Not quite. Just paying is the same as a signature.
You can buy the phone without a contract. Purchase of the phone does not imply any contract. Purchase of service from AT&T does, but you don't have to do that to get the phone. Even so, the contract is just for cellular service and has nothing to do with your phone. You may wish to unlock your phone so that you can use it while travelling (much cheaper/easier to get a SIM and a pay-as-you-go contract from a local provider than it is to have to get a whole new phone and contract for the duration of your trip). Unlocking your phone may void its warranty (definitely so with a hardware unlock, maybe not with a software unlock), but that's all.
And as for unlocking your phone not being illegal? It is if you agreed to not do it.
Is that written in the contract somewhere? Why would a contract for service govern your phone? You're not leasing the handset. You're purchasing it. The purchase price is subsidized by the fact that you also signed up for a contract (at least in the case of a conventional phone) but on a GSM network the phone is not tied to the contract/network -- the SIM card is.
Powerpoint (and similar products) are so poorly used (I've actually/never/ seen it used properly) that they actually seriously detract from the class. In fact, people tend to do the exactly same nonsense with powerpoint that they do with the chalkboard i.e. write what they say. Yes, I can read, tell me/write on the board something I can't.
It really depends on the teacher. For example, my Physics professor in college (had him for three classes, 2.5 semesters) used Powerpoint extensively and to good effect. The slides were available at the copy shop (would've been better if they were electronically available, but the copy shops run a racket on campuses for note printing) in Powerpoint's "note" format (two slides per page, with space to take notes on each). During class, the prof would use Powerpoint's pen tool to write equations, draw graphs, etc. He did all of that with a mouse and was amazingly good, but I guess you get pretty good at writing/drawing with a mouse when you use Powerpoint several hours a day, 5 days a week. That was before tablet PCs, so I would suspect a tablet + Powerpoint + a nice projector would make for a really good experience.
What really helped the slides was that the prof didn't just read what was there, or circle/highlight bits already on the slide. He used the slides to setup the basic premise and then went through the steps to show whatever concept he happened to be teaching at the time.
That's not to say that Powerpoint is always going to be the best thing to use. It's great in a large lecture hall setting, where the prof is teaching 200-300 people at once with more individual emphasis happening during discussion sections and office hours. For a typical high school class, Powerpoint is going to be overkill -- there's simply no need for a huge projected image when you have 25-30 people sitting in close proximity who can all see the whiteboard/blackboard and can have an interactive discussion rather than being lectured to. I also don't think Powerpoint would work very well for an "arts" class (history, literature, etc -- anything but math/science), but that just might be because my best experience with it was in a hard science class.
I also think Powerpoint is way overdone in business, but when I make presentations aided by a slide deck I at least try to keep the slides as brief notes for what I'm talking about and use the interactive nature of Powerpoint to highlight/emphasize/add detail to slides as I'm talking. Too many people use Powerpoint as if they were presenting slides from their family vacations, and we all know how boring that can be.
I'm guessing RAM will be the downfall here. SQL likes memory. SQL especially likes memory when your database is small enough to fit all of it inside memory. If your database is < 1GB and you can put 2GB in your server (to give memory to more than just SQL, so that SQL can take its full 1GB and/or keep you from going into swap for other system processes), SQL Express will load the entire database into memory. On the other hand, if your dataset is between 1GB and 4GB (the Express limit) but your budget would otherwise allow you to purchase more memory, you will definitely see better performance with a full version of SQL Server that can access more of that RAM (and thus still load your full database into memory). Of course if your dataset is tiny, none of that really matters because you'll likely never run up agains the 1GB limit.
Thanks for the link. It basically comes down to how much RAM my DB will need, the size it will eventually get up to and how many CPU's I need.
I'm guessing RAM will be the downfall here. SQL likes memory. SQL especially likes memory when your database is small enough to fit all of it inside memory. If your database is
How well would that database hold up in a real world context? That is, how much abuse can it take? I want to deploy a little site that won't ever get a lot of traffic (few thousand a day at most) and don't want to pay for a SQL Server license. The isn't too database intensive, but it will make a query every time a user comes on. I'd rather use Express if I can (free). Is this practical?
Honestly, I haven't actually tried SQL Express. It is the exact same engine as full SQL Server, but obviously with some limitations. Here's a decent comparison of Express vs. full versions of SQL. Assuming your data set is relatively small (4GB or less) and relatively simple (a limit of 1GB of RAM and a single CPU could make intensive queries suck), it should work well enough for you. Worst case, you try it out and find that you need a bigger version of SQL Server. If that's the case, your existing Express database will migrate over to a full SQL Server 2005 installation just fine, since it's the same engine.
Licensing-wise, it looks like what you want to do would be allowed. The only question is whether the Express engine will be robust enough.
I like to keep common source files in a directory and include them as needed on different projects.
Why not build a single library (or multiple libraries) with your common code and then just reference those libraries as necessary? Seems like that would be a much nicer way to handle common code, and it would give you the ability to patch your common functions and just ship a new copy of that single library rather than rebuilding all of your projects.
In the article it mentions Visual Studio doesn't do automatic building. Well, that's kinda true. You can however, create a macro that will execute a build every time you press "ctrl-s" or press the "save" button. Visual Studio will only rebuild and re-link what changed, eg. the file you just edited. I did this for one of my projects and it worked pretty well.
