On the other hand, my dual-band trimode CDMA phone (AMPS900, CDMA900/CDMA1900) doesn't interfere with anything.
OTOH, my dual-band Alinco DJ-580T (ham transceiver, 2 meters/70 cm NBFM, 2.5 watts on battery 5 watts with 12V power) can do some wonderful things to nearby electronics.:)
Yes, the peak power is indeed considerably higher. But it is NOT close to 200W. Peak-to-average ratio of most cellular signals is 7-10 dB. That means a 200 mW average cell phone is at most 2 watts peak.
Now, if you're talking about the *base station*, that's a different story, since that's broadcasting to multiple receivers. Most base station amps are in the 30-45 watt average range (I should know, my current project at work is a UMTS amp in that power range.) - Peak power of those units is indeed on the order of 300W. But a unit that can develop that kind of power won't be fitting in your hand.
Digital cell phones broadcast at only 200 mW, and have automatic power control. I don't know what "legal limit" power is, it's 3W for analog cellular. (Most handsets are 600 mW analog).
WiFi can be broadcast at up to 1 watt, although above 100 mW, some form of automatic power control is required.
That said - Except at the very beginning/end of a flight where extreme precision is required, airplane nav systems are pretty resilient to interference. Aerospace engineers tend to be very conservative people design-wise.
Must be a different RoboCup
on
RoboCup 2003
·
· Score: 1
For a few years in a row, Carnegie Mellon was world champion. Then, around 4-5 years ago, Cornell started winning on a regular basis. (Note: There is a chance that Big Red has been surpassed in the last year or two, but up until my junior year there, i.e. two years ago, CU was #1.) Hmm, according to http://robocup.mae.cornell.edu/, Big Red won in 2002. In the history it looks like they came in third in '01 for some reason. Also note that there are multiple RoboCup divisions, Cornell competes in the "small size" division.
Not surprising considering that the CU RoboCup effort is heavily sponsored by the M&AE department, which also is behind Cornell's #1 Formula SAE racing team.
This will begin to discourage the practice of putting crappy "filler" on albums. Because the listener no longer has to pay for the crud, it just won't sell.
Note that full albums are MOSTLY 9.99, which is cheaper than in-store CDs.
But the big thing is: These are CHEAP tracks. Keep in mind that the majority of CDs out there have 2-3 good tracks and the rest is crud.
So if the CD is $12, you're paying $4-6 per track that you actually want. The other tracks are irrelevant in many cases. For example, I really like "Big Yellow Taxi" by Counting Crows, but I'm wary of buying the CD because I haven't heard anything else on it.
If I had ITMS access, I would've bought that track days ago.
It's WAY more convenient. I haven't bought music in ages, but the moment the ITMS becomes available to PC users, I shudder at the thought of what it'll do to my wallet.:(
There were no details on the optics, but looking at the pictures it was MUCH larger than the pinhole lens of crappy cameras, and the DV portion was on par with traditional DV camcorders. That thing does NOT have a micro-lens. If you think it does, you must be looking at a different model.
The silicon of the Quadros is EXACTLY the same as the GeForces, although in many cases the Quadros also were higher-clocked samples. But the wireframe AA is the main thing that SoftQuadro gives you - GeForce hardware supports wireframe AA since it's the same silicon, but because the PCI ID identifies it as a GeForce, the driver disables Quadro features.
It's the same deal as with the ATI 9500-to-9700 hack, except that the success rate is 100%. (ATI 9500s and 9700s are the same chip, just lower clockrates and with half the pixel pipelines disabled, often because they were defective.)
NVidia is still the only option for those who are in any way concerned with driver reliability. While ATI has supposedly shaped up, Catalyst drivers are still far worse than NVidia's Detonator series in terms of quality and reliability. Take as an example the recent release of HDTV tuner cards that use software decoding: NVidia cards are currently the reccomended one with the DVICO FusionHDTV, because the ATI drivers are so buggy. If you do have ATI, you are forced to use an *older* driver because ATI is too incompetent not to add 2D bugs to their drivers in the race for 3D. (Catalyst 3.0 works "acceptably", 3.1 and 3.2 are crashfests with the Fusion.)
Interestingly enough - In most cases, the GF4MX sucks. But for some oddball reason, the MX series has MPEG acceleration features (IDCT, MoComp) missing from the Tis. (Which have only one of the former two, I believe just MoComp.)
ATI hardware may be fast, but thanks to the drivers it's like putting a V10 into a Yugo.
This is intended to be VERY different from those pinhole-camera POS units. This one is as good as any MiniDV camcorder in the $600-800ish range. (Once you go to $1000+ you can get progressive scan and extra pixels...)
