Could we please keep the original conspiracy that alcohol is bad for you? This article blows my whole excuse that I use for not drinking. Do I give a rat's fuzzy posterior about my health? Not really - but saying I don't drink for reasons of my health WAS an excuse that was hard to refute. Sheesh, now I'll have to go through the long process of explaining how I don't like the taste of alcohol. Sure, there's acquired tastes, and then there's camping stove fuel.
As I've learned from experience, the "I don't like the taste of alcohol." excuse is usually met with "Well, neither do I, but I love how it makes me feel.". Well, guess what - it makes me feel light-headed and nauseous. Kudos to you if you enjoy that feeling - I don't.
As you can imagine, I'm not much for social gatherings where drinking is the primary activity. I honestly wish more people were mature enough to find better social common grounds than the vile substances they're putting into their bodies. Pop culture says otherwise.
You smoke, I smoke, I drink, me too, well good Cause we gon get high tonight - Cam'ron "Hey Ma"
Since the actual site pointed to by the article has succumb to the infamous Slashdot effect and that means a lot of picture-hungry/.ers, I decided against hosting my pictures through my cable modem. I put them up on my old AOL account so you can pound AOL's servers to death instead.;) If they don't load the first time, just keep hitting reload... AOL can take it.
Here's the result of a few seconds of running around with my digital camera... A virtual tour of the network at my house.
mypc.jpg This is the PC in my bedroom. P3 850, 256MB RAM, RADEON 8500LE, 40GB Maxtor. I'm upgrading it to an Athlon XP 2000 pretty soon.
bro1.jpg This is one of my brother's PCs. P3 750, 256MB RAM, Geforce4Ti, 40GB Maxtor.
bro2.jpg This is my brother's other PC. Duron 1GHz, 128MB RAM, Radeon 7200, 20GB Maxtor.
guest.jpg Guest room PC (What guest room is complete without a PC?!). K6-2 500MHz, 96MB RAM, Radeon 7000, 8GB HD.
hidden.jpg Hidden office room server. (Used as a Win2k Terminal Server) Celeron 850MHz, 512MB RAM, onboard SiS video (no monitor anyway!), 40GB Maxtor.
tv.jpg Entertainment center PC. Used for watching DivX movies. Yes, that is a progressive scan bigscreen HDTV. 42" of Slashdot, baby. Athlon 1GHz, 256MB RAM, Radeon 7000 Dual Display Edition, 8GB HD.
server.jpg Linux (Slackware!) NAT/Fileserver box. 200MHz PPro, 64MB RAM, generic ISA VGA card, 80GB Maxtor, 40GB Maxtor, 20GB Western Digital drives. In case you're wondering, yes, they're pretty much full.
wirebox.jpg Do not touch any of these wires!;) With the cover removed from the IBM home director panel, you can see the UPS, the cable modem, the 8 port 100Mbps switch, the 4 way satelite switch (behind the cable modem), the video distribution amplifier and the phone line splitter.
Back when opening up CueCats and modifying them to output unencrypted data was all the rage, I experimented with putting a white LED in one. Hell, it was free so if it didn't work afterwards, I wouldn't have cared. But sure enough, it still worked... Not only did it look cooler, but I found out it also gave it the unique ability of being able to scan RED barcodes, something laser-based and normal CueCats couldn't do.
I think I speak for everyone (or, a lot of people) when I say that brak.slashdot.org was really neat (in a "we are all tripping on acid from the 30 mod points and silly stories / posts") kind of way...
Interestingly enough, even with all the chaos, the best posts STILL rose to the top the signal to noise ratio didn't render it unreadable and the 8 or so posts I made ended up with a net moderation amount no different than I usually get on the regular Slashdot.
Do I think 30 moderation points to EVERYONE is excessive - yes... But amazingly, it didn't break the system as badly as I would have thought.
Let's face it... Music just boils down to personal taste. If I want to crank the bass boost on my amp so high the subwoofers drown out the vocals and I don't even hear what the song is about, that is my (insert deity(s) of choice) given right. If I like the way it sounds, I'll listen to it. I could care less what skin color the artist currently is (or what color he/she used to be), what gender or sexuality or who he/she is sleeping with, whether or not they're RIAA-owned or indie. All I care about is if the song(s) they've created are something I find enjoyable.
I know this post is kind of geared more towards music in general than to the Sex Pistols, but the attitude on Slashdot seems to lean towards "My x music is more closely represents the genre than yours" or "Band X is cool until they sell out, then they're just commercialized pop." I can understand having a beef with a video card cause it gets texture flickering in the latest Quake-engined game... That's something you can back up with actual facts. Music is meant to be entertainment.
