Of course, in a few months we'll all be brainwashed by the idiot box into thinking D-VHS is the greatest thing since aresol cheeze, and tripping over each other to buy decks for the HDTV home theatres that everyone has at home and couldn't have lived without either.
(um, yeah, I tried to find a cool link for 'tripping over each other' in Google with the word 'trampled'... but you don't even want to know what I found...)
That's great that you can recover missing data from a moderately worn digitally encoded tape, but what about when you send it through the deck a dozen more times? Eventually you will no be able to reconstruct larger blocks of lost data.
Sure if it's your own recorded media you can make a backup before it's too late, but if it's a commercial video, sorry pal, be seeing you again at the video store soon (and your little wallet too)!
The days of Tape/VHS cassettes were glorious for the record and movie industries. They'd sell a cassette, and the customer's tape deck or VCR would promptly munch it. Back to the store where you're obviously not going to get a refund for mangling the merchandise. Instant repeat revenue.
Then CDs and DVDs were born. Cheap, durable, and reliable. TOO durable and reliable. Sure if you're a moron you can scrape them up, but if you're a moron you can scrape up your nose picking it too. Careful and responsible owners were no longer victims of freak munchings, and the industry never forgave themselves for not making the damn things shatters inside the players (most of the time... hey, remember those gimmicky ads for 100x players back before DMA66?).
Right now, the movie and record industries are salivating all over themselves trying to figure out how to sell you the same damn thing over and over again (like teeny pop and the late 90's onslaught of natural disaster cinema). Like Circuit City's DIVX (the scam disc format, not the codec) was one of the first examples. Now the music industry wants to let us buy digital music, in multiple proprietary formats, and pay for it for each playback device we own, even when we've already bought the physical album!
D-VHS probably will and should replace Beta, et.al. in the professional sector, but I don't think it would have ever seen the light of day in video stores if the media was as durable as some of the new high capacity DVD/optical technology coming out.
But maybe I'm just biased against magnetic media because of all the data I've ever lost!
They way I see it, everything will kill, cripple, or make you stupid eventually. I can only hope that my Dell ergo keyboard is relatively safer since it's a hundred times more comfortable to use, and hasn't caused me any severe pain in about five years of constant coding, whereas a flat keyboard will put me in agony in just a few hours.
The bottom line is that as long as we have to twiddle our fingers for data entry, RSIs continue will be a problem. It's just a question of improving posture to minimize injury.
True, you are within your rights to do whatever you want to the cable modem itself if you own it... HOWEVER, the moment you attach it to a leased cable line, you are most likely violating the provider's TOS/AUP/FAP/EULA that you agreed to be legally bound to when you subscribed.
Here's another example: you may own your telephone handset, AND it may even be legal to modify it for the purpose of phone phreaking (maybe...DMCA?), but once you plug it into a live phone jack, you've surely committed a crime.
Summary: It's not about how you handle your equipment, it's where you have permission to stick it.
I can't wait to read the next Slashdot article entitled "Cut off by Cable, It's Just Not Fair", in which everyone bellyaches about their newfound understanding of the "cable monopoly" definition.
Think about it... even if it did get "out of control"... cable providers could simply restrict bandwidth further up the line (someone please explain why on earth it would be delegated at the modem in the first place???).
Anyone remember years ago when the same thing happened with DirecPC's service?
Had a clothespin gun, but upgraded when I was about 12 to the plastic rifle with six spindle revolver, which you could actually rotate two or three times loading well over a dozen shots.
Incidently, this is OLD news... I've been able to buy this EXACT same product at Merlo's Cutlery (national knife/gift store chain) for at least five years. However, Merlo's price tag of ~$500 made this extreme form of feline terrorism cost prohibitive.
Maybe this Abit trick for a similar 'disable hidden' problem will work with Soyo boards?
"None of the new Abit BIOS versions support the disabling of ACPI through the BIOS, as this functionality has been hidden. Abit's own support site reports that this is because this is a prerequisite for any mainboard submitted for Microsoft WHQL approval. However, if you are desperate for this option, then it is in fact still available with the KT7 BIOS releases, but you must use a utility called modbin6 to modify the BIOS options to unhide this feature. This is a simple exercise. Instructions for using modbin6 are here. Needless to say, you risk corrupting your system by modifying a BIOS file yourself and flashing the machine. I recommend you prepare an emergency floppy disk as described in "I flashed my BIOS and now the machine is dead. What can I do?" below. You therefore do this at your own risk. Note that after disabling ACPI in the BIOS, Windows will need to redetect all your hardware!"
