Then you want Viiv once ClickStar is mature. ClickStar is supposed to provide the streaming content that you want. Part of the Viiv protocol is that if you install ClickStar on your Viiv desktop, it'll magically show up on all of your TVs with Viiv media adaptors.
Most of your replies were rather, uhm, sympathetic.
Perhaps it's your mistake for letting your superiors think that you could do in 3 months what took 4 people 6 months? Either way, it's a good learning experience of not overpromising and/or identifying bad managers.
Take a look at Pragmatech's Web Publisher. (www.pragmatech.com) It's supposed to allow you to generate a web site from the same documents that your company's marketing people are cut & pasting from when a sales request comes in. If you can sell your marketing department on automated RFP generation, managing your web site could easily be a two-person tool.
Multi-threaded operating systems switch a CPU among many tasks, giving the appearence of multiple things running at the same time. This is known as context switching.
Every context switch has an associated penalty with it. It's really impossible for a modern operating system to not boggle down when a process wants 100% of a single-core CPU, even if the operating system throttles it. The context switches will still cause sluggish performence. What would happen is that the system would have brief, but noticable, bouts of unresponsiveness while the background task runs slowly.
Multi-core CPUs really are an improvement because they reduce the amount of time the system is busy in a context switch.
I find that minor bumps in processor speed don't make Office, web, and email much faster. Dual core is desirable for the situations where one task maxes out a CPU for a short period of time, which does happen in Office, web, and email.
On my personal system, a busy process brings Outlook to its knees. If I had a dual-core system, I wouldn't have a problem.
Cross-platform my ass! Since when does requiring me to download a proprietary browser make a web application cross-platform?
Given all of the different frame rates...
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Region-free PS3
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· Score: 1
Given all of the different frame rates across the globe, I don't see how this will work. How can a game optimized for a 60fps display easily be run on a 50fps display, and vice-versa, without some serious display issues?
When I bought a laptop I started to take it to class to take notes. If a professor told me that I couldn't take it to class I'd just ignore the directive and take it anyway; after all, I'm paying his/her salary.
When I bought my GSM, no-contract phone from T-Mobile, they told me I could get the unlock code in a few months. Of course, it helps that I bought the phone outright. Perhaps I should call and ask for it.:)
I forget the model number, but my phone cost about $110 after rebates. It's a Motorolla that's a bit more fancy then the one reviewed by the article, but I actually use the features of the phone. For example, when I save a contact, I use the internal memory instead of the SIM because it stores more information. I also use the camera instead of a notebook when I go shopping.
While I think Gates is right to mock these laptops, I don't think he understands the realities of the problems of helping others around the world. The only thing that helps others is letting them find or create their own opportunities to better their futures. Taking care of people today is counter-productive and can destroy opportunities in the future.
I bought a combo player two years ago and started to ignore the format of what I purchase. Most of my DVD-As are 96khz 24-bit in surround, (although they will play back at a lower resolution in a DVD-Video player.) About half of my SACDs don't have a CD layer, which means that I will be left with useless discs if the format fails. This isn't the case with my DVD-As because I'll always be able to play them in a DVD-Video player or buy DVD-A software to play them on a HTPC.
Anyway, to stay on topic, I've been pretty happy with the dual discs. Two of my dual discs (both NiN) are true DVD-A, and the other two are just DVD-video. It's pretty cool to be able to buy a CD that I can stick in a DVD player and have a music video or two.
I'm a big fan of surround sound on DVD. Compared to the stereo versions of the recordings, it feels much closer to being in a real concert hall. I've started to avoid SACD because they can't be played on a HTPC.
How soon until this has wireless internet and a decent hard drive? I really want to run VOIP wirelessly. Just think, they could put a little headset on a retractable wire!
I thought bytecode was supposed to solve the problem? Specifically, with.Net, you can run a program that caches a compiled version of a.Net assembly. In theory, it could compile it to run optimally on your specific chip.
A friend of mine is a V.P. for a major east coast cinema chain. I asked him why digital adoption is so slow and he explained the problem to me. Currently, theaters use film projectors that cost about $30,000 and last 30 years. Digital projectors cost $100,000 and become obsolete every five years. A film print costs about $2,000 to manufacture, while it costs about $100 (rough estimate) to make a copy of a digital movie. The problem is that the studios still charge the theater the same amount of money for a "digital" print. If they passed the savings of going digital to the theater, it would be cost-effective to use digital projectors.
And yes, digital projects are a huge improvement over traditional film. A local digital theater, when it can only get its print on film, still uses its digital projector for the coming attractions. When they switch over to film, you can see the picture start to shake and flicker.
Give me electrical outlets everywhere. If you can, try and make each outlet have four plugs instead of the usual 2.
Put an ethernet jack on the middle of each wall. Don't be afraid to put a few ethernet jacks together in areas where there will be a TV or a workspace.
Run coax to every room.
I don't know if this is legal, but wire the telephone system as if you were wiring ethernet. This way, when telephones are finaly obsolete, all of the telephone jacks can be turned into ethernet jacks.
Make all of the ethernet and coax terminate in a single wiring closet.
