I still have one of those Casio calculator watches. It still works. I still wear it. Every time I drag it out and strap it on, I get lots of "Cool!"s...
Some tech is just timeless. And yes, the pun is intended.
We're a 2-parent, 2-kid family. Most of our computers are in one room, a kind of in-home NOC. Often all 4 of us are in this room, on the computers, and often all on IM. There we sit, our backs to each other, and sometimes rather than talk we'll all IM each other. We all admit it's pretty pathetic and pretty weird, but dammit, we like it that way.
I've got sleep apnea, and so I travel with my CPAP machine. This is a device which keeps a constant air pressure flowing in my nose, which in turn keeps the tissues in my throat open while I sleep.
The machine looks like a very small bedside humidifier, only with an LCD screen, buttons and nobs. It also comes with a six-foot-long flex tube, a reservoir for heated water and a mask not unlike the one Dennis Hopper used in Blue Velvet.
It's become my 2nd carry-on bag, replacing my notebook computer, which now goes in my suitcase.
Screeners' reaction to this device has been mixed, to say the least. Some have said, "Oh yeah, that's a breathing machine. We see these those all the time." Others have asked me to assemble it and power it up, and don't appear to understand what it's for even after 3 or 4 attempts at explanation.
It's a real hassle, however, since not traveling it and using it could result in heart attack, stroke and/or death, I put up with it.
I review computer hardware/software for a daily newspaper, and I can tell you that, in many cases, the quality of the hardware I get is less than what you'd see on store shelves. This is because reviewers often get pre-production units, which are essentially lacking some of the bells/whistles and fit/finish of production-line products. Whenever possible, I try to insist on production models, but that's not always possible. It's even tougher for dead-tree magazines, which work on lead times of months, to get full production units.
That said, there's no way for reviewers to know with pre-production units whether they are getting what will eventually be on the shelf - and it may not be a case of the manufacturer trying to get away with something. A processor in a pre-production unit may be faster, or an LCD screen have a greater contrast ratio, than what ends up at retail, but the reason often is that design changes are made at the last minute related to cost or part availability. In fact, sometimes the product may be less powerful in pre-production than what is finally delivered to buyers. This was particularly true in the days of falling RAM prices - I'd get review PCs with 128 MB of RAM, and when they shipped they'd have 256 MB.
I fully understand that the list of reasons is aimed at those who insist on practical aspects for space, and if we have to convince visionless dolts who hold the purse strings, so be it.
But the real reason to go into space is because we, as a species, must. It's what we do. We find something we don't understand and we go figure it out. We find uninhabited places and we go live there. It's a major part of being human.
Revisionists may take great joy in dismantling his mythology, but John Kennedy and the generation he led understood this. Raised on the notion that we can do anything, we did the impossible and roared to the moon - and the fact that we were spurred on by fear of the Soviet boogieman was only secondary. Kennedy had a vision for what space meant to the U.S. and to man as a species.
Today, we're all practicality and logic and bottom-lines, and that sucks our soul away. We go into space because we must, because we're called there, and if we don't answer the call, we've lost something vitally important within ourselves.
Other than that, I was very pleased with the responses we got. They weren't the short little answers I was expecting.
You were expecting short answers? From a bunch of lawyers?
It was not my intent to complain about getting canned responses. Hell, any response is good. At least if there's some kind of auto-response, you can hope there's a system behind it.
While I'm as big a fan of weblogs as anyone, I gotta say this just proves a point I've been making for a while... there's not much really cutting edge about them. They're diaries that happen to have hyperlinks. The only reason they get read, I think, I is people like to look in other people's windows.
And the view is a lot more interesting in some of those windows than others. Pepys lived a life that's a lot more interesting than almost anything today.
Wouldn't it be fun to apply for this job, and once you're in the interview process, begin espousing pro-P2P views. What if, one after the other, these guys had to confront a parade of rabid, file-sharing geeks with CTO-level qualifications?
Even better, *don't* mention your views until after you've accepted the job. Then work to sabotage Warner's "P2P warfare" efforts. Yeah, that's the ticket.
There's probably enough of you unemployed CTO's out there - who've undoubtedly spent your idle days using Kazaa - to pull of this Ken Kesey-style prank.