I can respect that your music tastes are different than mine. Arguing that your artists or genres are better is like arguing chocolate is better than vanilla. Do I enjoy any music The Sex Pistols have released? No. Am I going to point out artists that I think are better than the Sex Pistols? No - the Sex Pistols created their own catalog of unique songs and comparing them to other artists' different songs would be comparing apples to oranges.
And if various bills get passed in the future, the CD player that can play copy-protected CDs will not have a 1/8" audio-out jack.
More than likely, a Palladium-equiped PC would happily record the analog audio source; however, the file created will be encrypted and tied to just THAT PC and any "trusted" portable devices.
Potentially, CD ripping could be reintroduced with Palladium. Want protected WMA files that will play on your trusted portable player or your PC? Pay a small ransom to the RIAA and you'll be able to copy those audio tracks. Gosh, Palladium really is a wet dream for the RIAA.
With the way cell phones are advancing, why buy one? Cell phones already have games, messaging, logs, and other electronic accessories.
"Those Slashdot editors are right... If I had moderator points - bam!"
Your post is blatant flamebait. Cell phones are NOT PDAs for SEVERAL reasons:
Games and other applications are tightly controlled by the cell phone provider. While you may be able to find "cellphone Java" (the name of the Java variant they run escapes me) applications, good luck getting them to download to your phone. Cell phones ALREADY HAVE the worst of what we expect Palladium to be. If an app isn't signed and delivered (usually with a FEE) to your cell phone by your cell phone provider, you're not getting it on there. Another nice feature of some applications is that they expire or require you to be using Internet airtime minutes while they're running. Even if you want to download something as simple as images or ringtones to your phone, you're likely to be hit with a download fee and only able to download from your cell phone provider or a company that has an agreement with your provider.
Next comes the issue of getting data onto your phone... The screen is small and the entry interface (press each button over, and over, and over) is awful. You can't begin to compare it to the Palm or any other PDA at all.
Cell phones are designed to be a glorified phonebook and self-setting clock if you don't pay for service. The providers nickel and dime you for every feature you're used to getting for FREE with a PDA or portable PC device. If you want wireless communication - get a cell phone. If you want a personal digital assistant - get a Palm.
Divx3,4,5 for various reasons including lower quality and copyright issues, most serious mpeg4 encoding is migrating to xvid. Once some Ogg issues get worked out most mpeg4 encoding will be done in Ogg/Xvid. Will this player support those codecs or just be a hundred dollar piece of obsolete junk?
These were my thoughts exactly. I recently switched from the hacked Microsoft (DivX 3.11) codec to XviD. I have no desire to support DivxNetworks and their closed source codec. Let's face it, the name DivX really belongs to Circuit City and the fame belongs to the original hacked Microsoft codec. DivxNetworks started out as Project Mayo but closed the source on their codec once they realized they were stealing enough of the "DivX" thunder, err, marketshare.
XviD is what DivXNetwork's codec would have been if Project Mayo continued. It is largely based on the original open source code and will continue to be improved. Last I checked, the latest version of DivxNetworks's codec includes SPYWARE.
If I download a DivX 5.x movie that XviD can't play, it gets deleted. I don't do a lot of movie downloading anyway - a lot of the movies on P2P networks are poorly encoded and take forever to download. I do however have access to a great professionally mastered library of recent and older movies for a modest per-movie fee of around $4.00. Due to the DMCA, I can't reveal this source, but I'm sure if you live in an urban or suburban area you'll have no trouble locating a similar source.;)
...some prodigal math genius at Wal-Mart the other day, because he appeared to be no more than 6 years old, yet he was playing the EXACT same song on a Kawasaki synthesizer.
Anyone else read the title and think this was about the women's cable network station Lifetime? I was like, "What are they doing giving a big brother award to Microsoft?", but then my brain was like fart, fart, fart, fart and it totally derailed my train of thought. I had to think up something new about this article and but I did it fast and it wasn't as good... It was kinda, a bummer.
Since the net result is a quiet, non-functional PC, I've found a superior method to accomplish the same level of noiselessness WITHOUT costly tools or dynamat. The best part? It's totally reversable with no damage to the computer!
Turn the system OFF.
Virus scanning companies have dropped the ball
on
First Worm with a EULA?
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yes, I know about Adaware, but average Sally or Joe computer user does not. They think that the copy of Norton bundled with their Gateway or Dell will protect them from everything bad and that it's okay to click on "Yes" when prompted "Do you want to install and run X by Spyware Inc.?"
This worm is no worse than the sites that have javascript to prompt you to install Cometcursor, Gator, Download accelerator, Bonzi Buddy and other spyware apps. I've already seen quite a few shockwave greeting card sites (with a Gator or other spyware install attempt) that ask you to "Send this card to a friend" and I've been sent links to these by my less computer-savvy friends. What's worse, you end up on more spam lists too...
