The original PSX had some of the worst 3D graphics I'd seen, incredibly slow CDROM....
I don't see how you can say that and expect to be taken seriously. Perhaps you only saw the PSX near the end of its life-cycle, and compared it to the PC 3D cards of the time. Well, when the PSX came out in 1995, it blew the holy hell out of anything on the PC for a few years to come. By modern standards (PS2, XBOX, PC), the PSX's graphics look dated, but go pop in Crash Bandicoot or Rage Racer (both circa 1997) and see how amazing they looked for the time. I don;t think there's been a PC racing game that looked better than Gran Turismo 2, let alone GT3 on PS2.
The PSX was a hell of a piece of hardware, and is still not too shabby. It takes a PC with 10X the processor speed to even come close to the PSX graphics-wise (PSX had a 33MHz cpu).
I won't argue that there are a lot of crap games. That's true of any system, and it's not exclusive to SONY. Playstation has more games period, so of course it's gonna have more crap. But it's gonna have more GOOD games, too.
I came to the same conclusion with my current project (online database/data editing/analysis system). It's written in 98% Perl with some pieces in C++. Perl+Inline is perfect for this.
We had the following tasks to perform:
- Web interface for upload/editing/etc.
- Store fairly large amounts of data in XML format
- Create analysis in PDF format for download and HTML for viewing
- Create images of analysis for PDFs and web site
We decided the best solution was to use existing, proven tools as much as possible, and glue them together in Perl. MSIE as our 'client app', PS2PDF to create PDF files, gzip to conserve disk space, and a host of other common linux command-line tools for various minor tasks.
The only real problem was image creation. We had very specific requirements, so we wrote custom code for this. However, as Perl lacks adequate memory management, not to mention SPEED, those parts were written as a standalone C++ app. I later learned how to use Perl Inline, so it's now a library of subroutines. Same speed (faster even), and more flexibility.
Programming languages are a toolbox. The situation disctates what is the most appropriate tool for the job:
Need rapid development, and frequent changes? Web interface OK? Need complex data structures native to the language (hashes for example)? Use Perl or some other scripting language.
Massive memory requirements and speed a priority? USe Assembly, C++ or some other compiled language.
Someone already made a tool (or combination) that will work -- write a shell script.
Japan is a nation that relies almost entirely on mass transit. People spend a lot of time on the train, or the bus, or waiting for the train or bus. Rather than sit around and be totally bored, many fill the time with reading manga. More recently, people are just as likely to sit and play games or message friends on their cell phones.
For the same reason the super-high-tech japanese cell phones and DoCoMo features haven't really caught on here in the US. While this might also work in New York City, the vast majority of the US is much more spread out. Most Americans own cars, and few outside major cities use mass transit. Even less use it for trips longer than a half-hour/hour (which is common in Japan). The critical mass for this sort of thing just isn't there.
Unless the studios DO offer free replacements for defective media, which many do. It is fun to note, however that if they refuse to replace the media, their argument that they are 'licensing the content, not selling physical product' falls apart. Perfect time to get a statement to that effect on record for upcoming legal battles. ^_^
Most GM seeds are hybrids, and thus are inherently infertile. There is no need for a 'suicide gene'.
On your cynical comment, you're more correct than you think. I believe the companies _want_ their patented genes to spread, so they can extort money out of people contaminated by their crops. There was a story a year or so ago about a farmer in Western Canada who had GM varieties growing on his farm (that he did not buy from the seed company). He argued that it must have blown off a passing seed truck, or something, but the court ordered him to destroy his entire crop (since it had the _unlicensed_ patented seeds mixed in. THAT is where the problem lies IMHO.
I work in the ag industry (data analysis), so we hear all about this stuff. The GM food itself isn't the problem, it's the associated patents, etc. that are the problem.
It's not as hard as you think. They could broadcast the SAP (Seperate Audio Program) signal in Japanese. I've rarely seen SAP used, but it's there, and it's practically designed for this purpose. Closed-caption subs, while not ideal, would be acceptable. They'd be fools not to do this, except much of the dubbed anime shown on TV is edited making it difficult to sync the sub + dub versions. Plus, it would probably kill their DVD sales.
