MythTV has gotten that good?
on
TiVo Basic
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· Score: 1
I used it only 4-5 months ago and it SUCKED.
For one - It ignored any bitrate/quality settings I set. It was recording NTSC video at well beyond DVD bitrates (i.e. 5-6 gigs/hour!)
The UI sucked. Also, most importantly, the core scheduling/capture system and the UI were tied together. i.e. if I wanted to record something, I couldn't do anything else with the machine because of that damn ignores-the-windowmanager UI. MythTV needs to split scheduling/recording into a seperate background daemon. (Or have they done so already?)
It might be an OK solution for a dedicated box, but there are plenty of people who want to add PVR to their existing Linux box.
Re:Itsn't it a moot point?
on
TiVo Basic
·
· Score: 3, Informative
" The nice thing however, is that when you're receiving a signal through the dish network PVR (or Bell ExpressVu in Canada), the PVR is recording the raw MPEG stream directly - there's no recompression as in TIVO, so you're seeing exactly the same quality picture as if you were watching it live."
It's the same case for DirecTiVo
Either way, no satellite for me. $1200+ in tree removal in the way. And two of the trees in question are not on my property.:(
" Well, their stock is up, so the markets thinking positive things about them. And while they haven't paid for the standard 30 second spots, NBC has done several placements in their TV series (Friends, Scrubs, Will & Grace). Not sure if they're paying for it or NBC's throwing it in as part of their investment. " There are TiVo references every once in a while on Ed, too. (Or the word may be "were", as it's apparently "indeterminate" as to whether the series will continue.)
" Actually, Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss. That is totally anathema to their corporate personality." Not true. Check out www.actsofgord.com - Nintendo BRIEFLY sold the N64 or Gamecube at a loss following a Sony price slash.
But in general, that situation is not preferable and is to be avoided at Nintendo - They quickly cost-reduced the system in question to make it profitable again. (They were working on it, but Sony slashed prices too quickly.)
Last time I read that, it basically said that in certain cases, newer consoles were briefly sold at a loss, but this situation was highly undesirable and never occurred for more than 2-3 months for any given company. (Except MS, the Xbox always has been a loss leader and always will be, since cost-cutting options available to Nintendo and Sony are not available to them. MS can't integrate the CPU and GPU into one chip because they're made by two different manufacturers - Sony can and HAS - Over the PS1's life, the console went from many chips to a single chip that did everything at much lower cost. That's why new PS1s are $50 now and Sony is probably making a (tiny) profit, and why the PS2's compatibility with PS1 games is so good - The PS2 doesn't do emulation, it *includes PS1 electronics* because they were so cheap.
The only times consoles were sold at a loss by anyone was usually after a price slash was forced on the company. (Usually by a competitor slashing prices. I believe one instance was that Nintendo was planning to slash either the N64 or GC in 2-3 months, but Sony was ready to slash one of their systems immediately. Sony slashed prices, and Nintendo was forced to slash even though they wouldn't be ready to slash and remain profitable on the box for another 2-3 months.)
The profit margins may be razor thin (I'm positive they are on a device like the PS1) and the REAL money may be in the games, but they're not loss leaders.
Microwave emissions aren't ionizing radiation like gamma rays, UV, or X-rays. Microwaves do not have a cumulative effect, as opposed to the "bit flipping" that higher-energy electromagnetic radiation causes in your DNA.
Microwaves have only ONE path to bodily damage - Heating via RF absorption at the molecular level. For microwaves to do damage, the power level has to be high. (Microwave ovens are usually 500 watts and above, most modern ones are around a kilowatt.)
Most WLAN cards are 25 mW. Higher-end ones (Ciscos, for example) are 100. There are a very small number of 200 mW cards.
Needless to say, these power levels are NOT enough to cause any significant heating, even if you're exposed to it 24/7. You're more likely to burn yourself via heat conduction from a laptop computer than you are to have any heat-related injuries from a WLAN card or cell phone. MAYBE if you touch the circuit traces of the PCB antenna directly with your fingers you MIGHT get a mild RF burn on the surface of your skin (This would require opening up the card), but thanks to the inverse square law, that's the worst thing that can happen.
