I suppose it depends on the round as much as the rifle. I was told by the officer running the heavy caliber firing range, that a Berret Light 50 will kill a man standing behind two APC even if they shoot through both engine blocks first. He didn't sound like he was joking.
You ever seen Tremors 2? Here's a quick thing I found online about what one rifle bullet does over: Although My favorite Barrett 82 publicity has to be Tremors 2. The AP bullet kills a pre-cambrian walker (messily), goes through the corrugated steel warehouse wall, thought the 55gallon drum full of water, the cinder block wall behind that, through the toolshed, and finally stops in the engine block of their escape truck
There was quite a distance between the rifle and the truck. I don't know if it is possible or not, but it sure gives an example. The Berret 82 is a.50 caliber rifle.
Well, on top of it, there are still some (perhaps many?) areas of the US
where the digital signals from local TV stations aren't carried on the local
cable TV plant, even though the analog ones are AND the cable plant has other
HDTV channels (e.g., HBO, DiscoveryHD, ESPN HD, etc.) in the channel lineup.
Why?
The cable companies have this thing called "must carry". By law, if the station requests (demands) it they must carry the analog station. This has been partally transfered over to the digital channel/station. Cable companies only have to carry the primary digital chanel the stations broadcast. However, as they are still broadcasting analog, most cable companies will only broadcast that as it takes up less bandwidth on their cable systems (generaly under 4 megabits) than the HD digital ones will (19.4 megabits). Cox, my local cable company, has put the broadcast HDTV stations on an HDTV tier that they are charging money for. As I do not get that tier, I do not know if it is the networks who run it or the local affiliate. If the local affiliate, they must be getting some money for it. If the networks, the local affiliate probable gets none.
However, why the hell would the Affiliates even care?
Because it takes away viewers and through that, they don't get as much advertising dollars, their sole source of revenew. They also don't like the network competing with them. Similar to why many fast food resturants would not but pepsi as it helped their competitors (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) while they were still directly owned by Pepsi. There are similar examples in other markets. Car dealers would not like it if FORD/GM/Honda/Toyota/Mercedes/Volkswagon started selling directly from them bypassing the dealerships entirely, especially if they undercut the dealers.
They still get the first airing of the show and thats the important airing.
Only so long as the networks decide to do this and charge a fee, among other things. Wait until the networks start releasing them same day, with comercials (that can't be skiped easily) for free or without comercials for a small fee. All of this is of course assuming at least as good of a quality as you get off your regular TV.
Affiliates really want to do something, they should learn and start making things like local news casts available online for say $.50 or free with 2-3 min of comercials in there.
This won't pay for their current operations or many other things. They don't want to compete with their own network. With this, their current business model is dead at the hands of the network. Expect some affiliates to leave for other networks if ABC keeps this up.
I asked this the other day, here is the start of the thread. http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165283&c id=13790943
Brief summary, they are using a VHS equivalent resolution, but a bit rate that is a bit low. Doesn't look good when full screened/put on a TV. (Note, Program for playback [Quick Time] may just have a crapy scaling function that needs improvement.)
broadcast TV is dead. Or is this another Wolf-cry like VHS destroying the theater business or catalogs (or the internet) closing every mall in America?
I can actually see this killing, or at least severly hurting, the local affiliates. Unlike VHS and the internet, this type of selling is very close to the original way of doing business.
VHS didn't do much as it took months for the movie to come out on VHS after theatres. Additionaly, some people want to see movies on an 80 foot screen versus their TV. Home theatre systems and HD are changing some of this, but it is expensive and slow.
The internet is more of a replacement for mail order catalogs than brick and mortar stores. People still like going to a physical place when they need something NOW or when they want to try something one. Can you imagine someone buying clothes/perfume online without trying it out is some way first? If a piece of computer equipment like my keyboard breaks, I want it fixed quickly and goto the store to buy a new one, I don't want to have to wait for a new one to come in the mail.
(The following assumes that the shows are downloaded in a TV/DVD/Good Quality equivalent form)
However, this one is very close to the original form of transmision. You pay $2 and download it online. Then you can output to a TV or Monitor (My monitor is 20" in sits near a 19" TV) giving an equivalent viewing expierience. Broadcast TVs only leg up (for now) is that it is paid for by comercials versus itunes $2. If they start putting in comercials that can't be skiped (like TV) or can pay for it entirely with product placement and make the downloads free broadcast TV is at a disadvantage due to me having to arrange my schedule around when the show is broadcast.
