From TechDirt: Guy Arrested, Threatened With 15 Years For Recording Traffic Stop In Illinois
Officer: "That recording? Frobe : "Yes, Yes, I've been... Officer: "Was it recording all of our conversation? Frobe: "Yes. Officer: "Guess what? You were eavesdropping on our conversation. I did not give you permission to do so. Step out of the vehicle."
Louis Frobe was then cuffed and arrested for felony eavesdropping.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying
From The Atlantic
From Slashdot:
"With Carnegie Mellon's cloud-centric new mobile app, the process of matching a casual snapshot with a person's online identity takes less than a minute. Tools like PittPatt and other cloud-based facial recognition services rely on finding publicly available pictures of you online, whether it's a profile image for social networks like Facebook and Google Plus or from something more official from a company website or a college athletic portrait. In their most recent round of facial recognition studies, researchers at Carnegie Mellon were able to not only match unidentified profile photos from a dating website (where the vast majority of users operate pseudonymously) with positively identified Facebook photos, but also match pedestrians on a North American college campus with their online identities. ... '[C]onceptually, the goal of Experiment 3 was to show that it is possible to start from an anonymous face in the street, and end up with very sensitive information about that person, in a process of data "accretion." In the context of our experiment, it is this blending of online and offline data — made possible by the convergence of face recognition, social networks, data mining, and cloud computing — that we refer to as augmented reality.
Face scans match few suspects
Viisage Technologies, provided the software that studied the faces of thousands of fans who attended the big game and compared them to police databases of criminal suspects, even pictures of terrorists.The software employed at Super Bowl has had limited success, yet Pinellas' Sheriff's Office got millions to use it.
http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Security/Viisage-Technology-Face-Invaders/
Viisage Technology
Headquarters: 30 Porter Road, Littleton, MA 01460
Phone: (978) 952-2200
Ticker: VISG (NASDAQ)
URL: www.viisage.com
Employees: 160
Founded: 1993
Viisage looks like it's changed names to L-1 Identity Solutions
http://www.l1id.com/pages/18
http://www.pittpatt.com/
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tizen | An open source, standards-based software platform for multiple device categories.
https://www.tizen.org/
Today we are happy to welcome you to Tizen, a new open source project that is the home of the Tizen software platform, a mobile and device operating system based on Linux and other popular upstream projects. Tizen will support multiple device categories, such as smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks, and in-vehicle infotainment devices. The Linux Foundation will host the project, where Tizen development will be completely open and led by a technical steering team composed of Intel and Samsung.
Today we are happy to welcome you to Tizen, a new open source project that is the home of the Tizen software platform, a mobile and device operating system based on Linux and other popular upstream projects. Tizen will support multiple device categories, such as smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, netbooks, and in-vehicle infotainment devices. The Linux Foundation will host the project, where Tizen development will be completely open and led by a technical steering team composed of Intel and Samsung.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Google, Motorola and the next big play, TV.
From Google CEO Page Speaks at Zeitgeist Conference
Also read:
With Motorola, Google TV just got a huge shot in the arm
Can Google Fix the Cable Box?
Google TV: The Future of Interactive Television?
When asked whether Google was interested in Motorola’s production of cable set-top boxes as a launching pad into people’s television screens, Larry Page said “certainly that’s something we considered, yes.”
Google has launched a service called Google TV that is built into cable set-top boxes or new TVs and lets people simultaneously search for Web video and TV programs to watch, but the service has had relatively slow uptake in the market.
When Page was asked what was the No. 1 threat to Google, he said “Google.” Google Chairman Eric Schmidt explained that “problems of companies at Google’s scale are internal.”
Page said many large companies “tend to slow decision-making and that tends to be tragic.” He previously said he became CEO in April in order to speed up decision-making at the company.
Also read:
With Motorola, Google TV just got a huge shot in the arm
Can Google Fix the Cable Box?
Google TV: The Future of Interactive Television?
Fwd: AMD Delivers Multi-Display Support with Longevity on Latest Entry-Level Embedded Discrete GPU
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "AMD Embedded Solutions" <embedded.solutions@amd.com>
Date: Sep 27, 2011 8:31 AM
Subject: AMD Delivers Multi-Display Support with Longevity on Latest Entry-Level Embedded Discrete GPU
From: "AMD Embedded Solutions" <embedded.solutions@amd.com>
Date: Sep 27, 2011 8:31 AM
Subject: AMD Delivers Multi-Display Support with Longevity on Latest Entry-Level Embedded Discrete GPU
| This message contains graphics. If you do not see the graphics, View this online. |
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Yesterday at Friday, September 23, 2011
New Rules for Mobile DTV | ceoutlook.com
http://ceoutlook.com/2011/09/22/new-rules-for-mobile-dtv/
New rules have been spelled out for mobile digital TV products that now call for an Internet "back channel" of some type.
Mobile DTV (ATSC m/h) delivers free over-the-air TV even in a moving vehicle, so users can receive popular network and other TV shows without a subscription fee. Currently the service is only available in some markets as it is gradually rolled out by broadcasters.
On Thursday, two "device profiles" were announced to help guide suppliers of Mobile DTV in creating products. These are suggested guidelines from the Open Mobile Video Coalition, a group of broadcasters. It is possible that some broadcasters may not permit reception unless a product adheres to the guidelines.
The two profiles: one for basic receivers and one for more advanced receivers both require a back channel that can send information about what the customer is viewing back to broadcasters. It can also provide the means for premium (paid) programming that will supplement the free channels.
The back channel connection may include a 3G or 4G modem, or a means of connecting to a smartphone. It could be a WiFi radio, but consumers must connect to the Internet at least once a week to transmit their viewing data, said the OMVC.
"The news today is that now there is a road map on how to add conditional access, which means if I'm developing a device for the car, I have to get some information on what is being watched," said an OMVC spokesman.
There are already a few Mobile DTV products on the market from brands including RCA, which may not have the new back channel.
Kinect-Powered 3-D Video Streaming
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/01/hologram-video-kinect/
The Force is strong with holographic scientists these days. Researchers from MIT unveiled the fastest 3-D holographic video to date at a conference in San Francisco January 23, filming a graduate student dressed as Princess Leia and projecting her as a postcard-sized hologram in real time.
The holographic device plays a 3-inch projection at 15 frames per second, just shy of movie refresh rates of 24 to 30 frames per second, the MIT researchers demonstrated at the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers' conference on practical holography.
The red hologram is jerkier and has much lower resolution than the one in Star Wars that sparked the public fascination with 3-D holograms in the 1970s. In fact, it kind of looks like a red blob on a staticky TV. But it's 30 times faster than a telepresence device created in 2010 by University of Arizona researchers (SN Online: 12/4/10).
"I think it's an important milestone because they were able to get to 15 frames per second, which is almost real time," says physicist Nasser Peyghambarian, who led the Arizona research. "The quality is not as high, but hopefully it will get better in the future."
