The dude is an egotistical prick. Billg is out for money, ESR is out to have his ego stroked. They're both dicks. His response could have probably gone more like this.
OMG1! LOL! i so totally pwn3d m$ft in the past u should respect me cause i pwn3d joo ESR roxxors!!11 joo sux!!!!!111OMGLOLLERSKATESWTF!!1
Sorry, Eric, there's lots of people who don't know who you are, get used to it. If the recruiter just went to his website, they'd just think he's some dude who appears to have an aversion to showers or something. The design of the page is so hidieous no one is going to take the time to read it. You'd send the dude a form letter, and shuttle him on to the real hiring authority if he showed interest.
Absolutely... That recipe is sucktacular. Over 30% of the fermentables are white sugar. According to the article, they're mashing at 55-60C, there is absolutely no way they're getting 10 lbs of fermentables out of that. Probably half that, which makes the amount of sugar used even worse. I'd be surprised if it was actually drinkable.
Drop the sugar, Add more base malt. Increase the mash temp to 65-68C (150-155F). Do a 60 minute mash, and mashout at 75C (168F).
Do a 60 minute boil, with the Tettnanger for the full boil, and add the hallertau with 15 minutes remaining. Hallertau is worthless as an aroma hop IMO.
I'd use a yeast like WYeast American Ale II, it's a very fast ferment, and clean tasting.
Of course this is far from the first 'open source' beer. Here's hundreds... http://brewery.org/gambmug/ Many micro breweries are also willing to share recipies or grain bills/hop schrdules with homebrewers who send a friendly email to them.
Here's my contribution... Would have made a much better 'first open source' beer. This is the perfect beer for people who are afraid of homebrew.
3.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 30.0 % 3.00 lb Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 30.0 % 0.50 lb Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 % 0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 % 0.50 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) Hops 17.5 IBU 0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50%] (15 min) Hops 4.6 IBU 0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50%] (0 min) Hops - 3.00 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 30.0 % 1 Pkgs American Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP320) Yeast-Wheat
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.057 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.055 SG Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.008 SG Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.5 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 6.1 % Bitterness: 22.1 IBU Calories: 242 cal/pint Est Color: 5.0 SRM Color: Color
30 minute protien rest at 122, and mash at 150 for 30 more minutes. Mashout at 168F
I think mostly because IE came pre-installed with the OS on new computers.
Bullshit. IE took over because it was better than Netscape. IE was cleaner, faster, and more full featured. It hurts for a lot of people to admit, but people would have downloaded Netscape if it was worth the bandwidth. It just wasn't.
Instead of responding to IE, by improving their product, Netscape threw a hissy fit and faded into obscurity. One of the biggest mistakes of the internet age. They should have fought their battles by hiring better designers and coders instead of lawyers.
IE has stagnated, and Firefox has caught up, and in some ways surpassed IE. MS will respond and likely raise the bar. Then Firefox can do the same.
I'm assuming the person isn't paying the taxes which range from 30-50 cents on the gallon depending on the state. Off Highway use is acceptable, but that's going to do little to reduce any dependance on fossil fuels. Many states also have some sort of alternative fuel fee to make up for the lost revenue that would have to be paid as well.
While lots of folks may think sticking it to the gov't might be justice, those taxes help keep roads we drive on in decent shape, and are very important to keep in mind when considering any sort of alternative fuels.
Growing plants like Rapeseed and soybeans isn't the answer. While making your own biodiesel is cool and all, its, a) illegal, and b) not a large scale solution.
Traditional crops take a lot of land and a lot of energy to produce oils. Once you've figured in the cost to harvest transport and then create biodiesel on a lage scale its cost efficeincy goes down, especially when you add in subsidies for farmers. And when you look at the amount of land we would need for rapeseed, and the energy it would take to harvest and process it, it becomes more of an impossibility.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the use of Bio-diesel, in fact it's quite possibly the best medium range replacement for gasoline. But you need to look at other sources of oil. There are species of algea which are very efficient in the production of oil. Figures suggest 50,000 gallons per hectare. Even at half that number, it's still very feasable, because no arable is needed. Just giant shallow ponds. And they can be saltwater ponds.
