Android could stand to be more open, or use different jumping off points for work towards future versions.
Not being GPL'd, the modified source from the various handset vendors / carriers isn't likely to make it make it back into the gene pool. Users can't fix bugs or make other improvements to what came on their devices, and any would-be natural selection using "surviving" popular variations from some vendors normally doesn't get any added goodness put back into the main distribution. The evolutionary mechanism for selection of better code-genes going forward is absent.
For users, it doesn't really seem like open source if you're effectively on a closed source fork, and other than praying for fixes/updates from the closed vendor, your only option is to jump to the other branch and lose whatever custom growth you'd bought into.
Outside of developer handsets, Is there EVEN ONE carrier/handset vendor that provides the source to what they ship?
Although there are likely far fewer bugs, in some ways Android is WORSE THAN (desktop) WINDOWS because there are so many different builds with no reliable source of timely updates. Even the PCs with awful demoware-customized versions of Windows still get patches. Also, Windows has a fairly long life before becoming unsupported with patches. Some Android products are out of date when they ship yet they never see an update. There's generally no jailbreaking needed to replace a copy of Windows.
Perhaps there should be class action suits against various carriers/handset vendors for damages resulting from vulnerabilities that could have been prevented had they not been negligent in providing timely updates.
Google could improve things by switching to the GPL, and supporting at least modular code updates on ALL devices for those functions where bugs would likely expose vulnerabilities. It's great that there is source for work on some substitute builds, but that's really not enough.
Of course it's a different division, but all of the divisions contribute to the profitability or losses of the parent. If one feels either individually or collectively wronged by a company and feels it is not appropriate to support them, that usually extends to the whole company. Compare to one not wanting to support a drug gang avoid doing business with a member selling watches as well as those selling drugs.
Sony lost credibility with many when they hired people to blog and people to paint graffiti promoting the Playstation. So even before ousting Linux there was inappropriate behavior from the Playstation division.
What can Sony do to improve the feeling some have towards them?
They could be more open and interoperable. Let people innovate with Sony products, finding new uses for the hardware and using alternative software. Don't force people into proprietary (slow, costly, and non-interoperable) memory modules etc. Microsoft is actually profiting and seeing favorable excitement from people finding new ways of using the Kinect. A success in spite of themselves. Will some notice and learn from that?? Would a food vendor dictate what recipes a food product can go into? Instead of strong DRM, allowing some sharing to provide a sort of viral marketing while designing to give some added functionality to registered users might have more people smiling. Genuine user excitement might be more effective than bogus shipping figures or subsidized launch parties to promote a product.
Sony had the potential to excite the open source community with their GNUstep derived SNAP project, but then pulled back. They could bring in people with that, as well as create some exciting projects.
Some wanting to limit consumption from another country that has been dominating imports may like to see Sony as a more viable alternative. Doing more manufacturing in the countries of their target markets would make some more receptive. Closer ties with people in other nations would help their image. With Sony branding being less visible now on Columbia pictures, they realize there was some U.S. resentment of foreign ownership of a major player in what has traditionally been one of the stronger U.S. industries. Their involvement with B.M.G. and Columbia has no doubt be behind their corporate mindset pushing clinging more tightly to DRM in their hardware divisions. Where did that get them? They've got many great people, but like Microsoft they've had some problems with the visionary people not being the ones making the decisions.
Many people once loved Sony the way some now love Apple. Innovating and not being hostile to the customers might help them get some of that back. With cheaper products coming from China, they're in a bad spot of they try to compete only on price, or by strong-arming locked in customers. They need to bring back some love. Sony was very innovative, highly regarded and successful under Masaru Ibuk and Akio Morita. I wish them well at efforts to bring back that sort of vision.
Since MHTML is a web archive format that is also used by MS Word, perhaps there's a possibility of issues there too.
