My mother-in-law dragged my wife and I into a Walmart for some random reason over the holidays. It was interesting to note that all of the Blu-ray players were out of stock and there was a whole stack of cheaper HD-DVD players ($299 vs $385). Who knows what it really means they could have only had 10 BR player compared to 30 HD-DVD but I thought it was interesting.
A sidenote: my inlaws just got a HD tv and when my mother inlaw saw the two choices of the players between a Toshiba and a Sony she went with the Sony without a thought. With all the crap we give Sony on/., I wonder if the public just doesn't care as much as we do.
At my old job, we develop industrial test equipment(actually a cooling solution for current equipment) for AMD and Intel. Well as a startup we got in trouble because my bosses were asses. So Intel funded us a bunch of money and encourage us to sell the company to one of their buddies in the test equipment business. We shopped the startup around to various companies but then all of a sudden Intel and this other company(both were "observers" on our board) resigned one day. The following weeks we were "forced" into spliting the company up and the other company got the half of our company that Intel had wanted.
I would bet that the CEO is going to work for Intel to develop a cheap laptop for them. The pattern just looks to familiar.
Whatever his motives(just to be a Troll or not) he is right in the sense that people are naive about how this will change the world and how pissed they get when someone tells them that. The error he falls into is that the "Laptop or the Rice" is an oversimplification. It is not one or the other there is a massive middle ground that needs to be covered to get to the Laptop part.
I think also that there is a problem with how the OLPC PC is being marketed. It should not be used in situations that he gave in Africa with the literacy problems, the money could be spent on basic schooling and trade skills. The ideal situations for the OLPC is third world developing countries like Mexico and Peru(these countries have purchased the laptops) were there is an infrastructure and basic economy to support this kind of development.
The key here is that they have got the wireless companies where they want them even if they don't win the auction.
If the other companies knew that Google was not going to bid on it then they would just wait for it expired and be put up without the requirements. Now Google assures themselves an open network even if they don't win because the other companies have to follow the requirements.
I am a Verizon customer and have had mixed results with them but the problems that my wife and family have had with the New AT&T are a lot worse.
The first thing I did when I saw that Verizon Wireless was not apart of the Open Handset Alliance was to send an email to customer support saying I might leave if they don't join. Out of 63.7 Million customers I wonder how many did that.
As others have said it has to do with the new 4G rollout, all companies are going to have the same tech. This also means that they can steal other customers with just a switch of a sim card. AT&T does not have this luxury becuase they are locked into the iPhone for X amount of time. I am going to enjoy the opportunity to screw over AT&T.
I agree that the government does need to get involved but in a different way. Currently to get a TV license you must apply to each municipality for that area. This causes situations like the one I used to live in. We used to live in Northern Virgina and we were forced to use Comcast when right across the street other people had Cox. The key was that the Cable companies did collude with each other because the Cox customers could not get Comcast either. Having price control in this situation would be horrible. My service sucks as it is, what is going to happen when they are forced to lower their prices.
The way the government can help is to pass a National TV license, one license to conquer them all. This would open the door for phone companies(I know Verizon is not a great example but I would rather have them than Comcast) to enter the market and may encourage cable companies to leave their little shelter municipalities. Getting more service providers(>2) to be in one area should be the goal not price controls.
After watching the latest three Star Wars it came to my attention that Episode IV was pretty bad as well. What do those 4 have in common, Lucas wrote the screenplay for them all. We give Episode IV a pass because it was the one that introduced us to the universe but Lucas' writing just take great actors and makes them into cardboard.
Episodes V and VI to me is just one great 4 hr movie, Lucas did not write or direct either of those and I think it shows.
He created one of the greatest universes of all time but he just can't write dialog.
My wife works for a Republican Senator. She said that everyone knows that Stevens is a corrupt and he is the King of Earmarks. Her boss is trying to get all Earmarks on public record and from what I understand is trying to block them. Living in the DC area and hearing all the crap that goes on in politics is very depressing but her boss seems to be a smart guys but he has only been there a short amount of time.
I live in Alexandria,Va and we are blackmailed into using Comcast because there are no other providers for cable or broadband internet. I have had nothing but problems with setup and customer service, but at least I have good bandwidth. I average about 400KBps but can get up to 600400KBps with BT. The one thing that needs to be changed is the whole TV licensing municipality. Comcast and Cox have this unsaid agreement don't step on my toes I won't step on yours and Verizon does not want to apply for a TV license in all the municipalities. If I could get Fios I would drop Comcast at the drop of a hat.
