If this is just a cheap way of eliminating the mighty overpaid news anchor, yea, I'll be disapointed. Yes, it will be nothing but eye candy. However, if it is something that will make news on the web a less "hands-on" system (ie: have to search for story, sit and read it, can't really do anything else while surfing), I'd buy it. There are some advantages to having a passive experience when consuming information. The biggest, by far, is that you can multitask. An example: Eating dinner while catching up on what MY stocks did today (who really cares about the latest Linux IPO if I didn't get in on it). Or, spending time with your wife and/or children. I could see some system similiar to the Tivio "thumbs up/thumbs down" system to decide if a story is of interest to you or not.
Re:If I have a screen, why waste it on a human hea
on
Virtual Newscaster
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· Score: 1
Actually, research done at AT&T Labs has shown that a head helps with comprehension. Take a look here for examples of what they've been doing with text to speech. Then check out the examples with a talking head. It seems a little easier to listen to the voice when there's a head associated.
I often wonder why no one has done this before. the technology has been around for a while (there are just 16 different lip positions to re-create the entire English language). Just morph between them, and you've got realistic lip movement.
I've been interested in this sort of technology for years, since I first got a speech box for my Atari 8-bit. It came with a little program that would simulate lips on the montor while it spoke. Very crude, but effective.
The real question is what this will mean to current broadcast television. It should be possible to create text scripts that will take into account that my personal news will select different stories than yours, and write generic "bumper" text to chain stories together. This way, checking on my stocks on quote.yahoo.com becomes something that I do while eating dinner, sitting at the dinner table, instead of at the computer. This is a product for the set top, not the desktop.
but it just goes to prove that if you just inforce your AUP (it ain't just there for looks yanno) you don't have the problem. All @Home really needs to do is grab a bunch of techs who aren't doing anything, give 'em the spams, access to query the logging server and I bet within a few days they wouldn't have a problem anymore.
Ah, the AUP. The fun thing about @home's AUP is that it is slightly different for every cable partner. Also, by adhering to the AUP, you end up pissing off 1/2 the subscriber base who sets up an FTP: server on their home machine (so that they can transfer files from their work machine easily).
As for finding a few techs that don't have anything else to do, I get the impression that everyone in the place has too much to do. All those phone calls to tech support have to go somewhere, and keeping the network alive makes plate spinning look easy. However, this is no excuse for allowing 1) tons of spam to propagate through their network, and 2) not watching out for their subscriber base (after all, _if_ what they claim about the mis-configured proxy servers causing the problem is true, it means people are at a greater risk than they should be).
Finally, I would hate to think that @home may be blaming proxy servers to get an excuse to get rid of them. After all, the big reason to use one is for NAT, and @home charges for additional IPs. If you can use 1 IP to get all your computers connected, why buy more?
Please don't patent this... It's been tried. Bell Atlantic Stargazer. First use of ADSL (main reason it is Adsl and not just plain 'ol DSL). Since they couldn't cram more than one MPEG-like stream down the pipe, they put together a PPV system that would let you choose re-broadcasts of programs as well as movies, etc. Huge failure. The infrastructure cost was so high, people didn't really want to pay for each program, and, with the national average 8.5 hours of TV per night, ended up costing consumers about $100 per month.
Well, sure. No one can be totally objective. The best to hope for is that our news sources are not overt in their opinion. For example, CBS "News" does some amazing things with lighting. The bad guy is almost always lit with some heavy shadows and a dark background, while the good guy is lit like an angel. If you don't believe me, watch 60 Minutes with the sound off. Very educational.
Re:Just remove the middleman -- read reuters
on
Live or Memorex?
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· Score: 1
Agreed. At some point there will be enough viewpoints, and someone will develop a way to compare each story easily and automatically. When enough people delivering a story agree, it will be The Truth (tm).
Keep in mind, though, that all these great tools are fine for today's TV, but they just don't work on HDTV. The processing needed to do these types of effects on such a large space either don't exist or are way, way too expensive.
I finally got off Casio last year. Had it with the cheap plastic bands and geek look. Got a Sieko kenitic. Looks like a regular watch, but flip it over and see the counterweight for charging the capicitor (still geek IMHO). Also the most accurate watch I've ever owned, loosing 1 sec every 3-4 months. However, the camera watch does look interesting. I just hope they have a version with a decent case.
Give me a break. It isn't wine, or even fine art. Both magazines are what they are: Jr High humor. Great when you're in the 5th grade, but most of us outgrew it by 8th.
I have to agree. Writing some nice little routine in 6502 assembler, converting to decimal, poking it into page 6 (on Atari) and writing a basic program with 1 USR command. I really miss it.
Does anyone remember, oh, I don't know, Digital? How about IBM? Control Data? Atari? Comodore?
