Macs use PC-standard RAM, but you definitely can't stick the cheap stuff in a G5 system. I recently bought 4 G5 systems and 2 GB RAM for each from a third-party vendor who hadn't tested the RAM before shipping it. Macs were crashing all over the place, it wasn't pretty.
Cheap hard drives will work, though... just look at the 4200 RPM drive Apple ships with the Mini...;-)
Anyone who would settle for the generally poor quality of bootleg movies probably in not a big spender on theaters to begin with.
Seriously. Somebody showed me the bootleg of Hitchiker's Guide the other day, and I was really sorry I saw it that way. I wasn't planning to see it, but I ended up enjoying it immensely; the only problem was that the low quality of the rip was a big distraction.
But come on, a movie like Star Wars was made to be seen on the big screen, and most of the public knows that.
I tend to think that the Pippin was an enormous failure, not because it was ahead of its time, but because of a lack of compelling content. Apple just kind of threw the hardware out there on the market, "Ok, folks, there it is, and it's Apple... buy it!"
If you look at how game consoles are marketed nowadays, console specs mean nothing. "It has (x) more polygons than the competition, and (y) MB's of RAM, and (z) ghz processor speed!" Whatever. Actually, the gaming press always looks at what the first hot title is going to be to drive sales of the console. The XBox may have been superior to the PS2, spec-wise, but if there hadn't been a Halo, I don't think there would be talk of an XBox 360 right now.
The problem with the Pippin is that Apple tried to market it as if it was another computer... if you build it, the software developers will come. They made a huge mistake by not courting the developers while the system was in development so some hot Pippin games would be available from day one.
Has anyone EVER bought a game console that had NO games available for it, in hopes that one day, SOMEBODY might develop something for it? Well, I think a handful of "Apple faithful" bought the Pippin, but that's about it.
Have you ever tried playing a PC game on the Mac using VirtualPC? Performance is downright AWFUL. The Mac side has been trying to do this for over a decade. The only thing that really worked well was OrangeMicro's OrangePC card, which was basically an x86 processor and memory on a NuBUS or PCI card. Even then, you paid a lot of money for an x86 processor that was years out of date, so again, games were out of the question.
If MS goes the hardware route (adding the extra processor), I suspect that they will, once again, be taking a loss on the console.
Back when the PS2 was in development, I think DVD players were still $150 and up; so the appeal of having DVD playability was a definite value-add to the game console; it was like subracting $150 off the price of the PS2, because it could serve double duty.
The Xbox360 CPU will probably be very fast performing well-defined number cruching tasks with little branching and logic (e.g. physics processing), but bad at game logic (e.g. AI), compared to current general purpose PPC or AMD64 hardware.
Ah, that explains why the XBox 360 will be shipping with Excel Spreadsheet: The Game.
is that every last connection has to be SOLDERED DOWN in order for this thing to work for more than half an hour.
The problem the guy ran into six years ago was that the mineral oil seeped in between all of the connections and disrupted the flow of electrons; PCI cards, AGP card, CPU, IDE, power... everything. A stock motherboard simply won't cut it, you have to have a custom board with everything hard-wired to it to survive the submersion.
This story is a dupe because it doesn't solve the basic problem.
I've been reading the reviews, too, with a bit a skepticism... but I liked this one most of all. She's an occasional columnist for AICN, and definitely one of their better and more trustworthy writers. She trashed the last two movies, but this one, well...
To quote: Q. Give us a four-word review. A. Bloody hell! It's good!
I worked for a VERY large drug store chain back in the late 80's... they lost a very imporatant lawsuit regarding references. Basically, this woman left on bad terms, and was having trouble finding a new job because every time the interviewer called her former store manager to verify her employment, the store manager would tell the interviewer what a terrible employee she was. She sued the drug store chain, and won big. The ruling that came down was that the employers on your resume can only verify the dates of your employment, nothing more. No comments about the type of employee you are, good or bad.
That being said, I'm sure that virtually all small business owners are ignorant of the ruling. So, it would be better in the article submitter's case to be without fault and not give his soon-to-be former employer any reason to badmouth him.
