No Kidding… a COMPUTERIZED toothbrush.
I think, like razors, much of this is just gimmickry.
I am currently watching some shit on the Military Channel themed “what’s the best tank?” And it’s between the M1A2, the Challenger II, the Leopard II, and the LeClerc – this is all so ridiculous! Technology sharing within NATO makes all these weapons just variations on a theme.
I have gotten pretty upset with our hosting service from time-to-time. But it’s times like these which remind me that shit happens even with the biggest and the best of ’em.
Over the past week or two, I’ve been having really slow response, at various times, from various Yahoo! services. Now, I’ve had zero response (can’t even log on) from Yahoo! IM for over half an hour.
Update: close to an hour now, and still nothing – no: there it goes. I’d test it, but there be no-one online just now I particularly want to chat with. đ
Anyway: 50 minutes of down-time is pretty bad for Yahoo! IM. This reflects my hesitance to get into Vonage, or any of those other low-cost VoIP long distance services. I mean, the telephone works more than anything in my life but water and sewer. And I don’t pay much for phone service – why fuck with it?
As of 7:10am local time, Yahoo! IM is down again. I’ll check back from time-to-time. 7:25 – now it’s back up. 7:56 – down for about the last 5 minutes. 8:20 – up now.
This is a response to Reader Scottâs comment to this post
Well Scott – it’s nice to see we still have you as a reader. But, if indeed you have been a reader for over two years, as you say, you must surely understand and appreciate the fact that, on this blog, we don’t mince words. If you act as a fool, you will be called a fool.
And all our readers should know that, were I referring specifically to you, Scott, I would have called you by name. But I used the generalization “some idiot” because your comment was typical of many readers (as well as callers, LttE writers, “People on the Street”, etc., to this or any other media) who seem to have a firmly established opinion, despite any evidence of knowledge, or rational evaluation, of the subject upon which they are commenting.
In the automotive field, I recall some idiot commenting on this post (Sorry, comment threads were deleted from the old MT blog.), who claimed his overboosted Supra Turbo was “better” than a Bentley Continental GT. Well, while I wouldn’t call myself an expert, particularly relative to the luminaries I have been in the presence of, I have had vast experience with tuner cars. And I can say, without reservation, that, while that idiotic reader’s Supra might have been “better” than a Bentley Continental GT in some very limited context, there is no way – NO WAY – that it would be an appropriate Bond Car – particularly to the Bond book reader, who knows that Bond’s car is not simply a pursuit and escape vehicle, but also a meditation chamber.
Anyway, Scott: First let me say that everyone is entitled to their opinion on styling. Personally, while I consider the Chrysler 300 to be visually interesting, and hardly offensive, and the Magnum a pretty great job at doing a station wagon (while not as great as the original Ford Taurus), I look at the Charger and say, âgawd, this piece came from the same people who gave us the Mercedes CLS?â So, perhaps we are in agreement there.
But now, when you talk about engineering, itâs a âol difrnât mataâ. Your âfifty year-oldâ technology citation is, on its face, completely without merit. First, I have examples of crossflow cylinder head designs dating back to the âteens. And DOHC 4VPC designs were being done by Offenhauser, Duesenberg, and others, in the late âtwenties. Bringing this to present-day, the most easily accessible crosspoint is in comparison of the Nissan Titan and the Dodge Ram 1500 Hemi (and, if you want to throw in the Ford F-150 – 5.4 Triton, with itâs SOHC 3VPC format, feel free). Obviously, upon comparison of the âtechnical specificationsâ, the Nissanâs motor is by far the most sophisticated. But, âwhen the rubber meets the roadâ, the comparison is far more muddled. In fact, at another, more obscure, crosspoint â The Jeep Grand Cherokee Hemi can lay the Porsche Cayenne to waste.
But, when you talk about Itâs a Hemi, you are not talking about technology, you are talking about icons, And I can assure you â my mother had a â56 Imperial Crown, and I had a â67 GTX – Hemi is a powerful icon in American car (and popular) culture. And I can also assure you that, in todayâs dismal family sedan market (from which Americaâs PDs prefer to draw their petrol/pursuit vehicles), the Chrysler LX platform (300, Magnum, Charger) stands a good chance of achieving iconic status itself.
