Good enough is all people will pay for
on
Can TiVo be Saved?
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· Score: 1
The key benefits of a DVR are to let people time shift their viewing, and to let people skip portions of a show they're not interested in watching (e.g. commercials, boring scenes, innane commentary). The key features of a DVR are the ability to easily record a scheduled show or a scheduled series (first run only, or first run and repeats), and to provide VCR-like controls on live TV. Even the most rudimentary cable DVRs provide that functionality, and that's good enough for most people if it's cheap.
Comcast charges $5/month for a Motorola HD DVR with only two tuners and 14 hours of high definition recording. The difference between having that mediocre DVR and not having one is huge, and well worth $5/month. The difference between having a Tivo and the motorola is small and not work more than $0.50/month. If so, then why would anyone pay $200 for a low end Tivo box that can't record high def plus $12.95/month for the mandatory Tivo channel guide?
Tivo is seriously deluded about the value of their product in a world where DVRs are a commodity item. They had the first mover advantage, but they blew it. They are going down.
Avoiding the validation is not just for pirates. I have a valid paid-for copy of Windows XP but I don't want to be bothered finding the Windows XP serial number for each computer and then carefully typing that unreasonably long number into the microsoft web page. They need to find a more user-friendly way to validate their software.
The compatibility problem is due to glibc. glibc is the software developer's worst compatibility nightmare. Code compiled under one version won't work under another version, regardless of whether you use dynamic or static linking. This problem is so severe that even different minor versions of glibc don't work together. They are continually changing their symbol names. It's gotten so bad that we write our own versions of c libary calls so we can have some minimal level of compatibility.
By way of contrast, most proprietary unix operating systems (such as Solaris or Tru64) make a huge effort to ensure compatibility. Code I've compiled ten years ago under SunOS or OSF still runs on the latest versions of those operating systems.
The key advantage of SCSI drives over SATA drives is the number of simultaneous I/Os they can process, not transfer rates or access times. This advantage holds even among drives of equal speed and density. According to StorageReview.com, the fastest 10k RPM SCSI drive (Maxtor Atlas 10k) can handle 275 I/Os per second, while the fastest 10k RPM SATA drive (Western Digital Raptor WD740GD) can only do 226 I/Os per second. The fastest available SCSI drive ( the 15k RPM Fujitsu MAS3735) can process a whopping 366 I/Os per second! You won't notice the difference for local disk, but that's a huge difference when multiple processes are reading/writing to the disk simultaneously, as in a typical SAN/NAS shared disk environment: a SATA drive will hang on some processes, while a SCSI drive won't.
It looks like the "high definition option" is included in update 1:
"For U.S. versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition, this update also provides HDTV support for Media Center Edition 2005 computers equipped with an Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) tuner card"
You have to look beyond the marketing pap that cnet regurgitates to see the truth. MCE2005 doesn't currently support HDTV in any form. MSFT claims that a later patch (the so-called "high definition option") will support it.
From the MCE2005 FAQ:
Q.Does Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 support HDTV? What do I need?
A. Yes, Media Center Edition 2005 is the first PC operating system to support playback, pause, and recording of free, over-the-air High Definition Television (HDTV) right out of the box. New PCs with the High Definition option will begin shipping shortly after Media Center 2005 launches, delivering up to 6 times the image quality of standard TV.
The technology of HDTV provides a better viewing experience than you can imagine if you haven't seen it yourself. Not only does it have more resolution, it also has more color depth. The resulting picture is jaw-dropping, as anyone who has seen it first-hand will attest. Once you've seen your favorite sporting event in HDTV, there's no going back. The biggest problem with HDTV is the lack of HDTV content. Most providers transmit SD content most of the time on their HD channels. Only a few of the HD channels are HD all the time. Even so, it's fantastic when it happens.
The proposed EU remedy is foolish because it does not address the heart of the problem, namely, that Microsoft is using their Windows monopoly to enter related markets (in this case media distribution via WMP software and the WMV format). Dropping WMP from Windows in Europe won't hinder Microsoft from entering those markets worldwide. And most people in Europe will download WMP anyway since it will be free and most video content will require its use due to the prevalance of the WMV format. The only effective remedy is to require Microsoft to open source the WMV format (and possibly the WMV player as well) so that the user's choice of operating system is completely independent of their choice of media player/format.
