These courses are going for about $80 each.
The advantage of courses on DVD is you can set go over the material at your pace based on your own schedule, and repeat sections of lectures (or entire lectures) as necessary. Disadvantage is of course there is no instructor to answer specific questions you may have. If you learn better through personal interaction, taking courses at a local community college as suggested may be a better option.
Pariser's definition of theft in the context of ripping CDs was actually quite confined. One could argue that just the act of playing a track from a CD over speakers or headphones amounts to the act of copying the particular performance that was recorded on that track. By playing a CD track, you are simply changing the medium of the audio performance from a set of digital bits encoded on an optical disk to a set of sound waves that are emanating from a set of acoustical transducer devices. In this context, each an every time a customer plays a song from a CD, they are effectively making a copy of it.
Therefore, government should come up with new legislation that should require manufacturers of audio playback equipment (including computers equipped with CD/DVD drives) to track the number of times each song is played so that Sony/BMG and other record labels can bill each customer individually for each instance they have played a particular song on a CD. For the benefit of the consumers, if the track was not played in its entirety, the billing amount could be pro-rated based on the percentage of the total playing of the track that was actually played.
It is possible that an alien civilization (or the Chinese) may have already developed advanced technology to detect the particular atmospheric disturbances that result from an individual auido performance of a CD track on a set of audio transceiver output devices and reassemble the resulting waveforms back to a copy of the original form, so one could argue that the simple act of playing a CD on your stereo may actual amounts to not only making a copy of the song but also broadcasting to the universe. Further data on the estimate of total number of alien civilizations in the universe and the average population of each alien civilization is needed to calculate the total amount of revenue Sony/BMG is losing in this manner.
If I put 10 dollars in the slot machine, and it gives me one dollar back, everything is fine and dandy.
If I put 1 dollar and get 10 dollars back, I am a criminal?
Give me a break. This is a casino. The only reason people are there are because they are (most of the time incorrectly) hoping that they will get back more than they put in.
It all comes down to who is responsible for the software error? It should be part of doing business for the casino if they cannot test their equipment properly before it is installed.
The only way this would be a crime if it was an inside job, i.e., someone knowingly installed a wrong configuration on the machine and told others to take advantage of it.
Isn't it kind of strange that patents which are sometimes the result of millions or tens of millions of dollars of investment are protected for only 20 years whereas the copyrights are valid for a lot longer?
I wonder how the jazz music would have developed if performers/clubs were facing the type of restrictions that exist today?
Maybe this will create an opportunity for coffee shops to shift the focus of musical performances to classical music and jazz standards where plenty of good material in the public domain is available.
It is about time that someone invents a device that can be installed in places offering live performances that would detect each song being played and provide a small fee to the artist(s) who own the song directly instead of going through the current blanket licensing scheme.
I don't allow users at my organization to use any computers. When users complain, I point out that we can't control the security policies of computer systems.:-)
It doesn't make any sense to apply completely different legal restrictions to the same content just because it is sold in two different formats. Actually the higher quality version of the content (the CD) has less restrictions that the lower quality version (DRM protected compressed format of your choice).
Let's see - once you pass 500 readers per blog, you have to get registered?
A trivial piece of software that will translate a blog into a different blog everytime it has been read by 499 should fix this problem. It may even become a simple service that is provided by blog hosting companies...
Technically, this is true, but I am not sure about the reasonable cost part. It is also possible to correct chromatic aberration using diffractive lenses which require much less exotic (at least completely passive) technology. Canon has been able to take the concept of diffractive optics technology to market to manufacture some relatively compact telephoto lenses but even after many years of production, DO lenses are still quite expensive.
While satisfied with most of the report, The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says, "it would continue to press for the copyright extension." It is surprising that the viewpoint of the largest supplier (at least in terms of bandwidth) of Internet content is ignored by the authors of the original article.
It would be more interesting to hear what the other BPI (British Pornographic Industry) would have to say about the new copyright proposal...
