Re:Same with the ipods back when they hit 1 mil.
on
A Million Zunes Sold
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· Score: 1
I can't scratch either of my Nanos with a fingernail. All the casing I use is a plastic film over the screen. The rest of the unit is scratched because I leave it in my pocket with keys. I got my 1st gen Nano on the UK release day (purely by accident!). The battery is still fine after being used most days.
I'm a strong supporter of governments regulating items that can be sold within the local market, as long as those standards are kept up to date technically. We've had recent talks of banning standby modes on electronic equipment. I think that's pretty silly, but I'd love to see someone figure out what power a device should use in standby mode e.g. at most 0.1W. Then just ban the sale of non-compliant devices within a couple of years. I've recently bought a power meter to check usage around the home, and found that my old freeview box uses 4W in standby mode - just to power an LED and IR receiver. That seems pretty excessive but I don't see consumers ever checking this sort of thing before buying (enough to pressure the manufacturers anyway). I also found a power brick for an external hard disc that drew 3W without anything attached. I had been leaving that permanently plugged in - I certainly don't any more. I heard phone chargers also draw a constant current while plugged in, but that wasn't true of mine. The only solution I can see is a regulation disallowing such inefficient devices. Plenty of people must have a few similar devices - a few watts per household running 24/7 adds up to a lot.
NB: I've just got a new 37" LCD TV - a Sharp LC37XD1E, which doesn't even register anything on my power meter in standby mode (less than 0.1W I guess). Most of the stuff I've got registers 0.1 - 0.5W in standby.
Elements that can be added to silver to produce useful silver alloys include zinc, aluminum, copper, manganese, germanium, yttrium, bismuth, scandium, and cobalt I agree the patent seems ridiculously broad, I really don't understand how this can possibly be a patent. The patent terms do narrow it down somewhat but there are still points such as:
1. An optical storage medium, comprising: a first layer having a pattern of features in at least one major surface; and a first reflective layer adjacent said feature pattern, said first reflective layer including a metal alloy, said metal alloy including silver and yttrium, wherein the relationship between the amounts of silver and yttrium in the metal alloy is defined by Ag.sub.xY.sub.w where 0.9500<x<0.9999 and 0.0001<w<0.05.
That's for a fairly specific alloy, but then point 12 is Silver / Scandium, 23 is Silver / Bismuth, 34 is Silver / Copper and one of yttrium, scandium, or bismuth. The points go upto number 88 with another half dozen listing more options for the reflective layer.
If this is a genuine invention, it seems to me it should be talking about one specific alloy that has better properties. If that would be too easy to bypass because all sorts of alloys involving silver would serve this purpose, it's not even an invention.
The click-wheel is a really really good interface though. You call it a fad, as though people like it because it's trendy. I switched to ipods with the first gen nano having spent the previous years sticking with the cheaper more feature packed alternatives. The ipod interface really was so far ahead of anything else on the market. I was a little upset at the loss of radio, but after using an ipod I was amazed at just how much nicer to use it was.
If it wasn't a microsoft product, and Apple made it... NOBODY would have a problem with it.
If it wasn't a Microsoft product, no one would have heard of it. It's a mediocre product at best.
I've never had any data corruption problems with my ipod. My first Nano did have the broken screen problem but Apple quickly sent me a new one. My second gen Nano has just this week survived it's own trip through the washing machine. There's still condensation visible behind the screen but it's working fine again after two days drying out time. I actually think it's a quite robust and reliable piece of equipment.
Here in the UK, there has been a MASSIVE turnaround in HD-DVD / Blu-Ray fortunes. When I ordered my PS3 a couple of days after launch, I went out looking for a couple of Blu-Ray discs to try out. All the high street stores were stocking many more HD-DVDs and only about 12 Blu-Rays in total, none of which I was interested in.
We're now a few weeks after PS3 launch, and recently when I was in HMV, I noticed the Blu-Ray section was suddenly three times the size of HD-DVD. Same story in Asda, which even had sensibly priced Blu-Ray discs. It's still a small section of the DVD space but going on shelf area, Blu-Ray is well ahead here.
The COBOL language died because it's entire family of languages dropped out of mainstream programming. C is in a distinctly different position. C++, C# and Java are all based very closely on C-syntax. Actually learning C isn't really required. C syntax is by far the dominant style.
