There is an unwritten rule in Washington when it comes to the television press: Don't piss 'em off. There is a very real concern that the broadcasters have way, way too much power over the political landscape. Congress doesn't want to piss off anyone in the media, especally television, because they are in charge of picking who gets elected. I'm not trying to sound like one of those crazy people who call in on AM talk radio, but there is some truth to the idea that TV can make or break a candidate (or elected official).
As a theoritical example: Congressman complains about the HD land grab. Network news doesn't like his comment, so they make sure they only get his "bad" side, the one with the mole. And, they screw with his lighting a little bit. On a subconcious level, people think he's not someone they want representing them.
Now, when election time comes along, they find every little mistake on the campaign trail and make sure it gets on the air. They continue to point their cameras at every one of his physical flaws. Third party candidates get a lot of coverage. Next thing you know, he's looking for a job.
Don't think this hasn't happened before. Think about the last presidential election. One candidate was loved by the media, one hated. Who won? Why didn't the media like the one guy? Could it be that he thought broadcasters should have to pay for the second channel?
Pay attention to the lighting on 60 minutes this week.
No, most cable companies are concerned with "must carry" rules and HDTV. The.gov has stated that broadcasters have 2 channels available until 2006/whenever there are "enough" sets out there. The concern of cable companies is one of bandwidth.
1) Who decides when there are enough sets to turn off the analog signal? How is the verification process going to work? Maybe a question on the 2010 census?
2) Do cable companies have to carry both signals (A and D)? Can they prefer one over the other? Can they convert the digital signal to analog?
3) Can the broadcaster specify which signal they want transmitted? In other words, can they force cable to carry the analog signal, even though most people are watching the HD signal?
4) Do cable companies have to provide all feeds from a broadcaster (in the case of multiplexed signals), or can they just carry the main feed?
5) Assume a cable box provided by the cable company is able to decode the HD signal from the broadcaster. One of the functions of this box is impulse PPV (just click on the 'buy' button, and the box sends purchase back to cable company. Now the broadcaster decides to offer PPV content (which they are able to do under the rules). Who becomes the collection agency? How does the box figure out where to send the information?
Now, one can argue that 'they' will figure it all out when the time comes, but there has been very little response from anyone when these questions are raised. Cable wants to see HDTV as much as anyone else, they know that digital signals are going to be the norm, and it will make their systems much better, but they need a few answers from the broadcasters or FCC first.
BTW: HDTV uses the same 6MHz as analog video. It is just compressed digital. The modulation format is 8 or 16 VSB. 8VSB is used for over the air broadcasts, 16VSB is for cable. And, cablemodems are not the same as digital cable. They use similar technology, but are not related in any way.
It is not necessarly ready for HDTV. Some of the newer boxes (that will be released by GI/Motorola this summer) will decode just about anything you throw down the pipe.
That being said, it does decode an encripted MPEG 2 signal that has been multiplexed on a 6MHz carrier of some sort. Much like a standard def HDTV stream. However, the RF section is completely different (HD uses 8- or 16-VSB modulation, Digital cable uses QAM-64).
Well, standards in video are a little strange. The standard for color television in the US (NTSC) was never ratified, broadcasters just started using it, manufacturers (RCA) just built sets and production equipment the way they (RCA) wanted, and next thing you know, we have a color television standard. However, there is nothing that says a broadcaster MUST transmit NTSC video, just accepted practices.
What are they going to do about the 'stuck on' transmitter problem (be it simple hardware failure or something more unpleasant)? How does one go about finding that transmitter?
That is somewhat easy. Just design the transmitters to have a TX_time_out variable that won't let the tranmitter stay on for more than a few seconds.
depends on your idea of mobile. Most services that are provided on goesynchronous sats require a dish/feedhorn combo, properly aimed at the service, etc. I really doubt you'd want to be walking down the street, pull out your palm, compass, dish, look for good southern (in the US) exposure with no trees/buildings in the way, check the elevation for the area you happen to be in at the time, cable everything together, peak out the dish, and finally, you can get the latest stock report.
Even though cellular services are just now getting rampped up in medium sized markets, they will be the mobile way to go in a year or so.
Actually, I get very good quality out of a 27GB IDE drive running at 7200RPM. I have a Pinacle DC10+. It is an M-JPEG capture card. I bought it when the DV cards were much more expensive, and my camcorder at the time didn't have DV out anyway.
Since IPv6 is a way off, and people seem to have trouble setting things up properly, the providers will begin to embrace these types of modems. Right now, the only modem that has general approval is from Cisco, and it costs about $1,000. Great box, does it all, and runs IOS to boot (work on your CCNE at home). There have been cases where people set up servers wrong and become DHCP servers for an entire town (and everyone gets configured to have the idiot's server as the default gateway -what a mess). Here's a nice, easy to configure, remote admin. solution. Can't wait.
This is not the first time I've heard this subject brought up. Stewart Brand and bunch of other techno-hippies are building a clock in the desert. One thing they want to include is a library. They are using a laser-etching method to store pages of information.
