Not sure I can agree with that entirely. Bear in mind, the PC tech repairs a fairly broad spectrum of machines. (though there DO seem to be quite a few Dells?) I however, only work on one brand of computer, it's a big name brand, and I've replaced maybe 5 power supplies in all my time working on them, at least three of them from major surges or lightning strikes as far as I could tell.
After a lightning storm, I'm busy replacing modems, an he's busy replacing well... power supplies, modems, and motherboards. Although I suppose that speaks more for the quality of the modems than anything else.
(read my profile for a clue as to the brand name I work on)
Sidenote: I deal with Antec cases also, in the form of HD towers, and I have had good luck with their large power supplies. However, the smaller variations on those cases, (possible knockoff, there are never brand names it seems) the 2.5" dual towers have absolutely worthless mini power supplies. A friend that bought SIX of them had ONE still running after a year's time. The other five would not power up at all, or would constantly click and reset when trying to spin up the drives. He took my advice and pullled the firewire boards out and stuffed them into a tower with a regular ATX power supply and has been happy ever since.
Ever seen a Tiger brand power supply? Only place I've ever seen them here is in the trash can after a storm.
I've seen quite a few PC power supplies replaced by the PC repair tech at work. Clearly something is wrong there. The machines I work on almost never lose their PS. It's either due to better engineering or OVERengineering, and I like to believe the latter. (tho I imagine some PSs are better protected against spikes and surges than others?)
I prefer to overengineer anything to do with power supplies, since they tend to run hot when near their limit, and can only run for so long at that level (which may be well within their specs) before they smoke.
That, and having a little extra reserve is nice in case you want to hook up an extra pair of HDs, try out that new video card with the box fan attached to it, or add a few christmas trees worth of lights to the case. That's also likely a PS that will be the one original thing still IN that case six years from now.
Considering how long the door stays open after the person walks through, I seriously wonder how much that would help for say, maintaining AC or heating in the winter.
Considering the complexity of the door, I think a Star Trek style split parting door would be a whole lot easier to make and cheaper to build, and have most of the benefits this door claims.
The model I believe they are adopting is "first one's free". In this case, they are showing either promos, or sometimes the first several episodes of a series, to get you interested.
As you pointed out, the distribution costs for BT are practically free, compared to say mailing out promo DVDs or even bundling promo DVDs with other titles. The only other medium that's even close to it in benefit per cost is promos bundled ON other titles' DVDs, which we've been seeing for years now. With anime at least, it's not uncommon for each DVD in a set to include promos for 4-10 other titles, or sometimes even the entire episode 1 of a series or two.
This is really a nice compliment to their existing promo strategy, and allows them to deliver fresh content to the masses. Instead of picking which four series they put a promo for on their next release, they can just put up promos for all 35 of their current series and you can go grab ep 1 and 2 of any that strike your interest. Much more effective really. And I really like to be able to look at the first ep or two to decide if I like the series or not. So much better than shelling out cash for disc 1 and finding it's not to my taste. I could have spent that $26 on another title I might have liked, and would have bought the entire series of. But I've already spent my weekly budget for checking out new series, so they may have just lost my $80 for the rest of another series.
BT is helping us get the content we want, not have to pay for content we don't like, and is helping sales and costs for the distributors. I think this is a true win-win situation.
Near the end that guy tries to go through and if he'd have kept walking forward he'd have clippped his head on the set of panels on the left that never moved. Even when he waved his hand in front of the panels, it took several tries before they would move.
There's also a time issue. Unless you are walking at a reasonably slow pace, you're going to have to slow down or stop for the door to open. Most automatic doors at grocery stores react much faster than that.
Also, the door is not clear, you cannot see the other guy walking toward the other side of the door. *WHAM* That'd hurt.
Finally, the slats slide left and right, so for a 3.5 ft wide door it requires an additional 2ft of space inside the jamb on the left and right side for the slats to retreat into. There's no way to put two of these doors right next to eachother, they'd have to be at least 4 ft apart.
Too many problems with this design. Looks like something you'd see at one of those "house of the future" exhibits where they show a lot of neat things that if you were to actually try to use them, would be much less practical than what we are already using.