Since the article/advisory don't really say what MHTML is (It's not Microsoft HTML!), here's the wikipedia description for those not motivated to look it up:
"MHTML, short for MIME HTML, is a web page archive format used to combine resources that are typically represented by external links (such as images, Flash animations, Java applets, audio files) together with HTML code into a single file. The content of an MHTML file is encoded as if it were an HTML e-mail message, using the MIME type multipart/related. The first part of the file is normally encoded HTML; subsequent parts are additional resources identified by their original URLs and encoded in base64. This format is sometimes referred to as MHT, after the suffix.mht given to such files by default when created by Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, or Opera. MHTML is a proposed standard, circulated in a revised edition in 1999 as RFC 2557"
One gripe I have about the story as posted here, which is NOT a problem in the linked article or advisory, is calling the bug NEW. While a particular researcher discovered it recently, it is not safe to assume that no one else knew about it. This affects XP, meaning it could have been used anytime over a number of YEARS. While it's easy to only raise eyebrows over issues actively doing widespread damage or causing net congestion, it is always possible that someone else out there has discovered an issue and has written code to exploit it, but just hasn't used it yet, or has kept it for focused attacks on specific targets. To an individual, organization, or government that gets hit it may not be matter much whether an exploit has seen much use elsewhere. We should not trivialize vulnerabilities by acting as if they were only a potential danger during a very brief window. There certainly are those out there who won't report vulnerabilities for fixing and have a virtual tool chest of exploits to unleash whenever they see a reason to. A secret weapon would likely be far more effective than one a target has had time to prepare for. Security policies should be designed to defend against unknown vulnerabilities. Being current with patches isn't enough. While OSes with a better track record than Windows don't see the mass-market exploits, that doesn't mean that their vulnerabilities wouldn't get exploited under some circumstance. Being hit by a little used or unknown exploit may actually have more impact on a target with it being less likely to be discovered.
Perhaps the next-generation products will get a new name, like NGP, giving him a loophole? If they really are launching a quad-core ARM-based product later this year, some might like to run unrestricted Linux on it. Chances are it'll be expensive. And if Sony gets quad core CPUs / GPUs, others most likely will also.
I think it might be good to have the system default to the classic discussion system for users that are not logged in and that have javascript disabled/blocked (by NoScript etc.). I'm not sure if bookmarked messages are readable for those users otherwise.
There might also be more participation in meta-moderating and Firehose screening if scripting wasn't required. (or at least not for more than the site domain, many don't like enabling anything resembling an offsite script.)
One of these days someone, in the quest to trim federal spending, fight drugs, and patrol borders, is going to go a few steps beyond remotely controlled web cams.
Imagine if you will a parallel universe, where handling crime is a game. There the government sells "hunting" licenses to website operators that provide cameras and weapons remotely operated over the web by paying players. The war on whatever turns profitable? Not sure what happens to any captured drugs, maybe the government could auction those off or give them away either to raise money or drive prices down.
The may or may not become an official part of the Game and Party party-platform.
There are alternative sources if one looks. Some material may be objectionable, viewer discretion is advised.
Besides the U.S. commercial and cable broadcasters, there is news service on PBS stations with some streaming and podcasts available from http://www.pbs.org./ Many PBS and other public stations also carry the BBC which has much available on the web too. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
A great many international newscasts are carried by the non-profit public satellite broadcaster MHz on their WorldView channel. (They have a number of other international channels also)
Sometimes a station has them on a secondary digital channel (Like KCET 28.4 Los Angeles) that isn't on cable. Ask your cable operator to add it if they're not carrying the feed.
The target audience will not be moving to the mac.
It might be possible for some to get them. The U.K. may not have as many as the U.S., but since most most Mac users have upgraded since 2002 or so there are some very usable, some might say delightful, low cost older units turning up. Running Tiger (10.4.x) they're still fine for many things, stable, low maintenance, easily to use, and the iMac G4's are pretty light on energy use as well.
It's really hard not to like one of these, especially at $100 or so.
Linux conversions, or nearly free older Macs, might also be a relief to some users of older PCs that do little or gave up because of lost battles with malware. Some cope fine but not all.
These solar cars and efficiency are a great thing and all, but sometimes I'd still like to see a competition with cars shooting flames out the back, Bat-mobile style...
Toasters use about 1.5 kW which is about 2 horsepower. If one thinks in terms of doing work lifting without other losses, that works out to about 1100 foot-pounds per second.
The thing is, if they used switched video, every TV that is on gets exactly 1 channel of the quality they allow.
They're sending a radio frequency signal modulated with what amounts to an MPEG transport stream. It's not TCP/IP. There's no retransmission of corrupt packets etc. The only way they could free up bandwidth within that stream is by not carrying a channel at all TO ANYBODY. So not using on-demand frees capacity, not watching Biggest Loser etc. doesn't.
