Are there even SATA optical drives yet? And if so, what do they cost? Actually there is. Plextor was the first to introduce the SATA DVD burner. Now HP, Pioneer, and many others have their own. I went from PATA to SATA almost exclusively and I don't miss the days of PATA one bit.
The cost? Roughly $30 to $40 for the low end models and around $100 for the high end.
Now, if only they would get rid of those stupid 555- phone numbers in a movie and use a real(ish) number. 555-1234 just screams "Hey! Look at me! I'm a fake movie prop! Stop suspending disbelief! This is just a movie!"
-matthew The biggest reason for that is someone would end up calling that number annoying the people that have that number in various area codes. Take the song Jenny(867-5309) for example, after the song's release people were calling that number in just about every city. There were some that were unfortunate to have that number. Another example is Bruce Almighty. After the film's release people were calling the number asking for God. As a result, "555-0123" was used in the DVD and television versions of the movie rather than "776-2323" that was in the theatrical release. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_telephone_number
As a result the studios using anything other than 555 as a prefix is unlikely except under certain circumstances.
and then lots of bad things can happen, like you can die from the cardiac arrest. of course it flushes other minerals too but seems like sodium is the most important one.
(funny because I actually have to maintain low sodium because of the high blood pressure.) We are supposed to ingest sodium? Gee, I didn't know we were supposed to blow ourselves up. All this time I thought it was sodium chloride we are supposed to ingest. *rimshot*;)
Won't the two just merge eventually? They may merge, they may continue to compete against each other. Either way it won't stop other businesses from emerging when new technologies emerge. Today there are areas that already have wireless Internet access. When 802.16 finally matures, I believe the results would be interesting. For all we know, satellite technology may continue to advance and allow true broadband to those that live in areas that currently don't have broadband. With the ever changing technological field, I highly doubt there's going to be a true monopoly in communications technology.
Unlike 30 years ago, people today have a choice between two camps. The cable companies are expanding even further into the telecommunications area while the 'phone' companies are expanding into the television area That's not much consolation, given that the choice for most people seems to mean whether to hate the cable company or the phone company more...:-/ I forgot to mention, there are some areas that have wireless access available today. Here in Richmond Indiana, Paralax is offering Residential Wireless for $40 per month. When 802.16 finally matures, this will allow businesses to offer television and telephone services as well. On top of that, who knows what technologies will emerge between now and 2037. I think it would be interesting to see the communications technology that will be available then.
The baby Bells, for the most part, have reached the size I like to call the "fuck the customer" stage; the stage in which the company is large enough that the business will continue to generate enough profit even if they piss off a fifth of their customers, usually because the customers have few alternatives. I'm convinced that once a business gets above a certain size it's very difficult to stop it from getting to this stage. Unlike 30 years ago, people today have a choice between two camps. The cable companies are expanding even further into the telecommunications area while the 'phone' companies are expanding into the television area. In thirty more years there may be other areas that will be able to compete with the two camps today. By then the satellite TV providers may be able to provide the same things.
802.16 could open the market even further by offering Internet Access, phone service, television, and even music. If BPL ever matures, that too will become yet another option, that is only if it matures. As time goes on, more options will be available to people. You can see the evidence of this as there are more options today than there were even 15 years ago let alone 30. This will force the different camps to compete with one another. This will help prevent any of them for stabbing their customers in the back. They know that if they do, then they will face a huge backlash. The more it will happen, the more their customers will flee and go to competing camps. That will hurt them no matter how big they are.
They just simply don't care whether or not Youtube can filter every piece of audio.
My prediction is they will sue for the simple fact they did commit copyright violations by allowing the clips to even exist. When Youtube eventually decides to settle, Universal will continue with the lawsuit simply to make an example out of them. Afterwards Universal will purchase Youtube to simply bury them.
Universal has done this before with mp3.com and I think they will do it again with Youtube.
