Well said. I was going to say exactly the same thing. You already did, so I don't have to:)
I have heard very, VERY nice presentations from people with good systems hooked up to a regular CD player. The amplifier quality and speaker quality make a lot more difference than if the source is 96khz, 24 bit, rather than 48khz, 16 bit.
It's funny how the major request of most consumers (more available playtime per-disc) never seems to increase though, despite the technical advances in other areas. Of course, consumers might get just a bit upset if the music labels can make a disc with 10 hours or more of high-quality recording time, and they only use 45 minutes for one album at 3 times the price of a regular CD.
IMHO, CD-quality sound isn't lacking anything that I need, except maybe surround-sound capability. And regular DVDs handle that quite nicely.
And as DVDs and audio DVDs are so easy to author now, even small bands and labels aren't cut-out of the action. It makes me wonder if the "audio engineers are looking to justify their own existance" with new products that people don't really need, in addition to the obvious greed of music companies who are desperately hoping that millions of people will dump their now suddenly "low quality" CDs (and of course, MP3s) to buy their "new and improved" format.
-If you are going to pay for cell phone service anyway, and you want a PDA as well, you don't really lose anything by purchasing a PDA with cell phone capabilities and paying a monthly fee for the cell phone connectivity.
Perhaps you only need a phone that can place and receive calls, but I get a heck of a lot of functionality out of my SE P800 which does have PDA capability, a camera, video mail, etc. For example, I never really thought I'd use the camera much, but I find myself using it more and more for work-related purposes, and just pure convenience. Sure, my Canon G3 digital camera produces a far superior picture, but there are times when I just need a quick photo of something and the phone is the most convenient way of getting that.
Now, to be fair, it's neither the cheap nor tatty phone that you were describing, so you may have been speaking of cheaper "quasi-PDA" phones with less functionality.
I used to own seperate a seperate Handspring Visor, and a Nokia cell phone. It was an inconvenience to always carry both around, so I usually didn't. I don't have that problem anymore. When a new model is released that has WiFi capability, I'll have a device which is essentially a "micro-laptop" - which is the perfect tool for me (I have fast desktop machines at work and at home, so little need for a conventional laptop).
I suppose I should clarify a bit because you don't seem to understand how the system works...
The classification errors are on the side of a spam getting through, not real messages being tagged as spam.
So out of the "1650" email messages per day that you get, it "might" misclassify 12 or 13 spam messages as real messages based on my accuracy rating. With that volume of email however, the corpus will build that much faster and become even more accurate.
Spam filters aren't the best long-term solution to solve the problem, but they're a damn fine short-term solution until something better is worked out. Spam has ceased to be a problem for me thanks to POPFile.
You may be abnormal in your email volume and perhaps that sort of filtering may not be quite as effective for your peculiar circumstances, however you are the exception to the rule.
Which is better, to have some risk of vulnerability and be employed, or refuse to use the browser compatible with applications your job requires and get fired for not performing?
Most of the classification errors were in the first couple weeks of training it.
It's nearly bulletproof now. Maybe one message a month gets past it. Works on all platforms and the Windows client has become much easier to use than older version (nice installer and all).
This is the same issue that I have when everyone starts the "switch browsers" chant.
I need IE because of certain web-applications that require IE-specific plugins. There's no possibility of that changing in the short term, so it's a non-starter.
The end result is that it apparently caught a couple pirates, and probably pissed off a lot of people who can see the dots easily (they're really obvious on high-contrast areas of the film).
I was wondering how long it would be before someone rained on the "ra ra ra", guns solve all problems, "bigger is better", ammo-comparing Americaspeak.
I too, am more than happy to live in a country where I've never even had to CONSIDER being mugged, much less have it actually happen. Hell, walking alone downtown after a concert a couple years back after the buses shut down, I was in one of the seedier parts of the city with a few hours to waste until the morning buses, and I wasn't particularly worried wandering around.
Sure, the street beggers and window washers are annoying, but very rarely problematic.
I don't carry any weapons on my person or in my car, and the most dangerous things I have at home are probably kitchen utensils.
