While your post seems to reek of 'It's not a problem for me, so it's not a problem', I'll reply to some of your 'points'.
1. No 'best' browser. So if one browser gets better, and then because of the pressure another gets better, too, this is bad? Maybe we should remove some features from one of them to make another look better? It's sad that we would have to downgrade the capability of something before we are able to make a choice.
No, the problem is that since there's no clearly better browser (well, I feel that Mozilla is), there is no standard as to which one the user gets, removing consistancy across distributions.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan. I rewrote my rc/boot scripts myself from scratch. I haven't had this problem for 3 years.
And how many end users want to do this? Hell, even I don't want to do this, and I could do it easily.
We need better standards among printers.
Like postscript? But that costs money. If you want a vendor to throw in compatibility, that means you restrict their designs and implementations into the standard. Postscript does this beautifully, up until you get your credit card bill.
For example, how do I tell Windows that my hardware clock runs as UTC and that it should still show me my local time.
You don't. And before you shoot back that this is an example of windows being as bad as Linux (which your comment seems to try to do), keep in mind two things. First, you're saying it's ok to be as bad as Windows. Second, it's worse to have a feature without telling anyone than it is to not have the feature, espcially for end users. If there's no manual about, or even option for, it, then as far as they're concerned, it exists not.
This is more of a programming problem. Certain programmers think that they need to first erase the screen then rewrite it.
No, I think he's right in his assertion - backbuffer blitting as opposed to drawing directly to the screen. The differences are substantial, especially in gaming, and it annoys me how, in X and Windows, the contents of windows or what's behind them 'fills in'. This should be in the backbuffer, people! Heck, I've gotten 640x480 animations smooth when double-buffering (or triple-buffering, a few times), and it actually feels faster and more responsive than drawing directly to the display.
Why do you want access to my files? Leave me alone.
This is just stupid. No one wants access to or mentioned your files, but sharing one's own files on a network is nice. I mean, isn't Linux about connectivity (as one of the main points, anyway)?
Like printers, this is a vendor problem. Find vendors who do a better job of not always changing the driver-to-hardware interface, and favor them over the vendors that keep screwing people over with the next board version.
The sound subsystem in 2.4.x broke, severely, the driver I had to use for my sound card. The result was that if I compiled the driver in, I had no sound. If I compiled it as a module, then I had to do 'cat/proc/isapnp' before insmod'ing the driver, or it wouldn't work (yes, this was the ONLY thing I did to make it suddenly work).
In other news, until ALSA is complete and installed, his points remain. Sound is complex. One program can have the sound card open at once, unless they're using ESD, which sucks up CPU on slower machines (playing an MP3 resulted in ESD using more CPU than xmms, though they were, together, using 99.8% on average). Unacceptible.
What you are asking for is to show text as if it had newlines, when in fact it has none. Maybe you should be writing HTML instead of plain ASCII text. Don't mail it to me w/o newlines. But if you want to be able to reformat a range of text, maybe you should try emacs.
I honestly doubt the author cares about what you want, but while newlines are nice in some cases, 1) it's annoying when the other person is using a different screen res than you. I could hard-wrap an ASCII text file on 1024x768, but what if you were viewing it on an 80x25 char screen? Or vice-versa? 2) When actually writing something, hard-wrapping is a no-no. A hard return is a paragraph break. You (should) only use it when you're breaking paragraphs, typographically speaking. It's no fun having to go back and reflow text because you decided to add or remove a word. I do this in Pine all the time, and quite frankly, it sucks.
I just changed my resolution on the fly while entering this line of text by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-KeypadMinus combo. Then I pressed Ctrl-Alt-KeypadPlus to revert back.
Which is made obvious to the user when? There should be a preferences dialog in which the user can select, test, and accept/reject resolutions, change colour depths, and so on. Users don't want to remember arcane keyboard shortcuts that they rarely use, they want to *use* the machine. If they have to configure something, it should all be in the same area.
Your post, as I mentioned above, seems to be the typical 'well it works for me so what's the problem?' People are different. You are obviously not the average user. For that matter, I'm not even the average user, and most of what you said strikes me as stupid, pointless, or overly complex. As many other people have said, they want a system that just works, without dicking around with it for a week and reading obscure HOWTOs written four major versions ago on a differnet distro.
99% of everything responds to the standard select-copy and middle-button-paste.
This is something that bothers me. Why on earth does 'select = copy' make any sense whatsoever to anyone? Selecting can be for many purposes (bolding, deleting, drag-dropping, or just to fix weird text display bugs, for example), but having X automatically copy whenever you select something has given me a paranoia that I haven't managed to get rid of - I'm afraid to select. I'm always afraid that I have something important on the clipboard and that I'll eradicate it, so I can't select to delete, I can't click in any input area that auto-selects (Mozilla URL bar), and so on. Quite frankly, it's a stupid behaviour that does something I didn't ask it to do.
^C ^X ^V may not be intuitive to everyone (except that C = copy, and X/V are right around there), but copying on select is just broken. A more sensible way to do it, if you insisted on doing it like that, is to select using the middle mouse button - click and drag with middle differentiates, and allows fast copies without accidental copies (or at least, as many).
Seems like no one has noticed that other than Lindows, and perhaps Mandrake, none of the major linux vendors are interested in Joe Home User.
How do you define 'vendor'? I ask because Debian has consistantly focused (though the interview on Slashdot today raises good points) on making a working system without having to do (much) stupid stuff. Configuring package is done at install time, and is straightforward. If you don't know the answer, you can hit enter and the defaults (or no value) will usually work. If it *needs* to be entered, the help provided by debconf is usually a good indication of what to do, as long as you read carefully.
At the very least, Debian has zero, squat, no interest whatsoever in marketing. Code, not cash, not corporations, not release dates. Get it right, THEN get it out.
It's not perfect yet, but within a few years, I think it'll be the next best thing to OS X (which is another matter entirely).
Here is my simple solution to MS' latest Passport move:
Here's my simple solution to MS' latest Passport move:
Get out of the house and go to a freaking store.
Problem solved, and if I have problems with it, I can take it in that day and talk to someone about a repair or replacement. I can see what other stuff just came in. I can have my product within a few minutes, instead of a few days to weeks, and no shipping charges.
If anything, the more people that are duped in to using this service will actually help you out by lowering the mathematical odds that it's your card number that's stolen.
Chances are, if someone was to steal credit cards using this method, they wouldn't just pick one or two, they'd get as many people as possible. Maybe an Outhouse Expres virus that mails the encrypted Passport cookies to a drop box or anonymous relay? Maybe they'd just open up the database somehow. Who knows. Either way, I get the feeling that more people just == more stolen numbers.
Not only does the waiter/waitress handle your card, but in a lot of places they'll swipe it in a magnetic card reader that sends it unencrytped over a phone line, or worse, they'll use a POS system that stores the entire swipe data in an unencrypted text file on their local server's hard drive... which will later send it out over a phone line unencrypted.
While tapping data phone lines is trickier than it might first seem...