On the other hand, Visual Studio will automatically save when you build. IMHO, this is more useful because as I'm developing and want to test all I have to do is run a build and all my code is saved. If I'm quitting for the day, I don't want to have to wait for a build to run when I save my files and quit, even if the build only takes a second or two.
Obviously the biggest problem with it all is that it costs money. A lot of money if you want the IDE with all the architecture tools, design tools, testing tools, compilers, SQL server, TFS for source control and deployment, etc. You're locked into a MS environment essentially. And sometimes this isn't a problem at all. Maybe you're developing an ASP.net site or something. But you're spent a lot of money on tools and when multiplied by 50 developers, this can add up to a lot. However, you get MS support and for a lot of business companies with developers that aren't the greatest thing around, this is very valuable.
I think the key here is that it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing small-time ASP.NET work, smaller.NET apps, or even writing games, the Express versions of Visual Studio (including XNA Game Studio) are quite nice and free. If you're doing enterprisey work, you'll probably want the full Architect edition and probably get an MSDN subscription as well. If you just want to do an ASP.NET website with a SQL Server backend, spend your money on SQL Server 2005 (or don't spend your money yet and use SQL Server Express to build your proof of concept) and use the free Visual Web Developer Express.
It's features like this that has turned Java from a hideously verbose language into something that's almost easier to develop in than Ruby (imho), and Visual Studio seems almost antiquated on this subject (there's no excuse for not implementing these features for statically typed languages such as C/C++)
What version of Visual Studio are you comparing against? Visual Studio 2005 (which is the basis for the free Express versions, so you can try it out without risking any cash) has all of the features you claim are lacking. It's maybe not as automatic (VS2k5 won't automatically stub a method for you unless you tell it to do so), but IMHO that's a good thing -- I don't want the IDE second-guessing what I'm doing.
Perhaps you were using Visual Studio for C++ code? It's been a while since I've done any C++, having focused almost exclusively on C# for the last 5 years, but with C# the IDE will catch syntax errors, auto-complete for you if you wish (use ctrl+space to bring up intellisense), stub out methods and interface implementations (ctrl+F10 to open the SmartTag-like dropdown), allow you to easily refactor code into methods or wrap variables into Properties, declare "using" tags if you reference something from an assembly in the project references without declaring its namespace (you can alternatively tell it to use the fully-qualifed namespace if you don't want to add it to your "using" list), etc. I would assume that most of the functionality also exists for C++ projects, but I haven't verified that. The functionality is all there (at least for.NET languages), in the box, without any extra plugins needed, and Visual Studio is lightweight enough that I can run 4-5 instances on a 2 year old laptop with 2GB RAM without any issues at all. VS is also pluggable like Eclipse, so feel free to extend it as you wish.
It's been a while since I tried using Eclipse, mostly because I haven't done any Java work since graduating from college back in 2000. When I did last check it out (probably 2-3 years ago) it was horribly obtuse and bloated. I'm sure things have gotten better over the years, and if I had to start working with Java Eclipse would be my first choice of IDE, but in a Windows C++/C# world I'll choose Visual Studio 2005 every single time. (I'd choose Visual Studio 2008, but I was burned by the VS2k5/.NET 2.0 beta and am now wary of beta versions of Visual Studio -- I'll switch when it ships.)
Firefox shows just fine! just so to let you people of/. know:)
Windows Live Maps has a bad habit of checking user agent strings in order to support non-IE browsers. While most people won't have a problem with Firefox, there have been cases of people using Firefox browsers with the old 2.0 beta codename "Bon Echo" as the user agent string, and it's possibile that non-Firefox Firefox browsers like Iceweasel (Firefox without the Mozilla copyright bits) may have a non-Firefox user agent. In those cases, you'll get redirected to a barely-functional page instead of the proper map view. A good way to play around with this is to use Opera's ability to easily change the browser's UA (to mimic Firefox or IE). With Opera's normal UA (or a broken Firefox UA), you'll see this. If you change Opera to masquerade as Firefox, you'll see this instead.
The correct solution is to stop using UA strings for browser detection, but have fun trying to convince Microsoft to do that.
The PS3 is nearly even in sales with the more established XBox360 and has 0 must-have exclusive hit titles
The PS3 was nearly even in sales for one month (July) which also saw a "price cut" (really a closeout price). Xbox 360 saw a price cut this month (an actual price cut, not a phasing out of a version of the console), so we'll have to wait and see what the August numbers look like. The 360 also had several big games this month (Bioshock and Madden08 -- say what you will about people buying the same game year over year, but Madden is a huge system seller), and the Halo 3 madness is already gearing up which should drive sales at least through the holiday season. The PS3's increase in sales was a fluke, nothing more.
Microsoft's answer to the Wii appears to be that Viva Pinata party game/mini-game collection. To me, looks like a clear case of missing the point. The Wii isn't successful because of games like Wario Ware, Rayman and the like. Attempting to duplicate their success in this manner is foolhardy. Sony, at least, appears to have a better inkling of what's going on. LittleBigPlanet is a large step in the right direction, even if it is the only step we can see for now.
Microsoft's "answer" to the Wii is exactly as you said above -- that they're not competing. And it's true. Someone in the market for an Xbox 360-type console is not going to buy a Wii, and vice versa, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 are interchangeable (for example, Madden on PS3 and Madden on 360 are virtually identical, while Madden on the Wii is much closer to Madden on the PS2 or Xbox 1). The Viva Pinata party game is not trying to steal away Wii users. It's trying to enter a genre that has been traditionally weak on Xbox consoles.
