Actually, it's more likely to result in retail-iation as people flock to buy even more devices:) However, I don't think the hardware is where Sony makes its money - it's in the games and the yet-again-released $30 movies.
I have a collection of 3-400 DVDs, and I don't want to pay again for the same content in a different format at a lower resolution. It's bad enough I will probably do so when the High-Def battle has been won by someone..
I'm just astonished that this kind of thing actually works. Does *anyone* ever click on any of the ads when you arrive at one of these hijacked places?
Income tax certainly exists, yes, typically at higher rates than in the US.
In the UK, I pay just over 40% income tax of every earned $. In France, it was around 52%, and in Denmark the top income tax rate is around 60%, in addition to 9% or so of mandatory social contributions.
What we get for the moneth is free health care, free education from kindergarten to university, etc - but it certainly carries a steep price.
Sounds like you're in the US - 9% sales tax is not very much compared to what we are used to:
UK: 17.5%
France: 20%
Denmark: 25%
Germany: 16%
Your $16 movie at Wal-Mart easily costs $30 here, plus the taxes. Add to that the fact that Europe gets it 6-12 months after it came out in the US - there is your reason for pirating.
The final straw is the region encoding. I have lived both in Canada and in Europe and consequently have lots of DVDs from different regions. Now, when I visit someone with my son, I can only take half "his" DVDs along, because the other half don't work in an unmodified player. A pirated movie on the other hand plays everywhere.
In conclusion, if DVDs were priced the same here as in the US, did not have region protection, and came out roughly at the same time worldwide, I'd buy more of them.
I think that in real life, those that still code in Pascal consider Borland the standard-setter, and Borland has set the de facto standard with its compilers for quite some time. I don't know of any serious Pascal-based tools that are not to some extent compatible with Borland - and where they are not, they strive to be.
This includes FreePascal, Virtual Pascal, TMT Pascal, etc.
If there are still any "standard Pascal" compilers out there, I find it hard to imagine that they are useful for anything other than teaching. Standard Pascal doesn't even have the Short String type that started the thread, since it was introduced by... Borland:)
Yes, the 255-length limit on strings can be bothersome, and to address it a new dynamic string type with a 32-bit length was introduced in Delphi 2: AnsiString.
That is 7 Delphi versions ago, btw, so it's not exactly new any more:-)
The advantage of the "Short" strings is that they can be allocated on the stack and thus have no memory manager overhead, pointers etc associated with them - which makes them simple to use. And many strings *are* less than 255 chars, always.
If you need longer strings, use Delphi 2 or later. The AnsiString implementation is certainly heads and shoulders above the std::string from the STL, which I have found to be astonishingly inefficient several times.
My IBM X40 (it's a Pentium M, 1GHz) runs 7 hours on a charge of the 8-cell battery.
Total weight is only 1.6kg with the battery, and the laptop is great for everything except graphics-intensive games. The downside is that there is no DVD drive except with a docking station, and it has only a 10.4" screen running 1024x768.
It suits me perfectly for a transatlantic flight though and plays DivX very well for several hours:)
What I don't get is the stock price. SCOX has gone up, and up, and up, and is now at more than $19. This in spite of several pieces of evidence suggesting SCO has no case at all, and no evidence that they have a case that is worth anything (Just lots of bluster).
Do the Wall Street types know something that we don't about the likelihood of SCO actually winning in court, or are they just massively ignorant about how much SCO is going to go down once this issue gets heard in a court of law?
I think both of those alternatives are scary. Particlarly as i sold short SCOX at $16:) I'm thinking it will be at less than $1 a year from now - but Wall Street does not appear to agree thus far...?
I also live in Canada and a few months ago went through lots of frustrating phonecalls to get some silent-PC equipment to Ottawa.
In the end, I ended up using US-based Plycon for the Papst fans (they are the best queiet fans you can get, bar none) and Magic Fleece. Other bits, like the Zalman cooler, I had to buy in the UK.
Why is it that it's so difficult to find any of this gear in Canada? In this regard, Canada is a third world country!
In many cases, it is necessary to use a conjecture to prove something else. Once a fundamental conjecture is proven to be true, a whole range of other mathemathical conjectures based on it may all of a sudden seem become real proofs!
Conversely, disproving a conjecture widely assumed to be true could invalidate a lot of work - so getting the proof right is definitely important.
