The best C64 joystick that I ever used was the Epyx one. It was gripped perfectly to fit your hand, with the fire button being where your trigger finger was. Granted, it only worked if you held the unit in your left hand, but that wasn't a problem for me.
That joystick was pretty much indestructible, and Epyx put a five year warranty on it, they were that certain. I remember when I brought it over to my friends' place, they were amazed (this after having actually broken a couple of Boss sticks playing World Games). (Well, the sticks weren't physically broken, probably the switches inside needed to be bent a bit.)
From what I've gathered through Google, it was the Atari 7800 version that was impossible, due to some puzzle pieces that were hidden behind terminals (which can't be searched like the other items).
I can say that the Commodore 64 version didn't suffer from this (or if it did, it was rather sporadic) as I've beaten it over a dozen times. In an interview with Commodore magazine (I don't remember when, but it was quite some time ago), the developer of the game stated this his best time for beating the game was about 45 minutes (of real time, not game time).
My best time is somewhere around the 55 minute mark. Impossible Mission II on the other hand took me over six hours to beat, and I've only done it once. Seeing how difficult Impossible Mission II was, I'd hate to see what they would have done for Impossible Mission III...
The problem is that technology moves too quickly for it to get "NASA certified". When you send something up in space where making changes to it will be difficult, you need something that is known to be robust and reliable, that has several years of testing.
Last I read (maybe a year ago?), NASA still used 386 and 486 chips because they didn't generate a lot of heat (compared to todays machines) and could be made to withstand higher than normal forces (through extra padding on the device I imagine). They were more resiliant to the issues you might see in space than newer processors.
Simply put, if they put the latest CPU with tons of RAM in there, and it fails, how are they going to fix it?
Yes, and seeing as I'm currently working with embedded Linux, I can honestly say that it's a pain. (Note: I must preface this by saying that I am using Linux 2.4.18 for MIPS and my company is not using any sort of real-time extensions, just the bare 2.4.18 tree).
You get what you pay for... I've used VxWorks for a few years now, and while it does have it's share of problems, and while they are sometimes difficult to deal with, it is a great platform for development. You get much better control of the system as opposed to Linux (the main problem with using Linux in an embedded environment is the user to kernel relationship. It's solved neatly in vxWorks by getting rid of it (everything is in kernel space)). This works out very nicely for MIPS processors, which I deal with most of the time. Threading (or tasks as vxWorks has) is much better than Linux - you can at least somewhat guarantee when your tasks run, unlike with the default Linux scheduler.
I am very interested in trying QNX out, to see how it compares to vxWorks, one of these days.
If my mother could raise 3 kids alone on about $35k/yr and have us all grow up to be college educated productive members of society, I fail to see how 2 parents with a combined income that stretches well into the 6 figures cannot do it.
I know how they can fail to do it. Those parents making well into the six figures are never home with their children. They drop their kids off to daycare where somebody else spends time with the kids for up to 12 hours per day. They're too busy making the money that they don't have time to impart their values on the children.
What's wrong with it? I'll tell you what's wrong from my perspective.
I'm a geek. I like to tinker, but I still want a working computer where I can run an installation program, and everything is configured for me, ready to go. I don't want to have to manually grab all sorts of packages to make my machine usable.
My employer develops embedded software in Linux. My manager pays me to develop software, not install operating systems. We're a small company and don't have time to have somebody roll something out for the developers to use.
Since I'm the software developer most familiar with Linux, the questions come to me when something doesn't work. Because of this, I gave Fedora Core 3 a shot, and it seems that the other developers like it. We're now standardizing on it, because: 1. I can show somebody else how to start the installer, and they can figure it out on their own (assuming a new PC, no special partitioning) 2. It includes everything we need 3. Everything (mostly) has a consistent look and feel 4. It's easy to keep up date (once apt-get comes out for FC3, if it's not present already) 5. For the most part, it just works! (Lindows doesn't work well, despite it's claims, as one of the developers found out.)
It just has to work and install the software that we need to get our work done.
Yes, but it will also likely get you kicked off of XBox Live if you forget to disable the hack. Not a problem if you only want to use Linux or play non-Live games.
Also, some newer games apparently replace your Dashboard application if it detects an older version (to facilitate XBox Live play). So then you'd have to re-rent the game and redo the mod.
For me, a modchip gives me the piece of mind that should I decide to use XBox Live games, I don't have to worry.
My boss at work related to me how he once bought a hard drive at Fry's, and when he opened it, he found that the warranty card was already filled out. Having had problems with Fry's before, he decided to call the Better Business Bureau to report it.
He was told by them that they have so many complaints against Fry's (the number was in the thousands), and that they won't take any more complaints until they can actually make some progress on the existing ones.
One of the big problems at Fry's is that they will resell merchandise that was returned and previously opened. Most of the time they will test the item out and slap a sticker on it saying that it was a return, but there are many times (as my boss found out) where they don't. They'll just tape it up, or re-shrinkwrap it, and put it on the shelf.