If I were an affiliate, I would be affraid, very affraid of this happening. The only way for affiliates to survive is if the studios keep charging for the shows and keep the price high enough that most people would rather watch it live than pay for it. Either that, or we will see them going back to their business model from the 60's(?) where most shows were created localy and did not come from the networks. If the networks start to do this for all the shows, the current business model for the affiliates is dead.
I was going to say that we should use an anagram of his name and ran his name through an anagram generator to see what would come up that we could us. To My surprise, "PHANTOM JOCKS" came up. Think maybe Jack Thompson had some problems growing up and this is just all the fault of soom repressed memmories? Or his he trying to get revenge on the geek community for something?
he is unlikely to see his computers again for at least a year or two.
Can you provide some links for this?
Consider Indymedia, who had their computers seized for months during election season and were never charged with anything.
I think you mean this case where they wanted copies of the drives, not the drives themselves nor the computers. As I recall, it was at the request of Italy, who wanted evidence for something. The drives were gone for three days, not the months you say.
Seriously -- whether you like Ralsky or not, this practice of seizing computer equipment is probably unconstitutional. He is being deprived of his property and his ability to make a living, without due process of law. According to TFA, all of his computer were seized, shutting him down.
Last I checked, a warrant was generally needed before property could be seized. Last I checked, a warrant equated to due process, at least until the trial ends. How else do you think the police get to keep evidence until the trial? Not all evidence is at the scene of the crime.
(a) no surprises yet - you can't stop migrating birds - especially during migration season;
I think between anti-aircraft guns, shot guns and a few other weapons we've developed in the past few hundred years that we could stop migrating birds. There just won't be many birds left alive afterwards.
I am slightly surprised that this project is expected to cost at most as much, if not less, than the extected cost of seismic retrofit for the relatively shorter San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (that project involves the construction of a completely new replacement for the eastern span of the bridge).
You give the reason in your own question. seismic retrofit
Italy doesn't have to worry about Earthquakes. The seismic retrofit is really the building of an entirely new bridge to replace the old one.
Unfortunately, I do not have the Quicktime Codec to watch the content on my computer. What I have seen are demonstrations using equipment sold to TV stations (where I have done some testing with h.264 and similar equipment) and using a program (footage/test tape, not computer program) we came up with for testing out encoders. The h.264 encoders, that were attempting to be sold to TV stations, needed at least 4 Mbps for full-D1 resolution and still had noticeable problems. The minimum on bitrate we have seen needed for 320x240 has been 1.5 Mbps, and even then there were sometimes problems. Mind you, we were generally looking at more detail than most people would notice and were, in some cases, going frame by frame to find problems.
But the filesize (I'm at work so iirc) is about 150 megabytes.
Bittorrent dloads of Stargate come in at 440 MB and 704x400 (wide screen). With a decent scaler, it should look pretty good so long as it has a decent bitrate. Time will tell, I guess.
The video is h.264, 320x240, approximately 500Kb/s, audio is 128kbps AAC stereo.
Hmmm... MPEG1/VCR resolution at only 500Kb. Audio has a nice bit rate. Even if they are using h.264, they should be using at least 1 mbit for video. They really should be using at least a 1.5 mbit overall bit rate (1408 Kb/s video, 128 AAC stereo). Crapy low bitrate encoding is their problem.
Last i heard, the cable companies must also pay for the 'right' to broadcast.
Depends on which stations, largest part of a cable bill generally goes to ESPN. Most stations (including the broadcast stations) don't get money from the networks, only from commercials and product placement.
Or were you not around when cable was commercial free and was the major selling point?
When was this? When cable originally started, all they did was transmit what came to them over the air from the networks. Comercials and all. There were no other stations at that point.
They already have the bandwidth, which is f-ing paid for already ( by me ).
Last time I checked you didn't pay for the internet connection that Apple's iTunes store has. So how are you paying for the bandwidth? Both the uploader and the downloader need bandwidth. What you pay to the cable company doesn't get to the broadcast networks. They only get money through their shows and comercials.
