"This didn't happen in a vacuum. Someone started a digital conversion parade"
Oh my god! Stop this crazy progress stuff! Give me my crystal radio set and leave me the hell alone so I can listen to The Shadow and The Great Gildersleeve!
". Someone stepped in front of that parade with a promising patented idea, and they knew the risks. The public got snookered. "
You mean they won versus the unpromising shitty alternatives.
"A responsible government would make every effort to find the least cost option to the citizens for each and every monopoly it chooses to create."
I'm sorry, I don't see this as being an onerous cost. This is all just Vizio corporate lobbying bullshit. I'd like to see an independent accounting of the actual patent license costs associated with one of the $50 digital converter boxes. All that's been shown so far is claims based on alleged fees for tuners in digital TVs, but that was inflated with handwaving and unspecified 'mystery licenses' that get more expensive as TV size increases.
I can't really get upset about patent fees that add $20 to the cost of a $200 LCD TV.
"Why is parent modded up? It's quite off topic, as it is not addressing the real issue. The issue is the FCC's mandate to move to DTV, while it is still encumbered by patents."
Why should Vizio and Sony get to profit from someone else's work? Especially when *they* have their own profit portfolios.
" HD doesn't really seem like that much of a step forward when it requires taxed hardware and offers little if any advantages over traditional FM analog signals, asides from more streams of top 40 crap followed by commercials of course."
One of the two NPR stations in Boston, WGBH, offers three sub-stations over HD. One's a classical station which is unavailable over FM, and one's a feed of the Cape Cod NPR station.
The classical station sounds pretty nice, so they aren't cutting its bandwidth to the bone. The Cape Cod station doesn't sound that great, but it's mostly talk anyway. I bought an HD radio specifically so I could listen to the classical station. (Got a refurb Boston Acoustics stereo clock radio with HD for $99 from Radio Shack.)
The other Boston NPR station, is HD without any sub-channels (or whatever they're called) and it sounds fine. I don't bother listening to anything else on the dial.
" When there is an open alternative available that does the same thing it should be up to the stations, not the government to decide which method to broadcast in"
But it doesn't do the same thing, because it would prevent the reallocation of the bandwidth, and would require many stations to continue broadcasting in both formats, which is expensive and wasteful.
"It is well established that public airwaves are subject to strict regulation, for example to exclude obscenity. It doesn't make sense to allow private entities to charge fees of their choosing to anyone who wants to receive these airwaves."
What do you think the patent fees are like for cellphone manufacturers?
"This is what happens when money-grubbing for-profit entities dictate what becomes "standards". For that amount of 'control' over the process, the patent holders should've been required to give the patents to the public."
They developed it, they deserve to profit. Some giant electronics company who wants to make TVs doesn't deserve to profit from another company's engineering without compensating the original developer.
Looks like most of the patent fees are in the 'confidential licensors' category. That's the *only* category that increases as the screen size goes up.
And that category, being 'confidential', doesn't describe how, exactly the fees fit into Digital TV.
MPEG2 and MPEG-LA are fixed fees, at $2.50 and $5, respectively, no matter how big the screen is.
Somehow they "estimated" that the 'confidential licensors' category ranged from $6.15 to $20.65. Which looks like blowing smoke. They don't actually know, they just made up a number based on the price of the TV.
(I'd also note that bigger, fancier TVs tend to have more features, including more advanced signal-processing features, so that also would explain why manufacturers might pay more, unspecified patent fees on larger TVs.)
Try using a MacBook Pro on an airplane or bus. I have the 17" model because it's a "desktop replacement" that I use for infrequent travel. There's to room to open the screen to a comfortable angle so it can be read without odd body contortioning.
That's why I have a kindle. The point is, because like many people I already have laptops I use a lot (Xcode, etc), I am not in the market for a netbook. Thus the kindle fits in my life.
Some of the books I've bought on my Kindle have clearly had their typography specified. Alberto Manguel's "The Library At Night" was set in a sans-serif font, maybe Optima. And Peter L. Bernstein's "Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story Of Risk" somehow managed to have a typeface that looked like it had been printed on a press with worn plates - occasional letters were malformed as if they had too little or too much ink. An 'A' on one screen might be a little wrong, but not every 'A' on every page, as would be the case if the problem were with the font.
It actually matched the paperback pretty well - perhaps they were both produced from a scan of a hardcover. Wasn't the best reading experience, however.
I don't know what kind of format they used to get that level of detail.
"Given that Jobs is CEO, there's probably a "coolness" factor for anybody at Apple to have him on as a co-inventor. It certainly doesn't say anything about how involved (or not) he was in coming up with the idea."
It should be easy enough to search for all recent Apple Computer patents. If he's not on all of them, his name probably only appears on things he was involved in.
