The Instapundit recently linked to this article about new battery research.
Apparently some nano-tech research done at Stanford's Department of Materials Science and Engineering indicates that it might be possible to increase the life of a rechargeable lithium-ion batteries by a tremendous amount. The article mentioned the possibility of reaching a 40-hour life.
That's fantastic compared to current (excuse the pun) batteries. I agree with Professor Reynolds: "Bring it on!"
Something else occurs to me; is it possible to scale this technology up? Forty hours at 40 mph could give an electric car a 1600 mile range. Forty hours might be unrealistic (at least at first) but the possibilities are intriguing.
Will Collier has an interesting post at Vodkapundit , wherein he speculates about just what Apple will be announcing during their October 12 "One More Thing" event.
His suggestion: "iFlicks," a downloadable movie service similar to iTunes, with (one supposes) similarly low prices. Will envisions a connection he calls "Airport-Express-on-steroids" with a video out connector, and a remote.
There's some consensus in the comment thread that -if this is what Apple is planning- it will involve a new 100Mbit/second Airport standard to handle the bandwidth.
All of this is very cool, and even if that's not the new service, folks should check out a recent innovation from Apple: Airport with Airtunes, called Airport Express.
What's so cool about Airport Express is that -if you're using Airport as your wireless router- you can painlessly transmit music to another room. Just connect a "stereo out" line from your sound system to the base station, and plug a second pair of speakers to a module in another room. Viola, music everywhere!
You can even get a remote. So (say) your sound system is in the living room, and your downstairs blogging (or hobbying, whatever) you can control the music from down there.
How cool is that?
Dean's World contributor Aziz P discusses the "fanatical bickering" ... of competitive DVD formats.
His final graf focuses content protection, and how it protects consumers:
I think [the debate between Blue-ray and HD-DVD is] important and affects us in a potentially greater way than did the VHS vs BetaMax standards battle of a few decades ago. Ultimately, content on these next-generation discs will have to tread a fine line between consumers' rights and content producers' need to protect their intellectual property. It is good that the debate is playing out in public, because the transparency will ensure that we consumers have a window into the process. After all, it's our hard-eaned cash that both consortiums plan to suck in the hope that we will replace our DVD collections for our personal home theater libraries. Stay tuned.
Some thoughts:
Let's recall that what people want is backwards compatibility, as commenter Jerry Kindall pointed out.
Not only that, there's a more than a few DVD players out there these days, and not very many people spring for bleeding-edge, state of the art hardware. Especially if it's expensive.
Let's recall that previous generations of media technology included significant improvements over and above an increase in capacity.
Vinyl (33-1/3 rpm) LPs were so-called because they were long-playing compared to 78s; but LPs also displayed a significant increase in sound quality over the older 78 rpm records as well. 45 rpm singles were popular during the 50s and 60s, but eventually died out. One may consider iTunes their (modern) spiritual successor.
The original compact discs were -ironically- of lower sound quality than LPs, especially in the context of audiophiles who carefully maintained their collections. In fact, some of the first remasters to CD format were pretty bad, such as some of Jethro Tull's early catalog.
What CDs did offer was -in effect- entropy-free playing; how many of us remember playing a favorite album so many times we literally wore the grooves out? Doesn't happen with CDs*. Also the physical size of the media was much, much smaller than an LP.
After that we had the VHS-HQ vs. DVD format; you won't see the difference between a professionally-recorded tape and a DVD unless you have a high-end TV, or a low-end tape player. And (believe it or not) it's hard to beat sound quality on VHS-HQ. Just about any high-quality stereo Hi-Fi videotape player is as good as the older reel-to-reel players. In fact, I've had one audiophile tell me he considered a high-quality stereo Hi-Fi videotape player to provide better sound than anything outside of a studio deck; even a Nakamichi Dragon.
But (again) the digital format allowed nearly unlimited replays without loss of quality. Tapes will, eventually, wear out.
Both CDs and DVDs also included the flexibility of random access, compared to tapes. You could (to a degree) randomly play LP tracks, but only with a great deal of manual queueing, and/or flipping the record over.
