The Mac OS X platform, at least, has a shareware offering (DV Backup) that lets you back up your hard drive to DV tapes using your camcorder and FireWire connection. Anyone know what the life expectancy of such a backup media might be?
LaserDisc didn't fail. It survived for many years and was still going strong right up until DVD format came along and pushed it aside.
I have never, ever been able to rent LaserDisc movies at the local rental store. I have only seen a player once in an electronics store. They weren't widespread. They certainly were not "going strong", at least not in the USA. They were expensive and inconvenient. Nine out of ten people on the street, if you asked them today, wouldn't even know what "LaserDisc" was, but I'll bet they could identify an audio cassette if you held it up.
Commercially, LaserDisc was a complete and utter failure in the face of VHS. Just because some people bought them doesn't make them a success.
Re:My C64 floppy could do that!
on
Scanjet Music
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· Score: 1
I had a tape drive on my PET2001, and the only way we could make music with it would be to record a BASIC program, then play the cassette in an audio tape player.
I hate to tell you this, but getting music out of a cassette tape could have been done much more easily than this.
When LaserDisc was introduced in 1978, they were GREAT. They were amazing. They could push right up against the limits of the NTSC standard. LD was really over-designed because very few people had TV sets good enough to show them off properly. DVD video is basically the same thing
Wrong, wrong, wrong. LaserDiscs probably could have succeeded, except they were the size of an LP record (and therefore much more unwieldy than a VHS tape) and needed to be flipped in order to finish the film. DVDs, on the other hand, can cram an entire movie and more besides on a single side using dual-layer technology, and it all fits into a disc you can easily manipulate with one hand.
LaserDisc was too much technology, not enough convenience. That's why it failed. VHS beat BetaMax for essentially the same reason, if you define "convenience" as "ability to get movies you want".
And unless either of these HD disc formats can improve on the convenience of DVDs, they'll fail too. You mentioned DVD Audio vs. SACD -- both new "hi-res audio" formats failed utterly in the face of entrenched, "good enough" CDs. Don't rule out the possibility of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray losing to the existing DVD standard.
Never underestimate the importance of convenience in the caplitalistic marketplace. The whole reason Man invented anything worth having was to make his life easier.
Timex was going to run a live advertisement that showcased the durability of their watches. They strapped the watch to a boat's propellor, spun it around a bit, then showed how it "takes a lick'n, and keeps on tick'n!"
I remember that ad, on a "bloopers" show. What happened in the tape I saw was that the watch fell off the propellor into the foamed-up water, and the announcer/demonstrator was unable to recover it before the commercial was supposed to end.
Major and minor Mac news sites like Macintouch and MacNN always have someone in the audience blogging the Apple presentation in real time. Lately Apple's been blocking wi-fi connections during the presentation, but you still get the information immediately after it's over.
I think this is a great idea. Right off the bat, there will be lots of Widgets available.
No, there won't. The headline is misleading. Read carefully:
...the upcoming KDE 4 will be able to run and display Dashboard widgets much in the same way that Mac OS X 10.4 can.... I'm planning to add full OSX Dashboard compatibility layer for Plasma....Basically, this means that a layer (similar in some ways to layers in Adobe Photoshop) in the KDE desktop could function the same way that Dashboard does in Mac OS X.
Furthermore, keep in mind that a not insignificant number of OS X widgets interact specifically with OS X apps like iTunes. Obviously, only internet-based widgets (like Google lookups) could be cross-platform.
But consider this: everything you see in this world is like that. It all gets projected onto our flat retinas. We just have really big brains. A 3D scene is constructed in our mind regardless of whether what we're viewing is on a flat computer monitor or in that nether-world known as real life. In fact, most brains do a decent job of scene construction even with one eye closed. From 2D to 3D. Impressive!
With journalism like that, I can't wait to read what novel and uniquely interesting insights he'll have on page 3 of 5....
The tech-novice maintains his innocence, and contends that he is a victim of a drive-by upload.
I admit I haven't seen "Coach Carter", and I'm not using hard numbers here, but I estimate that uploading an entire motion picture at any worthwhile quality would take at least six hours, maybe twelve. That's not a drive-by, that's your next-door neighbor using your bandwidth all day long.
