standards

If your typical high-end home theater with rows of plush seats, velvet wallpaper, and popcorn machines offers Cadillac levels of performance and luxury, then Jeremy Kipnis' $6 million ultimate home theater is more like a fire-breathing Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano, the fastest production Ferrari ever built.

This home theater is all about aggressively advancing the state of the art of picture and sound presentation. Yes, it's comfortable and beautiful, but its prime directive is a quest for the very best. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is overlooked. Kipnis won't settle for second best. … Read more

As expected, The Industry Standard is back, but without the trendy rooftop parties of the dot-com boom and the hype.

International Data Group is launching a Web-only version of The Industry Standard on Monday that will feature news and analysis items about the tech industry. The items in a quick glance on Friday appeared to be predominantly from IDG News Service, IDG's internal wire service (where I used to work). There is also a prediction market section where readers can make forecasts about events in the industry and bet on whether they will happen.

The Industry Standard originally launched … Read more

Ian Rogers, Yahoo's VP of Video and Media Applications, didn't get much chance to speak on the five-person panel I saw at Billboard Live. However, he gave a very interesting presentation at Aspen Live, a conference for music industry types sponsored by talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and he's paraphrased the talk in its entirety--complete with slides--on his blog.

Most of his arguments ring true to me: scarcity has been replaced by abundance, and spending incremental dollars on improving quality (while difficult and highly subjective) will provide much better returns in the long tail era … Read more

Standards, standards, standards.

That's the general theme of a video about the next version of Internet Explorer, which will unsurprisingly be called IE 8. Details thus far have been scarce, but in a half-hour video with IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch and Architect Chris Wilson produced by Microsoft's Channel 9, the two discuss the importance of standards, compatibility, and interoperability with the upcoming browser.

We also get a (faraway) sneak peak at a development build of the new hush-hush browser. The key takeaway? IE will finally be able to render the Acid 2 test correctly, which has historically … Read more

Requirement 3.4 in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard mandates that financial service and retail companies, "render Primary Account Number (PAN), at minimum, unreadable anywhere it is stored." While the PCI standard provides a number of ways to do this, most large companies equate the term "unreadable" with encryption.

So here is the rub. PAN data is stored in a bunch of places but everyone stores it in databases. I'm talking about massive databases here--think hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes of data in many cases. Now when your database gets this big, you … Read more

A new attempt to provide a higher-end sequel to the ubiquitous JPEG image standard is officially under way.

The multiple countries participating in the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the JPEG standard, have approved an effort to make Microsoft's HD Photo format a standard called JPEG XR, said Bill Crow, who has led Microsoft's HD Photo effort and who just took over the company's Microsoft Live Labs Seadragon imaging project. XR stands for "extended range," a reference to the format's ability to show a wider and finer range of tonal gradations and a … Read more

Robots don't always see eye to eye. Sometimes they don't even use the same techniques for viewing.

Companies are taking different approaches to computer vision systems, one of trickiest problems in robotics, according to a whirlwind round of interviews at the RoboDevelopment Conference taking place in San Jose, Calif. But it's only one of several forks in the road for robot developers. The "humanoid or not" debate continues to rage, and companies still question whether the strongest market for robots will be with consumers or industrial customers.

First, the visual debate. In computer vision systems, … Read more

Olympus shipped its first interchangeable-lens dSLR, the pro-level E-1, in the fall of 2003. Four years is a long time to wait for a new model, especially given the rapid pace of technological change in the dSLR category and a cast of photographic characters hungry for the latest and greatest to help boost their earnings potential. Consumers buying their first (and perhaps even second) dSLRs will follow where great technology leads, but pros must commit to a camera system that includes lenses and flashes. Once they've moved on, it takes more than just a snappy shutter and flashy LCD … Read more

A few years ago, it seemed like we would hear about a new virus threatening to hijack computers around the globe every week. Though it may feel like we're out of the woods these days, it is probably only because many users and companies are now much more aware of potential threats than they used to be. Even computer manufacturers have gotten the message and take more precautions by including some form of pre-installed protection. But when the limitations on these demos run out, it has been my experience that many people just hope for the best because of how little we hear about new threats. Of course, these are the same people who later call me up asking why their computers no longer work.

Even though we don't hear about as many threats in the news, there are just as many viruses out in the wild and some viruses have become even more destructive. At work, your company probably has an antivirus system that protects you from most new strains and an IT department that keeps it updated. At home you are the IT department, and if you want to keep your files safe, you have to remain vigilant.… Read more