This game is nothing like Doom3; it is NOT graphics intensive. It's more cpu intensive due to greater use of physics and AI.
This game was demoed last year on high end hardware at amazing speeds. The "leaked" source ran beautifully on my machine then (an Athlon 2000+ with a 9500 Pro and 512MB RAM). CS:Source is playing NOW at cybercafes around the country on normal hardware (I personally played it on athlon 2500+ with an NVidia FX something-or-other).
I'm personally resigned to this game being VERY underwhelming. We've been hearing hype on it for years, and it was pretty damn cool last year... I think it'll be really damn cool, but I don't think it will be revolutionary or anything. I also know it won't spur nearly as many upgrades as Doom3. Which is odd, because I think this game will be so much more replayable than Doom3. Once you are done with Doom3, there's little incentive to play again from all the reports I've read.
since the patent is for a CONSOLE ADD ON DEVICE, it doesn't apply to XBox or PCs
Well, that was just their example setup. If you read the actual patent, it makes sure to state that it doesn't have to be an add on device. This means that XBox might fall under the patent (that's for the courts to decide). PCs wouldn't because they aren't consoles.
I don't think Nintendo would try to go after MS, but who knows... they are probably just preparing to enter the market and need to protect themselves.
he's not a troll, this is a real issue... all you have to do is look on google. hell, even my installer mentioned the issue to me. it's not just about series 1 vs 2, there are multiple brands of each. there are also other circumstances: how often your machine dials in, how many season passes, how many shows are recorded, etc. call up hughes (who've recently stopped making any more dtivos) and ask tech support about it... they aren't surprised and know how to "fix" it.
Well, DirecTV doesn't give away DVRs to new customers; they still cost $99. They give away free receivers but not DVRs (usually). New customers pay $99 for an install with the DVR, while you can buy a DTivo at Best Buy for $99.
You also can't get lifetime service on a DTivo, so DirecTV could say that the DVR portion of the device is no longer supported (they control the subscription, not Tivo). If DirecTV no longer supports the Tivo, Tivo will lose subscribers.
In my original post, I meant to say something to the effect that since the deal ends next year, their could be a loss of service. It is by no means guaranteed... DirecTV is not commenting about whether they are or aren't re-signing or what happens if they don't sign. It could just mean they support the legacy people, but sign no new customers. It could also mean that they will no longer support ANY.
It could also be that you got "the good model." There are multiple brands of them out there. You also don't mention whether you have Series 1 or 2. Series 1 can be fixed by a RAM cache card (costs as much as the device itself). I have only heard of this problem on one model of Series 2 devices (the Hughes HDVR2). Even the guy who came to install it warned me before installing that it would be much slower than I expected. According to the tech support guy, it also has to do with how often I let it dial in (I don't have it connected to the phone line right now). Others say that it has to do with the drive filling up, so your 120GB might not get as full as the 40GB.
They have enough subscribers NOW, but that means very little. 56% of them are from DirecTV, and their deal ends next year (DirecTV isn't signing a new agreement last time I heard). Losing all of them would be a HUGE hit to their revenue stream. Not only that, but most of the newer DirecTivos suck donkey balls. As soon as my one year agreement with DirecTV ends, I'll be considering dumping them and going back to my ReplayTV. When I move, I probably will go back to Replay. I might try out a different brand of DTivo receiver to see if they suck less than the Hughes one I have now.
Aside from the potential loss of a large portion of their revenue stream, having subscribers doesn't mean profitability. Tivo continually posts quarterly losses, because they just don't have enough penetration to mark up their prices. They have roughly 1.6 million subscribers (many of those could be from multi-unit households), but how many households watch TV? 50 million? They just can't charge enough to be profitable.
It even gets worse than that... on some DTivos, if you don't call in often enough and let the drive get filled with shows, it will slow down the machine to near unusability.
I had this happen, and it would take 5 minutes to bring up the list of recorded shows and hours to reorder the season passes. Now THAT is shitty programming. The tech support said there were only two ways to fix it: either wipe the drive clean or go through the process of deleting shows manually (10 minutes to do per show).
