That statement in the article was slightly off. 32MB of RAM is not enough for the iBook to take advantage of GPU-accelerated Core Image technologies. The Core Image system is designed to scale, and will revert to using Altivec instructions if the GPU is not up to par.
I'll agree that the systems should simply include 64MB of RAM, but I also expected more of the writers at a mac-centric site such as thinksecret.
Re:Dual Layer Drive? It would be nice
on
New Apples Next Week
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Yes and sort of.
Patch Burn is a tiny, simple app that will allow OS X to work with almost any non-supported DVD-R drive. It's free, just download it, run it once, and you're done.
Assuming you don't want to go with patch burn, the new version of iDVD supports outputting an.iso image in addition to burning straight to the DVD. You can then burn that.iso using disk copy, or even transfer it to another computer that might happen to have a DVD-R drive.
The only reason Apple really does this with iDVD is compatability issues. I'm not sure about the current revisions, but Superdrives have always been Pioneer DVR-XXX series drives with Apple-designed firmware. I guess Apple was just really keen on maintaining the "experience" by guaranteeing that a DVD drive WOULD work with iDVD. Patch burn has always been a simple way around it, but the introduction of the.iso feature shows that Apple is probably catching on to the fact that many people are unhappy with that solution.
One thing that really bothered me about this game was the seemingly random difference in controls when compared to Battlefield: Vietnam.
I can understand some of the motivation for removing the F1-8 chat, as it forces you to move your hand away from the actual game controls. The buttons to switch seats in a vehicle, though, are different for reasons that appear to be pointless. Other buttons for lesser commands are also different, again, seemingly at random.
My biggest complaint: air vehicles, especially helicopters, control very differently. It is immensely frustrating.
When I jump from one game to the other, I find myself pressing incorrect buttons and (worst of all) randomly crashing helicopters into trees. It's not as though the BF:2 helicopters control better, they're just... different.
Other than that, BF:2 is an entertaining game, but I just can't help but be angry about the totally random control differences.
Um, they sue all the time to get grades changed. A guy I worked with was sued after his third year as a teacher because he failed a kid. She was slated to be the valedictorian, got her solid class rank (many districts establish a valedictorian in January or February of their senior year), and just stopped doing any work. He failed her, and got to spend the next summer and fall in and out of court non-stop. It's also fairly common to sue the district (which has money) and name the teacher(s) as co-defendants.
The union doesn't just pay up if I'm found to owe $2 million. They also pay all lawyers' fees, which is far more important in a lot of cases.
So Toshiba's HD-DVD player will not display HD video on the millions of Toshiba HDTVs that were produced before DVI and HDMI were common? Awesome!
The funniest part is that no one would want to bootleg over the component connections anyway. I don't know of a signle component capture card that's priced remotely near what a normal consumer could afford. The big piracy houses will find a quick workaround anyway. But they'll stave off all four casual pirates with access to professional capture devices, at least until the HD-DVD encryption is cracked.
We're all used to ludicrous DRM systems, but I've never seen an electronics company (without a major stake in the film/music production business) so willing to shoot themselves in the foot.
I am a member of a teacher's union. I hate 98% of what they stand for. But $130/year gets me $6 million in liability coverage. When some kid decides to sue for bad grades, sue for "mistreatment" while being taken to the disciplinary office, or accuse me of "touching them" because I failed them, I need that. It happens more frequently than a lot of people would care to imagine, especially the first example. So while I disagree with the teacher's union on a lot of things, I can't afford to take the chance. I'm going to have to have that same kind of coverage from the state before I give up my union membership.
Incidentally, union memebership is totally optional in most districts.
I'm not going to delve too far into economics; it wasn't my field of study, and I don't pretend to understand much beyond what the introductory courses teach you. So I'll say this.
I teach English at a public high school. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 3.8 GPA, Dean's List, glowing marks during internships, etc. All the things a major employer would look for in a prospective employee who had just graduated. I am an exception in public education.
Don't get me wrong, I work with brilliant people, many of whom far surpass those achievements. I would say that the school I am currently at surpasses all others I've seen. I am paid a reasonable wage, and I get some great benefits, but I also work for a district that pays $13,000 more than is legally required. It's a job that's rewarding in a lot of respects, but when I started down this path, I knew there were sacrifices that would have to be made. I may start out with a good salary now, but 10 years from now most college graduates will be earning far more than I will. I'm willing to deal with that; it's a choice I made. Obviously, there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me, and when you want good people, money is one of the best places to start. I can't tell you how many people I've met who tell me, "I would've loved to have been a teacher." The unspoken bit of elaboration is that they found something else, something better.