My education taught me Java and only Java (in terms of real large-scale programming languages). At Uni, I wrote my dissertation in C++ because I needed to make use of various intel DLLs so C++ was just the easiest option. That was hardly a difficult transition to make. For my work, I program in C, and again it's an easy transition to make. System design is a bit different but I can easily switch C to Java and often even copy paste code from one language to the other (many semi-standalone parts of our systems are now Java based). PHP is a bit more different but the overall syntax of pure PHP is also similar.
Pascal and COBOL on the other hand have significantly different syntaxes and it's not so easy to pass a C-style programmer a Pascal program and just let them get on with it (although thats what happened to me!)
Actually I'm surprised Pascal wasn't on the list. Various features of the language made it naturally easier to write more reliable systems with Pascal vs C - notably a more resilient string representation, stronger typing and stronger handling of case statements (missing a case value crashes the program). Therefore it is used for a lot of older mission-critical applications. Getting Pascal programmers to support these is hard work since there are so few around.
I take it you don't know so many teachers then. Both mine and my wife's mothers are teachers. Most teachers are teaching 8-4. Lesson preparations for the next day and marking homework from the previous day take up another couple of hours. Quite a bit of those long holidays are taken up marking extensive courseworks frequently set just before the end of term. You end up with slightly longer holidays, but no choice of when to take them.
Secondly a good teacher is worth way more than twice as much as a bad one (and most new teachers will be bad for a few years until they build up the presence to keep decent control of a classroom). Unfortunately in most schools, they aren't going to be getting much more money in just because the teaching is better. For the wider economy, a great teacher will produce a generation of better educated students which is going to be hugely beneficial even in pure financial terms. A great teacher is worth a LOT more than they are paid.
Very true. In fact if you try and find this stuff out, it's not normally a genuine secret - it's just (understandably) not the first thing they advertise. There is a huge amount of competition in the broadband sector and if you go for a lower cost package, you'll probably find these limitations. I'm now paying the equivalent of $50/month for a properly unlimited package, although the main thing which attracted me was the 1.3Mb upload speed which is the highest I've seen on a consumer package.
It's worth remembering that plenty of people just want occasional web and email access. All they want is a snappy response on that. For my part, I'd be quite pleased with packet shaping that gave me quicker access to the web / email during the day, and then allowed P2P etc to run at full speeds overnight. That to me sounds a much better solution than a usage cap.
NB The www.thinkbroadband.com website is pretty good for finding out just how UK broadband providers rate with their customers.
I wish they would mention how the valves are powered. It really sounds just like a souped up version of variable valve timing (VVT) systems. The description reminded me of BMW's Double VANOS system. This modifies the position of the camshaft relative to the crankshaft - this doesn't make the valves timings completely tunable, but it's a good start.
I'd like to know whether the gains they quote are relative to ancient engines or are in comparison to decent modern engines using the technology we've already got. If the gains are 15% above using standard VVT systems it might be a worthwhile technology. If basic VVT gets you 10% of that gain and this gives another 5%, it might never be economic to build something like this.
Part of this is due to bureaucracy of large companies. I'm not sure more government would help much because it tends to be even more bureaucratic.
I applied at IBM a few years ago, and one thing I noticed was the specificity of the job titles and descriptions. A lot of large companies do this. I've also worked at the local council where this was taken to extreme lengths in some departments. In one, there was a database administrator, DBA's assistant and an administrator role. All 3 jobs needed doing and people refused to work outside the job descriptions. So it needed three people even though each job required only 2 hours work a day.
My job title is simply 'Software Engineer' along with most of my colleagues, and I don't have any proper job description. I work in a small company and only a few people have defined roles. The balance of work varies depending on the person's strengths, but our software engineers do most basic management, admin, customer relations and site work.
The advantage of this is that so far as I'm aware we've never had to get rid of people due to changing work patterns. It also creates variety in my work - I don't think there's a downside to this approach as long as worker's strengths and weaknesses are understood by the people assigning resources to projects. I guess that gets trickier in large companies.
But really the copying is the manufacture. Writing the software is the design. Apple designs iPods in California and ships out a complete description of it to China where the pieces are put together. Microsoft designs the software in various countries and sends the completed design to other countries where they press and package up the CDs for distribution. Just because the split of work and cost between the two phases is different doesn't change the definitions.
