Versions of Windows. 3.0, 3.11, '95, '98, nt, 2000, ce, and soon to be released XP.
Uhhh...yeah, those are all Microsoft products. I'm pretty sure I was paying attention...
Like when a bit gets changed and instead of going to 0xff8342, it 0xff3843. Something like that. It starts to execute a program I don't want it to execute or has some weird logic that does something that executes a program that takes every single CPU cycle in existence so it takes a minute to kill and impatiently, I press CTRL-ALT-DEL 20,000 times until it reboots. Lala land, the land of the lalas.
Step 1, stop monitoring all your memory bits. Step 2, don't click on things you don't want to start up. Step 3, find the offending 100% CPU user and figure out what's wrong with it or kill it. Step 4, never be impatient with computers. Step 5, perhaps you should try Ctrl-Shift-Esc for the Task Manager instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del.
Now the trick here is to place a single microphone in the room and capture all of the above discribed chaos going on. And you really need to, because this guy's theory says that the frequencies that are NOT audible to the human ear will resonate and affect the net sound of the frequencies that we can.
I'm not sure I understand. If the human ear can hear only frequencies between X and Y Hz, then we only need to capture those frequencies. The harmonics, reflections, and acoustics of the room mean nothing to us unless they produce sound between X and Y.
If we then play back our recorded sound with equipment that will faithfully reproduce between X and Y, then our job is done. Unfortunately, it won't sound the exact same as the live session, because our room acoustics, placement of listeners, etc. are all different. This means that our sound waves will reflect differently and combine differently, producing a (slightly) different set of frequencies.
The fallacy of music compression is the idea that unused (or nearly unused) frequencies can be removed without detriment to the quality of the music.
No, the fallacy of audiophiles is that you can ever recreate the live session on a recording. Unless you record each instrument direct from the source (with no reflections), and then play back those recordings precisely synchronized, from the same exact spot the instruments were in (same height, as well), in the same exact room, with the same amount of ambient noise, then your whole theory falls apart.
You know, I'm getting sick of this "lowest common denominator" BS being thrown around. Perhaps no one's ever takken a class on Economics before, but it's really shouldn't be the lowest common denominator, it's the largest common denominator. Ie., companies produce for the largest market segment first, then (if the market is large enough to warrant it) the second largest, etc., etc.
If CD's were really produced for the "lowest common denominator", then there would be very little (almost non-existent) bass, strong mid-range, and an abrupt drop in the high end. Because, that's what would sound good on $3 headphones or your clock radio. By producing for the largest market segment, however, we come to a compromise. CD's sound good on mid to low-level systems, and don't necessarily sound any better on high end systems because the detail isn't there to reproduce. And they still sound like shit on low-end systems. Don't believe me, let me loan you my Sharp boombox...
Lossy image compression seems less and less attractive as higher bandwidth and more storage space becomes available. For any professional use, i.e. when you really need all the detail you can get, it's certainly not what you want.
I'd have to question the wisdom of any professional needing all the detail they can get using JPEG's. There are other, non-lossy, image formats available to people who need them. For the average use, however, JPEG is sufficient. I'll take the reduction in storage and bandwidth over a slight loss of bits any day of the week.
Of course, if PNG or something else can beat JPEG in either compression and/or image quality, then I'll be happy to switch to that.
You can pretty much do this already. If you have the text of the book as practically any kind of file, it can be easily converted to a.pdf and run practically however you need it on a Xerox Docutech 6115. It cannot do the stitch binding of hardcover books, but so what? Most copy centers (oh, and btw, Staples reeks as a copy center) can't do them either. If you want hardcover stitching, go to a book-binder.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems, according to this Xerox brochure (PDF), that the DocuTech 6135 (and 6180) can't automatically trim the books. Nor, can it stitch together more than 70 pages (@20lb) or bind together more than 125 pages (@20lb). Their optional Signature Booklet Maker II, which boasts "fully automatic booklet making", is limited to 22 pages at 20lb. I don't think that this would cut it as a book-on-demand system.
I agree that this device can be revolutionary, but not quite to the extent you say. As one of the posters above stated, many people go to the book store to browse through books and generally poke around from section to section. Taking that touchy-feely aspect out of the book shopping "experience" would result in very little difference between shopping online or at a b&m.
Okay, fine-tune the idea some, and have top-sellers or featured books as "display models". Perhaps have 1 or 3 or 4 of these on the store shelves, and you can either purchase those or take the little bar code tag to the cashier who will print you out a fresh new copy. You still eliminate the vast majority of warehousing and retail space, and eliminate distribution costs. As for differences between online shopping and brick and mortar, I'm not sure we should strive for differences. If these books were already digitized in a standard format (a by-product of switching to this machine) web sites could easily offer you a list of (searchable) titles, complete with cover art and back cover info, as well as perhaps, the first chapter to tease you into buying it. Click a button to buy it, and by the time you got to the store it'd be ready for you.
