The author took some liberties of presuming that the rate of progress in the realm of the "proprietary" consoles, and the mainstream technology engined XBox, are comparable : On the one side you have chips that are used in absolutely nothing except for the game consoles, and on the other you have chips that are subsidized by a several hundred billion dollar a year computer industry (i.e. the R&D of the P3 733 has long since been paid off by Joe Average buying some desktops for his business). Nvidia uses the same R&D and technology first to sell their nForce motherboards (nForce 2 is coming out shortly), as well as using the graphics technology in its video cards (which have now eclipsed the technology in the xbox). DDR RAM of course has been well proven and is now bargain basement. I think the author makes some pretty grand assumptions in presuming the xbox isn't benefitting from the PC's progress forward: nvidia and Intel have been incorporating much more efficient processes, and I'm sure at this point that Intel can punch out P3 733s at about $2/chip. Perhaps Microsoft is currently losing money, but for all we know they might be losing $2.00, not the hundreds that the author seems to presume. I've actually been considering getting a console for more social entertainment when people are over, etc. (PCs don't work well for that), and it is clear that hardware wise, the PS2 is absolutely no competition for the xbox, however the remaining failure with the xbox is one of games: I can get dozens of great games on the ps2, but you can count on one hand the great games for the xbox. I wonder if this will change anything soon (are there any killer games in the pipeline for the xbox?).
As a sidenote: The xbox strategically holds several grounds, and one is that it gets a lot of shops programming in DirectX on the Wintel platform, meaning that it's a very short journey to releasing PC games where, surprize surprize, there is the Microsoft tax. Microsoft is in such a position that virtually anything they do can be to their strategic advantage somewhere or other.
It definitely depends on the point of crossing: When I leave Toronto (there's actual US customs in the Toronto airport), or fly to the international gate in Pittsburgh, the grilling is fairly substantial (including ID checks, and a verification that I'm not a wanted person or something by typing in my drivers license or passport numbers into their system), and you have to be very careful about what you say (the grilling has more to do with protectionism than about drugs or terrorism: Most questions are based around what sort of work you are doing, determining that you are not providing a paid service in the US, but instead are being trained or something of that sort) lest you get denied entry. I've never actually gotten searched being the normal pat down at any point.
Crossing the border by car, though, is often the basic "Where are you going and for how long?" type deal that goes by fairly quickly, or alternately just a wave through. This is not just at the Canadian border, but I've read that even the Mexican border is pretty much the same.
I understand why the Canadian border guards ask the extended questions: It's likely to find a hole in your story, if it is a story versus a reality. i.e. Asking your return port is brilliant if someone didn't actually think through their plan, and of course even if they did someone would likely get nervous about their story and cracks in their facade will appear, likely leading to a thorough cavity search. Of course this has a unwanted side effect of persecuting the naturally nervous as well (returning from Florida recently I was sure that I would be in for a thorough search: I had driven straight through and was so unbelievably tired that I'd swear I sounded like I was lying being 100% honest, but thankfully he wasn't feeling like pursuing it).
One side thing: Toronto airport (I'm from Toronto, so I can criticize it:-)) is a bit ridiculous in ways because they hire students to assist the customs, so when you're coming in the international gate you get accosted by a phalanx of about 14 students, all acting thoroughly unprofessional, asking you questions about your trip, etc. I'm not criticizing teens, but I don't think that something as serious and liberty-invading as customs should be staffed by non-professionals.
Well lots of people are saying that it is produced in Canada, and they'd be right (at least regarding marijuana) : BC is a pot growers heaven, and it's well known that it is a highly desired product (hence US nationals come up and bring it home, or orchestrate for it to be brought to the US. Again, drugs into the US always require buyers and usually a distributor that are pure red white & blue Americans. Where there is a demand there will be a supply). Indeed, truthfully Canada has become becoming much more lenient in regards to marijuana, as has virtually all of Europe (any rational analysis of the "drug war" leads to the conclusion that it is fruitless and does more harm than good, especially regarding trivially soft drugs like marijuana).
Pray tell: What, exactly, is a "Canadian" accent? Is this one of those foolish "paint 30 million people covering 10,000,000 square kilometers with one brush" type stereotypes? There are dozens of accents within Canada, all very different. My `accent' tradition is turned as "neutral" (such as in a recent trip through the Virginas), and hard to place, versus say a New York, or Boston, or Minnesotan, or Wisconsan, or Texan accent.
