The 'real' Amiga (OS4) is still in beta, out with users, but it hasn't gone officially to a release version yet. I still live in hope (yes, I'm one of those sad individuals who still watches what AmigaOS is doing (or isn't, as the case may be), hoping for a resurrection;) )
I wouldn't consider you *really* "sad" unless you were living under the delusion that Amiga OS 4 is likely to do anything in the 'real' world. It's been out of the mainstream so long now that it's going to have to start from scratch on its own merits.
Yeah, even considered separately from the hardware (which would of course be different nowadays anyway) it knocked spots off DOS/Windows 3.1, but that was a long time ago.
Things have moved on, Linux is available, you can run a 'telnet' session under Windows without everything else hanging when it can't connect, and... sorry, I really don't care. If it was to be so much better than Windows/Linux, it would have to be radically different to the old Amiga OS, which would pretty much defeat the purpose. Why not start from scratch?
Kind of reminds of when you had to decide whether you were going to get DVD+R or DVD-R discs.
Now you can get a dual format drive for less than $50 and not have to worry about it.
I'm guessing after a little while we'll see the same thing happen with the new formats and nobody will care which one you're using.
My understanding (gained mainly via my memory of/., so take it with a pound of salt) is that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far more different at a fundamental level, and it wouldn't be as simple to produce devices that support both formats.
Of course, it would probably be possible to squeeze technology to read both types of disks into a single drive, but in a worst-case scenario, this could involve (essentially) two separate mechanisms in the same case, costing at least twice the price.
one could always migrate from OS/2 to the Amiga, as it isn't officially dead, and is still being developed.
Oddly enough, you linked to "Amiga Anywhere", which is an on-top-of-Java-ME environment for software running on mobile devices, AFAIK. What it has to do with the 'classic' Amiga OS (beyond the name) has never been explained to me- I suspect because it has absolutely *nothing* to do with it, and the Amiga company simply figured that slapping that name on it would sell a few more to undemanding nostalgics. Pathetic.
BTW, apparently AmigaOS 4.0 finally came out a few months back, although by this stage I'm not really sure what the point was.
With live action, how are they going to reproduce Megatron?
He's as big as an 18 wheeler truck in robot form, but is a handgun in disguise.
A really damn *big* handgun... ought to get attention from some people.
"Is that an 18 wheel truck in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?"
Anyway, I think that "Ravage" (who transformed into an audio cassette) would have the same problem- can you imagine how unthreatening a robotic panther the size of a C90 would be?
This isn't an issue anyway, as neither Ravage (nor his ghetto-blasting cassette-deck buddy Soundwave) will be appearing in the movie, having become rather unfashionable and outdated.
Apprently, they will be replaced by an iPod that transforms into a style-conscious robot. "iKill" will, claim producers, be the first openly gay Transformer.
Sadly, the loss of Ravage and Soundwave deprive us of the opportunity to witness some extremely screwed-up psychosexual issues, as "cassette" Ravage hides inside his "cassette player" buddy Soundwave.
This loss is a double-blow to Ravage, who never recovered fully after someone recorded a Debbie Gibson album on him in 1989.
That's not going to happen, as such. However, after finishing King Kong, Jackson is supposed to be working on a cash-in prequel- "Lord of the Rings 0" if you like, although the rumoured name is "The Hobbit".
Apparently they contrived some stupid story about a guy who appears at the start of the first LOTR film.
I know I'll never need to use it, but if I had omitted it I'd have inevitably run into some bizarre combination of circumstances where a floppy drive was desperately needed.
That's probably true; although if there's little or no space in the case, there's nothing stopping you from simply plugging the floppy into the mobo as required.
That does have the drawback that you have to turn the computer off to connect the thing (unless you're really desparate and want to risk it); but since it's usually needed on boot these days, it might not be such a significant problem.
Did they also use a 486? You might find LCDs have improved since then.
Very possibly, but the laws of physics likely haven't.
Now, unless you can demonstrate that LCDs have undergone a fundamental change in design (not quality) since then, they're still going to have to block the light twice. Slap that on top of a not-particularly-bright OHP and you're still going to end up with something fairly dim.
Why on earth do you think projectors require such intense (and expensive) bulbs?
There's also this invention called "The Intarweb"...
Yep... I had a web-page back then. Your point being?
I don't really get why one would want DIY here... Having a video-projector, say for home-cinema sake or gaming is mostly about quality of the picture.
When I first went to university in the early-mid 1990s, they used the *same* method to project a computer display; a transparent LCD device (designed for the purpose) placed on an OHP.
It was *horrible*. The OHPs gave (just about) passable performance under most conditions when used for their intended purpose. However, the optics were no better than they needed to be to project text legibly; which is another way of saying they were crap (*especially* in the corners; colour-fringing and lack of focus ahoy...). More importantly, the display was never particularly bright.
And unfortunately, LCDs filter out a lot of light; firstly to convert the "100% RGB" white source to red, green or blue light (discarding at least 2/3 of the light), then *again* in order to reduce the "100%" Red (or green or blue) to the appropriate level for that pixel.
The resultant display was extremely dim, and only at all usable when the curtains were drawn. Even then it was poor; and that was when it was used for Powerpoint slides, not DVDs (especially since DVDs weren't even out then...:)).
