>You're right. Without a modchip I can't play pirated games. I can't play them without a TV either, so is that next to go? The TVs original intention wasn't to let me play pirated PS2 games, but it's certainly an integral part of the process.
That's why "they" (big corps) are trying (very hard) to make everything encrypted from the media up to the display and putting crap like the DMCA so you can't go around it without getting beaten up. If you think IBM's drive were a ugly try, just wait in 5 years from now.
>Actually, MS fired the first shot by forcing IE upon Windows users.
Forced? I was always free to download netscape until it became so slugish and suckish that explorer shined by itself.
Communicator 4.7 on win98 was the last netscape that was great on a microsoft platform, 6 was PAINLY slushish and on Win2k, you really don't want to use netscape unless you don't mind all the pauses and slugishness. Opera works just fine so don't tell me that it's MS bullshit, as much as I don't like some of their practices, IE has progressed while netscape downgraded. It took me a long time to accept outlook and IE instead of using netscape, but now I'd never go back unless they really impress me.
AOL simply killed netscape, what improvement did you see in netscape other than supporting standards? did you see any speed improvements? I saw MAJOR deterioration especially in Win2k when going from 4.7 to 6, aside from adding a buttload of AOL stuff, AIM , icones on your desktop and all that junkware, I didn't see any "innovation" or major breakthrough either in term of UI, Speed or general responsiveness.
Opera on the other hand, has really surprised me, but I still like IE better, not because it was FORCED on me, I always had the CHOICE to download Netscape, opera, or to download a newer IE.
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Moderators that abusively troll/mod down because of personnal bias will be metamoderated accordingly.
Especially for the digital cameras, I mean, I know Ebay is a cool experience, bidding, winning and all that, but paying MORE than what it's worth, I wonder if these people are the same that are suffering from the gambling problems (like those who get ruined in casinos or with videopoker machines).
Anything that is video/digital but light (shipping) is really crazy on ebay. I was looking for a DLP projector instead of buying a huge ass tv, the amount of video projectors that I saw completed or some of the reserve prices were so crazy, the thing is USED and I could get a refurb unit from the manufacturer CHEAPER with a warranty and a new light bulb! This is just too "x-file" for my understanding, I can understand for a 50$ joycam digital camera, no hassles and you get it, but when it's in the 4 digits, usually, unless you're rich or not spending your own money, you'd tend to shop a bit to see the prices and compare... if you're rich enough to buy something in the 4 digits without even shopping for it first usually you can afford a new unit... this is why I'm wondering if these people are actually morons or it goes deeper than this (like gambling problems), ah anyways, the only thing I can say is: good for the sellers:)
Lucas just gave them the biggest publicity and exposure they would have gotten even if they would have been called Star Wards, this is what over-reacting, misjudgment caused by greed will bring you.
I am all for trademarks and all,. but not when common sense is out of the picture. Next thing you'd know is they would have sued school when they do history lessons about the "star wars" project of US vs Russia... I'm glad a judge finally put them in their places. Lucas should focus on how to kill Jarjar in the most suffering and inhuman ways for episode II instead of suing anything that has Star in it.
I'll pass on modding this time, I have to jump in it.
You want to do hardware encryption for displaying movies? GOOD LUCK.
CASE #1. Lame protection scheme a la DVD.
A: Someone gets a key, goodbye.
CASE #2. A bit better hardware encryption.
A: Put some decoding circuit at the output of the video signal and sample it (it's probably going to be digital anyways so no loss).
CASE #3. Encryption between the media and the decoder, encryption between the decoder and the display.
A: a1. They'll nevew go that far, they are pencil pushers right? ok let's say they do.
a2. They do. You will STILL be able to sample the pixel writtent to the screen SOMEHOW in hardware.
Conclusion: Make is as HARD as you want, the only way you can 100% prevent people from duplicating content is by not showing/displaying it, which is what they seem to going straight to without even knowing it:). This is totally ridiculous... I don't even conceive how someone can actually think it's going to work that way and consumers are going to go for it... Encrypted hard drives? good luck for server/datacentre drives that need every extra bit of performance they can get, where are you going to encrypt? controller? forget that, strong encryption on a U320 raid won't happen, weak encruption will get killed, and putting that on each individual drive PCB without losing ANY performance? it will be overkill and not rewarding. People will simply turn their heads and look elsewhere for the hardware they need, there's not just USA in the world. I admit that they are strong enough to force other countries to support this, but if they are the only ones to support it, they'll drawn in their own crap, it's just a matter of how the other countries will react.
Either way, if it passes, it will die by itself, I remember the DIVX DVD rental system... prototypes were there, it was working, and it died. Consumers and especially internet people are more educated, and the funny part is US is all against China's way of treating human rights, and they are going the exact same way China is, limiting the information, punishing people that give information, lobbying against any freedom of thoughts that goes against their way of seeing things... I mean... wow.. 50% of the people actually voted for that.. sad.
To get back on the subject, like I've already stated earlier, How about lowering the price of the medias?, or even better, you want to refresh your hardware buisness? Super! how about investing in a new buisness model and technology to make people actually *Want* to get new hardware? how about a HDTV resolution SDVD format with newer cd technologies? how about 24bits audio for the audiophile, how about etc etc... something BETTER for the consumer, not pointing a gun and tell him "buy this, it's crappier than your other unit, it has more restriction and will probably have firmware issues, but heck, I got the gun".
>The problems really started in 1976. The Montreal games were a financial disaster (it is rumoured that the city still hasn't fully settled the account).
About that quote, on a side note:
We're still paying taxes for the Olympic Stadium that is falling in rumble bits by bits. The montreal Expo baseball club isn't working anymore (i.e. very very low attendance) and it's the tax payers that are suffering from this terrible debt. Since January 1st, they've forced all the cities on the Ilsand to become only 1 big city, politics wants to to think that it's better for the economy, in the real world, it's more like all the surrounding cities were richer and better managed while montreal was going down in debts, that decision was forced upon the other cities, which strongly opposed to that because their citizens knew this meant transferring money to montreal's hole, and reduction in quality of services and probably tax increases.
The mayor who started this fusion project didn't get re-elected, the mayor who fought to get the olympic games in montreal was a visionnary, he really brought a lot to the city (yeah, and debts too:) ) but the subsequent mayors didn't do a good job at managing the money and investing it at the right places, so the olympics were a financial catastrophy, yes, but it was great to map montreal in the world, in that respect, it was a success, people tend to think only at one side of the medal, it's always easier to blame the predecessor than to innovate or do something simple to fix/patch the mistakes. It's like that minister who cutted millions of dollar in health ressources and got her office remade for 300,000$, these people aren't seeing past their mendate, the guy who brought us the olympics, expo 67 and the subways, did, the others after had 25 years to do something about the debt and/or repay it, they never payed anything until recently, so no wonder it's a HUGE bill. This is just plain bad administration.
