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Sony's F520 is sweet. It's the only trinitron with .22AG across the entire screen. Sharpness of a shadow mask, color of a Trinitron, and flat to boot. Sure, it's expensive (~$1600) but that wasn't a concern for ESR and I consider it money well spent.

Aside from the (questionable) joy of explaining cryptography to suits and explaining licensing requirements to geeks (Harry Fox helps throw a real monkey wrench in there, administering rights for song-writers), one of the things that came up time and time again was anti-trust issues.

SMEI and WMG were well-aware that together they represented about 30% of the market (they split that up, flip-flopping every year over who has the most based on who had bigger hits). Their expectation was that a joint venture between them would attract BMG, Universal, EMI and whoever was number six at the time. Then independents would simply have to fish or cut bait and join up as well.

Everyone was very careful to avoid using words and phrases like "controlling", "domination", etc. at least in written materials. People would verbally joke that they needed to make sure those words weren't written down, in case they ever got subpoena'ed for anti-trust, but everyone knew that the objective was making the HBO of electronic music distribution. You see, they recognized that HBO had the movie companies by the short and curlies as far as cable distribution of films went, and didn't want the same to happen to them in a new media distribution - the film companies have been worrying about this for themselves for electronic distribution for a couple of years now.

Of course, Napster beat them to it, so they beat on Napster legally. One of the funniest things about the timing of these things for me was SDMI being announced just after MP3 hit the cover of Time Magazine, when I'd been working on it for years prior. And of course they got the DMCA passed in the meantime, making cracking even the stupidest of copy control schemes illegal. Of course, every crypto expert they talked to at the time (myself included) emphasized that no scheme was foolproof and you should be sure to design the system to minimize damage in the case of a crack. Being powerful executives with lobbyists on retainer, a legal solution was obvious.

So, all in all, I'm pleasantly amused that the music companies got just a bit too eager and slipped in one phrase too many.....

I'll use EverQuest for an example. (I'm an EverCrackfeind myself, well not as of recent because college started). Anyhow, quite from this messageboard post 3 months ago. "as of July 18th, 658,504 total players have ever registered EverQuest and the number of active subscribers was 405,522"

Let's say that 50% pay the $50 for 6 months ($20,276,100/yr), and the other 50% pay $10 a month ($24,331,320/yr). In one year they make: $44,607,420 off of subscriptions. This is a very very very rough estimate. I don't see how you could make that much money, or even half as much from advertising.

This 50/50 is of course probably way off, or perhaps not, only a $4million difference. I would assume more pay the $10 a month, so actually more than $44mil is made.

Except that some of them are on both sides themselves - and choose the user-hostile route every time.

Except that some of them are on both sides themselves - and choose the user-hostile route every time.

I know of at least one site that already does this. Sony Station, an online gaming site, pops up ads when you start games. It's easy enough to close the window before they finish loading. I'm sure the advertisers don't like this, but oh well.

So what happens when a it's recorded onto another CD with one of Sony's consumer CD recorders? Does it produce a normal CD without that wacko formatting, or does the little LED display read "OWN3D"?

sp00g3!

spooge?

spooge.

I like to spooge!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

I like to go to the movie!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

sp00g3!

spooge?

spooge.

I like to eat donuts!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

I like to spooge!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

sp00g3!

spooge?

spooge.

I like to take baths!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

I like to spooge!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

sp00g3!

spooge?

spooge.

I like to spooge!

spooging makes me happy!

without spooge, I am incomplete!

give me a sponge on which to spooge!

