For what it's worth most devices needed drivers installed manually on then-current devices even when Win2K was new...
Good point. But to be fair lets look at the situation with ubuntu 6 years ago, when windows 2000 was new, and see how well it fared with drivers back then... oh... wait... nevermind.
No matter which distro that did exist you choose, installing Linux 6 years ago wasn't a cakewalk. And Windows 2000 was actually pretty good for its time.
But if you are going to compare a new ubuntu install to Windows, its only fair to at least compare the install to Windows XP SP2. Anything less is dishonest.
I said disabling.net would not affect Vista itself, because Vista doesn't rely on.net for anything.
Its true a lot of applications now rely on it, but that was never at issue.
The advertising guys will love it.... Imagine it, a Pizza Hut advertisement comes on...
And my Smell-o-matics nozzel for the supply of chemical-372, and chemical-441 has clogged and instead of mixxing up a yummy baked pizza smell I'm treated to a vomit inducing fecal odour...
I wouldn't have been so bad if it was just once, but Pizza Hut ran the same commercial 6 times in the next hour...
Tangentially that brings up a real issue with this technology. It sounds like an inkjet printer business model gone out of control How many chemicals am I going to need to fuel this? A 100 chamber 'chem-cartridge' that will need be replaced in its entirety as soon as even one single chemical is low?
Count me out. I already have no patience for the scam that is color inkjet printers.
Who said "critical data". Gee, I don't know...maybe the guy that I was replying to?
Er... you originally replied to -me-, and I didn't mention "critical data".
If that's all that he's doing, I can think of a nice OS that handles all of that just fine and doesn't cost any money.
Me too. But he probably hasn't and the salesrep at the computer store probably won't bring it up either, preferring to peddle him a shiny new Mac or PC.
But you don't need to leave your pc running 24/7 to contribute to distributed computing projects - typically during normal use you're not fully utilizing your cpu... if that's the case, then you can still make a small contribution towards some sort of research, and still not waste electricity by leaving your pc on all the time.
That's incorrect. Computers are not merely on vs off; its a continuum of power consumption.
To use the classic car analagy, imagine that someone wrote a program to to do research using your car engine when the car is idling. So, whenever you pull up to a stop light, or a drive thru window, the engine would direct its energy output to research. However, when its "idling" that energy is being used to sustain the "idle" its NOT available for something else, to do some hard research a lot more power is required, and the engine would immediately crank up to 6000 rpm and hold there until it was time to move again.
Its pretty clear this program will seriously affect fuel consumption.
Same goes for your CPU. When its sitting there idling, it its drawing a few watts, just enough to keep everything alive. When its doing research its running full tilt and drawing its maximum wattage, loading data onto the buses, and even kicking the fans into high gear to compensate for the extra heat being generated, etc.
Its your computer, and you can direct it to do what ever you like:
1) You can turn it off to save electricity 2) You can pay to have it idle, using just enough electricity to be ready the second you need it 3) You can pay extra to have it running full bore for a worthy cause of your choice during the time it would have otherwise been idle and using minimal electricity. 4) You can pay even more to leave it running 24x7, and have it contribute to a cause even during times when you know you don't the need the computer on for yourself.
Whatever you choose is fine by me; its your computer and your electrical bill*. Just don't confuse 2 and 3. Even though the computer might be on for the same amount of time they use significantly different amounts of electricity. 3 isn't a "free" upgrade from 2.
*Assuming its your electricity; I can imagine LOTS parents being annoyed to find out they've paid over a thousand bucks** toward the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence over that last decade thanks to the "free screensaver" their kids set up. I'd bet anything that if your PC metered its electrical use to applications, the popup for SETI asking for another dollar every few days would be a big wake up call to a lot of people.
** $1000 isn't an exaggeration at all. It's even somewhat conservative. One estimate put a PC running Seti at Home 24x7 at around $185/year in electricity. (This was an older estimate; modern power hungry PCs will burn far more electricity than those P-IIs with 235W power supplies from '99, and the cost of electricity has gone up too. Seti at home has been around since 1999. Now think how many homes have 2 or 3 computers.
Why the hell would MS care if they move from a pirated version of Windows to something else?
windows stickyness.
Once you switch to mac, and start buying mac applications you might want to to use a mac at work, you might decide not to deploy exchange server because it won't work well with your mac, you might choose a pda with PalmOS instead of Windows Mobile 5 because Activesync won't sync to Mail.app, and when you launch your browser it will be safari not internet explorer, and you won't be taken to the MSN home page, and when you hit search you won't see MSN results. You'll probably rip your music to AAC or MP3 instead of WMA, etc.
