You aren't very familiar with Tivo. They not only don't close hacking loopholes, but seem to even encourage them. For instance, a hardware hacker created a NIC card for the first generation Tivo that allows you to telnet in and schedule recordings and do other things. TiVo included his driver in the latest release of the software that is automatically pushed to all Tivos, so that by changing the dialing prefix in the Tivo software it will use the NIC to obtain guide data (rather than the analog modem that is built in).
Furthermore, building a box that does the equivalent of the Tivo will cost in excess of $600 dollars (keep in mind that Tivo does high-quality buffering of all video, so it requires high-quality real time compression). A VIA CPU and an all-in-wonder TV tuner won't work.
You can get a lifetime subscription Tivo for hundreds less than building a Myth TV or FreeVo box.
Of course if building the box and fiddling with scripts is most of the fun, the FreeVo/MythTV box is the better deal:)
You know that you can ignore the thumbs up/down if you want? They aren't used at all except for the added feature of letting Tivo guess what shows you may like.
Channel changing does take about 3-4 seconds, but this is expected with an IR-Blaster interface.
It sounds like your neighbor gave you a very bad demo.
No, the kiosk is a table-top setup and the bottom screen is totally opaque. There is only about 2cm gap before the top screen, and you lean over it while looking at it. Simply no way to be projected.
I went to the newly renovated Ocean World exhibit at the Museum of Natural History a few nights ago. Their information kiosks feature a two-layered display. It is quite striking.
The top layer shows information about the selected creature, while the bottom layer shows the "tree of life". Elements on both layers are selectable via touchscreen. The bottom screen is visible through the top screen - both through a window and more faintly through the content of the top screen.
Bad analogy. The correct one is "loving women doesn't make me a good gynocologist". And that is true.
Re:$20/30mins ? $5 for a test drive ???
on
Rent a Segway
·
· Score: 2, Informative
A folded Brompton fits into a bag which is quite manageable - a worst-case technique for bringing the bike into a place that "doesn't allow bikes". If they don't know a bike is in the bag, they can't tell you they aren't allowed.
For people not familiar with the Brompton, it folds much smaller than the usual folding bikes. It also folds so that it can stand or be rolled in the folded state. The chain is in the center of the folded bicycle, away from anything it may dirty. It is a great design.
In 20 years your average $99 flatbed scanner from Staples Express will be able to do a bit-perfect scan of a DVD.
An exposed, optical media has advantages in being able to be read by a whole class of devices that aren't going away, but instead are just going to get better.
OK, this still doesn't seem that practical. A 100 foot diameter dish is pretty huge, and 10,000 watts isn't that much. Enough to run a single light bulb in 100 homes. More realistically, enough to run 10 super-energy efficient homes. So for every 10 homes you need a 100 foot dish - which would likely cost more in construction costs than the 10 homes.
Anyway, it is an interesting idea but I can't see how it is cheaper/better than just running a fat cable.
I assume the microwave beam would have to be highly focused in order to work. What safegaurds are there to make sure nothing gets in the way of the beam?
(the article is unavailable without a $55 subscription, maybe it is spelled out in the article?)
The real incentive for open source is saving money. Saving money is the same as earning money.
This motivation will most likely be felt by large companies, many already have huge IT departments. If the large banks (each has thousands of coders) adopted OS, they could save hundreds of dollars per desktop across the entire company. Missing features (such as a media server) could be implemented by all those IT people who would otherwise be trying to come up with workarounds to Microsoft forced-upgrades and other marketing BS.
Projectors are great, but the bulbs are expensive. Count on a replacement costing $300-$500 dollars. They will last for around 700 hours before they are noticably dim.
I use an older LCD projector to watch movies. It is great and I don't mind using the bulb for something like this - but for regular junk TV watching I stick with the CRT.
This is like a race car driver bitching because he can not figure out fuel injection and he keeps getting smoked with a carbed engine.
Not really. It's more like a writer for a car-racing magazine not being able to figure out their fuel injection.
She is a writer who is technically-able. She needs a computer to get her job done. Linux didn't work out for her. Windows 95 does.
Yep, your original statement required the use of "some sort of spacial sampler" which is what the overlaying grids are. Well, I understood what you meant.
