I'll admit I almost never use floppies. But they do come in handy, and when you need them, YOU NEED THEM TRUST ME. It's not to cut costs obviously... Floppy drives are like $9 at most.
Anyway, you'll need a floppy disk:
a) Even if you never use them, somebody might give you documents or something on a floppy and you can't use it because you don't have a drive.
b) I just bought a piece of wireless equipment the other day that came with drivers on floppy only.
I wonder if it has anything to do with millions of artist supporting citizens going to RIAA.org to read about the latest lawsuits only to find the forsaken Goatse.cx image on the news page?
Judging by the name Cringley has picked out for himself, he seems to think he is of some higher breed than the rest of us. This way, he can write technical columns for PBS and get away with glaring errors and awful research. Not to mention it sounds like the article was written by a high school newspaper editor-in-chief or something.
This isn't the first time he's been wrong. If you go back and read his columns (arrange to be checked into a mental asylum if you do decide to), you will find every article full of bs like this.
Why would you want to buy a Microsoft product based on Linux when you can get it for free anyhow? I guess he didn't bother thinking out the reality of the situation. That's like saying maybe Xbox Next should be based on PS3 methinks.
Of course Serial ATA is going to be great when they get all the kinks out but for now, the Seagate Barracuda is barely faster than the WD SE drives with 8mb cache (which is a bit cheaper for now).
The reason states want this is because they're being influenced by B&M stores. B&M stores apparently think they're missing out on a lot of customers JUST because there is no sales tax on the internet.
Sorry guys, that isn't why I'm not shopping as much at B&Ms... Chances are, the cheapest you'll find the product you're looking for is on the internet. If B&Ms had prices like I find on the internet, I'd buy there.
Shipping and handling doesn't really make up for the sales tax... S&H on a $50 game could be anywhere from free to $2 (overnight) and sales tax would be ~$3.50 depending on your state.
The only reason to shop at B&M stores for the most part is the convenience. Try the product, hold the product, go home with it THAT VERY day. No need to wait around for product shipments.
Shopping at B&M and on internet sites have advantages and disadvantages that pretty much cancel out. Don't destroy internet shopping with a sales tax!
What are those reasons I see you conveniently didn't list them in your commentary. It's one thing to be in the business to make money, it's another to rip people off for no reason.
They're giants in the TV and game console industries.
It would have cost them all of 5 cents to add two extra game ports to the PS2. Why would they want to do that when they can make a $30 accessory (the multi-tap) and sell it to any poor fool who wants to play 4-player games.
Same for Everquest. They could make it free, but why when they could make $50 extra for every poor sucker who buys it and becomes addicted for 3 years?
Update the graphics or add fresh content? Bah. Let's just release some expansions. People will still buy it.
The same thing happened to the Rainbow Six and Sims franchise... how many expansions have we seen for those damn games?
Duke Nukem Forever started out on the Quake II engine. When that became outdated, they rewrote it for the Unreal engine. That was the last I ever heard ANY news on the game.
They're going to have to write it again for the new Unreal engine, and then when they're done with that, they'll have to redo it again for the Doom 3 engine.
It's a vicious cycle. Bets that this game won't see the light of day?
When I got Digital cable, I had to buy all of these Motorola cable boxes for my TVs (I only got two, so I have 2 TVs still on regular cable - I wonder how long before they think of a way to charge me for these as well).
I was delighted to see the Dolby Digital logo on the front of the box. Finally I can watch Band of Brothers in 5.1... wrong. AT&T (well, now their cable TV is owned by ComCast) craftily has put metal slots over the coaxial out (not the cable, but the digital audio connection, just not TOSLINK) and S-video outs on the back of the box. A friend and I opened the thing up and noticed the ports aren't there at all.
I called AT&T to see what was going on and they said I had to special order a box with digital connections. And it would cost me an extra $10/month.
IIRC, there were a lot of problems with the 17 inch studio display. People were reporting "popping" sounds coming from their monitors. This usually means static discharge.
When you hear those sounds, it normally means your monitor is about to crap out. The problems I heard of had all occurred, conveniently enough, after Apple's 1 year warranty had expired. The cost for out-of-warranty repair for those studio displays is around $300. A friend of mine had to get repairs done on his for some reason (it wasn't static discharge) and that was the price they quoted him.
The Radeon 9700 has been leading for months upon months now. There have been countless articles about it slaughtering the GF4 Ti4600. This is not news.
If you want some videocard news, you should look at the newly released ATi Radeon 9500 Pro. It supports AGP 8x, something that only a couple special GeForce 4 "Ti4800" cards do, and it can be had with 128mb and 64mb of RAM for around $50-80 less than a GF4 4600.
In the benchmarks on Anandtech above, it comes within 2fps of the Ti4600 in most cases.
