There is an add-on board for the Commodore 64 called the SuperCPU that features a 20 MHz WDC 65816 processor. It also supports up to 16MB of direct memory (w/o bank switching). Recall that the 65816 uses hard-wired 1-byte ops as opposed to the microcoded 2-byte ops that the 68000 uses, so for many instructions, the 65816 is much faster cycle-for-cycle.
That said, I've heard of rumors of somebody making a prototype add-on board using a MC 68EC020, hanging the original C64 chipset and a small bit of memory (for 8-bit DMA) off of the 6800 synchronous bus and the rest of main memory off of the 68K asynchronous bus.
Heck, bump it up to a full 68030 or 68040 and you could run BSD with Apache on your C64.
Nvidia could get around their lack of a complete platform through the purchase of VIA. Their C3 line could be ramped in such a way to compete with AMD and Intel's processor lines.
Furthermore, VIA's processor division does have some experience with blended CPU+GPU designs from the MediaGX days.
The major problem, though, is that the C3 line is more of an embedded processor design than a mainstream one. But that may not be bad for integrated systems for devices like laptops.
KDE 4 has the potential to be truly revolutionary, but at this point, it's all good looks and severely lacking in functionality.
That's not necessarily such a bad thing.
This allows for the new framework to get out into public hands as a stable environment. More conservative users can continue to use the older v3 branch until v4 is brought up to speed.
Besides, not everyone needs all of those extra features, so why should they wait? You can see this with several KDE "lite" compiler packages available.
As an example, I have an old AMD K6-2/500 (384MB PC100 mem, Nv5700u grfx, 80GB Seagate 7200.6 disk, ALI Aladdin-V bridge) running FreeBSD 6.3, KDE 4.0.1 and Firefox 3.0b4. I keep it around as a toy for the nostalgia factor. Amazingly, KDE4 runs very well under it. It is just a hair slower than the quite spartan Xfce4 window manager. Running through various menus and configuration options is quite acceptable, if far from zippy. This compares to KDE3, which was borderline unusable on the same system.
--
Disclaimer: my entire FreeBSD environment (kernel, userland, xorg, kde, firefox, qt and the like) were built from source using the -march=k6-2 -o2 -ffast-math options
Precompiled binaries are for gnubies.;)
Cheated and compiled it using my K8/3800+
Even though KDE is, IMHO, better than GNOME, issues surrounding the license model of Qt kept it from being wholly adopted by all parties. As a result, a GNU version came about.
This is not unlike how GNU/Linux came to be due to the lawsuit surrounding BSD/OS from BSDi.
As far as I'm aware, all the HD channels in the UK use H.264
I'm specifically talking about terrestrial broadcasts (DVB-T, ATSC OTA). My understanding is that the UK still uses MPEG-2 for its DVB-T transmissions, although BSkyB is talking about MPEG-4 for some of its multiplexes.
As for private cable and satellite systems, they have more ability to use what systems they like. I've seen some use ATSC with 256QAM using MPEG-4/AVC, others using 16VSB with MPEG-2. In the US, DirecTV is deploying DVB-S2 with H.264 for its HD and local "spot beam" stations. Dish Network is currently experimenting with DVB-S2.
Of course, this is where the issue in the article comes into play. Private carriers [in the United States] are not required to utilize a minimum resolution and/or bandwidth. As a result, they can take a 1920x1080i 19.39Mbps 8VSB MPEG-2 terrestrial feed and convert it to 1280x1080i 8Mbps 256QAM MPEG-4/AVC cable signal, yet still get away with calling it "HD".
Many of the countries (see below) that plan on utilizing MPEG-4 H.264/AVC are those that are somewhat late to the digital television game. The United States, Germany, France, Japan and the UK have been broadcasting digital terrestrial transmissions for almost a decade now. Given that the MPEG-4 standard wasn't ratified until 1998, it was too late to be chosen for either the ATSC, DVB-T or ISDB-T standards.
Catalonia, Estonia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Russia and Slovenia all plan on deploying MPEG-4/H.264 with DVB-T. Poland and Ukraine are currently testing with MPEG-2, but plan to adopt MPEG-4/H.264 as their final video codec. Brazil and Venezuela are deploying H.264 with ISDB-T.
