Do I hear a bunch more people getting it? I mean the Macromedia thing? It is missing consistant end user controls for so long, nobody pays much attention to it. The lack of a close or stop button that works is the reason I have removed Macromedia completely. The junk to content ratio wasn't worth it. It is loaded on my wifes machine because the kids do the flash game sites. (neopets) I'm not into the games so Flash has very little use for me and usualy slows and delays searches and reading articles. Because of a consistant lack of a stop button of much flash advertising, I have removed the playback mechanism. I wonder if intrusive advertising using flash will accelerate the removal of Macromedia.
Gasoline powered engines have been around since 1864. If you can't build an engine after they've been around 140 years, you must be an idiot.
Slightly offtopic, but things have changed a little bit since 1864. You didn't used to need a computer to figure out if the mass flow sensor was not working properly. The only thing electric was a coil for the spark. Nowdays everything from injection to valve timing to emissions sensing is electric. Pull all that stuff off the new engines and they won't run. A tune up is no longer changing the plugs, change the oil, drain the sediment bowl, and gap the points. Have you tried to buy points, rotor and a condensor for a new car?
I like it. Give them a dial-up account they must use to contact their laywer and parole officer by signing a GIF loaded from a HTML e-mail and sending it back. Failure to keep in touch means a violation and time. It'll give them an idea that spam wastes time, effort and resources. Be sure the daily download is buried in SPAM on dial-up with all the GIF's that have to be loaded. It would be best for the officers to dink with the subject line to make it spammy.
Bizarre isn't it. Just cos it's an MP3 player, everyone's looking at it from an iPod perspective, but if you look at it as a WiFi server, then it's pretty much the first one there.
Reading between the lines with my conspiracy theory mindset going full blast brings up this tidbit from the specifications page.
USB mass storage device. 1 Gig SD card slot.
This might not be an open wireless share. It may be a wireless client for your PC. I wouldn't get my hopes up that this is a wireless open share. I'll wait for the reviews before I buy one to find out what it does to protect it's content from casual sharing. Why is it using DRM removable memory?
CF has been dropped by many manufactures because much of the older memory cards are slow and power hungry. If the memory is slow or eats the battery, the device manufacture gets a bad rap for speed or power consumption. The newer SD memory has high speed specifications. (unfortunately they compare it to CF 1X speed not the new CF speeds)
A lot of CF is has high speed (check a good photoshop) but it is expensive. (well so is SD) CF speed is a moot point for me as my new camera has a large buffer. I choose to use CF because of it's price and solid package. Unfortunately there seems to be format wars in the flash market. The newest is that tiny picture card that is even more expensive and smaller than SD. Many cameras use it. I think there is a lot of incentive to be the next universal digital floppy out there. There is a lot of push by the manufactures of flash memory to get products out using their format. They all seem to want a chunk of the secure memory for portable cell phone and music player market
Even SONY who is trying not to die in the format wars has licensed it's memory stick to competitors to keep the format alive. That's quite a move for Sony who usualy acts like a printer manufacture and making money on the closed single source of specialty supplies.
I made the mistake of buying a SONY digital camera once. Even the battery could be bought only from SONY. They were too expensive to stock up on at $40 each, and didn't last long enough to do a wedding.
My new camera uses CF and AA batteries. The rechargable AA batteries are a quarter the cost of the Sony ones and last twice as long. I get 4 sets for the price of one Sony battery. Memory is cheap and can be bought from almost anybody. I no longer run out of battery power or memory. Spare non-rechargable's are cheap insurance for a longer than expected shoot. I learned my lesson on non-interchangable oddball parts. I will be hard to convince to make the same mistake again.
Due to the format wars, many memory cards can't be borrowed from one device to be used in another such as a camera for a wedding/reception shoot. It's a shame there are too many incompatible formats.
A universal card reader must now support 7 formats! This dumb. I'll be glad when the format war is over and one secure cell phone memory and one plain camera memory format remain.
Ever try to plug a DVD player into your VCR to watch a movie?
Yes. I found some VCR's are cheap and have the AGC in the video line from the tuner/video in. These mess up the video for you. Other VCR's have the AGC in the record circuit. The E-E (electronics-electronics) circuit does not have AGC. This passes the video through the VCR out to the TV unaltered, but still messes up the recording if you attempt it as required by law. Read the reviews. Let the buyer beware.
