Is the math in this article entirely wrong, or am I just crazy??
For True-False exams for example, the number subtracted would most likely be (Number Wrong ÷ 2). Let's see how that would work out, for the sample case above. You, answering two questions correctly and guessing at 98 would be likely, on the average, to get 49 wrong, and so have a final score of 2 + 49 - (49 ÷ 2), or 75.5, while I, again on the average. answering only 1 correctly and guessing at 97, would get a final score of 1 + (97 ÷ 2) - ((97 ÷ 2) ÷ 2)), which comes out to be 25.25. Here there is a substantial difference between our scores, closer to the two-fold difference in our actual knowledge.
2 + 49 - (49 / 2) is equal to 26.5, NOT 75.5 . . . he added it in one case and not in the other. So the actual scores that should be compared are 26.5 to 25.25. The disparity he saw was entirely from a lack of capability at arithmetic. And in all his examples, the numbers are so close not because of a lack of quality in the testing methods, but because his hypotheticals are so extreme (someone who only knows the answer to 2 questions out of 100 is ridiculous).
That said, subtracting for wrong answers is still the most accurate way to grade, but not based on the crap that this guy was talking about.
you're simply wrong. the dvorak keyboard was designed to have as much alternating hand keystrokes as possible. just putting the vowels on the left side probably does it more than qwerty, but the rest of the keyboard was designed with that in mind as well. you're simply wrong. if you don't believe me, copy some text into http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/comparePage.html and see the results.
You're pretty close, as I understand it. Your typewriter analogy is pretty funny though, since a typewriter key might be off by a milimeter or so, while if the fab's "key," were off by the same amount, nothing would work at all. They "miss" by nanometers or less.
The way they get the sizes is exactly as you describe. They basically take the big wafer (it's a cylinder wider than what you said; by now i think they're at like a foot and a half or so and getting bigger by the day) and cut it up after they make the chips.
Then they take the chips, one by one, and put em in the little tester machine thingy. They try it at 2 GHz, then 2.1, then 2.2, etc. Once it doesn't work consistently, say it breaks at 2.4, they toss it in the 2.3 bucket. The next one, from the same wafer, might be tossed in the 2.2 bucket. The next one might never work because of an imperfection in the wafer and it gets thrown in the trash.
Kinda funny how the final "GHz" rating is come by.
What everyone else said in response is true, but additionally, when you consider how much more expensive RAM (whatever it is that they purchased) is than magnetic disks, and how much they've spent on the RAM, I'm sure they'd barely notice the expenditure on enough disk space to back all that up. But, if the information is actually some sort of flash or whatever (though I'm not certain that it is, since regular SDRAM is a "solid state" device), the point could be moot. (I'm of the opinion that it's not flash, but whatever).
I don't know if I agree with all of that. If you want to make high quality cinematic motion pictures, fixed focal length cameras are likely a pretty good choice. On the other hand, this guy may very well need flexibility not available with fixed focal length cameras. If flexibility is his metric, then maybe zoom lenses are a better choice.
For all we know, he may want to be able to videotape his friends doing funny stuff at his house but also be able to tape his kids soccer game and have his kid show up as more than 12 pixels.
Granted, he probably doesn't need a zoom lens comparable to professional cameras used on tv and in movies, but being able to zoom is pretty important for most consumers/prosumers, in my opinion.
That said, I know far too little about the subject to make suggestions as to which exact models he has. But I don't think he should disregard zooming as a metric (though the grandparent is right in saying that digital zoom is worthless and should be disgregarded, as digital zooming can be done (likely better) afterwards and merely throws away data).
I'm surprised someone modded you up, as you are definitely wrong about this.
A 4.3 megapixel camera contains 4.3 x 10^6 pixels. That number does NOT refer to "pixels per square inch." The actual cmos (or ccd) sensor in a 4.3 megapixel camera is smaller than a square inch, much smaller.
The photos were stitched together side by side. That means that the final photo has 6 megapixels per shot times 196 shots. Which equals over a gigapixel.
