-- There are some mini-silicon valleys, with Cambridge MA, Austin TX, and Raleigh-Durham VA being the most recognizable. --
I wouldn't call Cambridge "mini" -- I think you are forgetting it's part of the only other original "silicon valley"-like area: The Massachusetts Route 128 Corridor. It didn't have as catchy a name, but during the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was as much a force in High Tech as the actual Silicon Valley. With original "founding" businesses like Wang, Digital Equipment, Mitre and Data General, along with its proximity to MIT, Rt 128 over-shadowed the Silicon Valley for many years. It was only in the 1980s when PC and software companies like Apple and Microsoft boomed, that Rt 128 started to wane in it's importance.
Probably Tivo probably can't track commercials effectively because there are several levels of commercial sponsorship:
-- The network commercials that are inserted by the parent network themselves. (Like FOX, ABC, HBO)
-- the regional or cable-provider based ones that are inserted into the proper space by the cable provider (Adelphia or Comcast corporate level)
-- and then the local ads inserted by your local cable provider. (Comcast of Whoville.)
Have you ever seen a commercial startup for 1 or 2 seconds, and then switch to something else? That's the regional cable provider inserting their own content over the National feed. (or local inserting over regional).
Tivo would likely only be able to track the national feed, and if you hit THUMBS UP on a particular 30 second ad, it would look like you approved of the national ad, even if you were approving the ad for your neighborhood sports bar.
By Google:
"Well that's awesome, maybe now ill be able to search through TV shows to find exactly the ones that I want and skip all the ones that aren't worth watching."
you have to change your password once every 2 weeks
I used to work a fortune 30 company that shall remained un-named which had a similar password changing policy. Know what the end result was? You could log on to almost any user account with a password like "march2006", "march2006-2", etc....
I'm all for changing passwords, but force it TOO frequently and you defeat the whole purpose of having passwords.
It sounds like Best Buy's I.T. ARE a bunch of asshats.
Way back in the days of DOS I discovered a very effective way of describing "files", "directories" and "drives" to new computer users. (I was tasked with giving new managers some basic computer training at a large company.)
Every single one of them "got it" when described like this: (condensed for Slashdot, the original explanation was even simpler)
Visualize a 2 drawer file cabinet. The top drawer is labeled "C:", the bottom drawer is "D:". Open the "C" drawer -- you can put paper in there, right? Those pieces of paper are your "files". To keep them organized, you probably want to use manila folders, right? Those are your directories. So if you want to file this bill from the electric company on your File Cabinet "computer", you'd open drawer C:, find the folder called "Bills" and place the piece of paper named "January Electric Bill" in it. On a (windows) computer you would write that as C:\utilities\january electric bill
Interestingly, just a few days ago there was a thread on the WoW Warlock forum, started by a woman player who wanted the Succubus skin to be able to be replaced by an Incubus skin if the player so chose.
The Succubus in WoW is a summoned demon that basically looks like a porn star with bat wings and a whip. The poster said she was sick of being followed around by a stripper and wanted to get an Incubus (the male form of the same demon) cause she felt like an idiot running around with the succubus moaning and spanking itself every so often.
Re:The show will need local humor appeal
on
Homer Becomes Omar
·
· Score: 1
Except their mayor has a distict resemblance to a certain Massachusetts Democrat senator with a penchant for taking his car for a swim....
And although there IS a Springfield, Mass., I think Springfield in this case = Anytown, USA.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not from the USA and don't know any better.
There are only a handful of communities in the US that are trying to stupidly incorporate
Intelligent Design (I.e., "Creationism") into their school systems. Perhaps a total of 20.
If you consult your atlas, you'll see that the US has 50 states, most of which have hundreds of individual school districts.
So your blanket statement is automatically absurd.
Forget Joe Public or the "average home user", I like the out-of-the-box option, too. I F*** with computers all day, the last thing I want to do is come home and mess with them some more just to watch TV. I have two Tivo's -- and 40 and an 80hour, and I couldn't be more pleased.
When and if TIVO starts implementing the auto-delete feature on shows, I may re-evaluate. (if it affects what I watch) but for now Tivo is still great.
People have to accept that rights management is something we're going have to deal with. It sucks, and I don't like it, but I've got many more important things to worry about before DRM becomes a priority to me.
And before anyone starts in on the "oh they've already deleted stuff off of people's TIVO's" bit -- Tivo has admitted it, said it was a mistake and said it's part of a future change that isn't ready for roll-out and it only "escaped" to regular users by accident.
This happens to me every few weeks and usually lasts a minute or two. Not a big deal, but certainly not going to meet your reliability requirements.
I'm not so sure. the poster said he needed 99.9% uptime. If I did my math right, that means he's willing to deal with over two 40 hour work weeks of downtime! (87.6 hours)
I haven't had any where near that amount of downtime with Gmail since I got it back in July of 2004.