I'll reiterate this again - I work for a company that develops transmitters for cell towers. On a regular basis, we're exposed to RF levels higher than even a habitual cellphone user. (Amps with covers off tend to leak a lot - Never measured the exact amount, but it's enough to register on other equipment in the same room while a transmitting cell phone will not.) Some of my coworkers have been in the industry for two decades and not a single person anyone knows has ever had any RF-related health problems except for the occasional RF burn from accidentally touching a live trace carrying 45 watts of power. A cup of coffee can hurt you more.
I wouldn't call Dell cheap crap. MAYBE if you order their dirt-cheap systems, but their slightly better systems are excellent.
I have an Inspiron 8200 laptop, and my dad has an I8000. Both are rock-solid, excellent systems.
At work, we use Dell machines almost exclusively. Their business machines are built EXTREMELY well. Newer ones are COMPLETELY screwless - Not only the case, but the PCI cards too. (Neato latch-down mechanism.) Yes, the Mac's case itself is screwless, but not the PCI cards, and it also seems flimsier than the construction of the OptiPlexes and Precisions at work.
A longer pipeline allows for a higher clockrate, but usually decreases performance per MHz.
This is why the P4 is significantly slower than the P3 at a given clockrate, and the Athlon can keep up with the P4 in benchmarks despite being clocked at 2/3 the clockrate. The P4's big advantage is that it can scale WAY up in clockrate.
Unfortunately for Apple, the G4 isn't efficient enough MHz for MHz to compensate for the fact that for the same price you can get an Athlon running at twice the clockrate of a G4. 10-20% more efficient MHz for MHz, maybe. But not 100% more efficient.
It's a waste when I already have an 18" flat-panel with a spare input and NO ROOM for another 17"-monitor-sized device anywhere.
If Apple had stuff in the eMac's price range WITHOUT the built-in monitor (total waste for me), I'd bite. But they want $1500 minimum if I don't want to waste money on a 17" CRT.
"* keyboard and mouse - a decent pair might cost $50." I can get an Intellimouse Optical for under $15 at a computer show. I can get a USB to PS/2 adapter for about the same price. That's $30 for a mouse that's far better than the single-button POS that Apple would force on me, and the ability to use one of my spare Model Ms.
"# Combo DVD/CDRW drive - $60" Mv DVD-R drive is already in an external 1394 case, and I also have plenty of spare CD-ROM drives lying around. If I wanted CD-RW capability in the machine - Combo drives always sacrifice both DVD read performance and CD recording performance. OfficeMax has Lite-On 48x12x48 CD-RW drives on sale for $20 after rebate every other week it seems.
Radeon - I'd prefer a GeForce. Still about the same price, but I get to choose.
I've saved more than 10% and eliminated a lot of waste. Also, I would be going for the slowest (i.e. minimal) system available, since I'm primarily a PC user and the Mac would be mainly for iTunes and a few other niche things. i.e. slower than what Apple is willing to sell me.
The cost savings of my PC hasn't been in the fact that it was cheap when I purchased it.
It's the fact that it is UPGRADABLE. i.e. every year or so I dump a small amount of money in it.
In addition, I already have a number of my peripherals in external 1394 cases (shared between laptop and desktop). Since Macs can supposedly boot off of Firewire drives - No need for an optical drive, already have one. No need for a monitor either - Already have one, WITH a spare unused input.
These kits aren't for people looking for a new computer - These are for people looking to upgrade their box or add a box that shares hardware with their existing setup.
I believe AMD was (and still is) one of the top flash memory vendors around. (Intel happens to be too...)
As someone else said, AMD started in other markets. CPUs are something "new" to them. Even if AMD gets creamed in the CPU market for a few years, they'll still be around. It's not like 3Dfx who had nothing to fall back on other than their 3D accelerator chips - x86 CPUs are just one part of AMD's business, they're involved in a LOT of other areas and always have been, even before they made CPUs.