I use a Samsung syncmaster 151s at work to monitor the renderfarm nodes, it's nice, slick and sexy. Especially for the price. The contrast is more than okay, the only thing negative I could say about it is like most 15" LCD, the resolution locks at 1024x768, I'd love to get 1280X1024 on these devices. Aside from that, it's really good.
Tom might bitch at the suppliers not giving them any replies, I could say the same thing about him when some users are giving him a positive way to better some of his benchmarking numbers since he's not an expert in everything (especially 3D rendering, the scenes he's using only stress parts of the processors, when you know the software enough you know you can get 200% difference from a benchmark to another while keeping the same AMD and INTEL processor. Especially when it touches SSE2 optimized rendering functions)
Anyways, he doesn't mention that so it makes the benchmarks totally flawed (and when you look at the rest of the benchmarks, it proves the point that the AMD processor is still the best choice). Did he change it? no, did he acknoledge this? no... did he even bothered to reply to a nice message? no.
Well, if you treat your readers like this that aren't flaming you and writting in a mature fashion, sometimes these are readers working in big corps writing from home, and SOMETIMES you piss them off really good, and SOMETIMES it backfires at you, I'm not surprised at this, and besides, his articles are getting lamer and lamer week by week, anandtech at least keeps constant and professionnal (i.e. without the bitching).
Look at the next and last alpha that will come out, it will SMOKE at a fraction of the speed the P4 will be at the end of the year. That's what I call going out with a bang. It's a shame such a technology got obliterated in part because of Intel's markettign muscle, we're going to be set back for 2 years for them to catch up on this technology and performance (they've got some alpha people in their staff now that will teach them how to do more than overclocking and recycling like putting SMT on chips for example, that will be one great leap, it's in at least one of the northwood flavor I think).
Watch out for the Hammer when it will come out, it still going to beat intel's latest offering mhz per mhz in desktop performance (can't speak too fast about the server side though.)
Look at the PowerPC, as much as I hate apple's hyping to keep their blinded userbase into beleiving that they hold the only computer that should exist on the surface of the planet, the powerPC architechture has proven itself to beat the crap out of Intel mhz to mhz side to side (and no I am not talking about that "hey loading an image in photoshop on the mac is 2x faster than on a PC, but I won't mention that it's totally unrelated to the CPU and the mac is running on a SCSI cheetah while the PC was running a 5400 rpm 5 gig drive", I am talking about rendering on different crossplatform software like premiere, lightwave, maya, etc).
This goes without mentionning SUN or MIPS or any other cpus on the planet that has interresting technologies ASIDE FROM CLOCKSPEED.
So again, Screw the MHZ hype, I am a power user, I love doing 3d rendering, I administer a small renderfarm at work, I love raw power, anything that comes out and had a power factor gets my attention, it's nice to see stuff running fast, but I am not impressed at ALL with the MHZ hype. Especially for the PRICE you have to pay to cover all the media and marketting hype... Intel's Hype tax like I often call it. Also, what you see is the MHZ going skyrocket... How much do you thihnk they had to cut in the design so that it stays that stable at these speeds? why do you think the athlon4 can't run at 2.2ghz? design.. intel had to cut in some places so the cpu could be easily cranked up that much, they had to redesign part of it, and that's why you need SSE2 optimisation and the pipeline for standard FPU is so bad. It's not because Intel doesn't know how to design a FPU, it's because they HAD to cut on it...
My precision 530 workstation that runs dual 1.7ghz P4 for the price I payed, I find a dual AthlonXP or MP 1900+ far more impressive for 1/2 of the price. Heck, you want to be in the cool factor? get a Dell 8100 with DVD/CD-RW Geforce2Go 32megs and 1600x1200 15" LCD screen, now THAT'S a nice little piece of technology. And quake plays soooo smooth on it... I won't waste my personnal money or blast my budget for a chip that can generate small blackholes because of it's so great CLOCKSPEED. Gimme raw speed at a decent price. For the price you'd pay that northwood alone you could probably get 2 athlonXP and it's mainboard that beat the crap out of the P4 for the same price of the cpu alone.
>So try a utility like this one: Sysinternals' filemon.exe [sysinternals.com]
That's what I was using for Ad-Aware scanning... there's a lot of tools at sysinternals to track the software that tracks you. Theres also Regmon for monitoring changes made to the registry that is interresting.
One last thing you might want to check is a tcpmonitor process (there's one at sysinternal as well I think) to check where it's communicating (if you want to go that far)
For you linux people there's also a flavor of filemon (file access tracking discussed above) for linux, you can grab it Here
AD-AWARE (current 5.62) is one of the BEST ad removal tools for windows computer, grab it at Lavasoft. It's free, it has updates (download the latest definition file after installing the 5.62 version) and I've tracked it's every move with a filesystem scanner, and it doesn't put thrash anywhere in your system.
It scans Registry, cookies, files, dlls, and it found the Kazaa backdoor installed in my system. Usually when you put a software you can remove it's tracking bugware and the main software will still run (I remember posting an article here over a year ago about bearshare having that same type of crap that Kazaa is using right now but it got rejected). What's interresting about Kazaa is if you remove the offending DLL (which is Cydoor bugtracking stuff), Kazaa won't start anymore, this really shows how BAD they want to track your moves.
While I don't have anything against software companies making a buck by selling tracked info, I do have something against companies being hypocritical about it. When you install Kazaa, it offers you a lot of "free stuff" that any above average users knows that it means advertising stuff, spamming and tracking. This is okay in my book at LEAST it's part of the installer and if you don't know and say yes, well that becomes your problem. What I find really hypocritical is i've unselected EVERYTHING exept "Kazaa needed files" and it STILL installed that bugware thing, and it's not mentionned anywhere CLEARLY in the installer. People get pissed at microsoft activation process which is clear, known and way less intrusive than that, but they let that pass in exchange of leeching free MP3, vids, p0rn and warez. If one day the big suppliers of content on that services have an FBI raid at their places, they'll scream justice and claim that FBI couldn't use the informatin that Kazaa was getting from them because it's not constitutionnal. Well I'd say, make up your mind, if you want P2P and privacy, go to some other service, an example, Download winMX, run Ad-aware in case there's anything installed with the newer versions, and it will probably still run after the cleaning process (I use winMX I love it). Don't support crooks like Kazaa and bearshare that are trying to look friendly, on your side, and pro this and that, while they turn around and sell your browsing habbits without your knowledge.
Also, notice when you're not uploading or downloading, but kazaa is running.. your drive burps every 5 seconds.... I'm still trying to figure out why.. it doesn't stop even after an hour.. it's not "windows-typical" drive burping.
Lucas diserved the money he made from the 3 first star wars, in that repect, I support him in every trademark dispute, piracy attacks, and anything that might go against his master piece of work and innovation(tm).
