CFLs aren't the solution. They're full of mercury, which is highly toxic for the environment. The solution is LEDs, but they're not quite ready to replace 100w light bulbs. 2012 is way too soon for LEDs as powerful and inexpensive as 100w bulbs. Give it until 2020.
"To win this case you have to break new legal ground. "
not only that, but shouldn't he welcome these jokes? Chuck norris is a washed-up has-been. Maybe these jokes will put him back in the lime-light with the next generation of movie goers, if only to poke fun at his invincible tough guy image.
"If you really want to get a perspective Install WIndows XP SP0 on a PC that is 5 or 6 years old"
I have. Besides the minor USB issues it ran everything perfectly and never crashed.
Vista, on the other hand, finally committed suicide and now crashes at the login screen without any user intervention. Vista DVD said it couldn't find restore points, couldn't find the backups on the second parition, and wouldn't give me a option to upgrade the current Vista install because I wasn't installing within the OS.
"This really only ever happens on systems that are dual booting, it would be extremely rare for it to happen on a normal Windows box..."
They were "contacted by fewer than 215 users", seems like a lot for something is suppose to be "very rare", especially considering the patch was only live for less than 6 hours: "...released on Tranquility at 22:04 GMT on 5 December.... The faulty upgrade had been pulled from Tranquility a few hours after the problem was discovered, at around 03:40 GMT."
Guess a lot of Eve players dual boot.
My question is, why the rush? This was a graphics upgrade, made the game look nicer, why the "working very hard for many weeks prior to release, evenings and weekends...not enough time to test the graphics content upgrade thoroughly"? I could maybe understand if this fixed a bug, but they created a patch to make it look prettier and ended up screwing with the OS. Isn't this like trying to fix a paint-chip in a hurry and destroying the wall?
the same way bits are more than bytes: "Called GDDR (Graphics Double Data Rate) 5, the new chips can transfer data at speeds up to 6G bps (bits per second)....GDDR5 is able to move more data, up to 24G bytes per second..."
so apparently it can move 6G bits per second, but if it really feels up to it, it can kick it up a notch and move 24G bytes per second (8 bits in 1 byte = 192G bits per second).
Comprende?
Something tells me the author can't tell his volt from his watt or his bit from his byte.
They should come with warnings on the label like cigarettes, or stores should put up warnings in front of the wireless keyboards.
I suppose I'm lucky I still have a few of the old Lite-On IR compact keyboards with built-in thumb mouse for HTPCs. Works great from across the room and the keyboard doesn't need to be pointed directly at the receiver for it to work, but at least being IR it still requires line-of-sight. They stopped making them a few years back when RF took off and now they're extremely rare. I bought 20 of them in '03 for less than $20 each and sold most of them in '05 for $60+ each.
I'm actually in the market for a new keyboard so I'm glad this was brought up, I'll definitely focus on wired keyboards.
"That as may be, the game in question was released in *1998*."
actually the color-added version was released in 1998 but the original came out in 1993, and since you can play the 1998 version on the old monochrome gameboy methinks it's not truly a title that was entirely redone for the gameboy color and it makes me question whether this left over code could also be found in the 1993 monochrome version of Link's Awakening.
"my sister had a job as a dental assistant and decided to quit because she would be eligible for food stamps, subsidized housing, and she could live off of the child support given to her by her ex-boyfriend."
agreed. I know a woman in her early 20s who does not work because she has calculated she would have to make at least $12/hr full time to make up for food stamps and welfare and pay for child care while at work. She actually makes more money living off welfare than working at McD's. We go to her place for barbecues and she's serving steaks and shrimp and lobster tail all paid for by food stamps.
makes you wonder why women working at walmart or mcd's don't just crank out some kids and sit at home and live off the rest of us.
"Now, if Verizon or Quest or Comcast were to install a feeder line or a customer drop through my property and outside the easement without permission, you would have the makings of a civil suit."
not exactly. Similar to a property that is land-locked, you can't just put up a fence and say "screw you neighbors, you're not going anywhere!" Your backyard becomes an easement and they're legally allowed to drive across your lawn if that's the only route to get out of their property to a major road.
easement:"An easement is granted by the owner of the property for the convenience, or ease, of the person using the property. Common easements include the right to pass across the property, the right to construct and maintain a roadway across the property, the right to construct a pipeline under the land, or a power line over the land. "
So if Verizon needs to run it's lines across your backyard to reach your neighbor's house you're SOL, they can do that.
