If an author is automatically going to assume that a invalid serial implies piracy, or even that a few "non-purchase" serial numbers are cause for worry, then I won't use his software.
I'll even go so far as to notify everyone within earshot that they should steer clear of the developer and any of his other software as well!
If you're going to assume that everyone's a criminal, how do you tell the good from the bad? The one who sends you money could very well be handing his serial number off to relatives and friends, and (gasp) posting it on Kazaa...
Deleting someone's entire home folder over a bad serial on a $20.00 piece of software (which is also a very redundant piece of software - There's lot of competing solutions on the Mac, and many of them are free) is just insane. This guy deserves every bit of hatred and bad karma he gets over such a decision. If this gets publicized a lot in the Mac world, I can guarantee this guys software sales will plummet. Justifiably so IMHO.
I'm a pretty big news buff, and I've never heard the Libertarian candidates name until now.
So I guess a more PC question than the one posed above would be "Please introduce yourself to the readers, and explain why it is that your party is being completely ignored in the mainstream press."
I'm guessing that the real answer will be something to the effect of "A 3rd party candidate doesn't stand a chance, so why waste the camera time", which is the mantra that the two main political parties chant over and over, but seriously... In the land of the free where anyone can supposedly become president, why is it that only the two most despised parties (albeit with the most members) constantly get all the press attention.
How can someone be given a fair chance if the partisan news coverage never covers them?
Perhaps those who freely offer their IP are more forward-thinking people/groups, who want to foster creativity at all levels, whereas those who try and protect their IP with legislation and legal inuendos do so to keep them on top, while keeping others beneath them in the pecking order of life.
A good example is Microsoft's recent patent achievments... They're (unfairly) acheiving patents on some very low-level, basic system processes and procedures. Everything from tabbing through a web page to how you administer your system. They aren't doing this to protect the purity of their IP so much as to keep "the little guy" down.
It's been argued by many better than I that Microsoft is stifling global development and innovation with their questionable tactics and patents. I think this article illustrates quite clearly why this shouldn't be allowed!
Microsoft was born due to both the creativity of it's founders, and their marketing/business savy. I think it's quite clear that Microsoft's trying to ensure that no one will be able to (legally) unseat them from the top of the mountain they've built. Not financially, but intellectually.
Think about it... You can build a car if you have the right tools and parts at your disposal. But if Ford says "Hold it! You can't use a wrench, or any threaded bolts or screws as those are items we've invented and patented", then your car isn't going to look or perform anywhere near the levels of those who were able to use bolts and screws during their build times. True, you might innovate in ways they hadn't dreamed of due to these restrictions, but more than likely, your invention will never be able to achieve its potential, nor will it perform or be accepted into a market that's already saturated with similar, well-built cars with easily added removed parts that are held on with threaded fasteners.
Or maybe it's this Dayquil I'm on... I probably shouldn't be hypothesizing when I feel this shitty. 8)
I believe it'd be an easy arguement to say that the movies being ran as an "infomercial" for the Democratic party.
If I recall right, this is the whole reason that Larry Flynt's threatened to run for pres in the past, since the law allows you to run anything to support your platform.
In Larry's case, he intended to show hardcore porn (which would proably get a lot of the Slashdot readers to vote for him). Although the length might be an issue, I don't think the content will be.
Here's a free clue... MPEG2 is *not* an "edit" format. It's a final output format used at the very tail end of the video editing process. Converting from MPEG2 to DV/AVI/QT and back to MPEG2 is going to pretty well trash the quality of your video clip. Same thing goes for DivX/XVid/WM9 formats, you only ever want to convert to those once at the end of the project.
You are absolutely correct. Go to the head of the class and keep your clue for yourself.
Not that it applys to the subject at hand, but since you bring it up, I record direct to mpeg2 when I am recording television shows and such. I could record it as an AVI, or uncompressed DV, etc., but since my only real goal with such recordings is to archive them sans commercials, it's ridiculous to waste so much space and time to record them as non-mpeg, edit them, and then convert them to mpg2 before burning. My solution is much quicker. Again, not that the conversation's tied to this, but your reply seems to imply that I'm somehow a moron for recording to mpeg2. I disagree.
Similarly, MpegVCR can easily chop off commercials and such, without having to rencode the entire video clip (as most software does - TmpGenc's a great example). I'd even be happy recoding the output in OSX if I could simply edit an mpeg2 with the editing tools that are available. Alas, MpegVCR is Windows only, and there's nothing similar in OSX-land. Hence my post.
The *only* editing you should ever do with an MPEG2 clip is to cut out segments (e.g. removing commercials or entire blocks of frames). Ideally, you only cut at key frames, but some products will re-encode frames if you cut at one of the other frames.
I agree! So why can't I clip these segments out easily on the Mac side of things? It's simple to do in PC-land. It should be considered "low hanging fruit" to those planning Quicktime's roadmap. It's frustrating that this all-too common task is impossible on my Mac.
BTW, I've been told that Final Cut Express will do such editing. I just don't feel that I should have to fork out almost $300.00 and have to learn a fairly complex piece of software, just to edit a Pizza Hut commercial off a 30 minute mpeg clip (particularly considering I've spent almost $3000 for a top of the line Mac already!).
Elgato is over twice the price of the ATI solution
You can record in mpeg2, which means that you can't edit in any of the "big" Mac apps (iMovie, iDVD, etc) unless you convert the video to quicktime , DV, or some other compatible format (only to then have to convert back to mpeg for the actual DVD burning)
There's no way for me to use this on a PC with firewire apparently, so I need something else if I want to make this portable between machines
In short, it's as annoying of a solution for us who own both PC's and Mac as the PC-only version is.
Not to troll, but Apple really has to pick up its support of us "prosumers" who choose to switch, or own both PC's and Mac. I've howled previously about this. Rather recently in fact.
There's just no reason for OSX (read as "Quicktime and all related apps which utilize Quicktime's abilities") not to support such a common video format as mpeg2 for anything other than playback.
I mean I can almost forgive the fact that OSX doesn't yet have an editor that allows me to highlight syntax with the degree of control that Homesite provides me on the PC-side of things, but to make me have to jump through hoops just to chop a couple of commercials off a recording before burning to DVD is frickin' ridiculous. This is one of the primary reasons I'm typing from a Windows box right now: I keep having to jump over to Windows to accomplish something, and then find myself multitasking. Before long, I've been working back in Windows for a few hours without realizing it.
