... that looked like that, back in 1982. Of course, it was made to kill capitalist pigs, not ferry them around in comfort to meetings with other capitalist pigs.:-)
The Concorde has a history of tire problems. When the crash happened last year, it was due to debris from the Concorde's own blown tire perforating the fuel tank, which led to the ignition of the leaking fuel.
Now, I'm no aeronautical engineer, but i'd say that when a flying chunk of blown tire can punch a hole in your fuel tank and lead to the loss of the entire aircraft and the death of all souls aboard, that's a pretty Goddamned major design flaw.
I concur... I'm in the process of cataloging a several-year buildup of old computer parts scattered around my house. When I'm done, I will keep a spare or two of each part that I might need, eBay the rest, and funnel the proceeds back towards any new equipment I might want.
Technic appears to be alive and well. Though I must agree with you about the dumbing-down and relentless merchandising of everything these days. Growing up, I thought LEGO was a lot of fun without having to attach the Star Wars franchise or any other marketing crap to the products. LEGO were (and still are) just plastic blocks that stick together, and they managed to compete quite successfully with video games when I was a young'un-- there was many an afternoon that my ColecoVision sat idle while I was furiously building space shuttles and F-15s.
I loved the Technic stuff, I had a huge box of miscellaneous gears, axles, etc, a couple of the motors, and also the pneumatic stuff. I also have a huge town setup from sets from the 80's, the very first model of their battery-powered train sets, and enough track to circle the whole town... all carefully stored away until I have enough space to set them up again someday. Hell, I'm 28 and I still pull out the things once in a while when I'm in a creative mood. Once a LEGO kid, always a LEGO kid, I guess.
They are pulling kids away from the idiot box (t.v.) and getting them to read in droves.
Well, that will stop once the movie and its probable sequels come out. The kids only read now because there is no alternative. Once the movies are out, then it'll be back to that old Summer Reading technique: Why read the book(s) when you can see the movie(s) based on the books?
Indeed. Why spend hours upon hours of quiet, immersed in a book, when you can sit in a theater for 90 minutes and be treated to deafening digital sound effects? Why use your own imagination, when you can just disconnect your brain and absorb some Hollywood special effects?
Furthermore, the Harry Potter books have become just a stupid fad, like those dumb Tamagotchi things were a couple years ago. Those kids you saw on the news lined up at Barnes & Noble with mommy at midnight to buy the last book, wanted it solely for bragging rights the next day at school. They then most likely blew through the book just so they could brag about being the first of their schoolyard chums to finish it. Reading like that, like a chore that must be finished, is a far cry from the reading for pleasure that most of us know.
Yeah, I've discovered that being able to read/. from the Throne Room (or the patio) alone is worth the cost of the AirPort stuff. And the range on the dual-USB iBook is great.
...and try contacting them and asking them to cover Linux as well.
VT is a great site, it should be at the top of any support tech's bookmark list, the first web site you check in the morning with your Coke (or coffee), and the site you re-check most often through the day (well, maybe behind/.).
I'll happily look at a few banner ads in exchange for a quickly-found, direct download link to that crucial update from some company that I need for their product. It's a lot easier than digging down through that company's often-poorly-designed web site to find that same update.
Someone who didn't just blindly use Outlook Express "because it was already on my computer," and actually investigated alternatives, downloaded and installed one, probably isn't dumb enough to open a suspicious-looking, unexpected attachment.:-)
As long as there are benchmarks, there will be ways to skew the results in favor of who you want to 'win' the test. Especially when the money funding the lab/entity doing the benchmarking comes from the marketing budget of an interested party.
IMHO, all this cock-measuring bullshit needs to come to a stop if the industry is going to meaningfully advance past where it is now. What does it matter whose processor is the fastest, when the computer already spent 95% of its time waiting for the user to do something, ten years ago?
AMD needs to start gettin the word out that numbers aren't the only thing that matters.
Why bother, when nobody's going to listen? Meanwhile, Intel is paying the Blue Man Group (who use Macs to run their shows, BTW) to convince everyone that the MHz rating is everything, and that the P4 makes the whole Internet faster, clears up your acne, and makes your whole house smell lemony fresh.
