The account number is not stored on the card, and there is no way to validate without a PIN. The number recorded on the card is meaningless without a database to link it to your real bank account.
Actually, checking for a valid ATM card is impossible.
There is no ATM or even credit card standard; it's just a unique identifier linked to your account in the bank's databases. You can use ANY magstripe card you have as an ATM card. Just go to the bank and ask them.
My bank did this for me when I lost my ATM card and needed cash. I went in, showed my picture ID, and they recorded my Student ID card as my ATM card. I could then stick it in an ATM and withdraw money. The guy explained that it was a lot faster than mailing me a new ATM card and that they could do it with any card that wasn't already linked to a bank account.
The series turned to crap the day it went 3d and turned into a teen angst soap opera. FF7 was okay but FF8 was the death of the series as far as I'm concerned.
Well, my television has the same native resolution as my monitor (1280x1024) in DVI mode so it's not a stretch that I might want to move my PC the 10 feet over to the TV and play over there on a 32" screen as opposed to a 20" one.
Every other wireless keyboard I've used sucks ass for playing games. The problem is that when you sit on a couch, you rarely sit in a position where you'd be able to lay the keyboard at a comfortable angle to type on. Forget about using a mouse. If they can solve even one of these problems, they'll be that much further ahead of everyone else. That's a big "if" though, we'll have to wait and see.
Yes, the company's main product may be beaten to the punch by XBox live arcade at best and vaporware at worst, but they found a real problem and attempted to create a real solution. Every wireless keyboard/mouse combo I've ever used is totally unsuitable for gaming while sitting on a couch.
If this thing ever comes out, and it's priced right (under $100,) I'll think about picking one up only because there are no good alternatives. Erm, the lapboard, not the Phantom.
The only competing market space they shared was the hollywood production market, which has been taken over by Apple anyway. Apple doesn't need Opterons, Intel has been playing catch up and the new Xeon 5100s are Opteron-killers. 'Xserve' in general is nice hardware, but it's too pricey and offers little over other 1U rackmounts if you're not running a 100% mac environment. IRIX has been dead for years, SGI has been selling Linux boxes since 2001 or so.
The problem is SGI has nothing *anyone* wants. They made some sweet, high-powered workstations, but unfortunately for them the tasks people were doing with the machines didn't scale in complexity as fast as commodity PCs did. A few years of management blunders later and they are just another computer maker with nothing to offer over Sun, IBM, HP or even Dell.
Because Madden has had the same interface for years. Screw with that and people get confused. You need at least 5 unused buttons for your recievers, that's just the way Madden has always worked. After seeing the Wii controller, it seems that Nintendo is aware of this. It looks like an SNES pad with 2 analog sticks a la the Dual Shock.
Crystal Chronicles was the Gamecube one (though honestly it felt more like part of the Mana series IMO.) You're missing Mystic Quest, the American-made hack-and-slasher for SNES.
Well, at least if they're doing this they're not passing 'real' laws, right?
That may actually be a good thing.
I think it comes down to the point that Democrats know they are going to have a shot at taking over in a couple of months, so they have no incentive to work with the Republicans. The Republicans, on the other hand, are putting forth a lot of bills they know have no chance of passing in order to appease their constituency and maybe stop the bleeding a little bit.
The people voting affirmatively on these fluff bills are doing so because they know they won't pass, but they can say "I voted against gay marriage!" (or some other make believe problem du jour.) Word in many political circles was that as many as 20 republican senators were willing to vote against the flag burning thing if it actually had a shot at passing.
Yeah, Sega is still around, but they are not the same company. They're making ports of Sonic games to new consoles. Woo. I think EA signing an exclusive license with the NBA and NFL sealed their fate; the 2K sports games were their last mainstream product and I'm betting they were banking on that to fund some of their other projects.
Working Designs was great; I used to deal with them a lot back when I did game reviews. They were always friendly and accessible, even to a small site like the one I worked for. Their games tended to cater to the anime fanboy crowd though, and they stuffed the packaging with extras (figurines, maps, leather bound books, soundtracks, etc.) Elemental Gearbolt is probably the best lightgun-on-rails shooter I've ever played though. WD always catered to their fans first and it's a shame there aren't more companies around like them.
Because I don't feel like paying $1500 per machine for Windows 2003 server on every server in my web farm. Shit, that's twice as much as the servers I'd run it on! Grid computing and server farms are very poorly suited to a commercial operating system.
It was released in Japan and flopped horribly. It was a crappy idea to begin with, everyone knows aftermarket peripherals don't sell.
The only game worth playing was Zelda: OoT Master Quest, which was subsequently released in North America on the GameCube (and is the same game as Z:OoT except the dungeons are totally different and harder) on the pre-order bonus disk for Wind Waker.
