If he's worried about having tons of people ringing his doorbell, he could also get a plan with unlimited calling to one number only. Here in Canada, that costs about $7/mo, so about 4 Euros. But yes, the prepaid cell plans are *much* better in Europe. Around here, unless you put a ton of money on your card, the card will expire in 30 days. I am not putting $100/year into a prepaid cell plan for a doorbell when it'll use $20 at most over the course of the year.
My experience with dogs is that your own body language is what will set off the violent reaction. You're absolutely right that otherwise gentle, calm, submissive dogs can sometimes snap and bite, but it's usually because you're chasing it into a corner (fight/flight response), or because your own body language is so nervous around the animal that it triggers the animal into a nervous state. As long as you are calm and relaxed around the dog, you should never have any troubles. Even dogs that have big signs "will bite, stay the fuck away" are easy to deal with as long as you are calm and friendly towards them, and don't let them dominate you.
Delivery drivers shouldn't have to play roulette with the animals, no, but they should also have as part of their basic training a few lessons in the psychology of animals, and how their actions can set off a bad reaction in an animal. I would call that basic health & safety training for that kind of job.
You're assuming a lot. While I realize my passwords are a lot more secure than the average user, try this one on for size:
1. Take a phrase or full sentence that you will easily remember. 2. Translate that phrase into a language that's usually written with a different alphabet. Bonus points if the language is written right-to-left. I use Japanese usually because it was my minor at University, but every now and then I mix it up and use Russian or Vietnamese. 3. Transliterate the language back into the latin alphabet, keeping the word order (reversing it if you used an RTL language). 4. Start replacing random characters with their leet equivalent. a = 4, r =/2, etc.
There's your password. Arbitrarily long based on the length of the sentence you picked, and damned near impossible to guess.
A phrase is only as good as the person picking it, but they are more secure than simple passwords, specifically because most of the methods being used to brute force a password work faster against short passwords. Using a phrase instead of a password makes that password longer, increasing the time you have for it to be brute forced. As others have been quick to point out, if somebody's got physical access to your hash table, you're screwed anyway. But if somebody gets the hash table, and you're notified, you have much longer to get in there and change your password before it can be guessed if you have a long password.
And if you don't like having a password like I suggest, or can't read another language, there's other ways to randomize it. Another method I have seen used is to take an md5 (or other hash) unsalted of the password you actually want to use, and to use that md5 hash as your actual password for logging into the system. Works reasonably well for web forms and such, but not so well for logging into a system. You can also use random password gens with a keychain of some sort. There's lots of ways, and passphrases is just an easy way of increasing security without needing extra equipment or software.
If your engineers are in a customer-facing role, they won't survive very long without soft skills. Or at least, they won't advance in that customer-facing role.
*everywhere* I have worked which has engineers in a customer-facing role, the engineers are good at what they do while still having social skills. Where I'm working now, they won't even get to a second interview if they can't demonstrate some social ability.
You can still have a zippy phone with Advanced Task Killer, but you need to use it properly... on 2.x it'll start killing apps that you need running. There's also no point in having ATK running full time on 2.x, because of changes in the way Android handles sleeping apps and power management. As your friend noticed, running ATK can seriously harm your performance.
But you can configure ATK to not run full time, and to not auto-kill apps. I have it installed on my phone, and I use it to nuke the browser if it freezes (fucking flash addon), or for other similar apps. And I never homescreen out of ATK, I kill the process using ATK.
That battery use isn't unique to 2.3. I have a phone running 2.1, and I can get the same meter... I don't still have a phone running 1.6, so I can't check, but in 2.1, go to Settings > About Phone > Battery Use.
LG Shine Plus here (c710h, known as the Ally in some markets). 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and the only pre-installed stuff that's running full time (unless you turn it off) is a zippy UI replacement that makes the stock 2.1 look more like 2.3 (except in the apps menu, where I prefer it to the stock, because it separates pre-installed apps and downloaded apps into two different sections). Of course, you can switch to the stock really quickly by opening a pre-installed app called the Home Selector.
Other than that, the only other pre-installed app is the LG App Advisor, which is an LG-controlled market overlay where you can install apps that LG recommends. I opened it once on a lark, but haven't touched it since, but it seems to be pretty good at suggesting free apps. Just opened it again, and it suggested I would like to install MotherTED, which I didn't even know exists.... (didn't install it because I would go well over my monthly data cap if I started watching TED on my phone... it's enough that I have the plugin installed on my XBMC system and check out ted.com during downtime at work, lol.)