These algeas also create methane, which can be reclaimed and used in creating the bio-diesel fuel from the raw oil.
Deserts, waste water systems, agricultural runoff areas all could be used to farm algeas. On a large scale, Bio-diesel could be produced for well under.50 a gallon, and that's taking into account a 10 year recovery of the initial investment. Sold at ~.70 a gallon, and taxed at.30-.50 a gallon you've got a very cheap fuel.
In fact, you can eat more plutonium than you can caffeine... if you ingest 1 gram of caffeine you will instantly die.
In fact, you're completely wrong. The lethal dose of caffine is around 150mg per kg of weight. The average lethal dose is 10 grams. Plutonium is.5 grams.
Bottom line, if you ingest 5 Vivarin (1 gram of caffine) you most certainly will not die, and I bet there's quite a few/.rs who have done just this. If you ingest 1 gram of plutonium, don't make any long term plans.
Evin if it were the case that people under 20 didn't know about Apple Corps, it certainly doesn't make it irrelevant. I'd tend to say the things people OVER 20 don't know about are much more likely to be irrelevant.
Apple Computer broke an agreement. Apple Corps is entitled to defend their trademark. It is TOTALLY relevant.
Call 'em up and cancel. Give them the reason that they are extorting thousands of people, and you feel that dealing with criminals such as them would potentially be harmful to yourself.
After a few hundred of these, and something gets printed in a major US paper, they might just shit themselves and change course.
I don't have DirecTV, I use Dish, but if I did I would have called already.
In addition, US forces will be using these signals to find the enemy, and shut down their communications. If you are not the enemy you are told when black out times are, so you do not get killed. Journalists would also be well advised not to fire AA guns as well.
These instructions are to protect the safety of the journalists, not threaten them. This is a war, not the world cup.
No, you were not unpopular because you were smarter than everyone else. If it makes you feel good to think that, then fine, keep lying to yourself. There were many other reasons... Maybe because you didn't try to be social, maybe you smelled funny, maybe you shunned things like physical activity all together, maybe you came to school each day looking like a dork. I don't know but there are thousands of reasons you may have been unpopular.
Slashdot and some of its readers seem to enjoy to perpetuate the myth that all athletes and popular people in high school are dumb while the unpopular people are for the most part misunderstood and are getting the short end of the stick.
Being liked isn't tough. For the most part if you just follow three rules you aren't going to be shunned.
1) Personal hygene. If you smell like feet, and your greasy hair doesn't look like it's been washed in days, people aren't going to like you. Shower daily. Wear deodorant. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Wear clean clothes.
2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.
3) Maybe try to have similar intrests... If you shun everything most people like, you aren't going to have anything at all in common with anyone are you? I'm not saying you have to become a rabid sports fan, or become glued to watching whatever TV shows kids these days watched... But a little effort to have some of the same interests of your peers goes a long way.
These three rules not only work in high school they also work in real life.
And this is why the merger between Echostar and DirecTV would have been a good thing. It would have meant more transponders, and very likely more HD channels.
When it comes to HD, Dish is the bigger player. They're offering more PPV's in HD and are currently offering CBS-HD to 17 markets. BTW, Fox has no HD offerings. They're 480p, which is SDTV.
Had the merger been allowed, both services would have been able to boost their HD offerings and local offerings, but people afraid of a monopoly simply because of the word refused to see the positives here. Sometimes it's better to have a monopoly when your only two players can't make significant upgrades without spending massive amounts of money.
The real reason the merger was stopped was to protect cable companies interests, just as the regulations regarding local channels are there for. You might ask yourself why you can subscribe to the Washington post anywhere in the US, but can't subscribe to the DC area ABC affiliate. It's because you have a cartel of cable companies trying to make sure they can keep taking your money, even though they can't provide uniform service to the majority of the US, something which DBS can easily do.
It's ridiculous that the E*/DTV merger was shot down, while mergers like AOL/TW are allowed. E*/DTV would have benifitted consumers more than any harm.
