The biggest issue I have is stuff that you'll NEVER BE ABLE TO ACTUALLY BUY OR SEE AGAIN being taken down. My favorite example is prince performing at half time for the superbowl. Now, not only are the videos gone from youtube, but also all of the comments (which IMHO are equally as valuable to the community) about the videos.
<stupid question>I seem to remember that one could buy DVD sets of the superbowl, no? Wouldn't said DVD sets include the half-time show?</stupid question>
I only ask because I have seen them for sale (including a humongous box set that included like every superbowl ever). However, not being a NFL fan (or liking football), and being in Canada (meaning we get crappy ads), means I don't watch it. I'm sure someone out there sells a DVD sets of superbowl half-time shows, as well. (On a limb here - does someone sell the ads?)
I've never heard of a "Samsung Upstage" but I imagine that you must have looked pretty hard (or been unlucky) to have discovered another phone with a soldered-in battery. I've never heard of it in over 12 years of owning and reading about mobile phones.
Well, it's not a 12 year old phone. It's at most a few months old (released April). It's sold by Sprint, and you've probably seen it (though you've probably not heard its name) if you're in the US. It's the phone where one side is a phone with the keypad and everything, and if you flip it over, the other side is an MP3 player with MP3 player controls. (And if you're outside of North America, well, we don't get all the nice phones you guys do, but I'm sure your "reading about mobile phones" should include what models we get, since we may have a phone that's identical to a 3 year old phone you've had, with a different model number).
The benefit of the add-on drive is that it has been well and thoroughly hacked. If you want to rip HD-DVD's - the add-on drive, when added on to your PC, is the way to go.
Which is the reason why I hope HD-DVD lives - it's got less DRM than Blu-Ray, and being able to rip HD-DVD is useful for those who don't want to carry around discs and such.
Plus the DVD Forum got rid of the bloody region code for HD-DVD (at least, region coding doesn't exist on HD-DVD yet). Sure you can get region hacks, but considering they're not even necessary for HD-DVD...
Re:well it seems like the obvious thing....
on
The Trouble With TiVo
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Ahhh yes... The quick and dirty reasons why Tivo is the bane of cable companies existence. [list of reasons clipped]
You missed a big one. CONTROL.
Cable companies control the entire DVR user experience when you rent/buy their boxes. (If you buy a box off eBay, the cable company will "update" its firmware).
TiVo doesn't let them do that. Instead of ads plastered everywhere (mine - if you scroll the guide (which only shows 5 channels because the full-screen guide has the top half used) using the up/down buttons, they stick an ad at the bottom of the list, reducing the guide to only 4 channels long, but the ad is a "hotspot" now, so it takes 5 button pushes) - TiVo only lets them have one at the bottom of the main menu (rotates) with the rest hidden under a "Showcase" menu.
It's also not like TiVo can't support stuff like Video On Demand or Pay Per View (I don't use it, I don't care, my "bonus" coupons from the cable company haven't been touched) - they did PPV stuff just fine with DirecTV.
Also, I suspect they know once people go TiVo, they're not going back. There are a lot of unhappy DirecTV customers since the DirecTiVo was discontinued (and I'm sure, many ex-DirecTV customers from those who left when it was revealed that the replacement DVRs are crap, much like the cable DVR). So the Cable company really doesn't want to be beholden to people who get used to TiVo, and who'll leave their cable service behind when they decide to abandon TiVo. They want a nice audience who'll sit infront of the TV, without considering alternative TV providers.
Dude you already RENT a Tivo. if you do not pay for the lifetime subscription after purchase you are in essence RENTING it.
Except you own the hardware, and can do anything you want with it. By your definition, you "rent" cellphones, too, since if you stop paying, it doesn't work (well, emergency calls do, but TiVo works as a nice TV tuner with a 1/2 hour trick play buffer, too).
Try that with your cablebox DVR - open it up, pop out the hard drive. Then return it. You'll find that you'll be charged some huge fee because the cablebox "doesn't work - user tampering". With TiVo, you own the hardware. Even if you buy one brand new from the store, you can drop it out of a plane to look at the crater it makes. You can't return it, but hey. If you stop paying your Cable company, they'll want the box back and charge you some huge fee because it's broken.
Yea, but doesn't your lifetime subscription only apply to the box you have right now? If you were to upgrade to a Series3 for example, it would go away?
