One of the big issues in IT departments is that many people want to use their "personal phone X" as their work phone. I can somewhat understand this, as having two phones on my own belt-holster is quite irritating.
The big issue becomes, when a company's important data may be linked to the phone, who manages/owns the phone. If you have a corporate blackberry and an employee is terminated or loses the phone, you can wipe the phone via BES etc. It that phone is not necessarily a corporate phone, then you're going to have a pretty ticked off user (and possibly a lawsuit) if you wipe his/her personal stuff along with the phone. Also, what if the user jailbreaks the phone, etc
If personal/corporate space are separate, then your work space can be safely wipe the work VM. Similarly, an individual VM may have an entirely different privacy/security setting, jailbroken personal VM (and unbroken work VM) etc etc
My main concern would be performance. VM's nowadays are pretty efficient, but phones run on batteries and any overhead isn't cutting into what's already a fairly thin line.
I'm in Canada. When I order a package from the US, using USPS (stateside) + Canada Post (past the border) is the only option that doesn't randomly screw me with things like "brokerage fees" that often hit half or more the value of the package itself.
The private carriers seem to *love* brokerage fees, which allow them to hold packages hostage for fees way beyond the sending postage after crossing the border. It's always fun to get a bill for $10-15 duties/taxes and an additional $25-40 in "brokerage"
Many of the places I knew that were still running Cobol (or some other medieval software+hardware combo) were doing so for money-related reasons. Not necessarily because they were cheap but rather:
a) Critical systems that couldn't be offlined required them. Any downtime quickly ended up in 6-7 digit figures b) There was nothing to replace it with that existed c) Nobody know the inner workings of the system well enough to come up with a replacement any time soon d) Testing or implementing (b) or (c) often ran into (a)
I removed a former co-worker from my friends list because some of the (Christian offshoot) religious groups he was part of were ending up in my feed regularly as he "liked" them etc.
The straw that broke the camel's back was a call to ban/boycott immunization because they believed vaccines were made from (or made from testing with) aborted baby fetuses.
There are also cheaper android tablets that have capacitive touch screens along with decent processors and memory. The main issue is that you have to find a decent Chinese seller online and buy direct. Prices are around $200, give or take a bit.
Similar tablets exist in local B&M, but at about 2-3x the price.
Bosses (and I think regular enemies) also got harder if your characters were at higher levels. So facing off against a big cactuar would still be challenging if you were at level 50 vs level 30.
I really did quite enjoy the battle system of FF12 though. Yes, it wasn't the same "choose command, wait for turn, choose command" style, but being able to predefine actions for classes of enemies also made repetitive encounters less annoying. Unfortunately the story never really made it anywhere compared to some other FF's (not as bad as FF13 though).
If I ended up with something that was at least 95% good gaming experience, as opposed to 40-50% game, 50-60% grind, and 10% unskippable-introduction-to-how-to-play type crap.
One of me fond memories of some of the better RPG's was that there were lost of truly *optional* side-quests (that weren't DLC). The quests themselves added nice details to the story, but weren't necessary for completion (though they did make the bosses easier). They tended to involve a little grind but the story addition was nice.
This is as opposed to Mass Effect's (and especially ME2) mineral scavenging (otherwise it's a good game, but could use more actual storyline content that's not DLC), Final Fantasy's (recent games) lame leveling and "not useful in game/plot but looks pretty" item gathering, etc.
One of the last good games I played that seemed to capture this fairly well was "Lost Odyssey". Some of the more grindy parts weren't actually necessary unless you wanted to collect some powerful spells/items/weapons, but you could complete the game without those items well enough. I think that LO had some of the old FF devs on the team though. I don't suppose anyone else knows of games from that team, or of similar quality...
There's a video on steam that you can view. It looked good enough to me, but how it actually pans out on your home system may be subject to change/hardware.
For all my complaints about goings-on at former jobs, the most I can recall doing is grousing about it with colleagues etc. Why burn bridges? Even in jobs where I've left because of frustration with the business, I'd not publicly badmouth the company or sabotage their infrastructure. In some cases I've had to re-contact those old employers (as a job reference, or to get some information I needed but no longer had regarding my position). They've always been polite to me, and I've been polite to them.
