Unfortunately RIAA & the MPAA can lobby & bitch & whine all they want, but the simple fact is that I have 60+ year olds ask me what the best program to get music off of is... Not just teens & young adults. The sheer number of people who don't care whetehr it's legal or not is insanely high.
The closest historical example I can even come up with is of Prohabition in the first half of this century within the US... It made drinking alcohol illegal (for those not up on their US history). People didn't care for the most part that it was illegal or not, they found ways to aquire their alcohol without the cops (hopefully) finding out. In the end though the government realized they had no hope of enforcing this concept on the people & it was repealed...
The same happens with file sharing today, in that to many people find ways around the restriction on 'sharing' 'intellectual property' (which as far as I'm concerned is a silly concept anyways, once it left your brain it wasn't just yours anymore & frankly it probably wasn't very 'intellectual' either). Either RIAA/MPAA &/or the government will have to spend large portions of time & money fighting against people who don't care if it's illegal (& therfore will do it anyways) or they will be forced to get rid of the law forcing this on us...
Now as far as us 'legitimatizing or actions', well I don't legitimatize them. Most of my stuff in fact are mixes & indie stuff that is freely available to anyone who wants it. Occasionally I do grab a file or two that is a popular hit, but those tend to fade fast & then I get rid of them (I have better uses of hard drive space). I have though done the very thing you say doesn't happen (listening to a few songs & then buying the CD). In fact I own several Movie soundtracks because I saw the movie & then bought the CD with the music I heard on it... Gee isn't that a strange thing, huh?
I think they worry more about potential (& for companies like Intel potential is profit) lost profit.
It's very simple from Intel's POV: High Mhz CPU's cost more, thus making the company more money per CPU. Intel has been hurting profit-wise due to lowering their astronomical prices on CPU's/ Intel needs those astronical prices on CPU's to support it's bloated self. Overclocking lets people buy cheaper CPU's & OC them to the level of higher CPU's cutting into Intel's profits. So bloacking OC = Increase in profits.
Intel knows that they have the marketing clot to avoid any real damage to their rep from this. Heck they've managed to make most of the world think they need a "Intel Inside" CPU for years... Worse yet most people (aka most non-technical people) don't realize their are other companies that make CPU's due to Intel advertising. So they loose a few people to AMD as they were just into for the OCing, oh well they gain larger profits from making those people who stay with Intel pay more...
It's not like thsi is the frist time they've tried to limit overclocking...
Well their have been alternatives to Adobe Photoshop for some time on PC. For instance I use Jasc's Paintshop Pro, which costs $99.99 & does most everything Photshop does (like layered images, filters, etc). I haven't seen to many people at any graphics design places let that stop them from buying Adobe's photoshop though...
Unfortunately the problem I see most is that if someone buys an extrenal card it's a lower end one without an hardware MPEG2 encoder & using USB 1.X... Not an optimal solution...
I'd rather see them get a PCI card than those... Most won't pay a coupel hundred for a external hardware MPEG2 encoder and a Firwire card (since most systems don't have one by default in the PC world)...
Well here is a rundown of local IT jobs & average pay:
A network assistant (code phrase for helping maintain/run the network) makes ~$8-9/hr. And locally this is never a salary position, this is so they can manage your pay (if they have money they'll give you more hours if they have less money they give you fewer hours). This is what my job is and I make $9.75/hr (so I am actually above the average, though they just capped my hourly rate so I can never get another raise). Oh & yes that's with a college degree (Bachloer in CIS, Computer Information Systems) and some certifications in networking...
Most lower end networking positions pay $7.50/hr. starting (it's also what most computer techs make & working for a 'Helpdesk' you'll make this as well).
Admins (regardless of type) tend to make $30-40k (salary). Recently though to 'qualify' as an admin they want at least 10-15 years experience & insist on personal knowledge of Unix (Linux knowledge doesn't count) & multiple MS Certs in networking. I have only ~5 years experience so I don't qualify these days for this type of job...
Cisco certified 'Network Engineers' are best off, making 60k (also salary) to top the list of local IT jobs.
