Wow, yet another "I didn't read the article, but I feel fully qualified to comment on it" response...
For you and others like you, it specifically states that a pop-up box appears and requires the user to accept the download, and they rely on the fact that 99.999999% of the non-slashdot population immediately assumes it is something they need and click "Yes".
I didn't *have* to put in a new hard drive, I just chose to do it since I was going to have to format and install a new OS. That way I could simply copy over the files from the old HD when I needed them.
Admittedly, I could have worded my initial post a little better, but the hard drive installation was not a requirement for getting the card to work.
I recently purchased the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV card, and I've been quite happy with it so far.
I had Windows ME installed, and after installing the video card and the accompanying software drivers it worked. Then I installed Ulead's Video Studio 5 and it killed my system. It took 10+ minutes to boot, I couldn't access my CD-RW or DVD-ROM drive, and everything was really slow.
I put in a new hard drive and did a fresh install of Win2K, installed all the drivers and everything as before, installed Video Studio 5, and everything works fine.
I replaced a GeForce 2 GTS card and a Pinnacle Micro DC30 capture card with a single card that gives me better performance, better input/output options AND gives me two Firewire ports.
The card comes with all the multimedia software and drivers, a free copy of Half Life with CS and TF, Ulead Video Studio 5, the RF remote with batteries and a USB RF receiver, a composite video cable, S-video cable, i-Link to Firewire cable, DVI to VGA adapter and a very nice break-out box cable with Firewire, composite, S-Video and digital audio ports. There was another CD of some sort of multimedia presentation software that went on the shelf with all my other "it came free with the (device) and I'll probably never use it" software.
I have already captured video from my Sony Hi-8 camcorder and burned a video CD with relative ease (I'd done it before, so it wasn't something new to me).
I have a DV camcorder arriving tomorrow, and I can't wait to check out the world of digital video capture.
If the new 7500 is even half as good as the 8500 (at right about half the price) it's worth the money, IMHO.
The only problems I have are:
1) The included RF remote isn't a universal remote, so since I have my satellite receiver hooked to the coax input on the card, I have to use the satellite remote to change the channel, and then I have to use the ATI remote (which is a nice remote, BTW!) to adjust volume, etc.
2) There is no way to change the video input from within the included video capture software (Ulead Video Studio 5). If there is a way, I haven't been able to figure it out.
Hell, they might as well find the entire AOL Time-Warner conglomerate inadequate, round up all the suits, shoot them, and use their carcasses to make pet food, hot dogs, and spam.
Ewww... don't we get enough SPAM from AOL already?
My Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 has real handwriting recognition, whereas Micro$oft Winblows CE (note clever use of subliminal imagery) does not.
Except for the fact that there is free software available from Microsoft called Transcriber (or Calligrapher) that does give you true handwriting recognition on the Pocket PC
My Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 has a PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) slot for easy expansion, whereas those dolts at "Fu" "jitsu" didn't put one in to their so-called "innovative" "PDA." Nice try, guys. While you're listening to "digital music", I'll be surfing the Internet using a real web browser and getting e-mail on a large screen.
Most Pocket PCs include a Compact Flash Type I/II slot which means that we can add wireless NICs, modems, digital cameras, micro-drives, etc., just in a slightly different (smaller) format that what you use.
I am boycotting Micro$oft, but I am not boycotting Apple. Another plus for me!
Right before I started to work at Best Buy (a long time ago, when I was still young and naive) one of the other employees had been caught.
It appears that he was taking the cases of laser printer paper, unloading the reams onto the shelves for sale, and then packing the empty cases with high-end merchandise, sound cards, hard drives, etc., and putting the plastic bands around the case to 'seal' it back up.
He would then stash the box at the back of the shelf of printer paper, and the next day walk into the store, put the case of 'paper' in his cart, pay the $25 for a case of 'paper' and walk out with hundreds of dollars of equipment.
At the time, Packard Bell was having a deal - buy a PC, get a free Creative Labs Sound Blaster sound card. There was a case of 100+ OEM packaged sound cards (no boxes, just card and disks) that all grew legs and walked out of the store that way...