The key to speed was computational power. The MIT team used a Kinect camera from an Xbox 360 gaming console to capture light from a moving object. Then they relayed the data over the Internet to a PC with three graphics processing units, or GPUs, tiny processors found in computers, cell phones, and video games that render video quickly. The processors compute how light waves interfere with each other to form patterns of light and dark fringes. Light bouncing off these fringe patterns reconstructs the original image. The MIT team used a display to illuminate the computer-generated fringes and create a hologram.
"The students were able to figure out how to generate holograms by using what GPU chips are good at," says Michael Bove, an MIT engineer who led the research. "And they get faster every year. There's room for a lot more understanding of how to compute holograms on them."
MIT's holograms are fast, says Peyghambarian, but they have to trade quality for speed.
Bove's device uses one camera that estimates the depth of the object it is filming. The disadvantage of one camera, which is more consumer-friendly, is that you can't see behind objects, says Bove. Also, even though graphics cards can compute high-resolution holograms, the effective display size is limited by a chip in the physical display to 150 millimeters by 75 millimeters, which Bove says is the biggest challenge to creating better holograms.
The Arizona device had a very different setup: Researchers grabbed video from 16 cameras angled around the object, so that one could walk around a holographic person and see not just the front side, but side profiles and back views. The team used an old-fashioned method that hologram artists have employed for decades, employing two lasers to create fringe patterns. Their key insight was engineering a special type of plastic that erases and rewrites quickly. The Arizona hologram is already high-definition and the size of a 17-inch TV, but speeding it up will require switching to a new laser system, says Peyghambarian.
"There's a variety of technologies," says Bove. "The fact is, the barrier to entry has been unbelievably high for the past 20 years. Now, many technologies are maturing at the same time. I think we'll see some fun things in the next few years."
Bove looks to the near future for consumer teleconferencing that connects people far, far away from each other, just like Darth Vader and the Emperor in their imperial chats. Star Wars purists will remember that Princess Leia's plea was actually prerecorded.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Spectrophotometer Analysis of Crayons
I have always wanted to do this for a number of materials.
Beautiful work.
http://www.photo-mark.com/notes/2011/sep/20/crayon-colors/
http://www.photo-mark.com/webpix/note_examples/crayons/Crayons_24.pdf
Click to see full size image.
From Slashdot:
"Like many as a child, the photographer Mark Meyer wondered what the difference between Yellow-Green and Green-Yellow was in that Crayola box of crayons. Using a monitor calibration tool and the Argyll 3rd party software he evaluated a box of 24 color box of Crayola crayons, and plotted them out with sRGB values. He even included a nice printable poster size version of the chart in his blog post. For the geek or curious this was a pretty interesting plot."
Beautiful work.
http://www.photo-mark.com/notes/2011/sep/20/crayon-colors/
http://www.photo-mark.com/webpix/note_examples/crayons/Crayons_24.pdf
Click to see full size image.
From Slashdot:
"Like many as a child, the photographer Mark Meyer wondered what the difference between Yellow-Green and Green-Yellow was in that Crayola box of crayons. Using a monitor calibration tool and the Argyll 3rd party software he evaluated a box of 24 color box of Crayola crayons, and plotted them out with sRGB values. He even included a nice printable poster size version of the chart in his blog post. For the geek or curious this was a pretty interesting plot."
Smart Meters Reveal What You're Watching
From Slashdot:
"H-Online reports that 'researchers at the Münster University of Applied Sciences have discovered that it is possible to use electricity usage data from smart electricity meters to determine which programmes consumers are watching on a standard TV set. By analysing electricity consumption patterns, it is, in principle, also possible to identify films played from a DVD or other source.' It's time for some clever EEs to come up with a countermeasure. Unfortunately alumfoil hats have already been dismissed."
"H-Online reports that 'researchers at the Münster University of Applied Sciences have discovered that it is possible to use electricity usage data from smart electricity meters to determine which programmes consumers are watching on a standard TV set. By analysing electricity consumption patterns, it is, in principle, also possible to identify films played from a DVD or other source.' It's time for some clever EEs to come up with a countermeasure. Unfortunately alumfoil hats have already been dismissed."
Tactile Pixels
Soon it will be possible to To Read Braille On Touchscreens
Senseg technology applies an innovation in biophysics to bring a haptic effect to the traditionally passive touch user interface.
Senseg's new E-sense technology, could bring real-world touch into everyday computing.
Obviously, this is nothing new. Research into programmable friction has already yielded impressive results with changing stickiness.
But this concept accomplishes the same goal by using "tixels" or tactile pixels to create an electrical field you can feel. Your skin responds by feeling whatever the interface wants it to feel: Buttons, perhaps, or even the fur of a virtual pet.
The project sounds really promising, and Senseg already has Toshiba backing them. Imagine video chat aided by tactile pixels.
http://senseg.com/technology/senseg-technology
Senseg E-Sense makes use of an electro-sensory phenomenon that replicates the feeling of touch. As very tiny electrical charges pass into the tixel elements, the individual tixels generate a controlled electric field which extends several millimeters above the surface. Senseg E-Sense is a wholly new way of creating a sophisticated sensation of touch without the use of less sensitive haptic technology like vibration or mechanical actuators such as motors, piezoelectric actuators or electro-active polymers.
The Senseg E-Sense principle
Based on the principle of attraction force between charges, Senseg effects creates a sophisticated sensation of touch. By passing an ultra-low electrical current into the insulated electrode – the tixel – the proprietary charge driver can create a small attractive Coulomb force to finger skin. By modulating this attractive force, any number of touch sensations can be generated from vibrations, clicks, textured surfaces and more.
University of British Columbia has another method for doing similar.
From Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/5819701/tactile-pixels-will-make-it-easy-to-read-braille-on-touchscreens
http://gizmodo.com/5801371/future-touchscreens-might-have-adjustable-stickiness-factor
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/programmable-friction-makes-to.html
Senseg technology applies an innovation in biophysics to bring a haptic effect to the traditionally passive touch user interface.
Senseg's new E-sense technology, could bring real-world touch into everyday computing.
Obviously, this is nothing new. Research into programmable friction has already yielded impressive results with changing stickiness.
But this concept accomplishes the same goal by using "tixels" or tactile pixels to create an electrical field you can feel. Your skin responds by feeling whatever the interface wants it to feel: Buttons, perhaps, or even the fur of a virtual pet.
The project sounds really promising, and Senseg already has Toshiba backing them. Imagine video chat aided by tactile pixels.
http://senseg.com/technology/senseg-technology
Senseg E-Sense makes use of an electro-sensory phenomenon that replicates the feeling of touch. As very tiny electrical charges pass into the tixel elements, the individual tixels generate a controlled electric field which extends several millimeters above the surface. Senseg E-Sense is a wholly new way of creating a sophisticated sensation of touch without the use of less sensitive haptic technology like vibration or mechanical actuators such as motors, piezoelectric actuators or electro-active polymers.
The Senseg E-Sense principle
Based on the principle of attraction force between charges, Senseg effects creates a sophisticated sensation of touch. By passing an ultra-low electrical current into the insulated electrode – the tixel – the proprietary charge driver can create a small attractive Coulomb force to finger skin. By modulating this attractive force, any number of touch sensations can be generated from vibrations, clicks, textured surfaces and more.
