You get an optimum resolution on CRT as well, doesn't mean you are "stuck" with it.
I should have been more clear. While CRTs do have an optimum resultion, they have a greater range of useable clear resolutions. They even have a greater range of good enough resolutions. LCDs on the otherhand, going away from optimium results in a dithering effect, as in those sharp clear as day L shaped pixles.
As I said, my 10 year old Sony SE20 can go as high as 1080P, but 1600x1200 is the max practical resolution. I typicaly run at 1152x864, but I can push it above and beyond. I can lower it and the pixles are still displayed 1:1. LCDs are stuck with their max resolution. Granted you can't go outside a CRT's frequency range, but that range is more than adquate. Not to speak of the color range of analog CRT.
I'm not saying LCD isn't good. I am saying there is a good reason to stick with CRT, like the fact that 10+ years is a good run on a monitor, where those who bought LCDs tend to buy higher resolution LCDs a short time later.
When this monitor finally kicks the bucket, I might go LCD.
When are these going to go away? Nobody I know uses a CRT any more. Why not include a DVI connector on the back instead? For that matter, why do all graphics cards and many low-end LCD screens employ these old VGA interfaces?
I know of many people who still use CRT. I still use CRT. CRT is where it's at as far as peformance, versaltility, sharpness, and clarity. On my old sony 20seII s, I can do 720p or 1080p if I wanted, and these are 10+ year old monitors. LCDs are stuck at a set resolution. Many plasma TVs do come stock with VGA connectors. For 20 inches and above CRTs actually seem to cost more. While "old" it's more than adquate for it's purpose, unless you are talking LCD which does benifit from a digital signal.
Aside from that, you are probally right, a DVI port can at least be adapted to VGA. If you are going to have one port, might as well be DVI.
I'm all for the micronization of the PC. I'm all for such pico-boards being employed in stand alone devices such as DVD players so I as the end user could load up my own set of custom codecs, or better yet plop in the latest and greatest drive.
I'm also for all cases of higher power efficency, and reduction of waste.
But my biggest complaint are laptops, the lack of standardization. There is no agreed upon standard for screens, main boards, power supplies, ect... ect. They are very much presently a throw away technology.
... is the fact that Diebold also manufacturs ATMs. Makes me wonder if my bank account is safe...
I would *think* if someone managed to open an ATM, I think the money would be the first thing to grab. I don't know how much cash your average cash machine holds but http://www6.diebold.com/gssssps/pdfs/DBD_ATM_Cash_ Mgt_PC.pdf Diebold machines do employ cash maangement, making sure to keep track of how much is needed.
Besides, and pointed out in other slashdot articals, phishing schemes seem to be most effective.
I'd also suggest, "If somebody wants to buy something from you, take their damn money." That's not the way it works, though. We're not talking about marketing...I already want the album. I'm just not allowed to buy it, because I live in the States.
You are not "a" market, you are a person. If they make the choice to not sell a product where there isn't a big enough market to justify the expence, they are under no obligation to.
It's not like I don't feel your pain. I too would be happy to buy some things which are not sold.
No, I won't pay extra for an "import" album. I will spend time figuring out how to download it for free, though.
It seems they are happy with this arangement, and it sounds like you are happy too. Problem solved. I too am not a fan of the import market, not so much because of it's cost but because there is no real assurance that an edition you buy in good faith is actually a licensed copy. For example, One Piece dubs.
I know the industry should understand that we now live in a global market, and the concept of boarders is obsolete.
I would "reccomend" that you do what I do... something i'm interested in buying... send a letter saying "I want to buy it, but it's not available". Otherwise, they are clueless as to the existance of any market. If enough demand exists, then they *will* jump into your market with bells on.
I suppose the bigger question is "why do Japanese labels want people to pirate their music?". Because if you don't offer people a legit way of downloading tracks, then people gravitate to the alternatives.
All the marketing, none of the support, and no overhead.
But if the pirates actually create a following, you can then offer media via existing channels, and make a buck.
Doesn't really bother me much, but makes me curious about their business sense.
Don't market in a place where a market does not exist. Wait for a market to apear, then take advantage of it. Nothing could be more brilliant.
For what it's worth, microsoft consider OEM copies of windows non-transferable, which is why they're half the price of a retail licence which can be transferred. A motherboard change is the 'key' component in their world view, so replacing a faulty motherboard counts as replacing the computer; and that means the OEM copy of windows is no longer valid, and a new copy needs to be bought. Sounds like your hassle with the motherboard swap could be down to this limitation - they did consider your valid OEM licence to no longer be valid.
On my desktops, I have the Full Pro. No upgrade, no OEM. In theory a key benifit of owning pro is microsoft considers these to be transferable.
Again in all fairness, the WGA is technicaly less restrictive than the old method which would detect major hardware changes. On 2k and XP, i've had issues with it failing to do anything including trying to enable network support (or was it dialup support) to verify the license was legit. I was able to boot, backup, and then remove. Normally I would mount the drive on another system, but thanks to Nortons, the partition ID was unfamilar to windows and doesn't mount.
On my laptops, which I've not had an issue with, those are OEM, except with the keys not working on other media.
Similarly, OEM licence codes that ship on name-brand desktops and laptops usually won't activate online anymore; you're supposed to use the pre-activated restore disks that will only install on that hardware; the OEM licence on the side isn't easily usable on its own, and certainly not on another PC with different hardware.