... And check out these amazing introductory offers, available for a limited time only through [jingle] SleepNET! *buy*... *spend*... *shop*...
Personally, I think i'll pass and opt for a regular projection system, pc, and virtual i/o device like one of these or these. I wonder if they're waterproof...
I know this is offtopic, but I couldn't help but notice your sig...
Back in the day (bbs's, 300-2400 baud, etc.) we used to call that duplex hence the oldschool duplex joke sigs:
WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
The Tech of Shrek.... what about Final Fantasy?
on
Reviews:Shrek
·
· Score: 1
Is it just me or does it seem like the 'tech' of Shrek has been waaaay overplayed? I frankly am not terribly impressed with the graphics... yes they are a step above everything else that has been released... but just that... a step. Not 'leaps and bounds'... not a revolution, just a very marginal step.
I too heard that the Shrek animators had to dial-back the female actor's appearance (TechTV Shrek Special)... but I've also heard that the entire staff has been terribly disenhartened by Final Fantasy's superior graphics, and that fact seems to discredit their claim. Notice they never offered up any pre-dialback clips of the female actor. Shrek boasts 'realistic human cgi characters', but Final Fantasy is obviously leaps and bounds ahead of Shrek and everything else we've seen.
Sure, Shrek will probably be a fun ride, and I'm a Disney fan... but I'm saving my $7.75 for Final Fantasy on July 11th. All the Shrek marketing blasphemy has irritated me enough that I'm going to wait for it on VHS.
You miss the point. It has nothing to do with the three letters AIM at all... It has to do with the fact that AIMster is using the letters to relate to AOL's product.
I'm not usually one to side with AOL, but because AIMster is cross-compatible with AOL-AIM, it is arguable that AIMster is taking market share away from AOL, and using the 'letters' to that end.
AOL will most likely win in court too because the argument is valid and they are practically FORCED to take action on these infringements because they could, because of trademark law, loose their trademark entirely if they don't enforce their trademark rights.
Companies like Xerox and Velcro have had to fight constantly to enforce their trademarks. If they didn't, they would completely loose their right to defend their marks at all!
I think that was the point. DNA died aged 49. Although I find it little more than vaguely amusing. Perhaps my own sense of humor has passed as well with this sad news.
I would love to check the Anonymous Coward's source, but without a link... and judging by the AC's misspelling of 'Independent', missing name of reviewing organization, HAHA's, -1 moderation, and of course COMMON SENSE derived from personal experience and expertise in looking at the figures...
I'll bet you get the warm fuzzies every time some poor sob with a hosed OS can't use IE, is too incompetent to reinstall Windows, and has to suffer with Netscape all while inventing blasphemous reviews and statistics to compensate for the browser's shortcomings.
Could RH and other distros be following Microsoft's lead and slowly evolving into a subscription based business model? This looks like an 'Easing In' to me.
Just cut Netscape out of the equation and in doing so, bargain with IE for a substantial 'exclusive browser' discount. Besides, if Netscape is trying to charge more than their piddily few percentage share of the browser market out of that $200k, they're ripping you off and you'd be supporting an aol bastardized company that will never properly adhere to w3c standards. Let them die asap.
By responding to most spam, even to REMOVE, you simply move your ICQ, email address, etc. from one list of general addresses, to another list of 'Active' or 'Live' addresses and recieve even more spam.
I don't follow REMOVE instructions unless the company spamming me appears reputable (scoff), ie: OfficeMax (scoff).
Don't mix apples with oranges... Gross margin is not the same as net profit. These companies may still be making 10-20% margin, but that's over parts and manufacturing. Consider the millions that are spent on marketing!
Also keep in mind, computers don't exactly sell in large quantites compared to your box of Cap'n Crunch. Do you have any idea what the margin on Crunchberries is?? Again, apples and oranges, but you can see the vague relationship I'm trying to make.
And speaking of printers... PC Printers anymore and sold nearly at cost. You'll probably point out a margin over P&M, but I'll point out that they have to advertise too (see Subject). HP makes all it's $ in ink cartridges.
Look at Amazon if you need a loud and clear example: they're still making a margin on their book sales, but did that turn them a profit?
(btw: have they turned a profit yet? I thought I heard they finally did but...)
Heh... I used to do Adam West's tech support back when I worked at rmci.net (restraining verbally abusive former employer fit). Had to show him how to reinstall DUN... he's not exactly the techie type at all;)
Did anyone see the Johnny Bravo episode with Adam West? The guy sure can poke fun at himself! At least he's having fun with his retirement. Mr T. could take a lesson.
