Ok, I clicked the links and read...but come one, can't there be a picture of this little thing!! I mean, it loses a little bit of collness factor when I can't see what it looks like walking on water.
Really though, will this really be that important. I am guessing that any application of a water walking robot would require relatively calm and stable water conditions. That basically limits the times and places it could be used. I mean, we already have things that can "walk on water" and can be used almost everywhere...they're called boats.
I had Netflix for a few months earlier this year, I loved the service, and when I decided to cancel for financial reasons, it was very easy. I just hopped online, and clicked a link. Then they told me I had 7 days to return my three movies, and we were done.
For this exact reason, I planned on signing up again in the near future. But if they are going down the road of AOL, where you can only cancel by phone, after long waits and pushy sales reps, I may just go try Blockbuster Online instead, and see how it fares.
Yes, but I wonder if this is the same as talking on the phone? I read a study (can't remember where) that basically said that talking on the phone casuses more accidents than simply listening to the radio, or even singing along with the radio. It's because, evidently, the human mind tries to paint a picture of the person you are talking to in your head. If that person is in the car with you, talking to you, it takes less brain power because you don't have to think about the person subconciously. This was done as a study to see how different behaviors in the car affected driving ability. Amd talking on the phone was worse by far than others...
So would your brain try to see the person sending the email? Or better yet, would your brain try to see the naked women, or try to imagine the effects of Viagra from the spam you are getting?
...May/Walsh were on my screen bouncing around in the sand just a week or so ago. Now this wonderful technology will have to wait 4 years to realize its glory.
So I don't exactly get it, but is this just the root servers that are going to be updating every five minutes? I read the links, but it still doesn't seem clear to me. I mean, if my registrar (or dns service or whatever) still only send in their updates once every day, this won't really help me as much right?
Of course, once they do send it in I will still get it updated an average of 6 hours faster I guess. Just curious, since the details were a little vague to us non-dns folks.
No shit, and you've heard of Wingrep? Those features are nothing new to Windows either. Sometimes it's nice to have the graphical interface...that's why most of us use modern day OS instead of Dos or whatever.
I don't lose files, but it is nice sometimes to search for *.mp3 or *.doc to find that one file that you saved somewhere and forgot about.
Even if you don't lose files, sometimes it is nice to use the search to find what files were modified on the drive during a certain time period (due to an install gone bad or whatever) or even to find files containing a certain phrase.
Finding the files themselves is not always the most important thing. Sometimes it is just as important to know what is in them, or when they were created.
That's just my opinion though, you may never use the search and I may never use the windows calculator...who knows.
From what I know of WinFS, it really won't be all that important anyway. It is supposed to provide a way for all files to be treated the same by the OS (roughly) right? Thus making it easier for users to search, browse, or otherwise find these files?
Well, I don't know all of the juicy details of WinFS but I have played with the new Longhorn build. The search tool that is in the Alpha release (MSDN) is much improved over the current WinXP search. It was pretty cool, although some of it can be chalked up to eye candy. It still had a certain ease of use to it.
I doubt WinFS will ever be complete, personally. But I am sure some of the innovation and development benefits will still reach us as consumers. I know where I work, we spend time doing things the customers will never see. But they will still reap many of the benefits.
How can this robot run on so little power that it can create more than it consumes? There must be some crazy technology behind this...I mean you can't possibly get more power out of a fly than it takes to power an led for a few seconds right? (I know that is a bit of an exageration, but you see the point right?)
Well said. I did not watch Enterprise until this season, but I sort of got into it after catching TNG (The next generation for those non trekie/.'ers) fever a year or so ago. Since then I have seen most of the TNG episodes, and most of the Enterprise episodes.
I would liken TNG more to an adventure show, something where there is a story line in each episode, with a beginning and an end. Enterprise was a soap opera to me. It seemed like if you missed an episode, you missed out on "who was kissing who" and not the important story developments.
I think they need to concentrate less on the romance and whatnot, and get back to the roots.
Well, I can't provide you with a link to the stats or anything, but I can say that I have seen a ton of people roaming around college campuses (Michigan State and UofM) with them.
