I'll second that, I've also got a 46" (albeit Sony Grand Wega 1080i) HDTV and dvd's look EXCELLENT even using 480p output. That being said, I also have a PS3, bought mainly for the gaming aspect--but I have quickly fallen in love with BluRay. The visuals aren't the only upside to BluRay, the uncompressed 5.1 or DTS tracks that come on nearly every title simply CRUSH Dolby Digital 5.1. I don't even have a bazillion dollar surround sound system, only a fairly entry level Sony receiver with HDMI and an addon Sony Powered 12" sub--but the difference in sonic quality of uncompressed vs. DD5.1 is very impressive! (and I thought DTS was the end-all of high end audio...)
I'm glad to see BluRay is winning the HD format war, the titles I've purchased on BluRay (Fifth Element, Underworld, Some Disney Flicks for my kids) are far superior to DVD and getting them on sale for $15-$20 isn't much more than their DVD counterparts. On the other hand, the PS3 makes DVD's look and sound excellent as well so there's no need to re-buy the movies we've grown to love unless the media falls apart. Add in the ability to play Mpeg-4 off my NAS box and the PS3 may finally make Sony's dream of a single media power house in your living room reality.
I'll also throw in a vouch for the "still usefulness" of the 4.x versions of Navigator.
I recently changed careers from a call-center network admin to state wide agricultural extension (think 4-H and County Nutrition Programs, weed control, bug control, etc) support analyst. The people I support are educators with the state's land grant university and state and federal research scientists. Many of them still prefer to use Netscape 4.79 and have used it since it was released. One of my primary job functions is to purchase and replace PC hardware and I am consistently asked to re-install Netscape and migrate bookmarks.
Originally I began extolling the virtues of "modern browsers" (Firefox) and even installed it on a few new Dual Core PCs. Nearly immediately after leaving, I was called asking where the "lighthouse with the N" was for the Internet." I now include both browsers and clone the bookmarks in Firefox, but I still find people prefer to stick with what they know and works for them!
I sure am glad I rushed out and stood in line to buy the original $460 version, spent another $179 to add an HD-DVD player, and now I get to buy one all over again if I want the extra sexy-ness in a single box version?
I think you've got something there. Bandwidth can NOT be that expensive...sheesh, GoDaddy lets me host my site with 100gb per month of traffic for 6.99$ Of course GoDaddy doesn't expect that I'd use that much (or the others on the server would either) but if I wanted to share 4.2gb.iso's of my family vacation pictures for direct HTTP download and DIDN'T break the 100gb, I could over and over, every month.
I think everything has a purpose, really. Windows 98 and Windows ME are still useful for certain things. (suprisingly so is DOS) I have an older Gateway Solo 2500 366MHz Celeron laptop with Windows ME installed on it that my kids use constantly. My 3 year old plays simple games like Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and the Doring Kindersly Learning Ladder with that laptop a few times a week. In addition, Firefox 1.5 works fine on it as does Flash 8 Player and he can use any miriad of Flash-based websites like thomasthetankengine.com and sproutletsgrow.com.
It also runs Open Office 2 without issue, its not super fast, but its fine for my fifth grader to do simple reports and papers with, and she has no complaints about speed. She's also able to access her favorite websites like penguinchat.com and nicktoons.com without issue using Firefox and Flash.
What else works on Windows ME? My Belking Wireless 802.11G card, Java, the Nokia updater for infrared for my wife's 6100 series phone, USB Mass Storage device drivers for my generic 64mb USB key, Acrobat Reader, GAIM, WinAMP, VLC and Media Player Classic for playing VCD movies (it doesn't do xvid or divx too well, but VCD looks fine at 800x600 to my kids and they LOVE having a small collection of movies they can watch without asking or taking up the big TV).
This laptop's been a workhorse from day one when I got it in August of 1999 and it just keeps ticking along. I've installed various flavors of Red Hat, Solaris 8 x86, Sun's SUSE based Java Desktop System, Windows 2000, and even WindowsXP on it's 4gb hard drive and 128mb of ram over the years. All of these OS's worked to great lengths--Fedora Core 1 would be my personal preference for it if I still used the laptop regularly. I've (recently) used it and Open Office along with Photoshop Elements and my afformentioned USB key to create final projects for my college courses including a PowerPoint type presentation on South Korea's GDP--all with NO issues.
