Well, the military fires people on a regular basis - for officers, two fail to promotes and your out (unless you have made 04 where you're assured 20 years of service) Enlisted memebrs can be refused re-enlistment as well
For that to happen, there are well documented specific conditions that the service member would have to not meet before there would be a seperation from the military. These are far from just letting you go and the member would know he/she was not cutting it looong before they were let go. It's not like you were late for work twice in one week and they sent you packing. It takes a while and there are many steps of punishment prior to finally not being reccomended for retention.
I'm using an example from a poster already in this thread...
Boss sees you walking into a strip bar on a Saturday when you are off work. He does not like it and fires you.. It appears based on your comment, that is perfectly acceptable.
Now back up a few months in time to your initial interview with that same boss. He can not ask you in that interview if you visit strip bars after work.
It seems odd that he could be allowed to fire you because you go to strip bars but he is not allowed to ask you that in an interview.
What this appears to boil down to is, he can fire you because he wants to but he better not admit it was because he saw you go to a strip bar after work. Where this would become questionable is if he specifically mentioned his dislike for strip bars many times to you and you happen to see him see you go into one. If you got fired for "no reason" the next Monday, you'd have a good case to fight back. There are a lot of people that can sense when something is going downhill at work and they get a strong feeling the shit is about to hit the fan. If you can prove you were fired for something not directly work related, you do have an appeal process. The hard part is proving it.
You're not going to be imprisoned or tortured for what you say. On the other hand, you can be fired from your job.
So who defines the line of what is acceptable and what is not? You defined some extreme end points but there is a lot left in the middle. The way I see it, it may be broken down to as simple as judical punishment will not happen which is the foundation for our free speech rights but other then that, anything goes in society. You could tell your boss you can't stand him/her and they can let you go but they can not get you put in jail for it.
Are you talking about tray 2 (pull out) or tray 1 (flip down). For tray 1 pickup issues, you can order a new pad. The HP part requires replacement of the whole pickup assembly but some third partys sell just the pads which is cheaper and saves time for the repair. I assume you are actually talking about tray 2 issues though as you specifically mentioned rollers. For tray 2 pickup issues, I've found a decent no cost fix.. The metal piece that makes up the floor or the "bottom" of the printer seems to sag over time and the tray drops a mm or two. You can fold up a stack of about 10 pieces of paper in half or into a fourth and place under the printer in the middle. Just enough that it will put pressure in the center of the bottom but the corner feet will still contact the desk surface. Another method if you think the paper method is too much of a rig job is to turn the printer on its side and jam your knee into the middle of the metal bottom to bend it back in. I've done both on many of those models and either will work fine. The only side effect is the paper tray MAY be a little harder to pull in and out but no one has ever complained. I am not a printer tech at all and I've never actually researched these issues so there be a more technical fix.
Well, let's put this in perspective... I use the web all the time to access my bank accounts, which includes transfer money around, apply for and pay my loans (including my mortgage), use bill pay to pay others etc... The web seems to be acceptable by many people for those functions. The only difference is I can not actually recieve cash out the front of my computer. Of course my bank would allow me to withdrawl funds or have a check mailed to my house from my account. Basically I can do many more functions from my home computer over the internet then I could at any web based ATM. I'm not trying to say it is not a risk and I am not saying W2K is the best choice for the ATM OS itself but can someone provide some situations where a web based ATM or ATM network could be violated much worse or any easier then the network front end to the bank that the web users access?
I see your point but on that note... FR2 did no field representation at all and placed the burden on the technical guys as our manning requirements were based off of specific duties. You could remove FR2 completely from the loop and just let the technical guys do the whole thing themselves and everyone would have been better served (including the technical group). Nothing is more frustrating then FR2 ordering 2 USR 33.6 modems for a build out when he was actually supposed to order 2 CSU/DSUs. That is a huge price difference. Instead of requoting the original department for the right equipment he would move things around from somewhere, would rob Peter to pay Paul, or fluff or pad the next request to make up for it. It is a moot point now but he used to determine what IP addresses to use by pinging a few, if no response, he figured it must not be in use. How about when one department ordered 15 USB scanners I'm sorry, but I do not find those methods of doing your job should be rewarded.
Surrounds himself with yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear.
* Listens? To what? He's the CEO and makes all the important decisions.
Not specific to a CEO but the lower levels as well.
Long and drawn out story follows
At my last company we had two field reps. They wer the first contact when someone wanted a new workstation or something moved.