I don't know about the rest of their hardware, but I do know the DSC-H1 is an excellent camera. The quality of the photos from this camera are excellent and I haven't even had a nickle's worth of trouble with this camera. It only uses two AA batteries and it includes a AA NiMH charger. Although it uses a memorystick pro, having a Sony brand MS and/or MS reader isn't required. I do have to agree that the battery problem puts Sony into an even worse position. They need to find out immediately what the heck is causing the battery problems.
Although I agree there is some crippleware that is still usable to try, most of the crippleware is crippled in the wrong way. For example, someone downloads some application that they need, and then try to use over half of the features just to get "Can't use this feature because this is shareware, To use this feature, you must register it" even after they claim that shareware is "try before you buy". How can anyone try such crap if the features that someone needs to try is crippled? I have registered several pieces of shareware, including Paint Shop Pro 7. All of which were not crippled. I do have to admit one thing. The software that is usually heavily crippled is software that doesn't have anything to compete with in the shareware area.
I find that crippleware is the more annoying than nag-ware. With nagware and timebombware, at least someone can still test it in a real world setting, whereas crippleware no one can. Whenever I come across crippleware, I don't care how useful they claim it will be, If I can't check to see if it will fit my needs, I uninstall it and look for something similar. If I can't find anything similar, I decide I don't really need it so badly. If the features are not restricted in any way, I will check it and If I decide it is worthy to purchase, I will do so.
IMO, cripple ware was one of the things that has pretty well killed shareware.
BTW, here are a couple sources for unrestricted shareware/freeware.
LOL, I agree that is the problem with the Caps Lock. Too bad it doesn't work like the shift-lock key on a typewriter. For example, it is released once someone hits the shift key and if someone hits the shift key while hitting a letter with the caps-lock activated, it doesn't end up lower case, rather it would type as an upper case letter. I really don't see eliminating the caps-lock key at all, there is still uses for it even when typing a letter. It is still more efficient than holding the shift key down for several letters.
More like Hard Drivin, the first driving simulator to use 3-D polygon graphics. Other games to use 3D Polygon graphics were Race Drivin', F15 Strike Eagle and several other Microprose simulators. All of those games ran straight off of the Genesis hardware.
Source : Wikipedia The virtual chip was made to extend the 3D capabilities of the Sega Genesis, unlike the SNES which required the SuperFX chips to do any kind of polygon based 3D graphics on its own.
StarFox was not the first polygon based console game as people might think, thanks to the multi page spreads in many popular gaming mags describing the game as such. Hard Drivin', Race Drivin', F15 Strike Eagle and several other Microprose simulators had all been out on the Genesis in 1992 and 1993. Moreover, they all ran straight off the Genesis hardware, rather than a special on cartridge chip like StarFox's SFX chip. Gameplay wise, StarFox might as well have been Galaxy Force 3 with cute animal pilots, because it is virtually identical to Sega's Galaxy Force II from way back in 89'.
It wasn't just the fact it was running at a faster clock rate, it had a better memory badwitdh. As for music, there is Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star II through IV, Altered Beast and Outrun. For the SNES to do anything spetacular, they needed to add some chip to the cartridge, which added to the cost of the game. Like i said, according to the site, what the SuperFX chip was designed for, the Genesis could do that without an add-on chip with no problems.
Also 'While the system memory limitations could be overcome through the speedy cartridge to system bus, and data streaming, it was still a factor in how much detail could be displayed on screen at once, if the central processors and bandwidth weren't already. The SNES demonstrates this limitation the best. With a CPU speed of less than half of that of the Genesis, pushing around two to three times the colors at once only added to its issues, and limited how many background layers and sprites could be on screen before slowdown.'
SNES came around with a lot of things that Genesis
Actually, that bit of information is one of the biggest urban legends out there. The Sega Genesis was far superior to the SNES, the Mode 7 effects were nothing more than smoke and mirrors, as the processor could only perform those tasks on a sprite when the background is one solid colour, usually black. The Genesis had a superior processor. True the SNES had more colours than the Genesis, but the Genesis could keep up with the same number of colours while the SNES had trouble with flickering.
