I'll be the first to try 1080p conversion, but I don't have the ability to display it huge, yet. Even so, the technology will be below $5000 any day now
I've seen these at the Sony store, and at the local high-end audio/video store, and even at Fry's. And the picture is stunning each and every time. Everyone has a boatload of opinions about HDTV... They talk about black levels, contrast ratios, calibration, yadda, yadda. But the bottom line is that I've looked at just about everything -- LCOS, DLP, LCD, CRT, Plasma, you name it. And I've looked at them side-by-side, in different lighting conditions, at different distances, viewing angles, everything. That Sony SXRD TV simply wins the contest, hands down. You can press your nose up against the glass and you can't see a pixel. There is no "screen door" effect. The motion is as smooth and realistic as it gets. And the native resolution is 1080p, and absolutely crystal clear. What more could you want? They've got a 60" version if you've got room for it, as well.
And what's more, I've been a Samsung DLP owner for three years, and I was convinced that nothing could beat the picture quality of my DLP, until I saw that TV.
Besides the social gap that you mention, which will be, in essence, a gap between "true" youth and "artificial" youth, there are other aspects of longevity that will dramatically change the world. One is a giant increase in risk aversion. If you suddenly learn that you can live 500 years, will you still be interested in sky diving? What about crossing the street? What about leaving the house at all? Maybe it sounds ridiculous now, but that's because we're surrounded by death all the time, and we're desensitized to it. We watch our grandparents and our parents die of old age, cancer, heart attack... and as a result, risking a car accident by driving to work every day doesn't seem like such a big deal. But faced with the potential of living a very, very long time (possibly even indefinitely), that risk begins to seem unacceptable. And there are other obvious issues, like overcrowding and the impact on the environment in general. But I think it is naive to assume that the human race would not pursue life extension at any cost.
Science will "cure" the aging process. Will the result be Heaven or Hell?
Yeah, I'd use it, because the "patch" to disable the ads would hit the web about 0.03 seconds after MS announced the new OS. Then you get free Windows, with a valid serial number (or product key, or activation code, or whatever it's called), with no ads. The only problem is that MS knows that this is exactly what would happen, and they aren't dumb enough to try this. The other drawback for them is that the legality of applying such a patch is fuzzy. In other words, blocking the ads might not even be illegal -- IE now comes with a pop-up blocker, right? -- so there's the possibility that they wouldn't even be able to go after people who disable the ads.
Excellent point. I've heard it suggested that CNN and the RIAA are practically one in the same. Recall that CNN was first on the scene with this great story:
And remember that their writeup, and only theirs, had this quote:
"I am sorry for what I have done," LaHara said. "I love music and don't want to hurt the artists I love."
I remember thinking that that whole story seemed fabricated at the time, and wondered why no one else had picked it up. Maybe they have since then, I don't know.
Not to mention that Easynews has been around for ages. Easynews was kind of the "best kept secret" in the world of usenet binaries. This stupid slashvertisement for Guba is very unfortunate.
The RIAA/MPAA must have an ulterior motive here. Either that, or this isn't being reported accurately. If this legislation really is the equivalent of "All recorders must be approved by us," then it just can't be serious. They can't be collectively stupid enough to think that a bill like that would pass. When something as blatantly frivolous as this happens, there's always something else going on behind the scenes, right? Like later, they come back to congress and say "Well, we couldn't get our other bill passed, so the only choice we have left is to introduce this other ridiculous thing (which maybe doesn't seem quite as bad, in comparison)."
Sweet... I love it when my sig happens to be relevant to the comment I'm posting.
This is a matter of physics that doesn't need to be tested any more than it already has been.
Yeah, but it's also well known that if you force more air/gasoline/nitrous into a car engine, it will go faster. But people continue to try to break land speed records. It's human nature. People do it just for the sake of doing it.
I'm sure there are people at Radeon (and other companies) who have done things far more bizarre, but didn't announce it to the world.
The company is ATI, and no, they don't do anything like this. They don't care what happens to their chips at -80C or +180C. All they do is test them a little bit beyond the limits of their recommended operating range. If you operate a chip way outside that range, they aren't going to guarantee that it will work.
What would disrupt Wall Street and global economics? Doing away with DST? Or changing DST? Or not changing DST? I didn't argue for any of those things. I just said that the fact that our government cares at all about DST is amazing. Like I said, moving the clocks one way or the other has no effect on the number of light hours in a day. If that's not obvious, then you are the moron.
