My day job is as a network analyst for a Big Company. Until a few years ago (50th birthday), I taught martial arts in the evenings.
While not a Ninja...we teach Karate, BJJ, Aikido, Muy Thai, and straight up Western boxing...I have a fair amount of skill.
Also used to fight full contact, so it was not unusual to show up for work with things bruised or broken. One morning, an IT secretary saw some bruises on my forearms and asked how it happened. When I explained, she exclaimed "what are you...some kind of Ninja Nerd?"
I thought for a second and replied "exactly". Kept the nickname for the last 16 years.
Oh, I have actually met Chuck Norris; he trained Terry Smith, who trained me. Chuck was filming "Sidekicks" in Houston and the cast and crew were staying at the same hotel. Met Mako in the bar...drinking a Coors Light quietly in the corner. I introduced myself and spoke with him a minute or two. The next morning, I ran into Chuck crossing the lobby. Told him who I was, got an autograph for a friend back home, and chatted for 4-5 minutes. He was very gracious and only punched me twice. (Just kidding...although his handshake was strong enough to snap bones)
I'll have to get the ninja book...sounds like some humor I can appreciate.
Well I have read a lot of the replies and here's my take.
I have a BIG Terk HD amplified sumbitch in my attic. Looks like a photon torpedo, I kid you not. It gets good reception, but not great. It's rated for signals at 50-60 miles distance. My local towers are 25-30 at most. So, I have cable with an HD DVR. Overall, the Terk is an okay unit that I now use for FM reception and backup if the cable goes blooie.
On the other hand, I have a rent house 4 miles east of my house (local towers are north, so this house is no closer than mine) and I'm using an OLD Radio Shack VHF/UHF mast antenna, also mounted in the attic. (Actually, it's laying on its side at a 45 degree angle to the east and 60 degrees to the north). I get all 26 local channels and subchannels with crystal clarity. Before finding the RS mast for FREE at a garage sale, I tried several indoor HD antennas from Best Buy, etc. NONE of them could pick up all of the stations and a couple couldn't get a signal at all.
So from my experience, a mast antenna, perhaps bolted to a bracket outside a window may be a good solution. Certainly I'm very underwhelmed with the "modern" rigs I've tried.
iTunes has a Watchmen "Motion Comic" episode up and it's a freebie.
Now the bizarre thing is that the panels and text balloons are EXACTLY like the graphic novel, with some "motion" applied. It's not animated, per se, but it isn't static either. This is good, very good.
The bizarre part is that the voices...ALL THE VOICES in Chapter 1, including females, are voiced by male "actors". And it's as bad as it sounds. In fact, the terrible voice acting almost ruins this.
I decided that the opportunity to "read" the novel again...on my iPod no less...was worth the price of free.
As for the trailer...I could quibble, but won't. So far, this looks better than I thought it would. If Snyder doesn't wimp out on the ending, this could be the third part of the "superhero movies go mainstream" trifecta, with Iron Man and The Dark Knight being the first two.
Put de lime in de ocean and mix dem both togedder. Put de lime in de ocean and make it feel better.
And, it makes a refreshing after dinner drink!
And perhaps are .... LESS FILLING !
on
Inside Steve's Brain
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I have been to Apple, have met Steve, and know a few folks there. The people I have met seem to like working there...a lot.
Over the years, I've been to countless businesses and there are definitely places where you can practically feel the "bad mojo" in the air. Others have a happy vibe, and a few were "ready for the Kool-Aid". Apple was NOT like that...didn't have a bunch of happy, shiny cult members running around. I did feel folks were very focused, which is not a bad thing to be.
As for Steve's _taste_, I'd say he has definite and somewhat immutable ideas about how things should look and feel and operate. Sometimes, it's good...others, maybe not.
I have the daily joy of riding herd on a global network that services about 10,000 locations in every major time zone on Earth.
While I had a role in designing, building, and deploying it over the last 12 years, my primary role for several years has been network traffic forensics. We employ very sophisticated QoS schemes and require our carriers give us visibility into the MPLS clouds. Since the network IS our money bitch, there's a keen interest from the top down on making the (packet) trains run on time.
