Totally agree - there are many things banned in Texas schools - until recently, NO ONE was allowed to have a cell phone powered on (even visitors) while in a Texas school. The exceptions were for kids with emergancies, and it was registared with the school office. Likewise, with medical reasons for having candy, this would be registared with the school office and the nurse. When I was in school, the school nurse had a bag of hard candies for exactly the reason you mentioned.
The issue here is NOT a bad policy. The issue is that the kids knew the No Candy policy, and not only brought candy, but shared it with friends. I somehow doubt that you can justify passing out candy to friends as being a medical necessity.
Actually, it does make a difference. Granted, most of the people using Myth are probably geeks who understand about point releases, but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time, and the fact that MythTV has been around for, oh, roughly eight years (archive.org's oldest page is July 2002) and is still at such a low point number says to me that there is not much development going on in it. The fact that its a stable release is moot. If I were to start an operating system, it booted and simply displayed "Hello World" without crashing makes it a stable release - doesn't mean its ready for world wide use.
No, I agree with the parent. Find a release that is stable and relatively bug free, and call it 1.0 already. This staying at 0.x for 8 years simply says your project is either not organized, lacks proper development, or lacks the balls to release a product that's ready for prime-time.
The original story posted here on/. does not properly convey what happened. The state law prevents the school from selling food of low nutritional value, not from parents sending candy in their kids lunch. The issue, as has been pointed out in other posts here, was that the school district had a policy against gum and hard candy. Most schools do. What made this an issue was how strict the punishment was, and then news medias blowing it out of proportion and not reporting the full story. The slashdot story should really have an Update included stating the suspension was because they broke school policy, not because they broke state law.
Glad you posted this, as I was about to respond to the original post. Living in Texas, I am familer with the state guideline, and it prohibits minimally nutritonal food from being sold in the schools, not what students can or cannot bring from home (as stated in the San Antonio paper that you posted). The issue here seems simply that the school has a policy against hard candy, the students knew that, and broke the rules. However, the punishment does seem a little harsh - 5 days detention for a first time offender is steep. One or two day detention should be appropriate here, maybe five for a second offense, and suspension for multiple offenses.
Probably end up being a doop by the time I end up posting this, but here it goes - The consequences of refusing the update are not being able to connect to the Playstation Network (big if you want to download game demos, addons, or movies), loss of future updates (3D is on the way), and the possibility of not being able to play some future Blu-Ray discs.
As for the EULA, don't we have to agree to a new EULA every time we install a new OS on the iPhone, or a new version of Windows? The EULA is to the software, not to the hardware (unless I am much mistaking).
I skimmed both articles, and something bothers me. The line "when viewed from an angle of 45 degrees". Um, isn't that step two in determining if said cloak works? I mean, "Looks invisible for this angle, let's look at it from another angle to see if its still invisible".
My guess is that they are not cloaking something that large. Measurements are given as "0.2 units" and "0.15 units". The original article stated that they were covering "a bump". My guess is that Harry Potter is not wodering around in one of these.
I want to know where this chiropracter is at, because he is obviously an old-school chiropracter that ACTUALLY DOES REALIGNMENTS. The modern thing for chiropractors is to slightly adjust you over 30 visits, give you electrical shock therapy, and try to tell you they can cure any medical condition you throw at them.
Long story short, an old fashioned chiropracter CAN cure back pain. A modern chiropractor is a quack.
I have stopped going to chiropracters myself and am looking for an alternative. I used to be able to go once every couple of years, get my back popped, come back in a week or two for followup, then go on my way, feeling great. Chiropracters nowdays want to slightly adjust you over 20-30 treatments, and give you shock treatments and roll out your back. These feel great while you are having them and for about 15 minutes after the treatment is over, then I start feeling like crap all over again - manytimes feeling as bad, if not worse, than before I went in. Nice placebo effect.