Some posters have said that they want an a La Carte service compare to Cable. I hate the cable monopoly as much, but the business model is going to have to be something new. Buying episodes for 2-3 dollars is going to get expensive plus all other TV events ie sports, American Idol and my wife's favorite the food network. I guess it boils down to how many hrs of TV you watch a day. No matter what it is going to take a massive paradigm shift to get people away from their tvs. I do alot of timeshifting with Bittorrent but I like to have the TV on in the background when I am working on my computer or playing WoW.
To use Divx they would have to license it, but why can't they use Xvid?
I don't know what you are doing to those cars but I would hate to see what would happen if you drove a Ford or Chevy (car). On average Honda has a very good reliability rating, they are almost always in the top 10 cars in Consumer Reports. Honda owners that I know say that it would be very unusual for a Honda to last less than 100k miles.(Last Consumer Report all the cars in the top ten were Foreign Cars most Toyotas and Hondas)
On Warranties, Most Companies give a 36k comprehensive, 60k miles LIMITED and some 100K mile powertrain(even more limited). Most TV ads hype the 100k warranty but people don't realize how limited the powertrain is.
It would definitely be interesting if the Hummer did have less of an impact than a prius, but Hummer is made by GM and the Prius by Toyota and both of their track records(on car reliability) speak for themselves. I have no doubt that a Prius would last longer than a Hummer especially the H2(which is just a stupid Tahoe with a different paneling)
I think that is a very large misconception. There are very few christians that believe that if you do bad thing you can't be a christian. Everyone does, has done and will do bad things (sin). Grace is a gift, not an reward for doing something right or in the right way. There are some denominations that do believe that if you "sin" you have lost your "salvation" and must ask God for it again but that is just one side of the spectrum.
Besides the fact that there is historical proof that a "man" named Jesus lived around the 30s AD. How many ppl on slashdot have sigs pointing to Christian sites that say your a dilutional idiot if you think God does not exist. I know that they exist out there,that is not my argument.
I called the South Carolina situation about a year ago. SC has cheap land and power plus an OC-192 goes through Columbia to the University of SC(the first USC, sorry Alumnus). I just figured no one would do it because the schools are so bad no one would move there. I wonder what kind of jobs these Data Centers employ.
Isn't a vertical landing a waste of a lot of resources? You have to carry the fuel into orbit that you need to land as opposed to landing with minimal fuel ie Shuttle and Spaceship One. I guess the best thing would be you don't need a runway but that does not seem like it should be problem.
Here in Northern VA specifically the City of Alexandria, the broadband service is horrible. The main issue is that Comcast is the only provider. The City of Alexandria and the county of Fairfax are two different municipalities. Comcast is in Alex and Cox is in Fairfax. but there are not in each other's territory because that means they would have to compete with each other so they just don't apply for that license(sounds like collusion). Back the problem, I live in an old apartment(1940s) and Verizon DSL does not work because of the wire quality. I eagerly await the day when I can tell Comcast that I am dumping them for anyone else hopefully FIOS but I doubt that.
One of the aspects of the much maligned telco bill is that any company can apply for a national tv license instead of having to go to every municipality. Cable companies are running commericals says that it will put people(their workers) out on the street and that the created the industry from nothing so they deserve to have it the way it is. Shouldn't this be an opportunity for the Cable companies to expanded as well, as opposed to just protecting their island. I know that the telcos are not any better in the vast scheme of things but having the two monopolies duke it out has to be better than just being forced to be hostage to one company. I just want the options.
Question: With ABC and other channels allowing free viewing of Lost and other shows(on the web), couldn't the Cable companies sue for unfair advantage even though it could be over DSL?
Parents should be involved in their children's lives already. You can't say that Video Games do have impact in anyone's life, that is what parents are for in the case of children. They define what they think is best for their child and implement it. There are many reasons why things happen and to say that Video Games is the direct cause it stupid. Parents should get off their collective asses and play some games with the children both video and rec games.
With the Wii you can do both, Tennis anyone. \haha
"Japanese news site Impress Watch has suggested that the cost of Japanese PlayStation 3 titles will range from ¥8,800 ($75) to ¥9,800 ($84), an increase attributed to rising development costs."
"PlayStation 2 game price in Japan of ¥6,800 ($58)"
I was speaking in general terms because it also states that "Tecmo's Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 will be sold at an even more excessive ¥9,240 ($79)." which is for the Xbox360 (I am not 100% sure)
The 58$ would be the exact thing that I am talking about because the standard PS2 game in the US is between 39-49 dollars.