Hopefully, they program it like a real TV channel. Instead of "Cowboy Bebop" at 5PM, it's Cowboy Bebop at 5PM on Mondays, 5PM the rest of the week is Noir, Full Metal Panic, Rahxephon, and Escaflowne. Or whatever. Most anime is made to be shown once per week, hence the odd numbers of episodes in a series (13, 26, 39, 52, etc.) I hope this is what they do, as it would greatly increase the variety of programming on the channel and make it worth watching. If it's gonna be DBZ from 6-7PM every nite, no thanks.
I bought my 55" Toshiba HDTV monitor a little over a year ago. I love it. I do not have cable, or satellite, and I live in a rural area in a basement apartment where I cannot get over-the-air signals even if I wanted to. I saved about $1000 by getting a model without a digital tuner. Even in major cities, most of the content is not broadcast in HDTV anyway, so what's the point out here in the middle of nowhere?
What do I use the TV for? Well, three things:
DVDs -- Mostly anime DVDs, but a fair number of TV series (Farscape, Sopranos, Young Ones, Buffy), HK and other foreign films, and a modest selection of good Hollywood movies.
Digisub anime -- This I download off the internet. Stuff is broadcast in Japan, captured by people there, traded P2P, translated and subtitled here in less than a week sometimes. It's a great time to be an anime fan.
TV shows -- I also download the occasional TV episode, but I don't have _that_ much bandwitdh and free time to spare. I did download the 2nd half of The West Wing season 3 instead of having a friend tape it for me. The quality was better than his crappy VCR recorded, too. ^__^ I also got Sopranos Season 3 to watch until the DVD set came out (which I bought). We can't get UPN here, even on cable, so I'd have to resort to the internet for Buffy episodes anyway.
I hope they get Hiroyuki Kitakubo to direct it, instead of Mamoru Oshii. Kitakubo directed the Playstation GitS videogame opening, which IMHO looked way cooler than the movie and was more 'true' to the series. Oshii's a great director, but he's better off not screwing with someone else's story. His stuff is never faithful to the original.
Blank DVD-R discs can be had for less than $1.50 each in quantity. I just bought 100 of them. Writers are as low as $250 for the very popular Pioneer DVR-A04
And frankly, well-encoded DiVX can look AS GOOD OR BETTER than DVD. I watch mostly anime, and the hard-encoded subtitles often look better than the DVD soft subs due to DirectX's image smoothing and interpolation. Keep in mind this is a 200MB file for 24 minutes of video, so a movie at this rate would run 1.0-1.2GB. Source material, encoding settings, and other factors affect the outcome of course--a steadycam rip of a theatrical film will encode poorly and look like shite no matter what you do.
That said, I love to buy DVDs (own about 450)--they offer a great value for the money. Assuming you aren't a sucker who pays MSRP of course. ^_-
> Sega used to be a big console maker and they got done in just this way.
In all generosity, SEGA failed largely on their own. SEGA rose to ascendancy with the Genesis, but since then, they have made mistake after mistake. Sega CD with too many movie-game titles, the abandonware 32X that cost more than a genesis. The Saturn, which was a decent system. Its strengths were in 2D, but the bulk of the 2D games were Japan-only. PSX dominated that generation. Then the Dreamcast, which failed to fly out the door immediately, and was later killed outright by PS2 hype.
Uh, don't all the geeks who would play these already have PCs? Why would they need an Xbox? And if you think playing an FPS without a mouse is hard, try playing an RTS like AoE without one.
It's this kind of thinking on the part of MS management and Xbox advocates that will kill the system. Yes, Xbox is easy to port PC games from. However, those same PC games were not designed for a console. They were not designed for a console controller, and they were not designed for TV screen resolutions. Yet by most accounts, they will make up the bulk of the Xbox library. Yes, console gamers will love getting PC games they've always wanted to play but could not afford a PC to do so. But they will hate the poor gaming experience of playing them on a platform not suited for them.
In some ways, this has already begun. A few of the best-selling PS2 games are being reissued at $20 each, including the excellent Gran Turismo 3 and Twisted Metal Black. A number of older games can already be found at discount prices. However, the $50 price point seems to work for most games, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
This is a false argument. It is unfair to compare a 6-month old system with a 2-year (PS2) or 8-year (PSX) old system. At least compare today's X-box to the PS2 6 months after launch (which is when I bought mine).
