A couple of months ago I needed a USB DVD to install Windows 7 on a netbook.
But why? Assuming you have access to a PC with a DVD drive, a USB port, and a 4GB or larger USB drive, you didn't need a USB DVD drive. Installing Windows from a USB stick is trivial:
Make sure your USB stick is FAT32 formatted. Unless you mucked about with formatting, that should be the out-of-the-box default.
Copy the contents of the Windows DVD to the USB drive, keeping the folder structure the same.
Stick the USB drive in your netbook and reboot. When prompted to boot from USB drive (the BIOS might say CD or DVD), press any key and get on with your install.
I've never understood why most "Install Windows 7 from USB drive" tutorials on the web have so many extra, unnecessary steps. I've done this install on three different netbooks, across multiple installs on one (beta to RC to RTM), and have never had to do anything more than just copying the files to my USB key.
The PS3 has no infrared port, hence it cannot be used with my universal remote.
There are various IR-to-Bluetooth adapters available that will allow you to control your PS3 with a universal remote. Personally, I use the Logitech adapter for their Harmony remote line, since I have a Harmony One that I really love. In theory that adapter could be used with any universal remote as long as you know the codes. The Harmony adapter has the added benefit of supporting a power off macro (previously only available on $100+ adapters).
I never owned a PS2 thus have no games. In fact I've never owned a console period so console gaming just isn't a big deal to me.
That's fine, since all but the first generation or two of PS3s are not backwards compatible with PS2. Considering you were buying at a time when stand-alone players were cheaper than the PS3, you'd already missed the window of opportunity to get a backwards compatible PS3 without spending large amounts of money for used hardware on ebay.
My PS3 can stream Netflix... at 1080p with 7.1 audio
No it can't, because Netflix streams cap out at 720p with stereo audio. Also, your PS3 still needs a disc in the drive in order to stream Netflix. Not quite the same integrated experience as a Roku, Popbox, or even Xbox 360. I guess if you never use the PS3 for anything but Netflix it works out the same since the disc will always be in the drive, but if you ever play games or other discs (Blu-Rays or DVDs), you'll have to get up off the couch and swap discs in order to stream Netflix.
Yeah, yeah, the native PS3 app is "coming soon", and it's all because of Microsoft strongarming Netflix. Whatever. The fact is, PS3 does not yet have a native Netflix streaming app.
Doesn't cost much more than these others
By "not much more" you mean "2x to 3x as much", then sure. Ignoring used models and the occasional sale, the PS3 sells for $300. A Roku player is $100, and the Popbox in the article is expected to be $130. I don't know about you, but to me $300 is quite a bit more than $100. Three times more, in fact.
I got a Wii because I fell in love with it and it's party-style gaming atmosphere.
The Wii has just a handful of good party games (Wii Sports, Boom Blox) that aren't also (and better) on other platforms (Rock Band, Guitar Hero). The motion control of the Wii is very much a gimmick, and has been as much frustration as fun for most people I've played with (yes, I have a Wii). The Wii has done very well at selling itself to a "mainstream" audience, but that audience buys it for the pack-in Wii Sports and rarely buys anything else. Not really good for Nintendo, since you want a constant stream of game sales for profit. My Wii pretty much gathers dust these days, as does the Wii of everybody else I know with one.
I got a PS3 because it plays games I like (syphon filter/COD) as well as being arguably the best BluRay player available on the market today.
That was true about the PS3 being the best BluRay player... in 2006-2007. The current crop of standalone players are much better than the PS3. They're cheaper, with better video quality, and with full BD-Live support (the only reason the PS3 was initially better, since it was updated more often). If you're in the market for a BluRay player today, units from Oppo, Samsung, etc are much better than the PS3. (yes, I also have a PS3)
I've NEVER wanted an Xbox (except maybe for MechWarrior). Maybe I'm just not the hardcore gamer.
Behind the times much? There hasn't been a new MechWarrior/MechAssault game on the Xbox since 2004, and that was the Xbox 1. There's supposedly a new one coming for PC and 360, but a release is still TBA.
Also, you play COD. I think that counts as a "hardcore gamer". And Modern Warfare 2 on the 360 outsold the PS3 by nearly 2 to 1. If you're at all into multiplayer, your experience is simply going to be better on 360 due to more people available to play with.
Nope, software developer. But I know when to do 0-indexed counting and 1-indexed counting. Since there was never a 0CE, years count from 1. Kinda like VB arrays vs. everybody else.
It doesn't even come close for this generation- its far behind the Wii in sales and in originality. Although I agree for the decade it has to be the PS2, due to its dominance last gen. Obviously written by someone with an MS hard on.
