Hydrogen is nothing but an energy storage medium. There will be an energy loss converting to hydrogen, an energy loss converting from hydrogen. A whole infrastructure to build for conversion/delivery. Storage issues in cars....
Wouldn't a better battery be a much better solution. We already have the distribution network(electric grid). EEStor ultra capacitors seem to be that better battery if they deliver on promises, but there are also advanced flywheels (composite wheels in a vacuum, superconducting magnetic bearings, turning neark 100k rpm). These can be charged or discharge quickly and should last the life of the vehicle.
Fuel cells don't solve any energy creation issues and as a deliver mechanism, it doesn't seem so hot, I would much prefer to stick with mechanisms we aleady have like the electric grid.
I think this going to drive a stake into all those microsoft partners that paid for play4sure licences. I would imagine they are not so impressed with this announcement and that microsoft is going to compete with them even at a loss on hardware to take market share.
I won't buy in the first wave instanity. But once the buzz dies down and prices drop, A HDMI equipped low end PS3 sounds like no brainer to me now. I would never buy a $500 game machine or a $500 next gen DVD player, but combine the two for under $500 and it becomes worthy of consideration.
Users: This is a big screw you to the consumers who thought they were buying the warm and cuddly microsoft guarantee of play4sure. The dutifully bought music under microsofts play4sure. But then microsoft releases a new player which won't work with their old music. Their old player won't work with the new music solution.
HW builders: Microsoft DRM partners must be smiling as well. Paying microsoft a licence fee for DRM, that won't let thier playes work with microsofts new service. Some of these folks were unahappy that Apple wouldn't let them in. Think how happy they must be now that the partner they pay their DRM money to, won't let them in either.
Music Services: Alternate music services are also paying DRM money to microsoft to get into the music selling echosystem. Only to see microsoft release a hot player (simply becuase of marketing clout) that won't work with their system they pay microsoft for.
I think the message is simple. Partner/trust microsoft and they will burn you at the very first opportunity.
$40 gets me integrated doc/control/audio connection/battery charging. Seems pretty sweet to me. Better than cassete adaptors/fm transmitter or even a wire hanging off the front or other clunky solutions.
You can choose not to go this route, but I like the ecosystem and the integrated options it presents.
I don't care about track display. I play on random and hit next if I don't feel like that song. That is all the control I need. Since these are my tunes, I usually recognize the artist/song.
The BMW system lists for $150, I don't know how difficult installation is.
But a nice solution that puts the player in the glove box out of site and powers the unit and lets me change tracks from the head unit sounds perfect for me.
The Docks I am talking about are Car manufacturers offering integrated systems like for all BMW's that control the Ipod through the head unit. Unit goes in glove compartment, gets power, control and audio connection through dock. It would be silly to have this control integration and use FM for the signal, when they can grab output at the same time.
Besides who has cassette anymore, do you have an 8-track adaptor as well? I have a CD player in my car, most new cars are CD only.
That Sandisk looks nice. Nice that there is a battery replacement kit, but there are many kits for Ipods as well. The real advantage would be a player that took standard Nimh batteries. But then you would be getting a bigger form factor.
I am not interested in DRM'd media either. Suggesting that by using apple you are buying into DRM is like suggesting that your Sandisk forces you to use "PlayForSure". I will play plain old MP3s on my Ipod when I get one.
As far as the big hit of forcing Itunes to transfer songs. Well I think I will manage to live with that, since I will probably load it full and leave it that way. I imagine that if I spent time looking I could find alternatives to using Itunes to transfer songs anyway.
I don't have one, I have an ancient 32K RCA K@zoo with 64mb SD card (the biggest it can handle) that I have not used in a while.
When I next upgrade it will be an Ipod, not because it is fashionable or faddish or popular, but because there is now a supporting ecosystem. Cars come with IPOD docks, you can get a cheap, nifty running package from Nike that tracks speed/distance while you are listening too music while your run.
