I will say, that without proper management, they could run out, but clearly look at this stupidity: "whois 3.0.0.0@whois.arin.net". Does GE need 16.7 million addresses?
Believe me, I had that in mind when I wrote my post. Dividing half the IPv4 address space into just 128 "Class A" licenses is stupid, but it's also pretty hard to change now that the system is in place. We can't exactly ask GE and all the other big corps to just "give back" those addresses. Also, you can't blame the people who originally came up with that scheme -- they had no way of knowing the Internet was going to become the global computer network of the future.
Yes, it's true that 4 billion addresses ought to be enough, if properly managed. However, why should we bother doing all that management? Why not just go to an address space that it so large it doesn't need management? A pool of IP numbers that is for all practical intents and purposes, infinite would make it so you could just hand out IP addresses in as big a chunks as you wanted. You'd never have to worry about management!
Sorry, I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth, but I do believe that a blanket statement that "DVDs are better" is not correct. A more accurate statement would be "it depends", which is what I said.
To wit, Braveheart may not look as good on DVD (I don't know, never watched the LD version), but does the LD version have...(bunch of stuff)
The main reason for getting the discs is to watch the movie! If the picture isn't as good, how are all those extras going to make up for that? There's a reason why they're called "extras"! It really bothers me that everyone is so busy gushing over all the cool features that come with DVDs that they often overlook the fact that the movie's image has flaws. There have been many, many DVDs that are quite disappointing in terms of picture quality. As I said before, DVD has the potential to be the better in terms of image quality, but so far it has not lived up to that potential.
As more and more devices (cell phones, PDAs) become IP-enabled, 32-bit IP addresses will become increasingly scarce, and eventually they will run out. Some people are predicting this will happen in just a few short years. Moving to a larger address space, such as the one afforded by IPv6 is the only answer.
Unfortunately, the fate of IPv6 rests in Microsoft's hands. If IPv6 is to ever attain widespread use, Windows will have to support it. The sheer number of Windows machines out there guarantees it. No matter how soon Linux and BSD servers support it, it will be pretty useless without widespread client-side support, and that means Windows support.
MS has had IPv6 working in the research labs for a long time, yet they are really dragging their heels when it comes to putting it into a shipping product. Beats me why. I suppose they might have some financial interesting in seeing IP numbers getting scarce ("If you want your own IP, you have to sign up for MSN!"), but somehow I don't think even Microsoft can hold back the rising demand for more IP addresses.
So, sooner or later, they are going to have to include IPv6 support in Windows by default. And not just the server-branded versions of Windows either, but the consumer versions as well. The Windows that Joe Bloe runs on his home PC will have to come with IPv6 built-in. Otherwise, Internet growth will be stifiled. Isn't it scary to think that the future of the net rests in Bill's hands?
Well, it's a cool idea, and I like the Zappa-inspired Warning/Guarantee, but...
The Gore and Bush models don't look anything like the real-life dudes. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be perfect, but you can't even recognize them!
Star Wars Ep II is being shot in HDTV. The resolution is 1920x1080 (16:9 aspect ratio), which will be cropped to about 1920x800 to form a 2.39:1 widescreen "scope" aspect ratio.
Of course, the resolution isn't really 1920x1080, it's half that, due to the 4:2:2 color sampling, where evey other pixel is just a black and white pixel with the same color sample repeated from the adjacent pixel. Plus, there will be MPEG-2 compression artifacts all over the place, due to the fact that the video data is heavily compressed in-camera in order to fit onto the tape.
SW Ep II is going to look like crap in terms of image quality. I just know they're going to put a little tag at the beginning of the movie that says something like "filmed in DIGITAL!", and everyone will cheer when they see it, but if they were to really be truthful, they should say "filmed in HDTV!" or even "filmed with a video camera!". I doubt anyone would cheer for that. The "D" word makes people lose their senses.
...only some specific images (contrast ranges, etc.) will give you that kind of resolution...
In a way, the same thing applies to electronic images as well. In low light conditions, CCDs are subject to noise, which actually looks an awful lot like grainy film.
Digital cameras and scanners aren't subject to the same constraints as film. They actually measure a continuous range of intensities at every pixel and give you full tonality down to the pixel level.
With scanners, yes that's true, since they have the same controlled lighting conditions for all images they record. For CCD cameras, however, that's not necessarily true, since CCDs become subject to noise in low light conditions, resulting in a lot of bogus pixels.
