Here's one that came up on Google ads that I couldn't get to load from work: http://www.lcdpc.com/ I don't have a clue what's on it right now, but judging from the URL I think it's relevant:)
That's all I hit on three Google searches, but seeing as I had no clue what terms to search, I think it's a fair start.
I evaluated a couple of G5 servers a while back. Aside from OSX being a poor server, a large part of the reason I decided against recommending them to my customers was that they were more expensive than their PC counterparts, with no additional benefits to justify the cost.
Like I said, I'd like to see the new Intel Macs go up against a PC of similar price (both a home fab and a Dell/HP model, just to be thorough). I'm specifically interested in how AMD's new dual-core chips would fare against it.
My money is on the AMD:)
All that said, the new Intel Macs have piqued my interest. We're going to be in the market for a new computer soon to go in our living room, and the new iMac is attractive enough and affordable enough that I just might give it a shot.
I haven't seen much about the performance of the new Intel Macs, but I know the old G5s couldn't keep up with a comparably-priced PC. One advantage the PC has is that its competitive hardware market keeps prices lower.
What we need now is some solid Linux benchmarks on both systems. I'd wager that the PC would outperform the Mac on a price-for-performance scale. It would probably win overall, just because AMD has a better CPU on the market than Intel.
Of course, it all really depends on what you want to do with your system. Different architectures emphasize different things.
Even on the oft-derided CounterStrike you can find a great deal of organization and cooperation. A handful of good players can really energize a team, and before you know it there are a dozen or more people communicating and working together to acheive an objective. And in CS the round starts over in a few minutes.
In a MMORPG, I would expect a lot more of that behavior. In order to achieve goals and reach certain milestones, players quickly learn that it is beneficial to work together. You will see people get much better at communicating and staying with a specific role in a team the longer they play.
Of course, there are plenty of idiots out there...but for those who are actually playing the game as it was meant to be played, you'll see the development TFA was talking about.
Sort of, yes. What the Squeezebox doesn't do is let you stream audio off a PC, which could be a very cool feature. Rather than being format- or application-specific (like the squeezebox) you could configure it to play anything your PC played, or to play audio from a specific media player, file, whatever. A good example of an application for what I'm thinking of would be guys who like to do live mixes from their PCs...no more wiring into the sound system, you can do it via 802.11g and it should be able to run lossless with that bandwidth.
IANA developer, so don't look at me to make it. I just like to toss out grand ideas and hope someone gets a marketable idea out of it from time to time:D
My last TV, I bought without a lot of research. I only had two concerns: I wanted a 27" TV, and I wanted it cheap. I bought a Magnavox analog for under $150 the day after Thanksgiving.
I did that because my next TV is going to be the one that I keep for a very long time. I didn't want to spend $1,000+ on a really good TV only to watch a new, must-have technology show up six months later. We've the rise of plasma, LCD, and DLP in a remarkably short period of time. Once the technology race has settled some and a clear winner is apparent, I'll give it a few years for the price to drop and then grab one.
I don't see a lot of use for this now that I think about it.
On the desk, you can get a comparable 2.1 speaker set and a keyboard with media controls for a lot less than $100. For remote listening, I have a better idea: 802.11b.
I'd like to see a device like this that would either access a shared folder or use proprietary sharing software (so a complete novice could set it up without creating a security risk). The software would make more sense, because then you could stream sound from a CD or some other audio source if you wanted to. Then the PC would just have a service running in the background and wouldn't have to launch a media player to operate. Surely you could pull that off for not much more than $100.
Headphone Output. Seriously, I don't understand why anyone manufactures PC speakers without a headphone jack when you can buy a pair for $5 that has it.
Am I the only one not surprised that when you put a group of people in an entertaining environment with common goals, they develop a positive social structure that emphasizes cooperation and just generally being a good sport?
I mean, seriously. This has been documented plenty of times in real life, is it really all that astounding that people behave the same way in multiplayer games?
