The biggest problem for me is that like all of the other "TiVo cards" for your PC, it will ONLY work with analog cable tv. There is no "IR Blaster" output that would allow me to use this with my digital cable box, or my digital satellite TV decoder.
These cards need to include an IR transmitter which I can use to change the damn channel on the decoder box automatically when I want to record a program. Without that, it's no better than the tuner-free video-in port on my PC now.
Actually, there is a BIG difference between "letterboxed" movies, and "anamorphic", or enhanced-for-widescreen-TV movies.
I can't possibly explain the difference as well as these guys can, so I won't even try. Go there and read this, it's a great explination. It's true that both present a wide-screen picture, but you lose a lot of information in a letterboxed format.
Yup, this slime will be completely useless against us Canadians, and most folks in the Northern US. We're used to walking and driving over slippery surfaces for at least 4 months of the year. Just put some studded tires on the 4x4, and some spikes on the shoes, and this stuff won't slow us down much.
I think the only practical use for this slime is to make the worlds biggest slip-and-slide. Or maybe we'll see it in use in the Summer X-games... just slime down a steep road in San Fran and let the athletes slip-and-slide to the bottom as fast as possible.
Ha ha ha! Oh man, this sums me up nicely when I was a kid. I started taking apart all of my toys when I was about 4. I started successfully putting them back together when I was around 10. In the 6 years in between, my Dad got really good at putting toys back together...
Here I am, 30 years old, and I still get LEGO for every gift-giving holiday. Well, LEGO and power tools, so I can fiddle with my biggest, most expensive toy (the one that has a 25-year mortgage, and is a great place to store all of the smaller toys:-)
My incredibly cool GF got me two B.I.O. Bugs for Christmas. Very sweet toys indeed.
This brings up a long-standing debate I have with several friends over what is a sport, and what is simply a competition.
Obviously the first thing to get thrown out is anything that is solely based on the opinion of judges. There has to be some emperical measure of a winner or loser. Say goodbye to figure skating, ballet/freestyle skiing, and snowboard half-pipe.
The second requirement is that a sport has to involve athletes, and athletes have to exhibit a whole heck of a lot of physical prowess. Out goes baseball, curling, and chess.
Some argue that a game like baseball is based on the opinion of "judges", in that umpires make the call for everything that happens. Strikes, balls, calls at the plate, etc. I say baseball isn't a sport for the second requirement, however.
Then you get into the wierd sports that are a combination of emperical and judged values, like mogul skiing and ski-jumping. They could be easily tweaked to make them 'real' sports.
Just because it's a competition, and it's physically demanding, doesn't make it a sport in my books.
I personally think the Olympics started their downward slide the very same moment they started allowing pro athletes to compete. I think it started with track&field events, and has snowballed from there (if I'm wrong, please correct me!)
Still, you have got to admit that this is still the world's premier sporting event. The best of the best in the world competing over the course of two weeks. It's a damned shame that the corruption of the IOC can sometimes overshadow the work and accomplishments of these athletes.
Hmmm, I should have been a bit clearer. Obj-C and C++ work together just fine, and I have mixed-and-matched C, C++, and Obj-C all in the same source file, just as Apple suggests. And even calling C++ libs directly from Obj-C works great, when you are always using the same compiler for both (ie. gcc)
However, when you have a precompiled C++ library that used a -different- compiler from the gcc you are currently working with (such as the Sun WSPro compiler, or an older version of gcc), this is where the headaches begin.
Perhaps this is just a compiler issue, and not an Obj-C issue, but seeing as the only compiler that supports Obj-C is gcc, I tend to (incorrectly) lump the two together.
Objective-C is great, but try using it when you need to link in some C++ libraries some time. For fun, try linking in C++ libraries built with the Sun WSPro compiler.
Java is the hands-down winner here. In fact, if you are developing WebObjects code, and need to use C++ libraries, Java is the best way to go! It's that, or write C wrappers for your C++, and call those from Obj-C. Ugh.
To be fair, the problem is most likely that Obj-C has been all but abandoned, and never has worked properly alongside C++. Had Obj-C received the development resources of Java, it wouldn't have these drawbacks.
NeXTstep is state-of-the-art GUI design, circa. 1985-1990. At the time, it was easily 10 years ahead of anything else available.
But here we are 17 years later, and everyone has finally had a chance to catch up. (Except for Apple, who is now a good 5 years ahead of everyone else by basing their system on NeXTstep:-)
The beauty of NeXTstep was the underlying Objective-C APIs and the dev tools. Amazing, simply amazing. The "build a text editor in under 1 minute without even compiling" example was always a winner.