I had a really positive experience that could maybe become more standard practice. I ordered some expensive items from a US web site (I live in France) and my bank (which happens to be a UK one) actually called me and asked if I agreed with this transaction.
The conversation took about 30 seconds but left me with a lot more confidence in the whole e-commerce thing than before. I am now basically reassured that if anyone attempts to buy expensive goods using my credit card details, I'll get a chance to say no before payment goes through.
If this is not feasible, the method used by my Danish bank could also be used - if not quite as convenient. They send me a statement every month, with details of every item that will be paid from my credit card next month. If I disagree with any of the items, I just call the bank and let them know. Of course, if you have a payment that must be cleared and go through urgently, this approach is not quite as powerful or flexible as when you get your bank to call you.
Has anyone else had the same experiences, or am I just lucky? For reference, the bank is First Direct in the UK, which offers telephone and online banking only...
... when he says that Big Brother is not *the* overriding concern - just yet another thing to keep in mind.
However, Phil Zimmermann is even more right when saying this is largely the credit of PGP: If it hadn't been for the existence of PGP, there really would have been something to worry about.
Stephen Donaldson The Gap Story is simply some of the best Sci-Fi around. The series consists of 5 books, and is an extremely enjoyable and thoughtprovoking read.
Iain M. Banks - particularly his Culture books are exquisite. His prose is excellent, his humor even better, and his universe immaculately built. Without humans being at the center of everything (Earth is considered contacted in a short story of his, and that's it), it is simply brilliant. My favourite.
What would it take to get a version of Linux certified in the same way? Lots of money, or just lots of carefully configured pices of software? Is it not something
While I think general consensus is that NT's C2 certification is pretty useless (it has to be configured in a way to make it of even less use than normally), it still puts NT on the scoreboard when compared against Linux.
I think the issue of salary vs hourly wages is a matter of personal preference.
If you want security and stability (usually a preference for those with family or a large rent/mortgage bill), salaried income is definitely preferable. An hourly income scheme can (and should!) pay more, but can leave you in the dust if you get ill, when you take vacation, etc.
Since after my student days I have worked exclusively on a salaried basis, and prefer it this way. My contract states that I should work about 40h/week, and that occasional overtime may be required - without extra pay. This is quite a normal clause, and is fine by me: Instead of being nitpicky about extra hours spent in the office, the company rewards performers with a nice bonus at the end of the year...
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Actually, it's more likely to result in retail-iation as people flock to buy even more devices :) However, I don't think the hardware is where Sony makes its money - it's in the games and the yet-again-released $30 movies.
I have a collection of 3-400 DVDs, and I don't want to pay again for the same content in a different format at a lower resolution. It's bad enough I will probably do so when the High-Def battle has been won by someone..
I'm just astonished that this kind of thing actually works. Does *anyone* ever click on any of the ads when you arrive at one of these hijacked places?
For me, it's ctrl-W or backspace, every time.
Income tax certainly exists, yes, typically at higher rates than in the US.
In the UK, I pay just over 40% income tax of every earned $. In France, it was around 52%, and in Denmark the top income tax rate is around 60%, in addition to 9% or so of mandatory social contributions.
What we get for the moneth is free health care, free education from kindergarten to university, etc - but it certainly carries a steep price.
Your $16 movie at Wal-Mart easily costs $30 here, plus the taxes. Add to that the fact that Europe gets it 6-12 months after it came out in the US - there is your reason for pirating.
The final straw is the region encoding. I have lived both in Canada and in Europe and consequently have lots of DVDs from different regions. Now, when I visit someone with my son, I can only take half "his" DVDs along, because the other half don't work in an unmodified player. A pirated movie on the other hand plays everywhere.
In conclusion, if DVDs were priced the same here as in the US, did not have region protection, and came out roughly at the same time worldwide, I'd buy more of them.
I think that in real life, those that still code in Pascal consider Borland the standard-setter, and Borland has set the de facto standard with its compilers for quite some time. I don't know of any serious Pascal-based tools that are not to some extent compatible with Borland - and where they are not, they strive to be.
:)
This includes FreePascal, Virtual Pascal, TMT Pascal, etc.
If there are still any "standard Pascal" compilers out there, I find it hard to imagine that they are useful for anything other than teaching. Standard Pascal doesn't even have the Short String type that started the thread, since it was introduced by... Borland
Yes, the 255-length limit on strings can be bothersome, and to address it a new dynamic string type with a 32-bit length was introduced in Delphi 2: AnsiString.
