What is not being widely reported is that Xhibit Corp sold the customer loyalty fulfillment part of the business last year for around $20 million. This was the unit that apparently generated the vast majority of the revenue and probably all the profit. Why would a firm who expected to stay solvent sell of the unit that generated most of the revenue, a unit with guaranteed sales?
It really seems like a scam to create liquidity of the profitable assets and then screw the creditors.
Hmm. Where have I heard *that* countless times before?
(Opens Wikipedia article on the company, does text search for "private equity"...)
In 2012, SkyMall was purchased by Najafi Companies, the largest private equity firm in Arizona. In January 2015 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
First off, that wasn't an apology for Radio Shack's problems, nor an attempt to say that they were blameless. From what I've read (*), the company quite clearly *has* been obviously mismanaged and directionless for a long time now, and would probably have gone under on that basis.
What I'm criticising with respect to Radio Shack- or rather with the market's use of it- is a problem with derivatives in general. It's the fact that they've become detached from the business processes that they were meant to relate to (and serve), and have become the driving force in their own right, a massively overgrown tail wagging a tiny (and irrelevant) dog.
The point is that the people on either side aren't interested in Radio Shack per se, they're interested in exploiting and using insurance policies- in effect, derivatives here- taken out against Radio Shack, bundled up, passed around and abstracted away from the business itself. And, on the opposite side, the interests of the insurance company (e.g.) in insuring against a payout, in effect a derivative in itself.
Radio Shack is still "important" in the way that the ball is important in a football game.
None of this excuses Radio Shack's own failings, in fact it says nothing about that either way. What it *was* an attack on is the financial markets creating derivatives of derivatives of derivatives that are so far detached from their original purpose as to be irrelevant. Until- as in 2008- the "real life" issues (e.g. the housing market) hidden away hit the fan and cause masses more damage thanks to the multiplying effect of derivatives, or the other way around, i.e. the use of derivatives as a plaything causes damage to the real world entity.
(*) I live in the UK, where all the Tandy stores (i.e. Radio Shack) were sold off to a mobile phone retailer around 15 years ago.
It's clear that no-one involved on either side of that cares about the business itself, beyond it being a means to an end. Nor would they have any qualms about tanking it if they were on the side that stood to benefit from such a move. Whether this would result from what would technically be called "insider trading" is relevant only in a legal sense; it's clear that a market which operates in such a way is inherently rotten, regardless.
Another article which basically explains that Radio Shack's primary function is now ultimately as little more than the ball itself in a game of derivatives and credit default swaps that- as often happens- has veered far from any legitimate use of them, or having much to do with the company per se, and into borderline legalised gambling of the type that hit the fan in 2008.
As I said, Radio Shack is the ball in this; nominally the raison d'etre, but really just a means to an end of little importance in itself, like a £50 football being used in a game between Manchester United and Chelsea, players costing millions competing on behalf of clubs worth the better part of a billion each.
Haven't read all the linked articles through yet, but it's been mentioned in the past- and again in the articles- that one of the reasons for the explosion may have been the use of organic-based kitty litter(!) reacting badly with the materials being disposed of, and that the inorganic version should have been used.
Now, there's nothing wrong with using what amounts to kitty litter to do whatever it was being used for. If that does the job, fine.
But whichever of the cases described was true, a problem is that if the stuff they're buying is intended and sold as kitty litter, it's quite possible that the makers may feel at liberty to change the formulation in a way that doesn't effect its use as kitty litter, but massive alters its safety as a "nuclear waste disposal material".
If having organic matter in your kitty litter could inadvertantly turn the nuclear material into a form of radioactive explosive, then you should be damn sure that you're getting the inorganic formulation from a supplier that can guarantee that this is what you're getting. It won't be called "kitty litter" even if that's what- in effect- it is, and it'll probably cost a lot more, but the supplier will (or should be) in the s*** if they supply the wrong type, whereas are Los Alamos going to sue "Pets R Us" for causing a nuclear explosion even if they *did* inadvertantly put organic in an inorganic bag, or change the formulation with insufficient notice (or whatever)?
So this is why (e.g.) the military (for example) might pay a lot more for a given item than you or I might pay over the counter. That, and the fact that they're probably diverting the money to some dubious black ops...!
Sorry, but if that's what it's meant to mean, it's a pretty opaque and obnoxiously PR-ish choice of words. Whether or not it's come (or is coming) into common currency doesn't change the fact that it's recent enough that most people using it probably chose to do so, or did so under the influence of too much PR bullshit.
There may be a case for a short and snappy phrase intended to concisely convey the meaning you describe, but f*****g "reaching out" sure as hell aren't the words I'd have chosen to do so.
We've reached out to Netflix to verify what it's doing
Urgh... this makes me think of that famous bash.org quote. Seriously, why the **** are Engadget using this obnoxious phrase instead of simply saying "we've contacted Netflix" or something similar?
It's the current favoured stock weasel-worded pseudo-touchy-feely (but in fact, insultingly off-the-shelf) bullshit phrase corporate PR use to sound like they *suddenly* give a f*** about a pissed-off customer they're having to contact, er... "reach out to" in response to some massive PR disaster they didn't expect.
But why would a "proper" news source feel the need to use the same irritating phrase when *they're* not the putative offending party on the defensive, but rather the people investigating the problem?
Unless this is an example of the phrase "if you lie down with dogs [i.e. hang around too many PR weasels], you get up with fleas".
If someone can create an app that itself accurately determines whether any given app will terminate (or not) for any given input... I'll be more than impressed.
Other than that, I think every damn app possible has already been written.:-)
Similarly when Apple got rid of the floppy drive [..] there were adapters available for the (very) few people who actually needed them, and in all cases despite the massive FUD being produced everything worked just fine.
