My money goes towards other interests than gaming.
I mean come on... Does anyone really think that all the little "nigga" wannabe's are anything other than mass marketed MTV drones?
If everyone that 'talks the talk" also 'walked the walk', than 2/3 of the population would be in prison, or dead. It's a bunch of huff and puff 99% of the time, and it pisses of parents who grew up with Motley Crue and Poison doing the talking for them, so it's inherently the "in" thing.
The only real problem with it is the number of kids it introduces to the concept of "money is for buying bitches, and guns is for talkin" (there, I paraphrased the entire genre for you! Happy? 8).
So while I understand why game manufacturers are going for this target demographic, I don't know if it's neccesarily something I feel is a good thing.
You have to remember that until this generation of parents decide to start being parents, this is the kinda drek which is raising their kids while they're out trying to relive their childhoods themselves.
Personally, I'd rather role play Leisure Suit Larry type characters than Snoop Dogg anyday. There's just something more fun about playing a smarmy cartoon character, and letting my imagination fill in some of the blanks, than playing a life like copy of a real life black pimp.
One's role-playing, and the other's just envy over an impossibility.
Yeah, what's up with that?
Talk about alienating a HUGE potential market. I have an ATI AIW on my media box, but was seriously considering something like this for my Mac (which is in a different area of the house).
I guess EyeTV won't be getting my hard earned cash!
On a related note, all of Eye TV's recorders (that I've seen) record in mpeg2 format - Does the Mac have a decent Mpeg2 editing solution yet?
It's very frustrating that I can chop commercials off my mpegs on my Winbox in seconds, but there's only choppy workarounds at best for doing the same thing on my new Mac (which seems to prefer DV only ).
I really can't understand why Quicktime Pro doesn't support this (and I wish I would have known before buying the pro version from Apple. Their documentation's VERY misleading).
Introduce legislation to prevent people from lobbying for business's in which they themselves have a financial interest in.
For example, if I remember correctly Senator Hatch supposedly receives royalties from several (questionable) musical projects of his. Thus he should not be allowed to introduce legislation which could financially benefit him through his affiliation with the RIAA, and/or his project(s). It's a clear conflict of interest to me.
There should be a window of time to make this a viable solution. Something to the effect off not being able to profit or work for any represented industry's for 5 years prior to taking office, or 5 years after taking office. This should eliminate any doubts about someones ulterior motives, while ensuring that people aren't passing laws simply to increase their own bottom line.
Why throw a ton of people into quickly improving an emerging new technology when we can split all those people up into smaller teams to try & develop the same thing from several different angles.
Thus rather than continually improving upon potential "killer apps" (not that I'm saying Looking Glass is such an app), we can all slowly develop slightly different versions of the same thing, all the while ensuring that cross-compatability doesn't exist.
Oh! And don't forget the reunion party in 2 years when we all get drunk and lament the fact that products from the likes of Microsoft stole the fire that should have been ours. Even though our solution was technically superior to Microsofts.
Ok... Maybe I do sound a bit jaded, but it sure does seem that as soon as a killer new technology or application comes on the market, we suddenly have a ton of applications being produced trying to replicate the performance of that technology, rather than either building upon the strengths of it, or developing a totally different, non-copycat alternative. Wassup with that?
Everytime I see the whole "IE vs. [every other browser]" debate I wonder why no one's yet came up with a simple, "IE Compatible" layer for Mozilla yet.
How hard could it be to program a "pluggable" (meaning that it's a simple 'use or don't use' checkable option in the preferences) layer which would read the incoming HTML code, and then quickly re-interprete and optimize it for Mozilla before outputting it in the browser?
Now I'm a web developer, and I realize that this isn't a 100% solution since there's so many variables, and so many styles of coding. It would be a constantly improving thing (duh... software), but it wouldn't be too difficult to determine the optimal way to present HTML code in Mozilla. On a modern PC (1ghz+), the process shouldn't really introduce any kind of a noticable delay.
It'd erase the last reason to use IE. Additionally as could be made to allow the user to simply choose which sites to use the "IE Mode" with. Thus they could view Mozilla's default display/interpretation on all sites other than what they've specified. Then the browser would silently switch into IE mode when needed.
I'm a web developer and code things differently for Mozilla and IE all the time. This would save me and countless other developers having to do double the code just to handle the fact that IE and non-IE browsers don't always see things equally. And don't get into the whole "That's because Mozilla displays HTML as it should be and IE..." crap. I think the only browser that might be 100% W3C compatible is Opera, and I'm not too sure about that. Mozilla, Netscape, IE, and all the rest all have their share of unique issues/nuances.
But aside from saving my lazy ass some extra work, this would also help to ensure that all browser users see things equally with Mozilla.
So... Why hasn't anyone done this? Am I missing something? Something like this is doable in Javascript and is done daily (if browser==Netscrape{Do...}), but why no on/off "IE mode" compatability layer for Mozilla?
I'm sure the author intended it as a compliment (12 year olds get "kinda funny" when it comes to older women), but what a depressing observation of the status quo of geek girls.
If Eugenia's the pinnacle of what geekdom has to offer it's males, I'm really surprised that I don't run into more gay IT guys.
I'm not really up on the Gimps' licensing status, but assuming it's OSS, why is it that one of the complainers doesn't just build the Gimp a new GUI?
If the source is all OSS, wouldn't it just be a matter of someone just putting their skills to work, and creating a new GUI in which to house the Gimps functionality?
I'm not a Gimp user myself (I've used it, but my opinion of the GUI is the same as a lot of others: Too many open windows and right click menus), but I don't see any reason that the existing functionality of the Gimp couldn't be tied a new interface rather easily (be it a Photoshop clone, or some new and unique look).
Obviously I'm over-simplifying this a bit, but the average GUI is simply a bunch of controls which tell the backend functions what to do. How hard could something like this be if someone put their mind to it?