University of British Columbia has another method for doing similar.
The friction adjustment is actually something of a trick. The surface of the screen itself is made of glass and does not become rougher or smoother. Instead, the glass is made to vibrate at around 26,000 Hz by a series of small mechanical discs that sit at the edge of the screen. This creates a thin film of moving air on top of the glass, which has the effect of making the screen feel stickier. By adjusting the vibrations in response to finger movements across the glass, the system can create a convincing illusion in which objects appear to bump into each other or stick to things.
From Gizmodo:
http://gizmodo.com/5819701/tactile-pixels-will-make-it-easy-to-read-braille-on-touchscreens
http://gizmodo.com/5801371/future-touchscreens-might-have-adjustable-stickiness-factor
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/05/programmable-friction-makes-to.html
World’s Largest CMOS Sensor
Canon's has made the largest CMOS sensor which measures 202 x 205 mm about eight inches square.
APS-H CMOS sensor that delivers a staggering 120 megapixels at 60fps.
The Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo's Kiso Observatory now employs it to records faint meteors in the night sky.
The sensor already only requires 1/100th of the light as current sensors need.
Canon ultra-large-scale, ultra-high-sensitivity CMOS sensor makes possible wide field-of-view video recording of meteors with equivalent apparent magnitude of 10
Real Time Face Substitution
This is a sign of things to come.
You can see this is very raw and has lots of problems, but it's close and soon will be nearly perfect.
Arturo Castro put together this technical demo for face swapping technique.
The application works in real time and it's developed using the opensource framework for creative coding openFrameworks: openFrameworks.cc
Most of the "magic" happens with Jason Saragih' c++ library for face tracking. The face tracking library returns a mesh that matches the contour of the eyes, nose, mouth and other facial features.
That way the mesh obtained from a photo is matched to my own face in the video. Applying some color interpolation algorithms from Kevin Atkinson's image clone code: methodart.blogspot.com/ gives it the blending effect that can be seen in the final footage.
Also uising Kyle McDonald's ofxFaceTracker addon for openframeworks github.com/kylemcdonald/ofxFaceTracker which wraps Jason's library for easier use.
Read story:
Watch This Dude’s Face Become Other FacesReal Time Face Substitution Should Be Renamed Real Time Horror Show
You can see this is very raw and has lots of problems, but it's close and soon will be nearly perfect.
Arturo Castro put together this technical demo for face swapping technique.
The application works in real time and it's developed using the opensource framework for creative coding openFrameworks: openFrameworks.cc
Most of the "magic" happens with Jason Saragih' c++ library for face tracking. The face tracking library returns a mesh that matches the contour of the eyes, nose, mouth and other facial features.
That way the mesh obtained from a photo is matched to my own face in the video. Applying some color interpolation algorithms from Kevin Atkinson's image clone code: methodart.blogspot.com/ gives it the blending effect that can be seen in the final footage.
Also uising Kyle McDonald's ofxFaceTracker addon for openframeworks github.com/kylemcdonald/ofxFaceTracker which wraps Jason's library for easier use.
Read story:
Watch This Dude’s Face Become Other FacesReal Time Face Substitution Should Be Renamed Real Time Horror Show
Monday, September 19, 2011
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto, Copyleft Movie
http://ripremix.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiP!:_A_Remix_Manifesto
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto is a 2008 open source documentary film about "the changing concept of copyright" directed by Brett Gaylor.
Created over a period of six years, the documentary film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to the Open Source Cinema website, helping to create the "world's first open source documentary" as Gaylor put it. The project's working title was Basement Tapes, (referring to the album of the same name) but it was renamed RiP!: A Remix Manifesto prior to theatrical release. Gaylor encourages more people to create their own remixes from this movie, using media available from the Open Source Cinema website, or other websites like YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, or MySpace.
Copyleft movies, can it be done? Apparently so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RiP!:_A_Remix_Manifesto
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto is a 2008 open source documentary film about "the changing concept of copyright" directed by Brett Gaylor.
Created over a period of six years, the documentary film features the collaborative remix work of hundreds of people who have contributed to the Open Source Cinema website, helping to create the "world's first open source documentary" as Gaylor put it. The project's working title was Basement Tapes, (referring to the album of the same name) but it was renamed RiP!: A Remix Manifesto prior to theatrical release. Gaylor encourages more people to create their own remixes from this movie, using media available from the Open Source Cinema website, or other websites like YouTube, Flickr, Hulu, or MySpace.
Copyleft movies, can it be done? Apparently so.
Fwd: An Explanation and Some Reflections
Dear Mr Reed Hastings,
I love Netflix, but you need to stop digging a deeper and deeper hole.
Qwikster, why, why, why, I can only shake my head in disapproval.
Part of the appeal was the combination of DVD and Streaming in the same listing so that if it wasn't available now, I could get it tomorrow.
Do you really want to separate out these services and become like everyone else?
Whom every your taking advice from is not your friend. You need to look elsewhere for guidance, I am telling you now.
First there are several things I'd do.
1.) Just renew the Stars content for deal for 300 Million. It was good for both of you. REALLY.
They are doing themselves and your company a disservice by starting yet another competing service.
Both you and Liberty will in the end fragment and commodify content and this is bad for everyone.
2.) Open up to more foreign and Independent content.
3.) Open to funding original content, cut deal with SciFi channel or similar.
4.) Find a way to allow people to share movies via Facebook and other simple URL's. Not actually sharing the file, but links, viewable by subscribers.
This should be then expanded in partnerships with HULU and other services. So your tinyurl like video link service works for anyone with TV and Movie format content.
5.) Lead the charge on publicly funded content, and copy left movies.
6.) Expand beyond Al-la-cart and offer some pay per content and free content to non-subscribers (maybe with adds). This could be section out to different parts of the site or different sites.
7.) Stop day dreaming that you can play nice with the rest of the industry and they will play nice back. It's an illusion, while the surround you and kill you off and take everything you have away from you.
Hollywood is the biggest pit of snakes and vipers. The friendlier they act to you, the worse they will treat you when screwing you over. They actually will take delight in it.
8.) Support open source Operating system based on Linux and BSD. Copy protection bla bla bla. Well HDMI is already cracked, Sure you don't want them accessing the raw MP4 stream. Well odds are it's already on bit torrent.
Worse case fro now, just distribute binaries. Yea I know you still need to cow-tow to the content owners. Do what you can, worst case, not all movies are available on all platforms.
9.) Silverlight?!?! What were you thinking? You don't need these guys! Really Microsoft is not helping you.
10.) Expand. You could sell so much more though your web site. Really make it the movie lovers site. Sell collectables, screen savers, and desktop backgrounds. Promote new movies, and work with theater owners.
11.) Contact me and let's do an NDA, I can show you what I am working on and how you can take over the industry...
I hope this helps.
John L. Sokol - Loyal Netflix Fan.
I love Netflix, but you need to stop digging a deeper and deeper hole.
Qwikster, why, why, why, I can only shake my head in disapproval.
Part of the appeal was the combination of DVD and Streaming in the same listing so that if it wasn't available now, I could get it tomorrow.