I've worked at Future Shop, Radio Shack, and Superstore. Future Shop, I didn't do any sales, but their sales information is kept locally, only. The verification is done over a dedicated line to the bank. Same with Superstore - it's sent from the till to the processing computer, out over the dedicated line, and a response is returned (usually within two seconds of swiping the card, actually). Tapping a dedicated data line to the bank is surprisingly hard to do. I believe the transmissions are encrypted, as well, but I'm not certain.
Radio Shack on the other hand... When you take a credit card number, you have to enter it (manually) into the computer, as well as expiry date, THEN enter it into the bank's hardware (Transelect in our case) so it can be verified. The card number is then PRINTED ON THE RECIEPT. Yes, that's right. When I was doing refunds to Visas, you didn't even need to have your card. Sales, I always made with the card, but I didn't have to. I could also go into the computer and print off a copy of any reciept for any transaction in the last three years.
Oh, and did I mention that the POS system didn't need a password to get into the transaction history? I don't complain about unencrypted lines, since I know now there are worse things in the world.
Essentially we did the same thing you say Microsoft does, and maybe even a little more, yet you trust Visa over Microsoft. Interesting.
Visa doesn't store people's credit card information insecurely on their computer. Visa doesn't try to control what you do (DRM), only track it (well, you did, or so you claim).
I would rather have someone sell my buying habits to companies than to fuck up and give someone else access to my credit card information, *as well as*... Call me crazy, but...
I have a few points to make regarding your post, and the one you quoted. I will make them thus:
I think you have a combination of unusual motor skills and incorrect reasoning.
I think s/he has large hands and is used to moving them great distances (piano) in order to accomplish what s/he suggests. Not for everyone, for sure, but there are interesting points made.
This requires incredible foresight and motor skills. For most people, the key to finding a key quickly is knowing its position relative to a fixed reference.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I was arguing vim vs. textedit or some garbage text editor like that, and my opponent stated that having the editor fill in 'if () {' when you type 'if' and then putting the cursor between the () is great, because 'how hard is it to hit the end key?'. My argument was that it's not hard, but it's easier for me to type the whole thing out by hand than move it over and guess which is the end key (I always use delete, and some keyboards have those six keys moved up or down) or to look, refocus (my eyes take time to refocus even a few cm difference). I think this is, while boring, a good example: without reference, even an 'end' key isn't that fast to use.
Resting wrists on the table, and stretching fingers without moving the hand, are both generally recognized as major contributors to CTS and other typing injuries.
And other injuries. I float when I type, which means I'm sometimes inaccurate, but firstly, I partly rest the weight of my hands on the keys, just enough to take some load off, and secondly, mousing, in which I DO rest my wrist, has resulted in my having a very weak and easily hurt wrist, as I cannot take any weight on it at all while it's bent (i.e. knuckle pushups fine, regular are no-go). The only solution to this would be to get a wrist-rest mousepad, which I don't have desk space for. Floating results in you keeping your hands where they're comfortable, and lets you move your hands faster when necessary, without having to stretch fingers this way or that.
Just then, I typed "up." with right hand "2-4-1" (where 1 is thumb, 5 is little). Why? Because when fingers 2,4 have been tied up on the top row, the most convenient finger to use is my thumb. Try it.
I tried it. It's a disaster for me. Typing up with 2-4 is hard enough, requiring an awkward stretch of the ring finger. Getting to . with the thumb requires me to twist my whole arm in addition to contorting my hand, and hitting a target after such a long travel with such a fat digit is quite unreliable.
When you hold your hand still, it certainly is uncomfortable, but playing around just now, I've found that there's an easy way to make it simple: dance. Don't hold your hand still and try and move your fingers to the key, dance it along, move the hand left to right, and then hit the '.' key with your thumb by swinging it in towards your palm and glancing off the key. It sounds pretty odd, but it works surprisingly well for me, and I'm going to try to make it a habit. It may improve my already fast typing, though it may cost me some already-rare accuracy. Enh, not like anyone ever reads anything I type.:P
I would think that given your claim that different fingers can easily go to different rows, you would prefer 2-5-4.
I find that this is a much more awkward way to type it, whcih actually causes great pain and suffering to untold millions, or at least, to my fingers.
It seems to me that your typing style is heavily influenced by the 'hold your damn hand still!' school of typistry. Understandably, this probably works well for you, but I, and many others, have found it far too rigid. The fact is, not everyone can fit into the same form as everyone else (like the original poster said, not all fingers are the same length, not even yours, let alone everyone's), so for some people, the 'dance' method that I use works much better.
The original poster quoth:
Model the positioning of the hands and fingers in detail. If you remove the restrictions that "touch-typing" enforce, then the key-to-finger mapping also depends on context.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. When I lay my fingers down on the keyboard to rest, I often find them spelling out 'a,w,e,f j,i/o,o/p,\'' (as in, a quote before the end of the quote), though 'a,s,d,f/g m,k,l,\'' is not uncommon, nor is anything else, really.
The benefit of the dance school of typistry is that it doesn't matter where your fingers rest while you're resting (asdf jkl; really cramps my fingers up), because no matter where they are, they'll be somewhere else as soon as you start typing. It also means I never have to type with my pinky, which is good because I have very weak pinkies and when I do anything (like hit Shift) with them too much at once they start hurting very much and I'm forced to use another finger anyway).
Careful observers will notice typos in my posts 99% of the time. Carefuller observers will notice that 99% of them are not hitting the wrong key, but rather hitting a key ahead of when it should - i.e. 'beacuse' or 'tehn'. Before anyone criticizes my lecturing about typing, this is a matter of two fingers getting signals crossed, or one hand getting ahead of the other, and happens in anything I do, irrelevant of my typing style.
My theory about carpal tunnel and other typing related injuries is that "touch typing" is actually to blame. It encourages stiffening of the wrists and hands, discourages stretching, and generally leaves your hands as weak as they were before you started typing.
I'm not a doctor, but this flies in the face of all the medical advice I've read. What you call "stiffening" is what most people would call making gentle, comfortable motions. What you call "stretching" is what most people would call excessive and unnatural motion. What you call "leaving weak" is what most people would call avoiding strain. Maybe your hands can take it, but most people's can't.
I don't know that 'most people's can't', but certainly not everyone can. However, as I mentioned before, the biggest problem I have is when using my mouse. Most people, when they type 'properly', have to rest their wrists on the table; this requires bending the wrists back (typically) as far as they will go, usually 80-90 degrees. This is VERY bad for the tendons and muscles. Wrist-wrests are a partial solution, but only in otherwise perfectly ergonomic environments. Most of the type, they simply lower the angle at which the wrist bends. The typing style I use, and, I suspect, that the original poster uses, leaves the wrists usually at a 0 degree angle along the top of the arm, or a 0 degree angle along the bottom of the arm. This is a natural and easy range of movement, and has caused me no problems in ten years.
My theory is that mousing is what's causing wrist injuries. I've never met anyone with wrist problems from their computer in the hand they don't use for mousing (maybe a coincidence, who knows), but I've seen a lot of people who, despite having wrist-rests for keyboards, don't have them for their mouse. My own problems, as I said, are with the mouse. Perhaps this should be looked into, or perhaps I'm stupid. Oh well.
Some of these tips might not apply now, but they are good to keep in mind in the long run.
