It is not the companies fault that many customers don't provide the proper interaction with the *trial* and take it as a free gift and walk away not expecting a bill because they didn't meet their trial obligations (making a yes or no decision and reporting it).
If you, as a company, ends up having a lot of paying customers who thought they were getting a freebie, you're probably at least guilty of misleading advertising. If your business model is based upon tricking people who didn't read the fine print, I would consider it a scam. If you're selling a good product which actually gives value for the customer's money you don't need to use such tactics in the first place.
You and I would probably never fall for such tricks, that doesn't make it OK for a company to exploit those who will.
The point I was making is that they exist. I didn't say anything about availability or pricing, neither of which is under Microsoft's control.
Since we're replying to points that people didn't make anyway, I think the OP's point was that there are a lot of free and useful ones for Firefox. No one in the thread said that IE didn't have addons. Of course they exist, which is irrelevant if they don't do what he wants, or have priced themselves out of the competition.
"You need a boat, and this guy right here will give you one for free? Why not go with these people instead, they have affiliates who might sell you a car!" - Yes I know, you didn't actually recommend it.
One of the things I like about my Mac is the lack of cutting edges.
Well... My computer went bust the other day, and the only replacement computer I had was an ibook G4. It was painful. When I replaced the PSU in my desktop I sliced my hand pretty badly on the Zalman cooler, those are sharp as razorblades. I didn't even feel it at first. I still prefer those cutting edges to the MacIntosh:) (No, I'm not making this up)
it's just not worth carrying around a separate eBook reader all the time.
I read a lot, and I used to carry around a paper book all the time, two when I was getting close to the end of the previous one. I recently bought a Sony PRS-600. It fits in the inner pocket of my jacket, and it's far more handy than a paper book. I literally never leave home without it.
I've also tried reading books on my phone (Nokia N95 8GB), but the screen is too small for reading comfort in the long run, and the display quality is vastly inferior. I ended up choosing green on black to avoid eye strain, same as my terminal colours of choice. Even an iPhone can't touch E-Ink for reading novels.
Hmm, perhaps what the world really needs is a cell phone with an eInk screen.
I've thought about that as well, and apparently one exists, even if it obviously isn't intended for reading. It looks more like it's geared toward people with vision problems or technophobia. I don't think a "reader phone" would have a big market, people just aren't that interested in reading books. It also needs to be bigger than most phones to work well for novels. That said, I'd probably buy one if they built it:)
I obviously haven't used this device yet, but the e-ink screens I've seen so far have refresh rates far, far too low to be suitable for general applications.
I recently bought the Sony PRS-600BC. It updates the screen to full quality in about half a second, and it has a "fast" update mode of about 6 Hz (I guess) with lesser quality. The fast mode is more than good enough for scrolling around large images (ER diagrams in my case), and when you get where you want the display will re-render highest quality. It uses the fast mode for the on-screen keyboard feedback as well, and it feels quite responsive. Unfortunately it has no web browsing capability, but the display itself wouldn't hinder that significantly.
The device itself is great, I've read about fifteen books on it so far, and I can recommend it strongly (even if it comes from the evil Sony). The contrast isn't as good as for instance the Irex Iliad, which I've also used a lot. This is due to the touch screen, but it's still more than good enough for hours and hours of reading without eye fatigue.
size of the known universe (15 billion light years across--itself an almost unimaginable distance)
Nitpicking: It's 93 billion light-years (radius 46.5 billion), see Misconceptions. It doesn't really matter, as the distances involved are so mindbogglingly large that in most cases the only explanation you need will be: "So large that your mind can't cope with it". The same thing goes for the infinitesimal size of an atomic nucleus. An error of an order of magnitude still gets the point across:)
Windows has been able to do that for a long, long time. Roaming user profiles [wikipedia.org] store a user's settings, documents and files on a central server.
For my final project at university college I and a classmate deployed a complete IT solution for a small eye surgery clinic from scratch. We even budgeted, selected and bought all hardware, including routers and servers. We tried very hard to implement roaming profiles and centralised login with that in mind; we had the assistance of a very proficient Windows admin as well. We ran into all sorts of problems with software expecting files to be in a specific location among other things, to the point that we found it easier to just install everything from scratch when upgrading hardware.