His name isn't on the patent for the design of the NeXT pizzabox computer case. That's credited to the guy from frogdesign who created it.
From the CNN article: "More than 110 4-millimeter tape cartridges were copied onto the hard drive. The records included records from the Clinton Administration Executive Office of the President."
The simple fact is that Sun doesn't have the standing in the market to be able to pull this off. It might as well be Novell or (whatever remains of) Borland making this announcement.
Google has the mindshare to do this, and the traffic. Sun definitely does not - at this point they're basically a middleware and server business. When people think "Where can I go on the Internet to buy and/or download software for my computer", they certainly don't think "Sun" (unless they already know it's a Sun product they're after). They probably think Google first.
Hell, Fry's would have a better chance of making it work than Sun would.
Come to think of it, Sun's best shot is to develop the system, then cut a deal with a retailer like Fry's, Best Buy, or Wal-Mart, and provide the system as a service through the retailer website with all the marketing done by the retailer.
But if Sun thinks they're going to create a Sun App Store and it's going to be an internet sensation, they're deluding themselves and having a 90's flashback.
Previously purchased Kindle books are not having text-to-speech disabled remotely. The disabling only applies to books bought after the flag was implemented:
"Here's an interesting twist. I just downloaded about 7 books from my Kindle's Archive that are currently listed as having TTS disabled, which I had purchased prior to the implementation of the TTS prohibition, and have found that all them still work just fine with the TTS feature."
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"This didn't happen in a vacuum. Someone started a digital conversion parade"
Oh my god! Stop this crazy progress stuff! Give me my crystal radio set and leave me the hell alone so I can listen to The Shadow and The Great Gildersleeve!
". Someone stepped in front of that parade with a promising patented idea, and they knew the risks. The public got snookered. "
You mean they won versus the unpromising shitty alternatives.
"A responsible government would make every effort to find the least cost option to the citizens for each and every monopoly it chooses to create."
I'm sorry, I don't see this as being an onerous cost. This is all just Vizio corporate lobbying bullshit. I'd like to see an independent accounting of the actual patent license costs associated with one of the $50 digital converter boxes. All that's been shown so far is claims based on alleged fees for tuners in digital TVs, but that was inflated with handwaving and unspecified 'mystery licenses' that get more expensive as TV size increases.
I can't really get upset about patent fees that add $20 to the cost of a $200 LCD TV.
So basically this is all corporate lobbying bullshit.
Thanks for clearing that up.
"Why is parent modded up? It's quite off topic, as it is not addressing the real issue. The issue is the FCC's mandate to move to DTV, while it is still encumbered by patents."
Why should Vizio and Sony get to profit from someone else's work? Especially when *they* have their own profit portfolios.
"This is about a patent holder forcing the adoption of there Patent as a standard,"
How does that work, exactly?
And the American people are free to give up TV or switch to cable or satellite.
" HD doesn't really seem like that much of a step forward when it requires taxed hardware and offers little if any advantages over traditional FM analog signals, asides from more streams of top 40 crap followed by commercials of course."
One of the two NPR stations in Boston, WGBH, offers three sub-stations over HD. One's a classical station which is unavailable over FM, and one's a feed of the Cape Cod NPR station.
The classical station sounds pretty nice, so they aren't cutting its bandwidth to the bone. The Cape Cod station doesn't sound that great, but it's mostly talk anyway. I bought an HD radio specifically so I could listen to the classical station. (Got a refurb Boston Acoustics stereo clock radio with HD for $99 from Radio Shack.)
The other Boston NPR station, is HD without any sub-channels (or whatever they're called) and it sounds fine. I don't bother listening to anything else on the dial.
" When there is an open alternative available that does the same thing it should be up to the stations, not the government to decide which method to broadcast in"
But it doesn't do the same thing, because it would prevent the reallocation of the bandwidth, and would require many stations to continue broadcasting in both formats, which is expensive and wasteful.
"On June 12 (unless it's delayed again), your analog OTA TV receiver becomes a brick."
Most people have cable. That remains an option if you want to keep your old TV and not buy a digital tuner.
Sheesh. The Vizio thing is about Funai using Vizio LCD panel patents without a license.
" there wouldn't be any FCC regulation with regard to whether you used CDMA, GSM, iDEN, WiMax, or shoe polish to broadcast it"
But you might have to pay patent fees (directly or indirectly) to the patent holders o those technologies (apart from the shoe polish).
"I suspect that has more to do with VHS being a legacy tech then the license fees. Try buying a dvd recorder or a DVR without an ATSC tuner."
Hell, try finding a VHS tape storage rack. I've been looking for one to organize bare SATA drives, but they're nowhere to be found.
"This is nothing more than government assisted extortion."
Get a grip, it's only television. I bet you could use some time away from the tube.