It's funny that Motorola and LG can come out with otherwise identical phones, and yet the LG version is much more responsive than the Motorola despite having the same processor and memory specs. Of course, it has to be because of the apps I downloaded off the Android marketplace (they aren't running but they're slowing my system down!), and couldn't possibly have anything to do with the MotoBLUR crapware that comes preinstalled on the Motorola and can't be killed.
You can actually get a decent colo fairly cheaply. I am paying $50/mo for my colo, which is a share of a 100mbit pipe with no bandwidth metering. For a low traffic site like the original summary is discussing, that's actually plenty.... it is certainly enough for my colo system, which is primarily a mail server, but also hosts a small low-traffic website and forum. Throw in $1000 for the hardware if you don't have an old server-capable computer kicking around, and you're golden.
And if your e-commerce site isn't turning enough margin to pay for a $50 colo, then you really shouldn't be running an e-commerce site in the first place. As your traffic rises, you can worry about expanding your infrastructure either with load-balancing multiple servers, or with moving your colo to a faster pipe.
According to an update in TFA, that WP7-like tile interface is non-optional.
So I think we should rejoice, because if it continues to be non-optional, it will effectively kill Windows on the Desktop in favour of systems that actually allow their users to, you know, *do* stuff with their computer.
The Roman empire did *not* hold progress up by 1500 years. The *collapse* of the Roman empire held it up by 1500 years.
A *lot* of technological advance happened under the Romans, and perhaps some of the most obvious examples of it are their feats of construction and architecture. (both of which are practical applications of their advances in mathematics, physics, and chemistry). It's quite telling that aqueducts that they built 2000 years ago are still standing while some buildings less than 100 years old are falling apart, or that the Colosseum would not have been possible to rebuild until the early 20th Century because our understanding of architecture and construction methods took that long to catch up with what the Romans were doing.
We are, today, still using technologies that were invented by the Romans, stuff that you probably take for granted without ever thinking about where it came from... stuff like indoor plumbing, central heating/cooling, glass, and steel.
There are many other options out there, but that's the one I am using, for exactly the purpose that the GP has suggested. No stringing wires needed at all, and throughput is plenty adequate for wifi.
If you have the option, use Intel wireless. The last time I had to install drivers for my Intel wifi cards was years ago, and I have not had any problems using wifi with Intel cards on Linux ever (once the drivers were installed). No slowdowns, no sudden drops from the network, no stability issues at all. And in most laptops, it is really easy to specify an Intel wireless card... if they didn't give you a choice at the manufacturer, it's also trivially easy to replace the card with one you can get from sites like http://www.logicsupply.com/. The Intel cards tend to be more expensive, but they are worth every penny, especially if you plan on installing Linux.
The routers with auto-select on the channel select based on the interference where the router itself is, not based on the interference between your router and where you want to use wifi. I find it often chooses really bad channels for full coverage, and prefer to set it manually after walking around with a wifi analyser (which is a free app on any android phone). It won't protect against RF interference from microwaves, senders, or anything like that, but at least it'll help pick a channel that doesn't have other networks to fight with.
The way my house is set up, the kitchen is between the router and the conservatory. There's a bit of a distance issue, but the router is quite usable when the microwave is turned off... but because the kitchen has a hanging ceiling, and the microwave is a little on the old side, the wireless becomes completely unusable in the conservatory and dining room when the microwave is on.
The solution was to use powerline networking to extend a wired connection to the other side of the kitchen, and set up a second wireless access point there, which worked out well, because it also meant I could move the main router to a position that better covered the bedroom end of the house.
Ahh, the joys of living in a 2800sqft bungalow....
Yes, because that has worked ever so well with 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl.... As it fades from the news, it will become more of a distant memory, and will no longer have the weight it has now when arguing the dangers of nuclear energy. Ultimately, it'll come down to one thing: cost. As long as nuclear energy is the cheapest out there, it will continue to be widely used. As soon as safer and cheaper technologies are easily available, a gradual transition will begin. It is not going to be an overnight change, no matter how much you want it to be: just look at how much coal energy is still being used in the states.