…I thought you guys might get a kick out of this post by Randall Halcomb at AutoBlog, with spyshots of a Bugatti evaluation team out with a Saleen S7 twin turbo along as a benchmark. The 987 horsepower, 253 mph Bugatti has eclipsed the 750 horsepower Saleen, and the 806 horsepower Koenigsegg CCR for the moment. But it is rumored that Steve Saleen has a 1000+ HP variation in the works. And Dan Knott, Director of Chrysler Group’s Street and Racing Technologies, expects to see a whole crop of 1000hp supercars in the near future.
Of course, it’s a bit silly to try to compare the two. The Bugatti is a 4300 pound luxury grand tourer, most comparable to the Mercedes McLaren SLR, while the Saleen is a 2950 pound street racer, most competitive with the Koenigsegg CCR or Pagani Zonda F.
By now, every Car Guy in the world knows that figure applies to the incredible new Corvette Z06. I was going to blog on this a month ago. But I wanted to wait until Larry Webster’s Car and Driver article was available online, specifically so I could excerpt this quote:
Europeans gawked at the car and seemed to applaud it. They likely were unaware that they were witnessing the arrival of a car that exposes the majority of European sports cars for what they are: overpriced, underperforming snobs.
Of course, some idiot will likely comment that the Z06 MUST be crap because it is a Chevrolet, or perhaps because of its “50 year-old engine technology” (and it doesn’t even have crossflow heads, like the Chrysler Hemi).
Well, the facts are: While they share the bowtie, Corvette functions as an autonomous division within GM. Indeed, Corvettes have less in common with lesser Chevrolets than Buicks do. As well, the Z06 is a $66,000 technological tour de’force. Even the fact that they got 427 cubic inches out of that “50 year-old engine technology” AND got it to turn 7000 rpm (titanium connecting rods help there) is an engineering wonder. (Note: Lingenfelter has had a 427 small block for several years. But a 427 Lingenfelter engine alone will cost you $25,000).
I suspect, when these start rolling out the dealer’s doors, they will be at a substantial premium over the $66,000 price. But when you consider that you can also expect to pay a huge dealer premium over the price of a $154,000 Ford GT, or a $180,000 Ferrari F430 (IF your Ferrari dealer likes you enough to sell you one at all), that’s par-for-the-course.
I have yet to drive any C6 Corvettes. But I’ve got a lot of experience with C5s in various configurations. And, for all its luster, and despite Road & Track’s Douglas Kott’s claim that the new Z06’s ride is actually more supple than the C5 Z51, the Z06 is really overkill. And, when you consider that, for the price you are likely to actually pay, you can buy yourself a well-optioned C6 coupe (with a removable top – not available on the Z06) AND get your wife a new Dodge Hemi Magnum, it’s advisable to ask yourself if you REALLY need what it has to offer.
I have argued this point since well before I went online (Jan 2000). It is wonderful to finally see it get some legal recognition:
Spyware can constitute illegal trespass on home computers
A federal trial court in Chicago has ruled recently that the ancient legal doctrine of trespass to chattels (meaning trespass to personal property) applies to the interference caused to home computers by spyware. Information technology has advanced at warp speed with the law struggling to keep up, and this is an example of a court needing to use historical legal theories to grapple with new and previously unforeseen contexts in Cyberspace.
Read the whole thing. (must read)
But the article doesn’t bring up the doctrine of limited license – which is important if one is downloading a game with embedded spyware. I don’t know if it came up in the case or not.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit
It’s out. It plays video. It’s bigger than the music only version which means it’s not going to fit any of the accessories I currently own without some rigged up adaptor. So my speakers will be no good before they wear out.
And Jobs has screwed himself again by demanding money from the people who make all those accessories. He learned nothing in the 80s and 90s…nothing.
I won’t buy one until my current one absolutely can’t be fixed because I want a music player…not a video player. Unless of course Suicide Girls (NSFW) decide to do Video Podcasts and then I’ll think about it. And no, I don’t make anything by mentioning Suicide Girls, I’m just a fan.
UPDATE: Of course, if I can burn a DVD of the downloaded videos as easily as I can burn a playlist of tunes to a CD, then we’re talking another thing altogether, but it seems like that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
UPDATE 2: In the comments SteveH points out that while the screen is wider, the Pod itself is not…I looked closer at the specs and…insert Emilie Latella voice here…Nevermind. So…more disk space, color screen, same price. Kinda cool.