About the only way they could be more outlandish is by adopting the tagline, "Pentium 4. It'll get ya laid." All those pasty-faced, never-go-out, 24/7 gamerz will start snapping them up even faster, then.
As far as I can tell, these "smart cards" do nothing at all.
Sure they do, they make a bunch of unwashed Windows users think they're 31337 because they have a credit card with a computer chip in it.
That's right, just Windows users. Oh you thought Macs and Linux might be supported? Fat chance! AmEx Blue has been promising Mac support Real Soon Now since their card debuted two years ago, but now they don't even mention it on their system requirements page anymore. The promised Mac support was one of the reasons I got the Blue card, along with the 'added security'-- but their security is a joke in general. There was significant fraud perpetrated with my account numberbefore I even got the card, and it did not involve identity fraud or interception of my postal mail.
Nah, you need an IMSAI with all the huge-ass, Fisher-Price lookin' toggle switches on the front panel for that. Not to mention an acoustic coupler modem, a good war-dialer program, and the help of Jim and Malvin (make sure you tell him when he's acting rudely and insensitively).
And you need to clean up the garbage the dog spilled out of the cans, right now!
The only other thing I didn't like was that there wasn't nearly enough of Shannon Elizabeth and Eliza Dushku, parading around in those black latex outfits....<drool>
Saw it last week at a sneak preview, and will go see it again to catch any pop-culture references or anything else I might have missed the first time.
Great performances by all involved-- not 'master thespian' quality, but good enough to entertain, which is what' s important. Probably the funniest parts were Affleck & Damon ripping into each other, and much the same from the two actors set to play Jay & Silent Bob (I'm trying not to give away anything for those who haven't yet visited IMDB's J&SBSB entry).
Only thing I didn't care for was Will Ferrell's character-- even for this movie, it went beyond so-stupid-it's--funny and landed in just-plain-stupid. But his name was good for a chuckle if you grew up watching Sid & Marty Krofft stuff and got the reference.
Back in the 70's when I was a kid, there was at least a hint left of the 'we just want to make kids happy, and if we make money doing it, that's cool' vibe from them. No more. Nowadays, Disney is just another evil megacorporation who cranks out unentertaining, ultra-merchandisable dreck with a "G" rating (face it, they are more like 90-minute commercials for the toys in the Disney Store than they are movies now), would pry the pennies off a dead man's eyes if it would add to their profits, and is quick to fire off the lawyers in any direction where there is a little guy to be squashed for painting Donald Duck on the side of his daycare center or otherwise depriving the mother ship of a dollar of profit.
How is there any "may" about this? IBM would have to be nuts to not license this technology to a mass-producer or two, they'll rake in the dough from licensing fees!
Every freelance graphic designer who has up until now had to surrender a big chunk of their living space to a hulking 19" or 21" CRT (because of finances or because of LCD color issues) will be flinging wads of money at the makers of slim CRT monitors. Not to mention the regular joes who just want a 17" or 18" LCD, but can't justify spending ~$1000 on a display.
Hell, I'd pony up for two of the things, just to replace what I have now and get my desk to stop bowing in the middle from the weight of my old-school 17" and 14".
If this campaign does any good at all, it will have been worth it to Microsoft. And come on, $100K to them is like $0.25 to most individuals. I highly doubt they'll be whining about the cost.
I rather thought it was his statement that the Altair ran Microsoft's BASIC OS.
Also, Jef Raskin doesn't spell his name "Jeff," and the Mac OS was referred to as "colorful" in its infancy-- though it was only black and white until ~1989.
Judging by their past history of acquisitions, Comcast would definitely pick up the pieces if Excite@Home goes bye-bye, and I'm willing to bet that Microsoft would step in and up the $1B stake they've had in Comcast since 1997 if the need arose in order to make this happen.
Only if you can prove the music being played during said table dance is in compliance will all relevant licensing, and the use of the table is in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the TPAA (Table Producers Association of America),
It depends on the state. Some states require all/both parties involved in the call to be aware it is being recorded, like PA, where I live. Other states require only one person to be aware, which of course in this story would be Mr. Burchett.