In comparison, at the college computer labs (Linux) all this just worked. Adding a new box meant doing a stock install/imaging, point it at the local repos, and configure it to mount home from a server on login. All custom software including proprietary got deployed automatically, and your settings where available at first login. I got experience with both, with Linux it's dead simple because it's designed with such cases in mind, with Windows we found it to be not really doable:)
Of course this was some time ago. Where I work now (Windows shop with ~400 users) the IT department still installs every new box individually from scratch, and then installs all software on it. When the user gets it he/she will still have to customise everything to their liking, so the whole thing is not exactly 30 minutes...
I've had basic functionality break between releases and this will not be acceptable for business use.
With Ubuntu for basic business use you won't need to upgrade at every release. Their LTS releases guarantees three years of support. Running an old version is usually not acceptable for a home power user, but it provides the stability a small business needs.
For a larger shop with at least one full time IT technician it would be possible to maintain your own repository with selected upgrades enabled. Then you can pick and choose the upgrades you need for new features in specific software. You would have the stability and security of an old release, and still get bleeding edge features where it matters with relatively little testing. This is how most major Windows shop does it for security patches and feature upgrades anyway.
Also the differences and testing needed between each version of the major distros is still far less than what's needed between each new edition of Windows. That's when you ignore the immense practical problem of global reinstallation of individual Windows boxes (yes, MS shills, fire away. It's possible on Windows as well. Call me when it's possible for my company to have absolutely all system and OS settings administrated centrally while ALL the user's personal customisations ("registry") and documents rest in his home directory on a file server, and when a motherboard fries, it'll take less than half an hour to physically replace the box and get the user back in business with all software and personalisations in place).
It's a distributed effort like Folding@Home, and it's not testet strictly sequentially. You can choose roughly the size of the candidates you want to test, the largest ones will take weeks or months on regular hardware. They do try to fill in the bottom gaps between tested numbers, but before they have tested every number 2^n-1 below a certain value of n they can't be sure they haven't missed any Mersenne primes in that range. I believe they also tests every n twice to make sure one isn't missed due to bugs or faulty hardware.
the real definition is nabbing people at a change of speed limit that is large, unwarranted, or easy to miss.
The worst example I have seen was a police officer with a radar measuring people in the acceleration area after a toll booth. The limit was 50 km/h before the booth, and the sign with 90 km/h is situated about 200m after the booth. If that isn't just to fatten the government coffers I don't know what is.
I don't have any clue what the guy did, and I'm sure it doesn't work for everyone, but it fixed me. YMMV etc.
I suspect that you were sent to a modern chiropractor, clinically educated. They don't practice any woo woo at all, only real physical therapy like your physiotherapist might do. Only that they have _a lot_ more education, and learn some advanced techniques and facts about physiology that your regular PT would never be acquainted with. I have an extensive post about it elsewhere in this story.
Anyway, those chiropractors that don't subscribe to the woo woo view can be quite amazing regarding what results they can achieve.
chiropractors are frauds, along with naturopaths, healing touch types and all the other absurd lying pieces of worthless trash out there
Firstly, I'm a big fan of James Randi, and as skeptical as they come. The judicial actions described in the article are ridiculous, those people should be jailed for malpractice, reckless ignorance, or whatever.
That said, it's important to discern the "straight" chiropractors from the modernly educated ones. The former are quacks like the people suing and the groups you mentioned (along with the fucking homeopaths which you forgot to mention especially), although they usually have reasonably good knowledge of anatomy. The latter ones act as extremely competent physiotherapists. I gather that in my edge of the woods we luckily have more of the scientific ones. I live in Norway, my experience might be very different from yours:)
Those in the latter group have received a purely scientific and very solid education comparable with that of medical doctors, even surpassing it by far when it comes to anatomy. They are glorified physiotherapists and perform as such. Their treatment consists of physical manipulation, literally, of the body part which has a problem (in most cases not the spine), additionally prescribing conventional drugs if necessary. Traditinal spinal chiropractics doesn't apply at all, for instance the notion that most illnesses stem from problems with your musculoskeletal system has been abandoned. Specifically, they won't ever presume to have a knowledge of anything else than the mechanics of your body. However, if you have a real physical problem with a joint, tendon or muscle, a modern chiropractor might be the best one to aid you.