Incidentally, they were having a sale on hard drives a few weeks ago, and I was looking at the Maxtors. The Maxtor drives have their logo printed on the shrinkwrapping (as they say on the box, to prevent counterfeiting, or something like that), yet I saw a Maxtor box on the shelf that had completely plain shrinkwrapping, and no sticker indicating that it had been opened.
Their employees are not very intelligent about the products that they sell, and they are definitely on commission. I once grabbed a $400 item off of the shelf, and I had a new "best buddy" in a sales associate who wanted to ring up my entire purchase before I got to the cash registers (so that it got credited to him).
It also really irritates me on how they insist on looking at your receipt and rifling through your bag when you leave. One time I just walked past the guy, and he was to the point of yelling after me (just, "Sir, sir!"), and following me for a few feet. Another customer asked me why I didn't stop for the Fry's employee, and I politely explained to him that they had no right inspect my bag, and he just didn't seem to care. But, anyway...
I live in the SF Bay Area, and I find myself going to Fry's less and less. There are other smaller stores that have some of the items I am looking for, and I will usually shop there first.
Highly unlikely. The capabilities of the drive (in terms of how fast it can write to media, and whether it can write to -R or +R) is determined by the actual hardware in the drive.
There have been some cases of some older LiteOn drives being upgraded to do dual-layer +R discs, but that's due to the way that LiteOn actually writes to them (or so the people in charge of the hacks say).
Plus, you bought a Pioneer drive... Pioneer is notorious for not releasing firmware upgrades to unlock new functionality. They'll update media tables, and their writing routines for better burns, but if you buy a single-layer drive (as an example), it will pretty much stay a single-layer drive.
Apparently there are lots of fake Taiyo Yuden discs circulating. They have the same media code (TYG02) as the real discs, but the discs are of inferior quality, and definitely not made by TY.
The same thing happened back when 2x drives were popular, there were some companies (mainly Princo) who used TDK's media code, so that they could trick the burners into burning the discs at 2x. The only problem is that most of these discs were awful even at 1x, and you'd wind up with coasters.
I recently ordered some inkjet-printable 8x Taiyo Yuden discs from rima.com, and my new Pioneer DVR-A08XL burns them at 12x (no hacks involved, Pioneer set them to burn at 12x in the default media table - I guess Pioneer feels that the media is that good, and TY paid their money). I ran them through Nero CD/DVD Speed and got a perfect speed line.
Also, it could be your drive, you didn't mention whether or not your TYs are +R or -R, but I've heard it said by quite a few people that the LiteOn drives tend to prefer +R media.
Maintaining a stable ABI is pretty darned difficult without proper planning. Typically two of the things that pose difficulty are function calls (the API), and the internal data structures (new variables added or removed, which breaks binary compatibility).
Say you have a function, foo, and it takes three integer arguments. So, here's your theoretical function:
int foo (int a, int b, int c) {
int d = 42; ... rest of foo... }
Now, say all of a sudden, you decide that the variable d in foo should be passed in (maybe d being 42 is correct for all but one variant of hardware device). At this point, you have two options: 1. Update function foo to include support for parameter d:
int foo (int a, int b, int c, int d) { ...code of foo... }
This breaks the binary compatibility (well, and source for that matter). Probably you'd see segmentation faults/invalid memory accesses, etc.
2. Create a new function (say, foo2) that includes support for d, and maintains backwards compatibility:
int foo2 (int a, int b, int c, int d) { ... code from function foo... }
Then, update foo as such:
int foo (int a, int b, int c) {
foo2(a, b, c, 42) }
Existing drivers don't see that foo has changed, and new drivers needing the extra parameter can use foo2. Binary (and source) compatibility is retained, but it becomes a major pain in the butt for the developers. Imagine several of these changes happening, and you (possibly) end up with foo2 through foo15.
Quite frankly, I can see why Linus doesn't want to do it, for both technical and the ideals behind it. Personally, I believe it's the ideals that he favors, rather than the technical side of it. That said, on the x86, maintaining this might not be so bad, but maybe on other platforms it is more difficult. Back when software was typically written in assembly (my favorite example that comes to mind is GEOS on the Commodore 64, it had a huge API, which retained backwards compatibility with older versions), not only did you have to make sure that the parameters passed in were the same (usually on the stack, or registers, or inline), but you also had to make sure that the entry-point addresses stayed the same too (most often accomplished via a jump table).
In fact, I have never heard of a dorm where RAs have keys to resident rooms.
Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The RAs have skeleton keys for every dorm building, which means that they can get into every dorm room. As part of the first dorm meeting, they explain this, and they also mention that they have the right to enter your room at any time if they suspect something is going on. However, they usually have the Campus Security with them when they do so.
It's nice for when you lock yourself out of your room, you can just grab your RA if he/she is on duty. If your RA isn't there, you can find any RA on duty (who is on rounds), and they'll let you into your room, provided that you can prove you live there.