Your concept of resolution is incorrect. Resolution in this sense just refers to the number of pixels; there is no distance scale involved. Those pixels can map to a sensor that was a foot by a foot, or an inch by an inch, or whatever. They can also map to a picture being taken of a one centimeter by one centimeter microchip, or a light year by light year section of the sky.
That's why the picture is indeed a gigapixel. (Or so it supposedly is, I guess. I haven't actually downloaded it yet due to the slashdot effect)
It sounds like you need to play a song to start the download, but then once it's started, it sounds like you can then stop that song from playing. You need to play it to make that connection, but once it's started downloading, I would think you could then start another song playing and then it too will appear in the list of songs you can download. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what it sounds like.
Dude, it's not going "off the air." It's going digital. Unless I'm missing something, it seems you're wrong. Network TV broadcasting will still exist. It will just be digital, so people will have to get a new TV. No, it won't be as seamless as the black/white to color switch, but it doesn't have to be apocolyptic.
If I'm missing something let me know; I just thought I'd say this.
This is an issue because it forces the electronics industry to be the "chicken" and pay a kind of "early adopter" cost associated with switching to digital broadcasting.
This way, they all have to make digital-capable sets. Then the broadcasters will have less of a problem switching to digital; right now they complain that there are not enough people who will receive it to justify spending the money on the switch. Then once there are digital broadcasts, the electronics company will have even more of a reason to finish the switch, and so on. Getting the ball rolling is the hard part, and that's what this law does.
So both sides will start going to digital, and everything will be happy. Except for the broadcast flag issue, and pvr issues, and a bunch more issues that I'm sure exist.
Others have said it, but I'll say part of it again: many of the possible permutations can't (or won't) happen, so we won't need all 10^150.
Also, there's the fact that chess _is_ a "solvable" game. There is (though we may never know it) a "perfect" way to play. If the computer starts from the beginning and plays perfectly, there are definitely a LOT of states it could get to, depending on what its opponent does. But, the number of states is only a fraction of the total possible game states.
That's basically my point: there are more states possible than we can keep track of, but there is still the possibility of playing "perfectly."
Stop reading now if you don't want a lot of drivel.
There's a counting game I just thought of. Two players, each turn you can count 1 or 2 numbers. The person who says the number 7 wins. A sequence could be: 1-23-45-6-7 and Player one wins. It turns out that if on the first turn, you just say "1," then after that, you just say the opposite of Player 2 (he says two numbers, you say one, and vice versa). So: 1-23-4-56-7 1-2-34-5-67 and so on. You can always win. Now let's say the game goes up to (3x10^99999999) + 1. That's way more possibilities than we can remember. But, we could still play perfectly, since we know this magic rule.
Not a perfect analogy, I realize. There is no magic rule in chess that's quite so simple. But, my point still stands: a computer can learn to play perfectly without having a lookup table with 10^150 entries.
Like usual, I'm probably wrong, so correct anything you want.
Sorry, but I don't like spammers that are trying to save my soul any more than spammers who want to sell me placebos to increase my sexual prowess.
That may be true, but what percentage of the spam you receive is trying to save your soul? If your inbox looks anything like mine, it's full of low-interest loan offers, porn offers, and penile enlargement stuff. If that stuff can be eradicated with this bill, then I'd be all for it. I, for one, don't get much non-profit spam at all, if any. But I don't know about everyone else.
The notion (that another reply offered) that penile enlargement companies will spawn non-profits just to do the spamming for them seems awfully far-fetched to me. I was under the impression that non-profits had to meet certain criteria or something of that sort. I highly doubt an organization would be allowed to keep non-profit status if it were sending out millions of porn ads a day.
Of course, as usual, this is all just my opinion, and if the past is any indicator, it's highly likely that I'm wrong.
While I doubt this will get read by anyone, since the article was posted a while ago, I'll say it anyways:
I was just thinking about the argument you guys make: buy used cd's; the RIAA gets nothing, you're happy etc. but I just realized that there's definitely a flaw to that logic.
Every time you buy a used CD, you are voting with your wallet. You're telling the used CD store that yes, people want used CD's. They will pay more for them than the store has to pay to get them. It's profitable to buy and sell used CD's.
