Since I didn't see anyone else mention it, almost any DVI-capable video card with HDCP can output DRM'd HD media to any capable display (or if the card isn't HDCP compatible, it can output SD or DRM-free). The reason for this is that HDMI is completely compatible with DVI-D (single link) cable, and is directly convertible with only a simple pin conversion part (nearly the size of a DVI to VGA adapter).
Obviously, audio isn't transmitted over this link, and it isn't compatible with a VGA-only card.
I got kind of lucky. A Future Shop (think Best Buy; they're the same company) in the city here had five consoles in stock, with one being sold as I was buying another. I managed to grab one just by walking in, and I haven't seen anywhere else with Wii stock since.
It's only a matter of time before a less restricted version of this native 24Hz mode is made by a standards body and everyone's favourite whipping boy goes into marketing mode. I can see it now:
TruSpeed, Sony's 24Hz mode found on Sony TV's and those of several other licensees, offers superior image quality than the industry standard High-Definition Synchronization, or HDSync because its name also functions as a market buzzword. Both standards provide perfect film-quality frame-by-frame synchronization of the display, but only TruSpeed offers a two-syllable solution, making it faster and lighter than its tri-syllabic competition.
It's similar to the PC, but doesn't involve an IP. Assuming you can still access your friends list, you can simply make a private match and invite them in. Private matches are hosted directly, so once the connection is made, you don't need to worry about a monolithic server list to play with a few friends. It's what I've been doing since this whole thing started up with Live. If I can manage to get it to sign me in along with everyone else (it happens, just very slowly), then I can set up a match.
Firefox has Standards Mode, too (right-click anywhere on a page->View Page Info). It differentiates between "Quirks" mode and Standards-compliance mode. "Quirks" mode is used when invalid markup is detected, or if there's no DOM declared; Standards-compliance mode simply means that the site is being displayed to spec, instead of being cleaned up by the browser's interpretation as to what way it should look. Standards-compliance mode, in theory, should always look the same on every browser (it's why standards *exist*), but as everyone who's done web design knows, that's not the case.
That's not to say I support Microsoft, but as a web developer, I have to look forward to the day when most of the audience on the web can view my pages properly, without the need for time-consuming workarounds. In actuality, IE7 really has impacted me to an extent, since none of the old workarounds for IE6 work for it any more, and it still doesn't get things right. So I have to work around IE6, IE7, and any differences that those workarounds cause in browsers like Opera and Firefox who display it right the first time, which is a major headache and waste of time considering there's standards for these browsers to follow.
Now that you mention it, I have to say it: I really freaking hate the term "Podcast". What happened to webcast? Even that was a trendy term for it back in the day, but now we just have the popularity of the iPod leading to a ludicrous misuse of the word "cast".
"But yeah, you download it to your iPod, right, so it's a podcast!" And I can download it to my computer, too. I don't call my computer a pod. It really annoys the hell out of me. Maybe I just hate Steve Jobs.
That's true, but even installed programs need permission to run for the first time, both by Vista itself and then by the firewall if it's on, which is a fair number of hoops to jump through just to start using a program you already jumped through the hoops to install in the first place. Of course, this may have changed with an update; I haven't touched many Vista systems since its launch (maybe a dozen in total), despite working for a computer service shop. At launch, however, we had to go through multiple hoops doused in gasoline and set ablaze in order to get most of the basic stuff set up, with crashes abound (gee, thanks, NVidia!).
Actually, our biggest activities with Vista so far have been XP downgrades; I'd estimate that two out of every three Vista systems that come in have this done. Otherwise, it's a Vista install, and UAC is turned off until we send it out the door anyway. Very, very rarely does a Vista machine come in for spyware/virus cleanup, installation of this or that, etc. Maybe that itself is a sign that it's working well overall for those who like it? Or perhaps it's slow enough on mid-low hardware (common here) that most people don't notice another performance hit.:P
Correct me if I'm wrong - And I usually am - But in my experience with Linux/OS X, you never have to "Cancel/Allow" every new program you install on your PC (that includes the original installer and the final product after it's installed), even if it is only once. The OS doesn't take you for an idiot, and anything that can legitimately be installed legitimately runs - In a limited, sandbox-style mode. Vista's prompts are just like XP SP2's Run/Cancel dialogues (in fact, those are often combined with Cancel/Allow dialogues... Meaning two interruptions; Most often associated with installers), except they're there for pretty much everything you want to run, including programs you've already installed (but haven't run yet).
