I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion. I love the Wii remote for games like Wii Sports, Rayman and Tiger Woods. It still pisses me off that it's so blurry and indisticint in some games and it makes them much less pleasant, though I realise the impact is less significant of those not used to HD games on large displays.
Are you using the composite cable or the component cable? Are you using 480i or 480p? The Wii with a component cable and 480p looks much better.
Despite them being by far the most popular portable digital player, why would this focus purely on the ipod? how can they possibly be doing this, and it not be a problem for other players?
Remember, this "study" was run by a 17-year-old. We know very little; my guess is that it was a high school science project where the student visited his grandparents at a retirement home.
Perhaps I'm forgetting how bad that system was in the DOS days, and I'd welcome people reminding me, but it is looking pretty good at the moment.
Hmmm... No multitasking, no TCP/IP stack, no security at all... I seem to remember that BBSes looked cooler, though.
6 months ago I bought a Macbook. When I replaced my aging Windows XP box with a Mac desktop, all I did was connect a firewire cable between the two and everything was copied.
I haven't tried VMWare-- never occurred to me since it was a driver/hardware issue. We use the old tape software in Windows XP for reading files, but couldn't get it to access the SCSI tape readers, no matter what I tried. Do you think it would be able to access the hardware in VMWare when the host OS can't (in that way)?
It's theoretically possible, but I'm not the expert. Paralels on Mac allows the user to specifically direct USB devices to the VM, it wouldn't surprise me if there's some VM that can allow for direct connection of a SCSI device to a VM. I think you'll need to shop around.
You can try consulting. It's not a significant career change, and it'll allow you to see some variety. It's also very easy to leave, as contracts do end.
A mentor of mine left tech to become a professional carpenter. He installs custom cabinets.
Scott Adams (the guy who writes Dilbert) now owns a restaurant.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure that there's enough value so that you can keep the standard of living you want. Selling asaragus on the side of the road isn't going to allow you to afford a brand-spanking-new BMW.
Sounds reasonable, right? Well, apparently not. I've had drivers behind me go into apoplectic fits, screaming and flipping me off, because I allowed a half-dozen car lengths to open ahead of me. I've had drivers pass me on the shoulder where there is no shoulder (I literally mean a two lane road with big, scary ditches on the sides) because they couldn't stand to see a gap in front of me. I've had drivers pull out of line, swerve in front of me, then watch their mirror as I idled up from behind and slam on the brakes as I approached, attempting to cause an accident that would be my fault. I hate to ascribe motives to people I don't know, but that seems to me to be just an attempt to "get" me for not driving like everybody else.
Call your local police. Seriously. Tell them about people who pass you as you coast. The local police where I grew up would always make an effort to watch areas that tax payers complained about.
Our oil problems would be greatly solved if everyone stopped driving their cars and started riding bicycles for any trip less than, say, 5 miles long, but that isn't likely to happen.
There's no way I'd bike 5 miles to work in the 80-degree weather that I've had this past week. Besides, there's no way I'm going to bike 1/2 mile with a butt-load of groceries.
The real fault is that American cities are designed for cars. When I visited Europe, because so little room was reserved for cars, you could go anywhere on foot. Carrying groceries home was just slightly further then carrying groceries across an American parking lot.
I don't think you get it. The problem is not the security of the.bank domain. The problem is getting people to recognize that the site they are visiting is not legitimate. Considering that it's already pretty obvious that a URL like http://wellsfargo.scammer.com/scam_me does not belong to a bank, I'd say the.bank extension won't help anything.
All digital music, with the exception of purely synthesized stuff, has to pass through an analog-to-digital conversion process that throws away information (quantizing). So "uncompressed music" is still actually compressed -- and lossy-compressed at that -- if it's in digital form. The question has never been compressed vs. uncompressed, but rather what type and level of information loss you find acceptable.
There's a lot of misinterpretation of the term "lossy". It really doesn't apply in the analog - to - digital conversion area. The proper term to use is signal - to - noise ratio, this describes the ratio between the loudest and softest signal that the analog - to - digital conversion can handle; anything quieter then the softest signal is supposed to be masked by hiss. (For example, a 16-bit A/D has a better SNR then 8-bit because it can handle quieter sounds.)
