Well they did stop making them. It's just some one at Sony discovered they forgot to turn off the BetaMax Maker and it's been pumping them out for the laast 20 years. -Don't worry, they have a whole building foull of them and an estimated supply to last mankind until the next millenium! yay!
What People Seem to Miss is that Sony is the Microsoft of Japan
Yup, just keep making them, somebody will like it and buy it, After all it is better --- sounds like a Mac doesn't it?
Yeah this has been tried all over the place. --or more like promised all over the place. I have yet to see anyone who actually made this work with any reliability
For kicks, I tried entering in a bunch of different postcodes, every one of them said it wasn't recognized - I doubt they ever will be either.
...I mean this is bad. They like to talk about video games and violence specifically it allows them to show violence to get their ratings up all the while claiming how they don't depict violence.
It's a case of lets lie about what were doing, then blame it on someone else. granted the video games are violent - but who'd know about it if you'd have kept your mouth shut????
when is the media going to learn that they are the cause of most of the immoral nature of modern society that they themselves complain about?
I have been looking but not seeing any new free PC to Phone stuff out there. It looks athat all you get are years old google references now and a few insanely complicated linux solutions -- All I want is my free phone calls back so I can call anywhere in the country (us) again.
A Cheapskate I may be, but I have more stuff than thee. - Me
Linksys makes a unit - the WAP11 Which not only is a wireless access point, but can also work as a repeater / range extender for the Wireless Network. Inside the building isn't going to be a problem for the wireless. Outside, shouldn't be too much of a problem at all if you can place the units by the windows, you can then use these to bridge your wireless networks to extend the range of the network from building to building.
If they have a computer already, this could be a cheap answer
you would need a cheap webcam (less than $35) - this can work on a computer running Win98 or better... prolly need atleast 35 MB Ram
There is a program I've seen called Homewatcher... I found it at download.com it... using a webcam monitors motion in a room and can sound an alarm... it is intended to be used as a burgler alarm. It watches the video stream and notices changes from one frame to the next and it's sensitivity can be adjusted. It has a free version too that's good enough for what i propose. -The version you payfor allows it to e-mail you pictures of the burglers which isn't needed for this application
Aim the webcam at the eye... if close enough or with zoom lenses applied, it can easily detect the motion of a blinking or moving eye.
Now... here's where it gets good. Many webcams have a little more sensitivity in the near-infrared and infrared portions of the spectrum than the human eye... you may notice this when you adjust it to deal with flurescent or incandescent lighting... depending on the camera of course. You could illuminate the eye with IR (or red) LED's making it bright enough for the camera to detect eye movements / blinking
The software is just configurable enough that you might make this work with a minimal amount of fuss. The only problem may be is that it detects motion, any motion -it may be too sensitive.
Big isn't all there is... and it's used too much in iMax. Many times I have seen iMax films and the shooting is just horrible. The whole point of iMax (or OmniMax) is to fill your perephiral vision with the image, or show more. One thing I hate is iMax movies where the person is 7 stories tall and I'm less than 15 feet from the screen. It is nauseating and gives me a headache. I prefer when the director shoots it so the main action is about the same size as a normal movie, yet you have all this other stuff going on around it. That is what iMax was meant for. Otherwise you can have the entire front 10 -20 rows of the theater. pr0n at that size would require an entire different way of doing things for sure.
The other annoying thing about iMax is the gad-aweful flicker! It needs at least 3 times the framerate
I am unfamiliar with the scart lead other than by it's definition. It's nice to have an acronym finder
In the US, of course we have RF leads, but we do have line-level leads as well. They use the standard RCA-tpe connectors with a coaxial wire, one for Audio Right, Audio Left and Video Composite each. As the standard normal consumer grade way of hooking devices together. Of course we do have an S-Video Lead (SVHS) which has seperate Chroma Luma and Sync Lines and such in it. It seems to be available on most DVD players, however it's hit-and-miss on consumer affordable reasonably priced Televisions/Monitors. Generally the larger the screen the more likely to have S-Video - Audio still uses the RCA-Type Connectors.
And ofcourse we have all those wonderful, Proprietory Digital connectors too:)
The way the desktop functions [in general] is exactly what is needed for most of the tasks a computer does. The desktop is not going to go away any time soon. However, that doesn't mean we won't have more than on form of UI on a computer... Not only tactile, but voice activated and aromatic and probably more. The real reason you haven't seen this so far is there is no application that is currently available that really requires such a different UI. When we get our first killer ap that uses a different UI, people will start using other UI's until then it's not going to happen.