Being a jackass doesn't help anyone. If you really hate the job, move on, but don't leave a trail of destruction behind. If you get canned unfairly, talk to a lawyer and build a case for wrongful dismissal or whatever. Vigilante b.s. only proves that you're a cowboy jackass, and that they were fairly justified in firing you.
Strange, I know a lot more people who have broken their iPhones (or other smartphones) than those with broken DS's. The biggest issue with the DS seemed to be that craptastic hinge which eventually loses resistance and just sorta flops around after that.
Depends on if you're somebody who travels a lot, or has a penchant for games that might not be available locally. It's not such a small market either, if you consider the students who ship to USA/Canada/etc for several years from other countries.
OK, so decent multitouch displays come along, and they drop the keyboard and then add a button or two on the bottom. The d-pad is less necessary due to the touchscreen so it gets dropped.
Note that other than a central "home" style button, i-devices *do not* have the offscreen buttons that most androids have (my previous device had home, context, settings, and back. Current has home, context, and back).
Other than that, rectangular with rounded corners.
Speaker on the top, microphone on the bottom. Charger slot on the side or bottom. If android manufacturers *really* wanted to copy the iphone, they'd have a consistent design for "media device" attachments (docks, stereos, etc). Different location for the camera, power, and various other bits. In terms of the extra buttons and overall layout, I actually prefer android devices.
Yes, a lot of smartphones look alike. There's only so many places to practically put things when you're dealing with a full-size touchscreen device. Buttons above the screen would interfere, and too many edge buttons are clunky. A lot of my stereo's and car head-units look alike too, because it makes sense.
There's also the difference between a "gaming laptop" and a laptop that just has a good graphics card and processor etc.
I picked up an Asus K21J for around $800 @ Costco earlier this year (it was on sale on the website). Quick specs include: * Core i7 Quad CPU * 8GB RAM * Radeon HD6370M 1GB * Win7 * BD-ROM (DVD-RW etc)
I brought it and a desktop to a LAN party last weekend, as I hadn't tested it for gaming and didn't really buy it as a gaming rig. The only major issue I had was that when connected to an external LCD via HDMI, it always jumped back to "overscan" mode (an issue between the LCD and ATI graphics card) and I had to jigger the settings.
Other than that, it played every game we had without any noticeable performance issues. I had a cooler-pad under it so it didn't even get all that hot. Mind you, the newest game we played was "bad company 2", but it handled that like a champ. Comparable to a year-old more than 3x pricier "alienware" gaming laptop, the rig was affordable and performance was excellent.
No justifying either way here, but just a commentary on human behavior.
Many people joke their way through awkward situations as a way of covering their own fear or confusion. In the case of those who have "transitioned," I'd imagine that there's a whole lot more of both, and a lot of issues that spring from it.
For example, the bathroom issue for those that are "in transition" (men's, women's, or a new bathroom, which is less discriminatory). But beyond that, there's an element beyond the usual homophobia, etc. Most times, if you're interested in a given gender, it's a simple thing in concept. I'll use the male viewpoint for example. Meet girl, hit on girl, succeed or get shot down. If you get shot down, then does it matter whether the girl is non-interested in you or your gender? If a guy is interested in you (and you're not), hopefully a simple "sorry, not my thing" will suffice.
But how about, meet girl, succeed (have relationship), discover that girl isn't actually a girl (extra parts) or wasn't originally a girl (missing parts in some ways). Not everyone is honest about that sort of thing, and it's probably not something most people are going to share in a crowded room. There are people who actually fear that scenario, and anger/gallows-humour/etc are often how those people cover such things.
In circles of geeks with lower social skills, meeting somebody within your gender of preference is *hard*, and leads to plenty of feelings of inadequacy etc. Within my friends there are plenty of higher-level-geeks so it's come up as a topic of debate rather than crude jokes (what *would* you do if you discovered your S.O. wasn't originally of the current visible gender), but it's still a pretty complex situation with a variety of levels of acceptance/coping/etc.