I have seen moire with just my eyes, though rarely. I used to ride the bus every day and there was a tall building that stood out in the distance. It's facade was alternating light and dark stripes, which at a great distance would show as moire'd. The resolution needed to discern the detail would dip below my eye's resolution, and I'd see a shimmering.
The human eye has very sophisticated firmware (how about that blindspot!) which digital cameras don't have yet.
I don't think anyone disagrees that the Fovean is cool. It sure is. Undoubtably the future of digital photography lies with Fovean type technologies.
The problem is the article. It makes a false claim (the fovean works just like the eye) and then makes false statements of quality (the fovean is better than film, bayer is worse than film). This is like saying "the motorcycle is best because it works just like you walk! Motorcycles are better than cars because cars don't work in the same way you walk".
This is a very dumb story. Not only does the human eye work nothing like the fovean chip, but the fovean chip by itself isn't "better than film" while all bayer pattern chips aren't "worse than film".
For instance, a 15 megapixel bayer chip digital camera is better than 35MM color film in almost all metrics (except dmax).
An 8x10 piece of color film is likewise better in most aspects (except noise).
A 2mp fovean chip may look pretty good, but not better than 35mm.
See? It depends on the parameters of the technologies.
What will your company use them for? I'm curious about real-world use of these, since handwriting would seem to hurt productivity too much for any non-field application. A PDA would seem much better for any roaming application such as environmental monitoring, package tracking, etc.
I know that XP is configurable. I know I could probably turn off the search wizards "what do you want to search for? A photo? Music?" and just type in *.mp3 like I can in Win2k. I could turn off simple file sharing, etc. I could probably find tweaks to get all my older games runnning. I could even get a hacked version that didn't require registration from MS every time I reinstall or change too much of my hardware.
However, why should I? My new Dell came with XP. I spent about 30 minutes with it, looking into how I could change it to not be so annoying. After 30 minutes, I formatted the drive and put Win2K on.
Battery life: up to 10 hours continuous MP3 CD playback, up to four hours CD-DA playback, up to one-and-a-half hours DVD video playback
So, in other words, the battery's official specs give it enough power to make it through one showing of a 90 minute movie. Factor in the usual reduction in battery life vs. the official claim, and this drive will come in well short of being able to play a standard length film. Want to watch Lord of the Rings? Better have 3 sets of fully charged batteries in addition to your laptop.
When connected to a computer, the MPD-AP20U acts as a DVD-ROM drive for viewing DVD movies, and as a Memory Stick media reader for viewing, saving and transferring files, Sony says.
When away from the computer, the drive then works as a stand-alone CD player that can play standard audio CDs, and MP3 or WAV files from a CD, DVD or Memory Stick.
No mention of being able to play DVDs while away from a computer.
It will not play DVDs to a TV. It only acts as an external drive to allow DVDs to be played on a computer. My guess is that it has no MPEG2 circuitry and relies on the computer to do all decoding.
This is what it does: Portable CD player - regular and Mp3 cds External CD-R/W drive and DVD ROM drive
Maybe its just me, but this is no big deal. Portable CD/MP3 players can be had for under $100 dollars, and almost everyone already has a CD burner / DVD ROM in their computer.
If you need to make CDRs while you are on the road, this may be useful, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't already get an external CD burner for under $300.
The theater will only be sucessful as long as it offers a better experience than watching a movie at home. By choosing to shoot the Star Wars movies in digital video at a paltry 1280x1024 resolution, Lucas and Co. have cheapened the theater experience and made it less compelling when compared to watching a DVD at home.
Just as cheap 35mm bump-ups diluted and eventually killed Cinerama's quality proposition, cheap digital video will kill the movie theater's quality proposition.
Not actually getting thrust from the jet
on
Jet Turbine Locomotives
·
· Score: 5, Informative
This may be obvious to most people, but this train doesn't actually get thrust from the jet engine. The jet engine is used to power an electric generator, which in turn powers electric motors for the wheels. This is how diesel locomotives work too.
I'd guess the reason they say this locomotive is faster is due to the much lower power to weight ratio of the jet turbine compared to diesel engines. I don't see how this would make any difference on a fully loaded train, however, as the delta in weight between a jet turbine and a diesel engine has to be a small fraction of a percent of the overall weight of the train.
