I saw the Windows 2000 splash screen come up. I'm not sure but I think it was a standing up jet-ski or speedboat racing game. Can anyone confirm this?
Midway had been using Windows 2000 for their racing games, and maybe more. I figured this out when I saw a Hydro Thunder machine with a Blue Screen Of Death. And before anybody gloats, it was INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE, which is, 99% of the time, a hard drive failure.
Once again, we have a case of somebody railing against Sony's Memory Stick format because it's "proprietary". Well, I gots news for ya. They're all proprietary. The only difference between Memory Stick and Compact Flash, SmartMedia, and MMC/SD is how many big multinationals split the licensing fees. Sony keeps all the MStick yen for itself, while the others have consortiums to spread the money around. (Although, IIRC, Matsushita gets the lion's share of MMC/SD money.)
At least you didn't attack MagicGate, then endorse the equally DRM-encumbered Secure Digital, like some others around here.
I hope this book is better than Idoru which sucked total balls. Anybody who's read this book knows the book was a couple hundred pages of anticlimatic boredom.
The problem with Idoru is that it was the middle book of a trilogy, but nobody knew it was a trilogy until All Tomorrow's Parties arrived, when Gibson tied Idoru back to Virtual Light. Gibson's problem is that he doesn't know how to write a cliffhanger. Idoru ended on its own terms, wrapped up well enough to suggest no sequel was forthcoming, but not well enough to give the reader a satisfactory resolution. As a result, many fans skipped ATP, figuring that Gibson's fading relevance finally went out-of-scale low. It's a shame. ATP's ending is as deus ex left field as Mona Lisa Overdrive's, (and Pattern Recognition's, apparently), but far more satisfying than Idoru's.
Who cares who came first? He said Microsoft didn't have a lossless codec, and I corrected him. Please tell me English is a second language for you. And what "near legal battle"?
Sega tried, and Sonic was a good series, but it just never became synonymous with Sega the way Mario did with Nintendo.
Actually, Sonic was synonymous with Sega. The problem was that Sonic was Sega's only franchise. Let's just look at the NES/Master System and SuperNES/Genesis eras. Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Sega had Sonic. That's it. Now step forward to the N64/Saturn days. Sega had a multiple-month head start on Nintendo, but Saturn didn't have a Sonic title at launch. Their only franchise, and it wasn't ready until after N64 came out, with a Mario title at launch. That was Sega's Waterloo. They didn't make the same mistake with Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure, but it was too little, too late. The fanboys were gone. Shame. I loved those early Dreamcast commercials.:-)
I have to wonder if GameCube's slow start has the same root cause: No franchise at launch? Luigi's Mansion didn't have the Mario mystique, and Super Smash Bros. Melee, fun as it is, doesn't work because you're just throwing a bunch of franchise characters out of their elements and into a fighter. Unlike Sega, however, Nintendo can get by on reputation. Mario is a given on any Nintendo console. We knew Zelda was coming from the demo reels. Announcing the return of Metroid created plenty of buzz. Maybe things will pick up now that they've arrived (or are on the horizon, in Zelda's case).
Look at it this way: Would XBox 2 stand a chance if Halo 3 was 6 months late? Heck, will the current XBox stand a chance if Halo 2 is 6 months late?
MFC and.Net have nothing to do with each other. MFC is an island unto itself. A big, scary, densely overgrown jungle island that will claim the sanity of anyone who ventures there. WinForms has its roots in Visual Basic. Think of VB's toolkit, add all the extra common control ActiveX libraries as first-class members, rationalize the naming conventions (was that.Text or.Caption?), and rebuild for the CLR. Now you have WinForms.
Now that I think about it, I don't recall Microsoft advertising any changes to MFC for VC++ 7. Stands to reason. If they want everyone to move to the.Net Framework, there's no better place to start than a hairball like MFC.
But I think you're right about WinForms v. GTK#. Whether somebody builds WinForms bindings for X, or GTK learns to do Windows much better, the WinForms mountain isn't coming to Mohammed.
I think there was some hackery around the X character in Graffiti. If you invoke Graffiti Help, you'll see that the official way of drawing it is as you described. Two strokes, top-left to bottom-right, top-right to bottom-left. But scroll down in the help to the extended shift page. Look at the multiplication character's stroke. Top-right to bottom-left. But the preceding extended shift stroke is top-left to bottom-right. And the resulting character isn't a distinct multiplication symbol; it's a lower-case X! Sneaky, eh?
