I actually do use a trackball, and for the life of me, can't figure out why anybody would prefer the mouse. The trackball requires much less desk space, and also doesn't require constantly positioning your hand. You can leave it in one spot, and are never at a point where you're reaching for it. From my experience, a lot of the RSI problems seem to be from reaching for the mouse. Also, you can be very precise with a trackball. No problems with moving it as you press or release a button, and also easy to do continuous movements without having to reposition it. This makes it great when you have to trace around something when editing a picture.
Laptops are kind of a different beast altogether. In order to fit the pieces into the smallest space possible, they often make it hard/impossible to fix a lot of common problems. If your CPU dies, in most desktops, this is an easy replacement. However, in a laptop, it's sometimes soldered in, so replacing the CPU is a no-go. I'm not aware how common this is with more modern laptops, but I know it has been a problem in the past.
I was refering to my original parent post where it seems that in some other completely unrelated case, the perpetrator actually installed cameras inside people's houses.
However, I've never seen a computer where you had to do the equivalent of removing the engine to change an oil filter. I've seen motherboards that required the CPU or video card to be removed in order to remove/insert RAM, but that's about as far as it goes. Also, I don't think I've seen a computer in more than 5 years that requires anything more than a standard screwdriver to completely disassemble/assemble.
The problem with cars is that they have gotten so complicated, and so proprietary, and require so many specialized tools, that it makes it almost impossible for the owner to diagnose and fix problems. Computers seem to be the exact opposite. A small (1 week of evenings) course in computer repair and maintenance, along with a couple good books could give most people all the knowledge they need. And things don't change much over the years. The connectors change and what not, but the basics still remain the same.
Yeah but what do you do when you have too much spare and you've already read all TFAs on/.
You start reading the comments, and going to stories that don't show up on the front page. Seriously, if you have enough time to go through all the Slashdot articles, as well as all the comments, you must be travelling at near light speeds.
Yeah, but ever since Digg came along, I've had to say "get off my lawn" quite a bit less. All jokes aside, maybe we're better off without the people that would leave Slashdot for Digg. Nothing against Digg users, but the two sites are just geared at completely different audiences.
That's why when making the rules, you can't just award x point for move y, and call it a day. You have to make the rules a little more complicated. Such as, you have to do at least one of moves A,B,C,D,E,F and also add in points for how well they complete each of those required moves. What you describe, is exactly what happens in ski jumping (the flipping kind, not distance), where every skiier who has a chance of winning does a quad-twisting triple flip. The winner is judged by quite subjectively, as two jumps could look almost identical, as the athletes only have to practice and perform 1 trick. I think ski jumping could be made more exciting if competitors had to perform a series of tricks, and the winner was determined by adding together the points for all the required moves.
Except when a Canadian wins, and then some America claims to be the worlds fastest man, because he broke a record for the 200m. After which they decide to have a showdown, at a race of 150m, which the Canadian won. Apparently Johnson, the America, pulled his quadriceps muscle, which caused him to drop out halfway through the race. There's controversy as to whether or not he actually had injured himself, or decided to throw the race after he realized he was going to lose.
Canada is going big on this. I think almost all major stores have reusable canvas bags that you can buy for about $1. They still have plastic bags, although some stores charge 5 cents each for them. I think they all offer some kind of incentive for using your own reusable bags. It's really good in some respects. However, the downside is that if all stores were to completely remove plastic bags, that you would have to tote bags around, just in case you happened to buy something. The really big upside is that if you walk, you no longer have to worry about ripped bags.
You're right, but those aren't the people who would pay for Ubuntu either. They'd just download it for free, and get their computer buddy to install and support it. Most people don't have a need for it. For them, Ubuntu is free, but Windows Vista Ultimate still costs $300. But the people who would pay for Ubuntu support from Canonical are the same people who would pay for support from MS. If you compare the cost of support for Windows, and the cost for support for Ubuntu, then you'll probably find out that Ubuntu ends up a lot cheaper, after just a few support calls.
Did you read about the Greyhound bus killer? Seems that in certain cases people can go from zero to crazy in 4.6 seconds. Not all the details are out yet, but it seems like the accused in the greyhound case went from normal to cannibalistic killer in a matter of a few days. No word if there was even a trigger yet which caused him to snap.
I doubt anybody will remember her name. I've heard about the case many times before, and couldn't recall the name of the accused. If you ask me tomorrow, I will probably have forgotten the name again by them. Sure I could just Google every potential person I plan to hire. But a lot of employers don't do that.
The slow adoption of Vista is cutting into our hardware sales, so we are looking at alternatives to get units out the door" and shipping more copies of Symphony is a happy byproduct.
