I only cross checked a few of the HP's listed but you pay about $100-150 extra compared to going to HP directly. But that is why HP/Dell PC's come with that crap ware it helps them reduce the sale cost.
I feel like this is something the lawyers for Oculus VR and Zenimax would have looked over before Carmack started developing for the Oculus Rift. I would also think the lawyers for Facebook would have paid closed attention to this when looking into buying Oculus Rift.
In the Star Trek DVD commentary they(director and producer) even talk about how they overdid the lens flares. For the sequel they still had them but it wasn't as prevalent as the first. Its fine if you have like a single shot with it in there but not everything needs a flare.
Do you use a phone? Do you browse the Internet? Do you drive an automobile? Did you file your taxes?
No matter what you do unless you live in the middle of the woods you will always be exposed to software that you have no control over. Even if you're using open sourced software to communicate with people the messages are still transmitted over corporate owned hardware which means they can easily copy your message even if its encrypted.
Well, the first price increase cost us customers so the stock plunged. What will make the stock soar? A price increase!
The company has outgrown its current monthly fee. The only way for Netflix to continue growing and offer a better experience is to increase its monthly fee. Its one thing to bring in new members but they need to protect their retention rate. Netflix lately has been suffering from a quality issue where they lack new content and to a lot of us older members are starting to get annoyed by it. The good thing for Netflix is that a decent alternative doesn't exist yet but the bad thing is if the service starts to suffer and an alternative comes around people can easily jump ship.
This is someone just talking out of their ass and doesn't see the full pictures. Hes the same type of person who thinks that if you ban alcohol every thing will suddenly be better.
Slashdot has gotten so soft, so much like reddit and other useless sites.
Can you explain to me why Reddit is a useless site? The site has thousands of different subreddits that you can customize to your tastes. Don't like/r/WTF? Unsubscribe. You enjoy discussions on movies? Subscribe to/r/movies. Its literally two clicks to do either. On top of that you can find knowledgeable people in specific subreddits. I had an old artillery shell that I wanted identified and I went to/r/military and within an hour someone had posted a link to exactly what I had. Reddit is light years ahead of where Slashdot is now.
Slashdot has gotten so soft
Slashdot is out of date. When it was first came out it had a new model no one was using but when everyone started to change and new sites started to come up Slashdot stuck to its old ways and has slowly been dying since.
They should just roll back to Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and start from there.
They probably will make their next operating system work like Windows 7 or at least give the option to choose between the two interfaces. But the main goal of the Windows 8 redesign was to make a seamless user interface between their products. They wanted it so users to be able to pick up any Microsoft device like Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, or a Windows phone and feel like they didn't even switch devices.
What I'd like to know is which taxpayers agreed on spending their taxes on this? The only citizens I found supporting this are those who do not pay income taxes.
Technically the 65,915,796 residents who voted for Obama in the 2012 election?
The United States has tried to replace the $1 bill on several occasions. The problem is that replacing the dollar doesn't solve any problem to the individual. Its not like people grab a bunch of dollar bills from their pockets and say, "Oh geez, I wish these were coins!".
Re:No real reason to buy until games come out
on
Xbox One Released
·
· Score: 1
At least this generation can play last gen games... Oh wait.
To be fair here. The reason why you cant run last generation games is because of the architecture switch. Both the Xbox One and PS4 are running x86 processors which means you don't have consoles coming out with specialized CPU architectures anymore. At one point or another this had to be done and the big consequence was dropping backward compatibility unless they decide to release emulator software for the current hardware or they start releasing specialized versions of the console that contain prior generation hardware.
The big benefit though is that developers can in theory develop a game across all consoles and PC without dealing with too much porting.
Blockbuster had a service like Netflix and it was launched in 2004. The Blockbuster DVD-by-Mail was an interesting endeavor because everyone thought they were going to compete head to head with Netflix. The problem is that when you examined the Blockbuster DVD-by-Mail service it had a hidden agenda and that was getting people to come back to the stores.
With Netflix they sent you a DVD, you send it back through the mail, they send you another. With Blockbusters service they send you a DVD and you could either send it back and they send you a new movie OR bring it back to the stores and exchange it for a so-called rental. Except that new rental is subject to late fees and restocking fees WHICH they announced in 2005 they were getting rid of which they secretly didn't and this brought upon them a massive lawsuit.
