If you want some truly comfortable ear buds that sound very good and don't cost too much, check out the Sony Fontopias. They're a little weak on the bass, as you'd expect from such tiny drivers, but they're unblievably comfy, and they don't feel like they're going to fall out of your ears all the time. They also do a damned fine job of shutting out ambient noise.
Arby's has already tried this. In San Jose, CA (on Stevens Creek Blvd), there is an Arby's restaurant with touch screen displays for ordering. They have a bank of five or six screens where you can order your food, and they've been there for at least six years. I guess I shouldn't say that...I haven't been to that restaurant since I moved out of CA, three years ago. I'd assume it's still there, though. I thought they were great, and a lot of people seemed to agree with me, especially during lunch rush. Some older people wouldn't even acknowledge their presence, but most folks seemed to use'em. Money was taken, and orders were filled by people, but it was two or three people handling all of the order lines, usually with no significant delays. A very nice system, IMHO, since it gives the person on the other side of the counter less of a chance to screw up your order. Generally, when my order was screwed up, it was because I tapped the wrong bit of the screen! I'm all in favor of this stuff, personally. Sadly, Arby's seems to have decided that the automated ordering thing was not successful enough to spread around.
What an annoying assumption. John C. Dvorak didn't come up with this keyboard layout. It was devised by Drs. August Dvorak and William Dealey in the 1930's. You can read more here
I believe you're thinking of Borders, not BN. BN and Amazon are still bitter enemies, AFAIK. Amazon has taken over Borders, We Be Toys 'N Shit, and a few others. BN is still separate, but a sad shadow of Amazon.com.
If you really want to Fight the Man(TM), you might want to check out Powell's City of Books
It's *far* from being that simple. Firstly, a single zip code will frequently cover multiple taxation areas. Secondly, there's a ton of variation in which items are taxable (and at what rate) and which aren't. Some states don't tax groceries, some don't tax clothing, some don't tax shoes. Thirdly, payment schedules, methods, and contacts are all over the map (pun intended).
I hope you're joking. It *does* run Linux. It's the big brother to the Sharp SL-5000 and SL-5500. The SL-C700 is a clamshell version of the same gadget, and isn't available in the US yes.
The worst title I ever saw like this is "Understanding SOAP." Admittedly, there are more than a few programmers that need this book under either of its possible meanings, but it still got me some odd looks when I was buying it.
Actually, most movies make more from the DVD release than from the box office. Most of that money comes in the form of rentals. Check out this page for more info. It's part of a larger feature called The Monster That Ate Hollywood
Of course, you still can't compare the two, because renting CDs doesn't happen, for various reasons.
Well actually, it'll connect to something Compaq calls "internet radio" whatever that is.
I'm listening to Rhapsody radio right now. At the lo-fi setting, it has some sort of weird harmonics going on. At hi-fi, I'd be hogging a significant portion of the bandwidth at work.:]
First and foremost: don't put the spices above the stove. For that matter, don't put them right next to it or in front or behind it either. Heat and light aren't good for spices, especially if you use any fresh spices. If you've got one of those froofy spice racks with glass jars, toss it out. Put your spices either in opaque containers or in a dark cupboard AWAY FROM HEAT!
WinTV has just announced some new PVR products, the top two of which will do hardware MPEG-II encoding. The most expensive one also has hardware decoding. Creative Labs' board also has hardware encoding, though it does have some limitations that put some people off. Read about it at AVS Forum in the Home Theater Computers forum.
They've also "promised" that it'll be brain-damaged and will only allow 480p output, regardless of the ability of your equipment. This is apparently due to some legal requirement imposed by the DVD Consortium or whatever that band of idiotic thieves is called.
The Radeon 8500 is seriously broken for playing DVDs on a very high quality display. The gamma correction is screwed up, preventing proper display of many scenes. Furthermore, the AIW is a somewhat inferior capture card.
FWIW, ATI has given a prerelease driver to one of the AVS Forum's most prominent members for testing and he claims the gamma correction problem is fixed in that driver. Who knows when the drivier will be released and if it will be even remotely stable...many of their most recent drivers are pure, unadulterated fecal matter.
I'm an Oracle DBA, and I can't disagree with you. However, I have to add that a properly configured and provisioned MySQL server would also have lasted a lot longer.
Remember: A sufficiently bad programmer can write COBOL in any language.