spooge
sp00g3
spooge@

• MIT is a private institution. Yes it gets money from public grants & programs, almost every accredited institution does. MIT is no more a public or government entity then the trade schools that advertise on late night TV. Furthermore even parts of the US Gov't doing public work can now claim IP on some of their products.
• Yes MIT uses Graduate Students and no they don't generally earn much. On the other hand putting them to work probably does keep their tuition down a bit and heck, if you don't like it you can always go someplace else (courts rarely require X years attending MIT as part of a sentence and the campus is very open, one is free to leave it and not return at any time.) However this has nothing to do with the topic and just gets brought up every time a .edu issue is raised.
• The US HDTV standards happened after the FCC ran a competition in which four finalists emerged. Rather then a winner-take-all situation emerging (which would of taken years with the legal wrangling) a pooling of the "best" of a various technologies was brokered. As the patent & other IP issues around HDTV were spread out amongst several institutions and companies a pool was created held by the companies who now dubbed themselves "The Grand Alliance". Then as any other number of projects have done (DVD, Firewire, etc.) an examiner was brought in to determine exactly what IP was required then a formula was put in place to compensate the IP owners and everything got signed off on.
• MIT earns some large sum of money every year from it's IP material, money which helps fund them. Sony does the same from it's own portfolio. In this case MIT's IP is used through the Grand Alliance agreement, something which Sony seems to have now decided to ignore. Whether or not you agree with all details of all IP in this case it seems rather strightforward and not to fall into any of the areas which so many folks find offensive.
• Yes MIT (a US institution) can sue Sony (a company HQ'd in Japan.) Internationial trade has been going on since we first worked out nations and the laws are rather straightforward in cases like this. Did anyone other then a few sappy posters think that this was a new situation, that one couldn't sue an offshore entity?

USB2 is FINNALY catching up to IEEE 1394 (firewire, iLink, whatever) in terms of speed. Have you heard of 1394b? Coming to devices near you starting at 800mbps, ramping up to over 3.2gbps by 2003.

Ain't technology grand?

I still want the Star Wars MMORPG to rock my world tho.

The official Star Wars MMORPG FAQ is updated from time to time. (I like this FAQ: "2.13 Will I cast twin shadows on Tatooine?" "We are remaining true to the continuity of the movies, so only one shadow is cast on Tatooine.")

They're saying "second half of 2002"; patient, a Jedi must be.

I still want the Star Wars MMORPG to rock my world tho.

The official Star Wars MMORPG FAQ is updated from time to time. (I like this FAQ: "2.13 Will I cast twin shadows on Tatooine?" "We are remaining true to the continuity of the movies, so only one shadow is cast on Tatooine.")

They're saying "second half of 2002"; patient, a Jedi must be.

Indeed. In fact, your quote of my original posting included the assertion that Microsoft has indeed has some practical uses.

And I will give Microsoft credit where it's due. Microsoft can be at least partially credited for standardizing the Intel x86 architecture, for one thing. IBM may have created it, but it was the clone makers selling it to run MS-DOS that standardized it. For sure, it was a dated kludge of an architecture even when it was introduced in 1981, but the fact that we don't have 18 different popular desktop platforms has terrifically simplified buying a computer. The adoption rate has been increased greatly as a result of Microsoft selling MS-DOS.

On the other hand, Microsoft did not invent Plug and Play. The Amiga had it in 1985, the Mac in 1984 and the TI-99/4 in 1979. They merely managed to make it work (sorta) on the Intel platform that IBM designed and they standardized.

Microsoft did not invent the Internet, did not invent TCP/IP, multitasking, multi-user operating systems, e-mail, etc. Hell, they didn't even invent MS-DOS.

So, what does Microsoft do well? Sell their products and implement standards. Not good standards, usually.

Like VHS winning over Beta, Microsoft usually pushes the technically inferior standard, of its own or someone else's creation. Just on sheer volume. And again, like VHS winning over Beta, a default operating system and platform sure makes it a lot easier to use your computer.

Anyone else here old enough to remember trying to mount DOS diskettes on an Amiga, or Amiga diskettes on a Mac, or Mac diskettes on a TI-99/4A? That's the only part of Microsoft which has been a blessing to the industry.

As with most other people who've got experience with more than one operating system (and, better still, several hardware and CPU platforms), I've seen enough variety of computers to know that Emperor Bill has no clothes.

VHS versus Beta? Beta's still very much alive, thank you. Consumers don't know quality, but TV stations sure do.

I've yet to meet anyone with any degree of experience in multiple operating systems who still feels positively about Microsoft. If all you've ever driven is Hyundais, I guess it's pretty hard to understand how someone could like a Plymouth Superbird or a Porsche 959.

And, lemme tell you, Windows 2000 makes a nice daily driver. Disposable, just like a shiny new Hyundai Sonata.

True. It's so much better to have similarly incompetent people actually managing to get online, contract every dread e-mail virus known to man, and then continue to pollute *my* webserver (paid for with *my* money) through *their* idiocy, right?

