It's true, most people probably don't NEED a larger screen than 1920x1200 or 2560x1600, but I'd have to say the guy is right, but mostly in the laptop range.
I run 1680x1050 on my work laptop at 15.4" and it's awesome, I wish for 1920x1080 in that area and when I go to find a personal laptop with a screen size anywhere close I find that most laptops come with a resolution of MAX 1366x768. Even my mom's new $800 HP 17" laptop only has that resolution! Personally I think anything less than 1920 in a 17" screen is lackluster yet if you really want something that high you have to spend a lot of money.
Let me step back and say this. I have two laptops at home, both of the same 1024x768 resolution. I also do a lot of photography with a Canon EOS Rebel XT and 5D mk II. When I view a picture on one, a 15.1" Thinkpad, the picture looks okay. Then I open the same picture on my x40 12.1" screen and the clarity is outstanding. It looks even better if I choose to view it at work on the 1680x1050 screen. Considering we keep getting higher resolution cameras, and better video cards, a higher resolution screen should be a no brainer.
Personally I think the laptop makers think they found a sweet spot, 1366x768 is technically perfect for 720p video and the next step up is 1920x1080 for 1080p. Why should they think they need to go higher than that? Well, 4k video is coming out soon, let's start there.
Someone should show them a nice picture taken with a Canon 5D mk II on a higher res screen and when they wipe the droll off their chins, make them get back to work. Why anti-alias with sub-pixels when you can just have that much more detail in the first place.
I believe #1 came up in North Carolina. IIRC they agreed, the state appealed, and then won.
This is why they have speed cameras.
I believe it was appealed successfully as saying it wasn't a criminal trial, so you didn't get the 6th amendment right of facing an accuser... but it could have been that they just decided the guy that looked at the picture and camera's evidence was the accuser and since he worked for the state, it was therefore 'the state vs. '
Where I was taught drivers ed (as well as the DMV's and BMV's I've lived under the reign of), Yellow simply means caution. It's supposed to alert the driver that the light is about to change, so if you're not going to make it to and through the yellow, you should stop at the line. So, yes, 'go if you can squeeze through', where 'squeeze' means safely travel as if the light were still green. It is why around here, you will not get a ticket, from a camera or otherwise, if you have already passed the line while the light was still yellow, even if it takes until the light is red to pass out of the intersection.
Now, personally, I stop on yellows that I think I safely can without someone rear-ending me (which is a bigger issue than being T-boned around here), and I don't go when the traffic is stacked up so I can't make sure my ass isn't in the middle of the intersection if I were to go through, but I like my car, and obviously a lot of other people don't give a crap about theirs. On the flip side, I get yelled at almost every time I stop too early by my wife who thinks I'm endangering us by hitting my brakes when I obviously have enough time to get through... But I tend to err on the side of caution as, due to a previous job, I've traveled to almost every state of the US and have seen yellows in length anywhere from 8 seconds to 2 seconds. (which is a complete different topic, but I think there should be some sort of standardizing...)
Around here, they recently put up cameras and watched the total number of accidents INCREASE because people would slam on their brakes, worried about the $75 fine (no points though, proving again it's not about safety) and the person behind them would ram into them, either not paying attention, or being convinced there was still plenty of time to get through the light (which there probably was) and then surprised by the effectiveness of the person's brakes in front of them. 'Course they don't really count these because they're non-fatal.
The main problem I see about the whole thing is that while people do get creamed when someone flys through a red light, it's generally not because that person thought it'd stay yellow a hair longer. It's a blatant disregard of the light, because they weren't paying attention (or inebriated). Red light cameras do nothing to help this situation other than throw an additional charge and a nice video in as souvenirs.
To answer the original post, The cameras around here take videos of the car passing through the red light. This way they can tell if you simply stopped a few feet past the line, or stopped at the line and then inched up to actually see around that tree they never trim, or the construction sign they so cleverly placed in your line of sight when you want to make a right turn on red (which is perfectly legal in VA, other than when marked otherwise).
Was it advertised to contain the StopSaw tech? Because if not, he's just a dumb ass for not buying one that did and then sticking his hand in it. I mean seriously people the fact that this even went to court shows how screwed up our court system is. People need to take responsibility for their actions. If he wanted something with StopSaw, he should have bought something with StopSaw.