Locally GETS (GE Transportation Services) used to be require about half the local IT jobs as they have a huge network covering a large complex... 'Laid Off' all their lesser IT personnel (~60-80), so now it's about a dozen 'admins' & networkign consultants as needed. Also their helpdesk (which was about 40 people) is in India now so those jobs are no longer local either... This means their are tons of IT people & nowhere near enough jobs for them. Employeers can demand the moon from potential employees because of this glut..
So no I'm not being under paid, I'm actually better off than most...
WTF, 'extremely frugally' means you don't have two cars, a huge home, a boat, & a two week overseas vacation... LOL...
I make less than $20k a year & always have in the tech industry, but it's the tech industry on the east coast (& heck it's not even really 'coastly' unless you count lake Erie). I can barely pay for a car, apartment, insurance, & food with a little extra... I have problems getting another job because the companies would like to outsource rather than hire me for a little more than I make now (maybe I could buy a house or pay back those college loans that would make it so I'd have to live in a box to pay them back atm)...
The problem isn't just in the bigger cities of the west coast, it's everywhere. They have a much lower cost of living (especially if actually in... say... India) & often even those coming here stick together, which to be honest we (the ones already in this country) don't so they can live on less...
It has nothign to do with people insisting on having "two cars, a huge home, a boat, a 2 week overseas vacation, etc", it has everythign to do with making a living in a global market we are ill prepared for as a workforce...
The FCC may want it for those reasons, but it does bring good things as well...
& the Movie industry hates the idea... Which is why they've insisted on DRM. The Movie industry wants to limit the use of their products (movies) to get the greatest monetary gain from them... HDTV & high resolution aren't big are their lsits of features...
& the problem with foregoing VHF/UHF & DIgital broadcasts in favor of cable or Sat is that alot of people don't a) want it & b) want to pay for it (just look at the Canadian DirectTV underground to see a perfect example of item b). My parents fall into this category for example... They refuse to pay for TV & they don't see any need for the benefits of cable or Sat... Heck I had trouble convincing them that DVD's were a good thing (as opposed to VHS).
The best way to show a difference over normal TV would be in quality (hence HDTV), but Sat is slow on adding it (& doesn't yet draw enough of the right customers to make it feasable to change over entirely) & Cable companies don't seem to care if their product looks like crap... Ever complained about your picture quality? I've seen people complain, but normally the best you get is a "We'll have a technician come check out your setup as you must be doing something wrong & we'll do this at our convenience"... So HD doesn't interest them either...
But locally I have a PBS station which airs in HD (WICQ channel 50) & the quality of the images on an HDTV convinced my parents they needed an HDTV...
It's being forced on us because people are inherently dumb. People hate change (of just about any type) & this has hurt certain things. DTV/HDTV being one of them, other countries have something like it already (Japan) or are working on it (Europe & Australia).
I'm biased on the whole issue because I own an HDTV. HDTV is simly amazing. I've seen people watch an HDTV loop of various locations of the country for hours & this was a 10 minute loop (so it repeated for ~10 times before they could pull themselves away). It's also great for gaming as it lets games from a console system rival the quality of PC games, of course the only system designed to output in HD is the xbox but the next generation of consoles will most likely all support it...
How about checking out the roundup of LCD's that appeared on SLashdot yesterday the? Use either Slashdot's article or go directly to the article in question via Tech report's article link.
I will add that soem channels do have a good number of ads though it's almost always because they are carrying content from other sources... KISS FM from LA being one example (It's on XM as a Top 20 station), ESPN & the other audio news & sports services are also much the same... XM can't say anything about what they air if they want to keep those outside groups happy & on their service...
So those types that are based outside XM do have ads just like normal radio due to their controlling influences deciding to continue their ads even over XM rather than adding new content...
All the statiosn controlled/Created by XM itself have very few commercials. Probably 3-4 in 24 hours or less if I had to guess.
Ok we'll make you a special deal on XM radio... Well sell you the receiver.. Heck we'll even through in a in-dash CD player/head unit with built-in Sat display. & A Sat Antenna for say... $1500 (installed for you even) & you can use it for 100 months without any silly Monthly fees...
Oh wait in 100 months all you'd pay is $999 anyways & the hardware costs are only about $200-250 anyways... Guess you might want to rethink your hatred of monthly fees there...