Big whoop, they aren't making money either way.
The hell they aren't.
Why do you think dell pays like 15 bucks to install XP Home on a PC? Sure Microsoft wants to convert as many 'pirates' into paying customers as possible, but given a choice between having users run pirated Windows or Mac OS, Microsoft comes out way way ahead with pirated windows.
Their monopoly on the desktop feeds their search, advertising, applications, browser, and server divisions. Microsoft would be dead if they lost their desktop monopoly. Most of their products aren't priced competitively and most of them are not best of breed, but they perform well simply because of leverage they get from the desktop.
How many people do you know that use MSN search that do not use Internet Explorer? Zero? Pretty close to it.
And if someone has critical data on a system running a pirated OS, I'm not inclined to feel much pity.
Who said "critical data". We aren't talking enterprises with pirate xp installs for servers here.
The average home user will have their vacation photos, some music, their resume, and so on. Its may not be "critical" but anyone would be pissed if microsoft tried to hold it hostage. Not to mention blocking you from doing online banking, chatting with friends, reading the news, listening to music, and playing solitaire.
Oh yeah, tons of potential for the average gamer THERE. I roll my virtual eyes.
Uh... the average gamer will find a hack for their copy of XP, Turn off windows updates, and firewall the microsoft domain.
Non gamers, on the other hand who might be inclined to buy a new computer after microsoft decides to hold the one they have for ransom may very well be inclined to buy a mac. Especially as it will give him the satisfaction of giving the company that reached into his house and took his data hostage the one finger salute.
Frankly though I'm surprised MS would be stupid enough to disable XP BEFORE VISTA ships though. People would be more inclined to buy a NEW product when their computer demands money than to fork over money to use a product they've had for free for 4 years.
The problem with Vista too much integration with.net and C#, code that is designed for small business oriented projects being used on a huge bloated project.
Got a cite for that?
All the reports I've seen are that Vista relies almost entirely on native code. What little managed code there was has actually been REMOVED. Vista -supports-.net, but vista isn't integrated with it at all; it barely uses it. If you could disable it, Vista probably wouldn't even miss it.
That was modded to Funny but this is actually insightful.
The eyes working only works because there is only one pair, watching the coffee pot, and that's it.
You -can't- apply it generally and make society more honest by wall-papering the city with eyes; that's equivalent to the trees that scream all the for no good reason.
We would rapidly become completely desensitized to them.
Honestly, try to be a bit more precise in any future replies.
Honestly, if you can't imagine a scenario involving a short streak of bad luck that will deprive you of money and easy transportation you simply lack an imagination.
As for the 'imprecision' at specifying keys vs wallet. That was deliberate. Its not hard at all to imagine "A series of unfortunate events" that leads to separate you from both. Perhaps you forgot your wallet at home and then lost your keys. Perhaps you left your keys at home because you got a ride, took a bus, rode a bike and then lost your wallet somehow...
If you got a ride perhaps they ditched you after a disagreement, perhaps the car broke down, perhaps the ride was a one way trip and you intended on taking the bus back all along, etc... Use your imagination.
As for calling the police that is not nearly so simple as you make out. For a non-emergency call like my car was stolen or I've been pickpocketed, you *still* need a quarter, and if it happens in the right part of town, you don't simply walk into the first shop you see and ask to use the phone - they'll grunt and point you back to the payphone outside. And even when you do speak to the police, they don't zip over and drive you home. You report the incident they thank you and ask you to file a statement in the next few days.
If you want to up the 'challenge' set your series of unfortunate events in motion while on vacation, in a foreign city where english is hit and miss, eg. Get mugged off the beaten track in Mexico.
Oh, and cartoon-like things happen to people all the time.
The fact that HDTV is slated to replace NTSC come hell or high water. And those high-dev DVD's really do look nicer on HDTVs.
Almost. Those high def DVD's really do look nicer on ***BIG*** HDTVs. On smaller ("regular size") tvs dvds and hddvds look pretty much the same at normal viewing distances.
Admittedly 'big TVs' are in right now, but its going to be a *long* time before everyone has one. (If ever; some people are perfectly happy with a 20", 25" or 30" set.) Plus, for someone to be won over by an HD media format, he's going to be looking at his other playback devices -- his laptop/portable dvd player, the one mounted into the back of the seats in his SUV, the one in his bedroom, the one at the summer cabin...
Even if he has a big screen in his living room, the fact that the disc won't play anywhere else will be an issue. Tapes lingered on for years beside cds partly because they were recordable while cds took ages to get there, and partly because all our 'walkmans', 'car stereos', 'ghetto blasters' and other devices still used them. We could buy the CD, and make a tape to use in our other players until the rest of our world caught up.