Modern chiropractic's got nothing to do with alternative bullshit or philosophy _at all_. In Norway we have a (very) few of the quacks, but the modern ones are proving to be a valuable addition to the health services, in that they can treat problems which the MDs and PTs can not. They are certified by the government to prescribe any conventional medication equal as an MD, which a "straight" chiropractor would never do. They are accepted by the medical community, MDs will routinely refer patients to a chiropractor if they have muscular pains, joint aches, or undefinable back pains and the like which the MD is unable to treat successfully.
I just want to point out that there are other chiropractors than the quacks talking about how every problem connects to intervertebral discs in the vicinity of the Coccyx. A "straight" chiropractor might for instance recommend woo woo spine manipulation instead of vaccines, those should be sent to jail for being a menace to society. Most modern chiropractors are perfectly scientific and can really help you.
Disclaimer: My brother is a recently educated "clinical biomechanic" (modern chiropractor), and he's just as pissed with the frauds as you and I are. He would never presume to know anything about the flu, stomach aches, or any physical or psychic illness. His expertise is with the pure physical anatomy and mechanics of your body, he's damned good at it, but for anything else he'd send you on to a specialist or a general practitioner. My father is a GP MD of the old school with 33 years of experience, and he approves of what my brother is doing.
Anecdotal but real example: My brother managed to diagnose and completely rectify a knee problem I had after a knee injury, with which several MDs including one knee specialist were unsuccessful. I walked with a limp because of pain and reduced mobility of my joint. He identified the source of my pains, a tendon in my thigh which had constricted after the injury, and proceeded to literally stretch the tendon over several extremely painful treatments. The reason why three separate MDs didn't identify this problem is that they solely examined my knee, but didn't have the expertise to examine the tendons and muscles connecting to it. They could have treated many
Must be why I've yet to see a USB device not supported in Windows, but working fine in Linux.
Depends on what you mean by "supported in windows". Here are some obscure pieces of hardware for you:
I use a Logitech UltraX Media keyboard, it needed a special driver for the multimedia keys (play/pause, volume, and so on). When Logitech replaced their software with a newer version that refused to even let you choose this keyboard several keys lost functionality and some visual effects disappeared. In Ubuntu it interacts perfectly with everything by default, every button works as expected and gives visual feedback.
One time when I connected my Nokia to my Linux desktop via USB I chose the wrong option on the phone, PC suite instead of mass storage. I was slightly surprised when Linux told me that "You have plugged in a device with internet support, would you like to use it?". I was a lot more surprised when I yanked the ethernet cable, clicked yes, and was connected within five seconds. Why? I _never_ got it to supply my work laptop (Windows) with connectivity, even with Nokias fat, bloated software and "trying everything".
My girlfriend's Canon Powershot A300 was a bitch to get working in Windows, with special drivers, software and reboots. In Linux it showed up as mass storage and a twain device/camera upon insertion.
My Cardman 3021 smartcard reader was the same, a big hassle in Windows with two reboots (not possible to install the drivers with the reader plugged in - WTF? And no good warning. Download a 300 MB driver package, install it, shutdown, reboot, plug in the reader, reboot again because that was "necessary"). It was recognized by linux instantly, and a simple apt-get and a Firefox restart made it work with the Java applet I needed it for as well.
My Saitek P990 gamepad is a pain to use with WinXP. Special drivers, shifty calibration and button selection software, and lack of support for sticks, several buttons, or both, in various games. In Linux I can usually just plug it in, select it as a controller, and it will behave perfectly. And, what is it with Windows and required reboots? Come on, it's a fucking gamepad!
The list probably goes on, but I'm running out of devices. Sure, only one of those didn't work at all with Windows (and N95 is NOT an obscure device), but all of them were painless to use with Linux and not so in Windows. On the contrary I can't think of a single personal experience where Windows was better.
