While I admit that I really like iTunes, I am surprised that they make it such a pain in the rear to share music with another user on the same computer. I tried setting this up on my OS X box at home so my wife and I could share the music but have seperate logins. I can use the same folder, but can't use the same library file no matter how I change the permissions on the file, so whenever I download new music I have to login to my wife's account, delete the library, and rebuild it. It would be easier if they would just let you use the same library and have a seperate file for your ratings, etc.
Some Windows XP programs ask whether or not to install the program for just you or anyone who uses the computer and it wouldn't take much for Apple to do the same.
is that Sony's rootkit will prevent your camera from taking photos where those famous Ansel Adams pictures were taken in order to avoid copyright infringement and that the battery may catch on fire if you try to disconnect the device from your camera while "on location."
Actually if you travel at all, the video ipod can be a lifesaver. While I don't like watching the video on a small screen, bringing an ipod and the video out cable doesn't take that much more room in my luggage and when I get to the hotel I get to watch the movies on my ipod instead of hoping that there's something good on TV. This is especially useful as Apple has been loading up the amount of content available on iTunes. (Can you say Mythbuster's? Eureka? Psych?) Also, Apple has been offering a lot of the season premiers as freebies so you can test drive the new shows at your leisure.
Last week, I was just commenting to a coworker that Apple "didn't get it" when they came up with their Mac models because you were stuck with a small HD in the mini, and all in one solution with the MacBook (Screen too small.) or you could jump up to either iMac or the MacBook Pro (A tad too expensive at ~$1800) or the way too expensive Mac Pro starting at ~$2500. It appears that they have a)upgraded the HD sizes in the mini, b) added some mid-level machines to nicely fill in the void. I would still like to see an imac HD in a Mac Pro chasis to add extra hard drives. My co-worker is a developer who would need to dual boot, but even the 250GB hard drives in the mini are small and he doesn't want to use external drives.
It's the CgiJoes who you can't trust. One of my favorite DS9 episodes was the one where they used CGI to put the DS9 crew on the Enterprise during the trouble with tribbles episodes.
Astophysicists everywhere pulled the old, "If it weren't for planets there wouldn't be any plutons so we're keeping the word, neaner neaner neaner" argument.
I don't believe that the ideas behind the TiVo were obvious before they designed a box. While the TiVo is the next generation of a VCR, significant improvement went into the product before it was released. They built a very good service with some pretty decent hardware and showed it to the wrong people.
This is very much akin to the old netscape scenario, Netscape (Tivo) built this new thing called a web browser. Some folks at Microsoft (Echostar) took a look at it and said, "If we build that and add it to our service for free we can gain marketshare." How many people are still using the Netscape browser? Early on it was believed that Netscape had won the browser wars.
I think Echostar knew what they were doing at the time and should be held liable for their actions.
The really funny thing is that once you get past the security checkpoint you can buy scissors and fingernail clippers at most airport stores. I bought my wife a really nice personal grooming kit at a Brookstone in an airport about 2-3 years ago. Scissors, nail files, clippers, etc. all within 10 yards of where some poor family was being harassed over trying to smuggle on the exact same items.
Yes, but I have always had family up here, and I moved AWAY from California.:) I'm more of an Idahoan than a Californian even though I lived in CA most of my life.
Given Job A only gives you $40,000/yr vs. $60,000 with Job B.
Assuming you spend the remainder of your salary with 5% sales tax at job A you can spend $38,000 with 8.5% (Bay Area Taxes) taxes at job B you can only spend $54,900. With Job A you have utility costs of $1,000/year and job B has costs of $3600. With Job A you pay $100 registration for two cars for two years. With Job B you spend $500 per year.
So now you have $36,990 with Job A and $50,800 with job B. We still haven't factored in the costs of Gas ($2.79 v $3.20/gal), or meals (Family of four dining out at a good restaraunt for $25 v $40), or the extra two hours you have as available family time because you don't have a commute (priceless), or that after you pay your mortgage you increase equity in your house but with rent you're only increasing equity with someone else's house (My neighborhood has seen an average of $40,000 increase in the past three years.), or the cost of movies ($5 v $8).
