My big upgrade this year was the Dell 24" widescreen. I was looking at the 20", but then they went and put it on sale. The 9800pro I had tried to keep up but choaked a bit under the 1900x1200 load. So I pickup up a 7800GS. I have a dual slot motherboard by Asrock, it has both APG and PCI-ex 16x on it so I could delay my purchase and wait for the post Christmas prices for a new video card.
The extra push in the eye candy department was nice. BF2 does look much better, but the thing that I'm getting the most mileage out of is the fact that the latest cards have the ability to excellerate graphics/video on both outputs not just one like with my 9800pro. I have my old 17" set up next to the 24". What am I talking about? Essentially what it lets you do is run a game/video on either monitor or drag it in a window from one monitor to the other without it stopping and locking up the computer. Add in a dual core processor and now I can run a game and a video at the same time.
Playing MMO's and watching TV goes together like peanut butter and jelly, and yes I did find it possible to run two game accounts one on each monitor at the same time possible with some games, but only if I turned things down quite a bit.
I got Max in South Dakota, that's pretty close to Canada, solar works just fine up there.
I'm getting off the subject of this response. Who cares about Canada and Scandanavia, or Russia, the original response to the response, on which I commented was that it would take an insane amount of surface area to switch to solar in the US and I responded that we already have plenty of empty roof space here, so exactly what does this have to do with Canada? Other than maybe that we should be switching to solar so more carbon based things can be left for those up north. Course we could always send some power lines up your way, we like Canada.
Wow first they sue MS for having a monopoly then we making it ilegal for anyone to use anything but MS (A burning case of herpes is perferable to using Realnetworks products).
I guess if my choices are either MS or Real when it comes to getting music streamed, then the choice is neither.
An electric car is no different than a gas one. If you design it to be slow and efficient it will be so, but if you design it to be a rocket, it can do that too with ease.
The car companies are finally smarting up and offering hybrids that are not toy eco cars. If you look at the latest models from Accord and Toyota, both have 6 cyclinder engines and both out perform in fuel economy and performance of the standard models.
California blackouts occurred more on the news than in reality, much like the 10's of thousands of dead in New Orleans and in the Trade Towers.
The lithium bateries that have been exploding are cheap Asian garbage batteries that people have been buying off of Ebay for $2 instead of the OEM ones for $40
Finally if lithium battery production becomes much like lead acid batteries is currently, the recycle rate will hit near 90% after only a few years.
My old computer is hooked up to the widescreen in the living room. It has just shy of 1TB of harddrives in it and is full of shows and movies. Most I bought or rented then ripped. When it gets too full I just delete some of the older stuff off of it.
It's hooked up to the net as well so radio and music video are readily available in addition to the 70gb of ripped CD's I have on there too.
The whole thing is networked with GB networking so streaming to the other machines in the house is very easy as long no more than a couple of people are accessing the same harddrive at the same time.
I have a dual monitor system set up with a dual processor puter. Watching TV/movies rarely interferes with games/work/school other than maybe being distracting.
We already have fore more than 1-2 Maines already being used in the US, they're called buildings. By requiring all new buildings to have a minimal amount of PV cells or solar hot water heating installed, a great deal of power can generated simply through new construction.
Start off with an insignificant amount per new home, say a 1000 watt inerty system and/or enough solar hot water for 4 people, and up the amount every decade or so until the thing becomes self sustaining.
After visiting Hawaii I am convinced this is feeseable. Nearly every home I saw in Maui had solar hot water heaters on them, and nearly every business had a PV array and solar hot water heaters on their roofs.
Want the price lower? Then stop buying them till it goes down. It's not like fuel where you need it to get to work. Speaking of which we trade movies around at work so that you end up paying around $20 for every 5-10 movies that you get to watch. No netflix or pirating required.
Along those lines, my favorite tactic to combat crap movies is when I do end up buying a bad one that wont sell on ebay or amazon for more than $5 then I just take it to the local library and donate it. I get to knock $20 off my taxes and a little warm spot in my heart to know that everytime someone checks that movie out the company that made it gets nothing.
