I have electronic billing with a Citibank credit card and they send me a notice of $0.00 when I haven't used the card. This of course shows up as a bill in my online banking portal, but the portal doesn't register the $0.00 the value. I've tried paying $0.00 through the system and at least my bank is smart enough not to allow that.
In the end I have a (few) notice(s) that my balance is overdue and I need to make a payment. It remains that way until I actually use the card again and owe them something.
Add to that, the ability that EchoStar has, that I don't believe TiVO has. The ability to only record NEW episodes of a program, vs all episodes (which it also has).
TiVo will allow you to do the same thing. It has options to record first run, repeats and first run, or all (includes duplicates of existing shows).
iPhoto (and iLife) comes bundled on all new Macs. You get the minor updates, but an upgrade from iPhoto 5 ->6 is only available as part of the $79 iLife.
iPhoto 6 is a vast improvement from early versions. It's a little slow on a 450 mhz G4, and still has room for improvement, but it is headed in the right direction.
If you are doing serious running, you should be replacing your shoes every 300-400 miles. I would wager the included battery would easily last that long. Heart rate monitor chest straps do essentially the same thing as these shoes, except they count heartbeats instead of paces. Every HRM battery has lasted at least a year, some more than 2, so I don't anticipate it being a real concern for most customers.
There is an option in TiVO to change the volume of the sound effects. I don't particularly care for them, and that is why I have them turned off. The recommendations feature is interesting, but unless you take a lot of time to rate everything you watch and don't, you can get some weird recommendations. Again, this feature can be turned off.
If you really checked it out you would see that it doesn't even run on windows, so in a way, you are right. There is no point for AppZapper on windows. On Mac OS, there is a point. There is no Add/Remove program functionality.
In order to un-mangle the songs, just drag and drop them onto iTunes and have the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes folder organized" selected. They get organized and renamed into/artist/album/01-trackname.mp3 automatically.
One should be able to do this in any program that lets you rename the files from the ID3 tags.
Change in temp or airiation does not a complex wine make.
I didn't say that every wine will change with temp or time, but, often better wines will develop different, better, more exciting, etc. flavor as it sits. A simple wine can taste flat, leave no finish, and not change flavor as you swallow it. A complex wine can do just the opposite. It can have a multi-layered taste where you get the fruit first, then you might get oak or tobbacco, and then something different on the finish. Complex does not necessarily mean good or bad, it is simply a way to describe way how a wine tastes. This is speaking from my own experience, I don't read wine magazines, or pay attention to what anyone else says.
It isn't necessarily mold growing in the cork, but the cork being porus and allows oxygen into the bottle that spoils the wine. I should have specified like advocate one did that you smell/taste the little bit of wine that is first poured out into the glass.
Wine tasting IS SNAKE OIL; 100% so. Here's what happens. You get used to tasting specific characteristics of certain types of wine and eventually your brain no longer registers the tastes like you once did. The same is 100% true for vision, smell, and hearing. You then move on to a new wine which offers new flavors (stimulus) that your tongue could not previously discern.
I'd be curious to see some real evidence to back this up. I've had a fair amount of wine, and my fiancee is a sommelier. She has an excellent nose and sense of taste, and according to your theory, she should only be drinking super exotic expensive stuff. That isn't the case. There IS such a thing as good wine, although good is subjective. I don't like many chardonnays, but they are one of the most popular wines in America and a lot of people think they are good.
There are such a things as complex and sophisticated wines, but it sounds like either a) you haven't had any, or b) don't have the palate to make the distinction. That isn't meant as an insult, but rather as what you were born with. Some people just don't have as many taste buds. A complex wine can give many flavors and odors, change as it goes across your tongue, or develop as it sits in a glass.
You are right, smelling the cork is pretty worthless, however, looking at the cork can sometimes tell you something. It obviously shouldn't be dry or crumbly, and if it looks like the wine has really penetrated the cork, it can be an indication that the bottle is corked. The scent of wet cardboard is a giveaway for a corked wine.
For a lot of wines the last glass is the best because the wine has had some time to open up. Decanting a bottle before drinking it will have the same effect so all the glasses would be better.
