But Microsoft would be better served PR wise by investing the money in their home country.
Besides that, I don't look at MS spending 750 Mil over three years as actually spending money. 750M / 3 = 250 M / yr. For a company that has over $40 in cash and add about $1 Billion / month that isn't a very huge donation. They make that back on 1% annual interest rates. MS probably gets, overall on their cash something more along the lines of a 4 or 5% benefit. That's $1.6 - $2 Billion per year in interest.
$250 Mil isn't insignificant, but this is like piss in the ocean to MS. And, again, if they had donated that to US schools or to American industry, but particularly schools, then they would get a huge PR boost here. We'll see how China's Empire responds to Microsoft's empire, I suppose. Should be interesting.
Well, that's only operating on the Heisenbug principle.
My favorite bugs aren't exactly reproducable ones. I favor Schrodinger's Bugs. When it comes down to it, it says that if you haven't seen the code, every line contains neither working code nor bugged code. Only when it's seen is the result known. Programs complied from such code are often called Beta tests.
> It states that a person is guilty of an offence if they cause, or intend to cause, 'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'"
If they changed the wording just a little bit it would make Spammers face charges.
Of course, the whole impairment bit would make Microsoft criminals too. You know, I mean more so. Actually, isn't Windows XP designed to impair system preformance, forcing a hardware upgrade? Hmmmm....
I know that HP owns Compaq, but you'd think that they would at least put the HP label on the old Compaq line. More to the point, get the Compaq label off if you're going to call it an HP device.
Of course, they could just use their new stock symbol. Though, come to think of it that would just look wierd.
The thought that I honestly had was one of when walking around the office, city, home, etc.
I know I'm not the absolute most coordinated person in the world, but if I'm walking around somewhere, I generally don't have my palmtop out. I had the image of the Palm being charged while moving back and forth inside a pocket. I know it doesn't move as much as a watch (BTW, the standard self-winding and kinetic watches are what made me think of this whole idea) but what I'm thinking of is the amount and force of the movement.
Sure, the watch may move 2 feet back and forth compared to the 3-6 inches a Palm would move in a pocket, but when you consider the weight of a palm, 6-8 oz., it might just take in some of a charge.
Also, consider people who use their palms and carry them in purses/bags/briefcases. They move a lot, relatively speaking.
I think that, for some people, it would work fairly well. The biggest issue would be cost and size. I know that since they have the devices in watches they aren't that large, but I don't know how that would scale up. I also don't have any idea how much they would cost to add in, or even what the potential gain would be.
Would a 25% gain in battery life, which is just a guesstimate, be worth it to anyone here if you have to pay 10-20% more, but could count on an extra few hours life for an Ipaq, or having to buy or charge batteries a week later for lower end Palms? I certainly wouldn't mind a few extra hours of life on mine, but I don't know if it would be worth $20-100, based on individual machines.
Palm systems are curently on top. They may only be B&W, but they get great battery life and do what most users need. Once you start entering the realm of music, that can be scaled over to an MP3 player instead of a Palm device.
However, once you start deciding to run higher end applications, give the machines net connects, etc. everything gets more complicated. Full color, integrated (or even unintegrated) 802.11b, sound and so on all drain batteries at an increased rate. My keyboard for my palmtop drains when it's plugged in, which is, obviously, why it's not plugged in all the time.
Battery life and functionality are both the keys. Is there a potential way to implement a self charging feature? Maybe harness the kinetic energy of movement to assist in charging the device? Most people with handhelds carry them everywhere. It wouldn't work well with high drain / low charge devices, like the Ipaq, Jornada, etc. which have charges of under 10 hours (at best) but maybe a system like this could achieve a few days or a week in a low drain device like a Palm m100.
I have no idea. Just a decidedly random thought that I had. Later.
> That's right, if every PC came with a couple front-mounted PCMCIA slots, we would have the PERFECT solution. You could boot off of flash cards with capacities from 4MB-2GB... At about $0.50/MB. They're cheap enough to hand around, and, unlike floppies or CDs, no matter how big of a file you want to hold, you can get a card with the exact capacity.
That's your innate flaw of using PCMCIA Flash. Real hard drives, even USB2/Firewire adapted, cost at most (and this is high) $4 / GB. Blank CDs cost, what, nothing per CD? I wait for deals and only pay tax (and get a rebate for the actual price) anymore.
Zip offers a cheaper alternative for high storage. At around $.05-$.10 / MB for a disk ( = $5-$10, 100MB) for a (usually) bootable disk high realtively high read/write storage.
The problem with your argument comes with the very high price. Now, for a 4MB flash card, $2 is just fine. But they'd never get away with $50 for the equivalent of a Zip disk in size, much less the $1000 it would cost for a 2GB card. I can get a 180GB SCSI hard drive for that cost.