And why would Canadians be running the balloons? From what I've read, they are a prospective part of NORAD protecting the coastal regions of both countries, not the borders in between (mind you, Mr. Bush has been hard at work giving the illusion of safety to a public that is so unbelievably uninformed that they buy it. You know, pretending that the REAL problem is the Canadian border, despite the fact that not a single one of the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada. I continually hear about the big problem with Canadian marijuana entering the US (all a part of the "War on Drugs" propaganda that is keeping a lot of contractors rolling in dough), and this would almost be humorous if it weren't the absolutely miniscule amount of drugs going South (far less than the drugs and guns coming to Canada from the US. The US is a far greater exporter of crime than it's an importer, which makes the posturing and lip service all the more ridiculous), but compared to the monstrous amount of drugs coming into the US via the gulf region, BC pot is absolutely trivially tiny.
The operating system, or rather the processor itself, did catch the divide by zero, and helpfully threw a divide by zero exception/interrupt back to the software: A divide by zero doesn't crash NT, but NT does pass a software exception do your app so depending upon the language and exception handling, what happens is up to you. If this were any of most modern languages, a simple try/except block would let them catch and deal with the error. If, on the other hand, they presumed, as developers often do, that there is no need for that error control because there's no way the code can fault, then all hell can break loose as the error percolates up the app, eventually crashing it at the root. Remember that a divide by zero isn't just something you want to filter out, because the app has to know about it (because the result of the calculation is undefined so it can't just continue along using the result).
So the code threw an exception when it divided by zero: That's a _wanted_ thing (because technically dividing by zero is an error state. You don't want to just skip over something like that when it could be guiding a missile or steering the ship). From everything I've heard about that Navy ship, the fault had absolutely zero to do with "Windows NT", and everything to do with a proprietary application that didn't wrap a non-deterministic calculation in a try/except : Hardly extraordinary. Unfortunate, yes. Fodder for anti-MSitism, hardly.
One thing about your sig : Caffeine actually leads to a nervous system collapse after several hours, ironically causing extreme tiredness/mental fatigue. The "stay alert" aspect of caffeine is only true for very short periods of time, but extended it inverts and has the opposite effect.
Just thought I'd mention that as it's a common fallacy that sucking back mountain dews (at least the US kind) all day leads to some extra long day, when the reality is quite the contrary.
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This is true in many areas outside of just ISPs. I recently had to cancel a cell phone after changing jobs (basically I was returning the phone, but the account was tied to my name), and during the cancellation process I was disconnected on "accidentally" about three times, transferred to the wrong departments, etc. I suspect that much like mail in rebates (I'm still waiting on a $100 mail in rebate from a Visiontek video card that I mailed in about 3 months ago. Personally I think the whole mail-in rebate thing is a gigantic scam of fraudulent proportions, and it's growing every day), they hope that eventually you'll just give up and write it off.
Unless you've completely and absolutely modelled the exact same environment 100% (not 99.9%, not 99.9999%, but 100%), then there is always an element of risk. Recreating a whole ATC system is likely prohibitely expensive, but on top of that you need to model the existing system and the interactions that are happening to it, and that can be very difficult.
I guess the point is that it's easier said than done. Many best plans were waylaid by the tiniest difference between assumptions and the implementation environment. ATC should be a level above, of course, but it looks like the tiny element of risk caught them.
Why couldn't it be the PBXs at the hotels? Many of those hotels continue to have shady associations (though they've been mostly taken over by large media consortiums, the mob hasn't left Las Vegas. Speaking of that I recall the ?excellent series on professional gamblers), and each represents thousands of patrons, many of whom are looking to separate themselves from their money (and some bodily fluids) : It would not surprize me whatsoever if, at the motivational hands of either a baseball bat or a bag of cash, individual hotels contracted on to selectively block/forward calls (and I'd be curious of the legality of that: Technically it is their phone and their PBX...this is the same sort of BS that we see online all the time). You could take it lower and imagine it being just the IT manager, or IT department. Pretty much anyone can be bought, and it wouldn't surprize me a bit, especially when one could easily moralize and justify (at least to themselves) if all you're hurting are sex trade workers.
I'm sure additionally that when the PUC or Sprint went into the hotel to do tests, they likely broadcast their arrival, probably booking the test times in advance. It seems to me that the hotels would be the first place I'd check, and I'd presume them to be hostile "witnesses" so to speak and wouldn't let them in on the tests.
Do you know what day trading is? It actually relies on cyclical trends in stocks rather than going up up up (otherwise everytime you sold out you were then theoretically losing when you bought in again). Day trading is a sort of embarrassing term that reminds us all of the absurd.COM euphoria of but a few years ago.
Actually, didn't Carmack actually warn them directly? I'm pretty sure that Carmack was an advisor to 3dfx. Actually, I believe he's been a technical advisor to 3dfx, ATI, and nvidia.