It really depends on how you measure it. By sales, the PS2 is definitely the winner, with the Wii a close second. In terms of innovation, though, the 360 had quite a bit more "firsts" than either of those.
Achievements and gamerscore. Whether you like it or not, people love this. It's completely e-peen bragging rights, but players gobble it right up. So much so that others have started doing the same thing -- PS3's Trophy system, WoW's achievements, Steam achievements, etc.
Downloadable games. XBLA has definitely been a killer app for the 360 since day 1. People joked that they were buying a $400 console to play a $5 game (Geometry Wars 2), but they still bought it. Sony and Nintendo were late to this, and initially focused only on back-catalog games (Wii's Virtual Console, PSN's PS1 games) while Microsoft came out of the gate from the very start with original new games. All three have dipped into the retro well to a certain extent, but Microsoft has done that far less than others. (I'm not mentioning Games on Demand since Sony actually did that one first -- full retail games available for digital purchase.)
Donwloadable content, demos, etc. A bit of an addendum to the last point, but the 360 was the first time you could download demos of games online rather than having to buy a DVD of demos. That single-handedly put several magazines completely out of business, since a lot of game rags relied on demo discs for subscriptions.
XNA and community/indie games. The Xbox 360 is the first console that you can legitimately (without hacking) develop homebrew games for without having to buy development hardware (like the Net Yaroze during the PS1 timeframe). Yeah, the PS3 had Linux (the Slim got rid of Linux support), but without access to the GPU there's not a whole lot you can do with it.
The 360 was the first console to add significant features completely via software. Video streaming (originally the Xbox could only stream Windows Media files), XNA indie games, installable games (optionally installable, unlike many PS3 games with forced installs), Facebook and Twitter, etc. There's surely more to come in the next few years, with Natal on the hardware side.
Streaming video and "owning the living room". Sony took the first step by making the PS2 a DVD player, but the 360 took it much, much further. The 360 is the best (only?) Media Center Extender on the market. It can stream most formats natively (and pretty much any format with a transcoding av server). It was the first console to have Netflix streaming (and still the only one to have a native interface -- the PS3 streaming disc is simply BD-Live trickery, and the native installed app is still a while away). The new Zune video store seems to defy reality with 1080p instant-on streaming that actually works.
Of course there have been failures. RROD issues, backing HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray, continuing to use the DVD9 format for games rather than HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, lack of HDMI on early console hardware, the hard drive as an optional component, no built-in wifi, etc. But to say that there's no innovation, or that they haven't moved the industry forward by huge strides, is just completely wrong.
First, IANAGAP (I am not a general aviation pilot) but I've considered getting my license and I paid pretty close attention when a friend was working on getting hers.
How much did it cost to get lessons and a license? Was it comparable to the requirements for driving a car legally?
I'm sure it depends on your area, but it also depends on what licenses you need. Figure $3-5000 for a visual-only license, give or take a grand or so. Definitely not the same as getting a car license.
Also, doesn't a private plane cost a lot more to buy than a car?
Depends on the plane and the car you're comparing. Obviously buying your own Learjet is going to be a lot more expensive than buying a used Honda. On the other hand, a used Cessna is much more affordable than a Bugatti Veyron. Most pilots don't own their own plane but instead own a portion of a plane with a number of other people. Unless you expect to fly each and every weekend, there's no reason not to get in on a co-op ownership rather than buying your own.
Don't forget that the Corvette still uses a leaf spring suspension. Granted it's barely related to what we traditionally think of as leaf spring suspensions (stacked iron or steel leaves per wheel), using a single leaf made of a composite material in a transverse application for the rear suspension.
Replacing the vette's leaf springs (or its pushrod V8) would be like Porsche trying to make a non-rear engined 911. In both cases, they've spent decades applying technology to an initially flawed design, and owners would not have it any other way.
Cable Card tuners are trumpeted as this great "killer feature" for a medicore product when infact
that aren't really generally available (if at all) and come with all sorts of bullshit requirements
and gotchas.
You really don't understand how markets work, do you? CableCard tuners are not vaporware. They were "restricted" sale items for the past couple of years, and only recently (as in the past 1.5 months) have you been able to use them without a special OCUR BIOS. As such, the market hasn't had time to catch up. It goes something like this:
CableLabs announces CableCard PC support with a bunch of restrictions, both on what PCs can use these tuners and what certifications are required for companies to build tuner products.
ATI decides to build a tuner (external and internal versions). Requires jumping through a lot of arbitrary hoops, but it gets done. Other tuner manufacturers don't believe the market is big enough to bother with, so nobody else builds a digital cable tuner.
Microsoft adds necessary support to MCE for the new CableCard tuners.
