What do you mean none of their other activities are successful? The XBox 360 has become the best gaming platform for hardcore gamers, beating out the over-hyped (and -priced) Playstation 3. I'd say MS's game console division is quite successful.
Aside from that, their Live Local maps are much better than Google's maps with their bird's eye view and the more recent images (Google's are several years old in most places). There are still a lot of Hotmail users and the new Hotmail interface is quite nice if you ask me.
As for MS Office, the new interface is far more intuitive and takes a regular user only a week or 2 to get used to it. It was an important change as they add more features, they made everything easier to find, unless you're just using it for simple word processing (little more than a text editor could do). If you use most of the features, the new interface is awesome and really easy to use. Google Docs doesn't even come close to being able to do what MS Office can do. Anyone who can suggest that isn't a power user of MS Office. MS also had announced this year that they were going to introduce document sharing. And if you really think online software is the way of the future, wait until you have to edit a presentation in flight to a client. Good luck with that.
so what happens when a movie theatre lets a 12 year old into an R rated movie. last i checked, R meant 17 and old only. it's really the same thing. if a parent wants to buy a violent game for their kid, the store isn't going to get in trouble. they're getting in trouble if they sell it directly to the kid.
didn't some sporting event (or maybe it was some other event) already do that? i seem to remember reading something within the last year, or even the last few months, about someone getting kicked out for live blogging and not having press creds?
i've read some pretty dumb things on slashdot, but i think that takes the cake. consider this... most christians know that people were riding horses before jesus was born. 'nuff said.
creationists are certainly not make up "most christians", nor do they represent the beliefs of "most christians". in fact, they're actually just a small subset of christians. they just happen to be quite vocal.
and how much more expensive are they when there's games included?
i assume one of them is the halo 3 xbox, which has a special skin that i'm sure costs more.
Re:Seems in stock here in Sweden
on
Where are Wii?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
the shortages are real in certain parts of the US. i live in the northeast and while i managed to get one back in january (though i had to get up at the crack of dawn and stand outside target in line), they're rare to see in stores. many people here say it's easy to get one, but unless you get to the store at the right time, you won't. and people who have to work during the week have it the toughest (that was my issue, i couldn't just spend time calling stores or visiting stores when i got a chance). the wiiseeker helped me, but they changed the site so it's not as useful as it once was (it used to post rumors of when stores would be getting them in stock and how many they would have). but regardless of all that, i have not seen a wii in a store since i bought mine at 7 am one cold january morning.
Re:Couple Thoughts
on
Where are Wii?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
i don't think most people are buying all of that. there's just not a need. not to mention, the wii comes with a game and the other consoles just come with 1 controller and no games. the price is already better than buying an xbox or ps3. the other thing is that those who are making those purchases aren't doing it all up front. they might go and get wiiplay to get the second remote and pick up a second nunchuck, making the price $320, but they're not going to buy 2 extra remotes right up front.
the component cable isn't necessary to really enjoy the wii either. heck, i play it on a 20" flat tube CRT.
the xbox wireless controller is $50 and the wired one is $40, the same price as the wii remote. the ps3 wireless controller is also $50. the games for the xbox and ps3 are also about $10 more than wii games. so people with any console are going to be putting in more than just the price of the console, but at least the standard wii package comes with a game.
the wii is a competitor to the xbox or ps3 solely for the fact that they're gaming consoles (or at least sony and microsoft see it that way, especially sony). that being said, the reality might be that people purchase a wii in addition to another console rather than instead of one simply because it is so different than the others.
i haven't fully looked into it, but i'm not entirely sure that google forwards mail that it determines to be spam.
i agree with you that when it comes to colleges, i don't think they should be outsourcing email for anybody (disclaimer: i work in college IT). there are too many restrictions. FERPA has been mentioned many times related to correspondence between staff and faculty members, but it also pertains to correspondence with students (can colleges truly trust a third party?). i don't mind gmail for my own personal use, but i wouldn't be overly happy if it was being used for business purposes here or even if i was still a student, i wouldn't be happy getting it.
someone also made a comment about people under 20 not using email. it's true to a degree, but wait until they turn 21-22 and graduate and realize that all their job applications and contacts are through email. they may not care if it doesn't work the first 3 years of college, but that last year, it's really important. i'd rather have it through the college than some beta product from google.
