Frankly, the most annoying part of that install procedure is one user who every month or two ends up having that "install" process start over - for no apparent reason. He just logs into the system in the morning, fires up Outlook, and bam, time to reinstall!
So then Outlook forgets the server name, so then he calls me, and I'm none too happy to be bothered with asinine problems before I've put some caffeine in me.
I hate to break the news to you, but of all the spams I've received over the past 2 days, not a single one was SENT from the account that is listed on the reply-to address. In fact, if you read the contents of the spam, you'll usually see them point replies to a completely different address, and "remove" requests to another (usually bogus) address. In not a single case does the subnet of the sender, nor the mail server used to relay the message, match any email address contained within the spam.
Now, that's not to say that there are idiots out there who are ignorant enough to send spam with their own return address via their ISP's mail server, nor do I mean to say that there aren't enough spam-friendly ISPs out there loaning bandwidth to spammers running their own server farms (like the scumbag weasel $!@#$@# who's currently getting ever-increasing amounts of old-fashioned junkmail). I'm just saying that it's unlikely your actions will cause the effect you intend, as spammers who operate in the manner you need are in the minority.
Your #1 is good, but I prefer an email program that doesn't interpret ANY HTML automatically.
I realize this means I'm a backwards crotchety old fart, but email is text, dammit. You don't need funny fonts, you don't need any extraneous crap to get your point across. Period.
My primary complaint against Outlook is that there's no way to disable the HTML rendering engine. Other than that, and the myriad of security holes present in all it's components, it's really not that bad of an email program.
But I'll keep using the same email program I've been using for 10 years now, at least until it breaks completely...
Re:Slower because of file-based swap?
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
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· Score: 1
You can setup a swapdisk under OSX, XLR8YourMac has had blurbs numerous times about how to accomplish this under 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. As I recall there weren't any major performance boosts.
Since you're performing an unsupported change to the OS, it's possible that something will break by doing this. The swapdisk code isn't being actively updated (NeXTStep era code), etc. while the swapfile code is, at least in theory.
I could be completely off-base on the last though - the swapdisk/swapfile code probably falls under the domain of Darwin, and people are probably actively updating both systems... Apple is just supporting the swapfile-based system. In theory they're doing it for a good reason, though it may just be simplicity's sake.
Connectix didn't win. Sony dropped the lawsuit. There's a difference.
Connectix was able to continue selling their product, but legal precedence was not set. If the court case had been tried and a judgement found in favor of Connectix, there may have been precedence that could be applied here.
Well, seeing how my best friend was killed exactly 1 month ago by a woman yakking on a cell phone driving a full-size pickup/SUV (instead of turning onto the shoulder to avoid a stopped vehicle she turned into oncoming traffic)... Suing is too good for 'em. Hanging is too good for 'em.
Cut their heads off and stick them on a pike. It worked for the Tower of London, right?
Yeah, EA is risk-adverse. It's cubeland office environment inspires much loathing from anyone who's worked elsewhere in the industry, too. EA used to have an interesting philosophy, back when games were either completely done by a single individual or a handful of people. But the bar has been raised very high now, with dozens of people working on any title (I'm amazed at the number of Japanese titles have 100+ team members), which means that more sales are required to break even.
That said, EA did try to axe The Sims multiple times during it's development process. So to say that The Sims was a non-risk is obviously untrue - some execs were very scared of it. Now that it's an established "brand", much to those execs chagrin, it's obviously turned into a non-risk...
Yes, and no. Jedi Knight 2 contains a few thousand files, only a few of which are extremely large. These few files are the levels (and movies), but I'm not sure how loading a level (into RAM) faster is worth the risk. I think VM ends up behaving like small files, because small chunks of data are written into and out of it all the time.
RAID5 requires 3 disks. The problem is you write off 1 disk for parity (OK, parity is distributed across all disks, but a drive's worth of space), so the space advantage is virtually nil vs. a 2-drive RAID0 solution. You just pay for an extra disk and peace of mind. Of course, I haven't seen a hardware RAID5 IDE controller, so...