Ummm, no not just as good as DVD. But i hope we don't have to re-visit this issue as well...
Actually it depends on the DVD. If you think it's impossible to make a bad-looking DVD you're nuts. Yes, DVDs have the potential to always be better than LDs, but the reality depends heavily on how well they are mastered.
In some cases, even the DVD fanboy websites will grudgingly admit that some discs just don't look as good as the laserdiscs. Braveheart is one recent example. The Sound of Music is another (sorry, no link, just check rec.arts.movies.tech for discussion on it).
In terms of picture quality, DVDs can be better than laserdiscs, but aren't necessarily.
Actually, I think the first 3-D game of any kind would have to be Atari's "Battlezone" stand-up arcade game.
Or if you really want to stretch the definition of "3-D game", I believe there were some very old UNIX terminal-based maze games with ASCII graphics that pre-date even Battlezone. A guy who used to work at DEC told me such games were even networkable. ASCII deathmatch -- heh!!
Another reason why high-end 3-D renderers use such extreme color depths is so that they can take advantage of the full range of the logarithmic 10-bit-per-component Cineon format. If you just render so that it looks good on your 24/32 bpp monitor, then it will look like crap on film.
Beats me what people are going to do after the conversion to digital video for movie making, though. I guess all that work that went into making computers use the full color range of film will just be thrown out the window, because video's color range is so much narrower. But hey, it's "digital", therefore it's "better", right?
Damn, I wish I'd seen your comment before I sent my letter. Oh well, I used the HRRC's online form, which I think uses the same mechanism, so hopefully it went through okay.
I seriously doubt anyone's going to see this comment, since this story is several days old, but just thought I'd post my letter to the FCC here.
I sent it on September 7th, which was (accoring to the Inter@ctive Week story) was the last day for public comments.
I am writing in regards to the proposal by the MPAA to require copy-protection circuitry in all digital TV devices sold in the U.S. I first heard about this from an article in the online news service ZDnet's "Inter@ctive Week". The article can be found here:
I am vehemently opposed to any such requirement whatsoever. We have already been through this before, with the famous "Betamax decision" by the Supreme Court, and now we have to do it again. Have a look at the following article in the New York Times:
Take special note of what Jack Valenti once said about VCRs, back in 1982 before the Supreme Court made its decision. Think about how ridiculous his statements seem in retrospect. This is just the same old story again. They are trying to stop consumers from exercising fair use rights. Now, as before, the only correct decision is to simply allow people to record TV broadcasts without any restrictions whatsoever. Anything less would be a violation of consumers' rights.
One of the things that bothers me the most is that the MPAA is asking for copy prevention mechanisms to be required in all devices, but without any restrictions on how they will be used. Sure, they claim they won't copy-protect everything, as Fritz Attaway (executive vice president and Washington general counsel at the MPAA) said, "the vast majority of content won't be copy-protected", but does anyone really believe that? Once they get the mechanisms in place, they will use it for everything -- I mean EVERYTHING. Anyone who really believes otherwise is fooling themselves.
Relying on broadcasters to voluntarily decide not to copy-protect some content would be irresponsible to say the least. If the FCC is to actually allow this rule to go into place, there absolutely MUST be some set of rules governing what types of content may be copy-protected. News, for example, must never be copy-protected. Public broadcasting must never be copy-protected. In fact, I believe that the default should be not to copy-protect any broadcasts, and that only a very small subset of all broadcasts should be allowed to qualify for copy-protection. And the smaller that subset is, the better.
If, as they say, the "vast majority of content" will not be copy-protected, then they certainly wouldn't mind putting that in writing, would they? If that really is their plan, then surely they won't object to a rule forcing them to stick to that plan, will they? So go ahead, put it in writing -- hold them to it! That way, if they resist being held to their statements, you will then know they are lying! Don't let them trick you by saying "this is our plan, but we don't want to be held to it". Voluntary enforcement of rules is worse than no enforcement at all. Be suspicious, and be aggressive. Don't let them walk all over you. Make them agree to it in writing.
In closing, I must also protest your lack of publicity regarding this issue. Nowhere on the FCC's website is there any mention of the upcoming decision, and nowhere is there any call for public comments. Were it not for that obscure news source I mentioned above, I would never have known about this at all. Is this your idea of serving the public interest? Silently letting an industry bully such as the MPAA dictate policy for all U.S. consumers?