So you're recording HDTV@9G an hour a 60 hour Tivo would contain $540 worth of disk. Yikes. Plus what is currently $500 of HDTV hardware, you've got yourself a $1000 peice of equipment...
This guy is probably just getting undercut by someone who doesn't have A+ certification and does just as good of a job. And he's pissed that he paid for a worthless certificate.
I can do a better job than most people with A+ certification. And I can assure you that I've cleaned up messes from plenty of people with plenty of certifications. The training I recieved, basically working in a journeyman enviroment, was far more valueable than any certification test.
Kraft is protesting Shur-Fine Brand Macaroni and Cheese because it sells for 50% less.
They think MS should be required to sell for more. How the hell does this help consumers? It doesn't. They're simply trying to ride on anti-MS sentiment and maintain the rate which they can fleece the public.
Unless MPEG-4 is significantly better than Windows Media, they should drop their prices and be competitive. Suggesting that the consumers should be forced to pay more for similar service JUST because it's not MS is ridiculous.
If they think their product is so much better that it warrants a higher price do what Kraft does and market the damn thing as such. If it's not, cut the price. That's the way a free economy works, you have a right to charge whatever you want, but don't have the right to mandate what your competitors charge.
As an aside, I have noticed that broadcasters are transmitting in a range of resolutions from 480p to 1080i, but all the HDTVs I have seen for sale are 720p or lower (although 720p on 720p looks pretty sweet).
Every HDTV I have seen has suport for 1080i. Very few have support for 720p. 720p is primarily used for sporting events, most programming will be in 1080i. I believe Toshiba's support 720p in addition to 1080i, but for the most part, they support 1080i (720p is converted to 1080i or 480p) in the HDTV realm and 480i/p in the DTV realm.
I have the Panasonic 53WX42, and can garuntee it supports 1080i. It's absolutely goregeous.
I'm sure it will support both component and and composite connections. The XBox currently does this and supports the HDTV resolutions of 1080i and 720p along with SDTV resolution of 480p. There's no reason for them not to support both types of connections, unless they want to be dicks.
You will however want a HDTV monitor, because most games will be able to output at 1080i or 720p, and the difference is amazing.
There are standards for broadcasting HDTV. On the lines of 18 of them, but the standards are there, and accounted for by the current hardware.
It's the cable company who takes this and encrypts it or restricts it. Right now you can purchase a Over-the-air STB and use it anywhere in the country where HDTV is broadcast, or over cable that carries HDTV signals as a standard HDTV brodcast, not wrapped with some encryption.
Yeah, in the future you can purchase one of these TV's and be able to view whatever digital cable channels without a cable box, Good, I get to invest $300 or so more in something that I would be able to rent for $2 a month.
The cable companies have forced cable boxes on consumers in order to secure their content. Now they've found the hardware too expensive to maintain, so they're pushing the burden of cost to you, with the added benifit of DRM. All under the guise of providing HDTV...
It is not consumer friendly to integrate the STB with the monitor. It will make it easier to sell though.
HDTV's are monitors, and why that is seen as a problem I don't really understand. So the STB is integrated into the set, what does this mean? Only thing it means to me is you don't have a separate box. You'll still have to pay for the components, they're just inside the TV instead of next to it.
I'd rather have a monitor capable of 1080i and 540p or 720p that simply has component video in along with a STB that handles the conversions and outputs to a resolution my monitor can display. This way I can feed my component video to any device that supports it and display or record it if I wish.
It does not benifit me to have a TV that traps the signal, and provides no output or limitted output. It may seem easier if I just need to plug one cable into the TV, but it certainly doesn't benifit consumers beyond initial setup ease.
What would be consumer friendly is a recording device that could take a 1080i, 540p, or 720p signal and record it and replay it in the same format.
Don't let them fool you, this is retailer and provider friendly. It will help cable providers keep their "you don't need and extra box" advertising fodder, the networks by preventing you from recording programming, and retailers, not consumers.
Is anyone surprised you can pick up a refurbished mainboard, and a processor upgrade on the internet? Whoopee.