Surely I could do with a faster PC, but damn--this one is paid for, easy to work on, and can take a beating. If it can stand up to my 3 year old's use and still be used to churn out a research paper or two, why upgrade? I can say one think keeping it running is the lack (or apparent lack) of Internet Explorer. I've hidden it as well as I can and replaced it with Firefox. The system has as many patches as are available from the older version of Windowsupdate and I keep it behind a hardware firewall and MAC authenticated WPA wireless router. Only complaint--7 year old batteries don't hold much of a charge, I get about 11 minutes of off AC time--I tend to think of it as a basic built in UPS...hahaha!
Aside from the afformentioned GBA/DS titles, there's been a few good releases on XBox like "Battle for Bikini Bottom" and "Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure" and to a lesser extent, "Pac World III." The downside is that for every creative and kitchy fun platform game, there are 4 crappy cookie cutter games to crowd the market space.
I agree, my usage of IRC and IM programs has assisted greatly with my keyboard skills. I've never taken a formal keyboarding class, yet through the use of chat on the Internet, I've developed nearly 50WPM typing ability.
This would make sense if they tied the user's account across windows (al la Active Directory?) in to some massive global Windows Domain...The idea of pre-paid terminal access with all of your user goodies from MSN and Office following you to any Internet conected PC you stuck your pre-paid smart card in to isn't too bad. (if you can see past the obvious privacy questions)I think this is idea for business travelers, technophile societies, and developing nations.
Sun's got something like that for LAN, SunRay--but we've tested them at work on a large callcenter rollout and they are less than stellar when running Windows software.
On the complete otherhand, this is a DUMB idea current form scratch cards? geesh--I give it 15 minutes before someone figures out away around this limitation and 16 minutes for it to hit the torrent sites.
Yea right, like that's worked for them in the past....oh wait, my cassette player is experiencing some severe flutter--why can't a company create a replacement for the cassette tape?
Netscape is a shell of its former self. AOL would love to leverage itself the way that Microsoft does with IE. I think its great to give the consumer the choice (as if they have one when it comes to IE) but wouldn't an open alternative be more warmly recieved by the community? I'd be extremely suprised to see MS even bat an eye at this, they know they've already crushed Netscape long ago.
Now if they offered Firefox that'd be a story worth telling. Surely HP wants the consumer to see this as a positive, hence the reason for offering "Netscape" that people "have heard of before."
Why not? I've bought a few of these "limited" type games in the last few years, the first being the "Collector's Edition" of Diablo 2. The most recent was the afformentioned Mortal Kombat Deceptions. The Diablo box set was well worth the extra $12. It contained enough junk that I later sold and recouped 80% of the original purchase price via eBay and kept the actual game cds/keys.
I think the extra stuff is a nice premium IF its not just cheesy extras and cut-scenes on the same media as the game install. Physical trinkets make the $10 or so worth spending if you are really in to the game you are purchasing. Then again, I'd gladly pay $10 or so less for JUST the game for two thirds of the titles I consider purchasing.
While the thought of having a $xxx device around just to rescue a dead Windows pc intrigues me, I think any critical server system should/will have a backup system. As the article mentions, using it as a portable complete VPN solution is a much better use. It'd be akin to the SunRay system, but "take the whole system with you" kind of way. That way you can use the local peheriphreals anywhere with out having to pack around a laptop or PDA.
As for the joke, google r00t3dz0rd and get the punchline.
Which is more scary, that privacy in general is a hard to obtain or that the Internet makes it readily available to anyone with too much time on their hands.
I guess if privacy wasn't such a commodity, it wouldn't come as a shock when disrupted.
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Shopping Online
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This will become a bunch of plugs for all the geeks favorite places to shop, so here's mine:
I like Mwave.com, they have just about all the parts you could ever want at comparable prices to other sites on the net. They also ship UPS ground that comes to Idaho as fast as 2 day UPS for 1/3 the price of 2 day.
My best advice for buying PC stuff online is order from the US, and read the reviews on Pricewatch or epinions.com to make an informed decision.
I agree. I live in a small (pop. 50K) town in Idaho; however, I work for a HUGE "business casual" corporation that set up shop here. I have gauged ear lobes and tats on my arm and the back of my calf. I've never had anyone give me flack for either.
Its all common sense. I don't flaunt either, and know when it is appropriate to remove the CBR's or wear long sleeves. I think its all relative.
Slashdot Mirror
Ha, they don't have to, but for the record I do have a Cybershot, a HandiCam, and XPlode CD players in my vehicles, thanks for asking!