Also, I have heard that the next Star Wars movie (#2) will be filmed on digital media. This is great, but this technology isn't yet as good quality as the film they were using before. So although he may be taking a step up technology-wise, he may be taking a step down quality-wise.
Boy, am I glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks that this "Filmed in HDTV" movie is going to suck in terms of picture quality. Too many people are busy drooling over the use of that damn Sony video camera just because someone decided to attach the "digital" buzzword to it.
Just think, if Lucas had said he was going to shoot the next Star Wars movie using a video camera, everyone would have laughed. But because he used the word "digital" instead, people's eyes glazed over, they shut their brains off, and started chanting "digital is good, it is the future, digital is good, it is the future..."
I wouldn't have too big a problem with the use of a video camera if it had proper resolution, but this movie is going to be filmed in 1920x1080 format (16:9 aspect ratio), cropped to about 1920x700 to form a widescreen "scope" image (2.35:1 aspect ratio). That's simply not good enough to replace film. Have a look at this resolution chart for motion picture film scanning/printing. You'll see that the mamimum resolution for scanning film is about 4000 pixels per side, not 2000. Lucas is essentially shooting at HDTV resolution, not film resolution.
Even though it was shot on film, Ep. I looked pretty bad too, since almost the entire movie was processed on computers at 2K resolution (instead of 4K). All that extra resolution that was captured on the film just got thrown away, and the image quality ofthe final product just suffers. When they project that image up on the big screen and you sit at the proper distance so that the image completely fills your vision, 2K resolution just looks blurry.
Actually, CGI images for film are usually done using the 10-bit-per-color-component "Cineon" format. You can read more about it here and here. It's still only 4 bytes per pixel though, so your numbers are still correct.
That said, the reason why a single frame may be more than that amout is because in order to render the frame there will be multiple layers of the image (like when you're working with an image in Photoshop, you may break the image into several layers). That way, they can go back and change things in one of the layers without having to do the whole image over from scratch. Only when the shot is completely done will they merge the layers back into one.
Now comes the issue of resolution. I agree with you that 4000x4000 (a.k.a., "4K" resolution) is what is necessary to match the effective resolution of 35mm film, but special effects shots in movies are frequently scanned/rendered/printed at "2K" resolution (2000x2000) just to save time and money.
In some cases, such as with "Star Wars Episode I", the director will just decide that 2K is "enough" resolution and go with it. The problem is, 2K just isn't enough. When an image done at 2K resolution is projected on a large movie screen it will look blurry and indistinct. 4K is what is need for the big screen, but unfortunately, many people in the movie business these days just don't care about image quality, and thus don't bother to do 4K, even when they have the resources to do it.
I don't know which they are using for LotR, 2K or 4K, but I fear it will be 2K, thus making all that careful artwork go to waste. I mean, what's the point of spending all that time, money, and effort on creating spectacular images if they are just going to be ruined by the fact that your rendering process is done in low-res mode to save on costs?!
James Cameron's company Digital Domain was already using Linux several years ago. For "Titanic" they had a huge render farm consisting of about 100 Alpha machines running Linux. I saw a picutre of it, and one of the more interesting things is that they didn't use rackmount enclosures; instead they had a room full of mini-towers networked using 100Base-T. In the middle of the room there was a giant KVM switch so that a single keyboard/monitor/mouse could control any of the machines.
The render farm was used primarily for "helicopter shots" where the entire ship could be seen at once. The ocean waves were completely CGI, and as we all know water takes a s**tload of computational power to render realistically, hence the army of Alphas.
What we need is a constitutional amendment disallowing unrelated riders from being attached to legislation. This would put the power to nullify inappropriate portions of the law where it belongs, in the judiciary.
I agree that such a law would be a great thing, but enforcement would be a problem. Having an oversight committee within the Congress that reviewed "riders" and decided if they were appropriate probably wouldn't work since you would be essentially depending on the Congress to police itself. Not a very reliable solution. Barring anyone who was on the oversight committee from serving on other committees might help ensure impartiality, but you still have the problem of self-policing.
