I know reading end to end across a whole screen is bad, but for me that column was a way too narrow. When I said 'flow' I meant let it be as wide as the window is, and I'll size it to my liking. To each his own. Personally, I don't like to move my eyes up and down as much, so skinny columns force me to scroll after nearly every paragraph. Not only is that manual labor;-) it also keeps taking me out of the flow of reading. The web isn't a newspaper, but newspapers provide a good hint--they don't have columns the full width of the paper, nor do they go the full height.
I've capped video at 352x240*, burned it to a VCD, watched said VCD on a 32" 2-year-old TV, and let me tell you, I'd rather watch a good pre-recorded or first-generation SP VHS tape than VCD by far. Cap at 640x480, minimum. And even *that* will look bad in 20 years on your 3rd-generation 84" HDTV.
* captured from a DirecTV satellite reciever, via an S-Video cable, into a PCI ATI TV Wonder (not VE) as MPEG1, then burned to VCD.
It's already starting to exist but requires special paper (it reads dots on the paper instead of using gyros) and a dock (no bluetooth). Read all about it at Logitech's site or buy one at ThinkGeek.
In other news, I've seen those 256 MB USB keyring drives on sale for $90-100 for the last two weeks. Probably even cheaper if you look around at pricewatch or whatever power-shopper site you like.
The kernel really is the most important part, when you are tersely describing a computer, because it controls what software will run on that computer.
Exactly. Same with hardware. How many times have you answered the question "What kind of computer do you have?" by answering "A Pentium 200" (or whatever the processor is)? People are lazy and will give the least amount of information possible, especially when one of the optional words has such ungainly pronounciation as 'gnu'. I swear, there's no way to win with that word--it either sounds like 'new', causing confusion, or 'guh-new', which just sounds plain clunky.
One thing you just reminded me of--when will we be able to download videos? Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" is about the coolest video ever. I think I'd pay $2.50 for nice, big copies of that, Will Smith's "Miami", Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy", and many others.
Funny now that the recent G4s are SO LOUD that Apple is offering a power-supply trade-in deal for $20 to help the noise. I have a newer model that came *with* the new PS and it's still louder than earlier G4s or any PC I've ever had. Plus it rattles. We just bought twenty dual-1.25GHz G4s and about 1/4 of them rattle like mine.
It seems pretty clear that DVD is a dead-end technology, due to be replaced by Video On Demand.
Yeah, the same way that no one buys tapes and CDs because radio exists. Oh, wait...
OK, there's a little difference, in that radio isn't quite On Demand. OTOH, do you think there's enough bandwidth and storage space in the universe to make it so that every single person in the world will have instantaneous access to every single movie ever made? Not to mention all the shows that are on DVD right now, including Six Feet Under, Law & Order, X-Files, every flavor of Star Trek... And remember, that list is only going to get longer and longer. In the upcoming year, there will be a few hundred more movies added to that list--new releases, straight-to-video and -cable that winds up on DVD, old movies that they finally decide to release, and foreign films. Hell, there will probably be more like 2,000 new DVDs released this year. I don't know, I'm just guessing, maybe 5,000 unique titles, especially if TV-to-DVD picks up steam. (Finally got my *&#@$% Futurama last month!)
VOD will just be the slow evolution of PPV--selling ultimate convenience to a handful (compared to DVD-buyers and regular cable/satellite viewers) of consumers, not much more. Why would any studio start cataloging and making instantly available everything ever made (not to mention infrastructure--upstream needs to be *substantially* beefed up, even with better compression (note: I can just *barely* sit through a DivX'd DVD, and sure as hell wouldn't pay for it) and no sense mentioning the infamous 'last mile') when they can just sell shiny discs at a ver high profit* and make the consumer do their own cataloging? Not to mention people like to just plain *own* stuff and have it be theirs. And read yesterday's thread about Apple's new music store--people are apparently very fond of owning boxes with liner notes and cover art. (Or maybe they're just using that as an excuse to bith about the service.;-) )
If anything, VOD will make use of TiVo-like boxes--new movies will be sent to your set-top box in the middle of the night the day before they're oficially "released" and there will be a small fee will unlock them for viewing. Just like how QuickTime has been distributed for the last 5 years--everyone with QuickTime 3 or newer on their computer *has* the full version of QuickTime Pro already--you just need to pay for a key to unlock it and gain access to all those features.