Agreed (and I made that point in another post here, albeit a much less concise one)
However, consumers can make better purchasing decisions with the help of experts. Tell us more about test patterns. Tell us what to look for in general, not just which TV out of a handful won a shootout. Talk more about the differences between the experts and the consumers and how they view the TV. Better yet, show the lay people what they didn't see in the images by demonstrating the test patterns that clearly show the artifacts. Help them understand what they're looking at, and then have them judge again.
I'm a semi-professional musician (I've played with a dozen professional artists and recorded with four, but it's not regular enough to be a career). I can hear the difference between 64, 128, 192, and 256. It's largely a frequency range thing, though somewhere between 128 and 64 you seem to lose a lot of the "fullness" of the sound.
I've got no problem listening to most music at 64k. Most of mine I keep at 128k because my MP3 player is too small to fit many songs at higher bitrates. I recognize the loss in quality, but I'm okay with it because I know what I'm not hearing, and don't miss it.
That said, I won't listen to classical at anything less than 192k.
Sometimes other people either just don't care, or don't have the option, to do things the way you do. Be careful, you *almost* came across as being a little snobbish:)
There's something to be said for a "non-expert" opinion on the matter.
To go back to your analogy of musicians: There is some "music" which is absolutely adored by the experts that sounds like utter crap to the lay person. Why? Because what the expert hears is technical acheivement, innovation, something hard to play that's never been done before. What they lay person hears is an annoying cacophony of seemingly random blarings from an orchestra. I'm thinking of a specific orchestral piece I heard on NPR a few months back. The composer's name eludes me, but his work made a lasting impression...it was impressive to me as a musician that he could write it, but (at best) annoying to listen to.
A monitor can have all the technical features and perfect picture in the world to impress the experts, but if another "inferior" TV somehow fools the average buyer into thinking they're looking at a better picture, which one do you think they'll buy? Last I checked, buyers far outnumber experts.
This article raised an excellent point about the *difference* between what technical experts and average consumers see when they look at a TV. In the end, two things will influence a buyer more than anything: their wallet and their eyes.
Wasn't the news last year that Apple was going to move OSX into the PC market to compete directly with Windows?
Now someone says they're going to move Windows into the Mac market to...what? Be *less* competitive?
OSX on a PC makes sense. Windows on a Mac doesn't. Apple hardware is still expensive, which means average home users and budget-conscious corporations aren't going to spring for a Windows Mac when they can get (what they perceive as) the same thing for less by buying Dell. OSX *isn't* Windows, and that's a selling point with a lot of people.
This is why "Red Hat" is almost synonymous with "Linux" in a lot of business circles. Red Hat offers enterprise support for the product they develop. That gives the suits some peace of mind.
I've said for a long time that one of the things Linux needs to gain marketshare is solid support for businesses.
Also on that list: better documentation--it can really be atrocious at times--simpler installation (yay for Ubuntu), and less convoluted processes for interfacing and emulating Microsoft networks. It's getting better, but I shudder to think what would happen if I tried to switch my users (and techs) over to Linux right now.
Who'd have thought handheld video would never have caught on? Those handheld TVs that came out in the 80s were such a huge hit, you know. Everyone should want to watch their favorite movies on a 2-inch screen!
Let's think about this for a minute. The average movie is 90 minutes or longer. To watch a movie on a portable player, you'd have to be somewhere you can sit or stand for 90 minutes without distraction if you're really going to enjoy the movie.
As best I can figure it, there are only two places that a lot of people might remotely find this useful: public transportation and waiting in line. I've never lived anywhere that public transportation takes 90 minutes--Dallas to Fort Worth by train is something like an hour, that's my longest run--but I suppose you could watch half in the morning and half in the evening. I've also never seen lines that take 90 minutes outside of theme parks and concerts, where you're probably hanging out with friends and, you know, socializing.
This should surprise absolutely no one that UMD isn't performing as well as Sony had hoped. It's a neat little gimmick, but it's still a gimmick. Wal-Mart has an $80 6" DVD player listed on their website, and DVDs are selling under half the price of UMDs if you wait a few months for them to go on sale. The PSP isn't nearly as impressive to me as the GameBoy DS for gaming. The PSP simply isn't the "must have" item Sony billed it as.
