The main reason for the outsourcing to India is quite basic at heart, their hi-tech sector is maturing later than ours did. Wages in India are rapidly rising, and once that tech sector reaches the maturity of the US, a balance will be struck between the two and some jobs will come back over here as the wage savings won't be enough to cover the other expenses of outsourcing (time zone difference, communication barriers, etc).
If it isn't already apparent, consoles are already customized PCs. The two platforms will continue to converge. PS2's have hard drives. Xboxes do as well. Both have a form of USB which allows keyboards, they have network adapters... Hell they have available VGA outputs. It's kind of like racing your pickup truck, which can also be used for other tasks, against a dedicated race car. Just doesn't make sense anymore.
Not to mention the price/performane ratio seems to be higher for consoles than a comparable PC setup.
As far I as know, the RIAA represents a select group of record labels. Are they suing people sharing music that's not under these labels? I know a good portion of users who deal in the underground electronica and hiphop scenes which are dominated by tiny American and European labels that most likely aren't affiliated with the RIAA.
Just curious...
With entire gaming systems available for the price of a decent video card (Gamecubes and PS2s are under $150 now), what is the incentive for the casual gamer to set up a complicated computer to play a game? It used to be PCs had the advantage with networking, but that is quickly going away due to XBox live and similar services. You can even hook regular keyboards/mice up to these systems now, so what's left for a PC to do? All a console is a CHEAP, specialized PC, with Joe User not caring the least bit what operating system it is running, so long as he can play Tony Hawk and have it look pretty.
I envision Linux digging out a niche in the game SERVER market, which makes far more sense as I've always felt Linux filled the server niche very nicely.
Plasma TVs are especially prone to burn-in problems. Having a static image on the screen for many hours may cause problems. They may have fixed this with newer versions of the displays, but I've seen some Plasma TV's at the airport with horrendous burn in (screen was unusable).
On the same vein, I've found that chewing Winterfresh gum while drinking Coors Lite or similar beers is actually very pleasant. The bitter of the beer and the sweetness of the gum go well together, and the gum covers the bitter after-beer taste.
(I know this is getting off topic...) If you haven't noticed, consoles are just specialized PC's now. And you and easily attach a keyboard/mouse to XBox, and I'm sure it can be done on Gamecube. The big limiting factor on consoles used to be the networking aspect, but it appears XBox has again taken care of that, removing yet another barrier from all games being available on the consoles. I'm not sure about the other platforms, but I do know if there isn't a networking option on the market, it's in development.
If those game genres you metioned aren't available on the consoles, then it is simply a matter of the market wouldn't accept them. The important thing to note is that a console is just a specialized PC! There are no hardware limitations for consoles versus PCs anymore, and look for further generations of these machines to continue merging in terms of functionality, to a point where they will be difficult to differentiate.
Food for thought: Back in the 386 and 486 days, I was in the 18-month upgrade cycle, simply cause my comp couldn't run the latest and greatest apps. Now, I am currently using a computer from 1999 - a p3-500. And, I have no immediate plans on upgrading. I consider myself among the power users -- graphic design, MSOffice, many programming suites, even an occasional game. And ya know what? It all works like a champ. Tell me, what's the reason for upgrading? So Photoshop loads in 4 seconds and not 20? Obviously, a new system would be NICE, but I don't really NEED it like we used to (new version of windows wouldn't run, office would crash, etc).
Before you answer with "To play games!" Please note that you can buy a brand spanky new Gamecube for $99 now. I will never play games on my PC again at that price!
Obviously this also doesn't apply to video editting as that needs every drop of power you can get it.
Higher response rate is good for everyone
on
Building Better Spam
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Let's face it, spam with higher resposne rate is better than spam with little to no response rate. This could be the result of several things: better targetting (more likely to get to an interested audience), less offensive, more legit, etc. If all spammers tried to improve their response rates by simply cleaning their lists with people they know might be interested, and with products or services that were legit and of economic value, then the situation wouldn't be bad at all. I do tolerate spam from reputable companies I have done business with in the past or am actively looking to buy those sorts of products.