I paid more than the $600 for my MythTV machine, but then again, I went pretty high end (dual PVR-250's, Athlon XP 2400+, fancy Antec Sonata case, etc.). It has more than paid for itself, in the ability to: 1. Skip commercials without hacking it. 2. Play my DVDs (my other DVD player is an XBox) 3. I can use a universal remote, so that I only have one remote - mind you, I think that even TiVo has some sort of universal remote control now 4. I can play games in MAME while recording TV shows 5. Weather forecasts 6. MP3 playback 7. And more...
My only concern is when my PVR-250 cards will be obsoleted due to mandatory HDTV broadcasts, and/or encryption.
(As a note to anybody else curious about the Zap2It data, it really only works in North America.)
Before MythTV 0.15 came out, the data from Zap2It was "scraped" by grabbing HTML pages from their website and ripping the data from there. It worked, but Zap2It constantly broke the scrapers.
With MythTV 0.15, it seems that Issac (the core developer of MythTV) and Zap2It have worked out an agreement, where MythTV users can subscribe to Zap2It's guide data for free. The catch though is that in order to continue receiving guide data, you must fill in a survey every few months. (In case you're wondering, the last survey I got was something like, "What program are you using with the Zap2It service", and "Enter any comments you have on our service").
The guide data is pretty good, and you get guide data for 12 days (that's what I seem to get). Of course, you do have to run a script every night (although MythTV 0.15 can supposedly do this for you, it doesn't seem to work for me, so I use an entry in my crontab).
I have noticed that MythTV, when retrieving data from Zap2It (at least on the old scraper) would actually grab data for every day (not just a one day increment), just in case there was a schedule change on a show.
If they are going to buy a set of products because they tightly interoperate, they are not going to care what the "standard" is.
No, but they will care if they receive complaints from customers who can't order products, or worse, those customers will go elsewhere.
Is that a function of coding or of the webserver? Couldn't I make perfect Mozilla/Opera/whatever rendable code with IIS?
Very true that this is a function of the website coding, not necessarily the software. But, if IIS offers the feature, and IE renders it, then most places don't seem to care about anything else.
IE IS a Windows specific application.
I realize that. What I was trying to say (and obviously not doing such a good job), is that if a company is using web-based services (assuming for the moment that they aren't locked in by any other Windows-only software), and those web-based services work perfectly fine in a non-IE browser, then why keep Windows and IE around?
If everyone stops using IE and moves to Mozilla/Opera/whatever, Microsoft's loss in revenue is exactly zero. Not true. A lot of companies are using the Microsoft server tools (like IIS, SQL Server, Windows Media Server) because they're designed to work with Internet Explorer (and vice-versa). If all of a sudden Mozilla/Opera/whatever had 97% of the browser market, then companies would have to stop serving up web pages that don't render properly in Mozilla/Opera/whatever. And if you're not serving up those pages, when it's time to upgrade your Windows server software, why upgrade? Why not just switch to other open source tools, like Apache?
Additionally, once everything standardizes on a platform-independant browser, like Mozilla, who needs Windows anymore? Okay, granted, a lot of software is still available for Windows, etc., etc., but perhaps for a company that doesn't need Windows-specific applications, they might switch. This scares Microsoft more than anything else.
If everyone abandons other browsers and uses IE exclusively, Microsoft's increase in revenue is exactly zero. Again, not true (in fact the opposite of what I state above). Since IE has a dominant portion of the browser market, companies are more willing to buy the Microsoft server tools, which brings in money for Microsoft. Also, this leads to client lock-in, since in order to view the Microsoft content, you need a Microsoft client.
I can't speak for how this would work over DSL, but I can tell you how this will work over cable modems. Note: I haven't read the PacketCable spec in a few weeks, so my memory might be a bit hazy.
If you happen to get a cable modem with an MTA (Multimedia Terminal Adapter) built-in (which would serve as your VoIP box), then your ISP will configure two streams for you, one for data, one for voice. (This is where using cable modems for VoIP is truly superior, I think, in that you have a dedicated stream that is prioritized, rather than trying to use the priority bits in the IP headers, which although I may be wrong, is how I understand that regular VoIP is done).
The dedicated stream for your voice goes through a centralized server, which if the police get a warrant, etc., will log every packet, as well as who the call was made to, and for how long. Clearly CableLabs was planning for this requirement even before it became official.
More information here (PDF file, PacketCable Electronic Surveillance Specification).
Well, you're right, the Prime Minister has typically been PC (Progressive Conservative) or Liberal - I did a quick check with the Parlimentary website, and it shows that the last non Liberal or Conservative PM was back in 1917 (Robert Borden of the Unionist party), although he was previously a conservative.
Still, at least the Canadian system does have the option of having a third party, should you choose to elect one (myself, back when I was living in Canada, I voted NDP, because that was the affiliation that my local member of Parliament had).
And that right there is the problem with the election system in the United States. If you want your vote to actually "count"[1], you need to vote for one of the two major candidates, otherwise you lose out.
