Your orbital velocity is governed by the distance between the two bodies and the path of the orbit. If your current velocity is below the circular oribit velocity, you're on the outer side of an elliptical orbit (we'll assume that we're not considering parabolic or hyperbolic orbits at this point). If your velocity is greater than circular, then you're on the inner side. If you're only 100km up, and you've got less than orbital velocity (tangent), then your apoapse will be below the surface of the earth. This is better known as a ballistic trajectory, and usually results in a spectacular "landing".
You do get earth's tangential velocity, about 232 m/s, when you launch into an equitorial orbit from the equator, and less if you launch from the nothern or southern hemispheres. Of course, the velocity works against you if you launch in a retrograde orbit (which is why we generally don't, except for primarily polar orbits which don't get the boost anyway). Orbital velocities are measures in km/s (7-8km/s for LEO, iirc). GEO (geostationary)orbits are somewhere in the 1-1.5km/s range (okay, that may be off by a good deal...it seems slow to me).
Sorry if this is so vague - it's been over a decade since I even looked at this stuff, and two since I had undergrad astromechanics.
I know you're trying to be funny, but there is some issue with them. Many less-than techincal (and some techincal) people don't know which side to use. As odd as this may sound, it can be a bit non-obvious. On a DVD with two sides (say WS and PS) what should the hub label read if you want to play the WS version? Should it say "Widescreen" or "Pan & Scan"? Well, it depends on how the labeller felt. If you mark the widescreen side as widescreen, then the Pan & Scan label must be visible when you insert the disc in order to play the Widescreen version, and visa versa. If the labeller tried to outsmart you, then they'd label the Widescreen side Pan & Scan and the Pan & Scan side Widescreen, so that if you wanted to see the Widescreen Version, you'd put the disc in the player with the Widescreen label showing.
On an unrelated note, this appears to force the use of a single layer HD-DVD, which would tip the quality tables back towards BD. It also means that likely many first generation players will have problems with this disc, if they're so close to the link margin (is the term link margin even used in laser transmission applications?).
Well, I think we would have liked a bit more conjecture. I've posted above that I was disappointed in your answers, but given as legal advice they are indeed proper answers.
I guess I would have liked two answers to each question: the one you would have given to a client who had been sued by the RIAA, and the one you would give to an uninvolved client. Sometimes the things which should be legally defensible are not necessarily a guarantee that your side will prevail in court. Some more response involving what can and cannot be done with purchased music, based on written and case law, would have been enlightening. Clearly, the content providers want it both ways: you buy a physical object (which terminates your rights when it leaves your posession or becomes unusable), but you effectively have a severly limited license to the content. A run down of the legal support for format shifting, and the sharing aspects of the AHRA (taxed discs and such), would have been nice. Ex: Could his daugther have taken a copy to school if it were a taxed Music CD, or is that just for him to keep one copy at work and one copy at home, where it can only be listened to in one location at a time (that's what I learned copyright meant back in school).
I can't believe that someone asked what to do to not get sued by the RIAA, and that you actually had to answer that as a question (ans: don't share songs).
And I really dislike the answers, especially in the terse language, that this question received.
Fair use really does have a say in what can and cannot be done. The AHRA also does. The question is how does this legal mess get sorted out. Last I heard, anything that wasn't explicitly unlawful was lawful. The answers seem to take a different tack.
Okay, with that off my chest, let me say just a bit in defense of the lawyer:
He's taking the part of giving legal advice, not speculation. If you ask a lawyer what a law means, and then tell him you're likely to be involved in litigation concering the matter, you will get two completely different answers. There's a lot of grey between intent and letter of the law and how its interpreted in a court. As an engineer, I understand that. There are a lot of things in my field (buildings) which will "usually" work, but if you want me to guarantee that it will withstand (insert favorite natural disaster here), I'm going to show you something that's going to be far more complex than you're used to seeing.