Even if Apple and AMD were intense competitors, I wouldn't be that surprised to see an AMD chip in an Apple product. Sometimes using the best chip for a job involves buying from your competitor. This was the case with Lucent Microelectronics - Some of their largest customers were intense competitors of theirs in the optical networking business. (Such as Cisco). This was eventually one of the main reasons for spinning the microelectronics division off into Agere. Many years ago I saw a Lucent FPGA on a telephone interface board in a Nortel product. At that time, Lucent was one of the top FPGA and DSP vendors in the world.
"This is probably where the "Apple is going to use x86 CPUs in their PCs" rumours start from." Probably, although people who know AMD will know that they're completely OK with companies making non-x86 CPUs that use their bus technology.
Or more appropriately - The original Athlon bus was HEAVILY based on the bus used by the Alpha processor that was released around the same time. AMD and DEC (this was before the Compaq/Intel mess) cooperated heavily on bus technology.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see AMD bus technology proliferate in non-x86 CPUs. AMD doesn't see it as significant competition, and it means other companies helping with development.
Not sure about other Dells (I haven't had any problems with mine, but I'm careful with it. I will agree that the power connector is virtually invincible - Solid ABS plastic.), but if you look at the closest price/performance analog to Apple, which is IBM, IBMs are built MUCH more solidly than Apples, some of which look rather flimsy to me. IBM laptops are built like tanks. Pricey, though.
I don't know about the 2100 (Didn't the Newtons get even larger over time, i.e. the 2100 is larger than the 120?), but the 120's handwriting recognition is indeed the shittiest HW recognition ever.
We had a Newton MP120 in my house - It very quickly achieved "paperweight" status, even BEFORE it was replaced with a Palm Professional. It was a piece of shit, no ifs ands or buts. Slow, anemic, and bad handwriting recognition. A year later my dad got the aforementioned Palm Professional. No one in my family has gone back since then - At this point both of us carry Kyocera 6035s (Palm + CDMA phone) and I may be upgrading to a 7135 this summer. (Depends on if I can finagle an early phone upgrade, otherwise I have to wait an extra year for "new every two".)
You can theoretically obtain an almost infinitesimal decrease in audio quality when downsampling from 48->44.1.
Problem is that the good resampling algorithms are computationally intensive, and hence are almost never implemented in hardware, instead less "costly" algorithms are used. But with good software (For the ultimate in flexibility, use Matlab - I kid you not. Lots of different resampling algorithms and documentation on how they work.)
Because MPEG-2 is an open standard, it's guaranteed that if you convert to DVD, it'll be around forever. (With occasional lossless maintenance required).
Blu-ray becomes big and DVD obsolete? Copy the data to a Blu-Ray disc. MPEG-2 decoders will be around for ages. (FYI, even the "obsolete" codecs like Intel Indeo are still maintained and kept in Windows Media Player, etc.) Blu-Ray becomes obsolete? Copy the data again - It's lossless.
DVD isn't expensive - It's slightly over $1/disc these days. (I wouldn't go for the sub-$1 discs, they're crap. But Ritek G03s are $1.15 or so per disc in quantity and are excellent discs. Samsung BeAll is around $1.40-1.50/disc.)
You can fit a 2-hour movie on DVD if you drop the bitrate a bit. 99% chance that the source quality (20-year-old VHS) is bad enough that you won't be able to tell the difference at even half the bitrate.
" That's a worthy goal of reuse, and something I wouldn't expect the Apollo/Soyuz model to beable to do."
Apollo is partially capable of such a feat... Of course, the planet or other body needs much lower gravity than Earth. But remember that Apollo landed on the Moon and then took off again. (Admittedly part of it was left behind, but not all.)
The transmit amp must be biased so that it can handle the peak power that will be transmitted. Otherwise, the peaks get "squished". This is the case whether it is a mobile device or the base station.
Problem with this is that biasing an amp for high power levels results in horrible efficiency at lower power levels.
For example, a Class A linear amplifier's efficiency is a maximum of 50% - This is if it is continouously operating at full rated power. If a Class A amp needs to handle 200 watts, then it must be biased with a DC power of 200 watts. If only 2 watts are being transmitted, it will consume 202 watts...
Class AB is more likely the case, the penalty for not running full power is far less, but still, there's no way a mobile device can generate a 200W pulse like you claim a GSM phone can without sacrificing large amounts of battery life.