Again, I won't say that it's the *right* behavior, but for many - usually people who are hiding their own insecurity - one can see where the behavior comes from.
Never used couch-surfing. I have used airbnb a few times (to find a place to stay, not to rent out). The rating system were fairly decent, but I don't know how one could trust an unknown never-rated person to stay in your house. I suppose at the least you have the name on the paypal/credit-card tied to the renter, but there's still room for abuse.
All-in-all, they have a decent online system so long as you're willing to have trust in other people, but obviously not everyone is trustworthy. It's worth mentioning that their phone-support does suck completely though. I've never managed to connect to a live person initially (though I did get a call-back the next day), which really sucks for anyone that might arrive and find their lodgings sub-par or unavailable.
So what happens if I'm using a commercial/paid-for gmail account (or rather, in my case my own domain email hosted at gmail). Does it still get canned?
IMHO, there's nothing that sounds quite as nice as wood for a speaker enclosure. I picked up an old pair of Sony "bookshelf" speakers, which - even on an el-cheapo crappy amp - sounds *much* better than the lame plastic-enclosed speakers (similar rating other than the enclosure). In many cases, the high-watt blah blah blah system with plastic-enclosed speakers doesn't compare to the cheap system with decent wood speakers.
Plastic is cheap and good for molding into special forms, but when it comes to audio it can't compare to wood.
Indeed, many automotive policies do not cover you in cases such as: a) You have been drinking/driving and get into an accident b) Your car is stolen when you leave the keys in the ignition (or leave it running, etc)
Depends on what's in Sony's policy, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had an anti-negligence clause.
Tracking via cellular phones has been doable with a decent degree As long as the circumstances are "when we have a warrant", then I don't see an issue.
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One of the big issues in IT departments is that many people want to use their "personal phone X" as their work phone. I can somewhat understand this, as having two phones on my own belt-holster is quite irritating.
The big issue becomes, when a company's important data may be linked to the phone, who manages/owns the phone. If you have a corporate blackberry and an employee is terminated or loses the phone, you can wipe the phone via BES etc. It that phone is not necessarily a corporate phone, then you're going to have a pretty ticked off user (and possibly a lawsuit) if you wipe his/her personal stuff along with the phone. Also, what if the user jailbreaks the phone, etc
If personal/corporate space are separate, then your work space can be safely wipe the work VM. Similarly, an individual VM may have an entirely different privacy/security setting, jailbroken personal VM (and unbroken work VM) etc etc
My main concern would be performance. VM's nowadays are pretty efficient, but phones run on batteries and any overhead isn't cutting into what's already a fairly thin line.
I'm in Canada. When I order a package from the US, using USPS (stateside) + Canada Post (past the border) is the only option that doesn't randomly screw me with things like "brokerage fees" that often hit half or more the value of the package itself.
The private carriers seem to *love* brokerage fees, which allow them to hold packages hostage for fees way beyond the sending postage after crossing the border. It's always fun to get a bill for $10-15 duties/taxes and an additional $25-40 in "brokerage"
Many of the places I knew that were still running Cobol (or some other medieval software+hardware combo) were doing so for money-related reasons. Not necessarily because they were cheap but rather:
a) Critical systems that couldn't be offlined required them. Any downtime quickly ended up in 6-7 digit figures
b) There was nothing to replace it with that existed
c) Nobody know the inner workings of the system well enough to come up with a replacement any time soon
d) Testing or implementing (b) or (c) often ran into (a)
I know ALL of the FOOS geeks out there want desperately for Apple to fail,
Actually, many geeks would probably be happy for apple to succeed if - in doing so - they weren't being underhanded and controlling about it...
I removed a former co-worker from my friends list because some of the (Christian offshoot) religious groups he was part of were ending up in my feed regularly as he "liked" them etc.
The straw that broke the camel's back was a call to ban/boycott immunization because they believed vaccines were made from (or made from testing with) aborted baby fetuses.
At least without something like DaemonTools...
I think that's what the $2.95 was for...
"ejaculated" is also used in terms of vomited etc.
I can recall at least one story in which a landlubber "ejaculated" over the side of a boat during the storm, and it did not mean anything sexual.
In that case, they should be selling them as *used*.
