So, I suppose its part of the rules that you must drink and drive?
And btw... at our college here, there were toilet racer things. Had quite some pep in them.
Probably ran on methane.
Fast Dirty Mirror of the Page in Question
on
LCD Price Fixing?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
March 30, 2003 LCD price fixing? What's with prices on LCD displays?
On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000. Then there's how much they're gouging for the same resolution in an LCD television.
There are, of course, manufacturing yield issues with LCDs. The bigger you make them, the harder it becomes to make one free from defects. But look at the price differentials between OEM panels in laptops vs that of standalone monitors. The disparity is quite wide. Balancing (subsidizing) one market on the backs of another is not a new thing. But it seems a reach to use that as justification for the LCD montior/TV prices.
So what's going on here? Are the monitor manufacturers pulling a fast one here? Are they gouging consumers? And why are they priced so similarly across the board?
# | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | 03:47 PM Comments (scroll down to see all 3 comments...) Hope it's okay but I submitted this to/. to see if any good answers come up. Who knows if it will get posted though, since none of my previous submissions have been.
Posted by: BillSaysThis on March 30, 2003 07:04 PM It's been posted! I'm a slashdot subscriber and I see that this story has been posted, it will be up probably within 20 minutes
Posted by: Zach on March 31, 2003 08:35 PM Brace yourself, here it comes. Its on slashdot, or will be in a few minutes. Hope you've paid you bandwidth bill!:) Actually, as I am going to say on slashdot, a lot of it has to do with supply vs demand. There are a LOT of laptops sold, but comparitvily, not many standalone LCD screens. It does require some more work to make a LCD screen accept VGA or RCA input.
Yes it does seem silly that it would have english subtitles for an english film in a foreign country, but if this is real... it's probably an english to some asian language back to english, which may produce a very very strange sub.
What you have to understand (at least in the language i can speak) is that compound words are the norm. There are words, then there are words made of many words (traditional example being white people... which in chinese is essentially white devil or white ghost, as a direct translation). So you can see where this is going... when you have only single syllable words, you gotta use multiple words sometimes to either mimic a word in another language, or to make new words, and it is this type of word making that will screw up translations.
So if the translator just did a direct english-asian language-english translation... it will be ugly indeed.
Sure it might be great for small quantities that aren't going to kill you, but think about it... it's a watch, on your wrist.
If your watch told you it got a dose of lethal radiation... by extension, you did as well. By that time, you could equally judge the lethality of the radiation by the peeling and burning skin all over your body.
So I don't see this as warning you of danger, as it might be a bit late by the time it beeps at you.
Well, great, not only will we be able to make our penis size bigger and make that extra million by doing nothing but selling to other people how to make a million,
but we get to get mail from would-be-presidents-of-whatever.
Think about, if this does catch on, then on top of whatever spam we usually get, we will get political email/popups/popunders/im's etc...
As some have said already... the bandwidth is the problem, but even after that, you still have to write it pretty damn fast... so here is the obvious solution... a cluster... per pixel.
Rather than just have ram per pixel as the article says they did, for digital, have a single computer unit per pixel. So say you want a 4megapixel resolution full motion video. Then you get 4 million computers each processing a single pixel. That should be plenty fast enough to get some very high speeds (assuming the ccd can handle it).
Of course, the problem now is to tie all that data together into a single video... and even then to find a machine to play something like that, though i supposed you could take each 4 million machines and have them each play their data into a single pixel on an lcd.
And that is exactly where they should stay (barring of course the Pixar style total 3d animation stuff).
Why is this? Look at Star Wars EP2 for the obvious answer. Even with Lucas Arts churning out some of the best 3d in the movie business, there are still some amazingly obvious 3d effects (Anakin getting on and riding the creature... where Anakin becomes a 3d model getting tossed like a rag doll). And this obviousness seriously hinders the overall movie experience. Anything that pushes the viewer from the imaginary world back to realising he/she is in the theater is a bad thing, and in this case, I found myself thinking, "That doesn't look real," and bang i'm back in the theater.
So what am I say? Well, 3d should stay in the background. Until they can make it look exactly like the actor and have it move exactly like the actor, they shouldn't put it in the center of the action in a film made with real people. It is far too obvious. Though sometimes this is done pretty well.. such as Spiderman, the costumed one. The part with him in his hooded sweatshirt is also pretty obviously 3d.
But all these amazing secondary effects are just incredible, such as the backgrounds in Cast Away. Sometimes you have no idea, and that is the point of the game. Not that you can look and say, damn Lucas Arts has just made some cool 3d stuff, but to do a double take 2 months down the road when someone tells you it actually was 3d in the first place.
So basically, in the world of realistic 3d... the less recognition they get, the better they did their job.