Yeah, seriously. Apple's AAC "protected" files were the only DRM encoded media I bought last year, and probably the only DRM media most people bought last year, and it doesn't even get name-checked? Sloppy.
You are kidding, right? I think many of those who bought Apple's AAC "protected" files are forgetting that they also bought a DVD (Macrovision and/or CSS). How soon we forget these have DRM protection.
Lots of guys will buy used and find drivers online. Not many ladies will attempt that. My flat bed scanner was $12. My laser printer was $60. My inkjet refils are $35/pint, not $35/18mL. These are things the guy buys so they can drive a geek car. A lady would have bought the $400 laser printer and the $100 scanner and got less in the deal. They buy ink cartridges at $35/18mL of ink. I don't very often just when it dies completely.
I love my Prius with the NAV system. I like the 1 KW inverter I put in it that makes it my primary emergency generator. Having a generator that will run for days on a tank is good. Under light load, it starts, tops off the battery and shuts back down. I don't think they list cars as tech stuff so that setup only counts as about $70 for the inverter.
If sufficient people stop purchasing games that restrict their ability to play them, then it's a simple business decision for the company to make - stop over-restricting the user.
It's already hapening. I bout a 3 pack of Need for Speed. (Porche unlimited, High Stakes, & Hot persuit) The kids wanted to play it. I never give them originals as they are often knocked off the desk and used as a floormat. I always make a work copy or run off the hard drive. Guess what... They don't copy or play off the hard drive. They don't get to play them and I'm not buying Electronic Arts software anymore as it doesn't work in my family use model.
I'm sure Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would experience a bump in sales, at the very least.:)
Good point. Check out the problems MS is haveing with Open Office. How many people are checking it out, not because of price, but because they disagree with product activation. Same thing for Intuit and the Turbo Tax registration. The backlash for these imposed problems is strong.
That's why I have Open Office and an old copy of MS Office on this machine. I won't do the new version and I use OO as a tool to open stuff MS office won't. As it improves, Open Office may replace MS office entirely here as MS moves to to a rental model.
You just need to look at this from a different angle. Think of it like paying for petrol for your car.
Some things like hammers and screwdrivers, I like to purchase and keep them on the shelf, not rent them. Same thing with my car. I own it. It's paid for. However consumables that I might need I can purchase from any corner supplier, not just Texaco. Single vendor lock-in is a bad thing. A screwdriver that needs a subscription is a bad thing. Not all software needs to be online to be useful. Artificaily tying a subscription to screwdriver software is a bad thing.
Here is a great example of problems caused by a screwdrever needing to phone home. I put together a PC on my coffee table. I hadn't added a modem or lan card yet. To keep to drivers in check I don't stuff in all the hardware all at once. A keyboard and mouse are nice things to start with.
MS had just came out with the optical mouse. (quite a few years ago) I loaded it's driver. Not only did it insist of having a CD key for the driver, but it complained loudly about being unable to find my modem! This I don't need. I imediately gave away the mouse never to use a MS mouse again. Who knows what it would have reported silently to home if it found a lan net connection. There is no reason for a screwdriver (mouse driver) to phone home EVER! My local LAN games shouldn't be any different. I buy them, I expect to play them with no hastles.
However if I stick in an AOL disk for use with an Online Service, I expect it to phone home and want an account for the online access. It's used to access someone else's provided content for a price.
A LAN game and Tax Preperation Software does not need this. Single vendor lock in is a bad thing. The software should be able to be purchased, not rented and I should be able to play a LAN game using a local server. There is no reason for a LAN game to phone home unless I choose to use the server provided by the manufacture to play someone in Guam. I should pay for service where service is supplied and I choose to use it. (subscription service) Lack of subscription should not break the local functioning of a program. EG a mouse driver or Word Processor that can't phone home shouldn't nag that I haven't registered or quit in 60 days.
Fighting piracy is one thing. Making the product less useful is also a bad business model. Competing is good. Trying to lock-in consumers is a bad business model. Consumers will find and buy the stuff that works with no hastles.
If MS didn't do product activation, do you think Open Office would havd gotten much serious attention?
The easy way to beat the type of road hog is to build a few single lane roads.
Picture a four-lane highway. Some Canyonero driver is straddling the line, forcing traffic to stay behind it. The road was built for two lanes of traffic going in each direction.