Note that the United States did include both MPEG-4/H.264 and Microsoft-VC1 as part of the E-VSB extension for ATSC. This will allow broadcasters to have a more error-resistant sub-channel for mobile and deep fringe receivers. However, the use of MPEG-4 for the primary digital channel is some time away.
During a Congressional hearing during the mid-80s
on
Must a CD Cost $15.99?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I recall there was a Congressional hearing sometime back during the 1980s when several CEOs from various music companies were forced to testify as to why the cost of compact discs were so much higher than audio tape.
One lady in specific stated that it was due to the higher manufacturing costs associated with digital mastering and compact disc pressing. She continued to state that as the technology became more mature, it would fall in price.
Back then, a compact disc was often between $10 and $12. Today, they are often between $12 and $18. While adjusted for inflation, the real cost of an audio CD has come down somewhat, that cost has not dropped at the same rate as the technology needed to create a disc. In short, we are getting ripped off.
Furthermore, as the article states near the end, most of the costs are due to "fuzzy" expenses as opposed to manufacturing and the costs associated with "brick and mortar" retail outlets. So again, while some prices have come down, others may have gone up.
/haven't purchased a new CD in over seven years //have no plans of doing so anytime soon ///expects the music industry to shrink by over half within the next decade
There are a huge number of undersea cables and pipes that currently reside on the surface of the ocean floor. How will they be affected by this device?
Furthermore, even if the "water knife" does not damage existing infrastructure, it will still be there when you go to run your new cable. Unless you manage to thread your cable under it somehow, there will be points where it will be exposed above the soil where it junctions with existing cable. Perhaps that's an acceptable issue today, but in a century when we have millions of miles of fiber-optics undersea, it may not.
FTA:The first one is that, from many points of view, Microsoft and Intel come from an enterprise background. They're enterprise-centric. So in many respects the consumer market, from their point of view, is an after market for stuff really designed for the enterprise
This is because enterprise customers have a higher rate of legitimate purchases than home consumers (what is the rate of Windows piracy in China and India?). Furthermore, while enterprise customers may receive deeper discounts on their bulk-OEM licenses than home consumers, they counter that buy purchasing more lucrative packages (how many home users are using XP Server or Advanced Datacenter?).
FTA:So certainly Intel is producing a new generation of chips that have CPU and GPU on the same die which share access to the cache--the L1 cache--coming out in maybe 2009.
You know, Cyrix tried something similar back in the late 1990s with their MediaGX 5x86 processor. Granted, the MediaGX did not have the level of integration that Intel is proposing, but one has to ask: is this really a good thing? Will the video run as a separate core, with a level of autonomy, or will it be more tightly coupled? Will this cause contention between the VPUs and ALUs on die?
Also, how many video cards does the average person have before they toss a system? My current K8/3800+ is on its second video card (upgraded from dual 6600GTs to a single 8600GTS). I'll most likely keep this system for another two years. Although I doubt it'll be my primary system by then, I do bet that it'll have a new video card.
Since the days of Cyrix and AMD keeping "outdated" sockets are over (remember the Am5x86 for Socket3|5, K6-2/500 for Super7?), I suspect that the life cycle of existing sockets will get shorter (I think SocketA's longevity was a fluke). So, if GPU/VPU systems are integrated on-die, how can we keep systems updated when they are 3 or 4 years old? Will Hypertransport direct add-on GPUs be in our future?
FTA:[Nintendo] shipped off the shelf, cheapo, ATI video chips! And they're killing it!... Nintendo correctly observes that graphics is no longer a differentiating feature; it's a commodity
The use of off-the-shelf components for consoles is nothing new. As an example, the Texas Instruments TMS9918 (and variants) were used in an arse-load of consoles during the mid-1980s (including the ColecoVision, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear and others). It did quite well versus Nintendo's semi-custom chipsets at the time.
So, it is the same game, just with higher-end gear and more expensive R&D budgets? As ray-tracing takes over from current 3D technology, will new coprocessors that are designed specifically for that task be utilized? Yes, you could use more generalized processors (such as POWER, Cell or x64), but then, the original Voodoo cards could have been equipped with a MC68020, too. Right?
FTA:Elgamal says the bad guys can hop on Port 80 and ship FTP through that port, for example, and a firewall wouldn't block the file transfer. Some Internet gateways scan for FTP traffic, such as F-Secure's Internet Gatekeeper, which does so by default.
