There is a store in the UK called Poundland. Like the name suggests every item it sells costs exactly one pound. Amongst the items it frequently sells are ethernet cables, modem cables, USB cables, DVD rewritable media, remote controls, USB hubs, mice, earphones, SCART cables and a bunch of tech stuff amongst all the other things it sells. The sick joke is that in general stuff WORKS and it cost a pound. I recently bought a retractable ethernet cable for a quid. That's a cable you wind up and stuff in a pouch of a laptop bag - very handy. I bet within a year they'll be selling HDMI cables for a quid too.
It's depressing to see someone like Denon engaging in what can only be called a scam. They're only dragging their own name through the mud with this practice.
If creationists took scientific evidence seriously they wouldn't be creationists. All they will do with this latest evidence is put it in a huge mental box marked "Ignore / Deny" with everything else they must pretend doesn't exist or matter for their faith to work. If you absolutely pushed a creationist on the issue, they would probably try to dodge by making some arbitrary distinction between macro and micro evolution. What you won't ever do is make them concede defeat. They are not rational people and no amount of evidence is going to change that.
O2 are crap, most people in the UK realise this, it's one of the main reasons the iPhone has failed to take off in the UK.
Nah, it has more to do with the fact that the iPhone is ludicrously expensive AND you must lock yourself into an expensive 18 month contract.
Perhaps that strategy works in the US. It doesn't work in Europe where you can literally have any phone for free on the sorts of tariffs and contracts the iPhone ties you to.
To copy a rental could easily cost you $4. For an extra $1 I presume you get the case and cover. That's not so bad.
Not necessarily. These things look like they arrive in some kind of vacuum sealed pouch which is probably held inside one of those tamper proof plastic shells that you have to cut open.
A bigger concern for these things is what you get for your money compared to a rental disk. Is it some crappy panned and scanned version of the movie? Does it have any features? Is the disc single layer or even less due to the disposable nature of the disc? etc.
Another thing to add is proper streaming quotes show every single up and down tick against the symbol. There could be dozens every second. Google probably conflates the data so even if it did deliver a quote every second, it would be an amalgamation of the all those little trades. Chances are it's not going to be a quote a second either unless they intend to maintain an open http pipeline for every browser and push the data down. Maintaining tens of millions of open sockets could be... problematic. So maybe they'll poll in which case the chances are that realtime means 60 second updates or similar unless the user hits a refresh button.
Still better than it was though and perfectly fine for most regular people. If I were a broker I would pissed at Nasdaq who charge a small fortune (which they must pass on to their customers) to get realtime quotes. If Nasdaq are allowing basic realtime quote data to Google, they're going to have to offer it to brokerages on similar terms. It would be good news for brokers and customers since they can cut their commissions.
The next thing is when will Google start offering commission free or extremely cheap trades. I can see it happening. It's a very scary thought actually.
* Blu-ray players have gotten more expensive. In some cases, a lot more expensive / *Blu-ray sales, paradoxically, have collapsed / * High definition media gets almost no attention / * Retailers that used to push both Blu-ray and HD-DVD now push....nothing. I find it hard even finding a single Blu-ray player for sale.
I can summarise the above far more succinctly for you:
January, February, March, April and May happened.
As shocking as this may seem. Sales of consumer electronics take a dump in the first half of the year. Stores don't offer discounts, no new models come out, releases start to dry up and there are no advertising or other promotions. It is no wonder that sales in that period are low. Sales of DVD players are historically 2, 3 or even 4 times higher in the latter half of the year.
June is where things start to happen. That's when model & titles releases occur, promotions and deals kick off properly for Father's day and keep on going to Christmas. It is around about now that things get interesting for Blu Ray. If sales don't pick up then it might be in trouble. But if DVD's experiences are any indicator, things are going to improve markedly starting about now.
One of the things that's with Ubuntu is that it's the only group with a real sense of marketing.