I can certainly say this has added to my quality of life:
The harried bartenders at Mariano’s couldn’t squeeze enough limes or blend the drinks fast enough to keep up with demand, though. Customers complained â the signature drink was inconsistent, and it wasn’t even cold.
“I saw my dream evaporating,” Mr. Martinez said. “This was my one shot at being somebody.”
A pit stop at a 7-Eleven proved inspiring. Mr. Martinez spotted a Slurpee machine and knew he’d found the answer. He acquired a soft-serve ice cream machine and started mixing.
“The challenge was to make each drink taste like a blender margarita,” he said. “We kept experimenting â and tasting.”
Once Mr. Martinez hit upon the right recipe â sugar was the secret ingredient, he said â he moved the machine to the bar.
“It became an instant success,” he said. “We didn’t have to sell it.”
Mr. Martinez never got a patent for his margarita machine, so copycats quickly surfaced. Soon, other bars and restaurants were pouring frozen margaritas, and a few claimed to have acquired “Mariano’s secret recipe.”
Ole! đ
Hat Tip: Virginia Postrel
This from Adam Thierer and Wayne Crews at OpinionJournal:
Kofi Annan, Coming to a Computer Near You! The Internet’s long run as a global cyberzone of freedom–where governments take a “hands off” approach–is in jeopardy. Preparing for next month’s U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (or WSIS) in Tunisia, the European Union and others are moving aggressively to set the stage for an as-yet unspecified U.N. body to assert control over Internet operations and policies now largely under the purview of the U.S. In recent meetings, for an example, an EU spokesman asserted that no single country should have final authority over this “global resource.”
I see no good coming of this.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit
This from Chris Kraeuter at Forbes:
BURLINGAME – In a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Sun Microsystems and Google today teamed up to take a swipe at Microsoft’s desktop dominance.
The deal could be a boon for Sun, which has tried with minimal success to use its open source desktop suite, StarOffice, to put a dent in Microsoft’s (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people ) Office monopoly. With Google’s (nasdaq: GOOG – news – people ) backing and a new market approach, the latest deal is a positive for Sun, but the extent of any long term benefit is unclear.
[…]
Google has had no trouble keeping excitement going on its end since before it became a public company, but Sun needs to make sure it continues to capitalize on this opportunity if it is to truly the reap rewards.
Anything that promotes the spread of quality open source sodtware sounds good to me.
An inexpensive, super-rugged laptop for elementary schoolers:
And why not offer this machine in the United States? We are a wealthy nation, but I believe there would be a market for super-cheap, rugged, rechargeble-by-hand laptops right here.
If offered for $200 or less, I would buy two of these machines immediately – one for my 3rd grader, another for my 1st grader. No way am I giving these rowdy guys fragile $1000 laptops. But these would be perfect for them.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit
None other than Arthur C. Clarke himself chimes in on NASA’s further plans for space:
In 1969, the giant multistage rocket, discarded piecemeal after a single mission, was the only way of doing the job. That the job should be done was a political decision, made by a handful of men. (I have only recently learnt that Wernher von Braun used my The Exploration of Space (1952) to convince President Kennedy that it was possible to go to the Moon.) As William Sims Bainbridge pointed out, space travel is a technological mutation that should not really have arrived until the 21st century. But thanks to the ambition and genius of von Braun and Sergei Korolev, and their influence upon individuals as disparate as Kennedy and Khrushchev, the Moon â like the South Pole â was reached half a century ahead of time.
If Nasa resumes lunar missions by 2018, that timing would be just about right: it will be only a year short of the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrongâs famous âone small stepâ. But banking on solid rocket boosters to escape from Earth, as being planned, will not represent a big technological advance over the Apollo missions. Even if the spacecraft are reusable, it will still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to launch every kilogram into space. I think the rocket has as much future in space as dog sleds in serious Antarctic exploration. Of course, it is the only thing we have at the moment, so we must make the best use of it.
But I would urge Nasa to keep investing at least a small proportion of its substantial budget in supporting the research and development of alternatives to rockets. There is at least one idea that may ultimately make space transport cheap and affordable to ordinary people: the space elevator.
First conceived by a Russian engineer, Yuri Artsutanov, in 1960, it was reinvented by a group of American scientists a decade later. And itâs based on a simple â yet daring â concept.