funny... most students also prefer to not leave campus to get their computers fixed or to not pay $200 to have a virus removed. most students do use the service that the college provides for computer support.
as for the local phone, it's a small portion of it. the college where i work doesn't even offer long distance anymore because 99% of students have cell phones. it saves the students money in the long run. students also have the option to not go to college.
the students do not get a choice to pay the $200 technology fee. in the grand scheme of things, saving $200 off a $35,000 bill isn't going to do a whole lot. and that $200 gets them wireless all over campus, which is something the students have been wanting for a long time, as well as a completely overhauled email system, computer labs, and support for their computers. ask any sudent if they would prefer to pay the $200 up front of pay individually for each individual service and i'd be willing to bet they'd take the former. it would save them money in the long run if they had to pay for computer service (especially for some of them who i see over and over again).
consider it like paying for insurance. if you never use it, you don't get to reap the benefits and end up spending money for nothing, yet it's required by your state.
You know... I Googled my last name (Rizzo) a while back and one of the top hits was an Italian porn star, Jessica Rizzo. She wasn't particularly attractive and the site was written in all Italian. I wasn't able to read it. I just found it funny.
My full name is far too common to find me by simply Googling my first and last names together. It's not for a few pages on Google (currently) that you get any hits on me (unfortunately, it's LinkedIn, so it's pretty easy to figure out who I am if you have my resume and know anything about my employment history, though if you know that or at least where I live, you can easily find me on Google).
college and universities already do this. they use packetshaping and QoS. the P2P gets throttled the most, generally to the speed of a modem and generally during the day. at night, they open it up a bit, but still keep it low enough so that people using the network for legit activity can do so (and yes, i know that P2P can be used for legitimate stuff, but 99% of the time, it's used to illegally download music and movies). by doing this, we can say we don't block any ports even though the P2P stuff can barely connect.
the students bitch when the internet stops working or gets really slow. they say silly things like "i'm paying $40k to go here, you'd think the internet would work". i tell them that if they're paying that much for an internet connection, they might as well leave the college so that things like classes don't get in the way (yes, i work in college IT). however, most students are actually only paying $200-400 per year in technology fees. this covers the cost of their in room internet connection, the computer labs that get upgraded every 2 years, the software we provide, their email account, their domain account, their in-room cable tv, their local telephone service, the free computer support we provide (there is no laptop program at the college where i work, so the computers are the students), the wireless access points we're putting up all over campus, and part of the salaries of the IT workers who support the students and these technologies. they're actually not paying much for all of this when you think about it. if they had to get their computers fixed by geek squad every time they got a virus or spyware infection, they'd be broke.
i agree 100000%. the acting is was killed those movies for me. i've seen movies with hayden when he was actually good (life as a house). he was awful in the star wars movies. portman was only slightly better in ep1 than she was in 2 and 3. the part of ep2 where hayden kills the sand people was especially bad. he has no emotion when he says he's going to kill them for killing his mother.
the other issue i had with the prequels is that the foreshadowing is laid on so thick. while i knew what anakin becomes, they make it so bad that anyone who hasn't seen the original trilogy can figure out what anakin becomes before ep3. someone who has never seen it should be able to watch ep1-3 without knowing until ep3 that anakin is going to turn to the dark side. while i realize he had to connect ep3 with ep4, it wasn't a smooth transition.
we inform everyone who requests a laptop or an apple computer (the people with apples had to sign something) that they won't get the same level of service as they do with desktops (we use white box machines from a local indie vendor for our desktops so the parts are cheap and we keep them in stock without worrying about warranty or anything like that).
i didn't mean to imply that all faculty are that way, but most of the ones i've encountered are. many can barely figure out how to use the podium computers that are already in the classrooms.
both options are already checked (i went through all the settings when i got the thing). the "accidental input" thing doesn't work so well and the other one does disable it, but it does as it says and disables it when a mouse is present, which is fine for when i have a mouse present, but most of the time i don't.
you seem to be implying that laptops are a need for most users. this just isn't true. the only people who need laptops are those who are on the road all the time. everyone else can work just fine in their office on a desktop. anyone who says otherwise is just trying to get a laptop.
Yes, it is costly to not meet the actual needs of the users, but in most cases, the users artificially inflate their needs so they can have a status symbol (laptop).