Sony has a lot of internal political battles, the hardware division vs. the media division. They don't like each other.:)
FYI, Sony makes one of the most advanced DVD recorders on the market at the moment. The DRU-500AX was the first dual-format DVD-R/DVD+R drive on the market.
In case you noticed, the iTunes Music Shop DRM is pretty minimal compared to any other RIAA-sanctioned service. i.e. Apple put in the bare minimum amount needed to allow them to provide this service legally.
This Apple DRM can be compared to speedbumps, as opposed to the brick walls of many other download services.
Maybe institute a minimum purchase amount for the songs or a slight volume discount for multiple simultaneous purchases?
Maybe have a price of 50 cents a song plus (guess what?) 35 cents/purchase? That way, the credit card flat fee is always covered adequately, and if someone buys 100 $0.50 tracks, that cost becomes insignificant to them.
a) 30-sec preview. Try before you buy. b) Convenience. One of the two biggest advantages to this service. c) This is the most important. One big complaint people have is that on so many CDs, there are 2-3 good tracks and the rest is crap. This is why I almost never buy CDs myself. Yes, the cost per track is more, but the ability to buy individual songs rather than a whole album means that if I just want 2-3 tracks from a given album, I can spend $2-3 instead of $10-15.
He built that system a YEAR ago. I'll price out a similar system in the PC world: Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core) - $150 (Actually, I think it's down to $125 now, but $150 would include a heatsink) Epox EP-8RDA+ motherboard - $120 or so 1 GB DDR333 - $200 for Corsair XMS, two 512M sticks GeForce4 Ti4600 - Under $200 now Chieftec case with power supply - Under $100 Go for the gold - DVD-R drive, $230. $150 if you get lucky at an OfficeMax sale like I did. Intel Gigabit Eth cards can be found for under $100, possibly under $50. (IIRC they have a deal where you can order one card for $50 or maybe it was even $30something.) 120GB 7200 RPM HD - $120
WORST case that's $1220 for a system that eats your nearly double-the-cost system for lunch. (CPU-wise it's probably even, but the system I priced adds a DVD-R drive, 40 gigs more HD space, and a video card that will eat that pitiful GF4MX for lunch. Wireless would be another $50 or so. The EpoX is an nForce2 mobo, so that includes dual-channel DDR, Firewire, and a VERY nice sound subsystem among other goodies.
For the price of your refurbished system, you could add an 18" Dell UltraSharp 1800FP flat-panel display and a small-ish surround sound system. (Target has one for $140 now, 300 watts total made by RCA.)
I'm a PC enthusiast. But I haven't bought a new computer in nearly 6 years. I simply upgrade a little at a time.
You can't do that in a Mac. The price/performance of a Mac is significantly worse than a PC to begin with, and then beyond that it's MUCH more expensive if you want to "keep up with the times" since incrementally upgrading a Mac is MUCH more difficult than a PC.
It won't do anything to the retail DVD market (pay-to-own). Just like rentals haven't killed that market.
Where VOD will make a HUGE difference is competing against Pay-Per-View. (Actually, it won't compete with it, as VOD is the logical "next generation" of PPV, cable companies will simply upgrade their PPV setups to support VOD instead of scheduled display.) It will also allow companies on the Internet to compete with cable PPV systems, and possibly win. (Not likely, the cable companies have a LOT of local downstream bandwidth to spare. Remember that DOCSIS is 30 Mbits/sec or so, and the cable company can easily add multiple 30 Mbit channels.)
VOD may or may not compete with the rental market. It will probably give PPV a bit more of an edge against brick-and-mortar rentals and maybe Netflix too. Not too much.
VOD will be successful. It won't be a major industry-changing success, it'll just increase the popularity of PPV a bit.
Some players (my standalone included) have buggy firmware that sometimes doesn't handle FF/REW very well. Better players (any decent PC player, for example) have no problems on the few DVDs where I've had FF/REW problems.
In most of these cases, it's partially a disc problem, but one that only occurs on some players. Probably the player didn't see that the P-UOPs (Prohibited User Operations) preventing FF/REW in the FBI warning were removed for the main title.
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It's an accepted phenomenon in the advertising world - Negative marketing is better than no marketing.
I've seen that in a number of places.
:)
On the other hand, my dual-band trimode CDMA phone (AMPS900, CDMA900/CDMA1900) doesn't interfere with anything.
OTOH, my dual-band Alinco DJ-580T (ham transceiver, 2 meters/70 cm NBFM, 2.5 watts on battery 5 watts with 12V power) can do some wonderful things to nearby electronics.
