It's consumer electronics in general. They all look like crap and generally suck (my vcr's up button makes the menu go down and the down button goes up). In general I'm just sick of companies that don't even try to make their crap look or work decently.
Not that the Roku box looks much worse than most of that crap.
I might try a competitor to NetFlix as I haven't been to impressed by their selection. They seem to have mostly stuff of mass appeal. Either that or their search is so bad I can't find the stuff I'm looking for.
Still cameras can pretty much always take higher res pictures than video cameras no matter what price range you're looking at. I wonder if they could combine a still camera into a video camera and have it take high res still frames as the video is shot and then use this software to improve the video. It seems that'd be a cost effective way to squeeze more out of any level of camera.
DVDs are a poor concept IMO. Discs always get damaged or lost. Downloadable or streaming content is a better idea but Netflix's streamed content has several problems. Limited selection, doesn't seem to think my 15Mb connection is fast enough, doesn't work on my Linux box or my Mac, DRM sucks, watching on a computer sucks anyway, their external device doesn't seem to let you play anything but Netflix content, their external device is ugly, and their external device is $100 up front (can't charge a monthly rental fee if I'd rather?), and downloading seems to not be allowed.
NetFlix seems hard to search IMO. As far as I can tell you can't easily specify to only search G and PG movies (for my kids) and to search by topic and so on. Their recommendations might be good but that is really only half the picture without good search capabilities. I run an eCom website so I know that search and recommendations are complicated to make work well but they're a must have. Good search should use the recommendation system to improve results but should still cover basic search options too.
I considered their streaming device for the tv but when I try to watch online with my PC it constantly says that my connection is to slow. I have 15Mb down and have tested it to confirm that is really what I get and I know that nothing else is using the connection. Also their streaming selection seems limited with not a lot that I would really be interested in. I've been considering getting Apple TV too so a NetFlix box seems like just an extra (ugly) device stuck to my tv.
I tried NetFlix mostly looking for more of a selection but have found they don't have a lot of anime and stuff that I'm interested in. Combined with the slow turn around I don't really feel the love. I used to use Greencine because they had a lot of anime but now they're interface is just horrible and they aren't what they used to be.
Sounds like the reason I've been disappointed in my trial membership. I'm planning on canceling because why pay if they can't get me movies at a reasonable rate. I'll go back to the RedBox.
If you must have a SUV or large truck or van then I suggest looking into a compressed natural gas vehicle. They're especially a money saver for businesses that have whole fleets of vehicles that move a lot. I wish more fueling stations would offer CNG as an option but if you have the money ($5000+ depending on the model) you can fuel from home (or the corporate parking lot) using something like the FuelMaker Phill. Probably to much for the average home owner but not bad for businesses. Kind of a geek toy too I think - be the first on your block with your own CNG fueling station (woot).
Obama just sounds like an idiot when he talks. McCain sounds like a liar. Democracy at work - we get to pick who we want to be our leader.
I'd love to see someone honest and intelligent run for an important office but I know if they did that nobody would vote for them - only extremist sideshow freaks get support.
They don't pay anyway - the merchant does. If someone buys a product on your card and you report it stolen or fraud then they charge it back to the merchant most of the time. The customer may get their money back but the merchant ends up out a product.
Especially fun if you have a customer buy something big and then report it as fraud. "I ordered an iPod and all they sent me was this cheap knock-off!" Unless you're WalMart they get their cash back and you're out the iPod.
I hate dealing with credit cards and PayPal. I wish the freaking government would just do the right thing and offer a usable Internet-friendly currency.
What pisses me off is that you can't really opt out and just have the damn thing stop bugging you. Worse, our business cards have this crap popping up all the time and sometimes required. We don't want employees to need to jump through extra hoops but Visa and Mastercard can't quite get that through their heads.
This crap does exactly nothing for security anyway. Anyone stealing your card will just go somewhere that doesn't prompt for the extra information. It provides a small measure of protection to vendors but they probably lose more income from annoyed customers than they were losing from thieves.
As I said, keep charging license fees to those already paying them - those selling x or more copies. Letting small publishers and home brew also publish just increases the value of your console. There is no benefit to locking out small players.
It wouldn't be that difficult to keep some copy protection while allowing smaller publishers to publish non copy protected work. That'd be one way to enforce large publishers paying their license fees.
I don't really care about pirating games but I've been tempted to get one of these toys so I can write my own DS apps. I think it is a major failing on the part of console makers that they don't make it easier for home brew software to be out there. There is no need to force buying development tools and distribution rights in hardware. Let small projects go for free and charge per number of copies sold or something.