I feel the same way. In fact, I've frequently wished my TiVo let me give thumbs up/down to commercials. That way I could tell those Jackasses at Old Navy that I'll never buy one of their products due to their moronic ads. OTOH, I'm more inclined to eat at Jack in the Box (in spite of the suckage of their food) because their commercials are hilarious. I just wanna be able to tell'em that!
I'm a pretty hard-core TiVo user, but I frequently watch ads. I'm not sure *why* I do, but I do. Mostly I hit that FF button when I'm really into the show or when the commercial's obnoxious...like those fsckin' Ford commercials with dogoffal country music playing.
but still too expensive. Kenwood has a product called the Entre Entertainment Hub that truly integrates with a stereo system, controls a DVD changer, and even offers remote listening if you buy the extra Axcess Remote Portal gadget. Unfortunately, the Entre all by itself is $1800 and the other bits that hook up to it are similarly expensive.
If you think Oracle's a big headache, you've obviously never worked in an Oracle shop with a competent DBA. I've never used those wacky, off-the-wall, CA databases (except Ingres), but I have used DB2, Sybase, Ingres, Informix, SQL-Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Of all those, the only two I would currently recommend for a high performance 24x7 shop are DB2 and Oracle. For low speed work, especially when weekly down-time is allowed, all of them work just fine. I would not under any circumstances buy a CA product, though...I've had such horrible experiences with them that I'd sooner use Microsoft stuff than CA. Luckily, there are other choices in the world than those two.
I'm glad to finally see somebody else that realizes this. I'm an experienced Oracle DBA and I've quit more than one contract because of a complete lack of work. I finally ended up starting a consulting company and working for as many as 7 companies at once, just to stay busy. Even with that many customers, I was only working about 25 hours a week. Working with a new database is a full-time job for a little while. Coming in on an old database that's never had a competent DBA and getting it up to snuff is a full-time job for quite a while. After that's over though, a few hours a week is more than enough. I've handled as many as 50 databases at a time in much less than 40 hours per week and I could handle many times more than that if I really wanted/needed to. I always tell people that if they want a DBA on staff, they should train one of their developers or admins to do double-duty. Unfortunately, few companies take my advice. Even more unfortunately, the ones who DO take my advice forget that they need to pay a qualified DBA as if he/she is a qualified DBA, rather than a Jr Sys Admin or whatever.
I've been searching all over for good ways to make my computers essentially invisible. I finally ended up just sticking them in a closet (with a really badly hung door so they ventilate just fine) and running cables out to the monitor and keyboard.
I just don't get the deal with making the thing more obvious, I guess. I'd like a system where the monitor and keyboard disappeared when I wasn't using them. I've looked at armoires and such but they're so huge. Maybe someday laptops will come with video cards that don't suck ass.
"nice collaboration software like Lotus Notes, or Exchange"
WHAT?? If you really *really* need collaboration software, then I guess Notes is okay, but EXCHANGE? This thing is a security hole waiting to happen, not to mention an administrative black hole. On the up side, it's collaborative capabilities are strictly a huge pile of steaming fecal matter.
There are at least a thousand system out there that beat exchange hands down, and many of them are free. Exchange coupled with Outlook is probably the worst combination I've ever seen. Notes is fine for collaboration, but it's email client is still the electronic equivalent of a hot poker up the rectum.
I wish corporate IT types would wake up, look around, and discover that "popular" or "free with MS Office" doesn't mean "qood" or "useful."
I disagree completely about running your own mail server. Most cable/DSL connections are hopelessly lame as far as reliability is concerned. On top of that, you will almost always be directly in violation of the ISP's terms of service agreement and thus liable to lose your connectivity without notice.
On top of all that, then you have to start worrying about crackers, backups, bounced e-mail, keeping up on patches, and all sorts of other crap.
I had an idiot friend who thought he'd run a domain for us on his host connected to a cable modem. It was about 90% reliable (which all of us in the industry know is unacceptable), mostly due to his lame attempts at being a security wonk. To make matters worse, the moron posted on the usenet security lists quite a lot, thus throwing down the gauntlet to every script kiddie in the world.
Running your own server is to a Linux user what writing your own text editor is to a programmer...it's something that seems like a great idea and something that everybody has to try at least once. After that, you can move on to something useful and more enjoyable.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want some truly comfortable ear buds that sound very good and don't cost too much, check out the Sony Fontopias. They're a little weak on the bass, as you'd expect from such tiny drivers, but they're unblievably comfy, and they don't feel like they're going to fall out of your ears all the time. They also do a damned fine job of shutting out ambient noise.