Technology is promising. There are new types of solar cells available in the last couple of years that weren't possible 5 years ago, and that are significantly cheaper to manufacture while also being significantly more efficient. There's other uses of solar energy that are coming into use (like the plant outside Seville, Spain). There's large scale wind operations coming into use, and even some very interesting buildings being built that produce their own wind (there's a twin tower in Dubai with 3 wind turbines between the pillars, using the Bernoulli effect on the breeze passing between the buildings to increase the flow through the turbines, for example). There's buildings being built that are much more efficient with how they use energy. All of it will add up to an eventual shift to completely renewable energy in time, but right now, we're still developing technologies that we'll need to do it properly, and we still need to use transition technologies like ethanol fuel and biodiesel. (and yes, I do believe that a traditional diesel generator plant fuelled by biodiesel will be a step between nuclear power and large scale solar/wind power, because the infrastructure is already there and old plants can be converted really easily).
If you give up on using data, a European phone will work on ATT's network as a GSM phone. As long as it's a quad-band phone you're fine. Their pay-as-you-go option is $2/day for unlimited nationwide long distance, local talk, and nationwide texting, and you only get billed on days you use it. Obscenely expensive by European standards, but fairly reasonable by NA standards.
But there are better options out there. Depending on the length of the trip, you may want to get a monthly plan, or look into other providers. Where you're going also has a significant impact on which carrier you choose, as I understand that some carriers have non-existant coverage in some areas and that none of the US carriers have truly nationwide coverage.
You could book a different route... depending on the time of year, you may even want to do this... it'll be a longer flight, but probably worth it in the end. You can, for example, fly Australia to Vancouver via Tokyo without ever crossing US airspace. It's even easier, though a much longer flight, to fly Australia to Canada via Europe, but in that case I would suggest that you plan for a week to decompress in Europe either way of the trip.
That said, the Rockies are nice but I prefer the Alps, and Niagara is nice, but having seen it several times (it's only an 8h drive from where I live, which is reachable for a 4-day weekend trip or a week-long excursion to see the wineries on the peninsula), I would rather see Victoria Falls.
Prior Art... Cellphone-based mobile payment options have been available in Japan, India, even Kenya for years... some of these services have been available since before PayPal existed. And if that isn't enough of a prior art for a portable mobile payment system using an electronic network, I have an Interac card and a Visa I'd like to show them... the Interac network has existed since before the Internet (as it is today) existed, ditto Visa's electronic transaction network.
It is basic electronic security... beyond that, all you need is a unique user ID and a way to bill that user ID back to the customer. Giving somebody a unique account number isn't exactly a trade secret: banks have been doing that for as long as banks have existed. Putting a password/PIN on that isn't exactly a trade secret: that's been done in computer science for almost as long as computers have existed. How is any of what they're doing a trade secret?
Not in this position, but the HTTP_REQUEST does include the language of the user's browser (accept-language)... It is fairly safe to assume that your site visitor wants it in the language that their browser is, and give them the option to change that language with a cookie to save it.
As an added bonus, if the site automatically looks at the accept-language and serves up a German-language storefront without the user having to click on German after being presented with an English default, it may improve your sales by not driving away some customers who may think your site isn't available in their language.
Actually, most of what Apple has brought to market with a little i in front of it is their own locked down version of something somebody else has invented.
Creative beat Apple to market with the media player, Sandisk had some really nice offerings in the early days as well that easily competed with the early iPods. Palm beat Apple to market with the smart phone. Microsoft beat Apple to market with the idea of a media-center PC (which they were copying from programs available in Linux).... the list goes on.
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented, but where they truly excel is at marketing. Microsoft is actually pretty good at improving other peoples' work as well, but they have a major image problem, and their marketing is basically non-existant except for the xbox. But neither company really succeeds at innovation despite the wealth of intellectual talent available to both companies.... most innovation is coming out of small shops, and the only behemoth of a company that really fosters innovation these days is Google.
In fact, for the price, it'd make sense to have a color laser just for color printing, and a dedicated B&W printer for regular printing, since lasers don't have to worry about ink drying out from disuse.