Because really, it's all about attracting good applicants. If every school could all of a sudden pay $10,000 more, I guarantee that there would be an enormous increase in applicants. Many of these people would be well-qualified. Imagine if a school was only paying $8,000 or $10,000 less per year than a comparable industry job. Math and science positions, in particular, would have some spectacular applicants. There may not be as many presitigious jobs available for people with English or History degrees, but if the stakes are raised, you will get more applicants. With more applicants, obviously, you have a better chance of finding a well-qualified one. As for the poor-performing teachers already in place? Well, it's a little easier to dump someone if you know there are five people who might jump at their job (a very little, but that's a rant for another day).
Won't we attract bad teachers looking for an "easy" buck? Yeah. There are crappy employees in every job sector. But it's a lot easier to weed out the crappy ones when you can choose from among 10 applicants instead of 3.
The public school system in America has plenty of problems. Listing them would take far too long, and most people already know them anyway. I seriously doubt, though, that a lack of laptops is a major hurdle in our education system.
The other poster is correct. I don't remember the base price, but I do recall some heavy complaining about ludicrous mark-ups on upgrades. We aren't just talking the standard OEM "twice-what-you'd-normally-pay-RAM-upgrade," either, we're talking absolutely ridiculous price ranges. Not really surprising, given that SGI was used to selling upgrades on $10K workstations, but it wasn't really the best way to gain a foothold in the market.
Regardless there, my point to the GP was not about pricing, it was about why Apple won't go down that road. For whatever reason (price, late to the party, peculiar smelling sales staff), SGI was unable to move what was just another NT workstation. Apple's move to x86 doesn't matter to consumers because 98% of Apple users I've met care way more about the OS than the CPU.
Don't forget, SGI started selling vastly overpriced PC-compatible Intel hardware that ran Windows NT! Apple's primary advantage isn't really nice aesthetics (although they definitely are nice), it's OS X.
Thing is, I'm not even sure you can blame the coder. Lots of games have levels or characters or what-not that are "cut" partway through the design process. These parts are "left in" because removing them introduces more QA problems than simply cutting off all access.
Then we go even beyond that. Many of those "cut" parts are sometimes accessible through codes or bugs. GTA3, for example, had a ghost town that, IIRC, could be reached if the player input a low-gravity code and flew there using the plane. Occasioanlly, you find 3rd person adventure games where the player can fall between the seams of a level to access something intended to be cut.
Problem is, this is not the case for San Andreas. These mini-games were cut, likely because Rockstar realized the outcry that might occur when the soccer moms of the world heard about it. Again, probably for QA/testing reasons, the games weren't removed entirely, but simply had all access cut.
Getting to these areas requires modifying system files; we aren't talking about a bug or a secret code, we're talking about a mod here. The uproar is as preposterous as blaming Eidos/Core for the old "Nude Raider" patches or complaining that a spreadsheet program doesn't add correctly after a library has been edited. Don't blame the programmers. Don't blame the ESRB.
On second thought, just wait a week, and the hurricane or shark attacks will have pushed this "issue" entirely out of the media.
Well, that confirms my crack smoking theory on their store employees. It was a seriously awful experience with those guys. My GF (at the time), renewed a two year contract with them and then discovered that service was basically non-existant around much of our apartment and university. She went in five days later and told them she wanted to terminate service. This shouldn't have been a problem, since they allowed termination of contracts up to two weeks.
Of course, the VZ store employees never finished the paperwork on time, which meant that my GF continued to get bills from Verizon... for nine more months. We'd call every month, and the lackey on the other end would be able to cancel that month's bill, but would never be able to fix the contract. It seriously took nine months of running around with them to get someone to actually cancel te service entirely. All of this because of the store employees' incompetence.
It lead us, of course, to mock Verizon's tagline. "No, seriously, we will never stop working for you, capiche?"
I'll concede the data issue; that is one area where CDMA does have a definite advantage over GSM systems.
The in-network calling can be beneficial, though with the price difference it's kind of debatable. Cingular's $7/7 promo (not sure if it's still running) pushed evening start times down to 7pm for $7, which a lot of people found more beneficial than in-network stuff (YMMV depending on how much you use in-network and at what time). Additionally, Verizon's higher price/minutes setup probably does necessitate using the in-network system as much as possible, but why not just get a carrier who's willing to give you decent minutes for the same amount?
