I used to work as a student tech support guy at my university. I had one call to a typical sorority girl who had trouble getting her internet connection to work. I quickly glance behind her tower to check for the link light, which is on. So I go about with the usual troubleshooting routine. Nothing seems to work, and I am about to call the NOC to schedule a line repair, when I notice the ethernet cable looks kind of funny coming out of the wall. Upon closer inspection, I discover it is, in fact, a phone cable jammed into the socket. That just blew my mind, that a phone cable could make a solid enough connection to give a link light.
Hell, TNTHD upconvertes and stretches (!) normal SD content for most of the day and calls it "HD".
They somehow manage to mess up the audio on HD shows as well. I've noticed several shows, like Law & Order, have the audio pitch reduced significantly, so everyone's voice sounds deeper. It is very unnatural and distracting.
Exisiting DVD still looks quite strong since the quality improvements gained from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD arn't nearly as compelling as the gains when moving from VHS to DVD. We'll see. I'm no videophile, but I can see some pretty nasty digital artifacts from compression on DVDs, especially in dark scenes. The resolution may be better than VHS, but I'm not convinced the overall picture is.
The resolution isn't better then VHS. They are both 480i. The only quality improvement in DVD over VHS is that DVD is digital so the signal quality is better. There are fewer artifacts, but they are still plenty visible, especially on a big screen.
It's true that DVD was a big technological improvement over VHS, but the improvements were mainly convenience factors--menus and chapters so you didn't have to rewind and fast forward, small, durable form factor, multiple languages and subtitles, etc. High-def DVD will be a much, much larger improvement in quality over DVD then DVD was over VHS. Instead of just going from analog to digital (which gets converted back to analog on 99% of DVD player/tv setups anyway), you will get a true, 100% digital signal with an order of magnitude more pixels (1080p compared to 480i). I'll take that any day over those stupid chapter menus.
Exisiting DVD still looks quite strong since the quality improvements gained from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD arn't nearly as compelling as the gains when moving from VHS to DVD.
We'll see. I'm no videophile, but I can see some pretty nasty digital artifacts from compression on DVDs, especially in dark scenes. The resolution may be better than VHS, but I'm not convinced the overall picture is.
The resolution isn't better then VHS. They are both 480i. The only quality improvement in DVD over VHS is that DVD is digital so the signal quality is better. There are fewer artifacts, but they are still plenty visible, especially on a big screen.
It's true that DVD was a big technological improvement over VHS, but the improvements were mainly convenience factors--menus and chapters so you didn't have to rewind and fast forward, small, durable form factor, multiple languages and subtitles, etc. High-def DVD will be a much, much larger improvement in quality over DVD then DVD was over VHS. Instead of just going from analog to digital (which gets converted back to analog on 99% of DVD player/tv setups anyway), you will get a true, 100% digital signal with an order of magnitude more pixels (1080p compared to 480i). I'll take that any day over those stupid chapter menus.
Technically, you can fuse any element lighter then iron (so that the final product is at most iron). However, the heavier you go, the higher temperatures you need and the less efficient the process. This is because iron has the highest binding energy of any element. Past iron, you have to use fission.
I don't think that is correct. At least in my industry, if I were to publish security information, even if it were under the guise of "whistleblowing", not only would I be fired, but I'd be in prison.
What does government classified national defense secrets have to do with the first amendment? I don't have the right to break into your house, steal your personal or buisness secrets, and post them in the newspaper. Now I know that the government is different and that they are supposed to be accountable. I'm not saying they shouldn't be. But this is about intelligence and defense secrets. If Klaus Fuchs published the blueprints on the atom bomb in the New York Times, I doubt he would be able to use the first amendment as a defense.
I'm not trolling so please don't give me the -1 conservative mod. Honestly, someone please explain to me how this is different. I'm pretty sure whistleblowing is protected by some federal regulation. I don't see how releasing intelligence methods and secrets, and posting them publicly, constitutes whistleblowing.
instead of the broad spectrum network advertising during commercial breaks, overlay them with targeted and well-crafted shorts designed to catch the eye of that tivo's owner tastes.
Instead of ads for tampons, SUV's, and herpes medication, I might be inclined to sit through commercial breaks if they went something like this:
"Hey there Mr. Pion from 21 Jump Street, would you like your lawn mowed tomorrow for only $39.99? Call Honest Bob's lawn care now!"
Hell yeah I'd like my lawn mowed for $39.99!
Or how about:
"Mr. Pion, did you know that with your credit score of 750, Geico could save you $193.26 on your Honda Civic liability insurance!
