I think you're being a little harsh. The people running this program know technology and computers. They are using what they know to do something. It's a lot better then most, who do nothing.
It wouldn't make sense for these same people to get into the food distribution business, or whatever else. They know THIS business, not that one.
It WILL provide a tool for education, whether you believe it's "good enough" or not. It's up to these people to make use of it. If they don't, or if they miss this opportunity, there's not much we can do about it. Hopefully the people in these communities will try to make the best of it, and get something out of this program.
In fact, as a general rule I find that pages pop up pretty damned fast for me; faster then IE7 for a lot of sites. I don't know where all this "it's slow" is coming from. Speed has never been a problem for me with FireFox.
Maybe ya'll are using Pentium II 333Mhz boxes or something. From where I stand, IE7 might load a page in 1.23 seconds, versus Firefox in 1.26. Or the other way around.
As for the extra features, I like the spell check a lot, it's not bloat and it just works. The minimalist crowd is always very loud when it comes to bare-bones. Weighing in at less then 6MB for download, Firefox is still one of the more lightweight applications out there. If you want really bare-bones, I'd suggest looking here: http://lynx.isc.org/.
I see merit in electronic voting. It allows us to get results fast, and that's what us Americans love. Fast results.
The thing is, a lot of us already do it. I mean, here in Rhode Island we have a very simple ballot. It's big, and there's arrows pointing to each option - be it a candidate or yes/no question. The arrows are empty in the middle. All you do is take a sharpie and connect the tail and tip of the arrow for the option you want. They're far enough away from each other that even if you draw a messed up curvy line, it still registers correctly. Then, when you're done, you insert the ballot into a machine which counts up your votes. This information is available immediately.
Shazam. We have a paper ballot and an electronic counting machine. No fancy gizmos or complicated software. If anyone questions the votes, there's stacks of easily readable ballots ready for the manual count.
I don't see how using a touch-screen is any easier, or faster, then a sharpie. I also don't see how vote counting could be any faster.
So, I agree with you, I don't see a need for video screens and such. I do like electronic counting, and I do think it's more accurate then human counting. I mean, poll workers could be persuaded to count votes in someone's favor just as easily as someone could tamper with the software. With both paper and electronic, we have a check-and-balance.
The whole thing is just big nonsense, and a waste of money.
I don't like non-free drivers. Unfortunately, I can't exactly use any of the new video cards out there without them, so we have no choice. For now. Who knows, maybe AMD will do something nice and open their drivers and/or specs now that they own ATI. Until then, if we want decent 3d performance in Linux, we have to succumb to this fact.
However, a driver is different then a core OS component. My system still runs with OSS drivers, or alternatively, I can replace the hardware with something that will work, even if it doesn't perform as well. Overall, my data formats are open, and the core OS is open, and the networking systems and authentication systems are open. Nobody could prevent me from using my system by recalling non-free drivers.
If Microsoft wants to help Novell develop Linux components that will allow you do do things like real AD authentication and group policies, that's okay with me, because again we don't need to use it to run a functional Linux system, and certainly not if we don't run any MS Servers. If they open source the stuff, all the better. I wouldn't mind getting Linux desktops under control with our existing AD infrastructure at the office. It might allow us to get Linux desktops deployed in the organization. This is a good thing.
The bad would come with changes to the system that affect system libraries, compilers, and other such things that are non-free. Fortunately, I don't see this happening. What I see are things like described above; authentication and interoperability with Windows servers. If you need to run both types of servers, this is a good thing. If not, or if you don't want to pay for it, you still currently have good options with the existing OSS available.
I think this should be a "wait and see" scenario. Most folks in the OSS camps will always be careful of anything that comes out of Redmond. I can't imagine a case where Microsoft could somehow "infiltrate" the Linux system code base with their own non-free code without anyone knowing. While I'm sure MS always has an ulterior motive, this all could end up being good for Linux systems in general.
"I personally would find figures from either the pre.com boom or post.com boom more enlightening."
I don't understand. The.com era was filled with overblown everything-IT, as you admit. How would comparing today's market with a "bubble" market be an indication of anything? We already know the market today is a lot less then it was in 1999. I believe what's enlightening is the fact that five years after the big downward spiral, we're still not any better then when the IT market "crashed." While companies and the stock market is doing pretty darned well, IT salaries and job openings are stagnating. What does that tell you?
"A lot of those lost jobs were people who had no business being in the industry to begin with"
Unlike you, I don't think anyone "deserves" to be here anymore then you or I. If they studied up and got a job, more power to them. It's true that there was a lot of low-talent people in high paying positions, but those people are filtering out of the system, for the simple fact that there's no jobs. Unfortunately, it's not just affecting these people, it's affecting everyone.
"I call that you being overpaid, not a corporation being greedy."