What makes this game different is (along with the developers actually polling users about their preferences and building them into the game) the amount of attention they are paying to non-gamers. Current discussion threads have centered around making the universe more interesting to females (who typically are a bit more mature and tire of the repetitive womp-rat hunting to gain experience), and others who want a more robust universe to navigate.

There are entire skill trees and abilities planned for dancing, weaving, makeovers (hair coloration/clothing disguise), house building/layout, mining, merchant abilites (owning a store, trading stocks, industrial espionage), politics (mayor of your city/county/planets/galaxy), etc.

As soon as these games hit a certain critical mass, they'll start defining the future of the Net -- where users can move, and dance, and react, and display realistic facial animations. I'm hooked already.

If they don't want people copying CDs, why do they sell this CD recorder?

Instead, I'd get a good NTSC monitor (*not* a television set...check these out) and hook it to one of the boxes found here.

HTH,
Phred

The next question would be how much does the TOOL system cost, and how would a normal mortal go about getting on? More than likely though, if you have to ask those questions, you will never get one. such is life. Anyone have a yaroze they want to get rid of cheaply?

At least one or two people here avoided AO, UO and EQ as the sole topic in their post... Only one mention of the original MMOG, MUDs (and related) type text-games (of which, one commercial venture done by Simu remains and at least one of their games (Dragon Realms) has an average population of 800 players (lows around 450, highs well over 2000))

Granted, those games mentioned frequently have received the greatest number of players (even in Beta stages, for AO). I just thought I'd mention a few places where I see MMO-type games really taking off. First, I think Verant's other works, such as Sovereign should be considered instead of just EQ. It looks to be an excellent game in both MMO and RTS catagories. The idea of an RTS where once you've won an area, you can continue to resource in that region to fund later attacks is good (though I think it has been done somewhat in games like Earth 2150)... As is the idea of having an entire planet to fight over rather than a small chunk of ground. Without any map edges to build against, players will finally need to surround their entire base with defenses rather than only 2 sides. Also coming from Verant (and Sony), Planetside should be a good extension of games like Tribes. Where Tribes had some nice versions of games (like Capture and Hold) where out-lying base buildings could hold a tactical advcantage, generally there was little in terms of being able to seriously gain or lose ground. The front-line was in the middle, and it stayed there. With a game like Planetside, you have the capability (I don't know if this will occur, mind you) of having a moving front. One of the previous games to do something similar to this was Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, where they had a server set up that allowed the games which were played to alter a more global map. The matches were just standard battles, but what was happening in theory was that each win allowed the player's side to gain or retain a section of land. Enough wins on one side claimed that territory and moved the fight forward into the next. Eventually one team would conquer the planet and the map would be reset.

The expanded nature of these games is a real improvement, IMHO. Instead of having a meaningless battle on planet X over a flag (ok, I'm willing to go further and say that the flag represents data or materials or some other tactical advantage, but the battle remains meaningless as there is no tangible benefit to winning in the subsequent match) the players will be able to achieve a victory that (hopefully) will have other benefits to aid them in later attacks. If a few good commanders appear in Planetside who happen to know where various useful buildings are, coordinated assaults on outposts would be possible, lending to the atmosphere and frankly to the fun factor in the game.

Of course, if winning a section of land in Planetside has no benefit other than more land to retreat over, I'd say it probably isn't worth the effort of making the game function in a MMO fashion... I'd even put forward small benefits gained, like capturing a vehicle factory allows for faster or better or even just more available vehicles for your team would be good enough.

(This is mainly in response to anothr comment) As for Neverwinter Nights being MMO... That's debatable. Some might say something like, "Massively Multiplayer should mean more than a standard Multiplayer. If NWN is MMO, then so is Tribes..." Almost. Tribes allows for an equal number of players on a given server (I believe NWN is currently slated for a maximum of 64 players per server). However, the NWN servers can be linked via portals, which would allow for a set of 10 servers so linked to handle 640 clients. The other complaint leveled is in regards to a persistant world. Nothing in MMO says persistant, though a good NWN server should be able to maintain itself for several months if so desired.

