I use iChat a few times a week to talk to family that's scattered across the continent. In the past few couple of months something changed in the Houston market that negatively impacts video conferencing. The call starts out fine, but after a minute my parents or brother can no longer understand what I'm saying and my image breaks up. I can still see and hear them fine. Disconnect and reconnect and it will work fine for another minute.
Last week I finally found a workaround - in iChat's Audio/Video preferences is an option for Bandwidth Limit which defaults to NONE. I just kept lowering the limit until the connection remained clear.
DASM and batariBasic are freely available for coding Atari 2600/VCS games.
The freely available emulator Stella has a really nice integrated debugger that really helps figuring out issues.
And you can even get your 2600/VCS game published! AtariAge has a 58 homebrew games, including my homebrew Medieval Mayhem, an updated version of Warlords.
Coding for the Atari is a challenge - 4K of ROM(though bank switching can be used to exceed that), 128 bytes of RAM(not K, not M, just bytes), no video memory - your program has to generate the screen on the fly, even controlling the TV sync signals. Andrew Davie has a nice series of articles, 2600 Programming For Newbies that can get you started.
I've had X10 for years - and while nice, it doesn't always work as expected. Remotes will stop working until I unplug and replug in the receiver, tap DIM to lower lights one level and they'll occasionally dim all the way to OFF and be unresponsive after that.
I'm in the process of upgrading my X10 system to INSTEON. It's much more robust, haven't experienced the quirks I've had using X10. I've also noticed it's much quicker at turning things on/off.
Indigo is home automation software for OS X - it supports INSTEON as well as X10.
I've a number of CFL installed in my house. My main issue with them is in locations I'd like to dim the lights. They have dimmable CFL, but they're expensive and have a horrible headache inducing flicker when dimmed.
The retina determines resolution, but by moving the eye around the brain ends ups "seeing" a higher resolution. The same as Motion DSP can do with poor camera phone resolution. The 2nd example is really impressive - you actually read the book titles in the processed video.
I remember being very disappointed when I tried Lemmings on the PC as I was used to playing the original on my Amiga. Off the top of my head I recall the PC audio was rather crappy and it lacked the 2 player mode.
Customer,"I'll have a coke" Me, "here ya go" Customer, "That's not what I wanted, I wanted orange!" Me, thinking, "then why didn't you ask for orange, ya friken moron"
After that happened a number of times, I started asking which soda they wanted, which would end up turning into
Customer,"I'll have a Coke" Me, "what kind of soda would you like?" Customer, "Uh, what do you mean, I said Coke..." Customer, thinking, "is this guy dense or something?!?!"
It was a lose-lose situation. Even though I didn't drink Pepsi, I was glad when they bought KFC. That turned it into:
Customer,"I'll have a coke" Me, "We don't sell Coke, we have Pepsi" Customer, "That's OK, I want orange."
I'll stick with my arrangment of the Mobile Houston Real-Time Traffic Map that I made for my RAZR because the original layout requires you to scroll up/down to view the map on the RAZR's small display.
For some reason my RAZR needed a WML page loaded before the HTML page. I also made arrangements for the close-ups of the different areas. All of which can be found here
How about a rapidly animated image where each frame contains seperate pieces of the characters and each frame uses different colors. Persistance of vision would end up yielding an image.
The Superbit DVD of The Fifth Element is often used as a reference DVD due to it's quality. I compared it with a HD showing of the film(HBO or Showtime, don't recall which) and the difference was very noticable. Not all HD sets are created equally, perhaps your set isn't up to par?
(Side note: the reason why the iSight demos in Apple keynote addresses look so darn good is that the participants are looking at the iSight camera, and not at the actual screen when they're doing the demo. It's a very subtle shift, but it still matters. Kind of a clever, sneaky way to make the product look even better than it actually does.)
Could be they're using a SightFlex to position the camera better.
A few years ago I had three CRT monitors going, 17" in the middle, two 15" on either side. They were replaced with two 19" LCDs, and while the bigger screens were nice, I found not having that third screen to be annoying. I recently got a third 19" LCD and things are much nicer. I have queries running in oracle on one screen and development tools on the other two.
I don't think four screens would be helpful, and think it might even be counter productive by having the information too spread out.
This is no different than cable - they have a large portion of the cable's bandwidth allocated to providing video and a small portion for providing internet access.
The point of Blu-Ray is High Definition. So your analog video and audio outputs are not going to get you HD. You are not going to plug your HDTV to your DVD player using analog if you want HiDef.
I use analog component video cables to hook up my HD cable box. I'm getting a Hi Def picture.
If Blu-Ray is going to be "HDMI only" for Hi Def then they are artificially limiting the ability to play hi def content and will end up pissing off early adopters like myself because HDMI connections where not even an option. (by "early adopter" I mean anybody who bought a HDTV before 2003 - HDMI spec 1.0 wasn't out until December 2002. Even then, a lot of HDTVs from 2003 and 2004 did not include the HDMI connector.)