When I entered engineering school, way back when this stuff (digital replication) was farily new, we got a 1 hour lecture on IP and copyright. It boiled down to this: You buy one copy, you can use one copy. Backing it up is okay. Installing it in multiple locations is okay, as long as only one instance can be used at a time. If you sell the original, you have to wipe the copies - you dont' own it any more. If you can't control the use of a copy, don't make that copy. It boiled down to "treat it like a book".
I still want to know if I download a song "unlawfully" and burn it to a taxed Music CD, then rip it back onto my hard drive, is that copy now legal? ARHA seems to imply so, as would buying a cd and making multiple copies for my immediate family and friends, as long as they were on a taxed Music CD.
That's a pretty small run in three years for something that is going to change the world. Even if it was only in the US, that would still be much less than 1/10000 penetration.
I'm not saying that he should or should not offer audio of his lecture for an additional fee, but for the price, it's a steal.
Let's say he records the lecture digitally (say, with his ipod he already owned) so that he has to do minimal post processing of the lecture, and the initial investment in equipment is near-zero. Now, if he were to screen the content and make minor edits to clean up the file, you might expect him to spend 30 minutes on a 1.5 hour lecture. I'm assuming he's pretty efficient here, as the last time I recorded a book to CD for my daugter, it took about 20 minutes to combine and clean a book that finished at 7 minutes of audio (I Wish That I Had Duck Feet, if you must know). So 30 minutes to quick-review and prep, another 5 to upload. If he gets 80% of the cost of the product after processing fees and such, that's $2/purchase. Now, if you had to hire a professor at rack rates, you'd be looking at about $150-$350/hr, depending on the purpose (research vs expert witness) and the efficiency of the school's financial system (many have well over 200% overhead).
So for a typical lecture, this guy would would need to sell $200/hr x 35 min / $2 = 58 copies to break even on a "fee for service" basis. Maybe he's got some big lecture classes, but most classes above the freshman or sophomore level rarely have that many students total. I'd say, aside from the ehtical issues, $2.50 is a bargain.
I know I shouldn't admit to this, because the fool on the other end of the phone is probably scraping out $7 an hour and just wants his 8 hours of misery to be over, but here's my favorite:
I was called by a nice sounding female telemarketer for somthing or other (this was long before the DNC registry), and I decided to have some fun. I listed to part of the pitch and was genial with her as I found my wife's plant watering pitcher, which usually has water in it. I then walked to the bathroom, noisily lifted the toilet seat, and slowly poured about a quart of water into the bowl. Wanting to go for realism, I added a couple start/stops at the end. Then I flushed. She had already paused once or twice at this point. At the final pause, I thanked the woman for her call, but mentioned that I wasn't interested.
on what you're surfing for, and who will be looking at your records in the future. Anon surfing might be a good idea for anyone who ever expects to go into politics, for example.
Sorry, I was referring to the total number of channels. I'm guessing most people will have the four networks plus PBS. Most stations near me are broadcasting 3 (maybe 4) total channels including subchannels. That's 15-20 in a normal market. Add in the WBs and PAX and other locals, and you can see where 20-25 is likely. Most of them are worth shit, but that's pretty much true of the cable/dtv basic options as well.
Also, locally (to me): "Consumers will be able to lease the cards directly from Adelphia for approximately $1.75 per month."
So presuming I got cable, I'm looking at $3.50/mo+$12.95+$6.95= $23.50/mo.
Sure, if I buy right now, I'll be out $800 for the DVR, but if I'd bought a DTV HD Tivo when it came out, I'd have shelled out $1000. I suspect the box price will drop to $500, and they'll include some programming with that, but the end of next summer. And I can wait for that.
Early adopters always pay the engineering bills. Once the inital investment is paid off, the rest of us get the harware at just above commodity prices. I think the demand exists. I also think the upgrade to CC2, when the possiblilty occurs, will be rapid. I don't mean that the existing units will be necessarily upgradable, but the newer boxes will be CC2 as soon as TiVo can get them out the door. I wouldn't be suprised, however, to see some sort of upgrade possible. The people buying the first units will likely be the same people craking the boxes to add space or install their own software.
