The real problem is the big telcos that own the majority of the "backbone" network and the majority of the copper and fiber in this country.
Bandwidth is *expensive* and transport fees are *ludicrous*. ISPs are getting screwed by the telcos, and those costs get passed on to the end-user. Now, don't get me wrong, the big cable providers are sleazy, too, but they are at the mercy of the telcos, who obviously HATE the cable companies and want them to go away.
It's just a big mess, and I think the only real solution is to nationalize most of the copper/fiber networks in this country. It's too important to our economy.
It's looking better, I guess. But that's only because it couldn't look any WORSE.
There still aren't any "system seller" games for it. And it's still too expensive. The only good news, really, is some of the upcoming games that were shown at E3. Most of which aren't coming out until this fall, and most of which are also coming out for the 360.
Sony is still in a world of hurt, I think. The PS3 just doesn't have any momentum at all.
My major problem with trackballs is that it's difficult to move the ball and click the buttons at the same time. A "thumb" trackball solves that issue, mostly, but thumb trackballs are so inaccurate and hard to use that they aren't really an option.
With the "big ball", you get accuracy, but you can't really hit the buttons while moving the ball. At least, not without contorting/stretching your hand into uncomfortable positions.
For some people, especially people with wrist/hand/arm problems, I suppose all those problems are forgiveable. But a mouse is a better pointing device. It just is. In my experience, the people that like trackballs tend to be people that just can't handle the mouse, for whatever reason. Everyone knows someone like that. Generally it's older people. The way a mouse works is just something they can't wrap their brains around.
"I don't think so. I think "open devices" means that you can use anyone's cell phone, Treo, PocketPC, or whatever on that spectrum if it's designed to use that spectrum, not just the ones the winner approves."
I think you are being foolishly optimistic.
"Open devices" MAY mean that any device designed for the spectrum in question must work, but it doesn't mean it has to work WELL. I fully expect that, at the very least, "unapproved" devices and software will be crippled like crazy.
The whole problem is the word "open" doesn't really mean anything. The FCC and AT&T can call any scheme they come up with "open", but still lock it down so that it's not really open at all.
The whole problem is, Google really has no chance of winning.
They don't have the political connections or the ENORMOUS resources that AT&T/Cingular has. Never mind that AT&T/Cingular REALLY REALLY wants this spectrum. I mean, it's their wet dream to own that spectrum. It's the future of the company. They essentially will pay whatever they have to for it. But it would be amusing to see Google keep upping the bid on them.
See, "open devices" and "open applications" probably means that you are free to use any device or application that has been approved by whoever wins the auction in question. I fully expect AT&T (or whoever wins, but they look like they will) to announce some kind of ridiculously elaborate and expensive "open licensing program" where if you want to make a device or applications that works with their network, you'll have to pay them gobs of money. They'll say it's for "adminstrative fees" or "Homeland Security Wireless Management and Auditing Charges" or some such crap.
Personally, while I like what Google is trying to do, I think they should stay in the bidding anyway. I'd much rather have Google own the spectrum than literally ANY other telco corporation. Google isn't nearly as evil as those guys are.
Three years isn't that far away, and most businesses aren't planning on moving to Vista any time soon. My guess is that many of them will just skip it entirely if the next version of Windows, which presumably will be what Vista SHOULD HAVE been, is right around the corner.
It just confirms the widely-held opinion that Windows Vista was rushed to market, and is really just a crappy "place-holder" operating system, much like Windows ME.
Eh. Trojans/rootkits/viruses built form these "kits" tend to all be very similar. Essentially, if you defend against one, you're defended against all the others.
Never mind the fact that it's a fucking KIT. If YOU can download it, so can the anti-virus people in order to figure out how to detect viruses made with it.
The interesting thing about modern viruses/trojans/whatever is that very few of them are really *viruses* anymore. They rely almost completely on simply getting a user to manually run (or at least give permission to the system to run) an obfuscated executable. It's sad that the technique is so successful.
Oh, trust me, the various book publishing companies HATE libraries. They're constantly sending lobbyists to Washington in an effort to extract some kind of fees from libraries. So far, the various "library associations" have successfully fought them off. But it's a never ending battle.
The PS3 is still too expensive. But the bigger problem is, there just aren't any "must have" games. I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and just for kicks I was looking at the PS3 game selection. There were about, oh, 25 titles or so, and fully HALF of them were crappy movie tie-in games. That's nuts.
The Wii is slightly better off, in that there are at least 3 or 4 really fun games. But in my opinion, it's not worth buying yet either. But the good Wii games are fun, and they are nice and "console-y". Which brings me to the 360-
Well, it has the most games, of course. But am I the only one that finds the 360s selection of games really dull? It seems like there are a lot of FPS and sports games, and not a heck of a lot else. I expect this will be the case with the PS3, also. It's almost like they are trying too hard to cater to the "hardcore" crowd. Lots of "heavy" games, not too much stuff that's simple to pick-up-and-play. Well, I guess the Live! Arcade games are. But all of those games could be done on the Wii, easily. Never mind the emulated games, which I refuse to pay for because I've been playing them for free for almost a decade now via PC emulators.