I'll second that, I've also got a 46" (albeit Sony Grand Wega 1080i) HDTV and dvd's look EXCELLENT even using 480p output. That being said, I also have a PS3, bought mainly for the gaming aspect--but I have quickly fallen in love with BluRay. The visuals aren't the only upside to BluRay, the uncompressed 5.1 or DTS tracks that come on nearly every title simply CRUSH Dolby Digital 5.1. I don't even have a bazillion dollar surround sound system, only a fairly entry level Sony receiver with HDMI and an addon Sony Powered 12" sub--but the difference in sonic quality of uncompressed vs. DD5.1 is very impressive! (and I thought DTS was the end-all of high end audio...)
I'm glad to see BluRay is winning the HD format war, the titles I've purchased on BluRay (Fifth Element, Underworld, Some Disney Flicks for my kids) are far superior to DVD and getting them on sale for $15-$20 isn't much more than their DVD counterparts. On the other hand, the PS3 makes DVD's look and sound excellent as well so there's no need to re-buy the movies we've grown to love unless the media falls apart. Add in the ability to play Mpeg-4 off my NAS box and the PS3 may finally make Sony's dream of a single media power house in your living room reality.
I'll also throw in a vouch for the "still usefulness" of the 4.x versions of Navigator.
I recently changed careers from a call-center network admin to state wide agricultural extension (think 4-H and County Nutrition Programs, weed control, bug control, etc) support analyst. The people I support are educators with the state's land grant university and state and federal research scientists. Many of them still prefer to use Netscape 4.79 and have used it since it was released. One of my primary job functions is to purchase and replace PC hardware and I am consistently asked to re-install Netscape and migrate bookmarks.
Originally I began extolling the virtues of "modern browsers" (Firefox) and even installed it on a few new Dual Core PCs. Nearly immediately after leaving, I was called asking where the "lighthouse with the N" was for the Internet." I now include both browsers and clone the bookmarks in Firefox, but I still find people prefer to stick with what they know and works for them!
I sure am glad I rushed out and stood in line to buy the original $460 version, spent another $179 to add an HD-DVD player, and now I get to buy one all over again if I want the extra sexy-ness in a single box version?
I think you've got something there. Bandwidth can NOT be that expensive...sheesh, GoDaddy lets me host my site with 100gb per month of traffic for 6.99$ Of course GoDaddy doesn't expect that I'd use that much (or the others on the server would either) but if I wanted to share 4.2gb .iso's of my family vacation pictures for direct HTTP download and DIDN'T break the 100gb, I could over and over, every month.
Geesh Jim, want some cheese with that whine?
w0wz0r!! jOO r so 1337!!
While we're at it, PLEASE do everything in your power to keep the content of YouTube OFF of HDNet.
I think everything has a purpose, really. Windows 98 and Windows ME are still useful for certain things. (suprisingly so is DOS) I have an older Gateway Solo 2500 366MHz Celeron laptop with Windows ME installed on it that my kids use constantly. My 3 year old plays simple games like Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and the Doring Kindersly Learning Ladder with that laptop a few times a week. In addition, Firefox 1.5 works fine on it as does Flash 8 Player and he can use any miriad of Flash-based websites like thomasthetankengine.com and sproutletsgrow.com.
It also runs Open Office 2 without issue, its not super fast, but its fine for my fifth grader to do simple reports and papers with, and she has no complaints about speed. She's also able to access her favorite websites like penguinchat.com and nicktoons.com without issue using Firefox and Flash.
What else works on Windows ME? My Belking Wireless 802.11G card, Java, the Nokia updater for infrared for my wife's 6100 series phone, USB Mass Storage device drivers for my generic 64mb USB key, Acrobat Reader, GAIM, WinAMP, VLC and Media Player Classic for playing VCD movies (it doesn't do xvid or divx too well, but VCD looks fine at 800x600 to my kids and they LOVE having a small collection of movies they can watch without asking or taking up the big TV).
This laptop's been a workhorse from day one when I got it in August of 1999 and it just keeps ticking along. I've installed various flavors of Red Hat, Solaris 8 x86, Sun's SUSE based Java Desktop System, Windows 2000, and even WindowsXP on it's 4gb hard drive and 128mb of ram over the years. All of these OS's worked to great lengths--Fedora Core 1 would be my personal preference for it if I still used the laptop regularly. I've (recently) used it and Open Office along with Photoshop Elements and my afformentioned USB key to create final projects for my college courses including a PowerPoint type presentation on South Korea's GDP--all with NO issues.