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Just remember not to give your real name when you buy the video patch cables at Radio Shack!
You aren't very familiar with Tivo. They not only don't close hacking loopholes, but seem to even encourage them.
:)
For instance, a hardware hacker created a NIC card for the first generation Tivo that allows you to telnet in and schedule recordings and do other things. TiVo included his driver in the latest release of the software that is automatically pushed to all Tivos, so that by changing the dialing prefix in the Tivo software it will use the NIC to obtain guide data (rather than the analog modem that is built in).
Furthermore, building a box that does the equivalent of the Tivo will cost in excess of $600 dollars (keep in mind that Tivo does high-quality buffering of all video, so it requires high-quality real time compression). A VIA CPU and an all-in-wonder TV tuner won't work.
You can get a lifetime subscription Tivo for hundreds less than building a Myth TV or FreeVo box.
Of course if building the box and fiddling with scripts is most of the fun, the FreeVo/MythTV box is the better deal
Yes, peaceful protesters shooting guns from inside mosques at occupying soldiers under martial law.
Poor, poor protesters.
You know that you can ignore the thumbs up/down if you want? They aren't used at all except for the added feature of letting Tivo guess what shows you may like.
Channel changing does take about 3-4 seconds, but this is expected with an IR-Blaster interface.
It sounds like your neighbor gave you a very bad demo.
No, the kiosk is a table-top setup and the bottom screen is totally opaque. There is only about 2cm gap before the top screen, and you lean over it while looking at it. Simply no way to be projected.
It sure looks like an LCD screen to me.
I went to the newly renovated Ocean World exhibit at the Museum of Natural History a few nights ago. Their information kiosks feature a two-layered display. It is quite striking.
The top layer shows information about the selected creature, while the bottom layer shows the "tree of life". Elements on both layers are selectable via touchscreen. The bottom screen is visible through the top screen - both through a window and more faintly through the content of the top screen.
Bad analogy. The correct one is "loving women doesn't make me a good gynocologist". And that is true.
A folded Brompton fits into a bag which is quite manageable - a worst-case technique for bringing the bike into a place that "doesn't allow bikes". If they don't know a bike is in the bag, they can't tell you they aren't allowed.
For people not familiar with the Brompton, it folds much smaller than the usual folding bikes. It also folds so that it can stand or be rolled in the folded state. The chain is in the center of the folded bicycle, away from anything it may dirty. It is a great design.
In 20 years your average $99 flatbed scanner from Staples Express will be able to do a bit-perfect scan of a DVD.
An exposed, optical media has advantages in being able to be read by a whole class of devices that aren't going away, but instead are just going to get better.
OK, this still doesn't seem that practical. A 100 foot diameter dish is pretty huge, and 10,000 watts isn't that much. Enough to run a single light bulb in 100 homes. More realistically, enough to run 10 super-energy efficient homes. So for every 10 homes you need a 100 foot dish - which would likely cost more in construction costs than the 10 homes.
Anyway, it is an interesting idea but I can't see how it is cheaper/better than just running a fat cable.
I assume the microwave beam would have to be highly focused in order to work. What safegaurds are there to make sure nothing gets in the way of the beam?
(the article is unavailable without a $55 subscription, maybe it is spelled out in the article?)
The real incentive for open source is saving money. Saving money is the same as earning money.
This motivation will most likely be felt by large companies, many already have huge IT departments. If the large banks (each has thousands of coders) adopted OS, they could save hundreds of dollars per desktop across the entire company. Missing features (such as a media server) could be implemented by all those IT people who would otherwise be trying to come up with workarounds to Microsoft forced-upgrades and other marketing BS.
Projectors are great, but the bulbs are expensive. Count on a replacement costing $300-$500 dollars. They will last for around 700 hours before they are noticably dim.
I use an older LCD projector to watch movies. It is great and I don't mind using the bulb for something like this - but for regular junk TV watching I stick with the CRT.
Not really. It's more like a writer for a car-racing magazine not being able to figure out their fuel injection. She is a writer who is technically-able. She needs a computer to get her job done. Linux didn't work out for her. Windows 95 does.
I don't know about you, but I consider my NAT router to be an "Access control device".
Yep, your original statement required the use of "some sort of spacial sampler" which is what the overlaying grids are. Well, I understood what you meant.
