I'm still waiting for someone to invent a 50/100/150 three-way bulb (or even a 30/70/100 bulb) in an A21 form factor. Until then, I'll keep putting incandescents in my living room lamps.
They already did that. Just go to Home Depot and pick one up. I've got two - one in my living room torchiere lamp and one in my bedroom torchiere lamp - works fine (it's really two bulbs, a 50W equivalent and a 100W equivalent (think that's 8W and 17W actual). The new ones are instant on and feel much brighter and sunnier than the old ones did too.
Do NOT buy cheap CFL - unless from say Home Depot, as they last a lot less time and the quality of light and delay is not as good, but you can get decent CFL 4-packs or 6-packs on discount for about $6 or $8 at Home Depot (100w, 60w equiv) and you can even get 2-packs of the 3-way CFLs.
If he hung his wet laundry on that chandelier's hot bulbs, he could save $25 a month.
But, if he just hung up his laundry on the bathtub wall when it was damp when he went to work, and popped it back in the dryer later, he would save even more, and not need the fancy humidifier...
Seriously, though, I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically, and saved me tons of cash. And they make compact flourescents that work in chandelier bulbs and don't look ugly now - just go to Home Depot and look.
True, 2007 will not be the Year of Desktop Linux, but that's only because most people who won't buy Vista have no need to replace their old computers yet. Most of us will be moving games onto Mac or consoles, and abandoning the Windows desktop or laptop.
1. Hot woohoo in the virtual cabin! 2. Avoids those messy in-air collisions 3. Who needs to land anyway, right FAA? 4. Easier to cuss out the trainer 5. HaXX0RZ can upgrade your Piper Cub for Gladiatorial Combat 6. Saves on jet fuel that funds terrorism 7. Prepares you for real-world situations like having Hot Coffee running on your Flight Simulator 8. No distractions from Flight Attendants (see the BBC show...) 9. The food is better 10. Electrons don't scream when they crash and burn.
Interesting. But not exceptionally relevant, in that when viewed from more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) away on a set of 40 inches (um, 1 meter) the visual difference is not very noticeable between any of the 480 and higher level standards. While interlacing (the i part) does have some qualitative difference, it's mostly visually impacting when you're close - say on an LCD monitor that is an average on 1 to 3 feet away.
The XBox360's superiority in graphics and computing power has nothing to do with HD-TV, its far away from the Wii in SD-TV just as well. What is holding back the XBox360 so far is that a lot of games are still build for multiple platforms. If you see Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the XBox360 it won't look that much different then on a PS2 or Wii, the gameplay is all the same on every console and the much better bump mapping, resolution and light effects on the XBox360 won't change that.
All I know is what I've seen and what people in head-to-head reviews who've played both consoles - as evidenced in reviews at the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal for example, as well as G4 TV, Spike TV, etc - in that, sure, the xBox360 and PS3 have nice graphics, and they look cool close up (less than 4 feet for an HDTV that is more than 40 inches in size), but in the end it's all about the game play.
For most people, in 480p (standard TV), it really isn't that much different. And a lot of the PS3 releases don't even have good game graphics and camera controls - for example, water waves sloshing thru the land in a few, or bouncing into walls in Need for Speed 2, or whatever.
Again, it's all about the games. It's like my sports coupe - in the hands of someone like me, who actually knows the limitations of the vehicle, you can drive up to the ski hill with it, but the average Joe can't even drive their 4WD up to ski hill without getting stuck. Sure, they have more power, more clearance, they should be able to beat me there, but in real life they can't.
Now, the lead article is about first-week sales for the Wii in Japan of Zelda, compared to an already released user base of xBox360 consoles with a game that was released a couple of weeks before. It's like comparing pomegranates to oranges. Pomegranates may be better, but if they only are available right now, and people are used to oranges, you'll sell a lot more oranges.
The "buzz" is that several 360 games will be nominees for sure: Oblivion and Gears of War. I would argue that Dead Rising and Viva Pinata also deserve to be high marks in their respective genres.