In short I think it is the perfect choice for taking my music with me everywhere, moving seamlessly from jogging, to work, to driving cross country. I am just waiting for an 8Gig Nano to make the driving across country more feasable.
My company is doing hefty outsourcing. My group used to be mostly in Canada/USA with a bit of other countries. Now we are more like an even split between Canada/India/China.
I used to find it wasteful just dealing Canada/USA when we spoke the same language and had close to the same time zone. Now it is just FUBAR. By the time upper management clues in, I think it will be beyond too late.
Splitting development of the same product up into different locations in the same country is not the brightest thing to do. Across international borders that still share the basics, still less bright, but throw in massive language/geographic/time zone divide and you are looking for disaster. But hey the books will look better this quarter...
The problem is we are incredibly adaptable and we forget quickly. 5 minutes into the movie it won't register wether you are watching a DVD or and HD/BD.
It may be cool for wowing your friends, but once into the movie you probably won't notice. This is my experience watching HD Dish and DVD. When you switch from one to the other, there is a momentary blip where you really notice the change in resolution and it is quickly forgotten. We are a very adaptable/forgetfull species.
Once you realize this, you start to recognize that you would have to have more money than brains to shell out heaps of cash for hardware, just to pay more money for more restrictive content.
DVD had a better picture than VHS, but it also had a VASTLY superior form factor and that is really what sold it. It could have had the same picture quality and that probably wouldn't have slowed down adoption.
This is really a fight to get more content protection into our homes and most of us just are not interested. That and hopes that we will re-buy our collections. Ha!
I am a little surprised. I don't think I saw anyone admit that they recognize their own surfing habits cost them. It seems many recognize "other" people can have issues with it.
Full unfettered access destroys my productivity at times. I follow a thought and boom an hour has gone by. I would definitely prefer to be subject to whitelisting/blacklisting. First things to block: Slashdot and digg of course.
I know I would be doing a much better job if aimless surfing could be eliminated. But it is just so easy to click a link and read stuff, or comment on stories on slashdot. Our buisness communication depends heavily on our internal web so we all have contstant connectivity and at times external access can be handy, but I would be 100% in favor of restrictions.
I really think productivity would go up quite a bit. Most of my friends all admit to surfing too much on the job (we are all techies).
I am an info junky and always have been, even before getting Fidonet, I used to read tons of magazines about technology/science etc. In an environment with unfettered access is like a kid in a Candy store. Look: Shiny new Mazda roadster with retractable hardtop, planets 8, 9, 12 or 50?, New rumored Canon 400D DSLR, New ATI Radeons (damn I got sidetracked while writing this to read about new Radeon). You get the idea.
So Yes please, bring on the filtering. Some of us just can't handle unlimited access to information.
There is no major architecture change in the AMD 4 cores, so it won't blow the intel solution away. I strongly suspect the reverse. Intels glued together cores will still carry the day.
The difference from last time when Intel did this packaging move, is that intel was starting out with inferior cores and its loss was assured. This time Intel has the superior core and that will swamp the very small packaging differences.
But I dont' really care. I am just looking for this move to lower prices on dual cores. More cores only help in certain situations and when I was working on multi processor Dec Alphas, more processors, also meant more overhead (diminishing returns). As a home user. I will spend my money on two faster cores over four slower ones any day.
I hope you are right. There is a big gap here and it is only from this gap where I will purchase a Mac. I am a potential switcher.
Apple can't count on forcing people (like me) into only the high end (Mac Pro) or the low end(Mac Mini), as others have suggested. That might work on the faithful, but it only creates another barrier for entry for potential switchers. A year from now even low end Dells will have dual core conroes.
If they are getting serious about market share they need something with more potential than a Mini that is affordable and competetively priced with PC offerings.
It doesn't have to be cheaper than Dell for me. It just needs to be close.
I want something between a Mac Mini and Mac Pro. There is an extemely large gulf between these that really needs a mainstream model that will at minimum accept a video card and regular size HD.
I am not interested in a built in monitor mac. I am picky about screen types and run dual screens, so this doesn't fly for me. Fine for my Mom when I get her a new computer, but not for me.
