Until the hardware is in more homes, consumers will not have decided anything.
Which is ironic, because the hardware won't be in more homes until the consumers decide...
I for one don't buy many DVD's anyway, but have scaled that back even more until this whole thing finishes up. From what I've seen/read BluRay is a clear winner of this round, but I'm not buying another until either of them (and I don't care which at this point) dies a quick death. There's no point in dropping the money and I think may customers feel the same way. In the mean time I'll have to say that my HD screen and progressive scan standard DVD player looks pretty darn nice and clear. So even if one won I'd be hard pressed to justify running out tomorrow to buy a new one. I'd only really be in the market for a next gen if my current one died.
At this point, if you're not tired of dissing vista, you must have a better life than anyone else in the world...
In anycase... I've been running Vista since before it was released... it's really not bad. Let me respond in order: (ugly) looks are up to the individual, turn off areo if you don't like it. (rights restrictions) I'm sure there are some, there are plenty in XP if you run newer media players and include activation as a "rights restriction" because it is... and it's no different in Vista. (slow as shit) you know, I installed Vista RC1 and RC2 on the same system I had vista on. A dual boot setup. Athlon XP 2500+, nVidia 5900GT, 512MB RAM, old 15GB WD ATA-133 drive. Was pretty snappy, more so than XP SP2 on some things, less so on others, but generally it was pretty much the same thing just with a bit more polished interface. (RAM Hog) 512MB... no problem. 'nuff said. (buggy) yeah, and so is XP. Even SP2 has some pretty decent sized bugs.. though all in all XP SP2 is fairly clean, Vista hasn't even had SP1 yet. XP SP0 was pretty darn buggy too.
Comparing Vista to a Linux box, no matter what the flavor, is just an apples to oranges comparison. Sure, if you spend enough time you can get Linux to run faster than Vista. Hell, even Dell straight out told me that on a tech support call a while back when I said their WSS 745N was slower than a single drive linux box. People that run Vista or XP do it for reasons, same as Linux. be it gaming, productivity in the office, company mandate, etc...
I currently have been running Vista Home Premium x64 for about 9 months now. Current system has 2GB RAM, C2D E6300, and an 8800GTS. It's a hella nice gaming platform and I've grown used to a lot of the new features in Vista over XP. I haven't run into issues on anything lately and I spent $30 less than a copy of XP. please find something new to complain about already...
>>They, more than likely, see it as a colossal waste of taxpayers money. Unlike, say...
>Or dropping billions and billions into a welfare state that demeans and destroys the human spirit. Or an education system that has gotten worse as >more Federal money has been dropped into it.
When you write "welfare state" you mean Iraq, right? And when you write "education system" you mean pseudo-federal, corporatized propaganda apparat, right?
I have to agree with you.
If by "Iraq" you mean USA and "education system" you mean the schools in the USA, I'd have to agree with you too.
Welfare has to be one of the worst things this country has going for it next to crappy education, rising tuition, and people who refuse to take charge of their own life. Not only does it promote the belief by the masses that they're all owed something and that someone else will be there to pay their bills for them, but it gives lazy people who are content living off someone else's dime a free ride on my tax money. I'd much rather we spend the money on bombs destined for Iraq than on filly worthless welfare addicts. Get a job people!
Your first example sorta makes sense... When food is prepared, it's changed from a commodity to a product. Because it's changed and sold as a stand alone product that's been produced by a chef (even loosely using the word) it's got sales tax like any other product.
The part that annoys me is that you'd then think that other raw commodities would carry this same privledge, but afaik none do. If I buy lumber, even in it's raw right-from-the-forest state, it has sales tax associated with it.
If you view your "Contribution" as a tip, then who would want to buy CD's? I'll put it this way, I usually give a good tip if the service is good, i.e. 30%. It's my norm. If the service was crappy, I'll go down to 20%, if it's really good, I've been known to go 40%+ in some situations. He/She was on time, kept the drinks coming, was friendly, helpful, seemed to care about me/my satisfaction, etc... little things go a long way.
In comparison, if you buy a CD, I know (thanks to too much/. reading), the artist gets between $0.50-$2.50 a CD. At say, $12 for a CD, that's %20. You could say that's a good percentage for a tip, but they're not the waitress, they're the chef, so it should be the other way around... with the 20% going towards the distributor, the store, the clerk, the label, the manager, etc.
Also, I don't really KNOW the artist is getting anything at all from my money. The label's usually charge the artist for using a producer, for recording fees, for advertising, etc., as part of an advance (giving money to the band for the band to use to make the album, expecting to get their money back on investment). The money I'm giving could be going right to the label with the artist never seeing it. Now I agree the sous chefs should get their cut, but if I knew for a fact that my $12 was going toward the artist and not some other corporation I DON'T like (i.e. don't want to tip well) I'd probably buy a CD once in a while. I don't like having no control over where my money goes.
Online however, it's basically artist/producer/recording studio => buyer. And if I had the option to pay money that I knew went, again, direct to the artist, like my tip goes directly to the waiter/waitress (and I make sure to hand it directly to her when she collects the check), I'd probably buy more music.
However, to put this in perspective, lets think of this CD as any other distributable mass produced good. Say a Seagate hard drive. When I spend my $100 on a HDD, not much really ends up at Seagate. Most gets passed on to run the machines and humans to make the drive or to the makers of their platters (or the raw materials there-of), or to the designers, or the controller board chip makers, or the CIO/CEO/TLA men, etc... If you think of the artists being the designers, they really don't get that much of our money, do they? Out of $100 they probably end up with about $0.001 if that. So Artists aren't really too bad off with $1 a CD.
