I like this quote:
Microsoft distributes some of its programs without charge to customers
Yeah, and exactly WHEN did it start doing that? Did they distribute any significant software for free before Netscape?
Even the development tools where a pain in the ass to get your hands on before then, like the DDK for which you needed to be an MSDN subscriber to get it.
Uhm, Nokia Communicator? I think I bought mine in 97'ish, maybe 98.
Oh, wait,- GeoWorks wrote the OS and browser for that! AHAAA!
However, far before 98 we used a satelite based Internet connection (think DirectPC like) and I can't imagine there's isn't prove somewhere of someone using a wireless connection before 98. And what if you connected to the Internet through an airplane's phone system?
An other thing that lawyers should have a closer look at is the man-machine interface part of the patent. A user interface is NOT a web-browser, therefore this patent may only apply to the user-interface through a browser on a wireless device...
Besides, really nice technology about Crusoe is that it can detect when
user is having high demand on its laptop, and speed things up, then switch
to low consumption when the computer is idle (like while you're watching
something on the screen, not doing much). Intel has not developed such
technology, it might, but not this year
Bullshit. It's called the HLT instruction and any decent OS executes this instruction when idle. It's been in Intel CPU's for ages and works excellent to conserve power: as long as you run a non-brain-dead OS.
When Transmeta publishes figures that actually show the power consumption when the CPU IS busy, then we'll see how far they actually are ahead of comparable speed Intel CPUs.
Yeah exactly. What's up with the vagueness about that M$ thingy? And what the hell is this supposed to mean:
Now your REMOVABLE ATA - that looks like it is going to be still bound to CPRM rules. Compact FLASH, IBM MicroDrives, Sony Mem-Stick.... Things that are defined as "MEDIA" and not FIXED!
When just before it's stated that this is based on one or two bits to identify the difference tween removable and fixed. In other words how hard to it be to CRACK THAT? Like pretend my MicroDrive is FIXED. I'm sure I've got it all wrong, but PLEASE be a bit more clear about things like this.
I've been doing that for years with PGPDisk now. Ooops, only Win32.
I'd be surprised if there wheren't anything similar for Linux. Me thinks implementing something at the block-device driver level would be even simpler than at the file-system level.
Btw. the PGPDisk source is available. Search and you'll find.
Breace
Re:Quit saying that word!
on
What is 'IT'?
·
· Score: 1
And they got their demand with the new president: SHRUB!;)
/. reader:
Late in November, I read the ask slashdot article about the Dulux DVD/MP3/Game player and followed the link (http://www.gamedvdplayer.com) to purchase the item
...
and it turns out that I have never received the item, and although the company's web site is still up, they do not return phone calls or emails
/back comment:
Well said. Who else can contribute words of wisdom (or chagrin) about what so far appears to be a non-deluxe player?
I'm sorry/. but this sounds a little cheap to me. I hope that the article and this comment make you realize the responsibility that you have today.
People take you seriously, and although those of use who've been around long enough realize this, for some it may be hard to distinguish tween rite and wrong.
/. is a great site, but this is a good example of people being (possibly) frauded, believing in the quality of you (/.). I think you should at least be a bit more serious about it than the lame comment you make here.
Be angry. Pull for these guys. You have the power, and you can't let them down now.
The lawyers cite statistics showing that just 2.6 percent of Microsoft's approximately 22,000 employees, and just 1.6 percent of its 5,155 managers, are black. "The numbers illustrate that Microsoft is guilty of some of the most egregious discrimination in corporate America," Hoffler said. The numbers don't illustrate a gawdamn thing!
Where are the numbers for what should be the qualification for managers, like education/experience? It could be that it so happens that the black people that M$ is employing have a lower educational/experience level on average.
Yeah yeah, I'll prawly be flamed for that statement, and I really don't mean to suggest that black people have lower educational/experience levels. I'm just saying that we are talking pretty small numbers here, so the differences shown by the lawyers may be explained by some other factors than racism.
What baffles me is, say these people where making $100K a year, I don't really understand why they want 10.000 years of compensation. It's not like they missed out on that many years because of M$.
