My tendency is to side with Microsoft on this one. Apple has a history of producing buggy, poor-quality software for the Windows platform. I suspect the strategy is to make people want to replace said platform with a Mac. Regardless of the motivation, I've been extremely unimpressed with iTunes on Windows in the past; massive always-on TSR plugins that ruin system performance, un-intuitive controls, poor performance, buggy/crashy installers that I can't get support for, inability to customize the interface to my liking, DRM, all of these are reasons I long ago banned iTunes from my system, and this was even before Vista. Man, Apple completely pissed me off when they started bundling iTunes with Quicktime, and the QT installer would fail with no explanation due to the bundled, buggy iTunes installer. You could install just QT, but you had to really go digging to find it, even though I was a paid registered QT user just trying to use the 'upgrade' option from within the software. To this day, I've never found an explanation or fix for the iTunes installer not working on my old XP machine.
OR, one could do a traceroute to the IP and check the ARP tables of that gateway.
The problem I suspect is that like most governments, they're still using a mix of very old technology. This thing might not even be running IP. Of course, one then presumes to ask "How did they know it's there in the first place."
I tried the Yahoo beta and quit it twice. I couldn't stick with it, because: a) It was simply WAY too slow, on a cable modem b) Yes, I had the same problems with the arrangement/visual look at 1024x768. Hotmail's new interface has this same problem. c) Too many elements constantly loading, loading, loading. I had to turn off my navigation sound, because it was driving me insane. d) new mail notification didn't happen until I reload the inbox folder
There were other reasons, but these are the ones that I see still exist. Oh, and as for advertising... please, put it all in one place, at the top, at the bottom, at the side, but not scattered all over. WAY too much visual clutter. (Hotmail is worse about wasted screen space/advertising, though)
You're completely right. I've had GMail hide messages from one sender within the nested view of another sender, so I didn't even know I had a new/unopened message. What's wrong with a simple, date-ordered, sender-ordered, or subject-ordered list???
What he needs to do is let someone make the Admiral Thrawn trilogy (actually, I think it's called the Dark Fleet saga). Those three books are the closest I've seen books come to the magic of the original trilogy. The actors are just about the right ages to do it (with some help from makeup in a couple of cases). It does more to fill in the back-story of what the Emperor and Vader were doing all those years before Episode IV, and fleshes out the universe. Seriously, Lucas is dealing with a galaxy of thousands and thousands of inhabited planets, but he keeps coming back to dry old Tatooine. *sigh*
And the best part about this metric is that it is less subjective and a measurement over a longer period of time. What they do for themselves is an indication of what they might be able to do for the company.
BULLSHIT. Nobody has any idea how the credit score works. Health Insurance/Medical History isn't the only thing that can damage your credit. Five years ago, I was doing great, making good money, and so I bought a house. A month later, my employer (a small, private company) sold the company to a fake offshore entity in an attempt to steal a couple million in someone else's money. The closed the doors, leaving me without a job just as I started having to make payments. A week after that, 9/11. I couldn't get a job at McDonald's, EVERYBODY was out of work. I was living on unemployment and my savings, and that didn't last long. I had some things go into collections, and I made a LOT of late payments. BUT, when I had a job again, I made regular payments and in a little over three years paid off ALL my debt except my mortgage. I like to think I was very responsible. Luckily, I was conservative when buying my house, I wasn't in as deep a hole as some people get. I wasn't past the credit event horizon.
Do you think the credit score reflects that I was as responsible as I could be in a bad situation? FUCK NO! When you're in a bad situation, credit companies take every opportunity to make it worse, a) raising interest rates b) outrageous penalties c) screwing your rating. If a company loans you $3000 and you pay $1000, then they stick you with $2000 in interests, late fees, and collection fees, then sell that $4000 account to a collection agency for $2000, they've gotten their original $3000 back, and they can still claim a $2000 loss for tax purposes. The collection agency, starts bugging you for $4000, you pay 'em $1000, they mark it up some more, say $500, and sell the $3500 account for $2000. They've just made $1000 off you and get to claim $1500 in losses. Wash, rinse, repeat. In the meantime, your credit is in the toilet, even though you're paying, and trying to keep up.
My credit rating only indicates a current score, and a payment history. Does the score reflect the sacrifices I made to pay off all the accounts? For one bad account that went into collections, does it reflect that I paid in three years time more than the original cost of the loan plus interest. That if I were making minimum payments, 70% of the debt would still be there. Nope. On a $3500 loan, I paid somewhere between $4500 and $5000 by the end of three years to get it out of collections and call it even. But the credit reports still show that it was 'negotiated for a lower payoff' and it's a big negative mark.