I've been playing around with the adodb library in my spare time. It seems fairly powerful, and flexible (so much so that I really have to question why everyone doesn't write using it, since it opens your script up to a much wider potential audience).
But now I wonder whether it's more secure that plain ol' vanilla php/mysql (keeping in mind that my globals are off, code's written with POSTs & GETs in mind, and so on).
If it is more secure, then I have to ask why it's not made the standard for accessing databases w/php? It seems comprehensive enough to replace php's built in database functionality, and as mentioned, by using it, suddenly your scripts are compatible with a lot more databases, as opposed to being written specifically for mySQL.
I've always had a really hard time trying to side w/the satellite providers on the issue of piracy.
I mean, in the case of cable piracy, you're exploiting a service which you're paying for the priveledge of. In other words, you wouldn't have cable if someone hand't hooked it up and ran wires.
It's the same with stealing electricty. It's not just laying around on your property waiting to be used... You have to pay for the priveledge of having electricty, just like you have to continue to pay in order to use it.
But with satellite it's different. They're shooting their signal across my land, so to my twisted way of thinking, there's not a lot of difference between me putting up an antenna to catch on-air broadcast feeds (ie, NBC, ABC, etc), and me buying a receivier and antenna to receive the satellite waves that are there for the taking.
I know there's a lot more to it from the legal point of view as well as from the ethical standpoint, but to me it's hard to really call someone who just buys the equipment and sets it up in their own home a criminal. They didn't run a line to illegally tap into some companies pay-for-use system. They didn't splice into someone elses services.
They simply installed the neccesary equipment to receive what's already on their property.
In one sense, I have to say that I can't really see why the satellite companies don't just sell the equipment and then make their money in premium services and advertising (as tv networks have been doing for some time now, with amazing success!). Give the standard programming away, and charge those who want more (this could probably be acconplished by encrypting certain streams, and sending out the free ones as unencrypted or something. I'm not satellite techie, but it seems fairly straight-forward).
In other words, give the razors away, and sell razor blades.
Of course the capitalist side of me says "That's no way to run a business", and thinks of all the backend licensing and copyright work that would be involved in order to make something like this happen.
But still... I have a hard labelling those who choose to freely receive what's already being broadcast to them as criminals. The day there's no more rape or murder in the world, that's the day I'll start considering satellite piracy a real crime.
The first post in this thread, though modded as flame-bait, is exactly how the majority of previous Iomega purchasers feel.
The Zip Drive was a nice... novelty. I never purchased one as I thought the media was too slow and too overpriced. It was also introduced just as CD burners were becoming mainstream, and there's no doubt who won that war. A CD golds 6-7 times more data than a zip disk, is drastically cheaper than the aforementioned zip disk, and every computer can use the media (unlike said zip disk)!
No... The zip drive never got my money. I was instead suckered into the whole Jaz drive debacle.
Without reiterating what all of us suckers now know, the Jaz drive was the biggest most over-priced piece of shit ever!
And that in itself might have been ok had Iomega came forward, stepped up to the plate and said "We had some quality control issues. We've corrected these, and have trashed all the affected units. In addition, those who have purchased said drives can now exchange them at their nearest retailer for an updated version at no cost".
They had such an opportunity to make a great customer servicing impression on all of us poor mistreated buyers, but they didn't. Instead they offered rude customer service reps who prefered to blame the user for the problems as opposed to admitting to them themselves.
Then they offered solutions that didn't fix anything, and cost the user more money - "Well... You can send the unit back to us at your cost, and we'll look at it. If we find anything wrong, we'll replace it with a remanufactured unit" (That will
likely also have the same "click of death" problem you're currently experiencing).
Does anyone remember the eventual outcome of this? All of us who got suckered into the Jaz drive were eventually allowed to return our damaged goods for credit towards another Iomega purchase.
That was their answer after a couple of years of harrasment and threatened law suits.
So no Iomega, I'm not interested in another of your products, no matter how good it sounds.
And isn't it interesting how the 'Son of Jaz' comes out just as dual sided DVD's and such as now coming into the consumer arena!
It'll be almost an instant replay of the CD/Original Jaz drive fight, and I'll bet money on the fact that in a few years or so, you'll have an entirely new generation of people complaining about Iomegas quality and customer service. Not to mention whining about how they wish they'd have waitied for the higher density DVD burners to become more mainstream.
Iomega is forever synonymous(SP?) with "Bad" and "Waste of money" in my book now. And you?
Really... The music industry (specifically the RIAA) still does not get it! They're obviously still working under the old school sales book of "find something consumers want, and as soon as they show they're willing to pay for it, raise the price".
Their business model is probably a slight variation of the typical "Underwear Gnomes" theory, and goes something like this...
1. Introduce new music/artists which sound and look very similar to other acts you've succesfully promoted
2. Drop newly signed artists if their debut record sales don't top the sales of existing signed acts
3. As soon as the listening audience shows interest in anything being promoted, immediately mass-market it to the point where they're all sick of it (Thus insuring that 90% of the signed acts out there never release a succesfull sophmore album due to the over-saturation of their 1st)
4. As people begin to get sick of the oversaturation, begin to crank up prices to try and suck as much as possible from the remaining buyers
5. As sales continue to dwindle off, spend enormous amounts of money tying to find a scape goat to point the finger at, rather than
a. spend that money on R&D to improve the company's operations
b. spend it on signing better, more original acts.
c. Trying to figure out what consumers really want
6. Sue, and threaten to sue anyone who markets or trades music in any way outside of the usual channels established by said music industry. Above all, DO NOT let the established monopoly change
7. Continue to charge more to those who are honest and continue to pay for their music. Blame the increase on the scape goats established in step 5
8. Repeat
As the saying goes, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
There's been a lot of work put into making the average PC understand its user over the past few years, but I've yet to see one that can convince the the average surfer to sit in his or her office/den/bedroom and talk to their screen. It doesn't feel natural, and most people feel that talking to ones PC is rather an awkward, embarrasing thing. And embarrassing isn't really the word I want to use, but those who I know who've tried it, and those who I've talked to about it have said that they're a little too self-conscious to talk to their PC alone in a room.