Given that almost every first-generation iMac I saw had an external floppy drive attached anyway, it suggests that "the very few people who actually needed" floppy drives when Apple dropped them (circa 1998) was "just about everyone" and that Apple jumped the gun.
This is hardly surprising. The intended use of the Internet to transfer files wasn't a sufficient replacement as- back then- not everyone had Internet connectivity and those that did were mostly on dial-up. The optical drive was only a reader, presumably due to the fact that back then writers were getting cheaper but still nowhere near cheap enough to be added to all lower end models without significantly increasing the price. And USB flash drives wouldn't get "no brainer" cheap for another several years.
So, no. The much vaunted "Apple showed their foresight by ditching floppies" was a red herring if everyone needed to rush out and hang an external drive off the USB port anyway.
Even the IBM Model M keyboard switches had more resistance if memory serves correctly
I can quite believe that; from my (brief) memories of the Model M, the resistance was noticable (and disconcerting in its positioning) for me anyway.
I suspect that if- like you- one learned to type on a mechanical typewriter, the Model M will feel better and more natural. I didn't, and that's possibly why I didn't like it (and- I suspect- most people used to lighter computer keyboards probably won't like it either).
As a software developer, I have to admit I avoid mechanical keyboards like the plague, they require more force to type, they're louder (a really BAD thing when you're blazing out code), they take more time to press and debounce, and they cost ~600% more than a scissor switch keyboard (that has none of those problems if you have a typical 2mm travel vector on your keys, 200% less than most mechanical keyboards).
Speaking as someone who *does* own (and am typing this on) a mechanical keyboard, I'll still say that membrane keyboards get unfairly disparaged, and that some are very nice to type on.
Some (emphasis "some") of the cheapest models are ******* horrible, true, but the one I have at work is actually pretty good even though that itself is a cheap one.
The best membrane keyboards I've used are miles better than the worst mechanical ones. And the scissor/membrane job on my old Compaq Armada laptop had a very pleasant, low-travel feel to them.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of it's what you're used to.
I forget the brand name of my keyboard, but I sprang for a cheap one with Cherry MX Black switches.
The mechanical keyboard I bought almost ten years ago has Cherry MX Black switches apparently. It's certainly lasted, but although I'm still using it to type this message on, I've always felt that the spring resistance was just a *little* too stiff to be truly pleasurable to touch-type on. (Something I've since read elsewhere).
The Cherry MX Red has the same "linear" key action I bought the Black-based keyboard for, but with less resistance, and having used a Red-based keyboard, it's closer to what I had in mind when I bought the Black one (mail order). Mind you, the Red switches apparently weren't around back then anyway.
Cherry MX Reds are supposedly too sensitive for touch-typing, and intended for gaming keyboards, but I (as a non-gamer) am still considering buying one.
Of course, all the above is a matter of personal preference; if possible, you should always try out a mechanical keyboard- or at least one based on the same technology- if the feel of it is important. (And you probably wouldn't be bothering to buy a mechanical one if it wasn't!)
FWIW, while I was researching new keyboards a couple of months back, I came across these, both of which are useful in explaining the different types of Cherry switch:-
Note that these colour codings only apply to official Cherry switches, not unofficial clones derived from their patent-expired design. For example, Razer commissioned a custom "green" switch from another manufacturer, which is apparently similar to the official Cherry MX Blue (rather than the Cherry MX Green).
Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but Model Ms- and the "clicky" style mechanism aren't the be all and end all of mechanical keyboards, and I'm sure that the endless raving about them is due to the fact that the people who *do* like them seem to be disproportionately vocal about it! As I commented a couple of months back:-
I briefly used what I realise (in retrospect) was a Model M keyboard at a job I had in the late-90s. At the time I found the fact the resistance was half way down and very obviously "click switchy" (i.e. requires relatively high amount of pressure to get through, then suddenly breaks) to be strange and unnatural. I'm no millennial membrane-weaned weenie; I'd been using computers since the 80s, most of which had mechanical keyboards back then, and while some had been mediocre, some I really liked. They all went "tap" at the bottom, unlike this weird and unsatisfactory action. I have to say that Model M did nothing for me, and I'd no desire to return to it.
When I bought a Cherry mechanical keyboard for myself, I intentionally avoided the ones with the Model M style force gradients in favour of the ones that go "tap" at the bottom.
I've said it before here, and I'll say it again- the people who like Model Ms seem to *really* like them, but I'm convinced that the majority of people who didn't grow up using that keyboard or anything like it would- at best- find it an acquired taste, and probably be happier with one of the better membrane jobs (sacrilege!) or a mechanical keyboard with a more regular action.
I also think that membrane keyboards nowadays aren't that bad. Maybe I'm just used to them, but while I've come across some truly horrible examples at the dirt-cheap end, I've also come across some that were quite pleasant to use (and oddly, were also dirt-cheap models). Still not quite as good as the best- in my judgement- mechanical keyboards, but much better than the mechanical keyboards on some 80s home computers.
Anyway, back to the Model M. Yes, it feels "expensive" and "well made" in that it's obviously mechanical, and heavy, but that doesn't make it that great to type on IMHO (any more than I'm going to deny that my membrane keyboard at work is okay, simply because it's cheap). Some people think they're really great, and that's fine, they're entitled to their opinion. However, given that the borderline fetishisation from a disproportionately vocal number of fanboys might give others the impression the Model M was the be all and end all, I'm quite happy in balancing things out by saying I don't think they were all that, to be honest.
It wasn't immediately obvious, especially as they'd been discontinuing variants and paring down the range for years prior, but it appears that the slide films they discontinued that time were *the only ones remaining*, "I’m confirming that we did send a notice to dealers today that we will be discontinuing our three slide films" (not simply "discontinuing three slide films").