Sooner or later, EVERYONE online ends up being prompted to install some kind of spyware. The companies that produce antivirus software need to include features to actively scan and disable spyware (with a default setting enabling scanning for spyware/adware, but an option to disable it if for some reason you want to). I've personally become sick of explaining to people that NO, their Norton or McAfee isn't going to catch the program that's been giving them all these popups and that they need some free program they've never heard of before (AdAware) to get rid of them.
While AdAware is great for power users, for the average population of PC users, automatic background protection like virus scanners provide for viruses is what is required. When a worm like this or a web page tries to install some new spyware, the user won't even be prompted - the antivirus software just says NO.
Re:Good for them
on
Blogger Hacked
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I hate the word blog and all its derivatives, they deserve it for promoting this pop-culter-esque net phenomenon. Either you run a news site, a discussion site, a community, a personal journal or something along those lines. Blog is a stupid term someone made up to sound cool.
As a *nix command, blog would be perfect. Hell, you've already got grep, cat, fsck, mount, umount, etc... Short commands with weird names, it'd fit in perfectly!
As a name for a personal journal however, it ranks right down there with OGG. These don't sound like technology terms, they sound like something a half-drunk mechanic would say to you... "OGG, your oil is all bloggy, your engine is fscked."
Personally, I have no need for a blog... As it stands, no one visits my home page (which basically consists of a standard AOL profile-type "about me" page, some MP3s of songs I made in Sonic Foundry Acid and a few free crappy VB programs) anyway so even if I HAD a life and things to write about, only thing that'd ever read it are the webcrawler bots. That's kinda depressing actually... I better schedule an appointment with my shrink.
What is there to "deal" with about people talking on phones? Do you also have to "deal" with people talking to the person next to them?
I agree. I can understand cell phones being a problem when they're distracting someone from driving or being used during a movie or concert. But if you're at a resturant, the mall, in a plane, train, bus, etc. where it is considered acceptable to carry on a conversation with the person(s) next to you, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to talk into a phone.
I'm personally sick of this argument that people talk louder or make profane/personal comments into cell phones. Not everyone does and quite a few people at resturants who have maybe had a bit too much to drink can be just as loud or make profane remarks to the other people in their party.
I moved into a new house almost a year ago. (Am I starting offtopic enough for you?) As anyone who has moved knows, things get broken in the move... My 17" CTX CRT was one of the casualties of the move. While I was carrying the monitor from one side of the room to the other, I tripped over some misc. stuff that happened to be on the floor and down the monitor went. Fortunately, instead of imploding violently, it had just cracked and *slowly* lost its vaccuum.
If I wasn't moving, I'd have probably just got another CRT to replace it... But since I still had a few more weeks to go at the old house and whatever monitor I bought had to move with me, I started looking at LCDs. After reading a few comparisons and reviews, then finally going to the local Best Buy, CompUSA and Office Depot stores, I decided on the KDS RAD-5.
Since the majority of my computer usage is just browsing the web, wordprocessing, photo cropping, using VB and some very infrequent gaming, the slower refresh of an LCD hasn't been a problem. While DivX and DVD movies seem to look fine on the monitor, I prefer using my video card's (a Radeon 8500) TV-out for video - 15" is just too small for good movie enjoyment.
Besides the sharpness and the perfect screen geometry, the other thing I like about LCDs is that they give off very little heat. My old 17" CRT was having a space heater on and would quickly heat up the entire room. I have a feeling though that when I upgrade from a PIII 850MHz to an Athlon XP2000 that the computer will pick up where the monitor leaves off in the heat department.
I never liked the idea of satellite radio from the start? Before you start sniffing for troll aroma, let me say I already HAVE a form of Satellite radio - DirecTV. Since I mainly listen to pop/rap/top-40 stuff, DirectTV's digital audio-only stations play the same songs I listen to on FM, but guess what - I only listened to them maybe once or twice as a novelty.
Yea, commercial-free radio is neat... But some commercials are actually entertaining, Bennigans for example comes to mind. Yesterday, I heard a commercial for Time Warner Roadrunner service and the spokesperson was mouthing modem tones ("I no longer have to hear those bleeep beep blah pbpbpbpbpbpb dialup sounds") - it was hilarious. Do I like all commercials? No, certainly not - but missing the good ones would really suck.
I don't know about XM or Sirus, but the local stations all have DJs that put people from the area on the air to give shout outs, talk about things happening in the area and take requests. I don't care if the actual station is run out of a closet in Bumfsck, Alaska, as long as they're still Central Florida-centric, it seems more "personalized". Stations seem to realize that part of getting people to listen is listener participation. Hell, I've even called in a few times to vote for songs and make requests.
