Clearly the AC duct taped a power strip to the side of his computer case, thereby making any extra power outlets he uses part of the host machine. Sheer brilliance I tells ya!
As I've said before, the Netflix service isn't too great for new movies (as this article points out), but it is wonderful for older TV shows (and some newer ones). Now that they've lifted the time limits, I'll be sitting down and watching tons of old shows. Full seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Amazing Stories (well, the first season at least), and tons and tons of BBC stuff (Doctor Who and Red Dwarf, anyone?). I saw that they recently added Dexter Season 1. Hopefully they'll be putting up Season 2 of that soon, too. Perfect timing, too, since it's the middle of Winter and there's nothing new on TV due to the writers strike.
Or do what other multitouch systems do - rear projection.
Which sort of defeats the purpose of having a highly portable touch-surface system. One of the HUGE benefits of this system is that you can set it up on any conference room table and it'll work. All you need is a large flat surface. If you messed with rear projection, then you'd suddenly need to either find a big glass table, or you'd need to lug one around with the projection system.
And if you'd read the article and watched the video, you'd see that Zonk's comment really has no place here, since he's talking about how the MS Surface works. The Hitachi system demonstrated here is very much a short-throw projector that projects the image downwards onto the surface (hence negating the need for a full-table solution, as the MS one requires). Unless they've figured out a way for light to travel through opaque objects, you will get shadows.
This means you get a huge -- 50-inch, in fact -- bright screen, which doesn't get blocked out by your head as you lean over the table.
No, but you do get big shadowhands when you use the touch surface. If they found a way to do this with two projectors, though, you'd probably be able to avoid even that (though alignment/convergence issues would be a bitch).
You probably also wouldn't get something like vi today at all. The development of the vi interface was due to the constraints of the systems of the 70s. Those same constraints generally don't exist in modern systems today. For instance, the H, J, K, and L keys would never have been used for navigation if keyboards were developed with arrow keys.
No, they put the SITE MAP at the bottom of each page. The main nav is the navbar at the top of the page. Would you be making the same complaint if they had just made the site map a separate page like most sites do?
Is the source material for TOS of sufficient quality to warrant that?
Y'mean film? Yeah, I think film handles the conversion to HD quite well. Of course, not everything from that period was filmed on film, but the stuff that was will convert nicely.
Anyone know if there will be some way to exchange formats, should HD-DVD finally die out? Buying a hybrid player seems like an awful waste for a single dvd. Anyone else have a contingency plan to play HD-DVD's that they own?
Unfortunately there isn't any way to do that at the moment. You may want to try to take it into WalMart or somewhere and exchange it for the BD version or just try to get a refund/credit.
As for contingency plans, I have a library of about 20 HD movies. My player should last at least another two years. I figure that even if the format completely dies for movies, I should still be able to get a HDDVD-ROM drive for my computer from Toshiba.
The real news will be when BluRay players are 150 bucks a pop.
Which is something that we won't see for at least a year--possibly longer. Something that struck me about the new BD player announcements at CES is that none of the manufacturers are lowering the prices of the entry level players (all are still around 400 bucks MSRP). Rather, they're refreshing/updating them and keeping the prices the same. The only price drops were on the higher end ones ($800 down to $650, for instance).
You ever had a monitor with a bad flyback transformer? The sparks that some of those things make are insane. I'd easily believe that one could start a fire if you had something highly flammable located near your monitor.
That's great. Now all they need is a few more little things to round things out. Let's see--a well-written script, some decent actors, a good sense of cinematography and creative vision. Nah, screw all that. We've got effects!
First thing I did when I put 64MB in my old Mac Performa 6100 was set up a 40MB or so RAM drive. I then copied the System Folder over to it and set it as the startup volume. That's still about the fastest I've ever seen a machine boot (took about 3-4 seconds from the startup chime). Too bad it wasn't non-volatile memory...
MD is still used since most mp3 players do not work as recorders.
No, but there's a whole market of HD and flash-based portable recorders, many of which will also record 24-bit uncompressed audio. If you're serious about the recording quality, you don't want mp3 or ATRAC compression getting in the way.
For movies, yeah, the selection isn't that great. But as far as classic TV shows go, they have tons and tons of stuff to dig through. All the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lots of stuff from the BBC, including what looks to be nearly every episode of Dr Who. And they seem to have a deal with NBC/Universal, whereby they were posting episodes of Heroes up a few days after they aired. Not to mention, as someone else already did, this service is the 'value added' upgrade to the primary service that you went to them for in the first place. Yeah, it sucks that it's Windows only, but if you have a Windows machine hooked up to your TV (or you don't mind watching on a monitor), it's a great service. And without any time limits, I'll be using it even more!
I'm glad someone else mentioned that (and got modded up for it). I can't stand summaries that completely mangle the point of the story. And yet Taco et al just keep on shoveling them through...
"Oh, I remember the 60s. Best years of my life. I spent some time in the jungle hunting down the Cong. Y'know, this 'open source' stuff sounds kinda like commie propaganda to me."
Maybe there are some people you shouldn't try to switch to FOSS. : p
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Clearly the AC duct taped a power strip to the side of his computer case, thereby making any extra power outlets he uses part of the host machine. Sheer brilliance I tells ya!
Hmm.. and who is getting a residual payment from your downloads of those older shows?
Ahhh, good point. Well, you've just convinced me to focus on watching the BBC stuff for the time being (which I was going to do anyways).
I'm talking about the Netflix streaming service, not their standard by-mail service.