I'll have to say I agree that we're, geologically speaking, still getting out of the last ice age. We haven't started the next one yet, and there's still plenty of ice around, so you can't really say we're done with this one.
You'll also notice, from your graph, that the global temp is actually lower than a number of the previous spikes (showing that as far as that graph is concerned we're NOT warming anymore). You'll also notice that while it's not going down, it's steady (which doesn't show the continuous upward trend that news sources want you to believe). You'll find in your noted graph, on the left at around 425,000 years ago there was a similar leveling, which was followed by a spike and then a drop off in temp.
Now I'm not going to say that all of our CO2 emissions are helping things, but I would like to point out that the earth was doing a fine job spiking it's own temps long before we arrived. Volcanos, changes in the Earth's orbit around (Milankovitch cycles), changes in plate techtonics, solar output and meteorites have been deciding factors before and likely will continue that way in the future. I'm assuming they don't teach this stuff in school anymore, so here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age.
I find it #1 vain of the human race to think that they're the ONLY reason why temps can change in the world, #2 to think that they're the only thing that can fix it, #3 to think that this hasn't happened before and won't happen again. Humans are but a blip in the geologic time scale.
That being said, there are plenty of other reasons besides global warming to go green, we will run out of oil sooner than later, and land/water pollutants cause more harm that CO2 anyway. Let's not be so one sided and try to come up with ways to make things better for the environment as a whole instead of throwing everything towards "global warming".
Well, I hate to say it, but #1 is pretty much done already. Go to Best Buy or Circuit City or any other electronics shop, they'll sell you a pretty decent setup that you can turn up louder than the theater will and depending on how much you want to spend, will probably be better than the theater. You can even have someone install it for you if you're not-so technically inclined. My system didn't cost much, and compared to the usual range of regal, amc, and showcase cinemas around here, it's a large step above the theaters I have to pay 9 bucks a head to get into and then spend more if I want a drink.
#2, well, the dinner and a movie date was never the best one for me. I don't know how many young people still do this now that it'll cost you $60+ for the 'experience'. There are many other interesting dates that actually allow conversation between the couple. Use you're imagination, I'm sure you can think of some.
#3, I agree changing actors, producers, directors, etc.., will probably help get some new ideas out there and not the same old sequels and remakes we seem to be getting lately. I don't see how this counteracts the first two points though. If the movie looks good, I'm probably still more apt to rent it than see it in a crowded theater with sticky floors, improperly focused projectors, wimpy sound systems, peoples cell phones ringing, a mad rush to get the good seats... you get the idea.
Make the prices better (espeically after they've milked the crowds (and there are still crowds when a movie comes out, you can't tell they're struggling at all) for their money) and they'll probably win some customers back without having to sue anyone. After all, I can spend $25 bucks for my wife and I to see a movie with some popcorn, or I can buy the DVD and watch it at home whenever I want for $10-$20. Or I can just rent it for $3 or do as I usually do and say "'eh, I'll pass". After all, not seeing movies doesn't really make me feel like I've missed out on anything other than finding other ways to make the 3 hour time span more useful and productive.
If this guy doesn't like the phone that he was too lazy to do any sort of homework on, dropped $500+ on it and is now bitching that it doesn't do what he wants isn't SOL. He has a few course of action:
Take it back and say it wasn't what he wanted, with a reciept and a quick enough turn around, they might just take it back and sell it to someone who wants it.
Sell it on E-Bay. You can't tell me some guy on e-bay who didn't want to stand in line like an idiot for a phone isn't about ready to pay top dollar for something you don't want anymore.
AND in the future perhaps he should pay attention when he's about to drop that much money. I mean, it's not like the phone was $15 bucks, or free with a plan, it was expensive and therefore any normal person would do some homework.
And for all the people who think that it's obvious that something in the pda form factor like an iPhone would have a replaceable battery, I didn't think it would, and I'll tell you why... I have a Palm Pilot (not a replaceable battery), I know people with iPods (no replaceable battery) there are multiple cordless phones without replaceable batteries, heck, even my cordless mouse doesn't have a "user serviceable battery". Sure I can probably pop them all open (including an iPhone) but once I break that seal I'm on my own.
ALSO, if your any one else, you just factor the replacement cost into the cost of a battery. $29 to service it isn't that much when most batteries are more than that. Sure it's not cheap, but have you looked at parts for a BMW or Mercedes lately? Those aren't cheap either and that's about what you're buying, it's sort of relative to the price of the item. Anybody with common sense would not assume that a $500 phone would have a $10 battery. But then I suppose any one with common sense wouldn't line up outside a store to get a fancy iPod either. Honestly, that's what it was advertised as... even in the ads on apple's site and now on TV, they constantly compare it to an iPod.
In anycase, this guy might be pissed off, but so what, he's got a $500 phone. If he doesn't like it sell it or try to return it. If that doesn't work, oh well, maybe now you'll see if the wheels will hold you up before you jump on the bandwagon. Sue yourself if you want to sue someone.
