This is a veritable miracle given that the dithering is done by the LCD panel, not the operating system. On a laptop it might be the combination of graphics chip + LCD panel as it is driven directly, but it's still not the OS.
Sounds like a graphics driver issue to me. Apple should sort that out.
Honestly, there's a legitimate point to that. If the advertised specs say that it can display "millions of colors", then there's a reasonable expectation that a given pixel will be able to represent over 1 million colors (most likely 16MiColors, but who's counting?). Yeah, this might seem a little silly, but if you can't deliver then don't promise it.
Using your logic, even high quality LCD panels can only display 766 different colours, and all laptop panels are stuck with 190 colours.
8-bit: 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue + black. 6-bit: 63 red, 63 green, 63 blue + black.
These use spatial closeness to simulate the full colour spectrum.
By the same argument, I don't see the issue with using temporal dithering to simulate a greater colour spectrum. Unless the temporal dithering algorithm wasn't very good of course, or if the temporal dithering operated too slow. Neither of these should be an issue on a modern screen.
You'd notice temporal dithering between black and white pixels every 16.6ms in order to get 50% grey.
You don't notice temporal dithering between 23/64th red and 24/64th red in order to get 47/128th red.
Most people reading this article are assuming spatial dithering. 6-bit TN LCDs utilise temporal dithering. They can do this because TN displays are quick to react and have very low grey-grey transition times (10ms), so they can temporally dither in such a way that the eye will not notice.
C64 games used to temporally dither the sprite colours to create colours that weren't in the C64's limited palette, by the way. That was done in software back then, but LCD dithering is done in the LCD hardware itself.
To the people that say that the human eye can only see some 300,000 colours, they should take notice that that includes thousands of grey levels, and a 6-bit TN display can only have 64, and can temporally dither to get 128 (or 256 more recently as they can dither 25% 23/64ths and 75% 24/64s to get 93/256ths grey due to their fast response times).
A finger-driven user interface should require, as a core feature, that the user interface did not present to the user buttons or other selectable entities that are too small to mash with a finger.
Once you've designed with that requirement in mind, the need for this software becomes rather moot.
Now maybe for something like an on-screen keyboard you have an issue, because you can't fit many finger-pressable keys in that. Apple's iPhone however enlarges the key as you press it, and this solution would slow you down on each keypress as you rock in a direction to select the correct key.
Other people have already pointed out that most people use a fingernail after a while for accuracy anyway, rather than hitting with the fleshy bit of the finger tip.
According to this article (well worth reading, despite the newspaper it is from), Iran's not that bad.
Sure, the elections may be dodgy, but it's democratic. Nobody seems to like the leaders as they don't represent the people and it's unlikely they'll be in power long. The people are pushing the boundaries in all walks of life. In fact they're far more Western than a country like Turkey. And as for the political situation, it doesn't sound unlike any other Western country - unpopular leadership, dodgy elections, etc.
But no, the Western media portray Iran as a country hell bent of destroying the West, destroying Israel (the viewpoint of one politician who doesn't have that power), and evil evil evil. But in a country with 40% of people under the age of 15, you really don't want to invade badly like in Iraq, and turn them ALL against you for the rest of their lives.
Now whilst the article above is but one story that gives an idea of life within Iran, it is counter to the rhetoric and fearmongering that is so popular within our media.
How, in this day and age, can a website have such a short limit on the subject line for a post?
Anyway, nearly a year ago iSupply claimed that Microsoft were making a profit on each console sold. This figure has been repeated ever since then, especially in relation to the PS3's huge loss per console. Yet the figures were weird, the console hadn't changed, no cost reductions applied, and iSupply thought it had gone from a $150 loss per console to a $70 gain. But people were very happy to accept this figure.
Now Microsoft's gaming (and music) division has made a $300+m loss for 500k sold, and presumably they're getting profits from online use, the games themselves (the attach rate is rising), and add-ons. Of course the Zune and other products are dragging them down too, and there's wages and future developments and all that...
Also 500k sold in a quarter, albeit a quiet quarter, is appalling at this stage in the game. You would think that if Microsoft COULD drop the price, they would have, to stimulate demand. But they didn't.
So in conclusion, I suspect Microsoft are still making losses on the 360 console, probably in the $100 per console ballpark. 65nm shrinks are really required - cheaper chips, cheaper cooling, cheaper power supply. I expect the 65nm introduction to coincide with a $50 pricedrop, and a static loss/console rate.