I'm not saying I wouldn't want to use PCMCIA for lots of things, but with it's current cost it really is not feasble.
>>Microsoft, for example, has got itself on a treadmill, because it has to come out with a new version, regardless of worth, every several years. This has irritated me so much that I hope they trip on the treadmill, fall, and do serious damage to themselves.
Didn't they already trip and crack their heads on something? I thought that was where Windows ME came from.
One question though...
on
Windependence Day
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If Indenpendence Day is ID4.... Does that make Windependence Day WD-40?
> Any successful PC game these days, except for a few extremely successful franchises, either is ported from a console, or is ported to a console immediately.
A point of order: very, very few successful PC games are ported from console. If companies could understand the concept of making good ports it would be much different. Most ports from console suck. The games that tend to be successful on multiple platforms are usually designed from the ground with each platform in mind.
Also, there aren't a huge number of ports from PC to console. Sure, there are a few. But the best games (Baldur's Gate II, Counter Strike, Warcraft III, NWN, etc.) are unique to the PC or the console (Halo, Smash Brothers, etc.). Not only that, forget the multiplay styles. PC: Online multiplay only, console: Sit in the same room.
Maybe what you're talking about could happen. Could. Won't. A high end PC will always kick a console's tail. A console, OTOH, will likely always be much cheaper. They are two seperate worlds. They're happy together and neither is going anywhere.
If the details are accurate, this could beat out the GeForce4 and bring Matrox back into the gaming market. Unlike the 550. Decent card, but 0 gaming potential.
I was extremely sad when I heard of the great man's death, and still am. I read the complete Hitchhiker's Trilogy in a week. I don't know what else I did, if I went to classes or anything. All I remember was enjoying every moment of reading. I will be looking forward to this documentary, and to reading A Salmon of Doubt when classes are finals are finally finished.
I do find it fitting that they replaced "Everything" with "Douglas Adams" for the documentary title. He and his works did mean a lot to many, many people.
With everything we've seen done in history, the statement "Why HAL will never exist" has to be one of the most asinine things ever said.
We've put a man on the moon, split the atom, discovered the building blocks of life, cloned life, and created a globe spanning network of information. A hundred years before each of these discoveries were made, people could only imagine such things, and they were really considered Science Fiction.
Science Fiction has proven many times to be prophecy. Artificial Intelligence is hard SF. It has basis in the real world. I may come to pass. It may not, as well. But to say we will never be able to create "HAL" is ridiculous. It may be 100 years, and "never in our lifetimes" may be accurate. But it may happen. Never rule our science.
Anyway, the article doesn't focus on the CG/non-CG aspects of it. It's more of an interview with a guy who made an, apparently, good and popular live action movie ten years ago.
It's not that he wouldn't support a good CG movie, it just that he doesn't think this movie will be all that good. It deviates from the standards set in the comic book. It focuses more on Poole as a purist, and someone who really honors and respects Spider-Man's long and impressive history.
As we've seen, however, this means nothing. Lots of superhero movies and TV shows go against their comic's grain. Superman was a much more serious comic (in the past 10-20 years) than the good-for-a-season Lois and Clark. X-Men didn't stick true to everything in the comic, but it was still a good movie, with memorable lines like "What else would we wear? Yellow spandex?" (Wolverine).
In fact, some of the better movies and series don't succeed. Same goes for comics. I, personally, thought that the Flash TV series was very good. It didn't deal with many very serious issues, but it was a dark and serious show, in many cases darker than the comic.
When you translate something from the little pages to the big screen, you have to expcet things to get changed or cut. It sucks that they do it, but they often don't have the time/resources/etc.. I don't like that they do it either. It doen't mean we can't enjoy the new story though.
Think about Lord of the Rings. Honestly, it was an amazing film (and Oscar Nominee), but a lot was left out from the books. Some of the things in were changed. Like, say, 17 years that instead take, what, a few weeks, months maybe in the movie? It doesn't hurt to hear what someone else thinks of a story.
Before any of you read the story, how many knew that Spidey, in the comic, made the web-shooters, and that they weren't standard with the spiderbite? I'd guess that it was about even. The only reason I knew is because they mentioned it in the old Spider-Man cartoon show.
Don't even bother with the EULAs. Get a young person ( < 18 ) to install all your software for you. You don't agree to the EULA, and they can't be legally bound. Everybody wins!
Slashdot Mirror
The top down view reminds me A LOT of a stealh bomber.
"We've dropped off the passengers in France, now to drop off our 'packages' in northern Afganistan."
But Microsoft would be better served PR wise by investing the money in their home country.
Besides that, I don't look at MS spending 750 Mil over three years as actually spending money. 750M / 3 = 250 M / yr. For a company that has over $40 in cash and add about $1 Billion / month that isn't a very huge donation. They make that back on 1% annual interest rates. MS probably gets, overall on their cash something more along the lines of a 4 or 5% benefit. That's $1.6 - $2 Billion per year in interest.
