Zen are about the highest rated ISP on thinkbroadband.com but they're not particularly cheap. You get what you pay for though, and the service and support are the best I've ever seen from an ISP. Beware though, of fairly low download allowances unless you spend a lot of money. I was with them for a few years and only switched away to get better value through a local unbundled ISP.
Apart from the really obvious one of needing an almost infinitely strong piece of cable? So far, carbon nanotubes (the main contender to make a very strong cable) are limited to being only a few millimeters long. Not quite the several kilometers they require for a space elevator.
Um, no. I've done the maths and you'd have to sit only 3-4ft away for that to be the case (relative to sitting half way back in a typical cinema). Who sits 4ft away from a 40 inch screen? I'm 12ft from my TV, and it's only 32".
There's some element of it being an optical illusion because there's no frame jitter.
I'm not saying that digital is horrible - I'm just saying it definitely a lot lower resolution, but I actually agree that I think it looks better if you're sitting a fair way back from the screen as I really hate frame jitter.
> Since the Odeon system is digital I guess it is possible to overscan it and use clever motion interpolation to make movement look smooth
Who cares about problems with frame rate when the resolution is 2,048 x 1,080 pixels?! A fairly standard 40 inch TV is close to that resolution so just IMAGINE how shit that's going to look on a 40 foot wide screen.
Even the 4K digital projectors look pretty crap compared to 35mm analog film reels. The effective resolution of 35mm film is about 2-4 times higher than any current digital system. The advantages though, are that digital projection has no dust or frame jitter. Unless they get the resolution up to at least 10,000 pixels horizontally, I don't really think digital projection is worth bothering with unless you're using a fairly small screen (by cinema standards I mean).
I really hate it when the standard answer for everything is "it's open source - just fix it yourself". Do people really think that every single person on this site is an expert C/C++ developer with 80 free hours each month to spend fixing problems in the software they use?
The article poster is incorrect and basically talking rubbish.
Windows 7 Starter Edition is simply the next version of "Vista Starter Edition". This is a version of Windows for 3rd world/developing countries to run on old/recycled computers, or possibly OLPC type laptops. You won't find it on any netbooks sold in the Europe or the US. In fact it will probably impossible to purchase it in these areas (as it was to try and purchase Vista Starter Edition).
>...the Program Files folder in Vista. > Some applications need to write in there > and sometimes *I* want to write in there
So which part of "Program Files" don't you understand? Microsoft explicity says nothing and nobody should attempt to store any kind of data or user files under this folder.
Nearly all the street-level photos on Google Maps are aerial rather than satellite. If you can see windows in houses or road markings, then they are definitely aerial. Publically available satellite imagery is rarely much better than 1m resolution but some of the best govenment operated satellites claim to have resolutions comparable to aerial photos (I've not seen any samples myself though).
Great, so they're going to tax people who pay for films and music legitimately, so they can pass the money on to the production companies on behalf of the people that always pirate their films/music. That's fair. NOT.
Why the hell should I pay a tax because OTHER PEOPLE pirate stuff?! It's up to the industry to find another way to stop people pirating stuff. If film downloads were a sensible price like £1.50/$2 who'd even bother pirating?
> If Google worked on putting some of the good features of Chrome into Firefox, you wouldn't have to force anyone to use Firefox.
They're both open source, so theoretically, the Firefox guys could just steal the process management code out of Chrome and use it in Firefox (or even just take the idea, if the code is totally incompatible). I'm sure they don't need Google's help for that. While they're at it, they should take the V8 JavaScript engine too.
Er no - Give me Windows XP over 2000 any day. How can you say XP is bloated compared to 2000?! It has a smaller installation size, is faster, and boots up in about half the time of Windows XP. Vista boots faster still on my machine. It's Windows 2000 that was bloated and slow.
And if you think XP is bloated, try using a modern Linux distro like Ubuntu. It takes over a minute to boot on exactly the same hardware that can boot Vista in 21 seconds (to the desktop in both cases).
