SDL? Sound is a PITA in linux, but much of that is because some stuff was made with Alsa in mind, others with Pulse, etc. If Valve picks one or sets it up properly to allow user-choice, it shouldn't be so much of an issue.
Ditto. HDMI audio works like a charm in ALSA. I did have to choose the right HDMI channel for my surround type, but that was it. Pulse... well I never did get more than stereo to work and it came out rather screechy.
I also had a lot of issues with Pulse and Wine, particularly with microphones and input devices. ALSA worked fine.
Pulse used to be good if you needed to mix multiple input sources without having one monopolize your sound device, but ALSA hasn't had issues with that in years on any device I've used. Pulse may still be useful for some bluetooth or distributed-audio stuff, but for most people it seems to be just excess baggage.
I believe Cedega died because Wine was beating it out in terms of maturity/compatibility. Near the end, many games worked fine on Wine but still had issues in Cedega, so all it had going was a GUI. DRM used to be an issue with Wine but most of the games I have that used to have DRM issues work fine now.
And lack of latitude in the ios version of Google Maps was a PITA. Most times I have it off, but when I'm taking a long trip, I like to share my location with the wife etc in case I run into trouble on the road. It didn't work between my Android and her iphone, but at least she could view my location on Google Maps if she wanted.
My step-father is a trucker and we wanted to setup something similar for him, as often it's a worry if he's driving on bad winter roads. It also helps to estimate if he's going to hit home in time for dinner. It doesn't work for his iPhone either. Annoying.
"First, the local vegetable market is dominated by Malaysian and Chinese import"
Dude, I live in Canada and it's becoming much the same here. Lettuce/tomatoes/potatoes are local, oranges come from California, and other stuff varies, but if you want garlic, ginger, and many other such things you'll have to shop around for some place that sells more domestic product. I found one grocer that sells some nice made-in-Canada Russian Red Garlic. It costs more, but is tastier than the cheap stuff at most stores (kinda spicy), and I don't have to worry as much about it being grown in land full of heavy metals etc.
So just out of curiosity, what would happen if Moto entered into a cross-licensing deal with Apple, trading wireless patents for design patents etc. Then one side's patents are declared invalid (I'd bet on design patents for this).
Do the terms of the licensing fall apart at that point and need to be re-negotiated, or does one party get screwed in terms of offering their patents in turn for something the other party doesn't own anymore?
Yes, this is a tech site filled with nerds. However, it's also a tech site filled with schills, astroturfers, and trolls. I - as do many people - actually come here for the commentary more than the articles, but don't assume that it's unbiased by any stretch of the imagination.
Just to add in. Not all religious employers are that way. I had a boss who was apparently very religious. He was very good however at keeping his personal beliefs separate from his workplace jobs, and was tolerant of others in general.
If they're just checking for facebook updates etc instead of having conversation, then it's somewhat rude.
However, if they're waiting for an update on something important, then not quite as much. Prior to cellular phones, if you were wanted to be sure you got an important call (medical issue, repairman, whatever), you had to hang around the house and not go out. That meant you have to either chance missing the call or not go out at all.
Cellular phones do spawn new social situations, but they're not all bad. What pisses off my family is when that they can no longer come up with as much unchallenged B.S. as before. Before everyone used to take them at face value, but nowadays a quick check of google/wikipedia/etc often disputes some of the less-than-honest stories/concepts.
Depends on the mistake, and whether you're caught lying about it or find you made an "honest error" and come clean about it.
There are often gov't programs to "come clean" youself and pay taxes owing before the tax-man catches you himself. Granted many of these cropped up when people were getting outed for hidden swiss accounts etc.
I'm disappointed at Hyundai for doing this, because they really didn't have to.
As somebody who doesn't yet own a Hyundai though, I'm happy. Likely this could translate to lower sales in the next while, prompting lowered price (which is good for anyone still considering buying a Hyundai that already knew factory mileage statistics are crap in general).
Being that XBox is the only console that requires an additional paid subscription (XBox live) to use Netflix etc, I'd say you're better off with one of the other consoles anyways.
Actually, there are. Google wallet is one example. Unfortunately, paypal is the de-facto (often only, and required) payment provider for eBay. How they've avoided anti-trust on this I'm not user (or a class-action for that matter, considering that ebay's shown exchange-rate differs greatly from what paypal actually ends up with).
None of that will help you much if your credit-card # has been lifted from Paypal, which is unfortunate as credit-card was the safest way to deal with them (the horror stories of those with direct-linked bank accounts are numerous)
You know, if Armageddon or the Zombie Apocalypse come to be, Americans are so very screwed.
[cue video of slightly overweight and under-fit dude puffing and running from a shambling zombie hoard] He's just about to escape when he passes by a dessicated corpse with an iPad clutched in its hands. "oooo" iPad mini As he reaches for the mini, the corpse reaches up and grabs his arm, holding him in place as the shamblers catch up and have a nice meaty snack.