Perhaps the guy is using a very bright bulb, and perhaps dealing with light pollution inside the case improves things. However, as most of the problems I described above were down to the *external* light pollution relative to the low brightness of the projected image, I suspect the former.
I still outfit every computer i build with a floppy. Only 10 bucks, and you never know when it'll come in handy.
True; although ironically, the present cheapness of floppy drives and disks have probably contributed to lack of quality, and driven the perception of the floppy further into the ground than would have happened otherwise.
This is beside the point; the floppy's time has been and gone. Which raises a couple of issues with the article:-
(1) The guy is positively relishing the end of floppy disks. Yeah, they're slow, and really too small to be useful for anything except emergency boot disks nowadays. But I remember getting an Atari 800XL with 5.25" drive in the mid-80s (not state-of-the-art, even then) and believe me, when the alternative was program storage on audio cassette (as was the norm for the UK 8-bit market), a floppy drive was pretty damn desirable. Particularly when you consider that Atari games took from 5-25 minutes to load from cassette. *I* didn't hate floppies back then.
(2) It's notable that he doesn't mention the "next-generation" disk drives such as the Iomega Zip and LS-120/Superdisk... the 3.5" floppy comes out bad because it's been around *forever* (original release circa 1982, with the 1.44Mb HD released roughly *twenty years ago*!!). It's not as if the 3.5" was the only potential successor to the 5.25", it just happened to be the one adopted as standard. There were many potential successors to the 3.5", but they didn't become widely adopted enough (not even the relatively popular Zip) to become "transparently" standard.
So, the question is, is he criticising floppies, or just having a go at the 3.5" format? In fact, what was the point of the article at all- that the 1.44Mb floppy is dying? That's not news, we've heard it before, and it's too widespread to die suddenly, although USB drives will hasten its demise.
It's like audio cassettes... I didn't just "stop" using them one day. It just dawned on me that I had no real need for them any more, that I wasn't likely to record any new ones, and that it made more sense to transfer any remaining "commitment" to other formats. They're not woefully obsolete, I don't hate them, I just don't have a real use for them any more.
> > And if the BBC paid for the performance and did the recording they can do whatever
> > they want with it right?
> And since i pay my TV licence that pays for the BBC that should mean that
> it's my recording so I should have access to it.
That doesn't necessarily apply; it depends what the BBC agreed with the performers. They may be entitled to 'repeat' or 'transmission' fees, which were probably negotiated long before this scheme was even a twinkle in its creator's eye. This sort of thing *is* an issue with DVD/VHS release of TV shows recorded before those technologies became common (later contracts would probably include a clause relating to release on various media, although I doubt even those would cover Internet release like this).
Quite right too; the BBC might be government-owned and run "for the people", but that doesn't mean they have the right to deny people the royalties that both sides agreed to.
This might not be the case here, but it shouldn't be assumed that it isn't.
I thought that the BBC collected the fee themselves, they include the costings for collection on how they spend the fees.
My understanding is that (legally) the license fee is "separate" from what the BBC get paid. People with a TV have to pay money to the government which "happens" to match what the BBC get paid by the government.
Of course, we all know that this is nonsense, but I guess it (for one thing) avoids problems such as people who can't get decent BBC reception suing the government on that basis.
after heavy, government-subsided campaigning in favor of the yes, and resignation threats by the prime minister, the new EU constitution, which gives far reaching rights to corporate entities, did indeed get approved
By Luxembourg, after being *rejected* by the French and the Dutch.
And bear in mind that it was by no means an overwhelming "yes", even in the face of so much pressure to vote that way.
My systems professor told us that they chose to create a very complicated assembly language, that while may be efficient, makes programming un-nesceissarly difficult.
What do you mean by difficult to program?
I am not an EE (so correct me if I'm talking out of my backside), but I assume he was talking about the processor relying on effective compilers (lo and behold, a post a couple of screens down says exactly this...)
Although I understand that some assembly (i.e. machine code in human-readable form) programming is still required for certain embedded systems, I'd assume that the Itanium was never intended for that particular application.
Yeah, it's nice to be able to say you've written a program in assembly language for your PC (I've done some *very* basic stuff), but I can't see that being an issue here.
While we're on the subject, I'm not surprised that Intel would like to wipe the slate clean of the x86 architecture; from what I know of it, it must have been a major nightmare to improve performance whilst supporting all that baggage.
Question is, how big a "free lunch" did Intel get when they switched cores from CISC (Pentium I) to RISC (Pentium Pro/Pentium II onwards)? Assuming RISC is reliant on compiler optimization, that would still mean some tricky optimization of the CISC x86 code before it was passed to the RISC unit for execution....
Probably because most everyone has sympathies with the IRA. As not one country in existance has escaped the brutal rape, pillage and torture of the UK/EU collective.
The UK/EU collective has profited from those under it's boot for well over two thousand years.
I'll tell you how to stop IRA retributions. Haul your asses, and assets out of that country.
You really don't have a clue, do you?
The IRA want Northern Ireland to join the Republic.
The Republic of Ireland is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the EU; mainly because they get a good level of funding from them. They're certainly more pro-EU than the UK; the UK is traditionally one of the less enthusiastic EU members.
