While the ipod is small, other units have a number of things going for them that the ipod doesn't.
The NJB3 for example, has built-in recording in either uncompressed or MP3 format, and a battery life that's in the ~22 hour range with two batteries loaded.
It also supports bi-directional file transfer, so you're not stuck just "syncing" your media when you connect it to the host computer.
It's bigger, yes - but it also utilizes industry-standard 2.5" drives (which go up to 60gb now). That offers a lot more room for expansion than the 1.8" drives which are used in the smaller devices.
Saying "everything else is a joke" is naive, and flamebait imho. What may work for you may not fill my needs - the opposite can be true as well, but let's be honest here.
Yup, CPU / MB manufacturers better beware - my system is already really damn fast (tm). If they start getting on the bandwagon of restricting what MY computer can do, they'll find MY hard-earned money going into huge LCD displays, video cards, or simply other areas of interest besides computing.
Which all means I won't be buying THEIR motherboards or CPUs.
In BC it's a maximum of $413 per week, not per pay period. So $1652 month Of course, this is taxed like any other income (which is pretty stupid if you ask me), so you'll be making something more like $1200/month.
Not a lot by any means, but should be sufficient to keep a roof overhead and food in stomach while looking for another job.
A well thought out post that I totally agree with. I simply don't have the time to devote to playing a single game for hours upon hours to raise a character to a level I can enjoy. That said, I did play Diablo II from the beginning, but my highest characters were only around level 40 or so. I didn't have the patience to just go and "kill more stuff" to get into the 80+ range. Got bored.
The obvious solution would be to make two seperate game communities - if you buy a pre-made character, you are restricted to only play with other pre-mades. If you start from scratch, you have to stay with other players from scratch.
No DVD burner out there enforces WRITING region codes on stuff you burn yourself. It's always region 0 (no regioncode).
Infact, I don't think any consumer (DVD General) drives can make discs that are region protected. It's possible to do it through some command scripting in most high-level authoring packages, but not terribly useful.
You also can't enable the Macrovision bit or the CSS encryption on consumer drives (although it may be possible to at least macrovision your stuff with a bit of hacking).
I gotta say, I could give a rat's ass about Hollywood Content. There's far better programming out there from many of the specialty channels.
I really don't care at all if they release their latest rehash movie-of-the-week on cable or by satellite. I'll buy DVDs for the movies I want to see - at least there you have a decent value for your money (unlike cable).
Maybe it would make for a good "Junkyard Wars" episode?
"Today's challenge is to pulverize 2 stone doors inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid. As there will be annoying Egyptian officials whining from nearby, your machine should be loud, and preferably have an optional wood-chipper attachment. You have 10 hours from the sound of the Junkyard Wrecking Ball demolishing the Sphinx!"
If they made a 2 hour special of THAT (say, with a couple of the bigger, beefier teams that prefer brute force competing), I'd watch:P
Well, the Fox "Secrets of Magic revealed" specials were pretty decent. I was honestly surprised that they moved as fast as they did, I woulda thought they'd milk each "secret" for as long as possible, but it was short and to the point. Go Figure.
Well, because the longer they prolong finding out what's in there, the longer one of the "Big Egyptian Mysteries" will be around for discussing on Discovery channel, TLC, Nat Geo, etc.
If they were simply to go in and look, they'd deprive themselves of lots of ratings, not to mention the wanker from the Supreme Egyptian so-and-so being able to grandstand (The Pyramid Nazi - "No Explorations for YOU!")
I used to use the same thing to do TV commercials locally. Worked great - the drivers were a little buggy and crashed a little more than I appeciated, but the quality was excellent.
Using Avid DV Xpress now, which is simply incredible. And of course, is available on both PC and Mac formats.
Re:When users attack... Themselves
on
When Users Attack
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Reminds me of a friend of mine who was doing the old "paperclip the payphone mouthpiece" trick to get some free phone calls on his campus.
Apparently he was doing it while holding the phone up to his face (to hear when he got a dialtone), and managed to zap himself nicely when a spark jumped from the paperclip to his lip.
It was the last time he did that trick I believe...
I totally agree. I had the great fortune to be near the front of the stage at Anime Expo in 1999 when Yoko Kanno did a live concert. Simply amazing. Got to ask her a few questions too:P
But I agree on her talent, her music is diverse, beautiful, and has depth. New listeners should listen to "Sora" (Escaflowne), "Voices", "Idol Talk", and "Wanna be an Angel" from Macross Plus for good starters.
She also did the music for the Magnetic Rose episode in Memories, which was also haunting and beautiful.
Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort
Um, no. The more challenging it is, the more people will target it. The really good cracker groups get tired of generating keygens and hacking winzip for the 10,000th time, so they really savor the opportunity to go after challenging targets.
Like playing a game of chess with a good opponent that you have to work on, as opposed to a weak opponent that's boring to play...
Just going to chip in with my $0.02 worth of "what I'll pay for" when it comes to digital music distribution:
#1 - Must be an open encoding format (MP3, OGG, etc). I will NOT EVER subscribe to any service that requires any digital rights management / licensing. When I buy the music, be it online or on a CD, it's MINE, and I don't want to have to worry about screwing with licensing if I move the media to my portable MP3 player, upgrade my computer, reinstall windows, move to linux, etc.
#2 - Single tracks must be available, not just whole albums.
#3 - Purchasing a whole album must be less than the cost of purchasing individual tracks by at least 20%
#4 - The total charged for a full album must be $10 or less.
#5 - If downloading the full album, graphic files for printing CD covers/labels must be available as an option, for perhaps $1 to $2 more.
#6 - Consumers must have the choice to pay for either a monthly subscription (unlimited downloads, but lower quality - perhaps 64kbps), or purchase music as a single transaction. If the consumer has a monthly subscription and wants high-quality, they should be able to purchase the high-quality version for half the regular price.
There you have it. Now I'm expecting that some people will get all bent out of shape about my requirements. Please be mindful that these are MY requirements, not what I'm realistically expecting the industry to adopt.
Of course if they don't adopt them, or something very close, I won't be a member of a pay service.
The most important requirement is #1 - I am absolutely inflexible on that.
Re:Is Quake Still Played?
on
Tenebrae Quake
·
· Score: 2
I never really cared for Quake II or Quake 3. The original Quake, played in CTF or Thunderwalker CTF was my all-time favorite.
I think the things I didn't like about the newer varients were the extremely (imho) slow grappling hook.
Hooking around on Q1 CTF on a big monitor, felt like flying. And it was great! Nothing else has come close to the same feeling yet.
There was nothing like the feeling of having a gang of opponents hot on your heels as you were making tracks with the flag and being able to hook away leaving them in the dust. You could even stay totally airborne in some of the bigger rooms.
I still get nostalgic when I play Q1 - I used to be able to play for 6 hours a day over the dialup at my old job:)
Apples to apples please - when you clock the Athlon at the same clockspeed as the Intel chip, (which are possible with the new chips that AMD just released) the FPU is far faster on the Athlon chips.
This is what indicates a superior FPU design, not a comparison based on a ~700mhz difference in clockspeed.
There's also a different sort of CCD highspeed camera that's used in various types of racing.
That system uses a single row of pixels which can be scanned at extremely high rates - the picture is built from objects moving in front of the pickup row, rather than the camera actually taking a full-resolution image.
Sort of a high-tech slit-camera.
Perhaps not 100% on-topic, but still interesting.
The other factor when talking about extreme high-speed photography (when people are calculating bandwidth):
Most really high-speed cameras shoot in black and white afaik.
If you drop the calculations from 32bpp down to 8bpp for a nic greyscale image, you're starting to get to manageable numbers... Also, adding cheap hardware based compression (RLE or the like), would be able to reduce the data stream to even more manageable levels.
You're not going to be able to shoot 6 megapixel pictures that fast, but 320x240 or 640x480 images should be possible at high framerates. I doubt it would replace film, but it might be handy for quick playback without having to get negs developed.
If you watch the "Bad Boys" DVD (the Will/Martin ver of Bad Boys), they have some very cool high-speed photography of different guns being fired into different objects. They used some sort of kodak high speed imager afaik - around 2000fps.
The point here is that the company made the army security specialists look like idiots to their superiors.
In all probability, they would've prefered to stay vulnerable if it meant saving face.
Typical tactic. When you expose their piss-poor security, they scramble for cover and instead of acknowledging that they don't know security from a hole in the ground, immediately accuse the people who exposed their incompetence.
I find it rather funny when people say that "humans are destroying the world".
Nothing we could possibly do would destroy the world... It could kill us, and all life on the planet off, but nature would eventually recover and move on.
Are we so important that the universe couldn't get along without us? I rather doubt it.
Slashdot Mirror
While the ipod is small, other units have a number of things going for them that the ipod doesn't.
The NJB3 for example, has built-in recording in either uncompressed or MP3 format, and a battery life that's in the ~22 hour range with two batteries loaded.
It also supports bi-directional file transfer, so you're not stuck just "syncing" your media when you connect it to the host computer.