Wha? You keep your dissertation in boot.ini? Clever.
This deleted a single file, and even if it were to delete every file on your hard drive, you'd still have the option of recovery software. A delete without an overwrite is as simple as pie to recover, so if you've spent years on your dissertation, just spend the hour or so it'll take to get it back, if you haven't backed it up. Before you say it, yes, this is an installer, but if your installer flattened a hard drive before installing its software, you're looking at it failing before it gets to copy a file and your computer bombing fairly quickly, assuming that were actually possible. Assuming it only went for your dissertation, you're looking at something other than a programming error.
Long story short:
Disabling Windows != Hard Drive Gone.
Hell, a Windows Repair or even a few keystrokes in the recovery console would fix this, hence the Geek Squad being dispatched. And hell, Windows falls back to C:\Windows on Partition 1 of Disk 1 if it doesn't find a boot.ini anywhere, so most people are in the clear, anyway (which is what they meant by "Windows recovering" after that on a single-partition system).
And here everyone thought that the potential Canadian bill was going to be bad. Government-mandated content filtering... Where have I heard that before?
The point is, in my mind, that the price of a product should have nothing to do with how long you'll use the product for. That's an artificial inflation. Imagine I were a representative of the Spoon Manufacturers Association of America, a governing body of spoon manufacturers. Imagine I were to sell you a spoon, telling you that it's something that you'll use every day, and it'll last you all your life. Then, if I charge you $200 for it, what do you think of that? It's a spoon. After only one year, you're looking at a cost of $0.00038 per minute, and it only gets cheaper from there, especially when you factor in usage.
So, is the $200 spoon a good buy? If yes, then what happens when I sue you for letting someone else use the spoon?
The point is, just because you'll use something often, and for a long time, doesn't necessarily mean that it should be priced a certain way. That's pretty close to price fixing, given that the **AA is a representation of a collection of labels.
That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the clarification. Like I said, I don't know much about the dynamics of supersonic flight, so this is interesting to know.
It's not to combat piracy specifically; The tax actually goes to the music/video industries, regardless of the intended use of the blank media (CD, DVD, VHS, cassette tape, MP3 players, etc are all levied regardless of intended use).
Actually, it's not structural, it's more the fact that the air inlets are fixed rather than variable, so the engines can't get the optimal amount of air intake at different flight envelopes. Because of this, pushing the aircraft beyond mach 2.0 for any extended period of time will cause structural failures in the air intake. Presumably, this is a feature designed either to increase stealthiness or decrease overall weight and/or surface area, or perhaps to optimize air intake for supercruise. I'm not a flight engineer or rocket scientist, only an aircraft buff, so I can't really say.
I DARE you to take steel wool to a BD-ROM and play it flawlessly in a Blu-Ray player. Throw it across the room a few times like a frisbee, run it along your carpet, data-side down. Scratchless? No, clearly not. Scratch resistant? Yes, yes indeed. It needs it, because Blu-Ray's data surface is so close to the outer coating.
Us Canadians are expected to pay $64.99 for games, and routinely have been expected to pay $69.99 as of this generation until very recently. PS2/X-Box/GCN generation consoles routinely sold games for $59.99 and no cheaper, and it looks like very soon they may actually drop us to parity with the USA on game prices, if we're lucky.
And our dollar is worth $1.05 US. Stop complaining, seriously.
I'm actually fairly certain that Microsoft is in the black on the 360 (even if just a little), whereas the PS3 is still selling in the red. Little things like sticking with DVD, software-emulated backwards compatibility and the like cut costs a lot for them. While Sony promised everything under the sun and attempted to deliver, they failed on most counts, and now they're cutting features from PS3 consoles (and pulling entire lines off the shelves) and making full 180 turnarounds on many issues that were once important/unimportant (such as backwards compatibility and rumble). Microsoft's 360, on the other hand, is adding features as time goes on, and not a single 360 SKU has been retired yet to my knowledge (though the Core will soon be replaced by the Arcade).
So yeah, not the best way to bring down the MS giant. If only Sony and MS would exhaust themselves in a console war to such an extent that nobody could take either of them seriously any more, we'd be set.
Slashdot Mirror
Since I didn't see anyone else mention it, almost any DVI-capable video card with HDCP can output DRM'd HD media to any capable display (or if the card isn't HDCP compatible, it can output SD or DRM-free). The reason for this is that HDMI is completely compatible with DVI-D (single link) cable, and is directly convertible with only a simple pin conversion part (nearly the size of a DVI to VGA adapter).
