yes, you can report it to the telephone company and they will contact the offending faxer. Next time you get it, hang up and dial *69 (the one that tells you what the last incoming number was). Then call your telephone number and say you've been receiving faxes at this voice line for [duration] and here's the offending number. They'll track down who owns the line and, well, they won't be very nice about it.
I had this happen to me in my old apartment. We didn't own a fax machine, but we got fax calls at 4am for a week. Needless to say, they were not very pleasant mornings.
Because "interesting" doesn't always equal "fun." And similarly, fun isn't equivalent. I know some people who loved Black & White for the creature training, and because of that, had a great deal more fun playing the game itself (since the creature, when well trained, actually does a lot of work for you). But a lot of people found it stupid and wanted to play what the game was telling you to play (the RTS-aspect) and the creature was an addition that didn't seem to work too well.
I like the guy's ideas, and I think he's definitely an asset. What he really needs, though, is exactly what he just got -- a parent company that will put a little restraint on what he says before any code for a game is written. Fable sounded great on paper, but was likely impossible to create as written in reality.
The stupid thing about it is that "most expensive" is so fleeting. All someone would have to do is craft a device that uses more gold or more diamond, and ta da.
the other aspect that ties into your point is that the game is persistent. Your group doesn't change, and you need to schedule the time for everyone. A good group is going to be more than 4 people, and if someone can't make it, the entire thing is put on hold. Let alone account for people being late or having to leave early.
Long board games don't have that problem -- you finish one game, and the next time, it's all new. So you can play it at an entirely different party with different people and you don't have to spend forever setting it up. Not to mention that those board games have enough ways to "sudden death" themselves in order to finish up a long evening -- it doesn't force a GM to break their game because it's 2am and the players are only halfway through.
That's really going to be the key, what you said there -- face time with clients. Hell, not even necessarily face time, but phone time, being able to easily be on call, etc. If you're doing business in the US with US clients, they typically expect you to be available during US business hours. Not so much a problem in, say, Costa Rica, but India or China?
Not to mention that at what point do you cease to be a US company? You'll always need people in the US to coordinate. If you're so outsourced where you're doing all of your business, from production to sales, in another country... you're no longer outsourced. You're just a business in the other country.
The whole POINT of outsourcing is to save on labor and material costs so you make more money in the US. With any outsourcing, you're going to double the managerial staff. You need to have effective management at the outsourcing location, and you need managers at the local site in order to tell them what they need to do. You also need technology people at the local site in order to take what they're doing and run testing on it; since they're not doing the raw coding, you don't need as many to create a large mass of code, as they're more review/testing. But in no way does that create a company that's "nearly all outsourced." If you were to do that, you would experience so many other issues that your competitor who's doing it smarter with more staff in both locations is going to be kicking your ass.
I agree on the point that if it's so much better, hey, where's the problem? I think an issue you may have missed, from the movie producer's point of view, is the number of people who may go see a movie, enjoy it, and then go buy it the next day (while it's still fresh in their mind). For people who do see movies in theaters, the 4+ month wait for the DVD release can make any positive opinions of the movie fade... like, an action movie could kick ass, but 4 months later, something else may kick ass, or the explosions just weren't that memorable.
Not to mention that it requires two separate advertising budgets.
I still like seeing movies in theaters because it's easier to go with friends. You can get a group of 6 together and see a movie in the theater and then talk about it afterwards. If you're at home, you'll just talk over the movie, or someone's seen it already and will be more annoying than they would've been in the theater anyway!
But if this causes the really crappy theaters to pay a bit more attention to the quality of service they provide, hey, I can't see a problem with it. I refuse to by any food or drink at the big mega-theaters, where they're staffed by teens and the popcorn is trucked in from a warehouse. Yet the local theater that has the popcorn machine right there, and the staff are usually hipsters? I almost always buy a bag.
I think there were issues with MiniDisc, but I do think it was an issue of marketing. They were marketed as a replacement for CDs, but they really sucked in that regard. However, they're fantastic as a replacement for tape -- easy to record to on the fly, smaller, digital, etc. But they were never sold as thus.
It seems like the treatment simply addresses strength problems between the eyes. If poor vision caused the eyes to have different strength, then I don't see why not. Obviously you would have to wear contacts or have the vision in each eye corrected before using this method.