So when can I get a quantum processor from Intel/AMD running with holographic solid state memory with instant data access (read and write) using spooky particles, and a total 3d holographic and tactile monitor?
And if these first prototypes get off the ground... can Intel still say their ghz procs are faster than these mhz procs?
Not always that great in person
on
Fragfest
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Remember... that your actually sitting next to the person you just destroyed 20 to 1...
Depends on what you think is better. The Gillete Mach3 system will take 3 swipes at your hair. This Scramjet system seems to attempt to take a record 7.6 swipes at your hair. Not sure how they do the.6 of a blade though... but from the commercials, the 3rd blade seems to essentially get as close to the skin as possible. So then the 4th blade must then (in a logical progression) take of the top layer of skin. The 5th blade then takes out the middle layer of skin. The 6th blade takes out the lower layer of skin. This is a highly good design as if you shave really fast, by the time it hits the 6th blade you should have shaved off all your nerves so it shouldn't even hurt anymore.
Which leaves the 7th blade to shave off some bone, to polish it maybe. Now that.6 of a blade that is left... maybe its some new encryption scheme for their razor so no one can exactly copy their design, as who would want to make.6 of a blade? Perhaps it means its only 60% as sharp as the rest of the blade and used to buff your bone?
Well then, this has to be the closest shave you'll get, and with your skin gone, you should have no growth after, as the bulbs should have been rooted with that skin by then.
Why would they patent IM bots... when they are selling the tools to make your own IM bot? Aren't you supposed to patent the technology your selling and not patent the technology that your product can make? I mean, jeez, could they just write in the EULA that your not supposed to violate their patents by using their IM bot maker... and then sue you if you make an IM bot with their maker (since they have the patent on IM bots).
Well, what if then someone in turn patents an IM bot maker. That would be poetic justice right there.
They had better not give this to an ape! Or he'll start talking and become super intelligent and start rallying the Earth's apes under his super power and then take over human kind only to establish a new ape government onto of a nuclear wasted planet so that some astronaut sent up and forgotten can wake up on this new Earth and find the broken statue and fall to his knees a scream...
Now even the blind can view porn when they eventually make this thing internet capable.
Which means... you no longer have to shut the monitor off or other such nonsense when someone walks in. You can even view on an airplane without fear of a mother slapping you. You can even binge on your favorite pics while driving. Hell, if you got contacts to direct eye movement, you got TWO hands free!
"The basic premise is that Garage Games gives a full license of the Torque engine to a team for a project for $100 USD per developer. The only caveat is that you must publish any finished works through Garage Games."
I don't think id publishes their own games. Doesn't activision do that? So rather than taking a percent on profits that Garage Games seems to be doing, id is taking the lump before, which seems like the better route as your pretty much guaranteed that lump, even if the game tanks.
"Another feature allows the Duo to act as a recording device. Just insert the Duo into a cassette recorder and press the record button and it will convert an analog source into MP3 audio."
Well, given that mp3's are relatively small, and radio broadcast quality is relatively low, then time shifting shouldn't be too difficult to do (especially when you got ram cards that can do 128 megs and be a bit larger than a stamp and much thinner than this cassette). Wow, that would be quite the product. Put it in your car, turn on the radio and the timeshift cassette. Let it go for like 5 min, and just listen without commercials. Or record your daytime radio show. Or record that one song that you just cannot find the name or artist of (since the station i listen to never ever ever announces who sung it or what it was).
Damn, now if you could get a radio that did all this out of the box... that would be worth buying.
Of course, now the RIAA is going to be annoyed by time shifting.
I can just see it now...
on
Linuxworld Fun
·
· Score: 5, Funny
At some point... every single linux geek in the entire place is going to collectively turn to and point at the Microsoft booth, and then in unison, laugh their asses off, when one of the machines bsod's.
"Another interesting fact is that the genes that define the front and back of a fruit fly also exist in humans, but are switched around. So the gene that defines the back of a fruit fly defines the front of a human, and vice versa. This means that at some point in our evolutionary history, one creature decided to walk on its front, and another decided to walk on its back."
So would that mean that the fly's equivalent of a head is a human's equivalent of a butt? No wonder flies are so ugly.
On the same note... one wonders if this same backwards thing applies to the pointy hair boss species of the human race.
Slashdot Mirror
So, I suppose its part of the rules that you must drink and drive?
And btw... at our college here, there were toilet racer things. Had quite some pep in them.
Probably ran on methane.
March 30, 2003
/. to see if any good answers come up. Who knows if it will get posted though, since none of my previous submissions have been.
:)
LCD price fixing?
What's with prices on LCD displays?
On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000. Then there's how much they're gouging for the same resolution in an LCD television.