Inevitably, the "music licensing" mafia is going to pull this kind of shit on an establishment that is owned by/associated with a senator, or judge, or district attorney. And then, finally, things will change. They'll get smacked down, hard.
Some of his stuff has stood the test of time. His later stuff, especially.
Personally, I always liked "Glory Road" the best, and it's almost a fantasy novel. "Friday" still holds up amazingly well.
The real problem with reading Heinlein is that there is lots of sex and sexual themes in his novels, and the sex is completely juvenile and ridiculous. His later novels do better, but it's still fairly cheesy.
Overall, most of Heinlein's seems pretty outdated. But it's a lot less dated than the work of his contemporaries, and his writing style was very entertaining and natural. I'd rather read Heinlein stuff than stuff by Asimov or Clarke, for example. They were *terrible* writers of dialogue.
The reason you can't measure all the details of a particle at the same time is NOT because photons bounce off of it and disturb it. The reason you can't measure all of the details of a particle at the same time is because that is JUST THE WAY IT IS. It has nothing to do with interference from other particles. There is no "reason" for it. No one knows why it works that way. It's called "complementarity", and it's the fundamental quantum mystery.
What REALLY upsets me is the fact that the writers at ZDNet actually get *paid* to regurgitate data they likely found on some other website via Google.
I'm hard-pressed to think of ANY reason for companies to "upgrade" to Vista.
What does it offer to businesses? The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly already.
Beyond that, there isn't much Vista does better than XP. At some point, businesses will HAVE to upgrade, of course, but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away? That's not a very long time. I imagine most businesses are just going to stick with XP until they just can't make it work on new hardware anymore.
Microsoft reached a plateau with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It's going to be harder and harder for them to convince people they need a new operating system.
You *can* downgrade to XP. But you can only downgrade to *XP Professional*, and you must have purchased either Vista Ultimate or Vista Business in the first place.
So if you buy Vista Home or Vista Home Premium, you are stuck with them. No downgrades for you.
No, he changed it on his own. He was trying to distance himself from their marketing machine, which is why he chose that goofy "symbol" as his name. Made it really tough on the marketing department, because he had no prounouncable name. He also said some typically bizarro Prince-type stuff about how he was "abandoning his slave-name" or something like that.
Also, his birth name really *is* Prince. It's not a stage name. Prince Rogers Nelson is the name on his birth certificate.
Prince is awesome. He best music is FAR behind him, but he still does some good stuff, and, well, his old stuff is so great that it doesn't even matter what else he does.
I honestly would *like* to see a Microsoft PC. But not one that ran standard Windows.
What they need to do is take something like the Xbox 360 (something that will plug into an HDTV, basically), and put a whole new, incompatible "Microsoft PC-only" version of Windows on it. Basically, a "clean" version of Windows that abandons backward compatibility entirely, and only runs on their own hardware.
Then, port Office and Internet Explorer to the new platform. Sell it for a few hundred bucks.
They *must* have thought of this. I wonder if it will ever happen.
I'm sure overall music sales are down, if you are looking at nothing but the dollars spent on music. But I wonder if individual SALES are up? I mean, people don't buy 18$ CDs, but they DO buy 99 cent tracks. I have a feeling that if you look at the "number of music purchases made" figures, they're probably right in line with what they've always been. Maybe even higher.
As far as CDs sticking around because of the "inferior quality" of compressed tracks goes-
Give me a break. Nobody cares. Good enough is good enough. The so-called "audiophile" market is not what drives sales.
Yeah, all you had to do was hunt for a couple of hours a day.
Of course, you would only live to about 35, and essentially any serious injury was likely to kill you, or at least seriously cripple you. And infections? Forget it. You're dead.
Oh, and those 2 hours you spent hunting? You'll be spending most of the rest of the day cooking that food, and the remainder will be spent sleeping.
Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? I mean, we're talking about a game, after all. And it's not even a game with PRIZES. It's not even a game you can WIN. What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.
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The real problem is the big telcos that own the majority of the "backbone" network and the majority of the copper and fiber in this country.
Bandwidth is *expensive* and transport fees are *ludicrous*. ISPs are getting screwed by the telcos, and those costs get passed on to the end-user. Now, don't get me wrong, the big cable providers are sleazy, too, but they are at the mercy of the telcos, who obviously HATE the cable companies and want them to go away.
It's just a big mess, and I think the only real solution is to nationalize most of the copper/fiber networks in this country. It's too important to our economy.
It's looking better, I guess. But that's only because it couldn't look any WORSE.