But one thing is for sure, he lost *ALL* my respect with Episode 1, This was clearly a "coup de cash" against his loyal fans. Not only he deceived us, it's not like if he was under-funded or he had to make tough choices (jarjar is the "living proof of poor judgment). Now, he's in it ONLY for the money, he lost his soul and his artistic taste for the movies the same way metallica lost it's artistic side for money in heavy metal music. He had all the time in the world to make a masterpiece, he had all the funding available, he had all the talent, he had enough people around him to tell him what was a good and a bad idea, I guess fans sometimes are really harsh but there's no forgiving for such blattant mistakes and misjudgement; he knew what his fans were expecting and he betted only on the CGI technical skills side (like most hollywood producers) to save the day.
You didn't see me crying when DiVX of his mastercrap went around the net, actually it even did some good; Remember when he commented on the editor that removed *EVERY* scenes where jarjar was? that it was illegal etc etc? Well, on a moral standpoint and to defend the same Trademark that Lucas is tarnishing by himself, I think it was the best thing that the internet and p2p technology could do to save the little content of the movie that wasn't half bad. It's still illegal though, but for someone who saw it at the theatre and gave in money like I did, I would have prefered paying an extra buck to see such a version.
At first, my thought was, maybe I was expecting too much, maybe I've lost that amazement feeling you get when you're younger and seeing something truely fantastic, but LOTR proved to me that it wasn't gone, and SWEP1 should have given me that same feeling if not better. I didn't have such a harsh judgment before seeing LOTR, but what I saw is that you CAN match a buttload of CGI, a good story and good acting and still amaze people... and that my friends, at any age.
Having NSYNC in there just shows the commercial side of lucas that has overtaken his artistic soul. What is it going to be? Big sync dance of Yoda and all his family? oh god, I can see riverdance comming for episode 3 and have a bunch of JarJar lapdansing for 10 minutes... oh and have him signing on top of that, and oh I can see vador joining the club and using the force to lift everybody in the air and and&#*H@IkKn3,22214m3,4
The main problem with hollywood is they are running a buisness. Some people in "the company" are brilliant, but the others (majority) are just seeing and "understanding" the numbers.
Pixar's been around for quite a while, Disney's been around forever in the realm of 2D animation. If you look at both entities, what made them a success is the mix of mastering their art (2d, 3d) AND the storyline. Obvious you might say? well for us, yes, but think "marketting guy" (no no!!! I don't mean like "what would I do if I had unlimited spending money and a ferrari":) ) and like I said before, they see only numbers. It's obvious that hollywood has a kool-aid receipe to make movies and bring in cash. The 3D CGI movies got in only because it was a continuation of the 2D art, so it blended in without causing too much noise. It fitted well and Hollywood noticed it generated quite an amount of cash. That's good in a way, that means we'll still se quality content like Pixar's and Dreamwork's, but the downside is we'll probably start seeing a LOT of crap in the next years in that field as well.
Hollywood sees something that makes money, and they use use use and abuse it until it runs dry and people puke when they see that again. Instead of "risking" new material or storylines. How about a movie that doesn't end well? How about a movie where the good guy gets killed in the middle and you see the movie from the bad guy's perspective until the end (something bad/good happens to him?), How about an ecological catastrophe that CAN'T be avoided and resulting on the mass destruction of the human being with stuff like pollution/asteroids/younameit, instead of having some crap about one guy that defeats nature?
Yes it might flop, depending, again, on the story and more importantly, how it's told. But I don't think I'd see anyone SERIOUSLY pissed and boycotting hollywood because of a different ending. Of course there's always alternative movies from other countries or independant films if you want something special, but usually only hollywood has the cashflow to push effects in a film to give it that extra "magic".
Your wife/girlfriend/mistress/mom bugs you with finding at least ONE good resolution for 2002? here's one that will make you happy to follow and shut them off for next year:)
in 2002, my resolution will be 1600x1200x32x75+hz... on a 21+" LCD, playing DOOM III.
Hey, they've asked for it so stop feeling guilty and go buy one with your next (or maybe 10 next) paychecks:)
Yeah I've seen some HOE stuff like you're referring to with the telescope, it's really interresting. You're lacking several diverging lenses? no problems, make an HOE of the lense and stick it back in the optical setup. Of course there's a big loss of power depending on the efficiency of the hologram, but it's still impressive:)
Of course post-processing the plate is an option that I've completely forgot, maybe because I am more of a "less steps less chances of screwing up" type of person:) for the sensitivity you can always pre-latencify it depending on which type of film used (and of course if the datasheets are representative of the media used, some datasheets seems rather "what you SHOULD expect" from a batch of plates to another:) ).
What I love about them is they gained popularity, the service held like it was before, and heck, look at the start page, do you see load of useless stuff? do you see loads of banner adds, buttons, "options that you never go thru", images, etc? no. They kept it clean, simple, fast to load, and they've managed even to make it cute (noticed how many times the google logo changed since 2 weeks)
I just hope it will stay that way because THAT'S the way it should be for people like us that wants to get something fast and to the point without having to code an SQL query form in the input search:)
The aggressive actions by the RIAA spurred press stories on the music business that exposed the more dubious practices of an industry the Department of Justice has labeled a cartel. This has created a PR debacle for the industry as now aware - and even angry - consumers view the industry as nothing more than a ripoff, overcharging for the music while stealing from the artists they love. What did the industry do? They raised prices again and began removing the ability of CDs to play on PCs. Sinking public opinion and a growing consumer attitude that CDs are overpriced will hurt sales more than the trading of free MP3 files, a big loss.
My thoughts exactly and the thought of million of other people. This goes without saying that the consumer, given enough information and will, CAN have the last word and win, these people often forget the one BASIC rule of consuming... you're SUPPOSED TO DELIVER A GOOD to the customer, you're supposed to SELL something that a consumer WANTS. If something better comes out, people will naturally go to the better offering, which can be any or a mix of variable such as quality features and price. We don't see FORD trying to force us to use 1980 car technology, if they see competition doing something good that adds value, they copy it or try to better it, and they also INNOVATE, you know, that buzzword. What did the RIAA do since 20 years on the technology side, aside from sitting in their pile of money and INNOVATING RESTRICTIONS instead of giving the CONSUMER a better experience, by investing cash in better audio system, heck with all the money they've got, we could have had digital radio STANDARD in north american cars by now! but no, they had to act like old close-minded people that are affraid of change. As a consumer, I don't have to PAY for their incompetence nor their buisness mistakes. I have NOTHING against monopoly or big corporation, as long as they deliver and they make me, the consumer, feel satisfied with the merchandise and if they screw me, well they could at least be clever enough so that I don't notice and still be happy with the merchandise content/quality I've purchased.
We're far from a victory, but it's going somewhere, we're still in the part of public awareness, people are starting to realize that, the napster case and subsequent stories about how the industry is ripping off artists were even stuff found in my local newspaper, which was surprising (usually that stuff stays on the net and doesn't cross media, like the dimitry case for example). Anyways, they won't be able to keep it up, they can stick a zillion protection scheme, raise the price as much as they want to, when they're gonna render the medium useless, people will simply switch medium... like it's the case right now. A lot of us, non-rich, non-marketting, non-ceo, non-buisness people saw decent audio compression comming, if they didn't, well too bad... that kind of retarded reaction usually KILL companies, they should be grateful that they are loaded enough to survive such a blattant mistake, and put their energy on a new buisness model that is a PLUS to the consumer, instead of putting fences everywhere to prefent their cash cow from jumping off their property.