Obviously, audio isn't transmitted over this link, and it isn't compatible with a VGA-only card.
I got kind of lucky. A Future Shop (think Best Buy; they're the same company) in the city here had five consoles in stock, with one being sold as I was buying another. I managed to grab one just by walking in, and I haven't seen anywhere else with Wii stock since.
Ironic, isn't it? =D
It's only a matter of time before a less restricted version of this native 24Hz mode is made by a standards body and everyone's favourite whipping boy goes into marketing mode. I can see it now:
TruSpeed, Sony's 24Hz mode found on Sony TV's and those of several other licensees, offers superior image quality than the industry standard High-Definition Synchronization, or HDSync because its name also functions as a market buzzword. Both standards provide perfect film-quality frame-by-frame synchronization of the display, but only TruSpeed offers a two-syllable solution, making it faster and lighter than its tri-syllabic competition.
Maybe they mean noise?
I demand to know why you posted as an anonymous coward. I have mod points, and if I were to use them on you now, that would be wasting them.
Curse you, Red Baron! >=|
It's similar to the PC, but doesn't involve an IP. Assuming you can still access your friends list, you can simply make a private match and invite them in. Private matches are hosted directly, so once the connection is made, you don't need to worry about a monolithic server list to play with a few friends. It's what I've been doing since this whole thing started up with Live. If I can manage to get it to sign me in along with everyone else (it happens, just very slowly), then I can set up a match.
Firefox has Standards Mode, too (right-click anywhere on a page->View Page Info). It differentiates between "Quirks" mode and Standards-compliance mode. "Quirks" mode is used when invalid markup is detected, or if there's no DOM declared; Standards-compliance mode simply means that the site is being displayed to spec, instead of being cleaned up by the browser's interpretation as to what way it should look. Standards-compliance mode, in theory, should always look the same on every browser (it's why standards *exist*), but as everyone who's done web design knows, that's not the case. That's not to say I support Microsoft, but as a web developer, I have to look forward to the day when most of the audience on the web can view my pages properly, without the need for time-consuming workarounds. In actuality, IE7 really has impacted me to an extent, since none of the old workarounds for IE6 work for it any more, and it still doesn't get things right. So I have to work around IE6, IE7, and any differences that those workarounds cause in browsers like Opera and Firefox who display it right the first time, which is a major headache and waste of time considering there's standards for these browsers to follow.
Now that you mention it, I have to say it: I really freaking hate the term "Podcast". What happened to webcast? Even that was a trendy term for it back in the day, but now we just have the popularity of the iPod leading to a ludicrous misuse of the word "cast".
"But yeah, you download it to your iPod, right, so it's a podcast!" And I can download it to my computer, too. I don't call my computer a pod. It really annoys the hell out of me. Maybe I just hate Steve Jobs.
That's true, but even installed programs need permission to run for the first time, both by Vista itself and then by the firewall if it's on, which is a fair number of hoops to jump through just to start using a program you already jumped through the hoops to install in the first place. Of course, this may have changed with an update; I haven't touched many Vista systems since its launch (maybe a dozen in total), despite working for a computer service shop. At launch, however, we had to go through multiple hoops doused in gasoline and set ablaze in order to get most of the basic stuff set up, with crashes abound (gee, thanks, NVidia!).
:P
Actually, our biggest activities with Vista so far have been XP downgrades; I'd estimate that two out of every three Vista systems that come in have this done. Otherwise, it's a Vista install, and UAC is turned off until we send it out the door anyway. Very, very rarely does a Vista machine come in for spyware/virus cleanup, installation of this or that, etc. Maybe that itself is a sign that it's working well overall for those who like it? Or perhaps it's slow enough on mid-low hardware (common here) that most people don't notice another performance hit.
Correct me if I'm wrong - And I usually am - But in my experience with Linux/OS X, you never have to "Cancel/Allow" every new program you install on your PC (that includes the original installer and the final product after it's installed), even if it is only once. The OS doesn't take you for an idiot, and anything that can legitimately be installed legitimately runs - In a limited, sandbox-style mode. Vista's prompts are just like XP SP2's Run/Cancel dialogues (in fact, those are often combined with Cancel/Allow dialogues... Meaning two interruptions; Most often associated with installers), except they're there for pretty much everything you want to run, including programs you've already installed (but haven't run yet).
Well, yeah, but what if you have electric heating?
