I bought an episode of lost the other day for fun. At the same time, I downloaded the HD stream with AC3 audio from USENET for a comparison. Well, the USENET download was 3 times the size (700meg vs 250meg) and took 1/3 the time to download. The USENET file has NO DRM, looks fabulous on my Sony SXBR and the AC3 is very nice through my optical connection to my amp. Now, the itunes video, holy crap, why isnt anyone complaining about the quality of the audio, let alone the low bitrate of the video. I feel my $2 was a total waste and I will not buy any more video from itunes. The quality is a joke not to mention I paid for it legally and the download speed was a fraction of giganews (free through adelphia).
I have to say, I listened to the interview and I anm glad to hear someone speak out their true feelings. I found him to be saying from a developers point that the new consoles arent so hot. Well, I am a consumer and I have to agree for a totally different point of view.
I just dont see that the previous generation of machines lived up to their potential. I mean when they came out we were convinced to believe that they were the best thing from now till the end of time, we were assured of movie like game play and what-not. Well, they are saying the same thing again, and they will say it again in 5 years. Consoles are getting somewhat better graphics, the gameplay is getting worse, and they are getting basic PC functionality that a pentium 90 machine has had for years (chat, mp3 and video playback?!?!)
I have bought EVERY single console and at least 15 games for each one since Atari 2600 (I even own a PSP and a DS). But, for the first time since the 70s, I am not inclined at all to buy these new machines. I dont see them doing anythign that my computer cant already do.
This will not happen. China does not invest in research. Sure they do to some extent, but look at what NSF and NIH alone fund for research and development. If China or anyone else want to take over, they will need to come up with their own ideas and fund them on their own, rather than take what someone else has already done and either blatently copy it or make it more cheaply. It is simply NOT the same thing as investing in the developent of ideas.
Have you ever asked an apple store to backup your data from a hard drive in an emac with a bad monitor?
Here is the lowdown. There is a problem with the monitors in a number of the emacs -- do a search on google for monitor and emac and you will see this is the case.
Anyway, a friend of mine asked the Apple store how much it would be to fix the monitor and they quoted her a price of $500 USD!!!! Now, this is kind of expensive for a 17 inch CRT, but in addition, they told her they could backup the data from the hard drive to a DVD for only $200 USD. ONLY 200$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a bargain!!!!
This is NOT good customer support. The computer was 1 year and 1 month old at the time. She was told that she should have bought the applecare warrenty and they could fix it. Well, this is true, but what it means is that if you want support for your Mac at all, you had better have bought that extra warrenty.
I think, if Apple really cared about customers, they would repair these things for reasonalbe costs . The dont need to lose money at all, rather just repair them at a nominal cost. Either this, or let us buy the parts to fix the computers ourselves. This is really the better option in my opinion, but alas Apple does not sell their parts to anyone except authorized shops.
Anyway, her experience in dealing with customer support at Apple has really pushed me away from buying a Mac. There is virtually no support unless you buy the extra warrenty. In additon, the lack of spare parts is a big negative. No computer is worth that much extra money no matter the OS. Linux and Windows XP work fine for me and I can use pretty much any old monitor I want.
Remeber this and it will end. Never click on a popup if at all possible. It is usually a scam. Even it if its legit advertising, if everyone thinks popups are a scam, companies will get a bad name for using them.
I heard that the new Direct TV satellites are going to be using mpeg4 instead of mpeg2 for HD material. This seems to make sense as long as the bitrate is high enough. This will allow for more channels, however what this does is require everyone to buy a new box as far as I can tell. Without an update to decode mpeg4 the current boxes will not be able to interpret the data being transmitted to the dish.
This is similar to a DVD player that can not read mpeg4 encoded DVDs I burn. I like to burn tv shows I record with my ATi all in wonder using divx and mp3 for video and audio. The resolution and sound are perfectly acceptable for television watching (I like A cook's tour alot) If I put these DVDs in my standard DVD player, they do not do anything. However, If I put them into a DVD player with the correct firmware which is capable of reading both the file structure and the file format then I can watch the programs I record. A standard DVD player or even recorder most likely will not understand the data and just report a disc error.
What does this mean? I can record tv shows at about the same resolution as the original and downsample the audio to make a much smaller file. I can get many many hours (I think I am getting 6-8 at acceptable resolution on my 51 Inch HDTV) of television on one dvd in the same space that mpeg2 video with dolby digital can only get around 2 hours.
The question that I have is what bitrate will DirectTV be sending the data? Many of the PBS channels I can recieve OTA are clearly at 1080i resolution but the bitrate is significantly reduced yeilding a somewhat pixelated looking picture. I am worried that we are going to be getting jipped on the bitrate side of things becasue people only seem to care about resolution these days. Does anyone know what the answer to this is?