Well, if a 'bookstore' relies on this machine to print out all the titles it carries, I'd hate to be them every time a new Harry Potter books comes out. If they follow the "print-on-demand" idea, you can't print extras and hope you'll sell them or it defeats the idea in the first place (and in all these concepts, you're eliminating any storage areas). So if they get swamped, they're screwed.
Crikey, why does everyone have to take everything so literal? So, perhaps they would forecast demand a bit, and print up some extra copies. It's a helluva lot easier to forecast demand 24 hours in advance (or less), than it is 1 month in advance (or more).
Second, most copy machines, even the color ones, cannot generally produce the same quality you see on standard soft-cover books. And if you don't think that the covers help sell books, you are so wrong that it's not even funny.
Standard soft-cover books? I'm not real sure what that means, I guess it depends on your standard reading material. IMO, standard soft-covers would be novels and the like, printed on cheap stock with limited typefaces, with no color pictures, and perhaps a few black and white illustrations or drawings. Of course, that may come from my habit of reading Westerns and Mystery novels.
If, by standard, you're referring to something like a photo-montage book, with glorious full-page color photographs, then I'd have to admit that you may have a point. But, most everything in between, from novels to self-help to religion to cookbooks to most computer books to most magazines could be reproduced in fairly high quality by this machine.
Third, these machines cannot do true hard-covers. Sure you can run cardstock paper through them, but that's only 200 grams/square meter, and for those people who like hard-cover books, there is no substitute.
Well, I didn't see any specs on the machine (nor did I, I admit, look for any), so I don't know what the heaviest weight paper it can use would be, but I think most books these days are soft-cover. For those that are diehard into hardcovers, then you should be willing to pay a premium for them (as you already do).
Is it going to majorly upset the publishing industry as we know it? Not a chance in Hell(tm).
The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with you. Why? Because publishers, being of the old-school business leagues, ar eprobably afraid to invest in something better than what they have now. That, and short-sighted fellows not realizing the true potential of a machine like this.
When you promise someone (IBM) a piece of sofware you don't have, then pay someone $50,000 for a piece of software without telling them you're going to turn around and sell it for millions, then I think you're in ethically murky waters.
Well, then, I guess my employer is going ot hell after all! He promises customers something he doesnt't have (a functioning network), then pays me peanuts to fix it/install it/etc. without telling me how much the customer is paying him (obviously, more than he pays me).
Well, I don't think there is much value in making a machine that can print out the same titles that you can get from your local B&N (or online, for that matter), because those books (they mention Stephen King's Dreamcatcher) are at least somewhat popular and available (save remote/country areas, where this machine could be used for that purpose).
Well, then, remind me to never hire you as a corporate executive. This machine (if the article details it truthfully, and it can be mass-produced for under $100,000) has the potential to REVOLUTIONIZE the printing industry. Can you imagine the cost of shipping millions of books? Can you imagine how much in inventory, warehousing, shipping, handling, and retail space is taken up by books? Not to mention the costs of guessing demand for a title, then having to credit hundreds of thousands of purchases to retailers when the book doesn't sell and the titles are destroyed. Or, even worse, lowballing demand and not selling thousdands of copies. Or, not selling books becasue the cost of publishing a specific title is too high to justify the niche market. Or, books that are out-of-print, and dollars go to the secondary used-book market?
With this machine, Books-a-600-million could be located in a small corner cafe, instead of the huge retail outlets they are in now. Each major, semi-major, and even indie publisher could snail-mail a DVD/CD/etc. to the retail outlet who would load them to the network. Go in to order a book, and they print it for you while you wait. Or, order from the Internet, pick it up at the shop. The only possible downsides I can see are the lack of back cover info, easily remedied with computer workstations or the Internet, however.
This is the ultimate Just In Time inventory system. Eliminates shipping and warehousing costs, gives access to a publisher's entire (digitized) catalog, and the money saved coul go back into digitizing the works. Hell, I'd even be willing to grant the publisher's an extension on copyrights if they digitized their entire catalog for this machine.
This piece of machinery is amazing, and if publisher's are smart, they'll jump on this. Of course, I'm not going to argue that publishers of any kind of medium are smart, so we'll have to wait and see.
Can anyone tell me what system resources are? I have a vauge idea that it has something to do with free RAM but the documentation for MS Resource Monitor never specifies exactly what it is...
Actually, it has nothing to do with free RAM. It's a combination of the GDI and User heaps, and System Resources is just the lower of the 2 (the Resource Monitor will show values of all 3, the Performance tab of the System Control Applet shows the lowest value of GDI and User as System Resources % free).
So, what's GDI and User resources, you ask? Here's a brief rundown.