This was their way of getting people to come back to their stores and adding on late fees which was their cash cow.
Blockbuster is the perfect example of a company that knew the industry was changing and somewhat attempted to adapt but wouldn't let go of the past completely.In my opinion Netflix wasn't what damned them it was just the beginning. Redbox is what really killed them.
I have only heard of one game that fell into abandon ware. Unfortunately, I can't find the arcade game but they used to package it with the MAME Emulator. It was an arcade game made in a former European country that no longer exists. From what I remember since the game was never released outside of that country it didn't fall into any copyright domain therefore it was considered abandon ware because the country it was made in no longer exists.
To be fair most of these bots don't do much. Most bots won't go on quests, have conversations with actual people, go on raids, etc, etc. If they did fall into one of those areas the bot would quickly fail.
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me.
Ever played Fallout, Morrowind, or Skyrim on Xbox/PS3? You level up the sneak attribute by sneaking around which is basically crouching around and walking. People exploited this by putting rubber bands around the controller so the character would continuously crouch walk into a corner. That gameplay mechanic is pretty simplistic yet those games are amazing to play.
Here is the short description on why hospitals cannot turn away patients from the ER anymore like they used to.
In 1986 and 1987, 2 articles appeared in the literature by physicians from Cook County Hospital in Chicago detailing the extent of patient dumping to that facility (1, 2). The authors defined dumping as “the denial of or limitation in the provision of medical services to a patient for economic reasons and the referral of that patient elsewhere” (1). The majority of such transfers to Cook County Hospital involved patients who were minorities and unemployed. The reason given for the transfer by the sending institution was lack of insurance in 87% of the cases. Only 6% of the patients had given written informed consent for their transfer. Medical service patients who were transferred were twice as likely to die as those treated at the transferring hospital, and 24% of the patients were considered to have been transferred in an unstable condition. It was concluded that this practice was done primarily for financial reasons and that it delayed care and jeopardized the patient's health. This practice was not limited to Chicago but occurred in most large cities with public hospitals. In Dallas, such transfers increased from 70 per month in 1982 to more than 200 per month in 1983 (1).
> "...but I seriously had no idea it would be this bad."
We'll we can always go back to the old system when you couldn't even buy health insurance because of some common pre-existing condition like hypertension. Or if you happened to have insurance and fell sick they would find some way of cancelling your insurance.
Or you missed a payment because they typed the wrong checking account number into their system over the phone and your payment failed because of THEM and then they considered it a missed payment with the fault being blamed on you, and its an immediate termination with no appeal process or means to resolve the issue. Yeah, that happened to me in 2008.
The Affordable Care Act and Healthcare.gov are not perfect but its definitely better than what we had before and there is always room for improvement. That is if one side of the aisle would start working on improvements instead of just spending their time abolishing everything instead.
> LucasArts was a company paralyzed by greed, overconfidence, and incompetence from executives at the highest levels.
I'm going to say greed mostly greed and lazyness. During the 90s they were pushing out 3-4 titles a year under their name. By the 2000's they had very few titles under their own name. Most games were being developed by another developer with the Lucas Arts name slapped on for licensing purposes. They would release a game every few years to show they did something. Disney probably saw this and realized right away this whole division could be eliminated the IP's merged into their existing licensing division since thats basically all Lucas Arts did for the last ten years.
> what do you expect? ballmer got his MBA at harvard at the same time the current GE CEO was there. and that's where the ranking system was born, at GE
What you are referring to is the Jack Welch approach. Its a strategy that was developed to eliminate excess employees. It works. Its biggest pro is that once implemented it shows the main result of excess employee elimination in a short period of time. It has two major flaws one that appears in the short term and one that appears in the long term if you continue to the use the strategy. The major flaw in the short term is that you can have a department full of amazing employees but you're forced to eliminate someone, this is probably something most companies are willing to accept when deploying the strategy. The other major flaw which Microsoft is now seeing is what happens when you keep this strategy around for too long. It creates a hostile environment where no one wants to help each other. No department wants to see the other succeed nor do they want to see their co-workers succeed because you're in constant competition for your own job.
Its a strategy that can work and it did for General Electric, but Jack Welch had other strategies he mixed with this strategy that made it work with GE.
> Microsoft should focus on the things where it is successful including XBOX and Windows and Office.