What's interesting to me is that over the years, I've seen enormous amounts of money and effort spent on the network and tuning it to death while the vast majority of the system owners...including PCs...just jam their toys onto the wire with little to no thought about the network hardware and software IN THEIR FREAKIN' IRON!
I see crap like Nagle's (TCP_NODELAY), Receive Window size mismatches, VLWS set to OFF, SACK not enabled, and a host of other nightmares all the time. I'll get a call or e-mail from someone with a data mover application; FTP, backup job, etc., and they're complaining their 10Gb link is not running at 10Gb..they "measured" it with ping and traceroute...or simply "this isn't as fast as it should be".
Invariably, I'll interrogate the path, grab some traces, and see one or more "TCP bullets to the head"...from their host. Over the years, I've built some tuning guides for the UNIX, Linux, and Windows and send them along to the owner when the data reveals it's their shitty TCP/IP configuration choking the box.
It's helped. My suggestion from this is to make sure your "iron" is tuned for the link. It will help. My son's friends think I'm magic when I do surgery on their PCs and their torrents, Skype, etc. suddenly work better than they ever did before.
As for home gear, I don't know. I use Cisco and LinkSys and D-Link at the house. I have DSL AND cable. I have had occasion to talk to level 5 support for both, but for the most part, I'm happy with the service I get. I do monitor and trend my traffic, but that's habit more than anything, because of work.
I read it in the early 80's. When I started my own software company in '89, I took a page from the book, specifically hiring kids right off the campus of Oklahoma University.
They worked for the nearly nothing I could afford and were fanatical. (and yes, I'm a pretty good salesman!)
Interestingly enough, we developed software for the NeXT. So, we got a glass or three of Steve's Kool-Aid whilst doing business with NeXT.
We've all since moved on to other things, but one of the kids went on to become Chief Systems Architect at a company that is doing some amazing stuff. I don't know for a fact, but I'd guess he worked on the cheap while they were spinning up.
A lot of NeXT folks went to Apple and I've stayed in touch with several. My impression is that Apple is a good place to work, regardless of salary.
An admittedly crude statement I've made on occasion indicating we may someday be surprised to learn our entire Universe is someone else's Petri dish.
And if you considered the Universe as a biological system, it would make sense that genetic material could travel, to us, vast distances on a meteorite.
Life on other worlds could be remotely or closely related to life on Earth.
"Honey....your 9th x 10e47 cousin from Rigel is here! He brought the wives and kids. You know they don't like my cooking, so bring home some KFC."
If this holds up, I am dying to see how folks like my fundamentalist Christian sister deal with the fact we may be bacteria in the actual grand scheme of things.
My company is expanding into China in 2009-2010. Over 100 locations with Windows boxes acting as POS terminals (Point Of Sale and Piece Of Shit both apply here, unfortunately), connecting back to our network infrastructure in the U.S.
I'm a Network Systems Analyst, but not in a Information Security role. Still, I felt it prudent to ask recently; "so, how are we hardening the systems going into China?" only to be met with the deer in the headlights look. I pointed out the inception of this story and then went on to describe how people could buy in iPhone 1.0 in China last year...30-60 days before last June's U.S. launch. And the fact that virtually ANY software you wanted was available, for pennies, in China. Hacked, cracked, and pre-loaded with malware galore in many cases, to be sure, but available nonetheless.
I didn't get the sense my comments got anyone in power even a little concerned. Luckily, I can retire in Fall 2009. I'll get to read about this upcoming disaster in the easy chair with a cup of joe. I may even think it funny since I won't have to do any mitigation of the virtually guaranteed compromise(s) that will occur.
Underestimating the potential threats in this part of the world is painfully stupid. Which explains the idiot who left an unsecured laptop unattended in a foreign country that isn't exactly an ally, economic or otherwise. There are several firms in that part of the world that offer services to Fortune firms doing business in Asia BECAUSE of the increased risks.
