Technology – Page 5 – Spinor Info

HD stupidity

Mar 212009

I am watching a documentary on BBC World.

BBC World is available here on basic analog cable, which is the only kind of cable I am interested in having in the house. (Mainly, I am put off digital cable because of the need for separate set-top boxes, but DRM also doesn’t help, not to mention the nasty habit of the box to wake up in the middle of the night to perform an OS upgrade, clearly demonstrating that I am not in control of equipment that is in my house.)

However, BBC World is, it appears, a high definition (HD) broadcast, so on analog cable it appears with a black stripe on the top and the bottom of the picture.

This particular documentary, however, was apparently shot in standard definition. So BBC World chose one of three options, each less than perfect: instead of cropping the picture at the top and the bottom, or introducing black stripes on the left and right, they decided to stretch the picture horizontally. Why so many people prefer a distorted picture over black stripes, I have no idea.

But this means that on my standard analog cable, I get a standard definition show that appears at less than standard resolution, vertically compressed, distorted, with unnecessary black stripes at the top and the bottom. Isn’t HD just glorious?

HD madness

Fortunately, as I tend to watch TV on my computer, I always have the option of stretching the video window vertically and get a picture with the correct aspect ratio. This option is not necessarily available on ordinary televisions.

Behind this ridiculousness is the insane decision to change not just the resolution but the aspect ratio of HD broadcasts. Why, you might ask? Very simple. If the aspect ratios were the same, most people could not tell the difference between standard definition and HD even when the broadcast was true HD, which often is not the case (older shows, and even some newer shows, are shot in standard definition.) So how do you convince people to buy HD anyway? By making it apparent that they have a “better” television set because it is wider.

And this has been done before. Back in the 1950s, when movie studios were seriously worried about the competition of television, they changed the aspect ratio of Hollywood movies, intentionally making them incompatible with the standard 4:3 aspect ratio of NTSC/PAL television. What is amazing is how well they managed to convince the public that a wider picture is better, providing yet another example of just how easy it is to manipulate people.

That infamous do-not-call list

Canada, Technology No Responses »

Feb 192009

When the Canadian do-not-call list was brought into existence, I dutifully registered my two landline telephone numbers. Little did I know that the list is available to anyone (including foreign operators who are not subject to Canadian do-not-call legislation) for a few dollars. I have not checked (stupid mistake!) only naively assumed that the list will be implemented properly, meaning that the government will offer a means for operators to submit their list of numbers for do-not-call verification. I never expected that the do-not-call list itself will be made available in its entirety. On the odd chance that I know personally some of the people behind this lousy implementation, I’ll refrain from using stronger words but… this really wasn’t a very smart thing to do, was it.

Fortunately, I never registered our cell phones. And I don’t think I will. I doubt the do-not-call list will stop fraudulent operators from trying to tell us about our vehicle warranties or Florida vacations and why help them by making our numbers readily available in the form of an easy-to-purchase, government approved list?

Murphy on battery

Computers, Technology No Responses »

Feb 142009

Murphy’s law works well on battery power, too.

Not FIVE SECONDS after I finished shutting down my workstation and my main server, the power came back on. If it only came back just a minute earlier, I’d have been able to avoid the shutdown altogether.

Well, at least the power is back on. I cannot help but notice that ever since the 2003 blackout, power has been a great deal less reliable here than before. Or perhaps it was always like this, I just perceive it differently?

A funny thing happened during the shutdown of my workstation, by the way. I executed a manual shutdown, which in turn was interrupted by the UPS that initiated a hibernation. So the machine went to hibernate. When I powered it back on, it came out of hibernation and promptly proceeded to complete the previously initiated shutdown. Computers can be so literal-minded!

Battery power

Technology No Responses »

Feb 142009

I’m writing this on battery power: we just lost power in our house, and probably more than just our house, as the traffic lights at a nearby intersection are also dark. If power doesn’t come back soon, I’m afraid I’ll have to start shutting systems down. Joyful.

No digital dark ages?

Books, Internet, Physics, Society, Technology No Responses »

Jan 272009

I’ve read a lot about the coming “digital dark age”, when much of the written record produced by our digital society will no longer be readable due to changing data formats, obsolete hardware, or deteriorating media.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the opposite is happening. Material that is worth preserving may in fact be more likely to survive, simply because it’ll exist in so many copies.

For instance, I was recently citing two books in a paper: one by d’Alembert, written in 1743, and another by Mach, from 1883. Is it pretentious to cite books that you cannot find at any library within a 500-mile radius?