Unfortunatley MS knows this and has been pulling this trick to get everyone to fit their non-standard lane. How many places will your chosen browser not fit? How many places are selling MS size DRM WMA files? How many people use a MS browser so they can fit on the very restrictive lane?
should've checked out the lasermonks article from yesterday - its only $20 from them
I did check out Lasermonks. They list the cartridge on the front page. Click on the page for the description and shopping cart. That page comes up blank. There is no description and no add to shopping cart. They may have them, but it looks like they can't be put in the shopping cart. Try it.
Other ink like the 5164a twin pak works, but not the C6578D. I've tried filling the carts myself with ink from AtlasCopy. The pigmented black works great, but the color has been problems from not printing a color to streaking to a cart that starts with a beautiful print only to have the printer halt halfway with the ink light flashing. (yes the counters were reset with the level indicaters showing 100%) Why do filled cartridges die suddenly in the middle of a perfect print to never live again? I gave up as the reliability was terrible. I only use only black now with a dead color cartridge in the printer. My black is on it's 5th refill. Chosing a greyscale print on the HP950 printer does not use black ink. I found this out by getting magenta greyscale prints when a color died in a printhead. I figured color is out, just use black by switching to the greyscale printing option. Wrong. The printer tried to use color and that's how I got another magenta greyscale print. Monocrome printing does NOT switch over to the black cartridge. It uses the EXPENSIVE color ink! I switched to the laser for my primary printer.
These are parts soldered directly to the foil side of a circuit board without traditional leads going into holes in a board to be soldered on the other side. Take a look at any newer computer card. Most chips and components on the board no longer have pins that go through the board. As such, they can be a bear to unsolder the leads one at a time to get a part off the board. SMD tools heat a section of the board with a hotplate and hot air so all the leads of a component will unsolder at the same time so the part can be picked off the board without breaking the part or the board. It's hard to fix a board if removing a part rips the pads up to which it was attached.
A screwdriver of mass destruction can easly make a board un-repairable by breaking pads, lines, and VIA's.
There are several hacks to get around many of the DRM restrictions.
With Paladium, Secure Computing Initive, and Longhorn on the horizon, the days of all done in the same machine is limited. The new player will be spying for the infringing software connecting to the stream and refuse to work if one is found. They are working on securing the stream from the server, to the sound card, out to the fire wire speakers. There won't be a rippable tap point if the RIAA gets their way and MS sells them the solution. It seems best to have the subscription locked down box and the external open general purpose machine next to it.
Shh.. Don't tell anyone. Requested streams without the DJ blather.. Line out - Line in VS $1.00 a song that has to be burned on a CD but not saved to hard drive to keep. Watch for these to appear on the local sneaker net as MP3's on CD and DVD's. Don't expect them to anounce this on or off campus. Someone will figure out how to take the freebie music (well included with tuition) with them. Many will reason it's paid for. It's mine. I'll take it with me.
For the billionth time, AAC is a standard! And you use it exactly as you would any other format, including MP3.
78 RPM single sided records are a long established standard, but that doesn't make them any more or less useful than AAC to my in-dash MP3 player. It's simply a format supported by a minority of devices, just like my grandma's hand me down 78 RPM records. They can be played IF you have the right player. Neither format is currently in common use in most portable and car audio gear.
Please list all the in-dash players that will plug into a Toyota Prius dash that will play DRM'ed AAC files. I have a choice of 2 MP3 players that will go into the dash and interface with the multi-function display. I don't know of any in dash unit that will play DRM AAC and interface with the car. It's simply useless portable format with very limited market support.
Um, need to re-study just what EMP is. Then study electromagnetic shielding. Lots of things will survive EMP. Mostly things in sealed metal containers that don't have external wires to act as antennas would have a chance at survival. Home computers with attached phone lines, external keyboards, mice, network cables, USB stuff etc are sitting ducks for an EMP event. A laptop in a closed anvil aluminum road case is pretty well protected. You want EMP protection for you optical router? Stick it in a sealed metal box with 100% EMI shielding. Filter and surge protect the power at the point of entry. If EMI/RFI can't reach it, neither can EMP which is just an overgrown EMI event. If you keep your digital camera in a metal ammo box for storage, there is a good chance it will survive an EMP attack.
