Shrug, the DVD box I purchased has two DVDs in it -- the original 1983 version and the "enhanced" 2003 version. Said so very clearly on the outside of the box or I never would've bought it -- not because it's such a massive change, but because it was an unnecessary change.
And, of course, anybody who will actually bother looking at the E.T. 20th Anniversary DVD will note that both the original, unaltered 1983 and the "enhanced" 2003 vesions are sold in the very same package.
I think the alteration in question (guns -> flashlights) is absurd as well, but talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.
Another thing to note -- if you aren't experienced in the game you have no way of knowing if someone is using a cheat or not. Even if you're good it can be hard to tell.
I'm a decent FPS player (on public servers I usually rank in the top 2-3%; good enough to get accused of cheating from time to time), but I have a friend that can beat the crap out of me. To the point that I won't ever get a kill unless he goofs around. And I know he's not cheating -- he's just that much better than me.
If you're not familiar with the game then you're not going to be able to tell if you just died to some l33t script kiddie that is using an autoaim hack or to someone that just knows how to play.
Even if you only play 1/2 hour a day you'll get better (unless you just have no tendancy towards being able to play well), but you're going to spend a lot of time just dieing at the start. It simply takes awhile to learn the feel of the game -- what weapons work well where, how to navigate certain maps, etc. It's just like anything else.
Note that the product in question hasn't bothered with getting any independant certification of claims (by, oh say, AHAM) and is currently suing Consumer Reports over alleged improper testing practices. It might be worth noting that Consumer Reports has never lost or settled a lawsuit regarding its testing procedures.
because FireFox lacks the wonderful Mozilla ability to simply type text into the URL bar, hit the up key and then enter, and run a Google search
Which I find immensely inferior to Firefox's Quick Searches. You can create fake bookmarks that have some smarts to them, namely take the rest of the address terms and use it as a query on a search engine. I think the default google search is something like "gg" (or maybe "google" -- I dunno, I changed it long ago to "g") so you just go to the address bar and type "g some_search_terms" and it googles for you. Or type "webster some_word" and it runs a dictionary search on Webster online. There's also a stock ticker search that's default, and it's easy to add more. And, as another poster noted, just typing in some terms will run an "I feel lucky" search (as long as the terms don't look URL-ish).
One of the major reasons I switched from Mozilla to Fire*/Thunderbird was that Mozilla stupidly kept querying your mailbox for new messages -- even after you'd closed the Mail app. As long as you had even one browser open you couldn't make it stop doing so, and I simply didn't want it to do so. Of course, it wouldn't do so until you'd run the mail app the first time after starting any of the suite components. That's really inconsistent behavior and poor design.
Today, you can buy fade resistant inks for such printers.
Which actually aren't. They'll resist UV fading somewhat, but are still very vulnerable to effects of gasses and other environmental effects. If you read the docs on any of these papers carefully you'll see that they still recommend placing them under glass (real glass, not a composite) for maximum life.
If that pro had been asked to provide a 11"x17" print he wouldn't have been able to. Much less something larger. Which is where the big money is for a lot of pros -- particularly wedding photographers.
Now, imagine explaining to the the bride's mother why the stripes in the pictures are there. Ugh. HP broke their printers intentionally, and it will come back and bite them in strange and wonderful ways.
Now, imagine a world where professional photographers print on $200 inkjet printers... go ahead... and now shoot yourself because everyone in this world is abysmally stupid.
Please. Professional photographers don't print crap on these cheapo printers. They use much, much higher end stuff that's completely different and probably doesn't bear the HP logo anywhere. And if it does? And it causes problems? You take it to a colleague or another print house that uses some other printer that doesn't do this. It's not like HP is reaching out and corrupting your negatives or your original digital captures. Please.
The upshot is that on the deeply unlikely chance that this ever did occur (did you even read the part of the article that said not all of the suggestions were implemented?), you'd get the job done, call HP, complain, and explain that you'll never be purchasing their products again. If this somehow becomes a major issue (which I doubt) then HP will learn the hard way that it was a bad choice.
And you know what, when friends or family call for help with a medical or computer related question, I don't mind answering because they are my FREAKING friends and family.
And I have no problem answering a programming (pref. C/C++ or shell under Unix, I'll do perl/python too), database (pref. Oracle, can do Sybase/MS SQL Server as well) or PC hardware question. Thing is, when you call me about why you can't print I don't have a bloody clue because I'm not support.
