I think I remember from psychology class, that an innate fear of snakes is one of the very few visible human instincts. It's also something that is present in all (or nearly all?) mammals? If you take a stiff rope and shove it towards a kitten (who has never dealt witha real snake before), he will have a far stronger reaction than with other toys. The recognition and fear of snakes is built-in. (Sorry I don't have any references offhand, just my hazy recollection; any expert care to commment?)
I prefer AMD over Intel. I prefer NVidia over ATI (better Linux support). This move likely means I won't be seeing any integrated nVidia on AMD boards in the near future, which truly sucks. So will Linux support for AMD boards suddenly become worse (due to ATI's stinginess on the specs), or will AMD make ATI be more liberal with its specs now? It would certainly be in its best interests to do so.
Past this event horizon, following the creation of strong artificial intelligence or the amplification of human intelligence, existing models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers.
Fuh? Damn. I was hoping by "technological singularity" they meant a device that could act as my pda, my camera, my laptop, my cell phone, *and* my MP3 player. That's far more useful to me.
One of the main reasons I love Opera is that opening "g blah" will do a google search for "blah". There are several other shortcuts. It saves me a lot of time over having a separate search bar/box/menu.
I held out learning and embracing CSS for along time, but finally did. Yes, there are inconsistencies, but they're not that bad, really. I keep an instance of IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape open at all times when I'm working. Every now and then, I reload my work from each of them. "Oh, that browser has an issues with this..." Okay, tweak around it, no biggie. Still beats programming in the Windows API:P
Also, I found some great web pages documenting differences/bugs between browser versions. When you understnad these, and work around them, it's really not that bad. Again, the complexity of dealing with the exceptions is an order of magnitude easier than dealing with the oddities of the Win API...
In the early days of C on PC's, it wasn't the most efficient language in the world. Thankfully there were good profilers. And I quickly learned to utilize those. Analyze your program, and you find that 90% of the time was spent in one area. So I'd optimize that one section by recoding the CPU-intensive bits in assembly, and *wow*, the program would fly. Profile it again, and I'd find that most of the time was spent in a very mundane and efficient outer loop, and I'd know the program was near optimal.
Fast forward 10 or 20 years, and I'm coding in Java. I find one section takes 90% of the CPU time, I recode that as a native method and things fly.
Same with my new favorite language, Perl, although I find there are native methods for most libraries that would otherwise be inefficient.
It's a simple technique, that can make almost any language fly, tweaking around the odd spot where there's a bottleneck.
I loved HotWheels as a kid, but now that I have kids, I am so disappointed with all the crappy and expensive fluff. We don't need a fire spitting demon track, battery powered launchers, or hundreds of crappy and brittle little plastic pieces to put together for the "sets". Too many themes, with large towers and crap that snaps and breaks easily, or pieces that get lost and ruin the set. I was shocked at the stupid and needless themes, and poor quality. None of the sets were usable beyond the first setup of them. My son has more fun with my old track, curve, loop sets, with a bit of gravity to launch some stunts. If a pieces gets lost, no biggie, they're all basic and rugged units, not specialized and poorly built theme sets.
I searched high and low last Christmas, and couldn't find a basic set with some track, a few curves and maybe a loop, and some cars. (I ended up buying some bulk track, couldn't find any curves; and a few cars. Not as much fun as when I was a kid.) Please, HotWheels, get back to the basics, with some well built, simple, and fun, sets. I think you'd be surprised at how much appeal (and profits) it would find.
I see it a bit like Scrabble, one of my favorite games. There have been attempted variations of it, most of which sucked. But they have come out with deluxe versions of the old game (fancier tiles, rotatable board, electronic versions, etc.); that's useful and classy enhancement of a sure-fire formula. But changing the fundamentals usually blew the formula. Same thing with chintzy and expensive theme sets from HotWheels, IMO.
I was looking around for a cable to hook to my GM vehicle's stereo (Pontiac Montana). I was surpised to find, that for the same price (around $100), there were cables that hooked iPods up to the stereo, including the GM stereo's controls and display. Nice integration. I never thought of it, but it indeed a safety factor, as well as a gee-whiz thing. (It came with an iPod holder/charger too, I think.)