I have to say though, that nearly every review I have ever read about an new Mp3 player mentions the iPod as 'the competition'.
I'm not saying that there aren't more Rio flash based players out there, or more Sony minidisk players out there, but as far as hard drive based players go, iPod is currently the king and everyone seems to be trying to take their market share.
If it weren't for the iPod, Apple would still be in a world of hurt. They brought themselves back into the game with the iPod, they took their great innovation and applied it to a market that was ready for a change.
Does anyone think this kind of thing will happen for the iPod? I love the interface from what I have seen, but isn't it always better to have a choice? I am just curious if anyone will bother. Considering it is the overwhelming leader in mp3 players at the moment, you would have to think some development is under way.
I am a huge fan of the atari emulators on the PC and Xbox. But I have to say that I will likely get a copy if the Xbox version of this as well. There's something about it being 'legal' that increases the coolness factor.
Plus it will be funny to show my dad that all of the games he bought be as a kid are now on a single CD, and still being played on my Xbox today!
Now if only I could track down the old school games I used to play on the computer...anyone remember 'Tooth Invaders'?:-)
Actually, yes. I boot from USB occasionally. I have a very light version of Knoppix (also BartPE) that I can run from the USB pen drive that I have.
And if you don't want to use Usb, almost all CD-rom drives can boot a disk these days. So just take that "floppy boot disk" and burn it on a CD and you're golden.
I honestly can't speak of doing a Bios update without a floppy, because I have never had the need to update the Bios on my machine, but now that I have said it I will likely have to do it later this week. D'oh!
You can get a free iPod or a free flat screen by visiting my link in my sig. This is the freeipods.com deal that I am sure you have heard of. I am still working on mine, but Wired magazine has an article about it being for real.
As far as I know, Tivo did not "invent" the DVR. I for one, saw the ReplayTV (Then Panasonic HS1000 Showstopper) far before I saw the Tivo on the shelves. One of my buddies back in school bought an open box, discontinued due to company changing hands Showstopper unit at Best Buy for like $100. I went over to his apartment and marveled at pausing live TV. Then, months later I saw a commercial for Tivo (that was back when I actually watched commercials since I did not have my automatic skip then). I watched the commercial, and thought to myself "Wow, they are gonna bring come competition to Sonic Blue.
Anyway, I don't know if other markets had Tivo first, but if they did it was a close battle. Let's not forget the innovation by the other early competitors as well. Tivo is a name brand (like Kleenex) now, but in my mind ReplayTV does better at all aspects of the game.
You don't even need to open the Replay unit to get unlimited hard drive storage. Just get DVArchive and install it on your PC, connect the Replay to the switdh using the (yes that's right standard) 10/100 port and now you have as much space as you can fit in all of your PC's for storing and archiving shows. You can browse and watch all of them as if they were on the Replay unit itself. Can Tivo do this out of the box with no extra fees or modding....?
I have to imagine that if the shuttles had been destroyed, they would have built new ones. I don't know how much each ones costs, but wikipedia seems to indicate that it costs $500 million just for the launch.
Now, assuming that they had been destroyed and would be rebuilt...lets go on to ponder how many people are currently without homes/food/clothes down there in Florida. And how many of them could be fed/clothed for $500 million? Not all probably, but many.
I guess my only point is that I am surprised this made headlines. We should care just as much about the people down there getting their federal relief funds as we should about NASA fixing their walls. I'm all for space flight, but we should take care of those in need as well. Maybe once NASA fixes the hole in the wall, everyone can move in there!! Sounds like a big place.:-)
I agree that most companies do not want to alienate their customers, the problem (in my opinion) is the sites that are not smart enough to even KNOW that they are doing it. Most sites are pretty good now, but there are still the odd balls.
I have used all three: Tivo, ReplayTV, and Myth. For my money, I choose ReplayTV hands down. I currently own 2 of them.
Replay TV is about the same price as a Tivo. And unless I haven't seen the latest version of Tivo yet, you still can't easily get the vids off of your Tivo and onto a PC. With Replay TV, it is easy. Use a piece of software called DVArchive.