Disingenious? Naw...this is an outright lie, plain and simple.
Doing ANYTHING harmful to children is pretty much at the top of my list of things that could earn me a jail sentence someday. Porn involving kids...I'm sorry, your ticket needs to be punched.
But, since we can't to seem to advance mental health care beyond "here, take the red pill...it might help" and public floggings are no longer in style, we do fruitless crap like TFA describes.
I see child porn folks as either mentally ill or just sick, selfish slime looking to make a buck off of the truly ill. The first group needs help and isolation from society until they are well. The second group needs to be publicly horsewhipped.
Censoring and controlling the Internet does little to no good.
"Raping and pillaging YOUR network packets since 2008!"
"We know what you want...because we just told you!"
"Big Brother?...no. It's more like Big Family...everyone is screwing with you!"
"All the packets you deserve...and many you don't!"
This irritates me. Self-serving and not well thought out. Kind of like New Coke; what's good for the consumer doesn't exist, it's only about the revenue stream.
I may set up some tests in my lab and see if DPI retards throughput in stuff like WoW, CoD2, and so on. Does it cause issues streaming video? And so on. Curious for now, but may come in handy during the class action lawsuit later!
I went to work at a Radio Shack Computer Center in 1982. Worked with some crazy guys I should write a book about. We made a lot of money selling "Trash 80's".
When the Model 100 came out, most of us were managing our own stores. Being the boss(es), we took one with us to our bowling league and ran a score keeping application we wrote in BASIC. Actually drew the sheet on the display, player at a time, in turn order.
The dumbest thing about late leagues is waiting for both teams to do "gazintas" and sign the score sheets. We were out the door as soon as we got our shoes changed. Teams that bowled against us thought we were giant geeks, but loved leaving early. And, we got a lot of sales from word of mouth and passersby asking "what is that?"
I loved that machine. The 300 baud modem actually worked...most of the time. The price out the door for most customers was well over $1000 for one of these puppies. The 8KB model rarely sold; we always moved the customer up to the capacious 24KB, with genuine leatherette slipcase, various dongles, wires, and of course...BATTERIES! We're freakin' Radio Shack, you can't leave without BATTERIES!!
I have the original, serialized script by Ellison as published in Asimov's magazine. It's available in book form from Amazon.
If you read the Asimov stories and the script, there's no way on Earth you could construe the train wreck movie to anything the Good Doctor had created.
Susan Calvin's character was the one of the more horrible missteps in the movie. The character in the movie and in the books/stories share name only. Completely different characters. Susan Calvin NEVER WORE MAKEUP as was told in "Liar" and was in fact, an object of ridicule, pity, or fear, depending on who you were at US Robotics and Mechanical Men. Certainly not a "looker" like Bridget Monyahan. Hell, she didn't have the "balls" the Susan Calvin in the books had.
And excuse me, but did we even get a HINT of Donovan and Powell? Nope. Nada. Zilch.
No...this was a mess. Were Asimov still alive, he would have been very disappointed.
I've railed against the Starship Troopers film(s) since day one. An absolute travesty, topped only by the garbage that is "I, Robot".
How Hollywood could ignore the brilliant script by Harlan Ellison and put out a Will Smith action vehicle instead is beyond me. Of course, $$$ are paramount (no pun intended) to the studios and art gets lost in the noise.
I hope Snyder understands the material well enough to capture some of the themes in the novel. I will see the film, but I don't have high hopes.
I worked primarily on speech recognition during my development days, but I'm not ignorant of touch interfaces. Certainly, human testing and consumer expectation is not that different between the two.
My thought is that the touch interfaces...to date...do not offer a compelling experience for the average user. (Compelling defined as "yes, I will spend money on this!")
Yes, the iPhone is way cool, but it's NOT a desktop, everyday computing device like Windows 7 is aimed at.
Vertical applications using Surface are niche markets. Profitable most likely, but not the kind of numbers a Halo 4 or Office 2010 would produce.
