Few people would consider 150kbps broadband, the only reason Ntl are allowed to call it that is that Oftel like to keep their nice high broadband statistics.
Almost everything with Ntl depends on when you signed up. They are a proud member of the 'Offer vast discounts to new customers whilst screwing over all the people you have on contract already' club. And they prevent you from canceling and resigning every time they do a new offer by forcing you to agree to a minimum 12 months contract.
Normally movies get released first as SVCD as the quality loss isn't an issue when your source is a telesync or screener. Then when the DVD is available they are rereleased as xvid with much better video and sound quality.
Although xvid is better quality and much better compression than SVCDs being able to play it on a stand alone DVD player is a big deal for people who don't want to sit in front of their computer to watch movies.
Other posts already address your ignorance of how long it takes to rip a DVD so I won't say anymore about that.
However, to kill the practice of DVD regions, you buy a region 1 player and import region 1 DVDs - if everybody does that, the film industry has to change as a result.
The parent was referring to American movie studios buying up movies from Hong Kong and other asian movies and then either cutting them to shreads or not releasing them. So buying a DVD player that only plays American (Region 1) discs isn't the answer. Buying a multiregion player is the answer, but very few places in America sell them due to pressure from the media companies. In the UK almost all DVD players are multiregion so the only problem we have is that now the media companies are bringing legal action against companies who parallel import DVDs, companies like play.com and CdWow.
I see nothing wrong with ID-ing visitors from other countries at this point.
Visitors from other countries are already ID'd by their passports. How does taking their fingerprints and photos add to this? Except by allowing customs to check them against the 'known suicide bomber' database, gonna get a lot of hits on that i'm sure. Shall we look up the percentage of suicide bombers who reoffend?
Does anyone remember the ColdWar? I remember hearing about those "Duck and Cover" videos children had to practice for in an event of nuclear war.
Of course telling children to hide under tables during a nuclear strike is another example of well though out US policy.
If I downloaded his music and liked it then I would buy the cd. In the same way I buy DVDs even though I have already checked out the movie by downloading it. Also just like I donate money to sites even though it isn't compulsory, if I think a site like a web comic is really good then I donate money to support it.
I think you will find people are much more willing to give money to the artists than to a faceless corporation. Or in the case of DVDs willing to pay for quality and added content.
There is nothing worse than phone support for people who have no idea, the strain of putting your mind into 'LUser mode' just so they understand you. It isn't the start button, it's that thing in the bottom left, etc etc
Oh actually there is one thing worse, doing phone support for idiots when you don't have a computer in front of you to follow the steps through on. Its incredibly hard to break a simple task down in to tiny managable steps when you can't remember the exact layout of every menu and dialog box.
I often find it is quicker to jump on a train than try and talk people through something over the phone. I generally carry a small toolkit, installation cds, essential drivers etc in my bag most of the time, because I know I am going to be asked to do something and it is so much easier when you have your own tools and all the software to hand. Otherwise you get the nightmare of asking someone for their win95 install cd and them handing you a stack of 50 floppies, I actually almost screamed.
The hope of the lock on the cockpit door is that the pilots will have enough time to realize something is going seriously wrong in passenger-land and land the plane at the nearest airport.
How long is the pilot going to keep the door locked after the terrorists start executing a passenger each minute till he opens it? It is all very well having these protocols but humans aren't robots they act based on emotions. The only way to make such things work is to take the control out of the hand of humans. Examples would be time safes in banks, or the safes in armoured cars which can only be opened at the banks they drive between. Because the humans have no control they cannot be coerced.
I suppose you could lock the pilots in the cockpit at the start of the flight and only have keys at the airports but this wouldn't be practical or foolproof. Copies of the keys could be stolen and so many other reasons.
Once the plane is on the ground, it's a whole lot easier to keep under control.
This is why the standard procedure to deal with hijacks is to wait until the plane has to land. The fuel has to run out sometime and once it is down then the situation can be solved in a number of ways. Of course in the case of planes being hijacked for use in suicide attacks this isn't possible.
