you know, if you ONLY wanted so SEE something like that, you could go out doors and look for a field covered in sunflowers.
I liked the mod for this one; Score:4, Informative.
Insightful might have been fine, but "informative" suggests that the moderator has been sitting at their computer for too long and forgotten about the real world.
BTW, if you want an exciting game, you can get a gun (*) and *shoot* the sunflowers.
Please supply the latest Windows service pack and the latest Internet Explorer update patches on your CDs and make them a prerequisite to going online. Microsoft would love you to do this
Wasn't there something about MS *not* allowing Service Pack updates on magazine cover disks?
If this is true (and I'll confess that my memory is hazy here), that alone is good enough reason for the relevant authority in [insert your country name here] to slap Microsoft down. If Microsoft were not a near-monopoly, and computers not so ingrained in our daily lives, I might feel differently. However, that's not how it is.
Mailing out generic CDs at cost (*) to anyone who requested them would be an acceptable alternative; but why not just let them put them on coverdisks anyway.
(*) By which I mean genuinely at cost, and not including some vastly inflated shipping and handling price.
DVB-T (digital video broadcasting - terrestrial, I assume)
Yes; there are cable, satellite and even- I believe- 'handheld' variants.
With DVB-T we'd get all the channels we're interested in, at the same quality.
The quality of the technology got a bad rep in the UK when it came out, but the recent set-top box I have gives near-perfect quality with an indoor aerial (you're *meant* to require a rooftop one). From what I've heard, the receivers have improved a lot recently, and will hopefully get to the stage where most people can get away with a portable aerial.
However, DVB is still quite all-or-nothing; the difference between a perfect signal and one that gives no picture is narrow compared to analogue, which just gets progressively fuzzier.
I'd assume that the MPEG-decoding quality of the box also determined the picture quality; I've seen near-DVD quality from my box (obviously given decent source material), but in the same way that PowerDVD gives much better quality DVD playback than Windows Media Player, this may vary.
A600 == Neither fish nor fowl
on
Amiga Sells AmigaOS
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· Score: 2, Informative
A600 was a good machine, but it broke software compatibility. (The chipset was changed.)
How many of these changes had already happened with the A500 Plus (released late 1991)? (Yes, I know that machine wasn't released in the USA; but they could have)
My point isn't that the A600 was crap per se- it's that it was a pointless and stupid Amiga variant for the time. It came out 7-8 months after the A500 Plus. Yes, it had new interfaces.... which meant that a lot of the old A500 peripherals no longer fitted.
Then (IIRC) when the A1200 came out (which is what the A600 should have been at its price), many peripherals for that didn't work with the A600. Piggy in the middle. Why did they release a new incompatible machine that was *broadly* no better than the A500 series?
As you say, it had a nice IDE interface (good point), but no keypad. This last point is very telling; I heard that the motherboard was stamped 'A300', which was meant to be C='s "budget" Amiga. From that perspective, the A600 would have made more sense.
My point is this. The A600 was more similiar to the A500 than the A1200; the A500 Plus introduced AmigaDOS 2.0 etc and upgraded chips, but was sensible to keep broad compatibility with the A500, because it wasn't an "all-new" Amiga. That "all-new" Amiga was the A1200.
The A600 was a different-but-not-new-and-improved enough distraction at a time when the A1200 should have already been out.
As I said before, in a market moving forward very fast, any significantly new machine with compatibility issues has to be significantly better on balance than the machine it replaced. The A600 wasn't.
However, there are people out there who believe that the Amiga is still alive and working in a supermarket in Albuquerque.
I guess you get that jokes reference from OS/2. Yes, it does work in places, in 2004.
Can't figure out if you mean someone made the same joke about OS/2, or that OS/2 is still in use in supermarkets. In the former case... I made it up myself, though it's not unlikely that someone has already cracked a similar joke.