That's what we are doing in our network.... the colour laser is much higher end than the basic entry level, because it actually does get used to publish a quarterly newsletter for about 1500 members of a local charity (and for the cost of one of the quarterly prints we were able to buy the printer and all the toner for the print, and each subsequent print we have saved $600 over the print shop cost), but other than that, all the printing gets done on a b&w laser except the rare occasions that I want to print something in colour... which is exceedingly rare.:)
Haven't used an inkjet in almost a decade. Went without colour printing for years because of exactly the reason the GP said, but when colour became an option, I did exactly what you suggest.:)
Not entirely sure where you're getting your numbers... are you talking about 3D-accelerated output? For 2D output, the maximum is nowhere near as low as 2560x1600 (4,096,000 pixels)... my *laptop* is currently outputting a 3840x1080 desktop over the DisplayPort output (dual screens at 1920x1080, but capable of running higher resolution screens), while driving the 1920x1080 LCD display at the same time. (6,220,800 pixels) I haven't bothered to test it, but I am relatively certain it can handle 1080p HDMI output and output to the VGA port at the same time, as well. 2D graphics are limited by the number of outputs you have (and the bandwidth available in those outputs), not by the power of your graphics card.
For 3D output, the graphics card isn't powerful enough for me to run super-high resolution 3D-accelerated graphics, and I usually run in a 1600x900 window on the main display, but that is more because I don't like to run games full screen, not because the card isn't capable of driving a larger resolution.
dual head portrait mode 1920x1080 displays. you can get 'em cheap, and it gives you a desktop of 2160x1920, which is very good for word processing, coding, etc... can have your code on one screen, full screen, and the output or your algorithm plan, or whatever on the other display.
Now. I have one. It produces very nice picture, but the built-in speakers are shit. And yes, it works quite nicely in portrait mode as well (viewing angle is 178 degrees up/down as well as left/right), but I use it in a dual-head setup with my laptop's built-in 16" screen as the other display, and it is usually in Landscape orientation because it's easier to manipulate programs between the displays when they are in the same orientation and resolution.
2. The enemy is of a side so loathed that even the country of origin has condemned their action. The uberexample here are the Nazis - you can shoot them all you want without Germany making a fuss. This could also apply to, say, fighting the Confederacy in the American Civil War, but I can't think of any games that use that one.
The uber counter-example would be Wolfenstein, which was banned from the shelves in Germany because of its depictions of the nazis. Admittedly, the objections weren't so much that the enemies were nazis as they were to the fact that the swastika is everywhere in that game, but that game certainly did offend the German government a great deal.
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If he's worried about having tons of people ringing his doorbell, he could also get a plan with unlimited calling to one number only. Here in Canada, that costs about $7/mo, so about 4 Euros. But yes, the prepaid cell plans are *much* better in Europe. Around here, unless you put a ton of money on your card, the card will expire in 30 days. I am not putting $100/year into a prepaid cell plan for a doorbell when it'll use $20 at most over the course of the year.
My experience with dogs is that your own body language is what will set off the violent reaction. You're absolutely right that otherwise gentle, calm, submissive dogs can sometimes snap and bite, but it's usually because you're chasing it into a corner (fight/flight response), or because your own body language is so nervous around the animal that it triggers the animal into a nervous state. As long as you are calm and relaxed around the dog, you should never have any troubles. Even dogs that have big signs "will bite, stay the fuck away" are easy to deal with as long as you are calm and friendly towards them, and don't let them dominate you.
Delivery drivers shouldn't have to play roulette with the animals, no, but they should also have as part of their basic training a few lessons in the psychology of animals, and how their actions can set off a bad reaction in an animal. I would call that basic health & safety training for that kind of job.
You're assuming a lot. While I realize my passwords are a lot more secure than the average user, try this one on for size:
1. Take a phrase or full sentence that you will easily remember. /2, etc.
2. Translate that phrase into a language that's usually written with a different alphabet. Bonus points if the language is written right-to-left. I use Japanese usually because it was my minor at University, but every now and then I mix it up and use Russian or Vietnamese.
3. Transliterate the language back into the latin alphabet, keeping the word order (reversing it if you used an RTL language).
4. Start replacing random characters with their leet equivalent. a = 4, r =
There's your password. Arbitrarily long based on the length of the sentence you picked, and damned near impossible to guess.
A phrase is only as good as the person picking it, but they are more secure than simple passwords, specifically because most of the methods being used to brute force a password work faster against short passwords. Using a phrase instead of a password makes that password longer, increasing the time you have for it to be brute forced. As others have been quick to point out, if somebody's got physical access to your hash table, you're screwed anyway. But if somebody gets the hash table, and you're notified, you have much longer to get in there and change your password before it can be guessed if you have a long password.