I'm kind of in that boat myself too. While I think that anyone would readily play with such technology, there haven't been a lot of people willing to stick with it, and I think that's largely due to the "Who am I talking too? It's just a piece of furnitue" mentality.
Someday, when we're all oil for some future earth mining civilization, people will talk to their PC's and be able to hold up conversations with them I envision.
Something like:
"PC, Can you tell me when my next meeting with Mr. SoAndSo is? Oh! And bring up CNN for me would you? I want to check the headlines"
And the computer would respond with something like "Your next meeting with Mr. SoAndSo is currently scheduled for May 18. Would you like me to change that?"
And the user would say "No, just go on with the headlines please", to which the computer would start telling the user about the headlines of the day. It would interject little things like "CNN is reporting that 30 people died in a plane crash in Switzerland, but MSNBC's saying that only 24 died, so I'm not really sure which is accurate right now.
It'd be much more a conversation than you and I currently saying "PC, Go to CNN", "PC, Open Word", and so on. I would imagine that eventually productivity usage of the computer could be entirely verbally driven, from dictation to simply helping a user through his day... Something you could "chat with" while getting dressed, working on something else, exercising and so on. The PC would be our informer, figuring out what we want, and offering opinions and information based on discussions we would have with it, as well as prior conversations, and expressed interests. In short, it would do what a computer's always been designed to do: It'd make our lives easier, but in ways which simply are not possible today.
Right now such technology is very clunky when compared what I've described... Kind of a silky smooth "invisible friend" of the future. I understand that there's obviously going to be a lot of "in-between" stages for such technology, but I'd rather see todays developers focusing on making my PC more productive as opposed to sticking an auditory interface over a point-and-click technology. When my computer can surprise me with its knowledge and vocabulary, as opposed to repeating phrases I've programmed into it, and translating text into speech I'll be impressed.
Simply converting the on-screen text and reading it to me in a monotone voice is not what I want. I want my PC to know the types of news I frequently look for, and I want it to be able to paraphrase, and provide it to me in a meaningful, well-articulated manner. And I want it to feel like someone's there personally telling me of the days events. I want to be able to interupt and request greater detail on a specific bit of news. In short, I want my computer to work for me, and I want it to grow with me as my needs and interests change.
But that's so far down the line... 8(
For now this is a neat technology, but I'd imagine it will only appeal to the true geeks out there. Most will play with it and then go back to the more "private" methods of interfacing, such as mouse and keyboard.
I came across name-brand 4x burners yesterday for $63.00.
But as soon as I considered buying a 2nd burner I already have a 4x Sony), that thought was supplemented by the thought of "The next version of burners must be right around the corner". Voila! The next day, and here it is.
Has anyone heard what the dual-layered media will cost (ballpark? Don't even know if it's avail. yet).
Also, the fact that I can get another 4x burner for about the same cost as a decent CD burner has me thinking about adding a burner to my media PC. Has anyone done this w/their PVR system yet? I've seen a fair amount of CD-burner addons/features, but nothing for DVD yet...
I had a poor customer service experience with Dish Network just last Sunday (cancelling an appt. that had been on the books for over 90 days with less then a 24 hour notice to me, after it was too late to reverse the time off I'd requested for the appointment!), so might be a bit biased at the moment, but here's my thoughts (paraphrased from an email I sent via the CEOofDishNetwork@Dishnetwork.com address listed on their website):
...your website seems to indicate that you expect us, the consumers to lobby the networks carried by Viacom to get you a discount??? If I make any call as a result of this fiasco, it will only be to change my satellite TV provider. You need to face the facts and accept the blame, or you're going to lose a lot of people on this one!
You could have easily added alternative programming, additional channels, or even a discounted bill of more than the $1.00 a month you guys are doing. One dollar isn't even the cost of a 2 hour pay-per-view movie on your own network, and yet you've made hours worth of potential viewing material unavailable to me by removing so many of my channels.
This is not good customer service, nor is it good planning!
And I believe what I wrote. They can stick up for themselves and not pay off Viacom all they want, but if I'm the one getting screwed over, I really don't care about their costs. I'm still paying the same (forgetting a moment their paltry $1.00 off deal), and now they're making even more than before due to not having to pay Viacom. Who's winning and who's losing here?
And it's not like they couldn't see it coming. They knew their decision long before we did... They could have shut me up for awhile just by adding some alternative programming to my package until the whole mess was solved.
[In the tone of the infamous John Belushi]
But NOOOOOOOOO......
[/end rant]
For a content management system I've developed, I prototyped all of the basic functionality by using Access as a GUI for mySQL.
And I loved it! I actually considered doing the whole thing this way for a bit as it offered so many of Access's strengths (quick and powerful GUI building, familiar environment, everyone has it, etc.), but was combined with mySQL's stability, scalability (Well... For the needs of my target audience at least), and versatility.
All's you need to tinker with this is the free MyODBC package, and suddenly your mySQL database is seen as a standard ODBC one.
You can build table relationships within Access using mySQL based source data. You can locate the mySQL server anywhere you want (local or remote), point Access at it, and there ya go.
Additionally you can now use VBA within Access to take advantage of many Active-X components, as well as a wealth of freely available VB code.
There were several reasons I went back to my original plan of just prototyping in Access, and deploying via a web-based setup:
Obviously not everyone has Access. Many do, or have access to it via work or school (access to Access?!?)
There were certain things that were easier to implement in an HTML-based setting (conversely, there's things I still can't equal that were accomplished easily using VB & Active-X. Things such as a customized file browser with a built in image viewer)
While some of my VB code and Active-X'ing would have been transferable to the web, it would have required requiring that the user of my system use IE to administer it. Not gonna happen!
