OK, seriously...I'm using dd-wrt on my router and while I like it very much it is NOT a 10 minute job to install (particularly for the uninitiated). I'm not going to list my credentials here but suffice it to say I generally know what I'm doing - but it took me the best part of a day to set up, including figuring out which version I should be installing, where to get it, and how to install it. Just reading the giant FAQ threads on the forums (which I was told I had to do as the wiki pages were out of date) took much longer than 10 minutes. The actual install took a while too with all the hold this button, wait 5 minutes, press this, wait for this light to flash, etc etc. Then it was config, test, figure out why the wlan speed kept fluctuating, try another build, config, test, etc etc for the rest of the afternoon until I finally found a combo which was reasonably stable.
Now the OP mentioned OpenWRT, and maybe that's much, much better (it'd have to be!) but last time I checked that didn't support my hardware.
For camera stuff, sure - and Adorama too. They tend to be a little high priced for non photo stuff in my experience. Likewise I've never had any problems with J&R and would order from them any day, but they're rarely the best priced.
Amazon, Newegg, ZipZoomFly. There's no reason to ever look anywhere else IMHO. Excellent service and prices from all three. TigerDirect and Buy.com are on the avoid list.
Basically, encryption works with an algorithm and a key. If you have both you can decrypt the content, if you only have one you can't. So open source crypto algorithms are fine, provided you keep the key safe. DRM is fundamentally flawed because the player needs to have both to be able to show you the content, and if the key is in your computer you can get it out (eventually).
Or maybe it shows that we see a difference between threatening to kill someone (which is what you're doing, implicitly or explicitly, if you point a gun at them) and filing suit against them in court. I would MUCH rather lose a $150k law suit than be shot - just saying.
There's a difference you know. I get promotional email from Amazon, quite often it actually alerts me to deals I'm interested in, so it serves it's purpose. If I change my mind I can switch it off. It's not spam, it is email-based marketing.
Fighting spam is hard enough without confusing what it actually is.
It's also what happens every time you run "apt-get install foobar" or download a dpkg or msi or whatever. Unless you're telling me you personally review the source of every app you install, in which case I don't believe you - and it's irrelevant because you could also read all the JS delivered to your browser if you wanted.
Do you have your speakers setup right? If you don't have a center channel speaker, but your surround amp thinks you do, it'll direct all the dialog to the non-existent speaker and only the off-center echo & reverbs will be audible through the main L/R speakers.
Fable 2, Mass Effect 1/2, Forza 3, GT5, PGR 3, Split/Second, Oblivion, Dragon Age.... pick your console, there's plenty of great games for PS3 and 360.
All true, but it's worth noting that Wii sales have been on a steep decline for a while now, and profits are also down significantly whilst both MS and Sony are doing rather well, with the 360 in particular continuing to increase it's sales month on month. It's true that MS sunk a lot of cash into the Xbox project as a whole and is clearly very far from making a positive ROI, but the quarterly results are showing decent profits and have been for quite some time now. They're very far from hurting and if things continue the way they have (at least in the US) they're in very good shape for the next round. I, for one, most likely won't be bothering to upgrade my Wii to whatever Nintendo come out with next.
You seem to think that resolution is the only important measure of graphics performance, which is obviously not the case. I can render a black cube at 4000x4000 and it still doesn't look like anything other than a black cube. Textures, shaders, dynamic lighting, etc etc are what makes the difference between good and bad graphics - more so than the resolution in many cases. The best looking PS3/360 games at 1080p still aren't photorealistic, and until they are there's still more to do!
I tried a Mac as well, bought one a couple of years ago as an experiment. Sold it about a year later, haven't regretted that for a second. It was a decent system for sure, but it wasn't for me. Too many things about the OS annoyed me, too many things about the hardware annoyed me. It certainly wasn't any more reliable than any of the other systems I use on a regular basis.