It may have been true, back when DST was first introduced, that just about all businesses operated on a 8-5 work day, but that's hardly the case today. And there are many, many other arguments against DST. Here's a good starting point: http://www.standardtime.com/
... that the government of this country takes time out of it's day to even think about things like this. The only message this sends is that the citizens of this country are idiots (according to the government). Either A) They believe that changing the clocks actually changes the number of daylight hours in each 24-hour rotation of the Earth, or B) They believe that everyone is too stupid to just set their clocks an hour earlier or later, as needed, without the government passing a law forcing everyone to do it. Moronic.
It is sometimes legal to reverse engineer. It is not legal to reverse engineer any technology in order to defeat security (content protection) mechanisms. This is the result of the DMCA.
But that's just it... it's "working." There's a big gap between "working" and "shipping." They have quantum computers "working," but try finding one at Fry's. Where can I buy some MRAM? I'd love to have a computer that doesn't need to shut-down or reset or hibernate. Or how about FRAM? Or NRAM?
Progress is great, but these companies are so eager to hype their technology that they jump the gun. And then they find out a month later that there's a huge problem with acually mass producing them. Or, they find out that the technology isn't practical for one reason or another. That's why your PC still has a hard drive and DRAM, just like it did in 1985.
I hope I'm wrong and that I get 2GB of NRAM for Christmas this year. But I ain't holding my breath.:)
They should call it DNFRAM, because I heard that each DIMM will come bundled with Duke Nuke-em Forever. I also heard that their first major customer was the Phantom game console.
And ferromagnetic RAM (FRAM) technology shows promise for making faster non-volatile components: it uses the orientation of crystal atoms to store data.
But both flash and FRAM chips wear out over time and lose the ability to store information. FRAM chips, adds Schmergel, cannot be made as small as NRAM ones.
How long have people been announcing that a new, non-volatile, and/or huge-capacity, and/or incredibly fast memory technology is on the way, and soon to be released, and just going through the very last stages of entering mass production? Has even one of them made it to store shelves? The last real revolution in storage technology that I know of, that actually went anywhere, was "spintronics." And that has turned out to be practical only in hard drives, even though it was claimed by some that it would completely revolutionize memory in general.
Yeah, good question... I get tons and tons of spam, somewhere around a hundred a day. Of that, only one a day, at most, usually gets to my inbox. So I guess the spam filtering is pretty good. I know that they use some sort of adaptive algorithm, but I don't know which one. For every spam message that does make it through to your inbox, you can flag it as spam and supposedly they will take a look at it and improve their filter. Maybe GMail's system is better, I don't know.
Yahoo's mail does have the first three items on your list. And arguably the "reliability," too. I don't think there's a search or a "thread view," though, but I haven't really looked for those features. I would guess that the new "beta" Yahoo Mail will probably have them.
But I'll say that Google has done Yahoo users a great service, simply by bringing competition to the market. Yahoo has had to greatly increase storage and features in a hurry. It worked, I guess, at least well enough to keep me on as a Yahoo Mail user.
Why would an established artist re-sign to a label when he or she could simply hire a marketer and sell directly via iTunes and keep more of the money?!
Because they have no choice. They could do exactly what you suggest right now, but they don't. There is no "marketer" that can get you even 0.1% of the sales that you will get by being played on major radio stations, MTV, etc... Control over the mass media is the power that the major record labels have, not control over iTunes. iTunes has no control over anything, and cannot exist without MTV and Clear Channel playing the exact same songs over and over, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until teenagers have no choice but to pressure their parents into buying Britney Spears CDs.
Think of it this way. Suppose there was no radio and no MTV, but iTunes was alive and well (somehow). Now, this new artist comes out with an album for sale on iTunes, and her name is Britney Spears. She's kind of cute, has a pouty, teenage voice that is far from spectacular, and a nice ass (which you've never seen, because there's no MTV). And no one has ever heard of her before. How many albums would she sell? Probably about three. With iTunes, people would listen to the short sample of one of her songs and say "What the hell is this crap?" and move on to something else.
You're not supposed tell them that! Sheesh. Next, someone will tell the RIAA about cassette tapes!
Seriously, though, the MPAA and the RIAA are trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle. It just can't be done. The worst they can do is make life more difficult for their paying customers, which they do, regularly. CD copy protection, DVD region codes, Macrovision, iTunes DRM, DivX (snicker)... all of that garbage only pisses off the poor suckers who actually pay money for movies and music. Wonderful business model, isn't it?
Eh, maybe. But even that is debatable. South Florida is always worrying about hurricane season. I lived there not too long ago, and they don't exactly have the attitude of "Bring on the category 5 hurricane! We're ready for it!" They wanted to evacuate us a few years ago when a big hurricane was headed toward Boca Raton. I don't remember the name of the storm, but it changed direction just before they started the evacuation. 150 mph winds are simply going to wreck a city -- even if the bulidings are built to withstand the winds, are they built to withstand cars, boats, trees, busses and 18-wheelers being hurtled into them? And what about the flooding?