I just don't like Microsoft enough to make my product only available to users of their software. The above IE example would have required my admins to IE; Access would require users to have Access; Having Access implies that the user must also run Windows (Wine just isn't there for Access usage I'm afraid. At least not for very advanced usage)
But for other projects I have, who's target audience is Windows users, Access is a great way to quickly build some impressive mySQL-based applications.
IMHO, of course.
8)=
Here it is in a nutshell:
The phone company should offer a service whereim if a telemarketer calls (and as he pointed out, the telephone company certainly would be aware of what incoming calls are from telemarketers since they dole out the numbers themselves), they shoould here a message stating "You appear to be a telemarketer. %Your Name% is willing to hear what you have to say, provided you agree to a $1.00 (or $2, whatever...) charge for this call. Press 1 to accept the charges, or please hang up".
As Andy pointed out, such a service should be offered as free since the phone company could then have half of whatever was taken in as payment, with the rest going to whomever the phone belongs to.
Not a bad idea. Offer this in addition to the do not call list, and you might have the solution: Those who don't want the calls wouldn't get them, and those who are willing to talk to the salespeople for a fee would make a little extra cash. It might also be incentive for all of the scummy telemarketing firms to actually train their callers as to what's considered good customer service vs. the crap we get now!
This whole situation is bullshit, Nobody on earth is going to confuse Apple Computer Inc. with Apple Corps Ltd. So the trademark point should be moot.
Actually, I might be mistaken, but since they signed the agreement the first two times (keeping in mind that each time it was apparently spelled out what they could/couldn't do), I don't think it really matters how much bullshit this is.
If it was the 1st time the suit had been drawn up, I might agree, but if Apple agreed to the terms, I'll bet it'll be hard to argue "But that was then... This is now".
I don't think you will be watching a DVD on this 'media PC'. I didn't see anything in the specs about it having a DVD drive.
Well, I didn't see anything in the main article myself, as it was Slashdotted before I could get to it, but if you'd have followed the link to Zeus computers posted earlier in this thread (here), you'd have seen that it indeed does support an "optical drive". Last I checked, DVD drives were indeed optical.
I priced out building a miniATX entertainment system... the price works out to around $650
That sounds about right. I built a PVR system about a year and a half ago and spent around $600-$700, using an AMD 1600+ CPU, and a 8500DV video card.
My system still works great (using the awsome Showshifter software to drive the entire thing (Check it out here), but now that I've upgraded my primary system to include a DVD burner (Sony 4x - Nice!), I find my system struggling to record at 704x480 resolution, so I've began to look into a CPU upgrade. This system however might meet my needs. Just toss a P4 CPU into it along w/my existing memory and video card and it looks like I'm good to go.
I certainly don't see it as the over-priced CD Player that you appear to.
One area I would love to know more about is the periphreals... While a shuttle job controller is very cool, how would it tie in with existing software (The aforementioned Showshifter, or even Freevo, for example).
How would the Tuner tie in w/the system, or does it? Perhaps it's just a standalone tune w/audio outs to plug into a soundcard??
If anyone has more details regarding these items, or the heat dispertion of this unit, please post them.
Um... X-10 anyone? It isn't just for spy cameras you know. 8)=
A couple of quick references to get you started:
http://www/smarthome.com
http://www.x10.com
I've built a PC for use as a VCR which uses a ATI Radeon 8500DV video card. This card is nice for a varitey of reasons, but one of the main strenghts (for me) is that it comes with a connector supporting a variety of inputs and outputs.
By the way, you could basically do this with any decent/modern/1Ghz+ system & the aforementioned video card -Or one similar to it (The ATI 7500's a reputable alternative). But anyway...
In my case I've got a variety of peripherals tied into my 8500 via a Video Switcher (example: $50 ), and I run the output of this switcher through a signal enhancer (example: $50) before it's ran into the 8500's S-Video input.
One of the things connected via the switcher is a nice 4-head stereo VCR. By running the VCR through the enhancer, I can get quite good copies of video tapes.
Similarly, by running Showshifter (or another PVR / recording package -But Showshifter has some really nice DivX capabilities built in), I'm able to automatically encode the VCR's output as a stereo, high-quality DivX file in real time.
Or you could use any other video codec really. If it was something you wanted to edit, or preserve at high quality, you could record in a non-lossy codec, edit as needed in a video editor (Virtual Dub's a good place to start), and then encode down to a DivX (or again... Any codec. AVI, Mpeg, DivX, or even... Windows Media Format).
A side bonus of running the video switch through the enhancer is that a DVD player's output can be piped through and recorded as the enhancer removes the copy-protection. Not that I'd ever hook a DVD player up to my video switch to find this out (or to record a few rented DVD's for that matter), but one could do so if one wanted too.
Either way, the resulting video files can either be converted to VCD or SVCD (These both are burned onto regular CD's, with the former fitting slightly more, lower-resolution video on the CD than the latter. Both are also playable in the majority of modern DVD players), or DVD (self-explanatory) formats via programs such as Nero . I'm not an expert on the lifetime degredation of either CD or DVD media, but both are arguably going to be around and in good shape longer than some old VHS tapes.
Another option is to burn them as data files onto any of the aforementioned media, and set them up with an autorun software package so that your intended viewers can just pop it in a PC and go (another up and coming option here). Doing it this way offers the capability to save higher resolution video, but it also requires that your viewers view it either on a PC, or on a TV connected to a PC. There's some other pros and cons as well, but that's the basics from my point of view.
For archiving old VHS footage, I would reccomend recording the video via a method similar to what I've described above, and then outputting the footage as a regular old DVD. DVD's can support... what is it? 704x480 or something like that, and that's way higher than the 320x200 or whatever that standard TV broadcasts at (and this is likely the resolution you'd have on VHS tapes, I'm guessin'). This would ensure you wouldn't have to lose much if any quality, and the resulting footage will be viewable either on a consumer DVD player, or on a PC via a DVD drive, which are more or less standard these days.