To test your stuff for EMP resistance, simply place it next to an operating high power tesla coil near the primary. If it survives, it should also survive an EMP event.
print your pictures on a kodak printstation Odball parts and formats just don't have value. I looked at cameras in the past and stuck with basic 35mm manual cameras (the ancient ones with the screw on lens. The bayonett mounts were not standard then. (another format war) I still have them and use them. (I have Pentax and Yashika. the lenses fully interchange with no problems) I can use Kodak, Fuji or other film of my choice. I never delt with the pet rock of the month club that locked me into the manufacture for supplies. (Instamatic, Kodak Disk, Instant, Advantix, etc.)
In the digital world I got bit by my first digital that used a propritory battery. (SONY) I gave it away. I didn't do enough big shoots to justify buying 6 batteries at $40 a pop (Li-10 battery) and had enough big shoots (weddings, parties, and parades) that left me dead early in the game. My current camera uses CF (rant all you want, the camera has a large buffer so CF speed is not a issue.) CF is robust. It's the cheapest format and can be found anywhere. The camera uses standard AA batteries I carry 2 sets of Metal Hydride $10/set instead of $40 each and easly found. I take a package of disposables to my big events. I've never run out of batteries or memory. Downloading is no problem even without the camera software. The USB camera connects as a hard drive and the files are JPEG's. They are instantly usable at home or on the road. The memory card can be read at any kiosk or printer I have seen that supports removable media. (excluding of course the SONY memorystick printer)
Lessons learned.. Go with industry standard interfaces. Do not use anything that uses specialty supplies if possible. My last troublesome item is my printer. I can use most any paper, but ink is a problem. Due to this problem, I get my prints at Walgreens or Costco for 19 cents per 4X6 and less than $2.00 for an 8X10. HP does not make home printing a good value. You don't get many 8X10 prints out of the $60 HP78 color cartridge. Go elsewhere for value in printing photos. Don't forget to edit them first to kill red-eye and other problems.
When a corporation decides on something it just happens and all we have to fall upon to stop the adoption of a (potentially) damaging standard is the free market system.
If anybody doesn't understand the above, a real world example is the DRM files verses MP3 files. If Apple were selling DRM-less MP3's directly competing with DRM files in a free market, I can predict the result. The Lables are forcing the DRM, not the free market. The free market is however having an infulence. DRM CD's sell well in Japan and Europe, but due to consumer backlash, they are slow in being accepted in the US. Your vote with the dollar does count! CD's that can't be ripped to MY Choice of format are avoided. My in-dash player won't work with DRM files. I look for the standard Compact Disk logo. The non-standard disks don't have it.
A damaging standard is the Itunes format. To make a CD that I can play with compressed files for my car requires buring a useless CD just to rip it to a usable format. Free market would indicate the consumers would rather have MP3's to eleminate the wasteful step. This is the factor that has kept me from using the service. It's too wasteful of my time and resources. It's ineffectient. It fits some peoples needs, but the majority find the usefulness diminished by the DRM format file used by a list of players that I can count on one hand missing a few fingers instead of the most universal industry standard MP3 format.
No I'n not willing to challange the DMCA trying to rip a protected CD. I'd rather kill it by not voting for it with $$$. Let it die like the Circuit City rental DVD. No Rip Mix Burn = no sale.
Back to the subject, Signed mail is a great idea if it's using an open standard. Signing up with one or more certificate sites doesn't bother me as long as it isn't just one. If one is used for spam and doesn't revoke the certificates, (eg; adcertserver.com) I need the ability to revoke using that service. Trusted certificate sites that earn trust whether it be Verisign, Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft will be used until they betray our trust. Keep it open and let the market forces work. The idea of all the eggs in one basket quickly becomes a problem with too much power.
Please read the article. They are cutting patterns in a slice of cheese, not cutting slices of cheese. The cheese sags and they have been unable to make deep cuts. The slices they were cutting into patterns were only 2.5mm thick. This does not cut a slab from off the old block. With the right software, a nice 3d surface engraving would look outstanding.
Cue cat logged the serial number of the scanner taking the scan as well as the code being scanned. I presume you can buy a scanner to suit your needs and do all lookups in-house if needed. It required hacking the cat to do that. However you do have a valid point, to interface with the bigger world (Is that a candy bar in your pocket?, when was that tire sold, rotated, car milage etc.) would need external data to be returned to you.