Why even bother with TV's anymore. My 24" monitor works great as a TV. I watch everything off of DVD's or downloads now. No commercials, no DVR rental fee, no cable fee.
You know what Stewart, I like you, you're not like the other people here in the trailer park.
Re:IPTV and Channel Changes
on
A Look at IPTV
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· Score: 1
Other than the elderly, that don't know any better, who would actually channel surfs anymore? For me to buy into IPTV would be to have access to a library not a broadcast, I don't much care for sports or news, so I don't need live. I want full access to all episodes of a tv show or all released movies and then download them when I want them and watch them at my leisure. How hard is that for the telecos/cable company to understand?
If I'm bored I'll go find something else to do, or I'll hop online and look around for more content.
The whole thing could be rolled out right now, but they are still insistent on controlling the markets and the prices. Their method of choice is steaming. Which is nothing more than a gimic to make "priority traffic" a premium service and a road block to the competition and customer purchase rights.
People don't seem to get the point of IPTV. There wont be a reason to channel surf anymore. People surf because they are bored and are looking for something to watch.
If I'm bored now I'll surf the web to read or play a game, not to watch random TV channels. The whole point of IPTV is that the content you are interested will be already downloaded and sitting there waiting for you.
I don't want to watch a broadcast, I want a library. The whole concept of streaming is inane anyway. I don't want to wait for the next rerun showing of episode 3 season 1 of what ever show, I want to be able to grab them in order on my schedule not theirs. They still have some bizzar concept that on demand is some how still a premium service.
It's something that is something the Teleco's and the Cable companies just can't seem to figure out. Till they do DVD decrypter/shrink and bittorrent will be my best buds.
No they don't fantasize about a 1-hr commute. They fantasize about a 1400 sf home in LA with no yard that doesn't cost over $500,000
People don't commute for fun, they commute to afford a home. Every off-ramp closer to LA you go the price of homes climbs around $5000. When you are up here in the Antelope Valley they start at $200,000 for a prefab.
This all has little to do with the commute. If you want to reduce emmisions then you have to reduce the number of poluters, in other words, people.
Lot's of money needs to be spend on R&D for better ways to collect energy, but some needs to be spent on getting the global population back down below 4 billion, if we ever want to see things get back under control.
The national duress in the 80's was the local long distance tolls (there were very suspicious areas drawn up to cut through the middle of towns), 50+ cents a minute for long distance, dollars per minute for overseas, and the all around "Go Fuck Yourself if you don't like it" attitude of the phone company. Dialing was the easy part, they didn't play all the area code and dialing method games like they do today.
The only excuse these days to even have land lines is for 911 service, which is pointless when a small addition of code could be added for cell and VOIP service to provide location information to emergency response.
We will be seeing shortly the Bells behaving just as they did before, as a hostile monopoly. The nice thing this time around technology does give us an out in the form of other services if they choose to be belligerent.
In the long run, what the President says is very true. Out sourcing is not a zero sum game. When countries or even people specialize(do you still grow your own food?) then the net result is more not less.
Items that once cost ten dollars now only cost one dollar. Even if a company is greedy and keeps the other nine instead of passing it onto the consumer, or if they do pass it onto the consumer and now their buying power just increased by nine dollars. Either way the net is more available wealth which in turn results in more jobs, more economic opporunities.
With the good we cannot forget the bad. In the short term though, for the individual who has spent years training or educating themselves and gaining experience and skill, that economic fact global trade is more not less, is not much comfort when their lives are disrupted by lay offs and sudden loss of local job opportunities.
The whole process can be very painful and the government and businesses need to promote globalization that does not leave a high amount of human collateral in it's wake. It is all well and good for the excellent opportunities in India, but most of these off shore locations also tend to be hostile and protective against goods and services from other countries. We need to make sure that they are not eating our lunch and then turning around and doing the same to dinner.
My suggestion to anyone living in the US today or any other 1st world nation would be to make sure you are getting a piece of that pie the president is talking about. Live well within your means and invest from the time you start working, even if it is a very small amount from every paycheck. That way when things change for you, you'll still be getting your share of the offshore bonus check.
