What happened to the fans that were talked about in an earlier/. story that used positive and negative charges to blow air with less power use and almost no sound? I want some of those, not these.
The fact remains that on Pricewatch 70% of the items are incorrectly listed, another 20% are sold from 'questionable' stores, either with no security license or with no actual way of ordering online, and the rest are priced, well, 'normally'.
Suffice it to say that Pricewatch isn't exactly the best gauging tool for actual prices.
These are botched comparisons. It's obvious simply by the lack of there being any kind of sound card listed for the Dell, when there's obviously going to be one. Embedded or not, the sound processor is still there. And Dell computers are never the least expensive way to go. The most expensive parts of those computers are the DVD/CDRW combo drive and the LCD, but this still doesn't even the playing field enough. Look at the amount of usability that you could get out of a Mac, then look at the same amount of usability you could get out of a Windows-equipped PC. I don't support Microsoft in the least, but unfortunately, nearly 90% of software is written solely for Windows PCs. If you can get away with a computer that only has 10% of what's available, good for you, and feel free to go for it. For everyone else, it just doesn't cut it. Besides, the SB Audigy and Extigy come with an IEEE1394 port, essentially killing two birds with one stone. (I won't be surprised to start seeing mobos with integrated IEEE1394 soon -- it IS a damn good technology.)
There is one thing, and only one thing, that Apple computers are better at doing, and that is graphics. Why Apple doesn't just start selling computers that don't run things backwards is beyond my comprehension. Honestly, they can keep OSX and all the rest -- in fact, if they did that, even *I* might be enthused to go out and buy a Mac -- or at least OSX. Maybe.
I'm glad they're getting rid of FastTrack. KaZaA had spyware, I could never get a Morpheus account, and I already use Gnutella a lot -- having more users can never hurt.:)
Want a quick way to get support from PayPal? It's quite simple, really. Just send an email to didnotmeetexpectations@paypal.com. When I sent an email through their support page it took over a week to get a response. When I sent one to didnotmeetexpectations@paypal.com I got a response the next day. Just be sure to add this line: "I asked this before but the question was never really answered." Ah, I should get an award for manipulation of bureaucratic systems...I've manipulated my school more times than I can remember, PayPal, NuSphere, Microsoft...oh dear, I've said too much.;)
Guidescope is a great, free (beer) service that allows you to get rid of advertisements. It has some problems -- it gets rid of any image with the word 'banner' or 'advertisement' (possibly even 'ad' but I'm not sure) in it -- but 98.62973% of the time it hits the ads and leaves everything else intact. You download a small program (Linux and Mac users, you may be SOL with this one) that acts as a local proxy running on port 8000. Tell Mozilla (if you use anything else, you're an idiot *flame,flame*) to route through it and ta'da! No more ads. It can also kill cookies. From what the press says, it interacts with a central database to check whether or not something should be classified as an 'ad', but while I haven't checked to see what it converses with, I don't think it really does. You can however block specific images, which is kinda nifty.
I've said nifty twice in this post, which is a bad thing, so I'm going to stop talking at the end of this sentence. (period.)
Unfortunately, the government has routinely stalled on bills trying to crack down on internet SPAM. Much like the wiretapping act, the telemarketing bill passed in the eighties to stop unsolicited faxes was not expanded into the Internet. I'd be extremely happy to see any kind of anti-spam bill being passed into law, but I've yet to see one. However, there are a few guidelines to avoid 99% of all spam:
Don't use your ISP-provided email address. ISPs nearly always sell their email address list to email collectors to make extra money.
Never get a free email address.
Never use an un-spamproofed email address when registering a domain name. (There are some sadistic harvesters that crawl WHOIS registries for email addresses.)
For high-spam zones, use a spamcop email address (if there is an offchance you'll get any good/positive/important messages, like in a Usenet group). [This was more cost-effective when you could purchase by the megabyte instead of having a flat-rate as all new registrees get.]
Similarily, send any spam immediately to Spamcop.
Use a different email address for each automated registration form. If you can't use a fake email address (this inability is becoming more and more commonplace on message boards), be EXTREMELY certain that you want to sign up for whatever service this is.
Never ever EVER use Bravenet. Even when you stop your service and put your email address in their unsubscribe form, you STILL aren't unsubscribed.
Similarily, never ever EVER use CrushLink. Not only is the entire concept stupid, you will be spammed into the ground.