It's also the only group which appears to pay much attention to proper usability and human interface guidelines. Linux has been blighted for too long by TERRIBLE usability - dists would be content to slap together a generic GNOME / KDE, slap a few crappy tools into it, and too many users would snort at anyone who expected a GUI which (shock / horror) allowed you to configure your computer without wading through config files. Needless to say Ubuntu is getting a lot of publicity because they really seem to be trying to make it Just Work. That doesn't mean Ubuntu is perfect but its a damned sight better than most other dists.
You're forgetting all of the Indiana Jones Chronicles. Indy was a do-gooding jerk throughout his life, meeting famous people and affecting events through a series of highly improbable globe hopping adventures.
I was absolutely mad for the OLPC before it came out. It's small, it's cheap, it's light, you can use it anywhere. But I think they really blew it with their ideals. Sugar is not great and the lack of a commercial variant of the OLPC just beggars belief.
I see nothing about OS X which would make it any more sense to deploy on the OLPC than XP. Both are memory hogs (compared to Linux), both are proprietary and both companies would use OLPC as their play thing for scoring points, little more.
That said, I think the idea of Sugar was better than its execution. It was too ambitious and too immature to satisfy anyone, even kids. I think it would have been better to produce a simple app launcher (as in the Eee PC) combined with some simplified apps that already exist.
I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think that kids would be able to figure out a cut down desktop or something akin to the Asus Eee launcher with no trouble. They could always prune menu items from apps if they're concerned apps will be too complicated for kids.
All they saw was a smart man telling them they were idiots. And that, they don't like. So they voted for the lynching.
I suspect the large amount of circumstantial evidence and lame excuses for some of that evidence had its part to play in his conviction. No one removes a car seat (and dumps said car seat) or hoses the inside of a car without an extraordinarily good reason.
And how well do you think your girlfriend would go on a vanilla windows install with no flash installed, MSN account not setup, etc?
Probably fairly well assuming they felt brave enough to click "Yes" or "Click here to install missing plugin" when You Tube appeared and prompted the browser to install the missing player.
Buy a small, cheap laptop like an Asus Eee and take it with you. Chances are you'll find some wireless hotspot where you can plug it in and do what you like without fear of keyloggers etc.
Naturally someone could still sniff packets but it stops keyloggers, password sniffers etc.
Who says games have got to be good to be released. Look at the Wii's lineup and it's virtually 80-90% shovelware - either PS2 ports, TV / cartoon franchises, or budget trash comparable to "White Van Racer" (an infamously crap PS2 game).
Studios know they can push out shit like this because people keep buying it. The problem is compounded on the Wii because the console supposedly appeals to non-gamers who have even less of a clue about quality titles than is usual for some consoles.
I expect that if a Cabbage Patch Kids game had released which consisted of moving a dot from one side of the screen to the other, it would still have sold in measurable quantities. Maybe it just never appeared because the studio ran out of money or the Cabbage Patch Kids fad faded before they could cash in.
One well known evolutionary scientist P.Z. Myers was queueing up to see a preview screening of this movie, when he was singled out of line and asked to leave the cinema. So he was expelled from Expelled, presumably because he would write it up for the trash it was. A double irony was he was standing next to Richard Dawkins who was apparently not recognized and allowed in.
Actually Works does have a reason to exist - it's easy to use, comes with a bunch of helpful task-centric wizards and is very accessible for computer novices. It might be complete dross compared to MS Office or OpenOffice, buts it's clear it has its place in world.
My dad used to produce a magazine in MS Publisher and maintain the subscriptions Works spreadsheet. I couldn't persuade him to use anything better. This combo more or less did what he wanted so my extolling that Office (since OO didn't exist at the time) had a relational database, or better table support, or styles etc. just fell on deaf ears. He was in his comfort zone.
Some people simply can't cope or don't need a full blown word processor or spreadsheet with three times as many menus and buttons. That's why Works exists. There would be nothing to stop OpenOffice producing their own equivalent of course... OO is hardly the most user friendly product - they would win a lot of new users if they implemented a simple mode and a lot of useful hand holding wizards.
