The real problem is that they are all made in China
This was marked as flamebait, and it may well have been intended that way.
However, the reason they're made in China is because China is dirt-cheap to manufacture in.
They may well be capable of producing better quality drives, but that would require more quality testing (and so on) which is going to add to the price. And the consumer has shown that, everything else being equal, they will go for the cheaper drive.
I don't know how China would stack up if quality were a bigger factor, because I don't know the level of skills required, how many people with the necessary skills live in China, and so on.
In other words, would the cost of (increased) QA in Chinese-built goods be as proportionately cheap as the basic manufacturing cost in China?
Would it be worthwhile training people, or do enough people with the necessary skills (at the right price) live in China? Or would it make more sense to manufacture elsewhere?
Truth be told, I don't know; this is a can of worms. What I do know:-
(1) China is very cheap to manufacture in, and
(2) Long-term or even general quality/QA is far less important than the manufacturing (and hence retail) cost.
As I said, if (2) changed, it's totally unclear whether China would be a good bet or not. I suspect it might still be, but with a far narrower margin of competitiveness to its rivals. But (2) hasn't changed; so the goods with the lowest QA are produced in the country with the lowest manufacturing cost. Doesn't mean they aren't capable of better, it means that the market would prefer "cheaper" to "better".
Reminds me of the situation with printers and ink.
Welll.... no, not really. There isn't really any manufacturer lock-in, and the discs are actually pretty damn cheap.
A spindle could include 100 discs, which is a *lot*.
Personally, my Lite-On DVD-ROM drive started giving me problems with CD-Rs and CD-RWs, to the extent that it won't read them at all (including those from reputable sources); and yet it gives no problems whatsoever with pre-recorded media.
You raise some interesting points, though I should point out that I was thinking about conventional light-bulbs which are definitely not that hot (going by colour alone).
Of all the modern incarnations of the Doctor, the best actor in the role was Paul McGann. He looked the part and is a very good actor.
Now we get somebody who just doesn't fit the role.
Paul McGann was passable, but was really just a slightly bland generic amalgalm of previous Doctors (read the second half of this post) and someone's idea of what the Doctor "should" be like.
IMHO, to be successful and avoid comparisons with previous Doctors, an actor *has* to bring something new. The Batman comparison is flawed, because Batman was meant to be the same character in each, whereas each Doctor has a distinctly different personality- or at least they should.
Tim Curry, dressed as he was in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (and I'd already posted that idea in response to a previous story).
Actually, he'd probably be a bit old for that now.
In all seriousness, I don't think Eddie Izzard would've been a good choice; too much baggage (not just handbaggage, arf), and I reckon he'd be playing "Eddie Izzard" all the time.
I thought Christopher Ecclestone was a good choice, because he *wasn't* an obvious choice. The obvious choice, to go with a 'famous', 'eccentric', 'British', blah blah Doctor, really struck me as a bad idea, based on people with half-baked recollections of Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee trying to come up with ideas. I've nothing against Richard E Grant, but he was too much along that line (yeah, I know he did an online story or something). Apparently they also asked Hugh Grant (no relation AFAIK) to do it at one stage, but he turned it down. THANK GOD! Hugh-'king-Grant, fer chrissakes!
I don't want well-known, and I don't want formulaicly eccentric. I want someone who can bring something new to the role without losing sight of who The Doctor is.
Ecclestone seemed to be that guy, and then he buggered off. Damn.
There are also more subtle issues at work with the 'R/G/B mixing' approach to colour generation. You can read more about them here.
To summarise; consider that the red, green and blue receptors are sensitive to a *range* of colours; the sensitivity curve for each receptor is roughly bell-shaped, peaking on red, green or blue light. There is also some overlap between the red and green sensitivity curves, and between green and blue (not red and blue IIRC).
This is of course essential. Sensitivity narrowly focused on R, G or B would leave us unable to see intermediate colours (e.g. yellow!). Reasonable overlap is necessary, or
(A) there would be certain intermediate frequencies that were not covered sufficiently by either receptor (e.g. certain shades of yellow in the valley between the red and green curves would be very hard to see), and (B) Colours would be quantised into 'red group', 'green group', or 'blue group' (think about it...)
Because of the (necessary) sensitivity-curve overlap, the green receptor is slightly sensitive to red light, and so on. Where is this leading, you ask?
True cyan has a frequency between blue and green. This is within the sensitivity range of both blue and green receptors; the brain can use the 'ratio' to figure out that it's looking at cyan. But true cyan is (to all intents and purposes) outside the red receptors' range, so the red receptor is not stimulated.
