Product placement does not annoy me. Actually, the reverse annoys me - covering the manufacturer logo with a sticker or something like that.
Also, ads do not really annoy me... the first time. After that, I do not want to see that ad ever again and if I do, I get annoyed really quickly, because i hate this kind of repetition. Watching an ad once can be informative - I may find out about a product that I did not know before, but the second time is annoying.
This once happened with my ISP - whenever I call support (because the connection is down, so I'm already ticked off) the operator offers their digital TV service which I do not want, I of course decline. However, once the ISP called me to ask my opinion about the "calling support experience", so I told them (politely) that the operator was polite and solved the problem OK, but that it is pointless to continue to offer the service to me - if I declined 5 times already the probability that I will decline the 6th time is really high and I already know that the service exists, I just do not want it. I did not receive that offer since. I call support, they log the problem and that's it.
Also, I just record TV shows on VHS and can then fast forward trough the ads - no need to rely on the software (detecting ads is kind of like detecting spam - not that easy for computers to do) and the VCR can fast forward smoothly (and I don't need to buy a DVR and the tapes last longer if I want to keep what I recorded).
Frankly, I'm amazed at companies continuing to provide updates for older stuff.
They made the defective product in the fist place. It's not like the bugs developed because the software is wearing out.
Why is software so different from hardware? Hardware manufacturer give warranty and generally the devices last a long time (especially the old ones) and can be repaired by anyone who understands how to do it. Yet, software is provided without any warranty, no way to repair it if there is a design flaw (hardware can wear out or break from abuse, software does not do that) and has tons of design flaws.
It doesn't. I guess it works like this - the driver cuts everything out that is outside the margins and the printer, detecting a small piece of paper decides to move the head by 6cm and call that place "zero". If I send the same print job, but feed a normal A4 paper, it prints correctly (near the edge), but if I feed the small paper, it prints 6cm from the edge. It probably is some bug in the firmware. Not that big a deal, since I don't usually print on cassette j-cards (I just write on them, but I print Cyrillic letters since I can't write those).
Riddle us this first, what percent of 30 year old cars are still operational today?
Probably not a lot, however, unlike other devices (that are used at home) cars also get destroyed in crashes, though the older cars can more easily be straightened out after a minor crash.
What's the average maintenance schedule?
A couple times a year - replace the coolant, check the brakes, get winter/summer tires. Also, once every two years or so adjust the valves and tune the carburetor and LPG vaporizer. Any mechanic can do it and it does not cost a lot. Even I could tune the carburetor if I had the exhaust gas analyzer.
Then we'll see what we can speculate about today's cars.
It still may not be comparable. It seems like modern cars are designed to they run relatively without problems for some time then quickly break. Kinda similar to other equipment. For example, an old tape deck may need some repairs once in a while but it can be kept operational for decades, while a bluray player will work without problems for some time and then break with no way to repair it (or the repair being pretty much the replacement of all internal parts leaving only case of the old device).
I suppose you could order any phosphor you wanted in CFLs and somebody would still be grumpy.
Different people, different tastes. I like the light level to be low (a single 40W lightbulb for the room) and the light to be yellow instead of white.
Really? My car is 30 years old, how many cars made in 2012 will still be operational in 2042? Because it looks like the new cars are much more flimsier (after all, you have to save every gram of weight, so the car can't have thick body etc).
I can't for the life of me figure out why people are still using incandescants.
I like the yellow light of an incandescent bulb. Incandescent bulbs are also dimmable down to zero.
My main printer is quite big (it can print on A3 paper), so the small piece of paper gets lost inside it. Also, there is some problem with drivers or something that if I try to print on a small piece of paper (say, a CD jewel case cover, 12cm x 12cm) the text gets a 6cm margin (if I wanted to print in the center, I get only half of the text, the other half gets printed on the rollers).
The thing is that the cassette J card is not only narrow, but short too.
I have no idea how he still got printer ink for the printer.
My dot matrix printer uses typewriter ribbons. It is quite fast in text mode (IIRC 100 characters/second), but super slow in graphical mode (something like 1 page in 5 minutes on the lowest quality).
It is still the only printer I have that can print on a cassette J-card or other small piece of paper.
To jam a signal you need to transmit noise that can drown the original signal, so that the receiver cannot figure out what it is. To transmit fake information, you need a much stronger transmitter because you not only need to drown the original signal but also have your signal be strong enough so that the receiver does not get confused when it receives both signals (the original and yours), otherwise you are just jamming.
Also transmitting fake information requires more complex electronics instead of just a noise generator and a big transmitter.