This completely depends on the firewall or proxy. Many newer perimeter security devices are L7 protocol aware, and will abort any connection over a well known port that doesn't look right. This means that the days of running an SSH daemon on your home rig on port 80 are slowly coming to an end.
Having said that, I believe that many payloads can continue to slip past secure gateway devices via old fashioned encryption. FTP can be wrapped up via SSL/TLS, making payload inspection impossible. How many of those devices can tell the difference between an unencrypted data channel and an encrypted one? Better still, how many of them recognize 'AUTH TLS', 'CCC' or 'CDC' commands? As long as you keep your control channel clear-text, FTP/S looks and acts very similar to regular FTP.
When you have next to nothing, it is very easy to get something since you have almost nowhere to go other than up. However, statistics can be a funny thing when not put into perspective. If you made a gain of 3000% on your money, that's good. When you started out with only 5 cents, in the big picture, that's not very impressive.
That aside, I don't disagree that Linux could see a 200% gain in the next few years. However, once it has exhausted all of the low-hanging fruit in the operating system market, what's next?
The only flaw I see with this logic is that sporting organizations tend to price based on viewer ship patterns. If an event is not successful, it becomes cheaper for ESPN to purchase the rights.
So the whole less/more per subscriber is only valid in some situations. Sports broadcasting is not one of them.
Maybe if they come out with an ESPN-Future, I might bite...
Mark Cuban's HDNet was all I needed for a while. They had the NHL and NLL (National Lacrosse League) in 1920x1080i. Nothing like watching people get the crap beat out of them in HD.
Correction in earlier post - I get those channels free with my digital cable modem, not with digital cable.
ESPN is a shining example of why bundled packages don't work. ESPN is one of the most expensive channels for cable and sat companies to offer. This is, in part, due to the huge costs associated with the acquisition of broadcasting rights for various sporting events by ESPN.
It is compounded by ESPN's growth model, which is to spawn more specialized sporting channels that they then shuffle semi-major sporting events to. This was done with ESPN-2 and is now being done with ESPN-U. (see here) So if I want more of the specialized channels *I* want, I end up paying more for ESPN channels I could care less about.
The icing on the cake is this - about seven years ago, I paid over $600 for an ATSC/DVB-S receiver in order to pick up HD stations. The sat provider that I went with offered several HD channels for free. Several more channels were added to the HD package over the years, but the cost remained the same. This continued until ESPN-HD arrived. Suddenly, I was asked to pay a small fee to continue to watch all of these channels.
I subscribed to it for a while, but why? Most of the programming on ESPN-HD was simply upconvered NTSC analog programming. So I dumped it. Kept my sat service for a few more months then dumped it completely. Now all I get are local channels, TBS, WGN and Discovery that come free with my cable company's digital cable package.
Both my cable co and my former sat company bombard me with offers for HD PVRs and several months of free service. Why? All of it except for one or two channels is nothing but junk to me. The only way for me to pick and choose is to get a C-band sat, which my HOA would never approve.
So in the end, this cartoon from the CSMonitor sums it all up...
Anyone with a video encoding program can freely upscale the resolution of their video stream from 720x480 to 1920x1080. However, what is the point of increasing the resolution when there is no gain in clarity? The detail doesn't just magically appear when you run the video through a +200% resize filter.
If anything, 720p or 1080i analog video is harder to pirate since capture devices for that resolution of component video are so rare.
Personally, I think the lack of analog upscaling in your player it has everything to do with need. Most upper-end digital television sets come with excellent resolution scalers, de-interlacers and inverse-telecine filters. No need to duplicate that circuitry in the DVD player.
The resolution scaler is most likely in there for HDMI so that people who connect the player up to an LCD monitor won't have to rely on the built-in scaler since those built-ins tend to result in a "soft" picture.
In the meantime I... enjoy my current DVD collection in near HD quality.
Most DVD discs here in the States are encoded in Standard Definition resolutions of 480x480i or 720x480i. High Definition resolutions can be as high as 1920x1080p. Even 1280x720p is a huge jump above SD.
Upscaling in DVD players doesn't increase resolution. It is useful when your HD monitor has a poor quality up-sampler or a poor quality de-interlacer. The former may cause poor color or soft images. The later can cause "zebra" effects in fast motion or "jumping" with very high contrast lines.
