Honestly... easiest way for this to NOT be a problem... buy a cell phone off ebay... anything with GPS locationing will work... don't activate it... 911 ALWAYS works, and they've had GPS Locationing for years, so you can get one for ~$20...
Tell your kids that you have an emergency phone to call 911 if something bad happens...
keep it plugged in, w/o the battery (most kyocera work without a battery as long as they're plugged in)...
First, Apple is barely, if at all, more expensive than comparable PC hardware. it depends on what you call comparable.... if you're talking "entry level", a quick comparison reveals that the lowest dell model (with monitor) is $499, compared to Apple's lowest price computer, the eMac at $799.
Also between the two pages, you will notice that Dell has it's 20 gig music player listed at $250, while Apple's 20 gig music player is still $400.
Now, feature wise, the music players are comparable.... if I didn't have to pay for it, I'd probably pick the iPod, but I'd still be worried about the cost of replacing the battery in a year...
one thing that is certain, their "decent price points" as you say, are only decent if you value macs over PCs... If I were buying my mom a computer, and had to choose between a $500 Dell, and $800 eMac.... no contest... I could even pay $200 for her to take Computer Science 105 here at the University to learn how to use the computer, and Office, and STILL end up with the better deal.
well, anyways, the fact of the matter is that I own both a G4 and a Dell, I wouldn't go without either, but if I had to decide between the two, it would come down to the price, and I'd enjoy the 40% I saved when buying a Dell.
I had the choice between moderating this up, or re-emphasising what you said...
I'm writing this at my desk at a state university... I spend 1/4 of my time in meetings, 1/4 of my time trying to track down people (for authorizations, "support" (politics in education are crazy), and other things)... and 1/4 of my time waiting for my superiors to get done with paperwork so they can give me work to do... the other 1/4 of my time is trying to lead a group of people who are officially my equals and I have no authority over...
The only reason I'm still here is that it gives me plenty of time to work on personal projects!!!
and yeah, the politics are hell... though you'll probably survive better if you aren't one of those people who like to be in politics... keep in mind they've been doing this for 10-30 years, they've grown so used to people obeying the political rules that if you try to shake stuff up, you're out of there...
yay, how about first we market this wonderful feature of our product and call it "This name", then, after several years, lets change the name of the feature to "This thing", when the feature itself hasn't changed...
Sony knows what it's doing, Apple screwed up when it wouldn't let people use "Firewire", now there are three names for the same thing... Firewire, IEEE 1394, and i.Link... Because Sony hyped up it's iLink stuff, it's now unable to switch over to the other name, lest people worry that things aren't backwards compatible. Also, this keeps people who have i.Link stuff thinking that they're locked into i.Link stuff, as long as they don't research it.....
Yeah, silly Sony, not using "FireWire", even though Apple wasn't letting anyone use that name, and instead everyone had to call it IEEE 1394... sheesh, I can't believe sony decided to call it something completely different so they didn't get sued...
it's part of e911, it's a requirement in the US... take a look at all of sprint's phones they have out now:
Features an embedded Global Positioning System (GPS) chip necessary for utilizing the E911 emergency location services where available.
The phones send it's GPS data to the towers, and thus to the base station. In all digital towers, the towers are able to guess where the phone is at already, and use GPS to focus in on exactly where it's at. However, analog towers, and long sets of repeaters don't include this, so the Location has to be decided purely on the data the phone sends the towers.
e911 has absolutely nothing to do with network positioning, as it has proven unreliable in cities (you could be right under a tower, but have some interferance in the way, so you have to connect to a tower that's further away... but now network positioning thinks you're over by the other tower now, since it can't sense you on the tower you're right by.)
I have an earthmate GPS receiver... its about the size of a pack of gum, I opened it up a year ago, and there's not much circutry in there at all... the antenna, the main chip, power regulators, and the serial communication chip.... that's it... GPS has gotten very small in the past couple years, and I believe that qualcomm has actually started putting GPS into their chips, so no external chips are required (I also remember seeing a post related to that)...
anyways, yes, your phone is a GPS receiver.. no, it has no clue where you're at, it just sends the data it gets to the network, where the network figures it out... (it has to be the network, not the provider, otherwise 911 wouldn't work when you're on roam)
All cell phones sold now days have a GPS receiver built in. However, the phone still doesn't know where it is at. The phone simply relays satellite info to the towers. They send information they receive from the satellites to the towers/base station, where the calculations are done, and the resulting information is then added into the information about your call. There isn't much processing at the base station, since it usually has a pretty good idea of where you're at anyways.