By buying the CD, you are sending that message. Now, think about what would happen if you didn't buy that used CD. It'd sit on the shelf for a while. The store would think to itself: maybe it's not a good idea to keep doing this used CD thing. So it would stop buying them.
Then, the people who sell the CD's to the store (who are, incidentally, also the people who buy cd's new) would not be able to do so anymore. As a result, they'd be less inclined to buy new cd's.
By purchasing used CD's, you help keep the CD market alive. Not a huge effect by yourself, but everyone together makes a difference.
Anyways, I haven't thought this through all the way; it just came to me now. I may have made a couple mistakes myself. But it seems that buying used CD's may not be as harmless as everyone makes it out to be.
If you are going to lump all women over the age of 18 together and compare that to middle school and high school boys, I guess you could say that the numbers add up in favor of the disproportionately large population.
I think it's still a noteworthy statistic, regarless of the fact that it may be skewed. I'd be willing to bet that the percentage that are women is much higher than 10 years ago (or 5 years ago, whatever), and the percentage that are boys is probably less. I don't have the statistics, and I don't know if anyone else does either (did they do those statistics then?), but I think we all know that there weren't many women playing super mario bros when it first came out, but the "cool" boys (and the uncool boys for that matter) in the second grade sure did.
The study found that 26 percent of game players are women 18 or older, while at 38 percent are men 18 and up.
Who writes this stuff?
Do people read more than just the headlines anymore?
I believe the headline compares "women" and "boys." Not "women" and "men." It is a long believed notion that videogame players are "little boys playing mario in the basement." The point is that times have changed. No longer are girls given "Barbie sidescroller junk" games. The sims and more are starting to appeal to them.
In addition, the main group of gamers is getting older. People who were teens or so when Nintendo, Atari, Commodore came out are grown up now. And you can look at the way game focuses have changed as a result (the successful platforms (PS2 and XBox) are the ones catering to older guys: more violence, mayhem, etc). On the other hand, consoles like Nintendo are pointed towards the same audience (and this is probably where women are playing most). I guess I've gone off on a tangent though, so I'll stop now. My point is that, to answer your question, yes, people read the headlines.
This was actually linked in an above comment, and in the slashdot article linked to in the story heading but Wired has a really good article about just this topic.
The basic idea is that (unfortunatly) there are just a few players out there, but (fortunately) they're big players. They intend to revolutionize computing the same way the mosfet did, etc. I don't know all the science and stuff, but basically they're getting able to make high quality, super good, diamonds synthetically, fairly reliably, and fairly cheap.
Most importantly, they're able to make the diamonds without DeBeers. I don't remember which companies are focusing on which side of things (jewelry vs. semiconductors), but I think the moral of the story is that progress is being made, and the diamond semiconductor revolution does NOT have to include DeBeers, which is a good thing for all involved.
I think I disagree a little. Some users might have a problem ever typing a password or something, but I think most people are pretty reasonable. I know that when I started using a Linux desktop this summer, I didn't mind typing in the root password to change stuff around that would affect everyone. In fact, I kind of liked it since I knew I could play around as much as I wanted: if I didn't type in the root password, I couldn't affect anyone else.
On the other hand, I'm at this site, so I'm probably not your average computer user. And, Linux does have some stuff wrong (in my opinion). Changing screen resolution . . . adding printers . . . some of that stuff I'd kinda like to do without a password. But gnome has that nice little key thingy that stays around; you can play around for a while, and remove it when you're done. MUCH better than logging on as a regular user, and having to logoff/logon as administrator to install a program or whatnot.
I don't know. Maybe some users would get pissed off with one additional password request. But anything you do is going to make *someone* mad; you can't cater to either extreme. I think there's some middle ground Microsoft could find. Hopefully they will.
yeah, i've seen those. on the one hand, i guess they're good cause they probably don't waste much energy. if it's only visible when viewed directly from the front, it means no energy is wasted on other areas.
on the other hand, it's a pain for pedestrians. when i want to cross the street, i like to know what color the light is, so i know whether or not i'm going to be crushed by oncoming traffic.
overall though, i think they're great. you can honestly see them for miles and miles and light years, and they're always perfectly visible; even in direct sunlight it's exceedingly obvious which light is on (as opposed to those car stereos which are advertised as always being "super visible" "even in direct sunlight" but definitely AREN'T . . . )
and i think you're right about the headlights. the acura tl headlights have the bluish tint that guy seems to be talking about, and i'm pretty sure they use halogen. i, for one, have never seen LED headlights either, but who knows . . .