Do you really want to separate out these services and become like everyone else?
Whom every your taking advice from is not your friend. You need to look elsewhere for guidance, I am telling you now.
First there are several things I'd do.
1.) Just renew the Stars content for deal for 300 Million. It was good for both of you. REALLY.
They are doing themselves and your company a disservice by starting yet another competing service.
Both you and Liberty will in the end fragment and commodify content and this is bad for everyone.
2.) Open up to more foreign and Independent content.
3.) Open to funding original content, cut deal with SciFi channel or similar.
4.) Find a way to allow people to share movies via Facebook and other simple URL's. Not actually sharing the file, but links, viewable by subscribers.
This should be then expanded in partnerships with HULU and other services. So your tinyurl like video link service works for anyone with TV and Movie format content.
5.) Lead the charge on publicly funded content, and copy left movies.
6.) Expand beyond Al-la-cart and offer some pay per content and free content to non-subscribers (maybe with adds). This could be section out to different parts of the site or different sites.
7.) Stop day dreaming that you can play nice with the rest of the industry and they will play nice back. It's an illusion, while the surround you and kill you off and take everything you have away from you.
Hollywood is the biggest pit of snakes and vipers. The friendlier they act to you, the worse they will treat you when screwing you over. They actually will take delight in it.
8.) Support open source Operating system based on Linux and BSD. Copy protection bla bla bla. Well HDMI is already cracked, Sure you don't want them accessing the raw MP4 stream. Well odds are it's already on bit torrent.
Worse case fro now, just distribute binaries. Yea I know you still need to cow-tow to the content owners. Do what you can, worst case, not all movies are available on all platforms.
9.) Silverlight?!?! What were you thinking? You don't need these guys! Really Microsoft is not helping you.
10.) Expand. You could sell so much more though your web site. Really make it the movie lovers site. Sell collectables, screen savers, and desktop backgrounds. Promote new movies, and work with theater owners.
11.) Contact me and let's do an NDA, I can show you what I am working on and how you can take over the industry...
I hope this helps.
John L. Sokol - Loyal Netflix Fan.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix <info@netflix.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 4:57 AM
Subject: An Explanation and Some Reflections
To: john.sokol@gmail.com
From: Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix <info@netflix.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 4:57 AM
Subject: An Explanation and Some Reflections
To: john.sokol@gmail.com
 | |||||
| |||||
 | |||||
  |
Fwd: An Explanation and Some Reflections
Dear Mr Reed Hastings,
I love Netflix, but you need to stop digging a deeper and deeper hole.
Qwikster, why, why, why, I can only shake my head in disapproval.
Part of the appeal was the combination of DVD and Streaming in the same listing so that if it wasn't available now, I could get it tomorrow.
Do you really want to separate out these services and become like everyone else?
Whom every your taking advice from is not your friend. You need to look elsewhere for guidance, I am telling you now.
First there are several things I'd do.
1.) Just renew the Stars content for deal for 300 Million. It was good for both of you. REALLY.
They are doing themselves and your company a disservice by starting yet another competing service.
Both you and Liberty will in the end fragment and commodify content and this is bad for everyone.
2.) Open up to more foreign and Independent content.
3.) Open to funding original content, cut deal with SciFi channel or similar.
4.) Find a way to allow people to share movies via Facebook and other simple URL's. Not actually sharing the file, but links, viewable by subscribers.
This should be then expanded in partnerships with HULU and other services. So your tinyurl like video link service works for anyone with TV and Movie format content.
5.) Lead the charge on publicly funded content, and copy left movies.
6.) Expand beyond Al-la-cart and offer some pay per content and free content to non-subscribers (maybe with adds). This could be section out to different parts of the site or different sites.
7.) Stop day dreaming that you can play nice with the rest of the industry and they will play nice back. It's an illusion, while the surround you and kill you off and take everything you have away from you.
Hollywood is the biggest pit of snakes and vipers. The friendlier they act to you, the worse they will treat you when screwing you over. They actually will take delight in it.
8.) Support open source Operating system based on Linux and BSD. Copy protection bla bla bla. Well HDMI is already cracked, Sure you don't want them accessing the raw MP4 stream. Well odds are it's already on bit torrent.
Worse case fro now, just distribute binaries. Yea I know you still need to cow-tow to the content owners. Do what you can, worst case, not all movies are available on all platforms.
9.) Silverlight?!?! What were you thinking? You don't need these guys! Really Microsoft is not helping you.
10.) Expand. You could sell so much more though your web site. Really make it the movie lovers site. Sell collectables, screen savers, and desktop backgrounds. Promote new movies, and work with theater owners.
11.) Contact me and let's do an NDA, I can show you what I am working on and how you can take over the industry...
I hope this helps.
John L. Sokol - Loyal Netflix Fan.
I love Netflix, but you need to stop digging a deeper and deeper hole.
Qwikster, why, why, why, I can only shake my head in disapproval.
Part of the appeal was the combination of DVD and Streaming in the same listing so that if it wasn't available now, I could get it tomorrow.
Do you really want to separate out these services and become like everyone else?
Whom every your taking advice from is not your friend. You need to look elsewhere for guidance, I am telling you now.
First there are several things I'd do.
1.) Just renew the Stars content for deal for 300 Million. It was good for both of you. REALLY.
They are doing themselves and your company a disservice by starting yet another competing service.
Both you and Liberty will in the end fragment and commodify content and this is bad for everyone.
2.) Open up to more foreign and Independent content.
3.) Open to funding original content, cut deal with SciFi channel or similar.
4.) Find a way to allow people to share movies via Facebook and other simple URL's. Not actually sharing the file, but links, viewable by subscribers.
This should be then expanded in partnerships with HULU and other services. So your tinyurl like video link service works for anyone with TV and Movie format content.
5.) Lead the charge on publicly funded content, and copy left movies.
6.) Expand beyond Al-la-cart and offer some pay per content and free content to non-subscribers (maybe with adds). This could be section out to different parts of the site or different sites.
7.) Stop day dreaming that you can play nice with the rest of the industry and they will play nice back. It's an illusion, while the surround you and kill you off and take everything you have away from you.
Hollywood is the biggest pit of snakes and vipers. The friendlier they act to you, the worse they will treat you when screwing you over. They actually will take delight in it.
8.) Support open source Operating system based on Linux and BSD. Copy protection bla bla bla. Well HDMI is already cracked, Sure you don't want them accessing the raw MP4 stream. Well odds are it's already on bit torrent.
Worse case fro now, just distribute binaries. Yea I know you still need to cow-tow to the content owners. Do what you can, worst case, not all movies are available on all platforms.
9.) Silverlight?!?! What were you thinking? You don't need these guys! Really Microsoft is not helping you.
10.) Expand. You could sell so much more though your web site. Really make it the movie lovers site. Sell collectables, screen savers, and desktop backgrounds. Promote new movies, and work with theater owners.
11.) Contact me and let's do an NDA, I can show you what I am working on and how you can take over the industry...
I hope this helps.