Given that there's no mention of slide films on their site any more (go there and see if you can find any (*)) and no sign of new stock available through retailers, it's pretty clear that they managed something far more significant than the discontinuation of Kodachrome itself with far, *far* fewer people noticing.
Huge irony is that Fujifilm- who were much more willing to move into the digital age and thus prospered whereas Kodak didn't- still sells slide film, along with traditional colour and black-and-white negative and instant (Polaroid-style) film.
There is no Kodak. Fuck whatever is calling itself Kodak today. Kodak died with Kodachrome in 2010.
Get over yourself. Kodachrome was an important product in its day, but it was never *ever* the be-all-and-end-all of Kodak.
I'm pretty sure that latterly the print films (Gold et al) massively outsold it, and the sad truth (from an apparent Kodak insider, "Rowland Mowrey") was that by the late-80s- even before Velvia came out, and long, *long* before digital was eating into it- photographers weren't interested in Kodachrome any more:-
EK had some seriously upgraded Kodachrome films in R&D in the 80s, and sent samples to various professionals at the time. This included the HS Kodachrome with an EI of 400.
NO ONE WANTED THEM!
Read that. NO ONE WANTED THEM. EK could not sell them. They wanted Ektachrome or color negative film. So, that is what they got.
Sorry, but I was there as it happened.
Look for my name on the patent for the yellow color developing agent. It is CD6. Been there, seen it happen. [..] People stopped buying right after the introduction of some serious upgrades to the entire film line, the ones you like right now. Then, when approached with further improvements in speed and grain, with no sacrifice in color, no one was interested.
Do you think EK develops a film and abandons it with no market research? How stupid do you think they are? Back in the 80s, they sent samples to professionals to test out before formal introduction. Reaction was blase. It was "we want Ektachrome, give us more". Remember, there was no Fuji Velvia at this time. The market was Kodachrome and Ektachrome vs Vericolor. So, the market in professionals and amateurs wanted Ektachrome, current Kodachrome, Vericolor, and Gold.
There you have it.
I don't agree either, but that is a fact.
None of what I (or he) said is to say that Kodachrome was a bad film, nor that Ektachrome was better- just that people didn't want it, and by the end clearly weren't buying it in quantities sufficient to justify manufacturing it and keeping even the final lab (for *all* Kodachrome processing worldwide) open.
Anyway, I'm holding out for a Commodore smart phone!
Why? We all know by this point that such a thing would almost certainly consist of the "chickenhead" logo slapped on some otherwise generic middle-of-the-road smartphone hardware by a third-party licensor armed with a "Commodore is back!" press release (dumbly repeated by the mainstream press) and designed to exploit nostalgia as cheaply and with as little effort as possible.
They might even slap a cheap pastiche of the C64 case on the front if you're *very* lucky (cough).
As I've previously commented, the Commodore and Amiga brands and IP are a confusing mess, and many of the names have been exploited for very cheap nostalgic purposes. The same company that made the Commodore 64x- i.e. a PC in a case that at least *looked* like the computer it was meant to be "resurrecting"- also made new "Vic" all-in-one PCs that looked little to nothing like their namesake and even worse sold HTPC cases that didn't even resemble the original Amiga line under names of classic machines like Amiga 1000.
So, seriously. Commodore is long-dead, and while overpriced hardware is still sold to exploit the rabid diehards who want to run "Amiga OS" in 2014, anything likely to end up on a smartphone *will* be meaningless name whoring that has nothing to do with anything Commodore themselves did. Whoever "officially" owns the relevant fragment of the disputed rights this week means sod all.
If you want a "Commodore" smartphone, get a sticker from some guy on eBay, stick it on the phone of your choice, and it'll be as much a "Commodore" as anything produced by a licensor of a licensor of a guy who once knew the third owner of the rights to the "Commodore plus/4" brand after it was retrieved them from Gateway's dumpster in the late 1990s.
That's not Kodak, as they are dead. In their dying spasm they sold their name so it can be placed on mediocre rebadged crap.
Pretty much identical to what happened to 'Polaroid'. Every corpse has its maggots, I suppose.
While it's true that this *is* what happened to Polaroid- that is, the original company is effectively dead and liquidated (*) and the post-2001 "Polaroid" is an unrelated company that bought the name (**) and some of the assets- it technically *isn't* what happened to Kodak.
The present-day Kodak is still the same company. They went into bankruptcy protection, were forced to sell some things off, (***) and then emerged from that about 18 months ago.
That's not to say that they won't be indulging in name licensing anyway, and in this case it's unclear how much- if any- involvement Kodak themselves will have in the manufacture of this phone, or its sale.
In fact, before the bankruptcy it was clear to me that Kodak's problem was that in order to stay afloat in the short term they were being forced to sell off everything that would enable them to survive in the long term (i.e. patents and technical assets). My guess was that- at best- Kodak would survive as a massively pared down shadow of its former self, and at worst would be entirely liquidated and its name sold off to be whored out for its recognition in rebranding cheap generic electronics made by anonymous manufacturers in the Far East (a la "Polaroid").
Then again, even if the core of the "original" Kodak survives with ownership of its name intact, it's open to question how meaningful this would be if most of what made it "Kodak" had been sold off and it had to become little more than a brand-licensing operation anyway.
(**) Actually, AFAICT, the company that bought the Polaroid name (apparently quite dubious) themselves went bankrupt, so I'm not sure if the current owners are actually "Polaroid 3"(!!!) Not that it matters much. To be fair, the current owners do appear to be trying to use Polaroid's legacy more respectfully as far as cameras go (e.g. portable printers and cameras with that Lady Gaga tie-up a couple of years back), but they're still continuing the previous owner's model of licensing the name out to third-party distributors who use it to rebrand low-quality generic LCD TVs et al.