If I was to come and ask you a medical question outside of your field of expertise (yes, I've worked at a hospital with nurses; my mom was a RN as well. While a lot of nursing is generalized, there are still specializations between different segments) then you might be able to give me a suggestion on what to do, but if I need specific advise then you'd probably tell me to go see a doctor. Or do you often diagnose cancer symptoms via phone, along with home remedies? That's essentially what's being asked of me when I get some esoteric Windows problem.
It's a hell of a lot easier for everyone involved to point at people who are supposed to do this kind of thing.
I don't want to diagnose friends' and family's computers. I am not tech support. Some of my family is technical enough that I'm not worried about making recommendations on BYOC, or even beige box shops, but most of them will get referred to Dell, Gateway, etc.
My mom's a perfect example of this. When she retired and moved back to her hometown (~1500 people about 40 minutes away from Souix Falls, SD) she wanted a computer so she could email her friends and family, do business related stuff (she opened a B&B because she's always wanted to run one), and so forth. It was a no brainer. Gateway is HQ'd 40 minutes away from her. If she ever had any problems she could express her frustration in person. To the freaking CEO if she was persistent enough.
Heck of a lot better than calling me and my trying to diagnose what the problem is from 1200 miles away.
Pretty much, yeah... unfortunate too, since they were such good chips.
For gaming? What, you need 64bit color and 64bit sound?
No, for content creation -- textures, maps, etc. You can't reasonably address >4GB with a 32-bit chip (yes, you can do it. No, it's not fast) and we're reapidly approaching that limit in content creation.
And while 24-bits of color may be adequate, you need more precision than that when doing blends and other operations. Of course, those are largely done by the GPU nowadays, so that's a non-issue as far as the CPU is concerned.
So what if you can linearly address 4TB? A 1 or 2 GB machine is top of the line these days so far as desktop boxes go. The barrier is mainly price, not the addressing capabilities of the CPU.
Actually you can linearly address 256 TB with the current AMD64 chips (48-bit addressing) and 16 exabytes with true 64-bit addressing. That's quibbling though.
The main advantage of a 64-bit CPU (or at least one with direct addressing of >32-bit) is that you can directly map permanent storage to memory. Right now trying to do that is a freaking nightmare and very expensive, since we've long outgrown 4GB of disk space.
And, really, that's not even the main advantage of x86-64. The real advantage is compiling 32-bit code to be aware of x86-64's extra registers, which can lead to a considerable speed up with no other changes.
As far as all the kids running out to spend their allowance on AMD64 chips, that's just them trying to fit in and show how computer savvy they are.
Yeah, by and large. My next PC will probably be x86-64 based though. Why? Because it's not that expensive. You can get a Athlon64 3000+ for just over $200 now. That's only a little more than an AthlonXP 3200+ or a little less than a P4 3.0C. If you're looking in that price range, then why not go for it? You'll get roughly the same price/performance in 32-bit and be able to upgrade to 64-bit when the time comes. If you don't need that kind of performance, that's fine -- save your money. But otherwise it's kinda silly to ignore the potential advantages offered.
Yeah, from YOUR phone number. Thanks to ANI, they know exactly who you are, even if your unit's serial number isn't sent in the data. Tada. Your data is not anonymous.
And what's to say that any of the data on the ANI record is the same as any of the data for your TiVo account? TiVo does not have your phone number unless you gave it to them of your own free will.
Not to mention that a rather large number of people don't use dial-up for updates anyway, but get it over broadband. No ANI there.
Did you know that Tivo tracks not only what shows you watch, but exaclty what parts of shows you replay or skip over?
Yup.
Now, I know it's *supposed* to be anonymous.
And if you read the posts by people who have investigated this it is anonymous. The data that contains key presses, show info, etc. is sent without any identifying information whatsoever. TiVo has further stated that the data is stored in completely separate databases that have no interfacing between one another.
And you can always call them and opt-out entirely if you want. It's been confirmed that when you do so the data is never sent at all. (Which would make it very difficult to track)
But can you (or Tivo) guarentee that they will *never* be bought out be someone less ethical?
Nope. And if that happens then we'll simply have to see if they change the privacy policy, and what changes are made.
