Not to detract from your comment (or how wrong the comment you responded to was), but if every watt used came out as heat, then the computer would not function. In other words if all the electricity going into the CPU was being converted to heat, then nothing would be left over for the CPU to process data.
The heat being released by the CPU is a byproduct of certain inefficiencies in silicon chip design, which can be reduced by some technologies but can't be eliminated. In fact the heat being released by other system components are caused by inefficiencies in their designs - nothing is 100% efficient, and this inefficiency is released as heat.
As someone who drove home to be with family over the holiday, let me assure you that just because the speed limit may be 70-75mph in some parts of the US, that doesn't mean that people are actually going to do 70-75mph.
Drivers with Iowa plates, for instance, loved to follow a truck doing 60mph in the right lane (the maximum speed for trucks on the highway I was driving). As soon as a car came up in the left lane doing 70mph, they would flip over to the left lane and accelerate up to 61-63mph, all at the very last second so that the driver in the left lane would need to make a panic brake to avoid plowing into them. Sometimes when they passed the truck they wouldn't change back over to the right lane again.
Since our police can't be bothered to enforce traffic laws that don't involve speeding, this kind of poor driving is, unfortunately, becoming all too common.
...you can install Firefox on a Windows user's system, but until you remove that IE icon from wherever they're used to clicking on it (desktop, quick launch, program files, etc.), they're not going to use Firefox.
I spent a long night cleaning thousands of pieces of spyware off this user's workstation. Installed Firefox. The next day I showed him how to use FF. Explained that his spyware problem would be greatly minimized by using FF instead of IE. User agreed to stay the hell away from IE. One week later I'm in his office helping him with something completely different. User wanted to show me a web site about some new car that came out, and what does he do? He clicks on IE, then starts browsing around. I point out what he just did. He quickly closes IE and, with some fumbling, launches Firefox and continues.
A month later? He's back in spyware hell again.
Until you break the user's habit, it doesn't matter what software you install, they're going to keep doing the same thing they've always done. They don't care about how many hours you spend, they don't care about how many hours they waste because their system turns to molasses. All they care about is that they can keep doing things the same "comfortable" way they've always been doing them. Until you force them to change their habits use won't rise.
Frankly, I'd be happy if there was a checkbox during installation of FF to remove IE icons from all the standard locations. In my experience that's the only surefire way to force people to start using FF.
I found a T-Shirt a while back that had the slogan "Vote Robot Nixon!" or something similar, with a picture of Nixon's head grafted onto a large robot body.
Closest I could come to a Futurama shirt, and it wasn't the same body from Futurama... so it didn't turn out quite as good as I had hoped.
Still... a Robot Nixon is better than no Robot Nixon...
Re:This is my single biggest push to free software
on
Vista is Watching You
·
· Score: 1
Oh and that's just for the printer.. the scanner part of the driver is nonfunctional on vista (despite the driver being the latest vista driver), and the whole thing won't install on OSX (a small (for them) 250mb driver) because they stopped supporting it after 10.4.2 and it's hardcoded to reject a version higher than that.
Well, since most installers see 10.4.10 as 10.4.1, all those installers should start working again. For better or worse...
Just look at all the fools who wasted money on the XBox or XBox 2.
A lineup that consists of little except fifth rate titles written in the third world by developers who can't even speak English, and a legion of fanboys proclaiming the equivalent of "Uruguay SoccerFest 2007" as the best game ever made. And if they yell loudly enough, maybe they'll even convince themselves of the lies they've told.
Personally, I beat the ever living shit out of kids who screwed with me when I was a young brat. Got sent around to a couple schools because of it. Other kids would push my buttons, get the shit kicked out of them, then smirk as I'm getting punished. Well, at least they were only smirking out of the side of their face that still worked.
Didn't play a video game in the world back then. Because video games didn't exist. I'm like old 'n stuff.
These days my favorite games are Pikimin & Pikimin 2, and though I play Desert Combat from time to time, that doesn't mean I only play violent games...my violent streak was established lonnnnnnnng before video games were even around.
Similarly, I highly doubt that violent people are being made more violent or even being MADE violent by games. People are what they are long before games ever enter the picture.
Odd, since I have perfectly stable Windows systems with QuickTime installed. My box at work is over 5 years old, the XP installation on it hasn't been refreshed in damn near 4 years. QuickTime has always been installed on it.