Before university, I worked with a comp sci university grad, and was so disappointed in how little he could apply his skills to the business at hand. It's what led me to take a B. Comm. in University. I followed it up with an M. Sc., which was a good mix. The computer technology, I always found I could easily learn; the business skills were better learned in the University environment. I never regretted that approach. (Led to me being able to found one business that employed 100 people for a few years, and another that employed a half dozen for a copule of years, and another one on the go now.)
I'll give my vote for the Marble Mouse. I had some sever antibiotic-induced joint stiffness (not quite RSI, but similar end results), and tried a variety of input devices. Touchpads, trackpoints (which I generally *love*, wish they weren't dying), and some other more bizarre ones; but the Marble Mouse is the one that caused the least grief for me. Seemed to put far less stress on the joints in my hand (especially side-to-side stresses, which particularly bothered my joints).
I remember way back when, thinking that when the technology arrived to make games look "real" it would be pretty cool. WRONG. When games look "real" and are modeling real physics, they are limited in what they can do. All we get in the way of innovation is new environments for running around shooting stuff.
On the flip side, there are genres where I find excellent physics to really add to the game. Racers in particular (other than wacky ones like Mario Kart). NFS Porsche Unlimited was truly mind blowing for me, with a force-feedback wheel. You could really feel the difference in physics between the cars. (I owed one of the cars in the line-up, and could easily recognize it's feel in the game from the others.)
Every racer I've tried since, including later NFS games, just don't feel realistic to me. They've gone for glitz, and regressed on the physics, I've found. Is there any racing game out there that has/can/will advance on NFS PU???
Just give it a nice dose of Penicillin or Erythromycin, and you're done. (Ensure the full course of antibiotics are taken, otherwise super-resistant storage strains will result...)
Why upgrade to XP? To be able to run MSN Messenger 7.5, which will only install on XP.
Does anyone find that a bit anti-competitive? Forcing people to use XP to use the latest *messenger*??? What is it about MSN 7.5 that truly requires XP over earlier MS OS's???
My only concern is that if edited versions are not available, and the only version available is the purely unedited version, might that cause DVD producers to be more conservative with what they put in, in the first place? (It's a vague parallel to the rebate story posted earlier on SlashDot; if there isn't breakage [unfiled rebates], then the overall amount of rebates will likely drop. Sometimes by purifying and simplifying the process, you can cause unintended effects.)
In general, I applaud the ruling, but worry it might reduce the quality of the original distributions.
I'm curious what about MythTV you consider to be "rough-around-the-edges" (apart from the fact that you have to install it yourself) compared to which commercial offerings.
Sure, here's some of the reasons I consider it not-commercial grade (but I still love it, don't get me wrong):
1) As you mention, you do have to install it yourself. This is a challenge even for the savvy. Thankfully KnoppMyth takes most of the challenges out of it. Although even with KnoppMyth, I had to rebuild and hack LIRC myself to get my remote to work, and do a couple of other ugly hacks to get things working. This involved coming up with custom codes (a combination of two config files I found out there), and writing a script to send to the ir blaster. Pretty rough stuff. It works now, and I'm told (as I'm always told), a lot of these issues are resolved in the latest release.
2) The backend stops responding now and then. The process is running, and doesn't seem to have crashed, but things stop recording, and the UI hangs until I restart front and back end. This happens a few times a week. Maybe the newer KnoppMyth/Myth builds fix that.
3) If you have a lot of channels (like on Satellite), and a lot of previously-recorded programs, changing schedules and some other operations can really slow down. It doesn't scale well for large number of channels/programs. Works well enough, though.
4) Unpolished addons: MythMusic; where to start. It has the most bizarre playlist UI I've ever seen. To modify a play list you have to copy it to the "Active play list" change it, then copy it back, remembering whether to hit enter or right or whatever at the right points. Very confusing. And if you want to do any other operation (schedule a program), the Music stops. Not very elegant, IMHO. MythWeather is a great concept, but it hangs and acts very slow when trying to retrieve weather info and not being able to do so due to 'net problems. The MythBrowser, News Feeds, are basically unusable, I find. Partially due to font choices, but also due to confusing navigation. DVD Playing: key combinations are completely different from the MythTV configuration. I ended up switching it to Xine, and remapping all the key combos myself. (I hear the latest KnoppMyth helps this.)