Except for the few-times-a-year offer where you can get a Series 3, and transfer the lifetime sub to it. Everyone knew about the one that ended Jan 1, 2007, but since then, I have seen at least 2 more (one that ended last week, too!).
Basically, if you have a Series 2 with lifetime, they will for $200 let you transfer it to a Series 3. Bonus - the old Series 2 gets 3 years of prepaid service (nominally $300). So your old TiVo still gets service, and lifetime is moved to your shiny new Series 3.
I know this comes as a great surprise, but the OSes and processors this runs on are limited. If you want your programs to run on non-Intel platforms, or on any of the BSDs, I suggest you skip it and use something else.
Well, yeah, considering it's an Intel software product, that Intel originally released under a closed-source license and probably charged a nominal fee for. (Intel's software is used to promote their hardware, after all, so even if they give it away for free, they don't lose out since their licenses typically mandate that you use it on Intel chips).
So it is a surprise when Intel open-sources a formerly commercial program, that it only supports Intel processors? The big deal is that it's open-source. Intel cannot tell you that you can't make it work on AMD processors, since the terms of the GPL prevent Intel from doing so. They may not vouch for its support, but there's nothing stopping anyone from adding AMD processor support, BSD support, etc.
Complaining about compatibility on a just-open-sourced program is like complaining when a Windows app gets open-sourced that it doesn't support Linux/BSD/OSX. Or when a new Linux app is open-sourced, complaining it doesn't work on Windows. It doesn't support it yet because whoever released the code didn't think it was necessary. But now it's open source, someone else (or you) can add that "missing" functionality.
An interesting twist is that Transformers has in-game ads by Helio. Now, they're static ads - in fact, in the copyright page, they list Helio as a trademark.
The uselessness of it is that if you're not in the US, wtf is Helio? I can't buy a Helio phone here in Canada, and I'm sure, neither can anyone else outside of the US. Sure the largest market will understand it, but it sure will date itself quick when the phones they advertise is gone. The only reason I know who Helio is was from the million posts on sites like Gizmodo. So no matter how much "eye time" Helio gets, it's for naught...
More likely it is another publicity stunt, to make their work to look more "legitimate", to get more people to side with them (the "I may not agree with what you say, but would defend to death your right to say it" crowd), to generalize even more the feeling that Mac users are dangerous fanboys disconnected with the reality, etc.
The only thing easier than to make threats to people on the Internet is to fake threats to oneself on the Internet. We got plenty of these drama queens in the nineties, hopefully this is not a trend that will come back.
Or heck, how about some malware writers eager to get their hands on some valuable zero day vulnerability? I suppose some of these people set themselves up for it - by not disclosing to the vendor, etc., making it really valuable on the malware market (without vendor notification, it means the exploit will most likely work, and thus something can spread in the wild before it's caught - valuable for that next spam campaign).
And the bug-a-day crap would just as easily anger these malware writers who could use these in their next campaign, but now it's public knowledge. As they already use it for criminal activity, what's another death threat or two to someone who can impact your money making scheme? And now, there's an undisclosed vulnerability that supposedly works - why not try to get the guy scared enough so he'll release it to you so you can make the next big spam botnet?
I mean, it's not the first RNG available on the Internet. There is, after all, HotBits and several other ones available. HotBits uses the simple decay of a radioactive element, while others rely on pure noise (I believe one uses a webcam trained at nothing and is just picking up noise).
I believe there are even commercially available RNGs based on the same principles available at fairly low costs.
Wasn't there also a project that tried to see if the scope of human consciousness could affect these random events?
My personal preference is take the screen shot, flip it, then set that as the background. WinXP makes things easy because you can just right click and uncheck "show icons". I do it once or twice a year at work. Doesn't work so well anymore now that all PCs will lock themselves after 10 minutes of inactivity.
The truly evil among us keep *SOME* of the icons on the desktop, and hide the rest away in another folder. Thus, some of the icons work, while the rest are just images. Truly infuriating!
One of the nice side effects of Microsoft acquring SysInternals is that some popular SysInternals stuff, like their BSOD Screensaver get hosted by Microsoft. Why use a screenshot of a BSOD, when you can have a live screensaver emulate the real thing? (Including the reboot sequence if "automatically reboot" is set).
And hey, it's from Microsoft now, it's "official."
The signature behind the card means absolutely nothing. The only way to be sure is to ask for ID.
Actually, I don't know why people think that the signature on the back is for verification purposes. It isn't.