System builders go through all of the hoops required to build machines that pass CableLabs requirements (inevitably, these machines are $2000+ and limited availability).
Enthusiasts figure out how to hack around the OCUR BIOS requirement, but being a hack this doesn't instill confidence in the market and other tuner manufacturers still don't get in the game.
Fast forward to September 2009, where Microsoft announces that they've worked with CableLabs to remove the OCUR BIOS restrictions on using tuner cards in Windows 7. Users can now use these tuners with cheap PCs, rather than having to spend $2000+ for one with a special BIOS. CableLabs does not remove the certification requirements for developers building new tuners, updating firmware, etc (that is, it's still expensive and time consuming to build a digital cable tuner).
Several companies, including Ceton and Hauppauge, announce that they are in the process of building new digital cable tuners that will be on the market "soon" (Hauppauge claims "end of 2009", Ceton still says "Q1 2010"). Given when the announcement happened, CableLabs' still onerous certification process, time required to manufacture product, etc, that's a pretty aggressive schedule. In the meantime, ATI tuners are slowly becoming more available. ATI has mentioned in the past that they want out of the digital cable tuner business, so you'll probably never see the ATI offerings in B&M stores. But Hauppauge, Ceton, etc should all eventually make it there.
We're now in the slightly annoying period of time where restrictions on the type of PC where you can use digital cable tuners have been lifted, but there aren't many tuners on the market and the ones that are available are expensive and hard to find. This will get better. Your "alternative" of using a component capture card + IR blaster to control a set top box is not really much of an option to anybody who actually cares about this. Video and audio quality are worse. CPU load is increased because of having to re-encode. Using multiple "tuners" requires a one-to-one mapping of capture cards to set top boxes, which is expensive and unsustainable. If you must go that route, at least use the firewire output of an STB (same issues with tuning, but skips the re-encoding issues because you're getting a digital copy of the output). That's fine as a stop-gap measure while companies work on bringing new tuners to market. You'll get the best experience if you buy a digital cable tuner.
You again? Get off it. You're wrong and you know it. Rather than rehash this all over again, I'll just link to this and save us all the trouble of explaining why you're wrong.
Is there actually any evidence that people are using Asperger's to really get away with much (in a statistically measurable way - and I don't mean personal anecdotes)? hmmm?? Nope! The rate of using mental illness as defense has actually declined in recent years in the USA.
That's pretty disingenuous. Assburgers is mostly a social retardation syndrome. "Oh, I'm sorry I was an ass to you at that party. You see, I've self-diagnosed myself with Assburgers, which means I don't know how to act in public and you're expected to go along with it so that you don't seem unkind to the handicapped." You can't statistically quantify that, and of course it's personal anecdote. You won't accept anecdotes, put you'll totally accept self-diagnosis of Assburgers?
Like I said, it may really be a mental illness but if so it must be clinically diagnosed and treated. Otherwise it's just a convenient scapegoat to hide behind rather than learning how to socialize properly.
In this very specific case, I don't think the guy's Assburger status (self-diagnosed or otherwise) is at all relevant to the case. The media hypes it up because it's interesting, and the legion of internet Assbies eat it up. If he is found guilty, the social retards on the net are going to cry foul.
I never know what to say when people just outright reject decades of scientific evidence. And if on Slashdot of all places people don't understand the scientific method or just flatly deny it then maybe humanity is in big doodoo.
Assburgers may or may not be real. The problem is that it's become a convenient excuse for socially retarded people to self-diagnose as assburger sufferers in order to remove any responsibility that they should have for their own actions.
If you have assburger's syndrome, prove it with a proper diagnosis with a real doctor or you're just another social retard. It's sad to have to do that (other handicaps don't require proof), but assburgers has been tainted by hypochondriacs and sociopaths.
I went one step further. Not only did I cut off my family from tech support over a decade ago, I did it with a single word:
No
I didn't try to rationalize by charging them the cost of my time. I simply said, "I'm not your tech support, and I'm not going to do this." The word "No" seems to be a foreign concept to far too many geeks. All of our lives would be so much better if we'd just learn how to use "No" properly from time to time.
(Of course if you still live rent-free with your parents, this probably isn't going to fly. But then you have bigger problems and should be focused more on getting out of the basement than getting out of tech support. That will come later, once you no longer share a roof.)
Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...
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Even with an S1 Tivo, you get a lot of mileage out of a nice clean signal. Something that's a good clean 720p or 1080i signal is not likely to generate noticeable artifacts. As far as an IR blaster being such a tragedy goes: it didn't stop Tivo.
The S1 and S2 Tivos were not HD. In fact all HD Tivos (HD and S3) use CableCards. Hrm...