Apparently DTV doesn't find it useful enough to have negotiated it into their cross licensing contract with TiVo. Suggestions is what my wife uses for everything, and quite honestly it may be the most amazing feature of the unit. Oh, sure, season passes get used for the kids stuff, and the series we watch. I'm not much of a wishlist guy, really, though my wife uses them a bit. Suggestions tends to find stuff off the beaten path we never would have known about, but which we end up really enjoying. It also helps a great deal with one-off specials. Again, I don't use them, but my wife's TiVo is trained so well that her suggestions folder tends to be 50-60% populated with stuff she really enjoys watching. In fact, the only reason we still have her TiVo (a stock 40 hour unit) is that it is trained and I can't transfer the training to my HR10-250.
The UI is fantastic overall, and the remote is the best bit of interface engineering I've come across in quite some time. Heck, I've got about 8 tivo remotes lying around the house so we don't have to carry them from room to room (my TiVos reside in my server closet, and are piped over UHF channels w/ IR repeaters at the TVs so we can watch either TiVo in any room). I'm not willing to take a step backward.
- Dual ATSC tuners? Check. (they're not enabled yet, but the hardware's there)
Excellent. I hope the software upgrade to enable them get's more funding that the TiVo software did. I still don't have folders on my HR10-250. Or T2Go. Or Networking. Or TiVoWeb. Or MP3s. Or...
- 300GB SATA HD? check.
And this is better than a 250GB stock, or the ability to hack in a 500GB drive easily?
- External SATA jack for external storage space? check.
Is it active out of the box?
- Ethernet port for high-speed internet VOD? check.
And service is available now? It's going to be free with my DTV sub right?
- Exclusive interactive features not found on any TiVo? check.
Interactive? Well, if I can get my local wx broadcast that might be good. Again, all free, right?
- MPEG4 decoding (for up to 50 hours of HD from MPEG4 sources)? check.
Again, a 500GB drive buys me 50 hours. My HR10-250 is hacked, so I download my content to offline storage and burn season DVDs of what I like. Do you offer that on your box? If so, sign me up now - I'll decommission the SD TiVo my wife is using and put the new box on.
- DirecTV's HD and DVR fees are per-household, so you can keep the HR10-250 around in another room, deactivate an old SD receiver, and your bill stays the same.
You mean like dropping DTV and using the S3 to watch 25 (give or take) local broadcast channels for the $12.95/mo TiVo fee? Okay, I'm joking there. I have to have ESPN, especially now that ABC has dropped MNF. It's true that TiVo fees are per receiver, but if you get HD, you have to pay $10.95 for the HD package (all three worthwhile channels),plus the $5 DVR fee. That's more than the $12.95 TiVo fee. And every extra receiver is $5 for DTV vs $6.95 for TiVo's multi-box discount. If I'm dropping $80/mo on TV entertainment (and it pains me to admit that), an extra $2-4 to get the interface I really like is a worthwhile expenditure.
Really, I generally like DirecTV. The packages have what I like to watch. I had to drop NFLST because it just cost too damned much (close to $400 with the HD option), so that's no longer a factor keeping me with DTV. I switched from DTV to cable many years ago because I wanted local weather and the cost of local able was 1/2 what DTV cost. I switched from cable to DTV specifically because I could get the TiVo branded interface and add back NFLST, and kept it because I could get HD TiVo and hack the box to download all my shows for my personal archive. Now you're taking away the functionality I really like (which, admittedly, you han't intended to provide, you fair-use haters), removing the feature my wife likes the most (suggestions, which afaik you don't implement). I hate to say it, but you've essentially removed or out-priced all the things which really made DTV the choice. With the S3, I now have the ability to walk with few or no regrets.
I'll say it again - you're employer is on notice. It's just a matter of time (and price drop of the S3) before I jump, and the quicker you flip the M4 switch, the sooner I'll take the plunge.
I've been a DTV subscriber because of their TiVo service. I stayed DTV because I could get a HD model and get HD programming via DTV. Now DTV is planning to (eventually) get rid of my TiVo, and there is now a real competitor as I could get an HD TiVo with my local (evil) cable company.