It seems like a great product, but according to documentation doesn't control a digital cable box. That severly limits it's usefulness to me. I'd love to ditch the TIVO and be able to archive shows to DVD, but if it can't record what I want, it won't do much else.
If/when there is a solution that will allow control of a digital cable box I'd probably buy one.
It's a little hard to have your favorite [actor/athlete/whatever] sign your pda or laptop screen. At a recent cycling event I took a great photo of Floyd Landis as he was finishing. I ran off to CVS, printed up an 8x10, went back to his trailer and got him to sign it.
That's one good reason why I use digital imaging and minilab printing. Although I will admit, I've taken thousands of digital images and only printed out a handful of "keepers" to frame or give away.
Here's an example. I work in a group of about 15 people. We all do the same thing, but each person likes to do it differently (naming conventions, job directory structures, etc.) but all finished work gets dumped onto one network drive.
On top of this we have about 20 years worth of electronic files from at least 4 generations of applications that would be impracticable to convert to whatever the flavor of the day is.
Having a good search tool makes finding previously related jobs is a big bonus. Currently I use Copernic for this and I think it's great.
For a home system, I can see where you are coming from and I agree I wouldn't find it as useful as I do at work. The only exception is my growing digital photo collection.
The Sony Clie PEG-T615C has a pretty good IR transmitter. By pretty good I mean sitting on the couch watching TV (10-15ft). It also came with Clie RMC which allowed you to set up many different devices and control pretty much all functionality. It also has many maufacturers settings coded in, sometimes just takes a bit of searching to find the right one.
It won't do macros and it can't be programmed. All in all usefull, but won't take the place of any universal remote.
I use RealVNC 4.0 and have a 3 monitor setup. It functionally works quite well, but pegs the processor on the server (P4 2GHz W2kPro) and it gets really slow. Remotely it will keep up with network lag, but if a client is connected, control from the local end is painful.
Disabling 2 of the 3 screens makes it much more snappy.
To connect when machine is locked or no one is logged in you have to run the VNC server as a service. It will then allow client connections at any time. Real VNC allows you to send the Ctrl+Alt+Del by right clicking the VNC sessions title bar. (Windows version)
If you go to display properties and click on the settings tab do you see 2 boxes, labeled 1 and 2? If you do, select the greyed out one and check the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" box and click apply.
If you don't see 2 boxes, you probably have to hit the "Advanced" tab on the same screen and look for the tab that enables multiple screens. It will probably have an image of a CRT, a laptop screen, and a TV. Make sure the CRT is enabled. Then go back to the first set of instructions.
I don't know about all of them, but at least with Dell C400/D600 laptops it possible, but is implemented poorly. What Dell does is expand the monitor resolution to 2048x768 and span it across the external monitor and the laptop screen. It doesn't do a true dual monitor setup where there are 2 displays each at 1024x768 and each is treated independently by the OS and applications. You need a Margi Display-to-Go card or similar to acomplish that.
If there is a hack or different drivers that fixes this, I'd love to know about it.
Re:Movies while working are newsworthy & produ
on
A Dual Monitor Experiment
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I also have 3 monitors at work and I find it very useful. I had 2, but found an old graphics card in a discarded computer and figured I'd stick it in my current machine.
I typically run simulations on 2 monitors, and email/chat on the third. I wouldn't bother doing it at home no matter how much I use it at work. At home I'm either playing games or doing 1 thing at a time.
If the entire plant is a combined cycle plant or STeam And Gas (STAG), it would be configured exactly as you imagine. The waste heat of the gas turbine is fed into a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) for the steam turbine.
This is the most advanced combined cycle system in the world at the moment.
One of the more interesting applications of this is the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant. It's essentially a heavy duty gas turbine that has some modifications made to the fuel supply system.
More info here.
When I bought my Garmin Etrex, I wanted to use it to store mountain bike rides and overlay them with maps.
I've found USAPhotoMaps http://jdmcox.com/ to be an excellent free (as in beer) solution for plotting and viewing all my GPS data. It will download B&W aerial phots, USGS topos, and high resolution color photos of available areas.
It won't do profile slicing, or 3d elevation, but all in all it's the best GPS mapping software I've found for free. It beats a lot of commercial solutions in my opinion.
