I think US broadcast HDTV tops out at ~20 megabits/sec (not megabytes), so 1 Terabyte works out to ~100 hrs of HDTV (in practice much more because most HDTV content will probably be done at a lower bit rate...). Still wanting to put 4 years of your favorite show on to one disk is not an unreasonable thing to want to do (100 hrs is much less than one pro-football season worth of games....)
The thing to remember is that the one CRT they had was a 17" for $500. Now that the 15" LCD (which has about the same visible area to a 17" CRT, and sharper pixes...) is only $600 a $500 CRT does not make a lot of sense.
The real question is why were they charging $500 for a 17" tube? It seemed very non-std. (weird case, Apple Desktop Connector, digital input(?)) and my guess is it cost quite a bit to make. They could have started re-badging $200 19" , but then the cases would not have matched the computers, and they would not have had the cool one cable connection to the tower/cube...which may not be important to the average slashdoter, but if you care about atheistics....
> Sure the RIAA is evil, Phil will loudly attest > to that. However, it is looking out for the > interests of its musicians no matter how > little money the musicians actually realize.
Lets not mistake a congruence of intrestes for the RIAA "looking out for the musicians". The labels are trying to save their exploitive business model. The fact that the strategy they are using promotes some small segment of the musician's rights is an accident.
> Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16, > some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00
While I may not be willing to pay $500 for an audiotron, I think this analysis misses a few points:
It is not clear if the the typical 486 can decompress mp3 in real time
A 50' CAT-5 cable may only be few $, but installation can run quite a bit more
My guess is the 486 is going to have a noisy hard drive and power supply, if the Turtle Beach guys know what they are doing the audiotron won't
It is proably safe to assume that the audiotron has better acoustics than the 486-SB16 combo (SB Live might do better if you use the digital out, the inside of a computer case is an awful place to do audio electronics)
The $80 486 won't have the built in dispaly and remote control
The 486 is proably larger
Most of this comes down to if you build a computer to do only one thing, you can optimize it in ways people don't optimize PC, in this particuar case audio quality, noise, and size (heat proably too).
> I don't get it. Why is it these little > single-use boxes sell? Is the general public > really _that_ afraid of a general purpose > personal computer?
I have 4 PCs (really 3 1/2, one them isn't done yet) in my house so I don't think that I can be classified as being afraid of them, but for the right price I would proably buy 4 of these puppys (or something like them).
Because they are single purpose applances they can make trade-offs PC's can't, mostly in size, power, heat, noise, and usablity. I don't want a general PC in my living room or by my bed, general purpose PCs are too noisy for ether and to big form my bedroom. Maybe next year things will be diffrent, but I am not sure market forces are going to drive things that way.
In fact I am even tempted to put one these next to my computer so I don't lose my tunes when my PC locks-up/crashes or when netscape starts and sucks down all the cycles (ok I won't have this problem if I did not run windows, but for me Quicken is a mission critical app....)
This day in age computing power is not so precious that it has to be concentrated in one place.
Disclaimer : I am not good enough to play quake on the net, so I don't really have any idea what I am talking about
Something I have wanted to play with for a long time is systems that get the most of human-computer partnerships (see deep blue). One way to explore this area would be to encourage people to build things like armbots into their Quake clients. After all why do you want to get good at something that the computer will always be better at? Humans should do what they are good, and computers should do what they are good at - the trick is building the system so the computer and the human can work together. If the computer can aim better than I great, let see what the game is like if everyone is using armbots. What strategies are effective now? Are some armbots more effective than others? What are other good forms of computer enhancement?
Send in the cyborgs!
Sure it won't be Quake any more, but that does not mean it will necessarily be any less interesting (does't mean it won't be less ether....)
Slashdot Mirror
If it is not worth $0.25 / hr, you should proably not
be doing it....
Try lugging a V880 to LAN party though...