Slashdot Mirror
Do I hear a bunch more people getting it? I mean the Macromedia thing? It is missing consistant end user controls for so long, nobody pays much attention to it. The lack of a close or stop button that works is the reason I have removed Macromedia completely. The junk to content ratio wasn't worth it. It is loaded on my wifes machine because the kids do the flash game sites. (neopets) I'm not into the games so Flash has very little use for me and usualy slows and delays searches and reading articles. Because of a consistant lack of a stop button of much flash advertising, I have removed the playback mechanism. I wonder if intrusive advertising using flash will accelerate the removal of Macromedia.
Gasoline powered engines have been around since 1864. If you can't build an engine after they've been around 140 years, you must be an idiot.
Slightly offtopic, but things have changed a little bit since 1864. You didn't used to need a computer to figure out if the mass flow sensor was not working properly. The only thing electric was a coil for the spark. Nowdays everything from injection to valve timing to emissions sensing is electric. Pull all that stuff off the new engines and they won't run. A tune up is no longer changing the plugs, change the oil, drain the sediment bowl, and gap the points. Have you tried to buy points, rotor and a condensor for a new car?
I like it. Give them a dial-up account they must use to contact their laywer and parole officer by signing a GIF loaded from a HTML e-mail and sending it back. Failure to keep in touch means a violation and time. It'll give them an idea that spam wastes time, effort and resources. Be sure the daily download is buried in SPAM on dial-up with all the GIF's that have to be loaded. It would be best for the officers to dink with the subject line to make it spammy.
Bizarre isn't it. Just cos it's an MP3 player, everyone's looking at it from an iPod perspective, but if you look at it as a WiFi server, then it's pretty much the first one there.
Reading between the lines with my conspiracy theory mindset going full blast brings up this tidbit from the specifications page.
USB mass storage device.
1 Gig SD card slot.
This might not be an open wireless share. It may be a wireless client for your PC. I wouldn't get my hopes up that this is a wireless open share. I'll wait for the reviews before I buy one to find out what it does to protect it's content from casual sharing. Why is it using DRM removable memory?
CF has been dropped by many manufactures because much of the older memory cards are slow and power hungry. If the memory is slow or eats the battery, the device manufacture gets a bad rap for speed or power consumption. The newer SD memory has high speed specifications. (unfortunately they compare it to CF 1X speed not the new CF speeds)
A lot of CF is has high speed (check a good photoshop) but it is expensive. (well so is SD) CF speed is a moot point for me as my new camera has a large buffer. I choose to use CF because of it's price and solid package. Unfortunately there seems to be format wars in the flash market. The newest is that tiny picture card that is even more expensive and smaller than SD. Many cameras use it. I think there is a lot of incentive to be the next universal digital floppy out there. There is a lot of push by the manufactures of flash memory to get products out using their format. They all seem to want a chunk of the secure memory for portable cell phone and music player market
Even SONY who is trying not to die in the format wars has licensed it's memory stick to competitors to keep the format alive. That's quite a move for Sony who usualy acts like a printer manufacture and making money on the closed single source of specialty supplies.
I made the mistake of buying a SONY digital camera once. Even the battery could be bought only from SONY. They were too expensive to stock up on at $40 each, and didn't last long enough to do a wedding.
My new camera uses CF and AA batteries. The rechargable AA batteries are a quarter the cost of the Sony ones and last twice as long. I get 4 sets for the price of one Sony battery. Memory is cheap and can be bought from almost anybody. I no longer run out of battery power or memory. Spare non-rechargable's are cheap insurance for a longer than expected shoot. I learned my lesson on non-interchangable oddball parts. I will be hard to convince to make the same mistake again.
Due to the format wars, many memory cards can't be borrowed from one device to be used in another such as a camera for a wedding/reception shoot. It's a shame there are too many incompatible formats.
A universal card reader must now support 7 formats! This dumb. I'll be glad when the format war is over and one secure cell phone memory and one plain camera memory format remain.
Ever try to plug a DVD player into your VCR to watch a movie?
Yes. I found some VCR's are cheap and have the AGC in the video line from the tuner/video in. These mess up the video for you. Other VCR's have the AGC in the record circuit. The E-E (electronics-electronics) circuit does not have AGC. This passes the video through the VCR out to the TV unaltered, but still messes up the recording if you attempt it as required by law. Read the reviews. Let the buyer beware.
Yeah, seriously. Apple's AAC "protected" files were the only DRM encoded media I bought last year, and probably the only DRM media most people bought last year, and it doesn't even get name-checked? Sloppy.
