Are "Winter 2010" and "with glowing hearts" the new 09 F9?
Wow, Winter 2010 is shaping up to be really cold. I'm glad I got my firewood in, my family can sit in comfort with glowing hearts in our family room. So bleh.
> [...] as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide.
> MythTV is great if you like to fiddle with your DVR hardware instead of actually WATCHING the television.
I'm reluctant to say this, but I went with Media Center for just this reason -- I didn't want to fiddle with MythTV. And now I'm fiddling with Media Center. HD recording never did work right -- It'd work about one time in three, and then the center channel was often missing. (Nice music, no dialog.) And now, last night, it suddenly stopped tuning the satellite set-top box. So tonight I have to fiddle with it. So, where is this lack of fiddling of which I keep hearing?
I'm thinking the closest you can get to "no fiddling" is with an appliance. I like the ability to play anything on the media center, the ability to log in remotely, sharing files with other windows and macs, having itunes, movies and a dvd player on the same box, and having a DVD recorder right there for backups, but geeze, nothing works really well and some features -- like HD PVR -- never really worked at all.
So, my feeling is, you won't be doing substantially more fiddling with MythTV than any other PC-based solution. If you want true fiddle-free performance, dump the PC and get an appliance. We're considering retiring the media center in favor of a Netflix box, Tivo, and stand-alone DVD player. I know that's trading one box for three, but it would be worth it if I don't have to be my entertainment center's system administrator anymore.
Copy *that*. My situation was similar to yours, but I finally grew tired of making what would be considered a respectable wage anywhere else in the world and still not be able to afford a house in silicon valley. At least in Oregon I can own a home, and I can use some of that extra discretionary income that used to go for *rent* in Mountain View to finance a yearly vacation to visit friends and family. It's worked out pretty good so far.
My daughter has two laptops, an IBM T30 and an Asus EEE. The T30 stays in her room and is used for movies, itunes, homework. The EEE stays in her purse and is used for web, chat, email when she's out of the house, and occasionally to do homework when she wants to work on the kitchen table or upstairs in front of the TV. Before she got the EEE, she tried carrying around the T30, but size, weight and battery life made this a real chore.
Trying to develop C++ applications or run Halo 3 is not what these netbooks were designed for, and they -- still -- do what they *are* designed for very well. Trying to push them into areas they were not meant to go will -- duh -- give you questionable results. Like Max Payne running on a Surf, it's amazing that it works at all.
Yes, the keyboard kinda sucks and the screen is small. But the T30 won't fit in a purse, and my Latitude D620 *certainly* won't fit. When you need to look something up or send an email, any computer is better than no computer at all, and your big fancy white-hot dual core monster sitting at home isn't going to be any help when you're sitting here right now. The best computer is the one within reach, and the netbook is more likely to be with you when you're out of the building.
Moreover, the EEE will keep going long after the others have gone dark. For this reason, I sometimes borrow it for times when I won't be near a power source. (I wish she hadn't picked pink, though.)
And as cramped as the EEE is, it's still a damned site better than my Treo for web.
There may be a need for a bigger screen and better keyboard amongst those looking for a portable web appliance, but if it substantially increases the footprint, it breaks the paradigm. Moreover, I suspect that letting the price creep up makes it less attractive for people looking for an additional device, more portable than their mongo laptop but providing a better experience than their cell phone.
> If Apple sold the a bare "Apple blessed" desktop motherboard with a copy of OSX for $260 the enthusiast DIY crowd would be all over it like white on rice.
Agreed. But it'll never happen, because Apple would lose control over how cool it looked.
The article doesn't give much information. If the objective is just to rebrand Proliants, it's not interesting. If the objective is to create a "database appliance" pre-optimized for Oracle, easy to administer and cluster, that would be a lot more interesting.
>....they run Windows and they have been trained to expect Windows to fail frequently. They don't look at the message boxes because they don't care what they say. They're busy. Who has time to waste looking at the same error message you see 3 or 4 times a day, every day.
You have a point. As a geek, it's easy to forget that the vast majority of PC users are trying to accomplish something other than making Windows work. They don't care what the OS is doing or not doing, they're just trying to finish designing that flyer, or finish the end-of-month books, or make those Peoplesoft entries so they can leave this hellhole and get the hell home to their feeble attempt to have a life. Or at least to jeer at this week's reality show. The very last thing they're concerned about is some stupid popup designed to convey information to someone with a completely different skill set.
I wouldn't say the majority of users are idiots. They're just not Windows geeks. And that's a good thing, isn't it? Aren't PCs supposed to have some purpose besides running Windows? Shouldn't people expect to be able to perform some task with a PC without having to be a Windows geek?
Geeze, I'm starting to sound like a Mac fanboy. I think the way Mac applications jump up and down when they need attention is just terminally cute and I wish I knew how to make it stop. But (grinding my teeth) I have to admit, it's better than random incomprehensible eye-level demands for my attention to very little purpose.
