There's a company called Macroplant that makes a product called iExplorer, which I'm pretty sure does exactly what you're wanting to do.
I have no formal affiliation with the company, but I've been using iExplorer for years to back up various stuff from my iDevices.
It even makes it really easy to copy game save data from one device to another, so if you want to give someone a boost with Angry Birds or some other non-cloud based game, you can copy your game data over.
IIRC someone even figured out which bits to hack in the original Plants Vs. Zombies to get various things. iExplorer made it super easy to grab the save file so you could tweak it.
I've read "Octopodes" before from someone who knows and cares more about that sort of thing than I do, but I usually use "Octopi" because more people understand it.
The summary seems to imply that they were already tracking users and their usage of the clip art library.
More and more it seems like just keeping Office XP or 2010 around is the best bet. How much you hate the ribbon would determine which one you keep, I guess.
Not that I expect many to read this, since it's a day later, but polycarbonate is much more scratch-prone than glass, even with the scratch-resistant coating on it.
It wouldn't work on a phone, because the coating would rub off in fairly short order.
Many of the common woods used in boating are full of natural oils that prevent water from penetrating. Teak, cypress, and cedar are among those. I didn't RTFA (or would it be WTFV? whatever), so I don't know what they made theirs out of.
Of course, the natural oils only act as an inhibitor, and if the wood spends any amount of time in the water, it'll still need maintenance. Clear finishes look pretty, but need loads more work than a good paint or epoxy coating.
Don't forget who provides a big chunk of funding to the Mozilla folks.
I don't think it'll be a huge surprise if their checkbook gets a little harder to open if at some point in the future the Mozilla folks don't work on a similar plan.
Citizens Insurance was paying out something like 6-7 times their premium income (like $180 million to $25 million) just on sinkhole claims.
If the reforms hadn't been implemented, the entire property insurance industry in Florida would have collapsed.
And all insurers in Florida are required to cover true sinkholes (now called "Catastrophic Ground Collapse"). It's just that there has to be more evidence than a few cracks in drywall/driveway to legitimize the claim.
I've known some very intelligent people screw this up (even one in training to be an actuary!), so I'm going to make this post here so I can refer back to it in the future.
US income taxes are marginal, not flat.
I'm going to make it simple here. Tax rates for this example are 25% for income up to $99,999 and 33% for income above $100,000.
So if Judy is making $99,999 annually, and then is offered a 1.5% one time raise for exceptional performance on a successful project. That's a pay increase of $1,499.99, taking her to a total income of $101,498.99. Before her raise, her tax burden is 25% of $99,999, or $24,999.75. After her raise, her total tax burden is 25% of $99,999 (or $24,999.75) and 33% of $1,499.99, or $495.00, for a grand total of $25,494.75.
So a 1.5% raise does the following: -Raises her top income tax bracket from the 25% bracket to the 33% bracket -Raises her tax burden by around $500 on $1,500 -Nets her roughly $1,000 more in income.
Tell me a good reason why anyone would turn down a raise of that nature, even if it bumped them into the next bracket up.
You're only taxed on the amount of money that falls within the bracket for that tax.
Otherwise, a $0.01 raise could result in a net pay cut of thousands of dollars, and no one would accept that.
I happily pay to keep extra 3rd parts ads out of the applications I use regularly.
Also, if you're of the kind of user that has no qualms about copying a friend's movie/music/book library, then I wouldn't expect you to be terribly enthusiastic about paying for apps unless there was an extremely compelling reason.
For me, I prefer to pay for the things I use and enjoy. I committed to being above-board with my personal media choices back when the first lawsuits first started coming out way back when.
I'll still media shift and break DRM to consume my media as I want to, but I'll at least do what I feel is the right thing by starting out with a legitimate copy.
The only one I know of had to do with someone publishing the text of a Scientology exam manual. The CoS threatened to sue if it wasnt' removed, and they removed it, then posted a story about it, explaining what happened and why it was removed.
Back when I was working the computer labs at my university, we used a product by Centurion to secure our workstations.
We would build an image, then lock down this little device installed in the case.
The computer user never even notices it, and they can write to temp folders and change settings, and everything.
When the computer is then rebooted, this device just reloads the OS from the "locked" partition, and it's just like it ever was.
Day to day it was great, but applying updates was a pain because you had to visit each system and unlock it manually. This was 15 years or so ago, so I'm sure they have a better system in place now, but it worked pretty well for our group and the hundreds of computers we maintained.
I have a regular Zune 30gb brick that suffered from a headphone problem. It's been sitting in a dock, playing music for around 3 years.
I've had a Zune HD for a couple of years, and for music I like it much more than the iPod. It's main problem is that it's just an excellent MP3 player, with some other stuff added on. The iPod is a good MP3 player, but there's so much more to it, that the Zune really couldn't compete.
It should be simple enough to test his method. Use it to make illustrations for Earth, the Moon, and Mars. That should give us some indication as to its accuracy.
Slashdot Mirror
It's what a heffalump uses to fend off woozle attacks.
There's a company called Macroplant that makes a product called iExplorer, which I'm pretty sure does exactly what you're wanting to do.
I have no formal affiliation with the company, but I've been using iExplorer for years to back up various stuff from my iDevices.
It even makes it really easy to copy game save data from one device to another, so if you want to give someone a boost with Angry Birds or some other non-cloud based game, you can copy your game data over.
IIRC someone even figured out which bits to hack in the original Plants Vs. Zombies to get various things. iExplorer made it super easy to grab the save file so you could tweak it.