Further, these collection agencies go NUTS trying to get money from people any way they can. Because of some mixup in paperwork, they recently started bugging my mother for a student loan she paid off 25 years ago.
I don't have space here to go into all the horror stories I know about ways this system has gone wrong. Suffice it to say, the laws favor the banks, they're using it to inflate paper losses in order to offset ever-increasing profits and avoid the IRS. The less we rely on and trust such a fucked-up system, the better off we'll be.
I think there's one more factor people are leaving out. They took WAY too long to get to market. If the players had been available somewhere around 2000 to 2003, they could have sold to MANY people who were going DVD for the first time as most people were finally abandoning VHS. IF they had been priced reasonably, I believe many people would have bought HD-DVD as 'better' given the choice between that and regular DVD for their first player.
These guys are going to have to wait another couple of years until all the DVD players bought in the last 3 or 4 years begin to wear out or break. I think it will build, as more titles are available, and more people adopt HD screens.
The distinction between 'ethical' and 'legal' doesn't matter to me in this case. These people are simply DISHONORABLE. I move for a change of venue to a Klingon court.
If you bid more than once on an item, someone must be bidding against you, so of course your chances are reduced.
If you only bid once on an item, it could be the only bid. I wonder if they controlled for that.
Unless you're just trying to increase your maximum bid, in which case, you're bidding against YOURSELF, because eBay refuses to change that policy even in spite of a lawsuit. I despise bid snipers, because the maximum you wish to pay should not be something you set only at the beginning of an auction. The conditions change during the course of an auction. For instance, other auctions for the same or similar items may be coming to a close, or you may get a big bonus check, etc. etc.
Some items are available only through one or two sellers, and they only run one auction at a time, and they run the auctions for seven days. So last-minute snipers cost me weeks trying to get an item by outbidding me only by a dollar or less. I'm ALL for the automatic extension. If a dozen bids happen in the last 5 minutes of an auction, it is in both the sellers' and ebay's interests to keep the auction open a few more minutes until bidding dies down. I was *shocked* when I learned there were services offerring to submit bids for you at the last 30 seconds of an auction, or in the last 15, 10 or 5 seconds for a higher price. Since these services require your ebay login and password information, I suspect they could be considered in violation of official policies that forbid giving your login information to anyone. They certainly represent a risk that I'm not willing to take. It's not necessarily a matter of just submitting your maximum bid, when careless people are willing to give out their login information to a company that will outbid you by a penny using a robot.
That's why I love buy-it-now. I always look for items in BIN first before bidding on other auctions, even in many cases where the BIN price is higher. But for regular auctions, I don't see how adding a minute or five minutes to the end of an auction when bids are received during the last 30 seconds would possibly bring about the complete downfall of eBay. I suspect the loudest opponents of this are the ones who are first in line to use sniper services. To hell with them.
No sir, I think you don't understand what is being implied. Video games are fantasy. Period, no arguments about it. In fantasy, legality doesn't apply. I don't care how you wann try to spin it - being it morality or legility - fantasy is just that - fantasy. If you are afraid that your kid is getting the wrong education from video games, well don't buy him/her xbox and ps3. Impose all your morality on him/her, I can care less. But for the love of god, please stop bitchin that the other people are enjoying it.
Oh, boy, are you wrong. Even in fantasy, legality DOES now apply. Hence, recent child-porn laws making illegal computer-generated images in which no actual children are depicted. It's fantasy, but it's very very illegal. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that IS the law.
It's the classic "make love, not war"-hippies-vs-fascists argument.
This is perfectly indicative of just how out of touch with their customers all of Sony electronics divisions have become.
Example: 400-disc DVD player I bought which is crippled unless you have HDMI/HDCP, remote with a flip-switch for the guide, auto-play of last DVD (which you finished watching last time) when you turn on the unit, draconian menu-cripple features controlled by the DVD producer and not you as the user (One of my DVD's won't allow you to STOP or Power Off while it's showing the FBI warnings!) The complete list of problems with this unit is too long to list here.
Example: Privacy invasion/crippleware automatically installed on PCs when you play one of their CDs.
Example: Minidisc
Example: Proprietary batteries for EVERY device that are all different from each other.
This price announcement means NOTHING to me, as I already long-ago decided I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SONY DEVICE AS LONG AS I LIVE.
