There are some days I get so fed up w/ Word I edit my text in Excel...
at least there I can force it to do what I want, rather than the program forcing me to do what it wants:)
I typed all of my papers in college pretty much in a stream-of-consciousness way and thusly my typing speed was really useful. In my old age I've slowed down a bit and right now typing here I'm pausing every 7 or 8 words or so... gets a little annoying, but I just blame the beer.
Joe Piscipo's son was a friend of mine in middle school. For his birthday one year his father rented the damn thing and brought it to school. Several of us got to sit in the thing, which at 13 was awesome...
So I've kind of got a soft spot for that old thing.
But you've got all those fond memories of txt messages and old IM chat logs to keep around..:P
And while I agree with you that there are some books that are worth killing a tree over, is anyone going to lament the loss of a beautiful printed copy of a terrible historical romance novel? I doubt it...
After looking down and realizing that the t-shirt I'm wearing is from a nicely failed website from back then, I've got to agree. All that VC floating around was wonderful.. too bad it dried up before I could really take advantage of it...
Well, why make an argument against it if you have no reason to use the system? It's around 20$ a month for VoIP, or you can pay 20$ a month for your POTS line. Your system works for you, so keep it. On the other hand, I have no real need for a landline, fitting in to none of these categories.
What worries me a lot more than the small group of people who would call 911 in an emergency from VoIP or cell phones is the fact that in an emergency, 911 call centers get greatly overloaded and there's no way to get through for long periods of time. Plus, the 911 operation of VoIP phones has gotten better so now it's generally down to the fact that it won't work if the power or internet is out, which means that 99.99% of the time your houseguest CAN use any phone in the house.
If I ran a business, I'd be sure to call up the white pages to put my number in there, and I'd also probably have a yellow pages ad, too. They might not put you in for VoIP by default, but if you called up and explained the situation I highly doubt they'd keep you out.
A couple of years ago when I was in college, we used to take the school projector and hook consoles up to it, projecting over one of the dorm walls (it was a small school). As people would walk by, they'd sit down, watch the 20-foot screen, and pick up a controller to play. 1/4th of a screen isn't too bad when the screen is huge, and we'd always have someone go up to the screen and fight the other characters in games like Street Fighter 2. Always good for a laugh..
911 - Cell phone still works, can keep around an old, non-subscribed phone just for that, just have to keep it plugged in
Phone book - I'd rather not be in there anyway, anyone who wants to call me knows how to get in touch with me, anyone who doesn't know how shouldn't need to get in touch.
Pizza - I worked at a pizza place, just give us your phone number and we'll plug it in for you, no muss, no fuss
Tivo - broadband versions or roll-your own..
The benefits of a phone line and unlimited LD for 20$ a month outweigh these "problems" by a mile..
Heck, Linux has faced some tough roads due to the marketing of an inferior product.
Thank god the obligatory Linux zealot comment was thrown in here.. Linux has faced some tough roads due to many factors, most of them unrelated to Microsoft's marketing abilities. The biggest ones include a lack of an easy-to-follow setup procedure, a lack of a way to easily install programs without compiling them yourself, a desktop interface system that is little more than windows around command lines, etc.. I'm not saying that many of these problems aren't being worked on, but those are much larger barriers to popular usage than Microsoft's marketing...
After living in New York City for a summer and getting used to the subway pricing there (at the time, 1.50$ one way, no matter where you were going), the pay-for-your-distance nature of the BART was really disturbing. Plus, the NY subway was just so wonderfully branching when you were in the city, whereas the BART really only went on one major track... so it was more expensive and less useful, at least for me...
I wonder how you go about turning the pieces? Moving them left and right, along w/ dropping them down makes sense, but I don't see a "flip" button anywhere...
If I am driving my personal car at > 130 MPH on a highway, I don't think there's a place in America where I'm not breaking the law. Yes, there are racing tracks where you can go as fast as you want, but at that point the people who are racing have modified their cars in so many ways to make them faster, I'm sure they would have addressed the chip at some point.