Obviously they're not really stopping pirating to much either.
Those psych interviews are so funny and yet annoying. I can't believe they help anything. All they do is weed out people who don't like being asked in 16 different ways if they take money from the register, drown puppies, and smoke crack.
I don't mind someone making money from my code but I just don't want to have to pay them to use my own code or some minor features added to my code. It all comes down to playing in the closet with the neighbor girl - you show her yours but then she has to show you hers. Otherwise you're just some jerk left with your wank hanging out while everyone else laughs at you.
How about any statement that has already been made to death and is likely to cause heated discussion without any chance at resolving itself? It's a pointless argument. He raised no points that I haven't heard many times before. Why go there?
Besides all BSD-fans are hosers and they'll use anything to start an argument.;)
Those interviews are so stupid. If you can program then switching to a different language is pretty simple. Most languages/libs change often enough that you end up looking up minor details a lot anyway. I've seen a lot of large companies use that method when hiring and they usually end up with people that suck.
I usually look first at portfolios - especially personal projects. I want to see someone that codes up random stuff in their spare time and messes with random technologies for no real reason. Someone that doesn't feel a need to brag about how much they know but that can simply point me to their website for a list of things they've worked on.
A good, unprofessional, portfolio and a laid back personality and they're exactly the kind of person I'd hire.
I love Flash sites. Especially when they are my competition. They languish while my somewhat ugly site jumps higher and higher in the search rankings. Amazing what the proper text can do for you. Selling a Acme Dohickey 9000 and you put the words "Acme Dohickey 9000" on your page and surprise it shows up when someone searches for "Acme Dohickey 9000". This stuff is so complicated.;)
It's the curse of HR. Human resource people have no idea what we do or how to hire us so they go by the buzz word of the week (usually spelled wrong - looking for Pearl programmers?). Companies that let engineers hire engineers get a much better quality of employee I think. If they then offer a good work environment then they'll probably have an awesome crew that can kick serious ass.
Most of them can't even do HTML, Javascript, and CSS. None of those are new technologies. Along with those basics I usually look for someone familiar with the basics of Linux/Unix, Apache (mod_rewrite etc), Python, PHP, Perl, MySQL, and XML. I look for new fangled tech like knowing how to code a function and basic understanding of OOP.
I can train people on the specifics if they at least have a foundation of knowledge in basic web stuff. We do deal with some new stuff but we all learn as we go. If you understand the basics then new systems and new technology is easy to deal with.
I blasted our local university for it's horrible web development program because none of it's grads were any use. Knowing how to do basic Flash and Frontpage stuff is not a real skill set. The new material they are working on looks much better so I'm crossing my fingers to see.
At that age I liked Tolkien, Madeline L'Engle, CS Lewis, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, Douglas Adams, Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising), Lloyd Alexander (Prydain & Westmark), John Fitzgerald (Great Brain), the Tom Swift series, etc. I wouldn't assume they won't like a little more dark and mature book either as I read just about every scifi/fantasy book I could get my hands on. I also loved things like the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators.
This article was really nothing more than a pointless one-sided rant. Why is flamebait being counted as being worthy of being posted?
For all I care BSD fans can release their code under a BSD licence and GPL fans can release their code under a GPL license. To each their own. I use the GPL because I don't want my code to become irrelevant as changes are made by others and I don't want their changes kept locked up from the entire community. If others don't care about these things then it's up to them if it's their code. It's the difference between a sustainable free country and a country that is free for a short while before falling again into the hands of tyrants.
When I worked at AT&T they sent out a memo saying they were raising text messaging rates so that they could see higher profit margins for the quarter. Who needs a good customer experience when you can just crank up the cost for people already locked into a contract.
My first cell phone, around the year 2000, had free Internet and messaging. Since then every phone I have has raised the price and made the experience worse. So I've switched to a pre-paid cell I basically don't use. I'll get a real cell phone again when the pricing becomes reasonable. Give me two phones w/ unlimited everything for $50 or less and I'll start thinking about it. Until then I'll just call from my home or office where I have unlimited free calling including long distance. (I pay ~$20/yr for home VoIP phone.)
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It's consumer electronics in general. They all look like crap and generally suck (my vcr's up button makes the menu go down and the down button goes up). In general I'm just sick of companies that don't even try to make their crap look or work decently.