Agreed 110% mod parent up! I'll throw out another example for consideration:
While 'Wii' sounds like 'wee' and can be compared to urine, they could have accomplished most of their goals by calling it the 'Shiit'. It still has the double-i's they want, and it's just as fucking stupid! Their marketing dept could get on blogs (because it wouldn't be allowed in print or on tv) and say something like "It's the Schiit", but seriously, NOBODY in the US is going to buy a console with the word 'shit' in any form on the side of it. Too many negative connotations. Would people TALK about it? Sure! Doesn't mean they want to buy it.
You take POSITIVE buzz about a product called the Revolution and turn it 180 degrees into completely NEGATIVE buzz for a product called the Wii, and ONLY marketing could turn that shiit into a wiin.
Whoa whoa whoa... The Allman Brothers, Cheap Trick... You think MP3 *existed* when they signed their contracts? Depending on the wording of the contracts, there's an argument to be made that Sony doesn't have a right to ANY cut of/control of the music as published on ITMS. Even if online distribution is somehow considered to be covered, the contracts are probably pretty explicit that the fees collected from the artist are for packaging, etc, and if there IS no packaging, then the validity of the contract, in this specific area is certainly debatable. (IANAL) If you collect 35% from me for packaging and breakage, then by god, you better show me some receipts for packaging and breakage, or else I want my 35% back.
Just don't dismiss this as whining about shitty contracts. ESPECIALLY don't dismiss it out of hand when the #1 argument put forth by the xxAA's lately has been 'protecting the interests of the artists'. This is PERFECT proof that they don't give a flying fsck about the artists.
This theory that the punishment should be harsher to make up for how difficult it is to catch and convict people just doesn't make sense.
When you say that punishment should be harsher for copyright infringement as a deterrent, because more people do it and fewer get caught, it comes across as saying that the people who DO get caught have to suffer a harsher punishment to make up for the many who do NOT get caught.
That's a dangerous slope, because the same logic might lead you to say, for instance, in the case of rape, that as our techniques get better and more people are caught, that we should lower the severity of punishment. It just doesn't make sense.
The punishment should fit the crime and the circumstances of the individual case, PERIOD. It is just wrong to punish one person or group of people for the crimes of others. THAT should be written into the constitution.
In my experience, HP might be a better choice for a home computer, but it would take a lot to make me choose an HP over Dell in the business world. Good design, good support, fast shipping times... My boss once wanted me to buy PCs for the office with AMD chips (because his son-in-law works in marketing for AMD). HP estimated six weeks to ship the machines while comparable Intel systems from Dell shipped in less than a week.
Maybe with Fiorino gone, things are changing, but HP was once a company I trusted to produce quality hardware. Now, it doesn't matter whether it's printers, PCs, servers or anything else, HP is the LAST company I look to.
One example: I bought an HP multimedia USB keyboard from someone on Ebay. Because it was a keyboard that shipped with a 'consumer' system, and HP only supported Win '98 and XP on their 'consumer' systems, there was no windows 2000 driver support for the features on this keyboard. Later, I upgraded to XP, but HP at that time had no drivers available for download for the keyboard.
Another: windows-only printers and printers that when you try to locate drivers on HPs site, you are told that they are no longer available, for printers that are less than 5 years old.
A few years ago, my opinion was the opposite... Dell servers simply couldn't start to compete with Compaq. They were beefed-up PCs. It's funny, because now the reverse is true. Their servers and office PCs are fantastic machines, but they're playing catch-up in the home, as customizations, see-thru cases, light-up fans, etc, have become more popular. The business world IS saturated, as well as tired of having to upgrade. Now that XP has been around for a while, and nothing new is on the horizon for the near-term, I think businesses are going to operate in maintenance mode until Vista and the next upgrade cycle begins. That's going to hurt Dell more, because they're the largest office PC supplier.
I have a few of my own ideas, as well as comments on his article.
First, while people are arguing about brain in chest vs head due to nerve length, nobody is mentioning one of the other impracticalities of his suggestions. Namely, the brain in the chest would require a larger chest cavity, thus a larger torso, and more weight. As well, the extra pair of arms would add to this. The heart would likely need to be larger to support the extra mass. Also, I think the brain would not be as free to grow/evolve to larger sizes when surrounded by all this ribcage, heart, lungs.
