Taking a quick look at the Washington DC Area subway population, and you'll realize how faulty your premise is. The technology in a Treo may be far more advanced, but the user base of blackberries is astoundingly deep in some organizations...organizations that are loathe to transition 300+ users to anything different.
Seems to me that the the two most obvious uses for this would be for blind people and for in-store product information.
If your vision-impared, it would be an amazing thing to carry around a talking box that can read signs and maps to you.
For product "tool tips", you could walk around your local best buy with a small device that could scan CD's and DVD's and hot-link to IMDB reviews or short trailors and song samples.
It seems that everyone has something to say about this move, but beyond the framework of an Intel/Apple partnership, there is nothing of substance being said other then flat-out guesswork and FUD.
My problem with the speculation about this is that it centers around a report that contains no actual factual information beyond a rumored business alliance. One glance at any news forum yesterday had legions of PC junkies proclaiming how ecstatic they were going to be to finally be able to piece together an Apple using off-the-shelf parts. Other speculations had wintel boxes running OSX and FCP natively.
Nothing in the rumor indicates specifically that there is going to be a change in architecture of hardware, and there's even less to indicate any intention to port OSX to a more mass-market hardware solution.
It seems that the most obvious result would be exactly what the poster above proposes. That intel would be taking over PPC production and design, or that they will be building some flavor of support into the future architecture.
I'm not saying that a fully Intel-designed processor is a possibility, but considering the mountains that would have to be moved in order to get one into production, it's far more unlikely then the idea of Intel taking some aspect of the hardware chain away from IBM.
Not an informed opinion, but perhaps a rational one?
Photoshop for DNA gets released...
on
Photoshop for DNA
·
· Score: 1
Because it doesn't matter to them if the action they take actually works, they just want to be able to take credit for taking action.
You have to judge by what sounds better in a campaign stump speech:
"I facilitated the allocation of grant money to a series of projects that resulted in technological improvements that ware eventually incorporated into many software packages, eventually having a slight reduction on the amount of spam that reaches your email inbox"
or
"I passed legislation to curb the tide of spam."
With the second option, you don't have to make any claims of how well your legislation worked. You just have to say that you voted (for/against) the legislation on the (personal rights/social issue/crime prevention or punishment) your constituents (do/do not) approve of.
From your statements, it is obvious that your view of "justice" is the preferential application of punishment based on personally subjective criteria, which is inherently unjust.
You submit that two people guilty of breaking the same law should be punished differently based on (in the case you propose) their medical records. From that logic, it is easy to extend the idea to apply across any arbitrary difference between two defendants, be it class, religion or race.
In your mind, you might ascribe less weight to a crime when perpetrated by a breast cancer victim versus a generic stereotypical drug-dealer, but prosecuting both with the same penalty is the only just way to apply law. Now whether or not an actual "law" or "punishment" is unjust is another discussion, but partial application of an existing law does not mitigate that.
The problem when people argue semantics is that they confuse semantics with philosophy, and once someone with an American college education starts talking philosophy, they get confused and start talking about politics and socio-political doctrine.
There's got to be a price for these increases in storage capacity. With more data in a smaller package, aren't you just asking for larger errors due to physical damage and defect?
I'm just thinking of how scratched my average disk can get, and imagine if that scratch now corrupts 200 megs of data instead of a few bits in a song.
When are we gonna have to enclose these things in some sort of 8-track like case?
Firewall traversal is one of the hottest moving segments of the VTC market, those that don't have a solution already on the market are rushing to piece one together.
VTC exists on the public internet now, and it's even much more common on semi-private networks throughout the world.
Lifesize is touting that their solution will get HD quality through a 1MB pipe. For the average user, that sounds huge, but I've got a dedicated raw T1 heading out to each one of our fieldsites right here, right now. That means I could host one conference in HD and one at 384k at the same time to each one of my sites.
That's a very attractive advantage for a company that already has the pipe laid to support it.
