Sales tax is levied at the state level. There is no need for any federal law on this. As it stands, if you buy something from an online store, and they have a business presence in your state, you pay sales tax to your state.
That's why I have to pay Texas sales tax on my crucial.com purchases even though they are not in Texas. If, on the other hand, I buy something from NewEgg.com, which is in California, I pay no sales tax because they do not have a business presence in Texas. California residents do pay sales tax.
Internet sales are just like mail-order catalogs, and the same tax rules apply. We have no need for new laws on this.
I like my Panasonic 1100W microwave. I just have learned to not use the "Popcorn" button but instead set the timer for 95 seconds and voila, perfect popcorn. I hate using other microwaves because they take too damn long to cook stuff. Its auto-defrost works pretty well too -- simply enter the weight of the food and it runs it on defrost for the proper amount of time.
So much for HotMail's server-side scanning (it uses McAfee AFAIK). I've seen it block attachments with viruses before, but I guess it's not 100% effective (after all, it is a MS product!).
Shuttle also has plans for a SS40 model, which is very similar to the SS50, except for supporting AMD processors instead of the Pentium 4. It also uses the SiS chipset (745), which is very similar to the 645 Pentium-4 chipset (same GF2MX-level integrated graphics), and is even better than the surprising 735 chipset.
I beg your pardon, it is quite possible to polish a NeXT cube, however it takes a lot of work. Check out this guys's NeXT cube case mod...simply amazing!
No, not *the* John Romero. But it was still kinda cool to say that.
I asked him if he ever got emails mistaking him for the Quake guy, and he said occasionally, and he forwarded them to the correct John Romero, who kindly thanked him, so I don't doubt your tale one bit.
The article stated that the NEC dvd drive (which Dell uses in much of its computer line) read the TOC (table of contents of the CD) normally.
What it didn't say, however, is if other DVD drives, such as the famous slot-loading Pioneer (which I am blessed to have), also exhibit this behavior.
In any case, this whole copy-protection of audio CD's is a sham. If I use my computer as a CD player (which many people at work do), I should be able to play the CD normally, and do what I want with it.
Yes, they do have a BIOS, and do show up as a SCSI device in Windows. However, they are only presented to the operating system as a single drive when the proper Windows drivers are loaded (actually the BIOS does support DOS hooks, so win98 fdisk works with no drivers, but that's the only thing that does).
In Linux, the drives connected to it show up as IDE devices (usually/dev/hde through hdg). And until recent patches by Alan Cox, it was not possible to use the RAID functions of the controller in Linux, and it may not yet be bootable from a RAID array (not sure).
And yes, RAID 0 is faster than a single disk. But I'd bet that Linux software RAID-0 is just as fast as this so-called "hardware" RAID-0.
Count me among those hit by it. I bought a 30GB Deskstar 75GXP (model DTLA-307030) a little over a year ago. It worked perfectly fine until about a month ago, when accessing a certain location on the disk would result in grinding noises, and then the computer locking up completely. The drive failed IBM's drive fitness test, so I RMA'd it. I got a 30GB Deskstar 60GXP (model IC35L030AVER07, which btw is an OEM-only model, since the 60GXP line is 20GB/platter).
I guess they decided there were enough problems with the 75GXP line that they sent me a 60GXP. I haven't heard of any problems with the 60GXP line, and to boot it's much quieter than my old 75GXP -- I can't even hear it seek unless I listen very closely.
That is very true. It looks fine in Netscape 4.76 and MSIE 5, but it's all one wide column in in Mozilla. Using Opera, I get varying results, depending on what "Identify As..." setting I use. Opera has the nice feature that I can set the "User Agent" string it sends to the server to be Opera, Mozilla 5.0 (which is what Mozilla / Netscape 6 sends), Mozilla 4.76 (aka Netscape 4.76), Mozilla 3.0, and MSIE 5.0.
When set to "Opera" or "Mozilla 3.0", the My Netscape page doesn't load at all, displaying an "invalid browser" page, saying you must use NS 4.x or IE 5.x. (Apparently they think NS 6 sucks too). Setting the User Agent to "Mozilla 5.0" or "Mozilla 4.76" (strange, since the real NS 4.76 works) result in the same one-columned-stretched layout as Mozilla. However, when Opera is emulating MSIE 5.0, it works perfectly!
So apparently, it's not that the page couldn't display in Mozilla, it's that My Netscape intentionally screws up the page for Mozilla!!
The reason to not use TOC is because it lacks several features which the Oscar protocol has; most notably the ability to check someone's away message without actually sending them a message. File transfer is also a poor hack in TOC.
FWIW, the Linux Beta AOL client does use Oscar, and has not been blocked to my knowledge. However it is a ripoff of GAIM with only half the features.
I remember when I had to go to http://www.atitech.ca to find drivers for my old Mach 64, as ati.com pointed to something else. I wonder where that company is now?
