>RIM got their name on the park because they donated a bucket of cash; as far as I know they didn't have anything to do with this financing deal.
Oh, I know. I just included the link as a backgrounder.
RIMs only "offence" is to have gotten their name on a project for which they are only really a bit player. Bully for them, I suppose, if the city doesn't think the name of the park is that important.:)
>RIM had nothing to do with the financing of the park
Way to not read what I said!
Here, let me add some emphasis:
"Too bad that by percentage, I'm told they only bought the R.:-) At least they didn't rip off the city."
RIM didn't rip the city off -- it's just that they didn't pay (IMHO) enough to name the park after themselves. The numbers I've heard say they paid between 10% and 35% of the total cost.
>In America, how am I supposed to know that a particular phone number is cellular or not?
Simple -- I think you will now have to dial cellphones as long distance numbers. I suppose you might be able to dial it sans the "1", but either way, it's at least a 10 digit number.
Bah, you think that's lame? When I was there, my high school invested in an 800 number because students there were from 4 or 5 different calling areas. Calling friends for help on homework was expensive (ah, the times before the long-distance structure melt-down in Canada, when I could call a house 5 minutes away from me and it "only" cost $1 a minute or so). Fortunately the teachers knew this, and due to there being no internet there at the time, they simply didn't do group assignments.
I can't even get a stable 24k connection in my hometown, the local school has about a 35 km fiber run, but, dammit, my GSM cell phone works (as long as I'm outside).
And to think at one point I thought GSM sucked. Well, it still does, the analog phone covers the parts GSM doesn't, but it's getting better.
I think eventually I'll end up seeing what kind of a deal I can get on GPRS. I mean, 46k is better than 21.6k.
Re:Beat-matching in kiosks; DVD format-shifting
on
Burn A Song For 99 Cents
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
>But can you do it for songs for which the band has not released a music video?
My "Blue Man Group" DVD would say so.:-) (Depending on what you're meaning -- this is an Audio only DVD with only 1 or 2 static images per song).
>And, for movie soundtracks, can you remove the dialogue when the actors speak over the soundtrack?
Yeah! Alternate audio is a huge feature of the DVD format. There's no reason you can't have a soundtrack track, and a soundtrack+speaking track, etc, etc. Unfortunately I don't DVD supports mixing the tracks, though.
Multiple angles would be the best way of dealing with the no-music-video problem... Daft Punk did an OK job of using multiple angles, but unfortunately not as I'd like.
I've yet to see a DVD fully take advantage of the features available with DVD, though.
>If catering to the "three second gap between songs" crowd is enough to turn a decent profit, why add more features?
Good point, but as someone who DJs for fun on College radio, I'm really starting to hate all these continuous mix CDs that are coming out. One or two are good for when you need a break, but not everything.:-)
>How are you supposed to do beat-matched crossfaded transitions between songs?
PCDJ, traktor, and other PC mixers can currently autodetect the BPM of a song, and, at your option, attempt to mix them.
I've found for my type of music they tend to detect the BPM at half the value it should, but hey, how many people listen to music at 140 BPM?
There's no reason this technology can't be integrated into a kiosk.
>A soundtrack album (or any other CD for that matter) is as expensive as the movie because unlike the movie, you can play an CD in your car, in the kitchen, in your pocket player while jogging
I can do all those with a DVD. Feel free to ask how. (Of course, that's assuming laws don't prevent me!)
>How can you express your emotions with other peoples' words?
Four very common ways come to mind already:
Movies. Photography. Quotations. Publishing.
>This is my opinion, flame me all you want. It's not changing.
Maybe it just did? Or are all the above invalid uses of art?
Here's a piece of non-emotion on the subject, then:
Lawrence Lessig says:
"no one can do to Disney as Disney did to the Brothers Grimm." "Copyright owners deserve to be paid for the use of their work; they should not be allowed to veto follow on work that builds on theirs."
Which, in the TechTV interview where he was asked to comment on this, he explained that he believes much art is nothing more than improved and changed copies of old art, and that Disney is a master of this technique.
So, perhaps I should put it to you this way: Are Disney's most famous films copies or art?
I think Lawrence Lessig is right. And as someone who would like to create art, but could draw worth a damn, and as someone who isn't particularly good at coming up with a decent completely original piece of music, I support those who express themselves using the words of others.
Sorry for the repost, but it seems some LCD-only moron moderator can't handle the truth.