And if you don't like having a password like I suggest, or can't read another language, there's other ways to randomize it. Another method I have seen used is to take an md5 (or other hash) unsalted of the password you actually want to use, and to use that md5 hash as your actual password for logging into the system. Works reasonably well for web forms and such, but not so well for logging into a system. You can also use random password gens with a keychain of some sort. There's lots of ways, and passphrases is just an easy way of increasing security without needing extra equipment or software.
If your engineers are in a customer-facing role, they won't survive very long without soft skills. Or at least, they won't advance in that customer-facing role.
*everywhere* I have worked which has engineers in a customer-facing role, the engineers are good at what they do while still having social skills. Where I'm working now, they won't even get to a second interview if they can't demonstrate some social ability.
You can still have a zippy phone with Advanced Task Killer, but you need to use it properly... on 2.x it'll start killing apps that you need running. There's also no point in having ATK running full time on 2.x, because of changes in the way Android handles sleeping apps and power management. As your friend noticed, running ATK can seriously harm your performance.
But you can configure ATK to not run full time, and to not auto-kill apps. I have it installed on my phone, and I use it to nuke the browser if it freezes (fucking flash addon), or for other similar apps. And I never homescreen out of ATK, I kill the process using ATK.
That battery use isn't unique to 2.3. I have a phone running 2.1, and I can get the same meter... I don't still have a phone running 1.6, so I can't check, but in 2.1, go to Settings > About Phone > Battery Use.
LG Shine Plus here (c710h, known as the Ally in some markets). 1GHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and the only pre-installed stuff that's running full time (unless you turn it off) is a zippy UI replacement that makes the stock 2.1 look more like 2.3 (except in the apps menu, where I prefer it to the stock, because it separates pre-installed apps and downloaded apps into two different sections). Of course, you can switch to the stock really quickly by opening a pre-installed app called the Home Selector.
Other than that, the only other pre-installed app is the LG App Advisor, which is an LG-controlled market overlay where you can install apps that LG recommends. I opened it once on a lark, but haven't touched it since, but it seems to be pretty good at suggesting free apps. Just opened it again, and it suggested I would like to install MotherTED, which I didn't even know exists.... (didn't install it because I would go well over my monthly data cap if I started watching TED on my phone... it's enough that I have the plugin installed on my XBMC system and check out ted.com during downtime at work, lol.)
It's funny that Motorola and LG can come out with otherwise identical phones, and yet the LG version is much more responsive than the Motorola despite having the same processor and memory specs. Of course, it has to be because of the apps I downloaded off the Android marketplace (they aren't running but they're slowing my system down!), and couldn't possibly have anything to do with the MotoBLUR crapware that comes preinstalled on the Motorola and can't be killed.
You can actually get a decent colo fairly cheaply. I am paying $50/mo for my colo, which is a share of a 100mbit pipe with no bandwidth metering. For a low traffic site like the original summary is discussing, that's actually plenty.... it is certainly enough for my colo system, which is primarily a mail server, but also hosts a small low-traffic website and forum. Throw in $1000 for the hardware if you don't have an old server-capable computer kicking around, and you're golden.
And if your e-commerce site isn't turning enough margin to pay for a $50 colo, then you really shouldn't be running an e-commerce site in the first place. As your traffic rises, you can worry about expanding your infrastructure either with load-balancing multiple servers, or with moving your colo to a faster pipe.
According to an update in TFA, that WP7-like tile interface is non-optional.
So I think we should rejoice, because if it continues to be non-optional, it will effectively kill Windows on the Desktop in favour of systems that actually allow their users to, you know, *do* stuff with their computer.
The Roman empire did *not* hold progress up by 1500 years. The *collapse* of the Roman empire held it up by 1500 years.
A *lot* of technological advance happened under the Romans, and perhaps some of the most obvious examples of it are their feats of construction and architecture. (both of which are practical applications of their advances in mathematics, physics, and chemistry). It's quite telling that aqueducts that they built 2000 years ago are still standing while some buildings less than 100 years old are falling apart, or that the Colosseum would not have been possible to rebuild until the early 20th Century because our understanding of architecture and construction methods took that long to catch up with what the Romans were doing.
We are, today, still using technologies that were invented by the Romans, stuff that you probably take for granted without ever thinking about where it came from... stuff like indoor plumbing, central heating/cooling, glass, and steel.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122318&cm_re=powerline_networking-_-33-122-318-_-Product
There are many other options out there, but that's the one I am using, for exactly the purpose that the GP has suggested. No stringing wires needed at all, and throughput is plenty adequate for wifi.