On the other hand, there are limitless uses for huge amounts of network bandwidth. If I want to send a DVD-quality video of my child (if i had one) to their grandparents, I could just upload it over the network, rather than having to burn a DVD and send it in the mail. There's a difference in limiting uses of things when the only possible use is illegal and limiting uses of things where there are huge possibilities for applications.
It helps that the file server/router box is one that is approximately 5 years old:P The PVR/media is about nearly 3 years old, at this point, but having a dedicated MPEG2 encoding card (PVR-250, mmm) sure does take a lot of the processor load away...
Actually, I have the main computer, for things like work and games, the Fedora Core file server/router, and the PVR/media playing computer hooked up to the TV. And I have parts for another computer, but just no ideas for what to do with it.. sigh:P
Sitting in my somewhat comfortable chair, staring at a 19" screen a foot or so away from my face, or sitting on my extremely comfortable couch, putting my feet up on the coffee table and watching it on the 42" widescreen HDTV.. tough choice, but, well.. going to have to go for the far lazier couch:P
Wow, this is one of the few times I've been educated by reading Slashdot games.. thanks, you've made my day:)
Really interesting story, though, and it sure does make a hell of a lot of sense... I guess that's why so many food court shops in the malls will have the "get a receipt or your meal's on us" signs...
When the girl and I moved into an apartment, Comcast was running a promotion.. 100$ a month for digital cable w/ 2 premium sets of channels, along w/ high-speed internet.. it's just 1 charge on the bill, and she called once to ask a question about it.. so I'm pretty sure they can handle it.. perhaps they just don't want to:)
Slashdot Mirror
Because my t-shirts don't fall apart when I ask them to do something they don't have a script for (like using an old one to wax my car)
There are some days I get so fed up w/ Word I edit my text in Excel... at least there I can force it to do what I want, rather than the program forcing me to do what it wants :)
Man... 3 grand buys so much now :)
Brother!
I typed all of my papers in college pretty much in a stream-of-consciousness way and thusly my typing speed was really useful. In my old age I've slowed down a bit and right now typing here I'm pausing every 7 or 8 words or so... gets a little annoying, but I just blame the beer.
Here's some in-game screenshots from a guy who managed to get his hands on it already.
Doom3 Pix
Joe Piscipo's son was a friend of mine in middle school. For his birthday one year his father rented the damn thing and brought it to school. Several of us got to sit in the thing, which at 13 was awesome... So I've kind of got a soft spot for that old thing.
But you've got all those fond memories of txt messages and old IM chat logs to keep around.. :P
And while I agree with you that there are some books that are worth killing a tree over, is anyone going to lament the loss of a beautiful printed copy of a terrible historical romance novel? I doubt it...
After looking down and realizing that the t-shirt I'm wearing is from a nicely failed website from back then, I've got to agree. All that VC floating around was wonderful.. too bad it dried up before I could really take advantage of it...
Hopefully they've gotten that damn thing at least a few times.. he's always too quick for me
Well, why make an argument against it if you have no reason to use the system? It's around 20$ a month for VoIP, or you can pay 20$ a month for your POTS line. Your system works for you, so keep it. On the other hand, I have no real need for a landline, fitting in to none of these categories.
What worries me a lot more than the small group of people who would call 911 in an emergency from VoIP or cell phones is the fact that in an emergency, 911 call centers get greatly overloaded and there's no way to get through for long periods of time. Plus, the 911 operation of VoIP phones has gotten better so now it's generally down to the fact that it won't work if the power or internet is out, which means that 99.99% of the time your houseguest CAN use any phone in the house.
If I ran a business, I'd be sure to call up the white pages to put my number in there, and I'd also probably have a yellow pages ad, too. They might not put you in for VoIP by default, but if you called up and explained the situation I highly doubt they'd keep you out.