Consider having a few seperate circuits that can be hooked up to a UPS. You could go so far as to have one uninterupted outlet in each room, with its faceplate a different color.
Make it easy for me to add a line conditioner to my electrical system.
Someone mentioned having a dedicated home theater room. This might not be possible in all situations, but I would try and have an area that is optimized for a large screen television and surround sound. Put in-wall wiring in for at least 7.1 sound.
Run ethernet to one (or two if the house is large) places where a wireless access point can be hidden. Make sure that this is easy enough to access that it can be upgraded.
Right now, paper books are more natural. They are easy to aquire, easy to use, and "just work." If I go to e-book, I have to re-buy all of my books over again, (but the thought of getting rid of my bookshelf is appealing.)
I really won't consider e-books until I own one of the new ultra-mobile computers. At that point e-books become more natural because it's easy to carry ONE device around.
... The major difference here is that both disks have the same physical shape, and thus one can manufacture a combo player. This happened with SACD vs DVD-Audio and 33 vs 45 RPM records; combo players became the norm.
Personally, I think one of three things will happen:
If HTPC (home theater PCs) are quickly adopted, HD-DVD will win because of Blue-Ray's poor PC support. Early adopters of HTPC have little risk in either format because it will be easy and cheap to support the other format via an external USB drive. (This year's $1200 HTPC with HD-DVD can become a combo player next year with a $200 USB drive.)
If HTPC is adopted slower then standalone HD-DVD and Blue-ray players, we'll see combo players arrive quickly on the market. The consumer will be uneffected.
Video over the internet will become so popular that HD-DVD and Blue-ray are relegated to nitche markets.
The important figure (which are not revealed in this meticulously researched article) is which way did they make more money or which way did they move more units.
Easy. Most customers would have only purchased one track for $.99 on iTunes.
I honestly can't say that I'm surprised to see a model like this. It directly mirrors the movie industry's practice of releasing movies to theater before DVD. CDs, for the next 20-40 years or so, will be seen as "souveniers" for people who want a physical object to associate with a recording, and will continue to appeal to collectors. This model will give die-hard fans an incentive to buy the physical media.
Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced...
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AMD Subpoenas Skype
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· Score: 1
As far as Viiv is concerned, its primary advantage is ease-of-use. Specifically, if you have a Viiv HTPC that does DVR in your living room, you can stick a Viiv device on the TV in your kitchen and access all of your shows. It's supposed to be easy to set up, but I'll believe it when my parents set it up.;) Viiv computers also are supposed to start up within seconds.
The Pentium M can be placed in a desktop computer.
Although Intel has marketed the Pentium M exclusively as a mobile product, two motherboard manufacturers (AOpen and DFI) developed and shipped Pentium M compatible desktop boards in late 2004. An adapter, the CT-479, has also been developed by ASUS to allow the use of Pentium M processors in selected ASUS motherboards designed for Socket 478 Pentium 4 processors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_ M
Anyway, it was my mistake for saying Core Duo. I meant Centrino Duo, which uses Core Duo.
Anyway, we're now way off of the topic of this forum.
I was in a similar situation awhile ago where an employer was breaking a US tax law. (Specifically, they were requiring I, an independant contractor, behave like an employee, which is highly illegal.) I printed the IRS's summary of the law, which described the horrible consequences that they could face, and handed it to my manager. A few days later they started to obey the law.
So, if there is a web site from your government agency that discusses the legality of such cameras in very simple terms, just have your friend print it out and leave it on a Manager's desk. She could also cover the camera with a printout of the law when no one is looking.
It is a completely unstructured language that promotes very bad coding practices and allows for poorly writen applications to run anyway.
That's not true at all. (flamebait?) All VB.Net code that I've worked with is structured. Loops, procedures, and functions, which are what make a language structured, are core parts of VB.Net. If you are speaking for using VB in the pre-.Net days, keep in mind that VB.Net is a new language that is a considerable improvement over VB 6.
VB.Net allows for weakly-typed code, which is a double-edged sword. Beginners using weak typing in VB.Net will have problems, however weak typing is easier to use than reflection. Because I don't work with VB.Net on a daily basis, I am not sure if weak typing is enabled by default.
I've encountered both excellent and horrible code in VB.Net. The quality of the code is dependant on the programmer; had a different language been chosen, the code would have been just as bad.
What you say is true, to a degree. If the disk format is patented, or there is some patented procedure that must be used to read the disk, then distributing software that reads the disk could potentially violate the patent.
For example, if the file format uses MLP compression, distributing software that decompresses it will violate Dolby's patent.
Re:Do we have evidence that Intel coerced...
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AMD Subpoenas Skype
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· Score: 1
In the face of this threat, Intel is countering not by investing in engineering and improving their products, but by making a big new marketing campaign.
That's not really true. Intel is planning on releasing a new product line sometime this summer. Their new Core Duo platform improves battery life and the Vive platform is designed to make it easy to have a Home Theater PC. I would also look forward to a race between Intel and AMD to see who gets to quad-core first.