Hey check out my new joy-port... Makes all old pr0n new again:D
Use one of them water cooling kits, to move the heat out of the case without the need for venting or air movement inside the case? You could get a stainless steel case, or maybe one of them aluminum ones... Titanium?? or maybe a plastic case with the aluminum foil shielding... then seal all the cracks joints and stuff
This doesn't sound all that difficult or expensive
No. You will buy a $99 (maybe even less) box that sits on top of your TV and decodes the digital signal so that your old TV can display it.
Where do I get one of those $99 boxes now? I haven't seen them yet! - I don't want to wait until 2012 or 2006 or whatever, I want one now so I can use it for a few years and get my money's worth out of it.
I do expect to get an HDTV, but right now they are too expensive, and there isn't anything to watch, except for the PBS station which runs digital content on one channel, then runs the same content 3 hrs later on their second signal, and again 6 hours later on their thirs channel.... WTF? where are my 1024p DVD's???
This means we'll be allowed to write software reviews again! YAY!
This was a stupid piece of legislation and it needs to be fixed. Now, lets just see how bad they screw it up even more while trying to fix it.
If the opposite of pro is con, what's the opposite of progress?
Re:My possible flamebait...
on
Future of Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Because The FCC is not elected, nor does it represent any of us people. Unfortunately many of the more important legislation has been handed off to governemt agencies... red tape and bureaucracy.
Part of being a free society is... well... Being Free. Regulation is sometimes a necessary evil, when it must be used to protect people from each other or themselves. Where does this apply here? Why should it apply? How do you justify it? What regulation is needed beyond that already covered in existing legislation rules and regulations? and How may this regulation hamper the growth of these technologies? The freedom to use them? The cost and accessibility of this technology?
Regulation is a bad thing. It does infringe on freedom, some of course is a necessary evil. In this case, at this time, Regulation of this technology is a very bad idea, it's like banning alcohol -see what happening after the volsted act in the U.S.?
Regulation sometimes has unintended and unforseen consequences
Re:The biggest problem with wi-fi
on
Future of Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is exactly why many of us are so scared of regulation! Just regulate it completely out of existence
If your kid is trolling around pornonet, you better think of something better than regulating WiFi or The Internet in general. If you can't figure out how to ground your kid from the computer, perhaps you should take one of those parenting workshops
Re:The FCC is going to screw us
on
Future of Wi-Fi
·
· Score: 1
I don't know if regulation is the right way to go -yet
The fact is that every time the governemt decides to regulate something, the average person usually ends up getting screwed. It would be nice to try to leave this alone a little while and let the innovators, users and technicalities of the technology work themselves out a little bit.
Why do we always have to regulate something? Is there some reason we have to control it? Currently there is some regulation... power and spectrum availability
With all the whining about insecure WiFi and people hacking the networks to gain access or watch the data flying by, we should not regulate this yet. First off the airwaves are public property -Anyone should be allowed to eavsdrop, you should know this when you set up WiFi, you should take appropriate steps to make this not an issue should you wish to set up a WiFi Network. -This is how common practices on security evolve. With regulation you remove some of the reasons to develop appropriate practices which will ultimately resulte in a more robust infrastructure.
This from The RIAA Website: HTTP Error 403
403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected
This error can be caused if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic. Please try to connect again later.
Please contact the Web server's administrator if the problem persists.
-----------------
Can anyone say SLASH DOT ?
To some degree you will have those problems, similar to when you try to paste 360` panorama images together. You should be able to so some sort of software compensation to help correct this, particularly where you have a complete image and the image being pasted is a higher res portion of the origional image.
I seem to rememebr a program on television a few years back about HDTV. The program claimed that after the release of HDTV later models would be able to interpolate the background from TV shows on the fly to produce the 16:9 ratio from older shows filmed/taped in 4:3. - They showed how I Love Lucy could look in 16:9 - which was, very unimpressing. (It may have been my NTSC TV though).
Permitted to Merge only if they interoperate only if the want to do video... What fun.
I stoped using AIM because of the quality of their clientele --- not saying that everyone who uses AOL/AIM is that bad, there just seem to be a lot more of them there....AND they always seem to find me!