(***) I'm not entirely clear what was sold off. One report suggested (if I read it correctly) that they were going to give the film business to the UK pension fund to settle liabilities there, but from what I can tell that's not actually what happened in the end, and Kodak themselves still control the film business.
TOS was a bunch of LSD lights and kirk visiting stupid copies of earth
Hahaha.... I'm sure someone will point out that Kirk only went to a "stupid copy of earth" twice and LSD lights in space didn't feature that often... yet somehow you've managed to distill and exaggerate an already selective general perception into something that *sounds* like you hit the nail on the head.:-)
TNG a bunch of technobabble and reengineering the ship to solve the problem of the week
True... but you forgot the overuse of the holodeck, which, if you were to exaggerate it the same way you did TOS, would have every third episode involving Data dressing up as Holmes and chasing Moriarty who'd somehow overridden the safety settings.:-)
(Disclaimer: Still my favourite ST series).
never got into Voyager
Saw some of it, nowhere near as bad as some people claimed, but came across as too much like a rerun of TNG with weaker characters.
(And the TNG-style episodic "reset button" formula was more obviously contrived when there was an end goal (i.e. to get home) that had to be put back out of reach).
Er, yeah, I think we all know what you meant. You yourself understand that the guy was being a "SmartAss®" (i.e. he knew what you meant but deliberately misinterpreted it), so not sure why you bothered re-explaining the bit in bold!
In the sequel, the story will have to be much more powerful because the world is already introduced. From what I see in Wikipedia, it's not going to do it (which is not surprising, because it is by a different author).
That's a story from a series of Blade Runner books. Not the plot of Blade Runner 2, the movie.
Yeah... I suspect the film's still going to be written by a different author though. Well, unless there have been significant improvements in ouija board technology I wasn't aware of...
I will admit there are some moments on audio records that weren't effectively replicated by replacement CDs. For example, the swelling of a brass section in a jazz big band, and a dramatic piano entrance with loud, stacatto notes (I can just picture the pianists' hands repeatedly dropping 10 inches). Not at all dramatic on the CD, but maybe with today's higher bit mastering that could be improved.
Isn't this a problem with the (already mentioned) audio range compression- AKA "loudness war" where the quiet bits are made louder and hence the (already as loud as they can be) loud bits don't sound as much louder by comparison.
I noticed this with one song on a Vangelis compilation I got from a shop that- compared with the vinyl version- lacks "punch" when the expected increase in volume should come in.
Vinyl is the only consumer playback format we have that's fully analog and fully lossless
The article itself gives plenty of examples why vinyl isn't lossless, and it's easy to name a few more.
This comes across as a second-hand, simplistic interpretation of something that was a fallacy to begin with. This is a fallacy that's either explicitly or implicitly used as the (flawed) basis of arguments, even on Slashdot.
The fallacy is that because "analogue" as a *purely abstract* concept can in theory have infinite precision- as opposed to digital (which by definition has a clearly-defined level of precision)- then an analogue medium like vinyl records must inherently be able to hold more detail than a digital one like (e.g.) compact discs.
Problem is, that argument could then be applied to any analogue medium (not just vinyl), so that e.g. a cheap, worn-out audio cassette recording made on a portable recorder in the early 70s must also be inherently superior to a CD, or even to a 24-bit, 96KHz digital master(!!!)
This makes the flaw in the argument more obvious, but it's still a flaw when applied to vinyl. The problem is that we're talking about actual, real-world examples of analogue media, not the abstract concept. In real life, no analogue medium can have infinite bandwidth, so they quite obviously *do* have inherent limits of precision and quality- just not as clearly delineated as those of digital. (*)
Of course, you might argue that we could engineer our analogue media to higher standards... but similarly, we could (theoretically) engineer a higher resolution and sampling rate into digital media, so there is no inherent argument in that either way.
Furthermore, by definition, a "perfect" analogue copy would require infinite perfection in the duplication process (clearly impossible) and the ability to verify this to infinite levels of precision (ditto). So by definition *any* analogue copy will be imperfect.
This isn't to say that CD is better than vinyl, or that digital is better than analogue. Maybe vinyl *is* better... maybe not. What it *is* saying is that the "analogue is infinite and digital is limited" argument *in itself* is flawed, and not a valid basis for drawing a conclusion either way. One can make comparisons where either is the clear winner- a good quality analogue turntable setup (and LP) will quite obviously sound better than a grungy 4-bit digital sample "bit bashed" through a C64 or Atari 800 sound chip. But the aforementioned 24-bit, 96KHz digital master will blatantly knock spots off an analogue C90 cassette recorded in 1973.
(*) One may be scientifically able to calculate the meaningful upper limit of cassette bandwidth and the noise floor by (e.g.) looking at the maximum theoretical magnetisation possible, spacing of the grains, et al... both in theory and in practice. I can't tell you what those limits are, but I can be quite confident that they'll exist, and hence dictate the maximum sound quality.
Slashdot Mirror
What is not being widely reported is that Xhibit Corp sold the customer loyalty fulfillment part of the business last year for around $20 million. This was the unit that apparently generated the vast majority of the revenue and probably all the profit. Why would a firm who expected to stay solvent sell of the unit that generated most of the revenue, a unit with guaranteed sales?
It really seems like a scam to create liquidity of the profitable assets and then screw the creditors.
Hmm. Where have I heard *that* countless times before?
(Opens Wikipedia article on the company, does text search for "private equity"...)