Signing the back of the card is a contractual measure saying that you agree with the cardholder terms and conditions. That's why merchants are not supposed to allow blank signature panels, "Check ID" or other crap on there. Because without a signature, the card is merely a piece of plastic with no potential purchasing power. Just like an unsigned cheque is not a financial document - it's just a fancy piece of paper (you can actually write cheques using a regular piece of paper, as long as it's dated, has your signature, mentions to whom you're paying, and account details. But many people won't accept it even though it is a financial instrument under the law).
Signing the credit slip means that you contractually agree to pay the charge presented. That's why they usually say something to the effect that you'll pay the amount shown as per the cardholder agreement by signing it.
The merchant is wise to keep these slips since during disputes, they form compelling evidence that you made the charge, and it's up to the credit card company to dispute it with you (possibly by comparing the signatures themselves).
For someone else to start their own battery replacement program for the iPhone.
How many people *REALLY* use the Apple iPod battery replacement thing? Considering that replacement batteries tend to be easy to get for 1/3rd the cost these days and is practically available at any major electronics retailer...
Then again, there are plenty more people willing to do the battery replacement for you, too. It's a neat little effect.
And those who complain about the non-removable battery (which everyone has complained about since the beginning of the iPhone announcement), well, it's non-removable. It means it takes work to replace. It certainly won't be as easy as 99.999% of the cellphones out there, or as cheap. Also means you're limited to that one battery, so if your usage means you go through several batteries a day on your current cellphone, maybe the iPhone isn't for you.
Then again, aren't cellphone manufacturers starting to put crap on their batteries such that their phones only work with the manufacturer's battery? (Brought on because of the "cellphone exploding" (really, battery burns) caused by bum batteries overheating/catching fire. Usually caused by crappy 3rd party batteries (most of them, though there are several fairly good 3rd party battery manufacturers) where the manufacturer cut costs by using low-quality batteries and not having the requisite safety devices).
(And do the vast majority of the cellphone-owning public actually buy even a spare battery for their phones, or do they just move from phone to phone when their contract expires? I'm not talking about the few who actually buy them because they need it, I mean the vast majority of people out there.)
Yesterday's culture, you mean. All the shows are from 20 years ago.blockquote>
If you go there, most of the shows are from 20 years ago. But there are a few contemporaries, like Dilbert (2001-ish)... which is perfect for office use, I think. Just like people post dilbert cartoons on their cubes, they'll be mailing minisodes of the Dilbert series as well...
Sure it isn't traditional Transformers, but it is definitely an visual spectacular. You have to remember, they had to write a movie for people that had never heard of Transformers, and somehow make it plausible to today's critical 12 year old. This might be a bit of a letdown for the generation that grew up on Transformers, but you have to remember, that generation is between 22 and 32 now. Anyone younger just won't get it. And so I think they did a great job, even for this guy who still has his old Starscream toy.
I dunno. It appears they directed the film at us (the 22-32 generation as you called it)... brought back a lot of memories I have to say. And you gotta admit, the merchanidising was designed for us. I mean, the Optimus Prime voice changer helmet? The fact that size goes up to Adult (for all but the largest of heads, it seems) isn't an accident. Or the fact that the OP blaster fits fairly large arms as well. (Heck, just see GooTube for all the reviews of both, notably, all done by adults).
I haven't seen the movie yet (or actually gone to a movie theatre in 10 years), but I do plan on seeing this one. And from all the reviews I've read, it's either great, or crappy (for the usual reasons). None of the crappy reviews I've seen actually said "it makes a mockery of those who grew up with Transformers" but more along the lines of "yawn, another Hollywood SFX deal". So I'm guessing my childhood memories of Transformers are pretty safe.
Hell, I finally got an Optimus Prime transformer that I never had growing up (20th Anniversary Movie Optimus Prime - pricey), after 20-plus years.
1. It's been "Open Source" from the beginning, as are _all_ of Neuros' products. It's not "pixie dust" that they've added in the hope of increasing sales.
Except that it has a DSP, programmed with tools that cost a large amount of money. It can be "Open Source", but it's gonna cost you to actually do anything with it. At least Neuros' other products had easily available development tools.
As for AppleTV - well, Apple doesn't really care what you do with it. They make money off every AppleTV sold, and as long as you don't break it and try to claim warranty afterwards, they don't care. Just helps to disable the recovery software so your hacked AppleTV won't decide it failed to boot and restore from its update partition. IIRC, people have Linux running on the AppleTV.