Can we easily do that *that* with our HD purchases? Nevermind perserving the "HD" Can we even easily hook up a CD burner or SVHS VCR to our HD player to make copies? Can we rip them to our PSPs, and iPod videos?
The whole HD format just isn't looking to be very user friendly. That's going to hurt it. I think there's a very decent chance it will be repeat of the "LaserDisc".
I save my change so I can afford not to live in that part of town.
I said, "park", not "live".
As part of my job requires me to visit clients onsite I have little flexibility in where I park. I suppose I could always quit and get one of those TV advertised jobs where I make 20,000 a week from my own home with no money down though...;)
I don't park illegally and I don't leave my wallet in my car.
I don't habitually either. In this case I was dropping some heavy stuff off at the salvation army, and I was wearing pocketless sweatpants. I parked too close to the intersection./shrug
But at least you are safe.
Because other than that one scenario there is simply no way you could ever become separated from your keys/wallet.
I mean, nobody's ever been mugged, or pickpocketed, or had their stuff lifted while at the beach or pool, or dropped it in a gutter or off a dock, or left it in their other pants, or on the table at a restaurant, or lost it while jogging in the park, or had their car stolen....
Likewise, when people say "give a bit of spare change", this is often the worst advice that can be given as much of that money will go directly into feeding their addiction.
Apparently you don't have to park in the part of town where they'll smash your car windows for a nickle lying on your seat.
I'd gladly just give them the nickles to save a few hundred bucks worth of glass a year.
That said, have you ever been stuck for cash yourself? It doesn't take much, start with some grubby clothes and need of a shower, say, thanks to some house cleaning your in the middle of; then park in the wrong place for few couple minutes to perform a quick drop off errand, come back and find your car towed with your wallet & cellphone inside --- and instantly you can become reduced to begging for quarters to make a phone call, complete with a 'lame sob story' about how you just need bus fare to get accross town to the impound lot, or quarters to phone some friends to come get you... and you pretty much blend right in.
Its pretty freaky. Suddenly you are one of "them". Happened to me once. I can't say I have any idea what it would be like to be homeless, unstable, and so on, but I can tell you it must be pretty brutal; just based on the reactions of the people you are reduced to begging from. You become subhuman to the people around you.
And the scariest part is how thin the line can be between us...
Warren Buffet is known to disagree with "inheritence". He beleives that wealth should be redistributed not passed on to family members. In fact to paraphrase something I read about him once, he wants to leave his own children enough that they be able to do what they want with their lives, but not so much that they can choose to do nothing with them.
In other words, its clear he's always planned on ensuring they would be taken care of, but I don't think he ever planned on simply leaving them his billions.
A charitable foundation is probably the most effective way to spread his wealth around. The Gate's foundation is very well respected in spite of its link to Microsoft.
Warren Buffet has nothing but my respect for this move. Not only is it noble, but he's sticking with his long stated principles.
The point is if the keyword "Store" automatically adds 'local context', like "San Francisco" to your search, what hoops do you have to jump through to ensure that adding your own local context of "Los Angeles" is going to *eliminate* the "San Franciso".
The last thing I want is to search for "Los Angelos Store" and get over half my results pointing at San Fransicso ANYWAYS. I get enough of that CRAP already searching for restaurants and other physical named locations.
What if you want a store and you don't know what city its in. If I search for "The Cheese Emporium Store" and the nearest one is a 6000 miles away that's the result I want. I don't want local cheese and other emporiums in San Fransico cluttering up my results.
Rather than have them guess what I want, what I'd REALLY like to see is semantic search based on what I actually ask for:
if I search for "read new_product_X reviews", guess what Google et al, I want to READ reviews on new_product_X; I do not wish to "Be the first to write a review for product_X"; nor do I wish to read the SAME review that has been scraped onto 200 useless websites.
Or if I'm looking to buy something and want a site that will ship to Canada; the 200 sites that say "We do not ship to Canada or Internationally" is not a match.
Additionally, I can generally do without arriving on orphan pages where all the links off of it go to custom 404 pages.
And I can certainly do without arriving on parked domain pages, and link farms.
Do you really think companies will just resend the game over without a charge? That bandwidth must be payed for somehow.
Seriously, how much is it going to cost them to send me a new copy of the game if I was too stupid to burn it myself? 30 cents? They even could charge me 2 bucks and we'd both be happy.
