Beta - An old and now discontinued form of helical scan tape that was intended for the comsumer market. It was discontinued in the 80's IIRC. It degraded faster than VHS and was generally less reliable, but YMMV.
There are still versions of Beta used today. Betacam SP is in widespread use in the Television industry. This is much better quality than Beta of the 80's. Betacam tape moves really fast through the recording heads, recording only 30 minutes on a tape. The version that was geared to the home user was betamax. I think betacam blank tapes cost about 50 bucks.
There is also a move these days to Betacam Digital. Haven't actually seen this one in action, though.
I have worked with Betacam SP tapes on numerous occasions, however. The quality of Betacam is excellent, for an analog format. I own DVD's which look far worse than some of the Betacam masters that I have worked with.
No. 8mm videocams use 8mm or Super8 or Hi8 (I think they are all the same?)
I forget the size of the tape in the Beta format. I don't think beta cameras were ever really marketed to the end user. They are mostly used in video production, indie films and the like. The going rate for a betacam camera (not to be confused with betamax) in Canada is currently around $20,000, and probably used at that. Definately not something being sold at Circuit City.
I doubt Circuit City ever sold any flavour of Beta. In fact, I doubt that a Circuit City employee even knows what Beta, Betamax or Betacam are. Of course, beta machines are hardly for the home user these days.
And yes, I do realise you were trying to be funny.
Do you think that if humans go out into space there will suddenly become more noble creatures? They will be the same humans that we have here on earth, and act the same way. You must be a fan of Star Trek, where it appears that they have found a way to rip testosterone from males and whatever makes women so bitchy and catty.
Somebody mod this up. This is one of the most insightful comments I have read on Slashdot in a long time. Damn shame my mod points ran out yesterday!
If the only alternative is to give those powers to governments - which are prone to things like the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges, the U.S. genocide of American Indian nations, the rape of Nanking, etcetera - the U.N. might be the lesser of evils.
I note that you don't cite with any examples for the US which are less than a century and a half old. Might this not tell us something?
It tells me that somebody doesn't know his recent history. How about segregation in the 50's and 60's? How about Kent State?
I want to be paid millions of dollars a year for having sex with many beautiful women. Is there any way I could do this?
Sorry, U.S. President only pays $200,000, and promiscuous sex was made illegal in 1998.
Are you saying that Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Hilary Clinton, et al counts as beautiful women? That is just plain wrong, and quite frankly a little disturbing.
because I said it will work and they can have my ass on a platter if it doesn't.(exact words in the regional board meeting)
Geez, your ass must be worth some major moolah, then. Corporation out possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales if your so-called Linux solution fails, and all they get is your ass on a platter?
The currency is not that important really, the fact remains that, according to you, "a" GF4 costs nearly twice as much as a Nintendo GameCube is BS. The list price for the GC is 250 USD, the list price for a GF4 Ti4200 is 200 USD, list prices for (crappy) GF4 MX cards are way lower.
OK, seeing as I'm really bored at work right now, I will prove that you are very wrong.
My original point is still very valid. At least in Canada, a Nintendo GameCube is almost half the price of a card which isn't even NVIDIA's top of line model.
"A" GeForce 4 doesn't cost $399. The fastest cards available might cost that much, but the models that most people buy retail for about $200. You're spreading FUD.
How dare you refer to Canadian currency as FUD. Perhaps I should have qualified it. $200 US = ~320 CDN + tax = $399. FUD my ass!
But your games will be two years behind unless you throw the console away and buy another. With a PC you can upgrade by component
Unfortunately, the cost of upgrading each component to the next generation is usually the same as the console itself. For example, a GeForce 4 would cost me $399 whereas a GameCube only costs $249.
Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it
on
lowercase music
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Frank Zappa did something quite similar with is bands: he would use hand signals to change a performance of a piece and make a rock song into a reggae song or a jazzier piece or what-have-you
Zappa also did something which I think is almost the opposite of this lowercase stuff. Ever heard Weasels Ripped My Flesh? Great stuff...
I wasn't as bad as she was, she had to sit for about 20 mins to regain her composure. I was definitly not stable on my feet and seemed confused mentally, very strange.
This happened to me last time I was at the local amusement park. I realized that it was due to the joint I had smoked in the parking lot!
You DO realize that you can generally get your private pilot license for around $4000, leaving you with $4000 left over to rent time in a real airplane?".
Yes, but the cost of lessons is only a small part of the licensing process. You need probably close to a thousand hours of flight time before you are officially a licensed pilot. Factor in travelling time to the airport, time away from the family, etc. Not exactly feasible to many. Those hours are most certainly worth more than $4000.
I think the concept of playing every player in a sports game is cool but in some situations it just won't work. Like with American Football.