There are some other things you can do, but these are just a few good ideas. (One thing that works terribly well to eliminate telemarketers is to have a phone line activated but not have it connected to a telephone for a few months. As different telemarketing offices call the number and don't get an answer, you are weeded out of the system. This handly little bit thanks to a data line which we later started using as a voice line when DSL became available.)
Hybrid rollercoasters using real and virtual effects - 2001
'Hybrid rollercoaster' is a very vague. If all he's referring to is rollercoasters that go through tunnels with screens and lights and shit, well, look at Willy Wonka.;)
Positioning sound at any point in space - 2001
Again, it's 2002, and again, this doesn't exist. The last time I checked the best positional sound you could get was, I believe 10.1. (3 front, 2 side, 3 rear, one top, one bottom), and even that doesn't allow for sound positioned 'at any point'.
Doorstep videophone allowing remote interaction with callers - 2001
Okay, who else has seen one of these in the EIGHTIES?! It's not at all difficult to take two video cameras, two small screens, and wire them. What the hell are closed-captioned security systems!? Hello! Unless "remote interaction" specifically refers to being able to PHYSICAL interaction, in which case he's still wrong, because it's 2002 and it doesn't exist.:D
Automatic music composition in any style - 2002
Sure, you can make it. But does it sound like music?
Notebooks with P4 chips - 2002
Um, duh. The question is: who the hell would want a P4 chip, much less in a notebook??
I think I'm done now. Feel free to flame.
(Actually, I'm kinda surprised that I didn't see "99% of websites W3C compliant" -- oh wait, no I'm not. Look at Yahoo!. Look at SLASHDOT. *sigh*)
For each registration, website, or PET(*) I encounter, I use a different email alias on my domain so that when I get a piece of spam I know EXACTLY where they got my address from. There are a few places I've registered (like here) that I used addresses from BEFORE I implemented the system -- webmaster, spam, and ml -- but I don't usually get spam anyway. (About 1-2 per week.)
I don't see how this makes good business sense, even if there is MONEY to be made. Alienating, well, everyone who ever will and does use the Internet is probably bad for PR.
In other words, just because you DO have a patent doesn't mean you should always attempt to enforce it.
Tell that to Unisys. In fact, tell that to those guys that copyrighted telephone tones, too. They don't even have a patent. *snicker*
There is a secretary where I work that has four kids (and will probably have more) just to collect the welfare money. THIS is where overpopulation becomes a much more important factor. It is caused exactly because of the same thing that has become all too important in society today: Money. Welfare, as it is right now, helps very few people 'legitimately'. Either we need to stop capitalism (yeah, right) or we need to rework the welfare system.
Like Robin Hood: Robbing from the Rich and Giving to the Poor, it's WELFARE!
When you have committee after committee that needs to share data, it's beneficial to use one standard so that you spend less time haggling with technological problems and more time on the real work -- governmental issues.
Now all we need is for the government to actually DO the real work. Boy, won't THAT be the day.
Stating the obvious facts that people mix more today than they used to, and that this will create a more homogenous world population is in no way racist.
No, no, NO! This is basic biology, people! Genotype AaBbCcDd ("brown"), testing for skin colour, mixing with another genotype, AABBCCDD or whatever combination you'd like to choose, does NOT create another brown person. Unless both person's genotypes are identical (homogenous identicality, not heterogenous identicality), their offspring has a very high chance of being DIFFERENT. In fact, it's not completely out of the question that two "brown" people have a child that is completely white (or completely black), as per the random-mixing-of-genes. If you have two brown people, AaBbCcDd, and AaBbCcDd, there are 16! (that's 16*15*14...) different combinations. Now realize that this probably ISN'T the actual genotype for skin, and realize that it's probably MUCH more complex, and don't be so stupid as to say that everyone will be brown! It doesn't work that way!
No, see, what I was saying was that he claims only digital TVs have the decoders, which is FALSE, because this card has it, and this card is (obviously) not a digital TV set.
The HDCP system can't be broken, however, because only high definition sets will have the HDCP decoder, according to Dan McCarron, national product specialist in JVC's color TV division.
See, this is funny, because the PCI TV tuner card I just ordered from Hauppauge has an HDCP decoder. And it saves MPEG-2 video. Oops. Nice try, though.
"During take off, you must return your seat and tray table to their full and upright position and turn off all electronic devices, and keep all electronic devices such as radios and portable televisions turned off for the duration of the flight."