I currently have two laptops I still use. One only sporadically (an NEC VersaSX Pentium 2 400Mhz), one daily (IBM ThinkPad T23). The NEC is really only a backup/extra one that seems to run XP perfectly fine but has had few issues in it's lifespan, so I see no reason to get rid of it (it comes in handy sometimes and it's small, so why toss it). The ThinkPad is from 2000 I believe, seems to be solid except for a corner that is cracked due to a dive years back. It's a Pentium M 1Ghz and I've since upgraded the HD from the stock 30GB 4200RPM to a 100GB 7200 RPM Drive and that made it go quite a bit faster. Gentoo and XP both are nice on there with 256MB RAM (though I'm sure they'd be better with 512). For what I do wirelessly, I can't beat 'em. Not only was the NEC free, but I really can't complain about speed at all. Sure I don't do 3d gaming on them, nor do I render anything but compiles seem quick enough for my tastes (if it's a big compile I'm connected into a server here or at work anyway).
I Guess I'm one of those "If it ain't broke..." kinda people. Sure a new one would be nice, but I'm not willing to spend enough money on one to get it to be a desktop replacement (Desktop is a Core 2 Duo, 8800GTS, dual 320GB gaming rig) so I can't justify a new laptop until the ThinkPad lets out it's supercharged blue smoke. I really don't think I know anyone who is willing to drop that much dough on one either. One friend did a while back, but it's because his desktop died and he didn't have a laptop in the first place... which I suppose is what's inflating the numbers of laptops sold. Laptops are getting cheap to the point of everyone's affordability. What used to be a $700 Dell is now a $549 dell, with a $700 dell laptop available, so they spend the slight extra and they're mobile and feel hip and cool.
As for hinges, I've always been nice to mine and I haven't had them wear out. Now cell phone hinges, that's another story... I'll never buy another flip cell phone, those things snap all the time!
I'm going to have to agree, the GIMP is superior to Photoshop. At least compared to CS2. I haven't had a reason to try CS3. I mean, I guess I fit in the non-pro category, but I do use it quite a bit for web design at work and home, along with lots of work with digital photos. I really kinda just fell into it and never had to "learn" much.
I think your view comes from your background. I've been a Linux user for 15 years or so now and it just seems to make complete sense. The multi-window layout, the right click menus, the shortcuts, the placement of menu items, it was just like "hmm, I wonder if I could do this, it has to do with layers, [click on layers menu], oh look, it's right there!".
Now on the other hand, I'm going to have to say that this comparison that everyone automatically makes between Photoshop and GIMP is sort of like comparing VI and Nano and Emacs. They all edit (and besides the religious followers that I'm sure will fight this one out again on here) they work well and stand on their own as individual editors. They're all tools and using the right tool at the right time does help one work smarter and not harder.
Really at this point in time I hope the GIMP doesn't change anything. Sure they can polish some stuff, but really that's all Photoshop has been doing as of late. The GIMP has already got a good thing in it's UI, stick with it. Spend the time on some cool filters and reducing memory usage and ignore these crazy ingimp people.
This money, which isn't yours, gets channeled to you and unless someone pays a fee to you to be able to collect their money from you, you get to keep it.
So... person A ends up with all the money and then charges person B a fee to get the money? Wow, someone should alert the Nigerian Finance Minister, I think we've found a way for him to channel all those extra funds!
I really think that one of the best things from a space program is not any product, it's the realization of a vision. When a generation realizes that even something like the moon or planets is within our grasp, it's awe-inspiring and creates a positive in a world full of negatives. It gets people to believe in their dreams and aspire to be more than just another drone in society.
So then the ISP is injecting this GoodMail info into the headers as they pass... Being that Neither side has to use their ISP's e-mail (say both sides have gmail, or even their own e-mail servers), it goes from gmail on one end through the ISP to the doc's ISP to their own e-mail server-- with the ISP injecting this in the middle. Sounds more like packing shaping or a net nutrailty issue than a "GoodMail" issue. Sure people with ISP's that do this to their own e-mail would have to switch, but they don't have to switch ISPs, just email providers. Heck, I've never used my ISP's e-mail since I signed up with them. Already have hotmail, gmail, and yahoo, why the heck do I need another one?
Plus, in using gmail for instance, I'm using google's servers and their servers connection to the net, which doesn't go through MY ISP, so my ISP has no say what happened. Now if I owned my own e-mail server off a T1, I'd have to complain that I wasn't getting the access I paid for and dump them if they didn't comply.
Nice, HD Audio Mics! Now we can hear N00b's complain about lag in High Definition audio!
Serious what's the point in these apps? I mean VOIP isn't exactly the prime candidate for high definition audio... current mic's seem to do perfectly fine, heck, the audio gets the heck compressed out of it anyway, or is this another way we can get VoIP to take more bandwidth? Now if this story was about high definition audio mics being built into high end camcorders or something, that'd be interesting, but this seems to be a waste of time to me, and probably most of the country that's used to their good ole land-line quality voice microphones. Afer all, lots of people can't tell the difference between a CD and a 128kbps MP3/AAC anyway. Must be a slow news day.
Except that Diablo 2 is free to play online. (I just got done beating act 4 with a friend) I like being able to play it offline, in lan parties with locally served games, and on the net with BattleNet (Except when battlenet screws up, which is often, but as it's free, I move on with my life, and usually in a few minutes its back to responsive.)
I understand they need to pay for server upkeep, but it's still a steep price in my eyes... Especially since it's monthly, there are some months I don't play much, and there are others I play a lot. I would feel like I'm wasting my money if I didn't play it every night (and I have friends who feel this way about WoW). There's gotta be a better charging scheme.
You do realize you can shut off UAC, right? I mean if you're having phyiscal pain from such an unobtrusive question as "are you sure?", either shut it off and stop complaining or grab some Asprin and keep on clicking.