And yes, you can share recordings with other ReplayTV's of the same (or similar) model. Yes, you can program it over the web (my.replaytv.com I think it is, I never use it personally)
You can buy a good ReplayTV 5040 unit on Ebay for about $300 last I checked. This model has automatic commercial skip, and 30 second skip if you prefer to do it manually. I have one of these models and it kicks the crap out of my cousin's Tivo simply because I can network it with the 10/100 port on the back and get stuff off of it and onto my PC.
Lastly, if you want a bigger hard drive, there are instructions for installing dual 160 GB drives out there on the internet. I personally have plenty of room on my 40GB drive since I can archive to my PC.
Tivo I give a 7/10, Myth I give a 6/10 (mostly because it is more tedious to set up and lacks the all around neatness in the entertainment center) and I give ReplayTV 9/10. I do wish they had the thumbs up/down type thing Tivo has.
This makes it easier than manaully opening IE I guess, but it does not get rid of the need for keeping IE around. I'd like to get rid of IE altogether, not just make it easier to "use my crutch" so to speak.
Let me first say that I use Mozilla and Firefox almost religeously. I love the tabbe browsing and built in ad blocking (which only recently became available for IE in XP SP2) but...
I still find that at least once a day I run into a site that does not display right, or not at all, in these browsers. I know part of this is that "the site is designed for IE" and therefore "not following the standards" but you know what....if 90% of people use IE, then it IS the standard. Like it or not, a standard on paper is only as good as people make it through every day use.
I'd love to see Mozilla or Firefox come out with a version that runs all of the pages I need. Even if it is only a plugin or extension that "makes bad pages work" by throwing in some sort of hack to make Mozilla run like IE, it would help me to make the switch 100%. Until then, I am forced to keep that little 'E' icon in my quicklaunch for emergencies. And I dare not set Firefox as my default browser until I know it is going to be 100% compatible.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I clicked the links and read...but come one, can't there be a picture of this little thing!! I mean, it loses a little bit of collness factor when I can't see what it looks like walking on water.
Really though, will this really be that important. I am guessing that any application of a water walking robot would require relatively calm and stable water conditions. That basically limits the times and places it could be used. I mean, we already have things that can "walk on water" and can be used almost everywhere...they're called boats.
Oh my god!! I work for a company that does accounting and Payroll applications...does this mean Oracle is going to make me lose my job!!??
One C++ programmer, looking for a new job before Oracle squashes us all!
I had Netflix for a few months earlier this year, I loved the service, and when I decided to cancel for financial reasons, it was very easy. I just hopped online, and clicked a link. Then they told me I had 7 days to return my three movies, and we were done.
For this exact reason, I planned on signing up again in the near future. But if they are going down the road of AOL, where you can only cancel by phone, after long waits and pushy sales reps, I may just go try Blockbuster Online instead, and see how it fares.
Yes, but I wonder if this is the same as talking on the phone? I read a study (can't remember where) that basically said that talking on the phone casuses more accidents than simply listening to the radio, or even singing along with the radio. It's because, evidently, the human mind tries to paint a picture of the person you are talking to in your head. If that person is in the car with you, talking to you, it takes less brain power because you don't have to think about the person subconciously. This was done as a study to see how different behaviors in the car affected driving ability. Amd talking on the phone was worse by far than others...
So would your brain try to see the person sending the email? Or better yet, would your brain try to see the naked women, or try to imagine the effects of Viagra from the spam you are getting?
...May/Walsh were on my screen bouncing around in the sand just a week or so ago. Now this wonderful technology will have to wait 4 years to realize its glory.
So I don't exactly get it, but is this just the root servers that are going to be updating every five minutes? I read the links, but it still doesn't seem clear to me. I mean, if my registrar (or dns service or whatever) still only send in their updates once every day, this won't really help me as much right?
Of course, once they do send it in I will still get it updated an average of 6 hours faster I guess. Just curious, since the details were a little vague to us non-dns folks.
No shit, and you've heard of Wingrep? Those features are nothing new to Windows either. Sometimes it's nice to have the graphical interface...that's why most of us use modern day OS instead of Dos or whatever.
I don't lose files, but it is nice sometimes to search for *.mp3 or *.doc to find that one file that you saved somewhere and forgot about.