You are kidding, right? I think many of those who bought Apple's AAC "protected" files are forgetting that they also bought a DVD (Macrovision and/or CSS).
How soon we forget these have DRM protection.
Lots of guys will buy used and find drivers online. Not many ladies will attempt that. My flat bed scanner was $12. My laser printer was $60. My inkjet refils are $35/pint, not $35/18mL. These are things the guy buys so they can drive a geek car. A lady would have bought the $400 laser printer and the $100 scanner and got less in the deal. They buy ink cartridges at $35/18mL of ink. I don't very often just when it dies completely.
I love my Prius with the NAV system. I like the 1 KW inverter I put in it that makes it my primary emergency generator. Having a generator that will run for days on a tank is good. Under light load, it starts, tops off the battery and shuts back down. I don't think they list cars as tech stuff so that setup only counts as about $70 for the inverter.
If sufficient people stop purchasing games that restrict their ability to play them, then it's a simple business decision for the company to make - stop over-restricting the user.
It's already hapening. I bout a 3 pack of Need for Speed. (Porche unlimited, High Stakes, & Hot persuit) The kids wanted to play it. I never give them originals as they are often knocked off the desk and used as a floormat. I always make a work copy or run off the hard drive. Guess what... They don't copy or play off the hard drive. They don't get to play them and I'm not buying Electronic Arts software anymore as it doesn't work in my family use model.
I'm sure Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo would experience a bump in sales, at the very least. :)
Good point. Check out the problems MS is haveing with Open Office. How many people are checking it out, not because of price, but because they disagree with product activation. Same thing for Intuit and the Turbo Tax registration. The backlash for these imposed problems is strong.
That's why I have Open Office and an old copy of MS Office on this machine. I won't do the new version and I use OO as a tool to open stuff MS office won't. As it improves, Open Office may replace MS office entirely here as MS moves to to a rental model.
You just need to look at this from a different angle. Think of it like paying for petrol for your car.
Some things like hammers and screwdrivers, I like to purchase and keep them on the shelf, not rent them. Same thing with my car. I own it. It's paid for. However consumables that I might need I can purchase from any corner supplier, not just Texaco. Single vendor lock-in is a bad thing. A screwdriver that needs a subscription is a bad thing. Not all software needs to be online to be useful. Artificaily tying a subscription to screwdriver software is a bad thing.
Here is a great example of problems caused by a screwdrever needing to phone home. I put together a PC on my coffee table. I hadn't added a modem or lan card yet. To keep to drivers in check I don't stuff in all the hardware all at once. A keyboard and mouse are nice things to start with.
MS had just came out with the optical mouse. (quite a few years ago) I loaded it's driver. Not only did it insist of having a CD key for the driver, but it complained loudly about being unable to find my modem! This I don't need. I imediately gave away the mouse never to use a MS mouse again. Who knows what it would have reported silently to home if it found a lan net connection. There is no reason for a screwdriver (mouse driver) to phone home EVER!
My local LAN games shouldn't be any different. I buy them, I expect to play them with no hastles.
However if I stick in an AOL disk for use with an Online Service, I expect it to phone home and want an account for the online access. It's used to access someone else's provided content for a price.
A LAN game and Tax Preperation Software does not need this. Single vendor lock in is a bad thing. The software should be able to be purchased, not rented and I should be able to play a LAN game using a local server. There is no reason for a LAN game to phone home unless I choose to use the server provided by the manufacture to play someone in Guam. I should pay for service where service is supplied and I choose to use it. (subscription service) Lack of subscription should not break the local functioning of a program. EG a mouse driver or Word Processor that can't phone home shouldn't nag that I haven't registered or quit in 60 days.
Fighting piracy is one thing. Making the product less useful is also a bad business model. Competing is good. Trying to lock-in consumers is a bad business model. Consumers will find and buy the stuff that works with no hastles.
If MS didn't do product activation, do you think Open Office would havd gotten much serious attention?
The easy way to beat the type of road hog is to build a few single lane roads.
Picture a four-lane highway. Some Canyonero driver is straddling the line, forcing traffic to stay behind it. The road was built for two lanes of traffic going in each direction.
Unfortunatley MS knows this and has been pulling this trick to get everyone to fit their non-standard lane. How many places will your chosen browser not fit? How many places are selling MS size DRM WMA files? How many people use a MS browser so they can fit on the very restrictive lane?
You might need the small ammo box.
I tried. It fit.