"I don't have to listen to ads? No, wait, I am paying for my airtime to listen to people trying to sell me stuff. Same as t-radio"
I hear 1 ad a day or less... & I spend hours a day in my car listening to XM... SO go troll elsewhere on that...
"Quality of music? I must be able to listen to indie artists and hard-to-find cutting edge stuff, right? Gee, that doesn't seem to be the case either"
I hear tons of stuff that isn't doen by the big labels. Indie artists, club mix's, new artists, upcoming label artists... I hear so much new music that what you said made me laugh...
"Static free? Hmm, most of the time my FM is static free, too."
Lucky for you. All but one local station where I live has the worst reception possible due to dinky power going through their towers... The one that does have a clean signal is a top 20/Rap/R&B station... I guess that's good if you listen to what they offer. Though the quality of the audio is still sub-par compared to XM...
"So I'm just not seeing the value of paying $300+ for a receiver and $120/yr for the service"
Well it's more like $150 for the reciever and $50 for the sat antenna (actually it's $170 & $30, but I made it more nice and even for you). With of course that $120 a year... But hey that's only $10 a month... How much do you pay for cable again...? I think I can spare a whole $10/month or $120/year without to much of a problem...
Maybe you shouldn't just pull stuff out of thin air when creating comments... Try going into a place that sells XM (Or Sirrius if you prefer) & listenign to a comparison... It may change your mind abotu things...
First I'd like to say that I work at a store that sells XM radio... I also got a discount on my XM hardware due to that...
Lots of truck drivers have XM... lots of them... In fact the car audio shop in my store has done at least a dozen installs to big rigs over the last year... Yes to some that may not seem like much, but we aren't on any big truck routes so they are mostly going out of their way to get XM radio... Not to mention I've heard more than one truck driver mention that XM is the hottest thign going in the trucking community...
This also benefits people like my parents. My parents have never ever flown on a plane, if they go on vacation it's by car... & it's really hard to find good stations on a trip through multiple states. Especially when going by interstates to your destination because you may only be in range of a station for maybe an hour, probably less. And the incredible load of garbage stations is huge as well.
XM (& Sirrius) provide a way around those problems and the sound quality is better than most radio stations provide as well...
Now onto the 99%+ comment... sure most people may nevego more than 50 miles away from their home towns even, but who says they have good music stations...? My local options are all owned by one company (who in turn are owned by clear channel) & the rock stations are as follows: clasic rock (60-70's), 'modern' rock (80-90's, & top 20 rock tunes only & their are 4 of these stations take your pick), Top 20 station (which plays rap, R&B, & occasionally rock), & one 'soft' rock station that was supposed to be hard rock, but they decided their audience didn't want that... So in case you missed it my radio options suck... I grabbed XM radio the first chance I got, though it's already cheaper now to get it then it was when I bought it over 6 months ago...
I used to do CD's & in fact I created over 50 of them for use in my car... But it got so frickin' repetitive I couldn't take it anymore. Not to mention I can actually hear things I've never heard before on XM (Club music, Electronica, heck christian rock even...) all in high quality sound that is at least the equal of CD's... I thought about getting a car MP3 player, but they are more expensive up front & again I only hear what I have already heard a thousand times... Maybe you can stand that, but I couldn't...
Well Delphi's New SkyFi (sorry don't know a direct link)goes a long way to reducing costs... The receiver is only $169.99 (retail) with the car mount... meaning with a basic antenna it's about $200 to get started with XM radio...
I have a existing XM receiver/antenna/car mount & it pales in comparison to the Delphi SkyFi... Oh & you can get a home audio mount that lets you take the receiver in to your house to use with your home stereo system....
It used to be maybe a little more complex than it is now, but All Radeon cards use the catalyst drivers (even the 9700 Pro). But even back a generation all Radeon's still used the same drivers (my Radeon 64MB VIVO & my Radeon 8500LE have always used the same drivers). This is more amazing than you seem to think since cards like the 9700 Pro aren't evolutionary, but rather revolutionary (the underlying architecture has changed rather than an update to certain components of the chips)... So far all chips by Nvidia have been evolutionary (arguably since the TNT, unarguably since the Geforce 256), yes it's amazingly hard to have a single drivers for related hardware using an almost identical architecture... Please...