Now if it was supposed to have it and it didn't, then he has a lawsuit. If it didn't say that it did and he expected it to, then he needs to be charged for wasting our judicial system's time. Just because I buy a car and complain later that it doesn't have power seats doesn't mean I can sue someone for repetitive stress injuries related to moving the seat. It means I should have bought the damn power seat and got on with my life.
The PS3 remote is BT, and I love it. and it's lasted quite a while on it's 2 batteries. I'm sure it'll probably die slightly before a normal IR remote, but it could easily be made to use a rechargeable cradle and that'd solve that issue.
I completely agree! Though at least now I know, thanks to this article, that I can shut it off if I'm ever subjected to windows 7.
I also think that windows 7's general feel is a bit less polished than Vista. Probably something that will be fixed in the future I'm sure, but the start menu/task bar is a bit more blocky and single color hearkening back to days of ole. (I understand that this isn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it just continues from there...)
Then again, I'm apparently one of the few people who have Vista, have been running it for the past 3+ years now and it Just Works(tm). I haven't had any of the network issues, slowness, memory problems, etc. Which is fine, 'cause all I use it for is running games anyway.
I can honestly say I've never had that problem. The Touchpad just seems SO much more intuitive than the nipple mouse. In my book I try to imagine a world where that thing never existed. I have two think pads with only the touch point (They were given to me) and I pretty much always have to carry a mouse around if I want to use it for more than the simplest tasks.
The multiple defined areas and sensitivity of the touch pad make it an indispensable tool to me, and the newer it is, the better and better they've become with detecting erroneous inputs (which I rarely have, but know people who do). The T23 I have has a 3rd button for scrolling (push the button and the trackpad pans/scrolls the page instead of moving the cursor) and that's sorta handy, but to me it's not as intuitive as the side of the trackpad. At least it's a start though the x40 I have does NOT have it and it's quite a bit newer. It's quite a pain to have to move the trackpoint to the scroll bar just to move the page down. Especially when I'm running multiple desktops and 'sitting at the right edge of the screen' causes it to flip desktops. The track point is just no where near as accurate.
One of my friends got one of the newer Unibody MBP's with it's push to click touchpad, and I'll have to say, the first thing I had to do was turn on tap-to-click. Physically pushing in the touchpad is a huge step backwards for me, it's clumsy and requires a lot more pressure than I want to continually exert on a random plastic hinge. Luckily Apple provided the tap-to-click setting as well!
Seriously, no law that I've heard has really had that much of an effect on illegal behaviour. Sure, it gave the feds/authorities the ability to prosecute and such, but if someone wants to do something they'll do it, law against or no law against. All this does is intrude on law abiding citizens.
That said, it sounds like a good idea from the excerpt: Prevent a program/bot/other people from installing something on your pc that will share your files/block your programs/generally annoy you or cause you harm without first asking permission from the person doing the installing. But think about it, not only does this seem inherently flawed (dude breaks into your pc, installs program, is prompted if he wants to install it, sure he does, it's not HIS Computer!). If a bot/virus/trojan gets installed, well, it'll just hit the 'okay' button automatically. Is this really going to change anything, other than adding an extra prompt and legal ramifications? More government involvement for little gain!
The second thing is that they REALLY didn't even need to ask. Seriously, it's a VM, they can copy and crack the vm. They can restart it single user. They can mount the vm disk to another vm, change the password to what they want, and then put the disk back. They could make themselves a nice little backdoor of some sort. Etc...
In fact, the more I think about it, the nicer it was that they just asked for it. Once you trust someone to hold your entire machine in virtual space, they really might as well just have the password.
and I was told by AT&T that I COULD NOT get insurance on it. Flat None, Period. Where are these people getting these phones? Maybe it's just around here, but if you have insurance on your iPhone, it's a floater on your home owners insurance, and even then who knows if they'll do it.
Now I was pretty sure this is why they didn't offer it when I got mine, but it's just as well as I'd have not paid for it anyway.
On the flip side, my wife recently dropped her phone and besides learning that we'd been spending $5/mo on insurance for it (I remember when it was $1.49/mo and the phones didn't cost any more then either), plus the $50 deductible (she didn't have anything fancy), they were actually pretty quick and friendly. New phone was received in the mail THE NEXT DAY before 9am (well, refirb, but new to her). It was an upgraded model as they no longer carried her old one being like 7 months now, so, free upgrade. I'd have to say that $30 of that $50 went toward the shipping, and knowing how much she uses her phone, I'd have told them to just send it 3-5 day std ground UPS for $7 instead if they passed the savings on.
