A moderately priced stand alone DVD player will outperform video cards in terms of picture quality.
This is not correct. Software dvd decoding in its current state is equal or superior to just about any hardware solution save for the obscenely expensive. However, there is not htpc solution that equals a commercial pvr, which is why I own a 140 hour modded TiVo.
I noticed something funny here in Norway. When Yoda started fighiting, everybody in the theatre started laughing! I laughed too! And when he was finished fighting, he took his stick and started looking old again.
Funny, yes. Unrealistic, no. I remember seeing a demonstration by a competing team's fencing coach/master a long time ago. This guy was one of the best in the world in his prime, but well into his elder years spent most of his time just teaching and walking around with the assistance of a cane.
However, put a blade in this old guy's hand, and he was suddenly transformed from a decrepit-looking fragile elderly person into a graceful, dangerous foe. I saw him whip one of his own students who was at the time representing the US in the World University Games. After the bout, he picked up his cane and limped back to the sidelines.
AC makes the environment less challenging but isn't life or death.
Load of crock. Even during a heat wave in Dallas during my high school years where most of the people still had air conditioning, we had elderly people (who didn't have air conditioning) dropping dead like flies, and many that dropped and nearly died. And this is in temperatures well below your vaunted 50 degrees C. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke can indeed be life or death.
Heat exhaustion is a fairly common problem seen in the southern US, and I imagine in other hot climes in the world. I'd like to see how long you survive in a place with 50 C temps, no ac, and no wind.
Arizona and Nevada in the summer are hot enough to give you first degree burns on the bottoms of your feet through athletic shoes if you stand on the pavement long enough. (Been there, done that.)
Just because you haven't personally seen any smoking corpses in India doesn't mean that people don't die of heat stroke and dehydration there regularly. And I'm thinking that the life expectancy of the western australian gold miners wasn't all the great either.
Underground rooms aren't an option in many warm climes due to swamps/coastline. Where I live, and underground room pretty much turns into an underwater room.
It's a good scam to convince your boss to buy larger monitors, but it isn't true.
The story that squinting at small text or monitors, sitting too close to the tv, etc. can cause poor vision is an old wives' tale. There is no convincing medical evidence that any of these activities decrease vision in anything but the very short-term (hours). They do not cause near-sightedness, blindness, far-sightedness, or color blindness. At worst they will cause some fatiguing of the muscles in the eye making it difficult and irritating until those muscles are rested.
I realize people can sue for anything, but the moment they try to hire an ophthalmologist as an expert witness, they'll get nothing but laughter in their faces.
>>but it seems to make sense,
It may seem to make sense, but it's completely false. The earlier poster had it correct, in that nearsightness is an aberration of the length of the "eyeball" in relation to the maximum focusing power of the lens. Nothing to do with the muscles at all. The muscles in the eye can't change the fundamental limits of the anatomy.
G.N. M.D.
>>Could you imagine the horror of Speed Racer live action?
Actually, I had the opportunity to go back and watch some of those Speed Racer episodes I loved so much as a child. After watching a couple of them and getting over the inevitable nostalgia, I reached the conclusion that even animated Speed Racer is pretty horrible.
>>All may not be roses, but do you honestly believe that we're no better off because of the corporations?
Somebody please mod this parent post up. It's a very clear summary of why patent law (in general) and corporations are necessary and often good. The original poster complains about the high cost of a patented medication to keep his son alive. Without corporate-level research encouraged by patent law that medicine would likely never have existed, with the obvious result. Americans have to pay a lot of patented medications, but at least we have access to them.
And don't anybody tell me I don't have a heart for the underprivileged. In my profession I recently estimated I provide over $100,000 of free medical care a year for those who can't pay.
Just picking nits here, but if the bonds are truly trading at low rates, then they're not junk. Junk bonds have much higher than average return rates because that's what the market demands of the company to loan them money. If the company is a high risk, then they have to pay a higher return. High enough risk and they're termed "junk bonds."
Rape is rarely reported, and even more rarely prosecuted in this country. The actual time served for convicted rapists is astonishingly short. Why you may ask? Well, all those really dangerous marijuana users have mandatory minimum sentences thanks to the federal war on drugs. All others get their sentences shortened/let out early because the prisons just won't hold that many people.