Todayâs communications satellites demonstrate how an object can remain poised over a fixed spot on the Equator by matching its speed to the turning Earth, 22,300 miles (35,780 km) below. Now imagine a cable linking the satellite to the ground. Payloads could be hoisted up it by purely mechanical means, reaching orbit without any use of rocket power. The cost of launching payloads into orbit could be reduced to a tiny fraction of todayâs costs.
I differ with the great author on two points: First, it was by no great vision or effort of von Braun or Korolev that we reached the Moon in 1969, rather than 2019, but the quest for military superiority. Not to deny their genius. But, had they never even existed, the achievement – or something of similar technological magnitude – would have occurred no more than a decade, rather than a half-century, later.
Second, orbit in the Clarke Belt is achieved because the centrifugal force of the orbiting satellite exactly matches the force imparted upon it by gravity. Propelling a payload up a tether attached to that satellite would upset that equilibrium. Further, their is the distributed mass of the tether itself to consider. It is therefore necessary that the satellite be in a far lower orbit, in order to maintain tension on the tether. Indeed, the path the transport vehicle takes to reach the satellite will not be a straight path, as is popularly envisioned, but a great parabolic arc.
Read the whole thing.
Hat Tip: InstaPundit
Update: A bit red-faced after that sign-inversion. But those sort of things happen when you’re bouncing these things around in your head.
In any event, I never said the space elevator wouldn’t work, only that it wouldn’t be quite as currently envisioned. I still feel that the cable will arc into space, And it appears this effect has already been contemplated for the mass of the transport vehicle (“climber”, if you will), but not for the distributed mass of the cable itself.
Update: There is a spirited debate (of which I am pretty much on the defensive) on this subject, over at Transterrestrial Musings.
Little Green Footballs is under attack by Chinese hack-bots.
You know these must be part of a Chinese government operation, because they’d never let LGF get to the common folk.
Today at Tech Central Station, Glenn Reynolds is skeptical about NASA’s plans to go to the Moon:
The problem is that this NASA approach looks like more of the same. Oh, it’s better than some earlier efforts: The program emphasizes astronauts learning to “live off the land” via lunar resources, an approach that seemed quite radical back when Bob Zubrin was first championing it. But the technology looks old — and not “proven reliable,” as Space Shuttle components have been less than ideal — and I don’t see any way this program will deliver what we need most: High flight rates and low costs.
I wonder, then, if the money wouldn’t be better spent on things that have a higher likelihood of delivering those, like space elevators. As I mentioned in an earlier column, space elevator technology promises drastically reduced costs to orbit (from which, as Robert Heinlein famously observed, you’re halfway to anywhere in the solar system in terms of energy) and it looks as if we could build a working space elevator — or several — within the $100 billion pricetag and over the same time frame.
I most hardily agree; our emphasis at this juncture should be on finding inexpensive and reliable ways to put people and materials into orbit. But I wouldn’t limit ourselves to space elevators. Other technologies, such as Fly Into Orbit and Rail Guns as 1st stage boosters are also quite promising. This sort of multi-pronged approach is best undertaken by the private sector.
I am currently reading this post at The Speculist, which asks the question: has technological evolution quickened, as customarily believed, or actually slowed? LOTS of food-for-though to be had here. I pose a couple of interesting questions: What of the difficulty in producing truly seminal thought, as a direct result of the easy access to earlier thought? And what of the profundity of current thought, over earlier thought?
Hat Tip: InstaPundit.
So…
Am I the only one who didn’t know about Google Desktop?
I’ve downloaded it and I’ve installed it and I’ll let you know what I think of it, but so far it seems like it’s mostly a memory sink.
Update: It’s made everything slow and kludgey. I took it off.
Somewhere back there, I believe in a post centering on uber-stylist Chip Foose (I’ll get links later), I proclaimed Southern California “the new epicenter of automotive style”).
And one of our dear readers brought up the English midlands, citing the Morgan Aero 8.
And I countered appropriately, asking our readers: What would you rather have, a Morgan Aero 8, or a Saleen S7?
Of course, this is a pat question – anyone that would first choose the Aero 8 over the S7, without being able to pay for either out of pocket change, would have to be daft.
But all that is beyond the point. What I was trying to express was SoCal style vs. English Midlands style. And it turns out that the chassis of the Saleen S7, like the Ford GT40 before it, was largely engineered in England, by RML.
In response to my recent posts, concerning the F-14, and the movie Top Gun, reader Mike Williams sends this interesting email:
I started flying F-14s in 1973. I was an engineering test pilot at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, MD. I went on to a department head tour in one F-14 squadron, and to an XO/CO tour in another.