The GDI (graphical device interface) heap is basically a space in memory to be used for graphic elements (cursors, bitmaps, icons, etc). The User heap is for window placement, keybd and mouse interactions, etc. Check references for more info, especially the Technet article here (it's about Win 3.x, but applies equally, except for the space limitations).
The GDI and User heaps are left overs for backward compatibility with Win 3.x, which is why the NT line doesn't have to deal with this crap. Win9x, however, did increase the sizes of the heaps to 32-bits, as opposed to 16-bit, and also increased the number of heaps. So, Win9x has 1 16-bit (64K) User heap and 1 64K GDI heap, and 2 32-bit (2MB) User heaps and 1 32-bit GDI heap. Win 3.0 had 2 16-bit heaps, Win 3.1 had 4 16-bit heaps, 3 User and 1 GDI).
And, of course, they also upped the limits on a few other things as well.
Just FYI, more RAM does not increase system resources. Only another OS (including NT/2000) will be able to do away with those limitations (or open-source code).
References: PCForrest, Adobe TechDoc, and there's a Technet article explaining it all as well, but I'll be damned if I can find it. You can try if you like.
This 'license' refers to your right to use the software, and to have it on the data carriers you possess. If you break (a) part(s) of the agreement, you can't use the software anymore, as you have lost the license.
Which was my point in the last sentence. As discussed earlier, however, it would seem that US Copyright law is pretty specific to the fact that if you legally obtained and posess the program, you have a right to run the program. In other words, you only have to abide by the license because you agreed to it, not to run the program.
Well, first off, if you don't have any 16-bit apps and don't need backwards compatibility, why the hell are you using WinME (widely regarded as inferior to even the much-maligned Win98) instead of Win2K, where alot of those problems would be solved?
Secondly, I still disagree on your definition of a bug. A bug is defined (by dictionary.com) as "a defect in the code or routine of a program". Now, while it may be indirectly true that the programmers "work" for the users, 50 million users aren't going to agree on design features. Therefore, the programmers (and design team, project lead, etc., etc.) decide the features and design of the program. If it does what they intended, then there is no defect. Usability issues are not a defect, they are a bad design.
... I still can't get anything beyond a 56k connection out here in the boonies. And even then it would be a long-distance call without this "extended local" scam the phone company has going.
Don't feel too sorry for yourself. Because of crappy wiring, I max at 31.2k, and I live in a VERY large college town, with a population of 200,000!
The default clauses for software differ slightly from state to state, but are mostly pretty reasonable. You of course have the usual copyright permissions, which basically say you can't redistribute without permission, but otherwise don't much limit your use or disposal of the software. Until a few years back, there was a legal school of thought that you needed explicit permission from the copyright holder to run it, but Congress has since specified that this is not in fact true; in the absense of other agreements, you have the right to run any software you legally possess.
Well, then the usually present EULA clause stating (to the effect of anyway, for some reason I can't find any EULA's right now...damn GPL! =)) ...this license will terminate immediately upon the consumer breaking any portion of this license..."
would effectively remove the restrictions of the license, placing the program back under general copyright law.
So, simply break one of the (many) clauses not covered by applicable laws, and then you're out from under the EULA (if they're legally enforceable anyway). What's the most the publisher can do? There's no specific remedies in the EULA besides terminating the license.
Of course, if you assume that you can only use the program because of the license in the first place....but, the program was legally obtained, and in legal posession.
They detect a trace of on illegal drug in the fabric of your car
And pray tell me what they're gonna do?
Send you to maximum security prison right away? No, they would have to prosecute you and show concrete evidence that you are dealing/using drugs. Get real. No self-respecting law enforcement agency would make noise based on such flimsy piece of an evidence.
Actually, that trace of drug can be used to confiscate your car, your cash, your house, etc. as suspected proceeds of illegal activities (RICO act) without ever charging or arresting you for a crime.
Not to mention that that trace could be (depending on total weight) construed as posession in itself. A few hits of LSD diluted in water has been sucessfully prosecuted as posession of LSD in the amount of the total weight.
You're probably a smart and moral guy who could decide for himself. I would propose that this would be true in the case of most of the Slashdot readers. However, the problem is that the majority of the public really is stupid and incapable of making moral judgements themselves.
Perhaps you missed this one, but one could argue (pretty succesfully IMO) that following the law is, in itself, a moral decision.
if they were given executive power we'd have a eye-for-an-eye judicial system, for instance.
Once again, one could argue that we already have a great many elements of that in the States already (capital punishment, etc.).
I frequently go to that bank, give them 5 twenties and ask for a $100.00 bill, especially around Chinese New Years time for those red envelopes... Are they now going to have me fill out a form in triplicate every time I want to do that? If they don't, their whole system will be flushed down the toilet right there... And the bank cannot say, "We cannot process that transaction for you if you don't fill out that form", because I can just point to the phrase on the twenty dollar bill that says that this is legal tender for all debts public and private. It does NOT say this is only legal if you fill out form #XYZ-123.