In the latter case; yes, I can quite believe that OS/2 still enjoys major use in some supermarkets. It's only just now being phased out of NCR's ATMs (replaced with Windows 2000 or XP, IIRC). But I don't think the Amiga was ever used for stuff like that. It's an Elvis reference, dammit!:-)
About Amiga? 4000's are excellent for local TV stations and subtitling, with genlock and video toaster. Yes, they still work.
They must be replacing quite a lot of them with dirt-cheap PCs and cards now, though? I'd assume that with the move to all-digital technology, there must come a point where the analogue-based toaster/Amiga setup doesn't provide the facilities (and, to some extent, quality) that a modern studio would require.
I've noticed that the visual quality of US TV programmes (I'm in Europe) has improved noticably in the past few years; even early-to-mid 90s NTSC stuff looks poor by comparison. This is doubly noticeable since I got a digital TV receiver, where the good stuff looks really good.
Re:Let...it...die...peacefully...
on
Amiga Sells AmigaOS
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· Score: 3, Funny
Let the Amiga go...let it fade into computer history. It's time to pull the plug and take off the feeding tube.
In reality, that happened years ago. However, there are people out there who believe that the Amiga is still alive and working in a supermarket in Albuquerque.
The curse of the Amiga is how it could go for a full 10 years, bouncing from owner to owner, without actually coming back to the market despite the clear demand.
Who was the "clear demand" from? The hardcore fans or the public?
I remember that, by the start of 1993, *before* C= (Commodore.. I'd almost forgotten that pictogram) went bankrupt, the focus had shifted to the PC. People at my school were exchanging PC games, not Amiga ones.
Well, I'm no Amiga expert, but it seems that if C= had come up with something like the A1200 circa mid-1990, they might have stood a better chance. The momentum towards the PC was already significant by the time the A1200 was announced, and good though it was, I don't think it was revolutionary enough to make people change their minds back.
I don't understand what they were playing at with the moronic A600. The A500 Plus had pretty much the same OS, and although the A600 had a better spec in some ways, it was also *worse* than the (essentially) 5-year old A500 in certain respects, so was no better on balance, but couldn't use half the A500 peripherals.
In short, in a Red-Queen world where you have to keep moving forward, the A600 was a step backwards, and a pointless diversion from the A1200 6 months later.
They should also have included the A1200 technology in the CDTV (Amiga-based rival to Philip's CDi)... but would that have justified UKP 500 (US$750 or so at the time)? No.
So, was there really a massive demand for Amigas when C= went bankrupt? I'm not convinced. I saw the light when Escom wanted to charge *more* for the new A1200s (same spec as the year before). *No-one* was going to pay that for an aging machine in 1995 except the core fans.
If whoever owns the Amiga rights comes up with something cool, then good luck to them, but I'll judge it on the basis of something new.
True, especially when they used lossy JPEG images! Unbelievable, why not PNG or TIFF?
Because 5 minutes after being reported on Slashdot, they'd all have been replaced with "This site has exceeded its download limit for the next 5 years. Please come back in 2009."
I don't know; it looks more like a robot designed to get into a 25th Century gay disco. Seriously! (Well, not that seriously...)
Flashy LEDs and a policeman's cap for a Buck Rogers meets the Village People effect. Plus, I reckon they were going for the well-built "beefcake" look with those (cough) sculpted pecs and square shoulders.
And who's the other robot? Is that meant to be his cute twink boyfriend?
That would be hot if you could change the color of the ipod screen and what not. They need to move to a color LCD version.
Bleh. I agree 100% with the other replies that said this was a horrible waste of batteries and unnecessary. It would turn the iPod from something (supposedly) simple and elegant to one of those moronic CD systems with multiple bullshit coloured LEDs, gimmicky-looking level meters and speakers with doesn't-look-metallic-at-all silver/grey plastic detailing.
If you really just want to change the colour of the display, perhaps an interchangable backdrop or lights would be more appropriate. But I think that would still complicate the design and add a point of potential breakage.
Please believe me, kids, you will be thirty years old one day, and how well you are able to hear at that time depends very much on how well you treat your delicate, sensitive ears today.