DVD players not playing CD-R's is not a problem specific to your SONY.
The reason is this: The laser used in normal cd players has a wavelenght of about 700nm. The laser in dvd drives is about 630nm. Incidentally this is the same wavelenght that cd-rw's use, and so any dvd player should have no trouble with cd-rw.
The reason the dvd player can play cd's but not cd-r's is because cd-r's are not as reflective as pressed cd's and so the laser can't pick them up. This is the same problem older cd-rom drives have with cd-rw discs, except that wavelengths are reversed. So-called "multi-read" drives either use two lasers or use one designed to read less reflective material. Unfortunately your dvd player is not one of those.
So your solution is to either burn to cd-rw or buy a new dvd player.
This eerily resembles things the management in Dilbert's company does. Of course, employees aren't being catapulted from the building with pink slips taped to them, but they may as well have been.
I have never heard anything that extreme but that proves why the Dilbert strip is so succesful--it is almost real enough for people to think "I could see my PHB/HR director/company doing that..."
The Pine D'Music is a much better player than the Philips, and it costs roughly the same price. The major thing is that it supports reading ID3 tags whereas the Philips Expanium does not. Also it supposedly has better sound quality.
OK, 47 days sounds reasonable for actually writing code, but debugging it is work!! I've heard it said that programmers spend 10% of the time writing code and 90% debugging it. That's perhaps too extreme, but some bugs can certainly be hard to swat.
It's still work, even if a project gets cancelled, because I spent time on it, and I still got paid for it! My boss has sometimes not implemented a feature because the cost for programmer time would outweigh the benefits.
Now some programmers may only spend 47 days a year working a the rest surfing the web, but I value my job!
OK, this will be mod'ed down. But anyway...
We've got two pro-Microsoft statements in as many days (see 'Whistler' looks solid to ZDNET)! What's going on? It's almost like they pulled their heads out of their arses and realized Mozilla is not there yet! Don't get me wrong, I like Mozilla, but the fact is, it's nowhere close to IE, and even less stable than Netscape sometimes. Just get us a decent browser for Linux! (And whoever says "Konqueror", it's worse than Mozilla. I've tried it and was not impressed.)
At least at my company. The only time we ever deal with IT is if something screws up with the NT domain server or the Outlook server and we can't log in or use email. Aside from that, we do our own thing, with our NT workstations, our Linux servers, and we're responsible for maintaining them.
On a side not, I don't think we have any "production" level Linux servers, but that's mainly because of the support thing-- when the Oracle server went down we called HP and they made a guy come back from his vacation to help us. I'd hate to be him, but also, I don't know of any company that can provide that kind of support for Linux.
At least when I clicked on the link to see all the "+5" comments, I noticed at the bottom of the list, a comment with a measly score of 1. Posted by myself, nonetheless. I did a double-take, but sure enough, it is my post regarding Dogbert and zero-click shopping, listed with all the +5's. Cool...but how the heck did that happen?
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That's a very good point. I never though much of it, but NeXTStep had it right 15 years ago (and therefore Mac OS X does now).
Close an unsaved document in Edit.app, and you get a dialog saying:
Save changes to UNTITLED.rtf?
[Cancel] [Don't Save] [Save]
Save is the default (activatd by pressing Return)
If you quit Edit.app, then the dialog is:
There are edited windows.
[Cance] [Quit Anyway] [Review Unsaved]
Review Unsaved is the default. Clicking it brings up the aforementioned Save dialog. It makes perfect sense. Much better than Yes/No/Cancel.
Of course pronouncing each syllable is the origin of SlashDot itself.
Aich Tee Tee Pee Colon Slash Slash Slash Dot Dot Org
Sales tax is levied at the state level. There is no need for any federal law on this. As it stands, if you buy something from an online store, and they have a business presence in your state, you pay sales tax to your state.
That's why I have to pay Texas sales tax on my crucial.com purchases even though they are not in Texas. If, on the other hand, I buy something from NewEgg.com, which is in California, I pay no sales tax because they do not have a business presence in Texas. California residents do pay sales tax.
Internet sales are just like mail-order catalogs, and the same tax rules apply. We have no need for new laws on this.
So much for HotMail's server-side scanning (it uses McAfee AFAIK). I've seen it block attachments with viruses before, but I guess it's not 100% effective (after all, it is a MS product!).
Shuttle also has plans for a SS40 model, which is very similar to the SS50, except for supporting AMD processors instead of the Pentium 4. It also uses the SiS chipset (745), which is very similar to the 645 Pentium-4 chipset (same GF2MX-level integrated graphics), and is even better than the surprising 735 chipset.
I beg your pardon, it is quite possible to polish a NeXT cube, however it takes a lot of work. Check out this guys's NeXT cube case mod...simply amazing!
