The 2007WFP hasn't been an IPS panel in a while. Dell introduces new panels using IPS for good reviews, then switches to a panel lottery where they use whatever panel they want to. These days you won't find an IPS 2007WFP, they're all PVA/MVA. Dell would use TNs if they could get away with it.
The ruling is effectively a way for them to generate revenue to compensate for the losses generated by the anti-trade practices of the US. Think of it like this: they're allowed to print up & sell enough counterfeited DVDs that the retail value for them would be 21 million. This costs the (American) copyright holder 21mil, and Antigua is 21mil richer because that money went to the government and not the copyright holder of the DVD.
"Good" LCDs are not inexpensive, only "lame/good enough" LCDs are. The cheap LCDs you find today are all TN panels guaranteed to have horrible viewing angles and 18bit (262,144) color, if not additional gotchas like backlight bleeding and few OSD options like scaling modes. Good panels are still expensive, and are in practice going out of production. The only panels you're going to find that are genuinely "good" are IPS panels, which offer true 24bit (16,777,216) color with excellent color accuracy and a viewing angle that comes extremely close to the entire range of the LCD. Unfortunately these cost more to make resulting in everyone ceasing to make them for the consumer/prosumer segment; NEC is retiring its prosumer IPS-based LCDs and they were the last holdout.
Your choices these days are lame TN-based LCDs, or slightly better but still inferior MVA/PVA-based LCDs. The consumer market decided it wanted cheap LCDs, not good LCDs.
Under a proposed rule circulating at the FCC, cable companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have to slash the price they charge smaller television programmers to lease access on spare cable channels, a move the FCC says would open up cable viewers to a wider diversity of shows
Am I the only one that doesn't see a problem with the current "diversity"? We have 300+ channels of everything imaginable, including plenty of channels that have no right existing (*cough* G4 *cough*). Is anyone trying to create a channel today, and finding their limiting factor is the cost to get space on the cable networks, as opposed to the costs of making decent programming?
I suppose this change will make The Reality TV Rerun Channel cheaper to provide, but I've never seen any evidence that the limiting factor is anything other than convincing people to watch your channel over 299 others they already get.
They do, you're not allowed to publicize it. In fact this is very much an all-or-nothing situation: either NPD publishes it for free, or the public at large can never have it because the press can't report on it. Since it's basically up to the Big 3 to approve another year of public data, hopefully they'll go through with it.
This is a bit off-topic, but on the subject of HD encryption, is it me or does it seem like HD-DVD/BR discs are getting harder to crack? There have been several big releases lately that have taken a while to crack the encryption on and rip; the HD-DVD version of Transformers for example wasn't broken until some two weeks after the disc was released. Obviously the MPAA's engineers can't completely fix AACS due to flaws in its design, but they seem to be getting better at using what they have and keeping groups from cracking their discs for a bit longer.
On the whole this is still a loss for the MPAA, but none the less being able to stop people for even a couple of weeks would likely encourage anxious people to buy movies they'd otherwise pirate, so it would seem the MPAA hasn't completely lost yet.
I have never seen it lose data, but I don't store anything in it.
Starting with Windows Mobile 5, Microsoft finally wizened up and fixed the data loss problem. Now everything is handled more like a PC: data and applications are on flash memory, and RAM is just RAM (and not a place to store things). You'd have to work at it to lose data now.
It doesn't even immediately make sense. Until very recently major label music was DRM'd, which effectively prevented most casual piracy. I could potentially see streaming radio used as a piracy source, but that's only for MP3 streams, and then those guys do a number of things to discourage piracy.
Is there something I'm missing here? How can you tax someone for piracy when they're unable to use the taxed items to reasonably commit it?
Funny enough, part of the reason for the whole encryption thing is because of the law. The FCC mandates that cable companies offer a basic service (locals & trash channels) so that people can still watch their local networks when they can't receive them OTA at only the cost of providing the service. That means that cable companies have to filter (and now encrypt) the rest of the channels so that the basic customers aren't getting the channels they aren't paying for. If the cable companies could drop basic service and make "expanded basic" the new bottom tier, then they wouldn't need to protect those channels from a lower tier.
That said, they'd probably still encrypt the channels, both to guard against piracy (both of the stolen cable and illegally recording & distributing shows types) and to sell their wares (cable boxes & cable cards).
It's important to note that the cable companies actually aren't allowed to recompress the steams from the local stations, per FCC rules; so you should get the same picture quality out of both. They can and do however compress just about everything else. The satellite companies aren't beholden to the same rule, so they generally recompress the locals too.
We're only speechless because we're still trying to figure out what the catch is. IBM is a company, companies as a rule of thumb aren't nice when it means they're not making money for their shareholders. Just take a look at their comments, it wreaks of PR-speak.