I liked ICQ but it's almost useless now with the bloated program, and it's as clunky as it was in '98... in 98 it was sleek, by today's standards
its bad. Still log into it though.
MSN sux - It's like having clippy on your desktop constantly.
I'm still hanging around with Yahoo. Although the servers are buggy, atleast they work for the most part, I have chat rooms that work and Video and Voice chat that works -with a user base large enough to meet new people. Why can I not do Voice and Video on the Mac, Unix/Linux or anything else???
Trillian is real nice, but when I tried it - out go the voice and video on Yahoo... so out goes trillian - o well.
Here's what I want.
#1 I don't care who's network it's on or who's it connects to, as long as there is a reasonably sized userbase to make it of use to me.
#2 Voice and Video Chat. I want it!
#3 CROSS PLATFORM! Atleast Win32 (98 or better), MacOS 8/9, MacOS-X, and Linux/BSD. And fully cross platform, not just a kiss and a promise!
#4 Chat Rooms! - Makes it easier to meet new people to put on your contact list:P And none of this clunky IrCQ crap.
#5 Modular -- Make it come with everything, but allow me to remove the more annoying parts!
#6 Open Source is a plus - That way users can fix the broken stuff, and I don't have to wait for someone at some great big corp to get around to it.
#7 If it is one that connects to multiple networks, it should be able to tell when it's the same user on 3 networks -- I don't care if they are on AIM & Yahoo & ICQ just show me One contact!
If it weren't for applications like connecting this to your DSS low speed data port to control your satellite receiver or an LCD screen to show off MP3's in the car I doubt a serial ports would have made it on this thing either. I'm surprised there's more than one! Lets face it, it's getting harder to justify parallel or serial ports now that we have USB and FireWire.
Slashdot Mirror
It still shouldn't say "postcode not reconised" or what ever, it should say... something like "Yeah we know where you are and you can't have it"
Well they did stop making them. It's just some one at Sony discovered they forgot to turn off the BetaMax Maker and it's been pumping them out for the laast 20 years. -Don't worry, they have a whole building foull of them and an estimated supply to last mankind until the next millenium! yay!
What People Seem to Miss is that Sony is the Microsoft of Japan
Yup, just keep making them, somebody will like it and buy it, After all it is better --- sounds like a Mac doesn't it?
This is Just Vaporware
Yeah this has been tried all over the place. --or more like promised all over the place. I have yet to see anyone who actually made this work with any reliability
For kicks, I tried entering in a bunch of different postcodes, every one of them said it wasn't recognized - I doubt they ever will be either.
...I mean this is bad. They like to talk about video games and violence specifically it allows them to show violence to get their ratings up all the while claiming how they don't depict violence.
It's a case of lets lie about what were doing, then blame it on someone else. granted the video games are violent - but who'd know about it if you'd have kept your mouth shut????
when is the media going to learn that they are the cause of most of the immoral nature of modern society that they themselves complain about?
I wish Dialpad were still free ;)
I have been looking but not seeing any new free PC to Phone stuff out there. It looks athat all you get are years old google references now and a few insanely complicated linux solutions -- All I want is my free phone calls back so I can call anywhere in the country (us) again.
A Cheapskate I may be, but I have more stuff than thee. - Me
Linksys makes a unit - the WAP11 Which not only is a wireless access point, but can also work as a repeater / range extender for the Wireless Network. Inside the building isn't going to be a problem for the wireless. Outside, shouldn't be too much of a problem at all if you can place the units by the windows, you can then use these to bridge your wireless networks to extend the range of the network from building to building.
If they have a computer already, this could be a cheap answer
you would need a cheap webcam (less than $35) - this can work on a computer running Win98 or better... prolly need atleast 35 MB Ram
There is a program I've seen called Homewatcher... I found it at download.com it ... using a webcam monitors motion in a room and can sound an alarm... it is intended to be used as a burgler alarm. It watches the video stream and notices changes from one frame to the next and it's sensitivity can be adjusted. It has a free version too that's good enough for what i propose. -The version you payfor allows it to e-mail you pictures of the burglers which isn't needed for this application
Aim the webcam at the eye... if close enough or with zoom lenses applied, it can easily detect the motion of a blinking or moving eye.
