I think you make some very valid points, but to conclude the movie was "bad" from it? That's just personal opinion, and I'd argue you're possibly just biased towards certain types of science-fiction?
1. The camerawork (as you admit yourself) is really just one style of filming, and a viewer may love or hate it. It's supposed to give the viewer more of a feel of being involved in the action him/herself, instead of viewing it passively from the "outside". I think it's kind of a "fad" right now, and like most "techniques" - can be way over-used. (If it gets used with every single "action" movie out there, for example, it's going to entirely lose its purpose.) I happened to like the "raw, edgy" feel it gave to Battlestar Galactica though.
2. Sure, Kirk's story seems really "far fetched"... but come on! Anyone willing to accept the overly-dramatic acting style of William Shatner in the original Trek series should be just as willing/able to accept this stuff, no? Besides, in the world of Star Trek, people are past worrying about issues of "money", as we worry about it today. In that light, maybe the Enterprise wasn't quite as big a concern as you're assuming it would have been to the Federation?
3. The engine rooms of the ships, I agree, might have been better. But again, this movie was based on the original TV series, where sets were often so bad, you were looking at cardboard boxes wrapped in aluminum foil with big, non-functional knobs or buttons glued on top. Given that background, I'm not sure if it would have been more "unbelievable" to do "state of the art" looking sets throughout the movie?
After seeing the new Trek movie, it suddenly dawned on me that the "colorful" characters are what makes or breaks Star Trek movies or episodes.
I really liked the TNG series on TV, but when you think about it, they had to "borrow" some of the most important character elements of the original show, just to make the series really "work".
EG. "Data" was really just a way to re-invent Spock's personality. So much of the "fun" and the "intrigue" in Star Trek hinges on that idea of having a purely logical character trying to understand what human "emotion" is all about. So instead of a Vulcan, you have a robot... but same principle.
That said though, sure, TNG was never going to lend itself really well to feature-length movies, because it was more of a "soap opera in space" format than the original. I don't say that to "knock" it in any way -- but let's face it. How many soap operas ever got spun off into successful movies? A helluva lot of people watched the "classic" ones like "The Young and the Restless" or "As The World Turns" -- but nope, no movies came from those.
That's one reason I've stuck to working for small companies. The pay potential isn't there like it is for the bigger firms, but by contrast, I *am* I.T., or a big part of it. If they want to let me go, they're essentially saying "We don't need any computer support in-house anymore." -- and that's a much tougher thing for them to swallow.
I'd rather be less expendable and have more control over what I do than have a fatter paycheck, but a constant fear of a layoff.
You prevent the police from "attaching GPS devices to cars of people not accused of any crimes, just to see where he goes" by requiring a WARRANT for the activity!
You don't just allow it, and hope that "after it's abused enough, the courts will start tossing it out"!
This is NOT the same thing as tailing someone, because for one thing, you're talking about the police physically TAMPERING with your vehicle, which is your PERSONAL PROPERTY. There's a good chance such a device is going to need to be spliced into your car or truck's battery for power, for one thing. GPS units are notoriously high drain devices, and we're talking GPS *receivers* here, not *transmitters*. You think it's acceptable for a cop to start cutting up the wires on your vehicle to attach one of these things, with NO warrant first?
Right... a person's driveway is *not* public. It's private property, paid for and maintained by the land-owner.
What they were probably trying to argue is that a vehicle out in the open (not garaged) is in plain sight of any police officer driving or walking past it. Therefore, they think that gives them the ability to attach their GPS unit to it, at will, without need for a warrant.
(After all, repo men work under similar terms when trying to reclaim a car someone quit paying their monthly loan payment on. If you leave it out in your driveway, they'll come up and tow it away. If it's locked up in your garage however, they have to wait until you move it someplace else before they can snatch it.)
I think the most important issue here, though, is that affixing a GPS to one's vehicle amounts to tampering with their private property, in and of itself. It would be, at the very least, construed as vandalism, if I decided I wanted to glue some extra stuff on the side of my neighbor's car without permission, right?
I've been saying the same thing for quite a while. I do think there are some serious problems with some of the public school districts that require funds to address properly. These, as others have noted, tend to be infrastructure-related, though. Some of our city schools I've been through have leaky roofs, broken air-conditioners, and windows that won't stay open on their own, anymore.
If you're going to hold school in a building, the building has to be functional, first.
Other districts have a problem with not enough money for teacher salaries. But overall, we're talking more of a resource distribution issue than one of simply needing MORE funding.
