Aerial was GSM 1900, as is Voicestream. See this for more details about their network. From looking further, it looks like they have acquired licenses for Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, LA, SF, and other markets but have yet to complete their network in those markets.
Voicestream's coverage map can be viewed here. From experience, I know that there is no Voicestream coverage in Cleveland or Cincinnati, and by looking at the map it looks like the don't cover most of the SW US, no Chicago, and no California. I'm willing to bet that a job with a lot of travel would be frequenting at least one of the areas. GSM is far superior to CDMA and TDMA, and AFAIK Voicestream is the only provider still offering "first incoming minute free" to new subscribers, but it's too bad that it's taking Voicestream so long in providing coverage to new areas.
I don't disagree that the price is pretty painful; the point is that Portability Costs. You can't take that $500 AMD K6-based system into the bathroom and flame people on Slashdot whilst "on the throne." You can't carry it into the kitchen and write up a list of groceries to get. Lots of can'ts there.
And unless you have an rj-11 jack and power source near the toilet, you won't be flaming with this device either. This device is not a portable device like the much-touted wireless WebPads will be, this is a table-top device with a footprint that allows you to use it in places besides the typical office desk. You don't be carrying this into the kitchen to do a grocery list unless you want to power the unit down, unplug it, carrry it into the kitchen, plug it in, power it up, etc.
I'd expect Gateway/AOL to follow Compaq's pricing structure for their iPaq Home Internet Appliance , in which they offer a $400 rebate for a 36-month committment to the MSN Companion Service.
Re:Problems with the system
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 3
Perhaps these problems could be solved by using something that most everyone already has: their driver's license or photo ID. About 4 years ago I got one of those fancy, credit-card-looking driver's licenses with the magnetic strip on the back. This strip has been used a grand total of ZERO times since I received the card. This strip could be used at the voting terminal to provide secure authentication. Then we'd just have to find a way to ensure that the ID of each voter isn't tied to that voter's votes in a database somewhere (yes Doubleclick, I'm talking to you).
I'm against having people voting from their homes via computer, but I fully believe that each polling place needs to be fully computerized. The idea of waiting hours or even days for results to be counted is absolutely ridiculous with the technology that is available today. Each polling place needs a database server to provide authentication and to compile votes, a few computerized voting terminals, and a modem to transmit these results to the central county or state office when the polls close. The database server could be eliminated at each location if a dedicated connection were available, but that's unlikely in the fire departments and churches that are typcially hosting elections.
Not that I'm interested in pissing off TiVO, but... Does this open the door for someone to reverse-engineer the guide format, and then offer an alternate guide, either cheaper than TiVOs or free? TiVO needs to put a stop to this, or get some really good encryption...
This is certainly possible, although it would be quite a hassle for each user to customize the guide to contain their own cable lineup. Currently TiVo's guide does not contain DirecTV's PPV or pay-sports program info. An enterprising individual has come up with his own automated solution where he has a Javascript that runs on his PC, pulls the required data from DirecTV's website, formats that data to be compatible with TiVo's guide, and uploads it to a Geocities web site. The TiVo is then modified to make a 2nd PPP connection to any ISP after the call to TiVo takes place, it then downloads this DTV guide, and imports it into the TiVo guide. This doesn't bypass the TiVo guide but adds the data in addition to what is downloaded nightly from TiVo.
The DirecTV receiver with TiVo has been available for a few weeks now. It also has 2 tuners, although the 2nd tuner is currently disabled until the software is ready. There is no mpeg encoder since it records directly from the digital DirecTV feed.
The TiVo does make a PPP connection to UUNet servers nightly, where it then downloads the guide data via FTP. These FTP servers are accessible via the Internet, but the rest of the Internet is not accessible via TiVo's UUNet connection. TiVo probably won't be too upset about this hack since it will reduce some of their dial-up costs, unless somebody decides to circumvent TiVo's guide data and start importing data from another Internet source (trust me, not too hard at all). Then again, this could also be done over the current modem connection. The main reason I'm attracted to this hack is that it now allows me to add/remove/edit recording schedules on the fly without being at home and without having to wait until it places the daily call.
A Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey released to USA Today Friday found that 75 per cent of U.S. music downloaders said they would stop downloading free music if they had to pay.