Field Rep #1. Recieves order, does a walkthough and checks if cat5 and power in the area, checks if PC in stock, looks at IP addresses and config and provided the technicians with all the details including ip address, workstation name, chassis and port number etc.. Has the PC shipped to the location and tells the customer when we will be there for install. If cables or power needed run would tells the requesting department head that it would take about 3 weeks for everything to be done.
Field Rep #2. Immediately tells requesting department head we will have it up and running in 2 days. Slaps some paper work together and we show up. Well, there is no cat5, all ports on the switch are taken up, no computer, blah blah blah.
With field rep #1, the department heads do not like him, he always tells them 2-3 weeks and makes them pay for what they are requesting (out of switch space? Pay up $20k for a new blade). Things were done right and fully documented. We never had configuration issies and when we flew in to do a job, it was done in one day.
With field rep #2, department heads liked this guy because his turn around was "2 days". Of course we had to fly in and out several times because nothing was right the first time, customer did not even order what they thought they needed and we show up with something else etc.. He would procure a switch blade if needed from another job to put here because he forgot to check if one was needed etc..
Bottom line, the total time in both was about 2-3 weeks, one done right and the other done wrong. During layoff time? Field rep #1 was let go by the regional manager because he was not focused on "the customer".
In my descriptions, the customer, department heads and managers are all from the same company, just different departments.
You could grab someones MP3 cd or portable MP3 player with the media still inside and make a break for it. Funny thing is, if you got caught, you would be punished and fined about 1/100000 of the level then if you downloaded the same songs from P2P and got caught by the RIAA.
60MB uncompressed. I delete most of my stuff (mailing lists/slashdot/crap friends forward around) but I have a specific mail folder for account related things and I normally do not delete things in there. I have a mail older then the Yahoo one referenced from Real Networks as well;). I have not lost anything yet only because I backup/home (which contains my maildir) on a frequent basis to another physical drive. The IMAP/Procmail/Fetchmail combination is the best thing since sliced bread.
From id@yahoo.com Thu Nov 23 21:03:25 1995 Return-Path: <id@yahoo.com> Received: from marburg.yahoo.com (marburg.yahoo.com [205.216.162.14]) by mail.hula.net (8.6.12/SMI-4.1) with ESMTP id VAA00599 for <XXXXXX@hula.net>; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 21:03:24 -1000 From: id@yahoo.com Received: (from http@localhost) by marburg.yahoo.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id XAA21476; Thu, 23 Nov 1995 23:03:25 -0800 Date: Thu, 23 Nov 1995 23:03:25 -0800 Message-Id: <199511240703.XAA21476@marburg.yahoo.com> To: XXXXXX@hula.net Subject: Your Yahoo ID Mime-Version: 1.0
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You mean like the cell phone companies did with the number portability fees? Their story is the FCC said they could recoup these costs so they turned around and modified everyones phones contract to add another $1-$3/month claiming an "FCC recovery/pooling/portability fee". How in the hell can the FCC give a private company that you have a contract with the right to do that? The carriers want the long contracts to tie you in but seem to have the ability to modify those contracts at will to benefit themselves when the cost of providing you service goes up and the government agencies are providing the backup to allow it. That is fraud! I know off topic but everytime I think of that, I get frustrated.
My take on the media appliance concept.. IMHO, if anyone could make something like that truly succsessful, it could only be Apple, not because of some advanced look, feel, or some insightful design, only because Apple is more homogenous and one single product would likely have the features supported across the board in other Apple products. Good or bad, a majority of people that use Apple, pretty much use the same things across the board and a single product would work for most of those same people. I am a PC person. I have already looked at numerous standalone solutions but I always want a few things that no single standalone can offer. In my case, it would be more of a benefit to make my own product with another PC then to mold my existing media or network layout to work with a standalone device. An example is my wireless setup in the house. I use WPA-PSK with TKIP encyption, that severly reduces the amount of wireless solutions I can use. Using a lower form of encryption or authentication is not something I want to change just to stream to a standalone device. Of those capable, one may not play VBR mp3's or certain WMA's or can not access more then 2 subdirectories deep and another will not play divx or xvid encoded movies. I found a potential wired solution but it has issues browsing Samba shares that require a password or wants all of the video and audio to be in the same share. Blah Blah Blah... Maybe I am being too picky but I always have another solution that I know will work.. A seperate PC running and configured to my liking. I did the same with my home router. I got sick and tired of messing with different types and models and I did not find an all in one solution that fit my needs until I built my own using Smoothwall on an old PC. In conclusion.. A single hardware device may be the answer for the some (partial geek?) that sees the advantage of media consolidation and distribution but the hard core will be much more satisfied with something of their own.
could anyone explain what exactly is wrong with headphone output?