Is it Red vs. Blue that's ending, or the Blood Gulch Chronicles? I'm told it's the latter.
After all, RvB could be resurrected later on in another series (and another location). Like how we had "Star Trek", "Star Trek: TNG", "Star Trek: Voyager", "Star Trek: DS9", "Star Trek: Enterprise" (or "Enterprise" - the series title kept changing season to season).
It's hard to get the errata for intel's processors when your a post SI test engineer, working for intel. Marketing seems to keep a tight fist on bad news.
Yeah, because going to the processor's documentation page is hard to find. (Look under "specification update"). For the desktop Core2Duo processors, there are 59 pages(PDF) of errata documentation. Updated May 2007...
Just wondering if you can even repeat courses. I remember when I was an undergrad, unless you had a D, you couldn't repeat a course. Wasn't it like that at other places too?
Depends, really.
But I would recommend just continuing on, unless there's something you don't really understand.
Firstly, some schools record *ALL* marks. So if you re-took the class, both the old and new marks are on the transcript (i.e., the class is listed multiple times). The other variation is there's a notation saying the class was retaken.
Even if it was a core class, most places let you sit in the class (but you'll have to make yourself absent during grading exercises), so you can "retake" the class this way. Might be useful if you don't get something - no point taking a whole course if you didn't understand parts of it.
I have that Brother, the toner carts seems to have a lot less toner than other brands with similarly priced toner, maybe a third or half the toner as the cart for my HP laser.
I only use inkjet for photo printing, everything else I just use a laser. I hope to buy a color laser soon.
Yeah, they're rated for 2,500 pages rather than the normal 5,000 pages. Still, the cost of a toner cartridge is around the cost of a set of ink cartridges ($60), and lasts way longer. Heck, until a couple months ago, we were still on the original "starter toner" (1250 pages) cartridge - that thing lasted us 1 1/2 years! (I don't do heavy printing, but have gone through at least 4-5 reams of paper before the toner cart gave out).
For home use, it's perfect - network, postscript, works in Linux (printing and scanning), fast (enough).
It won't replace an office workhorse, but it costs much less to run than my inkjet did, plus the copy/scanner work great, so for low-volume printing, it's great. We don't have a color printer anymore, and we've not missed it.
Yeah, we probably have to replace the drum eventually, but well, that thing's supposed to last 12,000+ pages. Maybe by the time we have to do it, we'll just replace the printer - it'll be ancient by that time.
I seem to be finding the dialogue is completely intelligible in the surround mix, but more and more often the stereo mixdown or matrixed audio is nearly impossible to understand; I don't know if it's poor mastering or just a side-effect of ProLogic II or whatever, but it's aggravating as hell.
I almost always watch with subtitles.
The problem I think starts at the mastering. For some reason or other, the person at the mixing panel decides that some SFX has to be REALLY LOUD, and of course, there's some conversation going on or another. Well, the sound effect ends up masking the dialog! (Probably through the same effect that makes things like MP3 possible). Oh great, now what did the guy say?
Then when movies get broadcasted on TV, they get mixed down, making the effect even worse. Or heck, even TV programs do the same - they overlay SFX or canned laughing or other stuff that masks the dialog. Or if it isn't masked, it covers some syllable making you do a double-take (did they just say what I thought they said?).
I have pretty good hearing as well - but I have closed captioning on all the time - at least I can read what I just missed or figure out what they just said. The fact that A/V receivers and DVD players come with "dialog clarifiers" should be indication enough that perhaps people want to understand dialog.
YouTube and the like videos are even worse - there's often so much background noise that even normal conversation levels are hard to make out over the buzz. Properly done YouTube videos often re-mix the audio afterwards, but they're the minority. The rest are either echos or the guy speaking (muffling voices even more over the background hum), or talking just barely louder than the noise level.
It can't be that bad....can it? I've got a PS2 Linux kit and it can even play youtube video with ffplay (after I grab the flv with youtube-dl.py.
Well, it depends how many times you upscale it. I'm sure if you play it at 320x240 it'll work just fine. Upscaling it to 1080p... the PS3 can't redraw the screen fast enough.
It's apparently not just the framebuffer, but accessing the framebuffer's that slow. One of the tasks consuming the most time is the one handling the framebuffer (ps3fb). I wouldn't be surprised if to draw a pixel requires triggering an exception into the VM, the VM copies the pixels to the RSX, then returns back. (Most framebuffers on saner systems is a memory mapped area - you write to memory so updating the framebuffer's just as fast as hitting memory).