Chiropracters nowdays also claim to cure cancer, muscular distrophy, adhd, and many other things by simply aligning the back. Granted, it may make my arm stop tingling if my back is really messed up bad, but pretty sure its not going to cure a genetic disorder or cell mutation.
Here is what gets me - I think modern chiropracters ACTUALLY BELIEVE this stuff. I went into one once, and he claimed that he did a chiropractic adjustment on his SIX-WEEK-OLD granddaughter! Should have contacted Child Protective Services - seriously doubt the child suffered from back pain, and I am willing to bet more harm than good was done.
Truthfully, I get better treatment paying the random big muscular guy $5 to pop my back than I have gotten at a Chiropracter in the past seven years.
Its not that this thing happened in Canada or whatever that gets me. I get their law is different. My thought is asking GOOGLE to hand over identifying information about users who posted on a website not controlled by Google. Um, hello?
Maybe there is something in the article, but I am too lazy to pull it up, and instead am going to blast unannonimously for all the world to hear.
You sure? Office 2007 is office 12. Unless they are refering to office 2008 for the mac as office 13. But I don't think they are. Office 11 was office 2003, not 2004, and office 10 was office xp / 2002. I mess with this stuff on a daily basis. So unless Microsoft has taken to numbering their mac releases, or unless they are skipping 13 due to some superstition, Office 2010 is Office 13, not 14. So, with Microsoft releasing products every 3-4 years in the Office category, this means that we can expect OOXML support around 2016 / 2017.
I agree. I hope I don't get marked troll, but I just did a Google image search for 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. Images posted a few days ago versus stuff posted in 2001, and guess what, I could not tell a difference. Except that you can have strange fonts in the app window name. No, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME! No, even back when I was a Linux user, I was unimpressed with Gnome. Back in the early days (1.x release), it was beautiful, but ran SO SLOW compared to KDE. However, it seems to me that very little progress has been made in the UI of Gnome. In the past ten years, on the Mac side, we have seen the introduction of OSX, and the evolution of it, which is now functional, fast, and beautiful. On the Windows side, we went from Windows 2000 to XP to Vista to Windows 7. Gnome 2.3 has a look and feel that reminds me of Windows 2000. Welcome to the year 2000 everyone!
I know. I was so hoping it was real as Slashdot didn't tag it as AprilFools. This is a pretty cool idea, but I am pretty sure a charging station / gamepad for the iPad could probably be made for less than $150. Shoot, could probably license a few dozen games and still get the device in for around $50.
But, if Novel now owns Unix, Microsoft can't buy out Novel - because this would mean that Microsoft not only has control over Unix, but everything that can be branded as Unix, such as OSX. Wouldn't this create a monopolistic entity? Just thinking out loud.
Pity it does not apply to satelite. Would love to get some stuff off of my dish network hd dvr. Luckily they have USB ports enabled, but you can only use the external HDD with that one DVR.
However, I say that instead of removing math completely from the curriculum, you need to reduce the amount they do in younger years. The problem is not that the brains are not wired for it, but rather suffer from burnout. I can attribute to this point from first hand experience - I was always really good in math when we handled it for 20-30 minutes a day. However, my sophomore year of high school, we went to block scheduling, and suddenly we were in a single class for 90 minutes a day. I went from an A student to a C student my sophomore year, to failing math my junior year. Retaking the class back on a normal schedule, I aced it, but my senior year I had calculus and calculus-based physics back to back, for three hours a day of math. Talk about burn out! C in Physics and a curtesy D in Calculus! Funny thing is, I knew the material, and could explain it to the teachers. It was litterally burnout from too much math. Actually, after that year, I actually started performing worse on basic math and algebra than I performed before that year. I can tell you, it is litterally a mental block. I am not sure if areas of the brain can shut down from overuse or something, but there is deffinately a connection between having too much math and my current inability to do anything other than basic stuff. In fact, what is really weird is I can remember formulas and what they are for, and can explain to you how to find the slope of a line and all that, and I can even walk someone through it, but I find that if I try to do it myself, suddenly the numbers no longer make sense. This was a subject I aced.