Instead, I think we could really benefit from the addition of one or two more hearts. Why are all our other organs redundant? (even the brain is a dual organ)
In the area of reproduction, instead of putting genitals in our mouths, take another cue from the bird world... Let's keep our reproduction like it is, but make women lay eggs. If sexual intercourse caused a woman to develop an infant-sized egg that she had to lay three days later, we would probably see a lot fewer teen pregnancies. In addition, a fetus developing in the egg would allow much more flexibility in prenatal care. It would likewise put an immediate end to the abortion issue, as the debate would no longer encompass a woman's right to do as she pleases with her body.
One of the more interesting possibilities in medicine today is that scientists may be able to reactivate the gene responsible for regeneration of organs, so you could re-grow lost kidneys, lungs, even limbs, as we can already regrow liver tissue. That's a wonderful bit of evolution that we lost, I can't possibly imagine why.
Finally, while he's taking ideas from some of the animal world, why not give our new and improved human, who I like to call Homo Novo, spinnerets so we can make our own rope, easily glue and fasten things or in a bind even make our own clothes? I admit, it would put the packing tape industry out of business, but it might afford the chance for some exciting new sports, as competitors try to tie each other up, rapell down buildings, or even the new art form of web design (oh, I guess we'd have to come up with a different name).
Part of the confusion with the Westinghouses is due to there being at least 3 versions of the 37" with the same model #, but with different panels/inputs/contrast ratios based on serial #. The original 37s had two DVI inputs and could do full 1080p on one of them and on the VGA input but only 1080i on the 2nd DVI. The latest 37's now have HDMI, which is good, because the DVI 'HDCP compatible' is bogus. It works with my cable box, but not with my DVD changer.
Wow, what planet are you from? 37" is the biggest TV I've ever owned. And the article said the HP is the ONLY monitor with 1080p on the HDMI. Flat wrong.
As for the difference between 1080p and 1080i, anyone who says the screen is too small to tell is not telling the whole story. Spend enough time reading AVSForum, for instance, and you'll see many different takes on 1080p,1080i,upscaling,etc etc. Fact is, none of the cable or satellite companies provide 1080p signals and until now, 1080p wasn't available on a disc medium, so the only way to even see 1080p is with a HDPC, and most people's PCs won't do that resolution. Frankly, I'm happy with 1080i, if you can even get that from most sources. The biggest issue really should be DRM and the fact that an 'upscaling' DVD player like my 400-disc Sony changer won't work with an HDMI/DVI cable at 720p due to stupid HDCP DRM. THAT more than the cost or any other factor is enough to make me avoid both HDDVD and BluRay for the time being. No point in buying something if it's not going to work with my other gear.
The core of our system is the HP Pavilion MD6580N 65" Widescreen Rear-Projection DLP display device. It is currently the only consumer monitor that can accept full 1080p via its HDMI inputs, allowing it to display every last line of high-definition's maximum resolution of 1920x1080.
Uh, nope, not right... Westinghouse makes a very nice 42" LCD with 1080p resolution. (on both DVI and HDMI connectors) http://www.westinghousedigital.com/c-7-1080p-monit ors.aspx Maybe the HP is the only 65" monitor with 1080p? I have the 37" Westinghouse, and it's a GREAT 1080p monitor for a decent price.
Not just banks, but Network Solutions did this as well with one of my customers last year. The call was legitimate, but it was simplicity to change the CLID on our phone system to match the number they expected the call to come from.
G.711 requires 80Kbps, according to Cisco (in each direction). On the Cisco VOIP network I run, I generally see calls take somewhat less. G.729a is proprietary and requires a licensing fee, but operates nicely at 29Kbps. Something like 1 out of 100 people can tell the difference between the two.
Bandwidth is typically NOT the problem with VOIP. It is completely dependent on having decent QoS. RTP/RTSP packets have a limited window to be received and reassembled into voice. 384K of uploading via web browser really isn't as sensitive to the momentary delays in packets. But a 20 or 30ms delay between two RTP packets can result in an audible difference in quality. A 100ms to 300ms delay wouldn't be noticed in a web download/upload, but can make your Vonage sound like vomit. These packets are subject not only to the limitations of bandwidth, but also processing within switching/routing equipment. Typical QoS settings require that VOIP packets received at a port be processed with priority over any others in order to minimize latency. Enough of these can hit a piece of equipment at one time that some simply can't be prioritized.
