Rear projection DLP is pretty good, and is less expensive than its alternatives. Whether or not it's appropriate for your requirements is up to you.
I just went to Samsung's site and selected the first rear projection DLP monitor that was over 50". I got this. Whether or not it's too deep is up to you. Samsung is claiming 16.3" deep in their specifications. Some are thinner than others though. As far as noise goes, manufacturers seem to be listening to what their customers want and are competing to make quieter units. You may want to go to a showroom and hear what kind of noise these produce. Also, plug a laptop into a few to see what your presentations look like.
It has been estimated that about 5% of people experience what is known as the DLP Rainbow Effect, where some viewers can see flashes of color separation on the edges of high contrast edges. To minimize this, manufacturers are speeding up color wheels and adding more segments to effectively increase the color wheel speed. As DLP chips become cheaper, I believe that we will begin seeing 3-chip solutions enter the consumer market to completely eliminate the issue. In any case, the rainbow effect is something that you may want to keep in mind when you consider whether or not to use DLP.
I would practically KILL to have 4 Mbps for $20/month. I don't know WHERE in the US you get 15 Mbps, but I'm sure that it costs nearly 4X what you're paying. (3X if that figure is 20 EUR/month.)
I get 15MB/s down and 2 MB/s up for $55/mo on a cable modem w/o TV service. This is their premium Internet service. I belive that they are trying to compete with Verizon, who just rolled FIOS out to the area. This is in northern VA.
I like that, thats funny. Of course you realize that oil is mostly plant-based. So using your arguement, by burning it we are also releasing net zero gas... it just took a little longer to return it... and the net result is that the world climate will be back to the condition it was when those plants were alive.
You make an intersting point, and your extrapolation sort of gets at some of what I was suggesting. Releasing carbon from burning vegetable-based plants comes from a carbon source which was metabolized from carbon recently. Much of our fossil oil was also from animal sources -- and their carbon isn't necessarily all atmospheric (like that of plant matter). Further, when vegetable oil is pressed, I don't think that all of the carbon is extracted. Perhaps there is a carbon load, but it would be negative in this case.
In any case, I'm not scientist. I'm not clinging too hard to this one, but it does make sense -- especially when approached in the context of the carbon cycle.
You can get used to a lower range, easily. My Honda motorcycle has a range of about 150 miles. It doesn't bother me one bit. Every one of those miles is 1000x more fun than any car-driven mile, even if I do have to fuel up once per week instead of once every other week.
I'm with you on the motorcycle point (although my old POS goes 200-250 miles on a tank). The real question is whether or not the Tesla is rapidly rechargable. It takes me a minute or two to put 3-4 gallons into my bike. How long does it take to recharge a metric shitload of laptop batteries?
While we are in the realm of "WHAT IF" we might as well also hypothesize that the coal plants are replaced with other forms of clean centralized energy. Here's an analogy of your thought process: "We should put parents who abuse their children into prison". Your response: "But the children will be alone at home, who will take care of them?" You're not looking at the big picture. What is your solution? That we just sit and wait, and not try to innovate? Every industry should just wait in lock-step for everyone else to come up to speed at the same exact moment in time?
Yeah, you tell 'em! Forget about pragmatism and we'll create our own reality. Feasability? Screw it. Net environmental effect of the technology? Who needs to analyze anything when we've got dreamers! There's no point in looking at our world for how it is when we can see it like we want it to be.
The analogy that you provided about abusive parents is exactly the kind of absolutism that I disagree with -- and there's plenty of it to go around. What about when the definition of child abuse gets murky? What about when you've got a kid in an otherwise 'good' home, where the parents (for example) are pot smokers? Does it make sense to subject the kid to 'the system' by sticking them in a foster home (at best)? In the United States, it's not uncommon for child services to consider parents like that unfit. Absolutes don't work so well in a dynamic world.
In any case, we've already got an idealistic executive administration in the US who tends to think in black-and-white. Frankly, I think that we would do well with a bit of measured analysis.
To get back to the discussion, there's nothing wrong with trying to innovate, and I'm not seeing that argument anywhere. You're using a straw-man argument. However, there are plenty of hurdles which must be overcome when talking about electric cars...and it's important to recgonize that the electric car is no panacea for our environmental/political/economic ills. It just moves the problem elsewhere, and would continue to for the forseeable future. If it were really economically feasible, every major auto manufacturer would be selling an electric car right now.
Personally, I'm more interested in diesel power (utilizing vegetable-based fuel). The technology is already 100% available, very well developed, mass produced, and it can utilize the existing distribution infrastructure without serious modifications (I think that oil pipelines would need some help, however). Burning vegetable-based fuel also releases zero net greenhouse gas, since all carbon released into the atmosphere was originally metabolized from the atmosphere. Are there drawbacks? Certainly -- among other things, there is a poor public perception of diesel engines power and torque charasteristic, of being smelly, and having hard-to-find fuel. The former two have been resolved though development: Diesel emissions (as well as the sulphur odor) have been greatly reduced, and an Audi diesel race car won Le Mans last year, partly by churning out massive amounts of torque while maintaining better fuel economy than every other car in its class.
Again, getting back to the point, there is nothing wrong with pragmatism. In fact, the best way to deal with idealogues is to share a bit of reality. If you really believe in this, and this is truly an engineering problem, why not embrace the naysayers? Why not help find a solution to the real problems with the technology in question rather than smugly berate them in public? Your attempts to berate aren't convincing anyone of anything (except for the people who already share your ideals).
The reviewer, in person, here. Yes, you certianly could build a cheaper solution and whack Linux on it (the N5200 uses Linux too, incidentally). Of course, it depends on what features you long, how much you like fiddling, and what sort of case you fancy building it into.
I did not notice any evidence of a battery-backed cache in either your article or the product website. IMO, it is important to have battery when using cached RAID-5 in order to avoid a write hole. Can you confirm whether or not the N5200 is so equipped? For many users, this may be a deciding factor between the N5200 and a homebrewed solution.
The short story is he found that executives in many companies "happened" to receive stock options dated to the most recent low in the stock price.
Wow, that's a loaded statement -- do you have a specific dislike for executives?