It's really nice living somewhere where you just don't need to feel that scared...
Do NOT get that HP scanner. I have the same model, and while the hardware is just fine, HP's scanning software is garbage.
I run paperport to store all of my bills, documents, etc. The HP scanner software simply will-not use the resolutions and options I want paperport to use (200 DPI, B&W).
When using the sheetfeeder, the damn thing always scans in 24bit at 200DPI no matter what I try and set as a default - then I have to manually convert every page.
I was sort of thinking the same thing. $30 probably wouldn't even cover the paper they're going to need for this kind of foolishness, not to mention wear & tear on their copier, as well as the labor of employes who would have to dig this stuff out and handle copying/supplying it.
Just bill them $1 per-page. Then let them subpoena anything they want.
The simple fact of the matter is that GOOD CHARACTERS make a GOOD MOVIE, regardless of special effects, and even to a certain extent, script.
Episode 1 and 2 had very few characters I gave a damn about one way or another. I honestly feel that the breakdown is in the directing, and not so much in the actors (except for the CGI ones).
I'm afraid I don't quite follow. DVD burners that are currently available have absolutely no copy restriction capabilities on media they write.
The only possible restriction is region-coding when reading commercial DVDs, and for most people that isn't much of an issue anyway (they're easily patch-able, or they just watch stuff from their own region anyway).
DVD-R drives are DIRT cheap. There's no reason to buy a CD burner these days instead of a DVD-R IMHO.
It's not the DVD Drive that determines if a system supports progressive scan or not, it's just a data delivery device - it's the output from the video encoder chip.
If you hook a component video cable to the Xbox, it does indeed drive a 480p display.
XBMC is the newer version of XBMP - it's not quite as stable, but new builds are released VERY often, and it gets better and more stable with every release.
Modding my Xbox was the best possible thing I could've done for it. Microsoft is incredibly foolish not getting on-board with an "official" application like XBMC for people who wish to have run it on Xboxes that aren't modded. It would be very popular.
There's also a difference on maintenance, which should be huge (they havn't been out long enough to verify this, but the concept is sound).
Because a hybrid system shuts off the ICE (internal combustion engine) whenever it's not needed, there's far less wear and tear on the engine itself. They also use a variety of interesting tricks to spin up the engine with low compression to get oil moving before firing the cylinders to reduce wear.
Not having a conventional transmission also helps in the case of the Prius - There are no belts, pads, or fluids which can cause the transmisson to fail. It should be good for the life of the car.
So it's not just the gas milage that makes a difference, it should be a much more robust vehicle as well.
To be more specific, you can't run the Honda hybrids (Civic, Insight) on electric power alone because of the type of hybrid system they use (parallel hybrid). The gas engine is permanently coupled to the electric engine (which is just used for boost-assist and starting the engine).
You CAN run Toyota's hybrids (ie: Prius) on pure electric (they're combo series/parallel systems). They have a pretty slick planetary configuration CVT (continually variable transmission) that allows the gas engine to run alone, the electric engine to run alone, or both to run simultaneously. Infact, the reverse gear in the Prius is always 100% electric as there's no way to drive the gas engine in reverse through the CVT.
So yes, you can run a Prius out of gas, and still drive it to the station on electric power (so long as the battery holds-out anyway).
I always wonder where this "five year" myth comes from. The current crop of hybrids have batteries that last the life of the car (which is to say, well over a decade). The power management computers in the hybrids put a very high priority on properly managing power as to not damage the batteries.
I suppose it is a bit of a tradeoff though - do people conserve gas at the expense of recycling (or disposing of) a battery at the end of the car's lifespan? I think it's worthwhile, particularly when the individual 1.5v battery cells can be removed from the casing, and those that are still useful put back into service.
While it may be easier to swap the entire battery, case and all - the design allows for replacement of individual damaged or defective cells.
The term "gigantic" battery is a bit misleading too - the battery inside my 04 Prius is just a bit larger than the wide-carriage Epson Stylus 1200 inkjet printer in my office.