Plus you have to pay a minimum listing fee for every auction and a share of the total sales price. Even if it cost you only $2 per auction, you would have to invest $12,000 and a lot of your person time to rack up a 6000+ positive feedback... of course if you turn around and scam $200,000 - $400,000 it might be worth it... right up until the point where you get caught...
Well, Napster may have had 6 million, but how many of those downloaded every song?
And if they had, the artist would have been out how much money? $13,800 if you figure $0.0023 per download.
Maybe all those music videos have lied to me, but it seems to me that most artists (the kind of artists who would rate 6 million downloads) wouldn't even take the time to depost a $14K check...
Not if you quickly write a check to the RIAA. Figure $0.0023/song/passenger, so if you had 3 passengers listening to say, 10 songs, you owe somebody $0.069. Better round up to an even $0.07 to be sure. Pay up or else.
You just have to release it as an e-book and then release it as a dead-tree book 3-6 months later.
There are enough hard-core fans who will refuse to wait the 3-6 months to make it successful.
I just hope whoever publishes it considers that there are multiple types of e-book readers out there and doesn't try to tie it to only one format:-(
This is no different than health inspectors demanding to see the conditions of a food-packaging facility.
Would you want the government to take the word of the people that run the meat-packing plant that everything inside is clean and tidy, or do you want inspectors going inside and looking for themselves?
Microsoft set themselves up by claiming that they can't strip out that code but then refuses to allow the government to review that code.
The problem is, someone *buys* an account, pays the money, and then the guy never delivers. Who do they complain to?
The game manufacturer.
Another instance - player pays for an account, gets the account handed to them, then two days later they find that their password no longer works, because the original owner called up and said their account was 'hacked' and since they can prove they are the original owner, they get the password reset and get the account back. Who does the *victim* complain to?
That being said, if the ISPs want to limit bandwidth usage, they of course must say so in their TOS or user contracts. Advertizing "unlimited access" and then being surprised when people use it like that is even more idiotic...
That's exactly what almost did in DirecPC's satellite internet service. They advertised "Unlimited access" for $XX per month (where XX depends on whether you wanted daytime, nighttime or both access), but in reality they set a limit to how much you could download with what they called their Fair Access Policy or FAP. If you exceeded some arbitrary number of MB in a day's time, they would 'FAP' you and your speed would get cut in half, continue to abuse the limit? They cut you in half again.. Leave your PC on overnight to download some ISO images? You would wake up and find that your speed was SLOWER than your dial-up modem!
They got sued (I quit using DirecPC when the lawsuit started) and they lost, and they now have to reveal their limits on downloads and keep customers informed if those values ever change.
The only good thing about DirecPC was that they provided you with software to run a usenet server on your local PC (and you could pick which newsgroups to capture) and you could catch their constant newsstream that was in the MB/s speed range to your local hard drive, and that didn't count against your downloads, as they broadcast all the newsgroup contents to everyone.
After getting very frustrated with my current full-time position (been there for 13 years now) I posted my resume on Monster.com and over the next two weeks, received in excess of 180 phone calls or e-mails, all from headhunters.
The contacts broke down like this:
75% - Calls from recruiters with positions outside of my home state after I had specifically said I didn't want to move.
10% - Calls from recruiters with temporary positions they needed filled, after I had specifically said I was looking only for full-time employment
1 - Call from an out-of-state headhunter who had one local temporary position, but then told me he would probably never have another job for me.
The remainder - Calls from local headhunters who all said that I had the perfect skill set for multiples jobs they were recruiting for, who sent me out on over 40 interviews, from which I received two legitimate offers - one for a marketing company that specializes in developing spamming tools for mass-mailing campaigns and for facilitating tele-marketers calls (which I turned down) and a second for an insurance company on the fifth floor of a non-airconditioned building that required all their developers to wear suits (which I also turned down).
I spent many, many hours filling out applications and modifying my resume for each individiual job, and after more than a month of hassles, I decided that my current job wasn't so bad after all.
People will say they feel better in these 'wireless-free' areas for the same reason people prefer bottled water to tap water: 'placebo effect' or 'the power of suggestion'.