Yes, the peak power is indeed considerably higher. But it is NOT close to 200W. Peak-to-average ratio of most cellular signals is 7-10 dB. That means a 200 mW average cell phone is at most 2 watts peak.
Now, if you're talking about the *base station*, that's a different story, since that's broadcasting to multiple receivers. Most base station amps are in the 30-45 watt average range (I should know, my current project at work is a UMTS amp in that power range.) - Peak power of those units is indeed on the order of 300W. But a unit that can develop that kind of power won't be fitting in your hand.
Digital cell phones broadcast at only 200 mW, and have automatic power control. I don't know what "legal limit" power is, it's 3W for analog cellular. (Most handsets are 600 mW analog).
WiFi can be broadcast at up to 1 watt, although above 100 mW, some form of automatic power control is required.
That said - Except at the very beginning/end of a flight where extreme precision is required, airplane nav systems are pretty resilient to interference. Aerospace engineers tend to be very conservative people design-wise.
For a few years in a row, Carnegie Mellon was world champion. Then, around 4-5 years ago, Cornell started winning on a regular basis. (Note: There is a chance that Big Red has been surpassed in the last year or two, but up until my junior year there, i.e. two years ago, CU was #1.) Hmm, according to http://robocup.mae.cornell.edu/, Big Red won in 2002. In the history it looks like they came in third in '01 for some reason. Also note that there are multiple RoboCup divisions, Cornell competes in the "small size" division.
Not surprising considering that the CU RoboCup effort is heavily sponsored by the M&AE department, which also is behind Cornell's #1 Formula SAE racing team.
They're still making money off of these sales.
But they'll lose in the long term - Next stop for ITMS - Independent labels/artists.
This will begin to discourage the practice of putting crappy "filler" on albums. Because the listener no longer has to pay for the crud, it just won't sell.
Note that full albums are MOSTLY 9.99, which is cheaper than in-store CDs.
But the big thing is: These are CHEAP tracks. Keep in mind that the majority of CDs out there have 2-3 good tracks and the rest is crud.
So if the CD is $12, you're paying $4-6 per track that you actually want. The other tracks are irrelevant in many cases. For example, I really like "Big Yellow Taxi" by Counting Crows, but I'm wary of buying the CD because I haven't heard anything else on it.
If I had ITMS access, I would've bought that track days ago.
You've got to be kidding me.
:(
It's WAY more convenient. I haven't bought music in ages, but the moment the ITMS becomes available to PC users, I shudder at the thought of what it'll do to my wallet.
There were no details on the optics, but looking at the pictures it was MUCH larger than the pinhole lens of crappy cameras, and the DV portion was on par with traditional DV camcorders. That thing does NOT have a micro-lens. If you think it does, you must be looking at a different model.
The silicon of the Quadros is EXACTLY the same as the GeForces, although in many cases the Quadros also were higher-clocked samples. But the wireframe AA is the main thing that SoftQuadro gives you - GeForce hardware supports wireframe AA since it's the same silicon, but because the PCI ID identifies it as a GeForce, the driver disables Quadro features.
It's the same deal as with the ATI 9500-to-9700 hack, except that the success rate is 100%. (ATI 9500s and 9700s are the same chip, just lower clockrates and with half the pixel pipelines disabled, often because they were defective.)
NVidia is still the only option for those who are in any way concerned with driver reliability. While ATI has supposedly shaped up, Catalyst drivers are still far worse than NVidia's Detonator series in terms of quality and reliability. Take as an example the recent release of HDTV tuner cards that use software decoding: NVidia cards are currently the reccomended one with the DVICO FusionHDTV, because the ATI drivers are so buggy. If you do have ATI, you are forced to use an *older* driver because ATI is too incompetent not to add 2D bugs to their drivers in the race for 3D. (Catalyst 3.0 works "acceptably", 3.1 and 3.2 are crashfests with the Fusion.)
Interestingly enough - In most cases, the GF4MX sucks. But for some oddball reason, the MX series has MPEG acceleration features (IDCT, MoComp) missing from the Tis. (Which have only one of the former two, I believe just MoComp.)
ATI hardware may be fast, but thanks to the drivers it's like putting a V10 into a Yugo.
Do a search for RivaTuner or SoftQuadro.
Yes, if you have a Ti-series card (Actually some Quadros were MX-based), you can "warez" a Quadro out of it with a driver hack.
One should consider 10 GB/hourish the minimum for source footage. DV video is 13 GB/hour, and is (I believe) a variant of MJPEG.
