The newest Canadian bills are not only different colours, but they have braille, a special glossy maple leaf overlay, and a bunch of pressed on 'dots' which, with some difficulty, can be peeled off to prove they are not just printed on. All of these things (except, perhaps, the braille) are primarily to stop counterfeiting.
You forgot to mention the 'Bank of Canada' text and logo, and the little weird wormy lines that show up on the bill when you hold them up to a blacklight. Blacklights are relatively cheap and you can them forever, so it's an inexpensive way for retailers to verify bills, and it's great for banks, who can always use one more way to verify bills.
Just hope they do everything at once. The Canadian government recently changed the look of the new $5 and $10 bills. They look much nicer now, much more European as well as having much nicer security features (ever held one up to a blacklight? it's pretty neat).
The problem is, they staggered the releases. The $10s came out first, and now most of the $10 bills I handle (I work at a major grocery chain in the photo/electronics department) are the new ones. Then, maybe a year later, they released the new $5 bills, even though they were designed at the same time. The result? Two redesigns of bill readers and two refittings of any vending machines that accept bills.
However, since we introduced $2 coins, they, in combination with the $1 and $0.25 coins we already had, can be used for... well, any vending machine. The only bill readers I've seen in Canada are in change machines. As much as I hate pocketfuls of coins, I hate bill readers more. Go us.
As an aside, American money is the ugliest money I've ever seen. I was in Amsterdam last year, and I thought to myself 'this is really ugly money'. When I got a good look at American money a few months later though, I realized thet Dutch money is merely plain. American money is seriously hard to look at.
(after all, whats the only PC operating system you can run on a Playstation 2...yeah, thats right, [GNU/]Linux)
How is Linux a PC operating system any more than an embedded operating system or a mainframe operating system? For that matter, how can you say it's a PC operating system that runs on a game console? Isn't that contradictory?
I'm sure NetBSD will run on the PS2 soon enough. It runs on the Dreamcast, and on everything else, so why not? And MS has an OS running on the X-Box, does that mean anything? Nope.
'The PS2 will kill windows because you can run Linux on it' makes no sense whatsoever. Please, think before you post.
People get Final Fantasy games because they want to play through a story at their own pace and reach a conclusive finish.
I get Final Fantasy games because I like the gameplay and the writing. I've dreamed about having a well-done RPG that I could continue playing indefinitely, where the whole world would change and grow as time went on, and depending on what you did.
For example: a world, at the start, with a government/monarchy/whatever, and rebels who want to usurp them. Players can bop around in the world, or join one side or the other. Depending on the outcome of in-game events, the world changes. Rebels get crushed, or take over the government. Throw in some intrigue, evil bad guys, quests, and so on. A dynamic FF world, maintained and extended as time goes on. Sounds like fun to me. No more unlikely 'happily ever after', just a continuing gameplay with real-person interaction.
Besides, I've always wanted to take on someone in an FF-style battle. I'd love pitting my character against others'.
At Future Shop in Canada (or at least, every one I've been in for years), it's the same. They sell CDs, they sell DVDs, they sell blanks and burners for both, devices that will record VHS, ones that will do casettes, but prerecorded magnetic media is all gone.
I actually hadn't thought twice about it. VHS tapes are better by leaps in (almost) all respects. in my job, I like them because when we get a shipment in, it weighs less for more DVDs, they take up less shelf space, and we can fit the overstock away easier. No way could we have fit 70 copies of Harry Potter in our counter, but DVD wasn't a problem. Easier for retailers (Superstore), cheap (the Harry Potter DVD was $19.98 for the two-disc set, which is only a dollar or two more than our VHS titles, if not actually cheaper.
And considering the fact that you can buy a cheap DVD player for $100 CDN plus tax, there's less and less reason not to get one. Sure, it won't be top-of-the-line, but it'll be a fair sight better than VHS. All we need now are PVRs with DVD+/-RW burners (years away unless you have big cash) and all will be wonderful. You could even have a disc that would play in your DVD drive, complete with menus and subtitles (converted closed captioning) or something. Hmm...
--Dan
Re:The problem with ANY packaging system....
on
Is RPM Doomed?
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· Score: 2
When Maynard builds his SuperFlyFloobyDust.rpm file, rather than specifying the dependancies as "I need libPease.so", he accepts the default "I need libPease.1.4.2.thursday.5-31-41.1-pl3-build6.so". So, even though any libPease.so would work, you get a dependancy failure.