>>A business has the right to charge you the rates they see as fair and you have the right to not use their convenient service and start driving to work.
This is valid so long as the business in question isn't a monopoly, such as Time-Warner or one of the Baby Bells, for example. Those rates are regulated because the state has agreed to give them a limited monopoly. If you don't have much choice in broadband connectivity, then I'd argue that they do not have the right to raise prices willy-nilly as suits their suits.
This doesn't change the fundamental usefulness of the ultrasound in medical uses. It certainly won't replace xrays or CAT scans, as the imaging modalities have fairly different applications already which are limited by the differences in x-ray and ultrasound physics.
In most medical uses, it's important to be able to change the angle at which the ultrasound image is taken. Like CAT scans, ultrasound takes images of anatomy in slices. It's generally required that certain views to visualize a certain grouping of structures is desired, and one needs to be able to get those pictures quickly at various angles. For that, the handheld transducer as used is still going to be more useful than this invention. For something like this invention, you'd have to turn the whole patient or extremity to obtain a different angle due to size of the glass panel and transducer. Not practical as it's currently implemented for most medical applications.
This is one story where I wish I had about 1000 mod points to mod down all the negative posts that seem to specialize in 4 letter colloquialisms./. posters will praise to high heaven a stupid child's electronic pet that can be hacked to run linux in beowulf clusters. But just because an interesting new invention doesn't particularly suit their fat, suburban bodies living in the ice which doesn't matter because they never get out from in front of their monitors anyway, then the technology must suck?
*sigh*
At least give it a chance people. $3000 isn't that much money. I've got friends who spend nearly that much on mountain bikes who live in completely flat areas. A simple CD player cost that much when they first came out. VCR's cost considerably more than that at launch.
How many of us own/owned personal computers that cost that much money? Before we start casting stones at somebody else's ideas which many may find very useful, perhaps we should look at our own spending priorities.
Re:Speaking of retards.
on
This is IT?
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· Score: 2
Geez, doesn't anybody read the articles anymore? The thing has an automatic follow mode, so you don't have to "lug" it anywhere. It follows you.
I have friends that spend well over $1000 on mountain bikes in places where there are no mountains. This thing is a bargain by comparison.
I'm going to have to disagree that it's the same as having a conversation with somebody next to you in the car.
Phone conversations are traditionally continuous and uninterrupted. We've all been trained to use them that way, and the people on the other side of the conversation expect it as well. Phone conversations take up higher priorities (re-nice'd if you will) in our brain than conversations with other passengers.
Other passengers are far more likely to accept and expect breaks in the conversation due to traffic and driving issues. They often will break the conversation themselves to warn of impending dangers. You don't feel bad about not answering for a while if something needs attention while talking to a passenger, as usually they know what caused the delay.
Phone conversations are inherently more dangerous because we're expected to and pretty much always do devote more of our attention to them.
In yet another "RTFA" comment, the article also notes that it comes with a speakerphone as well, so you can use both the organizer functions and the phone functions at the same time.
No, it's the logical thing to do. The final winnings are generally mostly generated by the early rounds in most episodes anyway, as the questions are much easier. A somewhat larger pot does no good if you're pretty sure you can't beat a much better player. So eliminating the better player, especially when it's down to just 3 left, is the smartest thing to do.
The problem with WL is that the brightest out of the bunch almost never wins. By logic, when it gets down to the last 3 or 4, it's in the best interests of the other players to vote out the player who is clearly the strongest. This has happened on almost every single episode I've watched, sometimes quite a bit earlier in the game as well.
The few exceptions tend to be those episodes that are made up of celebrities from a similar background. They're generally all independently wealthy, so aren't driven by personal gain. In addition, they've all got "personal history" between them which often leads them to vote off other players without regards to what would give them the best chances of winning.
It's nice to see the EFF getting national publicity though, as I'm a paying member myself.
In all, though, when I watch game shows (not often) I tend to watch Jeopardy for the reasons stated above.
Heh, until now, I didn't even know the episode was any longer than the usual ones thanks to my TiVo. It recorded the whole thing automatically, and I just watched the whole thing.