I drive my 04 Prius just like the Corolla I owned before it. I get over 50mpg without any particular effort.
If a hybrid isn't making the milage estimates on the advertising, just think about what a regular car would be getting.
They advertise 35mpg on a regular 4-door sedan, and you're probably getting a real-world value of around 20-25mpg. But those cars don't have any sort of internal mileage metering/display, so it's difficult to get an exact reading (so people don't notice).
Remember, the EPA tests are under basically "ideal" driving conditions geared for the 1960s when the test was created. There needs to be a new test all-around.
Well, they're "trying" to deny access, but everyone knows how well telling a kid that you "can't do that", or "you're aren't allowed to look at that" works. They just get even more curious about what they're not allowed to look at.
The only method for control is to make stuff not even available, without anyone knowing what they're missing - and that's just not practical in China right now.
Ya, that's what I was going to suggest as well. Of course, if you're a company with an "800" fax number this still doesn't help with your phone bills, however it doesn't cost you any paper or toner.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. I was going to say exactly the same thing. You already did, so I don't have to :)
I have heard very, VERY nice presentations from people with good systems hooked up to a regular CD player. The amplifier quality and speaker quality make a lot more difference than if the source is 96khz, 24 bit, rather than 48khz, 16 bit.
It's funny how the major request of most consumers (more available playtime per-disc) never seems to increase though, despite the technical advances in other areas. Of course, consumers might get just a bit upset if the music labels can make a disc with 10 hours or more of high-quality recording time, and they only use 45 minutes for one album at 3 times the price of a regular CD.
IMHO, CD-quality sound isn't lacking anything that I need, except maybe surround-sound capability. And regular DVDs handle that quite nicely.
And as DVDs and audio DVDs are so easy to author now, even small bands and labels aren't cut-out of the action. It makes me wonder if the "audio engineers are looking to justify their own existance" with new products that people don't really need, in addition to the obvious greed of music companies who are desperately hoping that millions of people will dump their now suddenly "low quality" CDs (and of course, MP3s) to buy their "new and improved" format.
It just ain't going to happen folks...
N.
Well, I look at it this way:
-If you are going to pay for cell phone service anyway, and you want a PDA as well, you don't really lose anything by purchasing a PDA with cell phone capabilities and paying a monthly fee for the cell phone connectivity.
Perhaps you only need a phone that can place and receive calls, but I get a heck of a lot of functionality out of my SE P800 which does have PDA capability, a camera, video mail, etc. For example, I never really thought I'd use the camera much, but I find myself using it more and more for work-related purposes, and just pure convenience. Sure, my Canon G3 digital camera produces a far superior picture, but there are times when I just need a quick photo of something and the phone is the most convenient way of getting that.
Now, to be fair, it's neither the cheap nor tatty phone that you were describing, so you may have been speaking of cheaper "quasi-PDA" phones with less functionality.
I used to own seperate a seperate Handspring Visor, and a Nokia cell phone. It was an inconvenience to always carry both around, so I usually didn't. I don't have that problem anymore. When a new model is released that has WiFi capability, I'll have a device which is essentially a "micro-laptop" - which is the perfect tool for me (I have fast desktop machines at work and at home, so little need for a conventional laptop).
N.
To the Anonymous Poster:
I suppose I should clarify a bit because you don't seem to understand how the system works...
The classification errors are on the side of a spam getting through, not real messages being tagged as spam.
So out of the "1650" email messages per day that you get, it "might" misclassify 12 or 13 spam messages as real messages based on my accuracy rating. With that volume of email however, the corpus will build that much faster and become even more accurate.
Spam filters aren't the best long-term solution to solve the problem, but they're a damn fine short-term solution until something better is worked out. Spam has ceased to be a problem for me thanks to POPFile.
You may be abnormal in your email volume and perhaps that sort of filtering may not be quite as effective for your peculiar circumstances, however you are the exception to the rule.
N.
Which is better, to have some risk of vulnerability and be employed, or refuse to use the browser compatible with applications your job requires and get fired for not performing?
Easy choice.