That's the thing... I wanted to use the key on the bottom of the laptop, on the laptop. New drive, fresh install. You're likely right, I probally need "their" restore disks, rather than an OEM disc, which is unfortunate as I "wanted" to start fresh and ditch all their crap.
But in both cases 1) Legit hardware upgrade, desire to buy a new drive and re-install windows fresh. 2) Legit hardware failure, restoring from backup.
I currently have 4 machines running windows presently. Two desktops, two laptops. The laptops are quite legit, both came shipped with windows, Media center edition, and Pen edition. The desktops were not shipped with windows but have legit copies of XP pro on them.
The laptops, i've only had issue with one, the Toshiba pen edition. I "wanted" to do a fresh install on a fresh drive, but didn't have the tablet edition, nor was downloading possible as no copy would take my legit key.
Desktops, I've had NOTHING but issues. Motherboard upgrades, pre WGA systems would fail to authentiate. Post WGA systems in all fairness the warning was a tad more tolerant. I could browse the net, and get a resolution, well, except for the fact that on my via based board you needed to download the USB drivers, so alot of hassle to backup a system who's motherboard failed, who due to Nortons wouldn't mount under XP, just to get the same glitch when trying to transfer the old install to a new system.
I understand what microsoft is doing. They are trying to prevent casual piracy, those casual pirates who would otherwise buy one copy and use on many machines are likely to just buy another copy. But what they are actually doing is encouraging people like my self to download a cracked version of xp pro corp.
It would be "nice" if you could tell freaking windows "I bought new hardware, transfer this license". They can be control freaks till their hearts explode, so long as they continue to permit me to 1) Backup my existing install of windows 2) in the event of hardware failure, restore a backup, and have it work, or transfer the hard disk to another machine without assuming i've gone rogue.
Although note that's not really a browser problem, but that the OS didn't properly support 8 bit graphics until 1992.
Which... GUI webbrowsers actually came much later, like 1994 or so. I "imagine" it was possible to gear a web browser to support 24bit graphics as 24bit cards existed and software to use them also existed, but it made sence to support AGA.
It does make me think of IBM's attempt to release a dos based GUI web browser. This was a somewhat reasonable idea as there was a surplus of pre-pentium hardware. For the life of me I can't remember the name, but it's certainly something pre-2000. Commercial ware, cost under $100. It "came" with a modem but they never answered my tech support inquery as to whether they offered a microchannel modem. But there were a few issues.
1. Lack of graphics standardization. VGA was standard, but limited to 4bit. Unless you were using a graphics card directly supported, you were limited to 4bit. Lower resolutions at 8bit were standard. 2. Lack of sound card standardization. Soundblaster was sort of the defacto standard, and most boards emulated the soundblaster well enough. 3. Lack of mathcoprocessors. If you were lucky enough to have a 486DX, or a 386 with a mathco, you were golden, but jpeg decoding was just to freaking slow. 4. At slightly under $100 you could buy windows, at least the upgrade.
With Amiga, you "could have" ran a independent screen and delt out 8bit and 24bit graphics directly. The OS was perfectly happy to be in it's unique mode. Terminal programs did this to support 16 color text IIRC. But this wasn't done. But regardless to run a web browser in 8bit or beyond you needed 1) 3.x roms and workbench, you could cheat if you had 1.3 roms, but not 2.x roms. 2) a graphics board which was supported or could emulate AGA 3) A mathco, which wasn't directly supported on the a2000. Usually supported as part of a cpu upgrade.
The cost of these three items was in excess of, well, IIRC an e-machine circa 1998, which was at the very start a Cyrix socket 7 233. Hell, a simple motherboard upgrade and pci vid card to an existing throw away 286/386 was far less.
I stuck with the Amiga for a while but... there was no way I was going to shell out more money then I already did.
Re:Not only fast reboot - NO shutdown
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 1
If I want to turn it off, I press the power button. If I want to reboot, I give it the three finger salute (that's either "Ctrl Amiga Amiga" or "Ctrl Alt Alt" (depending on if you want a soft or hard reboot) for anyone paying attention) or hit the reboot button on the front of the computer. There's no "shutdown" required.
Unless you happened to shut down while the HD was still writing, then you needed to peform some intensive checks. This was mostly an issue for those of us running some old ass 5.25 inch scsi drives, or worse yet MFM. I was a cheap bastard an ran a Seagate ST-419, where 4 designated their full height drive. This wasn't really an OS issue... but a soft shutdown that would understand wait for drive cache to be clear then shutdown would have been most handy.
Re:Open Open Open? AROS!
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 1
3. multiple screens, different software can open a new screen in a different resolution with different color depth. yeah you can kind of do this in windows when booting up a game but we all know it's actually re-setting the resolution of the system as a whole, illustrated by the fact that when a game bombs your desktop is f**ked. You can have as many as a like, so you can be tight with your desktop's video ram and run it in 256 colors if you wish, but imagine at the same time being able to host a HD movie on another screen, pause it, and switch back to the desktop instantly without waiting for the OS to have a fit first.
I can achieve this effect on Linux with virtual consoles.
Not really. The Amiga could handle multi screens running different resolutions, and you could pull these screens down like a shade. You could have 1/2 the screen running low rez, the other half running high rez, without tweeks or fuckups.