Similarly, with 4x DVD burners hitting the "below $300" market, it's a good investment as you can back up your other data and videos when you're done archiving tapes. If that's not enough, you'll also be able to sample the
Slashdot Mirror
My money goes towards other interests than gaming.
I mean come on... Does anyone really think that all the little "nigga" wannabe's are anything other than mass marketed MTV drones?
If everyone that 'talks the talk" also 'walked the walk', than 2/3 of the population would be in prison, or dead. It's a bunch of huff and puff 99% of the time, and it pisses of parents who grew up with Motley Crue and Poison doing the talking for them, so it's inherently the "in" thing.
The only real problem with it is the number of kids it introduces to the concept of "money is for buying bitches, and guns is for talkin" (there, I paraphrased the entire genre for you! Happy? 8).
So while I understand why game manufacturers are going for this target demographic, I don't know if it's neccesarily something I feel is a good thing.
You have to remember that until this generation of parents decide to start being parents, this is the kinda drek which is raising their kids while they're out trying to relive their childhoods themselves.
Personally, I'd rather role play Leisure Suit Larry type characters than Snoop Dogg anyday. There's just something more fun about playing a smarmy cartoon character, and letting my imagination fill in some of the blanks, than playing a life like copy of a real life black pimp.
One's role-playing, and the other's just envy over an impossibility.
Yeah, what's up with that? Talk about alienating a HUGE potential market. I have an ATI AIW on my media box, but was seriously considering something like this for my Mac (which is in a different area of the house). I guess EyeTV won't be getting my hard earned cash! On a related note, all of Eye TV's recorders (that I've seen) record in mpeg2 format - Does the Mac have a decent Mpeg2 editing solution yet? It's very frustrating that I can chop commercials off my mpegs on my Winbox in seconds, but there's only choppy workarounds at best for doing the same thing on my new Mac (which seems to prefer DV only ). I really can't understand why Quicktime Pro doesn't support this (and I wish I would have known before buying the pro version from Apple. Their documentation's VERY misleading).
Introduce legislation to prevent people from lobbying for business's in which they themselves have a financial interest in.
For example, if I remember correctly Senator Hatch supposedly receives royalties from several (questionable) musical projects of his. Thus he should not be allowed to introduce legislation which could financially benefit him through his affiliation with the RIAA, and/or his project(s). It's a clear conflict of interest to me.
There should be a window of time to make this a viable solution. Something to the effect off not being able to profit or work for any represented industry's for 5 years prior to taking office, or 5 years after taking office. This should eliminate any doubts about someones ulterior motives, while ensuring that people aren't passing laws simply to increase their own bottom line.
Thoughts?
While I like to see bands do this kinda stuff, why couldn't it be someone who's music I'm willing to pay for?
Why throw a ton of people into quickly improving an emerging new technology when we can split all those people up into smaller teams to try & develop the same thing from several different angles.
...End Rant...
Thus rather than continually improving upon potential "killer apps" (not that I'm saying Looking Glass is such an app), we can all slowly develop slightly different versions of the same thing, all the while ensuring that cross-compatability doesn't exist.
Oh! And don't forget the reunion party in 2 years when we all get drunk and lament the fact that products from the likes of Microsoft stole the fire that should have been ours. Even though our solution was technically superior to Microsofts.
Ok... Maybe I do sound a bit jaded, but it sure does seem that as soon as a killer new technology or application comes on the market, we suddenly have a ton of applications being produced trying to replicate the performance of that technology, rather than either building upon the strengths of it, or developing a totally different, non-copycat alternative. Wassup with that?
Everytime I see the whole "IE vs. [every other browser]" debate I wonder why no one's yet came up with a simple, "IE Compatible" layer for Mozilla yet.
How hard could it be to program a "pluggable" (meaning that it's a simple 'use or don't use' checkable option in the preferences) layer which would read the incoming HTML code, and then quickly re-interprete and optimize it for Mozilla before outputting it in the browser?
Now I'm a web developer, and I realize that this isn't a 100% solution since there's so many variables, and so many styles of coding. It would be a constantly improving thing (duh... software), but it wouldn't be too difficult to determine the optimal way to present HTML code in Mozilla. On a modern PC (1ghz+), the process shouldn't really introduce any kind of a noticable delay.
It'd erase the last reason to use IE. Additionally as could be made to allow the user to simply choose which sites to use the "IE Mode" with. Thus they could view Mozilla's default display/interpretation on all sites other than what they've specified. Then the browser would silently switch into IE mode when needed.
I'm a web developer and code things differently for Mozilla and IE all the time. This would save me and countless other developers having to do double the code just to handle the fact that IE and non-IE browsers don't always see things equally. And don't get into the whole "That's because Mozilla displays HTML as it should be and IE..." crap. I think the only browser that might be 100% W3C compatible is Opera, and I'm not too sure about that. Mozilla, Netscape, IE, and all the rest all have their share of unique issues/nuances.
But aside from saving my lazy ass some extra work, this would also help to ensure that all browser users see things equally with Mozilla.
So... Why hasn't anyone done this? Am I missing something? Something like this is doable in Javascript and is done daily (if browser==Netscrape{Do...}), but why no on/off "IE mode" compatability layer for Mozilla?
I'm sure the author intended it as a compliment (12 year olds get "kinda funny" when it comes to older women), but what a depressing observation of the status quo of geek girls.
If Eugenia's the pinnacle of what geekdom has to offer it's males, I'm really surprised that I don't run into more gay IT guys.
Her looks SO don't make up for her personality...
I'm not really up on the Gimps' licensing status, but assuming it's OSS, why is it that one of the complainers doesn't just build the Gimp a new GUI?
If the source is all OSS, wouldn't it just be a matter of someone just putting their skills to work, and creating a new GUI in which to house the Gimps functionality?
I'm not a Gimp user myself (I've used it, but my opinion of the GUI is the same as a lot of others: Too many open windows and right click menus), but I don't see any reason that the existing functionality of the Gimp couldn't be tied a new interface rather easily (be it a Photoshop clone, or some new and unique look).