This is a failing not of any specific package manager - ALL package managers have this problem. You don't see it with.debs not because of any inherent superiority of.deb, but rather because of the hard work of the Debian maintainers to make sure the packages are all set up correctly!
Incorrect. RPM depends on files (/usr/bin/perl) and libraries (libPease.1.4.2.thursday.5-31-41.1-pl3-build6.so). Debian relies on packages (perl, libpease >= 1.4.2). This provides a lot more flexibility, in that you can replace packages with other packages, 'provide', and not require any one filename. Services can be required ('httpd') without specifying anything specific (/usr/sbin/httpd,/usr/sbin/roxen2), and packages that provide what is needed can provide that virtual package name.
However, all it takes is one person installing one program that breaks the rules, and that installation is screwed.
There have to be some pretty big changes to screw up a Debian installation, in my experience. I ran Unstable, doing updates twice a day for three years, and never had to reinstall. The worst thing I had to deal with was the glibc upgrade, when I lost apache for a few days until it was recompiled. The Unstable branch still has quality guidelines (Debian packaging policy), but it's fast and loose. If you want cutting-edge and safe, go for testing, which has any packages that were in unstable for 2 weeks without having big bugs filed against them.
Obviously not any mac user can write a driver, but writing drivers for OS X is easy, as far as driver writing goes. I don't see what relevance any of your comment has.
What are the odds that the average WIndows user will write a driver? or Linux, or BSD for that matter? The point is that, for a company, it can be done. If you need one, you can get one coded, or code one. The options are there. It's possible.
Because 'everyone else' doesn't have a vested interest in not making drivers. When Creative doesn't release Nomad drivers, they're losing out on a (pitifully small, really) market. When Apple doesn't release iPod software, they're helping sales of Macs (ideally) and reducing support nightmares.
Not saying it's right, just saying it is. But personally, gooooo Apple!
Do they know Windows? I dunno. But probably not all that well.
Ugh, have you ever used Quicktime for Windows? I love Apple, but QTWin makes me feel all dirty inside.
I suppose it says something that WMP can play MPEGs fairly smooth (they're not smooth MPEGs) on my 120, but QT is lucky if it displays every other keyframe. QTVR still rocks though.
(Note: if MPEGs don't use keyframes, interpret that as what I meant. If they do, well there you go.)
Whereas Apps and special hardware are their own deal, the lack of support for mac disk formats is another.
So you're complaining about Apple because no one else supports their filesystems?
Regardless, OS X is one of the most interoperable OSen out there (Linux wins easily, but OS X is right up there). Plus, if it doesn't support your filesystem, learn IOKit, and write a driver. Then Mac users can burn/write to disk/format hard drives/fileshare in whatever filesystem you like (ISO9660, FAT32, WevDAV, SMB, Appletalk, etc. just to name a few).
I would guess that the teeny little hard drive and teeny little electronics in the teeny little iPod can't handle a 30MB/s data transfer. Hell, my HD can't even handle buffered reading that fast, let alone raw read/write.
Be nice Gerhard, don't rub it in... Aw, what the heck.
First, I'll point out that most Americans pay between $50-60 USD for cable internet, from what I've read on Slashdot. $50 USD comes out to $76 CDN, which is 4x, and $60 comes out to $92, which is more than I pay for digital cable (with almost all channels, except Deutsche Welle and some other esoteric choices) and cable internet together (with two IPs).
Bandwith in Canada, for some reason, is ludicrously cheap. When we were in BC, we had 5 megabit cable internet through Shaw, which we got with a package deal. When we moved to Saskatchewan, the telco had a package deal that included DSL. Now I have DSL in my bedroom, and Cable internet in the living room, aling with digital cable. Our long distance is unlimited too, but who cares, I never call anyone.
In comparison to the $40/mo CDN I pay for 1.5/640k DSL, a friend of mine in Alaska would have to pay about $120 USD for the same. Elsewhere on the continent it's cheaper, but not that cheap.
It's the largest, easily. Bell Canada provides telephone services (and thus offers DSL) to Ontario and large parts of Quebec. These are the same provinces that single-handedly decide who gets elected before the polls close in BC. Telus, by comparison, has BC (a few million people) and Alberta (not much over a million).
Then there's their satellite offerings, Bell Mobility, and so on. Oh, and they own CTV. And the Globe and Mail.
