I might speculate that there is one.. slight difference about security on DVD and security on digital distribution of films: There are a few thousand movie theatres, and a few million consumers... The solution for security in the first case is simply lawyers, while the second case really neads reason and technology...;-)
This does not sound particularly interesting to me... Watching Wazzup or South Park clips in a tiny window with RealVideo or Windows Media (or anything of the sort) might be acceptable, but entire movies? The video and audio quality is even lower than that of VHS!
I recently read that TiVo plans to offer on-demand movies and found that interesting. I'm curious how this will work though! One hour of video in respectable quality requires about 3Gb (!) of space. An average two-hour movie would take about 1 DAY to download through my 640Kbps ADSL connection (assuming it was working at full capacity)! Now imagine a few hudnred thousand people doing that on the net at the same time...!
Obviously, broadband is not up to this and I do not think it will be up to this for quite some time. I believe the way TiVo will be doing this is by using some of the few hundreds of PPV channels to schedule essentialy multicasting of the movies. So, you say you want a movie in the evening. That movie is scheduled to be multicast (in analog form) at some point during the night and the TiVo wakes up and records it (with MacroVision enabled, if the distributor chooses, BTW) and you can watch it the next day. This is somewhat better than NetFlix (overnight, instead of 2-3 days for delivery)... However, you get no extras and no 5.1 surround like with a DVD (and I think fully digital transmission of video and 5.1 surround will take some time, mostly because of legal reasons -- watch what happened with poor MP3 and imagine how happy companies would be with Dolby Digital...;-)
BTW, if you do a search for multicast file transfer you might be surprised with the volume of results... This seems to me the only viable way to do things (if company lawyers allow it, of course!;-).
I remember reading somewhere that the reason Lucas did not want to release Star Wars on DVD was that he did not consider DVD to be a mature enough medium. Which, of course, sounds quite odd, given that the films were released on VHS.
But, on second thought: DVD is definitely superior to VHS, but is DVD as it is today going to last as long as VHS did? For audio formats, there are now both SACD and DVD-Audio and it is not entirely clear which will prevail (if any). On the video side, specifications for hi-def video, as well as for recordable media are mostly nonexistent (for both technical, but mostly legal and economic reasons).
Then there are the (somewhat ridiculus) issues of encoding and regions. The main argument for regional coding is that companies do not want to lose revenues: for instance, the same movie that sells for $20 in the US, sells for about $10 in, say, India. Even though companies do have profits in India, they want to maximize the overall profits, esp. given the high production and distribution costs of today's films. So the argument is, more or less, that if they do not do that, they won't be able to stay in business. In the meantime, India (to use the same example) produces about 3-4 films per week, at much lower costs (and keep in mind that costs for SFX etc are but a fraction of the overall costs in making and distributing a movie...).
However, I don't think the coding schemes will last for long (even now, they seem to rely more on lawyers than on engineers to work;-). And I do not think that Hollywood is unaware of this (even though they might seem to be). For instance, Lucas himself has been experimenting with various innovations to reduce costs. For instance, the technology for producing SFX might be an obvious one.
Also, Lucas was the first to experiment with digital distribution of films (the movie is transmitted to a hard disk at your local cinema and then projected -- the monstrous JVC-Hughes lightvalve projectors were used in the experiments, with excellent results). This practically eliminates the costs of producing (physical) copies of the film and allows for simultanous world-wide distribution (no need to share copies etc...)
So, I believe we will see a lot of changes in the near future and DVDs a few years from now might be entirely different from those of today. But, then again, if Lucas thinks he can make profit today as well as tomorrow... why not? In the meantime, we will satisfy our... addiction.;-)
The USB backpatch is for 2.2.14, but has anyone tried it with the RedHat 6.2 kernel (I think it is not the "standard" 2.2.14 -- has some extra patched applied)?
I've tried gdb on the x86 RedHat 6.1 and it seems to work with threads (at least switching between threads, doing backtraces and single-stepping seemed to be okay)...
Hey, this laptop exams concept opens up great opportunities! I'd love to see www.examsrus.com, a kind of geek-to-examinee web portal, for the right fee, of course;-).
However, others might have similar thoughts and my be working towards building the schools of tomorrow!
I am a happy user of a Phillips Pronto remote. I also have a Palm Pilot and I had tried using that to control my devices.
In brief, here are the main points of Pronto vs. Pilot:
With its own IR transmitter, the Pilot is pretty much useles as a remote (you need to be about 3-4 feet from the device, which is too close). However, there is a little gadget that plugs into the cradle port and is supposed to extend the range, which I haven't tried.
The Pilot's screen is too small to accomodate enough buttons (personally, I'd be happier even if the Pronto had a bigger screen, which is already much bigger than the Palm's).
If, like me, you like the lights low when watching movies, then the Pilot will eat up batteries in no time (whereas the Pronto's batteries tend to last much longer for this particular use -- even without the charging cradle, I don't really have a problem, I change batteries every 2-3 months, and I use it evey day for at least an hour).
Now, for the Pronto vs. Take Control, I do not have personal experience with the latter, but as far as I've read (mostly when trying to decide):
First of all Take Control is partly developed by Microsoft (the software etc. are Microsofts). This is not necessarily a bad thing... Anyway, it's up to you to decide whether it counts.
From what I've read, Pronto has a stronger beam. In particular, the beam's dispersion is much wider (unless all your devices are dead ahead from where you're sitting, you should probably take this into account).
The Pronto's programming capabilities are much better. However, Take Control is supposedly easier to program by your mom and dad that do not know anything about computers. But, if you're a "poweruser" then Pronto is probably the best.