The bill does not say that it's legal tender for all exchange purposes. If exchanging money (whether from one currency to another, or from one denomination to another) wasn't a service (that you can be required to fill out forms, stand on your head, etc) then it would be illegal to charge for it, as it's illegal to sell money.
Better? There are enough old problems that have never been fixed because it doesn't look sexy in the TV ads.
From bugs to missing features, they have it all:
Just because you don't have the answers or like the way it's designed, doesn't necessarily make it a bug. The real question is does it do what the programmer(s) intended it to do. In 90% of your cases, I'd say it's fits those criteria (as far as Windows is concerned). As for yourself not liking them, well, you just have to be creative and intelligent enough to figure out the problem then and do a workaround. I don't like the fact that my car seat doesn't slide into a notch when I push it all the way back, but I don't think it's a bug, it's just a silly design!
Hmm, actually when I do Insert->Object in MSWord, click on a.JPG, it seems to work for me. Then when I give the resulting.DOC to a co-worker, all he gets is a big black box where the image should have been.
I'm guessing this is because the co-worker does not have the image, and why you're not using Insert-File, or Insert-Picture-From File I don;t know.
MSWord often makes me wait for an 'auto save', but when it crashes it often knows nothing about the supposedly saved data when I restart it.
I believe it simply saves the changes to the document you're working on. If it bugs you that much, turn off AutoSave.
Sometimes when MSWord crashes and I later try to open the document I (and I alone) was editing, it claims that the document is still open by 'another user'. Twice wrong.
Word didn't exit cleanly, therefore the document is still locked by your previous instance of Word. Close the program from Task Manager and/or delete the temporary file that Word creates whenever it edits a DOC.
If you want to logout or want MSWindows to shutdown, you have to press 'Start'. In some versions of MSWindows, you press 'Ctrl-Alt-Delete' to reboot, in others you press it to log in.
Actually, you can do Ctrl-Alt-Del then press Shutdown in Win9x, or Ctrl-Alt-Del then Log Off or Shutdown in Win2K. True, Start-Shutdown is the common practice. I don't remember any Windows making you do Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot (are you thinking of MS-DOS?) unless it's Win3.1 or earlier which really don't count, IMO. And the Ctrl-Alt-Del to login is sufficiently expalined in the login box, and can be turned off as well.
After a few programs are installed, MSWindows actually takes little time to boot from nothing to the 'logon prompt', which normally happens during the first trip to the office coffee machine in the morning. Then, after logging on, it takes at least twice that time before double clicking on any desktop icon results in a program starting because it obviously has a lot of other starting up to do that are more important than what I want.
This is probably more related to your startup programs (usually not MS) in Win9x (my Win9x boots from a cold start to a usable desktop in about 30 seconds, so I don;t think it's a problem with Win9x), or parallel processing of login scripts in Win2K (which, IMO, is a godsend).
In MSWin9X, if you type a wrong password at the network logon, you get a second chance to type a password to 'log on into windows'. If you type the password correctly then, you go through the login wait but the network doesn't work correctly and you have to (click start+)logout and try again.
Windows9x could care less what you use as a username and password on the Client for MS Networks login box, unless you're on a NT/2000/Samba domain, as there is no certifier to check your login. It's only used to pass these credentials to another share that has restricted access. The second login box, to Login to Windows, is for personal profiles (Where each person can have a distinct desktop, settings, etc.) and has absolutely nothing to do with network authentication. Usually, you just use the same password for both, and the Network login passes the info to the Windows Logon which checks against your username.pwl file for the password. If you mistype the password, however, you won't be authenticated via the.pwl file and will have to try again.
In MSWindows, programs start so slow that it becomes common practice make 'tray icons' that keep the programs in memory to make them start faster. The result is that my computer is slow because all of the RAM is used by programs I need only once a month.
It's common practice by software developers (MS included, with thier Office suite at least), but not by MS Windows. Most of the tray icons, however, provide additional functions such as reminder notices, etc. The only ones I can think of offhand that simply exist to speed program loading are RealPlayer and Office Startup (which does not have an icon, but is loaded nonetheless as OSA IIRC). Most people don't need them, and should learn to turn them off. Nobody expects to drive a car without knowing either how to change the oil or to pay someone else to change it, people need to take the same view of computers.
In order to move or resize a window, I have to aim for a small area in the corner or on the side of the window. In Enlightenment and Sawfish, I can press ALT while clicking and resize or move with a lot more ease.
That's not a bug, that's an interface choice. Though to move a window, you use the title bar. If you can't aim that precisely with your mouse, then you may need to slow down the responsiveness of it. Most programs, however, wil lremmeber their last used size and position and default to it, so you shouldn't need to change it that often.