Even if you don't lose files, sometimes it is nice to use the search to find what files were modified on the drive during a certain time period (due to an install gone bad or whatever) or even to find files containing a certain phrase.
Finding the files themselves is not always the most important thing. Sometimes it is just as important to know what is in them, or when they were created.
That's just my opinion though, you may never use the search and I may never use the windows calculator...who knows.
From what I know of WinFS, it really won't be all that important anyway. It is supposed to provide a way for all files to be treated the same by the OS (roughly) right? Thus making it easier for users to search, browse, or otherwise find these files?
Well, I don't know all of the juicy details of WinFS but I have played with the new Longhorn build. The search tool that is in the Alpha release (MSDN) is much improved over the current WinXP search. It was pretty cool, although some of it can be chalked up to eye candy. It still had a certain ease of use to it.
I doubt WinFS will ever be complete, personally. But I am sure some of the innovation and development benefits will still reach us as consumers. I know where I work, we spend time doing things the customers will never see. But they will still reap many of the benefits.
How can this robot run on so little power that it can create more than it consumes? There must be some crazy technology behind this...I mean you can't possibly get more power out of a fly than it takes to power an led for a few seconds right? (I know that is a bit of an exageration, but you see the point right?)
Well said. I did not watch Enterprise until this season, but I sort of got into it after catching TNG (The next generation for those non trekie /.'ers) fever a year or so ago. Since then I have seen most of the TNG episodes, and most of the Enterprise episodes.
I would liken TNG more to an adventure show, something where there is a story line in each episode, with a beginning and an end. Enterprise was a soap opera to me. It seemed like if you missed an episode, you missed out on "who was kissing who" and not the important story developments.
I think they need to concentrate less on the romance and whatnot, and get back to the roots.
He hacks apart Segways because he has the money. I hack my TuneCast FM transmitter, that certainly puts things in perspective.
I could only dream of OWNING a Segway (which is awesome to ride if you have never done so) and he risks destroying them.
Well, I can't provide you with a link to the stats or anything, but I can say that I have seen a ton of people roaming around college campuses (Michigan State and UofM) with them.
I have to say though, that nearly every review I have ever read about an new Mp3 player mentions the iPod as 'the competition'.
I'm not saying that there aren't more Rio flash based players out there, or more Sony minidisk players out there, but as far as hard drive based players go, iPod is currently the king and everyone seems to be trying to take their market share.
If it weren't for the iPod, Apple would still be in a world of hurt. They brought themselves back into the game with the iPod, they took their great innovation and applied it to a market that was ready for a change.
Does anyone think this kind of thing will happen for the iPod? I love the interface from what I have seen, but isn't it always better to have a choice? I am just curious if anyone will bother. Considering it is the overwhelming leader in mp3 players at the moment, you would have to think some development is under way.
Or the jury will have to count their votes ten times.
I would have to check but I think it is called AtariXLBox.
I am sure www.xbox-scene.com would have some info though.
I am a huge fan of the atari emulators on the PC and Xbox. But I have to say that I will likely get a copy if the Xbox version of this as well. There's something about it being 'legal' that increases the coolness factor.
Plus it will be funny to show my dad that all of the games he bought be as a kid are now on a single CD, and still being played on my Xbox today!
Now if only I could track down the old school games I used to play on the computer...anyone remember 'Tooth Invaders'?
Actually, yes. I boot from USB occasionally. I have a very light version of Knoppix (also BartPE) that I can run from the USB pen drive that I have.
And if you don't want to use Usb, almost all CD-rom drives can boot a disk these days. So just take that "floppy boot disk" and burn it on a CD and you're golden.
I honestly can't speak of doing a Bios update without a floppy, because I have never had the need to update the Bios on my machine, but now that I have said it I will likely have to do it later this week. D'oh!
You can get a free iPod or a free flat screen by visiting my link in my sig. This is the freeipods.com deal that I am sure you have heard of. I am still working on mine, but Wired magazine has an article about it being for real.
Join me in my adventure!
