Isn't this the plan where the store that sells the Kindle gets a cut of all purchases made thru said Kindle? So that kickback expires after two years. Sell them a new kindle and reset the kickback clock. There's always a new reader coming out with new features, more storage, better display, etc.
This reminds me of that thread a year or three back where it was pointed out that book publishers need to realize that they're in the business of selling content, not paper. Paper is a content delivery/storage/display method. Kindle is the new paper in this scenario.
Paper books had a pretty good run. Over 500 years by my math. Now the business model is changing. Bookstores can find a way to change with it or they can bleed money until they go bankrupt. Their stubbornness isn't going to change reality. If they want to keep selling paper, they need to shift their physical inventory to publications that can't easily make the transition to electronic distribution. Large format books with lots of pictures. Art, atlases, photos, etc. Take the leftover space and stock it with readers (only from companies that will give you a kickback) and accessories. Put in a coffee/tea counter, comfy chairs, fireplace, etc. Fast WiFi, charging stations for devices. Have "meet the author" nights and "get the most out of your reader" nights.
I prefer my HD games to be rendered at 1920x1080 rather than some sub-720 resolution and scaled up. Actually, I'm running three 2560x1440 monitors but that's even farther (further?) removed from what current consoles can do. And I like having a keyboard and mouse for the games that play better with them. Not having that support on the PS3 and XB360 is stupid.
Having played the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race card, I plan to pick up a PS4 when they hit the streets.
It's not the tablet that's the problem. It's RT. RT has no reason to exist. It doesn't fill a gap, it creates one.
Apple: Tablets and phones run the same software (with a small number of exceptions). Android: Tablets and phones run the same software (with a small number of exceptions). Microsoft: Surface Pro and Desktops run the same software (with a small number of exceptions). This is freaking awesome and isn't offered anywhere else. Microsoft: Surface and...NOTHING run the same software (with a minuscule number of exceptions). This is freaking stupid and makes no sense at all.
I think you're confusing the Pro with the RT. The Pro and Pro 2 are no more "locked down" than a desktop running Windows because they're running the same OS.
The confusion and ire is understandable as the RT is a useless piece of shit. But they're two entirely different products.
That's what I came here to say. Why do people think that, once they start a business, they're never going to have another business related expense beyond the initial startup costs? Or they think that, once they get their degree, there will never be any need to add to their host of knowledge or invest another penny in ongoing training and education? "They didn't serve it up on a silver platter and I'm not gonna work to get it."
This is what separates people who run a speech therapy foundation from the speech therapist with a 200 square foot office in strip mall between the massage parlor and the liquor store.
I thought they had trouble with face tracking but that would be the same base issue.
There have also been some digital cameras that have trouble detecting faces. The ones that do automatic metering, red-eye removal, and such. Same with photo editing software.
Two reasons. The obvious one is that a lot of employees will balk at wearing the device.
The slightly less obvious one is the state of HVAC systems in many office buildings. The last building I worked in was straight out of Brazil. I had a thermostat on my wall that controlled the AC for my corner of my floor. Not the heat, tho. Every fall, people would lean in my office and ask me to turn up the heat. I'd explain over and over that I can only make it colder. They're welcome to look at my thermostat's setting and see that it's at its highest setting and can't go any higher. (The saddest part was that it was the same people every year. Like they didn't remember the last 4 winters.) I suspect that the heater's thermostat for our part of the building was the one that had been in the old conference room that was turned into an archive room. I know it controlled the AC for that room (and the adjacent server room) but I don't know about heat...or where it got moved when that room was renovated but the server room AC still worked so it must have gone somewhere. Maybe it was tossed on top of the ceiling tiles.
Anyway, my office had an AC thermostat and 5 different vents. 2 heat vents, 2 AC vents, and 1 that seemed to do nothing. It neither sucked nor blew. 1 AC vent was always blowing unless the heat was on. The other responded to my thermostat and blew cold air even if the heat was on. When the heat was working, I got hot air out of both my heater vents. They didn't appear to operate independently. And, yes, there were days when I'd sic the AC on the heater because the floor was roasting and nobody knew where the heater's thermostat was.