Keep small pets. Pets like cats, and anything smaller, are good for this. The reason is cost. Food for a large dog will cost you a ton compared to a half-tin of cat food a day and a bag of dry food every two weeks.
Keep low-maintenance pets. Cats are reasonably good for this, as long as you remember to let them in and out (if applicable), and remember to change their litter and feed them. They'll mostly stay out of your way if they're loners, and if they're sucky (friendly, suck-up, lovey) cats, they'll gladly sit in your lap, where you can pet them with one hand and browse slashdot with the other.
In a ground floor apartment, you can have any pet you want. In anything above the 1 1/2th floor, or anything above the 3rd floor that doesn't have a huge tree just outside the patio/window, you need an indoor pet, or a 'companion' pet. Cats are bad for this (unless you have the tree), since once you get outside, they'll take off, and you'll have to wait for hours for them to come back so you can open the door. Dogs are better for this, since you walk them and then go home with them. Problem is, you have to walk them, it's not an option.
Don't go exotic. It might seem 'cool' or 'geeky' to have an exotic pet, but when it gets sick and the vets are clueless, when the only petstore around that carries food for it closes up, when you move to a no-pets apartment and have to get rid of it, it can be a pain in the ass.
Don't get a bird. Either you let it fly around the apartment and crap on everything, or you lock it up in a cage, which is cruel. The best case you could hope for is one that's happy in a cage, in which case it'll sing and whistle at you, which can make concentrating or sleeping somewhat difficult.
I'm a cat person myself, I've almost never not had a cat, but I'm also aware of how much work it takes to care for a cat, and a lot of pets take more work to manage. Be very careful. Ask your local petstore, or as many local petstores as you can find. Ask friends, family, coworkers what kinds of pets they have or have had, and what it takes to take care of them. Get as much info as you can, not just from slashdot. No one here knows enough about your personal habits to give you proper information, only suggestions.
And lastly, once you decide on a pet, go to the SPCA or the local animal shelter. Don't buy from a petstore when there are poor things sitting locked in cages for who knows how long, up until they have to be killed to put them out of everyone's misery.
It really depends on where you live and what you buy, but in a lot of cases (even factoring in exchange) things are often cheaper in Canada. Burger King, last time I checked, comes out to $0.50 more (USD) for a whopper meal. A lot of other things are more expensive south of the border. The economy is, by some people's standards, 'slower' than the US's, so prices (for some things) get adjusted accordingly. As for things like rent, it depends on where you live. You can rent a house in New Westminster for $650/mo, or buy one for $120k and up. In the praries and the far east (maritimes) where jobs are less common (theoretically), houses start at $80k, and I've had four job offers in three months, including three interviews and two jobs taken. I've basically had my pick of the employers I've applied to. Not bad, if you can stand the small-town atmosphere, isolation, cold winters, and mosquitoes.
Taxes = high (15% combined federal/provincial not counting hidden taxes or income tax)
I love it when people quote without indicating they have any idea what they're talking about. In BC, the sales taxes come out to 14.5%. In Saskatchewan, 13%. In Alberta, there is no provincial tax, so it's 7%. Income tax and federal tax are higher, but then you also don't have to pay (or pay as much) for health care, education (my tuition next year is a 'staggering' $4000 CDN, which is expensive). In fairness though, I think it comes out to 15% in Ontario, but you don't have to live there. BC is nice too, and they've recently slashed income tax.
lack of jobs = high (8% unemployment)
7.5% in June actually, down from 7.7% in May. I read that during my break today thanks to AvantGo. These guys rule.
One persons connection != anothers
Check www.DSLreports.com and listen to what people have to say. People in the Surrey area, which was closer to metropolitan Vancouver than I was when I lived in BC, were getting faster tranfer rates than I was. I figure there had to be something wrong with my setup at home that I wasn't getting what they were (some guys have hit 680 KB/s on numerous occasions).
Another note, rogers has started capping almost everyone @ 1.5Mbit/192Kbit. And has notified NONE of their customers.
This is the same Rogers whose video stores do not share accounts even within the same city, and do not honour their 'VIP packages' that you can get with your cable bill. Rogers has their hands in dozens of pies, and only one, the cable company, is making any money. Of course they're capping people, they don't own their own national data pipeline and have to pay for their bandwidth. Shaw, on the other hand, has no such restrictions, and could care less.
Ontario got shafted by switching from Shaw to Rogers. BC residents have never been happier. Either way, I'd never recommend moving to Ontario anyway. Too polluted, crowded, and busy. Move to Vancouver.
As usual, I'm going to piss off half the world here, but oh well...
I remember the halcyon days of my youth (i.e. two months ago) when I had internet access via Shaw cable. It was only 2.5 megabits, they said, but I'd hit speeds of up to 5.2 (and my stepfather, using his G4, had hit 5.6), repeatedly, reliably, and sustainably. It was very nice. Most of my large downloads (large because then I had time to see how fast they were going) would go at around 380-420KBps, but I hit 520 very often, and, yes, 600KBps and above on several occasions.
So if you want cheap bandwidth, move to San Fran, for sure. Or, move to Canada, and pay $40/mo for almost twice the download (which is the same package they've been offering for years, so it's not going away). Oh, and the routes rock too. 7ms and 5 hops to ftp.ca.debian.org when it was still around. Le sigh.
It would be really nice if PC motherboards started shipping with internal and external firewire ports as standard, and it would mean we'd start seeing native firewire external HDDs a lot sooner.
I dunno about you, but I've seen Firewire/USB2 PCI cards that had internal connectors for both, and external Firewire hard drives (as well as external Firewire cases that turn internal IDE drives into external Firewire drives), all at London Drugs, late last year, and who knows how long they were there?
One of the big things I'd like about internal Firewire though is hot-swappable internal HDs. Can Serial ATA do this? I don't think so, but maybe.
OSX 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 are not different products each with unique life cycles. It's all THE Apple OS, their unique competitive differentiator in the market place.
One thing you forgot to mention. The Mac OS isn't a money-maker. The only reason Apple charges for 10.2 is to pay for documentation/packaging/distribution/media, and to cover some of the costs of developing (and because they can). With all the latest updates being free, OS X has all but disappeared off the shelves, since no one needs to buy it. It comes with the computer at no charge. Updates are free. Fixes are likewise free. Most things that get added are downloadable anyway.
I predict 10.2 will be a purchase-upgrade, but also that it will be inexpensive by 'modern OS' (Windows) standards, and that people will buy it because it rocks, and because it's worth the moderate price. I also predict that people will 'pirate' it and that Apple won't really care because it's not a cash cow anyway.
Their money is hardware that their OS runs on, and software that runs on their OS (Final Cut Pro anyone?). The OS itself is just a way to show off the shiny hardware and the kickass applications. The sooner they can get that shiny middleware out to the public, the sooner people can ooh and aah. Simple as that.
The bank. Apple has (had?) about $4b USD in liquid assets and short-term investments. They don't run a debt, they don't lose money (anymore), and they spend wisely.
Yes, but Superstore can have your photos done in an hour (two hours for digital pictures, I think). I'm not a big fan of mailing away things like memory cards, and for a lot of people (myself included, even on Sasktel's DSL), it's faster to drive to Superstore and get the photos developed there than it is to upload them anywhere, not to mention much less complicated. And besides, rare is the Western Canadian city without a Superstore. Or at least, sucky is it.
