Why do we need wireless USB when we already have bluetooth? and vice versa? and beyond that, why do we need wireless HDMI?
Bluetooth is great, but it has it's limitations. It was designed to be a low power usage protocol for wireless devices such as mobile phones. It is great for small amounts of data transmission, such as with bluetooth headsets, GPS, mice, or keyboards. However, as soon as you try to send a few MB of data it starts to become unbearably slow. Most devices use bluetooth 1.2 which has a maximum transfer speed of 723.1 kbit/s, and the newest protocol can get up to 2.1 Mbit/s. So if wireless USB can transmit data at 480Mbps, and still have the same range as bluetooth, it would be roughly a 240x improvement for data transmission rate. Also, because it is "wireless USB" I'm guessing it would be compatible, or with little modification, existing USB drivers and be an easier transition (for product producers and consumers) to using more wireless devices. So specifically to comparing those two technologies, that's why.
Generally speaking though, IIRC various protocols arise as a result of patents and also marketing/business decisions. USB and Firewire are very similar, the biggest difference to my knowledge is that firewire was developed by apple and less widely adopted. You may also seen one of several articles on slashdot about HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray. Is there really all that much difference except who gets the patent licensing fees, and who is the one who lost billions in product development? Nope. It all comes down to business, not logic.
I don't think anyone else has said this yet so I'll throw it out there. IIRC BD-9 is a format for Blu-Ray. This format uses existing DVD+/- discs and reads them with a red laser. This, obviously, defeats the biggest purpose of Blu-Ray discs because they have a much smaller capacity. However, for an early demo such at this, if Sony wanted to show a 20 minute clip of the video and was not able to get their hands on a Blu-Ray disc, then they would conceivably use the BD-9 format to put HD content onto a normal DVD. This would allow for 1080 HD content to be shown, and compared to the normal DVD on the other laptop. So the DVD+R could very well have been used in the Blu-Ray drive *and* also be producing true HD video output.
I agree the story is a fake, but I think I missed something... Lance Ulanoff did not write that article. Nor can I find and article from Lance Ulanoff reporting on this. The only article linked is from a two-bit reporter Jennifer DeLeo who claims this is what Lance Ulanoff said. Moreover, read the post made by the ACTUAL AUTHOR in the comments section of Gearlog, several posts down:
"We're sorry!
Posted by: Jennifer DeLeo
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 5:41 PM
Ok. We admit it. We were trying to come up with ways to get hits to our website. We knew if we somehow could make it look like Sony was caught in a wb of lies, every gaming and electronics site would link to us. We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
The best way to improve writing is to give meaningful feedback to students. It seems so obvious to me, but it (almost) never happens. IMHO the best class I ever took was an introduction to philosophy class my junior year of high school, and of course, it was taught by the best teacher I have ever had. It was also, perhaps surprisingly, the lowest course grade I got in all of high school. Every single assignment I got back I without a doubt earned the grade written on it. Every mistake I made in my papers, such as lack of detail or even too much detail, was clearly annotated in the margins. I was then able to change what I did wrong. If there was ever a doubt on something I talked to the teacher and he clearly told me how to improve it.
Now four years later I am an engineering student at UT. The problem with *every* writing class I have taken in college is the focus of *assessment* of writing, not improvement. My first semester in college I was very studious and even met with the TA before the first paper was due in my Introduction to Philosophy class. When I met with her she, concisely, like my paper and gave me no recommendations for improvement. When I got my grade back, at the bottom of the last page she had written "good" and an 88. That was it, no other comments of explanation. I can't fix what I don't know they want me to change.
I also just want to articulate that that comments have to be meaningful, and detailed. In my upper-division technical writing class the most memorable assignment handed back to me was 5 pages long, exactly, which was the maximum length for the assignment. There were about two sentences of scribbled feedback that amounted to "not enough detail." The paper was written by my four person group, and after talking to the professor, none of us still understood how we could have more detail without exceeding the page count.
Bottom line, at the college level, I don't think there is any way to improve writing aside from individually looking at what is done wrong and fixing it. Everyone knows "how" to write on a conceptual level, and every student consequently writes in a way he thinks is correct. Unless problematic issues are pin-pointed, no college writing course will improve writing. Bottom line is that if you want a good writing class, you have to be willing to give detailed and meaningful feedback.
Stay in school kid. The phrase is "could not care less" not "could care less." If you were in school learning something you would have the critical thinking skills to not sound so stupid.