*remember, all those movies in the $7.99 bargain bin (Broken Arrow, Miss Congeniality) are still making a profit and cost no more to make than a brand-new disc like Harry Potter or 8 Mile. So, let's just say that on an $8 DVD, there's $1 of profit to be made. On a new release sold for $19.99 there's $13 to be made on *each* disc! $24.99? That's $18 profit *per disc*. OK, *maybe* the $7.99 mark is a loss-leader (but I doubt it), in which case I'm sure the $9.99 discs turn a profit. There are *way* too many of them every week to all be loss-leaders.
... I'll just post a little something. I think the first Porsche laptop was pretty much a PC laptop in a near-perfect ripoff of the original TiBook--15.4" widescreen, titanium shell, thin, etc. I remember seeing it online when it came out and glanced at it at Best Buy once when I was I there. Can't tell right now--the official site is loading really slow and seems to have precious little actual info--click 'notebook' and you just get this dumb flash thing in a tiny window.
Anyone looking into this should take a look at what Cringely refers to as a "dry copper pair"--basically, it's a direct phone line connection (comes with no dial tone or internet access; it's just a private party on each end) roughly equivelant to a T1. In other words, like a big long piece of cat-5 that can be run underground pretty damn far.
quote: "If I run, say, 10 or 12 campaigns from different services, with similar rates of return, my narfing-iron business will net me in the vicinity of $80K-$100K in profit [emphasis yours]"
You've got it! the elusive Step 2, between Step 1: $STEP1 and Step 3: Profit! Step 2 is SPAM! SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM!!!!!:-)
2 quibbles: The Mac stopped crashing altogether...
hardly. a lot better, but not perfect. Java2 with all the trimmings...
And I find it quite funny that using IE to view a VNC machine is 3-4x faster than using Safari, both on the same dual-1.25.
That's the answer to all these questions!
MS: Why/what/how...
You: just a second, lemme search Google for that.
Seriously, that's one of the things that makes a good employee--if you don't know the answer, knowing where to find it. I get asked a lot of questions at work because everyone knows, if I don't know the answer, 99% of the time I know the person who does. Asking me a question usually means you're 0 steps or 1 step away from the answer.
I can't believe it, this was a Problem of the Week in 3rd- of 4th-grade Math, I kid you not. The next 3 letters after "O T T F F S S" are "E N T". One Two Three Four Five Six Seven
I just upgrade my TiVo to 120 GB and it was easy as pie. In my excitement to see if it worked, I forgot to reconnect the internal fan. I woke up the next day and the TiVo had powered itself off due to excessive heat. Power off, reconnect the fan, power on, and all was good. Talk about a solid product.
Well, now that ReplayTV's future is secured, why would you choose TiVo over a ReplayTV?
A couple months ago (when I bought mine) RTV's future wasn't so certain. But the main thing is, I work with a guy who has had a TiVo for quite a while (hint: when he bought it, he paid $250 for the lifetime subscription. How long has that *not* been an option?) and a couple guys in my LUG also have them. One had even hacked his and, as it happens, I bought a 120 GB HD last week and just put it in tonight. I literally just powered it back up 20 minutes ago and it all seems fine. In any case, I went with the TiVo mostly from good first-hand word of mouth. By the time I get another it should be close to (if not completely) caught up with RTV, and even if not, I'll probably go with another just to keep a consistant UI.
