It's a laptop thing, that's my theory. Almost everyone I've seen/heard that complains about Vista has tried it on a laptop. Almost everyone I've seen/heard that thinks Vista is fine, uses a desktop PC.
I just purchased a Dell XPS M1530 laptop. It has an Intel 2.2 ghz dual-core processor and 3 gigs of RAM. Vista actually runs fantastic for me. It boots in less than a minute and applications such as Firefox pop right open. It runs Adobe CS2 incredibly well.
This is my first Vista experience and while I was dreading it at first, it's turned out to be pretty nice. No issues here other than having to re-learn where stuff is.
Yeah, two leagues might be the way to go. I don't know how long the majors can keep up this impression that sports competition is somehow "fair". It's a business and people will do anything they need to do in order to cheat and win (and make the big bucks), including dope up, film other teams, etc. etc etc. Might as well have one league that can at least be honest about it.
I don't think having artificial legs is "cheating", though. He couldn't live a life close to normal without them. Because of a device he needs to live as well as he can, he's being blocked from his profession/hobby/avocation/whatever.
While I thing it's wrong that he is being told he can't compete, the legs he uses to run are not normal "walking legs" that amputees normally have. Wired had a great article about him last spring http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/blade_pr.html and I think I remember it saying that his running legs are not easy to walk on. He has two sets: one for "about the town" as it were and one for sprinting. He *could* run with his walking legs, but his running legs do give him more power.
I for one think he had to overcome far more *not having legs* in order to run and any advantage he has because of these legs is offset by that. However, it's hard to tell where you draw the line with these things, which is unfortunate.
Oh, it could have been a Kia too... I get them confused sometimes. Not that I have any problem with those car brands per-se (quality affordable cars are a good thing, which they provide) but I think directly taking stuff from vehicles so up-market from them is a little bold. But what do I know? I'm not in the automobile industry.
There is also the fact that there are only SO many designs to go around, some stuff will inevitably be re-used. And I guess it's better than them simply being lazy and making their cars look like garbage. The auto show is coming here in a few weeks, I'll have to check them out and see their current designs.
(for instance, the depictions or photographs of Ford's distinctively shaped vehicles) in advertising their products and services."
Yeah, distinctly bland. The new Fusion looks okay (besides those side vent things that look like they were ripped straight off of a BMW M), but man... years and years of the Focus... ugh. Give me a break.
(and on a related note, what is with some of those Hyundai's trying to look like freakin' Mercedes-Benz with the round headlights and stuff... come up with your own ideas!)
But some states are still issuing ID's that are literally little more than a laminated piece of paper.
Here in Oregon, when you move the Oregon DMV sends you a STICKER to fold over the bottom of your license. It has your new address, as well as a barcode on the back... and it just looks so tacky and fake.
Whats even better is when you go in to get your license renewed, they no longer have the printing/laminating machines to make you a proper one on the spot. They give you a piece of paper to carry around for two weeks while you wait for your new license to arrive in the mail. There have been plenty of reports here about bars turning patrons away because they are concerned they are fake and don't want to face fines for accidentally allowing someone underage to drink by mistake.
I don't see how they can prevent someone from stealing your identity
The only way they can help prevent it is through the "fraud alerts" they submit for you every 90 days to the 3 credit companies. You can do this yourself, for free. I've done this, and the last time I applied for credit the bank institution called me up to ask me some questions and confirm I was actually me.
They also get you off of the bulk mail lists for credit card offers and such. Again, you can do this yourself, for free. Do a google search for "opt out prescreen". I did this and have noticed a marked drop in credit offers. I think the only offers I get now are from companies that I currently do business with.
Besides that, I don't know that they do anything else to "prevent" fraud. They do offer to help you fix your credit if you are defrauded, however.
Just to preface this post, I distrust Die Bold just as much as anyone else here. I really, really do not like the idea of electronic voting machines.
With that said, how can we ensure that traditional ballots are being counted in a better manner? I live in Oregon, and we have "Vote by Mail". You receive your ballot in the mail several weeks before the actual elections. You fill in little bubbles in the ballot, somewhat like the Scantron sheet you see in school. You then seal it in a "secrecy envelope", and place that inside the mailing envelope and mail the ballot back (or drop it off at designated sites).