This is intended to be VERY different from those pinhole-camera POS units. This one is as good as any MiniDV camcorder in the $600-800ish range. (Once you go to $1000+ you can get progressive scan and extra pixels...)
Sony has a lot of internal political battles, the hardware division vs. the media division. They don't like each other. :)
FYI, Sony makes one of the most advanced DVD recorders on the market at the moment. The DRU-500AX was the first dual-format DVD-R/DVD+R drive on the market.
In case you noticed, the iTunes Music Shop DRM is pretty minimal compared to any other RIAA-sanctioned service. i.e. Apple put in the bare minimum amount needed to allow them to provide this service legally.
This Apple DRM can be compared to speedbumps, as opposed to the brick walls of many other download services.
Maybe institute a minimum purchase amount for the songs or a slight volume discount for multiple simultaneous purchases?
Maybe have a price of 50 cents a song plus (guess what?) 35 cents/purchase? That way, the credit card flat fee is always covered adequately, and if someone buys 100 $0.50 tracks, that cost becomes insignificant to them.
Just something different.
a) 30-sec preview. Try before you buy.
b) Convenience. One of the two biggest advantages to this service.
c) This is the most important. One big complaint people have is that on so many CDs, there are 2-3 good tracks and the rest is crap. This is why I almost never buy CDs myself. Yes, the cost per track is more, but the ability to buy individual songs rather than a whole album means that if I just want 2-3 tracks from a given album, I can spend $2-3 instead of $10-15.
He built that system a YEAR ago.
I'll price out a similar system in the PC world:
Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton core) - $150 (Actually, I think it's down to $125 now, but $150 would include a heatsink)
Epox EP-8RDA+ motherboard - $120 or so
1 GB DDR333 - $200 for Corsair XMS, two 512M sticks
GeForce4 Ti4600 - Under $200 now
Chieftec case with power supply - Under $100
Go for the gold - DVD-R drive, $230. $150 if you get lucky at an OfficeMax sale like I did.
Intel Gigabit Eth cards can be found for under $100, possibly under $50. (IIRC they have a deal where you can order one card for $50 or maybe it was even $30something.)
120GB 7200 RPM HD - $120
WORST case that's $1220 for a system that eats your nearly double-the-cost system for lunch. (CPU-wise it's probably even, but the system I priced adds a DVD-R drive, 40 gigs more HD space, and a video card that will eat that pitiful GF4MX for lunch. Wireless would be another $50 or so. The EpoX is an nForce2 mobo, so that includes dual-channel DDR, Firewire, and a VERY nice sound subsystem among other goodies.
For the price of your refurbished system, you could add an 18" Dell UltraSharp 1800FP flat-panel display and a small-ish surround sound system. (Target has one for $140 now, 300 watts total made by RCA.)
I'm a PC enthusiast. But I haven't bought a new computer in nearly 6 years. I simply upgrade a little at a time.
You can't do that in a Mac. The price/performance of a Mac is significantly worse than a PC to begin with, and then beyond that it's MUCH more expensive if you want to "keep up with the times" since incrementally upgrading a Mac is MUCH more difficult than a PC.
DVD can be 480i OR 480p. I think most DVDs are 480p.
HDTV can be either 1080i or 720p. Many people think 720p is better than 1080i.
And pretty horrible bandwidth too.
Boeing 777. Enough said.
It won't do anything to the retail DVD market (pay-to-own). Just like rentals haven't killed that market.
Where VOD will make a HUGE difference is competing against Pay-Per-View. (Actually, it won't compete with it, as VOD is the logical "next generation" of PPV, cable companies will simply upgrade their PPV setups to support VOD instead of scheduled display.) It will also allow companies on the Internet to compete with cable PPV systems, and possibly win. (Not likely, the cable companies have a LOT of local downstream bandwidth to spare. Remember that DOCSIS is 30 Mbits/sec or so, and the cable company can easily add multiple 30 Mbit channels.)
VOD may or may not compete with the rental market. It will probably give PPV a bit more of an edge against brick-and-mortar rentals and maybe Netflix too. Not too much.
VOD will be successful. It won't be a major industry-changing success, it'll just increase the popularity of PPV a bit.
Some players (my standalone included) have buggy firmware that sometimes doesn't handle FF/REW very well. Better players (any decent PC player, for example) have no problems on the few DVDs where I've had FF/REW problems.
In most of these cases, it's partially a disc problem, but one that only occurs on some players. Probably the player didn't see that the P-UOPs (Prohibited User Operations) preventing FF/REW in the FBI warning were removed for the main title.