Another way to look at it is that Microsoft is competing with the Wii via XBLA. If you assume that Wii players are "casual", then XBLA has a great library of casual games for $5-10 dollars each. Sony's trying to do the same thing but so far hasn't struck gold with their downloadable game service (no breakout hits like Geometry Wars, for example).
Just not worth the $55+extras it takes to get to a tier i would want. All i really want is SciFi (duh) and Speed (to get something besides nascar or the occasional condensed race they show on network)
You're in for a big surprise with Speed. While they do occasionally have other races, many of them are shortened (the big endurance races, obviously, but they also shorten other races that you wouldn't expect) and there's not a whole lot of them. The bulk of Speed's programming consists of NASCAR races and related shows. If you don't like NASCAR, Speed is mostly going to be a waste of your money.
Every Vista machine I have got connects only to unsecured networks by default; you have to go through several obscure dialog boxes even to mark a network as secure and requiring a password.
I don't have an unsecured network available for testing at the moment (I'm not going to unsecure my WAP to test this), but when I try to connect to the Guest network at work (unsecured but limited access, intended for visitors to use while waiting in the lobby) Vista warned me that it was unsecured and required me to acknowledge that before it would connect. Once you've connected to an unsecured network, it will remember that network and let you connect to it at a later point without warning. Connecting to secured networks has been pretty simple for me, depending on the type of security used (work's certificiate-based security requires a wired connection to get the cert and then it just works, my WEP network at home required me to input my WEP key once and then it just works). Since I only use wireless for my laptop and my laptop only runs Vista, I can't easily compare and contrast how other operating systems work.
...then why do hardware manufacturers design their products to automatically join unsecured networks by default? You could get cited simply for buying a laptop and turning it on.
What do hardware manufacturers have to do with it? It's a software implementation detail, and in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista you can't connect to an unsecured network by default. You have to acknowledge the fact that the network is unsecured and that you'd like to connect to it before it will do so. I have no idea if Linux or OS X behave the same, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't. The last thing you'd want to do is to connect to an unsecured, unknown network by default, as it's a huge security risk (you don't know what is happening on that network).
I could care less if my neighbors use my connection
So you do care? (hint: If you "could" care less, you obviously do care. If you "couldn't" care less, you don't.)
I would prefer it because then they will not be asking me to come over and fix theirs every day
Ever tried saying no? I know, it's a foreign concept to many people, but unless your neighbors/friends/family are paying you to fix their connection you have no obligation to fix it for them. If they keep breaking it, they either need to learn how to fix it themselves or pay somebody to fix it for them.
One things is for sure - they all rely on proprietary Microsoft produts (.Net, sharepoint, SQL server, etc) to run. They're not particularly useful to the Open Source community, just the Microsoft community. (In Debian, they would sit in the non-free repositorty).
I think you've confused the "Open Source community" with the "Linux community". While there's a fair amount of overlap, "Open Source" does not imply simply Linux.
Oh - and Open Source? Pah-lease. A license that governs USE of the software sounds neither permissive nor open:
The Ms-PL and Ms-CL have been submitted to OSI for approval. We'll have to wait and see if the OSI decides they're not compatible with Open Source licenses.
Also, way to be reactive. All software licenses govern use of said software, where "use" includes the usage of the source code for the software (if you read the license, it says nothing about how you may actually run the licensed software). In the case of an open source license like BSD, the only governance in place is the requirement to retain copyright information when modifying and redistributing the source. The GPL goes further and requires that you retain the same license for any derived work (the "viral" nature of the GPL) and that you must make source available. The Ms-PL has a BSD-like copyright restriction with a GPL-like license restriction (you must use the MS-PL license for any derived works with published source code, though you may publish binaries under a separate license without publishing source) and a patent revocation clause in case you sue. That may or may not fit the requirements for OSI-certification as an open source license, but it's still a very relaxed license.
After doing so, the tech brought up "I Love Lucy" (I kid you not) and told Dad "See, you are not receiving HD-TV". Once he was told to actually tune a High Definition channel, everything was fine.
Wait, you mean "I Love Lucy" isn't broadcast in high definition? Dammit!
I've found from experience that a competent cable tech is a very rare thing indeed. Here's another story as an example: In the spring of 2003, I purchased my first home. Prior to that, I had been using a DSL line in my apartment, but the new home was out of range for DSL and thus I had to switch to cable to get a broadband connection. Doing so was pretty simple, and even though the previous owners had used DirectTV rather than cable all of the wiring in the house was relatively current and up to date (1997 build). Unfortunately soon after getting everything setup and installed I started having very odd, intermittent connection problems. During the day and early evening, my internet connection would work just fine, but later in the evening and at night the connection would die. The TV signal was still good, but no internet. Calling Comcast tech support was pretty useless -- they had me reset my modem, and once that didn't work they couldn't do anything except schedule a tech. When the first tech came, he checked my modem, checked the signal on my cable, and decided that there was no problem at all. That evening, my internet connection went out again. This repeated for weeks, across ~8 tech visits. Finally the last tech solved the problem because he actually had a brain and could think. What was the problem?