Obviously I'm over-simplifying this a bit, but the average GUI is simply a bunch of controls which tell the backend functions what to do. How hard could something like this be if someone put their mind to it?
I've been playing around with the adodb library in my spare time. It seems fairly powerful, and flexible (so much so that I really have to question why everyone doesn't write using it, since it opens your script up to a much wider potential audience).
But now I wonder whether it's more secure that plain ol' vanilla php/mysql (keeping in mind that my globals are off, code's written with POSTs & GETs in mind, and so on).
If it is more secure, then I have to ask why it's not made the standard for accessing databases w/php? It seems comprehensive enough to replace php's built in database functionality, and as mentioned, by using it, suddenly your scripts are compatible with a lot more databases, as opposed to being written specifically for mySQL.
I've always had a really hard time trying to side w/the satellite providers on the issue of piracy.
I mean, in the case of cable piracy, you're exploiting a service which you're paying for the priveledge of. In other words, you wouldn't have cable if someone hand't hooked it up and ran wires.
It's the same with stealing electricty. It's not just laying around on your property waiting to be used... You have to pay for the priveledge of having electricty, just like you have to continue to pay in order to use it.
But with satellite it's different. They're shooting their signal across my land, so to my twisted way of thinking, there's not a lot of difference between me putting up an antenna to catch on-air broadcast feeds (ie, NBC, ABC, etc), and me buying a receivier and antenna to receive the satellite waves that are there for the taking.
I know there's a lot more to it from the legal point of view as well as from the ethical standpoint, but to me it's hard to really call someone who just buys the equipment and sets it up in their own home a criminal. They didn't run a line to illegally tap into some companies pay-for-use system. They didn't splice into someone elses services.
They simply installed the neccesary equipment to receive what's already on their property.
In one sense, I have to say that I can't really see why the satellite companies don't just sell the equipment and then make their money in premium services and advertising (as tv networks have been doing for some time now, with amazing success!). Give the standard programming away, and charge those who want more (this could probably be acconplished by encrypting certain streams, and sending out the free ones as unencrypted or something. I'm not satellite techie, but it seems fairly straight-forward).
In other words, give the razors away, and sell razor blades.
Of course the capitalist side of me says "That's no way to run a business", and thinks of all the backend licensing and copyright work that would be involved in order to make something like this happen.
But still... I have a hard labelling those who choose to freely receive what's already being broadcast to them as criminals. The day there's no more rape or murder in the world, that's the day I'll start considering satellite piracy a real crime.
Not trying to troll... Just thinking out loud...
The first post in this thread, though modded as flame-bait, is exactly how the majority of previous Iomega purchasers feel.
The Zip Drive was a nice... novelty. I never purchased one as I thought the media was too slow and too overpriced. It was also introduced just as CD burners were becoming mainstream, and there's no doubt who won that war. A CD golds 6-7 times more data than a zip disk, is drastically cheaper than the aforementioned zip disk, and every computer can use the media (unlike said zip disk)!
No... The zip drive never got my money. I was instead suckered into the whole Jaz drive debacle.
Without reiterating what all of us suckers now know, the Jaz drive was the biggest most over-priced piece of shit ever!
And that in itself might have been ok had Iomega came forward, stepped up to the plate and said "We had some quality control issues. We've corrected these, and have trashed all the affected units. In addition, those who have purchased said drives can now exchange them at their nearest retailer for an updated version at no cost".
They had such an opportunity to make a great customer servicing impression on all of us poor mistreated buyers, but they didn't. Instead they offered rude customer service reps who prefered to blame the user for the problems as opposed to admitting to them themselves.
Then they offered solutions that didn't fix anything, and cost the user more money - "Well... You can send the unit back to us at your cost, and we'll look at it. If we find anything wrong, we'll replace it with a remanufactured unit" (That will likely also have the same "click of death" problem you're currently experiencing).
Does anyone remember the eventual outcome of this? All of us who got suckered into the Jaz drive were eventually allowed to return our damaged goods for credit towards another Iomega purchase.
That was their answer after a couple of years of harrasment and threatened law suits.
So no Iomega, I'm not interested in another of your products, no matter how good it sounds.
And isn't it interesting how the 'Son of Jaz' comes out just as dual sided DVD's and such as now coming into the consumer arena!
It'll be almost an instant replay of the CD/Original Jaz drive fight, and I'll bet money on the fact that in a few years or so, you'll have an entirely new generation of people complaining about Iomegas quality and customer service. Not to mention whining about how they wish they'd have waitied for the higher density DVD burners to become more mainstream.
Iomega is forever synonymous(SP?) with "Bad" and "Waste of money" in my book now. And you?
Really... The music industry (specifically the RIAA) still does not get it! They're obviously still working under the old school sales book of "find something consumers want, and as soon as they show they're willing to pay for it, raise the price".
Their business model is probably a slight variation of the typical "Underwear Gnomes" theory, and goes something like this...
1. Introduce new music/artists which sound and look very similar to other acts you've succesfully promoted
2. Drop newly signed artists if their debut record sales don't top the sales of existing signed acts
3. As soon as the listening audience shows interest in anything being promoted, immediately mass-market it to the point where they're all sick of it (Thus insuring that 90% of the signed acts out there never release a succesfull sophmore album due to the over-saturation of their 1st)
4. As people begin to get sick of the oversaturation, begin to crank up prices to try and suck as much as possible from the remaining buyers
5. As sales continue to dwindle off, spend enormous amounts of money tying to find a scape goat to point the finger at, rather than
a. spend that money on R&D to improve the company's operations
b. spend it on signing better, more original acts.
c. Trying to figure out what consumers really want
6. Sue, and threaten to sue anyone who markets or trades music in any way outside of the usual channels established by said music industry. Above all, DO NOT let the established monopoly change
7. Continue to charge more to those who are honest and continue to pay for their music. Blame the increase on the scape goats established in step 5
8. Repeat
As the saying goes, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
I actually came across this plugin last night while looking for a fix to Firefox losing my bookmarks for my toolbar.