It's really great that you like your Mac, happy for you. But I wish people would drop the "there is one solution that works perfectly for everyone, you just have to realize it" mantra. It isn't true. Win 7 meets my needs pretty much perfectly - nothing else that I'm aware of does. Mac meets your needs, and Linux meets someone else's needs. That doesn't make any of us stupid, or ignorant, or inexperienced, or fashion victims, or anything else other than different.
Sure, but it's also a design decision they fixed years ago. I run a bunch of Win 7 boxes here at home for me & the family, no-one gets admin rights except me. Works fine. Sooo...maybe time to let it go?
There are a number of advantages to an optical viewfinder - the main one being the image in the finder is MUCH higher quality and much brighter. Most of the LCD viewfinders I've have been horribly low resolution to the point where I could barely see if the subject was properly lit - never mind judge focus.
If you have two audio systems, and one has significantly more fidelity than the other, you can process the sound to emulate the artifacts of the weaker system with no perceivable difference.
Theoretically, maybe. Simulating analogue devices in the digital domain is still very far from an exact science. Example - a lot of music producers still use analogue compressors/filters etc rather than their VST cousins because they prefer the sound. The VST is a simulation and is inherently imperfect (just as a digitally sampled waveform is not the same as the original analogue). Over time they'll get closer, and are already interchangeable in many cases - but not quite all yet.
Of course, PRICE does not mean quality -- not with loads of gear that don't stand to blind hearing tests and outright scams like Monster Cable
Well of course:) And the placebo effect/buyers remorse play no small part in these discussions, but there are cases where I'm willing to believe there is an audible difference - for example between two different but similarly spec'd DACs. My position is that once you've established there is a difference (through blind testing), which is "better" is really down the the listener's preference. There's no point me spending thousands to get the ultimate transparent system if I don't like to listen to it.
That tube amps you mention -- their only upside is that they fail more nicely at the point of clipping, starting to lose gain before the cap so the transition isn't that abrupt. You can of course easily emulate that with newer gear or in software. And the whole exercise is moot -- if any clipping occurs, any quality is already lost. Of course, the music industry doesn't care here.
Well that and there's a distinct color added to the sound. You probably don't consider that an upside, but I know people who do. They would call a traditional amp "cold" while you and I would call it "accurate":) On the clipping front, my understanding is that tubes help when your amp is clipping, which just means it's turned up too loud. Clipping the original recording isn't helped by tubes or anything else. Having said that, I did see some software which claimed to be able to apply filters to try and restore clipped peaks. No idea how well it works...
Or because people prefer the sound of vinyl, coloration and all. You can measure the performance of a medium and determine which is the most neutral (or the "best" from a technical pov), but that doesn't always equate to the one which people think sounds "best" to their ears. I get into this a lot with audio fans who say that their $xxxx gear sounds "better" than something much cheaper, despite the test results saying the cheaper one is as good or better from a transparency pov - our ears don't always like transparent (tube amps are great evidence of that!).
Agreed, except that the ST was 16-bit (actually parts were 32-bit). There's a rumor (not sure how true it is) that the letters "ST" came from "Sixteen/Thirtytwo".
Preemptive vs co-operative. In early multitasking setups (Win 3, MacOS, etc) each task had to cede control of the CPU itself so that the OS could schedule the next process - a badly behaved app could fail to do so and thus take over the whole system. Preemptive multitasking puts the OS in control so that it can decide how much CPU time each process gets.
They claim that the search results portion is based on a formula. Not the whole page - and specifically not the "smart" stuff like calculator, stock prices, flight status etc.
The quality & quantity of available application software doesn't affect the appeal of an OS, for sure, but it absolutely does affect the appeal of a platform. Linux is a great OS, but I run Windows largely because of the application software available for it. Android is also a great OS, but the application software (that I'm interested in) is better on iOS, so that's what I use. If the situation changes I reserve the right to change my mind:)
When it comes to phones it's the whole package that counts - OS, hardware, third party apps, and services like stores. Android's doing well on a couple of those dimensions but has a way to go on others.