I will not buy a Blu-Ray player if it only plays back DVD quality on my HDTV, and I will not replace my HDTV just to buy Blu-Ray.
Apple has been adding support for a Resultion Independent GUI which will allow displays with higher DPIs without making the GUI controls too tiny to use. I experienced that problem once trying to run OS/2 at 2048x1536, everything looked great but the window controls were too tiny and hard to hit with the mouse.
Scaling Factor
Resolution Independent UI can be used to provide the user with either detail (more pixels per point, but fewer points on the screen), or real-estate (fewer pixels per point but more points on the screen). To do so the graphics system and user interface require an additional parameter to govern this preference. We call this additional parameter "scaling factor". In future release of Mac OS X we expect this parameter to be settable by the user the same way a user can today go to the Displays Preferences Panel to change the screen resolution.
Note: For development purpose only, developers can use Quartz Debug to change the scaling factor (Location:/Developer/Applications/Performance Tools - Menu: Tools->Show User Interface Resolution)
Let's assume that on a 1600x1200 pixel display we want to target the basic "look" of our current user interface at 1024x768, which assumes a 72 virtual dpi. To take up the same fraction of the display, the UI would need to be larger by a scaling factor of 1600/1024 = 1.5625. Note that from a distance, this desktop would look identical to today's 1024x768, but upon closer inspection the 1600x1200 display would be much more detailed. If instead, we wanted to make the display look like today's 800x600 displays, we would run our 1600x1200 display at a virtual dpi of 144 with a scaling factor of 2, which would be highly detailed using 4 times as many pixels to represent the user interface.
He's not using their roads, emergency services, etc.
Also, since he doesn't have the right to vote there it could be considered taxation without representation.
Hated? What hate?
on
20 Years of NES
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Nobody stopped gaming, they just changed where they gamed. The early to mid 80s was when home computers first became affordable. Everybody I knew turned off their Atari/Coleco/Intellivision game console and started gaming on their Atari/Commodore/TRS-80 computer system instead.
My freedom to die young because I can't afford health insurance.
My freedom to slave forever on poverty wages because I can't afford college.
My freedom to starve because I can't find a job that pays enough for food *and* housing.
Ahh yes. Freedom. I forget how lucky I am.
If you can't afford to go to college, it's because you didn't get off your lazy "I'm should be entitled to it" ass to do so. I worked 2(sometimes 3) low paying jobs(fast food, grocery checkout, valet parking, data entry, etc) at the same time to put myself through college. As a student I had access to campus health care. To afford housing I had roommates. There's plenty of inexpensive ways to keep yourself fed(working fast food helped a lot).
Because of the time I invested in college, I now have an excellent paying job, healthcare, my own home, and probably eat a little bit more than I should:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I use iChat a few times a week to talk to family that's scattered across the continent. In the past few couple of months something changed in the Houston market that negatively impacts video conferencing. The call starts out fine, but after a minute my parents or brother can no longer understand what I'm saying and my image breaks up. I can still see and hear them fine. Disconnect and reconnect and it will work fine for another minute.
Others have noticed this problem too - Comcast: No iChat, No Choice.
Last week I finally found a workaround - in iChat's Audio/Video preferences is an option for Bandwidth Limit which defaults to NONE. I just kept lowering the limit until the connection remained clear.
DASM and batariBasic are freely available for coding Atari 2600/VCS games.
The freely available emulator Stella has a really nice integrated debugger that really helps figuring out issues.
And you can even get your 2600/VCS game published! AtariAge has a 58 homebrew games, including my homebrew Medieval Mayhem, an updated version of Warlords.
Coding for the Atari is a challenge - 4K of ROM(though bank switching can be used to exceed that), 128 bytes of RAM(not K, not M, just bytes), no video memory - your program has to generate the screen on the fly, even controlling the TV sync signals. Andrew Davie has a nice series of articles, 2600 Programming For Newbies that can get you started.
You forgot one - you're stealing if you go to the bathroom during a commercial break.
I've had X10 for years - and while nice, it doesn't always work as expected. Remotes will stop working until I unplug and replug in the receiver, tap DIM to lower lights one level and they'll occasionally dim all the way to OFF and be unresponsive after that.
I'm in the process of upgrading my X10 system to INSTEON. It's much more robust, haven't experienced the quirks I've had using X10. I've also noticed it's much quicker at turning things on/off.
Indigo is home automation software for OS X - it supports INSTEON as well as X10.
I saw some CFL chandelier bulbs last week, they didn't look bad.
I've a number of CFL installed in my house. My main issue with them is in locations I'd like to dim the lights. They have dimmable CFL, but they're expensive and have a horrible headache inducing flicker when dimmed.
http://pashdown.org/wiki/index.php/Pete_Ashdown
At least we know where your viewpoint comes from.