The other major problem with satellite radio is you can only listen to it where the equipment is. Yesterday, I was working on my moped (yes, I have a car too, the moped is NOT the reason for not liking satellite radio) in the garage - there's a boombox in the garage with a FM tuner, a tape player (what the hell are those things again?) and a CD player. I wanted to listen to music and didn't feel like getting up every 74 minutes or so to change CDs - so I put on the radio. If I had a satellite radio service in my car, I'd feel like I'm wasting my money since the majority of the time I listen to music (while working in the garage, mowing the lawn or in front of the computer) I wouldn't be able to use it. If I want to hear high quality commercial free music with just the songs I want - well, I can just bring my hard drive based MP3 player with me...
Once you get past the hype... this movie was just a bunch of guys, running from place to place, killing bad guys. Basically, it seems to me to be on the same level as Scorpion King, except it doesn't have beautiful and scantily clad women all over the place; they replaced those, mistakably, with smoldering bondage kings and smelly goblins.
Not having read the book myself, this is the same feeling I had about the movie... It was an action flick that seemed like it could use some serious editing. There was a lot of cruft that added nothing really to the movie and just sorta made it drag... When I gave this opinion to one of my friends who HAD read the book, he said if they had done more editing it would have ruined the movie... I guess it all depends on what you expect.
I kinda felt the same way about Harry Potter as well... Somewhere in that two and a half hours was a good movie, it just needed some editing to bring it out. Same problem again... Just dragged at parts and had a lot of stuff that wasn't really relevent to the story.
My guess, not being much of a book reader myself, is that books spend a lot of time explaining lots of minute details about everything that is going on so you can build a picture in your mind... Since this isn't needed for a movie, a lot of stuff from the book gets put in that really ads nothing to the actual plot. If you've ever watched to-be-continued cartoons, isn't it funny how they can basically summerize the entire plot of the last episode in about 30 seconds? If they can do that, why can't they tell the story of LOTR in ONE three hour movie? Oh yea, it wouldn't make them as much money.
When ALL three LOTR movies get released, I'm gonna try my hand at crunching them down to ONE three hour movie... I'll bet I can do it.;)
I've just recently started encoding all my DivX movies with XviD and found the quality to be greatly superior to the old DIV3 (DivX 3.11, the hacked MS codec). While "P2P-style" 700MB single-CD rips still seem to be a bit heavy on the artifacts with movies longer than 100 minutes, I've found it to be much more tolerable than DIV3 was. If you'd like to try out the XviD codec but you've already ripped (err... backed up) all you DVDs, I hear Don Pablos (it's a mexican resturant... but if you live near one you probably already know that) is giving away free Blockbuster Movie rental certificates with the purchase of certain meals. Yum.
As for DataPlay... People are pretty happy with compact discs as they stand now. I've never heard any of my friends or their friends or anyone I've met in real life ever tell me they had complaints about the audio quality of CDs. Mostly, people seem to think CDs are just too expensive and a few agree they're too easily scratched. I don't know what kind of crack the inventor of these DataPlay discs was on, but "smaller" is not a good primary selling point. For me, I want as much music available as possible at my fingertips and it was a hard drive based player that provided that. Shame DataPlay wasn't into those, the name would have worked.;)
I've found that my "high-end" CRT, which costs LESS than even a basic LCD, displays much better, and is far more flexible.
More flexible, yes... I'll give you that. You can't beat a CRT for quick refresh rates needed for serious gaming and a good picture in any supported resolution.
What a flat panel LCD monitor lacks in resolutions, it makes up for in display consistency. There is no pincushioning, no color seperation problems, the picture fills the entire screen perfectly, a horizontal or vertical line of pixels is perfectly straight and there is absolutely no flicker. Once you get used to looking at an LCD on a regular basis, the flaws in CRTs really start to become more apparant. I'll admit they're not for everyone, but for mostly browsing the web, wordprocessing, cropping and resizing images and the infrequent game or two, you can't beat an LCD.
By the time this is for sale, hopefully good "old fashioned" LCD technology will be more affordable. I'm already using a 15" KDS RAD-5 and my friends are like "Wow, a flat panel, those are still too expensive for me." I like my flat panel though... Once you go flat, you never go back. Everything else just looks blurry.
Imagine how much power would be saved if everyone set their computers to go into hibernate mode during periods of inactivity. I never ran any of these distributed clients for the simple reason that I felt saving power was of more immediate benefit to my electric bill and to the enviorment.
If the SETI project ends and you've still got that do-good feeling - enable your OS's power saving features. It's the OTHER good thing your computer can do when its processing power isn't needed.
Slashdot Mirror
I concur. I'd be far more interested in a study about "Success despite social rejection." I am a geek afterall.
Could we please keep the original conspiracy that alcohol is bad for you? This article blows my whole excuse that I use for not drinking. Do I give a rat's fuzzy posterior about my health? Not really - but saying I don't drink for reasons of my health WAS an excuse that was hard to refute. Sheesh, now I'll have to go through the long process of explaining how I don't like the taste of alcohol. Sure, there's acquired tastes, and then there's camping stove fuel.
