I just wish windows would support resizing an image for your desktop without changing the aspect ratio. I think they had this in Linux about 6 years ago. And I'm pretty sure it's still not in Windows Vista. Come on, it isn't that hard.
How about a GPS that doesn't track where they are going or report their location? A GPS could be a useful navigation tool, alerting the driver of accidents and slow downs, in order to decrease the time it takes to transport customers. I think a GPS in a cab would be a great idea. However, I think that there's no reason for it to be recording it's location, or reporting it to anyone. It would be nice to have a screen that the customer could see, so that they could see the calculated route, and see of the driver really is trying to con them. If the GPS says it's supposed to be a 10 minute ride, straight down the expressway, and the cabbie takes 1/2 an hour through a bunch of traffic lights and one way streets, then the customer would be quite aware, and could probably refuse to pay.
But most cabs that I've been in (I'm in Canada) have some starting fare, like $3, and then go up in increments of 10 cents or whatever for every 10 seconds of idle time, or per 100 metres (I made up the numbers). What would make the most sense in terms of generating the most revenue would be to pick people up, do the trip as quickly as possible, and pick up the next person in the shortest amount of time. That starting rate is the most profitable time by a long shot. So you want to have as many of those in a day as possible. At least that's the way I view it.
Watching the video, this seems pretty impressive. It's also neat to see them use the same technology to remove items (people in this case) from an image with only about 10 seconds of work.
That's probably the best idea. Don't try to filter stuff, because you're either not filter everything, or filter too much. Just either put your computer in a room where you would be likely to walk by at any time, or put in some kind of proxy machine so that you can monitor what's going on. Even if they use HTTPs, you can see what IPs they are connecting to. This can help determine what they are looking at. Also, once they start looking for it, don't assume the internet is the only place they will find it. We all got a hold of it somehow when we were kids without the internet, and we all turned out pretty normal (by we, I mean just about everybody in society). For the most part, I'd just put the computer in a well travelled room. All this proxy/filter/nanny stuff is too much, and just shows a lot of distrust in your children, and probably won't stop them from seeing porn anyway.
I'm not sure of the specifics of how these rootkits work, but if every piece of software we buy starts installing a rootkit, What is the probably they will conflict with each other and make the system less stable, and/or break the system completely? What kind of support or compensation is available once this starts happening. I find it very disturbing that they will install rootkits, or use non-standard CDs that don't work in a lot of CD drives (which used to happen a lot), making a terrible experience for the end users, while the pirates just modify the machine code, so it doesn't do any checks, and use the software without paying.
That's just the CPU. Add an LCD (biggest power drain on most laptops), hard drive, dvd-rom, memory, motherboard, video card, wireless network (another big drain), and you're still going to need quite a bit more power than this thing can produce.
Because a laptop probably requires at least 60 watts to function correctly under full load, and this thing produces 50mW. I know mine, uses 20 w just looking at the desktop. To generate 60 watts, you could hook them up in series. But they are about 4 cm cubed, and to generate 60W, you would need 1200 of them with a volume of 4800 cm cubed. I'm not saying it can't ever be done if they bring up the watts:size ratio, but for now I don't think it would work.
Isn't it kind of ironic that some of the best products Microsoft (a software company mainly) puts out are hardware products. You'd think they would be able to get their core business right, and would have problems with stuff they are less focussed on.
For $130, you could get a single tuner (one of each) ATSC/NTSC card. That's $230 for a dual tuner set up. Add $500 for a computer capable as a media centre, and $80 for sageTV, and for about $800 you have a really good media center. A little expensive, but it will be more nicely integrated, than what you get with the PS3 set up. You'll get a much better experience, because you can do whatever you want with the videos, convert them to play on your PSP off an SD card, or play them on your ipod, or whatever other device you happen to own. I've even set up a custom conversion (it uses ffmpeg from what I know) to convert videos to flash, so I can watch them on my Wii.
or one that tries as hard as possible to *slow down* reads from hard disks
I wonder if anybody has written a filesystem like this before? Seems to me like it would be an interesting (yet useless) problem to solve. I guess it would just be the reverse of trying to make a fast file system.