The first US color TVs in 1954 cost the equivalent of nearly $8000 in today's money, for a 14" screen.
"It is well established that public airwaves are subject to strict regulation, for example to exclude obscenity. It doesn't make sense to allow private entities to charge fees of their choosing to anyone who wants to receive these airwaves."
What do you think the patent fees are like for cellphone manufacturers?
"This is what happens when money-grubbing for-profit entities dictate what becomes "standards". For that amount of 'control' over the process, the patent holders should've been required to give the patents to the public."
They developed it, they deserve to profit. Some giant electronics company who wants to make TVs doesn't deserve to profit from another company's engineering without compensating the original developer.
Sorry, that's just how it is.
Looks like most of the patent fees are in the 'confidential licensors' category. That's the *only* category that increases as the screen size goes up.
And that category, being 'confidential', doesn't describe how, exactly the fees fit into Digital TV.
MPEG2 and MPEG-LA are fixed fees, at $2.50 and $5, respectively, no matter how big the screen is.
Somehow they "estimated" that the 'confidential licensors' category ranged from $6.15 to $20.65. Which looks like blowing smoke. They don't actually know, they just made up a number based on the price of the TV.
(I'd also note that bigger, fancier TVs tend to have more features, including more advanced signal-processing features, so that also would explain why manufacturers might pay more, unspecified patent fees on larger TVs.)
Try using a MacBook Pro on an airplane or bus. I have the 17" model because it's a "desktop replacement" that I use for infrequent travel. There's to room to open the screen to a comfortable angle so it can be read without odd body contortioning.
That's why I have a kindle. The point is, because like many people I already have laptops I use a lot (Xcode, etc), I am not in the market for a netbook. Thus the kindle fits in my life.
Some of the books I've bought on my Kindle have clearly had their typography specified. Alberto Manguel's "The Library At Night" was set in a sans-serif font, maybe Optima. And Peter L. Bernstein's "Against The Gods: The Remarkable Story Of Risk" somehow managed to have a typeface that looked like it had been printed on a press with worn plates - occasional letters were malformed as if they had too little or too much ink. An 'A' on one screen might be a little wrong, but not every 'A' on every page, as would be the case if the problem were with the font.
It actually matched the paperback pretty well - perhaps they were both produced from a scan of a hardcover. Wasn't the best reading experience, however.
I don't know what kind of format they used to get that level of detail.
"Can't you get a "Netbook" for less than a Kindle and read whatever you want on it (and then some) DRM free?"
Maybe, if I didn't already have a personal MacBook Pro and a work MacBook Pro.
I suspect a Netbook isn't as good as a kindle for reading-while-walking, nor as good for reading-on-a-very-crowded-bus.
"Given that Jobs is CEO, there's probably a "coolness" factor for anybody at Apple to have him
on as a co-inventor. It certainly doesn't say anything about how involved (or not) he was in
coming up with the idea."
It should be easy enough to search for all recent Apple Computer patents. If he's not on all of them, his name probably only appears on things he was involved in.
His name isn't on the patent for the design of the NeXT pizzabox computer case. That's credited to the guy from frogdesign who created it.
From the CNN article: "More than 110 4-millimeter tape cartridges were copied onto the hard drive. The records included records from the Clinton Administration Executive Office of the President."
Maybe they meant a 1 Gigawatt HDD?
The simple fact is that Sun doesn't have the standing in the market to be able to pull this off. It might as well be Novell or (whatever remains of) Borland making this announcement.
Google has the mindshare to do this, and the traffic. Sun definitely does not - at this point they're basically a middleware and server business. When people think "Where can I go on the Internet to buy and/or download software for my computer", they certainly don't think "Sun" (unless they already know it's a Sun product they're after). They probably think Google first.
Hell, Fry's would have a better chance of making it work than Sun would.
Come to think of it, Sun's best shot is to develop the system, then cut a deal with a retailer like Fry's, Best Buy, or Wal-Mart, and provide the system as a service through the retailer website with all the marketing done by the retailer.
But if Sun thinks they're going to create a Sun App Store and it's going to be an internet sensation, they're deluding themselves and having a 90's flashback.
THERE IS NO REMOTE KILL FLAG.
Previously purchased Kindle books are not having text-to-speech disabled remotely. The disabling only applies to books bought after the flag was implemented:
From mobileread forums:
"Here's an interesting twist. I just downloaded about 7 books from my Kindle's Archive that are currently listed as having TTS disabled, which I had purchased prior to the implementation of the TTS prohibition, and have found that all them still work just fine with the TTS feature."
"No, they took functionality back which they had previously sold. I believe that they should be sued."
I'd like to see confirmation that they are actually turning off the feature in already-purchased books. I haven't seen that.