Doing this over many pixels runs into a fundamental limit in the number of exceptions that can be handled.
It's probably faster on the PS2 as the PS2's probably got a saner memory mapped framebuffer, or even direct bare metal hardware access (I think you have access to the GraphicsSynthesizer, no?). Here, the real framebuffer's in RSX memory, and the only way is to trigger a VM exception to update the real framebuffer from our "virtual" framebuffer (the one Linux knows about).
It's pretty obvious that hacking the console at this point is mostly about piracy. Face it, you can do basically everything you'd like to do on the PS3 either out of the box or after a simple Linux installation (which they FULLY SUPPORT!). The only thing that's restricted is access to the graphics accelerator, and really, who buys a PS3 to play Tux Racer?
Except said Linux distribution isn't running on bare-metal hardware, but instead inside a nice VM. Thus, the graphics accellerator isn't accessible at all because the VM insulates Linux from even getting the hint that there's more to it than a special area of memory known as a framebuffer.
And believe me, the framebuffer is god-awful slow. Trying to view a DVD causes Xine to actually complain that it can't draw the screen fast enough! (yup, it's full framebuffer - no accelleration at all). I'm sure everyone knows how nice X is to use without accelleration, especially at the higher resolutions.
I'm fairly certain there are faster framebuffers out there, too - the PS3's just happens to be one of the slowest possible framebuffers.
Another restricted thing is the wireless. No bluetooth, no wifi. And no full hard disk access - it's all emulated SCSI, just like VMWare... I'm fairly certain it's not a fast implementation of a disk, either.
Basically, the PS3 Linux is merely just for people to use it as a cell developer's kit, nothing more.
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<stupid question>I seem to remember that one could buy DVD sets of the superbowl, no? Wouldn't said DVD sets include the half-time show?</stupid question>
I only ask because I have seen them for sale (including a humongous box set that included like every superbowl ever). However, not being a NFL fan (or liking football), and being in Canada (meaning we get crappy ads), means I don't watch it. I'm sure someone out there sells a DVD sets of superbowl half-time shows, as well. (On a limb here - does someone sell the ads?)
Well, it's not a 12 year old phone. It's at most a few months old (released April). It's sold by Sprint, and you've probably seen it (though you've probably not heard its name) if you're in the US. It's the phone where one side is a phone with the keypad and everything, and if you flip it over, the other side is an MP3 player with MP3 player controls. (And if you're outside of North America, well, we don't get all the nice phones you guys do, but I'm sure your "reading about mobile phones" should include what models we get, since we may have a phone that's identical to a 3 year old phone you've had, with a different model number).
A quick google will find you more information. Here's nice pictures from Engadget - http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/26/sprint-announc
For us Canada folk, Telus sells 'em, and I suspect Bell will too. It's a CDMA phone.
Which is the reason why I hope HD-DVD lives - it's got less DRM than Blu-Ray, and being able to rip HD-DVD is useful for those who don't want to carry around discs and such.
Plus the DVD Forum got rid of the bloody region code for HD-DVD (at least, region coding doesn't exist on HD-DVD yet). Sure you can get region hacks, but considering they're not even necessary for HD-DVD...
You missed a big one. CONTROL.
Cable companies control the entire DVR user experience when you rent/buy their boxes. (If you buy a box off eBay, the cable company will "update" its firmware).
TiVo doesn't let them do that. Instead of ads plastered everywhere (mine - if you scroll the guide (which only shows 5 channels because the full-screen guide has the top half used) using the up/down buttons, they stick an ad at the bottom of the list, reducing the guide to only 4 channels long, but the ad is a "hotspot" now, so it takes 5 button pushes) - TiVo only lets them have one at the bottom of the main menu (rotates) with the rest hidden under a "Showcase" menu.
It's also not like TiVo can't support stuff like Video On Demand or Pay Per View (I don't use it, I don't care, my "bonus" coupons from the cable company haven't been touched) - they did PPV stuff just fine with DirecTV.
Also, I suspect they know once people go TiVo, they're not going back. There are a lot of unhappy DirecTV customers since the DirecTiVo was discontinued (and I'm sure, many ex-DirecTV customers from those who left when it was revealed that the replacement DVRs are crap, much like the cable DVR). So the Cable company really doesn't want to be beholden to people who get used to TiVo, and who'll leave their cable service behind when they decide to abandon TiVo. They want a nice audience who'll sit infront of the TV, without considering alternative TV providers.