Then again, maybe they just didn't want to mess with a pregnant lady...
From working in the backup industry for years, I'm sure they have backups, the problem is that they never tried to verify or restore them. but is there really isn't any data there, compression is great when you just "tar cv * >/dev/null"...
Heck one time I had a guy who was getting Parity Errors decide that the best way to solve them was to just shut off Parity Checking... Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
Seriously I can't count the number of times I tried to help someone restore their backups after a critical loss that turned out to never have actually verified that they worked in the first place. Just as bad as when I worked in a photo shop and someone said they couldn't get their film out... put the camera in the light locked compartment, stuck my hands in, just to find that he had taken 36 'priceless vacation pictures' on the back of the camera body instead of film.
PLEASE get rid of the keyboard, and put a high-end touch screen in it's place, removing the existing hinged screen. It'd make it under.6" thick I'd think and it'd be a nice little powerhouse! Not to mention the awesome applications and interaction that could take place on a correctly done touch screen interface, in this form factor with wifi, bluetooth, and 3G. It's what the iPad should have been and it'd kick it's butt. I'll just keep waiting until this happens. I see no reason to get a netbook in it's current form. If I wanted all that I'd just buy a laptop and get a lot more for my money.
The thing with the 3D spec's is that it's all in the TV. BluRay's just provide the 3d imaging (left and right frames) it's the TV then projects it, however the hell it wants to... active/passive glasses, polarized fields, stereoscopy, Dolby3D, Real3D, hell, even red-blue or magic eye if that's how the set works.
Personally, I think the 3D thing is cool, it's finally bringing this stuff into the main stream that's going to make industry focus on ways to make it not suck. And I figure by the time they work that part out, it'll be about time to upgrade my currently 7 year old 1080i CRT to something a bit flatter and bigger without feeling like I didn't get my money's worth out of the current set (and relegating it to another room).
Because windows shouldn't be confined inside another window. If you're going to have multiple windows, let them roam the desktop free or there's no point.
I'm with you. If they could have an option to setup the GIMP windows like in 2.4, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. It's SO much more efficient than Photoshop.
Every time I help my wife with Photoshop, I'm constantly thinking they went to great lengths to make it as confusing and poorly organized as possible. They don't even have a RIGHT CLICK menu with COPY/PASTE on it!
GIMP just makes sense, it's how my brain works. But in all honesty, the 2.6 branch really screwed up the interface, why not put the file menu structure with the tools (or at least be able to dock the tools in that window), why do I need a separate window that doesn't even have anything in it if I don't have a photo open? It irks me on a regular basis. I enjoyed having one window with the tools/layers/plugins/root menus and then having separate windows for each photo for the changes that can occur in them (though in all honesty I used the right click menu structure the majority of the time, it was just there, I didn't have to move the mouse up to near the title bar to get to a menu. One of the best interfaces in my opnion. But then I also use the follow-focus mouse (but not autoraise, that just makes other windows get in the way.) It's so handy to be able to type into a window without clicking on it, especially ones that may be partially behind the current one! Every OS should have that option! It increases my productivity quite a bit!
I read it the same way. I thought perhaps they were reviewing the source code for the OS or something and then I find "Doom"... which being an interesting game, isn't as great as reviewing the source code to the iPhone OS would be.
Do a google search for "playstation 3 slim loss leader"...
You'll find quite a few articles, the most recent I saw on the first page was Dec 11th, 2009, which stated that they were loosing $40 on each one.
No, on the flip side, $40 isn't really that bad considering what it used to be, and if things continue this way, I'd say they'll start making money on them (or at least braking even) later this year, but still, that's a number of years of loss-leading, most of it at > $400.
(Thinking about it, I don't know if this means they weren't loosing on the slim when it wasn't $299... or if they're loosing on the $349 250GB model being that the difference in HD's probably isn't $50, though somehow I doubt it's $10.)
or you could just get a used laptop... I have an x40. it's 12.1" and because of this is the same or smaller than the new ASUS netbooks. It's plenty powerful doing about everything but playing HD Video (which is fine because I don't really see much point in that), runs for hours, has built in wireless, 2GB of RAM and a fairly powerful Pentium M. And I paid $100 for it a year or so ago.