Are you implying yours is bigger than mine?
Maybe you need a full size microwave to fit your big box.
should've checked out the lasermonks article from yesterday - its only $20 from them
I did check out Lasermonks. They list the cartridge on the front page. Click on the page for the description and shopping cart. That page comes up blank. There is no description and no add to shopping cart. They may have them, but it looks like they can't be put in the shopping cart. Try it.
Other ink like the 5164a twin pak works, but not the C6578D. I've tried filling the carts myself with ink from AtlasCopy. The pigmented black works great, but the color has been problems from not printing a color to streaking to a cart that starts with a beautiful print only to have the printer halt halfway with the ink light flashing. (yes the counters were reset with the level indicaters showing 100%) Why do filled cartridges die suddenly in the middle of a perfect print to never live again? I gave up as the reliability was terrible. I only use only black now with a dead color cartridge in the printer. My black is on it's 5th refill. Chosing a greyscale print on the HP950 printer does not use black ink. I found this out by getting magenta greyscale prints when a color died in a printhead. I figured color is out, just use black by switching to the greyscale printing option. Wrong. The printer tried to use color and that's how I got another magenta greyscale print. Monocrome printing does NOT switch over to the black cartridge. It uses the EXPENSIVE color ink! I switched to the laser for my primary printer.
It sure keeps me busy adding all these to my router block list.
SMD tools
Screwdrivers of Mass Destruction?
Fyi, Surface Mount Device
These are parts soldered directly to the foil side of a circuit board without traditional leads going into holes in a board to be soldered on the other side. Take a look at any newer computer card. Most chips and components on the board no longer have pins that go through the board. As such, they can be a bear to unsolder the leads one at a time to get a part off the board. SMD tools heat a section of the board with a hotplate and hot air so all the leads of a component will unsolder at the same time so the part can be picked off the board without breaking the part or the board. It's hard to fix a board if removing a part rips the pads up to which it was attached.
A screwdriver of mass destruction can easly make a board un-repairable by breaking pads, lines, and VIA's.
There are several hacks to get around many of the DRM restrictions.
With Paladium, Secure Computing Initive, and Longhorn on the horizon, the days of all done in the same machine is limited. The new player will be spying for the infringing software connecting to the stream and refuse to work if one is found. They are working on securing the stream from the server, to the sound card, out to the fire wire speakers. There won't be a rippable tap point if the RIAA gets their way and MS sells them the solution. It seems best to have the subscription locked down box and the external open general purpose machine next to it.
Shh.. Don't tell anyone. Requested streams without the DJ blather.. Line out - Line in VS $1.00 a song that has to be burned on a CD but not saved to hard drive to keep. Watch for these to appear on the local sneaker net as MP3's on CD and DVD's. Don't expect them to anounce this on or off campus. Someone will figure out how to take the freebie music (well included with tuition) with them. Many will reason it's paid for. It's mine. I'll take it with me.
For the billionth time, AAC is a standard! And you use it exactly as you would any other format, including MP3.
78 RPM single sided records are a long established standard, but that doesn't make them any more or less useful than AAC to my in-dash MP3 player. It's simply a format supported by a minority of devices, just like my grandma's hand me down 78 RPM records. They can be played IF you have the right player. Neither format is currently in common use in most portable and car audio gear.
Please list all the in-dash players that will plug into a Toyota Prius dash that will play DRM'ed AAC files. I have a choice of 2 MP3 players that will go into the dash and interface with the multi-function display. I don't know of any in dash unit that will play DRM AAC and interface with the car. It's simply useless portable format with very limited market support.
Ever put a CD in an ammo box in a microwave? EMI/RFI shielding goes a long way to protecting against EMP.
Um, need to re-study just what EMP is. Then study electromagnetic shielding. Lots of things will survive EMP. Mostly things in sealed metal containers that don't have external wires to act as antennas would have a chance at survival. Home computers with attached phone lines, external keyboards, mice, network cables, USB stuff etc are sitting ducks for an EMP event. A laptop in a closed anvil aluminum road case is pretty well protected. You want EMP protection for you optical router? Stick it in a sealed metal box with 100% EMI shielding. Filter and surge protect the power at the point of entry. If EMI/RFI can't reach it, neither can EMP which is just an overgrown EMI event. If you keep your digital camera in a metal ammo box for storage, there is a good chance it will survive an EMP attack.