Quoth Vengie: "You cannot "fend off looters" unless you have reasonable belief that you are in mortal danger. If you discharge a firearm in any fashion to stop such looting, you'll be hard put to use self defense as you've responded with ostensibly deadly force."
Actually it depends where you are. In some places you can only kill someone if you are in immediate fear of your life, in others you can defend your property.
How timely considering Seti@home has been offline for a week and all the users have this really keen "Boinc is currently idle" floating screensaver. Maybe they've been hacked by Aliens who didn't want to be discovered. "I for one welcome our new alien hacker overlords."
quoth the poster: "Actually, reports are that they are better for RSI's. The force level isn't taht much higher than a cheap keyboard, but you get positive feedback, both audible, and tactile, when the contact is made. This helps a lot."
Also, because the tactile feedback occurs BEFORE the key bottoms-out, the typist is already releasing the key when (or if) it does bottom-out. This results in much less impact and strain in the hand and fingers.
Similarly.... I hate the use of present tense verbs to describe past events to make the TV news headline more "action packed". For instance, on the 6:00pm news: "A car crashes during the morning commute, killing two." I want to call them up ansd say, "Excuse me -- that happened HOURS ago, shouldn't it be, "A car CRASHED during the morning commute. Two people were killed."
If I remember correctly, In "The World of Star Trek" , a book that came out in the 70's all about Star Trek -- the US Navy actually came to the set of the Original Series to study the layout of the bridge control panels. Roddenberry and the set designers gave a lot of thought to the "ergonomics" of the controls when the were designing the bridge and the Navy supposedly utilized some of those ideas in their ships.
I'm not sure where you saw that Netflix will charge you for "late" movies. Checking their website just now, they only say they will charge you for outstanding rentals if you cancel the service. Nothing about charging you after any set amount of time. From their website:
Provided you continue to be a paying subscriber of our service, you may keep the DVDs delivered to you as long as you like. We do not impose any required return dates (other than upon cancellation of the service). Given that we have no required return dates, we do not charge any late fees. You will be required to return the movies within 7 days following any cancellation of the service or be subject to charge for unreturned DVDs...
Or they'll go completely nuts and make Wonder Woman a homosexual male cross-dresser. Then they'll air it on Bravo with a cameo of the Queer Eye guys designing "her" suit and decorating the secret hideout.
Slashdot Mirror
Ooops. Sorry ubeans -- that'll teach me not to read ALL the comments....
Anyone else see the irony that Duke Nukem Forever's initials are exactly the same abbreviation used in auto racing stats for "Did Not Finish"?
I wouldn't call Cambridge "mini" -- I think you are forgetting it's part of the only other original "silicon valley"-like area: The Massachusetts Route 128 Corridor. It didn't have as catchy a name, but during the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was as much a force in High Tech as the actual Silicon Valley. With original "founding" businesses like Wang, Digital Equipment, Mitre and Data General, along with its proximity to MIT, Rt 128 over-shadowed the Silicon Valley for many years. It was only in the 1980s when PC and software companies like Apple and Microsoft boomed, that Rt 128 started to wane in it's importance.
Probably Tivo probably can't track commercials effectively because there are several levels of commercial sponsorship:
-- The network commercials that are inserted by the parent network themselves. (Like FOX, ABC, HBO)
-- the regional or cable-provider based ones that are inserted into the proper space by the cable provider (Adelphia or Comcast corporate level)
-- and then the local ads inserted by your local cable provider. (Comcast of Whoville.)
Have you ever seen a commercial startup for 1 or 2 seconds, and then switch to something else? That's the regional cable provider inserting their own content over the National feed. (or local inserting over regional).
Tivo would likely only be able to track the national feed, and if you hit THUMBS UP on a particular 30 second ad, it would look like you approved of the national ad, even if you were approving the ad for your neighborhood sports bar.
That's the first step to Googlezon and the Google Grid!
Why do I envision a sudden surge of phone calls to Apple support saying, "Hi, This is Woz. I need....."
I used to work a fortune 30 company that shall remained un-named which had a similar password changing policy. Know what the end result was? You could log on to almost any user account with a password like "march2006", "march2006-2", etc....
I'm all for changing passwords, but force it TOO frequently and you defeat the whole purpose of having passwords.
It sounds like Best Buy's I.T. ARE a bunch of asshats.
Way back in the days of DOS I discovered a very effective way of describing "files", "directories" and "drives" to new computer users. (I was tasked with giving new managers some basic computer training at a large company.)
Every single one of them "got it" when described like this: (condensed for Slashdot, the original explanation was even simpler)
Visualize a 2 drawer file cabinet. The top drawer is labeled "C:", the bottom drawer is "D:".