That's a spin. So, you think that my college education, a decade in the field, countless projects completed and heavy experience shouldn't mean I should command a decent salary? I ain't making no $100k a year, and I consider myself very good at what I do. And, there's not all that many people at my experience level. I am comfortable with my salary at this stage in my life - but why should I accept a big pay cut because there's talent-less workers in India that will work for peanuts because it's better then starving? Real competitive..
The Dells and Microsofts of the world have enough money to keep those jobs in the good old US of A. Or the UK or other european countries for that matter (Outsourcing isn't just a USA problem, but many other countries aren't just rolling over for big business ot make more money.)
You're saying I should take a paycut so that the CEO's and board members can make an extra million bucks this year.
"So yeah, we have 2-3 well fed happy Indians for the price of one fat diabetic American."
You should try to get a reporter position with Fox News. Here's a newsflash: Not all IT workers are fat and diabetic! Are you?
"Globalization is working, we just have to find a way to make ourselves more competitive"
Tell unto us this wisdom you share, because nobody else knows what the hell to do about it. Besides, of course, putting measures in place to stop the rapid outsourcing that we're experiencing.
"I choose not to just sit around and get upset that my cheese is being moved."
So, what are you doing about it? Nothing, because you think it's going to be just fine, apparently. Well, I choose not to accept the fact that too many American jobs are being outsourced to keep big business big business.
"I don't think the impact is that bad or will get much worse."
You haven't lost your job, or had to take a $20k paycut then. We'll see how you opinion changes when you realize that all the IT jobs are gone, and you have to mop floors because you've invested your career in IT so much that you don't have too many other skills.
Like the poster replied to you, if things DO get worse, your savings might not amount to much.
You're right on the fact that all the video game characters in a game like CS:S have the same speed, height, etc. However, if you have a real team on each side of the game, it can indeed help you develop teamwork, teach you what you should be aware of in an urban setting, and how to be aware of things like ammo supply and grenades.
It's not REALISTIC, of course - CS:S is more of a shoot'em'up type game. Perhaps America's Army would be a better represnetation of squad combat. But just the same, I play paintball from time to time and I do feel as though I have an advantage over some of the guys because I've trained with video games like AA and CS:S, and I know where to hide, when to shoot, and all sorts of things combat related.
Plus, it would make the machine terribly heavy. I mean, sure, most of us including myself don't move them around all that much but when I do, I would rather not move around an extra 30lb because of the wood.
I guess the good thing about the case is that if you ever get sick of it, you could always refinish it with another stain =)
Personally, I like the aluminum cases. Whether or not it's some conspiracy theory or not about the radiant-heat or whatever, it doesn't matter to me. I think they look nice. I like a modern looking home. I like sharp angles on ceilings, and I like lighter-colored wood. And, I prefer my equipment to look modern yet elegant. I don't need them to look like end-tables. I'm not putting the PC outside, which apparently this company does, by looking at all the pictures =)
"the very idea of my PC having its resources tied up for someone else's phone call is frankly maddening to me."
Well, boo hoo. It's the way the system works. I seriously doubt any significant system resources would be used up for other people's calls. When you make your calls, it happens to other people. It's a give-pull situation where everyone has to share resources in order for the system to scale with the number of subscribers. Would you rather have nothing?
That's all well and good for pre-packaged pre-fab units that are completely designed to spec. But what happens when you build your own machine?
There's no way to order a PSU with exactly the right length cables, or IDE cables that are exactly perfect, or etc. If you put a little bit of effort into it, you can tidy things up very nicely. Don't blame all PC makers for this crap because Dell is messy with cables.
Of course, on the other side of the coin - as long as the cables aren't impeding air flow, who cares? They're INSIDE the case. Unless you like case mods, you can't see them. Personally, I really don't care if the cables are in knots as long as they all reach and don't hit any fans.
If you actually read it (I know, it was longer then a digg blurb, so you probably didn't) you'd have seen that he used many dates, but the fact that many of his comparisons STARTED with 2001 (which you yourself said was a shitty time for IT workers) and compare them with TODAY (or close as he could get with the data) while showing NO growth or negative growth is scary. In other words, since the shittiest time after the.com blowout, there's been hardly any tangable IT growth.
He blames it on offshoring in general, and I agree with him. Off-shoring IT is a direct IT-job losing situation, but all off-shoring has a serious impact on our economy in general. It's the huge companies getting bigger, and being as greedy as possible while doing it.
So, imagine if he compared things to the year 2000 or 1999? It would look *completely* bleak.
I definately agree with you. I've used a few Nikon cameras and they're really a nice cameras. Like you said, Canon's sensors are among the best that anyone makes, and it shows in the images - but you do have to be a bit picky to seriously notice any quality differences between the Canon and the Nikon images. Mostly, it's noticable at higher ISO settings, which you don't normally use unless it's very dark and flashes aren't going to work for you.
