The main reason the Iomega HipZip does not sell well is not because people don't trust optical/mechanical drives. Many people (including yourself, according to your post) have had optical drives that have lasted for years. It is because the size of the media is ridiculously small, and the media is still too expensive. How many songs can you fit on a 40mb disc? This is not the case with the eXpanium. The 3" cd stores over 180 megs, more than four times the capacity of the Clik.
Also, last time I checked, the 40mb Clik discs were around $7 a piece, compared to the $1 price of the 3" cd. There is simply no comparison between the two. The eXpanium has a huge advantage.
The eXpanium has quite a number of advantages over the MiniDisc as well. First of all, a good 4x minidisc recorder costs around $170. You can get a good 12x cd-r for about $90. You can make a cd in 5 minutes by typing one command. I don't know how you make minidiscs, but I'm sure it's not as easy. Also, you can't pop your minidisc in your computer and copy the files to your hard drive.
Another note: many people (myself included) can't tell the difference between a 256kbps mp3 file and a 160kbps. Some people can't even tell the difference between 256 and 128. In any case, with a 3" CD you get at least 30 more minutes per disc than the Minidisc, and at most, 100+ more minutes.
I think the advantage of the eXpanium is that it has the small, lightweight advantage that flash-based players have, with a capacity that is closer to CD-based players. It's a good balance.
I'm really looking forward to the eXpanium being released; I just hope that the price is reasonable.
The device could be hidden inside the keyboard, which would require the agent to physically disassemble the keyboard to install the device.
They could have swapped the keyboard with an identical model that had a keyghost or similar device installed. I'm sure that at least 99 out of 100 people wouldn't be able to tell the difference, as long as the keyboard is less than ~6 months old, and doesn't have any identifying cracks/marks. By doing this, they would greatly reduce the time needed to install the device.
I think that ogg vorbis will have a good chance of becoming a new standard, as long as there are really good (linux and windows based) utilities available, especially all-in-one rip/cddb/encode programs. Most people don't want to have to go through the process of ripping to raw audio (wav, etc), converting, and renaming the files. It's just too much effort.
I plan on converting my 200+ CD collection to ogg vorbis, but I would like to figure out how to do this with as little interaction as possible. In other words, I just want to put the cd in the tray, and let it work. Otherwise, the conversion process will take too much of my free time.
I tried to visit some of the infected sites in my web log, but most of them gave no response, until I got to http://202.81.246.51 which states: "If you can see this, it means that the installation of the Apache web server software on this system was successful.":)
It seems that this might be a good language for beginning programmers. Especially for beginning programmers that want to eventually learn C. After all, it is essentially a C-like language with no memory management issues, type checking, etc.
Or maybe it's designed so that novice C programmers can write scripts without having to learn another language?
The mp3 with the commentary is 5:35 in length, while the regular song is 4:44. Sounds like the BNL aren't as innovative as some people claim;)
Actually, they released 2 versions of the "trojan" song (possibly more). One of them is the exact length of the real song (actually 3 seconds shorter, but close enough). Instead of pausing the song to talk, they just lower the volume and talk over the song. For some reason, the 2nd version seems much harder to find, but it is there. If you want to find it on Napster, you may be able to find it by searching for "Barenaked Ladies" as the artist, and "new song pinch me" as the title, and looking for a song that is 4:41 in length.
I am not sure exactly how the interpolation is done. I would guess that each defective pixel is replaced by a color that is the average of all the pixels surrounding it. However, I haven't seen any documentation that explains how this interpolation is actually done.
oops, I hit "submit" instead of "preview". Here is my post correctly formatted.
What are the chances of ONE of those going dead, like in a laptop screen? More importantly, what's the return policy on dead-pixels in a camera?
It is extremely rare for a CCD-based (or CMOS-based) digital camera to have no bad pixels. Most (if not all) digital cameras automatically cover the dead pixels through interpolation. And with 1.2 to 3.4 million pixels per image, you probably won't notice if a a small number of pixels are interpolated. If you wanted to purchase a 1 megapixel CCD with no bad pixels, expect to pay around $25,000. Nasa is developing a new type of CMOS based sensor, called APS (Active Pixel Sensor). Among other goals, it aims to increase the yield of perfect samples. See this page for more information.
What are the chances of ONE of those going dead, like in a laptop screen? More importantly, what's the return policy on dead-pixels in a camera?
It is extremely rare for a CCD-based (or CMOS-based) digital camera to have no bad pixels. Most (if not all) digital cameras automatically cover the dead pixels through interpolation. And with 1.2 to 3.4 million pixels per image, you probably won't notice if a a small number of pixels are interpolated.
If you wanted to purchase a 1 megapixel CCD with no bad pixels, expect to pay around $25,000.
Nasa is developing a new type of CMOS based sensor, called APS (Active Pixel Sensor). Among other goals, it aims to increase the yield of perfect samples. See this page for more information.