I think US broadcast HDTV tops out at ~20 megabits/sec (not megabytes), so 1 Terabyte works out to ~100 hrs of HDTV (in practice much more because most HDTV content will probably be done at a lower bit rate...). Still wanting to put 4 years of your favorite show on to one disk is not an unreasonable thing to want to do (100 hrs is much less than one pro-football season worth of games....)
I was at Target yesterday and saw something
that claimed to be 2.0, so I guess it is already
"widely avaiable."
The real question is why were they charging $500 for a 17" tube? It seemed very non-std. (weird case, Apple Desktop Connector, digital input(?)) and my guess is it cost quite a bit to make. They could have started re-badging $200 19" , but then the cases would not have matched the computers, and they would not have had the cool one cable connection to the tower/cube...which may not be important to the average slashdoter, but if you care about atheistics....
> Excellent point. You need to add one more
> factor, though. A protest will only work if you
> stop buying them and DON'T steal them.
And one more thing after that, tell the movie
studios that you are't buying their stuff any
more.
[of course I fell of the wagon last month,
so maybe I should not talk...]
http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/c onsumer/ss5/feedback.shtml
to tell Sony that you won't be buying any more of their products.
> Sure the RIAA is evil, Phil will loudly attest
> to that. However, it is looking out for the
> interests of its musicians no matter how
> little money the musicians actually realize.
Lets not mistake a congruence of intrestes for
the RIAA "looking out for the musicians". The
labels are trying to save their exploitive business model. The fact that the strategy they
are using promotes some small segment of the
musician's rights is an accident.
> Cost of one Audiotron: $499.00
> Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16,
> some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00
While I may not be willing to pay $500 for an audiotron, I think this analysis misses a few points:
It is not clear if the the typical 486 can
decompress mp3 in real time
A 50' CAT-5 cable may only be few $, but
installation can run quite a bit more
My guess is the 486 is going to have a
noisy hard drive and power supply, if the
Turtle Beach guys know what they are doing
the audiotron won't
It is proably safe to assume that the
audiotron has better acoustics than the
486-SB16 combo (SB Live might
do better if you use the digital out, the
inside of a computer case is an awful
place to do audio electronics)
The $80 486 won't have the built in
dispaly and remote control
The 486 is proably larger
Most of this comes down to if you build a computer to do only one thing, you can optimize it in ways people don't optimize PC, in this particuar case audio quality, noise, and size (heat proably too).
> I don't get it. Why is it these little
> single-use boxes sell? Is the general public
> really _that_ afraid of a general purpose
> personal computer?
I have 4 PCs (really 3 1/2, one them isn't done yet) in my house so I don't think that I can be classified as being afraid of them, but for the right price I would proably buy 4 of these puppys (or something like them).
Because they are single purpose applances they can make trade-offs PC's can't, mostly in size, power, heat, noise, and usablity. I don't want a general PC in my living room or by my bed, general purpose PCs are too noisy for ether and to big form my bedroom. Maybe next year things will be diffrent, but I am not sure market forces are going to drive things that way.
In fact I am even tempted to put one these next to my computer so I don't lose my tunes when my PC locks-up/crashes or when netscape starts and sucks down all the cycles (ok I won't have this problem if I did not run windows, but for me Quicken is a mission critical app....)
This day in age computing power is not so precious that it has to be concentrated in one place.
Does any one know what the definition of an "innocent party" is in this context?
Disclaimer : I am not good enough to play quake on the net, so I don't really have any idea what I am talking about
Something I have wanted to play with for a long time is systems that get the most of human-computer partnerships (see deep blue). One way to explore this area would be to encourage people to build things like armbots into their Quake clients. After all why do you want to get good at something that the computer will always be better at? Humans should do what they are good, and computers should do what they are good at - the trick is building the system so the computer and the human can work together. If the computer can aim better than I great, let see what the game is like if everyone is using armbots. What strategies are effective now? Are some armbots more effective than others? What are other good forms of computer enhancement?
Send in the cyborgs!
Sure it won't be Quake any more, but that does not mean it will necessarily be any less interesting (does't mean it won't be less ether....)
This post and $3.00 will get you a cup of coffee.