Walmart was selling $400 laptops way back in 2005, so to hear that someone's trying to sell a 433mhz, 1gig flash memory, 7.5" display laptop-sized device for $400 sounds a little nuts. Yes, I know half that is for charity, but I still pay $400 and get one laptop.
"Who invests money in 12 year olds?... I wouldn't trust a 12 year old with 6.5M $"
Maybe someone that wants to lose 6.5M?
I love the end of the article "No word on when PlaySpan will be launching."
His entire company is a website describing a great idea and that's all it is. The software will never launch. Why would it? He has 6.5 million, technically owned by his parents because children don't really control anything unless they're emancipated, he can't even sign a contract.
If I was his parents I'd take the money and say "ok play time's over, here's a ps3, wii, xbox360 and new gaming PC, go have fun, mommy and daddy's going shopping". And what could the venture capitals do? Go to court and tell a judge "We gave 6.5 million to a 12 yr old for something that doesn't exist and we want it back!" Pretty sure the judge would say "You're retarded, go home, courts don't pay people for being stupid"
Exactly. And the idiot went on national TV to tell the world how wonderful his policy is! What was he thinking? Who would hire him now to manage anything? Who would trust him? He would have been better off showing up to work drunk and high, least he could explain that as a lapse in judgment, but refusing to sell 24 games to paying customers and bragging about it on TV?!?
What's next, refusing to sell McD's to fat people?? Refusing to sell gas to SUV owners? Refusing the morning after pill to women? (oops nevermind) This guy would be lucky to get a mop boy job after pulling this stunt.
"we'll have to see what else gets bigger with scale, other than just the thrust."
That's what she said;)
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version
on
BioShock Review
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· Score: 1
"it's entirely possible to get BSODs you wouldn't otherwise get, even in video games."
Agreed. I'm an avid overclocker, and no matter how many "burn-in" programs you run to test the processor nothing stresses it like the latest FPS. I had the problem with total annihilation. It'd crash, but burn-in programs and 3dmark06 ran flawlessly. Clocking down the cpu did the trick.
"Engineers face difficult challenges all the time."
Or maybe there's nothing wrong with Lithium Ion batteries.
How many billions upon billions of LiIon batteries have been shipped out in the last 17 years? What percentage have been recalled? Think of all the cellphones and laptops and ipods that have been shipped with LiIon batteries. I probably own dozens of LiIon batteries and not even know half of them because they're in every battery powered device now days. I've never had a problem with any of them besides losing the ability to recharge.
Speaking of the survey, is anyone else a bit surprised at the RAM numbers? If I'm reading it right nearly 45% of "gamers" have only 512 to 999 mb of ram. This survey started May 30th, 2007 and has been updated many times since.
With ram prices in the gutter I'm a bit shocked. 1gig of ram is less than $50 and has been for about 6 months. Why are these so called "gamers" spending hundreds on new video cards but still chugging along with $25 worth of ram? Many modern games like Supreme Commander won't even run with such little ram.
This might be even more surprising: only 0.43% have 2gigs or more. Less than 1% of gamers bothered to spend ~$100 on 2gigs of ram?
Also, 6.91% of gamers were running NVIDIA GeForce 6600 cards that came out in 2004. Another 4.42% are running the ATI Radeon 9600 which was out in 2003. These are very old cards for any true gamer to be running.
I don't think this survey is a good overall picture of what real gamers are buying and using. Real gamers are not using 4 year old Radeon 9600 cards and 512mb of ram.
"Has this ever happened to anybody here (while in their home country)? It's something you hear about, and it's something I could imagine happening, but I ride in cabs fairly regularly, and I've never had a cab driver try to do this to me..."
Yes. Someone I know takes a cab a few times a week to work. Many times the drivers have tried to take a longer route to make about 30% more. She calls them on it when they turn the wrong way. The longer route gets her there but it's obviously longer and the drivers know they're going the long way.