Hmmm. Gears of War is 5 out of 5, Dead Rising is maybe 4, Viva Pinata is a definite 4, but there are many other games that are barely a 2 or 3, and quite frankly, that's not very good.
So far, when you actually look at the Wii and PS3 and xBox360 titles available in the US, it looks like the Wii has a stable of 4 and 5 rated games, the xBox360 is middle of the road (with barely as many total 4 and 5 games as the just-released Wii), and the PS3 is well, just not up to it, with only one decent game to speak of, and a lot of really glitchy but nice-looking games to round it out.
Maybe it's different in Japan - I've heard the xBox360 released a number of cool Japan-only Samurai games, but haven't heard of any cool PS3 ones yet in Japan, and it's still early for any Wii games (launch was just a short while back).
One of the interesting questions is when will game designers who sell a certain type of game in Japan realize the vast untapped markets in the US for the same kind of game? I've seen tons of reviews on G4 TV for many Japan-only games that I know many many Americans would love to play.
Even if they were Japanese-spoken with English online help, my guess is the untapped market for such games is vast - and growing.
But if they just had some local American voice dub talent redub it, even if it were kind of quirky, the market would be huge.
One hopes the Wii designers will realize this and plan to port games they used to think of as Japan-only to US and Canadian markets.
.. the fact that the gap between the Wii's graphics and the 360 and PS3's graphics is even greater than that between the PS2 and X-Box 1 makes me think it'll be left behind.
While this might matter in Japan, where HDTV is standard in most households, in the US only 5 percent of households have an HDTV, and in most cases Dad won't let the kids play games on it, because he bought it to watch sports and pr0n.
The xBox360 doesn't have many games on a standard 480p normal TV that look that much different, and so far all the game reviews I've seen say that most of the games aren't that great.
Give it about six months, and we'll see what the real numbers are. Everyone I know (dads) is buying Nintendo Wii consoles for their kids.
1. More people have xBox360 systems in Japan today, thus the market for new Japan-friendly games (which have been in short supply until recently) is much much bigger than the only just-released Wii console users (only 400,000 sold on release week in Japan, all they could ship, not a one left).
2. There aren't any RPG games to speak of for the Wii yet - all the cool Japan-friendly game releases for these won't be around until late this year or in first quarter of 2007 - thus, while one could "call" Zelda an RPG, it isn't. You only get to play Link, just to start.
3. As the market share of Wii consoles continues growing rapidly, the number of copies of Zelda - and the eventual Japan-friendly RPGs - will skyrocket. Hard to play a game when you don't have the console yet. As Japan market share goes past 1 million Wiis by January, they will sell more games.
Other than that, you'll just have to wait since, unfortunately, OpenOffice is not yet sufficiently compatible with Microsoft Office to replicate the latter's vulnerabilities in their entirety. But we are working on it!
I can't find anything to clarify if this new release of Open Office 2.1 includes (or needed) a patch for either of the two recently discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Word (one was a Zero Day bug, the other just announced today).
Does anyone know if it also existed for:
a. exported WinXP/2000/98 DOC files from Open Office (since I use Open Office on my Win XP laptop and frequently export in DOC for other people);
b. imported Word DOC files (in other words, was there a vulnerability if you only had Open Office and imported a DOC file to then save as ODT)?
c. specifically WindowsXP machines - in other words, was it patched in the Open Office 2.1 for WinXP version?
Thanks! I've pretty much stopped using Word except at work in favor of Open Office, but recent news has been concerning me on these aspects, and I can't figure out if they were real concerns or not.
I personally find both NoScript and AdBlock work well in Firefox. Now, I'm not against ads, but if they persist in being NOISY, MOVING, obnoxious ads I don't just kill them, I kill the entire subsite that launces them.
Want ads? Then stop popping up and stop full motion video with sound.
If you look at where firms lose the most money, and the risk factors, it's the lack of realistic background checks and clawback contracts for CEOs and CFOs that puts a company at risk, then the accounting staff, then sales and shipping staff, and way down you have IT staff.
One study does not a conclusion make. Usually, in scientific research, you need three independent studies before most scientists will draw a conclusion.