I suspect Leopard will be here before Apple build me a mid range mac. Someone at Apple must see this gap in the product line. The mini is just too underpowered with integrated graphics and laptop Hard Drive; The Pro is total overkill (and overpriced) for my needs.
I agree. I am a potential convert. But there is no decent mid range mac.I want to use/choose my own monitor so the only macs for that are the Mac Mini (too underpowered) and the Mac Pro (huge overkill).
I want one graphics card slot. Room for 2 3.5" HDs. I don't need a whole card cage for a variety of cards. I just need a vid slot.
I remember 170K (double as we notched them and flipped them over:-) and talk about slow, commodore was famous for slow storage. I started with their tape device, which took me over 30mins to load some games.
Once I got the floppy and the fastload cartrige, I thought I was in heaven.
1: you can adjust the DPI in windows if the font is hard to see. Most people don't.
2: Even if you don't adjust it, the dot pitch on a 24" 1920x1200 monitor is.270mm where it is.264mm on a 17" 1280x1024. So fonts are actually bigger on the 24" high resolution LCD, than on a low res 17" LCD. This really makes the article summary somewhat pointless to downright incorrect. More resolution doesn't make fonts tiny and create legibility problems. This is the kind of argument made by people that just don't understand the process they are talking about.
Tomb raider is if anything, even worse. KOTOR is also unplayable for me. Racing games are a bit of an issues, but I haven't played any for a while.
NWN represents a more modern game engine (still uses a 3d engine) than BG/BG2 that causes me zero problems. So they can still use a 3d engine and not make me sick. The difference is putting control of the camera in my hands instead of tracking every move of the onscreen characters. Overhead views are good. FPP or Third Person Perspective behind the character kill me.
I like Adventure/RPG/RTS. RTS are still OK, but I dont' get into that many of them. TA and SC will be it in years. Adventure games seem dead, but heck I couldn't play Myst 3, because it went to a live FPP engine. RPGs are mainly FPP now. Oblivion, I would have bought, but unplayable, Dragon Age I really wanted to get, but it will be FPP/TPP like KOTOR.
But there is less creativity combined with motion sickness inducing engines. I think the industry needs a good downturn to have a wakeup call.
At least you are just bored, the new titles make me sick.:-)
I find more and more games are locking me out as they move to more First Person Perspective (FPP) paradigms that make me motion sick (spare me your cures, been there done that).I have been a gamer since Arcade Lunar Lander, but now they are leaving me behind with 3d FPP everything.
I am a fan of Bioware and Black Ilse games. I have BG1,BG2,PT,NWN. But their next game Dragon Age, is going to FPP for exploration, which completely rules out the game for me. I really wanted to play this game, but now I won't and they won't have my money. One of my gaming buddies has the same problem.
Being a big Total Annhilation Fan, I am looking forward to Supreme Commander, maybe NWN2, both sequels to games I own, but after that nothing....
Slashdot Mirror
Hydrogen is nothing but an energy storage medium. There will be an energy loss converting to hydrogen, an energy loss converting from hydrogen. A whole infrastructure to build for conversion/delivery. Storage issues in cars....
9 /1715549.html (ultracaps)h tml (advanced flywheels)
Wouldn't a better battery be a much better solution. We already have the distribution network(electric grid). EEStor ultra capacitors seem to be that better battery if they deliver on promises, but there are also advanced flywheels (composite wheels in a vacuum, superconducting magnetic bearings, turning neark 100k rpm). These can be charged or discharge quickly and should last the life of the vehicle.
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2006/1/1
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.05/flywheel.
Fuel cells don't solve any energy creation issues and as a deliver mechanism, it doesn't seem so hot, I would much prefer to stick with mechanisms we aleady have like the electric grid.
"If you only want to chose between chocolate and vanilla, do so. The other 29 flavours are irrelevant."
...