I thought "neat", and quickly moved on, looking for what I was after. It didn't warrant much interest other than that.
And now when I wake up it's front page material for Slashdot??? What gives? Is Sco suing them or something?
There's been a lot of work put into making the average PC understand its user over the past few years, but I've yet to see one that can convince the the average surfer to sit in his or her office/den/bedroom and talk to their screen. It doesn't feel natural, and most people feel that talking to ones PC is rather an awkward, embarrasing thing. And embarrassing isn't really the word I want to use, but those who I know who've tried it, and those who I've talked to about it have said that they're a little too self-conscious to talk to their PC alone in a room.
I'm kind of in that boat myself too. While I think that anyone would readily play with such technology, there haven't been a lot of people willing to stick with it, and I think that's largely due to the "Who am I talking too? It's just a piece of furnitue" mentality.
Someday, when we're all oil for some future earth mining civilization, people will talk to their PC's and be able to hold up conversations with them I envision.
Something like:
"PC, Can you tell me when my next meeting with Mr. SoAndSo is? Oh! And bring up CNN for me would you? I want to check the headlines"
And the computer would respond with something like "Your next meeting with Mr. SoAndSo is currently scheduled for May 18. Would you like me to change that?"
And the user would say "No, just go on with the headlines please", to which the computer would start telling the user about the headlines of the day. It would interject little things like "CNN is reporting that 30 people died in a plane crash in Switzerland, but MSNBC's saying that only 24 died, so I'm not really sure which is accurate right now.
It'd be much more a conversation than you and I currently saying "PC, Go to CNN", "PC, Open Word", and so on. I would imagine that eventually productivity usage of the computer could be entirely verbally driven, from dictation to simply helping a user through his day... Something you could "chat with" while getting dressed, working on something else, exercising and so on. The PC would be our informer, figuring out what we want, and offering opinions and information based on discussions we would have with it, as well as prior conversations, and expressed interests. In short, it would do what a computer's always been designed to do: It'd make our lives easier, but in ways which simply are not possible today.
Right now such technology is very clunky when compared what I've described... Kind of a silky smooth "invisible friend" of the future. I understand that there's obviously going to be a lot of "in-between" stages for such technology, but I'd rather see todays developers focusing on making my PC more productive as opposed to sticking an auditory interface over a point-and-click technology. When my computer can surprise me with its knowledge and vocabulary, as opposed to repeating phrases I've programmed into it, and translating text into speech I'll be impressed.
Simply converting the on-screen text and reading it to me in a monotone voice is not what I want. I want my PC to know the types of news I frequently look for, and I want it to be able to paraphrase, and provide it to me in a meaningful, well-articulated manner. And I want it to feel like someone's there personally telling me of the days events. I want to be able to interupt and request greater detail on a specific bit of news. In short, I want my computer to work for me, and I want it to grow with me as my needs and interests change.
But that's so far down the line... 8(
For now this is a neat technology, but I'd imagine it will only appeal to the true geeks out there. Most will play with it and then go back to the more "private" methods of interfacing, such as mouse and keyboard.
I came across name-brand 4x burners yesterday for $63.00. But as soon as I considered buying a 2nd burner I already have a 4x Sony), that thought was supplemented by the thought of "The next version of burners must be right around the corner". Voila! The next day, and here it is. Has anyone heard what the dual-layered media will cost (ballpark? Don't even know if it's avail. yet).
Also, the fact that I can get another 4x burner for about the same cost as a decent CD burner has me thinking about adding a burner to my media PC. Has anyone done this w/their PVR system yet? I've seen a fair amount of CD-burner addons/features, but nothing for DVD yet...
I had a poor customer service experience with Dish Network just last Sunday (cancelling an appt. that had been on the books for over 90 days with less then a 24 hour notice to me, after it was too late to reverse the time off I'd requested for the appointment!), so might be a bit biased at the moment, but here's my thoughts (paraphrased from an email I sent via the CEOofDishNetwork@Dishnetwork.com address listed on their website):
...your website seems to indicate that you expect us, the consumers to lobby the networks carried by Viacom to get you a discount??? If I make any call as a result of this fiasco, it will only be to change my satellite TV provider. You need to face the facts and accept the blame, or you're going to lose a lot of people on this one!
You could have easily added alternative programming, additional channels, or even a discounted bill of more than the $1.00 a month you guys are doing. One dollar isn't even the cost of a 2 hour pay-per-view movie on your own network, and yet you've made hours worth of potential viewing material unavailable to me by removing so many of my channels.
This is not good customer service, nor is it good planning!
And I believe what I wrote. They can stick up for themselves and not pay off Viacom all they want, but if I'm the one getting screwed over, I really don't care about their costs. I'm still paying the same (forgetting a moment their paltry $1.00 off deal), and now they're making even more than before due to not having to pay Viacom. Who's winning and who's losing here?
And it's not like they couldn't see it coming. They knew their decision long before we did... They could have shut me up for awhile just by adding some alternative programming to my package until the whole mess was solved. [In the tone of the infamous John Belushi] But NOOOOOOOOO...... [/end rant]
"All your planets are belong to us!"
- Obviously not everyone has Access. Many do, or have access to it via work or school (access to Access?!?)
- There were certain things that were easier to implement in an HTML-based setting (conversely, there's things I still can't equal that were accomplished easily using VB & Active-X. Things such as a customized file browser with a built in image viewer)
-
While some of my VB code and Active-X'ing would have been transferable to the web, it would have required requiring that the user of my system use IE to administer it. Not gonna happen!
