"I'll tell you what. I'll set up two cabins. One will have a bucket of nuclear waste under the bed. The other will have a bucket coal dust and carbon under the bed. Which bed do you choose to sleep in?"
Wow. That's a great argument.
Of course, in the REAL WORLD, we don't sleep over nuclear waste. Oh, and in the REAL WORLD, coal emissions end up in the air we breathe.
So, here's a choice: we produce a small amount of nuclear waste - waste that is disposed of away from humans and in a safe manner - or - we produce a large quantity of pollution and dump it into the atmosphere.
Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there are regulations and procedures in place to ensure its safe disposal.
With coal power, production by-products are simply dumped into the air. Yes, there are regulations, but as long as we are burning fossil fuels, there will always be substantial emissions.
"Yep.. I can see it now.. hundreds of Prius's going down the road at 28MPH so they can use their electric motors instead of the gas engine. "
The HSD Prius can do up to 38mph on electric-only power.
"Fule Cell cars are where the technology is going towards,"
Fuel Cells aren't going to solve our energy problems. Where, might I ask, do you get the hydrogen? The only commercially viable source that exists today is the processing of hydrocarbons.
Oil companies love the "hydrogen economy" because they know, when it arrives, they'll still be supplying the fuel.
"1) x86-64 is the same on both Intel and AMD. If they were really different, we would target Intel because Intel is shipping 10x the x86-64 volume AMD does."
That's just plain wrong. All Athlon 64 CPUs and Opteron CPUs have AMD64 ("x86-64") technology.
Only Intel's "600 series" Pentium 4s (which were just introduced) and newer Xeon CPUs (which are much lower volume than P4 or A64) have EMT64 ("x86-64").
There's no way that Intel is shipping "10x" more x86-64 parts than AMD. Hell, even if everything they sold had x86-64, they still only have 5x more volume than AMD.
"Stuff recorded on todays DVD standard...well, could possibly be hard in 40 years to find a player backwards compatible enough to read today's media...."
Unlikely. CDs have been around for almost 25 years, and all proposed next-gen drives (Blue-Ray and HD-DVD) will have CD and DVD compatibility.
Moreover, people have large collections of DVD movies, which alone will ensure the availability of DVD drives for years to come.
VHS is 29 years old, and you can still buy players. Heck, even Laserdisc and Betamax players are pretty easy to find if you look on eBay.
"If there were as many substantial improvements between Windows 200 and Windows XP as are slated to be in Tiger, many more people would probably rush out and purchase it. As it is, Windows XP pretty much is Windows 2000 with a slightly uglier skin on the GUI."
GDI+. System Restore. Windows File Protection. Wi-Fi support. ClearType. Alpha-enabled icons. New theme. Repair functionality in networking. No-hassle hotplug on USB drives. Windows Movie Maker. Networking wizard. New user configuration UI. Fast-user switching. Remote Desktop. CD Burning. Zip-File Support. Firewall. Faster booting. Automatic updates.
If you don't think XP is a significant upgrade from 2000, you're wrong. Some XP features (IE6, WMP10, automatic updates) have been added to 2000, but XP is - and will remain - a very different OS.
XP is as different from 2000 as 10.2 was from 10.1.
When I purchased my notebook, I paid over $1400. I could have purchased a PowerBook for $1500.
However,
- The 12" PowerBook has a low-resolution screen. XGA doesn't cut it for me. My notebook is SXGA+, which gives me almost twice as much working space.
- I run Linux. Yeah, OS X is nice, but it's still a commercial OS. I could run Linux on a Mac, but, what's the point? Why not get a cheaper PC?
- Quality is not an issue. The CL-56 I own is a solid, well-built notebook. I got a 3-year warranty standard, 24/7 service/support, and a very-nice shipping policy. All of this is *included* in the price of the notebook.
- My notebook has a 7200rpm HDD. It's quite a bit nippier than the 4200rpm drives used in the low-end PowerBook.
- Unlike the Powerbook keyboards, the modifier keys aren't shifted to make room for FN.
- Battery life with my current notebook is *excellent*. I don't know if the Powerbooks get 5 hours, but my notebook certainly does.
- Pentium-M is fast. Really fast. My 1.7GHz CPU is both fast and cool.