We already have quad-core chips in 65nm process. As area scales much better than speed with process technology transition, 8-cores in 45nm would be relatively straight forward in terms of implementation. Note that Intel is already planning to ship 45nm processors in the second half of 2007 and AMD is planning to start the 45nm transition in 2008. I would actually be very surprised if we don't see 8 core processors by 2009.
The real question is whether applications will be able to take advantage of 8 or more cores. In the server world, this is obviously possible as 8-way/16-way/32-way SMP servers have been around for some time. There are also other multi-core architectures (e.g. Sun) which has proven that servers can take advantage of large numbers of cores. Multiple cores on a standard x86 processor simply enables similar technology at a lower cost point. For desktops, games and video processing (especially encoding) are probably the most CPU-hungry applications. Both class of applications can be parallelized to take advantage of 8 or more cores.
As for memory bandwidth, it will indeed become an issue with more cores on a single die. However, unlike memory latency, memory bandwidth is a manageable problem. DDR3 chips with 666MHz clock rate (1.33Gb/s data rate per pin) are already sampling. Performance oriented Intel desktop chipsets will transition to DDR3 by the second half of next year. By that time, we are going to 800MHz clock rate (1.6Gb/s data rate per pin) will also be available. This effectively enables desktop chips to double the memory bandwidth for the same number of pins. As for servers, FB-DIMM type of architecture enables memory bandwidth to scale to much larger numbers, albeit at additional cost. The other potential bottleneck in the memory datapath is the system bus, FSB. It is very likely that Intel will get rid of the FSB by 2009 and switch to CPUs with integrated memory controller - similar to what AMD is doing today. Alternatively, it is possible to scale the FSB by using a differential point-to-point architecture. For example, 64-lane PCI-E 2.0 compatible FSB would give you 320Gb/s raw bandwidth in each direction.
It is true that 100GbE will not target desktop users when it first becomes available. Initially, new flavors of higher speed Ethernet is typically used in switch-to-switch connections. Higher speed links make it easier to aggregate traffic from lower speed links to a single logical link. It usually takes at least 4-6 years for a faster Ethernet standard to propagate from core/distribution applications to server/desktop connectivity.
However, the current PC architecture is not actually too far from removing the bottlenecks in being able to support a 100GbE interface. A 16-lane PCI-E interface has about 32Gb/s of bandwidth in each direction. The upcoming PCI-E 2.0 doubles the bandwidth per lane, such that a 16-lane PCI-E 2.0 interface would support about 64Gb/s of bandwidth in each direction. When PCI-E 3.0 comes out, it would most likely double the lane bandwidth again and provide sufficient bandwidth to support a 100GbE NIC. Unlike the PCI bus, which was a shared bus, doubling the signal rate on PCI-E may turn out to be easier since PCI-E is a point-to-point signaling architecture.
This standard effort appears to be targeted at 2009-2010. By that time, we are likely to see CPUs with 8-16 cores. This implies a total of 16-32 cores on a 1U dual-processor server, 32-64 cores on a 2U dual-processor server. Most server/chipset vendors are adding enhancements to further improve network throughput like TCP offload engines or virtual-NICs. By 2010, it is conceivable that one of these servers could easily sustain multi-gigabit network throughput and burst close to 10Gb/s for short periods of time. Once you connect a set of such servers to an access switch with 10G ports, how do you uplink this much network throughput? What kind of network interfaces and how much switching bandwidth would you need in the switch at the next level of hierarchy?
By 2009-2010, even if fiber-to-the home is not widely deployed, Cable and DSL customers will most likely have sufficient access bandwidth to support on-demand HDTV downloads. Even if we assume the video is H.264 encoded, you are still looking at 10Mb/s sustained bandwidth per subscriber. It takes only 10,000 subscribers to fill a 100Gb Ethernet pipe at those kind of access rates.
IMHO, there will be plenty of applications for 100Gb Ethernet.