Sure, you CAN build a Mac. But why? By the time you get done paying shipping from 10 different online merchants, you may as well have bought the real thing.
I understand building PC's, but I do that because the hardware is plentiful, I can get everything at one place usually, and end up saving quite a bit of money in the long run.
If you want to build a Mac, order yourself a Dual 866 G4, have someone tear it apart and put it in boxes, and put it back together...
Re:but no reall thrill
on
Robocoaster
·
· Score: 2
The Spiderman ride is fantastic. When you drop down, and get caught by the web you do feel like you're falling. By far, that is the best VR type ride I've been on.
They've really done some amazing things with those rides since the first few came out like the Star Wars ride at MGM, and Back to the Future at Universal. They do enough with them to overwhelm your senses so that you don't realize that the G forces are not sustained.
Before discounting them and saying there's no way it's as good as a real coaster, you have to try the new generation out. Simply amazing.
Hmmm, I wonder what the overall maintainence cost of 500 PC's vs. 1 IBM mainframe unit. You're talking hundreds of drives, hundreds of case fans, hundreds of potential problems, versus one contained unit that has a far longer expected life than a standard PC. In addition you have storage space. A mainframe unit is the size of a couple server racks. Cabling, switching hardware, power all figure in as well.
And then there's maintaining backup enviroments. Do you have another 500 units located accross the country in case of a disaster? You have got to account for failures other than the occasional hardware downtime. Fires, hurricanes, tornados, cut lines, all these must be accounted for if you want to be safe.
Clustering is interesting technology, but for replacing mission critical apps out there, it just won't work. There's far too many points of failure with the hardware to worry about. And the processing and I/O a mainframe is capable of is simply mindboggling. It's not like they are stagnating while PC's continue to improve.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, Eric, there's lots of people who don't know who you are, get used to it. If the recruiter just went to his website, they'd just think he's some dude who appears to have an aversion to showers or something. The design of the page is so hidieous no one is going to take the time to read it. You'd send the dude a form letter, and shuttle him on to the real hiring authority if he showed interest.
Absolutely... That recipe is sucktacular. Over 30% of the fermentables are white sugar. According to the article, they're mashing at 55-60C, there is absolutely no way they're getting 10 lbs of fermentables out of that. Probably half that, which makes the amount of sugar used even worse. I'd be surprised if it was actually drinkable.
Drop the sugar, Add more base malt. Increase the mash temp to 65-68C (150-155F). Do a 60 minute mash, and mashout at 75C (168F).
Do a 60 minute boil, with the Tettnanger for the full boil, and add the hallertau with 15 minutes remaining. Hallertau is worthless as an aroma hop IMO.
I'd use a yeast like WYeast American Ale II, it's a very fast ferment, and clean tasting.
Of course this is far from the first 'open source' beer. Here's hundreds... http://brewery.org/gambmug/ Many micro breweries are also willing to share recipies or grain bills/hop schrdules with homebrewers who send a friendly email to them.
Here's my contribution... Would have made a much better 'first open source' beer. This is the perfect beer for people who are afraid of homebrew.
3.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 30.0 %
3.00 lb Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 30.0 %
0.50 lb Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.50 lb Cara-Pils/Dextrine (2.0 SRM) Grain 5.0 %
0.50 oz Northern Brewer [8.50%] (60 min) Hops 17.5 IBU
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50%] (15 min) Hops 4.6 IBU
0.50 oz Fuggles [4.50%] (0 min) Hops -
3.00 lb Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 30.0 %
1 Pkgs American Hefeweizen Ale (White Labs #WLP320) Yeast-Wheat
Beer Profile
Est Original Gravity: 1.057 SG
Measured Original Gravity: 1.055 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.015 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.008 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.5 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 6.1 %
Bitterness: 22.1 IBU Calories: 242 cal/pint
Est Color: 5.0 SRM Color: Color
30 minute protien rest at 122, and mash at 150 for 30 more minutes. Mashout at 168F
I think mostly because IE came pre-installed with the OS on new computers.