You do have to make a descision if you're already into photography - do you forgo your investment in Nikon or X brand lenses, just to get a little better performance, or do you stick with your brand, knowing that eventually Nikon will produce something that rivals the best Canon?
It does remind me of an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit - we, as a society, are obsessed with The Best. Usually, you don't need the best, and you'll be very happy without it.
Wow, you seem a bit angry. I think you should chill out.
The Rebel XT is a very nice consumer DSLR. Canon packed in almost all the features you find on the very expensive professional models, to lesser degrees (Less RAM for rapid-fire shots, no ISO 3200, etc.) It uses a Canon sensor and it's a very good one - the photos you see from the Rebel XT are really quite something, and when you compare it to even the most expensive Nikons, the Rebel usually produces a better image.
I haven't found anything on the camera to be a "peice of shit." It's sturdy as hell. I'm banged the shit out of mine and it still looks like now (although, I got the Black one, so no silver paint chipping off to make it look bad.)
In fact, if you say the Rebel XT is a "peice of shit" then you're saying the entire Canon line of DSLR's is also a peice of shit. The XT is made side-by-side to all their more expensive models. The original Rebel used the same sensor as their "pro" 10D. The Rebel XT shares many of the same charactistics as the 20D.
It's a consumer camera that puts out images like the big boys. If you're pissed off that the average enthusiast now has this ability with a low cost DSLR, then get over yourself.
Let me ask you a question: Do you really think people went out and purchased $800 cameras to "join the crowd" with big, heavy DSLR cameras that you can't take everywhere, or do you think that the reason people are buying DSLR's now is because they're affordable, offer excelent performance, and have interchangable lenses? I'm thinking the latter.
I think it might seem surprising to someone that's not into photography that Canon completely ownes the market. Nikon makes decent stuff, but 6/10 of those cameras listed are Canon, and for good reason. They make good cameras.
Sprint charges an arm and a leg for their shoddy wireless-internet access right now, and requires expensive PCMCIA cards or PDA-phones and long contracts to sign up for anything past ringtone downloads. Any new service will be equally as bullshit, with ringtones and limited web access on the phones, but for full internet you'll need to pay a high premium and buy special expensive hardware.
I hate wireless carriers, and I don't believe a word they say until it's a reality.
"There's a lot of things that I'd rather be doing than watching tv"
That's what you said. Reason would have it that you meant you don't generally enjoy TV. If you meant something else, or if you meant to be more specific, you might have mentioned that.
HDTV is expensive right now. That's NOT in dispute. What is in dispute is that a lot of people claim to ne be able to tell the difference between HDTV and SDTV, and I think that's bullshit. If you have a nice TV and a nice HDTV signal, it will be really impressive, and anyone would love to watch HDTV instead of SD.
I do agree, that because of the costs, for many people they just don't care at this point. The same was true for Color TV. Color sets were way more expensive then B&W, and not a lot of programming was color. Color didn't improve the show, it just made watching the show more enjoyable. I believe the same is true for HDTV. Eventually (and you can see it now) HD prices will drop to what we saw for SDTV's before HD started taking over the store shelves. Even now, you can get a CRT HDTV for a very affordable price, or a lower end plasma for less then $1000. In 2000, I purchased a 32" Sony Trinitron CRT TV for $850. In another year or so, you'll easily be able to beat that price with a similarly sized HDTV.
It's a transition period and the manufacturers are milking it. It doesn't mean HDTV isn't a great technology. It will improve everything from Movies and TV to game systems and computers in the living room.
First of all, there's no such thing as a wide-screen SDTV. "SD" is going to be either PAL or NTSC, and neither are wide-screen. However, there exists "EDTV" sets that provide a lower resolution then HD but with widescreen formats. They generally accept an HD signal and/or are able to stretch a standard NTSC signal if it's broadcast in anamorphic pixels - such as a DVD player can do.
The price differences between widescreen "EDTV's" and a 720p HDTV are not great. For only a small percentage more, you can get full HD. To be clear - you can get a 1080i CRT-based set for a very low price these days. While the picture will be generally less stable then a flat-panel or LCD/DLP projector, the picture is awesome. A friend of mine has a 30" CRT HDTV and it looks awesome, but it's not acceptable for using with a computer, for example.
To my knowledge, nothing in the United States is broadcast in wide-screen without also being broadcast in a standard HD format.
The whole point is moot anyways, because I didn't say you HAD to upgrade to a full HD set to view widescreen. It's just a very nice side effect that ALL HD signals are widescreen.
That's not the argument that's pervasive, at least around here. The argument usually entails someone saying that they can't tell the difference between HDTV and normal TV. Honestly, I don't see how this is possible, unless you're using a really small TV or a really low end HDTV.