But definitely it would be easier to be done at an early age, as after puberty there's really no way to easily create neural pathways to the brain. It's the same reason why it's easy for kids to learn languages, yet more difficult for adults. I'm sure it could assist amblyopia in adults, but it would probably be impossible to cure it.
But if your eyes individually are having problems, then I don't think this treatment would address that. It seems to focus on differences between the eyes, versus any inherent weakness in a single eye individually.
I'm with you there, but I see it as them kind of saying "OK, I guess we shouldn't try TOO hard."
Their PowerMacs have used only SATA basically since it came out, for example, but they didn't create a new standard. They do a lot of funky stuff with FireWire, but they're adding more USB (and really did a major push to help USB get started). Contrast that with, as you say, the ADC connection, or how long they stuck with SCSI on the home computer offerings despite the high prices. They still make it quite difficult to eject CDs without an Apple keyboard, mind.
I see it more as Apple realizing that if they really want to compete, there are some concessions they need to make. Forcing people to use adapters (that generally only they sold) on monitors that already cost more than the competition? I'm sure some exec in a meeting finally said "uhh, guys? yeah, this was kind of a stupid idea. I mean, a good idea, but still stupid."
So they dropped it. To me (as someone with a PowerMac with an ADC connector and a converter dongle hanging out the back), that gives me a good feeling -- they realized it really wasn't what people wanted and dropped it. They still hold on to some things that are bizarre but as TFA shows, they're not really afraid to mess with their own stuff to either make the programs/OS more efficient or the hardware better (and after it's better, make sure it's still compatible).
Dropped. The last few revisions of PowerMacs don't have ADC ports, and the G5-styled Cinema Displays don't use ADC either. It's been that way for over a year now, I believe. Mostly, I think, because they realized there were lots of DVI monitors out there that weren't Apple that cost less and people had to buy adapters for. They figured "ah hell, it's cheaper for us to just use DVI anyway."
I hear conflicting things on the Registry. it's definitely in Vista, but some say that it was never going to be in, and others say that it was always going to be in there. Others say that it's in but entirely different, and some say that it's similar but no one can access it (of course, if no one can access it, then what's the point of having it again?). Who knows.
It would be nice if Microsoft were a little more up front about all this crazy tech they're adding. Yes, we all realize that computers are "neato," but we've come to the point where a lot of people really do use them to work, and it's nice to see what you could be working on in the upcoming years.
To me, it means that Allchin was probably bending the truth a bit for PR reasons. Given how many different departments and groups there are within Microsoft, I'm sure there have been numerous instances of someone saying "we can't rewrite that from scratch; we'd have to start everything we're working on over from scratch too!" And so they port a little code here, a little code there... a big piece of code here, a bigger piece of code there...
Given what we know is in Vista, it doesn't make much sense for the entirety to be rewritten. Why would they choose to recode the Registry and then follow through on actually including it? Similarly, look how many things are being backported to XP, and easily at that -- that doesn't sound like Vista is "all new" to me. But it appears that by NOT doing what Allchin said they were going to do, they now get to "scramble" and rewrite tons of code. I'm sure that's significantly less efficient than simply starting from scratch in the first place.
My girlfriend's got a mac mini that's utterly silent... until you put a CD or DVD in. Then the motors whir up and the laser jumps around and it's almost obnoxious! Since the article only talks about "quiet" in a general sense, it doesn't seem like he paid much attention to the use of disc media -- rather, he focused on HDD noise and fan noise. While important, I know plenty of people will use such a device to rip CDs to, watch DVDs on, and so on. Myself included.
Otherwise it's a pretty neat little thing, and seems to work well w/o much hassle. I'm still skeptical of those slimline DVD drives in media computers, though...
Of course. You don't want the last boss to be so difficult that most people can't finish the story. It's why lots of games nowadays have "collectathons" that will grant some bonus or extra feature, but isn't necessary for the completion of the main game -- a way to flesh it out for more advanced players.
Looking back, I actually think it's one of the more unique elements of FF6. The last boss is actually pretty tough. Some of the other fights in the game are hard due to limitations or restrictions, but the 4-in-a-row boss fight took me about 3 tries before I beat it.