These services burn your digital image on to ordinary film paper - the same stuff they use to make your prints from negatives in the lab.
A sidenote for any Canadians living in an area near a Great Canadian Superstore (or, possibly, Atlantic Superstore, I'm not certain) - our lab (in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan) got a new batch of equipment recently. The most useful thing we can do now is 8x10 prints in the lab, but the neatest thing is prints from memory cards.
People can bring in compact flash or smartcard memory cards, and we can print out the pictures.
I'm not certain what the actual process is myself (I work the counter, not the lab), but I do know that they use off-the-shelf Epson photo paper (because the first time we did it the photo guy went and got some 4x6 Epson photo paper off the shelf). Cost for us to do this in our lab is $0.49/print plus a minor setup charge. The benefit is, you can just pick the prints you want on your camera anyway, and then no more proofing.
Other notes: if you're considering putting your film onto CD, get it done at the time of developing. We can put a roll of film onto CD for $3.99, if you get it done when you develop them, or we can make a CD from negatives for $1.98 plus $0.85/print ($22.38 for a 24 exposure, $32.58 for a 36). It's a serious pain for the lab to set their equipment up to do it, since they have to scan them in just like the average person would (if they had really high-quality equipment, anyway).
The difference is that Wired is 'new-style' techno-nonsense tunnel-vision claptrap. All their articles are tech related, and most are old news or boring news. Everything I could get out of Wired I get out of two minutes of reading at the Newsstand or library.
Salon is, while definitely 'new-style', at least a valid attempt at journalism, with interesting articles that span more than just one topic ('technology'). The articles are astonishingly diverse, and very well-written. They cover interesting topics that 'main-line' media doesn't even bother to print.
What Salon should do is put their biggest articles (especially free ones) into a magazine and print that weekly or biweekly. The really good articles, collaries and responses to the really good articles that were in print, and the pretty good articles can all go in the subscription section. The rest of the site (free articles and teaser articles) can stay as it is.
I don't subscribe to Time. I'm almost tempted. I don't read Maclean's at all. I'm not tempted unless I become rich. I was going to purchase a Salon aubscription. Now I'm wondering how good of a long-term investment it is. I would definitely buy a Salon magazine. The only problem is that they'd have to publish a Canadian version with Canadian ads, or I'd never see it. Damn!
Travelocity is probably the only real suggestion I can give you. It's basically an online travel agent. They do flights, hotels, car rentals, trains, and vacation packages (as I recall). Check them out, even if you're Canadian - they rock, comparatively speaking.
Or you could - and I'm going to be radical here - leave your house (*gasp*) and go and actually talk to a real travel agent. They'd know more about the local attractions, as well as other nearby places you could take them too.
Seriously, the internet is not the answer to everything. Sometimes you have to go out into the big room with the green floor and the ceiling that's sometimes blue with a yellow heat lamp and sometimes black with little white status LEDs, and actually use more than twenty muscles for once.
It sounds to me like you haven't installed QuickTime since 2000 or so. Give it a whirl today and see if you like it better.
In fact, I've used every version of QT for Windows since 2.0, up to and including the latest 6.0 beta.
For comparison, my P120 can play MPEG-2 encoded music videos at what I would consider entirely an reasonable playback rate (our G4 is not much smoother) in Windows Media Player. In Quicktime (any version), it is literally unwatchable. I get most of the audio track, and the occasional frame. Usually, I get one frame and it stays like that until I get sick of it and stop the playback.
This is what I'm talking about. I don't expect to be able to play movies on a P120, but WMP handles it fine and QT chokes badly.
As for the installer, that means nothing, it's a web installer. It downloads stuff later. The UI (again, on a P120) is almost unusable, it's so laggy, while Media Player 6.4 is fine, perfectly responsive, and functional without trying to be pretty. QT is beautiful, sure, but unusable because of it on my baseline system. Again, I don't expect it to run perfectly on a measly P120, but WMP does, because it's ugly, it's boring, and it works fine.
I'm not saying the statistics weren't flawed, I'm saying to hell with the statistics, basically. Still, it's nice to see Apple with a great showing. QT is beautiful on Macs, it just sucks on Windows.
It sounds to me like you have the money for good hardware. Not everyone does. I can't expect Apple to work on shitty computers, but WMP does, so I'll keep using it until something better (hardware- or software-wise) comes along.
The thing about biometrics like iris scanners is that the iris expands and contracts rythmically at about 120 Hz - very minute, but detectable. Modern iris scanners look for these fluctuations. If they're not present (dead eye, picture of an eye, etc.) then it will refuse to validate you.
The only question then is whether or not you trust the company with the iris scanner. Not perfect, but at least your iris print isn't copyable.
Apple doesn't need statistics re-worked to get better market share. They have to do very few things.
First, make the player on Windows not suck ass. As in, re-code the app. Right now it's too bloated. Make it more responsive. Optimize optimize optimize. Even MP7 isn't as slow, and that's saying a lot.
Second, use native codecs when possible. MPEG-2, for example. If you're not going to optimize your codecs for x86/pentium (and that would take a lot of work, I'm sure) then use the work of those who have. In addition to quicktime formats, use the native windows CODECs. They're all registered already, all you have to do is hook in.
Third, fix the plugin/associations. For people who know what's what, Quicktime isn't a problem (anymore), but for the average user, taking over PNG from the browser is stupid, especially since it doesn't add better handling anyway. Likewise for most other formats. Make all non-Windows non-Mac file formats open in or plugin with Quicktime by default, UNLESS there are other associations for them. Mac file formats open with QT. Windows file formats don't get touched unless the user requests it.
Basically, QT does three things. Lags my system down, wastes clock cycles doing decoding poorly, and trashes my associations unless I'm careful. Fix these three things, and more people will install it.
You can't get market share if your product sucks. Just ask Steve Case. Er, wait..
You're telling the poster that he should stop whining about millions of dollars in property damage because people need to be heard? I'm sorry, you don't need to smash storefront windows to be heard. You don't need to attack police to be heard. You don't need to start riots to be heard.
Get a clue. Democracy is by election. What you're supporting is vigilante democracy. What you're supporting is business getting destroyed because people have no sense of responsibility. There is no excuse whatsoever for the kind of garbage that happens at these meetings and summits and so on.
Yes, the leaders of 8 countries are meeting in the wilderness. And it's not happening because of a letter writing campaign. It's happening because people use violent means towards political ends.
If protest means I'm afraid to leave my house, if protest means my favourite stores are closed half the month, if protest means damage and destruction, fires, looting, and hundreds of people hospitalized because some jerks feel like they have the right, then no, I don't support protesting. But that's not protesting, that's vandalism and mob rule, and I don't support that at all.
I learned while in Montreal that the latest trick is to take a bunch of fives, bleach the colour off, and print tens onto them. The holographic stuff is still there, but bill readers see a ten and not a five, and change machines double your money. Some guys apparantly got rich in the south shore doing this.
Talk about paying good odds. That's even better than the change machine I found in Amsterdam that was paying out 5:8.