As I've learned from experience, the "I don't like the taste of alcohol." excuse is usually met with "Well, neither do I, but I love how it makes me feel.". Well, guess what - it makes me feel light-headed and nauseous. Kudos to you if you enjoy that feeling - I don't.
As you can imagine, I'm not much for social gatherings where drinking is the primary activity. I honestly wish more people were mature enough to find better social common grounds than the vile substances they're putting into their bodies. Pop culture says otherwise.
You smoke, I smoke, I drink, me too, well good
Cause we gon get high tonight - Cam'ron "Hey Ma"
Screw pop culture. I'm a geek.
Since the actual site pointed to by the article has succumb to the infamous Slashdot effect and that means a lot of picture-hungry /.ers, I decided against hosting my pictures through my cable modem. I put them up on my old AOL account so you can pound AOL's servers to death instead. ;) If they don't load the first time, just keep hitting reload... AOL can take it.
;) With the cover removed from the IBM home director panel, you can see the UPS, the cable modem, the 8 port 100Mbps switch, the 4 way satelite switch (behind the cable modem), the video distribution amplifier and the phone line splitter.
Here's the result of a few seconds of running around with my digital camera... A virtual tour of the network at my house.
mypc.jpg This is the PC in my bedroom. P3 850, 256MB RAM, RADEON 8500LE, 40GB Maxtor. I'm upgrading it to an Athlon XP 2000 pretty soon.
bro1.jpg This is one of my brother's PCs. P3 750, 256MB RAM, Geforce4Ti, 40GB Maxtor.
bro2.jpg This is my brother's other PC. Duron 1GHz, 128MB RAM, Radeon 7200, 20GB Maxtor.
guest.jpg Guest room PC (What guest room is complete without a PC?!). K6-2 500MHz, 96MB RAM, Radeon 7000, 8GB HD.
office.jpg Office room PC. P4 1.6GHz, 256MB RAM, Radeon 7000, 80GB Maxtor.
hidden.jpg Hidden office room server. (Used as a Win2k Terminal Server) Celeron 850MHz, 512MB RAM, onboard SiS video (no monitor anyway!), 40GB Maxtor.
tv.jpg Entertainment center PC. Used for watching DivX movies. Yes, that is a progressive scan bigscreen HDTV. 42" of Slashdot, baby. Athlon 1GHz, 256MB RAM, Radeon 7000 Dual Display Edition, 8GB HD.
server.jpg Linux (Slackware!) NAT/Fileserver box. 200MHz PPro, 64MB RAM, generic ISA VGA card, 80GB Maxtor, 40GB Maxtor, 20GB Western Digital drives. In case you're wondering, yes, they're pretty much full.
wirebox.jpg Do not touch any of these wires!
Back when opening up CueCats and modifying them to output unencrypted data was all the rage, I experimented with putting a white LED in one. Hell, it was free so if it didn't work afterwards, I wouldn't have cared. But sure enough, it still worked... Not only did it look cooler, but I found out it also gave it the unique ability of being able to scan RED barcodes, something laser-based and normal CueCats couldn't do.
Picture of White-modifed CueCat
I've also modified my share of mice, but I don't think they're as cool as my cat.
I think I speak for everyone (or, a lot of people) when I say that brak.slashdot.org was really neat (in a "we are all tripping on acid from the 30 mod points and silly stories / posts") kind of way...
Interestingly enough, even with all the chaos, the best posts STILL rose to the top the signal to noise ratio didn't render it unreadable and the 8 or so posts I made ended up with a net moderation amount no different than I usually get on the regular Slashdot.
Do I think 30 moderation points to EVERYONE is excessive - yes... But amazingly, it didn't break the system as badly as I would have thought.
Let's face it... Music just boils down to personal taste. If I want to crank the bass boost on my amp so high the subwoofers drown out the vocals and I don't even hear what the song is about, that is my (insert deity(s) of choice) given right. If I like the way it sounds, I'll listen to it. I could care less what skin color the artist currently is (or what color he/she used to be), what gender or sexuality or who he/she is sleeping with, whether or not they're RIAA-owned or indie. All I care about is if the song(s) they've created are something I find enjoyable.
I know this post is kind of geared more towards music in general than to the Sex Pistols, but the attitude on Slashdot seems to lean towards "My x music is more closely represents the genre than yours" or "Band X is cool until they sell out, then they're just commercialized pop." I can understand having a beef with a video card cause it gets texture flickering in the latest Quake-engined game... That's something you can back up with actual facts. Music is meant to be entertainment.
I can respect that your music tastes are different than mine. Arguing that your artists or genres are better is like arguing chocolate is better than vanilla. Do I enjoy any music The Sex Pistols have released? No. Am I going to point out artists that I think are better than the Sex Pistols? No - the Sex Pistols created their own catalog of unique songs and comparing them to other artists' different songs would be comparing apples to oranges.