In serious VTC, 10k is about the buy-in point for one or two installations, so why not go HD at those numbers?
It's what people have been paying for the past 10 years for sub-NTSC quality, so you're not talking about any real difference in outlay but a substantial increase in quality (when it becomes effective to carry that bandwidth of course).
H.264 is standards based. While there are plenty of non-standard standards-based codecs out there, it is inevitable that we will have some degree of interoperability soon.
The problem, however, is not in the actual endpoints, it's in the Bridging of those endpoints.
Actually, running a mid-sized governmental agency with a small handful of field sites nationwide, we have immediate need for a system like this.
We're running semi-monthly meetings that are presented more like carefully timed television broadcasts then casual spitballing sessions. HD would be a GIGANTIC improvement over CIF.
Could there be a successful argument of an anti-trust case here? I'm not so sure. There's nothing actively preventing consumers from opting for any of the other linux packages out there.
More so, there's nothing to stop the average consumer from building and selling their own linux package.
If anything, it could be seen as a perfectly legit and strategic purchase regardless of what they would actually DO with the company and assets.
Yeah, I can see that...but you're talking about a military application, not your common office campus. This is for DOD, NSA, DHS, CIA, law enforcement, etc...not for a medium-security facility where the janator can plant a bug under the conference table.
The other components are not insecure as you suggest. Nearly all serious VTC endpoints run 128 bit AES as standard, they are hardware machines without user-serviceable software, and the code is proprietary to each vendor. Furthermore, you're talking about a field that has more security research and application then any other in the world. Outboard KG and KIV encryption are standard in the defense sector.
There are no worms, viruses or phishing techniques that apply to this discussion.
You would think this isn't cost effective, but VTC endpoints can easily cost between 2k to 30k per install. With a video bridge costing anywhere between 30k to 500k, a $20k security add-on is pennies in the VTC world.
"Only if what you are saying is that having only one raw converter, Nikon's, is not significant."
Strangely enough, that is exactly what I'm saying. I don't claim any moral position on this issue, I'm just saying that having only one Nikon RAW converter is not a significant detriment to anyone in the Pro photo world (if it were true). Professional photographers pay for the tools they use because those tools ARE their income. If there are ten Nikon RAW converting solutions on the market, they'll buy the best one out there regardless of cost. If there is ONE Nikon RAW solution out there, they'll buy it regardless of cost.
"This is truly[sic] significant. What Nikon is saying is that Nikon owns the file and that the photographer does not."
Of course, this is a gross exaggeration and wholly inappropriate to the discussion. Nikon is saying nothing of the sort and implying nothing of the sort. If Nikon were locking all their RAW and JPG file formats, you might have a valid point there, but they're not making it any more difficult then any other proprietary format out there.
What they are doing is protecting their proprietary RAW format, and in so protecting their IP, they are not significantly hampering the end user in any way. Bibble 4.2 already incorporates Nikon's D2X RAW file processing and we're sure to see a number of companies following suit.
Everyone always thinks about copyright and proprietary issues as a matter of David and Golliath, casting these huge corporations as the bad-guys set to enslave us little creative communists, but there's an additional advantage to locking a proprietary format...
Assurance.
By locking a format, you have a lot more leverage to ensure that anyone attempting to use your format does so in a way you find satisfactory. Maybe Nikon is charging through the nose to have companies license the RAW from them, or maybe they're just locking their format to insure that photo software implements any conversion in the best way possible.
Either way, I don't much care, there are other camera manufacturers out there that I can choose to do business with.
The photoshop pie is rather large, I think it's quite fair for a company with a legitimately proprietary technology (their own RAW format) to want a licensing fee for the rights to include that technology inside photoshop.
Once you're getting into the "pro" bracket of digital photo investment, serious users are much more inclined to use secondary software solutions that work with photoshop...regardless of cost. While photoshop edits great images and most photoprinters put out some fantastic pictures, serious digital image makers regularly use printer RIPs that cost more then the actual printer.