In Canada, there are multiple parties, and as long as a party gets one seat, they get to influence how things run. It's not uncommon for a minority government (where the winning Prime Minister's party holds less than 51% of the seats) to be overruled by two (or more) smaller parties combining their votes on matters in Parliament.
-- Joe
[1] Yes, your vote does count if you vote for another party, but IIRC, if the party you vote for gets over 5% of the votes, they get advertising money for the next year, or something like that. My knowledge of U.S. elections is somewhat lacking, seeing as I'm not a citizen (although a resident), and can't legally vote anyway.
Actually, believe it or not, the U.S. is seemingly going metric.
The newest draft of the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices), and apparently the 2003 finalized version does mention metric units (as well as imperial), and has signs for kilometers per hour and meters.
The new sign for metric speeds is supposed to be white background, black numbers, with a red circle around the numbers to catch people's attention.
In some places in California, you can find distance signs to control cities that are both in metric and imperial (they list both kilometers and miles, most of the time with one or the other being wrong). These signs are being phased out, but as of earlier this year, I did see a couple of them on SR-1 around Big Sur, and U.S. 101 (but I can't remember where). This was from an experiment done in the 1970's (I think) to see if they could switch to metric.
I think that Linux could support "industry standards" if there were actually any. Granted, there are a few like VESA and AC '97, but even Creative makes cards that are incompatible with "Soundblaster compatible" cards (EMU10K1 (Live/Audigy 1), EMU10K2 (Audigy 2) and others like some newer Audigy cards are not compatible with the original SB16, for instance).
Blame the hardware manufacturers for not coming up with suitable standards, then when they do have standards, making half-assed buggy hardware that doesn't conform to the standard. Or, blame them for keeping the specs to themselves, and at the same time not making Linux drivers.
I really like Linux/FreeBSD, and I'm considering trying out FreeBSD 5.3 when it comes out, but while Windows has it's faults, at least there's drivers for lots of the hardware. Mind you, the only piece of hardware I have that isn't supported by Linux/FreeBSD is the Rage Theater 200 chip on my ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro, because I tend to do my research.
Dead or not, the Dreamcast is a full-featured system, with lots of potential for those who want to spend the time learning it.
Granted, somebody like me, who is employed full-time, and has very little time as it is, won't be spending too much time on it (I still have my Dreamcast, complete with broadband adaptor, keyboard and serial cable). But, for somebody who has some free time and wants to learn about the Dreamcast, there's a lot of knowledge that can be gained, and applied to other systems.
Never hurts to have it on the resume - as a matter of fact, I got my job interview at Sega in part due to the demos that I did on the Commodore 64 back in the early 1990's.
I would serve for jury duty, but unfortunately, because I'm not a citizen of the United States (I'm a resident alien), I'm ineligible to serve.
I was actually sent a summons for jury duty about a month ago, and I was prepared to go. However, since the notice did say that I had to excuse myself if I wasn't a citizen, well, that's what I did.
I think that if they didn't have this requirement they'd get quite a few more people of better than average intelligence (especially in California, where there's lots of legal aliens, like myself). They pull the records from the DMV, why not just have everybody who has a drivers' license eliglble?
As for the reason why the lawyers would remove the smarter people - well, it seems that the way that jury trials go now, there's more emphasis placed on emotion than logic. If the case tends to be weak, the attorneys need to add a bit of emotion to shock/enrage the jury.
Really, it doesn't matter what name you use, as long as it's all consistent.
My SSN card has Joe, my driver's license has Joe, and my credit cards say Joe. Nobody cares that my real name is Joseph (well, except for maybe the government of Canada, it says Joseph on my birth certificate).
Now, if I was to use Joseph for my SSN card, and Joe everywhere else, then I might run into problems.
As long as you're consistent, you'll have no problem, even if you have to go to the extent of getting a legal name change for it.
My personal thought on this is that I'd rather put Joe on legal documents than Joseph. I use the name Joe, I'd like to be identified as Joe. Heck, I can't even use Joseph in a signature anymore, it's been so long since I've used it.
Back in Canada, growing up, I could never decide which name I wanted to go by. My given name is Joseph, but when I was young, I'd sometimes go by Joey, sometimes Joseph. and finally I settled on Joe.
My Canadian Social Insurance Number card is issued under Joseph, but the rest of my ID and credit cards were issued under Joe. I've never run into any problems with this, but what really did bug me was that when I received notices from the government, and had to sign things, they usually preferred that I sign Joseph, rather than Joe.
Now, like I said, Joseph is my given name, but I just don't go with it. When I came to the U.S., I made sure that I applied for all documents in the name Joe. It's just easier to sign, and it's much easier to keep things straight. If I were to have to sign something as Joseph, I couldn't reproduce the same signature twice.
So, my suggestion is to just go with whatever feels comfortable. If you want Tim, go with Tim, but you should be consistent. If that involves a legal name change, go for that.
