So, what you're calling for is that every single video device out there should have an MPEG-2 encoder capable of rendering (in some cases) 1920x1080p MPEG-2 video in real time (in some cases at 120 fps), all the time, in every situation.

That means the on-screen menu in your HD cable or satellite box: encode MPEG-2 in real-time.

Video Game system or computer display: Encode MPEG-2 at 1920x1080 in real-time.

DVD Player/Blu-Ray player: Either pre-render render every single possible menu combination as an MPEG-2 video and have pressing down on the remote trigger the video where "languages" is selected, or encode MPEG-2 video in real-time.

What we need for nearly everything other than an optical disc player (since the menu problem can be easily and trivially solved there) is an MPEG-2 encoder capable of handling real-time compression and transmission in resolutions all the way up to 1920x1080. That's pricey hardware. While the economy of scale would drive it down to a decent degree, it's still way more complex than is necessary, given that we've already worked out a spectacular alternative.

Of course, you can reasonably argue that all we'd need is a built-in mechanism for guide systems (which already exists for DTVs) and extend that to allow for menus from DVD/Blu-Ray/Cable Box. It still doesn't solve the problem of the game system or computer/TV convergence. Nor does your external box for transcoding video (ostensibly for legacy devices but for game systems/computer); why not just plug that external video straight into the TV, like we already do?

Yeah, I don't see that being a cost-effective approach to the problem. Storing actual pre-recorded video is trivial, as you've pointed out. Generating anything in real-time is much, much more difficult. It's far easier to use a standard based on computer monitors that allows for inexpensive cabling and switching methods.

Your motivation appears to be purely focused toward employment and earnings (not that there's anything wrong with that). As such, I'd have to advise against graduate studies in CS or similar. While they don't have to be theoretical - Master's degrees offer a lot more flexibility in this department than PhDs - they are still focused at their core on contributing to the common knowledge. You're probably better off with a masters or doctorate that falls into the category often described as professional degrees: things such as MDs, Law degrees, MBAs, etc.

You've mentioned an MBA. It's too early for that; while it's certainly not a hard and fast rule, the general consensus is that an MBA works much better after you've been in industry for a few years. You'll be better equipped to discuss and apply the relevant ideas when you know how things work "in the real world." On top of that recommendation, it's important to realize that MBAs have literally become the new "dime a dozen" degree. As the popularity of the degree exploded, every commuter school and online university has begun offering them. Without stooping to elitism (I'm sure the education is sufficient), you risk entering a glutted field with a less than stellar name on your diploma. That's a bad way to make a stack of money and a 2-ish year time sink worthwhile. If you decide on an MBA, you should work for 3 or 4 years, then aim to obtain your MBA from one of the top 40 or so schools. Again, I'm not saying that you'll get a sub-par education or won't succeed with an MBA from tier-3 State U, but it will be more difficult to stand out from a crowd waving MBAs from the big names.

With all that said, may I recommend pursuing graduate studies related to health informatics? At it's simplest level, it's a practical and always-necessary application of CS to the medical field. With the current push from the Obama administration for Electronic Medical Records and the enormous flow of government money sure to follow, it's likely to be an enormous growth industry in the coming years. The basic ideas about DB structure and interface are translatable to other industries if you ever need to leave. Health Informatics-focused graduate programs are available through some Business schools as a hybrid of MIS studies and through the bigger Health Science schools as their own degrees or as specialized variations of Health Administration degrees.

The granddaddy of them all (well, really two) have a lot to teach us: Resident Evil on the consoles and Alone in the Dark on the PC. There are really only two things that matter: the camera and the resources.

Camera: we can't be allowed to see everything. Horror movies exploit this by giving us a limited range of view, setting the movie at night, etc. RE and Alone in the Dark didn't always let us see everything; an enemy would be hiding off screen and we could only just hear them. That works. It taps into deep-seated fears in humans, the very same fears that made us hate the dark when we were small children.

Even Resident Evil 4, for all of its full 3D without pre-rendered backgrounds managed to do this right. The over-the-shoulder view caused your main character to obscure a good part of the screen. You had to stop, look around, make sure things were clear, and continue. You'd sometimes hear a sound and not see that someone was obscured by your character. In an FPS, not seeing everything would be infuriating, but it's part of the horror genre.

Limited resources: We can't be a super solider. We can't have a machine gun, we can't have a rocket launcher, and we probably shouldn't even have enough bullets for our pistol (yes, I realize many survival horror games have had all of those elements, but they're generally late in the game or included as a plot point rather than a weapon). Every encounter is supposed to be a balancing act-enemies can be killed nearly instantly with a headshot, but it requires taking time to line up the shot. Alternately, you can pump them full of easy body shots, but use 3x-6x as many bullets. While you're trying to decide what to do, the enemy is approaching. The sinking feeling you get when you hear an enemy and realize that you only have 3 bullets to deal with them is far more horrific than anything that ever appeared in Doom 3.