If they passed on this patent, there's a reason why, and it's not because they're trying to be "nice."
ISPs are not common carriers
ISPs are not common carriers ISPs are not common carriers
I'm not sure why everyone keeps thinking otherwise, but ISPs are not common carriers. They already do actions that would be in violation of common carrier status, and no, no one has or will be suing them for it.
It's similar, but not the same. When DDR2 came out, we were comparing low-latency DDR-400 to high-latency DDR2-533; the latency wiped out the marginal bandwidth improvement. With DDR3, we have higher latencies again but the bandwidth boost is much higher (some of the best modules are rated for 2x the bandwidth of what JEDEC-spec DDR2 does) but it's still not getting much of a performance boost. At this point the problem is what's using the RAM, Intel's P35 memory controller + C2D design can't properly use all of that extra bandwidth. That will change, starting with Penryn and the X38 chipset.
So the FCC is requiring that the cable companies carry analog broadcasts of local channels until 2012, but then what's this:
or they can offer digital SD only and roll out converter boxes to all their subscribers (which could be expensive).
It seems like they'll pick option #2 here, and then either charge legacy users a fee to get a box, or just jack up everyones' rate by $5. Everyone is going to end up with a box either way, it's the only way to watch cable given that CableCARD so far is a bust and the cable companies seem anxious to start doing SDV rollouts.
And then there's the fact that the cable industry's main association is happy about this. What's up with that!?
The National Cable & Telecommunications Association applauded the decision, thanking the FCC for "engaging so constructively and fairly with our industry."
To be fair, Microsoft has stopped using LM hashes by default starting with Windows Vista. So unless I'm reading TFA wrong, this attack only works on XP/2000/2003.
Steve is ridiculously wealthy, and I don't mean this in a bad way. All of the expenses of searching for him can be recovered from him (or his estate), so there is basically a blank check on all of these costs. And yes, he's famous, so people will care and do more about finding him compared to some other schmuck - this is human nature and isn't going to be changing any time soon.
No, this isn't recent, it's only more sensationalized and is affecting more people overall because of the increased deployment of devices using the technology. Heck, the PowerBook 5300 when first released in the early-to-mid 90's was blowing up due to its LiIon battery - somewhat amusingly that was Sony made too.
Batteries will continue to periodically blow up as long as we use them, it's the inherent result of creating devices with so much energy density.
While it's true there are cracks, none of them are particularly great in the long run. Prior to WGA it was possible to get away with a VLK version of XP and any key that would work; in short it was trivially easy to pirate Windows and only one step above people pirating the more normal versions. Since WGA there has not been a way to pirate it that is nearly as easy, as these hacks don't work 100% of the time and/or MS finds a way to patch them out and detect them.
It's still possible to pirate Windows, and no doubt it'll always be possible, but WGA has made it so that for the first time ever it's not a trivial matter, and it has yielded a lot more than "a few days' delay."
I'm not sure what tech sites you have been reading, but that is not at all the truth for the Core2 release. Intel had already been producing at 65nm for quite some time with the 65nm "Cedar Mill" Pentium 4's, so the process had matured by the time Intel began Core2 production. The Core2 was extremely high yielding from the start both in terms of usable dice and what those dice would clock to (even among the early chips, many could go past 3ghz), the problems at launch were demand problems: everyone wanted a Core2, which kept supplies low.
2) Cable companies don't want to support it. Maybe #1 justifies a installer, I don't know. But I should be able to pick one up at my local store, install it myself, put the numbers in a web site and be good to go in a few minutes. I should get guide info. They don't do it because they want you to get their two way box, not because it's hard or expensive.
The thing is, #2 doesn't make sense any more. The FCC is making the cable companies eat their own dog food, so to speak, as any new boxes they deploy must use CableCards instead of integrated security. So I'm not sure what's going on at this point, as they're obviously doing okay using their own CableCards.
No, the grandparent has it right, it's more or less a structured denial system. Instead of using an open standard for security black boxes are used that still must be rented from the cable co (when the whole point was to prevent the cable co's from forcing customer rentals), and a cable co organization gets to decide who can be approved to use the black box (hint: open source systems need not even bother to apply), only to set the requirements so high that making the whole system work is damn near impossible.
This is all about denying the customer the ability to watch TV through anything other than a cable co device, it's just paying lip service to the law so that they're not obviously in violation of it. This will only get worse too once switched video gets deployed.
In theory, this has been a problem since D&D first came out, where biased GMs could get the new guy killed, etc. In practice such people quickly found themselves without players and games to run, and the same extends to the MMO-sphere where most MMOs don't have this problem. While meta-gaming is predictable, it's none the less a solvable problem that doesn't need to occur. You don't see this problem in most other games, it boils down to the EVE developers being unwilling to overcome their natural tendencies.
