At some time during execution of the validation process, the CPU computates a yes or no answer based on a number of bytes of input. Whether or not there is a validator for the validator is not known, but you can simply disassemble both of them, NOP out the entire validating sub-routine (or figure out which result is 'yes'), and voila. Well, it won't be this simple, the validation will probably be deliberately complicated, but the result os always the same, "no, not valid", or "yes, run it in kernel mode".
Disassembling binaries isn't the nicest thing to do. I've done it once or twice to bypass software registration, it took me a long while (days). There are professionals out there, though, that do this sort of stuff as a hobby. For them, it may not be so difficult.
From memory (which hasn't been to good to me lately), Windows NT had two separate APIs for getting the time, GetSystemTime and SystemTimeToLocalTime, or something. They probably tried to implement user-specific timezones, but perhaps too much software was already developed to use GetSystemTime and ignore local times altogether.
Isn't it annoying, where if you don't get it right at the start, it makes it really hard for you later?
They cannot take over the entire Sony conglomerate (or perhaps they can), but PlayStation comes from a company within Sony called Sony Computer Entertainment. That's a completely different part of the Sony conglomerate than the one that produces music/DVDs.
Much like how you wouldn't associate a Panasonic microwave with say a Universal Studios movie, effectively both owned by the same mother company, Matsushita (although I think ownership has changed again, but this is for arguments sake. Watch any Universal movie with appliances in it, they will all be Panasonic or maybe JVC).
I've never understood why people say "I could care less...". Care less then. Care so much more less that you can't care less. Then say it properly: "I couldn't care less...".
Yep, it's true, brands like Teac, Tokai, S&V etc they all have cheap DVD players that all do the same thing and do it well for the price you pay. The big-brands still need to sell DVD players or they'd miss out on a huge market. Buying anything with a big-brand label on it has it's advantages:
When things do break under warranty, the big-brand will carry spare parts for the model. In New Zealand, manufacturers have an obligation to provide spare parts for models they import. If they cannot fix it, they will credit the retailer to refund the customer. This quite often happens when brands like Teac and S&V can no longer source whole units. Factories in China mass produce products for brands like Teac and S&V to slap their name on it and call it theirs. If I wanted to, I could ask the factory to ship 10,000 units my way with the name "Dreamlax" on it. Once production stops, Teac and S&V look for another source, and will call it a new model. However Panasonic consumer goods are all manufactured by Panasonic by factories owned by them (or as much as you can "own" a factory in China). One exception to this is photocopiers, where they used to, but might not anymore, get Minolta to manufacture them. Even when things break outside of warranty, if you've spend big bucks on something (say an LCD or home theatre system), you'd want the possibility of being able to have it fixed.
Product support for big-brand products is a must for some people. Again with Pana in NZ; Panasonic localise all instructions to either Oceania or sometimes even specifically for New Zealand. Instead of trying to understand some poorly typeset, poorly translated manual, you have a well typeset English manual. If that's still too hard, you can ring the [usually toll-free] customer support number without being redirected to Malaysia or India.
Although almost everything is made in China (some of Pana's DVD-recorders come from Malaysia), factories still grade the batch quality of production. Depending on the brand you buy, you might get a piece of shit, or you might get the best of the batch. Teac, not being the cheapest or the most expensive, go towards buying the best graded batches only (I was told this by the Teac sales rep at my retailer outlet), whereas other brands might just want the cheapest batch. A big-brand's factory doesn't operate like this because all batches are to be branded the same. They have stricter quality control for this very reason.
Yeah, I may work at a retailer, but I still buy brands like Teac. That doesn't mean that everyone else will. People aren't "stupid" for buying big brand items, but this doesn't make them "smart" for not buying Teac.
It all depends on what you want out of what you buy.
Panasonic released an "MP3" player which used SD cards for external storage. Since I don't use Windows and the only software it was bundled with was for Windows, I figured I could just load MP3s onto the SD card using a card reader/writer. Well, I couldn't. It turns out the software is mandatory as it encrypts the MP3s somehow to play ONLY on that particular player, nowhere else. I tried using WINE etc, but it wasn't worth the effort, so instead I bought one of these: http://www.picnroll.com/. It was pretty cheap (cheaper than the Panasonic player), and it's simply drag and drop (or "cp *.[Mm][Pp]3/media/PicNRoll").