That's pretty neat, but I think it falls short of the traditional definition of pinball...
Interesting tidbit:
The largest machine ever to be mass produced was Atari's Hercules. It was 83" (211 cm) tall, 41" (103 cm) wide, and 93" (236 cm) deep. Weighed a hefty 275 lbs. Not quite the monster in the article, but it was mass produced and used a ball the size of a cue ball.
The Direct Marketing Association sued to block the list shortly after Congress approved it in January, saying it would violate free-speech laws and discriminate against an industry that provides millions of jobs.
All together now: Corporations are NOT PROTECTED BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT!
As far as I can tell, RIAA is only suing people using Kazaa (not even Kazaa Lite). There ARE P2P programs for Mac... Does that make other P2P programs safe for the time being?
The "Black Box" system that everyone is crying about is part of the OBDII standard, or On Board Diagnostics that all cars produced since the early 90's are required to support. This is a set of standards that includes what data is to be accessible via diagnostics. There are several modes of retrieving data, and they are all intended for aiding in diagnosing the emissions welness of the vehicle as well as other faults your vehilce may encounter. The feature that has everyone up in arms is the "Freeze frame data" feature of OBD-II. What this does is, whenever there is a sensor fault (Ie: front of your car gets blown up in a collision, or something simple like your Oxygen sensor goes bad), the previous 5-30 seconds of data (varies depending on the car) is logged to *aid the technitian* in diagnosing the fault. Unfortunately, someone figured out that when you get in a wreck, there's usually some sort of sensor fault, and the car's computer conviently records a lot of variables relevent to the collision.
It is impossible to remove this "black box" because on any car that supports OBD, *EVERY* computer in the car logs some sort of data. The important stuff is logged in the same computer that controls how your engine runs. It IS possible to clear the data using a diagnostic tool designed to do so. See the SAE J1979 standard if you're interested learning how to do this.
I'm surprised noone's mentioned Internet Explorer. Seems like everyone's forgotten that when you mistype an address in IE, you're automatically redirected to MSN's search engine (one of the reasons they can claim high search engine traffic like google). I find that almost as disturbing as Versign's abuse.
Lets see, 1200 people out of the 30+ Million using Kazaa now? You have better chances of winning the lottery than getting sued by the RIAA. For once, I'm glad our legal system is bloated and slow.
Just the other day, I was helping organize furniture in a community furniture bank, and we came across a dsek that was chock full of this guy's fianancial history. Bills, receipts, loans, credit card statements, everything. We joked around that we could go shopping and get ourselves a new car, had any of us had loser morals this guy would have been screwed.
Just goes to show, it happens in the real world too still.
Someone ought to rate the parent up. I was about to say the same thing. The fact is that most SUV deaths don't occur in rollovers. People are hyping the rollover problems of SUVs because they don't like SUVs not because it is a big problem.
Another big cause of injuries in SUV-based accidents is the fact that SUVs and other light trucks are frame-based as opposed to the typical uni-body car. This means you have two steel rails running underneath the body from front to rear. Compared to the aluminum-can-like tendencies of a unibody to fold up, frame-based vehicles don't really do that. So, the driver ends up taking a lot of extra energy that would otherwise be absorbed by a unibody car's front end, and is more likely to become injured in head-on type accidents.
If we could work out that little safety hitch with nuclear energy, we could launch whatever the hell we wanted into orbit however we want. The energy/mass ratio is absurd.
I'm sure nuclear boosters have been examined in the past, and I know they've used nuclear-powered ion engines in some satellites.
Too bad radioactivity has that nasty habit of killing people.
This just reminds us what the greatest risks are to any secure system: social engineering and inside men. If you look authoritative and dress up in a serviceman's outfit, very few people will question your actions. You can steal furniture, computers, machinery, tools, whatever by just looking important. By imporsonating a sysadmin on the phone, you can easily talk passwords out of gullible people. With a fake service order "signed" by the right people, the odds are endless.
On the same note, people inside an organization are often responsible for hacks, stolen information, and other things since they have the keys already!