Thanks for the clarification, it was 1am when I wrote this, I might want to add one thing though, the HeNe I got a few years ago were 10mW tubes and PSU for 100$ each, sometimes you can get great deals just by looking around.
I'm really impressed that you got 3 feet of coherence with Diodes, maybe I should look into testing newer ones as well.
As for 670nM the hologram won't be as bright as if you would have used 635nM, the higher you go in the spectrum the less sensible it is to the human eye. Or did you test something that contradict this as well?:)
By doing Copy protection CD they'll piss off customers, customers will burn even more CD-Rs, and after that they'll shove Digital right management crap down our troats, people will be even more pissed, buying even less... and they'll blame it on piracy instead of blaming themselves.
LOWER THE PRICE OF THE GOD DAMN CDS IF YOU WANT MORE VOLUME SELLS, I can see some mozart crap sold at C$6 at my local music shop, why would I have to pay C$20 for a metallica CD? Don't tell me because of the expenses and all, the expenses are the packaging, the design, the loans, etc etc.. YES... well, the mozart CD went thru the about the same process, Metallica sells a LOT more hense more VOLUME hense more PROFIT in the end to repay that possible loan (well now they are rich anyways), so why 20$? maybe they'd sell a LOT more if CDs would be cheaper and become the "trading cards" of the kids instead of being overpriced unreachable-to-most-teenagers-that-aren't-working.
3 times cheaper would mean greater volume, greater splitting among artists, greater audience, greater penetration of the market, and I'D BUY SOME, which I don't do since maybe 5 years after being raped having to pay c$50 for imports that I really wanted and they would classify imports when they had actually a TON of them and anyways, even metallica is "imported" to canada so who cares about the "import" label. I was ripped off, I've searched for alternatives, and I got one.
You can screw people off big time and keep it up for YEARS, but history shows that in ANY circumstances, people will find alternatives or revolt when they are mistreated or abused.
I did my part, I have 100's of Original CDs, but I had it with that system, and seeing them investing massively in crap like DMCA or DRM instead of doing the obvious: CUTTING THE PRICES, simply disgust me. Again, I'd buy a shitload of CDs if the price would be right, it isn't.
For people with the lame "expenses" arguments, tell me, why are tapes 1/2 the price of the cd? it's the SAME process, heck a cassette costs more to produce than a CD, in both time and material, so why is it cheaper? there are many reasons, but I don't care, WHY wouldn't the CDs be cheaper? why would I shell C$30 for a DVD or C$20 for a CD if they could be sold for a fraction of that price?
I am not saying I copy my stuff, I don't even own a dvd player because I just skipped that technology, I'm still happy with my SVHS tapedeck. But I am really not surprised (like most of the people here) of what's happening. Someone is really high at RIAA... Towelie must be running things:)
Get a used HeNe laser off ebay or any Optics surplus, with TEM00 properties (which means the laser is coherent... needed for holography, and you'll be able to make some holograms that have more than a few millimeters of coherence (hense, depth).
Laser Diodes holography really sucks, it's pricey for the result you get, learn the thing with the right basic parts. If you're ready to invest let's say 400$ worth of chemicals films and all, with the idea of doing more in the future, might as well invest in the proper "amateur equipment"
Also: High power laser diodes in a decent spectrum (630-640nm) aren't THAT powerful, or if they are, (more than 5mw) they are pricey. These laser diodes lacks coherence (notice how close are the object from the plates). Without coherence, you don't get depth, without power, you have more chances that your object might move (if the object moves just a quarter of the wavelength, it screws up the hologram), so getting a cheap used 20mW HeNe laser gives you the benifit of power (you won't make a 8x10 with that, unless you have a really stable environment that can take 30+seconds exposure time depending on the object, of course doing the hologram of a fruit might not work too well with that much exposure because only the "fermentation" of the fruit over 30 seconds changes the structure in the nm scale:), yeah sometimes it's that crazy, I tried:) ).
The only downside of Gas lasers is their lifespan. You can be lucky and it would last for 3-4 years, like you can get one that will last for 6 months, depends on the manufacturer, prices, condition. Normally they give you the tube usage and lifespan. Also, it requires high voltage power supply, which isn't a problem for the low power heNe lasers (under 30mw at the output).
Holography is cool, but it takes patience, a lot of trial/error, and when you want to move a step further, it takes as much money than doing high-end photography (with all the optics and chemicals).
another option if you're not watching a LOT of tv and you have the money is buying a cheap DLP projector.
That way, you can get any size you want, at the 3000$ price point they have HDTV support, it's cool but the downside is the replacement lights are really expensive (200-300$) and lasts for 1000 or 2000 hours depending on manufacturers (that's why I specified if you Don't watch a lot of tv:) ). Why so much for the lights? I've noticed that the replacement is not only a light but somekind of module with some optics, maybe when my Nec will wear off I'll be tempted to open it up and see if I couldn't hack a new lightbulb in the system, but anyways you get the idea.
Personnaly I think buying a tv for 3K$ (or kibidollars:) ) is kinda crazy, every year or 2 they come out with new display technologies/electronics that renders your 3K+ tv down to 1K, if you *really* enjoy it well I guess it's worth it, but when I look at the quality you can get in the sub 1000$ area, I'm not tempted to shell out 4000$ for that nice sony hdtv screen.
In the end it's like buying a computer, you don't need a quad alpha if you want to send email, but if you do a lot of renders, you'll probably enjoy it, same goes for a tv I guess, if you watch a lot of movies and get a home theatre, you'll probably appreciate it.
The last thing that comes to mind is the brain's adaptation of the content, I mean, it's like going to an IMAX theatre, you're like "wow" the first minutes, and after that you don't even notice you're sitting in front of a super large screen unless you "detatch" from the movie and take a look again. Then again, I'm sure it's nice to actually see the players when you watch an hockey game... get one and tell us after a month of usage:)
Seriously, this may sound funny, but heck, if amiga would have 0.05% TODAY it would mean more machines out there then all of the machines put together back in the early 90s.
Even 0.1% of the market IS a market, I'm not in marketting but with the number of computers out there, if you can create some killer app for that 0.1%, I'm sure you can get under the spot light pretty easily.
While I didn't have any problems with them because I never risked receiving money, they did screw me up on the "5$ referal bonus" things even after the referee mailed the support and confirmed my claims and all.. so I thought, if they don't respect their word, what tells me that they will refund me? what stops them from freezing my account or overcharging me?
I did a few searches and I've found the above site that confirmed what I was suspecting.
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>You're right. Without a modchip I can't play pirated games. I can't play them without a TV either, so is that next to go? The TVs original intention wasn't to let me play pirated PS2 games, but it's certainly an integral part of the process.