Then make the CD something more tangible and people will buy them. How about include a larger package with more art and lyrics. Maybe some nice art on the disc too. And a CD case made out of plastic that isn't so brittle. If you don't give the customer much over the pirated downloaded tracks, then why would they buy the CD?
However, I find that the cost of the album on iTunes is only $2-$5 cheaper than buying an actual CD. I've even seen some actual CDs that are cheaper than what you pay on iTunes. Given the choice of buying the CD or the tracks from iTunes, I will always choose the CD, because you can do whatever you want to do with the CD, iTunes are only playable on iPods. If I want to play on some other portable music player that doesn't do AAC or CDs(for iTunes Plus), I have to re-encode. The only digital music I buy is from eMusic, because it's possible to get and entire album for $3-$5.
However, kids spend money on their cellphone, because they don't have to spend money on their music. If you have $50 to spend, you can either buy $50 worth of CDs, and have no cell phone, or spend $50 on your cell phone, and buy no music. But if you know you can download it for free, it's a simple choice. Just pay for the phone, and get the music for free. If the music for free wasn't an option, there might be more people willing to pay for it, and deprive themselves of something else. Classic case of having your cake, and eating it too.
3. Much music is listened to via headphones these days. If you're trying to get the purest recording and reproduction of acoustic instruments, a pair of earbuds isn't going to cut it. Not a whole lot of popular music today requires pure recording and reproduction of acoustic instruments anyway, so what's the difference?
Please notice the difference between headphones and earbuds. I find that a moderately priced set of headphones ($50-$100 range) gives much better sound quality than even $500 speakers. At least that's my perception. I found I can hear a lot of the more subtle sounds and background noises much better on a set of headphones. The effect of stereo sound is also greatly enhanced.
But that EM radiation is converted into a signal that travels along their wired internet connection. And if you use X bandwidth, that's X bandwidth that they can no longer use. It would be akin to your neighbour setting up a giant sun blocking shield (ala Mr. Burns) so that you could no longer use the sun that would regularly shine on you property. Just as a reference point, I agree that they shouldn't be charged. If someone leaves their connection wide open, there is no way to know that you aren't allowed to access it, and with the ubiquity of free wireless internet, it's a valid assumption that you should be allowed to connect. People should be allowed to leave their connection open, and anybody should be allowed to connect to these networks.
Not if you live in Canada. From what I know (IANAL) it's legal to decrypt any signal you want, because it's over the air, and public domain. That's why all the pirate satellite dishes and receivers are referred to as grey-market. Because you are allowed to do this.
Except that video games don't go stalking your children in the park. They sit there on the shelf waiting for you to buy them. They don't download and install themselves on your computer, and then hold the child down and make the child play the game. See the difference?
May work for some.Net. Do they have WinForms working yet? What about Excel, Sharepoint, and SQL Server projects? How would people use those? Sure SQL Server Dev version is free, bwhat happens when your project expands outside the 4GB mark?
What's the point of using open source software if you have to buy some expensive closed source package to use it. Such as SharePoint, Excel, IIS, Vista, etc. Open source only gives you all the advantages of open source if the entire software stack is open source. Otherwise, you can't modify the software, and you aren't free to fix all the bugs that you encounter.
Why put the GPL in that box then? Why not put a simple concise message in there stating that "There are no restrictions on the use of this software, only on the distribution. For restrictions on distribution please see the GPL at http://..../". Then you're making it clear to the person that they aren't restricted in any way from just using the program. A short little message like that sure would be an eye opener to most people who are used to seeing license agreements that are thousands of words long.
There was a big argument about this when a local grocery store decided to stop carrying a local Gay/Lesbian paper because they found that a lot of the content was pretty objectional. Lots of sex content and what not. Stuff you may not want the kiddies reading about. Well, they started a big stink about how it was censorship. Sorry, but if they don't want to display your product in their store, then that's their perogative. They don't sell playboy magazines either. Are they censoring that? No, they just decide what products they do and do not want to carry in their store. Forcing them to carry a product they don't want to infringes more on their rights to run their business as they see fit than them not carrying it infringes on someone elses right to sell a product.