For the record, there is a single-stroke X gesture. Just keep the stylus down between the two strokes of the "official" X gesture. Think of it as a lower-case alpha, or a sideways shortcut gesture. Either way, I found it easier than the two-stroke X, which I always slopped into "lower-case I, [CR-LF]"
I don't have the time to read the article but I'm guessing it has several flaws:
Not exactly striking from a position of strength, are you?
2) I don't care for the activation aspect and think that most users will rebel against it. It's one thing to be forced to activate a PC OS, but an entertainment OS???? No thanks
XP's WPA is rotten just on principle. But I don't see why MCE would be exempt. Home and Pro can do everything MCE does, with the right kit. All MCE does is put a shiny face on it all.
1) You are limited by the fact that this thing is built on legacy hardware, by the time it hits the stores you would be able to build one with better performance and much better specs.
What? Take a current, standard issue Fiorina-Capellas Presario, add a tuner card, IR remote, and memory card reader, and wrap it in a lacquer finish case, and suddenly it's "legacy hardware"? You make it sound like it's a 286 with a VLB graphics card. And it already has hit the stores. I started seeing them at my local Best Buy in November.
5) Where is the USB2?? serial ATA66?? WiFi??? 802.11b??? Bluetooth??? I need to plug my other musica devices (iPod anyone) into this and make them work, lacking these things just don't cut it.
How could a 286 support all that?:-) SerialATA is just starting to penetrate the high end of the market, so I'm not surprised by it's omission on the HP. Besides, putting hard to find hard drives in a consumer grade PC isn't very user friendly. Bluetooth, cool as it is, doesn't have an obvious application in a Media Center PC except wireless keyboards and mice. You can get those now without Bluetooth, so what's the point? A best-case 11 Mbps won't give users a good impression of 802.11b. I don't think WiFi will be truly useful on a media center PC until 802.11g hits the mainstream. And HP's models include both USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394, so your iPod will work just fine.
3) The sound on this is going to be sub-optimal simply due to the limited bus speeds used by their analog to digital decoder.
Buzzword Bingo! You have no idea what sound card it is, let alone how it works. You're trying to BS the wrong crowd, buddy. Oh, for the record, it's a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy in the HP. They even have a bundle that includes a set of Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speakers.
4) As the article porbably states the price will be the major stumbling point, these are going to have to meet the typical "Best Buy" buyers price point and at their outrageous starting point they are way way over the top
Ah, now for the coup de grace. It's too expensive to begin with, but the feature list is missing a whole bunch of esoteric bullet points! Price is relative to an individual's financial situation, so I'll just post the prices, and leave you to determine their worth. An entry level HP is $1349. The loaded model, with higher-spec core components and (expensive) Klipsch speakers, is $1999. Sony's nearest match is the the Vaio RZ, which uses their home-brewed GigaPocket software instead of XP MCE, and includes a DVD burner on all models. It starts at $1599. (Note: all prices are from hp.com and sonystyle.com, which were both advertising sale and/or rebate pricing. Display not inlcuded.)
Wagner LLC Consulting Co. - Getting it right the first time
Let's see how many sarcastic uses of the phrase "ringing endorsement" this generates. Hey, is Bernie Schiffman hiring?
Standard Slashdot Clue-Slap #4: The Fallacy of Mass Hypocracy
If you walked into PNC Park during a game, and saw a group of 10 people wearing Braves jerseys, would you call the remaining 38,000+ Pirate fans* in the crowd hypocrites? What about a vegetarian eating a salad at a steakhouse?
What you're observing is not hypocracy on the posters' part. They're willing to join the debate, and they deserve credit for that. (You imply that much with your preemptive taunt to anyone who would mod you down.) It's just human nature getting the best of the moderation system. It's too easy to silently and anonymously squelch a valid dissenting opinion. And while meta-moderation can cull out the egos and zealots, it operates too slowly to keep up with short tempers.
*: Jokes about the Pirates selling out a home game >/dev/null:-)
Actually, the DVD/VCR issue is pretty much unavoidable without additional equipment. The DVD spec demands Macrovision encoding on a DVD player's video outputs. Macrovision exploits a specific trait common to the video inputs of all VCRs, regardless of age. So, unless you have some unusual piece of kit, running any DVD player through any VCR will cause Macrovision interference.
There are ways around this problem. De-Macrovision boxes that sit between the DVD and VCR exist. Some DVD players can be fixed by mod chips, flash ROM updates, or hidden setup menus. Other than that, your best bet would be to find a way to avoid running the DVD through the VCR. A switch box and an RF converter would work. I mention a new TV only to point out that only the crappy ones don't have at least one non-RF input. But that's only an option if your budget is more Best Buy than Radio Shack.
As for your MiniDisc problem... (sigh) Sony seems determined to run it into the ground, and yet it still survives. Baffling.