How recently did VZ start their phone promo? When my ex-girlfriend was phone shopping not too long ago, they had nothing of the sort. Two years is still a scam, though, considering none of the other carriers require more than a year agreement for phone upgrade deals, and still give you promotional pricing.
Ah, the old days of activation. My T-mobile account has, in four years, been tied to a Nokia 3300, Nokia 3595, Nokia 6200, Siemens SL65, and Sony T610 (I used to get ludicrous hook-ups on phones, like $5 for a 3595 ludicrous). Pull SIM and reinsert and no one's the wiser. If Verizon decides to start extending their same cripple strategy tomorrow, they could easily decide not to activate your handset. Comparing anything to Sprint PCS is pointless - 2 cans attached by string would be preferable to Sprint.
I stand corrected on the crappiest phone issue. My research consisted of leading Verizon's webpage and seeing the first phone at the top (which was definitely crappy) listed at $30. I didn't really bother to scroll down. Of course, most other carriers do crappy phones for free with a one year agreement, which eliminates any arguement there.
I don't know. His blog talks about buying this v265 to replace "an old junker cellphone." The fact that his cell is an old junker implies to me that he probably wasn't in contract. It may just be poor writing on his part, but none of his post seems to imply that he discovered this crippling after the fact.
With number portability now in effect (and most of the bugs worked out by now), I don't see any reason why he'd resign himself to a crippled piece of garbage if he didn't have to.
Because all the services are about equal for 95% of the phone calls. In fact, all the services have similar coverage in about 95% of the areas. I don't know if you stopped reading at that sentence, but I go on to mention how that's only an advantage for people who do a huge amount of travelling. It's not as though every 20th call is going to drop for me; my phone just won't work in East Cow Turd, LA. Guess what? I have no intention of going to East Cow Turd, and neither do most people. For non Cow Turdians, all of the services work equally well, except Verizon costs about $10 more per month and about $50 more per phone.
Consider this scenario: You don't travel, and any phone service works in your area. For you, and for 9 out of your 10 friends, they are all about equal. One costs $10 more per month. Which one would you choose?
Oh, I know electronics marketing. Verizon's not playing the ol' Celeron 300 game here, they're just looking for added revenue by forcing the end user to buy their add-ins from Verizon. They've done the same thing in the past with the bluetooth on a lot of their phones: it's essentially a "bluetooth for headset purposes only." Here, they're just playing with the internal software and disallowing normal data cable connections. This is not like selling a 400mhz CPU as a 350Mhz because the market isn't demanding as many 400mhz CPUs. It's more like HP purposely disabling the cache on an otherwise functional CPU because they can. You're being cut-off from a feature that Motorola allows on that model by default, but which has been cut off by Verizon.
Other carriers sell similar phones, without crippled software, for similar prices. It's not as though going in and tweaking the software allows Verizon to save money on the phone.
The poster is angry that the phone is crippled, and reasons that the only natural thing to do is hack it? I would expect that NOT BUYING THE DAMNED THING would be a much more logical approach to the problem.
Props to the guy for hacking it, and it's nice to know that Verizon users can do the same thing if they've found themselves stuck with an otherwise crippled phone, but the "natural" approach to dealing with jack-assery from a company isn't to go buy their product.
Agreed. I don't understand a lot of Verizon customers. Verizon's only major advantage is a coverage area that's a little better than most carriers, but we're realistically talking about a coverage area that's only beneficial to uber-travellers. For the majority of us who aren't constantly travelling, their rate plans are nowhere near as good as most competitors, and their phone prices are outrageous compared to the other carriers. Who the hell goes for the two year agreement just to get the crappiest phone for $30?
I sure hope T-Mobile hangs in there. They were the only major carrier willing to do a family plan with different area codes (a Godsend when both my brother and I were at different colleges), and their rate plans have generally been pretty reasonable.
My only recommendation if they go under would be Cingular, if only because of the GSM factor. Even though Sprint and Verizon's CDMA is technically better in almost every respect, I've typically found the handsets to be of lower quality (particularly the Korean ones). Also, the absence of a SIM-style system for storing phone numbers boggles my mind - I still crack up when I see people writing down every number in their phonebook when they're upgrading/replacing a phone.