WW2 Online sounded like a good idea gone wrong. Personally, I wouldn't have played it, but I can see how it might've been a good game. Especially if they'd included hooks for other games to be linked in, such that you could have an FPS client, a commander client (available to those who've risen far enough in rank, so only a few get the priveldge is they want it) plotting out attack routes for the FPS people, a flight simulator so you could allow bomber runs and fighter-plane pilots to join in, and a few tanks and such (which I believe were included)... things to take all the fighting aspects and include them.

The only other game I know of in the works that looks interesting is Star Wars: Galaxies... but not for the RPG aspect. Instead, I'm looking at the propsed Space Expansion, which is the only genre I feel is seriously missing from the current MMO arena. A good MMO Space-Sim would be a lot of fun, I think... Having the capability of being a trader, a fighter pilot, a gunner or maybe even a capital ship commander would lend itself to some great gaming opportunities. Especially if space was limited to play-bubbles (here I'm thinking of something like Wing Commander or maybe Terminus, where you might be able to range over a single solar-system in your ship, but interstellar travel would be limited to jump-points) it could be an excellent strategic game as well as a fun Space Sim. Having blockades and blockade runners alone would be something neat...

I think I'll cut this short here and not go on to mention the plethora of other MMOGs that have been announced. I've covered those genres where I think expansion into the MMO arena will be good. I don't think many other game types will be able to make the switch (Sim City Online? Pharoah Online? Maybe some trading or something...)


~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"

other names are less recognizable like Arcam , Marantz, Rega , Rotel , NAD, and Nakamichi . But all make superlative gear for less than you'd think.

my habit has recently been Krell and Vandersteen

above all, any audiophile will tell you to listen, make adjustments, and buy and enjoy what sounds the best. all it takes is love of music

I suppose that using IR imagery will be ok when it is easy to buy IR film or IR camcorders? Whoops - maybe it is just fancy IR imaging equipment that is off-limits.

I'd much rather have seen a decision allowing warrantless passive technology (e.g. IR imaging, RF monitoring, etc) but forbidding the use of active technology (e.g. radar, xray, etc).

Agreed. I used to work at ABC News and these have been around for some time. Although the application is different, it sure sounds like what TiVO was intended to do. Here's a good example from SONY that makes a system called Newsbase that sounds like TiVO on steroids. Newsbase Product brochure

The last paragraph highlights a comment from the president of Sega, Hideki Sato. The statment shows that the fault with their failure was not in the hardware or games, but in the lack of marketing. I have also seen other articles at The Register that confirm stories of arguing at executive levels. This bickering led to the lack of marketing, and hence the demise. And this demise is much to my dismay, as I am a avid Sega fan. NEED SOULCALIBUR! Any way...

Sega has done similar things in the past, as seen when they failed to market the Sega Nomad. The Nomad was essentially a portable Genesis, and it rocked. Information on it can be found here and here.

Sega has continually disappointed for years, making the same mistakes with several systems, including the Saturn, the Nomad, and the Dreamcast. I am at a loss for words at the mismanagement of this potentially groundbreaking company.

One thing I find interesting about this new console is the decision to use an 366 MHz Intel Celeron. I would assume that if Nokia wanted to really compete, they would use either a faster processor or at least the Pentium. I know that Linux would make excellent use of any CPU beyond a 486 (*grin*), but wouldn't the greater power be needed to compare to something like a 766Mhz Pentium 3? As Nokia has not released what kind of video processing/GPU/etc, we have little to compare to in the visual arena. Although looking good is not what determines how good a game is, it helps. So with what we currently know, I have some substantial doubts about this system.

The future remains uncertain....

Solar cells based on amorphous silicon are less efficient than their crystalline cousins, but they still have many advantages, he says.

Although I can see some advantages of having flexible solar arrays, some of the issues right now aren't so much the flexibility, as most arrays are flat parts which fold up. If you need to fit to a curved surface, you just use a series of smaller cells to approximate the surface, and then use a conformal coating as a sealant.

The issues that I see, however, is that they admit that these are less efficient, how large of an array are we going to need to get a useful amount of power? Last time I looked into it [1995 or so], agricultural solar cells were considered to be about 20-22% efficient. Hughes Electronics at the time had some that were 35% efficient, but you were looking at paying through the nose for 'em [US$100k per square meter worth, assuming you could find a supplier]

Looking at some current numbers, it looks like these have a chance at being near 10% efficient. To take things into perspective, the typical solar car for the GM Sunrayce in 1995 had an 8 meter squared solar array, and produced at most 200W per square meter under optimal conditions. [Normally 100-150W]. If we assume that we're going to get 50W/meter from these clothes, we can compare them to a standard NiMH rechargable AA battery.