I can drive 10 minutes from one of the schools in the most disrepair and with the most disgruntled, underpaid teachers, and find another "public school" that's practically new, with the latest technologies installed in it. Often, you'll find they just approved some expense in the multiple $10,000 range for a new scoreboard on their field, or a new Olympic sized indoor pool, or ??
Obviously, this discrepancy occurs because of the boundaries between the municipalities and their corresponding tax districts. Yet the students attending probably cross those boundaries constantly, throughout life in our city.
I often wonder if it really makes any sense for a particular municipality to be so concerned with making THEIR school superior, vs. worrying about the "health" of the public schools in the surrounding areas, on the whole?
Yep... and it's one reason I've always questioned if it was really a step BACKWARDS with OS X, vs. the classic MacOS method of doing things?
I know people got sick and tired of the whole "resource fork" issue, where a native Mac file would lose its extra info when copied over a network to a non-Mac system, or media formatted in a foreign file system (or perhaps archived with a not fully compliant archiving program). But it seems like that wasn't Apple's fault, so much as nobody else having an understanding (or caring) how their file format worked.
I thought it made a lot more sense than having 3 letter "extensions" designating filetype. Many situations come up where an extension is used by multiple different programs - so it's not certain what the file really goes to.
Honestly, it probably did grow "larger than life" over the years, with so many people fondly remembering it (but not having really considered how far the 3D shooter genre has come since then either).
I'd agree that it was "no Quake", but it wasn't supposed to be. Part of what made the game really good, IMHO, was the humor and lightheartedness to it - while still keeping the player focused on having "serious" missions and goals.
A lot of action arcade games are "silly" or "cute", and that has an audience and a purpose. Others try to be as serious and realistic as possible, and that's got merit too. But it's relatively rare you get a game like Duke Nukem, where the character's random comments and gestures keep you laughing, while creating a fondness for the character himself. Yet at the same time, the game still appeals to the typical male's "violent side". You still get to blow things up and kill all sorts of aliens, and especially on multi-player mode, you had real strategies to employ. (I think it was the first of its type to make use of explosives you could drop and trigger remotely afterwards.)
At the end of the day though, how much do we "fondly remember" the main character in Quake, or even the space marine in Doom, compared to "The Duke"?
Sure, that's what Microsoft keeps saying about these issues too. But at some point, I think a commercial OS maker has to "take charge" of things. If a major vendor keeps producing products that make your OS look bad, you either DO something to address it, or you suffer from their continual screw-ups.
Why do you think MS bundles so many drivers with the OS itself? They realize what a piss-poor user experience it is, when you install Windows, only to be greeted by a VGA 640x480 display in 16 colors, no sound, no working modem or NIC card, etc. By the same token, the user experience is just as piss-poor AFTER the OS is installed and working with the hardware built into the PC, if other (often expensive) peripherals malfunction with it.
I have an HP TouchSmart PC at home, for example. Windows XP isn't even a viable option for it, because HP doesn't offer any touchscreen drivers for XP, only Vista. Windows 7, however, is also supposed to have support for its touchscreen and utilities.
Vista has been a nightmare on the system, though. Practically nothing I've tried to use as a peripheral with it has worked properly!
(Ironically, after going through 3 different USB modems I had, trying to get one to work as a faxmodem on it - the ONLY thing I got to work at all was an APPLE USB modem dongle! I had to load all of Apple's "Boot Camp" drivers into Vista to get it to detect it properly, but it worked.)
Other example of spectacular failures include my Canon "Canoscan" USB scanner, which actually claims to have Vista support, but I never got Canon's Vista driver to work properly on it, and my HP 2550N Color LaserJet printer, for which HP seem to have no "toolbox" type utility software for it -- hence I can't figure out why the printer is only printing one test page (of 3 total that should come out), and just blinks an orange "attention" light any time I send it a normal print job.
If Windows 7 RC1 will run on the TouchSmart, it's well worth at least trying it for free, to see if it has more compatibility with the things I need to use. If not, well - it was free to try. If so, great... might even be worth paying for it in a year, if I'm still getting use out of the machine.
Yeah... I thought the same thing - although granted, this is just "proof of concept" stage, right now.
It's also worth considering, though, the fact that this system allows for another "button state" you don't generally have with physical buttons. You have "raised", "flat" (no air compressor running), AND "convex" where the compressor is creating a vacuum, sucking the surface inwards.