Capitalism is like Communism - both are great in theory, but suck in practice, because they assume things that will never happen in reality (perfect information for capitalism, people not being greedy for Communism).
As I understand it, the police would have to use software that has been certified for evidence gathering, the creators would also have to approve it for such use. Because, you know, the one thing that software creators like to claim is that their software is not suited for anything (most of the EULAs state so) and that there are no guarantees.
Also, a few authors chose that tracker to promote their work. Pretty much like some use TPB for that.
I don't live in the US. In my country, while piracy is illegal, nobody cares about it. The local MAFIAA equivalent cannot even do anything to a big local private tracker, the owner of which is well known. Later Microsoft together with that agency sued ~100 people for downloading Windows 7, they lost the case on the grounds that uTorrent screenshot is not admissible evidence because uTorrent was not certified for evidence gathering (the police radars, for example, are certified and the certificate has to be renewed every year or so after inspecting the device).
I use peerblock though.
Hell, ISPs themselves run DC hubs (mine runs a modified ed2k server) and FTP servers. Those are only accessible to the clients of that ISP, so I guess they do it to reduce the traffic to outside.
I have a fast connection and want to see it used, but do not want to download stuff I do not like for the sake of uploading.
And my ratio sometimes reaches over 1000 if the torrent is popular enough or I get it very soon after release.
The problem is initial uploads. If I have enough uploaded already I can download the file and keep it for a few months, I am already doing it with the public torrents. But the initial ones are really difficult, because if I tried that with my first torrent on that tracker, I would be banned before I got the chance to upload.
I still use private trackers, but I check the public ones first - there is no advantage in using a private tracker if the same files are available in a public one.
This is why I prefer the public trackers - I do not need to fill the hard drives with stuff that I don't like just so I can download what I like. The only "real" private tracker I use organizes freeleech and some torrents are free all the time, so I use those to increase the ratio, or just wait until freeleech to download what I want. The other ones are semi-public, so there are more downloaders and it is quite easy to have a good ratio.
I've not been to any such site in many a moon so I might be completely out of touch, but I was under the impression that people were moving more towards private trackers and even ignoring that there are many small public trackers and aggregators available as alternatives.
I do not like private trackers because of their ratio enforcement. I have a good connection and I really seed torrents to a large ratio (usually 100 or more, sometimes only 2 or so if I did not like what I downloaded and want to delete it as soon as possible to make space), but since private trackers force everyone to have good ratio, everybody seeds and nobody downloads. Because of that, if I download a torrent, it s very likely that I won't be able to get good ratio because nobody will want to download from me. So, instead I have to download what is popular (instead of what I want) to build up the ratio and then later I can download what I want. So, I usually go to TPB or other public places first and use private trackers only if the public ones do not have that torrent.
Moving from Windows to iPad or a similar device is gradual. I don't think that a lot of people throw out their desktops and buy tablets. They most likely buy the tablet and use it when they are not near the desktop or alongside the desktop. That means if there is a problem (they don't know how to do something), they can always go to the desktop and do that there. The tablet is just an addition. Or at least it is at first.
On the other hand, replacing the OS removes the old OS*. So, if I am stuck and don't know how to do x on Linux, I have to google it, maybe download, compile and install some software that's not in the repository. I can't just go to Windows and do what I need there. If some device does not have drivers for Linux, that's it, there is no way to use it. On the other hand, if the device is not compatible with a tablet, I can still use the desktop with that device.
* I know, there are ways around that - dual booting and keeping the old OS inside a VM. I personally do not like dual booting because I do not like rebooting, so I just stay with the OS that has more features and for me it means Windows (because of games). Using a VM with the old OS is better, but then again, it raises a question - why have all that trouble? If there are problems with hardware support, a VM won't help you most of the time (it can pass USB and SCSI devices to the guest OS, but not PCI ones) and you still need to have a license for the guest OS (or pirate it), so no money (or morals) is saved. Also, keeping Windows in a VM reduces game performance, so if I want to sometimes play games on my PC I have to have Windows.
Yes, x264 is a h.264 codec (encoder/decoder). As the open source encoder is very popular, sometimes the format itself is called x264. The same is true for the older codec - the files are called XviD instead of DivX or MPEG-4 Part 2
The battery would be plugged in and stay in the car.
That will require even more power. While the average power consumption of a car might be manageable for a small battery, the initial acceleration may be a problem. Add in lights and heating (it may be -20C outside). And it results in a battery that I would like to have for my UPS:) After all, it has to be affordable.