5) Whenever Zap2it changes things in their interfaces (less often now), you need to update the Myth code. Also, if your subscription expires, things stop recording, without any elegant notice. I've lost a few days here and there every few months when I have to renew my Zap2It.
6) It can be very frustrating trying to *force* a program to override others. The "record with override options" is a very vague one, and never works as expected for me. Also, the "Don't record" options are a bit ambiguous as to what they do. To force a recording, I often have to "don't record" all other shows that it might have considered, first.
7) The font choices available are very difficult for my mid-sized TV. I couldn't read any of the program descriptions, etc. I ended up hacking all the XML to use larger fonts; and even then, some screens look like crap, and others can't be configured. Not exactly what Joe consumer could do.
8) There are two handy modes for skipping around a show. Non-sticky mode, where forward skips ahead 30 seconds, and back skips back 10 seconds (might be diff from the defaults, those are the settings I liked the best.) And then there's sticky mode, where you can change the forward/reverse speeds to skip through things. Both are handy in different situations. If I just want to skip commercials, the non-sticky mode is best. If I want to skim through a show to catch something that interests me, or find a memorable part of a show to show someone, the non-sticky mode is best. But the functionality can only be changed deep within the GUI configuration screens. I'd love to have both types of functionality at my fingertips, not have to pick one or the other.
A bit OT, but I don't think Microsoft evaded the penalties thanks to an army of competent lawyers, it was more like Bill discovered the benefits of political contributions (which they had prior shunned) and arose to sit at the left hand of God and steal Jesus' bucket of popcorn.
You can go off topic all you want, for a gem like that. Just when you think you've heard all the funny expressions, along comes "sit at the left hand of God and steal Jesus' bucket of popcorn." Lordy... Still catching my breath.
(Reminds me of one I heard my lawyer's secretary use, which is probably old, but new to me at the time... Talking about a client who "fucked the dog and sold the puppies.")
As rough-around-the-edges as MythTV can be as compared to a commercial offering, any tecchies on here that are sitting on the edge of Tivo-versus-Myth, I would suggest might want to make the extra effort in getting MythTV up and running (which KnoppMyth makes far easier). Every bit of popularity this package gains, will help keep DVR flexibility more open and available. If the commercial DVR's (and PVR card manufacturers) choose to bow to these silly demands by broadcasters, simply don't buy their hardware.
I was very close to tossing Myth and switching to a Bell Express VU PVR, but with the threat of broadcasters putting pressure on to lock things down to a greater and greater degree, I'll stick with the odd pain of the open source solution, thank you.
By not including the support in the core product, this is effectively a token move. I have found that 99% of end users will not install additional components, even if it's a free download. Office is pre-installed on their computers (or installed by their IT people); but ODF will not gain obiquity if Office does not support it "out of the box." (Unless enough brave governments buck MS's strangehold.)
snip propane to (via a catalytic process) produce CO2 and heat/snip Also know as burning propane.
It actually uses platinum beads to oxidize the propane without a flame. Maybe someone with some greater chemistry background can expand upon that... It's not like a BBQ, by any means...
From a company I used to work for, related to me from the support guys:
Support: "Try making a copy of the diskette." Customer: "Okay, be right back. [pause...] Okay, but it won't fit in the drive." Support: "Why not?" Customer: "I could only get the copier to copy on 8 1/2 x 11 paper."
The other one invovled repeated diskettes sent to a customer, that kept going bad. Turned out they stored the diskettes using fridge magnets on their filing cabinet.:S
The attraction to carbon dioxide is the principle behind the Mosquito Magnet, which uses propane to (via a catalytic process) produce CO2 and heat, which attracts the Mosquitos. It then sucks them into a net where they dry out and die. Rather a fascinating design. (The more expensive units use the heat generated to drive the fan from a thermopile; although I found that model less reliable than the units that used a DC adapter to power the fans.)