I've always worried that the optical scanning machines used to count these ballots could be rigged up to produce wrong results, similar to the Die Bold machines. It's something I always think about when voting here.
If you have a decent amount of free time and good grades, try to get an internship or get involved with some sort of mentor-type program. I did that my senior year of university and was offered a job by my mentor before I graduated.
The stuff you'll learn being exposed to the "real world" is much more valuable then what you learn in the classroom.
Don't wait too long.. usually you need to apply during your junior year for any sort of senior-level internships (at least the ones I remember reading about).
The Scion brand is a similar phenomenon, I think, except that instead of catering to pretentious people like the "high-end" brands, it caters to stupid young people who want to be "different", and think their car is somehow better, or making a different statement, with a "Scion" badge instead of a boring "Toyota" badge like the one on their parents' Camrys and Avalons.
I happen to own a Scion tC, which is the "car" looking one (not the small hatchback or the box). I'll agree that their marketing is youth orientated for sure, but it's actually a pretty nice car. It has a good suite of safety features and some other good options, and is very practical for a coupe because there is actually leg room FOR ADULTS in the back. The roof dips a little low, but there is plenty of leg room. You can also flip the rear seats down completely flat with the trunk and haul a lot of crap around.
As far as wanting to "be different", thats what EVERY car purchaser wants at some level (in my opinion), unless you are buying something PURELY for function, which I don't think happens that often in the American market. Just look at this discussion about branding - clearly, most American consumers, even those of high-end automobiles, want something different. I don't think its a phenomenon that takes place only with younger buyers.
Maybe this will be rolled into Wikipedia once it's done, but it seems me to that their search algorithm needs *plenty* of work. Thanks to the glories of SpellChecker, I can't spell worth a damn... when I misspell something in Wikipedia, it rarely finds it in the results, whereas Google always know what I meant to type AND OFFERS ME A CORRECTION. On Wikipedia, I have to go look how to spell whatever I'm searching for correctly, then put it back into Wikipedia's search just to find what I'm looking for.
could potential employers, private schools, and such require the vaccines instead of requiring testing as they do now? Would this be better or worse?
I think this could be a very real, and very scary, scenario that could play out eventually. Before I started university I was required to get a vaccine for some sort of illness (I can't remember now, it's been so long). I could VERY easily see employers that already mandate drug testing to require employees to get this. After all, "what harm will it do if you're not using drugs?" right? Or: "It's for the safety of our workers". To me, it's basically the same argument that anti-privacy whackjobs use: "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide".
Sure, I don't use coke but I don't exactly want to be modified against my will either.
Case in point: The decline in educational content on channels such as Discovery and TLC.
Indeed, they have shifted their programming to attract more of the key 18-35 male demographic, and are quite open an honest about it. And I'll admit that it works. I'm in that demo and I LOVE Discovery channel. Dirty Jobs, Myth Busters, Deadliest Catch... it's all good. It's also really the only TV I watch.
This isn't quite a real "hack", but more of a "social hack" if you will.
In 1967 Abbie Hoffman and a group of protesters thew fake money onto the floor of the NYSE (it wasn't blocked by glass back then). Trading on the floor *actually stopped* while traders scrambled around trying to collect the money. Kinda ironic that they'd stop to do that, considering how much more they were actually making doing their real trading. Wikipedia has a little bit on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman. I don't really know much about Hoffman, but I found the story very amusing myself.
I don't know what this means or what causes it, but I very rarely actually remember my dreams. I usually fall asleep and *BAM* it's the next morning and my alarm clock is going off. I remember dreams so infrequently that I can't even say how often I do remember them. I had a bad one after going to bed after being out on New Years, but I can't remember when I had one before that.
I do remember that back during college when I worked in retail I'd have this reoccurring dream where I'd be closing the store and couldn't get people to leave, no matter what I did. It felt like hours passed while I tried to get everyone to leave the store.
Actually, I can't find the source off hand but I've heard that WalMart has quite a bit of sway with their suppliers and can dictate to them how much they want things to cost or even packaging. Fast Company had a great article several years back which talks about those very issues. You can find it at http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html. It's somewhat old, but I'm sure the information still holds true today.