I can't understand why they would put out a product that is unbelievably slow at its fastest, then expect users to want to stay with the product... maybe that is why Hughes is no longer making DirecTivos.
I can think of a number of things Tivo could do to make their UI more efficient, and I'm sure the coding would be simple to make it faster (how hard is it to sort a list of 30 shows?).
I looked at those a month ago, but they aren't for series 2 boxes. They are also more than the cost of a brand new box WITHOUT the cost of the 512MB pc100 it needs.
I read a report that said when the box fills up it doesn't leave any swap space, and that jacks up its file table. I don't believe any manufacturer would be this stupid, but that's what the internet is saying. The only way to fix it is to wipe and start fresh... only to have the same problem in a few months.
It gets worse than that, too... I have a series 2 DTivo and it will take 30 seconds for the Now Playing list to pop up and 5 minutes to reorder the season passes. For about a week or so it was taking 5 minutes to bring up the list and 2 hours to reorder the passes. At that point I finally called Hughes and bitched. They said I had too many shows recorded and could either reformat and lose my shows or go through the painful act of deleting shows manually (each show took about 5 minutes to delete). I finally have it back to usable times, but it still is annoying as hell to wait 30 seconds just to load a list of 30 shows.
Honestly, this is the worst hardware support I've seen in awhile. This is obviously a major glitch, since I've seen other users report the same (and the tech didn't seem surprised). Are they offering a new one? No. Are they trying to fix the problem? No.
How in the hell did you come up with that "proof?"
Hunting uses a shitload of calories. Look at a cheetah vs a lion. A cheetah hunts and is skinny, while a lion is both a predator and scavenger and is much larger. An even better example is a female lion vs a male lion. The females hunt and are skinnier, while the males generally scavenge and are larger.
This growth rate isn't all that spectacular. Elephants and whales both acheive similar rates and they don't really hunt (baleen whales eat live prey, but they just swim and let things go into their mouths). If you look at all the large animals on Earth, most are either herbivores or eat slow moving prey. Scavengers don't need to use calories to find food... they can eat an animal that died of old age, an animal that a smaller predator killed, or even a wounded animal. Not only that, but TRex was eating 50 ton bohemoths. Stumbling upon one huge herbivore that died of old age would give enough food for a long time. All a TRex had to do was watch another predator hunt and kill its prey, then walk up and scare it off.
Sitting around doing nothing is the way to really gain weight. Running around hunting and killing is great exercise to keep lean and mean. Like you said, these guys were fearsome... they could scare most predators away from a kill. Sort of like a big bully taking your lunch money. They don't have to beat you up and expend energy to get food, just look big and mean.
I think the best way to get that big that fast is to sit around and wait for a 20 ton animal to get killed by something else, while also watching for any 50 ton animals to drop dead of old age.
I also have a Treo 600... while I get pissed occasionally about the load times for a page or the way it is displayed, I can usually fix that just by using the option to not show images or by use wide page mode.
For movies I usually use IMDb.com (they have a text based movie showtimes link) or Moviefone.com Neither are WAP or have wireless pages, but they are loadable and usable on the Treo.
For maps I use mapquest's mobile page: www.mapquest.com/pda It is a barebones page specifically for phones/pdas. Loads fast and has low res maps that are readable. You can also load a map from their normal page to get a high res map and then use wide page mode to see them. The mobile page/site gives directions, too.
For weather, I use "cool weather v2." Google that and it's the first link.
For restaurants, I just know my city well or call a friend. I've used google for that, too. That's the one thing I haven't been able to easily fix. I do occasionally use citysearch, too.
The other option is to use one of the alternate browsers instead of Blazer. They sometimes load faster and look better. The mobile site for Mapquest was a dream come true, though, so I wish the movie sites would implement that.
P.S. Penny Arcade also has a mobile version of its page with low res version of the comic.
Well, I'm sure there is an option to turn it off somewhere (I haven't done the update and won't for a month or so till bugs get found), but if you just want to kill it...