PS2 at the time had only 2 'great' games (SSX and Madden), and a handful of good ones (Armored Core 2, Star Wars Starfighter). It also had a TON of crap. Comparing that to the X-box today with Halo, Jet Set Radio Future, and DOA3 they are not so different. SONY was also in a similar position to Microsoft when PS2 launched. Dreamcast had been out for over a year and had a number of good, solid titles behind it: Soul Calibur, Sega GT, Jet Grind Radio just to name a few. I remember at the time of PS2's launch when people were commenting how PS2 had mostly crap games, while Dreamcast had a good library of titles. Sound familiar?
Today, PS2 has FAR more market penetration than DC ever did, so it will be a more difficult struggle for MS. Plus, PS2 has done a much better job of continuing to produce great titles than Sega ever did. Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill 2, SSX/Tricky, Devil May Cry, Ace Combat 4, Wipeout Fusion, Virtua Fighter 4, etc.--most of which are exclusive content--are all great games that drive system sales. The upcoming schedule for PS2 also has more highly-anticipated titles than any other system.
Since the beginning, the Xbox has been perceived by many as a "cheap PC that connects to the TV to play games". And as evidenced by the upcoming titles on the system, a lot of PC ports seem to be in its future. Xbox will have far and away the most FPS games of any console, I'm sure. Problem is, it will have little else. Most console gamers grew up on "Japanese" video games. Many are anime fans. US developers mostly seem uninterested in making that style of game (cute), instead opting for 'manly' killing machine games. Consoles are driven by content, not tech specs, and the Japanese still own in the content department, at least as far as console-style games go.
Also, while the stable hardware platform should make Xbox less buggy than normal MS software, the folks at Redmond hardly have a reputation for making things that work well. That, coupled with the public's negative views of MS as a company ("evil corporate pirates!") and SONY's experience and head start, things look bad for Xbox.
And when the Japanese public finds out Xbox was called "Project Midway" by MS Insiders, don't expect to sell many more boxes there. ^_^
Wouldn't this make security cameras mostly illegal? Would evidence obtained via 'illegal' video cameras be inadmissable in court?
Prosecutor: "Here is a videotape clearly showing the defendant shooting 3 people." Defendant: "That was videotaped in a non-public area without my consent." Judge: "The tape is inadmissable."
After reading a slashdot article a couple weeks ago (Tiniest R/C cars), I started looking for more info on Tomy's "Bit Char-G" toys. Searching for "bit char" on google gives me tons of relevant results, and then some stuff on variable data types, etc. Altavista gives me no relevant results. "bit char tomica" gives me mostly garbage, and "bit char tomy" finally gives me 1-2 relevant pages.
Oh, PS: I own a Pioneer DVR-A03. I primarily use it for data storage, tho said data is Divx fansubtitled anime for viewing on my Home Theater PC. I own about 400 "real" DVDs and buy another 20 or so per month. But the drive is nice to store things you can't buy.
Finally, we can have our favorite shows on DVD. If MTV Home Video doesn't want to release Daria on DVD, I can simply capture it off my DSS with a PC capture card, edit out the commercials, convert it to MPEG2 and author my own discs. It's work, but it's nothing _too_ hard. And technically, it's fair use.
Of course, I'd rather plunk down $120 to have MTV do all that work for me. Earth to movie companies: if you release it (at good quality and affordable prices), we WILL buy it. Stop trying to deny me the ABILITY to pirate video, and try denying me the MOTIVATION.
I own about 400 DVDs at this point, and buy 20 or more per month. TV series top my wish lists: Sopranos, Hogan's Heroes, Batman Animated, Batman Beyond, Twin Peaks, Simpsons, Futurama, The Young Ones, Daria, Farscape, and lots of others. I'd buy every one if you put them out.
I write software for this industry for a living. We collect field boundaries, fertilizer and pesticide data (types and amounts used, application method), and other farming practices. When it comes time to harvest the crop, a device called a yield monitor (GPS plus flow and other sensors) collects data on how much crop is harvested at a given point in the field.
It's an idea that had been gaining a lot of momentum in the farming industry for a while, but it is starting to become apparent it is not as useful as they thought. The growers like the pretty pictures the GPS maps give them, but their utility as tools is severely limited. Changing levels of chemical application in a field does not have as much of an impact as you would think. Not to mention the education level of the average ag worker is not all that high, so data collection is a difficult process.
What IS useful however is statistical analysis of these farming practices. Seed companies like Pioneer have universities run tests on their varieties and report on the results. The problem is that these tests are all conducted on tiny "test plots" of a fraction of an acre. It's simply too small a sample to get reliable results. With the data we have collected, we can state with a fair degree of certainty what farming practices will result in higher yields. Conventional vs No-Till farming, what crop order to rotate, what row spacing to plant at, etc.