All in all, though, Sony Electronics is still very much a theoretical evil. They can only impose DRM in exclusive or developing markets. Hence, MiniDisc, and Network Walkman products that only use MagicGate Memory Sticks. (Yes, I know there are hacks for purple Sticks, but what other product needs them?) In other markets, competition ensures that DRM is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either everybody standardizes on DRM, like CSS and Macrovision on DVDs, or nobody does. And free-market competition ensures that nobody makes DRM the feature that sets their product apart, since it will only serve as a big "DO NOT BUY" sticker next to the price tag.
Basketball. A new way of networking, an enhancement on sneaker-net. You pass the whole computer.
Nice idea. Until someone not coordinated enough to make a behind-the-back, no-look pass tries one.
Boss: "McDermott! What the hell happened to the Morgenstern account?"
McDermott: "Well, sir, ever since we got these basketball shaped PCs, everyone around the office has been calling Fred Johnson 'Magic', so he figured..."
First Law of Star Trek Films: Even-numbered Trek movies do not suck.
Corollary to the First Law: Odd-numbered Trek movies suck.
Second Law of Star Trek Films: Trek movies evenly divisible by 5, even or odd, are so bad that they are disavowed by the studio, and eliminated from the official timeline.
At least, I hope Nemesis is given the ST V treatment. You can't claim a richly-detailed universe for a sci-fi franchise when a major race can be reduced to the two-word phrase "sneaky bastards".
Diane Duane, if you're reading this: I will gladly join a torch-and-pitchfork parade on Rick Berman's office. Just name your time.:-)
...they teach you how to modify for some personal, quasi-legal gains, but not others.
It's a simple distinction, really. Subscriptions are a source of revenue for TiVo.
Compare this to hard drive expansion mods, for example. If an OEM offered a unit with an expansion bay for a pre-blessed hard drive, such hacks would be frowned upon. (Of course, we wouldn't need that hack anymore.) But that's not the case. AFAIK, nobody is selling different capacities for the same model. The marginal cost of producing two models with different sized hard drives is greater than the cost of a single model. It's cheaper for OEMs to find the price-capacity sweet spot.
The Average Joe isn't concerned with expanding his TiVo's capacity. And if he does get interested, he'll see that the process is more "bike without instructions on Christmas Eve" than "plug it into the wall and turn it on". It's the Power User who wants more capacity. He's savvy enough to know that expanding a single box is the best option. Sure, the accountants would like you to buy a second box. Connecting and managing another unit, however, is sub-optimal compared to hacking a single unit by stuffing in two Drivezillas. It's not a lost sale, since anyone skilled enough to expand their TiVo successfully is smart enough to not buy two TiVos in the first place. Hopefully, they're also smart enough to not put two rattlesnake-loud 7200 rpm drives in a case designed for a single, quiet 5400 rpm drive without providing more airflow and sound baffling.:-)
Thus, we have the current Gentlemen's Agreement: Circumventing the subscription service hurts TiVo and, by extension, TiVo's user base, and is therefore taboo. As long as the hack doesn't impact the bottom line, however, TiVo won't try to stop it.
I gotta say, I'm getting pretty damned tired of these posts.
Amen, brother! A little lesson for everyone: Your brain is not a bit field.
Oh, and one more thing. Since the Slashdot community is a large, diverse collection of individuals, I have to wonder how he was able to get a representative sample of all those readers in just 1.5 hours?
...why wouldn't they want to be on this panel and strongarm them into using their particular metadata to describe documents?
Microsoft hates to compete on an even playing field. By defining Office.NET's XML schema on their own terms, they can make arbitrary changes as they see fit. Competitors will be forced to either chase down the changes or give up a measure of compatibility. And the terms of the Appeals Court settlement won't help, since it does nothing to counter the massive inertia of Office's existing market share.
In the past, Microsoft might have embraced-and-extended the OASIS spec. Now, they're under too much scrutiny to get away with it. I think they've had a change of heart in their PR philosophy: Better upfront arrogance than skullduggery in hindsight.
Besides, a large contingent of Microsoft's rivals are members of OASIS. The Committee is chaired by a Sun employee, and they're contributing the OpenOffice.org/StarOffice schema as the baseline. While they've just announced the Call for Parcipitation, Corel has already joined by press release. If Microsoft tried to join with a "my way or the highway" attitude, they'd probably be pointed at the nearest interstate.
Funny you should ask that. Scott Rosenberg addressed that issue in his blog today.
I don't know about a left vs. right slant in Salon...
Left. Waaaay left. Salon slants so far left, they've toppled over.
