I know, I mean, first the earth was flat, and then they all tried to convice us is was round.
Then the earth was the center of the galaxy and everything revolved around us, and now we're just some random planet in billions that rotates around other things.
And now not all the stars have partners?!? That's crazy talk! I mean, people that believe that nonsense are heretics!
But seriously, I thought we figured this out before... Oh well, I could be wrong. Suppose if we did, we just made sure this time, which is a good idea in science. Until we figure out that they do have twins, but they're the evil, black magic, dark matter, twin that wants to take over the world...
If you bought something someone had stolen from you[1], then you would probably not be liable for handling stolen goods.
Isn't that like when someone asked if they could borrow your pencil and then tried to make you to buy it back from them? I believe the words Idiot and Gullible apply to someone who would actually pay money to get something they own back, especially if it's stolen. But hey, it's M$, so I guess that's accurate.
Next thing you know they'll be selling it on E-bay. Buy it now for $5.95+s/h. Now you can learn how to start your own business and pull in thousands of dollars a week from your 1 bedroom apartment!
Well, When the dupe appears on here in a month or so, please tell us how it is and if you have/haven't recieved it. We're all dying to find out, but unlike you aren't blessed with the $2-2.5k.
If I were you I'd seriously recheck tapes. I worked for a decent sized tape backup company for 3 years that also sold hard drive based solutions. By far we had a lower failure rate from tapes than from Hard Drives. Espeically when not in use for a while. We sold a virtual library system that used drives to look like tapes, but, again it was always highly recommnded to offload to physical tape to avoid the problems associated with hard drives. Working In tech support gave a "everything is broken" outlook on things, but I always wondered what the benifit of Hard Drive storage was. Sure, Hard drives are fast, but unless you're swapping out an entire RAID worth of disks, they're likely not as fast as some of the tape technologies out today (infact, most of the time someone complained their tape system was slow it was because they couldn't push the data to it fast enough, not because it couldn't write fast enough.
There are plenty of different ones to chose from now-a-days. Sure some get expensive, but the fact that they can be read by about anyone (if your drive dies, you can get one on E-bay, buy a new one, get one from another company, lease one, or even send the tape to a data recovery place that will load its contents into the media of your choice.) They stay good for a long time (most have archival life for well over 15 years, some say up to 50 years.) They don't have many moving parts (and if the transport mechinism in the tape dies, you can always take the physical tape out of the casette and put it in a working one) They have advanced lossless compression technologies. They are built to deal with bad sectors, they have CRC checking, they have tape striping solutions, they can be completely automated in a library, their capacity per cubic inch outweighs hard drives, they're lighter than hard drives, they're cheaper than hard drives, and their faster than hard drives if you want to pay the money (LTO-2 = 35MB/sec NATIVE with compression I regularly saw speeds over 100MB/sec. LTO-3 is double that) They can be used over and over, and aren't as picky about temperature differences (as long as you don't leave them on your dashboard in the sun). The most important difference in my mind is: Tapes don't break when you drop them! And if the casette breaks, see above.
I guess it comes down to how long you want them to be good for. If you're cycling through drives every two-three days, then maybe it's not a big deal. If you're going to go for months/years between uses, then I'd go tapes all the way.
We all know the story is a dupe... what's funny is the fact that the story was only up three times, the number of duplicate comments telling everyone that the story is a dupe has to be over 50+ by now.
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Besides, in Soviet Russia, the Webpage Only Takes 50ms to Judge You!
But all music turns into analog at some point. So that's not a very accurate retort.
CD's store music in 1's and 0's.. So do MP3s, WAVs, AIFFs, VOCs, AUs, etc... the only difference between thet two is compression. And if you think about music piracy, it's still "Piracy" as defined by the RIAA if someone makes a bit for bit copy of a CD without it being turned to analog first.
I think they just used "Digital Music" as a marketing buzz word.
Actually it IS 18 inches... the pool was 1.5 ft underground, and the rest was above ground. 4.5 ft deep total I believe. it was done that way to meet up with the height of the first floor of the house so the deck surrounding the pool would be only a small step down from the first floor.
We have the same sort of thing in Virginia "MISS Utility"... the problem is, they aren't required to respond in a timely manor. One of my friends had called it, a number of utilities came out and marked them within the next few days. Excavation began, a pool went in, a deck, some concrete, and then a second power guy came out and figured out that a 33kv powerline ran about 24"-36" underground right through the middle of the pool that was already complete with water and being used. Luckily they only dug down 18" for the pool...