$250 Mil isn't insignificant, but this is like piss in the ocean to MS. And, again, if they had donated that to US schools or to American industry, but particularly schools, then they would get a huge PR boost here. We'll see how China's Empire responds to Microsoft's empire, I suppose. Should be interesting.
Well, that's only operating on the Heisenbug principle.
My favorite bugs aren't exactly reproducable ones. I favor Schrodinger's Bugs. When it comes down to it, it says that if you haven't seen the code, every line contains neither working code nor bugged code. Only when it's seen is the result known. Programs complied from such code are often called Beta tests.
> It states that a person is guilty of an offence if they cause, or intend to cause, 'degradation, failure or other impairment of function of a computerised system.'"
If they changed the wording just a little bit it would make Spammers face charges.
Of course, the whole impairment bit would make Microsoft criminals too. You know, I mean more so. Actually, isn't Windows XP designed to impair system preformance, forcing a hardware upgrade? Hmmmm....
Later.
And, what, $59 billion in sloppy code is from Microsoft?
I know that HP owns Compaq, but you'd think that they would at least put the HP label on the old Compaq line. More to the point, get the Compaq label off if you're going to call it an HP device.
Of course, they could just use their new stock symbol. Though, come to think of it that would just look wierd.
HPQ IPAQ
There just aren't enough vowels in there.
The thought that I honestly had was one of when walking around the office, city, home, etc.
I know I'm not the absolute most coordinated person in the world, but if I'm walking around somewhere, I generally don't have my palmtop out. I had the image of the Palm being charged while moving back and forth inside a pocket. I know it doesn't move as much as a watch (BTW, the standard self-winding and kinetic watches are what made me think of this whole idea) but what I'm thinking of is the amount and force of the movement.
Sure, the watch may move 2 feet back and forth compared to the 3-6 inches a Palm would move in a pocket, but when you consider the weight of a palm, 6-8 oz., it might just take in some of a charge.
Also, consider people who use their palms and carry them in purses/bags/briefcases. They move a lot, relatively speaking.
I think that, for some people, it would work fairly well. The biggest issue would be cost and size. I know that since they have the devices in watches they aren't that large, but I don't know how that would scale up. I also don't have any idea how much they would cost to add in, or even what the potential gain would be.
Would a 25% gain in battery life, which is just a guesstimate, be worth it to anyone here if you have to pay 10-20% more, but could count on an extra few hours life for an Ipaq, or having to buy or charge batteries a week later for lower end Palms? I certainly wouldn't mind a few extra hours of life on mine, but I don't know if it would be worth $20-100, based on individual machines.
Later.
Palm systems are curently on top. They may only be B&W, but they get great battery life and do what most users need. Once you start entering the realm of music, that can be scaled over to an MP3 player instead of a Palm device.
However, once you start deciding to run higher end applications, give the machines net connects, etc. everything gets more complicated. Full color, integrated (or even unintegrated) 802.11b, sound and so on all drain batteries at an increased rate. My keyboard for my palmtop drains when it's plugged in, which is, obviously, why it's not plugged in all the time.
Battery life and functionality are both the keys. Is there a potential way to implement a self charging feature? Maybe harness the kinetic energy of movement to assist in charging the device? Most people with handhelds carry them everywhere. It wouldn't work well with high drain / low charge devices, like the Ipaq, Jornada, etc. which have charges of under 10 hours (at best) but maybe a system like this could achieve a few days or a week in a low drain device like a Palm m100.
I have no idea. Just a decidedly random thought that I had. Later.
Unidentified Flying Udders?
And from the sky shall rain forth the sheep or cows.
>better referred to as an inland sea like the Great Lakes
I'm not even going to comment on this.
Damn! I'm fine with my local, but I really want to sue Verizon.
Not for their service or anything like that. I just hate the "Can you hear me now? Good," guy.
> That's right, if every PC came with a couple front-mounted PCMCIA slots, we would have the PERFECT solution. You could boot off of flash cards with capacities from 4MB-2GB... At about $0.50/MB. They're cheap enough to hand around, and, unlike floppies or CDs, no matter how big of a file you want to hold, you can get a card with the exact capacity.
That's your innate flaw of using PCMCIA Flash. Real hard drives, even USB2/Firewire adapted, cost at most (and this is high) $4 / GB. Blank CDs cost, what, nothing per CD? I wait for deals and only pay tax (and get a rebate for the actual price) anymore.
Zip offers a cheaper alternative for high storage. At around $.05-$.10 / MB for a disk ( = $5-$10, 100MB) for a (usually) bootable disk high realtively high read/write storage.
The problem with your argument comes with the very high price. Now, for a 4MB flash card, $2 is just fine. But they'd never get away with $50 for the equivalent of a Zip disk in size, much less the $1000 it would cost for a 2GB card. I can get a 180GB SCSI hard drive for that cost.
