My first computer was a TRS-80 Model III (1978). Then a Timex Sinclair with 1K RAM and membrane keyboard. Woo! Then it was a Color Computer, a TI-994A, a VIC20, a C64, a C128, a 386-SX16, a 486-DX2-66, etc.
I have one of these sitting next to me. I purchased it for my HTPC home theater. First, it does have excellent range. The keyboard is small which is nice for infrequent use, but a pain for anything else. The mouse takes some getting used to, but the 'gyroscopic' air waving thingy is cool. BUT. And there's always a but. I've had two of the RF receivers die on me. Gyration has been good about replacing them, but I'm dead in the water until the new one arrives. The syptoms are usually that the mouse "stops working". What's happened is the receiver no longer wants to talk to the mouse and won't re-learn the connection. I'm in this situation again tonight: the mouse isn't working and 30 minutes of poking and it's not coming back. Time to call tech support.
Anyway. Aside from this and the price, it's a decent setup for HTPC.
A few points about the HS20 from personal experience. It *does* have amazing image quality and resolution.
But...
I went through three brand new HS20's (all sent back to Sony) before giving up on it. They all suffered from the same problem which was an inconsistent color temperature. For example, with a white screen, the lower left corner was pinkish and the top right was bluish. All three exhibited this behavior. I could get the same effect on a black screen with no inputs, so it was not my input. It seemed like a manufacturing defect with one or more of the panels being "pinched".
Second, the color registration on the three panels was never spot on and it's not adjustable. So the crosshair in the middle of the screen was white, but all the others had blue or red fringes.
Third, I wanted an all digital system. This projector has DVI input which is sweet. Unfortunately, at the native resolution of the panels (16x9 at 1388x768), it only accepts a refresh of 56.6Hz. That means movies show a slight jerkiness since the frame refresh does not sync up with output of the computer. Using a lower resolution results in blurring and scaling of the image inside of the projector which totally negates the point of a pure digital picture (and letting the computer handle scaling, etc). It also makes for a crappy desktop.
Sony also refuses to divulge any info about supported display modes. One support idiot claimed that connecting a PC to the projector via DVI was not supported and could damage the projector or PC. Sometimes Sony's proprietary ways are a little too much to bear.
I owned the previous generation of VPL Sony home theater projectors and they did not exhibit these problems (color and alignemnt). I'm hoping these flaws are fixed because it's an otherwise amazing piece of hardware.
Because Swing is a bloated monster that doesn't benefit from direct OS assistance/integration (either in the kernel or windowing system). But Java on servers can be very, very fast and scalable. I have years of coding and benchmarking Java server apps to back that up.
wouldn't an EU mandate make open source scanners and image manipulation illegal in the EU? it's not like their providing the source. And if they did, the couterfeiters would just strip it out.
CSS was 'cracked' because xing left all the CSS keys in one of it's product distributions by accident. That made it about a billion times easier to reverse-engineer. I'm not betting the new system will be cracked.
And I guess that's what separates you from, um, people with experience. Wear a t-shirt and shorts in the desert for any period of time and you're in a whole lot worse shape. There's actually a basis for their attire.
Magistrate's wigs, 3-piece suits, ties and the like, on the otherhand, are pure pomp and fashion.
this is not something that has to be "admitted"... it's a fact. he won on the technicality that we have an electoral college that's not 1:1 correlated with population. oh, and yeah, the funny business with Florida purging a few tens of thousands on blacks from the voter roles (a job left to a Republican run private business, no less). that's more than all the dangling and hanging chads combined. lest we forget, the margin of "victory" in FL was in the hundreds.
to the previous post, right-wing bible-thumping is not mainstream in America. but Americans are more conservative and religious than Europeans by a wide margin.
it's interesting to note how the far right in America who look forward to a judgement day (the end result of which is the extermination of the jews and muslims) see not a whiff of similarity with their intolerant views and those of, say, the Taliban. I guess it's OK to let someone else do your smiting and exterminating, but if you get your own hands dirty...
I guess you don't know any Arabs. They are quite liberal. This is especially true of the younger generation. The people in charge are not the Taliban... but they are resposible for the rise of fundamentalism through corruption, cronyism and basically being too self-absorbed to really care about the countries they're in charge of. They've left that to the powerful, unelected religious leaders. And it's *these* people who are the prime benefactors of the Wests gross misconceptions and indifference to the Arab people. The anger that generates only fuels more fundamentalism.
wrong about one thing. the average education level of workers in indian call centers is way above that of their american peers. being able to speak like a native has little to do with education level and a lot to do with exposure to locals.
Slashdot Mirror
put four wheels on it and call it a 'hummer'.
368,000 feet ... NOT 328,000. So they almost hit 70 miles high. Way more than enough.
If Bush wins both the popular and electoral votes in November then what will you find to complain about?
Diebold?
Seriously. The *only* people threatened by election observers are those whose scams may be exposed. In this particular election, it's the Republicans.
Or...
I've got two of these filled with 300GB disks driven by 8-port 3ware cards. That's 4.2TB of Raid5 for under 8K including redundant power supplies.
My first computer was a TRS-80 Model III (1978). Then a Timex Sinclair with 1K RAM and membrane keyboard. Woo! Then it was a Color Computer, a TI-994A, a VIC20, a C64, a C128, a 386-SX16, a 486-DX2-66, etc.
I personally witnessed $300 million of VC money come to naught. And our product worked.