Simulated cyan is made up of green and blue light. This stimulates the green and blue receptors in the same ratio as true cyan would, so in theory looks just like the real thing. However, the red receptor is also slightly sensitive to green light; thus, unlike with real cyan, the RGB-mixed version also stimulates the red receptor.
This is (supposedly) what makes certain RGB-generated colours less convincing (hence the linked story above).
This isn't even counting the fact that our colour receptors aren't exactly R, G and B, and therefore to simulate certain colours using RGB is impossible, as it requires one or more components to be negative. (If the receptors were exactly R, G and B, that would not be the case).
Not sure if this is connected, but it could be related to the way that, after sitting outside in bright sunlight, then going inside, everything appears green.
I was just at a wal*mart getting some food and they had a huge widescreen tv set up with the star wars frito-lays display. On the widescreen tv was running a full frame version of phantom menace with big black bars on the sides.
Idiots! As every widescreen TV owner can demonstrate, the way to view 4:3 video is to stretch it so that everyone looks squat and fat. *cough*
Some people seem to *really* value their screen being full over anything else. When I was at university, my flatmates watched anamorphic widescreen DVDs on a normal 4:3 TV without the black bars (so everyone was tall); and, of course, the stretching of non-widescreen material to fit a widescreen is even more common.
BTW, is the use of the phrase 'full-screen' helpful any more? It's not 'full-screen' when displayed in the correct ratio on a 16:9 TV.
A friend of mine did something similar for a project using IR sensors. In that case, he had a break in the beam trigger a sample, so he could have a LASER HARP
Well, that's pretty cool, but I doubt it would wow the crowds at a Jean-Michel Jarre light show. I thought the whole point of a laser-harp was that you could *see* the beams.
On the other hand....
"Man, Jarre's new stuff really sucks!"
"I don't think he's actually playing anything; he looks like he's warming up his hands on the laser harp"
BTW, if it's a genuine IR *laser* harp, did he get the lasers from some old CD players?
Ah, come on, you'd seen him before at least once. Boxleitner was Tron!
I omitted that for reasons of length. Specifically; yes, I *had* seen Tron, but I didn't remember him from that. In fact, the Tron characterisation and acting is very weak, and didn't stick in my mind at all; one reason I rate it very highly in terms of effects, but not as an overall movie experience.
In fact, I watched Tron *again* circa 2000, and I didn't recognise Boxleitner for quite some time (his character in the 'real world' had glasses on and he was quite a bit younger). So go figure...!
t the denoumont of the entire serious, Bruce Boxleitner yells "Get the hell out of our galaxy!"
I know that Boxleitner replaced O'Hare's character because he was a bigger name, but he was *way* too much of a "regular American guy/soldier" to be convincing in that position. He totally lacked authority and statesmanship. Or was the audience supposed to be able to empathise with the character?
Yuk.
The irony is that, to a very large extent, earth was a metaphor for the USA; and Sheridan's attitude was very American. Yet in that case, earth was a pawn in a war between two greater powers, the tiny country that *wasn't* the USA nor the USSR.
In the past they didn't have that much compting with them, but the new battlestar galactica, farcape, the new doctor who and other shows that put Enterprise to shame.
(My emphasis) Sorry, the new Doctor Who will *not* appeal to a mainstream American audience.
They tried to do that in 1996; the result was a horribly watered-down version that changed a lot of the stuff around and Americanised it (even set it in the US!) And it *still* flopped.
Although the effects in the new series are massively better than those in the old one, the simple fact is that Doctor Who is too British to appeal to a mass-market US audience. Sure, it had a cult-like fanbase in the US who may well enjoy the new series; but it will never get the sorts of audience that are likely to worry the producers of ST.
B5 isn't really a good example. B5 ran it's full story arc.
B5 got futzed about by the uncertainty over the fifth season; consequently, the intended end of the arc was moved to series four, and when series 5 got the go-ahead, it was missing the main plot that drove the whole series.
I found it inconsequential and disappointing. Of course, some would argue that the replacement of Michael O'Hare with Bruce Boxleitner was also a major kink in the story arc. Although some criticised O'Hare's acting, it was at least as good as Boxleitner's and his style was way more appropriate (pseudo-gravitas versus Boxleitner's regular-guy character acting). Apparently, Boxleitner was more of a "name" than O'Hare; well, maybe in the US, but I'd never heard of him before that.