I'm happy with a compression format that is not encumbered with lots of onerous license terms (i.e., that I could write and distribute an open-source player for if I felt like it) and that produces quality slightly better than the point at which I can hear the difference on a good stereo system. The "slightly better" simply so that if I get an even better stereo system later on, I still won't hear the difference. As long as that baseline is met, I want the format to take as few bytes per song as possible.
With regard to choosing a codec, both Apple lossless and WMA lossless a rather nice. they use about 1/3 the space of a WAV, and do not change the signal in any way. With today's ultra-cheap hard drives, it's kind of silly to use anything else! For more favorable liscensing terms, you might like FLAC.
Given the choice, how many people would rent a home instead of buying it? Would you rather rent a TV from RaC or own it?
In many cases, people must resort to renting because they can't afford to buy. This is hardly the case when it comes to music.
Like Jobs says, consumers want to own shit and do what they want with it. 'Renting' and 'subscription' are associated with control, red tape, limitations, etc. Buying a DRM-free song or album is a single transaction with no strings attached.
Honestly, subscription services initialy appealed to me. At the time, I was buying more then 1 CD a month, and a subscription service would allow me to access significantly MORE music for less money.
What drove me away from subscription services was that they sounded so bad that they gave me a headache, and also the lack of flexibility in how I access the service. Subscription services really only work when you have access to an unfiltered high-speed internet connection. I don't have such a connection in my car, and I don't expect to have one anytime soon.
I strongly suspect that market forces will push the price of download-to-own so low that we'll end up using software that appears to look like a subscription service, except we'll only pay the first time we download the song.
Fructose depresses leptin and insulin levels. Leptin is normally produced when you eat, and this triggers the "ok, I'm no longer hungry" signal in your brain so you stop eating. Lowering the leptin level causes you to still feel hungry, even after you've eaten. Switching from fructose to sucrose will allow your body to regulate itself better.
Its probably going to take some major lawsuits (and bankruptcies) to fix this problem...
My tounge-in-cheek response is that you need to look at how fast your hardware is compared to how fast it should be.
Specifically, I've been in many situations where my company-provided hardware was too slow due to the company-provided security software. McAffee is the biggest offender, it'll needlessly make me wait for minutes while it trashes my hard drive.
You know that utility that automatically updates everyone's desktop? Guess what, making everyone reboot in the middle of the afternoon cuts away half an hour of productivity!
This is to compete with TV. Looking at the way TV is going, it's only a matter of time before we'll all have 70" TV screens in our homes that appear as big as a full movie screen.
I got sick of mail order. I usually want something "now", and I don't want to wait, (or pay $50 for overnight shipping). Now that Dell is so big, they can't afford to ignore people like me.
We have a couple Windows 98 machines for reading mainframe tapes we still get from our clients. The tape software runs in DOS, and simply can not be run in any newer Windows. There is updated tape software, but it's all GUI, less useful, and takes about 10 times longer to do the same thing.
A previous post suggested using a VM. Have you tried running FreeDOS on a VM or an older machine tucked in a corner?
Does your client have any plans or desires to move away from tape? Without knowing much about their mainframe, can they write data to a removable hard drive? There are many options for removable hard drives, including caddies and USB.
I've gotten close with MacOS and Parallels. I was able to designate a specific USB mouse to a specific VM, but I could not do it with the keyboard. If you can find a good VM that allows you to direct USB mice and keyboards without the parent OS seeing the inputs, you might have some luck. It'll also simplify your configuration because you can clone VMs at the click of a mouse.
The only hitch comes with the price tag, which is set at a rather expensive price of $549.
Back in the mid-90s I paid about $300 for a 700 megabyte drive. Considering inflation, this is a good price. I might make the jump when I can get an affordable 60-100 gig flash drive.