I have no love for the FCC's "temporary" agreements. Check the books... Cable TV is covered as a temporary thing too. That's been temporary for HOW many years? (leaky cable TV coax, yet another sore spot in the amateur radio operator community)
Once they start it, they won't ever stop it. So we have to prevent this hindenburg from getting off the ground.
Just think of the noise you hear on the radio when someone turns on a mixer, or a hair dryer, or drives by with a car that has bad plug wires. That nasty noise you hear and that interferance you see on the tv, that will be a nonstop problem if BOPL goes in.
This isn't a matter of IF it will interfere. There is no theoretical design change they can make that will prevent interferance.
The problem you have is when you send a digital signal, especially a high speed one, over unshielded wires such as power lines, this forms what amounts to a radio transmitter. Unfortunately, this transmitter's antenna is miles long, and goes right up to everyone's house. So you can't get away from it unless you move out into the country and run your farm off a gas generator.
Amateur radio operators are required to adhere to strict rules to prevent them from interfering with others or eachother. This is important for them because they can operate with up to 1500 watts of power, which can go quite a distance. Now, we have a system that will not just affect a few hundred foot circle around a house, but that will blanket an entire city.
With radio interferance, when you cut the distance in half, the interferance quadruples. With power lines physically coming into people's houses, it takes very very little power to cause interferance at only a few feet.
The other issue is that digital signals are not like ham radio or police radios or anything like that. They are not pure and cannot be filtered really. The FCC requires hams and others to strictly transmit on their frequency and no one else's. (or rather, to keep "out of band" transmissions to extremely low levels, less than 1/100th of the signal can stray) Digital signals for high data rates just create "noise" - a spray of transmissions across a huge part of the radio spectrum - tens of thousands of "channels" you might say. They won't just interfere with a few people - they will literally interfere with everyone that uses any kind of radio receiver. (includes FM radios and TVs)
The reason the wires in your cat-5 are twisted is in part to prevent them from spraying radio interferance all over the room. Twisting opposing signal wires or use of braid around the hot wire keeps the signal where it belongs, in the wire and out of your neighbor's house.
The FCC would never allow hams or anyone else with a transmitter to just spray pollution all over the band, but that is what broadband over power lines will do. If the BOPL lobbies were not waving wheelbarrows full of money at the FCC for a BOPL license, the FCC wouldn't even be considering this at all, they'd be laughing at them. Unfortunately, the FCC, as with many other govt agencies, is short on money and would like to have more to spend on policing the airwaves and keeping the spectrum clean, and the possibility of getting all this cash (in the form of licenses to the govt and from that, additional funding for the FCC to enforce and manage them) is going to their heads. A government agency not having enough funding is NOT a good reason to screw the american public.
of trying to protect society from doing what it wants to do, compounded by holding everyone in the world accountable for everything anyone else does. (like every person on the planet needs to police the rest of the world or be held liable for what they do)
When will it end? Somehow I'm thining "probably never." *sigh*
They just claim to have invented everything. Spoons, toasters, web commerce, you name it, they have filed or have tried to file a patent for it, blatantly months, years, or decades after the same idea has already been brought to market and would take a non-braindead patent clerk 2 minutes to find prior art on.
Just look at all the slashdot articles. We see one about every 2 weeks for MS trying (succceeding?) to patent things there's blindingly obvious prior art for. Nothing new here. Tomorrow they'll try to patent the computer case, using about 850 words to describe "a metal box you put a computer in" in such complex verbage that the patent clerk will think "I have no idea what he's talking about and have never heard ANYTHING like that before so it MUST be original". *STAMP* ("Approved")
Not that it counts for much, but I will at least say they don't spend all their time chasing down "patent infringers" for their thousands of silly patents. I think they do it more for defense than offense, unlike some we've seen here recently.
paid about a week? (sorry units of time don't work well to answer questions of cost)
Almost all companies hold out for the results of the class action lawsuits, of which almost half are unsuccessful. Apple volunteered the REP before the class action went through. What more did you want? You sound like you're upset with them but don't know why.
If you asked and didn't get it, you asked the wrong person or something. Take a look at the warranty paperwork you got. It's in there. Three covered major repairs gets you a new or refurbished replacement. (usually new) If you would have pointed that out to them, you'd be sitting in front of a new ibook g4. Can't blame them for you not exercising your options. They are not your lawyer, and are not required to advise you of your rights.