That's why "they" (big corps) are trying (very hard) to make everything encrypted from the media up to the display and putting crap like the DMCA so you can't go around it without getting beaten up. If you think IBM's drive were a ugly try, just wait in 5 years from now.
>Actually, MS fired the first shot by forcing IE upon Windows users.
Forced? I was always free to download netscape until it became so slugish and suckish that explorer shined by itself.
Communicator 4.7 on win98 was the last netscape that was great on a microsoft platform, 6 was PAINLY slushish and on Win2k, you really don't want to use netscape unless you don't mind all the pauses and slugishness. Opera works just fine so don't tell me that it's MS bullshit, as much as I don't like some of their practices, IE has progressed while netscape downgraded. It took me a long time to accept outlook and IE instead of using netscape, but now I'd never go back unless they really impress me.
AOL simply killed netscape, what improvement did you see in netscape other than supporting standards? did you see any speed improvements? I saw MAJOR deterioration especially in Win2k when going from 4.7 to 6, aside from adding a buttload of AOL stuff, AIM , icones on your desktop and all that junkware, I didn't see any "innovation" or major breakthrough either in term of UI, Speed or general responsiveness.
Opera on the other hand, has really surprised me, but I still like IE better, not because it was FORCED on me, I always had the CHOICE to download Netscape, opera, or to download a newer IE.
--
Moderators that abusively troll/mod down because of personnal bias will be metamoderated accordingly.
Especially for the digital cameras, I mean, I know Ebay is a cool experience, bidding, winning and all that, but paying MORE than what it's worth, I wonder if these people are the same that are suffering from the gambling problems (like those who get ruined in casinos or with videopoker machines).
:)
Anything that is video/digital but light (shipping) is really crazy on ebay. I was looking for a DLP projector instead of buying a huge ass tv, the amount of video projectors that I saw completed or some of the reserve prices were so crazy, the thing is USED and I could get a refurb unit from the manufacturer CHEAPER with a warranty and a new light bulb! This is just too "x-file" for my understanding, I can understand for a 50$ joycam digital camera, no hassles and you get it, but when it's in the 4 digits, usually, unless you're rich or not spending your own money, you'd tend to shop a bit to see the prices and compare... if you're rich enough to buy something in the 4 digits without even shopping for it first usually you can afford a new unit... this is why I'm wondering if these people are actually morons or it goes deeper than this (like gambling problems), ah anyways, the only thing I can say is: good for the sellers
Lucas just gave them the biggest publicity and exposure they would have gotten even if they would have been called Star Wards, this is what over-reacting, misjudgment caused by greed will bring you.
I am all for trademarks and all,. but not when common sense is out of the picture. Next thing you'd know is they would have sued school when they do history lessons about the "star wars" project of US vs Russia... I'm glad a judge finally put them in their places. Lucas should focus on how to kill Jarjar in the most suffering and inhuman ways for episode II instead of suing anything that has Star in it.
I'll pass on modding this time, I have to jump in it.
:). This is totally ridiculous... I don't even conceive how someone can actually think it's going to work that way and consumers are going to go for it... Encrypted hard drives? good luck for server/datacentre drives that need every extra bit of performance they can get, where are you going to encrypt? controller? forget that, strong encryption on a U320 raid won't happen, weak encruption will get killed, and putting that on each individual drive PCB without losing ANY performance? it will be overkill and not rewarding. People will simply turn their heads and look elsewhere for the hardware they need, there's not just USA in the world. I admit that they are strong enough to force other countries to support this, but if they are the only ones to support it, they'll drawn in their own crap, it's just a matter of how the other countries will react.
You want to do hardware encryption for displaying movies? GOOD LUCK.
CASE #1. Lame protection scheme a la DVD.
A: Someone gets a key, goodbye.
CASE #2. A bit better hardware encryption.
A: Put some decoding circuit at the output of the video signal and sample it (it's probably going to be digital anyways so no loss).
CASE #3. Encryption between the media and the decoder, encryption between the decoder and the display.
A: a1. They'll nevew go that far, they are pencil pushers right? ok let's say they do.
a2. They do. You will STILL be able to sample the pixel writtent to the screen SOMEHOW in hardware.
Conclusion: Make is as HARD as you want, the only way you can 100% prevent people from duplicating content is by not showing/displaying it, which is what they seem to going straight to without even knowing it
Either way, if it passes, it will die by itself, I remember the DIVX DVD rental system... prototypes were there, it was working, and it died. Consumers and especially internet people are more educated, and the funny part is US is all against China's way of treating human rights, and they are going the exact same way China is, limiting the information, punishing people that give information, lobbying against any freedom of thoughts that goes against their way of seeing things... I mean... wow.. 50% of the people actually voted for that.. sad.
To get back on the subject, like I've already stated earlier, How about lowering the price of the medias?, or even better, you want to refresh your hardware buisness? Super! how about investing in a new buisness model and technology to make people actually *Want* to get new hardware? how about a HDTV resolution SDVD format with newer cd technologies? how about 24bits audio for the audiophile, how about etc etc... something BETTER for the consumer, not pointing a gun and tell him "buy this, it's crappier than your other unit, it has more restriction and will probably have firmware issues, but heck, I got the gun".
>The problems really started in 1976. The Montreal games were a financial disaster (it is rumoured that the city still hasn't fully settled the account).
:) ) but the subsequent mayors didn't do a good job at managing the money and investing it at the right places, so the olympics were a financial catastrophy, yes, but it was great to map montreal in the world, in that respect, it was a success, people tend to think only at one side of the medal, it's always easier to blame the predecessor than to innovate or do something simple to fix/patch the mistakes. It's like that minister who cutted millions of dollar in health ressources and got her office remade for 300,000$, these people aren't seeing past their mendate, the guy who brought us the olympics, expo 67 and the subways, did, the others after had 25 years to do something about the debt and/or repay it, they never payed anything until recently, so no wonder it's a HUGE bill. This is just plain bad administration.
About that quote, on a side note:
We're still paying taxes for the Olympic Stadium that is falling in rumble bits by bits. The montreal Expo baseball club isn't working anymore (i.e. very very low attendance) and it's the tax payers that are suffering from this terrible debt. Since January 1st, they've forced all the cities on the Ilsand to become only 1 big city, politics wants to to think that it's better for the economy, in the real world, it's more like all the surrounding cities were richer and better managed while montreal was going down in debts, that decision was forced upon the other cities, which strongly opposed to that because their citizens knew this meant transferring money to montreal's hole, and reduction in quality of services and probably tax increases.
The mayor who started this fusion project didn't get re-elected, the mayor who fought to get the olympic games in montreal was a visionnary, he really brought a lot to the city (yeah, and debts too
I use a Samsung syncmaster 151s at work to monitor the renderfarm nodes, it's nice, slick and sexy. Especially for the price. The contrast is more than okay, the only thing negative I could say about it is like most 15" LCD, the resolution locks at 1024x768, I'd love to get 1280X1024 on these devices. Aside from that, it's really good.