It is possible to carry some extra gasoline in a canister in the trunk, so if I run out, I can pour the gasoline from the canister to the tank. Did that a few times. Even if the canister was empty (or I forgot to bring it with me), I could still go to the nearest gas station on foot, buy the canister if I don't have one, fill it and bring it to my car, pour the gasoline to the tank and drive to the gas station. My dad did that once.
That would be interesting - a small, but very powerful battery.
Usually the problem with small batteries is that they cannot supply a lot of power, even if they have a lot of energy. I am most familiar with lead-acid batteries (the kind that is used in a UPS), if you discharge them in 10 minutes or so, the real capacity becomes very small compared to the rated capacity (which is rated for a 20 hour discharge).
As electric cars need a lot of electricity (compared to, say, gasoline powered cars), the battery would have to have large capacity and be able to deliver it in 10 minutes or less, which may be a problem. As it is now, if I ever manage to run out of gasoline (and LPG) I can just stop, take the can out of the trunk and pour the gasoline into the appropriate tank in my car. It takes a couple of minutes at most. Then I drive to a gas station to fill the can and fill the tank part way (the priority is like this - LPG (cheaper), then gas can ten gas tank if I still have some cash).
When you fuel your gas car the average [chemical] power of the connection is 8 MW.
But that's the difference - it does not take as much power to pump the fuel to my car, so it can be done pretty fast (full tank from empty in a couple of minutes), it is even possible to do it manually (using a gas canister) if car ran out of gas before you reached the station.
While it works, it is legal only if you use OSX on an original Mac (not a clone), and those are sold with OS licenses attached. So, from a legal point of view, it is an upgrade, because you have to have a license of the previous version of the OS (which came with the Mac when you bought it). On the other hand, I can buy a retail copy of Windows and legally install it to a PC I assembled myself.
The same way Windows is not free even though you can get the install disc (and serial number) on ThePirateBay.
Anime fansubbers like to stay ahead of hardware decoding capabilities.
DivX DVD players becoming popular - time to move to x264. Players start being able to play x264 files - time to drop SD. There is hardware decoding for HD x264 - time to move to 10bit.
If I want to watch anime on my UMPC I have to transcode it to 8bit 720p as the Atom CPU can only decode that in hardware and does not have enough power do decode 720p 10bit in software.
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Product placement does not annoy me. Actually, the reverse annoys me - covering the manufacturer logo with a sticker or something like that.
Also, ads do not really annoy me ... the first time. After that, I do not want to see that ad ever again and if I do, I get annoyed really quickly, because i hate this kind of repetition. Watching an ad once can be informative - I may find out about a product that I did not know before, but the second time is annoying.
This once happened with my ISP - whenever I call support (because the connection is down, so I'm already ticked off) the operator offers their digital TV service which I do not want, I of course decline. However, once the ISP called me to ask my opinion about the "calling support experience", so I told them (politely) that the operator was polite and solved the problem OK, but that it is pointless to continue to offer the service to me - if I declined 5 times already the probability that I will decline the 6th time is really high and I already know that the service exists, I just do not want it. I did not receive that offer since. I call support, they log the problem and that's it.
Also, I just record TV shows on VHS and can then fast forward trough the ads - no need to rely on the software (detecting ads is kind of like detecting spam - not that easy for computers to do) and the VCR can fast forward smoothly (and I don't need to buy a DVR and the tapes last longer if I want to keep what I recorded).
If you don't want advertising, go buy the DVD boxes
... and sit trough unskippable ads.
Frankly, I'm amazed at companies continuing to provide updates for older stuff.
They made the defective product in the fist place. It's not like the bugs developed because the software is wearing out.
Why is software so different from hardware? Hardware manufacturer give warranty and generally the devices last a long time (especially the old ones) and can be repaired by anyone who understands how to do it. Yet, software is provided without any warranty, no way to repair it if there is a design flaw (hardware can wear out or break from abuse, software does not do that) and has tons of design flaws.
It doesn't. I guess it works like this - the driver cuts everything out that is outside the margins and the printer, detecting a small piece of paper decides to move the head by 6cm and call that place "zero". If I send the same print job, but feed a normal A4 paper, it prints correctly (near the edge), but if I feed the small paper, it prints 6cm from the edge. It probably is some bug in the firmware. Not that big a deal, since I don't usually print on cassette j-cards (I just write on them, but I print Cyrillic letters since I can't write those).
Riddle us this first, what percent of 30 year old cars are still operational today?
Probably not a lot, however, unlike other devices (that are used at home) cars also get destroyed in crashes, though the older cars can more easily be straightened out after a minor crash.
What's the average maintenance schedule?