John L. Sokol - Loyal Netflix Fan.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix <info@netflix.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 4:57 AM
Subject: An Explanation and Some Reflections
To: john.sokol@gmail.com
From: Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix <info@netflix.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 4:57 AM
Subject: An Explanation and Some Reflections
To: john.sokol@gmail.com
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Sunday, September 18, 2011
Obituary: Tomomi Murakami, helped develop color TV
http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/130052888.html
Tomomi Murakami, 89, of Medford, who was imprisoned with other West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry during World War II and went on to help develop the first color television for RCA, died of cardiac arrest Wednesday, Sept. 7, at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mount Holly.
In a eulogy written for his memorial service Monday, Sept. 19, his son Keith says that a friend half-jokingly remarked that RCA should have asked Mr. Murakami to design a Star Trek transporter.
The friend, Keith writes, "knew that my father wouldn't rest until he was beaming himself back and forth to work."
Dr. Murakami, a Compton, Calif., native, graduated from Compton High School in 1939, the son of an immigrant farmer abandoned by his wife.
During the Depression, Keith writes, Dr. Murakami "had two sets of clothes, one to wear and one to wash. . . .
"He mentioned that he was class valedictorian," Keith continues, "but did not attend his graduation because he didn't feel he had the proper clothes for the occasion."
In spring 1942, before he was to receive an associate's degree at Compton Junior College, Dr. Murakami and his family were forced to leave their home and were sent to live at Santa Anita, the racetrack in Arcadia, Calif.
"Leaving most of their possessions behind," Keith says, "they shared a horse stall with another family for over three months," before moving to a camp in Rohwer, Ark.
Declared security risks, Japanese Americans and others of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After the University of Wisconsin rescinded his acceptance because he was Japanese American, his son writes, Swarthmore College "accepted him, and in February of 1943 he left the camp and his family."
His father was able to pay the tuition, but Dr. Murakami supported himself as a cleaner at the college library and local restaurants.
When Dr. Murakami was unable to find a job after earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1944, Swarthmore again rescued him. The college paid him to be a math teaching assistant.
Dr. Murakami earned a master's in 1947 and a doctorate in 1970, both in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
"His big break" came in 1945 while at Swarthmore, "when he received a fellowship from RCA," according to his son.
"They were having a problem with signal drift in their FM tuner and wanted Dad to do some experiments on the circuit they designed."
Once you dialed in a station, the signal would not remain stable but would seem to drift on its own away from its original position.
"Dad didn't quite understand what they were asking, so he designed his own circuit. . . . This circuit later became a standard component of all FM tuners," writes his son.
That led to a full-time job with RCA in Camden and the first of 11 patents Dr. Murakami earned over five years, a period when, his son writes, "he was part of a team that developed the first color TV."
In 1962, Dr. Murakami became a member of the RCA Advanced Development Group in Moorestown, whose work led the federal government to award the firm a 1969 contract for the Aegis missile-defense system.
From 1974 to 1978, Dr. Murakami, his wife, and daughter lived on Kwajalein Atoll in what is now the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where he worked in RCA's missile and surface radar division.
He retired in 1982 but continued to 1992 as a contractor with RCA's Advanced Systems Corp., his son writes.
"What struck me was that when he started his career, a slide rule and drafting board were his main tools. By the time he finished his career he had 3 computers in his office churning out data to solve his calculations."
Tomomi Murakami, 89, of Medford, who was imprisoned with other West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry during World War II and went on to help develop the first color television for RCA, died of cardiac arrest Wednesday, Sept. 7, at Virtua Memorial Hospital in Mount Holly.
In a eulogy written for his memorial service Monday, Sept. 19, his son Keith says that a friend half-jokingly remarked that RCA should have asked Mr. Murakami to design a Star Trek transporter.
The friend, Keith writes, "knew that my father wouldn't rest until he was beaming himself back and forth to work."
Dr. Murakami, a Compton, Calif., native, graduated from Compton High School in 1939, the son of an immigrant farmer abandoned by his wife.
During the Depression, Keith writes, Dr. Murakami "had two sets of clothes, one to wear and one to wash. . . .
"He mentioned that he was class valedictorian," Keith continues, "but did not attend his graduation because he didn't feel he had the proper clothes for the occasion."
In spring 1942, before he was to receive an associate's degree at Compton Junior College, Dr. Murakami and his family were forced to leave their home and were sent to live at Santa Anita, the racetrack in Arcadia, Calif.
"Leaving most of their possessions behind," Keith says, "they shared a horse stall with another family for over three months," before moving to a camp in Rohwer, Ark.
Declared security risks, Japanese Americans and others of Japanese ancestry were imprisoned by order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After the University of Wisconsin rescinded his acceptance because he was Japanese American, his son writes, Swarthmore College "accepted him, and in February of 1943 he left the camp and his family."
His father was able to pay the tuition, but Dr. Murakami supported himself as a cleaner at the college library and local restaurants.
When Dr. Murakami was unable to find a job after earning a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1944, Swarthmore again rescued him. The college paid him to be a math teaching assistant.
Dr. Murakami earned a master's in 1947 and a doctorate in 1970, both in electrical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.
"His big break" came in 1945 while at Swarthmore, "when he received a fellowship from RCA," according to his son.
"They were having a problem with signal drift in their FM tuner and wanted Dad to do some experiments on the circuit they designed."
Once you dialed in a station, the signal would not remain stable but would seem to drift on its own away from its original position.
"Dad didn't quite understand what they were asking, so he designed his own circuit. . . . This circuit later became a standard component of all FM tuners," writes his son.
That led to a full-time job with RCA in Camden and the first of 11 patents Dr. Murakami earned over five years, a period when, his son writes, "he was part of a team that developed the first color TV."
In 1962, Dr. Murakami became a member of the RCA Advanced Development Group in Moorestown, whose work led the federal government to award the firm a 1969 contract for the Aegis missile-defense system.
From 1974 to 1978, Dr. Murakami, his wife, and daughter lived on Kwajalein Atoll in what is now the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where he worked in RCA's missile and surface radar division.
He retired in 1982 but continued to 1992 as a contractor with RCA's Advanced Systems Corp., his son writes.
"What struck me was that when he started his career, a slide rule and drafting board were his main tools. By the time he finished his career he had 3 computers in his office churning out data to solve his calculations."
Thin Film Transforms Any Surface Into Touchscreen
Singularity Hub.
Visual Planet's ViP Interactive Foil Touch Technology. From unpacking to installation this unique and innovative large format touchfoil has been used here with superb SWPF application software to create a fun and exciting interactive wall. Highly responsive to the users touch Visual Planet's through glass touchfoil technology offers a creative way to attract people passing by. www.visualplanet.biz
Slashdot
"Open up a cardboard tube, roll out a transparent film just millimeters thick, apply it on a flat object and *tada* you've got an interactive touch surface. Cambridge-based Visual Planet just launched its new massive-sized multitouch thin film drivers so you can create touchscreens from 30 to 167 inches in size! Their touchfoil is a transparent nanowire embedded polymer capable of sensing the touch of a finger, or even pressure from wind and translating that to a computer interface. It works on glass, wood, and other non-conductive surfaces."