To be honest I haven't farted around with RAID0 since 4GB drives were the largest you could get your hands on. I think a current-tech 3-drive RAID0 array would have a faster seek than one of those drives. So it's possible that the seeks are so quick these days that even after adding a few it's still fast enough.
I think the only RAIDs in major use these days are 1 & 5, and variations on the theme ("RAID 50" scares me). RAID0 isn't really used except for temporary circumstances.
BTW, I had a drive fail in a RAID0 array. Back up early, back up often. I only lost a few hours of work. I can't imagine what would happen to someone who didn't have a tape drive.
Er. The rule of thumb with RAID0 is that you not only add up the transfer rates, you also add the seek times.
So depending on the type of access, RAID0 can be slower than a single drive. If you're primarily working with small files (e.g. Windows installation), the transfer rate may not outweigh the increased seek time.
YMMV of course. The only RAID I trust for boot volumes is RAID1 - RAID0 is fine for data, assuming you're working with large sequentially accessed files, and you back everything up on a constant basis. RAID 5 is probably a safer bet, with distributed parity and the ability to have live spares online and spinning to make up for any hardware failure.
Yes, IDE has had busmastering for a long time. I think 7 years is even pessimistic, it's been bus mastered for a very long time. However, with IDE the bus mastering seems to just interrupt the CPU less for disk transfers, not totally absolve it from those duties. This is why SCSI has historically had a 2-3% CPU utilitization with the bus maxed.
While you make a good argument for purchasing an aftermarket IDE controller (which can perform tasks with the CPU utilization of SCSI), the reality of the matter is that virtually zero OEMs ship a system that way, they use whatever is built in on the motherboard. Which almost always consume a large amount of CPU time when performing disk I/O.
This is why the only people who build enterprise-class database servers with IDE drives at their core are idiots. That or they're penny-wise and dollar-stupid.
FWIW, with companies in the US, the corporate HR policy in regards to severance can also be used, IF they have a policy.
When I was laid off by Viacom they had a standard corporate policy for all layoffs, used to calculate the number of weeks of severance. Since I'd been there for 8 years, and hadn't taken a vacation the last year, I got roughly 9 weeks of pay after leaving. This was corporate policy for all layoffs.
Now, in addition to this I had the option of signing a restrictive contract that required me not to discuss the terms of the severance package, not badmouth Viacom, not sue, etc. for an additional 2 weeks of pay.
Yes, I chose not to sign. I already had 8 weeks coming and was working part-time at my future employer after hours, with an agreement that I would begin full-time once the company shut down. Double pay for over 2 months was nice.
Not that it was all roses. The management team they brought in the final year, after the long-timers all abandoned ship, made every single employee's life a living hell the final week of their employment (fired with 'cause' = no severance). These were a couple of dicks who I will never, ever work with again, and frankly will badmouth at every opportunity I get.
Evidently I'm not the only one because they never got another job in the video game industry again. The industry is so small, and word of mouth spreads so fast, they ended up just screwing themselves.
Hmm. It's weird. I have a love-hate relationship with WD.
Basically their OEM drive business from 7+ years ago was bread and butter for them - massive influx of cash selling cheap, cheap, cheap drives with little in the way of quality control. This is back when they actually shipped drives that spun at 1800 & 2100rpm, while almost everyone else was at 3600rpm. But they were cheap. OEMs love cheap.
Within the past couple years though I've seen a major shift for them. Their OEM drives are still of questionable integrity, though nothing like they used to be. But their retail drives have been damn good to me. The last problem I had with a WD was back when they were one of the first 9GB 7200rpm IDE drive manufacturers, and there was a firmware bug that caused problems with old controllers - like, oh, I dunno, the kind you'd find built into the BX chipset. Yeah. That big of a pain.
Oh, wait, I take that back... I bought one of their first 7200rpm "enterprise" class SCSI drives and, well, found it less than enterprise worthy. I saw weird data corruption issues that I never tracked down, literally didn't have the luxury of tracking them down, I just replaced the drive with a same-size Seagate and bam, problem went away. That drive still rests on a shelf, someplace, waiting for a 2nd chance.