As far as I know, Tivo did not "invent" the DVR. I for one, saw the ReplayTV (Then Panasonic HS1000 Showstopper) far before I saw the Tivo on the shelves. One of my buddies back in school bought an open box, discontinued due to company changing hands Showstopper unit at Best Buy for like $100. I went over to his apartment and marveled at pausing live TV. Then, months later I saw a commercial for Tivo (that was back when I actually watched commercials since I did not have my automatic skip then). I watched the commercial, and thought to myself "Wow, they are gonna bring come competition to Sonic Blue.
Anyway, I don't know if other markets had Tivo first, but if they did it was a close battle. Let's not forget the innovation by the other early competitors as well. Tivo is a name brand (like Kleenex) now, but in my mind ReplayTV does better at all aspects of the game.
You don't even need to open the Replay unit to get unlimited hard drive storage. Just get DVArchive and install it on your PC, connect the Replay to the switdh using the (yes that's right standard) 10/100 port and now you have as much space as you can fit in all of your PC's for storing and archiving shows. You can browse and watch all of them as if they were on the Replay unit itself. Can Tivo do this out of the box with no extra fees or modding....?
I thought not...thank you for your time.
I have to imagine that if the shuttles had been destroyed, they would have built new ones. I don't know how much each ones costs, but wikipedia seems to indicate that it costs $500 million just for the launch.
:-)
Now, assuming that they had been destroyed and would be rebuilt...lets go on to ponder how many people are currently without homes/food/clothes down there in Florida. And how many of them could be fed/clothed for $500 million? Not all probably, but many.
I guess my only point is that I am surprised this made headlines. We should care just as much about the people down there getting their federal relief funds as we should about NASA fixing their walls. I'm all for space flight, but we should take care of those in need as well. Maybe once NASA fixes the hole in the wall, everyone can move in there!! Sounds like a big place.
I agree that most companies do not want to alienate their customers, the problem (in my opinion) is the sites that are not smart enough to even KNOW that they are doing it. Most sites are pretty good now, but there are still the odd balls.
I have used all three: Tivo, ReplayTV, and Myth. For my money, I choose ReplayTV hands down. I currently own 2 of them.
Replay TV is about the same price as a Tivo. And unless I haven't seen the latest version of Tivo yet, you still can't easily get the vids off of your Tivo and onto a PC. With Replay TV, it is easy. Use a piece of software called DVArchive.
And yes, you can share recordings with other ReplayTV's of the same (or similar) model. Yes, you can program it over the web (my.replaytv.com I think it is, I never use it personally)
You can buy a good ReplayTV 5040 unit on Ebay for about $300 last I checked. This model has automatic commercial skip, and 30 second skip if you prefer to do it manually. I have one of these models and it kicks the crap out of my cousin's Tivo simply because I can network it with the 10/100 port on the back and get stuff off of it and onto my PC.
Lastly, if you want a bigger hard drive, there are instructions for installing dual 160 GB drives out there on the internet. I personally have plenty of room on my 40GB drive since I can archive to my PC.
Tivo I give a 7/10, Myth I give a 6/10 (mostly because it is more tedious to set up and lacks the all around neatness in the entertainment center) and I give ReplayTV 9/10. I do wish they had the thumbs up/down type thing Tivo has.
This makes it easier than manaully opening IE I guess, but it does not get rid of the need for keeping IE around. I'd like to get rid of IE altogether, not just make it easier to "use my crutch" so to speak.
Let me first say that I use Mozilla and Firefox almost religeously. I love the tabbe browsing and built in ad blocking (which only recently became available for IE in XP SP2) but...
I still find that at least once a day I run into a site that does not display right, or not at all, in these browsers. I know part of this is that "the site is designed for IE" and therefore "not following the standards" but you know what....if 90% of people use IE, then it IS the standard. Like it or not, a standard on paper is only as good as people make it through every day use.
I'd love to see Mozilla or Firefox come out with a version that runs all of the pages I need. Even if it is only a plugin or extension that "makes bad pages work" by throwing in some sort of hack to make Mozilla run like IE, it would help me to make the switch 100%. Until then, I am forced to keep that little 'E' icon in my quicklaunch for emergencies. And I dare not set Firefox as my default browser until I know it is going to be 100% compatible.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.