"...my goal was to help increase AIBO sales not decrease them."
I don't doubt your sincerity or good intentions, but perhaps you should have contacted Sony first to see if they wanted you to help increase sales of this product in your own particular way. Perhaps they had some other, likely to be even more financially successful, approach toward increasing sales planned which was incompatible with your approach. Strange as it may seem, there are plenty of people out there mentally challenged enough to mistake you for someone working for or in concert with Sony, potentially leaving Sony at risk of legal action (time and money-consuming, even if eventually thrown out of court) and bad publicity as a result of actions of yours over which they had no control. Perhaps there are situations where forgiveness is more easily obtained than permission, but you might think twice before adopting that as standard operating procedure.
Okay, this is sort of an off-topic rant, but can anybody tell me what's up with ATX tower cases with 4 5.25 inch drive bays, but only the upper two are useable for anything as long as a CD or 1.2Mb floppy drive because the standard ATX motherboard is in the way, in other words, the case is high enough and wide enough, but not deep enough. Anybody else fighting this particular frustration factory?
97 does it too, but not to a temp file (although it does like to leave.tmp files all over the place too). Just as soon as you screw up what you're working on big-time, before you can hit Ctrl-Z or click Edit-Undo, it leaps into Auto-Save, which can't be overridden, and saves your mistake, erasing the good version that you wanted to save.
"...but it won't take long for some cheesehead purchasing manager of IT dept's at any Fortune500 company to figure out that software that is free and does exactly the same thing as the pricey, licensed software of MS, Oracle, etc is a much better investment for their business."
Well, yeah, but only after he realises that the answer* to the question "Who are you going to sue if it doesn't work?" is the same with either kind.
*(Nobody, the license means they get to treat you the same way The Secretary would have treated Jim Phelps if he ever got caught.)
Allchin's looking at it from the point of view that the buyers exist for the benefit of the sellers and not the other way around. In other words, the consumer has an obligation to arrange their needs and desires to support what the producer wants, and if it takes legislation to force that to happen, well, to him, that *is* The American Way.
Is there anything in the support contract that says that they can bail on it just by giving you a (no interest added, even though they've had your money for awhile) refund? If not, sue'em for breach of contract. Would you have purchased quite a number of machines from them without the service contract option available? Demand that they take back the hardware and give back the moeny you paid for it. Have your trained attack lawyer deliver the message.
Even more likely than the magnetic field of the planet is someone getting too close to the screen for a moment with a speaker or something with an electric motor or a little kid with a refrigerator magnet. Most people hearing the words "powerful magnet" think "permanent magnet", like those things in the Edmund Scientific catalog. Degaussing a CRT calls for an air core electromagnetic coil specifically designed for the purpose, driven by alternating current, and someone who knows how to properly operate it. (You can also use a degaussing coil to make things worse if you so it wrong.) If the problem is that it needs degaussing, take it to a clueful TV repair shop.
However, if giving it a good *WHACK!* solves the problem temporarily, then it's probably an intermittently bad solder connection in the blue gun driver circuitry or an intermittent partial grid to cathode short of the blue gun inside the neck of the CRT. Again, consult a professional who knows what they're doing.
One other possiblility is an intermittent open in the cable between video card and monitor.
I just put everything from the various media through the same mental filter I use for everything Katz has to say. That usually solves the problem, although recent exposure to the Fox "News" Channel is causing said filter to show the strain. Last night they were arguing with Pat Buchanan about what, if anything, we should do in the near future regarding Iraq, and Pat was the only one making any sense. I kept waiting for the camera to do a fast pan over to Rod Serling.
"Microsoft hardware has had a long repuation (sic) for being high quality."
Now if we could only get them to subcontract their software.
But seriously, the last hardware they marketed under their name even approaching the level of complexity (and potential for things to go wrong) of this was probably that "run CP/M on an Apple II" plug in card. There's just so much more to this thing that can go wrong than a mouse or keyboard or joystick. So I don't think we can take previous good experiences as a chisled in stone guarantee this time around.