Arby's has already tried this. In San Jose, CA (on Stevens Creek Blvd), there is an Arby's restaurant with touch screen displays for ordering. They have a bank of five or six screens where you can order your food, and they've been there for at least six years. I guess I shouldn't say that...I haven't been to that restaurant since I moved out of CA, three years ago. I'd assume it's still there, though. I thought they were great, and a lot of people seemed to agree with me, especially during lunch rush. Some older people wouldn't even acknowledge their presence, but most folks seemed to use'em. Money was taken, and orders were filled by people, but it was two or three people handling all of the order lines, usually with no significant delays. A very nice system, IMHO, since it gives the person on the other side of the counter less of a chance to screw up your order. Generally, when my order was screwed up, it was because I tapped the wrong bit of the screen! I'm all in favor of this stuff, personally. Sadly, Arby's seems to have decided that the automated ordering thing was not successful enough to spread around.
What an annoying assumption. John C. Dvorak didn't come up with this keyboard layout. It was devised by Drs. August Dvorak and William Dealey in the 1930's. You can read more here
I believe you're thinking of Borders, not BN. BN and Amazon are still bitter enemies, AFAIK. Amazon has taken over Borders, We Be Toys 'N Shit, and a few others. BN is still separate, but a sad shadow of Amazon.com.
If you really want to Fight the Man(TM), you might want to check out Powell's City of Books
It's *far* from being that simple. Firstly, a single zip code will frequently cover multiple taxation areas. Secondly, there's a ton of variation in which items are taxable (and at what rate) and which aren't. Some states don't tax groceries, some don't tax clothing, some don't tax shoes. Thirdly, payment schedules, methods, and contacts are all over the map (pun intended).
I hope you're joking. It *does* run Linux. It's the big brother to the Sharp SL-5000 and SL-5500. The SL-C700 is a clamshell version of the same gadget, and isn't available in the US yes.
The worst title I ever saw like this is "Understanding SOAP." Admittedly, there are more than a few programmers that need this book under either of its possible meanings, but it still got me some odd looks when I was buying it.
Actually, most movies make more from the DVD release than from the box office. Most of that money comes in the form of rentals. Check out this page for more info. It's part of a larger feature called The Monster That Ate Hollywood
Of course, you still can't compare the two, because renting CDs doesn't happen, for various reasons.
It's actually only 76 virgins, IIRC. I think they mistranslated the original writings, though. It's really supposed to be "76 Vogons"
Well actually, it'll connect to something Compaq calls "internet radio" whatever that is.
:]
I'm listening to Rhapsody radio right now. At the lo-fi setting, it has some sort of weird harmonics going on. At hi-fi, I'd be hogging a significant portion of the bandwidth at work.
First and foremost: don't put the spices above the stove. For that matter, don't put them right next to it or in front or behind it either. Heat and light aren't good for spices, especially if you use any fresh spices. If you've got one of those froofy spice racks with glass jars, toss it out. Put your spices either in opaque containers or in a dark cupboard AWAY FROM HEAT!
Check out the bright orange O'Reilly books about Oracle. One of them has an ant on it. It creeps me out...I hate ants.
WinTV has just announced some new PVR products, the top two of which will do hardware MPEG-II encoding. The most expensive one also has hardware decoding. Creative Labs' board also has hardware encoding, though it does have some limitations that put some people off. Read about it at AVS Forum in the Home Theater Computers forum.
They've also "promised" that it'll be brain-damaged and will only allow 480p output, regardless of the ability of your equipment. This is apparently due to some legal requirement imposed by the DVD Consortium or whatever that band of idiotic thieves is called.
The Radeon 8500 is seriously broken for playing DVDs on a very high quality display. The gamma correction is screwed up, preventing proper display of many scenes. Furthermore, the AIW is a somewhat inferior capture card.
If you really want to know what cooks, check out the Granddaddy of A/V Forums and look in their Home Theater Computers Forum. There are two threads in particular of interest:
HTPC FAQ
Best in Class HTPC Component Listing
FWIW, ATI has given a prerelease driver to one of the AVS Forum's most prominent members for testing and he claims the gamma correction problem is fixed in that driver. Who knows when the drivier will be released and if it will be even remotely stable...many of their most recent drivers are pure, unadulterated fecal matter.
I'm an Oracle DBA, and I can't disagree with you. However, I have to add that a properly configured and provisioned MySQL server would also have lasted a lot longer.
Remember: A sufficiently bad programmer can write COBOL in any language.