And apple has extended that recall voluntarily how many times?
I've also seen them replace smoke-damaged top decks on several ibooks that were sent in for logic board replacement, again for free.
BTW, you were probably not on your toes with your reading either. Three "covered repairs" means you are entitled to a NEW LAPTOP. Complain and you WILL get a new ibook G4. Failure to be an "informed consumer" means you're just bending over and taking it.
Bill doesn't sell computers, he sells operating systems and software. Why on earth would he code windows to NOT run under Wine? Those are paying customers.
I'd be willing to bet they specifically tested it with Wine. (maybe not like they tested it with a real PC, but it got tested I'm sure)
Now on the other hand, if this were say, Mac OS X....
is often one of the easiest. The bean-counters, especially the computer-illiterate ones, look at the WidgetMaster 2000 and all they see is a price tag, because they have no idea what this magic device does, or how it is going to help the company make money. When all you have is a price tag to work with, all you can do is go cheap.;)
So, for any item you would like to have, (I didn't say "have to have") you need to put together a simple description of the item. Explain in plain terms what it does, this will help the people that have half a clue. Then spell out how this item will save money or make money, in simple terms. (go on the assumption that what you have just told them is ALL they know about the item at this point) Explain how long the item will last, and how long it will take to break even. Explain how much money you roughly estimate the item will make your company over its lifespan, factoring in its initial cost and the cost of updates, maintenance, etc. Don't cut corners on the future costs - they need to know if you have to buy a new license for the software every year or renew a service contract.
Do this for anything you would like to have. Do not restrict yourself to things you think you will get, or just the things you find essential. Include it all. They are unlikely to approve everything, so there is no sense in being picky about what you ask for - you can't get what you didn't ask for. You might drop a hint to the reviewers when you hand it in, giving them a hint as to how much of this you expect to be approved. This will ease tensions as they may still not understand how much of this you need and how much you want. If you tell them you're hoping to get at least 50% of what's on the list, they won't freak out trying to figure out where they're going to get budget to get 95% of your list. (this usually leads to you getting a completely random assortment)
Depending on who's evaluating the list, it may also be useful to break the items down into groups. "Essentials", things we need to get to stop hemoraging money. "Needs", things we need to become more proffitable, improve efficiency, improve customer response time, etc. "Try-outs", things we'd like to get into and we're looking for a sample of the technology to see if it's worth a buy-in. "Extras", things we strictly don't need, but that may have a positive effect on the company... these can include things that simply make employees' jobs easier to do or more tolerable. (how about a radio for the mailroom?) If they're short on cash they may very well go entirely on this grouping to determine what they get - maybe they only get the essentials and the needs this year.
This does a lot for you. It stops them from buying stupid things you don't really need rather than the things you had to have yesterday. It also helps them to make informed decisions about what they should buy and what can wait until next year or next quarter. And it helps you because you can push the tech in the direction you are prepared to go rather than getting a spray of differnt items which could take your people in three different directions at once. You are their only source of information right now and what you tell them is very important to your business. You aren't actually the one spending the money, but they are depending on your professional opinion right now to spend that money where it counts. What you tell them will determine the direction your I.T. goes for the next 10 months.
I realize the iSight is classified as a "web cam", but have you actually taken a look at video shot with an iSight, or are you just passing judgement based on it being a "web cam"? It's also auto white balance, auto contrast, auto focus. About the only thing it won't do compared to a high end camcorder is anti-jitter.
Actually, more surprising than the video quality is the audio quality. The mic in that camera is incredibly good. I'm used to using the built-in mic in my powerbook and the iSight's mic quality is stunning.
For portability, get an isight camera and a 12" powerbook, upgraded to a 100 (or 120 if you can find it) GB hard drive. Run iMove to capture your video.
Be prepared to go grab lunch and wait while the video "finishes" recording after the presentation - that cleanup it does when you hit Stop will take quite awhile for a four hour recording. (probably 30 minutes or more?)
Then do any editing you need to via iMovie (cutting out breaks, inserting text overlays at the start/end, transitions, etc) then export to whatever format suits you. You'll save yourself a lot of headache having to import the video into a computer later to do the editing and cleanup anyway.
Be sure you bring your power adapter - 4 hours is asking a lot of even a powerbook battery.