(Yes, I have his contact info somewhere in my mail backups. No, I'm not going to give it out.:P )
Since Nintendo and Retro Studios are dead set on making Metroid 4 a First Person Shooter/Adventure, I would love to see the classic side-scrolling Metroid 3 ported over to the GameBoy Advance or a new Metroid game for Advance based on the classics.
<soapbox>Boo to FPS! Long live platform games!</soapbox>
The point isn't that the PC as we know it is still popular, it's that the market is no longer profitable.
If widgets are wildly popular, but none of the widget manufacturers can find a way to profit, widgets will become extinct no matter how badly you and everyone else wants one.
More realistically, however, manufacturers will drop out of the race, demand will exceed supply, prices will go up, and profits will return.
Although, if the RIAA does 'reverse engineer' it, will these guys really have the guts to defend their case? I love a good David vs Goliath case, but I wouldn't ever want to put myself in a David position against anything larger than a grocery store in an injury suit.
Slashdot Mirror
(um, yeah, I tried to find a cool link for 'tripping over each other' in Google with the word 'trampled'... but you don't even want to know what I found...)
Sure if it's your own recorded media you can make a backup before it's too late, but if it's a commercial video, sorry pal, be seeing you again at the video store soon (and your little wallet too)!
The days of Tape/VHS cassettes were glorious for the record and movie industries. They'd sell a cassette, and the customer's tape deck or VCR would promptly munch it. Back to the store where you're obviously not going to get a refund for mangling the merchandise. Instant repeat revenue.
Then CDs and DVDs were born. Cheap, durable, and reliable. TOO durable and reliable. Sure if you're a moron you can scrape them up, but if you're a moron you can scrape up your nose picking it too. Careful and responsible owners were no longer victims of freak munchings, and the industry never forgave themselves for not making the damn things shatters inside the players (most of the time... hey, remember those gimmicky ads for 100x players back before DMA66?).
Right now, the movie and record industries are salivating all over themselves trying to figure out how to sell you the same damn thing over and over again (like teeny pop and the late 90's onslaught of natural disaster cinema). Like Circuit City's DIVX (the scam disc format, not the codec) was one of the first examples. Now the music industry wants to let us buy digital music, in multiple proprietary formats, and pay for it for each playback device we own, even when we've already bought the physical album!
D-VHS probably will and should replace Beta, et.al. in the professional sector, but I don't think it would have ever seen the light of day in video stores if the media was as durable as some of the new high capacity DVD/optical technology coming out.
But maybe I'm just biased against magnetic media because of all the data I've ever lost!
The bottom line is that as long as we have to twiddle our fingers for data entry, RSIs continue will be a problem. It's just a question of improving posture to minimize injury.
Here's another example: you may own your telephone handset, AND it may even be legal to modify it for the purpose of phone phreaking (maybe...DMCA?), but once you plug it into a live phone jack, you've surely committed a crime.
Summary: It's not about how you handle your equipment, it's where you have permission to stick it.
Think about it... even if it did get "out of control"... cable providers could simply restrict bandwidth further up the line (someone please explain why on earth it would be delegated at the modem in the first place???).
Anyone remember years ago when the same thing happened with DirecPC's service?
Incidently, this is OLD news... I've been able to buy this EXACT same product at Merlo's Cutlery (national knife/gift store chain) for at least five years. However, Merlo's price tag of ~$500 made this extreme form of feline terrorism cost prohibitive.
Maybe this Abit trick for a similar 'disable hidden' problem will work with Soyo boards?
Here's the link (12th item down):
http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/faqbios.html
BTW Skapare: I was informed customer #443000 at PaypalWarning.com. Do I get a cookie? Do I get a pizza?
... And check out these amazing introductory offers, available for a limited time only through [jingle] SleepNET! *buy*... *spend*... *shop*...
Personally, I think i'll pass and opt for a regular projection system, pc, and virtual i/o device like one of these or these . I wonder if they're waterproof...
BTW: Information on the phillips website and a picture of the system can be found here: http://www.news.philips.com/mondial/archive/2001/m ay/artikel4_2.html
Sometimes the most witty comment is only obvious to a few. And this one is totally true! Congrats there, and damn the fool who modded this down.
:P
Well... we ARE Beowulf clusters of those.
I know this is offtopic, but I couldn't help but notice your sig...