Yeah, like... anyone that old's only going to use them to listen to shitty old people's music. So it's probably a good thing that you can't hear it. OTOH, maybe the music companies figured that out and decided to sell all their shitty music to over 30s.
Yes (a) This is a blatant troll and (b) I'm closer to that age than I'd like to be. Dammit.
According to the frequency list I found, 252kHz is RTE Radio 1. It's actually an Irish station, but covers the UK as well.
That sounds plausible- although aimed at UK audiences, Atlantic 252 broadcast from the Irish Republic. I assume the Irish must have let Atlantic use 'their'(?) bandwidth in exchange for some money...
I can't pick up RTE Radio 1 on 252KHz where I am; I assume that RTE use a weaker signal that doesn't reach as far outside Ireland as Atlantic's.
BBC World Service broadcasts on LW, and they transmit BBC Radio 4 when they don't have World Service stuff to send out.
True; but that's the same frequency as Radio 4 I mentioned above- and World Service is being used to fill the gaps in Radio 4, not vice versa. World Service still broadcasts their stuff on their own frequencies when Radio 4 is on air (e.g. via SW, various forms of digital TV, DAB(??)).
Are there any broadcast stations on MW and LW? I wasn't aware of any - maybe it's just where I live though...
Where do you live? The US?
There are quite a lot of MW stations in the UK; BBC Radio 5 Live, some commercial stuff using old BBC frequencies (for BBC stations where FM coverage is now almost universal); and there are also local stations which nowadays use their FM and MW bands for totally different services (local MW tends to the MOR/retro stuff, FM for more modern music).
LW is... not much used, except for BBC Radio 4. Sometimes LW Radio 4 broadcasts different stuff to FM; they use it for cricket commentary for example. Atlantic 252 (kHz)- a pop/rock station- started in the late 80s; that frequency was sold at some stage to a talk station, but it seems to be silent now.... so Radio 4 is all alone again.
I'd guess most UK radios support MW (usu. labelled as 'AM'), but less than 50% have LW, and very few ordinary radios have SW.
you could use a diesel generator (engine) converted to run on vegetable oil, while its not as green as a hand crank, its from a renewable source and recycling oil that would usually be disposed of (by restaurants so its more or less free)
Downside: Your car now smells like a chip shop.
American readers will now be scratching their chins... "a *chip* shop?!" In this context, chips are french fries (but usu. thicker than McDonalds) and often sold with fish, pie, sausage etc. And you get to sprinkle vinegar on the chips.
Perhaps, but 100GB CD's just make too good sombreros to waste on data backup
Uh?!.... 100GB CDs? I'd like to see that:-)
Actually, I realised literally seconds after I'd posted it what a lousy idea suggesting CD-Rs for backup was- 100 CDs per 80GB drive. If you couldn't afford anything better, writable DVD drives and media are cheap enough now and (I guess) just about usable for incremental background backups.
Dammit... since you're the proprieter of the 'autopr0n' website, can I sue you for not providing me with vehicle-based pornography?
Not that I'm saying I'm the type of guy to get off on watching a cute Asian car get jump-started by two big black American limousines, nor enjoy in any way watching a car park full of BMWs do each other, or monster trucks or...... ahem... doesn't do it for me at all.
No, I spend all my time perusing goatse like a good Slashdotter, but if I was that way inclined, then I'd feel pretty damn cheated that I wasn't getting hot European cars, or whatever.
Before anyone says $250 for a 4GB device is overpriced, look at the competition. Sony 256MB MP3s are about 150GBP here, and that's more than $250.
You're not comparing like-for-like. UK prices are always above US prices, and I assume the one you quoted includes VAT (i.e. sales tax). Plus, Sony are generally overpriced for what they are (and- it seems- these days without the quality to justify the inflated price).
The 4GB device may be small in size, but I'd guess the capacity is too small to hold most people's CD collection. When larger capacity iPods of the same size come out in a years time, which can hold most people's entire collections, the mini iPod will seem inconvenient and passe (*).