Point being that these improvements included much more than mere higher capacity; they included higher quality and/or greater convenience than before, and (in the case of DVDs) more options such as the documentaries about the movie, commentary tracks, and other extras such as (my personal favorite {g}) "blooper" reels.
Something else to consider is that CDs and DVDs replaced fairly mature technologies; LPs date from the 50s, and videotape from the early 70s.
One may consider standard CDs to be fairly mature, now, but are (once you factor fast modern burners) still nearly unrivaled for convenience. It's too easy to make your own mixes for the car player, parties, and so on.
With all of this in mind, just what do Blue-ray and HD-DVD offer consumers, aside from higher capacity? We know Blue-ray, at least, offers features to vendors, but who buys what's good for vendors? I'm sure the RIAA hates CD/DVD burners, and even videotape recorders. Let's not bring up the heinous court decision which allowed peon consumers to tape movies for their own use!! The bastards.
Do the new formats offer significantly superior video or sound performance? Do they offer new features (eg extras on current DVDs) or greater convenience? Stephen den Best points out that the new formats will support HDTV resolutions. For those of us with HDTVs....
Will the new players play my old DVDs? Recall that all DVD players also play CDs as well. Consumers have become accustomed to a single "all in one" player. Will this backwards compatibility continue?
And (critical question, I think) will most people be able to tell the difference? Aside from the greater capacity, that is.
Recall above when I alluded to the fact that a vinyl LP in good condition gives better sound than a CD? That's true, under most circumstances. The trick is that you have to have a system good enough to hear the difference. Most home audio/home theatre systems won't highlight that difference. You need at least a low-end Harmon-Kardon, or Onkyo amp, with Bose, Polk, or (maybe) Boston Acoustic speakers to notice. The $400 "home theatre" system at Circuit City or Media Play won't cut it.
But then, most folks are willing to settle for that. Hell, .MP3s are of even lower audio quality than CDs, but that's not stopping Apple from selling iPods hand over fist.
Let's not forget SuperAudio CDs (SACDs): many musicians and audiophiles have lauded the incredible quality of this format, but it's never really caught on. SACDs have faced a legacy problem similar to what the new DVD formats will. from the Sony website:
You'll have a choice of four types of Super Audio CD, including multi-channel and "hybrid" discs.Any of that sound familiar? It should, if you've read up on the issues facing Blue-ray/HD-DVD backwards compatibility.Hybrid discs will play back beautifully in any home, car or portable CD player made since 1982. These discs contain two signal layers: one for CD, the other for Super Audio CD.
[Single-layer stereo] - Discs with this emblem will only play in Super Audio CD players.
[Hybrid stereo] - These discs play in all standard CD players, as well as Super Audio CD players.The extraordinary experience of Super Audio CD doesn't stop at stereo. Multi-channel discs deliver the full warmth and resolution of Super Audio CD on up to 5.1 channels. And each multi-channel disc also includes a separate two-channel version of the music, for complete compatibility with two-channel Super Audio CD players.
[Single-layer multichannel] These discs will only play in Super Audio CD players, providing stereo sound on two-channel players and multi-channel sound on multi-channel players.
[Hybrid multichannel]Discs with this graphic will play in all CD players, as well as Super Audio CD players.
Let us include the datapoint that -while providing massively superior sound- SACDs have never caught on. Perhaps the format issues referenced above contributed that lack of success.
So should you buy a Blue-ray, and hope the studios release your favorite movies on it, or gamble on HD-DVD, with equal uncertainty? Recall that the studios' public commitments to the new formats are as hazy and contradictory as the rest of the debate.
And -all hype aside- no one has released a new-format player which will play older DVDs as well. Oh, the consortiums have said they will, but right now it's all vaporware.
I promise you that my money is going to stay in my pocket until (at the very least) a real high-def DVD player, with full support for the current DVD format exists. And even then they'll have to provide features which are so far beyond the current DVD format that I'll just have to upgrade.
And I bet I'll have a lot of company, too...
*Ok, you can scratch or damage the surface of a CD, but not by playing it over and over again.
Dean reminds us that the first episode of the second season will be shown in less than 24 hours...