Water damage at the street drop. The line had rusted, and while it would still make enough of a connection to transmit the TV signal it was too degraded to handle internet traffic. However because it was spring/early summer, the line would expand enough during the heat of the day to make a good connection, and then contract during the night to kill the connection. Since Comcast techs don't make house calls at 10:00pm, they obviously would never see the issue. The last tech actually believed me when I told him that I had gone through three different modems and crawled all over the attic of my house verifying the cable run. Since that ruled out a problem within the house, he took the logical next step -- check the line at the street. Once he did that, the water damage was extremely obvious. It was a 5 minute fix that took nearly two months to solve. If I hadn't eventually gotten a competent tech, it would've taken much longer than that to fix (would've had to wait for fall/winter for the problem to occur during the day as well as at night).
My next "fun" project is to remind my cable operator (TW) of the following:
FCC mandate Title 47, Chapter 1, Subchapter C, Part 76, Subpart K requires that all cable operators that have not received an explicit exemption from the FCC offer any customer who requests it a high-definition cable box with an operational firewire port.
Have you tried using the firewire output on your box? It works just fine on the Motorola boxes I've used from Comcast, without having to bug Comcast about it at all. If your provider's box doesn't have an active Firewire port, that's bad. Just note that the firewire interface only transmits video. It doesn't carry the overlay information for the channel guide or menus. That's not an issue if you're using Firewire to feed an HTPC, but it could be annoying if you're trying to connect the Firewire output directly to a TV.
1. Installation requires your local Cable company to come out and install the card as they have to do specialized setup similiar to when you first get digital cable turned on in your place for the first time.
That's what the cable companies want you to think. I haven't tried using CableCard, but my "installing" my HD STB was as easy as going to the local Comcast store and picking up a box. I phoned ahead, they scanned the box onto my account, I brought it home, plugged it in, and it Just Worked(tm). There's no reason that a CableCard should be any different.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the cable techs are incompetent with respect to setting up HD equipment. The last time I had a tech actually touch any of my stuff, he ended up misconfiguring the outputs of the box such that I couldn't actually get any HD content to my TV. The channels all worked fine, but the "installation" was botched. As soon as he left, I rewired it all to work properly. Of course that was back when HD was supplied by a side-car box, so the installation was a little tricky. The current Moto boxes are trivial -- plug in the cable, plug in your component/DVI/HDMI/Firewire cable for output, plug in your S/PDIF coax cable for audio, and you're done. Use the front-panel menu to configure (upscaling for SD channels, what resolution to use for HD channels, etc).
2. Cable card is supported in very few select large cities/metropolis.
CableCard should be supported anywhere that digital cable is offered. To the cable company, a CableCard should look no different than any other STB with the minor difference that it only allows one-way traffic (oh noes! I have to call teh Comcast to buy my PPV pr0n!).
3. Even in cities where Cable Card is supported it often cannot be installed properly and does not sync up to channels properly from the cable company.
That's usually either bad hardware or bad installation. There's no excuse for either scenario except that the cable companies want you to think CableCard sucks. If you're currently using a digital STB, there's no reason why a CableCard shouldn't work just as well in your house.
One draws the line where the money is no longer available. Gun dealers are not held accountable for the crimes of their clients because the NRA is a huge lobby with plenty of the money. Auto dealers and manufacturers are not held accountable because again they're huge lobbyists with lots of money. Do you know who does get held accountable? Bars that overserver people and then let them drive drunk. Why? Because the restaurant industry is too fragmented to effectively lobby against such legistlation, but the tee-totaller prohibitionists like MADD are big enough to get such terrible legislation pushed through.
Lobbyists are neither good or bad. They're just using the system to further their own interests. If you don't like it, either work to change the system (ha!) or build your own lobby (that's what the MADD folk did). For what it's worth, I like the NRA, I hate MADD, and I'm indifferent to Big Auto.
Yeah, but either way I'd wait for a review first... Games have innovated quite a bit since the Halo series started coming out. Who knows if the gameplay will have kept up with the times? If I go back and play the other 2 they seem pretty ancient compared to what you can play today...
Did you read any of the multiplayer beta reviews (for example)? Or better yet, did you participate in the beta? Halo 3 is still Halo. It looks and feels like halo (shiny metal, relatively slow movement speed, many returning weapons and vehicles you should already be familiar with, etc). It's evolutionary, not revolutionary, though I was surprised that such a minor control change (moving weapon pickup/reloading to the bumpers so you can have independent hand control) made such a big difference. Going back to Halo 2 after playing Halo 3 was quite a challenge.
On the single player side of things, Bungie generally plays those cards close to their chests. So far they've told us that we'll be able to play with up to 4-players in co-op over Live, but that's it. There might be some information leaks as we get closer to launch, but historically Bungie has been pretty good about keeping the single player campaign information hidden from prying eyes so that it's fresh when you actually play it (the Arbiter was a huge surprise in Halo 2, for example).
Will it blow away every game out there? Probably not. Will it be a fun and compelling single player campaign with a long-lasting and competitive multiplayer component? Definitely. Is it worth paying $130 for the Legendary edition with a mini helmet? Only if you're that hardcore. Is it worth paying $60 for the regular edition? If you liked Halo 1 and Halo 2, absolutely.
What do you mean "who would buy it" voluntarily? Probably lots of people. I think it's a great idea. I often find myself driving home on weekends not really sure if I'm over the limit (I probably am) or not. It would be nice to have something like this to help alert me if I'm actually not sober enough to drive.