I doubt it is backstabbing, so much as being presented to the customer as many choices by many companies can be much more appealing than being presented as one choice. i.e. If a store sells three variants of ATI cards (all made by ATI), and 30 nvidia based cards all by different companies, filling the shelves, there's a very good chance that the customer will go home with an nvidia based card. On top of that nvidia gets to double up all their advertisements with ads from the board makers themselves (Diamond, as a board maker, was extremely prolific and very well known. I owned several of their boards over the years). I rue the day that someone at nvidia gets greedy and decides that they should make the boards in-house, because that will be the omen of the end of nvidia.
They also refused to support large textures, always claiming that there was no need. 3dfx is a classic company that was driven by engineers rather than the market: The engineers would sit around and figure out the easiest route to pursuing their pet project, and at the same time the company would just try to use marketing to smooth over people who wanted better features : More memory? You don't need it! Bigger textures? Bah, who wants em? Smoother colours? Not necessary!
Their business model is brilliant, and it's what helped them in their fame (getting lots of other companies to fund their advertising and push their product : Creative Labs, Diamond, Hercules, etc). Indeed the precipitous fall of 3dfx can be seen as kicking into high gear when 3dfx decided to pull away from having third party companies build the boards while they provided the chipsets (remember the Diamond ads? Is that company still around), to trying to hog all the profit themselves: Suddenly it's one company getting space on the shelves, rather than 5 companies that are actually selling the same thing.
I had to change my Opera identity to get it to let me in. Looks like one of those ad hoc "version check" things that makes presumptions about the capabilities of your browser.
Having said this, this has more to do with Microsoft Passport than Microsoft. I've actually been evaluating Passport as an optional authentication method on a current project, and one of the features that it offers is that upon authentication partners can get the basic user information (such as what they state on their site when you look at what "other registration info lists") for the purpose of making it easier for the user to complete orders, etc. It's unfortunate that they hijacked Hotmail to begin this, and the preference should start and not (perhaps even terminating your account if you refuse to allow it, but certainly not automatically doing it), however that's the whole purpose of Passport : To give users one username and password, and to allow them an easier experience on the net. You can see the details at http://www.microsoft.com/myservices/passport/overv iew.asp. The same sort of idea is going to hold true with the Liberty Alliance system as well.
Firstly, let me say that I think it's awesome the progress Mozilla is making (and it has dramatically improved in the past months). Having said that, many mozilla supporters hold it up as a better than Opera (with a previous post calling Opera "bloated", and then stating that they use Mozilla). Just as a quick test I ran Mozilla on Windows 2000 and loaded Slashdot : Memory usage = 23,304 KB. I then opened Opera and loaded Slashdot : Memory usage = 13467 KB. For mozilla I just installed the browser, whereas for Opera I did install the full package (I'm not sure if this is an optional thing. In other words I have the email client and newsgroup reader). This is hardly scientific, and as you browse both of them bloat up with cached handles and such, however it is interesting to see.
You know I would have believed this 2 years ago, but there is definitely a major push for cross platform usability of web interfaces now: I personally feel that there is less of an acceptance of just saying "Best viewed on IE 5.x" now than there was a couple of years ago. Why? Animosity to Microsoft has grown, and of course the W3C standards have vastly improved. Opera has committed to abiding by the DOM 2.x spec, and I'm sure that when it matters (it doesn't right now), they will support it. You can take any current product and talk about how it's doomed because it doesn't support some esoteric, unused feature that will be relevant in the future, but that presumes that the product that you're talking about is static and isn't progressing as well.
The irony of you complaining about the "bloat" of opera, and then state that you're using Mozilla hasn't been lost. That's a pretty funny joke, really.
Having said that, Opera has finally achieved a level of functionality (err, "bloat". Of course a browser that fits on a floppy wouldn't offer the features that customers needed, and wouldn't have any market presence) that makes it a very worthy replacement for IE on the Windows platform, at least: In my day to day use, 95% of my browsing is with Opera 6, and pretty much the only time that I don't use it is when visiting msdn.microsoft.com : Apart from that I've seldom had the slightest problems, and it offers fetures (such as multiple-windows in one host: I love this) like being able to accept/reject pop-ups (or prompt), among a whole slew of "quick preferences". Mouse gestures rock and I find myself trying to use them in IE all the time.
Opera is a fantastic browser, and if anything its time is just beginning. The advertising banner is unfortunate, but for people willing to pay the small price it is tremendous and well worth every penny.