I don't really see the point to Netbooks. They're in an awkward position in size and power. Esp now that they keep making them bigger. Back when they were in 7" and 8" varieties it made a bit more sense, much smaller and it'd be a palm top. But really now it's just a laptop with a slower proc. And it's getting to be about the same price as a laptop anyway.
Either they need to go back to 7" $200 netbooks, or just get rid of the darn class already, it's truely pointless IMHO. Though sadly enough, I'd even pass then as I can do 80% of what I'd do on one of those with my iPhone (seriously, SSH, VNC, RDP, E-mail, Web, facebook, IM, IRC). And for the other 80%, I just bust out the x40.
Exactly. And I think it's funny that you can always cancel out of the VbV thing and it'll still work.
Which I have to do everytime I want to use my Visa card online because it straight doesn't support the VbV thing. It either fails (yet sitll works) or comes up saying my bank doesn't support it. I now do all my shopping with MC.
Exactly. This IS an iPod Touch on growth hormones. That makes it also good for reading publications and maybe watching video easier or surfing the net easier. It's still basically the same.
Personally I was REALLY hoping that it'd be more of a general use Tablet PC with OSX, some usb ports and the ability to do whatever. And maybe (hopefully) someone can hack linux onto the thing and make it that way, but the way it's intended it's NOT. If it was, Apple would charge more for it. It'd be closer to the price of a 13" MBP.
In the mean time, the iPod Touch is only made for consuming DRM'd applications, news papers, magazines, videos, etc. Sure iWork is on there too, but that's basically to widen it's a appeal a little, no different from one of the old casio PDA's that let you type your essays on it along with being a calculator/calendar/messaging thing.
I actually think the iPad is a decent leap forward in certian respects. It'll raise tablet awareness (maybe laptop manufacturers will catch on and release some not-expensive-as-hell tablets now) for one thing. It also is another way to move the music/movie/print media into the 21st century by going digital in a controlled environment. And most importantly, when you lock things down, you can actually perform QA on them and make things operate more smoothly. (Other than the Facebook app being slow as crap, I've NEVER had an issue with my iPhone where it locked up, blue screened, core dumped, etc. Things just seem to work on there, in most cases for more than I originally intended.) That is a HUGE help to getting Joe Sixpack and Jane Wineaux into computers.
It also, for the most part, does everything that 90% of people getting netbooks now-a-days are doing. If this had OSX on it, it'd BE a much better netbook than anyone else has on the market at this time (esp if it had a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and a few USB ports)
Am I going to get one? Probably never (unless someone hacks Linux on there, hint, hint...). Would I consider one for my wife who isn't a Linux Admin, perhaps.
Debt is the present. If we don't take care of that, we will stagnate and disappear much more quickly. This is good, pay down debt first then invest.
That'd be awesome if I believed that one cent of what we don't spend on NASA is really going to truly pay down the deficit. They'll find other places to spend it, probably many times over, each time saying "well, we saved $5 from NASA, we can afford this $10 thing now"
I read that as "Sweet, I can save $130+ by not getting 3G." Seriously. If this thing did everything I wanted and I had to get a 3G service contract and such I'd never buy it. With the fact that everywhere I go there's an access point, or a lack of me needing access 3G is so useless.
There's no reason to drag something this large outside of the work/home offices. I mean, I could see maybe reading with it on a trip, but do you really need 3G for that? you buy the book before you leave just like you'd have done normally. If you want to web surf, then I suppose I can see that, but it's $14.99 for the CHEAP 3G data plan (250MB/mo), that's $180/year... + the $130 extra at purchase... I'm glad it's an option.
You know what... In either case they're still not very good at getting ratings. They never asked me, or any one I know for that matter. It really seems like there has to be a better way to figure out if people are watching your show or not.
The battle for my system tray is getting crazy lately in general. I don't subscribe to any of the digital distribution channels (except iTunes), but things keep filling my system tray and I don't like it.
Why does everything have to have a quick start agent? It's one of the first things I disable. I know for a fact I'm not going to use the program everytime I turn on my computer, so why waste the time when booting?! Also, if I wanted to load the program, then I don't mind waiting for the program to load, is it that hard of a concept?
And if your program takes THAT LONG TO LOAD that you have to have a QUICKSTART feature, I think it's time to rethink your program's requirements and efficiency!
I suppose the fact that they download updates in the background is handy for some people, but I really don't want my PC doing anything that I didn't tell it to do. In fact, I don't like patching things all willy-nilly either.