Open the "C" drawer -- you can put paper in there, right? Those pieces of paper are your "files". To keep them organized, you probably want to use manila folders, right? Those are your directories. So if you want to file this bill from the electric company on your File Cabinet "computer", you'd open drawer C:, find the folder called "Bills" and place the piece of paper named "January Electric Bill" in it.
On a (windows) computer you would write that as C:\utilities\january electric bill
What about cupholder.exe ....?
Interestingly, just a few days ago there was a thread on the WoW Warlock forum, started by a woman player who wanted the Succubus skin to be able to be replaced by an Incubus skin if the player so chose.
The Succubus in WoW is a summoned demon that basically looks like a porn star with bat wings and a whip. The poster said she was sick of being followed around by a stripper and wanted to get an Incubus (the male form of the same demon) cause she felt like an idiot running around with the succubus moaning and spanking itself every so often.
Except their mayor has a distict resemblance to a certain Massachusetts Democrat senator with a penchant for taking his car for a swim....
And although there IS a Springfield, Mass., I think Springfield in this case = Anytown, USA.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not from the USA and don't know any better. There are only a handful of communities in the US that are trying to stupidly incorporate Intelligent Design (I.e., "Creationism") into their school systems. Perhaps a total of 20.
If you consult your atlas, you'll see that the US has 50 states, most of which have hundreds of individual school districts.
So your blanket statement is automatically absurd.
Forget Joe Public or the "average home user", I like the out-of-the-box option, too. I F*** with computers all day, the last thing I want to do is come home and mess with them some more just to watch TV. I have two Tivo's -- and 40 and an 80hour, and I couldn't be more pleased.
When and if TIVO starts implementing the auto-delete feature on shows, I may re-evaluate. (if it affects what I watch) but for now Tivo is still great.
People have to accept that rights management is something we're going have to deal with. It sucks, and I don't like it, but I've got many more important things to worry about before DRM becomes a priority to me.
And before anyone starts in on the "oh they've already deleted stuff off of people's TIVO's" bit -- Tivo has admitted it, said it was a mistake and said it's part of a future change that isn't ready for roll-out and it only "escaped" to regular users by accident.
This happens to me every few weeks and usually lasts a minute or two. Not a big deal, but certainly not going to meet your reliability requirements.
I'm not so sure. the poster said he needed 99.9% uptime. If I did my math right, that means he's willing to deal with over two 40 hour work weeks of downtime! (87.6 hours) I haven't had any where near that amount of downtime with Gmail since I got it back in July of 2004.
Quoth Vengie: "You cannot "fend off looters" unless you have reasonable belief that you are in mortal danger. If you discharge a firearm in any fashion to stop such looting, you'll be hard put to use self defense as you've responded with ostensibly deadly force."
Actually it depends where you are. In some places you can only kill someone if you are in immediate fear of your life, in others you can defend your property.
How timely considering Seti@home has been offline for a week and all the users have this really keen "Boinc is currently idle" floating screensaver.
Maybe they've been hacked by Aliens who didn't want to be discovered.
"I for one welcome our new alien hacker overlords."
.
Damn, for a second I thought you wrote KFC employees, and I thought, "They need fried chicken for the flight back?"
Also, because the tactile feedback occurs BEFORE the key bottoms-out, the typist is already releasing the key when (or if) it does bottom-out. This results in much less impact and strain in the hand and fingers.
Similarly .... I hate the use of present tense verbs to describe past events to make the TV news headline more "action packed". For instance, on the 6:00pm news: "A car crashes during the morning commute, killing two." I want to call them up ansd say, "Excuse me -- that happened HOURS ago, shouldn't it be, "A car CRASHED during the morning commute. Two people were killed."
That bugs the crap out of me...
If you grew up in the 70s and 80s, that IS what you did!
To steal a phrase:
"In the USSR, school educates YOU"
Why not? We've already had a Starfleet officer serve on Jury Duty for a high profile court case.
If I remember correctly, In "The World of Star Trek" , a book that came out in the 70's all about Star Trek -- the US Navy actually came to the set of the Original Series to study the layout of the bridge control panels. Roddenberry and the set designers gave a lot of thought to the "ergonomics" of the controls when the were designing the bridge and the Navy supposedly utilized some of those ideas in their ships.
I'm not sure where you saw that Netflix will charge you for "late" movies. Checking their website just now, they only say they will charge you for outstanding rentals if you cancel the service. Nothing about charging you after any set amount of time. From their website:
Provided you continue to be a paying subscriber of our service, you may keep the DVDs delivered to you as long as you like. We do not impose any required return dates (other than upon cancellation of the service). Given that we have no required return dates, we do not charge any late fees. You will be required to return the movies within 7 days following any cancellation of the service or be subject to charge for unreturned DVDs...
Or they'll go completely nuts and make Wonder Woman a homosexual male cross-dresser. Then they'll air it on Bravo with a cameo of the Queer Eye guys designing "her" suit and decorating the secret hideout.