Well, obviously, after clicking ok on a popup, another popup should open that contains a picture of the previous popup and a message "This is what you just clicked. Are you sure it's not malware?" That should take care of it. If enough of us send suggestions to Microsoft, there may be enough time to get it into Windows 7.
> not sure why that got modded Troll... it is true they dumped their printer and computer divisions to china.
Desktop and laptop computer divisions. IBM has four server lines -- mainframe, Intel, and two based on the Power architecture, plus storage and backup peripherals.
...in small words, what this means? What is Microsoft's motivation for doing this, and what do they hope to achieve? Is it a sign that they're in trouble, or is there some financial advantage to reducing the number of shares in play? For instance, if a company is cash-heavy, does that trip something with the analysts, requiring Microsoft to shed cash somehow? I'm not even sure what questions to ask.
What about Activesync? That always has to be there, and they can't easily change the protocol because it would break the execs' Windows Mobile gadgets.
I agree that having a professional looking domain on your business card is a plus.
Domains are very cheap (on the order of $10 a year) and most domain management services provide email forwarding. So it's a simple matter to set up a mail address of "me@myfullname.com" that points to your gmail or yahoo address. Some of them even have web mail services so you wouldn't even have to use a separate free account. (Besides, you get to look at Danica Patrick... Mmmmmm, Danica....)
I was self-employed for awhile. I chose a company name that nobody had registered yet, and registered a domain and LLC at the same time. Back then domains ran about $30 a year and registering an LLC was $50/year (in my state -- your mileage may vary). I forwarded email to an existing address at a local ISP for which I was paying $30 a year for an email-only account. So I had my own company name on my card and my email address was my_name@company_name.com, with a total expenditure of $110/year. That's less than $10 a month to be able to show a professional face to the world.
Some mailers support munging the From: and/or Reply-to: fields, so you can completely disguise the fact that you're using gmail.
These days registration is a lot cheaper and email is essentially free. It should be very easy to do what you're trying to do.
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What will the trees breathe?
Are "Winter 2010" and "with glowing hearts" the new 09 F9?
Wow, Winter 2010 is shaping up to be really cold. I'm glad I got my firewood in, my family can sit in comfort with glowing hearts in our family room. So bleh.
> [...] as such mixtures form in different locations near the ground and are ignited by lightning, explosions and conflagrations destroy most of the terrestrial life, and also produce great amounts of smoke and of carbon dioxide.
Wow, that'd be cool to watch. From a distance.
> MythTV is great if you like to fiddle with your DVR hardware instead of actually WATCHING the television.
I'm reluctant to say this, but I went with Media Center for just this reason -- I didn't want to fiddle with MythTV. And now I'm fiddling with Media Center. HD recording never did work right -- It'd work about one time in three, and then the center channel was often missing. (Nice music, no dialog.) And now, last night, it suddenly stopped tuning the satellite set-top box. So tonight I have to fiddle with it. So, where is this lack of fiddling of which I keep hearing?
I'm thinking the closest you can get to "no fiddling" is with an appliance. I like the ability to play anything on the media center, the ability to log in remotely, sharing files with other windows and macs, having itunes, movies and a dvd player on the same box, and having a DVD recorder right there for backups, but geeze, nothing works really well and some features -- like HD PVR -- never really worked at all.
So, my feeling is, you won't be doing substantially more fiddling with MythTV than any other PC-based solution. If you want true fiddle-free performance, dump the PC and get an appliance. We're considering retiring the media center in favor of a Netflix box, Tivo, and stand-alone DVD player. I know that's trading one box for three, but it would be worth it if I don't have to be my entertainment center's system administrator anymore.
Copy *that*. My situation was similar to yours, but I finally grew tired of making what would be considered a respectable wage anywhere else in the world and still not be able to afford a house in silicon valley. At least in Oregon I can own a home, and I can use some of that extra discretionary income that used to go for *rent* in Mountain View to finance a yearly vacation to visit friends and family. It's worked out pretty good so far.
My daughter has two laptops, an IBM T30 and an Asus EEE. The T30 stays in her room and is used for movies, itunes, homework. The EEE stays in her purse and is used for web, chat, email when she's out of the house, and occasionally to do homework when she wants to work on the kitchen table or upstairs in front of the TV. Before she got the EEE, she tried carrying around the T30, but size, weight and battery life made this a real chore.
Trying to develop C++ applications or run Halo 3 is not what these netbooks were designed for, and they -- still -- do what they *are* designed for very well. Trying to push them into areas they were not meant to go will -- duh -- give you questionable results. Like Max Payne running on a Surf, it's amazing that it works at all.