You're supposed to pay for music. You don't. That's theft. Whining because what you steal isn't perfect is stupid. It's like people who pirate software and then whine that they can't get the updates, or patches, or tech support. If you want it, pay. If not, it's not your right, so don't whine.
Whereas in most places the ticket prices for bus or subway is fixed (I know its like $2 in Toronto, Canada) its different in Hong Kong. The price for subways and buses depends on approximately how far you travel (by approximately I mean say they divide one bus route into 5 zones and set a certain price if you travel within one zone and different if you travel though one zone, two zone,etc)
I can't speak for all cities, but Vancouver and Montreal both divide into zones. The difference is that the zones are absurdly large (it's a three zone fare from Surrey Central to Waterfront, and a two-zone fare from Waterfront to Lonsdale Quay in North Van, which is a half hour by car (more incl. traffic) and, depending on traffic, between a half hour and four hours, respectively).
However, that doesn't change much. At Surrey Central, you can buy a three-zone fare for about $4 (I think), or you can get a Daypass for $5. The three zone fare is one way, one use. The daypass is unlimited travel in all zones on all transports until midnight or so. Easy choice.
In Montreal, it's even more fun. A one week pass is $13, and a monthly pass is $54. These give you unlimited travel in all zones (there are three on the island). Other passes and fares and so on that you can get allow transit within the first zone only (which is damned big anyway), but those two let you use the metro, the busses, and even the Via commuter rail.
Israel, by contrast, has a train system that does not work anymore, and busses that, while they charge you for every trip (two people going halfway across Jerusalem, it was cheaper to get a taxi), DO give change (surprised the hell out of me, I thought you just pay and you're done; nope, they give change and a reciept. oops). I imagine this would go over very well there, but the competing transit companies probably wouldn't want to go into something unless the other person was as well. Who knows though.
Fortunately for me, Nintendo was smart enough to anticipate that I might make a mistake like that and design it so it's not easy to do.
And then they redesigned the cartridges so that they looked more futuristic, and so that people could pull them out easily. It was probably from support calls, but that screws up people like me who assume that it's always safe to take the cart out.
Sorry, I don't consider Access to be a selling point for Office (or, for that matter, any good at all). Filemaker has been the de facto standard on MacOS for ages before Access ever showed up. Microsoft Access support would be a waste of time. Access is also the only 'mainline' MS Office program that wasn't created on the Mac and ported to Windows as well. Perhaps this has something to do with it. Either way, if you're doing databases on MacOS, you want Filemaker.
If you want something more concrete, how about IE 4 for Mac being more standards compliant than any other browser at the time? Or how about Outlook letting you disable rendering HTML mail, which MS has refused to do on Windows for years.
In other words, 1000 ways they could have written the code better the first time.
Come on, this is totally unfair. Office v.X is widely considered to be a better office suite than its Windows counterpart (it really is excellent work), there's no forced registration with Microsoft, and without an office suite, OS X would have had very, very little going for it for a long time. It was rushed out the door so Microsoft could showcase the new Office X for OS X, show that it wasn't a monopoly by providing products and compatibility across platforms, and to help launch OS X.
That being said, who gets everything right on the first try? The Linux kernel? Slashcode? Apache? XFree?
Yes, it could have been written better the first time, but no one gets it right the first time. They had the benefit of real-world profiling, of testing on OS X, X.1, and probably X.2 at this point, they can see where things can be improved, they can see real-world issues with OS X, or new features/code/libraries that can be used and abused, and they released a patch. This sounds exactly like what any other software company would do, except other software companies don't have this much code behind them.
I'm all about bashing MS, but come on people, don't be unfair about it.
A few years ago, my parents bought a mac, a Performa 5260 (one of the most un-upgradable and unsupported machines on the planet, which I knew at the time), and I kept saying, don't get a Performa, don't get a Performa. Well, they got the Performa (and later got quite angry when I told them that I'd told them not to get it).
My stepfather asked me, one day, after he'd had his computer for a while, how you compare one computer to another, in terms of speed. My simple reply was 'games'. See how a game plays on both systems. He didn't believe me that games are used for benchmark numbers, if not entire benchmarks. 'Why would anyone buy a better computer just for games?' he asked.
Our Performa came with a ton of useless crap on CD, but it also came with a copy of FA/18 Hornet 2.0, a flight sim. Stepfather is very into planes, so he started playing it one day. Over the next few months, he was more and more into the game.