I seem to remember a time when XP's new interface was the Devil and no one would ever look at such an ugly beast. Most people found you could turn it off and be fine, and other people I know now like it. Just like the new $10 bills here, at first I thought I was using Monopoly Money or bills that the feds spilled Kool-Aid on, now it's like "whatever, it's just a $10 bill.
And I hate to say it but there are actually a number of improvements in Vista. It generally seems to deal with driver and program crashes better, it keeps my system running cooler than XP, I get the same or better frame rate in games, I've yet to have a problem with a driver, hovering over items to see their realtime thumbnail is also nice, you can completely disable some things you don't like (for instance UAC), the built in burning software (with the addition of a 200k MS patch to burn ISOs) works really well as long as you select "mastered" format, etc...
Sure it's not XP, but XP wasn't ME, ME wasn't 2k or 98, 98 wasn't 95, and 95 was cerianly not 3.11. To say that the main reason you don't like it is the interface and some items you can easily disable, is saying that you just can't deal with change period. But wheather you can or not the world's moving on, even if that means switching to linux. If my Luddite wife can use Vista with out a full tutorial, then the average slashdotter has nothing to complain about when it comes to its usability.
Yeah... Vista is SO not doing as well as they expected... as explained in this article http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/27/ap366376 5.html MS actually sold MORE Vista copies than they expected to. I'd have to say that M$ is doing better than you seem to want to admit.
Am I an MS Fan Boy OH, HELL NO! I run Gentoo on about everything I can shake a stick at, but I also have 1 copy of Vista, and once everyone gets over themselves they'll realize it's just XP SP3 and move on.
Now, on to the patents, I think a 3rd party should take a look at these, along with the ones M$ has and see how many of both have prior art. MS didn't invent tabs, they didn't invent the scroll bar, they didn't invent most of the things they claim. Did they improve them, or bring them to the main stream? Maybe, but that's not what patents are all about. They're just trying to kick up as much dirt on FOSS as possible to make themselves look better. They might have made out fine with Vista so far, but there's never been a lack of greed at M$.
This is definitely true, and I'm sure most people at schools that offer such a connection will do so if they've got the money and really are that hard up for it. I know at ODU up until at least 2003 this was possible as I knew two people that bought a cable modem and paid for just the internet service through them. (previous to this they were yelled at for pulling too much bandwidth on the campus network) There's also the ability to plug into a random port in the library or other campus building and pull what you need and move on.
I will have to say that in this case, if a student can prove that he didn't use the campus network, he should get a refund for his campus connection fees, but you know how far that'll go. ("You didn't use it? oh, that sucks, you really should have since we're taking the money anyway")
I've been to data centers that have Google systems. One such place had it's own 2 U Bright Yellow server. They bought it from google and use it for all their internal web and corporate data search duties. I would assume you could get calendar or mail capabilities on such boxes as well, thus having your own server in house without having to use internet based facilities.
I haven't traveled to customer sites like this in about two years (job change... too much travel), but I assume, considering how much they paid for the box, Google would still be selling such systems.
That sorta makes sense if you were to say have a text file "A" that was the same as text file "B" except that someone inserted 3 lines of "Blahblahblah" near the beginning. But it'd have to parse the file in such a way that it would use variable block sizes to determine not only the difference between the two files, but note exactly what on who's server can fill in those pieces. Heck, it'd be cool if it could use files you already have downloaded to pull from, requiring less transfer. However, I wonder how much data would need to be transfered just to figure out that it doesn't need to transfer as much data. Seems like sort of a waste and a good way to over complicate things.
So why is requiring me to run a network cable to my DVD Player a bonus? Can't I play a movie without having to worry about the current state of my network connection? Does my player really have to ask someone outside the house if it's ok to show me a movie? And honestly, I'll have to say when the network goes down, that's a perfect time to watch a movie... 'cause ya sure can't read slashdot. I remember the days when you all you needed was one utility company involved in movie viewing (power). What about all the people who are video/audiophiles who aren't net nerds? I think I'll stick with the Progressive Scan DVD hooked to my 32" HD Screen thank you.
I have to agree with this poster... one thing no one has brought up here yet (in the last 20 min reading) is the effect of the used music store. Records and Tapes, while decent as a format, would wear out after a while, CD's that are properly taken care of will not. I've noticed that this seems to have blossomed popularity in used CD and DVD stores. There were a number I used to visit in a few different places I've lived. Once I got on the bandwagon I never went back. The only new CD's I get anymore are gifts. Why pay $15-$30 for a CD/DVD when you can buy the same CD for $2 bucks used (or the DVD for $5-$10). First summer I found a used CD store with a good selection and workers that knew their stuff I went from around 20 CD's to over 200. Figuring I paid an average of 3.5 bucks (I often scoured the $1.50 and $2.50 sections, paying $5 or so for especially good CDs), there's around $2,000 bucks I saved and the major stores lost out on.
I also work somewhere I can listen to music, so I ripped my CD's. I occasionally grab new songs (at the rate of around once every other month), but the fact that I can throw all my MP3s into a folder and have winamp pull one at random means I actually get to LISTEN to the music I ALREADY OWN instead of leaving it in the binder, forgetting about it until I decide I need a new CD to listen to. It's been a huge savings of time and money and it reminds me how many truly great albums I already own. I'm sure I'm not the only one noticing this effect with modern MP3 players with mutli-Gig storage... does anyone take that into account?
There are so many nuances in the modern music scene that you can't say that "piracy killed it" or "itunes killed it" or "the internet killed it". I'm sure we could all think of tens of factors if not hundreds, that helped to spell the demise for the RIAA and music distribution as we know it. But that's not bad, things worked before the RIAA and somehow music has been around for millenniums, I'm sure it'll keep going.