I feel the same way. In fact, I've frequently wished my TiVo let me give thumbs up/down to commercials. That way I could tell those Jackasses at Old Navy that I'll never buy one of their products due to their moronic ads. OTOH, I'm more inclined to eat at Jack in the Box (in spite of the suckage of their food) because their commercials are hilarious. I just wanna be able to tell'em that!
I'm a pretty hard-core TiVo user, but I frequently watch ads. I'm not sure *why* I do, but I do. Mostly I hit that FF button when I'm really into the show or when the commercial's obnoxious...like those fsckin' Ford commercials with dogoffal country music playing.
but still too expensive. Kenwood has a product called the Entre Entertainment Hub that truly integrates with a stereo system, controls a DVD changer, and even offers remote listening if you buy the extra Axcess Remote Portal gadget. Unfortunately, the Entre all by itself is $1800 and the other bits that hook up to it are similarly expensive.
If you think Oracle's a big headache, you've obviously never worked in an Oracle shop with a competent DBA. I've never used those wacky, off-the-wall, CA databases (except Ingres), but I have used DB2, Sybase, Ingres, Informix, SQL-Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. Of all those, the only two I would currently recommend for a high performance 24x7 shop are DB2 and Oracle. For low speed work, especially when weekly down-time is allowed, all of them work just fine. I would not under any circumstances buy a CA product, though...I've had such horrible experiences with them that I'd sooner use Microsoft stuff than CA. Luckily, there are other choices in the world than those two.
I'm glad to finally see somebody else that realizes this. I'm an experienced Oracle DBA and I've quit more than one contract because of a complete lack of work. I finally ended up starting a consulting company and working for as many as 7 companies at once, just to stay busy. Even with that many customers, I was only working about 25 hours a week. Working with a new database is a full-time job for a little while. Coming in on an old database that's never had a competent DBA and getting it up to snuff is a full-time job for quite a while. After that's over though, a few hours a week is more than enough. I've handled as many as 50 databases at a time in much less than 40 hours per week and I could handle many times more than that if I really wanted/needed to. I always tell people that if they want a DBA on staff, they should train one of their developers or admins to do double-duty. Unfortunately, few companies take my advice. Even more unfortunately, the ones who DO take my advice forget that they need to pay a qualified DBA as if he/she is a qualified DBA, rather than a Jr Sys Admin or whatever.
The number of IQ points in the univers is a constant. Population is increasing. Do the math. 8)
Get the Gateway Connected Home Audio Player thingie. I have one and it's absolutely wunnerful.
I've been searching all over for good ways to make my computers essentially invisible. I finally ended up just sticking them in a closet (with a really badly hung door so they ventilate just fine) and running cables out to the monitor and keyboard.
I just don't get the deal with making the thing more obvious, I guess. I'd like a system where the monitor and keyboard disappeared when I wasn't using them. I've looked at armoires and such but they're so huge. Maybe someday laptops will come with video cards that don't suck ass.
"nice collaboration software like Lotus Notes, or Exchange"
WHAT?? If you really *really* need collaboration software, then I guess Notes is okay, but EXCHANGE? This thing is a security hole waiting to happen, not to mention an administrative black hole. On the up side, it's collaborative capabilities are strictly a huge pile of steaming fecal matter.
There are at least a thousand system out there that beat exchange hands down, and many of them are free. Exchange coupled with Outlook is probably the worst combination I've ever seen. Notes is fine for collaboration, but it's email client is still the electronic equivalent of a hot poker up the rectum.
I wish corporate IT types would wake up, look around, and discover that "popular" or "free with MS Office" doesn't mean "qood" or "useful."
I disagree completely about running your own mail server. Most cable/DSL connections are hopelessly lame as far as reliability is concerned. On top of that, you will almost always be directly in violation of the ISP's terms of service agreement and thus liable to lose your connectivity without notice.
On top of all that, then you have to start worrying about crackers, backups, bounced e-mail, keeping up on patches, and all sorts of other crap.
I had an idiot friend who thought he'd run a domain for us on his host connected to a cable modem. It was about 90% reliable (which all of us in the industry know is unacceptable), mostly due to his lame attempts at being a security wonk. To make matters worse, the moron posted on the usenet security lists quite a lot, thus throwing down the gauntlet to every script kiddie in the world.
Running your own server is to a Linux user what writing your own text editor is to a programmer...it's something that seems like a great idea and something that everybody has to try at least once. After that, you can move on to something useful and more enjoyable.