I remember that M$ was the first company that I saw to use the term 'equal opportunity employer'. It would be sad if that wasn't true. And obviously the claims have to be taken seriously and be investigated. I think the $5B doesn't do a lot of good in terms of public opinion tho.
Anyways, working in Sillicon Valley, I feel our industry is one of the greatest because of it's lack of discrimination. You simply wouldn't get a damn thing done if you are discriminating. It's like practically everyone has something that (s)he could be discriminated for;).
I really hope it stays that way, and all I can say that other industries should take the hi-tech industry as an example.
One thing I noticed at the keybowl web-site was the lack of information about special keystrokes.
They have a nice little program that converts text into the movements that should be made with their keylessboard, but it doesn't even handle capitalization. The 'traditional' approach of holding one key, while hitting an other is heavily used by many users, and how this exactly is handled is unclear.
I think people use keyboards differently, and the a through z keys are only part of the equation.
As a side note, I've never understood why M$ decided to re-layout the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PG-UP/DWN island from 3x2 to 2x3 on their second version of the natural keyboard. Are they insane? (oh right, never mind..) I use them all the time and its unbelievable how annoying such a small change can be. Fortunately they changed them back on the NK Pro.
I'm worried about the video quality. When I watch video through the all-in-wonder card, it's not bad but I still seem to notice that video is not going direct to the video input of the TV. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but I notice a hit in resolution. If I buy a DVD player, I want it to look perfect. I'd be interested to hear from folks who have a hardware DVD decoder board with an S-video output to know whether or not this would really be a problem.
As opposed to what someone else says here, you should be worried.
I have tried 4 different DVD playbacks on a 53" HD projection TV, and the results where amazing to me.
Please notice that I have not tried a dedicated DVD playback card with S-Video out. I suspect that to be better than a video card that has S-Video out (like the ATI and 3Dfx described below), although it shouldn't be.
Here's a list of players, in order of LEAST desired:
Most important features:
- S-Video out (at 800x600)
- hardware DVD decoding
Results:
Horrible, horrible noise on the S-Video out, for only certain colors. Other colors displayed at the same time looked just fine. A really weird problem, which may have been a hardware failure. I was still able to tell the overall quality and decided that I would just return it.
Most important features:
- S-Video out (at 800x600)
- hardware DVD decoding
Results:
I still use this to play games and browse on my TV. The sharpness is not as good as the ATI, but I already had this card, plus it doesn't have the noise problem. Without the noise problem I would probably choose the ATI.
However, putting a card like this or the ATI next to a stand-alone player shows is no comparison. The stand-alone players are just soooo much clearer/sharper etc, that you don't even have to do a side by side. You can tell straight away.
I'm sure a hardware decoder card like the Creative _could_ possibly have the exact same hardware as a stand-alone player and should be able to generate similar quality.
However, most will have a VGA overlay kind of thing (even though, for PC monitor playback it would be much better to use VMI, ZV or an other digital bus). What that does to the timing/resolution is still unclear to me.
3) Apex AD800
Most important features:
- Plays about every CD/DVD on the planet
- Component video out with Progressive Scan
Well, the quality of this machine is really not too bad. If they had still have the hidden menu to disable Region Codes I would have probably kept it (as a second machine though...)
You'll only see the difference between this one and the Toshiba if you have a good HD (ready) TV.
4) Toshiba SD-6200
Most important features:
- Component video out with Progressive Scan
This is the one I kept after doing a side-by-side. My TV has two component inputs and supports Progressive Scan. I rented a movie that I already had and thus could do a real side-by-side comparison by switching the TV input.
The difference was noticable in favor of the Toshiba, but it wasn't big. The Toshiba was just a little bit sharper and seemed to have more color depth.
And there are other less known products out there, for example http://www.jakom.de. You can even download it to evaluate,- e.g. this is a _real_ (8 bit) product.
Some people just make good products, others produce the noise... Slashdot should be about the first group, not the second...
There is however truth in the fact that only a small decrease in power consumption of widely used ICs would greatly reduce our cumulative power consumption.
/. is shamelessly pluging TM and the subliminal message in this article is the pinnacle of them all!
Sure if Intel CPUs would use 1 Watt less, the SF bay-area alone would need about a GigaWatt less power, but think about how great global warming is for people in Iceland!