I think your idea of having the judicial branch enforce the rule would avoid the self-policing problem, but it would add an enormous amount of red tape and overhead to the legislative process. Then again, given the number of laws already on the books, it might not be a bad idea to slow down the process of adding new ones.
In any case, you're right that it would be great if there were some practical way of preventing unrelated riders from being tacked on to Congressional bills.
Yep, I saw your comment. You're right, Sir Alec's character (I'm not even going to try to spell it!) was the most shrewd, manipulative old bastard politician in the whole movie. Not that he really looked old; it was only 1962 when the movie was made.
I find it somewhat depressing that "Lawrence of Arabia" still has the crown for cinematography after all these years. A film made nearly 40 years ago beats anything made today. And when they switch everything over to "digital" (god, I hate that damn buzzword) filmmaking, that's it! The resolution of movies will be permanently stuck at 1920x1080 (or whatever it is that they are planning to use). Never mind that 70mm films like "Lawrence" and "West Side Story" that were made almost half a century before beat that by a mile, we're talking about something that's "digital", therefore it must be better, right?! Sheesh.
Lawrence of Arabia was O'Toole's movie. The rest of the cast was very good, but O'Toole stole the show.
Have to agree with you there. However, Sir Alec's role was still vital to the story. If he hadn't done such a good job, the movie would have really suffered.
This is very sad indeed. I imagine many people will not remember Sir Alec simply as "Obi-Wan", although that will always come to mind for Star Wars fans, but rather for his roles in movies like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, which were both directed by one of the finest film directors who ever lived, the late Sir David Lean (another knighted Englishman).
If you haven't seen them, do yourself a favor and check those two movies out. Of course, Sir Alec was also a prominent stage actor as well, but you can't go back and look at those performances unless someone filmed or videotaped them. The movies will likely be his most lasting legacy.
But it seemed like they were keeping up with it. Yes, for a brief period on Monday evening the story queue was full of junk, but it was quickly taken care of, and things (seemingly) got back to normal. My impression was that keeping up the appearance of things being normal was just too overwhelming in the face of all that crap.
Yeah, I noticed he was one of the most outspoken critics of/. on K5. Hell, he was one of the most outspoken people on K5, period. Still, it's amazing that someone would admit something like that. Unless of course, he didn't do it and his "admission" was just a joke...
Actually, with the way the story is written, it is not really clear. It is made to sound more like K5 being is down due to a server outage rather than a permanent, intentional closing down of the site, which is what happened.
FWIW, I submitted a very lengthy and detailed story about this that would have avoided that problem, as it was IMHO, also very clearly written. However, as usual with/. stories, someone else posted it first.
Slashdot Mirror
Believe me, I had that in mind when I wrote my post. Dividing half the IPv4 address space into just 128 "Class A" licenses is stupid, but it's also pretty hard to change now that the system is in place. We can't exactly ask GE and all the other big corps to just "give back" those addresses. Also, you can't blame the people who originally came up with that scheme -- they had no way of knowing the Internet was going to become the global computer network of the future.
Yes, it's true that 4 billion addresses ought to be enough, if properly managed. However, why should we bother doing all that management? Why not just go to an address space that it so large it doesn't need management? A pool of IP numbers that is for all practical intents and purposes, infinite would make it so you could just hand out IP addresses in as big a chunks as you wanted. You'd never have to worry about management!
To wit, Braveheart may not look as good on DVD (I don't know, never watched the LD version), but does the LD version have...(bunch of stuff)
The main reason for getting the discs is to watch the movie! If the picture isn't as good, how are all those extras going to make up for that? There's a reason why they're called "extras"! It really bothers me that everyone is so busy gushing over all the cool features that come with DVDs that they often overlook the fact that the movie's image has flaws. There have been many, many DVDs that are quite disappointing in terms of picture quality. As I said before, DVD has the potential to be the better in terms of image quality, but so far it has not lived up to that potential.
As more and more devices (cell phones, PDAs) become IP-enabled, 32-bit IP addresses will become increasingly scarce, and eventually they will run out. Some people are predicting this will happen in just a few short years. Moving to a larger address space, such as the one afforded by IPv6 is the only answer.
Unfortunately, the fate of IPv6 rests in Microsoft's hands. If IPv6 is to ever attain widespread use, Windows will have to support it. The sheer number of Windows machines out there guarantees it. No matter how soon Linux and BSD servers support it, it will be pretty useless without widespread client-side support, and that means Windows support.