I don't see consumers dumping XP or whatever version of Vista they're on to adopt Windows 7 for multi-touch alone. The final product will have to "win" in a lot of areas to get folks lined up at Best Buy, not just because you can touch the screen and things happen.
I'm certainly biased, but for me, the ideal interface "killer combo" would be intrinsic, system-wide voice AND touch capability. That, I would buy...which is the litmus test; will anyone or ENOUGH anyones desire this sufficiently to make it profitable?
Hmm...I would agree that Sound and Vision, for instance, does a much more thorough job of dissecting a new LCD TV or A/V receiver than Consumer Reports. But I would also observe that the issue with the test of Yahama's newest receiver ALWAYS has one or more ads for the same unit. And people have complained that their reviews are sometimes TOO technical for the average consumer.
I have to disagree that CR sucks. Quite the opposite, IMHO. I've read CR for a long time and have made many buying decisions based on their reviews.
I drive a 2007 Toyota RAV4. When I went shopping, I was looking for a small, good mileage, SUV. I looked at the top 10 rated vehicles in CR, narrowed it to the Honda CR-V and the RAV4, drove both for a weekend, and picked the Toyota. And since I got good fair market data on my trade, got an idea of what dealers were selling RAV4s for, and followed their buyers advice...go into the dealership near the end of the month, for instance, I got a great deal.
My whole house is "CR" equipped, I guess. New microwave? Bought a GE that was rated high in CR and it's the best unit I've owned. Washer, dryer, stove, gas cooktop, and vent hood were all CR recommended. I can't recall EVER buying something I first read about in CR and having been disappointed later. Now, I do consult many sources on major things...like the RAV4...so, I don't live and die by CR, but I have a lot more trust in their data than any other source.
The ONLY thing that makes sense is the corporate mandated LanDesk agent or Windows domain policy or something else Microsoft couldn't test or account for toasted the install.
So, in fairness to MS, my Evo is not quite plain vanilla as I stated. Still, it's nothing that out of the ordinary for any business use Windows machine.
I can't afford a disaster with my monster PC I do the bulk of my job with, so I'm going to talk to PC Support and see if they're testing SP3 on our standard build image. We have about 40,000 PCs and laptops across the company, so I imagine this is on their agenda already.
Might test some of the PCs at home this weekend...they're no sweat to burn down and reload, unless SP3 trashes MY external USB drives! Thinking I'll unhook those puppies first, and the SATA ones as well.
...when I attempted to install it on a standard Compaq Evo N610c laptop. Other than a 2nd NIC installed in a card slot, this is a vanilla machine with IE7 and Office 2003.
The SP downloaded and began the install just fine. Ran all the way to the end, which took over 2 hours, and then popped up a dialog after reboot that the installation "...has failed and will be rolled back. This is a two-step process..."
Pressed OK and it took about 45 minutes and a reboot to finish. After boot, I got the "your system has encountered a serious error" dialog. So far, everything SEEMS normal, but I haven't done much as this is my 3rd PC, hence his starring role as "SP3 sacrificial lamb".
Disappointed, but not particularly surprised this SP has issues.
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I have no clever semi-political comments, just what I said; I'd go in a heartbeat.
And since I'm past 50, it would definitely be a one-way jaunt.
D.D. Harriman had it right..........
I'm a member of the PPA and there are positive efforts at a national level to get decent legislation in place for poker.
The argument FOR is that poker is a skill game, not gambling, and as such, should be treated differently than craps, roulette, etc.
Currently, the UIGEA is in place...this being the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act that was tacked on to the Port Authority Bill.
It's stupid and short-sighted. If the US would legalize and TAX online poker, the revenues would be in the billions annually.
If you play online poker, check out the PPA; it's doing some good.
1) An object at rest is ALWAYS in the wrong place.
2) An object in motion is ALWAYS headed in the wrong direction.
3) The energy required to alter either state is NEVER enough to make it impossible but is ALWAYS more than you'd care to expend.
Trapped in a cosmic bubble:
The tragic result of a madman attempting to corner the galactic market for rich, Corinthian leather!