Indeed, they COULD hire the management and employees to do such things. But will they? I don't think so. To me, the fact that this failed because Wal-Mart was behind it is totally relevant, because it seems that whenever I read about Wal-Mart's management this is exactly the kind of thing they do.
Rather than hire the talent and devote the resources to doing it in-house (the expensive and hard way) they outsourced it to HP (the easier and cheaper way). This totally fits into everything I have ever read about their management style. Not to say it couldn't change once some of the old guard retires/dies off and younger managers with potentially different styles come into play. However, I think shifting the style that a company runs in (and in Wal-Mart's case, the style that has made it the huge company it is today) is a lot easier said than done.
I'll agree with you to an extent. As another poster said, they have the physical distribution model down pat. When I was getting my marketing degree several of my professors held up their supply chain management system as the best in the industry (which it is, despite my dislike for Wal-Mart on a personal level).
Gasoline is a physical good which can fit into their existing supply chain model. Plus, it has the added advantage of being something people need when they happen to already be at their stores ("shoot, I need to fill my car up.. HEY, Wal-Mart has a gas station now, great!"). I feel the online download market is a completely different beast which Wal-Mart will never get right unless they out-and-out buy a company, such as Netflix, to do it for them. It doesn't fit well into their existing business model, IMHO.
Is this evidence of the strength of unified pricing in media downloads or just another company being squished by the giant Netflix & Apple?"
I think this is evidence of businesses trying to be too many things to too many people and slowly discovering that no, you can't be everything to everyone. "Jack of all trades, master of none" indeed.
If they really wanted to cut out the middleman, they'd start a direct download service on their website. Oh, wait... it seems that the studios can't ever get that right (they need to focus on what they CAN do, which is make movies). Just last night as I was driving home listening to the news on the radio, they reported that Wal-Mart had to shut down their online video download service because the technology for it (developed by HP or Dell, can't remember which now) was being discontinued.
It'll be interesting to see if any studio is ever really able to self-distribute, like what Radiohead did with their last album.
I still would rather buy the CD and encode losslessly (I made a new word!).
I do the same thing... I just pick up used CDs off of Amazon's marketplace, rip them, and then shelve them. I'm not supporting the RIAA (but unfortunately not supporting the artist at the same time) and the overall cost is about the same as buying an album off of iTunes (with the added benefit of being able to pick my format and bit rate). I actually really like the Amazon marketplace... I've had good luck with books (textbooks especially) and DVDs as well.
I haven't bought an album new from a store in quite a awhile... I can't remember the last time I bought an album from a store, actually. It has probably been at least 3 or 4 years.
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I just purchased a Dell XPS M1530 laptop. It has an Intel 2.2 ghz dual-core processor and 3 gigs of RAM. Vista actually runs fantastic for me. It boots in less than a minute and applications such as Firefox pop right open. It runs Adobe CS2 incredibly well.
This is my first Vista experience and while I was dreading it at first, it's turned out to be pretty nice. No issues here other than having to re-learn where stuff is.
Yeah, two leagues might be the way to go. I don't know how long the majors can keep up this impression that sports competition is somehow "fair". It's a business and people will do anything they need to do in order to cheat and win (and make the big bucks), including dope up, film other teams, etc. etc etc. Might as well have one league that can at least be honest about it.
While I thing it's wrong that he is being told he can't compete, the legs he uses to run are not normal "walking legs" that amputees normally have. Wired had a great article about him last spring http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/blade_pr.html and I think I remember it saying that his running legs are not easy to walk on. He has two sets: one for "about the town" as it were and one for sprinting. He *could* run with his walking legs, but his running legs do give him more power.
I for one think he had to overcome far more *not having legs* in order to run and any advantage he has because of these legs is offset by that. However, it's hard to tell where you draw the line with these things, which is unfortunate.
Oh, it could have been a Kia too... I get them confused sometimes. Not that I have any problem with those car brands per-se (quality affordable cars are a good thing, which they provide) but I think directly taking stuff from vehicles so up-market from them is a little bold. But what do I know? I'm not in the automobile industry.
There is also the fact that there are only SO many designs to go around, some stuff will inevitably be re-used. And I guess it's better than them simply being lazy and making their cars look like garbage. The auto show is coming here in a few weeks, I'll have to check them out and see their current designs.