I also have a Minolta SRT-201 SLR. It was my dad's until I was old enough to use it and it has now become mine, along with it's stock 45mm lens, I also have a 85-300mm, a 28mm, a doubler, and even a T mount Telescope adapter. I've gotten many many years of faithful service out of both the camera body and the lenses I have for it. I understand that the Digital Cameras today have made the old fully manual SLRs of the past look like dinosaurs, but Minolta's presence will be missed.
I have since upgraded to a Canon Digital Rebel XT, and wish that I could use the lenses from my old Minolta. I guess I future proofed myself a bit by going with a camera that takes standard EOS Lenses (All EOS Lenses work on the Digital Rebel, but there are a few lenses made for the digital that don't work on film EOS Bodies).
I would like to point out one thing that digital has that film doesn't (besides the obvious ones). The bodies are the same size (approx) between film and digital, but the digital has a smaller sensor. There are cameras (like the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II) that have what's called "Full Frame" sensors that register across all 35mm as if it was film, but most do not. What this leads to is two things, one the actual pixel density is higher (yes, it's a 16.7 MegaPixel sensor vs. the XT's 8 MegaPixel Sensor), this allows more detail to be captured in a smaller area. Because of this, my Minolta's 45mm lens is approximately what I capture on the XT with around a 25-30mm lens. So, the second thing is the size of the Lenses can be smaller to get the same view. I think in the future the "Medium Format" cameras of old (say the 120mm cameras which make stunning enlargements, showing details you didn't even know were there) will eventually die out once a high enough pixel density is achieved due to the fine grain of film is no longer being an issue when enlarging with Digital Photography (and high pixel densities).
I have to say though, there are still many times when I like having my good old Minolta around (for things like 30+ minute Astrophotography exposures), so while Digital is quite prevelent and doing a great job at a lot of things, I think it still has a ways to go before it will be the defacto standard in professional photography (atleast for people doing anything emphasizing on enlargment quality).
I really do have to wonder if Minolta could have made a better offering in the Digital Realm that would have secured them an EOS Digital Rebel like stance in the market.
I'm definately not a huge fan of flash for videos like this. yeah, it works for quick animations and menus and such, but this is a video, how about we pick a tried-and-true standard that everyone can play back, like Mpeg. or if you want to skimp on bandwidth, divx or xvid.
That being said this is perhaps the only time I've gotten flash videos to play on here correctly. Usually this box just shows a big "you need to download this" box and then it tells me that the appropriate plugin isn't available (firefox on linux). But this time it played, with sound and everything. not sure what they did that other people haven't but kudos to them.
And before people say "well you just need to install..." or "can't you install linux properly" or whatever else they want to say. I kinda like browsing without flash working. Saves me from tons of crap on the net, and half the the time I'm on windows I flat out disable it. Afterall, Slashdot/Gmail/ebay/plenty of other sites run fine, why should I allow more flash based pop-up-over-everything-until-I-Adblock-them ads to annoy me?
And back on topic. I've definately seen all of these before During shows On TV. It's hard to forget an episode where they blow up a concrete truck with TONS of TNT!
It's a good plan, but every single floor would have to be individually pressurized to match the bottom floor and the elevator.
That being said, there are certian locations where they've done such a thing. Last time I was at The Sears Tower in Chicago (probably 8 years ago now) I went up to the observation deck on like the 106th floor. There is an express elevator for all the tourists that starts in the basement and goes directly to the 106th in under 45 seconds. Thing is FAST, ears pop once on the way up, but the reason they don't pop twice is because the entire basement is about the same pressure as the 106th. I'm sure it's a pain to keep it that way though, and as I said, you're ears still pop once, so the system isn't perfect but we had to go through double doors that try to keep the pressure consistant and all that fun stuff. It's wierd to go into a basement and have your ears pop...
I'm sure that since there are only so many people droping that much money during one quarter (for the holiday season) that both the Revolution and the PS3 will sell at "less than expected" numbers. So I wonder if it's really in their best interests to fight at that point. However, on the flip side it may help to hide the fact that they don't won't have enough units to ship for the season.
Oh, and Best Buy will now have to have two lines of people waiting at 3am, one for the Revolution, and one for the PS3. I can just hear the almost religious wars being waged between those lines-- So yeah, it could be an interesting time. LOL
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I pay to connect to the internet (charge #1). THe company I'm connecting to (say xyz.com) has some servers somewhere. They're not just hanging on the internet for free, they're probably in a CoLoc or Server Room somewhere that has to Pay to be connected to the internet (charge #2). It's in this way that pulling files from friends websites work too. We ALL pay to connect to "The Internet". So basically I'm paying for my half of the digital journey to their website, and xyz.com is paying for the other half of the digital journey to their website (and vice versa on the return trip).