Hey, I drink bottled water, our tap water tastes like crap!
I'm sure you meant to say "magnetized water" or "bottled water with silver colloidal suspension" or some other mumbo-jumbo water that isn't more expensive just for taste reasons.
Once again Microsoft gets richer at the expense of usability and the public pays for it.
Last I checked, Microsoft doesn't make or sell any PocketPCs, they only license the OS to OEM's to make their own. Also, the cost to license the OS in small qty is around $35 per unit, so Microsoft isn't exactly making huge sums of money off of this. Just an FYI.
The first few times I manually transferred files to my PocketPC, I was unable to open them in many apps. Turns out that by default, the PocketPC expects all your data files (docs, mp3s, etc) to be in the "My Documents" folder, and many shareware apps don't let you check other directories.
Once I figured that out, it's been a cakewalk ever since.
Yes, I'm sure HP had them in mind, and they were thinking "There is no way that's ever going to fit in our PPC"...
According to the Detailed Specs for the HP 568:
"One IrDA infrared port, One USB (Slave)/serial RS232C, AC input jack, Earphone jack, Expansion slot: One CompactFlash Type I extended"
And for the IBM Microdrive:
"Integrates with a variety of handheld devices through use of the industry- standard CF+** Type II format and compatibility with PCMCIA Type II (with an adapter)"
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, no!
You have to learn to speak like a marketing person.
You don't say 'killing off our users'
You do say 'we're experiencing a reduction in dissatisfied users'.
Wow, yet another "I didn't read the article, but I feel fully qualified to comment on it" response...
For you and others like you, it specifically states that a pop-up box appears and requires the user to accept the download, and they rely on the fact that 99.999999% of the non-slashdot population immediately assumes it is something they need and click "Yes".
I didn't *have* to put in a new hard drive, I just chose to do it since I was going to have to format and install a new OS. That way I could simply copy over the files from the old HD when I needed them.
Admittedly, I could have worded my initial post a little better, but the hard drive installation was not a requirement for getting the card to work.
I recently purchased the All-In-Wonder Radeon 8500DV card, and I've been quite happy with it so far.
I had Windows ME installed, and after installing the video card and the accompanying software drivers it worked. Then I installed Ulead's Video Studio 5 and it killed my system. It took 10+ minutes to boot, I couldn't access my CD-RW or DVD-ROM drive, and everything was really slow.
I put in a new hard drive and did a fresh install of Win2K, installed all the drivers and everything as before, installed Video Studio 5, and everything works fine.
I replaced a GeForce 2 GTS card and a Pinnacle Micro DC30 capture card with a single card that gives me better performance, better input/output options AND gives me two Firewire ports.
The card comes with all the multimedia software and drivers, a free copy of Half Life with CS and TF, Ulead Video Studio 5, the RF remote with batteries and a USB RF receiver, a composite video cable, S-video cable, i-Link to Firewire cable, DVI to VGA adapter and a very nice break-out box cable with Firewire, composite, S-Video and digital audio ports. There was another CD of some sort of multimedia presentation software that went on the shelf with all my other "it came free with the (device) and I'll probably never use it" software.
I have already captured video from my Sony Hi-8 camcorder and burned a video CD with relative ease (I'd done it before, so it wasn't something new to me).
I have a DV camcorder arriving tomorrow, and I can't wait to check out the world of digital video capture.
If the new 7500 is even half as good as the 8500 (at right about half the price) it's worth the money, IMHO.
The only problems I have are:
1) The included RF remote isn't a universal remote, so since I have my satellite receiver hooked to the coax input on the card, I have to use the satellite remote to change the channel, and then I have to use the ATI remote (which is a nice remote, BTW!) to adjust volume, etc.
2) There is no way to change the video input from within the included video capture software (Ulead Video Studio 5). If there is a way, I haven't been able to figure it out.
Hell, they might as well find the entire AOL Time-Warner conglomerate inadequate, round up all the suits, shoot them, and use their carcasses to make pet food, hot dogs, and spam.
Ewww... don't we get enough SPAM from AOL already?