The point I am trying to make? Don't take math out of the younger levels, reduce the amount of it (or actually any subject). Give the brain a chance to rest. We always hear that the brain is like a muscle, and you have to work it out. Well, just like a muscle, overuse could probably damage it. This is where the educational system is flawed. We do what we can to stuff every bit of knowledge into someone's brain, then wonder why people have trouble retaining information. In fact, it seems that if a child complains they are overloaded, we tell them they are lazy or have no motivation.
Anyways, I am not saying this professor's ideas are right or wrong, but I think his studies are on the right track. What just amazes me is that people spend years, or even decades, studying stuff that the average person (in this case, the average student) could probably tell you straight up - in this case, I'm overloaded.
Probably going to get marked redundant, but I couldn't agree more.
The truth is, though, that I think the original poster answered his question in the post - The last four LAPTOPS he bought. Most laptops I have seen do have only a headphones out jack and a microphone in jack, at least that I have seen.
Truthfully, dude, are you buying laptops and not even looking to see if the specs meet your needs? You should be laughed at by the Slashdot community.
Second, buy a freakin Desktop or build one yourself. I have yet to see a motherboard with onboard audio that does not have a line in jack. Or just go buy yourself a soundblaster. In fact, they have USB soundblasters. Notice first feature - record old cassette tapes & vinyl to MP3 with included software.
So, he doesn't buy laptops without first checking to see if they have what he needs, he is assumming that because his laptop doesn't have said jack, all computers must not have them, and clearly doesn't know how to use Google. That took me 10 seconds of searching.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, I interviewed for them last year. Used Google Maps to pull up directions on my iPhone. Many of the employees inside use Google, and I walked by a few cubes where employees were running Linux on their desktops. I was told that I was welcome to use non-Microsoft products to do my job, I just was not allowed to promote non-Microsoft products on a call.
You will find though, that this is not at all unusual in the professional world. You will see GMC employees driving Toyota, Fords and Dodge. You will see AT&T employees with Verizon and Sprint phones. Shoot, at my last company, we worked in advertising, and rarely did our people on that team actually have the client's products. Its unrealistic to think that everyone in your company is going to be using your product before coming to work for you, or to change to your product simply because they are working for you. Even if you offer company discounts, many are happy with their current products / services and do not wish to change, or, in some cases, such as with cell companies, may live outside their employer's coverage area.
Point is, there should be no surprise that people at Microsoft have iPhones, and in fact, I am sure there are people at apple sporting Windows Mobile, Blackberries and Android, and same way with people who work at Google. Its just unrealistic to expect otherwise.
You should see what AT&T charges in the US for an iPhone with 400 minutes, unlimited Data and 1000 texts a month - over $100 (not for sure how much - that is the price AFTER a corporate discount). I am hoping that when my contract expires, I can take my iPhone to Boost, but have a feeling that Apple won't like that. I really do not want to jailbreak.
That beeing said, with as great as Boost is, they are still way above what many European providers charge. I lived in Salzburg a few years ago, and ended up buying a prepaid phone for around $80. Came with about $20 credit on it (this was voice only, which was fine at the time - smart phones didn't become big until a year or two later). Here's the thing - it only went against the minutes if I went outside of Austria, or if I made a call to a landline. No mobile to mobile charges, no charges for incoming calls, no calls to 800 numbers (had AT&T international calling card back to the states at 3 cents a minute). Point is, I only bought extra minutes once, and that was because I was going to Italy and Greece for a couple of weeks, and wanted to make sure I had cell access in case of an emergancy.