Except you own the hardware, and can do anything you want with it. By your definition, you "rent" cellphones, too, since if you stop paying, it doesn't work (well, emergency calls do, but TiVo works as a nice TV tuner with a 1/2 hour trick play buffer, too).
Try that with your cablebox DVR - open it up, pop out the hard drive. Then return it. You'll find that you'll be charged some huge fee because the cablebox "doesn't work - user tampering". With TiVo, you own the hardware. Even if you buy one brand new from the store, you can drop it out of a plane to look at the crater it makes. You can't return it, but hey. If you stop paying your Cable company, they'll want the box back and charge you some huge fee because it's broken.
Except for the few-times-a-year offer where you can get a Series 3, and transfer the lifetime sub to it. Everyone knew about the one that ended Jan 1, 2007, but since then, I have seen at least 2 more (one that ended last week, too!).
Basically, if you have a Series 2 with lifetime, they will for $200 let you transfer it to a Series 3. Bonus - the old Series 2 gets 3 years of prepaid service (nominally $300). So your old TiVo still gets service, and lifetime is moved to your shiny new Series 3.
Well, yeah, considering it's an Intel software product, that Intel originally released under a closed-source license and probably charged a nominal fee for. (Intel's software is used to promote their hardware, after all, so even if they give it away for free, they don't lose out since their licenses typically mandate that you use it on Intel chips).
So it is a surprise when Intel open-sources a formerly commercial program, that it only supports Intel processors? The big deal is that it's open-source. Intel cannot tell you that you can't make it work on AMD processors, since the terms of the GPL prevent Intel from doing so. They may not vouch for its support, but there's nothing stopping anyone from adding AMD processor support, BSD support, etc.
Complaining about compatibility on a just-open-sourced program is like complaining when a Windows app gets open-sourced that it doesn't support Linux/BSD/OSX. Or when a new Linux app is open-sourced, complaining it doesn't work on Windows. It doesn't support it yet because whoever released the code didn't think it was necessary. But now it's open source, someone else (or you) can add that "missing" functionality.
An interesting twist is that Transformers has in-game ads by Helio. Now, they're static ads - in fact, in the copyright page, they list Helio as a trademark.
The uselessness of it is that if you're not in the US, wtf is Helio? I can't buy a Helio phone here in Canada, and I'm sure, neither can anyone else outside of the US. Sure the largest market will understand it, but it sure will date itself quick when the phones they advertise is gone. The only reason I know who Helio is was from the million posts on sites like Gizmodo. So no matter how much "eye time" Helio gets, it's for naught...
Or heck, how about some malware writers eager to get their hands on some valuable zero day vulnerability? I suppose some of these people set themselves up for it - by not disclosing to the vendor, etc., making it really valuable on the malware market (without vendor notification, it means the exploit will most likely work, and thus something can spread in the wild before it's caught - valuable for that next spam campaign).
And the bug-a-day crap would just as easily anger these malware writers who could use these in their next campaign, but now it's public knowledge. As they already use it for criminal activity, what's another death threat or two to someone who can impact your money making scheme? And now, there's an undisclosed vulnerability that supposedly works - why not try to get the guy scared enough so he'll release it to you so you can make the next big spam botnet?
I mean, it's not the first RNG available on the Internet. There is, after all, HotBits and several other ones available. HotBits uses the simple decay of a radioactive element, while others rely on pure noise (I believe one uses a webcam trained at nothing and is just picking up noise).
I believe there are even commercially available RNGs based on the same principles available at fairly low costs.
Wasn't there also a project that tried to see if the scope of human consciousness could affect these random events?
The truly evil among us keep *SOME* of the icons on the desktop, and hide the rest away in another folder. Thus, some of the icons work, while the rest are just images. Truly infuriating!
One of the nice side effects of Microsoft acquring SysInternals is that some popular SysInternals stuff, like their BSOD Screensaver get hosted by Microsoft. Why use a screenshot of a BSOD, when you can have a live screensaver emulate the real thing? (Including the reboot sequence if "automatically reboot" is set).
And hey, it's from Microsoft now, it's "official."
Actually, I don't know why people think that the signature on the back is for verification purposes. It isn't.