Rosenberg is one of the reasons I haven't deleted Salon's bookmark yet. He's one of the last of a dying breed there: The rational liberal. I think they're trying to troll their way back to health. The rhetoric has become increasingly shrill and occasionally paranoid. And I don't know what medication Joe Conason is on, but he really needs to have his dosage adjusted. Salon claims to be the last bastion of intelligent journalism, but yet they stoop to pushing the same hot buttons as the screaming heads that pass for commentators on MSNBC. You all know the type. They believe that the entire political spectrum can be represented by one bit: 1 for Liberal, 0 for Conservative.
It's a shame, really. Outside the realm of politics, they actually live up to their billing. I particularly like the sports columnists, Allen Barra, King Kaufman, and Keith Olbermann. But I can't support them with a subscription without also endorsing the horribly skewed politics of their editors. So, they don't get my money. Apparently, they don't get anyone's money.
I really like how C|Net only quotes an analyst who has something positive to say.
Sounded like a fairly neutral sound bite to me. Any angular momentum imparted on it was your own.
This is utterly bizarre - only MSFT can get away with cancelling a major release and not undergoing a hailstorm of criticism in the trade press.
What major release? Longhorn Server was vaporware with a code name. It was the successor to.Net Server, which is still in the Release Candidate stage. They could have slapped the Longhorn name on Blackcomb Server, and I doubt anybody would notice or care.
...when MSFT released a particularly weak, non-standards-compliant, single-CPU-architecture operating system called "NT" without a network-transparent window system...
<snl accent="scottish">Welcome to All Things Linux. If it's not Linux, it's crrrrap!</snl> Get your facts straight. NT 3.1 was Posix compliant, and supported SMP on four different CPU architectures. Just another zealot. Move along. Nothing to see here.
there's a right-click button on the stylus which, from the ny times article, looks like it's placed in an incredibly stupid place..right where you grip the stylus
Don't knock it until you try it. Unless you have a really ham-fisted grip on the stylus, the button placement is quite natural. I use a Wacom Graphire 2 tablet here at home. It has a rocker switch that defaults to down for right-click and up for double-click. It's positioned perfectly under the thumb or index finger. I prefer the the thumb, myself. It's easier to press up for the double-clicks.
That was my first thought when I saw a "butterfly man" ad on TV last night: The Moth on acid. I expected MSN's new slogan to be "Not in the face! Not in the face!"
Ah, one more LARTing before I go home for the day.
Who's the one with the propriatary memory stick?
Anyone with a flash memory device. They're all proprietary. It's just a matter of how many big multi-nationals get a cut of the licensing fees. The only thing that makes Memory Stick special is that all the money goes to one big multi-national.
Enjoy your "protected" music on your "protected" devices. You can listen to MP3's still? Sure... for now. Enjoy DRM.
How many times do aziegler and I have to tell you you're wrong before it sinks in? The music is not protected. The device is not protected. There is no DRM on MP3s now, nor will there be in the future. And if you think there will be DRM in the future, well... I'd like to hear your ideas on how Sony can maintain or increase its share of a fiercely competitive market when it's trying to retrofit Vaios and Clies with draconian levels of DRM encumberance.
BTW, aziegler, thanks for pointing out the irony of this guy's advocacy of Secure Digital.
Sorry. Brought the wrong weapon to the fight. I had a clue-stick when I really needed an anti-troll ICBM.
Sure, and "mechanically" their iLink is IEEE1394 FireWire. But it's not. Remove a few prongs and change the voltage and PROHIBIT anyone fron using it without paying a license. Real niiiice and open, eh?
The 4-pin non-powered connector has been part of IEEE 1394 from Day One. The "missing prongs and changed voltage" are to spec. There is absolutely nothing to prevent anyone from connecting an IEEE 1394-compliant device to a Sony. The only thing Sony charges for is the "iLink" trademark. Just as Apple used to charge for the "Firewire" trademark and Creative charges for "SB 1394".
Want to BYPASS their protected CF slot?
Who said anything about it being "protected"? The 802.11b card is the only CF device with drivers at the moment.
Oh, about that memmory stick, so your telling me that I can take my 128mb SD card which I can use in a Kyocera phone, or a Palm 515, or a NomadII player, or any other large number of devices, and plop it into a sony device? Nope. Sorry. Have to fork over another bucket of $$$ for the same thing - memory - but in a different plastic case so I can use my little Sony device.
That's odd. None of the devices you mention support SmartMedia. Oh, wait. The Nomad II uses SmartMedia. But the Palm m515 doesn't. It uses MMC/SD. Oh, no! I have to fork over another bucket of $$$ for the same thing - memory - but in a different plastic case so I can use my little Palm device!
