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Inside Track v26n04
« on: 2007-02-06 18:38:03 » |
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Inside Track v26n04
ARTICLE DATE: 01.31.07
By John C. Dvorak
The Vista View Dept.: As Vista begins to ship, two things are becoming apparent. The first is that you're better off with machines equipped with the hybrid hard drive, especially if you're running Vista on a laptop. Second, in the real world, some people are finding the fanciest layer of the GUI, which looks slightly Mac-like, a bit nauseating (I find this hilarious). Luckily, you can turn this layer off.
The HD DVD vs. Blu-ray Battle Is Heating Up Dept.: There is no end in sight for this war, with both sides in the dispute sending out elaborate dog-and-pony shows to get people to buy these devices. HD DVD is getting an edge for one reason only: It's cheaper, especially for Microsoft Xbox 360 owners, who can buy a drive to play HD DVD discs for $200. Apparently, this drive was one of the hottest Christmas sellers.
More interesting are the extra features that are part of the systems. In particular, HD DVD machines have all sorts of weird and interesting ideas incorporated into their drives. But the Blu-ray folks say that these features aren't as important as the fact that the Blu-ray system runs Java, so it can be made to do all sorts of things, too—when someone does some coding, that is.
One of the most interesting features demonstrated on the HD DVD system was a skinning capability. I was shown, for example, how the color of a car in a movie could be changed and the new color used throughout—provided that the technology that supports this feature is present. What's even more impressive is the possibility that you could put your face on the Batman character, for example, and be in the movie. I'm sure there are all sorts of limitations to doing this, but the mechanism is there in the system.
Of course, when I discuss this with anyone, the first thing that comes up is the idea of substituting your image for someone else's in a porn movie! Apparently everyone's mind goes straight to the gutter when an idea like this emerges.
The Collective Intelligence of the Online User Dept.: I'm always amused by these books that appear, telling us how there is something like a collective unconscious that is smarter and wiser than the individual's and how the virtual electronic brain that forms as an entity from the global Internet becomes all-knowing. Wisdom of the crowd. These ideas amuse me because each time one appears, something like the Yahoo! Search results survey also appears. So what has been the top Yahoo! search by the great group-mind? Britney Spears, of course. There's your collective unconscious in a nutshell.—next: Copyrights Everywhere Dept. >
Copyrights Everywhere Dept.: The U.S. Copyright Office has laid down a few interesting edicts of late. First of all, there will be no DVD-to-iPod copying (legally), but the DVD copy protection scheme may be bypassed by college professors teaching film studies. Also, it's now legal to break cell-phone locks, so these locked phones can be used with different carriers. (I never knew it was illegal in the first place, but then again I use only phones that are unlocked.) I've always thought that the idea of locking a phone should itself be illegal. It's like owning a car that can run on only one brand of gasoline.
World Beater Dept.: If you have not followed the progress of LED technology over the past few years, you are missing out on a lighting revolution. Since the invention of the blue LED, everyone has been scrambling to improve LED efficiency beyond that of fluorescent lights -and even past that of high-pressure sodium lighting, which has been the most cost-effective lighting method in terms of energy consumed per lumen produced.
Nichia, the Tokyo-based leader in LED technology, has come up with an incredibly efficient white LED. White light produced by LEDs is generally composed of light from four LEDs: two green, one blue, and one red. According to reports, the new white LED produces nearly 1.7 times the lumens per watt of a fluorescent bulb. This development essentially makes lighting technology as we know it obsolete. That said, too many of the LED implementations that I've seen on buses and other vehicles have an annoying strobe that will have to be eliminated.
Where LEDs will appear first is as backlights for LCD displays, which means that such devices will last much longer than the fluorescent bulbs that typically light the screen for you. Also, LEDs are much less fragile than fluorescent bulbs. A lot of displays go out because a fluorescent bulb gets broken.
Copyright (c) 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!
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Fritz
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #1 on: 2008-03-27 11:21:52 » |
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[Friz] Well looks like Sony did an end game with their Play Stations .... only time will tell if this prediction pans out . :-)
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/27/hd_dvd_death_is_blu_ray_bloom/
Blu-ray to bloom now HD DVD's dead, analyst forecasts
®[P]
By Tony Smith [More by this author]
27th March 2008 14:44 GMT
Expect demand for Blu-ray Disc technology to explode this year, with 29.4m homes around the globe owning a BD player by the end of the year, it has been claimed.