If nothing else, all HD programming is in wide-screen, which is perhaps even more important then the jacked up resolution. While it's true that many DVD's come in widescreen mode which will letterbox on your SDTV, television programming does not. HD Programming is more enjoyable to watch because you see more of the scene.
If you don't even like TV, then I don't see how you can even pipe in on this discussion. It would be like me arguing why people don't give a shit if Callaway is better then Ping when I don't even like golf.
In terms of video quality, a DVD didn't really offer up that much of an improvement over DVD. DVD helped with longer-lasting quality video (10 year old VHS tapes show their age) and better sound, but besides the random-access nature of a DVD (which really, how many times do you jump back and forth during a movie?) I don't find it to be that big a deal over VHS.
Now, HD-DVD/Blu-Whatever, they promise up to 4x the resolution of normal DVD's/VHS, which is damned significant. If you can't tell the difference between HD and SD, you either need a new TV or new Eyes, and you definately didn't notice any difference between VHS and DVD.
With a simple program called Graphedit and a 3rd party demuxer, you can extract the video and audio from.tivo files into standard mpeg files. You need the decryption keys (as you do with this) and it uses those to decrypt the stream.
This program seems to do a similar thing with the WMA files, it doesn't recode, it just filters the file through windows media player libraries and copies out the decrypted streams.
I like it.
Now, if there were only an online music service that had better quality files then Napster... and didn't charge per-song.
Blocker software isn't very expensive, and I've found they can be very effective these days. We have one such software at work and it works very well. It won't block unclassified sites just because they have an XXX in the URL.
I agree with you that it's not really necessary, but if you MUST do it, be very liberal about it.
There's a lot of times when I'd like to be able to play a game of CS:S with some friends that don't even have PC's capable of running the game but would have a blast in a 6v6 LAN friends game. Or, perhaps I want to go and meet some fellow game players that I might find online later on. Maybe my PC is broken, and I want to play some games.
It's like a rebirth of the video arcade, but it's more captivating.
Some things that a game spot should avoid:
- Ruthless monitoring of the players. If you have the game police watching everyone and barking every time someone does something you don't like, it will keep people away REAL fast. Make sure you have a supply of keyboards and mice. They're cheap. Don't worry about them so much.
- Tailoring to the very young kids. While families might visit a gaming center once in awhile, you don't want to alienate your core customer group by forcing them to be proper little gentlemen because sometimes a young kid might play. Some ediquite is a good idea, but be too strict and you'll drive them right away.
- Limiting internet usage. Don't limit internet usage. Sure, you could block porn sites, but don't block everything else.
A game cafe should have a method of quickly regenerating a PC to "defaults" and should have a couple machines on stand-by. If you don't have to worry about users screwing up Windows, you don't have to be the PC Nanny.
You should also provide stations for people that want to bring in their own PC's. You could charge the same amount of money, but let people use their own equipment. If I am going to go to someplace like this for a bunch of hours with some friends, I want to bring my own PC, my own LCD screen, and my own keyboard+mouse.
I've been to places that break all these suggestions and I'll never go back. It would have been great if they weren't so strict. I mean, gamers want to hang out, play some games, yell at each other, and have fun. Let them do that and you could be successful.
What is hardware but software that can't be changed?
You can always insert another layer of security elsewhere, and in this case the software COULD prevent the transmission of data by altering the delay of packets being sent away.
This is not likely to be something that reaches far and wide like an Outlook virus, but it IS another thing to consider when building ultra secure systems. It's interesting that you could transmit data by altering the delay of network packets or keystrokes. I feel better just knowing that such a thing is even possible, and it opens up new possibilities for locking down computer systems.
Don't be such a killjoy. And YES WE KNOW telnet is not encrypted!
You're right, most of the people won't report bugs. However, when you have three million people downloading it, even if 1% does, that's a lot. By charging, they're eliminating a lot of people, and a lot of those people that would otherwise post a bug report.
Not to mention, they've built in a lot of automatic reporting on crashes and such.
Very expensive is relative. Don't forget we're talking about Microsoft here, and Office 12 is going to get them an unimaginable amount of cash. They can afford to do this for no cost to the testers.
Hmm. And here I was thinking it was predatory and illegal business practices, which they are now using to milk the customer for all they have.
$1.50? Bullshit. Unless the betas are non-expiring, it's test software. Why should we pay to test their software? If they want to test on a wide scale they need to figure it into the budget or stop and use a sign-up method.
Three million downloads? Big deal. They act like that's a lot these days. Other companies get away with it, and don't charge more.
It's just a show of how belligerent they've become to their customer base. They know they'll sell a bazillion copies of it, so they really don't give a shit.
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I think you're being a little harsh. The people running this program know technology and computers. They are using what they know to do something. It's a lot better then most, who do nothing.