The program is given away by Microsoft for free, I think they should be allowed to do whatever they want with it.
true, it is given away for free. on the other hand, internet explorer was "given away for free" (bundled with windows) a while ago, too. and the department of justice definitely did not allow them to "do whatever they want with it." they have a monopoly on operating systems. including a proprietary instant messaging client that uses a closed standard can be seen as an abuse of their monopoly in the OS market, especially since they get revenue from the ads and stuff.
so, in conclusion: yeah, it's free, but that doesn't mean they have carte blanche to go do what they want. i'm not saying they are or are not doing anything wrong; i'm just saying that they can be held accountable for the actions they're taking. personally, i'd prefer it if every im client used the same, open standard, and we could all choose which one was "coolest" and they'd all work together and everyone would be happy, but things don't always turn out the way i'd like.
ok then, i was wrong. there still is the fact that they have moved the link from its previous prominence. and, it doesn't seem like the player is still included.
true. the codec is available. but there is a change from how things used to be.
you used to be able to download the divx player with the divx codec, for free. you could download the better players (with encoding, etc) for money or with adware.
now, you can only download the codec for free (i can't be fully certain, since i'm at a linux machine and have no access to a windows box, but if i remember correctly, the exe file you linked to is only the codec). no more divx player (which i kinda liked) for free. that is definitely a change from how things used to be. mod me down if i'm wrong, but that's what i think the change is.
to have mass acceptance, it has to be "cheap" (i assume you mean inexpensive), and to be "cheap" it has to be sub-par material?
i think to have mass acceptance, it has to be *worth it* to consumers. i don't there is a need for "cheap materials."
i think if you look at all the stuff made today (cars, computers, whatever) you'll find many examples of products having mass public acceptance without being "cheap."
i think that's the point though: getting them back into society. it seems like they feel they can improve efficiency with this stuff, and use the money spent on low income housing, etc more effectively, which would help more of them "get back into society."
wouldn't it be worth it to spend a small amount of money on "tracking" if it meant a greate increase in the effectiveness of the help given to the homeless?
i don't know how effective the tracking is, or if it's worth it, but it might be. maybe spending the money there will get more people into homes, etc. or maybe not, who knows.
what if, instead, everyone called collect? the phone would still ring and become an incredible annoyance, but at no cost to us, the poor, proletariat spammees.
i know i don't feel like paying just to be an annoyance, but maybe i'd do it for free.
seriously, there's got to be a way to make spam end. i sure hope so.
Slashdot Mirror
you're simply wrong. the dvorak keyboard was designed to have as much alternating hand keystrokes as possible. just putting the vowels on the left side probably does it more than qwerty, but the rest of the keyboard was designed with that in mind as well. you're simply wrong. if you don't believe me, copy some text into http://www.acm.vt.edu/~jmaxwell/dvorak/comparePage .html and see the results.
oh, and by the way, i typed this in dvorak.
You're pretty close, as I understand it. Your typewriter analogy is pretty funny though, since a typewriter key might be off by a milimeter or so, while if the fab's "key," were off by the same amount, nothing would work at all. They "miss" by nanometers or less.
The way they get the sizes is exactly as you describe. They basically take the big wafer (it's a cylinder wider than what you said; by now i think they're at like a foot and a half or so and getting bigger by the day) and cut it up after they make the chips.
Then they take the chips, one by one, and put em in the little tester machine thingy. They try it at 2 GHz, then 2.1, then 2.2, etc. Once it doesn't work consistently, say it breaks at 2.4, they toss it in the 2.3 bucket. The next one, from the same wafer, might be tossed in the 2.2 bucket. The next one might never work because of an imperfection in the wafer and it gets thrown in the trash.
Kinda funny how the final "GHz" rating is come by.