It is probably launched as a service and probably as either automatic or manual. Type 'services.msc' in the Run box. You can stop and disable the service from there (you can also stop and disable a bunch of other rather useless and resource intensive services from there).
Actually, that might not be the case. In general, books such as this one get bought by the publisher for a flat fee and the copyright becomes theirs. Most people who write novels may own the copyright, but one time writers like this usually don't. I'm betting that Katie T. isn't getting much, if any, more money based on how many more books she sells.
BTW, if you read Katie J's website, KT's lawyers are badgering her as well. KT is no longer a victim, but is helping to victimize someone else. KT is now out of college, so it's not like she's a little girl anymore. She's an adult with a responsibility to act like one. If she really doesn't want to hurt KJ and really has control over her book, she should tell her lawyers to back off and demand the same from Penguin. If she doesn't have any control over Penguin (which she says she doesn't in an email from KatieT.com), then she should speak out publicly against Penguin for trying to use the internet to victimize another woman (that's what the book is all about).
Yes, they are called "average" people. You know: those people who don't know what Linux is, don't read/., don't know you can avoid spam, don't know they have a virus/worm. I know a LOT of people who have real logins for NYT and even pay for it just to get the crossword. Just as average computer users blindly open email attachments that contain viruses, they blindly use their real info when registering.
Even if only half of the registering people on NYT are putting in their accurate info, they are still able to target their ads extremely more effectively than from the almost complete lack of information they get from people buying on the street.
Well, you need to look a little harder. All the new DTivos I've seen are series 2. The Hughes HDVR2, the Samsung SIRS4040, the RCA whatever are all series 2. I didn't check if the Phillips one is, but I'd assume so. I have the Hughes HDVR2 (not to be confused with the HR10-250 HD DVR), and it is most assuredly series 2.
OK, I see your point now. I think you are in the same boat as me with respect to our knowledge of antenna designs. I'll see if I can get my friend to reply to you and give better info than I can.
The way I understand it is that certain antenna designs have theoretical maximum gains and ERPs. A Yagi made in the best possible way with the best possible components will give you this gain and ERP. The company would then certify for THAT design (or as close to it as possible if they have to do real-world tests). If it is certified for a Yagi of the highest specs, then any Yagi will work. As far as pringles cans go, I don't know if that has a technical design name or if you can buy pre-manufactured ones, etc.
I think by legalizing the use of specialized antennae, they are trying to shift the production of them over to bigger businesses and keep control over the area in their own hands. Feel free to poke holes in that idea.
Well, I can almost understand not RTFAing, but you didn't even correctly RTFBlurb. "a manufacturer can certify their hardware with the highest gain legal antennas of each type (yagi, omni, etc.) and then end-users can swap in antennas of equal or lesser signal characteristics."
The manufacturer will certify a product with the highest legal antenna of each type, then sell you the product with their normal low-gain antenna. As a manufacturer, would you rather sell a product with a $0.05 antenna that can only work over short distances but for 90% of users, or would you rather advertise that it is certified to use MUCH higher gain antennae so that it will work for 99% of users (and still use that $0.05 antenna)? Essentially, for the cost of certifying one test item and the cost of a sticker on the same box, you gain a larger percentage of possible buyers.
Sony wanted the judge to rule that flashing the infringing material on the screen is the same as storing infringing material in RAM, which is the same as storing it in ROM, which is the same as illegally copying the game. They said that just showing the game on the screen is the same as illegally copying a game.
Things might not have gone that far if the modchip in question didn't copy the game to RAM in order to play foreign/homebrew/cracked games. The copying to RAM is what the judge ruled was infringing Sony's copyright. Sony thinks that showing it on the screen was enough to be called an illegal copy. The judge seemed happy that he didn't have to rule on that.
I have both a Replay 4504 (older model WITH the auto commercial skip and show sharing) and a DirecTivo. I can say without a moment's hesitation that the RTV is far and away my favourite. I absolutely hate the Tivo for my intended purposes. It's MUCH slower, can only pause for 30 minute blocks, doesn't have auto commercial skip, and requires too many button presses to watch and delete shows.
