Back before the internet hit computer shopper was THE place to look for deals on computers. The Hard Edge was always a funny and interesting article to read. I haven't kept up with it these last few years, but they were unique in really telling you what they thought about stuff.
"Why does the box use gray letterboxing for 4:3? Why is my 1080i picture so blurry? How could 480p SD look this bad?"
Jesus... stop crying like a baby....
First off... the 4:3 issue. The STB displays it with gray bars on the sides because that is how it SHOULD display it. The monitor should be set to stretch the image to the fill the screen if you want to get rid of the bars.
The 1080i image likely looks blurry because you need you monitor calibrated for convergence... geometry... and color. This is a common problem with displays as they arrive from the store. And sadly almost no one goes to the trouble of having them properly set up.
And 480p likely looks bad because it is just 480i sources that the STB is upconverting to 480p. If your normal cable channels look like crap... then you are just upconverting crap... Do you expect it to look stunning? Now... if you use a good progressive scan DVD player and have it setup correctly... and it still looks like crap, then I would say it has to do with your display not being calibrated... which seems obvious from some of his other comments.
Know what they say though..... "No highs... no lows... must be Bose." Get a progressive scan DVD player and some HD programming to watch and your new monitor will certianly blow away your old SD set. Cable tv is notorious for crappy picture quality in SD. Your new set is likely just making that more obvious to you. Feed it some quality source material! Check out Voom.... 35+ channels in HD plus most other normal cable channels.
If you can put up with the crappy sound quality of the online source I guess there is no point. I often find that when listening to songs on my laptop or even home system that mp3s are acceptable. Even in my car the iPod sounds a little crappy using apple's compression scheme or mp3.... but the utility of having such a large library out weighs the dip in quality. However, when listening to music in my 2 channel system or in the home theater.... there is no way I could do without CDs, SACDs, and esp LPs.
I listen to internet radio and download music all the time. But, usually it results in me going out and purchasing a CD of a artist/group that I thought stood out. Lossey compressed audio has it's place, but so does higher quality playback. I'm willing to pay for both. Although some cd prices lately are getting crazy. I just think it is sad that people are thinking that mp3s are "good enough" and equal to a cd in quality and that they deserve the music for free. Those are the people that need to get their butts out to some concerts and buy music! ESP local artists that need the money! Ok... enough for now;-)
Malaria isn't a bacteria. It is a single cell eukaryotic parasite. It also can be treated in a health person with about 4 pills total. Two days or so and you're fine.
I agree. This seems totally stupid, esp in a country like Canada. People live in very remote places and hikers venture into some even further remote locations. People's lives often depend on HAM radio communications. As a HAM here in the US, that lives in a urban setting, I know how much trouble I have on the HF bands because there are large transmission lines near my house.... let along trying to run broadband on them as well. I wish there were something we could do to help out Canadian friends out on this one. Hopefully they can get organized.
Agreed, as a HAM radio operator I am very aware of the problems caused up BPL. It would basically kill any HF work, if it were to become widespread. Things are bad enough the way they are now.
It would really suck ass if the next time I was out hiking or in a remote area and some emergency happened, and I needed to get out on HF that no one would be able to pick it up because of BPL.
Just wait.... How long do you think it will be until the MPAA, RIAA, or some other "Big Business" (friend of the Bush family) convinces the honorable John Asscroft that 2600 is a terrorist organization. After all, they talk about security exploits, fun with the phone systems, etc.
If this goes unchallenged, the possibility of abuse against people "not with the team" is almost a definite.
I realize that the space station *could* provide a great resourse for doing scietific experiments for the entire world. But, with the current budget situation and the chances of it being mothballed, I seriously think we could have spent that money in a much better way. I can't imagne that a manned mission to Mars would have cost much more than 40 BILLION, if it would even have been that much. Then at least we would have had something to show for the money. Honestly, I would be better pleased to have seen us allocated a large part of that 40 billion to building some more probes to get information on planets and moons of our solar system. Heck, even exploring the moon more in depth, and looking into lunar mining wouldn't have cost this much. Of course, since we now have George Jr. to contend with we all might as well just continue reading our SciFi books for the next few years.
Ahhhh... reminds me of dialing into various BBS's that I could get numbers for on my 8088 (When my parents had went to bed and I sneaked back down to the computer) Or making the long distance call to the nearest CompuServe node and racking up enormous phone bills (the enjoyment wasn't worth the punishment I got from my parents in return though:) )
But seriously... I loved those times... logging onto servers that you had little clue about.. seeing what was there... who was there... etc.