Such shortcomings in Apples offerings obviously have hurt the chances of me becoming a dedicated "switcher". But... back to the subject: "Elgato is not the perfect solution that it seems. It appears to be a nice product, but I don't they'll be seeing $270 bucks from me anytime soon.
Didn't Russia do something similar?
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I remember reading an article discussing how Russia had made all these stand-alone mini-reactors and spread them throughout the wilderness of Russia.
If I recall right, the intention was to provide light (from a shoreline) for ships or to provide heat to stranded sailors in the wilderness, or something similar.
Unfortunately, the article I read this in was an article looking at how terrorists were/are able to readily find radioactive material throughout the world, but particularly in Russia.
These things were spread around during the cold war, and then forgot about after the fall of communism. Russia is now playing a "catch-up" game of having to locate and retrieve all these little powerplants, and at the time of this article, they were unable to locate several of them, and of the ones they'd found, several were missing the "vital pieces".
Similarly, of the ones that they had found, some had been tampered with, some had simply been broken open, probably by nature (with the contents located generally near the remains), and some were a little scarier: Some had been found by unsuspecting people in the area (local residents, hunters, etc), and these people of course became very ill, and in many cases passed away as a result of finding a cracked open, and mysterious case.
One that sticks with me was a guy talking about how he had found this unusual rod laying on the ground, with all the snow around it melted. He took it home to his family as an oddity...
Long story short, I think nuclear power is safe, when handled correctly, and safety is the #1 priority. I have problems believing that portable nuclear devices are held to the same high standards for safety. You simply can't guarantee that a device that's left alone, will always be left alone.
Yes, but if, as in my (admittedly poor) example, Mr. Bob has already been found guilty of such crimes twice before, it wouldn't bother me a bit if he didn't do it the time he got beat up for. He'd deserve that and more for the 1st couple of offences, that he didn't get beat for, but was found guilty of. Presumably through some very hard-to-oops DNA evidence or whatever.
It's not like I'm serious about the idea... I was just theorizing that with all the nasty news in the world, it'd make some people feel better to occasionally know that some scumbag out there is actually getting what they deserve.
Think about how often we hear about tragedies such as rape, kidnappings, needless shootings, gang violence, and such. Not to mention such current lovelies such as terrorism, viruses, and infectious disease. I just think it'd put a smile on some peoples face to know that the people committing these crimes aren't always walking away unscathed. Kinda that feeling that the Lone Ranger tales must have inspired in their day. (You know... fighting the bad guys for the 'little guy' type-a thing).
I certainly would never propose that people attack others to resolve a matter. But in the same sense, you and I both know that there's losers out there who just abuse society for their own gain/amusement, and they continually don't get punished, or at least don't get appropriately punished time and time again. It'd just be nice to know that someday those people will "get what's coming to them".
Instead of dealing with the criminal element these days, we continually try and rehabilitate it. In a sense, modern man has bypassed Darwinism in that the worst of the worst are kept around by the good guys these days. Not too long ago, people who regularly proved how evil and worthless to society they really are were appropriately "left behind" on the evolutionary trail.
Again, I realize that the idea of this is about as comic book as it gets, but hell a beat down is nothing compared to what some of these repeat offenders deserve. IMHO, of course
I have to wonder why there isn't a well-meaning bunch of people out there putting the beatdown to people like this.
I mean... You've got nutcases out there just looking for a reason to go off on someone. You've got terrorists out there looking for someone to attack, or as is more often the case, something (ie, "World Trade Center"). You have racist guys out there looking for someone to attack in the name of their "cause". You've got stalkers using the Net to hunt down their victims before attacking them...
So why isn't there a secretive group of good guys out there anonymously hunting down and beating on all these people who so deserve it? Something like the A-Team meets the Town Bully (film at 11)!
For some reason, I like the romanticism associated with a group of people who hold bullys, terrorists, and their ilk responsible for their diatribe and threats. I can almost picture them communicating and travelling secretively to anonymously deal out justice for the little guy. The slow, and pathetic justice system that we have (at least here in the USA) obviously isn't making a dent in the number of people who are abusing others, and spreading fear through the anonyminity(SP?) of the Net. More often than not, the people responsible for terrorizing others get away without so much as a warning. Meanwhile normal, innocent people are threatened, and sometimes hurt because of these jerks. Face it... Terrorism, whether to an individual or a group, works. If it didn't work, and/or if people were held accountable for their actions more often than not, perhaps this wouldn't be the case.
Example: Let's say that "Billy Bob" rapes someone, and while out on bond, awaiting trial (we'll say this is his... 3rd offence) he gets the beating of his life from a bunch of people he doesn't know, along with a threat that there'll be more if he touches someone that way again. I'll bet he would reconsider his actions a lot more than if he gets off with a fine, and another year tacked onto his probation.
The cops obviously aren't out hunting for such people. They're too busy sitting on the side of a highway, or under an overpass, waiting for crime to come to them. The cops tend not to get involved until after a threat is made a reality, and someone is severely injured or killed. We need someone(s) out there looking for warning signs, and/or precursors to a larger crime, and addressing these people before they hurt someone. A van full of "good guy terrorists" with a bat and a message seems to fit the bill!
I want to see something like that Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a good guy avenger, throwing pies at the bullys he comes across. Only without the pastries and fat guy, of course.:)
Perhaps if there was an anonymous threat on the table, and evidence that these guys can get to you outside of the law if you're a bad person, there wouldn't be so much anonymous bullying and slander.
At least it sounds nice. I'm sure it would raise all kinda questions about who decides who's good or who's bad, and of course what accountability would befall someone in such a position. But when I see stories like this and this, I have to think that it'd be nice to know that these people are going to get a better deterant against future crimes then a night in the clink, and a fine for their deeds. Hell, most people who go to jail for beating on someone are out within 24 hours and are able to go after their victims again, knowing that a court date is more or less a formality that they won't have to deal with for quite some time.
This isn't a troll, or at least it's not meant as one, but try as I might, I could never get into using Enlightenment. And from the fact that Gnome and KDE get the majority of the press/developers/software, I'm guessing I'm not alone in this impression.
Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment is certainly a powerful and capable windowing system, and there have been some fairly original looks/themes released for it, but, to me at least (he says, carefully circumventing the Troll under the bridge) it's not a GUI that a new user coming from the Windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world can immediately begin using. Or configuring.