If you can stand a little less portable and quite a bit more expensive, go with a 17" powerbook instead. You'll fall in love with the large screen the first day out.
This is definitely not the cheapest solution out there, but it is arguably one of the best.
Somewhat OT but something I wanted to complain about. I just saw a documentary on hydrogen powered cars, on Nova's "Science Now" show. Sounds great, but one point they raised is where the world is going to get all this hydrogen from. All good points etc until the end when they ruined it.
He says eventually we will have cars powered by water. Someone needs to beat him with a ClueBat. Whatever energy you get out of burning the hydrogen with the oxygen is going to be equal to or less than the energy it required for your car to break up the hydrogen from the oxygen (in the water) in the first place. Unless you can violate some laws of physics, you are making a perpetual motion machine, since the hydrogen car's waste product is water... if it RUNS on water, then it is powered by its own waste product, and THAT is a perpetual motion machine.
Idiots.
I'm done now. Continue talking about splitting and recombining H and O.
Actually, the terminal IS private property. The airwaves above the terminal however, are the domain of the FCC. Any radiating transmission is the domain of the FCC, and no one else. They maintain exclusive juristiction. And they have made wifi frequencies an "unlicensed spectrum", subject to only a few restrictions, including max ERP and modulation style. Unless you are breaking one of their restrictions, you can do as you very well please. If another station is interfering with you for example, tough cookies, work it out on your own or ask the FCC to arbitrate, but that's about all you can do. You have no legal authority to claim any right to a public frequency, whether or not you are charging for your service.
Same as you own your house and property, but anyone can fly a plane above it because the sky is the domain of the FAA. You can't do jack about an annoying helicopter that's hovering 800 ft over your house.
Speaking of charging... I seriously wonder if pay-for-wifi is legal for a wap operating in the unlicensed band? Take CB for instance... that is also an unlicensed spectrum, and I know for a fact there are specific rules that say you cannot use it for proffit. (you can, as a trucker, use it as part of your business for example, but you could not say, do a performance over the airwaves and collect a fee from the listeners for such service) The reasoning behind this I believe is based on the fact that signals in the air are considerd public domain, and you can't charge for something that you have placed in the public domain. I wonder how the rules for wifi are any different?
is all they should have for weapons against this free provider. They are using a free, UNREGULATED channel. The FCC is the only one that can say who can or can't do something, and the airline simply does not have a say as to who broadcasts on those frequencies within the rules the FCC has set forth. If you can't turn a buck because someone else is undercutting you, TOO BAD. This is no different in any other business. That's like the corner gas station trying to sue the new Quick Trip that just moved in because they're charging less for their gas.
> No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered.
What planet did THIS person come from?
Go play with your network settings in XP. When you finally get back, (assuming you don't get TOTALLY lost) try to say that again with a straight face.
Re:Music Store Opens in another Country...
on
iTMS Launches in Japan
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
It's called "price fixing", and when done within a single country is usually illegal. When done between different countries, no single country's law can apply, and even though it's illegal in BOTH countries, it's legal if done separately in each country.
The basic idea is, as usual, to maximize proffit. If a band is really popular in the USA but not popular in say, Europe, the most profitable price point of the album in USA might be $19 where it might be maximized at say, $12 in Europe due to low demand. They are trying to prevent an entrepenur from buying a few thousand CDs in Europe and shipping them to the US and selling for say, $16 each. This undercuts their market in the US by $2/unit, costing them sales. Instead they only see the $12 where they could be seeing the $19.
They want the $19 and do everything they can to see that they get it.
If price fixing wasn't illegal in your country, things would be a lot worse... like in the USA a Garth Brooks album might go for twice as much in Tennessee as it did in say, Alaska. We'd probably see more aggressive region coding on DVDs as well. Instead of 7 world region codes, they'd probably try to like split up countries into regions too. Imagine having to buy a DVD that was not only USA region, but was say, in Central timezone code too? Think of the mess that would make for the consumer. And the recording companies would LOVE it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure I can agree with that entirely. Bear in mind, the PC tech repairs a fairly broad spectrum of machines. (though there DO seem to be quite a few Dells?) I however, only work on one brand of computer, it's a big name brand, and I've replaced maybe 5 power supplies in all my time working on them, at least three of them from major surges or lightning strikes as far as I could tell.