I work in a college and most of the people with laptops are those who are out on the road a lot (coaches, recruiters, admissions reps, fund raisers, etc). The rest of the people with laptops just wanted a laptop (faculty members who don't want to work in their office on campus). What none of these users realize is that if something happens to the laptop, it's not a quick fix. In many cases, we have to send them back to the manufacturer for repair. We don't stock parts for them like we do the desktops (and in many cases, it's not possible to stock parts, like video cards, network cards, and all that other stuff that's on the motherboard now).
i just started using a macbook pro. i HATE the size of the touchpad. my hands always hit it when i'm typing, pulling me out of the window i was in or doing something worse. it's really obnoxoius. i much prefer the size of the one on the HP laptop i used to have.
the only thing i like better about this is the two finger tap to get the right click menu. my HP had the scroll area that worked fine for scrolling.
SUV's are actually no safer than smaller cars (i'm talking your corollas, civics, etc, not smartcars).
drivers in SUV's don't have the same vision out the back that smaller cars do, and they have bigger blind spots. most people who drive them don't take any of that into consideration because they think that they're safer and can do no harm.
comparing your phone number to your domain is apples and oranges. a better comparison would be your email address, which can still be private (use a separate one to register the domain, have a personal one that you don't post anywhere public). i don't know about your phone company, but any phone company i've been in business with (at least landlines), you have to pay to keep your phone number unlisted.
you can be private on the internet, there are tons of free services that allow you to post your anonymous opinions on the internet.
tracking down the owners is important if the domain is infringing on someone else's rights.
i get no spam, extra mail (or people coming to my door), or telemarketing calls from my domain registrations.
if you run a non-profit, you're giving up your address anyways. to incorporate as a non-profit, you have to give an actual street address (not a PO box).
people can also find out who owns what house through public records. there's no reason domain information should not be public.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean none of their other activities are successful? The XBox 360 has become the best gaming platform for hardcore gamers, beating out the over-hyped (and -priced) Playstation 3. I'd say MS's game console division is quite successful.
Aside from that, their Live Local maps are much better than Google's maps with their bird's eye view and the more recent images (Google's are several years old in most places). There are still a lot of Hotmail users and the new Hotmail interface is quite nice if you ask me.
As for MS Office, the new interface is far more intuitive and takes a regular user only a week or 2 to get used to it. It was an important change as they add more features, they made everything easier to find, unless you're just using it for simple word processing (little more than a text editor could do). If you use most of the features, the new interface is awesome and really easy to use. Google Docs doesn't even come close to being able to do what MS Office can do. Anyone who can suggest that isn't a power user of MS Office. MS also had announced this year that they were going to introduce document sharing. And if you really think online software is the way of the future, wait until you have to edit a presentation in flight to a client. Good luck with that.
right, and to buy a video game that's 18+, it requires someone be 18. end of story. i don't think this is such a big deal.
so what happens when a movie theatre lets a 12 year old into an R rated movie. last i checked, R meant 17 and old only. it's really the same thing. if a parent wants to buy a violent game for their kid, the store isn't going to get in trouble. they're getting in trouble if they sell it directly to the kid.
didn't some sporting event (or maybe it was some other event) already do that? i seem to remember reading something within the last year, or even the last few months, about someone getting kicked out for live blogging and not having press creds?
i've read some pretty dumb things on slashdot, but i think that takes the cake. consider this... most christians know that people were riding horses before jesus was born. 'nuff said.
creationists are certainly not make up "most christians", nor do they represent the beliefs of "most christians". in fact, they're actually just a small subset of christians. they just happen to be quite vocal.
and how much more expensive are they when there's games included?
i assume one of them is the halo 3 xbox, which has a special skin that i'm sure costs more.
the shortages are real in certain parts of the US. i live in the northeast and while i managed to get one back in january (though i had to get up at the crack of dawn and stand outside target in line), they're rare to see in stores. many people here say it's easy to get one, but unless you get to the store at the right time, you won't. and people who have to work during the week have it the toughest (that was my issue, i couldn't just spend time calling stores or visiting stores when i got a chance). the wiiseeker helped me, but they changed the site so it's not as useful as it once was (it used to post rumors of when stores would be getting them in stock and how many they would have). but regardless of all that, i have not seen a wii in a store since i bought mine at 7 am one cold january morning.