Maybe you've been extremely lucky but that normally leads to a 60HZ hum from a ground loop. It is very annoying and very noticable. You can buy a small inline transformer from Radio Shack to elimiate the ground loop but you then limit your high and low frequencies as the transformer is not that efficient.
I have a "media" pc attached to my stereo and I've found the coaxial digital output from the plain old SB live plugged into the coaxial digital input to my receiver works great. No hum, and very little noise. The speaker out jack or headphone jack on the same system sounds like complete crap and borderline worthless. The better your stereo is, the more you will notice the downfalls of that headphone jack.
Insightful my ass. Can you give us a single reason why you'd believe that getting your OS/Office patches via windowsupdate.microsoft.com with activeX/IE is more expensive for MS then getting them manually from ftp.microsoft.com? Do you really think that is the reason for blocking out Wine? I'd like to see the internal study from MS that shows how the worlds vast number of Wine users compared to non Wine users accessing the automated update site for their MS office updates is realy having an effect on the MS bottom line. I'd bet if there really was such a price breakdown, it would be less then the cost of something from the 99 cent menu at Wendys per year and the cost of the study that concluded those results probably cost 20000x that.
Smoothwall or Freesco if you want a pre packaged solution for that setup (both do much more as well). I used Freesco running from floppy on a 486 with 12MB ram when I had dialup and it worked fine.
Getting off topic here but anyway.. I am using Smoothwall at home now on a P200/128Mb with 3 nics and fully optioned (DHCP/Snort/Squid/DDNS/DMZ etc) and it is running great. It seems every single home router I've tried has some very annoying issues or some bug somewhere in one form or another and I finally got frustrated and built the Smoothwall box. One model home router would not work with the PS2 headset regardless of DMZ status or ports forwarded and would randomly drop computers off the local network, one model would slow to a crawl when passing pop email and would stay at crawl speed until rebooted, one model would choke with heavy multiple connections (bittorrent, some games, and usenet) and would not recover, it also took up to 20 minutes with multiple reboots for it to get a DHCP address from Comcast. The list goes on and on. I understand these are home routers but you'd think they would at least work. Funny how I rarely see firmware updates for them either. I have not tried any of the Linksys models but Dlink, Netgear, SMC, and ATT have failed me.
Ones "need" for a big vehicle is not anothers same need. Back in my military days, my only car was a Ford Mustang GT. My wife, myself, and two young kids averaged about 30-40k miles a year in that car. I used that car to drive across the country four times including everything everyone needed for a few day/weeks in the hatch. I drove "home" to moms house from whatever duty station in the US I was stationed at least 3 times a year. My wife made many trips with the kids without me when I was gone back and forth to mom. We used it for our daily grocery store trips, trips to the mall, and whatever. I had too do everything in that car as it was my only car for YEARS. You do not NEED a suburban because you have kids. That is nothing but an excuse, it is a waste and not required. I am not saying a Suburban is bad but please do not lie and try to justify the Suburban because you have a need the space. You need space for a twice or three time a year trip but do not want a SUV or SUV want-a-be? Pack light and get a hard shell car roof top hauler. You can try to justify why you think you need a Suburban or give the worst case hypothetical situation to try to prove me wrong but more then likely, I was in the same situation and found a way around it.
You want responsible? How about get to the root of the Spyware problem.
Provide a control panal app or a button on IE that shows and allows removal of IE BHO's. Take it a step further and only allow BHO's to be installed through that button or CPL. How about a single function or button that shows ALL locations and all programs that are set to start on bootup (even the ones that can hook and hide themselves from showing when using regedit). Not make the users trudge through 20 or so different hidden locations that msconfig does not even show. How about when I remove something from that startup list, it can't come back or a gatekeeper to allow much more control of what goes in there. How about a method to stop a process and prevent it from starting again?
All of these functions would be seem relatively simple and provide protection or at least prevent spyware from hiding from the user. Those steps would be user friendly compared to a spyware infection and would be leaps and bounds having to constantly remove spyware app of the week that uses these sneaky unchecked methods to get onto and wreck your system. Third parties have solutions that offer some of what I suggest, MS should start with those before even thinking about a signature based product.