This seems like a good project to play around with.
"This software would be used only by Nielsen Media Research to retrieve data from sample households"
In the words of Dr. Evil "Riiiiiiiight" How long until this "inactive" part of the Tivo software gets hacked by someone (ie Time Warner, etc). Or at least until that viewing information collected is "shared" with the media companies. Of course they all know that most people fast forward through the commercials already... so maybe it doesn't matter all that much. But it just gets under my skin that Tivo sent his to all of their boxes without consent. (yea yea... I am sure the EULA says they can do whatever they want)
The guy talking about OSX said he likes Mandrake but has actually never used it. I don't think it is quite the same. I have used Both Debain and Drake over the years and was just commenting on a general sense of how the mandrake team build their distro and its interaction with the end users. As a bit more discriminating user I much prefer the design qualities of Debin and its upgrade path. I was just giving Mandrake its deserved props for doing a good job of building a distro for their target market.
I'm always glad to hear about a new release from Mandrake. Although I personally use Debian, Mandrake has always done an excellent job of promoting useability with their distro. Not to mention what is often the best hardware suport out of the box that I have seen. Granted it isa bit bloated unless you do the expert instal. But I think it is targeted at exactly the right market, and is an easy way for people with out lots of experience to get some of the newest goodies out there.
I wish these guys the best. But I seriously doubt they have much chance of changing the ruling. I fear the RIAA and big business has too strong a hold on the key parties in congress for them to be able to make much head way. It is really sad that the RIAA seeks to have such a strangle hold on every possible outlet for media. Which of course means one thing...support your local independent music scene!!!
This seems so typical these days. Just look at what the United States accomplished in the first 5 or 10 years of our space program..... then since the early 80's we haven't done crap. Granted that it helped to be in the cold war and have someone to compete against. IT seems without that pressure that the US isn't interested in making the needed investment and dedication to really push space exploration. To me that seems terribly sad. We shouldnt' just let the ISS sit up there and collect dust, it is a great place to do some very interesting science. IF.... we would get our act together.
Also, lets do something about the space shuttle for god's sake! What total piece of shit. How sad is it that we are flying something designed 25+ years ago that has the computing power of an P90 into space in the 21st Century.
Anyone else get violently upset witht he clipboard program in KDE. Who was the person who though it to be a good idea for that little option bar to popup when I selected an internat address?? So that everytime I select all in the url box of my web browser it comes up, takes focus away from the app I am using and asks when I want to do..... I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO!!!!;-) There is most likely a way to alter its behavior... but I thought it was a silly thing to have by default. But what do I care?? I use Blackbox anyhow!
I would have to think that it isn't really a question of which came first. I think it safe to say that both evolved on their own and each became a good excuse for the others actions. People have been piriting software forever.... even on silly things that don't cost much money. I remember doing this back when I had my first comedore 64. Software developers charge high prices because they want to make money, and often they deserve it. Warez people do it because they enjoy seeing what they can find and accumulate.
Gnome has of course made HUGE strides over the last couple of years. (and hardware has came along enough so it doesn't run like NT 4 on a pentium 90) I have played with every major release that comes out and am very impressed with their work. I think this is a great way for others to give back to the project. Not everyone is a cabable developer.
(But personally I am still a BlackBox man....;) I don't need UI junk)
DLP projectors are truly awsome. I have a small version for my home theater system and it is MANY times better than my previous CRT projector. CRT's need yearly maintanence to keep them in proper adjustment... not to mention the lamps are very expensive and start dropping intensity after just a few weeks. So, I LOVE my new projector. *BUT* For a real theater I couldn't imagine going to digital image. 35mm film offers amazing resolution. True quality is lost in making the thousands of copies that have to be sent all over the place (and weigh a ton). If I were able to have a 35mm in my home (and actually get newer movies for it) I would get one in a heart beat. but as we all know... Hollywood is all about controlling distrobution with an iron fist.... so I wouldn't be suprised to see more and more of a "forced" migration to digital media by the MPAA.
Slashdot Mirror
Back before the internet hit computer shopper was THE place to look for deals on computers. The Hard Edge was always a funny and interesting article to read. I haven't kept up with it these last few years, but they were unique in really telling you what they thought about stuff.
Imagine that... someone not reading and then complaining when it doesn't work the first time he plugs it in.....