From your comment, it appears that you don't understand much about how stock options work. Check out this Wikipedia article. It explains a little bit about how strike price (or excercise price) works. In fact, most companies issue stock options at a strike price; these are not just offered to executives, but to employees too. This is especially nice when options mature over a number of years. Stock options are supposed to be a benefit to the employee (including executives). If the company gains value, employees can get in and excercise their options at the lower (strike) price that they were initially offered to the employee at. There is nothing illegal, dirty, or immoral about this practice -- just as long as the company bi-laws do not prohibit the practice.
Offering stock options at a specific strike price has been going on for a long, long time. (much) More often than not, this is not illegal or shady.
Two possible scenarios (in addition to the official version of events) come immediately to mind:
* Ken was going to roll over on Dubya & Company, and was 'neutralized',
- or -
* Ken faked his own death and is currently laughing himself sick under a palm tree somewhere.
Aaah, laying on the slightly wild Michael Moore-style conspiracy theories already? IMO, facing a sentence in a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison that will last the rest of one's life is pretty stressful. A massive coronary is pretty credible. Beyond that, I'd probably believe that it was a suicide before an executive-branch conspiracy or a faked death.
The color coding is stupid, the long lines at the airport and having to take my shoes off and dispose of my pen knife is ridiculous, and I think there ought to be a change, but I simply don't consider being able to carry a pen knife on a plane an essential liberty.
I tend to agree with your entire statement, but the question is: where does it stop? No pocket knives on planes and intercepting international long-distance calls aren't really a big deal. Warrantless searches of anyone having anything to do with a terrorist investigation is sort of pushing it. Widespread automated domestic communications survelience is sort of a big deal. Secret arrests of non-citizens as enemy combatants without any sembalance of due process is also disturbing and goes against the foundation of our nation. The lack of oversight over the executive branch is also quite disturbing. I'm also a little worried about the unchecked growth and expansion of power of the federal government, impinging on state's rights.
The point is that while some of this stuff is minor, it all adds up. None of it should go unchecked. If you don't see any loss of liberty as a whole after 9/11, I think that you may want to take another look at the changes that have happened as a whole. I tend to take a 'slippery slope' stance on this stuff, and I'm feeling that the populus is losing quite a bit of footing on that slope, and many are content do do so. It's kind of a bummer. I think that our government is opportunistic in this light. They'll take advantage of whatever they can. Also, looking at the USA Patriot act and the set of tools afforded to law enforcement -- in my opinion, this is unamerican. Our justice system was set up to stack the deck against law enforcement, with the understanding that all power will be used and/or abused by law enforcement. It's understandable -- they have a very difficult job which will never end. However, given what history has shown us about law enforcement; in order to have a free society, the deck needs to be stacked against law enforcement. Without our relatively modern concept of due process, we risk living in a police state.
The standard rhetoric about terrorists wanting to take our freedom away is a bunch of bullshit. Our own government will be the undoing of our freedom, and I'm pretty scared.
The deciding factor about what is and is not illegal is what the people of the country decide, through Congress and Juries, should not be allowed. Which is why pot is illegal and tobacco can't be sold to minors.
Neither Congress nor a jury officially made cannabis illegal (although the Congress put heavy restrictions on its trade and possession in 1937 with the Marijuana Stamp Act). Under the Controlled Substances Act, Congress gave power to the Attorney General and the DEA to make that decision for us with regards to cannabis and other drugs. It is written in the law that certian medical and statistical study must be considered, however ultimate consideration up to either the AG or the Administrator of the DEA for whatever reasons that they choose (political or otherwise). Consequently, under provisions of that same act, the DEA has power to restrict access to any controlled substances for research purposes. These applications for access to materials for research purposes are carefully screened. Applications for studies that contain a hypothesis that may indicate anything insufficiently negative about the controlled substance in question are not granted. This way, accurate studies regarding illicit drugs (e.g. cannabis) are never realized. Further, accurate information about illicit drugs are kept from the people, helping to ensure that popular opinion stays within govenment control for as long as possible.
That was sort of long and ambiguous -- in short, I believe that in the case of popular opinion of the war on drugs, the tail has been wagging the dog for a very long time.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the rich and allows their rich buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
An interesting observation, but in this case, I strongly disagree. We're becoming more and more populus, and pop trends tend to be more widespread. As this happens, demand for such events increases. When demand increases and supply stays the same, price tends to go up. This is really simple market economics of supply and demand. Not a vast, divisive conspiracy.
Before this Ticketmaster scheme, scalpers would band together and use their collective buying power to buy out tickets early and sell them at enourmous profit margins when demand peaked. This wasn't a case of a bunch of rich guys and their rich buddies scheming to screw you over and keep themselves rich.
Ticketmaster seems to have a problem with the scalper model and they want a piece of that revenue. If the market will bear it...then it's Ticketmaster's money. The scheme is really no different than the scalper's scheme, Ticketmaster just has more buying power and can buy first, then centralize and auction from there. One way or the other, I doubt that this will increase the cost of the ticket to the purchaser. It's just going to change who gets that money.
So where are the wealthy banding together to screw you there? Also, do you think it's OK to make the same type of assumptions with any other socio-economic class? What about people of a certain race or religion? I'm not even close to wealthy and I can see a pretty scary problem with your massive generalization. Let me see if I can put it in some other terms using the same words:
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the blacks and allows their black buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the poor and allows their poor buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the Jews and allows their Jewish buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the latinos and allows their latino buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the gays and allows their gay buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the whites and allows their white buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the middle-class and allows their middle-class buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Do any of those statements strike you as sort of assholish? While it may seem OK to make statements about the wealthy because you don't belong to that group and may truly believe that they're screwing you over, remember that in the late 30's, many Germans truly felt that the Jews were screwing them over in a similar fashion. I'm not calling you anything, but I'm urging you to be careful in your assumptions and words. There are some striking similarities to some scary ideals.
Their commitment will be throughput burstable to 6 MBps down, 1 Mbps up, 24/7connectivity. The keyword here is burstable. If you want to use that bandwidth all the time, feel free to buy a T1 or better.
The idea that continous bandwidth is not available is neither advertised nor indicated anywhere (service contract or otherwise). Nobody even implied that this service was sold on a burstable basis. Further, a T1's strength is mainly in the SLA, which residential services don't have (business cable/DSL also lack an SLA). The cable/DSL services are considered 'best effort', where the buyer has no recourse if a enterprise line fails (unlike a T).