X, near as i'm aware, can't change resolutions on the fly, or rather you can but the desktop size remains constent. You can have multiable screens but these seem to be limited to the same resolution. This sort of becomes a moot point as we switch to LCD, but still.
Sure you can have multiable virtual consoles, but what the parent was talking about was doing this on a single console.
The floppies on the Amiga were not identical to x86 counterparts. That is, the diskettes were of course identical, and the mechanical drive I assume was also the same, but the *floppy controller* was very different from both the x86 and the Apple counterparts.
I should have been more clear. But needless to say I as an end user could pop in a Teac drive on my a2000 and do DD 880k disks. I could not do 1.44 or 1.8meg discs. I don't remember if I was limited to 1.44 on the scsi floppy controler I had, or if I felt it was wise to keep my stuff on something the PC could read.
Again, if I remember correctly, there were issues reading mac 3.5inch DD mac floppies, but not HD ones if you had a HD drive that is. Again my recall on this subject is vague.
There's an explanation for HD disks not working. The (very) few Amigas that came with HD floppy drives had custom-built drives that would spin at half speed with HD disks. IIRC, the reason for this was that Paula's bandwidth wouldn't have been enough. And of course Commodore never updated the audio chip/floppy controller...
I just popped in a standard HD teac drive as my amiga drive failed. I got annoyed and eventually invested in a scsi floppy controler. That worked pretty well, but as you might imagine, it was worthless as nothing came out for the amiga in HD.
BTW, did you get the disk change function to work properly? I always thought there would be some trouble just using a regular drive. Some of the later non-Commodore A1200's came with standard PC drives, and couldn't start certain copy-protected games.
I wasn't game oriented, esp since I got into the amiga very late. As I couldn't be bothered swapping discs I went out of my way to get cracked editions of things I actuallly used. After all, running origional discs is dumb, and using floppys when you don't have to is silly. I can only speak for Pirates, Civilization, Colonization, and Lemmings. There were certainly some cooler games I "wanted" to find but simply could not, like "It Came From the Desert".
What's really sad is the fact that there "was" a good market for amiga type machines in the 1990s, when webTV and other set web browsers were in vogue. Hell, just expand out, what was it called CD32, their game/cd console, and poof a good game machine and something the parents could use to check their stocks and e-mail.
I "imagine" that AmigaOS would be rather handy for hand held applications. It was designed to operate at very low resolutions, did multimedia before it was a term, multitasking, all of this with only a 68000 and less than 1 meg of memory. in this age of bloatware, it's actually rather ideal for this nitch application.
Re:What is it used for?
on
AmigaOS 4
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The Amiga's killer app was video production which has been trivial now on Macs and Windows XP for years. Even the Video Toaster that was cherished by Amiga users now requires a P4 or Athlon and Windows XP. It seems to me that Amiga OS doesn't offer that much when compared Linux, BSD, OS X, and Windows. Heck, I'm even going to throw WM5 in there since it has better browser choices.
That was the main reason I switched from Amiga to Sun. Browsers were limited to like 4 bit video even if you had a 8 or 24 bit bitplane board, unless you were update the roms "again" to version 3 if I remember correctly. I was a dumb ass and updated to version 2.x roms and couldn't kickstart version 3.x from version 2.x. Not that I was offended by the idea of pirating the roms as amiga folded.
Also 24bit graphics boards were not really standarized, well I think Picasso II was the defacto standard, something that cost a pretty penny. The board I had could emulate AGA graphics, amiga 8bit ham support, but not without newer roms.
But I started to price what it would cost to update my hardware on my amiga 2000. The cost was horrible. By the time I added in a faster cpu, more memory via a special cpu board upgrade, a defacto standard graphics board, oh and an extra serial board to handle a standard mouse, not to speak of the fact that you needed a 23pin to something else cable to sport either the stock monitor, an EGA monitor, or one of those rare vga monitors that would sync down to TV levels in the unlikely event the config on my graphics card failed, well... the cost was equal to a high end penium with 16 megs of memory.
Did the Amiga hardware include a motorized floppy drive similar to the Apple Macintosh floppy drive? I don't think that standard "x86" drives would automatically access a disk - the OS usually has to be told to do so, unless it is constantly probing. But I think that would cause the OS to constantly be hanging. I think Tandy also used automatic drives.
IIRC, the floppies drives on the amiga were identical to x86 counterpart. I back up this claim by knowing for a fact I took a standard x86 drive put it on my amiga when the factory drive failed. It was too short for the bay, and franky I couldn't seem to get High Density to work on my A2000 but aside from that no problem. The only thing they did differently, that i'm aware, was use the disc change pin. As in when you put a disc in, the drive would relay this to the system.
It was a complaint of mine that on the PC, when using multiable media, you had to press "OK" once you swapped discs, an operation which could have been handled by the disc change line. Even more sad the fact that this support only came into play in later versions of windows, a feature offered on older systems.
Does Microsoft (and along the same lines, the RIAA, MPAA, etc) believe education is really the problem?
I'm sure education is part of the problem. The 50+ crowd does think if they buy one copy of microsoft office for $500, then they can also install that copy on their other computer, their children's machine, their grandkids machine. "It's ok I bought a copy".
From a business perspective, this makes sense. Inform these casual pirates who actually do pay money for software they need to pay more money for more machines. The real pirates, the ones who don't shell out a dime for software, why spend money on those people who don't provide an income.