Class C and higher = not candidates since they're not linear in any way, shape, or form. (Note that this was the one advantage of analog cellular - They used FM, which works fine when run through a class C or D amplifier since there is no information carried in the amplitude of the signal.)
There are no "recal pulses" whatever those may be in CDMA or UMTS. We don't have to handle anything like that in any of our amplifiers. We also make a handful (not very many) GSM amplifiers, and none of those have to handle unusually high PARs either. If they did, the amplifiers would have to be huge as an RF power amplifier has to be biased to handle the highest peaks that go through it - If we had something worse than a 10 dB PAR, the amps would become huge and even more inefficient than they are now. As it is, most of our amps are only specced to deal with PARs on the order of 7-8 dB (This is what my current product has been specced.)
If you knew anything about RF design, which you apparently don't, you'd know that an amplifier has to be sized to handle the largest power peaks that go through it if you want any semblance of linearity. (Thermal design is a different issue, that's all about averages.)
I believe that back in the day when WP and MSOffice were approximately even, WP had some formatting features that made it slightly better for legal documents.
Apparently, over the years, MS has made Word more and more generic and LESS suited to legal use than it was in the past. Meanwhile, Corel realized that they have a good hold on the niche market of law firms, and began specifically catering to law firms.
As a result, WP evolved into a vastly superior application for law firms. It's a niche market for Corel, but a VERY solid niche.
Some telcos have a system that blocks all calls without caller ID info, PERIOD, with no way around it.
Problem is that some PBX systems don't provide caller ID info to the outside world. This is the case at Cornell University - Caller ID info is not present for calls originating inside their system and going outside. This was a problem for someone who special-ordered from the Campus Store and only left a phone number as a contact. But his number blocked our "Your item is in!" (human, not automatic) calls, resulting in an irate customer coming in two weeks later.
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I used it only 4-5 months ago and it SUCKED.
For one - It ignored any bitrate/quality settings I set. It was recording NTSC video at well beyond DVD bitrates (i.e. 5-6 gigs/hour!)
The UI sucked. Also, most importantly, the core scheduling/capture system and the UI were tied together. i.e. if I wanted to record something, I couldn't do anything else with the machine because of that damn ignores-the-windowmanager UI. MythTV needs to split scheduling/recording into a seperate background daemon. (Or have they done so already?)
It might be an OK solution for a dedicated box, but there are plenty of people who want to add PVR to their existing Linux box.
" The nice thing however, is that when you're receiving a signal through the dish network PVR (or Bell ExpressVu in Canada), the PVR is recording the raw MPEG stream directly - there's no recompression as in TIVO, so you're seeing exactly the same quality picture as if you were watching it live."
:(
It's the same case for DirecTiVo
Either way, no satellite for me. $1200+ in tree removal in the way. And two of the trees in question are not on my property.
" Well, their stock is up, so the markets thinking positive things about them. And while they haven't paid for the standard 30 second spots, NBC has done several placements in their TV series (Friends, Scrubs, Will & Grace). Not sure if they're paying for it or NBC's throwing it in as part of their investment. "
There are TiVo references every once in a while on Ed, too. (Or the word may be "were", as it's apparently "indeterminate" as to whether the series will continue.)
" Actually, Nintendo has never sold a console at a loss. That is totally anathema to their corporate personality."
Not true. Check out www.actsofgord.com - Nintendo BRIEFLY sold the N64 or Gamecube at a loss following a Sony price slash.
But in general, that situation is not preferable and is to be avoided at Nintendo - They quickly cost-reduced the system in question to make it profitable again. (They were working on it, but Sony slashed prices too quickly.)
Last time I read that, it basically said that in certain cases, newer consoles were briefly sold at a loss, but this situation was highly undesirable and never occurred for more than 2-3 months for any given company. (Except MS, the Xbox always has been a loss leader and always will be, since cost-cutting options available to Nintendo and Sony are not available to them. MS can't integrate the CPU and GPU into one chip because they're made by two different manufacturers - Sony can and HAS - Over the PS1's life, the console went from many chips to a single chip that did everything at much lower cost. That's why new PS1s are $50 now and Sony is probably making a (tiny) profit, and why the PS2's compatibility with PS1 games is so good - The PS2 doesn't do emulation, it *includes PS1 electronics* because they were so cheap.