The "best" BR player on the market is STILL the PS3. And the price point is too high.
When the MSRP for a decent BR device hits $199, I'll look at buying.
Until then, I'll keep upscaling standard DVDs with my current SD players (Sony, Panasonic).
....they just kill people a little more slowly.
My day job is as a network analyst for a Big Company. Until a few years ago (50th birthday), I taught martial arts in the evenings.
While not a Ninja...we teach Karate, BJJ, Aikido, Muy Thai, and straight up Western boxing...I have a fair amount of skill.
Also used to fight full contact, so it was not unusual to show up for work with things bruised or broken. One morning, an IT secretary saw some bruises on my forearms and asked how it happened. When I explained, she exclaimed "what are you...some kind of Ninja Nerd?"
I thought for a second and replied "exactly". Kept the nickname for the last 16 years.
Oh, I have actually met Chuck Norris; he trained Terry Smith, who trained me. Chuck was filming "Sidekicks" in Houston and the cast and crew were staying at the same hotel. Met Mako in the bar...drinking a Coors Light quietly in the corner. I introduced myself and spoke with him a minute or two. The next morning, I ran into Chuck crossing the lobby. Told him who I was, got an autograph for a friend back home, and chatted for 4-5 minutes. He was very gracious and only punched me twice. (Just kidding...although his handshake was strong enough to snap bones)
I'll have to get the ninja book...sounds like some humor I can appreciate.
Well I have read a lot of the replies and here's my take.
I have a BIG Terk HD amplified sumbitch in my attic. Looks like a photon torpedo, I kid you not. It gets good reception, but not great. It's rated for signals at 50-60 miles distance. My local towers are 25-30 at most. So, I have cable with an HD DVR. Overall, the Terk is an okay unit that I now use for FM reception and backup if the cable goes blooie.
On the other hand, I have a rent house 4 miles east of my house (local towers are north, so this house is no closer than mine) and I'm using an OLD Radio Shack VHF/UHF mast antenna, also mounted in the attic. (Actually, it's laying on its side at a 45 degree angle to the east and 60 degrees to the north). I get all 26 local channels and subchannels with crystal clarity. Before finding the RS mast for FREE at a garage sale, I tried several indoor HD antennas from Best Buy, etc. NONE of them could pick up all of the stations and a couple couldn't get a signal at all.
So from my experience, a mast antenna, perhaps bolted to a bracket outside a window may be a good solution. Certainly I'm very underwhelmed with the "modern" rigs I've tried.
Good luck!
iTunes has a Watchmen "Motion Comic" episode up and it's a freebie.
Now the bizarre thing is that the panels and text balloons are EXACTLY like the graphic novel, with some "motion" applied. It's not animated, per se, but it isn't static either. This is good, very good.
The bizarre part is that the voices...ALL THE VOICES in Chapter 1, including females, are voiced by male "actors". And it's as bad as it sounds. In fact, the terrible voice acting almost ruins this.
I decided that the opportunity to "read" the novel again...on my iPod no less...was worth the price of free.
As for the trailer...I could quibble, but won't. So far, this looks better than I thought it would. If Snyder doesn't wimp out on the ending, this could be the third part of the "superhero movies go mainstream" trifecta, with Iron Man and The Dark Knight being the first two.
We'll see......
Put de lime in de ocean and mix dem both togedder.
Put de lime in de ocean and make it feel better.
And, it makes a refreshing after dinner drink!
I have been to Apple, have met Steve, and know a few folks there. The people I have met seem to like working there...a lot.
Over the years, I've been to countless businesses and there are definitely places where you can practically feel the "bad mojo" in the air. Others have a happy vibe, and a few were "ready for the Kool-Aid". Apple was NOT like that...didn't have a bunch of happy, shiny cult members running around. I did feel folks were very focused, which is not a bad thing to be.
As for Steve's _taste_, I'd say he has definite and somewhat immutable ideas about how things should look and feel and operate. Sometimes, it's good...others, maybe not.