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It's true, most people probably don't NEED a larger screen than 1920x1200 or 2560x1600, but I'd have to say the guy is right, but mostly in the laptop range.
I run 1680x1050 on my work laptop at 15.4" and it's awesome, I wish for 1920x1080 in that area and when I go to find a personal laptop with a screen size anywhere close I find that most laptops come with a resolution of MAX 1366x768. Even my mom's new $800 HP 17" laptop only has that resolution! Personally I think anything less than 1920 in a 17" screen is lackluster yet if you really want something that high you have to spend a lot of money.
Let me step back and say this. I have two laptops at home, both of the same 1024x768 resolution. I also do a lot of photography with a Canon EOS Rebel XT and 5D mk II. When I view a picture on one, a 15.1" Thinkpad, the picture looks okay. Then I open the same picture on my x40 12.1" screen and the clarity is outstanding. It looks even better if I choose to view it at work on the 1680x1050 screen. Considering we keep getting higher resolution cameras, and better video cards, a higher resolution screen should be a no brainer.
Personally I think the laptop makers think they found a sweet spot, 1366x768 is technically perfect for 720p video and the next step up is 1920x1080 for 1080p. Why should they think they need to go higher than that? Well, 4k video is coming out soon, let's start there.
Someone should show them a nice picture taken with a Canon 5D mk II on a higher res screen and when they wipe the droll off their chins, make them get back to work. Why anti-alias with sub-pixels when you can just have that much more detail in the first place.
I believe #1 came up in North Carolina. IIRC they agreed, the state appealed, and then won.
This is why they have speed cameras.
I believe it was appealed successfully as saying it wasn't a criminal trial, so you didn't get the 6th amendment right of facing an accuser... but it could have been that they just decided the guy that looked at the picture and camera's evidence was the accuser and since he worked for the state, it was therefore 'the state vs. '
Where I was taught drivers ed (as well as the DMV's and BMV's I've lived under the reign of), Yellow simply means caution. It's supposed to alert the driver that the light is about to change, so if you're not going to make it to and through the yellow, you should stop at the line. So, yes, 'go if you can squeeze through', where 'squeeze' means safely travel as if the light were still green. It is why around here, you will not get a ticket, from a camera or otherwise, if you have already passed the line while the light was still yellow, even if it takes until the light is red to pass out of the intersection.
Now, personally, I stop on yellows that I think I safely can without someone rear-ending me (which is a bigger issue than being T-boned around here), and I don't go when the traffic is stacked up so I can't make sure my ass isn't in the middle of the intersection if I were to go through, but I like my car, and obviously a lot of other people don't give a crap about theirs. On the flip side, I get yelled at almost every time I stop too early by my wife who thinks I'm endangering us by hitting my brakes when I obviously have enough time to get through... But I tend to err on the side of caution as, due to a previous job, I've traveled to almost every state of the US and have seen yellows in length anywhere from 8 seconds to 2 seconds. (which is a complete different topic, but I think there should be some sort of standardizing...)
Around here, they recently put up cameras and watched the total number of accidents INCREASE because people would slam on their brakes, worried about the $75 fine (no points though, proving again it's not about safety) and the person behind them would ram into them, either not paying attention, or being convinced there was still plenty of time to get through the light (which there probably was) and then surprised by the effectiveness of the person's brakes in front of them. 'Course they don't really count these because they're non-fatal.
The main problem I see about the whole thing is that while people do get creamed when someone flys through a red light, it's generally not because that person thought it'd stay yellow a hair longer. It's a blatant disregard of the light, because they weren't paying attention (or inebriated). Red light cameras do nothing to help this situation other than throw an additional charge and a nice video in as souvenirs.
To answer the original post, The cameras around here take videos of the car passing through the red light. This way they can tell if you simply stopped a few feet past the line, or stopped at the line and then inched up to actually see around that tree they never trim, or the construction sign they so cleverly placed in your line of sight when you want to make a right turn on red (which is perfectly legal in VA, other than when marked otherwise).
Until 30% more power is required because there's 30% more people, which is what the parent post is pointing out.
Was it advertised to contain the StopSaw tech? Because if not, he's just a dumb ass for not buying one that did and then sticking his hand in it. I mean seriously people the fact that this even went to court shows how screwed up our court system is. People need to take responsibility for their actions. If he wanted something with StopSaw, he should have bought something with StopSaw.