The problem with DRM, and the reason it will never be completely unbreakable, is because of the following. With any data, that you are trying to prevent someone from reading, you need An encryption algorithm, and a key. You have to keep the key secret from those who you do not want reading the data. However, in this case, you must give the person buying the CD the key, or store the key somewhere, in order for them to listen to the music. So, the person always has the key, which makes any attempt at DRM useless.
Actually, you don't have to give the key to the person buying the CD if you have control over the system that is responsible for playback. This is what Sony is trying to accomplish by partnering with Microsoft. In this case, the actual audio data on the CD is not encryped since it has to be compatible with hunreds of millions of plain CD players. But they are counting on Windows XP to act on information embedded on a data-only track to preven the O/S from enabling the user to rip the audio content.
In a somewhat more secure solution, the key can be embedded in the playback system, which would make it impossible for the user to bypass the system by simply disabling some drivers or "corrupting" a specific track on the media. However, even this type of DRM is susceptible as all content is distributed with the same key. If too many people know about the key (or if some people can disassemble the key out of an existing application), the key will eventually leak as was the case with DVDs.
A more secure way to protect the content would be to encrypt with a user specific key. Obviously, this does not work on media based distribution systems like CDs and DVDs or broadcast (e.g. satellite) but it can be made to work for online distribution systems. It is not impossible to crack this type of system, but it will make it very difficult for the average user to "share".
Of course, with audio content, you can always digitize back from the analog outputs and create " good enough" copies. I doubt many people would be able to tell the difference between a 128Mb/s MP3 file created from the original digital content vs a 128Mb/s MP3 file that is created from content sampled from the analog output of a high quality CD player.
Conversation between Steve and IBM:
Steve: I heard that you are selling triple-core 3.2GHz PowerPC chips to Microsoft for $199. You also seem to be offering octal-core Cell chips to Sony for less than $249. I would like to get some dual-core 3.2GHz G5s for $199 please.
IBM: No way
Steve: Doh!
Conversation between Steve and Intel:
Steve: Can I get some dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium-4 chips for $199 please?
Intel: Sure, we can also offer you our next-gen dual-core 65nm 4GHz Pentium-5 chips for $199 starting June 2006. We can also give you 65nm 2.66GHz Pentium-M2 chips that burn less than 15W before the end of 2006.
Steve: Hmmm, maybe we should "switch"
Not really. If you don't have complete control over the system somebody can hack various HW and or SW components on the system to break and/or circumvent whatever DRM scheme is implemented.
According to various preliminary benchmarks from The Tech Report, Tom's Hardware and AnandTech, AMD's desktop dual-core chips are significantly better than Intel's dual-core desktop offerings in terms of performance and power consumption. This is partly due to the fact that the AMD solution has a better inter-core communication architecture and lower memory latency.
Meanwhile, Intel's desktop dual core chips seem to offer much more aggressive pricing at this time. AMD's lowest price dual core chip, the X2 4200 is almost twice as expensive as Intel's lowest cost dual core processor. However, an interview with three AMD execs on PCPerspective.com claims that "AMD would eventually have lower priced Athlon X2 processors via the waterfall effect in the future".
Despite all the criticism that is likely to flame on this thread, this is a step in the right direction. I rahter see Sony focus on preventing people from making copies of copies instead of making copies of originals.
There is really no way to prevent technically savy people from making copies of content which is distributed on media that does not have user specific encryption without owning the complete system that is responsible for playback. I am sure the long term dream of Sony is a transition from the relatively open CD format to something more proprietary like SACD. In the short term, they have to deal with CDs, which represents more than 99% of the music that is sold in stores.
Sony's goal is probably to make it difficult enough to copy coied CDs such that 90% or 95% of the people don't bother to deal with it. A copy protection system that is tedious enough to break can be commercially successful even if it is a technical failure.
Of course, the basic flaw in this system is that most people who copy music are not that conscious about the quality. Ripping the tracks from a copied CD to MP3s and then burning them back on to a CD would defeat this sytems with some loss of quality.