Furthermore, several high-end photographers are extolling the virtues of stand-alone raw processors as an addition to their photoshop workflow.
I'm not saying that it's morally acceptable for Nikon to lock part of their RAW format, I'm just saying that the impact of this upon the pro photo world is far less significant then it would appear.
Property is like SOO overvalued on the Northern Rim anyway, and its almost impossible to break into that market unless you've got a trust-fund of space-creds.
It makes so much more sense to follow the space-artists and convert one of the older moon manufacturing bases on the southern rim into funky loft habitat-bubbles and catch a commuter tank into the Northern Rim for work.
Besides, all the cool authentic space coffee shops are on the Southern Rim. Nothern Rim just has the same old crappy StarStarbucks on every module hub.
the video editor in me is twitching and dreaming
on
New Mac System Specs
·
· Score: 3, Funny
90% of all video conferencing done in the professional world is based on open standards already, H.323 and H.264 are much more viable options then a propriotary microsoft product.
If linux and other GNU/GPL/open source projects are to routinely tout the viability of open source standards, why not simply use the existing and tested open sources already in use in the vast majority of VTC solutions?
Unless it's a bunch of linux users that want to taunt microsoft fans on MSN.
Why do they persue and advertise these as minimum requirements?
Microsoft Windows XP required, Microsoft IE required, Microsoft Media Player 10 required...what no Microsoft stock requirements?
bwah? Have you ever been on a subway? Each car stuffed full of people sitting there pretending to read the morning paper while listening to their iPods? Of course there are people who would be interested in watching their tivo'd American Idol/OC/Apprentice/Biggest Loser/CSI episodes on the train in the morning.
And a video iPod would be used ONLY for video? Isn't it obvious that the player would be valuable for both video AND audio?
Slashdot Mirror
Taking a quick look at the Washington DC Area subway population, and you'll realize how faulty your premise is. The technology in a Treo may be far more advanced, but the user base of blackberries is astoundingly deep in some organizations...organizations that are loathe to transition 300+ users to anything different.
Seems to me that the the two most obvious uses for this would be for blind people and for in-store product information.
If your vision-impared, it would be an amazing thing to carry around a talking box that can read signs and maps to you.
For product "tool tips", you could walk around your local best buy with a small device that could scan CD's and DVD's and hot-link to IMDB reviews or short trailors and song samples.
It seems that everyone has something to say about this move, but beyond the framework of an Intel/Apple partnership, there is nothing of substance being said other then flat-out guesswork and FUD.
My problem with the speculation about this is that it centers around a report that contains no actual factual information beyond a rumored business alliance. One glance at any news forum yesterday had legions of PC junkies proclaiming how ecstatic they were going to be to finally be able to piece together an Apple using off-the-shelf parts. Other speculations had wintel boxes running OSX and FCP natively.
Nothing in the rumor indicates specifically that there is going to be a change in architecture of hardware, and there's even less to indicate any intention to port OSX to a more mass-market hardware solution.
It seems that the most obvious result would be exactly what the poster above proposes. That intel would be taking over PPC production and design, or that they will be building some flavor of support into the future architecture.
I'm not saying that a fully Intel-designed processor is a possibility, but considering the mountains that would have to be moved in order to get one into production, it's far more unlikely then the idea of Intel taking some aspect of the hardware chain away from IBM.
Not an informed opinion, but perhaps a rational one?
onslaught of fake nude DNA ensues.
Because it doesn't matter to them if the action they take actually works, they just want to be able to take credit for taking action.
You have to judge by what sounds better in a campaign stump speech:
"I facilitated the allocation of grant money to a series of projects that resulted in technological improvements that ware eventually incorporated into many software packages, eventually having a slight reduction on the amount of spam that reaches your email inbox"
or
"I passed legislation to curb the tide of spam."