I read your post and the reply about Research Triangle Park a little too quickly and was thinking the company involved was maybe the one run by the brother of one of the guys who started Cree Semiconductors (the silicon carbide blue LED guys). The brother's company, whose name escapes me at the moment, makes synthetic diamonds (moisonnite?).
unitron is short for university electronics, a nomme de get free catalogs and trade mag subscriptions. I'm a life-long NC resident and spent time in the RTP area circa 1970-75 and 80-81. The NE/SE 555 timer chip is a Signetics product (originally), probably still in production by somebody somewhere (GE, RCA, Sylvania ECG and NTE used to make them as part of their replacement semiconductor lines). I never used one to do Touch-Tone (I think you can use 566s and 567s for that) or any other phone company tones, but I did rig up a pulse width modulation speed control for a Dremel 260 with a 555 and a horizontal output transistor.
I think some Asian company has unitron.com, haven't looked in a while, but I picked up a Windows 3.1 OEM set and book on eBay a few months ago with the unitron brand on it (the "t" is white where the rest of the letters are black, interesting effect). No address for the company in the book, unfortunately, and I haven't gotten around to loading it to check out the splash screen yet.
Actually for anyone who needs to be told to RTFM it probably *is* the Forgotten Manual, and they need to be reminded of its existence.
Plus, "Read The Forgotten Manual" has a less hostile tone than the original version of the phrase, and keeps both parties in a more civil frame of mind.
What OSDN bar? That thin grey thing at the top of the page that disappears as soon as you scroll down an inch? People think that's worth getting bent out of shape about?
Maybe it's more of a problem/annoyance on other browsers or something, but it only took me a day or so 'til I didn't even notice it anymore.
Now having to reload at 0 instead of -1 to get rid of the horizontal scroll is worth complaining about.
"If it weren't for his idea to sell software cheaply to everyone..."
He was smart to not give IBM an exclusive on DOS, but it wasn't until hardware makers started producing "clones" that being able to sell DOS to anyone except IBM was worth anything. Anybody who bought an IBM computer could get it as part of the package, so they weren't in the market to buy it from MS. They had a product (DOS separate from an IBM PC) with no real market until the clone makers got started.
Was MS software really that much cheaper (price-wise) than anybody else's back then?
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I'd have thought that the price tag (and all the other stuff on which you could have used the money instead) would have served that purpose admirably.
I don't doubt your sincerity or good intentions, but perhaps you should have contacted Sony first to see if they wanted you to help increase sales of this product in your own particular way. Perhaps they had some other, likely to be even more financially successful, approach toward increasing sales planned which was incompatible with your approach. Strange as it may seem, there are plenty of people out there mentally challenged enough to mistake you for someone working for or in concert with Sony, potentially leaving Sony at risk of legal action (time and money-consuming, even if eventually thrown out of court) and bad publicity as a result of actions of yours over which they had no control. Perhaps there are situations where forgiveness is more easily obtained than permission, but you might think twice before adopting that as standard operating procedure.
Please tell me that you misspelled "Deus" and "Rogue" intentionally for humorous effect.
Okay, this is sort of an off-topic rant, but can anybody tell me what's up with ATX tower cases with 4 5.25 inch drive bays, but only the upper two are useable for anything as long as a CD or 1.2Mb floppy drive because the standard ATX motherboard is in the way, in other words, the case is high enough and wide enough, but not deep enough. Anybody else fighting this particular frustration factory?
97 does it too, but not to a temp file (although it does like to leave .tmp files all over the place too). Just as soon as you screw up what you're working on big-time, before you can hit Ctrl-Z or click Edit-Undo, it leaps into Auto-Save, which can't be overridden, and saves your mistake, erasing the good version that you wanted to save.
Well, yeah, but only after he realises that the answer* to the question "Who are you going to sue if it doesn't work?" is the same with either kind.
*(Nobody, the license means they get to treat you the same way The Secretary would have treated Jim Phelps if he ever got caught.)
Allchin's looking at it from the point of view that the buyers exist for the benefit of the sellers and not the other way around. In other words, the consumer has an obligation to arrange their needs and desires to support what the producer wants, and if it takes legislation to force that to happen, well, to him, that *is* The American Way.