I notice that nobody has mentioned the one sport where this would work just fine. Hockey. Even if a player is injured, penalized, or benched, it wouldn't matter. Each human player simply locks on to a position, rather than an actual player. I would leave the goalies as AI, but I suppose if somebody wanted to be the goalie they could.
There were no less than four football titles for the Xbox last year.
That is fine for you Americans who happen to love a boring game such as NFL football, but will those games sell in the rest of the world, too?
If I recall the days of the Genesis, there were cricket games, rugby, soccer(football) and of course, hockey. All games that don't sell well in the United States. How many football games are needed?
Of all of their customers 95% of them probably used the service as expected. A little email here, a little web surfing there. Download the occasional mp3 and keep it connected all the time. Its the remaining 5% that created all the problems. And we know who they are.
You should get a job with Rogers Cablesystems. They refer to this evil 5% as "Bandwidth Hogs", and used it as the excuse to lean towards bandwidth caps. I am sure they could use a few more people to explain it to the masses...
I certainly have, and if you paid attention to the plot, you'd realize that most of the impossible stunts take place inside The Matrix itself, not the real world. The fight scenes would be akin to playing a video game, and so not subject to the rules of science. None of the spectacular stunts take place in the real world.
Name one thing (THING) that Bill Gates coded himself, that wasn't stolen or bought from somewhere else.
I remember reading about his first software venture. Fire in the Valley talked about something he made called Traf-o-Data. One of those little devices to measure traffic on a road. Apparently he couldn't make any money off of it in the States, so he sold the whole thing to some local government in Brazil. I am pretty sure he coded that one on his own.
but I've heard that the dry desert air plays some funny optical illusion tricks with your eyes and makes distances look much shorter than they actually are, tricking people into walking much more than they normally would
I suspect the free drinks inside the casinos have a lot to do with this too.
Slashdot Mirror
Beta - An old and now discontinued form of helical scan tape that was intended for the comsumer market. It was discontinued in the 80's IIRC. It degraded faster than VHS and was generally less reliable, but YMMV.
There are still versions of Beta used today. Betacam SP is in widespread use in the Television industry. This is much better quality than Beta of the 80's. Betacam tape moves really fast through the recording heads, recording only 30 minutes on a tape. The version that was geared to the home user was betamax. I think betacam blank tapes cost about 50 bucks.
There is also a move these days to Betacam Digital. Haven't actually seen this one in action, though.
I have worked with Betacam SP tapes on numerous occasions, however. The quality of Betacam is excellent, for an analog format. I own DVD's which look far worse than some of the Betacam masters that I have worked with.
but aren't 8mm vidoecams Beta?
No. 8mm videocams use 8mm or Super8 or Hi8 (I think they are all the same?)
I forget the size of the tape in the Beta format. I don't think beta cameras were ever really marketed to the end user. They are mostly used in video production, indie films and the like. The going rate for a betacam camera (not to be confused with betamax) in Canada is currently around $20,000, and probably used at that. Definately not something being sold at Circuit City.
But I can still buy Beta, right?
I doubt Circuit City ever sold any flavour of Beta. In fact, I doubt that a Circuit City employee even knows what Beta, Betamax or Betacam are. Of course, beta machines are hardly for the home user these days.
And yes, I do realise you were trying to be funny.
It's still standard journalistic practice to define any acronym the first time it's used in an article.
/.?
And you expect such rules to be followed on
Is it possible that MC Hammer has some sort of rights to the name "Hammer", and AMD is simply avoiding a potential lawsuit?
Although, I suppose we should be happy to not have to see AMD commercials on TV with Can't Touch This playing in the background.
Do you think that if humans go out into space there will suddenly become more noble creatures? They will be the same humans that we have here on earth, and act the same way. You must be a fan of Star Trek, where it appears that they have found a way to rip testosterone from males and whatever makes women so bitchy and catty.
Somebody mod this up. This is one of the most insightful comments I have read on Slashdot in a long time. Damn shame my mod points ran out yesterday!
If the only alternative is to give those powers to governments - which are prone to things like the Holocaust, the Stalinist purges, the U.S. genocide of American Indian nations, the rape of Nanking, etcetera - the U.N. might be the lesser of evils.
I note that you don't cite with any examples for the US which are less than a century and a half old. Might this not tell us something?
It tells me that somebody doesn't know his recent history. How about segregation in the 50's and 60's? How about Kent State?
I want to be paid millions of dollars a year for having sex with many beautiful women. Is there any way I could do this?
Sorry, U.S. President only pays $200,000, and promiscuous sex was made illegal in 1998.
Are you saying that Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Hilary Clinton, et al counts as beautiful women? That is just plain wrong, and quite frankly a little disturbing.
because I said it will work and they can have my ass on a platter if it doesn't.(exact words in the regional board meeting)
Geez, your ass must be worth some major moolah, then. Corporation out possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales if your so-called Linux solution fails, and all they get is your ass on a platter?