You are on notice, DirecTV. I chose you over cable because (Adelphia) cable is (more) evil and I like my TiVo, and the multitude of hacks available. Now that you are charging me more, taking away my TiVo, and your TiVo has less funcationality than a real one, cable just may win out.
$800 is a chunk of change, but the price will come down eventually. I'd be happy in the $400 range if I ended up with real value in the end.
I'm not an astrophysicist either, but I like to read the articles on space. Go figure. (I used to play games, back when I didn't own a company or have a family. You can think of it as vicarious gaming.)
So we'll be lured in by the next solid, stable, safe NT3.5(1), and then have the rug pulled out from under us when the followon version comes out and all those safteys are scrapped for marketability.
Apples don't crash, or BSOD. It's corporate policy, dintchaknow. They merely need restarting periodically. Restarts don't count against the continuous running uptime on their logs.;-)
Yes, they'll need to switch to dual format asap to really lock in the consumer.
Blockbuster (And NetFlix) will beg to get these discs. It means 1/2 the normal inventory for them. They can't abandon DVD - too many instaled players, but they want all of your business so they'd have to have the HD version too. What a nightmare for inventory. Unless they have dual formats. Nobody wants to go back to the VHS/DVD dichotomy of a couple years ago. (And nobody wants VHS/Beta, either, so by choosing DVD/HD combos they kill both bad possibilties)
Slashdot Mirror
Your orbital velocity is governed by the distance between the two bodies and the path of the orbit. If your current velocity is below the circular oribit velocity, you're on the outer side of an elliptical orbit (we'll assume that we're not considering parabolic or hyperbolic orbits at this point). If your velocity is greater than circular, then you're on the inner side. If you're only 100km up, and you've got less than orbital velocity (tangent), then your apoapse will be below the surface of the earth. This is better known as a ballistic trajectory, and usually results in a spectacular "landing".
You do get earth's tangential velocity, about 232 m/s, when you launch into an equitorial orbit from the equator, and less if you launch from the nothern or southern hemispheres. Of course, the velocity works against you if you launch in a retrograde orbit (which is why we generally don't, except for primarily polar orbits which don't get the boost anyway). Orbital velocities are measures in km/s (7-8km/s for LEO, iirc). GEO (geostationary)orbits are somewhere in the 1-1.5km/s range (okay, that may be off by a good deal...it seems slow to me).
Sorry if this is so vague - it's been over a decade since I even looked at this stuff, and two since I had undergrad astromechanics.
I know you're trying to be funny, but there is some issue with them. Many less-than techincal (and some techincal) people don't know which side to use. As odd as this may sound, it can be a bit non-obvious. On a DVD with two sides (say WS and PS) what should the hub label read if you want to play the WS version? Should it say "Widescreen" or "Pan & Scan"? Well, it depends on how the labeller felt. If you mark the widescreen side as widescreen, then the Pan & Scan label must be visible when you insert the disc in order to play the Widescreen version, and visa versa. If the labeller tried to outsmart you, then they'd label the Widescreen side Pan & Scan and the Pan & Scan side Widescreen, so that if you wanted to see the Widescreen Version, you'd put the disc in the player with the Widescreen label showing.
On an unrelated note, this appears to force the use of a single layer HD-DVD, which would tip the quality tables back towards BD. It also means that likely many first generation players will have problems with this disc, if they're so close to the link margin (is the term link margin even used in laser transmission applications?).
Well, I think we would have liked a bit more conjecture. I've posted above that I was disappointed in your answers, but given as legal advice they are indeed proper answers.
I guess I would have liked two answers to each question: the one you would have given to a client who had been sued by the RIAA, and the one you would give to an uninvolved client. Sometimes the things which should be legally defensible are not necessarily a guarantee that your side will prevail in court. Some more response involving what can and cannot be done with purchased music, based on written and case law, would have been enlightening. Clearly, the content providers want it both ways: you buy a physical object (which terminates your rights when it leaves your posession or becomes unusable), but you effectively have a severly limited license to the content. A run down of the legal support for format shifting, and the sharing aspects of the AHRA (taxed discs and such), would have been nice. Ex: Could his daugther have taken a copy to school if it were a taxed Music CD, or is that just for him to keep one copy at work and one copy at home, where it can only be listened to in one location at a time (that's what I learned copyright meant back in school).