Plus, a cable card centric solution will unfortunately limit you to your singular local land line monopoly (no dish or directv).
CableCard does not technically mean land line cable. FiOS uses CableCard, for example. Unfortunately for satellite there's no good solution.
If I wanted to put up with my local monopoly and a vendor that's in bed with Big Content, then I could just buy a Tivo.
If you really cared about not dealing with a vendor in bed with "Big Content", you'd use nothing but OTA via antenna. In which case all your problems would be solved, since there are dozens of ATSC tuners that work just fine for cheap. On the other hand, you could be like me -- I'm in a very hilly, wooded area so antenna access isn't really an option. Satellite is a no-go because it can't hook up to a PC in a sane way, leaving only cable or FiOS. FiOS isn't yet available to me (supposedly coming some time next year -- my town already has a deal with Verizon predating the Frontier sale, and they're actively working on it. They're just going very slowly and haven't gotten to my neighborhood yet), leaving Comcast.
Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...
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So surely this thing must be available from Amazon, or NewEgg, or Tiger Direct or from the manufacturer's own website like the Haupauge 1212 was when it was first released?
What about those links?
ATI doesn't have them for sale, but that's not surprising since ATI's actually trying to get out of the digital cable tuner market.
Newegg doesn't sell CableCard tuners. Yet. As the market picks up with mulitple players (Hauppauge and Ceton for starters), I expect Newegg to start selling something.
We're currently in a chicken-and-egg situation. CableCard tuners have been available for the past couple of years, but CableLabs were being retarded and required a special BIOS in order for the tuners to work so only ATI bothered with the market. At CEDIA 2009, that changed and new manufacturers have decided to enter the market, but it takes time to develop, test, and manufacture a product. Ask this question again in March of 2010 and there should be several tuners available on the market.
Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...
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Like I said... vaporware that has no real connection with reality. It is just something that Windows Lemming trolls like to bring up in some sort of vain attempt to knock down any non-Microsoft alternative.
You can buy actual tuners right now and use them on any Win7 machine that fits the requirements (dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, HDCP-compliant GPU). The old requirement of a special bias is now gone, as I said, and the market for these tuners is spinningup. So yeah, sounds like vaporware to me...
I can (and have) connected an HD-PVR to a $200 ION box.
Not anywhere near the same. HD-PVR is just a component video capture system and requires re-encoding the video, and still requires a STB with IR blaster. A CableCard tuner skips all of that, avoids re-encoding, and can have multiple tuners in a single package (see the Ceton card using M-card CableCards). And external USB CableCard tuners will work just fine on an ION box like the Aspire Revo 3600 (dual-core Atom, 2GB RAM).
Of course a device that has hoops that NO ONE wants to jump through won't be terribly interesting.
Those hoops are now gone. That's why other companies are starting to get into that market.
If CableCard PC devices were out there in the wild in significant numbers than they might get hacked for all sorts of reasons (the least of which is Linux support).
Back that up? ATICableCardtuners are easily available. Buy one. Hack it. Make it work with Linux.
Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...
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So where do I buy my "records HBO in HD" solution for MCE?
This is currently your only option (or its external counterpart). More coming soon.
Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...
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Get back to me when I can buy a PC CableCard tuner in Frys or MicroCenter.
Soon. If Hauppauge is to be believed, they claim they'll have a CableCard tuner in stores by the end of this year. I'm not holding my breath on that one. Ceton, on the other hand, will have their 4-tuner card out early next year. They probably won't initially sell in B&M stores, since Ceton is a relatively small company, but they should be affordable (they're talking $600 as the high end for the 4-tuner card, or $150 per tuner) and available to purchase online.
Until then, all of this CableCard FUD is TOTAL NONSENSE.
That's because for years the CableCard guys required a "certified" PC in order to be able to use such a tuner. As of this fall, that restriction is now gone. Nobody besides ATI jumped into the market, because there literally was no market (nobody's going to buy a $2000+ PC just to get CableCard support when they can buy a $400 Tivo instead). Now that you can do that, the market is expanding. Give it time.
I can buy an HDHomeRun or an HD-PVR in Frys TODAY along with a whole bunch of other PC capture devices.
You must have a better Fry's than I do. Mine doesn't carry HDHRs in the store, though I could buy online and pick it up there. The rest of the tuners tend to be hit or miss in terms of supporting various features (ClearQAM, MCE, etc).
PC CableCard tuners are total vaporware.
Vaporware implies that they don't exist. They do. It's just that up until now you had to have a special BIOS in order to use them. You could buy the tuners through various sites like Cannon PC or Dell, but it didn't really matter if you didn't have the special BIOS (a hack was eventually developed prior to the relaxing of the restrictions, but most people weren't willing to gamble $250 on a hack).