Funny how B5 exhibited some of the worst aspects of sci-fantasy (ropey acting and characterisation- e.g. Marcus and various second-league characters-, messing stuff around, cliched sets) as well as the best (genuinely planned long story arc, good characterisation and acting- e.g. London and G'Kar).
This time the rating's meaning is a bit different than usual. No one over the age of 13 should attend.
In that case, Michael Jackson will probably still be able to get in; primarily because he won't be watching the film, he'll be watching the audience...
God, now they're going to rape "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".
Raping a witch is evil (she might be a witch but she's still a person); raping a lion is perverse (even- or especially- one that talks and is a metaphor for the Christian deity).
But as for raping a wardrobe, I'm not sure I can visualise that at all. You have some damn strange fetishes.
Sorry mate, just because cleese moved to california it doesnt make him american;)
Actually, have you noticed Cleese isn't funny AT ALL nowadays?
That's what moving to California does to you...:)
In all seriousness, it's been said that Cleese seems to be trying to be funny because that's what expected of him and (elsewhere; I believe that it was Cleese himself said) that he isn't really interested in being funny nowadays. Which I don't blame him for; we all change.
Problem is, last two things I saw Cleese in were the two most recent Bond films. And he's damn AWFUL in them; obviously TRYING to be funny. There was always humour in the Bond/Q scenes, but Desmond Llewellyn played it straight (without being po-faced). Cleese is just annoying in it.
if you turn something in, get it repaired then the warranty gets extended. My muvo died after 14 months of use, got it replaced with a bigger model and extended for 24 months
Implication: Buy shoddy crap that'll fail within the 2-year guarantee period, and get free replacements for the rest of your life!
Of course, they'll eventually figure out what's happening, and give you the product designed to last 3 years, just to spite you.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
This is what shocked me about Hartnell when I found out; he wasn't that old at all. I'd have placed him at least ten years older than he was.
Are you perhaps going into flourescent lighting after sitting out in the sun?
No, just indoors, with no artificial lights on.
The real problem is that they are all made in China
This was marked as flamebait, and it may well have been intended that way.
However, the reason they're made in China is because China is dirt-cheap to manufacture in.
They may well be capable of producing better quality drives, but that would require more quality testing (and so on) which is going to add to the price. And the consumer has shown that, everything else being equal, they will go for the cheaper drive.
I don't know how China would stack up if quality were a bigger factor, because I don't know the level of skills required, how many people with the necessary skills live in China, and so on.
In other words, would the cost of (increased) QA in Chinese-built goods be as proportionately cheap as the basic manufacturing cost in China?
Would it be worthwhile training people, or do enough people with the necessary skills (at the right price) live in China? Or would it make more sense to manufacture elsewhere?
Truth be told, I don't know; this is a can of worms. What I do know:-
(1) China is very cheap to manufacture in, and
(2) Long-term or even general quality/QA is far less important than the manufacturing (and hence retail) cost.
As I said, if (2) changed, it's totally unclear whether China would be a good bet or not. I suspect it might still be, but with a far narrower margin of competitiveness to its rivals. But (2) hasn't changed; so the goods with the lowest QA are produced in the country with the lowest manufacturing cost. Doesn't mean they aren't capable of better, it means that the market would prefer "cheaper" to "better".
Reminds me of the situation with printers and ink.
Welll.... no, not really. There isn't really any manufacturer lock-in, and the discs are actually pretty damn cheap.
A spindle could include 100 discs, which is a *lot*.
Personally, my Lite-On DVD-ROM drive started giving me problems with CD-Rs and CD-RWs, to the extent that it won't read them at all (including those from reputable sources); and yet it gives no problems whatsoever with pre-recorded media.
Yeah; it's pretty interesting stuff, although IIRC I pretty much learned about it myself from reading the linked thread.
You raise some interesting points, though I should point out that I was thinking about conventional light-bulbs which are definitely not that hot (going by colour alone).
Of all the modern incarnations of the Doctor, the best actor in the role was Paul McGann. He looked the part and is a very good actor. Now we get somebody who just doesn't fit the role.
Paul McGann was passable, but was really just a slightly bland generic amalgalm of previous Doctors (read the second half of this post) and someone's idea of what the Doctor "should" be like.
IMHO, to be successful and avoid comparisons with previous Doctors, an actor *has* to bring something new. The Batman comparison is flawed, because Batman was meant to be the same character in each, whereas each Doctor has a distinctly different personality- or at least they should.
what snext? The cross dressing doctor?
Tim Curry, dressed as he was in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (and I'd already posted that idea in response to a previous story).
Actually, he'd probably be a bit old for that now.