Bullshit. IE took over because it was better than Netscape. IE was cleaner, faster, and more full featured. It hurts for a lot of people to admit, but people would have downloaded Netscape if it was worth the bandwidth. It just wasn't.
Instead of responding to IE, by improving their product, Netscape threw a hissy fit and faded into obscurity. One of the biggest mistakes of the internet age. They should have fought their battles by hiring better designers and coders instead of lawyers.
IE has stagnated, and Firefox has caught up, and in some ways surpassed IE. MS will respond and likely raise the bar. Then Firefox can do the same.
I'm assuming the person isn't paying the taxes which range from 30-50 cents on the gallon depending on the state. Off Highway use is acceptable, but that's going to do little to reduce any dependance on fossil fuels. Many states also have some sort of alternative fuel fee to make up for the lost revenue that would have to be paid as well.
While lots of folks may think sticking it to the gov't might be justice, those taxes help keep roads we drive on in decent shape, and are very important to keep in mind when considering any sort of alternative fuels.
Growing plants like Rapeseed and soybeans isn't the answer. While making your own biodiesel is cool and all, its, a) illegal, and b) not a large scale solution.
.50 a gallon, and that's taking into account a 10 year recovery of the initial investment. Sold at ~.70 a gallon, and taxed at .30-.50 a gallon you've got a very cheap fuel.
Traditional crops take a lot of land and a lot of energy to produce oils. Once you've figured in the cost to harvest transport and then create biodiesel on a lage scale its cost efficeincy goes down, especially when you add in subsidies for farmers. And when you look at the amount of land we would need for rapeseed, and the energy it would take to harvest and process it, it becomes more of an impossibility.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the use of Bio-diesel, in fact it's quite possibly the best medium range replacement for gasoline. But you need to look at other sources of oil. There are species of algea which are very efficient in the production of oil. Figures suggest 50,000 gallons per hectare. Even at half that number, it's still very feasable, because no arable is needed. Just giant shallow ponds. And they can be saltwater ponds.
These algeas also create methane, which can be reclaimed and used in creating the bio-diesel fuel from the raw oil.
Deserts, waste water systems, agricultural runoff areas all could be used to farm algeas. On a large scale, Bio-diesel could be produced for well under
In fact, you can eat more plutonium than you can caffeine... if you ingest 1 gram of caffeine you will instantly die.
.5 grams.
/.rs who have done just this. If you ingest 1 gram of plutonium, don't make any long term plans.
In fact, you're completely wrong. The lethal dose of caffine is around 150mg per kg of weight. The average lethal dose is 10 grams. Plutonium is
Bottom line, if you ingest 5 Vivarin (1 gram of caffine) you most certainly will not die, and I bet there's quite a few
Evin if it were the case that people under 20 didn't know about Apple Corps, it certainly doesn't make it irrelevant. I'd tend to say the things people OVER 20 don't know about are much more likely to be irrelevant.
Apple Computer broke an agreement. Apple Corps is entitled to defend their trademark. It is TOTALLY relevant.
And... The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Museum in Hutchinson, Kansas. And... The Strategic Air Commmand Museum near Ashland Nebraska.
All great places in out of the way places...
Call 'em up and cancel. Give them the reason that they are extorting thousands of people, and you feel that dealing with criminals such as them would potentially be harmful to yourself.
After a few hundred of these, and something gets printed in a major US paper, they might just shit themselves and change course.
I don't have DirecTV, I use Dish, but if I did I would have called already.
It looks like the server is slashdotted, because All I get is a 404 error.
Fortunately some friends of E have posted a mirror. here
In addition, US forces will be using these signals to find the enemy, and shut down their communications. If you are not the enemy you are told when black out times are, so you do not get killed. Journalists would also be well advised not to fire AA guns as well.
These instructions are to protect the safety of the journalists, not threaten them. This is a war, not the world cup.
No, you were not unpopular because you were smarter than everyone else. If it makes you feel good to think that, then fine, keep lying to yourself. There were many other reasons... Maybe because you didn't try to be social, maybe you smelled funny, maybe you shunned things like physical activity all together, maybe you came to school each day looking like a dork. I don't know but there are thousands of reasons you may have been unpopular.