- My notebook has Mobility Radeon 9700 128M graphics, which aren't available on the 12" PowerBook.
Basically, I could have paid a lot more and purchased a 15" PowerBook, or I could have accepted a slower GPU, slower HDD, smaller & lower resolution display, and a much slower processor.
If OSX were a factor, maybe the Mac would be worth it. But a cool aluminum case isn't worth the tradeoffs I'd have to make.
I currently have a DirecTV / TiVo, which doesn't get fast-forward ads.
However, I last used a standalone TiVo with version 2.5 of the software.
In three major revisions, they've added almost *nothing* to the underlying recording experience. Season Passes haven't gotten any better, the interface hasn't gotten any better.
With a few exceptions, TiVo is the same as it was when I left. Except now it has a "TV Guide" logo (ironic considering the guide data comes from Tribune, Gemstar's main competitor). Oh, and there are now FF ads.
It's now $13 a month for TiVo.
Don't give me crap about how it "costs money" to deliver guide listings.
My copy of XP-MCE was $120. With a TV tuner and a remote, I spent about $210 to upgrade my box to Media Center Edition.
No monthly fees, no advertisments, and a DVR that's every bit as good as TiVo.
"The funny thing is that my download actually did stop in the middle and I had to restart it. Don't let anyone tell you it's not possible to slashdot microsoft."
It's not. They use Akamai to mirror their downloads, so they have *way* more bandwidth than could be used by the 250,000 active readers of Slashdot.
Microsoft.com is the #4 website on the internet; MSN.com is the #2 website. If 70 million daily visitors don't take them down, I doubt that 250,000 more are going to make much of a difference.
"Maybe I am under a mistaken impression that iTunes was the only player that allowed you to share the library?"
You were. Napster lets you play music on up to three computers. You can use the built-in Windows file sharing to share your collection accross the network.
"The button to install software on a Mac would be 'Install Software'"
That's funny, becausse the button on my XP-SP2 system that you click to run ActiveX controls says "Install".
Oh, and the users at my office *still* manage to install Gator - even though we've blocked ActiveX through Group Policy.
They download the executable (ignoring the security warning), then run it (ignoring a second security warning). The 2nd warning has a big red shield with an X.
We're considering forcing everyone to run under more limited permissions, but we'd rather not have to do it.
"In similar situations I just handed over my stuff."
Which works great for assults, as we know.....
"With all due respect I think you USian guys should consider what firearms are doing to your society."
Frankly, it's not the guns, it never has been the guns, and it never will be the guns. We have plenty of murders with knives, crowbars, and other common objects.
Now, if the guns didn't exist, would we have the same number of murders? I don't know, but I can bet that we'd still have *way* more than Europe or Japan.
"At work I am blessed to have 1GB of ram, so I don't ever need to use any virtual memory."
That's not true. Paging is a *good idea*, even when you have enough RAM.
Now, if Windows is paging out things that you were using, it's a different situation. But this hasn't been my experience. I've found that Windows only pages much when I run memory-hungry games.
"Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there, and so is "SMSing" ringtones. If one person buys a ringtone from the carrier (which is around 8 cents), that ringtone can be SMSed to all the friends. There is a nominal charge for SMS also, basically its a huge market which people simply love."
You mean MMSing. Unless you like monophonic ringtones.
"Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there."
Funny, my T-Mobile branded Nokia 3650 doesn't seem to have any trouble talking to my computer.
"Most of the best software available between 98 and 2002 (when they started releasing api's to the public) was designed by former microsoft alumni or other big companies working in close collaboration with MS. What little information that was available was only available in the "Microsoft Press" books."
That's just crap. The vast majority of the Win32 API has been documented for *years*. I remember getting the MSDN Library in 1997 on CD, and it had plenty of API documentation.
Yeah, there may have been some proprietary API calls. But there were never very many of them.
Thousands of developers have created products for Windows for YEARS. Do you think Netscape was designed through "close collaboration with MS"? What about Winamp? Quicken? Flash?
There's simply too much software out there to support your theory. Yeah, MS did conceal APIs, but it certainly never hindered my ability to develop software.