Now... here's where it gets good. Many webcams have a little more sensitivity in the near-infrared and infrared portions of the spectrum than the human eye... you may notice this when you adjust it to deal with flurescent or incandescent lighting... depending on the camera of course. You could illuminate the eye with IR (or red) LED's making it bright enough for the camera to detect eye movements / blinking
The software is just configurable enough that you might make this work with a minimal amount of fuss. The only problem may be is that it detects motion, any motion -it may be too sensitive.
What I hate about iMax
Big isn't all there is... and it's used too much in iMax. Many times I have seen iMax films and the shooting is just horrible. The whole point of iMax (or OmniMax) is to fill your perephiral vision with the image, or show more. One thing I hate is iMax movies where the person is 7 stories tall and I'm less than 15 feet from the screen. It is nauseating and gives me a headache. I prefer when the director shoots it so the main action is about the same size as a normal movie, yet you have all this other stuff going on around it. That is what iMax was meant for. Otherwise you can have the entire front 10 -20 rows of the theater. pr0n at that size would require an entire different way of doing things for sure.
The other annoying thing about iMax is the gad-aweful flicker! It needs at least 3 times the framerate
I am unfamiliar with the scart lead other than by it's definition. It's nice to have an acronym finder
In the US, of course we have RF leads, but we do have line-level leads as well. They use the standard RCA-tpe connectors with a coaxial wire, one for Audio Right, Audio Left and Video Composite each. As the standard normal consumer grade way of hooking devices together. Of course we do have an S-Video Lead (SVHS) which has seperate Chroma Luma and Sync Lines and such in it. It seems to be available on most DVD players, however it's hit-and-miss on consumer affordable reasonably priced Televisions/Monitors. Generally the larger the screen the more likely to have S-Video - Audio still uses the RCA-Type Connectors.
And ofcourse we have all those wonderful, Proprietory Digital connectors too :)
SCART = "Syndicat des Constructeurs d'Appareils Radiorécepteurs et Téléviseurs"
(connector used in Europe to connect many kinds of audiovisual equipment)
um... k
There's nothing broken with the desktop idea.
The way the desktop functions [in general] is exactly what is needed for most of the tasks a computer does. The desktop is not going to go away any time soon. However, that doesn't mean we won't have more than on form of UI on a computer... Not only tactile, but voice activated and aromatic and probably more. The real reason you haven't seen this so far is there is no application that is currently available that really requires such a different UI. When we get our first killer ap that uses a different UI, people will start using other UI's until then it's not going to happen.
Hey check out my new joy-port... Makes all old pr0n new againYou can close those by using [ALT]+[F4] too.
that's called kiosk mode btw
Why not make a computer in a sealed case??
Use one of them water cooling kits, to move the heat out of the case without the need for venting or air movement inside the case? You could get a stainless steel case, or maybe one of them aluminum ones... Titanium?? or maybe a plastic case with the aluminum foil shielding... then seal all the cracks joints and stuff
This doesn't sound all that difficult or expensive
No. You will buy a $99 (maybe even less) box that sits on top of your TV and decodes the digital signal so that your old TV can display it.
Where do I get one of those $99 boxes now? I haven't seen them yet! - I don't want to wait until 2012 or 2006 or whatever, I want one now so I can use it for a few years and get my money's worth out of it.
I do expect to get an HDTV, but right now they are too expensive, and there isn't anything to watch, except for the PBS station which runs digital content on one channel, then runs the same content 3 hrs later on their second signal, and again 6 hours later on their thirs channel.... WTF? where are my 1024p DVD's???
This means we'll be allowed to write software reviews again! YAY!
This was a stupid piece of legislation and it needs to be fixed. Now, lets just see how bad they screw it up even more while trying to fix it.
If the opposite of pro is con, what's the opposite of progress?
Because The FCC is not elected, nor does it represent any of us people. Unfortunately many of the more important legislation has been handed off to governemt agencies... red tape and bureaucracy.
Part of being a free society is... well... Being Free. Regulation is sometimes a necessary evil, when it must be used to protect people from each other or themselves. Where does this apply here? Why should it apply? How do you justify it? What regulation is needed beyond that already covered in existing legislation rules and regulations? and How may this regulation hamper the growth of these technologies? The freedom to use them? The cost and accessibility of this technology?
Regulation is a bad thing. It does infringe on freedom, some of course is a necessary evil. In this case, at this time, Regulation of this technology is a very bad idea, it's like banning alcohol -see what happening after the volsted act in the U.S.?