Using GNUstep w/ WindowMaker is pretty close to the look of NeXTstep, but just seems to be lacking in the "feel" department (that from running GNUstep on my PC, right next to NeXTstep on my 68040 NeXTstation.)
Of course, that was over a year ago, so things might have changed a lot with GNUstep/WIndowMaker since then.
If you can get yourself a NeXT machine cheap, go for it. Heck, you might even be able to find an old Intel of HP machine with NeXTstep on it. But don't expect it to be a dailt use machine. I recently picked up a Mac Classic at a garage sale for the same reason: it's fun to remember what computers were like just a few (well, 12-15:-) years ago.
[sigh], if only OS X and GNUstep were just a little bit more like NeXTstep, and this wouldn't be a problem.
NeXTstep has something called "fat binaries". It means that the same application that runs on my 68040 NeXT machine will also run on my HP and Intel machines running NeXTstep. When I compile my application, I simply tell the compiler to compile for all these platforms.
Sure, the binaries end up being bigger (about 50% larger for each platform, if I recall), but it was completely painless, and you could use "lipo" to reduce the binary size (and make the application only run on a single platform) if you wanted.
Yes sir, this was state-of-the-art back in 1992. 10 years later, it's all but disapeared.
Before you go whining about how "it's only a 40Gig hard drive" and "I can build the same damned thing for $19.95 using parts I found under my bed", take some time to look at this thing on their website.
$1500 is a whole lot of cash, but this thing offers a few other features, such as including a "RIO Receiver" in the package, and what looks to be a decent display on it. It also has ReplayTV-like capabilities to recommend music based on your listening habits. It doesn't even appear to be hobbled, since you can rip MP3 with it and transfer them to your PC.
Sadly, it looks like it uses a 56k modem to access CDDB, even though it has a 10mbps connection as well.
Sure, $1500 is a lot. But triple the storage space and drop the price to $1000, and I'm interested (in other words, by next summer I might have one...)
>Ford has the equipment, knowledge and $$$ to do
>this, but if they do Honda WILL fill a law suit
>aleging lots of patents and copyright infringment.
>As a result Ford rathers design theyr own models.
Actually, Ford designs their own cars because Honda makes boring, unimaginative, ugly cars. Who would want to copy those?
Nope, just sign up for a seperate Passport account for each of the services you use. That way if you get yanked from one, it shouldn't affect all of the others.
It's no worse that managing the multiple logins for multiple MS services that you might be doing right now.
Don't be such a dil-hole and think about it for a split second... if the case is wider than a standard amp, it's not going to fit inside a standard stereo rack. Duh.
Well, if you have a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive in your home theatre PC, then you do need to have access to it.
And a desktop case painted black isn't what I am looking for either. I want something that looks like it belongs with my amp, VCR, and DVD player. Same width, same goofy round metal legs, power switch on the same side, etc. You'd think it would be easy to find such a beast.
You would think that with the interest of using a PC as a home theatre component that there would be a lot more choice in the market for a decent looking PC case!
I mean seriously, there is maybe 2 PC cases on the market that will take standard PC compnents and looks like it actually belongs in your A/V cabinet. And these cases tend to be in the $250+ range, which is nuts for just a case.
A PC w/ an HDTV tuner card, optical sound output, a DVD drive, a software line doubler/tripler/quadrupler, and a fast network connection (and gobs of sound-deadening material of course!)is a great thing to have in your home theatre, but it sure sticks out like a sore thumb!
The problem is, at least here in Ottawa, if you demand that your builder do something that isn't "the norm", the builder will just tell you to screw off and sell the house to someone else.
Seriously, it's that bad up here. You're lucky if you can get them to build your house to code, with all of the windows and doors in the right place, and within 4 months of the schedule!
D'oh! I can't believe I missed that connection. It's been far too many years since I've seen War Games, or even played with a modem (ahhh, gotta love the widely available, cheap, reliable high speed net access in Canada:-)
Well, for those looking for a translation without actually reading the story...
"War Driving" refers to the practice of driving around town with a laptop and an 802.11b car looking for and mapping the location of wirelass access points. A GPS is helpful to let you know where you are.
I have no idea where the name "War Driving" came from, though. "Wirelss Access Recon" perhaps?:-)
The article seems to imply that you need a specially constructed sphere to make this work. One that lets light in at a specific point, and allows no light out. It also is built in such a way to detect when a photon hits the inside surface. Just take a look at the diagram.
So unless someone is stupid enough to try and sneak a bomb onto a plane in one of these spheres, it's not much use to the security guards.