After a lightning storm, I'm busy replacing modems, an he's busy replacing well... power supplies, modems, and motherboards. Although I suppose that speaks more for the quality of the modems than anything else.
(read my profile for a clue as to the brand name I work on)
Sidenote: I deal with Antec cases also, in the form of HD towers, and I have had good luck with their large power supplies. However, the smaller variations on those cases, (possible knockoff, there are never brand names it seems) the 2.5" dual towers have absolutely worthless mini power supplies. A friend that bought SIX of them had ONE still running after a year's time. The other five would not power up at all, or would constantly click and reset when trying to spin up the drives. He took my advice and pullled the firewire boards out and stuffed them into a tower with a regular ATX power supply and has been happy ever since.
Ever seen a Tiger brand power supply? Only place I've ever seen them here is in the trash can after a storm.
I've seen quite a few PC power supplies replaced by the PC repair tech at work. Clearly something is wrong there. The machines I work on almost never lose their PS. It's either due to better engineering or OVERengineering, and I like to believe the latter. (tho I imagine some PSs are better protected against spikes and surges than others?)
I prefer to overengineer anything to do with power supplies, since they tend to run hot when near their limit, and can only run for so long at that level (which may be well within their specs) before they smoke.
That, and having a little extra reserve is nice in case you want to hook up an extra pair of HDs, try out that new video card with the box fan attached to it, or add a few christmas trees worth of lights to the case. That's also likely a PS that will be the one original thing still IN that case six years from now.
Considering how long the door stays open after the person walks through, I seriously wonder how much that would help for say, maintaining AC or heating in the winter.
Considering the complexity of the door, I think a Star Trek style split parting door would be a whole lot easier to make and cheaper to build, and have most of the benefits this door claims.
The model I believe they are adopting is "first one's free". In this case, they are showing either promos, or sometimes the first several episodes of a series, to get you interested.
As you pointed out, the distribution costs for BT are practically free, compared to say mailing out promo DVDs or even bundling promo DVDs with other titles. The only other medium that's even close to it in benefit per cost is promos bundled ON other titles' DVDs, which we've been seeing for years now. With anime at least, it's not uncommon for each DVD in a set to include promos for 4-10 other titles, or sometimes even the entire episode 1 of a series or two.
This is really a nice compliment to their existing promo strategy, and allows them to deliver fresh content to the masses. Instead of picking which four series they put a promo for on their next release, they can just put up promos for all 35 of their current series and you can go grab ep 1 and 2 of any that strike your interest. Much more effective really. And I really like to be able to look at the first ep or two to decide if I like the series or not. So much better than shelling out cash for disc 1 and finding it's not to my taste. I could have spent that $26 on another title I might have liked, and would have bought the entire series of. But I've already spent my weekly budget for checking out new series, so they may have just lost my $80 for the rest of another series.
BT is helping us get the content we want, not have to pay for content we don't like, and is helping sales and costs for the distributors. I think this is a true win-win situation.
Near the end that guy tries to go through and if he'd have kept walking forward he'd have clippped his head on the set of panels on the left that never moved. Even when he waved his hand in front of the panels, it took several tries before they would move.
There's also a time issue. Unless you are walking at a reasonably slow pace, you're going to have to slow down or stop for the door to open. Most automatic doors at grocery stores react much faster than that.
Also, the door is not clear, you cannot see the other guy walking toward the other side of the door. *WHAM* That'd hurt.
Finally, the slats slide left and right, so for a 3.5 ft wide door it requires an additional 2ft of space inside the jamb on the left and right side for the slats to retreat into. There's no way to put two of these doors right next to eachother, they'd have to be at least 4 ft apart.
Too many problems with this design. Looks like something you'd see at one of those "house of the future" exhibits where they show a lot of neat things that if you were to actually try to use them, would be much less practical than what we are already using.
I have no love for the FCC's "temporary" agreements. Check the books... Cable TV is covered as a temporary thing too. That's been temporary for HOW many years? (leaky cable TV coax, yet another sore spot in the amateur radio operator community)
Once they start it, they won't ever stop it. So we have to prevent this hindenburg from getting off the ground.