Just lemme know where the torrents are. :)
You know, this show could be the Itunes of television. Me, I'm not going to fork out $40/month to see that one show -there's not that much on cable I want to see-, but I'd still love to watch Battlestar Galactica.
I certainly wouldn't mind forking over a couple bucks to pick up a digital capture of a given episode.
So why not graduated downloads? Say $2 or $3 for a good quality digital TV recording, $5 for same with Dolby Digital, and maybe $8-$10 for HDTV w/5.1 sound?
The trick would be limiting this to paid-for downloads, but that's addressable.
Let's look at costs. I pay $7.50/month for 7000MB bandwidth. (Verve Hosting. Excellent service. HIGHLY recommended!!) At that cost I could afford to allow 10 downloads of a 700Mb episode, and that's very high quality. I've seen some (approx.) 350Mb episodes which are still good quality. In other words, a very high quality download (700Mb video file, AKA a single VCD disc) would be $0.75 cents a download, using my current, individual user plan.
So let's call it 20 downloads/month for $7.50, for the bandwidth. "Production" cost in this case is 20 downloads divided by $7.50/month, which gives 37.5 cents per episode downloaded. And that's using an el cheapo "bargain" plan.
Verve Hosting (my ISP) offers 35GB/month for $45/month. That means (roughly) 140 downloads for $45 server cost. In other words, $0.33 cents per download.
These are all end-user prices. I don't doubt that an industrial-strength server contract would allow greater economies to scale.
Now I'll be the first to admit that these are "back of the envelope" numbers. In this case, I think they're solid enough to conclude that $1/download (given 350Mb/episode) is a reasonable cost estimate.
And, yes, I'm ignoring start-up costs for the hypothetical BSG episode server. :)
But when you get right down to it, how many existing fans would be happy to buy legal copies of the episodes for $2-$3 for a 350Mb vid, or $5-$6 for an HQ copy (~ 700Mb)?
Me, I'd certainly go for the 350Mb stuff, and I'd look very favorably at a $5 cost for the HQ stuff, especially if it meant continued existance for the show.
In other words: forget the letter-writing campaigns, here's how real fans show their support. With money.
Even if the studio doesn't have a direct-to-DV machine on-hand, all you need is an HQ digital feed, and a digital video recorder. And how inexpensive is that? After that all they need is to distribute the copy to paying customers.
One way to discourage piracy would be distributing (via BitTorrent) encrypted ARJ or ZIP files. The password could be created for that account, then encrypted on the fly. Anyone in the world could distribute that encrypted ARJ or ZIP file, but you'd need the password to open it.
No, this wouldn't eliminate piracy, but it would discourage it; especially when you consider that most black markets historically exist when "offical" market prices do not match actual market prices. In other words, when the asking price is in excess of the selling price.
But -you ask me- where are the actual data to support this claim? Aren't all music/video dowloaders a guild of thieves?
Good question! Good answer? Look at success of Itunes. Before Apple started that company, no one believed you could sell songs for $1 a pop, and still make money off of the transaction. Itunes is now one of Apple's strongest revenue sources.
Itunes is why I believe most people are willing to spend money on TV shows. I repeat: Ituens is now one of Apple's strongest revenue sources. In other words, people all over the world are willing to pay for legal copies of songs, even though they could get those same songs for free, given current pirating & distribution.
Given that, I'm betting that people will be willing to pay for legal copies of TV shows, even though they could get those same shows for free, given current pirating & distribution.
I can't tell you how much it costs to produce a single episode of Battlestar Galactica, but I'll bet it's in the range of millions of dollars, minimum.
So how much more would it cost for the company to set up a nearly guaranteed source of future revenue (i.e. website dedicated to downloading episodes)? Not much, I'll bet.
Let's let BSG be the new century's Itunes....
This will probably fire up some of the True Believers out there:
"Macintosh Hacker Attacks Are on the Rise - Symantec
Reuters
Tuesday, March 22, 2005; 8:16 PM
SAN FRANCISCO -- Hacker attacks on Apple Computer Inc.'s Macintosh OS X operating system, thought by many who use the Mac to be virtually immune to attack, are on the rise, according to a report from anti-virus software vendor Symantec Corp."