Well said, not to mention those blister packs are always completely unopenable by hand. And once you've shredded the packaging with scissors, if you realise it's not quite what you want, it's not in a resaleable state for returning. I think a big and immediate improvement to the environment could be made by simply requiring minimal and biodegradable packaging for all products where possible.
Agreed again. The VAX systems are seriously reliable. I support a number of Pascal / OpenVMS systems written 10-15 years ago. Ease of use is in many ways severely lacking and the servers are ridiculously slow by modern standards. But it just keeps running 24/7 for years between requiring downtime.
We now use C / AIX mostly, and it is nearly upto the same standards - qdaemon has stability issues but most stuff works. We've tried Windows but it can't keep up with the IO workloads and going a week without a reboot is good going on that platform. Demos are frequently done on Linux, and it appears to work well. However, for many servers, the cost of the server platform is probably negligible compared to the cost of the custom software it is running.
Control is lost (in my mind) if and when a company stops to grow Companies don't need to grow. If it's a profitable company at it's current size, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is more usually after a burst of growth, a company suddenly finds it has outgrown it's market. It's easy to quickly sell large volumes of shiny new shrink wrapped software. Following that you need to hire a bigger support team and hope the money you made selling the boxes covers support costs, or that you can keep selling more copies. If you've just grown quickly, that's a calculation which is easy to get wrong.
Strange that your bank is angry with you. The credit card companies make upto 2.5% of any money you spend in fees to the company you buy from. Many companies pass these costs on to you with a credit card surcharge. If you're never late with payments, they're still rolling in money on your behalf.
I also live within my means, and when I did request an overdraft increase to cover unexpected costs in the run-up to my wedding, I had to see the bank's financial adviser who tried to provide me with 10 times more credit than requested in the form of a massive overdraft, personal loan and raised credit card limit. Enough credit to pay for the while wedding in fact. I'd not call it aggressive selling though, and certainly not an angry reaction.
I'm posting to defend the banks because I find them to consistently be one of the best types of business to deal with - better and faster customer service, plus here in the UK at least, there are no charges for everyday use - they get by on the slice of interest my money makes that isn't paid into my account. I know they make huge profits, but based on the treatment I get from them, I'm more impressed than annoyed by that.
This is why there's room in the industry for first place, second place, and Nintendo. But if Nintendo takes first or second place, I think there's distinctly less room left...
D'oh, I've got mod points but I've already posted.
I agree partially here. I've got some Planet Earth episodes downloaded from the internet in direct transport stream format from the BBC HD service - I'm not in the trial area:( It takes about 8.5 GB / hour. Real time downloads are out but it is still possible to get over the internet. The problem for now is that just a few hours of decent quality HD footage costs a vast amount in hard disc storage. A few plastic discs are more convenient and cheaper.
Apparently the Blu-Ray version of Planet Earth is being released next week. If you've got an HD setup you want put to some real use, grab a copy (it's in HD-DVD also). I'm hoping it's region free cos they're not releasing in the UK.
Yeah the Wii isn't half a generation ahead of the 360 graphically. But it does have controllers a generation ahead. That's part of the problem launching first. Sony got to see what people thought of the 360, and also hear what Nintendo was doing, and try for the best of both.
The tilt sensors in the PS3 controller are a nice touch and I'd like to see some games make better use of it. Tony Hawks uses the tilt sensors for balancing on grinds / manuals. It feels like a really natural way to do it and for me that was the killer feature vs the PC version I've got. Motorstorm can use them for turning, but that feels like a tacked on extra that doesn't really work.
I don't think Sony has caught up with online stuff yet. The headsets for the 360 also sound like a great piece of kit I'd like to see on the PS3. But that's all software. I think Sony concentrated on getting the hardware in place to do anything the 360 can do, with the idea they can improve software later.
I've gone for the full 1080p setup over the last few months, which includes a PS3. Last weekend we had a few people round and spent a bit of time playing Gran Turismo HD and Motorstorm. Two of the guys have 360s and were pretty impressed by the jump in graphics quality. GT plays properly in 1080p, and although Motorstorm only runs at 720p, it is really breathtaking. I can't fairly comment on Xbox360 quality because I've never seen one hooked up properly - the PS3 looks rubbish connected through SCART or component at 576i resolution, and for Xbox360 that's the only setup I've seen. So my unfair comment is that really the Xbox360 is half a generation behind Sony/Nintendo. Other consoles that have tried the same thing have started well and kind of fizzled out once the competition got going.