If you want chocolate you still have to ponder:
World Class® Chocolate
Chocolate Fudge
Chocolate Chocolate Chip
Chocolate Mousse Royale
Peanut Butter 'n Chocolate
Chocolate Almond
Fudge Brownie
Chocolate Chip
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
Chocolate
I mean doesn't world class chocolate sound better, or chocolate fudge or
I think this going to drive a stake into all those microsoft partners that paid for play4sure licences. I would imagine they are not so impressed with this announcement and that microsoft is going to compete with them even at a loss on hardware to take market share.
I won't buy in the first wave instanity. But once the buzz dies down and prices drop, A HDMI equipped low end PS3 sounds like no brainer to me now. I would never buy a $500 game machine or a $500 next gen DVD player, but combine the two for under $500 and it becomes worthy of consideration.
I take it you never read the Inquirer before.
It is a very tongue in cheek techy news source. They have pet names for most companies. Graphzilla, Chipzilla, Chimpzilla, Great Vole...
This is pretty much what regular readers expect. Read the Wall Street Journal if the style makes you uncomfortable.
Personally I love the Inq. Your tastes may vary.
Will you be critiquing "The Daily Show" for levity next?
Users: This is a big screw you to the consumers who thought they were buying the warm and cuddly microsoft guarantee of play4sure. The dutifully bought music under microsofts play4sure. But then microsoft releases a new player which won't work with their old music. Their old player won't work with the new music solution.
HW builders: Microsoft DRM partners must be smiling as well. Paying microsoft a licence fee for DRM, that won't let thier playes work with microsofts new service. Some of these folks were unahappy that Apple wouldn't let them in. Think how happy they must be now that the partner they pay their DRM money to, won't let them in either.
Music Services: Alternate music services are also paying DRM money to microsoft to get into the music selling echosystem. Only to see microsoft release a hot player (simply becuase of marketing clout) that won't work with their system they pay microsoft for.
I think the message is simple. Partner/trust microsoft and they will burn you at the very first opportunity.
http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/news/article /25835.html
Preview is very limited. But what I see looks like this was done right.
I have an IP-Bus Pioneer in my current car. Searching for a minute I found this on Amazon:
d _cp_e_title/104-6683704-2050345?ie=UTF8
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000FI71SG/ref=p
$40 gets me integrated doc/control/audio connection/battery charging. Seems pretty sweet to me. Better than cassete adaptors/fm transmitter or even a wire hanging off the front or other clunky solutions.
You can choose not to go this route, but I like the ecosystem and the integrated options it presents.
I don't care about track display. I play on random and hit next if I don't feel like that song. That is all the control I need. Since these are my tunes, I usually recognize the artist/song.
The BMW system lists for $150, I don't know how difficult installation is.
But a nice solution that puts the player in the glove box out of site and powers the unit and lets me change tracks from the head unit sounds perfect for me.
The Docks I am talking about are Car manufacturers offering integrated systems like for all BMW's that control the Ipod through the head unit. Unit goes in glove compartment, gets power, control and audio connection through dock. It would be silly to have this control integration and use FM for the signal, when they can grab output at the same time.
Besides who has cassette anymore, do you have an 8-track adaptor as well? I have a CD player in my car, most new cars are CD only.
That Sandisk looks nice. Nice that there is a battery replacement kit, but there are many kits for Ipods as well. The real advantage would be a player that took standard Nimh batteries. But then you would be getting a bigger form factor.
I am not interested in DRM'd media either. Suggesting that by using apple you are buying into DRM is like suggesting that your Sandisk forces you to use "PlayForSure". I will play plain old MP3s on my Ipod when I get one.
As far as the big hit of forcing Itunes to transfer songs. Well I think I will manage to live with that, since I will probably load it full and leave it that way. I imagine that if I spent time looking I could find alternatives to using Itunes to transfer songs anyway.
So ecosystem still wins out for me.
I don't have one, I have an ancient 32K RCA K@zoo with 64mb SD card (the biggest it can handle) that I have not used in a while.