The only times consoles were sold at a loss by anyone was usually after a price slash was forced on the company. (Usually by a competitor slashing prices. I believe one instance was that Nintendo was planning to slash either the N64 or GC in 2-3 months, but Sony was ready to slash one of their systems immediately. Sony slashed prices, and Nintendo was forced to slash even though they wouldn't be ready to slash and remain profitable on the box for another 2-3 months.)
The profit margins may be razor thin (I'm positive they are on a device like the PS1) and the REAL money may be in the games, but they're not loss leaders.
Microwave emissions aren't ionizing radiation like gamma rays, UV, or X-rays. Microwaves do not have a cumulative effect, as opposed to the "bit flipping" that higher-energy electromagnetic radiation causes in your DNA.
Microwaves have only ONE path to bodily damage - Heating via RF absorption at the molecular level. For microwaves to do damage, the power level has to be high. (Microwave ovens are usually 500 watts and above, most modern ones are around a kilowatt.)
Most WLAN cards are 25 mW. Higher-end ones (Ciscos, for example) are 100. There are a very small number of 200 mW cards.
Needless to say, these power levels are NOT enough to cause any significant heating, even if you're exposed to it 24/7. You're more likely to burn yourself via heat conduction from a laptop computer than you are to have any heat-related injuries from a WLAN card or cell phone. MAYBE if you touch the circuit traces of the PCB antenna directly with your fingers you MIGHT get a mild RF burn on the surface of your skin (This would require opening up the card), but thanks to the inverse square law, that's the worst thing that can happen.
I'll reiterate this again - I work for a company that develops transmitters for cell towers. On a regular basis, we're exposed to RF levels higher than even a habitual cellphone user. (Amps with covers off tend to leak a lot - Never measured the exact amount, but it's enough to register on other equipment in the same room while a transmitting cell phone will not.) Some of my coworkers have been in the industry for two decades and not a single person anyone knows has ever had any RF-related health problems except for the occasional RF burn from accidentally touching a live trace carrying 45 watts of power. A cup of coffee can hurt you more.
I wouldn't call Dell cheap crap. MAYBE if you order their dirt-cheap systems, but their slightly better systems are excellent.
I have an Inspiron 8200 laptop, and my dad has an I8000. Both are rock-solid, excellent systems.
At work, we use Dell machines almost exclusively. Their business machines are built EXTREMELY well. Newer ones are COMPLETELY screwless - Not only the case, but the PCI cards too. (Neato latch-down mechanism.) Yes, the Mac's case itself is screwless, but not the PCI cards, and it also seems flimsier than the construction of the OptiPlexes and Precisions at work.
A longer pipeline allows for a higher clockrate, but usually decreases performance per MHz.
This is why the P4 is significantly slower than the P3 at a given clockrate, and the Athlon can keep up with the P4 in benchmarks despite being clocked at 2/3 the clockrate. The P4's big advantage is that it can scale WAY up in clockrate.
Unfortunately for Apple, the G4 isn't efficient enough MHz for MHz to compensate for the fact that for the same price you can get an Athlon running at twice the clockrate of a G4. 10-20% more efficient MHz for MHz, maybe. But not 100% more efficient.
Built-in 17" - What do I care?
It's a waste when I already have an 18" flat-panel with a spare input and NO ROOM for another 17"-monitor-sized device anywhere.
If Apple had stuff in the eMac's price range WITHOUT the built-in monitor (total waste for me), I'd bite. But they want $1500 minimum if I don't want to waste money on a 17" CRT.
"* keyboard and mouse - a decent pair might cost $50."
I can get an Intellimouse Optical for under $15 at a computer show.
I can get a USB to PS/2 adapter for about the same price. That's $30 for a mouse that's far better than the single-button POS that Apple would force on me, and the ability to use one of my spare Model Ms.
"# Combo DVD/CDRW drive - $60"
Mv DVD-R drive is already in an external 1394 case, and I also have plenty of spare CD-ROM drives lying around.