Since this story does not mention Mr. Burchett being arrested or cited for anything related to his taping the call, I'd have to assume that OK is a "one party" state.
~Philly
Re:Did you expect any differently?
on
$1200 Cheap!
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Hell, if you'd even READ the article synopsis, it is saying that MS is encouraging, not forcing retailers to do this.
That's all well and good, but I believe there are court documents that demonstrate Microsoft's "encouragement" often metaphorically resembles "the delicate sound of a revolver being cocked somewhere just out of sight," as Dan Martinez so eloquently put it in one of the quotes on this page.
Microsoft may be just breaking into the console market, but I sure won't be surprised to see a few things that had their origin in Nintendo's playbook from when the NES came out 15 years ago.
~Philly
Re:But it's not OK when it's Microsoft!
on
$1200 Cheap!
·
· Score: 1
Even though Apple and Microsoft are trying exactly the same Bundling tatic (Apple has their mp3 player and movie authoring software), for M$, it is illegal, and for Apple, it's perfectly OK as an attempt to compete.
It's okay for Apple because iTunes and iMovie are not tied tightly into the OS and you can just toss them into the Trash if you want, like any bundled third-party software package. Microsoft can make their offerings a required component of Windows, just like they did with IE, even though it's completely unnecessary to do so. If IE is such a crucial part of the Windows operating system, then how come the Mac version is just an ordinary application that I can remove all traces of at will with no ill effects to my system?
I just saw this sort of behavior yesterday on a Win98 machine I was fixing... Outlook 2000 kept complaining because Outlook Express was not present on that machine. Never mind that OE will never be used, takes up space on the hard drive and throws shortcuts to itself all over the place which confuses endusers, it became a required part of the OS in order for Outlook 2000 to work properly and stop bitching at the enduser when it was launched.
Slashdot Mirror
... that looked like that, back in 1982. Of course, it was made to kill capitalist pigs, not ferry them around in comfort to meetings with other capitalist pigs. :-)
~Philly
The Concorde has a history of tire problems. When the crash happened last year, it was due to debris from the Concorde's own blown tire perforating the fuel tank, which led to the ignition of the leaking fuel.
Now, I'm no aeronautical engineer, but i'd say that when a flying chunk of blown tire can punch a hole in your fuel tank and lead to the loss of the entire aircraft and the death of all souls aboard, that's a pretty Goddamned major design flaw.
You might as well have said, "...the Ford Pinto's tendency to go up in flames was always due to a rear-impact, not a major design flaw."
~Philly
I concur... I'm in the process of cataloging a several-year buildup of old computer parts scattered around my house. When I'm done, I will keep a spare or two of each part that I might need, eBay the rest, and funnel the proceeds back towards any new equipment I might want.
~Philly
...these sets?
Was this the car you were talking about?
Technic appears to be alive and well. Though I must agree with you about the dumbing-down and relentless merchandising of everything these days. Growing up, I thought LEGO was a lot of fun without having to attach the Star Wars franchise or any other marketing crap to the products. LEGO were (and still are) just plastic blocks that stick together, and they managed to compete quite successfully with video games when I was a young'un-- there was many an afternoon that my ColecoVision sat idle while I was furiously building space shuttles and F-15s.
I loved the Technic stuff, I had a huge box of miscellaneous gears, axles, etc, a couple of the motors, and also the pneumatic stuff. I also have a huge town setup from sets from the 80's, the very first model of their battery-powered train sets, and enough track to circle the whole town... all carefully stored away until I have enough space to set them up again someday. Hell, I'm 28 and I still pull out the things once in a while when I'm in a creative mood. Once a LEGO kid, always a LEGO kid, I guess.
~Philly
They are pulling kids away from the idiot box (t.v.) and getting them to read in droves.
Well, that will stop once the movie and its probable sequels come out. The kids only read now because there is no alternative. Once the movies are out, then it'll be back to that old Summer Reading technique: Why read the book(s) when you can see the movie(s) based on the books?
Indeed. Why spend hours upon hours of quiet, immersed in a book, when you can sit in a theater for 90 minutes and be treated to deafening digital sound effects? Why use your own imagination, when you can just disconnect your brain and absorb some Hollywood special effects?