Regulation sometimes has unintended and unforseen consequences
This is exactly why many of us are so scared of regulation! Just regulate it completely out of existence
If your kid is trolling around pornonet, you better think of something better than regulating WiFi or The Internet in general. If you can't figure out how to ground your kid from the computer, perhaps you should take one of those parenting workshops
I don't know if regulation is the right way to go -yet
The fact is that every time the governemt decides to regulate something, the average person usually ends up getting screwed. It would be nice to try to leave this alone a little while and let the innovators, users and technicalities of the technology work themselves out a little bit.
Why do we always have to regulate something? Is there some reason we have to control it? Currently there is some regulation... power and spectrum availability
With all the whining about insecure WiFi and people hacking the networks to gain access or watch the data flying by, we should not regulate this yet. First off the airwaves are public property -Anyone should be allowed to eavsdrop, you should know this when you set up WiFi, you should take appropriate steps to make this not an issue should you wish to set up a WiFi Network. -This is how common practices on security evolve. With regulation you remove some of the reasons to develop appropriate practices which will ultimately resulte in a more robust infrastructure.
Now I can wear my Throw Barney out an airlock T-Shirt!
This from The RIAA Website: HTTP Error 403 403.9 Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected This error can be caused if the Web server is busy and cannot process your request due to heavy traffic. Please try to connect again later. Please contact the Web server's administrator if the problem persists. ----------------- Can anyone say SLASH DOT ?
I guess the warchalkers should add another symbol to their icons to warn people about honeypots.
Just draw your symbol and the quote Winne the Pooh... Write "Oh Bother" accross your pretty little symbol
The only true way to appreciate a good sysadmin is to leave them alone for one day.
Well please make sure to follow the suggestion on my shirt that says RTFM too.
We could disguise this as a go out into the real world days --- kinda like those turn off your TV days from years past.
I'm sorry Gramma but WebTV is closed today
To some degree you will have those problems, similar to when you try to paste 360` panorama images together. You should be able to so some sort of software compensation to help correct this, particularly where you have a complete image and the image being pasted is a higher res portion of the origional image.
I seem to rememebr a program on television a few years back about HDTV. The program claimed that after the release of HDTV later models would be able to interpolate the background from TV shows on the fly to produce the 16:9 ratio from older shows filmed/taped in 4:3. - They showed how I Love Lucy could look in 16:9 - which was, very unimpressing. (It may have been my NTSC TV though).
Permitted to Merge only if they interoperate only if the want to do video... What fun.
I stoped using AIM because of the quality of their clientele --- not saying that everyone who uses AOL/AIM is that bad, there just seem to be a lot more of them there. ...AND they always seem to find me!
I liked ICQ but it's almost useless now with the bloated program, and it's as clunky as it was in '98... in 98 it was sleek, by today's standards its bad. Still log into it though.
MSN sux - It's like having clippy on your desktop constantly.
I'm still hanging around with Yahoo. Although the servers are buggy, atleast they work for the most part, I have chat rooms that work and Video and Voice chat that works -with a user base large enough to meet new people. Why can I not do Voice and Video on the Mac, Unix/Linux or anything else???
Trillian is real nice, but when I tried it - out go the voice and video on Yahoo... so out goes trillian - o well.
Here's what I want.
#1 I don't care who's network it's on or who's it connects to, as long as there is a reasonably sized userbase to make it of use to me.
#2 Voice and Video Chat. I want it!
#3 CROSS PLATFORM! Atleast Win32 (98 or better), MacOS 8/9, MacOS-X, and Linux/BSD. And fully cross platform, not just a kiss and a promise!
#4 Chat Rooms! - Makes it easier to meet new people to put on your contact list :P And none of this clunky IrCQ crap.
#5 Modular -- Make it come with everything, but allow me to remove the more annoying parts!
#6 Open Source is a plus - That way users can fix the broken stuff, and I don't have to wait for someone at some great big corp to get around to it.
#7 If it is one that connects to multiple networks, it should be able to tell when it's the same user on 3 networks -- I don't care if they are on AIM & Yahoo & ICQ just show me One contact!
If it weren't for applications like connecting this to your DSS low speed data port to control your satellite receiver or an LCD screen to show off MP3's in the car I doubt a serial ports would have made it on this thing either. I'm surprised there's more than one! Lets face it, it's getting harder to justify parallel or serial ports now that we have USB and FireWire.