Let's change this law. I think I DO own my hardware, no matter how many lobbyists some corp, or the entertainment industry has.
No kidding. I certainly didn't sign a lease agreement or anything like that. So the company owns the design, I don't think that means I shouldn't legally be able reconfigure the device to operate my christmas tree lights.
So a regionalized game is legal to buy, own and operate in Europe or Japan but is illegal to own and operate in the US? I understand that there's a quite lot of bootlegging out there, but this is all rediculous.
I usually don't go for vampire stuff and horror in general because they generally take laughable stuff too seriously. At least the Buffy show made some fun of it.
Sure, but it doesn't really do it significantly better than some of the more common RISC architectures (Sparc, Power, Alpha), and it's a lot more expensive.
Uh, Itanium 2's really aren't _that_ expensive, are they, at least compared to the lot you stated? I thought that an HP I2 workstation could be had for $8000, which isn't too bad for a 64 bit workstation. New Alphas certainly aren't cheap either, I have no idea about the latest Sparcs and Powers.
At least most of the 32 bit Intel chips ran 16 bit software faster than 16 bit chips. That isn't so much the case with 64 bit Intel chips, they run slower with 32 bit code than their 32 bit counterparts. The 64 bit code isn't too bad though, I think Itanium is the #2 performing 64 bit chip.
That isn't the first time it happened though, the Pentium Pro didn't run 16 bit code as well as the previous generation, I think they fixed that Pentium II and up. I think some proposals for 32 bit compatibility in future Itaniums meant having a PIII or P4 core on the die, but that's a bit much.
While Bush might not believe the global warming thing, he does have some renewable energy programs that don't seem to get a lot of press. Maybe not as many or as much spending as the previous administration (I haven't looked that part up) but they are there and apparently he does promote them.
I don't know if any of the replies to you have any of this:
I haven't used VMS or Tru64 on my Alphas, but NT 4 actually felt snappier than faster x86 style machines running same operating system.
I had a UDB and despite how turdish the box was, its UI still behaved sleeker than a PII running twice as fast.
I also have a 500MHz Personal Work Station and it was the most reliable computer I've ever used, and its UI behavior under NT 4 still toasted a 500MHz PIII Xeon with a _much_ newer video card.
Despite that, for total processing power, the x86 version was faster in part because they were much newer systems, they just didn't seem so quick off the line.
BTW: The NT4 CD also included PPC and MIPS versions of the OS. Scuttlebutt is that there were a few Apple Macintoshe models that could boot and run some version of Windows NT. If I knew which, I'd grab one and install it to really tweak a Mac fan.:)
Actually, using big-name people for dubbing has done poorly, sometimes even worse. A person that has done "live" acting for many years is said to end up being flat because they aren't used to using only their voice for acting, so they get conniptions or fall flat. The actors/actresses that get screen time because of their looks can't get by so well.
Generally a dub from original language is going to be substandard to the original anyway. Try playing the French or Spanish track on a movie that was originally done in English. I've done it several times with many movies and they just aren't the same.
Worse yet, a lot of cards by default won't let you use the overscan area on the s-video output, so if you have a small overscan margin, the picture is surrounded by a huge black border, and the image has some downscale blurring even on a 640x480 setting that I don't appreciate.
I understand that it is to make sure that the entire desktop fits a typical screen, I would like to have easy access to how it is set. I actually try to see as much of the actual video signal as I can so I've adjusted my overscan to about 1%.
Like the Cue:Cat logo (or however it is "spelled") it gets pretty darn annoying. It looks more like a marketer's wet dream than a science task force page.
For one, you are talking about _one_ distribution, and differing distributions go about setting their boot-up differently. One distribution not liking your computer does not mean that "Linux doesn't get along with your computer" - all it really means "Red Hat's verion of Linux doesn't get along with your computer".
I thought the "new fries" was mostly just a switch to vegetable oil, or did I miss something? Well, McDonald's did to a mickey with hint of meat flavor, which got them in trouble with some people from a plant-eaters religion.
Even I who don't watch many rips know that subtitles are customizable both in size and font.
Yep. Subtitle frames are actually four color run length limited encoded image files, so nearly any font that can be rendered to a picture file is possible, and can be placed anywhere on the screen.
One color is for transparent key, so you can see the picture under the subtitle picture. Usually there's a border on the font - for readability - have you ever tried to read white subs on a picture with lots of white? That leaves two text colors on the screen at a time, and some companies assign a color per person speaking so it is easier to trak who is saying what, so lines from two people can be seen on the screen at a time.
I too think that this site could very well be legit.