Buy yourself a portable breathalyzer if you're not able to control your drinking. Not only will it let you know if you're too impaired to drive, it can also be great fun at parties. The person with the highest BAC wins! As a bonus, a portable breathalyzer can be used with any vehicle, and will likely cost much less than what Nissan will charge for this.
We're in an annoying period where vehicle control systems can help a bit, but aren't yet good enough to reliably drive cars automatically. That's getting close, though. A few more rounds of the DARPA Grand Challenge, in tougher situations, and we'll be there.
You'll get my manually-driven car when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
I would argue that they're doing it too soon. As of right now, there's absolutely no economic benefit to dropping the price. The PS3 (even with its pseudo-"price cut") is dead in the water as far as competition goes, and unless they can drop $200 the 360 will not be able to compete with the Wii on price. The holiday line-up is going to be killer (GTA4, Halo 3, Mass Effect, etc) and will entice enough people to buy without also dropping the price. As far as I know, the 65nm manufacturing process isn't yet in place, so they can't take advantage of new economies of scale in order to afford this price cut. The $1billion warranty write-off hurt the 360's potentional profitability, and lowering the price limits even further what the 360 could eventually make back (supposedly the 360 would become profitable on the 65nm manufacturing process, though I don't know if the gain is enough to offset the $50 price drop).
I would suggest that Microsoft hold their ground. The upcoming games and lack of competition (the Wii is complementary to the 360, thus the Wii60) will drive more sales of 360s than any price cut would do. I'd like to see how profitable the 360 could be if it were allowed to stay at its current price while growing cheaper to build via changes like the 65nm process. Have a price drop contingency, but don't roll it out unless real problems crop up such as key games slipping, or increased competition from Sony (ha!).
Okay, you've covered the Premium and Elite. What about the Core, "Halo 3 Edition" and the "Simpsons Movie Edition"?
What about them? Nobody buys a Core except to replace a broken Premium where they already have the hard drive, wireless controller, component video cable, etc. The Halo 3 edition is not out yet, and the Simpsons Movie edition is not available for purchase in stores. That leaves us with the Premium and the Elite. The choice between the two is pretty simple -- if you don't know or care why the Elite is better, buy the Premium unless you absolutely must have it in black. If you want and can use HDMI, or if you think the 120GB hard drive would be useful, buy the Elite. It's cheaper than buying a Premium and the 120GB hard drive separately.
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You can buy the phone without a contract. Purchase of the phone does not imply any contract. Purchase of service from AT&T does, but you don't have to do that to get the phone. Even so, the contract is just for cellular service and has nothing to do with your phone. You may wish to unlock your phone so that you can use it while travelling (much cheaper/easier to get a SIM and a pay-as-you-go contract from a local provider than it is to have to get a whole new phone and contract for the duration of your trip). Unlocking your phone may void its warranty (definitely so with a hardware unlock, maybe not with a software unlock), but that's all.
Is that written in the contract somewhere? Why would a contract for service govern your phone? You're not leasing the handset. You're purchasing it. The purchase price is subsidized by the fact that you also signed up for a contract (at least in the case of a conventional phone) but on a GSM network the phone is not tied to the contract/network -- the SIM card is.
It really depends on the teacher. For example, my Physics professor in college (had him for three classes, 2.5 semesters) used Powerpoint extensively and to good effect. The slides were available at the copy shop (would've been better if they were electronically available, but the copy shops run a racket on campuses for note printing) in Powerpoint's "note" format (two slides per page, with space to take notes on each). During class, the prof would use Powerpoint's pen tool to write equations, draw graphs, etc. He did all of that with a mouse and was amazingly good, but I guess you get pretty good at writing/drawing with a mouse when you use Powerpoint several hours a day, 5 days a week. That was before tablet PCs, so I would suspect a tablet + Powerpoint + a nice projector would make for a really good experience.
What really helped the slides was that the prof didn't just read what was there, or circle/highlight bits already on the slide. He used the slides to setup the basic premise and then went through the steps to show whatever concept he happened to be teaching at the time.
That's not to say that Powerpoint is always going to be the best thing to use. It's great in a large lecture hall setting, where the prof is teaching 200-300 people at once with more individual emphasis happening during discussion sections and office hours. For a typical high school class, Powerpoint is going to be overkill -- there's simply no need for a huge projected image when you have 25-30 people sitting in close proximity who can all see the whiteboard/blackboard and can have an interactive discussion rather than being lectured to. I also don't think Powerpoint would work very well for an "arts" class (history, literature, etc -- anything but math/science), but that just might be because my best experience with it was in a hard science class.
I also think Powerpoint is way overdone in business, but when I make presentations aided by a slide deck I at least try to keep the slides as brief notes for what I'm talking about and use the interactive nature of Powerpoint to highlight/emphasize/add detail to slides as I'm talking. Too many people use Powerpoint as if they were presenting slides from their family vacations, and we all know how boring that can be.
Gah! Should've previewed. That should read:
I'm guessing RAM will be the downfall here. SQL likes memory. SQL especially likes memory when your database is small enough to fit all of it inside memory. If your database is < 1GB and you can put 2GB in your server (to give memory to more than just SQL, so that SQL can take its full 1GB and/or keep you from going into swap for other system processes), SQL Express will load the entire database into memory. On the other hand, if your dataset is between 1GB and 4GB (the Express limit) but your budget would otherwise allow you to purchase more memory, you will definitely see better performance with a full version of SQL Server that can access more of that RAM (and thus still load your full database into memory). Of course if your dataset is tiny, none of that really matters because you'll likely never run up agains the 1GB limit.