With the second option, you don't have to make any claims of how well your legislation worked. You just have to say that you voted (for/against) the legislation on the (personal rights/social issue/crime prevention or punishment) your constituents (do/do not) approve of.
From your statements, it is obvious that your view of "justice" is the preferential application of punishment based on personally subjective criteria, which is inherently unjust.
You submit that two people guilty of breaking the same law should be punished differently based on (in the case you propose) their medical records. From that logic, it is easy to extend the idea to apply across any arbitrary difference between two defendants, be it class, religion or race.
In your mind, you might ascribe less weight to a crime when perpetrated by a breast cancer victim versus a generic stereotypical drug-dealer, but prosecuting both with the same penalty is the only just way to apply law. Now whether or not an actual "law" or "punishment" is unjust is another discussion, but partial application of an existing law does not mitigate that.
The problem when people argue semantics is that they confuse semantics with philosophy, and once someone with an American college education starts talking philosophy, they get confused and start talking about politics and socio-political doctrine.
Sometimes words should just be words.
There's got to be a price for these increases in storage capacity. With more data in a smaller package, aren't you just asking for larger errors due to physical damage and defect?
I'm just thinking of how scratched my average disk can get, and imagine if that scratch now corrupts 200 megs of data instead of a few bits in a song.
When are we gonna have to enclose these things in some sort of 8-track like case?
In all cases of law, society should aspire not to sympathy in the legal system, but to impartiality. Slight, but substantial difference.
Firewall traversal is one of the hottest moving segments of the VTC market, those that don't have a solution already on the market are rushing to piece one together.
VTC exists on the public internet now, and it's even much more common on semi-private networks throughout the world.
Lifesize is touting that their solution will get HD quality through a 1MB pipe. For the average user, that sounds huge, but I've got a dedicated raw T1 heading out to each one of our fieldsites right here, right now. That means I could host one conference in HD and one at 384k at the same time to each one of my sites.
That's a very attractive advantage for a company that already has the pipe laid to support it.
In serious VTC, 10k is about the buy-in point for one or two installations, so why not go HD at those numbers?
It's what people have been paying for the past 10 years for sub-NTSC quality, so you're not talking about any real difference in outlay but a substantial increase in quality (when it becomes effective to carry that bandwidth of course).
H.264 is standards based. While there are plenty of non-standard standards-based codecs out there, it is inevitable that we will have some degree of interoperability soon.
The problem, however, is not in the actual endpoints, it's in the Bridging of those endpoints.
That's where the standards are really tested.
Actually, running a mid-sized governmental agency with a small handful of field sites nationwide, we have immediate need for a system like this.
We're running semi-monthly meetings that are presented more like carefully timed television broadcasts then casual spitballing sessions. HD would be a GIGANTIC improvement over CIF.
Could there be a successful argument of an anti-trust case here? I'm not so sure. There's nothing actively preventing consumers from opting for any of the other linux packages out there.
More so, there's nothing to stop the average consumer from building and selling their own linux package.
If anything, it could be seen as a perfectly legit and strategic purchase regardless of what they would actually DO with the company and assets.
Yeah, I can see that...but you're talking about a military application, not your common office campus. This is for DOD, NSA, DHS, CIA, law enforcement, etc...not for a medium-security facility where the janator can plant a bug under the conference table.
The other components are not insecure as you suggest. Nearly all serious VTC endpoints run 128 bit AES as standard, they are hardware machines without user-serviceable software, and the code is proprietary to each vendor. Furthermore, you're talking about a field that has more security research and application then any other in the world. Outboard KG and KIV encryption are standard in the defense sector.
There are no worms, viruses or phishing techniques that apply to this discussion.
You would think this isn't cost effective, but VTC endpoints can easily cost between 2k to 30k per install. With a video bridge costing anywhere between 30k to 500k, a $20k security add-on is pennies in the VTC world.