You would have an easier time finding/buying a cable box hacked to allow for full firewire output.
If you're in the US and you have to hack your cable box in order to get firewire output, you need to call the FCC. Cable providers are required to provide a fully functional firewire connection on their STBs.
Re:Could be one of the best HD DVRs out there...
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MythTV 0.22 Released
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Given official Hauppage HD-PVR support, this could be one of the best high-def DVRs out there. Especially when you combine it with an HD Fury2 to convert it to HDMI...
For OTA signals, sure. If you're on cable, ClearQAM is almost dead. Since the FCC granted the ability to encrypt non-premium channels, most cable providers have already done so for everything except locals.
Get back to me when MythTV allows support for CableCard tuners. That's the way of the future. For windows, Win7 got rid of the ridiculous bios requirement for CableCard-capable PCs, which means you no longer have to buy a $2000+ "media center" PC. As long as you have enough CPU, RAM, and an HDCP-capable video card, you can use a CableCard tuner with Win7 MCE. Currently only AMD/ATI have a digital cable tuner available, but Hauppage has said they're working on CableCard tuners and Ceton will have a 4-tuner solution using a single M-Card in Q1 of next year (beta hardware is already out there and working).
Personally, I just got a cheap PC that meets the CableCard requirements, put Win7 on it, and am waiting out the Ceton release. My Comcast DVR is going in the trash (okay, back to Comcast) just as soon as the Ceton tuner is available. Oh yeah, and I don't have to mess about with drivers, libraries, etc. MCE in Win7 just works (which was not always the case).
Besides, don't take the stance of everyone else on this issue. They're morons. This is not "M$ IS TEH EVIL, THEY AR MONOPOLY!!!". They're locking out UNAUTHORISED storage units. This does not mean third-party, this means the chinese ripoffs and stuff that have a tendency to be faulty anyway. Properly licensed third-party storage units will still work fine.
Or in this case, units that enable hacking that would never have been authorized in the first place. The Datel memory cards use a removable micro SD card as storage, which you can then plug right into your PC, for example to use hacked save games for achievement hacking, to modify your profile for avatar hacking, etc. All of these are bannable offenses. Microsoft (and Sony and Nintendo) have a history of blocking tools that can be used for hacking. This is just another step in the direction they've been going for some time now.
Do those Netflix HD streams still look good when the picture is moving...or when your kid gets on YouTube in the other room? I'll believe it when I see comparable picture quality over an average (non-South Korean) connection.
On my 16Mbps cable connection (average speed test over 12Mbps)? Yes, it's rock solid even with multiple youtube or netflix streams going at the same time. On the girlfriend's 3Mbps DSL connection (average speed test 1.5Mbps), not so much. But then I wouldn't expect an HD stream (say 3-5Mbps) to work on her line. 12-16Mbps is the average US cable modem connection these days which most people can get, and with DOCSIS 3 and FiOS available in many areas you can go even higher. Obviously rural or sparsely populated areas may not have as many opportunities.
Whether or not it's a waste of bandwidth is a different question. I've not gone over Comcast's 250GB/mo cap and I haven't had to change my viewing habits to compensate, so at least for me it's not a waste. I obviously wasn't using that bandwidth for anything else. If you have a lower cap or are paying per GB then it could be a waste. (and yeah, I get that "download limit" and "bandwidth" aren't the same thing. But then any time your network connection is idle you're "wasting" available bandwidth so the statement is silly in the first place. I just interpreted it as the less silly "waste of a download limit".)
it obviously does not have a blu-ray drive so it's not good for big screens - the focus of my comment.
Right, and you completely missed the point of the people replying to you. You assume that Blu-Ray is the only way to do 1080p video. Not so. The Xbox 360 can stream H.264 videos at 1080p, and the Zune Marketplace in the Fall update will have "instant on" streaming 1080p videos. The Netflix HD streams (720p) look great on a big screen as well.
Blu-Ray is pretty much dead. Online streaming/download is the way of the future, for both games and videos.
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But why? Assuming you have access to a PC with a DVD drive, a USB port, and a 4GB or larger USB drive, you didn't need a USB DVD drive. Installing Windows from a USB stick is trivial:
I've never understood why most "Install Windows 7 from USB drive" tutorials on the web have so many extra, unnecessary steps. I've done this install on three different netbooks, across multiple installs on one (beta to RC to RTM), and have never had to do anything more than just copying the files to my USB key.
There are various IR-to-Bluetooth adapters available that will allow you to control your PS3 with a universal remote. Personally, I use the Logitech adapter for their Harmony remote line, since I have a Harmony One that I really love. In theory that adapter could be used with any universal remote as long as you know the codes. The Harmony adapter has the added benefit of supporting a power off macro (previously only available on $100+ adapters).