When I next upgrade it will be an Ipod, not because it is fashionable or faddish or popular, but because there is now a supporting ecosystem. Cars come with IPOD docks, you can get a cheap, nifty running package from Nike that tracks speed/distance while you are listening too music while your run.
In short I think it is the perfect choice for taking my music with me everywhere, moving seamlessly from jogging, to work, to driving cross country. I am just waiting for an 8Gig Nano to make the driving across country more feasable.
Anyone see this. Quite interesting I thought. Outsourced computer programmer goes to india to find an outsourced job.
m ain.html
http://www.fxnetworks.com/shows/originals/30days/
My company is doing hefty outsourcing. My group used to be mostly in Canada/USA with a bit of other countries. Now we are more like an even split between Canada/India/China.
I used to find it wasteful just dealing Canada/USA when we spoke the same language and had close to the same time zone. Now it is just FUBAR. By the time upper management clues in, I think it will be beyond too late.
Splitting development of the same product up into different locations in the same country is not the brightest thing to do. Across international borders that still share the basics, still less bright, but throw in massive language/geographic/time zone divide and you are looking for disaster. But hey the books will look better this quarter...
The problem is we are incredibly adaptable and we forget quickly. 5 minutes into the movie it won't register wether you are watching a DVD or and HD/BD.
It may be cool for wowing your friends, but once into the movie you probably won't notice. This is my experience watching HD Dish and DVD. When you switch from one to the other, there is a momentary blip where you really notice the change in resolution and it is quickly forgotten. We are a very adaptable/forgetfull species.
Once you realize this, you start to recognize that you would have to have more money than brains to shell out heaps of cash for hardware, just to pay more money for more restrictive content.
DVD had a better picture than VHS, but it also had a VASTLY superior form factor and that is really what sold it. It could have had the same picture quality and that probably wouldn't have slowed down adoption.
This is really a fight to get more content protection into our homes and most of us just are not interested. That and hopes that we will re-buy our collections. Ha!
"So we all have to suffer for your lack of discipline. That's fair.
Why not just install your own filter?"
How can a filter that I control be effective, given that I lack disipline?
It was up temporarily on the Canon china site.
0 0d-rebel-xti/
350d replacment:
10MP (still 1.6 crop)
vibrating sensor to shake off dust.
New Lenses: 50mm F1.2 and new 70-200 IS F4 .
http://www.infodigitalcamera.com/blog/242/canon-4
I am a little surprised. I don't think I saw anyone admit that they recognize their own surfing habits cost them. It seems many recognize "other" people can have issues with it.
Full unfettered access destroys my productivity at times. I follow a thought and boom an hour has gone by. I would definitely prefer to be subject to whitelisting/blacklisting. First things to block: Slashdot and digg of course.
I know I would be doing a much better job if aimless surfing could be eliminated. But it is just so easy to click a link and read stuff, or comment on stories on slashdot. Our buisness communication depends heavily on our internal web so we all have contstant connectivity and at times external access can be handy, but I would be 100% in favor of restrictions.
I really think productivity would go up quite a bit. Most of my friends all admit to surfing too much on the job (we are all techies).
I am an info junky and always have been, even before getting Fidonet, I used to read tons of magazines about technology/science etc. In an environment with unfettered access is like a kid in a Candy store. Look: Shiny new Mazda roadster with retractable hardtop, planets 8, 9, 12 or 50?, New rumored Canon 400D DSLR, New ATI Radeons (damn I got sidetracked while writing this to read about new Radeon). You get the idea.
So Yes please, bring on the filtering. Some of us just can't handle unlimited access to information.
There is no major architecture change in the AMD 4 cores, so it won't blow the intel solution away. I strongly suspect the reverse. Intels glued together cores will still carry the day.
The difference from last time when Intel did this packaging move, is that intel was starting out with inferior cores and its loss was assured. This time Intel has the superior core and that will swamp the very small packaging differences.
But I dont' really care. I am just looking for this move to lower prices on dual cores. More cores only help in certain situations and when I was working on multi processor Dec Alphas, more processors, also meant more overhead (diminishing returns). As a home user. I will spend my money on two faster cores over four slower ones any day.