Assuming the air marshal is a trained law enforcement officer, he's not going to be afraid of some terrorist with a box-cutter.
But what does the air marshal do when the terrorist has his box cutter to another passengers throat? In that situation the only way out which keeps the passenger alive is to give up your gun. The ideal option would be to shoot the terrorist anyway as one dead passenger is better than hundreds, but few people would be able to make that choice.
banning it isn't going to make it go away, it's just providing more free advertising for it.
The point of advertising is to increase sales, if the game is banned then all the advertising in the world isn't going to increase Rockstar Games sales and profits. It might result in increased 'brand recognition' but that would hardly generate the same amount of cash as they can make by continuing to sell the game. Games make loads of money even after their initial release is over, some games make considerably more when rereleased at a lower price point than they did initially, 'Theme Hospital' being one example.
Hopefully Compaq will be using the same battery model [or compatible type] for the next while to come [not much reason to change] since I really wouldn't want to buy a new laptop just to use a new battery...
Compaq must be an exception, most laptop manufacturers change the batteries of new models to force you to buy a new laptop instead of a new battery. Toshiba spring to mind. Bearing in mind that the useful life of a laptop is a couple of years, in that time technology will have moved on and the batteries won't be available anymore. So basically you are screwed when the battery starts to fail.
Right... so you'd rather be a pawn, manipulated into doing someone else's bidding?
I'd rather put up with being tailgated than be assaulted yes. A month ago I saw someone who had slowed down causing the car behind to rear end him, he stopped to exchange details and was pulled out of his car by the three men from the other car. They proceded to verbally abuse and threaten the man until a police car luckily pulled up having seen the accident.
Road rage is a serious problem and it isn't a good idea to provoke people on the road. Just as it isn't a good idea to provoke the guy who spills your drink in a pub. Maybe you can look after yourself and wouldn't worry, but maybe your girlfriend, mother or kid brother can't when they follow your advice and end up in a bad situation. Ideally we shouldn't have to submit to aggressors, but in a world where there are people who will beat someone unconcious for driving too slowly or looking at them funny in a bar it isn't a good idea to piss people off.
Now image a similar disaster, and all cars coming to an instant stop
Although your main point that this could be easily abused is right, your example is highly unlikely.The devices wouldn't kill the cars engines, they would slowly decrease the speed until it was at an acceptable level. Limiting speed in the same way chips in cars limit maximum speed at the moment, they limit the engine. It would be foolish and incredibly dangerous to design it to slam the brakes on when you pressed a button.
Now image a similar disaster, and all cars coming to an instant stop
Your main point that this could be easily abused is right, the devices wouldn't kill the cars engines. They would slowly decrease the speed until it was at an acceptable level. The devices would be limiting speed in the same way chips in cars limit maximum speed at the moment, they limit the engine. It would be foolish and incredibly dangerous to design it to slam the brakes on when you pressed a button.
Personally, I'd rather be the cause of someone behind me getting angry and passing me in a furious rage
Which is fine if they do just pass you in a rage, the problem is when you stop at lights and they get out of their car and beat you with a tire iron. Yes it does happen.
I would equate it to pressing mute of adjusting the color contrast or rewinding to rewatch a portion of the show.
Or shutting your eyes whilst the adverts are on. Not watching something doesn't delete it, in the same way the world doesn't disappear every time you close your eyes.
I have a feeling a mini ipod could be subsidized by the larger ipods in an effort to get more users for the itunes music store. Get those users hooked on it and later on they may consider the larger player or at least continue using the music store.
I really don't think apple would be selling a new player at a loss in order to make people use iTunes again at a loss, so they can have a slightly higher chance of selling more iPods. It could increase sales of iPods when people upgraded, but not by anywhere near enough to make it a valid strategy.
But it is not unreasonable that within the next century, we may begin to build very high technology systems with mission durations of thousands of years - for example, a system to contain radioactive wastes, or a probe to another star system.
Except that in the thousand years it takes to get there we will have developed a probe that can get there in 100 years, or 10, so we will have been their for hundreds of years by the time the original probe arrives. Dammit man go home and study your Hitchhiker's Guide.