More likely a crocodile. Snakes came about ~150 million years ago, but given the size of those ribs, I think it would have to be much longer than 300 feet if it were a snake. My bet is on something with legs.
You do realise that TV/Movie content is still licensed by country? In many cases they (currently) can not legally sell it to someone outside the US yet. Kind of like how those of us in the states can't get some BBC content.
but why do i have to pay to watch something that i already paid to have broadcast to my house?
You paid for the cable subscription, not the content. You paid to have those 100 channels come into your house, not for the content on them. This being broadcast TV, the cable network pays no money to have them on the channels either. Premium channels such as HBO/Cinemax are another matter where you pay for the content and the delivery.
I also had to sit thru those damned commercials, so really i paid even more then just the cable bill.
Correct, cause by watching the commercials you are paying for the show.
Its not like they had to do something special to digitize it.
Considering most recording is done in digital today, no. But they did have to compress it, do a nominal quality check of it and pay for the bandwidth to redistribute it all in addition to the regular costs of a show.
Free nightly news on iTunes, right after, or during the broadcast on the TV set. That to me, would be what puts the nail in the coffen for TV.
I'm not sure it would kill of TV. A lot of people still want their local news/weather, which is provided by the local stations, not the network anchor.
Compared to the free torrents, the quality $2 iTunes download was extremely bad.
Can you post some information on the codec used in the iTunes download (MPEG-1/2,DivX,MOV/MP4,...) and the total file size so we can get an idea of the bit-rate used? Also, what resolution was the iTunes download? 640x480? 320x240? 720x480? and what application did you have to play it in?
If this is a legit fossil, my guess is that its an ocean-going creature. If that thing flew, it would have needed enormous amounts of energy to keep itself aloft.
If it was an earth going creature, it would have needed enourmous amounts of energy to stay up. I'm going to guess this thing is either a sea-going dino, crocodile, shark or mammal. Dang, that thing is huge.
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I suppose it depends on the round as much as the rifle. I was told by the officer running the heavy caliber firing range, that a Berret Light 50 will kill a man standing behind two APC even if they shoot through both engine blocks first. He didn't sound like he was joking.
.50 caliber rifle.
You ever seen Tremors 2? Here's a quick thing I found online about what one rifle bullet does over:
Although My favorite Barrett 82 publicity has to be Tremors 2. The AP bullet kills a pre-cambrian walker (messily), goes through the corrugated steel warehouse wall, thought the 55gallon drum full of water, the cinder block wall behind that, through the toolshed, and finally stops in the engine block of their escape truck
There was quite a distance between the rifle and the truck. I don't know if it is possible or not, but it sure gives an example. The Berret 82 is a
Well, on top of it, there are still some (perhaps many?) areas of the US where the digital signals from local TV stations aren't carried on the local cable TV plant, even though the analog ones are AND the cable plant has other HDTV channels (e.g., HBO, DiscoveryHD, ESPN HD, etc.) in the channel lineup. Why?
The cable companies have this thing called "must carry". By law, if the station requests (demands) it they must carry the analog station. This has been partally transfered over to the digital channel/station. Cable companies only have to carry the primary digital chanel the stations broadcast. However, as they are still broadcasting analog, most cable companies will only broadcast that as it takes up less bandwidth on their cable systems (generaly under 4 megabits) than the HD digital ones will (19.4 megabits). Cox, my local cable company, has put the broadcast HDTV stations on an HDTV tier that they are charging money for. As I do not get that tier, I do not know if it is the networks who run it or the local affiliate. If the local affiliate, they must be getting some money for it. If the networks, the local affiliate probable gets none.
However, why the hell would the Affiliates even care?
Because it takes away viewers and through that, they don't get as much advertising dollars, their sole source of revenew. They also don't like the network competing with them. Similar to why many fast food resturants would not but pepsi as it helped their competitors (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC) while they were still directly owned by Pepsi. There are similar examples in other markets. Car dealers would not like it if FORD/GM/Honda/Toyota/Mercedes/Volkswagon started selling directly from them bypassing the dealerships entirely, especially if they undercut the dealers.
They still get the first airing of the show and thats the important airing.
Only so long as the networks decide to do this and charge a fee, among other things. Wait until the networks start releasing them same day, with comercials (that can't be skiped easily) for free or without comercials for a small fee. All of this is of course assuming at least as good of a quality as you get off your regular TV.