In 2012, SkyMall was purchased by Najafi Companies, the largest private equity firm in Arizona. In January 2015 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
What a surprise.
First off, that wasn't an apology for Radio Shack's problems, nor an attempt to say that they were blameless. From what I've read (*), the company quite clearly *has* been obviously mismanaged and directionless for a long time now, and would probably have gone under on that basis.
What I'm criticising with respect to Radio Shack- or rather with the market's use of it- is a problem with derivatives in general. It's the fact that they've become detached from the business processes that they were meant to relate to (and serve), and have become the driving force in their own right, a massively overgrown tail wagging a tiny (and irrelevant) dog.
The point is that the people on either side aren't interested in Radio Shack per se, they're interested in exploiting and using insurance policies- in effect, derivatives here- taken out against Radio Shack, bundled up, passed around and abstracted away from the business itself. And, on the opposite side, the interests of the insurance company (e.g.) in insuring against a payout, in effect a derivative in itself.
Radio Shack is still "important" in the way that the ball is important in a football game.
None of this excuses Radio Shack's own failings, in fact it says nothing about that either way. What it *was* an attack on is the financial markets creating derivatives of derivatives of derivatives that are so far detached from their original purpose as to be irrelevant. Until- as in 2008- the "real life" issues (e.g. the housing market) hidden away hit the fan and cause masses more damage thanks to the multiplying effect of derivatives, or the other way around, i.e. the use of derivatives as a plaything causes damage to the real world entity.
(*) I live in the UK, where all the Tandy stores (i.e. Radio Shack) were sold off to a mobile phone retailer around 15 years ago.
No insider trading there.... It was a coincidence that the stock price tanked...
I already commented elsewhere that Tandy had become little more than the football in a game of derivatives, credit default swaps, et al.
It's clear that no-one involved on either side of that cares about the business itself, beyond it being a means to an end. Nor would they have any qualms about tanking it if they were on the side that stood to benefit from such a move. Whether this would result from what would technically be called "insider trading" is relevant only in a legal sense; it's clear that a market which operates in such a way is inherently rotten, regardless.
Another article which basically explains that Radio Shack's primary function is now ultimately as little more than the ball itself in a game of derivatives and credit default swaps that- as often happens- has veered far from any legitimate use of them, or having much to do with the company per se, and into borderline legalised gambling of the type that hit the fan in 2008.
As I said, Radio Shack is the ball in this; nominally the raison d'etre, but really just a means to an end of little importance in itself, like a £50 football being used in a game between Manchester United and Chelsea, players costing millions competing on behalf of clubs worth the better part of a billion each.
Haven't read all the linked articles through yet, but it's been mentioned in the past- and again in the articles- that one of the reasons for the explosion may have been the use of organic-based kitty litter(!) reacting badly with the materials being disposed of, and that the inorganic version should have been used.
One version I heard was that they changed the kitty litter formulation; this version suggests that they bought organic instead of inorganic kitty litter because of a typo.
Now, there's nothing wrong with using what amounts to kitty litter to do whatever it was being used for. If that does the job, fine.
But whichever of the cases described was true, a problem is that if the stuff they're buying is intended and sold as kitty litter, it's quite possible that the makers may feel at liberty to change the formulation in a way that doesn't effect its use as kitty litter, but massive alters its safety as a "nuclear waste disposal material".
If having organic matter in your kitty litter could inadvertantly turn the nuclear material into a form of radioactive explosive, then you should be damn sure that you're getting the inorganic formulation from a supplier that can guarantee that this is what you're getting. It won't be called "kitty litter" even if that's what- in effect- it is, and it'll probably cost a lot more, but the supplier will (or should be) in the s*** if they supply the wrong type, whereas are Los Alamos going to sue "Pets R Us" for causing a nuclear explosion even if they *did* inadvertantly put organic in an inorganic bag, or change the formulation with insufficient notice (or whatever)?
So this is why (e.g.) the military (for example) might pay a lot more for a given item than you or I might pay over the counter. That, and the fact that they're probably diverting the money to some dubious black ops...!
Sorry, but if that's what it's meant to mean, it's a pretty opaque and obnoxiously PR-ish choice of words. Whether or not it's come (or is coming) into common currency doesn't change the fact that it's recent enough that most people using it probably chose to do so, or did so under the influence of too much PR bullshit.
There may be a case for a short and snappy phrase intended to concisely convey the meaning you describe, but f*****g "reaching out" sure as hell aren't the words I'd have chosen to do so.
We've reached out to Netflix to verify what it's doing
Urgh... this makes me think of that famous bash.org quote. Seriously, why the **** are Engadget using this obnoxious phrase instead of simply saying "we've contacted Netflix" or something similar?
It's the current favoured stock weasel-worded pseudo-touchy-feely (but in fact, insultingly off-the-shelf) bullshit phrase corporate PR use to sound like they *suddenly* give a f*** about a pissed-off customer they're having to contact, er... "reach out to" in response to some massive PR disaster they didn't expect.
But why would a "proper" news source feel the need to use the same irritating phrase when *they're* not the putative offending party on the defensive, but rather the people investigating the problem?
Unless this is an example of the phrase "if you lie down with dogs [i.e. hang around too many PR weasels], you get up with fleas".
If someone can create an app that itself accurately determines whether any given app will terminate (or not) for any given input... I'll be more than impressed.
:-)
Other than that, I think every damn app possible has already been written.
Similarly when Apple got rid of the floppy drive [..] there were adapters available for the (very) few people who actually needed them, and in all cases despite the massive FUD being produced everything worked just fine.
Given that almost every first-generation iMac I saw had an external floppy drive attached anyway, it suggests that "the very few people who actually needed" floppy drives when Apple dropped them (circa 1998) was "just about everyone" and that Apple jumped the gun.