I'm glad you isolated your problem. I had similar lockups/reboots but mine was mostly when playing games (hard drive and video intensive along with increased heating). I FINALLY isolated it to the MB by swapping it with another computer. In the process of troubleshooting, I got a new video card which I wanted anyway.
You did not have to write the upper 75% of your post to explain to me why they fluctuate in price. I already understand that. Dell is meeting the demands of all markets, the looker, the impulse buyer, and the constant watcher like you stated. Consumers who rely on any company to always give them the best price without even attempting to shop around is either extrememly naive or does not care about the price to being with. Based on the overall comments in this entire story, I am surprised at the number of people who do not shop around and to put it in your words, the amount of people that trust a companies prices wether they fluctuate or not. Take BestBuy for example, they ALWAYS have gold plated USB cables for $28 each. Since the price is always the same, do you trust that is a good purchase and feel confident with such a deal? I doubt anyone would. I shop around for everything and sometimes I do get burned but I learn from it and move on. The concept of blindly trusting a companies prices is not something I will ever practice and not something I suggest to others is a good practice. You can single out companies one by one and maintain a running list of who you consider an offender but in the long run, that is not going to help the type of person that is not looking for these tips anyway. Bottom line.. You are telling people don't buy from Dell, the price changes to often and you might get screwed if they lower it next week, go to Apple/HP/EMachines and pay the same price that is probably slightly higher then what you call the Moderately profitable consumer pays. I am telling people I know to look at Dell and see what they have a deal on, if you don't like the deal, don't buy it, wait until next week and check again, or check Apple/HP/Emachine/etc instead to compare. Far more people would be happy with a decent product at a good price regardless of the name badge on the front, they are not looking for a long term dedicated relationship, a friendship, or an emotional attachment with any specific company. If you do start getting an "emotional attachment", you may fall into a trap of assuming all of their products and/or prices are the best out there and will all perform or be as cost effective and they may not be.
So you would feel Dell more trustworthy if they just had the higher price and left it at that? I do not see the connection to trust. I am sorry about your fear of the price potentially going down but that is retail baby. Sears puts things sale, CompUsa, Bestbuy, a car dealer, airlines, and grocery stores. No difference at all. None of those stores will offer the unit for the previous lower price after the sale is over either. About a drop after the fact? Check the winter coat rack at JcPenny next time you are at the Mall, you will see nice coats for $35 that were selling just 6 weeks ago at $150. You should buy a product for a price you feel comfortable with, not simply on hope that it will never go lower. I could understand someone not wanting to play the game and shop or wait for a better price but that has nothing to do with trust and that is not going to get you the best deal if your into that kind of thing. Back to Dell. I got out of the white box business because of the hassles and free lifetime support I felt obligated to provide. I now refer everyone that asks to Dell now. I describe what is currently available and tell them to wait a week or so and check again if they want something different. I know a few people that have got discounts from newly lowered prices and others that have had to return the unit and then buy another one just to get the discount. Hey, if it is worth it to you, go for it.
It only intriqued the same group of people that are intriqued by any Apple story.
Apple release new version of toilet paper Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday February 04, @05:17PM
The first comments to be moderated to +5 insightful would be:
It just feels right.
It just works.
It comes off the roll with style, very pleasing.
Maybe this will get people to finally switch
I know it is more expensive and comes with less sheets per roll then the Dell brand toilet paper but IMHO, the lower sheet frequency is not a direct measure of wiping power.
I love the way it feels and it really makes the bathroom look so much nicer
Apple is doing a great thing, but people will always find something to complain about.
Apple doing a great thing? Wake up. There are many online music stores with some form of DRM and not the same as Apple. I use Rhapsody. I pay $10 a month for unlimted 24x7 streaming of what ever song I desire from their collection (which is probably the same size as iTunes). The steaming allows FF, pause, completely stop a song and pick another one you want at will. It also has playlists for songs you listen to frequently. If you want to listen to a specific type of music and not have to manually select songs, you can pick from one of about 50 "radio stations" they have or pick your own artists and make your own station of common genre. My kids and I use it every single day for hours. If I want to "download" a song for offline use, I pay $0.79 a song and it burns directly to an audio CD with NO DRM. Of course for my portable use I have to rerip it. My kids were always installing and Kazaa, Bearshare, WinMX and others. Always complaining about not being able to get the music they want. Since Rhapsody, P2P is no longer desired as they have access to just about everything they want with much less hassle. Please take off the blinders and not assume iTunes is the most logical solution for everyone and the only one selling access to music online.