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The best C64 joystick that I ever used was the Epyx one. It was gripped perfectly to fit your hand, with the fire button being where your trigger finger was. Granted, it only worked if you held the unit in your left hand, but that wasn't a problem for me.
That joystick was pretty much indestructible, and Epyx put a five year warranty on it, they were that certain. I remember when I brought it over to my friends' place, they were amazed (this after having actually broken a couple of Boss sticks playing World Games). (Well, the sticks weren't physically broken, probably the switches inside needed to be bent a bit.)
-- Joe
From what I've gathered through Google, it was the Atari 7800 version that was impossible, due to some puzzle pieces that were hidden behind terminals (which can't be searched like the other items).
I can say that the Commodore 64 version didn't suffer from this (or if it did, it was rather sporadic) as I've beaten it over a dozen times. In an interview with Commodore magazine (I don't remember when, but it was quite some time ago), the developer of the game stated this his best time for beating the game was about 45 minutes (of real time, not game time).
My best time is somewhere around the 55 minute mark. Impossible Mission II on the other hand took me over six hours to beat, and I've only done it once. Seeing how difficult Impossible Mission II was, I'd hate to see what they would have done for Impossible Mission III...
-- Joe
The problem is that technology moves too quickly for it to get "NASA certified". When you send something up in space where making changes to it will be difficult, you need something that is known to be robust and reliable, that has several years of testing.
Last I read (maybe a year ago?), NASA still used 386 and 486 chips because they didn't generate a lot of heat (compared to todays machines) and could be made to withstand higher than normal forces (through extra padding on the device I imagine). They were more resiliant to the issues you might see in space than newer processors.
Simply put, if they put the latest CPU with tons of RAM in there, and it fails, how are they going to fix it?
-- Joe
Yes, and seeing as I'm currently working with embedded Linux, I can honestly say that it's a pain. (Note: I must preface this by saying that I am using Linux 2.4.18 for MIPS and my company is not using any sort of real-time extensions, just the bare 2.4.18 tree).
You get what you pay for... I've used VxWorks for a few years now, and while it does have it's share of problems, and while they are sometimes difficult to deal with, it is a great platform for development. You get much better control of the system as opposed to Linux (the main problem with using Linux in an embedded environment is the user to kernel relationship. It's solved neatly in vxWorks by getting rid of it (everything is in kernel space)). This works out very nicely for MIPS processors, which I deal with most of the time. Threading (or tasks as vxWorks has) is much better than Linux - you can at least somewhat guarantee when your tasks run, unlike with the default Linux scheduler.
I am very interested in trying QNX out, to see how it compares to vxWorks, one of these days.
-- Joe
If my mother could raise 3 kids alone on about $35k/yr and have us all grow up to be college educated productive members of society, I fail to see how 2 parents with a combined income that stretches well into the 6 figures cannot do it.
I know how they can fail to do it. Those parents making well into the six figures are never home with their children. They drop their kids off to daycare where somebody else spends time with the kids for up to 12 hours per day. They're too busy making the money that they don't have time to impart their values on the children.
-- Joe
What's wrong with it? I'll tell you what's wrong from my perspective.
I'm a geek. I like to tinker, but I still want a working computer where I can run an installation program, and everything is configured for me, ready to go. I don't want to have to manually grab all sorts of packages to make my machine usable.
My employer develops embedded software in Linux. My manager pays me to develop software, not install operating systems. We're a small company and don't have time to have somebody roll something out for the developers to use.
Since I'm the software developer most familiar with Linux, the questions come to me when something doesn't work. Because of this, I gave Fedora Core 3 a shot, and it seems that the other developers like it. We're now standardizing on it, because:
1. I can show somebody else how to start the installer, and they can figure it out on their own (assuming a new PC, no special partitioning)
2. It includes everything we need
3. Everything (mostly) has a consistent look and feel
4. It's easy to keep up date (once apt-get comes out for FC3, if it's not present already)
5. For the most part, it just works! (Lindows doesn't work well, despite it's claims, as one of the developers found out.)
It just has to work and install the software that we need to get our work done.
-- Joe
Yes, but it will also likely get you kicked off of XBox Live if you forget to disable the hack. Not a problem if you only want to use Linux or play non-Live games.
Also, some newer games apparently replace your Dashboard application if it detects an older version (to facilitate XBox Live play). So then you'd have to re-rent the game and redo the mod.
For me, a modchip gives me the piece of mind that should I decide to use XBox Live games, I don't have to worry.
-- Joe
My boss at work related to me how he once bought a hard drive at Fry's, and when he opened it, he found that the warranty card was already filled out. Having had problems with Fry's before, he decided to call the Better Business Bureau to report it.
He was told by them that they have so many complaints against Fry's (the number was in the thousands), and that they won't take any more complaints until they can actually make some progress on the existing ones.