So now the ISP wants me to pay for my data to get ALL THE WAY to xyz.com even though xyz.com already paid for that leg of the journey, and vice versa.
ALSO. xyz.com is probably leasing a T/DS3 from the ISP. part of this leasing agreement states that the T/DS3 must be relyable (most have a 99.9%+ uptime promise) and fast dedicated bandwidth. So again, this is already been done and paid for.
And lets all remember that if companies didn't exist on the internet, people wouldn't want to be there either... So if companies can't afford this, their subscribers will leave too and they'll end up loosing money from both sides.
The tricky thing with patching UT 2007 for PS3 is that it would be on a console... that doesn't necessarily have access to the internet (sure the user COULD plug it in and configure it and get a patch...) So the fact that the game release should be bug free is a good idea.
But that's a game, and if you have a bug, as long as it's not a big one that corrupts everything or freezes the game, 'eh, big deal. it's just a game.
Now if we were all going to wait for MS to come out with a bug free version of Windows BEFORE they shipped it, we'd be running DOS 1... (well, hopefully it'd be released by now.)
THe main issue is just getting rid of the big bugs that corrupt or hang or etc., the tiny "sometimes the window doesn't refresh" or the "sometimes this button doesn't work" bugs, oh well. patch it later. "The good of the many outweigh the good of the few." Release it so that the Many don't see the bugs, and the few will just have to update later.
If this is really a huge issue for you (and I can see where you're coming from) then just get a Digital SLR. One viewfinder, perfect shot everytime. And you can have any lens you want (or can afford) and swap it out. And you'll get better quality shots out of it... Sure it may cost a little more, but buy it once, buy it right, or don't buy it at all.
I completely agree. I used to be all gung-ho about getting the latest and the greatest, but there's really no point anymore. I have plenty of games I haven't beaten for the current one, not to mention the plethora of games that I can now get used for 10-15 bucks because someone decided to trade in all of the current games for x-box 360 stuff. Besides, it's only going to get better and cheaper in the mean time.
I also agree that the current X-box is no where close to maxed out. In looking at games I find ones everyonce in a while that offer 480p, 720p, or even 1080i game play for the current system (though I only saw one of the latter). If you want to realize how much potential the x-box still has, throw a 720p game in there (like Tony Hawk Underground, or Soul Calibur 3). On an HD screen, the graphics are so much brighter, crisper and more detailed. And the game play is still a nice smooth framerate. I start to think that the x-box 360 cut the development of 720p and 1080i games for the current console short. And in the next year or so, systems will just get faster, less power-hungry, and more stable...
In your future, probably around June-July, you should see an article about a hard drive manufacture that was able to some how, beyond everyone's expectations, cram approximatly 25% more data per platter than ever before! Infact, using my crystal ball (i.e. xcalc) it'll probably be around 200GB.
There will probably be some people asking if it will run on linux.
There will be some people who say they couldn't imagine needing that much
There will be some people stating how happy they are that they can now store 40 more GB of porn per platter than ever before.
The last time I remember two standards really working out well was VHS and BetaMax... Oh wait, that didn't work out well did it.. We all ended up tossing our superior BetaMax decks for big, lower quality, VHS ones. Just think my pile of VHS tapes could have been so much smaller if Beta won... But I digress. Honestly, in the VHS vs BetaMax, they're both still in use (well, maybe not as wide spread as they were a few years ago), just some on the professional side of the fence and some on the home side. So is that going to happen for these two standards? I suppose time will tell.
I believe outlook used to have a message when a read receipt was requested that said "This message is to notify you that the message you sent to xxxx was received and displayed on his/her screen. It does not necessarily mean that he/she read the message". Maybe it was another program, but just because Outlook chooses to pop open and display something on my screen, doesn't mean I read it. 1600x1200+ is a lot of realestate, ICQ/AIM pops up all the time and displays messages, but I don't look at them until I'm done with whatever my current thought is (thank you for focus staying where my mouse is and not on some random pop-up window).
Well, actually they have bargin bins now. You know, you go to walmart or best buy or whatever and they have a bin full of disorganized CD's or DVD's that are on sale for 5 bucks a pop because they want to get rid of them. Mostly because they're taking up perfectly good shelf space that could go towards something they know they'll be able to sell at 15 bucks each.