Take AppleTV. Take out 40GB hard drive. Image onto 160GB hard drive. Put 160GB into Apple TV. Kappow, extra storage space. Whilst the drive is out you can also install a SSH server so you can get access to the filesystem. The username/password on the AppleTV is frontrow/frontrow. I guess you could install Apache or Postgresql or whatever here as well, assuming the BSD layer is intact. People are working on getting the USB port fully active, and remote desktop active. And via the SSH server you can install divx/xvid codecs into Quicktime on the AppleTV to support this common video format for backups (of DVDs, or Cinema showings, hehe).
It'll kill your warranty though. But it's looking to be a very hackable consumer BSD box right now...
Yet anyone, especially the rabid Christian gun-toting southerners would immediately say that it is the user that kills, not the gun (the tool). And the gun is specifically designed to hurt and kill!
A web browser is a tool. It is not there to browse porn, it can be used by someone to browse porn. Unlike a gun it actually has many many uses that are beneficial.
Tools are not portals. The desires of the user of the tool are, and children have been looking at porn illicitly one way or another for decades.
Is porn so bad anyway? Especially non-violent consentual porn. I think the amount of violence in society is a far greater concern than a couple of people having harmless fun, and allowing other people to satisfy their human needs as a result of it.
The upper-left corner of the menu bar is NOT an active location to click on the apple menu. The Start Menu's major components are always in the same locations; the recent programs list is always so many entries long, the list of programs to run is so many entries long, etc. The Dock resizes and warps around so that you cannot utilize muscle memory to click on dock items. Icons do not appear under anchored taskbars on Windows, but they DO appear beneath the dock. Windows will always leave my drive shortcuts in the same order on my desktop, and even in the same location if I don't use auto-arrange. On the mac, my "Macintosh HD" icon appears in a new location on my desktop on every boot.
Top left works on my Mac to get the Apple menu, so it is 'infinitely large' as well. Recent Programs is 10 items long in the Recent Items submenu off of the Apple Menu, then 10 recent documents, and 10 recent servers. This ain't ideal though, I think the entries on the Apple menu should each be vertically larger, with a visual aid. Selecting 'Recent Items' isn't quick, because as a text menu item is isn't that large vertically. Double the height, and it becomes useful.
The dock has deficiencies, so does the Windows taskbar. The docks' visual aesthetic helps though, with icons having, e.g., 'X new mails' and so on, or bouncing when demanding attention, etc. I certainly know that a windows taskbar with >10 items on it starts getting compressed so much you can't make out what app or window it refers to, whereas the dock only has smaller icons that are still recognisable.
I've never had a problem with the location of drives on the desktop, unless they're a removable drive and another icon has put itself in the way. Shame that Mac OS X is as easy to clutterify the desktop as Windows though.
Now Finder, that's something that could do with improvement.
Wouldn't it be better if one non-ISP company built it, and then leased to all users at prevailing prices?
Obviously.
However you're coming from a situation where there was a national telephone company, probably nationalised, that was privatised with monopoly restrictions, but is still massive. Look at BT in the UK as an example.
The solution has been to try and slice up the company in such a way that you don't create a bunch of smaller monopolies (like splitting Microsoft into Office, Windows, Internet would have done). This means that a company handles the core network, and sells access on a non-discriminatory basis to other companies, including itself. Of course it is possible to install your own network still, or buy access at a higher level (e.g., ISPs).
Well, in theory this is how it should be done. It sounds like Germany has tried to regulate instead of solve the situation, and when the regulators are bought out (as with this 'let us build our own exclusive network' deal) the entire mechanism is pointless and the consumers don't benefit.
I'm a bit stuck here, how should I approach the 3 year gap in my record when queried by a potential employer?
Take a lower paying job, and then trade up in 4 months time for a 30-40% pay rise, and do that several times....
Seriously, you may have to get a job for a year or two that will not pay so much - however if you're lucky it will be close enough for you to still mooch off your parents. That will give you recent job history, and hopefully some complete projects. After that you'll be up to date, and can get a new job for decent money. First though finish your existing project - find somewhere to make into a work den - the garage, a tree house, whatever, and work there. Turn off the wireless router if web browsing is becoming an issue.