The problem for many would be compensation. I'd be happy to be on a jury if I could be financially compensated in a way that adequately covers my absence from work. A few days I could handle, but if I somehow got stuck on a "big case" that ran for months it would be a significant financial hardship.
Doing your civic duty is a good thing, but doing so and not being able to pay your bills isn't so much. It's not good for those on the jury, and it's not good for the accused as a bunch of disgruntled and financially hurting jurors are more likely to make snap decisions based on their desire to get out of the box.
they don’t want to say how they have arrived at those numbers, only to say that Canada is a big country, and it costs a lot to provide infrastructure.
It does cost to provide infrastructure, however the biggest tend to provide the poorest service. Bell is notorious for "accidentally" over-billing and messing up on contracted service plans for cellular. For internet service, when I lived in Toronto (biggest city in Canada), their internet/phone infrastructure seemed the worst. In one's connection wasn't oversubscribed, then it was on a DSL line that was run several KM farther from the CO than it should be, resulting in miserable speeds or terrible packet-loss (or both).
In the west, Shaw is smaller but tends to fairly consistently deliver decent speeds and reliable service. I emailed them when their phone service started to get really bad (>1h wait time or no call-back until a day or two later). Their level-2+ guy were great but getting a a call to level-1 to start things off was nie impossible. A few later I got a call back from a manager letter me know that they had gotten a lot of feedback were hiring a new call-centre of support people. After that, support's good again. I wouldn't call them *small* (they span several provinces), but they're smaller than Telus, Bell, or Rogers.
I've dealt with smaller companies than Shaw, but they tend to go through one of the bigger guys (Bell or Telus generally), and while customer-service is good, the technical service is often hampered by dealing with a third-party.
IMHO, the big-boys offer terrible service and value for the price. Infrastructure is terrible even in large centres, so it's not just an issue of bad service somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. The bigger the get, the more invincible they feel, and the more the customer loses out.
At the time I was phone shopping last year, there were no keyboard-phones that had specs near the GS2. The evo3d came out awhile later but 3d on a phone isn't really a killer feature. The GS2 is reliable, and hackable. Without competitors offering something to differentiate, I went with Samsung.
HAD HTC offered a competitively powerful phone with extra functionality (like a keyboard), I would have gone for that. Hopefully they'll pull through and survive to the next lineup. I'd still like to see a keyboard phone for the next gen.
A lot of people end up with multiple consoles, as not all games are available on all consoles. However, for many there's usually a limit to where you'll go. I don't know many people who have a 360, wii, and PS3. Most people I know have only one or two of the those. In the end, it's a combination of features and games that drive a console. Nintendo makes a lot of fun games, but they tend to lose out on a lot of the bigger titles because of underpowered consoles. It's not that the games require high-end graphics to be fun. Nintendo has demonstrated they don't. However, many of the AAA titles *do* require powerful consoles to run.
Skyrim? Mass effect? Battlefield 3. Not on Wii. If you want to play those, you need a Wii+PS3/Xbox/PC.
However, it appears that they are coming out for the "Wii U." Hopefully it will play the coming-generation of games as well (and one must admit that those could have a lot of potential with a wii-mote type controller).
Nintendo makes a good console and good games. What they lack is third-party titles. A higher-powered console will hopefully close that gap. I bought my wii on sale about a year ago because - as much as I like Zelda and Metroid - a lot of the other games just weren't available.
If I can buy just one next-gen rig that plays all the games I want, and the wii-U does that and values to the experience (either with touchpad or wiimote), then it's actually a pretty easy sell for me.
it suspended production Tuesday to promote 'healthy development' of rare earths prices
If you want to promote "healthy development" of prices, raise the prices. If you go too high, you'll know when people stop buying from you or start developing relationships with a third-party. Perhaps this will promote some laws/rules around this sort of behavior. It's similar to cartel or price-fixing behavior when you've got a cornered market like this.
However, it's not like this is the only market where this happens. While the petroleum market is a bit more diverse, supplies are still choked in order to drive up prices etc.
It's fine to *know* you're better at something than others. It's good to use your skills to improve things for the group-at-large/company. It may even be OK to bring up your credentials if you are actively challenged on a technical decision etc by somebody less experienced.
It's *not* cool to smugly hold a sense of superiority over others in everyday situations. You are *NOT* better than people around you. You may be better at some things, or be more skilled, but judging from your post I'd say that social skills aren't among the things that you excel at.
Slashdot Mirror
Manual labor/processes do to a good extent though. More people to vote, more people to count.
SDL?
Sound is a PITA in linux, but much of that is because some stuff was made with Alsa in mind, others with Pulse, etc. If Valve picks one or sets it up properly to allow user-choice, it shouldn't be so much of an issue.