The Genesis could do Vector graphics without a hardware add-on, while the SNES relied on the expensive Super-FX chip. The 32X also allowed the Genesis to utilize effects like Mode 7 on the the SNES as well as using all 32K colours, the SNES never used more than 200. The SegaCD was capable of the Mode 7 like effects as well.
Comparing the Turtles games no both systems, the Genesis blew the SNES out of the water. The only advantage the SNES had was more colours, while the Genesis game has more characters, less flicker, more background layers and more animation.
In TMNT IV the Turtles are capable of a flipping slash attack, that will also carry you further, just after reaching the peak of a jump, and are also capable of throwing footsoldiers into the screen. Also contrary to popular belief, the screen throw animation is not using any kind of scaling technique, but is animated in three simple sprite changes. This same approach could have been used in the Genesis version, and both systems could have animated the throw with more frames. The reason why the SNES game does not scale the sprite for the screen throw is most likely due to the speed of the game, and the necessary 3-6 characters on screen at once. The SNES never did exceptionally well with action games, and throwing scaling sprites into the mix would very likely have caused slowdown, and possibly couldn't have been done well in such a quick animation.
Simple, don't go with iTunes. There are several places someone can download music in the MP3 format, such as dmusic.com, emusic.com, allofmp3.com, garageband.com, and several others. One the iPod will play music in the mp3 format, two there are thousands of portable music players out there that will play mp3 and wma. There are some that will even play Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC. There is also software that will rip CDs and re-encode it to whatever format you need.
Personally, I don't care for the iPod as it uses a HDD, that will introduce audio skipping, and the battery will be horrible. Also the battery is non-replaceable IIRC, so if the battery is at the end of its life, the whole iPod is worthless. As I said earlier, there are a lot of other portable music players out there, One that I use is by sumvision, all it uses is a single AAA battery that lasts between 5 and ten hours per battery, and it supports mp3 as well as wma. Best of all, it requires no special software to copy music to and from the device.
The first one I owned was a Packard Smell 80386sx. With all of the problems that I encountered I had the computer replaced several times, first to a 80486 with 2 MB on-board memory then to a 80486 with 4 MB on-board memory. Some of the problems I had with this computer for example was with the 386 I had, the keyboard would lock up on a random basis in Dos, and I would either have to hit the reset or unplug and replug the keyboard so it would work. This would also occur when using the keyboard and the mouse at the same time. This problem never occurred in Windows for some odd reason.
The first computer I have ever used was a TI-99/4A. I learned on my own some basic coding skills. I still remember the high I had when I had first built a computer, it lasted for weeks.
Isn't this similar to the service that mp3.com provided and got into trouble over? If I recall correctly, because mp3.com provided the same service, Vivendi-Universal got to buy them out at a discount price.
That is because there are those who use 'MP3' for any compressed music format. This is a similar concept to people calling any facial tissue 'Kleenex' or bandages 'Band-Aids'. Verizon is going to capitalize on that, as a lot of people have heard of MP3, not as many have heard of WMA.
That's the problem with corporate radio, especially conglomerates like clear-channel. The advantage to local stations is you don't have to listen exclusively to what the stock holders want you to listen to.
The allow more flexibility with the D.J. Heck, every friday morning from 7:00 to 9:00 on G101.3 here in Richmond, Indiana, they have what is known around here as 'Free-For-All Friday', where someone can request whatever song they want. There are two conditions, it must be up tempo, and if they can find it. If those two conditions are met, then they will play it, whether it's the Doors, The Sweet, Sean Morey, Herb Alpert, or even some country, all of which is outside their usuall format of Hot AC from 1980 to today. It also can be from either independant or RIAA signed artists.
Not to mention, local stations also have local news, weather, and sports, not some syndicated crap such as 'Bob and Tom'.
