Considering the years it took them to implement a rudimentary firewall into Windows, I'm surprised that they're going with the "Live without Walls" slogan.
But, putting that aside, these ads are much, much better than the Seinfeld ones.
I wasn't about to ask permission from Microsoft to use something that I bought and paid for. Since then, I've personally converted three non-techies from Windows to Linux. These companies never stop to think of the sales they lose by trying to stop each and every last instance of piracy.
When I read this, I immediately ran down to Borders to take a look, since the video link on Esquire's site seemed to be broken. It is not very impressive at all. It's very small, maybe 2" by 4" at the most, and it just flashes. It's kind of a neon light sign effect - you can still read the text even when the segment isn't on.
It worries me a bit that in the 3D driver video demo that they're displaying it on an old CRT monitor. Maybe we should all chip in a little and get them a flat panel.
Put the pictures on an SD card and leave it in a digital camera. You get a screen for built-in viewing, plus video out in a variety of formats. Get a camera that uses AA batteries, which have been around since 1947, so they're likely to be around in 2033. Include an external power supply as a backup.
Plus, as an added bonus, in 25 years whoever opens it up will get to see what it was like to take pictures with a 2D camera that only records in the visible spectrum.
The publisher, Book Surge, is Amazon's self-publishing/publish on demand branch. Likely, no one other than the author ever read this book prior to printing and it's likely that/.'s review copy was author-provided as well.
Well, its a free country, so feel free to not read any warning you like. But I like knowing that the power cable on my blender contains lead and that I should wash my hands after plugging it in and before touching food. I like knowing which products at Home Depot are more likely to cause respiratory problems. And yes, if a building I worked in contained excessive levels of some toxin, I would like to know about it.
I can't believe the number of people bashing California for the cancer labels. Since when is it a bad thing to notify consumers that the products they're buying and using may pose a health risk? I suppose you might also be against putting cancer warning labels on cigarettes?
This could be a major stumbling block for the solar panel industry. Also, maybe someone with more experience could comment, but I thought that GaAs was considered to be a possible replacement for silicon in chips in the future.
The article keeps mentioning price as the driving factor, but I say it's software. I think tablets are hella cool, but until someone designs a must-have Linux app for touch screens, I'm not going to plunk down the money, no matter how small the premium is. However, if someone cooks up something really incredible, I'll pay whatever it takes to have it.
Until the iPhone/DS most touchscreens simply mimicked the existence of regular buttons (think ATMs, POS machines, or the Harmony remote). If somebody puts that level of innovation into some laptop app, then everybody will be buying tablets.
As someone who just had one of these installed at the end of our block, I can attest to the size and noise of the things. They are about twice the size of a standard telephone box, with a footprint of about 5'x5'x5'. They are actively cooled, so you can always hear the fan churning away. They also have diagnostic leds on the outside, so in the middle of the night, you can still see their ugliness.
Unfortunately, the volume of these things makes it impractical to hang them from a utility pole and the need for maintenance and cooling precludes burying them.
The real shame is that the one in my neighborhood got installed on someone's easement, meaning that she's now responsible for mowing around the damn thing.
First of all, the hack takes advantage of the way Internet Explorer handles scripting languages, implying that Firefox/Safari/Opera users are safe. Second, I can run most Windows code on my Linux machine via Wine. If Wine doesn't have this security hole (or even XP for that matter) then its perfectly reasonable to assume that a rewrite of the affected portions of Vista will provide the fix.
To say that it's broken and can't be fixed is as much of a sure thing as saying it's secure and can't be hacked.
Back in the early days of the WWW, I was doing IT for a small business whose name was RTS Executive Services. Their phone number was 1-800-RTS-EXEC, so they wanted their website to match: www.rtsexec.com, but that lead to a "sex" in the middle of the domain name and I can't tell you the number of customers we had who couldn't access the website because the blocking software they installed on their computers to stop their kids from accessing porn had determined that our website must be porn too.
FTA: "When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed."
If there is no probable cause in the first place, then how can they collect the information in the first place?
As a rule, I try to avoid applying quick fxes to my servers. After all, if the poster and editor can't even be bothered to spell check, how can I be sure the programmer bug tested their fx? =)
I'm bugged by something he says in this review and I see reviewers doing it all the time:
"everything ran fast and smooth, even when I had six plasmoids in use and desktop effects turned on, even on a modest 1.6GHz laptop."
He's using the old megahertz myth. If he's using a 1.6GHz Centrino 2, I doubt that I'll see the same performance on my 1.8GHz Sempron that's four years old.
True, but try calling them up and saying that. The customer service agent will be unsympathetic. You'll spend hours on the phone arguing this until you finally get bumped to a high enough customer service tier. Meanwhile, if you don't pay, they'll report you to the credit bureaus and trash your credit score. Unless the increase in cost is huge, it will almost always be easier just to pay it.
Sure, the doubling is kind of an extreme example, but if you're two years into a three year contract with Dish Network, paying $140/mo for a top-level package and they bump the price to $150/mo, are you going to cancel? Are you going to threaten legal action?
These sorts of clauses encourage the companies to bump their prices because its highly unlikely that a customer is going to try and get out of a contract over an additional $10/mo.
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Considering the years it took them to implement a rudimentary firewall into Windows, I'm surprised that they're going with the "Live without Walls" slogan.