From the perspective of a provider, VOIP packets are a new technology, requiring changes to network architecture including not just programming but replacing equipment in some cases. The provider doesn't have a responsibility to guarantee that your Vonage calls work or work well. The market will decide whether it's a good decision, but it costs money to operate a network, and if they provide voice services and choose to prioritize their own voice packets, that is their right. On the other hand, they shouldn't deliberately block or degrade the performance of other services.
Some of the people who have been complaining of problems with Blizzard's policies are straight people who are playing the game to escape reality by playing as gay characters (but I repeat, are straight in RL). IMO, *Blizzard* has made this an issue, and the word 'politics' shouldn't have anything to do with it.
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My tendency is to side with Microsoft on this one. Apple has a history of producing buggy, poor-quality software for the Windows platform. I suspect the strategy is to make people want to replace said platform with a Mac. Regardless of the motivation, I've been extremely unimpressed with iTunes on Windows in the past; massive always-on TSR plugins that ruin system performance, un-intuitive controls, poor performance, buggy/crashy installers that I can't get support for, inability to customize the interface to my liking, DRM, all of these are reasons I long ago banned iTunes from my system, and this was even before Vista. Man, Apple completely pissed me off when they started bundling iTunes with Quicktime, and the QT installer would fail with no explanation due to the bundled, buggy iTunes installer. You could install just QT, but you had to really go digging to find it, even though I was a paid registered QT user just trying to use the 'upgrade' option from within the software. To this day, I've never found an explanation or fix for the iTunes installer not working on my old XP machine.
OR, one could do a traceroute to the IP and check the ARP tables of that gateway.
The problem I suspect is that like most governments, they're still using a mix of very old technology. This thing might not even be running IP. Of course, one then presumes to ask "How did they know it's there in the first place."
I tried the Yahoo beta and quit it twice. I couldn't stick with it, because:
a) It was simply WAY too slow, on a cable modem
b) Yes, I had the same problems with the arrangement/visual look at 1024x768. Hotmail's new interface has this same problem.
c) Too many elements constantly loading, loading, loading. I had to turn off my navigation sound, because it was driving me insane.
d) new mail notification didn't happen until I reload the inbox folder
There were other reasons, but these are the ones that I see still exist. Oh, and as for advertising... please, put it all in one place, at the top, at the bottom, at the side, but not scattered all over. WAY too much visual clutter. (Hotmail is worse about wasted screen space/advertising, though)
You're completely right. I've had GMail hide messages from one sender within the nested view of another sender, so I didn't even know I had a new/unopened message. What's wrong with a simple, date-ordered, sender-ordered, or subject-ordered list???
What he needs to do is let someone make the Admiral Thrawn trilogy (actually, I think it's called the Dark Fleet saga). Those three books are the closest I've seen books come to the magic of the original trilogy. The actors are just about the right ages to do it (with some help from makeup in a couple of cases). It does more to fill in the back-story of what the Emperor and Vader were doing all those years before Episode IV, and fleshes out the universe. Seriously, Lucas is dealing with a galaxy of thousands and thousands of inhabited planets, but he keeps coming back to dry old Tatooine. *sigh*
BULLSHIT. Nobody has any idea how the credit score works. Health Insurance/Medical History isn't the only thing that can damage your credit. Five years ago, I was doing great, making good money, and so I bought a house. A month later, my employer (a small, private company) sold the company to a fake offshore entity in an attempt to steal a couple million in someone else's money. The closed the doors, leaving me without a job just as I started having to make payments. A week after that, 9/11. I couldn't get a job at McDonald's, EVERYBODY was out of work. I was living on unemployment and my savings, and that didn't last long. I had some things go into collections, and I made a LOT of late payments. BUT, when I had a job again, I made regular payments and in a little over three years paid off ALL my debt except my mortgage. I like to think I was very responsible. Luckily, I was conservative when buying my house, I wasn't in as deep a hole as some people get. I wasn't past the credit event horizon.
Do you think the credit score reflects that I was as responsible as I could be in a bad situation? FUCK NO! When you're in a bad situation, credit companies take every opportunity to make it worse, a) raising interest rates b) outrageous penalties c) screwing your rating. If a company loans you $3000 and you pay $1000, then they stick you with $2000 in interests, late fees, and collection fees, then sell that $4000 account to a collection agency for $2000, they've gotten their original $3000 back, and they can still claim a $2000 loss for tax purposes. The collection agency, starts bugging you for $4000, you pay 'em $1000, they mark it up some more, say $500, and sell the $3500 account for $2000. They've just made $1000 off you and get to claim $1500 in losses. Wash, rinse, repeat. In the meantime, your credit is in the toilet, even though you're paying, and trying to keep up.