Ditto.
HDMI audio works like a charm in ALSA. I did have to choose the right HDMI channel for my surround type, but that was it.
Pulse... well I never did get more than stereo to work and it came out rather screechy.
I also had a lot of issues with Pulse and Wine, particularly with microphones and input devices. ALSA worked fine.
Pulse used to be good if you needed to mix multiple input sources without having one monopolize your sound device, but ALSA hasn't had issues with that in years on any device I've used. Pulse may still be useful for some bluetooth or distributed-audio stuff, but for most people it seems to be just excess baggage.
Right. Because a windows update or AV update never nuked a machine, and IOS never broke anything on an update. It never happens with OSX either
I believe Cedega died because Wine was beating it out in terms of maturity/compatibility. Near the end, many games worked fine on Wine but still had issues in Cedega, so all it had going was a GUI.
DRM used to be an issue with Wine but most of the games I have that used to have DRM issues work fine now.
And lack of latitude in the ios version of Google Maps was a PITA. Most times I have it off, but when I'm taking a long trip, I like to share my location with the wife etc in case I run into trouble on the road. It didn't work between my Android and her iphone, but at least she could view my location on Google Maps if she wanted.
My step-father is a trucker and we wanted to setup something similar for him, as often it's a worry if he's driving on bad winter roads. It also helps to estimate if he's going to hit home in time for dinner. It doesn't work for his iPhone either. Annoying.
"First, the local vegetable market is dominated by Malaysian and Chinese import"
Dude, I live in Canada and it's becoming much the same here.
Lettuce/tomatoes/potatoes are local, oranges come from California, and other stuff varies, but if you want garlic, ginger, and many other such things you'll have to shop around for some place that sells more domestic product. I found one grocer that sells some nice made-in-Canada Russian Red Garlic. It costs more, but is tastier than the cheap stuff at most stores (kinda spicy), and I don't have to worry as much about it being grown in land full of heavy metals etc.
So just out of curiosity, what would happen if Moto entered into a cross-licensing deal with Apple, trading wireless patents for design patents etc. Then one side's patents are declared invalid (I'd bet on design patents for this).
Do the terms of the licensing fall apart at that point and need to be re-negotiated, or does one party get screwed in terms of offering their patents in turn for something the other party doesn't own anymore?
Yes, this is a tech site filled with nerds. However, it's also a tech site filled with schills, astroturfers, and trolls.
I - as do many people - actually come here for the commentary more than the articles, but don't assume that it's unbiased by any stretch of the imagination.
Just to add in. Not all religious employers are that way.
I had a boss who was apparently very religious. He was very good however at keeping his personal beliefs separate from his workplace jobs, and was tolerant of others in general.
If they're just checking for facebook updates etc instead of having conversation, then it's somewhat rude.
However, if they're waiting for an update on something important, then not quite as much.
Prior to cellular phones, if you were wanted to be sure you got an important call (medical issue, repairman, whatever), you had to hang around the house and not go out. That meant you have to either chance missing the call or not go out at all.
Cellular phones do spawn new social situations, but they're not all bad.
What pisses off my family is when that they can no longer come up with as much unchallenged B.S. as before. Before everyone used to take them at face value, but nowadays a quick check of google/wikipedia/etc often disputes some of the less-than-honest stories/concepts.
Depends on the mistake, and whether you're caught lying about it or find you made an "honest error" and come clean about it.
There are often gov't programs to "come clean" youself and pay taxes owing before the tax-man catches you himself. Granted many of these cropped up when people were getting outed for hidden swiss accounts etc.
I'm disappointed at Hyundai for doing this, because they really didn't have to.
As somebody who doesn't yet own a Hyundai though, I'm happy. Likely this could translate to lower sales in the next while, prompting lowered price (which is good for anyone still considering buying a Hyundai that already knew factory mileage statistics are crap in general).
Being that XBox is the only console that requires an additional paid subscription (XBox live) to use Netflix etc, I'd say you're better off with one of the other consoles anyways.
But then there are no alternatives to PayPal
Actually, there are. Google wallet is one example.
Unfortunately, paypal is the de-facto (often only, and required) payment provider for eBay. How they've avoided anti-trust on this I'm not user (or a class-action for that matter, considering that ebay's shown exchange-rate differs greatly from what paypal actually ends up with).
None of that will help you much if your credit-card # has been lifted from Paypal, which is unfortunate as credit-card was the safest way to deal with them (the horror stories of those with direct-linked bank accounts are numerous)
You know, if Armageddon or the Zombie Apocalypse come to be, Americans are so very screwed.
[cue video of slightly overweight and under-fit dude puffing and running from a shambling zombie hoard]
He's just about to escape when he passes by a dessicated corpse with an iPad clutched in its hands.
"oooo" iPad mini
As he reaches for the mini, the corpse reaches up and grabs his arm, holding him in place as the shamblers catch up and have a nice meaty snack.