Millenium wheel? Segway? pets.com?
I have one of these sitting next to me. I purchased it for my HTPC home theater. First, it does have excellent range. The keyboard is small which is nice for infrequent use, but a pain for anything else. The mouse takes some getting used to, but the 'gyroscopic' air waving thingy is cool. BUT. And there's always a but. I've had two of the RF receivers die on me. Gyration has been good about replacing them, but I'm dead in the water until the new one arrives. The syptoms are usually that the mouse "stops working". What's happened is the receiver no longer wants to talk to the mouse and won't re-learn the connection. I'm in this situation again tonight: the mouse isn't working and 30 minutes of poking and it's not coming back. Time to call tech support.
Anyway. Aside from this and the price, it's a decent setup for HTPC.
yes, 'fair and balanced' was in the sarcastic typeface. most browsers fail to render this properly.
this is an advocacy site. you're not seriously expecting 'fair and balanced' are you?
Thats just marketing and lies, and those are the roots of all evil.
capitalism is the root of all evil?
A few points about the HS20 from personal experience. It *does* have amazing image quality and resolution.
But...
I went through three brand new HS20's (all sent back to Sony) before giving up on it. They all suffered from the same problem which was an inconsistent color temperature. For example, with a white screen, the lower left corner was pinkish and the top right was bluish. All three exhibited this behavior. I could get the same effect on a black screen with no inputs, so it was not my input. It seemed like a manufacturing defect with one or more of the panels being "pinched".
Second, the color registration on the three panels was never spot on and it's not adjustable. So the crosshair in the middle of the screen was white, but all the others had blue or red fringes.
Third, I wanted an all digital system. This projector has DVI input which is sweet. Unfortunately, at the native resolution of the panels (16x9 at 1388x768), it only accepts a refresh of 56.6Hz. That means movies show a slight jerkiness since the frame refresh does not sync up with output of the computer. Using a lower resolution results in blurring and scaling of the image inside of the projector which totally negates the point of a pure digital picture (and letting the computer handle scaling, etc). It also makes for a crappy desktop.
Sony also refuses to divulge any info about supported display modes. One support idiot claimed that connecting a PC to the projector via DVI was not supported and could damage the projector or PC. Sometimes Sony's proprietary ways are a little too much to bear.
I owned the previous generation of VPL Sony home theater projectors and they did not exhibit these problems (color and alignemnt). I'm hoping these flaws are fixed because it's an otherwise amazing piece of hardware.
Because Swing is a bloated monster that doesn't benefit from direct OS assistance/integration (either in the kernel or windowing system). But Java on servers can be very, very fast and scalable. I have years of coding and benchmarking Java server apps to back that up.
kind of like how we could FIX e-voting. oh, so many parallels.
The most-read webloggers aren't necessarily the ones with the most original ideas, say researchers at Hewlett-Packard Labs.
Otherwise know as the 'Slashdupe' syndrome. One site is even know for it's inability to keep stories original within a 24 hour period.
I had one for my home theater PC and it was really great until the keyboard died one week out of warranty. Now it's a $100 brick.
We would of, if Halliburton made 'em.
there's more truth to that statement than you can possibly know.
wouldn't an EU mandate make open source scanners and image manipulation illegal in the EU? it's not like their providing the source. And if they did, the couterfeiters would just strip it out.
thanks for the clarification. still, without the key, it's unlikely we would have DECSS.
CSS was 'cracked' because xing left all the CSS keys in one of it's product distributions by accident. That made it about a billion times easier to reverse-engineer. I'm not betting the new system will be cracked.
they've realized it's too late for CSS. no law suit will materially change this.
the next generation of higher density DVD is right around the corner. and you can bet it won't use CSS. that means linux is back out in the cold.
And I guess that's what separates you from, um, people with experience. Wear a t-shirt and shorts in the desert for any period of time and you're in a whole lot worse shape. There's actually a basis for their attire.
Magistrate's wigs, 3-piece suits, ties and the like, on the otherhand, are pure pomp and fashion.
Fortunetly they have been kept in check by our constitution
Until now.
this is not something that has to be "admitted" ... it's a fact. he won on the technicality that we have an electoral college that's not 1:1 correlated with population. oh, and yeah, the funny business with Florida purging a few tens of thousands on blacks from the voter roles (a job left to a Republican run private business, no less). that's more than all the dangling and hanging chads combined. lest we forget, the margin of "victory" in FL was in the hundreds.
to the previous post, right-wing bible-thumping is not mainstream in America. but Americans are more conservative and religious than Europeans by a wide margin.
it's interesting to note how the far right in America who look forward to a judgement day (the end result of which is the extermination of the jews and muslims) see not a whiff of similarity with their intolerant views and those of, say, the Taliban. I guess it's OK to let someone else do your smiting and exterminating, but if you get your own hands dirty...
I guess you don't know any Arabs. They are quite liberal. This is especially true of the younger generation. The people in charge are not the Taliban ... but they are resposible for the rise of fundamentalism through corruption, cronyism and basically being too self-absorbed to really care about the countries they're in charge of. They've left that to the powerful, unelected religious leaders. And it's *these* people who are the prime benefactors of the Wests gross misconceptions and indifference to the Arab people. The anger that generates only fuels more fundamentalism.
wrong about one thing. the average education level of workers in indian call centers is way above that of their american peers. being able to speak like a native has little to do with education level and a lot to do with exposure to locals.