I know a few people thinking about getting a PS3, and it's not really the price issue that's holding them back but the content. Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto are two of the big games people are waiting for. Also a lot of places are still price gouging - the games seem to be £35 online but £50 on the high street. Some decently priced Blu-Ray movies would also be good. I found Tesco are selling them for £13 now, but most retailers are still around the £25 mark. Unfortunately I can't find Casino Royale or Planet Earth in stock anywhere:(
Maybe I'm being unwilfully ignorant here, but I don't think there's much value in learning assembler. I never did during my education and although I've occasionally looked at assembler while debugging bizarre problems, I don't think it's ever got me anywhere. It's worth knowing about basics of a running program like the program counter, but making much use of assembler is for most programmers a waste of time.
I heard some good advice about 'optimising' code in the sort of way in which assembler might help: 1) don't do it 2) don't do it yet
Most languages don't really hide that many details from the programmer. If you're a C programmer it is worth knowing how library functions like strcat work, but there's no need to understand the machine instructions generated by a while loop.
Go look for a job at a small company. Part of the problem is that for a large corporation, unless you're high up the chain there, nothing you do or don't do is likely to affect the overall results of the company that much. The company has to have a really good set of people in charge watching the real contributions made by everyone or there is just no way to tell if you're good at work or good at appearing to be busy.
The place I work has under 100 people and a decent profit share scheme. I know everyone by name and at least say hello to the top management every day. A few uni friends work at similar places and have similar experiences.
I'm not sure why we're still getting these articles. 1080p is out now!!! You can just walk into a store and check out the difference for yourself. It's easy to see when you're looking for it, the only question left is would you notice it when you're watching the content not the video quality (enough to pay the extra?)
I've got a Sharp 37" LCD that does 1920x1080, an HTPC with HDMI output, and a PS3. I downloaded trailers for X-Men 3 (720p) and Casino Royale (1080p) from the PS3 store to check out the PS3's ability as a video player. Both look great of course, but it's simple to see there's just more detail in the Casino Royale video.
An even better example is Planet Earth in 1080p recorded from the BBC HD service. A lot of time and money was spent filming that series and every time I watch an episode I'm just blown away by the quality - it's so good that it is hard to listen to the narrator! That will be my first Blu-Ray video when it becomes available.
the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate
Notably, Revelle died in 1991 and over the last 16 years, a lot of additional evidence has come to light. A lot of the projected impacts on the ecosphere are a long way from certain, but there is at least one major problem that will cause a problem.
If the temperatures increase, melting ice caps will raise sea levels. Melting and freezing ice has happened in the past of course, and there was no catastrophe, but back then there were no big cities on the coastlines. We are better at adapting to changes than the rest of the life on the planet, but changes in sea level are a big exception because of the permanent settlements we have built. A significant change in sea level is a very very expensive problem to overcome.
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I can't scratch either of my Nanos with a fingernail. All the casing I use is a plastic film over the screen. The rest of the unit is scratched because I leave it in my pocket with keys. I got my 1st gen Nano on the UK release day (purely by accident!). The battery is still fine after being used most days.
I'm a strong supporter of governments regulating items that can be sold within the local market, as long as those standards are kept up to date technically. We've had recent talks of banning standby modes on electronic equipment. I think that's pretty silly, but I'd love to see someone figure out what power a device should use in standby mode e.g. at most 0.1W. Then just ban the sale of non-compliant devices within a couple of years. I've recently bought a power meter to check usage around the home, and found that my old freeview box uses 4W in standby mode - just to power an LED and IR receiver. That seems pretty excessive but I don't see consumers ever checking this sort of thing before buying (enough to pressure the manufacturers anyway). I also found a power brick for an external hard disc that drew 3W without anything attached. I had been leaving that permanently plugged in - I certainly don't any more. I heard phone chargers also draw a constant current while plugged in, but that wasn't true of mine. The only solution I can see is a regulation disallowing such inefficient devices. Plenty of people must have a few similar devices - a few watts per household running 24/7 adds up to a lot.
NB: I've just got a new 37" LCD TV - a Sharp LC37XD1E, which doesn't even register anything on my power meter in standby mode (less than 0.1W I guess). Most of the stuff I've got registers 0.1 - 0.5W in standby.
That's for a fairly specific alloy, but then point 12 is Silver / Scandium, 23 is Silver / Bismuth, 34 is Silver / Copper and one of yttrium, scandium, or bismuth. The points go upto number 88 with another half dozen listing more options for the reflective layer.