Affiliates really want to do something, they should learn and start making things like local news casts available online for say $.50 or free with 2-3 min of comercials in there.
This won't pay for their current operations or many other things. They don't want to compete with their own network. With this, their current business model is dead at the hands of the network. Expect some affiliates to leave for other networks if ABC keeps this up.
I asked this the other day, here is the start of the thread.c id=13790943
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165283&
Brief summary, they are using a VHS equivalent resolution, but a bit rate that is a bit low. Doesn't look good when full screened/put on a TV. (Note, Program for playback [Quick Time] may just have a crapy scaling function that needs improvement.)
broadcast TV is dead. Or is this another Wolf-cry like VHS destroying the theater business or catalogs (or the internet) closing every mall in America?
I can actually see this killing, or at least severly hurting, the local affiliates. Unlike VHS and the internet, this type of selling is very close to the original way of doing business.
VHS didn't do much as it took months for the movie to come out on VHS after theatres. Additionaly, some people want to see movies on an 80 foot screen versus their TV. Home theatre systems and HD are changing some of this, but it is expensive and slow.
The internet is more of a replacement for mail order catalogs than brick and mortar stores. People still like going to a physical place when they need something NOW or when they want to try something one. Can you imagine someone buying clothes/perfume online without trying it out is some way first? If a piece of computer equipment like my keyboard breaks, I want it fixed quickly and goto the store to buy a new one, I don't want to have to wait for a new one to come in the mail.
(The following assumes that the shows are downloaded in a TV/DVD/Good Quality equivalent form)
However, this one is very close to the original form of transmision. You pay $2 and download it online. Then you can output to a TV or Monitor (My monitor is 20" in sits near a 19" TV) giving an equivalent viewing expierience. Broadcast TVs only leg up (for now) is that it is paid for by comercials versus itunes $2. If they start putting in comercials that can't be skiped (like TV) or can pay for it entirely with product placement and make the downloads free broadcast TV is at a disadvantage due to me having to arrange my schedule around when the show is broadcast.
If I were an affiliate, I would be affraid, very affraid of this happening. The only way for affiliates to survive is if the studios keep charging for the shows and keep the price high enough that most people would rather watch it live than pay for it. Either that, or we will see them going back to their business model from the 60's(?) where most shows were created localy and did not come from the networks. If the networks start to do this for all the shows, the current business model for the affiliates is dead.
I was going to say that we should use an anagram of his name and ran his name through an anagram generator to see what would come up that we could us. To My surprise, "PHANTOM JOCKS" came up. Think maybe Jack Thompson had some problems growing up and this is just all the fault of soom repressed memmories? Or his he trying to get revenge on the geek community for something?
he is unlikely to see his computers again for at least a year or two.
/. Indymedia stories.
Can you provide some links for this?
Consider Indymedia, who had their computers seized for months during election season and were never charged with anything.
I think you mean this case where they wanted copies of the drives, not the drives themselves nor the computers. As I recall, it was at the request of Italy, who wanted evidence for something. The drives were gone for three days, not the months you say.
Take a look at the
I believe that quote was P.T. Barnum, but I could be wrong.
Yup, you are. One of those popular misconceptions. Though PT Barnum is related to the quote.
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refbarnum.html
Seriously -- whether you like Ralsky or not, this practice of seizing computer equipment is probably unconstitutional. He is being deprived of his property and his ability to make a living, without due process of law. According to TFA, all of his computer were seized, shutting him down.
Last I checked, a warrant was generally needed before property could be seized. Last I checked, a warrant equated to due process, at least until the trial ends. How else do you think the police get to keep evidence until the trial? Not all evidence is at the scene of the crime.
"There's a sucker born every minute." - David Hannum
Someone will buy it.
(a) no surprises yet - you can't stop migrating birds - especially during migration season;
I think between anti-aircraft guns, shot guns and a few other weapons we've developed in the past few hundred years that we could stop migrating birds. There just won't be many birds left alive afterwards.
Since when did any new bridge like this in America include more than one rail line, if any?
Usually in the US trains get their own seperate bridge.
I am slightly surprised that this project is expected to cost at most as much, if not less, than the extected cost of seismic retrofit for the relatively shorter San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (that project involves the construction of a completely new replacement for the eastern span of the bridge).