(This is where all the Slashdot/Linux "elite" begin to quote my thread for their 'RTFM', and 'How could it be any simpler than xxxx?' responses)
When I first began investigating Linux all those years ago, Enlightenment themes and screenshots were all the rage. KDE and Gnome were promising, but Enlightenment was how all the coolest geeks seemed to produce such cool eye candy-based desktops. But to a Linux newbie like me, coming from an Amiga/Dos/Windows background at the time, it was totally alien. It was just too much to have to begin learning Linux, and a totally different GUI like Enlightenment, both at the same time. So Enlightenment went goodbye after way too many wasted hours trying to become productive and look good doing it.
So flash ahead several years (last year, to be exact), and a much more Linux-savy version of Me decided to give Enlightenment shot again. I hadn't kept up with it, and had meanwhile become an avid KDE fan, but I wanted to try something different, and figured that Enlightenment had to have matured by this time, to a point wherein I could grasp it easier. I mean... KDE had came so far in this time.
So I boot it up after installing the latest version, and,after booting, am faced with the identical look and feel of the last time I used it. Nothing (on the surface, at least) had changed! No icons... Just a couple of odd, pager-like boxes.
Now... I'm not expecting enlightenment to change their way and become KDE or Gnome or anything. But they've gotta realize that virtually any converts to their window manager will be coming from an environment such as KDE, Gnome, Windows, etc. It's a totally different methodology from that of Enlightenment. You'd think that one of the first things that you'd see on a default desktop would be a "how to get started" type of document.
Yeah, yeah... I know. RTFM. Yes, I also know that I can configure Enlightenment to look and interact like whatever I want it to, but I'd kind of expect "something" to push the new user in the right direction.
But other things were not impressive also. Fonts, in paricular, looked poor when compared to the more popular window managers around.
So flash foward to todays announcement here on Slashdot, and so I decide to take a look at Enlightenments page to see if anything's changed yet. I see this.
Come on... For crying out loud, someone get Enlightenment a PR director. If the programmers hope to grow the userbase of their window manager, they really should make it a bit more accessible. If an "intro level" of usability isn't a possibility, then how about a simple "Introduction to Enlightenment" document, or walk through? Something to offer the new user a glimpse of the power of Enlightenment. And without requiring them to hunt it down, or surf out to a website.
At least make the default font's look better. This is a good example of both the default look of Enlightenment, and it's default fonts. Conversely, this is the default look of KDE. I'm not saying that KDE's superior (to me it is, but who cares), but the default look, which all of us have seen many times before, and consi
Companies are getting rich by stealing the future inventions of people with these generic fucking patents. What are the odds that those who invented the patenting process actually envisioned it being twisted around and allowing people to patent ideas, and concepts, the like of which they themselves have no idea how to achieve.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself.
Imagine if Ford had been able to patent the automile in generic enough terms so that any motorized land vehicle was covered... Where would we be today Wine makers had patented the fermentation process before beer had existed?
IMHO, patents should be for very specific inventions, and processes, which you have invented, and can accurately demonstrate at the time of patent request, and which of course didn't exist in it's current form prior to your invention
The computer industry, and it's money sucking lawyers have been allowed to chisel away at the wording and verbiage of the patent laws to such an extent that you are now able to patent just about any idea/concept someone may have down the road. Just think about the stifling of innovation if those science fiction writers of the 50's had patented all that they foresaw.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent on lawyer wielding companies who make their money by exploiting the ideas and innovations of others through a series of generic and vaguely worded patents and threats. Perhaps then this whole mess would disapear.
I've never been one to rely too heavily on online apps.
Something about trusting my data (confidential or not) to some unknown, faceless entity, for lack of a better term, has always kept me away from such services.
Not that I'm a paranoid guy or anything ("even paranoid people have enemies!"), but who knows who's really seeing what your data, and who knows what they might do with that knowledge. Whether it's initially (mis)used or not, the danger is there. And if it's archived anywhere along the way, the potential for misuse is even greater, as now anyone down the road can come along and find/sell/misuse it.
"See this killer app that everyone's talking about? That was my idea! But no sooner had I began sketching out my flow on gmodeler then 'Boom!' it was patented and being marketed everywhere. That shoulda been me...."
(Not that GModel would ever do this, but it's a good example of my point).
Not to mention the confidentiality issue... I work for a financial services company, and a few years ago, we were looking at ways to quickly re-purpose a bunch of PDF documents to HTML, and one proposed solution was a web service that offered online conversion of such documents for free. Clearly though the privacy issues, not to mention potential for misuse of the data made us choose a different avenue!
Plus there's always the fear of relying on the online apps. If I become dependant upon it, either for my work, or for the convenience it offers, what am I to do if suddenly the site goes under, becomes a pay site, or simply changes URLs due to a provider going down.
Not that there aren't any valuable services out there, there are! It's just that I feel safer relying on local software, and homegrown solutions. Am I alone with this perception?
Raid 0, in a well-planned system, can provide that extra "oomph!" that makes a great XP system a near-perfect one (IMHO).
I can understand why some feel that the risk doesn't justify the means, but if you plan the system out ahead of time, you can eliminate most risk. For instance...
Most motherboards with built in Raid these days also have an IDE bus built in as well. If you plan out some partitions for your documents, program data (custimizations, ini's, whatever preferences specific to your install), as well as partitions for downloads and warez storage, you can store these on the IDE drive(s), and then install your OS, programs, and temp/swap space on the (presumably SATA) Raid 0 array.
Thus if your array drives go down, your data, your documents, and any software you've downloaded and/or stored are safe on the IDE drives. Simply reformat/install the SATA drives, reinstall your software, re-point the software and OS at your IDE-based drives, and you're back in business. You retain the speed of the Raid 0 array for everything except loading and saving files. If you're really anal about speed, you can even setup a partition on the Raid 0 array for working on files (Like an audio/video work area, for instance. You could store your master copies on the IDE drives, and then your working copies on the faster Raid drives).
Something I personally do is to also have a partition on the Raid 0 side for program installation seperate from the OS install. Not all programs allow you to relocate their preferences; some store them in their installation directory. In such cases, you can usually preserve customizations by reinstalling over an old copy, which this method helps with. You can format your OS partition and reinstall to your hearts content, and your program specific data is often left untouched on the programs directory. This isn't 100% guarantee, but it's another step towards preventing data loss, and time wasted having to reconfigure.
All in all, Raid 0, when properly used, will reduce startup times for your programs, as well as your OS. In addition, your entire system will feel snappier due to the data read increases on your virtual memory/swap reads and writes. Cache is also affected, as is such things as surfing through a browsers history and such.