Microsoft still focuses on those markets, but it has the resources to step out of the box and try to capitalize in other markets. The problem is that they have failed more than succeeded when trying to enter a new market. They were successful with the Xbox but failed with the Zune and on course to fail with the Windows Phone, and Microsoft Surface.
Now you can enter markets and lose as long as your cash cows (Windows/Office) maintain control and continue to sell. The problem and in my opinion the reason why Ballmer is on his way out is not because of his failure with the Zune/Windows Phone/Microsoft Surface but the failure of Windows Vista and Windows 8. Microsoft has flopped on two of the last three releases of their biggest cash cow.
How so? Do you have a lot of Microsoft stock or you just hate the IT world and want it to suffer more years of monopoly abuse?
Its amazing that people still talk about Microsoft being a monopoly. The boogeyman of the late 90's and early 2000's is long gone.
Markets Microsoft currently controls:
Desktop Operating Systems
Office Suites
Markets Microsoft currently fights for control:
Servers
Databases
Home Gaming
Markets either Microsoft lost or cant put a dent into:
Web Browser
Mobile Operating Systems
Tablet Operating Systems
The monopoly just doesn't exist anymore The government stepped in over the monopoly and forced their hand. So Microsoft entered markets that already existed and their products either flopped or fight for market share. The markets they did control like Web Browser saw increased competition and eventually Microsoft lost their grip which forced them to heavily improve Internet Explorer while continuing to lose market share. And the markets they still own they own because well the competition cant seem to put a dent into the market.
If the game came out in 2005, it would have struggled to keep up with other FPS games but it could have contended.
But coming out in 2011 was six years too late. The final product felt like it came from 2005 and no later. I bought Duke Nukem Forever for a $10 in 2012, if I had paid $60 at launch for it, I would have been pissed because the game was not worth more than $10.
Because if everyone started using Adblock these websites would disappear or force people into a subscription. A large portion of their operating costs are supported by the advertisements that Adblock will block.
But baby monitors and walkie-talkies can pick up interference and other communication which can cause the trigger to go prematurely. With a cell phone its waiting to receive a phone call so if no one knows the number its less likely to go off prematurely.
Slashdot Mirror
I only cross checked a few of the HP's listed but you pay about $100-150 extra compared to going to HP directly. But that is why HP/Dell PC's come with that crap ware it helps them reduce the sale cost.
I feel like this is something the lawyers for Oculus VR and Zenimax would have looked over before Carmack started developing for the Oculus Rift. I would also think the lawyers for Facebook would have paid closed attention to this when looking into buying Oculus Rift.
In the Star Trek DVD commentary they(director and producer) even talk about how they overdid the lens flares. For the sequel they still had them but it wasn't as prevalent as the first. Its fine if you have like a single shot with it in there but not everything needs a flare.
Do you use a phone? Do you browse the Internet? Do you drive an automobile? Did you file your taxes?
No matter what you do unless you live in the middle of the woods you will always be exposed to software that you have no control over. Even if you're using open sourced software to communicate with people the messages are still transmitted over corporate owned hardware which means they can easily copy your message even if its encrypted.
Well, the first price increase cost us customers so the stock plunged. What will make the stock soar? A price increase!
The company has outgrown its current monthly fee. The only way for Netflix to continue growing and offer a better experience is to increase its monthly fee. Its one thing to bring in new members but they need to protect their retention rate. Netflix lately has been suffering from a quality issue where they lack new content and to a lot of us older members are starting to get annoyed by it. The good thing for Netflix is that a decent alternative doesn't exist yet but the bad thing is if the service starts to suffer and an alternative comes around people can easily jump ship.
This is someone just talking out of their ass and doesn't see the full pictures. Hes the same type of person who thinks that if you ban alcohol every thing will suddenly be better.
M$
I didn't know that was still in style.
Slashdot has gotten so soft, so much like reddit and other useless sites.
Can you explain to me why Reddit is a useless site? The site has thousands of different subreddits that you can customize to your tastes. Don't like /r/WTF? Unsubscribe. You enjoy discussions on movies? Subscribe to /r/movies. Its literally two clicks to do either. On top of that you can find knowledgeable people in specific subreddits. I had an old artillery shell that I wanted identified and I went to /r/military and within an hour someone had posted a link to exactly what I had. Reddit is light years ahead of where Slashdot is now.