The "2000 years" comment is so woefully brain-dead (hint; the UK wasn't around 2000 years ago, let alone the EU), I suspect you're trolling anyway.
Right. Because as we all know - Man was put on this Earth to slave off at work, for meager pay just enough to put food on the table and keep the squaw content.
Blatant strawman tactics. Where did I say that?
I was talking about accepting (slightly) less pay for something I enjoyed. You're rambling on about crap pay for (by implication of the word 'slave') something you probably don't enjoy.
Please take your strawman out of here. He's falling apart and making a mess of the floor.
Idiot.
You're calling me an idiot on the basis of a blatant misrepresentation of what I said... or are you just pissed off that I called you one? Grow up.
I wonder how you could live with the fact that you're getting less money for something you quote-unquote "like", while others find jobs where they spend the least amount of effort while still getting $$$?
Uh.... I could live with it because I "quote-unquote" LIKE it. If I spend 1/2 my waking hours doing a job, you can be damn sure I'd rather do one I like.
To give a contrived example, porn star at $25,000 versus office filing clerk who gets to sit around the office half the time at $26,000.
No, this doesn't mean I'd do a job I slightly preferred for half the money; but then I never said that (see above).
BTW, if the job you mention really *is* sitting around, then not only is it likely to get boring fast, but you're not likely to pick up any useful skills to get a better paying job. Frankly, I'll take a job with slightly poorer upfront benefits if I think it's going to stand me in better stead for what *I* want to do.
No, 'we' (the UK) do not believe in 100% free speech, if what 'we' believe in is judged by our laws.
Incitement to racial hatred is just one example of "free" speech that is not permitted.
Free speech doesn't mean anything unless it includes the right to say unpopular things. On the incitement of hatred, for the overall good of us.
There is a difference between expressing an opinion and inciting action.
Someone making a call-to-action is (in part) responsible for that action, even if 'all' they have done is to speak some words.
This is not free speech; there are of course many grey areas inbetween, but it is pretty clear that not all "speech" can be considered on its own.
Talking of free speech, I've heard some rather laughable arguments about it. Now, I'll put my cards on the table and say that there are some things I consider unacceptable (on the basis that they are incitement to hatred), but I'm quite willing to listen to someone else's argument about free speech. Yep, I can actually have some level of respect for someone holding a different opinion to myself if that person isn't a goddamn f*****g hypocrite.
Anyway, I was talking with some Americans online, and said something to the effect that if you aren't willing to support a society that allows a man, in full public view, to burn an American flag without fear for his life then you don't believe in free speech.
You don't have to like it; you don't have to like the guy; you don't even have to serve him in your shop. But if you aren't willing to let him express his opinion by *burning a damn flag*, then you don't believe in free speech.
I got some pretty lame defences of that along the lines of (a) The guy would be creating a nuisance and (b) Burning the flag would cause pollution. Well, for (a) Lots of people create a nuisance expressing their opinions, what's the deal with this one? Let's assume that he was making a legitimate protest; and for (b) Yeah, right. That's your best reason for banning people from burning the flag? Well, let's see you ban all the other pollution you red-blooded right-wingers think it's your God-given right to carry out.(Yeah, I know flag-burning isn't "speech" per se; but it's free expression of opinion- unless the guy is a terrorist intent on polluting God's Own Atmosphere *cough*bullshit*cough*).
In short, they gave bullshit answers and excuses instead of agreeing on principle.
Anyway, it'd be a brave guy who risked his life by burning an American flag in a Deep South town in the US.... 'course, everyone should feel free to express their racist, bigoted opinions. Just so long as you don't upset anyone that matters, right?
I'm not so naive that this was remotely a surprise, although I'd expected some better pseudo-rationale against the flag burning. Freedom of speech my arse.
It seems that most of us Londoners have forgotten the lessons we learnt from the IRA. Ten years ago, you would never, ever let an unattended bag go ignored, and you would never leave bags unattended. [...] I would also like to add a personal view on this, which is; these guys are pathetic. We have grown up with the IRA, and there is nothing special about these. Why the fuss?
Because it's Al-Qaeda, not the IRA. No-one outside the UK gave a damn about IRA attacks, so they were kept in perspective.
With Al-Qaeda, you have 9/11. You also have the fact that everyone knows about them, and that the Americans have felt the effects of their attacks.
Matter of fact, the Americans allowed IRA fundraising (they eventually outlawed them because their criminal activity was becoming an inconvenience). This is the same IRA that tried to kill the British Prime Minister around that time (Margaret Thatcher).....
The more I think about this, the more damn crack-headed it seems. An anti-democratic terrorist organisation comes close to killing the leader of one of America's closest allies, and they *still* allow them to raise funds on their soil?!
Bear this in mind the next time you hear an American complaining about lack of cooperation against terrorism.
Frankly, it doesn't say much about Thatcher that this was never an issue, but personally I never liked her anyway. Not that this is the point.
And on another subject; what the *hell* is going on with Britain allowing hate-preaching mullahs and so on, to remain in the country? It's been claimed that they can't send them back to countries with the death penalty or where they would be at serious risk of persecution.
Well, at least be ******* consistent about it; the British government is sending people (who have done *nothing* to endanger British security) back to Zimbabwe, laughably claiming that they won't face persecution or death when the evidence is blatantly to the contrary. And yet, they're allowing these hate-preaching vermin to remain in the country.