That's fine, since all but the first generation or two of PS3s are not backwards compatible with PS2. Considering you were buying at a time when stand-alone players were cheaper than the PS3, you'd already missed the window of opportunity to get a backwards compatible PS3 without spending large amounts of money for used hardware on ebay.
No it can't, because Netflix streams cap out at 720p with stereo audio. Also, your PS3 still needs a disc in the drive in order to stream Netflix. Not quite the same integrated experience as a Roku, Popbox, or even Xbox 360. I guess if you never use the PS3 for anything but Netflix it works out the same since the disc will always be in the drive, but if you ever play games or other discs (Blu-Rays or DVDs), you'll have to get up off the couch and swap discs in order to stream Netflix.
Yeah, yeah, the native PS3 app is "coming soon", and it's all because of Microsoft strongarming Netflix. Whatever. The fact is, PS3 does not yet have a native Netflix streaming app.
By "not much more" you mean "2x to 3x as much", then sure. Ignoring used models and the occasional sale, the PS3 sells for $300. A Roku player is $100, and the Popbox in the article is expected to be $130. I don't know about you, but to me $300 is quite a bit more than $100. Three times more, in fact.
The Wii has just a handful of good party games (Wii Sports, Boom Blox) that aren't also (and better) on other platforms (Rock Band, Guitar Hero). The motion control of the Wii is very much a gimmick, and has been as much frustration as fun for most people I've played with (yes, I have a Wii). The Wii has done very well at selling itself to a "mainstream" audience, but that audience buys it for the pack-in Wii Sports and rarely buys anything else. Not really good for Nintendo, since you want a constant stream of game sales for profit. My Wii pretty much gathers dust these days, as does the Wii of everybody else I know with one.
That was true about the PS3 being the best BluRay player ... in 2006-2007. The current crop of standalone players are much better than the PS3. They're cheaper, with better video quality, and with full BD-Live support (the only reason the PS3 was initially better, since it was updated more often). If you're in the market for a BluRay player today, units from Oppo, Samsung, etc are much better than the PS3. (yes, I also have a PS3)
Behind the times much? There hasn't been a new MechWarrior/MechAssault game on the Xbox since 2004, and that was the Xbox 1. There's supposedly a new one coming for PC and 360, but a release is still TBA.
Also, you play COD. I think that counts as a "hardcore gamer". And Modern Warfare 2 on the 360 outsold the PS3 by nearly 2 to 1. If you're at all into multiplayer, your experience is simply going to be better on 360 due to more people available to play with.
Nope, software developer. But I know when to do 0-indexed counting and 1-indexed counting. Since there was never a 0CE, years count from 1. Kinda like VB arrays vs. everybody else.
It really depends on how you measure it. By sales, the PS2 is definitely the winner, with the Wii a close second. In terms of innovation, though, the 360 had quite a bit more "firsts" than either of those.
Of course there have been failures. RROD issues, backing HD-DVD rather than Blu-Ray, continuing to use the DVD9 format for games rather than HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, lack of HDMI on early console hardware, the hard drive as an optional component, no built-in wifi, etc. But to say that there's no innovation, or that they haven't moved the industry forward by huge strides, is just completely wrong.
Dammit, people. The decade runs through 2010. 2001-2010. Next year is the end of the decade. Not this year.
First, IANAGAP (I am not a general aviation pilot) but I've considered getting my license and I paid pretty close attention when a friend was working on getting hers.
I'm sure it depends on your area, but it also depends on what licenses you need. Figure $3-5000 for a visual-only license, give or take a grand or so. Definitely not the same as getting a car license.
Depends on the plane and the car you're comparing. Obviously buying your own Learjet is going to be a lot more expensive than buying a used Honda. On the other hand, a used Cessna is much more affordable than a Bugatti Veyron. Most pilots don't own their own plane but instead own a portion of a plane with a number of other people. Unless you expect to fly each and every weekend, there's no reason not to get in on a co-op ownership rather than buying your own.
But can I get your service with a hemi?
Don't forget that the Corvette still uses a leaf spring suspension. Granted it's barely related to what we traditionally think of as leaf spring suspensions (stacked iron or steel leaves per wheel), using a single leaf made of a composite material in a transverse application for the rear suspension.
Replacing the vette's leaf springs (or its pushrod V8) would be like Porsche trying to make a non-rear engined 911. In both cases, they've spent decades applying technology to an initially flawed design, and owners would not have it any other way.