In the world of utility and productivity software where digital download is already a very common distribution model, they usually let you re-download for free. If you lose your license key, they nearly always let you recover that for free too, provided they have some method of verifying your purchase.
The only exception is if the company goes defunct -- always a risk no matter what you buy. Or your version is so out of date, you need a paid "upgrade". But games don't get upgraded, bugs get patched for free (if at all), major upgrades are called "expansion packs and are optional purchases. And the next version is called a "sequel" not an "upgrade".
My wife, on the other hand, was blind as a bat without her glasses, to the point that she had to carefully place her glasses in the same place next to the bed each evening, because she had to find them by touch in the morning
Your wife was effectively blind. Most people are averse to laser surgery because there is a risk they'll end up like your wife. (Most lasik "backfires" don't result in 100% blindness; they merely end up worse to much worse then they started.) Given that your wife was already there, she didn't have much to lose.
I know others with similar stories, and I can definitely see how someone who'd like to fly military jets would perceive the risk/reward tradeoff as a good deal. Heck, I'd get the surgery if it meant someone would let me fly an F-14.
To each their own. But I'd select ortho-k over lasik. You wear orthok lenses while you sleep to reshape your cornea (they are like "retainers" for your eye), and you have good unassisted vision during the day -- making it suitable for sports, water-sports, firefighing, and many other tasks where glasses or contacts are inconvenient or unusable.
I'm not sure it would be acceptable for military pilots though; as they might not be allowed to wear contacts even while sleeping, for readiness purposes or something...
People could be meeting by telephone, but, you wouldn't think of suing the phone company for not doing their part to screen people would you?
Good point. The phone company is a common carrier and is not responsible for what people say and do with it.
Therefore she should sue her ISP, not MySpace. After all, her ISP is likely against net neutrality, implying that they do not wish to be a common carrier, and therefore are responsible for what happens over the connections they provide...and therefore are liable when bad things happen.;)
It seemed pretty obvious to me. The NES and SNES didn't even get hot...
Yes, its obviously true that has occured in that very limited line of products to someone who's spent any time with them. However deriving from that observation the conclusion that "a more powerful system needs more electricity" is still patently absurd.
If the "a more powerful system needs more electricity" statement were generally true then how do you explain:
the way cellphones can do more with less electricity? the fact that a new desktop box is more powerful than an old CRAY? the fact that a GameBoy Advance is more powerful than an NES but can run on "AA" batteries (to use an example from Nintendo)?
These aren't exactly "anomalies".
Further, are you really that certain the next generation will use even more electricity? Is it really obvious the anwser is "yes"? Nevermind "obvious" is it even going to be "true"? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the next generation after the Wii/PS3/X360 takes advantage of the current computing-per-watt direction processor design is going and delivers machines that are more powerful, but use less electricity.
So, yes, it may be obvious that an Gamecube uses more electricity than an NES to someone who's spent a lot of time with them, because they've felt the heat, noticed all the new moving parts, and so on. But the fact that its true for the progression from the NES to the Gamecube doesn't make it generally true, and it certainly doesn't make it obvious that 'a more powerful system needs more electricity'. We have far too many counter examples for that to hold up.
Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needs more electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.
No. Because its not obvious at all.
In fact, it could be argued that in computers that the opposite is more likely. After all a solar powered calculator the size of a credit card can run off the light of a candle and is a more powerful system than a 1960's computer that needed a warehouse and an industrial power supply. We're pretty accusomted to seeing computers deliver more on less.
And I bet if the article had discovered that modern consoles were 10x as powerful, and used less electricity than their previous generations, you would probably have yawned and said:
Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needing less electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.
Two conflicting statements, both so perfectly reasonable that we would question neither. I think it IS worth reporting which one turned out to be true.
All the fossil fuels that are economically reachable will be burned. Do you want them burned in nice epa-mandated catalytic converter equiped cars or some 3rd world 2-stroke putt-putt cars?
That knife can cut both ways:
eg perhaps: Do you want them burned in highly efficient carefully regulated "car battery factories" located far away from parks, rivers, and schools... or burned in hundreds of thousands catalytic converter equipped cars in various states of disrepair trundling up and down your street?
If the fuel is going to get burned either way, I'd rather see it happen "somewhere's else". Ideally I'd prefer a perfect pollution free world, but too many hours spent playing sim-city has taught me that if you can't have that its better to isolate your industrial pollution far away from commercial and residential property.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Nice try, but Wrong Matrix.
For what it's worth most devices needed drivers installed manually on then-current devices even when Win2K was new...
Good point. But to be fair lets look at the situation with ubuntu 6 years ago, when windows 2000 was new, and see how well it fared with drivers back then... oh... wait... nevermind.