There are several contexts which can lead to Cell processor being used in future Apple platforms:
As a media co-processor in next generation PowerMacs, and potentially even high end iMacs, similar to "AV" badged Macs from a few years back. Cell can work as a pretty good general purpose media co-processor to offload video encode/decode operations from the main processor(s). Even the current high end dual processor PowerMacs are being challenged when decoding HD H.264. A co-processor that can enable real-time H.264 encoding would make a big impact on the user perception.
As a physics modelling co-processor for Macs to accelerate animation and games. This is really what the Cell processor is designed for in the first place, and there is likely to be plenty of libraries/engines written for PS3. This will go a long way to eliminate the existing perception that Macs are inferior game machines. The same capabilities can be used by professionals for 3D animation work.
As the core of a home media center that can encode/decode/store/stream video/audio. If the Cell can fit the thermal and cost constraints of a game console, it would also be a good fit for a next generation media center.
My gut feeling is also that the subject of Apple-Intel talks is not x86 chips. There are two other, more viable options:
1. Intel's PXA family. These are mid-rage embedded processors targeted at applications that require very low power consumption but a decent amount of compute power. Assuming that Apple is not likely to bring Newton back, the obvious target would be a video iPod kind of device.
2. To be able to run a iFlix Movie Store, Apple needs much more bandwidth to end customers. Even if this is a background service where customers maintain lists (similar to Netflix) and top few items from the list are downloaded in the background, phone and cable companies that own the last mile will not just sit back and watch Apple make money by using their precious bandwidth. At least in metropolitan areas, one way to bypass Cable and DSL providers is WiMAX. WiMax is especially suiatable for broadcasting (or multicasting) content. Intel is one of the leaders in the WiMax effort and was one of the first vendors to come up with WiMax silicon.
Of course, not being able to produce all the e-mails requested by the court was only one of the reasons for the $1.45B judgement.
I wonder what would be the long term costs of keeping every piece of e-mail that is sent and received at a large financial organization like Morgan Stanley? To be useful in the context of an unknown future legal case, the e-mail would not only have to be backed up but also needs to be organized in some fashion. And it will accumulate over years. What happens if some piece of e-mail that is crucial to a case happened to be classified as junk? Does this mean that the company will have to keep every piece of junk mail received just in case?
A couple of companies I worked for lately had an ever increasing emphasis on cutting expenses in areas like manufacturing and R&D, but the expenses associated with trying to "look good" in reference to new legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley act was virtually uncapped. According to the company Legal Counsel, if they have to go to court, showing that the company hired $1000/hr consultants to decide the record retention policy would be important. Apparently, what the company did nor did not do is not nearly as important as the company to be able to show that best effort along with the prevalent industry practice at the time was put in.
Even with the latest quad-layer format, optical storage formats don't seem to be able to keep up with hard drive technology. When CDs were first introduced, they had much higher storage capacity than the highest capacity consumer drives available at the time. When DVDs were introduced in 1996, the highest end 3.5" hard disks could match even the double layer capacity at 9.1GB. Now, we are talking about a quad-layer Blue Ray disk which will have a total capacity of 100GB. This sound pretty impressive but it is only one quarter of the maximum storage capacity of consumer grade hard disks. You can get a 100GB HD for quite cheap ($30AR?) these days. By next year, when BlueRay discs actually start shipping, 500-600GB 3.5" drives will be available, 100GB may become the mainstream point for 2.5" drives and we may even see 100GB 1.8" drives. It is likely that the 4x price-per-byte premium that we currently see for 2.5" and 1.8" drives over 3.5" drives will slowly disappear as the volumes for these smaller drives keep picking up.
In the consumer space, many people are moving to using external hard disks as a secondary storage mechnanism instead of burning the data they want to keep around on CDs and DVDs.