Increase dramatically? Well, I know one of MS' claims is that the descriptions for the patches might show malware authors new exploits that they didn't know about. I think most of the major worms were produced long after patches had already posted, though I don't know if that was because the malware authors saw the bugfix notes, or if they used info gleaned from other sources. That said, I doubt it would change the infection rate at all.
I was doing retail computer repair up until November of last year. Even in November of '04, it was still exceedingly common to see recent infections of Sasser or Blaster worms, which had been around for over a year before that point. These were worms, mind you, which exploited bugs that had been patched months prior to their first appearance.
After all is said and done, I think the vast majority of users both business and home would rather have a patch that was worked on for a week or so than one that was rushed out the door. The clueless won't install it even when it's already out. The security conscious already have a decent firewall in place that should hold them for that brief time. Additionally, I'm not aware of a recent major worm or virus that exploited a known bug before the patch arrived, so the security people probably don't have much to worry about as far as worms/viruses are concerned. Of course, I'm sure some more knowledgeable/.er will correct me on that last point.
It would appear that you are correct. I just checked a couple different versions of Public domain books I own, and specific notes are made regarding copyright on foot/endnotes or introductory material, but never a claim to the text. My mistake.
Regarding video, though, I'd expect that a studio would argue that after the color correction/grain removal/audio clean-up etc. (whether or not its particularly good in these $1 DVDs), the video stream is more equivalent to a translation of a foreign text. As such, it would certainly be copywritten. Anyone with one of these DVDs willing to look inside the cover?
Maybe. I'm not really sure if this issue has ever been decided regarding video, but it's quite possible that the MPEG-2 stream could be claimed as copyrighted. When Penguin Books goes through, say, Great Expectations, and does layout, changes punctuation to match the American rules, etc. their version is copyrighted.
It's entirely possible that a studio could argue that the physical process of scanning the film and encoding it would also grant a copyright to that particular version, even though the original film would still be public domain.
Slashdot Mirror
That statement in the article was slightly off. 32MB of RAM is not enough for the iBook to take advantage of GPU-accelerated Core Image technologies. The Core Image system is designed to scale, and will revert to using Altivec instructions if the GPU is not up to par.
I'll agree that the systems should simply include 64MB of RAM, but I also expected more of the writers at a mac-centric site such as thinksecret.
Yes and sort of.
.iso image in addition to burning straight to the DVD. You can then burn that .iso using disk copy, or even transfer it to another computer that might happen to have a DVD-R drive.
.iso feature shows that Apple is probably catching on to the fact that many people are unhappy with that solution.
Patch Burn is a tiny, simple app that will allow OS X to work with almost any non-supported DVD-R drive. It's free, just download it, run it once, and you're done.
Assuming you don't want to go with patch burn, the new version of iDVD supports outputting an
The only reason Apple really does this with iDVD is compatability issues. I'm not sure about the current revisions, but Superdrives have always been Pioneer DVR-XXX series drives with Apple-designed firmware. I guess Apple was just really keen on maintaining the "experience" by guaranteeing that a DVD drive WOULD work with iDVD. Patch burn has always been a simple way around it, but the introduction of the
One thing that really bothered me about this game was the seemingly random difference in controls when compared to Battlefield: Vietnam.
I can understand some of the motivation for removing the F1-8 chat, as it forces you to move your hand away from the actual game controls. The buttons to switch seats in a vehicle, though, are different for reasons that appear to be pointless. Other buttons for lesser commands are also different, again, seemingly at random.
My biggest complaint: air vehicles, especially helicopters, control very differently. It is immensely frustrating.
When I jump from one game to the other, I find myself pressing incorrect buttons and (worst of all) randomly crashing helicopters into trees. It's not as though the BF:2 helicopters control better, they're just... different.
Other than that, BF:2 is an entertaining game, but I just can't help but be angry about the totally random control differences.
I think she is actually called the first lady, as well.
Shouldn't this be Tipper's territory?
Um, they sue all the time to get grades changed. A guy I worked with was sued after his third year as a teacher because he failed a kid. She was slated to be the valedictorian, got her solid class rank (many districts establish a valedictorian in January or February of their senior year), and just stopped doing any work. He failed her, and got to spend the next summer and fall in and out of court non-stop. It's also fairly common to sue the district (which has money) and name the teacher(s) as co-defendants.
The union doesn't just pay up if I'm found to owe $2 million. They also pay all lawyers' fees, which is far more important in a lot of cases.