Looking at the battery stats on a very efficient laptop, you're looking at needing 10W to run it [50W*hr battery lasts 5hrs]. The Sony Vaio lists its power requirements as needing a peak of 49.5W. [A single battery is 1.8mAH@19.5V, so about 35W*hr, and lasts 2.5hr, so typical would be 14W draw].

Naturally, a larger, more feature rich portable would require more draw. Realistically, we might assume 20-30W. Which means we'd need 1/2 a meter squared of exposed surface. [about 775 sq in, or 5.4 sq ft]

So, based on these calculations, any of you skinny nerds are going to need to find a few more fat people wearing these shirts to sit next to you while you game.

[oh, and hey, it was 6 years ago when I was working on a solar car. My numbers may be off a bit, as I didn't get much sleep during those days]

Yakuza and Sony and DoCoMo and Anime. What a strange future...

ie. is it goatsex that is leading the way?
Or is it plain Jane erotica?
Or do people simply not care as long as it's free?

That's the kind of metrics I care about. Maybe we could loosen the religious right's hold on America if we could show that, indeed, most people in this country are depraved lunatics. After all we are a D E M O C R A C Y right?

Steven

As per media type, I was comparing size to size. A minidisk is bigger than any flash device, but it's also much smaller than a CD. Are there any mp3 miniCD devices? How about the price of miniCD-Rs? Those are only $45 for 50, and have 180mb storage. That's about 100 minutes of mp3 at a decent quality rate, so it beats the minidisc, but I haven't seen any players that fit that size.

You're right, I didn't clearly distinguish between atrac and atrac3; my own MD-MT20 from Sharp touts itself as a 6th generation ATRAC, but that's more to do with their implementation of ATRAC(1) and nothing to do with ATRAC3, which is specifically targetted for the MemoryStick devices, I think. I'm not sure, but I don't think ATRAC3 is availabe on minidisc, though sony's own page on ATRAC3 mentions easy transform from ATRAC3 to ATRAC here

Geek dating!

You CAN run programs directly off the memory stick. You just need to download the MSAutorun utility from the Sony Clie website. It was released on Oct 4 (not long after the Clie came out).

My fiancee is a resident physician and she uses her Clie constantly. For someone that wants a small handheld that can store up to 64 MB of medical textbooks on a single memory stick, the Clie is a godsend. Even better now that the 128 MB sticks are coming out.
--

Without the full specs on the clie, it sounds like there will be additional software to purchase from Sony if you want to move your mp3s to ATRAC3 format.

(I wait impatiently for the english version)

Anyone remember the old Net Yaroze project for the Playstation? (PSone) It was a way for hobbyists to write playstation games. For about $500, Sony provided you with a black console system (basically the same as the regular systems only it did not verify CD authenticity) and a bunch of C libraries for making system calls. I believe they even gave you a compiler, though it kind of sucked and you were better off buying Codewarrior for that aspect.

Well, we if get linux running on the PS2, and the whole thing is open sourced, then we'll have graphics and sound libraries put together in no time at all. Then anyone interested in writing games for the platform can do so. Just load the kernel and then have linux start your app right away. It probably wouldn't run as fast as some of the dedicated software (the kernel would probably eat a little bit of extra time here and there), but it would get the job done in most cases.

Just a thought.

Has anyone seen SLC Punk? It basically sums up this entire state. There's nothing like religious opression to keep the engineers away ;).

1/2 :-)

Marginally more seriously, Sony was, what, twenty, thirty years old at the time (founded in 1949, making a rice steamer, of all things). Lots of stock holders. Lots of existing vested interest. And existing analogies (audio tape) to draw on. And let's face it, TV broadcasters still made their money. They were tossing the content over the transom anyway.

