Actually, that's a minefield everywhere. I haven't yet seen any dual-screen configuration besides simple mirroring that didn't suffer from some kind of problem - from X11 simply failing to acknowledge the existence of a second monitor to Windows randomly letting the cursor disappear. Sometimes it's constant and sometines it's intermittent, but there's always some kind of issue.
I'll buy into multi-screen setups when there is an OS/driver combination that actually supports them without random issues.
The worst case would be if UMG said, "PReturn our property or else," and I have to waste a dollar on postage returning a piece of junk I never wanted in the first place!
Send it to them along with a burned CD-R with some photos you made and a sticker that declares the CD-R to be your property. Then send them a nastygram and threaten them with legal action if they don't return your property.
Or any of their other releases under OSI-approved licenses, for example WIX?
WIX, however, is completely useless to German developers who try to discuss it with a straight face or pitch it to their boss without getting fired.
("WIX" sounds quite similar to a common German slang word for masturbation. A nice example of how a completely innocent word can have unexpected connotations in different cultures.)
Episode IV
A FALSE HOPE
It is a period of civil litigation. European commisioners, striking from a hidden courtroom, have won their first victory against the evil Microsoft Monopoly.
During the battle, European judges managed to steal secret plans to the Monopoly's ultimate weapon, the DEATH SCREEN, a blue error screen with enough power to destroy an entire uptime.
Pursued by the Monopoly's sinister agents, President Barroso races home aboard his starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save his documents and restore freedom to the internet...
ASUS is nice, although I had an above-average number of DOA products with them. However, nobody else appears to have that issue so it might be a freak coincidence.
Perhaps it somehow prevents a scenario where more than one platter is inaccessible at the same time? Although I guess you'd have to switch to single-platter hard drives in order to even attempt that...
Google should then add a simple mechanism to the vans that allows the drivers to set a "last couple images are bad" marker. They turn into a driveway by accident or stop to refuel and as soon as they notice/are done, they press a button and the system sets a marker that tells the post-processing team that all images since the last turn are probably bad. The post-processing team can then just scan for those markers and closely examine the images preceding them; if the drivers pay a bit of attention that could cut down on images that shouldn't be in the database.
I use Jabber as my primary IM client - but then again my most important contacts are mostly technical people.
As for MSN not having had message rretention until recently: I didn't care much; ICQ is much bigger in Germany, even though MSN holds the second spot for some reason.
And Skype... well, Skype is very easy to set up. It has better voice quality than TeamSpeak, although the latter is much more robust in multi-user scenarios - if you have a TS server everyone can connect to. Skype benefits from being the most established brand and from being easy to use. That's enough to keep it firmly entrenched.
As for SIP... Like Ghandhi has said about western civilization: I think it would be a good idea.
As for IRC... IRC doesn't have message retention. If I'm not online and someone tries to send me a PRIVMSG, that PRIVMSG will never reach me. I know some networks have memo services etc., but why should I have to accomodate to a network's particularities? (And why have more than one IRC network anyway?)
As for the protocols... Oscar is nice, but there aren't any Free Oscar servers I know of. Jabber fills that bridge and, as a protocol, can be shaped by the community as the community deems fit. That's something Oscar doesn't have to offer. So there are two useful IM protocols.
As for Skype... Well, that's a VoIP service with some IM features tacked on for convenience. It does something entirely different from the other networks. (Note that MSN/ICQ/etc.'s VoIP service isn't supported by third-party clients, probably because MSN etc. don't want them to. Jabber has a VoIP extension, but arrived on the scene very late.)
TFA probably means DMB-T/H, which is the Chinese standard. Everyone outside (North|South) America* and Japan would mean DVB-T, Japan and parts of South America would mean ISDB-T, North America and parts of South America would mean ATSC.
Isn't it nice how well nations can work together on television standards?
Point-and-click combat works - for strategy/tactical games. I think that turn-based tactical MMORPGs (of which there are a few out there) work much better than the realtime stuff. However, you have to be quite patient as battles (especially ones with lots of monsters and laggy players) can take forever.
I played the open beta and didn't become addicted. What I played was a fairly standard - if lengthy - MMO with few qualities apart from graphics over, say, Ragnarok Online.
Then again, for me an MMORPG is an MMORPG is an MMORPG. Somewhat nice to play for a while but nothing I could stand for more than a few days. Apart from interface differences and slight details I find them to be completely equivalent (and not very engaging).
Does that make me socially awkward now? (Don't answer; I'm a slashdotter, so the answer is obvious.)
In Germany chip-and-PIN has been one of the two traditional homebanking concepts (the other being PIN-and-TAN) via the HBCI standard (now called FinTS). We distinguish between four classes of card readers:
Class 1 readers are just smartcard interface; you enter the PIN via the computer's keyboard. They come at about 30-40 EUR.
Class 2 readers are like class 1 plus a keypad. ~70-80 EUR, unless your bank sells you a branded device for less.