Shouldn't that be 100%? It no longer is free (as in beer) music if you have to pay for it, and if you continue to download this music without paying a fee, it technically isn't considered to be free music.
The people in the two counties were given sample ballots clearly explaining how to vote, giving them nothing other than their own ignorance to explain for the voting.
And according to ABCNews and various other news sources: "Democratic Party officials said sample ballots handed to Florida voters by volunteers as they entered the polling places in precincts in Palm Beach listed the candidates in a different order than what voters saw in the voting booths.
The result, they said, was voters who referenced the sample ballots to cast their votes may have voted for Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Gore."
If the old people in Florida can't follow simple directions, then maybe they shouldn't be voting. The ballots here in Ohio are almost identical to the ballots in South Palm Beach. And there's no spike of Buchanan votes here.
Perhaps this was true in your part of Ohio, but here in Franklin County our ballots were giant pages (probably larger than 16" x 12") with no holes, just computerized buttons to push. The Presidents were each listen in their own 2-3" boxes on the top left of the page with their corresponding button clearly placed. Anyone who claims to have been misled by *this* ballot has some more serious problems to worry about. I've seen the Palm Beach County ballots in question and can easily see how people were misled, especially considering the voters were given a different ballot layout in advance.
Can someone please tell me how folks have
figured out that Gore votes went to Buchanan???
It's not like there's some verify screen, so
why are people thinking this?
Perhaps after hearing the news reports, people realized they punched the 2nd hole down (Buchanan) rather than the 3rd hole down (Gore) because the holes were so close together. Or perhaps after leaving their voting booth they heard someone complaining about the confusing layout and realized that they could've chosen the wrong hole.
i thought bush refused to answer questions about his drug use saying only that he'd had "youthful indiscretions" or something like that...
Well, he *sorta* answered the question of drug use in his past. He put some type of qualifier on his answer, IIRC he said he would answer questions about his drug use since he turned 40 or some such nonsense, but any questioning before this time was unrelated to his candidacy.
<i>But only when it's sold as a game console will Sony make money. I read an article somewhere that said people in Japan were buying to PS2 mainly as a cheap DVD player. It might be the case in the US as well.</i><br><br>
That won't be the case in the US for quite a while, considering the Playstation2 retails for $299 (if you can even get one) while there are many basic DVD players available for under $150. Of course the Playstation2 will inevitably come down in price, but so will DVD players. Personally, the Playstation2's ability to play DVD's will probably put me in the market for one for my currently DVD-less home, but only because the DVD feature will give me an excuse for the wife as to why I'm buying it.
Taping a show was an interesting exercise. You first had to flip open a door and manipulate the huge LED clock to set the right time for the VCR to start. THEN you had to set the main power switch to auto record, THEN you had to hit the record and play button, and then hope for the best.
This type of programming was not a Betamax-specific "feature". My parents just last year *finally* replaced their old VHS VCR (possibly Magnavox?) that they've had since the early-to-mid-80's, and it had the same "flip door" (although the door was long ago broken off) where there were little buttons, dials, and switches to schedule recordings. Seems to me that this isn't something the Beta should be bashed for per se since it was probably how many VCR's of that era, both Betamax and VHS, were programmed.
From cnn.com:
The new ERS-210 model, shipments of which will begin in December, is based on the appearance of a baby lion and features more movement and sensors than the first model, a greater range of emotions, limited voice recognition and the ability to take digital photographs.
A digital camera in the nose? A wireless LAN connection? Am I being overly paranoid or should we be concerned that Sony can now snap "spy" photos from in our houses and easily retrieve them over the Internet? Based on Sony's history, I wouldn't say this is too far-fetched. Imagine the mountains of personal info they could gather with this thing.
But if I quit the service, then I have a $300 hunk of junk. (yea, yea, I know some people think it already is a hunk of junk).
Really though, will they give me back my money for the TIVO then?
If I decide I don't want to pay for gasoline anymore, will the oil companies give back the $24,000 that I paid for my vehicle since it will no longer be useful without fuel? No? Neither will TiVo, considering they didn't make any money on the hardware sale in the first place.
But seriously, the market for used TiVo's on eBay is quite healthy, I'm sure you'd have no problem getting at least 66% of your investment back.