Nah, Steve Jobs explicitly said in the keynote that core libraries like Core Animation and so on were present on the iPhone.
I expect that they will be cut down without any cruft, and rarely used functions and irrelevant (for a touch-screen interface) stuff removed as well. Never mind underlying abstraction layers that aren't needed either. But there will be libraries and frameworks that are recognisable as Mac OS X. OpenGL ES instead of OpenGL 1.4/1.5/2.0, only the required drivers for the hardware, etc...
The CPU provider is still vague - it is either Samsung, or Marvell. Marvell sell 624MHz XScales. Samsung aimed to hit over 300MHz on their 90nm with their 1136/56/76JF products last year (and a PDA with one of their 300MHz CPUs gets very high benchmark scores, so it appears to be better than the XScale design). Note that most of the interface work would be offloaded to a mobile GPU as well, indeed there is probably a DSP for signal processing on top of that.
The 687k number was XBox 360's equivalent sales in Dec 2005 (Comparing XBox 360's launch XMas period with Wii/PS3's launch XMas period). In December 2006, they sold 1.1million.
Wow, even the summary says "Microsoft trails with its numbers from 2005; it sold 607,000 consoles in its launch year."
This means that in 6 weeks Sony managed to outsell the XBox360 in its first few months of sales. Despite the massively higher price tag. Despite HD not being as new and shiny. It is a minor consolation to Sony, however now their fanboys have their PS3s and this year is going to be really tough. Still, they sold a boat load of PS2s, so they're making money there by the bucketload.
The NPD figures are USA only too. The Wii would have sold more but Nintendo shuffled some half a million into Europe for a launch there.
The fact is worldwide to date the PS3 has sold around a million consoles. The Wii has sold around 3 million. The figures on nexgenwars.com are clearly pulled from thin air though.
I can go out and assemble a cheap Windows-based file/print server for my home.
Their new Airport Extreme supports USB hard drives and acts as a print server. It's expensive, at $179, and I know other wireless routers include this functionality too for a lot less, but that's what I'd do - always on storage and printer. It's a lot cheaper than dedicated hardware and always on, low power, and hopefully it'd just work. One USB RAID enclosure and you'll have your redundancy, and for media streaming USB2 is fast enough.
The only issue is that the Apple TV would need to know about this network storage and access it usefully, rather than talking to iTunes Servers running on systems on the network.
People spend $299 on Squeezeboxes already. That requires their custom server running on a system in your house to work.
This device adds video functionality, photos and cover art + coverflow, and a lot more. However it won't have the hardware quality of the Squeezebox (in terms of DACs, etc), so you'll be making use of that optical output if you can. If you actually care. I'm sure that in tests the Squeezebox's audio output will be cleaner and better than the ATV (and the XBox360, which lacks optical out and HDMI too). You also lose the small on-device display, which requires you to use the TV to navigate, even if you only want to play music. However you do have a decent set of outputs, better than the most common media center extender, the XBox360.
All the Mac third party media software will be ripping to ATV supported media formats within weeks. A Mac Mini + external media HD + EyeTV is a perfect home server, and it does double duty as a decent computer as well. Of course it will work with Windows too, so it's a large market.
However would this solution please me? I don't care about HD right now, but if the next version if iTunes had DVD ripping (yeah, handbrake etc), then it could be appealing.
Use 3D models and environments, but limit movement to 2D.
You get the smoothness of animating 3D characters rather than frame-by-frame 2D animations, and free depth of field and scrolling effects. Don't forget proper lighting, animated features like water via pixel/vertex shaders and the like.
Something like Viewtiful Joe, that was a left to right beat-em-up but in full 3D.
And yes, there's a large market for something like this.
Yeah, channel 906 onwards on Sky. Babestation and the like. Hell there is a Playboy One channel that is Free To Air.
The one that got all-naked seems to have been dropped, but of course I would only know that by miskeying in the channel number on the remote control because I would never look at channels like that at all otherwise you get me?
i.e., virtually nobody used analogue television in the country anyway.
Whereas in the UK uptake of the Freeview package has been good, providing some 30 free-to-air channels, but there's a massive market of analogue-only households (no satellite or cable), hence the slow turnover. Even at £25 for a Freeview box it's not a minor expense to convert a couple of TVs in a house, and the signal is weak too due to needing to keep transmitting analogue. Some areas need new aerials. We're not going to complete changeover until 2012, although large parts of the country will be converted within the next 3 years.