Just got the v710 with Verizon Wireless and am horribly disappointed after I got over the novelty of having the phone connect to my car. The "obeymoto" voice command is the only good thing about this phone. Otherwise it's heavy, expensive, the camera is abysmal, the UI is awkward, and the bluetooth is crippled. I don't want all those extras (SMS, MMS, games, songs, movies, ringtones, etc.), just want a good phone to talk on!! The main reason I bought the v710 was to use hands-free in my car without a cumbersome headset, but that doesn't work very well. Already I've missed some incoming calls since neither the car nor the phone announces incoming calls when they're connected via bluetooth. The lack of bluetooth obex implementation to transfer the phone book is a deal breaker. Does Verizon really expect us to spend the rest of our lives manually reentering our phone books everytime we buy a new phone?? Without obex, "bluetooth handsfree" is no different than plugging a headset directly into the phone. Wait, it's worse since you can't use obeymoto voice command over bluetooth, and the phone doesn't ring for incoming calls when bluetooth is active. Too bad I can't plug the car's microphone and speaker "handset" directly into the phone. After reading
Jonathan's interview with Verizon's Brenda Raney, I'd be shocked if Verizon ever enables obex on the v710. It's easy for Verizon's sales and service reps to promise upgrades and fixes so that people don't cancel their contracts within the 15 day grace period. But after that interview we all know how Verizon does their math. The Verizon v710 is for suckers. I'm cancelling.
I agree, Molyneux's designs are high on pre-game hype and low on actual game delivery. Anyone remember Dungeon Keeper? After all the hype and grand pronouncements, and the massive release delays, it ended up being a below average behind-the-times game. Molyneux is better at working the media into a frenzy than he is at designing games or having them implemented.
Excellent points, Bozdune!
Another genius product marketing step by Microsoft was to bundling their spreadsheet, word processor, email reader into an Office Suite. That simple strategic move crushed Lotus, because no matter how good the Lotus spreadsheet was, or how much market share it had by itself, Lotus didn't have a competitive word processor or email reader.
I respectfully disagree that Intel was ever competing with itself. They've been competing with AMD in the desktop/workgroup market for a long time now, and with Sparc/MIPS/Alpha in the enterprise market as well. Intel developed the high-clock rate Pentium 4 to compete directly with AMD's Athlon, after the Athlon whooped the Pentium 3. The Intel marketing people saw how much leverage AMD got from being the first to 1GHz with their Athlon and they didn't want that to happen again. Intel was *severely* embarrassed by loosing the race to 1Ghz. The Intel marketing people incorrectly concluded that the market was buying clock rate rather than performance. So they mandated a CPU that would have the highest possible clock rate, irrespective of performance. That's the P4/Netburst. Now they are getting burned on performance because AMD has shifted the dialog from clock rate to benchmarks. Intel also saw with the success of the Pentium M that benchmarks can triumph over clock rate. So now Intel has finally realized that they misread the market and they have to change their entire product strategy.
It's incredible that TechTV looses to G4. G4 has the lamest content I've ever seen, a bunch of loosers playing video games. Not reviewing, just PLAYING. Who wants to watch other people playing video games??? How lame is that. It's worse than QVC, worse than infomercials. Charles Hirschhorn (the G4 CEO) sure snookered Brian Roberts (the COMCAST CEO) good.
Given the high chance of hardware incompatibilities when installing linux on laptops, linux live cds are fantastic for laptops. You boot the live cd, fiddle with the options, and see if the hardware you care about works (eg., display, external display, ethernet, wireless, etc.). If not, you try another distribution. I tried knoppix, gnoppix, morphix, as well as straight debian on my ibm t40p. Only knoppix was able to get everything working. After I got it working, I installed it to the harddrive. The biggest problems with knoppix are (1) it uses kde instead of gnome and (2) it has its own package structure that is incompatible with debian. So apt-get dist-upgrade or even apt-get upgrade will break everything. I've only had success upgrading individual packages with apt.
The principle benefit of a 64bit OS is that each process gets its own essentially infinite address space, which greatly simplifies coding in many applications. 64bit hardware makes the OS run fast because it provides hardware support for 64 bit pointers. You don't need a lot of RAM to benefit from a 64bit virtual address space. All you need is a large swap partition and an application program with locality of reference. Under such conditions nearly all of the memory references in RAM or cache, and the program will fly.
you will see that "the company claimed that the service worked during tests." What is "the service"? The ability to download a special inaudible sound wave and play it by hitting a few buttons on the mobile phone. That is the service they are providing, and its not too hard to believe that it worked during testing. Unfortunately they are not providing you with an anti-mosquito service.
The 1991 Acura/Honda NSX has an all-aluminum unit body, three years before the A8. Most of the other parts (engine, suspension, wheels) in the NSX are also aluminum. It wasn't until 1994 that the Audi A8 was introduced with its aluminum space frame chasis (developed jointly with Alcoa). The 1995 Lotus Elise followed shortly thereafter with an even more advanced superlight epoxy-bonded aluminum extrusion chasis developed jointly with Hydro Aluminium of Denmark.