The HDCP standard was designed for both DVI and HDMI. However, where HDCP is a required feature for HDMI interfaces, it is an optional feature for DVI.
If your DVI monitor supports HDCP, then you are fine. You can even use a HDMI-to-DVI.D cable. The HD-DVD or BluRay player will detect that your monitor has copy protection management and will display at full HD resolution.
If your DVI monitor does not support HDCP, then the HD-DVD or BluRay player will down-rez the video if the disc has the ICT bit enabled.
Are you amazed that they won't upconvert to their component video analog output, or are you amazed that they won't upconvert to any of their analog interfaces (composite and S-Video, too)?
If you are talking about the former, then it is a new shortcoming. Most mid-level DVD players offer resolution upscaling across their component video or RGBHV interfaces. However, I can see how some lower end players would leave out this feature to keep the cost of their HD analog interface circuitry down.
However, if you are wondering why they don't also upconvert across the other two interfaces, a small bit of information about all of the interfaces:
Composite video, S-Video (Y-C) and SCART (Y-C/RGB) interfaces only support standard NTSC/PAL frequencies, or around 500-600 lines of real resolution (interlaced). You can't upconvert the resolution with these connections because they can't handle anything better.
Component video (Y-Cb-Cr) and RGBHV video interfaces are both analog connections that support 720p and 1080i video. Since they both can handle HD resolutions, your DVD can upconvert the signal and properly display it across these connections.
Solar energy is not as "clean" as one might think.
Modern solar cells are subject to many of the same environmental waste hassles that plague the rest of the semiconductor industry. Heavy metals and toxic chemicals are just two of the major byproducts of the manufacturing process.
Furthermore, the high-grade silica required for manufacturing solar cells is becoming increasingly expensive. There was a lull in pricing during the recent semiconductor collapse, but that seems to have come to an end according to recent market reports. The result is a solar cell that is just not cost effective.
Nuclear power will most likely never surpass its existing use as a source of supplemental power for the world market. That said, I disagree with the article in its suggestion that it cannot make a significant dent in carbon emissions.
Nuclear power could very easily become the largest source of power for fixed location consumers. Existing coal and oil plants could simply be replaced with nuclear facilities. This eventual phase-out of legacy power supplies could easily cut carbon emissions by hundreds of tons per year.
However, nuclear power will never become the totally dominant source of all our power needs unless the near future reveals a revolutionary advance in battery or super-capacitor technology. Until then, transportation technology will never be able to efficiently harness power off the Grid. Transportation will continue to use energy sources that are easy to transport and distribute.
The major hold-up with nuclear power is two-fold. First, current generation nuclear reactors use uranium as a fuel source. This fuel creates huge amounts of radioactive waste. Although this waste was once highly desired for nuclear weapons projects in the past, today it is a worthless product that is expensive and dangerous to dispose of. Also, this fuel is quickly becoming scarce. Some scientists suggest that the world has less than 60 years worth of reactor grade uranium at current consumption. Secondly, current generation reactors have a high potential for danger. The horrific blunder of Soviet engineers when running a coolant test at the Chernobyl facility will haunt generations to come. America's own scare at Three-Mile Island brings that fear close to home.
Surprisingly, most of these issues have modern solutions. The French has developed an encapsulated uranium fuel source that places fuel within a heat resistant shell. This shell keeps the density of the fuel low enough that in the event of a coolant failure, the fuel rods never go critical.
Second, scientists have suggested that a switch from uranium to thorium could reduce radioactive waste by over half, and could reduce our plutonium stockpiles by using it as a seed for these new reactors. Furthermore, thorium is a more common element than uranium, with prices being only a fraction of uranium.
However, political pressure will most likely never allow it to happen since traditional power companies fund many anti-nuclear lobbies. Oil and coal hate nuclear. Popular media demonizes nuclear. Environmental laws make it nearly impossible to even whisper nuclear without the threat of civil lawsuits.
As such, we will continue to pump greenhouse gasses into the air. At our current rate, my home in Washington State might experience weather similar to that of Southern California today. Sunshine is good. ..
Slashdot Mirror
It completely depends on if it is stock or not.