The idea that persistent use of a service implicitly violates service terms which were never expressed is totally laughable. They do, however, generally forbid running services (like mail and web) using a residential connection. The fact is that ISP's sold service with the expectation that their clients weren't going to use it. Now, technology is catching up with the bandwidth offered by ISP's, and they're going to have to compensate. This sounds like a case of the ISP blaming an evolving marketplace for the problem -- even though the evloving marketplace is the reason for the ISP's existance. If staying afloat invloves raising rates over the long term in order to make up for market rates, sobeit. However, bulk bandwidth costs are still dirt cheap. IIRC, the real cost is in last-mile delivery -- I think that cable and DSL broadband is starting to show its age with its pooled bandwidth. This gives providers like Verizon (with FIOS) a real shot at competing with the established (Cable/DSL) players.
Ok, you bought into their crap and you actually believe that they're creating suffcient 'new' stuff here to inflate the costs. You're wrong because they don't actually generate any of the new expensive in any of these types of add-ons that I've seen so far, but OK, you believe it.
I haven't seen any reason to disbelieve Rockstar. Maybe others have bungled the job, but why should anyone else's performance reflect on Rockstar? I'm not sure why you keep jumping to these "you're wrong" conclusions. How can either of us possibly be right or wrong when neither of us have seen any episodic content for this game/series?
I read the other post that you linked me to, and your cost estimates are still wildly speculative. They do not hold any ground in the real world. If you want to read about their P&L (and gobs of other information), check out Edgar for their SEC filings. They're also available by searching on Yahoo finance. Stop with the BS speculation on what you think talent costs and what you think it costs to run a company and instead, do some real research and read up on what it did cost.
Also, I could care less what it costs to go see a movie, because that has exceeded my cost tolerance years ago, and I don't go anymore.
But enough people still go to the movies that it's highly profitable. It's not important until you're part of a larger group that makes movies less profitable. You're not there yet.
And Hollywood talent and pop music in video games is a stupid waste of money in most cases. You can make a case for the music in some games, but there are plenty of talented voice actors who would kill for a job that there is no need to pay a name premium. You can't name a single game that would have suffered for lack of hollywood star level voice talent (If you think you can, you'd be wrong)
Again with the right and wrong based merely upon speculation -- it's nonsensical. In any case, I thought that using Samuel jackson and Chris Penn as the first two voice actors in GTA:SA was a really nice touch. I recgonized them right away, and liked it -- I didn't mind paying for that. The fact that you don't care is only a matter of opinion, and I have a feeling that the market disagrees with you. Similarly, RS chose to use major label music. I also miss the days of cheap music in games, but RS took a different angle, and I also felt that it was a nice touch. Again, given the number of people who bought the game, the market seems to disagree with you. What other games have had a major label music selection as wide as the GTA series? You suggest that it's old news and it's been done over and over.
You are consistently confusing fact with opinion. You're coming off as neither credible nor mature with the I'm-right-you're-wrong stuff. It's difficult to have a discussion (not an argument) when someone is trying so hard to be right or wrong. If you want to discuss this further, I'd be glad to. However, if you want to continue to be confrontational and rude, I'll wish you the best and politely be on my way.
Let's say they have a team of twelve guys working on some episodic content. I pick that number because I know for a fact that there are developers who create the content with less, and because it makes the math obvious. Let's say it takes a month to create and test a $1 add-on. I pick that time period and price because the price is representitive and the time period is demostrably conservative. Let's say all ten of those people make a quarter million dollars a year. Which, quite frankly, isn't likely. I know plenty of people in the industry, and I can tell you that the average salary is signifigantly less than that. I personally don't work in the industry because they don't pay nearly that well.
So...because other shops pay a dozen coders to churn out a mod, it makes this one just the same? What about the hollywood talent that they hire, does that come cheap? What about the major label music that they license, how much does that cost them? What about the other costs associated with a project like this (testers, project management, voice actors, graphics, etc)? What about their legal fees incurred in order to fight off the jokers who blame video games for violence? What about all of the other costs associated with running a business (these are far too numerous to list)?
Your cost estimates make absolutely no sense, which doesn't say much for your profit margin numbers. In any case, you can see their margins any time as they are public record -- if you're interested. I don't think that they're really relevant anyway. Even if RS could churn an hour of gameplay out at no cost to them, $1/hr of entertainment still sounds pretty sweet to me. I loved the last game and would gladly pay that for add-ons to something even better, especially if I don't have to go to a store (or wait for the mail to arrive) to get it.
Think about how much you pay for a movie. $7 if you live out in the sticks, and $10+ in the city for a 90-120 minute feature. Best case scenario, you're still paying $3.50 for that same hour of entertainment. What about a DVD? How much does a roller coaster ride cost? I think that episodic gameplay still beats these in terms of value for entertainment. You might do better with a good album, since it may have some solid replayability -- but I can't think of much else that isn't free.
My point wasn't that people shouldn't be able to charge whatever they want. My point was twofold. First, that I'm not going to pay that much for mere minutes of content, and second, that I don't think other people should either. You can think I'm wrong all you want, but I have just as much a right and reason to try and convince people not to fund this crap as the developers do to pull it.
People do pay that much for mere minutes of content, and they don't have a problem with it. You probably pay more for less minutes of content right now. This sounds like sour grapes to me.
They pirate because it's the easiest option for them. Either because they lack the money (but would buy for a cheaper price if they could), or because the pirate provides better service (no DRM, easy downloads, etc).
Yeah, I totally agree. It is pretty quick and easy to download via Bittorrent. It's frustrating how slowly these content owners move, and even more frustrating that when they do move, they take a funky direction (downloadable movies at the same price as DVD's).
Kids, unemployed people maybe. Adults much less so. At some point you realize: "Hmm, I can either pay for this with 15 minutes of work, or spend 2 hours looking for a crack that might be loaded with spyware. Then I'll probably have to spend a day to reinstall Windows."