If this is a genuine invention, it seems to me it should be talking about one specific alloy that has better properties. If that would be too easy to bypass because all sorts of alloys involving silver would serve this purpose, it's not even an invention.
The click-wheel is a really really good interface though. You call it a fad, as though people like it because it's trendy. I switched to ipods with the first gen nano having spent the previous years sticking with the cheaper more feature packed alternatives. The ipod interface really was so far ahead of anything else on the market. I was a little upset at the loss of radio, but after using an ipod I was amazed at just how much nicer to use it was.
If it wasn't a Microsoft product, no one would have heard of it. It's a mediocre product at best.
I've never had any data corruption problems with my ipod. My first Nano did have the broken screen problem but Apple quickly sent me a new one. My second gen Nano has just this week survived it's own trip through the washing machine. There's still condensation visible behind the screen but it's working fine again after two days drying out time. I actually think it's a quite robust and reliable piece of equipment.
Here in the UK, there has been a MASSIVE turnaround in HD-DVD / Blu-Ray fortunes. When I ordered my PS3 a couple of days after launch, I went out looking for a couple of Blu-Ray discs to try out. All the high street stores were stocking many more HD-DVDs and only about 12 Blu-Rays in total, none of which I was interested in.
We're now a few weeks after PS3 launch, and recently when I was in HMV, I noticed the Blu-Ray section was suddenly three times the size of HD-DVD. Same story in Asda, which even had sensibly priced Blu-Ray discs. It's still a small section of the DVD space but going on shelf area, Blu-Ray is well ahead here.
The COBOL language died because it's entire family of languages dropped out of mainstream programming. C is in a distinctly different position. C++, C# and Java are all based very closely on C-syntax. Actually learning C isn't really required. C syntax is by far the dominant style.
My education taught me Java and only Java (in terms of real large-scale programming languages). At Uni, I wrote my dissertation in C++ because I needed to make use of various intel DLLs so C++ was just the easiest option. That was hardly a difficult transition to make. For my work, I program in C, and again it's an easy transition to make. System design is a bit different but I can easily switch C to Java and often even copy paste code from one language to the other (many semi-standalone parts of our systems are now Java based). PHP is a bit more different but the overall syntax of pure PHP is also similar.
Pascal and COBOL on the other hand have significantly different syntaxes and it's not so easy to pass a C-style programmer a Pascal program and just let them get on with it (although thats what happened to me!)
Actually I'm surprised Pascal wasn't on the list. Various features of the language made it naturally easier to write more reliable systems with Pascal vs C - notably a more resilient string representation, stronger typing and stronger handling of case statements (missing a case value crashes the program). Therefore it is used for a lot of older mission-critical applications. Getting Pascal programmers to support these is hard work since there are so few around.
I take it you don't know so many teachers then. Both mine and my wife's mothers are teachers. Most teachers are teaching 8-4. Lesson preparations for the next day and marking homework from the previous day take up another couple of hours. Quite a bit of those long holidays are taken up marking extensive courseworks frequently set just before the end of term. You end up with slightly longer holidays, but no choice of when to take them.
Secondly a good teacher is worth way more than twice as much as a bad one (and most new teachers will be bad for a few years until they build up the presence to keep decent control of a classroom). Unfortunately in most schools, they aren't going to be getting much more money in just because the teaching is better. For the wider economy, a great teacher will produce a generation of better educated students which is going to be hugely beneficial even in pure financial terms. A great teacher is worth a LOT more than they are paid.
Very true. In fact if you try and find this stuff out, it's not normally a genuine secret - it's just (understandably) not the first thing they advertise. There is a huge amount of competition in the broadband sector and if you go for a lower cost package, you'll probably find these limitations. I'm now paying the equivalent of $50/month for a properly unlimited package, although the main thing which attracted me was the 1.3Mb upload speed which is the highest I've seen on a consumer package.
It's worth remembering that plenty of people just want occasional web and email access. All they want is a snappy response on that. For my part, I'd be quite pleased with packet shaping that gave me quicker access to the web / email during the day, and then allowed P2P etc to run at full speeds overnight. That to me sounds a much better solution than a usage cap.
NB The www.thinkbroadband.com website is pretty good for finding out just how UK broadband providers rate with their customers.