Back in the day (bbs's, 300-2400 baud, etc.) we used to call that duplex hence the oldschool duplex joke sigs:
WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
I too heard that the Shrek animators had to dial-back the female actor's appearance (TechTV Shrek Special)... but I've also heard that the entire staff has been terribly disenhartened by Final Fantasy's superior graphics, and that fact seems to discredit their claim. Notice they never offered up any pre-dialback clips of the female actor. Shrek boasts 'realistic human cgi characters', but Final Fantasy is obviously leaps and bounds ahead of Shrek and everything else we've seen.
Sure, Shrek will probably be a fun ride, and I'm a Disney fan... but I'm saving my $7.75 for Final Fantasy on July 11th. All the Shrek marketing blasphemy has irritated me enough that I'm going to wait for it on VHS.
You miss the point. It has nothing to do with the three letters AIM at all... It has to do with the fact that AIMster is using the letters to relate to AOL's product. I'm not usually one to side with AOL, but because AIMster is cross-compatible with AOL-AIM, it is arguable that AIMster is taking market share away from AOL, and using the 'letters' to that end. AOL will most likely win in court too because the argument is valid and they are practically FORCED to take action on these infringements because they could, because of trademark law, loose their trademark entirely if they don't enforce their trademark rights. Companies like Xerox and Velcro have had to fight constantly to enforce their trademarks. If they didn't, they would completely loose their right to defend their marks at all!
I think that was the point. DNA died aged 49. Although I find it little more than vaguely amusing. Perhaps my own sense of humor has passed as well with this sad news.
I'll bet you get the warm fuzzies every time some poor sob with a hosed OS can't use IE, is too incompetent to reinstall Windows, and has to suffer with Netscape all while inventing blasphemous reviews and statistics to compensate for the browser's shortcomings.
There goes my blood pressure again.
Could RH and other distros be following Microsoft's lead and slowly evolving into a subscription based business model? This looks like an 'Easing In' to me.
Just cut Netscape out of the equation and in doing so, bargain with IE for a substantial 'exclusive browser' discount. Besides, if Netscape is trying to charge more than their piddily few percentage share of the browser market out of that $200k, they're ripping you off and you'd be supporting an aol bastardized company that will never properly adhere to w3c standards. Let them die asap.
By responding to most spam, even to REMOVE, you simply move your ICQ, email address, etc. from one list of general addresses, to another list of 'Active' or 'Live' addresses and recieve even more spam. I don't follow REMOVE instructions unless the company spamming me appears reputable (scoff), ie: OfficeMax (scoff).
Don't mix apples with oranges... Gross margin is not the same as net profit. These companies may still be making 10-20% margin, but that's over parts and manufacturing. Consider the millions that are spent on marketing!
Also keep in mind, computers don't exactly sell in large quantites compared to your box of Cap'n Crunch. Do you have any idea what the margin on Crunchberries is?? Again, apples and oranges, but you can see the vague relationship I'm trying to make.
And speaking of printers... PC Printers anymore and sold nearly at cost. You'll probably point out a margin over P&M, but I'll point out that they have to advertise too (see Subject). HP makes all it's $ in ink cartridges.
Look at Amazon if you need a loud and clear example: they're still making a margin on their book sales, but did that turn them a profit?
(btw: have they turned a profit yet? I thought I heard they finally did but...)
Heh... I used to do Adam West's tech support back when I worked at rmci.net (restraining verbally abusive former employer fit). Had to show him how to reinstall DUN ... he's not exactly the techie type at all ;)
Did anyone see the Johnny Bravo episode with Adam West? The guy sure can poke fun at himself! At least he's having fun with his retirement. Mr T. could take a lesson.
(Yes, I have his contact info somewhere in my mail backups. No, I'm not going to give it out. :P )
WOM Cubes ;)
...and ozzie ozbourne to kill the giant hedgehogs? I wonder who toyed with his genes before he was released into the wild :)
Since Nintendo and Retro Studios are dead set on making Metroid 4 a First Person Shooter/Adventure, I would love to see the classic side-scrolling Metroid 3 ported over to the GameBoy Advance or a new Metroid game for Advance based on the classics.
<soapbox>Boo to FPS! Long live platform games!</soapbox>
The point isn't that the PC as we know it is still popular, it's that the market is no longer profitable. If widgets are wildly popular, but none of the widget manufacturers can find a way to profit, widgets will become extinct no matter how badly you and everyone else wants one. More realistically, however, manufacturers will drop out of the race, demand will exceed supply, prices will go up, and profits will return.
Although, if the RIAA does 'reverse engineer' it, will these guys really have the guts to defend their case? I love a good David vs Goliath case, but I wouldn't ever want to put myself in a David position against anything larger than a grocery store in an injury suit.