I had similar problems. I was using a Matrox g450 AGP card and an Intel 10/100 NIC. Turns out both cards were in contention for bus mastering. Disabled bus mastering on the video card and poof, no more random lock-ups.
What's the point? Cable modem is capable of 2Mb-5Mb or more, but everyone is becoming capped at 128Kb not due to technological reasons, but business decisions. What we need is a cheap super-high-bandwidth solution for the Telcos, so they can open up a fatter pipe to our neighborhoods.
I bought my 55" Toshiba HDTV (55HX70) about 6 months ago for about $2150, shipped. For projection televisions, HDTV is definitely worth it, as they look so much brighter and clearer than standard-def projection TVs. On a CRT, I don't think you would see enough of a difference to warrant the price increase.
My set does not have an HDTV tuner. HDTV broadcasts are few and far between, and IMHO it is not/was not worth the extra cost. Plus, who pulls signals off the air anymore anyway? Save money by buying "HDTV-Ready".
Also, I'd suggest avoiding widescreen unless all you watch is movies. If you do the math, letterbox image on a 4:3 set is like 10% smaller than the same diagonal 16:9, but 4:3 image on a 16:9 set is like 20% smaller than a same-diagonal 4:3. Add to that the fact that 16:9 sets cost $300-1000 more than a 4:3 equivalent, and the choice is easy.
A good example is the Toshiba sets, where a 61" 4:3 is cheaper than their 56" 16:9, and the 16:9 letterbox size on the 61" is the same size as the 56" set (56" vs 55.4"), but the 4:3 picture is way bigger (61" vs 46").
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The original PSX had some of the worst 3D graphics I'd seen, incredibly slow CDROM....
I don't see how you can say that and expect to be taken seriously. Perhaps you only saw the PSX near the end of its life-cycle, and compared it to the PC 3D cards of the time. Well, when the PSX came out in 1995, it blew the holy hell out of anything on the PC for a few years to come. By modern standards (PS2, XBOX, PC), the PSX's graphics look dated, but go pop in Crash Bandicoot or Rage Racer (both circa 1997) and see how amazing they looked for the time. I don;t think there's been a PC racing game that looked better than Gran Turismo 2, let alone GT3 on PS2.
The PSX was a hell of a piece of hardware, and is still not too shabby. It takes a PC with 10X the processor speed to even come close to the PSX graphics-wise (PSX had a 33MHz cpu).
I won't argue that there are a lot of crap games. That's true of any system, and it's not exclusive to SONY. Playstation has more games period, so of course it's gonna have more crap. But it's gonna have more GOOD games, too.
I came to the same conclusion with my current project (online database/data editing/analysis system). It's written in 98% Perl with some pieces in C++. Perl+Inline is perfect for this.
We had the following tasks to perform:
- Web interface for upload/editing/etc.
- Store fairly large amounts of data in XML format
- Create analysis in PDF format for download and HTML for viewing
- Create images of analysis for PDFs and web site
We decided the best solution was to use existing, proven tools as much as possible, and glue them together in Perl. MSIE as our 'client app', PS2PDF to create PDF files, gzip to conserve disk space, and a host of other common linux command-line tools for various minor tasks.
The only real problem was image creation. We had very specific requirements, so we wrote custom code for this. However, as Perl lacks adequate memory management, not to mention SPEED, those parts were written as a standalone C++ app. I later learned how to use Perl Inline, so it's now a library of subroutines. Same speed (faster even), and more flexibility.
Programming languages are a toolbox. The situation disctates what is the most appropriate tool for the job:
Need rapid development, and frequent changes? Web interface OK? Need complex data structures native to the language (hashes for example)? Use Perl or some other scripting language.
Massive memory requirements and speed a priority? USe Assembly, C++ or some other compiled language.
Someone already made a tool (or combination) that will work -- write a shell script.
Japan is a nation that relies almost entirely on mass transit. People spend a lot of time on the train, or the bus, or waiting for the train or bus. Rather than sit around and be totally bored, many fill the time with reading manga. More recently, people are just as likely to sit and play games or message friends on their cell phones.