Surely I could do with a faster PC, but damn--this one is paid for, easy to work on, and can take a beating. If it can stand up to my 3 year old's use and still be used to churn out a research paper or two, why upgrade? I can say one think keeping it running is the lack (or apparent lack) of Internet Explorer. I've hidden it as well as I can and replaced it with Firefox. The system has as many patches as are available from the older version of Windowsupdate and I keep it behind a hardware firewall and MAC authenticated WPA wireless router. Only complaint--7 year old batteries don't hold much of a charge, I get about 11 minutes of off AC time--I tend to think of it as a basic built in UPS...hahaha!
I got nine kids to feed...
Aside from the afformentioned GBA/DS titles, there's been a few good releases on XBox like "Battle for Bikini Bottom" and "Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure" and to a lesser extent, "Pac World III." The downside is that for every creative and kitchy fun platform game, there are 4 crappy cookie cutter games to crowd the market space.
I agree, my usage of IRC and IM programs has assisted greatly with my keyboard skills. I've never taken a formal keyboarding class, yet through the use of chat on the Internet, I've developed nearly 50WPM typing ability.
This would make sense if they tied the user's account across windows (al la Active Directory?) in to some massive global Windows Domain...The idea of pre-paid terminal access with all of your user goodies from MSN and Office following you to any Internet conected PC you stuck your pre-paid smart card in to isn't too bad. (if you can see past the obvious privacy questions)I think this is idea for business travelers, technophile societies, and developing nations.
Sun's got something like that for LAN, SunRay--but we've tested them at work on a large callcenter rollout and they are less than stellar when running Windows software.
On the complete otherhand, this is a DUMB idea current form scratch cards? geesh--I give it 15 minutes before someone figures out away around this limitation and 16 minutes for it to hit the torrent sites.
Yea right, like that's worked for them in the past....oh wait, my cassette player is experiencing some severe flutter--why can't a company create a replacement for the cassette tape?
Netscape is a shell of its former self. AOL would love to leverage itself the way that Microsoft does with IE. I think its great to give the consumer the choice (as if they have one when it comes to IE) but wouldn't an open alternative be more warmly recieved by the community? I'd be extremely suprised to see MS even bat an eye at this, they know they've already crushed Netscape long ago.
Now if they offered Firefox that'd be a story worth telling. Surely HP wants the consumer to see this as a positive, hence the reason for offering "Netscape" that people "have heard of before."
Why not? I've bought a few of these "limited" type games in the last few years, the first being the "Collector's Edition" of Diablo 2. The most recent was the afformentioned Mortal Kombat Deceptions. The Diablo box set was well worth the extra $12. It contained enough junk that I later sold and recouped 80% of the original purchase price via eBay and kept the actual game cds/keys.
I think the extra stuff is a nice premium IF its not just cheesy extras and cut-scenes on the same media as the game install. Physical trinkets make the $10 or so worth spending if you are really in to the game you are purchasing. Then again, I'd gladly pay $10 or so less for JUST the game for two thirds of the titles I consider purchasing.
While the thought of having a $xxx device around just to rescue a dead Windows pc intrigues me, I think any critical server system should/will have a backup system. As the article mentions, using it as a portable complete VPN solution is a much better use. It'd be akin to the SunRay system, but "take the whole system with you" kind of way. That way you can use the local peheriphreals anywhere with out having to pack around a laptop or PDA. As for the joke, google r00t3dz0rd and get the punchline.
Which is more scary, that privacy in general is a hard to obtain or that the Internet makes it readily available to anyone with too much time on their hands.
I guess if privacy wasn't such a commodity, it wouldn't come as a shock when disrupted.
This will become a bunch of plugs for all the geeks favorite places to shop, so here's mine:
I like Mwave.com, they have just about all the parts you could ever want at comparable prices to other sites on the net. They also ship UPS ground that comes to Idaho as fast as 2 day UPS for 1/3 the price of 2 day.
My best advice for buying PC stuff online is order from the US, and read the reviews on Pricewatch or epinions.com to make an informed decision.
They are on a roll today!
The Saturn V's first stage (the biggest thrust producing stage) was fired with Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen.
I agree. I live in a small (pop. 50K) town in Idaho; however, I work for a HUGE "business casual" corporation that set up shop here. I have gauged ear lobes and tats on my arm and the back of my calf. I've never had anyone give me flack for either.
Its all common sense. I don't flaunt either, and know when it is appropriate to remove the CBR's or wear long sleeves. I think its all relative.
I agree, I mean damn...BSD has its own section, and its DEAD!
When Sony stops making Trinitron's, then we can discuss the end of the CRT monitor.
Star Wars Episode III will also consume 38.75% of the total available Internet bandwidth once a 1337 CAM is torrented.