There is an add-on board for the Commodore 64 called the SuperCPU that features a 20 MHz WDC 65816 processor. It also supports up to 16MB of direct memory (w/o bank switching). Recall that the 65816 uses hard-wired 1-byte ops as opposed to the microcoded 2-byte ops that the 68000 uses, so for many instructions, the 65816 is much faster cycle-for-cycle.
That said, I've heard of rumors of somebody making a prototype add-on board using a MC 68EC020, hanging the original C64 chipset and a small bit of memory (for 8-bit DMA) off of the 6800 synchronous bus and the rest of main memory off of the 68K asynchronous bus.
Heck, bump it up to a full 68030 or 68040 and you could run BSD with Apache on your C64.
Nvidia could get around their lack of a complete platform through the purchase of VIA. Their C3 line could be ramped in such a way to compete with AMD and Intel's processor lines. Furthermore, VIA's processor division does have some experience with blended CPU+GPU designs from the MediaGX days. The major problem, though, is that the C3 line is more of an embedded processor design than a mainstream one. But that may not be bad for integrated systems for devices like laptops.
Let me rephrase... GNU/Linux might never have become popular had BSD taken hold first.
KDE 4 has the potential to be truly revolutionary, but at this point, it's all good looks and severely lacking in functionality.
;)
That's not necessarily such a bad thing.
This allows for the new framework to get out into public hands as a stable environment. More conservative users can continue to use the older v3 branch until v4 is brought up to speed.
Besides, not everyone needs all of those extra features, so why should they wait? You can see this with several KDE "lite" compiler packages available.
As an example, I have an old AMD K6-2/500 (384MB PC100 mem, Nv5700u grfx, 80GB Seagate 7200.6 disk, ALI Aladdin-V bridge) running FreeBSD 6.3, KDE 4.0.1 and Firefox 3.0b4. I keep it around as a toy for the nostalgia factor. Amazingly, KDE4 runs very well under it. It is just a hair slower than the quite spartan Xfce4 window manager. Running through various menus and configuration options is quite acceptable, if far from zippy. This compares to KDE3, which was borderline unusable on the same system.
--
Disclaimer: my entire FreeBSD environment (kernel, userland, xorg, kde, firefox, qt and the like) were built from source using the -march=k6-2 -o2 -ffast-math options
Precompiled binaries are for gnubies.
Cheated and compiled it using my K8/3800+
That is exactly the reason.
Even though KDE is, IMHO, better than GNOME, issues surrounding the license model of Qt kept it from being wholly adopted by all parties. As a result, a GNU version came about.
This is not unlike how GNU/Linux came to be due to the lawsuit surrounding BSD/OS from BSDi.
As far as I'm aware, all the HD channels in the UK use H.264
I'm specifically talking about terrestrial broadcasts (DVB-T, ATSC OTA). My understanding is that the UK still uses MPEG-2 for its DVB-T transmissions, although BSkyB is talking about MPEG-4 for some of its multiplexes.
As for private cable and satellite systems, they have more ability to use what systems they like. I've seen some use ATSC with 256QAM using MPEG-4/AVC, others using 16VSB with MPEG-2. In the US, DirecTV is deploying DVB-S2 with H.264 for its HD and local "spot beam" stations. Dish Network is currently experimenting with DVB-S2.
Of course, this is where the issue in the article comes into play. Private carriers [in the United States] are not required to utilize a minimum resolution and/or bandwidth. As a result, they can take a 1920x1080i 19.39Mbps 8VSB MPEG-2 terrestrial feed and convert it to 1280x1080i 8Mbps 256QAM MPEG-4/AVC cable signal, yet still get away with calling it "HD".
Many of the countries (see below) that plan on utilizing MPEG-4 H.264/AVC are those that are somewhat late to the digital television game. The United States, Germany, France, Japan and the UK have been broadcasting digital terrestrial transmissions for almost a decade now. Given that the MPEG-4 standard wasn't ratified until 1998, it was too late to be chosen for either the ATSC, DVB-T or ISDB-T standards.
Catalonia, Estonia, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Russia and Slovenia all plan on deploying MPEG-4/H.264 with DVB-T. Poland and Ukraine are currently testing with MPEG-2, but plan to adopt MPEG-4/H.264 as their final video codec. Brazil and Venezuela are deploying H.264 with ISDB-T.