Obviously if Apple comes out with an LCD flat-panel iMac, it is going to have to be a lot cooler/more revolutionary that just an all-in-one Mac with a flat screen. They always seem to go that little bit further than other companies.
We've also heard all sorts of rumours about some new Apple product based on their Newton tech. Hmmmm. And we know that Apple loves their AirPort product. Hmmmmmm.
So here is the new product: it's a powerful desktop iMac with a 15" LCD screen, but the screen pops out of it's case/dock and is a portable web pad/writing tablet. Connected to the main machine via AirPort, of course. You can tote this baby all over the place, take notes with its hand-writing recognition, surf the web wirelessly. Then just drop it back in the dock/stand/cradle, and it's now the display for you much more powerful desktop machine, with it's hard drive, DVD+RW drive, etc.
Actually, I see things going in a different direction. Note how easy it is to break the protection on so-called "secured" CDs that are now hitting the market. The industry knows full well that these CDs will be cracked and copied. Showing that it is impossible to secure a CD that can still be played by a CD player will give them the "evidence" they need to stop selling CDs.
Bam! In comes the next audio format they want to shove down your throat. SCDs? Maybe. DVD for everything? Not likely, that's already been broken. But expect them to phase out CDs and bring in their "new" system, using the insecurity of the CD as their excuse.
When there are no more CDs to buy, they can force these online "rental" agreements down your throat if you want to listen to their music. If the copyright owner decides that they only way to get their music is through an online rental, then that's what they can do. A little support from the OS vendor, and you can be sure that the songs will only play on approved devices (with drivers cryptographically signed by the OS maker to ensure that no annoying "third party" drivers pop up to allow undesireable uses of that audio stream...)
The sad part about this is that these folks have put SO much work into sellling/renting songs at $.10 each. Really, $10 a month, 100 downloads allowed, that's only $.10 a song. You really think anyone would bother with Morpheus if they could be guaranteed a fast, complete download of their favorite tunes for ten cents each? Hell, double the price and I'm still only paying three bucks for an entire album. They just don't get it.
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The biggest problem for me is that like all of the other "TiVo cards" for your PC, it will ONLY work with analog cable tv. There is no "IR Blaster" output that would allow me to use this with my digital cable box, or my digital satellite TV decoder.
These cards need to include an IR transmitter which I can use to change the damn channel on the decoder box automatically when I want to record a program. Without that, it's no better than the tuner-free video-in port on my PC now.
Actually, there is a BIG difference between "letterboxed" movies, and "anamorphic", or enhanced-for-widescreen-TV movies.
I can't possibly explain the difference as well as these guys can, so I won't even try. Go there and read this, it's a great explination. It's true that both present a wide-screen picture, but you lose a lot of information in a letterboxed format.
Yup, this slime will be completely useless against us Canadians, and most folks in the Northern US. We're used to walking and driving over slippery surfaces for at least 4 months of the year. Just put some studded tires on the 4x4, and some spikes on the shoes, and this stuff won't slow us down much.
I think the only practical use for this slime is to make the worlds biggest slip-and-slide. Or maybe we'll see it in use in the Summer X-games... just slime down a steep road in San Fran and let the athletes slip-and-slide to the bottom as fast as possible.
> (ok, at first he will be a "one-way-mechanic")
:-)
Ha ha ha! Oh man, this sums me up nicely when I was a kid. I started taking apart all of my toys when I was about 4. I started successfully putting them back together when I was around 10. In the 6 years in between, my Dad got really good at putting toys back together...
Here I am, 30 years old, and I still get LEGO for every gift-giving holiday. Well, LEGO and power tools, so I can fiddle with my biggest, most expensive toy (the one that has a 25-year mortgage, and is a great place to store all of the smaller toys
My incredibly cool GF got me two B.I.O. Bugs for Christmas. Very sweet toys indeed.
This brings up a long-standing debate I have with several friends over what is a sport, and what is simply a competition.
Obviously the first thing to get thrown out is anything that is solely based on the opinion of judges. There has to be some emperical measure of a winner or loser. Say goodbye to figure skating, ballet/freestyle skiing, and snowboard half-pipe.
The second requirement is that a sport has to involve athletes, and athletes have to exhibit a whole heck of a lot of physical prowess. Out goes baseball, curling, and chess.
Some argue that a game like baseball is based on the opinion of "judges", in that umpires make the call for everything that happens. Strikes, balls, calls at the plate, etc. I say baseball isn't a sport for the second requirement, however.
Then you get into the wierd sports that are a combination of emperical and judged values, like mogul skiing and ski-jumping. They could be easily tweaked to make them 'real' sports.
Just because it's a competition, and it's physically demanding, doesn't make it a sport in my books.