No it's not. Progressive scan is the original format of a DVD, also called 480P (480 lines of resolution).
Svideo output runs at 480i (480 lines of resolution, interlaced) which only paints half of the lines in one pass of the electron gun. This makes a noticable flicker. Regular DVD players have to include the circuitry to step the output down to this format.
You know what, I have a suspicion we are both right.;)
Some people have been complaining about the Progressive Scan of the Pioneer, and say that the Toshiba is great.
This made me think. Basically a normal DVD decoder would decode a stream and output it interlaced, because this is what the old TV standard wants. Thus 480 lines, interlaced. Or one odd field, one even field 30 times per second. I know of at least one chip that can only output this format.
Now, to implement progressive scan you could do two things to enhance the picture, of which only one is actually good.
The first way (and I suspect the Apex does that because the manual uses the exact terminology) is to use line doubling. So it basically outputs an entire 480 line frame 60 times per second by doubling the horizontal line. This is bad, but probably easier (cheaper) to implement.
The second way would be to use a different decoder that will do the actual full decode of the 480 line frame 60 times a second,- the way it was recorded and encoded. This is the good way.
If this is the case, it could explain the difference in quality that people see. I've seen line-doubling, and it _can_ make a picture flicker more instead of less, which is the complaint I heard about the Pioneer.
It would be really great if somebody could confirm/deny this lil theory.
I was going to do a side-by-side later when the TV arrives. My projector does support Progressive Scan, and at Circuit City they only had the Apex or a Pioneer.
The Pioneer has bad reviews regarding the PS, and since the 800A is so new, I can't find any worthwile reviews.
I think it's gonna go back anyways, because the newer Apex machines don't support the region-code menu anymore. (you simply can't change it, not even a couple of times...)
Maybe this is not an issue to you, but to get superior video quality on a digital (HDTV or HDTV ready) TV, you would want Component Video out, with Progressive Scan output. For superior audio output, you may want to get DTS.
The Component Video seperates the Luminance and Chrominance into three components (hence three cables required) as opposed to two in S-Video and one in Composite Video. Seperation of components is a Good Thing(tm).
I don't know for sure if you need an HDTV(-ready) for this, or if there are 'normal' TV's with Component Video in.
Progressive Scan is what they call 'line doubling', which in effect doubles the horizontal lines (duh!) and gives a more steady, sharper picture. I'm sure you need a digital TV to handle this. Go to an electronics store to have it demonstrated to you.
The Dulux website does not mention DTS audio, which is (correct me if I'm wrong) DVD disks with audio on it. The audio is much higher quality and I think it's also possible to have true surround effects. Although the player has analog audio outputs, the real way to play DTS is through the digital output and a DTS amplifier. There's not much content out there yet, but it does sound awesome!
I just bought an APEX AD-800A yesterday which does all of the above (and MP3's etc, reply if you want a full list) at Circuit City for 299$ (actually they gave it to me for 199$ because I also bought a digital 55" projector;))
This player does NOT have the Sega capabilities though, and I don't know about the Karaoke (not my cup-a-thee).
So the question is, do you need/want the superior quality outputs, or do you prefer the all-in-one approach. If you don't have matching equipment, or are not going to get that in the near future, the additional outputs are not gonna do you any good.
Is this really a hack? He's basically replaced the core electronics (the microcontroller).
I would have thought that a hack would involve running custom code on the original controller.
Not to play down the effort or anything, but I don't see what this has to do with a Furby. It's not like you can run to the store, buy a Furby, hook it to your serial port, reprogram it and let it yell 'fart', or something.
Anyways, if anything it shows that the makers of the Furby have done an excellent job in making something that is _really_ hard to reverse-engineer.
With more and more platforms having some sort of a web-browser, it is likely that a plugin is not available for the particular platform.
An important 'feature' of a plugin is its security hazard. Running native on the client system may be nice for performance, but also means that it has full access to all resources AND to the internet. This means that we have to scrutinize the quality/honesty for every plugin installed. I'd rather have just one thing to worry about: the browser.