But on the whole, the picture is fairly clear.
Yes, I'd say that it is. Bringing up Windows as an example of good, general, native usb support shows a lack of experience with how it should be done. The fact that many devices don't work at all in Windows without the manufacturers adware might be a hint. I've supported Windows at work for nine years, so I'd say that my woes with devices in Windows is probably no PEBKAC error.
Speaking of usb, how is that portable, bootable Windows-on-an-usb-stick coming along? Sorry about that, couldn't resist:)
I have some to spare as well: simwEkH2Pg4XhczD CaeVkA7BeedSdfwJ apFEqCwLum6T5t26 Enjoy! I find that the premium service is worth paying for. Not expensive, no ads, and less chance that they'll go belly-up:)
I could come 30 minutes late and not miss a minute of the actual movie that I *paid* to see (and I would if it didn't cost me a decent seat).
As another Scandinavian posted, here we do have reserved seating, and most theatres still run 20 minutes of commercials before the movie starts. How? Once in a while they'll start the movie almost on time, skipping most of the ads. If you calculate on coming in late to avoid the commercials you also risk missing the start of the movie. We CAN bring our own drinks and snacks, though:)
ugh, what's up with the slashdot posts lately? I some white lines to make things more readible, and it gets posted as wall of text... everything before the "-- Sorry" is a quote.
The easiest is to choose Plain Old Text as the format when you post, or you can use html markup for line breaks. In either case you can make nice indented quotes by surrounding them with <blockquote>quote</blockquote>
A dedicated GPS is far, far better (IMHO) than a phone based GPS.
Yes, but the phone in my pocket is a lot more useful than my GPS at home:) I've had sudden and unexpected need for a GPS a couple of times while travelling, and the phone did its job very well. I wouldn't want to drag around a GPS for such eventualities. Even if you don't really *need* it, it can be interesting to have a look at your surroundings from a bird's eye view. I always preload my Nokia with maps for wherever I'm going.
They use it in Ecuador as well. I lived and worked there for most of 1998, Spanish being my working language. With no alternative languages to use my Spanish got quite good in the end, to the point that people from Spain could easily identify where I learnt it (Ecuador o Peru). They used "estadounidense" as an adjective for people from the U.S., and generally inferred that you meant something/someone from South America if you said "americano/a". Using "americano" about someone from the U.S. was plain wrong, they didn't get annoyed, most just didn't understand what you meant.
By the way, the Argentinian dialect of Spanish is by far the coolest one I've heard. It's to Spanish what the Scottish accent is to English:)
Slashdot Mirror
If you, as a company, ends up having a lot of paying customers who thought they were getting a freebie, you're probably at least guilty of misleading advertising. If your business model is based upon tricking people who didn't read the fine print, I would consider it a scam. If you're selling a good product which actually gives value for the customer's money you don't need to use such tactics in the first place.
You and I would probably never fall for such tricks, that doesn't make it OK for a company to exploit those who will.
Since we're replying to points that people didn't make anyway, I think the OP's point was that there are a lot of free and useful ones for Firefox. No one in the thread said that IE didn't have addons. Of course they exist, which is irrelevant if they don't do what he wants, or have priced themselves out of the competition.
"You need a boat, and this guy right here will give you one for free? Why not go with these people instead, they have affiliates who might sell you a car!" - Yes I know, you didn't actually recommend it.
Well... My computer went bust the other day, and the only replacement computer I had was an ibook G4. It was painful. :)
When I replaced the PSU in my desktop I sliced my hand pretty badly on the Zalman cooler, those are sharp as razorblades. I didn't even feel it at first. I still prefer those cutting edges to the MacIntosh
(No, I'm not making this up)
It's CC licenced, and thus available at Feedbooks in several formats: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/2466. Enjoy, it's an interesting read :)
I read a lot, and I used to carry around a paper book all the time, two when I was getting close to the end of the previous one. I recently bought a Sony PRS-600. It fits in the inner pocket of my jacket, and it's far more handy than a paper book. I literally never leave home without it.