Code in some places will not allow wires to not terminate in an electrical box. Meaning you may not be able to just run the wires and cover them up for later. I know common sense would say this really only applies to electrical wires but code in many areas does not specifically state only electrical wires and therefore applies to all wires. YMMV
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Well, the military fires people on a regular basis - for officers, two fail to promotes and your out (unless you have made 04 where you're assured 20 years of service)
Enlisted memebrs can be refused re-enlistment as well
For that to happen, there are well documented specific conditions that the service member would have to not meet before there would be a seperation from the military. These are far from just letting you go and the member would know he/she was not cutting it looong before they were let go. It's not like you were late for work twice in one week and they sent you packing. It takes a while and there are many steps of punishment prior to finally not being reccomended for retention.
I'm using an example from a poster already in this thread...
Boss sees you walking into a strip bar on a Saturday when you are off work. He does not like it and fires you.. It appears based on your comment, that is perfectly acceptable.
Now back up a few months in time to your initial interview with that same boss. He can not ask you in that interview if you visit strip bars after work.
It seems odd that he could be allowed to fire you because you go to strip bars but he is not allowed to ask you that in an interview.
What this appears to boil down to is, he can fire you because he wants to but he better not admit it was because he saw you go to a strip bar after work. Where this would become questionable is if he specifically mentioned his dislike for strip bars many times to you and you happen to see him see you go into one. If you got fired for "no reason" the next Monday, you'd have a good case to fight back. There are a lot of people that can sense when something is going downhill at work and they get a strong feeling the shit is about to hit the fan. If you can prove you were fired for something not directly work related, you do have an appeal process. The hard part is proving it.
You're not going to be imprisoned or tortured for what you say. On the other hand, you can be fired from your job.
So who defines the line of what is acceptable and what is not? You defined some extreme end points but there is a lot left in the middle. The way I see it, it may be broken down to as simple as judical punishment will not happen which is the foundation for our free speech rights but other then that, anything goes in society. You could tell your boss you can't stand him/her and they can let you go but they can not get you put in jail for it.
Are you talking about tray 2 (pull out) or tray 1 (flip down). For tray 1 pickup issues, you can order a new pad. The HP part requires replacement of the whole pickup assembly but some third partys sell just the pads which is cheaper and saves time for the repair. I assume you are actually talking about tray 2 issues though as you specifically mentioned rollers. For tray 2 pickup issues, I've found a decent no cost fix.. The metal piece that makes up the floor or the "bottom" of the printer seems to sag over time and the tray drops a mm or two. You can fold up a stack of about 10 pieces of paper in half or into a fourth and place under the printer in the middle. Just enough that it will put pressure in the center of the bottom but the corner feet will still contact the desk surface. Another method if you think the paper method is too much of a rig job is to turn the printer on its side and jam your knee into the middle of the metal bottom to bend it back in. I've done both on many of those models and either will work fine. The only side effect is the paper tray MAY be a little harder to pull in and out but no one has ever complained. I am not a printer tech at all and I've never actually researched these issues so there be a more technical fix.
Well, let's put this in perspective...
I use the web all the time to access my bank accounts, which includes transfer money around, apply for and pay my loans (including my mortgage), use bill pay to pay others etc... The web seems to be acceptable by many people for those functions. The only difference is I can not actually recieve cash out the front of my computer. Of course my bank would allow me to withdrawl funds or have a check mailed to my house from my account. Basically I can do many more functions from my home computer over the internet then I could at any web based ATM. I'm not trying to say it is not a risk and I am not saying W2K is the best choice for the ATM OS itself but can someone provide some situations where a web based ATM or ATM network could be violated much worse or any easier then the network front end to the bank that the web users access?
FLAC is too good -- it takes too much time/CPU power to encode.
Not quite according to this post. Do you have any references that say otherwise? I've never used ALAC myself so I can not comment.
I see your point but on that note...
FR2 did no field representation at all and placed the burden on the technical guys as our manning requirements were based off of specific duties. You could remove FR2 completely from the loop and just let the technical guys do the whole thing themselves and everyone would have been better served (including the technical group). Nothing is more frustrating then FR2 ordering 2 USR 33.6 modems for a build out when he was actually supposed to order 2 CSU/DSUs. That is a huge price difference. Instead of requoting the original department for the right equipment he would move things around from somewhere, would rob Peter to pay Paul, or fluff or pad the next request to make up for it. It is a moot point now but he used to determine what IP addresses to use by pinging a few, if no response, he figured it must not be in use. How about when one department ordered 15 USB scanners I'm sorry, but I do not find those methods of doing your job should be rewarded.