I could care less about satellite radio, as it's more prone to interference than traditional radio, and why pay for something while other technologies are free. When not listening to traditional radio, I listen to music on my computer or CD MP3 player.
This might help to prevent a few people from sharing copyrighted material, but what's to stop the RIAA from suing due to the fact that someone could still find a way around the filter? Remember napster had a similar issue when it was used to trade music online. Even with the filters in place, napster had to shut down until its filters didn't even let one single copyrighted song to pass through.
Of course, what's the need of using software like limewire, kazaa, etc, go to Dmusic, allmusic.com, or even Epitomic.com. For movies, go to archive.org. For software, use your favorite search engine to look for any OSS, Freeware, or Shareware equivalent.
that Dell may go with AMID, especially since there is a motherboard that supports both the P4 and the Athlon64 939 processors. That will allow Dell to stick primarily with Intel, at the same time they will also be able to build machines with an Athlon64 processor with little or no additional cost to them, since it uses the same motherboard.
I have a Sprint RL-4920 phone, and I use Sprint Users to upload my ringers. Midi needs no conversion, but the software I use to convert non-midi files to the Qualcomm PureVoice format using the Purevoice Converter. I have not had to pay a single penny for ringers, Applets, or Screen Savers. Like what the original post said, I can put what I want on there, not what is "popular" and it's free instead of paying at least $1 for 20 to 30 seconds of audio.
Slashdot Mirror
The cost?
Roughly $30 to $40 for the low end models and around $100 for the high end.
-matthew The biggest reason for that is someone would end up calling that number annoying the people that have that number in various area codes. Take the song Jenny(867-5309) for example, after the song's release people were calling that number in just about every city. There were some that were unfortunate to have that number. Another example is Bruce Almighty. After the film's release people were calling the number asking for God. As a result, "555-0123" was used in the DVD and television versions of the movie rather than "776-2323" that was in the theatrical release.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_telephone_number
As a result the studios using anything other than 555 as a prefix is unlikely except under certain circumstances.
Or an occasional +5, Informative. ;)
(funny because I actually have to maintain low sodium because of the high blood pressure.) We are supposed to ingest sodium? Gee, I didn't know we were supposed to blow ourselves up. All this time I thought it was sodium chloride we are supposed to ingest. *rimshot*
802.16 could open the market even further by offering Internet Access, phone service, television, and even music. If BPL ever matures, that too will become yet another option, that is only if it matures. As time goes on, more options will be available to people. You can see the evidence of this as there are more options today than there were even 15 years ago let alone 30. This will force the different camps to compete with one another. This will help prevent any of them for stabbing their customers in the back. They know that if they do, then they will face a huge backlash. The more it will happen, the more their customers will flee and go to competing camps. That will hurt them no matter how big they are.
They just simply don't care whether or not Youtube can filter every piece of audio.
My prediction is they will sue for the simple fact they did commit copyright violations by allowing the clips to even exist. When Youtube eventually decides to settle, Universal will continue with the lawsuit simply to make an example out of them. Afterwards Universal will purchase Youtube to simply bury them.
Universal has done this before with mp3.com and I think they will do it again with Youtube.
I don't know about the rest of their hardware, but I do know the DSC-H1 is an excellent camera. The quality of the photos from this camera are excellent and I haven't even had a nickle's worth of trouble with this camera. It only uses two AA batteries and it includes a AA NiMH charger. Although it uses a memorystick pro, having a Sony brand MS and/or MS reader isn't required. I do have to agree that the battery problem puts Sony into an even worse position. They need to find out immediately what the heck is causing the battery problems.
Although I agree there is some crippleware that is still usable to try, most of the crippleware is crippled in the wrong way. For example, someone downloads some application that they need, and then try to use over half of the features just to get "Can't use this feature because this is shareware, To use this feature, you must register it" even after they claim that shareware is "try before you buy". How can anyone try such crap if the features that someone needs to try is crippled? I have registered several pieces of shareware, including Paint Shop Pro 7. All of which were not crippled. I do have to admit one thing. The software that is usually heavily crippled is software that doesn't have anything to compete with in the shareware area.