Trying to give every TV or subscriber it's own stream would require far MORE resources. That's basically why cellular networks have some much trouble with handling users using video. Even just doing video chat chat which is far from continuous uses enough capacity that it's still not on AT&T. And while some systems may give fast peak or burst speeds, the actual amount of data they generally let people transfer is less in a month than most low-end broadband plans give DSL/cable net users in a day. (so multiply that data plan cost by 30 when comparing)
Just as with wireless, a cable system has to go to many more nodes (close to smaller number of users sites) to handle delivering substantial amounts of content to each. Much of what's gone on is a slight of hand, where the systems in place couldn't handle anywhere near the traffic that would be generated if everyone actually used what they're paying for at once.
Cable systems can scale better than wireless, since they could eventually go to the point of fiber to the home (or small cluster of homes). Fiber has far more capacity than the frequency range that can be handled by coaxial cable. Over the air wireless has far less capacity yet since much of the frequency spectrum is used for other services, the only way to reuse a given slice of spectrum among many simultaneous users is to break the coverage area of sites into smaller and smaller regions. With longer-distance coverage, users on the same frequency would tend to interfere with each other. The use of the spectrum can be in short bursts, but for things like live HD video and VoIP, very limited amounts of delay or throughput fluctuation are tolerated well.
Satellite television has high channel capacity because of the large bandwidth available at microwave frequencies (well about what's practical with coax cable), the use of high compression ratios, and some reuse of spectrum (directional antennas able to select specific satellites). There is still no way for satellites to radiate signals to only small clusters of users, so they have very limited capacity for unique content (like net access or on-demand video). Basically the signals for any unique content reach many people, they're just blocked from decoding them. Of course there are tricks that could be used to give the illusion of more capacity. If for instance the pool of available on-demand movies was small, they could actually be repeated and cached PVR-style at the user end, giving access only when requested/authorized. As with users of wireless systems, if requests could be made in advance, then transmitted overnight or during lulls in activity, more users could be handled. It's a bit like running the washing machine at off peak hours to avoid problems with reaching peak generating capacity.
If cable rates are based on so many channels, you should have access to all of those at once. If you're limited to one, or one per box you pay for, you should only pay for one. If we paying for a bunch of channels we should be able to capture whatever we wish for watching whenever we want on whatever we own. (That does not go as far as sharing with others outside the residence being served) Cable companies don't want customers to have the same freedom they had with analog service and VCRs, they want to charge you to see anything twice, or on several devices.
People should be encouraged to make maximum use of over the air digital tv (including the excellent cheap devices to make PCs PVRs like the Elgato systems ATSC / C
There are a couple of different types of digital tv delivery on cable. None of them actually get a whole tv channels' bandwidth the way analog tv did. Regular network and station shows don't require additional bandwidth as more people watch. They're not using separate stream or frequencies for each viewer. They do have control over the bandwidth (in the bitrate sense) that each program gets, with HD needing more. Less viewed channels may be delivered at a lower quality level (lower bitrate = higher compression) to make more available for other things. Because there are so many channels, the quality level is significantly worse than the quality transmitted over the air by digital stations. Even with more efficient MPEG4 or h.264 compression, quality is lower than over the air (MPEG2) due to the bitrates. Also, they often don't carry all of the programs that a station has on a broadcast transmitter (for example check and see what your local public or PBS stations broadcast by looking at the station websites, then compare guide listings for cable) Those shopping channels aren't taking "free" space/channels, their eating precious bandwidth everything else.
Some bandwidth is used for on-demand and internet services. Those things DO take bandwidth for each user and as a result the traffic for those isn't system wide. The system is essentially divided up into fiber-fed subnets with the number of coax-connected people in each limited based on available bandwidth. If you experience localized slowdowns they've oversold the capacity of those local nodes.
So if you're thinking you save bandwidth when you're watching normal or subscription cable channels, you don't. It's only your net use (including streamed video from any net source, and those paid on-demand (starts when YOU want it, not pay per view fights etc) programs that take additional system bandwidth beyond their standard tv services.
Consumer protests sometime do result in changes in regulation. But there's a downside to that. Now cities can do little to force better service since it's federally regulated. Also, the "fairer" system for rates that the feds came up with is based on channel count. Those junk shopping channels count. The cable operators get kickbacks based on sales. Most operators all insert and sell advertising. That hurts revenue of local radio and tv stations, in some cases degrading the service those provide. They face much higher costs. Consumer should demand that the FCC not allow cable operators to charge for channels that they get ad or kickback revenue to carry.