A couple times a year - replace the coolant, check the brakes, get winter/summer tires. Also, once every two years or so adjust the valves and tune the carburetor and LPG vaporizer. Any mechanic can do it and it does not cost a lot. Even I could tune the carburetor if I had the exhaust gas analyzer.
Then we'll see what we can speculate about today's cars.
It still may not be comparable. It seems like modern cars are designed to they run relatively without problems for some time then quickly break.
Kinda similar to other equipment. For example, an old tape deck may need some repairs once in a while but it can be kept operational for decades, while a bluray player will work without problems for some time and then break with no way to repair it (or the repair being pretty much the replacement of all internal parts leaving only case of the old device).
I suppose you could order any phosphor you wanted in CFLs and somebody would still be grumpy.
Different people, different tastes. I like the light level to be low (a single 40W lightbulb for the room) and the light to be yellow instead of white.
they last a hell of a lot longer today.
Really? My car is 30 years old, how many cars made in 2012 will still be operational in 2042? Because it looks like the new cars are much more flimsier (after all, you have to save every gram of weight, so the car can't have thick body etc).
I can't for the life of me figure out why people are still using incandescants.
I like the yellow light of an incandescent bulb. Incandescent bulbs are also dimmable down to zero.
My main printer is quite big (it can print on A3 paper), so the small piece of paper gets lost inside it. Also, there is some problem with drivers or something that if I try to print on a small piece of paper (say, a CD jewel case cover, 12cm x 12cm) the text gets a 6cm margin (if I wanted to print in the center, I get only half of the text, the other half gets printed on the rollers).
The thing is that the cassette J card is not only narrow, but short too.
I have no idea how he still got printer ink for the printer.
My dot matrix printer uses typewriter ribbons. It is quite fast in text mode (IIRC 100 characters/second), but super slow in graphical mode (something like 1 page in 5 minutes on the lowest quality).
It is still the only printer I have that can print on a cassette J-card or other small piece of paper.
Which requires a chip to handle the protocol.
The power requirements are different.
To jam a signal you need to transmit noise that can drown the original signal, so that the receiver cannot figure out what it is. To transmit fake information, you need a much stronger transmitter because you not only need to drown the original signal but also have your signal be strong enough so that the receiver does not get confused when it receives both signals (the original and yours), otherwise you are just jamming.
Also transmitting fake information requires more complex electronics instead of just a noise generator and a big transmitter.
Capitalism is like Communism - both are great in theory, but suck in practice, because they assume things that will never happen in reality (perfect information for capitalism, people not being greedy for Communism).
Lithuania.
The relevant article: http://torrentfreak.com/court-acquits-bittorrent-user-citing-faulty-evidence-100315/
As I understand it, the police would have to use software that has been certified for evidence gathering, the creators would also have to approve it for such use. Because, you know, the one thing that software creators like to claim is that their software is not suited for anything (most of the EULAs state so) and that there are no guarantees.
Also, a few authors chose that tracker to promote their work. Pretty much like some use TPB for that.
I don't live in the US. In my country, while piracy is illegal, nobody cares about it. The local MAFIAA equivalent cannot even do anything to a big local private tracker, the owner of which is well known. Later Microsoft together with that agency sued ~100 people for downloading Windows 7, they lost the case on the grounds that uTorrent screenshot is not admissible evidence because uTorrent was not certified for evidence gathering (the police radars, for example, are certified and the certificate has to be renewed every year or so after inspecting the device).
I use peerblock though.
Hell, ISPs themselves run DC hubs (mine runs a modified ed2k server) and FTP servers. Those are only accessible to the clients of that ISP, so I guess they do it to reduce the traffic to outside.
I have a fast connection and want to see it used, but do not want to download stuff I do not like for the sake of uploading.
And my ratio sometimes reaches over 1000 if the torrent is popular enough or I get it very soon after release.
The problem is initial uploads. If I have enough uploaded already I can download the file and keep it for a few months, I am already doing it with the public torrents. But the initial ones are really difficult, because if I tried that with my first torrent on that tracker, I would be banned before I got the chance to upload.
I still use private trackers, but I check the public ones first - there is no advantage in using a private tracker if the same files are available in a public one.
This is why I prefer the public trackers - I do not need to fill the hard drives with stuff that I don't like just so I can download what I like.
The only "real" private tracker I use organizes freeleech and some torrents are free all the time, so I use those to increase the ratio, or just wait until freeleech to download what I want. The other ones are semi-public, so there are more downloaders and it is quite easy to have a good ratio.
I've not been to any such site in many a moon so I might be completely out of touch, but I was under the impression that people were moving more towards private trackers and even ignoring that there are many small public trackers and aggregators available as alternatives.