As an employeed adult, I do not entirely agree. What cracks have you needed to download to play a movie file, and which of them contained spyware? Sun's JVM, Azureus, and VLC seem to do the trick for nearly everything (and maybe WinRAR). IMO, the spyware claim is about as valid as the issues that Warner cites about movie files containing viruses. It's pretty FUD'dy.
If we're going to bring up FUD'dy issues, recent events show that it is more likely that the content owners' software (such as a player) would automatically install some kind of rootkit. I'm not really cynical enough to believe that all DRM contains Sony-like rootkits, but it seems more likely than a spyware or virus infestation from a media file.
Oh yeah, because dropping the odd camera on some coral is really the same as killing off entire reefs.
Actually, they're pretty similar. Tourism has taken its toll on certain coral reefs, and just touching a coral head can kill the protective membrane and cause that region of the head to bleach (belaching is when the organism releases the xoozanthellae, or the algae that it survives on, which effectively kills the pollup). This is the same kind of activity that is killing entire reefs. So yeah, if everyone droped the odd camera on some coral, it really will kill off entire reefs.
The ability to run Mac OS X in virtual machine lowers the barriers to entry to test exploit code from $2000 to (effectively if you allready own a PC) $0.
Not to be disagreeable, but the cost may have already been $0, since Darwin has been both X86 and free for a long time.
The reason that "the Bush Administration" gets away with this is because you're looking in the wrong place. This is called "the legislature," and it really hasn't got a damn thing to do with who is the President.
Not quite...the horrible rhetoric was used by Alberto Gonzales, a member of the Bush administration:
...which are used to 'quite frankly, fund terrorism activities,' according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Sure, the bill itself was introduced by the congress and will be voted upon by the congress, but I find Gonzales' unsubstantiated BS inexcusable.
I'm inclined to believe that a big chunk of the driver not displaying as much of a reaction to car movements is that the driver knows what's gonna happen, while the passenger does not. As teh driver, I know precisely when the clutch is gonna go down and when it will engage, and I'm already adjusting myself to compensate. For a passenger, it's pretty much a surprise.
I was thinking about this as I typed my message, but then thought back to my track times with an instructor in the car on a track. The instructor knew precicely when I was going to brake, shift, turn-in, and accelerate as I tracked out. I still caught his/her head jolting as I changed the car's control inputs (maybe a testament to my less-than-perfect driving). I'm sure that you're partially right, that knowing when the control inputs changing will change how we stiffen our muscles for the inertial forces that we expect. However, I am absolutely certain that there is some amount of bracing against the steering wheel. Not to the extent of resting our chests against the wheel, but jsut holding it while in a proper seating position does quite a bit to brace a driver for minor inertia changes (again, this does nothing to protect the driver in a collision).
I also agree that there are plenty of legitamate reasons for a driver to momentarily remove their hand from the wheel (or even their eyes from the road). However, these should be few and far between, and in my opinion, that 20 minute cell phone call can either wait, or can be undertaken with a headset.
When I was anti-cellphone legislation, I was right next to you. Have we seen more or less desths per vehicle mile travelled since the popularization of mobile phones? The answer is less. However, this coorelation isn't the beginning and the end of the story for why I think that use of handheld phones should be outright banned or severly restricted on public roads...and it's sort of difficult to explain. I'll give it my best shot, however. In the United States, legislation needs to be simple, direct, and pointed. Very simple 'driving while distracted' laws would be very difficult to enforce. They would be very easy to fight in court for reasons similar to why Montana's brief 'reasonable and prudent' daylight speed limit was ruled unconstitutional. (In short, the law was too broad and left too much up to the arresting/ticketing officer -- leaving much room for abuse). While many states can ticket for 'failure to pay full-time attention', these citations tend to be few and far between. It's easier for an officer to spot a specific violation (like talking on the phone or reading a newspaper) and ticket for it than just noting the general condition of the vehicle operator. (...yeah, a few months ago, I encountered some jackass reading a newspaper while on my daily commute.)
I do, however, agree with you that further training and increased licensing requirements are a wise idea. I've participed in quite a few discussions regarding this, and there are some inherent problems with the idea. Mainly, with this new training the problem is that use of public roads will either be geared towards the wealthy, or ineffective since any government operated driver-training program will be crappy. Real driver training is expensive. I've invested thousands into cheaper forms of driver training (autocross, high performance drivers' ed, racing schools, track time, etc), and most of these are cheaper than the one-on-one training...mainly because they all required use of my own vehicle. They're also cheaper because they all tended to be at a grassroots club-race level, where professional driver salaries are not paid out to instructors. If we required real driver training on a real accident-avoidance course, with dedicated vehicles (and the requisite heavy insurance), who would pay for it? I'd certainly hope not the taxpayer, and if not, then only the wealthy could afford to drive (similar to Germany). I'm not disagreeing with you...on the contrary, I agree with you 100 percent. But I'd like to hear your opinion on the inherent problems with this approach.
Anyway, I think that if you're too fragile to withstand the forces your car will exert upon you via the seatbelt while you're braking, you're too fragile to safely drive (elderly or not). That nonwithstanding, if you're holding yourself back with the steering wheel instead of the belts, you're not in control of the vehicle - presumably at a time when you most need to be in control. Leaning on the wheel can pretty easily cause a swerve when you don't want a swerve...
While I agree that seatbelts should always be used, using the wheel to hold your body in place in a corner is very helpful, especially during heavier lateral G-loading. All drivers do this to some extent, whether or not they realize it. If you spend some time in a passenger car on a race track (with a passenger), you will notice the difference in how your bodies move under cornering and braking forces. Unless your passenger has a racing harness and a racing seat (or a really heavily bolstered sport seat), your passenger will be gripping the oh-shit handles to keep their body in place. The 3-point seatbelt alone is an acceptable restraint in a collision, but will not keep you comfortably in your seat during hard cornering. Even during normal street driving, drivers will stabalize their bodies using the wheel without even noticing. Drive your stick-shift car a little bit rough with passengers, and you will notice their necks snapping back and forth. As the driver, your head will probably will not suffer so much snapping back and forth. The reason why is that your arms (which are holding the wheel) are bracing your upper body and keeping your neck from snapping around.