-
I just don't like Microsoft enough to make my product only available to users of their software. The above IE example would have required my admins to IE; Access would require users to have Access; Having Access implies that the user must also run Windows (Wine just isn't there for Access usage I'm afraid. At least not for very advanced usage)
But for other projects I have, who's target audience is Windows users, Access is a great way to quickly build some impressive mySQL-based applications. IMHO, of course. 8)=Here it is in a nutshell: The phone company should offer a service whereim if a telemarketer calls (and as he pointed out, the telephone company certainly would be aware of what incoming calls are from telemarketers since they dole out the numbers themselves), they shoould here a message stating "You appear to be a telemarketer. %Your Name% is willing to hear what you have to say, provided you agree to a $1.00 (or $2, whatever...) charge for this call. Press 1 to accept the charges, or please hang up". As Andy pointed out, such a service should be offered as free since the phone company could then have half of whatever was taken in as payment, with the rest going to whomever the phone belongs to. Not a bad idea. Offer this in addition to the do not call list, and you might have the solution: Those who don't want the calls wouldn't get them, and those who are willing to talk to the salespeople for a fee would make a little extra cash. It might also be incentive for all of the scummy telemarketing firms to actually train their callers as to what's considered good customer service vs. the crap we get now!
Pity the poor webmaster who has to come home to this!
This whole situation is bullshit, Nobody on earth is going to confuse Apple Computer Inc. with Apple Corps Ltd. So the trademark point should be moot.
Actually, I might be mistaken, but since they signed the agreement the first two times (keeping in mind that each time it was apparently spelled out what they could/couldn't do), I don't think it really matters how much bullshit this is. If it was the 1st time the suit had been drawn up, I might agree, but if Apple agreed to the terms, I'll bet it'll be hard to argue "But that was then... This is now".
I don't think you will be watching a DVD on this 'media PC'. I didn't see anything in the specs about it having a DVD drive.
Well, I didn't see anything in the main article myself, as it was Slashdotted before I could get to it, but if you'd have followed the link to Zeus computers posted earlier in this thread (here), you'd have seen that it indeed does support an "optical drive". Last I checked, DVD drives were indeed optical.
I priced out building a miniATX entertainment system... the price works out to around $650
That sounds about right. I built a PVR system about a year and a half ago and spent around $600-$700, using an AMD 1600+ CPU, and a 8500DV video card.
My system still works great (using the awsome Showshifter software to drive the entire thing (Check it out here), but now that I've upgraded my primary system to include a DVD burner (Sony 4x - Nice!), I find my system struggling to record at 704x480 resolution, so I've began to look into a CPU upgrade. This system however might meet my needs. Just toss a P4 CPU into it along w/my existing memory and video card and it looks like I'm good to go.
I certainly don't see it as the over-priced CD Player that you appear to.
One area I would love to know more about is the periphreals... While a shuttle job controller is very cool, how would it tie in with existing software (The aforementioned Showshifter, or even Freevo, for example).
How would the Tuner tie in w/the system, or does it? Perhaps it's just a standalone tune w/audio outs to plug into a soundcard??
If anyone has more details regarding these items, or the heat dispertion of this unit, please post them.
Um... X-10 anyone? It isn't just for spy cameras you know. 8)= A couple of quick references to get you started: http://www/smarthome.com http://www.x10.com
I've built a PC for use as a VCR which uses a ATI Radeon 8500DV video card. This card is nice for a varitey of reasons, but one of the main strenghts (for me) is that it comes with a connector supporting a variety of inputs and outputs.
By the way, you could basically do this with any decent/modern/1Ghz+ system & the aforementioned video card -Or one similar to it (The ATI 7500's a reputable alternative). But anyway...
In my case I've got a variety of peripherals tied into my 8500 via a Video Switcher (example: $50 ), and I run the output of this switcher through a signal enhancer (example: $50) before it's ran into the 8500's S-Video input.
One of the things connected via the switcher is a nice 4-head stereo VCR. By running the VCR through the enhancer, I can get quite good copies of video tapes.
Similarly, by running Showshifter (or another PVR / recording package -But Showshifter has some really nice DivX capabilities built in), I'm able to automatically encode the VCR's output as a stereo, high-quality DivX file in real time.
Or you could use any other video codec really. If it was something you wanted to edit, or preserve at high quality, you could record in a non-lossy codec, edit as needed in a video editor (Virtual Dub's a good place to start), and then encode down to a DivX (or again... Any codec. AVI, Mpeg, DivX, or even... Windows Media Format).
A side bonus of running the video switch through the enhancer is that a DVD player's output can be piped through and recorded as the enhancer removes the copy-protection. Not that I'd ever hook a DVD player up to my video switch to find this out (or to record a few rented DVD's for that matter), but one could do so if one wanted too.
Either way, the resulting video files can either be converted to VCD or SVCD (These both are burned onto regular CD's, with the former fitting slightly more, lower-resolution video on the CD than the latter. Both are also playable in the majority of modern DVD players), or DVD (self-explanatory) formats via programs such as Nero . I'm not an expert on the lifetime degredation of either CD or DVD media, but both are arguably going to be around and in good shape longer than some old VHS tapes.
Another option is to burn them as data files onto any of the aforementioned media, and set them up with an autorun software package so that your intended viewers can just pop it in a PC and go (another up and coming option here). Doing it this way offers the capability to save higher resolution video, but it also requires that your viewers view it either on a PC, or on a TV connected to a PC. There's some other pros and cons as well, but that's the basics from my point of view.
For archiving old VHS footage, I would reccomend recording the video via a method similar to what I've described above, and then outputting the footage as a regular old DVD. DVD's can support... what is it? 704x480 or something like that, and that's way higher than the 320x200 or whatever that standard TV broadcasts at (and this is likely the resolution you'd have on VHS tapes, I'm guessin'). This would ensure you wouldn't have to lose much if any quality, and the resulting footage will be viewable either on a consumer DVD player, or on a PC via a DVD drive, which are more or less standard these days.
Similarly, with 4x DVD burners hitting the "below $300" market, it's a good investment as you can back up your other data and videos when you're done archiving tapes. If that's not enough, you'll also be able to sample the