Complete FUD. IE is *user mode*. No exploit in IE can allow you to 'own the box' unless you are running as superuser ('Administrator') or someone in the superuser group ('Administrators').
IE *cannot* cause privelage elevation. It's never been true and it never will be true.
"Unless they're running on something 'unsupported' like ppc or sparc. Or are running an 'unsupported' version of gcc or glibc. Or are trying to run the hardware three years after the vendor last bothered updating the driver so that it won't work on a modern kernel."
Perhaps if Linux had a standardized and consistent ABI this wouldn't be a problem
There are tens of thousands of binary-only drivers for Windows. It's been 5 years since Windows 2000 was released and those drivers still work great on Windows XP SP2.
I wish I could say the same about Linux modules. It's stupid that I have to recompile my modules when I go from 2.6.10-4 to 2.6.10-5.
Not every computer has GCC, automake, and the kernel headers installed & configured. If Linux wants to be seriously accepted as a desktop OS, the kernel *needs* an ABI that allows modules to be run on *any* kernel (on the same platform) without recompiling. It's OK to break support for a major release (2.4 -> 2.6), but there should be *no reason* why binary modules stop working when you install a minor kernel upgrade.
It particularly sucks on systems like my Ubuntu laptop. I need a special module to make wifi work, and I have to recompile it *every time* there is a minor update to the kernel.
Oh, yeah, and not having binary compatibility makes it harder for distro maintainers to keep up-to-date with kernel releases.
Windows, Mac OS, and other operating systems have had binary driver compatibility for *years*. It's time for Linus to stop trying to enforce his worldview and accept the reality that Linux isn't a toy OS anymore. It's a serious platform with serious vendor support, and it's time for the kernel ABI to reflect that.
"SPDIF is a horrible protocol that is sensitive to cables and almost anything else. Though it's nominally a digital signal, it's multiplexed with the system clock (which is as analog as it gets). If your cable distorts the signal (it almost certainly does), the system clock will be jittery and this will cause distortion. On a decent system, this can be audible."
That *might* matter if most people used SPDIF cables to transmit uncompressed PCM. Most SPDIF cables are used to send AC3 or Coherent Acoustics (DTS) signals to the decoder.
I've been hearing about "jitter" for YEARS. I have yet to hear it, even on horribly crappy cables. Show me an actual double-blind test that indicates jitter is a bat porblem,
"Analog signals are a whole different ballgame. If you don't think cables can make a difference, pick up an electromagnetics book."
The problem with Monster Cable - and people like you - is that they provide information that is technically correct but ultimately useless.
I never argued that $15 cables and Monster Cable products were elecrically identical. I argued that any distortion present ISN'T NOTICEABLE BY THE VEIWER.
Remember, when you watch a DVD, HDTV, digital cable, or DBS, you are looking at a *lossy compressed* signal. The digital compression artifacts are *far* more intrusive than anything you're likely to notice from not having "premium" cables.
"Anything from Wal-mart is probably suboptimal -- even if it looks well-made, it probably isn't."
That's a bullshit statement. You have no evidence to back it up, but you provide a blanket statement that has no real meaning.
As someone who actually reads (and posts on) Slashdot from a mobile device, including right now, let me tell you this:
1: You need a device with a keyboard. The Treo and iPaq are OK, the Blackberry is better, and the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick) is perfect.
2: You need a big screen.
3: You need a good browser. This leaves the Treo with Blazer (kind of - it's not the fastest) and the Hiptop. The iPaq is OK if you load NetFront (Pocket IE sucks). The Blackberry just doesn't cut it.
So, we're left with the Sidekick / Hiptop. It's the only mobile device that I will carry. It's what I just wrote this post on.
Most pages work great. Some don't. But *every* page is unusable unless you have a large screen and a good browser.
Slashdot, by the way, works ideally on my Sidekick.
FM definately rocks. You don't realize how stupid webmail is until you use a real IMAP client (like thunderbird)to access your mail.
No, Google, POP access doesn't count. I don't want my mail stored on my box at home, I want it stored on a server that I can access from anywhere - a server that is managed by people who know and care about security.
FM truly rocks. I can use Thunderbird at home, at work, and on my notebook. On the road, I can use the web-interface. Everything stays in sync, so I always have access to my mail.