I respectfully disagree with your point about manual transmissions as well. I drive a stick (actually, I prefer it). The only time that your hand should be touching the shifter is while shifting. Most shifting tends to happen in a straight line, while the car is accelerating (and decelerating, if you are a heel-and-toe downshifter). Resting a hand on the shifter will not only wear at the shifter bushings, they can also wear at your synchromesh cones as well as wear at your throwout bearing (usually requiring a new clutch).
Further, the shifter example doesn't really hold much water with me, since it is an essential control for operation of the car. A mobile phone is not. The fact is that a good driver will keep both hands on the wheel at all times (when possible). Drivers with both hands on the wheel not only tend to be more attentive to the road, but can respond much more quickly in an emergency situation, as well as be able to issue finer controls to the vehicle when necessary (such as adding in opposite-lock in a heavy oversteer scenario).
I was anti-cell phone regulation for a long, long time. Eventually, I began to realize that most of the driving mistakes that I saw on the road tended to be made by people holding mobile phones to their ears. I still see people pull out in front of other drivers (especially in parking lots) while talking on a cell phone. More often than not, they were completely avoidable mistakes, made totally distracted drivers who couldn't be bothered to simply check their mirrors, or turn their heads where necessary. Regardless of whether or not I believe that I can talk on the phone while driving, it has proven to be a real distraction among most drivers both antecdotally and statistically. Yes, there are other worthwhile distractions that should be addressed, but the frequency that mobile phones are used makes them a prime target for legislation.
The headset solution is not an ultimate solution, but I'd take a driver with a headset any day over a driver with one less hand on the wheel and a phone attached to their ear. My opinion of cell phones behind the wheel is much stronger when I'm riding my motorcycle. I tend to take stupidity much more seriously when I don't have a metallic cage protecting me.
And the 1950s were a hell of a lot better in a hell of a lot of ways than today.
Which part of the 1950's were a that much better better than today? The 50's saw an unprecedented rise in crime (until the 60's), and many Americans did not enjoy much in the way of civil rights. Americans were far less tolerant of other races and religions. This is nice if you're white and Christian, but the rest of America endured conditions which could be considered quite oppressive by today's standards. Over the past 10 years, our national crime rate is now showing an unprecedented drop. The crime rate (both property and violent) is down to the level it was at in the 60's and if the trend continues, it will drop to a level prior to the 50's. Further, we feared nuclear annihlation, which was a real possibility at the time. The country was in a state of panic over communist influence, both foreign and domestic, which led to a serious decline in civil liberties along with serious abuses by opportunistic politicians. Gas wasn't really much cheaper after adjusting for inflation (it wasn't as good, either).
I'm sure that there are some nice things about the 1950's, but I would much rather be alive today than 50 years ago.
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Rear projection DLP is pretty good, and is less expensive than its alternatives. Whether or not it's appropriate for your requirements is up to you.
I just went to Samsung's site and selected the first rear projection DLP monitor that was over 50". I got this. Whether or not it's too deep is up to you. Samsung is claiming 16.3" deep in their specifications. Some are thinner than others though. As far as noise goes, manufacturers seem to be listening to what their customers want and are competing to make quieter units. You may want to go to a showroom and hear what kind of noise these produce. Also, plug a laptop into a few to see what your presentations look like.
It has been estimated that about 5% of people experience what is known as the DLP Rainbow Effect, where some viewers can see flashes of color separation on the edges of high contrast edges. To minimize this, manufacturers are speeding up color wheels and adding more segments to effectively increase the color wheel speed. As DLP chips become cheaper, I believe that we will begin seeing 3-chip solutions enter the consumer market to completely eliminate the issue. In any case, the rainbow effect is something that you may want to keep in mind when you consider whether or not to use DLP.
I get 15MB/s down and 2 MB/s up for $55/mo on a cable modem w/o TV service. This is their premium Internet service. I belive that they are trying to compete with Verizon, who just rolled FIOS out to the area. This is in northern VA.
You make an intersting point, and your extrapolation sort of gets at some of what I was suggesting. Releasing carbon from burning vegetable-based plants comes from a carbon source which was metabolized from carbon recently. Much of our fossil oil was also from animal sources -- and their carbon isn't necessarily all atmospheric (like that of plant matter). Further, when vegetable oil is pressed, I don't think that all of the carbon is extracted. Perhaps there is a carbon load, but it would be negative in this case.
In any case, I'm not scientist. I'm not clinging too hard to this one, but it does make sense -- especially when approached in the context of the carbon cycle.
I'm with you on the motorcycle point (although my old POS goes 200-250 miles on a tank). The real question is whether or not the Tesla is rapidly rechargable. It takes me a minute or two to put 3-4 gallons into my bike. How long does it take to recharge a metric shitload of laptop batteries?
But everybody loves Lucas electrics!
Yeah, you tell 'em! Forget about pragmatism and we'll create our own reality. Feasability? Screw it. Net environmental effect of the technology? Who needs to analyze anything when we've got dreamers! There's no point in looking at our world for how it is when we can see it like we want it to be.
The analogy that you provided about abusive parents is exactly the kind of absolutism that I disagree with -- and there's plenty of it to go around. What about when the definition of child abuse gets murky? What about when you've got a kid in an otherwise 'good' home, where the parents (for example) are pot smokers? Does it make sense to subject the kid to 'the system' by sticking them in a foster home (at best)? In the United States, it's not uncommon for child services to consider parents like that unfit. Absolutes don't work so well in a dynamic world.
In any case, we've already got an idealistic executive administration in the US who tends to think in black-and-white. Frankly, I think that we would do well with a bit of measured analysis.
To get back to the discussion, there's nothing wrong with trying to innovate, and I'm not seeing that argument anywhere. You're using a straw-man argument. However, there are plenty of hurdles which must be overcome when talking about electric cars...and it's important to recgonize that the electric car is no panacea for our environmental/political/economic ills. It just moves the problem elsewhere, and would continue to for the forseeable future. If it were really economically feasible, every major auto manufacturer would be selling an electric car right now.
Personally, I'm more interested in diesel power (utilizing vegetable-based fuel). The technology is already 100% available, very well developed, mass produced, and it can utilize the existing distribution infrastructure without serious modifications (I think that oil pipelines would need some help, however). Burning vegetable-based fuel also releases zero net greenhouse gas, since all carbon released into the atmosphere was originally metabolized from the atmosphere. Are there drawbacks? Certainly -- among other things, there is a poor public perception of diesel engines power and torque charasteristic, of being smelly, and having hard-to-find fuel. The former two have been resolved though development: Diesel emissions (as well as the sulphur odor) have been greatly reduced, and an Audi diesel race car won Le Mans last year, partly by churning out massive amounts of torque while maintaining better fuel economy than every other car in its class.