For the same reason the super-high-tech japanese cell phones and DoCoMo features haven't really caught on here in the US. While this might also work in New York City, the vast majority of the US is much more spread out. Most Americans own cars, and few outside major cities use mass transit. Even less use it for trips longer than a half-hour/hour (which is common in Japan). The critical mass for this sort of thing just isn't there.
Unless the studios DO offer free replacements for defective media, which many do. It is fun to note, however that if they refuse to replace the media, their argument that they are 'licensing the content, not selling physical product' falls apart. Perfect time to get a statement to that effect on record for upcoming legal battles. ^_^
Most GM seeds are hybrids, and thus are inherently infertile. There is no need for a 'suicide gene'.
On your cynical comment, you're more correct than you think. I believe the companies _want_ their patented genes to spread, so they can extort money out of people contaminated by their crops. There was a story a year or so ago about a farmer in Western Canada who had GM varieties growing on his farm (that he did not buy from the seed company). He argued that it must have blown off a passing seed truck, or something, but the court ordered him to destroy his entire crop (since it had the _unlicensed_ patented seeds mixed in. THAT is where the problem lies IMHO.
I work in the ag industry (data analysis), so we hear all about this stuff. The GM food itself isn't the problem, it's the associated patents, etc. that are the problem.
It's not as hard as you think. They could broadcast the SAP (Seperate Audio Program) signal in Japanese. I've rarely seen SAP used, but it's there, and it's practically designed for this purpose. Closed-caption subs, while not ideal, would be acceptable. They'd be fools not to do this, except much of the dubbed anime shown on TV is edited making it difficult to sync the sub + dub versions. Plus, it would probably kill their DVD sales.
Hopefully, they program it like a real TV channel. Instead of "Cowboy Bebop" at 5PM, it's Cowboy Bebop at 5PM on Mondays, 5PM the rest of the week is Noir, Full Metal Panic, Rahxephon, and Escaflowne. Or whatever. Most anime is made to be shown once per week, hence the odd numbers of episodes in a series (13, 26, 39, 52, etc.) I hope this is what they do, as it would greatly increase the variety of programming on the channel and make it worth watching. If it's gonna be DBZ from 6-7PM every nite, no thanks.
I bought my 55" Toshiba HDTV monitor a little over a year ago. I love it. I do not have cable, or satellite, and I live in a rural area in a basement apartment where I cannot get over-the-air signals even if I wanted to. I saved about $1000 by getting a model without a digital tuner. Even in major cities, most of the content is not broadcast in HDTV anyway, so what's the point out here in the middle of nowhere?
What do I use the TV for? Well, three things:
DVDs -- Mostly anime DVDs, but a fair number of TV series (Farscape, Sopranos, Young Ones, Buffy), HK and other foreign films, and a modest selection of good Hollywood movies.
Digisub anime -- This I download off the internet. Stuff is broadcast in Japan, captured by people there, traded P2P, translated and subtitled here in less than a week sometimes. It's a great time to be an anime fan.
TV shows -- I also download the occasional TV episode, but I don't have _that_ much bandwitdh and free time to spare. I did download the 2nd half of The West Wing season 3 instead of having a friend tape it for me. The quality was better than his crappy VCR recorded, too. ^__^ I also got Sopranos Season 3 to watch until the DVD set came out (which I bought). We can't get UPN here, even on cable, so I'd have to resort to the internet for Buffy episodes anyway.
Actually, it's not. Tokyo is pronounced Toh-Kyoh (2 syllables), not Toh-kee-oh (3 syllables). Tokio is simply wrong.
--
Dave
I hope they get Hiroyuki Kitakubo to direct it, instead of Mamoru Oshii. Kitakubo directed the Playstation GitS videogame opening, which IMHO looked way cooler than the movie and was more 'true' to the series. Oshii's a great director, but he's better off not screwing with someone else's story. His stuff is never faithful to the original.
--
Dave
Blank DVD-R discs can be had for less than $1.50 each in quantity. I just bought 100 of them. Writers are as low as $250 for the very popular Pioneer DVR-A04
And frankly, well-encoded DiVX can look AS GOOD OR BETTER than DVD. I watch mostly anime, and the hard-encoded subtitles often look better than the DVD soft subs due to DirectX's image smoothing and interpolation. Keep in mind this is a 200MB file for 24 minutes of video, so a movie at this rate would run 1.0-1.2GB. Source material, encoding settings, and other factors affect the outcome of course--a steadycam rip of a theatrical film will encode poorly and look like shite no matter what you do.