Slashdot Mirror
While your post seems to reek of 'It's not a problem for me, so it's not a problem', I'll reply to some of your 'points'.
/proc/isapnp' before insmod'ing the driver, or it wouldn't work (yes, this was the ONLY thing I did to make it suddenly work).
1. No 'best' browser.
So if one browser gets better, and then because of the pressure another gets better, too, this is bad? Maybe we should remove some features from one of them to make another look better? It's sad that we would have to downgrade the capability of something before we are able to make a choice.
No, the problem is that since there's no clearly better browser (well, I feel that Mozilla is), there is no standard as to which one the user gets, removing consistancy across distributions.
2. Prompting for a filesystem scan.
I rewrote my rc/boot scripts myself from scratch. I haven't had this problem for 3 years.
And how many end users want to do this? Hell, even I don't want to do this, and I could do it easily.
We need better standards among printers.
Like postscript? But that costs money. If you want a vendor to throw in compatibility, that means you restrict their designs and implementations into the standard. Postscript does this beautifully, up until you get your credit card bill.
For example, how do I tell Windows that my hardware clock runs as UTC and that it should still show me my local time.
You don't. And before you shoot back that this is an example of windows being as bad as Linux (which your comment seems to try to do), keep in mind two things. First, you're saying it's ok to be as bad as Windows. Second, it's worse to have a feature without telling anyone than it is to not have the feature, espcially for end users. If there's no manual about, or even option for, it, then as far as they're concerned, it exists not.
This is more of a programming problem. Certain programmers think that they need to first erase the screen then rewrite it.
No, I think he's right in his assertion - backbuffer blitting as opposed to drawing directly to the screen. The differences are substantial, especially in gaming, and it annoys me how, in X and Windows, the contents of windows or what's behind them 'fills in'. This should be in the backbuffer, people! Heck, I've gotten 640x480 animations smooth when double-buffering (or triple-buffering, a few times), and it actually feels faster and more responsive than drawing directly to the display.
Why do you want access to my files? Leave me alone.
This is just stupid. No one wants access to or mentioned your files, but sharing one's own files on a network is nice. I mean, isn't Linux about connectivity (as one of the main points, anyway)?
Like printers, this is a vendor problem. Find vendors who do a better job of not always changing the driver-to-hardware interface, and favor them over the vendors that keep screwing people over with the next board version.
The sound subsystem in 2.4.x broke, severely, the driver I had to use for my sound card. The result was that if I compiled the driver in, I had no sound. If I compiled it as a module, then I had to do 'cat
In other news, until ALSA is complete and installed, his points remain. Sound is complex. One program can have the sound card open at once, unless they're using ESD, which sucks up CPU on slower machines (playing an MP3 resulted in ESD using more CPU than xmms, though they were, together, using 99.8% on average). Unacceptible.
What you are asking for is to show text as if it had newlines, when in fact it has none. Maybe you should be writing HTML instead of plain ASCII text. Don't mail it to me w/o newlines. But if you want to be able to reformat a range of text, maybe you should try emacs.
I honestly doubt the author cares about what you want, but while newlines are nice in some cases, 1) it's annoying when the other person is using a different screen res than you. I could hard-wrap an ASCII text file on 1024x768, but what if you were viewing it on an 80x25 char screen? Or vice-versa? 2) When actually writing something, hard-wrapping is a no-no. A hard return is a paragraph break. You (should) only use it when you're breaking paragraphs, typographically speaking. It's no fun having to go back and reflow text because you decided to add or remove a word. I do this in Pine all the time, and quite frankly, it sucks.
I just changed my resolution on the fly while entering this line of text by pressing the Ctrl-Alt-KeypadMinus combo. Then I pressed Ctrl-Alt-KeypadPlus to revert back.
Which is made obvious to the user when? There should be a preferences dialog in which the user can select, test, and accept/reject resolutions, change colour depths, and so on. Users don't want to remember arcane keyboard shortcuts that they rarely use, they want to *use* the machine. If they have to configure something, it should all be in the same area.
Your post, as I mentioned above, seems to be the typical 'well it works for me so what's the problem?' People are different. You are obviously not the average user. For that matter, I'm not even the average user, and most of what you said strikes me as stupid, pointless, or overly complex. As many other people have said, they want a system that just works, without dicking around with it for a week and reading obscure HOWTOs written four major versions ago on a differnet distro.
--Dan
99% of everything responds to the standard select-copy and middle-button-paste.
This is something that bothers me. Why on earth does 'select = copy' make any sense whatsoever to anyone? Selecting can be for many purposes (bolding, deleting, drag-dropping, or just to fix weird text display bugs, for example), but having X automatically copy whenever you select something has given me a paranoia that I haven't managed to get rid of - I'm afraid to select. I'm always afraid that I have something important on the clipboard and that I'll eradicate it, so I can't select to delete, I can't click in any input area that auto-selects (Mozilla URL bar), and so on. Quite frankly, it's a stupid behaviour that does something I didn't ask it to do.
^C ^X ^V may not be intuitive to everyone (except that C = copy, and X/V are right around there), but copying on select is just broken. A more sensible way to do it, if you insisted on doing it like that, is to select using the middle mouse button - click and drag with middle differentiates, and allows fast copies without accidental copies (or at least, as many).
--Dan
--Dan
Seems like no one has noticed that other than Lindows, and perhaps Mandrake, none of the major linux vendors are interested in Joe Home User.
How do you define 'vendor'? I ask because Debian has consistantly focused (though the interview on Slashdot today raises good points) on making a working system without having to do (much) stupid stuff. Configuring package is done at install time, and is straightforward. If you don't know the answer, you can hit enter and the defaults (or no value) will usually work. If it *needs* to be entered, the help provided by debconf is usually a good indication of what to do, as long as you read carefully.
At the very least, Debian has zero, squat, no interest whatsoever in marketing. Code, not cash, not corporations, not release dates. Get it right, THEN get it out.
It's not perfect yet, but within a few years, I think it'll be the next best thing to OS X (which is another matter entirely).
--Dan
You do know how to rebuild an engine, don't you?
No, but if I ever need to I can always look it up on the internet.
Hey, wait...
--Dan
Interesting, but I just tried it on Mozilla 1.1a and sadly, all I get is the Optimoz Gestures page. :(
--Dan
Here's my simple solution to MS' latest Passport move: Problem solved, and if I have problems with it, I can take it in that day and talk to someone about a repair or replacement. I can see what other stuff just came in. I can have my product within a few minutes, instead of a few days to weeks, and no shipping charges.
--Dan
If anything, the more people that are duped in to using this service will actually help you out by lowering the mathematical odds that it's your card number that's stolen.
Chances are, if someone was to steal credit cards using this method, they wouldn't just pick one or two, they'd get as many people as possible. Maybe an Outhouse Expres virus that mails the encrypted Passport cookies to a drop box or anonymous relay? Maybe they'd just open up the database somehow. Who knows. Either way, I get the feeling that more people just == more stolen numbers.
Not only does the waiter/waitress handle your card, but in a lot of places they'll swipe it in a magnetic card reader that sends it unencrytped over a phone line, or worse, they'll use a POS system that stores the entire swipe data in an unencrypted text file on their local server's hard drive... which will later send it out over a phone line unencrypted.