I get Freesat as my house had a satellite dish and my parents had an old Sky digibox. 20 useful channels, 50 shopping channels and a dozen late night phone-in topless sex-chat channels.
And yet LCD prices continue to collapse year-on-year whilst getting bigger, brighter and more contrastful (suck on that word, grammar nazis).
So what's bad for the consumer here? Companies still in business making a profit, or killing off all the companies until the one remaining LCD maker can charge the earth for them?
Yes, there is a fine line to tread between organised price fixing to pwn the consumer, and a free market where competition kills off choice, but things aren't black and white, good or bad.
"So let's tie the termination fees to the cost of the phone. If you have a high-end smartphone or the latest shiny Motorola toy, fine, you'll get charged out the wazoo for early termination. However, if you have something like a low-end Nokia or brought your own phone to the plan, then there's absolutely no excuse for it."
Yeah, that's very true.
Oddly enough in the UK it is illegal to charge fees that are disproportionate to the cost incurred, yet it does still happen. Then again my phone provider is so useless they forgot that I was on an 18 month contract and gave me a new contract after a year with half price fees and a new phone for the duration on top.
"Wireless Desk Area Networking" is pointless until the desk incorporates a form of wireless recharger (e.g., inductive, or that dot arrangement thing, etc) and devices can be recharged via that mechanism. And that requires people to care about a few cables popping up behind the desk to their rechargers and peripherals. Note that a few ties can organise wires into looking quite tidy too.
UWB is far more useful for high-speed in-house wireless networking between non-close systems, with applications such as HD video transmission. Or even sticking the printer in a closet out of the way.
I have never really cried about a keyboard cable or mouse cable, but I'd hate to run ethernet throughout the house.
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This is a veritable miracle given that the dithering is done by the LCD panel, not the operating system. On a laptop it might be the combination of graphics chip + LCD panel as it is driven directly, but it's still not the OS.
Sounds like a graphics driver issue to me. Apple should sort that out.
Honestly, there's a legitimate point to that. If the advertised specs say that it can display "millions of colors", then there's a reasonable expectation that a given pixel will be able to represent over 1 million colors (most likely 16MiColors, but who's counting?). Yeah, this might seem a little silly, but if you can't deliver then don't promise it.
Using your logic, even high quality LCD panels can only display 766 different colours, and all laptop panels are stuck with 190 colours.
8-bit: 255 red, 255 green, 255 blue + black.
6-bit: 63 red, 63 green, 63 blue + black.
These use spatial closeness to simulate the full colour spectrum.
By the same argument, I don't see the issue with using temporal dithering to simulate a greater colour spectrum. Unless the temporal dithering algorithm wasn't very good of course, or if the temporal dithering operated too slow. Neither of these should be an issue on a modern screen.
You'd notice temporal dithering between black and white pixels every 16.6ms in order to get 50% grey.
You don't notice temporal dithering between 23/64th red and 24/64th red in order to get 47/128th red.
Most people reading this article are assuming spatial dithering. 6-bit TN LCDs utilise temporal dithering. They can do this because TN displays are quick to react and have very low grey-grey transition times (10ms), so they can temporally dither in such a way that the eye will not notice.
C64 games used to temporally dither the sprite colours to create colours that weren't in the C64's limited palette, by the way. That was done in software back then, but LCD dithering is done in the LCD hardware itself.
To the people that say that the human eye can only see some 300,000 colours, they should take notice that that includes thousands of grey levels, and a 6-bit TN display can only have 64, and can temporally dither to get 128 (or 256 more recently as they can dither 25% 23/64ths and 75% 24/64s to get 93/256ths grey due to their fast response times).
A finger-driven user interface should require, as a core feature, that the user interface did not present to the user buttons or other selectable entities that are too small to mash with a finger.
Once you've designed with that requirement in mind, the need for this software becomes rather moot.
Now maybe for something like an on-screen keyboard you have an issue, because you can't fit many finger-pressable keys in that. Apple's iPhone however enlarges the key as you press it, and this solution would slow you down on each keypress as you rock in a direction to select the correct key.
Other people have already pointed out that most people use a fingernail after a while for accuracy anyway, rather than hitting with the fleshy bit of the finger tip.