It just goes to show the weakest portion of any system is the people.
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The main reason for the outsourcing to India is quite basic at heart, their hi-tech sector is maturing later than ours did. Wages in India are rapidly rising, and once that tech sector reaches the maturity of the US, a balance will be struck between the two and some jobs will come back over here as the wage savings won't be enough to cover the other expenses of outsourcing (time zone difference, communication barriers, etc).
If it isn't already apparent, consoles are already customized PCs. The two platforms will continue to converge. PS2's have hard drives. Xboxes do as well. Both have a form of USB which allows keyboards, they have network adapters... Hell they have available VGA outputs. It's kind of like racing your pickup truck, which can also be used for other tasks, against a dedicated race car. Just doesn't make sense anymore. Not to mention the price/performane ratio seems to be higher for consoles than a comparable PC setup.
As far I as know, the RIAA represents a select group of record labels. Are they suing people sharing music that's not under these labels? I know a good portion of users who deal in the underground electronica and hiphop scenes which are dominated by tiny American and European labels that most likely aren't affiliated with the RIAA. Just curious...
With entire gaming systems available for the price of a decent video card (Gamecubes and PS2s are under $150 now), what is the incentive for the casual gamer to set up a complicated computer to play a game? It used to be PCs had the advantage with networking, but that is quickly going away due to XBox live and similar services. You can even hook regular keyboards/mice up to these systems now, so what's left for a PC to do? All a console is a CHEAP, specialized PC, with Joe User not caring the least bit what operating system it is running, so long as he can play Tony Hawk and have it look pretty.
I envision Linux digging out a niche in the game SERVER market, which makes far more sense as I've always felt Linux filled the server niche very nicely.
...is the duct tape of the internet.
What's the best part about dating twenty-nine year-olds? There's twenty of them!
Q: What happens when Darl McBride takes Viagra? A: He gets taller!
Read-only will probably always be cheaper to produce than rewritable.
Why does not Ross, the largest of the "Friends" simply devour the others?!
Heh, you laugh, a Boeing 777 can fly for 5 hours on one engine. Oh well.
Plasma TVs are especially prone to burn-in problems. Having a static image on the screen for many hours may cause problems. They may have fixed this with newer versions of the displays, but I've seen some Plasma TV's at the airport with horrendous burn in (screen was unusable).
On the same vein, I've found that chewing Winterfresh gum while drinking Coors Lite or similar beers is actually very pleasant. The bitter of the beer and the sweetness of the gum go well together, and the gum covers the bitter after-beer taste.
(I know this is getting off topic...) If you haven't noticed, consoles are just specialized PC's now. And you and easily attach a keyboard/mouse to XBox, and I'm sure it can be done on Gamecube. The big limiting factor on consoles used to be the networking aspect, but it appears XBox has again taken care of that, removing yet another barrier from all games being available on the consoles. I'm not sure about the other platforms, but I do know if there isn't a networking option on the market, it's in development.
If those game genres you metioned aren't available on the consoles, then it is simply a matter of the market wouldn't accept them. The important thing to note is that a console is just a specialized PC! There are no hardware limitations for consoles versus PCs anymore, and look for further generations of these machines to continue merging in terms of functionality, to a point where they will be difficult to differentiate.
Food for thought:
Back in the 386 and 486 days, I was in the 18-month upgrade cycle, simply cause my comp couldn't run the latest and greatest apps. Now, I am currently using a computer from 1999 - a p3-500. And, I have no immediate plans on upgrading. I consider myself among the power users -- graphic design, MSOffice, many programming suites, even an occasional game. And ya know what? It all works like a champ. Tell me, what's the reason for upgrading? So Photoshop loads in 4 seconds and not 20? Obviously, a new system would be NICE, but I don't really NEED it like we used to (new version of windows wouldn't run, office would crash, etc).
Before you answer with "To play games!" Please note that you can buy a brand spanky new Gamecube for $99 now. I will never play games on my PC again at that price!
Obviously this also doesn't apply to video editting as that needs every drop of power you can get it.