1. While it's recording, you can only watch the show being recorded. You can't (for example) channel surf or watch another show until the one you're currently recording buffers up enough so that you can skip past the commercials. Can you watch something else with the TiVo while it's recording? I bought a video splitter and can switch video sources on my tv to watch "live" tv while the Replay is recording, but this is less than optimal.
With the TiVo, you are able to watch any of your recorded shows while another is recording. I thought this was also possible on the Replay, not true? If not, that's a major negative for Replay.
2. It appears to me that once you select a show to record every occurence of it only cares about the day and time of that show and ignores the title of that show from that point onward. The downside to this is that if the lineup changes you get some crap recorded that you never intended to. Does the TiVo pay more attention to the actual content of what it's recording?
Tivo has a feature called Season Pass where you can select, for example, Sopranos to record on your HBO channel. Anytime the Sopranos airs on that particular HBO channel, it will be recorded. An added feature will prevent the TiVo from recording the same episode twice (HBO typically repeats their shows many times during the week). To continue with my example, the Sopranos is currently not being aired (it's between seasons), but my Season Pass is still there and TiVo will start recording the Sopranos again once they start showing past seasons this fall.
I read recently during the pre-Olympic hype that Fosters only has something like 2% of the beer market in Australia. Fosters was also actually started by 2 Americans who opened a brewery in Australia.
I have the original TiVO, and one of its annoying limitations is the arbitrary 30 minute live buffer. C'mon, I have space to burn on this thing; let me pause live TV for more than a lousy half-hour!
No kidding, it's so incredibly difficult to press the "record" button if I'm going to walk away from the TV for any more than a few minutes during a show.
30 hours at *lowest quality* just isn't enough space for someone that wants to use their PTV device to its fullest capabilities. I typically record at Medium quality from my DSS feed, which on a TiVo takes about 33% more space than Basic quality and would take about 50% more space than Basic on ReplayTV. With a 30 hour unit, once you get a few movies saved that you'd like to view down the road and the normal weekly shows saved on the drive, you don't have much space for much else. I purchased a TiVo a little over a month ago mainly because I could easily add a hard drive and get 108 hours of basic quality recording space and over 66 hours at my preferred "Medium" level. I did a lot of research on the differences between TiVo and ReplayTV and found that each has its positives and negatives, and the main difference was that the TiVo is more of an "open source" solution. I'm not a huge TV watcher, normally a few hours in the evening, but I'm very happy with my TiVo. It's allowed me to catch shows (Oz, Sopranos repeats) that I normally can't catch when they air later at night, and its also allowed me to rearrange my TV viewing to fit my schedule. I was also pleasantly surprised that the TiVo Suggestions has caught a few shows and movies that I would've never thought to look for (it automatically recorded Platoon and Apocalypse Now one night). I still haven't gotten into major time-shifting, I still watch most shows the night they first air, but overall I'm very pleased.
This has already been happening to some extent in TV for the past few years, but the most glaring example recently is Coca-Cola's sponsorship of a WB show called Young Americans. For $6 million, Coke apparently gets to be a title sponsor, gets a mention everytime Young Americans is advertised (ie "Young Americans brought to you by Coke"), and gets very significant product placement. Survivor had some pretty obvious product-placements over the summer too (Target, Dr. Scholl's, Budweiser, Reebok).
TiVo makes most of their revenue from their subscriptions. They make NO money on hardware sales, and in fact actually give Philips and Sony a portion of each subscription fee because they sell the hardware at a loss.
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Aerial was GSM 1900, as is Voicestream. See this for more details about their network. From looking further, it looks like they have acquired licenses for Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, LA, SF, and other markets but have yet to complete their network in those markets.
Voicestream's coverage map can be viewed here. From experience, I know that there is no Voicestream coverage in Cleveland or Cincinnati, and by looking at the map it looks like the don't cover most of the SW US, no Chicago, and no California. I'm willing to bet that a job with a lot of travel would be frequenting at least one of the areas. GSM is far superior to CDMA and TDMA, and AFAIK Voicestream is the only provider still offering "first incoming minute free" to new subscribers, but it's too bad that it's taking Voicestream so long in providing coverage to new areas.
And unless you have an rj-11 jack and power source near the toilet, you won't be flaming with this device either. This device is not a portable device like the much-touted wireless WebPads will be, this is a table-top device with a footprint that allows you to use it in places besides the typical office desk. You don't be carrying this into the kitchen to do a grocery list unless you want to power the unit down, unplug it, carrry it into the kitchen, plug it in, power it up, etc.