It's not so bad that it's a scam per-say, but it's rigged. The lawless areas of the world that are effectively the PvP and PvE end-game are dominated by a single group of people called the Band of Brothers; they have and likely continue to receive help from the developers. In the lawful areas where role-playing events occur, the outcomes of the events are rigged - not so much that it benefits any one person as much as the RPers don't influence anything and hence are wasting their time because it's not real RP.
There's still plenty of things you can do that aren't touched by corruption, but as a game structured around PvP and then run by biased developers, you don't have a fair chance of winning at the end-game. It goes as the developer wants it to and if you're not part of the plan or winning side too bad for you.
With all due respect, who gives a fuck about all this and why is it on the/. front page?
The relevance is related to the subject:
1) Intersetallar Kredits(ISK) are worth a lot of real-world money, the 100 billion stolen was worth at least $20,000 at the time when the perpetrator attempted to sell them. If they had made off and actually sold 700bil, that would have been a couple years' salary for most people around here.
2) As for the Goons, EVE is known as a game where it's best to try to cheat as much as you can in hopes of getting away with it, and that its developers are not above this. The fact that people are paying money to lose is both saddening and remarkable, and such is why it's on the front page.
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The 2007WFP hasn't been an IPS panel in a while. Dell introduces new panels using IPS for good reviews, then switches to a panel lottery where they use whatever panel they want to. These days you won't find an IPS 2007WFP, they're all PVA/MVA. Dell would use TNs if they could get away with it.
The ruling is effectively a way for them to generate revenue to compensate for the losses generated by the anti-trade practices of the US. Think of it like this: they're allowed to print up & sell enough counterfeited DVDs that the retail value for them would be 21 million. This costs the (American) copyright holder 21mil, and Antigua is 21mil richer because that money went to the government and not the copyright holder of the DVD.
"Good" LCDs are not inexpensive, only "lame/good enough" LCDs are. The cheap LCDs you find today are all TN panels guaranteed to have horrible viewing angles and 18bit (262,144) color, if not additional gotchas like backlight bleeding and few OSD options like scaling modes. Good panels are still expensive, and are in practice going out of production. The only panels you're going to find that are genuinely "good" are IPS panels, which offer true 24bit (16,777,216) color with excellent color accuracy and a viewing angle that comes extremely close to the entire range of the LCD. Unfortunately these cost more to make resulting in everyone ceasing to make them for the consumer/prosumer segment; NEC is retiring its prosumer IPS-based LCDs and they were the last holdout.
Your choices these days are lame TN-based LCDs, or slightly better but still inferior MVA/PVA-based LCDs. The consumer market decided it wanted cheap LCDs, not good LCDs.
I suppose this change will make The Reality TV Rerun Channel cheaper to provide, but I've never seen any evidence that the limiting factor is anything other than convincing people to watch your channel over 299 others they already get.
They do, you're not allowed to publicize it. In fact this is very much an all-or-nothing situation: either NPD publishes it for free, or the public at large can never have it because the press can't report on it. Since it's basically up to the Big 3 to approve another year of public data, hopefully they'll go through with it.
This is a bit off-topic, but on the subject of HD encryption, is it me or does it seem like HD-DVD/BR discs are getting harder to crack? There have been several big releases lately that have taken a while to crack the encryption on and rip; the HD-DVD version of Transformers for example wasn't broken until some two weeks after the disc was released. Obviously the MPAA's engineers can't completely fix AACS due to flaws in its design, but they seem to be getting better at using what they have and keeping groups from cracking their discs for a bit longer.
On the whole this is still a loss for the MPAA, but none the less being able to stop people for even a couple of weeks would likely encourage anxious people to buy movies they'd otherwise pirate, so it would seem the MPAA hasn't completely lost yet.
It doesn't even immediately make sense. Until very recently major label music was DRM'd, which effectively prevented most casual piracy. I could potentially see streaming radio used as a piracy source, but that's only for MP3 streams, and then those guys do a number of things to discourage piracy.
Is there something I'm missing here? How can you tax someone for piracy when they're unable to use the taxed items to reasonably commit it?
Funny enough, part of the reason for the whole encryption thing is because of the law. The FCC mandates that cable companies offer a basic service (locals & trash channels) so that people can still watch their local networks when they can't receive them OTA at only the cost of providing the service. That means that cable companies have to filter (and now encrypt) the rest of the channels so that the basic customers aren't getting the channels they aren't paying for. If the cable companies could drop basic service and make "expanded basic" the new bottom tier, then they wouldn't need to protect those channels from a lower tier.