Operating systems that run on all types of hardware is a recent thing. It is only due to Micro$oft that we think in terms of "standard" systems. There wasn't even a standard BASIC out there. I'm really amazed when I see comments like this on slashdot. Doesn't anyone have a memory anymore? There really was no reason for Apple to OEM anything, given past practices of the industry. MS was the first (OK, UNIX was really first, but it took years to beat out DEC and IBM's systems) to sell their OS to anyone (as long as you could get a BIOS chip).
Sorry, but I have to disagree. Have you ever been robbed? Our office got broken into a few years ago, and since I was the operations manager, I got called. The police found the guy in a matter of hours, recovered our stuff, and gathered enough fingerprints to make sure they had a good case. I had to be at the courthouse for the arainment (sp), but I didn't have to appear, since his lawyer saw the overwhelming evedence. If Ramsey is guilty (remember, they had to prove intent to sell spying equipment, which according to the story, the salesperson was steering away from), they should have to pay the concequences. If found innocent, they should get their property returned. Sure, it is difficult for Ramsey when they loose their inventory, but they do have the right to sue the gov for damages.
The police should be eliminated and replaced with something better. What needed service do they perform that privately-hired investigators could not do better? Issuing traffic tickets?
Again, I point to our break in. Would I have had the mindset to get the best possible private investigator when we haven't had a break in yet? How about my boss, who did't think we needed an alarm (even though the corporation requires them for all offices). Add a profit margin the somewhat high cost of police protection, liability and malpractice insurance, and SG&A (over 1/2 the cost of a product/service in some cases), and I think we're getting a bargin.
Police are truly what the hippies of the 60s used to call them: pigs.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I have a feeling that they are very frustrated because of all the technicalities (most of which are necessary, IMHO), conflicting laws, no clear leadership, etc. Yes, there are bad cops, bad laws, bad lawyers, and bad politicians. But, there are plenty of good ones, too. They just don't make the evening news.
Remember that only about 2 million folks have a cablemodem, and far fewer have DSL. I have @home, for example, and their servers get overloaded when at peak usage. There's still a need for compression, if only because the server side is not quite ready for millions of people streaming content. The few bits that need dished out the better. And, that new 27 Gig HD (thanks, Santa) will hold far more if I can store it compressed.
Lenin wasn't a monster. His society was actually quite utopian. However, he forgot about human greed. The people in the former USSR had great intentions, but it would never work, since power tends to go to one's head. And, unless everyone gets on the bus, chances are comunism will be doomed to failure. Think about the whole hippie movement in the US, or the squatter movement in G. Brittan. Most of the time a commune will fall apart, mostly because no one wants to do what is necessary, and the rewards don't match the effort.
It is almost a shame that the USSR quickly went down the road it did. There really was no reason for a strong centralized government, and AFAIK, Lenin never said centralization was needed. That all came later, since the "leaders" of the USSR couldn't possibly think of self governance as a possible outcome.
Anyone remember Dolby SR? It claims to get better than CD quality out of a cassette tape. They were putting it in analog 2 track pro machines for a while, but I don't think it is in use much anymore.
This technology is similiar. Tape had a 50 year head start over digital recording, and look how long it took for digital to take over. Convience, low noise floors and consistancy will always win out over high resolution. Also, check out some of the articles in Broadcast Engineering for what HDTV really means for most of the world. According to studies of visual acuity done years ago, most of us won't really notice much of a difference in HDTV's resolution (unless you have a wall size projector, and you sit very close to it). But, what we will notice is lower noise floors, and better color reproduction.
The reason DVD (and most DV formats) look better than the analog equivalant is becuase of noise. It is the same reason that your compact disc sounds "better" than your LPs. The noise floor is SO much lower on a digital signal. If you do critical viewing on just about any consumer digital video format, you will see motion and color artifacts all over the place.
The trend over the past few years has been to get fewer fixed wireless devices (such as television) and throw that bandwidth to moble devices. For example, older TVs used to go up to channel 83 UHF. Now they only go to chan 69. The bandwidth was used for AMPS cell phones. The same plan is on tap for HDTV. All HDTV will be UHF, and the gvt hopes to auction the freed-up bandwith.
Remember that most of the available bandwith in the US is reserved for Military use. That's not likely to change any time soon. Also, there is not much really useful bandwidth available. If the frequency is too high, it is easily blocked. Too low, and it becomes tough to call something portable (1/4 wave dipole antenna is mesured in feet). That's one of the big reasons the VHF channels are where they are (and FM radio). The wavelength is just right.
Actually, the Philips CD recorder reads something on the disk to make sure it is a real music CDR. The "data" CDRs don't work (unless you know the hack).