But you have a point. Sony doesn't have a great history of making formats that eventually become the standard. Minidisc? DAT? UMD movies? If I was Sony I'd practically give away Blu-ray players just to get them out there, then in a year or two once it becomes a standard re-coop their costs in license fees. Microsoft has been doing this for years with the Xbox and Xbox360 but it was necessary to make them a major player in the console wars and at times Xbox has had the most sales.
"exceptional people will be bored no matter what you put in front of them."
Not to boast any but I was in grade school in the 80s and I would finish classroom assignments much faster than all of my peers. After helping all the students immediately around me understand and complete their assignments I would get out of my seat and help other students.
Teachers labeled me hyperactive and moved my seat into the corner and used tape to create a box around my seat, telling me I'd be punished if I left the box. Later I was put on Ritalin, which was brand new in the 80s. That helped, but I wish instead of medicating me I would have been allowed see how far I could have gone.
Slashdot Mirror
CFLs aren't the solution. They're full of mercury, which is highly toxic for the environment. The solution is LEDs, but they're not quite ready to replace 100w light bulbs. 2012 is way too soon for LEDs as powerful and inexpensive as 100w bulbs. Give it until 2020.
Besides, do we really need legislation? Walmart already aimed to sell 100 million CFLs for 2007 and forced manufactures to reduce mecury in CFLs, all without legislation.
"To win this case you have to break new legal ground. "
not only that, but shouldn't he welcome these jokes? Chuck norris is a washed-up has-been. Maybe these jokes will put him back in the lime-light with the next generation of movie goers, if only to poke fun at his invincible tough guy image.
"That's the last time I buy something from Circuit City. "
well don't go to Best Buy either. They're not well liked around here:
Best Buy Hands Out Cease & Desist Letters for Christmas
Best Buy 'Geek Squad' Accused of Pirating Software
Best Buy hopes to exorcize devil patrons
"So their highest paid salespeople made just under $30K a year?"
$30k/yr is about $15/hr, which sounds like high pay for someone that works at circuit city and isn't upper management.
"If you really want to get a perspective Install WIndows XP SP0 on a PC that is 5 or 6 years old"
I have. Besides the minor USB issues it ran everything perfectly and never crashed.
Vista, on the other hand, finally committed suicide and now crashes at the login screen without any user intervention. Vista DVD said it couldn't find restore points, couldn't find the backups on the second parition, and wouldn't give me a option to upgrade the current Vista install because I wasn't installing within the OS.
I went back to XP and couldn't be happier.
"This really only ever happens on systems that are dual booting, it would be extremely rare for it to happen on a normal Windows box..."
They were "contacted by fewer than 215 users", seems like a lot for something is suppose to be "very rare", especially considering the patch was only live for less than 6 hours:
"...released on Tranquility at 22:04 GMT on 5 December.... The faulty upgrade had been pulled from Tranquility a few hours after the problem was discovered, at around 03:40 GMT."
Guess a lot of Eve players dual boot.
My question is, why the rush? This was a graphics upgrade, made the game look nicer, why the "working very hard for many weeks prior to release, evenings and weekends...not enough time to test the graphics content upgrade thoroughly"? I could maybe understand if this fixed a bug, but they created a patch to make it look prettier and ended up screwing with the OS. Isn't this like trying to fix a paint-chip in a hurry and destroying the wall?
Anyone notice the author of the article looks like Mr. Bean?
How does it consume volts?
the same way bits are more than bytes:
"Called GDDR (Graphics Double Data Rate) 5, the new chips can transfer data at speeds up to 6G bps (bits per second)....GDDR5 is able to move more data, up to 24G bytes per second..."
so apparently it can move 6G bits per second, but if it really feels up to it, it can kick it up a notch and move 24G bytes per second (8 bits in 1 byte = 192G bits per second).
Comprende?
Something tells me the author can't tell his volt from his watt or his bit from his byte.
P.S. sorry samsung, someone beat you to it last month
"Anyone concerned about security doesn't use a wireless keyboard....Durrrr"
Except it's getting to the point that you can't even buy a wired keyboard. Check out circuit city, of the 57 keyboards they offer, 25 are wireless or bluetooth, and most of the wired keyboards are the cheap crappy kind. It also doesn't help when some of them act like "up to 100 ft. range with no line-of-sight limitations" is a good thing, as if anyone needs to type something while the screen's in another room.