There is plenty of education to stop users handing out passwords and personal details. Since people still do it, your plan is already doomed to fail. Some people are just too dumb, or too worried about the scary threats made in the fake email to take heed of warnings on the genuine site. And besides, they wouldn't see the genuine site so you could put the warning up in blinking 100pt font and it wouldn't help somebody visiting the spoof site.
Sometimes you just have to protect people for their own benefit. Forcing people to use a particular browser to sign up for a PayPal account is a good thing. There are also net benefits of forcing people to more recent browsers since it lowers exploits overall, improves the quality of web content, and reduces the profitability of spam. None of which are bad things.
I've thought long and hard about the Asus Eee PC before I got one. In fact my enthusiasm for an ultra small, ultra cheap laptop began with the OLPC.
The fact is that these things are amazingly useful where you need some computing access but don't want to haul some hulking laptop + cables + bag to get it. Or if your other half is on the main machine and you want to do a bit of browsing. It's perfect for the train, plane, hotel, coffee shop, lecture hall. And because they're cheap, the potential risk of theft or damage is less too. Getting one stolen would still suck, but not as much as if your X61 was nabbed.
The downside is that 701's screen is too small so you have to mess with tiny fonts and themes to make it acceptable. I think the 900 sounds great but I wonder if by piling too much stuff into it they negate one of the reasons for buying it in the first place - a low price.
That assumes that all 1000 PCs function correctly, and not the more likely scenario where failures go through the roof and they're saddled with replacing boxes from irate customers.
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Good self confidence or a lack of taste. If their judgement is impaired about how they adorn their car, perhaps it is impaired in other ways.
It's depressing to see someone like Denon engaging in what can only be called a scam. They're only dragging their own name through the mud with this practice.
If creationists took scientific evidence seriously they wouldn't be creationists. All they will do with this latest evidence is put it in a huge mental box marked "Ignore / Deny" with everything else they must pretend doesn't exist or matter for their faith to work. If you absolutely pushed a creationist on the issue, they would probably try to dodge by making some arbitrary distinction between macro and micro evolution. What you won't ever do is make them concede defeat. They are not rational people and no amount of evidence is going to change that.
Nah, it has more to do with the fact that the iPhone is ludicrously expensive AND you must lock yourself into an expensive 18 month contract.
Perhaps that strategy works in the US. It doesn't work in Europe where you can literally have any phone for free on the sorts of tariffs and contracts the iPhone ties you to.
Not necessarily. These things look like they arrive in some kind of vacuum sealed pouch which is probably held inside one of those tamper proof plastic shells that you have to cut open.
A bigger concern for these things is what you get for your money compared to a rental disk. Is it some crappy panned and scanned version of the movie? Does it have any features? Is the disc single layer or even less due to the disposable nature of the disc? etc.
Remarks like that are an open invitation for epic failure.
Still better than it was though and perfectly fine for most regular people. If I were a broker I would pissed at Nasdaq who charge a small fortune (which they must pass on to their customers) to get realtime quotes. If Nasdaq are allowing basic realtime quote data to Google, they're going to have to offer it to brokerages on similar terms. It would be good news for brokers and customers since they can cut their commissions.
The next thing is when will Google start offering commission free or extremely cheap trades. I can see it happening. It's a very scary thought actually.
I can summarise the above far more succinctly for you:
As shocking as this may seem. Sales of consumer electronics take a dump in the first half of the year. Stores don't offer discounts, no new models come out, releases start to dry up and there are no advertising or other promotions. It is no wonder that sales in that period are low. Sales of DVD players are historically 2, 3 or even 4 times higher in the latter half of the year.
June is where things start to happen. That's when model & titles releases occur, promotions and deals kick off properly for Father's day and keep on going to Christmas. It is around about now that things get interesting for Blu Ray. If sales don't pick up then it might be in trouble. But if DVD's experiences are any indicator, things are going to improve markedly starting about now.
I'm sure there are compatibility issues with some players. Buy a player which doesn't have those issues and make your feelings known.