I'm guessing RAM will be the downfall here. SQL likes memory. SQL especially likes memory when your database is small enough to fit all of it inside memory. If your database is
Honestly, I haven't actually tried SQL Express. It is the exact same engine as full SQL Server, but obviously with some limitations. Here's a decent comparison of Express vs. full versions of SQL. Assuming your data set is relatively small (4GB or less) and relatively simple (a limit of 1GB of RAM and a single CPU could make intensive queries suck), it should work well enough for you. Worst case, you try it out and find that you need a bigger version of SQL Server. If that's the case, your existing Express database will migrate over to a full SQL Server 2005 installation just fine, since it's the same engine.
Licensing-wise, it looks like what you want to do would be allowed. The only question is whether the Express engine will be robust enough.
Why not build a single library (or multiple libraries) with your common code and then just reference those libraries as necessary? Seems like that would be a much nicer way to handle common code, and it would give you the ability to patch your common functions and just ship a new copy of that single library rather than rebuilding all of your projects.
On the other hand, Visual Studio will automatically save when you build. IMHO, this is more useful because as I'm developing and want to test all I have to do is run a build and all my code is saved. If I'm quitting for the day, I don't want to have to wait for a build to run when I save my files and quit, even if the build only takes a second or two.
I think the key here is that it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing small-time ASP.NET work, smaller .NET apps, or even writing games, the Express versions of Visual Studio (including XNA Game Studio) are quite nice and free. If you're doing enterprisey work, you'll probably want the full Architect edition and probably get an MSDN subscription as well. If you just want to do an ASP.NET website with a SQL Server backend, spend your money on SQL Server 2005 (or don't spend your money yet and use SQL Server Express to build your proof of concept) and use the free Visual Web Developer Express.
What version of Visual Studio are you comparing against? Visual Studio 2005 (which is the basis for the free Express versions, so you can try it out without risking any cash) has all of the features you claim are lacking. It's maybe not as automatic (VS2k5 won't automatically stub a method for you unless you tell it to do so), but IMHO that's a good thing -- I don't want the IDE second-guessing what I'm doing.
Perhaps you were using Visual Studio for C++ code? It's been a while since I've done any C++, having focused almost exclusively on C# for the last 5 years, but with C# the IDE will catch syntax errors, auto-complete for you if you wish (use ctrl+space to bring up intellisense), stub out methods and interface implementations (ctrl+F10 to open the SmartTag-like dropdown), allow you to easily refactor code into methods or wrap variables into Properties, declare "using" tags if you reference something from an assembly in the project references without declaring its namespace (you can alternatively tell it to use the fully-qualifed namespace if you don't want to add it to your "using" list), etc. I would assume that most of the functionality also exists for C++ projects, but I haven't verified that. The functionality is all there (at least for .NET languages), in the box, without any extra plugins needed, and Visual Studio is lightweight enough that I can run 4-5 instances on a 2 year old laptop with 2GB RAM without any issues at all. VS is also pluggable like Eclipse, so feel free to extend it as you wish.
It's been a while since I tried using Eclipse, mostly because I haven't done any Java work since graduating from college back in 2000. When I did last check it out (probably 2-3 years ago) it was horribly obtuse and bloated. I'm sure things have gotten better over the years, and if I had to start working with Java Eclipse would be my first choice of IDE, but in a Windows C++/C# world I'll choose Visual Studio 2005 every single time. (I'd choose Visual Studio 2008, but I was burned by the VS2k5/.NET 2.0 beta and am now wary of beta versions of Visual Studio -- I'll switch when it ships.)
Windows Live Maps has a bad habit of checking user agent strings in order to support non-IE browsers. While most people won't have a problem with Firefox, there have been cases of people using Firefox browsers with the old 2.0 beta codename "Bon Echo" as the user agent string, and it's possibile that non-Firefox Firefox browsers like Iceweasel (Firefox without the Mozilla copyright bits) may have a non-Firefox user agent. In those cases, you'll get redirected to a barely-functional page instead of the proper map view. A good way to play around with this is to use Opera's ability to easily change the browser's UA (to mimic Firefox or IE). With Opera's normal UA (or a broken Firefox UA), you'll see this. If you change Opera to masquerade as Firefox, you'll see this instead.
The correct solution is to stop using UA strings for browser detection, but have fun trying to convince Microsoft to do that.
The PS3 was nearly even in sales for one month (July) which also saw a "price cut" (really a closeout price). Xbox 360 saw a price cut this month (an actual price cut, not a phasing out of a version of the console), so we'll have to wait and see what the August numbers look like. The 360 also had several big games this month (Bioshock and Madden08 -- say what you will about people buying the same game year over year, but Madden is a huge system seller), and the Halo 3 madness is already gearing up which should drive sales at least through the holiday season. The PS3's increase in sales was a fluke, nothing more.
Microsoft's "answer" to the Wii is exactly as you said above -- that they're not competing. And it's true. Someone in the market for an Xbox 360-type console is not going to buy a Wii, and vice versa, while the Xbox 360 and PS3 are interchangeable (for example, Madden on PS3 and Madden on 360 are virtually identical, while Madden on the Wii is much closer to Madden on the PS2 or Xbox 1). The Viva Pinata party game is not trying to steal away Wii users. It's trying to enter a genre that has been traditionally weak on Xbox consoles.