Actually, the main problem seems to be the connection to the backbone. The typical D/L channel for cablemodems is 30Mbps. Since cablemodems run to the CPE on 10baseT, there is little chance of your neighbors maxing out the sytem. While it is true that you will reach a point where the cable system will be a bottleneck, the truth is there just aren't that many customers in most areas at this time. Most areas are having problems with the connection outside the cable system (in the case of @home, to the data centers), as well as maintance issues with the plant effecting speed.
As for DOCSIS having QOS controls, most areas have not implemented it at this time (the SF bay area being one huge exception). In fact, not all equipment is even able to implement QOS, although they are working on it.
Re:What about the lemmings in modern-day USA?
on
The Year 1000
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· Score: 1
Most people who are pushing this idea of 2001 being the start of the new millennium forget one thing: the calender is based on the estimated birth of Christ. Now, you may not believe he was the son of God, but it is a little hard to argue that he was born 1 year old. That would make it possible to have a year 0. After all, how old was I from from June 10, 1968 (my date of birth) to June 10, 1969? 1 year old?
The thing that makes all this work is the fact that the modern calender wasn't in use at the time it was started.
NO WAY! Sitting in front of a keyboard/monitor can be very exciting! All you have to do is have a bunch of strange camera moves. Look at movies like Hackers, Sneakers, and WarGames. Or all those commercials for just about any.com?
Wargames was my favorite. How many times did they use the dolly shot of the W.O.P.A.R.? Almost makes one want to be a programer. Or a hacker. Or an actor. Maybe I'll just watch the movie. Much more exciting.
Read the book _Built_To_Last_ by James Collins and Jerry Porras. They studied several companies (including Disney) that have been in existance for over 50 yrs (and are looked at as the best of the best), and tried to figure out why. One of big common threads is that there is a "cult-like" culture within the company.
This makes some strange things happen, such as extreme secracy, distrust of outsiders, and no bad news.
Think about IBM in the 1960's. If you were IBM, you bled blue, you only associated with other IBMers, you had to wear the uniform, etc. It should be noted that IBM's greatest success was in the 60's. {OK, IBM's most profitable time was in the late 1980s, but that was due to getting customers to purchase all the hardware instead of leasing}.
I still can't figure out why Jobs killed the Newton! Having used one for a while (until it was stolen and cleaned of all data), I have been searching for a suitable replacement. NOTHING comes close to matching the usefulness of this PDA. It just needed to be cheaper.
If someone was to create a Newton OS PDA, I'd be there in a minute. Maybe we should petition Apple to release the source code.
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I often wonder why no one has done this before. the technology has been around for a while (there are just 16 different lip positions to re-create the entire English language). Just morph between them, and you've got realistic lip movement.
I've been interested in this sort of technology for years, since I first got a speech box for my Atari 8-bit. It came with a little program that would simulate lips on the montor while it spoke. Very crude, but effective.
The real question is what this will mean to current broadcast television. It should be possible to create text scripts that will take into account that my personal news will select different stories than yours, and write generic "bumper" text to chain stories together. This way, checking on my stocks on quote.yahoo.com becomes something that I do while eating dinner, sitting at the dinner table, instead of at the computer. This is a product for the set top, not the desktop.
Ah, the AUP. The fun thing about @home's AUP is that it is slightly different for every cable partner. Also, by adhering to the AUP, you end up pissing off 1/2 the subscriber base who sets up an FTP: server on their home machine (so that they can transfer files from their work machine easily).
As for finding a few techs that don't have anything else to do, I get the impression that everyone in the place has too much to do. All those phone calls to tech support have to go somewhere, and keeping the network alive makes plate spinning look easy. However, this is no excuse for allowing 1) tons of spam to propagate through their network, and 2) not watching out for their subscriber base (after all, _if_ what they claim about the mis-configured proxy servers causing the problem is true, it means people are at a greater risk than they should be).
Finally, I would hate to think that @home may be blaming proxy servers to get an excuse to get rid of them. After all, the big reason to use one is for NAT, and @home charges for additional IPs. If you can use 1 IP to get all your computers connected, why buy more?
Keep in mind, though, that all these great tools are fine for today's TV, but they just don't work on HDTV. The processing needed to do these types of effects on such a large space either don't exist or are way, way too expensive.
In the meantime, be careful of what you see.
Operating systems that run on all types of hardware is a recent thing. It is only due to Micro$oft that we think in terms of "standard" systems. There wasn't even a standard BASIC out there. I'm really amazed when I see comments like this on slashdot. Doesn't anyone have a memory anymore? There really was no reason for Apple to OEM anything, given past practices of the industry. MS was the first (OK, UNIX was really first, but it took years to beat out DEC and IBM's systems) to sell their OS to anyone (as long as you could get a BIOS chip).