Listening to music on headphones while on the train is lossy but people still do it. We can't all sit in silent rooms with reference quality speakers 6 ft in front of us and £1000 amplifiers. The quality loss is totally irrelevant as it cannot be heard under normal listening conditions by the vast majority of people.
HDTV is NOT 50FPS it's between 24 and 30FPS. At the very best, it's 30FPS displayed at 60Hz but this seems like another example of someone confusing frames per second with refresh rate.
> Linux does quite a bit better for graphic design.
Er no! All you have is the Gimp, which although very useful, is a child's toy compared to Photoshop CS4.
> Especially bigtime movie producers (pixar, etc) don't run Mac. They run linux.
What are you talking about - movie producers like Pixar don't do graphic design. They're a computer animation company! And they're using Linux only for render farms - their desktop computers are Macs!
> It used to be premiere for DTP and graphics design. No longer.
What do you mean "no longer"? Windows is still well behind in this area (and I'm a self confessed Windows lover), and in turn Linux is MILES behind Windows for DTP and graphic design, so what platform are you thinking of?
I have a feeling I'm simply falling for your troll.
Am I missing something? I've bought dozens of DRM free albums over the years. Nothing on Amazon MP3 or 7Digital.com has DRM as far as I'm aware, so how is this news? At first I thought the album was also FREE (price wise), but it's not - you have to pay for it, so I don't get why this is a story??
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Zen are about the highest rated ISP on thinkbroadband.com but they're not particularly cheap. You get what you pay for though, and the service and support are the best I've ever seen from an ISP. Beware though, of fairly low download allowances unless you spend a lot of money. I was with them for a few years and only switched away to get better value through a local unbundled ISP.
Apart from the really obvious one of needing an almost infinitely strong piece of cable? So far, carbon nanotubes (the main contender to make a very strong cable) are limited to being only a few millimeters long. Not quite the several kilometers they require for a space elevator.
Same goes for water skiing and parascending... The point is, its fun!
Um, no. I've done the maths and you'd have to sit only 3-4ft away for that to be the case (relative to sitting half way back in a typical cinema). Who sits 4ft away from a 40 inch screen? I'm 12ft from my TV, and it's only 32".
There's some element of it being an optical illusion because there's no frame jitter.
I'm not saying that digital is horrible - I'm just saying it definitely a lot lower resolution, but I actually agree that I think it looks better if you're sitting a fair way back from the screen as I really hate frame jitter.
> Since the Odeon system is digital I guess it is possible to overscan it and use clever motion interpolation to make movement look smooth
Who cares about problems with frame rate when the resolution is 2,048 x 1,080 pixels?! A fairly standard 40 inch TV is close to that resolution so just IMAGINE how shit that's going to look on a 40 foot wide screen.
Even the 4K digital projectors look pretty crap compared to 35mm analog film reels. The effective resolution of 35mm film is about 2-4 times higher than any current digital system. The advantages though, are that digital projection has no dust or frame jitter. Unless they get the resolution up to at least 10,000 pixels horizontally, I don't really think digital projection is worth bothering with unless you're using a fairly small screen (by cinema standards I mean).
> Windows 7 free to Vista Users
Well that's no surprise - service packs have always been free.
I really hate it when the standard answer for everything is "it's open source - just fix it yourself". Do people really think that every single person on this site is an expert C/C++ developer with 80 free hours each month to spend fixing problems in the software they use?
The article poster is incorrect and basically talking rubbish.
Windows 7 Starter Edition is simply the next version of "Vista Starter Edition". This is a version of Windows for 3rd world/developing countries to run on old/recycled computers, or possibly OLPC type laptops. You won't find it on any netbooks sold in the Europe or the US. In fact it will probably impossible to purchase it in these areas (as it was to try and purchase Vista Starter Edition).
> ...the Program Files folder in Vista.