Note that the United States did include both MPEG-4/H.264 and Microsoft-VC1 as part of the E-VSB extension for ATSC. This will allow broadcasters to have a more error-resistant sub-channel for mobile and deep fringe receivers. However, the use of MPEG-4 for the primary digital channel is some time away.
I recall there was a Congressional hearing sometime back during the 1980s when several CEOs from various music companies were forced to testify as to why the cost of compact discs were so much higher than audio tape.
/haven't purchased a new CD in over seven years
//have no plans of doing so anytime soon
///expects the music industry to shrink by over half within the next decade
One lady in specific stated that it was due to the higher manufacturing costs associated with digital mastering and compact disc pressing. She continued to state that as the technology became more mature, it would fall in price.
Back then, a compact disc was often between $10 and $12. Today, they are often between $12 and $18. While adjusted for inflation, the real cost of an audio CD has come down somewhat, that cost has not dropped at the same rate as the technology needed to create a disc. In short, we are getting ripped off.
Furthermore, as the article states near the end, most of the costs are due to "fuzzy" expenses as opposed to manufacturing and the costs associated with "brick and mortar" retail outlets. So again, while some prices have come down, others may have gone up.
There are a huge number of undersea cables and pipes that currently reside on the surface of the ocean floor. How will they be affected by this device?
Furthermore, even if the "water knife" does not damage existing infrastructure, it will still be there when you go to run your new cable. Unless you manage to thread your cable under it somehow, there will be points where it will be exposed above the soil where it junctions with existing cable. Perhaps that's an acceptable issue today, but in a century when we have millions of miles of fiber-optics undersea, it may not.
FTA: The first one is that, from many points of view, Microsoft and Intel come from an enterprise background. They're enterprise-centric. So in many respects the consumer market, from their point of view, is an after market for stuff really designed for the enterprise
... Nintendo correctly observes that graphics is no longer a differentiating feature; it's a commodity
This is because enterprise customers have a higher rate of legitimate purchases than home consumers (what is the rate of Windows piracy in China and India?). Furthermore, while enterprise customers may receive deeper discounts on their bulk-OEM licenses than home consumers, they counter that buy purchasing more lucrative packages (how many home users are using XP Server or Advanced Datacenter?).
FTA: So certainly Intel is producing a new generation of chips that have CPU and GPU on the same die which share access to the cache--the L1 cache--coming out in maybe 2009.
You know, Cyrix tried something similar back in the late 1990s with their MediaGX 5x86 processor. Granted, the MediaGX did not have the level of integration that Intel is proposing, but one has to ask: is this really a good thing? Will the video run as a separate core, with a level of autonomy, or will it be more tightly coupled? Will this cause contention between the VPUs and ALUs on die?
Also, how many video cards does the average person have before they toss a system? My current K8/3800+ is on its second video card (upgraded from dual 6600GTs to a single 8600GTS). I'll most likely keep this system for another two years. Although I doubt it'll be my primary system by then, I do bet that it'll have a new video card.
Since the days of Cyrix and AMD keeping "outdated" sockets are over (remember the Am5x86 for Socket3|5, K6-2/500 for Super7?), I suspect that the life cycle of existing sockets will get shorter (I think SocketA's longevity was a fluke). So, if GPU/VPU systems are integrated on-die, how can we keep systems updated when they are 3 or 4 years old? Will Hypertransport direct add-on GPUs be in our future?
FTA: [Nintendo] shipped off the shelf, cheapo, ATI video chips! And they're killing it!
The use of off-the-shelf components for consoles is nothing new. As an example, the Texas Instruments TMS9918 (and variants) were used in an arse-load of consoles during the mid-1980s (including the ColecoVision, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear and others). It did quite well versus Nintendo's semi-custom chipsets at the time.
So, it is the same game, just with higher-end gear and more expensive R&D budgets? As ray-tracing takes over from current 3D technology, will new coprocessors that are designed specifically for that task be utilized? Yes, you could use more generalized processors (such as POWER, Cell or x64), but then, the original Voodoo cards could have been equipped with a MC68020, too. Right?
FTA: Elgamal says the bad guys can hop on Port 80 and ship FTP through that port, for example, and a firewall wouldn't block the file transfer. Some Internet gateways scan for FTP traffic, such as F-Secure's Internet Gatekeeper, which does so by default.
