I've had an HT202 for a few months now and I'm very happy with it. I keep it attached to an otherwise useless clip on my wallet chain. It's survived a fair amount of abuse so far.
My one complaint is that they used crimped on caps to retain the ends of the cable. I've had one side pull lose, but it was easily fixed by a little krazy glue, and seems much stronger now.
I don't think the point is necessarily for the FMOD to be more secure than the USDOD, but rather to be more secure from the USDOD.
That is, after all, one of the primary reasons so many foreign government entities are getting interested in FOSS. Microsoft's response, Shared Source, is weak, since while they get to look at the source, they have no way to guarantee that it's the actual source for what they're installing (assuming that they even get to see all of the source. IIRC, they don't)
The problem with rubbing alcohol is that it's already got a lot of water in it.
Totally irrelevant, you just have to make sure your boards are dry before you power them up again.
I do component-level troubleshooting and repair on some VERY expensive boards (high end video servers). All our rework people use rubbing alcohol for cleanup. Back in the day, when my company actually made our own boards, we used normal dishwashers for the final cleanup at the end of the manufacturing process, so yes I'm quite certain that water isn't a problem as long as you dry the board out before you power it up.
You can get inline filters to remove that stuff. I used to work for a robotics company, and we used precision pneumatics on almost everything we built, and we were "highly encouraged" by the pneumatics manufacturer to put those filters on everything we built.
Ever noticed those pink foam things motherboards are shipped on? Those are conductive.
NO THEY AREN'T!
The pink foam is an insulator, it being pink just indicates it just doesn't generate static electricity on its own (which regular foam does, in abundance).
Go ahead and check it yourself. The pink foam I have on my desk reads Over Limit (over 20M ohms) with the probes less than a centimeter apart.
There's nothing inherently wrong with putting a board on an insulator. The problem is when there's a direct, low resistance connection between two areas with different potential. An insulator won't do that, but neither will it bleed off the charge like a resistive surface will. (See below)
You want to short EVERYTHING.
VERY, VERY WRONG!
Static electricity can build up to extremely high levels, in fact you won't even feel a static discharge under about 5000V. If you discharge this all at once, as would be the case if that foam were conductive, you'll burn out components, some of which can be damaged by as little as 500V. That's why static disipative stuff has such a high resistance, so the charge bleeds off slowly without damaging anything.
What you want is a surface that's "static disipative", which actually means it's resistive to the point of being just short of an insulator (around 10^9 ohms per square meter or something like that, according to a materials engineer I know who used to work for a company that produced static disipative ceramics), which is how you bleed off those high voltage static charges safely.
They do make some special static disipative foam, which is black, very dense, closed-cell stuff. All static disipative foam is supposed to be black, but don't make the mistake of assuming any black foam is static disipative, most of the time it's actually static generating.
Let me know what issues you disagree with Kerry on and I'm quite sure I can find you a quote from him that supports it.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. -- Bernard Berenson
If you really want something, though, let's try gay marriage for an example, though it has absolutely no bearing on my life (which is a large part of why I think it should be allowed, and yes, I am married. I find my marriage was, curiously, completely unaffected by the happenings in San Francisco.)
'Bush and company' have endured many hardships regarding the nation: Economic consequences of the Clinton years;
Ah yes, the Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity! How were we able to function without the huge deficit? The rampant expansion of government spending? The bleak employment prospects?
Thank God that's over!
Corporate scandals;
Which Bush aided and abetted, at least in Enron's case.
Hostages in China;
Can you name a president who hasn't had to deal with a hostage situation?
9/11.
Which led to the one thing Bush did right: invading Afghanistan. Of course, then he had to screw it up by invading Iraq, which as anyone who knows anything about the middle east knew from the moment it was proposed, had fuck-all to do with terrorism.
In spite of all this, they have created the opportunity for people to create the jobs (over 3 million new jobs and counting) to grow our economy.
Having the worst job creation record since Hoover is hardly something to crow about, especially since most of those are low-paying service jobs, hardly a replacement for the much better paying manufacturing and engineering jobs we continue to lose. Nice job of trying to put a positive spin on it though. I'm sure plenty of people would have been fooled.
Not to mention taking the necessary steps to protect our citizens against the ever-growing threat of TERRORISM...remember?
Indeed! Too bad it's "ever-growing" largely thanks to the incompetent, arrogant, and belligerant foreign policy of our current administration.