Still, those are both problems from over 3 years ago. It's enough time for them to change.
All that said, I have a 120GB WD IDE drive inside my current box that runs 24/7/365 and has since I bought it last year. But, by the same token, my tape backup kicks off MWF and backs up everything - data from the WD, the 15K Seagate, and the Atlas V. Once you realize that data loss is inevitable, the price of a safety net doesn't seem quite so high... the kicker is that sometimes the only thing that will make you realize that is data loss.
Not to nitpick, but at work we _just_ obsoleted a P133 OptiPlex that had ended up in a server role.
Dimensions are sometimes a little... under... engineered, and I usually argue that's because Intel designs the lion share of those systems, and they have an obvious interest in getting people to buy new systems sooner.
OptiPlexes have typically been overengineered. For instance, this particular P133 had a spot for a 2nd CPU (which we populated later on) and SCSI on the motherboard. This wasn't a special order, it was simply what Dell shipped at the time for P133 OptiPlex desktops.
I have no idea if Dell still operates in this fashion, I wouldn't be surprised if they've started underengineering the OptiPlex line as well (given the penny-wise dollar-stupid corporate behavior the past few years).
Call me paranoid, but I have trouble believing facts about the DVD+R/+RW format from a web site who's domain name is "dvdplusrw.org".
Maybe it's just the journalism 101 course (idealistic as it was), but I tend to trust a impartial third party more than someone who is involved, or is trying to get involved, in the situation. Isn't this part of the reason why we distrust the RIAA/MPAA/etc. when it comes to legal affairs/legislation? They have interests to protect, often have an axe to grind, and have readily omitted facts to make their arguments stronger.
Granted we're talking about the difference between a sledgehammer (RIAA/MPAA) and the hammer found in a bell-style alarm clock, but it's still in the same vein.
I've found similar lists on DVD-RW fan sites that have been... less... than accurate... about compatibility. Such is the joy of using a wide number of people to gather "facts", which are siphoned through their own technical ability & inability. Some will do proper testing, others will do what think is proper testing, some have no idea what the hell they're doing, and some will perform insane amounts of testing...
Then filter the results through the people running the web site, because there's always some wackjobs out there submitting incorrect information, and the filterers are only human...
I think the insane part comes in paying that much for a what amounts to a 50-inch computer display -- not just due to the cost, of course, but that in combination with a maximum resolution being THAT LOW.
I'm pretty sure 1366x768 on a 50" monitor would look very close to 640x480 on a 21" monitor. Granted you can fit more n a 1366x768 display, but, for chrissake, I run at 1280x1024 and STILL get cramped for room when trying to get something meaningful done.
But, by the same token, I know some vision-challenged individuals (in dire need of new glasses, I must add) who routinely run 640x480 on 21" monitors. This is the same group of people who put forth a nonstop litany of complaints about UI being too big and fonts being too small (!!) based on whatever it is they're doing (or trying to do, at least).
I dunno about you, but I tend to walk around work with my eyes taking in the full scope of walls. An ethernet cable snaking up and into the ceiling, anywhere, will catch my attention.
Then again, maybe I'm just a little bit paranoid since at my employer's last building we had cables running up and down walls all over the damn place - not much choice when people are packed in like sardines and there aren't enough close-by ports to meet people's needs.
Now that we're 4 months into a new building, with enough ports to go around (and the financial wherewithal to have more drops installed when we've needed them), I have to keep an eye on the little monsters who are used to the idea of stringing cables -- that way they don't have to plan beyond today.
Mmm. Not only is it different with XP and X, it's also different with OS9 too.
Stick a writeable CD in the drive, open the CD, presents a blank window, drag files to the window, eject the disc, asks you to burn, burns, ejects, disc is ready.
Re:You misrepresent the issue & Apple reversed
on
Death to the 3.5" Floppy?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
No, Apple did not "back down" from this issue. Even today you can get a low-end Mac (eMac) without a floppy and without a CD-RW.