Strangely enough, I will say I thought about the expression when I typed it. I did a makeshift check on google...
"could not care less" returns about 321,000 Results
"could care less" returns about 5,480,000 Results
Check the hit count yourself; there really is that big of difference in results. I merely stuck with the most common usage.
Disclaimer: For anyone who did happen to think critically about what I said, I will qualify that
"couldn't care less" returns about 3,270,000 Results.
That was the original cliche phrase, which over time has evolved for whatever reason to omit the "not" part. The real bottom line is that both versions are almost equally used, and the average person could care less which version you pick.;-)
Correcty me if I'm wrong, but providing a link to a bitTorrent client doesn't really have anything to do with the article. Or the summary. Or the Headline.
FTFS - segphault writes "The RIAA has sent letters to 40 university presidents in 25 separate states informing them that students are engaging in filesharing on their campuses using the local network.
I am a student at one of the Universities that had our local DC++ file sharing hubs shut down. The hub was up 24-7, sharing roughly 20TB of pretty much everything. Students loved it because you could get almost any file that was available on BitTorrents with up to 1.5Mbps transfer speeds, and almost always at least 300Kbps. On BitTorrents, similar first release movies on public trackers often peaked at about 30Kbps download speeds. Now students still download the movies, using BitTorrent, it's just much slower because they can't utilize the LAN. As far as "download while you still can," these is no reason universities are going to stop BitTorrent downloads. Additionally, I don't think the RIAA even thinks it is significantly curbing piracy by shuting down LAN networks, it just knows the student have to go out into the more public file sharing arena, and RIAA at least theoretically has the ability to catch them then.
Most of the time when I read the modded up comments below the summaries, someone has already said everything worth saying... but for this paticular article it seems like even a lot of the the +5 comments are, well, crap.
I am a student at the University of Texas. One week ago our DC++ hub was shut down. This was unexpected and unprecedented. A few months earlier the school news paper even interviewed people with ITS who basically said they could care less about the hub. After the university received some type of a cease and desist letter, our school's ITS contacted the primary HUB admin, and long story short within less than 24 hours the hub had to shut down forever. Amoung other obscure sidenotes, they even ordered that the facebook group "Direct Connect Users Group" be deleted. My friends at Texas A&M have told me their hub is down right now too, similar story.
Both our colleges had hubs constantly sharing about 20TB of data, 24-7, with net download speeds of 1.5Mbps. Every TV show was on our hub within 4 hrs of airing. Adobe Acrobat 7 and Office 2007 were both readily avaialable before I could, not that I ever would of course, download them from private bittorrent trackers. The files were never corrupted, there was no risk of getting caught, and everything mainstream you could ever want was on the hub.
One huge appeal of the hub also was it's simplicity of use. 5GB share minimum was pretty much the only barrier to entry. I know friends who downloaded from DC++ who never heard of BitTorrents in their life, and for that matter, have asked me for help reinstalling windows. It was so simple and easy to use to the average non-geek that now that it has gone down people ask me what to do and give me blank looks.
So in response to every post about other alternatives to file sharing or otherwise really miss the significance of this, I think it is quite a significant win for RIAA.
correct.
And furthermore, to clarrify the overall strength of the glue, the article gives a better meassure of its strength. It's right after their unless imagery:
"The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it. That's two to three times more force than the best retail glues can handle."
If I had mod points, I would certainly give you one. I think you perfectly describe the problem in that it rises concern that soon enough there will be certain people you can't say "no" to. It brings a whole new meaning to a jealous boyfriend.
With that said, however, I think the government can track you if they wanted to. I don't recall the name of the law off the top of my head, but the result is roughly that all new cell phones have to be able to able to provide an accurate GPS location when calling 911. There are many, many great benefits to this. For instance, if you get in a serious car accident while driving on vacation, you might have no clue where you are and they are able to quickly know your location. This clearly would be a reason anyone would want to opt-in, if possible. However, there are other reasons for the e911 mandate. The most frequent example I have heard cited is for drug trafficing. Using a cell phone, a call would be placed to 911 saying they are at a self reported location off the coast of the coast and need SOS. The coast guard is dispatched and searches for the troubled caller, meanwhile, 30 miles west a boat pulls into a harbor safely knowing the coast guard is not around. Because of abuses like that, the government will not let someone opt out of the e911 location tracking. All though it does not have to as precise as GPS, it is comparable, and bottom like the technological possibilites of tracking are present.