I'd say that another reason why it's less likely to occur is that the "exclusivity" of having a cell phone has diminished dramatically, hence the pompous self-important ass who just must take that critically important call asking him "Wazzzzappppp?" doesn't get quite the props he may at one time have thought he would get. The same thing holds true with laser pointers: Ha ha, you're funny kid, but when 30 kids all had their laser pointers it lost the novelty. I think there was a Seinfeld along those lines at one time.
I've heard about incidents like what you mentioned (though I've never seen one that bad), and honestly I would ostracize that person: Anyone so unbelievably devoid of social skills to think that that is even remotely acceptable is a scourge. On a more common note are those on the GO train here in the GTA who insist upon YELLING into their cell phone (totally unnecessary to begin with), apparently under the belief that their conversation is of interest to all of us.
I registered through registrar.com, I can see the verisign logo on the letter, I think that registrars.com != verisign.com
The problem is that I'm wrong: Verisign acquired registrars.com. This same sort of confusion exists for a lot of people as companies and responsibilities came and went.
From the Brad Templeton article: For a typical hour of TV with 15 minutes of advertising, I would much rather pay them the 30 cents than give them my time to watch 30 commercials.
It's so easy to claim this when you're not doing it, and I've seen this sort of claim a million times: The reality is that when systems like this go public, many of the same people who are ranting and raving about their god given, constitutional right to skip commercials (in essence stealing the TV program, as the commercials are a part of the implicit contract when you watch it) will then be ranting and raving about "the man" and how criminal it is that Dawson's Creek is now scrambled, damnit, but the freedom fighters are hard at work haxxoring it.
In essence what I'm saying is this: If all the networks switched to a pay model tomorrow (BTW: If they DON'T and you continue to advocate for commercial skipping PVRs, realize that what's next is in show commercials [yes, we already have them to a point, but expect them to get worse] : i.e. Joey holding up a box of Cheerios and dead panning "Cheerios, the choice for the new generation."), I GUARANTEE either the circumvention would go in full gear, or the absolutely laughably moronic "Uh, why don't they just use a tip jar? Oh, I'd tip FOR SURE if there was a tip jar! Just don't force it on me, man.". Blah.
There was an episode of the Simpsons once where nearing the end Homer exclaimed "When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!" : While laughable, to a point it has some merit -> So many people will promote whatever self serving rhetoric fits their needs today, never considering the whole picture from beginning to end, creating a sustainable system that works for everyone.
I find it odd that they quantify the "punch" of it: Are they talking about the absolute kinetic energy that would have to be released for it to come to a complete stop? Of course the energy transmitted is directly relational to what it hits: If it hits a big ball of pudding, obviously it wouldn't release much energy whatsoever to go through it. On a similar theme, if something like that hit a human, which would "give" very easily (perhaps bursting some cells in between), and it truly is the size of a piece of pollen [I believe about 0.1mm], then I wouldn't imagine it would do much damage whatsoever: Travelling at 900,000mph, it's not like there's much time for it to do thermal transmissions. You might lose a bit of memory if it hits your Quake3PlayingCortex, but I doubt you're going to explode, and it's not going to release the same energy as if it hit a solid Earth crust.
Novell was way ahead of Microsoft when Windows for Workgroups 3.11 came out (wayyyyyyy ahead-Microsoft had no credible network plan), and the bell then tolled for Novell as so many people have the "well if Microsoft did it, then it must be great! Novell isn't needed anymore..." attitude.
It really is funny, and sad, the way the general marketplace perceives Microsoft (though I do think it's changing): They've had a TREMENDOUS number of failure projects (.NET Services just recently becoming one). The various forms of Windows embedded (either of the NT or CE variety), despite bargain basement prices and countless iterations, are still a dismal failure. Throughout Microsoft's product line you can find endless examples of applications that truly is inferior to the competition (note: Don't misunderstand me-> I think some Microsoft products are tremendous and best of breed : They have done some great things over the years, and I'm typing this on a Windows 2000 machine [note: I `upgraded' to XP and quickly switched back. I largely consider XP to be one of those `failure' products, unless you're comparing it to Windows Me, another brutal money grab]). Yet still so many people are certain that when Microsoft enters a market that they'll dominate (I happen to work on a product that is a vastly superior feature to a half-implemented feature in.NET, and it astounds me how many people will say "Oh, but.NET has that", i.e. "a moped can ride on the highway, so why would I need a transport truck to deliver the 8000lb shipment?"), despite astounding numerical evidence to the contrary. Let's face it : Microsoft has been riding the Windows [and it's hitcher Office] gravy train for well over a decade now, and a lot of people move to the Microsoft alternatives not because they are better, or the competitor is a failure, but because of the flawed perception that whatever Microsoft does, eventually they'll do best.
