This is the worst consumer electronics product that I have ever bought.
That may be true, but it is the best consumer electronics product that I have ever bought. Good UI, skips commercials automagically, and I can copy the shows to my computer -- it's almost perfect and I vastly prefer it to Tivo.
I don't know the details of the current pricing snafu but I wanted to post a view from the other camp. ReplayTV is great.
I have a PocketPC and I use it for reading ebooks all the time. But I would jump on a purpose-built ebook reader that allowed me to use my text, html and pdb files.
All it really needs is:
- Big greyscale screen - SD and CF card slots - Backlight - fat rechargeable battery - a few hard buttons on the front and sides - Software that can display text,.pdb compressed text, HTML, RTF. Maybe, if you got crazy, you could put a plugin for another format on the SD card. - Give it a few fonts and landscape/portrait options - Touchscreen would be nice but I would sacrifice all text input if it kept the price down.
Such a beast would be pretty cheap compared to a modern PDA, and I would be all over it like stink on a monkey. Would I be the only one?
Unlike most everyone else here, I know a little about this. I was involved with the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) for about 10 years and I've been to the South Pole 4 times.
For God's sake, please tell me that everyone there knows better than to thaw out anything strange that they find in the ice.
It seems to me that every other company's legal department should have understood that there was a risk. It's like they were just assuming that things would work out. And now they aren't.
I'm no MS cheerleader but this is only a problem because the OTHER companies that used FAT were playing fast and loose.
Skipping over the commercials works great for stuff that's been recorded, but isn't very effective on live tv (you *could* pause it for 2 mintues then skip over them).
I have had a ReplayTV for about 3 years, and I always delay live shows by long enough that I miss all the commercials. 15 minutes for a 1-hour show... I'd rather spend it doing anything other than watching commercials.
If you are uncomfortable delaying live TV long enough to miss the ads, The Man is pushing you around, and you are still getting used to your Tivo.:)
The dots are luckily much less obvious than the end of reel mark, which is like a giant cigarette burn in comparison.
What bugs me more than the reel change mark is the way the color timing changes reel to reel. One second the movie looks like a nice 6500K, the next it's blued out or something. YUCK.
I hardly go see movies any more these days... only when I can't wait for DVD. Theaters really suck. And can we please, please get 30 fps of data in movies? I can't stand the blurry pans you get wtih 24 fps.
But another aim is to mess with video compression -- maybe they would dot the DVDs to impair ripping, where file size is important. (Seems silly though.)
At the movie theater. I only saw the dots in the center of the screen, when that area was a light color. They may have been present in other areas but I did not see them.
I can see how they would interfere with lossy compression, but I don't know how much.
Imagine what things might be like 50 years from now if our society continues to be lawsuit-crazy...
Everyone will have a lawyer on retainer... your parents will have a talk with you at age 13 about how important it is to choose a good one.
There will be Hallmark cards congratulating you for both surviving and filing your first suit.
When you place an ad in the personals, you will mention that you are only being sued by one person, and you have two very strong suits of your own ongoing.
Little kids will play at serving each other subpoenas.
You're right. You can take nail clippers now -- they relaxed the rules recently.
However, you may not have nail clippers that have the pokey metal bit that you use to clean under your fingernails. And that is still pretty ridiculous, don't you think?
So, I can't take my nail clippers on a plane because I could use them to crash the plane... but my FM radio, which allegedly risks crashing the plane, is OK because they trust me to turn it off? Hooey.
If personal electronics really put airplanes at risk of crashing, I think the FAA would have us all flying handcuffed while wearing hospital gowns. (The next time some lunatics dirt one of our planes I think that will happen anyway.)
The GPS prohibition in particular is probably more to protect the airlines... (it isn't an FAA rule, right?) Why would airlines want passengers to independently audit their flight path, speed and altitude?
Marked, logged and noted. FWIW I agree with you, I am a cynical SOB and have often thought this way myself.
If we can at least keep the hardware relatively open... keep this exe signing stuff out of the BIOS...
Re:Excellent heat conductivity
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
As to DeBeers, I'm sure they'll come up with some marketing angle.
Marketing? That is so 15 minutes ago. They'd be much better off buying some laws--forcing synthetic diamonds to be labeled as such, or better still forbidding trafficking in them without some kind of special industrial license.
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This is the worst consumer electronics product that I have ever bought.
That may be true, but it is the best consumer electronics product that I have ever bought. Good UI, skips commercials automagically, and I can copy the shows to my computer -- it's almost perfect and I vastly prefer it to Tivo.
I don't know the details of the current pricing snafu but I wanted to post a view from the other camp. ReplayTV is great.
But if it weren't leaking oil... ...it'd be out.
maybe if consumers would BUY another genre...
don't blame the manufacturer, they are meeting demand.
I have a PocketPC and I use it for reading ebooks all the time. But I would jump on a purpose-built ebook reader that allowed me to use my text, html and pdb files.
.pdb compressed text, HTML, RTF. Maybe, if you got crazy, you could put a plugin for another format on the SD card.
All it really needs is:
- Big greyscale screen
- SD and CF card slots
- Backlight
- fat rechargeable battery
- a few hard buttons on the front and sides
- Software that can display text,
- Give it a few fonts and landscape/portrait options
- Touchscreen would be nice but I would sacrifice all text input if it kept the price down.
Such a beast would be pretty cheap compared to a modern PDA, and I would be all over it like stink on a monkey. Would I be the only one?
Maybe so, since no one sells it.