What everyone else said in response is true, but additionally, when you consider how much more expensive RAM (whatever it is that they purchased) is than magnetic disks, and how much they've spent on the RAM, I'm sure they'd barely notice the expenditure on enough disk space to back all that up. But, if the information is actually some sort of flash or whatever (though I'm not certain that it is, since regular SDRAM is a "solid state" device), the point could be moot. (I'm of the opinion that it's not flash, but whatever).
I don't know if I agree with all of that. If you want to make high quality cinematic motion pictures, fixed focal length cameras are likely a pretty good choice. On the other hand, this guy may very well need flexibility not available with fixed focal length cameras. If flexibility is his metric, then maybe zoom lenses are a better choice.
For all we know, he may want to be able to videotape his friends doing funny stuff at his house but also be able to tape his kids soccer game and have his kid show up as more than 12 pixels.
Granted, he probably doesn't need a zoom lens comparable to professional cameras used on tv and in movies, but being able to zoom is pretty important for most consumers/prosumers, in my opinion.
That said, I know far too little about the subject to make suggestions as to which exact models he has. But I don't think he should disregard zooming as a metric (though the grandparent is right in saying that digital zoom is worthless and should be disgregarded, as digital zooming can be done (likely better) afterwards and merely throws away data).
A 4.3 megapixel camera contains 4.3 x 10^6 pixels. That number does NOT refer to "pixels per square inch." The actual cmos (or ccd) sensor in a 4.3 megapixel camera is smaller than a square inch, much smaller.
The photos were stitched together side by side. That means that the final photo has 6 megapixels per shot times 196 shots. Which equals over a gigapixel.
Your concept of resolution is incorrect. Resolution in this sense just refers to the number of pixels; there is no distance scale involved. Those pixels can map to a sensor that was a foot by a foot, or an inch by an inch, or whatever. They can also map to a picture being taken of a one centimeter by one centimeter microchip, or a light year by light year section of the sky.
That's why the picture is indeed a gigapixel. (Or so it supposedly is, I guess. I haven't actually downloaded it yet due to the slashdot effect)
It sounds like you need to play a song to start the download, but then once it's started, it sounds like you can then stop that song from playing. You need to play it to make that connection, but once it's started downloading, I would think you could then start another song playing and then it too will appear in the list of songs you can download. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what it sounds like.
Dude, it's not going "off the air." It's going digital. Unless I'm missing something, it seems you're wrong. Network TV broadcasting will still exist. It will just be digital, so people will have to get a new TV. No, it won't be as seamless as the black/white to color switch, but it doesn't have to be apocolyptic.
If I'm missing something let me know; I just thought I'd say this.
This is an issue because it forces the electronics industry to be the "chicken" and pay a kind of "early adopter" cost associated with switching to digital broadcasting.
This way, they all have to make digital-capable sets. Then the broadcasters will have less of a problem switching to digital; right now they complain that there are not enough people who will receive it to justify spending the money on the switch. Then once there are digital broadcasts, the electronics company will have even more of a reason to finish the switch, and so on. Getting the ball rolling is the hard part, and that's what this law does.
So both sides will start going to digital, and everything will be happy. Except for the broadcast flag issue, and pvr issues, and a bunch more issues that I'm sure exist.
Others have said it, but I'll say part of it again: many of the possible permutations can't (or won't) happen, so we won't need all 10^150.
Also, there's the fact that chess _is_ a "solvable" game. There is (though we may never know it) a "perfect" way to play. If the computer starts from the beginning and plays perfectly, there are definitely a LOT of states it could get to, depending on what its opponent does. But, the number of states is only a fraction of the total possible game states.
That's basically my point: there are more states possible than we can keep track of, but there is still the possibility of playing "perfectly."
Stop reading now if you don't want a lot of drivel.
There's a counting game I just thought of. Two players, each turn you can count 1 or 2 numbers. The person who says the number 7 wins. A sequence could be:
1-23-45-6-7 and Player one wins.
It turns out that if on the first turn, you just say "1," then after that, you just say the opposite of Player 2 (he says two numbers, you say one, and vice versa). So:
1-23-4-56-7
1-2-34-5-67
and so on. You can always win. Now let's say the game goes up to (3x10^99999999) + 1. That's way more possibilities than we can remember. But, we could still play perfectly, since we know this magic rule.