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The author took some liberties of presuming that the rate of progress in the realm of the "proprietary" consoles, and the mainstream technology engined XBox, are comparable : On the one side you have chips that are used in absolutely nothing except for the game consoles, and on the other you have chips that are subsidized by a several hundred billion dollar a year computer industry (i.e. the R&D of the P3 733 has long since been paid off by Joe Average buying some desktops for his business). Nvidia uses the same R&D and technology first to sell their nForce motherboards (nForce 2 is coming out shortly), as well as using the graphics technology in its video cards (which have now eclipsed the technology in the xbox). DDR RAM of course has been well proven and is now bargain basement. I think the author makes some pretty grand assumptions in presuming the xbox isn't benefitting from the PC's progress forward: nvidia and Intel have been incorporating much more efficient processes, and I'm sure at this point that Intel can punch out P3 733s at about $2/chip. Perhaps Microsoft is currently losing money, but for all we know they might be losing $2.00, not the hundreds that the author seems to presume. I've actually been considering getting a console for more social entertainment when people are over, etc. (PCs don't work well for that), and it is clear that hardware wise, the PS2 is absolutely no competition for the xbox, however the remaining failure with the xbox is one of games: I can get dozens of great games on the ps2, but you can count on one hand the great games for the xbox. I wonder if this will change anything soon (are there any killer games in the pipeline for the xbox?).
As a sidenote: The xbox strategically holds several grounds, and one is that it gets a lot of shops programming in DirectX on the Wintel platform, meaning that it's a very short journey to releasing PC games where, surprize surprize, there is the Microsoft tax. Microsoft is in such a position that virtually anything they do can be to their strategic advantage somewhere or other.
It definitely depends on the point of crossing: When I leave Toronto (there's actual US customs in the Toronto airport), or fly to the international gate in Pittsburgh, the grilling is fairly substantial (including ID checks, and a verification that I'm not a wanted person or something by typing in my drivers license or passport numbers into their system), and you have to be very careful about what you say (the grilling has more to do with protectionism than about drugs or terrorism: Most questions are based around what sort of work you are doing, determining that you are not providing a paid service in the US, but instead are being trained or something of that sort) lest you get denied entry. I've never actually gotten searched being the normal pat down at any point.
:-)) is a bit ridiculous in ways because they hire students to assist the customs, so when you're coming in the international gate you get accosted by a phalanx of about 14 students, all acting thoroughly unprofessional, asking you questions about your trip, etc. I'm not criticizing teens, but I don't think that something as serious and liberty-invading as customs should be staffed by non-professionals.
Crossing the border by car, though, is often the basic "Where are you going and for how long?" type deal that goes by fairly quickly, or alternately just a wave through. This is not just at the Canadian border, but I've read that even the Mexican border is pretty much the same.
I understand why the Canadian border guards ask the extended questions: It's likely to find a hole in your story, if it is a story versus a reality. i.e. Asking your return port is brilliant if someone didn't actually think through their plan, and of course even if they did someone would likely get nervous about their story and cracks in their facade will appear, likely leading to a thorough cavity search. Of course this has a unwanted side effect of persecuting the naturally nervous as well (returning from Florida recently I was sure that I would be in for a thorough search: I had driven straight through and was so unbelievably tired that I'd swear I sounded like I was lying being 100% honest, but thankfully he wasn't feeling like pursuing it).
One side thing: Toronto airport (I'm from Toronto, so I can criticize it
Well lots of people are saying that it is produced in Canada, and they'd be right (at least regarding marijuana) : BC is a pot growers heaven, and it's well known that it is a highly desired product (hence US nationals come up and bring it home, or orchestrate for it to be brought to the US. Again, drugs into the US always require buyers and usually a distributor that are pure red white & blue Americans. Where there is a demand there will be a supply). Indeed, truthfully Canada has become becoming much more lenient in regards to marijuana, as has virtually all of Europe (any rational analysis of the "drug war" leads to the conclusion that it is fruitless and does more harm than good, especially regarding trivially soft drugs like marijuana).
Pray tell: What, exactly, is a "Canadian" accent? Is this one of those foolish "paint 30 million people covering 10,000,000 square kilometers with one brush" type stereotypes? There are dozens of accents within Canada, all very different. My `accent' tradition is turned as "neutral" (such as in a recent trip through the Virginas), and hard to place, versus say a New York, or Boston, or Minnesotan, or Wisconsan, or Texan accent.
