Considering how much the trend in Linux is to simply copy the look, feel, and functionality of Windows it's not surprising that it's also copied Windows' trend toward being bloated.
I haven't seen anything innovative come out of Linux in years. Everything is simply "copy this" and "copy that" from other operating systems.
It's sad when the most exciting innovations in the *NIX world come from Apple, and not from the grassroots open source community.
Sometimes I wish the ad companies would know MORE about me (and I'm not just talking about online). That way I wouldn't have to see dozens of ads to insure a car I don't have, or to get a one-time cash payment for a lottery I didn't win, or invest money I don't have, or buy feminine products I don't have the organs for.
The ad companies have been trying to for years to come up with a way to micro-target their ads. Sometimes I think if they did it, I wouldn't see so many of them. Or at least the ones I did see would actually be for things I care about ("Don't forget Futurama starts in an hour!", "Our new hard drive is faster than ever!", "Someone just posted something about your neighbor on example.com!") and I wouldn't hate them so.
counterpoint is that traditionally Flu Vaccine has been purely voluntary, to the point that most insurance for most people not in narrowly defined risk groups won't pay for it.
I've had precisely the opposite experience. Over 20 years with six different employers and probably ten health plans every insurance company has covered my annual flu shot. Every one. Even the one I got this year. Aetna, U.S. Healthcare, BCBS, every single insurance company covered it. In fact at some places, the insurance company brought doctors and nurses to the jobsite to administer the vaccinations.
It's my understanding that sometimes it's not up to the insurance company to decide if it's covered, it's up to what the company you work for is willing to pay for. I guess the companies I've always worked for have thought it would be better to have its employees vaccinated and healthy to work and your companies have felt they'd rather roll the dice and let you burn sick days.
I have an HP multi-function, and it's OK. Not great. You can do basic printing easily and OS X loves it for that. But if you want to do any remote scanning, then you have to install this massive "suite" of HP software that is horribly designed, terribly buggy, and very unreliable. Remote scanning, even with HP's mess of a dozen different programs installed (Do you want to print your resume on a T-shirt? How about a mug?) only works half the time.
While I agree with what you say, it would be possible for iTunes to re-encode the files on the fly as they go into the media player. It already offers that as an option when syncing high bit rate MP3s to smaller capacity iPods.
iTunes does no file conversion before copying audio files to the iPod if it is in a format the iPod can play - AAC and mp3.
Depends on the iPod. On the lower-capacity iPods like the Shuffle, iTunes has an option to convert your high-quality audio files to 128k MP3s before putting them on the iPod so more can fit in a smaller space.
If the re-encoding bit is just a module, it would be pretty easy in the future for Apple to re-encode anything in your iTunes as anything else you might need going into your media player, depending on what the codec flavor of the day is.
Wow. V.Fast and 56.KFlex. Thanks for reawakening a patch of dormant brain cells I haven't used in a decade.
I have a feeling I'm going to spend the rest of the day surfing BBS nostalgia.
(I was the roxxorz with my 300 baud modem when all the other kids on the block were still 110/150/Baudot. "Eight bits -- No parity -- One stop bit! 7E1? That's for dogs like your mother!")
I don't have a mac and don't care to buy one in order to develop for my handheld.
What is it that makes you think that iPhone and iPod Touch users would be interested in your game? If you're so wedded to outdated legacy Microsoft tech, then chances are that your games aren't exactly innovative, user-friendly, or interesting either.
We set up access control and video monitoring not long ago for an antenna farm on top of Cougar Mountain, near Seattle. At that one facility there are seven major towers and probably at least a dozen smaller ones. A single major tower can support half a dozen 50,000-400,000 watt radio stations
You are obviously not a radio engineer, or you'd know that the maximum power a radio station is allowed in the United States is 100,000 watts, not 400,000 watts.
