if it requires ANY software to be installed on the host computer then it is crap
Care to explain why? I used to use audiotron, they were OK. Nothing spectacular, browsing was a pain for one thing - they were slow. Now I use Squeezeboxes. Yes they need a server running, but it's open source perl, so (hopefully) no complaints about lockin there. What you get in exchange is much better performance when searching through 10000 files (because meta data is all in a db), support for multi-player synchronized play, fun plugins like RSS tickers when the display is idle, etc. Given that the software is Free (in every sense of the word), I don't see running it as any more of a problem than running, say, Samba.
That would be sucky, it's also wrong. You can control playback, volume, create playlists, etc etc from either the web interface or the regular remote. There's very little that requires the web interface, typically it's config and setup stuff which you don't need to play with very often anyway.
Squeezeboxes are by far the most flexible & cost effective solution for network audio around these days.
It's 100 watts. Same as a lightbulb. Just switch off the light while you play your games and everything's equal again.
To be less flippant, yes these things use a lot of power compared to other computer parts, but compared to other things in your home it's negligable. Switch on an electric heater or cooker, that's at least 2 or 3 kW (i.e. 20-30x as much as this card). The big issue for me with power thirsty parts is the noise associated with cooling, not the actual use of power.
The problem isn't the GPU, it's the cooler. It's amusing to me that you pay $600 for a video card and get a $5 fan on it that sounds like a leaf blower. Solution: replace the cooler. I switched the POS on my 6800 with a Zalman cooler and it's wonderful. Took 10 minutes and $25 and now it's (virtually) silent, cooler, better looking (if that matters to you), and more stable. There are also some Gigabyte cards out there based on 6800 chipsets with passive (heatpipe) cooling. Haven't tried one myself, but those would obviously be totally silent.
I don't pretend to be an RF expert, but from practical experience, I use GPS on the streets of NYC frequently, and it seems pretty accurate. Most problems seem to occur when stationary or moving very slowly, when sometimes the orientation screws up (i.e. it suddenly decides I turned around 180 degrees), but when driving along it seems to get it right. This is via a portable bluetooth GPS unit and a PDA.
What exactly does "more image area" mean? Do you mean the ratio of finder:frame is closer to 1:1, if so, you need a better dSLR. They're as good as film cameras now.
And a battery lasts me for months
No auto-wind then. How many shots can you get of those fast moving planes with manual wind? I was at an F1 meeting this weekend, I was getting rapid fire shots of cars going past at 200mph. Not only was the autofocus keeping up, I was taking at 5fps. A battery will last around 500 shots, a single spare will take up a lot less space than all those film canisters.
I gave up taking my digital to air shows...it was a worthless paper weight, perpetually stuck in some power saving mode when the critical photo op occurred
You need a new camera. The newer Canon dSLRs can power up in the time it take you to press the shutter release.
or letting subjects escape due to shutter lag
Effectively 0 here, just the AF lag which is largely lens-dependent. Or use MF, which is sometimes useful.
or completely impossible to see through owing to the power-sucking LCD viewfinder that is invisible in bright sunlight
Now you're confusing me. Are you SURE you had a dSLR not a point & shoot? I've never seen an SLR with an LCD viewfinder, as the mirror blocks the sensor until exposure time. By definition an SLR has an optical viewfinder. No difference whether it's film or digital. The LCD screen on a dSLR is only for review and menus.
And low-light photography with digitals is laughable
My 3200 ASA mode begs to differ.
To me it seems like you compared a nice film SLR to a really crappy digital one, and decided that digital sucks. If you're working in a studio and have time to compose, light and frame shots then I can see some advantages to film. Out in the field, at a race meet or (as you mention) an airshow, I can't imagine using film. I took over 1000 shots this weekend, how much would that cost in film? Never mind changing rolls every 36 shots and carting it all around. Digital is great for sports, and it's why EVERY pro I saw at the meet was using a dSLR.
With film I can change from a 1600 ASA to 100 ASA, something that digital cameras cannot do
Actually, with digital I can switch from 3200 on one shot to 100 on the next, without having to change film midway through a roll. Sure the sensor is fixed, but the performance characteristics are configurable on the fly. So just as 1600 film is way granier than 100, my pics at 1600 have a lot more (digital) noise than at 100. The end result looks a little different as digital noise and film grain don't look exactly alike, but it's essentially the same noise/speed trade off.
For one thing, film is an analogue, within it exists infinite possibilities for shade and color
And this is simply untrue. Film has a resolution, and a colour gamut. Film also has an inherent hue and colour response, which is why film from different manufacturers behaves differently. To my mind digital allows the phootographer more freedom by not forcing him/her to commit to a specific film, speed, etc at the time of the shot. Take the pic in raw mode, capture the moment, and take the time later on to make it the best image you can. Maybe not as important in a controlled studio environment, but on location or (for example) while doing street work, not having to futz with film allows you to concentrate on the subject and framing.