Just a note to the FM people: *please* remove the non-SSL login from your frontpage. It's OK if you provide a link to the non-SSL form. Right now, one slipup and I just submitted my password (and sent my private notes in some cases) accross the net as plaintext.
As far as gmail goes, I despise it. Everyone keeps raving about the interface, but it is actually quite barren. I don't want Google analyzing my mail to deliver 'targeted' advertisements (actually, I don't want any adverts at all). I want *real* folders that I can nest, not 'labels'. I want IMAP/SSL, not POP. I want SpamAssassin. I want powerful rules to sort my mail into folders.
$20 a year isn't a lot to pay for email. I might even get the $40 a year plan with FM because you can use your own domain.
No. Monster cables are overpriced and unnecessary.
For digital signals (e.g. DVI or SPDIF audio): Use a good-quality cable. It doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate, but you'll want to ensure that the conductor is large enough and the shielding (if it is necessary) is good. Also ensure that the connectors are solid. Most cables meet this criteria.
For analog signals (e.g. Component Video): Follow the rules for digital cables. You may want additional shielding and. Ensure that the cable has the correct impedence. Make sure that the connectors can provide proper RF isolation.
I've found that the Philips cables found at Wal-Mart are quite sufficcent. They have nice metal connectors and are well-shielded, plus they have strain relief. They run about $15 to $20 for 10ft (component video).
Slashdot Mirror
"I'll tell you what. I'll set up two cabins. One will have a bucket of nuclear waste under the bed. The other will have a bucket coal dust and carbon under the bed. Which bed do you choose to sleep in?"
Wow. That's a great argument.
Of course, in the REAL WORLD, we don't sleep over nuclear waste. Oh, and in the REAL WORLD, coal emissions end up in the air we breathe.
So, here's a choice: we produce a small amount of nuclear waste - waste that is disposed of away from humans and in a safe manner - or - we produce a large quantity of pollution and dump it into the atmosphere.
Nuclear waste is dangerous, but there are regulations and procedures in place to ensure its safe disposal.
With coal power, production by-products are simply dumped into the air. Yes, there are regulations, but as long as we are burning fossil fuels, there will always be substantial emissions.
"Yep.. I can see it now.. hundreds of Prius's going down the road at 28MPH so they can use their electric motors instead of the gas engine. "
The HSD Prius can do up to 38mph on electric-only power.
"Fule Cell cars are where the technology is going towards,"
Fuel Cells aren't going to solve our energy problems. Where, might I ask, do you get the hydrogen? The only commercially viable source that exists today is the processing of hydrocarbons.
Oil companies love the "hydrogen economy" because they know, when it arrives, they'll still be supplying the fuel.
Quit driving a car. Bicycles are much more efficent.
Oh, you wanted to take your kids to school? Bummer.
"1) x86-64 is the same on both Intel and AMD. If they were really different, we would target Intel because Intel is shipping 10x the x86-64 volume AMD does."
That's just plain wrong. All Athlon 64 CPUs and Opteron CPUs have AMD64 ("x86-64") technology.
Only Intel's "600 series" Pentium 4s (which were just introduced) and newer Xeon CPUs (which are much lower volume than P4 or A64) have EMT64 ("x86-64").
There's no way that Intel is shipping "10x" more x86-64 parts than AMD. Hell, even if everything they sold had x86-64, they still only have 5x more volume than AMD.
"On Windows, you hear people talking about crashses all the time, but the answer is always just to reinstall Windows."
No, it's not. Stop errors ("Blue Screens") don't occur that frequently in XP, and when they do, it's almost always one of two issues:
- Bad hardware (usually RAM related)
- Bad drivers
If you buy quality hardware and use WHQL-approved drivers, crashes on Windows are very rare.
Now, of course, spyware & other garbage can make your system unusable. But that's not the same as a system crash.
"Stuff recorded on todays DVD standard...well, could possibly be hard in 40 years to find a player backwards compatible enough to read today's media...."
Unlikely. CDs have been around for almost 25 years, and all proposed next-gen drives (Blue-Ray and HD-DVD) will have CD and DVD compatibility.
Moreover, people have large collections of DVD movies, which alone will ensure the availability of DVD drives for years to come.