The forecast comes from market watcher Strategy Analytics (SA), which admits that the vast majority of those machines will be PS3 games consoles. Some 13m BD-compatible consoles will be purchased worldwide this year, compared to 4m standalone players and 2m computers with BD drives.
In 2012, the company predicted, some 57.4m BD devices will be sold, taking the format's installed base to 132m homes. By then, the PS3 will have lost out to standalone devices, almost certainly a result of falling player prices.
That said, SA also said 256m homes will have at least one HD TV in 2012, so there'll still be plenty of folk out there who won't be getting their HD content from optical discs.
Maybe by that time we'll all have sufficient broadband capacity for the realisation of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' vision of World+Dog downloading HD movies from iTunes to have come about. ®
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #2 on: 2008-04-03 19:41:50 » |
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So didn't the porn industry say they were standardizing on HD DVD ?
Cheers
Fritz
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/04/03/microsoft_denies_lite_on_blu_ray/
Microsoft denies Lite-On Blu-ray rumour
®[P] 37 comments
By James Sherwood [More by this author]
3rd April 2008 10:39 GMT
Microsoft has officially denied that it’s working with a Taiwanese manufacturer to develop a Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360.
On Tuesday Register Hardware reported that the software giant had inked a deal with Lite-On for the development of Xbox 360 Blu-ray drives. It was claimed the drives would be integrated into a smaller and less power-hungry Xbox 360s.
But a Microsoft spokeswoman has since told Register Hardware that the company has denied any such rumours. In a statement, Microsoft said: “No. Lite-On is not manufacturing Blu-ray drives for Xbox 360”.
The company added that Xbox 360 sales are driven by games and that the Redmond-based firm “remains focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster games available”.
Microsoft also claimed it has the “largest library of on-demand HD content available” and the ability to “play back DVDs in high definition”. The company recently canned production of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive, following Toshiba’s decision to step back from the next generation format.
Although Microsoft may have denied it’s working with Lite-On to develop an Xbox 360 Blu-ray drive, the statement doesn’t rule out the possibility of a Blu-ray drive for the console altogether.
When Microsoft recently denied it was in Blu-ray talks with Sony, the software giant didn’t explicitly state that it isn’t considering the format. So, thanks to some careful wording on Microsoft’s part, a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 could still be a possibility, just not with Sony or Lite-On.
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #3 on: 2008-05-22 16:11:02 » |
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The DVD discussion my be a mute point soon .....
Cheers
Fritz
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/20/emc_ssd_prices_fibre_channel_disks_by_2010/
EMC: The age of high-end flash has begun
Enterprise SSDs match high-end disk prices by 2010?
By Austin Modine → More by this author
Published Tuesday 20th May 2008 22:24 GMT
EMC predicts the end is nigh for rotating drives dominating data center storage.
Speaking at EMC's annual conference in Las Vegas, David Donatelli, boss of EMC's storage division said he expects enterprise solid state drives to match the price of its spinning magnetic media counterpart within only two years.
"By 2010, flash will have reached parity with high-speed fibre channel disks. The enterprise flash drive will significantly change the way storage products are designed."
Donatelli noted that flash drives can beat EMC's fastest disk drive in both IOPS (input/output operations per second) and response time. Combine this with better reliability and less energy consumed due to a lack of moving parts in SSD and spinning disks are past their days of glory. And soon, according to Donatelli, who forecasts we'll see "completely different storage" in data centers in a matter of years.
EMC was the first major storage vendor to embrace solid state with its Symmetrix arrays, but the current immense cost of the technology has kept most customers away.
But, Donatelli says, the cost of flash technology is coming down faster than spinning disks.
"We are by no means saying that spinning disks are dead — we see mixed environments," he said. "The disk drive will be around for a long time, particularly ATA drives."
EMC's CEO Joe Tucci seems less confident about flash dominance. Although he echoed sentiments at a JP Morgan conference today that flash technology would "revolutionize" the storage industry — he's hedging his bets on other types of chips too.
"We don't care what the substrate is, and we're looking at all these different technologies, but at the moment, flash is the technology."
Commence speculation. Hey, maybe it'll be Iomega ZIP drives powering future data center storage arrays instead. Suddenly EMC's purchase makes sense. ®
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Walter Watts
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #4 on: 2008-05-23 19:37:19 » |
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Nice!