Of course, it wasn't always stable. When you have VIA chipsets involved, it always takes a couple years for VIA to sort through all their spaghetti code written in the third world. But once the drivers finally settled down and started working, it's been perfectly stable.
Maybe instead of looking for reasons to blame your problems on Apple you should roll up your sleeves and find the actual source. Because one thing is for certain - it's not Quicktime. Quicktime is just a userspace application. If your system BSODed every time you opened Notepad, would you blame Notepad? Seriously?
If you have stability problems, you need to focus on the kernel-level. Userspace apps can crash, but they can't bring down the system when they crash. Kernel level, like chipset or graphics drivers, that's a whole other ball of wax. You should focus on resolving these problems, since Quicktime is merely exposing a bug in your drivers - sooner or later another app is going to expose that bug.
If you can get your admins to enable IMAP on the Exchange server, Entourage will work great with it.
The nasty WebDAV "Exchange mode" in Entourage is a whole other animal though. I connected both Outlook 2003 & Entourage 2004 to the same mailbox, both running junk email filters, and damn near every message that was moved into the junk email folder was duplicated. One would catch spam and move the message, but wouldn't didn't update the server before the other client found it, so the net result was two junk emails created for each incoming source message (at least for the ones they both recognized as junk email).
Switched Entourage to use IMAP mode instead, voila, problem completely went away.
Getting LDAP (directory) lookups working is atypical obtuse LDAP-ese, but unless your admins are buffoons they should know what query to put into Entourage. Without LDAP you can't resolve names to addresses off the Global Address List, though obviously if you know their email address you can still send mail to people.
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Apple's contract with the big labels has a stipulation that all music from iTMS has to use DRM.
First, the labels know damn well that tracks available without DRM would sell better than tracks with DRM.
Second, the labels know damn well that all the other major labels will require their tracks to be sold with DRM. Call it collusion, call it groupthink, or call it something else - any way you shape it, they're all drinking the same kool-aid.
So, finally, these supposed non-DRM tracks would have to come from sources other than the major labels.
If there's one thing that the past decade has proven beyond all reasonable doubt, it's that the major labels are terrified of losing control of their monopoly. Offering non-DRM'd tracks on iTMS would allow consumers to avoid the major labels completely, and most of all, easily. An iTMS search for non-DRM'd content and a few mouse clicks spells doom for the RIAA. And they damn well know it.
Therefore there's probably a stipulation in the label's contract with Apple that requires them to use DRM on all songs available from iTMS. This is why Apple came up with a standard boilerplate contract for all the smaller indie labels to use - the terms were set in stone by the major labels, the smaller labels have to go along with the restrictions the major labels put in place.
Remember, this is the RIAA we're talking about - they jump from shadows that haven't even been cast yet.
I'm sure part of the logic train for this is because Apple is "in" with most of the record labels & movie studios worldwide.
By partnering with Apple, and only allowing Apple hardware to connect, they avoid getting sued by the xxAA later for "enabling infringement" or a similar asinine excuse they'll pull out of their ass.
I own, charge, and use a 2nd battery for my phone.
However, my phone is a Nextel, and both the phone, contract, battery charger, and both batteries are all company property.
Nextel phones have a voracious appetite for power, with an extended battery (requires "fat battery" backplate) I can get 3 days of runtime, if I don't use it much. Standard cuts that by more than half. And the "thin" battery? I don't know, because I use my phone too much to even think of trying one.
How about an icon that depicts a Kitten having been fired at a high velocity at a Pony, so fast that the Kitten actually punches through the Pony to the other side. Don't forget to include the sheer amount of guts that are displaced by this Pony-Seeking Kitten Missile either.
Hrm. On second thought, maybe I just need to stop watching Metalocalypse.
Meh, buy an OEM version of Windows XP, they should be 50% or less the price of a retail box.
If you can find a retailer willing to sell it to you without any strings attached, the retailer is the one on the hook with Microsoft. But the strings are pretty loose though on OEM now, you could buy a mouse with an OEM OS, and so long as the mouse is connected to the PC, you're legally fine.
Obviously different country, different rules, but from what I gather from my Brit friends this particular loophole exists over there too.
But your dual monitors can't be shared with a KVM switch easily either.
I've got dual monitors with a KVM, but one monitor is permanently attached to my primary PC, the other is hooked up to the KVM. Taking that model down the DL-DVI route, you'd have your primary display (30") directly connected to your PC, with a secondary display KVM'd.