Truthfully, though, when I was there, I found it more handy just to jump into an Internet cafe. Just watch your guide books and check google before you leave to see how much they charge - places can charge anywhere from around $1 an hour to, in some cases, over $10 an hour. I found the cheapest internet while I was there to be in laundry mats, and people's living rooms. I kid you not, wonder into a college area, and watch how many students have a studio flat or something, with a DSL connection and half a dozen Linux computers networked, willing to let you use it for a couple of bucks (or a case of beer).
Interesting, this may actually fix many of my issues as in the last couple of years, I have gone to taking photos in burst mode. I also have another thought that may work with this - might be able to take a second or two of video with a handheld camera, even of a person, export to like 30 seperate images, and use this program to get a bit better of a picture. Thanks. I am going to play with this program some when I get home. May not work on some of my oldest pictures, but I bet I can do something with this.
Yeah, I know bigger lense is better. Working on upgrading to a true dslr now. Problem is, I got ten years (and counting) of images taken with various Nikon, Fuji and Canon Point and Shoot cameras (and, shudder, many taken with friends' Kodaks).
The Photoshop edge enhancing and smart sharpening actually do do a great job, and doing some color correction really helps. CS4 has additional tools that really help me on badly lit photos (usually taken by my friends, I thankfully learned pretty early about lighting).
Basically, I am looking for something that will allow me to enlarge without getting pixelated into oblivian and enhancing JPEG compression noise (yes, I know about JPEGS, and if my camera had a RAW or TIFF setting, I would use it - for now I am settling with the least amount of compression). Its not like I am trying to add frekles to someone's face in the background of a picture when it isn't visable in the original, I simply want some plugin with an algorithm that will detect colors, create a smooth blend (taking out, i guess you could call it macroblocking), detect edges with those colors (IE can tell the difference between, say, a person's shirt and their arm), detect where said color ends and begins and determine whether to replace jagged edges with a line or a curve, and then the shape of the curve. If the algorithm is good enough, might also be able to detect textures too (differences in color shade) and enhance that a bit too. I mean, unless you just zoom the crap out of a picture, there is usually enough information there that you should be able to do SOMETHING with it.
I used to work in IT at one. The people before us thought it would be smart to use file-sharing on a peer-to-peer (not p2p for the n00bs) network. Thought they would cry when we forced them over to AD and turned off filesharing. The concept of "file server is better" was met with "but this is the way we always do this". Don't try to explain SOX compliance to creatives and account managers.
That being said, if you order enough Macs from Apple, sometimes Apple might be willing to throw you a server for free.
Oh oh oh, get a 24 port hub 10BaseT hub, one uplinks to the network, one goes to him, the other 22 go to old 486s running Quake servers and bittorrent. When he complains about slowness, tell him the slowness is caused by the graphic files getting bigger, and eating up his system resources, and that if he copies the files to his local machine, it will greatly speed up. When asked why it has slowed down that much, tell him you detected someone trying to hack into his computer, so there are new security antivirus checks that scans every single network request that goes in and out of his computer, and he will need to live with it. Turning it off could lead to his computer being compromised and on to identity theft.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally agree - there are many things banned in Texas schools - until recently, NO ONE was allowed to have a cell phone powered on (even visitors) while in a Texas school. The exceptions were for kids with emergancies, and it was registared with the school office. Likewise, with medical reasons for having candy, this would be registared with the school office and the nurse. When I was in school, the school nurse had a bag of hard candies for exactly the reason you mentioned.
The issue here is NOT a bad policy. The issue is that the kids knew the No Candy policy, and not only brought candy, but shared it with friends. I somehow doubt that you can justify passing out candy to friends as being a medical necessity.
Actually, it does make a difference. Granted, most of the people using Myth are probably geeks who understand about point releases, but even I am skeptical of a product that is at 0.2x. That says to me its still in early development, is not ready for prime time, and the fact that MythTV has been around for, oh, roughly eight years (archive.org's oldest page is July 2002) and is still at such a low point number says to me that there is not much development going on in it. The fact that its a stable release is moot. If I were to start an operating system, it booted and simply displayed "Hello World" without crashing makes it a stable release - doesn't mean its ready for world wide use.