Thanks Fritz.
Walter
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Walter Watts
Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc.
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #5 on: 2008-08-28 14:56:25 » |
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[Fritz]Update on the HD disk saga
Blu Christmas coming, format fans forecast
source: The Register
author: Tony Smith
date: 28th August 2008 17:35 GMT
IFA Christmas is going to be a truly festive season for Blu-ray Disc, the organisation behind the optical disc standard forecast today.
But it's going to be some time before the format ousts DVD in European consumers' affections.
The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) based its rosy prediction on numbers put out by local market watcher Futuresource last week. Futuresource, formerly known as Understanding and Solutions, has long been a torch-bearer for BD.
The company reckons some 12m BDs will have been purchased in Europe this year, which sounds a lot but is still only around two per cent of the combined video sales in busy markets like the UK and France.
Look ahead to 2012, and BDs sales will have leapt to 240m a year.
That's very good news for the BD supply chain, for sure, but it's not DVD's death knell.
Futuresource's numbers indicate that none of the major European economies will have seen BD sales surpass DVD sales by that time. Four years on - all presumably resounding to the kerching of sales tills at Christmas as consumers, following the BDA's suggestion, splash out on PS3s... er... Blu-ray players - and the best the format will have done is equal DVD sales in France.
In the UK, DVD will still lead in 2012, 56 per cent to 44 per cent. BD will do better in Germany - it'll take 46 per cent of the market - but less well in Spain and Italy - 43 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively.
And this at a time when the numbers of HD TVs in European homes will be at an all-time high.
The point here is that there's nothing wrong with Blu-ray, simply that it's clearly not winning hearts and minds as well as you might expect from all the consumer electronics industry's 'everything HD' boosterism.
DVDs, which have never been cheaper and will be more so come 2012 - they'll be giving them away by then - are clearly satisfying the vast majority of consumers, despite being standard definition.
And the BDA avoids discussing the notion of downloads, assuming the UK's seemingly creaky broadband infrastrucure will be able to cope with HD file transfers by 2012. It certainly will in the rest of Europe - for many European countries it is already.
There is a role for BD, but the industry's going to have to work harder if it wants the format to be more than the video equivalent of DVD Audio and Super Audio CD - an upgrade the masses don't feel they need.
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #6 on: 2008-11-29 23:23:45 » |
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[Fritz]Ya gotta be thankful for NEWZBINS for now .... and friends with Hi-speed and no download Cap
Source: CNET
Author: David Carnoy
Date: November 20, 2008 10:06 AM PST
When will we see the $99 Blu-ray player?
We've been keeping an eye on prices for Blu-ray players and it appears that a handful of budget-brand models are starting to crack the $150 barrier. The other day Woot.com had the Memorex MVBD2510 player at $139.99 for a one-day sale and now TheNerds.net is selling it for $146.99 (shipping included) and Buy.com has it at $149.99. That's on top of both the Samsung BD-P1500 and the Sony BDP-S300 slipping in and out of sub-$200 territory at Amazon and other outlets.
The Wall-E Blu-ray costs $10 more than the DVD: Is that too big a premium in a tight economy?
(Credit: Amazon)
While $150 isn't bad, I think we're going to see $99 fairly soon, with a couple of stops at $129.99. As we found out with HD-DVD players, $99 really is a magic price point, though it is worth pointing out that these budget Blu-ray players are only profile 1.1, while the $99 HD DVD players were fully up to spec and allowed for firmware upgrades via Ethernet (the cheap Blu-ray players can't be updated and sometimes simply can't play certain movies). Profile 1.1 players aren't BD-Live enabled, which means you won't be able to access certain interactive features--for better or worse.
BD-Live issues aside, I'm betting we'll see $99 for a Blu-ray player inside of four months, if not sooner, the way the economy is going. We can debate exactly when it will happen (feel free to comment), but in the near future the initiation fee for entering Club Blu-ray will be relatively negligible--or at least not a serious stumbling block.
That said, the bigger problem is prices for Blu-ray movies compared to DVDs. For example, if you take a look at Wall-E, which currently sits atop Amazon's Blu-ray bestseller list, it costs $24.95 versus $14.99 for the DVD. Granted, the Blu-ray version comes with three discs (there's a two-disc version for 50 cents less, but why bother?) and the DVD is only a single disc. The fact is the majority of blue-chip Blu-ray titles cost around $25, with some, like Iron Man, coming in at $20. (It's also worth noting that you don't get the free shipping on Amazon on anything less than $25, which makes you understand the price has been set where it is for a reason).