Let's see. Who do we want to put out of business today?
This is Slashdot after all, so the answer would have to be Microsoft...
My Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 has real handwriting recognition, whereas Micro$oft Winblows CE (note clever use of subliminal imagery) does not.
Except for the fact that there is free software available from Microsoft called Transcriber (or Calligrapher) that does give you true handwriting recognition on the Pocket PC
My Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 has a PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association) slot for easy expansion, whereas those dolts at "Fu" "jitsu" didn't put one in to their so-called "innovative" "PDA." Nice try, guys. While you're listening to "digital music", I'll be surfing the Internet using a real web browser and getting e-mail on a large screen.
Most Pocket PCs include a Compact Flash Type I/II slot which means that we can add wireless NICs, modems, digital cameras, micro-drives, etc., just in a slightly different (smaller) format that what you use.
I am boycotting Micro$oft, but I am not boycotting Apple. Another plus for me!
Well good for you...
Right before I started to work at Best Buy (a long time ago, when I was still young and naive) one of the other employees had been caught.
It appears that he was taking the cases of laser printer paper, unloading the reams onto the shelves for sale, and then packing the empty cases with high-end merchandise, sound cards, hard drives, etc., and putting the plastic bands around the case to 'seal' it back up.
He would then stash the box at the back of the shelf of printer paper, and the next day walk into the store, put the case of 'paper' in his cart, pay the $25 for a case of 'paper' and walk out with hundreds of dollars of equipment.
At the time, Packard Bell was having a deal - buy a PC, get a free Creative Labs Sound Blaster sound card. There was a case of 100+ OEM packaged sound cards (no boxes, just card and disks) that all grew legs and walked out of the store that way...
Plus you have to pay a minimum listing fee for every auction and a share of the total sales price. Even if it cost you only $2 per auction, you would have to invest $12,000 and a lot of your person time to rack up a 6000+ positive feedback... of course if you turn around and scam $200,000 - $400,000 it might be worth it... right up until the point where you get caught...
Well, Napster may have had 6 million, but how many of those downloaded every song?
And if they had, the artist would have been out how much money? $13,800 if you figure $0.0023 per download.
Maybe all those music videos have lied to me, but it seems to me that most artists (the kind of artists who would rate 6 million downloads) wouldn't even take the time to depost a $14K check...
Not if you quickly write a check to the RIAA. Figure $0.0023/song/passenger, so if you had 3 passengers listening to say, 10 songs, you owe somebody $0.069. Better round up to an even $0.07 to be sure. Pay up or else.
People want cell phones to be small and unobtrusive.
People want PDA displays and interfaces as big as possible and still be portable and convenient.
It's a 'have your cake and eat it, too' problem.
Does this mean that the Jornada in question isn't a Pocket PC 2002 device any more?
No. The Pocket PC 2002 uses an ARM processor which can be made by anybody, and TI, Motorolla and Intel all manufacture ARM processors.
I'm not sure which brand HP was using prior to this, but I was surprised to see this as 'news'.
People didn't like the cartridges.
No, people objected to having to pay $5 - $12 for the CD caddies at the time.
I personally loved the cartridge, I just didn't like having to pay the high prices to encase every CD-ROM I bought.
You just have to release it as an e-book and then release it as a dead-tree book 3-6 months later. There are enough hard-core fans who will refuse to wait the 3-6 months to make it successful. I just hope whoever publishes it considers that there are multiple types of e-book readers out there and doesn't try to tie it to only one format :-(
This is no different than health inspectors demanding to see the conditions of a food-packaging facility.
Would you want the government to take the word of the people that run the meat-packing plant that everything inside is clean and tidy, or do you want inspectors going inside and looking for themselves?
Microsoft set themselves up by claiming that they can't strip out that code but then refuses to allow the government to review that code.
Heh, maybe we need to put warning stickers on consumers as well
Check out comedian Bill Engvall's album "Here's Your Sign", where he makes that very point.
If we gave all the stupid people signs that said "I'm stupid" then we'd know better than to deal with them.
The problem is, someone *buys* an account, pays the money, and then the guy never delivers. Who do they complain to?