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Which is ironic, because the hardware won't be in more homes until the consumers decide...
I for one don't buy many DVD's anyway, but have scaled that back even more until this whole thing finishes up. From what I've seen/read BluRay is a clear winner of this round, but I'm not buying another until either of them (and I don't care which at this point) dies a quick death. There's no point in dropping the money and I think may customers feel the same way. In the mean time I'll have to say that my HD screen and progressive scan standard DVD player looks pretty darn nice and clear. So even if one won I'd be hard pressed to justify running out tomorrow to buy a new one. I'd only really be in the market for a next gen if my current one died.
Just say "Computer, Arch!". Damn, no arch. Must not be a simulation.
At this point, if you're not tired of dissing vista, you must have a better life than anyone else in the world...
In anycase... I've been running Vista since before it was released... it's really not bad. Let me respond in order: (ugly) looks are up to the individual, turn off areo if you don't like it. (rights restrictions) I'm sure there are some, there are plenty in XP if you run newer media players and include activation as a "rights restriction" because it is... and it's no different in Vista. (slow as shit) you know, I installed Vista RC1 and RC2 on the same system I had vista on. A dual boot setup. Athlon XP 2500+, nVidia 5900GT, 512MB RAM, old 15GB WD ATA-133 drive. Was pretty snappy, more so than XP SP2 on some things, less so on others, but generally it was pretty much the same thing just with a bit more polished interface. (RAM Hog) 512MB... no problem. 'nuff said. (buggy) yeah, and so is XP. Even SP2 has some pretty decent sized bugs.. though all in all XP SP2 is fairly clean, Vista hasn't even had SP1 yet. XP SP0 was pretty darn buggy too.
Comparing Vista to a Linux box, no matter what the flavor, is just an apples to oranges comparison. Sure, if you spend enough time you can get Linux to run faster than Vista. Hell, even Dell straight out told me that on a tech support call a while back when I said their WSS 745N was slower than a single drive linux box. People that run Vista or XP do it for reasons, same as Linux. be it gaming, productivity in the office, company mandate, etc...
I currently have been running Vista Home Premium x64 for about 9 months now. Current system has 2GB RAM, C2D E6300, and an 8800GTS. It's a hella nice gaming platform and I've grown used to a lot of the new features in Vista over XP. I haven't run into issues on anything lately and I spent $30 less than a copy of XP. please find something new to complain about already...
If by "Iraq" you mean USA and "education system" you mean the schools in the USA, I'd have to agree with you too.
Welfare has to be one of the worst things this country has going for it next to crappy education, rising tuition, and people who refuse to take charge of their own life. Not only does it promote the belief by the masses that they're all owed something and that someone else will be there to pay their bills for them, but it gives lazy people who are content living off someone else's dime a free ride on my tax money. I'd much rather we spend the money on bombs destined for Iraq than on filly worthless welfare addicts. Get a job people!
Your first example sorta makes sense... When food is prepared, it's changed from a commodity to a product. Because it's changed and sold as a stand alone product that's been produced by a chef (even loosely using the word) it's got sales tax like any other product.
The part that annoys me is that you'd then think that other raw commodities would carry this same privledge, but afaik none do. If I buy lumber, even in it's raw right-from-the-forest state, it has sales tax associated with it.
Only 2 things are guaranteed, death and taxes.
If you view your "Contribution" as a tip, then who would want to buy CD's? I'll put it this way, I usually give a good tip if the service is good, i.e. 30%. It's my norm. If the service was crappy, I'll go down to 20%, if it's really good, I've been known to go 40%+ in some situations. He/She was on time, kept the drinks coming, was friendly, helpful, seemed to care about me/my satisfaction, etc... little things go a long way.
/. reading), the artist gets between $0.50-$2.50 a CD. At say, $12 for a CD, that's %20. You could say that's a good percentage for a tip, but they're not the waitress, they're the chef, so it should be the other way around... with the 20% going towards the distributor, the store, the clerk, the label, the manager, etc.
In comparison, if you buy a CD, I know (thanks to too much
Also, I don't really KNOW the artist is getting anything at all from my money. The label's usually charge the artist for using a producer, for recording fees, for advertising, etc., as part of an advance (giving money to the band for the band to use to make the album, expecting to get their money back on investment). The money I'm giving could be going right to the label with the artist never seeing it. Now I agree the sous chefs should get their cut, but if I knew for a fact that my $12 was going toward the artist and not some other corporation I DON'T like (i.e. don't want to tip well) I'd probably buy a CD once in a while. I don't like having no control over where my money goes.
Online however, it's basically artist/producer/recording studio => buyer. And if I had the option to pay money that I knew went, again, direct to the artist, like my tip goes directly to the waiter/waitress (and I make sure to hand it directly to her when she collects the check), I'd probably buy more music.
However, to put this in perspective, lets think of this CD as any other distributable mass produced good. Say a Seagate hard drive. When I spend my $100 on a HDD, not much really ends up at Seagate. Most gets passed on to run the machines and humans to make the drive or to the makers of their platters (or the raw materials there-of), or to the designers, or the controller board chip makers, or the CIO/CEO/TLA men, etc... If you think of the artists being the designers, they really don't get that much of our money, do they? Out of $100 they probably end up with about $0.001 if that. So Artists aren't really too bad off with $1 a CD.
I'll have to say I agree that we're, geologically speaking, still getting out of the last ice age. We haven't started the next one yet, and there's still plenty of ice around, so you can't really say we're done with this one.