Again neither is perfect neither is horrible... Go take your fanboyness elsewhere...
In relation to the crappy drivers Nvidia makes... I used to own Nvidia based cards exclusively and the have a number of problems just like Ati! What a shock! With all the fanboys claiming Ati's drivers suck and all you'd think they somehow had it better...
But no, in reality neither card has perfect drivers (I mean come on how many driver revisions has Nvidia had in total?)... In fact I don't think perfect drivers will ever exist in the life of the product... Sure Nvidia's drivers do certain things better (OpenGL support for modeling apps comes to mind), but Ati's drivers do a range of things that Nvidia's cards don't (like just about every single card has TV-out, or how about more MPEG2 decoding capability)...
Lets all face reality: no drivers for any video card company are perfect.
Actually the Radeon 9700 Pro comes with a standard set of component cables (feed off the TV-out) that can work at 480i/480p/720p/1040i on a TV capable of receiving HD resolutions.
The overscan issue seems to have been from the cable conversion the AIW Radeon 8500's had & the fact your using a non-Ati device to do the same on a AIW Radeon 7500.
Unfortunately thier is still no component in though... I could make use of that as well...
"Almost all U.S. families live in areas where a high-speed Internet connection is available, but many see no compelling reason to pay extra for it."
Sure that's a nice thing to say, but it's not true... In my area (North Western PA) less than 10% of the area is currently capable of getting any good form of broadband (sure satellite is possible, but sat sucks so I'm not including it). Cable & DSL are almost non-existant... Verizon owns all the phonelines & care only about college business & broadband is done by cablevision (which is part of aol-time warner) who don't care about broadband at al... Adelphia is also in certain limited areas (mostly a chunk of the city of Erie the biggest city within 100 miles in any direction), but they are tiny locally...
I'd sell my mother for broadband, but no ones offering... I've tried to buy a T1 & no one would install one... Verizon won't even support ISDN over the local CO... I've looked into WISP's & other wireless sources (since wired conenctiosn are owned by 3 companies in total that I already mentioned), but none exist & unless we can get something higher than a modem here it's not ever coming... Eventually I found someone who would specifically run a T1 conenction, but they would charge $2000 to run the line & then $800 a month... I was seriously considering it even though it's slower than the versions of DSL offered by Verizon (where you can get it) & is hugely more expensive...
I'm not the only one either, with PS2's & Xbox's (as well as Gamecube's eventually) being able to go online (but only really with broadband) the local market demand is increasing... But no one bothers to care if we'd buy it or not...
AMD has stated their plans for DRM many times and in those statements they mention that their next generation of CPU's won't feature true DRM functions. On the other hand their chipsets will...
This whole thing came up days ago in the cpu/hardware sites & AMD had the inquirer toss the trash out (they had picked up the story from The Age). Apparently that was some creative writing on the part of The Age with that story.
Except that happens in the as-yet-unaired pilot... This took place in that episode we may never see (They need something special for the DVD right?)...
I have to say I've worked with a few photgraphers for some magazines and more and more they seem to be going digital... Professional Digital SLR's within the 6-7 Megapixel range seem to be what they buy... I got to play with one briefly a year ago... I'm more up on the software end of digital photgraphy, but I've toyed with it off & on since the first 640x480 res B&W digitals came out...
Well so far from my understanding AMD has no plans to support DRM at the cpu level, just at the chipset level... This is at least what has been published regarding the 'hammer' release late this year/early next... After that it will probably get worse...
Intel made the mistake of releasing the details publicly before it's time... But both them & AMD really had no choice... The Entertainment industry is bigger then them & they could all read the writing on the wall...
It reads: "Incorporate someway to stop theft of our (the entertainment industries) property or we will force you out of business!"
So instead of let the industry take charge they formed a working group that established it's own standard to do what the entertainment industry wanted...
In fact I've heard several times that various higherups in AMD for instance would love to not use DRM in any form, but they fear being locked out of the home market if they did...