But, putting that aside, these ads are much, much better than the Seinfeld ones.
I wasn't about to ask permission from Microsoft to use something that I bought and paid for. Since then, I've personally converted three non-techies from Windows to Linux. These companies never stop to think of the sales they lose by trying to stop each and every last instance of piracy.
The same goes for checking for the latest story on /.
When I read this, I immediately ran down to Borders to take a look, since the video link on Esquire's site seemed to be broken. It is not very impressive at all. It's very small, maybe 2" by 4" at the most, and it just flashes. It's kind of a neon light sign effect - you can still read the text even when the segment isn't on.
would be if they would make it possible to read games right off of the SD card directly without having to transfer them back and forth.
an even better reason to go vegetarian. Or at least not eat beef.
According to the LA Times, the conversion might be postponed due to the storm.
What tool did you use to measure that? How can you tell if a page is sent compressed?
It worries me a bit that in the 3D driver video demo that they're displaying it on an old CRT monitor. Maybe we should all chip in a little and get them a flat panel.
Plus, as an added bonus, in 25 years whoever opens it up will get to see what it was like to take pictures with a 2D camera that only records in the visible spectrum.
After all, it can't run Silverlight or look at the Democratic convention videos.
The publisher, Book Surge, is Amazon's self-publishing/publish on demand branch. Likely, no one other than the author ever read this book prior to printing and it's likely that /.'s review copy was author-provided as well.
Well, its a free country, so feel free to not read any warning you like. But I like knowing that the power cable on my blender contains lead and that I should wash my hands after plugging it in and before touching food. I like knowing which products at Home Depot are more likely to cause respiratory problems. And yes, if a building I worked in contained excessive levels of some toxin, I would like to know about it.
I can't believe the number of people bashing California for the cancer labels. Since when is it a bad thing to notify consumers that the products they're buying and using may pose a health risk? I suppose you might also be against putting cancer warning labels on cigarettes?
This could be a major stumbling block for the solar panel industry. Also, maybe someone with more experience could comment, but I thought that GaAs was considered to be a possible replacement for silicon in chips in the future.
The article keeps mentioning price as the driving factor, but I say it's software. I think tablets are hella cool, but until someone designs a must-have Linux app for touch screens, I'm not going to plunk down the money, no matter how small the premium is. However, if someone cooks up something really incredible, I'll pay whatever it takes to have it.
Until the iPhone/DS most touchscreens simply mimicked the existence of regular buttons (think ATMs, POS machines, or the Harmony remote). If somebody puts that level of innovation into some laptop app, then everybody will be buying tablets.
As someone who just had one of these installed at the end of our block, I can attest to the size and noise of the things. They are about twice the size of a standard telephone box, with a footprint of about 5'x5'x5'. They are actively cooled, so you can always hear the fan churning away. They also have diagnostic leds on the outside, so in the middle of the night, you can still see their ugliness.
Unfortunately, the volume of these things makes it impractical to hang them from a utility pole and the need for maintenance and cooling precludes burying them.
The real shame is that the one in my neighborhood got installed on someone's easement, meaning that she's now responsible for mowing around the damn thing.
First of all, the hack takes advantage of the way Internet Explorer handles scripting languages, implying that Firefox/Safari/Opera users are safe. Second, I can run most Windows code on my Linux machine via Wine. If Wine doesn't have this security hole (or even XP for that matter) then its perfectly reasonable to assume that a rewrite of the affected portions of Vista will provide the fix.
To say that it's broken and can't be fixed is as much of a sure thing as saying it's secure and can't be hacked.
Back in the early days of the WWW, I was doing IT for a small business whose name was RTS Executive Services. Their phone number was 1-800-RTS-EXEC, so they wanted their website to match: www.rtsexec.com, but that lead to a "sex" in the middle of the domain name and I can't tell you the number of customers we had who couldn't access the website because the blocking software they installed on their computers to stop their kids from accessing porn had determined that our website must be porn too.
FTA: "When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed." If there is no probable cause in the first place, then how can they collect the information in the first place?
They just fixed the spelling! Now that was a quick fix!
As a rule, I try to avoid applying quick fxes to my servers. After all, if the poster and editor can't even be bothered to spell check, how can I be sure the programmer bug tested their fx? =)
I'm bugged by something he says in this review and I see reviewers doing it all the time: "everything ran fast and smooth, even when I had six plasmoids in use and desktop effects turned on, even on a modest 1.6GHz laptop." He's using the old megahertz myth. If he's using a 1.6GHz Centrino 2, I doubt that I'll see the same performance on my 1.8GHz Sempron that's four years old.
True, but try calling them up and saying that. The customer service agent will be unsympathetic. You'll spend hours on the phone arguing this until you finally get bumped to a high enough customer service tier. Meanwhile, if you don't pay, they'll report you to the credit bureaus and trash your credit score. Unless the increase in cost is huge, it will almost always be easier just to pay it.
Sure, the doubling is kind of an extreme example, but if you're two years into a three year contract with Dish Network, paying $140/mo for a top-level package and they bump the price to $150/mo, are you going to cancel? Are you going to threaten legal action?
These sorts of clauses encourage the companies to bump their prices because its highly unlikely that a customer is going to try and get out of a contract over an additional $10/mo.