Somewhere in California, even though the location is irrelevant--Apple's attempt at evoking nostalgia for Hypercolor T-shirts has backfired. The color-changing palmrests, like the shirts that preceded them, have begun to "stick" in their yellow color instead of reverting to white as intended.
When contacted for comment, an Apple spokesman said "Hi, I'm a Macintosh. I understand that sometimes people just aren't willing to sacrifice for fashion, so we're going to go ahead and switch those palmrests. But it's okay; I'm still better than a PC because I do all these things that PCs do and I don't do all the things PCs...haven't done since Windows ME was dropped like a bad habit.
A poorly-dressed spokesman for the PC inudstry responded with "Hi, I'm a PC. Yeah I don't look as trendy as Mr. Mac over there, but then I don't change colors when your palms get all sweaty. But do me a favor and keep them off of me anyway, okay? That's just gross."
"But it seems Parexel, despite having the moral responsibilty for the outcome of its incompetence
It would be incompetence if they had released the drug to market, or at least attempted to. The whole point of clinical testing is to look for problems like this that couldn't be predicted, and did not turn up in animal testing.
The lessons are that $4000 is not worth risking your life over, that that is what you are doing if you are foolish enough to volunteer for medical testing whatever promises you receive not withstanding, and that if you are so foolish you will be left to die by the company responsible without legal recourse should things go wrong.
Because every company does what this one does, right?
In other words, only an ignorant would sign up for medical testing.
Only an ignorant...what? Huh?
I predict a decline in voluntary test subjects, and a rise in the use of prisoners and other "disposable" human subjects.
Prisoners can't be used, and I'd say a subject that can be bought for $4,000 is disposable enough for a pharmaceutical. Unless you're saying that they are evil enough to abduct indigents for testing. Of course, the duress of being kidnapped would impact test results making any studies virtually useless, and couldn't very well be used with the FDA.
Those concepts also aren't easily taught. For me to make an assessment of your strategic weaknesses, I have to understand my own strategies and adjust them to fit the situation. I understand my own strategies because they are my own; born entirely of my own playing experiences and observation of other players in the game, not any structured teaching.
How do you teach a person to anticipate what their opponent will do? How do you teach them how to tell the difference between a player running away from a fight, and a player backing off to find a flanking position? When I play a FPS, my strength is in quickly being able to learn a person's way of thinking and recognize patterns in their play.
I've "taught" a few people to play games. I did that by bringing them into LAN parties and getting them to play until they learned to hold their own, or gave up. Those who want to learn, will.
1) Coaches in every sport imaginable 2) Exercise consultants in the gym of your choice 3) Music teachers
I mean, to learn piano, all you need is to buy a piano and then just plunk away at it until you're playing Chopin, right?
1) What do sports coaches teach? The rules of the game (because real-life sports rarely come with manuals and tutorials included), how to not get yourself physically hurt (stretching, properly exercises, proper technique in executing the physical component of the game), and the strategies of the sport. Only the last part can be "taught" as video games are concerned, and in truth the best strategies cannot be taught, but they can be learned.
2) Exercise consultants (aka trainers) in gyms have two roles: first, to make sure you don't hurt yourself, and second to teach you how to exercise efficiently. You don't normally need a trainer for years to get you from a fat slob to a fit individual, you need them for a few months to teach you the right way to do it so that once you're on your own, you get the most of your workout. In other words, the trainer shows you how to get you where you're going; a game coach is (imo) more akin to using steroids than using a trainer.
Now, I'm fully aware that some people do use trainers for years. This is for moral/psychological support, so that they can have someone there to tell them that yes they *can* do it when they think they can't. If you need someone to do that for you in video games, maybe you should be finding a new hobby. They shouldn't be work.
3) Music is a very difficult thing to "just learn". People spend decades in schools learning it; to even suggest that there might be any comparison between teaching music and teaching video games is an insult to musicians everywhere.
Very simple concept, just takes a little bit of time to get there.
It's also rewarding.
I don't know why I should be at all surprised that people are spending money on getting better at games. The solution to everything these days is to throw money at it; that's why I quit playing CCGs like Magic: The Gathering a decade ago...I wasn't able to spend the thousands of dollars required to even have hope of competing in the tournaments.