Can you guarentee that Tivo won't get a new CEO who decides selling your viewing habits to direct mail advertisers is more lucrative?
Won't happen unless they're bought out -- which is the only way the privacy policy can change in such a drastic manner.
The paranoia over viewing habits is really quite amazing. I really don't care that much, particularly since it's anonymized. Shrug.
An HTPC does a LOT more than a TiVo for only a LITTLE more in cost.
That is, if you value your free time at $0.
Yes, I can build a HTPC that does everything you said, and more, for only a bit more than a TiVo, but will it be as reliable? Will it be as user friendly (and not just to me! If my wife can't use it then it's worthless. If my visiting relatives/friends can't use it then it decreases in value somewhat)? How much time will I have to spend tweaking it? All just so that I can have it do everything?
For some people this isn't an issue, because that's what they want to spend their free time on. Odds are they don't also do their own housework (both cleaning and repairing/improving), vehicle maintainence, etc. -- everyone picks and chooses what to spend their time and money on. This is no different.
And can you even get HD satellite tuners for your PC? Seriously.
For one thing, it ignores deinterlacing needed for HDTV
Which isn't needed by the vast majority of people. The only people who need deinterlacing/scaling are people with older front projection systems that don't have an integrated scaler. All current HD sets have one, and usually a good one from Faroudja or Sage at that.
Given, if you don't have one you can save some serious bucks by using dScalar. It's a great piece of software -- I remember it being compared favorably to the $30k scalers back when it was first released in beta form.
The perpetual issue with a HTPC is that while, yes, you can migrate a bunch of stuff into a single box, you trade off usability. And given how unusable most home theater setups are already, that's saying something. You also have to spend a good bit of time tinkering with it, nearly perpetually, and that's something a lot of people (geeks included) just don't want to deal with. Sometimes I enjoy tinkering, but a lot of the time I just want it to work because I'd prefer to spend time tinkering else (or just freaking relax!). Most importantly, when my wife wants to use it I damn well want it to work.
Shrug. That's how it used to be, but letters have dramatically fallen in importance since 9/11 and the anthrax letters.
Here's a question for you -- just how much importance is being placed on letters, handwritten or otherwise, right now?
Answer? A ton. Unfortunately, it's not by anyone in your representative's office. Every single letter to both the House and Senate is being intercepted and checked for ricin. Sure, the staffers will eventually get (most of) them back, but that may be several days or weeks from now.
Additionally email has become more widespread in usage in the last few years. You can't just assume that it's some 12 year old now. Form letters are, as always, trash.
I'm sure a telegram to a Senator might get more attention than a letter and certainly more than an email.
And I'm sure you're wrong.
Email is the way to get your feelings to your representative (house or senate). Ever since the anthrax mailings in 2001 mail has been deprecated since it has to go through a ton of security checks both in the mail room and by staff when opening. And while you may think that your email will just get lost in all of the others, why do you think snail mail is any different? Do you have any idea how much mail a rep gets on a daily basis? Consider how quick and easy it is to go through email as compared to snail mail as well (you have to open the envelope, etc -- all of that's done by some low level flunky, sure, but it still takes more time), not to mention that most email is far more readable than hand-written snail mail.
Ok, yeah, a telegram will probably get a bit more notice, but unless it has good content then it'll go the same place most of the mail and email goes -- the circular file.
No. The board is flipped from ATX -- if you even tried you'd end up with all of your slots toward the front of the case and the AGP slot at the bottom, not the top.
BTX means a new case, motherboard, and PS (the latter is optional -- initial BTX PS's will be identical or very similar, but they'll eventually morph into different shapes, possibly with different mounting holes and cables).
When was the last time you bought a case or MB anyway? Virtually all cases have removable back panels and the MB comes with its own insert -- because no two motherboards have the same back panel layouts nowadays.
Depends on which package you get. You can pay up front for the box ($200+) or you can get the box for "free" and pay $5/month. Choose your poison.
As for TiVo graphics/sound -- you can turn off the sound you know. Can't do anything about the graphics, but this is also the first time I've ever heard someone complain about them. Shrug. To each their own.
I presume that you've never owned a TiVo before then.
I'll admit -- I've never owned the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 DVR (which is what the Comcast and TW boxes actually are), but there's a couple of good pages to read about the differences and just how feature poor the cable PVRs are.