When you compare Navy and Air Force fighters, itâs a little apples and oranges because of the Navyâs carrier suitability requirements. And itâs not just the extra weight in beefed up structures for carrier takeoffs and landings: you also have to take into account the comparatively limited space available on even Nimitz-class carriers for maintenance and storage of spare parts.
As you probably know, the F-14A was originally designed to use the same engine as the F-15A. In fact, if memory serves, the number 7 F-14 was a âBâ model with the F-15 engine. I forget the exact designation, but it had considerably more thrust than the âAâ modelâs PW TF-30, which was a variant of the F-111âs engine.
What some people forget is that both the TF-30 and the F-15A engines were high-energy afterburning turbofans, and that while the TF-30 was operational in the F-111, the F-15A engine was at that time pushing the state of the art. Certainly the F-14A was underpowered for a front-line fighter, and guys like me began referring to it as the twin-tailed turkey. I was a lieutenant (O-3) at the time, but that didnât stop me from venting my frustrations with the rear admiral who was the F-14 program manager at the Naval Air Systems Command. He listened politely to my rants, and then he said this: Youâre right, of course, but when the F-15A engine blew up in afterburner on the test stand for the third time at less than 100 hours, I had to make a hard decision about waiting for the engine to catch up, or getting the F-14 out to the fleet on time.
The difference here is that where the Air Force has the hangar space to yank engines every 100 hours for hot section inspections and to store replacements, aircraft carriers donât.
Now, as you and some of your readers have pointed out, the Air Force flew the F-111 more as a bomber than a fighter. Not so the Navy with the F-14A. Pilots routinely pushed it to the edges of the envelope â and beyond. And initially we had a lot of compressor stall problems with the TF-30 engines that the F-111 pilots didnât encounter. It took a while, but over the years we managed to engineer enough upgrades to work these problems out. The downside was that there wasnât enough money left over to upgrade to the F-15A engine when it finally got beyond 100 hours for a hot section inspection.
I can tell you from experience that the F-14A was a very forgiving fighter. Many is the time Iâve run out of airspeed and ideas in a dog fight, often when the jet was pointed nearly straight up. The problem here was that the F-14 has an unrecoverable flat spin mode, and that an engine stall at high angle of attack increases the susceptibility. The spin axis is somewhere between the NFOâs cockpit and the vertical stabilizers, and the transverse Gâs during the spin are enough to incapacitate the pilot. So, if you got into a flat spin, your only alternative was to eject, and you were dependent on the NFO (who was not incapacitated by the transverse Gâs) to initiate a command ejection.
The NFOâs concern was the canopy: the command eject sequence was the canopy, the NFO and then the pilot. Because you wanted your pilots and NFOs to survive carrier takeoff and landing mishaps, the time intervals were fairly compressed. Unfortunately, the canopy tended to hover over the aircraft during a flat spin, and there was a chance that the NFO would strike it during ejection â a guaranteed fatality.
To be sure, all the fixes to the TF-30âs compressor stall problem werenât just for air combat. A compressor stall on a combat-loaded F-14 during a catapult takeoff could also be a big problem. The engines are far enough apart so that with one stalled, and the other blazing away in full after burner, enough roll-to-yaw could be generated in short order to put you on your back. Those Martin-Baker seats might have been zero-zero, but as the airplane rapidly rolled from wings-level to inverted, your odds of surviving an ejection decreased exponentially.
Now about Top Gun. During Vietnam we were focused primarily on MIG-17s and MIG-21s. It turns out that the A-4 is a very good MIG-17 simulator, and the F-5 is a very good MIG-21 simulator.
But letâs digress here a minute and talk about the air war in Korea. At the start of the war, the MIG-15 was the superior air-to-air machine, even compared to early versions of the F-86. But later on, the US put bigger engines in the F-86 and bolted up the leading edge slats. Then the F-86 ruled the skies.
The same thing happened to the Top Gun A-4âs: The Navy bolted up the slats and installed big engines. The durn things were small and hard-to-see, had a thrust-to-weight close to 1:1, and could turn on a dime. In an F-14A, you could get in real trouble in a knife-fight with one of those hopped up A-4s. So â you tried to set the fight up to play to your strengths â which were your radar and missiles â and his weaknesses (but you always conceded GCI, which for him was like radar and an extra set of eyeballs).