Will the person who has been beating the moderators (and commenters) with the idiot stick please stop? This drivel is +5 Insightful?
firstly, without hurricanes this place will rot.
What the hell is "this place?" America? North America? New Orleans? Florida? The Everglades? None of those places will "rot" without hurricanes. Just about every city in America struggles with pollution or erosion or some other side effect of civilization. To suggest that the only thing capable of saving the environment is large-scale natural disasters is just utter stupidity.
secondly, hurricane damage on this scale only happens once. it happened here in 1992 with andrew.
Yeah! That's the only large scale damage caused by a hurricane! Ever! Wait... I think there was something in the news recently about a hurricane... I can't remember exactly... Nah, I'm wrong. Hurricane Andrew was the only one. Ever.
What im saying is though.
"Though?" That's what you're saying?
with modern building techniques this sort of thing is a problem of the past.
By "the past," do you mean two weeks ago? What the fuck are you talking about?
how often do you hear puerto rico whining about hurricanes and they get hit by them all the time?
Holy shit. This is one of the dumbest sentences I've ever seen, anywhere. Honestly, I want to make this my sig.
syntax error at funny.pl line 5, near ") {" syntax error at funny.pl line 9, near "case "the 60's"" syntax error at funny.pl line 12, near "case "the 70's"" syntax error at funny.pl line 15, near "case "the 80's"" syntax error at funny.pl line 18, near "case "the 90's"" syntax error at funny.pl line 21, near "case "the 00's"" syntax error at funny.pl line 24, near "}" Execution of funny.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
Just don't try to load someone else's savegame. Vista includes the new "Trusted Minesweeper(TM)." Minesweeper savegame content owners will finally get the protection that they deserve.
Slashdot Mirror
The power supply is also a heat problem. That's what the lawsuit is about.
I've seen these at the Sony store, and at the local high-end audio/video store, and even at Fry's. And the picture is stunning each and every time. Everyone has a boatload of opinions about HDTV... They talk about black levels, contrast ratios, calibration, yadda, yadda. But the bottom line is that I've looked at just about everything -- LCOS, DLP, LCD, CRT, Plasma, you name it. And I've looked at them side-by-side, in different lighting conditions, at different distances, viewing angles, everything. That Sony SXRD TV simply wins the contest, hands down. You can press your nose up against the glass and you can't see a pixel. There is no "screen door" effect. The motion is as smooth and realistic as it gets. And the native resolution is 1080p, and absolutely crystal clear. What more could you want? They've got a 60" version if you've got room for it, as well.
And what's more, I've been a Samsung DLP owner for three years, and I was convinced that nothing could beat the picture quality of my DLP, until I saw that TV.
Besides the social gap that you mention, which will be, in essence, a gap between "true" youth and "artificial" youth, there are other aspects of longevity that will dramatically change the world. One is a giant increase in risk aversion. If you suddenly learn that you can live 500 years, will you still be interested in sky diving? What about crossing the street? What about leaving the house at all? Maybe it sounds ridiculous now, but that's because we're surrounded by death all the time, and we're desensitized to it. We watch our grandparents and our parents die of old age, cancer, heart attack... and as a result, risking a car accident by driving to work every day doesn't seem like such a big deal. But faced with the potential of living a very, very long time (possibly even indefinitely), that risk begins to seem unacceptable. And there are other obvious issues, like overcrowding and the impact on the environment in general. But I think it is naive to assume that the human race would not pursue life extension at any cost.
Science will "cure" the aging process.
Will the result be Heaven or Hell?
Yeah, I'd use it, because the "patch" to disable the ads would hit the web about 0.03 seconds after MS announced the new OS. Then you get free Windows, with a valid serial number (or product key, or activation code, or whatever it's called), with no ads. The only problem is that MS knows that this is exactly what would happen, and they aren't dumb enough to try this. The other drawback for them is that the legality of applying such a patch is fuzzy. In other words, blocking the ads might not even be illegal -- IE now comes with a pop-up blocker, right? -- so there's the possibility that they wouldn't even be able to go after people who disable the ads.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/09/09/music
And remember that their writeup, and only theirs, had this quote:I remember thinking that that whole story seemed fabricated at the time, and wondered why no one else had picked it up. Maybe they have since then, I don't know.
Not to mention that Easynews has been around for ages. Easynews was kind of the "best kept secret" in the world of usenet binaries. This stupid slashvertisement for Guba is very unfortunate.
Good point... and the DMCA did pass, too. But still this new bill is just way over the top, even compared to those others. It just doesn't make sense.