So; any claims of not wanting to breach human rights (or at least human rights legislation) are complete hypocrisy. Frankly, no-one's "right" to asylum should stretch as far as allowing them to incite against, nor to create security risks towards the society that grants it to them.
If there's any case for detention centres, those guys should be the ones going in them, not the children of ordinary refugees. Though it'd probably be a lot easier to deport the hatemongers back to where they came from, outside the protection of the society they despise so much.
Anyway, back to the bombs; this was significant, and it sucks that people died; but it wasn't 9/11. Disruption was the aim, and if we let people like that dictate how we run our lives, they win.
I understanding being a fanboy of a particular brand and all, but this is ridiculous. Intel still makes some good products, and AMD makes some good products.
And Fujitsu might make some good products, but by all accounts they also make some
ratherbadones, and they'll screw you over if you're unlucky enough to buy them.
I don't care if Fujitsu are in the HDD market or not; would *you* buy products from a company with this attitude?
Reading that doesn't fill me with any desire to read farther.
As far as I'm concerned, "The message flashed across in chiselled 3D text" was bad enough on its own.
Cheesey, derivative sci-fi always has to have cheesey, derivative sci-fi stylings. I mean, aren't people going to want to read using a "normal" typeface in the future? Anyone with half a brain will have figured out that stylised typefaces like that will be a PITA to use for any length of time. Heck, I don't even like reading novels that use sans-serif.
One thing that grated about Babylon 5 for me was the use of the 'sci-fi' typeface to indicate the floor numbers and so on. Lets the credibility down quite a bit.... "futuristic"? Got news for you; one day the future will be the present, and people won't want futuristic typefaces just because they're "living in the future".
It's like expecting people nowadays to be using "1950s sci-fi" typefaces because that's what everyone in the 1950s thought everyone would be using in 50 years time.
Don't get me wrong; 'normal' typefaces change over time, styles change subtlely over the years such that (e.g.) you can often make a good stab at the era a book was published in simply by the typeface it used, the graphic design and so on. But the only place anything remotely resembling most of these is likely to appear is at a sci-fi convention.
Anyway, even if the story was meant to be stylised, did it have to be stylised in such a derivative way? The whole cyberpunk thing is a bit of a cliche itself now; time to move things on.
(How about get to work 15 minutes late, go through the back door so Lumbergh can't see you, zone out at your desk, go to Chochkies with your G's, do nothing for the following 6 hours and then go back home to chill? Oh... that makes too much sense.)
If you're the type of person who posts to Slashdot, this would be fun for about two days, and then get soul-destroyingly boring *very* quickly.
Better go for a job that doesn't pay as well and requires actual work... lol
Nah, better go for a job that might or might not pay as well, but gives you some enjoyment, sense of productivity, and doesn't leave you feeling like you're wasting your life.
You are an idiot. Go hang out at the mall where you belong.
I also own a Yamaha high-end keyboard (full 88 key, acceleration keys, 128 voice polyphonic), and it's main piano "voice" was digitally sampled from a Steinway. It sounds wonderful, but I could pick the Yamaha out of a bunch of real pianos from a mile away. The pitch was always too perfect, the decay was always to predictable, etc.
Have you ever heard that song 'The Reason' by Hoobastank? I read someone criticising it, and downloaded the f***** just to hear what it was like. Apparently it was a massive US hit, but it only got to #12 in the UK (and I'd *never* heard it).
Anyway... I start the thing playing. There's this repeated piano note that starts the thing off, and it sounds *so* fake, each time it plays sounding *exactly* like the last, the timing being *so* perfect that it's obviously been sampled and quantised to excessive perfection.
It *really* grates the first time I hear it. I can *not* believe that this wasn't picked up on by the masses who bought this crap. I mean, excessively polished production is nothing new, but this just sounds *fake*, synthesised, not even like a real piano.
Don't even get me started on the rest of the song... apart from being schmaltzy US-chart-friendly toss, what really got up my nose was the intonation he used to indicate "emotion" when he was singing. You know, the "I'm in great pain" or "really deep feelings" emotion that are supposed to sound 'soulful'.
THIS was obviously a real human singing (which of course it was), and yet managed to sound utterly fake, because it was too perfect. Like the guy wasn't *feeling* any of this emotion, but had listened to other (better) singers who did, and had rehearsed, mimicked, homogenised and honed their style so perfectly, and in so corporate a manner that it came across as sickeningly over-perfect.
Perhaps they'd used something like ProTools to erase the imperfections from his voice, but to be honest, the problems were at a more subtle level; a soulless white boy applying some perfectly-learned "emotional" techniques to his singing, as if they were another dial on the producer's console; "How much emotion do you want? Shake on this much..."
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The 'real' Amiga (OS4) is still in beta, out with users, but it hasn't gone officially to a release version yet. I still live in hope (yes, I'm one of those sad individuals who still watches what AmigaOS is doing (or isn't, as the case may be), hoping for a resurrection ;) )
I wouldn't consider you *really* "sad" unless you were living under the delusion that Amiga OS 4 is likely to do anything in the 'real' world. It's been out of the mainstream so long now that it's going to have to start from scratch on its own merits.
