When I bought my TIVO a M$ salesperson at Good Guys told me that I would regret buying a TIVO because it was only a matter of time before they went belly-up.
Well, I'm not abandoned yet, but who-ever bought his crap is now.
At the very end of the article it explains that Stanford allows quite a bit of latitude in what it's professors can release as open source, or rather Stanford isn't the money grubbing kind.
At the other end of the spectrum is UC Berkeley which apparently is reticent to allow anything to go out the door for free. Or rather UC Berkely has become the money grubbing kind.
I feel it's ironic that the perceived notions of Berkeley being quite liberal (flag burning communist supporters, etc.) and of Stanford being the conservative one (MBA/Lawyer driven money hounds etc.) are just exactly opposite of what is actually the case out there in the world.
I have everything a person needs to get HDTV except one item which I will explain a bit later.
I've got an 80 inch Mitsubishi which is HDTV ready. It is a 4x3 format TV that can show HDTV. Of course it's huge and great. Of the rear projection TV's it's the biggest I've personally ever seen. Ok, to make everyone jealous, the PIP on this baby is 27 diagonal inches by itself, WOW!
I live in the SF Bay area with a high number of the local stations producing HDTV signals.
I have a very large rotatable antenna on my roof which can grab the signals.
But I do not have the HDTV tuner for my TV yet.
The reason is is that I personally am a time-shifter and time-shifters need a way to record their programs. You can't cheaply record HDTV yet. There are $3000.00 VCRs out there that will record the signal.
If you prefer to tape your programs then watch them at a convenient moment in time then forget HDTV. Plus, you get the added benefit of being able to skip the commercials.
If you don't mind watching the commercials and have the cash to get the HDTV then get it.
Personally, I just recently purchased a TIVO (which only added to my timeshifting habits) and I have to say it is the most awesome gadget I have purchased in the last 10 years.
Spend the $100.00 on the TIVO with DirectTV receiver and save the odd $3-$4 thousand on the HDTV for now.
Second half to this story:
My 80 inch TV is broken at this moment. Will leave the details out here but suffice it to say that I did purchase a 5 year warrenty. No problems there, the service tech has faithfully been attempting to fix it.
But, my wife and I are terrified that the cost to fix it may exceed what it would cost our local Fry's Electronics (where we bought it) to replace it with the "latest, greatest" HDTV ready model.
The "latest, greatest" is a 73 inch Mitsubishi HDTV ready. Nice machine when showing HDTV, but when I ask the store to show me something in 4x3 format it looks crappy. Much, much worse than my current 80 inch TV.
Thus, make the salesperson show you the picture of a DVD or DirecTV or anything in 4x3 mode, because you might find yourself looking at a lot of it until 2006 or so.
Thus, if they try to replace our TV with newer technology we are going to say no thank-you, we want our old TV fixed. Or give us an 80 inch HDTV ready machine (BTW they don't make these anymore, hah, hah) to equivalently replace our current set.
Anything less is just not acceptable since I can't tape HDTV and I cannot record it on my TIVO.
Given you even mentioned the multiple thousands of dollars it actually takes to get into a real Oracle system I shall assume you or your organization can afford it.
I do have to say this. My wife is one of those people who carries the cell phone 24/7/365 as an Oracle employee. And she is good, real good. And I can say that she does get called at 2:30 am and she works on the problem until it is fixed, and not one minute less. Nothing else is satisfactory with her management.
So if you do buy that Oracle system and you're up hacking away at 3am and just cannot get something to work and you've got to have the quarterly results out by tomorrow afternoon, you'll probably be waking my wife up. And from what I've seen so far, your numbers will probably go out on time.
Just don't ask me for help because I'm probably just going to roll over and moan. Plus I personally know nothing about Oracle.
Slashdot Mirror
When I bought my TIVO a M$ salesperson at Good Guys told me that I would regret buying a TIVO because it was only a matter of time before they went belly-up.