This is a sad day for me. I have a special attachment to HP calculators as do may of us here. As a supergeek in high school, I participated in competitions of math and science skills, including calculator applications. Even came in 4th in the state my senior year!:)
Nobody who valued speed and accuracy used anything except HP's. Other kids would be using their butt-slow infix calculators for sharp, ti, and casio. We'd blow them all away! The amazingly solid, tactile feel of HP calcs meant I never had to look at the calculator when doing problems. I was a HP touch calculatorist! When I think of how fast we could run numbers on those things back then, I'm still amazed.
Of course, given the horrid pounding we gave them, we ran through an HP per year.
The commercial skipping part of the suit sounds completely bogus to me. However, the part about copyright infringement sounds quite dangerous. Why should they put up with people being able to essentially [i]rebroadcast[/i] shows on pay channels to lots of their friends without those friends paying for the channels? If I were working for them I'd be ticked off too.
People are asking how is this any different than sharing tapes with friends. Well, it's not really, except that the commercials are automatically removed. It's also no different than taping your CD collection and giving it to friends. Think about that.
The reason they've tolerated with VCR's so far is for several reasons:
1) they lost the suit about fair use
2) VCR's leave commercials in
3) it's cumbersome and therefore not a great threat
What surprises me is that it's the major (freely broadcast) networks bringing this suit. Rather, I would have expected the pay cable networks to sue Replay for this, as it's their material that people are actually paying them to provide. I don't think the redistribution thing would have bothered the major networks so much but for the automatic commercial skipping part. Don't be surprised if other pay cable/satellite channels jump in on the suit though.
the 30 second skip feature was taken out of the latest tivo update. it's no longer available. i never used it anyway. i'm perfectly happy skipping through it on ff. that way if i see something interesting (not often, but it does happen) i stop and go back and watch it.
Once Bush had 'won' the election, I knew this was the eventual outcome of US v. Microsoft. I never had a doubt that the DOJ would back off and Microsoft would get off scott-free. Bush strongly hinted that this would be the case even during the campaign.
Do I fault Bush? Only to a point. He's only representing his donors and constituency (big business), so he's doing as predicted. I blame the American public that voted for him far more. Those of you who voted for Bush, remember that this is what you wanted. If you didn't know that Republicans tend to side with big business over small business or consumer and individual rights, then you should read a little more before voting.
Remember your vote when you see cases like these or when Supreme Court justices get nominated. Not that I don't have anything to thank him for. Thanks to the big tax cut (which may drive the gov't back into deficit) he's going to make me even more well-off than I already am. That still won't get me to vote for him though.
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This is not correct. Software dvd decoding in its current state is equal or superior to just about any hardware solution save for the obscenely expensive. However, there is not htpc solution that equals a commercial pvr, which is why I own a 140 hour modded TiVo.
Funny, yes. Unrealistic, no. I remember seeing a demonstration by a competing team's fencing coach/master a long time ago. This guy was one of the best in the world in his prime, but well into his elder years spent most of his time just teaching and walking around with the assistance of a cane.
However, put a blade in this old guy's hand, and he was suddenly transformed from a decrepit-looking fragile elderly person into a graceful, dangerous foe. I saw him whip one of his own students who was at the time representing the US in the World University Games. After the bout, he picked up his cane and limped back to the sidelines.
Load of crock. Even during a heat wave in Dallas during my high school years where most of the people still had air conditioning, we had elderly people (who didn't have air conditioning) dropping dead like flies, and many that dropped and nearly died. And this is in temperatures well below your vaunted 50 degrees C. Heat exhaustion and heat stroke can indeed be life or death.
Heat exhaustion is a fairly common problem seen in the southern US, and I imagine in other hot climes in the world. I'd like to see how long you survive in a place with 50 C temps, no ac, and no wind. Arizona and Nevada in the summer are hot enough to give you first degree burns on the bottoms of your feet through athletic shoes if you stand on the pavement long enough. (Been there, done that.)
Just because you haven't personally seen any smoking corpses in India doesn't mean that people don't die of heat stroke and dehydration there regularly. And I'm thinking that the life expectancy of the western australian gold miners wasn't all the great either. Underground rooms aren't an option in many warm climes due to swamps/coastline. Where I live, and underground room pretty much turns into an underwater room.