This is what happens to buildings after a few decades of rotating tenants. Each new tenant remodels. Walls go up, walls come down, vents move, controls move. You'll have to clean up all that crap before you can shave 1 degree off the heat or AC. Of course, after you've done that, you'll be saving enough money that it's not worth the hassle of convincing people to wear a geek bracelet.
I had a Chromebook for about 3 days. Most of that time it was back in the box waiting for my next run to town to return it. I'd bought the Acer with a 320 gig hard drive expecting to either use it as a media player or torrent machine depending on which it did better. Neither. It can't access local network resources. And it couldn't handle any of my media files even tho they're h.264 and it's supposed to be able to play that format. So no media player. What about torrent clients? Nope. All I could find were remote control plugins to control clients running on other machines. When I complained about this on the official Chromebook forums I was told that it would be a lot of work to add local network support. Um...oooooookay. Oh, and, if I want to watch my local content, there are remote desktop solutions. I can just use those. Then W[hy]TF do I need the Chromebook?
I'm pretty Googleized with apps and drive and my android portables but the Chromebook was a real case of, "What the fuck is this shit???" I spent another $55 on a 'doze laptop and installed Chrome. Gives me all the Google integration I need without limiting what I can do with the platform.
Here's a thought. TRY ONE! You don't see the use but you've never tried it so how the heck would you know if it works?
I tried it and guess what happened. The boot times on my computer dropped significantly. From several minutes to "end of churn" to around 30 seconds. My apps launch faster, game levels load faster (after the first load), and there's almost no churn during normal use. Works great for me on two laptops and a gaming computer. My gaming computer has an 8-port RAID controller built in and I was sorely tempted to put in 8 SSDs in RAID0 for ultimate performance. I can easily afford it. But the $140 hybrid drive was plenty fast. Dropping boot times from 30 seconds to 12 seconds isn't nearly as much of a boost as going from 220 seconds to 30 seconds. My game levels are already loading faster than the cut scenes. There's no practical benefit [for me] in having faster access times.
Your ideas of "simple drive management" are not simple. Most people wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about or how to go about accomplishing it. Hybrid drives are faster without the user having to understand the technical details of how to make it work. Not everyone wants to become a tech god and squeeze every possible bit of performance out of their system. Most people want to check a box on the order form and have it just work. "Add hybrid drive (faster performance): [X] - $39.00"
That's about the time I helped develop a "how to use the internet" class for my department at UCSB. In preparation, we rolled out a bunch of clients to our Mac workstations for usenet, gopher, talk, ftp, http (Mosaic, of course), etc. After the class, everyone went straight to Mosaic. I was pretty impressed that someone had found a bunch of Elvis sound clips and figured out how to play them within minutes. Then I was concerned for the amount of bandwidth they must have been sucking up. I believe our part of campus was sharing a T1 at the time...
I haven't worked in over two years so, when I don't have to be synced with other people, I go to sleep when I get tired and get up when I'm done sleeping. When I get going on an interesting project, I might chug away for 30+ hours straight then sleep for 10-12 hours. Or I'll get in a cycle where I'm down for 3-4, up for 10-12. When I'm just chugging along, I'm usually up for 18-20 hours and sleep for 8-9 hours and I chase that around the solar cycle. Being able to go for months without setting an alarm and having electric lights and a DVR really let me step out of the traditional daily rhythm.
Tho I expect that I'll be negated by my current nomadic phase where I'm wandering around looking for a new place to settle down. If I want to explore a community, I can't really do that at 3am on a Thursday.
That reminds me of waaaaay back when I needed a backup solution that could handle a crap-ton of small files. The DOS and Win3.11 backup programs were limited to 65,536 files in a backup set. I asked a friend who worked for a backup company if they had anything that didn't suck. He said their new Win95 product could handle all of my files in a single backup set but, in a nutshell, it sucked. It would work but I'd be annoyed with it. Their OS/2 product was about to get a major upgrade and would be able to handle all the tiny files but it wasn't done yet. "I'll see what I can do."
A few days later, he handed me a floppy and said, "It compiled. Past that, you're on your own." Used that for a couple years until we upgraded to DAT and new software, also written by his company but an actual product this time licensed and everything.