Anyway, no disrespect to those people still using film, there's room for everyone, and I totally agree that film is still the best in some circumstances. But digital has it's strengths, and it's not just for snapshots.
It's the fact that all my code has to pass review with my peers that prevents me writing junk comments. In (decent) commercial dev environment peer review is mandatory, in O/S it's a possibility (i.e. if anyone can be bothered to read it).
I'm surprised that these people aren't ashamed of being human
Sometimes, I am.
or living in the country they do
Frequently, I am.
and their ancestors surely took the country they live in by force from someone else
Rubbish. I am British, I live in the US. Someone else's ancestors took the country I live in from my ancestors. But that isn't the point. The point is that if we consider ourselves above animals (and, in my experience, most people do) then surely it is our responsibility to try an behave in a civilized manner. Otherwise, why not just run wild? Who needs law & order? Survival of the fittest. Personally, that's not the kind of environment I want for myself or my family.
Ever since then, they've refused to look at any big-budget project
*cough* galactica *cough*
Re:Gach! More amateur website baloney
on
DivX 6.0 is Out
·
· Score: 1
Why do you expect us to believe your information over anyone else' then?
Well, there's the small matter of him being correct, but apart from that? Nothing. Toms/Anandtech are places I'd trust when it comes down to the latest stepping of AMD64 or some such thing, but when they branch out of their core expertise they often come away looking rather daft.
The "wheel" works pretty well, it's certainly nice to scroll up and down with, no complaints there. I also like the other design aspects of the mouse - like the tiny transmitter which fits inside the mouse for safe keeping. What I really don't like (being a Firefox user) is the lack of a middle button (which of course a wheel usually doubles as). It's very irritating to lose my middle-click open new tab function. If I had realised you couldn't use the touch pad as a button, I wouldn't have bought it.
No, I don't need to rethink. I use a printer very rarely, but when I do I usually need colour, and the quality has to be good. Laser/Solid Ink printers just don't cut it for photos. Mail order places fall down when you're trying to get the colour balance just right - if I had to wait 3 days for each print it could take me weeks to get it right never mind the cost. Lasers are also considerably larger than inkjets.
So rather than your $600 for a printer with more toner than I could ever use, I pay $150 for the printer and $30 or so a couple times a year to refill it.
I know that Inkjets have the highest price/page, but that isn't the only important statistic when choosing a printer.
the only people who are going to bitch about this are hardcore gamers
Rubbish. The people who will bitch about this are the people who have big expensive TVs. The exact same people with lots of spare cash to spend on consoles & games. Smart move Nintendo - alienate your most profitable demographic.
I am not a "hardcore gamer" by any definition of that phrase, but I still spend plenty on games, and I want them to look their best.
Nintendo is annoying me with all this luddite crap. First they pull the component outs on the GC (never mind that it doesn't even have digital audio outs), and now this. I would have bought all 3 next gen consoles, I have all 3 of the current ones (plus a GBA & PSP). I spend a lot of disposable income on games, I'm not wedded to any one manufacturer. I'm (I would have thought) a valuable customer. They just lost me by making their games look like crap (compared to the competition) on my TV. Xbox have stated that all 360 games will support at LEAST 720p, and that's cool.
And if you are so gung-ho that all your games must be 1080i or better, buy the versions for the PS3 or XBox 360.
Which is great, apart from the fact that Word is much faster than OO. It just is. This guy is smoking something. I just started Word XP on my box here, it was ready to type in under 2 seconds. OO is many many times slower. And before anyone spouts crap about Office being "preloaded", no, it isn't.
I'm using some scripting to add bells and whistles (like native cuecat decoding support, integrated webcam snapshots, mysql backend and a tcl/tk front-end)
The barcode & hide method sticks to the Keep It Simple Stupid paradigm
You are obviously using some definition of "simple" with which I am not familiar;)
Judging by what's happening for me right now, putting a bogus id in the form to the left of that page hits their server rather hard. Hasn't come back yet and it's been over a minute. Doesn't increase their hosting costs, but maybe we can cause a meltdown in the database;)
Oops, I appear to have just started 20 request threads on their app server. My mistake.
The Tetris song was a huge hit in the UK long before that - maybe 15 years ago? I forget exactly. It was around the same time it came out on original GameBoy.