You really don't understand how markets work, do you? CableCard tuners are not vaporware. They were "restricted" sale items for the past couple of years, and only recently (as in the past 1.5 months) have you been able to use them without a special OCUR BIOS. As such, the market hasn't had time to catch up. It goes something like this:
We're now in the slightly annoying period of time where restrictions on the type of PC where you can use digital cable tuners have been lifted, but there aren't many tuners on the market and the ones that are available are expensive and hard to find. This will get better. Your "alternative" of using a component capture card + IR blaster to control a set top box is not really much of an option to anybody who actually cares about this. Video and audio quality are worse. CPU load is increased because of having to re-encode. Using multiple "tuners" requires a one-to-one mapping of capture cards to set top boxes, which is expensive and unsustainable. If you must go that route, at least use the firewire output of an STB (same issues with tuning, but skips the re-encoding issues because you're getting a digital copy of the output). That's fine as a stop-gap measure while companies work on bringing new tuners to market. You'll get the best experience if you buy a digital cable tuner.
You again? Get off it. You're wrong and you know it. Rather than rehash this all over again, I'll just link to this and save us all the trouble of explaining why you're wrong.
Or buy PlayOn ($20 for the holidays) and use vmcPlayIt.
That's pretty disingenuous. Assburgers is mostly a social retardation syndrome. "Oh, I'm sorry I was an ass to you at that party. You see, I've self-diagnosed myself with Assburgers, which means I don't know how to act in public and you're expected to go along with it so that you don't seem unkind to the handicapped." You can't statistically quantify that, and of course it's personal anecdote. You won't accept anecdotes, put you'll totally accept self-diagnosis of Assburgers?
Like I said, it may really be a mental illness but if so it must be clinically diagnosed and treated. Otherwise it's just a convenient scapegoat to hide behind rather than learning how to socialize properly.
In this very specific case, I don't think the guy's Assburger status (self-diagnosed or otherwise) is at all relevant to the case. The media hypes it up because it's interesting, and the legion of internet Assbies eat it up. If he is found guilty, the social retards on the net are going to cry foul.
Assburgers may or may not be real. The problem is that it's become a convenient excuse for socially retarded people to self-diagnose as assburger sufferers in order to remove any responsibility that they should have for their own actions.
If you have assburger's syndrome, prove it with a proper diagnosis with a real doctor or you're just another social retard. It's sad to have to do that (other handicaps don't require proof), but assburgers has been tainted by hypochondriacs and sociopaths.
I went one step further. Not only did I cut off my family from tech support over a decade ago, I did it with a single word:
I didn't try to rationalize by charging them the cost of my time. I simply said, "I'm not your tech support, and I'm not going to do this." The word "No" seems to be a foreign concept to far too many geeks. All of our lives would be so much better if we'd just learn how to use "No" properly from time to time.
(Of course if you still live rent-free with your parents, this probably isn't going to fly. But then you have bigger problems and should be focused more on getting out of the basement than getting out of tech support. That will come later, once you no longer share a roof.)
The S1 and S2 Tivos were not HD. In fact all HD Tivos (HD and S3) use CableCards. Hrm ...
CableCard does not technically mean land line cable. FiOS uses CableCard, for example. Unfortunately for satellite there's no good solution.
If you really cared about not dealing with a vendor in bed with "Big Content", you'd use nothing but OTA via antenna. In which case all your problems would be solved, since there are dozens of ATSC tuners that work just fine for cheap. On the other hand, you could be like me -- I'm in a very hilly, wooded area so antenna access isn't really an option. Satellite is a no-go because it can't hook up to a PC in a sane way, leaving only cable or FiOS. FiOS isn't yet available to me (supposedly coming some time next year -- my town already has a deal with Verizon predating the Frontier sale, and they're actively working on it. They're just going very slowly and haven't gotten to my neighborhood yet), leaving Comcast.
Okay.
We're currently in a chicken-and-egg situation. CableCard tuners have been available for the past couple of years, but CableLabs were being retarded and required a special BIOS in order for the tuners to work so only ATI bothered with the market. At CEDIA 2009, that changed and new manufacturers have decided to enter the market, but it takes time to develop, test, and manufacture a product. Ask this question again in March of 2010 and there should be several tuners available on the market.
You can buy actual tuners right now and use them on any Win7 machine that fits the requirements (dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, HDCP-compliant GPU). The old requirement of a special bias is now gone, as I said, and the market for these tuners is spinning up. So yeah, sounds like vaporware to me ...
Not anywhere near the same. HD-PVR is just a component video capture system and requires re-encoding the video, and still requires a STB with IR blaster. A CableCard tuner skips all of that, avoids re-encoding, and can have multiple tuners in a single package (see the Ceton card using M-card CableCards). And external USB CableCard tuners will work just fine on an ION box like the Aspire Revo 3600 (dual-core Atom, 2GB RAM).