There's lots more you can do to tweak out your system. I don't want to turn this into an DIY article, so here's a few references if you're interested:
MS Powertoys - In addition to many other things, this will assist you with relocating your document and data directories. Also, you can speed up the menu response times considerably
ATNotes - Best free sticky notes I've came across!
XP Smoker - Good all around hardware/software tweaker
AutoHotKey - Omigod! I just discovered this. Get it now!! It's probably the closest to Appescript I've seen yet for the PC, it's OSS, and it's awsome!!
AltDeskOne of the better virtual desktop programs I've found for the PC. There's better and faster ones out there, but this is one of the few who's behavior I like w/multiple monitors
Anyway... Plenty of other tweaks and programs out there, but this is probably plenty for now. I really should finish that book I keep starting about this crap install of trying to cram it into threads anyway... 8)=
My original point was/is that Raid 0 is a great technology, and can greatly speed an already great system. But if you're the type of person who just will setup a box once with Raid 0 for everything, never consider backups, or other methods to really take advantage of your PC's technology
They're surely sending countless visitors to katie.com, and wasting her bandwidth.
Sue them back for this, in addition to the mental stress caused by dealing with the situation. Show how the "victim" is now making you a victim, and I'm sure this would all go away rather quickly.
No, but you are probably one of the few who finds it easier to whine about the problem than actually buy a replacement mouse (or plug your PC's in. Any USB mouse will work with modern day macs).
How would your life be different without a pulse?
on
Living Without a Pulse
·
· Score: 1
Well, for one thing, that weird, blue fish guy (w/the voice of Niles Crane) in Hellboy wouldn't be able to sense me behind walls!
(Sorry... Just saw the movie last night & it's on my mind)
Seriously, wouldn't this result in a whole new line of doctors if this becomes common place?
There's so much to specialize in regarding the circulatory system now, that it seems no pulse would warrant an entire new line of doctors prepared to diagnose and treat ailments to those who don't fit the normal modus operandi of pulse/heart related diagnosis.
It also begs the question of whether or not other body organs and/or functions rely on a pulse to syncronize their operation. Anyone know?
On one hand we have Real, a company I have long held disdain for. To briefly touch upon some of the reasons why I don't like them,
Their software sucks! The whole buffering joke aside, it's performance has never been close to that of competitors offerings IMHO. Why they've always been considered such a player in the tech game is beyond me.
Their website and countless annoying ads are very misleading. Only recently, after a couple of years of people complaining about how hard it is to find the free version of realplayer, have they made it a little easier to get at.
Historically, their marketing efforts seemed to revolve around enticing a user to their site with promised freebees, and then once the user had exhausted their patience looking for said freebies, they seem to hope that they'll just get disgusted and buy the full version. Not cool!
Their half-assed attempts at supporting non-Windows platforms is ridicuous. Perhaps this has changed recently (I gave up on them long ago), but historically, their multi platform support seemed to amount to "We support Linux, OSX, Beos, you name it (provided you don't want the majority of the features of the Windows version, and are willing to settle for a version that's about 3 generations behind the Windows version).
I could go on, but nuff' said.
And now Apple's coming down on them for making their precious ipod do something Apple didn't intend for?? You don't see them coming down on the people making addons for it (which coincidentally also make it do things Apple didn't intend), so why now Real???
I'll be honest. When/if I buy an ipod, it's frickin' mine, and I will do with it what I want. Consumers are being robbed by todays's legislative tactics (everything from the DMCA to the Homeland Security act ensures that big business's get bigger, and the little people lose out). Apple... I love you, and recently bought one of your G5's, but don't make me hate you so much that I see the Wintel platform as an equal or better solution to give my money to.
Man... Apple was originally started by hackers and here they are acting like they're so above that, and that Real's some little criminal group. Get real. If you want our money, let us actually own the hardware and do with it what we want (especially considering the cost of your products)!!
I used to smoke a lot (cut out cigarettes 2+ years ago!), and of course smoke doesn't mix well w/electronics.
So off and on I'd have CPU and exhaust fans slowly fill up with dust and crap from the smoke, in addition to normal household dust and such (was also a bachelor, so cleaning wasn't as important as it currently is with a live in GF), and eventually, I'd have meltdown city wherein a fan wouldn't be sufficient to cool the components down. And let me tell you, waking up to a CPU overheat alarm going off can be annoying!
My solutions were usually quick fixes, in that I always intended to go back and correctly repair the problem, but never seemed to get around to it.
My boss still laughs about how I had him over to demo a CMS I developed, and the box it was running off was leaning against my desk, with its case off, and a 12" floor fan blowing directly into it at high speed to keep everything cool enough to run.
Smoke's not good for a lot of things electronic, but I have to say I was always impressed with how much crap the components would take without too many problems. After awhile it was more an experiment to see how far I could push it, more than just me being lazy about cleaning.
Arguably, my CD burners and as of late, my DVD burners should have gone down first, but they always tended to outlast everything else, including the cheap CD-Roms I tend to use (Whatever's cheapest and over 36x is good enough for a Rom as far as I'm concerned).
Video cards with fans on seem to be one of the first things to go with a smoky/dusty environment. Also, you have to watch all fans to see how much their airflow is if they're starting to collect dust and crap. They might still spin freely with no noticable problems, but their air flow is greatly reduced once stuff starts to accumulate on their fins.
And CPU fans MUST be removed for cleaning regularly. CPU fans bearings seem to be one of the weakest links, as far as smoke/dust damage goes (they'll start squeaking and rattling, and eventually their bearings will be so gunked up you'll have to physically tap them to make them spin up), but the real problem is the dust and crap that accumulates below and around them in the heat sinks. It's just nasty!
Same goes for Power Supplies... They'll keep working fine, but they collect so much crap inside of them that vacumng won't even work. they have to be dissasembled to be thoroughly cleaned. If you don't, they'll eventually overheat, and you don't want a power supply exploding into sparks in a dust filled environment!
I too got this email this morning, and was scanning it as I got ready for work.
The email indicated something to the effect of if I wanted a check from them for the amount I'm entitled to, I'd be charged $1.00 from my account. This immediately made me wonder just what the settlement amount would be.
So is the $.35 listed on front page serious or not? I didn't see a dollar amount listed in the email, and if it's really only 35 cents (very possible! Not a lot of money for the individual in class action suits), that would mean that I'll be losing 65 cents on this deal.