Kieth (sic), let me introduce you to someone, DMCA. DMCA, meet Kieth (sic).
I refer you to my previous rant on MP3/ATRAC3 support, with this addendum. The MSImport app exposes the memory stick slot of a docked Clie to the operating system as a removable drive. From there, copyrighted material can be freely moved between handheld and PC with no restrictions whatsoever, and it will still be playable on the Clie when you're done. iPod, OTOH, can only sync playable MP3s one way: Mac to iPod. If you want to move MP3s from Mac to Mac, you have to use iPod's hard drive mode, which renders the MP3s unplayable on the iPod itself. What were you saying again about DMCA?
CF slot? Nope... only works with their wireless card.
Mechanically, it is a CF Type II slot. They are only providing drivers for their 802.11b card, so far. Hopefully somebody, anybody, will start providing drivers for other devices.
Open memory? Nope... only their lovely Magic Gate DRM sticks.
WRONG! Every time/. posts a story on Memory Stick equipped Sony kit, I have to clue-stick somebody on this point, and I'm getting sick of it. The only Sony Memory Stick devices that ever force you to use Magic Gate are their slow-selling Network Walkman products. (Gee, wonder why they're slow-selling?) Clies are compatible with Magic Gate, but only for playing audio in ATRAC3 format. All other memory card functions, including MP3 playback, use standard issue, non-DRM Memory Sticks.
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Midway had been using Windows 2000 for their racing games, and maybe more. I figured this out when I saw a Hydro Thunder machine with a Blue Screen Of Death. And before anybody gloats, it was INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE, which is, 99% of the time, a hard drive failure.
Standard Slashdot Clue-Slap #7: Sony Memory Stick
Once again, we have a case of somebody railing against Sony's Memory Stick format because it's "proprietary". Well, I gots news for ya. They're all proprietary. The only difference between Memory Stick and Compact Flash, SmartMedia, and MMC/SD is how many big multinationals split the licensing fees. Sony keeps all the MStick yen for itself, while the others have consortiums to spread the money around. (Although, IIRC, Matsushita gets the lion's share of MMC/SD money.)
At least you didn't attack MagicGate, then endorse the equally DRM-encumbered Secure Digital, like some others around here.
The problem with Idoru is that it was the middle book of a trilogy, but nobody knew it was a trilogy until All Tomorrow's Parties arrived, when Gibson tied Idoru back to Virtual Light. Gibson's problem is that he doesn't know how to write a cliffhanger. Idoru ended on its own terms, wrapped up well enough to suggest no sequel was forthcoming, but not well enough to give the reader a satisfactory resolution. As a result, many fans skipped ATP, figuring that Gibson's fading relevance finally went out-of-scale low. It's a shame. ATP's ending is as deus ex left field as Mona Lisa Overdrive's, (and Pattern Recognition's, apparently), but far more satisfying than Idoru's.
Who cares who came first? He said Microsoft didn't have a lossless codec, and I corrected him. Please tell me English is a second language for you. And what "near legal battle"?
Ya know, up to that point, you had a good Anything But Microsoft rant going there. But you missed something. Microsoft Windows Media 9 already has a lossless codec.
Actually, Sonic was synonymous with Sega. The problem was that Sonic was Sega's only franchise. Let's just look at the NES/Master System and SuperNES/Genesis eras. Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. Sega had Sonic. That's it. Now step forward to the N64/Saturn days. Sega had a multiple-month head start on Nintendo, but Saturn didn't have a Sonic title at launch. Their only franchise, and it wasn't ready until after N64 came out, with a Mario title at launch. That was Sega's Waterloo. They didn't make the same mistake with Dreamcast and Sonic Adventure, but it was too little, too late. The fanboys were gone. Shame. I loved those early Dreamcast commercials. :-)
I have to wonder if GameCube's slow start has the same root cause: No franchise at launch? Luigi's Mansion didn't have the Mario mystique, and Super Smash Bros. Melee, fun as it is, doesn't work because you're just throwing a bunch of franchise characters out of their elements and into a fighter. Unlike Sega, however, Nintendo can get by on reputation. Mario is a given on any Nintendo console. We knew Zelda was coming from the demo reels. Announcing the return of Metroid created plenty of buzz. Maybe things will pick up now that they've arrived (or are on the horizon, in Zelda's case).
Look at it this way: Would XBox 2 stand a chance if Halo 3 was 6 months late? Heck, will the current XBox stand a chance if Halo 2 is 6 months late?