I do not like private trackers because of their ratio enforcement. I have a good connection and I really seed torrents to a large ratio (usually 100 or more, sometimes only 2 or so if I did not like what I downloaded and want to delete it as soon as possible to make space), but since private trackers force everyone to have good ratio, everybody seeds and nobody downloads. Because of that, if I download a torrent, it s very likely that I won't be able to get good ratio because nobody will want to download from me. So, instead I have to download what is popular (instead of what I want) to build up the ratio and then later I can download what I want. So, I usually go to TPB or other public places first and use private trackers only if the public ones do not have that torrent.
Moving from Windows to iPad or a similar device is gradual. I don't think that a lot of people throw out their desktops and buy tablets. They most likely buy the tablet and use it when they are not near the desktop or alongside the desktop. That means if there is a problem (they don't know how to do something), they can always go to the desktop and do that there. The tablet is just an addition. Or at least it is at first.
On the other hand, replacing the OS removes the old OS*. So, if I am stuck and don't know how to do x on Linux, I have to google it, maybe download, compile and install some software that's not in the repository. I can't just go to Windows and do what I need there. If some device does not have drivers for Linux, that's it, there is no way to use it. On the other hand, if the device is not compatible with a tablet, I can still use the desktop with that device.
* I know, there are ways around that - dual booting and keeping the old OS inside a VM. I personally do not like dual booting because I do not like rebooting, so I just stay with the OS that has more features and for me it means Windows (because of games). Using a VM with the old OS is better, but then again, it raises a question - why have all that trouble? If there are problems with hardware support, a VM won't help you most of the time (it can pass USB and SCSI devices to the guest OS, but not PCI ones) and you still need to have a license for the guest OS (or pirate it), so no money (or morals) is saved. Also, keeping Windows in a VM reduces game performance, so if I want to sometimes play games on my PC I have to have Windows.
Yes, x264 is a h.264 codec (encoder/decoder). As the open source encoder is very popular, sometimes the format itself is called x264. The same is true for the older codec - the files are called XviD instead of DivX or MPEG-4 Part 2
It is faster and can go further without rest though.
The battery would be plugged in and stay in the car.
That will require even more power. While the average power consumption of a car might be manageable for a small battery, the initial acceleration may be a problem. Add in lights and heating (it may be -20C outside). And it results in a battery that I would like to have for my UPS :) After all, it has to be affordable.
It is possible to carry some extra gasoline in a canister in the trunk, so if I run out, I can pour the gasoline from the canister to the tank. Did that a few times. Even if the canister was empty (or I forgot to bring it with me), I could still go to the nearest gas station on foot, buy the canister if I don't have one, fill it and bring it to my car, pour the gasoline to the tank and drive to the gas station. My dad did that once.
That would be interesting - a small, but very powerful battery.
Usually the problem with small batteries is that they cannot supply a lot of power, even if they have a lot of energy. I am most familiar with lead-acid batteries (the kind that is used in a UPS), if you discharge them in 10 minutes or so, the real capacity becomes very small compared to the rated capacity (which is rated for a 20 hour discharge).
As electric cars need a lot of electricity (compared to, say, gasoline powered cars), the battery would have to have large capacity and be able to deliver it in 10 minutes or less, which may be a problem.
As it is now, if I ever manage to run out of gasoline (and LPG) I can just stop, take the can out of the trunk and pour the gasoline into the appropriate tank in my car. It takes a couple of minutes at most. Then I drive to a gas station to fill the can and fill the tank part way (the priority is like this - LPG (cheaper), then gas can ten gas tank if I still have some cash).
When you fuel your gas car the average [chemical] power of the connection is 8 MW.
But that's the difference - it does not take as much power to pump the fuel to my car, so it can be done pretty fast (full tank from empty in a couple of minutes), it is even possible to do it manually (using a gas canister) if car ran out of gas before you reached the station.
While it works, it is legal only if you use OSX on an original Mac (not a clone), and those are sold with OS licenses attached. So, from a legal point of view, it is an upgrade, because you have to have a license of the previous version of the OS (which came with the Mac when you bought it). On the other hand, I can buy a retail copy of Windows and legally install it to a PC I assembled myself.
The same way Windows is not free even though you can get the install disc (and serial number) on ThePirateBay.
Anime fansubbers like to stay ahead of hardware decoding capabilities.
DivX DVD players becoming popular - time to move to x264.
Players start being able to play x264 files - time to drop SD.
There is hardware decoding for HD x264 - time to move to 10bit.
If I want to watch anime on my UMPC I have to transcode it to 8bit 720p as the Atom CPU can only decode that in hardware and does not have enough power do decode 720p 10bit in software.