Nintendo would be idiots to try and roll their own silicone for the sake of a few extra bytes of memory.
Yeah, but I've seen loads of nerds who would happily roll their own silicone for a few bites of mammary!
I've read "Octopodes" before from someone who knows and cares more about that sort of thing than I do, but I usually use "Octopi" because more people understand it.
The summary seems to imply that they were already tracking users and their usage of the clip art library.
More and more it seems like just keeping Office XP or 2010 around is the best bet. How much you hate the ribbon would determine which one you keep, I guess.
Not that I expect many to read this, since it's a day later, but polycarbonate is much more scratch-prone than glass, even with the scratch-resistant coating on it.
It wouldn't work on a phone, because the coating would rub off in fairly short order.
Many of the common woods used in boating are full of natural oils that prevent water from penetrating. Teak, cypress, and cedar are among those. I didn't RTFA (or would it be WTFV? whatever), so I don't know what they made theirs out of.
Of course, the natural oils only act as an inhibitor, and if the wood spends any amount of time in the water, it'll still need maintenance. Clear finishes look pretty, but need loads more work than a good paint or epoxy coating.
Don't forget who provides a big chunk of funding to the Mozilla folks.
I don't think it'll be a huge surprise if their checkbook gets a little harder to open if at some point in the future the Mozilla folks don't work on a similar plan.
Apple Maps.
Sink Different.
Or maybe they want to try something new and don't know what's good at a new place.
Like the time I ordered Menudo at a Mexican joint because the menu suggested it was a Mexican version of Beef Stew.
I wish I had some mod points for this.
Citizens Insurance was paying out something like 6-7 times their premium income (like $180 million to $25 million) just on sinkhole claims.
If the reforms hadn't been implemented, the entire property insurance industry in Florida would have collapsed.
And all insurers in Florida are required to cover true sinkholes (now called "Catastrophic Ground Collapse"). It's just that there has to be more evidence than a few cracks in drywall/driveway to legitimize the claim.
That would be awesome! It would be a whole new angle on the historic GIANT SPIDERS that roamed the Wild, Wild West!
This kind of thinking drives me nuts.
I've known some very intelligent people screw this up (even one in training to be an actuary!), so I'm going to make this post here so I can refer back to it in the future.
US income taxes are marginal, not flat.
I'm going to make it simple here.
Tax rates for this example are 25% for income up to $99,999 and 33% for income above $100,000.
So if Judy is making $99,999 annually, and then is offered a 1.5% one time raise for exceptional performance on a successful project. That's a pay increase of $1,499.99, taking her to a total income of $101,498.99. Before her raise, her tax burden is 25% of $99,999, or $24,999.75.
After her raise, her total tax burden is 25% of $99,999 (or $24,999.75) and 33% of $1,499.99, or $495.00, for a grand total of $25,494.75.
So a 1.5% raise does the following:
-Raises her top income tax bracket from the 25% bracket to the 33% bracket
-Raises her tax burden by around $500 on $1,500
-Nets her roughly $1,000 more in income.
Tell me a good reason why anyone would turn down a raise of that nature, even if it bumped them into the next bracket up.
You're only taxed on the amount of money that falls within the bracket for that tax.
Otherwise, a $0.01 raise could result in a net pay cut of thousands of dollars, and no one would accept that.
I happily pay to keep extra 3rd parts ads out of the applications I use regularly.
Also, if you're of the kind of user that has no qualms about copying a friend's movie/music/book library, then I wouldn't expect you to be terribly enthusiastic about paying for apps unless there was an extremely compelling reason.
For me, I prefer to pay for the things I use and enjoy. I committed to being above-board with my personal media choices back when the first lawsuits first started coming out way back when.
I'll still media shift and break DRM to consume my media as I want to, but I'll at least do what I feel is the right thing by starting out with a legitimate copy.
So what you're saying is it's a chance for Apple to...
Think Different?
The only one I know of had to do with someone publishing the text of a Scientology exam manual. The CoS threatened to sue if it wasnt' removed, and they removed it, then posted a story about it, explaining what happened and why it was removed.
He and Chelle would be amazing on a date, wouldn't they?
I guess they'd communicate by jumping or something?
What?? Are you kidding??
I'm quacking up over here!
Back when I was working the computer labs at my university, we used a product by Centurion to secure our workstations.
We would build an image, then lock down this little device installed in the case.
The computer user never even notices it, and they can write to temp folders and change settings, and everything.
When the computer is then rebooted, this device just reloads the OS from the "locked" partition, and it's just like it ever was.
Day to day it was great, but applying updates was a pain because you had to visit each system and unlock it manually. This was 15 years or so ago, so I'm sure they have a better system in place now, but it worked pretty well for our group and the hundreds of computers we maintained.
Yeah, the bandwidth is great, but the latency SUCKS.
I have a regular Zune 30gb brick that suffered from a headphone problem. It's been sitting in a dock, playing music for around 3 years.
I've had a Zune HD for a couple of years, and for music I like it much more than the iPod. It's main problem is that it's just an excellent MP3 player, with some other stuff added on.
The iPod is a good MP3 player, but there's so much more to it, that the Zune really couldn't compete.
That was Macromedia, wasn't it?Adobe didn't buy them until something like 2005 or so, IIRC.
It should be simple enough to test his method. Use it to make illustrations for Earth, the Moon, and Mars. That should give us some indication as to its accuracy.
Really the only thing you can be reasonably certain about with a UID pissing contest is that you'll pretty much inevitably lose. :-)
That would have been perfect this year, with the new MLP show. Oh, well.