Also, I have DirecTV. Does RTV make something comparable to a DirecTiVo? It's great--the TiVo programming guide = the regular DTV guide, none of that hang-this-doodad-in-front-of-your-cable-box deal, and the quality is perfect--it doesn't re-encode the show, it just saves the stream as it was originally broadcast. Granted, if DTV ever goes under, it'll turn into a paperweight since it has no built-in MPEG encoder, but it's worth the risk.:-)
(a google search later) Nope, doesn't look like they have anything special for diretv users. From the faq: ( http://www.sonicblue.com/video/replaytv/replaytv_4 000_faq.asp ) Q. Does the ReplayTV 4500 have two tuners? Can customer record two shows at the same time? A. No, the ReplayTV 4500 does not have two tuners but you can record two shows simultaneously by installing two ReplayTV 4500s and connecting them via your home network. This is a better solution especially if you are using satellite boxes or cable boxes.
The networked ReplayTV solution is a better solution that allows you to record two shows at the same time and watch any show from any part of your home, which is something that the other products on the market, can't do. In addition, existing dual tuner products will only work with DirecTV while the ReplayTV4000 will work with analog cable, digital cable, DirecTV, Dish Network and antenna. ----------- Those are the only references to directv *anywhere* on the site. (according to their built-in search, anyway.) Their solution to 'record two shows at once' is 'buy two replays'? No thanks. I've got a dual-LMB dish and two cables going into the back of my TiVo. I can record one show and watch another (live) or record *two* shows and watch a third that I've already recorded.
My TiVo, with its 120 GB drive, will probably even cut into my DVD buying. There are plenty of movies on HBO, Skinemax, etc. that I would like to have and don't mind having on pan-n-scan. I can keep 40 two-hour movies and *still* have my original 35-hour capacity. And you know what's sick? There's room in the box (I mean a shelf with screwholes and everything) for a second drive. Sweeeeeeet...
Slashdot Mirror
I could live without everything on that list except for the season passes. Oh well. At least I've got a DirecTiVo, which is $4.95/mo, not $12.95.
I survived Dre, Metallica, and Madonna only to get kicked off of Napster by the estate of Roy Orbison.
Close--that would be iMail.
I know reading end to end across a whole screen is bad, but for me that column was a way too narrow. When I said 'flow' I meant let it be as wide as the window is, and I'll size it to my liking. To each his own. Personally, I don't like to move my eyes up and down as much, so skinny columns force me to scroll after nearly every paragraph. Not only is that manual labor ;-) it also keeps taking me out of the flow of reading. The web isn't a newspaper, but newspapers provide a good hint--they don't have columns the full width of the paper, nor do they go the full height.
Thanks for posting. I *hate* skinny-ass columns. I just got a new 20" flat panel, 1600x1200. Let the text *flow*, dammit! :-)
Good, cheap, and easy--pick any two.
I've capped video at 352x240*, burned it to a VCD, watched said VCD on a 32" 2-year-old TV, and let me tell you, I'd rather watch a good pre-recorded or first-generation SP VHS tape than VCD by far. Cap at 640x480, minimum. And even *that* will look bad in 20 years on your 3rd-generation 84" HDTV.
* captured from a DirecTV satellite reciever, via an S-Video cable, into a PCI ATI TV Wonder (not VE) as MPEG1, then burned to VCD.
It's already starting to exist but requires special paper (it reads dots on the paper instead of using gyros) and a dock (no bluetooth). Read all about it at Logitech's site or buy one at ThinkGeek.
In other news, I've seen those 256 MB USB keyring drives on sale for $90-100 for the last two weeks. Probably even cheaper if you look around at pricewatch or whatever power-shopper site you like.
Lots of good points have already been made, so I won't rehash them (and I'm only looking at +5 already!) but here's a good article on why micropayments will never, ever, ever, ever [emphasis mine] work by Clay Shirky.
The kernel really is the most important part, when you are tersely describing a computer, because it controls what software will run on that computer.
Exactly. Same with hardware. How many times have you answered the question "What kind of computer do you have?" by answering "A Pentium 200" (or whatever the processor is)? People are lazy and will give the least amount of information possible, especially when one of the optional words has such ungainly pronounciation as 'gnu'. I swear, there's no way to win with that word--it either sounds like 'new', causing confusion, or 'guh-new', which just sounds plain clunky.
his books don't quite click for me, but I always liked the other odds & ends he wrote. his 1999 piece about ebay was always one of my favorites.