Weâll Iâm sure youâre bored by now with an old manâs reminisces. In closing, my advice would be to let bygones be bygones, and to look to the future. The F-22 is deploying to Langley AFB as we speak, and Russia and China are partnering up in defense technology. The JSF is coming along, and you could reasonably conclude weâre in another Cold War-style arms race. The GWOT is critical right now, but itâs not the only game in town.
Via CNET.
Microsoft has signed a deal with two film studios to make a movie based on its popular space-based video game series “Halo,” a spokesman for Universal Pictures said Wednesday.
Universal and Twentieth Century Fox agreed to pay Microsoft $5 million plus a percentage of movie ticket sales. The total price being paid is capped at 10 percent of domestic box office receipts.
Okay, let’s start with the obvious questions. Who should play Master Chief? Who should play Cortana? Does it matter? Are we mostly concerned with voices? Should we have the voice actors from the game provide the voices and various stunt men and CGI handle the suit and Cortana’s hologram? Will we and should we see Master Chief’s face? I’m thinkin’ not.
Discuss.
Update: Zombieboy and crew are actually discussing this over at Resurrectionsong.
Google has an Instant Messaging client. Once it’s installed, you get little IM popups about new mail in your GMail Account. You can use your GMail Account to log into it. If anyone needs an invite (does anyone NOT have GMail at this point?) let me know and I’ll shoot you one.
I’ve never been a big IM fan…if I wanted to chat with someone I’d hook up with them on irc or some other chat room. But what the heck?
Dean and Michele pointed me at it, I just can’t download anything to my computer at work.
I’m timmer847@gmail.com.
More: They’re trying to unify all chat. Once you’ve got Google Chat installed, the IM pops up whenever you get new Google Mail, whether or not you’re signed in. I’m sure there’s a way to turn that off…just haven’t found it.
Steve Saleen and Jack Roush have, for several years, produced limited-production, modified Mustangs, distributed through elite Ford dealerships. Now, triple-Ridler winner Chip Foose joins the fray:
gallery
But it appears that, at this point, Foose’s work on the Mustang is more show than go:
PRE-PRODUCTION SPECS
— Chip Foose designed body with a modified hood, side molding, revised grille, fascias, custom side marker lights, side “C” pillar ducts, etc.
— Rear aerodynamic spoiler
— Custom graphics using Dupont’s Hot Hues finishes
— Chip Foose designed 20″ custom aluminum wheels
— 20-inch g-Force T/A(R) KDW ultra high performance tires from BFGoodrich(R)
— Sequential taillights (optional)
— Racing inspired front and rear coil springs, front and rear anti-sway bars, billet rear trailing arms and strut tower brace
— Baer Brakes 4-piston front brakes with Eradispeed Cross Drilled Rotors (15″ front and 14″ rear)
— JBA high flow catback exhaust with mufflers
— High flow air filter
— Quaker State synthetic lubricants
— Custom leather seats with dash & trim enhancements
In other news, super-babe Courtney Hansen seems to be out as co-host on Chip’s hit TLC automobile makeover show Overhaulin’. I was just surfing her website a couple of days ago, and there was no mention of it. But Overhaulin’s website no longer includes her in the cast, Chris Jacobs was hosting alone last week, and prankster A.J. (who is also VERY lovely) co-hosted this week.
This from Sander Sassen at Hardware Analysis (reprinted in full):
Iâve described DRM, digital rights management, as the holy grail of the movie and music industry before; it is generally perceived as their ticket to safeguard their inflated profit margins and a tool to breathe new life into their obsolete business models. DRM protected content allows them to control exactly how this content is used, distributed, and above all, can be tracked right down to the individual end user. DRM protected content is protected by an elaborate encryption scheme and can only be unlocked and played back if you follow and adhere to the requirements set forth by the producer exactly. This could mean that he only grants you the right to playback the DRM protected DVD you bought once, or dictates that you can only do so a set number of times. For DRM to work however, especially on the PC, youâd ideally need hardware support, so that both hard- and software work together to make sure the protection scheme is in no way circumvented.