On the one hand, RIP 'cause they're obsolete. On the other hand, there's a lot of obsolete stuff still in use that will be in use for a long time. The trick is getting those obsolete books to the people maintaining those obsolete systems. The chances of someone needing a 90s reference book that you have walking into your bookstore are pretty slim. Maybe you can list them on ebay.
You can have a refined, bug-free, well-performing PC release after the console versions are done, or you can have a crappy, poorly optimised version day-and-date with the console release, but you can't have both. Rockstar North favour the former.
How do you explain GTA4? It was delayed a year and performed like shit on PC when it was released. GTA was originally a PC game and they have been treating PC as a second class citizen lately.
No shit. Christ, what a steaming clusterfuck that was. It took me hours to get that game running. And I've been a PC gamer since the 80s so I've seen just about every poor design decision that's ever been made. First it took forever to load the data from the discs. Then I had to create two online gaming accounts (Live and Social Club, I think), then link them together. Then I could finally launch the game...and learn that I had to wait for a video driver update because nothing rendered right.
I guess it's a good thing they didn't release it with the console version. Probably would have molested my dog or something.
My first flat panel is actually a monitor. No tuner. It made sense because, by 2007, it wasn't like anyone tuned TV directly on their displays. They hooked up to a cable/satellite box or HD Tivo. I've never missed having a tuner on that panel.
Unfortunately, after years of double-duty as a computer monitor and TV, it started to suffer from image persistence. I moved it to video-only duty and it mostly cleared up but now it has a slight, curved shadow around the top edge like the outline of a curved CRT. When I finish my wanderings, I'll replace it. Probably with a big plasma if they still make them. Power consumption's really come down on those and the color can't be beat.
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Isn't this the plan where the store that sells the Kindle gets a cut of all purchases made thru said Kindle? So that kickback expires after two years. Sell them a new kindle and reset the kickback clock. There's always a new reader coming out with new features, more storage, better display, etc.
This reminds me of that thread a year or three back where it was pointed out that book publishers need to realize that they're in the business of selling content, not paper. Paper is a content delivery/storage/display method. Kindle is the new paper in this scenario.
Paper books had a pretty good run. Over 500 years by my math. Now the business model is changing. Bookstores can find a way to change with it or they can bleed money until they go bankrupt. Their stubbornness isn't going to change reality. If they want to keep selling paper, they need to shift their physical inventory to publications that can't easily make the transition to electronic distribution. Large format books with lots of pictures. Art, atlases, photos, etc. Take the leftover space and stock it with readers (only from companies that will give you a kickback) and accessories. Put in a coffee/tea counter, comfy chairs, fireplace, etc. Fast WiFi, charging stations for devices. Have "meet the author" nights and "get the most out of your reader" nights.
Now it all makes sense...
I prefer my HD games to be rendered at 1920x1080 rather than some sub-720 resolution and scaled up. Actually, I'm running three 2560x1440 monitors but that's even farther (further?) removed from what current consoles can do. And I like having a keyboard and mouse for the games that play better with them. Not having that support on the PS3 and XB360 is stupid.
Having played the Glorious PC Gaming Master Race card, I plan to pick up a PS4 when they hit the streets.
It's not the tablet that's the problem. It's RT. RT has no reason to exist. It doesn't fill a gap, it creates one.
Apple: Tablets and phones run the same software (with a small number of exceptions).
Android: Tablets and phones run the same software (with a small number of exceptions).
Microsoft: Surface Pro and Desktops run the same software (with a small number of exceptions). This is freaking awesome and isn't offered anywhere else.
Microsoft: Surface and...NOTHING run the same software (with a minuscule number of exceptions). This is freaking stupid and makes no sense at all.
I think you're confusing the Pro with the RT. The Pro and Pro 2 are no more "locked down" than a desktop running Windows because they're running the same OS.
The confusion and ire is understandable as the RT is a useless piece of shit. But they're two entirely different products.
So don't buy it. Sheesh. I don't see why luxury SUVs need to exist but I'm not offended by them. My solution is to not buy them.