Surrounds himself with yes-men who tell him what he wants to hear.
* Listens? To what? He's the CEO and makes all the important decisions.
Not specific to a CEO but the lower levels as well.
Long and drawn out story follows
At my last company we had two field reps. They wer the first contact when someone wanted a new workstation or something moved.
Field Rep #1. Recieves order, does a walkthough and checks if cat5 and power in the area, checks if PC in stock, looks at IP addresses and config and provided the technicians with all the details including ip address, workstation name, chassis and port number etc.. Has the PC shipped to the location and tells the customer when we will be there for install. If cables or power needed run would tells the requesting department head that it would take about 3 weeks for everything to be done.
Field Rep #2. Immediately tells requesting department head we will have it up and running in 2 days. Slaps some paper work together and we show up. Well, there is no cat5, all ports on the switch are taken up, no computer, blah blah blah.
With field rep #1, the department heads do not like him, he always tells them 2-3 weeks and makes them pay for what they are requesting (out of switch space? Pay up $20k for a new blade). Things were done right and fully documented. We never had configuration issies and when we flew in to do a job, it was done in one day.
With field rep #2, department heads liked this guy because his turn around was "2 days". Of course we had to fly in and out several times because nothing was right the first time, customer did not even order what they thought they needed and we show up with something else etc.. He would procure a switch blade if needed from another job to put here because he forgot to check if one was needed etc..
Bottom line, the total time in both was about 2-3 weeks, one done right and the other done wrong.
During layoff time? Field rep #1 was let go by the regional manager because he was not focused on "the customer".
In my descriptions, the customer, department heads and managers are all from the same company, just different departments.
You could grab someones MP3 cd or portable MP3 player with the media still inside and make a break for it. Funny thing is, if you got caught, you would be punished and fined about 1/100000 of the level then if you downloaded the same songs from P2P and got caught by the RIAA.
60MB uncompressed. I delete most of my stuff (mailing lists/slashdot/crap friends forward around) but I have a specific mail folder for account related things and I normally do not delete things in there. I have a mail older then the Yahoo one referenced from Real Networks as well ;). I have not lost anything yet only because I backup /home (which contains my maildir) on a frequent basis to another physical drive. The IMAP/Procmail/Fetchmail combination is the best thing since sliced bread.
You mean like the cell phone companies did with the number portability fees? Their story is the FCC said they could recoup these costs so they turned around and modified everyones phones contract to add another $1-$3/month claiming an "FCC recovery/pooling/portability fee". How in the hell can the FCC give a private company that you have a contract with the right to do that? The carriers want the long contracts to tie you in but seem to have the ability to modify those contracts at will to benefit themselves when the cost of providing you service goes up and the government agencies are providing the backup to allow it. That is fraud! I know off topic but everytime I think of that, I get frustrated.
My take on the media appliance concept..
IMHO, if anyone could make something like that truly succsessful, it could only be Apple, not because of some advanced look, feel, or some insightful design, only because Apple is more homogenous and one single product would likely have the features supported across the board in other Apple products. Good or bad, a majority of people that use Apple, pretty much use the same things across the board and a single product would work for most of those same people.
I am a PC person. I have already looked at numerous standalone solutions but I always want a few things that no single standalone can offer. In my case, it would be more of a benefit to make my own product with another PC then to mold my existing media or network layout to work with a standalone device. An example is my wireless setup in the house. I use WPA-PSK with TKIP encyption, that severly reduces the amount of wireless solutions I can use. Using a lower form of encryption or authentication is not something I want to change just to stream to a standalone device. Of those capable, one may not play VBR mp3's or certain WMA's or can not access more then 2 subdirectories deep and another will not play divx or xvid encoded movies. I found a potential wired solution but it has issues browsing Samba shares that require a password or wants all of the video and audio to be in the same share. Blah Blah Blah... Maybe I am being too picky but I always have another solution that I know will work.. A seperate PC running and configured to my liking. I did the same with my home router. I got sick and tired of messing with different types and models and I did not find an all in one solution that fit my needs until I built my own using Smoothwall on an old PC.
In conclusion.. A single hardware device may be the answer for the some (partial geek?) that sees the advantage of media consolidation and distribution but the hard core will be much more satisfied with something of their own.
could anyone explain what exactly is wrong with headphone output?