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Unfortunately RIAA & the MPAA can lobby & bitch & whine all they want, but the simple fact is that I have 60+ year olds ask me what the best program to get music off of is... Not just teens & young adults. The sheer number of people who don't care whetehr it's legal or not is insanely high.
The closest historical example I can even come up with is of Prohabition in the first half of this century within the US... It made drinking alcohol illegal (for those not up on their US history). People didn't care for the most part that it was illegal or not, they found ways to aquire their alcohol without the cops (hopefully) finding out. In the end though the government realized they had no hope of enforcing this concept on the people & it was repealed...
The same happens with file sharing today, in that to many people find ways around the restriction on 'sharing' 'intellectual property' (which as far as I'm concerned is a silly concept anyways, once it left your brain it wasn't just yours anymore & frankly it probably wasn't very 'intellectual' either). Either RIAA/MPAA &/or the government will have to spend large portions of time & money fighting against people who don't care if it's illegal (& therfore will do it anyways) or they will be forced to get rid of the law forcing this on us...
Now as far as us 'legitimatizing or actions', well I don't legitimatize them. Most of my stuff in fact are mixes & indie stuff that is freely available to anyone who wants it. Occasionally I do grab a file or two that is a popular hit, but those tend to fade fast & then I get rid of them (I have better uses of hard drive space). I have though done the very thing you say doesn't happen (listening to a few songs & then buying the CD). In fact I own several Movie soundtracks because I saw the movie & then bought the CD with the music I heard on it... Gee isn't that a strange thing, huh?
I think they worry more about potential (& for companies like Intel potential is profit) lost profit.
It's very simple from Intel's POV: High Mhz CPU's cost more, thus making the company more money per CPU. Intel has been hurting profit-wise due to lowering their astronomical prices on CPU's/ Intel needs those astronical prices on CPU's to support it's bloated self. Overclocking lets people buy cheaper CPU's & OC them to the level of higher CPU's cutting into Intel's profits. So bloacking OC = Increase in profits.
Intel knows that they have the marketing clot to avoid any real damage to their rep from this. Heck they've managed to make most of the world think they need a "Intel Inside" CPU for years... Worse yet most people (aka most non-technical people) don't realize their are other companies that make CPU's due to Intel advertising. So they loose a few people to AMD as they were just into for the OCing, oh well they gain larger profits from making those people who stay with Intel pay more...
It's not like thsi is the frist time they've tried to limit overclocking...
Well their have been alternatives to Adobe Photoshop for some time on PC. For instance I use Jasc's Paintshop Pro, which costs $99.99 & does most everything Photshop does (like layered images, filters, etc). I haven't seen to many people at any graphics design places let that stop them from buying Adobe's photoshop though...
I could swear Disney Japan helped distribute the movie in japan as well... So it's kinda like Disney won anyways...
Unfortunately the problem I see most is that if someone buys an extrenal card it's a lower end one without an hardware MPEG2 encoder & using USB 1.X... Not an optimal solution...
I'd rather see them get a PCI card than those... Most won't pay a coupel hundred for a external hardware MPEG2 encoder and a Firwire card (since most systems don't have one by default in the PC world)...
Well here is a rundown of local IT jobs & average pay:
A network assistant (code phrase for helping maintain/run the network) makes ~$8-9/hr. And locally this is never a salary position, this is so they can manage your pay (if they have money they'll give you more hours if they have less money they give you fewer hours). This is what my job is and I make $9.75/hr (so I am actually above the average, though they just capped my hourly rate so I can never get another raise). Oh & yes that's with a college degree (Bachloer in CIS, Computer Information Systems) and some certifications in networking...
Most lower end networking positions pay $7.50/hr. starting (it's also what most computer techs make & working for a 'Helpdesk' you'll make this as well).
Admins (regardless of type) tend to make $30-40k (salary). Recently though to 'qualify' as an admin they want at least 10-15 years experience & insist on personal knowledge of Unix (Linux knowledge doesn't count) & multiple MS Certs in networking. I have only ~5 years experience so I don't qualify these days for this type of job...
Cisco certified 'Network Engineers' are best off, making 60k (also salary) to top the list of local IT jobs.