The problem I think you'd have is, even IF your ISP guaranteed they weren't leaving any logs behind, most of the other "big name" web sites you use *do* log your activity.
For example, good old Google keeps records of every single search ever done and which IP address it originated from!
(I was watching a news story not that long ago about a murder suspect that was prosecuted largely because they were able to subpoena Google to turn over all of the search queries done by this individual. They found all sorts of searches related to the type of murder he was suspected of doing, and methods to cover it up, etc.)
For starters, the Supreme Court decision that supposedly "upheld the rights of the individual to keep and bear arms" was disturbing, because it just *barely* even passed!
Justice Stephen Breyer, for example, said:
"About 80,000 to 100,000 people every year in the United States are either killed or wounded in gun-related homicides or crimes or accidents or suicides," he said. "In the District, I guess the number is somewhere around 200 to 300 dead and maybe 1,500 to 2,000 wounded. Now, in light of that, why isn't a ban on handguns, while allowing the use of rifles and muskets, a reasonable or proportionate response on behalf of the District of Columbia?"
It doesn't matter if his boss can PROVE it or not, really. The fact is, he probably can't, if he has no prior knowledge of the employee's ability and skill at making a good patch cable.
He's probably like me though, going by past experiences with hand-made cables. I remember hassles they caused that cost FAR more in troubleshooting time than the initial greater cost of using pre-tested/pre-made cables instead!
The thing is, the fact that 44GB *is* more than "most people use in a year" is part of the reason it should be completely ACCEPTABLE for a person to use that much!
Their entire business model was designed around the idea that MOST people will pay for a lot of service they under-utilize. Why do so many keep subscribing for a level of service they don't seem to use or need (in this case, an "unlimited" broadband Internet package)? Because people like the INSURANCE of knowing the capabilities are there, in case they happen to want them!
When providers start cracking down on people who actually USE what they paid for (transferring a lot of data over that unlimited connection), they shake everyone else's confidence in the service - and even casual/light users start jumping ship. (Nobody wants to be the "next one" who gets cut off or penalized, because they suddenly had a need to transfer a lot of data, after going for a long time NOT doing so.)
The "typical" bandwidth usage of a customer is only going to keep increasing, as people get more savvy about what's available, and tools become more prevalent that let you watch video entertainment that's supplied over the Internet connection.
ISP's would be smart to invest in having the capabilities of supplying what they promised everyone in the first place, instead of trying to cap/limit/meter people to save money in the short term.
I've always heard complaints and warnings about Tiger Direct, but I'd have to side with you on this, to an extent.... Most of the time, I don't listen to the advertising hype in their ad copy. Rather, I go straight to the list of specs. The info seems to usually be there, if you care to read it.
EG. They can tell you what an "Awesome price" it is on a "Powerhouse" of a computer - but it'll tell you in there someplace if it's a Celeron processor with integrated Intel video, or what-not.
The people getting most upset with them seem to be the ones who don't know what those tech specs mean, and they just trust the "hype" and get disappointed.
I've recommended some of their closeout notebook computer deals to people before, and they've been quite happy with what they got.
Yeah, I have to agree with you. NewEgg ships promptly and seems to fill their orders accurately, plus offers great pricing (especially with the free shipping deals they run on various items).
I guess all of that adds up to excite people about them and give them those 5 star ratings.
I started using them regularly though, and honestly, I've had a lot of problems. Might just be bad luck, but here are some examples:
1. Ordered an Epson DLP projector and it arrived D.O.A. Just had a blinking orange power light whenever I turned it on. Had to send it back, and doing so was a little bit of a hassle. NewEgg made me use their automated RMA system, which means waiting at least a day or so just to get confirmation that they're really going to accept your return. Doesn't seem possible to talk to a human and get it done any quicker?
2. Ordered a Microsoft keyboard on sale from them, and again, arrived D.O.A. I plugged it into the USB port of 6 different computers (found it hard to believe something as basic as a keyboard was dead), but nothing..... Return shipping to NewEgg made it more cost-effective to eat the loss and throw it away.
3. Ordered a 500GB SATA notebook hard drive, and when it arrived (took a long time too, for some reason), the SATA connector on the edge of it was broken off. Looked like they wrapped the bubble wrap too tightly around the drive and snapped off the connector when they taped it up. Had to go through the RMA hassle AGAIN, and it took them several days to approve my return this time around.
That might be, but if so, it was a terrible business plan and as an earlier poster said, Chapter 7 was inevitable.