There still aren't any "system seller" games for it. And it's still too expensive. The only good news, really, is some of the upcoming games that were shown at E3. Most of which aren't coming out until this fall, and most of which are also coming out for the 360.
Sony is still in a world of hurt, I think. The PS3 just doesn't have any momentum at all.
My major problem with trackballs is that it's difficult to move the ball and click the buttons at the same time. A "thumb" trackball solves that issue, mostly, but thumb trackballs are so inaccurate and hard to use that they aren't really an option.
With the "big ball", you get accuracy, but you can't really hit the buttons while moving the ball. At least, not without contorting/stretching your hand into uncomfortable positions.
For some people, especially people with wrist/hand/arm problems, I suppose all those problems are forgiveable. But a mouse is a better pointing device. It just is. In my experience, the people that like trackballs tend to be people that just can't handle the mouse, for whatever reason. Everyone knows someone like that. Generally it's older people. The way a mouse works is just something they can't wrap their brains around.
"I don't think so. I think "open devices" means that you can use anyone's cell phone, Treo, PocketPC, or whatever on that spectrum if it's designed to use that spectrum, not just the ones the winner approves."
I think you are being foolishly optimistic.
"Open devices" MAY mean that any device designed for the spectrum in question must work, but it doesn't mean it has to work WELL. I fully expect that, at the very least, "unapproved" devices and software will be crippled like crazy.
The whole problem is the word "open" doesn't really mean anything. The FCC and AT&T can call any scheme they come up with "open", but still lock it down so that it's not really open at all.
The whole problem is, Google really has no chance of winning.
They don't have the political connections or the ENORMOUS resources that AT&T/Cingular has. Never mind that AT&T/Cingular REALLY REALLY wants this spectrum. I mean, it's their wet dream to own that spectrum. It's the future of the company. They essentially will pay whatever they have to for it. But it would be amusing to see Google keep upping the bid on them.
See, "open devices" and "open applications" probably means that you are free to use any device or application that has been approved by whoever wins the auction in question. I fully expect AT&T (or whoever wins, but they look like they will) to announce some kind of ridiculously elaborate and expensive "open licensing program" where if you want to make a device or applications that works with their network, you'll have to pay them gobs of money. They'll say it's for "adminstrative fees" or "Homeland Security Wireless Management and Auditing Charges" or some such crap.
Personally, while I like what Google is trying to do, I think they should stay in the bidding anyway. I'd much rather have Google own the spectrum than literally ANY other telco corporation. Google isn't nearly as evil as those guys are.
"and less interstitial sketches - which most MST3k fans never considered to be that essential anyhow."
The sketches *were* essential. Some of them were great, and almost all of them were funny. Well, at least when JOEL was doing them.
Joel was better than Mike. By a lot. People that like Mike will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Three years isn't that far away, and most businesses aren't planning on moving to Vista any time soon. My guess is that many of them will just skip it entirely if the next version of Windows, which presumably will be what Vista SHOULD HAVE been, is right around the corner.
It just confirms the widely-held opinion that Windows Vista was rushed to market, and is really just a crappy "place-holder" operating system, much like Windows ME.
Eh. Trojans/rootkits/viruses built form these "kits" tend to all be very similar. Essentially, if you defend against one, you're defended against all the others.
Never mind the fact that it's a fucking KIT. If YOU can download it, so can the anti-virus people in order to figure out how to detect viruses made with it.
The interesting thing about modern viruses/trojans/whatever is that very few of them are really *viruses* anymore. They rely almost completely on simply getting a user to manually run (or at least give permission to the system to run) an obfuscated executable. It's sad that the technique is so successful.
Oh, trust me, the various book publishing companies HATE libraries. They're constantly sending lobbyists to Washington in an effort to extract some kind of fees from libraries. So far, the various "library associations" have successfully fought them off. But it's a never ending battle.
The PS3 is still too expensive. But the bigger problem is, there just aren't any "must have" games. I was at Wal-Mart the other day, and just for kicks I was looking at the PS3 game selection. There were about, oh, 25 titles or so, and fully HALF of them were crappy movie tie-in games. That's nuts.
The Wii is slightly better off, in that there are at least 3 or 4 really fun games. But in my opinion, it's not worth buying yet either. But the good Wii games are fun, and they are nice and "console-y". Which brings me to the 360-
Well, it has the most games, of course. But am I the only one that finds the 360s selection of games really dull? It seems like there are a lot of FPS and sports games, and not a heck of a lot else. I expect this will be the case with the PS3, also. It's almost like they are trying too hard to cater to the "hardcore" crowd. Lots of "heavy" games, not too much stuff that's simple to pick-up-and-play. Well, I guess the Live! Arcade games are. But all of those games could be done on the Wii, easily. Never mind the emulated games, which I refuse to pay for because I've been playing them for free for almost a decade now via PC emulators.