And if various bills get passed in the future, the CD player that can play copy-protected CDs will not have a 1/8" audio-out jack.
More than likely, a Palladium-equiped PC would happily record the analog audio source; however, the file created will be encrypted and tied to just THAT PC and any "trusted" portable devices.
Potentially, CD ripping could be reintroduced with Palladium. Want protected WMA files that will play on your trusted portable player or your PC? Pay a small ransom to the RIAA and you'll be able to copy those audio tracks. Gosh, Palladium really is a wet dream for the RIAA.
With the way cell phones are advancing, why buy one? Cell phones already have games, messaging, logs, and other electronic accessories.
"Those Slashdot editors are right... If I had moderator points - bam!"
Your post is blatant flamebait. Cell phones are NOT PDAs for SEVERAL reasons:
Games and other applications are tightly controlled by the cell phone provider. While you may be able to find "cellphone Java" (the name of the Java variant they run escapes me) applications, good luck getting them to download to your phone. Cell phones ALREADY HAVE the worst of what we expect Palladium to be. If an app isn't signed and delivered (usually with a FEE) to your cell phone by your cell phone provider, you're not getting it on there. Another nice feature of some applications is that they expire or require you to be using Internet airtime minutes while they're running. Even if you want to download something as simple as images or ringtones to your phone, you're likely to be hit with a download fee and only able to download from your cell phone provider or a company that has an agreement with your provider.
Next comes the issue of getting data onto your phone... The screen is small and the entry interface (press each button over, and over, and over) is awful. You can't begin to compare it to the Palm or any other PDA at all.
Cell phones are designed to be a glorified phonebook and self-setting clock if you don't pay for service. The providers nickel and dime you for every feature you're used to getting for FREE with a PDA or portable PC device. If you want wireless communication - get a cell phone. If you want a personal digital assistant - get a Palm.
Divx3,4,5 for various reasons including lower quality and copyright issues, most serious mpeg4 encoding is migrating to xvid. Once some Ogg issues get worked out most mpeg4 encoding will be done in Ogg/Xvid. Will this player support those codecs or just be a hundred dollar piece of obsolete junk?
;)
These were my thoughts exactly. I recently switched from the hacked Microsoft (DivX 3.11) codec to XviD. I have no desire to support DivxNetworks and their closed source codec. Let's face it, the name DivX really belongs to Circuit City and the fame belongs to the original hacked Microsoft codec. DivxNetworks started out as Project Mayo but closed the source on their codec once they realized they were stealing enough of the "DivX" thunder, err, marketshare.
XviD is what DivXNetwork's codec would have been if Project Mayo continued. It is largely based on the original open source code and will continue to be improved. Last I checked, the latest version of DivxNetworks's codec includes SPYWARE.
If I download a DivX 5.x movie that XviD can't play, it gets deleted. I don't do a lot of movie downloading anyway - a lot of the movies on P2P networks are poorly encoded and take forever to download. I do however have access to a great professionally mastered library of recent and older movies for a modest per-movie fee of around $4.00. Due to the DMCA, I can't reveal this source, but I'm sure if you live in an urban or suburban area you'll have no trouble locating a similar source.
...some prodigal math genius at Wal-Mart the other day, because he appeared to be no more than 6 years old, yet he was playing the EXACT same song on a Kawasaki synthesizer.
Anyone else read the title and think this was about the women's cable network station Lifetime? I was like, "What are they doing giving a big brother award to Microsoft?", but then my brain was like fart, fart, fart, fart and it totally derailed my train of thought. I had to think up something new about this article and but I did it fast and it wasn't as good... It was kinda, a bummer.
Does that mean they'll look like they were sprayed with Rust-Oleum? That's how my grandfather makes everything purdy.
Since the net result is a quiet, non-functional PC, I've found a superior method to accomplish the same level of noiselessness WITHOUT costly tools or dynamat. The best part? It's totally reversable with no damage to the computer!
Turn the system OFF.
Yes, I know about Adaware, but average Sally or Joe computer user does not. They think that the copy of Norton bundled with their Gateway or Dell will protect them from everything bad and that it's okay to click on "Yes" when prompted "Do you want to install and run X by Spyware Inc.?"
This worm is no worse than the sites that have javascript to prompt you to install Cometcursor, Gator, Download accelerator, Bonzi Buddy and other spyware apps. I've already seen quite a few shockwave greeting card sites (with a Gator or other spyware install attempt) that ask you to "Send this card to a friend" and I've been sent links to these by my less computer-savvy friends. What's worse, you end up on more spam lists too...