I actually do remember the release of the Pleo and saw a couple in stores. Everyone looked at it for about 10 seconds, saw the price tag and said "Ouch!", walking away quickly.
Especially in THIS economy, people can't justify hundreds of dollars spent on a gimmicky toy, which is what Pleo amounts to. I'm as big a geek as anybody, but I still look for products that actually do something cool I think I'll use. For example, I just saw a sale today on 1TB SATA drives for about $78 each. I could buy 3 for a RAID 5 array in a computer and still have spent less than a Pleo. I know I can do a lot with the drive space....
I totally agree with the person who said a full-fledged "Hero 1" type robot would be a better product. Make it versatile enough, and schools will pay the higher price to have one in a learning lab, etc.
All true and valid points... But I'd also add that by the year 2020, it seems feasible that the "state of the art" in video teleconferencing would be FAR more advanced than what we've got now.
Currently, with an Apple Mac using iChat AV, I'm able to do a pretty fluid and usable video conference with as many as 2 or 3 other people simultaneously, assuming we all have good broadband connections.
If we reach a point where an Internet connection with a speed of, say 50-60mbits is "standard fare" in homes and apartments? I can easily see where software could be developed just for the purpose of e-lectures and e-learning. All participants would always see and hear the teacher in high-resolution on a full-screen display, and video/audio responses could be queued up to send back to him/her at points where he/she was ready to "take questions" from the students. All participants could then view those responses at the same time the teacher clicks to view them, sequentially.
Wouldn't an experience like THAT allow for good 2-way communications without need of a physical lecture hall?
But very FEW things in life come with a guarantee.
I've *long* felt that it's probable the MAJORITY of people with degrees out there really retained less than maybe 20% of what they learned in college.
Knowledge tends to be a "use it or lose it" proposition, really.
So yes, employers need to interview anyone who claims to have the skills and ability to do a job they're seeking new hires for. But it's also understandable they'd value degrees. They don't guarantee a thing, but they indicate the individual was at least *capable* of following instructions well enough to pass the courses, diligent enough to show up for the majority of classes, etc.
I think it's an interesting story, but sure... if a warrant was obtained first, the FBI actually did this the RIGHT way, and that makes me happy.
That's how law enforcement is supposed to work. Sometimes it seems like we completely forget that, these days, with all the stories of "the law" just doing whatever they please, secretly.
Yeah.... and if only such a facsimile device was equipped with a camera that logged time-stamped video of the sender, proving he/she really did sign the document?
Oh yeah, fax machines don't provide any of those layers of security -- unlike this robotic arm setup. Nevermind....
Granted, it's theoretically possible... but what's the alternative in this case? You go into detail trying to explain to the (now glassy-eyed) user all the potential sneaky ways someone might get a virus onto their Mac, despite the marketing they heard about Macs not having the virus/spyware problems of a Windows PC?
All that's going to accomplish in most cases is the user walking away with nothing more than some vague idea that "this computer geek tells me all the advertising is a lie, so I guess the Mac isn't any good after all". Then they'll stick with Windows and be at FAR greater risk of spyware/virus problems.
Reality is, OS X doesn't let you run as "root" in normal operation of the operating system. Most Windows users, by contrast, run as "Administrator" with full access to everything. (Yeah, that's changing with Vista, but their security model still annoys enough people so they sometimes override it and go back to running as administrator all the time, like XP did.)
For example, I have a 6 year old daughter who has discovered the wonders of YouTube videos on my iPhone. She knows how to do a basic search for things she wants to see, and finds all sorts of little cartoon segments and music videos for things she likes.
Unfortunately, there are also issues like her last search for "Easter bunny" bringing up a Charlie Brown Easter cartoon, overdubbed with all sorts of profanity, violent and racist remarks, in an attempt to be humorous.
She was still too young to understand all of it, but I had to wrestle the phone away from her before my mom overheard what it was saying and went ballistic.... She proceeded to try to find the SAME video 3 or 4 times after that, because she wanted to watch "Charlie Brown Easter" on there.
I found myself *really* wishing the iPhone had a family-friendly filter of some sort for YouTube viewing on it.
The younger kids really aren't going to go searching Google and figuring out how to use proxy sites to get around filters, etc. etc. All you really want for them is a basic "barrier" to things you don't want them accidentally stumbling onto. If it blocks known ad banner type sites that inject malware and so forth, that's a plus as well.
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I think you make some very valid points, but to conclude the movie was "bad" from it? That's just personal opinion, and I'd argue you're possibly just biased towards certain types of science-fiction?