Now if it was supposed to have it and it didn't, then he has a lawsuit. If it didn't say that it did and he expected it to, then he needs to be charged for wasting our judicial system's time. Just because I buy a car and complain later that it doesn't have power seats doesn't mean I can sue someone for repetitive stress injuries related to moving the seat. It means I should have bought the damn power seat and got on with my life.
The PS3 remote is BT, and I love it. and it's lasted quite a while on it's 2 batteries. I'm sure it'll probably die slightly before a normal IR remote, but it could easily be made to use a rechargeable cradle and that'd solve that issue.
I completely agree! Though at least now I know, thanks to this article, that I can shut it off if I'm ever subjected to windows 7.
I also think that windows 7's general feel is a bit less polished than Vista. Probably something that will be fixed in the future I'm sure, but the start menu/task bar is a bit more blocky and single color hearkening back to days of ole. (I understand that this isn't really that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it just continues from there...)
Then again, I'm apparently one of the few people who have Vista, have been running it for the past 3+ years now and it Just Works(tm). I haven't had any of the network issues, slowness, memory problems, etc. Which is fine, 'cause all I use it for is running games anyway.
I can honestly say I've never had that problem. The Touchpad just seems SO much more intuitive than the nipple mouse. In my book I try to imagine a world where that thing never existed. I have two think pads with only the touch point (They were given to me) and I pretty much always have to carry a mouse around if I want to use it for more than the simplest tasks.
The multiple defined areas and sensitivity of the touch pad make it an indispensable tool to me, and the newer it is, the better and better they've become with detecting erroneous inputs (which I rarely have, but know people who do). The T23 I have has a 3rd button for scrolling (push the button and the trackpad pans/scrolls the page instead of moving the cursor) and that's sorta handy, but to me it's not as intuitive as the side of the trackpad. At least it's a start though the x40 I have does NOT have it and it's quite a bit newer. It's quite a pain to have to move the trackpoint to the scroll bar just to move the page down. Especially when I'm running multiple desktops and 'sitting at the right edge of the screen' causes it to flip desktops. The track point is just no where near as accurate.
One of my friends got one of the newer Unibody MBP's with it's push to click touchpad, and I'll have to say, the first thing I had to do was turn on tap-to-click. Physically pushing in the touchpad is a huge step backwards for me, it's clumsy and requires a lot more pressure than I want to continually exert on a random plastic hinge. Luckily Apple provided the tap-to-click setting as well!
Mod this up!
Seriously, no law that I've heard has really had that much of an effect on illegal behaviour. Sure, it gave the feds/authorities the ability to prosecute and such, but if someone wants to do something they'll do it, law against or no law against. All this does is intrude on law abiding citizens.
That said, it sounds like a good idea from the excerpt: Prevent a program/bot/other people from installing something on your pc that will share your files/block your programs/generally annoy you or cause you harm without first asking permission from the person doing the installing. But think about it, not only does this seem inherently flawed (dude breaks into your pc, installs program, is prompted if he wants to install it, sure he does, it's not HIS Computer!). If a bot/virus/trojan gets installed, well, it'll just hit the 'okay' button automatically. Is this really going to change anything, other than adding an extra prompt and legal ramifications? More government involvement for little gain!
You know, This is the first thing I thought of.
The second thing is that they REALLY didn't even need to ask. Seriously, it's a VM, they can copy and crack the vm. They can restart it single user. They can mount the vm disk to another vm, change the password to what they want, and then put the disk back. They could make themselves a nice little backdoor of some sort. Etc...
In fact, the more I think about it, the nicer it was that they just asked for it. Once you trust someone to hold your entire machine in virtual space, they really might as well just have the password.
and I was told by AT&T that I COULD NOT get insurance on it. Flat None, Period. Where are these people getting these phones? Maybe it's just around here, but if you have insurance on your iPhone, it's a floater on your home owners insurance, and even then who knows if they'll do it.
Now I was pretty sure this is why they didn't offer it when I got mine, but it's just as well as I'd have not paid for it anyway.
On the flip side, my wife recently dropped her phone and besides learning that we'd been spending $5/mo on insurance for it (I remember when it was $1.49/mo and the phones didn't cost any more then either), plus the $50 deductible (she didn't have anything fancy), they were actually pretty quick and friendly. New phone was received in the mail THE NEXT DAY before 9am (well, refirb, but new to her). It was an upgraded model as they no longer carried her old one being like 7 months now, so, free upgrade. I'd have to say that $30 of that $50 went toward the shipping, and knowing how much she uses her phone, I'd have told them to just send it 3-5 day std ground UPS for $7 instead if they passed the savings on.