I have no affiliate with the company, other than being a semi-satisified customer. The units I have caught a major pile of mosquitos; not enough to crush the population in my area, but perhaps they weren't placed strategically enough (upwind, between you and the source, etc., etc..)
I was generally impressed with their interview process (for a fairly senior position); except after what I thought was a very successful fourth (I think) interview, they dropped me like a hot potato. I'm guessing there must have been one thing I said that rubbed someone the wrong way. (Probably the fact that I never tolerated incompetence or politics in any of my companies, and after a warning or two, if there was no improvement, I found it always best to cut the person loose. Maybe that wasn't the best thing to say in a peer-based interview. Also, when asked about how I'd go about staffing a team, I related my approach for my local area, not how I'd approach it for the google position. D'oh. Oh well...)
I was pretty excited about gpay (due to PayPal's poor handling of problems), until I read this. PayPal took ages to get support for Canadian bank accounts (and after that divorce, I won't be seeing a credit card for a looong, looong time!)
The only reason I'm hopeful, is that Google has seemed more progressive in the past to supporting Canadian needs (google maps/earth, quickly rounded out Canadian support, after an initial weak showing). Crossing my fingers that they'll nail another easy/similar market to the US, fairly soon. (Sorry, Greece!:P)
I'm sure I'll just be one of a hundred or more comments along this line (but yet, give me the love anyway), but lordy, couldn't this be the biggest boon to non-MS operating systems?
When every geek out there, and every sister/mother/grandma/grandpa/etc. of a geek who installed a non-licensed copy of Windows for their family, suddenly finds Windows non-functional, and the only viable option a costly purchase of Windows, won't flocking to Linux (or picking up Mac's with OSX) be far more attractive? This could really be the turning point of the MS domination of the market.
MS knows that a large chunk of their installations out there are not legit; maybe even the majority (maybe even the vast majority). But it helps them keep their ubiquity. Taking aim and carefully shooting themselves in the foot with a howitzer, is what this seems like to me. Their cost will suddenly be far more real to people, and they will seek alternatives, and Linux (in friendly distro's such as Ubuntu) meet a large chunk of people's needs. Browsing the web, checking email, in a free OS. Good enough.
Given the effect this would have, I kind of doubt the validity of the rumour. But if it takes place, giddyup! Every Linux person out there should help everyone they know hit by this, transition away from Windows!
It's almost too much of a cliche', but "bring it on!"
Slashdot Mirror
I think I remember from psychology class, that an innate fear of snakes is one of the very few visible human instincts. It's also something that is present in all (or nearly all?) mammals? If you take a stiff rope and shove it towards a kitten (who has never dealt witha real snake before), he will have a far stronger reaction than with other toys. The recognition and fear of snakes is built-in. (Sorry I don't have any references offhand, just my hazy recollection; any expert care to commment?)
I prefer AMD over Intel. I prefer NVidia over ATI (better Linux support). This move likely means I won't be seeing any integrated nVidia on AMD boards in the near future, which truly sucks. So will Linux support for AMD boards suddenly become worse (due to ATI's stinginess on the specs), or will AMD make ATI be more liberal with its specs now? It would certainly be in its best interests to do so.
Fuh? Damn. I was hoping by "technological singularity" they meant a device that could act as my pda, my camera, my laptop, my cell phone, *and* my MP3 player. That's far more useful to me.
Oh well.
One of the main reasons I love Opera is that opening "g blah" will do a google search for "blah". There are several other shortcuts. It saves me a lot of time over having a separate search bar/box/menu.
I held out learning and embracing CSS for along time, but finally did. Yes, there are inconsistencies, but they're not that bad, really. I keep an instance of IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape open at all times when I'm working. Every now and then, I reload my work from each of them. "Oh, that browser has an issues with this..." Okay, tweak around it, no biggie. Still beats programming in the Windows API :P
Also, I found some great web pages documenting differences/bugs between browser versions. When you understnad these, and work around them, it's really not that bad. Again, the complexity of dealing with the exceptions is an order of magnitude easier than dealing with the oddities of the Win API...
