You can get away with that on the 7800 and the Jaguar..but the 2600 was very popular in its day. I certainly saw a lot more of them at the time than, say, Colecovisions. After all, that's probably why they made that little adapter that would let you play 2600 games on your Colecovision. And, on the same token, why Atari made an adapter to play 2600 games in the 5200, and the 7800 had built-in support for 2600 games. You don't normally go through that much trouble for compatibility with an unpopular system.
It is possible to have a bad mental reaction with weed. I remember quite a while back, several friends and I were smoking up quite a bit, and one of the guys got really paranoid for a while. Kept going off on huge conspiracies and the fucked-up concept of apartment buildings (kept saying "People live above us. There's something wrong with that." If he was acting it all, it was very convincing. Of course, he was fine an hour later.
I guess the moral of this story is know your limits, and if you're going to do more than you're used to, have a sitter around (ESPECIALLY with some of the "harder" drugs)
You still have to catch them first. Y'see, that's the problem with the whole prohibition concept. Those people who really want to do drugs will find a way. A lot of those people will continue to lead normal lives. Unless you bother to investigate them, you'd never know. And of course you can't investigate without just cause (yet...I'm sure there's some bastard out there trying to get that sort of rule out of the way).
About the only way you're going to catch the majority of drug users is to initiate some sort of nationwide mandatory periodic drug testing...and that's just not going to happen. Every privacy and human rights group would be up in arms in a heartbeat.
And besides...I'd much rather clean streets and parks than sit in prison for a while...and I bet the better part of the middle to upper class population thinks the same.
It won't destroy society through the lowering of limits...the real problem will be the people who never come out. If you can create your own personal dream life in a simulation, why would you ever want to leave? A good number of people will be able to convince themselves that their fantasy world is in fact real. When the time comes that someone finally pulls the plug, the shock could cause insanity. A few incidents and the government will have em off the market in a heartbeat.
Fuckin' bastards...I really wanted to live in a fantasy world then go insane.
Going after the "pushers" won't work. Where there is demand, there will always be people willing to supply. Anti-piracy technology will advance, and piracy technology will advance right along with it. If nothing else, you have to attack both supply and demand with equal ferocity, though a stronger focus on demand tends to have a better result.
Interestingly, this is sort of the same problem with the "War on Drugs." You can attack the supply all you want, but as long as there is a demand, you're not gonna stop every manufacturer, every courier, every dealer. Drive demand into the toilet and the supply problem will take care of itself.
Most conceptual solar sail designs assume the material is fairly thin, and anything that hits it would (generally) hit at a pretty good clip and just leave a hole shaped like it. No real tearing or shattering. Most of the holes left would be fairly small and not really impact performance significantly. For big holes, bring a repair kit along with you.
The US has had a 50 cent piece for quite some time. I don't know if they're made anymore, but they are out there. They're certainly not as common or popularly used as the other coins. And never will be, as long as the average soda machine does not accept them.
I remember a long time ago the post offices here tended to like to dispense those for change when getting a book of stamps from the machine. I went to a convenience store afterwards, attempted to buy a drink, and the clerk had to check with her manager to make sure the damn things were "real".
Quite true. Though, I haven't yet found a program that accomplishes all the primary tasks that I like to use IRC for while still giving me the breadth of choice of interfaces and such that IRC gives me.
Also...there's one thing I've noticed about IRC (I've been using efnet now for about 6-7 years)...if you don't piss anybody off, and no one else in your channel ever pisses anybody off, you rarely have takeover attempts! It's really quite amazing! Imagine that.
Just because the "newbies" don't use it, that doesn't mean it's dying.
The "newbies" also don't generally go to tech-info-heavy text only websites. The "newbies" don't normally use FTP in a non-URL-based way. There are a lot of things out there in this wacky world of the internet that the newbies will never try out or understand. That doesn't mean that any of them are dying.
How can something with 40,000+ client connections at any given time, and often going to over 60,000 possibly be considered dying?