I've taken exception with the WGA... the fact of the matter is from a user perspective... while I actually do "own" copies of windows, i'm much better off with a pirate cracked edition than the *real deal*. For example... motherboard failure... backups. "This might be a counterfeit edition".
I live in one of the largest cities in my state. It has a population of approximately 85,000. The police ask people to use 911 for all communication with the police, including noise complaints and other non-emergencies.
85,000 as one of the largest cities in a state sounds rather smallish from my perspective, sounds like Wyoming, or perhaps North Dakota. Don't get me wrong, good sized city, just I can't think of many states who's larger cities are smaller than 100,000.
But yes.... my point exactly. While "I" and others feel 911 shouldn't be used for trivial matters, it's actually up to the city to decide what proper use is.
Now on the flip side... I remember having my car stall in the dead of winter, on a mountain, no mobile save one phone call I borrowed from some friendly skiers. The one call was to a friend who I was trying to see, who decided driving 10 miles to rescue me wasn't a good idea because it started snowing. Rather than 1) Call 911, alert state patrol 2) Call the state patrol directly 3) Call the department of transprotion 4) Call a freaking cab
she did nothing. Needless to say on mountain passes reporting stalled vehicels is considered to be approperate use of 911 as they do present a danger not only to those in the vehicel, but to others using the freeway.
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid I was taught at school to call 911 only in case of an emergency. That meant that someone is or was going to get seriously hurt (broken bone or worse), or there was someone around who was a threatening presence. Dispatch should never be your concierge. I notice that before that part of the excerpt you posted, it says the following: Call 9-1-1 anytime you have an EMERGENCY when police, fire or medical response is required immediately. Examples of 9-1-1 emergencies include fire, crimes in progress or that just occurred, or a medical crisis. A good rule of thumb is - when life or property is threatened or at immediate risk, or if there is a good chance that a criminal can be apprehended, call 9-1-1. I think that's good enough guidance.
I was taught the same thing as you... and I agree 911 should only be used in the event of an emergency, where an emergency is a threat to person or property. Crime in progress, 911, crime that happened yesturday, hit the phonebook. House fire, 911, auto accident 911. Cat in the tree, hit the phone book. But I discovered general assistance is considered to be an acceptable use in some towns, such as unable to make a court hearing. You might think this is dumb, and I would agree this is dumb, but there is no real standard how cities or counties advertise the use of 911.
While I agree with your general rule of thumb, do check your phonebook. Odds are it'll be more specific as to what 911 "should" be used for in your area.
Considering how often we hear about people calling 911 for driving directions or other ridiculous reasons, I can't help but wonder when dispatchers will start getting stuff like tubgirl...
The guidelines to call 911 are different from city to city.
* Threat to life
* Threat to property/property damage
* General Assistance
If in doubt, call 9-1-1. Better to be safe than sorry
There should be more uniform guideline, for example larger cities tend to be more restrictive as to the use of 911, smaller towns tend to be more liberal.
Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios
WTF?
Windows Vista has shit inside in case some asshole wanted to sell you overpriced crap. Because it's digital crap, you can't return it. Vista is designed to take your fucking money and give it to assholes.
There are no photos of the GPS devices, but I imagine they are rugged, ugly things with a greyscale LCD screen and maybe you could get them confused with a cell phone from 1996. Did they honestly think a phone that ugly would sell?
I know thieves are stupid but wouldn't it be worthwhile knowing what you're stealing?
If you attend flee markets, you'll notice quite a few people who simply don't know what they are selling. I remember back in like 1986 I wanted a cordless phone, which I bought one from such a flea market but only after I bought it I realized the base station was simply a charger and had no provisions to be hooked up to a phone line. The seller had no idea what I was talking about.
Now... I assumed that cellphones and other things which use serial numbers to access a service were worthless if declaired stolen. But in the age of the sim card, It's possible they won't bother to keep track of them.
In some cases, these older phones have value. I know for example I have a friend who's looking for your basic phone, something like the nokia 3120 but in triband or n.america, your basic nokia without a camera, or a bunch of trivial other crap, yet built like a brick, and better battery life then the new fangled 6010 or the 6103. "I" don't know for a fact about the battery life, but the built like a brick... that is something I can see with many older phones.
But this sounds like a crime of convenience. Kids took some shit that they thought they could get "some" money for.
Unfortunately, I don't think that just buying it is going to do the trick. You're going to have to occupy it and guard it. Which will cost somewhat more than $50/acre...
Find a rainforest with people already occupying it. Trade nuts for guns.
Hey hey hey. The majority of drug dealers are well meaning people trying to provide a valuable service to their community and making a little profit meanwhile. In the War on Drug Users, they are the freedom fighters. Don't mix them up with thugs like the RIAA.
What's sad is this is moderated funny when it's pretty much true. I have had friends who's first apartments were in the "not so good" inner city part of town. Their opinion of drug dealers changed when they discovered the friendly neighborhood street dealers were the best form of neighborhood watch. Think about it, who else is it who's business is to stay on the street, who's acting in their own best interest preventing the sorts of crimes that the cops would be called for.
I know it's hard to understand, this is slashdot, where I'm willing to wager most when teens bought computer equipment and not drugs. While moraly questionable, it can easily be argued that some street dealers peform a valuable community service.
...and you didn't tell her that you can make her old PC do anything WV can if she only pays you 30% of what a new PC will cost her ?
To be honest, no.