Further, since you're talking about a transmitter on a tower, the actual output is likely closer to 4,000 watts for 100,000 watts of EFFECTIVE radiated power, which is not the same thing as ACTUAL radiated power. It's all about height. That's part of the reason why satellite radio can cover the entire country with just 3,000 watt transmitters -- they're in space.
Also, the days of the 5,000,000-watt TV stations are over. The maximum power for station on channels 2-13 is now 10,000 watts I think. On UHF I believe it's around 60,000 watts unless the station gets STA from the FCC. I could be wrong about those numbers, though.
Most of the world doesn't have these tied deals, thank $deity
Spoken like an American Slashnerd who's never been to most of the rest of the world and gets his information from blogs.
Back in the 1980's that would have been true, but two and three-year contracts for carrier-subsidized phones are the norm in most countries these days, from Europe to Asia and even in parts of South America.
The places where it's not the norm are places like Russia and India and Brazil, which is why iPhone adoption is low in those regions -- because people have to pay full price for the phone.
Now go ahead and spew some falsehoods about how "superior" Japanese phones are compared to the ones available in America. They're not. Haven't been in years. But that's off topic.
You're right, T-Mobile has fantastic coverage in Minnesota. The reason for this is T-Mobile ate the home-grown Voicestream service back around 2001 or so.
It's only really messy in other parts of the world (In this case, Switzerland.) In the United States the courts have long ruled, and it is well established that pretty much anyone can take pictures of your home if they want as long as they're on public property (sidewalk, street, park, etc...) They can also take pictures of YOU if you are in public. Shock! Horror!
The problem is that Google caves in to the requests of amateur lawyers who have threatened to sue Google over publishing pictures of their homes or faces in Street View. From Google's point of view, it's easier and cheaper to blur things out. But from a public policy and rights perspective, it would have been better for the American people long-term if Google actually started fighting and winning these suits in order to shut the nutjobs up. If you don't want people to see you -- stay inside. If you don't want people to photograph your house, build a wall or buy out the neighbors to construct a massive lawn.
Of course, it isn't Google's job to fight these kind of fights. That's what newspapers are for, and is an example of the constant legal battles that newspapers are (mostly silently) fighting in court to protect the rights of the average American. Of course, then Google leeches the newspaper's content and makes money off of it, but that's a different argument.
And before I get a bunch of IANALs responding to this post, let me just say STFU. It's my job to know these sorts of things. Unless you're a lawyer or a judge who disagrees with all the briefings I've had with some of the nation's top attorneys on just this kind of matter, don't bother to respond.
Your proposal makes no sense. Millions of people live in cities. If someone uses Google Street View to find a particular Best Buy, they will also find my home, since the Best Buy is on the first floor and there are offices and residences above it.
Um yest hey DO need your SSN.
Comcast extends you "credit" by billing you after the month has gone by. and they pull a credit check on select people from time to time and adjust things in the system accordingly.
They use that SSN to track your credit rating and will adjust your "we cut you off after X days of non payment" from 30 days fora good credit risk to 1 day for a bad credit risk.
Maybe Comcast did that to you, but it's not universal. Did you ever think that you DON'T have to jump through Comcast's hoops? I have Comcast post-pay, and Comcast has no information for me other than a name and billing/service address. I didn't give Comcast enough information to even do a credit check, and certainly not my SSN. When I moved in to my new building all I did was tell the person on the phone my address and that I needed new service. That's it. If you gave Comcast a bunch of unnecessary information or signed a contract, then you're a dumbass.
First Comcast would need your SSN to do a credit check, unless you prepay your cable service including any pay-per-view charges you might incur.
Maybe where you are, but not where I am. Comcast does not have my Social Security number and I do not pre-pay my cable service. At no time did I authorize Comcast to do a credit check. All I did was tell the person on the phone that I needed new service at my address, and that was it. Comcast doesn't even have a phone number for me since I ordered cable service before phone service.