That's what I came here to say. Why do people think that, once they start a business, they're never going to have another business related expense beyond the initial startup costs? Or they think that, once they get their degree, there will never be any need to add to their host of knowledge or invest another penny in ongoing training and education? "They didn't serve it up on a silver platter and I'm not gonna work to get it."
This is what separates people who run a speech therapy foundation from the speech therapist with a 200 square foot office in strip mall between the massage parlor and the liquor store.
That's the plan, son. That's the plan.
I thought they had trouble with face tracking but that would be the same base issue.
There have also been some digital cameras that have trouble detecting faces. The ones that do automatic metering, red-eye removal, and such. Same with photo editing software.
Two reasons. The obvious one is that a lot of employees will balk at wearing the device.
The slightly less obvious one is the state of HVAC systems in many office buildings. The last building I worked in was straight out of Brazil. I had a thermostat on my wall that controlled the AC for my corner of my floor. Not the heat, tho. Every fall, people would lean in my office and ask me to turn up the heat. I'd explain over and over that I can only make it colder. They're welcome to look at my thermostat's setting and see that it's at its highest setting and can't go any higher. (The saddest part was that it was the same people every year. Like they didn't remember the last 4 winters.) I suspect that the heater's thermostat for our part of the building was the one that had been in the old conference room that was turned into an archive room. I know it controlled the AC for that room (and the adjacent server room) but I don't know about heat...or where it got moved when that room was renovated but the server room AC still worked so it must have gone somewhere. Maybe it was tossed on top of the ceiling tiles.
Anyway, my office had an AC thermostat and 5 different vents. 2 heat vents, 2 AC vents, and 1 that seemed to do nothing. It neither sucked nor blew. 1 AC vent was always blowing unless the heat was on. The other responded to my thermostat and blew cold air even if the heat was on. When the heat was working, I got hot air out of both my heater vents. They didn't appear to operate independently. And, yes, there were days when I'd sic the AC on the heater because the floor was roasting and nobody knew where the heater's thermostat was.
This is what happens to buildings after a few decades of rotating tenants. Each new tenant remodels. Walls go up, walls come down, vents move, controls move. You'll have to clean up all that crap before you can shave 1 degree off the heat or AC. Of course, after you've done that, you'll be saving enough money that it's not worth the hassle of convincing people to wear a geek bracelet.
I had a Chromebook for about 3 days. Most of that time it was back in the box waiting for my next run to town to return it. I'd bought the Acer with a 320 gig hard drive expecting to either use it as a media player or torrent machine depending on which it did better. Neither. It can't access local network resources. And it couldn't handle any of my media files even tho they're h.264 and it's supposed to be able to play that format. So no media player. What about torrent clients? Nope. All I could find were remote control plugins to control clients running on other machines. When I complained about this on the official Chromebook forums I was told that it would be a lot of work to add local network support. Um...oooooookay. Oh, and, if I want to watch my local content, there are remote desktop solutions. I can just use those. Then W[hy]TF do I need the Chromebook?
I'm pretty Googleized with apps and drive and my android portables but the Chromebook was a real case of, "What the fuck is this shit???" I spent another $55 on a 'doze laptop and installed Chrome. Gives me all the Google integration I need without limiting what I can do with the platform.
Darn that lousy Tibor!
Here's a thought. TRY ONE! You don't see the use but you've never tried it so how the heck would you know if it works?
I tried it and guess what happened. The boot times on my computer dropped significantly. From several minutes to "end of churn" to around 30 seconds. My apps launch faster, game levels load faster (after the first load), and there's almost no churn during normal use. Works great for me on two laptops and a gaming computer. My gaming computer has an 8-port RAID controller built in and I was sorely tempted to put in 8 SSDs in RAID0 for ultimate performance. I can easily afford it. But the $140 hybrid drive was plenty fast. Dropping boot times from 30 seconds to 12 seconds isn't nearly as much of a boost as going from 220 seconds to 30 seconds. My game levels are already loading faster than the cut scenes. There's no practical benefit [for me] in having faster access times.