Of course, after I played a bit more I learned some tricks that made it easier (yay life 3) but it's still one of the harder fights in the game.
Sure, compiling your own sometimes results in a more efficient binary, but it's also a great way to make sure you have all the dependencies for whatever you're installing.
Conversely, if programmers sufficiently document their binaries, that's not as much of a problem. URLs for other binaries, or instructions for checking/compiling dependencies, can speed up that process.
Of course, binaries are a huge advantage to non-experts and beginners, who just want a program to be there. They don't care about maximizing efficiency, they care about getting their work/fun done.
So really, it entirely depends on the application. For programs that are typically for the hardcore programmer/user crowd, source-only makes sense -- those people who use the program are going to know how to compile and check everything already. But for programs like, say, a CD burning program? I definitely think both should be provided, and installation for both should be well documented. Given how easy it is to provide a binary, even if it's "fat," there's no reason why a more popular program can't provide both versions.
I've encoded stuff with straight-up DivX and XviD and had no problems. There are some restrictions as far as what types of filters and options you can run, but I stick with ticking on Noise Reduction, High Quality and 2 Pass, and leave the other options off. The nice thing about the players is that if you put a file that it can normally read on there, it will tell you "Error: Cannot play file with [setting]." So you can just re-encode.
It can accept files up to 640x320 and it does look better to have the higher quality video on there. It does a good job of scaling on its own. It also does a pretty good job of detecting widescreen, although that's easy to fix if it detects incorrectly. The biggest problem is if you download a lot of videos, they'll often use some weird format for the audio. I'm not sure why some places or people decide on odd formats for audio, unless they're not really all that aware of codec types and ease of use for users, but ah well. Most transcoding tools will allow you to passthrough the video (or audio) and only re-encode the part that won't work
There was a problem with losing sync for video files encoded using VBR, but that's been less of a problem with current firmware. If you encode everything with CBR then it's not even an issue.
It doesn't play MKV or OGM files, which are a pain to reconvert. But there's only a few players that handle those formats on desktops, and it requires installing codecs, so that's not surprising.
The battery life is approximately 5-7 hours depending on what you're doing with it. If you're watching a huge movie encoded at very high quality, it's obviously going to run through the battery faster. There's 3 levels of brightness, and the lowest setting is great if it's sunny or you're in a darkened room. Max bright is just that -- very bright -- and works well in all other situations, I've found. The battery life has surprised me, as I didn't expect to get very long. But I'm able to go through about 16-20 TV shows at around 20min apiece before I start to worry about the battery (it'll end up around 20% or so). It doesn't die suddenly at the last few percentage bits, so you're really good until it gets to 2-3%. It also lasts a very long time between use. There's very little trickle when the device isn't being used, so I never worry about it being dead if I haven't used it in a while -- at worst it's about 10% lower than it was when I last used it.
And for picture use, it lasts easily 10 hours. I haven't timed it because that's a very long time to be looking through photos, but I've passed it around for people to look at photos for about an hour, and it was over 90% battery life still.
I like the 20gig ones because, well, that *is* a lot of video. Unless you're planning on being away from home for a long time, I found that it held as much as I needed to without being bored. It usually means you'll have a folder of "stuff for AV420" on your computer so you're ready to go, but that's not a big deal.
I agree that support is the biggie; software that requires something that simply is impossible to do on something like the Origami form factor will likely simply stay broken. Still, there's plenty of apps that are available for Windows, work fine with a mouse/tablet, and would be handy to have in an ultra-portable system. Plenty of games will probably not work, but a game that simply requires mouse input? Probably work like a charm. A music application that, again, just requires mouse input? Probably a better interface compared to a mouse, especially for live interaction.
I don't think it's going to appeal to people who look at Tablet PCs and say "what's the point," but I think it does present some interesting options for those who like the idea behind Tablet PCs, but don't like the high price and large device.
They probably will, thanks to the new Intel chips, but we probably won't see anything for quite a while. I could imagine Apple making quite a splash with a small, touchscreen, mini-iBook thing. But, again, we won't see anything until the entire current line is updated and strong, I imagine.
I own an Archos AV420, which I've enjoyed for portable video. There's a larger one out now, as well. Like most PMPs though, you need to be comfortable transcoding video in order to get things into the target format easily.