You'll also notice, from your graph, that the global temp is actually lower than a number of the previous spikes (showing that as far as that graph is concerned we're NOT warming anymore). You'll also notice that while it's not going down, it's steady (which doesn't show the continuous upward trend that news sources want you to believe). You'll find in your noted graph, on the left at around 425,000 years ago there was a similar leveling, which was followed by a spike and then a drop off in temp.
Now I'm not going to say that all of our CO2 emissions are helping things, but I would like to point out that the earth was doing a fine job spiking it's own temps long before we arrived. Volcanos, changes in the Earth's orbit around (Milankovitch cycles), changes in plate techtonics, solar output and meteorites have been deciding factors before and likely will continue that way in the future. I'm assuming they don't teach this stuff in school anymore, so here's a link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age.
I find it #1 vain of the human race to think that they're the ONLY reason why temps can change in the world, #2 to think that they're the only thing that can fix it, #3 to think that this hasn't happened before and won't happen again. Humans are but a blip in the geologic time scale.
That being said, there are plenty of other reasons besides global warming to go green, we will run out of oil sooner than later, and land/water pollutants cause more harm that CO2 anyway. Let's not be so one sided and try to come up with ways to make things better for the environment as a whole instead of throwing everything towards "global warming".
Well, I hate to say it, but #1 is pretty much done already. Go to Best Buy or Circuit City or any other electronics shop, they'll sell you a pretty decent setup that you can turn up louder than the theater will and depending on how much you want to spend, will probably be better than the theater. You can even have someone install it for you if you're not-so technically inclined. My system didn't cost much, and compared to the usual range of regal, amc, and showcase cinemas around here, it's a large step above the theaters I have to pay 9 bucks a head to get into and then spend more if I want a drink.
#2, well, the dinner and a movie date was never the best one for me. I don't know how many young people still do this now that it'll cost you $60+ for the 'experience'. There are many other interesting dates that actually allow conversation between the couple. Use you're imagination, I'm sure you can think of some.
#3, I agree changing actors, producers, directors, etc.., will probably help get some new ideas out there and not the same old sequels and remakes we seem to be getting lately. I don't see how this counteracts the first two points though. If the movie looks good, I'm probably still more apt to rent it than see it in a crowded theater with sticky floors, improperly focused projectors, wimpy sound systems, peoples cell phones ringing, a mad rush to get the good seats... you get the idea.
Make the prices better (espeically after they've milked the crowds (and there are still crowds when a movie comes out, you can't tell they're struggling at all) for their money) and they'll probably win some customers back without having to sue anyone. After all, I can spend $25 bucks for my wife and I to see a movie with some popcorn, or I can buy the DVD and watch it at home whenever I want for $10-$20. Or I can just rent it for $3 or do as I usually do and say "'eh, I'll pass". After all, not seeing movies doesn't really make me feel like I've missed out on anything other than finding other ways to make the 3 hour time span more useful and productive.
Exactly.
If this guy doesn't like the phone that he was too lazy to do any sort of homework on, dropped $500+ on it and is now bitching that it doesn't do what he wants isn't SOL. He has a few course of action:
Take it back and say it wasn't what he wanted, with a reciept and a quick enough turn around, they might just take it back and sell it to someone who wants it.
Sell it on E-Bay. You can't tell me some guy on e-bay who didn't want to stand in line like an idiot for a phone isn't about ready to pay top dollar for something you don't want anymore.
AND in the future perhaps he should pay attention when he's about to drop that much money. I mean, it's not like the phone was $15 bucks, or free with a plan, it was expensive and therefore any normal person would do some homework.
And for all the people who think that it's obvious that something in the pda form factor like an iPhone would have a replaceable battery, I didn't think it would, and I'll tell you why... I have a Palm Pilot (not a replaceable battery), I know people with iPods (no replaceable battery) there are multiple cordless phones without replaceable batteries, heck, even my cordless mouse doesn't have a "user serviceable battery". Sure I can probably pop them all open (including an iPhone) but once I break that seal I'm on my own.
ALSO, if your any one else, you just factor the replacement cost into the cost of a battery. $29 to service it isn't that much when most batteries are more than that. Sure it's not cheap, but have you looked at parts for a BMW or Mercedes lately? Those aren't cheap either and that's about what you're buying, it's sort of relative to the price of the item. Anybody with common sense would not assume that a $500 phone would have a $10 battery. But then I suppose any one with common sense wouldn't line up outside a store to get a fancy iPod either. Honestly, that's what it was advertised as... even in the ads on apple's site and now on TV, they constantly compare it to an iPod.
In anycase, this guy might be pissed off, but so what, he's got a $500 phone. If he doesn't like it sell it or try to return it. If that doesn't work, oh well, maybe now you'll see if the wheels will hold you up before you jump on the bandwagon. Sue yourself if you want to sue someone.
I currently have two laptops I still use. One only sporadically (an NEC VersaSX Pentium 2 400Mhz), one daily (IBM ThinkPad T23). The NEC is really only a backup/extra one that seems to run XP perfectly fine but has had few issues in it's lifespan, so I see no reason to get rid of it (it comes in handy sometimes and it's small, so why toss it). The ThinkPad is from 2000 I believe, seems to be solid except for a corner that is cracked due to a dive years back. It's a Pentium M 1Ghz and I've since upgraded the HD from the stock 30GB 4200RPM to a 100GB 7200 RPM Drive and that made it go quite a bit faster. Gentoo and XP both are nice on there with 256MB RAM (though I'm sure they'd be better with 512). For what I do wirelessly, I can't beat 'em. Not only was the NEC free, but I really can't complain about speed at all. Sure I don't do 3d gaming on them, nor do I render anything but compiles seem quick enough for my tastes (if it's a big compile I'm connected into a server here or at work anyway).