1) She doesn't have an old PC, she has NO pc 2) Even if she did have an old PC, odds are she would want vista anyway 3) Her buying a Vista Premium Ready PC is a good enough plan. Odds are it'll have a fast cpu
if not dual core, enough memory, and a decent vid card. 4) It doesn't matter whether "I" like vista or not, it's her choice.
Slashdot Mirror
samsung
MultiSync
Viewsonic
You get an optimum resolution on CRT as well, doesn't mean you are "stuck" with it.
I should have been more clear. While CRTs do have an optimum resultion, they have a greater range of useable clear resolutions. They even have a greater range of good enough resolutions. LCDs on the otherhand, going away from optimium results in a dithering effect, as in those sharp clear as day L shaped pixles.
As I said, my 10 year old Sony SE20 can go as high as 1080P, but 1600x1200 is the max practical resolution. I typicaly run at 1152x864, but I can push it above and beyond. I can lower it and the pixles are still displayed 1:1. LCDs are stuck with their max resolution. Granted you can't go outside a CRT's frequency range, but that range is more than adquate. Not to speak of the color range of analog CRT.
I'm not saying LCD isn't good. I am saying there is a good reason to stick with CRT, like the fact that 10+ years is a good run on a monitor, where those who bought LCDs tend to buy higher resolution LCDs a short time later.
When this monitor finally kicks the bucket, I might go LCD.
When are these going to go away? Nobody I know uses a CRT any more. Why not include a DVI connector on the back instead? For that matter, why do all graphics cards and many low-end LCD screens employ these old VGA interfaces?
I know of many people who still use CRT. I still use CRT. CRT is where it's at as far as peformance, versaltility, sharpness, and clarity. On my old sony 20seII s, I can do 720p or 1080p if I wanted, and these are 10+ year old monitors. LCDs are stuck at a set resolution. Many plasma TVs do come stock with VGA connectors. For 20 inches and above CRTs actually seem to cost more. While "old" it's more than adquate for it's purpose, unless you are talking LCD which does benifit from a digital signal.
Aside from that, you are probally right, a DVI port can at least be adapted to VGA. If you are going to have one port, might as well be DVI.
I'm all for the micronization of the PC. I'm all for such pico-boards being employed in stand alone devices such as DVD players so I as the end user could load up my own set of custom codecs, or better yet plop in the latest and greatest drive.
I'm also for all cases of higher power efficency, and reduction of waste.
But my biggest complaint are laptops, the lack of standardization. There is no agreed upon standard for screens, main boards, power supplies, ect... ect. They are very much presently a throw away technology.
... is the fact that Diebold also manufacturs ATMs. Makes me wonder if my bank account is safe...
_ Mgt_PC.pdf
I would *think* if someone managed to open an ATM, I think the money would be the first thing to grab. I don't know how much cash your average cash machine holds but
http://www6.diebold.com/gssssps/pdfs/DBD_ATM_Cash
Diebold machines do employ cash maangement, making sure to keep track of how much is needed.
Besides, and pointed out in other slashdot articals, phishing schemes seem to be most effective.
I'd also suggest, "If somebody wants to buy something from you, take their damn money." That's not the way it works, though. We're not talking about marketing...I already want the album. I'm just not allowed to buy it, because I live in the States.
You are not "a" market, you are a person. If they make the choice to not sell a product where there isn't a big enough market to justify the expence, they are under no obligation to.
It's not like I don't feel your pain. I too would be happy to buy some things which are not sold.
No, I won't pay extra for an "import" album. I will spend time figuring out how to download it for free, though.
It seems they are happy with this arangement, and it sounds like you are happy too. Problem solved. I too am not a fan of the import market, not so much because of it's cost but because there is no real assurance that an edition you buy in good faith is actually a licensed copy. For example, One Piece dubs.
I know the industry should understand that we now live in a global market, and the concept of boarders is obsolete.
I would "reccomend" that you do what I do... something i'm interested in buying... send a letter saying "I want to buy it, but it's not available". Otherwise, they are clueless as to the existance of any market. If enough demand exists, then they *will* jump into your market with bells on.
I suppose the bigger question is "why do Japanese labels want people to pirate their music?". Because if you don't offer people a legit way of downloading tracks, then people gravitate to the alternatives.
All the marketing, none of the support, and no overhead.
But if the pirates actually create a following, you can then offer media via existing channels, and make a buck.
Doesn't really bother me much, but makes me curious about their business sense.
Don't market in a place where a market does not exist. Wait for a market to apear, then take advantage of it. Nothing could be more brilliant.
For what it's worth, microsoft consider OEM copies of windows non-transferable, which is why they're half the price of a retail licence which can be transferred. A motherboard change is the 'key' component in their world view, so replacing a faulty motherboard counts as replacing the computer; and that means the OEM copy of windows is no longer valid, and a new copy needs to be bought. Sounds like your hassle with the motherboard swap could be down to this limitation - they did consider your valid OEM licence to no longer be valid.
On my desktops, I have the Full Pro. No upgrade, no OEM. In theory a key benifit of owning pro is microsoft considers these to be transferable.
Again in all fairness, the WGA is technicaly less restrictive than the old method which would detect major hardware changes. On 2k and XP, i've had issues with it failing to do anything including trying to enable network support (or was it dialup support) to verify the license was legit. I was able to boot, backup, and then remove. Normally I would mount the drive on another system, but thanks to Nortons, the partition ID was unfamilar to windows and doesn't mount.