No matter which distro that did exist you choose, installing Linux 6 years ago wasn't a cakewalk. And Windows 2000 was actually pretty good for its time.
But if you are going to compare a new ubuntu install to Windows, its only fair to at least compare the install to Windows XP SP2. Anything less is dishonest.
I said disabling .net would not affect Vista itself, because Vista doesn't rely on .net for anything.
Its true a lot of applications now rely on it, but that was never at issue.
The advertising guys will love it.... Imagine it, a Pizza Hut advertisement comes on...
...
And my Smell-o-matics nozzel for the supply of chemical-372, and chemical-441 has clogged and instead of mixxing up a yummy baked pizza smell I'm treated to a vomit inducing fecal odour...
I wouldn't have been so bad if it was just once, but Pizza Hut ran the same commercial 6 times in the next hour
Tangentially that brings up a real issue with this technology. It sounds like an inkjet printer business model gone out of control How many chemicals am I going to need to fuel this? A 100 chamber 'chem-cartridge' that will need be replaced in its entirety as soon as even one single chemical is low?
Count me out. I already have no patience for the scam that is color inkjet printers.
If something is worth saying, it's worth putting your name on it.
Even if it will cost you your job? your freedom? or your life?
maybe I should so it to my grandma so she's got something to discuss while she's getting her hair done!
Maybe that's who it WAS written for. I know my grandmother isn't going to understand memory usage, png support, or ACID2 results...
Who said "critical data".
Gee, I don't know...maybe the guy that I was replying to?
Er... you originally replied to -me-, and I didn't mention "critical data".
If that's all that he's doing, I can think of a nice OS that handles all of that just fine and doesn't cost any money.
Me too. But he probably hasn't and the salesrep at the computer store probably won't bring it up either, preferring to peddle him a shiny new Mac or PC.
But you don't need to leave your pc running 24/7 to contribute to distributed computing projects - typically during normal use you're not fully utilizing your cpu... if that's the case, then you can still make a small contribution towards some sort of research, and still not waste electricity by leaving your pc on all the time.
That's incorrect. Computers are not merely on vs off; its a continuum of power consumption.
To use the classic car analagy, imagine that someone wrote a program to to do research using your car engine when the car is idling. So, whenever you pull up to a stop light, or a drive thru window, the engine would direct its energy output to research. However, when its "idling" that energy is being used to sustain the "idle" its NOT available for something else, to do some hard research a lot more power is required, and the engine would immediately crank up to 6000 rpm and hold there until it was time to move again.
Its pretty clear this program will seriously affect fuel consumption.
Same goes for your CPU. When its sitting there idling, it its drawing a few watts, just enough to keep everything alive. When its doing research its running full tilt and drawing its maximum wattage, loading data onto the buses, and even kicking the fans into high gear to compensate for the extra heat being generated, etc.
Its your computer, and you can direct it to do what ever you like:
1) You can turn it off to save electricity
2) You can pay to have it idle, using just enough electricity to be ready the second you need it
3) You can pay extra to have it running full bore for a worthy cause of your choice during the time it would have otherwise been idle and using minimal electricity.
4) You can pay even more to leave it running 24x7, and have it contribute to a cause even during times when you know you don't the need the computer on for yourself.
Whatever you choose is fine by me; its your computer and your electrical bill*. Just don't confuse 2 and 3. Even though the computer might be on for the same amount of time they use significantly different amounts of electricity. 3 isn't a "free" upgrade from 2.
*Assuming its your electricity; I can imagine LOTS parents being annoyed to find out they've paid over a thousand bucks** toward the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence over that last decade thanks to the "free screensaver" their kids set up. I'd bet anything that if your PC metered its electrical use to applications, the popup for SETI asking for another dollar every few days would be a big wake up call to a lot of people.
** $1000 isn't an exaggeration at all. It's even somewhat conservative. One estimate put a PC running Seti at Home 24x7 at around $185/year in electricity. (This was an older estimate; modern power hungry PCs will burn far more electricity than those P-IIs with 235W power supplies from '99, and the cost of electricity has gone up too. Seti at home has been around since 1999. Now think how many homes have 2 or 3 computers.
Why the hell would MS care if they move from a pirated version of Windows to something else?
windows stickyness.
Once you switch to mac, and start buying mac applications you might want to to use a mac at work, you might decide not to deploy exchange server because it won't work well with your mac, you might choose a pda with PalmOS instead of Windows Mobile 5 because Activesync won't sync to Mail.app, and when you launch your browser it will be safari not internet explorer, and you won't be taken to the MSN home page, and when you hit search you won't see MSN results. You'll probably rip your music to AAC or MP3 instead of WMA, etc.