I'd expect Gateway/AOL to follow Compaq's pricing structure for their iPaq Home Internet Appliance , in which they offer a $400 rebate for a 36-month committment to the MSN Companion Service.
I'm against having people voting from their homes via computer, but I fully believe that each polling place needs to be fully computerized. The idea of waiting hours or even days for results to be counted is absolutely ridiculous with the technology that is available today. Each polling place needs a database server to provide authentication and to compile votes, a few computerized voting terminals, and a modem to transmit these results to the central county or state office when the polls close. The database server could be eliminated at each location if a dedicated connection were available, but that's unlikely in the fire departments and churches that are typcially hosting elections.
This is certainly possible, although it would be quite a hassle for each user to customize the guide to contain their own cable lineup. Currently TiVo's guide does not contain DirecTV's PPV or pay-sports program info. An enterprising individual has come up with his own automated solution where he has a Javascript that runs on his PC, pulls the required data from DirecTV's website, formats that data to be compatible with TiVo's guide, and uploads it to a Geocities web site. The TiVo is then modified to make a 2nd PPP connection to any ISP after the call to TiVo takes place, it then downloads this DTV guide, and imports it into the TiVo guide. This doesn't bypass the TiVo guide but adds the data in addition to what is downloaded nightly from TiVo.
The DirecTV receiver with TiVo has been available for a few weeks now. It also has 2 tuners, although the 2nd tuner is currently disabled until the software is ready. There is no mpeg encoder since it records directly from the digital DirecTV feed.
The TiVo does make a PPP connection to UUNet servers nightly, where it then downloads the guide data via FTP. These FTP servers are accessible via the Internet, but the rest of the Internet is not accessible via TiVo's UUNet connection. TiVo probably won't be too upset about this hack since it will reduce some of their dial-up costs, unless somebody decides to circumvent TiVo's guide data and start importing data from another Internet source (trust me, not too hard at all). Then again, this could also be done over the current modem connection. The main reason I'm attracted to this hack is that it now allows me to add/remove/edit recording schedules on the fly without being at home and without having to wait until it places the daily call.
Shouldn't that be 100%? It no longer is free (as in beer) music if you have to pay for it, and if you continue to download this music without paying a fee, it technically isn't considered to be free music.
And according to ABCNews and various other news sources: "Democratic Party officials said sample ballots handed to Florida voters by volunteers as they entered the polling places in precincts in Palm Beach listed the candidates in a different order than what voters saw in the voting booths. The result, they said, was voters who referenced the sample ballots to cast their votes may have voted for Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Gore."
Perhaps this was true in your part of Ohio, but here in Franklin County our ballots were giant pages (probably larger than 16" x 12") with no holes, just computerized buttons to push. The Presidents were each listen in their own 2-3" boxes on the top left of the page with their corresponding button clearly placed. Anyone who claims to have been misled by *this* ballot has some more serious problems to worry about. I've seen the Palm Beach County ballots in question and can easily see how people were misled, especially considering the voters were given a different ballot layout in advance.
Perhaps after hearing the news reports, people realized they punched the 2nd hole down (Buchanan) rather than the 3rd hole down (Gore) because the holes were so close together. Or perhaps after leaving their voting booth they heard someone complaining about the confusing layout and realized that they could've chosen the wrong hole.
Well, he *sorta* answered the question of drug use in his past. He put some type of qualifier on his answer, IIRC he said he would answer questions about his drug use since he turned 40 or some such nonsense, but any questioning before this time was unrelated to his candidacy.
<i>But only when it's sold as a game console will Sony make money. I read an article somewhere that said people in Japan were buying to PS2 mainly as a cheap DVD player. It might be the case in the US as well.</i><br><br>
That won't be the case in the US for quite a while, considering the Playstation2 retails for $299 (if you can even get one) while there are many basic DVD players available for under $150. Of course the Playstation2 will inevitably come down in price, but so will DVD players. Personally, the Playstation2's ability to play DVD's will probably put me in the market for one for my currently DVD-less home, but only because the DVD feature will give me an excuse for the wife as to why I'm buying it.
Taping a show was an interesting exercise. You first had to flip open a door and manipulate the huge LED clock to set the right time for the VCR to start. THEN you had to set the main power switch to auto record, THEN you had to hit the record and play button, and then hope for the best.