This completely depends on the firewall or proxy. Many newer perimeter security devices are L7 protocol aware, and will abort any connection over a well known port that doesn't look right. This means that the days of running an SSH daemon on your home rig on port 80 are slowly coming to an end.
Having said that, I believe that many payloads can continue to slip past secure gateway devices via old fashioned encryption. FTP can be wrapped up via SSL/TLS, making payload inspection impossible. How many of those devices can tell the difference between an unencrypted data channel and an encrypted one? Better still, how many of them recognize 'AUTH TLS', 'CCC' or 'CDC' commands? As long as you keep your control channel clear-text, FTP/S looks and acts very similar to regular FTP.
Agreed.
When you have next to nothing, it is very easy to get something since you have almost nowhere to go other than up. However, statistics can be a funny thing when not put into perspective. If you made a gain of 3000% on your money, that's good. When you started out with only 5 cents, in the big picture, that's not very impressive.
That aside, I don't disagree that Linux could see a 200% gain in the next few years. However, once it has exhausted all of the low-hanging fruit in the operating system market, what's next?
The only flaw I see with this logic is that sporting organizations tend to price based on viewer ship patterns. If an event is not successful, it becomes cheaper for ESPN to purchase the rights.
So the whole less/more per subscriber is only valid in some situations. Sports broadcasting is not one of them.
Maybe if they come out with an ESPN-Future, I might bite...
Mark Cuban's HDNet was all I needed for a while. They had the NHL and NLL (National Lacrosse League) in 1920x1080i. Nothing like watching people get the crap beat out of them in HD.
Correction in earlier post - I get those channels free with my digital cable modem, not with digital cable.
Agreed.
ESPN is a shining example of why bundled packages don't work. ESPN is one of the most expensive channels for cable and sat companies to offer. This is, in part, due to the huge costs associated with the acquisition of broadcasting rights for various sporting events by ESPN.
It is compounded by ESPN's growth model, which is to spawn more specialized sporting channels that they then shuffle semi-major sporting events to. This was done with ESPN-2 and is now being done with ESPN-U. (see here) So if I want more of the specialized channels *I* want, I end up paying more for ESPN channels I could care less about.
The icing on the cake is this - about seven years ago, I paid over $600 for an ATSC/DVB-S receiver in order to pick up HD stations. The sat provider that I went with offered several HD channels for free. Several more channels were added to the HD package over the years, but the cost remained the same. This continued until ESPN-HD arrived. Suddenly, I was asked to pay a small fee to continue to watch all of these channels.
I subscribed to it for a while, but why? Most of the programming on ESPN-HD was simply upconvered NTSC analog programming. So I dumped it. Kept my sat service for a few more months then dumped it completely. Now all I get are local channels, TBS, WGN and Discovery that come free with my cable company's digital cable package.
Both my cable co and my former sat company bombard me with offers for HD PVRs and several months of free service. Why? All of it except for one or two channels is nothing but junk to me. The only way for me to pick and choose is to get a C-band sat, which my HOA would never approve.
So in the end, this cartoon from the CSMonitor sums it all up...
I don't think it has anything to do with piracy.
Anyone with a video encoding program can freely upscale the resolution of their video stream from 720x480 to 1920x1080. However, what is the point of increasing the resolution when there is no gain in clarity? The detail doesn't just magically appear when you run the video through a +200% resize filter.
If anything, 720p or 1080i analog video is harder to pirate since capture devices for that resolution of component video are so rare.
Personally, I think the lack of analog upscaling in your player it has everything to do with need. Most upper-end digital television sets come with excellent resolution scalers, de-interlacers and inverse-telecine filters. No need to duplicate that circuitry in the DVD player.
The resolution scaler is most likely in there for HDMI so that people who connect the player up to an LCD monitor won't have to rely on the built-in scaler since those built-ins tend to result in a "soft" picture.
In the meantime I ... enjoy my current DVD collection in near HD quality.
Most DVD discs here in the States are encoded in Standard Definition resolutions of 480x480i or 720x480i. High Definition resolutions can be as high as 1920x1080p. Even 1280x720p is a huge jump above SD.