This proposal is waaaay too confusing and complicated. Why not price the internet like electricity? Charge everyone a minor (about $5 / month) connection fee, and then charge a flat rate per gigabyte downloaded. Heavy bandwidth users will end up footing the bill for their usage, and market forces will push ISPs to continually lower their price per gigabyte. This will also mitigate problems with uncapped cable modems, as customers who abuse it will end up paying large usage fees. In addition, light internet users might be tempted to connect to broadband as their total bill could be something like $10 a month.
In all honesty, gnome and kde have driven me away from linux for everything but core server use, and my next laptop will be a Macbook simply because i'm tired of it all.
I saw that coming back when I turned my back on Linux in 1999/2000. I recently bought a MacBook, and when my Windows desktop died, (which I use as a Server,) I replaced it with a MacPro.
This week, I set up my first cron job ever. You know what I realized: Unix is really cool when you have a GUI system on top of it that actually works!
Give it am MD5 hash and a file length and it will compute all the possible files that could have produced the hash. Automatically filter our the invalid files and the set you're left with can't be that large.
The various replies state that such a technique is computationally impossible. What would be interesting is if you sent every 3rd byte and used MD5 to fill in the gaps.
What would be really cool is if you could buy a $100 kit so you could yell at the idiot in front of you sitting at the red light with the transmission in reverse.
Seriously, being able to talk to the other driver instead of honking would be SOOOO much better!
I do infrequent, low-volume printing, and my biggest problem isn't how the output looks or the reliability of the cartridges; it's how long the under-used ink takes to evaporate from the cartridge. Brand-X cartridges seem to come up "out of ink" months and months sooner than OEM ones do.
The conclusion that I get from the article is that 3-rd party ink & cartridges are only worthwhile for people who need to count EVERY penny or who do a LOT of printing. For the rest of us, the hassle isn't worth saving a few bucks.
At least the printer manufacturers aren't suing people who use 3'rd party ink.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Are you using the composite cable or the component cable? Are you using 480i or 480p? The Wii with a component cable and 480p looks much better.
Remember, this "study" was run by a 17-year-old. We know very little; my guess is that it was a high school science project where the student visited his grandparents at a retirement home.
Let's rename "copyright infringement" to "keeping Holywood honest."
Hmmm... No multitasking, no TCP/IP stack, no security at all... I seem to remember that BBSes looked cooler, though.
6 months ago I bought a Macbook. When I replaced my aging Windows XP box with a Mac desktop, all I did was connect a firewire cable between the two and everything was copied.
It's theoretically possible, but I'm not the expert. Paralels on Mac allows the user to specifically direct USB devices to the VM, it wouldn't surprise me if there's some VM that can allow for direct connection of a SCSI device to a VM. I think you'll need to shop around.
Some thoughts:
You can try consulting. It's not a significant career change, and it'll allow you to see some variety. It's also very easy to leave, as contracts do end.
A mentor of mine left tech to become a professional carpenter. He installs custom cabinets.
Scott Adams (the guy who writes Dilbert) now owns a restaurant.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure that there's enough value so that you can keep the standard of living you want. Selling asaragus on the side of the road isn't going to allow you to afford a brand-spanking-new BMW.
Call your local police. Seriously. Tell them about people who pass you as you coast. The local police where I grew up would always make an effort to watch areas that tax payers complained about.
There's no way I'd bike 5 miles to work in the 80-degree weather that I've had this past week. Besides, there's no way I'm going to bike 1/2 mile with a butt-load of groceries.
The real fault is that American cities are designed for cars. When I visited Europe, because so little room was reserved for cars, you could go anywhere on foot. Carrying groceries home was just slightly further then carrying groceries across an American parking lot.
Or http://wellsfargo.ba.nc./ Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-leve l_domain#N
There's a lot of misinterpretation of the term "lossy". It really doesn't apply in the analog - to - digital conversion area. The proper term to use is signal - to - noise ratio, this describes the ratio between the loudest and softest signal that the analog - to - digital conversion can handle; anything quieter then the softest signal is supposed to be masked by hiss. (For example, a 16-bit A/D has a better SNR then 8-bit because it can handle quieter sounds.)