Yes, the keyboard kinda sucks and the screen is small. But the T30 won't fit in a purse, and my Latitude D620 *certainly* won't fit. When you need to look something up or send an email, any computer is better than no computer at all, and your big fancy white-hot dual core monster sitting at home isn't going to be any help when you're sitting here right now. The best computer is the one within reach, and the netbook is more likely to be with you when you're out of the building.
Moreover, the EEE will keep going long after the others have gone dark. For this reason, I sometimes borrow it for times when I won't be near a power source. (I wish she hadn't picked pink, though.)
And as cramped as the EEE is, it's still a damned site better than my Treo for web.
There may be a need for a bigger screen and better keyboard amongst those looking for a portable web appliance, but if it substantially increases the footprint, it breaks the paradigm. Moreover, I suspect that letting the price creep up makes it less attractive for people looking for an additional device, more portable than their mongo laptop but providing a better experience than their cell phone.
Another reason not to move back to California.
> If Apple sold the a bare "Apple blessed" desktop motherboard with a copy of OSX for $260 the enthusiast DIY crowd would be all over it like white on rice.
Agreed. But it'll never happen, because Apple would lose control over how cool it looked.
The article doesn't give much information. If the objective is just to rebrand Proliants, it's not interesting. If the objective is to create a "database appliance" pre-optimized for Oracle, easy to administer and cluster, that would be a lot more interesting.
> ....they run Windows and they have been trained to expect Windows to fail frequently. They don't look at the message boxes because they don't care what they say. They're busy. Who has time to waste looking at the same error message you see 3 or 4 times a day, every day.
You have a point. As a geek, it's easy to forget that the vast majority of PC users are trying to accomplish something other than making Windows work. They don't care what the OS is doing or not doing, they're just trying to finish designing that flyer, or finish the end-of-month books, or make those Peoplesoft entries so they can leave this hellhole and get the hell home to their feeble attempt to have a life. Or at least to jeer at this week's reality show. The very last thing they're concerned about is some stupid popup designed to convey information to someone with a completely different skill set.
I wouldn't say the majority of users are idiots. They're just not Windows geeks. And that's a good thing, isn't it? Aren't PCs supposed to have some purpose besides running Windows? Shouldn't people expect to be able to perform some task with a PC without having to be a Windows geek?
Geeze, I'm starting to sound like a Mac fanboy. I think the way Mac applications jump up and down when they need attention is just terminally cute and I wish I knew how to make it stop. But (grinding my teeth) I have to admit, it's better than random incomprehensible eye-level demands for my attention to very little purpose.
I already have one.
Well, obviously, after clicking ok on a popup, another popup should open that contains a picture of the previous popup and a message "This is what you just clicked. Are you sure it's not malware?" That should take care of it. If enough of us send suggestions to Microsoft, there may be enough time to get it into Windows 7.
Ha ha ha.
> Oh, I took a ride, on a Gemini Spacecraft! And I thought about you!
Bowie, although I think it's "trip" not "ride".
> and a nursing of an orphaned baby-penguin for 6 months.
Man, I hate that. It makes my nipples hurt.
> not sure why that got modded Troll... it is true they dumped their printer and computer divisions to china.
Desktop and laptop computer divisions. IBM has four server lines -- mainframe, Intel, and two based on the Power architecture, plus storage and backup peripherals.
I'm also beginning to suspect astroturfing.
Sure I would, especially if I'd just sold it back.
> If it works on TMobile, it's GSM.
Thanks, I wasn't sure what TMobile uses. Change what I said to "release an ATT or unlocked version".
Slide out full keyboard, touch screen, and not running Windows Mobile. So far, so good.
Once the majority of the bugs are worked out, and they release a GSM version, it could be really cool.
Now to carefully make my current phone last one more year...
What about Activesync? That always has to be there, and they can't easily change the protocol because it would break the execs' Windows Mobile gadgets.
I agree that having a professional looking domain on your business card is a plus.
Domains are very cheap (on the order of $10 a year) and most domain management services provide email forwarding. So it's a simple matter to set up a mail address of "me@myfullname.com" that points to your gmail or yahoo address. Some of them even have web mail services so you wouldn't even have to use a separate free account. (Besides, you get to look at Danica Patrick... Mmmmmm, Danica....)
I was self-employed for awhile. I chose a company name that nobody had registered yet, and registered a domain and LLC at the same time. Back then domains ran about $30 a year and registering an LLC was $50/year (in my state -- your mileage may vary). I forwarded email to an existing address at a local ISP for which I was paying $30 a year for an email-only account. So I had my own company name on my card and my email address was my_name@company_name.com, with a total expenditure of $110/year. That's less than $10 a month to be able to show a professional face to the world.
Some mailers support munging the From: and/or Reply-to: fields, so you can completely disguise the fact that you're using gmail.
These days registration is a lot cheaper and email is essentially free. It should be very easy to do what you're trying to do.
> Don't be scared.
I'm a registered Democrat, so I can't be, by definition. Apparently.