"Only if what you are saying is that having only one raw converter, Nikon's, is not significant."
Strangely enough, that is exactly what I'm saying. I don't claim any moral position on this issue, I'm just saying that having only one Nikon RAW converter is not a significant detriment to anyone in the Pro photo world (if it were true). Professional photographers pay for the tools they use because those tools ARE their income. If there are ten Nikon RAW converting solutions on the market, they'll buy the best one out there regardless of cost. If there is ONE Nikon RAW solution out there, they'll buy it regardless of cost.
"This is truly[sic] significant. What Nikon is saying is that Nikon owns the file and that the photographer does not."
Of course, this is a gross exaggeration and wholly inappropriate to the discussion. Nikon is saying nothing of the sort and implying nothing of the sort. If Nikon were locking all their RAW and JPG file formats, you might have a valid point there, but they're not making it any more difficult then any other proprietary format out there.
What they are doing is protecting their proprietary RAW format, and in so protecting their IP, they are not significantly hampering the end user in any way. Bibble 4.2 already incorporates Nikon's D2X RAW file processing and we're sure to see a number of companies following suit.
Everyone always thinks about copyright and proprietary issues as a matter of David and Golliath, casting these huge corporations as the bad-guys set to enslave us little creative communists, but there's an additional advantage to locking a proprietary format...
Assurance.
By locking a format, you have a lot more leverage to ensure that anyone attempting to use your format does so in a way you find satisfactory. Maybe Nikon is charging through the nose to have companies license the RAW from them, or maybe they're just locking their format to insure that photo software implements any conversion in the best way possible.
Either way, I don't much care, there are other camera manufacturers out there that I can choose to do business with.
The photoshop pie is rather large, I think it's quite fair for a company with a legitimately proprietary technology (their own RAW format) to want a licensing fee for the rights to include that technology inside photoshop.
Once you're getting into the "pro" bracket of digital photo investment, serious users are much more inclined to use secondary software solutions that work with photoshop...regardless of cost. While photoshop edits great images and most photoprinters put out some fantastic pictures, serious digital image makers regularly use printer RIPs that cost more then the actual printer.
Furthermore, several high-end photographers are extolling the virtues of stand-alone raw processors as an addition to their photoshop workflow.
I'm not saying that it's morally acceptable for Nikon to lock part of their RAW format, I'm just saying that the impact of this upon the pro photo world is far less significant then it would appear.
Property is like SOO overvalued on the Northern Rim anyway, and its almost impossible to break into that market unless you've got a trust-fund of space-creds.
It makes so much more sense to follow the space-artists and convert one of the older moon manufacturing bases on the southern rim into funky loft habitat-bubbles and catch a commuter tank into the Northern Rim for work.
Besides, all the cool authentic space coffee shops are on the Southern Rim. Nothern Rim just has the same old crappy StarStarbucks on every module hub.
iDrool.
90% of all video conferencing done in the professional world is based on open standards already, H.323 and H.264 are much more viable options then a propriotary microsoft product.
If linux and other GNU/GPL/open source projects are to routinely tout the viability of open source standards, why not simply use the existing and tested open sources already in use in the vast majority of VTC solutions?
Unless it's a bunch of linux users that want to taunt microsoft fans on MSN.
Why do they persue and advertise these as minimum requirements? Microsoft Windows XP required, Microsoft IE required, Microsoft Media Player 10 required...what no Microsoft stock requirements?
bwah? Have you ever been on a subway? Each car stuffed full of people sitting there pretending to read the morning paper while listening to their iPods? Of course there are people who would be interested in watching their tivo'd American Idol/OC/Apprentice/Biggest Loser/CSI episodes on the train in the morning.
And a video iPod would be used ONLY for video? Isn't it obvious that the player would be valuable for both video AND audio?
I'm still worried that "prolly" is going to eventually become the accepted spelling and pronunciation of "probably".
Yikes. What are kids learning these days at the Ly-berry?