Slashdot has gotten so soft
Slashdot is out of date. When it was first came out it had a new model no one was using but when everyone started to change and new sites started to come up Slashdot stuck to its old ways and has slowly been dying since.
They should just roll back to Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and start from there.
They probably will make their next operating system work like Windows 7 or at least give the option to choose between the two interfaces. But the main goal of the Windows 8 redesign was to make a seamless user interface between their products. They wanted it so users to be able to pick up any Microsoft device like Windows 8, Microsoft Surface, or a Windows phone and feel like they didn't even switch devices.
What I'd like to know is which taxpayers agreed on spending their taxes on this? The only citizens I found supporting this are those who do not pay income taxes.
Technically the 65,915,796 residents who voted for Obama in the 2012 election?
The United States has tried to replace the $1 bill on several occasions. The problem is that replacing the dollar doesn't solve any problem to the individual. Its not like people grab a bunch of dollar bills from their pockets and say, "Oh geez, I wish these were coins!".
At least this generation can play last gen games... Oh wait.
To be fair here. The reason why you cant run last generation games is because of the architecture switch. Both the Xbox One and PS4 are running x86 processors which means you don't have consoles coming out with specialized CPU architectures anymore. At one point or another this had to be done and the big consequence was dropping backward compatibility unless they decide to release emulator software for the current hardware or they start releasing specialized versions of the console that contain prior generation hardware.
The big benefit though is that developers can in theory develop a game across all consoles and PC without dealing with too much porting.
Blockbuster had a service like Netflix and it was launched in 2004. The Blockbuster DVD-by-Mail was an interesting endeavor because everyone thought they were going to compete head to head with Netflix. The problem is that when you examined the Blockbuster DVD-by-Mail service it had a hidden agenda and that was getting people to come back to the stores.
With Netflix they sent you a DVD, you send it back through the mail, they send you another. With Blockbusters service they send you a DVD and you could either send it back and they send you a new movie OR bring it back to the stores and exchange it for a so-called rental. Except that new rental is subject to late fees and restocking fees WHICH they announced in 2005 they were getting rid of which they secretly didn't and this brought upon them a massive lawsuit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_LLC#Misleading_advertising
This was their way of getting people to come back to their stores and adding on late fees which was their cash cow.
Blockbuster is the perfect example of a company that knew the industry was changing and somewhat attempted to adapt but wouldn't let go of the past completely.In my opinion Netflix wasn't what damned them it was just the beginning. Redbox is what really killed them.
I have only heard of one game that fell into abandon ware. Unfortunately, I can't find the arcade game but they used to package it with the MAME Emulator. It was an arcade game made in a former European country that no longer exists. From what I remember since the game was never released outside of that country it didn't fall into any copyright domain therefore it was considered abandon ware because the country it was made in no longer exists.
Free or not its still ridiculous that I need to download third party software to have a feature that was standard to Windows for 17 years.
If the gameplay is so simplistic that its bottable, then it's pretty boring to me.
Ever played Fallout, Morrowind, or Skyrim on Xbox/PS3? You level up the sneak attribute by sneaking around which is basically crouching around and walking. People exploited this by putting rubber bands around the controller so the character would continuously crouch walk into a corner. That gameplay mechanic is pretty simplistic yet those games are amazing to play.
In 1986 and 1987, 2 articles appeared in the literature by physicians from Cook County Hospital in Chicago detailing the extent of patient dumping to that facility (1, 2). The authors defined dumping as “the denial of or limitation in the provision of medical services to a patient for economic reasons and the referral of that patient elsewhere” (1). The majority of such transfers to Cook County Hospital involved patients who were minorities and unemployed. The reason given for the transfer by the sending institution was lack of insurance in 87% of the cases. Only 6% of the patients had given written informed consent for their transfer. Medical service patients who were transferred were twice as likely to die as those treated at the transferring hospital, and 24% of the patients were considered to have been transferred in an unstable condition. It was concluded that this practice was done primarily for financial reasons and that it delayed care and jeopardized the patient's health. This practice was not limited to Chicago but occurred in most large cities with public hospitals. In Dallas, such transfers increased from 70 per month in 1982 to more than 200 per month in 1983 (1).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1305897/
> "...but I seriously had no idea it would be this bad."