Discs are more fragile, currently do not have a faster tranfer rate and have a much higher latency. Blu-ray and HD is all vaporware until it hits the market. Even so harddrives will be as fast or faster by the time they hit maintstream.
DVD's are only now just dropping down in price. Harddrives may be more expensive now, but I'm sure Blu-ray and HD will take the same 5 years or longer to become mainstream and compete in price. By then they'll then hard drives will be even bigger, faster, and cheaper.
Now as far as data security and getting your harddrive back, it's called "don't be stupid". You never use one piece of media or hardware to keep your data safe, and you certainly don't loan something you can't "permanently" loan to anyone. I've got 2 spare harddrives with old 120gb drives in them for transport and one 300gb for data back up. If I lose one of the 120s I'm out about $40 so so what.
Now as far as Netflix or other DRM. Netflix barely ships DVD's as it is, and I won't buy into any new DRM that hasn't already been hacked by someone else. If I can't use it in the way I won't I won't be giving them my money. You honestly think they'll let you "own" any future Blu-ray or HD media purchases. I predict that it will be illegal to resell anything in the future without having to go through a lot of hassel getting the media "registered" to a new piece of crippled hardware.
we need a non proprietary standard, not a "better" one.
We already have one, it's called an external harddrive.
It's not as convenient nor as portable as a disk I'll give you that, but it is here now, it has a much higher rewriteable storage density, it's faster, it has no DRM, it's a generic product (can be bought OEM or retail), it is upgraded every six months or so and finally is backwards compatable. Let's not forget for those of you who like to let a friend "borrow" whatever you can drop the thing in the mail or meet them in person for a swap and enjoy a higher "bandwidth" rate than anything you could afford.
I do realize that companies are not going to sell you movies on harddrives, but do we really want to even go there anymore? I for one want to download things instead of playing the movie/dvd (full screen/widescreen/directors cut/collectors ed) release games they like to play now. Will there be DRM still? Most likely but overall prices will drop since they will no longer be able to sell products that are crippled out side of their destined market.
People have become too focused on the smoke and mirrors that they ignore the useable more pratical option sitting right in front of them. Refuse to buy their crap and they'll be forced to gives us what we want else the pirates will. Cave in and buy into the whole blu-ray/hd DRM scam and they sell us only what they want us to have at a price of their choosing.
We already have one, it's called an external harddrive. Not as convient and portable as a disk I'll conceed that point, but it is here now, it has a much higher rewriteable storage density, it's faster, it has no DRM, it's a generic product (can be bought OEM or retail), it is upgraded every six months or so and finally is backwards compatable.
Who gives a flying crap about what they want to sell you, go buy a external or external kit and join the future now. Put what ever you want on it now. Do some drive swapping with friends or mail it to your buddy in South Dakota now and enjoy a "upload" rate faster than anything you could afford.
People have become too focussed on the smoke and mirrors that they ignore the useable more logical option right in front of them.
They are working on a couple of designs. The shuttle was a compromise between flying personel, equipment, and military payloads. It did none of these things well. They are going back to specialized designs. A smaller reuseable orbiter just for crew and a large partially disposable vehicle for heavy lift.
Slashdot Mirror
The extra push in the eye candy department was nice. BF2 does look much better, but the thing that I'm getting the most mileage out of is the fact that the latest cards have the ability to excellerate graphics/video on both outputs not just one like with my 9800pro. I have my old 17" set up next to the 24". What am I talking about? Essentially what it lets you do is run a game/video on either monitor or drag it in a window from one monitor to the other without it stopping and locking up the computer. Add in a dual core processor and now I can run a game and a video at the same time.
Playing MMO's and watching TV goes together like peanut butter and jelly, and yes I did find it possible to run two game accounts one on each monitor at the same time possible with some games, but only if I turned things down quite a bit.
I got Max in South Dakota, that's pretty close to Canada, solar works just fine up there.