Then again, maybe they just didn't want to mess with a pregnant lady...
From working in the backup industry for years, I'm sure they have backups, the problem is that they never tried to verify or restore them. but is there really isn't any data there, compression is great when you just "tar cv * > /dev/null" ...
Heck one time I had a guy who was getting Parity Errors decide that the best way to solve them was to just shut off Parity Checking... Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
Seriously I can't count the number of times I tried to help someone restore their backups after a critical loss that turned out to never have actually verified that they worked in the first place. Just as bad as when I worked in a photo shop and someone said they couldn't get their film out... put the camera in the light locked compartment, stuck my hands in, just to find that he had taken 36 'priceless vacation pictures' on the back of the camera body instead of film.
PLEASE get rid of the keyboard, and put a high-end touch screen in it's place, removing the existing hinged screen. It'd make it under .6" thick I'd think and it'd be a nice little powerhouse! Not to mention the awesome applications and interaction that could take place on a correctly done touch screen interface, in this form factor with wifi, bluetooth, and 3G. It's what the iPad should have been and it'd kick it's butt. I'll just keep waiting until this happens. I see no reason to get a netbook in it's current form. If I wanted all that I'd just buy a laptop and get a lot more for my money.
The thing with the 3D spec's is that it's all in the TV. BluRay's just provide the 3d imaging (left and right frames) it's the TV then projects it, however the hell it wants to... active/passive glasses, polarized fields, stereoscopy, Dolby3D, Real3D, hell, even red-blue or magic eye if that's how the set works.
Personally, I think the 3D thing is cool, it's finally bringing this stuff into the main stream that's going to make industry focus on ways to make it not suck. And I figure by the time they work that part out, it'll be about time to upgrade my currently 7 year old 1080i CRT to something a bit flatter and bigger without feeling like I didn't get my money's worth out of the current set (and relegating it to another room).
Because windows shouldn't be confined inside another window. If you're going to have multiple windows, let them roam the desktop free or there's no point.
I'm with you. If they could have an option to setup the GIMP windows like in 2.4, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. It's SO much more efficient than Photoshop.
Every time I help my wife with Photoshop, I'm constantly thinking they went to great lengths to make it as confusing and poorly organized as possible. They don't even have a RIGHT CLICK menu with COPY/PASTE on it!
GIMP just makes sense, it's how my brain works. But in all honesty, the 2.6 branch really screwed up the interface, why not put the file menu structure with the tools (or at least be able to dock the tools in that window), why do I need a separate window that doesn't even have anything in it if I don't have a photo open? It irks me on a regular basis. I enjoyed having one window with the tools/layers/plugins/root menus and then having separate windows for each photo for the changes that can occur in them (though in all honesty I used the right click menu structure the majority of the time, it was just there, I didn't have to move the mouse up to near the title bar to get to a menu. One of the best interfaces in my opnion. But then I also use the follow-focus mouse (but not autoraise, that just makes other windows get in the way.) It's so handy to be able to type into a window without clicking on it, especially ones that may be partially behind the current one! Every OS should have that option! It increases my productivity quite a bit!
I read it the same way. I thought perhaps they were reviewing the source code for the OS or something and then I find "Doom"... which being an interesting game, isn't as great as reviewing the source code to the iPhone OS would be.
Do a google search for "playstation 3 slim loss leader"...
You'll find quite a few articles, the most recent I saw on the first page was Dec 11th, 2009, which stated that they were loosing $40 on each one.
No, on the flip side, $40 isn't really that bad considering what it used to be, and if things continue this way, I'd say they'll start making money on them (or at least braking even) later this year, but still, that's a number of years of loss-leading, most of it at > $400.
(Thinking about it, I don't know if this means they weren't loosing on the slim when it wasn't $299... or if they're loosing on the $349 250GB model being that the difference in HD's probably isn't $50, though somehow I doubt it's $10.)
or you could just get a used laptop... I have an x40. it's 12.1" and because of this is the same or smaller than the new ASUS netbooks. It's plenty powerful doing about everything but playing HD Video (which is fine because I don't really see much point in that), runs for hours, has built in wireless, 2GB of RAM and a fairly powerful Pentium M. And I paid $100 for it a year or so ago.