And why would Canadians be running the balloons? From what I've read, they are a prospective part of NORAD protecting the coastal regions of both countries, not the borders in between (mind you, Mr. Bush has been hard at work giving the illusion of safety to a public that is so unbelievably uninformed that they buy it. You know, pretending that the REAL problem is the Canadian border, despite the fact that not a single one of the 9/11 terrorists came from Canada. I continually hear about the big problem with Canadian marijuana entering the US (all a part of the "War on Drugs" propaganda that is keeping a lot of contractors rolling in dough), and this would almost be humorous if it weren't the absolutely miniscule amount of drugs going South (far less than the drugs and guns coming to Canada from the US. The US is a far greater exporter of crime than it's an importer, which makes the posturing and lip service all the more ridiculous), but compared to the monstrous amount of drugs coming into the US via the gulf region, BC pot is absolutely trivially tiny.
The operating system, or rather the processor itself, did catch the divide by zero, and helpfully threw a divide by zero exception/interrupt back to the software: A divide by zero doesn't crash NT, but NT does pass a software exception do your app so depending upon the language and exception handling, what happens is up to you. If this were any of most modern languages, a simple try/except block would let them catch and deal with the error. If, on the other hand, they presumed, as developers often do, that there is no need for that error control because there's no way the code can fault, then all hell can break loose as the error percolates up the app, eventually crashing it at the root. Remember that a divide by zero isn't just something you want to filter out, because the app has to know about it (because the result of the calculation is undefined so it can't just continue along using the result).
So the code threw an exception when it divided by zero: That's a _wanted_ thing (because technically dividing by zero is an error state. You don't want to just skip over something like that when it could be guiding a missile or steering the ship). From everything I've heard about that Navy ship, the fault had absolutely zero to do with "Windows NT", and everything to do with a proprietary application that didn't wrap a non-deterministic calculation in a try/except : Hardly extraordinary. Unfortunate, yes. Fodder for anti-MSitism, hardly.
One thing about your sig : Caffeine actually leads to a nervous system collapse after several hours, ironically causing extreme tiredness/mental fatigue. The "stay alert" aspect of caffeine is only true for very short periods of time, but extended it inverts and has the opposite effect.
Just thought I'd mention that as it's a common fallacy that sucking back mountain dews (at least the US kind) all day leads to some extra long day, when the reality is quite the contrary.
This is true in many areas outside of just ISPs. I recently had to cancel a cell phone after changing jobs (basically I was returning the phone, but the account was tied to my name), and during the cancellation process I was disconnected on "accidentally" about three times, transferred to the wrong departments, etc. I suspect that much like mail in rebates (I'm still waiting on a $100 mail in rebate from a Visiontek video card that I mailed in about 3 months ago. Personally I think the whole mail-in rebate thing is a gigantic scam of fraudulent proportions, and it's growing every day), they hope that eventually you'll just give up and write it off.
Unless you've completely and absolutely modelled the exact same environment 100% (not 99.9%, not 99.9999%, but 100%), then there is always an element of risk. Recreating a whole ATC system is likely prohibitely expensive, but on top of that you need to model the existing system and the interactions that are happening to it, and that can be very difficult.
I guess the point is that it's easier said than done. Many best plans were waylaid by the tiniest difference between assumptions and the implementation environment. ATC should be a level above, of course, but it looks like the tiny element of risk caught them.
Why couldn't it be the PBXs at the hotels? Many of those hotels continue to have shady associations (though they've been mostly taken over by large media consortiums, the mob hasn't left Las Vegas. Speaking of that I recall the ?excellent series on professional gamblers), and each represents thousands of patrons, many of whom are looking to separate themselves from their money (and some bodily fluids) : It would not surprize me whatsoever if, at the motivational hands of either a baseball bat or a bag of cash, individual hotels contracted on to selectively block/forward calls (and I'd be curious of the legality of that: Technically it is their phone and their PBX...this is the same sort of BS that we see online all the time). You could take it lower and imagine it being just the IT manager, or IT department. Pretty much anyone can be bought, and it wouldn't surprize me a bit, especially when one could easily moralize and justify (at least to themselves) if all you're hurting are sex trade workers.
I'm sure additionally that when the PUC or Sprint went into the hotel to do tests, they likely broadcast their arrival, probably booking the test times in advance. It seems to me that the hotels would be the first place I'd check, and I'd presume them to be hostile "witnesses" so to speak and wouldn't let them in on the tests.
Do you know what day trading is? It actually relies on cyclical trends in stocks rather than going up up up (otherwise everytime you sold out you were then theoretically losing when you bought in again). Day trading is a sort of embarrassing term that reminds us all of the absurd .COM euphoria of but a few years ago.
Actually, didn't Carmack actually warn them directly? I'm pretty sure that Carmack was an advisor to 3dfx. Actually, I believe he's been a technical advisor to 3dfx, ATI, and nvidia.