Visual Planet's ViP Interactive Foil Touch Technology. From unpacking to installation this unique and innovative large format touchfoil has been used here with superb SWPF application software to create a fun and exciting interactive wall. Highly responsive to the users touch Visual Planet's through glass touchfoil technology offers a creative way to attract people passing by. www.visualplanet.biz
Slashdot
"Open up a cardboard tube, roll out a transparent film just millimeters thick, apply it on a flat object and *tada* you've got an interactive touch surface. Cambridge-based Visual Planet just launched its new massive-sized multitouch thin film drivers so you can create touchscreens from 30 to 167 inches in size! Their touchfoil is a transparent nanowire embedded polymer capable of sensing the touch of a finger, or even pressure from wind and translating that to a computer interface. It works on glass, wood, and other non-conductive surfaces."
Friday, September 16, 2011
Fwd: NDS Surfaces: the Next Revolution in TV - 3D CineCast
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NDS Surfaces: the Next Revolution in TV Posted: 16 Sep 2011 02:00 AM PDT NDS provided the 'blow you away' demonstration for IBC2011 with its Surfaces concept, which takes the best of the big screen and companion screen experiences and throws them onto a single wall-sized display (or multiple walls) to create a feast of visual and interactive entertainment that still manages to maintain the lean-back characteristics of TV. Surfaces is designed to exploit revolutionary advances in video display technology. NDS believes that wall-sized video displays, including video-capable 'wallpaper', will be available at reasonable prices within five years and has decided that there is no longer any reason to limit the TV experience to a 50 inch rectangular box. Surfaces will give platform operators the display real-estate to provide more immersive TV experiences when we want to fully relax, or a combination of entertainment, diaries, information, social media and connected home applications in a television-centric user interface at other times in the day. In the demonstration, we were greeted by an 'ambient' display on the wall-sized screen showing large framed photos of family members and Facebook 'speech bubbles' with our latest social interactions. The first person to come down to breakfast is Mum, and as she is alone she selects 'Mum' on the controlling tablet and the display reorganises itself so that the equivalent of the BBC Radio 2 website appears in the centre of the wall, with music and details about the current show and the music playlist. To the right is a clock, the latest weather and diary items for the day. To the left are newspaper headlines that can be pursued for more information via the tablet. Mum decides that she wants to watch the breakfast TV news so the screen reorganises itself so that the news bulletin appears in a 50 inch widescreen format at the centre-top of the wall. Radio 2 moves to the left and is muted as the audio switches to TV. But the radio playlist is displayed so Mum can switch back to a song she likes at any moment. Under the news are headline links, which can be clicked via the companion to learn more about the news stories. After the national news comes the regional news and the headline links change to local stories. Then we return to the TV in the evening for some family entertainment. We choose the family profile on the tablet and The X Factor appears as an 80 inch widescreen TV display. Down the left-hand side are Twitter feeds relating to the show and below this is a live voting app where you can see viewer predictions about how each judge will vote, and you can cast your own vote via the tablet. The app is updated live so that as each judge makes their decision, a red cross or a green tick appears next to their photo. For the purposes of the demo, NDS provides an 'Immersive' bar on the tablet that you manually adjust depending on how immersive you want your TV experience to be. At this point, we are watching X Factor at about half way on the immersive gauge, so we still have the social interaction on the left and on the right there are promotions for Amazon where you can buy the song that is being sung currently on the show. By sliding the immersive scale higher, these interactive and social elements disappear from the screen and the video content alone fills the entire wall. For good measure, the lights also dim to create a cinema ambience. NDS then demonstrated what a 4k (ultra high-definition) movie looks like to confirm how the wall-sized screen can also act as your home cinema. Before we could relax too much, a video feed appeared as a picture-in-picture showing a baby crying in its cot upstairs, reminding us that not everyone gets to watch a movie uninterrupted! Mum and Dad can decide whether to keep an eye on that situation (the picture-in-picture can be reduced into the corner) or dismiss the babycam feed as one of them goes to settle the youngster. The demo clearly illustrates how the TV service provider can provide connected home applications in a way that make them much more useful and compelling. Surfaces illustrates some exciting concepts. First, it expands the boundaries of TV in anticipation of advanced screen technologies that a few years ago seemed like science-fiction. Just as the television experience has already spilled out of the 40 inch widescreen and onto tablets and smartphones, it can now encompass an entire wall. Surfaces shows how you can make use of that real-estate to completely revolutionise the user experience and potentially introduce new services, from newspaper apps to home automation and videoconferencing, that will have additional value as part of an aggregated service provider user interface. Surfaces takes all the richness of the convergence experience, like content and contextual apps and information, and gives viewers the option to have all that in one place without overlaying anything on the video itself. Then it allows consumers to decide how immersed they want to be in the video entertainment, so they can have less or more contextual apps and information to suit their mood and the time of day. This is a stunning demo; the best I have seen personally in my 13 trips to IBC. Surfaces is revolutionary because if NDS is right, there will be no physical boundary to the television service in future. It was pointed out that you do not even have to produce TV for a rectangular display in this new world, so producers could experiment with new shapes and effects. And subtitles do not have to be contained within the screen frame, for example. The surfaces concept represents a fabulous opportunity for Pay TV operators to cement their position as the gateway to the home, building on what they are already doing in multi-screen and companion screen offers. The implications for a Surfaces-enabled world (and of course we will expect other middleware/UI companies to embrace this concept) are dramatic. This looks like the easiest 'sell' to consumers of any TV innovation since colour. The public will be blown away by it and it will require little or no explanation. It will be an early adopter must-have with great 'wow' factor to impress neighbours and friends. This looks like something every service provider will end up offering once the technologies are priced for the mass-market. This could also be the market-maker for ultra high-definition. When Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPhone he gave us the reason to need mobile broadband. This will be the reason why millions of homes, rather than just a few palaces, will want ultra high-definition TV. It is worth noting that NDS upscaled HD automatically as the viewer slid the immersion scale upwards, and this still looked good across a 3.5 metre (approx) screen. And the company stresses that you can still use standard-definition TV too, since sometimes you will be viewing content in a 32 inch or 40 inch frame size. Nonetheless, cinema style displays, which is what you get when you slide the immersion scale to 'full', deserve more. There will be homes that struggle to find a wall large enough, and without obstructions, to make this work. And as many of us eat breakfast in one room (e.g. the kitchen/diner) and relax in another (e.g. the living room) the full potential of Surfaces relies on screens being affordable enough to be present in more than one room. But this is so compelling you can imagine people wanting a wall display of some kind, however their home is configured, and this could also prompt a revolution in interior design so that rooms have one clear end for the screen. What does seem certain is that this UI will probably make traditional remote controls obsolete, as this is an experience that needs and deserves full tablet control. Simon Parnall, UK Vice President of technology at NDS, said during the demo: "I have a 46 inch screen in the corner of my home and normally it is black. And whether it is news, sports or movies, I see all content in 46 inches. It is our fundamental