Slashdot and some of its readers seem to enjoy to perpetuate the myth that all athletes and popular people in high school are dumb while the unpopular people are for the most part misunderstood and are getting the short end of the stick.
Being liked isn't tough. For the most part if you just follow three rules you aren't going to be shunned.
1) Personal hygene. If you smell like feet, and your greasy hair doesn't look like it's been washed in days, people aren't going to like you. Shower daily. Wear deodorant. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. Wear clean clothes.
2) At least try to be social. People don't like people who don't talk or won't look them in the eyes. Smile, say hi to people you may not even know. When you talk to someone look at them.
3) Maybe try to have similar intrests... If you shun everything most people like, you aren't going to have anything at all in common with anyone are you? I'm not saying you have to become a rabid sports fan, or become glued to watching whatever TV shows kids these days watched... But a little effort to have some of the same interests of your peers goes a long way.
These three rules not only work in high school they also work in real life.
And this is why the merger between Echostar and DirecTV would have been a good thing. It would have meant more transponders, and very likely more HD channels.
When it comes to HD, Dish is the bigger player. They're offering more PPV's in HD and are currently offering CBS-HD to 17 markets. BTW, Fox has no HD offerings. They're 480p, which is SDTV.
Had the merger been allowed, both services would have been able to boost their HD offerings and local offerings, but people afraid of a monopoly simply because of the word refused to see the positives here. Sometimes it's better to have a monopoly when your only two players can't make significant upgrades without spending massive amounts of money.
The real reason the merger was stopped was to protect cable companies interests, just as the regulations regarding local channels are there for. You might ask yourself why you can subscribe to the Washington post anywhere in the US, but can't subscribe to the DC area ABC affiliate. It's because you have a cartel of cable companies trying to make sure they can keep taking your money, even though they can't provide uniform service to the majority of the US, something which DBS can easily do.
It's ridiculous that the E*/DTV merger was shot down, while mergers like AOL/TW are allowed. E*/DTV would have benifitted consumers more than any harm.
And you can do the same with the PC.
So you're recording HDTV@9G an hour a 60 hour Tivo would contain $540 worth of disk. Yikes. Plus what is currently $500 of HDTV hardware, you've got yourself a $1000 peice of equipment...
Exactly.
This guy is probably just getting undercut by someone who doesn't have A+ certification and does just as good of a job. And he's pissed that he paid for a worthless certificate.
I can do a better job than most people with A+ certification. And I can assure you that I've cleaned up messes from plenty of people with plenty of certifications. The training I recieved, basically working in a journeyman enviroment, was far more valueable than any certification test.
Kraft is protesting Shur-Fine Brand Macaroni and Cheese because it sells for 50% less.
They think MS should be required to sell for more. How the hell does this help consumers? It doesn't. They're simply trying to ride on anti-MS sentiment and maintain the rate which they can fleece the public.
Unless MPEG-4 is significantly better than Windows Media, they should drop their prices and be competitive. Suggesting that the consumers should be forced to pay more for similar service JUST because it's not MS is ridiculous.
If they think their product is so much better that it warrants a higher price do what Kraft does and market the damn thing as such. If it's not, cut the price. That's the way a free economy works, you have a right to charge whatever you want, but don't have the right to mandate what your competitors charge.
As an aside, I have noticed that broadcasters are transmitting in a range of resolutions from 480p to 1080i, but all the HDTVs I have seen for sale are 720p or lower (although 720p on 720p looks pretty sweet).
Every HDTV I have seen has suport for 1080i. Very few have support for 720p. 720p is primarily used for sporting events, most programming will be in 1080i. I believe Toshiba's support 720p in addition to 1080i, but for the most part, they support 1080i (720p is converted to 1080i or 480p) in the HDTV realm and 480i/p in the DTV realm.
I have the Panasonic 53WX42, and can garuntee it supports 1080i. It's absolutely goregeous.