Maybe you've been extremely lucky but that normally leads to a 60HZ hum from a ground loop. It is very annoying and very noticable. You can buy a small inline transformer from Radio Shack to elimiate the ground loop but you then limit your high and low frequencies as the transformer is not that efficient.
I have a "media" pc attached to my stereo and I've found the coaxial digital output from the plain old SB live plugged into the coaxial digital input to my receiver works great. No hum, and very little noise. The speaker out jack or headphone jack on the same system sounds like complete crap and borderline worthless. The better your stereo is, the more you will notice the downfalls of that headphone jack.
Insightful my ass. Can you give us a single reason why you'd believe that getting your OS/Office patches via windowsupdate.microsoft.com with activeX/IE is more expensive for MS then getting them manually from ftp.microsoft.com? Do you really think that is the reason for blocking out Wine? I'd like to see the internal study from MS that shows how the worlds vast number of Wine users compared to non Wine users accessing the automated update site for their MS office updates is realy having an effect on the MS bottom line. I'd bet if there really was such a price breakdown, it would be less then the cost of something from the 99 cent menu at Wendys per year and the cost of the study that concluded those results probably cost 20000x that.
The trick is to use a dial on demand linux box.
Smoothwall or Freesco if you want a pre packaged solution for that setup (both do much more as well). I used Freesco running from floppy on a 486 with 12MB ram when I had dialup and it worked fine.
Getting off topic here but anyway..
I am using Smoothwall at home now on a P200/128Mb with 3 nics and fully optioned (DHCP/Snort/Squid/DDNS/DMZ etc) and it is running great. It seems every single home router I've tried has some very annoying issues or some bug somewhere in one form or another and I finally got frustrated and built the Smoothwall box. One model home router would not work with the PS2 headset regardless of DMZ status or ports forwarded and would randomly drop computers off the local network, one model would slow to a crawl when passing pop email and would stay at crawl speed until rebooted, one model would choke with heavy multiple connections (bittorrent, some games, and usenet) and would not recover, it also took up to 20 minutes with multiple reboots for it to get a DHCP address from Comcast. The list goes on and on. I understand these are home routers but you'd think they would at least work. Funny how I rarely see firmware updates for them either. I have not tried any of the Linksys models but Dlink, Netgear, SMC, and ATT have failed me.
Well you obviously need enough seats to fit your family ;) I'll give you that one!
Ones "need" for a big vehicle is not anothers same need. Back in my military days, my only car was a Ford Mustang GT. My wife, myself, and two young kids averaged about 30-40k miles a year in that car. I used that car to drive across the country four times including everything everyone needed for a few day/weeks in the hatch. I drove "home" to moms house from whatever duty station in the US I was stationed at least 3 times a year. My wife made many trips with the kids without me when I was gone back and forth to mom. We used it for our daily grocery store trips, trips to the mall, and whatever. I had too do everything in that car as it was my only car for YEARS. You do not NEED a suburban because you have kids. That is nothing but an excuse, it is a waste and not required. I am not saying a Suburban is bad but please do not lie and try to justify the Suburban because you have a need the space. You need space for a twice or three time a year trip but do not want a SUV or SUV want-a-be? Pack light and get a hard shell car roof top hauler. You can try to justify why you think you need a Suburban or give the worst case hypothetical situation to try to prove me wrong but more then likely, I was in the same situation and found a way around it.
You want responsible? How about get to the root of the Spyware problem.
Provide a control panal app or a button on IE that shows and allows removal of IE BHO's. Take it a step further and only allow BHO's to be installed through that button or CPL. How about a single function or button that shows ALL locations and all programs that are set to start on bootup (even the ones that can hook and hide themselves from showing when using regedit). Not make the users trudge through 20 or so different hidden locations that msconfig does not even show. How about when I remove something from that startup list, it can't come back or a gatekeeper to allow much more control of what goes in there. How about a method to stop a process and prevent it from starting again?
All of these functions would be seem relatively simple and provide protection or at least prevent spyware from hiding from the user. Those steps would be user friendly compared to a spyware infection and would be leaps and bounds having to constantly remove spyware app of the week that uses these sneaky unchecked methods to get onto and wreck your system. Third parties have solutions that offer some of what I suggest, MS should start with those before even thinking about a signature based product.
I'm glad you isolated your problem. I had similar lockups/reboots but mine was mostly when playing games (hard drive and video intensive along with increased heating). I FINALLY isolated it to the MB by swapping it with another computer. In the process of troubleshooting, I got a new video card which I wanted anyway.