While the DL-DVI cards are still pretty expensive, everything is expensive when it first comes out. HDTV sets are still outrageously priced compared to their SDTV brethren. But those HDTV sets are still a fraction of the price that an HDTV set cost a few year ago. Provided you wait long enough, most consumer technologies will become cheap enough for normal people to afford.
Once DL-DVI is commonplace, DL-DVI KVMs will be common, and prices will be reasonable. Until then you have to pay through the nose, or get creative.
Maxtor bought Quantum. Quantum made damned reliable drives. In a corner of my storage room I have 250MB, 500MB, 1GB, & 2GB Quantum drives that are only not being used because of their dinky size - they work as well now as the day they were made. But after the Maxtor acquisition, the old Quantum product lines went down the crapper. Now they're just as reliable as any Maxtor drive.
I'm happy that you buy Maxtor drives and think they're reliable. At the same time I'm saddened because you think that drives regularly dying within the warranty period is acceptable.
You should have backups, yes. But drives shouldn't fail so often that you have to rely on those backups on a constant basis.
The only Maxtor drives I use on a regular basis form RAID 1, 5, 1/0, & 50 arrays. Relying on Maxtor to not be the single point of failure that forces you to drive into work on a Saturday night is just asking for trouble.
Right now if you want to get schematics of your purchased product you have to pay $X to the manufacturer, and may be required to sign Y non-disclosure agreement, etc. But you can still freakin' get them if you want them, you just need to be persistant and have a willingness to open your wallet.
Under your proposed system, every purchaser of the device would subsidize this minor number of owners who want access to this information. Rather than having the minority foot a large bill for getting access to this detailed info, every purchaser would have to foot a small bill so that this minority has access to detailed information this smaller fee.
Do you see how unfair this is to the average owner? Yes, I understand you get to pay less for the information. But why should Joe Buyer have to pay for your convenient access to information? He sure as hell isn't going to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to detract from your comment (or how wrong the comment you responded to was), but if every watt used came out as heat, then the computer would not function. In other words if all the electricity going into the CPU was being converted to heat, then nothing would be left over for the CPU to process data.
The heat being released by the CPU is a byproduct of certain inefficiencies in silicon chip design, which can be reduced by some technologies but can't be eliminated. In fact the heat being released by other system components are caused by inefficiencies in their designs - nothing is 100% efficient, and this inefficiency is released as heat.
As someone who drove home to be with family over the holiday, let me assure you that just because the speed limit may be 70-75mph in some parts of the US, that doesn't mean that people are actually going to do 70-75mph.
Drivers with Iowa plates, for instance, loved to follow a truck doing 60mph in the right lane (the maximum speed for trucks on the highway I was driving). As soon as a car came up in the left lane doing 70mph, they would flip over to the left lane and accelerate up to 61-63mph, all at the very last second so that the driver in the left lane would need to make a panic brake to avoid plowing into them. Sometimes when they passed the truck they wouldn't change back over to the right lane again.
Since our police can't be bothered to enforce traffic laws that don't involve speeding, this kind of poor driving is, unfortunately, becoming all too common.
Fat chance of that happening.
Even investigative reporters occasionally need to get home, car, etc. loans.
...you can install Firefox on a Windows user's system, but until you remove that IE icon from wherever they're used to clicking on it (desktop, quick launch, program files, etc.), they're not going to use Firefox.
I spent a long night cleaning thousands of pieces of spyware off this user's workstation. Installed Firefox. The next day I showed him how to use FF. Explained that his spyware problem would be greatly minimized by using FF instead of IE. User agreed to stay the hell away from IE. One week later I'm in his office helping him with something completely different. User wanted to show me a web site about some new car that came out, and what does he do? He clicks on IE, then starts browsing around. I point out what he just did. He quickly closes IE and, with some fumbling, launches Firefox and continues.
A month later? He's back in spyware hell again.
Until you break the user's habit, it doesn't matter what software you install, they're going to keep doing the same thing they've always done. They don't care about how many hours you spend, they don't care about how many hours they waste because their system turns to molasses. All they care about is that they can keep doing things the same "comfortable" way they've always been doing them. Until you force them to change their habits use won't rise.
Frankly, I'd be happy if there was a checkbox during installation of FF to remove IE icons from all the standard locations. In my experience that's the only surefire way to force people to start using FF.
Yep, that's the one I got.