My question is - who paid for this study? Was it Nokia (caveat, I own shares in them) or some other cell phone firm?
I say to heck with copyright extensions. What was written in the US and UK Constitutions way back when (e.g. 17 or 20 years max) is good enough for then, and it's still good enough now.
And trying to pretend you can make me sign a DRM contract that's on a website at the bottom of a file drawer in the local planning office is just as insane.
Don't get me started on patents. My granddad had a patent, and 17 years was good enough for him, and it was for something real, not some fake software "concept".
I'm looking forward to my son getting Elebits from a relative for Xmas, and I'll pick up Animal Crossing and Will Wright's Japanese Wii Sims when they come out.
So far, don't know anyone who has found a single turkey for the Wii - worst I've heard is Red Steel, but even that is 3 stars out of 5 (most Wii games are 4 or 5, amazingly).
Still not much good on PS3 from what anyone can tell me, except for one game. Hope that changes soon for those people who spent so much for it.
Parents are playing games with their kids again. Parents who don't even care about video games are picking up the Wii and playing it. That is what is meant by Nintendo took this thing in an entirely new direction, and it is going to work for them.
Have to agree on this. One thing I've heard over and over at the coffee shop is dads and moms who are now playing Wii games with their kids and their parents (the kids' grandparents).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still waiting for someone to invent a 50/100/150 three-way bulb (or even a 30/70/100 bulb) in an A21 form factor. Until then, I'll keep putting incandescents in my living room lamps.
They already did that. Just go to Home Depot and pick one up. I've got two - one in my living room torchiere lamp and one in my bedroom torchiere lamp - works fine (it's really two bulbs, a 50W equivalent and a 100W equivalent (think that's 8W and 17W actual). The new ones are instant on and feel much brighter and sunnier than the old ones did too.
Do NOT buy cheap CFL - unless from say Home Depot, as they last a lot less time and the quality of light and delay is not as good, but you can get decent CFL 4-packs or 6-packs on discount for about $6 or $8 at Home Depot (100w, 60w equiv) and you can even get 2-packs of the 3-way CFLs.
If he hung his wet laundry on that chandelier's hot bulbs, he could save $25 a month.
...
But, if he just hung up his laundry on the bathtub wall when it was damp when he went to work, and popped it back in the dryer later, he would save even more, and not need the fancy humidifier
Seriously, though, I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically, and saved me tons of cash. And they make compact flourescents that work in chandelier bulbs and don't look ugly now - just go to Home Depot and look.
I'm predicting this will fail.
True, 2007 will not be the Year of Desktop Linux, but that's only because most people who won't buy Vista have no need to replace their old computers yet. Most of us will be moving games onto Mac or consoles, and abandoning the Windows desktop or laptop.
A number of people who (* cough mistake *) bought the Zune have complained that they can't find anyone to share music with.
In Seattle
In Coffeeshops
In Malls
Think about it, that's NOT a good thing to say.
Me, I think our DRM-obsessed overlords blew this one. Good tech, lousy software/DRM.
1. Hot woohoo in the virtual cabin! ...)
2. Avoids those messy in-air collisions
3. Who needs to land anyway, right FAA?
4. Easier to cuss out the trainer
5. HaXX0RZ can upgrade your Piper Cub for Gladiatorial Combat
6. Saves on jet fuel that funds terrorism
7. Prepares you for real-world situations like having Hot Coffee running on your Flight Simulator
8. No distractions from Flight Attendants (see the BBC show
9. The food is better
10. Electrons don't scream when they crash and burn.
Interesting. But not exceptionally relevant, in that when viewed from more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) away on a set of 40 inches (um, 1 meter) the visual difference is not very noticeable between any of the 480 and higher level standards. While interlacing (the i part) does have some qualitative difference, it's mostly visually impacting when you're close - say on an LCD monitor that is an average on 1 to 3 feet away.
The XBox360's superiority in graphics and computing power has nothing to do with HD-TV, its far away from the Wii in SD-TV just as well. What is holding back the XBox360 so far is that a lot of games are still build for multiple platforms. If you see Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the XBox360 it won't look that much different then on a PS2 or Wii, the gameplay is all the same on every console and the much better bump mapping, resolution and light effects on the XBox360 won't change that.