They should come with warnings on the label like cigarettes, or stores should put up warnings in front of the wireless keyboards.
I suppose I'm lucky I still have a few of the old Lite-On IR compact keyboards with built-in thumb mouse for HTPCs. Works great from across the room and the keyboard doesn't need to be pointed directly at the receiver for it to work, but at least being IR it still requires line-of-sight. They stopped making them a few years back when RF took off and now they're extremely rare. I bought 20 of them in '03 for less than $20 each and sold most of them in '05 for $60+ each.
I'm actually in the market for a new keyboard so I'm glad this was brought up, I'll definitely focus on wired keyboards.
"That as may be, the game in question was released in *1998*."
actually the color-added version was released in 1998 but the original came out in 1993, and since you can play the 1998 version on the old monochrome gameboy methinks it's not truly a title that was entirely redone for the gameboy color and it makes me question whether this left over code could also be found in the 1993 monochrome version of Link's Awakening.
"my sister had a job as a dental assistant and decided to quit because she would be eligible for food stamps, subsidized housing, and she could live off of the child support given to her by her ex-boyfriend."
agreed. I know a woman in her early 20s who does not work because she has calculated she would have to make at least $12/hr full time to make up for food stamps and welfare and pay for child care while at work. She actually makes more money living off welfare than working at McD's. We go to her place for barbecues and she's serving steaks and shrimp and lobster tail all paid for by food stamps.
makes you wonder why women working at walmart or mcd's don't just crank out some kids and sit at home and live off the rest of us.
"Now, if Verizon or Quest or Comcast were to install a feeder line or a customer drop through my property and outside the easement without permission, you would have the makings of a civil suit."
not exactly. Similar to a property that is land-locked, you can't just put up a fence and say "screw you neighbors, you're not going anywhere!" Your backyard becomes an easement and they're legally allowed to drive across your lawn if that's the only route to get out of their property to a major road.
easement: "An easement is granted by the owner of the property for the convenience, or ease, of the person using the property. Common easements include the right to pass across the property, the right to construct and maintain a roadway across the property, the right to construct a pipeline under the land, or a power line over the land. "
So if Verizon needs to run it's lines across your backyard to reach your neighbor's house you're SOL, they can do that.
"to pretend it's "Apple's Vista" when it's not even out yet is the biggest load of tripe I've ever heard."
Actually that's an insult to Vista. Vista's minimum requirements is a 1 ghz cpu and 512 mb, easily 5+ year old hardware
"At $200 I might have been able to scrape up enough to buy my oldest one for Xmas,but at $399? I could just buy a much more powerful Dell."
Actually you could. Walmart has 1.0 GHz VIA C3 laptops for $398 in stores or a 1.86 GHz Intel Celeron Acer Aspire for $428 with 14" LCD, 512meg, 80gig HD and dvd-rom/cdrw with Vista.
Walmart was selling $400 laptops way back in 2005, so to hear that someone's trying to sell a 433mhz, 1gig flash memory, 7.5" display laptop-sized device for $400 sounds a little nuts. Yes, I know half that is for charity, but I still pay $400 and get one laptop.
"Who invests money in 12 year olds? ... I wouldn't trust a 12 year old with 6.5M $"
Maybe someone that wants to lose 6.5M?
I love the end of the article "No word on when PlaySpan will be launching."
His entire company is a website describing a great idea and that's all it is. The software will never launch. Why would it? He has 6.5 million, technically owned by his parents because children don't really control anything unless they're emancipated, he can't even sign a contract.
If I was his parents I'd take the money and say "ok play time's over, here's a ps3, wii, xbox360 and new gaming PC, go have fun, mommy and daddy's going shopping". And what could the venture capitals do? Go to court and tell a judge "We gave 6.5 million to a 12 yr old for something that doesn't exist and we want it back!" Pretty sure the judge would say "You're retarded, go home, courts don't pay people for being stupid"
UPDATE: apparently his dad actually runs the company, the kid is just there as a gimmick and wasn't actually mentioned in the official press release.