Sony does have a media converter for this purpose. It's listed at $499.95

--

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

If you are about phantasy, games that happen in your mind, try (kind of ancient) MUDs (MultiUserDungeons). You can find the biggest list here. The games are quite entertaining, much like the Sim Stuff, you can marry, you can choose a profession, even extend the games as a wizard. You interact with people you never met, you can be someone you always wanted to be (or just be yourself). If you are more into visual entertainment you might want to try other worlds (new stuff, not so much imagination required) like Everquest or Ultima Online. Have fun exploring ...

This is simply Verant and/or Sony feeling that they should be the ever powerful Gods ruling over an idealistic fantasy world, right down to the name you may give your character. 13 rules for a game in general would be off putting enough for me, much less just for what you can call yourself.

Would you like me to scan the side of the box it came in? It's pronounced Vega, and the box has a double-V on the front; half black, half blue.

Sony FD Trinitron Wega

--

Some clients left impressed, while others left scratching their heads, but I think the most interesting thing about HDTV, is that while we had some large screen $10,000 HDTV's to display some of the video, we were also using standard Dell monitors to display HDTV signals as well. The picture quality is great, though limited to the 21 inches or so of the monitors we had on hand. Now if I just had a 40 inch "monitor" I'd be all set for the HDTV "revolution" if and when it ever arrives.

High definition Penguins. The Linux Pimp

I spent three years as a suit at this small media and electronics conglomerate, so I thought I had an idea of how to talk the talk and walk the walk when it came to the big dinero. I still don't entirely understand it - I managed to explain the cost-benefit analysis to their assistants, but they just wouldn't hear it.

That was why I made that semi-joke about an OReilly panel on talking to suits - even when you know the lingo, it doesn't always work. I'd hope that a bunch of smart geeks would have enough ware stories to at least tell others the traps....

Since Sony seems to be a popular choice, I would have to recommend the HTD-DW820. It includes a Sony receiver (with optical inputs) and six speaker surround sound for a total of 550 Watts of enjoyment. I recently got one of these babies and would highly recommend it for its size, price and quality.

Well, it is difficult to decide from your post on what system is "the best" because it depends on personal taste (does a lot of "Kawumm" Bass make a good system for you?) and the room situation.
You should try and go out to respected dealers like Magnolia Hifi and go into their test rooms.
But, since I don't wanna make this a stupid "go figure it our for yourself post" let's try it anyway.
1) you have a limited budget of 1500$ which rules out a lot of Receiver options like BK or high class Denons. Good quality for the buck is delivered by Sony. You should try to look out for special deals on Sony "ES" (elevated standard) Receivers like the Sony STR-V333ES . You should be able to get a deal at around 700$. You really should go for the ES standard components here because of better parts used in the system.
2) Speakers. Hmmmm, this is a real personal taste question. I, personally, made good experiences with Bose systems like the Acoustimass 10 which sells at $999 and gives you the freedom to hide the middle and lower frequency module anywhere in the room while putting up only stylish little speakers. JBL is also a good choice and, usually, slightly cheaper. So, I hope this helps a little.

I like this evilla thing, I am not going to elaborate why.

Blah, you're no fun.

I also like the memory stick, and on that I am going to spend afew lines: memory sticks are very practical. More practical than the click(tm) because they are pure solid-state and don't require a special (and expensive and clumsy and power-consuming) drive, and faster, too.

Don't require a drive? Remember that's if, and only if, you own a Sony product with the Memory Stick reader built-in. As far as I know, there are no 3rd party devices with this tech built-in. If Memory Stick tech is licensed, then you WILL need a possibly expensive/clumsy/power-consuming drive to read them.

If Iomega made computers too, I bet they'd have Pocket Zip (it's no longer called Clik) drives built in.

You get to transfer 64/128 MB of pictures/mp3 from your camera to the evilla or from the evilla to your portable mp3 player. In solid state. I think it has it's benefits, and your trashing is a bit gratuitous.

What you're citing as a benefit of Memory Sticks is, as far as I know, also a benefit of technologies like SmartMedia and Compact Flash. The difference is, Compact Flash is an industry standard, not controlled by a single company like Memory Sticks.

I still don't see what's so great about Memory Sticks versus every other solid state storage tech out there. Other than the fact that Sony has the clout to force it into the market in every one of its products. Oh, and maybe the packaging of the sticks themselves is slicker.

It's not that I don't appreciate your opinion, I do, but I'm puzzled you are unable to envision any benefits of this technology.