For me it's doubled as a portable picture viewer and camera backup, as it has a compact flash slot on the device, making it easy to simply dump a full CF card on to it while out and about. The video makes it fun for plane rides. It's small, but that's why I like it.
Well, it's more featured than a PDA, as it runs full Windows apps apparently. It seems like an entry into the ultra-small laptop line. Given the lack of ultra-small laptops in the 500-1000 price range, I could see it selling somewhat well.
I'd kind of like one to replace my 10lb Windows laptop that generally only gets used as an IE check for web design and some small music programs. If it can run full apps, then there's no reason it can't be used for a few media-friendly things; would be kind of neat for a very small music editor, video tool, whatever.
Not really. The big difference is intent, as far as I see it. If you're at a bank, and want to split things up, or use an intermediary, then you're guilty. If you simply space your deposits out, well, you might be structuring. Or you might simply be reading the markets and deciding that you'll figure out what's going on at a later date.
Many people have regular large payments added to their account twice a month -- it's a paycheck. Similarly, plenty of people get allowances monthly for whatever reason, or do freelance work, or the occasional odd job. Those amounts can be in the high hundreds or thousands. Just because someone decides over, say, a 3 month period to make 3 $5 deposits doesn't mean they're trying to structure; they could be seeing if the stock market is going to take a turn for the better (or worse, depending on where they want to enter the market), and realize that they're not going to do anything, and want the money in a bank.
Granted, you can still get flagged and they can look into you. But unless you're actually breaking the law, you can simply explain what you did -- show the receipts for freelancing, or have your parents call if they're gifting money to you, or whatever. I agree that it's stupid for the ceilings to come down when inflation marches onwards, but it works in both directions -- they check for large, irregular deposits, as well as large, irregular withdrawls. The latter are for your protection, and the former are for their protection.
You make it sound like Sony won't encounter the same problems MS did, with delayed games, slow release schedules, and problems meeting demand. Yet, all of those things happened with the PS2 -- its first year was notoriously slow.
Exactly. Friend of mine graduated from my program and moved out to California to work for IBM. Starting salary for her? $75k. But she worked in Silicon Valley... and the only place she could afford was a shared apartment with 3 other new employees. Granted, it was a nice apartment...
I moved to the other coast, make about half what she does, and I'm buying a house this summer. She may be making more money, but that doesn't mean she has more money.
Slashdot Mirror
I had this happen to me in my old apartment. We didn't own a fax machine, but we got fax calls at 4am for a week. Needless to say, they were not very pleasant mornings.
I like the guy's ideas, and I think he's definitely an asset. What he really needs, though, is exactly what he just got -- a parent company that will put a little restraint on what he says before any code for a game is written. Fable sounded great on paper, but was likely impossible to create as written in reality.
Intergem White Gold, Diamond-encrusted iPod Nano Case
The stupid thing about it is that "most expensive" is so fleeting. All someone would have to do is craft a device that uses more gold or more diamond, and ta da.
Long board games don't have that problem -- you finish one game, and the next time, it's all new. So you can play it at an entirely different party with different people and you don't have to spend forever setting it up. Not to mention that those board games have enough ways to "sudden death" themselves in order to finish up a long evening -- it doesn't force a GM to break their game because it's 2am and the players are only halfway through.
And 3.0 and 95 and 98 and Me...
Not to mention that at what point do you cease to be a US company? You'll always need people in the US to coordinate. If you're so outsourced where you're doing all of your business, from production to sales, in another country... you're no longer outsourced. You're just a business in the other country.
The whole POINT of outsourcing is to save on labor and material costs so you make more money in the US. With any outsourcing, you're going to double the managerial staff. You need to have effective management at the outsourcing location, and you need managers at the local site in order to tell them what they need to do. You also need technology people at the local site in order to take what they're doing and run testing on it; since they're not doing the raw coding, you don't need as many to create a large mass of code, as they're more review/testing. But in no way does that create a company that's "nearly all outsourced." If you were to do that, you would experience so many other issues that your competitor who's doing it smarter with more staff in both locations is going to be kicking your ass.
Not to mention that it requires two separate advertising budgets.