Again, getting back to the point, there is nothing wrong with pragmatism. In fact, the best way to deal with idealogues is to share a bit of reality. If you really believe in this, and this is truly an engineering problem, why not embrace the naysayers? Why not help find a solution to the real problems with the technology in question rather than smugly berate them in public? Your attempts to berate aren't convincing anyone of anything (except for the people who already share your ideals).
I did not notice any evidence of a battery-backed cache in either your article or the product website. IMO, it is important to have battery when using cached RAID-5 in order to avoid a write hole. Can you confirm whether or not the N5200 is so equipped? For many users, this may be a deciding factor between the N5200 and a homebrewed solution.
Wow, that's a loaded statement -- do you have a specific dislike for executives?
From your comment, it appears that you don't understand much about how stock options work. Check out this Wikipedia article. It explains a little bit about how strike price (or excercise price) works. In fact, most companies issue stock options at a strike price; these are not just offered to executives, but to employees too. This is especially nice when options mature over a number of years. Stock options are supposed to be a benefit to the employee (including executives). If the company gains value, employees can get in and excercise their options at the lower (strike) price that they were initially offered to the employee at. There is nothing illegal, dirty, or immoral about this practice -- just as long as the company bi-laws do not prohibit the practice.
Offering stock options at a specific strike price has been going on for a long, long time. (much) More often than not, this is not illegal or shady.
Aaah, laying on the slightly wild Michael Moore-style conspiracy theories already? IMO, facing a sentence in a federal-pound-me-in-the-ass prison that will last the rest of one's life is pretty stressful. A massive coronary is pretty credible. Beyond that, I'd probably believe that it was a suicide before an executive-branch conspiracy or a faked death.
I tend to agree with your entire statement, but the question is: where does it stop? No pocket knives on planes and intercepting international long-distance calls aren't really a big deal. Warrantless searches of anyone having anything to do with a terrorist investigation is sort of pushing it. Widespread automated domestic communications survelience is sort of a big deal. Secret arrests of non-citizens as enemy combatants without any sembalance of due process is also disturbing and goes against the foundation of our nation. The lack of oversight over the executive branch is also quite disturbing. I'm also a little worried about the unchecked growth and expansion of power of the federal government, impinging on state's rights.
The point is that while some of this stuff is minor, it all adds up. None of it should go unchecked. If you don't see any loss of liberty as a whole after 9/11, I think that you may want to take another look at the changes that have happened as a whole. I tend to take a 'slippery slope' stance on this stuff, and I'm feeling that the populus is losing quite a bit of footing on that slope, and many are content do do so. It's kind of a bummer. I think that our government is opportunistic in this light. They'll take advantage of whatever they can. Also, looking at the USA Patriot act and the set of tools afforded to law enforcement -- in my opinion, this is unamerican. Our justice system was set up to stack the deck against law enforcement, with the understanding that all power will be used and/or abused by law enforcement. It's understandable -- they have a very difficult job which will never end. However, given what history has shown us about law enforcement; in order to have a free society, the deck needs to be stacked against law enforcement. Without our relatively modern concept of due process, we risk living in a police state.
The standard rhetoric about terrorists wanting to take our freedom away is a bunch of bullshit. Our own government will be the undoing of our freedom, and I'm pretty scared.
Neither Congress nor a jury officially made cannabis illegal (although the Congress put heavy restrictions on its trade and possession in 1937 with the Marijuana Stamp Act). Under the Controlled Substances Act, Congress gave power to the Attorney General and the DEA to make that decision for us with regards to cannabis and other drugs. It is written in the law that certian medical and statistical study must be considered, however ultimate consideration up to either the AG or the Administrator of the DEA for whatever reasons that they choose (political or otherwise). Consequently, under provisions of that same act, the DEA has power to restrict access to any controlled substances for research purposes. These applications for access to materials for research purposes are carefully screened. Applications for studies that contain a hypothesis that may indicate anything insufficiently negative about the controlled substance in question are not granted. This way, accurate studies regarding illicit drugs (e.g. cannabis) are never realized. Further, accurate information about illicit drugs are kept from the people, helping to ensure that popular opinion stays within govenment control for as long as possible.
That was sort of long and ambiguous -- in short, I believe that in the case of popular opinion of the war on drugs, the tail has been wagging the dog for a very long time.
An interesting observation, but in this case, I strongly disagree. We're becoming more and more populus, and pop trends tend to be more widespread. As this happens, demand for such events increases. When demand increases and supply stays the same, price tends to go up. This is really simple market economics of supply and demand. Not a vast, divisive conspiracy.
Before this Ticketmaster scheme, scalpers would band together and use their collective buying power to buy out tickets early and sell them at enourmous profit margins when demand peaked. This wasn't a case of a bunch of rich guys and their rich buddies scheming to screw you over and keep themselves rich.
Ticketmaster seems to have a problem with the scalper model and they want a piece of that revenue. If the market will bear it...then it's Ticketmaster's money. The scheme is really no different than the scalper's scheme, Ticketmaster just has more buying power and can buy first, then centralize and auction from there. One way or the other, I doubt that this will increase the cost of the ticket to the purchaser. It's just going to change who gets that money.
So where are the wealthy banding together to screw you there? Also, do you think it's OK to make the same type of assumptions with any other socio-economic class? What about people of a certain race or religion? I'm not even close to wealthy and I can see a pretty scary problem with your massive generalization. Let me see if I can put it in some other terms using the same words:
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the blacks and allows their black buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the poor and allows their poor buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the Jews and allows their Jewish buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the latinos and allows their latino buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the gays and allows their gay buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the whites and allows their white buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Notice how this fracturing is always being done by the middle-class and allows their middle-class buddies to get the goodies while the rest of us get left out.
