well I would think there are some exceptions for user serviceable parts... otherwise they could void your warranty for changing the ink in your printer or the tires on your car.
Where would it stop with a PC? What if I put in a bigger hard drive, or more ram, or a new drive or card? Should the OS be considered a user serviceable part?
Depending how shady you're feeling you could probably pop out the factory hard drive and plug in a clean one to install Linux, then when if you start having problems swap the drives back to get the repairs done.
your application line up looks remarkably similar to my own.
Some Differences:
-I use WinRAR instead of 7zip... I've never used 7zip but Winrar gives me customizable right click commands that I can use to compress and decompress files in rar or zip format as if the function was built into windows. Opening up WinRar complete is a little bloated but the shell integration is quite nice
-I use PSPad instead of editpad... it has tabbed file viewing as well but it's catered towards code as it has a colored highlighter, line numbers and a whole slew of other functions. Overall it's quite lite too.
everything else you've got listed I use myself too, with the exception of thunderbird and putty simply because I don't need an email editor (I just use gmail) or telnet/ssh
I used to use notepad quite a bit for that stuff but I recently switched to PSPad... I have no idea how much space or resources it actually uses but it doesn't seem to be any heftier than notepad or word pad. The nice part is it will color highlight all your code, provide line numbering and allow you to have multiple files open in tabs along with all sorts of other handy stuff for writing code.
I still use notepad for quite a bit but if if I'm working with html/php/javascript etc. I'll use PSPad.
Interesting... it would seem that using adult stem cells has more than one benefit. It almost makes me think that all the Anti-Stem cell research rallying had a silver lining in that it shifted work towards adult stem cells.
If not for being being denied the ability to work with undeveloped stem cells would as much work have been done with Adult Stem cells? and would we still be seeing these kinds of results today?
No, But I think Viacom leagally used the video because it was on YouTube... if you read YouTube's policy you give up all your rights to whatever you upload and they take legal ownership of it. Viacom only needed to ask YouTube (the legal owner of the clip) for permission. IANAL so I don't know the extent of the agreement but as far as I can tell this guy is actually violating copyright, but not his own because he no longer retains ownership of that video clip.
As someone who lives in the great state of NH I can easily say: Welcome to NH, b*tch.
I can say that at least half of my co-workers live in areas where they just can't get cable or DSL because the lines end X thousand feet from their house.
This isn't an Uncommon problem here and the local Cable provider that offers cable internet to most of the state (Metrocast) is very good at telling you exactly where service is and where service isn't. Go on ahead and check their website for youself... plug in Gilsum's zip "03448" right at the top of the metrocast page and see what you get.
Even still, the receptionists have tools to test the lines out to the exact address you specify and tell you if service is available there. In many cases even if you offer to pay to have the line extended to your house the distance from the ISP is such that it will be quite a shoddy and unreliable connection and they tell you to wait until they put in another distribution center closer to your location.
Of course the article leaves out that detail. Would you rather an ISP say "sorry even if you pay to have the lines extended the quality will be too damn low so it's not worth doing" or "sure give us $7000" while you drop the cash only to get screwed by unreliable lines.
Despite the high number of my peers who are without service you really do have to live out in the boonies to not have it around here. I've lived in this state most of my life and moved around quite a bit, I've never found myself in a location without service. A good rule of thumb is if you live within 15miles of a highway you've got a good chance of having internet access... heck I even know a whole lot of people who live on unpaved roads and still have cable internet. (and for you city folk, yes we do have quite a few unpaved roads up here in NH.)
I stand by that this schmuck just didn't do one iota of research before buying his house.
...Methinks you're going to have to act like the average and just accept it.
Does the average just accept it? it seems these days that the average are against that thinking. Maybe not the majority but those damn vocal outliers....
The first thing I thought of in terms of MTV & Movies was Joe's Apartment but Alas it's not on that list. For whatever reason it's listed under MTV Networks. After browsing through that page I'm reminded of all the crappy TV shows they made. Though interesting enough Mr Wizard's World was listed there so I guess they can't be all bad.
There was also a similar promotion with Cadillac and PGR3.
Fine by me... it just means I get more free cars to play with, if anything this is good. Rather than Developer X paying heaps of money for licensing they auto makers pay the game developer to include their cars... As long as they steer clear of the "make sure our car outperforms our competitors car in the game" then it can greatly reduce development costs.
HDMI: A digital interface that combines video and audio. Must support HDCP, though unencrypted signals can be sent. A simple dongle is used to convert a DVI port into an video only HDMI port.
Actually HDMI is _NOT_ required to support HDCP, there are quite a few older HDTVs with HDMI ports and no HDCP available (I own one). IIRC it was added to the spec around v1.2 so while MOST HDTVs with HDMI and probably all that have been manufactured in the last year up to now do support HDCP it's not as cut and dry as you make it sound.
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that . . . is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof
The real question here is when does it cross the line into becoming a protection circumvention device?
Most, if not all modchips are nothing but microcontrollers with some code on them. Xbox modchips are just regular PC bios chips that ship with a Linux kernel that doesn't actually circumvent copy protection. Wii and playstation modchips are nothing but PIC and Atmel MCUs. If I write the code myself is that considered "manufacturing" Obviously the chip is "part" of the device so why are Microchip and Atmel allowed to make any of their MCUs? Early Wii hacks were nothing but some open source code running on a computer and connecting to the Wii via the RS-232 port, are we going to start confiscating all the computers manufactured by Dell because they can be used in part to circumvent copy protection? What if I just tell someone how to do it? What if I give them the code but not the hardware? Where is the line drawn.