Instead of focusing on higher capacity, I would rather like to see Sony and Toshiba focus on how to make next gen DVD formats compatible and cheap. Otherwise, both formats may lose to new paradigms based on using modular hard disks as the content delivery and storage mechanism.
Slashdot Mirror
- Basic Match
- Algebra I
- Algebra II
- Geometry
These courses are going for about $80 each. The advantage of courses on DVD is you can set go over the material at your pace based on your own schedule, and repeat sections of lectures (or entire lectures) as necessary. Disadvantage is of course there is no instructor to answer specific questions you may have. If you learn better through personal interaction, taking courses at a local community college as suggested may be a better option.Pariser's definition of theft in the context of ripping CDs was actually quite confined. One could argue that just the act of playing a track from a CD over speakers or headphones amounts to the act of copying the particular performance that was recorded on that track. By playing a CD track, you are simply changing the medium of the audio performance from a set of digital bits encoded on an optical disk to a set of sound waves that are emanating from a set of acoustical transducer devices. In this context, each an every time a customer plays a song from a CD, they are effectively making a copy of it.
Therefore, government should come up with new legislation that should require manufacturers of audio playback equipment (including computers equipped with CD/DVD drives) to track the number of times each song is played so that Sony/BMG and other record labels can bill each customer individually for each instance they have played a particular song on a CD. For the benefit of the consumers, if the track was not played in its entirety, the billing amount could be pro-rated based on the percentage of the total playing of the track that was actually played.
It is possible that an alien civilization (or the Chinese) may have already developed advanced technology to detect the particular atmospheric disturbances that result from an individual auido performance of a CD track on a set of audio transceiver output devices and reassemble the resulting waveforms back to a copy of the original form, so one could argue that the simple act of playing a CD on your stereo may actual amounts to not only making a copy of the song but also broadcasting to the universe. Further data on the estimate of total number of alien civilizations in the universe and the average population of each alien civilization is needed to calculate the total amount of revenue Sony/BMG is losing in this manner.
Can I claim that my email address is my "copyrighted intellectual property" and sue spammers under DMCA? :-)
- If I put 10 dollars in the slot machine, and it gives me one dollar back, everything is fine and dandy.
- If I put 1 dollar and get 10 dollars back, I am a criminal?
Give me a break. This is a casino. The only reason people are there are because they are (most of the time incorrectly) hoping that they will get back more than they put in.It all comes down to who is responsible for the software error? It should be part of doing business for the casino if they cannot test their equipment properly before it is installed.
The only way this would be a crime if it was an inside job, i.e., someone knowingly installed a wrong configuration on the machine and told others to take advantage of it.
Isn't it kind of strange that patents which are sometimes the result of millions or tens of millions of dollars of investment are protected for only 20 years whereas the copyrights are valid for a lot longer? I wonder how the jazz music would have developed if performers/clubs were facing the type of restrictions that exist today? Maybe this will create an opportunity for coffee shops to shift the focus of musical performances to classical music and jazz standards where plenty of good material in the public domain is available. It is about time that someone invents a device that can be installed in places offering live performances that would detect each song being played and provide a small fee to the artist(s) who own the song directly instead of going through the current blanket licensing scheme.
I don't allow users at my organization to use any computers. When users complain, I point out that we can't control the security policies of computer systems. :-)
It doesn't make any sense to apply completely different legal restrictions to the same content just because it is sold in two different formats. Actually the higher quality version of the content (the CD) has less restrictions that the lower quality version (DRM protected compressed format of your choice).
Let's see - once you pass 500 readers per blog, you have to get registered? A trivial piece of software that will translate a blog into a different blog everytime it has been read by 499 should fix this problem. It may even become a simple service that is provided by blog hosting companies...
Technically, this is true, but I am not sure about the reasonable cost part. It is also possible to correct chromatic aberration using diffractive lenses which require much less exotic (at least completely passive) technology. Canon has been able to take the concept of diffractive optics technology to market to manufacture some relatively compact telephoto lenses but even after many years of production, DO lenses are still quite expensive.