Now, you have to remember, that following the same idea, a digital online store with finite storage space will want to populate it's storage with songs that will also fill their wallets. If you can, say, only fit 10 songs on your site, you want as many of those to be frequently downloaded 99 cent songs. So if they have the option to carry 5 that are very popular and 5 that arent, they'll wonder why they don't get rid of the ones that don't make money and put money makers in their place.
Using that logic, this example site would want to either A.) Dump the 5 that don't sell, or B.) Charge more for the ones that don't sell to make them make as much as the ones that do. (Of couse, if they're too high, then they won't sell, but there's usually some happy medium that meets the supply and demand principal) That policy is why AutoCad and 3d Studio and other such highly specific programs are so darn expensive. Sure your average game probably has more development time in it, but you know you're going to sell them to every tom, dick, and harry... where as 3d Studio, well, there are only a few hundred people out there that have the coffers to dump a number of grand on the table for a copy.
I'm not saying it's the way music should go, I'm just playing the DA here. Frankly I think if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 99 cents a song isn't bad considering most albums only have like 3-4 good songs anyway (and if it doesn't I don't buy it), so you end up spending 4 bucks for an album instead of 15 (which comes out to like $3.75 per good song instead of 99 cents).
The real reason for the PSP not selling as well as the DS is the audience and the games. I've used both and I believe the PSP is far superior in every way shape and form. Screen is better, it's much more ergnomic, and the graphic quality is outstanding. However, it doesn't have games that target the market the device itself is going into. That's where the DS shines and shines brightly.
In retrospect, I thought the same about the game gear vs. the game boy. IMHO, The game boy Sucked. Yes I had one, and yes I bought games for it. The games were cool, the device sucked, but since the games were so good, I kept playing it and everyone else did too. Even though, IMHO, The game gear was better.
So as you pointed out the DS has better games than the PSP. And the games will make or break the Revolution. If the controller fits those games and it's all worth playing, they WILL SELL. But if the controller does turn out to be a gimmick (which, though I haven't had the chance to try one, it really looks like it to me) and there aren't games or any real reasons for people to buy the Revolution, It's going to be a sign that Nintendo isn't going to be able to cut it anymore in the big screen arena.
I'm all about the mandate, makes sense as the whole original reason for using different.??? endings was to make things organized (org = orginazations, com=commercial, etc...) so.xxx=porn only makes sense. It doesn't seem like that hard of a decision either, heck it seems like if you just make it avaiable, the relevent sites will jump on it so they can be the first to be there. I figure it's good advertising, makes their content easier to block I suppose, but it also makes easier to find for those who are looking for it.
The only question about a forced turnover to that is what's going to happen to the already used.com names? Will playboy.com be owned by Playboy still, but just not have any nudity, maybe just a "clean" ad for their.xxx site? If they're forced to give up their.com name completely, then Joe Schmoe can grab it and host some adware, virus, pop-up loaded "search engine" and try to snag everyone that doesn't pay attention to ICANN news.
Ok, so this might be off topic but to respond to the previous poster's:
...even the PC industry (try to get a PC without MS Windows).
I can think of one right off the top of my head because my company just dropped money on another 8 servers. Dell Yeap, they've got (and have had for as long as I can remember) a "No OS Installed" option. Quite handy when you want to put your own Gentoo or netBSD distro on there and it's not in Dell's "we'll install this for you" list, or for people like me who'd like to install the packages they want and not install the stuff they don't need.
Now, to be back on topic, I know I would definately pay a little more than the current average cost per channel to only get decent ones because I know I would still come out ahead. I mean, right now it's like 40-50 bucks a month for basic digital cable, we get, maybe 150 channels? That would equate out to 26 to 30 cents a channel. I watch, probably 10-15 of those. At 30 cents each, that's $3-$4.50, not 40-50 bucks. Even at double or heck, tripple that ($12 bucks) I'd still be saving over 28 bucks a month!
It also might be interesting to use the data of which channels people buy to show the networks what people like. If lots of people choose DIY, HGTV, Food, Discovery, etc.. then maybe they'll start making shows that appeal to those people to try and get them to drop the $2 bucks on their station. And just like people who buy a console just for one game, I'm sure there are plenty of people who think "Hey, they got this one show I want to watch, I wonder if they have anything else? Well I'll Drop 2 bucks to find out!". It may actually HELP the networks at the same time.
Slashdot Mirror
Verizon has the right to set aside bandwidth for its own projects. i.e. Porn.