According to this article (well worth reading, despite the newspaper it is from), Iran's not that bad.
Sure, the elections may be dodgy, but it's democratic. Nobody seems to like the leaders as they don't represent the people and it's unlikely they'll be in power long. The people are pushing the boundaries in all walks of life. In fact they're far more Western than a country like Turkey. And as for the political situation, it doesn't sound unlike any other Western country - unpopular leadership, dodgy elections, etc.
But no, the Western media portray Iran as a country hell bent of destroying the West, destroying Israel (the viewpoint of one politician who doesn't have that power), and evil evil evil. But in a country with 40% of people under the age of 15, you really don't want to invade badly like in Iraq, and turn them ALL against you for the rest of their lives.
Now whilst the article above is but one story that gives an idea of life within Iran, it is counter to the rhetoric and fearmongering that is so popular within our media.
How, in this day and age, can a website have such a short limit on the subject line for a post?
Anyway, nearly a year ago iSupply claimed that Microsoft were making a profit on each console sold. This figure has been repeated ever since then, especially in relation to the PS3's huge loss per console. Yet the figures were weird, the console hadn't changed, no cost reductions applied, and iSupply thought it had gone from a $150 loss per console to a $70 gain. But people were very happy to accept this figure.
Now Microsoft's gaming (and music) division has made a $300+m loss for 500k sold, and presumably they're getting profits from online use, the games themselves (the attach rate is rising), and add-ons. Of course the Zune and other products are dragging them down too, and there's wages and future developments and all that...
Also 500k sold in a quarter, albeit a quiet quarter, is appalling at this stage in the game. You would think that if Microsoft COULD drop the price, they would have, to stimulate demand. But they didn't.
So in conclusion, I suspect Microsoft are still making losses on the 360 console, probably in the $100 per console ballpark. 65nm shrinks are really required - cheaper chips, cheaper cooling, cheaper power supply. I expect the 65nm introduction to coincide with a $50 pricedrop, and a static loss/console rate.
You could either count the first console as being the Windows CE capable Dreamcast, or go back further in time and consider the MSX.
Take AppleTV. Take out 40GB hard drive. Image onto 160GB hard drive. Put 160GB into Apple TV. Kappow, extra storage space.
Whilst the drive is out you can also install a SSH server so you can get access to the filesystem. The username/password on the AppleTV is frontrow/frontrow. I guess you could install Apache or Postgresql or whatever here as well, assuming the BSD layer is intact. People are working on getting the USB port fully active, and remote desktop active.
And via the SSH server you can install divx/xvid codecs into Quicktime on the AppleTV to support this common video format for backups (of DVDs, or Cinema showings, hehe).
It'll kill your warranty though. But it's looking to be a very hackable consumer BSD box right now...
Yet anyone, especially the rabid Christian gun-toting southerners would immediately say that it is the user that kills, not the gun (the tool). And the gun is specifically designed to hurt and kill!
A web browser is a tool. It is not there to browse porn, it can be used by someone to browse porn. Unlike a gun it actually has many many uses that are beneficial.
Tools are not portals. The desires of the user of the tool are, and children have been looking at porn illicitly one way or another for decades.
Is porn so bad anyway? Especially non-violent consentual porn. I think the amount of violence in society is a far greater concern than a couple of people having harmless fun, and allowing other people to satisfy their human needs as a result of it.
The upper-left corner of the menu bar is NOT an active location to click on the apple menu. The Start Menu's major components are always in the same locations; the recent programs list is always so many entries long, the list of programs to run is so many entries long, etc. The Dock resizes and warps around so that you cannot utilize muscle memory to click on dock items. Icons do not appear under anchored taskbars on Windows, but they DO appear beneath the dock. Windows will always leave my drive shortcuts in the same order on my desktop, and even in the same location if I don't use auto-arrange. On the mac, my "Macintosh HD" icon appears in a new location on my desktop on every boot.
Top left works on my Mac to get the Apple menu, so it is 'infinitely large' as well.
Recent Programs is 10 items long in the Recent Items submenu off of the Apple Menu, then 10 recent documents, and 10 recent servers.
This ain't ideal though, I think the entries on the Apple menu should each be vertically larger, with a visual aid. Selecting 'Recent Items' isn't quick, because as a text menu item is isn't that large vertically. Double the height, and it becomes useful.
