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Comment Re:Good advice - Always use your ISP for DNS (Score 1) 348

Use your own ISP for DNS.

Do you have any tips for keeping your ISP from directing a "server not found" to one of their crappy ad-ridden search pages? I think that's a major reason people choose DNS servers that aren't at their ISP.

Direct all household surfing through a squid proxy, and put the ad-page url in a deny list?

Comment A mixed lot, but still good. (Score 1) 412

I wasn't happy to see the movie become one big Ducati commercial. Some bum at Disney made his nut on that deal. (Light cycles? Sell in-movie ad deal to Ducati?) Lame, really lame. Reminds me of the Audi tie-in in I Robot.

Base jumping? Lame.

Well, it was a Disney movie. I guess I should be happy there was no stupid dancing included.

You know the 20 second mp3 loop that plays while the TRON demo loads on the iPhone? The whole soundtrack sounds like that 20 seconds looped for 45 minutes with just filter changes.

And the Daft Punk cameo? Super lame.

I did miss the Ford Econoline from the original movie.

And where were the grid bugs?

It sounded like Jeff was having a hard time hitting his lines for the voice acting. The CGI version of Jeff was very rubberfaced, looked like something out of Crysis. You could replace all the dialog with "shuh shuh shuh" and it would lipsync better with the rubber teeth motion.

The movie was too visually dark for 3d.

Comment Re:General loss of resolution (Score 1) 1140

I agree with your sentiment, but CRTs do not stay fresh very long. You might not notice much with a 20 year old standard definition TV, but CRTs get blurry pretty fast if they're used much.

From time to time, I'm tempted to round up a few used FW900s; a monitor I could not afford when it first came out. But there is also the weight, power consumption, and the desk space they take up.

Comment Re:where have the high res laptop screens gone (Score 1) 1140

Personally, I blame the endless stream of crap Intel video chipsets.

All through 2008 and 2009, people were buying small laptops with nearly useless video chipsets. When the GMA based stuff shows up used, you just want to take a hammer to it.

If you put a high resolution display on those systems, you'll just see how long it takes to update the screen. (When you're doing anything intensive.)

Larger pixel counts require powerful graphics chips. I remember when we had a used Precision M65. Updating all 1680x1050 pixels worked the Quadro FX350M so hard it would overheat.

My main displays are still a pair of 1600x1200 20" LCDs. Finding good dual-DVI video cards, that don't require supplemental power, was no easy task.

And if, like so many IT managers, you're running a pair of DVI capable 20" monitors on analog VGA, you need to hand in your geek card.

Comment Re:Volume Limiter (Score 1) 625

Back when we watched analog TV, I bought a little Sima "Volume Stabilizer".

It was basically about fifty cents worth of opamp in a little metal case, with an on-off switch and a two setting range control. (Two amplification ratios.)

I used this on the line level (fixed volume) outputs from the TV, before sending it to an AV/receiver/amp. Being a cheap device, it was susceptible to "pumping", but otherwise worked well.

The volume stabilizer amplified any quiet material, and then the AV amp was set for low volume. Overall, it worked really well.

When the CRT was replaced with a LCD, all the extra gear was re-purposed. These days we just don't watch much broadcast TV.

Comment Re:I think this is a crock of pooh.... (Score 1) 366

The only blu-ray video quality problems I've seen so far are on some computer generated content on the new version of Star Trek.

There is noticeable video noise in the black portion of the starry background. I wouldn't be surprised if this has something to do with the content originally being mastered for HD-DVD.

Comment Search engine spammers. (Score 1) 51

Why on earth would you run a story that is essentially advertising, for those assholes "Retrevo" that come up as spam any time you do a key word search for some arbitrary product and "review"? They never have any reviews, just spam.

Might as well run a story published by Nigerian scammers or folks selling Viagra.

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