MFC and .Net have nothing to do with each other. MFC is an island unto itself. A big, scary, densely overgrown jungle island that will claim the sanity of anyone who ventures there. WinForms has its roots in Visual Basic. Think of VB's toolkit, add all the extra common control ActiveX libraries as first-class members, rationalize the naming conventions (was that .Text or .Caption?), and rebuild for the CLR. Now you have WinForms.
Now that I think about it, I don't recall Microsoft advertising any changes to MFC for VC++ 7. Stands to reason. If they want everyone to move to the .Net Framework, there's no better place to start than a hairball like MFC.
But I think you're right about WinForms v. GTK#. Whether somebody builds WinForms bindings for X, or GTK learns to do Windows much better, the WinForms mountain isn't coming to Mohammed.
I think there was some hackery around the X character in Graffiti. If you invoke Graffiti Help, you'll see that the official way of drawing it is as you described. Two strokes, top-left to bottom-right, top-right to bottom-left. But scroll down in the help to the extended shift page. Look at the multiplication character's stroke. Top-right to bottom-left. But the preceding extended shift stroke is top-left to bottom-right. And the resulting character isn't a distinct multiplication symbol; it's a lower-case X! Sneaky, eh?
For the record, there is a single-stroke X gesture. Just keep the stylus down between the two strokes of the "official" X gesture. Think of it as a lower-case alpha, or a sideways shortcut gesture. Either way, I found it easier than the two-stroke X, which I always slopped into "lower-case I, [CR-LF]"
Wow. Where do I start? Oh, yeah:
Not exactly striking from a position of strength, are you?
XP's WPA is rotten just on principle. But I don't see why MCE would be exempt. Home and Pro can do everything MCE does, with the right kit. All MCE does is put a shiny face on it all.
What? Take a current, standard issue Fiorina-Capellas Presario, add a tuner card, IR remote, and memory card reader, and wrap it in a lacquer finish case, and suddenly it's "legacy hardware"? You make it sound like it's a 286 with a VLB graphics card. And it already has hit the stores. I started seeing them at my local Best Buy in November.
How could a 286 support all that? :-) SerialATA is just starting to penetrate the high end of the market, so I'm not surprised by it's omission on the HP. Besides, putting hard to find hard drives in a consumer grade PC isn't very user friendly. Bluetooth, cool as it is, doesn't have an obvious application in a Media Center PC except wireless keyboards and mice. You can get those now without Bluetooth, so what's the point? A best-case 11 Mbps won't give users a good impression of 802.11b. I don't think WiFi will be truly useful on a media center PC until 802.11g hits the mainstream. And HP's models include both USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394, so your iPod will work just fine.
Buzzword Bingo! You have no idea what sound card it is, let alone how it works. You're trying to BS the wrong crowd, buddy. Oh, for the record, it's a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy in the HP. They even have a bundle that includes a set of Klipsch ProMedia 5.1 speakers.
Ah, now for the coup de grace. It's too expensive to begin with, but the feature list is missing a whole bunch of esoteric bullet points! Price is relative to an individual's financial situation, so I'll just post the prices, and leave you to determine their worth. An entry level HP is $1349. The loaded model, with higher-spec core components and (expensive) Klipsch speakers, is $1999. Sony's nearest match is the the Vaio RZ, which uses their home-brewed GigaPocket software instead of XP MCE, and includes a DVD burner on all models. It starts at $1599. (Note: all prices are from hp.com and sonystyle.com, which were both advertising sale and/or rebate pricing. Display not inlcuded.)
Let's see how many sarcastic uses of the phrase "ringing endorsement" this generates. Hey, is Bernie Schiffman hiring?
Standard Slashdot Clue-Slap #4: The Fallacy of Mass Hypocracy
If you walked into PNC Park during a game, and saw a group of 10 people wearing Braves jerseys, would you call the remaining 38,000+ Pirate fans* in the crowd hypocrites? What about a vegetarian eating a salad at a steakhouse?
What you're observing is not hypocracy on the posters' part. They're willing to join the debate, and they deserve credit for that. (You imply that much with your preemptive taunt to anyone who would mod you down.) It's just human nature getting the best of the moderation system. It's too easy to silently and anonymously squelch a valid dissenting opinion. And while meta-moderation can cull out the egos and zealots, it operates too slowly to keep up with short tempers.
*: Jokes about the Pirates selling out a home game > /dev/null :-)
I remembered another discussion about Memory Stick products. The secret is to use another Memory Stick reader.
Actually, the DVD/VCR issue is pretty much unavoidable without additional equipment. The DVD spec demands Macrovision encoding on a DVD player's video outputs. Macrovision exploits a specific trait common to the video inputs of all VCRs, regardless of age. So, unless you have some unusual piece of kit, running any DVD player through any VCR will cause Macrovision interference.