The game manufacturer.
Another instance - player pays for an account, gets the account handed to them, then two days later they find that their password no longer works, because the original owner called up and said their account was 'hacked' and since they can prove they are the original owner, they get the password reset and get the account back. Who does the *victim* complain to?
The game manufacturer.
I don't blame them one bit for not allowing this.
That being said, if the ISPs want to limit bandwidth usage, they of course must say so in their TOS or user contracts. Advertizing "unlimited access" and then being surprised when people use it like that is even more idiotic...
That's exactly what almost did in DirecPC's satellite internet service. They advertised "Unlimited access" for $XX per month (where XX depends on whether you wanted daytime, nighttime or both access), but in reality they set a limit to how much you could download with what they called their Fair Access Policy or FAP. If you exceeded some arbitrary number of MB in a day's time, they would 'FAP' you and your speed would get cut in half, continue to abuse the limit? They cut you in half again.. Leave your PC on overnight to download some ISO images? You would wake up and find that your speed was SLOWER than your dial-up modem!
They got sued (I quit using DirecPC when the lawsuit started) and they lost, and they now have to reveal their limits on downloads and keep customers informed if those values ever change. The only good thing about DirecPC was that they provided you with software to run a usenet server on your local PC (and you could pick which newsgroups to capture) and you could catch their constant newsstream that was in the MB/s speed range to your local hard drive, and that didn't count against your downloads, as they broadcast all the newsgroup contents to everyone.
After getting very frustrated with my current full-time position (been there for 13 years now) I posted my resume on Monster.com and over the next two weeks, received in excess of 180 phone calls or e-mails, all from headhunters.
The contacts broke down like this:
75% - Calls from recruiters with positions outside of my home state after I had specifically said I didn't want to move.
10% - Calls from recruiters with temporary positions they needed filled, after I had specifically said I was looking only for full-time employment
1 - Call from an out-of-state headhunter who had one local temporary position, but then told me he would probably never have another job for me.
The remainder - Calls from local headhunters who all said that I had the perfect skill set for multiples jobs they were recruiting for, who sent me out on over 40 interviews, from which I received two legitimate offers - one for a marketing company that specializes in developing spamming tools for mass-mailing campaigns and for facilitating tele-marketers calls (which I turned down) and a second for an insurance company on the fifth floor of a non-airconditioned building that required all their developers to wear suits (which I also turned down).
I spent many, many hours filling out applications and modifying my resume for each individiual job, and after more than a month of hassles, I decided that my current job wasn't so bad after all.
People will say they feel better in these 'wireless-free' areas for the same reason people prefer bottled water to tap water: 'placebo effect' or 'the power of suggestion'.
Hey, I drink bottled water, our tap water tastes like crap!
I'm sure you meant to say "magnetized water" or "bottled water with silver colloidal suspension" or some other mumbo-jumbo water that isn't more expensive just for taste reasons.
Hopefully after 45 days they will open up the cafes again with some proper supervision and this won't be another Indianpolis.
And let's not forget what happened to the "law" there...
Once again Microsoft gets richer at the expense of usability and the public pays for it.
Last I checked, Microsoft doesn't make or sell any PocketPCs, they only license the OS to OEM's to make their own. Also, the cost to license the OS in small qty is around $35 per unit, so Microsoft isn't exactly making huge sums of money off of this. Just an FYI.
The first few times I manually transferred files to my PocketPC, I was unable to open them in many apps. Turns out that by default, the PocketPC expects all your data files (docs, mp3s, etc) to be in the "My Documents" folder, and many shareware apps don't let you check other directories. Once I figured that out, it's been a cakewalk ever since.
Yes, I'm sure HP had them in mind, and they were thinking "There is no way that's ever going to fit in our PPC"...
According to the Detailed Specs for the HP 568: "One IrDA infrared port, One USB (Slave)/serial RS232C, AC input jack, Earphone jack, Expansion slot: One CompactFlash Type I extended"
And for the IBM Microdrive: "Integrates with a variety of handheld devices through use of the industry- standard CF+** Type II format and compatibility with PCMCIA Type II (with an adapter)"