To test your stuff for EMP resistance, simply place it next to an operating high power tesla coil near the primary. If it survives, it should also survive an EMP event.
print your pictures on a kodak printstation
Odball parts and formats just don't have value. I looked at cameras in the past and stuck with basic 35mm manual cameras (the ancient ones with the screw on lens. The bayonett mounts were not standard then. (another format war) I still have them and use them. (I have Pentax and Yashika. the lenses fully interchange with no problems) I can use Kodak, Fuji or other film of my choice. I never delt with the pet rock of the month club that locked me into the manufacture for supplies. (Instamatic, Kodak Disk, Instant, Advantix, etc.)
In the digital world I got bit by my first digital that used a propritory battery. (SONY) I gave it away. I didn't do enough big shoots to justify buying 6 batteries at $40 a pop (Li-10 battery) and had enough big shoots (weddings, parties, and parades) that left me dead early in the game. My current camera uses CF (rant all you want, the camera has a large buffer so CF speed is not a issue.) CF is robust. It's the cheapest format and can be found anywhere. The camera uses standard AA batteries I carry 2 sets of Metal Hydride $10/set instead of $40 each and easly found. I take a package of disposables to my big events. I've never run out of batteries or memory. Downloading is no problem even without the camera software. The USB camera connects as a hard drive and the files are JPEG's. They are instantly usable at home or on the road. The memory card can be read at any kiosk or printer I have seen that supports removable media. (excluding of course the SONY memorystick printer)
Lessons learned.. Go with industry standard interfaces. Do not use anything that uses specialty supplies if possible. My last troublesome item is my printer. I can use most any paper, but ink is a problem. Due to this problem, I get my prints at Walgreens or Costco for 19 cents per 4X6 and less than $2.00 for an 8X10. HP does not make home printing a good value. You don't get many 8X10 prints out of the $60 HP78 color cartridge. Go elsewhere for value in printing photos. Don't forget to edit them first to kill red-eye and other problems.
When a corporation decides on something it just happens and all we have to fall upon to stop the adoption of a (potentially) damaging standard is the free market system.
If anybody doesn't understand the above, a real world example is the DRM files verses MP3 files. If Apple were selling DRM-less MP3's directly competing with DRM files in a free market, I can predict the result. The Lables are forcing the DRM, not the free market. The free market is however having an infulence. DRM CD's sell well in Japan and Europe, but due to consumer backlash, they are slow in being accepted in the US. Your vote with the dollar does count! CD's that can't be ripped to MY Choice of format are avoided. My in-dash player won't work with DRM files. I look for the standard Compact Disk logo. The non-standard disks don't have it.
A damaging standard is the Itunes format. To make a CD that I can play with compressed files for my car requires buring a useless CD just to rip it to a usable format. Free market would indicate the consumers would rather have MP3's to eleminate the wasteful step. This is the factor that has kept me from using the service. It's too wasteful of my time and resources. It's ineffectient. It fits some peoples needs, but the majority find the usefulness diminished by the DRM format file used by a list of players that I can count on one hand missing a few fingers instead of the most universal industry standard MP3 format.
No I'n not willing to challange the DMCA trying to rip a protected CD. I'd rather kill it by not voting for it with $$$. Let it die like the Circuit City rental DVD. No Rip Mix Burn = no sale.
Back to the subject, Signed mail is a great idea if it's using an open standard. Signing up with one or more certificate sites doesn't bother me as long as it isn't just one. If one is used for spam and doesn't revoke the certificates, (eg; adcertserver.com) I need the ability to revoke using that service. Trusted certificate sites that earn trust whether it be Verisign, Yahoo, Google, or Microsoft will be used until they betray our trust. Keep it open and let the market forces work. The idea of all the eggs in one basket quickly becomes a problem with too much power.
Please read the article. They are cutting patterns in a slice of cheese, not cutting slices of cheese. The cheese sags and they have been unable to make deep cuts. The slices they were cutting into patterns were only 2.5mm thick. This does not cut a slab from off the old block.
With the right software, a nice 3d surface engraving would look outstanding.
Cue cat logged the serial number of the scanner taking the scan as well as the code being scanned. I presume you can buy a scanner to suit your needs and do all lookups in-house if needed. It required hacking the cat to do that. However you do have a valid point, to interface with the bigger world (Is that a candy bar in your pocket?, when was that tire sold, rotated, car milage etc.) would need external data to be returned to you.