43715543
submission
aws910 writes:
In an article by LA Times, Cablevision (a huge cable network) is suing Viacom (owner of MTV, nickelodeon, etc), alleging they are violating US federal anti-trust laws by requiring programming packages to be bundled. If they are victorious, it would be a tiny step closer to "a la carte cable", but not much — Cablevision just wants to make their own bundles, and not give the customer the freedom to choose which channels they get. Where can I get my "kill your tv" bumper sticker from?
10768488
submission
aws910 writes:
Today, I fired up Google Earth to find that the "points of interest" category had been removed, and a single checkbox is in its place. Certain layers are now entirely inaccessible. Google triggered a user revolt, but admitted fault, and promised to restore full functionality someday. In the meantime, I've found a lack of plausible alternatives. Bing seems nice, but Moonlight crashes the browser on any machine I use, and I'd rather use OSS anyway... which made me realize there doesn't seem to be a good open-source alternative to Google Earth. Am I missing something? Maybe a project out there that needs a dev?
7858998
submission
aws910 writes:
According to an article on the bbc website, BBC HD lowered the bitrate of their broadcasts by almost 50% and are surprised that users noticed. From the article: "The replacement encoders work at a bitrate of 9.7Mbps (megabits per second), while their predecessors worked at 16Mbps, the standard for other broadcasters". The BBC claims "We did extensive testing on the new encoders which showed that they could produce pictures at the same or even better quality than the old encoders..." I got a good laugh off of this, but is it really possible to get better quality from a lower bitrate?