People don't think of installing software as something you use a giant repository for, or especially type in obscure commands for.
The reason people don't think that way is because they are used to using windows. Not knowing about something doesn't make it bad. Oh and the obscure command mentioned in the parent post was "yum install programname" which is pretty self explantory as far as I can see.
Magnetic and optical supports aren't very long lasting...
No but if you keep it on your hard drive you can keep copying it to the new media. Or when you replace your hard drive do you just throw it away with all your data?
It isn't hard at all, the reason the iPod doesn't have a user replacable battery is that it is designed to be as small as possible. In order to allow the battery to be replaces simply it would need to be in a seperate enclosure, the case would have to be able to be opened, requiring joins and clasps. When you have something as thin as the iPod an 1/8 of an inch for a battery caddy is a big deal.
In engineering you have to make sacrifices, its a balance. You can't have the smallest device which also holds the most and is the most upgradable. Most people get one, the best get two. You will always have to sacrifice upgradability if you want a smaller form factor.(I know replacing the battery isn't an upgrade but the principal is the same.)
I would rather have to pay another $99 for a new battery after 18months, than spend that 18 months with a substandard device. I don't want the design which I see every day spoilt just to allow a task which needs doing every 18 months. The seamless and solid design of the iPod is one of the things that makes it so appealing. Most devices aren't very solid because they have lots of joins for battery compartments and flash card slots. This makes them feel cheap and flimsy, like when you buy a new car and the plastic dashboard bends when you lean on it. The iPod is more of a walnut dashboard I think, solid, stylish, no its not as practical but it feels right.
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(150kbps, 18UKP/month).... effectively unlimited broadband
Few people would consider 150kbps broadband, the only reason Ntl are allowed to call it that is that Oftel like to keep their nice high broadband statistics.
I am pretty sure Telewest and Ntl are the same company now they just still trade under two different names. IIRC they merged last year.
Almost everything with Ntl depends on when you signed up. They are a proud member of the 'Offer vast discounts to new customers whilst screwing over all the people you have on contract already' club. And they prevent you from canceling and resigning every time they do a new offer by forcing you to agree to a minimum 12 months contract.
Normally movies get released first as SVCD as the quality loss isn't an issue when your source is a telesync or screener. Then when the DVD is available they are rereleased as xvid with much better video and sound quality.
Although xvid is better quality and much better compression than SVCDs being able to play it on a stand alone DVD player is a big deal for people who don't want to sit in front of their computer to watch movies.
Other posts already address your ignorance of how long it takes to rip a DVD so I won't say anymore about that.
However, to kill the practice of DVD regions, you buy a region 1 player and import region 1 DVDs - if everybody does that, the film industry has to change as a result.
The parent was referring to American movie studios buying up movies from Hong Kong and other asian movies and then either cutting them to shreads or not releasing them. So buying a DVD player that only plays American (Region 1) discs isn't the answer. Buying a multiregion player is the answer, but very few places in America sell them due to pressure from the media companies. In the UK almost all DVD players are multiregion so the only problem we have is that now the media companies are bringing legal action against companies who parallel import DVDs, companies like play.com and CdWow.
I see nothing wrong with ID-ing visitors from other countries at this point.
Visitors from other countries are already ID'd by their passports. How does taking their fingerprints and photos add to this? Except by allowing customs to check them against the 'known suicide bomber' database, gonna get a lot of hits on that i'm sure. Shall we look up the percentage of suicide bombers who reoffend?
Does anyone remember the ColdWar? I remember hearing about those "Duck and Cover" videos children had to practice for in an event of nuclear war.
Of course telling children to hide under tables during a nuclear strike is another example of well though out US policy.
a fraction of an inch IS pretty impressive.
You just keep telling yourself that, oh and its what you do with it that counts.
The colors are awful. I wouldn't have such a problem with them if they offered 'Plain'
Silver not plain enough for you?