I know, I mean, first the earth was flat, and then they all tried to convice us is was round.
Then the earth was the center of the galaxy and everything revolved around us, and now we're just some random planet in billions that rotates around other things.
And now not all the stars have partners?!? That's crazy talk! I mean, people that believe that nonsense are heretics!
But seriously, I thought we figured this out before... Oh well, I could be wrong. Suppose if we did, we just made sure this time, which is a good idea in science. Until we figure out that they do have twins, but they're the evil, black magic, dark matter, twin that wants to take over the world...
If you bought something someone had stolen from you[1], then you would probably not be liable for handling stolen goods.
Isn't that like when someone asked if they could borrow your pencil and then tried to make you to buy it back from them? I believe the words Idiot and Gullible apply to someone who would actually pay money to get something they own back, especially if it's stolen. But hey, it's M$, so I guess that's accurate.
Next thing you know they'll be selling it on E-bay. Buy it now for $5.95+s/h. Now you can learn how to start your own business and pull in thousands of dollars a week from your 1 bedroom apartment!
Well, When the dupe appears on here in a month or so, please tell us how it is and if you have/haven't recieved it. We're all dying to find out, but unlike you aren't blessed with the $2-2.5k.
If I were you I'd seriously recheck tapes. I worked for a decent sized tape backup company for 3 years that also sold hard drive based solutions. By far we had a lower failure rate from tapes than from Hard Drives. Espeically when not in use for a while. We sold a virtual library system that used drives to look like tapes, but, again it was always highly recommnded to offload to physical tape to avoid the problems associated with hard drives.
Working In tech support gave a "everything is broken" outlook on things, but I always wondered what the benifit of Hard Drive storage was. Sure, Hard drives are fast, but unless you're swapping out an entire RAID worth of disks, they're likely not as fast as some of the tape technologies out today (infact, most of the time someone complained their tape system was slow it was because they couldn't push the data to it fast enough, not because it couldn't write fast enough.
There are plenty of different ones to chose from now-a-days. Sure some get expensive, but the fact that they can be read by about anyone (if your drive dies, you can get one on E-bay, buy a new one, get one from another company, lease one, or even send the tape to a data recovery place that will load its contents into the media of your choice.) They stay good for a long time (most have archival life for well over 15 years, some say up to 50 years.) They don't have many moving parts (and if the transport mechinism in the tape dies, you can always take the physical tape out of the casette and put it in a working one) They have advanced lossless compression technologies. They are built to deal with bad sectors, they have CRC checking, they have tape striping solutions, they can be completely automated in a library, their capacity per cubic inch outweighs hard drives, they're lighter than hard drives, they're cheaper than hard drives, and their faster than hard drives if you want to pay the money (LTO-2 = 35MB/sec NATIVE with compression I regularly saw speeds over 100MB/sec. LTO-3 is double that) They can be used over and over, and aren't as picky about temperature differences (as long as you don't leave them on your dashboard in the sun). The most important difference in my mind is: Tapes don't break when you drop them! And if the casette breaks, see above.
I guess it comes down to how long you want them to be good for. If you're cycling through drives every two-three days, then maybe it's not a big deal. If you're going to go for months/years between uses, then I'd go tapes all the way.
We all know the story is a dupe... what's funny is the fact that the story was only up three times, the number of duplicate comments telling everyone that the story is a dupe has to be over 50+ by now.
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Besides, in Soviet Russia, the Webpage Only Takes 50ms to Judge You!
But all music turns into analog at some point. So that's not a very accurate retort.
CD's store music in 1's and 0's.. So do MP3s, WAVs, AIFFs, VOCs, AUs, etc... the only difference between thet two is compression. And if you think about music piracy, it's still "Piracy" as defined by the RIAA if someone makes a bit for bit copy of a CD without it being turned to analog first.
I think they just used "Digital Music" as a marketing buzz word.
Actually it IS 18 inches... the pool was 1.5 ft underground, and the rest was above ground. 4.5 ft deep total I believe. it was done that way to meet up with the height of the first floor of the house so the deck surrounding the pool would be only a small step down from the first floor.
We have the same sort of thing in Virginia "MISS Utility"... the problem is, they aren't required to respond in a timely manor. One of my friends had called it, a number of utilities came out and marked them within the next few days. Excavation began, a pool went in, a deck, some concrete, and then a second power guy came out and figured out that a 33kv powerline ran about 24"-36" underground right through the middle of the pool that was already complete with water and being used. Luckily they only dug down 18" for the pool...