No, I agree with the parent. Find a release that is stable and relatively bug free, and call it 1.0 already. This staying at 0.x for 8 years simply says your project is either not organized, lacks proper development, or lacks the balls to release a product that's ready for prime-time.
The original story posted here on /. does not properly convey what happened. The state law prevents the school from selling food of low nutritional value, not from parents sending candy in their kids lunch. The issue, as has been pointed out in other posts here, was that the school district had a policy against gum and hard candy. Most schools do. What made this an issue was how strict the punishment was, and then news medias blowing it out of proportion and not reporting the full story. The slashdot story should really have an Update included stating the suspension was because they broke school policy, not because they broke state law.
Glad you posted this, as I was about to respond to the original post. Living in Texas, I am familer with the state guideline, and it prohibits minimally nutritonal food from being sold in the schools, not what students can or cannot bring from home (as stated in the San Antonio paper that you posted). The issue here seems simply that the school has a policy against hard candy, the students knew that, and broke the rules. However, the punishment does seem a little harsh - 5 days detention for a first time offender is steep. One or two day detention should be appropriate here, maybe five for a second offense, and suspension for multiple offenses.
Not like the UID war means anything - Mine is six digits and I have been here since 1998.
Probably end up being a doop by the time I end up posting this, but here it goes - The consequences of refusing the update are not being able to connect to the Playstation Network (big if you want to download game demos, addons, or movies), loss of future updates (3D is on the way), and the possibility of not being able to play some future Blu-Ray discs.
As for the EULA, don't we have to agree to a new EULA every time we install a new OS on the iPhone, or a new version of Windows? The EULA is to the software, not to the hardware (unless I am much mistaking).
I skimmed both articles, and something bothers me. The line "when viewed from an angle of 45 degrees". Um, isn't that step two in determining if said cloak works? I mean, "Looks invisible for this angle, let's look at it from another angle to see if its still invisible".
My guess is that they are not cloaking something that large. Measurements are given as "0.2 units" and "0.15 units". The original article stated that they were covering "a bump". My guess is that Harry Potter is not wodering around in one of these.
I want to know where this chiropracter is at, because he is obviously an old-school chiropracter that ACTUALLY DOES REALIGNMENTS. The modern thing for chiropractors is to slightly adjust you over 30 visits, give you electrical shock therapy, and try to tell you they can cure any medical condition you throw at them.
Long story short, an old fashioned chiropracter CAN cure back pain. A modern chiropractor is a quack.
I have stopped going to chiropracters myself and am looking for an alternative. I used to be able to go once every couple of years, get my back popped, come back in a week or two for followup, then go on my way, feeling great. Chiropracters nowdays want to slightly adjust you over 20-30 treatments, and give you shock treatments and roll out your back. These feel great while you are having them and for about 15 minutes after the treatment is over, then I start feeling like crap all over again - manytimes feeling as bad, if not worse, than before I went in. Nice placebo effect.
Chiropracters nowdays also claim to cure cancer, muscular distrophy, adhd, and many other things by simply aligning the back. Granted, it may make my arm stop tingling if my back is really messed up bad, but pretty sure its not going to cure a genetic disorder or cell mutation.
Here is what gets me - I think modern chiropracters ACTUALLY BELIEVE this stuff. I went into one once, and he claimed that he did a chiropractic adjustment on his SIX-WEEK-OLD granddaughter! Should have contacted Child Protective Services - seriously doubt the child suffered from back pain, and I am willing to bet more harm than good was done.
Truthfully, I get better treatment paying the random big muscular guy $5 to pop my back than I have gotten at a Chiropracter in the past seven years.
Its not that this thing happened in Canada or whatever that gets me. I get their law is different. My thought is asking GOOGLE to hand over identifying information about users who posted on a website not controlled by Google. Um, hello?