MS has had IPv6 working in the research labs for a long time, yet they are really dragging their heels when it comes to putting it into a shipping product. Beats me why. I suppose they might have some financial interesting in seeing IP numbers getting scarce ("If you want your own IP, you have to sign up for MSN!"), but somehow I don't think even Microsoft can hold back the rising demand for more IP addresses.
So, sooner or later, they are going to have to include IPv6 support in Windows by default. And not just the server-branded versions of Windows either, but the consumer versions as well. The Windows that Joe Bloe runs on his home PC will have to come with IPv6 built-in. Otherwise, Internet growth will be stifiled. Isn't it scary to think that the future of the net rests in Bill's hands?
The Gore and Bush models don't look anything like the real-life dudes. I certainly wouldn't expect them to be perfect, but you can't even recognize them!
Of course, the resolution isn't really 1920x1080, it's half that, due to the 4:2:2 color sampling, where evey other pixel is just a black and white pixel with the same color sample repeated from the adjacent pixel. Plus, there will be MPEG-2 compression artifacts all over the place, due to the fact that the video data is heavily compressed in-camera in order to fit onto the tape.
SW Ep II is going to look like crap in terms of image quality. I just know they're going to put a little tag at the beginning of the movie that says something like "filmed in DIGITAL!", and everyone will cheer when they see it, but if they were to really be truthful, they should say "filmed in HDTV!" or even "filmed with a video camera!". I doubt anyone would cheer for that. The "D" word makes people lose their senses.
In a way, the same thing applies to electronic images as well. In low light conditions, CCDs are subject to noise, which actually looks an awful lot like grainy film.
Digital cameras and scanners aren't subject to the same constraints as film. They actually measure a continuous range of intensities at every pixel and give you full tonality down to the pixel level.
With scanners, yes that's true, since they have the same controlled lighting conditions for all images they record. For CCD cameras, however, that's not necessarily true, since CCDs become subject to noise in low light conditions, resulting in a lot of bogus pixels.
Actually it depends on the DVD. If you think it's impossible to make a bad-looking DVD you're nuts. Yes, DVDs have the potential to always be better than LDs, but the reality depends heavily on how well they are mastered.
In some cases, even the DVD fanboy websites will grudgingly admit that some discs just don't look as good as the laserdiscs. Braveheart is one recent example. The Sound of Music is another (sorry, no link, just check rec.arts.movies.tech for discussion on it).
In terms of picture quality, DVDs can be better than laserdiscs, but aren't necessarily.
Or if you really want to stretch the definition of "3-D game", I believe there were some very old UNIX terminal-based maze games with ASCII graphics that pre-date even Battlezone. A guy who used to work at DEC told me such games were even networkable. ASCII deathmatch -- heh!!
Beats me what people are going to do after the conversion to digital video for movie making, though. I guess all that work that went into making computers use the full color range of film will just be thrown out the window, because video's color range is so much narrower. But hey, it's "digital", therefore it's "better", right?
Damn, I wish I'd seen your comment before I sent my letter. Oh well, I used the HRRC's online form, which I think uses the same mechanism, so hopefully it went through okay.
I sent it on September 7th, which was (accoring to the Inter@ctive Week story) was the last day for public comments.
Any comments on my letter would be welcome.
Boy, am I glad to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks that this "Filmed in HDTV" movie is going to suck in terms of picture quality. Too many people are busy drooling over the use of that damn Sony video camera just because someone decided to attach the "digital" buzzword to it.
Just think, if Lucas had said he was going to shoot the next Star Wars movie using a video camera, everyone would have laughed. But because he used the word "digital" instead, people's eyes glazed over, they shut their brains off, and started chanting "digital is good, it is the future, digital is good, it is the future..."
I wouldn't have too big a problem with the use of a video camera if it had proper resolution, but this movie is going to be filmed in 1920x1080 format (16:9 aspect ratio), cropped to about 1920x700 to form a widescreen "scope" image (2.35:1 aspect ratio). That's simply not good enough to replace film. Have a look at this resolution chart for motion picture film scanning/printing. You'll see that the mamimum resolution for scanning film is about 4000 pixels per side, not 2000. Lucas is essentially shooting at HDTV resolution, not film resolution.