*runs Flight Simulator, takes control of plane, flies into the ground (oops)*
You ever wonder how crackable the autopilot on a commercial airplane is? It probably uses the same frequencies (or frequencies scannable by) a wireless ethernet card, or will in the coming years (what with the FCC cracking down on radio bandwidth usage). This open availability of access to various sources can only compound the issue of security.
Slashdot Mirror
What happened to the fans that were talked about in an earlier /. story that used positive and negative charges to blow air with less power use and almost no sound? I want some of those, not these.
Floating breasts shooting people. Sounds damn good to me.
The fact remains that on Pricewatch 70% of the items are incorrectly listed, another 20% are sold from 'questionable' stores, either with no security license or with no actual way of ordering online, and the rest are priced, well, 'normally'.
Suffice it to say that Pricewatch isn't exactly the best gauging tool for actual prices.
DVD is not a word. It is an acronym. Remember? Digital Versatile Disc.
Fool ya once, shame on me. Fool ya twice, shame on you.
These are botched comparisons. It's obvious simply by the lack of there being any kind of sound card listed for the Dell, when there's obviously going to be one. Embedded or not, the sound processor is still there. And Dell computers are never the least expensive way to go. The most expensive parts of those computers are the DVD/CDRW combo drive and the LCD, but this still doesn't even the playing field enough. Look at the amount of usability that you could get out of a Mac, then look at the same amount of usability you could get out of a Windows-equipped PC. I don't support Microsoft in the least, but unfortunately, nearly 90% of software is written solely for Windows PCs. If you can get away with a computer that only has 10% of what's available, good for you, and feel free to go for it. For everyone else, it just doesn't cut it. Besides, the SB Audigy and Extigy come with an IEEE1394 port, essentially killing two birds with one stone. (I won't be surprised to start seeing mobos with integrated IEEE1394 soon -- it IS a damn good technology.)
There is one thing, and only one thing, that Apple computers are better at doing, and that is graphics. Why Apple doesn't just start selling computers that don't run things backwards is beyond my comprehension. Honestly, they can keep OSX and all the rest -- in fact, if they did that, even *I* might be enthused to go out and buy a Mac -- or at least OSX. Maybe.
Transcripts of Kelani's Prank Phone Calls. 'Nuff said.
I'm glad they're getting rid of FastTrack. KaZaA had spyware, I could never get a Morpheus account, and I already use Gnutella a lot -- having more users can never hurt. :)
Funny that they were trying to copy-protect music CDs...
Want a quick way to get support from PayPal? It's quite simple, really. Just send an email to didnotmeetexpectations@paypal.com. When I sent an email through their support page it took over a week to get a response. When I sent one to didnotmeetexpectations@paypal.com I got a response the next day. Just be sure to add this line: "I asked this before but the question was never really answered." ;)
Ah, I should get an award for manipulation of bureaucratic systems...I've manipulated my school more times than I can remember, PayPal, NuSphere, Microsoft...oh dear, I've said too much.
Follow W3C specs and get programmers that aren't complete morons. Don't use WYSIWYG editors. Use tab characters instead of three spaces. Use more CSS.
Almost every design I've made runs under 10KB, images and all. And, dammit, *sniff* they aren't crappy designs!
Guidescope is a great, free (beer) service that allows you to get rid of advertisements. It has some problems -- it gets rid of any image with the word 'banner' or 'advertisement' (possibly even 'ad' but I'm not sure) in it -- but 98.62973% of the time it hits the ads and leaves everything else intact. You download a small program (Linux and Mac users, you may be SOL with this one) that acts as a local proxy running on port 8000. Tell Mozilla (if you use anything else, you're an idiot *flame,flame*) to route through it and ta'da! No more ads. It can also kill cookies. From what the press says, it interacts with a central database to check whether or not something should be classified as an 'ad', but while I haven't checked to see what it converses with, I don't think it really does. You can however block specific images, which is kinda nifty.
I've said nifty twice in this post, which is a bad thing, so I'm going to stop talking at the end of this sentence. (period.)
However, there are a few guidelines to avoid 99% of all spam:
- Don't use your ISP-provided email address. ISPs nearly always sell their email address list to email collectors to make extra money.
- Never get a free email address.
- Never use an un-spamproofed email address when registering a domain name. (There are some sadistic harvesters that crawl WHOIS registries for email addresses.)