Another way to look at it is that Microsoft is competing with the Wii via XBLA. If you assume that Wii players are "casual", then XBLA has a great library of casual games for $5-10 dollars each. Sony's trying to do the same thing but so far hasn't struck gold with their downloadable game service (no breakout hits like Geometry Wars, for example).
You're in for a big surprise with Speed. While they do occasionally have other races, many of them are shortened (the big endurance races, obviously, but they also shorten other races that you wouldn't expect) and there's not a whole lot of them. The bulk of Speed's programming consists of NASCAR races and related shows. If you don't like NASCAR, Speed is mostly going to be a waste of your money.
I don't have an unsecured network available for testing at the moment (I'm not going to unsecure my WAP to test this), but when I try to connect to the Guest network at work (unsecured but limited access, intended for visitors to use while waiting in the lobby) Vista warned me that it was unsecured and required me to acknowledge that before it would connect. Once you've connected to an unsecured network, it will remember that network and let you connect to it at a later point without warning. Connecting to secured networks has been pretty simple for me, depending on the type of security used (work's certificiate-based security requires a wired connection to get the cert and then it just works, my WEP network at home required me to input my WEP key once and then it just works). Since I only use wireless for my laptop and my laptop only runs Vista, I can't easily compare and contrast how other operating systems work.
What do hardware manufacturers have to do with it? It's a software implementation detail, and in Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista you can't connect to an unsecured network by default. You have to acknowledge the fact that the network is unsecured and that you'd like to connect to it before it will do so. I have no idea if Linux or OS X behave the same, but I'd be very surprised if they didn't. The last thing you'd want to do is to connect to an unsecured, unknown network by default, as it's a huge security risk (you don't know what is happening on that network).
So you do care? (hint: If you "could" care less, you obviously do care. If you "couldn't" care less, you don't.)
Ever tried saying no? I know, it's a foreign concept to many people, but unless your neighbors/friends/family are paying you to fix their connection you have no obligation to fix it for them. If they keep breaking it, they either need to learn how to fix it themselves or pay somebody to fix it for them.
I think you've confused the "Open Source community" with the "Linux community". While there's a fair amount of overlap, "Open Source" does not imply simply Linux.
The Ms-PL and Ms-CL have been submitted to OSI for approval. We'll have to wait and see if the OSI decides they're not compatible with Open Source licenses.
Also, way to be reactive. All software licenses govern use of said software, where "use" includes the usage of the source code for the software (if you read the license, it says nothing about how you may actually run the licensed software). In the case of an open source license like BSD, the only governance in place is the requirement to retain copyright information when modifying and redistributing the source. The GPL goes further and requires that you retain the same license for any derived work (the "viral" nature of the GPL) and that you must make source available. The Ms-PL has a BSD-like copyright restriction with a GPL-like license restriction (you must use the MS-PL license for any derived works with published source code, though you may publish binaries under a separate license without publishing source) and a patent revocation clause in case you sue. That may or may not fit the requirements for OSI-certification as an open source license, but it's still a very relaxed license.
Wait, you mean "I Love Lucy" isn't broadcast in high definition? Dammit!
I've found from experience that a competent cable tech is a very rare thing indeed. Here's another story as an example: In the spring of 2003, I purchased my first home. Prior to that, I had been using a DSL line in my apartment, but the new home was out of range for DSL and thus I had to switch to cable to get a broadband connection. Doing so was pretty simple, and even though the previous owners had used DirectTV rather than cable all of the wiring in the house was relatively current and up to date (1997 build). Unfortunately soon after getting everything setup and installed I started having very odd, intermittent connection problems. During the day and early evening, my internet connection would work just fine, but later in the evening and at night the connection would die. The TV signal was still good, but no internet. Calling Comcast tech support was pretty useless -- they had me reset my modem, and once that didn't work they couldn't do anything except schedule a tech. When the first tech came, he checked my modem, checked the signal on my cable, and decided that there was no problem at all. That evening, my internet connection went out again. This repeated for weeks, across ~8 tech visits. Finally the last tech solved the problem because he actually had a brain and could think. What was the problem?
Water damage at the street drop. The line had rusted, and while it would still make enough of a connection to transmit the TV signal it was too degraded to handle internet traffic. However because it was spring/early summer, the line would expand enough during the heat of the day to make a good connection, and then contract during the night to kill the connection. Since Comcast techs don't make house calls at 10:00pm, they obviously would never see the issue. The last tech actually believed me when I told him that I had gone through three different modems and crawled all over the attic of my house verifying the cable run. Since that ruled out a problem within the house, he took the logical next step -- check the line at the street. Once he did that, the water damage was extremely obvious. It was a 5 minute fix that took nearly two months to solve. If I hadn't eventually gotten a competent tech, it would've taken much longer than that to fix (would've had to wait for fall/winter for the problem to occur during the day as well as at night).
Have you tried using the firewire output on your box? It works just fine on the Motorola boxes I've used from Comcast, without having to bug Comcast about it at all. If your provider's box doesn't have an active Firewire port, that's bad. Just note that the firewire interface only transmits video. It doesn't carry the overlay information for the channel guide or menus. That's not an issue if you're using Firewire to feed an HTPC, but it could be annoying if you're trying to connect the Firewire output directly to a TV.