I realize that manufacturers, retail outlets, and studios want to preserve margins as long as they can and they've made an effort to present Blu-ray as a premium format that deserves to be marked up. But asking people to pay 50-75 percent extra when everybody's cutting back already is going to crimp sales of both Discs and players.
The smart people are opting to rent rather than buy (Netflix charges an extra buck for Blu-ray rentals, but it's still a good deal, especially when you consider you get its free movie streaming service thrown in). That said, I know folks who say they'll only consider switching to Blu-ray when players are $99 and the price gap between DVD and Blu-ray movies is minimal. Of course, others will never switch, preferring instead to download zero-cost illegal pirated flicks or stream legal free content from Hulu, Netflix, and others.
What do you guys think? At what point is Blu-ray really going to take off (if ever)? Is one of these stripped-down, cheap players worth buying? And are Discs too expensive?
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Re:Inside Track v26n04:Behind the scenes in storage Disneyland
« Reply #7 on: 2009-01-30 19:53:20 » |
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[Fritz]I'm just in the process of implementing the NetAPP filers and a VTL; these really are as advertised, not cheap mind you, but setup is straight forward and they work. My initial use is for block level iSCSI based WAN replication of disk subsystems and to virtualize our existing SANs.
Just wanted to share a good and cool thing
Source: The Register
Author: Chris Mellor
Date: 26th January 2009
NetApp - just like perfection?
Behind the scenes in storage Disneyland
Talking to NetApp about storage is like entering a holiday village where everything is well-ordered, well-run, efficient and clear-cut. The world outside can be messy and confusing, but inside the holiday village gates the lawns are mowed, the pavements clean, everything is signposted clearly and it's all consistent. Why would you ever want to leave?
It's a kind of Disney World approach which looks weird from outside but which is perfectly logical inside. In fact the insiders think outside is weird - why on earth would you want all those different pieces of incompatible storage kit? Those EMC Clariions, DMX, Celerras, Centeras, whatever.
Just say no to all that and choose NetApp storage. It can be whatever you want it to be. Stick a NAS skin on it, an iSCSI block-access skin, a Fibre Channel access skin, have it function as a layer two storage NearStore. Have your primary storage de-duplicate with ASIS while every other supplier restricts de-dupe to secondary storage. Have it replicate, snapshot, thin-provision. Have it virtualise other suppliers' storage in its V-Series form. It's all NetApp storage arrays or controllers and it's all running ONTAP, NetApp's operating system with date stored using WAFL. Sounds like WAFFLE; how American is that?
Even NetApp's employees adore it. The firm has just been voted the best place in the US to work by Fortune magazine which ranked US companies. What's not to love?
But look a little closer and gaps appear. ONTAP comes in two versions; 7G, the mainstream version, and GX, the clustered version. Then the VTL (Virtual Tape Library) product doesn't run ONTAP at all.
Talk to Dan Warmenhoven, NetApp's CEO, and clarity returns, the gaps are explained: "We don't think every single function can be delivered with ONTAP... I don't think they (VTL and ONTAP range) should be integrated fully." He can't see the business sense as "a VTL is virtual tape". It stores tape-reel data and is not a standard file system.
There'll be some integration but not that much. "I think you'll see more of a shared code space (with) FCoE and management interfaces shared between them."
Earthshaking ONTAP 8
What about 7G and GX? They are coming together in ONTAP 8. GX is based on code acquired with Spinnaker in 2003, and the idea is to cluster multiple NetApp systems together. Combining n-way clustering with NetApp's mainstream technology and its replication and snapshot technology and existing high-availability clustered pairs has not been easy.
Warmenhoven said: "It's been a hard challenge but we'll be ready to ship in about six months from now. It's the culmination of five years of very complicated engineering, a lot harder than we anticipated when we acquired Spinnaker."
"I think it will be earth-shaking. It will be as innovative in the storage world as DNS was. Today you have to know what physical device data is on, the LUN, the system. If you move data about you have to change all the apps that point to it."
DNS, the Domain Name System, translates website names into actual IP addresses, the dotted quads, four bytes in a sequence such as 172.128.248.36, which, in IPV4 defines the actual IP address for a website. This means website names can stay the same even though its host computer can move, and we website users don't have to know or care where a website is physically located.