Just to clarrify, I think what is really meant is IUD = IED = Improvised Explosive Devices
Second, I think you are trying to be funny, but seriouslt if the Army is standing around and sees an IED is detonated, and they have to go through the disney network to realize the explosion occured right where the rubble is, I think we as a country have bigger concerns than a loss of privacy.
IIRC There are other phones with GPS receivers. I think all of Nextel's new phones have them. However, GPS is a feature most people don't need, and consequently to the average user it just results in a lower battery life. Also, the cell phone has to be larger to contain the GPS receiver, which again your average consumer doesn't want. Lastly, adding GPS functionality makes the phone cost more (cost of receiver), which again, has undermined the market for GPS phones.
Concisely, imagine taping your existing bluetooth GPS to your cell phone. If you want, you can remove battery for the GPS before taping, but just realize the space saved means the phone bettery will die that much quicker. The final result will cost about as much as your cell phone + the bluetooth GPS; if you want it much smaller, the price goes up more.
RE: Since 9/11, the government has mandated that all mobile phones be able to pinpoint their location.
First, this has nothing to do with 9/11. The issues of E911 has been around long before 9/11 happened, here's a wired news article from 1998 for instance: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,9502,0 0.html.
RE: This is simply Disney extending their capability to see where you/their phones are to you.
Second, IIRC most cell phones right now are not GPS equipped. I recently bought a Samsung D600, which many people this is one of the best cell phones, and needless it does not have GPS built it. I heard a technical presentation about it from SwRI before, and it is cheaper to use GPRS or simialar technology and trianglate a cell phone users location relative to cell phone towers the phone can detect. To comply with the E911 directive, the accuracy is much less precise that can be provided by GPS. The new Disney phones will use GPS, which is much more precise than what is legally mandated by the article you reference.
Third, I don't think this article really is even all that much about technological innovation. The alarming part of this article is that precise GPS tracking is being marketed. It's about privacy. I don't think discussing technological capabilities is all that insightful.
AIM removed the warning feature long ago. There never was a real point to it and it caused more harm than good. If you sent a message to someone with an away message up, it would automatically reply with the message, and then you could warn the user and increase their level by 5%. Sign off and then sign on and it would let you warn them again for another 5%. Repeat this 20 times and the person would be kicked offline (100% warning level). Since childish people like me would exploit this for no good reason (there were other similar tatics too), and there was no real benefit to warning, they removed the feature.
Slashdot Mirror
Bluetooth is great, but it has it's limitations. It was designed to be a low power usage protocol for wireless devices such as mobile phones. It is great for small amounts of data transmission, such as with bluetooth headsets, GPS, mice, or keyboards. However, as soon as you try to send a few MB of data it starts to become unbearably slow. Most devices use bluetooth 1.2 which has a maximum transfer speed of 723.1 kbit/s, and the newest protocol can get up to 2.1 Mbit/s. So if wireless USB can transmit data at 480Mbps, and still have the same range as bluetooth, it would be roughly a 240x improvement for data transmission rate. Also, because it is "wireless USB" I'm guessing it would be compatible, or with little modification, existing USB drivers and be an easier transition (for product producers and consumers) to using more wireless devices. So specifically to comparing those two technologies, that's why.
Generally speaking though, IIRC various protocols arise as a result of patents and also marketing/business decisions. USB and Firewire are very similar, the biggest difference to my knowledge is that firewire was developed by apple and less widely adopted. You may also seen one of several articles on slashdot about HD DVD vs. Blu-Ray. Is there really all that much difference except who gets the patent licensing fees, and who is the one who lost billions in product development? Nope. It all comes down to business, not logic.
I don't think anyone else has said this yet so I'll throw it out there. IIRC BD-9 is a format for Blu-Ray. This format uses existing DVD+/- discs and reads them with a red laser. This, obviously, defeats the biggest purpose of Blu-Ray discs because they have a much smaller capacity. However, for an early demo such at this, if Sony wanted to show a 20 minute clip of the video and was not able to get their hands on a Blu-Ray disc, then they would conceivably use the BD-9 format to put HD content onto a normal DVD. This would allow for 1080 HD content to be shown, and compared to the normal DVD on the other laptop. So the DVD+R could very well have been used in the Blu-Ray drive *and* also be producing true HD video output.