After you kill a program in MSWindows, sometimes it still has memory allocated that can only be freed by a reboot.
This is actually pretty rare, and is almost always the software maker's fault, not Windows. If you're talking kill as in forcing an end process, then you really can't expect memory handlers to be invoked to clean up after the program, however. Most of the time, if you wait 5-10 minutes, the program will exit on it's on (programs such as rnaapp (DUN component) will stay in memory for 5-10 minutes after exiting in order to speed a possible reload), or you can kill it with the Task Manager. 16-bit programs won't give up allocated resources until all 16-bit apps are exited, as they share the same memory space. Fonts that are initialized with programs do not get cleared, but this is a programming decision, not a bug. Get Win2K which doesn't have to worry about legacy app compatibility and most of these resource issues are easily resolved.
When you move the mouse a little while clicking on a directory in explorer.exe, it moves (hides) the directory into the directory above in a split second, however when I want to delete it it wants a confirmation for every.DLL and.EXE in it.
That's what it's supposed to do. You told it to move that directory. As for deletion prompts, you can answer yes to all for the first prompt and not be bothered again by it.
[blah, blah, blah from college EE text...] I'll bet that his supposed 20db gain is due more to the colmination effect from the dish itself (it is acting like a focusing lens) than due to proper waveguide design.
If the guy gets a 20db gain from his setup, then who cares? He got it to work, he's not selling the equipment to you, if you try it YMMV, etc, etc.
So, either you say "this guy isn't getting a 20db gain" and prove it, or drop the whole impromptu/. EE course and admit it just plain works! Obviously, he's not too far off the calculations (too far being defined as not getting his needed 20db gain from the setup) or he's lying about the gain. Which is it?
If you install additional grounds (for computers or whatever) the must all be bonded together. Bonding involves runing a piece of heavy copper (10+ guage) between all grounds.
IANAEE, but I can vouch for the importance of this. A company I contracted with had underpaid and incompetent monkeys wire their building, and the monkeys forgot this step. A few months down the road, EVERY single UPS connected to that circuit was fried in an instant. Luckily for them, they had every single PC plugged into a UPS, so no PC's were damaged. The 40 or so UPS's weren't so lucky, however. (You can take that as a vote of confidence for APC UPS's as well....)
I'm no fan of large corporations like DirectTV but if you want your rights and personal property respected then you must reciprocate and respect everyone else's.
I know that the US has an odd view about this, but last I checked, corporations weren't people, and thus, have no "rights". Of course, most of our politicians have gone about and written laws to grant them "rights", but that's another problem altogether.
Please don't try to preach to me about the "rights" of corporations. Corporations have a single, undying motive: to make a profit. If a corporation can justify breaking a law to make a profit, then believe me, it will.
Corporations are not "born", do not "die", and do not have a soul or a conscience. The Creator (God, Allah, or the Big Bang, whatever your fancy) did not create corporations, and did not endow them "unalienable rights". Corporations have no rights, and until more people come to realize this, the US will continue to be run by and for the corporations.
I disagree. Why should service providers have to pay to protect their data from stealing? It's like saying that I'm responsible for not using a more solid door lock if someone is breaking into my house.
The content, like it or not, is the property of the distributor, and just because it's easy to steal it's not making stealing more justified.
The content may be the property of the distributor, but my house and yard are my property. That, IMHO, should include airspace rights as well (at least to a reasonable footage. I don't think a plane flying at 20,000 feet is in my property, but a plane flying at 6-8' sure as well would be, and I'd be upset about that too).
By broadcasting their signal into my property, they lose their rights to it. It's like peppering my yard with Office2K CD's and then complaining when I use them.
I should sue them for illegal use of my airspace rights (not only DirectTV but every damn company that is using up the radio spectrum in my yard. What if I wanted to put up a small transmitter to tranmsit across the yard, but now I can't because damn WKWL is broadcasting on the signal in my property!)
My father is a truck driver, and they use a Qualcomm system, but not for speeding. That's taking car eof with governors (usually set at 70mph, though some companies set it at 65mph. You can go faster downhill, but otherwise that's pretty much a hard limit). Dome people disable them, but it's a pretty heavy fine if you're caught.
GPS is used for fleet tracking. That way, dispatchers can know where each truck is at any point in time, and how far it is from a load pickup. Of course, they also monitor to see how far off route you are, but they are somewhat lenient in that respect.
BTW, overall efficency is improved alot by speeding. Why? Because if you don't speed or drive longer than you're supposed to, then you're not going to make the delivery when the customer wants it. Translation: you're company loses the account.
Slashdot Mirror
Uhhh...yeah, those are all Microsoft products. I'm pretty sure I was paying attention...