I want Privateer, online. Not a lame turn-based/dice-roll, level and XP based World of Warcraft set in space, but actual dogfighting like the original game. There would be no artificial restrictions like levels or experience for ships and equipment. What is required is cooperative play. PVP would be faction based, between a neutral commerce guild (for most players), and then military and pirate factions for PVP. Pirates can raid other player's cargo ships at will, so players will need to hire escorts. Guilds will have the option of using capital ships, which require a minimum crew to operate. I would pay good money for this.
Have you actually seen an HD DVD play on a large HD screen? If not then maybe the reason why you don't understand how people can't see a (significant) difference is that you're comparing in your imagincation.
Well, no, but I do watch OTA high def signals and can compare them directly to DVD's. High def DVD's (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) should be at least as good as OTA HD, if not better.
I for one am really looking forward to HD DVD's. I am not going to rush out and buy a player until someone comes out with a dual format player, the prices drop to the ~$200-300 range, and enough good movies come out. But when they do, I won't be able to whip out my check book fast enough. If you can't tell the difference between a 480i DVD and 1080i HD on a decent sized screen then you need to have your eyes examined. Or check your TV's manual on how to correctly set up your system.
This is not a troll. I seriously don't understand how people can claim to not be able to tell the difference. Regular DVD's just look like trash on a large HD sceen, even with a good up-converting player. Ever since I read about the development of high-dev DVD's several years ago, I have ceased buying regular DVD movies in anticipation of buying their higher resolution versions in the near future.
My only concern is that high-def DVD's will go the way of high-def audio with the DVD-A/SACD format war, with neither gaining acceptance and both dying out.
Contrast: National Review with National Review Online, the latter being a den of ultra-racist, mysognistic, violent and depraved lunatics (see also: Little Green Footballs, FreeRepublic).
You mean like Cynthia McKinney, who punched a security officer (who politely tried to stop her from walking through a security checkpoint without identification) because he was a white male? She's pretty racist, mysoginistic, violent, and a crazy-go-nuts. Oh wait, she's a liberal democrat. Nevermind.
I don't have the game yet, however as someone who played Morrowind all the way through, I am looking forward to what you describe in Oblivion. My biggest complaint with Morrowind was that by about half-way through the game, your character was so utterly powerful that no amount of enemies could hope to even scratch you. At this point, it was just a chore to travel around and complete the main quest. Hopefully Oblivion will be challenging enough to hold my interest longer.
Klipsch makes quality products that are equivalent to other mid and upper range speaker brands, along with Athena, Infinity, JBL, etc. They are certainly not the best of the best but they are priced what they are worth and sound good. Contrary to Bose, which literally sells $5 paper cone drivers for THOUSANDS, claiming "better sound through research", yet refusing to disclose their speaker's specifications.
The Mythbusters found that while a raw instrument sitting on a table could be affected by a signal frequency that cell phones use, but 1000 times more powerful, they had zero effect on a real plane because everything is thoroughly shielded from EM.
What was so great about Rise of Nations? I tried the demo and found it a bit clunky... hard to manage, especially battles. What does it have that's better than the Age of Empires trilogy or other RTSes? I might give it another try.
I was a long time veteran of RoN. In my opinion, it was THE best real time strategy game of all time. The eason was the innovative way the game mechanics are designed. Everything is made in order to get you to utilize strategy and macromanagement as opposed to micromanagement.
For example, when groups of units are fighting each other, if you intentionally micromanage your units to focus fire on the enemy, there is a penalty involved. The law of decreasing returns applies so that the more units fire at one individual enemy unit, the less damage each successive one does.
This promotes macromanagement and strategy as opposed to one of my least favorite strategy games, Warcraft 3, which is all about micromanaging to the extreme. In Warcraft 3, whoever was the quickest with the mouse and being able to micromanage each individual unit would prevail. In Rise of Nations, the victor is the commander with the better unit combinations and manuvering.
There are many other aspects to RoN which I adore, such as the subtle differences between the different countries, the resources system which was similar to Total Annihilation, and the way you have to balance research with military production. I could go on for pages but suffice it to say, RoN's game design was very innovative and just plain fun on a competitive level, unlike Warcraft 3 which was just brutal and painful.
You are wrong. There is not infinite money, because in WoW, time = money and there is not infinite time, at least for normal players. This is how the gold farmers hurt the regular players. They inflate time value by hiring shops of workers to "play" the game far more then the game was designed to handle.
The game's economy was designed to accomodate the average player who plays a few hours a day. When you have a concerted effort with people playing 16 hours a day, you are essentially inflating time, and therefore, money. This devalues the currency of normal players, causing prices to rise, and thus forcing the average players to resort to buying gold in order to keep up.