On my laptops, which I've not had an issue with, those are OEM, except with the keys not working on other media.
Similarly, OEM licence codes that ship on name-brand desktops and laptops usually won't activate online anymore; you're supposed to use the pre-activated restore disks that will only install on that hardware; the OEM licence on the side isn't easily usable on its own, and certainly not on another PC with different hardware.
That's the thing... I wanted to use the key on the bottom of the laptop, on the laptop. New drive, fresh install. You're likely right, I probally need "their" restore disks, rather than an OEM disc, which is unfortunate as I "wanted" to start fresh and ditch all their crap.
But in both cases
1) Legit hardware upgrade, desire to buy a new drive and re-install windows fresh.
2) Legit hardware failure, restoring from backup.
I currently have 4 machines running windows presently. Two desktops, two laptops. The laptops are quite legit, both came shipped with windows, Media center edition, and Pen edition. The desktops were not shipped with windows but have legit copies of XP pro on them.
The laptops, i've only had issue with one, the Toshiba pen edition. I "wanted" to do a fresh install on a fresh drive, but didn't have the tablet edition, nor was downloading possible as no copy would take my legit key.
Desktops, I've had NOTHING but issues. Motherboard upgrades, pre WGA systems would fail to authentiate. Post WGA systems in all fairness the warning was a tad more tolerant. I could browse the net, and get a resolution, well, except for the fact that on my via based board you needed to download the USB drivers, so alot of hassle to backup a system who's motherboard failed, who due to Nortons wouldn't mount under XP, just to get the same glitch when trying to transfer the old install to a new system.
I understand what microsoft is doing. They are trying to prevent casual piracy, those casual pirates who would otherwise buy one copy and use on many machines are likely to just buy another copy. But what they are actually doing is encouraging people like my self to download a cracked version of xp pro corp.
It would be "nice" if you could tell freaking windows "I bought new hardware, transfer this license". They can be control freaks till their hearts explode, so long as they continue to permit me to
1) Backup my existing install of windows
2) in the event of hardware failure, restore a backup, and have it work, or transfer the hard disk to another machine without assuming i've gone rogue.
Although note that's not really a browser problem, but that the OS didn't properly support 8 bit graphics until 1992.
Which... GUI webbrowsers actually came much later, like 1994 or so. I "imagine" it was possible to gear a web browser to support 24bit graphics as 24bit cards existed and software to use them also existed, but it made sence to support AGA.
It does make me think of IBM's attempt to release a dos based GUI web browser. This was a somewhat reasonable idea as there was a surplus of pre-pentium hardware. For the life of me I can't remember the name, but it's certainly something pre-2000. Commercial ware, cost under $100. It "came" with a modem but they never answered my tech support inquery as to whether they offered a microchannel modem. But there were a few issues.
1. Lack of graphics standardization. VGA was standard, but limited to 4bit. Unless you were using a graphics card directly supported, you were limited to 4bit. Lower resolutions at 8bit were standard.
2. Lack of sound card standardization. Soundblaster was sort of the defacto standard, and most boards emulated the soundblaster well enough.
3. Lack of mathcoprocessors. If you were lucky enough to have a 486DX, or a 386 with a mathco, you were golden, but jpeg decoding was just to freaking slow.
4. At slightly under $100 you could buy windows, at least the upgrade.
With Amiga, you "could have" ran a independent screen and delt out 8bit and 24bit graphics directly. The OS was perfectly happy to be in it's unique mode. Terminal programs did this to support 16 color text IIRC. But this wasn't done. But regardless to run a web browser in 8bit or beyond you needed
1) 3.x roms and workbench, you could cheat if you had 1.3 roms, but not 2.x roms.
2) a graphics board which was supported or could emulate AGA
3) A mathco, which wasn't directly supported on the a2000. Usually supported as part of a cpu upgrade.
The cost of these three items was in excess of, well, IIRC an e-machine circa 1998, which was at the very start a Cyrix socket 7 233. Hell, a simple motherboard upgrade and pci vid card to an existing throw away 286/386 was far less.
I stuck with the Amiga for a while but... there was no way I was going to shell out more money then I already did.
If I want to turn it off, I press the power button. If I want to reboot, I give it the three finger salute (that's either "Ctrl Amiga Amiga" or "Ctrl Alt Alt" (depending on if you want a soft or hard reboot) for anyone paying attention) or hit the reboot button on the front of the computer. There's no "shutdown" required.
Unless you happened to shut down while the HD was still writing, then you needed to peform some intensive checks. This was mostly an issue for those of us running some old ass 5.25 inch scsi drives, or worse yet MFM. I was a cheap bastard an ran a Seagate ST-419, where 4 designated their full height drive. This wasn't really an OS issue... but a soft shutdown that would understand wait for drive cache to be clear then shutdown would have been most handy.
I can achieve this effect on Linux with virtual consoles.
Not really. The Amiga could handle multi screens running different resolutions, and you could pull these screens down like a shade. You could have 1/2 the screen running low rez, the other half running high rez, without tweeks or fuckups.
X, near as i'm aware, can't change resolutions on the fly, or rather you can but the desktop size remains constent. You can have multiable screens but these seem to be limited to the same resolution. This sort of becomes a moot point as we switch to LCD, but still.
Sure you can have multiable virtual consoles, but what the parent was talking about was doing this on a single console.