Here's a free tip for you: If you don't want to get stung by hornets, don't go stirring up their nest.
Allow me to enlighten you. Back in the 80's, Jimmy Carter cut a lot of defense funding, among other bad decisions. This resulted in thousands of people losing their jobs. I was living in southern california at the time. I remember property value plummeting and interest rates skyrocketing. Also, a lot of defense spending goes into jets, rocket engines, communications technologies like satellites, the GPS system, earth observing satellites (environment), I could go on and on. This is really quite a simple concept, I don't think many of your liberal buddies would argue with me.
I said NUCLEAR WEAPONS RESEARCH is pointless, not defense research in general. I'm well aware of the benifits we've reaped from other areas.
A 20 year record. That says a lot. During that 20 year record, he didn't sponsor a single bill. He just voted, and his votes were pretty bad.
Again: pure bullshit. Research it yourself. In fact, Kerry leads McCain on bills sponsored by a few hundred. Is McCain a do-nothing slacker? If you really want an example of a legislator who did practically nothing take a look at Chenney's record.
You should find the person who told you this and punch them in the face for lying to you.
See thats the thing. I believe Bush has a set of moral values, and I trust he wouldn't do that, and what would he possibly have to gain?
I have no idea what he has to gain from it, but he most definately did lie in order to get us into Iraq. The only reason he gave that still holds any water is "he tried to kill my daddy", and sorry, but I just don't think that's a legitimate reason to go to war. To be perfectly honest, the invasion of Iraq makes no sense to me. There was nothing to gain and a great deal to lose, and that was quite clear to me from the day it was proposed.
I'd rather have Clinton than Kerry.
So would I, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to defend the choices Clinton made in his personal life. Then again, those choices clearly had no bearing on his performance of his duties as president. Nobody died when Clinton lied.
I see the damage Bush has done so far, and will continue to do as long as he is allowed, as damage that will take a long time to repair. How is it short-sighted to try and minimize long-term damage?
Then again, in case you missed it, I'm not aware of a third party candidate that I consider a better option than Kerry, so for me it's kind of a moot point.
Defense spending is always beneficial to society, whether the weapons are actually used or not.
Really! How is expending massive amounts of resources on something that's not at all useful beneficial to society? Would you mind detailing the benefits to your everyday man on the street of being able to destroy the world even more times over than we already can?
Also, I think there may be a need for nuclear weapons in the future, shooting down other missiles or volleys of missiles would be a pretty good use for them, off the top of my head.
Sure, as long as you don't mind completely frying your power and communications grids! And how great would it be to have that cloud of radiation drifting across the country! Seriously, that's about the stupidest idea for nuclear weapons use I think I've ever heard.
Bush has a record to tout, John Kerry does not.
Bullshit. Kerry has a 20 year record to tout. Turn off the Faux News and try doing some basic research for yourself.
You may disagree with his beliefs, and that's fine. You have that right in America, at least as long as we can prevent another PATRIOT Act from being passed. But saying he doesn't have a record is pure and utter bullshit.
I don't trust John Kerry personally, I don't trust any democrat. Character matters a lot to me, more than the things they say they would do.
And yet you trust Bush and company, even though they're PROVEN liars? You Bush-puppets never cease to amaze me!
As I recall, clinton said he was going to lower taxes.
I won't try and defend Clinton, but at least none of his lies resulted in 1000+ dead Americans.
If we shelve everything we will just full behind, or apear to full behind. Then we would apprear vulnerable and thus become an even more appealing target to our enemies. I say "appear" because the likely scenerio is that the nuclear programs would be officially scrapped, then shifted to some blck budget operation so we look clean, but in reality it is the same old story. Just like when the bilogical weapons and chemical weapons were supposedly dismantled in the 60's and 70's.
What a crock!
You can only destroy the world once. Since, as you were so kind as to point out for me, we have had many times that capability for decades, developing further mass-destructive capability is a pointless waste of resources.
Yeah, MAD seemed to work fine in the Cold War, but since the demise of the Soviet Union our stockpile is mostly useless, even as a deterent. Our Cold War stockpile still exists, and that's public knowledge all over the world. But that didn't stop 9/11, did it?
And while you might trumpet the lesser of two evils, I pity you for your shortsightedness and lack of character.
As I pity you for yours.