I suppose we're just forgetting the joy of doing things for ourselves. Our society has come to care only about the end result. Pay someone else to do all the hard work, then take credit for what they did. Landscaping companies and interior designers are a good example of it in the real world: I don't see where someone can take a great deal of pride in their home when they had nothing to do with its appearance except writing checks.
Why does anyone need to hire a coach for video games? If yo want to get better--here's a novel thought--find where the good players go, and go there, too. It will either force you to get better or give up because you lack any natural aptitude for the game.
Example: A lot of RTS games now have replay features. Want to get better? Every time you get stomped, watch the replay and see what the other guy did. Try to emulate it in sandbox or skirmish mode. After a few dozen replays you'll be playing like a competent player.
I dont think they can make much money with those activities.
I doubt Intel makes a lot of money off their motherboards, but their line of NICs has become one of the best in the business and is likely quite profitable. But that's beside the point; they don't sell motherboards for the sake of selling motherboards, they sell motherboards because it helps them sell processors.
I worked for a server OEM that had five major partners: Intel, Microsoft, Fujitsu, LSI, and Kingston.
Microsoft: obvious
Fujitsu: hard drives only
LSI: RAID controllers (because they were the fastest by far of anything we tested)
Kingston: memory, of course
Intel: Everything else
One thing that kept us from using AMD was the fact that we would have had to switch to using third-party motherboards AND adopt a new partner on CPUs. OEMs that can't make their own boards aren't crazy about having to use third-party boards for AMD chips because they tend to be inconsistent (for example, I recently worked on a motherboard where different batches had different sound chips, all under the same product name) and high-performance boards have excessive and expensive features that OEMs would prefer not to have.
AMD would only benefit from marketing their own line of motherboards. Even if they broke even on the boards, they would almost be guaranteed to sell more CPUs.
One thing that Intel has always done better than AMD is provide the "whole package".
What I can buy from Intel:
Server chassis + power supply Motherboard CPU(s) NIC RAID
What I can buy from AMD:
CPU(s)
Small-medium OEMs are going to like Intel because it gives them one point of support for most of their major components. It also gives them a single "partner" with which to negotiate pricing; the larger volume of product means they can get overall better pricing.
Taking on ATI might be AMDs move to start fixing that shortfall in their business model. If they put a solid OEM-friendly motherboard on the market, it will be a huge step in the right direction. With Conroe presently beating the pants off AMD's offerings, this is well-timed.
The bigger Apple's market share, the more we'll see:
Competition. Microsoft has been lazy because they dominated the market for so long. If Apple becomes a serious competitor in the business world (where they're just really beginning to scratch the surface) then MS will feel the pinch and be forced to raise the quality of their product. We've seen nothing but good results from the CPU and video card races and price wars.
Realism. As Apple becomes more mainstream and falls into the hands of less competent users, we're going to see a lot of the myths about Apple go away. Its vaunted security comes at the price of ease of use, and I think we'll be seeing a lot of people wondering why they can't do on their Mac what they could do on their Dell...the answer is because they shouldn't have done it on the Dell to begin with, but that's beside the point. I've long said that for Apple to make a play for market dominance they'll have to dumb down their OS the way Microsoft did, and that will make them vulnerable, the same as Microsoft.
Less hypocrisy. Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.
I've heard that people in some lines of work lose their prints due to constant friction on their fingertips. If that's true, you could actually sand off your fingerprints.
It'd hurt, but it would be a lot less dangerous than the alternative...
Anyone who relies on biometrics alone is asking for trouble.
Fingerprint: not secure Fingerprint + password: more secure Fingerprint + password + voice sample: even better.
There are harder biometrics to reproduce, like the thermal patterns of your face. For highly secure areas, multiple biometric keys, a memorized password, a voiceprint, plus a physical key/card would be ideal. And of course there's the good old-fashioned trustworthy security guard to make it even harder for the wrong person to get where they shouldn't be (assume you're restricting physical access).
Picture a stick of dynamite under a large rock, and another under a pile of sand with mass equal to that of the rock. Which do you think will move more...the rock or the sand?
Let's say we drill a hole into the asteroid and manage to break it up with a really big nuke. Then we have a lot of smaller rocks heading our way, and a lot more smaller rocks thrown out of collision course. As the debris cloud approaches earth, we detonate another nuke or two just ask the cloud reaches the warhead. More debris is redirected, and even more is slowed down significantly.