Like it or not, Ethernet IS "good enough" for sharing files. Barring incompetant wiring, it's faster and more reliable.
If you absolutely need a floppy, external USB floppies are cheap and plentiful. And I say this as someone who bought one three years ago and has used it twice - both times for writing a set of DOS 6.22 floppies (disk images are fun). Bootable CDs are not difficult to make (on the Mac you would have to be brain-dead not to be able to make one) and are simple to maintain.
On the PC side the only thing I do with floppies is to make network boot disks. That's it. Once the system is on the network I can perform a variety of tasks, from prepping for OS installs, HD imaging, driver updates - plenty of annoying required PC maintenance.
Frankly at this point I'm getting ready to start making network boot CDs instead - every system I work with can boot off CD, and floppies develop bad sectors when I look at them funny (necessitating a reformatting & recreating the floppy). Though I have noticed plenty of floppy imaging software will happily ignore the bad sectors (as in fail to write but not modify the structure to avoid that sector), providing me with a disk of dubious usefulness.
This isn't to say that I don't know people who don't use floppy for file storage and transfers. They knock on my door every week or two, bearing a floppy that has developed bad sectors, all confused as to where their file has gone. I sigh heavily, take the floppy, explain how floppies are not reliable for storage, then try my damndest to recover the data. (almost always in succeeding recovering some to all of it)
(hmmm... battery life seems to be its most apparent weakness. My LG VX1 / TM-520 is rated at 180 min talk / 110h standby from the standard battery.)
Well, historically, iDEN phones have much lower talk times. They are transmitting much, much more often than typical digital phones.
But by the same token within a second of hitting the DirectConnect button you're talking to a coworker - which is entirely because their servers know exactly where the phone is due to the constant check-ins.
FWIW, the closest phone to the i95 is not the i85, it's the i90. Take an i95c, stick in a slower CPU, remove memory (I think it's 50%), and of course swap in a lower-res greyscale screen - voila, i90. They both run Java apps, they both can surf the web (for a monthly fee).
Also, I dunno how great calling it a "Java phone" is - it just optionally runs Java apps. The phone itself is running... er... some OS... when you enter the Java section (the first time after installing a battery) you have to wait as the VM loads and initializes.
Not that it's a horrible phone by any means, just don't expect it to be a traditional digital cell phone - because it's not. Range, voice quality, etc. are quite different.
I would guess it's because the bit "requirement" would have to wait for contract renewal/negotiation.
Getting it "turned on" within a reasonable timeframe for all broadcast media is pretty much impossible if it's only included in new contracts. Plus there's always the chance of some small fry choosing not to require it, snubbing the MPAA so to speak while at the same time providing a lucrative opportunity for broadcasters (since their shows wouldn't require implementation, they could skip it and go with the third party).
Working with the FCC turns that expensive battle (because the MPAA would have to pay, one way or the other, for implementation) into law (or close enough) which they don't have to pay for - beyond lobbyists, etc.
Bear with me - because this "copyright bit" wasn't part of the original contract, and probably wasn't even a twinkle in Valenti's eye when most contracts were last negotiated, they probably don't have a simple way of amending the contract to require it. Well, without renegotiating the contract, which would no doubt require lower prices -- the only way broadcasters would even consider this expensive proposition.
Sorry if I rehashed things a few times, I'm freakin' exhausted...
Region 0, no dub, multiple subs (english, couple chinese, others), has been available for almost as long.
If you want to import it from Malaysia. Or Hong Kong. Or any other number of sources.
Or you can do what I did - buy it on eBay, from a guy in HK. Actually got a good deal on mine, given the prices on (international) web sites plus shipping, saved some money vs. those sources.
I'll buy the official Region 1 release when it comes out (I'm a sucker for good dubs), but I had the money and it _was_ available, so what the hell. If they wanted my money earlier, they could have sold it earlier...
Slashdot Mirror
Aren't anonymous cowards fun?