In the early days of C on PC's, it wasn't the most efficient language in the world. Thankfully there were good profilers. And I quickly learned to utilize those. Analyze your program, and you find that 90% of the time was spent in one area. So I'd optimize that one section by recoding the CPU-intensive bits in assembly, and *wow*, the program would fly. Profile it again, and I'd find that most of the time was spent in a very mundane and efficient outer loop, and I'd know the program was near optimal.
Fast forward 10 or 20 years, and I'm coding in Java. I find one section takes 90% of the CPU time, I recode that as a native method and things fly.
Same with my new favorite language, Perl, although I find there are native methods for most libraries that would otherwise be inefficient.
It's a simple technique, that can make almost any language fly, tweaking around the odd spot where there's a bottleneck.
I loved HotWheels as a kid, but now that I have kids, I am so disappointed with all the crappy and expensive fluff. We don't need a fire spitting demon track, battery powered launchers, or hundreds of crappy and brittle little plastic pieces to put together for the "sets". Too many themes, with large towers and crap that snaps and breaks easily, or pieces that get lost and ruin the set. I was shocked at the stupid and needless themes, and poor quality. None of the sets were usable beyond the first setup of them. My son has more fun with my old track, curve, loop sets, with a bit of gravity to launch some stunts. If a pieces gets lost, no biggie, they're all basic and rugged units, not specialized and poorly built theme sets.
I searched high and low last Christmas, and couldn't find a basic set with some track, a few curves and maybe a loop, and some cars. (I ended up buying some bulk track, couldn't find any curves; and a few cars. Not as much fun as when I was a kid.) Please, HotWheels, get back to the basics, with some well built, simple, and fun, sets. I think you'd be surprised at how much appeal (and profits) it would find.
I see it a bit like Scrabble, one of my favorite games. There have been attempted variations of it, most of which sucked. But they have come out with deluxe versions of the old game (fancier tiles, rotatable board, electronic versions, etc.); that's useful and classy enhancement of a sure-fire formula. But changing the fundamentals usually blew the formula. Same thing with chintzy and expensive theme sets from HotWheels, IMO.
I was looking around for a cable to hook to my GM vehicle's stereo (Pontiac Montana). I was surpised to find, that for the same price (around $100), there were cables that hooked iPods up to the stereo, including the GM stereo's controls and display. Nice integration. I never thought of it, but it indeed a safety factor, as well as a gee-whiz thing. (It came with an iPod holder/charger too, I think.)
Before university, I worked with a comp sci university grad, and was so disappointed in how little he could apply his skills to the business at hand. It's what led me to take a B. Comm. in University. I followed it up with an M. Sc., which was a good mix. The computer technology, I always found I could easily learn; the business skills were better learned in the University environment. I never regretted that approach. (Led to me being able to found one business that employed 100 people for a few years, and another that employed a half dozen for a copule of years, and another one on the go now.)
I'll give my vote for the Marble Mouse. I had some sever antibiotic-induced joint stiffness (not quite RSI, but similar end results), and tried a variety of input devices. Touchpads, trackpoints (which I generally *love*, wish they weren't dying), and some other more bizarre ones; but the Marble Mouse is the one that caused the least grief for me. Seemed to put far less stress on the joints in my hand (especially side-to-side stresses, which particularly bothered my joints).
On the flip side, there are genres where I find excellent physics to really add to the game. Racers in particular (other than wacky ones like Mario Kart). NFS Porsche Unlimited was truly mind blowing for me, with a force-feedback wheel. You could really feel the difference in physics between the cars. (I owed one of the cars in the line-up, and could easily recognize it's feel in the game from the others.)
Every racer I've tried since, including later NFS games, just don't feel realistic to me. They've gone for glitz, and regressed on the physics, I've found. Is there any racing game out there that has/can/will advance on NFS PU???
Just give it a nice dose of Penicillin or Erythromycin, and you're done. (Ensure the full course of antibiotics are taken, otherwise super-resistant storage strains will result...)
Why upgrade to XP? To be able to run MSN Messenger 7.5, which will only install on XP.
Does anyone find that a bit anti-competitive? Forcing people to use XP to use the latest *messenger*??? What is it about MSN 7.5 that truly requires XP over earlier MS OS's???