Up until now the movie and music industry has been unable to partner with the likes of Microsoft or Intel to make this a reality. Microsoftâs Windows XP featured DRM, but only on a software level and Intel has hinted at a platform with DRM for a few years now, but never followed through with the concept. With the arrival of Microsoft Windows Vista and Intelâs East Fork concept both Microsoft and Intel have however sold out to the music and movie industry and their unbridled greed. Microsoftâs Vista will, amongst other things, feature something thatâs called the Output Content Protection, which is a first implementation of the NGSCB, Next Generation Secure Computing Base, the infamous platform formerly known as Palladium. This prohibits the output of protected video content unless you have HDCP, High bandwidth Digital Content Protection, support on your display. Currently a very small percentage, less than 1%, of shipping monitors support this and hence will allow you to view such content.
Intelâs East Fork concept is the proverbial icing on the cake, adding the needed hardware support to supplement the features as found in Windows Vista. And unlike the concept platform Intel has shown us in the past, East Fork will start shipping in the first quarter of 2006, quite in time for the release of Windows Vista. The combination of the two will mean that you, the end-user, will be royally screwed in every way, shape and form. Thatâs right, once East Fork and Vista ship you can forget about exercising your fair-use rights, no more converting songs to MP3, no more music downloads to- and from friends and family, no more DivX movies, and the list goes on. But more disturbing is the fact that new content will only be able to playback on the new platform, there, for example, will be no (legal) Linux support or support in other operating systems. Simply because any such media player, able to playback this content, will circumvent the protection scheme that is DRM, which is illegal. Basically fair use and your rights as a consumer are out of the window when East Fork and Vista arrive.
With East Fork Intel has given the music and movie industry the tools to force the consumer to give up its rights and abide by their rules and has handed the keys to unlock the protection scheme to Microsoft. Looking at the track record of the music and movie industry and their watchdogs the RIAA and MPAA you can rest assured that when this platform is introduced theyâll use any possible legal avenue to further limit how you can use their content. And more importantly theyâll also make sure you pay a substantial amount of money for any use of their content that before was labeled as fair use, such as converting songs to MP3 for example. So thanks Intel and thanks Microsoft for selling out, youâve now clearly shown us that these new features are meant to better your revenue and profits, not the computing experience of the end user. Or rather, youâve sided with the music and movie industry and their unbridled greed and clearly donât care one bit about what the end user wants. I guess money talks after all.
Check for updates, I intend to look into this further. And I expect our readers have some pithy comments.
Here’s a good piece from Charlie Demerjian at The Inquirer:
Up the river without a paddle
So, that is what it is, how does it sell you up the river? The first part is DRM. Any DRM on a machine is simply a sign of failure. It signifies that the providers cannot, or will not provide you with a good product at a fair price. People are inherently averse to getting screwed, in the way that Intel is doing mind you, and if you try to screw people, they will avoid you. If you offer them something they actually want, they tend to readily open their wallets. This crushing DRM that is being foisted upon you is the surest sign that you don’t want this product, and you will be paying too much for it. Don’t like that? Bought legislators are hard at work making sure you will go to jail if you try to exercise your rights on the issue.Remember there was a time when something called fair use existed? Remember when you could rip a CD to your MP3 player to listen to in your car, or while out biking? That was and is called fair use. Breaking down the term, fair means equitable, and use means to use. Both are about to be stripped from you, but you get to pay for the privilege.
Here’s how it works. The record companies, and to a far lesser degree the movie studios, are rapacious greedy bastards that have a failing business model. No, really, look at the numbers, they are on a treadmill where they need bigger and bigger hits to support the 90 plus per cent of projects that don’t make dollar one. Each time, they spend more and more money making the latest plastic knuckle dragger seem cool enough so you will part with your money.
It is getting harder and harder to do, mainly because quality is declining so rapidly. So, rather than go for quality and content you want to buy, they are trying to make it so you have to buy, and crying to legislators that you are evil if you don’t consume how they want, when they want, in the ways that they want. Pay per play has these cretins drooling.
Add in the fact that they completely missed the boat for digital media, obstructed its growth at every possible turn, and sued their prime consumers when they didn’t flock to sup-par offerings at super-par pricing, and you have a recipe for failure. This is exactly what the record companies are doing, failing, and it is richly deserved. Some adapted early, Go-Kart being a prime example, are doing the right thing for the right reasons. The vast majority are not.
In their failing, they are passing laws left and right that make you a criminal for doing things that you were entitled to do up until it did not make several large corporations enough money. Don’t like it? How many Congressmen do you own?