And especially for embedded platforms (I'm working on an In-Flight Entertainment System) it is often not desirable or possible to run plugins. It's unlikely that third-party code will be executed, without some sort of _very_ rigorous verification.
I don't quite understand it either. You _can_ do quite a bit with a Java applet, or even with JavaScript. I know the sound/image synchronization of Macromedia is nice, but look what it's used for: marketing.
And I says: fsck marketing. The Web was designed to provide information on demand, not to watch advertisements (which is what most Flash content really is). It pisses me of when I have to sit through a frigging commercial before I get to see what I want.
In my opinion it's better to extend the capabilities of the browser, if new features are desired. This way it will be a more standardized solution (read NOT proprietary) and it's possible for _everyone_ to implement it in their browser.
WebTV uses SpyGlass, Device Mosaic. It doesn't support plugins, unless WebTV has modified DM heavily. I know this because I'm porting DM to an In-Flight entertainment system. We will not support plugins either.
Actually what you are refering to is the AARD code, discovered by Andrew Schulman.
This code was only executed in a beta version of Windows, and it's pretty obvious that it was there for the sole purpose of discovering anything else but MS-DOS (e.g. DR-DOS) and halting with a weird error message.
The funny thing is that the actual code was linked in later code, but never executed.
So how do I hook that programmer to my PC? I have just never seen something like that, but maybe I've had my head up the wrong place.
A friend of mine made a PIC programmer using just a few transistors and probably some resistors and caps, and that was it. I'm sure those parts are probably in old VCR's but what would a VCR use a fully functional PIC programmer for?
Slashdot Mirror
dont forget to read up on CS vs CIS:
s html
http://slashdot.org/askslashdot/00/12/27/1634227.
I like this quote:
Microsoft distributes some of its programs without charge to customers
Yeah, and exactly WHEN did it start doing that? Did they distribute any significant software for free before Netscape?
Even the development tools where a pain in the ass to get your hands on before then, like the DDK for which you needed to be an MSDN subscriber to get it.
Breace.
Uhm, Nokia Communicator? I think I bought mine in 97'ish, maybe 98.
Oh, wait,- GeoWorks wrote the OS and browser for that! AHAAA!
However, far before 98 we used a satelite based Internet connection (think DirectPC like) and I can't imagine there's isn't prove somewhere of someone using a wireless connection before 98. And what if you connected to the Internet through an airplane's phone system?
An other thing that lawyers should have a closer look at is the man-machine interface part of the patent. A user interface is NOT a web-browser, therefore this patent may only apply to the user-interface through a browser on a wireless device...
Breace.
Besides, really nice technology about Crusoe is that it can detect when
user is having high demand on its laptop, and speed things up, then switch
to low consumption when the computer is idle (like while you're watching
something on the screen, not doing much). Intel has not developed such
technology, it might, but not this year
Bullshit. It's called the HLT instruction and any decent OS executes this instruction when idle. It's been in Intel CPU's for ages and works excellent to conserve power: as long as you run a non-brain-dead OS.
When Transmeta publishes figures that actually show the power consumption when the CPU IS busy, then we'll see how far they actually are ahead of comparable speed Intel CPUs.
Breace.
This 'what if' crap doesn't matter to ME!
Nuff said.
Yeah exactly. What's up with the vagueness about that M$ thingy? And what the hell is this supposed to mean:
Now your REMOVABLE ATA - that looks like it is going to be still bound to CPRM rules. Compact FLASH, IBM MicroDrives, Sony Mem-Stick.... Things that are defined as "MEDIA" and not FIXED!
When just before it's stated that this is based on one or two bits to identify the difference tween removable and fixed. In other words how hard to it be to CRACK THAT? Like pretend my MicroDrive is FIXED. I'm sure I've got it all wrong, but PLEASE be a bit more clear about things like this.
Breace
I've been doing that for years with PGPDisk now. Ooops, only Win32.
I'd be surprised if there wheren't anything similar for Linux. Me thinks implementing something at the block-device driver level would be even simpler than at the file-system level.
Btw. the PGPDisk source is available. Search and you'll find.
Breace
And they got their demand with the new president: SHRUB! ;)
/. reader:
/. but this sounds a little cheap to me. I hope that the article and this comment make you realize the responsibility that you have today.