Cable has harmed broadcast in other ways. In some smaller markets where more people use cable due to fewer local available signals (at least in the past), many stations skimped on the digital tv conversion. Some opted for lower power transmitters hurting coverage. Some also didn't put digital back on the original analog channel at the end of the transition (which required moving and perhaps new equipment TWICE). As a result a number of small market stations gave up VHF channels and ended up on UHF. In some of those cases, particularly where terrain is rough, many viewer lost reception entirely). Some could theoretically get it with high gain outdoor antennas and preamps but there are a number of regions where even that doesn't work. I've seen stations that only identify by their cab;e channel number, as if no one was watching the actual transmitter. It's a shame, because with digital tv service a small number of stations could actually carry a number of programs.
NetFlix is competing with cable for revenue. Except for some channels with a per-subscriber license fee, your not using or even not subscribing to any already on for others television services doesn't measurably reduce any bandwidth costs or ease bandwidth limitiations they face. Using their net services or using them more raises their costs (but not nearly as much as what you pay them).
As much as squirrels and others love nuts, I think some crows in Japan deserve credit for doing something different with nuts. NHK (via Mhz WorldView) reports that birds have learned not only to drop nuts in the roadway where cars break them open, but to do it at intersections where the traffic gets stopped so they can pick up the pieces.
There's that segment in the closing segment of the old Flintstones cartoon series where a drive-in serves ribs on a tray on the side of the car, and the car tips over.
That has some interesting features, but does come with a number of licensing restrictions... including these and others:
NO COMMERCIAL USE: This EULA grants you the right to use the Software for personal use only. Commercial use of the Software or of the work products resulting from its use is not permitted under this EULA. If you require a commercial license, please contact Sales@divx.com.
NO TRANSCODING: You are prohibited from using the Software with software or hardware products whose purpose is to "transcode" or convert DivX video or DivX Media Format content into an alternate format.
Have the MPEG raked us over the coals with MPEG1, MPEG2, JPEG, MP3, or AAC? Then why do you think they'll do it with MPEG4/h264?
Read the licenses in products that do MP3 encoding (iTunes for instance). Even with Apple paying a licensing fee, what you get isn't licensed for commercial use. MPEG2 video playback is something one normally didn't get for free either. Although there might be a license for s dedicated DVD player app, people had to pay for QuickTime Pro to get MPEG2 support.
If you read the licenses for any product you have that does encoding or decoding you'll see there are major issues. There are problems for both content and the related software. We need options that can be fully supported with totally free software (compatible with the GPL and free of any patent liability)
If we speak to each other using video, we don't want someone telling us we can only talk under their terms because they own the language. Our ability to create and distribute fully functional free software mustn't be held back by patents or other restrictions on data formats.
If Sony wishes to bring up potential harm instead of actual harm, the court ought to be reminded of the rootkits installed by Sony audio CDs on machines they didn't own or manufacture.
Part of the massive failure of Windows Mobile is that it tried to be Windows scaled down to 3" screens. Small devices need customized OSs, a square peg with the corners shaved off to fit into a round hole.
Windows 8 - just think of this possibilities!
Trouble getting that square peg in? Maybe it just needs a little interface change.
Getting strong regulations for truth in advertising are certainly something to wish for, right up there with patent sanity. ("Impossible Dream" music playing in background)
Figure out how to make the U.S. a member of the E.U. ?
Slashdot Mirror
Android could stand to be more open, or use different jumping off points for work towards future versions.
Not being GPL'd, the modified source from the various handset vendors / carriers isn't likely to make it make it back into the gene pool. Users can't fix bugs or make other improvements to what came on their devices, and any would-be natural selection using "surviving" popular variations from some vendors normally doesn't get any added goodness put back into the main distribution. The evolutionary mechanism for selection of better code-genes going forward is absent.
For users, it doesn't really seem like open source if you're effectively on a closed source fork, and other than praying for fixes/updates from the closed vendor, your only option is to jump to the other branch and lose whatever custom growth you'd bought into.
Outside of developer handsets, Is there EVEN ONE carrier/handset vendor that provides the source to what they ship?
Although there are likely far fewer bugs, in some ways Android is WORSE THAN (desktop) WINDOWS because there are so many different builds with no reliable source of timely updates.
Even the PCs with awful demoware-customized versions of Windows still get patches. Also, Windows has a fairly long life before becoming unsupported with patches. Some Android products are out of date when they ship yet they never see an update. There's generally no jailbreaking needed to replace a copy of Windows.