Really, it's just a difference of priorities. IMO the most important thing is to get Bush out, mainly because he'll take Cheney, Ashcroft, and the rest with him. The action most likely to achieve that is to vote for Kerry.
I may disagree with Kerry on a few issues, but I think he'll be a fine president. I don't need, or even want, a clone of myself or a puppet who just parrots my beliefs. What I want is someone capable of independent thought, who's not so blinded by their ideals that they can't at least give consideration to the opposing viewpoint.
I see those qualities in Kerry, and therefor conclude that he will be a fine president. Yeah I have some disagreements with him, but I have equivalent or stronger disagreements with every third party candidate I know anything about. A thoughtful man can be reasoned with, and is capable of changing his stance when he finds the available facts warrant it. So, I pick the one most likely to unseat Bush, which, if you recall, is my primary goal in this election.
Since I'm sure you're wondering what I meant in my opening sentence, here it is: Your shortsightedness is you apparant failure to recognize the extent of the damage Bush and company will do, not just in America but all over the world, if given another four years. Your lack of character is your refusal to do what's necessary to prevent that.
Remember, the only thing necessary for evil triumph is for good men to do nothing. I think you are a good man (social liberal + fiscal conservative = good in my book) who has allowed himself to be blinded by his ideals.
I don't mean to flame you necessarily, but it has always been my opinion that anyone taking so aggressive a stance has clearly missed something, and needs to be hit in the face with an opposing viewpoint.
OTOH, does your uncle's Dell/Gateway/Compaq need a BIOS flash? Does your Uncle know how, or have any inclination to flash the BIOS?
Well, my uncle has a white box, but most likely could benefit from a BIOS flash. IIRC it has USB, but it's one of those old super-7 boards where enabling USB made the whole system flakey. It most certainly can't flash from within the BIOS.
And yes, they all have USB ports, and the ones I've tried (Older Dell desktop, newish Gateway laptop, older Dell laptop) can boot from USB too.
How old are you talking about? I don't know many people who have new enough machines that there's a reasonable probability that they'd be able to do that, and all of those are people who are very unlikely to ask me for help, being more than capable of handling it on their own. (The exception being my mom, whom I just built a new machine for a few months ago, which replaced her k6-2-300, which in turn replaced her 1928 Underwood.)
Out there in the real world 2-3 years is not old, and anything more than about 3 years is not likely to be able to boot reliably from USB (just because they say it doesn't mean it's so).
Real decided not to play by Apple's rules. What would Real do if someone decided not to play by their rules? Isn't this question valid?
What I don't think you're getting is that the two situations are totally different. Apple doesn't want to share FairPlay, while Real very much does want to share Helix. You seem to be operating under the assumption that Real is attempting some sort of Microsoftian market domination plan, but the impression I got from Rob's answers (to all the questions, including this one) is that this is not at all what they want.
By falling into this trap I think you have lost the actual meaning of your question. In the context of Rob's answers, as well as some of the previous posts in this thread, your question might more accurately be phrased "What would you do if your competitor expended their own resources to boost support and popularity of your product, especially on platforms it isn't feasable for you to support yourself?" You're assuming a hostile response, when I think a far more likely response might be something like "I'd put them on my christmas card list."
Well what do you expect? Slashdot has a (relatively) high percentage of Macheads, including, IIRC, cmdrtaco, and more than likely a few more of the "editors". And it was posted under Media (Apple), which seems to be misnamed, since the only stories listed are about Real.
It's called a loss-leader, and it can be a very effective way to introduce a new product (as long as you can afford it). They'll more than make their money back from the subscribers they gained in that introductory period.
What evidence can you offer that they would ever make their money back on a Mac port?
It certainly seems that way. The last time I bought a box of floppies I think 3 or 4, out of 10, were bad before I even opened the box. Thinking back, though, it could have been the floppy drives in the crappy old Gateways my school had in the lab.
I wonder if a can of compressed air before use might clear up a lot of those issues? I'll probably never know, as it's largely irrelevant to me now.
I had a college instructor say that was caused by storing your floppies standing up. Apparently, time and gravity will warp the disk, making them unreadable. He said the only way to even out the warping is to stand them on their side for a while. So basically, he was saying that we should store our floppies laying flat.
I think he was full of crap. After all, the same should be more or less true for hard drive platters, right? But IBM engineers told us that drives should be stored on edge for best results (we used to use a lot of IBM drives in our products, and had to store a fair number for customer service replacement. Hitachi doesn't seem to have the same commitment to customer service though, so we're switching to Seagate where possible).