While tapping data phone lines is trickier than it might first seem...
I've worked at Future Shop, Radio Shack, and Superstore. Future Shop, I didn't do any sales, but their sales information is kept locally, only. The verification is done over a dedicated line to the bank. Same with Superstore - it's sent from the till to the processing computer, out over the dedicated line, and a response is returned (usually within two seconds of swiping the card, actually). Tapping a dedicated data line to the bank is surprisingly hard to do. I believe the transmissions are encrypted, as well, but I'm not certain.
Radio Shack on the other hand... When you take a credit card number, you have to enter it (manually) into the computer, as well as expiry date, THEN enter it into the bank's hardware (Transelect in our case) so it can be verified. The card number is then PRINTED ON THE RECIEPT. Yes, that's right. When I was doing refunds to Visas, you didn't even need to have your card. Sales, I always made with the card, but I didn't have to. I could also go into the computer and print off a copy of any reciept for any transaction in the last three years.
Oh, and did I mention that the POS system didn't need a password to get into the transaction history? I don't complain about unencrypted lines, since I know now there are worse things in the world.
--Dan
Essentially we did the same thing you say Microsoft does, and maybe even a little more, yet you trust Visa over Microsoft. Interesting.
Visa doesn't store people's credit card information insecurely on their computer. Visa doesn't try to control what you do (DRM), only track it (well, you did, or so you claim).
I would rather have someone sell my buying habits to companies than to fuck up and give someone else access to my credit card information, *as well as*... Call me crazy, but...
--Dan
I think you have a combination of unusual motor skills and incorrect reasoning.
I think s/he has large hands and is used to moving them great distances (piano) in order to accomplish what s/he suggests. Not for everyone, for sure, but there are interesting points made.
This requires incredible foresight and motor skills. For most people, the key to finding a key quickly is knowing its position relative to a fixed reference.
I agree with this wholeheartedly. I was arguing vim vs. textedit or some garbage text editor like that, and my opponent stated that having the editor fill in 'if () {' when you type 'if' and then putting the cursor between the () is great, because 'how hard is it to hit the end key?'. My argument was that it's not hard, but it's easier for me to type the whole thing out by hand than move it over and guess which is the end key (I always use delete, and some keyboards have those six keys moved up or down) or to look, refocus (my eyes take time to refocus even a few cm difference). I think this is, while boring, a good example: without reference, even an 'end' key isn't that fast to use.
Resting wrists on the table, and stretching fingers without moving the hand, are both generally recognized as major contributors to CTS and other typing injuries.
And other injuries. I float when I type, which means I'm sometimes inaccurate, but firstly, I partly rest the weight of my hands on the keys, just enough to take some load off, and secondly, mousing, in which I DO rest my wrist, has resulted in my having a very weak and easily hurt wrist, as I cannot take any weight on it at all while it's bent (i.e. knuckle pushups fine, regular are no-go). The only solution to this would be to get a wrist-rest mousepad, which I don't have desk space for. Floating results in you keeping your hands where they're comfortable, and lets you move your hands faster when necessary, without having to stretch fingers this way or that.
I tried it. It's a disaster for me. Typing up with 2-4 is hard enough, requiring an awkward stretch of the ring finger. Getting to . with the thumb requires me to twist my whole arm in addition to contorting my hand, and hitting a target after such a long travel with such a fat digit is quite unreliable.
When you hold your hand still, it certainly is uncomfortable, but playing around just now, I've found that there's an easy way to make it simple: dance. Don't hold your hand still and try and move your fingers to the key, dance it along, move the hand left to right, and then hit the '.' key with your thumb by swinging it in towards your palm and glancing off the key. It sounds pretty odd, but it works surprisingly well for me, and I'm going to try to make it a habit. It may improve my already fast typing, though it may cost me some already-rare accuracy. Enh, not like anyone ever reads anything I type.
I would think that given your claim that different fingers can easily go to different rows, you would prefer 2-5-4.
I find that this is a much more awkward way to type it, whcih actually causes great pain and suffering to untold millions, or at least, to my fingers.
It seems to me that your typing style is heavily influenced by the 'hold your damn hand still!' school of typistry. Understandably, this probably works well for you, but I, and many others, have found it far too rigid. The fact is, not everyone can fit into the same form as everyone else (like the original poster said, not all fingers are the same length, not even yours, let alone everyone's), so for some people, the 'dance' method that I use works much better.
The original poster quoth: I agree with this wholeheartedly. When I lay my fingers down on the keyboard to rest, I often find them spelling out 'a,w,e,f j,i/o,o/p,\'' (as in, a quote before the end of the quote), though 'a,s,d,f/g m,k,l,\'' is not uncommon, nor is anything else, really.
The benefit of the dance school of typistry is that it doesn't matter where your fingers rest while you're resting (asdf jkl; really cramps my fingers up), because no matter where they are, they'll be somewhere else as soon as you start typing. It also means I never have to type with my pinky, which is good because I have very weak pinkies and when I do anything (like hit Shift) with them too much at once they start hurting very much and I'm forced to use another finger anyway).
Careful observers will notice typos in my posts 99% of the time. Carefuller observers will notice that 99% of them are not hitting the wrong key, but rather hitting a key ahead of when it should - i.e. 'beacuse' or 'tehn'. Before anyone criticizes my lecturing about typing, this is a matter of two fingers getting signals crossed, or one hand getting ahead of the other, and happens in anything I do, irrelevant of my typing style.
I don't know that 'most people's can't', but certainly not everyone can. However, as I mentioned before, the biggest problem I have is when using my mouse. Most people, when they type 'properly', have to rest their wrists on the table; this requires bending the wrists back (typically) as far as they will go, usually 80-90 degrees. This is VERY bad for the tendons and muscles. Wrist-wrests are a partial solution, but only in otherwise perfectly ergonomic environments. Most of the type, they simply lower the angle at which the wrist bends. The typing style I use, and, I suspect, that the original poster uses, leaves the wrists usually at a 0 degree angle along the top of the arm, or a 0 degree angle along the bottom of the arm. This is a natural and easy range of movement, and has caused me no problems in ten years.
My theory is that mousing is what's causing wrist injuries. I've never met anyone with wrist problems from their computer in the hand they don't use for mousing (maybe a coincidence, who knows), but I've seen a lot of people who, despite having wrist-rests for keyboards, don't have them for their mouse. My own problems, as I said, are with the mouse. Perhaps this should be looked into, or perhaps I'm stupid. Oh well.
--Dan
- Keep small pets. Pets like cats, and anything smaller, are good for this. The reason is cost. Food for a large dog will cost you a ton compared to a half-tin of cat food a day and a bag of dry food every two weeks.
- Keep low-maintenance pets. Cats are reasonably good for this, as long as you remember to let them in and out (if applicable), and remember to change their litter and feed them. They'll mostly stay out of your way if they're loners, and if they're sucky (friendly, suck-up, lovey) cats, they'll gladly sit in your lap, where you can pet them with one hand and browse slashdot with the other.