If I downloaded his music and liked it then I would buy the cd. In the same way I buy DVDs even though I have already checked out the movie by downloading it. Also just like I donate money to sites even though it isn't compulsory, if I think a site like a web comic is really good then I donate money to support it.
I think you will find people are much more willing to give money to the artists than to a faceless corporation. Or in the case of DVDs willing to pay for quality and added content.
you guessed it-- PHONE SUPPORT!!!
There is nothing worse than phone support for people who have no idea, the strain of putting your mind into 'LUser mode' just so they understand you. It isn't the start button, it's that thing in the bottom left, etc etc
Oh actually there is one thing worse, doing phone support for idiots when you don't have a computer in front of you to follow the steps through on. Its incredibly hard to break a simple task down in to tiny managable steps when you can't remember the exact layout of every menu and dialog box.
I often find it is quicker to jump on a train than try and talk people through something over the phone. I generally carry a small toolkit, installation cds, essential drivers etc in my bag most of the time, because I know I am going to be asked to do something and it is so much easier when you have your own tools and all the software to hand. Otherwise you get the nightmare of asking someone for their win95 install cd and them handing you a stack of 50 floppies, I actually almost screamed.
The hope of the lock on the cockpit door is that the pilots will have enough time to realize something is going seriously wrong in passenger-land and land the plane at the nearest airport.
How long is the pilot going to keep the door locked after the terrorists start executing a passenger each minute till he opens it? It is all very well having these protocols but humans aren't robots they act based on emotions. The only way to make such things work is to take the control out of the hand of humans. Examples would be time safes in banks, or the safes in armoured cars which can only be opened at the banks they drive between. Because the humans have no control they cannot be coerced.
I suppose you could lock the pilots in the cockpit at the start of the flight and only have keys at the airports but this wouldn't be practical or foolproof. Copies of the keys could be stolen and so many other reasons.
Once the plane is on the ground, it's a whole lot easier to keep under control.
This is why the standard procedure to deal with hijacks is to wait until the plane has to land. The fuel has to run out sometime and once it is down then the situation can be solved in a number of ways. Of course in the case of planes being hijacked for use in suicide attacks this isn't possible.
Assuming the air marshal is a trained law enforcement officer, he's not going to be afraid of some terrorist with a box-cutter.
But what does the air marshal do when the terrorist has his box cutter to another passengers throat? In that situation the only way out which keeps the passenger alive is to give up your gun. The ideal option would be to shoot the terrorist anyway as one dead passenger is better than hundreds, but few people would be able to make that choice.
banning it isn't going to make it go away, it's just providing more free advertising for it.
The point of advertising is to increase sales, if the game is banned then all the advertising in the world isn't going to increase Rockstar Games sales and profits. It might result in increased 'brand recognition' but that would hardly generate the same amount of cash as they can make by continuing to sell the game. Games make loads of money even after their initial release is over, some games make considerably more when rereleased at a lower price point than they did initially, 'Theme Hospital' being one example.
Hopefully Compaq will be using the same battery model [or compatible type] for the next while to come [not much reason to change] since I really wouldn't want to buy a new laptop just to use a new battery...
Compaq must be an exception, most laptop manufacturers change the batteries of new models to force you to buy a new laptop instead of a new battery. Toshiba spring to mind. Bearing in mind that the useful life of a laptop is a couple of years, in that time technology will have moved on and the batteries won't be available anymore. So basically you are screwed when the battery starts to fail.
Right... so you'd rather be a pawn, manipulated into doing someone else's bidding?
I'd rather put up with being tailgated than be assaulted yes. A month ago I saw someone who had slowed down causing the car behind to rear end him, he stopped to exchange details and was pulled out of his car by the three men from the other car. They proceded to verbally abuse and threaten the man until a police car luckily pulled up having seen the accident.
Road rage is a serious problem and it isn't a good idea to provoke people on the road. Just as it isn't a good idea to provoke the guy who spills your drink in a pub. Maybe you can look after yourself and wouldn't worry, but maybe your girlfriend, mother or kid brother can't when they follow your advice and end up in a bad situation. Ideally we shouldn't have to submit to aggressors, but in a world where there are people who will beat someone unconcious for driving too slowly or looking at them funny in a bar it isn't a good idea to piss people off.
