Oh god yes. My only complaint about the ads on Spotify free is the monotone voice announcements, not sure what it is about his American accent that is so robotic! Get an English voice actor and the ads would be so much less annoying.
It is pretty clear to see though that buying used cds isn't really sustainable if everyone does it. Demand would outstrip supply so prices would go up.
If you compare it to something like a LoveFilm or Netflix account where you pay £10-£15 a month and can only have a limited number of DVDs at once then it is really good value. You have access to any music in the Spotify library which is incredibly extensive and you can download it and carry it around on your phone or when you are out of the country.
Being able to listen to anything from a massive library of music as much as you want including on mobile devices for the price of maybe 2 cds seems pretty cheap to me.
As far as I know the achievement cheats are done by taking a save game that has all the achievements unlocked and modifying it so it can be used on a different Xbox. Once the save game is loaded it will then trigger all of the achievements to be awarded.
This is trivial for Microsoft to detect though as it causes all of the achievements to be unlocked at the same time. They can easily detect if someone unlocks all of the achievements for a game at exactly the same time, or unlocks online achievements while offline.
But this YET AGAIN raises the issue that you have been given a case that can be a cheat or non-cheat and you have no evidence to sway you either way.
Except they almost certainly do have evidence. These cases aren't based on "Well they got those achievements more quickly than we think is normal" they are based on evidence like people gaining all of the achievements for a game at exactly the same time. Or getting online only achievements while they aren't online. That is what is tracked by Microsoft's anti-cheater monitoring.
Even if being autistic makes this kid amazing at video games he still can't earn achievements while not actually playing the game, or earn online achievements while he isn't online!
Microsoft's anti-cheating team have handled this in the same way as any other case. Which is exactly as they should do. There aren't any mitigating factors.
For the last decade Microsoft stock has been dead money. No growth.
Hardly dead money, Microsoft have paid out a dividend on their shares every quarter since the end of 2004 (which is as far as the linked dividend history goes back)
So if you own Microsoft stock you are paid actual cash money every quarter. If you own Apple stock you then it has gained in value so it has made you money in theory, but you don't actually have any more money in practice unless you sell the stock.
Both situations are beneficial to the stock holders but there is a big difference between cash in your pocket and an increase in share price.
Microsoft have failed to get a mainstream living room media platform off the ground that is true. But I think you are over stating the success of AppleTV.
Apple remotes worked out of the box and they were designed to deliver what the customer wanted day one.
Remember the AppleTV has been around since 2006 and what the current functionality is very different from the gen 1 device.
Market penetration of the AppleTV is pretty poor especially outside the US. It is hardly a dominant platform for living room media.
I think the bit you're missing is that you can't just simply schedule these to be loaded onto a bunch of container ships at random and then push a button in Tehran and have them automatically take out a carrier.
I wasn't suggesting that at all. What I was saying was that they give any ship that can carry a container the capacity to become a missile boat. So for instance you could load up lots of small ships with them and move them into strike range without anyone noticing. Or you could put several on a container ship to do the same thing. Obviously you would need control of the ship and placing but a container ship flying the flag of some random country is a lot more subtle than an Iranian missile cruiser.
There are two advantages of this as a launch system. The first is subterfuge, they just look like regular containers so you can move them into strike range without being detected.
The second is mobility. If they can be handled as normal shipping containers then that makes moving your forces a lot easier. Instead of having to use specialised transports to move land based mobile missile platforms you can just load these on a ship and then onto a truck at the other end.
The British Navy are actually looking at using shipping containers for a similar reason. Because they are standardised it is very cheap and easy to transport them. Especially when Naval units are called on to support humanitarian missions it is a lot quicker and more effective to load up standard shipping containers that are kitted out as "standard crew container", "aid supplies", "Comms room" than it is to send a destroyer or other vessel.
Capital ships will simply have to maintain bigger distances. From the shore and from merchant ships.