I wish they would mention how the valves are powered. It really sounds just like a souped up version of variable valve timing (VVT) systems. The description reminded me of BMW's Double VANOS system. This modifies the position of the camshaft relative to the crankshaft - this doesn't make the valves timings completely tunable, but it's a good start.
I'd like to know whether the gains they quote are relative to ancient engines or are in comparison to decent modern engines using the technology we've already got. If the gains are 15% above using standard VVT systems it might be a worthwhile technology. If basic VVT gets you 10% of that gain and this gives another 5%, it might never be economic to build something like this.
So we could have a popup ad, and when you close it, it can popup a questionnaire to check if it annoyed you!
Part of this is due to bureaucracy of large companies. I'm not sure more government would help much because it tends to be even more bureaucratic.
I applied at IBM a few years ago, and one thing I noticed was the specificity of the job titles and descriptions. A lot of large companies do this. I've also worked at the local council where this was taken to extreme lengths in some departments. In one, there was a database administrator, DBA's assistant and an administrator role. All 3 jobs needed doing and people refused to work outside the job descriptions. So it needed three people even though each job required only 2 hours work a day.
My job title is simply 'Software Engineer' along with most of my colleagues, and I don't have any proper job description. I work in a small company and only a few people have defined roles. The balance of work varies depending on the person's strengths, but our software engineers do most basic management, admin, customer relations and site work.
The advantage of this is that so far as I'm aware we've never had to get rid of people due to changing work patterns. It also creates variety in my work - I don't think there's a downside to this approach as long as worker's strengths and weaknesses are understood by the people assigning resources to projects. I guess that gets trickier in large companies.
But really the copying is the manufacture. Writing the software is the design. Apple designs iPods in California and ships out a complete description of it to China where the pieces are put together. Microsoft designs the software in various countries and sends the completed design to other countries where they press and package up the CDs for distribution. Just because the split of work and cost between the two phases is different doesn't change the definitions.
Well said, not to mention those blister packs are always completely unopenable by hand. And once you've shredded the packaging with scissors, if you realise it's not quite what you want, it's not in a resaleable state for returning. I think a big and immediate improvement to the environment could be made by simply requiring minimal and biodegradable packaging for all products where possible.
Agreed again. The VAX systems are seriously reliable. I support a number of Pascal / OpenVMS systems written 10-15 years ago. Ease of use is in many ways severely lacking and the servers are ridiculously slow by modern standards. But it just keeps running 24/7 for years between requiring downtime.
We now use C / AIX mostly, and it is nearly upto the same standards - qdaemon has stability issues but most stuff works. We've tried Windows but it can't keep up with the IO workloads and going a week without a reboot is good going on that platform. Demos are frequently done on Linux, and it appears to work well. However, for many servers, the cost of the server platform is probably negligible compared to the cost of the custom software it is running.
Strange that your bank is angry with you. The credit card companies make upto 2.5% of any money you spend in fees to the company you buy from. Many companies pass these costs on to you with a credit card surcharge. If you're never late with payments, they're still rolling in money on your behalf.
I also live within my means, and when I did request an overdraft increase to cover unexpected costs in the run-up to my wedding, I had to see the bank's financial adviser who tried to provide me with 10 times more credit than requested in the form of a massive overdraft, personal loan and raised credit card limit. Enough credit to pay for the while wedding in fact. I'd not call it aggressive selling though, and certainly not an angry reaction.
I'm posting to defend the banks because I find them to consistently be one of the best types of business to deal with - better and faster customer service, plus here in the UK at least, there are no charges for everyday use - they get by on the slice of interest my money makes that isn't paid into my account. I know they make huge profits, but based on the treatment I get from them, I'm more impressed than annoyed by that.
D'oh, I've got mod points but I've already posted.
I agree partially here. I've got some Planet Earth episodes downloaded from the internet in direct transport stream format from the BBC HD service - I'm not in the trial area :( It takes about 8.5 GB / hour. Real time downloads are out but it is still possible to get over the internet. The problem for now is that just a few hours of decent quality HD footage costs a vast amount in hard disc storage. A few plastic discs are more convenient and cheaper.
Apparently the Blu-Ray version of Planet Earth is being released next week. If you've got an HD setup you want put to some real use, grab a copy (it's in HD-DVD also). I'm hoping it's region free cos they're not releasing in the UK.