Maybe there is something in the article, but I am too lazy to pull it up, and instead am going to blast unannonimously for all the world to hear.
I was thinking the same thing. Shoot, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DC7100SFF-P430-RCD-3R&cat=SYS complete system here, minus keyboard, mouse and monitor, for $134.99, with Windows XP preinstalled! This one, http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=EL1300G-01W-R&cat=SYS is $179.99, comes with Vista, keyboard, mouse, and speakers! (Granted, these are refurbished units).
I mean, where are you getting that you cannot buy an operating system and malware for microsoft for that price?
Here is XP for $69 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Professional-System-Builders/dp/B000JTDV6M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271101580&sr=1-4 Several people have mentioned that you can get Vista and Windows 7 full versions for $99 http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Premium-64-bit-English/dp/B000MFIPDC/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1271101580&sr=1-7. Avast and AVG are free, and I know Avast at least now includes free malware protection. Spybot is free. Need I go on?
You sure? Office 2007 is office 12. Unless they are refering to office 2008 for the mac as office 13. But I don't think they are. Office 11 was office 2003, not 2004, and office 10 was office xp / 2002. I mess with this stuff on a daily basis. So unless Microsoft has taken to numbering their mac releases, or unless they are skipping 13 due to some superstition, Office 2010 is Office 13, not 14. So, with Microsoft releasing products every 3-4 years in the Office category, this means that we can expect OOXML support around 2016 / 2017.
Sorry, should have posted the link to the website rather than the Google cache: http://zebardast.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/kde-history-in-screenshots/
I agree. I hope I don't get marked troll, but I just did a Google image search for 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. Images posted a few days ago versus stuff posted in 2001, and guess what, I could not tell a difference. Except that you can have strange fonts in the app window name. No, it looks EXACTLY THE SAME! No, even back when I was a Linux user, I was unimpressed with Gnome. Back in the early days (1.x release), it was beautiful, but ran SO SLOW compared to KDE. However, it seems to me that very little progress has been made in the UI of Gnome. In the past ten years, on the Mac side, we have seen the introduction of OSX, and the evolution of it, which is now functional, fast, and beautiful. On the Windows side, we went from Windows 2000 to XP to Vista to Windows 7. Gnome 2.3 has a look and feel that reminds me of Windows 2000. Welcome to the year 2000 everyone!
Even having left Linux totally about three years ago, I feel that I have used it enough to recommend ANY X manager over Gnome. You ever wonder why most Linux distros bundle KDE with it? I mean, look at the history of KDE: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://itpencil.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/kde3.png&imgrefurl=http://zebardast.wordpress.com/2008/02/02/kde-history-in-screenshots/&usg=__DhWX0VcaoSaOkdSFmFvFf8umTlo=&h=864&w=1152&sz=347&hl=en&start=2&itbs=1&tbnid=m6-4wpQ_HueotM:&tbnh=112&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkde%2B3%26hl%3Den%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1
I would also happy recommend BlackBox over Gnome. I am honestly shocked to hear that Gnome is still around.
Okay, you can mark me troll now.
I know. I was so hoping it was real as Slashdot didn't tag it as AprilFools. This is a pretty cool idea, but I am pretty sure a charging station / gamepad for the iPad could probably be made for less than $150. Shoot, could probably license a few dozen games and still get the device in for around $50.
But, if Novel now owns Unix, Microsoft can't buy out Novel - because this would mean that Microsoft not only has control over Unix, but everything that can be branded as Unix, such as OSX. Wouldn't this create a monopolistic entity? Just thinking out loud.
Pity it does not apply to satelite. Would love to get some stuff off of my dish network hd dvr. Luckily they have USB ports enabled, but you can only use the external HDD with that one DVR.