The new google scholar is a GREAT idea, but in practice it doesnt work. All the real science is by subscription only.
This is a real problem for finding the details on a particular subject. Most online journals are biased towards biomedical sciences. There is no "real" access to journals outside of this. Biological abstracts and some other search engines are still pay by search only, and usually accessable via University library systems.
University libraries have to pay tons of money to subscribe to these online journals. Google can access the abstracts, but that only goes so far. Pub med is ok and better for finding some thigns, but it is a horrible search engine (they should just use the google engine on their database).
As for ther overall usefullness for finding real peer reviewed science on the web, it is still not available to most people.
I went out the other day to see if there were any and every store I went to had PLETNY. Infact, I wasnt sure some of the stores had sold any. Its pretty obvious why - The price.
I am an American living in Canada and I need to deal with some US ISPs. For example, my father uses AOL for email. I use Shaw -- I am not sure there actually is another cable service provider in Canada -- and when I first moved here I was unable to send or recieve email from or to my father.
I later found out that some of my Japanese friends that use AOL accounts couldnt get my email and I couldnt get theirs.
This has since changed, and I can now get email from them and they can recieve mine. I found this to be really annoying at the time, but I did get much less spam on my canadian email accounts than on my US accounts.
A final note is that there is a difference between the amount of spam I get on University accounts in the US and Canada. I have 3 accounts at US univeristies and 1 in Canada. The accounts in the US get more than 50 spams a day. The Canadian one has never even recieved 1!!! This seems impressive, however, I think that someone is just stealing the outlook domain listings at US universities and selling them, this doesnt seem to be a problem yet here. Either that or they have the best spam filter I have ever seen. Cant figure it out.
If you are interested in backing up message history look no further than Trillian (www.trillian.cc). The history of every IM is backed up in very easy to access and searchable (through the program) txt files.
Slashdot Mirror
How am I ever gonna get all those Capcom B boards now!!!!
I bought an episode of lost the other day for fun. At the same time, I downloaded the HD stream with AC3 audio from USENET for a comparison. Well, the USENET download was 3 times the size (700meg vs 250meg) and took 1/3 the time to download. The USENET file has NO DRM, looks fabulous on my Sony SXBR and the AC3 is very nice through my optical connection to my amp. Now, the itunes video, holy crap, why isnt anyone complaining about the quality of the audio, let alone the low bitrate of the video. I feel my $2 was a total waste and I will not buy any more video from itunes. The quality is a joke not to mention I paid for it legally and the download speed was a fraction of giganews (free through adelphia).
Check out the SXRD 60 incher before you say that. sony TVs are still the best. I agree on Sony software based things though.
Maybe I am wrong, but shouldn't laptop CPU use less power than a desktop CPU? Why is this comparison being made?
Amen Brother.
Yes....It is.
Have you actually watched the News? Its chocked full of adds. Why would this be diffent.
Telemarketers?
I have to say, I listened to the interview and I anm glad to hear someone speak out their true feelings. I found him to be saying from a developers point that the new consoles arent so hot. Well, I am a consumer and I have to agree for a totally different point of view.
I just dont see that the previous generation of machines lived up to their potential. I mean when they came out we were convinced to believe that they were the best thing from now till the end of time, we were assured of movie like game play and what-not. Well, they are saying the same thing again, and they will say it again in 5 years. Consoles are getting somewhat better graphics, the gameplay is getting worse, and they are getting basic PC functionality that a pentium 90 machine has had for years (chat, mp3 and video playback?!?!)
I have bought EVERY single console and at least 15 games for each one since Atari 2600 (I even own a PSP and a DS). But, for the first time since the 70s, I am not inclined at all to buy these new machines. I dont see them doing anythign that my computer cant already do.
I would pay as well. Given its a resonable price and there is not a mandatory update every 6 months that I have to pay for.
I am in the biotech indusry. I do not see the investment being made, only intellectual borrowing at best.
This will not happen. China does not invest in research. Sure they do to some extent, but look at what NSF and NIH alone fund for research and development. If China or anyone else want to take over, they will need to come up with their own ideas and fund them on their own, rather than take what someone else has already done and either blatently copy it or make it more cheaply. It is simply NOT the same thing as investing in the developent of ideas.
Agreed, Very similar experience here.
Have you ever asked an apple store to backup your data from a hard drive in an emac with a bad monitor?
Here is the lowdown. There is a problem with the monitors in a number of the emacs -- do a search on google for monitor and emac and you will see this is the case.
Anyway, a friend of mine asked the Apple store how much it would be to fix the monitor and they quoted her a price of $500 USD!!!! Now, this is kind of expensive for a 17 inch CRT, but in addition, they told her they could backup the data from the hard drive to a DVD for only $200 USD. ONLY 200$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What a bargain!!!!