When Hornet 3.0 came out, he purchased it. Same with A-10 Cuba, and the Hornet Korea upgrade. He even bought a game he couldn't play (Falcon 4.0), just for when he later could play it (i.e. got a new machine). He was also very disappointed when I told him he couldn't add a 3D accelerator to the Perorma, to get the beautifully textured goodness of Hornet 3.0. I think it was at this point I told him I'd told him, and he shouted that I had not.
We run a home-based business, or rather, they do, and I used to help. They needed a new computer, and the local Mac shop had a great deal on a G4, 17" monitor, laser printer, and so on, so they leased it (the whole purchase = tax deductable as a lease). GeForce 2MX (great at the time) and a sweet sweet 533 G4 processor.
Wouldn't you know it, Falcon 4.0's hardware acceleration only supports RAVE, and ATI cards directly, neither of which is supported on the GeForce 2, and no OpenGL support. What's the first thing he thinks of? Buy an ATI card for it, spend a few hundred bucks that they really don't have, and upgrade, just so that one game plays nicer than it did before (it plays very smooth in software mode).
I agree with the other posters, and my anecdote supports the claim. 3D is what drives sales. I remember WC3's 3D gameplay (basically software 3D done beautifully) on my friend's 486, and it was amazing. Let me tell you, if you didn't have the hardware to play it, you damn well wanted to buy the hardware to play it. That was the major turning point (for me). En masse, QGL sounds about right. DirectX was another important turning point, too. By making games faster (in Windows), people could write more complex games with better graphics, and they didn't have to bother with a DOS version. Then, people who didn't have Windows 95 had to get it, and people who didn't have the hardware for Windows 95, or barely had it, had to get that. If you wanted to game, you HAD to have W95, or you were stuck playing legacy games until eternity (which, for a hardcore gamer, is not an option).
So DX, OpenGL, GLide (which sucked), and use of these technologies are, to me, what really turned the tables. Game development took off, and so did hardware purchases. Now, everyone's chasing their first 3D high.
And as one of, if not the most successful embedded Linux product ever to make it to market, it's in the community's best interest to support Tivo. That includes paying for the subscription that keeps the company alive.
I approve of embedded Linux as much as the next guy, but I can't see your logic here. As I understand it, you're saying that TiVo makes an embedded Linux device and sells it, so it's our duty to buy it?
That makes no sense at all. I'll buy it if I want it (I do) and if the pricing is reasonable (it's not). Not tying up a phone with long-distance calls (if they cut off any toll-free numbers they have in my area) is also a huge factor.
When TiVo has a lower subscription fee and/or they give the box away for free, and when it uses broadband access to download program listings and/or can get the listings from my digital cable box or satellite reciever, then maybe I'll consider it. At the moment, however, I'm not going to buy their product and pay their fees just because they used Linux when they made their product. When TiVo provides good hardware and good service for the price, then I'll buy into it. And before anyone brings up the idea of 'help and help alike', remember that they're not giving anything away, they're selling the boxes and the info. They're not sharing, and neither will I.
AudioGalaxy was designed and is distributed for the sole purpose of trading MP3s. All the RIAA has to do is prove that the programmers of AudioGalaxy intended to promote music piracy (which they did, I'm certain), and it's a done deal. I don't like the precident being set, but I agree that legally, the RIAA is within its rights, and morally, it's right too (theft is wrong, even if no one else loses out. Welcome to capitalism), at least in the US.
Canadian laws allow filesharing, according to my interpretation of the downloader being the one to copy the music, not the uploader. Since Canadians are allowed to make copies for their own personal use, but not for others' (I can borrow a friend's CD and copy it, but he can't copy it and give the copy to me); the recording industry would argue that it's the uploader's client that is making the copy by moving it over the network. Sadly, US law is more straightforward.
Slashdot Mirror
The newest Canadian bills are not only different colours, but they have braille, a special glossy maple leaf overlay, and a bunch of pressed on 'dots' which, with some difficulty, can be peeled off to prove they are not just printed on. All of these things (except, perhaps, the braille) are primarily to stop counterfeiting.
You forgot to mention the 'Bank of Canada' text and logo, and the little weird wormy lines that show up on the bill when you hold them up to a blacklight. Blacklights are relatively cheap and you can them forever, so it's an inexpensive way for retailers to verify bills, and it's great for banks, who can always use one more way to verify bills.