Those hoops are now gone. That's why other companies are starting to get into that market.
Back that up? ATI CableCard tuners are easily available. Buy one. Hack it. Make it work with Linux.
This is currently your only option (or its external counterpart). More coming soon.
Soon. If Hauppauge is to be believed, they claim they'll have a CableCard tuner in stores by the end of this year. I'm not holding my breath on that one. Ceton, on the other hand, will have their 4-tuner card out early next year. They probably won't initially sell in B&M stores, since Ceton is a relatively small company, but they should be affordable (they're talking $600 as the high end for the 4-tuner card, or $150 per tuner) and available to purchase online.
That's because for years the CableCard guys required a "certified" PC in order to be able to use such a tuner. As of this fall, that restriction is now gone. Nobody besides ATI jumped into the market, because there literally was no market (nobody's going to buy a $2000+ PC just to get CableCard support when they can buy a $400 Tivo instead). Now that you can do that, the market is expanding. Give it time.
You must have a better Fry's than I do. Mine doesn't carry HDHRs in the store, though I could buy online and pick it up there. The rest of the tuners tend to be hit or miss in terms of supporting various features (ClearQAM, MCE, etc).
Vaporware implies that they don't exist. They do. It's just that up until now you had to have a special BIOS in order to use them. You could buy the tuners through various sites like Cannon PC or Dell, but it didn't really matter if you didn't have the special BIOS (a hack was eventually developed prior to the relaxing of the restrictions, but most people weren't willing to gamble $250 on a hack).
If you're in the US and you have to hack your cable box in order to get firewire output, you need to call the FCC. Cable providers are required to provide a fully functional firewire connection on their STBs.
For OTA signals, sure. If you're on cable, ClearQAM is almost dead. Since the FCC granted the ability to encrypt non-premium channels, most cable providers have already done so for everything except locals.
Get back to me when MythTV allows support for CableCard tuners. That's the way of the future. For windows, Win7 got rid of the ridiculous bios requirement for CableCard-capable PCs, which means you no longer have to buy a $2000+ "media center" PC. As long as you have enough CPU, RAM, and an HDCP-capable video card, you can use a CableCard tuner with Win7 MCE. Currently only AMD/ATI have a digital cable tuner available, but Hauppage has said they're working on CableCard tuners and Ceton will have a 4-tuner solution using a single M-Card in Q1 of next year (beta hardware is already out there and working).
Personally, I just got a cheap PC that meets the CableCard requirements, put Win7 on it, and am waiting out the Ceton release. My Comcast DVR is going in the trash (okay, back to Comcast) just as soon as the Ceton tuner is available. Oh yeah, and I don't have to mess about with drivers, libraries, etc. MCE in Win7 just works (which was not always the case).
Or in this case, units that enable hacking that would never have been authorized in the first place. The Datel memory cards use a removable micro SD card as storage, which you can then plug right into your PC, for example to use hacked save games for achievement hacking, to modify your profile for avatar hacking, etc. All of these are bannable offenses. Microsoft (and Sony and Nintendo) have a history of blocking tools that can be used for hacking. This is just another step in the direction they've been going for some time now.
On my 16Mbps cable connection (average speed test over 12Mbps)? Yes, it's rock solid even with multiple youtube or netflix streams going at the same time. On the girlfriend's 3Mbps DSL connection (average speed test 1.5Mbps), not so much. But then I wouldn't expect an HD stream (say 3-5Mbps) to work on her line. 12-16Mbps is the average US cable modem connection these days which most people can get, and with DOCSIS 3 and FiOS available in many areas you can go even higher. Obviously rural or sparsely populated areas may not have as many opportunities.
Whether or not it's a waste of bandwidth is a different question. I've not gone over Comcast's 250GB/mo cap and I haven't had to change my viewing habits to compensate, so at least for me it's not a waste. I obviously wasn't using that bandwidth for anything else. If you have a lower cap or are paying per GB then it could be a waste. (and yeah, I get that "download limit" and "bandwidth" aren't the same thing. But then any time your network connection is idle you're "wasting" available bandwidth so the statement is silly in the first place. I just interpreted it as the less silly "waste of a download limit".)
Right, and you completely missed the point of the people replying to you. You assume that Blu-Ray is the only way to do 1080p video. Not so. The Xbox 360 can stream H.264 videos at 1080p, and the Zune Marketplace in the Fall update will have "instant on" streaming 1080p videos. The Netflix HD streams (720p) look great on a big screen as well.
Blu-Ray is pretty much dead. Online streaming/download is the way of the future, for both games and videos.