Frankly, the most annoying part of that install procedure is one user who every month or two ends up having that "install" process start over - for no apparent reason. He just logs into the system in the morning, fires up Outlook, and bam, time to reinstall!
So then Outlook forgets the server name, so then he calls me, and I'm none too happy to be bothered with asinine problems before I've put some caffeine in me.
I hate to break the news to you, but of all the spams I've received over the past 2 days, not a single one was SENT from the account that is listed on the reply-to address. In fact, if you read the contents of the spam, you'll usually see them point replies to a completely different address, and "remove" requests to another (usually bogus) address. In not a single case does the subnet of the sender, nor the mail server used to relay the message, match any email address contained within the spam.
Now, that's not to say that there are idiots out there who are ignorant enough to send spam with their own return address via their ISP's mail server, nor do I mean to say that there aren't enough spam-friendly ISPs out there loaning bandwidth to spammers running their own server farms (like the scumbag weasel $!@#$@# who's currently getting ever-increasing amounts of old-fashioned junkmail). I'm just saying that it's unlikely your actions will cause the effect you intend, as spammers who operate in the manner you need are in the minority.
Your #1 is good, but I prefer an email program that doesn't interpret ANY HTML automatically.
I realize this means I'm a backwards crotchety old fart, but email is text, dammit. You don't need funny fonts, you don't need any extraneous crap to get your point across. Period.
My primary complaint against Outlook is that there's no way to disable the HTML rendering engine. Other than that, and the myriad of security holes present in all it's components, it's really not that bad of an email program.
But I'll keep using the same email program I've been using for 10 years now, at least until it breaks completely...
You can setup a swapdisk under OSX, XLR8YourMac has had blurbs numerous times about how to accomplish this under 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. As I recall there weren't any major performance boosts.
Since you're performing an unsupported change to the OS, it's possible that something will break by doing this. The swapdisk code isn't being actively updated (NeXTStep era code), etc. while the swapfile code is, at least in theory.
I could be completely off-base on the last though - the swapdisk/swapfile code probably falls under the domain of Darwin, and people are probably actively updating both systems... Apple is just supporting the swapfile-based system. In theory they're doing it for a good reason, though it may just be simplicity's sake.
Connectix didn't win. Sony dropped the lawsuit. There's a difference.
Connectix was able to continue selling their product, but legal precedence was not set. If the court case had been tried and a judgement found in favor of Connectix, there may have been precedence that could be applied here.
Well, seeing how my best friend was killed exactly 1 month ago by a woman yakking on a cell phone driving a full-size pickup/SUV (instead of turning onto the shoulder to avoid a stopped vehicle she turned into oncoming traffic)... Suing is too good for 'em. Hanging is too good for 'em.
Cut their heads off and stick them on a pike. It worked for the Tower of London, right?
Yeah, EA is risk-adverse. It's cubeland office environment inspires much loathing from anyone who's worked elsewhere in the industry, too. EA used to have an interesting philosophy, back when games were either completely done by a single individual or a handful of people. But the bar has been raised very high now, with dozens of people working on any title (I'm amazed at the number of Japanese titles have 100+ team members), which means that more sales are required to break even.
That said, EA did try to axe The Sims multiple times during it's development process. So to say that The Sims was a non-risk is obviously untrue - some execs were very scared of it. Now that it's an established "brand", much to those execs chagrin, it's obviously turned into a non-risk...
Yes, and no. Jedi Knight 2 contains a few thousand files, only a few of which are extremely large. These few files are the levels (and movies), but I'm not sure how loading a level (into RAM) faster is worth the risk. I think VM ends up behaving like small files, because small chunks of data are written into and out of it all the time.
RAID5 requires 3 disks. The problem is you write off 1 disk for parity (OK, parity is distributed across all disks, but a drive's worth of space), so the space advantage is virtually nil vs. a 2-drive RAID0 solution. You just pay for an extra disk and peace of mind. Of course, I haven't seen a hardware RAID5 IDE controller, so...