I'm so glad we have the RIAA around to interpret the law in a fair and unbiased fashion. Otherwise we'd have to depend upon the courts and those nasty judge people.
Rise of the Triad - best quirky mutliplayer experience Duke Nukem 3D - best multiplayer FPS (out of the box) Total Annihilation - best RTS. Ever. Well, until Supreme Commander comes out. Full Throttle - The last great adventure game. Half-Life - best single-player FPS. Spider Solitaire - best waste of time. Civilization II - best improvement upon a great game Medieval: Total War - best Braveheart simulator. X-Wing - Most entertaining space sim Babylon 5: I've Found Her - most realistic space (combat) sim X-COM: UFO Defense - most addictive game, best turn-based combat
Honorable mention: Civilization, Master of Orion, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Half-Life 2, Unreal, Far Cry, X-COM: Apocalypse, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E., Yar's Revenge, Adventure, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander series, Jane's flight sims, Falcon 3.0 and 4.0, Sid Meier's Pirates, Homeworld, Homeworld 2, a few dozen others I can't think of at the time.
She snuck in amidst the 247.WAV files I was downloading. By the time I realized what happened, she'd installed her stuff in my living room and everything smelled like lavender. I'm still trying to figure out how this ring got on my finger.
The real story: We both frequented three of the same CS servers, and I was one of the few guys that didn't spaz out that she was a girl (which is why she paid any attention at all to me). Played together a lot, started voice chatting when the server was really slow, got interested. We met in person a few months after we met online. It's not every day you find a funny, game-loving web designer who also happens to be a hot chick.
Slashdot Mirror
In a word, Yes. Just like when the first iMac came out and PC makers released clones, you can find LCDs with embedded PCs.
Here's one from Sony. I know it's $2,000, but it looks like it's a lot more than the iMac as features go.
Here's another one: http://www.boldata.com/html/unique.cfm
Here's one that came up on Google ads that I couldn't get to load from work: http://www.lcdpc.com/ I don't have a clue what's on it right now, but judging from the URL I think it's relevant :)
That's all I hit on three Google searches, but seeing as I had no clue what terms to search, I think it's a fair start.
I evaluated a couple of G5 servers a while back. Aside from OSX being a poor server, a large part of the reason I decided against recommending them to my customers was that they were more expensive than their PC counterparts, with no additional benefits to justify the cost.
:)
Like I said, I'd like to see the new Intel Macs go up against a PC of similar price (both a home fab and a Dell/HP model, just to be thorough). I'm specifically interested in how AMD's new dual-core chips would fare against it.
My money is on the AMD
All that said, the new Intel Macs have piqued my interest. We're going to be in the market for a new computer soon to go in our living room, and the new iMac is attractive enough and affordable enough that I just might give it a shot.
I haven't seen much about the performance of the new Intel Macs, but I know the old G5s couldn't keep up with a comparably-priced PC. One advantage the PC has is that its competitive hardware market keeps prices lower.
What we need now is some solid Linux benchmarks on both systems. I'd wager that the PC would outperform the Mac on a price-for-performance scale. It would probably win overall, just because AMD has a better CPU on the market than Intel.
Of course, it all really depends on what you want to do with your system. Different architectures emphasize different things.
Even on the oft-derided CounterStrike you can find a great deal of organization and cooperation. A handful of good players can really energize a team, and before you know it there are a dozen or more people communicating and working together to acheive an objective. And in CS the round starts over in a few minutes.
In a MMORPG, I would expect a lot more of that behavior. In order to achieve goals and reach certain milestones, players quickly learn that it is beneficial to work together. You will see people get much better at communicating and staying with a specific role in a team the longer they play.
Of course, there are plenty of idiots out there...but for those who are actually playing the game as it was meant to be played, you'll see the development TFA was talking about.
Sort of, yes. What the Squeezebox doesn't do is let you stream audio off a PC, which could be a very cool feature. Rather than being format- or application-specific (like the squeezebox) you could configure it to play anything your PC played, or to play audio from a specific media player, file, whatever. A good example of an application for what I'm thinking of would be guys who like to do live mixes from their PCs...no more wiring into the sound system, you can do it via 802.11g and it should be able to run lossless with that bandwidth.