People really need to get it out of their heads that they have to have contacts with these companies. I have no contract for my phone service, or my cable service, or my DSL, or my mobile phone, or electricity, or my water, trash, or anything else. Why people bind themselves to contacts all the time, I'll never understand.
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Considering how much the trend in Linux is to simply copy the look, feel, and functionality of Windows it's not surprising that it's also copied Windows' trend toward being bloated.
I haven't seen anything innovative come out of Linux in years. Everything is simply "copy this" and "copy that" from other operating systems.
It's sad when the most exciting innovations in the *NIX world come from Apple, and not from the grassroots open source community.
You must not watch C-SPAN.
Sometimes I wish the ad companies would know MORE about me (and I'm not just talking about online). That way I wouldn't have to see dozens of ads to insure a car I don't have, or to get a one-time cash payment for a lottery I didn't win, or invest money I don't have, or buy feminine products I don't have the organs for.
The ad companies have been trying to for years to come up with a way to micro-target their ads. Sometimes I think if they did it, I wouldn't see so many of them. Or at least the ones I did see would actually be for things I care about ("Don't forget Futurama starts in an hour!", "Our new hard drive is faster than ever!", "Someone just posted something about your neighbor on example.com!") and I wouldn't hate them so.
I've had precisely the opposite experience. Over 20 years with six different employers and probably ten health plans every insurance company has covered my annual flu shot. Every one. Even the one I got this year. Aetna, U.S. Healthcare, BCBS, every single insurance company covered it. In fact at some places, the insurance company brought doctors and nurses to the jobsite to administer the vaccinations.
It's my understanding that sometimes it's not up to the insurance company to decide if it's covered, it's up to what the company you work for is willing to pay for. I guess the companies I've always worked for have thought it would be better to have its employees vaccinated and healthy to work and your companies have felt they'd rather roll the dice and let you burn sick days.
Is Amazon full of it, or are you jumping to uninformed conclusions?
The Kindle doesn't read books, it reads e-books, which are considered and taxed as software in many locales.
You've obviously never been to a real developers conference and seen the exploding number of Macs in the audiences of the lectures and meetings.
Hate to wake you from 1993, but the real hard-core professional developers are all buying Macs, and not because they like free stickers.
Mine's the 2510. I wouldn't buy another one.
I always took it as an expression of sarcasm.
I have an HP multi-function, and it's OK. Not great. You can do basic printing easily and OS X loves it for that. But if you want to do any remote scanning, then you have to install this massive "suite" of HP software that is horribly designed, terribly buggy, and very unreliable. Remote scanning, even with HP's mess of a dozen different programs installed (Do you want to print your resume on a T-shirt? How about a mug?) only works half the time.
No, Ms. Morissette. Just coincidental.
While I agree with what you say, it would be possible for iTunes to re-encode the files on the fly as they go into the media player. It already offers that as an option when syncing high bit rate MP3s to smaller capacity iPods.
Depends on the iPod. On the lower-capacity iPods like the Shuffle, iTunes has an option to convert your high-quality audio files to 128k MP3s before putting them on the iPod so more can fit in a smaller space.
If the re-encoding bit is just a module, it would be pretty easy in the future for Apple to re-encode anything in your iTunes as anything else you might need going into your media player, depending on what the codec flavor of the day is.
Wow. V.Fast and 56.KFlex. Thanks for reawakening a patch of dormant brain cells I haven't used in a decade.
I have a feeling I'm going to spend the rest of the day surfing BBS nostalgia.
(I was the roxxorz with my 300 baud modem when all the other kids on the block were still 110/150/Baudot. "Eight bits -- No parity -- One stop bit! 7E1? That's for dogs like your mother!")
What is it that makes you think that iPhone and iPod Touch users would be interested in your game? If you're so wedded to outdated legacy Microsoft tech, then chances are that your games aren't exactly innovative, user-friendly, or interesting either.
You are obviously not a radio engineer, or you'd know that the maximum power a radio station is allowed in the United States is 100,000 watts, not 400,000 watts.