In all seriousness, I don't think Eddie Izzard would've been a good choice; too much baggage (not just handbaggage, arf), and I reckon he'd be playing "Eddie Izzard" all the time.
I thought Christopher Ecclestone was a good choice, because he *wasn't* an obvious choice. The obvious choice, to go with a 'famous', 'eccentric', 'British', blah blah Doctor, really struck me as a bad idea, based on people with half-baked recollections of Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee trying to come up with ideas. I've nothing against Richard E Grant, but he was too much along that line (yeah, I know he did an online story or something). Apparently they also asked Hugh Grant (no relation AFAIK) to do it at one stage, but he turned it down. THANK GOD! Hugh-'king-Grant, fer chrissakes!
I don't want well-known, and I don't want formulaicly eccentric. I want someone who can bring something new to the role without losing sight of who The Doctor is.
Ecclestone seemed to be that guy, and then he buggered off. Damn.
There are also more subtle issues at work with the 'R/G/B mixing' approach to colour generation. You can read more about them here.
To summarise; consider that the red, green and blue receptors are sensitive to a *range* of colours; the sensitivity curve for each receptor is roughly bell-shaped, peaking on red, green or blue light. There is also some overlap between the red and green sensitivity curves, and between green and blue (not red and blue IIRC).
This is of course essential. Sensitivity narrowly focused on R, G or B would leave us unable to see intermediate colours (e.g. yellow!).
Reasonable overlap is necessary, or
(A) there would be certain intermediate frequencies that were not covered sufficiently by either receptor (e.g. certain shades of yellow in the valley between the red and green curves would be very hard to see), and
(B) Colours would be quantised into 'red group', 'green group', or 'blue group' (think about it...)
Because of the (necessary) sensitivity-curve overlap, the green receptor is slightly sensitive to red light, and so on. Where is this leading, you ask?
True cyan has a frequency between blue and green. This is within the sensitivity range of both blue and green receptors; the brain can use the 'ratio' to figure out that it's looking at cyan. But true cyan is (to all intents and purposes) outside the red receptors' range, so the red receptor is not stimulated.
Simulated cyan is made up of green and blue light. This stimulates the green and blue receptors in the same ratio as true cyan would, so in theory looks just like the real thing. However, the red receptor is also slightly sensitive to green light; thus, unlike with real cyan, the RGB-mixed version also stimulates the red receptor.
This is (supposedly) what makes certain RGB-generated colours less convincing (hence the linked story above).
This isn't even counting the fact that our colour receptors aren't exactly R, G and B, and therefore to simulate certain colours using RGB is impossible, as it requires one or more components to be negative. (If the receptors were exactly R, G and B, that would not be the case).
Not sure if this is connected, but it could be related to the way that, after sitting outside in bright sunlight, then going inside, everything appears green.
While incadensent lights are close because they also use blackbody radiation (unlike LEDs and flourescent lights), they aren't perfect
Wouldn't the same colour require that the incandescent material was at the same temperature as the sun?
I was just at a wal*mart getting some food and they had a huge widescreen tv set up with the star wars frito-lays display. On the widescreen tv was running a full frame version of phantom menace with big black bars on the sides.
Idiots! As every widescreen TV owner can demonstrate, the way to view 4:3 video is to stretch it so that everyone looks squat and fat. *cough*
Some people seem to *really* value their screen being full over anything else. When I was at university, my flatmates watched anamorphic widescreen DVDs on a normal 4:3 TV without the black bars (so everyone was tall); and, of course, the stretching of non-widescreen material to fit a widescreen is even more common.
BTW, is the use of the phrase 'full-screen' helpful any more? It's not 'full-screen' when displayed in the correct ratio on a 16:9 TV.
A friend of mine did something similar for a project using IR sensors. In that case, he had a break in the beam trigger a sample, so he could have a LASER HARP
Well, that's pretty cool, but I doubt it would wow the crowds at a Jean-Michel Jarre light show. I thought the whole point of a laser-harp was that you could *see* the beams.
On the other hand....
"Man, Jarre's new stuff really sucks!"
"I don't think he's actually playing anything; he looks like he's warming up his hands on the laser harp"
BTW, if it's a genuine IR *laser* harp, did he get the lasers from some old CD players?
Ah, come on, you'd seen him before at least once. Boxleitner was Tron!
I omitted that for reasons of length. Specifically; yes, I *had* seen Tron, but I didn't remember him from that. In fact, the Tron characterisation and acting is very weak, and didn't stick in my mind at all; one reason I rate it very highly in terms of effects, but not as an overall movie experience.