I still like seeing movies in theaters because it's easier to go with friends. You can get a group of 6 together and see a movie in the theater and then talk about it afterwards. If you're at home, you'll just talk over the movie, or someone's seen it already and will be more annoying than they would've been in the theater anyway!
But if this causes the really crappy theaters to pay a bit more attention to the quality of service they provide, hey, I can't see a problem with it. I refuse to by any food or drink at the big mega-theaters, where they're staffed by teens and the popcorn is trucked in from a warehouse. Yet the local theater that has the popcorn machine right there, and the staff are usually hipsters? I almost always buy a bag.
I think there were issues with MiniDisc, but I do think it was an issue of marketing. They were marketed as a replacement for CDs, but they really sucked in that regard. However, they're fantastic as a replacement for tape -- easy to record to on the fly, smaller, digital, etc. But they were never sold as thus.
But definitely it would be easier to be done at an early age, as after puberty there's really no way to easily create neural pathways to the brain. It's the same reason why it's easy for kids to learn languages, yet more difficult for adults. I'm sure it could assist amblyopia in adults, but it would probably be impossible to cure it.
But if your eyes individually are having problems, then I don't think this treatment would address that. It seems to focus on differences between the eyes, versus any inherent weakness in a single eye individually.
Their PowerMacs have used only SATA basically since it came out, for example, but they didn't create a new standard. They do a lot of funky stuff with FireWire, but they're adding more USB (and really did a major push to help USB get started). Contrast that with, as you say, the ADC connection, or how long they stuck with SCSI on the home computer offerings despite the high prices. They still make it quite difficult to eject CDs without an Apple keyboard, mind.
I see it more as Apple realizing that if they really want to compete, there are some concessions they need to make. Forcing people to use adapters (that generally only they sold) on monitors that already cost more than the competition? I'm sure some exec in a meeting finally said "uhh, guys? yeah, this was kind of a stupid idea. I mean, a good idea, but still stupid."
So they dropped it. To me (as someone with a PowerMac with an ADC connector and a converter dongle hanging out the back), that gives me a good feeling -- they realized it really wasn't what people wanted and dropped it. They still hold on to some things that are bizarre but as TFA shows, they're not really afraid to mess with their own stuff to either make the programs/OS more efficient or the hardware better (and after it's better, make sure it's still compatible).
Dropped. The last few revisions of PowerMacs don't have ADC ports, and the G5-styled Cinema Displays don't use ADC either. It's been that way for over a year now, I believe. Mostly, I think, because they realized there were lots of DVI monitors out there that weren't Apple that cost less and people had to buy adapters for. They figured "ah hell, it's cheaper for us to just use DVI anyway."
It would be nice if Microsoft were a little more up front about all this crazy tech they're adding. Yes, we all realize that computers are "neato," but we've come to the point where a lot of people really do use them to work, and it's nice to see what you could be working on in the upcoming years.
Given what we know is in Vista, it doesn't make much sense for the entirety to be rewritten. Why would they choose to recode the Registry and then follow through on actually including it? Similarly, look how many things are being backported to XP, and easily at that -- that doesn't sound like Vista is "all new" to me. But it appears that by NOT doing what Allchin said they were going to do, they now get to "scramble" and rewrite tons of code. I'm sure that's significantly less efficient than simply starting from scratch in the first place.
Otherwise it's a pretty neat little thing, and seems to work well w/o much hassle. I'm still skeptical of those slimline DVD drives in media computers, though...
Looking back, I actually think it's one of the more unique elements of FF6. The last boss is actually pretty tough. Some of the other fights in the game are hard due to limitations or restrictions, but the 4-in-a-row boss fight took me about 3 tries before I beat it.
Of course, after I played a bit more I learned some tricks that made it easier (yay life 3) but it's still one of the harder fights in the game.
Conversely, if programmers sufficiently document their binaries, that's not as much of a problem. URLs for other binaries, or instructions for checking/compiling dependencies, can speed up that process.
Of course, binaries are a huge advantage to non-experts and beginners, who just want a program to be there. They don't care about maximizing efficiency, they care about getting their work/fun done.
So really, it entirely depends on the application. For programs that are typically for the hardcore programmer/user crowd, source-only makes sense -- those people who use the program are going to know how to compile and check everything already. But for programs like, say, a CD burning program? I definitely think both should be provided, and installation for both should be well documented. Given how easy it is to provide a binary, even if it's "fat," there's no reason why a more popular program can't provide both versions.