Let's face it, spam with higher resposne rate is better than spam with little to no response rate. This could be the result of several things: better targetting (more likely to get to an interested audience), less offensive, more legit, etc. If all spammers tried to improve their response rates by simply cleaning their lists with people they know might be interested, and with products or services that were legit and of economic value, then the situation wouldn't be bad at all. I do tolerate spam from reputable companies I have done business with in the past or am actively looking to buy those sorts of products.
But that's just wishful thinking.
Interesting tidbit: The largest machine ever to be mass produced was Atari's Hercules. It was 83" (211 cm) tall, 41" (103 cm) wide, and 93" (236 cm) deep. Weighed a hefty 275 lbs. Not quite the monster in the article, but it was mass produced and used a ball the size of a cue ball.
As far as I can tell, RIAA is only suing people using Kazaa (not even Kazaa Lite). There ARE P2P programs for Mac... Does that make other P2P programs safe for the time being?
The "Black Box" system that everyone is crying about is part of the OBDII standard, or On Board Diagnostics that all cars produced since the early 90's are required to support. This is a set of standards that includes what data is to be accessible via diagnostics. There are several modes of retrieving data, and they are all intended for aiding in diagnosing the emissions welness of the vehicle as well as other faults your vehilce may encounter. The feature that has everyone up in arms is the "Freeze frame data" feature of OBD-II. What this does is, whenever there is a sensor fault (Ie: front of your car gets blown up in a collision, or something simple like your Oxygen sensor goes bad), the previous 5-30 seconds of data (varies depending on the car) is logged to *aid the technitian* in diagnosing the fault. Unfortunately, someone figured out that when you get in a wreck, there's usually some sort of sensor fault, and the car's computer conviently records a lot of variables relevent to the collision.
It is impossible to remove this "black box" because on any car that supports OBD, *EVERY* computer in the car logs some sort of data. The important stuff is logged in the same computer that controls how your engine runs. It IS possible to clear the data using a diagnostic tool designed to do so. See the SAE J1979 standard if you're interested learning how to do this.
I'm surprised noone's mentioned Internet Explorer. Seems like everyone's forgotten that when you mistype an address in IE, you're automatically redirected to MSN's search engine (one of the reasons they can claim high search engine traffic like google). I find that almost as disturbing as Versign's abuse.
Lets see, 1200 people out of the 30+ Million using Kazaa now? You have better chances of winning the lottery than getting sued by the RIAA. For once, I'm glad our legal system is bloated and slow.
Just the other day, I was helping organize furniture in a community furniture bank, and we came across a dsek that was chock full of this guy's fianancial history. Bills, receipts, loans, credit card statements, everything. We joked around that we could go shopping and get ourselves a new car, had any of us had loser morals this guy would have been screwed. Just goes to show, it happens in the real world too still.
Another big cause of injuries in SUV-based accidents is the fact that SUVs and other light trucks are frame-based as opposed to the typical uni-body car. This means you have two steel rails running underneath the body from front to rear. Compared to the aluminum-can-like tendencies of a unibody to fold up, frame-based vehicles don't really do that. So, the driver ends up taking a lot of extra energy that would otherwise be absorbed by a unibody car's front end, and is more likely to become injured in head-on type accidents.
If we could work out that little safety hitch with nuclear energy, we could launch whatever the hell we wanted into orbit however we want. The energy/mass ratio is absurd. I'm sure nuclear boosters have been examined in the past, and I know they've used nuclear-powered ion engines in some satellites. Too bad radioactivity has that nasty habit of killing people.
This just reminds us what the greatest risks are to any secure system: social engineering and inside men. If you look authoritative and dress up in a serviceman's outfit, very few people will question your actions. You can steal furniture, computers, machinery, tools, whatever by just looking important. By imporsonating a sysadmin on the phone, you can easily talk passwords out of gullible people. With a fake service order "signed" by the right people, the odds are endless.
On the same note, people inside an organization are often responsible for hacks, stolen information, and other things since they have the keys already!
It just goes to show the weakest portion of any system is the people.