i don't think most people are buying all of that. there's just not a need. not to mention, the wii comes with a game and the other consoles just come with 1 controller and no games. the price is already better than buying an xbox or ps3. the other thing is that those who are making those purchases aren't doing it all up front. they might go and get wiiplay to get the second remote and pick up a second nunchuck, making the price $320, but they're not going to buy 2 extra remotes right up front.
the component cable isn't necessary to really enjoy the wii either. heck, i play it on a 20" flat tube CRT.
the xbox wireless controller is $50 and the wired one is $40, the same price as the wii remote. the ps3 wireless controller is also $50. the games for the xbox and ps3 are also about $10 more than wii games. so people with any console are going to be putting in more than just the price of the console, but at least the standard wii package comes with a game.
the wii is a competitor to the xbox or ps3 solely for the fact that they're gaming consoles (or at least sony and microsoft see it that way, especially sony). that being said, the reality might be that people purchase a wii in addition to another console rather than instead of one simply because it is so different than the others.
i haven't fully looked into it, but i'm not entirely sure that google forwards mail that it determines to be spam.
i agree with you that when it comes to colleges, i don't think they should be outsourcing email for anybody (disclaimer: i work in college IT). there are too many restrictions. FERPA has been mentioned many times related to correspondence between staff and faculty members, but it also pertains to correspondence with students (can colleges truly trust a third party?). i don't mind gmail for my own personal use, but i wouldn't be overly happy if it was being used for business purposes here or even if i was still a student, i wouldn't be happy getting it.
someone also made a comment about people under 20 not using email. it's true to a degree, but wait until they turn 21-22 and graduate and realize that all their job applications and contacts are through email. they may not care if it doesn't work the first 3 years of college, but that last year, it's really important. i'd rather have it through the college than some beta product from google.
funny... most students also prefer to not leave campus to get their computers fixed or to not pay $200 to have a virus removed. most students do use the service that the college provides for computer support.
as for the local phone, it's a small portion of it. the college where i work doesn't even offer long distance anymore because 99% of students have cell phones. it saves the students money in the long run. students also have the option to not go to college.
the students do not get a choice to pay the $200 technology fee. in the grand scheme of things, saving $200 off a $35,000 bill isn't going to do a whole lot. and that $200 gets them wireless all over campus, which is something the students have been wanting for a long time, as well as a completely overhauled email system, computer labs, and support for their computers. ask any sudent if they would prefer to pay the $200 up front of pay individually for each individual service and i'd be willing to bet they'd take the former. it would save them money in the long run if they had to pay for computer service (especially for some of them who i see over and over again).
consider it like paying for insurance. if you never use it, you don't get to reap the benefits and end up spending money for nothing, yet it's required by your state.
You know... I Googled my last name (Rizzo) a while back and one of the top hits was an Italian porn star, Jessica Rizzo. She wasn't particularly attractive and the site was written in all Italian. I wasn't able to read it. I just found it funny.
My full name is far too common to find me by simply Googling my first and last names together. It's not for a few pages on Google (currently) that you get any hits on me (unfortunately, it's LinkedIn, so it's pretty easy to figure out who I am if you have my resume and know anything about my employment history, though if you know that or at least where I live, you can easily find me on Google).
college and universities already do this. they use packetshaping and QoS. the P2P gets throttled the most, generally to the speed of a modem and generally during the day. at night, they open it up a bit, but still keep it low enough so that people using the network for legit activity can do so (and yes, i know that P2P can be used for legitimate stuff, but 99% of the time, it's used to illegally download music and movies). by doing this, we can say we don't block any ports even though the P2P stuff can barely connect.
the students bitch when the internet stops working or gets really slow. they say silly things like "i'm paying $40k to go here, you'd think the internet would work". i tell them that if they're paying that much for an internet connection, they might as well leave the college so that things like classes don't get in the way (yes, i work in college IT). however, most students are actually only paying $200-400 per year in technology fees. this covers the cost of their in room internet connection, the computer labs that get upgraded every 2 years, the software we provide, their email account, their domain account, their in-room cable tv, their local telephone service, the free computer support we provide (there is no laptop program at the college where i work, so the computers are the students), the wireless access points we're putting up all over campus, and part of the salaries of the IT workers who support the students and these technologies. they're actually not paying much for all of this when you think about it. if they had to get their computers fixed by geek squad every time they got a virus or spyware infection, they'd be broke.