Want a quick summary? Very poor searching, amazingly poor recording management, poor conflict resolution, barely adequate playback controls, and crappy live tv support. Oh, and it's less stable to boot.
The only upside is that the hardware is usually free and has a low monthly cost. That's great, except that Dish has a free PVR as well, and DirecTV with TiVo is only $99. Both have a monthly fee, but it's pretty much the same as the cable ones (and with DirecTV it's waived w/ the top of the line package). Oh, and that fee is once per household, not once per unit -- at least for sat.
And, of course, the signal quality is better over sat than it is from cable -- particularly for the analog channels (usually anything under 100, sometimes anything under 80, depends on your cable carrier).
Personally, I switched from my cable company (Charter) to DirecTV last October. My picture quality went up, I added about a dozen channels, and my monthly charge went down. Even with the forthcoming DirecTV price increases (all of $3 for me -- I can't think of a cable hike that was that little) I'll be paying less for more. Oh, and unlike cable, my TV doesn't go out randomly or with any really severe storm.
one full-time guy to constantly replace the failed disks with new ones
And this is why they don't. Tape is vastly more reliable than HDs are, particularly when you're talking about this much data. As long as you don't need realtime (or even near realtime) access to the data then tape is the better choice. Even with that much data a robotic tape server can serve you the data from any one tape with only a few seconds of access time plus however long it takes to spool the tape. Probably under 5 minutes for any given data segment.
BTW, if you want a more accurate cost analysis, you have to go RAID. That'll jack your prices up considerably, and now large segments of your array will be down at any given time in order to restore the continuously failing drives.
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Shrug, the DVD box I purchased has two DVDs in it -- the original 1983 version and the "enhanced" 2003 version. Said so very clearly on the outside of the box or I never would've bought it -- not because it's such a massive change, but because it was an unnecessary change.
And, of course, anybody who will actually bother looking at the E.T. 20th Anniversary DVD will note that both the original, unaltered 1983 and the "enhanced" 2003 vesions are sold in the very same package.
I think the alteration in question (guns -> flashlights) is absurd as well, but talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.
Another thing to note -- if you aren't experienced in the game you have no way of knowing if someone is using a cheat or not. Even if you're good it can be hard to tell.
I'm a decent FPS player (on public servers I usually rank in the top 2-3%; good enough to get accused of cheating from time to time), but I have a friend that can beat the crap out of me. To the point that I won't ever get a kill unless he goofs around. And I know he's not cheating -- he's just that much better than me.
If you're not familiar with the game then you're not going to be able to tell if you just died to some l33t script kiddie that is using an autoaim hack or to someone that just knows how to play.
Even if you only play 1/2 hour a day you'll get better (unless you just have no tendancy towards being able to play well), but you're going to spend a lot of time just dieing at the start. It simply takes awhile to learn the feel of the game -- what weapons work well where, how to navigate certain maps, etc. It's just like anything else.
Oops. Right you are.
Odd... I thought Quick Searches were one of the things listed as a feature for Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox. Guess not.
at best a warning to shut of indoor air ionizers whose output of ozone can lead to concentrations in excess those present of ambient pollution levels
Heh. Talk about a rock and a hard place.
Either your product doesn't do anything at all or it causes cancer, or maybe just other health risks (hint - read "The Buzz").
Note that the product in question hasn't bothered with getting any independant certification of claims (by, oh say, AHAM) and is currently suing Consumer Reports over alleged improper testing practices. It might be worth noting that Consumer Reports has never lost or settled a lawsuit regarding its testing procedures.
because FireFox lacks the wonderful Mozilla ability to simply type text into the URL bar, hit the up key and then enter, and run a Google search
Which I find immensely inferior to Firefox's Quick Searches. You can create fake bookmarks that have some smarts to them, namely take the rest of the address terms and use it as a query on a search engine. I think the default google search is something like "gg" (or maybe "google" -- I dunno, I changed it long ago to "g") so you just go to the address bar and type "g some_search_terms" and it googles for you. Or type "webster some_word" and it runs a dictionary search on Webster online. There's also a stock ticker search that's default, and it's easy to add more. And, as another poster noted, just typing in some terms will run an "I feel lucky" search (as long as the terms don't look URL-ish).