It's different with storage. On your PC you have to go find a file on the C: drive or another one. If you don't know the device and directory you're in a bit of a bind. On a storage area network you have to know the volume or LUN details and accessing stored data on a host or across a network generally means you have to know pretty much which physical device it's on. That goes away with ONTAP 8.
"Now we'll have a unified name space over the whole file system and no one will have to hold (physical addresses)," Warmenhoven said. "This is not about scaling out for performance; it's scaling out for manageability. It's virtualisation of data locality... present the name of the object and we'll go and find the volume."
It's not that NetApp customers can't get this global name space feature already. Isilon for example offers it but that's outside the NetApp stockade. ONTAP 8 will bring it inside the fence.
It was 20 years ago today
Warmenhoven thinks storage is now at the stage networking was 20 years ago, when "you probably had purpose-built switches for Ethernet (and the other different interfaces). Along came the router and the different interfaces became line cards. The core of data management and data storage is not dissimilar to the router."
Just as a unified router dissolved the need for switches purpose-built for different network applications, so unified storage can dissolve the reasons for having different storage technologies for separate storage apps.
"We do believe that the right solution is to move away from purpose-built products for each storage application and move to a single model."
EMC's coming Celerra update embodies this approach - to an extent. It offers a NAS interface alongside its iSCSI and Fibre Channel SAN interfaces and it can deduplicate data and function as an archive. Thus it overlaps Symmetrix and Clariion arrays and Centera archive storage - but those other product lines won't go away.
Still, NetApp believes they should, that the same core product technology should operate within the various storage personalities, that you have your fairground ride, your enchanted castle, your canoe flume ride, all operating together and integrated.
It's all about continuity. Buy one NetApp product and get to know it. Buy another and it works and is managed pretty much the same way. Buy another and you don't have to learn much new at all as NetApp continuity wraps you inside its warm blanket. Filers or block access devices, primary storage or secondary storage - all just different personalities, skins around the same constant NetApp onion.
The continuity even extends to Warmenhoven's own future. He's starting his 15th year as NetApp CEO and says: "I'm older than the hills (he's 58) and I do not expect to be the CEO of this company when I'm 60... There's a point at which a new leader is needed." Tom Georgens, president and chief operating officer, is identified as the probable next CEO, "as long as he continues the executive leadership". Can you detect the whip held by the velvet glove there?
In fact, NetApp is even better than Disney World; it has a plan for what happens when the top man goes - which Disney didn't. ®
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #8 on: 2009-02-03 21:58:04 » |
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[Fritz]It's time to get your 'Yah Yahs' out, sky's the limit now;everything you ever photographed and video'd, can now be transported rectally through customs. 
Source: SD Association
SDXC
Massive Storage, Incredible Speed
The next-generation SDXC (eXtended Capacity) memory card specification, pending release in Q1 2009, dramatically improves consumers’ digital lifestyles by increasing storage capacity from 32 GB up to 2 TB and increasing SD interface read/write speeds up to 104 MB per second in 2009 with a road map to 300 MB per second. SDXC will provide more portable storage and speed, which are often required to support new features in consumer electronic devices and mobile phones.
A 2 TB SDXC memory card could store an estimated 100 HD movies or 480 hours of HD recording or 136,000 fine-grade photos. Faster bus speeds will enable professional-level recording in compactconsumer camcorders and increase the number of frames shot in a second with SDXC cameras.
The faster bus speeds in the SDXC specification also will benefit SDHC, Embedded SD and SDIO specifications.
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Re:Inside Track v26n04
« Reply #9 on: 2009-02-24 22:58:32 » |
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[Fritz]ooohh baby soooo cute 
Source: Engadget
Author: Joesph L Flatley
Date: Feb 19th 2009
Well, what do we have here? According to MacRumors, this could quite possibly be the next-gen Mac mini we've been waiting so patiently for. This guy would seem to correspond roughly to other possible "leaks" we've been hipped to in the past, including the presence of five USB ports, FireWire 800, Mini DisplayPort, and Mini DVI. Coincidence? Underhanded Photoshoppery? You be the judge.
Update: Looks like the pic hit both MacRumors and AppleInsider at the same time, but the MR forum poster who put it up included some alleged specs: a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB Level 2 cache, 2GB DDR 3 memory at 1066MHz and a ATA Super Drive. Believe what you will!
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