Meanwhile, most games won't even let you carry that many weapons; you're generally limited to a pistol and a larger weapon until later in the games. In Resident Evil, for example, even if you do manage to pick up the powerful rifle or big .357, you have to choose if you're willing to give up the group-clearing shotgun to use it.

Along the same lines as resources: your character can't be indestructible. An enemy or two, particularly bunched up, SHOULD have the ability to kill or at least seriously injure you. Having no bullets doesn't matter if you can easily tough it out through a swarm.

The type of enemy doesn't really matter. I'm sure a suitable game could be made with vampires or crazy people or werewolves or even enemy soldiers if it was done correctly. As long as game creators use a horror-inspired camera and limit your resources, you're on track to a good horror movie.

Finally note: What many people have said about FEAR, Left4Dead, etc. is true. They are not horror games. Rather, they are FPS games with monsters instead of soldiers. If you doubt it, then just run them through the camera/resources test. Shooting 100 zombies from an over-the-barrel view is the functional opposite of a horror game.

Er, isn't your comment simply telling me I'm correct. To paraphrase: "The cut-off exists, but some people who don't meet the cut-off don't think they can afford it." Starting from $0, you can pay half of the cost of an Ivy League education based purely on government loans alone. Throw in private education loans (a bad idea, but available), student work, and family contributions and it can be done.

But how much do these people you know (or their families) earn? The $60,000 (it was $40,000 until last year or the year before) cut-off is intended to attract those from lower-middle class and poor families. It is not intended to allow a hassle- and pressure-free funding source for the upper fifth in income. Admittedly, any "bright line" policy fails at the fringes; those families who make $65,000 are probably no better equipped to send a child to Harvard. However, the $60,000 policy certainly instills more confidence than a vague and ambiguous "we help those with difficult financial situations," or something similar. I would hope and expect that for a student on the very fringes, scholarships and government grants would take up much of the slack. On the flip-side, I would hope that any family in a situation on the very fringes would examine how they might qualify - a simple IRA, 401(k), or 529 investment would drop AGI down to the range necessary to qualify their children.

If your family makes $100,000 per year, then you don't qualify. If you truly want to attend any of those schools, it can be done; conversely, doing so may be a bad choice financially because it will require enormous sacrifice on the part of the student and his or her family. Moving to a smaller house, investing money each year from birth, forgoing many luxuries, and so on is not necessarily the sort of situation many middle and upper-middle class families are excited about. A family pulling $100,000 can certainly send a child to Harvard, but it will require some serious sacrifices (and planning ahead).

Conversely, the federal government already provides plenty of excellent opportunities for families in those situations. 529 plans allow for completely sheltered investment, which for someone in the upper two fifths of the income is the functional equivalent of a 25%-35% match on money before we even consider any returns on the invested money. Further, the government offers a well-designed federally-subsidized student loan system that will cover the instant costs and allow for a wide range of repayment options based on income after graduation.

Bottom line: three fifths of the United States is sub-$60,000 (the cut is $55,000 for the middle quintile). There is some overlap in the fourth quintile, which runs to $88,000, and that is the only group that really gets caught. It's likely that many in that group won't qualify for grants and it's entirely possible that the family is unable to sock away enough through a 529 to make it work. A person in this position COULD attend an Ivy if they really wanted, but it would require a hefty sacrifice on both the student's part and that of his or her family. If there's any room for criticism in this argument, it's that such schools could effectively cover all ranges if they upped their cut-off to $80,000. Of course, the Harvard policy is specifically intended to pull those from the bottom tier of US income, not to make things affordable for the middle class. It's not billed as an "anyone can come here" so much as a "we want financial diversity in the form of lower income students and this is how we will accomplish that goal."

For someone in the upper quintile, though, there's not much sympathy. 529 plans will support the funding and subsidized loans are available to take up any of the slack for those in the lower range of that quintile. $300 a month (actually $400, but sheltered from tax) invested per month will provide ~$100,000 at age 18, assuming any moderate investment strategy. Not enough to pay for Harvard, mind you, but enough to make Harvard cost the same as any state school. $450 per month would cover the entire cost (note that these are 2009 dollars - properly invested you should be able to beat inflation which makes the 2009 dollars acceptable for comparison's sake). Could a family making $100,000 afford $450 a month? Certainly. In fact, they could probably afford substantially more than that to compensate for the earlier years when things might have been "leaner." That family may not like the sacrifice in standard of living required, but it can certainly be done.

Every person you know who "couldn't afford" Cornell could have paid; they simply couldn't justify the expense. I don't blame them one bit and I would make the same choice every single time, but I also don't complain that it's bullshit.