The real question is whether applications will be able to take advantage of 8 or more cores. In the server world, this is obviously possible as 8-way/16-way/32-way SMP servers have been around for some time. There are also other multi-core architectures (e.g. Sun) which has proven that servers can take advantage of large numbers of cores. Multiple cores on a standard x86 processor simply enables similar technology at a lower cost point. For desktops, games and video processing (especially encoding) are probably the most CPU-hungry applications. Both class of applications can be parallelized to take advantage of 8 or more cores.
As for memory bandwidth, it will indeed become an issue with more cores on a single die. However, unlike memory latency, memory bandwidth is a manageable problem. DDR3 chips with 666MHz clock rate (1.33Gb/s data rate per pin) are already sampling. Performance oriented Intel desktop chipsets will transition to DDR3 by the second half of next year. By that time, we are going to 800MHz clock rate (1.6Gb/s data rate per pin) will also be available. This effectively enables desktop chips to double the memory bandwidth for the same number of pins. As for servers, FB-DIMM type of architecture enables memory bandwidth to scale to much larger numbers, albeit at additional cost. The other potential bottleneck in the memory datapath is the system bus, FSB. It is very likely that Intel will get rid of the FSB by 2009 and switch to CPUs with integrated memory controller - similar to what AMD is doing today. Alternatively, it is possible to scale the FSB by using a differential point-to-point architecture. For example, 64-lane PCI-E 2.0 compatible FSB would give you 320Gb/s raw bandwidth in each direction.
However, the current PC architecture is not actually too far from removing the bottlenecks in being able to support a 100GbE interface. A 16-lane PCI-E interface has about 32Gb/s of bandwidth in each direction. The upcoming PCI-E 2.0 doubles the bandwidth per lane, such that a 16-lane PCI-E 2.0 interface would support about 64Gb/s of bandwidth in each direction. When PCI-E 3.0 comes out, it would most likely double the lane bandwidth again and provide sufficient bandwidth to support a 100GbE NIC. Unlike the PCI bus, which was a shared bus, doubling the signal rate on PCI-E may turn out to be easier since PCI-E is a point-to-point signaling architecture.
By 2009-2010, even if fiber-to-the home is not widely deployed, Cable and DSL customers will most likely have sufficient access bandwidth to support on-demand HDTV downloads. Even if we assume the video is H.264 encoded, you are still looking at 10Mb/s sustained bandwidth per subscriber. It takes only 10,000 subscribers to fill a 100Gb Ethernet pipe at those kind of access rates.
IMHO, there will be plenty of applications for 100Gb Ethernet.
In a somewhat more secure solution, the key can be embedded in the playback system, which would make it impossible for the user to bypass the system by simply disabling some drivers or "corrupting" a specific track on the media. However, even this type of DRM is susceptible as all content is distributed with the same key. If too many people know about the key (or if some people can disassemble the key out of an existing application), the key will eventually leak as was the case with DVDs.
A more secure way to protect the content would be to encrypt with a user specific key. Obviously, this does not work on media based distribution systems like CDs and DVDs or broadcast (e.g. satellite) but it can be made to work for online distribution systems. It is not impossible to crack this type of system, but it will make it very difficult for the average user to "share".
Of course, with audio content, you can always digitize back from the analog outputs and create " good enough" copies. I doubt many people would be able to tell the difference between a 128Mb/s MP3 file created from the original digital content vs a 128Mb/s MP3 file that is created from content sampled from the analog output of a high quality CD player.
Since this is a simple scheme that can be implemented relatively easily, it will never be approved by politicians in the congress...
This is not really true. California got into its current state partially because large numbers of illegal immigrants who are not counted as part of the state's population as far as any federally funded program is concerned. As a result, California gets back substantially less federal spending compared to the Federal tax revenue it generates.