Yeah, even considered separately from the hardware (which would of course be different nowadays anyway) it knocked spots off DOS/Windows 3.1, but that was a long time ago.
Things have moved on, Linux is available, you can run a 'telnet' session under Windows without everything else hanging when it can't connect, and... sorry, I really don't care. If it was to be so much better than Windows/Linux, it would have to be radically different to the old Amiga OS, which would pretty much defeat the purpose. Why not start from scratch?
Kind of reminds of when you had to decide whether you were going to get DVD+R or DVD-R discs. Now you can get a dual format drive for less than $50 and not have to worry about it. I'm guessing after a little while we'll see the same thing happen with the new formats and nobody will care which one you're using.
/., so take it with a pound of salt) is that Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are far more different at a fundamental level, and it wouldn't be as simple to produce devices that support both formats.
My understanding (gained mainly via my memory of
Of course, it would probably be possible to squeeze technology to read both types of disks into a single drive, but in a worst-case scenario, this could involve (essentially) two separate mechanisms in the same case, costing at least twice the price.
Who'd buy *that*?
one could always migrate from OS/2 to the Amiga, as it isn't officially dead, and is still being developed.
Oddly enough, you linked to "Amiga Anywhere", which is an on-top-of-Java-ME environment for software running on mobile devices, AFAIK. What it has to do with the 'classic' Amiga OS (beyond the name) has never been explained to me- I suspect because it has absolutely *nothing* to do with it, and the Amiga company simply figured that slapping that name on it would sell a few more to undemanding nostalgics. Pathetic.
BTW, apparently AmigaOS 4.0 finally came out a few months back, although by this stage I'm not really sure what the point was.
With live action, how are they going to reproduce Megatron? He's as big as an 18 wheeler truck in robot form, but is a handgun in disguise.
A really damn *big* handgun... ought to get attention from some people.
"Is that an 18 wheel truck in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?"
Anyway, I think that "Ravage" (who transformed into an audio cassette) would have the same problem- can you imagine how unthreatening a robotic panther the size of a C90 would be?
This isn't an issue anyway, as neither Ravage (nor his ghetto-blasting cassette-deck buddy Soundwave) will be appearing in the movie, having become rather unfashionable and outdated.
Apprently, they will be replaced by an iPod that transforms into a style-conscious robot. "iKill" will, claim producers, be the first openly gay Transformer.
Sadly, the loss of Ravage and Soundwave deprive us of the opportunity to witness some extremely screwed-up psychosexual issues, as "cassette" Ravage hides inside his "cassette player" buddy Soundwave.
This loss is a double-blow to Ravage, who never recovered fully after someone recorded a Debbie Gibson album on him in 1989.
I'm holding out for "Lord of the Rings IV".
That's not going to happen, as such. However, after finishing King Kong, Jackson is supposed to be working on a cash-in prequel- "Lord of the Rings 0" if you like, although the rumoured name is "The Hobbit".
Apparently they contrived some stupid story about a guy who appears at the start of the first LOTR film.
What a cheap cash-in. Scum.
Oh yeah... never having used a Zip drive personally, I'd forgotten about the 'click of death'.
Wasn't that viral (ruined drive ruins disk, which ruins any drive which it goes in which ruins the disk which...)?
Even if it hadn't been for that, it would have got toasted by the aforementioned technologies anyway...
I know I'll never need to use it, but if I had omitted it I'd have inevitably run into some bizarre combination of circumstances where a floppy drive was desperately needed.
That's probably true; although if there's little or no space in the case, there's nothing stopping you from simply plugging the floppy into the mobo as required.
That does have the drawback that you have to turn the computer off to connect the thing (unless you're really desparate and want to risk it); but since it's usually needed on boot these days, it might not be such a significant problem.
Did they also use a 486? You might find LCDs have improved since then.
Very possibly, but the laws of physics likely haven't.
Now, unless you can demonstrate that LCDs have undergone a fundamental change in design (not quality) since then, they're still going to have to block the light twice. Slap that on top of a not-particularly-bright OHP and you're still going to end up with something fairly dim.
Why on earth do you think projectors require such intense (and expensive) bulbs?
There's also this invention called "The Intarweb"...
Yep... I had a web-page back then. Your point being?
I don't really get why one would want DIY here... Having a video-projector, say for home-cinema sake or gaming is mostly about quality of the picture.
:)).
When I first went to university in the early-mid 1990s, they used the *same* method to project a computer display; a transparent LCD device (designed for the purpose) placed on an OHP.
It was *horrible*. The OHPs gave (just about) passable performance under most conditions when used for their intended purpose. However, the optics were no better than they needed to be to project text legibly; which is another way of saying they were crap (*especially* in the corners; colour-fringing and lack of focus ahoy...). More importantly, the display was never particularly bright.
And unfortunately, LCDs filter out a lot of light; firstly to convert the "100% RGB" white source to red, green or blue light (discarding at least 2/3 of the light), then *again* in order to reduce the "100%" Red (or green or blue) to the appropriate level for that pixel.
The resultant display was extremely dim, and only at all usable when the curtains were drawn. Even then it was poor; and that was when it was used for Powerpoint slides, not DVDs (especially since DVDs weren't even out then...
