I have never understood the virulent resistance to unionization amongst the IT folks I know.
Look at the havily-unionized steel, automotive, and textile industries. They're fleeing this country to a greater extent than tech jobs. I would expect unionized IT to have the same effect. What possible protection could a union provide against development shifting overseas? It's already being done for cost reasons, increasing job security et al would simply make moving overseas even more cost-effective.
What about content? Why even purchase a $$$$ HDTV unless content exists?
There are DVD players that smoothly upconvert to 720p and 1080i, and presumably it looks better than standard def or upscaling the 480i or 480p signal. But really, there's content: "Medal of Honor", IL-2, and thousands of other PC games.
Also, $$$$ is in the eye of the beholder. How many new and nearly new cars are there on the road, when there are millions of near-equally capable used cars around? How much more are Corian or granite counters compared to mica? And somebody's buying those $500 Jimmy Choo shoes. $3K for something you use a few hours almost every day really isn't that much. And with low power, no burn-in, you can leave it on with photos, weather and traffic reports, etc. when you're not watching something.
I think the question you guys should be asking is how would they handle getting rid of the region codes? You can't just stop putting them in,because every player on the planet (of course except the ones we have) will stop accepting the media.
Yes you can. If a disc is given region 0, it will play on any player that can handle the format (NTSC vs. PAL/SECAM).
You can always put it off for another year. Eventually you just have to take the plunge and buy it, realizing that you will kick yourself in 6 months when the same product is available for 25 - 50% less.
I want hi-res (pref 1080p), 50+", thin, light, no burn-in, good black levels, preferably with low power usage. When I can get all this for a tolerable price (for me, ~$3000), I won't wait another year.
Uh, despite your earnest attempt to pin the blame of this on George Bush and the Iraqi war, perhaps you might want to add in the fact that the American dollar is down roughly 18% for this same period -- very similar to the price increase of the 12 days of Christmas.
It's not too much of a stretch to assert that the drop in the dollar is in large part due to government spending and deficits. Regardless, a significant fraction of the cost is contract labor, and I know I didn't get an 18% raise this year, did you?
It prohibits Fake headers and abusing relays and proxies. Granted, this will only start the use of throw away email addresses that are used once for sending the 20 billion pieces of spam.
I got several hundred bounced e-mails in my inbox recently when a spammer decided to use my domain for his/her fake "Reply-to:" addresses.
Perhaps this law will allow me to be the master of my domain again...
an 80" LCD running at that resolution would look like complete ass
Not at normal TV viewing distances. I agree that for intense computer work, you can make good use of the higher resolution, but Seinfeld isn't going to be any funnier at higher resolutions.
Hah! Yeah right. 1920x1080 is nowhere near the resolution limits that human eye can discern.
No, but it's close to what the human mind "cares" about. Sure, you could tell the difference if you looked really carefully, but I find HDTV doesn't make much difference now for smaller TVs viewed at normal distances. I would not be bothered by a movie viewed at 1080p. Remember that most movies are post-processed in that resolution or lower, and AOTC was "filmed" at 1280x1024, I believe, so you've already been seeing those resolutions on the big screen. I'll grant you movies aren't the definition of perfection by any means, but they are quality enough that people pay money to see them.
And then there's full FOV stereoscopic immersion. Mmmmmmm...
I haven't found a stereo vision system that isn't tiring to use after a while, have you? Shutter glasses have leakage, head-mounted displays are too close focally, red-blue glasses leak and limit the color range, etc.
They sell you the same device, but with one of the components upgraded.
Exactly. The problem with any device of this type now is that tecnology is such a moving target. HDTVs are getting better each year. The PS2 is meaningfully better than the Playstation. PDAs keep adding features.
But... if I could buy an 80" LCD display capable of 1920x1080, I'd probably never want for a better display. (And Samsung has demoed a 54" display that does just that.) Games on the PS2, Gamecube, and XBox don't look dramatically different from each other in visual quality, so perhaps video games are only a couple of generations from plateauing. The largest hard drives available can store about as much music as I've ever heard, and a substantial number of movies. The various audio encodings are nigh-indistinguishable.
I wouldn't want a convergence device now, but in five years, I may want several PVR/video game/computer/movie player/audio player devices. And I may want a PDA/GPS/MP3 player/computer-in-a-pinch sooner than that.