Just think of the noise you hear on the radio when someone turns on a mixer, or a hair dryer, or drives by with a car that has bad plug wires. That nasty noise you hear and that interferance you see on the tv, that will be a nonstop problem if BOPL goes in.
This isn't a matter of IF it will interfere. There is no theoretical design change they can make that will prevent interferance.
The problem you have is when you send a digital signal, especially a high speed one, over unshielded wires such as power lines, this forms what amounts to a radio transmitter. Unfortunately, this transmitter's antenna is miles long, and goes right up to everyone's house. So you can't get away from it unless you move out into the country and run your farm off a gas generator.
Amateur radio operators are required to adhere to strict rules to prevent them from interfering with others or eachother. This is important for them because they can operate with up to 1500 watts of power, which can go quite a distance. Now, we have a system that will not just affect a few hundred foot circle around a house, but that will blanket an entire city.
With radio interferance, when you cut the distance in half, the interferance quadruples. With power lines physically coming into people's houses, it takes very very little power to cause interferance at only a few feet.
The other issue is that digital signals are not like ham radio or police radios or anything like that. They are not pure and cannot be filtered really. The FCC requires hams and others to strictly transmit on their frequency and no one else's. (or rather, to keep "out of band" transmissions to extremely low levels, less than 1/100th of the signal can stray) Digital signals for high data rates just create "noise" - a spray of transmissions across a huge part of the radio spectrum - tens of thousands of "channels" you might say. They won't just interfere with a few people - they will literally interfere with everyone that uses any kind of radio receiver. (includes FM radios and TVs)
The reason the wires in your cat-5 are twisted is in part to prevent them from spraying radio interferance all over the room. Twisting opposing signal wires or use of braid around the hot wire keeps the signal where it belongs, in the wire and out of your neighbor's house.
The FCC would never allow hams or anyone else with a transmitter to just spray pollution all over the band, but that is what broadband over power lines will do. If the BOPL lobbies were not waving wheelbarrows full of money at the FCC for a BOPL license, the FCC wouldn't even be considering this at all, they'd be laughing at them. Unfortunately, the FCC, as with many other govt agencies, is short on money and would like to have more to spend on policing the airwaves and keeping the spectrum clean, and the possibility of getting all this cash (in the form of licenses to the govt and from that, additional funding for the FCC to enforce and manage them) is going to their heads. A government agency not having enough funding is NOT a good reason to screw the american public.
Half the PC users I know that have half a clue are not running SP2. Instead they are hiding behind routers.
SP2 can and does make matters worse more often than not.
of trying to protect society from doing what it wants to do, compounded by holding everyone in the world accountable for everything anyone else does. (like every person on the planet needs to police the rest of the world or be held liable for what they do)
When will it end? Somehow I'm thining "probably never." *sigh*
They just claim to have invented everything. Spoons, toasters, web commerce, you name it, they have filed or have tried to file a patent for it, blatantly months, years, or decades after the same idea has already been brought to market and would take a non-braindead patent clerk 2 minutes to find prior art on.
Just look at all the slashdot articles. We see one about every 2 weeks for MS trying (succceeding?) to patent things there's blindingly obvious prior art for. Nothing new here. Tomorrow they'll try to patent the computer case, using about 850 words to describe "a metal box you put a computer in" in such complex verbage that the patent clerk will think "I have no idea what he's talking about and have never heard ANYTHING like that before so it MUST be original". *STAMP* ("Approved")
Not that it counts for much, but I will at least say they don't spend all their time chasing down "patent infringers" for their thousands of silly patents. I think they do it more for defense than offense, unlike some we've seen here recently.
SSH'ing to your car... there's just something about it that makes me want to try it...
"Man, my car crashed." "What'd you do?" "I rebooted it of course."
paid about a week? (sorry units of time don't work well to answer questions of cost)
Almost all companies hold out for the results of the class action lawsuits, of which almost half are unsuccessful. Apple volunteered the REP before the class action went through. What more did you want? You sound like you're upset with them but don't know why.
If you asked and didn't get it, you asked the wrong person or something. Take a look at the warranty paperwork you got. It's in there. Three covered major repairs gets you a new or refurbished replacement. (usually new) If you would have pointed that out to them, you'd be sitting in front of a new ibook g4. Can't blame them for you not exercising your options. They are not your lawyer, and are not required to advise you of your rights.
and you've paid for how many of them?