I agree the story is a fake, but I think I missed something... Lance Ulanoff did not write that article. Nor can I find and article from Lance Ulanoff reporting on this. The only article linked is from a two-bit reporter Jennifer DeLeo who claims this is what Lance Ulanoff said. Moreover, read the post made by the ACTUAL AUTHOR in the comments section of Gearlog, several posts down:
"We're sorry!
Posted by: Jennifer DeLeo
Tuesday, May 16, 2006 5:41 PM
Ok. We admit it. We were trying to come up with ways to get hits to our website. We knew if we somehow could make it look like Sony was caught in a wb of lies, every gaming and electronics site would link to us. We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"
Link
There are countless other reasons it is obviouosly faked too; shame on all of you gullible idiots.
The best way to improve writing is to give meaningful feedback to students. It seems so obvious to me, but it (almost) never happens. IMHO the best class I ever took was an introduction to philosophy class my junior year of high school, and of course, it was taught by the best teacher I have ever had. It was also, perhaps surprisingly, the lowest course grade I got in all of high school. Every single assignment I got back I without a doubt earned the grade written on it. Every mistake I made in my papers, such as lack of detail or even too much detail, was clearly annotated in the margins. I was then able to change what I did wrong. If there was ever a doubt on something I talked to the teacher and he clearly told me how to improve it.
Now four years later I am an engineering student at UT. The problem with *every* writing class I have taken in college is the focus of *assessment* of writing, not improvement. My first semester in college I was very studious and even met with the TA before the first paper was due in my Introduction to Philosophy class. When I met with her she, concisely, like my paper and gave me no recommendations for improvement. When I got my grade back, at the bottom of the last page she had written "good" and an 88. That was it, no other comments of explanation. I can't fix what I don't know they want me to change.
I also just want to articulate that that comments have to be meaningful, and detailed. In my upper-division technical writing class the most memorable assignment handed back to me was 5 pages long, exactly, which was the maximum length for the assignment. There were about two sentences of scribbled feedback that amounted to "not enough detail." The paper was written by my four person group, and after talking to the professor, none of us still understood how we could have more detail without exceeding the page count.
Bottom line, at the college level, I don't think there is any way to improve writing aside from individually looking at what is done wrong and fixing it. Everyone knows "how" to write on a conceptual level, and every student consequently writes in a way he thinks is correct. Unless problematic issues are pin-pointed, no college writing course will improve writing. Bottom line is that if you want a good writing class, you have to be willing to give detailed and meaningful feedback.
Strangely enough, I will say I thought about the expression when I typed it. I did a makeshift check on google...
- "could not care less" returns about 321,000 Results
- "could care less" returns about 5,480,000 Results
Check the hit count yourself; there really is that big of difference in results. I merely stuck with the most common usage.Disclaimer: For anyone who did happen to think critically about what I said, I will qualify that "couldn't care less" returns about 3,270,000 Results. That was the original cliche phrase, which over time has evolved for whatever reason to omit the "not" part. The real bottom line is that both versions are almost equally used, and the average person could care less which version you pick.
Correcty me if I'm wrong, but providing a link to a bitTorrent client doesn't really have anything to do with the article. Or the summary. Or the Headline. FTFS - segphault writes "The RIAA has sent letters to 40 university presidents in 25 separate states informing them that students are engaging in filesharing on their campuses using the local network.
I am a student at one of the Universities that had our local DC++ file sharing hubs shut down. The hub was up 24-7, sharing roughly 20TB of pretty much everything. Students loved it because you could get almost any file that was available on BitTorrents with up to 1.5Mbps transfer speeds, and almost always at least 300Kbps. On BitTorrents, similar first release movies on public trackers often peaked at about 30Kbps download speeds. Now students still download the movies, using BitTorrent, it's just much slower because they can't utilize the LAN. As far as "download while you still can," these is no reason universities are going to stop BitTorrent downloads. Additionally, I don't think the RIAA even thinks it is significantly curbing piracy by shuting down LAN networks, it just knows the student have to go out into the more public file sharing arena, and RIAA at least theoretically has the ability to catch them then.
Most of the time when I read the modded up comments below the summaries, someone has already said everything worth saying... but for this paticular article it seems like even a lot of the the +5 comments are, well, crap.