Sooner or later, EVERYONE online ends up being prompted to install some kind of spyware. The companies that produce antivirus software need to include features to actively scan and disable spyware (with a default setting enabling scanning for spyware/adware, but an option to disable it if for some reason you want to). I've personally become sick of explaining to people that NO, their Norton or McAfee isn't going to catch the program that's been giving them all these popups and that they need some free program they've never heard of before (AdAware) to get rid of them.
While AdAware is great for power users, for the average population of PC users, automatic background protection like virus scanners provide for viruses is what is required. When a worm like this or a web page tries to install some new spyware, the user won't even be prompted - the antivirus software just says NO.
I hate the word blog and all its derivatives, they deserve it for promoting this pop-culter-esque net phenomenon. Either you run a news site, a discussion site, a community, a personal journal or something along those lines. Blog is a stupid term someone made up to sound cool.
As a *nix command, blog would be perfect. Hell, you've already got grep, cat, fsck, mount, umount, etc... Short commands with weird names, it'd fit in perfectly!
As a name for a personal journal however, it ranks right down there with OGG. These don't sound like technology terms, they sound like something a half-drunk mechanic would say to you... "OGG, your oil is all bloggy, your engine is fscked."
Personally, I have no need for a blog... As it stands, no one visits my home page (which basically consists of a standard AOL profile-type "about me" page, some MP3s of songs I made in Sonic Foundry Acid and a few free crappy VB programs) anyway so even if I HAD a life and things to write about, only thing that'd ever read it are the webcrawler bots. That's kinda depressing actually... I better schedule an appointment with my shrink.
What is there to "deal" with about people talking on phones? Do you also have to "deal" with people talking to the person next to them?
I agree. I can understand cell phones being a problem when they're distracting someone from driving or being used during a movie or concert. But if you're at a resturant, the mall, in a plane, train, bus, etc. where it is considered acceptable to carry on a conversation with the person(s) next to you, there is no reason you shouldn't be able to talk into a phone.
I'm personally sick of this argument that people talk louder or make profane/personal comments into cell phones. Not everyone does and quite a few people at resturants who have maybe had a bit too much to drink can be just as loud or make profane remarks to the other people in their party.
I moved into a new house almost a year ago. (Am I starting offtopic enough for you?) As anyone who has moved knows, things get broken in the move... My 17" CTX CRT was one of the casualties of the move. While I was carrying the monitor from one side of the room to the other, I tripped over some misc. stuff that happened to be on the floor and down the monitor went. Fortunately, instead of imploding violently, it had just cracked and *slowly* lost its vaccuum.
If I wasn't moving, I'd have probably just got another CRT to replace it... But since I still had a few more weeks to go at the old house and whatever monitor I bought had to move with me, I started looking at LCDs. After reading a few comparisons and reviews, then finally going to the local Best Buy, CompUSA and Office Depot stores, I decided on the KDS RAD-5.
Since the majority of my computer usage is just browsing the web, wordprocessing, photo cropping, using VB and some very infrequent gaming, the slower refresh of an LCD hasn't been a problem. While DivX and DVD movies seem to look fine on the monitor, I prefer using my video card's (a Radeon 8500) TV-out for video - 15" is just too small for good movie enjoyment.
Besides the sharpness and the perfect screen geometry, the other thing I like about LCDs is that they give off very little heat. My old 17" CRT was having a space heater on and would quickly heat up the entire room. I have a feeling though that when I upgrade from a PIII 850MHz to an Athlon XP2000 that the computer will pick up where the monitor leaves off in the heat department.
I never liked the idea of satellite radio from the start? Before you start sniffing for troll aroma, let me say I already HAVE a form of Satellite radio - DirecTV. Since I mainly listen to pop/rap/top-40 stuff, DirectTV's digital audio-only stations play the same songs I listen to on FM, but guess what - I only listened to them maybe once or twice as a novelty.
Yea, commercial-free radio is neat... But some commercials are actually entertaining, Bennigans for example comes to mind. Yesterday, I heard a commercial for Time Warner Roadrunner service and the spokesperson was mouthing modem tones ("I no longer have to hear those bleeep beep blah pbpbpbpbpbpb dialup sounds") - it was hilarious. Do I like all commercials? No, certainly not - but missing the good ones would really suck.
I don't know about XM or Sirus, but the local stations all have DJs that put people from the area on the air to give shout outs, talk about things happening in the area and take requests. I don't care if the actual station is run out of a closet in Bumfsck, Alaska, as long as they're still Central Florida-centric, it seems more "personalized". Stations seem to realize that part of getting people to listen is listener participation. Hell, I've even called in a few times to vote for songs and make requests.