For example, the access to my country's equivalent to the ivy league schools doesn't depend on your family's wealth, which means that if you are dumb as a door knob and you happen to be the son of a billionaire then you still have to work your ass off in order to be admitted to one of those schools. It also means that if you are terribly smart and talented then you may enroll in those schools, no matter how poor you are. It's raw talent that matters, now raw cash.

Not to disagree with your other points, but Harvard, Yale, and most of the other Ivy League schools have a similar policy. Harvard's current cut-off for tuition, for example, is $60,000. If your family makes under that amount, you don't pay tuition; for reference, the median annual income for US families is in the mid-$30,000 to mid-$40,000 range depending on how you choose to interpret the data.

You may have to pay room, board, and books, but if you're from a family earning under $60,000 and you're posting grades good enough for Harvard then you can probably qualify for a scholarship or grant to cover those costs. If not, government-subsidized student loans are the preferred method for many better-off families and will certainly get the job done and allow plenty of flexibility with pay-off

Again, not to push against your points, but the Ivy's programs for poorer and middle-income Americans are not government-backed, but rather a private choice made by each of those institutions. Some may argue, cynically, that the programs were put in place to deflect complaints about those institutions multi-billion dollar endowments, but the fact stands that the private institutions make those policies.

As for the other side of your assertion: that those with influence can't use it to manipulate admissions to your country's universities? That would go contrary to what the last few thousand years of political history has taught us. I would find it exceedingly hard to believe that - out of every country in all of political history - your country is the one somehow operating without influence by the powerful.

Unless, of course, the powerful aren't manipulating admissions because they're busy sending their kids to Harvard and Yale.

Is this common stock or preferred stock? Is the company contractually obligated to pay out profit or a portion of profit as dividends to its shareholders? For that matter, what is the structure of this company? How will this five year period be enforced?

If you can't immediately answer these questions, you need to speak to an attorney. Period. There has been quite a bit of development in the last 10-15 years in terms of small business structure and practices, and I highly doubt that you have enough experience in how this company is legally structured to be able to make an educated decision. At this point, your question is like asking /. which server you should use at your business. We have absolutely no idea about any of the criteria or facts that would explain that situation.

Note that this is entirely separate from the equally good advice that others have been throwing around: if you were ready to leave, why are you now ready to stay for a fairly lengthy period of time? If it's just the money, then it's doubly important to get to a lawyer and have this situation analyzed carefully.

No it isn't. Sweeps was rescheduled this year because of the changeover.

Not really. First off, Sweeps is a month-long period, not a week. Also, March 2009, not February as usual, is sweeps month for this exact reason. It just made sense not to try and accurately gauge viewership in the middle of a changeover.

By being a moron and attempting to comment at the same time I was answering a different question from someone in the room; I simply had the order flipped.

My mistake; by using the word "bump" I phrased it as an increase (it is 50%) rather than as a percentage of the old one's powers (167.5%). My math was right, but my wording was wrong.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain the Wii uses more or less the same graphics hardware as the Game Cube.

You're wrong. Although the official specs on the Wii's GPU (which is actally multiple chips on the package that handle I/O and sound in addition to video) are under wraps, it is definitely more powerful. Most indications point to it being based on the same architecture to maintain backwards compatibility, but it has a substantially higher clock rate (~240 mhz vs. 162 mhz on the Gamecube).

Even if we assume that absolutely nothing else changed on the Wii graphics hardware - which is a reasonable assumption - a nearly 70% bump in clock rate is a pretty big change if we're talking about the same architecture.

1125i and 1080i are the same thing. OP is just using different terminology. Much like 480i is actually 525i but has some extra lines that aren't used, 1125i is the actual, full range of scan lines in HDTV of which 1080 are actively used.

It's just a difference in terminology. In fact, if you look in the manuals for TVs that talk about 1125i, they'll usually say something like "Supported resolutions: 1125i (1080i)." I've only ever heard of the term being used in Japan. Apparently one of the old analog HD broadcast standards there (MUSE) used the term 1125i to describe their broadcasts. Now, everyone still has to use the term for fear of looking like the worse product. Think of it as the TV version of calling a billion bytes a gigabyte in the hard drive world; the company that doesn't will look like a worse product to the uninformed masses.

Well, the Wii is pretty much exactly like the last two Nintendo consoles. There will be 15 or 20 absolutely great games, 75% of which are first or second party. Probably 6 or 7 of those games have already hit.

If you take a look in the reviews, there are some spectacular games out there, but you'll have to look past the shovelware to find them. Much like how the installed base of the GameCube or the cartridge format of the N64 made them substantially "different" enough from the competition to discourage some releases, the last-gen hardware in the Wii will probably keep many of the potentially bigger cross-platform names out of the Wii pool.

As someone who has owned every Nintendo system back to the NES, I'd suggest you keep your fingers crossed but get ready to accept that there will be some cool games from each major franchise and a couple of new and surprising ones. Unfortunately, months will pass between each worthwhile purchase.