The currency is not that important really, the fact remains that, according to you, "a" GF4 costs nearly twice as much as a Nintendo GameCube is BS. The list price for the GC is 250 USD, the list price for a GF4 Ti4200 is 200 USD, list prices for (crappy) GF4 MX cards are way lower.
OK, seeing as I'm really bored at work right now, I will prove that you are very wrong.
GeForce 4 - Ti4400
Game Cube
My original point is still very valid. At least in Canada, a Nintendo GameCube is almost half the price of a card which isn't even NVIDIA's top of line model.
"A" GeForce 4 doesn't cost $399. The fastest cards available might cost that much, but the models that most people buy retail for about $200. You're spreading FUD.
How dare you refer to Canadian currency as FUD. Perhaps I should have qualified it. $200 US = ~320 CDN + tax = $399. FUD my ass!
But your games will be two years behind unless you throw the console away and buy another. With a PC you can upgrade by component
Unfortunately, the cost of upgrading each component to the next generation is usually the same as the console itself. For example, a GeForce 4 would cost me $399 whereas a GameCube only costs $249.
Frank Zappa did something quite similar with is bands: he would use hand signals to change a performance of a piece and make a rock song into a reggae song or a jazzier piece or what-have-you
Zappa also did something which I think is almost the opposite of this lowercase stuff. Ever heard Weasels Ripped My Flesh? Great stuff...
I wasn't as bad as she was, she had to sit for about 20 mins to regain her composure. I was definitly not stable on my feet and seemed confused mentally, very strange.
This happened to me last time I was at the local amusement park. I realized that it was due to the joint I had smoked in the parking lot!
You DO realize that you can generally get your private pilot license for around $4000, leaving you with $4000 left over to rent time in a real airplane?".
Yes, but the cost of lessons is only a small part of the licensing process. You need probably close to a thousand hours of flight time before you are officially a licensed pilot. Factor in travelling time to the airport, time away from the family, etc. Not exactly feasible to many. Those hours are most certainly worth more than $4000.
I think the concept of playing every player in a sports game is cool but in some situations it just won't work. Like with American Football.
I notice that nobody has mentioned the one sport where this would work just fine. Hockey. Even if a player is injured, penalized, or benched, it wouldn't matter. Each human player simply locks on to a position, rather than an actual player. I would leave the goalies as AI, but I suppose if somebody wanted to be the goalie they could.
There were no less than four football titles for the Xbox last year.
That is fine for you Americans who happen to love a boring game such as NFL football, but will those games sell in the rest of the world, too?
If I recall the days of the Genesis, there were cricket games, rugby, soccer(football) and of course, hockey. All games that don't sell well in the United States. How many football games are needed?
Imagine the airlines saying: "to make more money, we overbooked your flight, assuming that some of you would not show...
Obviously you've never flown Air Canada. Every flight I have been on in the last 6 months has been over-booked.
Of all of their customers 95% of them probably used the service as expected. A little email here, a little web surfing there. Download the occasional mp3 and keep it connected all the time. Its the remaining 5% that created all the problems. And we know who they are.
You should get a job with Rogers Cablesystems. They refer to this evil 5% as "Bandwidth Hogs", and used it as the excuse to lean towards bandwidth caps. I am sure they could use a few more people to explain it to the masses...
There's actually a few ways where you can make install files in win2k & XP, and no one has to be there.
I can think of an even easier one. Norton Ghost.
anybody here ever see The Matrix?
I certainly have, and if you paid attention to the plot, you'd realize that most of the impossible stunts take place inside The Matrix itself, not the real world. The fight scenes would be akin to playing a video game, and so not subject to the rules of science. None of the spectacular stunts take place in the real world.
Name one thing (THING) that Bill Gates coded himself, that wasn't stolen or bought from somewhere else.
I remember reading about his first software venture. Fire in the Valley talked about something he made called Traf-o-Data. One of those little devices to measure traffic on a road. Apparently he couldn't make any money off of it in the States, so he sold the whole thing to some local government in Brazil. I am pretty sure he coded that one on his own.
but I've heard that the dry desert air plays some funny optical illusion tricks with your eyes and makes distances look much shorter than they actually are, tricking people into walking much more than they normally would
I suspect the free drinks inside the casinos have a lot to do with this too.
I hope they have a bar on the train so I don't have to sneak a flask onboard.
I thought in Vegas you didn't have to sneak around with the flask. You can do it in the open. What a civilized town.
When I wanted to drink on the subway we used to buy the half-litre bottles of coke and mix rum with it.
At the time we didn't think anybody would even know. Now when I see others doing it, I realize how bloody obvious it actually is.
I wouldn't want an insurance company seeing that I drive my Honda Civic at 90 mph at 2AM on saturday mornings.
Neither would I, because I am usually quite drunk at that point. Come to think of it, I wouldn't want the cops knowing either...