Today a lot of cars make extensive use of aluminum --- follow this link for some examples in the US domestic market.
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The key benefits of a DVR are to let people time shift their viewing, and to let people skip portions of a show they're not interested in watching (e.g. commercials, boring scenes, innane commentary). The key features of a DVR are the ability to easily record a scheduled show or a scheduled series (first run only, or first run and repeats), and to provide VCR-like controls on live TV. Even the most rudimentary cable DVRs provide that functionality, and that's good enough for most people if it's cheap.
Comcast charges $5/month for a Motorola HD DVR with only two tuners and 14 hours of high definition recording. The difference between having that mediocre DVR and not having one is huge, and well worth $5/month. The difference between having a Tivo and the motorola is small and not work more than $0.50/month. If so, then why would anyone pay $200 for a low end Tivo box that can't record high def plus $12.95/month for the mandatory Tivo channel guide?
Tivo is seriously deluded about the value of their product in a world where DVRs are a commodity item. They had the first mover advantage, but they blew it. They are going down.
Avoiding the validation is not just for pirates. I have a valid paid-for copy of Windows XP but I don't want to be bothered finding the Windows XP serial number for each computer and then carefully typing that unreasonably long number into the microsoft web page. They need to find a more user-friendly way to validate their software.
The compatibility problem is due to glibc. glibc is the software developer's worst compatibility nightmare. Code compiled under one version won't work under another version, regardless of whether you use dynamic or static linking. This problem is so severe that even different minor versions of glibc don't work together. They are continually changing their symbol names. It's gotten so bad that we write our own versions of c libary calls so we can have some minimal level of compatibility. By way of contrast, most proprietary unix operating systems (such as Solaris or Tru64) make a huge effort to ensure compatibility. Code I've compiled ten years ago under SunOS or OSF still runs on the latest versions of those operating systems.
The key advantage of SCSI drives over SATA drives is the number of simultaneous I/Os they can process, not transfer rates or access times. This advantage holds even among drives of equal speed and density. According to StorageReview.com, the fastest 10k RPM SCSI drive (Maxtor Atlas 10k) can handle 275 I/Os per second, while the fastest 10k RPM SATA drive (Western Digital Raptor WD740GD) can only do 226 I/Os per second. The fastest available SCSI drive ( the 15k RPM Fujitsu MAS3735) can process a whopping 366 I/Os per second! You won't notice the difference for local disk, but that's a huge difference when multiple processes are reading/writing to the disk simultaneously, as in a typical SAN/NAS shared disk environment: a SATA drive will hang on some processes, while a SCSI drive won't.
"For U.S. versions of Windows XP Media Center Edition, this update also provides HDTV support for Media Center Edition 2005 computers equipped with an Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) tuner card"
From the MCE2005 FAQ:
Q.Does Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 support HDTV? What do I need?
A. Yes, Media Center Edition 2005 is the first PC operating system to support playback, pause, and recording of free, over-the-air High Definition Television (HDTV) right out of the box. New PCs with the High Definition option will begin shipping shortly after Media Center 2005 launches, delivering up to 6 times the image quality of standard TV.
Noticeably absent is Microsoft's Media Center 2005.
Because it doesn't yet support HDTV.
The technology of HDTV provides a better viewing experience than you can imagine if you haven't seen it yourself. Not only does it have more resolution, it also has more color depth. The resulting picture is jaw-dropping, as anyone who has seen it first-hand will attest. Once you've seen your favorite sporting event in HDTV, there's no going back. The biggest problem with HDTV is the lack of HDTV content. Most providers transmit SD content most of the time on their HD channels. Only a few of the HD channels are HD all the time. Even so, it's fantastic when it happens.
The proposed EU remedy is foolish because it does not address the heart of the problem, namely, that Microsoft is using their Windows monopoly to enter related markets (in this case media distribution via WMP software and the WMV format). Dropping WMP from Windows in Europe won't hinder Microsoft from entering those markets worldwide. And most people in Europe will download WMP anyway since it will be free and most video content will require its use due to the prevalance of the WMV format. The only effective remedy is to require Microsoft to open source the WMV format (and possibly the WMV player as well) so that the user's choice of operating system is completely independent of their choice of media player/format.