Neither of those programs appear to do what pearLyrics was best at, which is searching for lyrics online and downloading it to your iTunes fields. All SingPod and Sing That iTune do is display the lyrics already stored in the song file.
Even worse, URLs stop working: the addressing information shown at the top of the browser no longer constitutes a complete specification of the information shown in the window.
I hate to state the obvious, but URLs have never really constituted a complete specification of the information shown. The big problem is that, unlike books, the Web is digital and dynamic -- what you read at a given URL today can be moved, edited, deleted, or p0wned by the time you get there tomorrow.
Ask any experienced high school literature or history teacher why they discourage students from using the Internet as an source for research papers, and this will be the big reason why.
I understand the core of his point, but I think it's time he acknowledges the reality that nothing on the World Wide Web is static these days--if it ever was.
I've downloaded episodes of "Lost" for viewing on my computer, since I don't own/can't afford a video iPod. I was pleased to see that I could watch it on my 17" monitor from several feet away on the couch and enjoy it -- the quality is comparable to a medium-quality home VHS recording. You could see the pixelation in, say, the stubble on Jack's chin, but printed text was completely legible.
Now, keep in mind that a 45-minute episode of "Lost" takes 10-20 minutes to download. You want twice the resolution, that's almost four times the data and would take an hour to download, if not longer. Most customers aren't going to want to download video if it takes longer than the episode itself to do so.
iTMS' current resolution for video is "good enough" for viewing at home and on a portable device. It does the job it was meant to do. If you want it higher than this, you're honestly better off spending the money on the DVD set or a good cable TV connection.
Been there, seen it. Interesting, but functionally useless, since the only real advantage to using Front Row is when you're relaxed on a futon several feet away using the remote control.
If you don't have a remote, you have to be at your keyboard and mouse anyway, and in that case why not use the standard interface which is faster and more controllable?
I'm not a Superman reader, but what little I've read ("Kingdom Come", a few others) showed me that Superman's story potential is based around his ability to do pretty much anything versus his unwavering willingness to do good and never let anybody die.
The best stories seem to be built around villains who can manipulate Superman's desire to protect everyone from harm--good, bad and bystander--while they do whatever else they want to do. Superman will torture himself looking for another way in order to avoid killing people, no matter how villainous they may be. It's a bit cliche, but it does make him vulnerable.
...I just tried playing a standard AVI file I got from my digital camera using the latest version of VLC. It promptly opened an oversized window that filled the screen, showed no video, and maxed out my processor until I was able to quit the thing.
Like Kehoe, Sabnis doesn't seem to consider the possibility that a problem can't be solved.
I love that one sentence. More than anything else, this one philosophy is what has led one person after another to change the world, even if it's just in the temporary-dye business.
It's set mostly in San Francisco in the 25th century, and there's a "Hendrix hotel" that's actually controlled by a self-aware AI inspired by its famous namesake.
I like the bit where Kovacs was told the AI hotels are actually programmed to crave guests the way animals and humans crave sex.
Which just goes to show that "ubiquitous computing" has a long way to go before it reaches the current state of cyberpunk fiction.
Is this like a subsection of the search engine, or an informal free webhosting service? I'm just not sure of what this is or why it's necessary.
The important details I'm getting from Google's own site are:
- You can post existing item types like Products, Recipes, Jobs, Want Ads, Vehicles, Reviews, Reference Articles, People Profiles, and more. Think of it as you're posting an entry with specific attributes (Product: Price, Quantity, Condition, Brand...) and keywords (anything you can think of), along with a description.
- When you search Google Base, you have the normal Google search interface, but you can also toggle specific keywords on and off with a single click. This is something that would be impractical in Google's normal web search, but can be done in a highly structured database.
- You can post anything you want (they screen out spam), but it's mostly text and no more than ten pictures--minimal multimedia. Bulk uploading is possible using RSS. Google becomes your free content host, but (again) you're limited by the highly structured types of data you can publish. So it's no replacement for a webpage-hosting service.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac OS X platform, at least, has a shareware offering (DV Backup) that lets you back up your hard drive to DV tapes using your camcorder and FireWire connection. Anyone know what the life expectancy of such a backup media might be?