1. The camerawork (as you admit yourself) is really just one style of filming, and a viewer may love or hate it. It's supposed to give the viewer more of a feel of being involved in the action him/herself, instead of viewing it passively from the "outside". I think it's kind of a "fad" right now, and like most "techniques" - can be way over-used. (If it gets used with every single "action" movie out there, for example, it's going to entirely lose its purpose.) I happened to like the "raw, edgy" feel it gave to Battlestar Galactica though.
2. Sure, Kirk's story seems really "far fetched" ... but come on! Anyone willing to accept the overly-dramatic acting style of William Shatner in the original Trek series should be just as willing/able to accept this stuff, no? Besides, in the world of Star Trek, people are past worrying about issues of "money", as we worry about it today. In that light, maybe the Enterprise wasn't quite as big a concern as you're assuming it would have been to the Federation?
3. The engine rooms of the ships, I agree, might have been better. But again, this movie was based on the original TV series, where sets were often so bad, you were looking at cardboard boxes wrapped in aluminum foil with big, non-functional knobs or buttons glued on top. Given that background, I'm not sure if it would have been more "unbelievable" to do "state of the art" looking sets throughout the movie?
After seeing the new Trek movie, it suddenly dawned on me that the "colorful" characters are what makes or breaks Star Trek movies or episodes.
I really liked the TNG series on TV, but when you think about it, they had to "borrow" some of the most important character elements of the original show, just to make the series really "work".
EG. "Data" was really just a way to re-invent Spock's personality. So much of the "fun" and the "intrigue" in Star Trek hinges on that idea of having a purely logical character trying to understand what human "emotion" is all about. So instead of a Vulcan, you have a robot ... but same principle.
That said though, sure, TNG was never going to lend itself really well to feature-length movies, because it was more of a "soap opera in space" format than the original. I don't say that to "knock" it in any way -- but let's face it. How many soap operas ever got spun off into successful movies? A helluva lot of people watched the "classic" ones like "The Young and the Restless" or "As The World Turns" -- but nope, no movies came from those.
That's one reason I've stuck to working for small companies. The pay potential isn't there like it is for the bigger firms, but by contrast, I *am* I.T., or a big part of it. If they want to let me go, they're essentially saying "We don't need any computer support in-house anymore." -- and that's a much tougher thing for them to swallow.
I'd rather be less expendable and have more control over what I do than have a fatter paycheck, but a constant fear of a layoff.
You prevent the police from "attaching GPS devices to cars of people not accused of any crimes, just to see where he goes" by requiring a WARRANT for the activity!
You don't just allow it, and hope that "after it's abused enough, the courts will start tossing it out"!
This is NOT the same thing as tailing someone, because for one thing, you're talking about the police physically TAMPERING with your vehicle, which is your PERSONAL PROPERTY. There's a good chance such a device is going to need to be spliced into your car or truck's battery for power, for one thing. GPS units are notoriously high drain devices, and we're talking GPS *receivers* here, not *transmitters*. You think it's acceptable for a cop to start cutting up the wires on your vehicle to attach one of these things, with NO warrant first?
Right... a person's driveway is *not* public. It's private property, paid for and maintained by the land-owner.
What they were probably trying to argue is that a vehicle out in the open (not garaged) is in plain sight of any police officer driving or walking past it. Therefore, they think that gives them the ability to attach their GPS unit to it, at will, without need for a warrant.
(After all, repo men work under similar terms when trying to reclaim a car someone quit paying their monthly loan payment on. If you leave it out in your driveway, they'll come up and tow it away. If it's locked up in your garage however, they have to wait until you move it someplace else before they can snatch it.)
I think the most important issue here, though, is that affixing a GPS to one's vehicle amounts to tampering with their private property, in and of itself. It would be, at the very least, construed as vandalism, if I decided I wanted to glue some extra stuff on the side of my neighbor's car without permission, right?
I've been saying the same thing for quite a while. I do think there are some serious problems with some of the public school districts that require funds to address properly. These, as others have noted, tend to be infrastructure-related, though. Some of our city schools I've been through have leaky roofs, broken air-conditioners, and windows that won't stay open on their own, anymore.
If you're going to hold school in a building, the building has to be functional, first.
Other districts have a problem with not enough money for teacher salaries. But overall, we're talking more of a resource distribution issue than one of simply needing MORE funding.