Not anymore, thanks, in this case, to Google Books:

Jean Le Rond d’ Alembert: Traité de dynamique
Ernst Mach: Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung

And now, extra copies of these books exist on my server, as I downloaded and I am preserving the PDFs. Others may do the same, and the books may survive so long as computers exist, as copies are being made and reproduced all the time.

Sometimes, it’s really nice to live in the digital world.

About leap years

Computers, Music, Technology No Responses »

Jan 012009

A full nine years after the Y2K bug was to end civilization as we know it, it appears that Microsoft has yet to discover leap years. It seems that many of their Zune music players died a premature death yesterday (though they’re expected to come back to life today) because they were not prepared to deal with years that are 366 days in length.

Not only is this a remarkable case of sloppy programming and quality control, it also highlights why devices with digital rights management are such a bad idea. They’re designed not to serve you, the person who owns the devices and pays for the content played on it, but to serve third party content providers who view you as the enemy. And you actually pay good money for such garbage?

This is why I have yet to purchase an iPod, Zune, or indeed, any other device or software that is designed to police my non-existent file sharing habits.

The high-tech era

Space, Technology No Responses »

Dec 142008

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but there is something magically beautiful in vintage 1960s high tech. Take JPL’s Space Flight Operations Center, for instance.

JPL Space Flight Operations Center

Sure, wall-size LCD or plasma screens are nowadays a dime a dozen, and as to the computing equipment in that room, hey, my watch probably has more transistors. Still… there is something awe-inspiring in this picture that is just not there when you walk into a Best Buy.

Mischief

History, Technology No Responses »

Dec 122008

Here is a place where some serious mischief took place nearly half a century ago:

Craters in Nevada

Must be a nice place to visit. Or, if not that, then perhaps this fine Arizona museum next time I drive across the United States.

Obama’s Blackberry

Internet, Politics, Technology 2 Responses »

Nov 182008

Having heard on the news all the phony reasons as to why President-elect Obama must give up his Blackberry, I was planning to write down my strong opinions here. But, it’s no longer necessary… it appears that Newsweek has done it, and I agree with them on all counts: Obama should keep his Blackberry, as it is time for the United States to have a 21st century president.

Digital obsolescence

Books, Computers, Internet, Technology No Responses »

Nov 162008

In the year 1086, William the Conqueror ordered a survey of England. The result of this became known as the Domesday Book, a detailed account of the material wealth of England on that day of accounting, or reckoning, or doom (dom in Old English), i.e., on domesday.

900 years later, the BBC engaged in a cultural heritage project. The BBC Domesday Project was a multimedia survey of the United Kingdom, published using the latest technology: laser disc. Remember laser discs? Not compact discs, laser discs. 12 inches wide, big, shiny, designed originally to store near broadcast quality analog video.

The two Domesday discs contained professional video segments, numerous photographs encoded as single-frame analog video, along with a large amount of data (including geographic data and data from the 1981 census), as the discs could store about to 300 MB of digital data, a huge data capacity at the time.

All you needed to view the BBC Domesday disc was a specially manufactured laser disc player, along with an Acorn computer with specialized interface hardware.

Of course today it is a tad hard to find a laser disc player of any kind, never mind a specially manufactured model. As to the Acorn with the custom interface and coprocessor, good luck finding one on eBay!

The original creators of the BBC Domesday project knew about possible obsolescence; yet despite their efforts (they sent copies of everything to the UK National Data Archive, where apparently everything promptly disappeared) the data were almost lost.

Although it appears that the BBC Domesday project has been largely rescued, it highlights a bigger problem: what happens to our society’s written record if the medium on which it was written becomes obsolete? Some people speak of the digital dark ages, a period in history (i.e., the present) that will become inaccessible to future researchers, as our collective memory is written in a form that will not be compatible with the hardware of the future. Indeed, to some extent it has already happened… how many people have computers today that can read 5.25″ floppy disks, for instance? Or, what happens to Web sites when the people who maintain them are no longer around? Never mind 900 years, will any of our “domesday books” still be readable just 90 years from now?

How much is that ticket, Mr. Terminator robot sir?

Media, Technology No Responses »

Nov 162008

It is always creepy when fact meets fiction. I’ve been watching the latest episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is a surprisingly good quality sci-fi series. I then checked on Google News if there are any news about the show’s rating or popularity. Instead, what I found was a story about a robot in Japan, greeting amusement park visitors, selling tickets, and using face recognition software to profile customers. Not only does it sound a little like Westworld, one commenter actually suggested that it might be time to call Sarah Connor to finish this one off, which is why Google News found this entry in response to my search.

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