Big whoop, they aren't making money either way.
The hell they aren't.
Why do you think dell pays like 15 bucks to install XP Home on a PC? Sure Microsoft wants to convert as many 'pirates' into paying customers as possible, but given a choice between having users run pirated Windows or Mac OS, Microsoft comes out way way ahead with pirated windows.
Their monopoly on the desktop feeds their search, advertising, applications, browser, and server divisions. Microsoft would be dead if they lost their desktop monopoly. Most of their products aren't priced competitively and most of them are not best of breed, but they perform well simply because of leverage they get from the desktop.
How many people do you know that use MSN search that do not use Internet Explorer?
Zero? Pretty close to it.
And if someone has critical data on a system running a pirated OS, I'm not inclined to feel much pity.
Who said "critical data". We aren't talking enterprises with pirate xp installs for servers here.
The average home user will have their vacation photos, some music, their resume, and so on. Its may not be "critical" but anyone would be pissed if microsoft tried to hold it hostage. Not to mention blocking you from doing online banking, chatting with friends, reading the news, listening to music, and playing solitaire.
Oh yeah, tons of potential for the average gamer THERE. I roll my virtual eyes.
Uh... the average gamer will find a hack for their copy of XP, Turn off windows updates, and firewall the microsoft domain.
Non gamers, on the other hand who might be inclined to buy a new computer after microsoft decides to hold the one they have for ransom may very well be inclined to buy a mac. Especially as it will give him the satisfaction of giving the company that reached into his house and took his data hostage the one finger salute.
Frankly though I'm surprised MS would be stupid enough to disable XP BEFORE VISTA ships though. People would be more inclined to buy a NEW product when their computer demands money than to fork over money to use a product they've had for free for 4 years.
The problem with Vista too much integration with .net and C#, code that is designed for small business oriented projects being used on a huge bloated project.
.net, but vista isn't integrated with it at all; it barely uses it. If you could disable it, Vista probably wouldn't even miss it.
Got a cite for that?
All the reports I've seen are that Vista relies almost entirely on native code. What little managed code there was has actually been REMOVED. Vista -supports-
That was modded to Funny but this is actually insightful.
The eyes working only works because there is only one pair, watching the coffee pot, and that's it.
You -can't- apply it generally and make society more honest by wall-papering the city with eyes; that's equivalent to the trees that scream all the for no good reason.
We would rapidly become completely desensitized to them.
Honestly, try to be a bit more precise in any future replies.
Honestly, if you can't imagine a scenario involving a short streak of bad luck that will deprive you of money and easy transportation you simply lack an imagination.
As for the 'imprecision' at specifying keys vs wallet. That was deliberate. Its not hard at all to imagine "A series of unfortunate events" that leads to separate you from both. Perhaps you forgot your wallet at home and then lost your keys. Perhaps you left your keys at home because you got a ride, took a bus, rode a bike and then lost your wallet somehow...
If you got a ride perhaps they ditched you after a disagreement, perhaps the car broke down, perhaps the ride was a one way trip and you intended on taking the bus back all along, etc... Use your imagination.
As for calling the police that is not nearly so simple as you make out. For a non-emergency call like my car was stolen or I've been pickpocketed, you *still* need a quarter, and if it happens in the right part of town, you don't simply walk into the first shop you see and ask to use the phone - they'll grunt and point you back to the payphone outside. And even when you do speak to the police, they don't zip over and drive you home. You report the incident they thank you and ask you to file a statement in the next few days.
If you want to up the 'challenge' set your series of unfortunate events in motion while on vacation, in a foreign city where english is hit and miss, eg. Get mugged off the beaten track in Mexico.
Oh, and cartoon-like things happen to people all the time.
The fact that HDTV is slated to replace NTSC come hell or high water. And those high-dev DVD's really do look nicer on HDTVs.
Almost. Those high def DVD's really do look nicer on ***BIG*** HDTVs. On smaller ("regular size") tvs dvds and hddvds look pretty much the same at normal viewing distances.
Admittedly 'big TVs' are in right now, but its going to be a *long* time before everyone has one. (If ever; some people are perfectly happy with a 20", 25" or 30" set.) Plus, for someone to be won over by an HD media format, he's going to be looking at his other playback devices -- his laptop/portable dvd player, the one mounted into the back of the seats in his SUV, the one in his bedroom, the one at the summer cabin...