Were you able to tap into any grant money for rural community Internet providers, are or are these funding sources a thing of the past? I was under the impression there is money available for rural Internet infrastructure - is it real, or is it vaporcash?
Maybe I'm naive (no, wait, I know I'm naive), but I gotta think that there's going to be some legal action on this, hopeful before it gets momentum.
Or maybe it won't require that. Microsoft does respond to angry buzz, and has changed direction when the wind blows hard enough. There's probably some formula on a whiteboard in BillG's office: Money / badPR + JusticeDept = Go and/or NoGo.
Yep, the article said they may not have been sold. I repeated to arrive at the notion that they may have been placed on unpopular CDs as a trial balloon, and thus may not be selling at a high rate.
Sigh. I forgot. Geeks get literal. Gotta spell it out for most of them. 1's and 0's.
I seriously doubt there are 10 million "on store shelves." Probably 10 million in warehouses. And I suspect they're not putting this copy protection on the most popular artists' CDs... probably more apt to be on other Charlie Pride titles!
I was a NetFlix user for several months and also was frustrated by turnaround time - but I'm not even on the East Coast. I'm in Houston, and it still took a good 4-5 days to get movies once they were shipped. If you watch DVDs frequently, you can burn through the 3 you get with the $20 rate, then sit and wait for more to come.
The fix for this is really - surprise! - to move to one of the more expensive tiers of service that give you more disks.
That said, NetFlix really is great for those obscure films. I finally got to see Robert Downey's Greaser's Palace again through NetFlix. I'd loved it in college in the '70s, and had tried to describe it to my wife, but there's no describing that movie. None of the rental stores here had it, but NetFlix did. Ironically, it wasn't as good when seen through more mature eyes. Another myth of youth shot to hell.
Last night (10/9), RoadRunner-Houston apparently did some tweaking/up-beefing to the router that was causing pain. About mid-evening, the effect was sudden & dramatic - ping to it went from the high 200s to the 20s-50s. Online gaming was suddenly possible, where it had not been before. We'll see if it holds...
This problem has been known for some time, and is patched in the IE 5.5 SP1 that was released a couple months back. In fact, I believe there was a separate patch for it prior to the release of the SP.
Slashdot Mirror
It's also being offered in some Texas communities, including Houston.
Dear Kitty,
I hacked you a delicious bass.
. . . that the price of the board game is the same as that of the PC version? $54.95.
I still have one of those Casio calculator watches. It still works. I still wear it. Every time I drag it out and strap it on, I get lots of "Cool!"s ...
Some tech is just timeless. And yes, the pun is intended.
We're a 2-parent, 2-kid family. Most of our computers are in one room, a kind of in-home NOC. Often all 4 of us are in this room, on the computers, and often all on IM. There we sit, our backs to each other, and sometimes rather than talk we'll all IM each other. We all admit it's pretty pathetic and pretty weird, but dammit, we like it that way.
I've got sleep apnea, and so I travel with my CPAP machine. This is a device which keeps a constant air pressure flowing in my nose, which in turn keeps the tissues in my throat open while I sleep.
The machine looks like a very small bedside humidifier, only with an LCD screen, buttons and nobs. It also comes with a six-foot-long flex tube, a reservoir for heated water and a mask not unlike the one Dennis Hopper used in Blue Velvet.
It's become my 2nd carry-on bag, replacing my notebook computer, which now goes in my suitcase.
Screeners' reaction to this device has been mixed, to say the least. Some have said, "Oh yeah, that's a breathing machine. We see these those all the time." Others have asked me to assemble it and power it up, and don't appear to understand what it's for even after 3 or 4 attempts at explanation.
It's a real hassle, however, since not traveling it and using it could result in heart attack, stroke and/or death, I put up with it.
I review computer hardware/software for a daily newspaper, and I can tell you that, in many cases, the quality of the hardware I get is less than what you'd see on store shelves. This is because reviewers often get pre-production units, which are essentially lacking some of the bells/whistles and fit/finish of production-line products. Whenever possible, I try to insist on production models, but that's not always possible. It's even tougher for dead-tree magazines, which work on lead times of months, to get full production units.