However, I say that instead of removing math completely from the curriculum, you need to reduce the amount they do in younger years. The problem is not that the brains are not wired for it, but rather suffer from burnout. I can attribute to this point from first hand experience - I was always really good in math when we handled it for 20-30 minutes a day. However, my sophomore year of high school, we went to block scheduling, and suddenly we were in a single class for 90 minutes a day. I went from an A student to a C student my sophomore year, to failing math my junior year. Retaking the class back on a normal schedule, I aced it, but my senior year I had calculus and calculus-based physics back to back, for three hours a day of math. Talk about burn out! C in Physics and a curtesy D in Calculus! Funny thing is, I knew the material, and could explain it to the teachers. It was litterally burnout from too much math. Actually, after that year, I actually started performing worse on basic math and algebra than I performed before that year. I can tell you, it is litterally a mental block. I am not sure if areas of the brain can shut down from overuse or something, but there is deffinately a connection between having too much math and my current inability to do anything other than basic stuff. In fact, what is really weird is I can remember formulas and what they are for, and can explain to you how to find the slope of a line and all that, and I can even walk someone through it, but I find that if I try to do it myself, suddenly the numbers no longer make sense. This was a subject I aced.
The point I am trying to make? Don't take math out of the younger levels, reduce the amount of it (or actually any subject). Give the brain a chance to rest. We always hear that the brain is like a muscle, and you have to work it out. Well, just like a muscle, overuse could probably damage it. This is where the educational system is flawed. We do what we can to stuff every bit of knowledge into someone's brain, then wonder why people have trouble retaining information. In fact, it seems that if a child complains they are overloaded, we tell them they are lazy or have no motivation.
Anyways, I am not saying this professor's ideas are right or wrong, but I think his studies are on the right track. What just amazes me is that people spend years, or even decades, studying stuff that the average person (in this case, the average student) could probably tell you straight up - in this case, I'm overloaded.
Probably going to get marked redundant, but I couldn't agree more.
The truth is, though, that I think the original poster answered his question in the post - The last four LAPTOPS he bought. Most laptops I have seen do have only a headphones out jack and a microphone in jack, at least that I have seen.
Truthfully, dude, are you buying laptops and not even looking to see if the specs meet your needs? You should be laughed at by the Slashdot community.
Second, buy a freakin Desktop or build one yourself. I have yet to see a motherboard with onboard audio that does not have a line in jack. Or just go buy yourself a soundblaster. In fact, they have USB soundblasters. Notice first feature - record old cassette tapes & vinyl to MP3 with included software.
So, he doesn't buy laptops without first checking to see if they have what he needs, he is assumming that because his laptop doesn't have said jack, all computers must not have them, and clearly doesn't know how to use Google. That took me 10 seconds of searching.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, I interviewed for them last year. Used Google Maps to pull up directions on my iPhone. Many of the employees inside use Google, and I walked by a few cubes where employees were running Linux on their desktops. I was told that I was welcome to use non-Microsoft products to do my job, I just was not allowed to promote non-Microsoft products on a call.
You will find though, that this is not at all unusual in the professional world. You will see GMC employees driving Toyota, Fords and Dodge. You will see AT&T employees with Verizon and Sprint phones. Shoot, at my last company, we worked in advertising, and rarely did our people on that team actually have the client's products. Its unrealistic to think that everyone in your company is going to be using your product before coming to work for you, or to change to your product simply because they are working for you. Even if you offer company discounts, many are happy with their current products / services and do not wish to change, or, in some cases, such as with cell companies, may live outside their employer's coverage area.
Point is, there should be no surprise that people at Microsoft have iPhones, and in fact, I am sure there are people at apple sporting Windows Mobile, Blackberries and Android, and same way with people who work at Google. Its just unrealistic to expect otherwise.
You should see what AT&T charges in the US for an iPhone with 400 minutes, unlimited Data and 1000 texts a month - over $100 (not for sure how much - that is the price AFTER a corporate discount). I am hoping that when my contract expires, I can take my iPhone to Boost, but have a feeling that Apple won't like that. I really do not want to jailbreak.