With regard to choosing a codec, both Apple lossless and WMA lossless a rather nice. they use about 1/3 the space of a WAV, and do not change the signal in any way. With today's ultra-cheap hard drives, it's kind of silly to use anything else! For more favorable liscensing terms, you might like FLAC.
Honestly, subscription services initialy appealed to me. At the time, I was buying more then 1 CD a month, and a subscription service would allow me to access significantly MORE music for less money.
What drove me away from subscription services was that they sounded so bad that they gave me a headache, and also the lack of flexibility in how I access the service. Subscription services really only work when you have access to an unfiltered high-speed internet connection. I don't have such a connection in my car, and I don't expect to have one anytime soon.
I strongly suspect that market forces will push the price of download-to-own so low that we'll end up using software that appears to look like a subscription service, except we'll only pay the first time we download the song.
I just learned that Wonderbread contains HFCS.
My tounge-in-cheek response is that you need to look at how fast your hardware is compared to how fast it should be.
Specifically, I've been in many situations where my company-provided hardware was too slow due to the company-provided security software. McAffee is the biggest offender, it'll needlessly make me wait for minutes while it trashes my hard drive.
You know that utility that automatically updates everyone's desktop? Guess what, making everyone reboot in the middle of the afternoon cuts away half an hour of productivity!
This is to compete with TV. Looking at the way TV is going, it's only a matter of time before we'll all have 70" TV screens in our homes that appear as big as a full movie screen.
I got sick of mail order. I usually want something "now", and I don't want to wait, (or pay $50 for overnight shipping). Now that Dell is so big, they can't afford to ignore people like me.
A previous post suggested using a VM. Have you tried running FreeDOS on a VM or an older machine tucked in a corner?
Does your client have any plans or desires to move away from tape? Without knowing much about their mainframe, can they write data to a removable hard drive? There are many options for removable hard drives, including caddies and USB.
Be careful if you find someone who easily agrees with everything you say, (s)he's just saying yes to keep you happy.
I've gotten close with MacOS and Parallels. I was able to designate a specific USB mouse to a specific VM, but I could not do it with the keyboard. If you can find a good VM that allows you to direct USB mice and keyboards without the parent OS seeing the inputs, you might have some luck. It'll also simplify your configuration because you can clone VMs at the click of a mouse.
Back in the mid-90s I paid about $300 for a 700 megabyte drive. Considering inflation, this is a good price. I might make the jump when I can get an affordable 60-100 gig flash drive.
The thing that bugs me with firefox on mac is that I have to install it.
Seriously, my mac already came with a working browser; why do I have to install another one?
This proposal is waaaay too confusing and complicated. Why not price the internet like electricity? Charge everyone a minor (about $5 / month) connection fee, and then charge a flat rate per gigabyte downloaded. Heavy bandwidth users will end up footing the bill for their usage, and market forces will push ISPs to continually lower their price per gigabyte. This will also mitigate problems with uncapped cable modems, as customers who abuse it will end up paying large usage fees. In addition, light internet users might be tempted to connect to broadband as their total bill could be something like $10 a month.
I saw that coming back when I turned my back on Linux in 1999/2000. I recently bought a MacBook, and when my Windows desktop died, (which I use as a Server,) I replaced it with a MacPro.
This week, I set up my first cron job ever. You know what I realized: Unix is really cool when you have a GUI system on top of it that actually works!
The various replies state that such a technique is computationally impossible. What would be interesting is if you sent every 3rd byte and used MD5 to fill in the gaps.
What would be really cool is if you could buy a $100 kit so you could yell at the idiot in front of you sitting at the red light with the transmission in reverse.
Seriously, being able to talk to the other driver instead of honking would be SOOOO much better!
The conclusion that I get from the article is that 3-rd party ink & cartridges are only worthwhile for people who need to count EVERY penny or who do a LOT of printing. For the rest of us, the hassle isn't worth saving a few bucks.
At least the printer manufacturers aren't suing people who use 3'rd party ink. ;)