That said, there's no way for reviewers to know with pre-production units whether they are getting what will eventually be on the shelf - and it may not be a case of the manufacturer trying to get away with something. A processor in a pre-production unit may be faster, or an LCD screen have a greater contrast ratio, than what ends up at retail, but the reason often is that design changes are made at the last minute related to cost or part availability. In fact, sometimes the product may be less powerful in pre-production than what is finally delivered to buyers. This was particularly true in the days of falling RAM prices - I'd get review PCs with 128 MB of RAM, and when they shipped they'd have 256 MB.
But the real reason to go into space is because we, as a species, must. It's what we do. We find something we don't understand and we go figure it out. We find uninhabited places and we go live there. It's a major part of being human.
Revisionists may take great joy in dismantling his mythology, but John Kennedy and the generation he led understood this. Raised on the notion that we can do anything, we did the impossible and roared to the moon - and the fact that we were spurred on by fear of the Soviet boogieman was only secondary. Kennedy had a vision for what space meant to the U.S. and to man as a species.
Today, we're all practicality and logic and bottom-lines, and that sucks our soul away. We go into space because we must, because we're called there, and if we don't answer the call, we've lost something vitally important within ourselves.
Other than that, I was very pleased with the responses we got. They weren't the short little answers I was expecting. You were expecting short answers? From a bunch of lawyers?
It was not my intent to complain about getting canned responses. Hell, any response is good. At least if there's some kind of auto-response, you can hope there's a system behind it.
Yeah, I'm an optimist.
While I'm as big a fan of weblogs as anyone, I gotta say this just proves a point I've been making for a while ... there's not much really cutting edge about them. They're diaries that happen to have hyperlinks. The only reason they get read, I think, I is people like to look in other people's windows.
And the view is a lot more interesting in some of those windows than others. Pepys lived a life that's a lot more interesting than almost anything today.
How about some guerilla action here?
Wouldn't it be fun to apply for this job, and once you're in the interview process, begin espousing pro-P2P views. What if, one after the other, these guys had to confront a parade of rabid, file-sharing geeks with CTO-level qualifications?
Even better, *don't* mention your views until after you've accepted the job. Then work to sabotage Warner's "P2P warfare" efforts. Yeah, that's the ticket.
There's probably enough of you unemployed CTO's out there - who've undoubtedly spent your idle days using Kazaa - to pull of this Ken Kesey-style prank.
Were you able to tap into any grant money for rural community Internet providers, are or are these funding sources a thing of the past? I was under the impression there is money available for rural Internet infrastructure - is it real, or is it vaporcash?
You can find the entire 3-part series here.
Or maybe it won't require that. Microsoft does respond to angry buzz, and has changed direction when the wind blows hard enough. There's probably some formula on a whiteboard in BillG's office: Money / badPR + JusticeDept = Go and/or NoGo.
Then again, I am naive.
Agreed. Running an anonymous review is bush-league, Slashdot. An anonymous review - whether critical or favorable - has zero credibility.
This article should have be rejected on that basis alone.
Full disclosure - writing reviews of computer products is part of what I do for a living.
Yep, the article said they may not have been sold. I repeated to arrive at the notion that they may have been placed on unpopular CDs as a trial balloon, and thus may not be selling at a high rate.
Sigh. I forgot. Geeks get literal. Gotta spell it out for most of them. 1's and 0's.
I seriously doubt there are 10 million "on store shelves." Probably 10 million in warehouses. And I suspect they're not putting this copy protection on the most popular artists' CDs
The fix for this is really - surprise! - to move to one of the more expensive tiers of service that give you more disks.
That said, NetFlix really is great for those obscure films. I finally got to see Robert Downey's Greaser's Palace again through NetFlix. I'd loved it in college in the '70s, and had tried to describe it to my wife, but there's no describing that movie. None of the rental stores here had it, but NetFlix did. Ironically, it wasn't as good when seen through more mature eyes. Another myth of youth shot to hell.
Hey, you're never too young to kill Nazis. If you're old enough to use a mouse, you're old enough to kill Nazis.
The family that wastes Nazis together
Last night (10/9), RoadRunner-Houston apparently did some tweaking/up-beefing to the router that was causing pain. About mid-evening, the effect was sudden & dramatic - ping to it went from the high 200s to the 20s-50s. Online gaming was suddenly possible, where it had not been before. We'll see if it holds...
Nothing to see here, folks, move along ....
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Gotta say, though, quality of service varies dramatically by neighborhood. There are lots of RR users who swear by it; and many who swear at it.
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