Step 1, stop monitoring all your memory bits. Step 2, don't click on things you don't want to start up. Step 3, find the offending 100% CPU user and figure out what's wrong with it or kill it. Step 4, never be impatient with computers. Step 5, perhaps you should try Ctrl-Shift-Esc for the Task Manager instead of Ctrl-Alt-Del.
I'm not sure I understand. If the human ear can hear only frequencies between X and Y Hz, then we only need to capture those frequencies. The harmonics, reflections, and acoustics of the room mean nothing to us unless they produce sound between X and Y.
If we then play back our recorded sound with equipment that will faithfully reproduce between X and Y, then our job is done. Unfortunately, it won't sound the exact same as the live session, because our room acoustics, placement of listeners, etc. are all different. This means that our sound waves will reflect differently and combine differently, producing a (slightly) different set of frequencies.
No, the fallacy of audiophiles is that you can ever recreate the live session on a recording. Unless you record each instrument direct from the source (with no reflections), and then play back those recordings precisely synchronized, from the same exact spot the instruments were in (same height, as well), in the same exact room, with the same amount of ambient noise, then your whole theory falls apart.
If CD's were really produced for the "lowest common denominator", then there would be very little (almost non-existent) bass, strong mid-range, and an abrupt drop in the high end. Because, that's what would sound good on $3 headphones or your clock radio. By producing for the largest market segment, however, we come to a compromise. CD's sound good on mid to low-level systems, and don't necessarily sound any better on high end systems because the detail isn't there to reproduce. And they still sound like shit on low-end systems. Don't believe me, let me loan you my Sharp boombox...
I'd have to question the wisdom of any professional needing all the detail they can get using JPEG's. There are other, non-lossy, image formats available to people who need them. For the average use, however, JPEG is sufficient. I'll take the reduction in storage and bandwidth over a slight loss of bits any day of the week.
Of course, if PNG or something else can beat JPEG in either compression and/or image quality, then I'll be happy to switch to that.
What other versions of Windows are there, besides MS products?
Wait, hold on. I don't think I can follow all your technical reasonings here....Could you scale that down some for me?
Nothing like /. for some well-thought out, logical reasoning on something....
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems, according to this Xerox brochure (PDF), that the DocuTech 6135 (and 6180) can't automatically trim the books. Nor, can it stitch together more than 70 pages (@20lb) or bind together more than 125 pages (@20lb). Their optional Signature Booklet Maker II, which boasts "fully automatic booklet making", is limited to 22 pages at 20lb. I don't think that this would cut it as a book-on-demand system.
Okay, fine-tune the idea some, and have top-sellers or featured books as "display models". Perhaps have 1 or 3 or 4 of these on the store shelves, and you can either purchase those or take the little bar code tag to the cashier who will print you out a fresh new copy. You still eliminate the vast majority of warehousing and retail space, and eliminate distribution costs. As for differences between online shopping and brick and mortar, I'm not sure we should strive for differences. If these books were already digitized in a standard format (a by-product of switching to this machine) web sites could easily offer you a list of (searchable) titles, complete with cover art and back cover info, as well as perhaps, the first chapter to tease you into buying it. Click a button to buy it, and by the time you got to the store it'd be ready for you.
Crikey, why does everyone have to take everything so literal? So, perhaps they would forecast demand a bit, and print up some extra copies. It's a helluva lot easier to forecast demand 24 hours in advance (or less), than it is 1 month in advance (or more).
Standard soft-cover books? I'm not real sure what that means, I guess it depends on your standard reading material. IMO, standard soft-covers would be novels and the like, printed on cheap stock with limited typefaces, with no color pictures, and perhaps a few black and white illustrations or drawings. Of course, that may come from my habit of reading Westerns and Mystery novels.
If, by standard, you're referring to something like a photo-montage book, with glorious full-page color photographs, then I'd have to admit that you may have a point. But, most everything in between, from novels to self-help to religion to cookbooks to most computer books to most magazines could be reproduced in fairly high quality by this machine.
Well, I didn't see any specs on the machine (nor did I, I admit, look for any), so I don't know what the heaviest weight paper it can use would be, but I think most books these days are soft-cover. For those that are diehard into hardcovers, then you should be willing to pay a premium for them (as you already do).
The more I think about it, the more I have to agree with you. Why? Because publishers, being of the old-school business leagues, ar eprobably afraid to invest in something better than what they have now. That, and short-sighted fellows not realizing the true potential of a machine like this.
Well, then, I guess my employer is going ot hell after all! He promises customers something he doesnt't have (a functioning network), then pays me peanuts to fix it/install it/etc. without telling me how much the customer is paying him (obviously, more than he pays me).