I doubt that has anything to do with it. IBM sold their desktop/laptop business to Lenovo a few years back, and the only computers they currently sell are servers. I don't think anybody would run Vista on a server, nor would IBM sell one with Vista pre-installed.
That's the point I think most people don't understand. Why you buy Vista Ultimate, it doesn't entitle you to any support. You get one or two phone calls, and you have to use them within the first 90 days of registering your software. After that you're on your own. $59 for each support request. If your computer came with Vista installed, you don't get any free support from MS, they want you to call the company who manufactured your computer. How is a company with access to the source code for windows supposed to give you proper support? At least when you pay Canonical for support, they are actually prepared to answer your questions without any additional fees, and are actually able to issue software patches against the product, as most (all??) of it is open source.
Well, the way the US is going, they are the ones that are currently broke, and it doesn't look like they have any plan of how to get out of the financial mess they are in. You can sit around and speculate what might happen in Europe over the next 10 years, or you can look at what's happening right now in the US.
No, because Party B and Party C wouldn't always agree to vote against Party A. So, now you have what's known as a minority government, where no single party has the ability to decide anything. If there was another issue where A and C agreed, then they would decide what happens, and B would lose in that case.
Your preferred way is exactly the way it works in Canada. If "candidate A" wins in a certain district (called a riding, there are 308? of them), then "Candidate A" gets to represent his constituents in parliament. Even if no other riding in the country votes for the same party, he still gets to put his vote in on all the bills being passed.
What exactly is the problem with proportional representation. In a true democracy, every citizen would vote on every issue. However, since every citizen doesn't have the time to read every bill and make an informed decision about it, wouldn't the most logical step be for the citizen to have somebody who he generally agrees with in most political matters to cast a vote for him?
It seems to me that the way the US system is set up, is that there can not be an "alternative". In a winner takes all situation, even if only 40% of the people vote for the winner, and all other parties receive less than 40%, then the 60% of the people who didn't vote for the winner, end up receiving no representation. In an idea system, if 45% of the people voted for "party A", 40% for "party B", and the remaining 15% to "party C", then each of those three parties would receive exactly that share of the votes when voting on bills in the government. So, even though, in my hypothetical situation, the "party A" would have been the winner, Party B and C could vote against Party A, and party A would lose the vote.
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I actually do use a trackball, and for the life of me, can't figure out why anybody would prefer the mouse. The trackball requires much less desk space, and also doesn't require constantly positioning your hand. You can leave it in one spot, and are never at a point where you're reaching for it. From my experience, a lot of the RSI problems seem to be from reaching for the mouse. Also, you can be very precise with a trackball. No problems with moving it as you press or release a button, and also easy to do continuous movements without having to reposition it. This makes it great when you have to trace around something when editing a picture.
Laptops are kind of a different beast altogether. In order to fit the pieces into the smallest space possible, they often make it hard/impossible to fix a lot of common problems. If your CPU dies, in most desktops, this is an easy replacement. However, in a laptop, it's sometimes soldered in, so replacing the CPU is a no-go. I'm not aware how common this is with more modern laptops, but I know it has been a problem in the past.
I was refering to my original parent post where it seems that in some other completely unrelated case, the perpetrator actually installed cameras inside people's houses.
However, I've never seen a computer where you had to do the equivalent of removing the engine to change an oil filter. I've seen motherboards that required the CPU or video card to be removed in order to remove/insert RAM, but that's about as far as it goes. Also, I don't think I've seen a computer in more than 5 years that requires anything more than a standard screwdriver to completely disassemble/assemble.
Couldn't they charge him with tresspassing? What about breaking and entering? If he was doing neither of these, how did he get the cameras installed?
The problem with cars is that they have gotten so complicated, and so proprietary, and require so many specialized tools, that it makes it almost impossible for the owner to diagnose and fix problems. Computers seem to be the exact opposite. A small (1 week of evenings) course in computer repair and maintenance, along with a couple good books could give most people all the knowledge they need. And things don't change much over the years. The connectors change and what not, but the basics still remain the same.
The browser on my Wii?
You start reading the comments, and going to stories that don't show up on the front page. Seriously, if you have enough time to go through all the Slashdot articles, as well as all the comments, you must be travelling at near light speeds.
Yeah, but ever since Digg came along, I've had to say "get off my lawn" quite a bit less. All jokes aside, maybe we're better off without the people that would leave Slashdot for Digg. Nothing against Digg users, but the two sites are just geared at completely different audiences.
Real geeks just use multiple computers.
If a landed punch is a landed punch, why do they have 3 judges who all end up with different scores at the end?