Not that the Roku box looks much worse than most of that crap.
I might try a competitor to NetFlix as I haven't been to impressed by their selection. They seem to have mostly stuff of mass appeal. Either that or their search is so bad I can't find the stuff I'm looking for.
Still cameras can pretty much always take higher res pictures than video cameras no matter what price range you're looking at. I wonder if they could combine a still camera into a video camera and have it take high res still frames as the video is shot and then use this software to improve the video. It seems that'd be a cost effective way to squeeze more out of any level of camera.
DVDs are a poor concept IMO. Discs always get damaged or lost. Downloadable or streaming content is a better idea but Netflix's streamed content has several problems. Limited selection, doesn't seem to think my 15Mb connection is fast enough, doesn't work on my Linux box or my Mac, DRM sucks, watching on a computer sucks anyway, their external device doesn't seem to let you play anything but Netflix content, their external device is ugly, and their external device is $100 up front (can't charge a monthly rental fee if I'd rather?), and downloading seems to not be allowed.
NetFlix seems hard to search IMO. As far as I can tell you can't easily specify to only search G and PG movies (for my kids) and to search by topic and so on. Their recommendations might be good but that is really only half the picture without good search capabilities. I run an eCom website so I know that search and recommendations are complicated to make work well but they're a must have. Good search should use the recommendation system to improve results but should still cover basic search options too.
I considered their streaming device for the tv but when I try to watch online with my PC it constantly says that my connection is to slow. I have 15Mb down and have tested it to confirm that is really what I get and I know that nothing else is using the connection. Also their streaming selection seems limited with not a lot that I would really be interested in. I've been considering getting Apple TV too so a NetFlix box seems like just an extra (ugly) device stuck to my tv.
I tried NetFlix mostly looking for more of a selection but have found they don't have a lot of anime and stuff that I'm interested in. Combined with the slow turn around I don't really feel the love. I used to use Greencine because they had a lot of anime but now they're interface is just horrible and they aren't what they used to be.
Sounds like the reason I've been disappointed in my trial membership. I'm planning on canceling because why pay if they can't get me movies at a reasonable rate. I'll go back to the RedBox.
If you must have a SUV or large truck or van then I suggest looking into a compressed natural gas vehicle. They're especially a money saver for businesses that have whole fleets of vehicles that move a lot. I wish more fueling stations would offer CNG as an option but if you have the money ($5000+ depending on the model) you can fuel from home (or the corporate parking lot) using something like the FuelMaker Phill. Probably to much for the average home owner but not bad for businesses. Kind of a geek toy too I think - be the first on your block with your own CNG fueling station (woot).
Obama just sounds like an idiot when he talks. McCain sounds like a liar. Democracy at work - we get to pick who we want to be our leader.
I'd love to see someone honest and intelligent run for an important office but I know if they did that nobody would vote for them - only extremist sideshow freaks get support.
They don't pay anyway - the merchant does. If someone buys a product on your card and you report it stolen or fraud then they charge it back to the merchant most of the time. The customer may get their money back but the merchant ends up out a product.
Especially fun if you have a customer buy something big and then report it as fraud. "I ordered an iPod and all they sent me was this cheap knock-off!" Unless you're WalMart they get their cash back and you're out the iPod.
I hate dealing with credit cards and PayPal. I wish the freaking government would just do the right thing and offer a usable Internet-friendly currency.
What pisses me off is that you can't really opt out and just have the damn thing stop bugging you. Worse, our business cards have this crap popping up all the time and sometimes required. We don't want employees to need to jump through extra hoops but Visa and Mastercard can't quite get that through their heads.
This crap does exactly nothing for security anyway. Anyone stealing your card will just go somewhere that doesn't prompt for the extra information. It provides a small measure of protection to vendors but they probably lose more income from annoyed customers than they were losing from thieves.
As I said, keep charging license fees to those already paying them - those selling x or more copies. Letting small publishers and home brew also publish just increases the value of your console. There is no benefit to locking out small players.
It wouldn't be that difficult to keep some copy protection while allowing smaller publishers to publish non copy protected work. That'd be one way to enforce large publishers paying their license fees.
I don't really care about pirating games but I've been tempted to get one of these toys so I can write my own DS apps. I think it is a major failing on the part of console makers that they don't make it easier for home brew software to be out there. There is no need to force buying development tools and distribution rights in hardware. Let small projects go for free and charge per number of copies sold or something.
Obviously they're not really stopping pirating to much either.