>>what is it about intelligence and the desire to blow things up?
>Lack of it?
Well, intelligence and common sense aren't always connected. Making these devices requires people with a lot of intelligence and posessing very little common sense.
Don't you need drivers for USB graphics tablets, scanners, digital cameras etc on the Mac?
I think Apple has already integrated most such drivers into OSX, because the public interface to many common devices is specified by the USB standard. Any good USB digital camera would show up as a hard drive. Tablets probably fall under the existing Human Interface Device spec. Scanners would fit too. I don't know about printers though, I imagine having a specific driver might allow you to use more features.
It is even easy to buy several specific development demo boards from Cypress Semiconductor (among other companies) that show how you can design and produce 100% USB compliant keyboards, mass storage and other devices.
The public interface for a lot of standard device types is specified by the spec, including the control, data and interrupt messages. If you comply with the USB Mouse specification, then the USB Mouse driver included with the OS will work with it. For OSX, Apple already made those drivers.
That way, you don't need a specific driver by Logitech for your specific mouse, as far as the OS is concerned, the basic functionality of the mouse is the same.
Oh, and search slashdot for 'Mac +Mouse' to read the 13'000 posts that describe how you can plug any 'normal' mouse into OS X and it'll work instantly...
That part is actually the beauty of the USB spec.
If you design a device to the spec, then it will work on any OS that implements drivers to that spec. So you shouldn't need special Mac drivers for USB speakers, drives, mice, keyboards if they were properly designed. I even had a Mac friend that wasn't sure how to hook up his computer to his new reciever that has a USB jack. I told him to just plug it in. And it worked. The maker didn't even include a CD, drivers or any of that crap.
Also, the right to sell products with the USB logo means that the company is required to have those products compatibility tested - which means any product with the USB logo is going to work, so you don't have to look up special hardware compatibility lists. The reason why computer standards didn't work as well in the past is because those standards didn't mandate compatibility tests.
Well, there are at least three media slot formats for cameras, interconnecting between ANY of them is going to be a pain no matter what you do. Compact Flash seems to be the most common format for cameras, the little SD format is most common for PDAs.
Besides, doesn't this CLIE unit serve as a multi-function device so you don't need to carry a separate PDA? I thought that bypasses the compatibility issue.
Really, the story really doesn't examine superiority, but it does raise a point in a vague way but unfortunately reaches too stiff of a conclusion, particularly the conclusion that the best is always what market chooses, or the market chooses what is the best.
I am uncomfortable with the idea of assigning "best" to the dominant player simply because it dominates sales, which the article seems to imply in ways, and that it really isn't any better of a way to evaluate how good something is. Is McDonald's the best at burgers simply because they have the highest sales? The only thing that McDonald's really did right was by hitting a happy medium of price, quality, speed and convenience.
What the article does get right is by showing a lot of reasons why a different product didn't do as well, and shows why being better doesn't mean you'll dominate. Does better marketing really make a better product? I don't think so, it really only improves sales.
There are lots of choices. Which choices make the best sense _depends_on_the_situation_. Sure, infrastructure and support matters. Sure, price matters. But there's usually a reason the competing, more expensive, less supported products still exist despite those obstacles: there is _still_ a market for it. The answer to the issue lies in what you plan to do with it.
Did VHS win? In the consumer market, yes, and probably overall production volume, yes. But the price and library concerns don't affect video professionals the same way. As you point out, Beta was the choice for a lot of TV stations. TV stations don't care whether rental stores had Beta copies of Vampire Vixens from Outer Space, because they generally don't use the decks that way.
Beta could have won the consumer market in the long term, but apparently there were too many valid reasons for it not to work out.
According to the article, Sony DID try to licence out BetaMax, and did get a few other companies on board.
Sony also licences out MiniDisc tech too. Just about every media company makes the blanks, and a lot of electronics companies made the players. Pioneer, Aiwa and other companies make or have made MD units, I've seen them for myself.
They also licenced out Memory Stick too, as a lot of other companies make and sell Memory Sticks and readers.
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Let's change this law. I think I DO own my hardware, no matter how many lobbyists some corp, or the entertainment industry has.
No kidding. I certainly didn't sign a lease agreement or anything like that. So the company owns the design, I don't think that means I shouldn't legally be able reconfigure the device to operate my christmas tree lights.
So a regionalized game is legal to buy, own and operate in Europe or Japan but is illegal to own and operate in the US? I understand that there's a quite lot of bootlegging out there, but this is all rediculous.
I usually don't go for vampire stuff and horror in general because they generally take laughable stuff too seriously. At least the Buffy show made some fun of it.