I'm not saying I wouldn't want to use PCMCIA for lots of things, but with it's current cost it really is not feasble.
>>Microsoft, for example, has got itself on a treadmill, because it has to come out with a new version, regardless of worth, every several years. This has irritated me so much that I hope they trip on the treadmill, fall, and do serious damage to themselves.
Didn't they already trip and crack their heads on something? I thought that was where Windows ME came from.
If Indenpendence Day is ID4....
Does that make Windependence Day WD-40?
> Any successful PC game these days, except for a few extremely successful franchises, either is ported from a console, or is ported to a console immediately.
A point of order: very, very few successful PC games are ported from console. If companies could understand the concept of making good ports it would be much different. Most ports from console suck. The games that tend to be successful on multiple platforms are usually designed from the ground with each platform in mind.
Also, there aren't a huge number of ports from PC to console. Sure, there are a few. But the best games (Baldur's Gate II, Counter Strike, Warcraft III, NWN, etc.) are unique to the PC or the console (Halo, Smash Brothers, etc.). Not only that, forget the multiplay styles. PC: Online multiplay only, console: Sit in the same room.
Maybe what you're talking about could happen. Could. Won't. A high end PC will always kick a console's tail. A console, OTOH, will likely always be much cheaper. They are two seperate worlds. They're happy together and neither is going anywhere.
No, it's much better than Shatner. Anything's better than Shatner.
Link
If the details are accurate, this could beat out the GeForce4 and bring Matrox back into the gaming market. Unlike the 550. Decent card, but 0 gaming potential.
The_Shadows, out.
Forty-second post!
I was extremely sad when I heard of the great man's death, and still am. I read the complete Hitchhiker's Trilogy in a week. I don't know what else I did, if I went to classes or anything. All I remember was enjoying every moment of reading. I will be looking forward to this documentary, and to reading A Salmon of Doubt when classes are finals are finally finished.
I do find it fitting that they replaced "Everything" with "Douglas Adams" for the documentary title. He and his works did mean a lot to many, many people.
The_ShadowsLTH, out.
With everything we've seen done in history, the statement "Why HAL will never exist" has to be one of the most asinine things ever said.
We've put a man on the moon, split the atom, discovered the building blocks of life, cloned life, and created a globe spanning network of information. A hundred years before each of these discoveries were made, people could only imagine such things, and they were really considered Science Fiction.
Science Fiction has proven many times to be prophecy. Artificial Intelligence is hard SF. It has basis in the real world. I may come to pass. It may not, as well. But to say we will never be able to create "HAL" is ridiculous. It may be 100 years, and "never in our lifetimes" may be accurate. But it may happen. Never rule our science.
I'm done.
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
Never happened before, huh?
Anyway, the article doesn't focus on the CG/non-CG aspects of it. It's more of an interview with a guy who made an, apparently, good and popular live action movie ten years ago.
It's not that he wouldn't support a good CG movie, it just that he doesn't think this movie will be all that good. It deviates from the standards set in the comic book. It focuses more on Poole as a purist, and someone who really honors and respects Spider-Man's long and impressive history.
As we've seen, however, this means nothing. Lots of superhero movies and TV shows go against their comic's grain. Superman was a much more serious comic (in the past 10-20 years) than the good-for-a-season Lois and Clark. X-Men didn't stick true to everything in the comic, but it was still a good movie, with memorable lines like "What else would we wear? Yellow spandex?" (Wolverine).
In fact, some of the better movies and series don't succeed. Same goes for comics. I, personally, thought that the Flash TV series was very good. It didn't deal with many very serious issues, but it was a dark and serious show, in many cases darker than the comic.
When you translate something from the little pages to the big screen, you have to expcet things to get changed or cut. It sucks that they do it, but they often don't have the time/resources/etc.. I don't like that they do it either. It doen't mean we can't enjoy the new story though.
Think about Lord of the Rings. Honestly, it was an amazing film (and Oscar Nominee), but a lot was left out from the books. Some of the things in were changed. Like, say, 17 years that instead take, what, a few weeks, months maybe in the movie? It doesn't hurt to hear what someone else thinks of a story.
Before any of you read the story, how many knew that Spidey, in the comic, made the web-shooters, and that they weren't standard with the spiderbite? I'd guess that it was about even. The only reason I knew is because they mentioned it in the old Spider-Man cartoon show.
Anyway, I'm done.
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
No surprise. They already bought the USA.
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
Go Here. Play File. Make with the enjoyment.
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
I am so throughly frightened.
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
Don't even bother with the EULAs. Get a young person ( < 18 ) to install all your software for you. You don't agree to the EULA, and they can't be legally bound. Everybody wins!
The_Shadows[LTH], out.