And apple has extended that recall voluntarily how many times?
I've also seen them replace smoke-damaged top decks on several ibooks that were sent in for logic board replacement, again for free.
BTW, you were probably not on your toes with your reading either. Three "covered repairs" means you are entitled to a NEW LAPTOP. Complain and you WILL get a new ibook G4. Failure to be an "informed consumer" means you're just bending over and taking it.
Bill doesn't sell computers, he sells operating systems and software. Why on earth would he code windows to NOT run under Wine? Those are paying customers.
I'd be willing to bet they specifically tested it with Wine. (maybe not like they tested it with a real PC, but it got tested I'm sure)
Now on the other hand, if this were say, Mac OS X....
is often one of the easiest. The bean-counters, especially the computer-illiterate ones, look at the WidgetMaster 2000 and all they see is a price tag, because they have no idea what this magic device does, or how it is going to help the company make money. When all you have is a price tag to work with, all you can do is go cheap. ;)
So, for any item you would like to have, (I didn't say "have to have") you need to put together a simple description of the item. Explain in plain terms what it does, this will help the people that have half a clue. Then spell out how this item will save money or make money, in simple terms. (go on the assumption that what you have just told them is ALL they know about the item at this point) Explain how long the item will last, and how long it will take to break even. Explain how much money you roughly estimate the item will make your company over its lifespan, factoring in its initial cost and the cost of updates, maintenance, etc. Don't cut corners on the future costs - they need to know if you have to buy a new license for the software every year or renew a service contract.
Do this for anything you would like to have. Do not restrict yourself to things you think you will get, or just the things you find essential. Include it all. They are unlikely to approve everything, so there is no sense in being picky about what you ask for - you can't get what you didn't ask for. You might drop a hint to the reviewers when you hand it in, giving them a hint as to how much of this you expect to be approved. This will ease tensions as they may still not understand how much of this you need and how much you want. If you tell them you're hoping to get at least 50% of what's on the list, they won't freak out trying to figure out where they're going to get budget to get 95% of your list. (this usually leads to you getting a completely random assortment)
Depending on who's evaluating the list, it may also be useful to break the items down into groups. "Essentials", things we need to get to stop hemoraging money. "Needs", things we need to become more proffitable, improve efficiency, improve customer response time, etc. "Try-outs", things we'd like to get into and we're looking for a sample of the technology to see if it's worth a buy-in. "Extras", things we strictly don't need, but that may have a positive effect on the company... these can include things that simply make employees' jobs easier to do or more tolerable. (how about a radio for the mailroom?) If they're short on cash they may very well go entirely on this grouping to determine what they get - maybe they only get the essentials and the needs this year.
This does a lot for you. It stops them from buying stupid things you don't really need rather than the things you had to have yesterday. It also helps them to make informed decisions about what they should buy and what can wait until next year or next quarter. And it helps you because you can push the tech in the direction you are prepared to go rather than getting a spray of differnt items which could take your people in three different directions at once. You are their only source of information right now and what you tell them is very important to your business. You aren't actually the one spending the money, but they are depending on your professional opinion right now to spend that money where it counts. What you tell them will determine the direction your I.T. goes for the next 10 months.
"He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security"
- Benjamine Franklin
Going by that, we should be seeing the 4th reich here in the USA anytime now..
Quick, outlaw the internet! The terrorists are using it!
I realize the iSight is classified as a "web cam", but have you actually taken a look at video shot with an iSight, or are you just passing judgement based on it being a "web cam"? It's also auto white balance, auto contrast, auto focus. About the only thing it won't do compared to a high end camcorder is anti-jitter.
Actually, more surprising than the video quality is the audio quality. The mic in that camera is incredibly good. I'm used to using the built-in mic in my powerbook and the iSight's mic quality is stunning.
For portability, get an isight camera and a 12" powerbook, upgraded to a 100 (or 120 if you can find it) GB hard drive. Run iMove to capture your video.
Be prepared to go grab lunch and wait while the video "finishes" recording after the presentation - that cleanup it does when you hit Stop will take quite awhile for a four hour recording. (probably 30 minutes or more?)