It wouldn't make sense for these same people to get into the food distribution business, or whatever else. They know THIS business, not that one.
It WILL provide a tool for education, whether you believe it's "good enough" or not. It's up to these people to make use of it. If they don't, or if they miss this opportunity, there's not much we can do about it. Hopefully the people in these communities will try to make the best of it, and get something out of this program.
In fact, as a general rule I find that pages pop up pretty damned fast for me; faster then IE7 for a lot of sites. I don't know where all this "it's slow" is coming from. Speed has never been a problem for me with FireFox.
Maybe ya'll are using Pentium II 333Mhz boxes or something. From where I stand, IE7 might load a page in 1.23 seconds, versus Firefox in 1.26. Or the other way around.
As for the extra features, I like the spell check a lot, it's not bloat and it just works. The minimalist crowd is always very loud when it comes to bare-bones. Weighing in at less then 6MB for download, Firefox is still one of the more lightweight applications out there. If you want really bare-bones, I'd suggest looking here: http://lynx.isc.org/.
I see merit in electronic voting. It allows us to get results fast, and that's what us Americans love. Fast results.
The thing is, a lot of us already do it. I mean, here in Rhode Island we have a very simple ballot. It's big, and there's arrows pointing to each option - be it a candidate or yes/no question. The arrows are empty in the middle. All you do is take a sharpie and connect the tail and tip of the arrow for the option you want. They're far enough away from each other that even if you draw a messed up curvy line, it still registers correctly. Then, when you're done, you insert the ballot into a machine which counts up your votes. This information is available immediately.
Shazam. We have a paper ballot and an electronic counting machine. No fancy gizmos or complicated software. If anyone questions the votes, there's stacks of easily readable ballots ready for the manual count.
I don't see how using a touch-screen is any easier, or faster, then a sharpie. I also don't see how vote counting could be any faster.
So, I agree with you, I don't see a need for video screens and such. I do like electronic counting, and I do think it's more accurate then human counting. I mean, poll workers could be persuaded to count votes in someone's favor just as easily as someone could tamper with the software. With both paper and electronic, we have a check-and-balance.
The whole thing is just big nonsense, and a waste of money.
I don't like non-free drivers. Unfortunately, I can't exactly use any of the new video cards out there without them, so we have no choice. For now. Who knows, maybe AMD will do something nice and open their drivers and/or specs now that they own ATI. Until then, if we want decent 3d performance in Linux, we have to succumb to this fact.
However, a driver is different then a core OS component. My system still runs with OSS drivers, or alternatively, I can replace the hardware with something that will work, even if it doesn't perform as well. Overall, my data formats are open, and the core OS is open, and the networking systems and authentication systems are open. Nobody could prevent me from using my system by recalling non-free drivers.
If Microsoft wants to help Novell develop Linux components that will allow you do do things like real AD authentication and group policies, that's okay with me, because again we don't need to use it to run a functional Linux system, and certainly not if we don't run any MS Servers. If they open source the stuff, all the better. I wouldn't mind getting Linux desktops under control with our existing AD infrastructure at the office. It might allow us to get Linux desktops deployed in the organization. This is a good thing.
The bad would come with changes to the system that affect system libraries, compilers, and other such things that are non-free. Fortunately, I don't see this happening. What I see are things like described above; authentication and interoperability with Windows servers. If you need to run both types of servers, this is a good thing. If not, or if you don't want to pay for it, you still currently have good options with the existing OSS available.
I think this should be a "wait and see" scenario. Most folks in the OSS camps will always be careful of anything that comes out of Redmond. I can't imagine a case where Microsoft could somehow "infiltrate" the Linux system code base with their own non-free code without anyone knowing. While I'm sure MS always has an ulterior motive, this all could end up being good for Linux systems in general.
You make some grand assumptions here.
.com boom or post .com boom more enlightening."
.com era was filled with overblown everything-IT, as you admit. How would comparing today's market with a "bubble" market be an indication of anything? We already know the market today is a lot less then it was in 1999. I believe what's enlightening is the fact that five years after the big downward spiral, we're still not any better then when the IT market "crashed." While companies and the stock market is doing pretty darned well, IT salaries and job openings are stagnating. What does that tell you?
"I personally would find figures from either the pre
I don't understand. The
"A lot of those lost jobs were people who had no business being in the industry to begin with"
Unlike you, I don't think anyone "deserves" to be here anymore then you or I. If they studied up and got a job, more power to them. It's true that there was a lot of low-talent people in high paying positions, but those people are filtering out of the system, for the simple fact that there's no jobs. Unfortunately, it's not just affecting these people, it's affecting everyone.
"I call that you being overpaid, not a corporation being greedy."