My only concern is that if edited versions are not available, and the only version available is the purely unedited version, might that cause DVD producers to be more conservative with what they put in, in the first place? (It's a vague parallel to the rebate story posted earlier on SlashDot; if there isn't breakage [unfiled rebates], then the overall amount of rebates will likely drop. Sometimes by purifying and simplifying the process, you can cause unintended effects.)
In general, I applaud the ruling, but worry it might reduce the quality of the original distributions.
Sure, here's some of the reasons I consider it not-commercial grade (but I still love it, don't get me wrong):
1) As you mention, you do have to install it yourself. This is a challenge even for the savvy. Thankfully KnoppMyth takes most of the challenges out of it. Although even with KnoppMyth, I had to rebuild and hack LIRC myself to get my remote to work, and do a couple of other ugly hacks to get things working. This involved coming up with custom codes (a combination of two config files I found out there), and writing a script to send to the ir blaster. Pretty rough stuff. It works now, and I'm told (as I'm always told), a lot of these issues are resolved in the latest release.
2) The backend stops responding now and then. The process is running, and doesn't seem to have crashed, but things stop recording, and the UI hangs until I restart front and back end. This happens a few times a week. Maybe the newer KnoppMyth/Myth builds fix that.
3) If you have a lot of channels (like on Satellite), and a lot of previously-recorded programs, changing schedules and some other operations can really slow down. It doesn't scale well for large number of channels/programs. Works well enough, though.
4) Unpolished addons: MythMusic; where to start. It has the most bizarre playlist UI I've ever seen. To modify a play list you have to copy it to the "Active play list" change it, then copy it back, remembering whether to hit enter or right or whatever at the right points. Very confusing. And if you want to do any other operation (schedule a program), the Music stops. Not very elegant, IMHO. MythWeather is a great concept, but it hangs and acts very slow when trying to retrieve weather info and not being able to do so due to 'net problems. The MythBrowser, News Feeds, are basically unusable, I find. Partially due to font choices, but also due to confusing navigation. DVD Playing: key combinations are completely different from the MythTV configuration. I ended up switching it to Xine, and remapping all the key combos myself. (I hear the latest KnoppMyth helps this.)
5) Whenever Zap2it changes things in their interfaces (less often now), you need to update the Myth code. Also, if your subscription expires, things stop recording, without any elegant notice. I've lost a few days here and there every few months when I have to renew my Zap2It.
6) It can be very frustrating trying to *force* a program to override others. The "record with override options" is a very vague one, and never works as expected for me. Also, the "Don't record" options are a bit ambiguous as to what they do. To force a recording, I often have to "don't record" all other shows that it might have considered, first.
7) The font choices available are very difficult for my mid-sized TV. I couldn't read any of the program descriptions, etc. I ended up hacking all the XML to use larger fonts; and even then, some screens look like crap, and others can't be configured. Not exactly what Joe consumer could do.
8) There are two handy modes for skipping around a show. Non-sticky mode, where forward skips ahead 30 seconds, and back skips back 10 seconds (might be diff from the defaults, those are the settings I liked the best.) And then there's sticky mode, where you can change the forward/reverse speeds to skip through things. Both are handy in different situations. If I just want to skip commercials, the non-sticky mode is best. If I want to skim through a show to catch something that interests me, or find a memorable part of a show to show someone, the non-sticky mode is best. But the functionality can only be changed deep within the GUI configuration screens. I'd love to have both types of functionality at my fingertips, not have to pick one or the other.
9) Auto commerc
You can go off topic all you want, for a gem like that. Just when you think you've heard all the funny expressions, along comes "sit at the left hand of God and steal Jesus' bucket of popcorn." Lordy... Still catching my breath.
(Reminds me of one I heard my lawyer's secretary use, which is probably old, but new to me at the time... Talking about a client who "fucked the dog and sold the puppies.")
As rough-around-the-edges as MythTV can be as compared to a commercial offering, any tecchies on here that are sitting on the edge of Tivo-versus-Myth, I would suggest might want to make the extra effort in getting MythTV up and running (which KnoppMyth makes far easier). Every bit of popularity this package gains, will help keep DVR flexibility more open and available. If the commercial DVR's (and PVR card manufacturers) choose to bow to these silly demands by broadcasters, simply don't buy their hardware.