:D
IANA developer, so don't look at me to make it. I just like to toss out grand ideas and hope someone gets a marketable idea out of it from time to time
Well, then, Google it!
My last TV, I bought without a lot of research. I only had two concerns: I wanted a 27" TV, and I wanted it cheap. I bought a Magnavox analog for under $150 the day after Thanksgiving.
I did that because my next TV is going to be the one that I keep for a very long time. I didn't want to spend $1,000+ on a really good TV only to watch a new, must-have technology show up six months later. We've the rise of plasma, LCD, and DLP in a remarkably short period of time. Once the technology race has settled some and a clear winner is apparent, I'll give it a few years for the price to drop and then grab one.
I don't see a lot of use for this now that I think about it.
On the desk, you can get a comparable 2.1 speaker set and a keyboard with media controls for a lot less than $100. For remote listening, I have a better idea: 802.11b.
I'd like to see a device like this that would either access a shared folder or use proprietary sharing software (so a complete novice could set it up without creating a security risk). The software would make more sense, because then you could stream sound from a CD or some other audio source if you wanted to. Then the PC would just have a service running in the background and wouldn't have to launch a media player to operate. Surely you could pull that off for not much more than $100.
Headphone Output. Seriously, I don't understand why anyone manufactures PC speakers without a headphone jack when you can buy a pair for $5 that has it.
Am I the only one not surprised that when you put a group of people in an entertaining environment with common goals, they develop a positive social structure that emphasizes cooperation and just generally being a good sport?
I mean, seriously. This has been documented plenty of times in real life, is it really all that astounding that people behave the same way in multiplayer games?
Agreed (and I made that point in another post here, albeit a much less concise one)
However, consumers can make better purchasing decisions with the help of experts. Tell us more about test patterns. Tell us what to look for in general, not just which TV out of a handful won a shootout. Talk more about the differences between the experts and the consumers and how they view the TV. Better yet, show the lay people what they didn't see in the images by demonstrating the test patterns that clearly show the artifacts. Help them understand what they're looking at, and then have them judge again.
I'm a semi-professional musician (I've played with a dozen professional artists and recorded with four, but it's not regular enough to be a career). I can hear the difference between 64, 128, 192, and 256. It's largely a frequency range thing, though somewhere between 128 and 64 you seem to lose a lot of the "fullness" of the sound.
:)
I've got no problem listening to most music at 64k. Most of mine I keep at 128k because my MP3 player is too small to fit many songs at higher bitrates. I recognize the loss in quality, but I'm okay with it because I know what I'm not hearing, and don't miss it.
That said, I won't listen to classical at anything less than 192k.
Sometimes other people either just don't care, or don't have the option, to do things the way you do. Be careful, you *almost* came across as being a little snobbish
There's something to be said for a "non-expert" opinion on the matter.
To go back to your analogy of musicians: There is some "music" which is absolutely adored by the experts that sounds like utter crap to the lay person. Why? Because what the expert hears is technical acheivement, innovation, something hard to play that's never been done before. What they lay person hears is an annoying cacophony of seemingly random blarings from an orchestra. I'm thinking of a specific orchestral piece I heard on NPR a few months back. The composer's name eludes me, but his work made a lasting impression...it was impressive to me as a musician that he could write it, but (at best) annoying to listen to.
A monitor can have all the technical features and perfect picture in the world to impress the experts, but if another "inferior" TV somehow fools the average buyer into thinking they're looking at a better picture, which one do you think they'll buy? Last I checked, buyers far outnumber experts.
This article raised an excellent point about the *difference* between what technical experts and average consumers see when they look at a TV. In the end, two things will influence a buyer more than anything: their wallet and their eyes.
Wasn't the news last year that Apple was going to move OSX into the PC market to compete directly with Windows?
Now someone says they're going to move Windows into the Mac market to...what? Be *less* competitive?