--Dan
Just hope they do everything at once. The Canadian government recently changed the look of the new $5 and $10 bills. They look much nicer now, much more European as well as having much nicer security features (ever held one up to a blacklight? it's pretty neat).
The problem is, they staggered the releases. The $10s came out first, and now most of the $10 bills I handle (I work at a major grocery chain in the photo/electronics department) are the new ones. Then, maybe a year later, they released the new $5 bills, even though they were designed at the same time. The result? Two redesigns of bill readers and two refittings of any vending machines that accept bills.
However, since we introduced $2 coins, they, in combination with the $1 and $0.25 coins we already had, can be used for... well, any vending machine. The only bill readers I've seen in Canada are in change machines. As much as I hate pocketfuls of coins, I hate bill readers more. Go us.
As an aside, American money is the ugliest money I've ever seen. I was in Amsterdam last year, and I thought to myself 'this is really ugly money'. When I got a good look at American money a few months later though, I realized thet Dutch money is merely plain. American money is seriously hard to look at.
--Dan
Keep your cellphone on its highest ring volume while I'm trying to relax and enjoy a cappucino at the cafe, and you'll get your wish.
I want a small, subtle flip phone that looks elegant and classy, has good reception, and doesn't cost $700. Why can't that happen? Le sigh.
--Dan
(after all, whats the only PC operating system you can run on a Playstation 2...yeah, thats right, [GNU/]Linux)
How is Linux a PC operating system any more than an embedded operating system or a mainframe operating system? For that matter, how can you say it's a PC operating system that runs on a game console? Isn't that contradictory?
I'm sure NetBSD will run on the PS2 soon enough. It runs on the Dreamcast, and on everything else, so why not? And MS has an OS running on the X-Box, does that mean anything? Nope.
'The PS2 will kill windows because you can run Linux on it' makes no sense whatsoever. Please, think before you post.
--Dan
People get Final Fantasy games because they want to play through a story at their own pace and reach a conclusive finish.
I get Final Fantasy games because I like the gameplay and the writing. I've dreamed about having a well-done RPG that I could continue playing indefinitely, where the whole world would change and grow as time went on, and depending on what you did.
For example: a world, at the start, with a government/monarchy/whatever, and rebels who want to usurp them. Players can bop around in the world, or join one side or the other. Depending on the outcome of in-game events, the world changes. Rebels get crushed, or take over the government. Throw in some intrigue, evil bad guys, quests, and so on. A dynamic FF world, maintained and extended as time goes on. Sounds like fun to me. No more unlikely 'happily ever after', just a continuing gameplay with real-person interaction.
Besides, I've always wanted to take on someone in an FF-style battle. I'd love pitting my character against others'.
--Dan
Anyone want to take bets on how long until some boy scout tries to make a planet in his mother's potting shed?
--Dan
At Future Shop in Canada (or at least, every one I've been in for years), it's the same. They sell CDs, they sell DVDs, they sell blanks and burners for both, devices that will record VHS, ones that will do casettes, but prerecorded magnetic media is all gone.
I actually hadn't thought twice about it. VHS tapes are better by leaps in (almost) all respects. in my job, I like them because when we get a shipment in, it weighs less for more DVDs, they take up less shelf space, and we can fit the overstock away easier. No way could we have fit 70 copies of Harry Potter in our counter, but DVD wasn't a problem. Easier for retailers (Superstore), cheap (the Harry Potter DVD was $19.98 for the two-disc set, which is only a dollar or two more than our VHS titles, if not actually cheaper.
And considering the fact that you can buy a cheap DVD player for $100 CDN plus tax, there's less and less reason not to get one. Sure, it won't be top-of-the-line, but it'll be a fair sight better than VHS. All we need now are PVRs with DVD+/-RW burners (years away unless you have big cash) and all will be wonderful. You could even have a disc that would play in your DVD drive, complete with menus and subtitles (converted closed captioning) or something. Hmm...
--Dan
When Maynard builds his SuperFlyFloobyDust.rpm file, rather than specifying the dependancies as "I need libPease.so", he accepts the default "I need libPease.1.4.2.thursday.5-31-41.1-pl3-build6.so". So, even though any libPease.so would work, you get a dependancy failure.
.debs not because of any inherent superiority of .deb, but rather because of the hard work of the Debian maintainers to make sure the packages are all set up correctly!
