Sorry, I should have specified "quality" in terms of "audio feel BS" as opposed to measurable (on a scope) degradation of signal. As I said, if the cable is bad, you have bit loss, but nothing about an optical cable will make things sound "warm", "rich", "sparkly", or other stuff cable companies imply is a result of their magical improvements.
But jitter is a ADC/timing problem, not an optics problem. Unless the cable is somehow varying in length or composition(perhaps from heat) to cause the signal to arrive in between clocks and the ADC doesn't/can't correct for skew.
Generally, it is made of the exact same stuff - copper. That 100/ft cable is probably made at the same factory as the 3/ft cable. The 3/ft cable is maybe more likely to be.5 inches/ft short, but it is still just copper with insulation. Most of the cost is huge margins to the mfger & distributer, and maybe the retailer if it has a good contract.
If the mfger is a bit honest(or delusional), they might freeze the cables or perform some other voodoo, but anything sold in Best Buy was made in the same factory as the no-name cable.
As for the effects from optical audio cables, they're all lying sacks of shit. You either have bit loss or you don't, any changes in sound quality is a result of the AD/DA chips or speakers, not the cable.
I've seen a few people with what seems to be a similar thing but home-made. Take some fabric cut into the shape of your foot, coat one side with a flexible adhesive and then rub it in finely ground rubber. Repeat the applications of adhesive and rubber until you get desired thickness, then figure out a way to keep it on your foot. Or just take a pair of worn out moccasins and coat them.
This guy has a whole list of instructions(about halfway down), what kind of cement, etc.
He also assume that all those people would have pirated the game, had it been available. Some of us are impatient jerks that didn't have a Gamestop nearby.
I do know some people that have downloaded things and then bought them. It does happen but there is a huge amount of people that are just tight wads or think they deserve more entertainment than they can afford
.
You left off "can't buy it for any amount of money, because it wasn't available"
I bought Demigod as soon as they let me(not having a Gamestop). I played the pirated version until then. Similarly, an increasing number of games have region coding to prevent imports. When game makers knock that shit off, I'll not pirate any games at all.
While the demand curve is generally downward sloping, you will find that between about $1 to $20 it is upward sloping, excluding games for phones.
Next, pirated copies are not a perfect substitute, even ignoring multiplayer. A pirate copy generally cannot be patched until the patch is also cracked(which may never happen).
Also, pirated software increases the risk of virus/malware, as the majority of pirates are neither sufficiently careful nor close enough to the source, so must both risk the software being infected(somewhat unlikely) and infectious advertisements(extremely likely).
Lastly, you discount the possibility of buying the game after prices drop, which seems reasonable(haven't bought it months, why would one do so now), but you cannot make that assumption. The majority of people I know don't buy PC games until the first price drop, both because they are stingy and because they don't want to wait days or week for the patches to make their legitimately bought games work right.
Lately, they've been doing the same to console games as well. Quality control sure drops when you can fix it after release.
2 hemispheres made of rear-projector material, 2 projectors, 2 webcams, computer with dual video cards or one card with 2 ports.
Project a grid onto each hemisphere, use the webcams to distort the grid until it projects evenly across each hemisphere as viewed from inside(you'll lose some resolution at the edges).
Actually, the cost to maintain their network probably didn't go down. They probably just didn't maintain it and cut maintenance & repair crews, if the crappy S/N levels and response times my local TW has is anything to go by.
Morelike kids will do whatever is easiest to get messed up, which is why they do household inhalents, choke themselves, and sniff jenkem(fermented crap).
When I was in highschool, I made booze out of grapefruits. Nastiest stuff I've ever tasted, but bring it to a party and people would drink it because they couldn't get anything easier until they could drive across the border.
If someone came up with a safe, cheap oral/smokeable euphoriant/intoxicant that wore off quickly, they'd make a bundle.
I'm not assuming they are stupid. I can see them requiring anyone visiting Mexico to register their phones with immigration or the border authority before local towers will authenticate. That's reasonable.
It is erecting a large Tempest shield along the borders to prevent cell reception from outside the country that I find implausible, to say nothing of satphones.
Perhaps they can get the US to use a fine mesh chain fence instead of building a wall?
I believe the italian form of -age is -atico or -aggio, so it could be sabotatico or sabotaggio. Probably the latter.
-age is both a way to make a collective noun or to "something" related to the base word. E.G. foliage is a bunch of leafy stuff(foille+age), voyage is the thing that happens when you go somewhere(via-age)
Thus sabotage is "that action we have no word for that you do with noisy wooden shoes". If it had been german, it'd probably be "destroyMachineswithShoes"(zerstörenMaschinenmitSchuhen?)
Anyway, a linguist will be along shortly to rip me a new one.
Send an email offering clever moneymaking ideas for free, just send a stamped envelope(no need to self address it, you'll copy it off the outside envelope for them!) to your mailbox.
Take all the envelopes you get, use them for yourself(a bit of white-out on the pesky pre-addressed ones). These days, that a stamp and an envelope is worth even more.
Don't use postal mail much? Sell them as "conveniently pre-stamped envelopes" at the flea market for just the cost of a stamp. Why just for the cost of the stamp, asks a flea? You make it up in volume!