Class 3 readers are like class 2 plus a display. Upwards of 100 EUR. Fancy ones with additional biometric interfaces (not useful for homebanking) come at 250 EUR and up.
Class 4 readers are like class 3 plus support for an own Secure Access Module so they can sign transactions with their own credentials (to make card and reader uniquely identifiable for each transaction). These aren't used for homebanking, but the planned German healthcare smartcard will require them.
Any of the first three classes can be used for homebanking. A few years ago my bank issued a class 1 reader with their homebanking package; when my parents had to get a now one because the old one got flaky they got the current standard-issue device, which is class 2 - however, that might also be because the company the bank gets the readers from has removed all class 1 readers from their lineup.
Class 2 readers are arguably more secure, but class 1 devices have the advantage of being small and robust, which is useful to me because I lug the reader around in my backpack. Having the choice is nice and sice HBCI is an open standard there are implementations for Linux (GnuCash) and OS X (MacGiro, BankX, GnuCash), so keyloggers are a bit less of a worry.
Recently, I've seen two drives (a 200G Seagate and a 120G Maxtor) die with similar symptoms - they went completely inert. They just don't care whether there is power or not. All drive failures I've seen before had the drive at least attempting to spin up, so I find this unusual. The only lead I have is that both drives have at some point been connected to the same external controller, which has since been retired.
Any idea what that might be? I guess something on the logic board must have fried so the driven don't even make it to the spinup procedure...
Same here. For me, hard disk drives are the computer component with the second highest failure rate, right after floppy drives.
I think that MTBF is a completely random number with no connection to reality. A hard drive lives for about two to four years, persiod. Much more interesting is how the manufacturer deals with failing drives. Maxtor makes bad drives but I like their RMA process. Seagate gives a five-year warranty. Much more important than MTBF.
The oldest working drive I have is about 2 GB in size, but it's in an old 486DX laptop that rots in some corner, so it doesn't see any use. (Note: It's not the original drive and the laptop's BIOS can only address 214 MB of it.)
And in mine I saw a university resort to either marking classes taught by "staff" or "accidentally" reversing which professors taught which sections, all to ensure that the students had already committed to their schedule before they stroll into class on the first day to see who will really be teaching them.
That wouldn't work at mine - we decide which classes we officially enroll in about one wonth into the semester. That allows the students to drop classes that aren't what they thought they are or where they don't agree with the lecturer's style. While you could drop a class after enrolling that counts as failure and you only can retry the same class once, so it's good to know whether the class is right for you before enrolling.
Then again, we don't pay per-class tuition but just a global per-semester fee.
Any nonprime bittage is evil. I propose a 7 bit memory with floating parity (in the Nth byte the (N % 7)th bit is the parity bit). Storage would use 13 bit bytes with reverse floating parity (in the Nth byte the ((13 - N) % 13)th bit is the parity bit). Every 91st (13 * 7) byte in both storage and memory is a leap byte and has no parity bit.
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I'll buy into multi-screen setups when there is an OS/driver combination that actually supports them without random issues.
("WIX" sounds quite similar to a common German slang word for masturbation. A nice example of how a completely innocent word can have unexpected connotations in different cultures.)
Episode IV
A FALSE HOPE
It is a period of civil litigation. European commisioners, striking from a hidden courtroom, have won their first victory against the evil Microsoft Monopoly.
During the battle, European judges managed to steal secret plans to the Monopoly's ultimate weapon, the DEATH SCREEN, a blue error screen with enough power to destroy an entire uptime.
Pursued by the Monopoly's sinister agents, President Barroso races home aboard his starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save his documents and restore freedom to the internet...
ASUS is nice, although I had an above-average number of DOA products with them. However, nobody else appears to have that issue so it might be a freak coincidence.
Well, you could rip out most of the internals and put generic PC components in. Then you end up with a 37 Kilodollar case mod.
Perhaps it somehow prevents a scenario where more than one platter is inaccessible at the same time? Although I guess you'd have to switch to single-platter hard drives in order to even attempt that...
Google should then add a simple mechanism to the vans that allows the drivers to set a "last couple images are bad" marker. They turn into a driveway by accident or stop to refuel and as soon as they notice/are done, they press a button and the system sets a marker that tells the post-processing team that all images since the last turn are probably bad. The post-processing team can then just scan for those markers and closely examine the images preceding them; if the drivers pay a bit of attention that could cut down on images that shouldn't be in the database.
I use Jabber as my primary IM client - but then again my most important contacts are mostly technical people.
As for MSN not having had message rretention until recently: I didn't care much; ICQ is much bigger in Germany, even though MSN holds the second spot for some reason.
And Skype... well, Skype is very easy to set up. It has better voice quality than TeamSpeak, although the latter is much more robust in multi-user scenarios - if you have a TS server everyone can connect to. Skype benefits from being the most established brand and from being easy to use. That's enough to keep it firmly entrenched.
As for SIP... Like Ghandhi has said about western civilization: I think it would be a good idea.