One thing you just reminded me of--when will we be able to download videos? Cibo Matto's "Sugar Water" is about the coolest video ever. I think I'd pay $2.50 for nice, big copies of that, Will Smith's "Miami", Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy", and many others.
Funny now that the recent G4s are SO LOUD that Apple is offering a power-supply trade-in deal for $20 to help the noise. I have a newer model that came *with* the new PS and it's still louder than earlier G4s or any PC I've ever had. Plus it rattles. We just bought twenty dual-1.25GHz G4s and about 1/4 of them rattle like mine.
It seems pretty clear that DVD is a dead-end technology, due to be replaced by Video On Demand.
;-) )
Yeah, the same way that no one buys tapes and CDs because radio exists. Oh, wait...
OK, there's a little difference, in that radio isn't quite On Demand. OTOH, do you think there's enough bandwidth and storage space in the universe to make it so that every single person in the world will have instantaneous access to every single movie ever made? Not to mention all the shows that are on DVD right now, including Six Feet Under, Law & Order, X-Files, every flavor of Star Trek... And remember, that list is only going to get longer and longer. In the upcoming year, there will be a few hundred more movies added to that list--new releases, straight-to-video and -cable that winds up on DVD, old movies that they finally decide to release, and foreign films. Hell, there will probably be more like 2,000 new DVDs released this year. I don't know, I'm just guessing, maybe 5,000 unique titles, especially if TV-to-DVD picks up steam. (Finally got my *&#@$% Futurama last month!)
VOD will just be the slow evolution of PPV--selling ultimate convenience to a handful (compared to DVD-buyers and regular cable/satellite viewers) of consumers, not much more. Why would any studio start cataloging and making instantly available everything ever made (not to mention infrastructure--upstream needs to be *substantially* beefed up, even with better compression (note: I can just *barely* sit through a DivX'd DVD, and sure as hell wouldn't pay for it) and no sense mentioning the infamous 'last mile') when they can just sell shiny discs at a ver high profit* and make the consumer do their own cataloging? Not to mention people like to just plain *own* stuff and have it be theirs. And read yesterday's thread about Apple's new music store--people are apparently very fond of owning boxes with liner notes and cover art. (Or maybe they're just using that as an excuse to bith about the service.
If anything, VOD will make use of TiVo-like boxes--new movies will be sent to your set-top box in the middle of the night the day before they're oficially "released" and there will be a small fee will unlock them for viewing. Just like how QuickTime has been distributed for the last 5 years--everyone with QuickTime 3 or newer on their computer *has* the full version of QuickTime Pro already--you just need to pay for a key to unlock it and gain access to all those features.
*remember, all those movies in the $7.99 bargain bin (Broken Arrow, Miss Congeniality) are still making a profit and cost no more to make than a brand-new disc like Harry Potter or 8 Mile. So, let's just say that on an $8 DVD, there's $1 of profit to be made. On a new release sold for $19.99 there's $13 to be made on *each* disc! $24.99? That's $18 profit *per disc*. OK, *maybe* the $7.99 mark is a loss-leader (but I doubt it), in which case I'm sure the $9.99 discs turn a profit. There are *way* too many of them every week to all be loss-leaders.
... I'll just post a little something. I think the first Porsche laptop was pretty much a PC laptop in a near-perfect ripoff of the original TiBook--15.4" widescreen, titanium shell, thin, etc. I remember seeing it online when it came out and glanced at it at Best Buy once when I was I there. Can't tell right now--the official site is loading really slow and seems to have precious little actual info--click 'notebook' and you just get this dumb flash thing in a tiny window.
I'm colorblind, you insensetive clod!
Anyone looking into this should take a look at what Cringely refers to as a "dry copper pair"--basically, it's a direct phone line connection (comes with no dial tone or internet access; it's just a private party on each end) roughly equivelant to a T1. In other words, like a big long piece of cat-5 that can be run underground pretty damn far.
quote: "If I run, say, 10 or 12 campaigns from different services, with similar rates of return, my narfing-iron business will net me in the vicinity of $80K-$100K in profit [emphasis yours]"
:-)
You've got it! the elusive Step 2, between Step 1: $STEP1 and Step 3: Profit! Step 2 is SPAM! SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM!!!!!