Unlike most everyone else here, I know a little about this. I was involved with the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) for about 10 years and I've been to the South Pole 4 times.
For God's sake, please tell me that everyone there knows better than to thaw out anything strange that they find in the ice.
It seems to me that every other company's legal department should have understood that there was a risk. It's like they were just assuming that things would work out. And now they aren't.
I'm no MS cheerleader but this is only a problem because the OTHER companies that used FAT were playing fast and loose.
Now, I don't like advert breaks and I don't like the rampant commercialism they imply...
Isn't rampant commercialism the thing that makes it possible for you to have a computer to post with?
Unless you are making your own semiconductors from rocks in the back yard, you owe rampant commercialism quite a bit.
I don't like spam and TV ads either, but they are an inevitable byproduct of a free market society.
Skipping over the commercials works great for stuff that's been recorded, but isn't very effective on live tv (you *could* pause it for 2 mintues then skip over them).
:)
I have had a ReplayTV for about 3 years, and I always delay live shows by long enough that I miss all the commercials. 15 minutes for a 1-hour show... I'd rather spend it doing anything other than watching commercials.
If you are uncomfortable delaying live TV long enough to miss the ads, The Man is pushing you around, and you are still getting used to your Tivo.
There are alternatives to lengthy contracts, such as prepaid accounts.
I believe that the prepaid options now available (in the US) all have the same fatal flaw: the minutes expire... use it or lose it!
If I could buy a prepaid phone and stretch the minutes out over months, I would do it in a second. But as far as I know this is not possible.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong about minutes expiring on every carrier's prepaid plan...
Don't forget that Administrator privs on OSX aren't the same as root. You need to enable true root access in the NetInfoManager.
The dots are luckily much less obvious than the end of reel mark, which is like a giant cigarette burn in comparison.
What bugs me more than the reel change mark is the way the color timing changes reel to reel. One second the movie looks like a nice 6500K, the next it's blued out or something. YUCK.
I hardly go see movies any more these days... only when I can't wait for DVD. Theaters really suck. And can we please, please get 30 fps of data in movies? I can't stand the blurry pans you get wtih 24 fps.
But another aim is to mess with video compression -- maybe they would dot the DVDs to impair ripping, where file size is important. (Seems silly though.)
But any way you look at it, it stinks.
At the movie theater. I only saw the dots in the center of the screen, when that area was a light color. They may have been present in other areas but I did not see them.
I can see how they would interfere with lossy compression, but I don't know how much.
I SAW the dots in Underworld. They drove me NUTS. I thought it was some kind of problem with the film copy or... I dunno what.
I did not see this on 28 Days Later. Maybe I just missed it, or maybe it was only in the re-release with the new ending.
They are doing this on PURPOSE? Madness. Will these be on DVDs too?
Aren't there only a couple hundred thousand (or so) PVRs in use? Neither ReplayTV nor Tivo has been wildly successful.
Of course you can take mine when you pry it from my cold, dead etc....
After that I will introduce him to my own 500-employee business, which specializes in kicking people in the nuts.
Imagine what things might be like 50 years from now if our society continues to be lawsuit-crazy...
Everyone will have a lawyer on retainer... your parents will have a talk with you at age 13 about how important it is to choose a good one.
There will be Hallmark cards congratulating you for both surviving and filing your first suit.
When you place an ad in the personals, you will mention that you are only being sued by one person, and you have two very strong suits of your own ongoing.
Little kids will play at serving each other subpoenas.
That would be a scary world to live in.
You're right. You can take nail clippers now -- they relaxed the rules recently.
However, you may not have nail clippers that have the pokey metal bit that you use to clean under your fingernails. And that is still pretty ridiculous, don't you think?
So, I can't take my nail clippers on a plane because I could use them to crash the plane... but my FM radio, which allegedly risks crashing the plane, is OK because they trust me to turn it off? Hooey.
If personal electronics really put airplanes at risk of crashing, I think the FAA would have us all flying handcuffed while wearing hospital gowns. (The next time some lunatics dirt one of our planes I think that will happen anyway.)
The GPS prohibition in particular is probably more to protect the airlines... (it isn't an FAA rule, right?) Why would airlines want passengers to independently audit their flight path, speed and altitude?
Then again, I am paranoid.
Personally, I would be very happy if web pages could only display text and images. Plugins? Bah. Humbug.
In fact, I would be happy with just text. In black and white only.
Of course, in a few years that will be found to violate a patent, too.
they make good stuff.
I have a 7000-2 (about $100) card in my bsd box. linux support is even official I think.
Marked, logged and noted. FWIW I agree with you, I am a cynical SOB and have often thought this way myself.
If we can at least keep the hardware relatively open... keep this exe signing stuff out of the BIOS...
As to DeBeers, I'm sure they'll come up with some marketing angle.
Marketing? That is so 15 minutes ago. They'd be much better off buying some laws--forcing synthetic diamonds to be labeled as such, or better still forbidding trafficking in them without some kind of special industrial license.
But hey, I'm a cynic.
many scientists have thought that in Venus's rich ammonia lakes a Silicon based life could have emerged
MANY scientists? Can you name some of them? Silicon-based life is a load of hooey. Call me BiochemistryExpert.
And there are no lakes of any kind on Venus.
Where did you get this stuff, some 50's sci-fi magazine?
Nice link.
Let's see... we work harder/better than anyone else, and thanks to that our nation is the only superpower.
Way to go, fellow Americans! All y'all should pat yourselves on the back.