There are also cheaper android tablets that have capacitive touch screens along with decent processors and memory. The main issue is that you have to find a decent Chinese seller online and buy direct. Prices are around $200, give or take a bit.
Similar tablets exist in local B&M, but at about 2-3x the price.
Bosses (and I think regular enemies) also got harder if your characters were at higher levels. So facing off against a big cactuar would still be challenging if you were at level 50 vs level 30.
I really did quite enjoy the battle system of FF12 though. Yes, it wasn't the same "choose command, wait for turn, choose command" style, but being able to predefine actions for classes of enemies also made repetitive encounters less annoying. Unfortunately the story never really made it anywhere compared to some other FF's (not as bad as FF13 though).
If I ended up with something that was at least 95% good gaming experience, as opposed to 40-50% game, 50-60% grind, and 10% unskippable-introduction-to-how-to-play type crap.
One of me fond memories of some of the better RPG's was that there were lost of truly *optional* side-quests (that weren't DLC). The quests themselves added nice details to the story, but weren't necessary for completion (though they did make the bosses easier). They tended to involve a little grind but the story addition was nice.
This is as opposed to Mass Effect's (and especially ME2) mineral scavenging (otherwise it's a good game, but could use more actual storyline content that's not DLC), Final Fantasy's (recent games) lame leveling and "not useful in game/plot but looks pretty" item gathering, etc.
One of the last good games I played that seemed to capture this fairly well was "Lost Odyssey". Some of the more grindy parts weren't actually necessary unless you wanted to collect some powerful spells/items/weapons, but you could complete the game without those items well enough. I think that LO had some of the old FF devs on the team though. I don't suppose anyone else knows of games from that team, or of similar quality...
There's a video on steam that you can view. It looked good enough to me, but how it actually pans out on your home system may be subject to change/hardware.
For all my complaints about goings-on at former jobs, the most I can recall doing is grousing about it with colleagues etc.
Why burn bridges? Even in jobs where I've left because of frustration with the business, I'd not publicly badmouth the company or sabotage their infrastructure.
In some cases I've had to re-contact those old employers (as a job reference, or to get some information I needed but no longer had regarding my position). They've always been polite to me, and I've been polite to them.
Being a jackass doesn't help anyone. If you really hate the job, move on, but don't leave a trail of destruction behind.
If you get canned unfairly, talk to a lawyer and build a case for wrongful dismissal or whatever. Vigilante b.s. only proves that you're a cowboy jackass, and that they were fairly justified in firing you.
Strange, I know a lot more people who have broken their iPhones (or other smartphones) than those with broken DS's.
The biggest issue with the DS seemed to be that craptastic hinge which eventually loses resistance and just sorta flops around after that.
Meanwhile the iPhone user can still also do calls, 3G-enabled web-browsing, GPS, etc etc on the iDevice (at least until the crappy battery dies)
The 3DS user has to cart around an extra phone for that (but at least his DS is probably going to be running after the phone runs out of batteries)
Depends on if you're somebody who travels a lot, or has a penchant for games that might not be available locally.
It's not such a small market either, if you consider the students who ship to USA/Canada/etc for several years from other countries.
OK, so decent multitouch displays come along, and they drop the keyboard and then add a button or two on the bottom. The d-pad is less necessary due to the touchscreen so it gets dropped.
Note that other than a central "home" style button, i-devices *do not* have the offscreen buttons that most androids have (my previous device had home, context, settings, and back. Current has home, context, and back).
Other than that, rectangular with rounded corners.
Speaker on the top, microphone on the bottom. Charger slot on the side or bottom. If android manufacturers *really* wanted to copy the iphone, they'd have a consistent design for "media device" attachments (docks, stereos, etc). Different location for the camera, power, and various other bits. In terms of the extra buttons and overall layout, I actually prefer android devices.
Yes, a lot of smartphones look alike. There's only so many places to practically put things when you're dealing with a full-size touchscreen device. Buttons above the screen would interfere, and too many edge buttons are clunky. A lot of my stereo's and car head-units look alike too, because it makes sense.
There's also the difference between a "gaming laptop" and a laptop that just has a good graphics card and processor etc.