Even what are classed as short range cruise missiles have a range of 100s of kilometres, long range missiles go up to and above 2500km
range. It isn't really feasible to operate a carrier with the restraint of not going within 300km of shore or any commercial vessel.
A bigger problem is that due to the necessity of customs checking being on the shore, every American harbor has now become a launch site for Iranian missiles.
The containers being on shore is a complete non issue. The whole point is that the missiles are can be loaded on to and launched from any commercial ship that can carry a shipping container. If you were going to use it to blow up a port you wouldn't need a $10,000,000 missile delivery system you could just fill a container full of regular explosives.
The point of these weapons is that they can be transported and positioned for launch without being detected and that they are flexible so you can wither load it on a truck for land operations or on to a ship for a naval strike.
I don't really see a terrorist organisation bothering with something like this for most terrorist attacks a truck filled with explosives would do the same job a hell of a lot cheaper. Precision missile strikes aren't really necessary if you have suicide bomber willing to drive the truck right up to the target.
The danger would come nation states buying up a load of these and launching strikes from commercial ships during a conflict significantly blurring the lines between military and civilian vessels. Which would lead to a significant increase in civilian casualties due to civilian vessels being labeled as threats.
They spend quite a bit of time in school, if you can't teach them the skills in that amount of time, homework probably won't add a lot to the understanding.
Homework is about practising and reinforcing something that has been covered in class. A child is taught for instance fractions in class, and then they go home and do practise problems for homework. This serves as a way for the teacher to gauge whether they have understood the class by how well they do on the homework, it also reinforces the lesson through repetition.
In order to learn something it is necessary that it is revisited after the initial lesson and homework plays part of this process.
As has already been said if the homework is just copied from a friend then it is worthless but that doesn't devalue homework as a teaching tool. It is a case of making children realise that doing the homework helps them learn and serves a purpose. When children copy homework or fail to do it it is often due to overall workload. If teachers co-ordinate to make sure that children don't have too much homework then they are a lot more likely to complete it properly.
If you listen to the podcast that the summary is talking about the 'Christmas Party' referred to in the summary was actually the production of a high production value 'Christmas DVD' which apparently served no purpose other than to hopefully get a few members of staff noticed by one of the many hollywood types that were around the studio.
The retail "full price" edition of 10.6 is $29. It is not an upgrade. Does not require 10.5.
There seem to be a lot of posts saying this. Take a look at this page on Apple's site it clearly states that "Snow Leopard is an upgrade for Leopard users and requires a Mac with an Intel processor.".
It goes on to say:
Upgrading from Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard. If your Intel-based Mac is running Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, just purchase Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard and follow the simple installation instructions.
Upgrading from Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger.
If your Intel-based Mac is running Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, purchase the Mac Box Set,
I think that makes it pretty clear that this is an upgrade and that if you don't have Leopard then you can't use the $29 upgrade to install Snow Leopard. You have to pay $169 for the Mac Box Set which comes with iWork and iLife whether you want them or not.
full versions not upgrade disks like Microsoft, er did sell DVDs for $129 however Snow Leopard costs $29.00 [apple.com].
The $29 price is for an upgrade from Leopard. It won't install unless you already have Leopard on the system. If you are still using Tiger then you need to buy the 'Mac Box Set' which bundles iWork and iLife in with a full version of Snow Leopard and costs $169.
We use a whole load of Macs in the office and I have to say that slowdown over time is much more of an issue in OSX than Windows. We have near constant problems with Finder slowing to a crawl which are only solved by dumping the finder preference files. Pretty much all OSX problems we see regularly seem to be solved after deleting preference files, seems strange to design an OS that requires you to trash your settings on a regular basis.
Sure, if you want to get Madden or CoD on launch day there's a premium, but PC titles on launch day aren't cheap either - $40-$60 seems to be the norm.
The issue with console games isn't that the price is high on launch it is that for AAA titles the price never drops. CoD4 is still retailing for £35 even a year and a half after release. Left 4 dead is the same, still retailing for £35.