Just to hit a sidebar here, is there any music tagging spec that allows for multiple artists, listed separately, or multiple albums? A given song may appear on a Greatest Hits album or a compilation disc as well as the original. And multiple artists would allow me to make playlists of all the songs an individual artist has participated in, even if they aren't the sole artist.
It really seems to me that this new Battlestar Galactica is to the Battlestar Galactica franchise what Episodes I and II (and probably III) are to the Star Wars franchise.
I agree, but in a way you may not be thinking of.
Early Star Wars was much more Space Opera. A planet with millions or billions is wiped out, but soon forgotten. Lots of funny lines, humorous predicaments, catchy sayings. STPM and AOTC are much more serious in tone, overall.
The same parallel occurs with the "Real" BSG and this new one. The characters really are having to deal with most of humanity having been wiped out for most of the shows. The avuncular Adama is replaced by the tough-as-nails Adama. No humorous or silly situations.
Sage apparently doesn't have closed-captioning support, which is a deal-breaker for me. On the other hand, a HTPC that replaced the standard CC display with a less intrusive outline font (possibly with partial transparency) would be a serious bonus.
The iPod has a user-replaceable battery (even if Apple isn't very vocal about this), the iRiver does not. Since batteries do fail now and then, I consider this a significant flaw in the iRiver.
Tell that to my son, who will have to restart "Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy" because he saved at a point where the program incorrectly closes a door in the save, and there is no way to reopen it.
Re:From the Office of Redundancy Office comes...
on
Viewing Inside the Earth
·
· Score: 4, Funny
As a friend once said to me, "Do you have a Department of Redundancy Department?" To which I responded, "We have several."
"Those long winter evenings must just fly by."--Black Adder
Slashdot Mirror
If Slashdot would offer NNTP to their subscribers, I'd subscribe...
Extremely high angular resolution can be achieved on earth by linking up several telescopes.
Would this work in space as well as on earth, or is this more for distortion correction than combination of optics?
Indeed, google records me calling that "Bell's First Law of USENET" on May 15, 1990.
I have never understood the virulent resistance to unionization amongst the IT folks I know.
Look at the havily-unionized steel, automotive, and textile industries. They're fleeing this country to a greater extent than tech jobs. I would expect unionized IT to have the same effect. What possible protection could a union provide against development shifting overseas? It's already being done for cost reasons, increasing job security et al would simply make moving overseas even more cost-effective.
What about content? Why even purchase a $$$$ HDTV unless content exists?
There are DVD players that smoothly upconvert to 720p and 1080i, and presumably it looks better than standard def or upscaling the 480i or 480p signal. But really, there's content: "Medal of Honor", IL-2, and thousands of other PC games.
Also, $$$$ is in the eye of the beholder. How many new and nearly new cars are there on the road, when there are millions of near-equally capable used cars around? How much more are Corian or granite counters compared to mica? And somebody's buying those $500 Jimmy Choo shoes. $3K for something you use a few hours almost every day really isn't that much. And with low power, no burn-in, you can leave it on with photos, weather and traffic reports, etc. when you're not watching something.
I think the question you guys should be asking is how would they handle getting rid of the region codes? You can't just stop putting them in,because every player on the planet (of course except the ones we have) will stop accepting the media.
Yes you can. If a disc is given region 0, it will play on any player that can handle the format (NTSC vs. PAL/SECAM).
You can always put it off for another year. Eventually you just have to take the plunge and buy it, realizing that you will kick yourself in 6 months when the same product is available for 25 - 50% less.
I want hi-res (pref 1080p), 50+", thin, light, no burn-in, good black levels, preferably with low power usage. When I can get all this for a tolerable price (for me, ~$3000), I won't wait another year.
Uh, despite your earnest attempt to pin the blame of this on George Bush and the Iraqi war, perhaps you might want to add in the fact that the American dollar is down roughly 18% for this same period -- very similar to the price increase of the 12 days of Christmas.
It's not too much of a stretch to assert that the drop in the dollar is in large part due to government spending and deficits. Regardless, a significant fraction of the cost is contract labor, and I know I didn't get an 18% raise this year, did you?
It prohibits Fake headers and abusing relays and proxies. Granted, this will only start the use of throw away email addresses that are used once for sending the 20 billion pieces of spam.