I can't believe that someone asked what to do to not get sued by the RIAA, and that you actually had to answer that as a question (ans: don't share songs).
And I really dislike the answers, especially in the terse language, that this question received.
Fair use really does have a say in what can and cannot be done. The AHRA also does. The question is how does this legal mess get sorted out. Last I heard, anything that wasn't explicitly unlawful was lawful. The answers seem to take a different tack.
Okay, with that off my chest, let me say just a bit in defense of the lawyer:
He's taking the part of giving legal advice, not speculation. If you ask a lawyer what a law means, and then tell him you're likely to be involved in litigation concering the matter, you will get two completely different answers. There's a lot of grey between intent and letter of the law and how its interpreted in a court. As an engineer, I understand that. There are a lot of things in my field (buildings) which will "usually" work, but if you want me to guarantee that it will withstand (insert favorite natural disaster here), I'm going to show you something that's going to be far more complex than you're used to seeing.
When I entered engineering school, way back when this stuff (digital replication) was farily new, we got a 1 hour lecture on IP and copyright. It boiled down to this: You buy one copy, you can use one copy. Backing it up is okay. Installing it in multiple locations is okay, as long as only one instance can be used at a time. If you sell the original, you have to wipe the copies - you dont' own it any more. If you can't control the use of a copy, don't make that copy. It boiled down to "treat it like a book".
I still want to know if I download a song "unlawfully" and burn it to a taxed Music CD, then rip it back onto my hard drive, is that copy now legal? ARHA seems to imply so, as would buying a cd and making multiple copies for my immediate family and friends, as long as they were on a taxed Music CD.
That's a pretty small run in three years for something that is going to change the world. Even if it was only in the US, that would still be much less than 1/10000 penetration.
I'm not saying that he should or should not offer audio of his lecture for an additional fee, but for the price, it's a steal.
Let's say he records the lecture digitally (say, with his ipod he already owned) so that he has to do minimal post processing of the lecture, and the initial investment in equipment is near-zero. Now, if he were to screen the content and make minor edits to clean up the file, you might expect him to spend 30 minutes on a 1.5 hour lecture. I'm assuming he's pretty efficient here, as the last time I recorded a book to CD for my daugter, it took about 20 minutes to combine and clean a book that finished at 7 minutes of audio (I Wish That I Had Duck Feet, if you must know). So 30 minutes to quick-review and prep, another 5 to upload. If he gets 80% of the cost of the product after processing fees and such, that's $2/purchase. Now, if you had to hire a professor at rack rates, you'd be looking at about $150-$350/hr, depending on the purpose (research vs expert witness) and the efficiency of the school's financial system (many have well over 200% overhead).
So for a typical lecture, this guy would would need to sell $200/hr x 35 min / $2 = 58 copies to break even on a "fee for service" basis. Maybe he's got some big lecture classes, but most classes above the freshman or sophomore level rarely have that many students total. I'd say, aside from the ehtical issues, $2.50 is a bargain.
I know I shouldn't admit to this, because the fool on the other end of the phone is probably scraping out $7 an hour and just wants his 8 hours of misery to be over, but here's my favorite:
I was called by a nice sounding female telemarketer for somthing or other (this was long before the DNC registry), and I decided to have some fun. I listed to part of the pitch and was genial with her as I found my wife's plant watering pitcher, which usually has water in it. I then walked to the bathroom, noisily lifted the toilet seat, and slowly poured about a quart of water into the bowl. Wanting to go for realism, I added a couple start/stops at the end. Then I flushed. She had already paused once or twice at this point. At the final pause, I thanked the woman for her call, but mentioned that I wasn't interested.