Furthermore, the Harry Potter books have become just a stupid fad, like those dumb Tamagotchi things were a couple years ago. Those kids you saw on the news lined up at Barnes & Noble with mommy at midnight to buy the last book, wanted it solely for bragging rights the next day at school. They then most likely blew through the book just so they could brag about being the first of their schoolyard chums to finish it. Reading like that, like a chore that must be finished, is a far cry from the reading for pleasure that most of us know.
~Philly
Yeah, I've discovered that being able to read /. from the Throne Room (or the patio) alone is worth the cost of the AirPort stuff. And the range on the dual-USB iBook is great.
~Philly
...and try contacting them and asking them to cover Linux as well.
/.).
VT is a great site, it should be at the top of any support tech's bookmark list, the first web site you check in the morning with your Coke (or coffee), and the site you re-check most often through the day (well, maybe behind
I'll happily look at a few banner ads in exchange for a quickly-found, direct download link to that crucial update from some company that I need for their product. It's a lot easier than digging down through that company's often-poorly-designed web site to find that same update.
~Philly
Someone who didn't just blindly use Outlook Express "because it was already on my computer," and actually investigated alternatives, downloaded and installed one, probably isn't dumb enough to open a suspicious-looking, unexpected attachment. :-)
~Philly
...Beowulf cholesterol these!
~Philly
As long as there are benchmarks, there will be ways to skew the results in favor of who you want to 'win' the test. Especially when the money funding the lab/entity doing the benchmarking comes from the marketing budget of an interested party.
IMHO, all this cock-measuring bullshit needs to come to a stop if the industry is going to meaningfully advance past where it is now. What does it matter whose processor is the fastest, when the computer already spent 95% of its time waiting for the user to do something, ten years ago?
~Philly
AMD needs to start gettin the word out that numbers aren't the only thing that matters.
Why bother, when nobody's going to listen? Meanwhile, Intel is paying the Blue Man Group (who use Macs to run their shows, BTW) to convince everyone that the MHz rating is everything, and that the P4 makes the whole Internet faster, clears up your acne, and makes your whole house smell lemony fresh.
About the only way they could be more outlandish is by adopting the tagline, "Pentium 4. It'll get ya laid." All those pasty-faced, never-go-out, 24/7 gamerz will start snapping them up even faster, then.
~Philly
As far as I can tell, these "smart cards" do nothing at all.
Sure they do, they make a bunch of unwashed Windows users think they're 31337 because they have a credit card with a computer chip in it.
That's right, just Windows users. Oh you thought Macs and Linux might be supported? Fat chance! AmEx Blue has been promising Mac support Real Soon Now since their card debuted two years ago, but now they don't even mention it on their system requirements page anymore. The promised Mac support was one of the reasons I got the Blue card, along with the 'added security'-- but their security is a joke in general. There was significant fraud perpetrated with my account number before I even got the card, and it did not involve identity fraud or interception of my postal mail.
VISA's smart cards also offer bupkis in the way of non-Windows support.
~Philly
Perhaps he could hack into WOPR
Nah, you need an IMSAI with all the huge-ass, Fisher-Price lookin' toggle switches on the front panel for that. Not to mention an acoustic coupler modem, a good war-dialer program, and the help of Jim and Malvin (make sure you tell him when he's acting rudely and insensitively).
And you need to clean up the garbage the dog spilled out of the cans, right now!
~Philly
The only other thing I didn't like was that there wasn't nearly enough of Shannon Elizabeth and Eliza Dushku, parading around in those black latex outfits....<drool>
~Philly
Saw it last week at a sneak preview, and will go see it again to catch any pop-culture references or anything else I might have missed the first time.
Great performances by all involved-- not 'master thespian' quality, but good enough to entertain, which is what' s important. Probably the funniest parts were Affleck & Damon ripping into each other, and much the same from the two actors set to play Jay & Silent Bob (I'm trying not to give away anything for those who haven't yet visited IMDB's J&SBSB entry).
Only thing I didn't care for was Will Ferrell's character-- even for this movie, it went beyond so-stupid-it's--funny and landed in just-plain-stupid. But his name was good for a chuckle if you grew up watching Sid & Marty Krofft stuff and got the reference.