Late in November, I read the ask slashdot article about the Dulux DVD/MP3/Game player and followed the link (http://www.gamedvdplayer.com) to purchase the item
...
and it turns out that I have never received the item, and although the company's web site is still up, they do not return phone calls or emails
/back comment:
Well said. Who else can contribute words of wisdom (or chagrin) about what so far appears to be a non-deluxe player?
I'm sorry
People take you seriously, and although those of use who've been around long enough realize this, for some it may be hard to distinguish tween rite and wrong.
/. is a great site, but this is a good example of people being (possibly) frauded, believing in the quality of you (/.). I think you should at least be a bit more serious about it than the lame comment you make here.
Be angry. Pull for these guys. You have the power, and you can't let them down now.
Breace
The lawyers cite statistics showing that just 2.6 percent of Microsoft's approximately 22,000 employees, and just 1.6 percent of its 5,155 managers, are black. "The numbers illustrate that Microsoft is guilty of some of the most egregious discrimination in corporate America," Hoffler said.
;).
The numbers don't illustrate a gawdamn thing!
Where are the numbers for what should be the qualification for managers, like education/experience? It could be that it so happens that the black people that M$ is employing have a lower educational/experience level on average.
Yeah yeah, I'll prawly be flamed for that statement, and I really don't mean to suggest that black people have lower educational/experience levels. I'm just saying that we are talking pretty small numbers here, so the differences shown by the lawyers may be explained by some other factors than racism.
What baffles me is, say these people where making $100K a year, I don't really understand why they want 10.000 years of compensation. It's not like they missed out on that many years because of M$.
I remember that M$ was the first company that I saw to use the term 'equal opportunity employer'. It would be sad if that wasn't true. And obviously the claims have to be taken seriously and be investigated. I think the $5B doesn't do a lot of good in terms of public opinion tho.
Anyways, working in Sillicon Valley, I feel our industry is one of the greatest because of it's lack of discrimination. You simply wouldn't get a damn thing done if you are discriminating. It's like practically everyone has something that (s)he could be discriminated for
I really hope it stays that way, and all I can say that other industries should take the hi-tech industry as an example.
Breace
One thing I noticed at the keybowl web-site was the lack of information about special keystrokes.
They have a nice little program that converts text into the movements that should be made with their keylessboard, but it doesn't even handle capitalization. The 'traditional' approach of holding one key, while hitting an other is heavily used by many users, and how this exactly is handled is unclear.
I think people use keyboards differently, and the a through z keys are only part of the equation.
As a side note, I've never understood why M$ decided to re-layout the INS/DEL/HOME/END/PG-UP/DWN island from 3x2 to 2x3 on their second version of the natural keyboard. Are they insane? (oh right, never mind..) I use them all the time and its unbelievable how annoying such a small change can be. Fortunately they changed them back on the NK Pro.
Breace.
I'm worried about the video quality. When I watch video through the all-in-wonder card, it's not bad but I still seem to notice that video is not going direct to the video input of the TV. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but I notice a hit in resolution. If I buy a DVD player, I want it to look perfect. I'd be interested to hear from folks who have a hardware DVD decoder board with an S-video output to know whether or not this would really be a problem.
As opposed to what someone else says here, you should be worried.
I have tried 4 different DVD playbacks on a 53" HD projection TV, and the results where amazing to me.
Please notice that I have not tried a dedicated DVD playback card with S-Video out. I suspect that to be better than a video card that has S-Video out (like the ATI and 3Dfx described below), although it shouldn't be.
Here's a list of players, in order of LEAST desired:
1) PC with ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon
Most important features:
- S-Video out (at 800x600)
- hardware DVD decoding
Results:
Horrible, horrible noise on the S-Video out, for only certain colors. Other colors displayed at the same time looked just fine. A really weird problem, which may have been a hardware failure. I was still able to tell the overall quality and decided that I would just return it.
2) PC with 3Dfx Voodoo 3500 TV
Most important features:
- S-Video out (at 800x600)
- hardware DVD decoding
Results:
I still use this to play games and browse on my TV. The sharpness is not as good as the ATI, but I already had this card, plus it doesn't have the noise problem. Without the noise problem I would probably choose the ATI.