Odd statistic I picked up a few days ago. The chance of dying in a plane crash is about the same as dying during a 12 mile automobile trip.
on what you're surfing for, and who will be looking at your records in the future. Anon surfing might be a good idea for anyone who ever expects to go into politics, for example.
I'm sure they did. At 720x480 with 16bpp. Why would anyone need more resolution?
Sorry, I was referring to the total number of channels. I'm guessing most people will have the four networks plus PBS. Most stations near me are broadcasting 3 (maybe 4) total channels including subchannels. That's 15-20 in a normal market. Add in the WBs and PAX and other locals, and you can see where 20-25 is likely. Most of them are worth shit, but that's pretty much true of the cable/dtv basic options as well.
Also, locally (to me): "Consumers will be able to lease the cards directly from Adelphia for approximately $1.75 per month."
So presuming I got cable, I'm looking at $3.50/mo+$12.95+$6.95= $23.50/mo.
Sure, if I buy right now, I'll be out $800 for the DVR, but if I'd bought a DTV HD Tivo when it came out, I'd have shelled out $1000. I suspect the box price will drop to $500, and they'll include some programming with that, but the end of next summer. And I can wait for that.
Early adopters always pay the engineering bills. Once the inital investment is paid off, the rest of us get the harware at just above commodity prices. I think the demand exists. I also think the upgrade to CC2, when the possiblilty occurs, will be rapid. I don't mean that the existing units will be necessarily upgradable, but the newer boxes will be CC2 as soon as TiVo can get them out the door. I wouldn't be suprised, however, to see some sort of upgrade possible. The people buying the first units will likely be the same people craking the boxes to add space or install their own software.
they still want them as a customer.
You spelled "need" wrong.
DirecTV couldn't get the boxes out the door fast enough at $1000 a pop two years ago.
The "real" box will have a great deal more functionality than the stripped down DTV version (which _still_ doesn't even have folders).
$800 is steep. Expect that to be $500 with a year's programming by next summer.
Which neigborhoods in Montgomery County aren't rich and white?
Prince Georges "the armpit of MD" County, maybe, but not Montgomery.
Apparently DTV doesn't find it useful enough to have negotiated it into their cross licensing contract with TiVo. Suggestions is what my wife uses for everything, and quite honestly it may be the most amazing feature of the unit. Oh, sure, season passes get used for the kids stuff, and the series we watch. I'm not much of a wishlist guy, really, though my wife uses them a bit. Suggestions tends to find stuff off the beaten path we never would have known about, but which we end up really enjoying. It also helps a great deal with one-off specials. Again, I don't use them, but my wife's TiVo is trained so well that her suggestions folder tends to be 50-60% populated with stuff she really enjoys watching. In fact, the only reason we still have her TiVo (a stock 40 hour unit) is that it is trained and I can't transfer the training to my HR10-250.
The UI is fantastic overall, and the remote is the best bit of interface engineering I've come across in quite some time. Heck, I've got about 8 tivo remotes lying around the house so we don't have to carry them from room to room (my TiVos reside in my server closet, and are piped over UHF channels w/ IR repeaters at the TVs so we can watch either TiVo in any room). I'm not willing to take a step backward.
- Dual tuners? Check.
I wouldn't expect less
- Dual ATSC tuners? Check. (they're not enabled yet, but the hardware's there)
Excellent. I hope the software upgrade to enable them get's more funding that the TiVo software did. I still don't have folders on my HR10-250. Or T2Go. Or Networking. Or TiVoWeb. Or MP3s. Or...
- 300GB SATA HD? check.
And this is better than a 250GB stock, or the ability to hack in a 500GB drive easily?
- External SATA jack for external storage space? check.
Is it active out of the box?
- Ethernet port for high-speed internet VOD? check.
And service is available now? It's going to be free with my DTV sub right?
- Exclusive interactive features not found on any TiVo? check.
Interactive? Well, if I can get my local wx broadcast that might be good. Again, all free, right?
- MPEG4 decoding (for up to 50 hours of HD from MPEG4 sources)? check.