My credit rating only indicates a current score, and a payment history. Does the score reflect the sacrifices I made to pay off all the accounts? For one bad account that went into collections, does it reflect that I paid in three years time more than the original cost of the loan plus interest. That if I were making minimum payments, 70% of the debt would still be there. Nope. On a $3500 loan, I paid somewhere between $4500 and $5000 by the end of three years to get it out of collections and call it even. But the credit reports still show that it was 'negotiated for a lower payoff' and it's a big negative mark.
Further, these collection agencies go NUTS trying to get money from people any way they can. Because of some mixup in paperwork, they recently started bugging my mother for a student loan she paid off 25 years ago.
I don't have space here to go into all the horror stories I know about ways this system has gone wrong. Suffice it to say, the laws favor the banks, they're using it to inflate paper losses in order to offset ever-increasing profits and avoid the IRS. The less we rely on and trust such a fucked-up system, the better off we'll be.
I think there's one more factor people are leaving out.
They took WAY too long to get to market. If the players
had been available somewhere around 2000 to 2003, they
could have sold to MANY people who were going DVD for the
first time as most people were finally abandoning VHS.
IF they had been priced reasonably, I believe many people
would have bought HD-DVD as 'better' given the choice
between that and regular DVD for their first player.
These guys are going to have to wait another couple of
years until all the DVD players bought in the last 3 or
4 years begin to wear out or break. I think it will
build, as more titles are available, and more people
adopt HD screens.
The distinction between 'ethical' and 'legal' doesn't matter to me in this case. These people are simply DISHONORABLE. I move for a change of venue to a Klingon court.
And this would be a bad thing why???
Unless you're just trying to increase your maximum bid, in which case, you're bidding against YOURSELF, because eBay refuses to change that policy even in spite of a lawsuit. I despise bid snipers, because the maximum you wish to pay should not be something you set only at the beginning of an auction. The conditions change during the course of an auction. For instance, other auctions for the same or similar items may be coming to a close, or you may get a big bonus check, etc. etc.
Some items are available only through one or two sellers, and they only run one auction at a time, and they run the auctions for seven days. So last-minute snipers cost me weeks trying to get an item by outbidding me only by a dollar or less. I'm ALL for the automatic extension. If a dozen bids happen in the last 5 minutes of an auction, it is in both the sellers' and ebay's interests to keep the auction open a few more minutes until bidding dies down. I was *shocked* when I learned there were services offerring to submit bids for you at the last 30 seconds of an auction, or in the last 15, 10 or 5 seconds for a higher price. Since these services require your ebay login and password information, I suspect they could be considered in violation of official policies that forbid giving your login information to anyone. They certainly represent a risk that I'm not willing to take. It's not necessarily a matter of just submitting your maximum bid, when careless people are willing to give out their login information to a company that will outbid you by a penny using a robot.
That's why I love buy-it-now. I always look for items in BIN first before bidding on other auctions, even in many cases where the BIN price is higher. But for regular auctions, I don't see how adding a minute or five minutes to the end of an auction when bids are received during the last 30 seconds would possibly bring about the complete downfall of eBay. I suspect the loudest opponents of this are the ones who are first in line to use sniper services. To hell with them.
I think the secret is to build your first moon colony in the newest crater.
Oh, boy, are you wrong. Even in fantasy, legality DOES now apply. Hence, recent child-porn laws making illegal computer-generated images in which no actual children are depicted. It's fantasy, but it's very very illegal. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but that IS the law.
It's the classic "make love, not war"-hippies-vs-fascists argument.
He obviously never tried to install OS/2 2.1 just after it was released on CD-ROM.
This is perfectly indicative of just how out of touch with their customers all of Sony electronics divisions have become.
Example: 400-disc DVD player I bought which is crippled unless you have HDMI/HDCP, remote with a flip-switch for the guide, auto-play of last DVD (which you finished watching last time) when you turn on the unit, draconian menu-cripple features controlled by the DVD producer and not you as the user (One of my DVD's won't allow you to STOP or Power Off while it's showing the FBI warnings!) The complete list of problems with this unit is too long to list here.
Example: Privacy invasion/crippleware automatically installed on PCs when you play one of their CDs.
Example: Minidisc
Example: Proprietary batteries for EVERY device that are all different from each other.
This price announcement means NOTHING to me, as I already long-ago decided I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER SONY DEVICE AS LONG AS I LIVE.