That's a spin. So, you think that my college education, a decade in the field, countless projects completed and heavy experience shouldn't mean I should command a decent salary? I ain't making no $100k a year, and I consider myself very good at what I do. And, there's not all that many people at my experience level. I am comfortable with my salary at this stage in my life - but why should I accept a big pay cut because there's talent-less workers in India that will work for peanuts because it's better then starving? Real competitive..
The Dells and Microsofts of the world have enough money to keep those jobs in the good old US of A. Or the UK or other european countries for that matter (Outsourcing isn't just a USA problem, but many other countries aren't just rolling over for big business ot make more money.)
You're saying I should take a paycut so that the CEO's and board members can make an extra million bucks this year.
"So yeah, we have 2-3 well fed happy Indians for the price of one fat diabetic American."
You should try to get a reporter position with Fox News. Here's a newsflash: Not all IT workers are fat and diabetic! Are you?
"Globalization is working, we just have to find a way to make ourselves more competitive"
Tell unto us this wisdom you share, because nobody else knows what the hell to do about it. Besides, of course, putting measures in place to stop the rapid outsourcing that we're experiencing.
"I choose not to just sit around and get upset that my cheese is being moved."
So, what are you doing about it? Nothing, because you think it's going to be just fine, apparently. Well, I choose not to accept the fact that too many American jobs are being outsourced to keep big business big business.
"I don't think the impact is that bad or will get much worse."
You haven't lost your job, or had to take a $20k paycut then. We'll see how you opinion changes when you realize that all the IT jobs are gone, and you have to mop floors because you've invested your career in IT so much that you don't have too many other skills.
Like the poster replied to you, if things DO get worse, your savings might not amount to much.
Did you even read this article?
You're right on the fact that all the video game characters in a game like CS:S have the same speed, height, etc. However, if you have a real team on each side of the game, it can indeed help you develop teamwork, teach you what you should be aware of in an urban setting, and how to be aware of things like ammo supply and grenades.
It's not REALISTIC, of course - CS:S is more of a shoot'em'up type game. Perhaps America's Army would be a better represnetation of squad combat. But just the same, I play paintball from time to time and I do feel as though I have an advantage over some of the guys because I've trained with video games like AA and CS:S, and I know where to hide, when to shoot, and all sorts of things combat related.
Yea, seriously - these things are BIG BUCKS!
Plus, it would make the machine terribly heavy. I mean, sure, most of us including myself don't move them around all that much but when I do, I would rather not move around an extra 30lb because of the wood.
I guess the good thing about the case is that if you ever get sick of it, you could always refinish it with another stain =)
Personally, I like the aluminum cases. Whether or not it's some conspiracy theory or not about the radiant-heat or whatever, it doesn't matter to me. I think they look nice. I like a modern looking home. I like sharp angles on ceilings, and I like lighter-colored wood. And, I prefer my equipment to look modern yet elegant. I don't need them to look like end-tables. I'm not putting the PC outside, which apparently this company does, by looking at all the pictures =)
Yea, I feel so bad for that billionaire. I'd be really pissed if I were him.
"the very idea of my PC having its resources tied up for someone else's phone call is frankly maddening to me."
Well, boo hoo. It's the way the system works. I seriously doubt any significant system resources would be used up for other people's calls. When you make your calls, it happens to other people. It's a give-pull situation where everyone has to share resources in order for the system to scale with the number of subscribers. Would you rather have nothing?
That's all well and good for pre-packaged pre-fab units that are completely designed to spec. But what happens when you build your own machine?
There's no way to order a PSU with exactly the right length cables, or IDE cables that are exactly perfect, or etc. If you put a little bit of effort into it, you can tidy things up very nicely. Don't blame all PC makers for this crap because Dell is messy with cables.
Of course, on the other side of the coin - as long as the cables aren't impeding air flow, who cares? They're INSIDE the case. Unless you like case mods, you can't see them. Personally, I really don't care if the cables are in knots as long as they all reach and don't hit any fans.
If you actually read it (I know, it was longer then a digg blurb, so you probably didn't) you'd have seen that he used many dates, but the fact that many of his comparisons STARTED with 2001 (which you yourself said was a shitty time for IT workers) and compare them with TODAY (or close as he could get with the data) while showing NO growth or negative growth is scary. In other words, since the shittiest time after the .com blowout, there's been hardly any tangable IT growth.
He blames it on offshoring in general, and I agree with him. Off-shoring IT is a direct IT-job losing situation, but all off-shoring has a serious impact on our economy in general. It's the huge companies getting bigger, and being as greedy as possible while doing it.
So, imagine if he compared things to the year 2000 or 1999? It would look *completely* bleak.
I definately agree with you. I've used a few Nikon cameras and they're really a nice cameras. Like you said, Canon's sensors are among the best that anyone makes, and it shows in the images - but you do have to be a bit picky to seriously notice any quality differences between the Canon and the Nikon images. Mostly, it's noticable at higher ISO settings, which you don't normally use unless it's very dark and flashes aren't going to work for you.