So yes, he does have a receiver, but he doesn't have a way to process the information!!
If you're a student, or possibly will have weight on your laptop, buy a THIN mousepad... I won one from Alienware at a LAN, it's wonderful!!!!
more specifically, put the mousepad between your keyboard and your screen, it keeps finger grease off your screen, which doesn't come off after a month or so... and the mousepad is rigid, which is nice to have around for optical mice....
regardless of whether it was stable or not (it wasn't)... netscape still released it, and its still something that designers that are trying to be "nice" to all other browsers have to cater to..:-(
wow... hmm... the grand-grand-parent poster was obviously sarcasic, but seriously... lets take apart your arguements one by one...
1) yes, you CAN print flash... in fact, flash allows for you to design a seperate page specifically for when people print... thus you can even precisely control how things print..
2) not being able to copy from flash is a fault of the designers, not flash... there's one little button designers have to check to make their text editable...
3) anyone designing the page in only flash is lazy
4) flash can be set up to read paramaters at the end of the page, from javascript, JUST LIKE CGI AT NYTIMES, hence a simple piece of code that passes parameters to the flash, and a gotoAndPlay(x); at the beginning of the flash movie solves this
5) where did this come from? I agree with the intros part, but if I design a flash interface that can pull information and display it in itself without reloading the page, that means no waiting for ANY excess code, only content, plus the page doesn't blink to another page... what could be better for the user experience?
come up with as many other reasons as you want, I'll counter each and every one of them
for the record, I'm not suggesting that it REPLACE anything, but it is definately more than enough of a substitute when in the hands of a competant programmer...
yeah, good idea... design for a browser that has some of the smallest market share... if it doesn't render right, it's the user's fault for not having the right browser... it renders prettiest in this browser, so use it!!!
guhhh... I get so tired of mac fanboys (go ahead, what type of fanboy am I? ha... can't tell, can you?)
lots of things have changed in the newer versions of mozilla, but the older versions (especially ones that coincided with netscape releases) had lots of issues. NN6 included an absolutely horrid html/css engine...
I use firebird/fox exclusively now, I love them, but mozilla wasn't always so wonderful!
I get the same amount of signal whether it's plugged in or not, though I got an extra terminator piece from the dell service rep here, so I'll be trying to get an external antenna hookup
dell laptops (specifically 8200's) don't have an integrated wireless antenna:-( they have a cable that plugs into the card, but it terminates right around the speaker on the right hand side...
you hit on a point that is more true than you think... School Districts here in the midwest have been hit hard over the last 5 years, and most have moved to WinTEL platforms for their computers... even 7 years ago when I graduated high school, there wasn't a mac in the building, and when I came to college, I found most of my fellow classmates had the same type of environment.
Any more, the schools that can afford the macs are doing so because they have a sys admin that wants macs around, and usually they're very experienced in handling macs
(p.s. I highly doubt OS X "supports the most browsers of any platform"... there are so many prototype browsers developed by educational institutions [2 created here last year alone], just because macs have two browsers that won't run on any other platform doesn't mean they have the most... windows has a lot of the same types of browsers!!!)
and yet you can't depend on css working 100% of the time, so why use that?
why not just write plain text ascii pages, that way nothing can break?
almost every comment here specifically supports server side validation, yet you're saying "you suck, you're using ECMA in one form or another"... and you can write a reasonably complex validation script in less than 5k that can help people keep from being irritated because they EXPECT the form to have some kind of validation before it gets submitted..
nope, it's true... in fact, some pirating groups found this out, and they made a bootable cd that boots a linux shell, maps the files depeneding on which you want to install, and continues booting the cd.... its (as my roommate calls it) tits being able to install any version of win2k (and now they have one for winxp) from one cd...
yeah, I have a pair of their boots here, and I haven't ever beeped... I've had them for 3 years now, and though you can tell they're my favorite boot and I wear them a lot, you can't tell they're 3 years old... money well spent!