One of the big problems at Fry's is that they will resell merchandise that was returned and previously opened. Most of the time they will test the item out and slap a sticker on it saying that it was a return, but there are many times (as my boss found out) where they don't. They'll just tape it up, or re-shrinkwrap it, and put it on the shelf.
Incidentally, they were having a sale on hard drives a few weeks ago, and I was looking at the Maxtors. The Maxtor drives have their logo printed on the shrinkwrapping (as they say on the box, to prevent counterfeiting, or something like that), yet I saw a Maxtor box on the shelf that had completely plain shrinkwrapping, and no sticker indicating that it had been opened.
Their employees are not very intelligent about the products that they sell, and they are definitely on commission. I once grabbed a $400 item off of the shelf, and I had a new "best buddy" in a sales associate who wanted to ring up my entire purchase before I got to the cash registers (so that it got credited to him).
It also really irritates me on how they insist on looking at your receipt and rifling through your bag when you leave. One time I just walked past the guy, and he was to the point of yelling after me (just, "Sir, sir!"), and following me for a few feet. Another customer asked me why I didn't stop for the Fry's employee, and I politely explained to him that they had no right inspect my bag, and he just didn't seem to care. But, anyway...
I live in the SF Bay Area, and I find myself going to Fry's less and less. There are other smaller stores that have some of the items I am looking for, and I will usually shop there first.
-- Joe
Highly unlikely. The capabilities of the drive (in terms of how fast it can write to media, and whether it can write to -R or +R) is determined by the actual hardware in the drive.
There have been some cases of some older LiteOn drives being upgraded to do dual-layer +R discs, but that's due to the way that LiteOn actually writes to them (or so the people in charge of the hacks say).
Plus, you bought a Pioneer drive... Pioneer is notorious for not releasing firmware upgrades to unlock new functionality. They'll update media tables, and their writing routines for better burns, but if you buy a single-layer drive (as an example), it will pretty much stay a single-layer drive.
-- Joe
You may have fake Taiyo Yuden media.
Apparently there are lots of fake Taiyo Yuden discs circulating. They have the same media code (TYG02) as the real discs, but the discs are of inferior quality, and definitely not made by TY.
The same thing happened back when 2x drives were popular, there were some companies (mainly Princo) who used TDK's media code, so that they could trick the burners into burning the discs at 2x. The only problem is that most of these discs were awful even at 1x, and you'd wind up with coasters.
I recently ordered some inkjet-printable 8x Taiyo Yuden discs from rima.com, and my new Pioneer DVR-A08XL burns them at 12x (no hacks involved, Pioneer set them to burn at 12x in the default media table - I guess Pioneer feels that the media is that good, and TY paid their money). I ran them through Nero CD/DVD Speed and got a perfect speed line.
Also, it could be your drive, you didn't mention whether or not your TYs are +R or -R, but I've heard it said by quite a few people that the LiteOn drives tend to prefer +R media.
-- Joe
Say you have a function, foo, and it takes three integer arguments. So, here's your theoretical function:Now, say all of a sudden, you decide that the variable d in foo should be passed in (maybe d being 42 is correct for all but one variant of hardware device). At this point, you have two options:
1. Update function foo to include support for parameter d:This breaks the binary compatibility (well, and source for that matter). Probably you'd see segmentation faults/invalid memory accesses, etc.
2. Create a new function (say, foo2) that includes support for d, and maintains backwards compatibility:Then, update foo as such:Existing drivers don't see that foo has changed, and new drivers needing the extra parameter can use foo2. Binary (and source) compatibility is retained, but it becomes a major pain in the butt for the developers. Imagine several of these changes happening, and you (possibly) end up with foo2 through foo15.
Quite frankly, I can see why Linus doesn't want to do it, for both technical and the ideals behind it. Personally, I believe it's the ideals that he favors, rather than the technical side of it. That said, on the x86, maintaining this might not be so bad, but maybe on other platforms it is more difficult. Back when software was typically written in assembly (my favorite example that comes to mind is GEOS on the Commodore 64, it had a huge API, which retained backwards compatibility with older versions), not only did you have to make sure that the parameters passed in were the same (usually on the stack, or registers, or inline), but you also had to make sure that the entry-point addresses stayed the same too (most often accomplished via a jump table).
-- Joe
In fact, I have never heard of a dorm where RAs have keys to resident rooms.
Lakehead University, in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. The RAs have skeleton keys for every dorm building, which means that they can get into every dorm room. As part of the first dorm meeting, they explain this, and they also mention that they have the right to enter your room at any time if they suspect something is going on. However, they usually have the Campus Security with them when they do so.
It's nice for when you lock yourself out of your room, you can just grab your RA if he/she is on duty. If your RA isn't there, you can find any RA on duty (who is on rounds), and they'll let you into your room, provided that you can prove you live there.
-- Joe
Heck yes!