Those psych interviews are so funny and yet annoying. I can't believe they help anything. All they do is weed out people who don't like being asked in 16 different ways if they take money from the register, drown puppies, and smoke crack.
I don't mind someone making money from my code but I just don't want to have to pay them to use my own code or some minor features added to my code. It all comes down to playing in the closet with the neighbor girl - you show her yours but then she has to show you hers. Otherwise you're just some jerk left with your wank hanging out while everyone else laughs at you.
How about any statement that has already been made to death and is likely to cause heated discussion without any chance at resolving itself? It's a pointless argument. He raised no points that I haven't heard many times before. Why go there?
Besides all BSD-fans are hosers and they'll use anything to start an argument. ;)
My favorite was in about 1995. The ad was requiring a candidate with 10 years experience writing HTML. That'd have been quite the trick.
Those interviews are so stupid. If you can program then switching to a different language is pretty simple. Most languages/libs change often enough that you end up looking up minor details a lot anyway. I've seen a lot of large companies use that method when hiring and they usually end up with people that suck.
I usually look first at portfolios - especially personal projects. I want to see someone that codes up random stuff in their spare time and messes with random technologies for no real reason. Someone that doesn't feel a need to brag about how much they know but that can simply point me to their website for a list of things they've worked on.
A good, unprofessional, portfolio and a laid back personality and they're exactly the kind of person I'd hire.
I love Flash sites. Especially when they are my competition. They languish while my somewhat ugly site jumps higher and higher in the search rankings. Amazing what the proper text can do for you. Selling a Acme Dohickey 9000 and you put the words "Acme Dohickey 9000" on your page and surprise it shows up when someone searches for "Acme Dohickey 9000". This stuff is so complicated. ;)
It's the curse of HR. Human resource people have no idea what we do or how to hire us so they go by the buzz word of the week (usually spelled wrong - looking for Pearl programmers?). Companies that let engineers hire engineers get a much better quality of employee I think. If they then offer a good work environment then they'll probably have an awesome crew that can kick serious ass.
Most of them can't even do HTML, Javascript, and CSS. None of those are new technologies. Along with those basics I usually look for someone familiar with the basics of Linux/Unix, Apache (mod_rewrite etc), Python, PHP, Perl, MySQL, and XML. I look for new fangled tech like knowing how to code a function and basic understanding of OOP.
I can train people on the specifics if they at least have a foundation of knowledge in basic web stuff. We do deal with some new stuff but we all learn as we go. If you understand the basics then new systems and new technology is easy to deal with.
I blasted our local university for it's horrible web development program because none of it's grads were any use. Knowing how to do basic Flash and Frontpage stuff is not a real skill set. The new material they are working on looks much better so I'm crossing my fingers to see.
At that age I liked Tolkien, Madeline L'Engle, CS Lewis, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, Douglas Adams, Susan Cooper (The Dark is Rising), Lloyd Alexander (Prydain & Westmark), John Fitzgerald (Great Brain), the Tom Swift series, etc. I wouldn't assume they won't like a little more dark and mature book either as I read just about every scifi/fantasy book I could get my hands on. I also loved things like the Hardy Boys and the Three Investigators.
This article was really nothing more than a pointless one-sided rant. Why is flamebait being counted as being worthy of being posted?
For all I care BSD fans can release their code under a BSD licence and GPL fans can release their code under a GPL license. To each their own. I use the GPL because I don't want my code to become irrelevant as changes are made by others and I don't want their changes kept locked up from the entire community. If others don't care about these things then it's up to them if it's their code. It's the difference between a sustainable free country and a country that is free for a short while before falling again into the hands of tyrants.
It has absolutely nothing to do with linguistics.
When I worked at AT&T they sent out a memo saying they were raising text messaging rates so that they could see higher profit margins for the quarter. Who needs a good customer experience when you can just crank up the cost for people already locked into a contract.
My first cell phone, around the year 2000, had free Internet and messaging. Since then every phone I have has raised the price and made the experience worse. So I've switched to a pre-paid cell I basically don't use. I'll get a real cell phone again when the pricing becomes reasonable. Give me two phones w/ unlimited everything for $50 or less and I'll start thinking about it. Until then I'll just call from my home or office where I have unlimited free calling including long distance. (I pay ~$20/yr for home VoIP phone.)
I've had an ICQ account for about a million years and why would I switch when nobody has yet started offering a better service?
Actually I have accounts with all major IM systems. Why would I stop using any of them while I still know other people that use them?