I got several hundred bounced e-mails in my inbox recently when a spammer decided to use my domain for his/her fake "Reply-to:" addresses.
Perhaps this law will allow me to be the master of my domain again...
an 80" LCD running at that resolution would look like complete ass
Not at normal TV viewing distances. I agree that for intense computer work, you can make good use of the higher resolution, but Seinfeld isn't going to be any funnier at higher resolutions.
Hah! Yeah right. 1920x1080 is nowhere near the resolution limits that human eye can discern.
No, but it's close to what the human mind "cares" about. Sure, you could tell the difference if you looked really carefully, but I find HDTV doesn't make much difference now for smaller TVs viewed at normal distances. I would not be bothered by a movie viewed at 1080p. Remember that most movies are post-processed in that resolution or lower, and AOTC was "filmed" at 1280x1024, I believe, so you've already been seeing those resolutions on the big screen. I'll grant you movies aren't the definition of perfection by any means, but they are quality enough that people pay money to see them.
And then there's full FOV stereoscopic immersion. Mmmmmmm...
I haven't found a stereo vision system that isn't tiring to use after a while, have you? Shutter glasses have leakage, head-mounted displays are too close focally, red-blue glasses leak and limit the color range, etc.
"grammar", to keep the spelling people happy...
They sell you the same device, but with one of the components upgraded.
Exactly. The problem with any device of this type now is that tecnology is such a moving target. HDTVs are getting better each year. The PS2 is meaningfully better than the Playstation. PDAs keep adding features.
But... if I could buy an 80" LCD display capable of 1920x1080, I'd probably never want for a better display. (And Samsung has demoed a 54" display that does just that.) Games on the PS2, Gamecube, and XBox don't look dramatically different from each other in visual quality, so perhaps video games are only a couple of generations from plateauing. The largest hard drives available can store about as much music as I've ever heard, and a substantial number of movies. The various audio encodings are nigh-indistinguishable.
I wouldn't want a convergence device now, but in five years, I may want several PVR/video game/computer/movie player/audio player devices. And I may want a PDA/GPS/MP3 player/computer-in-a-pinch sooner than that.
cool photo in the Reg article!
It's a computer generated image, but clearly it can fool a casual glance.
Just to hit a sidebar here, is there any music tagging spec that allows for multiple artists, listed separately, or multiple albums? A given song may appear on a Greatest Hits album or a compilation disc as well as the original. And multiple artists would allow me to make playlists of all the songs an individual artist has participated in, even if they aren't the sole artist.
I for one didn't find the sex all the gratuitous, but then again maybe I like gratuitous sex.
I do too, but my wife tends to object...
It really seems to me that this new Battlestar Galactica is to the Battlestar Galactica franchise what Episodes I and II (and probably III) are to the Star Wars franchise.
I agree, but in a way you may not be thinking of.
Early Star Wars was much more Space Opera. A planet with millions or billions is wiped out, but soon forgotten. Lots of funny lines, humorous predicaments, catchy sayings. STPM and AOTC are much more serious in tone, overall.
The same parallel occurs with the "Real" BSG and this new one. The characters really are having to deal with most of humanity having been wiped out for most of the shows. The avuncular Adama is replaced by the tough-as-nails Adama. No humorous or silly situations.
That would be one long song to fill a 40 Gb iPod.
Nah, they just really turned up the sampling rate...
You missed this story.
it must have something to do with providing TV signals; DirecTV is even more evil than your average cable company.
Sage apparently doesn't have closed-captioning support, which is a deal-breaker for me. On the other hand, a HTPC that replaced the standard CC display with a less intrusive outline font (possibly with partial transparency) would be a serious bonus.
Where are the Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones quotes?
"Begun, this Slashdotting has."
Nope, that's all I've got.
No no, it's
"I find your lack of bandwidth disturbing."
It shreds the iPod in every way.
The iPod has a user-replaceable battery (even if Apple isn't very vocal about this), the iRiver does not. Since batteries do fail now and then, I consider this a significant flaw in the iRiver.
Tell that to my son, who will have to restart "Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy" because he saved at a point where the program incorrectly closes a door in the save, and there is no way to reopen it.
As a friend once said to me, "Do you have a Department of Redundancy Department?" To which I responded, "We have several."
"Those long winter evenings must just fly by."--Black Adder