Now, I'll concede that for other people, the Tivo is better, but not for the way I watch TV. I only have the Tivo because I have DirecTV, and I only have DirecTV so I can have the NFL Sunday Package. Of course, the video quality of Tivo recording the straight digital stream from the sat is better than the decoding then re-encoding to digital that the RTV would have to do. If I were to go back to cable, I would reattach the RTV.
Re:Changed the view of the US?
on
Bobby Fischer Found
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Next, think about this: In the past 20 years, average CEO salaries have gone up 2000% (that's 20 times). How much has minimum wage gone up? Well, back then it was around $4/hour, now it is around $5/hour. Are CEOs 20x better than they were in 1984? Are low income workers not subject to the same laws of inflation as the rest of the country?
A CEO lays off 100 workers to save $2 million per year of a company's money... that CEO then gets paid $2 million per year and gets a golden parachute if he leaves. That sounds like intelligent spending for a company.
Poor people NEED the tax cuts. Rich people do not.
In some of the replies to this post, you and others have cited stories by the Aerospace Corp (aero.org). This happens to be where I work and they took us on a tour of the labs researching exactly what you are talking about.
The Air Force is extremely concerned about the pollution by their rockets. The EELV program (the new launch vehicles by Lockheed and Boeing, Atlas V and Delta IV) now has emissions as one of its factors when they finally decide on the rocket to use. Side note: the USAF originally wanted both rockets to launch and compete against each other, but now Congress wants them to decide on only one rocket. Someone is going to be hurt badly by this: either Lockheed, Boeing or the taxpayer.
I can't say which (delta or atlas) pollutes more (I'm probably not allowed to say, either), but I know the issue is being researched.
These are the moments when I wish it were legal and ethical to experiment on humans. I want to know what happens if you temporarily induce blindness (like a permanent blindfold)in an infant so that it develops this ultra-hearing, then afterwards take off the blindfold. Would its hearing still be exceptional? Would its vision be highly impaired from being undeveloped? Since the eyes still technically work, would it develop super night vision?
Yes, the logistics of this is mind-boggling, as is the thought of seriously mucking around with some poor infant. But I want to know!
Wow, not only did you not RTFA, you didn't RTFBlurb. They said that going blind helps your hearing ONLY if you go blind before the age of 2.
"Only the blind subjects who had become blind before the age of two had a clearly superior performance. Late blind subjects, people who became blind after the age of five, were no different from the control subjects."
They attribute it to brain plasticity in infants. Yes, late blind people and musicians do have better hearing, but that is more from learning than anything else (Practice, like you said). This story is talking about actual physiological differences.
Why do Americans call petroleum gas? Why does the rest of the world call gasoline petroleum?
Gas is short for gasoline, which is what we put in our cars (well, it used to be... now it is a mix of gasoline, ethanol and other crap). It's boiling point is well below that of water and evaporates rather quickly (gas fumes are much more explosive than liquid gas).
Petroleum is "a thick, flammable, yellow-to-black mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the earth's surface, can be separated into fractions including natural gas, gasoline, naphtha, kerosene, fuel and lubricating oils, paraffin wax, and asphalt and is used as raw material for a wide variety of derivative products." (dictionary.com) It is also called crude oil.
What do you put in your tank? Gasoline or Petroleum? Us Americans use gas(oline) and it costs $2.50/gallon. If you Euros use petroleum maybe that is why it costs you $5.00/litre.
Hopefully, you were just joking and already knew why we call it gas. My point is that gasoline is NOT petroleum, but gasoline is closer to a gas at ambient temps than water.
Why do Euros call a trunk a boot? A trunk is where you store stuff, a boot is what you put on your feet. I store stuff in my trunk, but rarely put my feet in it.
Slashdot Mirror
This should be modded Overrated or Redundant.
This game is nothing like Doom3; it is NOT graphics intensive. It's more cpu intensive due to greater use of physics and AI.