Perhaps the guy is using a very bright bulb, and perhaps dealing with light pollution inside the case improves things. However, as most of the problems I described above were down to the *external* light pollution relative to the low brightness of the projected image, I suspect the former.
I still outfit every computer i build with a floppy. Only 10 bucks, and you never know when it'll come in handy.
True; although ironically, the present cheapness of floppy drives and disks have probably contributed to lack of quality, and driven the perception of the floppy further into the ground than would have happened otherwise.
This is beside the point; the floppy's time has been and gone. Which raises a couple of issues with the article:-
(1) The guy is positively relishing the end of floppy disks. Yeah, they're slow, and really too small to be useful for anything except emergency boot disks nowadays. But I remember getting an Atari 800XL with 5.25" drive in the mid-80s (not state-of-the-art, even then) and believe me, when the alternative was program storage on audio cassette (as was the norm for the UK 8-bit market), a floppy drive was pretty damn desirable. Particularly when you consider that Atari games took from 5-25 minutes to load from cassette. *I* didn't hate floppies back then.
(2) It's notable that he doesn't mention the "next-generation" disk drives such as the Iomega Zip and LS-120/Superdisk... the 3.5" floppy comes out bad because it's been around *forever* (original release circa 1982, with the 1.44Mb HD released roughly *twenty years ago*!!). It's not as if the 3.5" was the only potential successor to the 5.25", it just happened to be the one adopted as standard. There were many potential successors to the 3.5", but they didn't become widely adopted enough (not even the relatively popular Zip) to become "transparently" standard.
So, the question is, is he criticising floppies, or just having a go at the 3.5" format? In fact, what was the point of the article at all- that the 1.44Mb floppy is dying? That's not news, we've heard it before, and it's too widespread to die suddenly, although USB drives will hasten its demise.
It's like audio cassettes... I didn't just "stop" using them one day. It just dawned on me that I had no real need for them any more, that I wasn't likely to record any new ones, and that it made more sense to transfer any remaining "commitment" to other formats. They're not woefully obsolete, I don't hate them, I just don't have a real use for them any more.
> > And if the BBC paid for the performance and did the recording they can do whatever
> > they want with it right?
> And since i pay my TV licence that pays for the BBC that should mean that
> it's my recording so I should have access to it.
That doesn't necessarily apply; it depends what the BBC agreed with the performers. They may be entitled to 'repeat' or 'transmission' fees, which were probably negotiated long before this scheme was even a twinkle in its creator's eye. This sort of thing *is* an issue with DVD/VHS release of TV shows recorded before those technologies became common (later contracts would probably include a clause relating to release on various media, although I doubt even those would cover Internet release like this).
Quite right too; the BBC might be government-owned and run "for the people", but that doesn't mean they have the right to deny people the royalties that both sides agreed to.
This might not be the case here, but it shouldn't be assumed that it isn't.
I thought that the BBC collected the fee themselves, they include the costings for collection on how they spend the fees.
My understanding is that (legally) the license fee is "separate" from what the BBC get paid. People with a TV have to pay money to the government which "happens" to match what the BBC get paid by the government.
Of course, we all know that this is nonsense, but I guess it (for one thing) avoids problems such as people who can't get decent BBC reception suing the government on that basis.
after heavy, government-subsided campaigning in favor of the yes, and resignation threats by the prime minister, the new EU constitution, which gives far reaching rights to corporate entities, did indeed get approved
By Luxembourg, after being *rejected* by the French and the Dutch.
And bear in mind that it was by no means an overwhelming "yes", even in the face of so much pressure to vote that way.
My systems professor told us that they chose to create a very complicated assembly language, that while may be efficient, makes programming un-nesceissarly difficult.
What do you mean by difficult to program?
I am not an EE (so correct me if I'm talking out of my backside), but I assume he was talking about the processor relying on effective compilers (lo and behold, a post a couple of screens down says exactly this...)
Although I understand that some assembly (i.e. machine code in human-readable form) programming is still required for certain embedded systems, I'd assume that the Itanium was never intended for that particular application.
Yeah, it's nice to be able to say you've written a program in assembly language for your PC (I've done some *very* basic stuff), but I can't see that being an issue here.
While we're on the subject, I'm not surprised that Intel would like to wipe the slate clean of the x86 architecture; from what I know of it, it must have been a major nightmare to improve performance whilst supporting all that baggage.
Question is, how big a "free lunch" did Intel get when they switched cores from CISC (Pentium I) to RISC (Pentium Pro/Pentium II onwards)? Assuming RISC is reliant on compiler optimization, that would still mean some tricky optimization of the CISC x86 code before it was passed to the RISC unit for execution....
Probably because most everyone has sympathies with the IRA. As not one country in existance has escaped the brutal rape, pillage and torture of the UK/EU collective. The UK/EU collective has profited from those under it's boot for well over two thousand years. I'll tell you how to stop IRA retributions. Haul your asses, and assets out of that country.
You really don't have a clue, do you?
The IRA want Northern Ireland to join the Republic.
The Republic of Ireland is one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the EU; mainly because they get a good level of funding from them. They're certainly more pro-EU than the UK; the UK is traditionally one of the less enthusiastic EU members.
The "2000 years" comment is so woefully brain-dead (hint; the UK wasn't around 2000 years ago, let alone the EU), I suspect you're trolling anyway.