We'll we can always go back to the old system when you couldn't even buy health insurance because of some common pre-existing condition like hypertension. Or if you happened to have insurance and fell sick they would find some way of cancelling your insurance.
Or you missed a payment because they typed the wrong checking account number into their system over the phone and your payment failed because of THEM and then they considered it a missed payment with the fault being blamed on you, and its an immediate termination with no appeal process or means to resolve the issue. Yeah, that happened to me in 2008.
The Affordable Care Act and Healthcare.gov are not perfect but its definitely better than what we had before and there is always room for improvement. That is if one side of the aisle would start working on improvements instead of just spending their time abolishing everything instead.
> LucasArts was a company paralyzed by greed, overconfidence, and incompetence from executives at the highest levels.
I'm going to say greed mostly greed and lazyness. During the 90s they were pushing out 3-4 titles a year under their name. By the 2000's they had very few titles under their own name. Most games were being developed by another developer with the Lucas Arts name slapped on for licensing purposes. They would release a game every few years to show they did something. Disney probably saw this and realized right away this whole division could be eliminated the IP's merged into their existing licensing division since thats basically all Lucas Arts did for the last ten years.
> what do you expect? ballmer got his MBA at harvard at the same time the current GE CEO was there. and that's where the ranking system was born, at GE
What you are referring to is the Jack Welch approach. Its a strategy that was developed to eliminate excess employees. It works. Its biggest pro is that once implemented it shows the main result of excess employee elimination in a short period of time. It has two major flaws one that appears in the short term and one that appears in the long term if you continue to the use the strategy. The major flaw in the short term is that you can have a department full of amazing employees but you're forced to eliminate someone, this is probably something most companies are willing to accept when deploying the strategy. The other major flaw which Microsoft is now seeing is what happens when you keep this strategy around for too long. It creates a hostile environment where no one wants to help each other. No department wants to see the other succeed nor do they want to see their co-workers succeed because you're in constant competition for your own job.
Its a strategy that can work and it did for General Electric, but Jack Welch had other strategies he mixed with this strategy that made it work with GE.
> Microsoft should focus on the things where it is successful including XBOX and Windows and Office.
Microsoft still focuses on those markets, but it has the resources to step out of the box and try to capitalize in other markets. The problem is that they have failed more than succeeded when trying to enter a new market. They were successful with the Xbox but failed with the Zune and on course to fail with the Windows Phone, and Microsoft Surface.
Now you can enter markets and lose as long as your cash cows (Windows/Office) maintain control and continue to sell. The problem and in my opinion the reason why Ballmer is on his way out is not because of his failure with the Zune/Windows Phone/Microsoft Surface but the failure of Windows Vista and Windows 8. Microsoft has flopped on two of the last three releases of their biggest cash cow.
How so? Do you have a lot of Microsoft stock or you just hate the IT world and want it to suffer more years of monopoly abuse?
Its amazing that people still talk about Microsoft being a monopoly. The boogeyman of the late 90's and early 2000's is long gone.
Markets Microsoft currently controls:
Markets Microsoft currently fights for control:
Markets either Microsoft lost or cant put a dent into:
The monopoly just doesn't exist anymore The government stepped in over the monopoly and forced their hand. So Microsoft entered markets that already existed and their products either flopped or fight for market share. The markets they did control like Web Browser saw increased competition and eventually Microsoft lost their grip which forced them to heavily improve Internet Explorer while continuing to lose market share. And the markets they still own they own because well the competition cant seem to put a dent into the market.
Its a game that if it came out in 2001, I think it could have been up there as game of the year. I mean look at this trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDlB2P1leRM
If the game came out in 2005, it would have struggled to keep up with other FPS games but it could have contended.
But coming out in 2011 was six years too late. The final product felt like it came from 2005 and no later. I bought Duke Nukem Forever for a $10 in 2012, if I had paid $60 at launch for it, I would have been pissed because the game was not worth more than $10.
Because if everyone started using Adblock these websites would disappear or force people into a subscription. A large portion of their operating costs are supported by the advertisements that Adblock will block.
But baby monitors and walkie-talkies can pick up interference and other communication which can cause the trigger to go prematurely. With a cell phone its waiting to receive a phone call so if no one knows the number its less likely to go off prematurely.