Perhaps there should be class action suits against various carriers/handset vendors for damages resulting from vulnerabilities that could have been prevented had they not been negligent in providing timely updates.
Google could improve things by switching to the GPL, and supporting at least modular code updates on ALL devices for those functions where bugs would likely expose vulnerabilities. It's great that there is source for work on some substitute builds, but that's really not enough.
Of course it's a different division, but all of the divisions contribute to the profitability or losses of the parent. If one feels either individually or collectively wronged by a company and feels it is not appropriate to support them, that usually extends to the whole company. Compare to one not wanting to support a drug gang avoid doing business with a member selling watches as well as those selling drugs.
Sony lost credibility with many when they hired people to blog and people to paint graffiti promoting the Playstation. So even before ousting Linux there was inappropriate behavior from the Playstation division.
What can Sony do to improve the feeling some have towards them?
They could be more open and interoperable. Let people innovate with Sony products, finding new uses for the hardware and using alternative software. Don't force people into proprietary (slow, costly, and non-interoperable) memory modules etc.
Microsoft is actually profiting and seeing favorable excitement from people finding new ways of using the Kinect. A success in spite of themselves. Will some notice and learn from that?? Would a food vendor dictate what recipes a food product can go into? Instead of strong DRM, allowing some sharing to provide a sort of viral marketing while designing to give some added functionality to registered users might have more people smiling. Genuine user excitement might be more effective than bogus shipping figures or subsidized launch parties to promote a product.
Sony had the potential to excite the open source community with their GNUstep derived SNAP project, but then pulled back. They could bring in people with that, as well as create some exciting projects.
Some wanting to limit consumption from another country that has been dominating imports may like to see Sony as a more viable alternative. Doing more manufacturing in the countries of their target markets would make some more receptive. Closer ties with people in other nations would help their image.
With Sony branding being less visible now on Columbia pictures, they realize there was some U.S. resentment of foreign ownership of a major player in what has traditionally been one of the stronger U.S. industries.
Their involvement with B.M.G. and Columbia has no doubt be behind their corporate mindset pushing clinging more tightly to DRM in their hardware divisions. Where did that get them? They've got many great people, but like Microsoft they've had some problems with the visionary people not being the ones making the decisions.
Many people once loved Sony the way some now love Apple. Innovating and not being hostile to the customers might help them get some of that back. With cheaper products coming from China, they're in a bad spot of they try to compete only on price, or by strong-arming locked in customers. They need to bring back some love. Sony was very innovative, highly regarded and successful under Masaru Ibuk and Akio Morita. I wish them well at efforts to bring back that sort of vision.
Since MHTML is a web archive format that is also used by MS Word, perhaps there's a possibility of issues there too.
Since the article/advisory don't really say what MHTML is (It's not Microsoft HTML!), here's the wikipedia description for those not motivated to look it up:
"MHTML, short for MIME HTML, is a web page archive format used to combine resources that are typically represented by external links (such as images, Flash animations, Java applets, audio files) together with HTML code into a single file. The content of an MHTML file is encoded as if it were an HTML e-mail message, using the MIME type multipart/related. The first part of the file is normally encoded HTML; subsequent parts are additional resources identified by their original URLs and encoded in base64. This format is sometimes referred to as MHT, after the suffix .mht given to such files by default when created by Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, or Opera. MHTML is a proposed standard, circulated in a revised edition in 1999 as RFC 2557"
One gripe I have about the story as posted here, which is NOT a problem in the linked article or advisory, is calling the bug NEW. While a particular researcher discovered it recently, it is not safe to assume that no one else knew about it. This affects XP, meaning it could have been used anytime over a number of YEARS. While it's easy to only raise eyebrows over issues actively doing widespread damage or causing net congestion, it is always possible that someone else out there has discovered an issue and has written code to exploit it, but just hasn't used it yet, or has kept it for focused attacks on specific targets. To an individual, organization, or government that gets hit it may not be matter much whether an exploit has seen much use elsewhere. We should not trivialize vulnerabilities by acting as if they were only a potential danger during a very brief window. There certainly are those out there who won't report vulnerabilities for fixing and have a virtual tool chest of exploits to unleash whenever they see a reason to.
A secret weapon would likely be far more effective than one a target has had time to prepare for.