Actually I would say that WoW is a casual game the way most people play it. The majority of the playerbase (Blizzard's own generous statistics put the number around 75%) never participates in raiding. Yes, there are plenty of people who play to the point of obsession, and it may seem like these are more plentiful if only because they are ALWAYS online.
The only thing you have to realize about WoW is that if you have a life, you will not be one of the top players on your server, or even in the any of the top guilds on the server. Once you can accept that you are not a special flower, and you will essentially always be a 'noob' in the eyes of many, the game stops being a pissing contest and you can enjoy it casually.
They forgot Sega? Technically they are still around but it is not the same company it once was.
The Dreamcast was a great system too, and could more than hold its own against the PS2 and Xbox graphically, however it just didn't catch on outside of gaming critics. I blame poor marketing, as the DC had more memorable games in its short lifetime than the PS2 or Xbox have been able to muster thus far. They may have been doomed since the Saturn though, which truly was a subpar console.
This is probably the most touted feature of Office 2007 I've heard of, and all it does is reinforce bad habits. For stuff this size you should be using a database. Seriously, spreadsheets of this size are not portable and are pretty much tied to the person who created them. Databases force you into somewhat better data layout and have a standard interface so that if the original designer is run over by a bus, the project can continue. You also get better controls over how your data is displayed and searched, plus the ability to integrate this data into a ton of different places without much extra effort later.
I can maybe understand in a lab setting where you need to do quick calcultions over a few hundred thousand data points. But you should still probably be using a database if you have over 100,000 rows of ANYTHING you're going to need to refer to later. MySQL is free and perfect for these kinds of applications, plus every kid going through a CS department these days has done a MySQL + PHP project.
I'd never pay for Expert Exchange, but on older questions you can just scroll down to see the answer. I think you only have to login for questions less than 6 months old or something. So they're not totally useless.
The 'invitation' system is just a way to know which GMail address are linked to who. Every GMail user has way more invites than they can possibly give out, it's not like its a secret club or anything. You get something like 10 invites per week with a maximum of 100. I think I've given out 3 in 6 months. It has nothing to do with being l33t.
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The account number is not stored on the card, and there is no way to validate without a PIN. The number recorded on the card is meaningless without a database to link it to your real bank account.
Actually, checking for a valid ATM card is impossible.
There is no ATM or even credit card standard; it's just a unique identifier linked to your account in the bank's databases. You can use ANY magstripe card you have as an ATM card. Just go to the bank and ask them.
My bank did this for me when I lost my ATM card and needed cash. I went in, showed my picture ID, and they recorded my Student ID card as my ATM card. I could then stick it in an ATM and withdraw money. The guy explained that it was a lot faster than mailing me a new ATM card and that they could do it with any card that wasn't already linked to a bank account.
What movie is that from? I recall seeing that scene in some bad teen sex comedy when I was in high school, I just don't remember which one.
The series turned to crap the day it went 3d and turned into a teen angst soap opera. FF7 was okay but FF8 was the death of the series as far as I'm concerned.
Well, my television has the same native resolution as my monitor (1280x1024) in DVI mode so it's not a stretch that I might want to move my PC the 10 feet over to the TV and play over there on a 32" screen as opposed to a 20" one.
Every other wireless keyboard I've used sucks ass for playing games. The problem is that when you sit on a couch, you rarely sit in a position where you'd be able to lay the keyboard at a comfortable angle to type on. Forget about using a mouse. If they can solve even one of these problems, they'll be that much further ahead of everyone else. That's a big "if" though, we'll have to wait and see.
Yes, the company's main product may be beaten to the punch by XBox live arcade at best and vaporware at worst, but they found a real problem and attempted to create a real solution. Every wireless keyboard/mouse combo I've ever used is totally unsuitable for gaming while sitting on a couch.
If this thing ever comes out, and it's priced right (under $100,) I'll think about picking one up only because there are no good alternatives. Erm, the lapboard, not the Phantom.
SGI has nothing Apple wants.
The only competing market space they shared was the hollywood production market, which has been taken over by Apple anyway. Apple doesn't need Opterons, Intel has been playing catch up and the new Xeon 5100s are Opteron-killers. 'Xserve' in general is nice hardware, but it's too pricey and offers little over other 1U rackmounts if you're not running a 100% mac environment. IRIX has been dead for years, SGI has been selling Linux boxes since 2001 or so.
The problem is SGI has nothing *anyone* wants. They made some sweet, high-powered workstations, but unfortunately for them the tasks people were doing with the machines didn't scale in complexity as fast as commodity PCs did. A few years of management blunders later and they are just another computer maker with nothing to offer over Sun, IBM, HP or even Dell.
Because Madden has had the same interface for years. Screw with that and people get confused. You need at least 5 unused buttons for your recievers, that's just the way Madden has always worked. After seeing the Wii controller, it seems that Nintendo is aware of this. It looks like an SNES pad with 2 analog sticks a la the Dual Shock.