OOPS.... Now I look like the Mornon... I mean Moron ;-)
"Why does the box use gray letterboxing for 4:3? Why is my 1080i picture so blurry? How could 480p SD look this bad?"
Jesus... stop crying like a baby....
First off... the 4:3 issue. The STB displays it with gray bars on the sides because that is how it SHOULD display it. The monitor should be set to stretch the image to the fill the screen if you want to get rid of the bars.
The 1080i image likely looks blurry because you need you monitor calibrated for convergence... geometry... and color. This is a common problem with displays as they arrive from the store. And sadly almost no one goes to the trouble of having them properly set up.
And 480p likely looks bad because it is just 480i sources that the STB is upconverting to 480p. If your normal cable channels look like crap... then you are just upconverting crap... Do you expect it to look stunning? Now... if you use a good progressive scan DVD player and have it setup correctly... and it still looks like crap, then I would say it has to do with your display not being calibrated... which seems obvious from some of his other comments.
Know what they say though..... "No highs... no lows... must be Bose." Get a progressive scan DVD player and some HD programming to watch and your new monitor will certianly blow away your old SD set. Cable tv is notorious for crappy picture quality in SD. Your new set is likely just making that more obvious to you. Feed it some quality source material! Check out Voom.... 35+ channels in HD plus most other normal cable channels.
If you can put up with the crappy sound quality of the online source I guess there is no point. I often find that when listening to songs on my laptop or even home system that mp3s are acceptable. Even in my car the iPod sounds a little crappy using apple's compression scheme or mp3.... but the utility of having such a large library out weighs the dip in quality. However, when listening to music in my 2 channel system or in the home theater.... there is no way I could do without CDs, SACDs, and esp LPs.
;-)
I listen to internet radio and download music all the time. But, usually it results in me going out and purchasing a CD of a artist/group that I thought stood out. Lossey compressed audio has it's place, but so does higher quality playback. I'm willing to pay for both. Although some cd prices lately are getting crazy. I just think it is sad that people are thinking that mp3s are "good enough" and equal to a cd in quality and that they deserve the music for free. Those are the people that need to get their butts out to some concerts and buy music! ESP local artists that need the money! Ok... enough for now
Malaria isn't a bacteria. It is a single cell eukaryotic parasite. It also can be treated in a health person with about 4 pills total. Two days or so and you're fine.
I agree. This seems totally stupid, esp in a country like Canada. People live in very remote places and hikers venture into some even further remote locations. People's lives often depend on HAM radio communications. As a HAM here in the US, that lives in a urban setting, I know how much trouble I have on the HF bands because there are large transmission lines near my house.... let along trying to run broadband on them as well. I wish there were something we could do to help out Canadian friends out on this one. Hopefully they can get organized.
Agreed, as a HAM radio operator I am very aware of the problems caused up BPL. It would basically kill any HF work, if it were to become widespread. Things are bad enough the way they are now.
It would really suck ass if the next time I was out hiking or in a remote area and some emergency happened, and I needed to get out on HF that no one would be able to pick it up because of BPL.
Just wait....
How long do you think it will be until the MPAA, RIAA, or some other "Big Business" (friend of the Bush family) convinces the honorable John Asscroft that 2600 is a terrorist organization. After all, they talk about security exploits, fun with the phone systems, etc.
If this goes unchallenged, the possibility of abuse against people "not with the team" is almost a definite.
I realize that the space station *could* provide a great resourse for doing scietific experiments for the entire world. But, with the current budget situation and the chances of it being mothballed, I seriously think we could have spent that money in a much better way. I can't imagne that a manned mission to Mars would have cost much more than 40 BILLION, if it would even have been that much. Then at least we would have had something to show for the money. Honestly, I would be better pleased to have seen us allocated a large part of that 40 billion to building some more probes to get information on planets and moons of our solar system. Heck, even exploring the moon more in depth, and looking into lunar mining wouldn't have cost this much. Of course, since we now have George Jr. to contend with we all might as well just continue reading our SciFi books for the next few years.
>They are also resurrecting the (formerly Quantum) Fireball name, shortening their warranty (previously 3 years, now 1 year)
Nothing like misleading the customers with another name and then screwing them with a shortened warranty......
No thanks!
How about the Pentium III compared to the pentium IV?? ;-)
Ahhhh... reminds me of dialing into various BBS's that I could get numbers for on my 8088 (When my parents had went to bed and I sneaked back down to the computer) Or making the long distance call to the nearest CompuServe node and racking up enormous phone bills (the enjoyment wasn't worth the punishment I got from my parents in return though:) )
But seriously... I loved those times... logging onto servers that you had little clue about.. seeing what was there... who was there... etc.