PS3 games = (84 to 75dollars) - (15-10 dollars)= 70-55 dollars which is not far off from the Xbox360 games (59.99) at release.
This is just a personal example someone in the UK definite knows more than me. But my sister when to work in London for 7 months. My parents when over to visit her and said that all the food and stuff was expensive. Like 5 quid for a MickieDs value meal? which would be more than 7-8 dollars here. But the thing was that my sister was making about 7-8 quid/hr which is definitely more that minimum wage here. The argument this many yen = this many dollars should not hold up as a direct transfer to here in the US. Alot of things in Japan are more than here in the US and somethings that are cheap here are more expensive there. I need a little more detail than OMG there paying 9000 yen what are we going to be paying.
I have been fascinated with Robots since my childhood and is why I got an EE degree. We had to build a Pong robot in College it was pretty cool. The great hindrance to mast producing of robots I think is being able to have a cheap $150 positioning system. GPS is good but have a lawn mower being off by +- 12 feet is not good. But I guess that is jumping why ahead of where you want to be. The main thing is to just mess around good to a local college and see if they have any extra parts or dumpster dive. If you go into soldering make sure you have a good gun, bad ones make it alot harder. Have fun.
If it is 200$ dollars then it is practically the same as a PS3. The PS3 "Core" edition would be better in terms of hardware becuase of the HDD. The big kicker is if M$ can get the Price down to 299$ on the HDD version then they could say "equal" hardware for a better price. But we will see.
And I think that having the "addon" might confuse some people during the holidays. So I have to buy that with the Xbox360 to play "movies" This one(PS3)has the capability to do it and I don't have to buy anything more OK I will go with that(PS3)
Maybe M$ is thinking that two ~200-300$ items is better than one ~500 dollar item is the consumers mind.
Amen to that.
I love watching BSG and Lost. I can't remember the last time I wanted to watch something every week, but on the other hand. I don't care if I miss an episode of Lost (never miss BSG) because I can download it or now that they have caught on I can watch the entire show on the web. I think the Long Tail arguement might be apropriate but with PofC making so much money this summer, I think execs are still going to try to get the homerun instead of 5 singles.
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My mother-in-law dragged my wife and I into a Walmart for some random reason over the holidays. It was interesting to note that all of the Blu-ray players were out of stock and there was a whole stack of cheaper HD-DVD players ($299 vs $385). Who knows what it really means they could have only had 10 BR player compared to 30 HD-DVD but I thought it was interesting.
/., I wonder if the public just doesn't care as much as we do.
A sidenote: my inlaws just got a HD tv and when my mother inlaw saw the two choices of the players between a Toshiba and a Sony she went with the Sony without a thought. With all the crap we give Sony on
At my old job, we develop industrial test equipment(actually a cooling solution for current equipment) for AMD and Intel. Well as a startup we got in trouble because my bosses were asses. So Intel funded us a bunch of money and encourage us to sell the company to one of their buddies in the test equipment business. We shopped the startup around to various companies but then all of a sudden Intel and this other company(both were "observers" on our board) resigned one day. The following weeks we were "forced" into spliting the company up and the other company got the half of our company that Intel had wanted.
I would bet that the CEO is going to work for Intel to develop a cheap laptop for them. The pattern just looks to familiar.
Whatever his motives(just to be a Troll or not) he is right in the sense that people are naive about how this will change the world and how pissed they get when someone tells them that. The error he falls into is that the "Laptop or the Rice" is an oversimplification. It is not one or the other there is a massive middle ground that needs to be covered to get to the Laptop part.
I think also that there is a problem with how the OLPC PC is being marketed. It should not be used in situations that he gave in Africa with the literacy problems, the money could be spent on basic schooling and trade skills. The ideal situations for the OLPC is third world developing countries like Mexico and Peru(these countries have purchased the laptops) were there is an infrastructure and basic economy to support this kind of development.
The key here is that they have got the wireless companies where they want them even if they don't win the auction. If the other companies knew that Google was not going to bid on it then they would just wait for it expired and be put up without the requirements. Now Google assures themselves an open network even if they don't win because the other companies have to follow the requirements.
I am a Verizon customer and have had mixed results with them but the problems that my wife and family have had with the New AT&T are a lot worse.
The first thing I did when I saw that Verizon Wireless was not apart of the Open Handset Alliance was to send an email to customer support saying I might leave if they don't join. Out of 63.7 Million customers I wonder how many did that.