2 quibbles:
The Mac stopped crashing altogether...
hardly. a lot better, but not perfect.
Java2 with all the trimmings...
And I find it quite funny that using IE to view a VNC machine is 3-4x faster than using Safari, both on the same dual-1.25.
Being as lazy as I am, my first thought was that manhole covers are round so they're easy to put them back in--just plop them down in any direction.
That's the answer to all these questions!
MS: Why/what/how...
You: just a second, lemme search Google for that.
Seriously, that's one of the things that makes a good employee--if you don't know the answer, knowing where to find it. I get asked a lot of questions at work because everyone knows, if I don't know the answer, 99% of the time I know the person who does. Asking me a question usually means you're 0 steps or 1 step away from the answer.
...4 movies a month is *kinda* unlimited... :-p
I can't believe it, this was a Problem of the Week in 3rd- of 4th-grade Math, I kid you not. The next 3 letters after "O T T F F S S" are "E N T".
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
I just upgrade my TiVo to 120 GB and it was easy as pie. In my excitement to see if it worked, I forgot to reconnect the internal fan. I woke up the next day and the TiVo had powered itself off due to excessive heat. Power off, reconnect the fan, power on, and all was good. Talk about a solid product.
Well, now that ReplayTV's future is secured, why would you choose TiVo over a ReplayTV?
:-)
4 000_faq.asp )
A couple months ago (when I bought mine) RTV's future wasn't so certain. But the main thing is, I work with a guy who has had a TiVo for quite a while (hint: when he bought it, he paid $250 for the lifetime subscription. How long has that *not* been an option?) and a couple guys in my LUG also have them. One had even hacked his and, as it happens, I bought a 120 GB HD last week and just put it in tonight. I literally just powered it back up 20 minutes ago and it all seems fine. In any case, I went with the TiVo mostly from good first-hand word of mouth. By the time I get another it should be close to (if not completely) caught up with RTV, and even if not, I'll probably go with another just to keep a consistant UI.
Also, I have DirecTV. Does RTV make something comparable to a DirecTiVo? It's great--the TiVo programming guide = the regular DTV guide, none of that hang-this-doodad-in-front-of-your-cable-box deal, and the quality is perfect--it doesn't re-encode the show, it just saves the stream as it was originally broadcast. Granted, if DTV ever goes under, it'll turn into a paperweight since it has no built-in MPEG encoder, but it's worth the risk.
(a google search later)
Nope, doesn't look like they have anything special for diretv users. From the faq:
( http://www.sonicblue.com/video/replaytv/replaytv_
Q. Does the ReplayTV 4500 have two tuners? Can customer record two shows at the same time?
A. No, the ReplayTV 4500 does not have two tuners but you can record two shows simultaneously by installing two ReplayTV 4500s and connecting them via your home network. This is a better solution especially if you are using satellite boxes or cable boxes.
The networked ReplayTV solution is a better solution that allows you to record two shows at the same time and watch any show from any part of your home, which is something that the other products on the market, can't do. In addition, existing dual tuner products will only work with DirecTV while the ReplayTV4000 will work with analog cable, digital cable, DirecTV, Dish Network and antenna.
-----------
Those are the only references to directv *anywhere* on the site. (according to their built-in search, anyway.) Their solution to 'record two shows at once' is 'buy two replays'? No thanks. I've got a dual-LMB dish and two cables going into the back of my TiVo. I can record one show and watch another (live) or record *two* shows and watch a third that I've already recorded.
My TiVo, with its 120 GB drive, will probably even cut into my DVD buying. There are plenty of movies on HBO, Skinemax, etc. that I would like to have and don't mind having on pan-n-scan. I can keep 40 two-hour movies and *still* have my original 35-hour capacity. And you know what's sick? There's room in the box (I mean a shelf with screwholes and everything) for a second drive. Sweeeeeeet...