If I wanted CD-RW capability in the machine - Combo drives always sacrifice both DVD read performance and CD recording performance. OfficeMax has Lite-On 48x12x48 CD-RW drives on sale for $20 after rebate every other week it seems.
Radeon - I'd prefer a GeForce. Still about the same price, but I get to choose.
I've saved more than 10% and eliminated a lot of waste. Also, I would be going for the slowest (i.e. minimal) system available, since I'm primarily a PC user and the Mac would be mainly for iTunes and a few other niche things. i.e. slower than what Apple is willing to sell me.
The cost savings of my PC hasn't been in the fact that it was cheap when I purchased it.
It's the fact that it is UPGRADABLE. i.e. every year or so I dump a small amount of money in it.
In addition, I already have a number of my peripherals in external 1394 cases (shared between laptop and desktop). Since Macs can supposedly boot off of Firewire drives - No need for an optical drive, already have one. No need for a monitor either - Already have one, WITH a spare unused input.
These kits aren't for people looking for a new computer - These are for people looking to upgrade their box or add a box that shares hardware with their existing setup.
I believe AMD was (and still is) one of the top flash memory vendors around. (Intel happens to be too...)
As someone else said, AMD started in other markets. CPUs are something "new" to them. Even if AMD gets creamed in the CPU market for a few years, they'll still be around. It's not like 3Dfx who had nothing to fall back on other than their 3D accelerator chips - x86 CPUs are just one part of AMD's business, they're involved in a LOT of other areas and always have been, even before they made CPUs.
Even if Apple and AMD were intense competitors, I wouldn't be that surprised to see an AMD chip in an Apple product. Sometimes using the best chip for a job involves buying from your competitor. This was the case with Lucent Microelectronics - Some of their largest customers were intense competitors of theirs in the optical networking business. (Such as Cisco). This was eventually one of the main reasons for spinning the microelectronics division off into Agere. Many years ago I saw a Lucent FPGA on a telephone interface board in a Nortel product. At that time, Lucent was one of the top FPGA and DSP vendors in the world.
"This is probably where the "Apple is going to use x86 CPUs in their PCs" rumours start from."
Probably, although people who know AMD will know that they're completely OK with companies making non-x86 CPUs that use their bus technology.
Or more appropriately - The original Athlon bus was HEAVILY based on the bus used by the Alpha processor that was released around the same time. AMD and DEC (this was before the Compaq/Intel mess) cooperated heavily on bus technology.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see AMD bus technology proliferate in non-x86 CPUs. AMD doesn't see it as significant competition, and it means other companies helping with development.
Not sure about other Dells (I haven't had any problems with mine, but I'm careful with it. I will agree that the power connector is virtually invincible - Solid ABS plastic.), but if you look at the closest price/performance analog to Apple, which is IBM, IBMs are built MUCH more solidly than Apples, some of which look rather flimsy to me. IBM laptops are built like tanks. Pricey, though.
I don't know about the 2100 (Didn't the Newtons get even larger over time, i.e. the 2100 is larger than the 120?), but the 120's handwriting recognition is indeed the shittiest HW recognition ever.
We had a Newton MP120 in my house - It very quickly achieved "paperweight" status, even BEFORE it was replaced with a Palm Professional. It was a piece of shit, no ifs ands or buts. Slow, anemic, and bad handwriting recognition. A year later my dad got the aforementioned Palm Professional. No one in my family has gone back since then - At this point both of us carry Kyocera 6035s (Palm + CDMA phone) and I may be upgrading to a 7135 this summer. (Depends on if I can finagle an early phone upgrade, otherwise I have to wait an extra year for "new every two".)
Dolby Digital is AC3, not AAC.
That said, some DVD players may play it. But not all.
You can theoretically obtain an almost infinitesimal decrease in audio quality when downsampling from 48->44.1.
Problem is that the good resampling algorithms are computationally intensive, and hence are almost never implemented in hardware, instead less "costly" algorithms are used. But with good software (For the ultimate in flexibility, use Matlab - I kid you not. Lots of different resampling algorithms and documentation on how they work.)