Tom might bitch at the suppliers not giving them any replies, I could say the same thing about him when some users are giving him a positive way to better some of his benchmarking numbers since he's not an expert in everything (especially 3D rendering, the scenes he's using only stress parts of the processors, when you know the software enough you know you can get 200% difference from a benchmark to another while keeping the same AMD and INTEL processor. Especially when it touches SSE2 optimized rendering functions)
Anyways, he doesn't mention that so it makes the benchmarks totally flawed (and when you look at the rest of the benchmarks, it proves the point that the AMD processor is still the best choice). Did he change it? no, did he acknoledge this? no... did he even bothered to reply to a nice message? no.
Well, if you treat your readers like this that aren't flaming you and writting in a mature fashion, sometimes these are readers working in big corps writing from home, and SOMETIMES you piss them off really good, and SOMETIMES it backfires at you, I'm not surprised at this, and besides, his articles are getting lamer and lamer week by week, anandtech at least keeps constant and professionnal (i.e. without the bitching).
Just my 0.02.
iSCR3W3D JOBS!
*** Jobs sets mode: +b Timecanada #applefriends
Jobs kicked Timecanada (I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I@(*#&@(*&#(#@# )
And only here on slashdot, I give you an exclusive...
Jobs's Immediate reaction while seeing the Time Article
Mirror Here
Also To 2.8ghz
:)
But now, a little rant...
Look at the next and last alpha that will come out, it will SMOKE at a fraction of the speed the P4 will be at the end of the year. That's what I call going out with a bang. It's a shame such a technology got obliterated in part because of Intel's markettign muscle, we're going to be set back for 2 years for them to catch up on this technology and performance (they've got some alpha people in their staff now that will teach them how to do more than overclocking and recycling like putting SMT on chips for example, that will be one great leap, it's in at least one of the northwood flavor I think).
Watch out for the Hammer when it will come out, it still going to beat intel's latest offering mhz per mhz in desktop performance (can't speak too fast about the server side though.)
Look at the PowerPC, as much as I hate apple's hyping to keep their blinded userbase into beleiving that they hold the only computer that should exist on the surface of the planet, the powerPC architechture has proven itself to beat the crap out of Intel mhz to mhz side to side (and no I am not talking about that "hey loading an image in photoshop on the mac is 2x faster than on a PC, but I won't mention that it's totally unrelated to the CPU and the mac is running on a SCSI cheetah while the PC was running a 5400 rpm 5 gig drive", I am talking about rendering on different crossplatform software like premiere, lightwave, maya, etc).
This goes without mentionning SUN or MIPS or any other cpus on the planet that has interresting technologies ASIDE FROM CLOCKSPEED.
So again, Screw the MHZ hype, I am a power user, I love doing 3d rendering, I administer a small renderfarm at work, I love raw power, anything that comes out and had a power factor gets my attention, it's nice to see stuff running fast, but I am not impressed at ALL with the MHZ hype. Especially for the PRICE you have to pay to cover all the media and marketting hype... Intel's Hype tax like I often call it. Also, what you see is the MHZ going skyrocket... How much do you thihnk they had to cut in the design so that it stays that stable at these speeds? why do you think the athlon4 can't run at 2.2ghz? design.. intel had to cut in some places so the cpu could be easily cranked up that much, they had to redesign part of it, and that's why you need SSE2 optimisation and the pipeline for standard FPU is so bad. It's not because Intel doesn't know how to design a FPU, it's because they HAD to cut on it...
My precision 530 workstation that runs dual 1.7ghz P4 for the price I payed, I find a dual AthlonXP or MP 1900+ far more impressive for 1/2 of the price. Heck, you want to be in the cool factor? get a Dell 8100 with DVD/CD-RW Geforce2Go 32megs and 1600x1200 15" LCD screen, now THAT'S a nice little piece of technology. And quake plays soooo smooth on it... I won't waste my personnal money or blast my budget for a chip that can generate small blackholes because of it's so great CLOCKSPEED. Gimme raw speed at a decent price. For the price you'd pay that northwood alone you could probably get 2 athlonXP and it's mainboard that beat the crap out of the P4 for the same price of the cpu alone.
enuff
>So try a utility like this one: Sysinternals' filemon.exe [sysinternals.com]
That's what I was using for Ad-Aware scanning... there's a lot of tools at sysinternals to track the software that tracks you. Theres also Regmon for monitoring changes made to the registry that is interresting.
One last thing you might want to check is a tcpmonitor process (there's one at sysinternal as well I think) to check where it's communicating (if you want to go that far)
For you linux people there's also a flavor of filemon (file access tracking discussed above) for linux, you can grab it Here
AD-AWARE (current 5.62) is one of the BEST ad removal tools for windows computer, grab it at Lavasoft. It's free, it has updates (download the latest definition file after installing the 5.62 version) and I've tracked it's every move with a filesystem scanner, and it doesn't put thrash anywhere in your system.
It scans Registry, cookies, files, dlls, and it found the Kazaa backdoor installed in my system. Usually when you put a software you can remove it's tracking bugware and the main software will still run (I remember posting an article here over a year ago about bearshare having that same type of crap that Kazaa is using right now but it got rejected). What's interresting about Kazaa is if you remove the offending DLL (which is Cydoor bugtracking stuff), Kazaa won't start anymore, this really shows how BAD they want to track your moves.
While I don't have anything against software companies making a buck by selling tracked info, I do have something against companies being hypocritical about it. When you install Kazaa, it offers you a lot of "free stuff" that any above average users knows that it means advertising stuff, spamming and tracking. This is okay in my book at LEAST it's part of the installer and if you don't know and say yes, well that becomes your problem. What I find really hypocritical is i've unselected EVERYTHING exept "Kazaa needed files" and it STILL installed that bugware thing, and it's not mentionned anywhere CLEARLY in the installer. People get pissed at microsoft activation process which is clear, known and way less intrusive than that, but they let that pass in exchange of leeching free MP3, vids, p0rn and warez. If one day the big suppliers of content on that services have an FBI raid at their places, they'll scream justice and claim that FBI couldn't use the informatin that Kazaa was getting from them because it's not constitutionnal. Well I'd say, make up your mind, if you want P2P and privacy, go to some other service, an example, Download winMX, run Ad-aware in case there's anything installed with the newer versions, and it will probably still run after the cleaning process (I use winMX I love it). Don't support crooks like Kazaa and bearshare that are trying to look friendly, on your side, and pro this and that, while they turn around and sell your browsing habbits without your knowledge.
Also, notice when you're not uploading or downloading, but kazaa is running.. your drive burps every 5 seconds.... I'm still trying to figure out why.. it doesn't stop even after an hour.. it's not "windows-typical" drive burping.
Anyways... hope that helps anyone out there.
Lucas diserved the money he made from the 3 first star wars, in that repect, I support him in every trademark dispute, piracy attacks, and anything that might go against his master piece of work and innovation(tm).
