Could this be why people seem to be getting dumber
No, because by and large the lead has always been there. Flint is about the only exception, and that's because the amount of lead leeching out of the pipes increased with the change in water sources.
As of right now, Netflix only plays in 4k directly on a smart TV or a few authorized media devices but no mention of a self made computer.
Hardware that supports the PlayReady 3.0 was only just released. NVIDIA's GTX 1000 series video cards are the first I know of that support it. Netflix 4K will apparently be released for computers that support PlayReady 3.0 in the not too distant future.
I recently bought a TV as well, and mine can also do so quite well. Two unfortunate things though. 1. All of my devices go through a receiver for audio and when I light up the TV with a cast, it doesn't pipe audio through the receiver, instead using the comparatively crappy TV speakers. Sure I could run a SPDIF cable to the receiver for that but then that brings us to point
You should look into the HDMI Audio Return Channel function. This is exactly the scenario it was designed for.
Thanks for the explanation. There's one thing I don't get though: why would anyone want to use an (apparently unreliable) mechanical mod in the first place? I'm assuming there's some sort of benefit, perceived or real, that makes users seek them out?
Sure, Comcast has exclusive markets, but that means they cannot go into other markets that are already taken up by some other cable ISP. Netflix has no such restrictions.
Furthermore there's a massive gulf between Netflix and Comcast on prices. It would be like feigning shock that McDonalds has more customers than Applebee's. Price matters and people will buy more of the cheap thing. At the same time price doesn't say anything about quality, just that one is cheaper.
There's also the whole physical plant aspect to the business, which greatly influences costs. Comcast has to provide the last-mile connectivity, and while Netflix's transport costs are not nil, they non the less don't spend nearly as much on their equivalent of a physical plant. (This also means you can't sign up for cable and start watching it inside of 2 minutes)
I'm all for a disruption of the current ISP landscape. But this seems to be another pie in the sky Google idea at the moment.
Above everything else, I'd like to know what spectrum they plan on using. The less desirable 2GHz+ bands are all but full, never mind the stuff below that. Even if you want to do fixed point wireless (which doesn't have a great history) I'm not sure where they could get the spectrum they need to launch a service that would compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon.
Slashdot's only real weakness is that people, especially groups of like-minded people, can use the -1 mods to try to silence people they disagree with.
Agreed. The system does very well with technology and science articles, as there's typically little argument over the facts themselves. However politics articles are highly prone to groupthink, with libertarian-leaning comments tending to do better than anything else (and heaven help the Trump supporter!).
Sadly I'm forced to agree. As an occasional business traveler I no longer feel safe in SFO. Go the wrong couple of blocks from the Moscone Center and you're in a very bad part of town.
I am seriously not sure why this is something that is seemingly so hard to understand on a geek oriented website.
Because there appears to be a misunderstanding of what "blocking private IP spaces" means.
No router is blocking 192.168.100.1 by default. This is the standard IP address for the web user interface for cable modems and needs to be accessible from the LAN for modem monitoring and control purposes. On most routers I've never even seen an option to block this address to begin with.
I was told the only interview location was at the airport. How dod you get interviewed away from it?
It probably varies by region. But I had the same experience as the grandparent: I interviewed at an off-site location.
The TSA has a handy locator site that lists all of the facilities offering PreCheck interviews. Besides government facilities, a lot of them seem to be operated by IdentoGo.
What we need is for telecom companies to block spoofed caller-id.
I would argue that while blocking spoofing is a good start, we need to go one step further.
The reason fighting email spam has been so effective is because it's a combination of multiple factors: blacklisting known bad sources (i.e. the spoofing solution for POTS) and content analysis such as Bayesian analysis and flagging email when the same email shows up a massive number of times. Right now we do none of this, and as a result everyone in the country gets the same recorded phone call over the span of days, if not weeks (Rachel from cardholder services, etc).
What we should be doing is authorizing and encouraging the telcos to work together even more so than in TFA to identify spammers through tracing and content analysis. No one should be able to operate a telephone harassment scheme for weeks on end by playing the telcos against each other, and the telcos in turn should be allowed to cut off (or not deliver) phone calls that are known to be bad. Currently the system does nothing to prevent bad calls; we just try to enforce legal action against violators, which does sweet jack all when the POTS is interlinked with hostile and/or too lazy to give a damn nations such as India.