Slashdot Mirror
If an author is automatically going to assume that a invalid serial implies piracy, or even that a few "non-purchase" serial numbers are cause for worry, then I won't use his software.
I'll even go so far as to notify everyone within earshot that they should steer clear of the developer and any of his other software as well!
If you're going to assume that everyone's a criminal, how do you tell the good from the bad? The one who sends you money could very well be handing his serial number off to relatives and friends, and (gasp) posting it on Kazaa...
Deleting someone's entire home folder over a bad serial on a $20.00 piece of software (which is also a very redundant piece of software - There's lot of competing solutions on the Mac, and many of them are free) is just insane. This guy deserves every bit of hatred and bad karma he gets over such a decision. If this gets publicized a lot in the Mac world, I can guarantee this guys software sales will plummet. Justifiably so IMHO.
I'm a pretty big news buff, and I've never heard the Libertarian candidates name until now.
So I guess a more PC question than the one posed above would be "Please introduce yourself to the readers, and explain why it is that your party is being completely ignored in the mainstream press."
I'm guessing that the real answer will be something to the effect of "A 3rd party candidate doesn't stand a chance, so why waste the camera time", which is the mantra that the two main political parties chant over and over, but seriously... In the land of the free where anyone can supposedly become president, why is it that only the two most despised parties (albeit with the most members) constantly get all the press attention.
How can someone be given a fair chance if the partisan news coverage never covers them?
Perhaps those who freely offer their IP are more forward-thinking people/groups, who want to foster creativity at all levels, whereas those who try and protect their IP with legislation and legal inuendos do so to keep them on top, while keeping others beneath them in the pecking order of life.
A good example is Microsoft's recent patent achievments... They're (unfairly) acheiving patents on some very low-level, basic system processes and procedures. Everything from tabbing through a web page to how you administer your system. They aren't doing this to protect the purity of their IP so much as to keep "the little guy" down.
It's been argued by many better than I that Microsoft is stifling global development and innovation with their questionable tactics and patents. I think this article illustrates quite clearly why this shouldn't be allowed!
Microsoft was born due to both the creativity of it's founders, and their marketing/business savy. I think it's quite clear that Microsoft's trying to ensure that no one will be able to (legally) unseat them from the top of the mountain they've built. Not financially, but intellectually.
Think about it... You can build a car if you have the right tools and parts at your disposal. But if Ford says "Hold it! You can't use a wrench, or any threaded bolts or screws as those are items we've invented and patented", then your car isn't going to look or perform anywhere near the levels of those who were able to use bolts and screws during their build times. True, you might innovate in ways they hadn't dreamed of due to these restrictions, but more than likely, your invention will never be able to achieve its potential, nor will it perform or be accepted into a market that's already saturated with similar, well-built cars with easily added removed parts that are held on with threaded fasteners.
Or maybe it's this Dayquil I'm on... I probably shouldn't be hypothesizing when I feel this shitty. 8)
One giant "D'oh!" for all mankind...
I believe it'd be an easy arguement to say that the movies being ran as an "infomercial" for the Democratic party.
If I recall right, this is the whole reason that Larry Flynt's threatened to run for pres in the past, since the law allows you to run anything to support your platform.
In Larry's case, he intended to show hardcore porn (which would proably get a lot of the Slashdot readers to vote for him). Although the length might be an issue, I don't think the content will be.
Here's a free clue... MPEG2 is *not* an "edit" format. It's a final output format used at the very tail end of the video editing process. Converting from MPEG2 to DV/AVI/QT and back to MPEG2 is going to pretty well trash the quality of your video clip. Same thing goes for DivX/XVid/WM9 formats, you only ever want to convert to those once at the end of the project.
You are absolutely correct. Go to the head of the class and keep your clue for yourself.
Not that it applys to the subject at hand, but since you bring it up, I record direct to mpeg2 when I am recording television shows and such. I could record it as an AVI, or uncompressed DV, etc., but since my only real goal with such recordings is to archive them sans commercials, it's ridiculous to waste so much space and time to record them as non-mpeg, edit them, and then convert them to mpg2 before burning. My solution is much quicker. Again, not that the conversation's tied to this, but your reply seems to imply that I'm somehow a moron for recording to mpeg2. I disagree.
Similarly, MpegVCR can easily chop off commercials and such, without having to rencode the entire video clip (as most software does - TmpGenc's a great example). I'd even be happy recoding the output in OSX if I could simply edit an mpeg2 with the editing tools that are available. Alas, MpegVCR is Windows only, and there's nothing similar in OSX-land. Hence my post.
The *only* editing you should ever do with an MPEG2 clip is to cut out segments (e.g. removing commercials or entire blocks of frames). Ideally, you only cut at key frames, but some products will re-encode frames if you cut at one of the other frames.
I agree! So why can't I clip these segments out easily on the Mac side of things? It's simple to do in PC-land. It should be considered "low hanging fruit" to those planning Quicktime's roadmap. It's frustrating that this all-too common task is impossible on my Mac.
BTW, I've been told that Final Cut Express will do such editing. I just don't feel that I should have to fork out almost $300.00 and have to learn a fairly complex piece of software, just to edit a Pizza Hut commercial off a 30 minute mpeg clip (particularly considering I've spent almost $3000 for a top of the line Mac already!).
- Elgato is over twice the price of the ATI solution
- You can record in mpeg2, which means that you can't edit in any of the "big" Mac apps (iMovie, iDVD, etc) unless you convert the video to quicktime , DV, or some other compatible format (only to then have to convert back to mpeg for the actual DVD burning)
- There's no way for me to use this on a PC with firewire apparently, so I need something else if I want to make this portable between machines
In short, it's as annoying of a solution for us who own both PC's and Mac as the PC-only version is.Not to troll, but Apple really has to pick up its support of us "prosumers" who choose to switch, or own both PC's and Mac. I've howled previously about this. Rather recently in fact.
There's just no reason for OSX (read as "Quicktime and all related apps which utilize Quicktime's abilities") not to support such a common video format as mpeg2 for anything other than playback.
I mean I can almost forgive the fact that OSX doesn't yet have an editor that allows me to highlight syntax with the degree of control that Homesite provides me on the PC-side of things, but to make me have to jump through hoops just to chop a couple of commercials off a recording before burning to DVD is frickin' ridiculous. This is one of the primary reasons I'm typing from a Windows box right now: I keep having to jump over to Windows to accomplish something, and then find myself multitasking. Before long, I've been working back in Windows for a few hours without realizing it.