I've also tried reading books on my phone (Nokia N95 8GB), but the screen is too small for reading comfort in the long run, and the display quality is vastly inferior. I ended up choosing green on black to avoid eye strain, same as my terminal colours of choice. Even an iPhone can't touch E-Ink for reading novels.
I've thought about that as well, and apparently one exists, even if it obviously isn't intended for reading. It looks more like it's geared toward people with vision problems or technophobia. I don't think a "reader phone" would have a big market, people just aren't that interested in reading books. It also needs to be bigger than most phones to work well for novels. That said, I'd probably buy one if they built it :)
I recently bought the Sony PRS-600BC. It updates the screen to full quality in about half a second, and it has a "fast" update mode of about 6 Hz (I guess) with lesser quality. The fast mode is more than good enough for scrolling around large images (ER diagrams in my case), and when you get where you want the display will re-render highest quality. It uses the fast mode for the on-screen keyboard feedback as well, and it feels quite responsive. Unfortunately it has no web browsing capability, but the display itself wouldn't hinder that significantly.
The device itself is great, I've read about fifteen books on it so far, and I can recommend it strongly (even if it comes from the evil Sony). The contrast isn't as good as for instance the Irex Iliad, which I've also used a lot. This is due to the touch screen, but it's still more than good enough for hours and hours of reading without eye fatigue.
Nitpicking: It's 93 billion light-years (radius 46.5 billion), see Misconceptions. :)
It doesn't really matter, as the distances involved are so mindbogglingly large that in most cases the only explanation you need will be: "So large that your mind can't cope with it". The same thing goes for the infinitesimal size of an atomic nucleus. An error of an order of magnitude still gets the point across
Thanks, your feedback is appreciated! The do/does thing was just a (very bad) oversight :)
For my final project at university college I and a classmate deployed a complete IT solution for a small eye surgery clinic from scratch. We even budgeted, selected and bought all hardware, including routers and servers. We tried very hard to implement roaming profiles and centralised login with that in mind; we had the assistance of a very proficient Windows admin as well. We ran into all sorts of problems with software expecting files to be in a specific location among other things, to the point that we found it easier to just install everything from scratch when upgrading hardware.
In comparison, at the college computer labs (Linux) all this just worked. Adding a new box meant doing a stock install/imaging, point it at the local repos, and configure it to mount home from a server on login. All custom software including proprietary got deployed automatically, and your settings where available at first login. I got experience with both, with Linux it's dead simple because it's designed with such cases in mind, with Windows we found it to be not really doable :)
Of course this was some time ago. Where I work now (Windows shop with ~400 users) the IT department still installs every new box individually from scratch, and then installs all software on it. When the user gets it he/she will still have to customise everything to their liking, so the whole thing is not exactly 30 minutes...
With Ubuntu for basic business use you won't need to upgrade at every release. Their LTS releases guarantees three years of support. Running an old version is usually not acceptable for a home power user, but it provides the stability a small business needs.
For a larger shop with at least one full time IT technician it would be possible to maintain your own repository with selected upgrades enabled. Then you can pick and choose the upgrades you need for new features in specific software. You would have the stability and security of an old release, and still get bleeding edge features where it matters with relatively little testing. This is how most major Windows shop does it for security patches and feature upgrades anyway.
Also the differences and testing needed between each version of the major distros is still far less than what's needed between each new edition of Windows. That's when you ignore the immense practical problem of global reinstallation of individual Windows boxes (yes, MS shills, fire away. It's possible on Windows as well. Call me when it's possible for my company to have absolutely all system and OS settings administrated centrally while ALL the user's personal customisations ("registry") and documents rest in his home directory on a file server, and when a motherboard fries, it'll take less than half an hour to physically replace the box and get the user back in business with all software and personalisations in place).
They even eliminated him as well, according to The Fine Form 8-K.
Regards,
The department of redundancy department.
It's a distributed effort like Folding@Home, and it's not testet strictly sequentially. You can choose roughly the size of the candidates you want to test, the largest ones will take weeks or months on regular hardware. They do try to fill in the bottom gaps between tested numbers, but before they have tested every number 2^n-1 below a certain value of n they can't be sure they haven't missed any Mersenne primes in that range. I believe they also tests every n twice to make sure one isn't missed due to bugs or faulty hardware.