Sure, but it doesn't really do it significantly better than some of the more common RISC architectures (Sparc, Power, Alpha), and it's a lot more expensive.
Uh, Itanium 2's really aren't _that_ expensive, are they, at least compared to the lot you stated? I thought that an HP I2 workstation could be had for $8000, which isn't too bad for a 64 bit workstation. New Alphas certainly aren't cheap either, I have no idea about the latest Sparcs and Powers.
At least most of the 32 bit Intel chips ran 16 bit software faster than 16 bit chips. That isn't so much the case with 64 bit Intel chips, they run slower with 32 bit code than their 32 bit counterparts. The 64 bit code isn't too bad though, I think Itanium is the #2 performing 64 bit chip.
That isn't the first time it happened though, the Pentium Pro didn't run 16 bit code as well as the previous generation, I think they fixed that Pentium II and up. I think some proposals for 32 bit compatibility in future Itaniums meant having a PIII or P4 core on the die, but that's a bit much.
While Bush might not believe the global warming thing, he does have some renewable energy programs that don't seem to get a lot of press. Maybe not as many or as much spending as the previous administration (I haven't looked that part up) but they are there and apparently he does promote them.
I don't know if any of the replies to you have any of this:
:)
I haven't used VMS or Tru64 on my Alphas, but NT 4 actually felt snappier than faster x86 style machines running same operating system.
I had a UDB and despite how turdish the box was, its UI still behaved sleeker than a PII running twice as fast.
I also have a 500MHz Personal Work Station and it was the most reliable computer I've ever used, and its UI behavior under NT 4 still toasted a 500MHz PIII Xeon with a _much_ newer video card.
Despite that, for total processing power, the x86 version was faster in part because they were much newer systems, they just didn't seem so quick off the line.
BTW: The NT4 CD also included PPC and MIPS versions of the OS. Scuttlebutt is that there were a few Apple Macintoshe models that could boot and run some version of Windows NT. If I knew which, I'd grab one and install it to really tweak a Mac fan.
Actually, using big-name people for dubbing has done poorly, sometimes even worse. A person that has done "live" acting for many years is said to end up being flat because they aren't used to using only their voice for acting, so they get conniptions or fall flat. The actors/actresses that get screen time because of their looks can't get by so well.
Generally a dub from original language is going to be substandard to the original anyway. Try playing the French or Spanish track on a movie that was originally done in English. I've done it several times with many movies and they just aren't the same.
I think this might be the company that makes them, but I'm not sure.
t m
http://www.cvtinc.com/products/keyboards/menu.h
I think there is a clone of the OmniKey being sold, by Avant.
c adkey.com/webstore/soln/hardware/index .asp#keybrd
I can't find the manufacturer's site right now, but here are a couple a dealers:
http://www.boysprint.com/Avant.htm
http://www.
Worse yet, a lot of cards by default won't let you use the overscan area on the s-video output, so if you have a small overscan margin, the picture is surrounded by a huge black border, and the image has some downscale blurring even on a 640x480 setting that I don't appreciate.
I understand that it is to make sure that the entire desktop fits a typical screen, I would like to have easy access to how it is set. I actually try to see as much of the actual video signal as I can so I've adjusted my overscan to about 1%.
Like the Cue:Cat logo (or however it is "spelled") it gets pretty darn annoying. It looks more like a marketer's wet dream than a science task force page.
In this case, I don't think the 1U boxes are being used - as blade servers have computer cards that are smaller than what a 1/2 of a 1U slot.
These blades all fit maybe a dozen or more into a common blade chassis which the blade chassis itself is often rack mountable.
For one, you are talking about _one_ distribution, and differing distributions go about setting their boot-up differently. One distribution not liking your computer does not mean that "Linux doesn't get along with your computer" - all it really means "Red Hat's verion of Linux doesn't get along with your computer".
If you want something to stay unknown, put out a press release. If you want the news spread, divulge the information as a secret.
Or, create a high profile controversy about _nothing_ as a diversion and then quickly "dispose" of the truly troubling matter in relative obscurity.
I thought the "new fries" was mostly just a switch to vegetable oil, or did I miss something? Well, McDonald's did to a mickey with hint of meat flavor, which got them in trouble with some people from a plant-eaters religion.
Still, a fact of the matter is that this company is touting "military grade" security, but in some ways the milititary _is_ as insecure as DES. :)
At least there is a review on that firewire product that correctly points out that the encryption needs work.
Even I who don't watch many rips know that subtitles are customizable both in size and font.
Yep. Subtitle frames are actually four color run length limited encoded image files, so nearly any font that can be rendered to a picture file is possible, and can be placed anywhere on the screen.