There are ways around this problem. De-Macrovision boxes that sit between the DVD and VCR exist. Some DVD players can be fixed by mod chips, flash ROM updates, or hidden setup menus. Other than that, your best bet would be to find a way to avoid running the DVD through the VCR. A switch box and an RF converter would work. I mention a new TV only to point out that only the crappy ones don't have at least one non-RF input. But that's only an option if your budget is more Best Buy than Radio Shack.
As for your MiniDisc problem... (sigh) Sony seems determined to run it into the ground, and yet it still survives. Baffling.
All in all, though, Sony Electronics is still very much a theoretical evil. They can only impose DRM in exclusive or developing markets. Hence, MiniDisc, and Network Walkman products that only use MagicGate Memory Sticks. (Yes, I know there are hacks for purple Sticks, but what other product needs them?) In other markets, competition ensures that DRM is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either everybody standardizes on DRM, like CSS and Macrovision on DVDs, or nobody does. And free-market competition ensures that nobody makes DRM the feature that sets their product apart, since it will only serve as a big "DO NOT BUY" sticker next to the price tag.
Nice idea. Until someone not coordinated enough to make a behind-the-back, no-look pass tries one.
Boss: "McDermott! What the hell happened to the Morgenstern account?"
McDermott: "Well, sir, ever since we got these basketball shaped PCs, everyone around the office has been calling Fred Johnson 'Magic', so he figured..."
How's this?
At least, I hope Nemesis is given the ST V treatment. You can't claim a richly-detailed universe for a sci-fi franchise when a major race can be reduced to the two-word phrase "sneaky bastards".
Diane Duane, if you're reading this: I will gladly join a torch-and-pitchfork parade on Rick Berman's office. Just name your time. :-)
It's a simple distinction, really. Subscriptions are a source of revenue for TiVo.
Compare this to hard drive expansion mods, for example. If an OEM offered a unit with an expansion bay for a pre-blessed hard drive, such hacks would be frowned upon. (Of course, we wouldn't need that hack anymore.) But that's not the case. AFAIK, nobody is selling different capacities for the same model. The marginal cost of producing two models with different sized hard drives is greater than the cost of a single model. It's cheaper for OEMs to find the price-capacity sweet spot.
The Average Joe isn't concerned with expanding his TiVo's capacity. And if he does get interested, he'll see that the process is more "bike without instructions on Christmas Eve" than "plug it into the wall and turn it on". It's the Power User who wants more capacity. He's savvy enough to know that expanding a single box is the best option. Sure, the accountants would like you to buy a second box. Connecting and managing another unit, however, is sub-optimal compared to hacking a single unit by stuffing in two Drivezillas. It's not a lost sale, since anyone skilled enough to expand their TiVo successfully is smart enough to not buy two TiVos in the first place. Hopefully, they're also smart enough to not put two rattlesnake-loud 7200 rpm drives in a case designed for a single, quiet 5400 rpm drive without providing more airflow and sound baffling. :-)
Thus, we have the current Gentlemen's Agreement: Circumventing the subscription service hurts TiVo and, by extension, TiVo's user base, and is therefore taboo. As long as the hack doesn't impact the bottom line, however, TiVo won't try to stop it.
Amen, brother! A little lesson for everyone: Your brain is not a bit field.
Oh, and one more thing. Since the Slashdot community is a large, diverse collection of individuals, I have to wonder how he was able to get a representative sample of all those readers in just 1.5 hours?
Microsoft hates to compete on an even playing field. By defining Office.NET's XML schema on their own terms, they can make arbitrary changes as they see fit. Competitors will be forced to either chase down the changes or give up a measure of compatibility. And the terms of the Appeals Court settlement won't help, since it does nothing to counter the massive inertia of Office's existing market share.
In the past, Microsoft might have embraced-and-extended the OASIS spec. Now, they're under too much scrutiny to get away with it. I think they've had a change of heart in their PR philosophy: Better upfront arrogance than skullduggery in hindsight.
Besides, a large contingent of Microsoft's rivals are members of OASIS. The Committee is chaired by a Sun employee, and they're contributing the OpenOffice.org/StarOffice schema as the baseline. While they've just announced the Call for Parcipitation, Corel has already joined by press release. If Microsoft tried to join with a "my way or the highway" attitude, they'd probably be pointed at the nearest interstate.
Funny you should ask that. Scott Rosenberg addressed that issue in his blog today.
Left. Waaaay left. Salon slants so far left, they've toppled over.