It's bigger, yes - but it also utilizes industry-standard 2.5" drives (which go up to 60gb now). That offers a lot more room for expansion than the 1.8" drives which are used in the smaller devices.
Saying "everything else is a joke" is naive, and flamebait imho. What may work for you may not fill my needs - the opposite can be true as well, but let's be honest here.
Yup, CPU / MB manufacturers better beware - my system is already really damn fast (tm). If they start getting on the bandwagon of restricting what MY computer can do, they'll find MY hard-earned money going into huge LCD displays, video cards, or simply other areas of interest besides computing.
Which all means I won't be buying THEIR motherboards or CPUs.
In BC it's a maximum of $413 per week, not per pay period. So $1652 month Of course, this is taxed like any other income (which is pretty stupid if you ask me), so you'll be making something more like $1200/month.
Not a lot by any means, but should be sufficient to keep a roof overhead and food in stomach while looking for another job.
Grump grump grump. No showings in Vancouver (yet). I may have to drive to Seattle to watch it next weekend.
Even though the dub is showing, I think it will be just fine - Lasseter is an artist with integrity himself, so I expect it will be very well-done.
Here's hoping he does versions for theatricals of Totoro, Laputa, and Nausicaa as well.
N.
Sokay, I missed it at first too.
;P
Probably needed a sarcasm opening tag at the beginning
Then the people who can play games like this online for 16 hours a day should be happy I would think...
Yup, same as some people inherit money, win a lottery, or just screw over others the old fashioned way to fame and fortune.
Such is life.
A well thought out post that I totally agree with. I simply don't have the time to devote to playing a single game for hours upon hours to raise a character to a level I can enjoy. That said, I did play Diablo II from the beginning, but my highest characters were only around level 40 or so. I didn't have the patience to just go and "kill more stuff" to get into the 80+ range. Got bored.
The obvious solution would be to make two seperate game communities - if you buy a pre-made character, you are restricted to only play with other pre-mades. If you start from scratch, you have to stay with other players from scratch.
Canadians don't need to bid - we start off with perfect Karma anyway :P
No DVD burner out there enforces WRITING region codes on stuff you burn yourself. It's always region 0 (no regioncode).
Infact, I don't think any consumer (DVD General) drives can make discs that are region protected. It's possible to do it through some command scripting in most high-level authoring packages, but not terribly useful.
You also can't enable the Macrovision bit or the CSS encryption on consumer drives (although it may be possible to at least macrovision your stuff with a bit of hacking).
It's worth noting that not all "full" DVDs use 9.4gb dual-layer media, infact many will fit just fine on 4.7gb media (cheaper to master).
I gotta say, I could give a rat's ass about Hollywood Content. There's far better programming out there from many of the specialty channels.
I really don't care at all if they release their latest rehash movie-of-the-week on cable or by satellite. I'll buy DVDs for the movies I want to see - at least there you have a decent value for your money (unlike cable).
Maybe it would make for a good "Junkyard Wars" episode?
:P
"Today's challenge is to pulverize 2 stone doors inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid. As there will be annoying Egyptian officials whining from nearby, your machine should be loud, and preferably have an optional wood-chipper attachment. You have 10 hours from the sound of the Junkyard Wrecking Ball demolishing the Sphinx!"
If they made a 2 hour special of THAT (say, with a couple of the bigger, beefier teams that prefer brute force competing), I'd watch
Well, the Fox "Secrets of Magic revealed" specials were pretty decent. I was honestly surprised that they moved as fast as they did, I woulda thought they'd milk each "secret" for as long as possible, but it was short and to the point. Go Figure.
Well, because the longer they prolong finding out what's in there, the longer one of the "Big Egyptian Mysteries" will be around for discussing on Discovery channel, TLC, Nat Geo, etc.
If they were simply to go in and look, they'd deprive themselves of lots of ratings, not to mention the wanker from the Supreme Egyptian so-and-so being able to grandstand (The Pyramid Nazi - "No Explorations for YOU!")
I used to use the same thing to do TV commercials locally. Worked great - the drivers were a little buggy and crashed a little more than I appeciated, but the quality was excellent.
Using Avid DV Xpress now, which is simply incredible. And of course, is available on both PC and Mac formats.
Reminds me of a friend of mine who was doing the old "paperclip the payphone mouthpiece" trick to get some free phone calls on his campus.
Apparently he was doing it while holding the phone up to his face (to hear when he got a dialtone), and managed to zap himself nicely when a spark jumped from the paperclip to his lip.
It was the last time he did that trick I believe...