All I know is what I've seen and what people in head-to-head reviews who've played both consoles - as evidenced in reviews at the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal for example, as well as G4 TV, Spike TV, etc - in that, sure, the xBox360 and PS3 have nice graphics, and they look cool close up (less than 4 feet for an HDTV that is more than 40 inches in size), but in the end it's all about the game play.
For most people, in 480p (standard TV), it really isn't that much different. And a lot of the PS3 releases don't even have good game graphics and camera controls - for example, water waves sloshing thru the land in a few, or bouncing into walls in Need for Speed 2, or whatever.
Again, it's all about the games. It's like my sports coupe - in the hands of someone like me, who actually knows the limitations of the vehicle, you can drive up to the ski hill with it, but the average Joe can't even drive their 4WD up to ski hill without getting stuck. Sure, they have more power, more clearance, they should be able to beat me there, but in real life they can't.
Now, the lead article is about first-week sales for the Wii in Japan of Zelda, compared to an already released user base of xBox360 consoles with a game that was released a couple of weeks before. It's like comparing pomegranates to oranges. Pomegranates may be better, but if they only are available right now, and people are used to oranges, you'll sell a lot more oranges.
Four games does not a console make.
The "buzz" is that several 360 games will be nominees for sure: Oblivion and Gears of War. I would argue that Dead Rising and Viva Pinata also deserve to be high marks in their respective genres.
Hmmm. Gears of War is 5 out of 5, Dead Rising is maybe 4, Viva Pinata is a definite 4, but there are many other games that are barely a 2 or 3, and quite frankly, that's not very good.
So far, when you actually look at the Wii and PS3 and xBox360 titles available in the US, it looks like the Wii has a stable of 4 and 5 rated games, the xBox360 is middle of the road (with barely as many total 4 and 5 games as the just-released Wii), and the PS3 is well, just not up to it, with only one decent game to speak of, and a lot of really glitchy but nice-looking games to round it out.
Maybe it's different in Japan - I've heard the xBox360 released a number of cool Japan-only Samurai games, but haven't heard of any cool PS3 ones yet in Japan, and it's still early for any Wii games (launch was just a short while back).
One of the interesting questions is when will game designers who sell a certain type of game in Japan realize the vast untapped markets in the US for the same kind of game? I've seen tons of reviews on G4 TV for many Japan-only games that I know many many Americans would love to play.
Even if they were Japanese-spoken with English online help, my guess is the untapped market for such games is vast - and growing.
But if they just had some local American voice dub talent redub it, even if it were kind of quirky, the market would be huge.
One hopes the Wii designers will realize this and plan to port games they used to think of as Japan-only to US and Canadian markets.
.. the fact that the gap between the Wii's graphics and the 360 and PS3's graphics is even greater than that between the PS2 and X-Box 1 makes me think it'll be left behind.
While this might matter in Japan, where HDTV is standard in most households, in the US only 5 percent of households have an HDTV, and in most cases Dad won't let the kids play games on it, because he bought it to watch sports and pr0n.
The xBox360 doesn't have many games on a standard 480p normal TV that look that much different, and so far all the game reviews I've seen say that most of the games aren't that great.
Give it about six months, and we'll see what the real numbers are. Everyone I know (dads) is buying Nintendo Wii consoles for their kids.
1. More people have xBox360 systems in Japan today, thus the market for new Japan-friendly games (which have been in short supply until recently) is much much bigger than the only just-released Wii console users (only 400,000 sold on release week in Japan, all they could ship, not a one left).
2. There aren't any RPG games to speak of for the Wii yet - all the cool Japan-friendly game releases for these won't be around until late this year or in first quarter of 2007 - thus, while one could "call" Zelda an RPG, it isn't. You only get to play Link, just to start.
3. As the market share of Wii consoles continues growing rapidly, the number of copies of Zelda - and the eventual Japan-friendly RPGs - will skyrocket. Hard to play a game when you don't have the console yet. As Japan market share goes past 1 million Wiis by January, they will sell more games.