Right. Because as we all know - Man was put on this Earth to slave off at work, for meager pay just enough to put food on the table and keep the squaw content.
Blatant strawman tactics. Where did I say that?
I was talking about accepting (slightly) less pay for something I enjoyed. You're rambling on about crap pay for (by implication of the word 'slave') something you probably don't enjoy.
Please take your strawman out of here. He's falling apart and making a mess of the floor.
Idiot.
You're calling me an idiot on the basis of a blatant misrepresentation of what I said... or are you just pissed off that I called you one? Grow up.
I wonder how you could live with the fact that you're getting less money for something you quote-unquote "like", while others find jobs where they spend the least amount of effort while still getting $$$?
Uh.... I could live with it because I "quote-unquote" LIKE it. If I spend 1/2 my waking hours doing a job, you can be damn sure I'd rather do one I like.
To give a contrived example, porn star at $25,000 versus office filing clerk who gets to sit around the office half the time at $26,000.
No, this doesn't mean I'd do a job I slightly preferred for half the money; but then I never said that (see above).
BTW, if the job you mention really *is* sitting around, then not only is it likely to get boring fast, but you're not likely to pick up any useful skills to get a better paying job. Frankly, I'll take a job with slightly poorer upfront benefits if I think it's going to stand me in better stead for what *I* want to do.
Some of us are drug into it because we work at a bookstore
I always said you'd have to be on something to enjoy that Harry Potter garbage, but drugging your employees has *got* to be against some law (^_^)
That is of course correct, but I was discussing those who are *not* British citizens.
We believe in free speech.
No, 'we' (the UK) do not believe in 100% free speech, if what 'we' believe in is judged by our laws.
Incitement to racial hatred is just one example of "free" speech that is not permitted.
Free speech doesn't mean anything unless it includes the right to say unpopular things. On the incitement of hatred, for the overall good of us.
There is a difference between expressing an opinion and inciting action.
Someone making a call-to-action is (in part) responsible for that action, even if 'all' they have done is to speak some words.
This is not free speech; there are of course many grey areas inbetween, but it is pretty clear that not all "speech" can be considered on its own.
Talking of free speech, I've heard some rather laughable arguments about it. Now, I'll put my cards on the table and say that there are some things I consider unacceptable (on the basis that they are incitement to hatred), but I'm quite willing to listen to someone else's argument about free speech. Yep, I can actually have some level of respect for someone holding a different opinion to myself if that person isn't a goddamn f*****g hypocrite.
Anyway, I was talking with some Americans online, and said something to the effect that if you aren't willing to support a society that allows a man, in full public view, to burn an American flag without fear for his life then you don't believe in free speech.
You don't have to like it; you don't have to like the guy; you don't even have to serve him in your shop. But if you aren't willing to let him express his opinion by *burning a damn flag*, then you don't believe in free speech.
I got some pretty lame defences of that along the lines of (a) The guy would be creating a nuisance and (b) Burning the flag would cause pollution. Well, for (a) Lots of people create a nuisance expressing their opinions, what's the deal with this one? Let's assume that he was making a legitimate protest; and for (b) Yeah, right. That's your best reason for banning people from burning the flag? Well, let's see you ban all the other pollution you red-blooded right-wingers think it's your God-given right to carry out.(Yeah, I know flag-burning isn't "speech" per se; but it's free expression of opinion- unless the guy is a terrorist intent on polluting God's Own Atmosphere *cough*bullshit*cough*).
In short, they gave bullshit answers and excuses instead of agreeing on principle.
Anyway, it'd be a brave guy who risked his life by burning an American flag in a Deep South town in the US.... 'course, everyone should feel free to express their racist, bigoted opinions. Just so long as you don't upset anyone that matters, right?
I'm not so naive that this was remotely a surprise, although I'd expected some better pseudo-rationale against the flag burning. Freedom of speech my arse.
It seems that most of us Londoners have forgotten the lessons we learnt from the IRA. Ten years ago, you would never, ever let an unattended bag go ignored, and you would never leave bags unattended. [...] I would also like to add a personal view on this, which is; these guys are pathetic. We have grown up with the IRA, and there is nothing special about these. Why the fuss?
Because it's Al-Qaeda, not the IRA. No-one outside the UK gave a damn about IRA attacks, so they were kept in perspective.
With Al-Qaeda, you have 9/11. You also have the fact that everyone knows about them, and that the Americans have felt the effects of their attacks.
Matter of fact, the Americans allowed IRA fundraising (they eventually outlawed them because their criminal activity was becoming an inconvenience). This is the same IRA that tried to kill the British Prime Minister around that time (Margaret Thatcher).....
The more I think about this, the more damn crack-headed it seems. An anti-democratic terrorist organisation comes close to killing the leader of one of America's closest allies, and they *still* allow them to raise funds on their soil?!
Bear this in mind the next time you hear an American complaining about lack of cooperation against terrorism.
Frankly, it doesn't say much about Thatcher that this was never an issue, but personally I never liked her anyway. Not that this is the point.
And on another subject; what the *hell* is going on with Britain allowing hate-preaching mullahs and so on, to remain in the country? It's been claimed that they can't send them back to countries with the death penalty or where they would be at serious risk of persecution.