Is there anything in the support contract that says that they can bail on it just by giving you a (no interest added, even though they've had your money for awhile) refund? If not, sue'em for breach of contract. Would you have purchased quite a number of machines from them without the service contract option available? Demand that they take back the hardware and give back the moeny you paid for it. Have your trained attack lawyer deliver the message.
However, if giving it a good *WHACK!* solves the problem temporarily, then it's probably an intermittently bad solder connection in the blue gun driver circuitry or an intermittent partial grid to cathode short of the blue gun inside the neck of the CRT. Again, consult a professional who knows what they're doing.
One other possiblility is an intermittent open in the cable between video card and monitor.
I just put everything from the various media through the same mental filter I use for everything Katz has to say. That usually solves the problem, although recent exposure to the Fox "News" Channel is causing said filter to show the strain. Last night they were arguing with Pat Buchanan about what, if anything, we should do in the near future regarding Iraq, and Pat was the only one making any sense. I kept waiting for the camera to do a fast pan over to Rod Serling.
Don't you just hate it when the powder leaks out of you email client and piles up at the bottom of the screen?
It doesn't have to be new to be interesting.
I wish you'd said Purdue Chicken instead so I could have made a "Yellow Screen Of Death" joke.
"Hmm i was fairly sure that we were talking about emulating the xbox on the pc, not the ps2..."
Unless he was talking about an old IBM PS/2, apparently the starter of the thread wasn't.
Keep moving that line around and one could say that one's computer runs on Notepad or Freecell.
Now if we could only get them to subcontract their software.
But seriously, the last hardware they marketed under their name even approaching the level of complexity (and potential for things to go wrong) of this was probably that "run CP/M on an Apple II" plug in card. There's just so much more to this thing that can go wrong than a mouse or keyboard or joystick. So I don't think we can take previous good experiences as a chisled in stone guarantee this time around.
Doesn't Apple bill everything they release as "The Best Thing EVER!" ?
Gee, I'd forgotten how many references to The Iliad and The Odyssey Kildall had sprinkled throughout the source code.
unitron is short for university electronics, a nomme de get free catalogs and trade mag subscriptions. I'm a life-long NC resident and spent time in the RTP area circa 1970-75 and 80-81. The NE/SE 555 timer chip is a Signetics product (originally), probably still in production by somebody somewhere (GE, RCA, Sylvania ECG and NTE used to make them as part of their replacement semiconductor lines). I never used one to do Touch-Tone (I think you can use 566s and 567s for that) or any other phone company tones, but I did rig up a pulse width modulation speed control for a Dremel 260 with a 555 and a horizontal output transistor.
I think some Asian company has unitron.com, haven't looked in a while, but I picked up a Windows 3.1 OEM set and book on eBay a few months ago with the unitron brand on it (the "t" is white where the rest of the letters are black, interesting effect). No address for the company in the book, unfortunately, and I haven't gotten around to loading it to check out the splash screen yet.
As opposed to those who took the wine drinking class and forgot how to drive.
Plus, "Read The Forgotten Manual" has a less hostile tone than the original version of the phrase, and keeps both parties in a more civil frame of mind.
Are you both talking about an RTP company? One with ties to Cree? More details please.
Maybe it's more of a problem/annoyance on other browsers or something, but it only took me a day or so 'til I didn't even notice it anymore.
Now having to reload at 0 instead of -1 to get rid of the horizontal scroll is worth complaining about.
If it's C/PM instead of CP/M I don't really care, but I wonder if Kildall had made it more Unix-like, would it have been named CP\M?
He was smart to not give IBM an exclusive on DOS, but it wasn't until hardware makers started producing "clones" that being able to sell DOS to anyone except IBM was worth anything. Anybody who bought an IBM computer could get it as part of the package, so they weren't in the market to buy it from MS. They had a product (DOS separate from an IBM PC) with no real market until the clone makers got started.
Was MS software really that much cheaper (price-wise) than anybody else's back then?