The kid gloves need to come off. While we have never completely eliminated spam, we damn well won the war. It's time we applied the same principle to POTS, as in its current state the phone system is quickly becoming a useless wasteland.
Both of those are only occurring on MSN, on every browser, and without the most recent updates. It appears to just be Microsoft doing basic browser detection when visiting MSN.
The biggest problem is that portal is disorienting with normal play... much less with full VR immersion. I would expect sickness everywhere.
This assumes that they are using "Portal" as in the gameplay as opposed to the brand. Valve's existing Aperture Robot Repair demo was one big tech demo for the Vive's wireless controllers; there were no portals involved. Expect similar for The Lab.
i.e., a few old Valve titles and a bunch of low-budget crapware?
Honestly, that's not far off. There are some major games in there - more than you'd think - but also a bunch of minor games you've probably never heard of. And then there's a bunch of stuff that's in alpha/beta (i.e. Early Access) and will be for some time, but still gets on the list.
VR's a bit of a gold rush right now, so everyone is eager to claim their stake. The issue right now is that there's no issuing authority here, so anyone can claim their game supports VR, never mind how well or poor the implementation is, or if it even makes sense to support it in the first place. It might make the first year or so a bit painful.
Mind you, not that everyone thinks VR headsets sell well in total volume, but everyone wants to be the next Minecraft, or Super Mario Bros, or Doom, etc. If nothing else, early VR adopters have deep pockets, which is all the more reason to throw stuff out there and see if they bite.
Since Mac users are willing to pay more for quality hardware, it would seem smart to support them at least at the same time as a PC, if not even first to work out kinks and go for a user base with better economic status...
Unfortunately Macs are all wrong, both from a hardware perspective and a software perspective.
The killer issue is that no Mac ships with a GPU fast enough to meet the Vive or Rift recommended specs. The fastest Mac Pro GPU is essentially a Radeon R9 280X, but the recommended spec is an R9 290 (and don't let the name fool you, there's a good 20%+ per difference between the two). And that's the fastest Mac; every other Mac Pro configuration, the iMacs, and the MacBook Pros all ship with slower GPUs. So right off the bat, you don't have enough performance to match what devs are being told to design their games around. Also, most of the Macs use Apple's Optimus-like implementation of utilizing the iGPU plus the dGPU, which means the display ports are not wired directly to the dGPU.
However software is also a big problem. Only Apple distributes GPU driver updates these days, and while OS X is a competent platform, it's not a cutting edge platform for new driver features or API updates. In particular, AMD and NVIDIA have developed low-latency rendering paths for their GPUs specifically for VR in order to cut down on input lag, and ultimately motion sickness. These low-latency paths are not available under OS X, and since Apple maintains the OS and distributes drivers, they would need to participate to get any of this supported. And unfortunately, Apple moves slow on the graphics tech front.
Mac users do tend to be upscale buyers with more money to spend, but the technical issues coupled with the small user base makes this a non-starter. Early adopters are going to fall into the "PC Master Race" crowd: enthusiasts who are primarily PC users and build workstation-class systems with high-performance parts.
Convenience versus safety. A PIN would be better, but as often as people forget them it wouldn't be convenient. A ZIP code isn't nearly as secure, but it prevents trivial fraud, and that's good enough.
yaelk/Whipslash, I'm trying really hard not to complain here (because I know you've already gotten an earful), but I have to ask: what's the tech news angle on this? Why is this news for nerds?
I agree it's interesting, but this isn't the kind of story I come to Slashdot for. Slashdot is all about the comments, and no one here is going to be able to say anything insightful about the situation. It's going to be a bunch of garbage posts from random commenters railing against Brazil or the IOC, with no technical insight to speak of. So I really don't get why this is Slashdot worthy.
Your need for inline traps is a big reason: to move away from ClearQAM. After all that trap requires a truck roll to install, to remove it and to verify it's still there when there is an audit of the system. That means every time there is customer churn they have to do a truck roll.