This is NOT good customer support. The computer was 1 year and 1 month old at the time. She was told that she should have bought the applecare warrenty and they could fix it. Well, this is true, but what it means is that if you want support for your Mac at all, you had better have bought that extra warrenty.
I think, if Apple really cared about customers, they would repair these things for reasonalbe costs . The dont need to lose money at all, rather just repair them at a nominal cost. Either this, or let us buy the parts to fix the computers ourselves. This is really the better option in my opinion, but alas Apple does not sell their parts to anyone except authorized shops.
Anyway, her experience in dealing with customer support at Apple has really pushed me away from buying a Mac. There is virtually no support unless you buy the extra warrenty. In additon, the lack of spare parts is a big negative. No computer is worth that much extra money no matter the OS. Linux and Windows XP work fine for me and I can use pretty much any old monitor I want.
How much will it cost to train educators to use Linux?
They do have mobiel handsets. A pocket pc functions perfectly well anywhere I can pick up 802.11b.
well said
Two things
1. This is a very important discovery.
2. How can we copy this without paying for the research and profit from it?
Remeber this and it will end. Never click on a popup if at all possible. It is usually a scam. Even it if its legit advertising, if everyone thinks popups are a scam, companies will get a bad name for using them.
I heard that the new Direct TV satellites are going to be using mpeg4 instead of mpeg2 for HD material. This seems to make sense as long as the bitrate is high enough. This will allow for more channels, however what this does is require everyone to buy a new box as far as I can tell. Without an update to decode mpeg4 the current boxes will not be able to interpret the data being transmitted to the dish.
This is similar to a DVD player that can not read mpeg4 encoded DVDs I burn. I like to burn tv shows I record with my ATi all in wonder using divx and mp3 for video and audio. The resolution and sound are perfectly acceptable for television watching (I like A cook's tour alot) If I put these DVDs in my standard DVD player, they do not do anything. However, If I put them into a DVD player with the correct firmware which is capable of reading both the file structure and the file format then I can watch the programs I record. A standard DVD player or even recorder most likely will not understand the data and just report a disc error.
What does this mean? I can record tv shows at about the same resolution as the original and downsample the audio to make a much smaller file. I can get many many hours (I think I am getting 6-8 at acceptable resolution on my 51 Inch HDTV) of television on one dvd in the same space that mpeg2 video with dolby digital can only get around 2 hours.
The question that I have is what bitrate will DirectTV be sending the data? Many of the PBS channels I can recieve OTA are clearly at 1080i resolution but the bitrate is significantly reduced yeilding a somewhat pixelated looking picture. I am worried that we are going to be getting jipped on the bitrate side of things becasue people only seem to care about resolution these days. Does anyone know what the answer to this is?
The new google scholar is a GREAT idea, but in practice it doesnt work. All the real science is by subscription only.
This is a real problem for finding the details on a particular subject. Most online journals are biased towards biomedical sciences. There is no "real" access to journals outside of this. Biological abstracts and some other search engines are still pay by search only, and usually accessable via University library systems.
University libraries have to pay tons of money to subscribe to these online journals. Google can access the abstracts, but that only goes so far. Pub med is ok and better for finding some thigns, but it is a horrible search engine (they should just use the google engine on their database).
As for ther overall usefullness for finding real peer reviewed science on the web, it is still not available to most people.
I went out the other day to see if there were any and every store I went to had PLETNY. Infact, I wasnt sure some of the stores had sold any. Its pretty obvious why - The price.
University of Alberta is using Exchange server.
I am an American living in Canada and I need to deal with some US ISPs. For example, my father uses AOL for email. I use Shaw -- I am not sure there actually is another cable service provider in Canada -- and when I first moved here I was unable to send or recieve email from or to my father.
I later found out that some of my Japanese friends that use AOL accounts couldnt get my email and I couldnt get theirs.
This has since changed, and I can now get email from them and they can recieve mine. I found this to be really annoying at the time, but I did get much less spam on my canadian email accounts than on my US accounts.
A final note is that there is a difference between the amount of spam I get on University accounts in the US and Canada. I have 3 accounts at US univeristies and 1 in Canada. The accounts in the US get more than 50 spams a day. The Canadian one has never even recieved 1!!! This seems impressive, however, I think that someone is just stealing the outlook domain listings at US universities and selling them, this doesnt seem to be a problem yet here. Either that or they have the best spam filter I have ever seen. Cant figure it out.
If you are interested in backing up message history look no further than Trillian (www.trillian.cc). The history of every IM is backed up in very easy to access and searchable (through the program) txt files.