This game was demoed last year on high end hardware at amazing speeds. The "leaked" source ran beautifully on my machine then (an Athlon 2000+ with a 9500 Pro and 512MB RAM). CS:Source is playing NOW at cybercafes around the country on normal hardware (I personally played it on athlon 2500+ with an NVidia FX something-or-other).
I'm personally resigned to this game being VERY underwhelming. We've been hearing hype on it for years, and it was pretty damn cool last year... I think it'll be really damn cool, but I don't think it will be revolutionary or anything. I also know it won't spur nearly as many upgrades as Doom3. Which is odd, because I think this game will be so much more replayable than Doom3. Once you are done with Doom3, there's little incentive to play again from all the reports I've read.
since the patent is for a CONSOLE ADD ON DEVICE, it doesn't apply to XBox or PCs
Well, that was just their example setup. If you read the actual patent, it makes sure to state that it doesn't have to be an add on device. This means that XBox might fall under the patent (that's for the courts to decide). PCs wouldn't because they aren't consoles.
I don't think Nintendo would try to go after MS, but who knows... they are probably just preparing to enter the market and need to protect themselves.
he's not a troll, this is a real issue... all you have to do is look on google. hell, even my installer mentioned the issue to me. it's not just about series 1 vs 2, there are multiple brands of each. there are also other circumstances: how often your machine dials in, how many season passes, how many shows are recorded, etc. call up hughes (who've recently stopped making any more dtivos) and ask tech support about it... they aren't surprised and know how to "fix" it.
One Post
and another
Well, DirecTV doesn't give away DVRs to new customers; they still cost $99. They give away free receivers but not DVRs (usually). New customers pay $99 for an install with the DVR, while you can buy a DTivo at Best Buy for $99.
You also can't get lifetime service on a DTivo, so DirecTV could say that the DVR portion of the device is no longer supported (they control the subscription, not Tivo). If DirecTV no longer supports the Tivo, Tivo will lose subscribers.
In my original post, I meant to say something to the effect that since the deal ends next year, their could be a loss of service. It is by no means guaranteed... DirecTV is not commenting about whether they are or aren't re-signing or what happens if they don't sign. It could just mean they support the legacy people, but sign no new customers. It could also mean that they will no longer support ANY.
It could also be that you got "the good model." There are multiple brands of them out there. You also don't mention whether you have Series 1 or 2. Series 1 can be fixed by a RAM cache card (costs as much as the device itself). I have only heard of this problem on one model of Series 2 devices (the Hughes HDVR2). Even the guy who came to install it warned me before installing that it would be much slower than I expected. According to the tech support guy, it also has to do with how often I let it dial in (I don't have it connected to the phone line right now). Others say that it has to do with the drive filling up, so your 120GB might not get as full as the 40GB.
bzzzt! try again.
They have enough subscribers NOW, but that means very little. 56% of them are from DirecTV, and their deal ends next year (DirecTV isn't signing a new agreement last time I heard). Losing all of them would be a HUGE hit to their revenue stream. Not only that, but most of the newer DirecTivos suck donkey balls. As soon as my one year agreement with DirecTV ends, I'll be considering dumping them and going back to my ReplayTV. When I move, I probably will go back to Replay. I might try out a different brand of DTivo receiver to see if they suck less than the Hughes one I have now.
Aside from the potential loss of a large portion of their revenue stream, having subscribers doesn't mean profitability. Tivo continually posts quarterly losses, because they just don't have enough penetration to mark up their prices. They have roughly 1.6 million subscribers (many of those could be from multi-unit households), but how many households watch TV? 50 million? They just can't charge enough to be profitable.
It even gets worse than that... on some DTivos, if you don't call in often enough and let the drive get filled with shows, it will slow down the machine to near unusability.
I had this happen, and it would take 5 minutes to bring up the list of recorded shows and hours to reorder the season passes. Now THAT is shitty programming. The tech support said there were only two ways to fix it: either wipe the drive clean or go through the process of deleting shows manually (10 minutes to do per show).