I doubt it is backstabbing, so much as being presented to the customer as many choices by many companies can be much more appealing than being presented as one choice. i.e. If a store sells three variants of ATI cards (all made by ATI), and 30 nvidia based cards all by different companies, filling the shelves, there's a very good chance that the customer will go home with an nvidia based card. On top of that nvidia gets to double up all their advertisements with ads from the board makers themselves (Diamond, as a board maker, was extremely prolific and very well known. I owned several of their boards over the years). I rue the day that someone at nvidia gets greedy and decides that they should make the boards in-house, because that will be the omen of the end of nvidia.
They also refused to support large textures, always claiming that there was no need. 3dfx is a classic company that was driven by engineers rather than the market: The engineers would sit around and figure out the easiest route to pursuing their pet project, and at the same time the company would just try to use marketing to smooth over people who wanted better features : More memory? You don't need it! Bigger textures? Bah, who wants em? Smoother colours? Not necessary!
Their business model is brilliant, and it's what helped them in their fame (getting lots of other companies to fund their advertising and push their product : Creative Labs, Diamond, Hercules, etc). Indeed the precipitous fall of 3dfx can be seen as kicking into high gear when 3dfx decided to pull away from having third party companies build the boards while they provided the chipsets (remember the Diamond ads? Is that company still around), to trying to hog all the profit themselves: Suddenly it's one company getting space on the shelves, rather than 5 companies that are actually selling the same thing.
I had to change my Opera identity to get it to let me in. Looks like one of those ad hoc "version check" things that makes presumptions about the capabilities of your browser.
v iew.asp. The same sort of idea is going to hold true with the Liberty Alliance system as well.
Having said this, this has more to do with Microsoft Passport than Microsoft. I've actually been evaluating Passport as an optional authentication method on a current project, and one of the features that it offers is that upon authentication partners can get the basic user information (such as what they state on their site when you look at what "other registration info lists") for the purpose of making it easier for the user to complete orders, etc. It's unfortunate that they hijacked Hotmail to begin this, and the preference should start and not (perhaps even terminating your account if you refuse to allow it, but certainly not automatically doing it), however that's the whole purpose of Passport : To give users one username and password, and to allow them an easier experience on the net. You can see the details at http://www.microsoft.com/myservices/passport/over
Firstly, let me say that I think it's awesome the progress Mozilla is making (and it has dramatically improved in the past months). Having said that, many mozilla supporters hold it up as a better than Opera (with a previous post calling Opera "bloated", and then stating that they use Mozilla). Just as a quick test I ran Mozilla on Windows 2000 and loaded Slashdot : Memory usage = 23,304 KB. I then opened Opera and loaded Slashdot : Memory usage = 13467 KB. For mozilla I just installed the browser, whereas for Opera I did install the full package (I'm not sure if this is an optional thing. In other words I have the email client and newsgroup reader). This is hardly scientific, and as you browse both of them bloat up with cached handles and such, however it is interesting to see.
You know I would have believed this 2 years ago, but there is definitely a major push for cross platform usability of web interfaces now: I personally feel that there is less of an acceptance of just saying "Best viewed on IE 5.x" now than there was a couple of years ago. Why? Animosity to Microsoft has grown, and of course the W3C standards have vastly improved. Opera has committed to abiding by the DOM 2.x spec, and I'm sure that when it matters (it doesn't right now), they will support it. You can take any current product and talk about how it's doomed because it doesn't support some esoteric, unused feature that will be relevant in the future, but that presumes that the product that you're talking about is static and isn't progressing as well.
The irony of you complaining about the "bloat" of opera, and then state that you're using Mozilla hasn't been lost. That's a pretty funny joke, really.
Having said that, Opera has finally achieved a level of functionality (err, "bloat". Of course a browser that fits on a floppy wouldn't offer the features that customers needed, and wouldn't have any market presence) that makes it a very worthy replacement for IE on the Windows platform, at least: In my day to day use, 95% of my browsing is with Opera 6, and pretty much the only time that I don't use it is when visiting msdn.microsoft.com : Apart from that I've seldom had the slightest problems, and it offers fetures (such as multiple-windows in one host: I love this) like being able to accept/reject pop-ups (or prompt), among a whole slew of "quick preferences". Mouse gestures rock and I find myself trying to use them in IE all the time.
Opera is a fantastic browser, and if anything its time is just beginning. The advertising banner is unfortunate, but for people willing to pay the small price it is tremendous and well worth every penny.
I'd say that another reason why it's less likely to occur is that the "exclusivity" of having a cell phone has diminished dramatically, hence the pompous self-important ass who just must take that critically important call asking him "Wazzzzappppp?" doesn't get quite the props he may at one time have thought he would get. The same thing holds true with laser pointers: Ha ha, you're funny kid, but when 30 kids all had their laser pointers it lost the novelty. I think there was a Seinfeld along those lines at one time.