As I've said before, the Netflix service isn't too great for new movies (as this article points out), but it is wonderful for older TV shows (and some newer ones). Now that they've lifted the time limits, I'll be sitting down and watching tons of old shows. Full seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Amazing Stories (well, the first season at least), and tons and tons of BBC stuff (Doctor Who and Red Dwarf, anyone?). I saw that they recently added Dexter Season 1. Hopefully they'll be putting up Season 2 of that soon, too. Perfect timing, too, since it's the middle of Winter and there's nothing new on TV due to the writers strike.
Or do what other multitouch systems do - rear projection.
Which sort of defeats the purpose of having a highly portable touch-surface system. One of the HUGE benefits of this system is that you can set it up on any conference room table and it'll work. All you need is a large flat surface. If you messed with rear projection, then you'd suddenly need to either find a big glass table, or you'd need to lug one around with the projection system.
And if you'd read the article and watched the video, you'd see that Zonk's comment really has no place here, since he's talking about how the MS Surface works. The Hitachi system demonstrated here is very much a short-throw projector that projects the image downwards onto the surface (hence negating the need for a full-table solution, as the MS one requires). Unless they've figured out a way for light to travel through opaque objects, you will get shadows.
This means you get a huge -- 50-inch, in fact -- bright screen, which doesn't get blocked out by your head as you lean over the table.
No, but you do get big shadowhands when you use the touch surface. If they found a way to do this with two projectors, though, you'd probably be able to avoid even that (though alignment/convergence issues would be a bitch).
"Sir, if you'd just wait until next year when we release Windows ME, I'm sure you'll find that all of your problems will have been resolved."
You probably also wouldn't get something like vi today at all. The development of the vi interface was due to the constraints of the systems of the 70s. Those same constraints generally don't exist in modern systems today. For instance, the H, J, K, and L keys would never have been used for navigation if keyboards were developed with arrow keys.
No, they put the SITE MAP at the bottom of each page. The main nav is the navbar at the top of the page. Would you be making the same complaint if they had just made the site map a separate page like most sites do?
Man, the EU must really be out to get MS. They're opening what, like a new investigation every day?
Is the source material for TOS of sufficient quality to warrant that?
Y'mean film? Yeah, I think film handles the conversion to HD quite well. Of course, not everything from that period was filmed on film, but the stuff that was will convert nicely.
I dunno. I can't quite see John Rhys-Davies playing Pitfall Harry. I just can't imagine him swinging from those vines over alligator pits...
Anyone know if there will be some way to exchange formats, should HD-DVD finally die out? Buying a hybrid player seems like an awful waste for a single dvd. Anyone else have a contingency plan to play HD-DVD's that they own?
Unfortunately there isn't any way to do that at the moment. You may want to try to take it into WalMart or somewhere and exchange it for the BD version or just try to get a refund/credit.
As for contingency plans, I have a library of about 20 HD movies. My player should last at least another two years. I figure that even if the format completely dies for movies, I should still be able to get a HDDVD-ROM drive for my computer from Toshiba.
The real news will be when BluRay players are 150 bucks a pop.
Which is something that we won't see for at least a year--possibly longer. Something that struck me about the new BD player announcements at CES is that none of the manufacturers are lowering the prices of the entry level players (all are still around 400 bucks MSRP). Rather, they're refreshing/updating them and keeping the prices the same. The only price drops were on the higher end ones ($800 down to $650, for instance).
You ever had a monitor with a bad flyback transformer? The sparks that some of those things make are insane. I'd easily believe that one could start a fire if you had something highly flammable located near your monitor.
That's great. Now all they need is a few more little things to round things out. Let's see--a well-written script, some decent actors, a good sense of cinematography and creative vision. Nah, screw all that. We've got effects!
Does Ford have the right to prevent you from printing images of a car you own?
Hold on a moment. Let me get the EULA out of the glove box.
I have never seen the point in setting up a fixed RAM drive.
I think it had more to do with how the old MacOS handled memory management. That is, very poorly.
First thing I did when I put 64MB in my old Mac Performa 6100 was set up a 40MB or so RAM drive. I then copied the System Folder over to it and set it as the startup volume. That's still about the fastest I've ever seen a machine boot (took about 3-4 seconds from the startup chime). Too bad it wasn't non-volatile memory...
MD is still used since most mp3 players do not work as recorders.
No, but there's a whole market of HD and flash-based portable recorders, many of which will also record 24-bit uncompressed audio. If you're serious about the recording quality, you don't want mp3 or ATRAC compression getting in the way.
For movies, yeah, the selection isn't that great. But as far as classic TV shows go, they have tons and tons of stuff to dig through. All the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Lots of stuff from the BBC, including what looks to be nearly every episode of Dr Who. And they seem to have a deal with NBC/Universal, whereby they were posting episodes of Heroes up a few days after they aired. Not to mention, as someone else already did, this service is the 'value added' upgrade to the primary service that you went to them for in the first place. Yeah, it sucks that it's Windows only, but if you have a Windows machine hooked up to your TV (or you don't mind watching on a monitor), it's a great service. And without any time limits, I'll be using it even more!
I'm glad someone else mentioned that (and got modded up for it). I can't stand summaries that completely mangle the point of the story. And yet Taco et al just keep on shoveling them through...
"Oh, I remember the 60s. Best years of my life. I spent some time in the jungle hunting down the Cong. Y'know, this 'open source' stuff sounds kinda like commie propaganda to me."
Maybe there are some people you shouldn't try to switch to FOSS. : p
"But surely it can't be any good if they're just giving it away. After all, you don't get something for nothing."