By my account that leaves only $12,500, and you still don't own your home. (In my case the home equity will have made up the difference between the two salaries.)
For the gas and meals I figured two cars with 12 gallon tanks filled up once per week and once per week dining out, and once per week for movies. If you dine out or drive more than I do the differences are even closer.
As a Californian who moved to Idaho, I would agree. Housing in my area has shot up about 50% in the three years since we've moved here and they're still building hundreds of new homes each year catering to the waves of immigrants into the state.
That being said, I enjoy the ~$80/mo home utility bills (That's all total water, sewage, electric and gas.), ~$2.75/gal gasoline, 5% sales tax, skiing (water in the summer, snow in the winter although since I took out 3 of 4 ligaments in my leg last season I like that one less.), hiking, and boating.
If only they would raise the takes to fund a fence to keep the rest of you out.:)
That ethernet cards can't use a generic driver right out of the box. Can anyone give me a good reason that a NIC couldn't use a generic driver to get say a slower connection, but one that will allow you to download the new drivers?
As a precaution, please stop breathing as you are exhaling CO2 which we all know to be a bad greenhouse gas. Also, stop having children as they are also going to be exhaling CO2 for some 70 years. But, before you go, plant a tree.
The population keeps growing and thus increasing the amount of CO2 we pump into the air and at the same time we keep cutting down vegetation which takes in our CO2. I have just proved that man does indeed affect the rate at which global warming occurs.:)
Because that's what it said on Apple's iChat page when they first thought of the idea of adding video and voice. Everyone knows Microsoft copies Apple, they just forgot to change the taglines.
And yes I do know that iChat doesn't offer voice to phone, I was making a funny.
Finally, will this new system possibly be subject to abuse? Will it be possible for rival manufacturers to submit bogus crash reports to Microsoft to poison the ratings of their competitors?
I can see it already. Six months after Vista ships the iPod will be flagged as the worst device and lose it's windows certification.
I just want to know which platform they're developing it for. Will I have to break out my old Windows 95 box to play it or have they been rewriting it to be XP or Vista compatible.
Maybe they've decided to port it to the PS3 and won't need to ship it before the end of the year anyway.
Not to mention that the whole idea creative is suing over is basically an offshoot of the old NeXtStep (and now MacOS X) column view.
The only difference between the column view and Creative's patent appears to be the obvious use of forethought to create your folder structure. First by one class of identification with subfolders containing different classifications of the first folder to divide up the sub-folders.
Last time I checked they taught this method in 7th grade biology class. Instead of music Genre, Artist, Album, Song it was Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus & species.
I actually agree with the original poster that factions is NOWHERE near as good a game as prophecies was. The last two updates were done for free and added just as much as factions. I realize that they need to make money, but I would have rather paid $15 each that had 2 free and paid $45 for one that disappoints me. The two free updates had me looking forward to the pay for play version, but I don't know how much I'd shell out for next year's version after looking at factions.
It's true that you get fewer character slots IF you combine your prophecies and factions accounts, and you don't get any more storage for the extra slots. To me, it's kind of like the marraige tax. You get 4 slots each, but when you combine your accounts you get a total of 6.
The messenger syndrome got to me. First, there are many quests that start off with a character dialog between several NPCs, and you can't do anything until they finish talking and assign a quest to you. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to speed up the process, but they talk on a timed basis so you can't even dismiss each characters dialog when you're finished reading it and start the next character's dialogue. Also, in the training session on the first island there is a part where you have to go into an arena and "train" against an NPC. When you are done you have to leave the training arena to talk to the NPC that sent you in for training, grab the next training assignment, go back into the arena, defeat the master and repeat something like 10 times. Why can't all the teachers be in the arena along with the first NPC so you can get through all your training without going through something like 20 load screens. (one going in and one going out.)