. Debian relies on packages (perl, libpease >= 1.4.2). This provides a lot more flexibility, in that you can replace packages with other packages, 'provide', and not require any one filename. Services can be required ('httpd') without specifying anything specific (/usr/sbin/httpd, /usr/sbin/roxen2), and packages that provide what is needed can provide that virtual package name.
This is a failing not of any specific package manager - ALL package managers have this problem. You don't see it with
Incorrect. RPM depends on files (/usr/bin/perl) and libraries (libPease.1.4.2.thursday.5-31-41.1-pl3-build6.so)
However, all it takes is one person installing one program that breaks the rules, and that installation is screwed.
There have to be some pretty big changes to screw up a Debian installation, in my experience. I ran Unstable, doing updates twice a day for three years, and never had to reinstall. The worst thing I had to deal with was the glibc upgrade, when I lost apache for a few days until it was recompiled. The Unstable branch still has quality guidelines (Debian packaging policy), but it's fast and loose. If you want cutting-edge and safe, go for testing, which has any packages that were in unstable for 2 weeks without having big bugs filed against them.
--Dan
This is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time. WiFi is expensive, and hardware to put the WiFi in is expensive. FRS Radios, on the other hand, are cheaper individually than WiFi equipment, work on UHF, and have a much wider range of features, not to mention being designed for this sort of thing. Really, it's a great idea to go with. Cheaper, less clunky, better range, better signal quality, batteries last longer, easier to set up, and so on. Check it out.
--Dan
Obviously not any mac user can write a driver, but writing drivers for OS X is easy, as far as driver writing goes. I don't see what relevance any of your comment has.
What are the odds that the average WIndows user will write a driver? or Linux, or BSD for that matter? The point is that, for a company, it can be done. If you need one, you can get one coded, or code one. The options are there. It's possible.
--Dan
Because 'everyone else' doesn't have a vested interest in not making drivers. When Creative doesn't release Nomad drivers, they're losing out on a (pitifully small, really) market. When Apple doesn't release iPod software, they're helping sales of Macs (ideally) and reducing support nightmares.
Not saying it's right, just saying it is. But personally, gooooo Apple!
--Dan
Do they know Windows? I dunno. But probably not all that well.
Ugh, have you ever used Quicktime for Windows? I love Apple, but QTWin makes me feel all dirty inside.
I suppose it says something that WMP can play MPEGs fairly smooth (they're not smooth MPEGs) on my 120, but QT is lucky if it displays every other keyframe. QTVR still rocks though.
(Note: if MPEGs don't use keyframes, interpret that as what I meant. If they do, well there you go.)
--Dan
Whereas Apps and special hardware are their own deal, the lack of support for mac disk formats is another.
So you're complaining about Apple because no one else supports their filesystems?
Regardless, OS X is one of the most interoperable OSen out there (Linux wins easily, but OS X is right up there). Plus, if it doesn't support your filesystem, learn IOKit, and write a driver. Then Mac users can burn/write to disk/format hard drives/fileshare in whatever filesystem you like (ISO9660, FAT32, WevDAV, SMB, Appletalk, etc. just to name a few).
Just a thought.
--Dan
I would guess that the teeny little hard drive and teeny little electronics in the teeny little iPod can't handle a 30MB/s data transfer. Hell, my HD can't even handle buffered reading that fast, let alone raw read/write.
--Dan
Be nice Gerhard, don't rub it in... Aw, what the heck.
First, I'll point out that most Americans pay between $50-60 USD for cable internet, from what I've read on Slashdot. $50 USD comes out to $76 CDN, which is 4x, and $60 comes out to $92, which is more than I pay for digital cable (with almost all channels, except Deutsche Welle and some other esoteric choices) and cable internet together (with two IPs).
Bandwith in Canada, for some reason, is ludicrously cheap. When we were in BC, we had 5 megabit cable internet through Shaw, which we got with a package deal. When we moved to Saskatchewan, the telco had a package deal that included DSL. Now I have DSL in my bedroom, and Cable internet in the living room, aling with digital cable. Our long distance is unlimited too, but who cares, I never call anyone.
In comparison to the $40/mo CDN I pay for 1.5/640k DSL, a friend of mine in Alaska would have to pay about $120 USD for the same. Elsewhere on the continent it's cheaper, but not that cheap.
--Dan
It's the largest, easily. Bell Canada provides telephone services (and thus offers DSL) to Ontario and large parts of Quebec. These are the same provinces that single-handedly decide who gets elected before the polls close in BC. Telus, by comparison, has BC (a few million people) and Alberta (not much over a million).