Further, since you're talking about a transmitter on a tower, the actual output is likely closer to 4,000 watts for 100,000 watts of EFFECTIVE radiated power, which is not the same thing as ACTUAL radiated power. It's all about height. That's part of the reason why satellite radio can cover the entire country with just 3,000 watt transmitters -- they're in space.
Also, the days of the 5,000,000-watt TV stations are over. The maximum power for station on channels 2-13 is now 10,000 watts I think. On UHF I believe it's around 60,000 watts unless the station gets STA from the FCC. I could be wrong about those numbers, though.
You really need to look up the definition of "most."
Spoken like an American Slashnerd who's never been to most of the rest of the world and gets his information from blogs.
Back in the 1980's that would have been true, but two and three-year contracts for carrier-subsidized phones are the norm in most countries these days, from Europe to Asia and even in parts of South America.
The places where it's not the norm are places like Russia and India and Brazil, which is why iPhone adoption is low in those regions -- because people have to pay full price for the phone.
Now go ahead and spew some falsehoods about how "superior" Japanese phones are compared to the ones available in America. They're not. Haven't been in years. But that's off topic.
You're right, T-Mobile has fantastic coverage in Minnesota. The reason for this is T-Mobile ate the home-grown Voicestream service back around 2001 or so.
Crime will always exist, too. That doesn't mean the government should turn a blind eye to it.
It's only really messy in other parts of the world (In this case, Switzerland.) In the United States the courts have long ruled, and it is well established that pretty much anyone can take pictures of your home if they want as long as they're on public property (sidewalk, street, park, etc...) They can also take pictures of YOU if you are in public. Shock! Horror!
The problem is that Google caves in to the requests of amateur lawyers who have threatened to sue Google over publishing pictures of their homes or faces in Street View. From Google's point of view, it's easier and cheaper to blur things out. But from a public policy and rights perspective, it would have been better for the American people long-term if Google actually started fighting and winning these suits in order to shut the nutjobs up. If you don't want people to see you -- stay inside. If you don't want people to photograph your house, build a wall or buy out the neighbors to construct a massive lawn.
Of course, it isn't Google's job to fight these kind of fights. That's what newspapers are for, and is an example of the constant legal battles that newspapers are (mostly silently) fighting in court to protect the rights of the average American. Of course, then Google leeches the newspaper's content and makes money off of it, but that's a different argument.
And before I get a bunch of IANALs responding to this post, let me just say STFU. It's my job to know these sorts of things. Unless you're a lawyer or a judge who disagrees with all the briefings I've had with some of the nation's top attorneys on just this kind of matter, don't bother to respond.
Your proposal makes no sense. Millions of people live in cities. If someone uses Google Street View to find a particular Best Buy, they will also find my home, since the Best Buy is on the first floor and there are offices and residences above it.
Wacky. Until people stop falling for this, companies will keep trying to expand their power.
Put that thing away.
Maybe Comcast did that to you, but it's not universal. Did you ever think that you DON'T have to jump through Comcast's hoops? I have Comcast post-pay, and Comcast has no information for me other than a name and billing/service address. I didn't give Comcast enough information to even do a credit check, and certainly not my SSN. When I moved in to my new building all I did was tell the person on the phone my address and that I needed new service. That's it. If you gave Comcast a bunch of unnecessary information or signed a contract, then you're a dumbass.
Maybe where you are, but not where I am. Comcast does not have my Social Security number and I do not pre-pay my cable service. At no time did I authorize Comcast to do a credit check. All I did was tell the person on the phone that I needed new service at my address, and that was it. Comcast doesn't even have a phone number for me since I ordered cable service before phone service.
People really need to get it out of their heads that they have to have contacts with these companies. I have no contract for my phone service, or my cable service, or my DSL, or my mobile phone, or electricity, or my water, trash, or anything else. Why people bind themselves to contacts all the time, I'll never understand.