I loved prophecies, but factions felt a little out of place comparitively. I will continue to play it to completion, but it isn't anywhere near as good as the original, although it is beautiful to look at.
On a typical Mac (iMac or mini, the towers are still considered pro computers) you can upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive. Since they use small form factor CD/DVD drives with no bezel you can upgrade them, but they are hard to find. (Compared to a PC tower.) Beyond that your upgrade choices are a bit pricey, but the plus side is that you get a shiny new computer with the CPU upgrade.
I build my own PCs, but I order my Macs to spec. (Well except the RAM & HD which are cheaper to buy third party and install myself.)
I used a ReplayTv, Microsoft Ultimate TV, DISH DVR, and my TiVos, and I like the TiVo the best.
Especially, this one. As for your list Tivo either has or will be updating their boxes to cover most of what you point out as an advantage to the DVR. A quick look:
1) The Tivo will download "recommendations" (which I have yet to ever use).
Advantage: Tivo
2) The DVR has a way better guide that has a nice preview screen.
The series 2 TiVos let you choose which style of guide you like and you can change them by simply pressing guide again.
3) The DVR has two-channel capability (watch one show while the other records).
The user interface is what makes the TiVo. It is simply the easiest (of the ones I've used.) to use. My wife doen't like any computers or electronics, but she loves the TiVo and her iPod. Even my 4 year old can use our TiVo.
It's called control clicking on a Mac and it's almost as fast as using a two button mouse. OR you could get a BT mouse and use an external. Most people I know don't seem to like the trackpads anyway and wind up using an external mouse.
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While I admit that I really like iTunes, I am surprised that they make it such a pain in the rear to share music with another user on the same computer. I tried setting this up on my OS X box at home so my wife and I could share the music but have seperate logins. I can use the same folder, but can't use the same library file no matter how I change the permissions on the file, so whenever I download new music I have to login to my wife's account, delete the library, and rebuild it. It would be easier if they would just let you use the same library and have a seperate file for your ratings, etc.
Some Windows XP programs ask whether or not to install the program for just you or anyone who uses the computer and it wouldn't take much for Apple to do the same.
is that Sony's rootkit will prevent your camera from taking photos where those famous Ansel Adams pictures were taken in order to avoid copyright infringement and that the battery may catch on fire if you try to disconnect the device from your camera while "on location."
Actually if you travel at all, the video ipod can be a lifesaver. While I don't like watching the video on a small screen, bringing an ipod and the video out cable doesn't take that much more room in my luggage and when I get to the hotel I get to watch the movies on my ipod instead of hoping that there's something good on TV. This is especially useful as Apple has been loading up the amount of content available on iTunes. (Can you say Mythbuster's? Eureka? Psych?) Also, Apple has been offering a lot of the season premiers as freebies so you can test drive the new shows at your leisure.
Last week, I was just commenting to a coworker that Apple "didn't get it" when they came up with their Mac models because you were stuck with a small HD in the mini, and all in one solution with the MacBook (Screen too small.) or you could jump up to either iMac or the MacBook Pro (A tad too expensive at ~$1800) or the way too expensive Mac Pro starting at ~$2500. It appears that they have a)upgraded the HD sizes in the mini, b) added some mid-level machines to nicely fill in the void. I would still like to see an imac HD in a Mac Pro chasis to add extra hard drives. My co-worker is a developer who would need to dual boot, but even the 250GB hard drives in the mini are small and he doesn't want to use external drives.
It's the CgiJoes who you can't trust. One of my favorite DS9 episodes was the one where they used CGI to put the DS9 crew on the Enterprise during the trouble with tribbles episodes.
Hate the player, not the game.
Astophysicists everywhere pulled the old, "If it weren't for planets there wouldn't be any plutons so we're keeping the word, neaner neaner neaner" argument.
I don't believe that the ideas behind the TiVo were obvious before they designed a box. While the TiVo is the next generation of a VCR, significant improvement went into the product before it was released. They built a very good service with some pretty decent hardware and showed it to the wrong people.