I don't know what your defination of cheap is, but you can get a Libretto (discontinued, or at least pulled from their website) or Sony Picturebook -now with 12 Gig HD. They will do everything you want.
I've used NT 3.51 in situations where the servers have been running for months without a burp. However, with NT 4.0, I've seen lots of problems, most of which fall under the 'odd problems' catagory. The biggest thing about NT is that you've got to have stable aplications/services that do EXACTLY what they are supposed to do. If they deviate in any way from what MS tells the programmers to do, you will have problems (remember earlier versions of IIS?).
We used it for playback of MPEG 1 video, along with storage and database (SQL server) aplications. For the most part, the playback boxes and DB servers never seemed to burp, and it was usually hardware related. However, the software for the encoder station seemed to crash all the time. I'm sure the code running the encoder had some bugs that violated something in the OS. Now, I'm sure that if the OS was more strict about coding and what the application could get away with, there would have been fewer problems.
I'm using mine as the ultimate PDA/MP3/portable internet terminal/personal navigation device/whatever. The cost turns out to be about the same as all the seperate devices, and it gets a lot of attention from the techno-challenged palm users. The only down side is the long wake up times, and of course, the poor (in comparison to the palm) battery life.
BTW: I recently added voice recognition software to make up for the terrible keyboard. Now if I could program voice activated macros for launching applications...
Re:The newbie effect -- only the web exists
on
Is Usenet Dying?
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· Score: 1
This is very true. When I got involved in the Interent, the new big thing was Gopher. Everyone had a Gopher interface of some sort, and it was useful. I actually was wanting a 'net connection BECAUSE of news, and that was the big deal of the day (this was in the days of fidonet et al). I still enjoy a few select newsgroups, most of them with comp. and rec. in the name. Most people who know anything about news think it all starts with alt. That's fine with me.
I tend to look at the web much like I looked at AOL: the Internet with training wheels. Once people get bored with the web, they'll rediscover usenet and some of the other features of the Internet.
Have to agree with you. Go to your library sometime and look for old copies of Creative Computing. Lots of computer manufacturers, most with some interesting machines, all gone now.
Or, how about getting the whole thing in, only to find, it doesn't work! So, you go over the code, line by line, again and again. You're sure everything it is right, but it still doesn't happen.
Then next month's magazine has the bug fix. Of course, you've given up on that one cause there's some shiny new program in this one. So, off you go, typing away. When will you learn?:)
Yes, there is a standard, HDTV (or DTV). It should be possible to get the lower resoultion flavors of DTV to go through a cablemodem or DSL line without much of a problem. Check out the ATSC website
With the rate that cable/dsl is being deployed this year, most of the current streamming media formats will become useless in the next few years, as long as the backbones and servers can handle high bit-rate connections. Most of these connections can handle a 300Mbps connection without any real problem, other than the routers and backbones they run through.
The other extreme to this is driving a car. Imagine seeing a well dressed man getting out of the car at the Quick-e-mart, opening the hood and proceeding to pump gas into the coolant overflow bottle (or better yet, just spraying it all over the engine). That's the sort of thing that happens with computers these days. I get so tired of people telling me they need more memory, because they can't save the 2 meg proposal with flashy graphics to their floppy. Or, that they prefer saving to floppy disk because they are afraid of a hard drive crash (even though the modern HDD will outlast the floppy).
This is why M$ is introducing server side Office this year. In a sense, admins are giving up, and telling aplication designers to lock the users down.
A proper basic computer course can work wonders. As an example, I use 2 people that I have worked with. Both know nothing about computers. The first one I just put the machine in (she told me she had taken some classes at the local business school and knew what she was doing). I hated fixing her machine. Most of the time she called because a "virus" was deleting her files. It turns out that I could find them without any problem (all over the place). She also had (at the time) the fastest machine in the office, but was always compliaing about how slow it was. When I'd check, she had installed all sorts of junk that was hogging up resources. The second person I made a few simple segestions (such as keeping folders for his documents, downloaded items, etc, and a few advisories about installing extra software) to him when he got his machine. Most of what I hear from him has been "how can I get/do this" not complaints about the machine.
I work for a broadband provider. We do all the setup necessary to get people online. A good percentage of people (not the majority) install the software and hardware themselves. The folks who have us do the install usually have AOL's network adaptor installed. I think people get AOL because it is easy to set up, but in the end, companies that are willing to do what we do (provide on-site service and installation) will blow everyone else away. Sure, it costs money, but at least we know it was done right, and we get to spend a few minutes with the customer showing them how the service works.
I have to agree that CIS did plenty to get people thinking about connection their Ataris and Comodores to the world. And, their moderated forums were the best for years (made my first e-purchase on one of them) - way, way better than FidoNet et. al. But, they couldn't survive the tidal wave of the web. After all, once you got a PPP account (borrowed from a friend in my case), Mosaic blew away anything Compuserve could do with the/HMI interface.