Most of the time when a floppy drive is giving me consistent "corrupt disk" or "unformatted media" errors it's because the cable is attached backwards.
The vast majority of floppy drives are poorly keyed, if they're keyed at all, and I can't remember ever seeing one with pin 1 marked. It's basically a 50/50 guess, and I always seem to get it wrong.
Fortunately it doesn't seem to actually hurt anything, and a quick reversal of the cable magically clears it up.
But can your uncle's Dell, Gateway, or (god forbid) Compaq?
Hell, do they even have a USB port?
It's great that yours does that, mine does too and it's pretty damned cool, but if you can't see how that's totally irrelevant you've completely missed the point of this thread.
The Crown Vic is still the workhorse car for the CHP. There are a few Camaros, but at most there's only one or two in any given office (IIRC my wife's office doesn't have any Camaros, and she's in South LA).
They're trying to get Chevy to make a new Caprice, basicly a sedan body on a Tahoe frame, but for the time being the Crown Vic is the only rear wheel drive production sedan available, and nobody's happy with it. Chevy could make a fair amount of money on a new Caprice, as could Dodge if they made a sedan version of the Magnum.
Are you getting this from somewhere, or just assuming it? Because every single motorway/highway pileup is chock full of rear end collisions, often from cruising speed to rest in a fraction of a second. I'd guess that they are one of the most common impact types.
Actually, cop cars are much more likely to be hit from behind.
The most basic reason is that they spend a lot more time stationary on the sides of roads where drivers aren't really expecting there to be stationary cars. Also, drunks seem to be drawn to the flashing lights like moths to a flame. The lights grab their attention, and thanks to their impairment the car is more likely to go where they're looking.
My source for this is my wife, who is a CHP Officer.
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I've had an HT202 for a few months now and I'm very happy with it. I keep it attached to an otherwise useless clip on my wallet chain. It's survived a fair amount of abuse so far.
My one complaint is that they used crimped on caps to retain the ends of the cable. I've had one side pull lose, but it was easily fixed by a little krazy glue, and seems much stronger now.
I don't think the point is necessarily for the FMOD to be more secure than the USDOD, but rather to be more secure from the USDOD.
That is, after all, one of the primary reasons so many foreign government entities are getting interested in FOSS. Microsoft's response, Shared Source, is weak, since while they get to look at the source, they have no way to guarantee that it's the actual source for what they're installing (assuming that they even get to see all of the source. IIRC, they don't)
No toilets or kitchens goes a little beyond "no frills", I think. "Spartan" definately seems like the right word for what he's suggesting.
I think he's probably right, but lets at least call it what it is.
It all depends on the teacher.
When I was first introduced to flowcharts in high school we had a lot of fun with them. When I saw them again in college it sapped my will to live.
Presentation can make anything interesting. That's the real genius of Bill Nye.
The problem with rubbing alcohol is that it's already got a lot of water in it.
Totally irrelevant, you just have to make sure your boards are dry before you power them up again.
I do component-level troubleshooting and repair on some VERY expensive boards (high end video servers). All our rework people use rubbing alcohol for cleanup. Back in the day, when my company actually made our own boards, we used normal dishwashers for the final cleanup at the end of the manufacturing process, so yes I'm quite certain that water isn't a problem as long as you dry the board out before you power it up.
You can get inline filters to remove that stuff. I used to work for a robotics company, and we used precision pneumatics on almost everything we built, and we were "highly encouraged" by the pneumatics manufacturer to put those filters on everything we built.
They aren't that expensive, and work quite well.
Ever noticed those pink foam things motherboards are shipped on? Those are conductive.
NO THEY AREN'T!
The pink foam is an insulator, it being pink just indicates it just doesn't generate static electricity on its own (which regular foam does, in abundance).
Go ahead and check it yourself. The pink foam I have on my desk reads Over Limit (over 20M ohms) with the probes less than a centimeter apart.
There's nothing inherently wrong with putting a board on an insulator. The problem is when there's a direct, low resistance connection between two areas with different potential. An insulator won't do that, but neither will it bleed off the charge like a resistive surface will. (See below)
You want to short EVERYTHING.
VERY, VERY WRONG!