You did not have to write the upper 75% of your post to explain to me why they fluctuate in price. I already understand that. Dell is meeting the demands of all markets, the looker, the impulse buyer, and the constant watcher like you stated. Consumers who rely on any company to always give them the best price without even attempting to shop around is either extrememly naive or does not care about the price to being with. Based on the overall comments in this entire story, I am surprised at the number of people who do not shop around and to put it in your words, the amount of people that trust a companies prices wether they fluctuate or not. Take BestBuy for example, they ALWAYS have gold plated USB cables for $28 each. Since the price is always the same, do you trust that is a good purchase and feel confident with such a deal? I doubt anyone would. I shop around for everything and sometimes I do get burned but I learn from it and move on. The concept of blindly trusting a companies prices is not something I will ever practice and not something I suggest to others is a good practice. You can single out companies one by one and maintain a running list of who you consider an offender but in the long run, that is not going to help the type of person that is not looking for these tips anyway.
Bottom line..
You are telling people don't buy from Dell, the price changes to often and you might get screwed if they lower it next week, go to Apple/HP/EMachines and pay the same price that is probably slightly higher then what you call the Moderately profitable consumer pays. I am telling people I know to look at Dell and see what they have a deal on, if you don't like the deal, don't buy it, wait until next week and check again, or check Apple/HP/Emachine/etc instead to compare.
Far more people would be happy with a decent product at a good price regardless of the name badge on the front, they are not looking for a long term dedicated relationship, a friendship, or an emotional attachment with any specific company. If you do start getting an "emotional attachment", you may fall into a trap of assuming all of their products and/or prices are the best out there and will all perform or be as cost effective and they may not be.
So you would feel Dell more trustworthy if they just had the higher price and left it at that? I do not see the connection to trust. I am sorry about your fear of the price potentially going down but that is retail baby. Sears puts things sale, CompUsa, Bestbuy, a car dealer, airlines, and grocery stores. No difference at all. None of those stores will offer the unit for the previous lower price after the sale is over either. About a drop after the fact? Check the winter coat rack at JcPenny next time you are at the Mall, you will see nice coats for $35 that were selling just 6 weeks ago at $150. You should buy a product for a price you feel comfortable with, not simply on hope that it will never go lower. I could understand someone not wanting to play the game and shop or wait for a better price but that has nothing to do with trust and that is not going to get you the best deal if your into that kind of thing.
Back to Dell. I got out of the white box business because of the hassles and free lifetime support I felt obligated to provide. I now refer everyone that asks to Dell now. I describe what is currently available and tell them to wait a week or so and check again if they want something different. I know a few people that have got discounts from newly lowered prices and others that have had to return the unit and then buy another one just to get the discount. Hey, if it is worth it to you, go for it.
Apple release new version of toilet paper
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday February 04, @05:17PM
The first comments to be moderated to +5 insightful would be:
It just feels right.
It just works.
It comes off the roll with style, very pleasing.
Maybe this will get people to finally switch
I know it is more expensive and comes with less sheets per roll then the Dell brand toilet paper but IMHO, the lower sheet frequency is not a direct measure of wiping power.
I love the way it feels and it really makes the bathroom look so much nicer
The first troll post:
Steve Jobs, the king of ass wipes.
Apple is doing a great thing, but people will always find something to complain about.
Apple doing a great thing? Wake up. There are many online music stores with some form of DRM and not the same as Apple. I use Rhapsody. I pay $10 a month for unlimted 24x7 streaming of what ever song I desire from their collection (which is probably the same size as iTunes). The steaming allows FF, pause, completely stop a song and pick another one you want at will. It also has playlists for songs you listen to frequently. If you want to listen to a specific type of music and not have to manually select songs, you can pick from one of about 50 "radio stations" they have or pick your own artists and make your own station of common genre. My kids and I use it every single day for hours. If I want to "download" a song for offline use, I pay $0.79 a song and it burns directly to an audio CD with NO DRM. Of course for my portable use I have to rerip it. My kids were always installing and Kazaa, Bearshare, WinMX and others. Always complaining about not being able to get the music they want. Since Rhapsody, P2P is no longer desired as they have access to just about everything they want with much less hassle. Please take off the blinders and not assume iTunes is the most logical solution for everyone and the only one selling access to music online.
Downside? The streaming only works with W32.
Code in some places will not allow wires to not terminate in an electrical box. Meaning you may not be able to just run the wires and cover them up for later. I know common sense would say this really only applies to electrical wires but code in many areas does not specifically state only electrical wires and therefore applies to all wires. YMMV