Wissenbach Map3D looks like a great program, but I've tried it a couple times and couldn't get it to work. You need to find the right DRG's, which are available for free, but a hard to get for any large area. Then getting the map overlays to match up etc., I thought it was too much work for casual use.
Slashdot Mirror
In the end I have a (few) notice(s) that my balance is overdue and I need to make a payment. It remains that way until I actually use the card again and owe them something.
TiVo will allow you to do the same thing. It has options to record first run, repeats and first run, or all (includes duplicates of existing shows).
iPhoto (and iLife) comes bundled on all new Macs. You get the minor updates, but an upgrade from iPhoto 5 ->6 is only available as part of the $79 iLife. iPhoto 6 is a vast improvement from early versions. It's a little slow on a 450 mhz G4, and still has room for improvement, but it is headed in the right direction.
If you are doing serious running, you should be replacing your shoes every 300-400 miles. I would wager the included battery would easily last that long. Heart rate monitor chest straps do essentially the same thing as these shoes, except they count heartbeats instead of paces. Every HRM battery has lasted at least a year, some more than 2, so I don't anticipate it being a real concern for most customers.
There is an option in TiVO to change the volume of the sound effects. I don't particularly care for them, and that is why I have them turned off. The recommendations feature is interesting, but unless you take a lot of time to rate everything you watch and don't, you can get some weird recommendations. Again, this feature can be turned off.
If you really checked it out you would see that it doesn't even run on windows, so in a way, you are right. There is no point for AppZapper on windows. On Mac OS, there is a point. There is no Add/Remove program functionality.
In order to un-mangle the songs, just drag and drop them onto iTunes and have the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" and "Keep iTunes folder organized" selected. They get organized and renamed into /artist/album/01-trackname.mp3 automatically.
One should be able to do this in any program that lets you rename the files from the ID3 tags.
Change in temp or airiation does not a complex wine make.
I didn't say that every wine will change with temp or time, but, often better wines will develop different, better, more exciting, etc. flavor as it sits. A simple wine can taste flat, leave no finish, and not change flavor as you swallow it. A complex wine can do just the opposite. It can have a multi-layered taste where you get the fruit first, then you might get oak or tobbacco, and then something different on the finish. Complex does not necessarily mean good or bad, it is simply a way to describe way how a wine tastes. This is speaking from my own experience, I don't read wine magazines, or pay attention to what anyone else says.
It isn't necessarily mold growing in the cork, but the cork being porus and allows oxygen into the bottle that spoils the wine. I should have specified like advocate one did that you smell/taste the little bit of wine that is first poured out into the glass.
Wine tasting IS SNAKE OIL; 100% so. Here's what happens. You get used to tasting specific characteristics of certain types of wine and eventually your brain no longer registers the tastes like you once did. The same is 100% true for vision, smell, and hearing. You then move on to a new wine which offers new flavors (stimulus) that your tongue could not previously discern.
n sory/taste.html#Supertasters
I'd be curious to see some real evidence to back this up. I've had a fair amount of wine, and my fiancee is a sommelier. She has an excellent nose and sense of taste, and according to your theory, she should only be drinking super exotic expensive stuff. That isn't the case. There IS such a thing as good wine, although good is subjective. I don't like many chardonnays, but they are one of the most popular wines in America and a lot of people think they are good.
There are such a things as complex and sophisticated wines, but it sounds like either a) you haven't had any, or b) don't have the palate to make the distinction. That isn't meant as an insult, but rather as what you were born with. Some people just don't have as many taste buds. A complex wine can give many flavors and odors, change as it goes across your tongue, or develop as it sits in a glass.
http://www.cf.ac.uk/biosi/staff/jacob/teaching/se
The bottom line is, if you like it, great, if you don't, find something else. It doesn't matter how much it costs.
You are right, smelling the cork is pretty worthless, however, looking at the cork can sometimes tell you something. It obviously shouldn't be dry or crumbly, and if it looks like the wine has really penetrated the cork, it can be an indication that the bottle is corked. The scent of wet cardboard is a giveaway for a corked wine.
For a lot of wines the last glass is the best because the wine has had some time to open up. Decanting a bottle before drinking it will have the same effect so all the glasses would be better.