If you have the option, use Intel wireless. The last time I had to install drivers for my Intel wifi cards was years ago, and I have not had any problems using wifi with Intel cards on Linux ever (once the drivers were installed). No slowdowns, no sudden drops from the network, no stability issues at all. And in most laptops, it is really easy to specify an Intel wireless card... if they didn't give you a choice at the manufacturer, it's also trivially easy to replace the card with one you can get from sites like http://www.logicsupply.com/. The Intel cards tend to be more expensive, but they are worth every penny, especially if you plan on installing Linux.
The routers with auto-select on the channel select based on the interference where the router itself is, not based on the interference between your router and where you want to use wifi. I find it often chooses really bad channels for full coverage, and prefer to set it manually after walking around with a wifi analyser (which is a free app on any android phone). It won't protect against RF interference from microwaves, senders, or anything like that, but at least it'll help pick a channel that doesn't have other networks to fight with.
The way my house is set up, the kitchen is between the router and the conservatory. There's a bit of a distance issue, but the router is quite usable when the microwave is turned off... but because the kitchen has a hanging ceiling, and the microwave is a little on the old side, the wireless becomes completely unusable in the conservatory and dining room when the microwave is on.
The solution was to use powerline networking to extend a wired connection to the other side of the kitchen, and set up a second wireless access point there, which worked out well, because it also meant I could move the main router to a position that better covered the bedroom end of the house.
Ahh, the joys of living in a 2800sqft bungalow....
Yes, because that has worked ever so well with 3-Mile Island and Chernobyl.... As it fades from the news, it will become more of a distant memory, and will no longer have the weight it has now when arguing the dangers of nuclear energy. Ultimately, it'll come down to one thing: cost. As long as nuclear energy is the cheapest out there, it will continue to be widely used. As soon as safer and cheaper technologies are easily available, a gradual transition will begin. It is not going to be an overnight change, no matter how much you want it to be: just look at how much coal energy is still being used in the states.
Technology is promising. There are new types of solar cells available in the last couple of years that weren't possible 5 years ago, and that are significantly cheaper to manufacture while also being significantly more efficient. There's other uses of solar energy that are coming into use (like the plant outside Seville, Spain). There's large scale wind operations coming into use, and even some very interesting buildings being built that produce their own wind (there's a twin tower in Dubai with 3 wind turbines between the pillars, using the Bernoulli effect on the breeze passing between the buildings to increase the flow through the turbines, for example). There's buildings being built that are much more efficient with how they use energy. All of it will add up to an eventual shift to completely renewable energy in time, but right now, we're still developing technologies that we'll need to do it properly, and we still need to use transition technologies like ethanol fuel and biodiesel. (and yes, I do believe that a traditional diesel generator plant fuelled by biodiesel will be a step between nuclear power and large scale solar/wind power, because the infrastructure is already there and old plants can be converted really easily).
If you give up on using data, a European phone will work on ATT's network as a GSM phone. As long as it's a quad-band phone you're fine. Their pay-as-you-go option is $2/day for unlimited nationwide long distance, local talk, and nationwide texting, and you only get billed on days you use it. Obscenely expensive by European standards, but fairly reasonable by NA standards.
But there are better options out there. Depending on the length of the trip, you may want to get a monthly plan, or look into other providers. Where you're going also has a significant impact on which carrier you choose, as I understand that some carriers have non-existant coverage in some areas and that none of the US carriers have truly nationwide coverage.
You could book a different route... depending on the time of year, you may even want to do this... it'll be a longer flight, but probably worth it in the end. You can, for example, fly Australia to Vancouver via Tokyo without ever crossing US airspace. It's even easier, though a much longer flight, to fly Australia to Canada via Europe, but in that case I would suggest that you plan for a week to decompress in Europe either way of the trip.
That said, the Rockies are nice but I prefer the Alps, and Niagara is nice, but having seen it several times (it's only an 8h drive from where I live, which is reachable for a 4-day weekend trip or a week-long excursion to see the wineries on the peninsula), I would rather see Victoria Falls.