I can drive 10 minutes from one of the schools in the most disrepair and with the most disgruntled, underpaid teachers, and find another "public school" that's practically new, with the latest technologies installed in it. Often, you'll find they just approved some expense in the multiple $10,000 range for a new scoreboard on their field, or a new Olympic sized indoor pool, or ??
Obviously, this discrepancy occurs because of the boundaries between the municipalities and their corresponding tax districts. Yet the students attending probably cross those boundaries constantly, throughout life in our city.
I often wonder if it really makes any sense for a particular municipality to be so concerned with making THEIR school superior, vs. worrying about the "health" of the public schools in the surrounding areas, on the whole?
Yep... and it's one reason I've always questioned if it was really a step BACKWARDS with OS X, vs. the classic MacOS method of doing things?
I know people got sick and tired of the whole "resource fork" issue, where a native Mac file would lose its extra info when copied over a network to a non-Mac system, or media formatted in a foreign file system (or perhaps archived with a not fully compliant archiving program). But it seems like that wasn't Apple's fault, so much as nobody else having an understanding (or caring) how their file format worked.
I thought it made a lot more sense than having 3 letter "extensions" designating filetype. Many situations come up where an extension is used by multiple different programs - so it's not certain what the file really goes to.
Honestly, it probably did grow "larger than life" over the years, with so many people fondly remembering it (but not having really considered how far the 3D shooter genre has come since then either).
I'd agree that it was "no Quake", but it wasn't supposed to be. Part of what made the game really good, IMHO, was the humor and lightheartedness to it - while still keeping the player focused on having "serious" missions and goals.
A lot of action arcade games are "silly" or "cute", and that has an audience and a purpose. Others try to be as serious and realistic as possible, and that's got merit too. But it's relatively rare you get a game like Duke Nukem, where the character's random comments and gestures keep you laughing, while creating a fondness for the character himself. Yet at the same time, the game still appeals to the typical male's "violent side". You still get to blow things up and kill all sorts of aliens, and especially on multi-player mode, you had real strategies to employ. (I think it was the first of its type to make use of explosives you could drop and trigger remotely afterwards.)
At the end of the day though, how much do we "fondly remember" the main character in Quake, or even the space marine in Doom, compared to "The Duke"?
As the original article says, "There may be Securities and Exchange-related reasons for shuttering the posts."
Sure, that's what Microsoft keeps saying about these issues too. But at some point, I think a commercial OS maker has to "take charge" of things. If a major vendor keeps producing products that make your OS look bad, you either DO something to address it, or you suffer from their continual screw-ups.
Why do you think MS bundles so many drivers with the OS itself? They realize what a piss-poor user experience it is, when you install Windows, only to be greeted by a VGA 640x480 display in 16 colors, no sound, no working modem or NIC card, etc. By the same token, the user experience is just as piss-poor AFTER the OS is installed and working with the hardware built into the PC, if other (often expensive) peripherals malfunction with it.
Depends where you're coming from, I suppose.
I have an HP TouchSmart PC at home, for example. Windows XP isn't even a viable option for it, because HP doesn't offer any touchscreen drivers for XP, only Vista. Windows 7, however, is also supposed to have support for its touchscreen and utilities.
Vista has been a nightmare on the system, though. Practically nothing I've tried to use as a peripheral with it has worked properly!
(Ironically, after going through 3 different USB modems I had, trying to get one to work as a faxmodem on it - the ONLY thing I got to work at all was an APPLE USB modem dongle! I had to load all of Apple's "Boot Camp" drivers into Vista to get it to detect it properly, but it worked.)
Other example of spectacular failures include my Canon "Canoscan" USB scanner, which actually claims to have Vista support, but I never got Canon's Vista driver to work properly on it, and my HP 2550N Color LaserJet printer, for which HP seem to have no "toolbox" type utility software for it -- hence I can't figure out why the printer is only printing one test page (of 3 total that should come out), and just blinks an orange "attention" light any time I send it a normal print job.
If Windows 7 RC1 will run on the TouchSmart, it's well worth at least trying it for free, to see if it has more compatibility with the things I need to use. If not, well - it was free to try. If so, great... might even be worth paying for it in a year, if I'm still getting use out of the machine.
Yeah... I thought the same thing - although granted, this is just "proof of concept" stage, right now.
It's also worth considering, though, the fact that this system allows for another "button state" you don't generally have with physical buttons. You have "raised", "flat" (no air compressor running), AND "convex" where the compressor is creating a vacuum, sucking the surface inwards.
Maybe that could be put to creative/good use?