Security policies should be designed to defend against unknown vulnerabilities. Being current with patches isn't enough. While OSes with a better track record than Windows don't see the mass-market exploits, that doesn't mean that their vulnerabilities wouldn't get exploited under some circumstance. Being hit by a little used or unknown exploit may actually have more impact on a target with it being less likely to be discovered.
Perhaps the next-generation products will get a new name, like NGP, giving him a loophole? If they really are launching a quad-core ARM-based product later this year, some might like to run unrestricted Linux on it.
Chances are it'll be expensive. And if Sony gets quad core CPUs / GPUs, others most likely will also.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sony-computer-entertainment-announces-its-next-generation-portable-entertainment-system-114703879.html
(admittedly I'm biased against Sony at this point; not a serious gamer and not too quick to forgive Sony for the rootkit fiasco)
I think it might be good to have the system default to the classic discussion system for users that are not logged in and that have javascript disabled/blocked (by NoScript etc.). I'm not sure if bookmarked messages are readable for those users otherwise.
There might also be more participation in meta-moderating and Firehose screening if scripting wasn't required. (or at least not for more than the site domain, many don't like enabling anything resembling an offsite script.)
One of these days someone, in the quest to trim federal spending, fight drugs, and patrol borders, is going to go a few steps beyond remotely controlled web cams.
Imagine if you will a parallel universe, where handling crime is a game. There the government sells "hunting" licenses to website operators that provide cameras and weapons remotely operated over the web by paying players. The war on whatever turns profitable?
Not sure what happens to any captured drugs, maybe the government could auction those off or give them away either to raise money or drive prices down.
The may or may not become an official part of the Game and Party party-platform.
There are alternative sources if one looks. Some material may be objectionable, viewer discretion is advised.
Besides the U.S. commercial and cable broadcasters, there is news service on PBS stations with some streaming and podcasts available from http://www.pbs.org./ Many PBS and other public stations also carry the BBC which has much available on the web too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
A great many international newscasts are carried by the non-profit public satellite broadcaster MHz on their WorldView channel. (They have a number of other international channels also)
This guide is easier to browse than the one on their website:
http://proweb.myersinfosys.com/day.php?timezone=0&station=world&channel=MHz+Worldview&airdate=
They have free news and paid programs on-demand streamed through ROKU
mhznetworks.org/roku
Many of the news sources they carry have websites with some content available, here are some:
http://www.dw-world.de/ (Deutsche Welle from Germany)
http://www.euronews.net/
http://www.france24.com/en/
http://www.rt.com/ (Russia Today)
http://www.aljazeera.net/english
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AlJazeeraEnglish#g/u
http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ (NHK Newsline)
http://www.youtube.com/taiwanmactv
Not sure where a country is? Here's a good but simple map.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/CIA_WorldFactBook-Political_world.svg
More info and a list of stations carrying WorldView:
http://www.mhznetworks.org/mhzworldview/
Sometimes a station has them on a secondary digital channel (Like KCET 28.4 Los Angeles) that isn't on cable. Ask your cable operator to add it if they're not carrying the feed.
The target audience will not be moving to the mac.
It might be possible for some to get them. The U.K. may not have as many as the U.S., but since most most Mac users have upgraded since 2002 or so there are some very usable, some might say delightful, low cost older units turning up. Running Tiger (10.4.x) they're still fine for many things, stable, low maintenance, easily to use, and the iMac G4's are pretty light on energy use as well.
It's really hard not to like one of these, especially at $100 or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWGuUkYZYIE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGuRGPsIZiQ
Linux conversions, or nearly free older Macs, might also be a relief to some users of older PCs that do little or gave up because of lost battles with malware. Some cope fine but not all.
Some may prefer to use the phone and have the toast delivered?
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mister_Ed
These solar cars and efficiency are a great thing and all, but sometimes I'd still like to see a competition with cars shooting flames out the back, Bat-mobile style...
88 km/h is very close to 55 MPH
Toasters use about 1.5 kW which is about 2 horsepower. If one thinks in terms of doing work lifting without other losses, that works out to about 1100 foot-pounds per second.
Q: What's the most important thing to learn in chemistry?
A: Never lick the spoon.
Will an analysis of the swap reveal Page faults?
The thing is, if they used switched video, every TV that is on gets exactly 1 channel of the quality they allow.
They're sending a radio frequency signal modulated with what amounts to an MPEG transport stream. It's not TCP/IP. There's no retransmission of corrupt packets etc. The only way they could free up bandwidth within that stream is by not carrying a channel at all TO ANYBODY. So not using on-demand frees capacity, not watching Biggest Loser etc. doesn't.