Or, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, install POPFile (http://popfile.sourceforge.net/). Problem gone.
My current stats (Since May of last year):
Messages classified: 8,398
Classification errors: 66
Accuracy: 99.21%
Most of the classification errors were in the first couple weeks of training it.
It's nearly bulletproof now. Maybe one message a month gets past it. Works on all platforms and the Windows client has become much easier to use than older version (nice installer and all).
Highly recommended!
N.
This is the same issue that I have when everyone starts the "switch browsers" chant.
I need IE because of certain web-applications that require IE-specific plugins. There's no possibility of that changing in the short term, so it's a non-starter.
N.
They already do this.
0 3_ thb/031023_thu.html
Miramax did it with Kill Bill (1 and 2). If you look, they put annoying little red dots (Cap Codes) all throughout the film:
http://www.thehotbutton.com/today/hot.button/20
The end result is that it apparently caught a couple pirates, and probably pissed off a lot of people who can see the dots easily (they're really obvious on high-contrast areas of the film).
N.
Well, the problem would be that it's trivially easy to put an IR filter in front of the lens?
But ya, Cams suck. I watched a few to see what they looked like, and the quality is poor, the audio sucks, etc.
If you've got a kickass 5.1 surround system with a DLP projection system, there's no reason to waste your time with "copies from theatres" anyway.
N.
I was wondering how long it would be before someone rained on the "ra ra ra", guns solve all problems, "bigger is better", ammo-comparing Americaspeak.
I too, am more than happy to live in a country where I've never even had to CONSIDER being mugged, much less have it actually happen. Hell, walking alone downtown after a concert a couple years back after the buses shut down, I was in one of the seedier parts of the city with a few hours to waste until the morning buses, and I wasn't particularly worried wandering around.
Sure, the street beggers and window washers are annoying, but very rarely problematic.
I don't carry any weapons on my person or in my car, and the most dangerous things I have at home are probably kitchen utensils.
It's really nice living somewhere where you just don't need to feel that scared...
N.
I like the look, I don't think I've ever seen a PC grunged-up like that. Looks pretty industrial to me.
The keyboard looks like it has lots of sharp edges though, don't know how comfortable it would be for long-term use.
N.
Do NOT get that HP scanner. I have the same model, and while the hardware is just fine, HP's scanning software is garbage.
I run paperport to store all of my bills, documents, etc. The HP scanner software simply will-not use the resolutions and options I want paperport to use (200 DPI, B&W).
When using the sheetfeeder, the damn thing always scans in 24bit at 200DPI no matter what I try and set as a default - then I have to manually convert every page.
Go with a different model.
N.
Sure. And infact that's what I do on my mailserver.
I don't have any contact with anyone in China, and neither does anyone who uses my mailserver.
So the entire country is blackholed.
Shrug.
N.
I was sort of thinking the same thing. $30 probably wouldn't even cover the paper they're going to need for this kind of foolishness, not to mention wear & tear on their copier, as well as the labor of employes who would have to dig this stuff out and handle copying/supplying it.
Just bill them $1 per-page. Then let them subpoena anything they want.
N.
The simple fact of the matter is that GOOD CHARACTERS make a GOOD MOVIE, regardless of special effects, and even to a certain extent, script.
Episode 1 and 2 had very few characters I gave a damn about one way or another. I honestly feel that the breakdown is in the directing, and not so much in the actors (except for the CGI ones).
N.
I'm afraid I don't quite follow. DVD burners that are currently available have absolutely no copy restriction capabilities on media they write.
The only possible restriction is region-coding when reading commercial DVDs, and for most people that isn't much of an issue anyway (they're easily patch-able, or they just watch stuff from their own region anyway).
DVD-R drives are DIRT cheap. There's no reason to buy a CD burner these days instead of a DVD-R IMHO.
N.
I've loaded-up my modded xbox with emulators. It's fantastic!
- MAME-X
- Daphne X (for laserdisc games)
- Amiga Emulator (really!)
- N64 Emulator
- RawX (Out of This World)
The XBox can emulate just about anything! Fantastic!