This is hardly surprising. The intended use of the Internet to transfer files wasn't a sufficient replacement as- back then- not everyone had Internet connectivity and those that did were mostly on dial-up. The optical drive was only a reader, presumably due to the fact that back then writers were getting cheaper but still nowhere near cheap enough to be added to all lower end models without significantly increasing the price. And USB flash drives wouldn't get "no brainer" cheap for another several years.
So, no. The much vaunted "Apple showed their foresight by ditching floppies" was a red herring if everyone needed to rush out and hang an external drive off the USB port anyway.
Even the IBM Model M keyboard switches had more resistance if memory serves correctly
I can quite believe that; from my (brief) memories of the Model M, the resistance was noticable (and disconcerting in its positioning) for me anyway.
I suspect that if- like you- one learned to type on a mechanical typewriter, the Model M will feel better and more natural. I didn't, and that's possibly why I didn't like it (and- I suspect- most people used to lighter computer keyboards probably won't like it either).
As a software developer, I have to admit I avoid mechanical keyboards like the plague, they require more force to type, they're louder (a really BAD thing when you're blazing out code), they take more time to press and debounce, and they cost ~600% more than a scissor switch keyboard (that has none of those problems if you have a typical 2mm travel vector on your keys, 200% less than most mechanical keyboards).
Speaking as someone who *does* own (and am typing this on) a mechanical keyboard, I'll still say that membrane keyboards get unfairly disparaged, and that some are very nice to type on.
Some (emphasis "some") of the cheapest models are ******* horrible, true, but the one I have at work is actually pretty good even though that itself is a cheap one.
The best membrane keyboards I've used are miles better than the worst mechanical ones. And the scissor/membrane job on my old Compaq Armada laptop had a very pleasant, low-travel feel to them.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of it's what you're used to.
I forget the brand name of my keyboard, but I sprang for a cheap one with Cherry MX Black switches.
The mechanical keyboard I bought almost ten years ago has Cherry MX Black switches apparently. It's certainly lasted, but although I'm still using it to type this message on, I've always felt that the spring resistance was just a *little* too stiff to be truly pleasurable to touch-type on. (Something I've since read elsewhere).
The Cherry MX Red has the same "linear" key action I bought the Black-based keyboard for, but with less resistance, and having used a Red-based keyboard, it's closer to what I had in mind when I bought the Black one (mail order). Mind you, the Red switches apparently weren't around back then anyway.
Cherry MX Reds are supposedly too sensitive for touch-typing, and intended for gaming keyboards, but I (as a non-gamer) am still considering buying one.
Of course, all the above is a matter of personal preference; if possible, you should always try out a mechanical keyboard- or at least one based on the same technology- if the feel of it is important. (And you probably wouldn't be bothering to buy a mechanical one if it wasn't!)
FWIW, while I was researching new keyboards a couple of months back, I came across these, both of which are useful in explaining the different types of Cherry switch:-
An introduction to Cherry MX mechanical switches
Cherry MX overview
Note that these colour codings only apply to official Cherry switches, not unofficial clones derived from their patent-expired design. For example, Razer commissioned a custom "green" switch from another manufacturer, which is apparently similar to the official Cherry MX Blue (rather than the Cherry MX Green).
I briefly used what I realise (in retrospect) was a Model M keyboard at a job I had in the late-90s. At the time I found the fact the resistance was half way down and very obviously "click switchy" (i.e. requires relatively high amount of pressure to get through, then suddenly breaks) to be strange and unnatural. I'm no millennial membrane-weaned weenie; I'd been using computers since the 80s, most of which had mechanical keyboards back then, and while some had been mediocre, some I really liked. They all went "tap" at the bottom, unlike this weird and unsatisfactory action. I have to say that Model M did nothing for me, and I'd no desire to return to it.
When I bought a Cherry mechanical keyboard for myself, I intentionally avoided the ones with the Model M style force gradients in favour of the ones that go "tap" at the bottom.
I've said it before here, and I'll say it again- the people who like Model Ms seem to *really* like them, but I'm convinced that the majority of people who didn't grow up using that keyboard or anything like it would- at best- find it an acquired taste, and probably be happier with one of the better membrane jobs (sacrilege!) or a mechanical keyboard with a more regular action.
I also think that membrane keyboards nowadays aren't that bad. Maybe I'm just used to them, but while I've come across some truly horrible examples at the dirt-cheap end, I've also come across some that were quite pleasant to use (and oddly, were also dirt-cheap models). Still not quite as good as the best- in my judgement- mechanical keyboards, but much better than the mechanical keyboards on some 80s home computers.
Anyway, back to the Model M. Yes, it feels "expensive" and "well made" in that it's obviously mechanical, and heavy, but that doesn't make it that great to type on IMHO (any more than I'm going to deny that my membrane keyboard at work is okay, simply because it's cheap). Some people think they're really great, and that's fine, they're entitled to their opinion. However, given that the borderline fetishisation from a disproportionately vocal number of fanboys might give others the impression the Model M was the be all and end all, I'm quite happy in balancing things out by saying I don't think they were all that, to be honest.
Addendum; More seriously, Kodak appears to have quietly discontinued *all* its slide films around three years ago:-
http://www.thephoblographer.co...
It wasn't immediately obvious, especially as they'd been discontinuing variants and paring down the range for years prior, but it appears that the slide films they discontinued that time were *the only ones remaining*, "I’m confirming that we did send a notice to dealers today that we will be discontinuing our three slide films" (not simply "discontinuing three slide films").