Can they really call it an MP3 player when it doesn't truly play plain "MP3s"? It's a little misleading. It's like buying a car, discovering it requires special treatment to the petrol before it goes into your tank, and the only place you can fill it up is at a place you don't want to go (because they are known to be overpriced for their service).
If your office treats their hardware like that, perhaps they should be taught a lesson in laptop etiquette. Blown backlights are often the case of sudden downward force on the casing (i.e. perhaps sitting on the laptop). Flimsy keyboards usually come from either excessive force when typing or physical twisting of the entire laptop. Quickly degrading batteries come from using the laptop's battery for five minutes and putting it back on charge, and then using it for five minutes again. I have no idea where your electronic noises come from, but my T23 sounds just fine.
If you want a laptop that won't break, buy a Panasonic Toughbook. Their top model can withstand a drop from over a metre onto concrete without turning off (or breaking), and they will work at sub-zero temperatures thanks to the in-built hardware heater.
Seriously, don't argue that the Corolla (or AK47) of laptops isn't rugged enough for you, with anything there is a way to look after it. Laptops aren't meant to be abused (perhaps the Toughbook is an exception) so provided everything is used right, it will be like my T23; minor scratches, but a battery that still holds two hours of charge (with the backlight dimmed) after some 4 or 5 years of use, a backlight and LCD that still work perfectly, and a keyboard that is not flimsy! If I can have a Thinkpad this long, why can't you?
Sell your phone to a service department for $10 for them to disect and steal parts from, so that in effect, it shaves $5 off your bill each month, and you get a brand new phone every time!
Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba... they probably all have bigger R&D departments. Sony hasn't done much recently, compared to all the other brands. In fact, the last Sony product I bought was a PS2. Their first Bravia LCDs were shit (comparing to Panasonic's G8 Viera LCDs), their audio products aren't much better than other brands (except they usually play ATRAC as well as MP3s, but big deal!), their DVD players do everything the cheaper ones do, their DVD recorders do everything the other ones do (sometimes worse)... I was never a fan of Sony anyway. I probably sell 10 Panasonic appliances before selling a Sony.
I work in retail, and I can tell you that there is a shitload of markup in cables and accessories. I'm a good friend of the sales rep who distributes cables to our store, he gives the store a standard 26% discount on everything we buy. That's an extra 26% markup for us if we continue to sell at RRP (which sometimes we do).
For example, a SCART to SCART gold plated 4 metre cable, usually sells for about $80 here in New Zealand (although 4 metres is usually not a required length). I think I bought one for $4.80 from the rep. Another common cable is those RCA connections, 3 plugs to 3 plugs. The gold series, at even two metres is roughly $40. I bought one for $2. I don't buy it because I think gold is better, the cables cosmetically look better (they look like those professional cables).
I remember once he showed me a list of stock at his warehouse and what was old or slow moving stock. He said you can take as many cables as I wanted, of any type, and he'll charge me $1 each. I stocked up on s-video cables, RCA cables, DVI cables (HDMI cables weren't available back then) etc. Of course, this time I reflected my discounts onto the customer, charging them $5 per cable.
What a store lacks in brownware markup (I'm not sure if the rest of the world calls it brownware, but that consists of TVs, stereos, VCRs/DVDs etc, it came from when TVs that had the veneer finish were all the rage), they sure as hell make up for in accessories and cables.
Don't attack the analogy, attack the argument I present with the analogy.
So the guy builds the wall and realises that wasting rocks is not progress. Imagine that there was this new wall technology, using the same rocks, but building it faster and more effectively. He would also have the option to upgrade his wall so that in the future, people could use his wall by adding things to it, that they otherwise would not have been able to do. If he ignored the new wall technology, and built his wall the "old-fashioned" way, in the future he would regret his decision because it won't allow for any "new additions".
Even in later versions of Windows it is capable of cutting out the crap you don't need, while still allowing you to put it back if you need to. Look on mininova or piratebay for Barely Naked Windows XP. I'm running that through Qemu completely in user-space on my trusty Thinkpad T23 and it boots in 40 seconds (and about 25 seconds with the kernel module). The ISO is about 250MB and the install easily fits on a 2GB partition with plenty to spare.