I have seen moire with just my eyes, though rarely. I used to ride the bus every day and there was a tall building that stood out in the distance. It's facade was alternating light and dark stripes, which at a great distance would show as moire'd. The resolution needed to discern the detail would dip below my eye's resolution, and I'd see a shimmering.
The human eye has very sophisticated firmware (how about that blindspot!) which digital cameras don't have yet.
I don't think anyone disagrees that the Fovean is cool. It sure is. Undoubtably the future of digital photography lies with Fovean type technologies.
The problem is the article. It makes a false claim (the fovean works just like the eye) and then makes false statements of quality (the fovean is better than film, bayer is worse than film). This is like saying "the motorcycle is best because it works just like you walk! Motorcycles are better than cars because cars don't work in the same way you walk".
This is a very dumb story. Not only does the human eye work nothing like the fovean chip, but the fovean chip by itself isn't "better than film" while all bayer pattern chips aren't "worse than film".
For instance, a 15 megapixel bayer chip digital camera is better than 35MM color film in almost all metrics (except dmax).
An 8x10 piece of color film is likewise better in most aspects (except noise).
A 2mp fovean chip may look pretty good, but not better than 35mm.
See? It depends on the parameters of the technologies.
What will your company use them for? I'm curious about real-world use of these, since handwriting would seem to hurt productivity too much for any non-field application. A PDA would seem much better for any roaming application such as environmental monitoring, package tracking, etc.
I know that XP is configurable. I know I could probably turn off the search wizards "what do you want to search for? A photo? Music?" and just type in *.mp3 like I can in Win2k. I could turn off simple file sharing, etc. I could probably find tweaks to get all my older games runnning. I could even get a hacked version that didn't require registration from MS every time I reinstall or change too much of my hardware.
However, why should I? My new Dell came with XP. I spent about 30 minutes with it, looking into how I could change it to not be so annoying. After 30 minutes, I formatted the drive and put Win2K on.
Battery life: up to 10 hours continuous MP3 CD playback, up to four hours CD-DA playback, up to one-and-a-half hours DVD video playback
So, in other words, the battery's official specs give it enough power to make it through one showing of a 90 minute movie. Factor in the usual reduction in battery life vs. the official claim, and this drive will come in well short of being able to play a standard length film. Want to watch Lord of the Rings? Better have 3 sets of fully charged batteries in addition to your laptop.
When connected to a computer, the MPD-AP20U acts as a DVD-ROM drive for viewing DVD movies, and as a Memory Stick media reader for viewing, saving and transferring files, Sony says.
When away from the computer, the drive then works as a stand-alone CD player that can play standard audio CDs, and MP3 or WAV files from a CD, DVD or Memory Stick.
No mention of being able to play DVDs while away from a computer.
It will not play DVDs to a TV. It only acts as an external drive to allow DVDs to be played on a computer. My guess is that it has no MPEG2 circuitry and relies on the computer to do all decoding.
This is what it does:
Portable CD player - regular and Mp3 cds
External CD-R/W drive and DVD ROM drive
Maybe its just me, but this is no big deal. Portable CD/MP3 players can be had for under $100 dollars, and almost everyone already has a CD burner / DVD ROM in their computer.
If you need to make CDRs while you are on the road, this may be useful, but I'd be surprised if you couldn't already get an external CD burner for under $300.
To Sony, I say "big deal".
The theater will only be sucessful as long as it offers a better experience than watching a movie at home. By choosing to shoot the Star Wars movies in digital video at a paltry 1280x1024 resolution, Lucas and Co. have cheapened the theater experience and made it less compelling when compared to watching a DVD at home.
Just as cheap 35mm bump-ups diluted and eventually killed Cinerama's quality proposition, cheap digital video will kill the movie theater's quality proposition.
This may be obvious to most people, but this train doesn't actually get thrust from the jet engine. The jet engine is used to power an electric generator, which in turn powers electric motors for the wheels. This is how diesel locomotives work too.
I'd guess the reason they say this locomotive is faster is due to the much lower power to weight ratio of the jet turbine compared to diesel engines. I don't see how this would make any difference on a fully loaded train, however, as the delta in weight between a jet turbine and a diesel engine has to be a small fraction of a percent of the overall weight of the train.