I also have a Minolta SRT-201 SLR. It was my dad's until I was old enough to use it and it has now become mine, along with it's stock 45mm lens, I also have a 85-300mm, a 28mm, a doubler, and even a T mount Telescope adapter. I've gotten many many years of faithful service out of both the camera body and the lenses I have for it. I understand that the Digital Cameras today have made the old fully manual SLRs of the past look like dinosaurs, but Minolta's presence will be missed.
I have since upgraded to a Canon Digital Rebel XT, and wish that I could use the lenses from my old Minolta. I guess I future proofed myself a bit by going with a camera that takes standard EOS Lenses (All EOS Lenses work on the Digital Rebel, but there are a few lenses made for the digital that don't work on film EOS Bodies).
I would like to point out one thing that digital has that film doesn't (besides the obvious ones). The bodies are the same size (approx) between film and digital, but the digital has a smaller sensor. There are cameras (like the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II) that have what's called "Full Frame" sensors that register across all 35mm as if it was film, but most do not. What this leads to is two things, one the actual pixel density is higher (yes, it's a 16.7 MegaPixel sensor vs. the XT's 8 MegaPixel Sensor), this allows more detail to be captured in a smaller area. Because of this, my Minolta's 45mm lens is approximately what I capture on the XT with around a 25-30mm lens. So, the second thing is the size of the Lenses can be smaller to get the same view. I think in the future the "Medium Format" cameras of old (say the 120mm cameras which make stunning enlargements, showing details you didn't even know were there) will eventually die out once a high enough pixel density is achieved due to the fine grain of film is no longer being an issue when enlarging with Digital Photography (and high pixel densities).
I have to say though, there are still many times when I like having my good old Minolta around (for things like 30+ minute Astrophotography exposures), so while Digital is quite prevelent and doing a great job at a lot of things, I think it still has a ways to go before it will be the defacto standard in professional photography (atleast for people doing anything emphasizing on enlargment quality).
I really do have to wonder if Minolta could have made a better offering in the Digital Realm that would have secured them an EOS Digital Rebel like stance in the market.
I'm definately not a huge fan of flash for videos like this. yeah, it works for quick animations and menus and such, but this is a video, how about we pick a tried-and-true standard that everyone can play back, like Mpeg. or if you want to skimp on bandwidth, divx or xvid.
That being said this is perhaps the only time I've gotten flash videos to play on here correctly. Usually this box just shows a big "you need to download this" box and then it tells me that the appropriate plugin isn't available (firefox on linux). But this time it played, with sound and everything. not sure what they did that other people haven't but kudos to them.
And before people say "well you just need to install..." or "can't you install linux properly" or whatever else they want to say. I kinda like browsing without flash working. Saves me from tons of crap on the net, and half the the time I'm on windows I flat out disable it. Afterall, Slashdot/Gmail/ebay/plenty of other sites run fine, why should I allow more flash based pop-up-over-everything-until-I-Adblock-them ads to annoy me?
And back on topic. I've definately seen all of these before During shows On TV. It's hard to forget an episode where they blow up a concrete truck with TONS of TNT!
It's a good plan, but every single floor would have to be individually pressurized to match the bottom floor and the elevator.
That being said, there are certian locations where they've done such a thing. Last time I was at The Sears Tower in Chicago (probably 8 years ago now) I went up to the observation deck on like the 106th floor. There is an express elevator for all the tourists that starts in the basement and goes directly to the 106th in under 45 seconds. Thing is FAST, ears pop once on the way up, but the reason they don't pop twice is because the entire basement is about the same pressure as the 106th. I'm sure it's a pain to keep it that way though, and as I said, you're ears still pop once, so the system isn't perfect but we had to go through double doors that try to keep the pressure consistant and all that fun stuff. It's wierd to go into a basement and have your ears pop...
I'm sure that since there are only so many people droping that much money during one quarter (for the holiday season) that both the Revolution and the PS3 will sell at "less than expected" numbers. So I wonder if it's really in their best interests to fight at that point. However, on the flip side it may help to hide the fact that they don't won't have enough units to ship for the season.
Oh, and Best Buy will now have to have two lines of people waiting at 3am, one for the Revolution, and one for the PS3. I can just hear the almost religious wars being waged between those lines-- So yeah, it could be an interesting time. LOL
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I pay to connect to the internet (charge #1). THe company I'm connecting to (say xyz.com) has some servers somewhere. They're not just hanging on the internet for free, they're probably in a CoLoc or Server Room somewhere that has to Pay to be connected to the internet (charge #2). It's in this way that pulling files from friends websites work too. We ALL pay to connect to "The Internet". So basically I'm paying for my half of the digital journey to their website, and xyz.com is paying for the other half of the digital journey to their website (and vice versa on the return trip).