Yes, and no. It may be late (in that they should have had it out a long time ago, not that it was promised any earlier) but how do you know that it's "a dollar short" if you haven't used it?
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OK, seriously...I'm using dd-wrt on my router and while I like it very much it is NOT a 10 minute job to install (particularly for the uninitiated). I'm not going to list my credentials here but suffice it to say I generally know what I'm doing - but it took me the best part of a day to set up, including figuring out which version I should be installing, where to get it, and how to install it. Just reading the giant FAQ threads on the forums (which I was told I had to do as the wiki pages were out of date) took much longer than 10 minutes. The actual install took a while too with all the hold this button, wait 5 minutes, press this, wait for this light to flash, etc etc. Then it was config, test, figure out why the wlan speed kept fluctuating, try another build, config, test, etc etc for the rest of the afternoon until I finally found a combo which was reasonably stable.
Now the OP mentioned OpenWRT, and maybe that's much, much better (it'd have to be!) but last time I checked that didn't support my hardware.
Consider yourself corrected :) Unless you intentionally disable hotspot everything is a candidate for JIT and post-JIT optimizations.
For camera stuff, sure - and Adorama too. They tend to be a little high priced for non photo stuff in my experience. Likewise I've never had any problems with J&R and would order from them any day, but they're rarely the best priced.
Amazon, Newegg, ZipZoomFly. There's no reason to ever look anywhere else IMHO. Excellent service and prices from all three. TigerDirect and Buy.com are on the avoid list.
Basically, encryption works with an algorithm and a key. If you have both you can decrypt the content, if you only have one you can't. So open source crypto algorithms are fine, provided you keep the key safe. DRM is fundamentally flawed because the player needs to have both to be able to show you the content, and if the key is in your computer you can get it out (eventually).
Or maybe it shows that we see a difference between threatening to kill someone (which is what you're doing, implicitly or explicitly, if you point a gun at them) and filing suit against them in court. I would MUCH rather lose a $150k law suit than be shot - just saying.
And if your connection is low speed you get SD, and if it's faster you get HD.
There's a difference you know. I get promotional email from Amazon, quite often it actually alerts me to deals I'm interested in, so it serves it's purpose. If I change my mind I can switch it off. It's not spam, it is email-based marketing.
Fighting spam is hard enough without confusing what it actually is.
It's also what happens every time you run "apt-get install foobar" or download a dpkg or msi or whatever. Unless you're telling me you personally review the source of every app you install, in which case I don't believe you - and it's irrelevant because you could also read all the JS delivered to your browser if you wanted.
Do you have your speakers setup right? If you don't have a center channel speaker, but your surround amp thinks you do, it'll direct all the dialog to the non-existent speaker and only the off-center echo & reverbs will be audible through the main L/R speakers.
Fable 2, Mass Effect 1/2, Forza 3, GT5, PGR 3, Split/Second, Oblivion, Dragon Age.... pick your console, there's plenty of great games for PS3 and 360.
All true, but it's worth noting that Wii sales have been on a steep decline for a while now, and profits are also down significantly whilst both MS and Sony are doing rather well, with the 360 in particular continuing to increase it's sales month on month. It's true that MS sunk a lot of cash into the Xbox project as a whole and is clearly very far from making a positive ROI, but the quarterly results are showing decent profits and have been for quite some time now. They're very far from hurting and if things continue the way they have (at least in the US) they're in very good shape for the next round. I, for one, most likely won't be bothering to upgrade my Wii to whatever Nintendo come out with next.
You seem to think that resolution is the only important measure of graphics performance, which is obviously not the case. I can render a black cube at 4000x4000 and it still doesn't look like anything other than a black cube. Textures, shaders, dynamic lighting, etc etc are what makes the difference between good and bad graphics - more so than the resolution in many cases. The best looking PS3/360 games at 1080p still aren't photorealistic, and until they are there's still more to do!