To be honest I haven't farted around with RAID0 since 4GB drives were the largest you could get your hands on. I think a current-tech 3-drive RAID0 array would have a faster seek than one of those drives. So it's possible that the seeks are so quick these days that even after adding a few it's still fast enough.
I think the only RAIDs in major use these days are 1 & 5, and variations on the theme ("RAID 50" scares me). RAID0 isn't really used except for temporary circumstances.
BTW, I had a drive fail in a RAID0 array. Back up early, back up often. I only lost a few hours of work. I can't imagine what would happen to someone who didn't have a tape drive.
Er. The rule of thumb with RAID0 is that you not only add up the transfer rates, you also add the seek times.
So depending on the type of access, RAID0 can be slower than a single drive. If you're primarily working with small files (e.g. Windows installation), the transfer rate may not outweigh the increased seek time.
YMMV of course. The only RAID I trust for boot volumes is RAID1 - RAID0 is fine for data, assuming you're working with large sequentially accessed files, and you back everything up on a constant basis. RAID 5 is probably a safer bet, with distributed parity and the ability to have live spares online and spinning to make up for any hardware failure.
Yes, IDE has had busmastering for a long time. I think 7 years is even pessimistic, it's been bus mastered for a very long time. However, with IDE the bus mastering seems to just interrupt the CPU less for disk transfers, not totally absolve it from those duties. This is why SCSI has historically had a 2-3% CPU utilitization with the bus maxed.
While you make a good argument for purchasing an aftermarket IDE controller (which can perform tasks with the CPU utilization of SCSI), the reality of the matter is that virtually zero OEMs ship a system that way, they use whatever is built in on the motherboard. Which almost always consume a large amount of CPU time when performing disk I/O.
This is why the only people who build enterprise-class database servers with IDE drives at their core are idiots. That or they're penny-wise and dollar-stupid.
FWIW, with companies in the US, the corporate HR policy in regards to severance can also be used, IF they have a policy.
When I was laid off by Viacom they had a standard corporate policy for all layoffs, used to calculate the number of weeks of severance. Since I'd been there for 8 years, and hadn't taken a vacation the last year, I got roughly 9 weeks of pay after leaving. This was corporate policy for all layoffs.
Now, in addition to this I had the option of signing a restrictive contract that required me not to discuss the terms of the severance package, not badmouth Viacom, not sue, etc. for an additional 2 weeks of pay.
Yes, I chose not to sign. I already had 8 weeks coming and was working part-time at my future employer after hours, with an agreement that I would begin full-time once the company shut down. Double pay for over 2 months was nice.
Not that it was all roses. The management team they brought in the final year, after the long-timers all abandoned ship, made every single employee's life a living hell the final week of their employment (fired with 'cause' = no severance). These were a couple of dicks who I will never, ever work with again, and frankly will badmouth at every opportunity I get.
Evidently I'm not the only one because they never got another job in the video game industry again. The industry is so small, and word of mouth spreads so fast, they ended up just screwing themselves.
Hmm. It's weird. I have a love-hate relationship with WD.
Basically their OEM drive business from 7+ years ago was bread and butter for them - massive influx of cash selling cheap, cheap, cheap drives with little in the way of quality control. This is back when they actually shipped drives that spun at 1800 & 2100rpm, while almost everyone else was at 3600rpm. But they were cheap. OEMs love cheap.
Within the past couple years though I've seen a major shift for them. Their OEM drives are still of questionable integrity, though nothing like they used to be. But their retail drives have been damn good to me. The last problem I had with a WD was back when they were one of the first 9GB 7200rpm IDE drive manufacturers, and there was a firmware bug that caused problems with old controllers - like, oh, I dunno, the kind you'd find built into the BX chipset. Yeah. That big of a pain.
Oh, wait, I take that back... I bought one of their first 7200rpm "enterprise" class SCSI drives and, well, found it less than enterprise worthy. I saw weird data corruption issues that I never tracked down, literally didn't have the luxury of tracking them down, I just replaced the drive with a same-size Seagate and bam, problem went away. That drive still rests on a shelf, someplace, waiting for a 2nd chance.