So now the ISP wants me to pay for my data to get ALL THE WAY to xyz.com even though xyz.com already paid for that leg of the journey, and vice versa.
ALSO. xyz.com is probably leasing a T/DS3 from the ISP. part of this leasing agreement states that the T/DS3 must be relyable (most have a 99.9%+ uptime promise) and fast dedicated bandwidth. So again, this is already been done and paid for.
And lets all remember that if companies didn't exist on the internet, people wouldn't want to be there either... So if companies can't afford this, their subscribers will leave too and they'll end up loosing money from both sides.
The tricky thing with patching UT 2007 for PS3 is that it would be on a console... that doesn't necessarily have access to the internet (sure the user COULD plug it in and configure it and get a patch...) So the fact that the game release should be bug free is a good idea.
But that's a game, and if you have a bug, as long as it's not a big one that corrupts everything or freezes the game, 'eh, big deal. it's just a game.
Now if we were all going to wait for MS to come out with a bug free version of Windows BEFORE they shipped it, we'd be running DOS 1... (well, hopefully it'd be released by now.)
THe main issue is just getting rid of the big bugs that corrupt or hang or etc., the tiny "sometimes the window doesn't refresh" or the "sometimes this button doesn't work" bugs, oh well. patch it later. "The good of the many outweigh the good of the few." Release it so that the Many don't see the bugs, and the few will just have to update later.
If this is really a huge issue for you (and I can see where you're coming from) then just get a Digital SLR. One viewfinder, perfect shot everytime. And you can have any lens you want (or can afford) and swap it out. And you'll get better quality shots out of it... Sure it may cost a little more, but buy it once, buy it right, or don't buy it at all.
I completely agree. I used to be all gung-ho about getting the latest and the greatest, but there's really no point anymore. I have plenty of games I haven't beaten for the current one, not to mention the plethora of games that I can now get used for 10-15 bucks because someone decided to trade in all of the current games for x-box 360 stuff. Besides, it's only going to get better and cheaper in the mean time.
I also agree that the current X-box is no where close to maxed out. In looking at games I find ones everyonce in a while that offer 480p, 720p, or even 1080i game play for the current system (though I only saw one of the latter). If you want to realize how much potential the x-box still has, throw a 720p game in there (like Tony Hawk Underground, or Soul Calibur 3). On an HD screen, the graphics are so much brighter, crisper and more detailed. And the game play is still a nice smooth framerate. I start to think that the x-box 360 cut the development of 720p and 1080i games for the current console short. And in the next year or so, systems will just get faster, less power-hungry, and more stable...
Well, atleast they're consistant....
In your future, probably around June-July, you should see an article about a hard drive manufacture that was able to some how, beyond everyone's expectations, cram approximatly 25% more data per platter than ever before! Infact, using my crystal ball (i.e. xcalc) it'll probably be around 200GB.
There will probably be some people asking if it will run on linux.
There will be some people who say they couldn't imagine needing that much
There will be some people stating how happy they are that they can now store 40 more GB of porn per platter than ever before.
There will probably even be a few dupes.
Good times will be had by all.
The last time I remember two standards really working out well was VHS and BetaMax... Oh wait, that didn't work out well did it.. We all ended up tossing our superior BetaMax decks for big, lower quality, VHS ones. Just think my pile of VHS tapes could have been so much smaller if Beta won... But I digress. Honestly, in the VHS vs BetaMax, they're both still in use (well, maybe not as wide spread as they were a few years ago), just some on the professional side of the fence and some on the home side. So is that going to happen for these two standards? I suppose time will tell.
I believe outlook used to have a message when a read receipt was requested that said "This message is to notify you that the message you sent to xxxx was received and displayed on his/her screen. It does not necessarily mean that he/she read the message". Maybe it was another program, but just because Outlook chooses to pop open and display something on my screen, doesn't mean I read it. 1600x1200+ is a lot of realestate, ICQ/AIM pops up all the time and displays messages, but I don't look at them until I'm done with whatever my current thought is (thank you for focus staying where my mouse is and not on some random pop-up window).