I paid more than the $600 for my MythTV machine, but then again, I went pretty high end (dual PVR-250's, Athlon XP 2400+, fancy Antec Sonata case, etc.). It has more than paid for itself, in the ability to:
1. Skip commercials without hacking it.
2. Play my DVDs (my other DVD player is an XBox)
3. I can use a universal remote, so that I only have one remote - mind you, I think that even TiVo has some sort of universal remote control now
4. I can play games in MAME while recording TV shows
5. Weather forecasts
6. MP3 playback
7. And more...
My only concern is when my PVR-250 cards will be obsoleted due to mandatory HDTV broadcasts, and/or encryption.
-- Joe
(As a note to anybody else curious about the Zap2It data, it really only works in North America.)
Before MythTV 0.15 came out, the data from Zap2It was "scraped" by grabbing HTML pages from their website and ripping the data from there. It worked, but Zap2It constantly broke the scrapers.
With MythTV 0.15, it seems that Issac (the core developer of MythTV) and Zap2It have worked out an agreement, where MythTV users can subscribe to Zap2It's guide data for free. The catch though is that in order to continue receiving guide data, you must fill in a survey every few months. (In case you're wondering, the last survey I got was something like, "What program are you using with the Zap2It service", and "Enter any comments you have on our service").
The guide data is pretty good, and you get guide data for 12 days (that's what I seem to get). Of course, you do have to run a script every night (although MythTV 0.15 can supposedly do this for you, it doesn't seem to work for me, so I use an entry in my crontab).
I have noticed that MythTV, when retrieving data from Zap2It (at least on the old scraper) would actually grab data for every day (not just a one day increment), just in case there was a schedule change on a show.
-- Joe
If they are going to buy a set of products because they tightly interoperate, they are not going to care what the "standard" is.
No, but they will care if they receive complaints from customers who can't order products, or worse, those customers will go elsewhere.
Is that a function of coding or of the webserver? Couldn't I make perfect Mozilla/Opera/whatever rendable code with IIS?
Very true that this is a function of the website coding, not necessarily the software. But, if IIS offers the feature, and IE renders it, then most places don't seem to care about anything else.
IE IS a Windows specific application.
I realize that. What I was trying to say (and obviously not doing such a good job), is that if a company is using web-based services (assuming for the moment that they aren't locked in by any other Windows-only software), and those web-based services work perfectly fine in a non-IE browser, then why keep Windows and IE around?
If everyone stops using IE and moves to Mozilla/Opera/whatever, Microsoft's loss in revenue is exactly zero.
Not true. A lot of companies are using the Microsoft server tools (like IIS, SQL Server, Windows Media Server) because they're designed to work with Internet Explorer (and vice-versa). If all of a sudden Mozilla/Opera/whatever had 97% of the browser market, then companies would have to stop serving up web pages that don't render properly in Mozilla/Opera/whatever. And if you're not serving up those pages, when it's time to upgrade your Windows server software, why upgrade? Why not just switch to other open source tools, like Apache?
Additionally, once everything standardizes on a platform-independant browser, like Mozilla, who needs Windows anymore? Okay, granted, a lot of software is still available for Windows, etc., etc., but perhaps for a company that doesn't need Windows-specific applications, they might switch. This scares Microsoft more than anything else.
If everyone abandons other browsers and uses IE exclusively, Microsoft's increase in revenue is exactly zero.
Again, not true (in fact the opposite of what I state above). Since IE has a dominant portion of the browser market, companies are more willing to buy the Microsoft server tools, which brings in money for Microsoft. Also, this leads to client lock-in, since in order to view the Microsoft content, you need a Microsoft client.
-- Joe
I can't speak for how this would work over DSL, but I can tell you how this will work over cable modems. Note: I haven't read the PacketCable spec in a few weeks, so my memory might be a bit hazy.
If you happen to get a cable modem with an MTA (Multimedia Terminal Adapter) built-in (which would serve as your VoIP box), then your ISP will configure two streams for you, one for data, one for voice. (This is where using cable modems for VoIP is truly superior, I think, in that you have a dedicated stream that is prioritized, rather than trying to use the priority bits in the IP headers, which although I may be wrong, is how I understand that regular VoIP is done).
The dedicated stream for your voice goes through a centralized server, which if the police get a warrant, etc., will log every packet, as well as who the call was made to, and for how long. Clearly CableLabs was planning for this requirement even before it became official.
More information here (PDF file, PacketCable Electronic Surveillance Specification).
-- Joe
Well, you're right, the Prime Minister has typically been PC (Progressive Conservative) or Liberal - I did a quick check with the Parlimentary website, and it shows that the last non Liberal or Conservative PM was back in 1917 (Robert Borden of the Unionist party), although he was previously a conservative.
Still, at least the Canadian system does have the option of having a third party, should you choose to elect one (myself, back when I was living in Canada, I voted NDP, because that was the affiliation that my local member of Parliament had).
-- Joe
And that right there is the problem with the election system in the United States. If you want your vote to actually "count"[1], you need to vote for one of the two major candidates, otherwise you lose out.