Perhaps that's the difference between us. I'll pay extra money for something that looks nice and is well-designed and even has weaker technical specs than the competition *if* there are no serious compromises or inconveniences.
For example:- 60Gb device versus 40Gb device; not that big a deal, because I don't have anywhere near 40Gb worth of music and amn't likely to accumulate that much more soon. OTOH 4GB v 15-20GB; the latter will hold all my CDs, the former won't.... PITA.
(*) Yeah, I know passe has an accent, but Slashdot won't let me enter the accented letter directly *or* the HTML entity...
Oh, digressing slightly, with DVD pr0n movies are they taking advantage of the format? You know, multi camera angles, different soundtracks
Different soundtracks? Most porn is bad enough to start off with, but why the hell they bother with that incredibly shit dubbing is beyond me.
"Mmm... Mmmm... [sucking fingers]... Oh yes..."
"Uh... Uh...."
Well, I'm convinced.
Gimme one decent soundtrack over 10 shitty ones- I normally turn the sound down... anyway, I'd rather see (and listen to) two decently attractive people f*****g etc. and actually enjoying it than watch some big-haired chick with blatantly fake (and horrible) looking fake breasts fail miserably at the high-class-hooker/slut hybrid while some two sleazy weirdos with shaved balls do her.
Which isn't to say I don't like porn... just the bad stuff (i.e. most of it).
I'm surprised they haven't done porn in the "choose-your-own-adventure"-book style yet (i.e. watch a scene, choose what happens next...)
Slashdot Mirror
you know, if you ONLY wanted so SEE something like that, you could go out doors and look for a field covered in sunflowers.
I liked the mod for this one; Score:4, Informative.
Insightful might have been fine, but "informative" suggests that the moderator has been sitting at their computer for too long and forgotten about the real world.
BTW, if you want an exciting game, you can get a gun (*) and *shoot* the sunflowers.
(*) This offer void where prohibited by law.
Please supply the latest Windows service pack and the latest Internet Explorer update patches on your CDs and make them a prerequisite to going online. Microsoft would love you to do this
Wasn't there something about MS *not* allowing Service Pack updates on magazine cover disks?
If this is true (and I'll confess that my memory is hazy here), that alone is good enough reason for the relevant authority in [insert your country name here] to slap Microsoft down. If Microsoft were not a near-monopoly, and computers not so ingrained in our daily lives, I might feel differently. However, that's not how it is.
Mailing out generic CDs at cost (*) to anyone who requested them would be an acceptable alternative; but why not just let them put them on coverdisks anyway.
(*) By which I mean genuinely at cost, and not including some vastly inflated shipping and handling price.
DVB-T (digital video broadcasting - terrestrial, I assume)
Yes; there are cable, satellite and even- I believe- 'handheld' variants.
With DVB-T we'd get all the channels we're interested in, at the same quality.
The quality of the technology got a bad rep in the UK when it came out, but the recent set-top box I have gives near-perfect quality with an indoor aerial (you're *meant* to require a rooftop one). From what I've heard, the receivers have improved a lot recently, and will hopefully get to the stage where most people can get away with a portable aerial.
However, DVB is still quite all-or-nothing; the difference between a perfect signal and one that gives no picture is narrow compared to analogue, which just gets progressively fuzzier.
I'd assume that the MPEG-decoding quality of the box also determined the picture quality; I've seen near-DVD quality from my box (obviously given decent source material), but in the same way that PowerDVD gives much better quality DVD playback than Windows Media Player, this may vary.
A600 was a good machine, but it broke software compatibility. (The chipset was changed.)
How many of these changes had already happened with the A500 Plus (released late 1991)? (Yes, I know that machine wasn't released in the USA; but they could have)
My point isn't that the A600 was crap per se- it's that it was a pointless and stupid Amiga variant for the time. It came out 7-8 months after the A500 Plus. Yes, it had new interfaces.... which meant that a lot of the old A500 peripherals no longer fitted.