VHS is 29 years old, and you can still buy players. Heck, even Laserdisc and Betamax players are pretty easy to find if you look on eBay.
"If there were as many substantial improvements between Windows 200 and Windows XP as are slated to be in Tiger, many more people would probably rush out and purchase it. As it is, Windows XP pretty much is Windows 2000 with a slightly uglier skin on the GUI."
GDI+. System Restore. Windows File Protection. Wi-Fi support. ClearType. Alpha-enabled icons. New theme. Repair functionality in networking. No-hassle hotplug on USB drives. Windows Movie Maker. Networking wizard. New user configuration UI. Fast-user switching. Remote Desktop. CD Burning. Zip-File Support. Firewall. Faster booting. Automatic updates.
If you don't think XP is a significant upgrade from 2000, you're wrong. Some XP features (IE6, WMP10, automatic updates) have been added to 2000, but XP is - and will remain - a very different OS.
XP is as different from 2000 as 10.2 was from 10.1.
When I purchased my notebook, I paid over $1400. I could have purchased a PowerBook for $1500.
However,
- The 12" PowerBook has a low-resolution screen. XGA doesn't cut it for me. My notebook is SXGA+, which gives me almost twice as much working space.
- I run Linux. Yeah, OS X is nice, but it's still a commercial OS. I could run Linux on a Mac, but, what's the point? Why not get a cheaper PC?
- Quality is not an issue. The CL-56 I own is a solid, well-built notebook. I got a 3-year warranty standard, 24/7 service/support, and a very-nice shipping policy. All of this is *included* in the price of the notebook.
- My notebook has a 7200rpm HDD. It's quite a bit nippier than the 4200rpm drives used in the low-end PowerBook.
- Unlike the Powerbook keyboards, the modifier keys aren't shifted to make room for FN.
- Battery life with my current notebook is *excellent*. I don't know if the Powerbooks get 5 hours, but my notebook certainly does.
- Pentium-M is fast. Really fast. My 1.7GHz CPU is both fast and cool.
- My notebook has Mobility Radeon 9700 128M graphics, which aren't available on the 12" PowerBook.
Basically, I could have paid a lot more and purchased a 15" PowerBook, or I could have accepted a slower GPU, slower HDD, smaller & lower resolution display, and a much slower processor.
If OSX were a factor, maybe the Mac would be worth it. But a cool aluminum case isn't worth the tradeoffs I'd have to make.
"IBM sold their laptop division to some no-name, can't be yet trusted for quality company over seas..."
They sold their division to the company who was ALREADY MANUFACTURING their notebooks.
Oh, and your PowerBook? It's made by a "no-name can't be yet trusted for quality company over seas".
TiVo has lost its way.
I currently have a DirecTV / TiVo, which doesn't get fast-forward ads.
However, I last used a standalone TiVo with version 2.5 of the software.
In three major revisions, they've added almost *nothing* to the underlying recording experience. Season Passes haven't gotten any better, the interface hasn't gotten any better.
With a few exceptions, TiVo is the same as it was when I left. Except now it has a "TV Guide" logo (ironic considering the guide data comes from Tribune, Gemstar's main competitor). Oh, and there are now FF ads.
It's now $13 a month for TiVo.
Don't give me crap about how it "costs money" to deliver guide listings.
My copy of XP-MCE was $120. With a TV tuner and a remote, I spent about $210 to upgrade my box to Media Center Edition.
No monthly fees, no advertisments, and a DVR that's every bit as good as TiVo.
Sorry TiVo.
"To hell with patching. Stop using stupid software."
Because, as we know, there's such a thing as perfect software that's entirely flaw free.
Get real. Mac OS X, Linux, Windows - they all have major security holes, and they will continue to have security holes indefinately.
Bugs aren't going away. Neither will patching.
"The funny thing is that my download actually did stop in the middle and I had to restart it. Don't let anyone tell you it's not possible to slashdot microsoft."
It's not. They use Akamai to mirror their downloads, so they have *way* more bandwidth than could be used by the 250,000 active readers of Slashdot.
Microsoft.com is the #4 website on the internet; MSN.com is the #2 website. If 70 million daily visitors don't take them down, I doubt that 250,000 more are going to make much of a difference.