I can't understand why they would put out a product that is unbelievably slow at its fastest, then expect users to want to stay with the product... maybe that is why Hughes is no longer making DirecTivos.
I can think of a number of things Tivo could do to make their UI more efficient, and I'm sure the coding would be simple to make it faster (how hard is it to sort a list of 30 shows?).
I looked at those a month ago, but they aren't for series 2 boxes. They are also more than the cost of a brand new box WITHOUT the cost of the 512MB pc100 it needs.
I read a report that said when the box fills up it doesn't leave any swap space, and that jacks up its file table. I don't believe any manufacturer would be this stupid, but that's what the internet is saying. The only way to fix it is to wipe and start fresh... only to have the same problem in a few months.
It gets worse than that, too... I have a series 2 DTivo and it will take 30 seconds for the Now Playing list to pop up and 5 minutes to reorder the season passes. For about a week or so it was taking 5 minutes to bring up the list and 2 hours to reorder the passes. At that point I finally called Hughes and bitched. They said I had too many shows recorded and could either reformat and lose my shows or go through the painful act of deleting shows manually (each show took about 5 minutes to delete). I finally have it back to usable times, but it still is annoying as hell to wait 30 seconds just to load a list of 30 shows.
Honestly, this is the worst hardware support I've seen in awhile. This is obviously a major glitch, since I've seen other users report the same (and the tech didn't seem surprised). Are they offering a new one? No. Are they trying to fix the problem? No.
How in the hell did you come up with that "proof?"
Hunting uses a shitload of calories. Look at a cheetah vs a lion. A cheetah hunts and is skinny, while a lion is both a predator and scavenger and is much larger. An even better example is a female lion vs a male lion. The females hunt and are skinnier, while the males generally scavenge and are larger.
This growth rate isn't all that spectacular. Elephants and whales both acheive similar rates and they don't really hunt (baleen whales eat live prey, but they just swim and let things go into their mouths). If you look at all the large animals on Earth, most are either herbivores or eat slow moving prey. Scavengers don't need to use calories to find food... they can eat an animal that died of old age, an animal that a smaller predator killed, or even a wounded animal. Not only that, but TRex was eating 50 ton bohemoths. Stumbling upon one huge herbivore that died of old age would give enough food for a long time. All a TRex had to do was watch another predator hunt and kill its prey, then walk up and scare it off.
Sitting around doing nothing is the way to really gain weight. Running around hunting and killing is great exercise to keep lean and mean. Like you said, these guys were fearsome... they could scare most predators away from a kill. Sort of like a big bully taking your lunch money. They don't have to beat you up and expend energy to get food, just look big and mean.
I think the best way to get that big that fast is to sit around and wait for a 20 ton animal to get killed by something else, while also watching for any 50 ton animals to drop dead of old age.
I also have a Treo 600... while I get pissed occasionally about the load times for a page or the way it is displayed, I can usually fix that just by using the option to not show images or by use wide page mode.
For movies I usually use IMDb.com (they have a text based movie showtimes link) or Moviefone.com Neither are WAP or have wireless pages, but they are loadable and usable on the Treo.
For maps I use mapquest's mobile page: www.mapquest.com/pda It is a barebones page specifically for phones/pdas. Loads fast and has low res maps that are readable. You can also load a map from their normal page to get a high res map and then use wide page mode to see them. The mobile page/site gives directions, too.
For weather, I use "cool weather v2." Google that and it's the first link.
For restaurants, I just know my city well or call a friend. I've used google for that, too. That's the one thing I haven't been able to easily fix. I do occasionally use citysearch, too.
The other option is to use one of the alternate browsers instead of Blazer. They sometimes load faster and look better. The mobile site for Mapquest was a dream come true, though, so I wish the movie sites would implement that.
P.S.
Penny Arcade also has a mobile version of its page with low res version of the comic.
Well, I'm sure there is an option to turn it off somewhere (I haven't done the update and won't for a month or so till bugs get found), but if you just want to kill it...