Then do any editing you need to via iMovie (cutting out breaks, inserting text overlays at the start/end, transitions, etc) then export to whatever format suits you. You'll save yourself a lot of headache having to import the video into a computer later to do the editing and cleanup anyway.
Be sure you bring your power adapter - 4 hours is asking a lot of even a powerbook battery.
If you can stand a little less portable and quite a bit more expensive, go with a 17" powerbook instead. You'll fall in love with the large screen the first day out.
This is definitely not the cheapest solution out there, but it is arguably one of the best.
Somewhat OT but something I wanted to complain about. I just saw a documentary on hydrogen powered cars, on Nova's "Science Now" show. Sounds great, but one point they raised is where the world is going to get all this hydrogen from. All good points etc until the end when they ruined it.
He says eventually we will have cars powered by water. Someone needs to beat him with a ClueBat. Whatever energy you get out of burning the hydrogen with the oxygen is going to be equal to or less than the energy it required for your car to break up the hydrogen from the oxygen (in the water) in the first place. Unless you can violate some laws of physics, you are making a perpetual motion machine, since the hydrogen car's waste product is water... if it RUNS on water, then it is powered by its own waste product, and THAT is a perpetual motion machine.
Idiots.
I'm done now. Continue talking about splitting and recombining H and O.
Actually, the terminal IS private property. The airwaves above the terminal however, are the domain of the FCC. Any radiating transmission is the domain of the FCC, and no one else. They maintain exclusive juristiction. And they have made wifi frequencies an "unlicensed spectrum", subject to only a few restrictions, including max ERP and modulation style. Unless you are breaking one of their restrictions, you can do as you very well please. If another station is interfering with you for example, tough cookies, work it out on your own or ask the FCC to arbitrate, but that's about all you can do. You have no legal authority to claim any right to a public frequency, whether or not you are charging for your service.
Same as you own your house and property, but anyone can fly a plane above it because the sky is the domain of the FAA. You can't do jack about an annoying helicopter that's hovering 800 ft over your house.
Speaking of charging... I seriously wonder if pay-for-wifi is legal for a wap operating in the unlicensed band? Take CB for instance... that is also an unlicensed spectrum, and I know for a fact there are specific rules that say you cannot use it for proffit. (you can, as a trucker, use it as part of your business for example, but you could not say, do a performance over the airwaves and collect a fee from the listeners for such service) The reasoning behind this I believe is based on the fact that signals in the air are considerd public domain, and you can't charge for something that you have placed in the public domain. I wonder how the rules for wifi are any different?
is all they should have for weapons against this free provider. They are using a free, UNREGULATED channel. The FCC is the only one that can say who can or can't do something, and the airline simply does not have a say as to who broadcasts on those frequencies within the rules the FCC has set forth. If you can't turn a buck because someone else is undercutting you, TOO BAD. This is no different in any other business. That's like the corner gas station trying to sue the new Quick Trip that just moved in because they're charging less for their gas.
Got that right! They deserve that third Ferrari, and you're forcing them to wait another two weeks before they can afford it. Shame on you!
> No one was even close to the ease of use that Windows offered.
What planet did THIS person come from?
Go play with your network settings in XP. When you finally get back, (assuming you don't get TOTALLY lost) try to say that again with a straight face.
It's called "price fixing", and when done within a single country is usually illegal. When done between different countries, no single country's law can apply, and even though it's illegal in BOTH countries, it's legal if done separately in each country.
The basic idea is, as usual, to maximize proffit. If a band is really popular in the USA but not popular in say, Europe, the most profitable price point of the album in USA might be $19 where it might be maximized at say, $12 in Europe due to low demand. They are trying to prevent an entrepenur from buying a few thousand CDs in Europe and shipping them to the US and selling for say, $16 each. This undercuts their market in the US by $2/unit, costing them sales. Instead they only see the $12 where they could be seeing the $19.
They want the $19 and do everything they can to see that they get it.
If price fixing wasn't illegal in your country, things would be a lot worse... like in the USA a Garth Brooks album might go for twice as much in Tennessee as it did in say, Alaska. We'd probably see more aggressive region coding on DVDs as well. Instead of 7 world region codes, they'd probably try to like split up countries into regions too. Imagine having to buy a DVD that was not only USA region, but was say, in Central timezone code too? Think of the mess that would make for the consumer. And the recording companies would LOVE it.