This is very much akin to the old netscape scenario, Netscape (Tivo) built this new thing called a web browser. Some folks at Microsoft (Echostar) took a look at it and said, "If we build that and add it to our service for free we can gain marketshare." How many people are still using the Netscape browser? Early on it was believed that Netscape had won the browser wars.
I think Echostar knew what they were doing at the time and should be held liable for their actions.
The really funny thing is that once you get past the security checkpoint you can buy scissors and fingernail clippers at most airport stores. I bought my wife a really nice personal grooming kit at a Brookstone in an airport about 2-3 years ago. Scissors, nail files, clippers, etc. all within 10 yards of where some poor family was being harassed over trying to smuggle on the exact same items.
Yes, but I have always had family up here, and I moved AWAY from California. :) I'm more of an Idahoan than a Californian even though I lived in CA most of my life.
Given:
/gal), or meals (Family of four dining out at a good restaraunt for $25 v $40), or the extra two hours you have as available family time because you don't have a commute (priceless), or that after you pay your mortgage you increase equity in your house but with rent you're only increasing equity with someone else's house (My neighborhood has seen an average of $40,000 increase in the past three years.), or the cost of movies ($5 v $8).
Job A: $50,000/year, $10,000 annual rent.
Job B: $100,000/year, $40,000 annual rent.
Should be more like:
Given:
Job A: $50,000/year, $10,000 annual motgage.
Job B: $100,000/year, $36,000 annual rent.
Given Job A only gives you $40,000/yr vs. $60,000 with Job B.
Assuming you spend the remainder of your salary with 5% sales tax at job A you can spend $38,000 with 8.5% (Bay Area Taxes) taxes at job B you can only spend $54,900.
With Job A you have utility costs of $1,000/year and job B has costs of $3600.
With Job A you pay $100 registration for two cars for two years. With Job B you spend $500 per year.
So now you have $36,990 with Job A and $50,800 with job B.
We still haven't factored in the costs of Gas ($2.79 v $3.20
By my account that leaves only $12,500, and you still don't own your home. (In my case the home equity will have made up the difference between the two salaries.)
For the gas and meals I figured two cars with 12 gallon tanks filled up once per week and once per week dining out, and once per week for movies. If you dine out or drive more than I do the differences are even closer.
so they can see what cool stuff to add. ;)
As a Californian who moved to Idaho, I would agree. Housing in my area has shot up about 50% in the three years since we've moved here and they're still building hundreds of new homes each year catering to the waves of immigrants into the state.
:)
That being said, I enjoy the ~$80/mo home utility bills (That's all total water, sewage, electric and gas.), ~$2.75/gal gasoline, 5% sales tax, skiing (water in the summer, snow in the winter although since I took out 3 of 4 ligaments in my leg last season I like that one less.), hiking, and boating.
If only they would raise the takes to fund a fence to keep the rest of you out.
That ethernet cards can't use a generic driver right out of the box. Can anyone give me a good reason that a NIC couldn't use a generic driver to get say a slower connection, but one that will allow you to download the new drivers?
Because I'm 5' 9" and couldn't very well have said grew tall. :) Make no mistake, my children will have one or two to play with.
So will all the kids be able to setup hydrogen stands when the real cars comeout?
Yes we can, here's one now:
:)
As a precaution, please stop breathing as you are exhaling CO2 which we all know to be a bad greenhouse gas. Also, stop having children as they are also going to be exhaling CO2 for some 70 years. But, before you go, plant a tree.
The population keeps growing and thus increasing the amount of CO2 we pump into the air and at the same time we keep cutting down vegetation which takes in our CO2. I have just proved that man does indeed affect the rate at which global warming occurs.
Because that's what it said on Apple's iChat page when they first thought of the idea of adding video and voice. Everyone knows Microsoft copies Apple, they just forgot to change the taglines.