So now, to go back on topic, what about Skype? My initial reaction was very similar to yours, but after pondering the topic for awhile, I find it difficult to see why this is illegal. Considering that Intel helped develop 10-way calling, (http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_inte l.html), I don't understand why there's anything wrong with them saying that the feature can only be used on thier chips.
Slashdot Mirror
Then you want Viiv once ClickStar is mature. ClickStar is supposed to provide the streaming content that you want. Part of the Viiv protocol is that if you install ClickStar on your Viiv desktop, it'll magically show up on all of your TVs with Viiv media adaptors.
Perhaps it's your mistake for letting your superiors think that you could do in 3 months what took 4 people 6 months? Either way, it's a good learning experience of not overpromising and/or identifying bad managers.
(Disclaimer: I used to work for Pragmatech)
Isn't it believed that the earth has a spinning core of molten iron or some other heavy metal?
Multi-threaded operating systems switch a CPU among many tasks, giving the appearence of multiple things running at the same time. This is known as context switching.
Every context switch has an associated penalty with it. It's really impossible for a modern operating system to not boggle down when a process wants 100% of a single-core CPU, even if the operating system throttles it. The context switches will still cause sluggish performence. What would happen is that the system would have brief, but noticable, bouts of unresponsiveness while the background task runs slowly.
Multi-core CPUs really are an improvement because they reduce the amount of time the system is busy in a context switch.
On my personal system, a busy process brings Outlook to its knees. If I had a dual-core system, I wouldn't have a problem.
Given all of the different frame rates across the globe, I don't see how this will work. How can a game optimized for a 60fps display easily be run on a 50fps display, and vice-versa, without some serious display issues?
When I bought a laptop I started to take it to class to take notes. If a professor told me that I couldn't take it to class I'd just ignore the directive and take it anyway; after all, I'm paying his/her salary.
I forget the model number, but my phone cost about $110 after rebates. It's a Motorolla that's a bit more fancy then the one reviewed by the article, but I actually use the features of the phone. For example, when I save a contact, I use the internal memory instead of the SIM because it stores more information. I also use the camera instead of a notebook when I go shopping.
Anyway, to stay on topic, I've been pretty happy with the dual discs. Two of my dual discs (both NiN) are true DVD-A, and the other two are just DVD-video. It's pretty cool to be able to buy a CD that I can stick in a DVD player and have a music video or two.
How soon until this has wireless internet and a decent hard drive? I really want to run VOIP wirelessly. Just think, they could put a little headset on a retractable wire!
I thought bytecode was supposed to solve the problem? Specifically, with .Net, you can run a program that caches a compiled version of a .Net assembly. In theory, it could compile it to run optimally on your specific chip.
And yes, digital projects are a huge improvement over traditional film. A local digital theater, when it can only get its print on film, still uses its digital projector for the coming attractions. When they switch over to film, you can see the picture start to shake and flicker.
I really won't consider e-books until I own one of the new ultra-mobile computers. At that point e-books become more natural because it's easy to carry ONE device around.
Personally, I think one of three things will happen:
Easy. Most customers would have only purchased one track for $.99 on iTunes.
I honestly can't say that I'm surprised to see a model like this. It directly mirrors the movie industry's practice of releasing movies to theater before DVD. CDs, for the next 20-40 years or so, will be seen as "souveniers" for people who want a physical object to associate with a recording, and will continue to appeal to collectors. This model will give die-hard fans an incentive to buy the physical media.
As far as Viiv is concerned, its primary advantage is ease-of-use. Specifically, if you have a Viiv HTPC that does DVR in your living room, you can stick a Viiv device on the TV in your kitchen and access all of your shows. It's supposed to be easy to set up, but I'll believe it when my parents set it up. ;) Viiv computers also are supposed to start up within seconds.
The Pentium M can be placed in a desktop computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PentiumAnyway, it was my mistake for saying Core Duo. I meant Centrino Duo, which uses Core Duo.
Anyway, we're now way off of the topic of this forum.
So, if there is a web site from your government agency that discusses the legality of such cameras in very simple terms, just have your friend print it out and leave it on a Manager's desk. She could also cover the camera with a printout of the law when no one is looking.
VB.Net allows for weakly-typed code, which is a double-edged sword. Beginners using weak typing in VB.Net will have problems, however weak typing is easier to use than reflection. Because I don't work with VB.Net on a daily basis, I am not sure if weak typing is enabled by default.
I've encountered both excellent and horrible code in VB.Net. The quality of the code is dependant on the programmer; had a different language been chosen, the code would have been just as bad.
For example, if the file format uses MLP compression, distributing software that decompresses it will violate Dolby's patent.
That's not really true. Intel is planning on releasing a new product line sometime this summer. Their new Core Duo platform improves battery life and the Vive platform is designed to make it easy to have a Home Theater PC. I would also look forward to a race between Intel and AMD to see who gets to quad-core first.
So now, to go back on topic, what about Skype? My initial reaction was very similar to yours, but after pondering the topic for awhile, I find it difficult to see why this is illegal. Considering that Intel helped develop 10-way calling, (http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_inte l.html), I don't understand why there's anything wrong with them saying that the feature can only be used on thier chips.