Agreed 110% mod parent up! I'll throw out another example for consideration:
While 'Wii' sounds like 'wee' and can be compared to urine, they could have accomplished most of their goals by calling it the 'Shiit'. It still has the double-i's they want, and it's just as fucking stupid! Their marketing dept could get on blogs (because it wouldn't be allowed in print or on tv) and say something like "It's the Schiit", but seriously, NOBODY in the US is going to buy a console with the word 'shit' in any form on the side of it. Too many negative connotations. Would people TALK about it? Sure! Doesn't mean they want to buy it.
You take POSITIVE buzz about a product called the Revolution and turn it 180 degrees into completely NEGATIVE buzz for a product called the Wii, and ONLY marketing could turn that shiit into a wiin.
Whoa whoa whoa... The Allman Brothers, Cheap Trick... You think MP3 *existed* when they signed their contracts? Depending on the wording of the contracts, there's an argument to be made that Sony doesn't have a right to ANY cut of/control of the music as published on ITMS. Even if online distribution is somehow considered to be covered, the contracts are probably pretty explicit that the fees collected from the artist are for packaging, etc, and if there IS no packaging, then the validity of the contract, in this specific area is certainly debatable. (IANAL) If you collect 35% from me for packaging and breakage, then by god, you better show me some receipts for packaging and breakage, or else I want my 35% back.
Just don't dismiss this as whining about shitty contracts. ESPECIALLY don't dismiss it out of hand when the #1 argument put forth by the xxAA's lately has been 'protecting the interests of the artists'. This is PERFECT proof that they don't give a flying fsck about the artists.
This theory that the punishment should be harsher to make up for how difficult it is to catch and convict people just doesn't make sense.
When you say that punishment should be harsher for copyright infringement as a deterrent, because more people do it and fewer get caught, it comes across as saying that the people who DO get caught have to suffer a harsher punishment to make up for the many who do NOT get caught.
That's a dangerous slope, because the same logic might lead you to say, for instance, in the case of rape, that as our techniques get better and more people are caught, that we should lower the severity of punishment. It just doesn't make sense.
The punishment should fit the crime and the circumstances of the individual case, PERIOD. It is just wrong to punish one person or group of people for the crimes of others. THAT should be written into the constitution.
In my experience, HP might be a better choice for a home computer, but it would take a lot to make me choose an HP over Dell in the business world. Good design, good support, fast shipping times... My boss once wanted me to buy PCs for the office with AMD chips (because his son-in-law works in marketing for AMD). HP estimated six weeks to ship the machines while comparable Intel systems from Dell shipped in less than a week.
Maybe with Fiorino gone, things are changing, but HP was once a company I trusted to produce quality hardware. Now, it doesn't matter whether it's printers, PCs, servers or anything else, HP is the LAST company I look to.
One example: I bought an HP multimedia USB keyboard from someone on Ebay. Because it was a keyboard that shipped with a 'consumer' system, and HP only supported Win '98 and XP on their 'consumer' systems, there was no windows 2000 driver support for the features on this keyboard. Later, I upgraded to XP, but HP at that time had no drivers available for download for the keyboard.
Another: windows-only printers and printers that when you try to locate drivers on HPs site, you are told that they are no longer available, for printers that are less than 5 years old.
A few years ago, my opinion was the opposite... Dell servers simply couldn't start to compete with Compaq. They were beefed-up PCs. It's funny, because now the reverse is true. Their servers and office PCs are fantastic machines, but they're playing catch-up in the home, as customizations, see-thru cases, light-up fans, etc, have become more popular. The business world IS saturated, as well as tired of having to upgrade. Now that XP has been around for a while, and nothing new is on the horizon for the near-term, I think businesses are going to operate in maintenance mode until Vista and the next upgrade cycle begins. That's going to hurt Dell more, because they're the largest office PC supplier.
I have a few of my own ideas, as well as comments on his article.
First, while people are arguing about brain in chest vs head due to nerve length, nobody is mentioning one of the other impracticalities of his suggestions. Namely, the brain in the chest would require a larger chest cavity, thus a larger torso, and more weight. As well, the extra pair of arms would add to this. The heart would likely need to be larger to support the extra mass. Also, I think the brain would not be as free to grow/evolve to larger sizes when surrounded by all this ribcage, heart, lungs.