As others have said it has to do with the new 4G rollout, all companies are going to have the same tech. This also means that they can steal other customers with just a switch of a sim card. AT&T does not have this luxury becuase they are locked into the iPhone for X amount of time. I am going to enjoy the opportunity to screw over AT&T.
I agree that the government does need to get involved but in a different way. Currently to get a TV license you must apply to each municipality for that area. This causes situations like the one I used to live in. We used to live in Northern Virgina and we were forced to use Comcast when right across the street other people had Cox. The key was that the Cable companies did collude with each other because the Cox customers could not get Comcast either. Having price control in this situation would be horrible. My service sucks as it is, what is going to happen when they are forced to lower their prices.
The way the government can help is to pass a National TV license, one license to conquer them all. This would open the door for phone companies(I know Verizon is not a great example but I would rather have them than Comcast) to enter the market and may encourage cable companies to leave their little shelter municipalities. Getting more service providers(>2) to be in one area should be the goal not price controls.
After watching the latest three Star Wars it came to my attention that Episode IV was pretty bad as well. What do those 4 have in common, Lucas wrote the screenplay for them all. We give Episode IV a pass because it was the one that introduced us to the universe but Lucas' writing just take great actors and makes them into cardboard.
Episodes V and VI to me is just one great 4 hr movie, Lucas did not write or direct either of those and I think it shows.
He created one of the greatest universes of all time but he just can't write dialog.
My wife works for a Republican Senator. She said that everyone knows that Stevens is a corrupt and he is the King of Earmarks. Her boss is trying to get all Earmarks on public record and from what I understand is trying to block them. Living in the DC area and hearing all the crap that goes on in politics is very depressing but her boss seems to be a smart guys but he has only been there a short amount of time.
I live in Alexandria,Va and we are blackmailed into using Comcast because there are no other providers for cable or broadband internet. I have had nothing but problems with setup and customer service, but at least I have good bandwidth. I average about 400KBps but can get up to 600400KBps with BT. The one thing that needs to be changed is the whole TV licensing municipality. Comcast and Cox have this unsaid agreement don't step on my toes I won't step on yours and Verizon does not want to apply for a TV license in all the municipalities. If I could get Fios I would drop Comcast at the drop of a hat.
Some posters have said that they want an a La Carte service compare to Cable. I hate the cable monopoly as much, but the business model is going to have to be something new. Buying episodes for 2-3 dollars is going to get expensive plus all other TV events ie sports, American Idol and my wife's favorite the food network. I guess it boils down to how many hrs of TV you watch a day. No matter what it is going to take a massive paradigm shift to get people away from their tvs. I do alot of timeshifting with Bittorrent but I like to have the TV on in the background when I am working on my computer or playing WoW.
To use Divx they would have to license it, but why can't they use Xvid?
I don't know what you are doing to those cars but I would hate to see what would happen if you drove a Ford or Chevy (car). On average Honda has a very good reliability rating, they are almost always in the top 10 cars in Consumer Reports. Honda owners that I know say that it would be very unusual for a Honda to last less than 100k miles.(Last Consumer Report all the cars in the top ten were Foreign Cars most Toyotas and Hondas) On Warranties, Most Companies give a 36k comprehensive, 60k miles LIMITED and some 100K mile powertrain(even more limited). Most TV ads hype the 100k warranty but people don't realize how limited the powertrain is. It would definitely be interesting if the Hummer did have less of an impact than a prius, but Hummer is made by GM and the Prius by Toyota and both of their track records(on car reliability) speak for themselves. I have no doubt that a Prius would last longer than a Hummer especially the H2(which is just a stupid Tahoe with a different paneling)
I think that is a very large misconception. There are very few christians that believe that if you do bad thing you can't be a christian. Everyone does, has done and will do bad things (sin). Grace is a gift, not an reward for doing something right or in the right way. There are some denominations that do believe that if you "sin" you have lost your "salvation" and must ask God for it again but that is just one side of the spectrum.
Besides the fact that there is historical proof that a "man" named Jesus lived around the 30s AD. How many ppl on slashdot have sigs pointing to Christian sites that say your a dilutional idiot if you think God does not exist. I know that they exist out there
I called the South Carolina situation about a year ago. SC has cheap land and power plus an OC-192 goes through Columbia to the University of SC(the first USC, sorry Alumnus). I just figured no one would do it because the schools are so bad no one would move there. I wonder what kind of jobs these Data Centers employ.
Isn't a vertical landing a waste of a lot of resources? You have to carry the fuel into orbit that you need to land as opposed to landing with minimal fuel ie Shuttle and Spaceship One. I guess the best thing would be you don't need a runway but that does not seem like it should be problem.