LaserDisc didn't fail. It survived for many years and was still going strong right up until DVD format came along and pushed it aside.
I have never, ever been able to rent LaserDisc movies at the local rental store. I have only seen a player once in an electronics store. They weren't widespread. They certainly were not "going strong", at least not in the USA. They were expensive and inconvenient. Nine out of ten people on the street, if you asked them today, wouldn't even know what "LaserDisc" was, but I'll bet they could identify an audio cassette if you held it up.
Commercially, LaserDisc was a complete and utter failure in the face of VHS. Just because some people bought them doesn't make them a success.
I had a tape drive on my PET2001, and the only way we could make music with it would be to record a BASIC program, then play the cassette in an audio tape player.
I hate to tell you this, but getting music out of a cassette tape could have been done much more easily than this.
When LaserDisc was introduced in 1978, they were GREAT. They were amazing. They could push right up against the limits of the NTSC standard. LD was really over-designed because very few people had TV sets good enough to show them off properly. DVD video is basically the same thing
Wrong, wrong, wrong. LaserDiscs probably could have succeeded, except they were the size of an LP record (and therefore much more unwieldy than a VHS tape) and needed to be flipped in order to finish the film. DVDs, on the other hand, can cram an entire movie and more besides on a single side using dual-layer technology, and it all fits into a disc you can easily manipulate with one hand.
LaserDisc was too much technology, not enough convenience. That's why it failed. VHS beat BetaMax for essentially the same reason, if you define "convenience" as "ability to get movies you want".
And unless either of these HD disc formats can improve on the convenience of DVDs, they'll fail too. You mentioned DVD Audio vs. SACD -- both new "hi-res audio" formats failed utterly in the face of entrenched, "good enough" CDs. Don't rule out the possibility of both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray losing to the existing DVD standard.
Never underestimate the importance of convenience in the caplitalistic marketplace. The whole reason Man invented anything worth having was to make his life easier.
Timex was going to run a live advertisement that showcased the durability of their watches. They strapped the watch to a boat's propellor, spun it around a bit, then showed how it "takes a lick'n, and keeps on tick'n!"
I remember that ad, on a "bloopers" show. What happened in the tape I saw was that the watch fell off the propellor into the foamed-up water, and the announcer/demonstrator was unable to recover it before the commercial was supposed to end.
How will we know?
Major and minor Mac news sites like Macintouch and MacNN always have someone in the audience blogging the Apple presentation in real time. Lately Apple's been blocking wi-fi connections during the presentation, but you still get the information immediately after it's over.
No, there won't. The headline is misleading. Read carefully:Furthermore, keep in mind that a not insignificant number of OS X widgets interact specifically with OS X apps like iTunes. Obviously, only internet-based widgets (like Google lookups) could be cross-platform.
Why is it that, on this mysterious Skull Island, the only life forms that didn't evolve to gigantic proportions were the humans?
Maybe they just drank too much seawater out there on the perimeter, or something....
The tech-novice maintains his innocence, and contends that he is a victim of a drive-by upload.
I admit I haven't seen "Coach Carter", and I'm not using hard numbers here, but I estimate that uploading an entire motion picture at any worthwhile quality would take at least six hours, maybe twelve. That's not a drive-by, that's your next-door neighbor using your bandwidth all day long.
Rule 1. They lie. End users often tell you what they think yout wan to hear.
You ever watch House M.D.? Because you sound like him already.
Neither of those programs appear to do what pearLyrics was best at, which is searching for lyrics online and downloading it to your iTunes fields. All SingPod and Sing That iTune do is display the lyrics already stored in the song file.
Even worse, URLs stop working: the addressing information shown at the top of the browser no longer constitutes a complete specification of the information shown in the window.
I hate to state the obvious, but URLs have never really constituted a complete specification of the information shown. The big problem is that, unlike books, the Web is digital and dynamic -- what you read at a given URL today can be moved, edited, deleted, or p0wned by the time you get there tomorrow.
Ask any experienced high school literature or history teacher why they discourage students from using the Internet as an source for research papers, and this will be the big reason why.