It's also the only group which appears to pay much attention to proper usability and human interface guidelines. Linux has been blighted for too long by TERRIBLE usability - dists would be content to slap together a generic GNOME / KDE, slap a few crappy tools into it, and too many users would snort at anyone who expected a GUI which (shock / horror) allowed you to configure your computer without wading through config files. Needless to say Ubuntu is getting a lot of publicity because they really seem to be trying to make it Just Work. That doesn't mean Ubuntu is perfect but its a damned sight better than most other dists.
You're forgetting all of the Indiana Jones Chronicles. Indy was a do-gooding jerk throughout his life, meeting famous people and affecting events through a series of highly improbable globe hopping adventures.
I was absolutely mad for the OLPC before it came out. It's small, it's cheap, it's light, you can use it anywhere. But I think they really blew it with their ideals. Sugar is not great and the lack of a commercial variant of the OLPC just beggars belief.
That said, I think the idea of Sugar was better than its execution. It was too ambitious and too immature to satisfy anyone, even kids. I think it would have been better to produce a simple app launcher (as in the Eee PC) combined with some simplified apps that already exist.
I appreciate what they were trying to do, but I think that kids would be able to figure out a cut down desktop or something akin to the Asus Eee launcher with no trouble. They could always prune menu items from apps if they're concerned apps will be too complicated for kids.
I suspect the large amount of circumstantial evidence and lame excuses for some of that evidence had its part to play in his conviction. No one removes a car seat (and dumps said car seat) or hoses the inside of a car without an extraordinarily good reason.
Probably fairly well assuming they felt brave enough to click "Yes" or "Click here to install missing plugin" when You Tube appeared and prompted the browser to install the missing player.
After all Guillermo del Toro is more or less the non-union Mexican equivalent of Peter Jackson.
Naturally someone could still sniff packets but it stops keyloggers, password sniffers etc.
Studios know they can push out shit like this because people keep buying it. The problem is compounded on the Wii because the console supposedly appeals to non-gamers who have even less of a clue about quality titles than is usual for some consoles.
I expect that if a Cabbage Patch Kids game had released which consisted of moving a dot from one side of the screen to the other, it would still have sold in measurable quantities. Maybe it just never appeared because the studio ran out of money or the Cabbage Patch Kids fad faded before they could cash in.
Nonsense.
One well known evolutionary scientist P.Z. Myers was queueing up to see a preview screening of this movie, when he was singled out of line and asked to leave the cinema. So he was expelled from Expelled, presumably because he would write it up for the trash it was. A double irony was he was standing next to Richard Dawkins who was apparently not recognized and allowed in.
My dad used to produce a magazine in MS Publisher and maintain the subscriptions Works spreadsheet. I couldn't persuade him to use anything better. This combo more or less did what he wanted so my extolling that Office (since OO didn't exist at the time) had a relational database, or better table support, or styles etc. just fell on deaf ears. He was in his comfort zone.
Some people simply can't cope or don't need a full blown word processor or spreadsheet with three times as many menus and buttons. That's why Works exists. There would be nothing to stop OpenOffice producing their own equivalent of course... OO is hardly the most user friendly product - they would win a lot of new users if they implemented a simple mode and a lot of useful hand holding wizards.
Sometimes you just have to protect people for their own benefit. Forcing people to use a particular browser to sign up for a PayPal account is a good thing. There are also net benefits of forcing people to more recent browsers since it lowers exploits overall, improves the quality of web content, and reduces the profitability of spam. None of which are bad things.
The fact is that these things are amazingly useful where you need some computing access but don't want to haul some hulking laptop + cables + bag to get it. Or if your other half is on the main machine and you want to do a bit of browsing. It's perfect for the train, plane, hotel, coffee shop, lecture hall. And because they're cheap, the potential risk of theft or damage is less too. Getting one stolen would still suck, but not as much as if your X61 was nabbed.
The downside is that 701's screen is too small so you have to mess with tiny fonts and themes to make it acceptable. I think the 900 sounds great but I wonder if by piling too much stuff into it they negate one of the reasons for buying it in the first place - a low price.
That assumes that all 1000 PCs function correctly, and not the more likely scenario where failures go through the roof and they're saddled with replacing boxes from irate customers.