It is probably launched as a service and probably as either automatic or manual. Type 'services.msc' in the Run box. You can stop and disable the service from there (you can also stop and disable a bunch of other rather useless and resource intensive services from there).
Actually, that might not be the case. In general, books such as this one get bought by the publisher for a flat fee and the copyright becomes theirs. Most people who write novels may own the copyright, but one time writers like this usually don't. I'm betting that Katie T. isn't getting much, if any, more money based on how many more books she sells.
BTW, if you read Katie J's website, KT's lawyers are badgering her as well. KT is no longer a victim, but is helping to victimize someone else. KT is now out of college, so it's not like she's a little girl anymore. She's an adult with a responsibility to act like one. If she really doesn't want to hurt KJ and really has control over her book, she should tell her lawyers to back off and demand the same from Penguin. If she doesn't have any control over Penguin (which she says she doesn't in an email from KatieT.com), then she should speak out publicly against Penguin for trying to use the internet to victimize another woman (that's what the book is all about).
Yes, they are called "average" people. You know: those people who don't know what Linux is, don't read /., don't know you can avoid spam, don't know they have a virus/worm. I know a LOT of people who have real logins for NYT and even pay for it just to get the crossword. Just as average computer users blindly open email attachments that contain viruses, they blindly use their real info when registering.
Even if only half of the registering people on NYT are putting in their accurate info, they are still able to target their ads extremely more effectively than from the almost complete lack of information they get from people buying on the street.
P.S.
The RCA and Phillips DTivos are both $79 at Best Buy.
Well, you need to look a little harder. All the new DTivos I've seen are series 2. The Hughes HDVR2, the Samsung SIRS4040, the RCA whatever are all series 2. I didn't check if the Phillips one is, but I'd assume so. I have the Hughes HDVR2 (not to be confused with the HR10-250 HD DVR), and it is most assuredly series 2.
OK, I see your point now. I think you are in the same boat as me with respect to our knowledge of antenna designs. I'll see if I can get my friend to reply to you and give better info than I can.
The way I understand it is that certain antenna designs have theoretical maximum gains and ERPs. A Yagi made in the best possible way with the best possible components will give you this gain and ERP. The company would then certify for THAT design (or as close to it as possible if they have to do real-world tests). If it is certified for a Yagi of the highest specs, then any Yagi will work. As far as pringles cans go, I don't know if that has a technical design name or if you can buy pre-manufactured ones, etc.
I think by legalizing the use of specialized antennae, they are trying to shift the production of them over to bigger businesses and keep control over the area in their own hands. Feel free to poke holes in that idea.
Well, I can almost understand not RTFAing, but you didn't even correctly RTFBlurb.
"a manufacturer can certify their hardware with the highest gain legal antennas of each type (yagi, omni, etc.) and then end-users can swap in antennas of equal or lesser signal characteristics."
The manufacturer will certify a product with the highest legal antenna of each type, then sell you the product with their normal low-gain antenna. As a manufacturer, would you rather sell a product with a $0.05 antenna that can only work over short distances but for 90% of users, or would you rather advertise that it is certified to use MUCH higher gain antennae so that it will work for 99% of users (and still use that $0.05 antenna)? Essentially, for the cost of certifying one test item and the cost of a sticker on the same box, you gain a larger percentage of possible buyers.
You have no idea how right (well, wrong, but factually correct) that idea is.
Read the actual text of the UK decision PS2 modchips.
Sony wanted the judge to rule that flashing the infringing material on the screen is the same as storing infringing material in RAM, which is the same as storing it in ROM, which is the same as illegally copying the game. They said that just showing the game on the screen is the same as illegally copying a game.
Things might not have gone that far if the modchip in question didn't copy the game to RAM in order to play foreign/homebrew/cracked games. The copying to RAM is what the judge ruled was infringing Sony's copyright. Sony thinks that showing it on the screen was enough to be called an illegal copy. The judge seemed happy that he didn't have to rule on that.
Well, now you know another.