Rosenberg is one of the reasons I haven't deleted Salon's bookmark yet. He's one of the last of a dying breed there: The rational liberal. I think they're trying to troll their way back to health. The rhetoric has become increasingly shrill and occasionally paranoid. And I don't know what medication Joe Conason is on, but he really needs to have his dosage adjusted. Salon claims to be the last bastion of intelligent journalism, but yet they stoop to pushing the same hot buttons as the screaming heads that pass for commentators on MSNBC. You all know the type. They believe that the entire political spectrum can be represented by one bit: 1 for Liberal, 0 for Conservative.
It's a shame, really. Outside the realm of politics, they actually live up to their billing. I particularly like the sports columnists, Allen Barra, King Kaufman, and Keith Olbermann. But I can't support them with a subscription without also endorsing the horribly skewed politics of their editors. So, they don't get my money. Apparently, they don't get anyone's money.
Sounded like a fairly neutral sound bite to me. Any angular momentum imparted on it was your own.
What major release? Longhorn Server was vaporware with a code name. It was the successor to .Net Server, which is still in the Release Candidate stage. They could have slapped the Longhorn name on Blackcomb Server, and I doubt anybody would notice or care.
<snl accent="scottish">Welcome to All Things Linux. If it's not Linux, it's crrrrap!</snl> Get your facts straight. NT 3.1 was Posix compliant, and supported SMP on four different CPU architectures. Just another zealot. Move along. Nothing to see here.
Don't knock it until you try it. Unless you have a really ham-fisted grip on the stylus, the button placement is quite natural. I use a Wacom Graphire 2 tablet here at home. It has a rocker switch that defaults to down for right-click and up for double-click. It's positioned perfectly under the thumb or index finger. I prefer the the thumb, myself. It's easier to press up for the double-clicks.
Well, I know a few guys in penguin suits, and they can skate, but they won't be around NYC until December.
That was my first thought when I saw a "butterfly man" ad on TV last night: The Moth on acid. I expected MSN's new slogan to be "Not in the face! Not in the face!"
Ah, one more LARTing before I go home for the day.
Anyone with a flash memory device. They're all proprietary. It's just a matter of how many big multi-nationals get a cut of the licensing fees. The only thing that makes Memory Stick special is that all the money goes to one big multi-national.
How many times do aziegler and I have to tell you you're wrong before it sinks in? The music is not protected. The device is not protected. There is no DRM on MP3s now, nor will there be in the future. And if you think there will be DRM in the future, well... I'd like to hear your ideas on how Sony can maintain or increase its share of a fiercely competitive market when it's trying to retrofit Vaios and Clies with draconian levels of DRM encumberance.
BTW, aziegler, thanks for pointing out the irony of this guy's advocacy of Secure Digital.
Sorry. Brought the wrong weapon to the fight. I had a clue-stick when I really needed an anti-troll ICBM.
The 4-pin non-powered connector has been part of IEEE 1394 from Day One. The "missing prongs and changed voltage" are to spec. There is absolutely nothing to prevent anyone from connecting an IEEE 1394-compliant device to a Sony. The only thing Sony charges for is the "iLink" trademark. Just as Apple used to charge for the "Firewire" trademark and Creative charges for "SB 1394".
Who said anything about it being "protected"? The 802.11b card is the only CF device with drivers at the moment.
That's odd. None of the devices you mention support SmartMedia. Oh, wait. The Nomad II uses SmartMedia. But the Palm m515 doesn't. It uses MMC/SD. Oh, no! I have to fork over another bucket of $$$ for the same thing - memory - but in a different plastic case so I can use my little Palm device!
I refer you to my previous rant on MP3/ATRAC3 support, with this addendum. The MSImport app exposes the memory stick slot of a docked Clie to the operating system as a removable drive. From there, copyrighted material can be freely moved between handheld and PC with no restrictions whatsoever, and it will still be playable on the Clie when you're done. iPod, OTOH, can only sync playable MP3s one way: Mac to iPod. If you want to move MP3s from Mac to Mac, you have to use iPod's hard drive mode, which renders the MP3s unplayable on the iPod itself. What were you saying again about DMCA?
Mechanically, it is a CF Type II slot. They are only providing drivers for their 802.11b card, so far. Hopefully somebody, anybody, will start providing drivers for other devices.
WRONG! Every time /. posts a story on Memory Stick equipped Sony kit, I have to clue-stick somebody on this point, and I'm getting sick of it. The only Sony Memory Stick devices that ever force you to use Magic Gate are their slow-selling Network Walkman products. (Gee, wonder why they're slow-selling?) Clies are compatible with Magic Gate, but only for playing audio in ATRAC3 format. All other memory card functions, including MP3 playback, use standard issue, non-DRM Memory Sticks.