Given that there's no mention of slide films on their site any more (go there and see if you can find any (*)) and no sign of new stock available through retailers, it's pretty clear that they managed something far more significant than the discontinuation of Kodachrome itself with far, *far* fewer people noticing.
Huge irony is that Fujifilm- who were much more willing to move into the digital age and thus prospered whereas Kodak didn't- still sells slide film, along with traditional colour and black-and-white negative and instant (Polaroid-style) film.
(*) Colour and black-and-white negative films listed, but no transparency:- http://wwwuk.kodak.com/global/...
There is no Kodak. Fuck whatever is calling itself Kodak today. Kodak died with Kodachrome in 2010.
Get over yourself. Kodachrome was an important product in its day, but it was never *ever* the be-all-and-end-all of Kodak.
I'm pretty sure that latterly the print films (Gold et al) massively outsold it, and the sad truth (from an apparent Kodak insider, "Rowland Mowrey") was that by the late-80s- even before Velvia came out, and long, *long* before digital was eating into it- photographers weren't interested in Kodachrome any more:-
EK had some seriously upgraded Kodachrome films in R&D in the 80s, and sent samples to various professionals at the time. This included the HS Kodachrome with an EI of 400.
NO ONE WANTED THEM!
Read that. NO ONE WANTED THEM. EK could not sell them. They wanted Ektachrome or color negative film. So, that is what they got.
Sorry, but I was there as it happened.
Look for my name on the patent for the yellow color developing agent. It is CD6. Been there, seen it happen. [..] People stopped buying right after the introduction of some serious upgrades to the entire film line, the ones you like right now. Then, when approached with further improvements in speed and grain, with no sacrifice in color, no one was interested.
Do you think EK develops a film and abandons it with no market research? How stupid do you think they are? Back in the 80s, they sent samples to professionals to test out before formal introduction. Reaction was blase. It was "we want Ektachrome, give us more". Remember, there was no Fuji Velvia at this time. The market was Kodachrome and Ektachrome vs Vericolor. So, the market in professionals and amateurs wanted Ektachrome, current Kodachrome, Vericolor, and Gold.
There you have it.
I don't agree either, but that is a fact.
None of what I (or he) said is to say that Kodachrome was a bad film, nor that Ektachrome was better- just that people didn't want it, and by the end clearly weren't buying it in quantities sufficient to justify manufacturing it and keeping even the final lab (for *all* Kodachrome processing worldwide) open.
Anyway, I'm holding out for a Commodore smart phone!
Why? We all know by this point that such a thing would almost certainly consist of the "chickenhead" logo slapped on some otherwise generic middle-of-the-road smartphone hardware by a third-party licensor armed with a "Commodore is back!" press release (dumbly repeated by the mainstream press) and designed to exploit nostalgia as cheaply and with as little effort as possible.
They might even slap a cheap pastiche of the C64 case on the front if you're *very* lucky (cough).
As I've previously commented, the Commodore and Amiga brands and IP are a confusing mess, and many of the names have been exploited for very cheap nostalgic purposes. The same company that made the Commodore 64x- i.e. a PC in a case that at least *looked* like the computer it was meant to be "resurrecting"- also made new "Vic" all-in-one PCs that looked little to nothing like their namesake and even worse sold HTPC cases that didn't even resemble the original Amiga line under names of classic machines like Amiga 1000.
So, seriously. Commodore is long-dead, and while overpriced hardware is still sold to exploit the rabid diehards who want to run "Amiga OS" in 2014, anything likely to end up on a smartphone *will* be meaningless name whoring that has nothing to do with anything Commodore themselves did. Whoever "officially" owns the relevant fragment of the disputed rights this week means sod all.
If you want a "Commodore" smartphone, get a sticker from some guy on eBay, stick it on the phone of your choice, and it'll be as much a "Commodore" as anything produced by a licensor of a licensor of a guy who once knew the third owner of the rights to the "Commodore plus/4" brand after it was retrieved them from Gateway's dumpster in the late 1990s.
That's not Kodak, as they are dead. In their dying spasm they sold their name so it can be placed on mediocre rebadged crap.
Pretty much identical to what happened to 'Polaroid'. Every corpse has its maggots, I suppose.
While it's true that this *is* what happened to Polaroid- that is, the original company is effectively dead and liquidated (*) and the post-2001 "Polaroid" is an unrelated company that bought the name (**) and some of the assets- it technically *isn't* what happened to Kodak.
The present-day Kodak is still the same company. They went into bankruptcy protection, were forced to sell some things off, (***) and then emerged from that about 18 months ago.
That's not to say that they won't be indulging in name licensing anyway, and in this case it's unclear how much- if any- involvement Kodak themselves will have in the manufacture of this phone, or its sale.
In fact, before the bankruptcy it was clear to me that Kodak's problem was that in order to stay afloat in the short term they were being forced to sell off everything that would enable them to survive in the long term (i.e. patents and technical assets). My guess was that- at best- Kodak would survive as a massively pared down shadow of its former self, and at worst would be entirely liquidated and its name sold off to be whored out for its recognition in rebranding cheap generic electronics made by anonymous manufacturers in the Far East (a la "Polaroid").
Then again, even if the core of the "original" Kodak survives with ownership of its name intact, it's open to question how meaningful this would be if most of what made it "Kodak" had been sold off and it had to become little more than a brand-licensing operation anyway.
(*) As far as I can tell, the original Polaroid still "exists", but only as a dormant (and renamed) legal entity that conducts no business and I'm assuming is kept on life support for purely legal reasons related to liabilities after the bankruptcy.