Not a perfect analogy, I realize. There is no magic rule in chess that's quite so simple. But, my point still stands: a computer can learn to play perfectly without having a lookup table with 10^150 entries.
Like usual, I'm probably wrong, so correct anything you want.
Non-profit groups are exempt.
Sorry, but I don't like spammers that are trying to save my soul any more than spammers who want to sell me placebos to increase my sexual prowess.
That may be true, but what percentage of the spam you receive is trying to save your soul? If your inbox looks anything like mine, it's full of low-interest loan offers, porn offers, and penile enlargement stuff. If that stuff can be eradicated with this bill, then I'd be all for it. I, for one, don't get much non-profit spam at all, if any. But I don't know about everyone else.
The notion (that another reply offered) that penile enlargement companies will spawn non-profits just to do the spamming for them seems awfully far-fetched to me. I was under the impression that non-profits had to meet certain criteria or something of that sort. I highly doubt an organization would be allowed to keep non-profit status if it were sending out millions of porn ads a day.
Of course, as usual, this is all just my opinion, and if the past is any indicator, it's highly likely that I'm wrong.
While I doubt this will get read by anyone, since the article was posted a while ago, I'll say it anyways:
I was just thinking about the argument you guys make: buy used cd's; the RIAA gets nothing, you're happy etc. but I just realized that there's definitely a flaw to that logic.
Every time you buy a used CD, you are voting with your wallet. You're telling the used CD store that yes, people want used CD's. They will pay more for them than the store has to pay to get them. It's profitable to buy and sell used CD's.
By buying the CD, you are sending that message. Now, think about what would happen if you didn't buy that used CD. It'd sit on the shelf for a while. The store would think to itself: maybe it's not a good idea to keep doing this used CD thing. So it would stop buying them.
Then, the people who sell the CD's to the store (who are, incidentally, also the people who buy cd's new) would not be able to do so anymore. As a result, they'd be less inclined to buy new cd's.
By purchasing used CD's, you help keep the CD market alive. Not a huge effect by yourself, but everyone together makes a difference.
Anyways, I haven't thought this through all the way; it just came to me now. I may have made a couple mistakes myself. But it seems that buying used CD's may not be as harmless as everyone makes it out to be.
I think it's still a noteworthy statistic, regarless of the fact that it may be skewed. I'd be willing to bet that the percentage that are women is much higher than 10 years ago (or 5 years ago, whatever), and the percentage that are boys is probably less. I don't have the statistics, and I don't know if anyone else does either (did they do those statistics then?), but I think we all know that there weren't many women playing super mario bros when it first came out, but the "cool" boys (and the uncool boys for that matter) in the second grade sure did.
Who writes this stuff? Do people read more than just the headlines anymore?
I believe the headline compares "women" and "boys." Not "women" and "men." It is a long believed notion that videogame players are "little boys playing mario in the basement." The point is that times have changed. No longer are girls given "Barbie sidescroller junk" games. The sims and more are starting to appeal to them.
In addition, the main group of gamers is getting older. People who were teens or so when Nintendo, Atari, Commodore came out are grown up now. And you can look at the way game focuses have changed as a result (the successful platforms (PS2 and XBox) are the ones catering to older guys: more violence, mayhem, etc). On the other hand, consoles like Nintendo are pointed towards the same audience (and this is probably where women are playing most). I guess I've gone off on a tangent though, so I'll stop now. My point is that, to answer your question, yes, people read the headlines.
The basic idea is that (unfortunatly) there are just a few players out there, but (fortunately) they're big players. They intend to revolutionize computing the same way the mosfet did, etc. I don't know all the science and stuff, but basically they're getting able to make high quality, super good, diamonds synthetically, fairly reliably, and fairly cheap.
Most importantly, they're able to make the diamonds without DeBeers. I don't remember which companies are focusing on which side of things (jewelry vs. semiconductors), but I think the moral of the story is that progress is being made, and the diamond semiconductor revolution does NOT have to include DeBeers, which is a good thing for all involved.
the site's not slow, someone just wanted to see the word "dildo" in a comment.