- In a ground floor apartment, you can have any pet you want. In anything above the 1 1/2th floor, or anything above the 3rd floor that doesn't have a huge tree just outside the patio/window, you need an indoor pet, or a 'companion' pet. Cats are bad for this (unless you have the tree), since once you get outside, they'll take off, and you'll have to wait for hours for them to come back so you can open the door. Dogs are better for this, since you walk them and then go home with them. Problem is, you have to walk them, it's not an option.
- Don't go exotic. It might seem 'cool' or 'geeky' to have an exotic pet, but when it gets sick and the vets are clueless, when the only petstore around that carries food for it closes up, when you move to a no-pets apartment and have to get rid of it, it can be a pain in the ass.
- Don't get a bird. Either you let it fly around the apartment and crap on everything, or you lock it up in a cage, which is cruel. The best case you could hope for is one that's happy in a cage, in which case it'll sing and whistle at you, which can make concentrating or sleeping somewhat difficult.
I'm a cat person myself, I've almost never not had a cat, but I'm also aware of how much work it takes to care for a cat, and a lot of pets take more work to manage. Be very careful. Ask your local petstore, or as many local petstores as you can find. Ask friends, family, coworkers what kinds of pets they have or have had, and what it takes to take care of them. Get as much info as you can, not just from slashdot. No one here knows enough about your personal habits to give you proper information, only suggestions.And lastly, once you decide on a pet, go to the SPCA or the local animal shelter. Don't buy from a petstore when there are poor things sitting locked in cages for who knows how long, up until they have to be killed to put them out of everyone's misery.
--Dan
Cost of living = high
It really depends on where you live and what you buy, but in a lot of cases (even factoring in exchange) things are often cheaper in Canada. Burger King, last time I checked, comes out to $0.50 more (USD) for a whopper meal. A lot of other things are more expensive south of the border. The economy is, by some people's standards, 'slower' than the US's, so prices (for some things) get adjusted accordingly. As for things like rent, it depends on where you live. You can rent a house in New Westminster for $650/mo, or buy one for $120k and up. In the praries and the far east (maritimes) where jobs are less common (theoretically), houses start at $80k, and I've had four job offers in three months, including three interviews and two jobs taken. I've basically had my pick of the employers I've applied to. Not bad, if you can stand the small-town atmosphere, isolation, cold winters, and mosquitoes.
Taxes = high (15% combined federal/provincial not counting hidden taxes or income tax)
I love it when people quote without indicating they have any idea what they're talking about. In BC, the sales taxes come out to 14.5%. In Saskatchewan, 13%. In Alberta, there is no provincial tax, so it's 7%. Income tax and federal tax are higher, but then you also don't have to pay (or pay as much) for health care, education (my tuition next year is a 'staggering' $4000 CDN, which is expensive). In fairness though, I think it comes out to 15% in Ontario, but you don't have to live there. BC is nice too, and they've recently slashed income tax.
lack of jobs = high (8% unemployment)
7.5% in June actually, down from 7.7% in May. I read that during my break today thanks to AvantGo. These guys rule.
One persons connection != anothers
Check www.DSLreports.com and listen to what people have to say. People in the Surrey area, which was closer to metropolitan Vancouver than I was when I lived in BC, were getting faster tranfer rates than I was. I figure there had to be something wrong with my setup at home that I wasn't getting what they were (some guys have hit 680 KB/s on numerous occasions).
Another note, rogers has started capping almost everyone @ 1.5Mbit/192Kbit. And has notified NONE of their customers.
This is the same Rogers whose video stores do not share accounts even within the same city, and do not honour their 'VIP packages' that you can get with your cable bill. Rogers has their hands in dozens of pies, and only one, the cable company, is making any money. Of course they're capping people, they don't own their own national data pipeline and have to pay for their bandwidth. Shaw, on the other hand, has no such restrictions, and could care less.
Ontario got shafted by switching from Shaw to Rogers. BC residents have never been happier. Either way, I'd never recommend moving to Ontario anyway. Too polluted, crowded, and busy. Move to Vancouver.
--Dan
As usual, I'm going to piss off half the world here, but oh well...
I remember the halcyon days of my youth (i.e. two months ago) when I had internet access via Shaw cable. It was only 2.5 megabits, they said, but I'd hit speeds of up to 5.2 (and my stepfather, using his G4, had hit 5.6), repeatedly, reliably, and sustainably. It was very nice. Most of my large downloads (large because then I had time to see how fast they were going) would go at around 380-420KBps, but I hit 520 very often, and, yes, 600KBps and above on several occasions.
So if you want cheap bandwidth, move to San Fran, for sure. Or, move to Canada, and pay $40/mo for almost twice the download (which is the same package they've been offering for years, so it's not going away). Oh, and the routes rock too. 7ms and 5 hops to ftp.ca.debian.org when it was still around. Le sigh.
--Dan
First they ignore you... ...they assimilate you?
Then they laugh at you...
Then they fight you...
Then...
--Dan
It would be really nice if PC motherboards started shipping with internal and external firewire ports as standard, and it would mean we'd start seeing native firewire external HDDs a lot sooner.
I dunno about you, but I've seen Firewire/USB2 PCI cards that had internal connectors for both, and external Firewire hard drives (as well as external Firewire cases that turn internal IDE drives into external Firewire drives), all at London Drugs, late last year, and who knows how long they were there?
One of the big things I'd like about internal Firewire though is hot-swappable internal HDs. Can Serial ATA do this? I don't think so, but maybe.
--Dan
OSX 10.0, 10.1 and 10.2 are not different products each with unique life cycles. It's all THE Apple OS, their unique competitive differentiator in the market place.
One thing you forgot to mention. The Mac OS isn't a money-maker. The only reason Apple charges for 10.2 is to pay for documentation/packaging/distribution/media, and to cover some of the costs of developing (and because they can). With all the latest updates being free, OS X has all but disappeared off the shelves, since no one needs to buy it. It comes with the computer at no charge. Updates are free. Fixes are likewise free. Most things that get added are downloadable anyway.
I predict 10.2 will be a purchase-upgrade, but also that it will be inexpensive by 'modern OS' (Windows) standards, and that people will buy it because it rocks, and because it's worth the moderate price. I also predict that people will 'pirate' it and that Apple won't really care because it's not a cash cow anyway.
Their money is hardware that their OS runs on, and software that runs on their OS (Final Cut Pro anyone?). The OS itself is just a way to show off the shiny hardware and the kickass applications. The sooner they can get that shiny middleware out to the public, the sooner people can ooh and aah. Simple as that.
--Dan
The bank. Apple has (had?) about $4b USD in liquid assets and short-term investments. They don't run a debt, they don't lose money (anymore), and they spend wisely.
From http://biz.yahoo.com/e/l/a/AAPL.html (Apple's SEC filings on May 14th, 2001, numbers as of March 31st, 2001, dollars in millions):
People can say what they want about Steve Jobs, but he's got a lot of room to manouvre right now.
--Dan
Yes, but Superstore can have your photos done in an hour (two hours for digital pictures, I think). I'm not a big fan of mailing away things like memory cards, and for a lot of people (myself included, even on Sasktel's DSL), it's faster to drive to Superstore and get the photos developed there than it is to upload them anywhere, not to mention much less complicated. And besides, rare is the Western Canadian city without a Superstore. Or at least, sucky is it.