- For high-spam zones, use a spamcop email address (if there is an offchance you'll get any good/positive/important messages, like in a Usenet group). [This was more cost-effective when you could purchase by the megabyte instead of having a flat-rate as all new registrees get.]
- Similarily, send any spam immediately to Spamcop.
- Use a different email address for each automated registration form. If you can't use a fake email address (this inability is becoming more and more commonplace on message boards), be EXTREMELY certain that you want to sign up for whatever service this is.
- Never ever EVER use Bravenet. Even when you stop your service and put your email address in their unsubscribe form, you STILL aren't unsubscribed.
- Similarily, never ever EVER use CrushLink. Not only is the entire concept stupid, you will be spammed into the ground.
There are some other things you can do, but these are just a few good ideas. (One thing that works terribly well to eliminate telemarketers is to have a phone line activated but not have it connected to a telephone for a few months. As different telemarketing offices call the number and don't get an answer, you are weeded out of the system. This handly little bit thanks to a data line which we later started using as a voice line when DSL became available.)'Hybrid rollercoaster' is a very vague. If all he's referring to is rollercoasters that go through tunnels with screens and lights and shit, well, look at Willy Wonka.
Again, it's 2002, and again, this doesn't exist. The last time I checked the best positional sound you could get was, I believe 10.1. (3 front, 2 side, 3 rear, one top, one bottom), and even that doesn't allow for sound positioned 'at any point'.
Okay, who else has seen one of these in the EIGHTIES?! It's not at all difficult to take two video cameras, two small screens, and wire them. What the hell are closed-captioned security systems!? Hello! Unless "remote interaction" specifically refers to being able to PHYSICAL interaction, in which case he's still wrong, because it's 2002 and it doesn't exist.
Sure, you can make it. But does it sound like music?
Um, duh. The question is: who the hell would want a P4 chip, much less in a notebook??
I think I'm done now. Feel free to flame.
(Actually, I'm kinda surprised that I didn't see "99% of websites W3C compliant" -- oh wait, no I'm not. Look at Yahoo!. Look at SLASHDOT. *sigh*)
For each registration, website, or PET(*) I encounter, I use a different email alias on my domain so that when I get a piece of spam I know EXACTLY where they got my address from. There are a few places I've registered (like here) that I used addresses from BEFORE I implemented the system -- webmaster, spam, and ml -- but I don't usually get spam anyway. (About 1-2 per week.)
(*)Personal Electronic Thingie
(Gee, I hope this message wasn't redundant.)
Build big giant DOMES over everything. ;)
I can't believe nobody's ever thought of this before.
There is a secretary where I work that has four kids (and will probably have more) just to collect the welfare money. THIS is where overpopulation becomes a much more important factor. It is caused exactly because of the same thing that has become all too important in society today: Money. Welfare, as it is right now, helps very few people 'legitimately'. Either we need to stop capitalism (yeah, right) or we need to rework the welfare system.
Like Robin Hood: Robbing from the Rich and Giving to the Poor, it's WELFARE!
No, no, NO! This is basic biology, people! Genotype AaBbCcDd ("brown"), testing for skin colour, mixing with another genotype, AABBCCDD or whatever combination you'd like to choose, does NOT create another brown person. Unless both person's genotypes are identical (homogenous identicality, not heterogenous identicality), their offspring has a very high chance of being DIFFERENT. In fact, it's not completely out of the question that two "brown" people have a child that is completely white (or completely black), as per the random-mixing-of-genes. If you have two brown people, AaBbCcDd, and AaBbCcDd, there are 16! (that's 16*15*14...) different combinations. Now realize that this probably ISN'T the actual genotype for skin, and realize that it's probably MUCH more complex, and don't be so stupid as to say that everyone will be brown! It doesn't work that way!
No, see, what I was saying was that he claims only digital TVs have the decoders, which is FALSE, because this card has it, and this card is (obviously) not a digital TV set.
It sounds like someone has an alterior motive for the measurement of speed of light with PING ;)
"During take off, you must return your seat and tray table to their full and upright position and turn off all electronic devices, and keep all electronic devices such as radios and portable televisions turned off for the duration of the flight."
*runs Flight Simulator, takes control of plane, flies into the ground (oops)*
You ever wonder how crackable the autopilot on a commercial airplane is? It probably uses the same frequencies (or frequencies scannable by) a wireless ethernet card, or will in the coming years (what with the FCC cracking down on radio bandwidth usage). This open availability of access to various sources can only compound the issue of security.