On PC Cod4 is now £20 and Left 4 dead was only £22 on launch.
The new 'Games on demand' store that has been recently added is even worse. Titles are offered for £19.99 despite brand new Xbox360 copies of the game being available for £10-15 online. So you end up paying more for a copy of the game that is ties to your Xbox so you can't lend it to friends, give it away or sell it when you are finished playing it.
The increased definition doesn't add anything to the experience.
Of course it does. One of the very things that it does add to the experience is what other posts are complaining about. Namely the fact that you can put text on screen that is readable without having to cover half the picture with it. If you are playing a game and your character finds a letter or other text it is nice to be able to read it without the artists having to draw it in inch high letters.
This of course has the side affect of making games more difficult/impossible to play on a SD screen. As someone who owns an Xbox 360 and a HDtv my view on this is that if you want to be able to play the latest games to their fullest then you should get an HDtv, otherwise you should realise that you won't be getting the full experience, and in some cases this may make it difficult to play.
Everyone makes out like buying an HD screen is a massive outlay of money. You can pick up an LCD pc monitor for £60-100 that you can hook an Xbox straight up to for HD gaming. Hell you could get a second hand CRT computer screen for peanuts and it would still be 5 times the resolution of your SDtv. Yes it wouldn't be as big but that is the trade off that you make. Gimping game development by saying that everything has to be completely clearly legible on a screen running at 720x480 is certainly not the answer.
I can't imagine PC gamers complaining that the latest games look shit at 640x480 or 800x600. If you want to play the latest games you have to move with the times. HDtvs aren't exactly new tech.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with self-signed certificates but if you don't want to confuse users then you can get an SSL certificate for about £50 per year, hardly a huge outlay for a business.
making a repair that might cost me $100 in parts plus ten hours work (including drive time)
I think the parent was assuming a certain level of technical knowledge. I can't imagine any hardware issue that would take 10 hours to correct, unless you are driving for 8 of them.
If a stick of RAM goes then order a new one next day delivery and spend 5 mins swapping them out. I guess if you can't figure out what the problem is then there is a certain amount of time spent diagnosing the problem but in 10 hours you could tear down the whole system and rebuild it 5 times over.
Replacing a part - 20 mins (max) OR Replacing computer and transferring all files and settings - at least 3-4 hours.
I know, speaking as someone who values their time highly, which one I would choose. Hell it would take longer to drop it off at a repair shop and pick it up than it would to order a part and install it.
It's irrelevant, with a VGA cable and a dual link-vga adapter you need worry about only above 2048x1536 (QXGA) @ 85hz.
What isn't quite so irrelevant is that it the picture will look like shit if you use a VGA cable. DVI gives much higher picture quality for LCD screens.
Why jury duty is so hated in the first place though IS beyond me.
I believe that the reason a lot of people try and avoid jury duty is if you work for a small company or are self employed and get called up for the jury in a long case then it can cause massive problems. For someone who is self employed it is rarely possible to disappear for 2 weeks without your business going down the toilet.
Personally I think that serving on a jury is one of the big ways you can positively influence the legal system but I an see why some people avoid it like the plague.
In fact, a 75% off sale is the only time when PC games are actually cheaper than console games.
That is hardly the case. Most pc games are half the price of the console version on release. Left 4 Dead was £22 on release on PC and is still £40 on the Xbox in most places.
Super Smash Bros Brawl is one of very few games that have everyone playing on one view. Normally four player means hoping the game supports split screen and then putting up with a quarter of the tv, and reduced graphical fidelity to keep the frame rate playable.
I am not saying that split screen isn't fun, just that it isn't available on all games and doesn't offer the full game experience.
Especially if you have to buy four PCs at once, one for each player. Online play doesn't help when your friends are visiting your house.