Prior Art... Cellphone-based mobile payment options have been available in Japan, India, even Kenya for years... some of these services have been available since before PayPal existed. And if that isn't enough of a prior art for a portable mobile payment system using an electronic network, I have an Interac card and a Visa I'd like to show them... the Interac network has existed since before the Internet (as it is today) existed, ditto Visa's electronic transaction network.
It is basic electronic security... beyond that, all you need is a unique user ID and a way to bill that user ID back to the customer. Giving somebody a unique account number isn't exactly a trade secret: banks have been doing that for as long as banks have existed. Putting a password/PIN on that isn't exactly a trade secret: that's been done in computer science for almost as long as computers have existed. How is any of what they're doing a trade secret?
Not in this position, but the HTTP_REQUEST does include the language of the user's browser (accept-language)... It is fairly safe to assume that your site visitor wants it in the language that their browser is, and give them the option to change that language with a cookie to save it.
As an added bonus, if the site automatically looks at the accept-language and serves up a German-language storefront without the user having to click on German after being presented with an English default, it may improve your sales by not driving away some customers who may think your site isn't available in their language.
Actually, most of what Apple has brought to market with a little i in front of it is their own locked down version of something somebody else has invented.
Creative beat Apple to market with the media player, Sandisk had some really nice offerings in the early days as well that easily competed with the early iPods. Palm beat Apple to market with the smart phone. Microsoft beat Apple to market with the idea of a media-center PC (which they were copying from programs available in Linux).... the list goes on.
Apple frankly sucks at innovation. They are reasonably good at improving something somebody else has already invented, but where they truly excel is at marketing. Microsoft is actually pretty good at improving other peoples' work as well, but they have a major image problem, and their marketing is basically non-existant except for the xbox. But neither company really succeeds at innovation despite the wealth of intellectual talent available to both companies.... most innovation is coming out of small shops, and the only behemoth of a company that really fosters innovation these days is Google.
In fact, for the price, it'd make sense to have a color laser just for color printing, and a dedicated B&W printer for regular printing, since lasers don't have to worry about ink drying out from disuse.
That's what we are doing in our network.... the colour laser is much higher end than the basic entry level, because it actually does get used to publish a quarterly newsletter for about 1500 members of a local charity (and for the cost of one of the quarterly prints we were able to buy the printer and all the toner for the print, and each subsequent print we have saved $600 over the print shop cost), but other than that, all the printing gets done on a b&w laser except the rare occasions that I want to print something in colour... which is exceedingly rare. :)
Haven't used an inkjet in almost a decade. Went without colour printing for years because of exactly the reason the GP said, but when colour became an option, I did exactly what you suggest. :)
Not entirely sure where you're getting your numbers... are you talking about 3D-accelerated output? For 2D output, the maximum is nowhere near as low as 2560x1600 (4,096,000 pixels)... my *laptop* is currently outputting a 3840x1080 desktop over the DisplayPort output (dual screens at 1920x1080, but capable of running higher resolution screens), while driving the 1920x1080 LCD display at the same time. (6,220,800 pixels) I haven't bothered to test it, but I am relatively certain it can handle 1080p HDMI output and output to the VGA port at the same time, as well. 2D graphics are limited by the number of outputs you have (and the bandwidth available in those outputs), not by the power of your graphics card.
For 3D output, the graphics card isn't powerful enough for me to run super-high resolution 3D-accelerated graphics, and I usually run in a 1600x900 window on the main display, but that is more because I don't like to run games full screen, not because the card isn't capable of driving a larger resolution.
dual head portrait mode 1920x1080 displays. you can get 'em cheap, and it gives you a desktop of 2160x1920, which is very good for word processing, coding, etc... can have your code on one screen, full screen, and the output or your algorithm plan, or whatever on the other display.
http://www.benq.ca/products/product_detail.cfm?product=1803&pltag=49&ptag=104 (check the tech specs, not the marketing drivel)
Now. I have one. It produces very nice picture, but the built-in speakers are shit. And yes, it works quite nicely in portrait mode as well (viewing angle is 178 degrees up/down as well as left/right), but I use it in a dual-head setup with my laptop's built-in 16" screen as the other display, and it is usually in Landscape orientation because it's easier to manipulate programs between the displays when they are in the same orientation and resolution.
The uber counter-example would be Wolfenstein, which was banned from the shelves in Germany because of its depictions of the nazis. Admittedly, the objections weren't so much that the enemies were nazis as they were to the fact that the swastika is everywhere in that game, but that game certainly did offend the German government a great deal.