Well, at least be ******* consistent about it; the British government is sending people (who have done *nothing* to endanger British security) back to Zimbabwe, laughably claiming that they won't face persecution or death when the evidence is blatantly to the contrary. And yet, they're allowing these hate-preaching vermin to remain in the country.
So; any claims of not wanting to breach human rights (or at least human rights legislation) are complete hypocrisy. Frankly, no-one's "right" to asylum should stretch as far as allowing them to incite against, nor to create security risks towards the society that grants it to them.
If there's any case for detention centres, those guys should be the ones going in them, not the children of ordinary refugees. Though it'd probably be a lot easier to deport the hatemongers back to where they came from, outside the protection of the society they despise so much.
Anyway, back to the bombs; this was significant, and it sucks that people died; but it wasn't 9/11. Disruption was the aim, and if we let people like that dictate how we run our lives, they win.
If we don't, they lose.
I understanding being a fanboy of a particular brand and all, but this is ridiculous. Intel still makes some good products, and AMD makes some good products.
And Fujitsu might make some good products, but by all accounts they also make some rather bad ones, and they'll screw you over if you're unlucky enough to buy them.
I don't care if Fujitsu are in the HDD market or not; would *you* buy products from a company with this attitude?
"His uniform is black as activated charcoal" [...] It's like someone's homework assignment on adjectives, similes, and metaphors.
Worse still, 'activated charcoal' is the stuff they use in Odor Eaters(!)
Was this meant to be funny?
Reading that doesn't fill me with any desire to read farther.
As far as I'm concerned, "The message flashed across in chiselled 3D text" was bad enough on its own.
Cheesey, derivative sci-fi always has to have cheesey, derivative sci-fi stylings. I mean, aren't people going to want to read using a "normal" typeface in the future? Anyone with half a brain will have figured out that stylised typefaces like that will be a PITA to use for any length of time. Heck, I don't even like reading novels that use sans-serif.
One thing that grated about Babylon 5 for me was the use of the 'sci-fi' typeface to indicate the floor numbers and so on. Lets the credibility down quite a bit.... "futuristic"? Got news for you; one day the future will be the present, and people won't want futuristic typefaces just because they're "living in the future".
It's like expecting people nowadays to be using "1950s sci-fi" typefaces because that's what everyone in the 1950s thought everyone would be using in 50 years time.
Don't get me wrong; 'normal' typefaces change over time, styles change subtlely over the years such that (e.g.) you can often make a good stab at the era a book was published in simply by the typeface it used, the graphic design and so on. But the only place anything remotely resembling most of these is likely to appear is at a sci-fi convention.
Anyway, even if the story was meant to be stylised, did it have to be stylised in such a derivative way? The whole cyberpunk thing is a bit of a cliche itself now; time to move things on.
(How about get to work 15 minutes late, go through the back door so Lumbergh can't see you, zone out at your desk, go to Chochkies with your G's, do nothing for the following 6 hours and then go back home to chill? Oh... that makes too much sense.)
If you're the type of person who posts to Slashdot, this would be fun for about two days, and then get soul-destroyingly boring *very* quickly.
Better go for a job that doesn't pay as well and requires actual work... lol
Nah, better go for a job that might or might not pay as well, but gives you some enjoyment, sense of productivity, and doesn't leave you feeling like you're wasting your life.
You are an idiot. Go hang out at the mall where you belong.
I also own a Yamaha high-end keyboard (full 88 key, acceleration keys, 128 voice polyphonic), and it's main piano "voice" was digitally sampled from a Steinway. It sounds wonderful, but I could pick the Yamaha out of a bunch of real pianos from a mile away. The pitch was always too perfect, the decay was always to predictable, etc.
Have you ever heard that song 'The Reason' by Hoobastank? I read someone criticising it, and downloaded the f***** just to hear what it was like. Apparently it was a massive US hit, but it only got to #12 in the UK (and I'd *never* heard it).
Anyway... I start the thing playing. There's this repeated piano note that starts the thing off, and it sounds *so* fake, each time it plays sounding *exactly* like the last, the timing being *so* perfect that it's obviously been sampled and quantised to excessive perfection.
It *really* grates the first time I hear it. I can *not* believe that this wasn't picked up on by the masses who bought this crap. I mean, excessively polished production is nothing new, but this just sounds *fake*, synthesised, not even like a real piano.
Don't even get me started on the rest of the song... apart from being schmaltzy US-chart-friendly toss, what really got up my nose was the intonation he used to indicate "emotion" when he was singing. You know, the "I'm in great pain" or "really deep feelings" emotion that are supposed to sound 'soulful'.
THIS was obviously a real human singing (which of course it was), and yet managed to sound utterly fake, because it was too perfect. Like the guy wasn't *feeling* any of this emotion, but had listened to other (better) singers who did, and had rehearsed, mimicked, homogenised and honed their style so perfectly, and in so corporate a manner that it came across as sickeningly over-perfect.
Perhaps they'd used something like ProTools to erase the imperfections from his voice, but to be honest, the problems were at a more subtle level; a soulless white boy applying some perfectly-learned "emotional" techniques to his singing, as if they were another dial on the producer's console; "How much emotion do you want? Shake on this much..."
It doesn't take a machine to be overly perfect.