Then (IIRC) when the A1200 came out (which is what the A600 should have been at its price), many peripherals for that didn't work with the A600. Piggy in the middle. Why did they release a new incompatible machine that was *broadly* no better than the A500 series?
As you say, it had a nice IDE interface (good point), but no keypad. This last point is very telling; I heard that the motherboard was stamped 'A300', which was meant to be C='s "budget" Amiga. From that perspective, the A600 would have made more sense.
My point is this. The A600 was more similiar to the A500 than the A1200; the A500 Plus introduced AmigaDOS 2.0 etc and upgraded chips, but was sensible to keep broad compatibility with the A500, because it wasn't an "all-new" Amiga. That "all-new" Amiga was the A1200.
The A600 was a different-but-not-new-and-improved enough distraction at a time when the A1200 should have already been out.
As I said before, in a market moving forward very fast, any significantly new machine with compatibility issues has to be significantly better on balance than the machine it replaced. The A600 wasn't.
They did - I had an A1200 in 1993.
Which would have been shortly after they were announced at the end of 1992 and *not* mid-1990!
However, there are people out there who believe that the Amiga is still alive and working in a supermarket in Albuquerque.
:-)
I guess you get that jokes reference from OS/2. Yes, it does work in places, in 2004.
Can't figure out if you mean someone made the same joke about OS/2, or that OS/2 is still in use in supermarkets. In the former case... I made it up myself, though it's not unlikely that someone has already cracked a similar joke.
In the latter case; yes, I can quite believe that OS/2 still enjoys major use in some supermarkets. It's only just now being phased out of NCR's ATMs (replaced with Windows 2000 or XP, IIRC). But I don't think the Amiga was ever used for stuff like that. It's an Elvis reference, dammit!
About Amiga? 4000's are excellent for local TV stations and subtitling, with genlock and video toaster. Yes, they still work.
They must be replacing quite a lot of them with dirt-cheap PCs and cards now, though? I'd assume that with the move to all-digital technology, there must come a point where the analogue-based toaster/Amiga setup doesn't provide the facilities (and, to some extent, quality) that a modern studio would require.
I've noticed that the visual quality of US TV programmes (I'm in Europe) has improved noticably in the past few years; even early-to-mid 90s NTSC stuff looks poor by comparison. This is doubly noticeable since I got a digital TV receiver, where the good stuff looks really good.
Let the Amiga go...let it fade into computer history. It's time to pull the plug and take off the feeding tube.
In reality, that happened years ago. However, there are people out there who believe that the Amiga is still alive and working in a supermarket in Albuquerque.
The curse of the Amiga is how it could go for a full 10 years, bouncing from owner to owner, without actually coming back to the market despite the clear demand.
Who was the "clear demand" from? The hardcore fans or the public?
I remember that, by the start of 1993, *before* C= (Commodore.. I'd almost forgotten that pictogram) went bankrupt, the focus had shifted to the PC. People at my school were exchanging PC games, not Amiga ones.
Well, I'm no Amiga expert, but it seems that if C= had come up with something like the A1200 circa mid-1990, they might have stood a better chance. The momentum towards the PC was already significant by the time the A1200 was announced, and good though it was, I don't think it was revolutionary enough to make people change their minds back.
I don't understand what they were playing at with the moronic A600. The A500 Plus had pretty much the same OS, and although the A600 had a better spec in some ways, it was also *worse* than the (essentially) 5-year old A500 in certain respects, so was no better on balance, but couldn't use half the A500 peripherals.
In short, in a Red-Queen world where you have to keep moving forward, the A600 was a step backwards, and a pointless diversion from the A1200 6 months later.
They should also have included the A1200 technology in the CDTV (Amiga-based rival to Philip's CDi)... but would that have justified UKP 500 (US$750 or so at the time)? No.
So, was there really a massive demand for Amigas when C= went bankrupt? I'm not convinced. I saw the light when Escom wanted to charge *more* for the new A1200s (same spec as the year before). *No-one* was going to pay that for an aging machine in 1995 except the core fans.