So Toshiba's HD-DVD player will not display HD video on the millions of Toshiba HDTVs that were produced before DVI and HDMI were common? Awesome!
The funniest part is that no one would want to bootleg over the component connections anyway. I don't know of a signle component capture card that's priced remotely near what a normal consumer could afford. The big piracy houses will find a quick workaround anyway. But they'll stave off all four casual pirates with access to professional capture devices, at least until the HD-DVD encryption is cracked.
We're all used to ludicrous DRM systems, but I've never seen an electronics company (without a major stake in the film/music production business) so willing to shoot themselves in the foot.
I'm a teacher. I'm not looking to be the one responsible for organizing a private insurance pool.
Oh, and I don't pay $130 a month. I pay $130 per year. That's a pretty damned good deal for liability insurance.
I am a member of a teacher's union. I hate 98% of what they stand for. But $130/year gets me $6 million in liability coverage. When some kid decides to sue for bad grades, sue for "mistreatment" while being taken to the disciplinary office, or accuse me of "touching them" because I failed them, I need that. It happens more frequently than a lot of people would care to imagine, especially the first example. So while I disagree with the teacher's union on a lot of things, I can't afford to take the chance. I'm going to have to have that same kind of coverage from the state before I give up my union membership.
Incidentally, union memebership is totally optional in most districts.
I'm not going to delve too far into economics; it wasn't my field of study, and I don't pretend to understand much beyond what the introductory courses teach you. So I'll say this.
I teach English at a public high school. I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a 3.8 GPA, Dean's List, glowing marks during internships, etc. All the things a major employer would look for in a prospective employee who had just graduated. I am an exception in public education.
Don't get me wrong, I work with brilliant people, many of whom far surpass those achievements. I would say that the school I am currently at surpasses all others I've seen. I am paid a reasonable wage, and I get some great benefits, but I also work for a district that pays $13,000 more than is legally required. It's a job that's rewarding in a lot of respects, but when I started down this path, I knew there were sacrifices that would have to be made. I may start out with a good salary now, but 10 years from now most college graduates will be earning far more than I will. I'm willing to deal with that; it's a choice I made. Obviously, there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me, and when you want good people, money is one of the best places to start. I can't tell you how many people I've met who tell me, "I would've loved to have been a teacher." The unspoken bit of elaboration is that they found something else, something better.
Because really, it's all about attracting good applicants. If every school could all of a sudden pay $10,000 more, I guarantee that there would be an enormous increase in applicants. Many of these people would be well-qualified. Imagine if a school was only paying $8,000 or $10,000 less per year than a comparable industry job. Math and science positions, in particular, would have some spectacular applicants. There may not be as many presitigious jobs available for people with English or History degrees, but if the stakes are raised, you will get more applicants. With more applicants, obviously, you have a better chance of finding a well-qualified one. As for the poor-performing teachers already in place? Well, it's a little easier to dump someone if you know there are five people who might jump at their job (a very little, but that's a rant for another day).
Won't we attract bad teachers looking for an "easy" buck? Yeah. There are crappy employees in every job sector. But it's a lot easier to weed out the crappy ones when you can choose from among 10 applicants instead of 3.
The public school system in America has plenty of problems. Listing them would take far too long, and most people already know them anyway. I seriously doubt, though, that a lack of laptops is a major hurdle in our education system.
The other poster is correct. I don't remember the base price, but I do recall some heavy complaining about ludicrous mark-ups on upgrades. We aren't just talking the standard OEM "twice-what-you'd-normally-pay-RAM-upgrade," either, we're talking absolutely ridiculous price ranges. Not really surprising, given that SGI was used to selling upgrades on $10K workstations, but it wasn't really the best way to gain a foothold in the market.
Regardless there, my point to the GP was not about pricing, it was about why Apple won't go down that road. For whatever reason (price, late to the party, peculiar smelling sales staff), SGI was unable to move what was just another NT workstation. Apple's move to x86 doesn't matter to consumers because 98% of Apple users I've met care way more about the OS than the CPU.
Don't forget, SGI started selling vastly overpriced PC-compatible Intel hardware that ran Windows NT! Apple's primary advantage isn't really nice aesthetics (although they definitely are nice), it's OS X.
Thing is, I'm not even sure you can blame the coder. Lots of games have levels or characters or what-not that are "cut" partway through the design process. These parts are "left in" because removing them introduces more QA problems than simply cutting off all access.