You give the reason in your own question.
seismic retrofit
Italy doesn't have to worry about Earthquakes. The seismic retrofit is really the building of an entirely new bridge to replace the old one.
Adam and Eve?
Unfortunately, I do not have the Quicktime Codec to watch the content on my computer. What I have seen are demonstrations using equipment sold to TV stations (where I have done some testing with h.264 and similar equipment) and using a program (footage/test tape, not computer program) we came up with for testing out encoders. The h.264 encoders, that were attempting to be sold to TV stations, needed at least 4 Mbps for full-D1 resolution and still had noticeable problems. The minimum on bitrate we have seen needed for 320x240 has been 1.5 Mbps, and even then there were sometimes problems. Mind you, we were generally looking at more detail than most people would notice and were, in some cases, going frame by frame to find problems.
But the filesize (I'm at work so iirc) is about 150 megabytes.
Bittorrent dloads of Stargate come in at 440 MB and 704x400 (wide screen). With a decent scaler, it should look pretty good so long as it has a decent bitrate. Time will tell, I guess.
Just as an example, the Discovery Channel was originally commercial free...
Year Cable Started: 1949
Year Discovery Channel Started: 1985
The video is h.264, 320x240, approximately 500Kb/s, audio is 128kbps AAC stereo.
Hmmm... MPEG1/VCR resolution at only 500Kb. Audio has a nice bit rate. Even if they are using h.264, they should be using at least 1 mbit for video. They really should be using at least a 1.5 mbit overall bit rate (1408 Kb/s video, 128 AAC stereo). Crapy low bitrate encoding is their problem.
Last i heard, the cable companies must also pay for the 'right' to broadcast.
Depends on which stations, largest part of a cable bill generally goes to ESPN. Most stations (including the broadcast stations) don't get money from the networks, only from commercials and product placement.
Or were you not around when cable was commercial free and was the major selling point?
When was this? When cable originally started, all they did was transmit what came to them over the air from the networks. Comercials and all. There were no other stations at that point.
They already have the bandwidth, which is f-ing paid for already ( by me ).
Last time I checked you didn't pay for the internet connection that Apple's iTunes store has. So how are you paying for the bandwidth? Both the uploader and the downloader need bandwidth. What you pay to the cable company doesn't get to the broadcast networks. They only get money through their shows and comercials.
Could it be some long-ass sea snake?
More likely a crocodile. Snakes came about ~150 million years ago, but given the size of those ribs, I think it would have to be much longer than 300 feet if it were a snake. My bet is on something with legs.
You do realise that TV/Movie content is still licensed by country? In many cases they (currently) can not legally sell it to someone outside the US yet. Kind of like how those of us in the states can't get some BBC content.
but why do i have to pay to watch something that i already paid to have broadcast to my house?
You paid for the cable subscription, not the content. You paid to have those 100 channels come into your house, not for the content on them. This being broadcast TV, the cable network pays no money to have them on the channels either. Premium channels such as HBO/Cinemax are another matter where you pay for the content and the delivery.
I also had to sit thru those damned commercials, so really i paid even more then just the cable bill.
Correct, cause by watching the commercials you are paying for the show.
Its not like they had to do something special to digitize it.
Considering most recording is done in digital today, no. But they did have to compress it, do a nominal quality check of it and pay for the bandwidth to redistribute it all in addition to the regular costs of a show.
Free nightly news on iTunes, right after, or during the broadcast on the TV set. That to me, would be what puts the nail in the coffen for TV.
I'm not sure it would kill of TV. A lot of people still want their local news/weather, which is provided by the local stations, not the network anchor.
Compared to the free torrents, the quality $2 iTunes download was extremely bad.
Can you post some information on the codec used in the iTunes download (MPEG-1/2,DivX,MOV/MP4,...) and the total file size so we can get an idea of the bit-rate used? Also, what resolution was the iTunes download? 640x480? 320x240? 720x480? and what application did you have to play it in?
If this is a legit fossil, my guess is that its an ocean-going creature. If that thing flew, it would have needed enormous amounts of energy to keep itself aloft.
If it was an earth going creature, it would have needed enourmous amounts of energy to stay up. I'm going to guess this thing is either a sea-going dino, crocodile, shark or mammal. Dang, that thing is huge.