And seriously, when I saw LotR, whenever Gimli spoke I was half-expecting him to say "Ay, laddie!" a la the Dwarven Demolition Sqaud of WCII.
I asked him if he ever got emails mistaking him for the Quake guy, and he said occasionally, and he forwarded them to the correct John Romero, who kindly thanked him, so I don't doubt your tale one bit.
The article stated that the NEC dvd drive (which Dell uses in much of its computer line) read the TOC (table of contents of the CD) normally.
What it didn't say, however, is if other DVD drives, such as the famous slot-loading Pioneer (which I am blessed to have), also exhibit this behavior.
In any case, this whole copy-protection of audio CD's is a sham. If I use my computer as a CD player (which many people at work do), I should be able to play the CD normally, and do what I want with it.
But, the wordpad in Windows 2000 used the Word 97/2000 format. So taking that ability away in WinXP makes no sense at all.
In Linux, the drives connected to it show up as IDE devices (usually /dev/hde through hdg). And until recent patches by Alan Cox, it was not possible to use the RAID functions of the controller in Linux, and it may not yet be bootable from a RAID array (not sure).
And yes, RAID 0 is faster than a single disk. But I'd bet that Linux software RAID-0 is just as fast as this so-called "hardware" RAID-0.
Note that the 30GB 60GXP only uses one side of one of the platters, since the 60GXP line is 20GB/platter, so in essence I got a crippled 40GB drive.
I guess they decided there were enough problems with the 75GXP line that they sent me a 60GXP. I haven't heard of any problems with the 60GXP line, and to boot it's much quieter than my old 75GXP -- I can't even hear it seek unless I listen very closely.
When set to "Opera" or "Mozilla 3.0", the My Netscape page doesn't load at all, displaying an "invalid browser" page, saying you must use NS 4.x or IE 5.x. (Apparently they think NS 6 sucks too). Setting the User Agent to "Mozilla 5.0" or "Mozilla 4.76" (strange, since the real NS 4.76 works) result in the same one-columned-stretched layout as Mozilla. However, when Opera is emulating MSIE 5.0, it works perfectly!
So apparently, it's not that the page couldn't display in Mozilla, it's that My Netscape intentionally screws up the page for Mozilla!!
FWIW, the Linux Beta AOL client does use Oscar, and has not been blocked to my knowledge. However it is a ripoff of GAIM with only half the features.
I remember when I had to go to http://www.atitech.ca to find drivers for my old Mach 64, as ati.com pointed to something else. I wonder where that company is now?
The reason is this: The laser used in normal cd players has a wavelenght of about 700nm. The laser in dvd drives is about 630nm. Incidentally this is the same wavelenght that cd-rw's use, and so any dvd player should have no trouble with cd-rw.
The reason the dvd player can play cd's but not cd-r's is because cd-r's are not as reflective as pressed cd's and so the laser can't pick them up. This is the same problem older cd-rom drives have with cd-rw discs, except that wavelengths are reversed. So-called "multi-read" drives either use two lasers or use one designed to read less reflective material. Unfortunately your dvd player is not one of those.
So your solution is to either burn to cd-rw or buy a new dvd player.
This eerily resembles things the management in Dilbert's company does. Of course, employees aren't being catapulted from the building with pink slips taped to them, but they may as well have been.
I have never heard anything that extreme but that proves why the Dilbert strip is so succesful--it is almost real enough for people to think "I could see my PHB/HR director/company doing that..."
The Pine D'Music is a much better player than the Philips, and it costs roughly the same price. The major thing is that it supports reading ID3 tags whereas the Philips Expanium does not. Also it supposedly has better sound quality.
It's still work, even if a project gets cancelled, because I spent time on it, and I still got paid for it! My boss has sometimes not implemented a feature because the cost for programmer time would outweigh the benefits.
Now some programmers may only spend 47 days a year working a the rest surfing the web, but I value my job!
OK, this will be mod'ed down. But anyway...
We've got two pro-Microsoft statements in as many days (see 'Whistler' looks solid to ZDNET)! What's going on? It's almost like they pulled their heads out of their arses and realized Mozilla is not there yet! Don't get me wrong, I like Mozilla, but the fact is, it's nowhere close to IE, and even less stable than Netscape sometimes. Just get us a decent browser for Linux! (And whoever says "Konqueror", it's worse than Mozilla. I've tried it and was not impressed.)
On a side not, I don't think we have any "production" level Linux servers, but that's mainly because of the support thing-- when the Oracle server went down we called HP and they made a guy come back from his vacation to help us. I'd hate to be him, but also, I don't know of any company that can provide that kind of support for Linux.
At least when I clicked on the link to see all the "+5" comments, I noticed at the bottom of the list, a comment with a measly score of 1. Posted by myself, nonetheless. I did a double-take, but sure enough, it is my post regarding Dogbert and zero-click shopping, listed with all the +5's. Cool...but how the heck did that happen?