(**) Actually, AFAICT, the company that bought the Polaroid name (apparently quite dubious) themselves went bankrupt, so I'm not sure if the current owners are actually "Polaroid 3"(!!!) Not that it matters much. To be fair, the current owners do appear to be trying to use Polaroid's legacy more respectfully as far as cameras go (e.g. portable printers and cameras with that Lady Gaga tie-up a couple of years back), but they're still continuing the previous owner's model of licensing the name out to third-party distributors who use it to rebrand low-quality generic LCD TVs et al.
(***) I'm not entirely clear what was sold off. One report suggested (if I read it correctly) that they were going to give the film business to the UK pension fund to settle liabilities there, but from what I can tell that's not actually what happened in the end, and Kodak themselves still control the film business.
Speaking of "location", Beverley Hills 90210?! The guy's obviously a sell-out that betrayed his geek roots.
I'd have expected him to move to Lebanon, Missouri. Or- at a push- Plymouth, Florida.
TOS was a bunch of LSD lights and kirk visiting stupid copies of earth
Hahaha.... I'm sure someone will point out that Kirk only went to a "stupid copy of earth" twice and LSD lights in space didn't feature that often... yet somehow you've managed to distill and exaggerate an already selective general perception into something that *sounds* like you hit the nail on the head. :-)
TNG a bunch of technobabble and reengineering the ship to solve the problem of the week
True... but you forgot the overuse of the holodeck, which, if you were to exaggerate it the same way you did TOS, would have every third episode involving Data dressing up as Holmes and chasing Moriarty who'd somehow overridden the safety settings. :-)
(Disclaimer: Still my favourite ST series).
never got into Voyager
Saw some of it, nowhere near as bad as some people claimed, but came across as too much like a rerun of TNG with weaker characters.
(And the TNG-style episodic "reset button" formula was more obviously contrived when there was an end goal (i.e. to get home) that had to be put back out of reach).
Listen here SmartAss®, It is for...
Er, yeah, I think we all know what you meant. You yourself understand that the guy was being a "SmartAss®" (i.e. he knew what you meant but deliberately misinterpreted it), so not sure why you bothered re-explaining the bit in bold!
That's no way to talk about Linus, even if he did leave his door unlocked!
Stephanie is fat or homeley
Dear Coward, you fail at google.
Maybe he really *did* find out what she looks like, but considers her way below *his* standards...
In the sequel, the story will have to be much more powerful because the world is already introduced. From what I see in Wikipedia, it's not going to do it (which is not surprising, because it is by a different author).
That's a story from a series of Blade Runner books. Not the plot of Blade Runner 2, the movie.
Yeah... I suspect the film's still going to be written by a different author though. Well, unless there have been significant improvements in ouija board technology I wasn't aware of...
I will admit there are some moments on audio records that weren't effectively replicated by replacement CDs. For example, the swelling of a brass section in a jazz big band, and a dramatic piano entrance with loud, stacatto notes (I can just picture the pianists' hands repeatedly dropping 10 inches). Not at all dramatic on the CD, but maybe with today's higher bit mastering that could be improved.
Isn't this a problem with the (already mentioned) audio range compression- AKA "loudness war" where the quiet bits are made louder and hence the (already as loud as they can be) loud bits don't sound as much louder by comparison.
I noticed this with one song on a Vangelis compilation I got from a shop that- compared with the vinyl version- lacks "punch" when the expected increase in volume should come in.
Vinyl is the only consumer playback format we have that's fully analog and fully lossless
The article itself gives plenty of examples why vinyl isn't lossless, and it's easy to name a few more.
This comes across as a second-hand, simplistic interpretation of something that was a fallacy to begin with. This is a fallacy that's either explicitly or implicitly used as the (flawed) basis of arguments, even on Slashdot.
The fallacy is that because "analogue" as a *purely abstract* concept can in theory have infinite precision- as opposed to digital (which by definition has a clearly-defined level of precision)- then an analogue medium like vinyl records must inherently be able to hold more detail than a digital one like (e.g.) compact discs.
Problem is, that argument could then be applied to any analogue medium (not just vinyl), so that e.g. a cheap, worn-out audio cassette recording made on a portable recorder in the early 70s must also be inherently superior to a CD, or even to a 24-bit, 96KHz digital master(!!!)
This makes the flaw in the argument more obvious, but it's still a flaw when applied to vinyl. The problem is that we're talking about actual, real-world examples of analogue media, not the abstract concept. In real life, no analogue medium can have infinite bandwidth, so they quite obviously *do* have inherent limits of precision and quality- just not as clearly delineated as those of digital. (*)
Of course, you might argue that we could engineer our analogue media to higher standards... but similarly, we could (theoretically) engineer a higher resolution and sampling rate into digital media, so there is no inherent argument in that either way.
Furthermore, by definition, a "perfect" analogue copy would require infinite perfection in the duplication process (clearly impossible) and the ability to verify this to infinite levels of precision (ditto). So by definition *any* analogue copy will be imperfect.
This isn't to say that CD is better than vinyl, or that digital is better than analogue. Maybe vinyl *is* better... maybe not. What it *is* saying is that the "analogue is infinite and digital is limited" argument *in itself* is flawed, and not a valid basis for drawing a conclusion either way. One can make comparisons where either is the clear winner- a good quality analogue turntable setup (and LP) will quite obviously sound better than a grungy 4-bit digital sample "bit bashed" through a C64 or Atari 800 sound chip. But the aforementioned 24-bit, 96KHz digital master will blatantly knock spots off an analogue C90 cassette recorded in 1973.
(*) One may be scientifically able to calculate the meaningful upper limit of cassette bandwidth and the noise floor by (e.g.) looking at the maximum theoretical magnetisation possible, spacing of the grains, et al... both in theory and in practice. I can't tell you what those limits are, but I can be quite confident that they'll exist, and hence dictate the maximum sound quality.