Slashdot Mirror
Shielded speaker cable? That's a new one on me...
if it requires ANY software to be installed on the host computer then it is crap
Care to explain why? I used to use audiotron, they were OK. Nothing spectacular, browsing was a pain for one thing - they were slow. Now I use Squeezeboxes. Yes they need a server running, but it's open source perl, so (hopefully) no complaints about lockin there. What you get in exchange is much better performance when searching through 10000 files (because meta data is all in a db), support for multi-player synchronized play, fun plugins like RSS tickers when the display is idle, etc. Given that the software is Free (in every sense of the word), I don't see running it as any more of a problem than running, say, Samba.
That would be sucky, it's also wrong. You can control playback, volume, create playlists, etc etc from either the web interface or the regular remote. There's very little that requires the web interface, typically it's config and setup stuff which you don't need to play with very often anyway.
Squeezeboxes are by far the most flexible & cost effective solution for network audio around these days.
They do actually have an AGP 6800 with no fan - product page, although I agree, a good fan shouldn't be noisy at all.
It's 100 watts. Same as a lightbulb. Just switch off the light while you play your games and everything's equal again.
To be less flippant, yes these things use a lot of power compared to other computer parts, but compared to other things in your home it's negligable. Switch on an electric heater or cooker, that's at least 2 or 3 kW (i.e. 20-30x as much as this card). The big issue for me with power thirsty parts is the noise associated with cooling, not the actual use of power.
The problem isn't the GPU, it's the cooler. It's amusing to me that you pay $600 for a video card and get a $5 fan on it that sounds like a leaf blower. Solution: replace the cooler. I switched the POS on my 6800 with a Zalman cooler and it's wonderful. Took 10 minutes and $25 and now it's (virtually) silent, cooler, better looking (if that matters to you), and more stable. There are also some Gigabyte cards out there based on 6800 chipsets with passive (heatpipe) cooling. Haven't tried one myself, but those would obviously be totally silent.
I don't pretend to be an RF expert, but from practical experience, I use GPS on the streets of NYC frequently, and it seems pretty accurate. Most problems seem to occur when stationary or moving very slowly, when sometimes the orientation screws up (i.e. it suddenly decides I turned around 180 degrees), but when driving along it seems to get it right. This is via a portable bluetooth GPS unit and a PDA.
It is hopeless indoors though.
more image area
What exactly does "more image area" mean? Do you mean the ratio of finder:frame is closer to 1:1, if so, you need a better dSLR. They're as good as film cameras now.
And a battery lasts me for months
No auto-wind then. How many shots can you get of those fast moving planes with manual wind? I was at an F1 meeting this weekend, I was getting rapid fire shots of cars going past at 200mph. Not only was the autofocus keeping up, I was taking at 5fps. A battery will last around 500 shots, a single spare will take up a lot less space than all those film canisters.
I gave up taking my digital to air shows...it was a worthless paper weight, perpetually stuck in some power saving mode when the critical photo op occurred
You need a new camera. The newer Canon dSLRs can power up in the time it take you to press the shutter release.
or letting subjects escape due to shutter lag
Effectively 0 here, just the AF lag which is largely lens-dependent. Or use MF, which is sometimes useful.
or completely impossible to see through owing to the power-sucking LCD viewfinder that is invisible in bright sunlight
Now you're confusing me. Are you SURE you had a dSLR not a point & shoot? I've never seen an SLR with an LCD viewfinder, as the mirror blocks the sensor until exposure time. By definition an SLR has an optical viewfinder. No difference whether it's film or digital. The LCD screen on a dSLR is only for review and menus.
And low-light photography with digitals is laughable
My 3200 ASA mode begs to differ.
To me it seems like you compared a nice film SLR to a really crappy digital one, and decided that digital sucks. If you're working in a studio and have time to compose, light and frame shots then I can see some advantages to film. Out in the field, at a race meet or (as you mention) an airshow, I can't imagine using film. I took over 1000 shots this weekend, how much would that cost in film? Never mind changing rolls every 36 shots and carting it all around. Digital is great for sports, and it's why EVERY pro I saw at the meet was using a dSLR.
With film I can change from a 1600 ASA to 100 ASA, something that digital cameras cannot do
Actually, with digital I can switch from 3200 on one shot to 100 on the next, without having to change film midway through a roll. Sure the sensor is fixed, but the performance characteristics are configurable on the fly. So just as 1600 film is way granier than 100, my pics at 1600 have a lot more (digital) noise than at 100. The end result looks a little different as digital noise and film grain don't look exactly alike, but it's essentially the same noise/speed trade off.
For one thing, film is an analogue, within it exists infinite possibilities for shade and color
And this is simply untrue. Film has a resolution, and a colour gamut. Film also has an inherent hue and colour response, which is why film from different manufacturers behaves differently. To my mind digital allows the phootographer more freedom by not forcing him/her to commit to a specific film, speed, etc at the time of the shot. Take the pic in raw mode, capture the moment, and take the time later on to make it the best image you can. Maybe not as important in a controlled studio environment, but on location or (for example) while doing street work, not having to futz with film allows you to concentrate on the subject and framing.