----
Just what I want. A display which, if priced under the cost of the computer it's attached to, has these problems:
- Requires periodic fluorescent tube replacement
- Looks like crap unless you're head-on with it
- Adds temporal smoothing to all my movies due to slow pixels
- May require me to buy another videocard (DVI)
- Looks like crap in anything but the native resolution
- Will be totalled the first time I throw a pen at it
- Gets scratched with nails alone
- Requires special cleaning fluids
- Has an external power brick
- Has inconsistent/poor brightness/contrast
- Has dead/bright pixels and can't be returned for them
- Has no BNC connectors
Fix 75% of the above and make it cost the same price as a CRT for an equivalent size, and I'm game. Till then I tell everyone to just get a CRT (unless their desk requires it, in which case I ask if they're willing to change the desk to save money).
>I would like to say that the price of SCSI drives is not 10x more because nobody wants a SCSI drive, but because they are simply more complicated to manufacture and interface.
That was true in 1980. It isn't now. I mean, it costs no more to build a RAID card (witness Promise Ultra Hack) than it does to build an IDE card, and that's massively more complicated than SCSI.
In fact, since all the smarts are moved onto the controller (which is dead simple to make today -- I bought a cheap one for $35 CDN two years ago -- it was cheaper than a cheap IDE card!) the drive itself is less complicated.
>Also, the preformance hit you take going from 7200rpm SCSI to 7200rpm IDE is not noticable at most times, but I suppose i am tolerant because i can wait more than 3 ms seek.
Agreed, but there's more to it than that. IDE requires new interfaces every drive (unless you want to take the horrible performance hit master/slave arrangements incurr). SCSI doesn't. IDE cables can only be 18". SCSI can be quite a bit longer. IDE only works for hard drives and CD-ROMS (and one or two other things). SCSI is for anything. There's more reasons than this to support SCSI over IDE (at the same price), but I think these three would be enough to sway users at the right price.
>SCSI is loud and hot and expencive, just like all preformance computing componants, and thus will never be a consumer standard.
Only because no manufacturer thinks there's a good market if they slap a SCSI controller on their current consumer hard drives. I think there is, and I'd be game to buy one, if they existed, for my next upgrade.
RS232 still seems to be the same as day one to me, other than changing the size/pinout of the connector. I suppose the chipset could support more features, but that's no difference in the specs of what goes down the wire.
>Here comes DVI!
And there it goes! At 165 Mhz, none-the-less! That used to be fast (in 1995).
>You mean the oversized 40-conductor ribbon cables are solved by 68 conductor ones?
Nope, they're solved by using high-density cable connectors, which IDE still hasn't figured out with 80-pin cables (instead IDE just cheats).
>And 10x more expensive.
Because... why?
Nobody is buying, that's why. Lower speed SCSI drives are still available, but are still expensive because IDE is stuck in everyone's heads as the only storage method for a PC.
>You are the first SCSI fanboy I've ever seen.
You haven't been here very long. Let me be the first to say welcome!:-)
Just what I want. A display which, if priced under the cost of the computer it's attached to, has these problems:
- Requires periodic fluorescent tube replacement
- Looks like crap unless you're head-on with it
- Adds temporal smoothing to all my movies due to slow pixels
- May require me to buy another videocard (DVI)
- Looks like crap in anything but the native resolution
- Will be totalled the first time I throw a pen at it
- Gets scratched with nails alone
- Requires special cleaning fluids
- Has an external power brick
- Has inconsistent/poor brightness/contrast
- Has dead/bright pixels and can't be returned for them
- Has no BNC connectors
Fix 75% of the above and make it cost the same price as a CRT for an equivalent size, and I'm game. Till then I tell everyone to just get a CRT (unless their desk requires it, in which case I ask if they're willing to change the desk to save money).
Slashdot Mirror
>RIM got their name on the park because they donated a bucket of cash; as far as I know they didn't have anything to do with this financing deal.
:)
Oh, I know. I just included the link as a backgrounder.
RIMs only "offence" is to have gotten their name on a project for which they are only really a bit player. Bully for them, I suppose, if the city doesn't think the name of the park is that important.
>The funniest thing is I've had that sig for over 6 months and no one has ever commented on it
You need a sig like mine then. Though the near daily insults do wear thin after a while...
>RIM had nothing to do with the financing of the park
:-) At least they didn't rip off the city."
Way to not read what I said!
Here, let me add some emphasis:
"Too bad that by percentage, I'm told they only bought the R.
RIM didn't rip the city off -- it's just that they didn't pay (IMHO) enough to name the park after themselves. The numbers I've heard say they paid between 10% and 35% of the total cost.
You might want to know about their local exploits.
:-) At least they didn't rip off the city.
Too bad that by percentage, I'm told they only bought the R.
>In America, how am I supposed to know that a particular phone number is cellular or not?
Simple -- I think you will now have to dial cellphones as long distance numbers. I suppose you might be able to dial it sans the "1", but either way, it's at least a 10 digit number.