It seems like a great product, but according to documentation doesn't control a digital cable box. That severly limits it's usefulness to me. I'd love to ditch the TIVO and be able to archive shows to DVD, but if it can't record what I want, it won't do much else. If/when there is a solution that will allow control of a digital cable box I'd probably buy one.
It's a little hard to have your favorite [actor/athlete/whatever] sign your pda or laptop screen. At a recent cycling event I took a great photo of Floyd Landis as he was finishing. I ran off to CVS, printed up an 8x10, went back to his trailer and got him to sign it.
That's one good reason why I use digital imaging and minilab printing. Although I will admit, I've taken thousands of digital images and only printed out a handful of "keepers" to frame or give away.
Here's an example. I work in a group of about 15 people. We all do the same thing, but each person likes to do it differently (naming conventions, job directory structures, etc.) but all finished work gets dumped onto one network drive.
On top of this we have about 20 years worth of electronic files from at least 4 generations of applications that would be impracticable to convert to whatever the flavor of the day is.
Having a good search tool makes finding previously related jobs is a big bonus. Currently I use Copernic for this and I think it's great.
For a home system, I can see where you are coming from and I agree I wouldn't find it as useful as I do at work. The only exception is my growing digital photo collection.
The Sony Clie PEG-T615C has a pretty good IR transmitter. By pretty good I mean sitting on the couch watching TV (10-15ft). It also came with Clie RMC which allowed you to set up many different devices and control pretty much all functionality. It also has many maufacturers settings coded in, sometimes just takes a bit of searching to find the right one.
It won't do macros and it can't be programmed. All in all usefull, but won't take the place of any universal remote.
I use RealVNC 4.0 and have a 3 monitor setup. It functionally works quite well, but pegs the processor on the server (P4 2GHz W2kPro) and it gets really slow. Remotely it will keep up with network lag, but if a client is connected, control from the local end is painful.
Disabling 2 of the 3 screens makes it much more snappy.
To connect when machine is locked or no one is logged in you have to run the VNC server as a service. It will then allow client connections at any time. Real VNC allows you to send the Ctrl+Alt+Del by right clicking the VNC sessions title bar. (Windows version)
If you go to display properties and click on the settings tab do you see 2 boxes, labeled 1 and 2? If you do, select the greyed out one and check the "Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor" box and click apply.
If you don't see 2 boxes, you probably have to hit the "Advanced" tab on the same screen and look for the tab that enables multiple screens. It will probably have an image of a CRT, a laptop screen, and a TV. Make sure the CRT is enabled. Then go back to the first set of instructions.
I don't know about all of them, but at least with Dell C400/D600 laptops it possible, but is implemented poorly. What Dell does is expand the monitor resolution to 2048x768 and span it across the external monitor and the laptop screen. It doesn't do a true dual monitor setup where there are 2 displays each at 1024x768 and each is treated independently by the OS and applications. You need a Margi Display-to-Go card or similar to acomplish that. If there is a hack or different drivers that fixes this, I'd love to know about it.
I also have 3 monitors at work and I find it very useful. I had 2, but found an old graphics card in a discarded computer and figured I'd stick it in my current machine. I typically run simulations on 2 monitors, and email/chat on the third. I wouldn't bother doing it at home no matter how much I use it at work. At home I'm either playing games or doing 1 thing at a time.
If the entire plant is a combined cycle plant or STeam And Gas (STAG), it would be configured exactly as you imagine. The waste heat of the gas turbine is fed into a Heat Recovery Steam Generator (HRSG) for the steam turbine. This is the most advanced combined cycle system in the world at the moment.
One of the more interesting applications of this is the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant. It's essentially a heavy duty gas turbine that has some modifications made to the fuel supply system. More info here.
I've found USAPhotoMaps http://jdmcox.com/ to be an excellent free (as in beer) solution for plotting and viewing all my GPS data. It will download B&W aerial phots, USGS topos, and high resolution color photos of available areas.
It won't do profile slicing, or 3d elevation, but all in all it's the best GPS mapping software I've found for free. It beats a lot of commercial solutions in my opinion.
I prefer USAPhotoMaps http://jdmcox.com/ but it is Windows only.