Do any of those statements strike you as sort of assholish? While it may seem OK to make statements about the wealthy because you don't belong to that group and may truly believe that they're screwing you over, remember that in the late 30's, many Germans truly felt that the Jews were screwing them over in a similar fashion. I'm not calling you anything, but I'm urging you to be careful in your assumptions and words. There are some striking similarities to some scary ideals.
The idea that continous bandwidth is not available is neither advertised nor indicated anywhere (service contract or otherwise). Nobody even implied that this service was sold on a burstable basis. Further, a T1's strength is mainly in the SLA, which residential services don't have (business cable/DSL also lack an SLA). The cable/DSL services are considered 'best effort', where the buyer has no recourse if a enterprise line fails (unlike a T).
The idea that persistent use of a service implicitly violates service terms which were never expressed is totally laughable. They do, however, generally forbid running services (like mail and web) using a residential connection. The fact is that ISP's sold service with the expectation that their clients weren't going to use it. Now, technology is catching up with the bandwidth offered by ISP's, and they're going to have to compensate. This sounds like a case of the ISP blaming an evolving marketplace for the problem -- even though the evloving marketplace is the reason for the ISP's existance. If staying afloat invloves raising rates over the long term in order to make up for market rates, sobeit. However, bulk bandwidth costs are still dirt cheap. IIRC, the real cost is in last-mile delivery -- I think that cable and DSL broadband is starting to show its age with its pooled bandwidth. This gives providers like Verizon (with FIOS) a real shot at competing with the established (Cable/DSL) players.
I haven't seen any reason to disbelieve Rockstar. Maybe others have bungled the job, but why should anyone else's performance reflect on Rockstar? I'm not sure why you keep jumping to these "you're wrong" conclusions. How can either of us possibly be right or wrong when neither of us have seen any episodic content for this game/series?
I read the other post that you linked me to, and your cost estimates are still wildly speculative. They do not hold any ground in the real world. If you want to read about their P&L (and gobs of other information), check out Edgar for their SEC filings. They're also available by searching on Yahoo finance. Stop with the BS speculation on what you think talent costs and what you think it costs to run a company and instead, do some real research and read up on what it did cost.
But enough people still go to the movies that it's highly profitable. It's not important until you're part of a larger group that makes movies less profitable. You're not there yet.
Again with the right and wrong based merely upon speculation -- it's nonsensical. In any case, I thought that using Samuel jackson and Chris Penn as the first two voice actors in GTA:SA was a really nice touch. I recgonized them right away, and liked it -- I didn't mind paying for that. The fact that you don't care is only a matter of opinion, and I have a feeling that the market disagrees with you. Similarly, RS chose to use major label music. I also miss the days of cheap music in games, but RS took a different angle, and I also felt that it was a nice touch. Again, given the number of people who bought the game, the market seems to disagree with you. What other games have had a major label music selection as wide as the GTA series? You suggest that it's old news and it's been done over and over.
You are consistently confusing fact with opinion. You're coming off as neither credible nor mature with the I'm-right-you're-wrong stuff. It's difficult to have a discussion (not an argument) when someone is trying so hard to be right or wrong. If you want to discuss this further, I'd be glad to. However, if you want to continue to be confrontational and rude, I'll wish you the best and politely be on my way.
So...because other shops pay a dozen coders to churn out a mod, it makes this one just the same? What about the hollywood talent that they hire, does that come cheap? What about the major label music that they license, how much does that cost them? What about the other costs associated with a project like this (testers, project management, voice actors, graphics, etc)? What about their legal fees incurred in order to fight off the jokers who blame video games for violence? What about all of the other costs associated with running a business (these are far too numerous to list)?
Your cost estimates make absolutely no sense, which doesn't say much for your profit margin numbers. In any case, you can see their margins any time as they are public record -- if you're interested. I don't think that they're really relevant anyway. Even if RS could churn an hour of gameplay out at no cost to them, $1/hr of entertainment still sounds pretty sweet to me. I loved the last game and would gladly pay that for add-ons to something even better, especially if I don't have to go to a store (or wait for the mail to arrive) to get it.
Think about how much you pay for a movie. $7 if you live out in the sticks, and $10+ in the city for a 90-120 minute feature. Best case scenario, you're still paying $3.50 for that same hour of entertainment. What about a DVD? How much does a roller coaster ride cost? I think that episodic gameplay still beats these in terms of value for entertainment. You might do better with a good album, since it may have some solid replayability -- but I can't think of much else that isn't free.
People do pay that much for mere minutes of content, and they don't have a problem with it. You probably pay more for less minutes of content right now. This sounds like sour grapes to me.
Yeah, I totally agree. It is pretty quick and easy to download via Bittorrent. It's frustrating how slowly these content owners move, and even more frustrating that when they do move, they take a funky direction (downloadable movies at the same price as DVD's).
As an employeed adult, I do not entirely agree. What cracks have you needed to download to play a movie file, and which of them contained spyware? Sun's JVM, Azureus, and VLC seem to do the trick for nearly everything (and maybe WinRAR). IMO, the spyware claim is about as valid as the issues that Warner cites about movie files containing viruses. It's pretty FUD'dy.
If we're going to bring up FUD'dy issues, recent events show that it is more likely that the content owners' software (such as a player) would automatically install some kind of rootkit. I'm not really cynical enough to believe that all DRM contains Sony-like rootkits, but it seems more likely than a spyware or virus infestation from a media file.
Actually, I read the article...just not the sub-article. Sheesh.
Actually, they're pretty similar. Tourism has taken its toll on certain coral reefs, and just touching a coral head can kill the protective membrane and cause that region of the head to bleach (belaching is when the organism releases the xoozanthellae, or the algae that it survives on, which effectively kills the pollup). This is the same kind of activity that is killing entire reefs. So yeah, if everyone droped the odd camera on some coral, it really will kill off entire reefs.
Not to be disagreeable, but the cost may have already been $0, since Darwin has been both X86 and free for a long time.
Not quite...the horrible rhetoric was used by Alberto Gonzales, a member of the Bush administration:
Sure, the bill itself was introduced by the congress and will be voted upon by the congress, but I find Gonzales' unsubstantiated BS inexcusable.