I'm getting off the subject of this response. Who cares about Canada and Scandanavia, or Russia, the original response to the response, on which I commented was that it would take an insane amount of surface area to switch to solar in the US and I responded that we already have plenty of empty roof space here, so exactly what does this have to do with Canada? Other than maybe that we should be switching to solar so more carbon based things can be left for those up north. Course we could always send some power lines up your way, we like Canada.
I guess if my choices are either MS or Real when it comes to getting music streamed, then the choice is neither.
One more product I will not be interested in.
The car companies are finally smarting up and offering hybrids that are not toy eco cars. If you look at the latest models from Accord and Toyota, both have 6 cyclinder engines and both out perform in fuel economy and performance of the standard models.
The lithium bateries that have been exploding are cheap Asian garbage batteries that people have been buying off of Ebay for $2 instead of the OEM ones for $40
Finally if lithium battery production becomes much like lead acid batteries is currently, the recycle rate will hit near 90% after only a few years.
My old computer is hooked up to the widescreen in the living room. It has just shy of 1TB of harddrives in it and is full of shows and movies. Most I bought or rented then ripped. When it gets too full I just delete some of the older stuff off of it. It's hooked up to the net as well so radio and music video are readily available in addition to the 70gb of ripped CD's I have on there too. The whole thing is networked with GB networking so streaming to the other machines in the house is very easy as long no more than a couple of people are accessing the same harddrive at the same time.
I have a dual monitor system set up with a dual processor puter. Watching TV/movies rarely interferes with games/work/school other than maybe being distracting.
Start off with an insignificant amount per new home, say a 1000 watt inerty system and/or enough solar hot water for 4 people, and up the amount every decade or so until the thing becomes self sustaining.
After visiting Hawaii I am convinced this is feeseable. Nearly every home I saw in Maui had solar hot water heaters on them, and nearly every business had a PV array and solar hot water heaters on their roofs.
Along those lines, my favorite tactic to combat crap movies is when I do end up buying a bad one that wont sell on ebay or amazon for more than $5 then I just take it to the local library and donate it. I get to knock $20 off my taxes and a little warm spot in my heart to know that everytime someone checks that movie out the company that made it gets nothing.
Stereo types are for making broad and typically acurate assumptions of the average person in some social/economic group.
Why even bother with TV's anymore. My 24" monitor works great as a TV. I watch everything off of DVD's or downloads now. No commercials, no DVR rental fee, no cable fee.
Here is a suggestion for everyone who is sick to death of ads. Quit buying the crap being advertised! Otherwise shut up about it.
You know what Stewart, I like you, you're not like the other people here in the trailer park.
If I'm bored I'll go find something else to do, or I'll hop online and look around for more content.
The whole thing could be rolled out right now, but they are still insistent on controlling the markets and the prices. Their method of choice is steaming. Which is nothing more than a gimic to make "priority traffic" a premium service and a road block to the competition and customer purchase rights.
If I'm bored now I'll surf the web to read or play a game, not to watch random TV channels. The whole point of IPTV is that the content you are interested will be already downloaded and sitting there waiting for you.
I don't want to watch a broadcast, I want a library. The whole concept of streaming is inane anyway. I don't want to wait for the next rerun showing of episode 3 season 1 of what ever show, I want to be able to grab them in order on my schedule not theirs. They still have some bizzar concept that on demand is some how still a premium service.
It's something that is something the Teleco's and the Cable companies just can't seem to figure out. Till they do DVD decrypter/shrink and bittorrent will be my best buds.
People don't commute for fun, they commute to afford a home. Every off-ramp closer to LA you go the price of homes climbs around $5000. When you are up here in the Antelope Valley they start at $200,000 for a prefab.
This all has little to do with the commute. If you want to reduce emmisions then you have to reduce the number of poluters, in other words, people.
Lot's of money needs to be spend on R&D for better ways to collect energy, but some needs to be spent on getting the global population back down below 4 billion, if we ever want to see things get back under control.
The only excuse these days to even have land lines is for 911 service, which is pointless when a small addition of code could be added for cell and VOIP service to provide location information to emergency response.