The same three warheads on the surface of the intact asteroid wouldn't have near that effect...by breaking up the asteroid and then using nukes to redirect the debris, you give the nukes much more surface area to act on, and much less massive objects to push.
No cable, no satellite. I've never felt like paying $50 a month for 125 channels and STILL having nothing to watch. Just good old-fashioned analog broadcast.
But seriously...how hard would it be to put a little battery in the VCR to allow it to retain its settings when it loses power for a few minutes because I needed to move it or the power went out for a split second?
Possible solution to the problem of kinetic energy:
Once you've sufficiently shattered a rock, detonate a series of warheads, using their released energy to divert and/or slow down the resulting debris cloud.
If we can bust up a planet-killing asteroid, we should have ample power to redirect its leftovers.
Oh, and it most certainly would lose energy and mass, as far as the threat to earth is concerned.
If you detonated a nuke inside it that shattered it, then the radial nature of the explosion would push significant portions of the mass off the path to collision with Earth (this assumes that we detect the threat in time and approach it with enough time left for the fragments to drift apart, and not blow it up two hours before impact).
If you slammed a nuke into the side of it, all the energy release by the nuke that the rock absorbs would be pushing it away from Earth. It wouldn't be enough to alter its course (probably) but it would reduce kinetic energy. And again, fragments would be ejected that would not be on course to collide with earth.
To be fair, the excessive number of button presses required to set a VCR clock IS too hard unless you intend to set a timer for recording. Otherwise, you just have a clock on your VCR and, frankly, it's just not worth the effort only to have it reset itself the next time the power goes out.
You raise an excellent point. Why, after 20+ years of VCR development, do I *still* have to reset everything on my VCR every time the power blinks? My computer can keep time for years without power. What's so difficult about that?
The Japanese can't seem to make a decent VCR, yet we Americans are the "dumb" ones? Pah.
Maybe someone could explain to my why virtual memory is necessary; I have seen plenty of systems work without it without any significant performance degradation.
Re:Seems an obvious patent
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Somewhere in California, even though the location is irrelevant--Apple's attempt at evoking nostalgia for Hypercolor T-shirts has backfired. The color-changing palmrests, like the shirts that preceded them, have begun to "stick" in their yellow color instead of reverting to white as intended.
When contacted for comment, an Apple spokesman said "Hi, I'm a Macintosh. I understand that sometimes people just aren't willing to sacrifice for fashion, so we're going to go ahead and switch those palmrests. But it's okay; I'm still better than a PC because I do all these things that PCs do and I don't do all the things PCs...haven't done since Windows ME was dropped like a bad habit.
A poorly-dressed spokesman for the PC inudstry responded with "Hi, I'm a PC. Yeah I don't look as trendy as Mr. Mac over there, but then I don't change colors when your palms get all sweaty. But do me a favor and keep them off of me anyway, okay? That's just gross."
Please contact our piracy upgrade division via email at suemenow@microsoft.com
It would be incompetence if they had released the drug to market, or at least attempted to. The whole point of clinical testing is to look for problems like this that couldn't be predicted, and did not turn up in animal testing.
Because every company does what this one does, right?
Only an ignorant...what? Huh?
Prisoners can't be used, and I'd say a subject that can be bought for $4,000 is disposable enough for a pharmaceutical. Unless you're saying that they are evil enough to abduct indigents for testing. Of course, the duress of being kidnapped would impact test results making any studies virtually useless, and couldn't very well be used with the FDA.
I predict "a reader" needs to tighten his TFH.
The Newton is essentially a big PDA.
The Q1 is a small tablet (laptop).
The article seemed most interested in their roles as PDAs. OF COURSE the PDA will win.
Let's compare the Newton with some good CE-based handhelds and see what we find.
Been taking math lessons from Ma & Pa Kettle?
Those concepts also aren't easily taught. For me to make an assessment of your strategic weaknesses, I have to understand my own strategies and adjust them to fit the situation. I understand my own strategies because they are my own; born entirely of my own playing experiences and observation of other players in the game, not any structured teaching.
How do you teach a person to anticipate what their opponent will do? How do you teach them how to tell the difference between a player running away from a fight, and a player backing off to find a flanking position? When I play a FPS, my strength is in quickly being able to learn a person's way of thinking and recognize patterns in their play.