The floppies on the Amiga were not identical to x86 counterparts. That is, the diskettes were of course identical, and the mechanical drive I assume was also the same, but the *floppy controller* was very different from both the x86 and the Apple counterparts.
I should have been more clear. But needless to say I as an end user could pop in a Teac drive on my a2000 and do DD 880k disks. I could not do 1.44 or 1.8meg discs. I don't remember if I was limited to 1.44 on the scsi floppy controler I had, or if I felt it was wise to keep my stuff on something the PC could read.
Again, if I remember correctly, there were issues reading mac 3.5inch DD mac floppies, but not HD ones if you had a HD drive that is. Again my recall on this subject is vague.
There's an explanation for HD disks not working. The (very) few Amigas that came with HD floppy drives had custom-built drives that would spin at half speed with HD disks. IIRC, the reason for this was that Paula's bandwidth wouldn't have been enough. And of course Commodore never updated the audio chip/floppy controller...
I just popped in a standard HD teac drive as my amiga drive failed. I got annoyed and eventually invested in a scsi floppy controler. That worked pretty well, but as you might imagine, it was worthless as nothing came out for the amiga in HD.
BTW, did you get the disk change function to work properly? I always thought there would be some trouble just using a regular drive. Some of the later non-Commodore A1200's came with standard PC drives, and couldn't start certain copy-protected games.
I wasn't game oriented, esp since I got into the amiga very late. As I couldn't be bothered swapping discs I went out of my way to get cracked editions of things I actuallly used. After all, running origional discs is dumb, and using floppys when you don't have to is silly. I can only speak for Pirates, Civilization, Colonization, and Lemmings. There were certainly some cooler games I "wanted" to find but simply could not, like "It Came From the Desert".
die already. the amiga's time has come and gone.
What's really sad is the fact that there "was" a good market for amiga type machines in the 1990s, when webTV and other set web browsers were in vogue. Hell, just expand out, what was it called CD32, their game/cd console, and poof a good game machine and something the parents could use to check their stocks and e-mail.
I "imagine" that AmigaOS would be rather handy for hand held applications. It was designed to operate at very low resolutions, did multimedia before it was a term, multitasking, all of this with only a 68000 and less than 1 meg of memory. in this age of bloatware, it's actually rather ideal for this nitch application.
The Amiga's killer app was video production which has been trivial now on Macs and Windows XP for years. Even the Video Toaster that was cherished by Amiga users now requires a P4 or Athlon and Windows XP. It seems to me that Amiga OS doesn't offer that much when compared Linux, BSD, OS X, and Windows. Heck, I'm even going to throw WM5 in there since it has better browser choices.
That was the main reason I switched from Amiga to Sun. Browsers were limited to like 4 bit video even if you had a 8 or 24 bit bitplane board, unless you were update the roms "again" to version 3 if I remember correctly. I was a dumb ass and updated to version 2.x roms and couldn't kickstart version 3.x from version 2.x. Not that I was offended by the idea of pirating the roms as amiga folded.
Also 24bit graphics boards were not really standarized, well I think Picasso II was the defacto standard, something that cost a pretty penny. The board I had could emulate AGA graphics, amiga 8bit ham support, but not without newer roms.
But I started to price what it would cost to update my hardware on my amiga 2000. The cost was horrible. By the time I added in a faster cpu, more memory via a special cpu board upgrade, a defacto standard graphics board, oh and an extra serial board to handle a standard mouse, not to speak of the fact that you needed a 23pin to something else cable to sport either the stock monitor, an EGA monitor, or one of those rare vga monitors that would sync down to TV levels in the unlikely event the config on my graphics card failed, well... the cost was equal to a high end penium with 16 megs of memory.
There are still many features I miss.
Did the Amiga hardware include a motorized floppy drive similar to the Apple Macintosh floppy drive? I don't think that standard "x86" drives would automatically access a disk - the OS usually has to be told to do so, unless it is constantly probing. But I think that would cause the OS to constantly be hanging. I think Tandy also used automatic drives.
IIRC, the floppies drives on the amiga were identical to x86 counterpart. I back up this claim by knowing for a fact I took a standard x86 drive put it on my amiga when the factory drive failed. It was too short for the bay, and franky I couldn't seem to get High Density to work on my A2000 but aside from that no problem. The only thing they did differently, that i'm aware, was use the disc change pin. As in when you put a disc in, the drive would relay this to the system.
It was a complaint of mine that on the PC, when using multiable media, you had to press "OK" once you swapped discs, an operation which could have been handled by the disc change line. Even more sad the fact that this support only came into play in later versions of windows, a feature offered on older systems.
Does Microsoft (and along the same lines, the RIAA, MPAA, etc) believe education is really the problem?
I'm sure education is part of the problem. The 50+ crowd does think if they buy one copy of microsoft office for $500, then they can also install that copy on their other computer, their children's machine, their grandkids machine. "It's ok I bought a copy".
From a business perspective, this makes sense. Inform these casual pirates who actually do pay money for software they need to pay more money for more machines. The real pirates, the ones who don't shell out a dime for software, why spend money on those people who don't provide an income.
I've taken exception with the WGA... the fact of the matter is from a user perspective... while I actually do "own" copies of windows, i'm much better off with a pirate cracked edition than the *real deal*. For example... motherboard failure... backups. "This might be a counterfeit edition".