Progress and motion are two different things, but obviously so are Windows 95 and Windows XP. If every release of Windows is motion, that would contradict the existence of obvious difference between Windows 95 and Windows XP, so they can't be just motion (and I'm not talking about the interface, I'm talking about the backbone), there must be progress too.
Printing in Linux works fine for me. Just the other day at work I set up a kerberos authenticated samba printer, the Ricoh 3260 (big machine that staples etc). All the features were there, duplexing, colour options, n-up, stapling, finishing, input/output trays. http://www.linuxprinting.org/ is an excellent place to start. My home printer has also been set up correctly, a Kyocera FS-1000. It's not hard at all, it's just different to Windows. Once CUPS is installed, going to http://localhost:631/ provides a rather nice interface for managing printers/jobs/classes. Took about 2 minutes per printer.
And at not one point in my argument did I say running Windows XP was the solution.
The point is, you can use old things as much as you like, but everything has a lifespan. Impermanenance is inevitable. Eventually the old things will require an uneconomical amount of effort to keep it functioning.
You can stick with Windows 95, I'm not arguing that. Eventually you will say goodbye to it, when you no longer want to put effort into keeping it functioning. I'm different, I use whatever is available and current. If my computer can't run it, I scrap it and buy a new one (or give it to my Granddad).
It reminds me of a proverb I heard from a wise chinese man:
You can renovate an old house, but it will still be an old house.
Similarly, you can run an old OS, and you can patch it and run modern software, but it's still an old OS, and because of that, there will always be something new that will not work. Just like an old house, it will eventually fall apart, bit by bit.
Sure, you can use Windows 95 all you like... until you
- want to use a USB device.
- use a standards compliant web browser (although I think Firefox is still available for Windows 95).
- want to network securely.
- want to leave your PC on for more than 6 hours.
- install a wireless network interface.
- want to run a secure operating system.
- realise you're running an OS which is as old as Sega's Daytona USA.
Hey, I'm sure it's working for you, but it simply won't cut it for me.
Most of the power that an LCD TV uses is for a backlight, and as such, it consumes a somewhat constant amount of power (200W or thereabouts) (my 300W initial reading was from a Sharp 45"... I think...), if we exclude Philips' new line-up of LCDs that can dim certain parts of the backlight. A plasma consumes at most 350W during bright scenes (actually during a whitewash). In dark scenes there is not much power consumption (at the panel level) at all. A plasma will consume more power, but judging that it will constantly consume 350W is not the best way to consider buying an LCD over plasma.
One thing I have been told is that LCDs quite often look better under fluorescent lights, and lots of it, which is why LCDs sometimes look nicer in a big appliance store. A few customers that I have told this to confirmed it by telling me their LCD doesn't look quite as good as it did in the store. Perhaps you could explain this for me in a scientific manner?
That's totally incorrect.
Black and only black will look better on a plasma display. But since plasma pixels need to turn on and off rapidly to simulate lower brightness levels, very low brightnesses are converted to black to avoid visible flicker. This means that shadows have less detail than say on a CRT. Many LCDs have the same level of detail as a CRT just without true black (like having your brightness turned up too much).
CRTs still provide the reference for high definition viewing -- unfortunately they don't come in 40" or 50" sizes.
You have obviously never seen Panasonic's Generation 9 Viera. They produce richer colours in dark scenes and have shown through consumer surveys that darker scenes look better on Panasonic's TH42PA60 (which is G9) than any other LCD they compared it against. Even the G8 plasmas could produce a maximum of 8.6 billion colours (2048 possible grades per sub-pixel), but only in dark scenes. It did this by lowering the voltage across the whole panel (even though it is capable of lowering the voltage of red, green and blue independently) so that even when each pixel arced it was nowhere near as bright.
I wouldn't touch LCDs over 40". I work in retail and I hear both sides of the story. Sharp and other brands like Sony push LCDs through like mad, while Panasonic is primarily a plasma brand.
Power consumption
Plasmas and LCDs use a comparable amount of power. A 42" Panasonic plasma uses at most 350W (TH42PA60). An LCD of the same size would use about 300W at most. The difference is that the plasma only consumes 350W when it is displaying a full white picture. If it is a dark scene, it consumes less power (since the pixels are not arcing as often). LCDs consume a rather fixed rate of power since the backlight is always illuminated.