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I just wish windows would support resizing an image for your desktop without changing the aspect ratio. I think they had this in Linux about 6 years ago. And I'm pretty sure it's still not in Windows Vista. Come on, it isn't that hard.
How about a GPS that doesn't track where they are going or report their location? A GPS could be a useful navigation tool, alerting the driver of accidents and slow downs, in order to decrease the time it takes to transport customers. I think a GPS in a cab would be a great idea. However, I think that there's no reason for it to be recording it's location, or reporting it to anyone. It would be nice to have a screen that the customer could see, so that they could see the calculated route, and see of the driver really is trying to con them. If the GPS says it's supposed to be a 10 minute ride, straight down the expressway, and the cabbie takes 1/2 an hour through a bunch of traffic lights and one way streets, then the customer would be quite aware, and could probably refuse to pay.
I've also had cabbies take a wrong turn, and admit it and not charge for it. Not all of them are bad people.
But most cabs that I've been in (I'm in Canada) have some starting fare, like $3, and then go up in increments of 10 cents or whatever for every 10 seconds of idle time, or per 100 metres (I made up the numbers). What would make the most sense in terms of generating the most revenue would be to pick people up, do the trip as quickly as possible, and pick up the next person in the shortest amount of time. That starting rate is the most profitable time by a long shot. So you want to have as many of those in a day as possible. At least that's the way I view it.
Watching the video, this seems pretty impressive. It's also neat to see them use the same technology to remove items (people in this case) from an image with only about 10 seconds of work.
That's probably the best idea. Don't try to filter stuff, because you're either not filter everything, or filter too much. Just either put your computer in a room where you would be likely to walk by at any time, or put in some kind of proxy machine so that you can monitor what's going on. Even if they use HTTPs, you can see what IPs they are connecting to. This can help determine what they are looking at. Also, once they start looking for it, don't assume the internet is the only place they will find it. We all got a hold of it somehow when we were kids without the internet, and we all turned out pretty normal (by we, I mean just about everybody in society). For the most part, I'd just put the computer in a well travelled room. All this proxy/filter/nanny stuff is too much, and just shows a lot of distrust in your children, and probably won't stop them from seeing porn anyway.
I'm not sure of the specifics of how these rootkits work, but if every piece of software we buy starts installing a rootkit, What is the probably they will conflict with each other and make the system less stable, and/or break the system completely? What kind of support or compensation is available once this starts happening. I find it very disturbing that they will install rootkits, or use non-standard CDs that don't work in a lot of CD drives (which used to happen a lot), making a terrible experience for the end users, while the pirates just modify the machine code, so it doesn't do any checks, and use the software without paying.
How many different closed source licenses are there? Probably about 1 for every application.
That's just the CPU. Add an LCD (biggest power drain on most laptops), hard drive, dvd-rom, memory, motherboard, video card, wireless network (another big drain), and you're still going to need quite a bit more power than this thing can produce.
Because a laptop probably requires at least 60 watts to function correctly under full load, and this thing produces 50mW. I know mine, uses 20 w just looking at the desktop. To generate 60 watts, you could hook them up in series. But they are about 4 cm cubed, and to generate 60W, you would need 1200 of them with a volume of 4800 cm cubed. I'm not saying it can't ever be done if they bring up the watts:size ratio, but for now I don't think it would work.
Isn't it kind of ironic that some of the best products Microsoft (a software company mainly) puts out are hardware products. You'd think they would be able to get their core business right, and would have problems with stuff they are less focussed on.