John Hodgman and Jon Stewart explain Net Neutrality
I'm not looking forward to PneuMail.
My parents live in Mexico. Calls from them don't show a number.
I've taken using the answering machine to screen calls.
The retina determines resolution, but by moving the eye around the brain ends ups "seeing" a higher resolution. The same as Motion DSP can do with poor camera phone resolution. The 2nd example is really impressive - you actually read the book titles in the processed video.
I remember being very disappointed when I tried Lemmings on the PC as I was used to playing the original on my Amiga. Off the top of my head I recall the PC audio was rather crappy and it lacked the 2 player mode.
I always hated that when I worked at KFC.
Customer,"I'll have a coke"
Me, "here ya go"
Customer, "That's not what I wanted, I wanted orange!"
Me, thinking, "then why didn't you ask for orange, ya friken moron"
After that happened a number of times, I started asking which soda they wanted, which would end up turning into
Customer,"I'll have a Coke"
Me, "what kind of soda would you like?"
Customer, "Uh, what do you mean, I said Coke..."
Customer, thinking, "is this guy dense or something?!?!"
It was a lose-lose situation. Even though I didn't drink Pepsi, I was glad when they bought KFC. That turned it into:
Customer,"I'll have a coke"
Me, "We don't sell Coke, we have Pepsi"
Customer, "That's OK, I want orange."
how revolutionary
I'll stick with my arrangment of the Mobile Houston Real-Time Traffic Map that I made for my RAZR because the original layout requires you to scroll up/down to view the map on the RAZR's small display.
For some reason my RAZR needed a WML page loaded before the HTML page. I also made arrangements for the close-ups of the different areas. All of which can be found
here
How about a rapidly animated image where each frame contains seperate pieces of the characters and each frame uses different colors. Persistance of vision would end up yielding an image.
The Superbit DVD of The Fifth Element is often used as a reference DVD due to it's quality. I compared it with a HD showing of the film(HBO or Showtime, don't recall which) and the difference was very noticable. Not all HD sets are created equally, perhaps your set isn't up to par?
(Side note: the reason why the iSight demos in Apple keynote addresses look so darn good is that the participants are looking at the iSight camera, and not at the actual screen when they're doing the demo. It's a very subtle shift, but it still matters. Kind of a clever, sneaky way to make the product look even better than it actually does.)
Could be they're using a SightFlex to position the camera better.
A few years ago I had three CRT monitors going, 17" in the middle, two 15" on either side. They were replaced with two 19" LCDs, and while the bigger screens were nice, I found not having that third screen to be annoying. I recently got a third 19" LCD and things are much nicer. I have queries running in oracle on one screen and development tools on the other two.
I don't think four screens would be helpful, and think it might even be counter productive by having the information too spread out.
This is no different than cable - they have a large portion of the cable's bandwidth allocated to providing video and a small portion for providing internet access.
KUHT digital in Houston is on channel 9, which isn't between 13-69.
Where's the Holiday in those games?
By that title you should have been reviewing Reindeer Rescue, a brand new game released for the Atari 2600.
If Blu-Ray is going to be "HDMI only" for Hi Def then they are artificially limiting the ability to play hi def content and will end up pissing off early adopters like myself because HDMI connections where not even an option. (by "early adopter" I mean anybody who bought a HDTV before 2003 - HDMI spec 1.0 wasn't out until December 2002. Even then, a lot of HDTVs from 2003 and 2004 did not include the HDMI connector.)
I will not buy a Blu-Ray player if it only plays back DVD quality on my HDTV, and I will not replace my HDTV just to buy Blu-Ray.
He's not using their roads, emergency services, etc.
Also, since he doesn't have the right to vote there it could be considered taxation without representation.
Nobody stopped gaming, they just changed where they gamed. The early to mid 80s was when home computers first became affordable. Everybody I knew turned off their Atari/Coleco/Intellivision game console and started gaming on their Atari/Commodore/TRS-80 computer system instead.
Ahh yes. My freedom.
:-)
My freedom to die young because I can't afford health insurance.
My freedom to slave forever on poverty wages because I can't afford college.
My freedom to starve because I can't find a job that pays enough for food *and* housing.
Ahh yes. Freedom. I forget how lucky I am.
If you can't afford to go to college, it's because you didn't get off your lazy "I'm should be entitled to it" ass to do so. I worked 2(sometimes 3) low paying jobs(fast food, grocery checkout, valet parking, data entry, etc) at the same time to put myself through college. As a student I had access to campus health care. To afford housing I had roommates. There's plenty of inexpensive ways to keep yourself fed(working fast food helped a lot).
Because of the time I invested in college, I now have an excellent paying job, healthcare, my own home, and probably eat a little bit more than I should
Yep, Freedom - how lucky I am.