However, putting a card like this or the ATI next to a stand-alone player shows is no comparison. The stand-alone players are just soooo much clearer/sharper etc, that you don't even have to do a side by side. You can tell straight away.
I'm sure a hardware decoder card like the Creative _could_ possibly have the exact same hardware as a stand-alone player and should be able to generate similar quality.
However, most will have a VGA overlay kind of thing (even though, for PC monitor playback it would be much better to use VMI, ZV or an other digital bus). What that does to the timing/resolution is still unclear to me.
3) Apex AD800
Most important features:
- Plays about every CD/DVD on the planet
- Component video out with Progressive Scan
Well, the quality of this machine is really not too bad. If they had still have the hidden menu to disable Region Codes I would have probably kept it (as a second machine though...)
You'll only see the difference between this one and the Toshiba if you have a good HD (ready) TV.
4) Toshiba SD-6200
Most important features:
- Component video out with Progressive Scan
This is the one I kept after doing a side-by-side. My TV has two component inputs and supports Progressive Scan. I rented a movie that I already had and thus could do a real side-by-side comparison by switching the TV input.
The difference was noticable in favor of the Toshiba, but it wasn't big. The Toshiba was just a little bit sharper and seemed to have more color depth.
Hope this helps, Breace.
And there are other less known products out there, for example http://www.jakom.de. You can even download it to evaluate,- e.g. this is a _real_ (8 bit) product.
Some people just make good products, others produce the noise... Slashdot should be about the first group, not the second...
Breace
Oooh!
Maybe you should try this!
There is however truth in the fact that only a small decrease in power consumption of widely used ICs would greatly reduce our cumulative power consumption.
This really is a Transmeta plug, again.
/. is shamelessly pluging TM and the subliminal message in this article is the pinnacle of them all!
Sure if Intel CPUs would use 1 Watt less, the SF bay-area alone would need about a GigaWatt less power, but think about how great global warming is for people in Iceland!
No it's not. Progressive scan is the original format of a DVD, also called 480P (480 lines of resolution).
;)
Svideo output runs at 480i (480 lines of resolution, interlaced) which only paints half of the lines in one pass of the electron gun. This makes a noticable flicker. Regular DVD players have to include the circuitry to step the output down to this format.
You know what, I have a suspicion we are both right.
Some people have been complaining about the Progressive Scan of the Pioneer, and say that the Toshiba is great.
This made me think. Basically a normal DVD decoder would decode a stream and output it interlaced, because this is what the old TV standard wants. Thus 480 lines, interlaced. Or one odd field, one even field 30 times per second. I know of at least one chip that can only output this format.
Now, to implement progressive scan you could do two things to enhance the picture, of which only one is actually good.
The first way (and I suspect the Apex does that because the manual uses the exact terminology) is to use line doubling. So it basically outputs an entire 480 line frame 60 times per second by doubling the horizontal line. This is bad, but probably easier (cheaper) to implement.
The second way would be to use a different decoder that will do the actual full decode of the 480 line frame 60 times a second,- the way it was recorded and encoded. This is the good way.
If this is the case, it could explain the difference in quality that people see. I've seen line-doubling, and it _can_ make a picture flicker more instead of less, which is the complaint I heard about the Pioneer.
It would be really great if somebody could confirm/deny this lil theory.
Thanks for the feedback.
I was going to do a side-by-side later when the TV arrives. My projector does support Progressive Scan, and at Circuit City they only had the Apex or a Pioneer.
The Pioneer has bad reviews regarding the PS, and since the 800A is so new, I can't find any worthwile reviews.
I think it's gonna go back anyways, because the newer Apex machines don't support the region-code menu anymore. (you simply can't change it, not even a couple of times...)
Well, I don't want to imply that I'm an expert on the subject. I only said that the unit was missing (or at least it wasn't mentioned) DTS support.
I guess it's hard to believe that it wouldn't support it over the SPDIF outputs, but it's weird that they don't mention it.
I've heard DTS only once, a disc from the eagles, and it sounded awesome (and not because of bass). That would be compared to CD-DA though.