Inevitably, the "music licensing" mafia is going to pull this kind of shit on an establishment that is owned by/associated with a senator, or judge, or district attorney. And then, finally, things will change. They'll get smacked down, hard.
Well, probably not. But hope springs eternal.
Some of his stuff has stood the test of time. His later stuff, especially.
Personally, I always liked "Glory Road" the best, and it's almost a fantasy novel. "Friday" still holds up amazingly well.
The real problem with reading Heinlein is that there is lots of sex and sexual themes in his novels, and the sex is completely juvenile and ridiculous. His later novels do better, but it's still fairly cheesy.
Overall, most of Heinlein's seems pretty outdated. But it's a lot less dated than the work of his contemporaries, and his writing style was very entertaining and natural. I'd rather read Heinlein stuff than stuff by Asimov or Clarke, for example. They were *terrible* writers of dialogue.
You are mistaken.
The reason you can't measure all the details of a particle at the same time is NOT because photons bounce off of it and disturb it. The reason you can't measure all of the details of a particle at the same time is because that is JUST THE WAY IT IS. It has nothing to do with interference from other particles. There is no "reason" for it. No one knows why it works that way. It's called "complementarity", and it's the fundamental quantum mystery.
What REALLY upsets me is the fact that the writers at ZDNet actually get *paid* to regurgitate data they likely found on some other website via Google.
What a great job.
I'm hard-pressed to think of ANY reason for companies to "upgrade" to Vista.
What does it offer to businesses? The improved security is irrelevant in a corporate environment, because companies have everything locked-down pretty tightly already.
Beyond that, there isn't much Vista does better than XP. At some point, businesses will HAVE to upgrade, of course, but didn't Microsoft say that Vista's successor is only 2 years away? That's not a very long time. I imagine most businesses are just going to stick with XP until they just can't make it work on new hardware anymore.
Microsoft reached a plateau with Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It's going to be harder and harder for them to convince people they need a new operating system.
You *can* downgrade to XP. But you can only downgrade to *XP Professional*, and you must have purchased either Vista Ultimate or Vista Business in the first place.
So if you buy Vista Home or Vista Home Premium, you are stuck with them. No downgrades for you.
No, he changed it on his own. He was trying to distance himself from their marketing machine, which is why he chose that goofy "symbol" as his name. Made it really tough on the marketing department, because he had no prounouncable name. He also said some typically bizarro Prince-type stuff about how he was "abandoning his slave-name" or something like that.
Also, his birth name really *is* Prince. It's not a stage name. Prince Rogers Nelson is the name on his birth certificate.
Prince is awesome. He best music is FAR behind him, but he still does some good stuff, and, well, his old stuff is so great that it doesn't even matter what else he does.
WebTV didn't run Windows, or Internet Explorer, or Office. And it was incredibly underpowered. And it wasn't designed to work at HDTV resolutions.
Really, it wasn't the same thing at all. I'm talking about an old-timey "home computer". Like the Commodore 64 was.
I honestly would *like* to see a Microsoft PC. But not one that ran standard Windows.
What they need to do is take something like the Xbox 360 (something that will plug into an HDTV, basically), and put a whole new, incompatible "Microsoft PC-only" version of Windows on it. Basically, a "clean" version of Windows that abandons backward compatibility entirely, and only runs on their own hardware.
Then, port Office and Internet Explorer to the new platform. Sell it for a few hundred bucks.
They *must* have thought of this. I wonder if it will ever happen.
Okay, that's pretty amazing.
I'm sure overall music sales are down, if you are looking at nothing but the dollars spent on music. But I wonder if individual SALES are up? I mean, people don't buy 18$ CDs, but they DO buy 99 cent tracks. I have a feeling that if you look at the "number of music purchases made" figures, they're probably right in line with what they've always been. Maybe even higher.
As far as CDs sticking around because of the "inferior quality" of compressed tracks goes-
Give me a break. Nobody cares. Good enough is good enough. The so-called "audiophile" market is not what drives sales.
Yeah, all you had to do was hunt for a couple of hours a day.
Of course, you would only live to about 35, and essentially any serious injury was likely to kill you, or at least seriously cripple you. And infections? Forget it. You're dead.
Oh, and those 2 hours you spent hunting? You'll be spending most of the rest of the day cooking that food, and the remainder will be spent sleeping.
But yeah, those cavemen had it GREAT.
A Slashdotter would realize that if you don't want to see any information, you need to view the event horizon with a threshold of -1.
I completely agree. Seriously.
Who, really, is getting hurt by gold-farming? I mean, we're talking about a game, after all. And it's not even a game with PRIZES. It's not even a game you can WIN. What could the gold farmers possibly be taking away from other players, besides time? Time which they are spending on a GAME that they aren't obligated to play.