That's why when making the rules, you can't just award x point for move y, and call it a day. You have to make the rules a little more complicated. Such as, you have to do at least one of moves A,B,C,D,E,F and also add in points for how well they complete each of those required moves. What you describe, is exactly what happens in ski jumping (the flipping kind, not distance), where every skiier who has a chance of winning does a quad-twisting triple flip. The winner is judged by quite subjectively, as two jumps could look almost identical, as the athletes only have to practice and perform 1 trick. I think ski jumping could be made more exciting if competitors had to perform a series of tricks, and the winner was determined by adding together the points for all the required moves.
Except when a Canadian wins, and then some America claims to be the worlds fastest man, because he broke a record for the 200m. After which they decide to have a showdown, at a race of 150m, which the Canadian won. Apparently Johnson, the America, pulled his quadriceps muscle, which caused him to drop out halfway through the race. There's controversy as to whether or not he actually had injured himself, or decided to throw the race after he realized he was going to lose.
Canada is going big on this. I think almost all major stores have reusable canvas bags that you can buy for about $1. They still have plastic bags, although some stores charge 5 cents each for them. I think they all offer some kind of incentive for using your own reusable bags. It's really good in some respects. However, the downside is that if all stores were to completely remove plastic bags, that you would have to tote bags around, just in case you happened to buy something. The really big upside is that if you walk, you no longer have to worry about ripped bags.
You're right, but those aren't the people who would pay for Ubuntu either. They'd just download it for free, and get their computer buddy to install and support it. Most people don't have a need for it. For them, Ubuntu is free, but Windows Vista Ultimate still costs $300. But the people who would pay for Ubuntu support from Canonical are the same people who would pay for support from MS. If you compare the cost of support for Windows, and the cost for support for Ubuntu, then you'll probably find out that Ubuntu ends up a lot cheaper, after just a few support calls.
Did you read about the Greyhound bus killer? Seems that in certain cases people can go from zero to crazy in 4.6 seconds. Not all the details are out yet, but it seems like the accused in the greyhound case went from normal to cannibalistic killer in a matter of a few days. No word if there was even a trigger yet which caused him to snap.
I doubt anybody will remember her name. I've heard about the case many times before, and couldn't recall the name of the accused. If you ask me tomorrow, I will probably have forgotten the name again by them. Sure I could just Google every potential person I plan to hire. But a lot of employers don't do that.
I doubt that has anything to do with it. IBM sold their desktop/laptop business to Lenovo a few years back, and the only computers they currently sell are servers. I don't think anybody would run Vista on a server, nor would IBM sell one with Vista pre-installed.
That's the point I think most people don't understand. Why you buy Vista Ultimate, it doesn't entitle you to any support. You get one or two phone calls, and you have to use them within the first 90 days of registering your software. After that you're on your own. $59 for each support request. If your computer came with Vista installed, you don't get any free support from MS, they want you to call the company who manufactured your computer. How is a company with access to the source code for windows supposed to give you proper support? At least when you pay Canonical for support, they are actually prepared to answer your questions without any additional fees, and are actually able to issue software patches against the product, as most (all??) of it is open source.
Well, the way the US is going, they are the ones that are currently broke, and it doesn't look like they have any plan of how to get out of the financial mess they are in. You can sit around and speculate what might happen in Europe over the next 10 years, or you can look at what's happening right now in the US.
No, because Party B and Party C wouldn't always agree to vote against Party A. So, now you have what's known as a minority government, where no single party has the ability to decide anything. If there was another issue where A and C agreed, then they would decide what happens, and B would lose in that case.
Your preferred way is exactly the way it works in Canada. If "candidate A" wins in a certain district (called a riding, there are 308? of them), then "Candidate A" gets to represent his constituents in parliament. Even if no other riding in the country votes for the same party, he still gets to put his vote in on all the bills being passed.
What exactly is the problem with proportional representation. In a true democracy, every citizen would vote on every issue. However, since every citizen doesn't have the time to read every bill and make an informed decision about it, wouldn't the most logical step be for the citizen to have somebody who he generally agrees with in most political matters to cast a vote for him?
You can download Apple System 7.5.3 directly from Apple, for free if you want. Why not run System 7 on it?
It seems to me that the way the US system is set up, is that there can not be an "alternative". In a winner takes all situation, even if only 40% of the people vote for the winner, and all other parties receive less than 40%, then the 60% of the people who didn't vote for the winner, end up receiving no representation. In an idea system, if 45% of the people voted for "party A", 40% for "party B", and the remaining 15% to "party C", then each of those three parties would receive exactly that share of the votes when voting on bills in the government. So, even though, in my hypothetical situation, the "party A" would have been the winner, Party B and C could vote against Party A, and party A would lose the vote.