Maybe this is not an issue to you, but to get superior video quality on a digital (HDTV or HDTV ready) TV, you would want Component Video out, with Progressive Scan output. For superior audio output, you may want to get DTS.
;))
The Component Video seperates the Luminance and Chrominance into three components (hence three cables required) as opposed to two in S-Video and one in Composite Video. Seperation of components is a Good Thing(tm).
I don't know for sure if you need an HDTV(-ready) for this, or if there are 'normal' TV's with Component Video in.
Progressive Scan is what they call 'line doubling', which in effect doubles the horizontal lines (duh!) and gives a more steady, sharper picture. I'm sure you need a digital TV to handle this. Go to an electronics store to have it demonstrated to you.
The Dulux website does not mention DTS audio, which is (correct me if I'm wrong) DVD disks with audio on it. The audio is much higher quality and I think it's also possible to have true surround effects. Although the player has analog audio outputs, the real way to play DTS is through the digital output and a DTS amplifier. There's not much content out there yet, but it does sound awesome!
I just bought an APEX AD-800A yesterday which does all of the above (and MP3's etc, reply if you want a full list) at Circuit City for 299$ (actually they gave it to me for 199$ because I also bought a digital 55" projector
This player does NOT have the Sega capabilities though, and I don't know about the Karaoke (not my cup-a-thee).
So the question is, do you need/want the superior quality outputs, or do you prefer the all-in-one approach. If you don't have matching equipment, or are not going to get that in the near future, the additional outputs are not gonna do you any good.
Hope this helps, Breace
Yeah, but what is actually hacked? Cutting a few wires and connecting them to another board is hardly what I would call hacking, still...
:)
Anywho, I'm posting this from an airplane at 1.99$/minute, so I'd better quite. (I should have posted a FPFA, First Post From Airplane)
Later, Breace.
Is this really a hack? He's basically replaced the core electronics (the microcontroller).
I would have thought that a hack would involve running custom code on the original controller.
Not to play down the effort or anything, but I don't see what this has to do with a Furby. It's not like you can run to the store, buy a Furby, hook it to your serial port, reprogram it and let it yell 'fart', or something.
Anyways, if anything it shows that the makers of the Furby have done an excellent job in making something that is _really_ hard to reverse-engineer.
Breace
With more and more platforms having some sort of a web-browser, it is likely that a plugin is not available for the particular platform.
An important 'feature' of a plugin is its security hazard. Running native on the client system may be nice for performance, but also means that it has full access to all resources AND to the internet. This means that we have to scrutinize the quality/honesty for every plugin installed. I'd rather have just one thing to worry about: the browser.
And especially for embedded platforms (I'm working on an In-Flight Entertainment System) it is often not desirable or possible to run plugins. It's unlikely that third-party code will be executed, without some sort of _very_ rigorous verification.
I don't quite understand it either. You _can_ do quite a bit with a Java applet, or even with JavaScript. I know the sound/image synchronization of Macromedia is nice, but look what it's used for: marketing.
And I says: fsck marketing. The Web was designed to provide information on demand, not to watch advertisements (which is what most Flash content really is). It pisses me of when I have to sit through a frigging commercial before I get to see what I want.
In my opinion it's better to extend the capabilities of the browser, if new features are desired. This way it will be a more standardized solution (read NOT proprietary) and it's possible for _everyone_ to implement it in their browser.
Breace.
WebTV uses SpyGlass, Device Mosaic. It doesn't support plugins, unless WebTV has modified DM heavily. I know this because I'm porting DM to an In-Flight entertainment system. We will not support plugins either.
Actually what you are refering to is the AARD code, discovered by Andrew Schulman.
This code was only executed in a beta version of Windows, and it's pretty obvious that it was there for the sole purpose of discovering anything else but MS-DOS (e.g. DR-DOS) and halting with a weird error message.
The funny thing is that the actual code was linked in later code, but never executed.
So how do I hook that programmer to my PC? I have just never seen something like that, but maybe I've had my head up the wrong place.
A friend of mine made a PIC programmer using just a few transistors and probably some resistors and caps, and that was it. I'm sure those parts are probably in old VCR's but what would a VCR use a fully functional PIC programmer for?