> Some applications need to write in there
> and sometimes *I* want to write in there
So which part of "Program Files" don't you understand? Microsoft explicity says nothing and nobody should attempt to store any kind of data or user files under this folder.
I think people get confused as Google calls it's button "Satellite" even when aerial photography from planes is being used.
Nearly all the street-level photos on Google Maps are aerial rather than satellite. If you can see windows in houses or road markings, then they are definitely aerial. Publically available satellite imagery is rarely much better than 1m resolution but some of the best govenment operated satellites claim to have resolutions comparable to aerial photos (I've not seen any samples myself though).
12 pounds is quite cheap for a laptop of this spec. But I expect once it reaches the UK, it'll be more like 24 pounds. :)
Great, so they're going to tax people who pay for films and music legitimately, so they can pass the money on to the production companies on behalf of the people that always pirate their films/music. That's fair. NOT.
Why the hell should I pay a tax because OTHER PEOPLE pirate stuff?! It's up to the industry to find another way to stop people pirating stuff. If film downloads were a sensible price like £1.50/$2 who'd even bother pirating?
> If Google worked on putting some of the good features of Chrome into Firefox, you wouldn't have to force anyone to use Firefox.
They're both open source, so theoretically, the Firefox guys could just steal the process management code out of Chrome and use it in Firefox (or even just take the idea, if the code is totally incompatible). I'm sure they don't need Google's help for that. While they're at it, they should take the V8 JavaScript engine too.
Check that you haven't accidentally installed Microsoft Office on it.
Also, if it's horrendously slow, ensure you didn't accidentally select "Ubuntu" on the boot up screen.
I did of course mean to say - XP "boots up in about half the time of Windows 2000"
Er no - Give me Windows XP over 2000 any day. How can you say XP is bloated compared to 2000?! It has a smaller installation size, is faster, and boots up in about half the time of Windows XP. Vista boots faster still on my machine. It's Windows 2000 that was bloated and slow.
And if you think XP is bloated, try using a modern Linux distro like Ubuntu. It takes over a minute to boot on exactly the same hardware that can boot Vista in 21 seconds (to the desktop in both cases).
> Who gets 22mbps from a cable modem?
Er me, and lots of other people. What's your point? I've got friends who get 45mbps.
> But is it not more lossy to go from WAV->AAC->MP3 than to go from WAV->MP3
Yes it is. You have two totally different lossy algorithms being applied to the original WAV with the former.
Listening to music on headphones while on the train is lossy but people still do it. We can't all sit in silent rooms with reference quality speakers 6 ft in front of us and £1000 amplifiers. The quality loss is totally irrelevant as it cannot be heard under normal listening conditions by the vast majority of people.
> as long as the music is in a proprietary format it can't be migrated easily
It's not in a proprietrary format, it's a bog standard AAC file, which is just as much of a standard as MP3.
HDTV is NOT 50FPS it's between 24 and 30FPS. At the very best, it's 30FPS displayed at 60Hz but this seems like another example of someone confusing frames per second with refresh rate.
> Linux does quite a bit better for graphic design.
Er no! All you have is the Gimp, which although very useful, is a child's toy compared to Photoshop CS4.
> Especially bigtime movie producers (pixar, etc) don't run Mac. They run linux.
What are you talking about - movie producers like Pixar don't do graphic design. They're a computer animation company! And they're using Linux only for render farms - their desktop computers are Macs!
> It used to be premiere for DTP and graphics design. No longer.
What do you mean "no longer"? Windows is still well behind in this area (and I'm a self confessed Windows lover), and in turn Linux is MILES behind Windows for DTP and graphic design, so what platform are you thinking of?
I have a feeling I'm simply falling for your troll.
Am I missing something? I've bought dozens of DRM free albums over the years. Nothing on Amazon MP3 or 7Digital.com has DRM as far as I'm aware, so how is this news? At first I thought the album was also FREE (price wise), but it's not - you have to pay for it, so I don't get why this is a story??