Yeah, distinctly bland. The new Fusion looks okay (besides those side vent things that look like they were ripped straight off of a BMW M), but man... years and years of the Focus... ugh. Give me a break.
(and on a related note, what is with some of those Hyundai's trying to look like freakin' Mercedes-Benz with the round headlights and stuff... come up with your own ideas!)
Here in Oregon, when you move the Oregon DMV sends you a STICKER to fold over the bottom of your license. It has your new address, as well as a barcode on the back... and it just looks so tacky and fake.
Whats even better is when you go in to get your license renewed, they no longer have the printing/laminating machines to make you a proper one on the spot. They give you a piece of paper to carry around for two weeks while you wait for your new license to arrive in the mail. There have been plenty of reports here about bars turning patrons away because they are concerned they are fake and don't want to face fines for accidentally allowing someone underage to drink by mistake.
The only way they can help prevent it is through the "fraud alerts" they submit for you every 90 days to the 3 credit companies. You can do this yourself, for free. I've done this, and the last time I applied for credit the bank institution called me up to ask me some questions and confirm I was actually me.
They also get you off of the bulk mail lists for credit card offers and such. Again, you can do this yourself, for free. Do a google search for "opt out prescreen". I did this and have noticed a marked drop in credit offers. I think the only offers I get now are from companies that I currently do business with.
Besides that, I don't know that they do anything else to "prevent" fraud. They do offer to help you fix your credit if you are defrauded, however.
Just to preface this post, I distrust Die Bold just as much as anyone else here. I really, really do not like the idea of electronic voting machines.
With that said, how can we ensure that traditional ballots are being counted in a better manner? I live in Oregon, and we have "Vote by Mail". You receive your ballot in the mail several weeks before the actual elections. You fill in little bubbles in the ballot, somewhat like the Scantron sheet you see in school. You then seal it in a "secrecy envelope", and place that inside the mailing envelope and mail the ballot back (or drop it off at designated sites).
I've always worried that the optical scanning machines used to count these ballots could be rigged up to produce wrong results, similar to the Die Bold machines. It's something I always think about when voting here.
If you have a decent amount of free time and good grades, try to get an internship or get involved with some sort of mentor-type program. I did that my senior year of university and was offered a job by my mentor before I graduated.
The stuff you'll learn being exposed to the "real world" is much more valuable then what you learn in the classroom.
Don't wait too long.. usually you need to apply during your junior year for any sort of senior-level internships (at least the ones I remember reading about).
I happen to own a Scion tC, which is the "car" looking one (not the small hatchback or the box). I'll agree that their marketing is youth orientated for sure, but it's actually a pretty nice car. It has a good suite of safety features and some other good options, and is very practical for a coupe because there is actually leg room FOR ADULTS in the back. The roof dips a little low, but there is plenty of leg room. You can also flip the rear seats down completely flat with the trunk and haul a lot of crap around.
As far as wanting to "be different", thats what EVERY car purchaser wants at some level (in my opinion), unless you are buying something PURELY for function, which I don't think happens that often in the American market. Just look at this discussion about branding - clearly, most American consumers, even those of high-end automobiles, want something different. I don't think its a phenomenon that takes place only with younger buyers.
This coming from the same company that can't seem to get fleet-wide fuel economy out of the low 20s.
Work on getting a car that gets decent gas mileage first, THEN make them drive themselves. Baby steps now...
Maybe this will be rolled into Wikipedia once it's done, but it seems me to that their search algorithm needs *plenty* of work. Thanks to the glories of SpellChecker, I can't spell worth a damn... when I misspell something in Wikipedia, it rarely finds it in the results, whereas Google always know what I meant to type AND OFFERS ME A CORRECTION. On Wikipedia, I have to go look how to spell whatever I'm searching for correctly, then put it back into Wikipedia's search just to find what I'm looking for.
Very frustrating...
I think this could be a very real, and very scary, scenario that could play out eventually. Before I started university I was required to get a vaccine for some sort of illness (I can't remember now, it's been so long). I could VERY easily see employers that already mandate drug testing to require employees to get this. After all, "what harm will it do if you're not using drugs?" right? Or: "It's for the safety of our workers". To me, it's basically the same argument that anti-privacy whackjobs use: "if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide".