Trying to give every TV or subscriber it's own stream would require far MORE resources. That's basically why cellular networks have some much trouble with handling users using video. Even just doing video chat chat which is far from continuous uses enough capacity that it's still not on AT&T. And while some systems may give fast peak or burst speeds, the actual amount of data they generally let people transfer is less in a month than most low-end broadband plans give DSL/cable net users in a day.
(so multiply that data plan cost by 30 when comparing)
Just as with wireless, a cable system has to go to many more nodes (close to smaller number of users sites) to handle delivering substantial amounts of content to each. Much of what's gone on is a slight of hand, where the systems in place couldn't handle anywhere near the traffic that would be generated if everyone actually used what they're paying for at once.
Cable systems can scale better than wireless, since they could eventually go to the point of fiber to the home (or small cluster of homes). Fiber has far more capacity than the frequency range that can be handled by coaxial cable. Over the air wireless has far less capacity yet since much of the frequency spectrum is used for other services, the only way to reuse a given slice of spectrum among many simultaneous users is to break the coverage area of sites into smaller and smaller regions. With longer-distance coverage, users on the same frequency would tend to interfere with each other. The use of the spectrum can be in short bursts, but for things like live HD video and VoIP, very limited amounts of delay or throughput fluctuation are tolerated well.
Satellite television has high channel capacity because of the large bandwidth available at microwave frequencies (well about what's practical with coax cable), the use of high compression ratios, and some reuse of spectrum (directional antennas able to select specific satellites). There is still no way for satellites to radiate signals to only small clusters of users, so they have very limited capacity for unique content (like net access or on-demand video). Basically the signals for any unique content reach many people, they're just blocked from decoding them. Of course there are tricks that could be used to give the illusion of more capacity. If for instance the pool of available on-demand movies was small, they could actually be repeated and cached PVR-style at the user end, giving access only when requested/authorized. As with users of wireless systems, if requests could be made in advance, then transmitted overnight or during lulls in activity, more users could be handled. It's a bit like running the washing machine at off peak hours to avoid problems with reaching peak generating capacity.
If cable rates are based on so many channels, you should have access to all of those at once. If you're limited to one, or one per box you pay for, you should only pay for one. If we paying for a bunch of channels we should be able to capture whatever we wish for watching whenever we want on whatever we own. (That does not go as far as sharing with others outside the residence being served) Cable companies don't want customers to have the same freedom they had with analog service and VCRs, they want to charge you to see anything twice, or on several devices.
People should be encouraged to make maximum use of over the air digital tv (including the excellent cheap devices to make PCs PVRs like the Elgato systems ATSC / C
There are a couple of different types of digital tv delivery on cable. None of them actually get a whole tv channels' bandwidth the way analog tv did. Regular network and station shows don't require additional bandwidth as more people watch. They're not using separate stream or frequencies for each viewer. They do have control over the bandwidth (in the bitrate sense) that each program gets, with HD needing more. Less viewed channels may be delivered at a lower quality level (lower bitrate = higher compression) to make more available for other things. Because there are so many channels, the quality level is significantly worse than the quality transmitted over the air by digital stations. Even with more efficient MPEG4 or h.264 compression, quality is lower than over the air (MPEG2) due to the bitrates. Also, they often don't carry all of the programs that a station has on a broadcast transmitter (for example check and see what your local public or PBS stations broadcast by looking at the station websites, then compare guide listings for cable)
Those shopping channels aren't taking "free" space/channels, their eating precious bandwidth everything else.
Some bandwidth is used for on-demand and internet services. Those things DO take bandwidth for each user and as a result the traffic for those isn't system wide. The system is essentially divided up into fiber-fed subnets with the number of coax-connected people in each limited based on available bandwidth. If you experience localized slowdowns they've oversold the capacity of those local nodes.
So if you're thinking you save bandwidth when you're watching normal or subscription cable channels, you don't. It's only your net use (including streamed video from any net source, and those paid on-demand (starts when YOU want it, not pay per view fights etc) programs that take additional system bandwidth beyond their standard tv services.
Consumer protests sometime do result in changes in regulation. But there's a downside to that. Now cities can do little to force better service since it's federally regulated. Also, the "fairer" system for rates that the feds came up with is based on channel count. Those junk shopping channels count. The cable operators get kickbacks based on sales. Most operators all insert and sell advertising. That hurts revenue of local radio and tv stations, in some cases degrading the service those provide. They face much higher costs. Consumer should demand that the FCC not allow cable operators to charge for channels that they get ad or kickback revenue to carry.