Not only is ATi giving Nvidia's top dog a run for it's money, but also their value products.
Displays are really popular things today. They're always trying to come up with something brighter and more efficient. These VFDs take the crown from the relatively new OLED technology. They operate at a wider temperature range (some research I did shows -20 C to 70 C). They also use less voltage (around 5VDC as compared to 8 of most OLEDs).
VFDs sound like the perfect backlighting technology to go into everything from phones to handheld consoles (the Gameboy Advance is seriously in need of something like this) as they would go easier on battery life thanks to the minute power draw and low temperature.
This same thing happened to my little cousin (14 years old). He actually bought an Xbox on launch day and this year bought Xbox live only a few weeks after it launched. It told him to call microsoft with code 522 error. When he called they told him the older Xbox'es needed a "Hardware upgrade". I wanted to find out exactly what this "hardware upgrade" entailed so i called them after he told me about it.
apparently the first gen models had an unflashable (via software) TSOP. the so called 'hardware upgrade' was in order to allow for onboard, software-based TSOP flashing and upgrading. not sure if they actually replaced the chip or merely changed the TSOP circuit, but we were pretty angry about it.
Second, the M16 is not fully automatic. It only has semi-auto and three-round burst settings
No, you're wrong. Some M16's DO have full automatic. I know. I have fired an M16 (NOT an M4, and M16) in full auto mode. The M16A1 might but i am SURE one of the variants (whichever one is used by the Israeli Defense forces) IS full autmomatic.
Hey Jon, does the movie draw any 9/11 "terrorism" parrallels or allegories? From the trailers, it seems as though many of the worms have a distinctly Arab/Middle eastern look about them. Do any buildings get knocked over? Or any reference to American patriotism?
In this post-9/11 world you would expect a movie of such intellectual caliber as MIIB to handle it in a sensitive, way.
Slashdot Mirror
shoutouts to ag
I'll admit I almost never use floppies. But they do come in handy, and when you need them, YOU NEED THEM TRUST ME. It's not to cut costs obviously... Floppy drives are like $9 at most.
Anyway, you'll need a floppy disk:
a) Even if you never use them, somebody might give you documents or something on a floppy and you can't use it because you don't have a drive.
b) I just bought a piece of wireless equipment the other day that came with drivers on floppy only.
c) Boot disks...duh.
That's why Linux is such a great gaming platform when compared to Windows
So what is best for the avg. user?
Macs?
I couldn't figure out how to get the fscking cd drives open for the longest time until I noticed a strange button on the keyboard.
Gee yeah it looks cool but can I have a button on the front of the drive or is that to practical?
Why would anyone go to an AIC when there are hundreds of better sites ?
Seriously, what amount of actual gamers and linux users could make it through basic training?
I wonder if it has anything to do with millions of artist supporting citizens going to RIAA.org to read about the latest lawsuits only to find the forsaken Goatse.cx image on the news page?
Dr Nick "That's trauma!"
Judging by the name Cringley has picked out for himself, he seems to think he is of some higher breed than the rest of us. This way, he can write technical columns for PBS and get away with glaring errors and awful research. Not to mention it sounds like the article was written by a high school newspaper editor-in-chief or something.
This isn't the first time he's been wrong. If you go back and read his columns (arrange to be checked into a mental asylum if you do decide to), you will find every article full of bs like this.
Why would you want to buy a Microsoft product based on Linux when you can get it for free anyhow? I guess he didn't bother thinking out the reality of the situation. That's like saying maybe Xbox Next should be based on PS3 methinks.
Of course Serial ATA is going to be great when they get all the kinks out but for now, the Seagate Barracuda is barely faster than the WD SE drives with 8mb cache (which is a bit cheaper for now).
The reason states want this is because they're being influenced by B&M stores. B&M stores apparently think they're missing out on a lot of customers JUST because there is no sales tax on the internet.
Sorry guys, that isn't why I'm not shopping as much at B&Ms... Chances are, the cheapest you'll find the product you're looking for is on the internet. If B&Ms had prices like I find on the internet, I'd buy there.
Shipping and handling doesn't really make up for the sales tax... S&H on a $50 game could be anywhere from free to $2 (overnight) and sales tax would be ~$3.50 depending on your state.
The only reason to shop at B&M stores for the most part is the convenience. Try the product, hold the product, go home with it THAT VERY day. No need to wait around for product shipments.
Shopping at B&M and on internet sites have advantages and disadvantages that pretty much cancel out. Don't destroy internet shopping with a sales tax!
Does it take you two weeks to earn enough virtual money to buy the latest Nike Jordans like in real life?
What are those reasons I see you conveniently didn't list them in your commentary. It's one thing to be in the business to make money, it's another to rip people off for no reason.