Also keep in mind that your boss can't withhold pay that you have worked for. If he threatens you again, just tell him that you'll file a complaint with your state's labor comission, and have them open an investigation. Legally, he can't not pay you for time that you've worked. He can't even pay you at a reduced rate, unless he informed you of it before you worked the hours.
Hopefully, you only gave him two weeks. I found out the hard way, never give more than two weeks; you might think you're doing the boss a favor, but it just makes things harder on yourself to be known as the "short timer" for a month (or more).
You should definitely try to finish out your two weeks. Chances are, your boss will cool down sometime after you leave, and you'll want him to be a good reference when you embark on future job searches. At the very least, you don't want him to be a negative reference.
Your boss may be a total ass, but you should try to honor your word. Your most valuable asset in the business world is your reputation.
The worst part is the completely machine-readable/automatic nature of the thing -- you might not even know you're giving your information away.
Sure, they might require RFID cards... but somebody is going to make a fortune selling metal-lined ID card holders that block any signal from getting through.
that everyone who buys a hard drive-based MP3 player can pilfer songs off of the internet freely? After all, if the money is going straight to the recording industy, then you've already compensated them for all of the content that you are putting on the player.
Me, personally, I don't download songs from P2P. Not at all. All of my music collection is either from CD's or iTMS. So why should someone like me have to pay such a tax? It's insane to punish me for a crime I'm not committing.
I'm sorry, but a true geek would have had each of his beloved Electronics magazines soaked in a deacidification solution, carefully and lovingly dried, and then hermetically sealed in Mylar bags (with acid-free cardboard inserts, which he would have changed out every 3-5 years) and then stored in a cool, dry, dark basement.
A "true geek"? No, my friend, he certainly was not!
1) People can already buy their end-game setup at the beginning. (I got tired of always being broke in Anarchy Online, so I went on eBay and bought $100 mil credits for $20.) There are still limiting factors, though... you have to level up before you can use all of your stuff. I'm having a hard time spending my $100 mil because there's just not that much worthwhile stuff I can use without levelling up.
2) People who are serious about the game are already spending the money. People who are casual players probably do so for the cheap entertainment, so I doubt they'll be that upset. And if they are, well, Sony is going to cater to the crowd that has their wallets open.
3) Not everything can be traded. I've never played EQ, but in AO, there are a lot of NODROP items that can't be transfered. Only way to get those it to earn them. If EQ doesn't already have NODROP's, it's something that can be added to restrict commerce of the better stuff.
Smed says that 40% of their customer service calls are related to fraudulent in-game transactions. Sony could make this disappear instantly by creating an escrow system in-game. You have a sword to sell, you take it to the EQ Escrow storefront and drop it off. The buyer picks up the sword and the credits are automatically deducted from his account. No chance for fraud.
This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.
there was just too much money being left on the table for Sony not to get involved with the virtual sale/resale market at some point. It had to happen.
I'm sure that they've spent countless hours with their legal team trying to figure out all of the liability issues. For example, what if EQII suddenly goes bust and Sony shuts down the servers? Everything you just paid real dollars for is now non-existent.
by adding AMD systems across the board, Dell would double overnight the number of motherboards that they have to support and troubleshoot. Even if AMD sales were only a small part of their overall revenue.
Would there be enough new revenue from selling AMD systems to justify that? It has to be NEW revenue, because if it's just replacing one revenue stream with another at a greater cost, why would you bother?
Dell probably does not see enough additional revenue from AMD sales to justify the increased support costs.
We have the technology... premium vehicles already have back-up detection systems, just put the sensors all of the way around the vehicle.
Have Congress pass a law that all new vehicles must be equipped with a short-range transponder, making it easier for the navigation system to build a profile of the traffic around it. Also include in the law that ALL vehicles on the road must have a transponder within five years. This would be the first thing that would have to happen. Then, in five years, start testing automated systems.
The technology is there, it's just a matter of the run-up cost to implementing this.
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Macs use PC-standard RAM, but you definitely can't stick the cheap stuff in a G5 system. I recently bought 4 G5 systems and 2 GB RAM for each from a third-party vendor who hadn't tested the RAM before shipping it. Macs were crashing all over the place, it wasn't pretty.
;-)
Cheap hard drives will work, though... just look at the 4200 RPM drive Apple ships with the Mini...
It's broken.