Upscaling in DVD players doesn't increase resolution. It is useful when your HD monitor has a poor quality up-sampler or a poor quality de-interlacer. The former may cause poor color or soft images. The later can cause "zebra" effects in fast motion or "jumping" with very high contrast lines.
It depends on your DVI monitor.
The HDCP standard was designed for both DVI and HDMI. However, where HDCP is a required feature for HDMI interfaces, it is an optional feature for DVI.
If your DVI monitor supports HDCP, then you are fine. You can even use a HDMI-to-DVI.D cable. The HD-DVD or BluRay player will detect that your monitor has copy protection management and will display at full HD resolution.
If your DVI monitor does not support HDCP, then the HD-DVD or BluRay player will down-rez the video if the disc has the ICT bit enabled.
Are you amazed that they won't upconvert to their component video analog output, or are you amazed that they won't upconvert to any of their analog interfaces (composite and S-Video, too)?
If you are talking about the former, then it is a new shortcoming. Most mid-level DVD players offer resolution upscaling across their component video or RGBHV interfaces. However, I can see how some lower end players would leave out this feature to keep the cost of their HD analog interface circuitry down.
However, if you are wondering why they don't also upconvert across the other two interfaces, a small bit of information about all of the interfaces:
Composite video, S-Video (Y-C) and SCART (Y-C/RGB) interfaces only support standard NTSC/PAL frequencies, or around 500-600 lines of real resolution (interlaced). You can't upconvert the resolution with these connections because they can't handle anything better.
Component video (Y-Cb-Cr) and RGBHV video interfaces are both analog connections that support 720p and 1080i video. Since they both can handle HD resolutions, your DVD can upconvert the signal and properly display it across these connections.
Solar energy is not as "clean" as one might think.
Modern solar cells are subject to many of the same environmental waste hassles that plague the rest of the semiconductor industry. Heavy metals and toxic chemicals are just two of the major byproducts of the manufacturing process.
Furthermore, the high-grade silica required for manufacturing solar cells is becoming increasingly expensive. There was a lull in pricing during the recent semiconductor collapse, but that seems to have come to an end according to recent market reports. The result is a solar cell that is just not cost effective.
Nuclear power will most likely never surpass its existing use as a source of supplemental power for the world market. That said, I disagree with the article in its suggestion that it cannot make a significant dent in carbon emissions.
Nuclear power could very easily become the largest source of power for fixed location consumers. Existing coal and oil plants could simply be replaced with nuclear facilities. This eventual phase-out of legacy power supplies could easily cut carbon emissions by hundreds of tons per year.
However, nuclear power will never become the totally dominant source of all our power needs unless the near future reveals a revolutionary advance in battery or super-capacitor technology. Until then, transportation technology will never be able to efficiently harness power off the Grid. Transportation will continue to use energy sources that are easy to transport and distribute.
The major hold-up with nuclear power is two-fold. First, current generation nuclear reactors use uranium as a fuel source. This fuel creates huge amounts of radioactive waste. Although this waste was once highly desired for nuclear weapons projects in the past, today it is a worthless product that is expensive and dangerous to dispose of. Also, this fuel is quickly becoming scarce. Some scientists suggest that the world has less than 60 years worth of reactor grade uranium at current consumption. Secondly, current generation reactors have a high potential for danger. The horrific blunder of Soviet engineers when running a coolant test at the Chernobyl facility will haunt generations to come. America's own scare at Three-Mile Island brings that fear close to home.
Surprisingly, most of these issues have modern solutions. The French has developed an encapsulated uranium fuel source that places fuel within a heat resistant shell. This shell keeps the density of the fuel low enough that in the event of a coolant failure, the fuel rods never go critical.
Second, scientists have suggested that a switch from uranium to thorium could reduce radioactive waste by over half, and could reduce our plutonium stockpiles by using it as a seed for these new reactors. Furthermore, thorium is a more common element than uranium, with prices being only a fraction of uranium.
However, political pressure will most likely never allow it to happen since traditional power companies fund many anti-nuclear lobbies. Oil and coal hate nuclear. Popular media demonizes nuclear. Environmental laws make it nearly impossible to even whisper nuclear without the threat of civil lawsuits.
As such, we will continue to pump greenhouse gasses into the air. At our current rate, my home in Washington State might experience weather similar to that of Southern California today. Sunshine is good. . .
Thorium reactor acrticle: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68045, 00.html