Such shortcomings in Apples offerings obviously have hurt the chances of me becoming a dedicated "switcher". But... back to the subject: "Elgato is not the perfect solution that it seems. It appears to be a nice product, but I don't they'll be seeing $270 bucks from me anytime soon.
I remember reading an article discussing how Russia had made all these stand-alone mini-reactors and spread them throughout the wilderness of Russia.
If I recall right, the intention was to provide light (from a shoreline) for ships or to provide heat to stranded sailors in the wilderness, or something similar.
Unfortunately, the article I read this in was an article looking at how terrorists were/are able to readily find radioactive material throughout the world, but particularly in Russia.
These things were spread around during the cold war, and then forgot about after the fall of communism. Russia is now playing a "catch-up" game of having to locate and retrieve all these little powerplants, and at the time of this article, they were unable to locate several of them, and of the ones they'd found, several were missing the "vital pieces".
Similarly, of the ones that they had found, some had been tampered with, some had simply been broken open, probably by nature (with the contents located generally near the remains), and some were a little scarier: Some had been found by unsuspecting people in the area (local residents, hunters, etc), and these people of course became very ill, and in many cases passed away as a result of finding a cracked open, and mysterious case.
One that sticks with me was a guy talking about how he had found this unusual rod laying on the ground, with all the snow around it melted. He took it home to his family as an oddity...
Long story short, I think nuclear power is safe, when handled correctly, and safety is the #1 priority. I have problems believing that portable nuclear devices are held to the same high standards for safety. You simply can't guarantee that a device that's left alone, will always be left alone.
Interestingly enough, I found this linked directly off the download/info page:
0 /privacy.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp1
I think it covers most of your concerns...
Yes, but if, as in my (admittedly poor) example, Mr. Bob has already been found guilty of such crimes twice before, it wouldn't bother me a bit if he didn't do it the time he got beat up for. He'd deserve that and more for the 1st couple of offences, that he didn't get beat for, but was found guilty of. Presumably through some very hard-to-oops DNA evidence or whatever.
It's not like I'm serious about the idea... I was just theorizing that with all the nasty news in the world, it'd make some people feel better to occasionally know that some scumbag out there is actually getting what they deserve.
Think about how often we hear about tragedies such as rape, kidnappings, needless shootings, gang violence, and such. Not to mention such current lovelies such as terrorism, viruses, and infectious disease. I just think it'd put a smile on some peoples face to know that the people committing these crimes aren't always walking away unscathed. Kinda that feeling that the Lone Ranger tales must have inspired in their day. (You know... fighting the bad guys for the 'little guy' type-a thing).
I certainly would never propose that people attack others to resolve a matter. But in the same sense, you and I both know that there's losers out there who just abuse society for their own gain/amusement, and they continually don't get punished, or at least don't get appropriately punished time and time again. It'd just be nice to know that someday those people will "get what's coming to them".
Instead of dealing with the criminal element these days, we continually try and rehabilitate it. In a sense, modern man has bypassed Darwinism in that the worst of the worst are kept around by the good guys these days. Not too long ago, people who regularly proved how evil and worthless to society they really are were appropriately "left behind" on the evolutionary trail.
Again, I realize that the idea of this is about as comic book as it gets, but hell a beat down is nothing compared to what some of these repeat offenders deserve. IMHO, of course
I have to wonder why there isn't a well-meaning bunch of people out there putting the beatdown to people like this.
:)
I mean... You've got nutcases out there just looking for a reason to go off on someone. You've got terrorists out there looking for someone to attack, or as is more often the case, something (ie, "World Trade Center"). You have racist guys out there looking for someone to attack in the name of their "cause". You've got stalkers using the Net to hunt down their victims before attacking them...
So why isn't there a secretive group of good guys out there anonymously hunting down and beating on all these people who so deserve it? Something like the A-Team meets the Town Bully (film at 11)!
For some reason, I like the romanticism associated with a group of people who hold bullys, terrorists, and their ilk responsible for their diatribe and threats. I can almost picture them communicating and travelling secretively to anonymously deal out justice for the little guy. The slow, and pathetic justice system that we have (at least here in the USA) obviously isn't making a dent in the number of people who are abusing others, and spreading fear through the anonyminity(SP?) of the Net. More often than not, the people responsible for terrorizing others get away without so much as a warning. Meanwhile normal, innocent people are threatened, and sometimes hurt because of these jerks. Face it... Terrorism, whether to an individual or a group, works. If it didn't work, and/or if people were held accountable for their actions more often than not, perhaps this wouldn't be the case.
Example: Let's say that "Billy Bob" rapes someone, and while out on bond, awaiting trial (we'll say this is his... 3rd offence) he gets the beating of his life from a bunch of people he doesn't know, along with a threat that there'll be more if he touches someone that way again. I'll bet he would reconsider his actions a lot more than if he gets off with a fine, and another year tacked onto his probation.
The cops obviously aren't out hunting for such people. They're too busy sitting on the side of a highway, or under an overpass, waiting for crime to come to them. The cops tend not to get involved until after a threat is made a reality, and someone is severely injured or killed. We need someone(s) out there looking for warning signs, and/or precursors to a larger crime, and addressing these people before they hurt someone. A van full of "good guy terrorists" with a bat and a message seems to fit the bill!
I want to see something like that Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a good guy avenger, throwing pies at the bullys he comes across. Only without the pastries and fat guy, of course.
Perhaps if there was an anonymous threat on the table, and evidence that these guys can get to you outside of the law if you're a bad person, there wouldn't be so much anonymous bullying and slander.
At least it sounds nice. I'm sure it would raise all kinda questions about who decides who's good or who's bad, and of course what accountability would befall someone in such a position. But when I see stories like this and this, I have to think that it'd be nice to know that these people are going to get a better deterant against future crimes then a night in the clink, and a fine for their deeds. Hell, most people who go to jail for beating on someone are out within 24 hours and are able to go after their victims again, knowing that a court date is more or less a formality that they won't have to deal with for quite some time.
This isn't a troll, or at least it's not meant as one, but try as I might, I could never get into using Enlightenment. And from the fact that Gnome and KDE get the majority of the press/developers/software, I'm guessing I'm not alone in this impression.
,after booting, am faced with the identical look and feel of the last time I used it. Nothing (on the surface, at least) had changed! No icons... Just a couple of odd, pager-like boxes.
Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment is certainly a powerful and capable windowing system, and there have been some fairly original looks/themes released for it, but, to me at least (he says, carefully circumventing the Troll under the bridge) it's not a GUI that a new user coming from the Windows/Mac/KDE/Gnome world can immediately begin using. Or configuring.
(This is where all the Slashdot/Linux "elite" begin to quote my thread for their 'RTFM', and 'How could it be any simpler than xxxx?' responses)
When I first began investigating Linux all those years ago, Enlightenment themes and screenshots were all the rage. KDE and Gnome were promising, but Enlightenment was how all the coolest geeks seemed to produce such cool eye candy-based desktops. But to a Linux newbie like me, coming from an Amiga/Dos/Windows background at the time, it was totally alien. It was just too much to have to begin learning Linux, and a totally different GUI like Enlightenment, both at the same time. So Enlightenment went goodbye after way too many wasted hours trying to become productive and look good doing it.
So flash ahead several years (last year, to be exact), and a much more Linux-savy version of Me decided to give Enlightenment shot again. I hadn't kept up with it, and had meanwhile become an avid KDE fan, but I wanted to try something different, and figured that Enlightenment had to have matured by this time, to a point wherein I could grasp it easier. I mean... KDE had came so far in this time.
So I boot it up after installing the latest version, and
Now... I'm not expecting enlightenment to change their way and become KDE or Gnome or anything. But they've gotta realize that virtually any converts to their window manager will be coming from an environment such as KDE, Gnome, Windows, etc. It's a totally different methodology from that of Enlightenment. You'd think that one of the first things that you'd see on a default desktop would be a "how to get started" type of document.
Yeah, yeah... I know. RTFM. Yes, I also know that I can configure Enlightenment to look and interact like whatever I want it to, but I'd kind of expect "something" to push the new user in the right direction.
But other things were not impressive also. Fonts, in paricular, looked poor when compared to the more popular window managers around.
So flash foward to todays announcement here on Slashdot, and so I decide to take a look at Enlightenments page to see if anything's changed yet. I see this. Come on... For crying out loud, someone get Enlightenment a PR director. If the programmers hope to grow the userbase of their window manager, they really should make it a bit more accessible. If an "intro level" of usability isn't a possibility, then how about a simple "Introduction to Enlightenment" document, or walk through? Something to offer the new user a glimpse of the power of Enlightenment. And without requiring them to hunt it down, or surf out to a website.
At least make the default font's look better. This is a good example of both the default look of Enlightenment, and it's default fonts. Conversely, this is the default look of KDE. I'm not saying that KDE's superior (to me it is, but who cares), but the default look, which all of us have seen many times before, and consi
Companies are getting rich by stealing the future inventions of people with these generic fucking patents. What are the odds that those who invented the patenting process actually envisioned it being twisted around and allowing people to patent ideas, and concepts, the like of which they themselves have no idea how to achieve.
The idea of a patent is, or at least should be, to patent an invention. Not some task or distant goal which you can imagine some day being achieved, but are unable to currently achieve yourself.
Imagine if Ford had been able to patent the automile in generic enough terms so that any motorized land vehicle was covered... Where would we be today Wine makers had patented the fermentation process before beer had existed?
IMHO, patents should be for very specific inventions, and processes, which you have invented, and can accurately demonstrate at the time of patent request, and which of course didn't exist in it's current form prior to your invention
The computer industry, and it's money sucking lawyers have been allowed to chisel away at the wording and verbiage of the patent laws to such an extent that you are now able to patent just about any idea/concept someone may have down the road. Just think about the stifling of innovation if those science fiction writers of the 50's had patented all that they foresaw.
What makes me mad is that no one has yet come forward and shown prior artwork for a patent on lawyer wielding companies who make their money by exploiting the ideas and innovations of others through a series of generic and vaguely worded patents and threats. Perhaps then this whole mess would disapear.
I've never been one to rely too heavily on online apps.
Something about trusting my data (confidential or not) to some unknown, faceless entity, for lack of a better term, has always kept me away from such services.
Not that I'm a paranoid guy or anything ("even paranoid people have enemies!"), but who knows who's really seeing what your data, and who knows what they might do with that knowledge. Whether it's initially (mis)used or not, the danger is there. And if it's archived anywhere along the way, the potential for misuse is even greater, as now anyone down the road can come along and find/sell/misuse it.
"See this killer app that everyone's talking about? That was my idea! But no sooner had I began sketching out my flow on gmodeler then 'Boom!' it was patented and being marketed everywhere. That shoulda been me...." (Not that GModel would ever do this, but it's a good example of my point).
Not to mention the confidentiality issue... I work for a financial services company, and a few years ago, we were looking at ways to quickly re-purpose a bunch of PDF documents to HTML, and one proposed solution was a web service that offered online conversion of such documents for free. Clearly though the privacy issues, not to mention potential for misuse of the data made us choose a different avenue!
Plus there's always the fear of relying on the online apps. If I become dependant upon it, either for my work, or for the convenience it offers, what am I to do if suddenly the site goes under, becomes a pay site, or simply changes URLs due to a provider going down.
Not that there aren't any valuable services out there, there are! It's just that I feel safer relying on local software, and homegrown solutions. Am I alone with this perception?
I can understand why some feel that the risk doesn't justify the means, but if you plan the system out ahead of time, you can eliminate most risk. For instance...
Most motherboards with built in Raid these days also have an IDE bus built in as well. If you plan out some partitions for your documents, program data (custimizations, ini's, whatever preferences specific to your install), as well as partitions for downloads and warez storage, you can store these on the IDE drive(s), and then install your OS, programs, and temp/swap space on the (presumably SATA) Raid 0 array.
Thus if your array drives go down, your data, your documents, and any software you've downloaded and/or stored are safe on the IDE drives. Simply reformat/install the SATA drives, reinstall your software, re-point the software and OS at your IDE-based drives, and you're back in business. You retain the speed of the Raid 0 array for everything except loading and saving files. If you're really anal about speed, you can even setup a partition on the Raid 0 array for working on files (Like an audio/video work area, for instance. You could store your master copies on the IDE drives, and then your working copies on the faster Raid drives).
Something I personally do is to also have a partition on the Raid 0 side for program installation seperate from the OS install. Not all programs allow you to relocate their preferences; some store them in their installation directory. In such cases, you can usually preserve customizations by reinstalling over an old copy, which this method helps with. You can format your OS partition and reinstall to your hearts content, and your program specific data is often left untouched on the programs directory. This isn't 100% guarantee, but it's another step towards preventing data loss, and time wasted having to reconfigure.