"refusing to sell? That's just bad business."
Exactly. And the idiot went on national TV to tell the world how wonderful his policy is! What was he thinking? Who would hire him now to manage anything? Who would trust him? He would have been better off showing up to work drunk and high, least he could explain that as a lapse in judgment, but refusing to sell 24 games to paying customers and bragging about it on TV?!?
What's next, refusing to sell McD's to fat people?? Refusing to sell gas to SUV owners? Refusing the morning after pill to women? (oops nevermind) This guy would be lucky to get a mop boy job after pulling this stunt.
Remember kids: wear your helmet!
"we'll have to see what else gets bigger with scale, other than just the thrust."
;)
That's what she said
"it's entirely possible to get BSODs you wouldn't otherwise get, even in video games."
Agreed. I'm an avid overclocker, and no matter how many "burn-in" programs you run to test the processor nothing stresses it like the latest FPS. I had the problem with total annihilation. It'd crash, but burn-in programs and 3dmark06 ran flawlessly. Clocking down the cpu did the trick.
"Engineers face difficult challenges all the time."
Or maybe there's nothing wrong with Lithium Ion batteries.
How many billions upon billions of LiIon batteries have been shipped out in the last 17 years? What percentage have been recalled? Think of all the cellphones and laptops and ipods that have been shipped with LiIon batteries. I probably own dozens of LiIon batteries and not even know half of them because they're in every battery powered device now days. I've never had a problem with any of them besides losing the ability to recharge.
"...an accessory gmail account to keep the important stuff."
Unless they can't access gmail from school.
100 mB virtual lockers? What are they, zip drives from 1995? 2 gig flash drives are $20. Why the measly 100 megs?
Speaking of the survey, is anyone else a bit surprised at the RAM numbers? If I'm reading it right nearly 45% of "gamers" have only 512 to 999 mb of ram. This survey started May 30th, 2007 and has been updated many times since.
With ram prices in the gutter I'm a bit shocked. 1gig of ram is less than $50 and has been for about 6 months. Why are these so called "gamers" spending hundreds on new video cards but still chugging along with $25 worth of ram? Many modern games like Supreme Commander won't even run with such little ram.
This might be even more surprising: only 0.43% have 2gigs or more. Less than 1% of gamers bothered to spend ~$100 on 2gigs of ram?
Also, 6.91% of gamers were running NVIDIA GeForce 6600 cards that came out in 2004. Another 4.42% are running the ATI Radeon 9600 which was out in 2003. These are very old cards for any true gamer to be running.
I don't think this survey is a good overall picture of what real gamers are buying and using. Real gamers are not using 4 year old Radeon 9600 cards and 512mb of ram.
"Has this ever happened to anybody here (while in their home country)? It's something you hear about, and it's something I could imagine happening, but I ride in cabs fairly regularly, and I've never had a cab driver try to do this to me..."
Yes. Someone I know takes a cab a few times a week to work. Many times the drivers have tried to take a longer route to make about 30% more. She calls them on it when they turn the wrong way. The longer route gets her there but it's obviously longer and the drivers know they're going the long way.
"BluRay, please meet betamax."
I wouldn't call blu-ray the new betamax just yet, with Blockbuster already announcing they're carrying only blu-ray titles primarily due to PS3 sales.
But you have a point. Sony doesn't have a great history of making formats that eventually become the standard. Minidisc? DAT? UMD movies? If I was Sony I'd practically give away Blu-ray players just to get them out there, then in a year or two once it becomes a standard re-coop their costs in license fees. Microsoft has been doing this for years with the Xbox and Xbox360 but it was necessary to make them a major player in the console wars and at times Xbox has had the most sales.
"exceptional people will be bored no matter what you put in front of them."
Not to boast any but I was in grade school in the 80s and I would finish classroom assignments much faster than all of my peers. After helping all the students immediately around me understand and complete their assignments I would get out of my seat and help other students.
Teachers labeled me hyperactive and moved my seat into the corner and used tape to create a box around my seat, telling me I'd be punished if I left the box. Later I was put on Ritalin, which was brand new in the 80s. That helped, but I wish instead of medicating me I would have been allowed see how far I could have gone.