I too HIGHLY recommend Merrell shoes... probably the best sub $100 pair of shoes I've ever owned...
On the other hand, I am on my third year of owning a pair of Ecco shoes/boots... here and they are still in wonderful shape. Of course, I change the insoles once a year, but the traction barely wears off in and indoor setting...
Best $250 I ever spent (I got them before they were cheap online... they're still $200)
My power adapter for my dell 8200 / 15 UXGA LCD / 2.0 Ghz / 1 gig ram / 40 gig HD is rated at 90 Watts... I don't have the equpiment to see what it actually pulls, I can tell you that it gets extremely hot sometimes, but that's only when I'm gaming (Halo, Unreal Tournament, etc..) AND charging the batteries at the same time...
I use the touchstream LT (in fact, typing on it now...)... it has no buttons so it makes no sound.. it takes a while to get used to, but as long as you can touch type now, you'll be able to get the hang of it (it took my girlfriend a couple days to stop hunt n pecking, but it takes a couple months to get up to full speed again...)
I really like all of the different special things you can do with it, like closing windows, zooming, using it as a mouse, etc...
They complain about outsourcing when OUR economy is slumping and computer programmers are bagging groceries... yeah, if you try hard enough, you can always relate something to problems with race...
Just like our school just got sued because they didn't hire a woman for the football coach... she said it was sexual discrimination, the school said that regardless of her qualifications, a team of testosterone pumped college guys would have an extremely hard time adjusting to a female coach. Add onto that that she had never coached football, and it seems pretty clear cut...
I'm sick and tired of EVERYBODY blaming racism and discrimination for why they aren't doing well in this world, when I'd choose to believe its because they spend too much time bitching
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Honestly... easiest way for this to NOT be a problem... buy a cell phone off ebay... anything with GPS locationing will work... don't activate it... 911 ALWAYS works, and they've had GPS Locationing for years, so you can get one for ~$20...
Tell your kids that you have an emergency phone to call 911 if something bad happens...
keep it plugged in, w/o the battery (most kyocera work without a battery as long as they're plugged in)...
BLAMO... yay for easy solutions...
First, Apple is barely, if at all, more expensive than comparable PC hardware.
it depends on what you call comparable....
if you're talking "entry level", a quick comparison reveals that the lowest dell model (with monitor) is $499, compared to Apple's lowest price computer, the eMac at $799.
Also between the two pages, you will notice that Dell has it's 20 gig music player listed at $250, while Apple's 20 gig music player is still $400.
Now, feature wise, the music players are comparable.... if I didn't have to pay for it, I'd probably pick the iPod, but I'd still be worried about the cost of replacing the battery in a year...
one thing that is certain, their "decent price points" as you say, are only decent if you value macs over PCs... If I were buying my mom a computer, and had to choose between a $500 Dell, and $800 eMac.... no contest... I could even pay $200 for her to take Computer Science 105 here at the University to learn how to use the computer, and Office, and STILL end up with the better deal.
well, anyways, the fact of the matter is that I own both a G4 and a Dell, I wouldn't go without either, but if I had to decide between the two, it would come down to the price, and I'd enjoy the 40% I saved when buying a Dell.
hahahha.... how off topic can a post be and still be considered for +1 funny???
oh well, can't mod it up now, but figured I'd let you know I'm laughing
I had the choice between moderating this up, or re-emphasising what you said...
I'm writing this at my desk at a state university... I spend 1/4 of my time in meetings, 1/4 of my time trying to track down people (for authorizations, "support" (politics in education are crazy), and other things)... and 1/4 of my time waiting for my superiors to get done with paperwork so they can give me work to do... the other 1/4 of my time is trying to lead a group of people who are officially my equals and I have no authority over...