I have the daily joy of riding herd on a global network that services about 10,000 locations in every major time zone on Earth.
While I had a role in designing, building, and deploying it over the last 12 years, my primary role for several years has been network traffic forensics. We employ very sophisticated QoS schemes and require our carriers give us visibility into the MPLS clouds. Since the network IS our money bitch, there's a keen interest from the top down on making the (packet) trains run on time.
What's interesting to me is that over the years, I've seen enormous amounts of money and effort spent on the network and tuning it to death while the vast majority of the system owners...including PCs...just jam their toys onto the wire with little to no thought about the network hardware and software IN THEIR FREAKIN' IRON!
I see crap like Nagle's (TCP_NODELAY), Receive Window size mismatches, VLWS set to OFF, SACK not enabled, and a host of other nightmares all the time. I'll get a call or e-mail from someone with a data mover application; FTP, backup job, etc., and they're complaining their 10Gb link is not running at 10Gb..they "measured" it with ping and traceroute...or simply "this isn't as fast as it should be".
Invariably, I'll interrogate the path, grab some traces, and see one or more "TCP bullets to the head"...from their host. Over the years, I've built some tuning guides for the UNIX, Linux, and Windows and send them along to the owner when the data reveals it's their shitty TCP/IP configuration choking the box.
It's helped. My suggestion from this is to make sure your "iron" is tuned for the link. It will help. My son's friends think I'm magic when I do surgery on their PCs and their torrents, Skype, etc. suddenly work better than they ever did before.
As for home gear, I don't know. I use Cisco and LinkSys and D-Link at the house. I have DSL AND cable. I have had occasion to talk to level 5 support for both, but for the most part, I'm happy with the service I get. I do monitor and trend my traffic, but that's habit more than anything, because of work.
Great book...believe it won a Pulitzer Prize.
I read it in the early 80's. When I started my own software company in '89, I took a page from the book, specifically hiring kids right off the campus of Oklahoma University.
They worked for the nearly nothing I could afford and were fanatical. (and yes, I'm a pretty good salesman!)
Interestingly enough, we developed software for the NeXT. So, we got a glass or three of Steve's Kool-Aid whilst doing business with NeXT.
We've all since moved on to other things, but one of the kids went on to become Chief Systems Architect at a company that is doing some amazing stuff. I don't know for a fact, but I'd guess he worked on the cheap while they were spinning up.
A lot of NeXT folks went to Apple and I've stayed in touch with several. My impression is that Apple is a good place to work, regardless of salary.
I downloaded about 2:00 p.m. CDT with no problems. The bitrate was a tad slow...about modem speed, ranging from 34k to 60k, but no biggie.
Installed just fine, imported FF2 and IE7 bookmarks (2 machines) with no issues.
Speed seems very good, although only an hour in and still at work, I haven't stressed it much yet.
1.31 GIGAWATTS, this thing won't work at all.
Besides, it's nowhere near aerodynamic enough to handle worth a damn at 88 mph and above.
An admittedly crude statement I've made on occasion indicating we may someday be surprised to learn our entire Universe is someone else's Petri dish.
And if you considered the Universe as a biological system, it would make sense that genetic material could travel, to us, vast distances on a meteorite.
Life on other worlds could be remotely or closely related to life on Earth.
"Honey....your 9th x 10e47 cousin from Rigel is here! He brought the wives and kids. You know they don't like my cooking, so bring home some KFC."
If this holds up, I am dying to see how folks like my fundamentalist Christian sister deal with the fact we may be bacteria in the actual grand scheme of things.
My company is expanding into China in 2009-2010. Over 100 locations with Windows boxes acting as POS terminals (Point Of Sale and Piece Of Shit both apply here, unfortunately), connecting back to our network infrastructure in the U.S.