I've heard about incidents like what you mentioned (though I've never seen one that bad), and honestly I would ostracize that person: Anyone so unbelievably devoid of social skills to think that that is even remotely acceptable is a scourge. On a more common note are those on the GO train here in the GTA who insist upon YELLING into their cell phone (totally unnecessary to begin with), apparently under the belief that their conversation is of interest to all of us.
I registered through registrar.com,
I can see the verisign logo on the letter,
I think that registrars.com != verisign.com
The problem is that I'm wrong: Verisign acquired registrars.com. This same sort of confusion exists for a lot of people as companies and responsibilities came and went.
The AGP modes are usually backwards compatible, so if your board supports AGP 4x then it'll be fine.
From the Brad Templeton article: For a typical hour of TV with 15 minutes of advertising, I would much rather pay them the 30 cents than give them my time to watch 30 commercials.
It's so easy to claim this when you're not doing it, and I've seen this sort of claim a million times: The reality is that when systems like this go public, many of the same people who are ranting and raving about their god given, constitutional right to skip commercials (in essence stealing the TV program, as the commercials are a part of the implicit contract when you watch it) will then be ranting and raving about "the man" and how criminal it is that Dawson's Creek is now scrambled, damnit, but the freedom fighters are hard at work haxxoring it.
In essence what I'm saying is this: If all the networks switched to a pay model tomorrow (BTW: If they DON'T and you continue to advocate for commercial skipping PVRs, realize that what's next is in show commercials [yes, we already have them to a point, but expect them to get worse] : i.e. Joey holding up a box of Cheerios and dead panning "Cheerios, the choice for the new generation."), I GUARANTEE either the circumvention would go in full gear, or the absolutely laughably moronic "Uh, why don't they just use a tip jar? Oh, I'd tip FOR SURE if there was a tip jar! Just don't force it on me, man.". Blah.
There was an episode of the Simpsons once where nearing the end Homer exclaimed "When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!" : While laughable, to a point it has some merit -> So many people will promote whatever self serving rhetoric fits their needs today, never considering the whole picture from beginning to end, creating a sustainable system that works for everyone.
I find it odd that they quantify the "punch" of it: Are they talking about the absolute kinetic energy that would have to be released for it to come to a complete stop? Of course the energy transmitted is directly relational to what it hits: If it hits a big ball of pudding, obviously it wouldn't release much energy whatsoever to go through it. On a similar theme, if something like that hit a human, which would "give" very easily (perhaps bursting some cells in between), and it truly is the size of a piece of pollen [I believe about 0.1mm], then I wouldn't imagine it would do much damage whatsoever: Travelling at 900,000mph, it's not like there's much time for it to do thermal transmissions. You might lose a bit of memory if it hits your Quake3PlayingCortex, but I doubt you're going to explode, and it's not going to release the same energy as if it hit a solid Earth crust.
Novell was way ahead of Microsoft when Windows for Workgroups 3.11 came out (wayyyyyyy ahead-Microsoft had no credible network plan), and the bell then tolled for Novell as so many people have the "well if Microsoft did it, then it must be great! Novell isn't needed anymore..." attitude.
.NET, and it astounds me how many people will say "Oh, but .NET has that", i.e. "a moped can ride on the highway, so why would I need a transport truck to deliver the 8000lb shipment?"), despite astounding numerical evidence to the contrary. Let's face it : Microsoft has been riding the Windows [and it's hitcher Office] gravy train for well over a decade now, and a lot of people move to the Microsoft alternatives not because they are better, or the competitor is a failure, but because of the flawed perception that whatever Microsoft does, eventually they'll do best.
It really is funny, and sad, the way the general marketplace perceives Microsoft (though I do think it's changing): They've had a TREMENDOUS number of failure projects (.NET Services just recently becoming one). The various forms of Windows embedded (either of the NT or CE variety), despite bargain basement prices and countless iterations, are still a dismal failure. Throughout Microsoft's product line you can find endless examples of applications that truly is inferior to the competition (note: Don't misunderstand me-> I think some Microsoft products are tremendous and best of breed : They have done some great things over the years, and I'm typing this on a Windows 2000 machine [note: I `upgraded' to XP and quickly switched back. I largely consider XP to be one of those `failure' products, unless you're comparing it to Windows Me, another brutal money grab]). Yet still so many people are certain that when Microsoft enters a market that they'll dominate (I happen to work on a product that is a vastly superior feature to a half-implemented feature in