Burma shave
The worst example I have seen was a police officer with a radar measuring people in the acceleration area after a toll booth. The limit was 50 km/h before the booth, and the sign with 90 km/h is situated about 200m after the booth. If that isn't just to fatten the government coffers I don't know what is.
For extra security, use it twice. This post is encrypted with double rot13-encryption.
I suspect that you were sent to a modern chiropractor, clinically educated. They don't practice any woo woo at all, only real physical therapy like your physiotherapist might do. Only that they have _a lot_ more education, and learn some advanced techniques and facts about physiology that your regular PT would never be acquainted with. I have an extensive post about it elsewhere in this story.
Anyway, those chiropractors that don't subscribe to the woo woo view can be quite amazing regarding what results they can achieve.
Firstly, I'm a big fan of James Randi, and as skeptical as they come. The judicial actions described in the article are ridiculous, those people should be jailed for malpractice, reckless ignorance, or whatever.
That said, it's important to discern the "straight" chiropractors from the modernly educated ones. The former are quacks like the people suing and the groups you mentioned (along with the fucking homeopaths which you forgot to mention especially), although they usually have reasonably good knowledge of anatomy. The latter ones act as extremely competent physiotherapists. I gather that in my edge of the woods we luckily have more of the scientific ones. I live in Norway, my experience might be very different from yours :)
Those in the latter group have received a purely scientific and very solid education comparable with that of medical doctors, even surpassing it by far when it comes to anatomy. They are glorified physiotherapists and perform as such. Their treatment consists of physical manipulation, literally, of the body part which has a problem (in most cases not the spine), additionally prescribing conventional drugs if necessary. Traditinal spinal chiropractics doesn't apply at all, for instance the notion that most illnesses stem from problems with your musculoskeletal system has been abandoned. Specifically, they won't ever presume to have a knowledge of anything else than the mechanics of your body. However, if you have a real physical problem with a joint, tendon or muscle, a modern chiropractor might be the best one to aid you.
Modern chiropractic's got nothing to do with alternative bullshit or philosophy _at all_. In Norway we have a (very) few of the quacks, but the modern ones are proving to be a valuable addition to the health services, in that they can treat problems which the MDs and PTs can not. They are certified by the government to prescribe any conventional medication equal as an MD, which a "straight" chiropractor would never do. They are accepted by the medical community, MDs will routinely refer patients to a chiropractor if they have muscular pains, joint aches, or undefinable back pains and the like which the MD is unable to treat successfully.
I just want to point out that there are other chiropractors than the quacks talking about how every problem connects to intervertebral discs in the vicinity of the Coccyx. A "straight" chiropractor might for instance recommend woo woo spine manipulation instead of vaccines, those should be sent to jail for being a menace to society. Most modern chiropractors are perfectly scientific and can really help you.
Disclaimer: My brother is a recently educated "clinical biomechanic" (modern chiropractor), and he's just as pissed with the frauds as you and I are. He would never presume to know anything about the flu, stomach aches, or any physical or psychic illness. His expertise is with the pure physical anatomy and mechanics of your body, he's damned good at it, but for anything else he'd send you on to a specialist or a general practitioner. My father is a GP MD of the old school with 33 years of experience, and he approves of what my brother is doing.
Anecdotal but real example: My brother managed to diagnose and completely rectify a knee problem I had after a knee injury, with which several MDs including one knee specialist were unsuccessful. I walked with a limp because of pain and reduced mobility of my joint. He identified the source of my pains, a tendon in my thigh which had constricted after the injury, and proceeded to literally stretch the tendon over several extremely painful treatments. The reason why three separate MDs didn't identify this problem is that they solely examined my knee, but didn't have the expertise to examine the tendons and muscles connecting to it. They could have treated many
Depends on what you mean by "supported in windows". Here are some obscure pieces of hardware for you:
I use a Logitech UltraX Media keyboard, it needed a special driver for the multimedia keys (play/pause, volume, and so on). When Logitech replaced their software with a newer version that refused to even let you choose this keyboard several keys lost functionality and some visual effects disappeared. In Ubuntu it interacts perfectly with everything by default, every button works as expected and gives visual feedback.