Cable has harmed broadcast in other ways. In some smaller markets where more people use cable due to fewer local available signals (at least in the past), many stations skimped on the digital tv conversion. Some opted for lower power transmitters hurting coverage. Some also didn't put digital back on the original analog channel at the end of the transition (which required moving and perhaps new equipment TWICE). As a result a number of small market stations gave up VHF channels and ended up on UHF. In some of those cases, particularly where terrain is rough, many viewer lost reception entirely). Some could theoretically get it with high gain outdoor antennas and preamps but there are a number of regions where even that doesn't work. I've seen stations that only identify by their cab;e channel number, as if no one was watching the actual transmitter. It's a shame, because with digital tv service a small number of stations could actually carry a number of programs.
NetFlix is competing with cable for revenue. Except for some channels with a per-subscriber license fee, your not using or even not subscribing to any already on for others television services doesn't measurably reduce any bandwidth costs or ease bandwidth limitiations they face. Using their net services or using them more raises their costs (but not nearly as much as what you pay them).
If Comcast has it's way, NetFlix may be losing NBC/Universal titles. Many thought the NBC/Comcast deal was evil, looks like they may have been right.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/sen-al-franken-no-joke-comcast-trying-to-whack-netflix.ars
Do you think they'll have nut obsessed rodents?
As much as squirrels and others love nuts, I think some crows in Japan deserve credit for doing something different with nuts. NHK (via Mhz WorldView) reports that birds have learned not only to drop nuts in the roadway where cars break them open, but to do it at intersections where the traffic gets stopped so they can pick up the pieces.
PBS also reported it:
http://www.pbs.org/lifeofbirds/brain/index.html
And think of the food....
There's that segment in the closing segment of the old Flintstones cartoon series where a drive-in serves ribs on a tray on the side of the car, and the car tips over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJu8RreAGnM&feature=related
That has some interesting features, but does come with a number of licensing restrictions... including these and others:
NO COMMERCIAL USE: This EULA grants you the right to use the Software for personal use only. Commercial use of the Software or of the work products resulting from its use is not permitted under this EULA. If you require a commercial license, please contact Sales@divx.com.
NO TRANSCODING: You are prohibited from using the Software with software or hardware products whose purpose is to "transcode" or convert DivX video or DivX Media Format content into an alternate format.
Have the MPEG raked us over the coals with MPEG1, MPEG2, JPEG, MP3, or AAC? Then why do you think they'll do it with MPEG4/h264?
Read the licenses in products that do MP3 encoding (iTunes for instance). Even with Apple paying a licensing fee, what you get isn't licensed for commercial use. MPEG2 video playback is something one normally didn't get for free either. Although there might be a license for s dedicated DVD player app, people had to pay for QuickTime Pro to get MPEG2 support.
If you read the licenses for any product you have that does encoding or decoding you'll see there are major issues. There are problems for both content and the related software. We need options that can be fully supported with totally free software (compatible with the GPL and free of any patent liability)
If we speak to each other using video, we don't want someone telling us we can only talk under their terms because they own the language. Our ability to create and distribute fully functional free software mustn't be held back by patents or other restrictions on data formats.
If Sony wishes to bring up potential harm instead of actual harm, the court ought to be reminded of the rootkits installed by Sony audio CDs on machines they didn't own or manufacture.
And the battery last only 4 hours on standby, tops.
Well at least a phone with a dead battery stops eating up the monthly bandwidth quota
Part of the massive failure of Windows Mobile is that it tried to be Windows scaled down to 3" screens. Small devices need customized OSs, a square peg with the corners shaved off to fit into a round hole.
Windows 8 - just think of this possibilities!
Trouble getting that square peg in? Maybe it just needs a little interface change.
Instead of a stylus, maybe a tiny hammer...
Getting strong regulations for truth in advertising are certainly something to wish for, right up there with patent sanity. ("Impossible Dream" music playing in background)
Figure out how to make the U.S. a member of the E.U. ?
Someone should remind this guy about the availability of fuzzing tools, and their effectiveness in finding bugs that might be exploitable.
http://it.slashdot.org/tag/fuzzing
And even when it IS bundled with the operating system it isn't licensed for commercial uses.