You do have to make a descision if you're already into photography - do you forgo your investment in Nikon or X brand lenses, just to get a little better performance, or do you stick with your brand, knowing that eventually Nikon will produce something that rivals the best Canon?
It does remind me of an episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit - we, as a society, are obsessed with The Best. Usually, you don't need the best, and you'll be very happy without it.
Wow, you seem a bit angry. I think you should chill out.
The Rebel XT is a very nice consumer DSLR. Canon packed in almost all the features you find on the very expensive professional models, to lesser degrees (Less RAM for rapid-fire shots, no ISO 3200, etc.) It uses a Canon sensor and it's a very good one - the photos you see from the Rebel XT are really quite something, and when you compare it to even the most expensive Nikons, the Rebel usually produces a better image.
I haven't found anything on the camera to be a "peice of shit." It's sturdy as hell. I'm banged the shit out of mine and it still looks like now (although, I got the Black one, so no silver paint chipping off to make it look bad.)
In fact, if you say the Rebel XT is a "peice of shit" then you're saying the entire Canon line of DSLR's is also a peice of shit. The XT is made side-by-side to all their more expensive models. The original Rebel used the same sensor as their "pro" 10D. The Rebel XT shares many of the same charactistics as the 20D.
It's a consumer camera that puts out images like the big boys. If you're pissed off that the average enthusiast now has this ability with a low cost DSLR, then get over yourself.
Let me ask you a question: Do you really think people went out and purchased $800 cameras to "join the crowd" with big, heavy DSLR cameras that you can't take everywhere, or do you think that the reason people are buying DSLR's now is because they're affordable, offer excelent performance, and have interchangable lenses? I'm thinking the latter.
I think it might seem surprising to someone that's not into photography that Canon completely ownes the market. Nikon makes decent stuff, but 6/10 of those cameras listed are Canon, and for good reason. They make good cameras.
Sprint charges an arm and a leg for their shoddy wireless-internet access right now, and requires expensive PCMCIA cards or PDA-phones and long contracts to sign up for anything past ringtone downloads. Any new service will be equally as bullshit, with ringtones and limited web access on the phones, but for full internet you'll need to pay a high premium and buy special expensive hardware.
I hate wireless carriers, and I don't believe a word they say until it's a reality.
"There's a lot of things that I'd rather be doing than watching tv"
That's what you said. Reason would have it that you meant you don't generally enjoy TV. If you meant something else, or if you meant to be more specific, you might have mentioned that.
HDTV is expensive right now. That's NOT in dispute. What is in dispute is that a lot of people claim to ne be able to tell the difference between HDTV and SDTV, and I think that's bullshit. If you have a nice TV and a nice HDTV signal, it will be really impressive, and anyone would love to watch HDTV instead of SD.
I do agree, that because of the costs, for many people they just don't care at this point. The same was true for Color TV. Color sets were way more expensive then B&W, and not a lot of programming was color. Color didn't improve the show, it just made watching the show more enjoyable. I believe the same is true for HDTV. Eventually (and you can see it now) HD prices will drop to what we saw for SDTV's before HD started taking over the store shelves. Even now, you can get a CRT HDTV for a very affordable price, or a lower end plasma for less then $1000. In 2000, I purchased a 32" Sony Trinitron CRT TV for $850. In another year or so, you'll easily be able to beat that price with a similarly sized HDTV.
It's a transition period and the manufacturers are milking it. It doesn't mean HDTV isn't a great technology. It will improve everything from Movies and TV to game systems and computers in the living room.
First of all, there's no such thing as a wide-screen SDTV. "SD" is going to be either PAL or NTSC, and neither are wide-screen. However, there exists "EDTV" sets that provide a lower resolution then HD but with widescreen formats. They generally accept an HD signal and/or are able to stretch a standard NTSC signal if it's broadcast in anamorphic pixels - such as a DVD player can do.
The price differences between widescreen "EDTV's" and a 720p HDTV are not great. For only a small percentage more, you can get full HD. To be clear - you can get a 1080i CRT-based set for a very low price these days. While the picture will be generally less stable then a flat-panel or LCD/DLP projector, the picture is awesome. A friend of mine has a 30" CRT HDTV and it looks awesome, but it's not acceptable for using with a computer, for example.
To my knowledge, nothing in the United States is broadcast in wide-screen without also being broadcast in a standard HD format.
The whole point is moot anyways, because I didn't say you HAD to upgrade to a full HD set to view widescreen. It's just a very nice side effect that ALL HD signals are widescreen.