That said, I love to buy DVDs (own about 450)--they offer a great value for the money. Assuming you aren't a sucker who pays MSRP of course. ^_-
> Sega used to be a big console maker and they got done in just this way.
In all generosity, SEGA failed largely on their own. SEGA rose to ascendancy with the Genesis, but since then, they have made mistake after mistake. Sega CD with too many movie-game titles, the abandonware 32X that cost more than a genesis. The Saturn, which was a decent system. Its strengths were in 2D, but the bulk of the 2D games were Japan-only. PSX dominated that generation. Then the Dreamcast, which failed to fly out the door immediately, and was later killed outright by PS2 hype.
Uh, don't all the geeks who would play these already have PCs? Why would they need an Xbox? And if you think playing an FPS without a mouse is hard, try playing an RTS like AoE without one.
It's this kind of thinking on the part of MS management and Xbox advocates that will kill the system. Yes, Xbox is easy to port PC games from. However, those same PC games were not designed for a console. They were not designed for a console controller, and they were not designed for TV screen resolutions. Yet by most accounts, they will make up the bulk of the Xbox library. Yes, console gamers will love getting PC games they've always wanted to play but could not afford a PC to do so. But they will hate the poor gaming experience of playing them on a platform not suited for them.
In some ways, this has already begun. A few of the best-selling PS2 games are being reissued at $20 each, including the excellent Gran Turismo 3 and Twisted Metal Black. A number of older games can already be found at discount prices. However, the $50 price point seems to work for most games, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
The GT40 was designed by an English team (Lola, I think) with a Ford engine. I absolutely adore them, but I wouldn't give Ford that much credit.
This is a false argument. It is unfair to compare a 6-month old system with a 2-year (PS2) or 8-year (PSX) old system. At least compare today's X-box to the PS2 6 months after launch (which is when I bought mine).
PS2 at the time had only 2 'great' games (SSX and Madden), and a handful of good ones (Armored Core 2, Star Wars Starfighter). It also had a TON of crap. Comparing that to the X-box today with Halo, Jet Set Radio Future, and DOA3 they are not so different. SONY was also in a similar position to Microsoft when PS2 launched. Dreamcast had been out for over a year and had a number of good, solid titles behind it: Soul Calibur, Sega GT, Jet Grind Radio just to name a few. I remember at the time of PS2's launch when people were commenting how PS2 had mostly crap games, while Dreamcast had a good library of titles. Sound familiar?
Today, PS2 has FAR more market penetration than DC ever did, so it will be a more difficult struggle for MS. Plus, PS2 has done a much better job of continuing to produce great titles than Sega ever did. Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto 3, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill 2, SSX/Tricky, Devil May Cry, Ace Combat 4, Wipeout Fusion, Virtua Fighter 4, etc.--most of which are exclusive content--are all great games that drive system sales. The upcoming schedule for PS2 also has more highly-anticipated titles than any other system.
Since the beginning, the Xbox has been perceived by many as a "cheap PC that connects to the TV to play games". And as evidenced by the upcoming titles on the system, a lot of PC ports seem to be in its future. Xbox will have far and away the most FPS games of any console, I'm sure. Problem is, it will have little else. Most console gamers grew up on "Japanese" video games. Many are anime fans. US developers mostly seem uninterested in making that style of game (cute), instead opting for 'manly' killing machine games. Consoles are driven by content, not tech specs, and the Japanese still own in the content department, at least as far as console-style games go.
Also, while the stable hardware platform should make Xbox less buggy than normal MS software, the folks at Redmond hardly have a reputation for making things that work well. That, coupled with the public's negative views of MS as a company ("evil corporate pirates!") and SONY's experience and head start, things look bad for Xbox.
And when the Japanese public finds out Xbox was called "Project Midway" by MS Insiders, don't expect to sell many more boxes there. ^_^
--
Dave
Wouldn't this make security cameras mostly illegal? Would evidence obtained via 'illegal' video cameras be inadmissable in court?
Prosecutor: "Here is a videotape clearly showing the defendant shooting 3 people."
Defendant: "That was videotaped in a non-public area without my consent."
Judge: "The tape is inadmissable."
Not a very well thought-out law, I'd say.
After reading a slashdot article a couple weeks ago (Tiniest R/C cars), I started looking for more info on Tomy's "Bit Char-G" toys. Searching for "bit char" on google gives me tons of relevant results, and then some stuff on variable data types, etc. Altavista gives me no relevant results. "bit char tomica" gives me mostly garbage, and "bit char tomy" finally gives me 1-2 relevant pages.