The story that squinting at small text or monitors, sitting too close to the tv, etc. can cause poor vision is an old wives' tale. There is no convincing medical evidence that any of these activities decrease vision in anything but the very short-term (hours). They do not cause near-sightedness, blindness, far-sightedness, or color blindness. At worst they will cause some fatiguing of the muscles in the eye making it difficult and irritating until those muscles are rested.
I realize people can sue for anything, but the moment they try to hire an ophthalmologist as an expert witness, they'll get nothing but laughter in their faces.
>>but it seems to make sense, It may seem to make sense, but it's completely false. The earlier poster had it correct, in that nearsightness is an aberration of the length of the "eyeball" in relation to the maximum focusing power of the lens. Nothing to do with the muscles at all. The muscles in the eye can't change the fundamental limits of the anatomy. G.N. M.D.
Actually, I had the opportunity to go back and watch some of those Speed Racer episodes I loved so much as a child. After watching a couple of them and getting over the inevitable nostalgia, I reached the conclusion that even animated Speed Racer is pretty horrible.
>>All may not be roses, but do you honestly believe that we're no better off because of the corporations? Somebody please mod this parent post up. It's a very clear summary of why patent law (in general) and corporations are necessary and often good. The original poster complains about the high cost of a patented medication to keep his son alive. Without corporate-level research encouraged by patent law that medicine would likely never have existed, with the obvious result. Americans have to pay a lot of patented medications, but at least we have access to them. And don't anybody tell me I don't have a heart for the underprivileged. In my profession I recently estimated I provide over $100,000 of free medical care a year for those who can't pay.
Just picking nits here, but if the bonds are truly trading at low rates, then they're not junk. Junk bonds have much higher than average return rates because that's what the market demands of the company to loan them money. If the company is a high risk, then they have to pay a higher return. High enough risk and they're termed "junk bonds."
Rape is rarely reported, and even more rarely prosecuted in this country. The actual time served for convicted rapists is astonishingly short. Why you may ask? Well, all those really dangerous marijuana users have mandatory minimum sentences thanks to the federal war on drugs. All others get their sentences shortened/let out early because the prisons just won't hold that many people.
>>A business has the right to charge you the rates they see as fair and you have the right to not use their convenient service and start driving to work. This is valid so long as the business in question isn't a monopoly, such as Time-Warner or one of the Baby Bells, for example. Those rates are regulated because the state has agreed to give them a limited monopoly. If you don't have much choice in broadband connectivity, then I'd argue that they do not have the right to raise prices willy-nilly as suits their suits.
In most medical uses, it's important to be able to change the angle at which the ultrasound image is taken. Like CAT scans, ultrasound takes images of anatomy in slices. It's generally required that certain views to visualize a certain grouping of structures is desired, and one needs to be able to get those pictures quickly at various angles. For that, the handheld transducer as used is still going to be more useful than this invention. For something like this invention, you'd have to turn the whole patient or extremity to obtain a different angle due to size of the glass panel and transducer. Not practical as it's currently implemented for most medical applications.
*sigh*
At least give it a chance people. $3000 isn't that much money. I've got friends who spend nearly that much on mountain bikes who live in completely flat areas. A simple CD player cost that much when they first came out. VCR's cost considerably more than that at launch.
How many of us own/owned personal computers that cost that much money? Before we start casting stones at somebody else's ideas which many may find very useful, perhaps we should look at our own spending priorities.
Geez, doesn't anybody read the articles anymore? The thing has an automatic follow mode, so you don't have to "lug" it anywhere. It follows you. I have friends that spend well over $1000 on mountain bikes in places where there are no mountains. This thing is a bargain by comparison.
I'm going to have to disagree that it's the same as having a conversation with somebody next to you in the car.
Phone conversations are traditionally continuous and uninterrupted. We've all been trained to use them that way, and the people on the other side of the conversation expect it as well. Phone conversations take up higher priorities (re-nice'd if you will) in our brain than conversations with other passengers.