One of the major reasons I switched from Mozilla to Fire*/Thunderbird was that Mozilla stupidly kept querying your mailbox for new messages -- even after you'd closed the Mail app. As long as you had even one browser open you couldn't make it stop doing so, and I simply didn't want it to do so. Of course, it wouldn't do so until you'd run the mail app the first time after starting any of the suite components. That's really inconsistent behavior and poor design.
Today, you can buy fade resistant inks for such printers.
Which actually aren't. They'll resist UV fading somewhat, but are still very vulnerable to effects of gasses and other environmental effects. If you read the docs on any of these papers carefully you'll see that they still recommend placing them under glass (real glass, not a composite) for maximum life.
If that pro had been asked to provide a 11"x17" print he wouldn't have been able to. Much less something larger. Which is where the big money is for a lot of pros -- particularly wedding photographers.
Now, imagine explaining to the the bride's mother why the stripes in the pictures are there. Ugh. HP broke their printers intentionally, and it will come back and bite them in strange and wonderful ways.
Now, imagine a world where professional photographers print on $200 inkjet printers... go ahead... and now shoot yourself because everyone in this world is abysmally stupid.
Please. Professional photographers don't print crap on these cheapo printers. They use much, much higher end stuff that's completely different and probably doesn't bear the HP logo anywhere. And if it does? And it causes problems? You take it to a colleague or another print house that uses some other printer that doesn't do this. It's not like HP is reaching out and corrupting your negatives or your original digital captures. Please.
The upshot is that on the deeply unlikely chance that this ever did occur (did you even read the part of the article that said not all of the suggestions were implemented?), you'd get the job done, call HP, complain, and explain that you'll never be purchasing their products again. If this somehow becomes a major issue (which I doubt) then HP will learn the hard way that it was a bad choice.
Don't like it? Vote with your pocketbook.
20 years as an ER nurse?
Wow. I'm impressed. Seriously. I know of very few nurses, doctors, or anyone else who can take that kind of stress for anywhere that long.
Bravo -- keep up the good work. And ignore the lamer ACs.
And you know what, when friends or family call for help with a medical or computer related question, I don't mind answering because they are my FREAKING friends and family.
And I have no problem answering a programming (pref. C/C++ or shell under Unix, I'll do perl/python too), database (pref. Oracle, can do Sybase/MS SQL Server as well) or PC hardware question. Thing is, when you call me about why you can't print I don't have a bloody clue because I'm not support.
If I was to come and ask you a medical question outside of your field of expertise (yes, I've worked at a hospital with nurses; my mom was a RN as well. While a lot of nursing is generalized, there are still specializations between different segments) then you might be able to give me a suggestion on what to do, but if I need specific advise then you'd probably tell me to go see a doctor. Or do you often diagnose cancer symptoms via phone, along with home remedies? That's essentially what's being asked of me when I get some esoteric Windows problem.
It's a hell of a lot easier for everyone involved to point at people who are supposed to do this kind of thing.
The extra registers have nothing to do with the fact the system is 64bit
Which has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.
I stated that the advantage of x86-64 is the additional registers. I said nothing about other architectures.
Agreed, a thousand times over.
I don't want to diagnose friends' and family's computers. I am not tech support. Some of my family is technical enough that I'm not worried about making recommendations on BYOC, or even beige box shops, but most of them will get referred to Dell, Gateway, etc.
My mom's a perfect example of this. When she retired and moved back to her hometown (~1500 people about 40 minutes away from Souix Falls, SD) she wanted a computer so she could email her friends and family, do business related stuff (she opened a B&B because she's always wanted to run one), and so forth. It was a no brainer. Gateway is HQ'd 40 minutes away from her. If she ever had any problems she could express her frustration in person. To the freaking CEO if she was persistent enough.
Heck of a lot better than calling me and my trying to diagnose what the problem is from 1200 miles away.
There is this thing called NAT... and there are entire apartment and homeowner communities that use it...
Oh, nevermind. Put your tinfoil hat back on.
Does everyone forget the DEC Alphas?
Pretty much, yeah... unfortunate too, since they were such good chips.
For gaming? What, you need 64bit color and 64bit sound?
No, for content creation -- textures, maps, etc. You can't reasonably address >4GB with a 32-bit chip (yes, you can do it. No, it's not fast) and we're reapidly approaching that limit in content creation.