I'm a Network Systems Analyst, but not in a Information Security role. Still, I felt it prudent to ask recently; "so, how are we hardening the systems going into China?" only to be met with the deer in the headlights look. I pointed out the inception of this story and then went on to describe how people could buy in iPhone 1.0 in China last year...30-60 days before last June's U.S. launch. And the fact that virtually ANY software you wanted was available, for pennies, in China. Hacked, cracked, and pre-loaded with malware galore in many cases, to be sure, but available nonetheless.
I didn't get the sense my comments got anyone in power even a little concerned. Luckily, I can retire in Fall 2009. I'll get to read about this upcoming disaster in the easy chair with a cup of joe. I may even think it funny since I won't have to do any mitigation of the virtually guaranteed compromise(s) that will occur.
Underestimating the potential threats in this part of the world is painfully stupid. Which explains the idiot who left an unsecured laptop unattended in a foreign country that isn't exactly an ally, economic or otherwise. There are several firms in that part of the world that offer services to Fortune firms doing business in Asia BECAUSE of the increased risks.
Disingenious? Naw...this is an outright lie, plain and simple.
Doing ANYTHING harmful to children is pretty much at the top of my list of things that could earn me a jail sentence someday. Porn involving kids...I'm sorry, your ticket needs to be punched.
But, since we can't to seem to advance mental health care beyond "here, take the red pill...it might help" and public floggings are no longer in style, we do fruitless crap like TFA describes.
I see child porn folks as either mentally ill or just sick, selfish slime looking to make a buck off of the truly ill. The first group needs help and isolation from society until they are well. The second group needs to be publicly horsewhipped.
Censoring and controlling the Internet does little to no good.
"Raping and pillaging YOUR network packets since 2008!"
"We know what you want...because we just told you!"
"Big Brother?...no. It's more like Big Family...everyone is screwing with you!"
"All the packets you deserve...and many you don't!"
This irritates me. Self-serving and not well thought out. Kind of like New Coke; what's good for the consumer doesn't exist, it's only about the revenue stream.
I may set up some tests in my lab and see if DPI retards throughput in stuff like WoW, CoD2, and so on. Does it cause issues streaming video? And so on. Curious for now, but may come in handy during the class action lawsuit later!
I went to work at a Radio Shack Computer Center in 1982. Worked with some crazy guys I should write a book about. We made a lot of money selling "Trash 80's".
When the Model 100 came out, most of us were managing our own stores. Being the boss(es), we took one with us to our bowling league and ran a score keeping application we wrote in BASIC. Actually drew the sheet on the display, player at a time, in turn order.
The dumbest thing about late leagues is waiting for both teams to do "gazintas" and sign the score sheets. We were out the door as soon as we got our shoes changed. Teams that bowled against us thought we were giant geeks, but loved leaving early. And, we got a lot of sales from word of mouth and passersby asking "what is that?"
I loved that machine. The 300 baud modem actually worked...most of the time. The price out the door for most customers was well over $1000 for one of these puppies. The 8KB model rarely sold; we always moved the customer up to the capacious 24KB, with genuine leatherette slipcase, various dongles, wires, and of course...BATTERIES! We're freakin' Radio Shack, you can't leave without BATTERIES!!
Sorry...Tandy flashback.
Increasing the meds tomorrow.
I have the original, serialized script by Ellison as published in Asimov's magazine. It's available in book form from Amazon.
If you read the Asimov stories and the script, there's no way on Earth you could construe the train wreck movie to anything the Good Doctor had created.
Susan Calvin's character was the one of the more horrible missteps in the movie. The character in the movie and in the books/stories share name only. Completely different characters. Susan Calvin NEVER WORE MAKEUP as was told in "Liar" and was in fact, an object of ridicule, pity, or fear, depending on who you were at US Robotics and Mechanical Men. Certainly not a "looker" like Bridget Monyahan. Hell, she didn't have the "balls" the Susan Calvin in the books had.
And excuse me, but did we even get a HINT of Donovan and Powell? Nope. Nada. Zilch.
No...this was a mess. Were Asimov still alive, he would have been very disappointed.
Amen!
I've railed against the Starship Troopers film(s) since day one. An absolute travesty, topped only by the garbage that is "I, Robot".