Well, then, remind me to never hire you as a corporate executive. This machine (if the article details it truthfully, and it can be mass-produced for under $100,000) has the potential to REVOLUTIONIZE the printing industry. Can you imagine the cost of shipping millions of books? Can you imagine how much in inventory, warehousing, shipping, handling, and retail space is taken up by books? Not to mention the costs of guessing demand for a title, then having to credit hundreds of thousands of purchases to retailers when the book doesn't sell and the titles are destroyed. Or, even worse, lowballing demand and not selling thousdands of copies. Or, not selling books becasue the cost of publishing a specific title is too high to justify the niche market. Or, books that are out-of-print, and dollars go to the secondary used-book market?
With this machine, Books-a-600-million could be located in a small corner cafe, instead of the huge retail outlets they are in now. Each major, semi-major, and even indie publisher could snail-mail a DVD/CD/etc. to the retail outlet who would load them to the network. Go in to order a book, and they print it for you while you wait. Or, order from the Internet, pick it up at the shop. The only possible downsides I can see are the lack of back cover info, easily remedied with computer workstations or the Internet, however.
This is the ultimate Just In Time inventory system. Eliminates shipping and warehousing costs, gives access to a publisher's entire (digitized) catalog, and the money saved coul go back into digitizing the works. Hell, I'd even be willing to grant the publisher's an extension on copyrights if they digitized their entire catalog for this machine.
This piece of machinery is amazing, and if publisher's are smart, they'll jump on this. Of course, I'm not going to argue that publishers of any kind of medium are smart, so we'll have to wait and see.
Actually, it has nothing to do with free RAM. It's a combination of the GDI and User heaps, and System Resources is just the lower of the 2 (the Resource Monitor will show values of all 3, the Performance tab of the System Control Applet shows the lowest value of GDI and User as System Resources % free).
So, what's GDI and User resources, you ask? Here's a brief rundown.
The GDI (graphical device interface) heap is basically a space in memory to be used for graphic elements (cursors, bitmaps, icons, etc). The User heap is for window placement, keybd and mouse interactions, etc. Check references for more info, especially the Technet article here (it's about Win 3.x, but applies equally, except for the space limitations).
The GDI and User heaps are left overs for backward compatibility with Win 3.x, which is why the NT line doesn't have to deal with this crap. Win9x, however, did increase the sizes of the heaps to 32-bits, as opposed to 16-bit, and also increased the number of heaps. So, Win9x has 1 16-bit (64K) User heap and 1 64K GDI heap, and 2 32-bit (2MB) User heaps and 1 32-bit GDI heap. Win 3.0 had 2 16-bit heaps, Win 3.1 had 4 16-bit heaps, 3 User and 1 GDI).
And, of course, they also upped the limits on a few other things as well.
Just FYI, more RAM does not increase system resources. Only another OS (including NT/2000) will be able to do away with those limitations (or open-source code).
References: PCForrest, Adobe TechDoc, and there's a Technet article explaining it all as well, but I'll be damned if I can find it. You can try if you like.
Secondly, I still disagree on your definition of a bug. A bug is defined (by dictionary.com) as "a defect in the code or routine of a program". Now, while it may be indirectly true that the programmers "work" for the users, 50 million users aren't going to agree on design features. Therefore, the programmers (and design team, project lead, etc., etc.) decide the features and design of the program. If it does what they intended, then there is no defect. Usability issues are not a defect, they are a bad design.
Don't feel too sorry for yourself. Because of crappy wiring, I max at 31.2k, and I live in a VERY large college town, with a population of 200,000!
Well, then the usually present EULA clause stating (to the effect of anyway, for some reason I can't find any EULA's right now...damn GPL! =))
...this license will terminate immediately upon the consumer breaking any portion of this license..."
would effectively remove the restrictions of the license, placing the program back under general copyright law.
So, simply break one of the (many) clauses not covered by applicable laws, and then you're out from under the EULA (if they're legally enforceable anyway). What's the most the publisher can do? There's no specific remedies in the EULA besides terminating the license.
Of course, if you assume that you can only use the program because of the license in the first place....but, the program was legally obtained, and in legal posession.
Just out of curiosity, why can't you search for C# in Google? I just gave it a shot and it worked fine for me.
Actually, that trace of drug can be used to confiscate your car, your cash, your house, etc. as suspected proceeds of illegal activities (RICO act) without ever charging or arresting you for a crime.
Not to mention that that trace could be (depending on total weight) construed as posession in itself. A few hits of LSD diluted in water has been sucessfully prosecuted as posession of LSD in the amount of the total weight.
Perhaps you missed this one, but one could argue (pretty succesfully IMO) that following the law is, in itself, a moral decision.
Once again, one could argue that we already have a great many elements of that in the States already (capital punishment, etc.).
The bill does not say that it's legal tender for all exchange purposes. If exchanging money (whether from one currency to another, or from one denomination to another) wasn't a service (that you can be required to fill out forms, stand on your head, etc) then it would be illegal to charge for it, as it's illegal to sell money.