I bought my Visor because I really like the simplicity and conciseness of PalmOS, and it was cheaper than most other PalmOS offerings. It was also $200 cheaper than the IPaq you mention. I make a decent salary, but I'm not made of money. I bought a handheld for work purposes primarily, and the cheaper the handheld, the more money I have left over for things I want to buy and stuff I want to do. As far as batteries go, I only have to replace mine about once a month, even when I use it pretty heavily.
I suppose it really all comes down to a "right device for the right person" sort of thing...but I wouldn't rule out the Visor as just hype. FYI, i own the black (graphite) color Visor, because I use it at work, and I don't want to look like a dork in front of clients when I pull it out to write down their info.
When people ask me what I use my Visor for, I normally respond, "It's the notepad I paid too damn much for to lose." Since it was a $250 investment, plus another $30 for a Rhinoskin ShockSuit belt clip, I keep a close eye on it at all times. I've nearly lost my stylus a time or two, though.
A notepad is definitely the primary function of it for me...as evidenced by the 200+ records in the memo pad app. Secondary use is phone book, and tertiary is calculator. Though the EtherType app (returns manufacturer (and sometimes device type) based on a MAC address) has come in handy a few times.
They're winning because they keep it simple, and because the entry-level price is so much lower.
Most people want to use a handheld for very simple things...a phone book, an address book, maybe a few small games to pass the time during meetings. They don't want an MP3 player with just enough space to hold one song, or other such things that really only appeal to those who like to show off.
One of my coworkers is a big WinCE fan...he's gone through several ones that he's bought, sold, or traded. The other day he decided to play an MP3 through the little internal speaker. It sounded like crap. He said, "Can't do that with your Visor, can you?"
Of course, I can't, but then again, I paid less than half the price. And since mine is actually small enough to be comfortably clipped on the belt, I get a lot more work done with it. His is on his desk half the time because he doesn't feel like carrying it around all the time.
I don't need a "real" pc with me at all times. I have a workstation at my desk, multiple boxes at home, and a laptop for the rare occurances when I need that sort of capability away from those places. For everything else, PalmOS works great.
For the last time...there is nothing in the GPL which requires a GPL'd product to be free. It just requires that you make the source available to people who purchase the product, and that you allow them to do whatever they want with such source. If you're so damn concerned about it, cough up the $389 and make "Tangent Z's clustering linux-o-rama" and put it up on a public ftp site or something.
The general concept is: they get you to install Office on your current equipment/OS, you get used to it, then a new version comes out and all your Windows friends are upgrading. You can't upgrade because your version is still several months down the road. You're looking to upgrade your equipment by this time anyway, so you buy a PC with Windows and the latest version of Office.
When Windows 95 was getting to the point where a majority of the Joe Users were using it, I was working in a tech support call center handling ISP user support calls. I rejoiced whenever I got a win3.1 user with Trumpet Winsock...cause damnit...it WORKED. And when it didn't work, it was FIXABLE cause it generally gave you nice descriptive error messages. At least, always better than the infamous "Dialup networking could not negotiate a connection" bullshit error that 99% of problems with 95's stuff tended to throw up.
Don't get me started on that crap ShivaPPP dialer for win3.1 that seemed to ship with every damn prepackaged browser-dialer-whatever bundle. Man that thing sucked. And never ever ever would it give you a hint of what might be wrong.
Isn't that the point of Gateway's whole YourWare thing? From what I understand, it works almost like a lease sort of deal...no major up-front cost, just monthly payments. Ans after a year or two, you can trade up to a newer system. Or something like that.
I prefer my "filter down" upgrade approach where every few months I replace some part in my main system and schlop the old bits into another box on the apartment network. Once a year or so I go for a new mobo/proc. Keeps me current enough.
Lik Sang (www.lik-sang.com) sells the GBXChanger as well as backup units for other game systems. The shipping from Hong Kong can get a tad expensive though.