Sorry about the rant.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. Have you ever been robbed? Our office got broken into a few years ago, and since I was the operations manager, I got called. The police found the guy in a matter of hours, recovered our stuff, and gathered enough fingerprints to make sure they had a good case. I had to be at the courthouse for the arainment (sp), but I didn't have to appear, since his lawyer saw the overwhelming evedence. If Ramsey is guilty (remember, they had to prove intent to sell spying equipment, which according to the story, the salesperson was steering away from), they should have to pay the concequences. If found innocent, they should get their property returned. Sure, it is difficult for Ramsey when they loose their inventory, but they do have the right to sue the gov for damages.
The police should be eliminated and replaced with something better. What needed service do they perform that privately-hired investigators could not do better? Issuing traffic tickets?
Again, I point to our break in. Would I have had the mindset to get the best possible private investigator when we haven't had a break in yet? How about my boss, who did't think we needed an alarm (even though the corporation requires them for all offices). Add a profit margin the somewhat high cost of police protection, liability and malpractice insurance, and SG&A (over 1/2 the cost of a product/service in some cases), and I think we're getting a bargin.
Police are truly what the hippies of the 60s used to call them: pigs.
Sorry, but I have to disagree. I have a feeling that they are very frustrated because of all the technicalities (most of which are necessary, IMHO), conflicting laws, no clear leadership, etc. Yes, there are bad cops, bad laws, bad lawyers, and bad politicians. But, there are plenty of good ones, too. They just don't make the evening news.
Don't forget - you can't buy a grow light because you might grow pot.
It is almost a shame that the USSR quickly went down the road it did. There really was no reason for a strong centralized government, and AFAIK, Lenin never said centralization was needed. That all came later, since the "leaders" of the USSR couldn't possibly think of self governance as a possible outcome.
This technology is similiar. Tape had a 50 year head start over digital recording, and look how long it took for digital to take over. Convience, low noise floors and consistancy will always win out over high resolution. Also, check out some of the articles in Broadcast Engineering for what HDTV really means for most of the world. According to studies of visual acuity done years ago, most of us won't really notice much of a difference in HDTV's resolution (unless you have a wall size projector, and you sit very close to it). But, what we will notice is lower noise floors, and better color reproduction.
The reason DVD (and most DV formats) look better than the analog equivalant is becuase of noise. It is the same reason that your compact disc sounds "better" than your LPs. The noise floor is SO much lower on a digital signal. If you do critical viewing on just about any consumer digital video format, you will see motion and color artifacts all over the place.
The trend over the past few years has been to get fewer fixed wireless devices (such as television) and throw that bandwidth to moble devices. For example, older TVs used to go up to channel 83 UHF. Now they only go to chan 69. The bandwidth was used for AMPS cell phones. The same plan is on tap for HDTV. All HDTV will be UHF, and the gvt hopes to auction the freed-up bandwith.
Remember that most of the available bandwith in the US is reserved for Military use. That's not likely to change any time soon. Also, there is not much really useful bandwidth available. If the frequency is too high, it is easily blocked. Too low, and it becomes tough to call something portable (1/4 wave dipole antenna is mesured in feet). That's one of the big reasons the VHF channels are where they are (and FM radio). The wavelength is just right.
As for DOCSIS having QOS controls, most areas have not implemented it at this time (the SF bay area being one huge exception). In fact, not all equipment is even able to implement QOS, although they are working on it.
The thing that makes all this work is the fact that the modern calender wasn't in use at the time it was started.
Wargames was my favorite. How many times did they use the dolly shot of the W.O.P.A.R.? Almost makes one want to be a programer. Or a hacker. Or an actor. Maybe I'll just watch the movie. Much more exciting.
Read the book _Built_To_Last_ by James Collins and Jerry Porras. They studied several companies (including Disney) that have been in existance for over 50 yrs (and are looked at as the best of the best), and tried to figure out why. One of big common threads is that there is a "cult-like" culture within the company.
This makes some strange things happen, such as extreme secracy, distrust of outsiders, and no bad news.
Think about IBM in the 1960's. If you were IBM, you bled blue, you only associated with other IBMers, you had to wear the uniform, etc. It should be noted that IBM's greatest success was in the 60's. {OK, IBM's most profitable time was in the late 1980s, but that was due to getting customers to purchase all the hardware instead of leasing}.
I still can't figure out why Jobs killed the Newton! Having used one for a while (until it was stolen and cleaned of all data), I have been searching for a suitable replacement. NOTHING comes close to matching the usefulness of this PDA. It just needed to be cheaper.
If someone was to create a Newton OS PDA, I'd be there in a minute. Maybe we should petition Apple to release the source code.