Anyway, no disrespect to those people still using film, there's room for everyone, and I totally agree that film is still the best in some circumstances. But digital has it's strengths, and it's not just for snapshots.
It's the fact that all my code has to pass review with my peers that prevents me writing junk comments. In (decent) commercial dev environment peer review is mandatory, in O/S it's a possibility (i.e. if anyone can be bothered to read it).
I'm surprised that these people aren't ashamed of being human
Sometimes, I am.
or living in the country they do
Frequently, I am.
and their ancestors surely took the country they live in by force from someone else
Rubbish. I am British, I live in the US. Someone else's ancestors took the country I live in from my ancestors. But that isn't the point. The point is that if we consider ourselves above animals (and, in my experience, most people do) then surely it is our responsibility to try an behave in a civilized manner. Otherwise, why not just run wild? Who needs law & order? Survival of the fittest. Personally, that's not the kind of environment I want for myself or my family.
Do you even question whether the rules are correct? Or is your entire moral code based on "the rule book says it's ok, so it is"? Think for yourself.
Ever since then, they've refused to look at any big-budget project
*cough* galactica *cough*
Why do you expect us to believe your information over anyone else' then?
Well, there's the small matter of him being correct, but apart from that? Nothing. Toms/Anandtech are places I'd trust when it comes down to the latest stepping of AMD64 or some such thing, but when they branch out of their core expertise they often come away looking rather daft.
The "wheel" works pretty well, it's certainly nice to scroll up and down with, no complaints there. I also like the other design aspects of the mouse - like the tiny transmitter which fits inside the mouse for safe keeping. What I really don't like (being a Firefox user) is the lack of a middle button (which of course a wheel usually doubles as). It's very irritating to lose my middle-click open new tab function. If I had realised you couldn't use the touch pad as a button, I wouldn't have bought it.
it's a mixture of flac and vorbis -q6 actually.
400 gigs here, but no ipod :)
No, I don't need to rethink. I use a printer very rarely, but when I do I usually need colour, and the quality has to be good. Laser/Solid Ink printers just don't cut it for photos. Mail order places fall down when you're trying to get the colour balance just right - if I had to wait 3 days for each print it could take me weeks to get it right never mind the cost. Lasers are also considerably larger than inkjets.
So rather than your $600 for a printer with more toner than I could ever use, I pay $150 for the printer and $30 or so a couple times a year to refill it.
I know that Inkjets have the highest price/page, but that isn't the only important statistic when choosing a printer.
SeamlessWeb has been available in NYC (and surrounding areas, like Hoboken NJ) for years, I use it quite frequently. How is this news?
the only people who are going to bitch about this are hardcore gamers
Rubbish. The people who will bitch about this are the people who have big expensive TVs. The exact same people with lots of spare cash to spend on consoles & games. Smart move Nintendo - alienate your most profitable demographic.
I am not a "hardcore gamer" by any definition of that phrase, but I still spend plenty on games, and I want them to look their best.
Nintendo is annoying me with all this luddite crap. First they pull the component outs on the GC (never mind that it doesn't even have digital audio outs), and now this. I would have bought all 3 next gen consoles, I have all 3 of the current ones (plus a GBA & PSP). I spend a lot of disposable income on games, I'm not wedded to any one manufacturer. I'm (I would have thought) a valuable customer. They just lost me by making their games look like crap (compared to the competition) on my TV. Xbox have stated that all 360 games will support at LEAST 720p, and that's cool.
And if you are so gung-ho that all your games must be 1080i or better, buy the versions for the PS3 or XBox 360.
I think I will. Sorry Nintendo.
Which is great, apart from the fact that Word is much faster than OO. It just is. This guy is smoking something. I just started Word XP on my box here, it was ready to type in under 2 seconds. OO is many many times slower. And before anyone spouts crap about Office being "preloaded", no, it isn't.
I'm using some scripting to add bells and whistles (like native cuecat decoding support, integrated webcam snapshots, mysql backend and a tcl/tk front-end)
;)
The barcode & hide method sticks to the Keep It Simple Stupid paradigm
You are obviously using some definition of "simple" with which I am not familiar
Judging by what's happening for me right now, putting a bogus id in the form to the left of that page hits their server rather hard. Hasn't come back yet and it's been over a minute. Doesn't increase their hosting costs, but maybe we can cause a meltdown in the database ;)
Oops, I appear to have just started 20 request threads on their app server. My mistake.
The Tetris song was a huge hit in the UK long before that - maybe 15 years ago? I forget exactly. It was around the same time it came out on original GameBoy.