They're giants in the TV and game console industries.
It would have cost them all of 5 cents to add two extra game ports to the PS2. Why would they want to do that when they can make a $30 accessory (the multi-tap) and sell it to any poor fool who wants to play 4-player games.
Same for Everquest. They could make it free, but why when they could make $50 extra for every poor sucker who buys it and becomes addicted for 3 years?
Update the graphics or add fresh content? Bah. Let's just release some expansions. People will still buy it.
The same thing happened to the Rainbow Six and Sims franchise... how many expansions have we seen for those damn games?
The only people who would buy a computer at Wal-mart won't notice the difference between Windows and Linux anyway.
Duke Nukem Forever started out on the Quake II engine. When that became outdated, they rewrote it for the Unreal engine. That was the last I ever heard ANY news on the game.
They're going to have to write it again for the new Unreal engine, and then when they're done with that, they'll have to redo it again for the Doom 3 engine.
It's a vicious cycle. Bets that this game won't see the light of day?
When I got Digital cable, I had to buy all of these Motorola cable boxes for my TVs (I only got two, so I have 2 TVs still on regular cable - I wonder how long before they think of a way to charge me for these as well).
I was delighted to see the Dolby Digital logo on the front of the box. Finally I can watch Band of Brothers in 5.1... wrong. AT&T (well, now their cable TV is owned by ComCast) craftily has put metal slots over the coaxial out (not the cable, but the digital audio connection, just not TOSLINK) and S-video outs on the back of the box. A friend and I opened the thing up and noticed the ports aren't there at all.
I called AT&T to see what was going on and they said I had to special order a box with digital connections. And it would cost me an extra $10/month.
IIRC, there were a lot of problems with the 17 inch studio display. People were reporting "popping" sounds coming from their monitors. This usually means static discharge.
When you hear those sounds, it normally means your monitor is about to crap out. The problems I heard of had all occurred, conveniently enough, after Apple's 1 year warranty had expired. The cost for out-of-warranty repair for those studio displays is around $300. A friend of mine had to get repairs done on his for some reason (it wasn't static discharge) and that was the price they quoted him.
I fail to see the other post about the 9500 that makes this a redundant post...
All I see is TWO count them TWO posts moderated to 5 that imply that the news is old. I at least give you some content..
The Radeon 9700 has been leading for months upon months now. There have been countless articles about it slaughtering the GF4 Ti4600. This is not news.
If you want some videocard news, you should look at the newly released ATi Radeon 9500 Pro. It supports AGP 8x, something that only a couple special GeForce 4 "Ti4800" cards do, and it can be had with 128mb and 64mb of RAM for around $50-80 less than a GF4 4600.
In the benchmarks on Anandtech above, it comes within 2fps of the Ti4600 in most cases.
Not only is ATi giving Nvidia's top dog a run for it's money, but also their value products.
Displays are really popular things today. They're always trying to come up with something brighter and more efficient. These VFDs take the crown from the relatively new OLED technology. They operate at a wider temperature range (some research I did shows -20 C to 70 C). They also use less voltage (around 5VDC as compared to 8 of most OLEDs).
VFDs sound like the perfect backlighting technology to go into everything from phones to handheld consoles (the Gameboy Advance is seriously in need of something like this) as they would go easier on battery life thanks to the minute power draw and low temperature.
This same thing happened to my little cousin (14 years old). He actually bought an Xbox on launch day and this year bought Xbox live only a few weeks after it launched. It told him to call microsoft with code 522 error. When he called they told him the older Xbox'es needed a "Hardware upgrade". I wanted to find out exactly what this "hardware upgrade" entailed so i called them after he told me about it.
apparently the first gen models had an unflashable (via software) TSOP. the so called 'hardware upgrade' was in order to allow for onboard, software-based TSOP flashing and upgrading. not sure if they actually replaced the chip or merely changed the TSOP circuit, but we were pretty angry about it.
Oh man, you're a complete idiot. A subwoofer _is_ the driver.
No, the WOOFER is the driver. The entire unit, driver+enclosure, is referred to as a subwoofer.
Second, the M16 is not fully automatic. It only has semi-auto and three-round burst settings
No, you're wrong. Some M16's DO have full automatic. I know. I have fired an M16 (NOT an M4, and M16) in full auto mode. The M16A1 might but i am SURE one of the variants (whichever one is used by the Israeli Defense forces) IS full autmomatic.
dear god that was aful.
Hey Jon, does the movie draw any 9/11 "terrorism" parrallels or allegories? From the trailers, it seems as though many of the worms have a distinctly Arab/Middle eastern look about them. Do any buildings get knocked over? Or any reference to American patriotism?
In this post-9/11 world you would expect a movie of such intellectual caliber as MIIB to handle it in a sensitive, way.