The other major problem with satellite radio is you can only listen to it where the equipment is. Yesterday, I was working on my moped (yes, I have a car too, the moped is NOT the reason for not liking satellite radio) in the garage - there's a boombox in the garage with a FM tuner, a tape player (what the hell are those things again?) and a CD player. I wanted to listen to music and didn't feel like getting up every 74 minutes or so to change CDs - so I put on the radio. If I had a satellite radio service in my car, I'd feel like I'm wasting my money since the majority of the time I listen to music (while working in the garage, mowing the lawn or in front of the computer) I wouldn't be able to use it. If I want to hear high quality commercial free music with just the songs I want - well, I can just bring my hard drive based MP3 player with me...
Once you get past the hype... this movie was just a bunch of guys, running from place to place, killing bad guys. Basically, it seems to me to be on the same level as Scorpion King, except it doesn't have beautiful and scantily clad women all over the place; they replaced those, mistakably, with smoldering bondage kings and smelly goblins.
;)
Not having read the book myself, this is the same feeling I had about the movie... It was an action flick that seemed like it could use some serious editing. There was a lot of cruft that added nothing really to the movie and just sorta made it drag... When I gave this opinion to one of my friends who HAD read the book, he said if they had done more editing it would have ruined the movie... I guess it all depends on what you expect.
I kinda felt the same way about Harry Potter as well... Somewhere in that two and a half hours was a good movie, it just needed some editing to bring it out. Same problem again... Just dragged at parts and had a lot of stuff that wasn't really relevent to the story.
My guess, not being much of a book reader myself, is that books spend a lot of time explaining lots of minute details about everything that is going on so you can build a picture in your mind... Since this isn't needed for a movie, a lot of stuff from the book gets put in that really ads nothing to the actual plot. If you've ever watched to-be-continued cartoons, isn't it funny how they can basically summerize the entire plot of the last episode in about 30 seconds? If they can do that, why can't they tell the story of LOTR in ONE three hour movie? Oh yea, it wouldn't make them as much money.
When ALL three LOTR movies get released, I'm gonna try my hand at crunching them down to ONE three hour movie... I'll bet I can do it.
What will really happen is that people buying the low-end machines will then borrow a copy of Office 97 or Office 2000 from a friend and copy it.
Shssh! Don't let Microsoft know that! We wouldn't want them to know that's why all those $199 Wal-Mart PCs have been selling, now would we?
I've just recently started encoding all my DivX movies with XviD and found the quality to be greatly superior to the old DIV3 (DivX 3.11, the hacked MS codec). While "P2P-style" 700MB single-CD rips still seem to be a bit heavy on the artifacts with movies longer than 100 minutes, I've found it to be much more tolerable than DIV3 was. If you'd like to try out the XviD codec but you've already ripped (err... backed up) all you DVDs, I hear Don Pablos (it's a mexican resturant... but if you live near one you probably already know that) is giving away free Blockbuster Movie rental certificates with the purchase of certain meals. Yum.
;)
As for DataPlay... People are pretty happy with compact discs as they stand now. I've never heard any of my friends or their friends or anyone I've met in real life ever tell me they had complaints about the audio quality of CDs. Mostly, people seem to think CDs are just too expensive and a few agree they're too easily scratched. I don't know what kind of crack the inventor of these DataPlay discs was on, but "smaller" is not a good primary selling point. For me, I want as much music available as possible at my fingertips and it was a hard drive based player that provided that. Shame DataPlay wasn't into those, the name would have worked.
Perhaps YOU dont worry about it. But you'll be sorry once the yoghurt gets you.
So that's what that sound coming from my mini-fridge is... All this time I thought the compressor needed to be oiled.
I've found that my "high-end" CRT, which costs LESS than even a basic LCD, displays much better, and is far more flexible.
More flexible, yes... I'll give you that. You can't beat a CRT for quick refresh rates needed for serious gaming and a good picture in any supported resolution.
What a flat panel LCD monitor lacks in resolutions, it makes up for in display consistency. There is no pincushioning, no color seperation problems, the picture fills the entire screen perfectly, a horizontal or vertical line of pixels is perfectly straight and there is absolutely no flicker. Once you get used to looking at an LCD on a regular basis, the flaws in CRTs really start to become more apparant. I'll admit they're not for everyone, but for mostly browsing the web, wordprocessing, cropping and resizing images and the infrequent game or two, you can't beat an LCD.
By the time this is for sale, hopefully good "old fashioned" LCD technology will be more affordable. I'm already using a 15" KDS RAD-5 and my friends are like "Wow, a flat panel, those are still too expensive for me." I like my flat panel though... Once you go flat, you never go back. Everything else just looks blurry.
Imagine how much power would be saved if everyone set their computers to go into hibernate mode during periods of inactivity. I never ran any of these distributed clients for the simple reason that I felt saving power was of more immediate benefit to my electric bill and to the enviorment.
If the SETI project ends and you've still got that do-good feeling - enable your OS's power saving features. It's the OTHER good thing your computer can do when its processing power isn't needed.