Conversation between Steve and IBM: Steve: I heard that you are selling triple-core 3.2GHz PowerPC chips to Microsoft for $199. You also seem to be offering octal-core Cell chips to Sony for less than $249. I would like to get some dual-core 3.2GHz G5s for $199 please. IBM: No way Steve: Doh! Conversation between Steve and Intel: Steve: Can I get some dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium-4 chips for $199 please? Intel: Sure, we can also offer you our next-gen dual-core 65nm 4GHz Pentium-5 chips for $199 starting June 2006. We can also give you 65nm 2.66GHz Pentium-M2 chips that burn less than 15W before the end of 2006. Steve: Hmmm, maybe we should "switch"
Not really. If you don't have complete control over the system somebody can hack various HW and or SW components on the system to break and/or circumvent whatever DRM scheme is implemented.
Meanwhile, Intel's desktop dual core chips seem to offer much more aggressive pricing at this time. AMD's lowest price dual core chip, the X2 4200 is almost twice as expensive as Intel's lowest cost dual core processor. However, an interview with three AMD execs on PCPerspective.com claims that "AMD would eventually have lower priced Athlon X2 processors via the waterfall effect in the future".
There is really no way to prevent technically savy people from making copies of content which is distributed on media that does not have user specific encryption without owning the complete system that is responsible for playback. I am sure the long term dream of Sony is a transition from the relatively open CD format to something more proprietary like SACD. In the short term, they have to deal with CDs, which represents more than 99% of the music that is sold in stores.
Sony's goal is probably to make it difficult enough to copy coied CDs such that 90% or 95% of the people don't bother to deal with it. A copy protection system that is tedious enough to break can be commercially successful even if it is a technical failure.
Of course, the basic flaw in this system is that most people who copy music are not that conscious about the quality. Ripping the tracks from a copied CD to MP3s and then burning them back on to a CD would defeat this sytems with some loss of quality.
This must be the [lamest|smallest] clock speed increase associated with a new processor introduction in Intel's history...
1. Intel's PXA family. These are mid-rage embedded processors targeted at applications that require very low power consumption but a decent amount of compute power. Assuming that Apple is not likely to bring Newton back, the obvious target would be a video iPod kind of device.
2. To be able to run a iFlix Movie Store, Apple needs much more bandwidth to end customers. Even if this is a background service where customers maintain lists (similar to Netflix) and top few items from the list are downloaded in the background, phone and cable companies that own the last mile will not just sit back and watch Apple make money by using their precious bandwidth. At least in metropolitan areas, one way to bypass Cable and DSL providers is WiMAX. WiMax is especially suiatable for broadcasting (or multicasting) content. Intel is one of the leaders in the WiMax effort and was one of the first vendors to come up with WiMax silicon.
I wonder what would be the long term costs of keeping every piece of e-mail that is sent and received at a large financial organization like Morgan Stanley? To be useful in the context of an unknown future legal case, the e-mail would not only have to be backed up but also needs to be organized in some fashion. And it will accumulate over years. What happens if some piece of e-mail that is crucial to a case happened to be classified as junk? Does this mean that the company will have to keep every piece of junk mail received just in case?
A couple of companies I worked for lately had an ever increasing emphasis on cutting expenses in areas like manufacturing and R&D, but the expenses associated with trying to "look good" in reference to new legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley act was virtually uncapped. According to the company Legal Counsel, if they have to go to court, showing that the company hired $1000/hr consultants to decide the record retention policy would be important. Apparently, what the company did nor did not do is not nearly as important as the company to be able to show that best effort along with the prevalent industry practice at the time was put in.
In the consumer space, many people are moving to using external hard disks as a secondary storage mechnanism instead of burning the data they want to keep around on CDs and DVDs.
Instead of focusing on higher capacity, I would rather like to see Sony and Toshiba focus on how to make next gen DVD formats compatible and cheap. Otherwise, both formats may lose to new paradigms based on using modular hard disks as the content delivery and storage mechanism.