Here in Northern VA specifically the City of Alexandria, the broadband service is horrible. The main issue is that Comcast is the only provider. The City of Alexandria and the county of Fairfax are two different municipalities. Comcast is in Alex and Cox is in Fairfax. but there are not in each other's territory because that means they would have to compete with each other so they just don't apply for that license(sounds like collusion). Back the problem, I live in an old apartment(1940s) and Verizon DSL does not work because of the wire quality. I eagerly await the day when I can tell Comcast that I am dumping them for anyone else hopefully FIOS but I doubt that.
One of the aspects of the much maligned telco bill is that any company can apply for a national tv license instead of having to go to every municipality. Cable companies are running commericals says that it will put people(their workers) out on the street and that the created the industry from nothing so they deserve to have it the way it is. Shouldn't this be an opportunity for the Cable companies to expanded as well, as opposed to just protecting their island. I know that the telcos are not any better in the vast scheme of things but having the two monopolies duke it out has to be better than just being forced to be hostage to one company. I just want the options.
Question: With ABC and other channels allowing free viewing of Lost and other shows(on the web), couldn't the Cable companies sue for unfair advantage even though it could be over DSL?
Parents should be involved in their children's lives already. You can't say that Video Games do have impact in anyone's life, that is what parents are for in the case of children. They define what they think is best for their child and implement it. There are many reasons why things happen and to say that Video Games is the direct cause it stupid. Parents should get off their collective asses and play some games with the children both video and rec games.
With the Wii you can do both, Tennis anyone. \haha
Man anyone thing of William Gibson's Novel Virtual Light, that is crazy.
"Japanese news site Impress Watch has suggested that the cost of Japanese PlayStation 3 titles will range from ¥8,800 ($75) to ¥9,800 ($84), an increase attributed to rising development costs."
"PlayStation 2 game price in Japan of ¥6,800 ($58)"
I was speaking in general terms because it also states that "Tecmo's Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 will be sold at an even more excessive ¥9,240 ($79)." which is for the Xbox360 (I am not 100% sure)
The 58$ would be the exact thing that I am talking about because the standard PS2 game in the US is between 39-49 dollars.
PS3 games = (84 to 75dollars) - (15-10 dollars)= 70-55 dollars which is not far off from the Xbox360 games (59.99) at release.
This is just a personal example someone in the UK definite knows more than me. But my sister when to work in London for 7 months.
My parents when over to visit her and said that all the food and stuff was expensive. Like 5 quid for a MickieDs value meal? which would be more than 7-8 dollars here. But the thing was that my sister was making about 7-8 quid/hr which is definitely more that minimum wage here. The argument this many yen = this many dollars should not hold up as a direct transfer to here in the US. Alot of things in Japan are more than here in the US and somethings that are cheap here are more expensive there. I need a little more detail than OMG there paying 9000 yen what are we going to be paying.
I have been fascinated with Robots since my childhood and is why I got an EE degree. We had to build a Pong robot in College it was pretty cool. The great hindrance to mast producing of robots I think is being able to have a cheap $150 positioning system. GPS is good but have a lawn mower being off by +- 12 feet is not good. But I guess that is jumping why ahead of where you want to be. The main thing is to just mess around good to a local college and see if they have any extra parts or dumpster dive. If you go into soldering make sure you have a good gun, bad ones make it alot harder. Have fun.
If it is 200$ dollars then it is practically the same as a PS3.
The PS3 "Core" edition would be better in terms of hardware becuase of the HDD.
The big kicker is if M$ can get the Price down to 299$ on the HDD version then they could say "equal" hardware for a better price.
But we will see.
And I think that having the "addon" might confuse some people during the holidays.
So I have to buy that with the Xbox360 to play "movies"
This one(PS3)has the capability to do it and I don't have to buy anything more
OK I will go with that(PS3)
Maybe M$ is thinking that two ~200-300$ items is better than one ~500 dollar item is the consumers mind.
It's Called Battlestar Galactica.
Amen to that. I love watching BSG and Lost. I can't remember the last time I wanted to watch something every week, but on the other hand. I don't care if I miss an episode of Lost (never miss BSG) because I can download it or now that they have caught on I can watch the entire show on the web. I think the Long Tail arguement might be apropriate but with PofC making so much money this summer, I think execs are still going to try to get the homerun instead of 5 singles.
To my knowledge the Cell does not have the GPU on the same die, Nvidia made a separate chip.