In Canada, there are multiple parties, and as long as a party gets one seat, they get to influence how things run. It's not uncommon for a minority government (where the winning Prime Minister's party holds less than 51% of the seats) to be overruled by two (or more) smaller parties combining their votes on matters in Parliament.
-- Joe
[1] Yes, your vote does count if you vote for another party, but IIRC, if the party you vote for gets over 5% of the votes, they get advertising money for the next year, or something like that. My knowledge of U.S. elections is somewhat lacking, seeing as I'm not a citizen (although a resident), and can't legally vote anyway.
Actually, believe it or not, the U.S. is seemingly going metric.
The newest draft of the MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices), and apparently the 2003 finalized version does mention metric units (as well as imperial), and has signs for kilometers per hour and meters.
The new sign for metric speeds is supposed to be white background, black numbers, with a red circle around the numbers to catch people's attention.
In some places in California, you can find distance signs to control cities that are both in metric and imperial (they list both kilometers and miles, most of the time with one or the other being wrong). These signs are being phased out, but as of earlier this year, I did see a couple of them on SR-1 around Big Sur, and U.S. 101 (but I can't remember where). This was from an experiment done in the 1970's (I think) to see if they could switch to metric.
-- Joe
I think that Linux could support "industry standards" if there were actually any. Granted, there are a few like VESA and AC '97, but even Creative makes cards that are incompatible with "Soundblaster compatible" cards (EMU10K1 (Live/Audigy 1), EMU10K2 (Audigy 2) and others like some newer Audigy cards are not compatible with the original SB16, for instance).
Blame the hardware manufacturers for not coming up with suitable standards, then when they do have standards, making half-assed buggy hardware that doesn't conform to the standard. Or, blame them for keeping the specs to themselves, and at the same time not making Linux drivers.
I really like Linux/FreeBSD, and I'm considering trying out FreeBSD 5.3 when it comes out, but while Windows has it's faults, at least there's drivers for lots of the hardware. Mind you, the only piece of hardware I have that isn't supported by Linux/FreeBSD is the Rage Theater 200 chip on my ATI All-In-Wonder 9700 Pro, because I tend to do my research.
-- Joe
Dead or not, the Dreamcast is a full-featured system, with lots of potential for those who want to spend the time learning it.
Granted, somebody like me, who is employed full-time, and has very little time as it is, won't be spending too much time on it (I still have my Dreamcast, complete with broadband adaptor, keyboard and serial cable). But, for somebody who has some free time and wants to learn about the Dreamcast, there's a lot of knowledge that can be gained, and applied to other systems.
Never hurts to have it on the resume - as a matter of fact, I got my job interview at Sega in part due to the demos that I did on the Commodore 64 back in the early 1990's.
-- Joe
I would serve for jury duty, but unfortunately, because I'm not a citizen of the United States (I'm a resident alien), I'm ineligible to serve.
I was actually sent a summons for jury duty about a month ago, and I was prepared to go. However, since the notice did say that I had to excuse myself if I wasn't a citizen, well, that's what I did.
I think that if they didn't have this requirement they'd get quite a few more people of better than average intelligence (especially in California, where there's lots of legal aliens, like myself). They pull the records from the DMV, why not just have everybody who has a drivers' license eliglble?
As for the reason why the lawyers would remove the smarter people - well, it seems that the way that jury trials go now, there's more emphasis placed on emotion than logic. If the case tends to be weak, the attorneys need to add a bit of emotion to shock/enrage the jury.
-- Joe
Really, it doesn't matter what name you use, as long as it's all consistent.
My SSN card has Joe, my driver's license has Joe, and my credit cards say Joe. Nobody cares that my real name is Joseph (well, except for maybe the government of Canada, it says Joseph on my birth certificate).
Now, if I was to use Joseph for my SSN card, and Joe everywhere else, then I might run into problems.
As long as you're consistent, you'll have no problem, even if you have to go to the extent of getting a legal name change for it.
My personal thought on this is that I'd rather put Joe on legal documents than Joseph. I use the name Joe, I'd like to be identified as Joe. Heck, I can't even use Joseph in a signature anymore, it's been so long since I've used it.
-- Joe
Back in Canada, growing up, I could never decide which name I wanted to go by. My given name is Joseph, but when I was young, I'd sometimes go by Joey, sometimes Joseph. and finally I settled on Joe.
My Canadian Social Insurance Number card is issued under Joseph, but the rest of my ID and credit cards were issued under Joe. I've never run into any problems with this, but what really did bug me was that when I received notices from the government, and had to sign things, they usually preferred that I sign Joseph, rather than Joe.
Now, like I said, Joseph is my given name, but I just don't go with it. When I came to the U.S., I made sure that I applied for all documents in the name Joe. It's just easier to sign, and it's much easier to keep things straight. If I were to have to sign something as Joseph, I couldn't reproduce the same signature twice.
So, my suggestion is to just go with whatever feels comfortable. If you want Tim, go with Tim, but you should be consistent. If that involves a legal name change, go for that.
- Joe