Well, I'm not abandoned yet, but who-ever bought his crap is now.
BTW, love my TIVO, cannot live without it....
I can't wait to get my hands on one of these puppies.
As a Tivo owner, I've come to the conclusion that anybody who does any TV watching is an idiot not to have a Tivo.
BTW, that set of idiots included me for a long time, which I cannot, for the life of me, now understand...
At the very end of the article it explains that Stanford allows quite a bit of latitude in what it's professors can release as open source, or rather Stanford isn't the money grubbing kind.
At the other end of the spectrum is UC Berkeley which apparently is reticent to allow anything to go out the door for free. Or rather UC Berkely has become the money grubbing kind.
I feel it's ironic that the perceived notions of Berkeley being quite liberal (flag burning communist supporters, etc.) and of Stanford being the conservative one (MBA/Lawyer driven money hounds etc.) are just exactly opposite of what is actually the case out there in the world.
I have everything a person needs to get HDTV except one item which I will explain a bit later.
I've got an 80 inch Mitsubishi which is HDTV ready. It is a 4x3 format TV that can show HDTV. Of course it's huge and great. Of the rear projection TV's it's the biggest I've personally ever seen. Ok, to make everyone jealous, the PIP on this baby is 27 diagonal inches by itself, WOW!
I live in the SF Bay area with a high number of the local stations producing HDTV signals.
I have a very large rotatable antenna on my roof which can grab the signals.
But I do not have the HDTV tuner for my TV yet.
The reason is is that I personally am a time-shifter and time-shifters need a way to record their programs. You can't cheaply record HDTV yet. There are $3000.00 VCRs out there that will record the signal.
If you prefer to tape your programs then watch them at a convenient moment in time then forget HDTV. Plus, you get the added benefit of being able to skip the commercials.
If you don't mind watching the commercials and have the cash to get the HDTV then get it.
Personally, I just recently purchased a TIVO (which only added to my timeshifting habits) and I have to say it is the most awesome gadget I have purchased in the last 10 years.
Spend the $100.00 on the TIVO with DirectTV receiver and save the odd $3-$4 thousand on the HDTV for now.
Second half to this story:
My 80 inch TV is broken at this moment. Will leave the details out here but suffice it to say that I did purchase a 5 year warrenty. No problems there, the service tech has faithfully been attempting to fix it.
But, my wife and I are terrified that the cost to fix it may exceed what it would cost our local Fry's Electronics (where we bought it) to replace it with the "latest, greatest" HDTV ready model.
The "latest, greatest" is a 73 inch Mitsubishi HDTV ready. Nice machine when showing HDTV, but when I ask the store to show me something in 4x3 format it looks crappy. Much, much worse than my current 80 inch TV.
Thus, make the salesperson show you the picture of a DVD or DirecTV or anything in 4x3 mode, because you might find yourself looking at a lot of it until 2006 or so.
Thus, if they try to replace our TV with newer technology we are going to say no thank-you, we want our old TV fixed. Or give us an 80 inch HDTV ready machine (BTW they don't make these anymore, hah, hah) to equivalently replace our current set.
Anything less is just not acceptable since I can't tape HDTV and I cannot record it on my TIVO.
My 2 cents.
OYAHHH
AirportTools
Given you even mentioned the multiple thousands of dollars it actually takes to get into a real Oracle system I shall assume you or your organization can afford it. I do have to say this. My wife is one of those people who carries the cell phone 24/7/365 as an Oracle employee. And she is good, real good. And I can say that she does get called at 2:30 am and she works on the problem until it is fixed, and not one minute less. Nothing else is satisfactory with her management. So if you do buy that Oracle system and you're up hacking away at 3am and just cannot get something to work and you've got to have the quarterly results out by tomorrow afternoon, you'll probably be waking my wife up. And from what I've seen so far, your numbers will probably go out on time. Just don't ask me for help because I'm probably just going to roll over and moan. Plus I personally know nothing about Oracle.