This is a major problem with anti-virus software. Because of their blacklist model, they have to release definitions and updates very frequently. They have to release these updates as quickly as possible as well, or else their subscribers will be infected with these viruses before they get the updates. In addition, their software is very bloated and complicated, needing to be able to defend against a huge variety of attacks, both immidiate and obsolete. This results in a very error-likely situation. What the network security companies need to work on is an innovative way to effectively protect corporate and home networks without having to use dangerous bloatware.
Because when you have a gun, you can say whatever you want! That's why the CDC previously lobbied for the banning of guns, treating them like a disease. Trying to limit the first amendment with the same reasoning is the next logical step for this runaway bureacracy.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work as a student tech support guy at my university. I had one call to a typical sorority girl who had trouble getting her internet connection to work. I quickly glance behind her tower to check for the link light, which is on. So I go about with the usual troubleshooting routine. Nothing seems to work, and I am about to call the NOC to schedule a line repair, when I notice the ethernet cable looks kind of funny coming out of the wall. Upon closer inspection, I discover it is, in fact, a phone cable jammed into the socket. That just blew my mind, that a phone cable could make a solid enough connection to give a link light.
hold the austrailonions, please.
They somehow manage to mess up the audio on HD shows as well. I've noticed several shows, like Law & Order, have the audio pitch reduced significantly, so everyone's voice sounds deeper. It is very unnatural and distracting.
ugh, stupid html. It should read like this:
Exisiting DVD still looks quite strong since the quality improvements gained from DVD to Blu-Ray/HD-DVD arn't nearly as compelling as the gains when moving from VHS to DVD. We'll see. I'm no videophile, but I can see some pretty nasty digital artifacts from compression on DVDs, especially in dark scenes. The resolution may be better than VHS, but I'm not convinced the overall picture is.
The resolution isn't better then VHS. They are both 480i. The only quality improvement in DVD over VHS is that DVD is digital so the signal quality is better. There are fewer artifacts, but they are still plenty visible, especially on a big screen.
It's true that DVD was a big technological improvement over VHS, but the improvements were mainly convenience factors--menus and chapters so you didn't have to rewind and fast forward, small, durable form factor, multiple languages and subtitles, etc. High-def DVD will be a much, much larger improvement in quality over DVD then DVD was over VHS. Instead of just going from analog to digital (which gets converted back to analog on 99% of DVD player/tv setups anyway), you will get a true, 100% digital signal with an order of magnitude more pixels (1080p compared to 480i). I'll take that any day over those stupid chapter menus.
The resolution isn't better then VHS. They are both 480i. The only quality improvement in DVD over VHS is that DVD is digital so the signal quality is better. There are fewer artifacts, but they are still plenty visible, especially on a big screen.
It's true that DVD was a big technological improvement over VHS, but the improvements were mainly convenience factors--menus and chapters so you didn't have to rewind and fast forward, small, durable form factor, multiple languages and subtitles, etc. High-def DVD will be a much, much larger improvement in quality over DVD then DVD was over VHS. Instead of just going from analog to digital (which gets converted back to analog on 99% of DVD player/tv setups anyway), you will get a true, 100% digital signal with an order of magnitude more pixels (1080p compared to 480i). I'll take that any day over those stupid chapter menus.
Technically, you can fuse any element lighter then iron (so that the final product is at most iron). However, the heavier you go, the higher temperatures you need and the less efficient the process. This is because iron has the highest binding energy of any element. Past iron, you have to use fission.
I don't think that is correct. At least in my industry, if I were to publish security information, even if it were under the guise of "whistleblowing", not only would I be fired, but I'd be in prison.
I'm not trolling so please don't give me the -1 conservative mod. Honestly, someone please explain to me how this is different. I'm pretty sure whistleblowing is protected by some federal regulation. I don't see how releasing intelligence methods and secrets, and posting them publicly, constitutes whistleblowing.
Instead of ads for tampons, SUV's, and herpes medication, I might be inclined to sit through commercial breaks if they went something like this:
"Hey there Mr. Pion from 21 Jump Street, would you like your lawn mowed tomorrow for only $39.99? Call Honest Bob's lawn care now!"
Hell yeah I'd like my lawn mowed for $39.99!
Or how about:
"Mr. Pion, did you know that with your credit score of 750, Geico could save you $193.26 on your Honda Civic liability insurance!
That would be pretty cool.
I want more ninjas and pirates, and fewer robots and monkeys.