That beeing said, with as great as Boost is, they are still way above what many European providers charge. I lived in Salzburg a few years ago, and ended up buying a prepaid phone for around $80. Came with about $20 credit on it (this was voice only, which was fine at the time - smart phones didn't become big until a year or two later). Here's the thing - it only went against the minutes if I went outside of Austria, or if I made a call to a landline. No mobile to mobile charges, no charges for incoming calls, no calls to 800 numbers (had AT&T international calling card back to the states at 3 cents a minute). Point is, I only bought extra minutes once, and that was because I was going to Italy and Greece for a couple of weeks, and wanted to make sure I had cell access in case of an emergancy.
Truthfully, though, when I was there, I found it more handy just to jump into an Internet cafe. Just watch your guide books and check google before you leave to see how much they charge - places can charge anywhere from around $1 an hour to, in some cases, over $10 an hour. I found the cheapest internet while I was there to be in laundry mats, and people's living rooms. I kid you not, wonder into a college area, and watch how many students have a studio flat or something, with a DSL connection and half a dozen Linux computers networked, willing to let you use it for a couple of bucks (or a case of beer).
Interesting, this may actually fix many of my issues as in the last couple of years, I have gone to taking photos in burst mode. I also have another thought that may work with this - might be able to take a second or two of video with a handheld camera, even of a person, export to like 30 seperate images, and use this program to get a bit better of a picture. Thanks. I am going to play with this program some when I get home. May not work on some of my oldest pictures, but I bet I can do something with this.
Yeah, I know bigger lense is better. Working on upgrading to a true dslr now. Problem is, I got ten years (and counting) of images taken with various Nikon, Fuji and Canon Point and Shoot cameras (and, shudder, many taken with friends' Kodaks).
The Photoshop edge enhancing and smart sharpening actually do do a great job, and doing some color correction really helps. CS4 has additional tools that really help me on badly lit photos (usually taken by my friends, I thankfully learned pretty early about lighting).
Basically, I am looking for something that will allow me to enlarge without getting pixelated into oblivian and enhancing JPEG compression noise (yes, I know about JPEGS, and if my camera had a RAW or TIFF setting, I would use it - for now I am settling with the least amount of compression). Its not like I am trying to add frekles to someone's face in the background of a picture when it isn't visable in the original, I simply want some plugin with an algorithm that will detect colors, create a smooth blend (taking out, i guess you could call it macroblocking), detect edges with those colors (IE can tell the difference between, say, a person's shirt and their arm), detect where said color ends and begins and determine whether to replace jagged edges with a line or a curve, and then the shape of the curve. If the algorithm is good enough, might also be able to detect textures too (differences in color shade) and enhance that a bit too. I mean, unless you just zoom the crap out of a picture, there is usually enough information there that you should be able to do SOMETHING with it.
I used to work in IT at one. The people before us thought it would be smart to use file-sharing on a peer-to-peer (not p2p for the n00bs) network. Thought they would cry when we forced them over to AD and turned off filesharing. The concept of "file server is better" was met with "but this is the way we always do this". Don't try to explain SOX compliance to creatives and account managers.
That being said, if you order enough Macs from Apple, sometimes Apple might be willing to throw you a server for free.
Oh oh oh, get a 24 port hub 10BaseT hub, one uplinks to the network, one goes to him, the other 22 go to old 486s running Quake servers and bittorrent. When he complains about slowness, tell him the slowness is caused by the graphic files getting bigger, and eating up his system resources, and that if he copies the files to his local machine, it will greatly speed up. When asked why it has slowed down that much, tell him you detected someone trying to hack into his computer, so there are new security antivirus checks that scans every single network request that goes in and out of his computer, and he will need to live with it. Turning it off could lead to his computer being compromised and on to identity theft.