Well, let's see... A technology that practically duplicates the benefits of several other existing technologies. A storage media tech that is controlled by one central company, who also happens to be a media giant, who also happens to be on the forefront of pushing to limit fair use rights.

Hmm. Do you think Memory Sticks will be free of hardware level copy protection, and simply remain bit repositories? Hmm.. Oh, wait, here it is, and it's called "Magic Gate".

I'd rather just pay for the flash ram, and not a bunch of content gateways on top of it.

You may also be interested in a few products that make use of the MD for storing data, such as camcorders or cameras. Here's a nice page to look at (with pictures ;) and also here.

In addition to archiving the video on the drives to the tape as regular video, it encodes your timeline, edit bins, preferences etc. as data in the video area of the digital signal. It ends up looking like snow - random white blocks signifying data bits. Only with digital betacam, since it's lossless and noiseless, it can be done at a much higher data rate than using, say, VHS, without tape noise and much less fear of degredation or tape hits. (as long as the heads on the deck are clean)

I think this is probably the most advanced example to date of backing up data inside of a video signal. (in this case the video signal is all digital and uncompressed from end-to-end, so it's really just a data stream...but still, you can watch it on a monitor!)

Before you run out and get a deck and an D1 encoder...the deck costs $40,000 alone! :)

--Mike

Mike Massee

"Exclusively for locating commercial, professional, technical and academic information, products and services." Well, ok, that's nice in practice, but how exactly are you goint to differentiate the millions of pages of the web. What's to say someone's personal site with some technical information, information that's more useful than something provided by Sony.com will get indexed.

I looked for several different things following that search engine and did not find a single item I was looking for. It seems that instead of limiting the searching area for us, it should simply index everything (like our favorite search engine) and then allow us to whittle down the information by whatever means we find neccessary. Allow us to use '-'s to get rid of information you don't want, don't do it for us.

That is all.

Check out the MDR-NC5 Noise Cancelling Headphones from Sony and be amazed.
I bought a pair of these during a stopover in Tokyo and i'll _never_ take another long haul plane flight without them They do a remarkably good job at filtering out background noise, especially lower frequencies.
there are a few models, the lightweight ones i've linked to, some bud-type in-ear ones (that stick out of your ear and look like something from the original Star Trek and some nice, comfy fully-enclosed cans as well
they run for ages off a single AAA battery, and as well as cancelling background noise, they also slightly amplify the audio playback...

just in case that long URL comes through with spaces in it, it's
http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/office/ac cessories/noisecancelingheadphones/mdr-n c5.shtml

Ahem. KV-32XBR400 and KV-36XBR400. These are 1080i, which means they're HDTV-ready.

Ahem. KV-32XBR400 and KV-36XBR400. These are 1080i, which means they're HDTV-ready.

I've only seen one person post about it: Magneto-Optical (often abbreviated as "MO"). It's a genuinely *reliable* removable media system.

Zip, Jaz, etc. are all crap. And Iomega sucks anyway -- their support stinks, their product quality stinks, and they'd rather spend money advertising their products than building quality into them.

http://www.ita.sel.sony .co m/support/storage/faqs/mo.html has some MO FAQs (though I wouldn't recommend a Sony drive).

The downside is that MO drives tend to be expensive, though the media is quite inexpensive. Unfortunately, they don't have much popularity in the US -- they have much greater popularity in Europe and Japan. Fortunately, the media formats are ISO standard.

Probably the best consumer-level choice for MO drives in the US is Fujitsu, but MaxOptix makes good drives in the larger, 5.25" sizes.

Anyway, do yourself a favor and at least consider MO.

(A very satisfied MO user for 5+ years).

Sony have a similar product, HiFD. Apparently it's faster than LS120, holds 200Mb and of course, is not compatible.

While the LS120 is slower than a zip, it's main advantage is that it completly replaces the floppy drive. Yes you can boot from it on new motherboards, and linux recognises it just fine (/dev/hd ). Also, with syslinux you can boot small distros, such as LRP and get the same advantage as with a normal floppy: You can write-protect the media, easily.
It's just the thing you need for backing-up your data... if it weren't so expensive (both the drive and its media)

Just on a side note, I've read the new superdisk drives will let you format normal floppies to up to 32Mb, but can't find the reference to this anywhere... any link?

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