I've done a few installs of FreeBSD on my own laptop and others, and it's certainly a lot easier than it used to be. The number of PCMCIA devices supported and the APM stuff is much improved from the first time I tried to do this (around 2.2.3). The default values for the PCMCIA stuff works in most cases, and just changing the IRQ/base addrs to one of the other suggested values works in all the others I've experienced. My advice would be to try it and see what happens...and if it doesn't work, there's always the mailing lists (and one dedicated to FreeBSD on laptops, too).
A few years ago I was working part-time for a small ISP and I suggested something like this. I didn't know how to implement it so I handed it off to the senior admin. He kept putting it off and putting it off. Everyone thought it was a great idea, just no one wanted to bother since it wasn't absolutely necessary for the daily operation of the ISP. People can be really lazy.
Murder and marketing...interesting analogy. I'll have to use this line of reasoning on our sales guy sometime.
The thing about murder is, you know it happened. There is a person who was alive before and is now dead. There's not really any getting around the fact that a wrong was done.
With coerced-marketing stuff like this, it's a lot harder to point a finger. Can we prove, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt, that any particular reviewer was not influenced by any outside entities during the review of a particular product? If the company says, "we didn't do it", how are we to know? Maybe the reviewer just has an axe to grind and is spouting accusations at a convenient target.
Ok guys...time to stop freaking out over every last little thing like this. The computer industry is not immune from the same faults that have been there since the first product review was etched into a stone tablet long ago. People who make products will play nicey-nice with people who say their products are good. They will become mean and angry with people who say their products are bad. Remember the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" quote? It's quite correct to replace statistics with product reviews. It is something to be expected.
There's only one review that you can possibly trust...the product in your setup running your applications under your direct control. Anything else should be held suspect.
If only companies actually used new features to make their sites better. As things stand currently, this is extremely rare. Too many sites these days make you wander through 300 clicks of gee-whiz-wowie-did-that-just-move bullshit in order to get through to any content whatsoever. The vast majority of web "designers" should be shot.
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You can get away with that on the 7800 and the Jaguar..but the 2600 was very popular in its day. I certainly saw a lot more of them at the time than, say, Colecovisions. After all, that's probably why they made that little adapter that would let you play 2600 games on your Colecovision. And, on the same token, why Atari made an adapter to play 2600 games in the 5200, and the 7800 had built-in support for 2600 games. You don't normally go through that much trouble for compatibility with an unpopular system.
It is possible to have a bad mental reaction with weed. I remember quite a while back, several friends and I were smoking up quite a bit, and one of the guys got really paranoid for a while. Kept going off on huge conspiracies and the fucked-up concept of apartment buildings (kept saying "People live above us. There's something wrong with that." If he was acting it all, it was very convincing. Of course, he was fine an hour later.
I guess the moral of this story is know your limits, and if you're going to do more than you're used to, have a sitter around (ESPECIALLY with some of the "harder" drugs)
Arrest them, just like any other real criminal.
You still have to catch them first. Y'see, that's the problem with the whole prohibition concept. Those people who really want to do drugs will find a way. A lot of those people will continue to lead normal lives. Unless you bother to investigate them, you'd never know. And of course you can't investigate without just cause (yet...I'm sure there's some bastard out there trying to get that sort of rule out of the way).
About the only way you're going to catch the majority of drug users is to initiate some sort of nationwide mandatory periodic drug testing...and that's just not going to happen. Every privacy and human rights group would be up in arms in a heartbeat.
And besides...I'd much rather clean streets and parks than sit in prison for a while...and I bet the better part of the middle to upper class population thinks the same.
It won't destroy society through the lowering of limits...the real problem will be the people who never come out. If you can create your own personal dream life in a simulation, why would you ever want to leave? A good number of people will be able to convince themselves that their fantasy world is in fact real. When the time comes that someone finally pulls the plug, the shock could cause insanity. A few incidents and the government will have em off the market in a heartbeat.
Fuckin' bastards...I really wanted to live in a fantasy world then go insane.
Going after the "pushers" won't work. Where there is demand, there will always be people willing to supply. Anti-piracy technology will advance, and piracy technology will advance right along with it. If nothing else, you have to attack both supply and demand with equal ferocity, though a stronger focus on demand tends to have a better result.