The dock has deficiencies, so does the Windows taskbar. The docks' visual aesthetic helps though, with icons having, e.g., 'X new mails' and so on, or bouncing when demanding attention, etc. I certainly know that a windows taskbar with >10 items on it starts getting compressed so much you can't make out what app or window it refers to, whereas the dock only has smaller icons that are still recognisable.
I've never had a problem with the location of drives on the desktop, unless they're a removable drive and another icon has put itself in the way. Shame that Mac OS X is as easy to clutterify the desktop as Windows though.
Now Finder, that's something that could do with improvement.
Wouldn't it be better if one non-ISP company built it, and then leased to all users at prevailing prices?
Obviously.
However you're coming from a situation where there was a national telephone company, probably nationalised, that was privatised with monopoly restrictions, but is still massive. Look at BT in the UK as an example.
The solution has been to try and slice up the company in such a way that you don't create a bunch of smaller monopolies (like splitting Microsoft into Office, Windows, Internet would have done). This means that a company handles the core network, and sells access on a non-discriminatory basis to other companies, including itself. Of course it is possible to install your own network still, or buy access at a higher level (e.g., ISPs).
Well, in theory this is how it should be done. It sounds like Germany has tried to regulate instead of solve the situation, and when the regulators are bought out (as with this 'let us build our own exclusive network' deal) the entire mechanism is pointless and the consumers don't benefit.
I'm a bit stuck here, how should I approach the 3 year gap in my record when queried by a potential employer?
Take a lower paying job, and then trade up in 4 months time for a 30-40% pay rise, and do that several times....
Seriously, you may have to get a job for a year or two that will not pay so much - however if you're lucky it will be close enough for you to still mooch off your parents. That will give you recent job history, and hopefully some complete projects. After that you'll be up to date, and can get a new job for decent money. First though finish your existing project - find somewhere to make into a work den - the garage, a tree house, whatever, and work there. Turn off the wireless router if web browsing is becoming an issue.
Nah, Steve Jobs explicitly said in the keynote that core libraries like Core Animation and so on were present on the iPhone.
I expect that they will be cut down without any cruft, and rarely used functions and irrelevant (for a touch-screen interface) stuff removed as well. Never mind underlying abstraction layers that aren't needed either. But there will be libraries and frameworks that are recognisable as Mac OS X. OpenGL ES instead of OpenGL 1.4/1.5/2.0, only the required drivers for the hardware, etc...
The CPU provider is still vague - it is either Samsung, or Marvell. Marvell sell 624MHz XScales. Samsung aimed to hit over 300MHz on their 90nm with their 1136/56/76JF products last year (and a PDA with one of their 300MHz CPUs gets very high benchmark scores, so it appears to be better than the XScale design). Note that most of the interface work would be offloaded to a mobile GPU as well, indeed there is probably a DSP for signal processing on top of that.
Wow, even the summary says "Microsoft trails with its numbers from 2005; it sold 607,000 consoles in its launch year."
This means that in 6 weeks Sony managed to outsell the XBox360 in its first few months of sales. Despite the massively higher price tag. Despite HD not being as new and shiny. It is a minor consolation to Sony, however now their fanboys have their PS3s and this year is going to be really tough. Still, they sold a boat load of PS2s, so they're making money there by the bucketload.
The NPD figures are USA only too. The Wii would have sold more but Nintendo shuffled some half a million into Europe for a launch there.
The fact is worldwide to date the PS3 has sold around a million consoles. The Wii has sold around 3 million. The figures on nexgenwars.com are clearly pulled from thin air though.
Sorry, I didn't know the XBox360 had a standard optical audio output jack.
I can go out and assemble a cheap Windows-based file/print server for my home.
Their new Airport Extreme supports USB hard drives and acts as a print server. It's expensive, at $179, and I know other wireless routers include this functionality too for a lot less, but that's what I'd do - always on storage and printer. It's a lot cheaper than dedicated hardware and always on, low power, and hopefully it'd just work. One USB RAID enclosure and you'll have your redundancy, and for media streaming USB2 is fast enough.
The only issue is that the Apple TV would need to know about this network storage and access it usefully, rather than talking to iTunes Servers running on systems on the network.
People spend $299 on Squeezeboxes already. That requires their custom server running on a system in your house to work.