I want Privateer, online. Not a lame turn-based/dice-roll, level and XP based World of Warcraft set in space, but actual dogfighting like the original game. There would be no artificial restrictions like levels or experience for ships and equipment. What is required is cooperative play. PVP would be faction based, between a neutral commerce guild (for most players), and then military and pirate factions for PVP. Pirates can raid other player's cargo ships at will, so players will need to hire escorts. Guilds will have the option of using capital ships, which require a minimum crew to operate. I would pay good money for this.
Don't worry, I'm out of mod points.
Well, no, but I do watch OTA high def signals and can compare them directly to DVD's. High def DVD's (Blu-Ray and HD-DVD) should be at least as good as OTA HD, if not better.
This is not a troll. I seriously don't understand how people can claim to not be able to tell the difference. Regular DVD's just look like trash on a large HD sceen, even with a good up-converting player. Ever since I read about the development of high-dev DVD's several years ago, I have ceased buying regular DVD movies in anticipation of buying their higher resolution versions in the near future.
My only concern is that high-def DVD's will go the way of high-def audio with the DVD-A/SACD format war, with neither gaining acceptance and both dying out.
You mean like Cynthia McKinney, who punched a security officer (who politely tried to stop her from walking through a security checkpoint without identification) because he was a white male? She's pretty racist, mysoginistic, violent, and a crazy-go-nuts. Oh wait, she's a liberal democrat. Nevermind.
Do libraries, like video rental stores, buy books which are licensed for rental or public use that cost more then a general personal copy?
1) Patent "the process of exchanging goods or services for finiancial reimbursement"
2) Sue the entire world, muahahahaha
3) Profit!
I don't have the game yet, however as someone who played Morrowind all the way through, I am looking forward to what you describe in Oblivion. My biggest complaint with Morrowind was that by about half-way through the game, your character was so utterly powerful that no amount of enemies could hope to even scratch you. At this point, it was just a chore to travel around and complete the main quest. Hopefully Oblivion will be challenging enough to hold my interest longer.
Klipsch makes quality products that are equivalent to other mid and upper range speaker brands, along with Athena, Infinity, JBL, etc. They are certainly not the best of the best but they are priced what they are worth and sound good. Contrary to Bose, which literally sells $5 paper cone drivers for THOUSANDS, claiming "better sound through research", yet refusing to disclose their speaker's specifications.
The Mythbusters found that while a raw instrument sitting on a table could be affected by a signal frequency that cell phones use, but 1000 times more powerful, they had zero effect on a real plane because everything is thoroughly shielded from EM.
stay tuned for more...TALES OF INTEREST
(it turns out it's man)
I was a long time veteran of RoN. In my opinion, it was THE best real time strategy game of all time. The eason was the innovative way the game mechanics are designed. Everything is made in order to get you to utilize strategy and macromanagement as opposed to micromanagement.
For example, when groups of units are fighting each other, if you intentionally micromanage your units to focus fire on the enemy, there is a penalty involved. The law of decreasing returns applies so that the more units fire at one individual enemy unit, the less damage each successive one does.
This promotes macromanagement and strategy as opposed to one of my least favorite strategy games, Warcraft 3, which is all about micromanaging to the extreme. In Warcraft 3, whoever was the quickest with the mouse and being able to micromanage each individual unit would prevail. In Rise of Nations, the victor is the commander with the better unit combinations and manuvering.
There are many other aspects to RoN which I adore, such as the subtle differences between the different countries, the resources system which was similar to Total Annihilation, and the way you have to balance research with military production. I could go on for pages but suffice it to say, RoN's game design was very innovative and just plain fun on a competitive level, unlike Warcraft 3 which was just brutal and painful.
The game's economy was designed to accomodate the average player who plays a few hours a day. When you have a concerted effort with people playing 16 hours a day, you are essentially inflating time, and therefore, money. This devalues the currency of normal players, causing prices to rise, and thus forcing the average players to resort to buying gold in order to keep up.
This is a major problem with anti-virus software. Because of their blacklist model, they have to release definitions and updates very frequently. They have to release these updates as quickly as possible as well, or else their subscribers will be infected with these viruses before they get the updates. In addition, their software is very bloated and complicated, needing to be able to defend against a huge variety of attacks, both immidiate and obsolete. This results in a very error-likely situation. What the network security companies need to work on is an innovative way to effectively protect corporate and home networks without having to use dangerous bloatware.
Because when you have a gun, you can say whatever you want! That's why the CDC previously lobbied for the banning of guns, treating them like a disease. Trying to limit the first amendment with the same reasoning is the next logical step for this runaway bureacracy.