>Why is the pricing structure so bogus?
Bah, you think that's lame? When I was there, my high school invested in an 800 number because students there were from 4 or 5 different calling areas. Calling friends for help on homework was expensive (ah, the times before the long-distance structure melt-down in Canada, when I could call a house 5 minutes away from me and it "only" cost $1 a minute or so). Fortunately the teachers knew this, and due to there being no internet there at the time, they simply didn't do group assignments.
God, I loved that high school for that.
>Cell phone towers are popping up everywhere.
You are so right on that one.
I can't even get a stable 24k connection in my hometown, the local school has about a 35 km fiber run, but, dammit, my GSM cell phone works (as long as I'm outside).
And to think at one point I thought GSM sucked. Well, it still does, the analog phone covers the parts GSM doesn't, but it's getting better.
I think eventually I'll end up seeing what kind of a deal I can get on GPRS. I mean, 46k is better than 21.6k.
Query: Which lasts longer, an old LD or a new DVD?
:-)
I think you might not like the answer. And at least then it really is called "rot".
Cyrix made 386 processors?
I guess I missed that one, thankfully.
>But can you do it for songs for which the band has not released a music video?
:-) (Depending on what you're meaning -- this is an Audio only DVD with only 1 or 2 static images per song).
:-)
My "Blue Man Group" DVD would say so.
>And, for movie soundtracks, can you remove the dialogue when the actors speak over the soundtrack?
Yeah! Alternate audio is a huge feature of the DVD format. There's no reason you can't have a soundtrack track, and a soundtrack+speaking track, etc, etc. Unfortunately I don't DVD supports mixing the tracks, though.
Multiple angles would be the best way of dealing with the no-music-video problem... Daft Punk did an OK job of using multiple angles, but unfortunately not as I'd like.
I've yet to see a DVD fully take advantage of the features available with DVD, though.
>If catering to the "three second gap between songs" crowd is enough to turn a decent profit, why add more features?
Good point, but as someone who DJs for fun on College radio, I'm really starting to hate all these continuous mix CDs that are coming out. One or two are good for when you need a break, but not everything.
>How are you supposed to do beat-matched crossfaded transitions between songs?
PCDJ, traktor, and other PC mixers can currently autodetect the BPM of a song, and, at your option, attempt to mix them.
I've found for my type of music they tend to detect the BPM at half the value it should, but hey, how many people listen to music at 140 BPM?
There's no reason this technology can't be integrated into a kiosk.
>A soundtrack album (or any other CD for that matter) is as expensive as the movie because unlike the movie, you can play an CD in your car, in the kitchen, in your pocket player while jogging
I can do all those with a DVD. Feel free to ask how. (Of course, that's assuming laws don't prevent me!)
>How can you express your emotions with other peoples' words?
Four very common ways come to mind already:
Movies.
Photography.
Quotations.
Publishing.
>This is my opinion, flame me all you want. It's not changing.
Maybe it just did? Or are all the above invalid uses of art?
Here's a piece of non-emotion on the subject, then:
Lawrence Lessig says:
"no one can do to Disney as Disney did to the Brothers Grimm."
"Copyright owners deserve to be paid for the use of their work; they should not be allowed to veto follow on work that builds on theirs."
Which, in the TechTV interview where he was asked to comment on this, he explained that he believes much art is nothing more than improved and changed copies of old art, and that Disney is a master of this technique.
So, perhaps I should put it to you this way: Are Disney's most famous films copies or art?
I think Lawrence Lessig is right. And as someone who would like to create art, but could draw worth a damn, and as someone who isn't particularly good at coming up with a decent completely original piece of music, I support those who express themselves using the words of others.
Sorry for the repost, but it seems some LCD-only moron moderator can't handle the truth.
----
Just what I want. A display which, if priced under the cost of the computer it's attached to, has these problems:
- Requires periodic fluorescent tube replacement
- Looks like crap unless you're head-on with it
- Adds temporal smoothing to all my movies due to slow pixels
- May require me to buy another videocard (DVI)
- Looks like crap in anything but the native resolution
- Will be totalled the first time I throw a pen at it
- Gets scratched with nails alone
- Requires special cleaning fluids
- Has an external power brick
- Has inconsistent/poor brightness/contrast
- Has dead/bright pixels and can't be returned for them
- Has no BNC connectors
Fix 75% of the above and make it cost the same price as a CRT for an equivalent size, and I'm game. Till then I tell everyone to just get a CRT (unless their desk requires it, in which case I ask if they're willing to change the desk to save money).
>Haven't seen a whole lot of inexpensive SCSI network, processor, printers nor scanner.