There are, of course, manufacturing yield issues with LCDs. The bigger you make them, the harder it becomes to make one free from defects. But look at the price differentials between OEM panels in laptops vs that of standalone monitors. The disparity is quite wide. Balancing (subsidizing) one market on the backs of another is not a new thing. But it seems a reach to use that as justification for the LCD montior/TV prices.
So what's going on here? Are the monitor manufacturers pulling a fast one here? Are they gouging consumers? And why are they priced so similarly across the board?
# | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | 03:47 PM
Comments (scroll down to see all 3 comments...)
Hope it's okay but I submitted this to
Posted by: BillSaysThis on March 30, 2003 07:04 PM
It's been posted! I'm a slashdot subscriber and I see that this story has been posted, it will be up probably within 20 minutes
Posted by: Zach on March 31, 2003 08:35 PM
Brace yourself, here it comes. Its on slashdot, or will be in a few minutes. Hope you've paid you bandwidth bill!
Actually, as I am going to say on slashdot, a lot of it has to do with supply vs demand. There are a LOT of laptops sold, but comparitvily, not many standalone LCD screens. It does require some more work to make a LCD screen accept VGA or RCA input.
Posted by: Zaffle on March 31, 2003 08:39 PM
Star Wars EP 1 and 2 were rather underappreciated... er... wait
I didn't like it either...
Nevermind.
Yes it does seem silly that it would have english subtitles for an english film in a foreign country, but if this is real... it's probably an english to some asian language back to english, which may produce a very very strange sub.
What you have to understand (at least in the language i can speak) is that compound words are the norm. There are words, then there are words made of many words (traditional example being white people... which in chinese is essentially white devil or white ghost, as a direct translation). So you can see where this is going... when you have only single syllable words, you gotta use multiple words sometimes to either mimic a word in another language, or to make new words, and it is this type of word making that will screw up translations.
So if the translator just did a direct english-asian language-english translation... it will be ugly indeed.
Sure it might be great for small quantities that aren't going to kill you, but think about it... it's a watch, on your wrist.
If your watch told you it got a dose of lethal radiation... by extension, you did as well. By that time, you could equally judge the lethality of the radiation by the peeling and burning skin all over your body.
So I don't see this as warning you of danger, as it might be a bit late by the time it beeps at you.
Well, great, not only will we be able to make our penis size bigger and make that extra million by doing nothing but selling to other people how to make a million,
but we get to get mail from would-be-presidents-of-whatever.
Think about, if this does catch on, then on top of whatever spam we usually get, we will get political email/popups/popunders/im's etc...
Nah, those aren't fireballs... they were just downed weather balloons...
Move along, nothing to see here.
So when is this guy putting his patent up for auction on Ebay?
As some have said already... the bandwidth is the problem, but even after that, you still have to write it pretty damn fast... so here is the obvious solution... a cluster... per pixel.
Rather than just have ram per pixel as the article says they did, for digital, have a single computer unit per pixel. So say you want a 4megapixel resolution full motion video. Then you get 4 million computers each processing a single pixel. That should be plenty fast enough to get some very high speeds (assuming the ccd can handle it).
Of course, the problem now is to tie all that data together into a single video... and even then to find a machine to play something like that, though i supposed you could take each 4 million machines and have them each play their data into a single pixel on an lcd.
But then, why not just use film?
"We call them 'invisible effects,'"
And that is exactly where they should stay (barring of course the Pixar style total 3d animation stuff).
Why is this? Look at Star Wars EP2 for the obvious answer. Even with Lucas Arts churning out some of the best 3d in the movie business, there are still some amazingly obvious 3d effects (Anakin getting on and riding the creature... where Anakin becomes a 3d model getting tossed like a rag doll). And this obviousness seriously hinders the overall movie experience. Anything that pushes the viewer from the imaginary world back to realising he/she is in the theater is a bad thing, and in this case, I found myself thinking, "That doesn't look real," and bang i'm back in the theater.
So what am I say? Well, 3d should stay in the background. Until they can make it look exactly like the actor and have it move exactly like the actor, they shouldn't put it in the center of the action in a film made with real people. It is far too obvious. Though sometimes this is done pretty well.. such as Spiderman, the costumed one. The part with him in his hooded sweatshirt is also pretty obviously 3d.
But all these amazing secondary effects are just incredible, such as the backgrounds in Cast Away. Sometimes you have no idea, and that is the point of the game. Not that you can look and say, damn Lucas Arts has just made some cool 3d stuff, but to do a double take 2 months down the road when someone tells you it actually was 3d in the first place.
So basically, in the world of realistic 3d... the less recognition they get, the better they did their job.
So if someone steals your diamond who is a cremated someone or another... could you file for robbery as well as a kidnapping?