Locally GETS (GE Transportation Services) used to be require about half the local IT jobs as they have a huge network covering a large complex... 'Laid Off' all their lesser IT personnel (~60-80), so now it's about a dozen 'admins' & networkign consultants as needed. Also their helpdesk (which was about 40 people) is in India now so those jobs are no longer local either... This means their are tons of IT people & nowhere near enough jobs for them. Employeers can demand the moon from potential employees because of this glut..
So no I'm not being under paid, I'm actually better off than most...
WTF, 'extremely frugally' means you don't have two cars, a huge home, a boat, & a two week overseas vacation... LOL...
I make less than $20k a year & always have in the tech industry, but it's the tech industry on the east coast (& heck it's not even really 'coastly' unless you count lake Erie). I can barely pay for a car, apartment, insurance, & food with a little extra... I have problems getting another job because the companies would like to outsource rather than hire me for a little more than I make now (maybe I could buy a house or pay back those college loans that would make it so I'd have to live in a box to pay them back atm)...
The problem isn't just in the bigger cities of the west coast, it's everywhere. They have a much lower cost of living (especially if actually in... say... India) & often even those coming here stick together, which to be honest we (the ones already in this country) don't so they can live on less...
It has nothign to do with people insisting on having "two cars, a huge home, a boat, a 2 week overseas vacation, etc", it has everythign to do with making a living in a global market we are ill prepared for as a workforce...
The FCC may want it for those reasons, but it does bring good things as well...
& the Movie industry hates the idea... Which is why they've insisted on DRM. The Movie industry wants to limit the use of their products (movies) to get the greatest monetary gain from them... HDTV & high resolution aren't big are their lsits of features...
& the problem with foregoing VHF/UHF & DIgital broadcasts in favor of cable or Sat is that alot of people don't a) want it & b) want to pay for it (just look at the Canadian DirectTV underground to see a perfect example of item b). My parents fall into this category for example... They refuse to pay for TV & they don't see any need for the benefits of cable or Sat... Heck I had trouble convincing them that DVD's were a good thing (as opposed to VHS).
The best way to show a difference over normal TV would be in quality (hence HDTV), but Sat is slow on adding it (& doesn't yet draw enough of the right customers to make it feasable to change over entirely) & Cable companies don't seem to care if their product looks like crap... Ever complained about your picture quality? I've seen people complain, but normally the best you get is a "We'll have a technician come check out your setup as you must be doing something wrong & we'll do this at our convenience"... So HD doesn't interest them either...
But locally I have a PBS station which airs in HD (WICQ channel 50) & the quality of the images on an HDTV convinced my parents they needed an HDTV...
It's being forced on us because people are inherently dumb. People hate change (of just about any type) & this has hurt certain things. DTV/HDTV being one of them, other countries have something like it already (Japan) or are working on it (Europe & Australia).
I'm biased on the whole issue because I own an HDTV. HDTV is simly amazing. I've seen people watch an HDTV loop of various locations of the country for hours & this was a 10 minute loop (so it repeated for ~10 times before they could pull themselves away). It's also great for gaming as it lets games from a console system rival the quality of PC games, of course the only system designed to output in HD is the xbox but the next generation of consoles will most likely all support it...
Oh sure I'm a troll for using sarcasm... Yeah that oen makes sense... Whatever...
How about checking out the roundup of LCD's that appeared on SLashdot yesterday the? Use either Slashdot's article or go directly to the article in question via Tech report's article link.
I will add that soem channels do have a good number of ads though it's almost always because they are carrying content from other sources... KISS FM from LA being one example (It's on XM as a Top 20 station), ESPN & the other audio news & sports services are also much the same... XM can't say anything about what they air if they want to keep those outside groups happy & on their service...
So those types that are based outside XM do have ads just like normal radio due to their controlling influences deciding to continue their ads even over XM rather than adding new content...
All the statiosn controlled/Created by XM itself have very few commercials. Probably 3-4 in 24 hours or less if I had to guess.
Ok we'll make you a special deal on XM radio... Well sell you the receiver.. Heck we'll even through in a in-dash CD player/head unit with built-in Sat display. & A Sat Antenna for say... $1500 (installed for you even) & you can use it for 100 months without any silly Monthly fees...