--Dan
These services burn your digital image on to ordinary film paper - the same stuff they use to make your prints from negatives in the lab.
A sidenote for any Canadians living in an area near a Great Canadian Superstore (or, possibly, Atlantic Superstore, I'm not certain) - our lab (in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan) got a new batch of equipment recently. The most useful thing we can do now is 8x10 prints in the lab, but the neatest thing is prints from memory cards.
People can bring in compact flash or smartcard memory cards, and we can print out the pictures.
I'm not certain what the actual process is myself (I work the counter, not the lab), but I do know that they use off-the-shelf Epson photo paper (because the first time we did it the photo guy went and got some 4x6 Epson photo paper off the shelf). Cost for us to do this in our lab is $0.49/print plus a minor setup charge. The benefit is, you can just pick the prints you want on your camera anyway, and then no more proofing.
Other notes: if you're considering putting your film onto CD, get it done at the time of developing. We can put a roll of film onto CD for $3.99, if you get it done when you develop them, or we can make a CD from negatives for $1.98 plus $0.85/print ($22.38 for a 24 exposure, $32.58 for a 36). It's a serious pain for the lab to set their equipment up to do it, since they have to scan them in just like the average person would (if they had really high-quality equipment, anyway).
--Dan
Oh yeah, I forgot, it's called "Wired". Oops.
The difference is that Wired is 'new-style' techno-nonsense tunnel-vision claptrap. All their articles are tech related, and most are old news or boring news. Everything I could get out of Wired I get out of two minutes of reading at the Newsstand or library.
Salon is, while definitely 'new-style', at least a valid attempt at journalism, with interesting articles that span more than just one topic ('technology'). The articles are astonishingly diverse, and very well-written. They cover interesting topics that 'main-line' media doesn't even bother to print.
What Salon should do is put their biggest articles (especially free ones) into a magazine and print that weekly or biweekly. The really good articles, collaries and responses to the really good articles that were in print, and the pretty good articles can all go in the subscription section. The rest of the site (free articles and teaser articles) can stay as it is.
I don't subscribe to Time. I'm almost tempted. I don't read Maclean's at all. I'm not tempted unless I become rich. I was going to purchase a Salon aubscription. Now I'm wondering how good of a long-term investment it is. I would definitely buy a Salon magazine. The only problem is that they'd have to publish a Canadian version with Canadian ads, or I'd never see it. Damn!
--Dan
Travelocity is probably the only real suggestion I can give you. It's basically an online travel agent. They do flights, hotels, car rentals, trains, and vacation packages (as I recall). Check them out, even if you're Canadian - they rock, comparatively speaking.
Or you could - and I'm going to be radical here - leave your house (*gasp*) and go and actually talk to a real travel agent. They'd know more about the local attractions, as well as other nearby places you could take them too.
Seriously, the internet is not the answer to everything. Sometimes you have to go out into the big room with the green floor and the ceiling that's sometimes blue with a yellow heat lamp and sometimes black with little white status LEDs, and actually use more than twenty muscles for once.
--Dan
It sounds to me like you haven't installed QuickTime since 2000 or so. Give it a whirl today and see if you like it better.
In fact, I've used every version of QT for Windows since 2.0, up to and including the latest 6.0 beta.
For comparison, my P120 can play MPEG-2 encoded music videos at what I would consider entirely an reasonable playback rate (our G4 is not much smoother) in Windows Media Player. In Quicktime (any version), it is literally unwatchable. I get most of the audio track, and the occasional frame. Usually, I get one frame and it stays like that until I get sick of it and stop the playback.
This is what I'm talking about. I don't expect to be able to play movies on a P120, but WMP handles it fine and QT chokes badly.
As for the installer, that means nothing, it's a web installer. It downloads stuff later. The UI (again, on a P120) is almost unusable, it's so laggy, while Media Player 6.4 is fine, perfectly responsive, and functional without trying to be pretty. QT is beautiful, sure, but unusable because of it on my baseline system. Again, I don't expect it to run perfectly on a measly P120, but WMP does, because it's ugly, it's boring, and it works fine.
I'm not saying the statistics weren't flawed, I'm saying to hell with the statistics, basically. Still, it's nice to see Apple with a great showing. QT is beautiful on Macs, it just sucks on Windows.
It sounds to me like you have the money for good hardware. Not everyone does. I can't expect Apple to work on shitty computers, but WMP does, so I'll keep using it until something better (hardware- or software-wise) comes along.
--Dan
The thing about biometrics like iris scanners is that the iris expands and contracts rythmically at about 120 Hz - very minute, but detectable. Modern iris scanners look for these fluctuations. If they're not present (dead eye, picture of an eye, etc.) then it will refuse to validate you.
The only question then is whether or not you trust the company with the iris scanner. Not perfect, but at least your iris print isn't copyable.
--Dan
Apple doesn't need statistics re-worked to get better market share. They have to do very few things.
First, make the player on Windows not suck ass. As in, re-code the app. Right now it's too bloated. Make it more responsive. Optimize optimize optimize. Even MP7 isn't as slow, and that's saying a lot.
Second, use native codecs when possible. MPEG-2, for example. If you're not going to optimize your codecs for x86/pentium (and that would take a lot of work, I'm sure) then use the work of those who have. In addition to quicktime formats, use the native windows CODECs. They're all registered already, all you have to do is hook in.
Third, fix the plugin/associations. For people who know what's what, Quicktime isn't a problem (anymore), but for the average user, taking over PNG from the browser is stupid, especially since it doesn't add better handling anyway. Likewise for most other formats. Make all non-Windows non-Mac file formats open in or plugin with Quicktime by default, UNLESS there are other associations for them. Mac file formats open with QT. Windows file formats don't get touched unless the user requests it.
Basically, QT does three things. Lags my system down, wastes clock cycles doing decoding poorly, and trashes my associations unless I'm careful. Fix these three things, and more people will install it.
You can't get market share if your product sucks. Just ask Steve Case. Er, wait..
--Dan
What an absurdly inane comment.
You're telling the poster that he should stop whining about millions of dollars in property damage because people need to be heard? I'm sorry, you don't need to smash storefront windows to be heard. You don't need to attack police to be heard. You don't need to start riots to be heard.
Get a clue. Democracy is by election. What you're supporting is vigilante democracy. What you're supporting is business getting destroyed because people have no sense of responsibility. There is no excuse whatsoever for the kind of garbage that happens at these meetings and summits and so on.
Yes, the leaders of 8 countries are meeting in the wilderness. And it's not happening because of a letter writing campaign. It's happening because people use violent means towards political ends.
If protest means I'm afraid to leave my house, if protest means my favourite stores are closed half the month, if protest means damage and destruction, fires, looting, and hundreds of people hospitalized because some jerks feel like they have the right, then no, I don't support protesting. But that's not protesting, that's vandalism and mob rule, and I don't support that at all.
--Dan
I learned while in Montreal that the latest trick is to take a bunch of fives, bleach the colour off, and print tens onto them. The holographic stuff is still there, but bill readers see a ten and not a five, and change machines double your money. Some guys apparantly got rich in the south shore doing this.
Talk about paying good odds. That's even better than the change machine I found in Amsterdam that was paying out 5:8.
--Dan