The problem for many would be compensation. I'd be happy to be on a jury if I could be financially compensated in a way that adequately covers my absence from work. A few days I could handle, but if I somehow got stuck on a "big case" that ran for months it would be a significant financial hardship.
Doing your civic duty is a good thing, but doing so and not being able to pay your bills isn't so much. It's not good for those on the jury, and it's not good for the accused as a bunch of disgruntled and financially hurting jurors are more likely to make snap decisions based on their desire to get out of the box.
Hmmm....
Possibility of skipping the lineup VS possibility of a body cavity search+no-fly-list+incarceration.
Yeaaahhh. I don't think playing with your boarding pass is a very good idea in this case.
they don’t want to say how they have arrived at those numbers, only to say that Canada is a big country, and it costs a lot to provide infrastructure.
It does cost to provide infrastructure, however the biggest tend to provide the poorest service. Bell is notorious for "accidentally" over-billing and messing up on contracted service plans for cellular. For internet service, when I lived in Toronto (biggest city in Canada), their internet/phone infrastructure seemed the worst. In one's connection wasn't oversubscribed, then it was on a DSL line that was run several KM farther from the CO than it should be, resulting in miserable speeds or terrible packet-loss (or both).
In the west, Shaw is smaller but tends to fairly consistently deliver decent speeds and reliable service. I emailed them when their phone service started to get really bad (>1h wait time or no call-back until a day or two later). Their level-2+ guy were great but getting a a call to level-1 to start things off was nie impossible. A few later I got a call back from a manager letter me know that they had gotten a lot of feedback were hiring a new call-centre of support people. After that, support's good again. I wouldn't call them *small* (they span several provinces), but they're smaller than Telus, Bell, or Rogers.
I've dealt with smaller companies than Shaw, but they tend to go through one of the bigger guys (Bell or Telus generally), and while customer-service is good, the technical service is often hampered by dealing with a third-party.
IMHO, the big-boys offer terrible service and value for the price. Infrastructure is terrible even in large centres, so it's not just an issue of bad service somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. The bigger the get, the more invincible they feel, and the more the customer loses out.
At the time I was phone shopping last year, there were no keyboard-phones that had specs near the GS2. The evo3d came out awhile later but 3d on a phone isn't really a killer feature.
The GS2 is reliable, and hackable. Without competitors offering something to differentiate, I went with Samsung.
HAD HTC offered a competitively powerful phone with extra functionality (like a keyboard), I would have gone for that.
Hopefully they'll pull through and survive to the next lineup. I'd still like to see a keyboard phone for the next gen.
A lot of people end up with multiple consoles, as not all games are available on all consoles. However, for many there's usually a limit to where you'll go. I don't know many people who have a 360, wii, and PS3. Most people I know have only one or two of the those.
In the end, it's a combination of features and games that drive a console.
Nintendo makes a lot of fun games, but they tend to lose out on a lot of the bigger titles because of underpowered consoles. It's not that the games require high-end graphics to be fun. Nintendo has demonstrated they don't. However, many of the AAA titles *do* require powerful consoles to run.
Skyrim? Mass effect? Battlefield 3. Not on Wii. If you want to play those, you need a Wii+PS3/Xbox/PC.
However, it appears that they are coming out for the "Wii U." Hopefully it will play the coming-generation of games as well (and one must admit that those could have a lot of potential with a wii-mote type controller).
Nintendo makes a good console and good games. What they lack is third-party titles. A higher-powered console will hopefully close that gap. I bought my wii on sale about a year ago because - as much as I like Zelda and Metroid - a lot of the other games just weren't available.
If I can buy just one next-gen rig that plays all the games I want, and the wii-U does that and values to the experience (either with touchpad or wiimote), then it's actually a pretty easy sell for me.
They systematically reinforce their dominance in search and search advertising
A.K.A. They make their product easier to use and better, and that's bad because MS and Apple don't like it!
it suspended production Tuesday to promote 'healthy development' of rare earths prices
If you want to promote "healthy development" of prices, raise the prices. If you go too high, you'll know when people stop buying from you or start developing relationships with a third-party.
Perhaps this will promote some laws/rules around this sort of behavior. It's similar to cartel or price-fixing behavior when you've got a cornered market like this.
However, it's not like this is the only market where this happens. While the petroleum market is a bit more diverse, supplies are still choked in order to drive up prices etc.
It's fine to *know* you're better at something than others. It's good to use your skills to improve things for the group-at-large/company.
It may even be OK to bring up your credentials if you are actively challenged on a technical decision etc by somebody less experienced.
It's *not* cool to smugly hold a sense of superiority over others in everyday situations. You are *NOT* better than people around you. You may be better at some things, or be more skilled, but judging from your post I'd say that social skills aren't among the things that you excel at.