Oh wait in 100 months all you'd pay is $999 anyways & the hardware costs are only about $200-250 anyways... Guess you might want to rethink your hatred of monthly fees there...
"I don't have to listen to ads? No, wait, I am paying for my airtime to listen to people trying to sell me stuff. Same as t-radio"
I hear 1 ad a day or less... & I spend hours a day in my car listening to XM... SO go troll elsewhere on that...
"Quality of music? I must be able to listen to indie artists and hard-to-find cutting edge stuff, right? Gee, that doesn't seem to be the case either"
I hear tons of stuff that isn't doen by the big labels. Indie artists, club mix's, new artists, upcoming label artists... I hear so much new music that what you said made me laugh...
"Static free? Hmm, most of the time my FM is static free, too."
Lucky for you. All but one local station where I live has the worst reception possible due to dinky power going through their towers... The one that does have a clean signal is a top 20/Rap/R&B station... I guess that's good if you listen to what they offer. Though the quality of the audio is still sub-par compared to XM...
"So I'm just not seeing the value of paying $300+ for a receiver and $120/yr for the service"
Well it's more like $150 for the reciever and $50 for the sat antenna (actually it's $170 & $30, but I made it more nice and even for you). With of course that $120 a year... But hey that's only $10 a month... How much do you pay for cable again...? I think I can spare a whole $10/month or $120/year without to much of a problem...
Maybe you shouldn't just pull stuff out of thin air when creating comments... Try going into a place that sells XM (Or Sirrius if you prefer) & listenign to a comparison... It may change your mind abotu things...
First I'd like to say that I work at a store that sells XM radio... I also got a discount on my XM hardware due to that...
Lots of truck drivers have XM... lots of them... In fact the car audio shop in my store has done at least a dozen installs to big rigs over the last year... Yes to some that may not seem like much, but we aren't on any big truck routes so they are mostly going out of their way to get XM radio... Not to mention I've heard more than one truck driver mention that XM is the hottest thign going in the trucking community...
This also benefits people like my parents. My parents have never ever flown on a plane, if they go on vacation it's by car... & it's really hard to find good stations on a trip through multiple states. Especially when going by interstates to your destination because you may only be in range of a station for maybe an hour, probably less. And the incredible load of garbage stations is huge as well.
XM (& Sirrius) provide a way around those problems and the sound quality is better than most radio stations provide as well...
Now onto the 99%+ comment... sure most people may nevego more than 50 miles away from their home towns even, but who says they have good music stations...? My local options are all owned by one company (who in turn are owned by clear channel) & the rock stations are as follows: clasic rock (60-70's), 'modern' rock (80-90's, & top 20 rock tunes only & their are 4 of these stations take your pick), Top 20 station (which plays rap, R&B, & occasionally rock), & one 'soft' rock station that was supposed to be hard rock, but they decided their audience didn't want that... So in case you missed it my radio options suck... I grabbed XM radio the first chance I got, though it's already cheaper now to get it then it was when I bought it over 6 months ago...
I used to do CD's & in fact I created over 50 of them for use in my car... But it got so frickin' repetitive I couldn't take it anymore. Not to mention I can actually hear things I've never heard before on XM (Club music, Electronica, heck christian rock even...) all in high quality sound that is at least the equal of CD's... I thought about getting a car MP3 player, but they are more expensive up front & again I only hear what I have already heard a thousand times... Maybe you can stand that, but I couldn't...
Well Delphi's New SkyFi (sorry don't know a direct link)goes a long way to reducing costs... The receiver is only $169.99 (retail) with the car mount... meaning with a basic antenna it's about $200 to get started with XM radio...
I have a existing XM receiver/antenna/car mount & it pales in comparison to the Delphi SkyFi... Oh & you can get a home audio mount that lets you take the receiver in to your house to use with your home stereo system....
Could you be more wrong?
It used to be maybe a little more complex than it is now, but All Radeon cards use the catalyst drivers (even the 9700 Pro). But even back a generation all Radeon's still used the same drivers (my Radeon 64MB VIVO & my Radeon 8500LE have always used the same drivers). This is more amazing than you seem to think since cards like the 9700 Pro aren't evolutionary, but rather revolutionary (the underlying architecture has changed rather than an update to certain components of the chips)... So far all chips by Nvidia have been evolutionary (arguably since the TNT, unarguably since the Geforce 256), yes it's amazingly hard to have a single drivers for related hardware using an almost identical architecture... Please...