I picked up an Asus K21J for around $800 @ Costco earlier this year (it was on sale on the website). Quick specs include:
* Core i7 Quad CPU
* 8GB RAM
* Radeon HD6370M 1GB
* Win7
* BD-ROM (DVD-RW etc)
I brought it and a desktop to a LAN party last weekend, as I hadn't tested it for gaming and didn't really buy it as a gaming rig. The only major issue I had was that when connected to an external LCD via HDMI, it always jumped back to "overscan" mode (an issue between the LCD and ATI graphics card) and I had to jigger the settings.
Other than that, it played every game we had without any noticeable performance issues. I had a cooler-pad under it so it didn't even get all that hot. Mind you, the newest game we played was "bad company 2", but it handled that like a champ. Comparable to a year-old more than 3x pricier "alienware" gaming laptop, the rig was affordable and performance was excellent.
No justifying either way here, but just a commentary on human behavior.
Many people joke their way through awkward situations as a way of covering their own fear or confusion.
In the case of those who have "transitioned," I'd imagine that there's a whole lot more of both, and a lot of issues that spring from it.
For example, the bathroom issue for those that are "in transition" (men's, women's, or a new bathroom, which is less discriminatory).
But beyond that, there's an element beyond the usual homophobia, etc. Most times, if you're interested in a given gender, it's a simple thing in concept. I'll use the male viewpoint for example.
Meet girl, hit on girl, succeed or get shot down. If you get shot down, then does it matter whether the girl is non-interested in you or your gender? If a guy is interested in you (and you're not), hopefully a simple "sorry, not my thing" will suffice.
But how about, meet girl, succeed (have relationship), discover that girl isn't actually a girl (extra parts) or wasn't originally a girl (missing parts in some ways). Not everyone is honest about that sort of thing, and it's probably not something most people are going to share in a crowded room. There are people who actually fear that scenario, and anger/gallows-humour/etc are often how those people cover such things.
In circles of geeks with lower social skills, meeting somebody within your gender of preference is *hard*, and leads to plenty of feelings of inadequacy etc. Within my friends there are plenty of higher-level-geeks so it's come up as a topic of debate rather than crude jokes (what *would* you do if you discovered your S.O. wasn't originally of the current visible gender), but it's still a pretty complex situation with a variety of levels of acceptance/coping/etc.
Again, I won't say that it's the *right* behavior, but for many - usually people who are hiding their own insecurity - one can see where the behavior comes from.
Never used couch-surfing. I have used airbnb a few times (to find a place to stay, not to rent out).
The rating system were fairly decent, but I don't know how one could trust an unknown never-rated person to stay in your house. I suppose at the least you have the name on the paypal/credit-card tied to the renter, but there's still room for abuse.
All-in-all, they have a decent online system so long as you're willing to have trust in other people, but obviously not everyone is trustworthy. It's worth mentioning that their phone-support does suck completely though. I've never managed to connect to a live person initially (though I did get a call-back the next day), which really sucks for anyone that might arrive and find their lodgings sub-par or unavailable.
I've actually wondered about this.
So what happens if I'm using a commercial/paid-for gmail account (or rather, in my case my own domain email hosted at gmail). Does it still get canned?
PLASTIC speakers.
IMHO, there's nothing that sounds quite as nice as wood for a speaker enclosure. I picked up an old pair of Sony "bookshelf" speakers, which - even on an el-cheapo crappy amp - sounds *much* better than the lame plastic-enclosed speakers (similar rating other than the enclosure). In many cases, the high-watt blah blah blah system with plastic-enclosed speakers doesn't compare to the cheap system with decent wood speakers.
Plastic is cheap and good for molding into special forms, but when it comes to audio it can't compare to wood.
Indeed, many automotive policies do not cover you in cases such as:
a) You have been drinking/driving and get into an accident
b) Your car is stolen when you leave the keys in the ignition (or leave it running, etc)
Depends on what's in Sony's policy, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had an anti-negligence clause.
Tracking via cellular phones has been doable with a decent degree
As long as the circumstances are "when we have a warrant", then I don't see an issue.