Brightness
Plasmas work by emitting light, whereas LCDs work by blocking light. Since LCDs block light, it is difficult to stop light from leaking around blocked areas. Philips' latest LCD is capable of dimming certain areas of the backlight, but the leaking is still there. Plasmas on the other hand won't get leaking. In fact, in darker scenes the detail will always prevail over an LCD.
Lifespan
Panasonic now boast that their plasmas will last 60,000 hours, which is now comparable to LCDs. Like LCDs, plasmas lose brightness over time. Panasonic's 60,000 hour figure is the length of time it takes to become half as bright. Philips, Sony, Sharp and Toshiba all boast similar figures for their LCDs and plasmas.
Price
Well, here it becomes weird. Panasonic invested a huge amount of serious dollars into a new factory which aims to pump out hundreds of thousands of plasmas each year. A 42" plasma is generally cheaper than a 42" LCD. The difference is that it is immensely expensive to create large LCDs that will not have poor constrast and brightness and remain responsive (i.e. 10ms or less). Plasmas on the other hand "prefer" to be big. It is impossible to create small plasmas because of the size of the pixel. So if the TV screen size gets bigger, the price increase from plasma to LCD will too.
My biased opinion
I work for a company which exclusively sells Fisher & Paykel, New Zealand's largest whiteware manufacturer. Until recently, F&P were Panasonic's importers in NZ, until they were big enough here to take care of themselves. They still work closely together (one of F&P's double ovens has a built in Panasonic microwave) but because of their reputation together and because of where I work, I sell more Panasonic appliances than any other brand. Panasonic's primary interest in terms of TVs is plasma, and from all the evidence that I was given from all brands saying that x was better than y, Panasonic's was the only evidence that remained consistent over the course of 3 or 4 years. It concluded for anything big (say, 42" or larger), go plasma, for anything small, go LCD.
I cannot see Plasma TVs failing. Over the last year, Panasonic's TH42PA50 plasma was the top-selling TV of any classification throughout Australia, and the top-selling 42" TV in New Zealand. The PA60 model boasts even more features for the same price.
How many P2P clients have we got now, that we can use for free? Kazaa's gone, and Limewire's maybe on its way, but that still leaves all the Gnutella clients, DC[++], Googling with the phrases "index of" and "parent directory", warez forums, newsgroups, IRC, BitTorrent...
Now Sony want to release one that will probably only run on Windows, will inconspicuously monitor everything you do in regards to music downloads, install a rootkit, and on top of that, will be another client where no matter what I search for I get "barely legal teen girl gets fucked in three holes (mp3 txt avi ice age 2 v for vendetta divx latest movie hollywood peter jackson).wmv". At least this time, it will have user reviews attached; which would probably be really sick for this particular file, or maybe you'd get "This isn't Ice Age 2!!!", I'm not quite sure.
I'm certainly not going to use it, not just because I don't like Sony, but because I can already get whatever I'm looking for with one of the protocols I mentioned above.
Slashdot Mirror
At some time during execution of the validation process, the CPU computates a yes or no answer based on a number of bytes of input. Whether or not there is a validator for the validator is not known, but you can simply disassemble both of them, NOP out the entire validating sub-routine (or figure out which result is 'yes'), and voila. Well, it won't be this simple, the validation will probably be deliberately complicated, but the result os always the same, "no, not valid", or "yes, run it in kernel mode".
Disassembling binaries isn't the nicest thing to do. I've done it once or twice to bypass software registration, it took me a long while (days). There are professionals out there, though, that do this sort of stuff as a hobby. For them, it may not be so difficult.
I just wonder how long until they batteries are recalled . . .
From memory (which hasn't been to good to me lately), Windows NT had two separate APIs for getting the time, GetSystemTime and SystemTimeToLocalTime, or something. They probably tried to implement user-specific timezones, but perhaps too much software was already developed to use GetSystemTime and ignore local times altogether.
Isn't it annoying, where if you don't get it right at the start, it makes it really hard for you later?
Obviously they keep the good ones for themselves and sell the shit ones off for good prices.
They cannot take over the entire Sony conglomerate (or perhaps they can), but PlayStation comes from a company within Sony called Sony Computer Entertainment. That's a completely different part of the Sony conglomerate than the one that produces music/DVDs.