But one thing is for sure, he lost *ALL* my respect with Episode 1, This was clearly a "coup de cash" against his loyal fans. Not only he deceived us, it's not like if he was under-funded or he had to make tough choices (jarjar is the "living proof of poor judgment). Now, he's in it ONLY for the money, he lost his soul and his artistic taste for the movies the same way metallica lost it's artistic side for money in heavy metal music. He had all the time in the world to make a masterpiece, he had all the funding available, he had all the talent, he had enough people around him to tell him what was a good and a bad idea, I guess fans sometimes are really harsh but there's no forgiving for such blattant mistakes and misjudgement; he knew what his fans were expecting and he betted only on the CGI technical skills side (like most hollywood producers) to save the day.
You didn't see me crying when DiVX of his mastercrap went around the net, actually it even did some good; Remember when he commented on the editor that removed *EVERY* scenes where jarjar was? that it was illegal etc etc? Well, on a moral standpoint and to defend the same Trademark that Lucas is tarnishing by himself, I think it was the best thing that the internet and p2p technology could do to save the little content of the movie that wasn't half bad. It's still illegal though, but for someone who saw it at the theatre and gave in money like I did, I would have prefered paying an extra buck to see such a version.
At first, my thought was, maybe I was expecting too much, maybe I've lost that amazement feeling you get when you're younger and seeing something truely fantastic, but LOTR proved to me that it wasn't gone, and SWEP1 should have given me that same feeling if not better. I didn't have such a harsh judgment before seeing LOTR, but what I saw is that you CAN match a buttload of CGI, a good story and good acting and still amaze people... and that my friends, at any age.
Having NSYNC in there just shows the commercial side of lucas that has overtaken his artistic soul. What is it going to be? Big sync dance of Yoda and all his family? oh god, I can see riverdance comming for episode 3 and have a bunch of JarJar lapdansing for 10 minutes... oh and have him signing on top of that, and oh I can see vador joining the club and using the force to lift everybody in the air and and&#*H@IkKn3,22214m3,4
NO CARRIER
See how many of the same reactions there is?
:) ) and like I said before, they see only numbers. It's obvious that hollywood has a kool-aid receipe to make movies and bring in cash. The 3D CGI movies got in only because it was a continuation of the 2D art, so it blended in without causing too much noise. It fitted well and Hollywood noticed it generated quite an amount of cash. That's good in a way, that means we'll still se quality content like Pixar's and Dreamwork's, but the downside is we'll probably start seeing a LOT of crap in the next years in that field as well.
The main problem with hollywood is they are running a buisness. Some people in "the company" are brilliant, but the others (majority) are just seeing and "understanding" the numbers.
Pixar's been around for quite a while, Disney's been around forever in the realm of 2D animation. If you look at both entities, what made them a success is the mix of mastering their art (2d, 3d) AND the storyline. Obvious you might say? well for us, yes, but think "marketting guy" (no no!!! I don't mean like "what would I do if I had unlimited spending money and a ferrari"
Hollywood sees something that makes money, and they use use use and abuse it until it runs dry and people puke when they see that again. Instead of "risking" new material or storylines. How about a movie that doesn't end well? How about a movie where the good guy gets killed in the middle and you see the movie from the bad guy's perspective until the end (something bad/good happens to him?), How about an ecological catastrophe that CAN'T be avoided and resulting on the mass destruction of the human being with stuff like pollution/asteroids/younameit, instead of having some crap about one guy that defeats nature?
Yes it might flop, depending, again, on the story and more importantly, how it's told. But I don't think I'd see anyone SERIOUSLY pissed and boycotting hollywood because of a different ending. Of course there's always alternative movies from other countries or independant films if you want something special, but usually only hollywood has the cashflow to push effects in a film to give it that extra "magic".
Change that annoying incomming Email .wav file...
"You've got nailed"
Your wife/girlfriend/mistress/mom bugs you with finding at least ONE good resolution for 2002? here's one that will make you happy to follow and shut them off for next year :)
:)
in 2002, my resolution will be 1600x1200x32x75+hz... on a 21+" LCD, playing DOOM III.
Hey, they've asked for it so stop feeling guilty and go buy one with your next (or maybe 10 next) paychecks
Yeah I've seen some HOE stuff like you're referring to with the telescope, it's really interresting. You're lacking several diverging lenses? no problems, make an HOE of the lense and stick it back in the optical setup. Of course there's a big loss of power depending on the efficiency of the hologram, but it's still impressive :)
:) for the sensitivity you can always pre-latencify it depending on which type of film used (and of course if the datasheets are representative of the media used, some datasheets seems rather "what you SHOULD expect" from a batch of plates to another :) ).
Of course post-processing the plate is an option that I've completely forgot, maybe because I am more of a "less steps less chances of screwing up" type of person
What I love about them is they gained popularity, the service held like it was before, and heck, look at the start page, do you see load of useless stuff? do you see loads of banner adds, buttons, "options that you never go thru", images, etc? no. They kept it clean, simple, fast to load, and they've managed even to make it cute (noticed how many times the google logo changed since 2 weeks)
:)
I just hope it will stay that way because THAT'S the way it should be for people like us that wants to get something fast and to the point without having to code an SQL query form in the input search
Kudos to Google.
My thoughts exactly and the thought of million of other people. This goes without saying that the consumer, given enough information and will, CAN have the last word and win, these people often forget the one BASIC rule of consuming... you're SUPPOSED TO DELIVER A GOOD to the customer, you're supposed to SELL something that a consumer WANTS. If something better comes out, people will naturally go to the better offering, which can be any or a mix of variable such as quality features and price. We don't see FORD trying to force us to use 1980 car technology, if they see competition doing something good that adds value, they copy it or try to better it, and they also INNOVATE, you know, that buzzword. What did the RIAA do since 20 years on the technology side, aside from sitting in their pile of money and INNOVATING RESTRICTIONS instead of giving the CONSUMER a better experience, by investing cash in better audio system, heck with all the money they've got, we could have had digital radio STANDARD in north american cars by now! but no, they had to act like old close-minded people that are affraid of change. As a consumer, I don't have to PAY for their incompetence nor their buisness mistakes. I have NOTHING against monopoly or big corporation, as long as they deliver and they make me, the consumer, feel satisfied with the merchandise and if they screw me, well they could at least be clever enough so that I don't notice and still be happy with the merchandise content/quality I've purchased.
We're far from a victory, but it's going somewhere, we're still in the part of public awareness, people are starting to realize that, the napster case and subsequent stories about how the industry is ripping off artists were even stuff found in my local newspaper, which was surprising (usually that stuff stays on the net and doesn't cross media, like the dimitry case for example). Anyways, they won't be able to keep it up, they can stick a zillion protection scheme, raise the price as much as they want to, when they're gonna render the medium useless, people will simply switch medium... like it's the case right now. A lot of us, non-rich, non-marketting, non-ceo, non-buisness people saw decent audio compression comming, if they didn't, well too bad... that kind of retarded reaction usually KILL companies, they should be grateful that they are loaded enough to survive such a blattant mistake, and put their energy on a new buisness model that is a PLUS to the consumer, instead of putting fences everywhere to prefent their cash cow from jumping off their property.