A couple of years ago when I was in college, we used to take the school projector and hook consoles up to it, projecting over one of the dorm walls (it was a small school). As people would walk by, they'd sit down, watch the 20-foot screen, and pick up a controller to play. 1/4th of a screen isn't too bad when the screen is huge, and we'd always have someone go up to the screen and fight the other characters in games like Street Fighter 2. Always good for a laugh..
911 - Cell phone still works, can keep around an old, non-subscribed phone just for that, just have to keep it plugged in
Phone book - I'd rather not be in there anyway, anyone who wants to call me knows how to get in touch with me, anyone who doesn't know how shouldn't need to get in touch.
Pizza - I worked at a pizza place, just give us your phone number and we'll plug it in for you, no muss, no fuss
Tivo - broadband versions or roll-your own..
The benefits of a phone line and unlimited LD for 20$ a month outweigh these "problems" by a mile..
Offtopic, but I have to say, I do like your sig.. :P
Heck, Linux has faced some tough roads due to the marketing of an inferior product.
Thank god the obligatory Linux zealot comment was thrown in here.. Linux has faced some tough roads due to many factors, most of them unrelated to Microsoft's marketing abilities. The biggest ones include a lack of an easy-to-follow setup procedure, a lack of a way to easily install programs without compiling them yourself, a desktop interface system that is little more than windows around command lines, etc.. I'm not saying that many of these problems aren't being worked on, but those are much larger barriers to popular usage than Microsoft's marketing...
Sorry, no results were found containing "donkey punch"
After living in New York City for a summer and getting used to the subway pricing there (at the time, 1.50$ one way, no matter where you were going), the pay-for-your-distance nature of the BART was really disturbing. Plus, the NY subway was just so wonderfully branching when you were in the city, whereas the BART really only went on one major track... so it was more expensive and less useful, at least for me...
ouch
I wonder how you go about turning the pieces? Moving them left and right, along w/ dropping them down makes sense, but I don't see a "flip" button anywhere...
This is a terrible analogy.
If I am driving my personal car at > 130 MPH on a highway, I don't think there's a place in America where I'm not breaking the law. Yes, there are racing tracks where you can go as fast as you want, but at that point the people who are racing have modified their cars in so many ways to make them faster, I'm sure they would have addressed the chip at some point.
On the other hand, there are limitless uses for huge amounts of network bandwidth. If I want to send a DVD-quality video of my child (if i had one) to their grandparents, I could just upload it over the network, rather than having to burn a DVD and send it in the mail. There's a difference in limiting uses of things when the only possible use is illegal and limiting uses of things where there are huge possibilities for applications.
It helps that the file server/router box is one that is approximately 5 years old :P The PVR/media is about nearly 3 years old, at this point, but having a dedicated MPEG2 encoding card (PVR-250, mmm) sure does take a lot of the processor load away...
Actually, I have the main computer, for things like work and games, the Fedora Core file server/router, and the PVR/media playing computer hooked up to the TV. And I have parts for another computer, but just no ideas for what to do with it.. sigh :P
Let's see... where to watch TV...
:P
Sitting in my somewhat comfortable chair, staring at a 19" screen a foot or so away from my face, or sitting on my extremely comfortable couch, putting my feet up on the coffee table and watching it on the 42" widescreen HDTV.. tough choice, but, well.. going to have to go for the far lazier couch
Wow, this is one of the few times I've been educated by reading Slashdot games.. thanks, you've made my day :)
Really interesting story, though, and it sure does make a hell of a lot of sense... I guess that's why so many food court shops in the malls will have the "get a receipt or your meal's on us" signs...
This is not entirely true...
:)
When the girl and I moved into an apartment, Comcast was running a promotion.. 100$ a month for digital cable w/ 2 premium sets of channels, along w/ high-speed internet.. it's just 1 charge on the bill, and she called once to ask a question about it.. so I'm pretty sure they can handle it.. perhaps they just don't want to