Static electricity can build up to extremely high levels, in fact you won't even feel a static discharge under about 5000V. If you discharge this all at once, as would be the case if that foam were conductive, you'll burn out components, some of which can be damaged by as little as 500V. That's why static disipative stuff has such a high resistance, so the charge bleeds off slowly without damaging anything.
What you want is a surface that's "static disipative", which actually means it's resistive to the point of being just short of an insulator (around 10^9 ohms per square meter or something like that, according to a materials engineer I know who used to work for a company that produced static disipative ceramics), which is how you bleed off those high voltage static charges safely.
They do make some special static disipative foam, which is black, very dense, closed-cell stuff. All static disipative foam is supposed to be black, but don't make the mistake of assuming any black foam is static disipative, most of the time it's actually static generating.
Let me know what issues you disagree with Kerry on and I'm quite sure I can find you a quote from him that supports it.
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. -- Bernard Berenson
If you really want something, though, let's try gay marriage for an example, though it has absolutely no bearing on my life (which is a large part of why I think it should be allowed, and yes, I am married. I find my marriage was, curiously, completely unaffected by the happenings in San Francisco.)
'Bush and company' have endured many hardships regarding the nation: Economic consequences of the Clinton years;
Ah yes, the Long Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity! How were we able to function without the huge deficit? The rampant expansion of government spending? The bleak employment prospects?
Thank God that's over!
Corporate scandals;
Which Bush aided and abetted, at least in Enron's case.
Hostages in China;
Can you name a president who hasn't had to deal with a hostage situation?
9/11.
Which led to the one thing Bush did right: invading Afghanistan. Of course, then he had to screw it up by invading Iraq, which as anyone who knows anything about the middle east knew from the moment it was proposed, had fuck-all to do with terrorism.
In spite of all this, they have created the opportunity for people to create the jobs (over 3 million new jobs and counting) to grow our economy.
Having the worst job creation record since Hoover is hardly something to crow about, especially since most of those are low-paying service jobs, hardly a replacement for the much better paying manufacturing and engineering jobs we continue to lose. Nice job of trying to put a positive spin on it though. I'm sure plenty of people would have been fooled.
Not to mention taking the necessary steps to protect our citizens against the ever-growing threat of TERRORISM...remember?
Indeed! Too bad it's "ever-growing" largely thanks to the incompetent, arrogant, and belligerant foreign policy of our current administration.
Here's a free tip for you: If you don't want to get stung by hornets, don't go stirring up their nest.
Allow me to enlighten you. Back in the 80's, Jimmy Carter cut a lot of defense funding, among other bad decisions. This resulted in thousands of people losing their jobs. I was living in southern california at the time. I remember property value plummeting and interest rates skyrocketing. Also, a lot of defense spending goes into jets, rocket engines, communications technologies like satellites, the GPS system, earth observing satellites (environment), I could go on and on. This is really quite a simple concept, I don't think many of your liberal buddies would argue with me.
I said NUCLEAR WEAPONS RESEARCH is pointless, not defense research in general. I'm well aware of the benifits we've reaped from other areas.
A 20 year record. That says a lot. During that 20 year record, he didn't sponsor a single bill. He just voted, and his votes were pretty bad.
Again: pure bullshit. Research it yourself. In fact, Kerry leads McCain on bills sponsored by a few hundred. Is McCain a do-nothing slacker? If you really want an example of a legislator who did practically nothing take a look at Chenney's record.
You should find the person who told you this and punch them in the face for lying to you.
See thats the thing. I believe Bush has a set of moral values, and I trust he wouldn't do that, and what would he possibly have to gain?
I have no idea what he has to gain from it, but he most definately did lie in order to get us into Iraq. The only reason he gave that still holds any water is "he tried to kill my daddy", and sorry, but I just don't think that's a legitimate reason to go to war. To be perfectly honest, the invasion of Iraq makes no sense to me. There was nothing to gain and a great deal to lose, and that was quite clear to me from the day it was proposed.
I'd rather have Clinton than Kerry.
So would I, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to defend the choices Clinton made in his personal life. Then again, those choices clearly had no bearing on his performance of his duties as president. Nobody died when Clinton lied.
I see the damage Bush has done so far, and will continue to do as long as he is allowed, as damage that will take a long time to repair. How is it short-sighted to try and minimize long-term damage?
Then again, in case you missed it, I'm not aware of a third party candidate that I consider a better option than Kerry, so for me it's kind of a moot point.