Instead, I think we could really benefit from the addition of one or two more hearts. Why are all our other organs redundant? (even the brain is a dual organ)
In the area of reproduction, instead of putting genitals in our mouths, take another cue from the bird world... Let's keep our reproduction like it is, but make women lay eggs. If sexual intercourse caused a woman to develop an infant-sized egg that she had to lay three days later, we would probably see a lot fewer teen pregnancies. In addition, a fetus developing in the egg would allow much more flexibility in prenatal care. It would likewise put an immediate end to the abortion issue, as the debate would no longer encompass a woman's right to do as she pleases with her body.
One of the more interesting possibilities in medicine today is that scientists may be able to reactivate the gene responsible for regeneration of organs, so you could re-grow lost kidneys, lungs, even limbs, as we can already regrow liver tissue. That's a wonderful bit of evolution that we lost, I can't possibly imagine why.
Finally, while he's taking ideas from some of the animal world, why not give our new and improved human, who I like to call Homo Novo, spinnerets so we can make our own rope, easily glue and fasten things or in a bind even make our own clothes? I admit, it would put the packing tape industry out of business, but it might afford the chance for some exciting new sports, as competitors try to tie each other up, rapell down buildings, or even the new art form of web design (oh, I guess we'd have to come up with a different name).
Part of the confusion with the Westinghouses is due to there being at least 3 versions of the 37" with the same model #, but with different panels/inputs/contrast ratios based on serial #. The original 37s had two DVI inputs and could do full 1080p on one of them and on the VGA input but only 1080i on the 2nd DVI. The latest 37's now have HDMI, which is good, because the DVI 'HDCP compatible' is bogus. It works with my cable box, but not with my DVD changer.
Wow, what planet are you from? 37" is the biggest TV I've ever owned. And the article said the HP is the ONLY monitor with 1080p on the HDMI. Flat wrong.
As for the difference between 1080p and 1080i, anyone who says the screen is too small to tell is not telling the whole story. Spend enough time reading AVSForum, for instance, and you'll see many different takes on 1080p,1080i,upscaling,etc etc. Fact is, none of the cable or satellite companies provide 1080p signals and until now, 1080p wasn't available on a disc medium, so the only way to even see 1080p is with a HDPC, and most people's PCs won't do that resolution. Frankly, I'm happy with 1080i, if you can even get that from most sources. The biggest issue really should be DRM and the fact that an 'upscaling' DVD player like my 400-disc Sony changer won't work with an HDMI/DVI cable at 720p due to stupid HDCP DRM. THAT more than the cost or any other factor is enough to make me avoid both HDDVD and BluRay for the time being. No point in buying something if it's not going to work with my other gear.
Uh, nope, not right... Westinghouse makes a very nice 42" LCD with 1080p resolution. (on both DVI and HDMI connectors) http://www.westinghousedigital.com/c-7-1080p-moni
Not just banks, but Network Solutions did this as well with one of my customers last year. The call was legitimate, but it was simplicity to change the CLID on our phone system to match the number they expected the call to come from.
G.711 requires 80Kbps, according to Cisco (in each direction). On the Cisco VOIP network I run, I generally see calls take somewhat less. G.729a is proprietary and requires a licensing fee, but operates nicely at 29Kbps. Something like 1 out of 100 people can tell the difference between the two.
Bandwidth is typically NOT the problem with VOIP. It is completely dependent on having decent QoS. RTP/RTSP packets have a limited window to be received and reassembled into voice. 384K of uploading via web browser really isn't as sensitive to the momentary delays in packets. But a 20 or 30ms delay between two RTP packets can result in an audible difference in quality. A 100ms to 300ms delay wouldn't be noticed in a web download/upload, but can make your Vonage sound like vomit. These packets are subject not only to the limitations of bandwidth, but also processing within switching/routing equipment. Typical QoS settings require that VOIP packets received at a port be processed with priority over any others in order to minimize latency. Enough of these can hit a piece of equipment at one time that some simply can't be prioritized.
From the perspective of a provider, VOIP packets are a new technology, requiring changes to network architecture including not just programming but replacing equipment in some cases. The provider doesn't have a responsibility to guarantee that your Vonage calls work or work well. The market will decide whether it's a good decision, but it costs money to operate a network, and if they provide voice services and choose to prioritize their own voice packets, that is their right. On the other hand, they shouldn't deliberately block or degrade the performance of other services.
Some of the people who have been complaining of problems with Blizzard's policies are straight people who are playing the game to escape reality by playing as gay characters (but I repeat, are straight in RL). IMO, *Blizzard* has made this an issue, and the word 'politics' shouldn't have anything to do with it.