One time when I connected my Nokia to my Linux desktop via USB I chose the wrong option on the phone, PC suite instead of mass storage. I was slightly surprised when Linux told me that "You have plugged in a device with internet support, would you like to use it?". I was a lot more surprised when I yanked the ethernet cable, clicked yes, and was connected within five seconds. Why? I _never_ got it to supply my work laptop (Windows) with connectivity, even with Nokias fat, bloated software and "trying everything".
My girlfriend's Canon Powershot A300 was a bitch to get working in Windows, with special drivers, software and reboots. In Linux it showed up as mass storage and a twain device/camera upon insertion.
My Cardman 3021 smartcard reader was the same, a big hassle in Windows with two reboots (not possible to install the drivers with the reader plugged in - WTF? And no good warning. Download a 300 MB driver package, install it, shutdown, reboot, plug in the reader, reboot again because that was "necessary"). It was recognized by linux instantly, and a simple apt-get and a Firefox restart made it work with the Java applet I needed it for as well.
My Saitek P990 gamepad is a pain to use with WinXP. Special drivers, shifty calibration and button selection software, and lack of support for sticks, several buttons, or both, in various games. In Linux I can usually just plug it in, select it as a controller, and it will behave perfectly. And, what is it with Windows and required reboots? Come on, it's a fucking gamepad!
The list probably goes on, but I'm running out of devices. Sure, only one of those didn't work at all with Windows (and N95 is NOT an obscure device), but all of them were painless to use with Linux and not so in Windows. On the contrary I can't think of a single personal experience where Windows was better.
Yes, I'd say that it is. Bringing up Windows as an example of good, general, native usb support shows a lack of experience with how it should be done. The fact that many devices don't work at all in Windows without the manufacturers adware might be a hint. I've supported Windows at work for nine years, so I'd say that my woes with devices in Windows is probably no PEBKAC error.
Speaking of usb, how is that portable, bootable Windows-on-an-usb-stick coming along? Sorry about that, couldn't resist :)
It *can* happen, I tell ya! :)
I have some to spare as well: :)
simwEkH2Pg4XhczD
CaeVkA7BeedSdfwJ
apFEqCwLum6T5t26
Enjoy!
I find that the premium service is worth paying for. Not expensive, no ads, and less chance that they'll go belly-up
As another Scandinavian posted, here we do have reserved seating, and most theatres still run 20 minutes of commercials before the movie starts. How? Once in a while they'll start the movie almost on time, skipping most of the ads. If you calculate on coming in late to avoid the commercials you also risk missing the start of the movie. :)
We CAN bring our own drinks and snacks, though
The easiest is to choose Plain Old Text as the format when you post, or you can use html markup for line breaks. In either case you can make nice indented quotes by surrounding them with <blockquote>quote</blockquote>
Yes, but the phone in my pocket is a lot more useful than my GPS at home :)
I've had sudden and unexpected need for a GPS a couple of times while travelling, and the phone did its job very well. I wouldn't want to drag around a GPS for such eventualities. Even if you don't really *need* it, it can be interesting to have a look at your surroundings from a bird's eye view. I always preload my Nokia with maps for wherever I'm going.
They use it in Ecuador as well. I lived and worked there for most of 1998, Spanish being my working language. With no alternative languages to use my Spanish got quite good in the end, to the point that people from Spain could easily identify where I learnt it (Ecuador o Peru). They used "estadounidense" as an adjective for people from the U.S., and generally inferred that you meant something/someone from South America if you said "americano/a". Using "americano" about someone from the U.S. was plain wrong, they didn't get annoyed, most just didn't understand what you meant.
By the way, the Argentinian dialect of Spanish is by far the coolest one I've heard. It's to Spanish what the Scottish accent is to English :)
Neat demos, haven't seen those elements in action and actually working before now. Thanks!