All hail Google. And yes, the toolbar rocks. ^__^
NOW!
DVD Writers are $350-$400 and media is $2.25+
The drive costs more than my first CD-R, but DVD-Rs are half what CD-Rs were when I got into it.
http://www.meritline.com is where I buy my DVD media. Less than $60 for 25 discs. They seem to work fine--I've burned 20 without problems so far.
They were $72 for 25 just a month earlier.
Oh, PS: I own a Pioneer DVR-A03. I primarily use it for data storage, tho said data is Divx fansubtitled anime for viewing on my Home Theater PC. I own about 400 "real" DVDs and buy another 20 or so per month. But the drive is nice to store things you can't buy.
Finally, we can have our favorite shows on DVD. If MTV Home Video doesn't want to release Daria on DVD, I can simply capture it off my DSS with a PC capture card, edit out the commercials, convert it to MPEG2 and author my own discs. It's work, but it's nothing _too_ hard. And technically, it's fair use.
Of course, I'd rather plunk down $120 to have MTV do all that work for me. Earth to movie companies: if you release it (at good quality and affordable prices), we WILL buy it. Stop trying to deny me the ABILITY to pirate video, and try denying me the MOTIVATION.
I own about 400 DVDs at this point, and buy 20 or more per month. TV series top my wish lists: Sopranos, Hogan's Heroes, Batman Animated, Batman Beyond, Twin Peaks, Simpsons, Futurama, The Young Ones, Daria, Farscape, and lots of others. I'd buy every one if you put them out.
I write software for this industry for a living. We collect field boundaries, fertilizer and pesticide data (types and amounts used, application method), and other farming practices. When it comes time to harvest the crop, a device called a yield monitor (GPS plus flow and other sensors) collects data on how much crop is harvested at a given point in the field.
It's an idea that had been gaining a lot of momentum in the farming industry for a while, but it is starting to become apparent it is not as useful as they thought. The growers like the pretty pictures the GPS maps give them, but their utility as tools is severely limited. Changing levels of chemical application in a field does not have as much of an impact as you would think. Not to mention the education level of the average ag worker is not all that high, so data collection is a difficult process.
What IS useful however is statistical analysis of these farming practices. Seed companies like Pioneer have universities run tests on their varieties and report on the results. The problem is that these tests are all conducted on tiny "test plots" of a fraction of an acre. It's simply too small a sample to get reliable results. With the data we have collected, we can state with a fair degree of certainty what farming practices will result in higher yields. Conventional vs No-Till farming, what crop order to rotate, what row spacing to plant at, etc.
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David Christpher Asher
AgVenture, LLC.
I had similar problems. I was using a Matrox g450 AGP card and an Intel 10/100 NIC. Turns out both cards were in contention for bus mastering. Disabled bus mastering on the video card and poof, no more random lock-ups.
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Dave
What's the point? Cable modem is capable of 2Mb-5Mb or more, but everyone is becoming capped at 128Kb not due to technological reasons, but business decisions. What we need is a cheap super-high-bandwidth solution for the Telcos, so they can open up a fatter pipe to our neighborhoods.
I bought my 55" Toshiba HDTV (55HX70) about 6 months ago for about $2150, shipped. For projection televisions, HDTV is definitely worth it, as they look so much brighter and clearer than standard-def projection TVs. On a CRT, I don't think you would see enough of a difference to warrant the price increase.
My set does not have an HDTV tuner. HDTV broadcasts are few and far between, and IMHO it is not/was not worth the extra cost. Plus, who pulls signals off the air anymore anyway? Save money by buying "HDTV-Ready".
Also, I'd suggest avoiding widescreen unless all you watch is movies. If you do the math, letterbox image on a 4:3 set is like 10% smaller than the same diagonal 16:9, but 4:3 image on a 16:9 set is like 20% smaller than a same-diagonal 4:3. Add to that the fact that 16:9 sets cost $300-1000 more than a 4:3 equivalent, and the choice is easy.
A good example is the Toshiba sets, where a 61" 4:3 is cheaper than their 56" 16:9, and the 16:9 letterbox size on the 61" is the same size as the 56" set (56" vs 55.4"), but the 4:3 picture is way bigger (61" vs 46").