Wha? You keep your dissertation in boot.ini? Clever.
This deleted a single file, and even if it were to delete every file on your hard drive, you'd still have the option of recovery software. A delete without an overwrite is as simple as pie to recover, so if you've spent years on your dissertation, just spend the hour or so it'll take to get it back, if you haven't backed it up. Before you say it, yes, this is an installer, but if your installer flattened a hard drive before installing its software, you're looking at it failing before it gets to copy a file and your computer bombing fairly quickly, assuming that were actually possible. Assuming it only went for your dissertation, you're looking at something other than a programming error.
Long story short:
Disabling Windows != Hard Drive Gone.
Hell, a Windows Repair or even a few keystrokes in the recovery console would fix this, hence the Geek Squad being dispatched. And hell, Windows falls back to C:\Windows on Partition 1 of Disk 1 if it doesn't find a boot.ini anywhere, so most people are in the clear, anyway (which is what they meant by "Windows recovering" after that on a single-partition system).
And here everyone thought that the potential Canadian bill was going to be bad. Government-mandated content filtering... Where have I heard that before?
The point is, in my mind, that the price of a product should have nothing to do with how long you'll use the product for. That's an artificial inflation. Imagine I were a representative of the Spoon Manufacturers Association of America, a governing body of spoon manufacturers. Imagine I were to sell you a spoon, telling you that it's something that you'll use every day, and it'll last you all your life. Then, if I charge you $200 for it, what do you think of that? It's a spoon. After only one year, you're looking at a cost of $0.00038 per minute, and it only gets cheaper from there, especially when you factor in usage.
So, is the $200 spoon a good buy? If yes, then what happens when I sue you for letting someone else use the spoon?
The point is, just because you'll use something often, and for a long time, doesn't necessarily mean that it should be priced a certain way. That's pretty close to price fixing, given that the **AA is a representation of a collection of labels.
That makes a lot more sense, thanks for the clarification. Like I said, I don't know much about the dynamics of supersonic flight, so this is interesting to know.
It's not to combat piracy specifically; The tax actually goes to the music/video industries, regardless of the intended use of the blank media (CD, DVD, VHS, cassette tape, MP3 players, etc are all levied regardless of intended use).
See the concept of Private Copying Levy.
Which, while being an awesome game, was also (for the clueless) a WWI fighter plane.
Actually, it's not structural, it's more the fact that the air inlets are fixed rather than variable, so the engines can't get the optimal amount of air intake at different flight envelopes. Because of this, pushing the aircraft beyond mach 2.0 for any extended period of time will cause structural failures in the air intake. Presumably, this is a feature designed either to increase stealthiness or decrease overall weight and/or surface area, or perhaps to optimize air intake for supercruise. I'm not a flight engineer or rocket scientist, only an aircraft buff, so I can't really say.
Oh, man, I'm glad I'm not THAT guy.
I DARE you to take steel wool to a BD-ROM and play it flawlessly in a Blu-Ray player. Throw it across the room a few times like a frisbee, run it along your carpet, data-side down. Scratchless? No, clearly not. Scratch resistant? Yes, yes indeed. It needs it, because Blu-Ray's data surface is so close to the outer coating.
Us Canadians are expected to pay $64.99 for games, and routinely have been expected to pay $69.99 as of this generation until very recently. PS2/X-Box/GCN generation consoles routinely sold games for $59.99 and no cheaper, and it looks like very soon they may actually drop us to parity with the USA on game prices, if we're lucky.
And our dollar is worth $1.05 US. Stop complaining, seriously.
I'm actually fairly certain that Microsoft is in the black on the 360 (even if just a little), whereas the PS3 is still selling in the red. Little things like sticking with DVD, software-emulated backwards compatibility and the like cut costs a lot for them. While Sony promised everything under the sun and attempted to deliver, they failed on most counts, and now they're cutting features from PS3 consoles (and pulling entire lines off the shelves) and making full 180 turnarounds on many issues that were once important/unimportant (such as backwards compatibility and rumble). Microsoft's 360, on the other hand, is adding features as time goes on, and not a single 360 SKU has been retired yet to my knowledge (though the Core will soon be replaced by the Arcade).
So yeah, not the best way to bring down the MS giant. If only Sony and MS would exhaust themselves in a console war to such an extent that nobody could take either of them seriously any more, we'd be set.
Maybe the company should, instead of using code that was developed by people in their spare time for other people, make their own damned code.
Anything for an easier dollar, right?