Much like how you wouldn't associate a Panasonic microwave with say a Universal Studios movie, effectively both owned by the same mother company, Matsushita (although I think ownership has changed again, but this is for arguments sake. Watch any Universal movie with appliances in it, they will all be Panasonic or maybe JVC).
The difference is that you expect a monetary return from an investment, whereas you get a "moral" return from a charity.
I only just noted the RSS feed truncated the title. I was all excited, expecting to read about how YouTube wouldn't sell for less than $1.
I've never understood why people say "I could care less...". Care less then. Care so much more less that you can't care less. Then say it properly: "I couldn't care less...".
Yep, it's true, brands like Teac, Tokai, S&V etc they all have cheap DVD players that all do the same thing and do it well for the price you pay. The big-brands still need to sell DVD players or they'd miss out on a huge market. Buying anything with a big-brand label on it has it's advantages:
Yeah, I may work at a retailer, but I still buy brands like Teac. That doesn't mean that everyone else will. People aren't "stupid" for buying big brand items, but this doesn't make them "smart" for not buying Teac.
It all depends on what you want out of what you buy.
Panasonic released an "MP3" player which used SD cards for external storage. Since I don't use Windows and the only software it was bundled with was for Windows, I figured I could just load MP3s onto the SD card using a card reader/writer. Well, I couldn't. It turns out the software is mandatory as it encrypts the MP3s somehow to play ONLY on that particular player, nowhere else. I tried using WINE etc, but it wasn't worth the effort, so instead I bought one of these: http://www.picnroll.com/. It was pretty cheap (cheaper than the Panasonic player), and it's simply drag and drop (or "cp *.[Mm][Pp]3 /media/PicNRoll").
Can they really call it an MP3 player when it doesn't truly play plain "MP3s"? It's a little misleading. It's like buying a car, discovering it requires special treatment to the petrol before it goes into your tank, and the only place you can fill it up is at a place you don't want to go (because they are known to be overpriced for their service).
That's not the professor's only income, he gets a salary too (I should hope).
At least we can all agree that spaghetti code is bad.
If your office treats their hardware like that, perhaps they should be taught a lesson in laptop etiquette. Blown backlights are often the case of sudden downward force on the casing (i.e. perhaps sitting on the laptop). Flimsy keyboards usually come from either excessive force when typing or physical twisting of the entire laptop. Quickly degrading batteries come from using the laptop's battery for five minutes and putting it back on charge, and then using it for five minutes again. I have no idea where your electronic noises come from, but my T23 sounds just fine.
If you want a laptop that won't break, buy a Panasonic Toughbook. Their top model can withstand a drop from over a metre onto concrete without turning off (or breaking), and they will work at sub-zero temperatures thanks to the in-built hardware heater.
Seriously, don't argue that the Corolla (or AK47) of laptops isn't rugged enough for you, with anything there is a way to look after it. Laptops aren't meant to be abused (perhaps the Toughbook is an exception) so provided everything is used right, it will be like my T23; minor scratches, but a battery that still holds two hours of charge (with the backlight dimmed) after some 4 or 5 years of use, a backlight and LCD that still work perfectly, and a keyboard that is not flimsy! If I can have a Thinkpad this long, why can't you?
Sell your phone to a service department for $10 for them to disect and steal parts from, so that in effect, it shaves $5 off your bill each month, and you get a brand new phone every time!
Samsung, Panasonic, Toshiba... they probably all have bigger R&D departments. Sony hasn't done much recently, compared to all the other brands. In fact, the last Sony product I bought was a PS2. Their first Bravia LCDs were shit (comparing to Panasonic's G8 Viera LCDs), their audio products aren't much better than other brands (except they usually play ATRAC as well as MP3s, but big deal!), their DVD players do everything the cheaper ones do, their DVD recorders do everything the other ones do (sometimes worse)... I was never a fan of Sony anyway. I probably sell 10 Panasonic appliances before selling a Sony.
I work in retail, and I can tell you that there is a shitload of markup in cables and accessories. I'm a good friend of the sales rep who distributes cables to our store, he gives the store a standard 26% discount on everything we buy. That's an extra 26% markup for us if we continue to sell at RRP (which sometimes we do).