OSX on a PC makes sense. Windows on a Mac doesn't. Apple hardware is still expensive, which means average home users and budget-conscious corporations aren't going to spring for a Windows Mac when they can get (what they perceive as) the same thing for less by buying Dell. OSX *isn't* Windows, and that's a selling point with a lot of people.
Yes I do.
No, that would be what happened if EA bought Microsoft.
That would indeed be hilarious.
Now if they could just get OpenOffice to be an easier transition from MSO, it could pick up some market share.
This is why "Red Hat" is almost synonymous with "Linux" in a lot of business circles. Red Hat offers enterprise support for the product they develop. That gives the suits some peace of mind.
I've said for a long time that one of the things Linux needs to gain marketshare is solid support for businesses.
Also on that list: better documentation--it can really be atrocious at times--simpler installation (yay for Ubuntu), and less convoluted processes for interfacing and emulating Microsoft networks. It's getting better, but I shudder to think what would happen if I tried to switch my users (and techs) over to Linux right now.
Who'd have thought handheld video would never have caught on? Those handheld TVs that came out in the 80s were such a huge hit, you know. Everyone should want to watch their favorite movies on a 2-inch screen!
Let's think about this for a minute. The average movie is 90 minutes or longer. To watch a movie on a portable player, you'd have to be somewhere you can sit or stand for 90 minutes without distraction if you're really going to enjoy the movie.
As best I can figure it, there are only two places that a lot of people might remotely find this useful: public transportation and waiting in line. I've never lived anywhere that public transportation takes 90 minutes--Dallas to Fort Worth by train is something like an hour, that's my longest run--but I suppose you could watch half in the morning and half in the evening. I've also never seen lines that take 90 minutes outside of theme parks and concerts, where you're probably hanging out with friends and, you know, socializing.
This should surprise absolutely no one that UMD isn't performing as well as Sony had hoped. It's a neat little gimmick, but it's still a gimmick. Wal-Mart has an $80 6" DVD player listed on their website, and DVDs are selling under half the price of UMDs if you wait a few months for them to go on sale. The PSP isn't nearly as impressive to me as the GameBoy DS for gaming. The PSP simply isn't the "must have" item Sony billed it as.
I'm so glad we have the RIAA around to interpret the law in a fair and unbiased fashion. Otherwise we'd have to depend upon the courts and those nasty judge people.
Microsoft has been struggling with this question for a long time ;)
A few of my "forced" upgrades:
Wolfenstein 3D: sound card
Doom: 486/66
Quake: Diamond Monster 3D
Half-Life: pretty much everything
Half-Life 2: again, pretty much everything
Now that the site has been thoroughly slashdotted (and was crawling earlier when I tried to view it), is there anywhere else we can see these screens?
Rise of the Triad - best quirky mutliplayer experience
Duke Nukem 3D - best multiplayer FPS (out of the box)
Total Annihilation - best RTS. Ever. Well, until Supreme Commander comes out.
Full Throttle - The last great adventure game.
Half-Life - best single-player FPS.
Spider Solitaire - best waste of time.
Civilization II - best improvement upon a great game
Medieval: Total War - best Braveheart simulator.
X-Wing - Most entertaining space sim
Babylon 5: I've Found Her - most realistic space (combat) sim
X-COM: UFO Defense - most addictive game, best turn-based combat
Honorable mention: Civilization, Master of Orion, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Half-Life 2, Unreal, Far Cry, X-COM: Apocalypse, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E., Yar's Revenge, Adventure, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander series, Jane's flight sims, Falcon 3.0 and 4.0, Sid Meier's Pirates, Homeworld, Homeworld 2, a few dozen others I can't think of at the time.
She snuck in amidst the 247 .WAV files I was downloading. By the time I realized what happened, she'd installed her stuff in my living room and everything smelled like lavender. I'm still trying to figure out how this ring got on my finger.
The real story: We both frequented three of the same CS servers, and I was one of the few guys that didn't spaz out that she was a girl (which is why she paid any attention at all to me). Played together a lot, started voice chatting when the server was really slow, got interested. We met in person a few months after we met online. It's not every day you find a funny, game-loving web designer who also happens to be a hot chick.