Anyone who would settle for the generally poor quality of bootleg movies probably in not a big spender on theaters to begin with.
Seriously. Somebody showed me the bootleg of Hitchiker's Guide the other day, and I was really sorry I saw it that way. I wasn't planning to see it, but I ended up enjoying it immensely; the only problem was that the low quality of the rip was a big distraction.
But come on, a movie like Star Wars was made to be seen on the big screen, and most of the public knows that.
I tend to think that the Pippin was an enormous failure, not because it was ahead of its time, but because of a lack of compelling content. Apple just kind of threw the hardware out there on the market, "Ok, folks, there it is, and it's Apple... buy it!"
If you look at how game consoles are marketed nowadays, console specs mean nothing. "It has (x) more polygons than the competition, and (y) MB's of RAM, and (z) ghz processor speed!" Whatever. Actually, the gaming press always looks at what the first hot title is going to be to drive sales of the console. The XBox may have been superior to the PS2, spec-wise, but if there hadn't been a Halo, I don't think there would be talk of an XBox 360 right now.
The problem with the Pippin is that Apple tried to market it as if it was another computer... if you build it, the software developers will come. They made a huge mistake by not courting the developers while the system was in development so some hot Pippin games would be available from day one.
Has anyone EVER bought a game console that had NO games available for it, in hopes that one day, SOMEBODY might develop something for it? Well, I think a handful of "Apple faithful" bought the Pippin, but that's about it.
Have you ever tried playing a PC game on the Mac using VirtualPC? Performance is downright AWFUL. The Mac side has been trying to do this for over a decade. The only thing that really worked well was OrangeMicro's OrangePC card, which was basically an x86 processor and memory on a NuBUS or PCI card. Even then, you paid a lot of money for an x86 processor that was years out of date, so again, games were out of the question.
If MS goes the hardware route (adding the extra processor), I suspect that they will, once again, be taking a loss on the console.
Maybe a quote from the OTHER "A. Smith" is more appropriate here...
Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.
That guy's got some skillz... Nintendo ought to hire him.
Back when the PS2 was in development, I think DVD players were still $150 and up; so the appeal of having DVD playability was a definite value-add to the game console; it was like subracting $150 off the price of the PS2, because it could serve double duty.
However, nowadays DVD is so common that CompUSA is selling DVD players for $15.
So, why would I care about DVD functionality? To save $15 off the game console? Woot.
Now, if it had something else, like PVR to DVD-R functionality, that would be a value-add worth considering, but basic DVD playing... nah.
The Xbox360 CPU will probably be very fast performing well-defined number cruching tasks with little branching and logic (e.g. physics processing), but bad at game logic (e.g. AI), compared to current general purpose PPC or AMD64 hardware.
Ah, that explains why the XBox 360 will be shipping with Excel Spreadsheet: The Game.
is that every last connection has to be SOLDERED DOWN in order for this thing to work for more than half an hour.
The problem the guy ran into six years ago was that the mineral oil seeped in between all of the connections and disrupted the flow of electrons; PCI cards, AGP card, CPU, IDE, power... everything. A stock motherboard simply won't cut it, you have to have a custom board with everything hard-wired to it to survive the submersion.
This story is a dupe because it doesn't solve the basic problem.
Apparently, you have to flip it over and shake it to reboot.
I've been reading the reviews, too, with a bit a skepticism... but I liked this one most of all. She's an occasional columnist for AICN, and definitely one of their better and more trustworthy writers. She trashed the last two movies, but this one, well...
To quote:
Q. Give us a four-word review.
A. Bloody hell! It's good!
Great story.
I worked for a VERY large drug store chain back in the late 80's... they lost a very imporatant lawsuit regarding references. Basically, this woman left on bad terms, and was having trouble finding a new job because every time the interviewer called her former store manager to verify her employment, the store manager would tell the interviewer what a terrible employee she was. She sued the drug store chain, and won big. The ruling that came down was that the employers on your resume can only verify the dates of your employment, nothing more. No comments about the type of employee you are, good or bad.
That being said, I'm sure that virtually all small business owners are ignorant of the ruling. So, it would be better in the article submitter's case to be without fault and not give his soon-to-be former employer any reason to badmouth him.