"Maybe I am under a mistaken impression that iTunes was the only player that allowed you to share the library?"
You were. Napster lets you play music on up to three computers. You can use the built-in Windows file sharing to share your collection accross the network.
"The button to install software on a Mac would be 'Install Software'"
That's funny, becausse the button on my XP-SP2 system that you click to run ActiveX controls says "Install".
Oh, and the users at my office *still* manage to install Gator - even though we've blocked ActiveX through Group Policy.
They download the executable (ignoring the security warning), then run it (ignoring a second security warning). The 2nd warning has a big red shield with an X.
We're considering forcing everyone to run under more limited permissions, but we'd rather not have to do it.
Apparently, they aren't large enough issues to rule out IIS as the web server for the 2nd, 4th, or 6th largest websites on the Internet.
"In similar situations I just handed over my stuff."
Which works great for assults, as we know.....
"With all due respect I think you USian guys should consider what firearms are doing to your society."
Frankly, it's not the guns, it never has been the guns, and it never will be the guns. We have plenty of murders with knives, crowbars, and other common objects.
Now, if the guns didn't exist, would we have the same number of murders? I don't know, but I can bet that we'd still have *way* more than Europe or Japan.
"At work I am blessed to have 1GB of ram, so I don't ever need to use any virtual memory."
That's not true. Paging is a *good idea*, even when you have enough RAM.
Now, if Windows is paging out things that you were using, it's a different situation. But this hasn't been my experience. I've found that Windows only pages much when I run memory-hungry games.
"Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there, and so is "SMSing" ringtones. If one person buys a ringtone from the carrier (which is around 8 cents), that ringtone can be SMSed to all the friends. There is a nominal charge for SMS also, basically its a huge market which people simply love."
You mean MMSing. Unless you like monophonic ringtones.
"Synchronizing the phones with computer is standard there."
Funny, my T-Mobile branded Nokia 3650 doesn't seem to have any trouble talking to my computer.
"Most of the best software available between 98 and 2002 (when they started releasing api's to the public) was designed by former microsoft alumni or other big companies working in close collaboration with MS. What little information that was available was only available in the "Microsoft Press" books."
That's just crap. The vast majority of the Win32 API has been documented for *years*. I remember getting the MSDN Library in 1997 on CD, and it had plenty of API documentation.
Yeah, there may have been some proprietary API calls. But there were never very many of them.
Thousands of developers have created products for Windows for YEARS. Do you think Netscape was designed through "close collaboration with MS"? What about Winamp? Quicken? Flash?
There's simply too much software out there to support your theory. Yeah, MS did conceal APIs, but it certainly never hindered my ability to develop software.
Complete FUD. IE is *user mode*. No exploit in IE can allow you to 'own the box' unless you are running as superuser ('Administrator') or someone in the superuser group ('Administrators').
IE *cannot* cause privelage elevation. It's never been true and it never will be true.
"Unless they're running on something 'unsupported' like ppc or sparc. Or are running an 'unsupported' version of gcc or glibc. Or are trying to run the hardware three years after the vendor last bothered updating the driver so that it won't work on a modern kernel."
Perhaps if Linux had a standardized and consistent ABI this wouldn't be a problem
There are tens of thousands of binary-only drivers for Windows. It's been 5 years since Windows 2000 was released and those drivers still work great on Windows XP SP2.
I wish I could say the same about Linux modules. It's stupid that I have to recompile my modules when I go from 2.6.10-4 to 2.6.10-5.
Not every computer has GCC, automake, and the kernel headers installed & configured. If Linux wants to be seriously accepted as a desktop OS, the kernel *needs* an ABI that allows modules to be run on *any* kernel (on the same platform) without recompiling. It's OK to break support for a major release (2.4 -> 2.6), but there should be *no reason* why binary modules stop working when you install a minor kernel upgrade.
It particularly sucks on systems like my Ubuntu laptop. I need a special module to make wifi work, and I have to recompile it *every time* there is a minor update to the kernel.
Oh, yeah, and not having binary compatibility makes it harder for distro maintainers to keep up-to-date with kernel releases.