I personally think the Olympics started their downward slide the very same moment they started allowing pro athletes to compete. I think it started with track&field events, and has snowballed from there (if I'm wrong, please correct me!)
Still, you have got to admit that this is still the world's premier sporting event. The best of the best in the world competing over the course of two weeks. It's a damned shame that the corruption of the IOC can sometimes overshadow the work and accomplishments of these athletes.
(BTW... Go Jasey-Jay!)
Automan. Vauge memories are coming back to me now. Sidekick was "Cursor"? Was rendered/created on a Apple II of some sort?
Geez, I recall that I liked that show too. I wonder when the episodes will be released on DVD?
Hmmm, I should have been a bit clearer. Obj-C and C++ work together just fine, and I have mixed-and-matched C, C++, and Obj-C all in the same source file, just as Apple suggests. And even calling C++ libs directly from Obj-C works great, when you are always using the same compiler for both (ie. gcc)
However, when you have a precompiled C++ library that used a -different- compiler from the gcc you are currently working with (such as the Sun WSPro compiler, or an older version of gcc), this is where the headaches begin.
Perhaps this is just a compiler issue, and not an Obj-C issue, but seeing as the only compiler that supports Obj-C is gcc, I tend to (incorrectly) lump the two together.
Objective-C is great, but try using it when you need to link in some C++ libraries some time. For fun, try linking in C++ libraries built with the Sun WSPro compiler.
Java is the hands-down winner here. In fact, if you are developing WebObjects code, and need to use C++ libraries, Java is the best way to go! It's that, or write C wrappers for your C++, and call those from Obj-C. Ugh.
To be fair, the problem is most likely that Obj-C has been all but abandoned, and never has worked properly alongside C++. Had Obj-C received the development resources of Java, it wouldn't have these drawbacks.
NeXTstep is state-of-the-art GUI design, circa. 1985-1990. At the time, it was easily 10 years ahead of anything else available.
:-)
:-) years ago.
But here we are 17 years later, and everyone has finally had a chance to catch up. (Except for Apple, who is now a good 5 years ahead of everyone else by basing their system on NeXTstep
The beauty of NeXTstep was the underlying Objective-C APIs and the dev tools. Amazing, simply amazing. The "build a text editor in under 1 minute without even compiling" example was always a winner.
Using GNUstep w/ WindowMaker is pretty close to the look of NeXTstep, but just seems to be lacking in the "feel" department (that from running GNUstep on my PC, right next to NeXTstep on my 68040 NeXTstation.)
Of course, that was over a year ago, so things might have changed a lot with GNUstep/WIndowMaker since then.
If you can get yourself a NeXT machine cheap, go for it. Heck, you might even be able to find an old Intel of HP machine with NeXTstep on it. But don't expect it to be a dailt use machine. I recently picked up a Mac Classic at a garage sale for the same reason: it's fun to remember what computers were like just a few (well, 12-15
[sigh], if only OS X and GNUstep were just a little bit more like NeXTstep, and this wouldn't be a problem.
NeXTstep has something called "fat binaries". It means that the same application that runs on my 68040 NeXT machine will also run on my HP and Intel machines running NeXTstep. When I compile my application, I simply tell the compiler to compile for all these platforms.
Sure, the binaries end up being bigger (about 50% larger for each platform, if I recall), but it was completely painless, and you could use "lipo" to reduce the binary size (and make the application only run on a single platform) if you wanted.
Yes sir, this was state-of-the-art back in 1992. 10 years later, it's all but disapeared.
> The original NeXT Computer OS was called NeXTSTEP
> (notice capitalisation--it's important in what
> follows).
Oh so close, but not quite. The original OS was NeXTstep. Got changed to NeXTSTEP around 3.0.
Before you go whining about how "it's only a 40Gig hard drive" and "I can build the same damned thing for $19.95 using parts I found under my bed", take some time to look at this thing on their website.
$1500 is a whole lot of cash, but this thing offers a few other features, such as including a "RIO Receiver" in the package, and what looks to be a decent display on it. It also has ReplayTV-like capabilities to recommend music based on your listening habits. It doesn't even appear to be hobbled, since you can rip MP3 with it and transfer them to your PC.
Sadly, it looks like it uses a 56k modem to access CDDB, even though it has a 10mbps connection as well.
Sure, $1500 is a lot. But triple the storage space and drop the price to $1000, and I'm interested (in other words, by next summer I might have one...)
>Ford has the equipment, knowledge and $$$ to do
>this, but if they do Honda WILL fill a law suit
>aleging lots of patents and copyright infringment.
>As a result Ford rathers design theyr own models.