i agree 100000%. the acting is was killed those movies for me. i've seen movies with hayden when he was actually good (life as a house). he was awful in the star wars movies. portman was only slightly better in ep1 than she was in 2 and 3. the part of ep2 where hayden kills the sand people was especially bad. he has no emotion when he says he's going to kill them for killing his mother.
the other issue i had with the prequels is that the foreshadowing is laid on so thick. while i knew what anakin becomes, they make it so bad that anyone who hasn't seen the original trilogy can figure out what anakin becomes before ep3. someone who has never seen it should be able to watch ep1-3 without knowing until ep3 that anakin is going to turn to the dark side. while i realize he had to connect ep3 with ep4, it wasn't a smooth transition.
and ep2 was nothing but a really bad love story.
we inform everyone who requests a laptop or an apple computer (the people with apples had to sign something) that they won't get the same level of service as they do with desktops (we use white box machines from a local indie vendor for our desktops so the parts are cheap and we keep them in stock without worrying about warranty or anything like that).
i didn't mean to imply that all faculty are that way, but most of the ones i've encountered are. many can barely figure out how to use the podium computers that are already in the classrooms.
i agree with you on that. IT shouldn't be dictating anything to the business (other than best IT security practices, which always seem to be ignored).
both options are already checked (i went through all the settings when i got the thing). the "accidental input" thing doesn't work so well and the other one does disable it, but it does as it says and disables it when a mouse is present, which is fine for when i have a mouse present, but most of the time i don't.
you seem to be implying that laptops are a need for most users. this just isn't true. the only people who need laptops are those who are on the road all the time. everyone else can work just fine in their office on a desktop. anyone who says otherwise is just trying to get a laptop.
Yes, it is costly to not meet the actual needs of the users, but in most cases, the users artificially inflate their needs so they can have a status symbol (laptop).
I work in a college and most of the people with laptops are those who are out on the road a lot (coaches, recruiters, admissions reps, fund raisers, etc). The rest of the people with laptops just wanted a laptop (faculty members who don't want to work in their office on campus). What none of these users realize is that if something happens to the laptop, it's not a quick fix. In many cases, we have to send them back to the manufacturer for repair. We don't stock parts for them like we do the desktops (and in many cases, it's not possible to stock parts, like video cards, network cards, and all that other stuff that's on the motherboard now).
i just started using a macbook pro. i HATE the size of the touchpad. my hands always hit it when i'm typing, pulling me out of the window i was in or doing something worse. it's really obnoxoius. i much prefer the size of the one on the HP laptop i used to have.
the only thing i like better about this is the two finger tap to get the right click menu. my HP had the scroll area that worked fine for scrolling.
except SUV's are longer. so being higher doesn't mean anything, unless you mean a jeep wrangler (and is that even an SUV?).
being higher in a vehicle doesn't make it safer, it just makes you higher.
SUV's are actually no safer than smaller cars (i'm talking your corollas, civics, etc, not smartcars).
drivers in SUV's don't have the same vision out the back that smaller cars do, and they have bigger blind spots. most people who drive them don't take any of that into consideration because they think that they're safer and can do no harm.
so a global group search on facebook and you'll see that there are 16 groups with "OpenSocial" in their name. they're all currently growing in size.
apple would ruin the already uber-functional tivo interface and give you a remote with a crappy click wheel.
i guess dreamworks doesn't fit into that category. they use HP and linux. i guess apple isn't THE platform.
you can do anything just as easily on a windows box as you can on an apple.
and apple tried to make a photoshop killer app with aperture... but it fell short. i'd like to see GIMP become that killer app.
comparing your phone number to your domain is apples and oranges. a better comparison would be your email address, which can still be private (use a separate one to register the domain, have a personal one that you don't post anywhere public). i don't know about your phone company, but any phone company i've been in business with (at least landlines), you have to pay to keep your phone number unlisted.
you can be private on the internet, there are tons of free services that allow you to post your anonymous opinions on the internet.
tracking down the owners is important if the domain is infringing on someone else's rights.
i get no spam, extra mail (or people coming to my door), or telemarketing calls from my domain registrations.
if you run a non-profit, you're giving up your address anyways. to incorporate as a non-profit, you have to give an actual street address (not a PO box).
people can also find out who owns what house through public records. there's no reason domain information should not be public.