Sure, I don't use coke but I don't exactly want to be modified against my will either.
Indeed, they have shifted their programming to attract more of the key 18-35 male demographic, and are quite open an honest about it. And I'll admit that it works. I'm in that demo and I LOVE Discovery channel. Dirty Jobs, Myth Busters, Deadliest Catch... it's all good. It's also really the only TV I watch.
This isn't quite a real "hack", but more of a "social hack" if you will.
In 1967 Abbie Hoffman and a group of protesters thew fake money onto the floor of the NYSE (it wasn't blocked by glass back then). Trading on the floor *actually stopped* while traders scrambled around trying to collect the money. Kinda ironic that they'd stop to do that, considering how much more they were actually making doing their real trading. Wikipedia has a little bit on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman. I don't really know much about Hoffman, but I found the story very amusing myself.
I don't know what this means or what causes it, but I very rarely actually remember my dreams. I usually fall asleep and *BAM* it's the next morning and my alarm clock is going off. I remember dreams so infrequently that I can't even say how often I do remember them. I had a bad one after going to bed after being out on New Years, but I can't remember when I had one before that.
I do remember that back during college when I worked in retail I'd have this reoccurring dream where I'd be closing the store and couldn't get people to leave, no matter what I did. It felt like hours passed while I tried to get everyone to leave the store.
I keep an old T-Mobile phone on the headboard of my bed, and use that as my alarm clock (easy to set, small size, etc).
No wonder I sometimes can't sleep well!
Indeed, they COULD hire the management and employees to do such things. But will they? I don't think so. To me, the fact that this failed because Wal-Mart was behind it is totally relevant, because it seems that whenever I read about Wal-Mart's management this is exactly the kind of thing they do.
Rather than hire the talent and devote the resources to doing it in-house (the expensive and hard way) they outsourced it to HP (the easier and cheaper way). This totally fits into everything I have ever read about their management style. Not to say it couldn't change once some of the old guard retires/dies off and younger managers with potentially different styles come into play. However, I think shifting the style that a company runs in (and in Wal-Mart's case, the style that has made it the huge company it is today) is a lot easier said than done.
I'll agree with you to an extent. As another poster said, they have the physical distribution model down pat. When I was getting my marketing degree several of my professors held up their supply chain management system as the best in the industry (which it is, despite my dislike for Wal-Mart on a personal level).
Gasoline is a physical good which can fit into their existing supply chain model. Plus, it has the added advantage of being something people need when they happen to already be at their stores ("shoot, I need to fill my car up.. HEY, Wal-Mart has a gas station now, great!"). I feel the online download market is a completely different beast which Wal-Mart will never get right unless they out-and-out buy a company, such as Netflix, to do it for them. It doesn't fit well into their existing business model, IMHO.
I think this is evidence of businesses trying to be too many things to too many people and slowly discovering that no, you can't be everything to everyone. "Jack of all trades, master of none" indeed.
Focus on a specific market and DO THAT WELL.
I just do eyes, juh, juh... just eyes... just genetic design, just eyes. You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
S-s-s-s-o so cold...
This is EXACTLY what I came here to post.
If they really wanted to cut out the middleman, they'd start a direct download service on their website. Oh, wait... it seems that the studios can't ever get that right (they need to focus on what they CAN do, which is make movies). Just last night as I was driving home listening to the news on the radio, they reported that Wal-Mart had to shut down their online video download service because the technology for it (developed by HP or Dell, can't remember which now) was being discontinued.
It'll be interesting to see if any studio is ever really able to self-distribute, like what Radiohead did with their last album.
I do the same thing... I just pick up used CDs off of Amazon's marketplace, rip them, and then shelve them. I'm not supporting the RIAA (but unfortunately not supporting the artist at the same time) and the overall cost is about the same as buying an album off of iTunes (with the added benefit of being able to pick my format and bit rate). I actually really like the Amazon marketplace... I've had good luck with books (textbooks especially) and DVDs as well.
I haven't bought an album new from a store in quite a awhile... I can't remember the last time I bought an album from a store, actually. It has probably been at least 3 or 4 years.