I found a T-Shirt a while back that had the slogan "Vote Robot Nixon!" or something similar, with a picture of Nixon's head grafted onto a large robot body.
Closest I could come to a Futurama shirt, and it wasn't the same body from Futurama... so it didn't turn out quite as good as I had hoped.
Still... a Robot Nixon is better than no Robot Nixon...
Just look at all the fools who wasted money on the XBox or XBox 2.
A lineup that consists of little except fifth rate titles written in the third world by developers who can't even speak English, and a legion of fanboys proclaiming the equivalent of "Uruguay SoccerFest 2007" as the best game ever made. And if they yell loudly enough, maybe they'll even convince themselves of the lies they've told.
Personally, I beat the ever living shit out of kids who screwed with me when I was a young brat. Got sent around to a couple schools because of it. Other kids would push my buttons, get the shit kicked out of them, then smirk as I'm getting punished. Well, at least they were only smirking out of the side of their face that still worked.
Didn't play a video game in the world back then. Because video games didn't exist. I'm like old 'n stuff.
These days my favorite games are Pikimin & Pikimin 2, and though I play Desert Combat from time to time, that doesn't mean I only play violent games...my violent streak was established lonnnnnnnng before video games were even around.
Similarly, I highly doubt that violent people are being made more violent or even being MADE violent by games. People are what they are long before games ever enter the picture.
Odd, since I have perfectly stable Windows systems with QuickTime installed. My box at work is over 5 years old, the XP installation on it hasn't been refreshed in damn near 4 years. QuickTime has always been installed on it.
Of course, it wasn't always stable. When you have VIA chipsets involved, it always takes a couple years for VIA to sort through all their spaghetti code written in the third world. But once the drivers finally settled down and started working, it's been perfectly stable.
Maybe instead of looking for reasons to blame your problems on Apple you should roll up your sleeves and find the actual source. Because one thing is for certain - it's not Quicktime. Quicktime is just a userspace application. If your system BSODed every time you opened Notepad, would you blame Notepad? Seriously?
If you have stability problems, you need to focus on the kernel-level. Userspace apps can crash, but they can't bring down the system when they crash. Kernel level, like chipset or graphics drivers, that's a whole other ball of wax. You should focus on resolving these problems, since Quicktime is merely exposing a bug in your drivers - sooner or later another app is going to expose that bug.
If you can get your admins to enable IMAP on the Exchange server, Entourage will work great with it.
The nasty WebDAV "Exchange mode" in Entourage is a whole other animal though. I connected both Outlook 2003 & Entourage 2004 to the same mailbox, both running junk email filters, and damn near every message that was moved into the junk email folder was duplicated. One would catch spam and move the message, but wouldn't didn't update the server before the other client found it, so the net result was two junk emails created for each incoming source message (at least for the ones they both recognized as junk email).
Switched Entourage to use IMAP mode instead, voila, problem completely went away.
Getting LDAP (directory) lookups working is atypical obtuse LDAP-ese, but unless your admins are buffoons they should know what query to put into Entourage. Without LDAP you can't resolve names to addresses off the Global Address List, though obviously if you know their email address you can still send mail to people.
Personally, I wouldn't be surprised in the least if Apple's contract with the big labels has a stipulation that all music from iTMS has to use DRM.
First, the labels know damn well that tracks available without DRM would sell better than tracks with DRM.
Second, the labels know damn well that all the other major labels will require their tracks to be sold with DRM. Call it collusion, call it groupthink, or call it something else - any way you shape it, they're all drinking the same kool-aid.
So, finally, these supposed non-DRM tracks would have to come from sources other than the major labels.
If there's one thing that the past decade has proven beyond all reasonable doubt, it's that the major labels are terrified of losing control of their monopoly. Offering non-DRM'd tracks on iTMS would allow consumers to avoid the major labels completely, and most of all, easily. An iTMS search for non-DRM'd content and a few mouse clicks spells doom for the RIAA. And they damn well know it.
Therefore there's probably a stipulation in the label's contract with Apple that requires them to use DRM on all songs available from iTMS. This is why Apple came up with a standard boilerplate contract for all the smaller indie labels to use - the terms were set in stone by the major labels, the smaller labels have to go along with the restrictions the major labels put in place.
Remember, this is the RIAA we're talking about - they jump from shadows that haven't even been cast yet.
Paying $3 to ship a $5 cable beats the hell out of paying $30 to buy a $5 cable at retail, at least in my book.