Interestingly, this is sort of the same problem with the "War on Drugs." You can attack the supply all you want, but as long as there is a demand, you're not gonna stop every manufacturer, every courier, every dealer. Drive demand into the toilet and the supply problem will take care of itself.
Most conceptual solar sail designs assume the material is fairly thin, and anything that hits it would (generally) hit at a pretty good clip and just leave a hole shaped like it. No real tearing or shattering. Most of the holes left would be fairly small and not really impact performance significantly. For big holes, bring a repair kit along with you.
The US has had a 50 cent piece for quite some time. I don't know if they're made anymore, but they are out there. They're certainly not as common or popularly used as the other coins. And never will be, as long as the average soda machine does not accept them.
I remember a long time ago the post offices here tended to like to dispense those for change when getting a book of stamps from the machine. I went to a convenience store afterwards, attempted to buy a drink, and the clerk had to check with her manager to make sure the damn things were "real".
Quite true. Though, I haven't yet found a program that accomplishes all the primary tasks that I like to use IRC for while still giving me the breadth of choice of interfaces and such that IRC gives me.
Also...there's one thing I've noticed about IRC (I've been using efnet now for about 6-7 years)...if you don't piss anybody off, and no one else in your channel ever pisses anybody off, you rarely have takeover attempts! It's really quite amazing! Imagine that.
Just because the "newbies" don't use it, that doesn't mean it's dying.
The "newbies" also don't generally go to tech-info-heavy text only websites. The "newbies" don't normally use FTP in a non-URL-based way. There are a lot of things out there in this wacky world of the internet that the newbies will never try out or understand. That doesn't mean that any of them are dying.
How can something with 40,000+ client connections at any given time, and often going to over 60,000 possibly be considered dying?
I bought my Visor because I really like the simplicity and conciseness of PalmOS, and it was cheaper than most other PalmOS offerings. It was also $200 cheaper than the IPaq you mention. I make a decent salary, but I'm not made of money. I bought a handheld for work purposes primarily, and the cheaper the handheld, the more money I have left over for things I want to buy and stuff I want to do. As far as batteries go, I only have to replace mine about once a month, even when I use it pretty heavily.
I suppose it really all comes down to a "right device for the right person" sort of thing...but I wouldn't rule out the Visor as just hype. FYI, i own the black (graphite) color Visor, because I use it at work, and I don't want to look like a dork in front of clients when I pull it out to write down their info.
When people ask me what I use my Visor for, I normally respond, "It's the notepad I paid too damn much for to lose." Since it was a $250 investment, plus another $30 for a Rhinoskin ShockSuit belt clip, I keep a close eye on it at all times. I've nearly lost my stylus a time or two, though.
A notepad is definitely the primary function of it for me...as evidenced by the 200+ records in the memo pad app. Secondary use is phone book, and tertiary is calculator. Though the EtherType app (returns manufacturer (and sometimes device type) based on a MAC address) has come in handy a few times.
They're winning because they keep it simple, and because the entry-level price is so much lower.
Most people want to use a handheld for very simple things...a phone book, an address book, maybe a few small games to pass the time during meetings. They don't want an MP3 player with just enough space to hold one song, or other such things that really only appeal to those who like to show off.
One of my coworkers is a big WinCE fan...he's gone through several ones that he's bought, sold, or traded. The other day he decided to play an MP3 through the little internal speaker. It sounded like crap. He said, "Can't do that with your Visor, can you?"
Of course, I can't, but then again, I paid less than half the price. And since mine is actually small enough to be comfortably clipped on the belt, I get a lot more work done with it. His is on his desk half the time because he doesn't feel like carrying it around all the time.
I don't need a "real" pc with me at all times. I have a workstation at my desk, multiple boxes at home, and a laptop for the rare occurances when I need that sort of capability away from those places. For everything else, PalmOS works great.
But I coulda sworn the Olympic logo had 6 rings!