Then we go even beyond that. Many of those "cut" parts are sometimes accessible through codes or bugs. GTA3, for example, had a ghost town that, IIRC, could be reached if the player input a low-gravity code and flew there using the plane. Occasioanlly, you find 3rd person adventure games where the player can fall between the seams of a level to access something intended to be cut.
Problem is, this is not the case for San Andreas. These mini-games were cut, likely because Rockstar realized the outcry that might occur when the soccer moms of the world heard about it. Again, probably for QA/testing reasons, the games weren't removed entirely, but simply had all access cut.
Getting to these areas requires modifying system files; we aren't talking about a bug or a secret code, we're talking about a mod here. The uproar is as preposterous as blaming Eidos/Core for the old "Nude Raider" patches or complaining that a spreadsheet program doesn't add correctly after a library has been edited. Don't blame the programmers. Don't blame the ESRB.
On second thought, just wait a week, and the hurricane or shark attacks will have pushed this "issue" entirely out of the media.
Well, that confirms my crack smoking theory on their store employees. It was a seriously awful experience with those guys. My GF (at the time), renewed a two year contract with them and then discovered that service was basically non-existant around much of our apartment and university. She went in five days later and told them she wanted to terminate service. This shouldn't have been a problem, since they allowed termination of contracts up to two weeks.
Of course, the VZ store employees never finished the paperwork on time, which meant that my GF continued to get bills from Verizon... for nine more months. We'd call every month, and the lackey on the other end would be able to cancel that month's bill, but would never be able to fix the contract. It seriously took nine months of running around with them to get someone to actually cancel te service entirely. All of this because of the store employees' incompetence.
It lead us, of course, to mock Verizon's tagline. "No, seriously, we will never stop working for you, capiche?"
I'll concede the data issue; that is one area where CDMA does have a definite advantage over GSM systems.
The in-network calling can be beneficial, though with the price difference it's kind of debatable. Cingular's $7/7 promo (not sure if it's still running) pushed evening start times down to 7pm for $7, which a lot of people found more beneficial than in-network stuff (YMMV depending on how much you use in-network and at what time). Additionally, Verizon's higher price/minutes setup probably does necessitate using the in-network system as much as possible, but why not just get a carrier who's willing to give you decent minutes for the same amount?
How recently did VZ start their phone promo? When my ex-girlfriend was phone shopping not too long ago, they had nothing of the sort. Two years is still a scam, though, considering none of the other carriers require more than a year agreement for phone upgrade deals, and still give you promotional pricing.
Ah, the old days of activation. My T-mobile account has, in four years, been tied to a Nokia 3300, Nokia 3595, Nokia 6200, Siemens SL65, and Sony T610 (I used to get ludicrous hook-ups on phones, like $5 for a 3595 ludicrous). Pull SIM and reinsert and no one's the wiser. If Verizon decides to start extending their same cripple strategy tomorrow, they could easily decide not to activate your handset. Comparing anything to Sprint PCS is pointless - 2 cans attached by string would be preferable to Sprint.
I stand corrected on the crappiest phone issue. My research consisted of leading Verizon's webpage and seeing the first phone at the top (which was definitely crappy) listed at $30. I didn't really bother to scroll down. Of course, most other carriers do crappy phones for free with a one year agreement, which eliminates any arguement there.
I don't know. His blog talks about buying this v265 to replace "an old junker cellphone." The fact that his cell is an old junker implies to me that he probably wasn't in contract. It may just be poor writing on his part, but none of his post seems to imply that he discovered this crippling after the fact.
With number portability now in effect (and most of the bugs worked out by now), I don't see any reason why he'd resign himself to a crippled piece of garbage if he didn't have to.
Because all the services are about equal for 95% of the phone calls. In fact, all the services have similar coverage in about 95% of the areas. I don't know if you stopped reading at that sentence, but I go on to mention how that's only an advantage for people who do a huge amount of travelling. It's not as though every 20th call is going to drop for me; my phone just won't work in East Cow Turd, LA. Guess what? I have no intention of going to East Cow Turd, and neither do most people. For non Cow Turdians, all of the services work equally well, except Verizon costs about $10 more per month and about $50 more per phone.
Consider this scenario: You don't travel, and any phone service works in your area. For you, and for 9 out of your 10 friends, they are all about equal. One costs $10 more per month. Which one would you choose?