I was thinking about this as I typed my message, but then thought back to my track times with an instructor in the car on a track. The instructor knew precicely when I was going to brake, shift, turn-in, and accelerate as I tracked out. I still caught his/her head jolting as I changed the car's control inputs (maybe a testament to my less-than-perfect driving). I'm sure that you're partially right, that knowing when the control inputs changing will change how we stiffen our muscles for the inertial forces that we expect. However, I am absolutely certain that there is some amount of bracing against the steering wheel. Not to the extent of resting our chests against the wheel, but jsut holding it while in a proper seating position does quite a bit to brace a driver for minor inertia changes (again, this does nothing to protect the driver in a collision).
I also agree that there are plenty of legitamate reasons for a driver to momentarily remove their hand from the wheel (or even their eyes from the road). However, these should be few and far between, and in my opinion, that 20 minute cell phone call can either wait, or can be undertaken with a headset.
When I was anti-cellphone legislation, I was right next to you. Have we seen more or less desths per vehicle mile travelled since the popularization of mobile phones? The answer is less. However, this coorelation isn't the beginning and the end of the story for why I think that use of handheld phones should be outright banned or severly restricted on public roads...and it's sort of difficult to explain. I'll give it my best shot, however. In the United States, legislation needs to be simple, direct, and pointed. Very simple 'driving while distracted' laws would be very difficult to enforce. They would be very easy to fight in court for reasons similar to why Montana's brief 'reasonable and prudent' daylight speed limit was ruled unconstitutional. (In short, the law was too broad and left too much up to the arresting/ticketing officer -- leaving much room for abuse). While many states can ticket for 'failure to pay full-time attention', these citations tend to be few and far between. It's easier for an officer to spot a specific violation (like talking on the phone or reading a newspaper) and ticket for it than just noting the general condition of the vehicle operator. (...yeah, a few months ago, I encountered some jackass reading a newspaper while on my daily commute.)
I do, however, agree with you that further training and increased licensing requirements are a wise idea. I've participed in quite a few discussions regarding this, and there are some inherent problems with the idea. Mainly, with this new training the problem is that use of public roads will either be geared towards the wealthy, or ineffective since any government operated driver-training program will be crappy. Real driver training is expensive. I've invested thousands into cheaper forms of driver training (autocross, high performance drivers' ed, racing schools, track time, etc), and most of these are cheaper than the one-on-one training ...mainly because they all required use of my own vehicle. They're also cheaper because they all tended to be at a grassroots club-race level, where professional driver salaries are not paid out to instructors. If we required real driver training on a real accident-avoidance course, with dedicated vehicles (and the requisite heavy insurance), who would pay for it? I'd certainly hope not the taxpayer, and if not, then only the wealthy could afford to drive (similar to Germany). I'm not disagreeing with you...on the contrary, I agree with you 100 percent. But I'd like to hear your opinion on the inherent problems with this approach.
While I agree that seatbelts should always be used, using the wheel to hold your body in place in a corner is very helpful, especially during heavier lateral G-loading. All drivers do this to some extent, whether or not they realize it. If you spend some time in a passenger car on a race track (with a passenger), you will notice the difference in how your bodies move under cornering and braking forces. Unless your passenger has a racing harness and a racing seat (or a really heavily bolstered sport seat), your passenger will be gripping the oh-shit handles to keep their body in place. The 3-point seatbelt alone is an acceptable restraint in a collision, but will not keep you comfortably in your seat during hard cornering. Even during normal street driving, drivers will stabalize their bodies using the wheel without even noticing. Drive your stick-shift car a little bit rough with passengers, and you will notice their necks snapping back and forth. As the driver, your head will probably will not suffer so much snapping back and forth. The reason why is that your arms (which are holding the wheel) are bracing your upper body and keeping your neck from snapping around.
I respectfully disagree with your point about manual transmissions as well. I drive a stick (actually, I prefer it). The only time that your hand should be touching the shifter is while shifting. Most shifting tends to happen in a straight line, while the car is accelerating (and decelerating, if you are a heel-and-toe downshifter). Resting a hand on the shifter will not only wear at the shifter bushings, they can also wear at your synchromesh cones as well as wear at your throwout bearing (usually requiring a new clutch).
Further, the shifter example doesn't really hold much water with me, since it is an essential control for operation of the car. A mobile phone is not. The fact is that a good driver will keep both hands on the wheel at all times (when possible). Drivers with both hands on the wheel not only tend to be more attentive to the road, but can respond much more quickly in an emergency situation, as well as be able to issue finer controls to the vehicle when necessary (such as adding in opposite-lock in a heavy oversteer scenario).
I was anti-cell phone regulation for a long, long time. Eventually, I began to realize that most of the driving mistakes that I saw on the road tended to be made by people holding mobile phones to their ears. I still see people pull out in front of other drivers (especially in parking lots) while talking on a cell phone. More often than not, they were completely avoidable mistakes, made totally distracted drivers who couldn't be bothered to simply check their mirrors, or turn their heads where necessary. Regardless of whether or not I believe that I can talk on the phone while driving, it has proven to be a real distraction among most drivers both antecdotally and statistically. Yes, there are other worthwhile distractions that should be addressed, but the frequency that mobile phones are used makes them a prime target for legislation.
The headset solution is not an ultimate solution, but I'd take a driver with a headset any day over a driver with one less hand on the wheel and a phone attached to their ear. My opinion of cell phones behind the wheel is much stronger when I'm riding my motorcycle. I tend to take stupidity much more seriously when I don't have a metallic cage protecting me.
Which part of the 1950's were a that much better better than today? The 50's saw an unprecedented rise in crime (until the 60's), and many Americans did not enjoy much in the way of civil rights. Americans were far less tolerant of other races and religions. This is nice if you're white and Christian, but the rest of America endured conditions which could be considered quite oppressive by today's standards. Over the past 10 years, our national crime rate is now showing an unprecedented drop. The crime rate (both property and violent) is down to the level it was at in the 60's and if the trend continues, it will drop to a level prior to the 50's. Further, we feared nuclear annihlation, which was a real possibility at the time. The country was in a state of panic over communist influence, both foreign and domestic, which led to a serious decline in civil liberties along with serious abuses by opportunistic politicians. Gas wasn't really much cheaper after adjusting for inflation (it wasn't as good, either).
I'm sure that there are some nice things about the 1950's, but I would much rather be alive today than 50 years ago.