Their excuse it that they won’t enter a market without what they deem as adequate protection. Silly me, it seems that they define adequate protection as charging more for a download than a physical product that has actual costs to produce, ship, stock and sell. It is a flat out sham, and strangely, people are stupid enough to believe it, and buy the fact that the poor record companies will lose their shirts if they so much as dip a toe in the water without DRM. They can’t come in without you giving up your fair use rights.
That is a lie, they voluntarily left, and choose not to enter without you kneeling before them and giving up your civil liberties. It would be laughable if so many people didn’t do just that. A good analogy was one I used on a person giving a speech about DRM a few months ago. I said imagine that during his speech, I walk up on stage with a baseball bat, and for no reason, start hitting him. Then, out of the goodness of my heart, I stop hitting him, does this suddenly make me a nice guy? The record companies are hitting you by not supporting the current prevailing formats, and are asking you to call them nice guys when they stop hitting you. I hope you are not that stupid.
Likely, readers of The Inquirer/i>, or even TDB, for that matter, are far from “that stupid.” The problem is, we make up but a tiny minority of the general public.
Well, it seems hooking up the Airlink101 802.11g home network was more a problem in my mind than in reality.
First: While my two-to-three year-old information told me ISPs were hostile to home networks, I found Earthlink quite helpful, and not at all worried about having two nodes running on a single account.
Second: As shown by my previous post, the amount of misinformation and confusion out there, even among so-called “professionals” is rampant. I therefore volunteer to be your cyber-rabbi, should you have questions along this line. I need to know more here – and I always find I learn more by being a teacher. And I promise not to feed you any bullshit.
So, the home network is running: router hooked to DSL modem (and handling the dialer tasks), my computer hooked to router via Eithernet, and Dear Brother’s computer hooked to router via 802.11g. I have to train him – I just drew a diagram. I have to learn myself.
No encryption yet. That’s the next step.
Chime in if you wish to learn with me.
…but the prices were too good and the old one was starting to get weird on us.
This is really sweet. I really haven’t even started playing with this yet but from what I’ve seen so far, everyone in the family’s going to be very happy with their gaming experiences.
And yes, I went to the store to replace a fried video card and came home with a new video card and a new computer…makes perfect sense to me…especially since the dual cores are driving the prices down so much.
I LOVE the fact that I can plug every memory card, camera, MP3 Player and Microphone/Headset that I own or plan on buying into the front of this if I want to and still have open USB ports on the rear.
So no, I didn’t build it, but yes, we finally got the new computer. Beautiful Wife didn’t even raise her voice, she just rolled her eyes because she knows I’m not going to get much sleep the next couple of days until the new one is fully loaded with everything the old one had. This thing made it a breeze to transfer files over.
Sigh…but I still have to mow the frelling lawn before the yard nazi gives me a ticket tomorrow.
I have always accessed my Earthlink DSL ISP via a WinPoET dialer. Now I’m trying to network my brother (via an Airlink101 AR315W router) to the same Earthlink connection. And, when posed my geek friend, and the Earthlink people with the question, “what if my brother want’s to go online when I’m not?” they said: “you don’t need a dialer with DSL.” What’s with that? WTF was I ever using this? Perhaps I needed it with Win95, but no longer do with 98SE/XP?
Update: This is a bit of a “rock my world” epiphany. I’ve been using this PPPoE dialer for the past four years, and now I find I never needed it?
Update: After shutting down all my browser windows, IMs and email client, I “disconnected”. Then, nothing would work. So, now the Earthlink people tell me I must have a PPPoE dialer with Win98SE. It seems I don’t with XP, which the other machine runs on. But that’s in the other room, turned off, and not even hooked up yet, other than dial-up.
Oh, a task for another day. đ
I just saw a bit on Discovery about this Thomas Heatherwick designed roll-up footbridge at London’s Paddington Center. And, man, my brain has been kicked into overdrive. You have to understand: It’s few and far between that I see any truly seminal thinking in the world of mechanical structures. But this is one.
And now my brain is in overdrive: First; this structure would be better rolling up as a conch, rather than a disk. And, second, the structure should balance tensile strength against compressive (can you say prestressed?).
And then, what are the military applications? And what of incorporating carbon nanotubes? It boggles the mind. Can you imagine some human designed structure (with an M1A2 tank as insect), which emulates something you might see on the National Geographic Channel, or PBS’ Nature, where some plant deploys a rolled-up pistil, and then some insect lands on it, and walks out to the end?