Yeah the Wii isn't half a generation ahead of the 360 graphically. But it does have controllers a generation ahead. That's part of the problem launching first. Sony got to see what people thought of the 360, and also hear what Nintendo was doing, and try for the best of both.
The tilt sensors in the PS3 controller are a nice touch and I'd like to see some games make better use of it. Tony Hawks uses the tilt sensors for balancing on grinds / manuals. It feels like a really natural way to do it and for me that was the killer feature vs the PC version I've got. Motorstorm can use them for turning, but that feels like a tacked on extra that doesn't really work.
I don't think Sony has caught up with online stuff yet. The headsets for the 360 also sound like a great piece of kit I'd like to see on the PS3. But that's all software. I think Sony concentrated on getting the hardware in place to do anything the 360 can do, with the idea they can improve software later.
I've gone for the full 1080p setup over the last few months, which includes a PS3. Last weekend we had a few people round and spent a bit of time playing Gran Turismo HD and Motorstorm. Two of the guys have 360s and were pretty impressed by the jump in graphics quality. GT plays properly in 1080p, and although Motorstorm only runs at 720p, it is really breathtaking. I can't fairly comment on Xbox360 quality because I've never seen one hooked up properly - the PS3 looks rubbish connected through SCART or component at 576i resolution, and for Xbox360 that's the only setup I've seen. So my unfair comment is that really the Xbox360 is half a generation behind Sony/Nintendo. Other consoles that have tried the same thing have started well and kind of fizzled out once the competition got going.
:(
I know a few people thinking about getting a PS3, and it's not really the price issue that's holding them back but the content. Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto are two of the big games people are waiting for. Also a lot of places are still price gouging - the games seem to be £35 online but £50 on the high street. Some decently priced Blu-Ray movies would also be good. I found Tesco are selling them for £13 now, but most retailers are still around the £25 mark. Unfortunately I can't find Casino Royale or Planet Earth in stock anywhere
Maybe I'm being unwilfully ignorant here, but I don't think there's much value in learning assembler. I never did during my education and although I've occasionally looked at assembler while debugging bizarre problems, I don't think it's ever got me anywhere. It's worth knowing about basics of a running program like the program counter, but making much use of assembler is for most programmers a waste of time.
I heard some good advice about 'optimising' code in the sort of way in which assembler might help:
1) don't do it
2) don't do it yet
Most languages don't really hide that many details from the programmer. If you're a C programmer it is worth knowing how library functions like strcat work, but there's no need to understand the machine instructions generated by a while loop.
Go look for a job at a small company. Part of the problem is that for a large corporation, unless you're high up the chain there, nothing you do or don't do is likely to affect the overall results of the company that much. The company has to have a really good set of people in charge watching the real contributions made by everyone or there is just no way to tell if you're good at work or good at appearing to be busy.
The place I work has under 100 people and a decent profit share scheme. I know everyone by name and at least say hello to the top management every day. A few uni friends work at similar places and have similar experiences.
I'm not sure why we're still getting these articles. 1080p is out now!!! You can just walk into a store and check out the difference for yourself. It's easy to see when you're looking for it, the only question left is would you notice it when you're watching the content not the video quality (enough to pay the extra?)
I've got a Sharp 37" LCD that does 1920x1080, an HTPC with HDMI output, and a PS3. I downloaded trailers for X-Men 3 (720p) and Casino Royale (1080p) from the PS3 store to check out the PS3's ability as a video player. Both look great of course, but it's simple to see there's just more detail in the Casino Royale video.
An even better example is Planet Earth in 1080p recorded from the BBC HD service. A lot of time and money was spent filming that series and every time I watch an episode I'm just blown away by the quality - it's so good that it is hard to listen to the narrator! That will be my first Blu-Ray video when it becomes available.
the evidence for global warming thus far doesn't warrant any action unless it is justifiable on grounds that have nothing to do with climate
Notably, Revelle died in 1991 and over the last 16 years, a lot of additional evidence has come to light. A lot of the projected impacts on the ecosphere are a long way from certain, but there is at least one major problem that will cause a problem.
If the temperatures increase, melting ice caps will raise sea levels. Melting and freezing ice has happened in the past of course, and there was no catastrophe, but back then there were no big cities on the coastlines. We are better at adapting to changes than the rest of the life on the planet, but changes in sea level are a big exception because of the permanent settlements we have built. A significant change in sea level is a very very expensive problem to overcome.