Still, those are both problems from over 3 years ago. It's enough time for them to change.
All that said, I have a 120GB WD IDE drive inside my current box that runs 24/7/365 and has since I bought it last year. But, by the same token, my tape backup kicks off MWF and backs up everything - data from the WD, the 15K Seagate, and the Atlas V. Once you realize that data loss is inevitable, the price of a safety net doesn't seem quite so high... the kicker is that sometimes the only thing that will make you realize that is data loss.
May I suggest you try eBay?
Well... I have a Amiga 1000 1MB sidecar expansion card in a box... someplace...
Pah! One-handing a deluxe slice is for newbies. One-handing a deluxe deep-dish slice takes skill.
Along the path to mastery lies many dead keyboards unless you get some protection.
Doh!
I meant to mention it supported - at least - 128MB. If I remember correctly the max was 256MB.
(sigh)
It was impressive given the age of the box.
Not to nitpick, but at work we _just_ obsoleted a P133 OptiPlex that had ended up in a server role.
Dimensions are sometimes a little... under... engineered, and I usually argue that's because Intel designs the lion share of those systems, and they have an obvious interest in getting people to buy new systems sooner.
OptiPlexes have typically been overengineered. For instance, this particular P133 had a spot for a 2nd CPU (which we populated later on) and SCSI on the motherboard. This wasn't a special order, it was simply what Dell shipped at the time for P133 OptiPlex desktops.
I have no idea if Dell still operates in this fashion, I wouldn't be surprised if they've started underengineering the OptiPlex line as well (given the penny-wise dollar-stupid corporate behavior the past few years).
Call me paranoid, but I have trouble believing facts about the DVD+R/+RW format from a web site who's domain name is "dvdplusrw.org".
Maybe it's just the journalism 101 course (idealistic as it was), but I tend to trust a impartial third party more than someone who is involved, or is trying to get involved, in the situation. Isn't this part of the reason why we distrust the RIAA/MPAA/etc. when it comes to legal affairs/legislation? They have interests to protect, often have an axe to grind, and have readily omitted facts to make their arguments stronger.
Granted we're talking about the difference between a sledgehammer (RIAA/MPAA) and the hammer found in a bell-style alarm clock, but it's still in the same vein.
I've found similar lists on DVD-RW fan sites that have been... less... than accurate... about compatibility. Such is the joy of using a wide number of people to gather "facts", which are siphoned through their own technical ability & inability. Some will do proper testing, others will do what think is proper testing, some have no idea what the hell they're doing, and some will perform insane amounts of testing...
Then filter the results through the people running the web site, because there's always some wackjobs out there submitting incorrect information, and the filterers are only human...
I think the insane part comes in paying that much for a what amounts to a 50-inch computer display -- not just due to the cost, of course, but that in combination with a maximum resolution being THAT LOW.
I'm pretty sure 1366x768 on a 50" monitor would look very close to 640x480 on a 21" monitor. Granted you can fit more n a 1366x768 display, but, for chrissake, I run at 1280x1024 and STILL get cramped for room when trying to get something meaningful done.
But, by the same token, I know some vision-challenged individuals (in dire need of new glasses, I must add) who routinely run 640x480 on 21" monitors. This is the same group of people who put forth a nonstop litany of complaints about UI being too big and fonts being too small (!!) based on whatever it is they're doing (or trying to do, at least).
I dunno about you, but I tend to walk around work with my eyes taking in the full scope of walls. An ethernet cable snaking up and into the ceiling, anywhere, will catch my attention.
Then again, maybe I'm just a little bit paranoid since at my employer's last building we had cables running up and down walls all over the damn place - not much choice when people are packed in like sardines and there aren't enough close-by ports to meet people's needs.
Now that we're 4 months into a new building, with enough ports to go around (and the financial wherewithal to have more drops installed when we've needed them), I have to keep an eye on the little monsters who are used to the idea of stringing cables -- that way they don't have to plan beyond today.