How Hollywood could ignore the brilliant script by Harlan Ellison and put out a Will Smith action vehicle instead is beyond me. Of course, $$$ are paramount (no pun intended) to the studios and art gets lost in the noise.
I hope Snyder understands the material well enough to capture some of the themes in the novel. I will see the film, but I don't have high hopes.
I worked primarily on speech recognition during my development days, but I'm not ignorant of touch interfaces. Certainly, human testing and consumer expectation is not that different between the two.
My thought is that the touch interfaces...to date...do not offer a compelling experience for the average user. (Compelling defined as "yes, I will spend money on this!")
Yes, the iPhone is way cool, but it's NOT a desktop, everyday computing device like Windows 7 is aimed at.
Vertical applications using Surface are niche markets. Profitable most likely, but not the kind of numbers a Halo 4 or Office 2010 would produce.
I don't see consumers dumping XP or whatever version of Vista they're on to adopt Windows 7 for multi-touch alone. The final product will have to "win" in a lot of areas to get folks lined up at Best Buy, not just because you can touch the screen and things happen.
I'm certainly biased, but for me, the ideal interface "killer combo" would be intrinsic, system-wide voice AND touch capability. That, I would buy...which is the litmus test; will anyone or ENOUGH anyones desire this sufficiently to make it profitable?
Hmm...I would agree that Sound and Vision, for instance, does a much more thorough job of dissecting a new LCD TV or A/V receiver than Consumer Reports. But I would also observe that the issue with the test of Yahama's newest receiver ALWAYS has one or more ads for the same unit. And people have complained that their reviews are sometimes TOO technical for the average consumer.
I have to disagree that CR sucks. Quite the opposite, IMHO. I've read CR for a long time and have made many buying decisions based on their reviews.
I drive a 2007 Toyota RAV4. When I went shopping, I was looking for a small, good mileage, SUV. I looked at the top 10 rated vehicles in CR, narrowed it to the Honda CR-V and the RAV4, drove both for a weekend, and picked the Toyota. And since I got good fair market data on my trade, got an idea of what dealers were selling RAV4s for, and followed their buyers advice...go into the dealership near the end of the month, for instance, I got a great deal.
My whole house is "CR" equipped, I guess. New microwave? Bought a GE that was rated high in CR and it's the best unit I've owned. Washer, dryer, stove, gas cooktop, and vent hood were all CR recommended. I can't recall EVER buying something I first read about in CR and having been disappointed later. Now, I do consult many sources on major things...like the RAV4...so, I don't live and die by CR, but I have a lot more trust in their data than any other source.
Wow...same exact config; 1GB and 40GB HDD.
The ONLY thing that makes sense is the corporate mandated LanDesk agent or Windows domain policy or something else Microsoft couldn't test or account for toasted the install.
So, in fairness to MS, my Evo is not quite plain vanilla as I stated. Still, it's nothing that out of the ordinary for any business use Windows machine.
I can't afford a disaster with my monster PC I do the bulk of my job with, so I'm going to talk to PC Support and see if they're testing SP3 on our standard build image. We have about 40,000 PCs and laptops across the company, so I imagine this is on their agenda already.
Might test some of the PCs at home this weekend...they're no sweat to burn down and reload, unless SP3 trashes MY external USB drives! Thinking I'll unhook those puppies first, and the SATA ones as well.
It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.
...when I attempted to install it on a standard Compaq Evo N610c laptop. Other than a 2nd NIC installed in a card slot, this is a vanilla machine with IE7 and Office 2003.
The SP downloaded and began the install just fine. Ran all the way to the end, which took over 2 hours, and then popped up a dialog after reboot that the installation "...has failed and will be rolled back. This is a two-step process..."
Pressed OK and it took about 45 minutes and a reboot to finish. After boot, I got the "your system has encountered a serious error" dialog. So far, everything SEEMS normal, but I haven't done much as this is my 3rd PC, hence his starring role as "SP3 sacrificial lamb".
Disappointed, but not particularly surprised this SP has issues.