Crystal Chronicles was the Gamecube one (though honestly it felt more like part of the Mana series IMO.) You're missing Mystic Quest, the American-made hack-and-slasher for SNES.
Well, at least if they're doing this they're not passing 'real' laws, right?
That may actually be a good thing.
I think it comes down to the point that Democrats know they are going to have a shot at taking over in a couple of months, so they have no incentive to work with the Republicans. The Republicans, on the other hand, are putting forth a lot of bills they know have no chance of passing in order to appease their constituency and maybe stop the bleeding a little bit.
The people voting affirmatively on these fluff bills are doing so because they know they won't pass, but they can say "I voted against gay marriage!" (or some other make believe problem du jour.) Word in many political circles was that as many as 20 republican senators were willing to vote against the flag burning thing if it actually had a shot at passing.
Wii will be the console of choice for the next gen, followed by XBox 360, then PS3 as a close 3rd.
The only "if" in Wii's corner was EA's sports franchises. This pretty much guarantees it as long as the final Wii controller has enough buttons.
Funny, I thought a retrophiliac was someone who liked The Golden Girls a bit too much...
Unless, of course, you released Wife 1.0 in Texas.
But everyone pronounces it "wit-zul"!
RHEL is probably not the best distro for web farms. Something free would be much easier both from a licensing and a bugetary standpoint.
Yeah, Sega is still around, but they are not the same company. They're making ports of Sonic games to new consoles. Woo. I think EA signing an exclusive license with the NBA and NFL sealed their fate; the 2K sports games were their last mainstream product and I'm betting they were banking on that to fund some of their other projects.
Working Designs was great; I used to deal with them a lot back when I did game reviews. They were always friendly and accessible, even to a small site like the one I worked for. Their games tended to cater to the anime fanboy crowd though, and they stuffed the packaging with extras (figurines, maps, leather bound books, soundtracks, etc.) Elemental Gearbolt is probably the best lightgun-on-rails shooter I've ever played though. WD always catered to their fans first and it's a shame there aren't more companies around like them.
Because I don't feel like paying $1500 per machine for Windows 2003 server on every server in my web farm. Shit, that's twice as much as the servers I'd run it on! Grid computing and server farms are very poorly suited to a commercial operating system.
It was released in Japan and flopped horribly. It was a crappy idea to begin with, everyone knows aftermarket peripherals don't sell.
The only game worth playing was Zelda: OoT Master Quest, which was subsequently released in North America on the GameCube (and is the same game as Z:OoT except the dungeons are totally different and harder) on the pre-order bonus disk for Wind Waker.
Actually I would say that WoW is a casual game the way most people play it. The majority of the playerbase (Blizzard's own generous statistics put the number around 75%) never participates in raiding. Yes, there are plenty of people who play to the point of obsession, and it may seem like these are more plentiful if only because they are ALWAYS online.
The only thing you have to realize about WoW is that if you have a life, you will not be one of the top players on your server, or even in the any of the top guilds on the server. Once you can accept that you are not a special flower, and you will essentially always be a 'noob' in the eyes of many, the game stops being a pissing contest and you can enjoy it casually.
Careful there buddy.. This is slashdot, you're not suggesting that anyone actually reads the articles, are you?
They forgot Sega? Technically they are still around but it is not the same company it once was.
The Dreamcast was a great system too, and could more than hold its own against the PS2 and Xbox graphically, however it just didn't catch on outside of gaming critics. I blame poor marketing, as the DC had more memorable games in its short lifetime than the PS2 or Xbox have been able to muster thus far. They may have been doomed since the Saturn though, which truly was a subpar console.
This is probably the most touted feature of Office 2007 I've heard of, and all it does is reinforce bad habits. For stuff this size you should be using a database. Seriously, spreadsheets of this size are not portable and are pretty much tied to the person who created them. Databases force you into somewhat better data layout and have a standard interface so that if the original designer is run over by a bus, the project can continue. You also get better controls over how your data is displayed and searched, plus the ability to integrate this data into a ton of different places without much extra effort later.
I can maybe understand in a lab setting where you need to do quick calcultions over a few hundred thousand data points. But you should still probably be using a database if you have over 100,000 rows of ANYTHING you're going to need to refer to later. MySQL is free and perfect for these kinds of applications, plus every kid going through a CS department these days has done a MySQL + PHP project.
Billy Bastard was what I was 21 years ago when I was cross-addicted to alcohol and cocaine. A very volatile mix.
That might be a clue as to why... He's not exactly a sheltered tech nerd.
I'd never pay for Expert Exchange, but on older questions you can just scroll down to see the answer. I think you only have to login for questions less than 6 months old or something. So they're not totally useless.
The 'invitation' system is just a way to know which GMail address are linked to who. Every GMail user has way more invites than they can possibly give out, it's not like its a secret club or anything. You get something like 10 invites per week with a maximum of 100. I think I've given out 3 in 6 months. It has nothing to do with being l33t.