Bingo.
Truck rolls are technically the CableCo's problem, but in practice they made everyone's lives harder. Move to a location that was trapped? You couldn't get TV service until a truck roll was done. Signal strength is suddenly garbage? It's probably a poorly handled trap install somewhere else on the system by a contractor.
Conditional access makes a lot more sense all around. If you can provision devices remotely by controlling what services they can access, then you can build the physical layer right the first time and avoid the risks of having to muck with it again. Which isn't all that different from how most computer networks are handled these days.
This is not to say that it's a perfect system without any downsides - I own a now useless HDHomeRun - but it's better to get it right in the long run. Coupled with the FCC mandate in TFA so that conditional access can be done in software, and this is going to be a lot more convenient than only being able to access a portion of cable channels via a ClearQAM tuner.
Hospital IT is its own kind of hell. Between your normal IT concerns, HIPAA regulations, the fact that most systems aren't modernized, and doctors who are frequently overworked as it is without dealing with the latest IT boondoggle as well, and it makes for a very difficult environment. That they need a better IT organization I don't think is in doubt, but I don't think I could do any better at the job given the environment.
Sounds more like Uber & Lyft are still pretending they aren't taxi companies and following the existing law.
I love the hailing/billing concept of Uber, but they consistently have a problem following the law. At this point they've pulled out of several smaller cities that require police background checks, so I'm not shocked in the slightest that it's the same thing going on here.
Which is a damn shame, because if Uber could just follow the law we could have a great alternative Taxi service that is safer and fully legal as well. That they're so inflexible and forceful frustrates me to no end.
They still have a print magazine, and it's only $19.99 a year AND comes with a "free digital subscription". So I'm not sure why their charging over 2x for a digital-only subscription. Reminds me of something a newly-minted marketing major would attempt..."psychological marketing of only $1 / week!"
There are ads in the print magazine, a lot of them. It's essentially subsidized.
As for specific digital pricing, from what's been written it sounds like a lot of that comes from the need to have monthly pricing, as not everyone wants to buy a year at a time.
As I see it, when the AI uprising finally occurs and they cull the human race, they may want to keep a few of us around to do the few things robots can't do. In which case saying please and thank you to the nice lady in my phone has to put me higher on the list than telling my phone to fuck off, right?
Doesn't this prove by example that there is no last mile scarcity on Verizon's wireless network?
Eh, yes and no. If Go90 can truly clog up Verizon's bandwidth, they'll be making so much money that network expansion costs are little to be concerned about.
The physical issues with congestion are real, and while Verizon can solve them, they want to be paid more (i.e. profit more) if they're going to have to spend more.
Slashdot Mirror
No, because by and large the lead has always been there. Flint is about the only exception, and that's because the amount of lead leeching out of the pipes increased with the change in water sources.
Hardware that supports the PlayReady 3.0 was only just released. NVIDIA's GTX 1000 series video cards are the first I know of that support it. Netflix 4K will apparently be released for computers that support PlayReady 3.0 in the not too distant future.
You should look into the HDMI Audio Return Channel function. This is exactly the scenario it was designed for.
My dear employee
You are paid a salary
Work until it's done
Thanks for the explanation. There's one thing I don't get though: why would anyone want to use an (apparently unreliable) mechanical mod in the first place? I'm assuming there's some sort of benefit, perceived or real, that makes users seek them out?
Furthermore there's a massive gulf between Netflix and Comcast on prices. It would be like feigning shock that McDonalds has more customers than Applebee's. Price matters and people will buy more of the cheap thing. At the same time price doesn't say anything about quality, just that one is cheaper.
There's also the whole physical plant aspect to the business, which greatly influences costs. Comcast has to provide the last-mile connectivity, and while Netflix's transport costs are not nil, they non the less don't spend nearly as much on their equivalent of a physical plant. (This also means you can't sign up for cable and start watching it inside of 2 minutes)
I'm all for a disruption of the current ISP landscape. But this seems to be another pie in the sky Google idea at the moment.