I understand the core of his point, but I think it's time he acknowledges the reality that nothing on the World Wide Web is static these days--if it ever was.
I've downloaded episodes of "Lost" for viewing on my computer, since I don't own/can't afford a video iPod. I was pleased to see that I could watch it on my 17" monitor from several feet away on the couch and enjoy it -- the quality is comparable to a medium-quality home VHS recording. You could see the pixelation in, say, the stubble on Jack's chin, but printed text was completely legible.
Now, keep in mind that a 45-minute episode of "Lost" takes 10-20 minutes to download. You want twice the resolution, that's almost four times the data and would take an hour to download, if not longer. Most customers aren't going to want to download video if it takes longer than the episode itself to do so.
iTMS' current resolution for video is "good enough" for viewing at home and on a portable device. It does the job it was meant to do. If you want it higher than this, you're honestly better off spending the money on the DVD set or a good cable TV connection.
Been there, seen it. Interesting, but functionally useless, since the only real advantage to using Front Row is when you're relaxed on a futon several feet away using the remote control.
If you don't have a remote, you have to be at your keyboard and mouse anyway, and in that case why not use the standard interface which is faster and more controllable?
I'm not a Superman reader, but what little I've read ("Kingdom Come", a few others) showed me that Superman's story potential is based around his ability to do pretty much anything versus his unwavering willingness to do good and never let anybody die.
The best stories seem to be built around villains who can manipulate Superman's desire to protect everyone from harm--good, bad and bystander--while they do whatever else they want to do. Superman will torture himself looking for another way in order to avoid killing people, no matter how villainous they may be. It's a bit cliche, but it does make him vulnerable.
...I just tried playing a standard AVI file I got from my digital camera using the latest version of VLC. It promptly opened an oversized window that filled the screen, showed no video, and maxed out my processor until I was able to quit the thing.
Back to 0.8.3 for me, I guess....
I'm sure there are a lot of high-perf researchers on a shoestring
A lot of Xbox 360 power bricks, too.
Like Kehoe, Sabnis doesn't seem to consider the possibility that a problem can't be solved.
I love that one sentence. More than anything else, this one philosophy is what has led one person after another to change the world, even if it's just in the temporary-dye business.
Good for these guys.
Well, I hate naval gazing news
Yeah, staring at Naval vessels gets kind of boring unless you're really into that kind of thing.
Gazing at navels, on the other hand, I could do for hours....
It's set mostly in San Francisco in the 25th century, and there's a "Hendrix hotel" that's actually controlled by a self-aware AI inspired by its famous namesake.
I like the bit where Kovacs was told the AI hotels are actually programmed to crave guests the way animals and humans crave sex.
Which just goes to show that "ubiquitous computing" has a long way to go before it reaches the current state of cyberpunk fiction.
...but it is obvious that even the large readership of the slashdot community is either ill informed, indifferent, or uncertain about this issue.
Or maybe it's just because the essay's been Slashdotted.
Just look at the big external brick used to power it in the Anandtech article! Take something that big out of the casing and it's bound to be smaller.
Yep. What's your point? Apple did the same thing with the Mac mini, and it was a good idea then, too.
Is this like a subsection of the search engine, or an informal free webhosting service? I'm just not sure of what this is or why it's necessary.
The important details I'm getting from Google's own site are:
- You can post existing item types like Products, Recipes, Jobs, Want Ads, Vehicles, Reviews, Reference Articles, People Profiles, and more. Think of it as you're posting an entry with specific attributes (Product: Price, Quantity, Condition, Brand...) and keywords (anything you can think of), along with a description.
- When you search Google Base, you have the normal Google search interface, but you can also toggle specific keywords on and off with a single click. This is something that would be impractical in Google's normal web search, but can be done in a highly structured database.
- You can post anything you want (they screen out spam), but it's mostly text and no more than ten pictures--minimal multimedia. Bulk uploading is possible using RSS. Google becomes your free content host, but (again) you're limited by the highly structured types of data you can publish. So it's no replacement for a webpage-hosting service.
Problem is, the data is hosted exclusively by Google's servers. So, in fact, all your Base does belong to Google.