Note, mail fraud is insanely easy to prosecute as the USPS is the one delivering the evidence.
If bandwidth is such a significant cost compared to the cost of the physical cable, why is it that I pay the same for 6Mbps/768Kbps cable/dry dsl that I would pay for 10Mbps symmetric if I had line of site to my colo?
Does a local colo get better rates from their upstream connection that the phone or cable company does? Is there some hidden byte cost that consumer grade connection cost that business class doesn't? It sure isn't for decent phone staffing.
If there wasn't a bunch of concrete between me and the colo, I'd switch even if it cost double for the same speed. At least I'd get 2 or 3 nines of uptime, as opposed to the 96% cable co had last year(they've cut maintenance for the last 5 years running, I once got a truck based 3 hours away).
No, they are a company whose image has taken a big hit. They are currently hiring an entire marketing department which, in part, will "shape a messaging and brand strategy reflects today's dynamics and the firm's leadership role in helping to define it."
They went from being the largest bulge bracket firm to being a holding bank, lots of AIG's government money is going straight to them(with the attendant bad will), and a huge chunk of their growth in the last 2 years was from subprime derivatives.
Telex was a network used for telegraphy, wasn't it?
I suppose you could call a teletype that operated over phone lines a "Telex", but it'd be more of a misnomer than calling any copier a "Xerox". This one was used as a remote terminal to a computer, not a direct dial messaging device.
They have considerably less need to "get their name out in the mainstream media" than those scrappy little startups called McDonalds and Coca-Cola.
.
And yet they advertise, despite being one of the world's highest firms and consistantly outgrowing its competitors. True, it has never really used TV advertisments, but I still get print pieces and see newspaper ads for GS about new products(20+% of their revenue is from products that didn't exists last decade). Hell, they've been doing ads in COLOR for almost 10 years now:)
But GS recently posted losses for the first time ever. If they want to get back to profitability and avoid getting mired in this economy, they'll go looking for the next "20% of revenue" and they might need to go slumming in "the public" to do it.
Either that, or they've figured that the old adage "No press is bad press" might be true and that this is a hell of lot cheaper than a real advertising campaign.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I should have specified "quality" in terms of "audio feel BS" as opposed to measurable (on a scope) degradation of signal. As I said, if the cable is bad, you have bit loss, but nothing about an optical cable will make things sound "warm", "rich", "sparkly", or other stuff cable companies imply is a result of their magical improvements.
But jitter is a ADC/timing problem, not an optics problem. Unless the cable is somehow varying in length or composition(perhaps from heat) to cause the signal to arrive in between clocks and the ADC doesn't/can't correct for skew.
Generally, it is made of the exact same stuff - copper. That 100/ft cable is probably made at the same factory as the 3/ft cable. The 3/ft cable is maybe more likely to be .5 inches/ft short, but it is still just copper with insulation. Most of the cost is huge margins to the mfger & distributer, and maybe the retailer if it has a good contract.
If the mfger is a bit honest(or delusional), they might freeze the cables or perform some other voodoo, but anything sold in Best Buy was made in the same factory as the no-name cable.
As for the effects from optical audio cables, they're all lying sacks of shit. You either have bit loss or you don't, any changes in sound quality is a result of the AD/DA chips or speakers, not the cable.
I've seen a few people with what seems to be a similar thing but home-made. Take some fabric cut into the shape of your foot, coat one side with a flexible adhesive and then rub it in finely ground rubber. Repeat the applications of adhesive and rubber until you get desired thickness, then figure out a way to keep it on your foot. Or just take a pair of worn out moccasins and coat them.
This guy has a whole list of instructions(about halfway down), what kind of cement, etc.
He also assume that all those people would have pirated the game, had it been available. Some of us are impatient jerks that didn't have a Gamestop nearby.
.
You left off "can't buy it for any amount of money, because it wasn't available"
I bought Demigod as soon as they let me(not having a Gamestop). I played the pirated version until then. Similarly, an increasing number of games have region coding to prevent imports. When game makers knock that shit off, I'll not pirate any games at all.
While the demand curve is generally downward sloping, you will find that between about $1 to $20 it is upward sloping, excluding games for phones.
Next, pirated copies are not a perfect substitute, even ignoring multiplayer. A pirate copy generally cannot be patched until the patch is also cracked(which may never happen).
Also, pirated software increases the risk of virus/malware, as the majority of pirates are neither sufficiently careful nor close enough to the source, so must both risk the software being infected(somewhat unlikely) and infectious advertisements(extremely likely).
Lastly, you discount the possibility of buying the game after prices drop, which seems reasonable(haven't bought it months, why would one do so now), but you cannot make that assumption. The majority of people I know don't buy PC games until the first price drop, both because they are stingy and because they don't want to wait days or week for the patches to make their legitimately bought games work right.
Lately, they've been doing the same to console games as well. Quality control sure drops when you can fix it after release.
2 hemispheres made of rear-projector material, 2 projectors, 2 webcams, computer with dual video cards or one card with 2 ports.