:-)
:)
That is 7 Delphi versions ago, btw, so it's not exactly new any more
The advantage of the "Short" strings is that they can be allocated on the stack and thus have no memory manager overhead, pointers etc associated with them - which makes them simple to use. And many strings *are* less than 255 chars, always.
If you need longer strings, use Delphi 2 or later. The AnsiString implementation is certainly heads and shoulders above the std::string from the STL, which I have found to be astonishingly inefficient several times.
I guess it's all a matter of taste
It sounds like it's either a buggy mouse driver (try upgrading, it's cheap) or the mouse itself that is the problem.
The LCD is almost certainly not to blame.
My IBM X40 (it's a Pentium M, 1GHz) runs 7 hours on a charge of the 8-cell battery.
:)
Total weight is only 1.6kg with the battery, and the laptop is great for everything except graphics-intensive games. The downside is that there is no DVD drive except with a docking station, and it has only a 10.4" screen running 1024x768.
It suits me perfectly for a transatlantic flight though and plays DivX very well for several hours
What I don't get is the stock price. SCOX has gone up, and up, and up, and is now at more than $19. This in spite of several pieces of evidence suggesting SCO has no case at all, and no evidence that they have a case that is worth anything (Just lots of bluster).
:) I'm thinking it will be at less than $1 a year from now - but Wall Street does not appear to agree thus far...?
Do the Wall Street types know something that we don't about the likelihood of SCO actually winning in court, or are they just massively ignorant about how much SCO is going to go down once this issue gets heard in a court of law?
I think both of those alternatives are scary. Particlarly as i sold short SCOX at $16
In the end, I ended up using US-based Plycon for the Papst fans (they are the best queiet fans you can get, bar none) and Magic Fleece. Other bits, like the Zalman cooler, I had to buy in the UK.
Why is it that it's so difficult to find any of this gear in Canada? In this regard, Canada is a third world country!
In many cases, it is necessary to use a conjecture to prove something else. Once a fundamental conjecture is proven to be true, a whole range of other mathemathical conjectures based on it may all of a sudden seem become real proofs!
Conversely, disproving a conjecture widely assumed to be true could invalidate a lot of work - so getting the proof right is definitely important.
The conversation took about 30 seconds but left me with a lot more confidence in the whole e-commerce thing than before. I am now basically reassured that if anyone attempts to buy expensive goods using my credit card details, I'll get a chance to say no before payment goes through.
If this is not feasible, the method used by my Danish bank could also be used - if not quite as convenient. They send me a statement every month, with details of every item that will be paid from my credit card next month. If I disagree with any of the items, I just call the bank and let them know. Of course, if you have a payment that must be cleared and go through urgently, this approach is not quite as powerful or flexible as when you get your bank to call you.
Has anyone else had the same experiences, or am I just lucky? For reference, the bank is First Direct in the UK, which offers telephone and online banking only...
However, Phil Zimmermann is even more right when saying this is largely the credit of PGP: If it hadn't been for the existence of PGP, there really would have been something to worry about.
The Gap Story is simply some of the best Sci-Fi around. The series consists of 5 books, and is an extremely enjoyable and thoughtprovoking read.
Iain M. Banks
- particularly his Culture books are exquisite. His prose is excellent, his humor even better, and his universe immaculately built. Without humans being at the center of everything (Earth is considered contacted in a short story of his, and that's it), it is simply brilliant. My favourite.
While I think general consensus is that NT's C2 certification is pretty useless (it has to be configured in a way to make it of even less use than normally), it still puts NT on the scoreboard when compared against Linux.
If you want security and stability (usually a preference for those with family or a large rent/mortgage bill), salaried income is definitely preferable. An hourly income scheme can (and should!) pay more, but can leave you in the dust if you get ill, when you take vacation, etc.
Since after my student days I have worked exclusively on a salaried basis, and prefer it this way. My contract states that I should work about 40h/week, and that occasional overtime may be required - without extra pay. This is quite a normal clause, and is fine by me: Instead of being nitpicky about extra hours spent in the office, the company rewards performers with a nice bonus at the end of the year...
a quick job that produces what is needed, but not well,
very well indeed.
C++ is obviously a follow-up hack, as described by one of the following definitions of a hack:
An important secondary meaning of hack is `a creative practical joke'
The fact that both are so widely used in spite of the existence of so much better languages just reinforces the point :)