Even though it was shot on film, Ep. I looked pretty bad too, since almost the entire movie was processed on computers at 2K resolution (instead of 4K). All that extra resolution that was captured on the film just got thrown away, and the image quality ofthe final product just suffers. When they project that image up on the big screen and you sit at the proper distance so that the image completely fills your vision, 2K resolution just looks blurry.
Yep, that's the same picture. I would have included a link to that article if I had had the link handy.
That said, the reason why a single frame may be more than that amout is because in order to render the frame there will be multiple layers of the image (like when you're working with an image in Photoshop, you may break the image into several layers). That way, they can go back and change things in one of the layers without having to do the whole image over from scratch. Only when the shot is completely done will they merge the layers back into one.
Now comes the issue of resolution. I agree with you that 4000x4000 (a.k.a., "4K" resolution) is what is necessary to match the effective resolution of 35mm film, but special effects shots in movies are frequently scanned/rendered/printed at "2K" resolution (2000x2000) just to save time and money.
In some cases, such as with "Star Wars Episode I", the director will just decide that 2K is "enough" resolution and go with it. The problem is, 2K just isn't enough. When an image done at 2K resolution is projected on a large movie screen it will look blurry and indistinct. 4K is what is need for the big screen, but unfortunately, many people in the movie business these days just don't care about image quality, and thus don't bother to do 4K, even when they have the resources to do it.
I don't know which they are using for LotR, 2K or 4K, but I fear it will be 2K, thus making all that careful artwork go to waste. I mean, what's the point of spending all that time, money, and effort on creating spectacular images if they are just going to be ruined by the fact that your rendering process is done in low-res mode to save on costs?!
The render farm was used primarily for "helicopter shots" where the entire ship could be seen at once. The ocean waves were completely CGI, and as we all know water takes a s**tload of computational power to render realistically, hence the army of Alphas.
I agree that such a law would be a great thing, but enforcement would be a problem. Having an oversight committee within the Congress that reviewed "riders" and decided if they were appropriate probably wouldn't work since you would be essentially depending on the Congress to police itself. Not a very reliable solution. Barring anyone who was on the oversight committee from serving on other committees might help ensure impartiality, but you still have the problem of self-policing.
I think your idea of having the judicial branch enforce the rule would avoid the self-policing problem, but it would add an enormous amount of red tape and overhead to the legislative process. Then again, given the number of laws already on the books, it might not be a bad idea to slow down the process of adding new ones.
In any case, you're right that it would be great if there were some practical way of preventing unrelated riders from being tacked on to Congressional bills.
Holy crap! That wallet is even better than Jules' "Bad Mother F**ker" in Pulp Fiction! I laughed my ass off when I saw that.
I find it somewhat depressing that "Lawrence of Arabia" still has the crown for cinematography after all these years. A film made nearly 40 years ago beats anything made today. And when they switch everything over to "digital" (god, I hate that damn buzzword) filmmaking, that's it! The resolution of movies will be permanently stuck at 1920x1080 (or whatever it is that they are planning to use). Never mind that 70mm films like "Lawrence" and "West Side Story" that were made almost half a century before beat that by a mile, we're talking about something that's "digital", therefore it must be better, right?! Sheesh.
Have to agree with you there. However, Sir Alec's role was still vital to the story. If he hadn't done such a good job, the movie would have really suffered.
If you haven't seen them, do yourself a favor and check those two movies out. Of course, Sir Alec was also a prominent stage actor as well, but you can't go back and look at those performances unless someone filmed or videotaped them. The movies will likely be his most lasting legacy.
Yes!! A Max Headroom reference!
But it seemed like they were keeping up with it. Yes, for a brief period on Monday evening the story queue was full of junk, but it was quickly taken care of, and things (seemingly) got back to normal. My impression was that keeping up the appearance of things being normal was just too overwhelming in the face of all that crap.
Yeah, I noticed he was one of the most outspoken critics of /. on K5. Hell, he was one of the most outspoken people on K5, period. Still, it's amazing that someone would admit something like that. Unless of course, he didn't do it and his "admission" was just a joke...
Oops! While attempting bragging about how clear my story submission was, I made a typo. That should be "...K5 being down is due to..."
D'oh.
FWIW, I submitted a very lengthy and detailed story about this that would have avoided that problem, as it was IMHO, also very clearly written. However, as usual with /. stories, someone else posted it first.