Because MPEG-2 is an open standard, it's guaranteed that if you convert to DVD, it'll be around forever. (With occasional lossless maintenance required).
Blu-ray becomes big and DVD obsolete? Copy the data to a Blu-Ray disc. MPEG-2 decoders will be around for ages. (FYI, even the "obsolete" codecs like Intel Indeo are still maintained and kept in Windows Media Player, etc.) Blu-Ray becomes obsolete? Copy the data again - It's lossless.
DVD isn't expensive - It's slightly over $1/disc these days. (I wouldn't go for the sub-$1 discs, they're crap. But Ritek G03s are $1.15 or so per disc in quantity and are excellent discs. Samsung BeAll is around $1.40-1.50/disc.)
You can fit a 2-hour movie on DVD if you drop the bitrate a bit. 99% chance that the source quality (20-year-old VHS) is bad enough that you won't be able to tell the difference at even half the bitrate.
" That's a worthy goal of reuse, and something I wouldn't expect the Apollo/Soyuz model to beable to do."
Apollo is partially capable of such a feat... Of course, the planet or other body needs much lower gravity than Earth. But remember that Apollo landed on the Moon and then took off again. (Admittedly part of it was left behind, but not all.)
The transmit amp must be biased so that it can handle the peak power that will be transmitted. Otherwise, the peaks get "squished". This is the case whether it is a mobile device or the base station.
Problem with this is that biasing an amp for high power levels results in horrible efficiency at lower power levels.
For example, a Class A linear amplifier's efficiency is a maximum of 50% - This is if it is continouously operating at full rated power. If a Class A amp needs to handle 200 watts, then it must be biased with a DC power of 200 watts. If only 2 watts are being transmitted, it will consume 202 watts...
Class AB is more likely the case, the penalty for not running full power is far less, but still, there's no way a mobile device can generate a 200W pulse like you claim a GSM phone can without sacrificing large amounts of battery life.
Class C and higher = not candidates since they're not linear in any way, shape, or form. (Note that this was the one advantage of analog cellular - They used FM, which works fine when run through a class C or D amplifier since there is no information carried in the amplitude of the signal.)
Do you need Mt. Ranier (or packet writing in general?)
Keep in mind that in some circles, packet writing of CDs is considered an excellent way to lose your data, and nothing more.
WTF are you talking about?
There are no "recal pulses" whatever those may be in CDMA or UMTS. We don't have to handle anything like that in any of our amplifiers. We also make a handful (not very many) GSM amplifiers, and none of those have to handle unusually high PARs either. If they did, the amplifiers would have to be huge as an RF power amplifier has to be biased to handle the highest peaks that go through it - If we had something worse than a 10 dB PAR, the amps would become huge and even more inefficient than they are now. As it is, most of our amps are only specced to deal with PARs on the order of 7-8 dB (This is what my current product has been specced.)
If you knew anything about RF design, which you apparently don't, you'd know that an amplifier has to be sized to handle the largest power peaks that go through it if you want any semblance of linearity. (Thermal design is a different issue, that's all about averages.)
I believe that back in the day when WP and MSOffice were approximately even, WP had some formatting features that made it slightly better for legal documents.
Apparently, over the years, MS has made Word more and more generic and LESS suited to legal use than it was in the past. Meanwhile, Corel realized that they have a good hold on the niche market of law firms, and began specifically catering to law firms.
As a result, WP evolved into a vastly superior application for law firms. It's a niche market for Corel, but a VERY solid niche.
Since you gave that number as the contact info for their service, I believe that they were legally within their rights to call you there.
But that is an exception. Most telemarketers are people you have had no prior business dealings with.
There is some way around the blockage.
Some telcos have a system that blocks all calls without caller ID info, PERIOD, with no way around it.
Problem is that some PBX systems don't provide caller ID info to the outside world. This is the case at Cornell University - Caller ID info is not present for calls originating inside their system and going outside. This was a problem for someone who special-ordered from the Campus Store and only left a phone number as a contact. But his number blocked our "Your item is in!" (human, not automatic) calls, resulting in an irate customer coming in two weeks later.