If whoever owns the Amiga rights comes up with something cool, then good luck to them, but I'll judge it on the basis of something new.
True, especially when they used lossy JPEG images! Unbelievable, why not PNG or TIFF?
Because 5 minutes after being reported on Slashdot, they'd all have been replaced with "This site has exceeded its download limit for the next 5 years. Please come back in 2009."
This is more like the info boxes you find in airports.
My family was wiped out by a rampaging infopoint, you insensitive clod.
I don't know; it looks more like a robot designed to get into a 25th Century gay disco. Seriously! (Well, not that seriously...)
Flashy LEDs and a policeman's cap for a Buck Rogers meets the Village People effect. Plus, I reckon they were going for the well-built "beefcake" look with those (cough) sculpted pecs and square shoulders.
And who's the other robot? Is that meant to be his cute twink boyfriend?
That would be hot if you could change the color of the ipod screen and what not. They need to move to a color LCD version.
Bleh. I agree 100% with the other replies that said this was a horrible waste of batteries and unnecessary. It would turn the iPod from something (supposedly) simple and elegant to one of those moronic CD systems with multiple bullshit coloured LEDs, gimmicky-looking level meters and speakers with doesn't-look-metallic-at-all silver/grey plastic detailing.
If you really just want to change the colour of the display, perhaps an interchangable backdrop or lights would be more appropriate. But I think that would still complicate the design and add a point of potential breakage.
Please believe me, kids, you will be thirty years old one day, and how well you are able to hear at that time depends very much on how well you treat your delicate, sensitive ears today.
Yeah, like... anyone that old's only going to use them to listen to shitty old people's music. So it's probably a good thing that you can't hear it. OTOH, maybe the music companies figured that out and decided to sell all their shitty music to over 30s.
Yes (a) This is a blatant troll and (b) I'm closer to that age than I'd like to be. Dammit.
Bio-diesel is all a bunch of hype... [snip] Why bother?!
:-)
Damn right- I think walking is a good idea too.
According to the frequency list I found, 252kHz is RTE Radio 1. It's actually an Irish station, but covers the UK as well.
That sounds plausible- although aimed at UK audiences, Atlantic 252 broadcast from the Irish Republic. I assume the Irish must have let Atlantic use 'their'(?) bandwidth in exchange for some money...
I can't pick up RTE Radio 1 on 252KHz where I am; I assume that RTE use a weaker signal that doesn't reach as far outside Ireland as Atlantic's.
BBC World Service broadcasts on LW, and they transmit BBC Radio 4 when they don't have World Service stuff to send out.
True; but that's the same frequency as Radio 4 I mentioned above- and World Service is being used to fill the gaps in Radio 4, not vice versa. World Service still broadcasts their stuff on their own frequencies when Radio 4 is on air (e.g. via SW, various forms of digital TV, DAB(??)).
Are there any broadcast stations on MW and LW? I wasn't aware of any - maybe it's just where I live though...
Where do you live? The US?
There are quite a lot of MW stations in the UK; BBC Radio 5 Live, some commercial stuff using old BBC frequencies (for BBC stations where FM coverage is now almost universal); and there are also local stations which nowadays use their FM and MW bands for totally different services (local MW tends to the MOR/retro stuff, FM for more modern music).
LW is... not much used, except for BBC Radio 4. Sometimes LW Radio 4 broadcasts different stuff to FM; they use it for cricket commentary for example. Atlantic 252 (kHz)- a pop/rock station- started in the late 80s; that frequency was sold at some stage to a talk station, but it seems to be silent now.... so Radio 4 is all alone again.
I'd guess most UK radios support MW (usu. labelled as 'AM'), but less than 50% have LW, and very few ordinary radios have SW.
you could use a diesel generator (engine) converted to run on vegetable oil, while its not as green as a hand crank, its from a renewable source and recycling oil that would usually be disposed of (by restaurants so its more or less free)
Downside: Your car now smells like a chip shop.