~Philly
Back in the 70's when I was a kid, there was at least a hint left of the 'we just want to make kids happy, and if we make money doing it, that's cool' vibe from them. No more. Nowadays, Disney is just another evil megacorporation who cranks out unentertaining, ultra-merchandisable dreck with a "G" rating (face it, they are more like 90-minute commercials for the toys in the Disney Store than they are movies now), would pry the pennies off a dead man's eyes if it would add to their profits, and is quick to fire off the lawyers in any direction where there is a little guy to be squashed for painting Donald Duck on the side of his daycare center or otherwise depriving the mother ship of a dollar of profit.
~Philly
How is there any "may" about this? IBM would have to be nuts to not license this technology to a mass-producer or two, they'll rake in the dough from licensing fees!
Every freelance graphic designer who has up until now had to surrender a big chunk of their living space to a hulking 19" or 21" CRT (because of finances or because of LCD color issues) will be flinging wads of money at the makers of slim CRT monitors. Not to mention the regular joes who just want a 17" or 18" LCD, but can't justify spending ~$1000 on a display.
Hell, I'd pony up for two of the things, just to replace what I have now and get my desk to stop bowing in the middle from the weight of my old-school 17" and 14".
~Philly
If this campaign does any good at all, it will have been worth it to Microsoft. And come on, $100K to them is like $0.25 to most individuals. I highly doubt they'll be whining about the cost.
~Philly
I rather thought it was his statement that the Altair ran Microsoft's BASIC OS.
Also, Jef Raskin doesn't spell his name "Jeff," and the Mac OS was referred to as "colorful" in its infancy-- though it was only black and white until ~1989.
~Philly
Judging by their past history of acquisitions, Comcast would definitely pick up the pieces if Excite@Home goes bye-bye, and I'm willing to bet that Microsoft would step in and up the $1B stake they've had in Comcast since 1997 if the need arose in order to make this happen.
~Philly
What are they going to do about taking work home? Not every kid has a copy of StarOffice or AbiWord at home...
Um, save files in RTF or another format that can be read by whatever those kids are running at home?
~Philly
Only if you can prove the music being played during said table dance is in compliance will all relevant licensing, and the use of the table is in accordance with the guidelines set forth by the TPAA (Table Producers Association of America),
It depends on the state. Some states require all/both parties involved in the call to be aware it is being recorded, like PA, where I live. Other states require only one person to be aware, which of course in this story would be Mr. Burchett.
Since this story does not mention Mr. Burchett being arrested or cited for anything related to his taping the call, I'd have to assume that OK is a "one party" state.
~Philly
Hell, if you'd even READ the article synopsis, it is saying that MS is encouraging, not forcing retailers to do this.
That's all well and good, but I believe there are court documents that demonstrate Microsoft's "encouragement" often metaphorically resembles "the delicate sound of a revolver being cocked somewhere just out of sight," as Dan Martinez so eloquently put it in one of the quotes on this page.
Microsoft may be just breaking into the console market, but I sure won't be surprised to see a few things that had their origin in Nintendo's playbook from when the NES came out 15 years ago.
~Philly
Even though Apple and Microsoft are trying exactly the same Bundling tatic (Apple has their mp3 player and movie authoring software), for M$, it is illegal, and for Apple, it's perfectly OK as an attempt to compete.
It's okay for Apple because iTunes and iMovie are not tied tightly into the OS and you can just toss them into the Trash if you want, like any bundled third-party software package. Microsoft can make their offerings a required component of Windows, just like they did with IE, even though it's completely unnecessary to do so. If IE is such a crucial part of the Windows operating system, then how come the Mac version is just an ordinary application that I can remove all traces of at will with no ill effects to my system?
I just saw this sort of behavior yesterday on a Win98 machine I was fixing... Outlook 2000 kept complaining because Outlook Express was not present on that machine. Never mind that OE will never be used, takes up space on the hard drive and throws shortcuts to itself all over the place which confuses endusers, it became a required part of the OS in order for Outlook 2000 to work properly and stop bitching at the enduser when it was launched.
~Philly