I totally agree. I had the great fortune to be near the front of the stage at Anime Expo in 1999 when Yoko Kanno did a live concert. Simply amazing. Got to ask her a few questions too :P
But I agree on her talent, her music is diverse, beautiful, and has depth. New listeners should listen to "Sora" (Escaflowne), "Voices", "Idol Talk", and "Wanna be an Angel" from Macross Plus for good starters.
She also did the music for the Magnetic Rose episode in Memories, which was also haunting and beautiful.
Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort
Um, no. The more challenging it is, the more people will target it. The really good cracker groups get tired of generating keygens and hacking winzip for the 10,000th time, so they really savor the opportunity to go after challenging targets.
Like playing a game of chess with a good opponent that you have to work on, as opposed to a weak opponent that's boring to play...
Just going to chip in with my $0.02 worth of "what I'll pay for" when it comes to digital music distribution:
#1 - Must be an open encoding format (MP3, OGG, etc). I will NOT EVER subscribe to any service that requires any digital rights management / licensing. When I buy the music, be it online or on a CD, it's MINE, and I don't want to have to worry about screwing with licensing if I move the media to my portable MP3 player, upgrade my computer, reinstall windows, move to linux, etc.
#2 - Single tracks must be available, not just whole albums.
#3 - Purchasing a whole album must be less than the cost of purchasing individual tracks by at least 20%
#4 - The total charged for a full album must be $10 or less.
#5 - If downloading the full album, graphic files for printing CD covers/labels must be available as an option, for perhaps $1 to $2 more.
#6 - Consumers must have the choice to pay for either a monthly subscription (unlimited downloads, but lower quality - perhaps 64kbps), or purchase music as a single transaction. If the consumer has a monthly subscription and wants high-quality, they should be able to purchase the high-quality version for half the regular price.
There you have it. Now I'm expecting that some people will get all bent out of shape about my requirements. Please be mindful that these are MY requirements, not what I'm realistically expecting the industry to adopt.
Of course if they don't adopt them, or something very close, I won't be a member of a pay service.
The most important requirement is #1 - I am absolutely inflexible on that.
I never really cared for Quake II or Quake 3. The original Quake, played in CTF or Thunderwalker CTF was my all-time favorite.
:)
I think the things I didn't like about the newer varients were the extremely (imho) slow grappling hook.
Hooking around on Q1 CTF on a big monitor, felt like flying. And it was great! Nothing else has come close to the same feeling yet.
There was nothing like the feeling of having a gang of opponents hot on your heels as you were making tracks with the flag and being able to hook away leaving them in the dust. You could even stay totally airborne in some of the bigger rooms.
I still get nostalgic when I play Q1 - I used to be able to play for 6 hours a day over the dialup at my old job
Those were the good ol' days...
N.
Apples to apples please - when you clock the Athlon at the same clockspeed as the Intel chip, (which are possible with the new chips that AMD just released) the FPU is far faster on the Athlon chips.
This is what indicates a superior FPU design, not a comparison based on a ~700mhz difference in clockspeed.
There's also a different sort of CCD highspeed camera that's used in various types of racing.
That system uses a single row of pixels which can be scanned at extremely high rates - the picture is built from objects moving in front of the pickup row, rather than the camera actually taking a full-resolution image.
Sort of a high-tech slit-camera.
Perhaps not 100% on-topic, but still interesting.
The other factor when talking about extreme high-speed photography (when people are calculating bandwidth):
Most really high-speed cameras shoot in black and white afaik.
If you drop the calculations from 32bpp down to 8bpp for a nic greyscale image, you're starting to get to manageable numbers... Also, adding cheap hardware based compression (RLE or the like), would be able to reduce the data stream to even more manageable levels.
You're not going to be able to shoot 6 megapixel pictures that fast, but 320x240 or 640x480 images should be possible at high framerates. I doubt it would replace film, but it might be handy for quick playback without having to get negs developed.
If you watch the "Bad Boys" DVD (the Will/Martin ver of Bad Boys), they have some very cool high-speed photography of different guns being fired into different objects. They used some sort of kodak high speed imager afaik - around 2000fps.
The point here is that the company made the army security specialists look like idiots to their superiors.
In all probability, they would've prefered to stay vulnerable if it meant saving face.
Typical tactic. When you expose their piss-poor security, they scramble for cover and instead of acknowledging that they don't know security from a hole in the ground, immediately accuse the people who exposed their incompetence.
I find it rather funny when people say that "humans are destroying the world".
Nothing we could possibly do would destroy the world... It could kill us, and all life on the planet off, but nature would eventually recover and move on.
Are we so important that the universe couldn't get along without us? I rather doubt it.