While Symantec didn't release details of how they came to that conclusion, it should come as little surprise. As Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds said in the article
All these platforms have vulnerabilities - it's a fact of life ... The truth of the matter is that Mac is only a couple percentage points of (computer) shipments so it's not an interesting target.
Apparently the anti-virus company believes that strong sales for the new mini-Mac, which seems to be targeted to Windows users considering their next computer, could make things worse by increasing the number of Macs operated by "less-savvy users." They expect "the number of vulnerabilities can be expected to increase, as will malicious activity that targets them."
Now, before anyone blows a gasket, let's review a couple points. First technically-aware users will agree that the Free-BDS based OS X base is significantly more secure than today's Windows XP base. Which is a shame, really, since the Windows NT base was originally a very secure and powerful OS. Alas, Microsoft made it more "user friendly" in such a ways that damaged security.
Second, "more secure" doesn't mean "invulnerable," even though more than a few Mac-heads have a bad habit of saying things like "now that I own a Mac, I don't have to worry about trojans, viruses, or anything!" Um, no. You just have a lot less to worry about.
Third, while Symantec said it had documented 37 "high-vulnerabilities" in the past year in OS X, they have "almost always" been acknowleged and patched by Apple.
Finally, let's recall that selling anti-virus and other prophylactic applications is how Symantec makes money. Does this mean they're lying? Hardly. But I'm sure they wouldn't mind the extra income. :)
Bottom line: OS X still has a substantial lead over Windows XP in security, but it isn't invulnerable. No operating system is. And it is fairly easy to establish good habits while using XP to avoid 99% of the hacker/virus threat out there. Using Mozilla/Firefox is an excellent start. Just remember that no hardware or software solution is worry-free.
Me, I'd love to see the mini-Macs take off, if for no other reason to watch Redmond sphincters collectively tighten. They might even restore real security to their flagship operating system.
Heck, I wish I had the money to get a mini, but not right now. It would be great to plop it down next to my Athlon WinXP machine and my Thunderbird Win2000 system to see how it compares. The Apple networking is supposed to work very well with Windows nets these days.
I don't know if it's just the local area (maybe I'm lucky enough to be in a test market), but I just got an email from RoadRunner explaining that they just increased the bandwidth to 5Mbps (megabits/second).
So I trotted over to testmy.net; a great place to see just how fast your throughput really is.
I tested out at 4683Kpbs (4.68Mbps)! Another way to measure that is 572 KB/sec (Kilobytes/second).
Or, as the web page says "You are running: 84 times faster than 56K and can download 1 megabyte in 1.79 second(s)."
Yowza!
Looks like Star Trek's Universal Translator is getting closer.
Today's StrategyPage on "How to make war" (scroll down to the April 12, 2004 entry) mentions some interesting developments in document reading and computer translation.
First, there's the software developed by the Language Weaver Corporation, running under Windows on a server. This package can communicate with other servers or individual PCs.
The documents are scanned to electronic form, and then translated. It isn't clear from the article whether the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) application is part of the package or not. What is interesting is that as the database of correctly translated phrases grows, accuracy increases.
Favorite sentance: "Iraq, one of the places (China and Egypt being the others) where mankind created literacy, has never lost its fondness for writing things down."
Very cool.
Next we have the Phraselator. No "Ahnuld" jokes, please! And, yes, that really is what they named it. This doodad is about the size of a PDA like a Clie, or a Visor, and can accept Flash Cards with different phrases in different languages.
All the user has to do is speak English into the Phraselator, and the appropriate translated phrase is uttered by the device. But it isn't a general translator. The phrase has to be part of a pre-defined set on the Flash Card.
The interesting thing here is that the cards are customized for specific situations, such as the "Medic" card. The phrases are constructed for a simple response such as pointing (to where it hurts, for the Medic card, or "which way did they go?" {g}), or a yes/no answer.
Favorite sentance: "the troops agree that it sure beats sign language or thumbing through a phrase book. The locals like it because it's yet another neat American gadget, and one that won't kill them as well. "
Also very cool.