The receiver (but not the transmitter) on Take Control can handle higher frequencies than Pronto's. However, you can find Pronto CCFs on the net for most of the devices that emit non-standard high-frequency codes (see below).
The distribution network in the US for Take Control is better and you'll probably find it a little cheaper than Pronto.
If you want more information about these and other programmable remotes, an excellent site is: www.remotecentral.com
Finally, for the Pronto, you do not have to take my (or anyone's) word: There is a user community at www.prontoedit.com, with links to the Pronto emulator (runs under MS Windoze) and many CCFs (that is configuration files with screens, commands, macros, etc etc that you can incorporate into your own... designs and download into Pronto). Good luck!
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There are a few thousand movie theatres, and a few million consumers... The solution for security in the first case is simply lawyers, while the second case really neads reason and technology...
Just my 2 pennies...
I recently read that TiVo plans to offer on-demand movies and found that interesting. I'm curious how this will work though! One hour of video in respectable quality requires about 3Gb (!) of space. An average two-hour movie would take about 1 DAY to download through my 640Kbps ADSL connection (assuming it was working at full capacity)! Now imagine a few hudnred thousand people doing that on the net at the same time...!
Obviously, broadband is not up to this and I do not think it will be up to this for quite some time. I believe the way TiVo will be doing this is by using some of the few hundreds of PPV channels to schedule essentialy multicasting of the movies. So, you say you want a movie in the evening. That movie is scheduled to be multicast (in analog form) at some point during the night and the TiVo wakes up and records it (with MacroVision enabled, if the distributor chooses, BTW) and you can watch it the next day. This is somewhat better than NetFlix (overnight, instead of 2-3 days for delivery)... However, you get no extras and no 5.1 surround like with a DVD (and I think fully digital transmission of video and 5.1 surround will take some time, mostly because of legal reasons -- watch what happened with poor MP3 and imagine how happy companies would be with Dolby Digital... ;-)
BTW, if you do a search for multicast file transfer you might be surprised with the volume of results... This seems to me the only viable way to do things (if company lawyers allow it, of course! ;-).
But, on second thought: DVD is definitely superior to VHS, but is DVD as it is today going to last as long as VHS did? For audio formats, there are now both SACD and DVD-Audio and it is not entirely clear which will prevail (if any). On the video side, specifications for hi-def video, as well as for recordable media are mostly nonexistent (for both technical, but mostly legal and economic reasons).
Then there are the (somewhat ridiculus) issues of encoding and regions. The main argument for regional coding is that companies do not want to lose revenues: for instance, the same movie that sells for $20 in the US, sells for about $10 in, say, India. Even though companies do have profits in India, they want to maximize the overall profits, esp. given the high production and distribution costs of today's films. So the argument is, more or less, that if they do not do that, they won't be able to stay in business. In the meantime, India (to use the same example) produces about 3-4 films per week, at much lower costs (and keep in mind that costs for SFX etc are but a fraction of the overall costs in making and distributing a movie...).
However, I don't think the coding schemes will last for long (even now, they seem to rely more on lawyers than on engineers to work ;-). And I do not think that Hollywood is unaware of this (even though they might seem to be). For instance, Lucas himself has been experimenting with various innovations to reduce costs. For instance, the technology for producing SFX might be an obvious one.
Also, Lucas was the first to experiment with digital distribution of films (the movie is transmitted to a hard disk at your local cinema and then projected -- the monstrous JVC-Hughes lightvalve projectors were used in the experiments, with excellent results). This practically eliminates the costs of producing (physical) copies of the film and allows for simultanous world-wide distribution (no need to share copies etc...)
So, I believe we will see a lot of changes in the near future and DVDs a few years from now might be entirely different from those of today. But, then again, if Lucas thinks he can make profit today as well as tomorrow... why not? In the meantime, we will satisfy our... addiction. ;-)
--- I'm an INTP, why?
I've tried gdb on the x86 RedHat 6.1 and it seems to work with threads (at least switching between threads, doing backtraces and single-stepping seemed to be okay)...
What about the "Update Agent" in RedHat 6.1?
However, others might have similar thoughts and my be working towards building the schools of tomorrow!
Have a look at these sites for cool programmable control systems ("remote" is too small a word for these ;-):
Of course now we're out from the $300-400 price range... more like $700-$2000 (sic)! Happy drooling! ;-)
In brief, here are the main points of Pronto vs. Pilot:
- With its own IR transmitter, the Pilot is pretty much useles as a remote (you need to be about 3-4 feet from the device, which is too close). However, there is a little gadget that plugs into the cradle port and is supposed to extend the range, which I haven't tried.
- The Pilot's screen is too small to accomodate enough buttons (personally, I'd be happier even if the Pronto had a bigger screen, which is already much bigger than the Palm's).
- If, like me, you like the lights low when watching movies, then the Pilot will eat up batteries in no time (whereas the Pronto's batteries tend to last much longer for this particular use -- even without the charging cradle, I don't really have a problem, I change batteries every 2-3 months, and I use it evey day for at least an hour).
Now, for the Pronto vs. Take Control, I do not have personal experience with the latter, but as far as I've read (mostly when trying to decide):If you want more information about these and other programmable remotes, an excellent site is:
www.remotecentral.com
Finally, for the Pronto, you do not have to take my (or anyone's) word: There is a user community at www.prontoedit.com, with links to the Pronto emulator (runs under MS Windoze) and many CCFs (that is configuration files with screens, commands, macros, etc etc that you can incorporate into your own... designs and download into Pronto). Good luck!