Project a grid onto each hemisphere, use the webcams to distort the grid until it projects evenly across each hemisphere as viewed from inside(you'll lose some resolution at the edges).
Play quake until you vomit.
Actually, the cost to maintain their network probably didn't go down. They probably just didn't maintain it and cut maintenance & repair crews, if the crappy S/N levels and response times my local TW has is anything to go by.
So it is just two CAVEs stuck together? Yup, real advanced technology there.
I hope nobody tells them about head-mounted displays.
Morelike kids will do whatever is easiest to get messed up, which is why they do household inhalents, choke themselves, and sniff jenkem(fermented crap).
When I was in highschool, I made booze out of grapefruits. Nastiest stuff I've ever tasted, but bring it to a party and people would drink it because they couldn't get anything easier until they could drive across the border.
If someone came up with a safe, cheap oral/smokeable euphoriant/intoxicant that wore off quickly, they'd make a bundle.
I'm not assuming they are stupid. I can see them requiring anyone visiting Mexico to register their phones with immigration or the border authority before local towers will authenticate. That's reasonable.
It is erecting a large Tempest shield along the borders to prevent cell reception from outside the country that I find implausible, to say nothing of satphones.
Perhaps they can get the US to use a fine mesh chain fence instead of building a wall?
I believe the italian form of -age is -atico or -aggio, so it could be sabotatico or sabotaggio. Probably the latter.
-age is both a way to make a collective noun or to "something" related to the base word. E.G. foliage is a bunch of leafy stuff(foille+age), voyage is the thing that happens when you go somewhere(via-age)
Thus sabotage is "that action we have no word for that you do with noisy wooden shoes". If it had been german, it'd probably be "destroyMachineswithShoes"(zerstörenMaschinenmitSchuhen?)
Anyway, a linguist will be along shortly to rip me a new one.
I assume this doesn't apply to PAYG phones bought in the US? What a way to not affect criminals in the least.
I saw an ad recently with a guy saying "I make 150/hour off of google ads, find out how!"
And then right next to that one is skyscraper ad of the same guy, except "I make 140/hour off of google ads!"
I was like Damn, this economy sucks, he just got demoted 10/hour in less than 200 pixels, I better get in on this now!
Classic one:
Send an email offering clever moneymaking ideas for free, just send a stamped envelope(no need to self address it, you'll copy it off the outside envelope for them!) to your mailbox.
Take all the envelopes you get, use them for yourself(a bit of white-out on the pesky pre-addressed ones). These days, that a stamp and an envelope is worth even more.
Don't use postal mail much? Sell them as "conveniently pre-stamped envelopes" at the flea market for just the cost of a stamp. Why just for the cost of the stamp, asks a flea? You make it up in volume!
Note, mail fraud is insanely easy to prosecute as the USPS is the one delivering the evidence.
A $10,000 tax on abortion?
But how will I hang my clothes?
What, like Chromium?
That'd be true if it weren't for the fact that she and he have the exact same connection(and the exact same wiring, except for the last 40 feet).
If bandwidth is such a significant cost compared to the cost of the physical cable, why is it that I pay the same for 6Mbps/768Kbps cable/dry dsl that I would pay for 10Mbps symmetric if I had line of site to my colo?
Does a local colo get better rates from their upstream connection that the phone or cable company does? Is there some hidden byte cost that consumer grade connection cost that business class doesn't? It sure isn't for decent phone staffing.
If there wasn't a bunch of concrete between me and the colo, I'd switch even if it cost double for the same speed. At least I'd get 2 or 3 nines of uptime, as opposed to the 96% cable co had last year(they've cut maintenance for the last 5 years running, I once got a truck based 3 hours away).
I sure hope they are hedged. If my company was leveraged over 1000:1, (pdf, see page 25) I'd want it to be hedged.
No, they are a company whose image has taken a big hit. They are currently hiring an entire marketing department which, in part, will "shape a messaging and brand strategy reflects today's dynamics and the firm's leadership role in helping to define it."
They went from being the largest bulge bracket firm to being a holding bank, lots of AIG's government money is going straight to them(with the attendant bad will), and a huge chunk of their growth in the last 2 years was from subprime derivatives.
Telex was a network used for telegraphy, wasn't it?
I suppose you could call a teletype that operated over phone lines a "Telex", but it'd be more of a misnomer than calling any copier a "Xerox". This one was used as a remote terminal to a computer, not a direct dial messaging device.
.
And yet they advertise, despite being one of the world's highest firms and consistantly outgrowing its competitors. True, it has never really used TV advertisments, but I still get print pieces and see newspaper ads for GS about new products(20+% of their revenue is from products that didn't exists last decade). Hell, they've been doing ads in COLOR for almost 10 years now:)
But GS recently posted losses for the first time ever. If they want to get back to profitability and avoid getting mired in this economy, they'll go looking for the next "20% of revenue" and they might need to go slumming in "the public" to do it.
Either that, or they've figured that the old adage "No press is bad press" might be true and that this is a hell of lot cheaper than a real advertising campaign.
Gets the name out in the mainstream media.
So what phone code do you dial to get a TTY line back to the eighties?