I find that crippleware is the more annoying than nag-ware. With nagware and timebombware, at least someone can still test it in a real world setting, whereas crippleware no one can. Whenever I come across crippleware, I don't care how useful they claim it will be, If I can't check to see if it will fit my needs, I uninstall it and look for something similar. If I can't find anything similar, I decide I don't really need it so badly. If the features are not restricted in any way, I will check it and If I decide it is worthy to purchase, I will do so.
IMO, cripple ware was one of the things that has pretty well killed shareware.
BTW, here are a couple sources for unrestricted shareware/freeware.
No Nags
Association of Shareware professionals
LOL, I agree that is the problem with the Caps Lock. Too bad it doesn't work like the shift-lock key on a typewriter. For example, it is released once someone hits the shift key and if someone hits the shift key while hitting a letter with the caps-lock activated, it doesn't end up lower case, rather it would type as an upper case letter. I really don't see eliminating the caps-lock key at all, there is still uses for it even when typing a letter. It is still more efficient than holding the shift key down for several letters.
More like Hard Drivin, the first driving simulator to use 3-D polygon graphics. Other games to use 3D Polygon graphics were Race Drivin', F15 Strike Eagle and several other Microprose simulators. All of those games ran straight off of the Genesis hardware.
Source : Wikipedia
The virtual chip was made to extend the 3D capabilities of the Sega Genesis, unlike the SNES which required the SuperFX chips to do any kind of polygon based 3D graphics on its own.
It wasn't just the fact it was running at a faster clock rate, it had a better memory badwitdh. As for music, there is Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star II through IV, Altered Beast and Outrun. For the SNES to do anything spetacular, they needed to add some chip to the cartridge, which added to the cost of the game. Like i said, according to the site, what the SuperFX chip was designed for, the Genesis could do that without an add-on chip with no problems.
Also 'While the system memory limitations could be overcome through the speedy cartridge to system bus, and data streaming, it was still a factor in how much detail could be displayed on screen at once, if the central processors and bandwidth weren't already. The SNES demonstrates this limitation the best. With a CPU speed of less than half of that of the Genesis, pushing around two to three times the colors at once only added to its issues, and limited how many background layers and sprites could be on screen before slowdown.'
Actually, that bit of information is one of the biggest urban legends out there. The Sega Genesis was far superior to the SNES, the Mode 7 effects were nothing more than smoke and mirrors, as the processor could only perform those tasks on a sprite when the background is one solid colour, usually black. The Genesis had a superior processor. True the SNES had more colours than the Genesis, but the Genesis could keep up with the same number of colours while the SNES had trouble with flickering.
The Genesis could do Vector graphics without a hardware add-on, while the SNES relied on the expensive Super-FX chip. The 32X also allowed the Genesis to utilize effects like Mode 7 on the the SNES as well as using all 32K colours, the SNES never used more than 200. The SegaCD was capable of the Mode 7 like effects as well.
Comparing the Turtles games no both systems, the Genesis blew the SNES out of the water. The only advantage the SNES had was more colours, while the Genesis game has more characters, less flicker, more background layers and more animation.
In TMNT IV the Turtles are capable of a flipping slash attack, that will also carry you further, just after reaching the peak of a jump, and are also capable of throwing footsoldiers into the screen. Also contrary to popular belief, the screen throw animation is not using any kind of scaling technique, but is animated in three simple sprite changes. This same approach could have been used in the Genesis version, and both systems could have animated the throw with more frames. The reason why the SNES game does not scale the sprite for the screen throw is most likely due to the speed of the game, and the necessary 3-6 characters on screen at once. The SNES never did exceptionally well with action games, and throwing scaling sprites into the mix would very likely have caused slowdown, and possibly couldn't have been done well in such a quick animation.