This seems like a good project to play around with.
"This software would be used only by Nielsen Media Research to retrieve data from sample households"
In the words of Dr. Evil "Riiiiiiiight"
How long until this "inactive" part of the Tivo software gets hacked by someone (ie Time Warner, etc). Or at least until that viewing information collected is "shared" with the media companies. Of course they all know that most people fast forward through the commercials already... so maybe it doesn't matter all that much. But it just gets under my skin that Tivo sent his to all of their boxes without consent. (yea yea... I am sure the EULA says they can do whatever they want)
Thank God I don't use the Tivo service anyhow.
The guy talking about OSX said he likes Mandrake but has actually never used it. I don't think it is quite the same. I have used Both Debain and Drake over the years and was just commenting on a general sense of how the mandrake team build their distro and its interaction with the end users. As a bit more discriminating user I much prefer the design qualities of Debin and its upgrade path. I was just giving Mandrake its deserved props for doing a good job of building a distro for their target market.
I'm always glad to hear about a new release from Mandrake. Although I personally use Debian, Mandrake has always done an excellent job of promoting useability with their distro. Not to mention what is often the best hardware suport out of the box that I have seen. Granted it isa bit bloated unless you do the expert instal. But I think it is targeted at exactly the right market, and is an easy way for people with out lots of experience to get some of the newest goodies out there.
I wish these guys the best. But I seriously doubt they have much chance of changing the ruling. I fear the RIAA and big business has too strong a hold on the key parties in congress for them to be able to make much head way. It is really sad that the RIAA seeks to have such a strangle hold on every possible outlet for media. Which of course means one thing...support your local independent music scene!!!
This seems so typical these days. Just look at what the United States accomplished in the first 5 or 10 years of our space program..... then since the early 80's we haven't done crap. Granted that it helped to be in the cold war and have someone to compete against. IT seems without that pressure that the US isn't interested in making the needed investment and dedication to really push space exploration. To me that seems terribly sad. We shouldnt' just let the ISS sit up there and collect dust, it is a great place to do some very interesting science. IF.... we would get our act together.
Also, lets do something about the space shuttle for god's sake! What total piece of shit. How sad is it that we are flying something designed 25+ years ago that has the computing power of an P90 into space in the 21st Century.
Anyone else get violently upset witht he clipboard program in KDE. Who was the person who though it to be a good idea for that little option bar to popup when I selected an internat address?? So that everytime I select all in the url box of my web browser it comes up, takes focus away from the app I am using and asks when I want to do..... I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO!!!! ;-) There is most likely a way to alter its behavior... but I thought it was a silly thing to have by default. But what do I care?? I use Blackbox anyhow!
I would have to think that it isn't really a question of which came first. I think it safe to say that both evolved on their own and each became a good excuse for the others actions. People have been piriting software forever.... even on silly things that don't cost much money. I remember doing this back when I had my first comedore 64. Software developers charge high prices because they want to make money, and often they deserve it. Warez people do it because they enjoy seeing what they can find and accumulate.
Gnome has of course made HUGE strides over the last couple of years. (and hardware has came along enough so it doesn't run like NT 4 on a pentium 90) I have played with every major release that comes out and am very impressed with their work. I think this is a great way for others to give back to the project. Not everyone is a cabable developer.
;) I don't need UI junk)
(But personally I am still a BlackBox man....
Reminds me of James Cole in 12 Monkeys. "It's in te tooth Bob....."
I'm sure they could put a little GPS transmitter in there too.
;-)
Too bad there are no more HP calcs.... RPN was awsome to use.
DLP projectors are truly awsome. I have a small version for my home theater system and it is MANY times better than my previous CRT projector. CRT's need yearly maintanence to keep them in proper adjustment... not to mention the lamps are very expensive and start dropping intensity after just a few weeks. So, I LOVE my new projector. *BUT* For a real theater I couldn't imagine going to digital image. 35mm film offers amazing resolution. True quality is lost in making the thousands of copies that have to be sent all over the place (and weigh a ton). If I were able to have a 35mm in my home (and actually get newer movies for it) I would get one in a heart beat. but as we all know... Hollywood is all about controlling distrobution with an iron fist.... so I wouldn't be suprised to see more and more of a "forced" migration to digital media by the MPAA.