American readers will now be scratching their chins... "a *chip* shop?!" In this context, chips are french fries (but usu. thicker than McDonalds) and often sold with fish, pie, sausage etc. And you get to sprinkle vinegar on the chips.
Dammit, I hate explaining jokes.
either marketing in Canon is asleep, or the engineers rule the roost
Or maybe there are enough people like me who'll happily pay more for an equivalent-spec Canon because they have simple (and cheaper) tank replacement.
Yeah, sometimes I replace the tanks with compatibles, sometimes not. Canon will still make more money from me than Lexmark ever will.
I really despise their smaller printers (strangely, they all have all-in-one ink).
Does the i450/i455 count as a smaller printer? The print quality is incredible given the price.
Perhaps, but 100GB CD's just make too good sombreros to waste on data backup
:-)
Uh?!.... 100GB CDs? I'd like to see that
Actually, I realised literally seconds after I'd posted it what a lousy idea suggesting CD-Rs for backup was- 100 CDs per 80GB drive. If you couldn't afford anything better, writable DVD drives and media are cheap enough now and (I guess) just about usable for incremental background backups.
CDs though? Ugh.
If, like a great many people, you recycle backup tapes - eventually all your backups will also contain the corrupt data.
Perhaps a good reason to use CD-R (not CD-RW) then?
Dammit... since you're the proprieter of the 'autopr0n' website, can I sue you for not providing me with vehicle-based pornography?
Not that I'm saying I'm the type of guy to get off on watching a cute Asian car get jump-started by two big black American limousines, nor enjoy in any way watching a car park full of BMWs do each other, or monster trucks or...... ahem... doesn't do it for me at all.
No, I spend all my time perusing goatse like a good Slashdotter, but if I was that way inclined, then I'd feel pretty damn cheated that I wasn't getting hot European cars, or whatever.
Before anyone says $250 for a 4GB device is overpriced, look at the competition. Sony 256MB MP3s are about 150GBP here, and that's more than $250.
You're not comparing like-for-like. UK prices are always above US prices, and I assume the one you quoted includes VAT (i.e. sales tax). Plus, Sony are generally overpriced for what they are (and- it seems- these days without the quality to justify the inflated price).
The 4GB device may be small in size, but I'd guess the capacity is too small to hold most people's CD collection. When larger capacity iPods of the same size come out in a years time, which can hold most people's entire collections, the mini iPod will seem inconvenient and passe (*).
Perhaps that's the difference between us. I'll pay extra money for something that looks nice and is well-designed and even has weaker technical specs than the competition *if* there are no serious compromises or inconveniences.
For example:- 60Gb device versus 40Gb device; not that big a deal, because I don't have anywhere near 40Gb worth of music and amn't likely to accumulate that much more soon. OTOH 4GB v 15-20GB; the latter will hold all my CDs, the former won't.... PITA.
(*) Yeah, I know passe has an accent, but Slashdot won't let me enter the accented letter directly *or* the HTML entity...
Oh, digressing slightly, with DVD pr0n movies are they taking advantage of the format? You know, multi camera angles, different soundtracks
Different soundtracks? Most porn is bad enough to start off with, but why the hell they bother with that incredibly shit dubbing is beyond me.
"Mmm... Mmmm... [sucking fingers]... Oh yes..."
"Uh... Uh...."
Well, I'm convinced.
Gimme one decent soundtrack over 10 shitty ones- I normally turn the sound down... anyway, I'd rather see (and listen to) two decently attractive people f*****g etc. and actually enjoying it than watch some big-haired chick with blatantly fake (and horrible) looking fake breasts fail miserably at the high-class-hooker/slut hybrid while some two sleazy weirdos with shaved balls do her.
Which isn't to say I don't like porn... just the bad stuff (i.e. most of it).
I'm surprised they haven't done porn in the "choose-your-own-adventure"-book style yet (i.e. watch a scene, choose what happens next...)
i can't spend all day on google now, can i?
Damn right. If you spend 6 hours a day reading Slashdot, that only leaves 18 to spend on Google.