belief that actually, the size of the image needs to change according to the kind of content I am watching to match my attitude towards the content and my degree of interest, or what we are calling my level of immersion, in it." Nigel Smith, VP and Chief Marketing Officer at NDS, believes the rate of innovation in display technology means this will be realistic within five years, with pricing of $2,000 or less for full-wall displays that might even be a plastic film that can display video. He noted that husbands often want bigger screens today and are limited by what their wife will tolerate! With Surfaces, there is no screen to sit in the room as furniture, so this problem is removed. NDS has based the Surfaces concept demo on its existing unified multi-screen headend (which provides common intelligence in the backoffice for video management and delivery) and its Service Delivery Platform, which provides an open API that acts as an interface between apps on devices, a TV platform and social networks or other Internet content, and opens the way to third-party development work in multi-screen and companion screen services. These are the foundation technologies for Surfaces. As Smith points out: "We are not waiting for the screen technology to become available. We are working on getting the technology ready prior to what we think will happen anyway. We are waiting for the hardware technologies to catch up with the software." He adds that the CE vendors are looking beyond 3DTV for what will sell screens next and points out that 3D uptake has been slowed by lack of content. "We are helping them out because as soon as they launch these new screens, this will work." Smith adds that everyone who saw the demo said they wanted this solution at home. We are not surprised. Like the screens they will harness, Surfaces and concepts like it will be the next big thing in TV. By John Moulding, Videonet   |
| IBC: Multi-screen Dominates, but Another Revolution is Brewing Posted: 16 Sep 2011 02:00 AM PDT There was a positive mood at IBC this year, based on our conversations with vendors and the amount of business they were doing at the show, and not surprisingly, multi-screen TV was the big theme again. It is becoming clear now how this is a transition almost as big and dramatic as digital TV itself, which is why it keeps rolling on as a subject. Multi-screen is evolving and the discussion this year was about how platform operators can achieve scale cost-effectively as they move beyond tens of channels to hundreds of channels, and how the early movers can differentiate their services once everyone has content to all screens. The answer to this second question seems to be an integrated and holistic multi-screen experience, which means companion apps like remote control from the smartphone, and pause-resume between devices. The bottom line is that duplicating content everywhere is not enough; the whole experience has to be enriched so that two plus two equals five. Multi-screen should keep us all busy for some years yet, but the even better news from IBC is that there is another revolution on the way, eloquently demonstrated by NDS with its 'Surfaces' concept. This is the evolution of TV from a rectangular box in our home, and a piece of furniture, to wall-sized display surfaces, which means that all the contextual interactivity you can achieve across TV, smartphones and tablets can actually be replicated in one place, providing you get the balance between lean-back and lean-forward correct. This demo made it very clear where the future of TV is heading in the home and it was stunning. In a way, convergence has given us such multimedia riches that we can no longer contain them on a 42 inch or 60 inch screen, thus the drive for companion experiences. But it appears that advanced display technology and an accompanying revolution in the TV user interface will give us the option to converge the post-convergence TV experience! That will not remove the need for companion apps but consumers will have more choice about where they have contextual apps and information.  It often happens that the right technologies all come along at the same time, and that is not a coincidence, of course. Thus MPEG-4 AVC, DVB-S2, a new generation of decoders and lower priced flat-screen TVs arrived simultaneously to make the market for HDTV. So with wall-sized screens expected to become affordable, and a user interface that illustrates their potential for video and much more, it is probably time to start looking at ultra high-definition TV in more detail because NDS Surfaces looked to us like the reason mass-market consumers will want ultra high-def. The HEVC (High Efficiency Video Coding) next-generation compression standard is progressing well and is expected to halve bit rates compared to MPEG-4 AVC, and we are told the CE industry is looking for something to sell after 3DTVs and video 'surfaces' is where they are focused. So we may be set for the next big thing after multi-screen and connected/hybrid TV (including hybrid broadcast broadband). To sum up a few of the other interesting things we saw and learned: The connected home: Service providers can exploit new opportunities beyond video including home automation. Enabling whole-home TV and multi-screen is still the big driver today. There is a growing interest in IP thin clients around the home including set-top boxes that support adaptive bit rate streaming for OTT and even service provider STBs that only support adaptive streaming. It is also becoming clear that a major challenge for multi-screen TV at home is getting the cost of customer support down, since operators are going to be held responsible when the tablet stops streaming, whether it is their fault or not. Social TV: More focus on integrating social media into the TV experience. TV Genius had a nice demo showing how you can populate the EPG with pictures of your Facebook friends who like the programmes. Liberty Global and Virgin Media both outlined the importance of content recommendation, and Think Analytics announced a major deal with Liberty Global to provide the recommendations on the Horizon platform across multiple UPC territories, demonstrating that we are moving into mass roll-out phase for this technology. Multi-screen video processing: When it comes to video delivery, it is all about scale now and providing a common headend for classic broadcast and multi-screen delivery. There is a trend towards hardware-based transcoding to enable more channels per rack unit. Encoding vendors with a heritage in 'classic' broadcast are strengthening their multi-screen offers and vendors who targeted IPTV and multi-screen are looking for opportunities in traditional TV over cable and satellite. The bottom line is that everyone wants an end-to-end solution so they can take care of all video delivery for their customers. Content security: Pay TV OTT content protection was another important theme for the show. There is a feeling that multi-screen has reached a tipping point where all channels are expected on all screens, and platform operators will expect the same levels of security on smartphones and tablets as they have on the STB. They also want a managed security service and not just a DRM, and that is a role the CA vendors are only too happy to fulfil. Tablets: Where do you start? They are everywhere in this industry and will eventually be everywhere in homes, and they are already having a notable impact on TV. There is a growing feeling that they will displace the PC and even the second TV in the home because they are so easy to use, the picture quality is so good and they boot up instantly. Tablets are encouraging more linear viewing. There are big opportunities and disruptions ahead because of synchronisation between the tablet and the main TV, with the tablet providing Greenfield advertising inventory. Broadcasters will have to fight third-parties to control the interactive advertising (or engagement) opportunities on synchronised tablets. By John Moulding, Videonet   |
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Cloud-Based, Ray-Traced Games stream to thin clients.
This is really a trend of the future.
Where the big hardware can be a shared resource and streamed to thin clients, or basically devices with low end $10 ~ $20 cpu's like the Roku or other Internet media streamers. The heavy lifting is done on the back end game server.
Experimental Cloud-based Ray Tracing Using Intel® MIC Architecture for Highly Parallel Visual Processing
Wolfenstein gets ray traced - on your tablet!
Wolfenstein gets ray traced - now with more horsepower and new effects!
Where the big hardware can be a shared resource and streamed to thin clients, or basically devices with low end $10 ~ $20 cpu's like the Roku or other Internet media streamers. The heavy lifting is done on the back end game server.
Experimental Cloud-based Ray Tracing Using Intel® MIC Architecture for Highly Parallel Visual Processing
Wolfenstein gets ray traced - on your tablet!
Wolfenstein gets ray traced - now with more horsepower and new effects!