I'm sure part of the logic train for this is because Apple is "in" with most of the record labels & movie studios worldwide.
By partnering with Apple, and only allowing Apple hardware to connect, they avoid getting sued by the xxAA later for "enabling infringement" or a similar asinine excuse they'll pull out of their ass.
I own, charge, and use a 2nd battery for my phone.
However, my phone is a Nextel, and both the phone, contract, battery charger, and both batteries are all company property.
Nextel phones have a voracious appetite for power, with an extended battery (requires "fat battery" backplate) I can get 3 days of runtime, if I don't use it much. Standard cuts that by more than half. And the "thin" battery? I don't know, because I use my phone too much to even think of trying one.
How about an icon that depicts a Kitten having been fired at a high velocity at a Pony, so fast that the Kitten actually punches through the Pony to the other side. Don't forget to include the sheer amount of guts that are displaced by this Pony-Seeking Kitten Missile either.
Hrm. On second thought, maybe I just need to stop watching Metalocalypse.
Eh? I thought Slashdot didn't like any label that futzed with the CD spec for copy protection?
I mean hell, I barely buy music, and even I know enough not to buy CDs with that sticker on them.
Maybe you should shoot Weird Al a note about that too while you're at it.
Meh, buy an OEM version of Windows XP, they should be 50% or less the price of a retail box.
If you can find a retailer willing to sell it to you without any strings attached, the retailer is the one on the hook with Microsoft. But the strings are pretty loose though on OEM now, you could buy a mouse with an OEM OS, and so long as the mouse is connected to the PC, you're legally fine.
Obviously different country, different rules, but from what I gather from my Brit friends this particular loophole exists over there too.
"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra when suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
-- Matt Groening
But your dual monitors can't be shared with a KVM switch easily either.
I've got dual monitors with a KVM, but one monitor is permanently attached to my primary PC, the other is hooked up to the KVM. Taking that model down the DL-DVI route, you'd have your primary display (30") directly connected to your PC, with a secondary display KVM'd.
While the DL-DVI cards are still pretty expensive, everything is expensive when it first comes out. HDTV sets are still outrageously priced compared to their SDTV brethren. But those HDTV sets are still a fraction of the price that an HDTV set cost a few year ago. Provided you wait long enough, most consumer technologies will become cheap enough for normal people to afford.
Once DL-DVI is commonplace, DL-DVI KVMs will be common, and prices will be reasonable. Until then you have to pay through the nose, or get creative.
If not for kooks posting misinformation in forums, where can other kooks turn to for information?
I suspect the screwdriver they're going to use is DirectX 10, since Microsoft claims they can't make it work under Windows XP.
If you play games, like 99% of Windows XP users do, sooner or later you'll need DirectX 10 to play a game.
'course if you don't play games, you should really buy a Mac.
2.55TBs?!
Now that's some serious code bloat.
My hate of Maxtor isn't irrational.
Maxtor bought Quantum. Quantum made damned reliable drives. In a corner of my storage room I have 250MB, 500MB, 1GB, & 2GB Quantum drives that are only not being used because of their dinky size - they work as well now as the day they were made. But after the Maxtor acquisition, the old Quantum product lines went down the crapper. Now they're just as reliable as any Maxtor drive.
I'm happy that you buy Maxtor drives and think they're reliable. At the same time I'm saddened because you think that drives regularly dying within the warranty period is acceptable.
You should have backups, yes. But drives shouldn't fail so often that you have to rely on those backups on a constant basis.
The only Maxtor drives I use on a regular basis form RAID 1, 5, 1/0, & 50 arrays. Relying on Maxtor to not be the single point of failure that forces you to drive into work on a Saturday night is just asking for trouble.
Right now if you want to get schematics of your purchased product you have to pay $X to the manufacturer, and may be required to sign Y non-disclosure agreement, etc. But you can still freakin' get them if you want them, you just need to be persistant and have a willingness to open your wallet.
Under your proposed system, every purchaser of the device would subsidize this minor number of owners who want access to this information. Rather than having the minority foot a large bill for getting access to this detailed info, every purchaser would have to foot a small bill so that this minority has access to detailed information this smaller fee.
Do you see how unfair this is to the average owner? Yes, I understand you get to pay less for the information. But why should Joe Buyer have to pay for your convenient access to information? He sure as hell isn't going to use it.