And while 24-bits of color may be adequate, you need more precision than that when doing blends and other operations. Of course, those are largely done by the GPU nowadays, so that's a non-issue as far as the CPU is concerned.
So what if you can linearly address 4TB? A 1 or 2 GB machine is top of the line these days so far as desktop boxes go. The barrier is mainly price, not the addressing capabilities of the CPU.
Actually you can linearly address 256 TB with the current AMD64 chips (48-bit addressing) and 16 exabytes with true 64-bit addressing. That's quibbling though.
The main advantage of a 64-bit CPU (or at least one with direct addressing of >32-bit) is that you can directly map permanent storage to memory. Right now trying to do that is a freaking nightmare and very expensive, since we've long outgrown 4GB of disk space.
And, really, that's not even the main advantage of x86-64. The real advantage is compiling 32-bit code to be aware of x86-64's extra registers, which can lead to a considerable speed up with no other changes.
As far as all the kids running out to spend their allowance on AMD64 chips, that's just them trying to fit in and show how computer savvy they are.
Yeah, by and large. My next PC will probably be x86-64 based though. Why? Because it's not that expensive. You can get a Athlon64 3000+ for just over $200 now. That's only a little more than an AthlonXP 3200+ or a little less than a P4 3.0C. If you're looking in that price range, then why not go for it? You'll get roughly the same price/performance in 32-bit and be able to upgrade to 64-bit when the time comes. If you don't need that kind of performance, that's fine -- save your money. But otherwise it's kinda silly to ignore the potential advantages offered.
Yeah, from YOUR phone number. Thanks to ANI, they know exactly who you are, even if your unit's serial number isn't sent in the data. Tada. Your data is not anonymous.
And what's to say that any of the data on the ANI record is the same as any of the data for your TiVo account? TiVo does not have your phone number unless you gave it to them of your own free will.
Not to mention that a rather large number of people don't use dial-up for updates anyway, but get it over broadband. No ANI there.
Did you know that Tivo tracks not only what shows you watch, but exaclty what parts of shows you replay or skip over?
Yup.
Now, I know it's *supposed* to be anonymous.
And if you read the posts by people who have investigated this it is anonymous. The data that contains key presses, show info, etc. is sent without any identifying information whatsoever. TiVo has further stated that the data is stored in completely separate databases that have no interfacing between one another.
And you can always call them and opt-out entirely if you want. It's been confirmed that when you do so the data is never sent at all. (Which would make it very difficult to track)
But can you (or Tivo) guarentee that they will *never* be bought out be someone less ethical?
Nope. And if that happens then we'll simply have to see if they change the privacy policy, and what changes are made.
Can you guarentee that Tivo won't get a new CEO who decides selling your viewing habits to direct mail advertisers is more lucrative?
Won't happen unless they're bought out -- which is the only way the privacy policy can change in such a drastic manner.
The paranoia over viewing habits is really quite amazing. I really don't care that much, particularly since it's anonymized. Shrug.
An HTPC does a LOT more than a TiVo for only a LITTLE more in cost.
That is, if you value your free time at $0.
Yes, I can build a HTPC that does everything you said, and more, for only a bit more than a TiVo, but will it be as reliable? Will it be as user friendly (and not just to me! If my wife can't use it then it's worthless. If my visiting relatives/friends can't use it then it decreases in value somewhat)? How much time will I have to spend tweaking it? All just so that I can have it do everything?
For some people this isn't an issue, because that's what they want to spend their free time on. Odds are they don't also do their own housework (both cleaning and repairing/improving), vehicle maintainence, etc. -- everyone picks and chooses what to spend their time and money on. This is no different.
And can you even get HD satellite tuners for your PC? Seriously.
For one thing, it ignores deinterlacing needed for HDTV
Which isn't needed by the vast majority of people. The only people who need deinterlacing/scaling are people with older front projection systems that don't have an integrated scaler. All current HD sets have one, and usually a good one from Faroudja or Sage at that.
Given, if you don't have one you can save some serious bucks by using dScalar. It's a great piece of software -- I remember it being compared favorably to the $30k scalers back when it was first released in beta form.
The perpetual issue with a HTPC is that while, yes, you can migrate a bunch of stuff into a single box, you trade off usability. And given how unusable most home theater setups are already, that's saying something. You also have to spend a good bit of time tinkering with it, nearly perpetually, and that's something a lot of people (geeks included) just don't want to deal with. Sometimes I enjoy tinkering, but a lot of the time I just want it to work because I'd prefer to spend time tinkering else (or just freaking relax!). Most importantly, when my wife wants to use it I damn well want it to work.