I've "taught" a few people to play games. I did that by bringing them into LAN parties and getting them to play until they learned to hold their own, or gave up. Those who want to learn, will.
1) What do sports coaches teach? The rules of the game (because real-life sports rarely come with manuals and tutorials included), how to not get yourself physically hurt (stretching, properly exercises, proper technique in executing the physical component of the game), and the strategies of the sport. Only the last part can be "taught" as video games are concerned, and in truth the best strategies cannot be taught, but they can be learned.
2) Exercise consultants (aka trainers) in gyms have two roles: first, to make sure you don't hurt yourself, and second to teach you how to exercise efficiently. You don't normally need a trainer for years to get you from a fat slob to a fit individual, you need them for a few months to teach you the right way to do it so that once you're on your own, you get the most of your workout. In other words, the trainer shows you how to get you where you're going; a game coach is (imo) more akin to using steroids than using a trainer.
Now, I'm fully aware that some people do use trainers for years. This is for moral/psychological support, so that they can have someone there to tell them that yes they *can* do it when they think they can't. If you need someone to do that for you in video games, maybe you should be finding a new hobby. They shouldn't be work.
3) Music is a very difficult thing to "just learn". People spend decades in schools learning it; to even suggest that there might be any comparison between teaching music and teaching video games is an insult to musicians everywhere.
It's also rewarding.
I don't know why I should be at all surprised that people are spending money on getting better at games. The solution to everything these days is to throw money at it; that's why I quit playing CCGs like Magic: The Gathering a decade ago...I wasn't able to spend the thousands of dollars required to even have hope of competing in the tournaments.
I suppose we're just forgetting the joy of doing things for ourselves. Our society has come to care only about the end result. Pay someone else to do all the hard work, then take credit for what they did. Landscaping companies and interior designers are a good example of it in the real world: I don't see where someone can take a great deal of pride in their home when they had nothing to do with its appearance except writing checks.
Why does anyone need to hire a coach for video games? If yo want to get better--here's a novel thought--find where the good players go, and go there, too. It will either force you to get better or give up because you lack any natural aptitude for the game.
Example: A lot of RTS games now have replay features. Want to get better? Every time you get stomped, watch the replay and see what the other guy did. Try to emulate it in sandbox or skirmish mode. After a few dozen replays you'll be playing like a competent player.
According to Google...
http://www.google.com/finance?q=SEO
Or it might be search engine optimization...ya never know.
(yes, I looked it up)
I dont think they can make much money with those activities. I doubt Intel makes a lot of money off their motherboards, but their line of NICs has become one of the best in the business and is likely quite profitable. But that's beside the point; they don't sell motherboards for the sake of selling motherboards, they sell motherboards because it helps them sell processors. I worked for a server OEM that had five major partners: Intel, Microsoft, Fujitsu, LSI, and Kingston. Microsoft: obvious Fujitsu: hard drives only LSI: RAID controllers (because they were the fastest by far of anything we tested) Kingston: memory, of course Intel: Everything else One thing that kept us from using AMD was the fact that we would have had to switch to using third-party motherboards AND adopt a new partner on CPUs. OEMs that can't make their own boards aren't crazy about having to use third-party boards for AMD chips because they tend to be inconsistent (for example, I recently worked on a motherboard where different batches had different sound chips, all under the same product name) and high-performance boards have excessive and expensive features that OEMs would prefer not to have. AMD would only benefit from marketing their own line of motherboards. Even if they broke even on the boards, they would almost be guaranteed to sell more CPUs.
One thing that Intel has always done better than AMD is provide the "whole package".
What I can buy from Intel:
Server chassis + power supply
Motherboard
CPU(s)
NIC
RAID
What I can buy from AMD:
CPU(s)
Small-medium OEMs are going to like Intel because it gives them one point of support for most of their major components. It also gives them a single "partner" with which to negotiate pricing; the larger volume of product means they can get overall better pricing.
Taking on ATI might be AMDs move to start fixing that shortfall in their business model. If they put a solid OEM-friendly motherboard on the market, it will be a huge step in the right direction. With Conroe presently beating the pants off AMD's offerings, this is well-timed.
"Thank you for calling the Alzheimer's Research...umm...uhh...lavatory. Lobotomy. Oh gosh..."