For $130, you could get a single tuner (one of each) ATSC/NTSC card. That's $230 for a dual tuner set up. Add $500 for a computer capable as a media centre, and $80 for sageTV, and for about $800 you have a really good media center. A little expensive, but it will be more nicely integrated, than what you get with the PS3 set up. You'll get a much better experience, because you can do whatever you want with the videos, convert them to play on your PSP off an SD card, or play them on your ipod, or whatever other device you happen to own. I've even set up a custom conversion (it uses ffmpeg from what I know) to convert videos to flash, so I can watch them on my Wii.
Then make the CD something more tangible and people will buy them. How about include a larger package with more art and lyrics. Maybe some nice art on the disc too. And a CD case made out of plastic that isn't so brittle. If you don't give the customer much over the pirated downloaded tracks, then why would they buy the CD?
However, I find that the cost of the album on iTunes is only $2-$5 cheaper than buying an actual CD. I've even seen some actual CDs that are cheaper than what you pay on iTunes. Given the choice of buying the CD or the tracks from iTunes, I will always choose the CD, because you can do whatever you want to do with the CD, iTunes are only playable on iPods. If I want to play on some other portable music player that doesn't do AAC or CDs(for iTunes Plus), I have to re-encode. The only digital music I buy is from eMusic, because it's possible to get and entire album for $3-$5.
However, kids spend money on their cellphone, because they don't have to spend money on their music. If you have $50 to spend, you can either buy $50 worth of CDs, and have no cell phone, or spend $50 on your cell phone, and buy no music. But if you know you can download it for free, it's a simple choice. Just pay for the phone, and get the music for free. If the music for free wasn't an option, there might be more people willing to pay for it, and deprive themselves of something else. Classic case of having your cake, and eating it too.
But that EM radiation is converted into a signal that travels along their wired internet connection. And if you use X bandwidth, that's X bandwidth that they can no longer use. It would be akin to your neighbour setting up a giant sun blocking shield (ala Mr. Burns) so that you could no longer use the sun that would regularly shine on you property. Just as a reference point, I agree that they shouldn't be charged. If someone leaves their connection wide open, there is no way to know that you aren't allowed to access it, and with the ubiquity of free wireless internet, it's a valid assumption that you should be allowed to connect. People should be allowed to leave their connection open, and anybody should be allowed to connect to these networks.
Not if you live in Canada. From what I know (IANAL) it's legal to decrypt any signal you want, because it's over the air, and public domain. That's why all the pirate satellite dishes and receivers are referred to as grey-market. Because you are allowed to do this.
Except that video games don't go stalking your children in the park. They sit there on the shelf waiting for you to buy them. They don't download and install themselves on your computer, and then hold the child down and make the child play the game. See the difference?
May work for some .Net. Do they have WinForms working yet? What about Excel, Sharepoint, and SQL Server projects? How would people use those? Sure SQL Server Dev version is free, bwhat happens when your project expands outside the 4GB mark?
What's the point of using open source software if you have to buy some expensive closed source package to use it. Such as SharePoint, Excel, IIS, Vista, etc. Open source only gives you all the advantages of open source if the entire software stack is open source. Otherwise, you can't modify the software, and you aren't free to fix all the bugs that you encounter.
Why put the GPL in that box then? Why not put a simple concise message in there stating that "There are no restrictions on the use of this software, only on the distribution. For restrictions on distribution please see the GPL at http://..../". Then you're making it clear to the person that they aren't restricted in any way from just using the program. A short little message like that sure would be an eye opener to most people who are used to seeing license agreements that are thousands of words long.
I hope you're trying to be funny, but for more info, check out Wikipedia.
There was a big argument about this when a local grocery store decided to stop carrying a local Gay/Lesbian paper because they found that a lot of the content was pretty objectional. Lots of sex content and what not. Stuff you may not want the kiddies reading about. Well, they started a big stink about how it was censorship. Sorry, but if they don't want to display your product in their store, then that's their perogative. They don't sell playboy magazines either. Are they censoring that? No, they just decide what products they do and do not want to carry in their store. Forcing them to carry a product they don't want to infringes more on their rights to run their business as they see fit than them not carrying it infringes on someone elses right to sell a product.