Just got the v710 with Verizon Wireless and am horribly disappointed after I got over the novelty of having the phone connect to my car. The "obeymoto" voice command is the only good thing about this phone. Otherwise it's heavy, expensive, the camera is abysmal, the UI is awkward, and the bluetooth is crippled. I don't want all those extras (SMS, MMS, games, songs, movies, ringtones, etc.), just want a good phone to talk on!! The main reason I bought the v710 was to use hands-free in my car without a cumbersome headset, but that doesn't work very well. Already I've missed some incoming calls since neither the car nor the phone announces incoming calls when they're connected via bluetooth. The lack of bluetooth obex implementation to transfer the phone book is a deal breaker. Does Verizon really expect us to spend the rest of our lives manually reentering our phone books everytime we buy a new phone?? Without obex, "bluetooth handsfree" is no different than plugging a headset directly into the phone. Wait, it's worse since you can't use obeymoto voice command over bluetooth, and the phone doesn't ring for incoming calls when bluetooth is active. Too bad I can't plug the car's microphone and speaker "handset" directly into the phone. After reading Jonathan's interview with Verizon's Brenda Raney, I'd be shocked if Verizon ever enables obex on the v710. It's easy for Verizon's sales and service reps to promise upgrades and fixes so that people don't cancel their contracts within the 15 day grace period. But after that interview we all know how Verizon does their math. The Verizon v710 is for suckers. I'm cancelling.
I agree, Molyneux's designs are high on pre-game hype and low on actual game delivery. Anyone remember Dungeon Keeper? After all the hype and grand pronouncements, and the massive release delays, it ended up being a below average behind-the-times game. Molyneux is better at working the media into a frenzy than he is at designing games or having them implemented.
Excellent points, Bozdune! Another genius product marketing step by Microsoft was to bundling their spreadsheet, word processor, email reader into an Office Suite. That simple strategic move crushed Lotus, because no matter how good the Lotus spreadsheet was, or how much market share it had by itself, Lotus didn't have a competitive word processor or email reader.
I respectfully disagree that Intel was ever competing with itself. They've been competing with AMD in the desktop/workgroup market for a long time now, and with Sparc/MIPS/Alpha in the enterprise market as well. Intel developed the high-clock rate Pentium 4 to compete directly with AMD's Athlon, after the Athlon whooped the Pentium 3. The Intel marketing people saw how much leverage AMD got from being the first to 1GHz with their Athlon and they didn't want that to happen again. Intel was *severely* embarrassed by loosing the race to 1Ghz. The Intel marketing people incorrectly concluded that the market was buying clock rate rather than performance. So they mandated a CPU that would have the highest possible clock rate, irrespective of performance. That's the P4/Netburst. Now they are getting burned on performance because AMD has shifted the dialog from clock rate to benchmarks. Intel also saw with the success of the Pentium M that benchmarks can triumph over clock rate. So now Intel has finally realized that they misread the market and they have to change their entire product strategy.
Wrong! Dissatisfied customers ask for refunds.
It's incredible that TechTV looses to G4. G4 has the lamest content I've ever seen, a bunch of loosers playing video games. Not reviewing, just PLAYING. Who wants to watch other people playing video games??? How lame is that. It's worse than QVC, worse than infomercials. Charles Hirschhorn (the G4 CEO) sure snookered Brian Roberts (the COMCAST CEO) good.
TechReport.com consistently has the most thorough, careful, credible, and insightful hardware reviews. Here's their excellent review of the Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, which should have been included at the top with the others.
DigiUpdate has a guide to high definition displays, which focuses on commercially available technologies.
Given the high chance of hardware incompatibilities when installing linux on laptops, linux live cds are fantastic for laptops. You boot the live cd, fiddle with the options, and see if the hardware you care about works (eg., display, external display, ethernet, wireless, etc.). If not, you try another distribution. I tried knoppix, gnoppix, morphix, as well as straight debian on my ibm t40p. Only knoppix was able to get everything working. After I got it working, I installed it to the harddrive. The biggest problems with knoppix are (1) it uses kde instead of gnome and (2) it has its own package structure that is incompatible with debian. So apt-get dist-upgrade or even apt-get upgrade will break everything. I've only had success upgrading individual packages with apt.
The principle benefit of a 64bit OS is that each process gets its own essentially infinite address space, which greatly simplifies coding in many applications. 64bit hardware makes the OS run fast because it provides hardware support for 64 bit pointers. You don't need a lot of RAM to benefit from a 64bit virtual address space. All you need is a large swap partition and an application program with locality of reference. Under such conditions nearly all of the memory references in RAM or cache, and the program will fly.
you will see that "the company claimed that the service worked during tests." What is "the service"? The ability to download a special inaudible sound wave and play it by hitting a few buttons on the mobile phone. That is the service they are providing, and its not too hard to believe that it worked during testing. Unfortunately they are not providing you with an anti-mosquito service.
Today a lot of cars make extensive use of aluminum --- follow this link for some examples in the US domestic market.