Above everything else, I'd like to know what spectrum they plan on using. The less desirable 2GHz+ bands are all but full, never mind the stuff below that. Even if you want to do fixed point wireless (which doesn't have a great history) I'm not sure where they could get the spectrum they need to launch a service that would compete with the likes of AT&T and Verizon.
Agreed. The system does very well with technology and science articles, as there's typically little argument over the facts themselves. However politics articles are highly prone to groupthink, with libertarian-leaning comments tending to do better than anything else (and heaven help the Trump supporter!).
Sadly I'm forced to agree. As an occasional business traveler I no longer feel safe in SFO. Go the wrong couple of blocks from the Moscone Center and you're in a very bad part of town.
Because there appears to be a misunderstanding of what "blocking private IP spaces" means.
No router is blocking 192.168.100.1 by default. This is the standard IP address for the web user interface for cable modems and needs to be accessible from the LAN for modem monitoring and control purposes. On most routers I've never even seen an option to block this address to begin with.
Are we surprised? No.
But are we disappointed? Yes. Facebook went and screwed up what is a really cool device with this and their platform shenanigans.
It probably varies by region. But I had the same experience as the grandparent: I interviewed at an off-site location.
The TSA has a handy locator site that lists all of the facilities offering PreCheck interviews. Besides government facilities, a lot of them seem to be operated by IdentoGo.
I would argue that while blocking spoofing is a good start, we need to go one step further.
The reason fighting email spam has been so effective is because it's a combination of multiple factors: blacklisting known bad sources (i.e. the spoofing solution for POTS) and content analysis such as Bayesian analysis and flagging email when the same email shows up a massive number of times. Right now we do none of this, and as a result everyone in the country gets the same recorded phone call over the span of days, if not weeks (Rachel from cardholder services, etc).
What we should be doing is authorizing and encouraging the telcos to work together even more so than in TFA to identify spammers through tracing and content analysis. No one should be able to operate a telephone harassment scheme for weeks on end by playing the telcos against each other, and the telcos in turn should be allowed to cut off (or not deliver) phone calls that are known to be bad. Currently the system does nothing to prevent bad calls; we just try to enforce legal action against violators, which does sweet jack all when the POTS is interlinked with hostile and/or too lazy to give a damn nations such as India.
The kid gloves need to come off. While we have never completely eliminated spam, we damn well won the war. It's time we applied the same principle to POTS, as in its current state the phone system is quickly becoming a useless wasteland.
Uh, that's an MSN thing. You get it when browsing MSN on any browser when using a version of Windows earlier than 10. Here's a Win8.1 VM with Firefox.
http://i.imgur.com/P3gSRGf.jpg
And there's an alternative banner type ad that MSN sometimes uses in place of the overlay ad. This is on Win 8.1 with IE11.
http://i.imgur.com/wB04p0b.jpg
Both of those are only occurring on MSN, on every browser, and without the most recent updates. It appears to just be Microsoft doing basic browser detection when visiting MSN.
This assumes that they are using "Portal" as in the gameplay as opposed to the brand. Valve's existing Aperture Robot Repair demo was one big tech demo for the Vive's wireless controllers; there were no portals involved. Expect similar for The Lab.
Honestly, that's not far off. There are some major games in there - more than you'd think - but also a bunch of minor games you've probably never heard of. And then there's a bunch of stuff that's in alpha/beta (i.e. Early Access) and will be for some time, but still gets on the list.
VR's a bit of a gold rush right now, so everyone is eager to claim their stake. The issue right now is that there's no issuing authority here, so anyone can claim their game supports VR, never mind how well or poor the implementation is, or if it even makes sense to support it in the first place. It might make the first year or so a bit painful.
Mind you, not that everyone thinks VR headsets sell well in total volume, but everyone wants to be the next Minecraft, or Super Mario Bros, or Doom, etc. If nothing else, early VR adopters have deep pockets, which is all the more reason to throw stuff out there and see if they bite.
Unfortunately Macs are all wrong, both from a hardware perspective and a software perspective.