Again, a 500GB drive buys me 50 hours. My HR10-250 is hacked, so I download my content to offline storage and burn season DVDs of what I like. Do you offer that on your box? If so, sign me up now - I'll decommission the SD TiVo my wife is using and put the new box on.
- DirecTV's HD and DVR fees are per-household, so you can keep the HR10-250 around in another room, deactivate an old SD receiver, and your bill stays the same.
You mean like dropping DTV and using the S3 to watch 25 (give or take) local broadcast channels for the $12.95/mo TiVo fee? Okay, I'm joking there. I have to have ESPN, especially now that ABC has dropped MNF. It's true that TiVo fees are per receiver, but if you get HD, you have to pay $10.95 for the HD package (all three worthwhile channels),plus the $5 DVR fee. That's more than the $12.95 TiVo fee. And every extra receiver is $5 for DTV vs $6.95 for TiVo's multi-box discount. If I'm dropping $80/mo on TV entertainment (and it pains me to admit that), an extra $2-4 to get the interface I really like is a worthwhile expenditure.
Really, I generally like DirecTV. The packages have what I like to watch. I had to drop NFLST because it just cost too damned much (close to $400 with the HD option), so that's no longer a factor keeping me with DTV. I switched from DTV to cable many years ago because I wanted local weather and the cost of local able was 1/2 what DTV cost. I switched from cable to DTV specifically because I could get the TiVo branded interface and add back NFLST, and kept it because I could get HD TiVo and hack the box to download all my shows for my personal archive. Now you're taking away the functionality I really like (which, admittedly, you han't intended to provide, you fair-use haters), removing the feature my wife likes the most (suggestions, which afaik you don't implement). I hate to say it, but you've essentially removed or out-priced all the things which really made DTV the choice. With the S3, I now have the ability to walk with few or no regrets.
I'll say it again - you're employer is on notice. It's just a matter of time (and price drop of the S3) before I jump, and the quicker you flip the M4 switch, the sooner I'll take the plunge.
...with the included software package you got from Dell when you bought your $300 computer.
Don't feel bad, lots of people are perfectly happy with the base model.
Some of us just want more. This just the thing for those who do.
(Kind of odd really, me being a real fanboi over a CE item. I guess this must be what it feels like for Mac zealots.)
You now have somewhere to go when DirecTV turns off the Mpeg2 birds. ;-)
I've been a DTV subscriber because of their TiVo service. I stayed DTV because I could get a HD model and get HD programming via DTV. Now DTV is planning to (eventually) get rid of my TiVo, and there is now a real competitor as I could get an HD TiVo with my local (evil) cable company.
You are on notice, DirecTV. I chose you over cable because (Adelphia) cable is (more) evil and I like my TiVo, and the multitude of hacks available. Now that you are charging me more, taking away my TiVo, and your TiVo has less funcationality than a real one, cable just may win out.
$800 is a chunk of change, but the price will come down eventually. I'd be happy in the $400 range if I ended up with real value in the end.
Which open source, enterprise class OS would you have chosen back in 1985 to run your office with?
I'm not an astrophysicist either, but I like to read the articles on space. Go figure. (I used to play games, back when I didn't own a company or have a family. You can think of it as vicarious gaming.)
So we'll be lured in by the next solid, stable, safe NT3.5(1), and then have the rug pulled out from under us when the followon version comes out and all those safteys are scrapped for marketability.
Fool me one, shame on you...
Apples don't crash, or BSOD. It's corporate policy, dintchaknow. They merely need restarting periodically. Restarts don't count against the continuous running uptime on their logs.
Yes, they'll need to switch to dual format asap to really lock in the consumer.
Blockbuster (And NetFlix) will beg to get these discs. It means 1/2 the normal inventory for them. They can't abandon DVD - too many instaled players, but they want all of your business so they'd have to have the HD version too. What a nightmare for inventory. Unless they have dual formats. Nobody wants to go back to the VHS/DVD dichotomy of a couple years ago. (And nobody wants VHS/Beta, either, so by choosing DVD/HD combos they kill both bad possibilties)