The only reason I'm still here is that it gives me plenty of time to work on personal projects!!!
and yeah, the politics are hell... though you'll probably survive better if you aren't one of those people who like to be in politics... keep in mind they've been doing this for 10-30 years, they've grown so used to people obeying the political rules that if you try to shake stuff up, you're out of there...
yay, how about first we market this wonderful feature of our product and call it "This name", then, after several years, lets change the name of the feature to "This thing", when the feature itself hasn't changed...
... Because Sony hyped up it's iLink stuff, it's now unable to switch over to the other name, lest people worry that things aren't backwards compatible. Also, this keeps people who have i.Link stuff thinking that they're locked into i.Link stuff, as long as they don't research it.....
Sony knows what it's doing, Apple screwed up when it wouldn't let people use "Firewire", now there are three names for the same thing... Firewire, IEEE 1394, and i.Link
Yeah, silly Sony, not using "FireWire", even though Apple wasn't letting anyone use that name, and instead everyone had to call it IEEE 1394... sheesh, I can't believe sony decided to call it something completely different so they didn't get sued...
The phones send it's GPS data to the towers, and thus to the base station. In all digital towers, the towers are able to guess where the phone is at already, and use GPS to focus in on exactly where it's at. However, analog towers, and long sets of repeaters don't include this, so the Location has to be decided purely on the data the phone sends the towers.
e911 has absolutely nothing to do with network positioning, as it has proven unreliable in cities (you could be right under a tower, but have some interferance in the way, so you have to connect to a tower that's further away... but now network positioning thinks you're over by the other tower now, since it can't sense you on the tower you're right by.)
I have an earthmate GPS receiver... its about the size of a pack of gum, I opened it up a year ago, and there's not much circutry in there at all... the antenna, the main chip, power regulators, and the serial communication chip.... that's it... GPS has gotten very small in the past couple years, and I believe that qualcomm has actually started putting GPS into their chips, so no external chips are required (I also remember seeing a post related to that)...
anyways, yes, your phone is a GPS receiver.. no, it has no clue where you're at, it just sends the data it gets to the network, where the network figures it out... (it has to be the network, not the provider, otherwise 911 wouldn't work when you're on roam)
-Dusty
mostly right, but here's the diff...
All cell phones sold now days have a GPS receiver built in. However, the phone still doesn't know where it is at. The phone simply relays satellite info to the towers. They send information they receive from the satellites to the towers/base station, where the calculations are done, and the resulting information is then added into the information about your call. There isn't much processing at the base station, since it usually has a pretty good idea of where you're at anyways.
So yes, he does have a receiver, but he doesn't have a way to process the information!!
Inspiration... available on PC and Mac... its good for flowcharting things, making ideamaps, brainstorming, or just note taking...
If you're a student, or possibly will have weight on your laptop, buy a THIN mousepad... I won one from Alienware at a LAN, it's wonderful!!!!
more specifically, put the mousepad between your keyboard and your screen, it keeps finger grease off your screen, which doesn't come off after a month or so... and the mousepad is rigid, which is nice to have around for optical mice....
regardless of whether it was stable or not (it wasn't)... netscape still released it, and its still something that designers that are trying to be "nice" to all other browsers have to cater to.. :-(
wow... hmm... the grand-grand-parent poster was obviously sarcasic, but seriously... lets take apart your arguements one by one...
1) yes, you CAN print flash... in fact, flash allows for you to design a seperate page specifically for when people print... thus you can even precisely control how things print..
2) not being able to copy from flash is a fault of the designers, not flash... there's one little button designers have to check to make their text editable...
3) anyone designing the page in only flash is lazy
4) flash can be set up to read paramaters at the end of the page, from javascript, JUST LIKE CGI AT NYTIMES, hence a simple piece of code that passes parameters to the flash, and a gotoAndPlay(x); at the beginning of the flash movie solves this
5) where did this come from? I agree with the intros part, but if I design a flash interface that can pull information and display it in itself without reloading the page, that means no waiting for ANY excess code, only content, plus the page doesn't blink to another page... what could be better for the user experience?
come up with as many other reasons as you want, I'll counter each and every one of them
for the record, I'm not suggesting that it REPLACE anything, but it is definately more than enough of a substitute when in the hands of a competant programmer...
yeah, good idea... design for a browser that has some of the smallest market share... if it doesn't render right, it's the user's fault for not having the right browser... it renders prettiest in this browser, so use it!!!
guhhh... I get so tired of mac fanboys
(go ahead, what type of fanboy am I? ha... can't tell, can you?)
lots of things have changed in the newer versions of mozilla, but the older versions (especially ones that coincided with netscape releases) had lots of issues. NN6 included an absolutely horrid html/css engine...