Oh, I know electronics marketing. Verizon's not playing the ol' Celeron 300 game here, they're just looking for added revenue by forcing the end user to buy their add-ins from Verizon. They've done the same thing in the past with the bluetooth on a lot of their phones: it's essentially a "bluetooth for headset purposes only." Here, they're just playing with the internal software and disallowing normal data cable connections. This is not like selling a 400mhz CPU as a 350Mhz because the market isn't demanding as many 400mhz CPUs. It's more like HP purposely disabling the cache on an otherwise functional CPU because they can. You're being cut-off from a feature that Motorola allows on that model by default, but which has been cut off by Verizon.
Other carriers sell similar phones, without crippled software, for similar prices. It's not as though going in and tweaking the software allows Verizon to save money on the phone.
The poster is angry that the phone is crippled, and reasons that the only natural thing to do is hack it? I would expect that NOT BUYING THE DAMNED THING would be a much more logical approach to the problem.
Props to the guy for hacking it, and it's nice to know that Verizon users can do the same thing if they've found themselves stuck with an otherwise crippled phone, but the "natural" approach to dealing with jack-assery from a company isn't to go buy their product.
Agreed. I don't understand a lot of Verizon customers. Verizon's only major advantage is a coverage area that's a little better than most carriers, but we're realistically talking about a coverage area that's only beneficial to uber-travellers. For the majority of us who aren't constantly travelling, their rate plans are nowhere near as good as most competitors, and their phone prices are outrageous compared to the other carriers. Who the hell goes for the two year agreement just to get the crappiest phone for $30?
I sure hope T-Mobile hangs in there. They were the only major carrier willing to do a family plan with different area codes (a Godsend when both my brother and I were at different colleges), and their rate plans have generally been pretty reasonable.
My only recommendation if they go under would be Cingular, if only because of the GSM factor. Even though Sprint and Verizon's CDMA is technically better in almost every respect, I've typically found the handsets to be of lower quality (particularly the Korean ones). Also, the absence of a SIM-style system for storing phone numbers boggles my mind - I still crack up when I see people writing down every number in their phonebook when they're upgrading/replacing a phone.
Increase dramatically? Well, I know one of MS' claims is that the descriptions for the patches might show malware authors new exploits that they didn't know about. I think most of the major worms were produced long after patches had already posted, though I don't know if that was because the malware authors saw the bugfix notes, or if they used info gleaned from other sources. That said, I doubt it would change the infection rate at all.
/.er will correct me on that last point.
I was doing retail computer repair up until November of last year. Even in November of '04, it was still exceedingly common to see recent infections of Sasser or Blaster worms, which had been around for over a year before that point. These were worms, mind you, which exploited bugs that had been patched months prior to their first appearance.
After all is said and done, I think the vast majority of users both business and home would rather have a patch that was worked on for a week or so than one that was rushed out the door. The clueless won't install it even when it's already out. The security conscious already have a decent firewall in place that should hold them for that brief time. Additionally, I'm not aware of a recent major worm or virus that exploited a known bug before the patch arrived, so the security people probably don't have much to worry about as far as worms/viruses are concerned. Of course, I'm sure some more knowledgeable
Of course, the only natural thing to do in a situation like this is to hack it."
[Obvious] Or, you know, not buy it. [/obvious]
Indeed. I'm not sure what was going through my head when I wrote that, especially given that I have friends who used to write ad copy a while back.
Well, it was late and I was drunk, but still.
It would appear that you are correct. I just checked a couple different versions of Public domain books I own, and specific notes are made regarding copyright on foot/endnotes or introductory material, but never a claim to the text. My mistake.
Regarding video, though, I'd expect that a studio would argue that after the color correction/grain removal/audio clean-up etc. (whether or not its particularly good in these $1 DVDs), the video stream is more equivalent to a translation of a foreign text. As such, it would certainly be copywritten. Anyone with one of these DVDs willing to look inside the cover?
Maybe. I'm not really sure if this issue has ever been decided regarding video, but it's quite possible that the MPEG-2 stream could be claimed as copyrighted. When Penguin Books goes through, say, Great Expectations, and does layout, changes punctuation to match the American rules, etc. their version is copyrighted.
It's entirely possible that a studio could argue that the physical process of scanning the film and encoding it would also grant a copyright to that particular version, even though the original film would still be public domain.
In honor of one of the common infection vectors: The Active X-Men.
Of course, the need to acknowledge both genders would probably make Active X-Force or Active X-Factor a better choice.