Cloud-Based, Ray-Traced Games On Intel Tablets
"After Intel showed a ray traced version of Wolfenstein last year running cloud-based streamed to a laptop the company that has just recently announced its shift to the mobile market shows now their research project Lalso running on various x86-tablets with 5 to 10 inch screens. The heavy calculations are performed by a cloud consisting of a machine with a Knights Ferry card (32 cores) inside. The achieved frame rates are around 20-30 fps."Wolfenstein Ray Traced and Anti-Aliased, At 1080p
"After Intel displayed their research demo Wolfenstein: Ray Traced on Tablets, the latest progress at IDF focuses on high(est)-end gaming now running at 1080p. Besides image-based post-processing (HDR, Depth of Field) there is now also an implementation of a smart way of calculating anti-aliasing through using mesh IDs and normals and applying adaptive 16x supersampling. All that is powered by the 'cloud,' consisting of a server that holds eight Knights Ferry cards (total of 256 cores / 1024 threads). A lot of hardware, but the next iteration of the 'Many Integrated Core' (MIC) architecture, named Knights Corner (and featuring 50+ cores), might be just around the corner."FCC To Test Opening White Spaces Up To Public
From Slashdot:
"The FCC will begin a test on Monday that will give the public access to 'white spaces,' the unused spectrum between TV and radio stations. The Commission is in the process of opening up the airwaves for public use; the last release of unlicensed airwaves eventually spawned a number of innovations such as WiFi, cordless phones and baby monitors. Officials hope this move will lead to better WiFi technology that can cover up to 50 miles.
"The FCC will begin a test on Monday that will give the public access to 'white spaces,' the unused spectrum between TV and radio stations. The Commission is in the process of opening up the airwaves for public use; the last release of unlicensed airwaves eventually spawned a number of innovations such as WiFi, cordless phones and baby monitors. Officials hope this move will lead to better WiFi technology that can cover up to 50 miles.
New Channel Master DVR records OTA, streams Vudu but not Netflix | Crave - CNET News
http://www.channelmaster.com/
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20103986-1/new-channel-master-dvr-records-ota-streams-vudu-but-not-netflix/
Cutting the cable can be done, but one of the toughest challenges is replacing live TV programs, like sports and local news. We've long been advocates of over-the-air (OTA) HDTV to fill the gap, but there aren't many OTA DVRs and the existing models have significant drawbacks, including the Channel Master CM-7000PAL we reviewed earlier this year.
Channel Master has announced a new over-the-air DVR this morning, the Channel Master TV, combining TV recording functionality with the ability to stream Vudu. Unlike TiVo, the Channel Master TV does not require a monthly subscription, instead relying on free electronic program guide information already contained in over-the-air TV signals. The Channel Master TV also looks to sport a redesigned user interface, a much-needed upgrade over the rough-looking interface of the CM-7000PAL.
The Channel Master TV has a built-in 320GB hard drive, capable of recording 35 hours of HD content. There are also two USB ports (one on the front, one on the back) and Channel Master says you'll be able to play digital media files off them, although there's no file format information yet. The three antennas on the back of the player are for the Channel Master TV's built-in Wi-Fi connection, so you won't need an Ethernet connection in your living room to stream Vudu.
As much as we like seeing expanded over-the-air recording options, the Channel Master TV has a lot working against it. We're shocked that the Channel Master TV doesn't included Netflix support, considering it's available on nearly ever home theater product these days. And while Vudu is excellent for streaming movies, we've found the competing Amazon Instant service to be even better for cord-cutters, with its extensive selection of TV content.
Channel Master also didn't mention any improvements to our biggest criticism of the CM-7000PAL, which is that it works more like a VCR than a modern DVR. Most DVRs offer name-based recordings, so you can tell the machine to record all the new episodes of "30 Rock," and the DVR will adjust its recording schedule accordingly. With the CM-7000PAL, all you can tell it is to record every Thursday at 10 p.m. on NBC. It won't skip repeats, automatically extend for hour-long special episodes, or adjust if the show changes its time slot.
The $400 price is also likely to be a sticking point, especially budget-minded buyers looking to reduce their costs by cutting their cable subscription. It lacks the monthly fee of a TiVo, but it's still a large upfront cost and it will take a while before the cable bill savings will pay for the box.
Even with those drawbacks, the Channel Master TV looks to be a significant upgrade over the Channel Master CM-7000PAL, which has found a sizable niche even with its limitations. We're looking forward to getting our hands on a review sample to see how it holds up as an everyday DVR.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20103986-1/new-channel-master-dvr-records-ota-streams-vudu-but-not-netflix/
Cutting the cable can be done, but one of the toughest challenges is replacing live TV programs, like sports and local news. We've long been advocates of over-the-air (OTA) HDTV to fill the gap, but there aren't many OTA DVRs and the existing models have significant drawbacks, including the Channel Master CM-7000PAL we reviewed earlier this year.
Channel Master TV's EPG.
The Channel Master TV has a built-in 320GB hard drive, capable of recording 35 hours of HD content. There are also two USB ports (one on the front, one on the back) and Channel Master says you'll be able to play digital media files off them, although there's no file format information yet. The three antennas on the back of the player are for the Channel Master TV's built-in Wi-Fi connection, so you won't need an Ethernet connection in your living room to stream Vudu.
Channel Master TV's back panel. (Click for larger image.
(Credit: Channel Master) Channel Master also didn't mention any improvements to our biggest criticism of the CM-7000PAL, which is that it works more like a VCR than a modern DVR. Most DVRs offer name-based recordings, so you can tell the machine to record all the new episodes of "30 Rock," and the DVR will adjust its recording schedule accordingly. With the CM-7000PAL, all you can tell it is to record every Thursday at 10 p.m. on NBC. It won't skip repeats, automatically extend for hour-long special episodes, or adjust if the show changes its time slot.
The $400 price is also likely to be a sticking point, especially budget-minded buyers looking to reduce their costs by cutting their cable subscription. It lacks the monthly fee of a TiVo, but it's still a large upfront cost and it will take a while before the cable bill savings will pay for the box.
Even with those drawbacks, the Channel Master TV looks to be a significant upgrade over the Channel Master CM-7000PAL, which has found a sizable niche even with its limitations. We're looking forward to getting our hands on a review sample to see how it holds up as an everyday DVR.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Digital Media Interface Co
DMI® — Digital Media Interface Co., Ltd was established in 2006, with headquarters in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand.
DMI®— Digital Media Interface Co., Ltd is modestly proud to be the first home - grown company to provide a complete software and hardware platform solutions to the growing IPTV industry worldwide.
http://www.dmiinter.com/Brochure/S616-a.pdf
DMI®— Digital Media Interface Co., Ltd is modestly proud to be the first home - grown company to provide a complete software and hardware platform solutions to the growing IPTV industry worldwide.
http://www.dmiinter.com/Brochure/S616-a.pdf
Fwd: OVERSTOCK 2 DAY SALE!!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "CCTV Imports" <sales@cctvimports.com>
Date: Sep 13, 2011 2:01 AM
Subject: OVERSTOCK 2 DAY SALE!!
From: "CCTV Imports" <sales@cctvimports.com>
Date: Sep 13, 2011 2:01 AM
Subject: OVERSTOCK 2 DAY SALE!!
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