We will be seeing shortly the Bells behaving just as they did before, as a hostile monopoly. The nice thing this time around technology does give us an out in the form of other services if they choose to be belligerent.
Items that once cost ten dollars now only cost one dollar. Even if a company is greedy and keeps the other nine instead of passing it onto the consumer, or if they do pass it onto the consumer and now their buying power just increased by nine dollars. Either way the net is more available wealth which in turn results in more jobs, more economic opporunities.
With the good we cannot forget the bad. In the short term though, for the individual who has spent years training or educating themselves and gaining experience and skill, that economic fact global trade is more not less, is not much comfort when their lives are disrupted by lay offs and sudden loss of local job opportunities.
The whole process can be very painful and the government and businesses need to promote globalization that does not leave a high amount of human collateral in it's wake. It is all well and good for the excellent opportunities in India, but most of these off shore locations also tend to be hostile and protective against goods and services from other countries. We need to make sure that they are not eating our lunch and then turning around and doing the same to dinner.
My suggestion to anyone living in the US today or any other 1st world nation would be to make sure you are getting a piece of that pie the president is talking about. Live well within your means and invest from the time you start working, even if it is a very small amount from every paycheck. That way when things change for you, you'll still be getting your share of the offshore bonus check.
DVD's are only now just dropping down in price. Harddrives may be more expensive now, but I'm sure Blu-ray and HD will take the same 5 years or longer to become mainstream and compete in price. By then they'll then hard drives will be even bigger, faster, and cheaper.
Now as far as data security and getting your harddrive back, it's called "don't be stupid". You never use one piece of media or hardware to keep your data safe, and you certainly don't loan something you can't "permanently" loan to anyone. I've got 2 spare harddrives with old 120gb drives in them for transport and one 300gb for data back up. If I lose one of the 120s I'm out about $40 so so what.
Now as far as Netflix or other DRM. Netflix barely ships DVD's as it is, and I won't buy into any new DRM that hasn't already been hacked by someone else. If I can't use it in the way I won't I won't be giving them my money. You honestly think they'll let you "own" any future Blu-ray or HD media purchases. I predict that it will be illegal to resell anything in the future without having to go through a lot of hassel getting the media "registered" to a new piece of crippled hardware.
We already have one, it's called an external harddrive.
It's not as convenient nor as portable as a disk I'll give you that, but it is here now, it has a much higher rewriteable storage density, it's faster, it has no DRM, it's a generic product (can be bought OEM or retail), it is upgraded every six months or so and finally is backwards compatable. Let's not forget for those of you who like to let a friend "borrow" whatever you can drop the thing in the mail or meet them in person for a swap and enjoy a higher "bandwidth" rate than anything you could afford.
I do realize that companies are not going to sell you movies on harddrives, but do we really want to even go there anymore? I for one want to download things instead of playing the movie/dvd (full screen/widescreen/directors cut/collectors ed) release games they like to play now. Will there be DRM still? Most likely but overall prices will drop since they will no longer be able to sell products that are crippled out side of their destined market.
People have become too focused on the smoke and mirrors that they ignore the useable more pratical option sitting right in front of them. Refuse to buy their crap and they'll be forced to gives us what we want else the pirates will. Cave in and buy into the whole blu-ray/hd DRM scam and they sell us only what they want us to have at a price of their choosing.
Who gives a flying crap about what they want to sell you, go buy a external or external kit and join the future now. Put what ever you want on it now. Do some drive swapping with friends or mail it to your buddy in South Dakota now and enjoy a "upload" rate faster than anything you could afford.
People have become too focussed on the smoke and mirrors that they ignore the useable more logical option right in front of them.
lol a /.er's math being off is about as much of a surpise (interesting) as the sun rising in the morning.
(Smacks snooze and goes back to sleep)
So there were 1 billion instances of Apple's marketing machine working, who cares. Wake me when something really interesting happens.
They are working on a couple of designs. The shuttle was a compromise between flying personel, equipment, and military payloads. It did none of these things well. They are going back to specialized designs. A smaller reuseable orbiter just for crew and a large partially disposable vehicle for heavy lift.