I have both a Replay 4504 (older model WITH the auto commercial skip and show sharing) and a DirecTivo. I can say without a moment's hesitation that the RTV is far and away my favourite. I absolutely hate the Tivo for my intended purposes. It's MUCH slower, can only pause for 30 minute blocks, doesn't have auto commercial skip, and requires too many button presses to watch and delete shows.
Now, I'll concede that for other people, the Tivo is better, but not for the way I watch TV. I only have the Tivo because I have DirecTV, and I only have DirecTV so I can have the NFL Sunday Package. Of course, the video quality of Tivo recording the straight digital stream from the sat is better than the decoding then re-encoding to digital that the RTV would have to do. If I were to go back to cable, I would reattach the RTV.
First, read this:& cid=971 6190
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=114715
Next, think about this:
In the past 20 years, average CEO salaries have gone up 2000% (that's 20 times). How much has minimum wage gone up? Well, back then it was around $4/hour, now it is around $5/hour. Are CEOs 20x better than they were in 1984? Are low income workers not subject to the same laws of inflation as the rest of the country?
A CEO lays off 100 workers to save $2 million per year of a company's money... that CEO then gets paid $2 million per year and gets a golden parachute if he leaves. That sounds like intelligent spending for a company.
Poor people NEED the tax cuts. Rich people do not.
In some of the replies to this post, you and others have cited stories by the Aerospace Corp (aero.org). This happens to be where I work and they took us on a tour of the labs researching exactly what you are talking about.
The Air Force is extremely concerned about the pollution by their rockets. The EELV program (the new launch vehicles by Lockheed and Boeing, Atlas V and Delta IV) now has emissions as one of its factors when they finally decide on the rocket to use. Side note: the USAF originally wanted both rockets to launch and compete against each other, but now Congress wants them to decide on only one rocket. Someone is going to be hurt badly by this: either Lockheed, Boeing or the taxpayer.
I can't say which (delta or atlas) pollutes more (I'm probably not allowed to say, either), but I know the issue is being researched.
These are the moments when I wish it were legal and ethical to experiment on humans. I want to know what happens if you temporarily induce blindness (like a permanent blindfold)in an infant so that it develops this ultra-hearing, then afterwards take off the blindfold. Would its hearing still be exceptional? Would its vision be highly impaired from being undeveloped? Since the eyes still technically work, would it develop super night vision?
Yes, the logistics of this is mind-boggling, as is the thought of seriously mucking around with some poor infant. But I want to know!
Wow, not only did you not RTFA, you didn't RTFBlurb. They said that going blind helps your hearing ONLY if you go blind before the age of 2.
"Only the blind subjects who had become blind before the age of two had a clearly superior performance. Late blind subjects, people who became blind after the age of five, were no different from the control subjects."
They attribute it to brain plasticity in infants. Yes, late blind people and musicians do have better hearing, but that is more from learning than anything else (Practice, like you said). This story is talking about actual physiological differences.
Why do Americans call petroleum gas?
Why does the rest of the world call gasoline petroleum?
Gas is short for gasoline, which is what we put in our cars (well, it used to be... now it is a mix of gasoline, ethanol and other crap). It's boiling point is well below that of water and evaporates rather quickly (gas fumes are much more explosive than liquid gas).
Petroleum is "a thick, flammable, yellow-to-black mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the earth's surface, can be separated into fractions including natural gas, gasoline, naphtha, kerosene, fuel and lubricating oils, paraffin wax, and asphalt and is used as raw material for a wide variety of derivative products." (dictionary.com) It is also called crude oil.
What do you put in your tank? Gasoline or Petroleum? Us Americans use gas(oline) and it costs $2.50/gallon. If you Euros use petroleum maybe that is why it costs you $5.00/litre.
Hopefully, you were just joking and already knew why we call it gas. My point is that gasoline is NOT petroleum, but gasoline is closer to a gas at ambient temps than water.
Why do Euros call a trunk a boot? A trunk is where you store stuff, a boot is what you put on your feet. I store stuff in my trunk, but rarely put my feet in it.