For example, a SCART to SCART gold plated 4 metre cable, usually sells for about $80 here in New Zealand (although 4 metres is usually not a required length). I think I bought one for $4.80 from the rep. Another common cable is those RCA connections, 3 plugs to 3 plugs. The gold series, at even two metres is roughly $40. I bought one for $2. I don't buy it because I think gold is better, the cables cosmetically look better (they look like those professional cables).
I remember once he showed me a list of stock at his warehouse and what was old or slow moving stock. He said you can take as many cables as I wanted, of any type, and he'll charge me $1 each. I stocked up on s-video cables, RCA cables, DVI cables (HDMI cables weren't available back then) etc. Of course, this time I reflected my discounts onto the customer, charging them $5 per cable.
What a store lacks in brownware markup (I'm not sure if the rest of the world calls it brownware, but that consists of TVs, stereos, VCRs/DVDs etc, it came from when TVs that had the veneer finish were all the rage), they sure as hell make up for in accessories and cables.
Don't attack the analogy, attack the argument I present with the analogy.
So the guy builds the wall and realises that wasting rocks is not progress. Imagine that there was this new wall technology, using the same rocks, but building it faster and more effectively. He would also have the option to upgrade his wall so that in the future, people could use his wall by adding things to it, that they otherwise would not have been able to do. If he ignored the new wall technology, and built his wall the "old-fashioned" way, in the future he would regret his decision because it won't allow for any "new additions".
Even in later versions of Windows it is capable of cutting out the crap you don't need, while still allowing you to put it back if you need to. Look on mininova or piratebay for Barely Naked Windows XP. I'm running that through Qemu completely in user-space on my trusty Thinkpad T23 and it boots in 40 seconds (and about 25 seconds with the kernel module). The ISO is about 250MB and the install easily fits on a 2GB partition with plenty to spare.
Progress and motion are two different things, but obviously so are Windows 95 and Windows XP. If every release of Windows is motion, that would contradict the existence of obvious difference between Windows 95 and Windows XP, so they can't be just motion (and I'm not talking about the interface, I'm talking about the backbone), there must be progress too.
Printing in Linux works fine for me. Just the other day at work I set up a kerberos authenticated samba printer, the Ricoh 3260 (big machine that staples etc). All the features were there, duplexing, colour options, n-up, stapling, finishing, input/output trays. http://www.linuxprinting.org/ is an excellent place to start. My home printer has also been set up correctly, a Kyocera FS-1000. It's not hard at all, it's just different to Windows. Once CUPS is installed, going to http://localhost:631/ provides a rather nice interface for managing printers/jobs/classes. Took about 2 minutes per printer.
You missed the point of the proverb entirely.
And at not one point in my argument did I say running Windows XP was the solution.
The point is, you can use old things as much as you like, but everything has a lifespan. Impermanenance is inevitable. Eventually the old things will require an uneconomical amount of effort to keep it functioning.
You can stick with Windows 95, I'm not arguing that. Eventually you will say goodbye to it, when you no longer want to put effort into keeping it functioning. I'm different, I use whatever is available and current. If my computer can't run it, I scrap it and buy a new one (or give it to my Granddad).
It reminds me of a proverb I heard from a wise chinese man:
Similarly, you can run an old OS, and you can patch it and run modern software, but it's still an old OS, and because of that, there will always be something new that will not work. Just like an old house, it will eventually fall apart, bit by bit.
Sure, you can use Windows 95 all you like... until you
- want to use a USB device.
- use a standards compliant web browser (although I think Firefox is still available for Windows 95).
- want to network securely.
- want to leave your PC on for more than 6 hours.
- install a wireless network interface.
- want to run a secure operating system.
- realise you're running an OS which is as old as Sega's Daytona USA.
Hey, I'm sure it's working for you, but it simply won't cut it for me.
Most of the power that an LCD TV uses is for a backlight, and as such, it consumes a somewhat constant amount of power (200W or thereabouts) (my 300W initial reading was from a Sharp 45"... I think...), if we exclude Philips' new line-up of LCDs that can dim certain parts of the backlight. A plasma consumes at most 350W during bright scenes (actually during a whitewash). In dark scenes there is not much power consumption (at the panel level) at all. A plasma will consume more power, but judging that it will constantly consume 350W is not the best way to consider buying an LCD over plasma.