I've been considering re-registering as a Republican for a while now. I figure then I'd get to vote against the greater evil twice!
Defense spending is always beneficial to society, whether the weapons are actually used or not.
Really! How is expending massive amounts of resources on something that's not at all useful beneficial to society? Would you mind detailing the benefits to your everyday man on the street of being able to destroy the world even more times over than we already can?
Also, I think there may be a need for nuclear weapons in the future, shooting down other missiles or volleys of missiles would be a pretty good use for them, off the top of my head.
Sure, as long as you don't mind completely frying your power and communications grids! And how great would it be to have that cloud of radiation drifting across the country! Seriously, that's about the stupidest idea for nuclear weapons use I think I've ever heard.
Bush has a record to tout, John Kerry does not.
Bullshit. Kerry has a 20 year record to tout. Turn off the Faux News and try doing some basic research for yourself.
You may disagree with his beliefs, and that's fine. You have that right in America, at least as long as we can prevent another PATRIOT Act from being passed. But saying he doesn't have a record is pure and utter bullshit.
I don't trust John Kerry personally, I don't trust any democrat. Character matters a lot to me, more than the things they say they would do.
And yet you trust Bush and company, even though they're PROVEN liars? You Bush-puppets never cease to amaze me!
As I recall, clinton said he was going to lower taxes.
I won't try and defend Clinton, but at least none of his lies resulted in 1000+ dead Americans.
If we shelve everything we will just full behind, or apear to full behind. Then we would apprear vulnerable and thus become an even more appealing target to our enemies. I say "appear" because the likely scenerio is that the nuclear programs would be officially scrapped, then shifted to some blck budget operation so we look clean, but in reality it is the same old story. Just like when the bilogical weapons and chemical weapons were supposedly dismantled in the 60's and 70's.
What a crock!
You can only destroy the world once. Since, as you were so kind as to point out for me, we have had many times that capability for decades, developing further mass-destructive capability is a pointless waste of resources.
Yeah, MAD seemed to work fine in the Cold War, but since the demise of the Soviet Union our stockpile is mostly useless, even as a deterent. Our Cold War stockpile still exists, and that's public knowledge all over the world. But that didn't stop 9/11, did it?
And you call Kerry naive...
And while you might trumpet the lesser of two evils, I pity you for your shortsightedness and lack of character.
As I pity you for yours.
Really, it's just a difference of priorities. IMO the most important thing is to get Bush out, mainly because he'll take Cheney, Ashcroft, and the rest with him. The action most likely to achieve that is to vote for Kerry.
I may disagree with Kerry on a few issues, but I think he'll be a fine president. I don't need, or even want, a clone of myself or a puppet who just parrots my beliefs. What I want is someone capable of independent thought, who's not so blinded by their ideals that they can't at least give consideration to the opposing viewpoint.
I see those qualities in Kerry, and therefor conclude that he will be a fine president. Yeah I have some disagreements with him, but I have equivalent or stronger disagreements with every third party candidate I know anything about. A thoughtful man can be reasoned with, and is capable of changing his stance when he finds the available facts warrant it. So, I pick the one most likely to unseat Bush, which, if you recall, is my primary goal in this election.
Since I'm sure you're wondering what I meant in my opening sentence, here it is: Your shortsightedness is you apparant failure to recognize the extent of the damage Bush and company will do, not just in America but all over the world, if given another four years. Your lack of character is your refusal to do what's necessary to prevent that.
Remember, the only thing necessary for evil triumph is for good men to do nothing. I think you are a good man (social liberal + fiscal conservative = good in my book) who has allowed himself to be blinded by his ideals.
I don't mean to flame you necessarily, but it has always been my opinion that anyone taking so aggressive a stance has clearly missed something, and needs to be hit in the face with an opposing viewpoint.
OTOH, does your uncle's Dell/Gateway/Compaq need a BIOS flash? Does your Uncle know how, or have any inclination to flash the BIOS?
Well, my uncle has a white box, but most likely could benefit from a BIOS flash. IIRC it has USB, but it's one of those old super-7 boards where enabling USB made the whole system flakey. It most certainly can't flash from within the BIOS.
And yes, they all have USB ports, and the ones I've tried (Older Dell desktop, newish Gateway laptop, older Dell laptop) can boot from USB too.