The problem I think you'd have is, even IF your ISP guaranteed they weren't leaving any logs behind, most of the other "big name" web sites you use *do* log your activity.
For example, good old Google keeps records of every single search ever done and which IP address it originated from!
(I was watching a news story not that long ago about a murder suspect that was prosecuted largely because they were able to subpoena Google to turn over all of the search queries done by this individual. They found all sorts of searches related to the type of murder he was suspected of doing, and methods to cover it up, etc.)
I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption.
For starters, the Supreme Court decision that supposedly "upheld the rights of the individual to keep and bear arms" was disturbing, because it just *barely* even passed!
Justice Stephen Breyer, for example, said:
"About 80,000 to 100,000 people every year in the United States are either killed or wounded in gun-related homicides or crimes or accidents or suicides," he said. "In the District, I guess the number is somewhere around 200 to 300 dead and maybe 1,500 to 2,000 wounded. Now, in light of that, why isn't a ban on handguns, while allowing the use of rifles and muskets, a reasonable or proportionate response on behalf of the District of Columbia?"
It doesn't matter if his boss can PROVE it or not, really. The fact is, he probably can't, if he has no prior knowledge of the employee's ability and skill at making a good patch cable.
He's probably like me though, going by past experiences with hand-made cables. I remember hassles they caused that cost FAR more in troubleshooting time than the initial greater cost of using pre-tested/pre-made cables instead!
The thing is, the fact that 44GB *is* more than "most people use in a year" is part of the reason it should be completely ACCEPTABLE for a person to use that much!
Their entire business model was designed around the idea that MOST people will pay for a lot of service they under-utilize. Why do so many keep subscribing for a level of service they don't seem to use or need (in this case, an "unlimited" broadband Internet package)? Because people like the INSURANCE of knowing the capabilities are there, in case they happen to want them!
When providers start cracking down on people who actually USE what they paid for (transferring a lot of data over that unlimited connection), they shake everyone else's confidence in the service - and even casual/light users start jumping ship. (Nobody wants to be the "next one" who gets cut off or penalized, because they suddenly had a need to transfer a lot of data, after going for a long time NOT doing so.)
The "typical" bandwidth usage of a customer is only going to keep increasing, as people get more savvy about what's available, and tools become more prevalent that let you watch video entertainment that's supplied over the Internet connection.
ISP's would be smart to invest in having the capabilities of supplying what they promised everyone in the first place, instead of trying to cap/limit/meter people to save money in the short term.
I've always heard complaints and warnings about Tiger Direct, but I'd have to side with you on this, to an extent.... Most of the time, I don't listen to the advertising hype in their ad copy. Rather, I go straight to the list of specs. The info seems to usually be there, if you care to read it.
EG. They can tell you what an "Awesome price" it is on a "Powerhouse" of a computer - but it'll tell you in there someplace if it's a Celeron processor with integrated Intel video, or what-not.
The people getting most upset with them seem to be the ones who don't know what those tech specs mean, and they just trust the "hype" and get disappointed.
I've recommended some of their closeout notebook computer deals to people before, and they've been quite happy with what they got.
Yeah, I have to agree with you. NewEgg ships promptly and seems to fill their orders accurately, plus offers great pricing (especially with the free shipping deals they run on various items).
I guess all of that adds up to excite people about them and give them those 5 star ratings.
I started using them regularly though, and honestly, I've had a lot of problems. Might just be bad luck, but here are some examples:
1. Ordered an Epson DLP projector and it arrived D.O.A. Just had a blinking orange power light whenever I turned it on. Had to send it back, and doing so was a little bit of a hassle. NewEgg made me use their automated RMA system, which means waiting at least a day or so just to get confirmation that they're really going to accept your return. Doesn't seem possible to talk to a human and get it done any quicker?
2. Ordered a Microsoft keyboard on sale from them, and again, arrived D.O.A. I plugged it into the USB port of 6 different computers (found it hard to believe something as basic as a keyboard was dead), but nothing..... Return shipping to NewEgg made it more cost-effective to eat the loss and throw it away.
3. Ordered a 500GB SATA notebook hard drive, and when it arrived (took a long time too, for some reason), the SATA connector on the edge of it was broken off. Looked like they wrapped the bubble wrap too tightly around the drive and snapped off the connector when they taped it up. Had to go through the RMA hassle AGAIN, and it took them several days to approve my return this time around.
That might be, but if so, it was a terrible business plan and as an earlier poster said, Chapter 7 was inevitable.