One color is for transparent key, so you can see the picture under the subtitle picture. Usually there's a border on the font - for readability - have you ever tried to read white subs on a picture with lots of white? That leaves two text colors on the screen at a time, and some companies assign a color per person speaking so it is easier to trak who is saying what, so lines from two people can be seen on the screen at a time.
I too think that this site could very well be legit.
>>what is it about intelligence and the desire to blow things up?
>Lack of it?
Well, intelligence and common sense aren't always connected. Making these devices requires people with a lot of intelligence and posessing very little common sense.
Don't you need drivers for USB graphics tablets, scanners, digital cameras etc on the Mac?
I think Apple has already integrated most such drivers into OSX, because the public interface to many common devices is specified by the USB standard. Any good USB digital camera would show up as a hard drive. Tablets probably fall under the existing Human Interface Device spec. Scanners would fit too. I don't know about printers though, I imagine having a specific driver might allow you to use more features.
It is even easy to buy several specific development demo boards from Cypress Semiconductor (among other companies) that show how you can design and produce 100% USB compliant keyboards, mass storage and other devices.
The public interface for a lot of standard device types is specified by the spec, including the control, data and interrupt messages. If you comply with the USB Mouse specification, then the USB Mouse driver included with the OS will work with it. For OSX, Apple already made those drivers.
That way, you don't need a specific driver by Logitech for your specific mouse, as far as the OS is concerned, the basic functionality of the mouse is the same.
Oh, and search slashdot for 'Mac +Mouse' to read the 13'000 posts that describe how you can plug any 'normal' mouse into OS X and it'll work instantly...
That part is actually the beauty of the USB spec.
If you design a device to the spec, then it will work on any OS that implements drivers to that spec. So you shouldn't need special Mac drivers for USB speakers, drives, mice, keyboards if they were properly designed. I even had a Mac friend that wasn't sure how to hook up his computer to his new reciever that has a USB jack. I told him to just plug it in. And it worked. The maker didn't even include a CD, drivers or any of that crap.
Also, the right to sell products with the USB logo means that the company is required to have those products compatibility tested - which means any product with the USB logo is going to work, so you don't have to look up special hardware compatibility lists. The reason why computer standards didn't work as well in the past is because those standards didn't mandate compatibility tests.
I know USB has its downsides but it works.
Well, there are at least three media slot formats for cameras, interconnecting between ANY of them is going to be a pain no matter what you do. Compact Flash seems to be the most common format for cameras, the little SD format is most common for PDAs.
Besides, doesn't this CLIE unit serve as a multi-function device so you don't need to carry a separate PDA? I thought that bypasses the compatibility issue.
Not to mention having to fend off two groups of people: geek strangers lusting at your PDA, and shady strangers lusting after your wife.
Really, the story really doesn't examine superiority, but it does raise a point in a vague way but unfortunately reaches too stiff of a conclusion, particularly the conclusion that the best is always what market chooses, or the market chooses what is the best.
I am uncomfortable with the idea of assigning "best" to the dominant player simply because it dominates sales, which the article seems to imply in ways, and that it really isn't any better of a way to evaluate how good something is. Is McDonald's the best at burgers simply because they have the highest sales? The only thing that McDonald's really did right was by hitting a happy medium of price, quality, speed and convenience.
What the article does get right is by showing a lot of reasons why a different product didn't do as well, and shows why being better doesn't mean you'll dominate. Does better marketing really make a better product? I don't think so, it really only improves sales.
There are lots of choices. Which choices make the best sense _depends_on_the_situation_. Sure, infrastructure and support matters. Sure, price matters. But there's usually a reason the competing, more expensive, less supported products still exist despite those obstacles: there is _still_ a market for it. The answer to the issue lies in what you plan to do with it.
Did VHS win? In the consumer market, yes, and probably overall production volume, yes. But the price and library concerns don't affect video professionals the same way. As you point out, Beta was the choice for a lot of TV stations. TV stations don't care whether rental stores had Beta copies of Vampire Vixens from Outer Space, because they generally don't use the decks that way.
Beta could have won the consumer market in the long term, but apparently there were too many valid reasons for it not to work out.
According to the article, Sony DID try to licence out BetaMax, and did get a few other companies on board.
Sony also licences out MiniDisc tech too. Just about every media company makes the blanks, and a lot of electronics companies made the players. Pioneer, Aiwa and other companies make or have made MD units, I've seen them for myself.
They also licenced out Memory Stick too, as a lot of other companies make and sell Memory Sticks and readers.