I was very close to tossing Myth and switching to a Bell Express VU PVR, but with the threat of broadcasters putting pressure on to lock things down to a greater and greater degree, I'll stick with the odd pain of the open source solution, thank you.
I'm left handed, you insensitive clod!
By not including the support in the core product, this is effectively a token move. I have found that 99% of end users will not install additional components, even if it's a free download. Office is pre-installed on their computers (or installed by their IT people); but ODF will not gain obiquity if Office does not support it "out of the box." (Unless enough brave governments buck MS's strangehold.)
snip propane to (via a catalytic process) produce CO2 and heat
Also know as burning propane.
It actually uses platinum beads to oxidize the propane without a flame. Maybe someone with some greater chemistry background can expand upon that... It's not like a BBQ, by any means...
From a company I used to work for, related to me from the support guys:
:S
Support: "Try making a copy of the diskette."
Customer: "Okay, be right back. [pause...] Okay, but it won't fit in the drive."
Support: "Why not?"
Customer: "I could only get the copier to copy on 8 1/2 x 11 paper."
The other one invovled repeated diskettes sent to a customer, that kept going bad. Turned out they stored the diskettes using fridge magnets on their filing cabinet.
The attraction to carbon dioxide is the principle behind the Mosquito Magnet, which uses propane to (via a catalytic process) produce CO2 and heat, which attracts the Mosquitos. It then sucks them into a net where they dry out and die. Rather a fascinating design. (The more expensive units use the heat generated to drive the fan from a thermopile; although I found that model less reliable than the units that used a DC adapter to power the fans.)
I have no affiliate with the company, other than being a semi-satisified customer. The units I have caught a major pile of mosquitos; not enough to crush the population in my area, but perhaps they weren't placed strategically enough (upwind, between you and the source, etc., etc..)
I was generally impressed with their interview process (for a fairly senior position); except after what I thought was a very successful fourth (I think) interview, they dropped me like a hot potato. I'm guessing there must have been one thing I said that rubbed someone the wrong way. (Probably the fact that I never tolerated incompetence or politics in any of my companies, and after a warning or two, if there was no improvement, I found it always best to cut the person loose. Maybe that wasn't the best thing to say in a peer-based interview. Also, when asked about how I'd go about staffing a team, I related my approach for my local area, not how I'd approach it for the google position. D'oh. Oh well...)
I was pretty excited about gpay (due to PayPal's poor handling of problems), until I read this. PayPal took ages to get support for Canadian bank accounts (and after that divorce, I won't be seeing a credit card for a looong, looong time!)
:P)
The only reason I'm hopeful, is that Google has seemed more progressive in the past to supporting Canadian needs (google maps/earth, quickly rounded out Canadian support, after an initial weak showing). Crossing my fingers that they'll nail another easy/similar market to the US, fairly soon. (Sorry, Greece!
I'm sure I'll just be one of a hundred or more comments along this line (but yet, give me the love anyway), but lordy, couldn't this be the biggest boon to non-MS operating systems?
When every geek out there, and every sister/mother/grandma/grandpa/etc. of a geek who installed a non-licensed copy of Windows for their family, suddenly finds Windows non-functional, and the only viable option a costly purchase of Windows, won't flocking to Linux (or picking up Mac's with OSX) be far more attractive? This could really be the turning point of the MS domination of the market.
MS knows that a large chunk of their installations out there are not legit; maybe even the majority (maybe even the vast majority). But it helps them keep their ubiquity. Taking aim and carefully shooting themselves in the foot with a howitzer, is what this seems like to me. Their cost will suddenly be far more real to people, and they will seek alternatives, and Linux (in friendly distro's such as Ubuntu) meet a large chunk of people's needs. Browsing the web, checking email, in a free OS. Good enough.
Given the effect this would have, I kind of doubt the validity of the rumour. But if it takes place, giddyup! Every Linux person out there should help everyone they know hit by this, transition away from Windows!
It's almost too much of a cliche', but "bring it on!"