Windows, Mac OS, and other operating systems have had binary driver compatibility for *years*. It's time for Linus to stop trying to enforce his worldview and accept the reality that Linux isn't a toy OS anymore. It's a serious platform with serious vendor support, and it's time for the kernel ABI to reflect that.
"SPDIF is a horrible protocol that is sensitive to cables and almost anything else. Though it's nominally a digital signal, it's multiplexed with the system clock (which is as analog as it gets). If your cable distorts the signal (it almost certainly does), the system clock will be jittery and this will cause distortion. On a decent system, this can be audible."
That *might* matter if most people used SPDIF cables to transmit uncompressed PCM. Most SPDIF cables are used to send AC3 or Coherent Acoustics (DTS) signals to the decoder.
I've been hearing about "jitter" for YEARS. I have yet to hear it, even on horribly crappy cables. Show me an actual double-blind test that indicates jitter is a bat porblem,
"Analog signals are a whole different ballgame. If you don't think cables can make a difference, pick up an electromagnetics book."
The problem with Monster Cable - and people like you - is that they provide information that is technically correct but ultimately useless.
I never argued that $15 cables and Monster Cable products were elecrically identical. I argued that any distortion present ISN'T NOTICEABLE BY THE VEIWER.
Remember, when you watch a DVD, HDTV, digital cable, or DBS, you are looking at a *lossy compressed* signal. The digital compression artifacts are *far* more intrusive than anything you're likely to notice from not having "premium" cables.
"Anything from Wal-mart is probably suboptimal -- even if it looks well-made, it probably isn't."
That's a bullshit statement. You have no evidence to back it up, but you provide a blanket statement that has no real meaning.
As someone who actually reads (and posts on) Slashdot from a mobile device, including right now, let me tell you this:
1: You need a device with a keyboard. The Treo and iPaq are OK, the Blackberry is better, and the Danger Hiptop (T-Mobile Sidekick) is perfect.
2: You need a big screen.
3: You need a good browser. This leaves the Treo with Blazer (kind of - it's not the fastest) and the Hiptop. The iPaq is OK if you load NetFront (Pocket IE sucks). The Blackberry just doesn't cut it.
So, we're left with the Sidekick / Hiptop. It's the only mobile device that I will carry. It's what I just wrote this post on.
Most pages work great. Some don't. But *every* page is unusable unless you have a large screen and a good browser.
Slashdot, by the way, works ideally on my Sidekick.
FM definately rocks. You don't realize how stupid webmail is until you use a real IMAP client (like thunderbird)to access your mail.
No, Google, POP access doesn't count. I don't want my mail stored on my box at home, I want it stored on a server that I can access from anywhere - a server that is managed by people who know and care about security.
FM truly rocks. I can use Thunderbird at home, at work, and on my notebook. On the road, I can use the web-interface. Everything stays in sync, so I always have access to my mail.
Just a note to the FM people: *please* remove the non-SSL login from your frontpage. It's OK if you provide a link to the non-SSL form. Right now, one slipup and I just submitted my password (and sent my private notes in some cases) accross the net as plaintext.
As far as gmail goes, I despise it. Everyone keeps raving about the interface, but it is actually quite barren. I don't want Google analyzing my mail to deliver 'targeted' advertisements (actually, I don't want any adverts at all). I want *real* folders that I can nest, not 'labels'. I want IMAP/SSL, not POP. I want SpamAssassin. I want powerful rules to sort my mail into folders.
$20 a year isn't a lot to pay for email. I might even get the $40 a year plan with FM because you can use your own domain.
No. Monster cables are overpriced and unnecessary.
For digital signals (e.g. DVI or SPDIF audio):
Use a good-quality cable. It doesn't have to be expensive or elaborate, but you'll want to ensure that the conductor is large enough and the shielding (if it is necessary) is good. Also ensure that the connectors are solid. Most cables meet this criteria.
For analog signals (e.g. Component Video):
Follow the rules for digital cables. You may want additional shielding and. Ensure that the cable has the correct impedence. Make sure that the connectors can provide proper RF isolation.
I've found that the Philips cables found at Wal-Mart are quite sufficcent. They have nice metal connectors and are well-shielded, plus they have strain relief. They run about $15 to $20 for 10ft (component video).