Now image a similar disaster, and all cars coming to an instant stop
Although your main point that this could be easily abused is right, your example is highly unlikely .The devices wouldn't kill the cars engines, they would slowly decrease the speed until it was at an acceptable level. Limiting speed in the same way chips in cars limit maximum speed at the moment, they limit the engine. It would be foolish and incredibly dangerous to design it to slam the brakes on when you pressed a button.
Now image a similar disaster, and all cars coming to an instant stop
Your main point that this could be easily abused is right, the devices wouldn't kill the cars engines. They would slowly decrease the speed until it was at an acceptable level. The devices would be limiting speed in the same way chips in cars limit maximum speed at the moment, they limit the engine. It would be foolish and incredibly dangerous to design it to slam the brakes on when you pressed a button.
Personally, I'd rather be the cause of someone behind me getting angry and passing me in a furious rage
Which is fine if they do just pass you in a rage, the problem is when you stop at lights and they get out of their car and beat you with a tire iron. Yes it does happen.
I would equate it to pressing mute of adjusting the color contrast or rewinding to rewatch a portion of the show.
Or shutting your eyes whilst the adverts are on. Not watching something doesn't delete it, in the same way the world doesn't disappear every time you close your eyes.
I have a feeling a mini ipod could be subsidized by the larger ipods in an effort to get more users for the itunes music store. Get those users hooked on it and later on they may consider the larger player or at least continue using the music store.
I really don't think apple would be selling a new player at a loss in order to make people use iTunes again at a loss, so they can have a slightly higher chance of selling more iPods. It could increase sales of iPods when people upgraded, but not by anywhere near enough to make it a valid strategy.
But it is not unreasonable that within the next century, we may begin to build very high technology systems with mission durations of thousands of years - for example, a system to contain radioactive wastes, or a probe to another star system.
Except that in the thousand years it takes to get there we will have developed a probe that can get there in 100 years, or 10, so we will have been their for hundreds of years by the time the original probe arrives. Dammit man go home and study your Hitchhiker's Guide.
People don't think of installing software as something you use a giant repository for, or especially type in obscure commands for.
The reason people don't think that way is because they are used to using windows. Not knowing about something doesn't make it bad. Oh and the obscure command mentioned in the parent post was "yum install programname" which is pretty self explantory as far as I can see.
Magnetic and optical supports aren't very long lasting...
No but if you keep it on your hard drive you can keep copying it to the new media. Or when you replace your hard drive do you just throw it away with all your data?
My Archos has everything an iPod has, costs a lot less, and runs off 4 AA NiMHs.
The difference being that my iPod is almost as small as 4 AA NiMHs on their own, let alone the Archos you have wrapped around them.
I'm afraid size does matter
How hard is it to design a replaceable battery?
It isn't hard at all, the reason the iPod doesn't have a user replacable battery is that it is designed to be as small as possible. In order to allow the battery to be replaces simply it would need to be in a seperate enclosure, the case would have to be able to be opened, requiring joins and clasps. When you have something as thin as the iPod an 1/8 of an inch for a battery caddy is a big deal.
In engineering you have to make sacrifices, its a balance. You can't have the smallest device which also holds the most and is the most upgradable. Most people get one, the best get two. You will always have to sacrifice upgradability if you want a smaller form factor.(I know replacing the battery isn't an upgrade but the principal is the same.)
I would rather have to pay another $99 for a new battery after 18months, than spend that 18 months with a substandard device. I don't want the design which I see every day spoilt just to allow a task which needs doing every 18 months. The seamless and solid design of the iPod is one of the things that makes it so appealing. Most devices aren't very solid because they have lots of joins for battery compartments and flash card slots. This makes them feel cheap and flimsy, like when you buy a new car and the plastic dashboard bends when you lean on it. The iPod is more of a walnut dashboard I think, solid, stylish, no its not as practical but it feels right.