The RIAA/MPAA must have an ulterior motive here. Either that, or this isn't being reported accurately. If this legislation really is the equivalent of "All recorders must be approved by us," then it just can't be serious. They can't be collectively stupid enough to think that a bill like that would pass. When something as blatantly frivolous as this happens, there's always something else going on behind the scenes, right? Like later, they come back to congress and say "Well, we couldn't get our other bill passed, so the only choice we have left is to introduce this other ridiculous thing (which maybe doesn't seem quite as bad, in comparison)."
Sweet... I love it when my sig happens to be relevant to the comment I'm posting.
What would disrupt Wall Street and global economics? Doing away with DST? Or changing DST? Or not changing DST? I didn't argue for any of those things. I just said that the fact that our government cares at all about DST is amazing. Like I said, moving the clocks one way or the other has no effect on the number of light hours in a day. If that's not obvious, then you are the moron.
It may have been true, back when DST was first introduced, that just about all businesses operated on a 8-5 work day, but that's hardly the case today. And there are many, many other arguments against DST. Here's a good starting point: http://www.standardtime.com/
... that the government of this country takes time out of it's day to even think about things like this. The only message this sends is that the citizens of this country are idiots (according to the government). Either A) They believe that changing the clocks actually changes the number of daylight hours in each 24-hour rotation of the Earth, or B) They believe that everyone is too stupid to just set their clocks an hour earlier or later, as needed, without the government passing a law forcing everyone to do it. Moronic.
It is sometimes legal to reverse engineer. It is not legal to reverse engineer any technology in order to defeat security (content protection) mechanisms. This is the result of the DMCA.
Sew what.
But that's just it... it's "working." There's a big gap between "working" and "shipping." They have quantum computers "working," but try finding one at Fry's. Where can I buy some MRAM? I'd love to have a computer that doesn't need to shut-down or reset or hibernate. Or how about FRAM? Or NRAM?
:)
Progress is great, but these companies are so eager to hype their technology that they jump the gun. And then they find out a month later that there's a huge problem with acually mass producing them. Or, they find out that the technology isn't practical for one reason or another. That's why your PC still has a hard drive and DRAM, just like it did in 1985.
I hope I'm wrong and that I get 2GB of NRAM for Christmas this year. But I ain't holding my breath.
Yeah, good question... I get tons and tons of spam, somewhere around a hundred a day. Of that, only one a day, at most, usually gets to my inbox. So I guess the spam filtering is pretty good. I know that they use some sort of adaptive algorithm, but I don't know which one. For every spam message that does make it through to your inbox, you can flag it as spam and supposedly they will take a look at it and improve their filter. Maybe GMail's system is better, I don't know.
Yahoo's mail does have the first three items on your list. And arguably the "reliability," too. I don't think there's a search or a "thread view," though, but I haven't really looked for those features. I would guess that the new "beta" Yahoo Mail will probably have them.
But I'll say that Google has done Yahoo users a great service, simply by bringing competition to the market. Yahoo has had to greatly increase storage and features in a hurry. It worked, I guess, at least well enough to keep me on as a Yahoo Mail user.
Think of it this way. Suppose there was no radio and no MTV, but iTunes was alive and well (somehow). Now, this new artist comes out with an album for sale on iTunes, and her name is Britney Spears. She's kind of cute, has a pouty, teenage voice that is far from spectacular, and a nice ass (which you've never seen, because there's no MTV). And no one has ever heard of her before. How many albums would she sell? Probably about three. With iTunes, people would listen to the short sample of one of her songs and say "What the hell is this crap?" and move on to something else.
You're not supposed tell them that! Sheesh. Next, someone will tell the RIAA about cassette tapes!
Seriously, though, the MPAA and the RIAA are trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle. It just can't be done. The worst they can do is make life more difficult for their paying customers, which they do, regularly. CD copy protection, DVD region codes, Macrovision, iTunes DRM, DivX (snicker)... all of that garbage only pisses off the poor suckers who actually pay money for movies and music. Wonderful business model, isn't it?
Eh, maybe. But even that is debatable. South Florida is always worrying about hurricane season. I lived there not too long ago, and they don't exactly have the attitude of "Bring on the category 5 hurricane! We're ready for it!" They wanted to evacuate us a few years ago when a big hurricane was headed toward Boca Raton. I don't remember the name of the storm, but it changed direction just before they started the evacuation. 150 mph winds are simply going to wreck a city -- even if the bulidings are built to withstand the winds, are they built to withstand cars, boats, trees, busses and 18-wheelers being hurtled into them? And what about the flooding?
Just don't try to load someone else's savegame. Vista includes the new "Trusted Minesweeper(TM)." Minesweeper savegame content owners will finally get the protection that they deserve.
Gee... What do you want to do today, Brain?
Well, I'm not sure, Pinky. There was really only one thing on the list, and now that that's done, I got nothing.