That said, they'd probably still encrypt the channels, both to guard against piracy (both of the stolen cable and illegally recording & distributing shows types) and to sell their wares (cable boxes & cable cards).
It's important to note that the cable companies actually aren't allowed to recompress the steams from the local stations, per FCC rules; so you should get the same picture quality out of both. They can and do however compress just about everything else. The satellite companies aren't beholden to the same rule, so they generally recompress the locals too.
We're only speechless because we're still trying to figure out what the catch is. IBM is a company, companies as a rule of thumb aren't nice when it means they're not making money for their shareholders. Just take a look at their comments, it wreaks of PR-speak.
If they passed on this patent, there's a reason why, and it's not because they're trying to be "nice."
Repeat after me:
ISPs are not common carriers
ISPs are not common carriers
ISPs are not common carriers
I'm not sure why everyone keeps thinking otherwise, but ISPs are not common carriers. They already do actions that would be in violation of common carrier status, and no, no one has or will be suing them for it.
It's similar, but not the same. When DDR2 came out, we were comparing low-latency DDR-400 to high-latency DDR2-533; the latency wiped out the marginal bandwidth improvement. With DDR3, we have higher latencies again but the bandwidth boost is much higher (some of the best modules are rated for 2x the bandwidth of what JEDEC-spec DDR2 does) but it's still not getting much of a performance boost. At this point the problem is what's using the RAM, Intel's P35 memory controller + C2D design can't properly use all of that extra bandwidth. That will change, starting with Penryn and the X38 chipset.
It seems like they'll pick option #2 here, and then either charge legacy users a fee to get a box, or just jack up everyones' rate by $5. Everyone is going to end up with a box either way, it's the only way to watch cable given that CableCARD so far is a bust and the cable companies seem anxious to start doing SDV rollouts.
And then there's the fact that the cable industry's main association is happy about this. What's up with that!?To be fair, Microsoft has stopped using LM hashes by default starting with Windows Vista. So unless I'm reading TFA wrong, this attack only works on XP/2000/2003.
Which begs the question: How long until somebody does the Evil thing(with a capital E) and just starts scraping and copying Microsoft's listings?
Steve is ridiculously wealthy, and I don't mean this in a bad way. All of the expenses of searching for him can be recovered from him (or his estate), so there is basically a blank check on all of these costs. And yes, he's famous, so people will care and do more about finding him compared to some other schmuck - this is human nature and isn't going to be changing any time soon.
Batteries will continue to periodically blow up as long as we use them, it's the inherent result of creating devices with so much energy density.
It's still possible to pirate Windows, and no doubt it'll always be possible, but WGA has made it so that for the first time ever it's not a trivial matter, and it has yielded a lot more than "a few days' delay."
I'm not sure what tech sites you have been reading, but that is not at all the truth for the Core2 release. Intel had already been producing at 65nm for quite some time with the 65nm "Cedar Mill" Pentium 4's, so the process had matured by the time Intel began Core2 production. The Core2 was extremely high yielding from the start both in terms of usable dice and what those dice would clock to (even among the early chips, many could go past 3ghz), the problems at launch were demand problems: everyone wanted a Core2, which kept supplies low.
The thing is, #2 doesn't make sense any more. The FCC is making the cable companies eat their own dog food, so to speak, as any new boxes they deploy must use CableCards instead of integrated security. So I'm not sure what's going on at this point, as they're obviously doing okay using their own CableCards.
This is all about denying the customer the ability to watch TV through anything other than a cable co device, it's just paying lip service to the law so that they're not obviously in violation of it. This will only get worse too once switched video gets deployed.
In theory, this has been a problem since D&D first came out, where biased GMs could get the new guy killed, etc. In practice such people quickly found themselves without players and games to run, and the same extends to the MMO-sphere where most MMOs don't have this problem. While meta-gaming is predictable, it's none the less a solvable problem that doesn't need to occur. You don't see this problem in most other games, it boils down to the EVE developers being unwilling to overcome their natural tendencies.
There's still plenty of things you can do that aren't touched by corruption, but as a game structured around PvP and then run by biased developers, you don't have a fair chance of winning at the end-game. It goes as the developer wants it to and if you're not part of the plan or winning side too bad for you.
The relevance is related to the subject:
1) Intersetallar Kredits(ISK) are worth a lot of real-world money, the 100 billion stolen was worth at least $20,000 at the time when the perpetrator attempted to sell them. If they had made off and actually sold 700bil, that would have been a couple years' salary for most people around here.
2) As for the Goons, EVE is known as a game where it's best to try to cheat as much as you can in hopes of getting away with it, and that its developers are not above this. The fact that people are paying money to lose is both saddening and remarkable, and such is why it's on the front page.