I am a student at the University of Texas. One week ago our DC++ hub was shut down. This was unexpected and unprecedented. A few months earlier the school news paper even interviewed people with ITS who basically said they could care less about the hub. After the university received some type of a cease and desist letter, our school's ITS contacted the primary HUB admin, and long story short within less than 24 hours the hub had to shut down forever. Amoung other obscure sidenotes, they even ordered that the facebook group "Direct Connect Users Group" be deleted. My friends at Texas A&M have told me their hub is down right now too, similar story.
Both our colleges had hubs constantly sharing about 20TB of data, 24-7, with net download speeds of 1.5Mbps. Every TV show was on our hub within 4 hrs of airing. Adobe Acrobat 7 and Office 2007 were both readily avaialable before I could, not that I ever would of course, download them from private bittorrent trackers. The files were never corrupted, there was no risk of getting caught, and everything mainstream you could ever want was on the hub.
One huge appeal of the hub also was it's simplicity of use. 5GB share minimum was pretty much the only barrier to entry. I know friends who downloaded from DC++ who never heard of BitTorrents in their life, and for that matter, have asked me for help reinstalling windows. It was so simple and easy to use to the average non-geek that now that it has gone down people ask me what to do and give me blank looks.
So in response to every post about other alternatives to file sharing or otherwise really miss the significance of this, I think it is quite a significant win for RIAA.
correct.
And furthermore, to clarrify the overall strength of the glue, the article gives a better meassure of its strength. It's right after their unless imagery: "The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it. That's two to three times more force than the best retail glues can handle."
With that said, however, I think the government can track you if they wanted to. I don't recall the name of the law off the top of my head, but the result is roughly that all new cell phones have to be able to able to provide an accurate GPS location when calling 911. There are many, many great benefits to this. For instance, if you get in a serious car accident while driving on vacation, you might have no clue where you are and they are able to quickly know your location. This clearly would be a reason anyone would want to opt-in, if possible. However, there are other reasons for the e911 mandate. The most frequent example I have heard cited is for drug trafficing. Using a cell phone, a call would be placed to 911 saying they are at a self reported location off the coast of the coast and need SOS. The coast guard is dispatched and searches for the troubled caller, meanwhile, 30 miles west a boat pulls into a harbor safely knowing the coast guard is not around. Because of abuses like that, the government will not let someone opt out of the e911 location tracking. All though it does not have to as precise as GPS, it is comparable, and bottom like the technological possibilites of tracking are present.
Just to clarrify, I think what is really meant is IUD = IED = Improvised Explosive Devices
Second, I think you are trying to be funny, but seriouslt if the Army is standing around and sees an IED is detonated, and they have to go through the disney network to realize the explosion occured right where the rubble is, I think we as a country have bigger concerns than a loss of privacy.
Concisely, imagine taping your existing bluetooth GPS to your cell phone. If you want, you can remove battery for the GPS before taping, but just realize the space saved means the phone bettery will die that much quicker. The final result will cost about as much as your cell phone + the bluetooth GPS; if you want it much smaller, the price goes up more.
RE: Since 9/11, the government has mandated that all mobile phones be able to pinpoint their location. First, this has nothing to do with 9/11. The issues of E911 has been around long before 9/11 happened, here's a wired news article from 1998 for instance: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,9502,0 0.html.
RE: This is simply Disney extending their capability to see where you/their phones are to you.
Second, IIRC most cell phones right now are not GPS equipped. I recently bought a Samsung D600, which many people this is one of the best cell phones, and needless it does not have GPS built it. I heard a technical presentation about it from SwRI before, and it is cheaper to use GPRS or simialar technology and trianglate a cell phone users location relative to cell phone towers the phone can detect. To comply with the E911 directive, the accuracy is much less precise that can be provided by GPS. The new Disney phones will use GPS, which is much more precise than what is legally mandated by the article you reference.
Third, I don't think this article really is even all that much about technological innovation. The alarming part of this article is that precise GPS tracking is being marketed. It's about privacy. I don't think discussing technological capabilities is all that insightful.
AIM removed the warning feature long ago. There never was a real point to it and it caused more harm than good. If you sent a message to someone with an away message up, it would automatically reply with the message, and then you could warn the user and increase their level by 5%. Sign off and then sign on and it would let you warn them again for another 5%. Repeat this 20 times and the person would be kicked offline (100% warning level). Since childish people like me would exploit this for no good reason (there were other similar tatics too), and there was no real benefit to warning, they removed the feature.