N.
It's not the DVD Drive that determines if a system supports progressive scan or not, it's just a data delivery device - it's the output from the video encoder chip.
If you hook a component video cable to the Xbox, it does indeed drive a 480p display.
XBMC is the newer version of XBMP - it's not quite as stable, but new builds are released VERY often, and it gets better and more stable with every release.
Modding my Xbox was the best possible thing I could've done for it. Microsoft is incredibly foolish not getting on-board with an "official" application like XBMC for people who wish to have run it on Xboxes that aren't modded. It would be very popular.
N.
There's also a difference on maintenance, which should be huge (they havn't been out long enough to verify this, but the concept is sound).
Because a hybrid system shuts off the ICE (internal combustion engine) whenever it's not needed, there's far less wear and tear on the engine itself. They also use a variety of interesting tricks to spin up the engine with low compression to get oil moving before firing the cylinders to reduce wear.
Not having a conventional transmission also helps in the case of the Prius - There are no belts, pads, or fluids which can cause the transmisson to fail. It should be good for the life of the car.
So it's not just the gas milage that makes a difference, it should be a much more robust vehicle as well.
To be more specific, you can't run the Honda hybrids (Civic, Insight) on electric power alone because of the type of hybrid system they use (parallel hybrid). The gas engine is permanently coupled to the electric engine (which is just used for boost-assist and starting the engine).
You CAN run Toyota's hybrids (ie: Prius) on pure electric (they're combo series/parallel systems). They have a pretty slick planetary configuration CVT (continually variable transmission) that allows the gas engine to run alone, the electric engine to run alone, or both to run simultaneously. Infact, the reverse gear in the Prius is always 100% electric as there's no way to drive the gas engine in reverse through the CVT.
So yes, you can run a Prius out of gas, and still drive it to the station on electric power (so long as the battery holds-out anyway).
N.
I always wonder where this "five year" myth comes from. The current crop of hybrids have batteries that last the life of the car (which is to say, well over a decade). The power management computers in the hybrids put a very high priority on properly managing power as to not damage the batteries.
I suppose it is a bit of a tradeoff though - do people conserve gas at the expense of recycling (or disposing of) a battery at the end of the car's lifespan? I think it's worthwhile, particularly when the individual 1.5v battery cells can be removed from the casing, and those that are still useful put back into service.
While it may be easier to swap the entire battery, case and all - the design allows for replacement of individual damaged or defective cells.
The term "gigantic" battery is a bit misleading too - the battery inside my 04 Prius is just a bit larger than the wide-carriage Epson Stylus 1200 inkjet printer in my office.
N.
I drive my 04 Prius just like the Corolla I owned before it. I get over 50mpg without any particular effort.
If a hybrid isn't making the milage estimates on the advertising, just think about what a regular car would be getting.
They advertise 35mpg on a regular 4-door sedan, and you're probably getting a real-world value of around 20-25mpg. But those cars don't have any sort of internal mileage metering/display, so it's difficult to get an exact reading (so people don't notice).
Remember, the EPA tests are under basically "ideal" driving conditions geared for the 1960s when the test was created. There needs to be a new test all-around.
N.
Well, they're "trying" to deny access, but everyone knows how well telling a kid that you "can't do that", or "you're aren't allowed to look at that" works. They just get even more curious about what they're not allowed to look at.
The only method for control is to make stuff not even available, without anyone knowing what they're missing - and that's just not practical in China right now.
N.
Taco.... Grande!
I still have my SE P800, which is a pretty nice smartphone, although I'm waiting for a new SE offering which will hopefully have Wifi enabled.
If the new model is Wifi-able, I'll buy one instantly. If not, I'll hold off until the P800 dies.
N.
Ya, that's what I was going to suggest as well. Of course, if you're a company with an "800" fax number this still doesn't help with your phone bills, however it doesn't cost you any paper or toner.
N.
I thought I saw an essay on Fravia's old site a few years back about faking out checksums. That may not have been for MD5s though...
Looked for it on a mirror, but I couldn't find it.
N.