Actually, Ford designs their own cars because Honda makes boring, unimaginative, ugly cars. Who would want to copy those?
Not that most Fords are any better, though...
Nope, just sign up for a seperate Passport account for each of the services you use. That way if you get yanked from one, it shouldn't affect all of the others.
It's no worse that managing the multiple logins for multiple MS services that you might be doing right now.
Don't be such a dil-hole and think about it for a split second... if the case is wider than a standard amp, it's not going to fit inside a standard stereo rack. Duh.
Well, if you have a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive in your home theatre PC, then you do need to have access to it.
And a desktop case painted black isn't what I am looking for either. I want something that looks like it belongs with my amp, VCR, and DVD player. Same width, same goofy round metal legs, power switch on the same side, etc. You'd think it would be easy to find such a beast.
You would think that with the interest of using a PC as a home theatre component that there would be a lot more choice in the market for a decent looking PC case!
I mean seriously, there is maybe 2 PC cases on the market that will take standard PC compnents and looks like it actually belongs in your A/V cabinet. And these cases tend to be in the $250+ range, which is nuts for just a case.
A PC w/ an HDTV tuner card, optical sound output, a DVD drive, a software line doubler/tripler/quadrupler, and a fast network connection (and gobs of sound-deadening material of course!)is a great thing to have in your home theatre, but it sure sticks out like a sore thumb!
"Only in re-runs..."
The problem is, at least here in Ottawa, if you demand that your builder do something that isn't "the norm", the builder will just tell you to screw off and sell the house to someone else.
Seriously, it's that bad up here. You're lucky if you can get them to build your house to code, with all of the windows and doors in the right place, and within 4 months of the schedule!
D'oh! I can't believe I missed that connection. It's been far too many years since I've seen War Games, or even played with a modem (ahhh, gotta love the widely available, cheap, reliable high speed net access in Canada :-)
Well, for those looking for a translation without actually reading the story...
:-)
"War Driving" refers to the practice of driving around town with a laptop and an 802.11b car looking for and mapping the location of wirelass access points. A GPS is helpful to let you know where you are.
I have no idea where the name "War Driving" came from, though. "Wirelss Access Recon" perhaps?
The article seems to imply that you need a specially constructed sphere to make this work. One that lets light in at a specific point, and allows no light out. It also is built in such a way to detect when a photon hits the inside surface. Just take a look at the diagram.
So unless someone is stupid enough to try and sneak a bomb onto a plane in one of these spheres, it's not much use to the security guards.
OK, let me stir the rumour pot a bit.
;-)
Obviously if Apple comes out with an LCD flat-panel iMac, it is going to have to be a lot cooler/more revolutionary that just an all-in-one Mac with a flat screen. They always seem to go that little bit further than other companies.
We've also heard all sorts of rumours about some new Apple product based on their Newton tech. Hmmmm. And we know that Apple loves their AirPort product. Hmmmmmm.
So here is the new product: it's a powerful desktop iMac with a 15" LCD screen, but the screen pops out of it's case/dock and is a portable web pad/writing tablet. Connected to the main machine via AirPort, of course. You can tote this baby all over the place, take notes with its hand-writing recognition, surf the web wirelessly. Then just drop it back in the dock/stand/cradle, and it's now the display for you much more powerful desktop machine, with it's hard drive, DVD+RW drive, etc.
You heard it here first
Actually, I see things going in a different direction. Note how easy it is to break the protection on so-called "secured" CDs that are now hitting the market. The industry knows full well that these CDs will be cracked and copied. Showing that it is impossible to secure a CD that can still be played by a CD player will give them the "evidence" they need to stop selling CDs.
Bam! In comes the next audio format they want to shove down your throat. SCDs? Maybe. DVD for everything? Not likely, that's already been broken. But expect them to phase out CDs and bring in their "new" system, using the insecurity of the CD as their excuse.
When there are no more CDs to buy, they can force these online "rental" agreements down your throat if you want to listen to their music. If the copyright owner decides that they only way to get their music is through an online rental, then that's what they can do. A little support from the OS vendor, and you can be sure that the songs will only play on approved devices (with drivers cryptographically signed by the OS maker to ensure that no annoying "third party" drivers pop up to allow undesireable uses of that audio stream...)
The sad part about this is that these folks have put SO much work into sellling/renting songs at $.10 each. Really, $10 a month, 100 downloads allowed, that's only $.10 a song. You really think anyone would bother with Morpheus if they could be guaranteed a fast, complete download of their favorite tunes for ten cents each? Hell, double the price and I'm still only paying three bucks for an entire album. They just don't get it.