I tried a Mac as well, bought one a couple of years ago as an experiment. Sold it about a year later, haven't regretted that for a second. It was a decent system for sure, but it wasn't for me. Too many things about the OS annoyed me, too many things about the hardware annoyed me. It certainly wasn't any more reliable than any of the other systems I use on a regular basis.
It's really great that you like your Mac, happy for you. But I wish people would drop the "there is one solution that works perfectly for everyone, you just have to realize it" mantra. It isn't true. Win 7 meets my needs pretty much perfectly - nothing else that I'm aware of does. Mac meets your needs, and Linux meets someone else's needs. That doesn't make any of us stupid, or ignorant, or inexperienced, or fashion victims, or anything else other than different.
Sure, but it's also a design decision they fixed years ago. I run a bunch of Win 7 boxes here at home for me & the family, no-one gets admin rights except me. Works fine. Sooo...maybe time to let it go?
There are a number of advantages to an optical viewfinder - the main one being the image in the finder is MUCH higher quality and much brighter. Most of the LCD viewfinders I've have been horribly low resolution to the point where I could barely see if the subject was properly lit - never mind judge focus.
Theoretically, maybe. Simulating analogue devices in the digital domain is still very far from an exact science. Example - a lot of music producers still use analogue compressors/filters etc rather than their VST cousins because they prefer the sound. The VST is a simulation and is inherently imperfect (just as a digitally sampled waveform is not the same as the original analogue). Over time they'll get closer, and are already interchangeable in many cases - but not quite all yet.
Well of course :) And the placebo effect/buyers remorse play no small part in these discussions, but there are cases where I'm willing to believe there is an audible difference - for example between two different but similarly spec'd DACs. My position is that once you've established there is a difference (through blind testing), which is "better" is really down the the listener's preference. There's no point me spending thousands to get the ultimate transparent system if I don't like to listen to it.
Well that and there's a distinct color added to the sound. You probably don't consider that an upside, but I know people who do. They would call a traditional amp "cold" while you and I would call it "accurate" :) On the clipping front, my understanding is that tubes help when your amp is clipping, which just means it's turned up too loud. Clipping the original recording isn't helped by tubes or anything else. Having said that, I did see some software which claimed to be able to apply filters to try and restore clipped peaks. No idea how well it works...
Or because people prefer the sound of vinyl, coloration and all. You can measure the performance of a medium and determine which is the most neutral (or the "best" from a technical pov), but that doesn't always equate to the one which people think sounds "best" to their ears. I get into this a lot with audio fans who say that their $xxxx gear sounds "better" than something much cheaper, despite the test results saying the cheaper one is as good or better from a transparency pov - our ears don't always like transparent (tube amps are great evidence of that!).
Agreed, except that the ST was 16-bit (actually parts were 32-bit). There's a rumor (not sure how true it is) that the letters "ST" came from "Sixteen/Thirtytwo".
Preemptive vs co-operative. In early multitasking setups (Win 3, MacOS, etc) each task had to cede control of the CPU itself so that the OS could schedule the next process - a badly behaved app could fail to do so and thus take over the whole system. Preemptive multitasking puts the OS in control so that it can decide how much CPU time each process gets.
They claim that the search results portion is based on a formula. Not the whole page - and specifically not the "smart" stuff like calculator, stock prices, flight status etc.
The quality & quantity of available application software doesn't affect the appeal of an OS, for sure, but it absolutely does affect the appeal of a platform. Linux is a great OS, but I run Windows largely because of the application software available for it. Android is also a great OS, but the application software (that I'm interested in) is better on iOS, so that's what I use. If the situation changes I reserve the right to change my mind :)
When it comes to phones it's the whole package that counts - OS, hardware, third party apps, and services like stores. Android's doing well on a couple of those dimensions but has a way to go on others.
Yes, and no. It may be late (in that they should have had it out a long time ago, not that it was promised any earlier) but how do you know that it's "a dollar short" if you haven't used it?
Does Windows Phone 7 act and feel like Windows 7 on the desktop?
Which is great except 5 of those points apply to Kindles as well.