That's not the argument that's pervasive, at least around here. The argument usually entails someone saying that they can't tell the difference between HDTV and normal TV. Honestly, I don't see how this is possible, unless you're using a really small TV or a really low end HDTV.
If nothing else, all HD programming is in wide-screen, which is perhaps even more important then the jacked up resolution. While it's true that many DVD's come in widescreen mode which will letterbox on your SDTV, television programming does not. HD Programming is more enjoyable to watch because you see more of the scene.
If you don't even like TV, then I don't see how you can even pipe in on this discussion. It would be like me arguing why people don't give a shit if Callaway is better then Ping when I don't even like golf.
In terms of video quality, a DVD didn't really offer up that much of an improvement over DVD. DVD helped with longer-lasting quality video (10 year old VHS tapes show their age) and better sound, but besides the random-access nature of a DVD (which really, how many times do you jump back and forth during a movie?) I don't find it to be that big a deal over VHS.
Now, HD-DVD/Blu-Whatever, they promise up to 4x the resolution of normal DVD's/VHS, which is damned significant. If you can't tell the difference between HD and SD, you either need a new TV or new Eyes, and you definately didn't notice any difference between VHS and DVD.
With a simple program called Graphedit and a 3rd party demuxer, you can extract the video and audio from .tivo files into standard mpeg files. You need the decryption keys (as you do with this) and it uses those to decrypt the stream.
This program seems to do a similar thing with the WMA files, it doesn't recode, it just filters the file through windows media player libraries and copies out the decrypted streams.
I like it.
Now, if there were only an online music service that had better quality files then Napster... and didn't charge per-song.
Blocker software isn't very expensive, and I've found they can be very effective these days. We have one such software at work and it works very well. It won't block unclassified sites just because they have an XXX in the URL.
I agree with you that it's not really necessary, but if you MUST do it, be very liberal about it.
There's a lot of times when I'd like to be able to play a game of CS:S with some friends that don't even have PC's capable of running the game but would have a blast in a 6v6 LAN friends game. Or, perhaps I want to go and meet some fellow game players that I might find online later on. Maybe my PC is broken, and I want to play some games.
It's like a rebirth of the video arcade, but it's more captivating.
Some things that a game spot should avoid:
- Ruthless monitoring of the players. If you have the game police watching everyone and barking every time someone does something you don't like, it will keep people away REAL fast. Make sure you have a supply of keyboards and mice. They're cheap. Don't worry about them so much.
- Tailoring to the very young kids. While families might visit a gaming center once in awhile, you don't want to alienate your core customer group by forcing them to be proper little gentlemen because sometimes a young kid might play. Some ediquite is a good idea, but be too strict and you'll drive them right away.
- Limiting internet usage. Don't limit internet usage. Sure, you could block porn sites, but don't block everything else.
A game cafe should have a method of quickly regenerating a PC to "defaults" and should have a couple machines on stand-by. If you don't have to worry about users screwing up Windows, you don't have to be the PC Nanny.
You should also provide stations for people that want to bring in their own PC's. You could charge the same amount of money, but let people use their own equipment. If I am going to go to someplace like this for a bunch of hours with some friends, I want to bring my own PC, my own LCD screen, and my own keyboard+mouse.
I've been to places that break all these suggestions and I'll never go back. It would have been great if they weren't so strict. I mean, gamers want to hang out, play some games, yell at each other, and have fun. Let them do that and you could be successful.
What is hardware but software that can't be changed?
You can always insert another layer of security elsewhere, and in this case the software COULD prevent the transmission of data by altering the delay of packets being sent away.
This is not likely to be something that reaches far and wide like an Outlook virus, but it IS another thing to consider when building ultra secure systems. It's interesting that you could transmit data by altering the delay of network packets or keystrokes. I feel better just knowing that such a thing is even possible, and it opens up new possibilities for locking down computer systems.
Don't be such a killjoy. And YES WE KNOW telnet is not encrypted!
You're right, most of the people won't report bugs. However, when you have three million people downloading it, even if 1% does, that's a lot. By charging, they're eliminating a lot of people, and a lot of those people that would otherwise post a bug report.
Not to mention, they've built in a lot of automatic reporting on crashes and such.
Very expensive is relative. Don't forget we're talking about Microsoft here, and Office 12 is going to get them an unimaginable amount of cash. They can afford to do this for no cost to the testers.
Hmm. And here I was thinking it was predatory and illegal business practices, which they are now using to milk the customer for all they have.
$1.50? Bullshit. Unless the betas are non-expiring, it's test software. Why should we pay to test their software? If they want to test on a wide scale they need to figure it into the budget or stop and use a sign-up method.
Three million downloads? Big deal. They act like that's a lot these days. Other companies get away with it, and don't charge more.
It's just a show of how belligerent they've become to their customer base. They know they'll sell a bazillion copies of it, so they really don't give a shit.