As for IRC... IRC doesn't have message retention. If I'm not online and someone tries to send me a PRIVMSG, that PRIVMSG will never reach me. I know some networks have memo services etc., but why should I have to accomodate to a network's particularities? (And why have more than one IRC network anyway?)
As for the protocols... Oscar is nice, but there aren't any Free Oscar servers I know of. Jabber fills that bridge and, as a protocol, can be shaped by the community as the community deems fit. That's something Oscar doesn't have to offer. So there are two useful IM protocols.
As for Skype... Well, that's a VoIP service with some IM features tacked on for convenience. It does something entirely different from the other networks. (Note that MSN/ICQ/etc.'s VoIP service isn't supported by third-party clients, probably because MSN etc. don't want them to. Jabber has a VoIP extension, but arrived on the scene very late.)
Still not ideal. Neither phone has a slot for original NES cartridges.
TFA probably means DMB-T/H, which is the Chinese standard. Everyone outside (North|South) America* and Japan would mean DVB-T, Japan and parts of South America would mean ISDB-T, North America and parts of South America would mean ATSC.
Isn't it nice how well nations can work together on television standards?
* Except for Argentina and Uruguay.
A slide-open cellphone! An UMPC! A DVB-T USB dongle! And a set of devices designed to be used together!
Asia truly lives in the future!
Admittedly, the robot remote is somewhat cool, albeit impractical, but the rest of the stuff is pretty weak.
Point-and-click combat works - for strategy/tactical games. I think that turn-based tactical MMORPGs (of which there are a few out there) work much better than the realtime stuff. However, you have to be quite patient as battles (especially ones with lots of monsters and laggy players) can take forever.
I played the open beta and didn't become addicted. What I played was a fairly standard - if lengthy - MMO with few qualities apart from graphics over, say, Ragnarok Online.
Then again, for me an MMORPG is an MMORPG is an MMORPG. Somewhat nice to play for a while but nothing I could stand for more than a few days. Apart from interface differences and slight details I find them to be completely equivalent (and not very engaging).
Does that make me socially awkward now? (Don't answer; I'm a slashdotter, so the answer is obvious.)
- Class 1 readers are just smartcard interface; you enter the PIN via the computer's keyboard. They come at about 30-40 EUR.
- Class 2 readers are like class 1 plus a keypad. ~70-80 EUR, unless your bank sells you a branded device for less.
- Class 3 readers are like class 2 plus a display. Upwards of 100 EUR. Fancy ones with additional biometric interfaces (not useful for homebanking) come at 250 EUR and up.
- Class 4 readers are like class 3 plus support for an own Secure Access Module so they can sign transactions with their own credentials (to make card and reader uniquely identifiable for each transaction). These aren't used for homebanking, but the planned German healthcare smartcard will require them.
Any of the first three classes can be used for homebanking. A few years ago my bank issued a class 1 reader with their homebanking package; when my parents had to get a now one because the old one got flaky they got the current standard-issue device, which is class 2 - however, that might also be because the company the bank gets the readers from has removed all class 1 readers from their lineup.Class 2 readers are arguably more secure, but class 1 devices have the advantage of being small and robust, which is useful to me because I lug the reader around in my backpack. Having the choice is nice and sice HBCI is an open standard there are implementations for Linux (GnuCash) and OS X (MacGiro, BankX, GnuCash), so keyloggers are a bit less of a worry.
Recently, I've seen two drives (a 200G Seagate and a 120G Maxtor) die with similar symptoms - they went completely inert. They just don't care whether there is power or not. All drive failures I've seen before had the drive at least attempting to spin up, so I find this unusual. The only lead I have is that both drives have at some point been connected to the same external controller, which has since been retired.
Any idea what that might be? I guess something on the logic board must have fried so the driven don't even make it to the spinup procedure...
Same here. For me, hard disk drives are the computer component with the second highest failure rate, right after floppy drives.
I think that MTBF is a completely random number with no connection to reality. A hard drive lives for about two to four years, persiod. Much more interesting is how the manufacturer deals with failing drives. Maxtor makes bad drives but I like their RMA process. Seagate gives a five-year warranty. Much more important than MTBF.
The oldest working drive I have is about 2 GB in size, but it's in an old 486DX laptop that rots in some corner, so it doesn't see any use. (Note: It's not the original drive and the laptop's BIOS can only address 214 MB of it.)
Bravo. Quite awesome.
Although both you and TFA fail to mention his Conjure Hyperactive Bartender spell.
Then again, we don't pay per-class tuition but just a global per-semester fee.
As a Gentoo user I'm perfectly fine with that.
Any nonprime bittage is evil. I propose a 7 bit memory with floating parity (in the Nth byte the (N % 7)th bit is the parity bit). Storage would use 13 bit bytes with reverse floating parity (in the Nth byte the ((13 - N) % 13)th bit is the parity bit). Every 91st (13 * 7) byte in both storage and memory is a leap byte and has no parity bit.
You can say what you want about the olden days, but CIH was epic.