;-)
I bought a SCSI scanner 5 years ago for $99 CDN. Unfortunately, the consumer standard is now USB, which is FAR slower.
My 5 year old scanner beats the pants off any new USB scanner, except for the colours being off (Hey, it's an Acer, whaddaya expect, perfection?
Oh well.
>That's nonsense, almost every BIOS in the world turns on USB keyboard support at least long enough for you to hit Delete or whatever to enable it.
Integrated Peripherals->USB Keyboard support->Disabled.
You just haven't fixed enough comptuer yet to come across a crappy one that has this set as default.
>Because I have a job.
So do I, but unlike yourself, I actually have a name.
Must be hard having the same name as a few thousand other people.
>Since buying a new keyboard costs $20-30 (U.S.), who cares?
Yeah, but why not just use a PS/2 keyboard to start with?
USB keyboards add nothing but trouble.
You wouldn't be saying this if you had a first gen DVD drive that had destroyed your CD-Rs, would you?
>FYI, most modern bioses recognise USB keyboards and can be accessed from them.
Oh, I know that.
I also know its an option I disable on all my boards, and an option that isn't always the default.
This means that if you only have a USB keyboard and buy/receive a motherboard with USB disabled by default, you just bought a heap of trash.
>I would like to say that the price of SCSI drives is not 10x more because nobody wants a SCSI drive, but because they are simply more complicated to manufacture and interface.
That was true in 1980. It isn't now. I mean, it costs no more to build a RAID card (witness Promise Ultra Hack) than it does to build an IDE card, and that's massively more complicated than SCSI.
In fact, since all the smarts are moved onto the controller (which is dead simple to make today -- I bought a cheap one for $35 CDN two years ago -- it was cheaper than a cheap IDE card!) the drive itself is less complicated.
>Also, the preformance hit you take going from 7200rpm SCSI to 7200rpm IDE is not noticable at most times, but I suppose i am tolerant because i can wait more than 3 ms seek.
Agreed, but there's more to it than that. IDE requires new interfaces every drive (unless you want to take the horrible performance hit master/slave arrangements incurr). SCSI doesn't. IDE cables can only be 18". SCSI can be quite a bit longer. IDE only works for hard drives and CD-ROMS (and one or two other things). SCSI is for anything. There's more reasons than this to support SCSI over IDE (at the same price), but I think these three would be enough to sway users at the right price.
>SCSI is loud and hot and expencive, just like all preformance computing componants, and thus will never be a consumer standard.
Only because no manufacturer thinks there's a good market if they slap a SCSI controller on their current consumer hard drives. I think there is, and I'd be game to buy one, if they existed, for my next upgrade.
>RS232:
>Three modifications. Most recent in 1991
Like what?
RS232 still seems to be the same as day one to me, other than changing the size/pinout of the connector. I suppose the chipset could support more features, but that's no difference in the specs of what goes down the wire.
>Here comes DVI!
And there it goes! At 165 Mhz, none-the-less! That used to be fast (in 1995).
>USB!
I hope you never have to access the BIOS.
>Forgive me if I sound a bit naive but wouldn't parallel be faster than serial?
Yes, but just like with memory, serial is cheap, parallel costs. Those extra wires just ain't free.
>You mean the oversized 40-conductor ribbon cables are solved by 68 conductor ones?
:-)
Nope, they're solved by using high-density cable connectors, which IDE still hasn't figured out with 80-pin cables (instead IDE just cheats).
>And 10x more expensive.
Because... why?
Nobody is buying, that's why. Lower speed SCSI drives are still available, but are still expensive because IDE is stuck in everyone's heads as the only storage method for a PC.
>You are the first SCSI fanboy I've ever seen.
You haven't been here very long. Let me be the first to say welcome!
Just what I want. A display which, if priced under the cost of the computer it's attached to, has these problems:
- Requires periodic fluorescent tube replacement
- Looks like crap unless you're head-on with it
- Adds temporal smoothing to all my movies due to slow pixels
- May require me to buy another videocard (DVI)
- Looks like crap in anything but the native resolution
- Will be totalled the first time I throw a pen at it
- Gets scratched with nails alone
- Requires special cleaning fluids
- Has an external power brick
- Has inconsistent/poor brightness/contrast
- Has dead/bright pixels and can't be returned for them
- Has no BNC connectors
Fix 75% of the above and make it cost the same price as a CRT for an equivalent size, and I'm game. Till then I tell everyone to just get a CRT (unless their desk requires it, in which case I ask if they're willing to change the desk to save money).
>Look at most any Sony Trinitron.
Sony Trinitron's aren't all flat.
I have a few older ones -- the best trinitrons are still cylindrical shaped. Building up the glass on the edges to make it flat distorts the picture.