I think I disagree a little. Some users might have a problem ever typing a password or something, but I think most people are pretty reasonable. I know that when I started using a Linux desktop this summer, I didn't mind typing in the root password to change stuff around that would affect everyone. In fact, I kind of liked it since I knew I could play around as much as I wanted: if I didn't type in the root password, I couldn't affect anyone else.
On the other hand, I'm at this site, so I'm probably not your average computer user. And, Linux does have some stuff wrong (in my opinion). Changing screen resolution . . . adding printers . . . some of that stuff I'd kinda like to do without a password. But gnome has that nice little key thingy that stays around; you can play around for a while, and remove it when you're done. MUCH better than logging on as a regular user, and having to logoff/logon as administrator to install a program or whatnot.
I don't know. Maybe some users would get pissed off with one additional password request. But anything you do is going to make *someone* mad; you can't cater to either extreme. I think there's some middle ground Microsoft could find. Hopefully they will.
yeah, i've seen those. on the one hand, i guess they're good cause they probably don't waste much energy. if it's only visible when viewed directly from the front, it means no energy is wasted on other areas.
on the other hand, it's a pain for pedestrians. when i want to cross the street, i like to know what color the light is, so i know whether or not i'm going to be crushed by oncoming traffic.
overall though, i think they're great. you can honestly see them for miles and miles and light years, and they're always perfectly visible; even in direct sunlight it's exceedingly obvious which light is on (as opposed to those car stereos which are advertised as always being "super visible" "even in direct sunlight" but definitely AREN'T . . . )
and i think you're right about the headlights. the acura tl headlights have the bluish tint that guy seems to be talking about, and i'm pretty sure they use halogen. i, for one, have never seen LED headlights either, but who knows . . .
true, it is given away for free. on the other hand, internet explorer was "given away for free" (bundled with windows) a while ago, too. and the department of justice definitely did not allow them to "do whatever they want with it." they have a monopoly on operating systems. including a proprietary instant messaging client that uses a closed standard can be seen as an abuse of their monopoly in the OS market, especially since they get revenue from the ads and stuff.
so, in conclusion: yeah, it's free, but that doesn't mean they have carte blanche to go do what they want. i'm not saying they are or are not doing anything wrong; i'm just saying that they can be held accountable for the actions they're taking. personally, i'd prefer it if every im client used the same, open standard, and we could all choose which one was "coolest" and they'd all work together and everyone would be happy, but things don't always turn out the way i'd like.
ok then, i was wrong. there still is the fact that they have moved the link from its previous prominence. and, it doesn't seem like the player is still included.
true. the codec is available. but there is a change from how things used to be.
you used to be able to download the divx player with the divx codec, for free. you could download the better players (with encoding, etc) for money or with adware.
now, you can only download the codec for free (i can't be fully certain, since i'm at a linux machine and have no access to a windows box, but if i remember correctly, the exe file you linked to is only the codec). no more divx player (which i kinda liked) for free. that is definitely a change from how things used to be. mod me down if i'm wrong, but that's what i think the change is.
to have mass acceptance, it has to be "cheap" (i assume you mean inexpensive), and to be "cheap" it has to be sub-par material?
i think to have mass acceptance, it has to be *worth it* to consumers. i don't there is a need for "cheap materials."
i think if you look at all the stuff made today (cars, computers, whatever) you'll find many examples of products having mass public acceptance without being "cheap."
i think that's the point though: getting them back into society. it seems like they feel they can improve efficiency with this stuff, and use the money spent on low income housing, etc more effectively, which would help more of them "get back into society."
wouldn't it be worth it to spend a small amount of money on "tracking" if it meant a greate increase in the effectiveness of the help given to the homeless?
i don't know how effective the tracking is, or if it's worth it, but it might be. maybe spending the money there will get more people into homes, etc. or maybe not, who knows.
what if, instead, everyone called collect? the phone would still ring and become an incredible annoyance, but at no cost to us, the poor, proletariat spammees.
i know i don't feel like paying just to be an annoyance, but maybe i'd do it for free.
seriously, there's got to be a way to make spam end. i sure hope so.
yeah, so, i'm wrong. my bad.