I actually do remember the release of the Pleo and saw a couple in stores. Everyone looked at it for about 10 seconds, saw the price tag and said "Ouch!", walking away quickly.
Especially in THIS economy, people can't justify hundreds of dollars spent on a gimmicky toy, which is what Pleo amounts to. I'm as big a geek as anybody, but I still look for products that actually do something cool I think I'll use. For example, I just saw a sale today on 1TB SATA drives for about $78 each. I could buy 3 for a RAID 5 array in a computer and still have spent less than a Pleo. I know I can do a lot with the drive space....
I totally agree with the person who said a full-fledged "Hero 1" type robot would be a better product. Make it versatile enough, and schools will pay the higher price to have one in a learning lab, etc.
All true and valid points... But I'd also add that by the year 2020, it seems feasible that the "state of the art" in video teleconferencing would be FAR more advanced than what we've got now.
Currently, with an Apple Mac using iChat AV, I'm able to do a pretty fluid and usable video conference with as many as 2 or 3 other people simultaneously, assuming we all have good broadband connections.
If we reach a point where an Internet connection with a speed of, say 50-60mbits is "standard fare" in homes and apartments? I can easily see where software could be developed just for the purpose of e-lectures and e-learning. All participants would always see and hear the teacher in high-resolution on a full-screen display, and video/audio responses could be queued up to send back to him/her at points where he/she was ready to "take questions" from the students. All participants could then view those responses at the same time the teacher clicks to view them, sequentially.
Wouldn't an experience like THAT allow for good 2-way communications without need of a physical lecture hall?
But very FEW things in life come with a guarantee.
I've *long* felt that it's probable the MAJORITY of people with degrees out there really retained less than maybe 20% of what they learned in college.
Knowledge tends to be a "use it or lose it" proposition, really.
So yes, employers need to interview anyone who claims to have the skills and ability to do a job they're seeking new hires for. But it's also understandable they'd value degrees. They don't guarantee a thing, but they indicate the individual was at least *capable* of following instructions well enough to pass the courses, diligent enough to show up for the majority of classes, etc.
I think it's an interesting story, but sure ... if a warrant was obtained first, the FBI actually did this the RIGHT way, and that makes me happy.
That's how law enforcement is supposed to work. Sometimes it seems like we completely forget that, these days, with all the stories of "the law" just doing whatever they please, secretly.
Yeah.... and if only such a facsimile device was equipped with a camera that logged time-stamped video of the sender, proving he/she really did sign the document?
Oh yeah, fax machines don't provide any of those layers of security -- unlike this robotic arm setup. Nevermind ....
Granted, it's theoretically possible ... but what's the alternative in this case? You go into detail trying to explain to the (now glassy-eyed) user all the potential sneaky ways someone might get a virus onto their Mac, despite the marketing they heard about Macs not having the virus/spyware problems of a Windows PC?
All that's going to accomplish in most cases is the user walking away with nothing more than some vague idea that "this computer geek tells me all the advertising is a lie, so I guess the Mac isn't any good after all". Then they'll stick with Windows and be at FAR greater risk of spyware/virus problems.
Reality is, OS X doesn't let you run as "root" in normal operation of the operating system. Most Windows users, by contrast, run as "Administrator" with full access to everything. (Yeah, that's changing with Vista, but their security model still annoys enough people so they sometimes override it and go back to running as administrator all the time, like XP did.)
Really, it depends on the age of the user though.
For example, I have a 6 year old daughter who has discovered the wonders of YouTube videos on my iPhone. She knows how to do a basic search for things she wants to see, and finds all sorts of little cartoon segments and music videos for things she likes.
Unfortunately, there are also issues like her last search for "Easter bunny" bringing up a Charlie Brown Easter cartoon, overdubbed with all sorts of profanity, violent and racist remarks, in an attempt to be humorous.
She was still too young to understand all of it, but I had to wrestle the phone away from her before my mom overheard what it was saying and went ballistic.... She proceeded to try to find the SAME video 3 or 4 times after that, because she wanted to watch "Charlie Brown Easter" on there.
I found myself *really* wishing the iPhone had a family-friendly filter of some sort for YouTube viewing on it.
The younger kids really aren't going to go searching Google and figuring out how to use proxy sites to get around filters, etc. etc. All you really want for them is a basic "barrier" to things you don't want them accidentally stumbling onto. If it blocks known ad banner type sites that inject malware and so forth, that's a plus as well.