And yes I do know that iChat doesn't offer voice to phone, I was making a funny.
It can be found here.
Ah... The power of Google.
I can see it already. Six months after Vista ships the iPod will be flagged as the worst device and lose it's windows certification.
I just want to know which platform they're developing it for. Will I have to break out my old Windows 95 box to play it or have they been rewriting it to be XP or Vista compatible.
Maybe they've decided to port it to the PS3 and won't need to ship it before the end of the year anyway.
Not to mention that the whole idea creative is suing over is basically an offshoot of the old NeXtStep (and now MacOS X) column view.
The only difference between the column view and Creative's patent appears to be the obvious use of forethought to create your folder structure. First by one class of identification with subfolders containing different classifications of the first folder to divide up the sub-folders.
Last time I checked they taught this method in 7th grade biology class. Instead of music Genre, Artist, Album, Song it was Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus & species.
I actually agree with the original poster that factions is NOWHERE near as good a game as prophecies was. The last two updates were done for free and added just as much as factions. I realize that they need to make money, but I would have rather paid $15 each that had 2 free and paid $45 for one that disappoints me. The two free updates had me looking forward to the pay for play version, but I don't know how much I'd shell out for next year's version after looking at factions.
It's true that you get fewer character slots IF you combine your prophecies and factions accounts, and you don't get any more storage for the extra slots. To me, it's kind of like the marraige tax. You get 4 slots each, but when you combine your accounts you get a total of 6.
The messenger syndrome got to me. First, there are many quests that start off with a character dialog between several NPCs, and you can't do anything until they finish talking and assign a quest to you. It wouldn't be so bad if there was a way to speed up the process, but they talk on a timed basis so you can't even dismiss each characters dialog when you're finished reading it and start the next character's dialogue. Also, in the training session on the first island there is a part where you have to go into an arena and "train" against an NPC. When you are done you have to leave the training arena to talk to the NPC that sent you in for training, grab the next training assignment, go back into the arena, defeat the master and repeat something like 10 times. Why can't all the teachers be in the arena along with the first NPC so you can get through all your training without going through something like 20 load screens. (one going in and one going out.)
I loved prophecies, but factions felt a little out of place comparitively. I will continue to play it to completion, but it isn't anywhere near as good as the original, although it is beautiful to look at.
On a typical Mac (iMac or mini, the towers are still considered pro computers) you can upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive. Since they use small form factor CD/DVD drives with no bezel you can upgrade them, but they are hard to find. (Compared to a PC tower.) Beyond that your upgrade choices are a bit pricey, but the plus side is that you get a shiny new computer with the CPU upgrade.
I build my own PCs, but I order my Macs to spec. (Well except the RAM & HD which are cheaper to buy third party and install myself.)
Especially, this one. As for your list Tivo either has or will be updating their boxes to cover most of what you point out as an advantage to the DVR. A quick look:
1) The Tivo will download "recommendations" (which I have yet to ever use).
Advantage: Tivo
2) The DVR has a way better guide that has a nice preview screen.The series 2 TiVos let you choose which style of guide you like and you can change them by simply pressing guide again.
3) The DVR has two-channel capability (watch one show while the other records).Advantage: Tie for the new DT Tivo & DirecTiVo
4) The Tivo has to use the serial input, which makes channel changing slow, versus the DVR which is integrated with the cable box.Advantage: DVR for now, but series 3 Tivos are cablecard ready
5) The DVR can do HDTV.Advantage: DVR for now, but series 3 Tivos are HDTV ready
6) The user interface on the Tivo is way simpler.Advantage: Tivo.
The user interface is what makes the TiVo. It is simply the easiest (of the ones I've used.) to use. My wife doen't like any computers or electronics, but she loves the TiVo and her iPod. Even my 4 year old can use our TiVo.It's called control clicking on a Mac and it's almost as fast as using a two button mouse. OR you could get a BT mouse and use an external. Most people I know don't seem to like the trackpads anyway and wind up using an external mouse.