I actually get together with friends fairly often to play Xbox 360 games and I can tell you it is almost as much hassle as a LAN party. There is a growing trend of games to require one copy of the game and one Xbox per player especially if you want to play with more than 4.
Call of Duty 4 allows split screen for up to 4 players but not with system link games so if you want to play with more than 4 you need a copy of the game, an Xbox and a tv for each person.
Saints Row 2 doesn't allow multiplayer at all on a single Xbox again you need a copy of the game, an Xbox and a tv for each player.
Trust me once you have setup 8 Xboxs with power and networking and got 8 HD tvs hooked up to them, bought or rented 8 copies of the game, and made sure everyone is patched to the same level, you do start to question the convenience of console gaming!
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Oh god yes. My only complaint about the ads on Spotify free is the monotone voice announcements, not sure what it is about his American accent that is so robotic! Get an English voice actor and the ads would be so much less annoying.
It is pretty clear to see though that buying used cds isn't really sustainable if everyone does it. Demand would outstrip supply so prices would go up.
If you compare it to something like a LoveFilm or Netflix account where you pay £10-£15 a month and can only have a limited number of DVDs at once then it is really good value. You have access to any music in the Spotify library which is incredibly extensive and you can download it and carry it around on your phone or when you are out of the country.
Being able to listen to anything from a massive library of music as much as you want including on mobile devices for the price of maybe 2 cds seems pretty cheap to me.
You can import music into Spotify either just from folders on your hard drive or your entire iTunes library.
There is information on how this works on the Spotify site : https://www.spotify.com/uk/about/local-music/
As far as I know the achievement cheats are done by taking a save game that has all the achievements unlocked and modifying it so it can be used on a different Xbox. Once the save game is loaded it will then trigger all of the achievements to be awarded. This is trivial for Microsoft to detect though as it causes all of the achievements to be unlocked at the same time. They can easily detect if someone unlocks all of the achievements for a game at exactly the same time, or unlocks online achievements while offline.
Except they almost certainly do have evidence. These cases aren't based on "Well they got those achievements more quickly than we think is normal" they are based on evidence like people gaining all of the achievements for a game at exactly the same time. Or getting online only achievements while they aren't online. That is what is tracked by Microsoft's anti-cheater monitoring.
Even if being autistic makes this kid amazing at video games he still can't earn achievements while not actually playing the game, or earn online achievements while he isn't online!
Microsoft's anti-cheating team have handled this in the same way as any other case. Which is exactly as they should do. There aren't any mitigating factors.
Hardly dead money, Microsoft have paid out a dividend on their shares every quarter since the end of 2004 (which is as far as the linked dividend history goes back)
Apple on the other hand haven't paid a dividend to their stock holders since 1995.
So if you own Microsoft stock you are paid actual cash money every quarter. If you own Apple stock you then it has gained in value so it has made you money in theory, but you don't actually have any more money in practice unless you sell the stock.
Both situations are beneficial to the stock holders but there is a big difference between cash in your pocket and an increase in share price.
Microsoft have failed to get a mainstream living room media platform off the ground that is true. But I think you are over stating the success of AppleTV.
Apple remotes worked out of the box and they were designed to deliver what the customer wanted day one.
Remember the AppleTV has been around since 2006 and what the current functionality is very different from the gen 1 device.
Market penetration of the AppleTV is pretty poor especially outside the US. It is hardly a dominant platform for living room media.
I wasn't suggesting that at all. What I was saying was that they give any ship that can carry a container the capacity to become a missile boat. So for instance you could load up lots of small ships with them and move them into strike range without anyone noticing. Or you could put several on a container ship to do the same thing. Obviously you would need control of the ship and placing but a container ship flying the flag of some random country is a lot more subtle than an Iranian missile cruiser.
There are two advantages of this as a launch system. The first is subterfuge, they just look like regular containers so you can move them into strike range without being detected.
The second is mobility. If they can be handled as normal shipping containers then that makes moving your forces a lot easier. Instead of having to use specialised transports to move land based mobile missile platforms you can just load these on a ship and then onto a truck at the other end.