I don't really see the point to Netbooks. They're in an awkward position in size and power. Esp now that they keep making them bigger. Back when they were in 7" and 8" varieties it made a bit more sense, much smaller and it'd be a palm top. But really now it's just a laptop with a slower proc. And it's getting to be about the same price as a laptop anyway.
Either they need to go back to 7" $200 netbooks, or just get rid of the darn class already, it's truely pointless IMHO. Though sadly enough, I'd even pass then as I can do 80% of what I'd do on one of those with my iPhone (seriously, SSH, VNC, RDP, E-mail, Web, facebook, IM, IRC). And for the other 80%, I just bust out the x40.
Exactly. And I think it's funny that you can always cancel out of the VbV thing and it'll still work.
Which I have to do everytime I want to use my Visa card online because it straight doesn't support the VbV thing. It either fails (yet sitll works) or comes up saying my bank doesn't support it. I now do all my shopping with MC.
Exactly. This IS an iPod Touch on growth hormones. That makes it also good for reading publications and maybe watching video easier or surfing the net easier. It's still basically the same.
Personally I was REALLY hoping that it'd be more of a general use Tablet PC with OSX, some usb ports and the ability to do whatever. And maybe (hopefully) someone can hack linux onto the thing and make it that way, but the way it's intended it's NOT. If it was, Apple would charge more for it. It'd be closer to the price of a 13" MBP.
In the mean time, the iPod Touch is only made for consuming DRM'd applications, news papers, magazines, videos, etc. Sure iWork is on there too, but that's basically to widen it's a appeal a little, no different from one of the old casio PDA's that let you type your essays on it along with being a calculator/calendar/messaging thing.
I actually think the iPad is a decent leap forward in certian respects. It'll raise tablet awareness (maybe laptop manufacturers will catch on and release some not-expensive-as-hell tablets now) for one thing. It also is another way to move the music/movie/print media into the 21st century by going digital in a controlled environment. And most importantly, when you lock things down, you can actually perform QA on them and make things operate more smoothly. (Other than the Facebook app being slow as crap, I've NEVER had an issue with my iPhone where it locked up, blue screened, core dumped, etc. Things just seem to work on there, in most cases for more than I originally intended.) That is a HUGE help to getting Joe Sixpack and Jane Wineaux into computers.
It also, for the most part, does everything that 90% of people getting netbooks now-a-days are doing. If this had OSX on it, it'd BE a much better netbook than anyone else has on the market at this time (esp if it had a bluetooth keyboard/mouse and a few USB ports)
Am I going to get one? Probably never (unless someone hacks Linux on there, hint, hint...). Would I consider one for my wife who isn't a Linux Admin, perhaps.
That'd be awesome if I believed that one cent of what we don't spend on NASA is really going to truly pay down the deficit. They'll find other places to spend it, probably many times over, each time saying "well, we saved $5 from NASA, we can afford this $10 thing now"
I read that as "Sweet, I can save $130+ by not getting 3G." Seriously. If this thing did everything I wanted and I had to get a 3G service contract and such I'd never buy it. With the fact that everywhere I go there's an access point, or a lack of me needing access 3G is so useless.
There's no reason to drag something this large outside of the work/home offices. I mean, I could see maybe reading with it on a trip, but do you really need 3G for that? you buy the book before you leave just like you'd have done normally. If you want to web surf, then I suppose I can see that, but it's $14.99 for the CHEAP 3G data plan (250MB/mo), that's $180/year... + the $130 extra at purchase... I'm glad it's an option.
You know what... In either case they're still not very good at getting ratings. They never asked me, or any one I know for that matter. It really seems like there has to be a better way to figure out if people are watching your show or not.
The battle for my system tray is getting crazy lately in general. I don't subscribe to any of the digital distribution channels (except iTunes), but things keep filling my system tray and I don't like it.
Why does everything have to have a quick start agent? It's one of the first things I disable. I know for a fact I'm not going to use the program everytime I turn on my computer, so why waste the time when booting?! Also, if I wanted to load the program, then I don't mind waiting for the program to load, is it that hard of a concept?
And if your program takes THAT LONG TO LOAD that you have to have a QUICKSTART feature, I think it's time to rethink your program's requirements and efficiency!
I suppose the fact that they download updates in the background is handy for some people, but I really don't want my PC doing anything that I didn't tell it to do. In fact, I don't like patching things all willy-nilly either.