Again neither is perfect neither is horrible... Go take your fanboyness elsewhere...
In relation to the crappy drivers Nvidia makes... I used to own Nvidia based cards exclusively and the have a number of problems just like Ati! What a shock! With all the fanboys claiming Ati's drivers suck and all you'd think they somehow had it better...
But no, in reality neither card has perfect drivers (I mean come on how many driver revisions has Nvidia had in total?)... In fact I don't think perfect drivers will ever exist in the life of the product... Sure Nvidia's drivers do certain things better (OpenGL support for modeling apps comes to mind), but Ati's drivers do a range of things that Nvidia's cards don't (like just about every single card has TV-out, or how about more MPEG2 decoding capability)...
Lets all face reality: no drivers for any video card company are perfect.
Actually the Radeon 9700 Pro comes with a standard set of component cables (feed off the TV-out) that can work at 480i/480p/720p/1040i on a TV capable of receiving HD resolutions.
The overscan issue seems to have been from the cable conversion the AIW Radeon 8500's had & the fact your using a non-Ati device to do the same on a AIW Radeon 7500.
Unfortunately thier is still no component in though... I could make use of that as well...
"Almost all U.S. families live in areas where a high-speed Internet connection is available, but many see no compelling reason to pay extra for it."
Sure that's a nice thing to say, but it's not true... In my area (North Western PA) less than 10% of the area is currently capable of getting any good form of broadband (sure satellite is possible, but sat sucks so I'm not including it). Cable & DSL are almost non-existant... Verizon owns all the phonelines & care only about college business & broadband is done by cablevision (which is part of aol-time warner) who don't care about broadband at al... Adelphia is also in certain limited areas (mostly a chunk of the city of Erie the biggest city within 100 miles in any direction), but they are tiny locally...
I'd sell my mother for broadband, but no ones offering... I've tried to buy a T1 & no one would install one... Verizon won't even support ISDN over the local CO... I've looked into WISP's & other wireless sources (since wired conenctiosn are owned by 3 companies in total that I already mentioned), but none exist & unless we can get something higher than a modem here it's not ever coming... Eventually I found someone who would specifically run a T1 conenction, but they would charge $2000 to run the line & then $800 a month... I was seriously considering it even though it's slower than the versions of DSL offered by Verizon (where you can get it) & is hugely more expensive...
I'm not the only one either, with PS2's & Xbox's (as well as Gamecube's eventually) being able to go online (but only really with broadband) the local market demand is increasing... But no one bothers to care if we'd buy it or not...
AMD has stated their plans for DRM many times and in those statements they mention that their next generation of CPU's won't feature true DRM functions. On the other hand their chipsets will...
This whole thing came up days ago in the cpu/hardware sites & AMD had the inquirer toss the trash out (they had picked up the story from The Age). Apparently that was some creative writing on the part of The Age with that story.
Except that happens in the as-yet-unaired pilot... This took place in that episode we may never see (They need something special for the DVD right?)...
I have to say I've worked with a few photgraphers for some magazines and more and more they seem to be going digital... Professional Digital SLR's within the 6-7 Megapixel range seem to be what they buy... I got to play with one briefly a year ago... I'm more up on the software end of digital photgraphy, but I've toyed with it off & on since the first 640x480 res B&W digitals came out...
Well so far from my understanding AMD has no plans to support DRM at the cpu level, just at the chipset level... This is at least what has been published regarding the 'hammer' release late this year/early next... After that it will probably get worse...
Intel made the mistake of releasing the details publicly before it's time... But both them & AMD really had no choice... The Entertainment industry is bigger then them & they could all read the writing on the wall...
It reads:
"Incorporate someway to stop theft of our (the entertainment industries) property or we will force you out of business!"
So instead of let the industry take charge they formed a working group that established it's own standard to do what the entertainment industry wanted...
In fact I've heard several times that various higherups in AMD for instance would love to not use DRM in any form, but they fear being locked out of the home market if they did...