This device adds video functionality, photos and cover art + coverflow, and a lot more. However it won't have the hardware quality of the Squeezebox (in terms of DACs, etc), so you'll be making use of that optical output if you can. If you actually care. I'm sure that in tests the Squeezebox's audio output will be cleaner and better than the ATV (and the XBox360, which lacks optical out and HDMI too). You also lose the small on-device display, which requires you to use the TV to navigate, even if you only want to play music. However you do have a decent set of outputs, better than the most common media center extender, the XBox360.
All the Mac third party media software will be ripping to ATV supported media formats within weeks. A Mac Mini + external media HD + EyeTV is a perfect home server, and it does double duty as a decent computer as well. Of course it will work with Windows too, so it's a large market.
However would this solution please me? I don't care about HD right now, but if the next version if iTunes had DVD ripping (yeah, handbrake etc), then it could be appealing.
Use 3D models and environments, but limit movement to 2D.
You get the smoothness of animating 3D characters rather than frame-by-frame 2D animations, and free depth of field and scrolling effects. Don't forget proper lighting, animated features like water via pixel/vertex shaders and the like.
Something like Viewtiful Joe, that was a left to right beat-em-up but in full 3D.
And yes, there's a large market for something like this.
Yeah, channel 906 onwards on Sky. Babestation and the like. Hell there is a Playboy One channel that is Free To Air.
The one that got all-naked seems to have been dropped, but of course I would only know that by miskeying in the channel number on the remote control because I would never look at channels like that at all otherwise you get me?
i.e., virtually nobody used analogue television in the country anyway.
Whereas in the UK uptake of the Freeview package has been good, providing some 30 free-to-air channels, but there's a massive market of analogue-only households (no satellite or cable), hence the slow turnover. Even at £25 for a Freeview box it's not a minor expense to convert a couple of TVs in a house, and the signal is weak too due to needing to keep transmitting analogue. Some areas need new aerials. We're not going to complete changeover until 2012, although large parts of the country will be converted within the next 3 years.
I get Freesat as my house had a satellite dish and my parents had an old Sky digibox. 20 useful channels, 50 shopping channels and a dozen late night phone-in topless sex-chat channels.
But shouldn't these guys be investing their time and resources into industries where price fixing is a REAL PROBLEM that affects the consumer?
But LCD panels are made in Asia. Not America.
You wouldn't want to investigate a company that contributes to your political party now would you?
And yet LCD prices continue to collapse year-on-year whilst getting bigger, brighter and more contrastful (suck on that word, grammar nazis).
So what's bad for the consumer here? Companies still in business making a profit, or killing off all the companies until the one remaining LCD maker can charge the earth for them?
Yes, there is a fine line to tread between organised price fixing to pwn the consumer, and a free market where competition kills off choice, but things aren't black and white, good or bad.
"So let's tie the termination fees to the cost of the phone. If you have a high-end smartphone or the latest shiny Motorola toy, fine, you'll get charged out the wazoo for early termination. However, if you have something like a low-end Nokia or brought your own phone to the plan, then there's absolutely no excuse for it."
Yeah, that's very true.
Oddly enough in the UK it is illegal to charge fees that are disproportionate to the cost incurred, yet it does still happen. Then again my phone provider is so useless they forgot that I was on an 18 month contract and gave me a new contract after a year with half price fees and a new phone for the duration on top.
"Wireless Desk Area Networking" is pointless until the desk incorporates a form of wireless recharger (e.g., inductive, or that dot arrangement thing, etc) and devices can be recharged via that mechanism. And that requires people to care about a few cables popping up behind the desk to their rechargers and peripherals. Note that a few ties can organise wires into looking quite tidy too.
UWB is far more useful for high-speed in-house wireless networking between non-close systems, with applications such as HD video transmission. Or even sticking the printer in a closet out of the way.
I have never really cried about a keyboard cable or mouse cable, but I'd hate to run ethernet throughout the house.
Rogers cellular has ruined my life. NEVER, EVER trust these crooks.
Sounds like they gave you a good rogering, hard and fast.
Why didn't you contact your local consumer protection body, whatever the equivalent of trading standards and/or OFCOM are in Canada?
$250 certainly wasn't worth being unemployable, etc. You could have sold the phone on eBay and got some money back too.