Your ideas of "simple drive management" are not simple. Most people wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about or how to go about accomplishing it. Hybrid drives are faster without the user having to understand the technical details of how to make it work. Not everyone wants to become a tech god and squeeze every possible bit of performance out of their system. Most people want to check a box on the order form and have it just work. "Add hybrid drive (faster performance): [X] - $39.00"
That's about the time I helped develop a "how to use the internet" class for my department at UCSB. In preparation, we rolled out a bunch of clients to our Mac workstations for usenet, gopher, talk, ftp, http (Mosaic, of course), etc. After the class, everyone went straight to Mosaic. I was pretty impressed that someone had found a bunch of Elvis sound clips and figured out how to play them within minutes. Then I was concerned for the amount of bandwidth they must have been sucking up. I believe our part of campus was sharing a T1 at the time...
I haven't worked in over two years so, when I don't have to be synced with other people, I go to sleep when I get tired and get up when I'm done sleeping. When I get going on an interesting project, I might chug away for 30+ hours straight then sleep for 10-12 hours. Or I'll get in a cycle where I'm down for 3-4, up for 10-12. When I'm just chugging along, I'm usually up for 18-20 hours and sleep for 8-9 hours and I chase that around the solar cycle. Being able to go for months without setting an alarm and having electric lights and a DVR really let me step out of the traditional daily rhythm.
Tho I expect that I'll be negated by my current nomadic phase where I'm wandering around looking for a new place to settle down. If I want to explore a community, I can't really do that at 3am on a Thursday.
Anyone stupid enough to text while driving has the kind of stupid that can't be fixed with a "zone".
That reminds me of waaaaay back when I needed a backup solution that could handle a crap-ton of small files. The DOS and Win3.11 backup programs were limited to 65,536 files in a backup set. I asked a friend who worked for a backup company if they had anything that didn't suck. He said their new Win95 product could handle all of my files in a single backup set but, in a nutshell, it sucked. It would work but I'd be annoyed with it. Their OS/2 product was about to get a major upgrade and would be able to handle all the tiny files but it wasn't done yet. "I'll see what I can do."
A few days later, he handed me a floppy and said, "It compiled. Past that, you're on your own." Used that for a couple years until we upgraded to DAT and new software, also written by his company but an actual product this time licensed and everything.
On the one hand, RIP 'cause they're obsolete. On the other hand, there's a lot of obsolete stuff still in use that will be in use for a long time. The trick is getting those obsolete books to the people maintaining those obsolete systems. The chances of someone needing a 90s reference book that you have walking into your bookstore are pretty slim. Maybe you can list them on ebay.
I don't think you can package a time machine in an apk.
He didn't say it was a good plan.
Lemme take another look.
You can have a refined, bug-free, well-performing PC release after the console versions are done, or you can have a crappy, poorly optimised version day-and-date with the console release, but you can't have both. Rockstar North favour the former.
How do you explain GTA4? It was delayed a year and performed like shit on PC when it was released. GTA was originally a PC game and they have been treating PC as a second class citizen lately.
No shit. Christ, what a steaming clusterfuck that was. It took me hours to get that game running. And I've been a PC gamer since the 80s so I've seen just about every poor design decision that's ever been made. First it took forever to load the data from the discs. Then I had to create two online gaming accounts (Live and Social Club, I think), then link them together. Then I could finally launch the game...and learn that I had to wait for a video driver update because nothing rendered right.
I guess it's a good thing they didn't release it with the console version. Probably would have molested my dog or something.
I was on Delphi in '85 using an Epson QX-10 and a Prometheus Promodem 1200. Connected thru the local Tymnet node.
My first flat panel is actually a monitor. No tuner. It made sense because, by 2007, it wasn't like anyone tuned TV directly on their displays. They hooked up to a cable/satellite box or HD Tivo. I've never missed having a tuner on that panel.
Unfortunately, after years of double-duty as a computer monitor and TV, it started to suffer from image persistence. I moved it to video-only duty and it mostly cleared up but now it has a slight, curved shadow around the top edge like the outline of a curved CRT. When I finish my wanderings, I'll replace it. Probably with a big plasma if they still make them. Power consumption's really come down on those and the color can't be beat.
So what happens to the environment when we extract all that energy?