Other passengers are far more likely to accept and expect breaks in the conversation due to traffic and driving issues. They often will break the conversation themselves to warn of impending dangers. You don't feel bad about not answering for a while if something needs attention while talking to a passenger, as usually they know what caused the delay.
Phone conversations are inherently more dangerous because we're expected to and pretty much always do devote more of our attention to them.
In yet another "RTFA" comment, the article also notes that it comes with a speakerphone as well, so you can use both the organizer functions and the phone functions at the same time.
No, it's the logical thing to do. The final winnings are generally mostly generated by the early rounds in most episodes anyway, as the questions are much easier. A somewhat larger pot does no good if you're pretty sure you can't beat a much better player. So eliminating the better player, especially when it's down to just 3 left, is the smartest thing to do.
The few exceptions tend to be those episodes that are made up of celebrities from a similar background. They're generally all independently wealthy, so aren't driven by personal gain. In addition, they've all got "personal history" between them which often leads them to vote off other players without regards to what would give them the best chances of winning.
It's nice to see the EFF getting national publicity though, as I'm a paying member myself.
In all, though, when I watch game shows (not often) I tend to watch Jeopardy for the reasons stated above.
And in (un)related news, the Linux kernel version 2.0 is finally released...
>>I'd suspect Taco is moonlighting over there if it weren't for the correct use of the apostrophe in "It's."
The use of the apostrophe is correct. It's the capitalization that's incorrect. The apostrophe is omitted in the possessive pronoun.
Heh, until now, I didn't even know the episode was any longer than the usual ones thanks to my TiVo. It recorded the whole thing automatically, and I just watched the whole thing.
Thanks Tivo!
This is a sad day for me. I have a special attachment to HP calculators as do may of us here. As a supergeek in high school, I participated in competitions of math and science skills, including calculator applications. Even came in 4th in the state my senior year! :)
Nobody who valued speed and accuracy used anything except HP's. Other kids would be using their butt-slow infix calculators for sharp, ti, and casio. We'd blow them all away! The amazingly solid, tactile feel of HP calcs meant I never had to look at the calculator when doing problems. I was a HP touch calculatorist! When I think of how fast we could run numbers on those things back then, I'm still amazed.
Of course, given the horrid pounding we gave them, we ran through an HP per year.
The commercial skipping part of the suit sounds completely bogus to me. However, the part about copyright infringement sounds quite dangerous. Why should they put up with people being able to essentially [i]rebroadcast[/i] shows on pay channels to lots of their friends without those friends paying for the channels? If I were working for them I'd be ticked off too. People are asking how is this any different than sharing tapes with friends. Well, it's not really, except that the commercials are automatically removed. It's also no different than taping your CD collection and giving it to friends. Think about that. The reason they've tolerated with VCR's so far is for several reasons: 1) they lost the suit about fair use 2) VCR's leave commercials in 3) it's cumbersome and therefore not a great threat What surprises me is that it's the major (freely broadcast) networks bringing this suit. Rather, I would have expected the pay cable networks to sue Replay for this, as it's their material that people are actually paying them to provide. I don't think the redistribution thing would have bothered the major networks so much but for the automatic commercial skipping part. Don't be surprised if other pay cable/satellite channels jump in on the suit though.
the 30 second skip feature was taken out of the latest tivo update. it's no longer available. i never used it anyway. i'm perfectly happy skipping through it on ff. that way if i see something interesting (not often, but it does happen) i stop and go back and watch it.
Once Bush had 'won' the election, I knew this was the eventual outcome of US v. Microsoft. I never had a doubt that the DOJ would back off and Microsoft would get off scott-free. Bush strongly hinted that this would be the case even during the campaign.
Do I fault Bush? Only to a point. He's only representing his donors and constituency (big business), so he's doing as predicted. I blame the American public that voted for him far more. Those of you who voted for Bush, remember that this is what you wanted. If you didn't know that Republicans tend to side with big business over small business or consumer and individual rights, then you should read a little more before voting.
Remember your vote when you see cases like these or when Supreme Court justices get nominated. Not that I don't have anything to thank him for. Thanks to the big tax cut (which may drive the gov't back into deficit) he's going to make me even more well-off than I already am. That still won't get me to vote for him though.