One thing I have been told is that LCDs quite often look better under fluorescent lights, and lots of it, which is why LCDs sometimes look nicer in a big appliance store. A few customers that I have told this to confirmed it by telling me their LCD doesn't look quite as good as it did in the store. Perhaps you could explain this for me in a scientific manner?
You have obviously never seen Panasonic's Generation 9 Viera. They produce richer colours in dark scenes and have shown through consumer surveys that darker scenes look better on Panasonic's TH42PA60 (which is G9) than any other LCD they compared it against. Even the G8 plasmas could produce a maximum of 8.6 billion colours (2048 possible grades per sub-pixel), but only in dark scenes. It did this by lowering the voltage across the whole panel (even though it is capable of lowering the voltage of red, green and blue independently) so that even when each pixel arced it was nowhere near as bright.
I wouldn't touch LCDs over 40". I work in retail and I hear both sides of the story. Sharp and other brands like Sony push LCDs through like mad, while Panasonic is primarily a plasma brand.
Power consumptionPlasmas and LCDs use a comparable amount of power. A 42" Panasonic plasma uses at most 350W (TH42PA60). An LCD of the same size would use about 300W at most. The difference is that the plasma only consumes 350W when it is displaying a full white picture. If it is a dark scene, it consumes less power (since the pixels are not arcing as often). LCDs consume a rather fixed rate of power since the backlight is always illuminated.
Brightness
Plasmas work by emitting light, whereas LCDs work by blocking light. Since LCDs block light, it is difficult to stop light from leaking around blocked areas. Philips' latest LCD is capable of dimming certain areas of the backlight, but the leaking is still there. Plasmas on the other hand won't get leaking. In fact, in darker scenes the detail will always prevail over an LCD.
Lifespan
Panasonic now boast that their plasmas will last 60,000 hours, which is now comparable to LCDs. Like LCDs, plasmas lose brightness over time. Panasonic's 60,000 hour figure is the length of time it takes to become half as bright. Philips, Sony, Sharp and Toshiba all boast similar figures for their LCDs and plasmas.
Price
Well, here it becomes weird. Panasonic invested a huge amount of serious dollars into a new factory which aims to pump out hundreds of thousands of plasmas each year. A 42" plasma is generally cheaper than a 42" LCD. The difference is that it is immensely expensive to create large LCDs that will not have poor constrast and brightness and remain responsive (i.e. 10ms or less). Plasmas on the other hand "prefer" to be big. It is impossible to create small plasmas because of the size of the pixel. So if the TV screen size gets bigger, the price increase from plasma to LCD will too.
My biased opinion
I work for a company which exclusively sells Fisher & Paykel, New Zealand's largest whiteware manufacturer. Until recently, F&P were Panasonic's importers in NZ, until they were big enough here to take care of themselves. They still work closely together (one of F&P's double ovens has a built in Panasonic microwave) but because of their reputation together and because of where I work, I sell more Panasonic appliances than any other brand. Panasonic's primary interest in terms of TVs is plasma, and from all the evidence that I was given from all brands saying that x was better than y, Panasonic's was the only evidence that remained consistent over the course of 3 or 4 years. It concluded for anything big (say, 42" or larger), go plasma, for anything small, go LCD.
I cannot see Plasma TVs failing. Over the last year, Panasonic's TH42PA50 plasma was the top-selling TV of any classification throughout Australia, and the top-selling 42" TV in New Zealand. The PA60 model boasts even more features for the same price.
Especially the ones that pronounce it "Lie-nux"...
How many P2P clients have we got now, that we can use for free? Kazaa's gone, and Limewire's maybe on its way, but that still leaves all the Gnutella clients, DC[++], Googling with the phrases "index of" and "parent directory", warez forums, newsgroups, IRC, BitTorrent...
Now Sony want to release one that will probably only run on Windows, will inconspicuously monitor everything you do in regards to music downloads, install a rootkit, and on top of that, will be another client where no matter what I search for I get "barely legal teen girl gets fucked in three holes (mp3 txt avi ice age 2 v for vendetta divx latest movie hollywood peter jackson).wmv". At least this time, it will have user reviews attached; which would probably be really sick for this particular file, or maybe you'd get "This isn't Ice Age 2!!!", I'm not quite sure.
I'm certainly not going to use it, not just because I don't like Sony, but because I can already get whatever I'm looking for with one of the protocols I mentioned above.