I Guess I'm one of those "If it ain't broke..." kinda people. Sure a new one would be nice, but I'm not willing to spend enough money on one to get it to be a desktop replacement (Desktop is a Core 2 Duo, 8800GTS, dual 320GB gaming rig) so I can't justify a new laptop until the ThinkPad lets out it's supercharged blue smoke. I really don't think I know anyone who is willing to drop that much dough on one either. One friend did a while back, but it's because his desktop died and he didn't have a laptop in the first place... which I suppose is what's inflating the numbers of laptops sold. Laptops are getting cheap to the point of everyone's affordability. What used to be a $700 Dell is now a $549 dell, with a $700 dell laptop available, so they spend the slight extra and they're mobile and feel hip and cool.
As for hinges, I've always been nice to mine and I haven't had them wear out. Now cell phone hinges, that's another story... I'll never buy another flip cell phone, those things snap all the time!
I'm going to have to agree, the GIMP is superior to Photoshop. At least compared to CS2. I haven't had a reason to try CS3. I mean, I guess I fit in the non-pro category, but I do use it quite a bit for web design at work and home, along with lots of work with digital photos. I really kinda just fell into it and never had to "learn" much.
I think your view comes from your background. I've been a Linux user for 15 years or so now and it just seems to make complete sense. The multi-window layout, the right click menus, the shortcuts, the placement of menu items, it was just like "hmm, I wonder if I could do this, it has to do with layers, [click on layers menu], oh look, it's right there!".
Now on the other hand, I'm going to have to say that this comparison that everyone automatically makes between Photoshop and GIMP is sort of like comparing VI and Nano and Emacs. They all edit (and besides the religious followers that I'm sure will fight this one out again on here) they work well and stand on their own as individual editors. They're all tools and using the right tool at the right time does help one work smarter and not harder.
Really at this point in time I hope the GIMP doesn't change anything. Sure they can polish some stuff, but really that's all Photoshop has been doing as of late. The GIMP has already got a good thing in it's UI, stick with it. Spend the time on some cool filters and reducing memory usage and ignore these crazy ingimp people.
So... person A ends up with all the money and then charges person B a fee to get the money? Wow, someone should alert the Nigerian Finance Minister, I think we've found a way for him to channel all those extra funds!
I agree some of those are a bit off in popular thought, but check this list out http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html for a list of NASA Spin-offs and space benefits.
I really think that one of the best things from a space program is not any product, it's the realization of a vision. When a generation realizes that even something like the moon or planets is within our grasp, it's awe-inspiring and creates a positive in a world full of negatives. It gets people to believe in their dreams and aspire to be more than just another drone in society.
I know, I mean, why use one of todays small hand-held devices when you can use something the size of a small car? It's Brilliant!
But what about very small rocks? They float too...
So then the ISP is injecting this GoodMail info into the headers as they pass... Being that Neither side has to use their ISP's e-mail (say both sides have gmail, or even their own e-mail servers), it goes from gmail on one end through the ISP to the doc's ISP to their own e-mail server-- with the ISP injecting this in the middle. Sounds more like packing shaping or a net nutrailty issue than a "GoodMail" issue. Sure people with ISP's that do this to their own e-mail would have to switch, but they don't have to switch ISPs, just email providers. Heck, I've never used my ISP's e-mail since I signed up with them. Already have hotmail, gmail, and yahoo, why the heck do I need another one?
Plus, in using gmail for instance, I'm using google's servers and their servers connection to the net, which doesn't go through MY ISP, so my ISP has no say what happened. Now if I owned my own e-mail server off a T1, I'd have to complain that I wasn't getting the access I paid for and dump them if they didn't comply.
Nice, HD Audio Mics! Now we can hear N00b's complain about lag in High Definition audio!
Serious what's the point in these apps? I mean VOIP isn't exactly the prime candidate for high definition audio... current mic's seem to do perfectly fine, heck, the audio gets the heck compressed out of it anyway, or is this another way we can get VoIP to take more bandwidth? Now if this story was about high definition audio mics being built into high end camcorders or something, that'd be interesting, but this seems to be a waste of time to me, and probably most of the country that's used to their good ole land-line quality voice microphones. Afer all, lots of people can't tell the difference between a CD and a 128kbps MP3/AAC anyway. Must be a slow news day.
Except that Diablo 2 is free to play online. (I just got done beating act 4 with a friend) I like being able to play it offline, in lan parties with locally served games, and on the net with BattleNet (Except when battlenet screws up, which is often, but as it's free, I move on with my life, and usually in a few minutes its back to responsive.)
I understand they need to pay for server upkeep, but it's still a steep price in my eyes... Especially since it's monthly, there are some months I don't play much, and there are others I play a lot. I would feel like I'm wasting my money if I didn't play it every night (and I have friends who feel this way about WoW). There's gotta be a better charging scheme.
You do realize you can shut off UAC, right? I mean if you're having phyiscal pain from such an unobtrusive question as "are you sure?", either shut it off and stop complaining or grab some Asprin and keep on clicking.
I seem to remember a time when XP's new interface was the Devil and no one would ever look at such an ugly beast. Most people found you could turn it off and be fine, and other people I know now like it. Just like the new $10 bills here, at first I thought I was using Monopoly Money or bills that the feds spilled Kool-Aid on, now it's like "whatever, it's just a $10 bill.