Mmm. Not only is it different with XP and X, it's also different with OS9 too.
Stick a writeable CD in the drive, open the CD, presents a blank window, drag files to the window, eject the disc, asks you to burn, burns, ejects, disc is ready.
No, Apple did not "back down" from this issue. Even today you can get a low-end Mac (eMac) without a floppy and without a CD-RW.
Like it or not, Ethernet IS "good enough" for sharing files. Barring incompetant wiring, it's faster and more reliable.
If you absolutely need a floppy, external USB floppies are cheap and plentiful. And I say this as someone who bought one three years ago and has used it twice - both times for writing a set of DOS 6.22 floppies (disk images are fun). Bootable CDs are not difficult to make (on the Mac you would have to be brain-dead not to be able to make one) and are simple to maintain.
On the PC side the only thing I do with floppies is to make network boot disks. That's it. Once the system is on the network I can perform a variety of tasks, from prepping for OS installs, HD imaging, driver updates - plenty of annoying required PC maintenance.
Frankly at this point I'm getting ready to start making network boot CDs instead - every system I work with can boot off CD, and floppies develop bad sectors when I look at them funny (necessitating a reformatting & recreating the floppy). Though I have noticed plenty of floppy imaging software will happily ignore the bad sectors (as in fail to write but not modify the structure to avoid that sector), providing me with a disk of dubious usefulness.
This isn't to say that I don't know people who don't use floppy for file storage and transfers. They knock on my door every week or two, bearing a floppy that has developed bad sectors, all confused as to where their file has gone. I sigh heavily, take the floppy, explain how floppies are not reliable for storage, then try my damndest to recover the data. (almost always in succeeding recovering some to all of it)
But by the same token within a second of hitting the DirectConnect button you're talking to a coworker - which is entirely because their servers know exactly where the phone is due to the constant check-ins.
FWIW, the closest phone to the i95 is not the i85, it's the i90. Take an i95c, stick in a slower CPU, remove memory (I think it's 50%), and of course swap in a lower-res greyscale screen - voila, i90. They both run Java apps, they both can surf the web (for a monthly fee).
Also, I dunno how great calling it a "Java phone" is - it just optionally runs Java apps. The phone itself is running... er... some OS... when you enter the Java section (the first time after installing a battery) you have to wait as the VM loads and initializes.
Not that it's a horrible phone by any means, just don't expect it to be a traditional digital cell phone - because it's not. Range, voice quality, etc. are quite different.
I would guess it's because the bit "requirement" would have to wait for contract renewal/negotiation.
Getting it "turned on" within a reasonable timeframe for all broadcast media is pretty much impossible if it's only included in new contracts. Plus there's always the chance of some small fry choosing not to require it, snubbing the MPAA so to speak while at the same time providing a lucrative opportunity for broadcasters (since their shows wouldn't require implementation, they could skip it and go with the third party).
Working with the FCC turns that expensive battle (because the MPAA would have to pay, one way or the other, for implementation) into law (or close enough) which they don't have to pay for - beyond lobbyists, etc.
Bear with me - because this "copyright bit" wasn't part of the original contract, and probably wasn't even a twinkle in Valenti's eye when most contracts were last negotiated, they probably don't have a simple way of amending the contract to require it. Well, without renegotiating the contract, which would no doubt require lower prices -- the only way broadcasters would even consider this expensive proposition.
Sorry if I rehashed things a few times, I'm freakin' exhausted...
Region 0, no dub, multiple subs (english, couple chinese, others), has been available for almost as long.
If you want to import it from Malaysia. Or Hong Kong. Or any other number of sources.
Or you can do what I did - buy it on eBay, from a guy in HK. Actually got a good deal on mine, given the prices on (international) web sites plus shipping, saved some money vs. those sources.
I'll buy the official Region 1 release when it comes out (I'm a sucker for good dubs), but I had the money and it _was_ available, so what the hell. If they wanted my money earlier, they could have sold it earlier...