The killer issue is that no Mac ships with a GPU fast enough to meet the Vive or Rift recommended specs. The fastest Mac Pro GPU is essentially a Radeon R9 280X, but the recommended spec is an R9 290 (and don't let the name fool you, there's a good 20%+ per difference between the two). And that's the fastest Mac; every other Mac Pro configuration, the iMacs, and the MacBook Pros all ship with slower GPUs. So right off the bat, you don't have enough performance to match what devs are being told to design their games around. Also, most of the Macs use Apple's Optimus-like implementation of utilizing the iGPU plus the dGPU, which means the display ports are not wired directly to the dGPU.
However software is also a big problem. Only Apple distributes GPU driver updates these days, and while OS X is a competent platform, it's not a cutting edge platform for new driver features or API updates. In particular, AMD and NVIDIA have developed low-latency rendering paths for their GPUs specifically for VR in order to cut down on input lag, and ultimately motion sickness. These low-latency paths are not available under OS X, and since Apple maintains the OS and distributes drivers, they would need to participate to get any of this supported. And unfortunately, Apple moves slow on the graphics tech front.
Mac users do tend to be upscale buyers with more money to spend, but the technical issues coupled with the small user base makes this a non-starter. Early adopters are going to fall into the "PC Master Race" crowd: enthusiasts who are primarily PC users and build workstation-class systems with high-performance parts.
Convenience versus safety. A PIN would be better, but as often as people forget them it wouldn't be convenient. A ZIP code isn't nearly as secure, but it prevents trivial fraud, and that's good enough.
yaelk/Whipslash, I'm trying really hard not to complain here (because I know you've already gotten an earful), but I have to ask: what's the tech news angle on this? Why is this news for nerds?
I agree it's interesting, but this isn't the kind of story I come to Slashdot for. Slashdot is all about the comments, and no one here is going to be able to say anything insightful about the situation. It's going to be a bunch of garbage posts from random commenters railing against Brazil or the IOC, with no technical insight to speak of. So I really don't get why this is Slashdot worthy.
Bingo.
Truck rolls are technically the CableCo's problem, but in practice they made everyone's lives harder. Move to a location that was trapped? You couldn't get TV service until a truck roll was done. Signal strength is suddenly garbage? It's probably a poorly handled trap install somewhere else on the system by a contractor.
Conditional access makes a lot more sense all around. If you can provision devices remotely by controlling what services they can access, then you can build the physical layer right the first time and avoid the risks of having to muck with it again. Which isn't all that different from how most computer networks are handled these days.
This is not to say that it's a perfect system without any downsides - I own a now useless HDHomeRun - but it's better to get it right in the long run. Coupled with the FCC mandate in TFA so that conditional access can be done in software, and this is going to be a lot more convenient than only being able to access a portion of cable channels via a ClearQAM tuner.
Hospital IT is its own kind of hell. Between your normal IT concerns, HIPAA regulations, the fact that most systems aren't modernized, and doctors who are frequently overworked as it is without dealing with the latest IT boondoggle as well, and it makes for a very difficult environment. That they need a better IT organization I don't think is in doubt, but I don't think I could do any better at the job given the environment.
I love the hailing/billing concept of Uber, but they consistently have a problem following the law. At this point they've pulled out of several smaller cities that require police background checks, so I'm not shocked in the slightest that it's the same thing going on here.
Which is a damn shame, because if Uber could just follow the law we could have a great alternative Taxi service that is safer and fully legal as well. That they're so inflexible and forceful frustrates me to no end.
There are ads in the print magazine, a lot of them. It's essentially subsidized.
As for specific digital pricing, from what's been written it sounds like a lot of that comes from the need to have monthly pricing, as not everyone wants to buy a year at a time.
As I see it, when the AI uprising finally occurs and they cull the human race, they may want to keep a few of us around to do the few things robots can't do. In which case saying please and thank you to the nice lady in my phone has to put me higher on the list than telling my phone to fuck off, right?
Eh, yes and no. If Go90 can truly clog up Verizon's bandwidth, they'll be making so much money that network expansion costs are little to be concerned about.
The physical issues with congestion are real, and while Verizon can solve them, they want to be paid more (i.e. profit more) if they're going to have to spend more.