Thanks for the clarification, it was 1am when I wrote this, I might want to add one thing though, the HeNe I got a few years ago were 10mW tubes and PSU for 100$ each, sometimes you can get great deals just by looking around.
:)
I'm really impressed that you got 3 feet of coherence with Diodes, maybe I should look into testing newer ones as well.
As for 670nM the hologram won't be as bright as if you would have used 635nM, the higher you go in the spectrum the less sensible it is to the human eye. Or did you test something that contradict this as well?
By doing Copy protection CD they'll piss off customers, customers will burn even more CD-Rs, and after that they'll shove Digital right management crap down our troats, people will be even more pissed, buying even less... and they'll blame it on piracy instead of blaming themselves.
.
:)
LOWER THE PRICE OF THE GOD DAMN CDS IF YOU WANT MORE VOLUME SELLS, I can see some mozart crap sold at C$6 at my local music shop, why would I have to pay C$20 for a metallica CD? Don't tell me because of the expenses and all, the expenses are the packaging, the design, the loans, etc etc.. YES... well, the mozart CD went thru the about the same process, Metallica sells a LOT more hense more VOLUME hense more PROFIT in the end to repay that possible loan (well now they are rich anyways), so why 20$? maybe they'd sell a LOT more if CDs would be cheaper and become the "trading cards" of the kids instead of being overpriced unreachable-to-most-teenagers-that-aren't-working
3 times cheaper would mean greater volume, greater splitting among artists, greater audience, greater penetration of the market, and I'D BUY SOME, which I don't do since maybe 5 years after being raped having to pay c$50 for imports that I really wanted and they would classify imports when they had actually a TON of them and anyways, even metallica is "imported" to canada so who cares about the "import" label. I was ripped off, I've searched for alternatives, and I got one.
You can screw people off big time and keep it up for YEARS, but history shows that in ANY circumstances, people will find alternatives or revolt when they are mistreated or abused.
I did my part, I have 100's of Original CDs, but I had it with that system, and seeing them investing massively in crap like DMCA or DRM instead of doing the obvious: CUTTING THE PRICES, simply disgust me. Again, I'd buy a shitload of CDs if the price would be right, it isn't.
For people with the lame "expenses" arguments, tell me, why are tapes 1/2 the price of the cd? it's the SAME process, heck a cassette costs more to produce than a CD, in both time and material, so why is it cheaper? there are many reasons, but I don't care, WHY wouldn't the CDs be cheaper? why would I shell C$30 for a DVD or C$20 for a CD if they could be sold for a fraction of that price?
I am not saying I copy my stuff, I don't even own a dvd player because I just skipped that technology, I'm still happy with my SVHS tapedeck. But I am really not surprised (like most of the people here) of what's happening. Someone is really high at RIAA... Towelie must be running things
Get a used HeNe laser off ebay or any Optics surplus, with TEM00 properties (which means the laser is coherent... needed for holography, and you'll be able to make some holograms that have more than a few millimeters of coherence (hense, depth).
:), yeah sometimes it's that crazy, I tried :) ).
Laser Diodes holography really sucks, it's pricey for the result you get, learn the thing with the right basic parts. If you're ready to invest let's say 400$ worth of chemicals films and all, with the idea of doing more in the future, might as well invest in the proper "amateur equipment"
Also: High power laser diodes in a decent spectrum (630-640nm) aren't THAT powerful, or if they are, (more than 5mw) they are pricey. These laser diodes lacks coherence (notice how close are the object from the plates). Without coherence, you don't get depth, without power, you have more chances that your object might move (if the object moves just a quarter of the wavelength, it screws up the hologram), so getting a cheap used 20mW HeNe laser gives you the benifit of power (you won't make a 8x10 with that, unless you have a really stable environment that can take 30+seconds exposure time depending on the object, of course doing the hologram of a fruit might not work too well with that much exposure because only the "fermentation" of the fruit over 30 seconds changes the structure in the nm scale
The only downside of Gas lasers is their lifespan. You can be lucky and it would last for 3-4 years, like you can get one that will last for 6 months, depends on the manufacturer, prices, condition. Normally they give you the tube usage and lifespan. Also, it requires high voltage power supply, which isn't a problem for the low power heNe lasers (under 30mw at the output).
Holography is cool, but it takes patience, a lot of trial/error, and when you want to move a step further, it takes as much money than doing high-end photography (with all the optics and chemicals).
another option if you're not watching a LOT of tv and you have the money is buying a cheap DLP projector.
:) ). Why so much for the lights? I've noticed that the replacement is not only a light but somekind of module with some optics, maybe when my Nec will wear off I'll be tempted to open it up and see if I couldn't hack a new lightbulb in the system, but anyways you get the idea.
:) ) is kinda crazy, every year or 2 they come out with new display technologies/electronics that renders your 3K+ tv down to 1K, if you *really* enjoy it well I guess it's worth it, but when I look at the quality you can get in the sub 1000$ area, I'm not tempted to shell out 4000$ for that nice sony hdtv screen.
:)
That way, you can get any size you want, at the 3000$ price point they have HDTV support, it's cool but the downside is the replacement lights are really expensive (200-300$) and lasts for 1000 or 2000 hours depending on manufacturers (that's why I specified if you Don't watch a lot of tv
Personnaly I think buying a tv for 3K$ (or kibidollars
In the end it's like buying a computer, you don't need a quad alpha if you want to send email, but if you do a lot of renders, you'll probably enjoy it, same goes for a tv I guess, if you watch a lot of movies and get a home theatre, you'll probably appreciate it.
The last thing that comes to mind is the brain's adaptation of the content, I mean, it's like going to an IMAX theatre, you're like "wow" the first minutes, and after that you don't even notice you're sitting in front of a super large screen unless you "detatch" from the movie and take a look again. Then again, I'm sure it's nice to actually see the players when you watch an hockey game... get one and tell us after a month of usage
from 0.24% to 0.48% :)
Seriously, this may sound funny, but heck, if amiga would have 0.05% TODAY it would mean more machines out there then all of the machines put together back in the early 90s.
Even 0.1% of the market IS a market, I'm not in marketting but with the number of computers out there, if you can create some killer app for that 0.1%, I'm sure you can get under the spot light pretty easily.
http://www.paypalwarning.com
While I didn't have any problems with them because I never risked receiving money, they did screw me up on the "5$ referal bonus" things even after the referee mailed the support and confirmed my claims and all.. so I thought, if they don't respect their word, what tells me that they will refund me? what stops them from freezing my account or overcharging me?
I did a few searches and I've found the above site that confirmed what I was suspecting.
which will fuel the need for about 20% of the mentionned stuff on that site :)
Factor: 10
coolness: priceless.