The British Navy are actually looking at using shipping containers for a similar reason. Because they are standardised it is very cheap and easy to transport them. Especially when Naval units are called on to support humanitarian missions it is a lot quicker and more effective to load up standard shipping containers that are kitted out as "standard crew container", "aid supplies", "Comms room" than it is to send a destroyer or other vessel.
Even what are classed as short range cruise missiles have a range of 100s of kilometres, long range missiles go up to and above 2500km range. It isn't really feasible to operate a carrier with the restraint of not going within 300km of shore or any commercial vessel.
The containers being on shore is a complete non issue. The whole point is that the missiles are can be loaded on to and launched from any commercial ship that can carry a shipping container. If you were going to use it to blow up a port you wouldn't need a $10,000,000 missile delivery system you could just fill a container full of regular explosives.
The point of these weapons is that they can be transported and positioned for launch without being detected and that they are flexible so you can wither load it on a truck for land operations or on to a ship for a naval strike.
I don't really see a terrorist organisation bothering with something like this for most terrorist attacks a truck filled with explosives would do the same job a hell of a lot cheaper. Precision missile strikes aren't really necessary if you have suicide bomber willing to drive the truck right up to the target.
The danger would come nation states buying up a load of these and launching strikes from commercial ships during a conflict significantly blurring the lines between military and civilian vessels. Which would lead to a significant increase in civilian casualties due to civilian vessels being labeled as threats.
Homework is about practising and reinforcing something that has been covered in class. A child is taught for instance fractions in class, and then they go home and do practise problems for homework. This serves as a way for the teacher to gauge whether they have understood the class by how well they do on the homework, it also reinforces the lesson through repetition.
In order to learn something it is necessary that it is revisited after the initial lesson and homework plays part of this process.
As has already been said if the homework is just copied from a friend then it is worthless but that doesn't devalue homework as a teaching tool. It is a case of making children realise that doing the homework helps them learn and serves a purpose. When children copy homework or fail to do it it is often due to overall workload. If teachers co-ordinate to make sure that children don't have too much homework then they are a lot more likely to complete it properly.
If you listen to the podcast that the summary is talking about the 'Christmas Party' referred to in the summary was actually the production of a high production value 'Christmas DVD' which apparently served no purpose other than to hopefully get a few members of staff noticed by one of the many hollywood types that were around the studio.
There seem to be a lot of posts saying this. Take a look at this page on Apple's site it clearly states that "Snow Leopard is an upgrade for Leopard users and requires a Mac with an Intel processor.".
It goes on to say :
I think that makes it pretty clear that this is an upgrade and that if you don't have Leopard then you can't use the $29 upgrade to install Snow Leopard. You have to pay $169 for the Mac Box Set which comes with iWork and iLife whether you want them or not.
The $29 price is for an upgrade from Leopard. It won't install unless you already have Leopard on the system. If you are still using Tiger then you need to buy the 'Mac Box Set' which bundles iWork and iLife in with a full version of Snow Leopard and costs $169.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL?mco=NzgxMDc5OQ
We use a whole load of Macs in the office and I have to say that slowdown over time is much more of an issue in OSX than Windows. We have near constant problems with Finder slowing to a crawl which are only solved by dumping the finder preference files. Pretty much all OSX problems we see regularly seem to be solved after deleting preference files, seems strange to design an OS that requires you to trash your settings on a regular basis.
The issue with console games isn't that the price is high on launch it is that for AAA titles the price never drops. CoD4 is still retailing for £35 even a year and a half after release. Left 4 dead is the same, still retailing for £35.
On PC Cod4 is now £20 and Left 4 dead was only £22 on launch.
The new 'Games on demand' store that has been recently added is even worse. Titles are offered for £19.99 despite brand new Xbox360 copies of the game being available for £10-15 online. So you end up paying more for a copy of the game that is ties to your Xbox so you can't lend it to friends, give it away or sell it when you are finished playing it.