The bigger Apple's market share, the more we'll see:
Competition. Microsoft has been lazy because they dominated the market for so long. If Apple becomes a serious competitor in the business world (where they're just really beginning to scratch the surface) then MS will feel the pinch and be forced to raise the quality of their product. We've seen nothing but good results from the CPU and video card races and price wars.
Realism. As Apple becomes more mainstream and falls into the hands of less competent users, we're going to see a lot of the myths about Apple go away. Its vaunted security comes at the price of ease of use, and I think we'll be seeing a lot of people wondering why they can't do on their Mac what they could do on their Dell...the answer is because they shouldn't have done it on the Dell to begin with, but that's beside the point. I've long said that for Apple to make a play for market dominance they'll have to dumb down their OS the way Microsoft did, and that will make them vulnerable, the same as Microsoft.
Less hypocrisy. Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS. If Apple takes a large chunk of the market, we're going to have to hold them to the same standard we do Microsoft, meaning that we should be demanding an end to their anticompetitive practices of bundling their own software.
Hope you're not going to work with a fever :p
So far as I know, the *patterns* don't change, just the temperature. Sufficiently intelligent software could compensate.
I've heard that people in some lines of work lose their prints due to constant friction on their fingertips. If that's true, you could actually sand off your fingerprints.
It'd hurt, but it would be a lot less dangerous than the alternative...
Anyone who relies on biometrics alone is asking for trouble.
Fingerprint: not secure
Fingerprint + password: more secure
Fingerprint + password + voice sample: even better.
There are harder biometrics to reproduce, like the thermal patterns of your face. For highly secure areas, multiple biometric keys, a memorized password, a voiceprint, plus a physical key/card would be ideal. And of course there's the good old-fashioned trustworthy security guard to make it even harder for the wrong person to get where they shouldn't be (assume you're restricting physical access).
You forgot "I for one welcome our new highly reflective talking big brother overlords"
Picture a stick of dynamite under a large rock, and another under a pile of sand with mass equal to that of the rock. Which do you think will move more...the rock or the sand?
Let's say we drill a hole into the asteroid and manage to break it up with a really big nuke. Then we have a lot of smaller rocks heading our way, and a lot more smaller rocks thrown out of collision course. As the debris cloud approaches earth, we detonate another nuke or two just ask the cloud reaches the warhead. More debris is redirected, and even more is slowed down significantly.
The same three warheads on the surface of the intact asteroid wouldn't have near that effect...by breaking up the asteroid and then using nukes to redirect the debris, you give the nukes much more surface area to act on, and much less massive objects to push.
No cable, no satellite. I've never felt like paying $50 a month for 125 channels and STILL having nothing to watch. Just good old-fashioned analog broadcast.
But seriously...how hard would it be to put a little battery in the VCR to allow it to retain its settings when it loses power for a few minutes because I needed to move it or the power went out for a split second?
Possible solution to the problem of kinetic energy:
Once you've sufficiently shattered a rock, detonate a series of warheads, using their released energy to divert and/or slow down the resulting debris cloud.
If we can bust up a planet-killing asteroid, we should have ample power to redirect its leftovers.
Oh, and it most certainly would lose energy and mass, as far as the threat to earth is concerned.
If you detonated a nuke inside it that shattered it, then the radial nature of the explosion would push significant portions of the mass off the path to collision with Earth (this assumes that we detect the threat in time and approach it with enough time left for the fragments to drift apart, and not blow it up two hours before impact).
If you slammed a nuke into the side of it, all the energy release by the nuke that the rock absorbs would be pushing it away from Earth. It wouldn't be enough to alter its course (probably) but it would reduce kinetic energy. And again, fragments would be ejected that would not be on course to collide with earth.
To be fair, the excessive number of button presses required to set a VCR clock IS too hard unless you intend to set a timer for recording. Otherwise, you just have a clock on your VCR and, frankly, it's just not worth the effort only to have it reset itself the next time the power goes out.
You raise an excellent point. Why, after 20+ years of VCR development, do I *still* have to reset everything on my VCR every time the power blinks? My computer can keep time for years without power. What's so difficult about that?
The Japanese can't seem to make a decent VCR, yet we Americans are the "dumb" ones? Pah.
Or you could just not use virtual memory.
Maybe someone could explain to my why virtual memory is necessary; I have seen plenty of systems work without it without any significant performance degradation.
You got that wrong. It should be:
"Ahhh! But it's now being done by Apple!"
Narf!