I live in one of the largest cities in my state. It has a population of approximately 85,000. The police ask people to use 911 for all communication with the police, including noise complaints and other non-emergencies.
85,000 as one of the largest cities in a state sounds rather smallish from my perspective, sounds like Wyoming, or perhaps North Dakota. Don't get me wrong, good sized city, just I can't think of many states who's larger cities are smaller than 100,000.
But yes.... my point exactly. While "I" and others feel 911 shouldn't be used for trivial matters, it's actually up to the city to decide what proper use is.
Now on the flip side... I remember having my car stall in the dead of winter, on a mountain, no mobile save one phone call I borrowed from some friendly skiers. The one call was to a friend who I was trying to see, who decided driving 10 miles to rescue me wasn't a good idea because it started snowing. Rather than
1) Call 911, alert state patrol
2) Call the state patrol directly
3) Call the department of transprotion
4) Call a freaking cab
she did nothing. Needless to say on mountain passes reporting stalled vehicels is considered to be approperate use of 911 as they do present a danger not only to those in the vehicel, but to others using the freeway.
I don't know about you, but when I was a kid I was taught at school to call 911 only in case of an emergency. That meant that someone is or was going to get seriously hurt (broken bone or worse), or there was someone around who was a threatening presence. Dispatch should never be your concierge. I notice that before that part of the excerpt you posted, it says the following: Call 9-1-1 anytime you have an EMERGENCY when police, fire or medical response is required immediately. Examples of 9-1-1 emergencies include fire, crimes in progress or that just occurred, or a medical crisis. A good rule of thumb is - when life or property is threatened or at immediate risk, or if there is a good chance that a criminal can be apprehended, call 9-1-1. I think that's good enough guidance.
I was taught the same thing as you... and I agree 911 should only be used in the event of an emergency, where an emergency is a threat to person or property. Crime in progress, 911, crime that happened yesturday, hit the phonebook. House fire, 911, auto accident 911. Cat in the tree, hit the phone book. But I discovered general assistance is considered to be an acceptable use in some towns, such as unable to make a court hearing. You might think this is dumb, and I would agree this is dumb, but there is no real standard how cities or counties advertise the use of 911.
While I agree with your general rule of thumb, do check your phonebook. Odds are it'll be more specific as to what 911 "should" be used for in your area.
The guidelines to call 911 are different from city to city.
http://www.cresa911.org/911when.htm
Call precedence from highest to lowest:
There should be more uniform guideline, for example larger cities tend to be more restrictive as to the use of 911, smaller towns tend to be more liberal.
WTF?
Windows Vista has shit inside in case some asshole wanted to sell you overpriced crap. Because it's digital crap, you can't return it. Vista is designed to take your fucking money and give it to assholes.
{I speak marketing}
There are no photos of the GPS devices, but I imagine they are rugged, ugly things with a greyscale LCD screen and maybe you could get them confused with a cell phone from 1996. Did they honestly think a phone that ugly would sell?
I know thieves are stupid but wouldn't it be worthwhile knowing what you're stealing?
If you attend flee markets, you'll notice quite a few people who simply don't know what they are selling. I remember back in like 1986 I wanted a cordless phone, which I bought one from such a flea market but only after I bought it I realized the base station was simply a charger and had no provisions to be hooked up to a phone line. The seller had no idea what I was talking about.
Now... I assumed that cellphones and other things which use serial numbers to access a service were worthless if declaired stolen. But in the age of the sim card, It's possible they won't bother to keep track of them.
In some cases, these older phones have value. I know for example I have a friend who's looking for your basic phone, something like the nokia 3120 but in triband or n.america, your basic nokia without a camera, or a bunch of trivial other crap, yet built like a brick, and better battery life then the new fangled 6010 or the 6103. "I" don't know for a fact about the battery life, but the built like a brick... that is something I can see with many older phones.
But this sounds like a crime of convenience. Kids took some shit that they thought they could get "some" money for.
Unfortunately, I don't think that just buying it ...
is going to do the trick. You're going to have
to occupy it and guard it. Which will cost
somewhat more than $50/acre
Find a rainforest with people already occupying it. Trade nuts for guns.
Hey hey hey. The majority of drug dealers are well meaning people trying to provide a valuable service to their community and making a little profit meanwhile. In the War on Drug Users, they are the freedom fighters. Don't mix them up with thugs like the RIAA.
What's sad is this is moderated funny when it's pretty much true. I have had friends who's first apartments were in the "not so good" inner city part of town. Their opinion of drug dealers changed when they discovered the friendly neighborhood street dealers were the best form of neighborhood watch. Think about it, who else is it who's business is to stay on the street, who's acting in their own best interest preventing the sorts of crimes that the cops would be called for.
I know it's hard to understand, this is slashdot, where I'm willing to wager most when teens bought computer equipment and not drugs. While moraly questionable, it can easily be argued that some street dealers peform a valuable community service.
...and you didn't tell her that you can make her old PC do anything WV can if she only pays you 30% of what a new PC will cost her ?
To be honest, no.
1) She doesn't have an old PC, she has NO pc
2) Even if she did have an old PC, odds are she would want vista anyway
3) Her buying a Vista Premium Ready PC is a good enough plan. Odds are it'll have a fast cpu
if not dual core, enough memory, and a decent vid card.
4) It doesn't matter whether "I" like vista or not, it's her choice.