Signing the back of the card is a contractual measure saying that you agree with the cardholder terms and conditions. That's why merchants are not supposed to allow blank signature panels, "Check ID" or other crap on there. Because without a signature, the card is merely a piece of plastic with no potential purchasing power. Just like an unsigned cheque is not a financial document - it's just a fancy piece of paper (you can actually write cheques using a regular piece of paper, as long as it's dated, has your signature, mentions to whom you're paying, and account details. But many people won't accept it even though it is a financial instrument under the law).
Signing the credit slip means that you contractually agree to pay the charge presented. That's why they usually say something to the effect that you'll pay the amount shown as per the cardholder agreement by signing it.
The merchant is wise to keep these slips since during disputes, they form compelling evidence that you made the charge, and it's up to the credit card company to dispute it with you (possibly by comparing the signatures themselves).
For someone else to start their own battery replacement program for the iPhone.
How many people *REALLY* use the Apple iPod battery replacement thing? Considering that replacement batteries tend to be easy to get for 1/3rd the cost these days and is practically available at any major electronics retailer...
Then again, there are plenty more people willing to do the battery replacement for you, too. It's a neat little effect.
And those who complain about the non-removable battery (which everyone has complained about since the beginning of the iPhone announcement), well, it's non-removable. It means it takes work to replace. It certainly won't be as easy as 99.999% of the cellphones out there, or as cheap. Also means you're limited to that one battery, so if your usage means you go through several batteries a day on your current cellphone, maybe the iPhone isn't for you.
Then again, aren't cellphone manufacturers starting to put crap on their batteries such that their phones only work with the manufacturer's battery? (Brought on because of the "cellphone exploding" (really, battery burns) caused by bum batteries overheating/catching fire. Usually caused by crappy 3rd party batteries (most of them, though there are several fairly good 3rd party battery manufacturers) where the manufacturer cut costs by using low-quality batteries and not having the requisite safety devices).
(And do the vast majority of the cellphone-owning public actually buy even a spare battery for their phones, or do they just move from phone to phone when their contract expires? I'm not talking about the few who actually buy them because they need it, I mean the vast majority of people out there.)
I believe the purposeful invokation of Godwin's Law doesn't actually work, unfortunately.
It's more like Moore's Law in that respect, and less like the Laws of Thermodynamics.
I wonder how fast the comments in this article *will* degenerate, though. (Something Godwin's Law doesn't predict, unfortunately).
I dunno. It appears they directed the film at us (the 22-32 generation as you called it)... brought back a lot of memories I have to say. And you gotta admit, the merchanidising was designed for us. I mean, the Optimus Prime voice changer helmet? The fact that size goes up to Adult (for all but the largest of heads, it seems) isn't an accident. Or the fact that the OP blaster fits fairly large arms as well. (Heck, just see GooTube for all the reviews of both, notably, all done by adults).
I haven't seen the movie yet (or actually gone to a movie theatre in 10 years), but I do plan on seeing this one. And from all the reviews I've read, it's either great, or crappy (for the usual reasons). None of the crappy reviews I've seen actually said "it makes a mockery of those who grew up with Transformers" but more along the lines of "yawn, another Hollywood SFX deal". So I'm guessing my childhood memories of Transformers are pretty safe.
Hell, I finally got an Optimus Prime transformer that I never had growing up (20th Anniversary Movie Optimus Prime - pricey), after 20-plus years.
Except that it has a DSP, programmed with tools that cost a large amount of money. It can be "Open Source", but it's gonna cost you to actually do anything with it. At least Neuros' other products had easily available development tools.
As for AppleTV - well, Apple doesn't really care what you do with it. They make money off every AppleTV sold, and as long as you don't break it and try to claim warranty afterwards, they don't care. Just helps to disable the recovery software so your hacked AppleTV won't decide it failed to boot and restore from its update partition. IIRC, people have Linux running on the AppleTV.
Is it Red vs. Blue that's ending, or the Blood Gulch Chronicles? I'm told it's the latter.
After all, RvB could be resurrected later on in another series (and another location). Like how we had "Star Trek", "Star Trek: TNG", "Star Trek: Voyager", "Star Trek: DS9", "Star Trek: Enterprise" (or "Enterprise" - the series title kept changing season to season).
Yeah, because going to the processor's documentation page is hard to find. (Look under "specification update"). For the desktop Core2Duo processors, there are 59 pages(PDF) of errata documentation. Updated May 2007...
Depends, really.