All in all, Raid 0, when properly used, will reduce startup times for your programs, as well as your OS. In addition, your entire system will feel snappier due to the data read increases on your virtual memory/swap reads and writes. Cache is also affected, as is such things as surfing through a browsers history and such.
There's lots more you can do to tweak out your system. I don't want to turn this into an DIY article, so here's a few references if you're interested:
Anyway... Plenty of other tweaks and programs out there, but this is probably plenty for now. I really should finish that book I keep starting about this crap install of trying to cram it into threads anyway... 8)=
My original point was/is that Raid 0 is a great technology, and can greatly speed an already great system. But if you're the type of person who just will setup a box once with Raid 0 for everything, never consider backups, or other methods to really take advantage of your PC's technology
Not to reply to my own posting (yet I am), but hindsight says I might be confusing Tad's middle name with that of Stuey Griffin.
If so... My bad.
Damn TV and it's mind-numbin' rays...
I have to agree... If I had mod points right now they'd be going his way too.
Your question's answer came to me as I was typing (No Googlin' - Honest!): Gilligan, if my baked memory servers right.
Jury?? 8)=
They're surely sending countless visitors to katie.com, and wasting her bandwidth.
Sue them back for this, in addition to the mental stress caused by dealing with the situation. Show how the "victim" is now making you a victim, and I'm sure this would all go away rather quickly.
No, but you are probably one of the few who finds it easier to whine about the problem than actually buy a replacement mouse (or plug your PC's in. Any USB mouse will work with modern day macs).
Well, for one thing, that weird, blue fish guy (w/the voice of Niles Crane) in Hellboy wouldn't be able to sense me behind walls!
(Sorry... Just saw the movie last night & it's on my mind)
Seriously, wouldn't this result in a whole new line of doctors if this becomes common place?
There's so much to specialize in regarding the circulatory system now, that it seems no pulse would warrant an entire new line of doctors prepared to diagnose and treat ailments to those who don't fit the normal modus operandi of pulse/heart related diagnosis.
It also begs the question of whether or not other body organs and/or functions rely on a pulse to syncronize their operation. Anyone know?
- Their software sucks! The whole buffering joke aside, it's performance has never been close to that of competitors offerings IMHO. Why they've always been considered such a player in the tech game is beyond me.
- Their website and countless annoying ads are very misleading. Only recently, after a couple of years of people complaining about how hard it is to find the free version of realplayer, have they made it a little easier to get at.
- Their half-assed attempts at supporting non-Windows platforms is ridicuous. Perhaps this has changed recently (I gave up on them long ago), but historically, their multi platform support seemed to amount to "We support Linux, OSX, Beos, you name it (provided you don't want the majority of the features of the Windows version, and are willing to settle for a version that's about 3 generations behind the Windows version).
I could go on, but nuff' said.Historically, their marketing efforts seemed to revolve around enticing a user to their site with promised freebees, and then once the user had exhausted their patience looking for said freebies, they seem to hope that they'll just get disgusted and buy the full version. Not cool!
And now Apple's coming down on them for making their precious ipod do something Apple didn't intend for?? You don't see them coming down on the people making addons for it (which coincidentally also make it do things Apple didn't intend), so why now Real???
I'll be honest. When/if I buy an ipod, it's frickin' mine, and I will do with it what I want. Consumers are being robbed by todays's legislative tactics (everything from the DMCA to the Homeland Security act ensures that big business's get bigger, and the little people lose out). Apple... I love you, and recently bought one of your G5's, but don't make me hate you so much that I see the Wintel platform as an equal or better solution to give my money to.
Man... Apple was originally started by hackers and here they are acting like they're so above that, and that Real's some little criminal group. Get real. If you want our money, let us actually own the hardware and do with it what we want (especially considering the cost of your products)!!
I used to smoke a lot (cut out cigarettes 2+ years ago!), and of course smoke doesn't mix well w/electronics.
So off and on I'd have CPU and exhaust fans slowly fill up with dust and crap from the smoke, in addition to normal household dust and such (was also a bachelor, so cleaning wasn't as important as it currently is with a live in GF), and eventually, I'd have meltdown city wherein a fan wouldn't be sufficient to cool the components down. And let me tell you, waking up to a CPU overheat alarm going off can be annoying!
My solutions were usually quick fixes, in that I always intended to go back and correctly repair the problem, but never seemed to get around to it.
My boss still laughs about how I had him over to demo a CMS I developed, and the box it was running off was leaning against my desk, with its case off, and a 12" floor fan blowing directly into it at high speed to keep everything cool enough to run.
Smoke's not good for a lot of things electronic, but I have to say I was always impressed with how much crap the components would take without too many problems. After awhile it was more an experiment to see how far I could push it, more than just me being lazy about cleaning.
Arguably, my CD burners and as of late, my DVD burners should have gone down first, but they always tended to outlast everything else, including the cheap CD-Roms I tend to use (Whatever's cheapest and over 36x is good enough for a Rom as far as I'm concerned).
Video cards with fans on seem to be one of the first things to go with a smoky/dusty environment. Also, you have to watch all fans to see how much their airflow is if they're starting to collect dust and crap. They might still spin freely with no noticable problems, but their air flow is greatly reduced once stuff starts to accumulate on their fins.
And CPU fans MUST be removed for cleaning regularly. CPU fans bearings seem to be one of the weakest links, as far as smoke/dust damage goes (they'll start squeaking and rattling, and eventually their bearings will be so gunked up you'll have to physically tap them to make them spin up), but the real problem is the dust and crap that accumulates below and around them in the heat sinks. It's just nasty!
Same goes for Power Supplies... They'll keep working fine, but they collect so much crap inside of them that vacumng won't even work. they have to be dissasembled to be thoroughly cleaned. If you don't, they'll eventually overheat, and you don't want a power supply exploding into sparks in a dust filled environment!
I too got this email this morning, and was scanning it as I got ready for work.
The email indicated something to the effect of if I wanted a check from them for the amount I'm entitled to, I'd be charged $1.00 from my account. This immediately made me wonder just what the settlement amount would be.
So is the $.35 listed on front page serious or not? I didn't see a dollar amount listed in the email, and if it's really only 35 cents (very possible! Not a lot of money for the individual in class action suits), that would mean that I'll be losing 65 cents on this deal.
Can someone clarify if this is accurate?
One small step for a nerds, one giant leap for nerdkind.
The hardware req's are still just a fraction of what it'll take to run Longhorn when it come out