Even if he has a big screen in his living room, the fact that the disc won't play anywhere else will be an issue. Tapes lingered on for years beside cds partly because they were recordable while cds took ages to get there, and partly because all our 'walkmans', 'car stereos', 'ghetto blasters' and other devices still used them. We could buy the CD, and make a tape to use in our other players until the rest of our world caught up.
Can we easily do that *that* with our HD purchases? Nevermind perserving the "HD" Can we even easily hook up a CD burner or SVHS VCR to our HD player to make copies? Can we rip them to our PSPs, and iPod videos?
The whole HD format just isn't looking to be very user friendly. That's going to hurt it. I think there's a very decent chance it will be repeat of the "LaserDisc".
I save my change so I can afford not to live in that part of town.
;)
I said, "park", not "live".
As part of my job requires me to visit clients onsite I have little flexibility in where I park. I suppose I could always quit and get one of those TV advertised jobs where I make 20,000 a week from my own home with no money down though...
I don't park illegally and I don't leave my wallet in my car.
/shrug
I don't habitually either. In this case I was dropping some heavy stuff off at the salvation army, and I was wearing pocketless sweatpants. I parked too close to the intersection.
But at least you are safe.
Because other than that one scenario there is simply no way you could ever become separated from your keys/wallet.
I mean, nobody's ever been mugged, or pickpocketed, or had their stuff lifted while at the beach or pool, or dropped it in a gutter or off a dock, or left it in their other pants, or on the table at a restaurant, or lost it while jogging in the park, or had their car stolen....
Likewise, when people say "give a bit of spare change", this is often the worst advice that can be given as much of that money will go directly into feeding their addiction.
Apparently you don't have to park in the part of town where they'll smash your car windows for a nickle lying on your seat.
I'd gladly just give them the nickles to save a few hundred bucks worth of glass a year.
That said, have you ever been stuck for cash yourself? It doesn't take much, start with some grubby clothes and need of a shower, say, thanks to some house cleaning your in the middle of; then park in the wrong place for few couple minutes to perform a quick drop off errand, come back and find your car towed with your wallet & cellphone inside --- and instantly you can become reduced to begging for quarters to make a phone call, complete with a 'lame sob story' about how you just need bus fare to get accross town to the impound lot, or quarters to phone some friends to come get you... and you pretty much blend right in.
Its pretty freaky. Suddenly you are one of "them". Happened to me once. I can't say I have any idea what it would be like to be homeless, unstable, and so on, but I can tell you it must be pretty brutal; just based on the reactions of the people you are reduced to begging from. You become subhuman to the people around you.
And the scariest part is how thin the line can be between us...
Warren Buffet is known to disagree with "inheritence". He beleives that wealth should be redistributed not passed on to family members. In fact to paraphrase something I read about him once, he wants to leave his own children enough that they be able to do what they want with their lives, but not so much that they can choose to do nothing with them.
In other words, its clear he's always planned on ensuring they would be taken care of, but I don't think he ever planned on simply leaving them his billions.
A charitable foundation is probably the most effective way to spread his wealth around. The Gate's foundation is very well respected in spite of its link to Microsoft.
Warren Buffet has nothing but my respect for this move. Not only is it noble, but he's sticking with his long stated principles.
The point is if the keyword "Store" automatically adds 'local context', like "San Francisco" to your search, what hoops do you have to jump through to ensure that adding your own local context of "Los Angeles" is going to *eliminate* the "San Franciso".
The last thing I want is to search for "Los Angelos Store" and get over half my results pointing at San Fransicso ANYWAYS. I get enough of that CRAP already searching for restaurants and other physical named locations.
What if you want a store and you don't know what city its in. If I search for "The Cheese Emporium Store" and the nearest one is a 6000 miles away that's the result I want. I don't want local cheese and other emporiums in San Fransico cluttering up my results.
Rather than have them guess what I want, what I'd REALLY like to see is semantic search based on what I actually ask for:
if I search for "read new_product_X reviews", guess what Google et al, I want to READ reviews on new_product_X; I do not wish to "Be the first to write a review for product_X"; nor do I wish to read the SAME review that has been scraped onto 200 useless websites.
Or if I'm looking to buy something and want a site that will ship to Canada; the 200 sites that say "We do not ship to Canada or Internationally" is not a match.
Additionally, I can generally do without arriving on orphan pages where all the links off of it go to custom 404 pages.
And I can certainly do without arriving on parked domain pages, and link farms.
For me these are where search engines fail.
Do you really think companies will just resend the game over without a charge? That bandwidth must be payed for somehow.