I use firebird/fox exclusively now, I love them, but mozilla wasn't always so wonderful!
well, it does my wireless card no good... :-S
I get the same amount of signal whether it's plugged in or not, though I got an extra terminator piece from the dell service rep here, so I'll be trying to get an external antenna hookup
dell laptops (specifically 8200's) don't have an integrated wireless antenna :-( they have a cable that plugs into the card, but it terminates right around the speaker on the right hand side...
you hit on a point that is more true than you think... School Districts here in the midwest have been hit hard over the last 5 years, and most have moved to WinTEL platforms for their computers... even 7 years ago when I graduated high school, there wasn't a mac in the building, and when I came to college, I found most of my fellow classmates had the same type of environment.
Any more, the schools that can afford the macs are doing so because they have a sys admin that wants macs around, and usually they're very experienced in handling macs
(p.s. I highly doubt OS X "supports the most browsers of any platform"... there are so many prototype browsers developed by educational institutions [2 created here last year alone], just because macs have two browsers that won't run on any other platform doesn't mean they have the most... windows has a lot of the same types of browsers!!!)
and yet you can't depend on css working 100% of the time, so why use that?
why not just write plain text ascii pages, that way nothing can break?
almost every comment here specifically supports server side validation, yet you're saying "you suck, you're using ECMA in one form or another"... and you can write a reasonably complex validation script in less than 5k that can help people keep from being irritated because they EXPECT the form to have some kind of validation before it gets submitted..
it's usually called 5in1, or 7in1... it's the only way to get media center, so also look for media center....
nope, it's true... in fact, some pirating groups found this out, and they made a bootable cd that boots a linux shell, maps the files depeneding on which you want to install, and continues booting the cd.... its (as my roommate calls it) tits being able to install any version of win2k (and now they have one for winxp) from one cd...
yeah, I have a pair of their boots here, and I haven't ever beeped... I've had them for 3 years now, and though you can tell they're my favorite boot and I wear them a lot, you can't tell they're 3 years old... money well spent!
I too HIGHLY recommend Merrell shoes... probably the best sub $100 pair of shoes I've ever owned...
On the other hand, I am on my third year of owning a pair of Ecco shoes/boots... here and they are still in wonderful shape. Of course, I change the insoles once a year, but the traction barely wears off in and indoor setting...
Best $250 I ever spent (I got them before they were cheap online... they're still $200)
My power adapter for my dell 8200 / 15 UXGA LCD / 2.0 Ghz / 1 gig ram / 40 gig HD is rated at 90 Watts... I don't have the equpiment to see what it actually pulls, I can tell you that it gets extremely hot sometimes, but that's only when I'm gaming (Halo, Unreal Tournament, etc..) AND charging the batteries at the same time...
hopefully that helps
I use the touchstream LT (in fact, typing on it now...)... it has no buttons so it makes no sound.. it takes a while to get used to, but as long as you can touch type now, you'll be able to get the hang of it (it took my girlfriend a couple days to stop hunt n pecking, but it takes a couple months to get up to full speed again...)
I really like all of the different special things you can do with it, like closing windows, zooming, using it as a mouse, etc...
anyways, I highly recommend it
They complain about outsourcing when OUR economy is slumping and computer programmers are bagging groceries... yeah, if you try hard enough, you can always relate something to problems with race...
Just like our school just got sued because they didn't hire a woman for the football coach... she said it was sexual discrimination, the school said that regardless of her qualifications, a team of testosterone pumped college guys would have an extremely hard time adjusting to a female coach. Add onto that that she had never coached football, and it seems pretty clear cut...
I'm sick and tired of EVERYBODY blaming racism and discrimination for why they aren't doing well in this world, when I'd choose to believe its because they spend too much time bitching