I'm sure it will support both component and and composite connections. The XBox currently does this and supports the HDTV resolutions of 1080i and 720p along with SDTV resolution of 480p. There's no reason for them not to support both types of connections, unless they want to be dicks.
You will however want a HDTV monitor, because most games will be able to output at 1080i or 720p, and the difference is amazing.
DTV != HDTV
There are standards for broadcasting HDTV. On the lines of 18 of them, but the standards are there, and accounted for by the current hardware.
It's the cable company who takes this and encrypts it or restricts it. Right now you can purchase a Over-the-air STB and use it anywhere in the country where HDTV is broadcast, or over cable that carries HDTV signals as a standard HDTV brodcast, not wrapped with some encryption.
Yeah, in the future you can purchase one of these TV's and be able to view whatever digital cable channels without a cable box, Good, I get to invest $300 or so more in something that I would be able to rent for $2 a month.
The cable companies have forced cable boxes on consumers in order to secure their content. Now they've found the hardware too expensive to maintain, so they're pushing the burden of cost to you, with the added benifit of DRM. All under the guise of providing HDTV...
Friendly.
Here's one : http://www.digitalconnection.com/Products/Video/my hd.asp
STB's right now run in the $500 range. By '06 they'll be in the $75 range. You just won't be able to use that portable 2.5" TV anymore.
What?
It is not consumer friendly to integrate the STB with the monitor. It will make it easier to sell though.
HDTV's are monitors, and why that is seen as a problem I don't really understand. So the STB is integrated into the set, what does this mean? Only thing it means to me is you don't have a separate box. You'll still have to pay for the components, they're just inside the TV instead of next to it.
I'd rather have a monitor capable of 1080i and 540p or 720p that simply has component video in along with a STB that handles the conversions and outputs to a resolution my monitor can display. This way I can feed my component video to any device that supports it and display or record it if I wish.
It does not benifit me to have a TV that traps the signal, and provides no output or limitted output. It may seem easier if I just need to plug one cable into the TV, but it certainly doesn't benifit consumers beyond initial setup ease.
What would be consumer friendly is a recording device that could take a 1080i, 540p, or 720p signal and record it and replay it in the same format.
Don't let them fool you, this is retailer and provider friendly. It will help cable providers keep their "you don't need and extra box" advertising fodder, the networks by preventing you from recording programming, and retailers, not consumers.
Is anyone surprised you can pick up a refurbished mainboard, and a processor upgrade on the internet? Whoopee.
Sure, you CAN build a Mac. But why? By the time you get done paying shipping from 10 different online merchants, you may as well have bought the real thing.
I understand building PC's, but I do that because the hardware is plentiful, I can get everything at one place usually, and end up saving quite a bit of money in the long run.
If you want to build a Mac, order yourself a Dual 866 G4, have someone tear it apart and put it in boxes, and put it back together...
The Spiderman ride is fantastic. When you drop down, and get caught by the web you do feel like you're falling. By far, that is the best VR type ride I've been on.
They've really done some amazing things with those rides since the first few came out like the Star Wars ride at MGM, and Back to the Future at Universal. They do enough with them to overwhelm your senses so that you don't realize that the G forces are not sustained.
Before discounting them and saying there's no way it's as good as a real coaster, you have to try the new generation out. Simply amazing.
Hmmm, I wonder what the overall maintainence cost of 500 PC's vs. 1 IBM mainframe unit. You're talking hundreds of drives, hundreds of case fans, hundreds of potential problems, versus one contained unit that has a far longer expected life than a standard PC. In addition you have storage space. A mainframe unit is the size of a couple server racks. Cabling, switching hardware, power all figure in as well.
And then there's maintaining backup enviroments. Do you have another 500 units located accross the country in case of a disaster? You have got to account for failures other than the occasional hardware downtime. Fires, hurricanes, tornados, cut lines, all these must be accounted for if you want to be safe.
Clustering is interesting technology, but for replacing mission critical apps out there, it just won't work. There's far too many points of failure with the hardware to worry about. And the processing and I/O a mainframe is capable of is simply mindboggling. It's not like they are stagnating while PC's continue to improve.