Other than that, you'll just have to wait since, unfortunately, OpenOffice is not yet sufficiently compatible with Microsoft Office to replicate the latter's vulnerabilities in their entirety. But we are working on it!
Um, we want to replicate the vulnerabilities too?
5. Make it speedier.
I vote for this especially. I use OO on my WinXP laptop, and sometimes it loads so slowly I miss MSFT Office.
Not that I miss it much, but the load times feel long.
I can't find anything to clarify if this new release of Open Office 2.1 includes (or needed) a patch for either of the two recently discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and Microsoft Word (one was a Zero Day bug, the other just announced today).
Does anyone know if it also existed for:
a. exported WinXP/2000/98 DOC files from Open Office (since I use Open Office on my Win XP laptop and frequently export in DOC for other people);
b. imported Word DOC files (in other words, was there a vulnerability if you only had Open Office and imported a DOC file to then save as ODT)?
c. specifically WindowsXP machines - in other words, was it patched in the Open Office 2.1 for WinXP version?
Thanks! I've pretty much stopped using Word except at work in favor of Open Office, but recent news has been concerning me on these aspects, and I can't figure out if they were real concerns or not.
I personally find both NoScript and AdBlock work well in Firefox. Now, I'm not against ads, but if they persist in being NOISY, MOVING, obnoxious ads I don't just kill them, I kill the entire subsite that launces them.
Want ads? Then stop popping up and stop full motion video with sound.
I remember using military weapons technology between 1982 and 1989 that had similar triggers.
Sounds like someone trying to make a fast buck.
According to Yahoo News and G4 TV, Nintendo sold 400k in Japan alone and more than 650k in the US/Canada.
No, we actually run drug trials.
In fact, such trials go thru phases, Phase I, Phase II, etc, and we see if they have negative/positive effects on animals, then humans.
But, again, what I said stands - most people know that until you've read three papers on something, you shouldn't get too excited.
Surgery's a different animal.
If you look at where firms lose the most money, and the risk factors, it's the lack of realistic background checks and clawback contracts for CEOs and CFOs that puts a company at risk, then the accounting staff, then sales and shipping staff, and way down you have IT staff.
Let's get real.
Is to get a Wii, so you really don't need any patches to the PS3 for that.
...)
Except the patch to your wallet for wasting $600 for a console with only one good game (I did that when I got the xBox when it came out
Well, it gives you something to do when you're not having fun playing games on your Wii - that's why you put Linux on your PS3!
...
Besides, after the rabbits take over, all your PS3 are belong to Rayman
One study does not a conclusion make. Usually, in scientific research, you need three independent studies before most scientists will draw a conclusion.
My question is - who paid for this study? Was it Nokia (caveat, I own shares in them) or some other cell phone firm?
I say to heck with copyright extensions. What was written in the US and UK Constitutions way back when (e.g. 17 or 20 years max) is good enough for then, and it's still good enough now.
And trying to pretend you can make me sign a DRM contract that's on a website at the bottom of a file drawer in the local planning office is just as insane.
Don't get me started on patents. My granddad had a patent, and 17 years was good enough for him, and it was for something real, not some fake software "concept".
I'm looking forward to my son getting Elebits from a relative for Xmas, and I'll pick up Animal Crossing and Will Wright's Japanese Wii Sims when they come out.
So far, don't know anyone who has found a single turkey for the Wii - worst I've heard is Red Steel, but even that is 3 stars out of 5 (most Wii games are 4 or 5, amazingly).
Still not much good on PS3 from what anyone can tell me, except for one game. Hope that changes soon for those people who spent so much for it.
Parents are playing games with their kids again. Parents who don't even care about video games are picking up the Wii and playing it. That is what is meant by Nintendo took this thing in an entirely new direction, and it is going to work for them.
Have to agree on this. One thing I've heard over and over at the coffee shop is dads and moms who are now playing Wii games with their kids and their parents (the kids' grandparents).
It's just darned FUN!