Also keep in mind that your boss can't withhold pay that you have worked for. If he threatens you again, just tell him that you'll file a complaint with your state's labor comission, and have them open an investigation. Legally, he can't not pay you for time that you've worked. He can't even pay you at a reduced rate, unless he informed you of it before you worked the hours.
Hopefully, you only gave him two weeks. I found out the hard way, never give more than two weeks; you might think you're doing the boss a favor, but it just makes things harder on yourself to be known as the "short timer" for a month (or more).
You should definitely try to finish out your two weeks. Chances are, your boss will cool down sometime after you leave, and you'll want him to be a good reference when you embark on future job searches. At the very least, you don't want him to be a negative reference.
Your boss may be a total ass, but you should try to honor your word. Your most valuable asset in the business world is your reputation.
The worst part is the completely machine-readable/automatic nature of the thing -- you might not even know you're giving your information away.
Sure, they might require RFID cards... but somebody is going to make a fortune selling metal-lined ID card holders that block any signal from getting through.
that everyone who buys a hard drive-based MP3 player can pilfer songs off of the internet freely? After all, if the money is going straight to the recording industy, then you've already compensated them for all of the content that you are putting on the player.
Me, personally, I don't download songs from P2P. Not at all. All of my music collection is either from CD's or iTMS. So why should someone like me have to pay such a tax? It's insane to punish me for a crime I'm not committing.
By waiting until the day before, Tiger Direct hopes to put Apple in full panic mode, maximizing the amount of payoff that they would receive.
Never buy a computer when it's TODAY.
Always wait until it's TOMORROW, because something better may come out.
I'm sorry, but a true geek would have had each of his beloved Electronics magazines soaked in a deacidification solution, carefully and lovingly dried, and then hermetically sealed in Mylar bags (with acid-free cardboard inserts, which he would have changed out every 3-5 years) and then stored in a cool, dry, dark basement.
A "true geek"? No, my friend, he certainly was not!
1) People can already buy their end-game setup at the beginning. (I got tired of always being broke in Anarchy Online, so I went on eBay and bought $100 mil credits for $20.) There are still limiting factors, though... you have to level up before you can use all of your stuff. I'm having a hard time spending my $100 mil because there's just not that much worthwhile stuff I can use without levelling up.
2) People who are serious about the game are already spending the money. People who are casual players probably do so for the cheap entertainment, so I doubt they'll be that upset. And if they are, well, Sony is going to cater to the crowd that has their wallets open.
3) Not everything can be traded. I've never played EQ, but in AO, there are a lot of NODROP items that can't be transfered. Only way to get those it to earn them. If EQ doesn't already have NODROP's, it's something that can be added to restrict commerce of the better stuff.
Smed says that 40% of their customer service calls are related to fraudulent in-game transactions. Sony could make this disappear instantly by creating an escrow system in-game. You have a sword to sell, you take it to the EQ Escrow storefront and drop it off. The buyer picks up the sword and the credits are automatically deducted from his account. No chance for fraud.
This isn't going to legitimize IGE, this is going to put them out of business, once Sony gets rolling with this.
there was just too much money being left on the table for Sony not to get involved with the virtual sale/resale market at some point. It had to happen.
I'm sure that they've spent countless hours with their legal team trying to figure out all of the liability issues. For example, what if EQII suddenly goes bust and Sony shuts down the servers? Everything you just paid real dollars for is now non-existent.
by adding AMD systems across the board, Dell would double overnight the number of motherboards that they have to support and troubleshoot. Even if AMD sales were only a small part of their overall revenue.
Would there be enough new revenue from selling AMD systems to justify that? It has to be NEW revenue, because if it's just replacing one revenue stream with another at a greater cost, why would you bother?
Dell probably does not see enough additional revenue from AMD sales to justify the increased support costs.
We have the technology... premium vehicles already have back-up detection systems, just put the sensors all of the way around the vehicle.
Have Congress pass a law that all new vehicles must be equipped with a short-range transponder, making it easier for the navigation system to build a profile of the traffic around it. Also include in the law that ALL vehicles on the road must have a transponder within five years. This would be the first thing that would have to happen. Then, in five years, start testing automated systems.
The technology is there, it's just a matter of the run-up cost to implementing this.