Well, actually they have bargin bins now. You know, you go to walmart or best buy or whatever and they have a bin full of disorganized CD's or DVD's that are on sale for 5 bucks a pop because they want to get rid of them. Mostly because they're taking up perfectly good shelf space that could go towards something they know they'll be able to sell at 15 bucks each.
Now, you have to remember, that following the same idea, a digital online store with finite storage space will want to populate it's storage with songs that will also fill their wallets. If you can, say, only fit 10 songs on your site, you want as many of those to be frequently downloaded 99 cent songs. So if they have the option to carry 5 that are very popular and 5 that arent, they'll wonder why they don't get rid of the ones that don't make money and put money makers in their place.
Using that logic, this example site would want to either A.) Dump the 5 that don't sell, or B.) Charge more for the ones that don't sell to make them make as much as the ones that do. (Of couse, if they're too high, then they won't sell, but there's usually some happy medium that meets the supply and demand principal) That policy is why AutoCad and 3d Studio and other such highly specific programs are so darn expensive. Sure your average game probably has more development time in it, but you know you're going to sell them to every tom, dick, and harry... where as 3d Studio, well, there are only a few hundred people out there that have the coffers to dump a number of grand on the table for a copy.
I'm not saying it's the way music should go, I'm just playing the DA here. Frankly I think if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 99 cents a song isn't bad considering most albums only have like 3-4 good songs anyway (and if it doesn't I don't buy it), so you end up spending 4 bucks for an album instead of 15 (which comes out to like $3.75 per good song instead of 99 cents).
The real reason for the PSP not selling as well as the DS is the audience and the games. I've used both and I believe the PSP is far superior in every way shape and form. Screen is better, it's much more ergnomic, and the graphic quality is outstanding. However, it doesn't have games that target the market the device itself is going into. That's where the DS shines and shines brightly.
In retrospect, I thought the same about the game gear vs. the game boy. IMHO, The game boy Sucked. Yes I had one, and yes I bought games for it. The games were cool, the device sucked, but since the games were so good, I kept playing it and everyone else did too. Even though, IMHO, The game gear was better.
So as you pointed out the DS has better games than the PSP. And the games will make or break the Revolution. If the controller fits those games and it's all worth playing, they WILL SELL. But if the controller does turn out to be a gimmick (which, though I haven't had the chance to try one, it really looks like it to me) and there aren't games or any real reasons for people to buy the Revolution, It's going to be a sign that Nintendo isn't going to be able to cut it anymore in the big screen arena.
I'm all about the mandate, makes sense as the whole original reason for using different .??? endings was to make things organized (org = orginazations, com=commercial, etc...) so .xxx=porn only makes sense. It doesn't seem like that hard of a decision either, heck it seems like if you just make it avaiable, the relevent sites will jump on it so they can be the first to be there. I figure it's good advertising, makes their content easier to block I suppose, but it also makes easier to find for those who are looking for it.
.com names? Will playboy.com be owned by Playboy still, but just not have any nudity, maybe just a "clean" ad for their .xxx site? If they're forced to give up their .com name completely, then Joe Schmoe can grab it and host some adware, virus, pop-up loaded "search engine" and try to snag everyone that doesn't pay attention to ICANN news.
The only question about a forced turnover to that is what's going to happen to the already used
I can think of one right off the top of my head because my company just dropped money on another 8 servers. Dell Yeap, they've got (and have had for as long as I can remember) a "No OS Installed" option. Quite handy when you want to put your own Gentoo or netBSD distro on there and it's not in Dell's "we'll install this for you" list, or for people like me who'd like to install the packages they want and not install the stuff they don't need.
Now, to be back on topic, I know I would definately pay a little more than the current average cost per channel to only get decent ones because I know I would still come out ahead. I mean, right now it's like 40-50 bucks a month for basic digital cable, we get, maybe 150 channels? That would equate out to 26 to 30 cents a channel. I watch, probably 10-15 of those. At 30 cents each, that's $3-$4.50, not 40-50 bucks. Even at double or heck, tripple that ($12 bucks) I'd still be saving over 28 bucks a month!
It also might be interesting to use the data of which channels people buy to show the networks what people like. If lots of people choose DIY, HGTV, Food, Discovery, etc.. then maybe they'll start making shows that appeal to those people to try and get them to drop the $2 bucks on their station. And just like people who buy a console just for one game, I'm sure there are plenty of people who think "Hey, they got this one show I want to watch, I wonder if they have anything else? Well I'll Drop 2 bucks to find out!". It may actually HELP the networks at the same time.
Anyway, that's my $0.04.