And would it be logical to file it as murder if they attempt to destroy the gem?
And is this putting a cost to human life, that they are only worth as much as a diamond?
And damn... this is a pretty good way of hiding the body.
Sure, we know it runs awesome on Quake3... but will it run awesome on Quack3?
So when can I get a quantum processor from Intel/AMD running with holographic solid state memory with instant data access (read and write) using spooky particles, and a total 3d holographic and tactile monitor?
And if these first prototypes get off the ground... can Intel still say their ghz procs are faster than these mhz procs?
Remember... that your actually sitting next to the person you just destroyed 20 to 1...
Just make sure they are smaller than you.
Depends on what you think is better. The Gillete Mach3 system will take 3 swipes at your hair. This Scramjet system seems to attempt to take a record 7.6 swipes at your hair. Not sure how they do the .6 of a blade though... but from the commercials, the 3rd blade seems to essentially get as close to the skin as possible. So then the 4th blade must then (in a logical progression) take of the top layer of skin. The 5th blade then takes out the middle layer of skin. The 6th blade takes out the lower layer of skin. This is a highly good design as if you shave really fast, by the time it hits the 6th blade you should have shaved off all your nerves so it shouldn't even hurt anymore.
.6 of a blade that is left... maybe its some new encryption scheme for their razor so no one can exactly copy their design, as who would want to make .6 of a blade? Perhaps it means its only 60% as sharp as the rest of the blade and used to buff your bone?
Which leaves the 7th blade to shave off some bone, to polish it maybe. Now that
Well then, this has to be the closest shave you'll get, and with your skin gone, you should have no growth after, as the bulbs should have been rooted with that skin by then.
Why would they patent IM bots... when they are selling the tools to make your own IM bot? Aren't you supposed to patent the technology your selling and not patent the technology that your product can make? I mean, jeez, could they just write in the EULA that your not supposed to violate their patents by using their IM bot maker... and then sue you if you make an IM bot with their maker (since they have the patent on IM bots).
Well, what if then someone in turn patents an IM bot maker. That would be poetic justice right there.
They had better not give this to an ape! Or he'll start talking and become super intelligent and start rallying the Earth's apes under his super power and then take over human kind only to establish a new ape government onto of a nuclear wasted planet so that some astronaut sent up and forgotten can wake up on this new Earth and find the broken statue and fall to his knees a scream...
Now even the blind can view porn when they eventually make this thing internet capable.
Which means... you no longer have to shut the monitor off or other such nonsense when someone walks in. You can even view on an airplane without fear of a mother slapping you. You can even binge on your favorite pics while driving. Hell, if you got contacts to direct eye movement, you got TWO hands free!
"The basic premise is that Garage Games gives a full license of the Torque engine to a team for a project for $100 USD per developer. The only caveat is that you must publish any finished works through Garage Games."
I don't think id publishes their own games. Doesn't activision do that? So rather than taking a percent on profits that Garage Games seems to be doing, id is taking the lump before, which seems like the better route as your pretty much guaranteed that lump, even if the game tanks.
You can use this for interactive gaming pr0n!!
Too bad it doesn't have tactile feedback.
"Another feature allows the Duo to act as a recording device. Just insert the Duo into a cassette recorder and press the record button and it will convert an analog source into MP3 audio."
Well, given that mp3's are relatively small, and radio broadcast quality is relatively low, then time shifting shouldn't be too difficult to do (especially when you got ram cards that can do 128 megs and be a bit larger than a stamp and much thinner than this cassette). Wow, that would be quite the product. Put it in your car, turn on the radio and the timeshift cassette. Let it go for like 5 min, and just listen without commercials. Or record your daytime radio show. Or record that one song that you just cannot find the name or artist of (since the station i listen to never ever ever announces who sung it or what it was).
Damn, now if you could get a radio that did all this out of the box... that would be worth buying.
Of course, now the RIAA is going to be annoyed by time shifting.
At some point... every single linux geek in the entire place is going to collectively turn to and point at the Microsoft booth, and then in unison, laugh their asses off, when one of the machines bsod's.
I don't know how good this new Solaris will, now that it includes George Clooney.
"Another interesting fact is that the genes that define the front and back of a fruit fly also exist in humans, but are switched around. So the gene that defines the back of a fruit fly defines the front of a human, and vice versa. This means that at some point in our evolutionary history, one creature decided to walk on its front, and another decided to walk on its back."
So would that mean that the fly's equivalent of a head is a human's equivalent of a butt? No wonder flies are so ugly.
On the same note... one wonders if this same backwards thing applies to the pointy hair boss species of the human race.
We were too busy fending off those big goons who tried to take our lunch money.