But I would recommend just continuing on, unless there's something you don't really understand.
Firstly, some schools record *ALL* marks. So if you re-took the class, both the old and new marks are on the transcript (i.e., the class is listed multiple times). The other variation is there's a notation saying the class was retaken.
Even if it was a core class, most places let you sit in the class (but you'll have to make yourself absent during grading exercises), so you can "retake" the class this way. Might be useful if you don't get something - no point taking a whole course if you didn't understand parts of it.
Yeah, they're rated for 2,500 pages rather than the normal 5,000 pages. Still, the cost of a toner cartridge is around the cost of a set of ink cartridges ($60), and lasts way longer. Heck, until a couple months ago, we were still on the original "starter toner" (1250 pages) cartridge - that thing lasted us 1 1/2 years! (I don't do heavy printing, but have gone through at least 4-5 reams of paper before the toner cart gave out).
For home use, it's perfect - network, postscript, works in Linux (printing and scanning), fast (enough).
It won't replace an office workhorse, but it costs much less to run than my inkjet did, plus the copy/scanner work great, so for low-volume printing, it's great. We don't have a color printer anymore, and we've not missed it.
Yeah, we probably have to replace the drum eventually, but well, that thing's supposed to last 12,000+ pages. Maybe by the time we have to do it, we'll just replace the printer - it'll be ancient by that time.
The problem I think starts at the mastering. For some reason or other, the person at the mixing panel decides that some SFX has to be REALLY LOUD, and of course, there's some conversation going on or another. Well, the sound effect ends up masking the dialog! (Probably through the same effect that makes things like MP3 possible). Oh great, now what did the guy say?
Then when movies get broadcasted on TV, they get mixed down, making the effect even worse. Or heck, even TV programs do the same - they overlay SFX or canned laughing or other stuff that masks the dialog. Or if it isn't masked, it covers some syllable making you do a double-take (did they just say what I thought they said?).
I have pretty good hearing as well - but I have closed captioning on all the time - at least I can read what I just missed or figure out what they just said. The fact that A/V receivers and DVD players come with "dialog clarifiers" should be indication enough that perhaps people want to understand dialog.
YouTube and the like videos are even worse - there's often so much background noise that even normal conversation levels are hard to make out over the buzz. Properly done YouTube videos often re-mix the audio afterwards, but they're the minority. The rest are either echos or the guy speaking (muffling voices even more over the background hum), or talking just barely louder than the noise level.
Well, it depends how many times you upscale it. I'm sure if you play it at 320x240 it'll work just fine. Upscaling it to 1080p... the PS3 can't redraw the screen fast enough.
It's apparently not just the framebuffer, but accessing the framebuffer's that slow. One of the tasks consuming the most time is the one handling the framebuffer (ps3fb). I wouldn't be surprised if to draw a pixel requires triggering an exception into the VM, the VM copies the pixels to the RSX, then returns back. (Most framebuffers on saner systems is a memory mapped area - you write to memory so updating the framebuffer's just as fast as hitting memory).
Doing this over many pixels runs into a fundamental limit in the number of exceptions that can be handled.
It's probably faster on the PS2 as the PS2's probably got a saner memory mapped framebuffer, or even direct bare metal hardware access (I think you have access to the GraphicsSynthesizer, no?). Here, the real framebuffer's in RSX memory, and the only way is to trigger a VM exception to update the real framebuffer from our "virtual" framebuffer (the one Linux knows about).
Would be the Top Gun theme. Tell me that thing isn't all guitar...
Except said Linux distribution isn't running on bare-metal hardware, but instead inside a nice VM. Thus, the graphics accellerator isn't accessible at all because the VM insulates Linux from even getting the hint that there's more to it than a special area of memory known as a framebuffer.
And believe me, the framebuffer is god-awful slow. Trying to view a DVD causes Xine to actually complain that it can't draw the screen fast enough! (yup, it's full framebuffer - no accelleration at all). I'm sure everyone knows how nice X is to use without accelleration, especially at the higher resolutions.
I'm fairly certain there are faster framebuffers out there, too - the PS3's just happens to be one of the slowest possible framebuffers.
Another restricted thing is the wireless. No bluetooth, no wifi. And no full hard disk access - it's all emulated SCSI, just like VMWare... I'm fairly certain it's not a fast implementation of a disk, either.
Basically, the PS3 Linux is merely just for people to use it as a cell developer's kit, nothing more.