In fact, I watched Tron *again* circa 2000, and I didn't recognise Boxleitner for quite some time (his character in the 'real world' had glasses on and he was quite a bit younger). So go figure...!
t the denoumont of the entire serious, Bruce Boxleitner yells "Get the hell out of our galaxy!"
I know that Boxleitner replaced O'Hare's character because he was a bigger name, but he was *way* too much of a "regular American guy/soldier" to be convincing in that position. He totally lacked authority and statesmanship. Or was the audience supposed to be able to empathise with the character?
Yuk.
The irony is that, to a very large extent, earth was a metaphor for the USA; and Sheridan's attitude was very American. Yet in that case, earth was a pawn in a war between two greater powers, the tiny country that *wasn't* the USA nor the USSR.
Go figure what you can make of that...
Oh yeah; my apologies. I knew I was missing something from the list of "bads".
Really ******* horrible dialogue.
In the past they didn't have that much compting with them, but the new battlestar galactica, farcape, the new doctor who and other shows that put Enterprise to shame.
(My emphasis) Sorry, the new Doctor Who will *not* appeal to a mainstream American audience.
They tried to do that in 1996; the result was a horribly watered-down version that changed a lot of the stuff around and Americanised it (even set it in the US!) And it *still* flopped.
Although the effects in the new series are massively better than those in the old one, the simple fact is that Doctor Who is too British to appeal to a mass-market US audience. Sure, it had a cult-like fanbase in the US who may well enjoy the new series; but it will never get the sorts of audience that are likely to worry the producers of ST.
B5 isn't really a good example. B5 ran it's full story arc.
B5 got futzed about by the uncertainty over the fifth season; consequently, the intended end of the arc was moved to series four, and when series 5 got the go-ahead, it was missing the main plot that drove the whole series.
I found it inconsequential and disappointing. Of course, some would argue that the replacement of Michael O'Hare with Bruce Boxleitner was also a major kink in the story arc. Although some criticised O'Hare's acting, it was at least as good as Boxleitner's and his style was way more appropriate (pseudo-gravitas versus Boxleitner's regular-guy character acting). Apparently, Boxleitner was more of a "name" than O'Hare; well, maybe in the US, but I'd never heard of him before that.
Funny how B5 exhibited some of the worst aspects of sci-fantasy (ropey acting and characterisation- e.g. Marcus and various second-league characters-, messing stuff around, cliched sets) as well as the best (genuinely planned long story arc, good characterisation and acting- e.g. London and G'Kar).
They could put a plastic cover over the keyboard, with molds for each of hte keys, and spray/wipe that plastic cover with bleach every now and then.
You really want something disposable, like cling film.
Seriously, I don't like waste, but I reckon it would be a better bet than a plastic cover that would still have nooks and crannies to clean.
This time the rating's meaning is a bit different than usual. No one over the age of 13 should attend.
In that case, Michael Jackson will probably still be able to get in; primarily because he won't be watching the film, he'll be watching the audience...
God, now they're going to rape "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".
Raping a witch is evil (she might be a witch but she's still a person); raping a lion is perverse (even- or especially- one that talks and is a metaphor for the Christian deity).
But as for raping a wardrobe, I'm not sure I can visualise that at all. You have some damn strange fetishes.
Slashdotters are weird.
If you are adding the extraneous "u" after the "o", as you did to humor, shouldn't this term be spelled "pou-faced" ?
No.
Thank you for trolling. Please try again tommorow.
"Po-faced"; sullen, lacking in humour. I meant it to mean overly serious.
Sorry mate, just because cleese moved to california it doesnt make him american ;)
:)
Actually, have you noticed Cleese isn't funny AT ALL nowadays?
That's what moving to California does to you...
In all seriousness, it's been said that Cleese seems to be trying to be funny because that's what expected of him and (elsewhere; I believe that it was Cleese himself said) that he isn't really interested in being funny nowadays. Which I don't blame him for; we all change.
Problem is, last two things I saw Cleese in were the two most recent Bond films. And he's damn AWFUL in them; obviously TRYING to be funny. There was always humour in the Bond/Q scenes, but Desmond Llewellyn played it straight (without being po-faced). Cleese is just annoying in it.
if you turn something in, get it repaired then the warranty gets extended. My muvo died after 14 months of use, got it replaced with a bigger model and extended for 24 months
;-)
Implication: Buy shoddy crap that'll fail within the 2-year guarantee period, and get free replacements for the rest of your life!
Of course, they'll eventually figure out what's happening, and give you the product designed to last 3 years, just to spite you.