I hope you are right. There is a big gap here and it is only from this gap where I will purchase a Mac. I am a potential switcher.
Apple can't count on forcing people (like me) into only the high end (Mac Pro) or the low end(Mac Mini), as others have suggested. That might work on the faithful, but it only creates another barrier for entry for potential switchers. A year from now even low end Dells will have dual core conroes.
If they are getting serious about market share they need something with more potential than a Mini that is affordable and competetively priced with PC offerings.
It doesn't have to be cheaper than Dell for me. It just needs to be close.
Still waiting to buy my first Mac.
I want something between a Mac Mini and Mac Pro. There is an extemely large gulf between these that really needs a mainstream model that will at minimum accept a video card and regular size HD.
I am not interested in a built in monitor mac. I am picky about screen types and run dual screens, so this doesn't fly for me. Fine for my Mom when I get her a new computer, but not for me.
I suspect Leopard will be here before Apple build me a mid range mac. Someone at Apple must see this gap in the product line. The mini is just too underpowered with integrated graphics and laptop Hard Drive; The Pro is total overkill (and overpriced) for my needs.
Hey Apple. I am ready. Build me a machine.
I agree. I am a potential convert. But there is no decent mid range mac.I want to use/choose my own monitor so the only macs for that are the Mac Mini (too underpowered) and the Mac Pro (huge overkill).
I want one graphics card slot. Room for 2 3.5" HDs. I don't need a whole card cage for a variety of cards. I just need a vid slot.
A Mac Midi...
"640k floppy disk? More like 140k."
:-) and talk about slow, commodore was famous for slow storage. I started with their tape device, which took me over 30mins to load some games.
I remember 170K (double as we notched them and flipped them over
Once I got the floppy and the fastload cartrige, I thought I was in heaven.
1: you can adjust the DPI in windows if the font is hard to see. Most people don't.
.270mm where it is .264mm on a 17" 1280x1024. So fonts are actually bigger on the 24" high resolution LCD, than on a low res 17" LCD. This really makes the article summary somewhat pointless to downright incorrect. More resolution doesn't make fonts tiny and create legibility problems. This is the kind of argument made by people that just don't understand the process they are talking about.
2: Even if you don't adjust it, the dot pitch on a 24" 1920x1200 monitor is
Tomb raider is if anything, even worse. KOTOR is also unplayable for me. Racing games are a bit of an issues, but I haven't played any for a while.
NWN represents a more modern game engine (still uses a 3d engine) than BG/BG2 that causes me zero problems. So they can still use a 3d engine and not make me sick. The difference is putting control of the camera in my hands instead of tracking every move of the onscreen characters. Overhead views are good. FPP or Third Person Perspective behind the character kill me.
I like Adventure/RPG/RTS. RTS are still OK, but I dont' get into that many of them. TA and SC will be it in years. Adventure games seem dead, but heck I couldn't play Myst 3, because it went to a live FPP engine. RPGs are mainly FPP now. Oblivion, I would have bought, but unplayable, Dragon Age I really wanted to get, but it will be FPP/TPP like KOTOR.
But there is less creativity combined with motion sickness inducing engines. I think the industry needs a good downturn to have a wakeup call.
At least you are just bored, the new titles make me sick. :-)
I find more and more games are locking me out as they move to more First Person Perspective (FPP) paradigms that make me motion sick (spare me your cures, been there done that).I have been a gamer since Arcade Lunar Lander, but now they are leaving me behind with 3d FPP everything.
I am a fan of Bioware and Black Ilse games. I have BG1,BG2,PT,NWN. But their next game Dragon Age, is going to FPP for exploration, which completely rules out the game for me. I really wanted to play this game, but now I won't and they won't have my money. One of my gaming buddies has the same problem.
Being a big Total Annhilation Fan, I am looking forward to Supreme Commander, maybe NWN2, both sequels to games I own, but after that nothing....