I believe it simply saves the changes to the document you're working on. If it bugs you that much, turn off AutoSave.
Word didn't exit cleanly, therefore the document is still locked by your previous instance of Word. Close the program from Task Manager and/or delete the temporary file that Word creates whenever it edits a DOC.Actually, you can do Ctrl-Alt-Del then press Shutdown in Win9x, or Ctrl-Alt-Del then Log Off or Shutdown in Win2K. True, Start-Shutdown is the common practice. I don't remember any Windows making you do Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot (are you thinking of MS-DOS?) unless it's Win3.1 or earlier which really don't count, IMO. And the Ctrl-Alt-Del to login is sufficiently expalined in the login box, and can be turned off as well.
This is probably more related to your startup programs (usually not MS) in Win9x (my Win9x boots from a cold start to a usable desktop in about 30 seconds, so I don;t think it's a problem with Win9x), or parallel processing of login scripts in Win2K (which, IMO, is a godsend). Windows9x could care less what you use as a username and password on the Client for MS Networks login box, unless you're on a NT/2000/Samba domain, as there is no certifier to check your login. It's only used to pass these credentials to another share that has restricted access. The second login box, to Login to Windows, is for personal profiles (Where each person can have a distinct desktop, settings, etc.) and has absolutely nothing to do with network authentication. Usually, you just use the same password for both, and the Network login passes the info to the Windows Logon which checks against your username.pwl file for the password. If you mistype the password, however, you won't be authenticated via theThat's not a bug, that's an interface choice. Though to move a window, you use the title bar. If you can't aim that precisely with your mouse, then you may need to slow down the responsiveness of it. Most programs, however, wil lremmeber their last used size and position and default to it, so you shouldn't need to change it that often.
This is actually pretty rare, and is almost always the software maker's fault, not Windows. If you're talking kill as in forcing an end process, then you really can't expect memory handlers to be invoked to clean up after the program, however. Most of the time, if you wait 5-10 minutes, the program will exit on it's on (programs such as rnaapp (DUN component) will stay in memory for 5-10 minutes after exiting in order to speed a possible reload), or you can kill it with the Task Manager. 16-bit programs won't give up allocated resources until all 16-bit apps are exited, as they share the same memory space. Fonts that are initialized with programs do not get cleared, but this is a programming decision, not a bug. Get Win2K which doesn't have to worry about legacy app compatibility and most of these resource issues are easily resolved.
That's what it's supposed to do. You told it to move that directory. As for deletion prompts, you can answer yes to all for the first prompt and not be bothered again by it.If the guy gets a 20db gain from his setup, then who cares? He got it to work, he's not selling the equipment to you, if you try it YMMV, etc, etc.
So, either you say "this guy isn't getting a 20db gain" and prove it, or drop the whole impromptu /. EE course and admit it just plain works! Obviously, he's not too far off the calculations (too far being defined as not getting his needed 20db gain from the setup) or he's lying about the gain. Which is it?
IANAEE, but I can vouch for the importance of this. A company I contracted with had underpaid and incompetent monkeys wire their building, and the monkeys forgot this step. A few months down the road, EVERY single UPS connected to that circuit was fried in an instant. Luckily for them, they had every single PC plugged into a UPS, so no PC's were damaged. The 40 or so UPS's weren't so lucky, however. (You can take that as a vote of confidence for APC UPS's as well....)
I know that the US has an odd view about this, but last I checked, corporations weren't people, and thus, have no "rights". Of course, most of our politicians have gone about and written laws to grant them "rights", but that's another problem altogether.
Please don't try to preach to me about the "rights" of corporations. Corporations have a single, undying motive: to make a profit. If a corporation can justify breaking a law to make a profit, then believe me, it will.
Corporations are not "born", do not "die", and do not have a soul or a conscience. The Creator (God, Allah, or the Big Bang, whatever your fancy) did not create corporations, and did not endow them "unalienable rights". Corporations have no rights, and until more people come to realize this, the US will continue to be run by and for the corporations.
By broadcasting their signal into my property, they lose their rights to it. It's like peppering my yard with Office2K CD's and then complaining when I use them.
I should sue them for illegal use of my airspace rights (not only DirectTV but every damn company that is using up the radio spectrum in my yard. What if I wanted to put up a small transmitter to tranmsit across the yard, but now I can't because damn WKWL is broadcasting on the signal in my property!)
GPS is used for fleet tracking. That way, dispatchers can know where each truck is at any point in time, and how far it is from a load pickup. Of course, they also monitor to see how far off route you are, but they are somewhat lenient in that respect.
BTW, overall efficency is improved alot by speeding. Why? Because if you don't speed or drive longer than you're supposed to, then you're not going to make the delivery when the customer wants it. Translation: you're company loses the account.