That's what the cable companies want you to think. I haven't tried using CableCard, but my "installing" my HD STB was as easy as going to the local Comcast store and picking up a box. I phoned ahead, they scanned the box onto my account, I brought it home, plugged it in, and it Just Worked(tm). There's no reason that a CableCard should be any different.
In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the cable techs are incompetent with respect to setting up HD equipment. The last time I had a tech actually touch any of my stuff, he ended up misconfiguring the outputs of the box such that I couldn't actually get any HD content to my TV. The channels all worked fine, but the "installation" was botched. As soon as he left, I rewired it all to work properly. Of course that was back when HD was supplied by a side-car box, so the installation was a little tricky. The current Moto boxes are trivial -- plug in the cable, plug in your component/DVI/HDMI/Firewire cable for output, plug in your S/PDIF coax cable for audio, and you're done. Use the front-panel menu to configure (upscaling for SD channels, what resolution to use for HD channels, etc).
CableCard should be supported anywhere that digital cable is offered. To the cable company, a CableCard should look no different than any other STB with the minor difference that it only allows one-way traffic (oh noes! I have to call teh Comcast to buy my PPV pr0n!).
That's usually either bad hardware or bad installation. There's no excuse for either scenario except that the cable companies want you to think CableCard sucks. If you're currently using a digital STB, there's no reason why a CableCard shouldn't work just as well in your house.
One draws the line where the money is no longer available. Gun dealers are not held accountable for the crimes of their clients because the NRA is a huge lobby with plenty of the money. Auto dealers and manufacturers are not held accountable because again they're huge lobbyists with lots of money. Do you know who does get held accountable? Bars that overserver people and then let them drive drunk. Why? Because the restaurant industry is too fragmented to effectively lobby against such legistlation, but the tee-totaller prohibitionists like MADD are big enough to get such terrible legislation pushed through.
Lobbyists are neither good or bad. They're just using the system to further their own interests. If you don't like it, either work to change the system (ha!) or build your own lobby (that's what the MADD folk did). For what it's worth, I like the NRA, I hate MADD, and I'm indifferent to Big Auto.
Did you read any of the multiplayer beta reviews (for example)? Or better yet, did you participate in the beta? Halo 3 is still Halo. It looks and feels like halo (shiny metal, relatively slow movement speed, many returning weapons and vehicles you should already be familiar with, etc). It's evolutionary, not revolutionary, though I was surprised that such a minor control change (moving weapon pickup/reloading to the bumpers so you can have independent hand control) made such a big difference. Going back to Halo 2 after playing Halo 3 was quite a challenge.
On the single player side of things, Bungie generally plays those cards close to their chests. So far they've told us that we'll be able to play with up to 4-players in co-op over Live, but that's it. There might be some information leaks as we get closer to launch, but historically Bungie has been pretty good about keeping the single player campaign information hidden from prying eyes so that it's fresh when you actually play it (the Arbiter was a huge surprise in Halo 2, for example).
Will it blow away every game out there? Probably not. Will it be a fun and compelling single player campaign with a long-lasting and competitive multiplayer component? Definitely. Is it worth paying $130 for the Legendary edition with a mini helmet? Only if you're that hardcore. Is it worth paying $60 for the regular edition? If you liked Halo 1 and Halo 2, absolutely.
Buy yourself a portable breathalyzer if you're not able to control your drinking. Not only will it let you know if you're too impaired to drive, it can also be great fun at parties. The person with the highest BAC wins! As a bonus, a portable breathalyzer can be used with any vehicle, and will likely cost much less than what Nissan will charge for this.
You'll get my manually-driven car when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
I would argue that they're doing it too soon. As of right now, there's absolutely no economic benefit to dropping the price. The PS3 (even with its pseudo-"price cut") is dead in the water as far as competition goes, and unless they can drop $200 the 360 will not be able to compete with the Wii on price. The holiday line-up is going to be killer (GTA4, Halo 3, Mass Effect, etc) and will entice enough people to buy without also dropping the price. As far as I know, the 65nm manufacturing process isn't yet in place, so they can't take advantage of new economies of scale in order to afford this price cut. The $1billion warranty write-off hurt the 360's potentional profitability, and lowering the price limits even further what the 360 could eventually make back (supposedly the 360 would become profitable on the 65nm manufacturing process, though I don't know if the gain is enough to offset the $50 price drop).
I would suggest that Microsoft hold their ground. The upcoming games and lack of competition (the Wii is complementary to the 360, thus the Wii60) will drive more sales of 360s than any price cut would do. I'd like to see how profitable the 360 could be if it were allowed to stay at its current price while growing cheaper to build via changes like the 65nm process. Have a price drop contingency, but don't roll it out unless real problems crop up such as key games slipping, or increased competition from Sony (ha!).
What about them? Nobody buys a Core except to replace a broken Premium where they already have the hard drive, wireless controller, component video cable, etc. The Halo 3 edition is not out yet, and the Simpsons Movie edition is not available for purchase in stores. That leaves us with the Premium and the Elite. The choice between the two is pretty simple -- if you don't know or care why the Elite is better, buy the Premium unless you absolutely must have it in black. If you want and can use HDMI, or if you think the 120GB hard drive would be useful, buy the Elite. It's cheaper than buying a Premium and the 120GB hard drive separately.