Sorry. It has been tried, and failed. McDonalds knows they can completly automate their kitchens and deliver sandwitches at an incredibly high margin, and better consistancy (what McDonalds is really about). However, in tests they found that customers want to see the bright smiling faces behind the steam trays. Somthing about helping HS kids learn about work, etc.
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As a theoritical example: Congressman complains about the HD land grab. Network news doesn't like his comment, so they make sure they only get his "bad" side, the one with the mole. And, they screw with his lighting a little bit. On a subconcious level, people think he's not someone they want representing them.
Now, when election time comes along, they find every little mistake on the campaign trail and make sure it gets on the air. They continue to point their cameras at every one of his physical flaws. Third party candidates get a lot of coverage. Next thing you know, he's looking for a job.
Don't think this hasn't happened before. Think about the last presidential election. One candidate was loved by the media, one hated. Who won? Why didn't the media like the one guy? Could it be that he thought broadcasters should have to pay for the second channel?
Pay attention to the lighting on 60 minutes this week.
1) Who decides when there are enough sets to turn off the analog signal? How is the verification process going to work? Maybe a question on the 2010 census?
2) Do cable companies have to carry both signals (A and D)? Can they prefer one over the other? Can they convert the digital signal to analog?
3) Can the broadcaster specify which signal they want transmitted? In other words, can they force cable to carry the analog signal, even though most people are watching the HD signal?
4) Do cable companies have to provide all feeds from a broadcaster (in the case of multiplexed signals), or can they just carry the main feed?
5) Assume a cable box provided by the cable company is able to decode the HD signal from the broadcaster. One of the functions of this box is impulse PPV (just click on the 'buy' button, and the box sends purchase back to cable company. Now the broadcaster decides to offer PPV content (which they are able to do under the rules). Who becomes the collection agency? How does the box figure out where to send the information?
Now, one can argue that 'they' will figure it all out when the time comes, but there has been very little response from anyone when these questions are raised. Cable wants to see HDTV as much as anyone else, they know that digital signals are going to be the norm, and it will make their systems much better, but they need a few answers from the broadcasters or FCC first.
BTW: HDTV uses the same 6MHz as analog video. It is just compressed digital. The modulation format is 8 or 16 VSB. 8VSB is used for over the air broadcasts, 16VSB is for cable. And, cablemodems are not the same as digital cable. They use similar technology, but are not related in any way.
That being said, it does decode an encripted MPEG 2 signal that has been multiplexed on a 6MHz carrier of some sort. Much like a standard def HDTV stream. However, the RF section is completely different (HD uses 8- or 16-VSB modulation, Digital cable uses QAM-64).
That is somewhat easy. Just design the transmitters to have a TX_time_out variable that won't let the tranmitter stay on for more than a few seconds.
Even though cellular services are just now getting rampped up in medium sized markets, they will be the mobile way to go in a year or so.
Nah, that's dead technology!
I don't know what your defination of cheap is, but you can get a Libretto (discontinued, or at least pulled from their website) or Sony Picturebook -now with 12 Gig HD. They will do everything you want.
We used it for playback of MPEG 1 video, along with storage and database (SQL server) aplications. For the most part, the playback boxes and DB servers never seemed to burp, and it was usually hardware related. However, the software for the encoder station seemed to crash all the time. I'm sure the code running the encoder had some bugs that violated something in the OS. Now, I'm sure that if the OS was more strict about coding and what the application could get away with, there would have been fewer problems.
BTW: I recently added voice recognition software to make up for the terrible keyboard. Now if I could program voice activated macros for launching applications...
I tend to look at the web much like I looked at AOL: the Internet with training wheels. Once people get bored with the web, they'll rediscover usenet and some of the other features of the Internet.
Have to agree with you. Go to your library sometime and look for old copies of Creative Computing. Lots of computer manufacturers, most with some interesting machines, all gone now.
Then next month's magazine has the bug fix. Of course, you've given up on that one cause there's some shiny new program in this one. So, off you go, typing away. When will you learn? :)
With the rate that cable/dsl is being deployed this year, most of the current streamming media formats will become useless in the next few years, as long as the backbones and servers can handle high bit-rate connections. Most of these connections can handle a 300Mbps connection without any real problem, other than the routers and backbones they run through.
This is why M$ is introducing server side Office this year. In a sense, admins are giving up, and telling aplication designers to lock the users down.
A proper basic computer course can work wonders. As an example, I use 2 people that I have worked with. Both know nothing about computers. The first one I just put the machine in (she told me she had taken some classes at the local business school and knew what she was doing). I hated fixing her machine. Most of the time she called because a "virus" was deleting her files. It turns out that I could find them without any problem (all over the place). She also had (at the time) the fastest machine in the office, but was always compliaing about how slow it was. When I'd check, she had installed all sorts of junk that was hogging up resources. The second person I made a few simple segestions (such as keeping folders for his documents, downloaded items, etc, and a few advisories about installing extra software) to him when he got his machine. Most of what I hear from him has been "how can I get/do this" not complaints about the machine.