The SNES was inferior hardware wise, but both had an equal number of memorable games, depending on who you ask.
http://www.gamepilgrimage.com/TheSegaGenesis.htm
Simple, don't go with iTunes. There are several places someone can download music in the MP3 format, such as dmusic.com, emusic.com, allofmp3.com, garageband.com, and several others. One the iPod will play music in the mp3 format, two there are thousands of portable music players out there that will play mp3 and wma. There are some that will even play Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC. There is also software that will rip CDs and re-encode it to whatever format you need.
Personally, I don't care for the iPod as it uses a HDD, that will introduce audio skipping, and the battery will be horrible. Also the battery is non-replaceable IIRC, so if the battery is at the end of its life, the whole iPod is worthless. As I said earlier, there are a lot of other portable music players out there, One that I use is by sumvision, all it uses is a single AAA battery that lasts between 5 and ten hours per battery, and it supports mp3 as well as wma. Best of all, it requires no special software to copy music to and from the device.
The first computer I have ever used was a TI-99/4A. I learned on my own some basic coding skills. I still remember the high I had when I had first built a computer, it lasted for weeks.
The Sequence for me was
Isn't this similar to the service that mp3.com provided and got into trouble over? If I recall correctly, because mp3.com provided the same service, Vivendi-Universal got to buy them out at a discount price.
That is because there are those who use 'MP3' for any compressed music format. This is a similar concept to people calling any facial tissue 'Kleenex' or bandages 'Band-Aids'. Verizon is going to capitalize on that, as a lot of people have heard of MP3, not as many have heard of WMA.
That's the problem with corporate radio, especially conglomerates like clear-channel. The advantage to local stations is you don't have to listen exclusively to what the stock holders want you to listen to.
The allow more flexibility with the D.J. Heck, every friday morning from 7:00 to 9:00 on G101.3 here in Richmond, Indiana, they have what is known around here as 'Free-For-All Friday', where someone can request whatever song they want. There are two conditions, it must be up tempo, and if they can find it. If those two conditions are met, then they will play it, whether it's the Doors, The Sweet, Sean Morey, Herb Alpert, or even some country, all of which is outside their usuall format of Hot AC from 1980 to today. It also can be from either independant or RIAA signed artists.
Not to mention, local stations also have local news, weather, and sports, not some syndicated crap such as 'Bob and Tom'.
I could care less about satellite radio, as it's more prone to interference than traditional radio, and why pay for something while other technologies are free. When not listening to traditional radio, I listen to music on my computer or CD MP3 player.
This might help to prevent a few people from sharing copyrighted material, but what's to stop the RIAA from suing due to the fact that someone could still find a way around the filter? Remember napster had a similar issue when it was used to trade music online. Even with the filters in place, napster had to shut down until its filters didn't even let one single copyrighted song to pass through.
Of course, what's the need of using software like limewire, kazaa, etc, go to Dmusic, allmusic.com, or even Epitomic.com. For movies, go to archive.org. For software, use your favorite search engine to look for any OSS, Freeware, or Shareware equivalent.
The RIAA has an absolute monopoly? I don't think so.
MS has been giving us Beta software for production use. Why do you think airports, rental car companies, etc have been displaying BSoDs? ;D
that Dell may go with AMID, especially since there is a motherboard that supports both the P4 and the Athlon64 939 processors. That will allow Dell to stick primarily with Intel, at the same time they will also be able to build machines with an Athlon64 processor with little or no additional cost to them, since it uses the same motherboard.
Here is a post that an AC wrote about this.
I have a Sprint RL-4920 phone, and I use Sprint Users to upload my ringers. Midi needs no conversion, but the software I use to convert non-midi files to the Qualcomm PureVoice format using the Purevoice Converter. I have not had to pay a single penny for ringers, Applets, or Screen Savers. Like what the original post said, I can put what I want on there, not what is "popular" and it's free instead of paying at least $1 for 20 to 30 seconds of audio.