I would go as far to say that the *majority* or websites don't need an SSL certificate. And for those that do £50 is hardly a great expenditure.
Of course it does. One of the very things that it does add to the experience is what other posts are complaining about. Namely the fact that you can put text on screen that is readable without having to cover half the picture with it. If you are playing a game and your character finds a letter or other text it is nice to be able to read it without the artists having to draw it in inch high letters.
This of course has the side affect of making games more difficult/impossible to play on a SD screen. As someone who owns an Xbox 360 and a HDtv my view on this is that if you want to be able to play the latest games to their fullest then you should get an HDtv, otherwise you should realise that you won't be getting the full experience, and in some cases this may make it difficult to play.
Everyone makes out like buying an HD screen is a massive outlay of money. You can pick up an LCD pc monitor for £60-100 that you can hook an Xbox straight up to for HD gaming. Hell you could get a second hand CRT computer screen for peanuts and it would still be 5 times the resolution of your SDtv. Yes it wouldn't be as big but that is the trade off that you make. Gimping game development by saying that everything has to be completely clearly legible on a screen running at 720x480 is certainly not the answer.
I can't imagine PC gamers complaining that the latest games look shit at 640x480 or 800x600. If you want to play the latest games you have to move with the times. HDtvs aren't exactly new tech.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with self-signed certificates but if you don't want to confuse users then you can get an SSL certificate for about £50 per year, hardly a huge outlay for a business.
I think the parent was assuming a certain level of technical knowledge. I can't imagine any hardware issue that would take 10 hours to correct, unless you are driving for 8 of them.
If a stick of RAM goes then order a new one next day delivery and spend 5 mins swapping them out. I guess if you can't figure out what the problem is then there is a certain amount of time spent diagnosing the problem but in 10 hours you could tear down the whole system and rebuild it 5 times over.
Replacing a part - 20 mins (max) OR Replacing computer and transferring all files and settings - at least 3-4 hours.
I know, speaking as someone who values their time highly, which one I would choose. Hell it would take longer to drop it off at a repair shop and pick it up than it would to order a part and install it.
What isn't quite so irrelevant is that it the picture will look like shit if you use a VGA cable. DVI gives much higher picture quality for LCD screens.
I believe that the reason a lot of people try and avoid jury duty is if you work for a small company or are self employed and get called up for the jury in a long case then it can cause massive problems. For someone who is self employed it is rarely possible to disappear for 2 weeks without your business going down the toilet.
Personally I think that serving on a jury is one of the big ways you can positively influence the legal system but I an see why some people avoid it like the plague.
Man I had no idea you could play split screen on the PC version of Left 4 Dead! Got to try that now.
That is hardly the case. Most pc games are half the price of the console version on release. Left 4 Dead was £22 on release on PC and is still £40 on the Xbox in most places.
Super Smash Bros Brawl is one of very few games that have everyone playing on one view. Normally four player means hoping the game supports split screen and then putting up with a quarter of the tv, and reduced graphical fidelity to keep the frame rate playable.
I am not saying that split screen isn't fun, just that it isn't available on all games and doesn't offer the full game experience.
I actually get together with friends fairly often to play Xbox 360 games and I can tell you it is almost as much hassle as a LAN party. There is a growing trend of games to require one copy of the game and one Xbox per player especially if you want to play with more than 4.
Call of Duty 4 allows split screen for up to 4 players but not with system link games so if you want to play with more than 4 you need a copy of the game, an Xbox and a tv for each person.
Saints Row 2 doesn't allow multiplayer at all on a single Xbox again you need a copy of the game, an Xbox and a tv for each player.
Trust me once you have setup 8 Xboxs with power and networking and got 8 HD tvs hooked up to them, bought or rented 8 copies of the game, and made sure everyone is patched to the same level, you do start to question the convenience of console gaming!