Obviously, it's better to infringe on a trademark compared to a copyrighted image of a controller.
It can accept files up to 640x320 and it does look better to have the higher quality video on there. It does a good job of scaling on its own. It also does a pretty good job of detecting widescreen, although that's easy to fix if it detects incorrectly. The biggest problem is if you download a lot of videos, they'll often use some weird format for the audio. I'm not sure why some places or people decide on odd formats for audio, unless they're not really all that aware of codec types and ease of use for users, but ah well. Most transcoding tools will allow you to passthrough the video (or audio) and only re-encode the part that won't work
There was a problem with losing sync for video files encoded using VBR, but that's been less of a problem with current firmware. If you encode everything with CBR then it's not even an issue.
It doesn't play MKV or OGM files, which are a pain to reconvert. But there's only a few players that handle those formats on desktops, and it requires installing codecs, so that's not surprising.
The battery life is approximately 5-7 hours depending on what you're doing with it. If you're watching a huge movie encoded at very high quality, it's obviously going to run through the battery faster. There's 3 levels of brightness, and the lowest setting is great if it's sunny or you're in a darkened room. Max bright is just that -- very bright -- and works well in all other situations, I've found. The battery life has surprised me, as I didn't expect to get very long. But I'm able to go through about 16-20 TV shows at around 20min apiece before I start to worry about the battery (it'll end up around 20% or so). It doesn't die suddenly at the last few percentage bits, so you're really good until it gets to 2-3%. It also lasts a very long time between use. There's very little trickle when the device isn't being used, so I never worry about it being dead if I haven't used it in a while -- at worst it's about 10% lower than it was when I last used it.
And for picture use, it lasts easily 10 hours. I haven't timed it because that's a very long time to be looking through photos, but I've passed it around for people to look at photos for about an hour, and it was over 90% battery life still.
I like the 20gig ones because, well, that *is* a lot of video. Unless you're planning on being away from home for a long time, I found that it held as much as I needed to without being bored. It usually means you'll have a folder of "stuff for AV420" on your computer so you're ready to go, but that's not a big deal.
I don't think it's going to appeal to people who look at Tablet PCs and say "what's the point," but I think it does present some interesting options for those who like the idea behind Tablet PCs, but don't like the high price and large device.
They probably will, thanks to the new Intel chips, but we probably won't see anything for quite a while. I could imagine Apple making quite a splash with a small, touchscreen, mini-iBook thing. But, again, we won't see anything until the entire current line is updated and strong, I imagine.
For me it's doubled as a portable picture viewer and camera backup, as it has a compact flash slot on the device, making it easy to simply dump a full CF card on to it while out and about. The video makes it fun for plane rides. It's small, but that's why I like it.
I'd kind of like one to replace my 10lb Windows laptop that generally only gets used as an IE check for web design and some small music programs. If it can run full apps, then there's no reason it can't be used for a few media-friendly things; would be kind of neat for a very small music editor, video tool, whatever.
Many people have regular large payments added to their account twice a month -- it's a paycheck. Similarly, plenty of people get allowances monthly for whatever reason, or do freelance work, or the occasional odd job. Those amounts can be in the high hundreds or thousands. Just because someone decides over, say, a 3 month period to make 3 $5 deposits doesn't mean they're trying to structure; they could be seeing if the stock market is going to take a turn for the better (or worse, depending on where they want to enter the market), and realize that they're not going to do anything, and want the money in a bank.
Granted, you can still get flagged and they can look into you. But unless you're actually breaking the law, you can simply explain what you did -- show the receipts for freelancing, or have your parents call if they're gifting money to you, or whatever. I agree that it's stupid for the ceilings to come down when inflation marches onwards, but it works in both directions -- they check for large, irregular deposits, as well as large, irregular withdrawls. The latter are for your protection, and the former are for their protection.
You make it sound like Sony won't encounter the same problems MS did, with delayed games, slow release schedules, and problems meeting demand. Yet, all of those things happened with the PS2 -- its first year was notoriously slow.
I moved to the other coast, make about half what she does, and I'm buying a house this summer. She may be making more money, but that doesn't mean she has more money.