How old are you talking about? I don't know many people who have new enough machines that there's a reasonable probability that they'd be able to do that, and all of those are people who are very unlikely to ask me for help, being more than capable of handling it on their own. (The exception being my mom, whom I just built a new machine for a few months ago, which replaced her k6-2-300, which in turn replaced her 1928 Underwood.)
Out there in the real world 2-3 years is not old, and anything more than about 3 years is not likely to be able to boot reliably from USB (just because they say it doesn't mean it's so).
Real decided not to play by Apple's rules. What would Real do if someone decided not to play by their rules? Isn't this question valid?
What I don't think you're getting is that the two situations are totally different. Apple doesn't want to share FairPlay, while Real very much does want to share Helix. You seem to be operating under the assumption that Real is attempting some sort of Microsoftian market domination plan, but the impression I got from Rob's answers (to all the questions, including this one) is that this is not at all what they want.
By falling into this trap I think you have lost the actual meaning of your question. In the context of Rob's answers, as well as some of the previous posts in this thread, your question might more accurately be phrased "What would you do if your competitor expended their own resources to boost support and popularity of your product, especially on platforms it isn't feasable for you to support yourself?" You're assuming a hostile response, when I think a far more likely response might be something like "I'd put them on my christmas card list."
Please find another acronym. This one is already in use, and it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Well what do you expect? Slashdot has a (relatively) high percentage of Macheads, including, IIRC, cmdrtaco, and more than likely a few more of the "editors". And it was posted under Media (Apple), which seems to be misnamed, since the only stories listed are about Real.
It's called a loss-leader, and it can be a very effective way to introduce a new product (as long as you can afford it). They'll more than make their money back from the subscribers they gained in that introductory period.
What evidence can you offer that they would ever make their money back on a Mac port?
It certainly seems that way. The last time I bought a box of floppies I think 3 or 4, out of 10, were bad before I even opened the box. Thinking back, though, it could have been the floppy drives in the crappy old Gateways my school had in the lab.
I wonder if a can of compressed air before use might clear up a lot of those issues? I'll probably never know, as it's largely irrelevant to me now.
I had a college instructor say that was caused by storing your floppies standing up. Apparently, time and gravity will warp the disk, making them unreadable. He said the only way to even out the warping is to stand them on their side for a while. So basically, he was saying that we should store our floppies laying flat.
I think he was full of crap. After all, the same should be more or less true for hard drive platters, right? But IBM engineers told us that drives should be stored on edge for best results (we used to use a lot of IBM drives in our products, and had to store a fair number for customer service replacement. Hitachi doesn't seem to have the same commitment to customer service though, so we're switching to Seagate where possible).
Most of the time when a floppy drive is giving me consistent "corrupt disk" or "unformatted media" errors it's because the cable is attached backwards.
The vast majority of floppy drives are poorly keyed, if they're keyed at all, and I can't remember ever seeing one with pin 1 marked. It's basically a 50/50 guess, and I always seem to get it wrong.
Fortunately it doesn't seem to actually hurt anything, and a quick reversal of the cable magically clears it up.
As can Asus and (IIRC) Abit.
But can your uncle's Dell, Gateway, or (god forbid) Compaq?
Hell, do they even have a USB port?
It's great that yours does that, mine does too and it's pretty damned cool, but if you can't see how that's totally irrelevant you've completely missed the point of this thread.
The Crown Vic is still the workhorse car for the CHP. There are a few Camaros, but at most there's only one or two in any given office (IIRC my wife's office doesn't have any Camaros, and she's in South LA).
They're trying to get Chevy to make a new Caprice, basicly a sedan body on a Tahoe frame, but for the time being the Crown Vic is the only rear wheel drive production sedan available, and nobody's happy with it. Chevy could make a fair amount of money on a new Caprice, as could Dodge if they made a sedan version of the Magnum.
Are you getting this from somewhere, or just assuming it? Because every single motorway/highway pileup is chock full of rear end collisions, often from cruising speed to rest in a fraction of a second. I'd guess that they are one of the most common impact types.
Actually, cop cars are much more likely to be hit from behind.
The most basic reason is that they spend a lot more time stationary on the sides of roads where drivers aren't really expecting there to be stationary cars. Also, drunks seem to be drawn to the flashing lights like moths to a flame. The lights grab their attention, and thanks to their impairment the car is more likely to go where they're looking.
My source for this is my wife, who is a CHP Officer.