This type of programming was not a Betamax-specific "feature". My parents just last year *finally* replaced their old VHS VCR (possibly Magnavox?) that they've had since the early-to-mid-80's, and it had the same "flip door" (although the door was long ago broken off) where there were little buttons, dials, and switches to schedule recordings. Seems to me that this isn't something the Beta should be bashed for per se since it was probably how many VCR's of that era, both Betamax and VHS, were programmed.
From cnn.com: The new ERS-210 model, shipments of which will begin in December, is based on the appearance of a baby lion and features more movement and sensors than the first model, a greater range of emotions, limited voice recognition and the ability to take digital photographs.
A digital camera in the nose? A wireless LAN connection? Am I being overly paranoid or should we be concerned that Sony can now snap "spy" photos from in our houses and easily retrieve them over the Internet? Based on Sony's history, I wouldn't say this is too far-fetched. Imagine the mountains of personal info they could gather with this thing.
If I decide I don't want to pay for gasoline anymore, will the oil companies give back the $24,000 that I paid for my vehicle since it will no longer be useful without fuel? No? Neither will TiVo, considering they didn't make any money on the hardware sale in the first place.
But seriously, the market for used TiVo's on eBay is quite healthy, I'm sure you'd have no problem getting at least 66% of your investment back.
With the TiVo, you are able to watch any of your recorded shows while another is recording. I thought this was also possible on the Replay, not true? If not, that's a major negative for Replay.
2. It appears to me that once you select a show to record every occurence of it only cares about the day and time of that show and ignores the title of that show from that point onward. The downside to this is that if the lineup changes you get some crap recorded that you never intended to. Does the TiVo pay more attention to the actual content of what it's recording?
Tivo has a feature called Season Pass where you can select, for example, Sopranos to record on your HBO channel. Anytime the Sopranos airs on that particular HBO channel, it will be recorded. An added feature will prevent the TiVo from recording the same episode twice (HBO typically repeats their shows many times during the week). To continue with my example, the Sopranos is currently not being aired (it's between seasons), but my Season Pass is still there and TiVo will start recording the Sopranos again once they start showing past seasons this fall.
I read recently during the pre-Olympic hype that Fosters only has something like 2% of the beer market in Australia. Fosters was also actually started by 2 Americans who opened a brewery in Australia.
No kidding, it's so incredibly difficult to press the "record" button if I'm going to walk away from the TV for any more than a few minutes during a show.
30 hours at *lowest quality* just isn't enough space for someone that wants to use their PTV device to its fullest capabilities. I typically record at Medium quality from my DSS feed, which on a TiVo takes about 33% more space than Basic quality and would take about 50% more space than Basic on ReplayTV. With a 30 hour unit, once you get a few movies saved that you'd like to view down the road and the normal weekly shows saved on the drive, you don't have much space for much else. I purchased a TiVo a little over a month ago mainly because I could easily add a hard drive and get 108 hours of basic quality recording space and over 66 hours at my preferred "Medium" level. I did a lot of research on the differences between TiVo and ReplayTV and found that each has its positives and negatives, and the main difference was that the TiVo is more of an "open source" solution. I'm not a huge TV watcher, normally a few hours in the evening, but I'm very happy with my TiVo. It's allowed me to catch shows (Oz, Sopranos repeats) that I normally can't catch when they air later at night, and its also allowed me to rearrange my TV viewing to fit my schedule. I was also pleasantly surprised that the TiVo Suggestions has caught a few shows and movies that I would've never thought to look for (it automatically recorded Platoon and Apocalypse Now one night). I still haven't gotten into major time-shifting, I still watch most shows the night they first air, but overall I'm very pleased.
This has already been happening to some extent in TV for the past few years, but the most glaring example recently is Coca-Cola's sponsorship of a WB show called Young Americans. For $6 million, Coke apparently gets to be a title sponsor, gets a mention everytime Young Americans is advertised (ie "Young Americans brought to you by Coke"), and gets very significant product placement. Survivor had some pretty obvious product-placements over the summer too (Target, Dr. Scholl's, Budweiser, Reebok).
TiVo makes most of their revenue from their subscriptions. They make NO money on hardware sales, and in fact actually give Philips and Sony a portion of each subscription fee because they sell the hardware at a loss.