For the last time...there is nothing in the GPL which requires a GPL'd product to be free. It just requires that you make the source available to people who purchase the product, and that you allow them to do whatever they want with such source. If you're so damn concerned about it, cough up the $389 and make "Tangent Z's clustering linux-o-rama" and put it up on a public ftp site or something.
The general concept is: they get you to install Office on your current equipment/OS, you get used to it, then a new version comes out and all your Windows friends are upgrading. You can't upgrade because your version is still several months down the road. You're looking to upgrade your equipment by this time anyway, so you buy a PC with Windows and the latest version of Office.
Hell yes.
When Windows 95 was getting to the point where a majority of the Joe Users were using it, I was working in a tech support call center handling ISP user support calls. I rejoiced whenever I got a win3.1 user with Trumpet Winsock...cause damnit...it WORKED. And when it didn't work, it was FIXABLE cause it generally gave you nice descriptive error messages. At least, always better than the infamous "Dialup networking could not negotiate a connection" bullshit error that 99% of problems with 95's stuff tended to throw up.
Don't get me started on that crap ShivaPPP dialer for win3.1 that seemed to ship with every damn prepackaged browser-dialer-whatever bundle. Man that thing sucked. And never ever ever would it give you a hint of what might be wrong.
Isn't that the point of Gateway's whole YourWare thing? From what I understand, it works almost like a lease sort of deal...no major up-front cost, just monthly payments. Ans after a year or two, you can trade up to a newer system. Or something like that.
I prefer my "filter down" upgrade approach where every few months I replace some part in my main system and schlop the old bits into another box on the apartment network. Once a year or so I go for a new mobo/proc. Keeps me current enough.
Hmm...Microsoft seemed rather against the whole abandonware concept...yet...when I go to the Abandonware Ring page...what do I see? An MSN ad banner.
I love it when stuff like that happens.
Lik Sang (www.lik-sang.com) sells the GBXChanger as well as backup units for other game systems. The shipping from Hong Kong can get a tad expensive though.
I've done a few installs of FreeBSD on my own laptop and others, and it's certainly a lot easier than it used to be. The number of PCMCIA devices supported and the APM stuff is much improved from the first time I tried to do this (around 2.2.3). The default values for the PCMCIA stuff works in most cases, and just changing the IRQ/base addrs to one of the other suggested values works in all the others I've experienced. My advice would be to try it and see what happens...and if it doesn't work, there's always the mailing lists (and one dedicated to FreeBSD on laptops, too).
A few years ago I was working part-time for a small ISP and I suggested something like this. I didn't know how to implement it so I handed it off to the senior admin. He kept putting it off and putting it off. Everyone thought it was a great idea, just no one wanted to bother since it wasn't absolutely necessary for the daily operation of the ISP. People can be really lazy.
Murder and marketing...interesting analogy. I'll have to use this line of reasoning on our sales guy sometime.
The thing about murder is, you know it happened. There is a person who was alive before and is now dead. There's not really any getting around the fact that a wrong was done.
With coerced-marketing stuff like this, it's a lot harder to point a finger. Can we prove, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt, that any particular reviewer was not influenced by any outside entities during the review of a particular product? If the company says, "we didn't do it", how are we to know? Maybe the reviewer just has an axe to grind and is spouting accusations at a convenient target.
Ok guys...time to stop freaking out over every last little thing like this. The computer industry is not immune from the same faults that have been there since the first product review was etched into a stone tablet long ago. People who make products will play nicey-nice with people who say their products are good. They will become mean and angry with people who say their products are bad. Remember the "lies, damn lies, and statistics" quote? It's quite correct to replace statistics with product reviews. It is something to be expected.
There's only one review that you can possibly trust...the product in your setup running your applications under your direct control. Anything else should be held suspect.
If only companies actually used new features to make their sites better. As things stand currently, this is extremely rare. Too many sites these days make you wander through 300 clicks of gee-whiz-wowie-did-that-just-move bullshit in order to get through to any content whatsoever. The vast majority of web "designers" should be shot.