Seriously, how much is it going to cost them to send me a new copy of the game if I was too stupid to burn it myself? 30 cents? They even could charge me 2 bucks and we'd both be happy.
In the world of utility and productivity software where digital download is already a very common distribution model, they usually let you re-download for free. If you lose your license key, they nearly always let you recover that for free too, provided they have some method of verifying your purchase.
The only exception is if the company goes defunct -- always a risk no matter what you buy. Or your version is so out of date, you need a paid "upgrade". But games don't get upgraded, bugs get patched for free (if at all), major upgrades are called "expansion packs and are optional purchases. And the next version is called a "sequel" not an "upgrade".
My wife, on the other hand, was blind as a bat without her glasses, to the point that she had to carefully place her glasses in the same place next to the bed each evening, because she had to find them by touch in the morning
Your wife was effectively blind. Most people are averse to laser surgery because there is a risk they'll end up like your wife. (Most lasik "backfires" don't result in 100% blindness; they merely end up worse to much worse then they started.) Given that your wife was already there, she didn't have much to lose.
I know others with similar stories, and I can definitely see how someone who'd like to fly military jets would perceive the risk/reward tradeoff as a good deal. Heck, I'd get the surgery if it meant someone would let me fly an F-14.
To each their own. But I'd select ortho-k over lasik. You wear orthok lenses while you sleep to reshape your cornea (they are like "retainers" for your eye), and you have good unassisted vision during the day -- making it suitable for sports, water-sports, firefighing, and many other tasks where glasses or contacts are inconvenient or unusable.
I'm not sure it would be acceptable for military pilots though; as they might not be allowed to wear contacts even while sleeping, for readiness purposes or something...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthokeratology
People could be meeting by telephone, but, you wouldn't think of suing the phone company for not doing their part to screen people would you?
;)
Good point. The phone company is a common carrier and is not responsible for what people say and do with it.
Therefore she should sue her ISP, not MySpace. After all, her ISP is likely against net neutrality, implying that they do not wish to be a common carrier, and therefore are responsible for what happens over the connections they provide...and therefore are liable when bad things happen.
It seemed pretty obvious to me. The NES and SNES didn't even get hot...
Yes, its obviously true that has occured in that very limited line of products to someone who's spent any time with them. However deriving from that observation the conclusion that "a more powerful system needs more electricity" is still patently absurd.
If the "a more powerful system needs more electricity" statement were generally true then how do you explain:
the way cellphones can do more with less electricity?
the fact that a new desktop box is more powerful than an old CRAY?
the fact that a GameBoy Advance is more powerful than an NES but can run on "AA" batteries (to use an example from Nintendo)?
These aren't exactly "anomalies".
Further, are you really that certain the next generation will use even more electricity? Is it really obvious the anwser is "yes"? Nevermind "obvious" is it even going to be "true"? I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the next generation after the Wii/PS3/X360 takes advantage of the current computing-per-watt direction processor design is going and delivers machines that are more powerful, but use less electricity.
So, yes, it may be obvious that an Gamecube uses more electricity than an NES to someone who's spent a lot of time with them, because they've felt the heat, noticed all the new moving parts, and so on. But the fact that its true for the progression from the NES to the Gamecube doesn't make it generally true, and it certainly doesn't make it obvious that 'a more powerful system needs more electricity'. We have far too many counter examples for that to hold up.
Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needs more electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.
No. Because its not obvious at all.
In fact, it could be argued that in computers that the opposite is more likely. After all a solar powered calculator the size of a credit card can run off the light of a candle and is a more powerful system than a 1960's computer that needed a warehouse and an industrial power supply. We're pretty accusomted to seeing computers deliver more on less.
And I bet if the article had discovered that modern consoles were 10x as powerful, and used less electricity than their previous generations, you would probably have yawned and said:
Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needing less electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.
Two conflicting statements, both so perfectly reasonable that we would question neither. I think it IS worth reporting which one turned out to be true.
Don't you?
All the fossil fuels that are economically reachable will be burned. Do you want them burned in nice epa-mandated catalytic converter equiped cars or some 3rd world 2-stroke putt-putt cars?
:)
That knife can cut both ways:
eg perhaps: Do you want them burned in highly efficient carefully regulated "car battery factories" located far away from parks, rivers, and schools... or burned in hundreds of thousands catalytic converter equipped cars in various states of disrepair trundling up and down your street?
If the fuel is going to get burned either way, I'd rather see it happen "somewhere's else". Ideally I'd prefer a perfect pollution free world, but too many hours spent playing sim-city has taught me that if you can't have that its better to isolate your industrial pollution far away from commercial and residential property.