Then there's their satellite offerings, Bell Mobility, and so on. Oh, and they own CTV. And the Globe and Mail.
So yeah, they're big.
--Dan
What a troll.
You're supposed to pay for music. You don't. That's theft. Whining because what you steal isn't perfect is stupid. It's like people who pirate software and then whine that they can't get the updates, or patches, or tech support. If you want it, pay. If not, it's not your right, so don't whine.
--Dan
You know, you're right... I was thinking of the price for buying four weeklies ($52). I believe the monthly cost is $48 instead. Oops. :/
Whereas in most places the ticket prices for bus or subway is fixed (I know its like $2 in Toronto, Canada) its different in Hong Kong. The price for subways and buses depends on approximately how far you travel (by approximately I mean say they divide one bus route into 5 zones and set a certain price if you travel within one zone and different if you travel though one zone, two zone,etc)
I can't speak for all cities, but Vancouver and Montreal both divide into zones. The difference is that the zones are absurdly large (it's a three zone fare from Surrey Central to Waterfront, and a two-zone fare from Waterfront to Lonsdale Quay in North Van, which is a half hour by car (more incl. traffic) and, depending on traffic, between a half hour and four hours, respectively).
However, that doesn't change much. At Surrey Central, you can buy a three-zone fare for about $4 (I think), or you can get a Daypass for $5. The three zone fare is one way, one use. The daypass is unlimited travel in all zones on all transports until midnight or so. Easy choice.
In Montreal, it's even more fun. A one week pass is $13, and a monthly pass is $54. These give you unlimited travel in all zones (there are three on the island). Other passes and fares and so on that you can get allow transit within the first zone only (which is damned big anyway), but those two let you use the metro, the busses, and even the Via commuter rail.
Israel, by contrast, has a train system that does not work anymore, and busses that, while they charge you for every trip (two people going halfway across Jerusalem, it was cheaper to get a taxi), DO give change (surprised the hell out of me, I thought you just pay and you're done; nope, they give change and a reciept. oops). I imagine this would go over very well there, but the competing transit companies probably wouldn't want to go into something unless the other person was as well. Who knows though.
--Dan
Fortunately for me, Nintendo was smart enough to anticipate that I might make a mistake like that and design it so it's not easy to do.
And then they redesigned the cartridges so that they looked more futuristic, and so that people could pull them out easily. It was probably from support calls, but that screws up people like me who assume that it's always safe to take the cart out.
Yay lost saved games.
--Dan
Sorry, I don't consider Access to be a selling point for Office (or, for that matter, any good at all). Filemaker has been the de facto standard on MacOS for ages before Access ever showed up. Microsoft Access support would be a waste of time. Access is also the only 'mainline' MS Office program that wasn't created on the Mac and ported to Windows as well. Perhaps this has something to do with it. Either way, if you're doing databases on MacOS, you want Filemaker.
If you want something more concrete, how about IE 4 for Mac being more standards compliant than any other browser at the time? Or how about Outlook letting you disable rendering HTML mail, which MS has refused to do on Windows for years.
--Dan
In other words, 1000 ways they could have written the code better the first time.
Come on, this is totally unfair. Office v.X is widely considered to be a better office suite than its Windows counterpart (it really is excellent work), there's no forced registration with Microsoft, and without an office suite, OS X would have had very, very little going for it for a long time. It was rushed out the door so Microsoft could showcase the new Office X for OS X, show that it wasn't a monopoly by providing products and compatibility across platforms, and to help launch OS X.
That being said, who gets everything right on the first try? The Linux kernel? Slashcode? Apache? XFree?
Yes, it could have been written better the first time, but no one gets it right the first time. They had the benefit of real-world profiling, of testing on OS X, X.1, and probably X.2 at this point, they can see where things can be improved, they can see real-world issues with OS X, or new features/code/libraries that can be used and abused, and they released a patch. This sounds exactly like what any other software company would do, except other software companies don't have this much code behind them.
I'm all about bashing MS, but come on people, don't be unfair about it.
--Dan
A few years ago, my parents bought a mac, a Performa 5260 (one of the most un-upgradable and unsupported machines on the planet, which I knew at the time), and I kept saying, don't get a Performa, don't get a Performa. Well, they got the Performa (and later got quite angry when I told them that I'd told them not to get it).
