Aformentioned Flash player support for H.264/MPEG-4 should be released in the next few weeks (though media streaming is still tied to their Media Server, which kinda sucks),
2D Shading language for Flash code-named Hydra; you can check out a HW accelerated only version here,
C/C++ compiler for Actionscript; not sure if this will be productized, but the demo of Quake I software rendering compiled to the AS3 VM is pretty cool (end of the second video, here),
Substantially expanded text control: flow, wrap-around, tables, etc.,
With some significant focus of the developer productivity/debugging chain, Adobe could make things very interesting for the current generation of incumbents (Sun, Microsoft, etc.).
To cut to the chase, your coaxial cable (and hence your cable company) is capable of delivering (roughly somewhat less than) 5Gbps into your house.
The math for that number is pretty simple. There's about 750mhz (or so) or RF spectrum avaible, divided into 6mhz "channels". Why 6mhz? Because that's about how much spectrum you need to deliver an uncompressed analog NTSC AV signal - in the digital world, that translates into (about) 40Mbps. So 40*125 = 5 (you know, adjusting for decimal places).
That sounds like a big number, and it is, but there are a few mitigating factors, as discussed last time.
First, it is a "shared" connection. There a certain number of households grouped into a "service group", usually between 200 to 2000 (very broadly), which connect to some physical networking gear at the cable plant (I use the term "plant" very loosely here). Within that service group, DOCSIS (the cable networking data interface protocol) basically works like a form of encrypted ethernet. Everybody in that service group sees all the packets, but cannot decode those packets.
So right off the bat, your effective sustained speed (more on this concept in a bit), is 5Gbps divided by[number of homes in your service group].
Additionally, some portion of that spectrum, those channels, is consumed by television - In fact, almost all of it. Today, only a single 6mhz channel is allocated to your High Speed Data (HSD) connection. That's a big part of what DOCSIS 3.0 promises - the ability to "bond" channels to effectively multiply the available bandwidth by N number of 6mhz channels.
Assuming there's channel spectrum to allocate...
In digital form, some 10 to 16 or so Standard-Def (SD) channels can fit in a single 6mhz channel (multiplexed into a single MPEG container over that channel, for those curious - this is also important because it has implications for compressions; specifically regarding CBR v. VBR). Two to maybe 3 or four High-Def (HD) channels can fit in the same 40Mbps. The range incidentally, is largely a function of compression quality per digital channel; this is probably worth a future post.
Short version: you get either 1 analog channel, 10 to 16 (or so) SD digital channels, or 2 to 4 (or so) HD digital channels.
Thr rub is this: most of the U.S. is still analog. Or at least, enough of it that most cable operators carry around 80 or so analog channels (out of a possible 110 or so). Then they consume another 6 to 8 or so "double carrying" the same channels in digital form, and the rest is allocated to HD channels (triple carrying many channels) and VOD (Video-On-Demand - more on how this works in a future post also).
Which doesn't leave a lot of room for your HSD connection.
Interesting, the core technology and bandwidth available compares reasonably favorably even with newer technologies like optical fiber (remember that we're talking about the connection to the home from the "edge" of the network - "inside" the cable network is often optical fiber, already; the challenge here is the "last mile"). Mostly the advantage of networks like FiOS is smaller service group sizes (owing to larger capital investments and other "late mover" advantages), and less legacy encumberances.
Ok, it hasn't really been a year - the Vista launch was "officially" January 30, for consumers, with the actual release tepidly launching 60 days earliers to businesses and developers on November 30.
But its interesting to note the contrast betwixt Vista's reception and Halo 3 (which just launched September 25).
I don't think there's anything wrong, per se, with Vista (other than the ridiculously massive gap between it and the last major OS release from Microsoft) - and there's much to recommend - but, it reaffirms for me that OS'es increasingly won't matter. Note that although Vista projections are down from MS, XP projections are up - the message seemingly that one's just as good as the other.
I don't mean that snidely - as computing has moved from novelty to utility, consumer interest will be be driven by experience, not capability. That is, "What have you done for me lately?", not "What could you do for me lately?" - which explains Halo's, um, halo.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I watched the "Family Guy" season premiere last night, and quite enjoyed it.
It was an hour long, but if you take out commercials and about 10 minutes of "Family Guy" nonsense (most "Family Guy" humour seems to be of the "its-funny-if-it-goes-on-uncomfortably-long" variety anyway) - it was pretty much a 35 minute shot-for-shot recreation of the first Star Wars film (Episode IV, to be clear).
It may even be my preferred edition of Star Wars.
The CG was good, that action scenes were crisp, the pacing was tight, and Han shot first. Sure, the (voice-over) acting was a little wooden, but no worse than the original :)
Not a new observation, or anything, but there's been an explosion in storage capacity, with revolutions of change still coming.... but our ability to organize and manage that data has only incrementally improved over the last two decades. For example, at the high end, although every medium to large business drowns in an excess of data they have trouble managing, core rDB tech has only evolved incrementally, at least commercially - yet remains the tool of choice.
Companies like Google, whose mission statement is about data organization, of course, don't just fall back on tried and true patterns - they created tools (genuine internal infrastructure) like BigTable to help address these issues.
In a similiar vein (courtesy of Slashdot), you should check out the Database Column - a "multi-author blog on database technology and innovation" ("Column", get it? :D). Clearly, there's some interesting thinking going in the space that will change how data management happens - column-based dB tech vs. row-based is really only the tip of the iceberg, but provides a nice visual metaphor for how sideways things will get.
Interestingly enough, the "middeware" thing I referred to previously was in this space. If I manage to get out off my keister with that project some weekend, I'll post a sample application... but don't hold your breath :)
Boy - there were a number of interesting things at this year's SIGGRAPPH, but so-called "Seam Carving" really seems to have caught people's attention. It seems to have hit upon exactly the right combination of: (1) Easy to demo, (2) Fake AI/magic (seeming) computer smarts, and (most importantly) (3) Relatively trivial to code. Still, even having read the preprints, I'm surprised at all the attention it seems to be receiving.
Video, which explains what I'm talking about (it is fun to watch in action):
And demos, for Windows, in Java, and even Flash, if you just want to try it online (the Windows version is the coolest).
Pretty clever. (And yes, thank you, I've seen it :P)