In the forum where I originally read about paypai.com, someone claimed that they checked the SSL certificates, and they appeared to be running through secure.paypal.x.com. I could not verify this, because the site was already down. Perhaps the person running the scam considered this and found a way to fool IE? Another possibility is that the person checked the certificate after he was redirected to PayPal. Anyway, the post that I am referring to is here
Slashdot Mirror
The main reason the Iomega HipZip does not sell well is not because people don't trust optical/mechanical drives. Many people (including yourself, according to your post) have had optical drives that have lasted for years. It is because the size of the media is ridiculously small, and the media is still too expensive. How many songs can you fit on a 40mb disc? This is not the case with the eXpanium. The 3" cd stores over 180 megs, more than four times the capacity of the Clik. Also, last time I checked, the 40mb Clik discs were around $7 a piece, compared to the $1 price of the 3" cd. There is simply no comparison between the two. The eXpanium has a huge advantage.
The eXpanium has quite a number of advantages over the MiniDisc as well. First of all, a good 4x minidisc recorder costs around $170. You can get a good 12x cd-r for about $90. You can make a cd in 5 minutes by typing one command. I don't know how you make minidiscs, but I'm sure it's not as easy. Also, you can't pop your minidisc in your computer and copy the files to your hard drive.
Another note: many people (myself included) can't tell the difference between a 256kbps mp3 file and a 160kbps. Some people can't even tell the difference between 256 and 128. In any case, with a 3" CD you get at least 30 more minutes per disc than the Minidisc, and at most, 100+ more minutes.
I think the advantage of the eXpanium is that it has the small, lightweight advantage that flash-based players have, with a capacity that is closer to CD-based players. It's a good balance. I'm really looking forward to the eXpanium being released; I just hope that the price is reasonable.
The device could be hidden inside the keyboard, which would require the agent to physically disassemble the keyboard to install the device.
They could have swapped the keyboard with an identical model that had a keyghost or similar device installed. I'm sure that at least 99 out of 100 people wouldn't be able to tell the difference, as long as the keyboard is less than ~6 months old, and doesn't have any identifying cracks/marks. By doing this, they would greatly reduce the time needed to install the device.
I think that ogg vorbis will have a good chance of becoming a new standard, as long as there are really good (linux and windows based) utilities available, especially all-in-one rip/cddb/encode programs. Most people don't want to have to go through the process of ripping to raw audio (wav, etc), converting, and renaming the files. It's just too much effort.
I plan on converting my 200+ CD collection to ogg vorbis, but I would like to figure out how to do this with as little interaction as possible. In other words, I just want to put the cd in the tray, and let it work. Otherwise, the conversion process will take too much of my free time.
I tried to visit some of the infected sites in my web log, but most of them gave no response, until I got to http://202.81.246.51 which states: "If you can see this, it means that the installation of the Apache web server software on this system was successful." :)
It seems that this might be a good language for beginning programmers. Especially for beginning programmers that want to eventually learn C. After all, it is essentially a C-like language with no memory management issues, type checking, etc. Or maybe it's designed so that novice C programmers can write scripts without having to learn another language?
The mp3 with the commentary is 5:35 in length, while the regular song is 4:44. Sounds like the BNL aren't as innovative as some people claim ;)
Actually, they released 2 versions of the "trojan" song (possibly more). One of them is the exact length of the real song (actually 3 seconds shorter, but close enough). Instead of pausing the song to talk, they just lower the volume and talk over the song. For some reason, the 2nd version seems much harder to find, but it is there. If you want to find it on Napster, you may be able to find it by searching for "Barenaked Ladies" as the artist, and "new song pinch me" as the title, and looking for a song that is 4:41 in length.
Thanks for correcting the link.
I am not sure exactly how the interpolation is done. I would guess that each defective pixel is replaced by a color that is the average of all the pixels surrounding it. However, I haven't seen any documentation that explains how this interpolation is actually done.
oops, I hit "submit" instead of "preview". Here is my post correctly formatted.
What are the chances of ONE of those going dead, like in a laptop screen? More importantly, what's the return policy on dead-pixels in a camera?
It is extremely rare for a CCD-based (or CMOS-based) digital camera to have no bad pixels. Most (if not all) digital cameras automatically cover the dead pixels through interpolation. And with 1.2 to 3.4 million pixels per image, you probably won't notice if a a small number of pixels are interpolated. If you wanted to purchase a 1 megapixel CCD with no bad pixels, expect to pay around $25,000. Nasa is developing a new type of CMOS based sensor, called APS (Active Pixel Sensor). Among other goals, it aims to increase the yield of perfect samples. See this page for more information.
What are the chances of ONE of those going dead, like in a laptop screen? More importantly, what's the return policy on dead-pixels in a camera? It is extremely rare for a CCD-based (or CMOS-based) digital camera to have no bad pixels. Most (if not all) digital cameras automatically cover the dead pixels through interpolation. And with 1.2 to 3.4 million pixels per image, you probably won't notice if a a small number of pixels are interpolated. If you wanted to purchase a 1 megapixel CCD with no bad pixels, expect to pay around $25,000. Nasa is developing a new type of CMOS based sensor, called APS (Active Pixel Sensor). Among other goals, it aims to increase the yield of perfect samples. See this page for more information.
In the forum where I originally read about paypai.com, someone claimed that they checked the SSL certificates, and they appeared to be running through secure.paypal.x.com. I could not verify this, because the site was already down. Perhaps the person running the scam considered this and found a way to fool IE? Another possibility is that the person checked the certificate after he was redirected to PayPal. Anyway, the post that I am referring to is here