And I hate to say it but there are actually a number of improvements in Vista. It generally seems to deal with driver and program crashes better, it keeps my system running cooler than XP, I get the same or better frame rate in games, I've yet to have a problem with a driver, hovering over items to see their realtime thumbnail is also nice, you can completely disable some things you don't like (for instance UAC), the built in burning software (with the addition of a 200k MS patch to burn ISOs) works really well as long as you select "mastered" format, etc...
Sure it's not XP, but XP wasn't ME, ME wasn't 2k or 98, 98 wasn't 95, and 95 was cerianly not 3.11. To say that the main reason you don't like it is the interface and some items you can easily disable, is saying that you just can't deal with change period. But wheather you can or not the world's moving on, even if that means switching to linux. If my Luddite wife can use Vista with out a full tutorial, then the average slashdotter has nothing to complain about when it comes to its usability.
Yeah... Vista is SO not doing as well as they expected... as explained in this article http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/27/ap366376 5.html MS actually sold MORE Vista copies than they expected to. I'd have to say that M$ is doing better than you seem to want to admit.
Am I an MS Fan Boy OH, HELL NO! I run Gentoo on about everything I can shake a stick at, but I also have 1 copy of Vista, and once everyone gets over themselves they'll realize it's just XP SP3 and move on.
Now, on to the patents, I think a 3rd party should take a look at these, along with the ones M$ has and see how many of both have prior art. MS didn't invent tabs, they didn't invent the scroll bar, they didn't invent most of the things they claim. Did they improve them, or bring them to the main stream? Maybe, but that's not what patents are all about. They're just trying to kick up as much dirt on FOSS as possible to make themselves look better. They might have made out fine with Vista so far, but there's never been a lack of greed at M$.
This is definitely true, and I'm sure most people at schools that offer such a connection will do so if they've got the money and really are that hard up for it. I know at ODU up until at least 2003 this was possible as I knew two people that bought a cable modem and paid for just the internet service through them. (previous to this they were yelled at for pulling too much bandwidth on the campus network) There's also the ability to plug into a random port in the library or other campus building and pull what you need and move on.
I will have to say that in this case, if a student can prove that he didn't use the campus network, he should get a refund for his campus connection fees, but you know how far that'll go. ("You didn't use it? oh, that sucks, you really should have since we're taking the money anyway")
I've been to data centers that have Google systems. One such place had it's own 2 U Bright Yellow server. They bought it from google and use it for all their internal web and corporate data search duties. I would assume you could get calendar or mail capabilities on such boxes as well, thus having your own server in house without having to use internet based facilities.
I haven't traveled to customer sites like this in about two years (job change... too much travel), but I assume, considering how much they paid for the box, Google would still be selling such systems.
That sorta makes sense if you were to say have a text file "A" that was the same as text file "B" except that someone inserted 3 lines of "Blahblahblah" near the beginning. But it'd have to parse the file in such a way that it would use variable block sizes to determine not only the difference between the two files, but note exactly what on who's server can fill in those pieces. Heck, it'd be cool if it could use files you already have downloaded to pull from, requiring less transfer. However, I wonder how much data would need to be transfered just to figure out that it doesn't need to transfer as much data. Seems like sort of a waste and a good way to over complicate things.
So why is requiring me to run a network cable to my DVD Player a bonus? Can't I play a movie without having to worry about the current state of my network connection? Does my player really have to ask someone outside the house if it's ok to show me a movie? And honestly, I'll have to say when the network goes down, that's a perfect time to watch a movie... 'cause ya sure can't read slashdot. I remember the days when you all you needed was one utility company involved in movie viewing (power). What about all the people who are video/audiophiles who aren't net nerds? I think I'll stick with the Progressive Scan DVD hooked to my 32" HD Screen thank you.
I have to agree with this poster... one thing no one has brought up here yet (in the last 20 min reading) is the effect of the used music store. Records and Tapes, while decent as a format, would wear out after a while, CD's that are properly taken care of will not. I've noticed that this seems to have blossomed popularity in used CD and DVD stores. There were a number I used to visit in a few different places I've lived. Once I got on the bandwagon I never went back. The only new CD's I get anymore are gifts. Why pay $15-$30 for a CD/DVD when you can buy the same CD for $2 bucks used (or the DVD for $5-$10). First summer I found a used CD store with a good selection and workers that knew their stuff I went from around 20 CD's to over 200. Figuring I paid an average of 3.5 bucks (I often scoured the $1.50 and $2.50 sections, paying $5 or so for especially good CDs), there's around $2,000 bucks I saved and the major stores lost out on.
I also work somewhere I can listen to music, so I ripped my CD's. I occasionally grab new songs (at the rate of around once every other month), but the fact that I can throw all my MP3s into a folder and have winamp pull one at random means I actually get to LISTEN to the music I ALREADY OWN instead of leaving it in the binder, forgetting about it until I decide I need a new CD to listen to. It's been a huge savings of time and money and it reminds me how many truly great albums I already own. I'm sure I'm not the only one noticing this effect with modern MP3 players with mutli-Gig storage... does anyone take that into account?
There are so many nuances in the modern music scene that you can't say that "piracy killed it" or "itunes killed it" or "the internet killed it". I'm sure we could all think of tens of factors if not hundreds, that helped to spell the demise for the RIAA and music distribution as we know it. But that's not bad, things worked before the RIAA and somehow music has been around for millenniums, I'm sure it'll keep going.