Shrug. That's how it used to be, but letters have dramatically fallen in importance since 9/11 and the anthrax letters.
Here's a question for you -- just how much importance is being placed on letters, handwritten or otherwise, right now?
Answer? A ton. Unfortunately, it's not by anyone in your representative's office. Every single letter to both the House and Senate is being intercepted and checked for ricin. Sure, the staffers will eventually get (most of) them back, but that may be several days or weeks from now.
Additionally email has become more widespread in usage in the last few years. You can't just assume that it's some 12 year old now. Form letters are, as always, trash.
I'm sure a telegram to a Senator might get more attention than a letter and certainly more than an email.
And I'm sure you're wrong.
Email is the way to get your feelings to your representative (house or senate). Ever since the anthrax mailings in 2001 mail has been deprecated since it has to go through a ton of security checks both in the mail room and by staff when opening. And while you may think that your email will just get lost in all of the others, why do you think snail mail is any different? Do you have any idea how much mail a rep gets on a daily basis? Consider how quick and easy it is to go through email as compared to snail mail as well (you have to open the envelope, etc -- all of that's done by some low level flunky, sure, but it still takes more time), not to mention that most email is far more readable than hand-written snail mail.
Ok, yeah, a telegram will probably get a bit more notice, but unless it has good content then it'll go the same place most of the mail and email goes -- the circular file.
Will I be able to use my case on an ATX board?
No. The board is flipped from ATX -- if you even tried you'd end up with all of your slots toward the front of the case and the AGP slot at the bottom, not the top.
BTX means a new case, motherboard, and PS (the latter is optional -- initial BTX PS's will be identical or very similar, but they'll eventually morph into different shapes, possibly with different mounting holes and cables).
When was the last time you bought a case or MB anyway? Virtually all cases have removable back panels and the MB comes with its own insert -- because no two motherboards have the same back panel layouts nowadays.
Depends on which package you get. You can pay up front for the box ($200+) or you can get the box for "free" and pay $5/month. Choose your poison.
As for TiVo graphics/sound -- you can turn off the sound you know. Can't do anything about the graphics, but this is also the first time I've ever heard someone complain about them. Shrug. To each their own.
and most features that you'd find in a Tivo.
I presume that you've never owned a TiVo before then.
I'll admit -- I've never owned the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 DVR (which is what the Comcast and TW boxes actually are), but there's a couple of good pages to read about the differences and just how feature poor the cable PVRs are.
Want a quick summary? Very poor searching, amazingly poor recording management, poor conflict resolution, barely adequate playback controls, and crappy live tv support. Oh, and it's less stable to boot.
The only upside is that the hardware is usually free and has a low monthly cost. That's great, except that Dish has a free PVR as well, and DirecTV with TiVo is only $99. Both have a monthly fee, but it's pretty much the same as the cable ones (and with DirecTV it's waived w/ the top of the line package). Oh, and that fee is once per household, not once per unit -- at least for sat.
And, of course, the signal quality is better over sat than it is from cable -- particularly for the analog channels (usually anything under 100, sometimes anything under 80, depends on your cable carrier).
Personally, I switched from my cable company (Charter) to DirecTV last October. My picture quality went up, I added about a dozen channels, and my monthly charge went down. Even with the forthcoming DirecTV price increases (all of $3 for me -- I can't think of a cable hike that was that little) I'll be paying less for more. Oh, and unlike cable, my TV doesn't go out randomly or with any really severe storm.
one full-time guy to constantly replace the failed disks with new ones
And this is why they don't. Tape is vastly more reliable than HDs are, particularly when you're talking about this much data. As long as you don't need realtime (or even near realtime) access to the data then tape is the better choice. Even with that much data a robotic tape server can serve you the data from any one tape with only a few seconds of access time plus however long it takes to spool the tape. Probably under 5 minutes for any given data segment.
BTW, if you want a more accurate cost analysis, you have to go RAID. That'll jack your prices up considerably, and now large segments of your array will be down at any given time in order to restore the continuously failing drives.
Argh... forgot to close the quote on the link.
Here is the link I was talking about.