My stepfather asked me, one day, after he'd had his computer for a while, how you compare one computer to another, in terms of speed. My simple reply was 'games'. See how a game plays on both systems. He didn't believe me that games are used for benchmark numbers, if not entire benchmarks. 'Why would anyone buy a better computer just for games?' he asked.
Our Performa came with a ton of useless crap on CD, but it also came with a copy of FA/18 Hornet 2.0, a flight sim. Stepfather is very into planes, so he started playing it one day. Over the next few months, he was more and more into the game.
When Hornet 3.0 came out, he purchased it. Same with A-10 Cuba, and the Hornet Korea upgrade. He even bought a game he couldn't play (Falcon 4.0), just for when he later could play it (i.e. got a new machine). He was also very disappointed when I told him he couldn't add a 3D accelerator to the Perorma, to get the beautifully textured goodness of Hornet 3.0. I think it was at this point I told him I'd told him, and he shouted that I had not.
We run a home-based business, or rather, they do, and I used to help. They needed a new computer, and the local Mac shop had a great deal on a G4, 17" monitor, laser printer, and so on, so they leased it (the whole purchase = tax deductable as a lease). GeForce 2MX (great at the time) and a sweet sweet 533 G4 processor.
Wouldn't you know it, Falcon 4.0's hardware acceleration only supports RAVE, and ATI cards directly, neither of which is supported on the GeForce 2, and no OpenGL support. What's the first thing he thinks of? Buy an ATI card for it, spend a few hundred bucks that they really don't have, and upgrade, just so that one game plays nicer than it did before (it plays very smooth in software mode).
I agree with the other posters, and my anecdote supports the claim. 3D is what drives sales. I remember WC3's 3D gameplay (basically software 3D done beautifully) on my friend's 486, and it was amazing. Let me tell you, if you didn't have the hardware to play it, you damn well wanted to buy the hardware to play it. That was the major turning point (for me). En masse, QGL sounds about right. DirectX was another important turning point, too. By making games faster (in Windows), people could write more complex games with better graphics, and they didn't have to bother with a DOS version. Then, people who didn't have Windows 95 had to get it, and people who didn't have the hardware for Windows 95, or barely had it, had to get that. If you wanted to game, you HAD to have W95, or you were stuck playing legacy games until eternity (which, for a hardcore gamer, is not an option).
So DX, OpenGL, GLide (which sucked), and use of these technologies are, to me, what really turned the tables. Game development took off, and so did hardware purchases. Now, everyone's chasing their first 3D high.
I'm just waiting for a holodeck.
--Dan
And as one of, if not the most successful embedded Linux product ever to make it to market, it's in the community's best interest to support Tivo. That includes paying for the subscription that keeps the company alive.
I approve of embedded Linux as much as the next guy, but I can't see your logic here. As I understand it, you're saying that TiVo makes an embedded Linux device and sells it, so it's our duty to buy it?
That makes no sense at all. I'll buy it if I want it (I do) and if the pricing is reasonable (it's not). Not tying up a phone with long-distance calls (if they cut off any toll-free numbers they have in my area) is also a huge factor.
When TiVo has a lower subscription fee and/or they give the box away for free, and when it uses broadband access to download program listings and/or can get the listings from my digital cable box or satellite reciever, then maybe I'll consider it. At the moment, however, I'm not going to buy their product and pay their fees just because they used Linux when they made their product. When TiVo provides good hardware and good service for the price, then I'll buy into it. And before anyone brings up the idea of 'help and help alike', remember that they're not giving anything away, they're selling the boxes and the info. They're not sharing, and neither will I.
--Dan
AudioGalaxy was designed and is distributed for the sole purpose of trading MP3s. All the RIAA has to do is prove that the programmers of AudioGalaxy intended to promote music piracy (which they did, I'm certain), and it's a done deal. I don't like the precident being set, but I agree that legally, the RIAA is within its rights, and morally, it's right too (theft is wrong, even if no one else loses out. Welcome to capitalism), at least in the US.
Canadian laws allow filesharing, according to my interpretation of the downloader being the one to copy the music, not the uploader. Since Canadians are allowed to make copies for their own personal use, but not for others' (I can borrow a friend's CD and copy it, but he can't copy it and give the copy to me); the recording industry would argue that it's the uploader's client that is making the copy by moving it over the network. Sadly, US law is more straightforward.
--Dan