I don't know what's worse, the soulless corporations that lobby for such broad and unspecific laws that place the interests of capitalism above that of American freedoms, the ignorant (or not ignorant but equally soulless, take your pick) politician who seem to have no hesitation towards passing these laws, or the apathetic and oblivious American public that is too busy arguing about Gay Marrage, and voting on American Idol to care about all the technological freedoms being taken out back and executed one by one.
I'm fairly certain that number is exaggerated from the Daily Tech article that was pretty much the straw that broke the camels back before MS admitted the problem.
They got data from nearly every major retailer about return rates and saw that most stores were getting 1/4 to 1/3 (25%-33%) returned. Some of the stores supplied more concrete numbers than others but it was the first article to actually put a real number behind the failure rates beyond speculation from executive double speak.
Reading the article it would seem most stores fall on the lower end of the spectrum, more towards 25%, but up until that point the only numbers we had were from MS saying it was between 3 and 5%.
So while it is exaggerated, it's not complete BS and it is based on something... I'll hold my comment about the people who think they can somehow determine the failure rate from MS's claimed cost of the recall.
You're assuming that $LESSER_QUALITY_THINK is actually lesser quality than $HIGHER_QUALITY_THING. I don't know about most providers but having used TiVo and both my Cable providers DVRs (it's a local cable provider not a national chain) the Cable Companies box actually looked to have better recording quality and aside from a couple of trivial features the interface was nearly identical and just as fast.
I don't own a TiVo or the Cable provider's DVR but my parents owned a TiVo and after trying the cable company's DVR for a few weeks they decided they actually liked it better. Just because you're paying less for one doesn't actually make it a "lesser quality thing" purchase price does not equal quality.
Even assuming that TiVo is a better product, what encourages people to go out an drop several hundred dollars one to even see if it's better than what the cable company offers? If you're looking to get a DVR and you're faced with free vs $X hundred + subscription What would encourage joe consumer to even try out TiVo instead of just calling and requesting that the cable company sent them a box?
yeah, IMO this is the problem with TiVo... well that and subscription fees.
My local cable company offers a DVR for a $5 a month rental, if I order the HD Cable package I get one for free. Where is my incentive to buy a Tivo? Not only will have to pay $X hundred up front for the device but I STILL have to pay a subscription fee. Not only that but the HD models aren't compatible with my cable providers HD service.
If I'm going to spend a few hundred dollars I'd rather build myself a SageTV or MythTV box and forget about the subscription fees. At least then I can use the hardware for whatever I want instead of just TV recording duties.
With the options available I simply can't justify buying a TiVo, it's the most expansive, least upgradeable, and least compatible of all the options. And while you could say the same for some wildly popular Apple products, those products sell themselves on style and ease of use... which is something that TiVo doesn't have either, considering it's interface is only marginally better than the alternatives, and style wise I (and probably most people) find it rather ugly. At least with a homebuilt box I can pick the case that best matches my media room.
Actually I was thinking more that that 360 had a low session time due to the high session count. Caused by the fact that games get frequent updates and whenever you update a game you have to log-off while the update takes place. It only takes a few seconds but the stats would show a regular 1 session lasting about 1 minute followed by another session lasting 2 hours... If I pop in a game that I haven't played in a month or two there is almost guaranteed to be another game update that needs to occur, and if you pop in a game for the first time, it almost always has an update available. It's sad but when I bought the darkness last week I was almost shocked that it didn't have to update but instead just played straight away.
Obviously that would give you an average session of about an hour but it's not a very accurate statistic because despite the fact that the system logs it as two separate sessions it really is just one. There is no description about accounting for this and it sounds like they're using the built in profile system which would lead me to believe that they're not.
well I've never participated in phone sex or SL sex, nor do I know anyone who has. I can tell you that if my significant other was participating in either, anonymous or not, I would consider it a violation of our commitment. I would imagine if you wanted to keep phone sex anonymous you could (I'm sure you could give you # to your SL "friend"/find some anonymous phone service) and similarly if you wanted to make SL sex not-anonymous you could as well. Either interface could be used either way.
Why does anonymity make it ok? if your wife wore a mask and went to an orgy where everyone else was wearing masks would that be ok? If she was flirting with another man on SL NOT anonymously would that be ok? Where is the line drawn?
A relationship is more than just physical sex, it's about sharing intimacy in all aspects of your life, sharing that with someone other than your significant other, whether you know them or not, whether it's physically in the same room or not, is IMO disrespectful to your significant other.
Maybe I'm just not open minded... but for those of you that "are", have fun on Jerry Springer.
there is quite a large difference, one is playing back pre-recorded video, the other is creating a relationship with another person through an electronic interface.
By your standards it'd be a-ok for your wife to have phone sex with someone else too, right? What's the difference if it's over the cell or over the net?
You're absolutely right... most of the older B&W games (read: pre 79) didn't have roms but just ridiculous amounts of logic circuits. The versions of those games on MAME aren't actually rips of the original roms but roms created from scratch to emulate the original hardware. I'm not quite sure where that falls in the legal spectrum of things where on the one hand it is a new piece of software completely reverse engineered from the original hardware, and on the other hand the end result is an exact duplication of the original.
Many of the popular classics from this era were re-released down the road in ROM form.
Re:I'm curious...
on
Project Arcade
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· Score: 4, Informative
You don't have to do any winking at all... You can find boards for most classic games on ebay for $2-$40 depending on the game (more modern or rare games can go up to $200) and you can get an EPROM reader for about $50 and rip your own ROMs from the boards that YOU OWN. I know because I've done it.
I worked for 3 years as an arcade tech while I was in college, we'd have bins and bins of scrapped gameboards, most of them had good ROMs and were just tossed in a bin once the cabinet was converted to a more lucrative game. We then scavenged spare parts off these boards for when active machines had problems. It was a great resource for the arcade because when a obsolete proprietary Sega chip failed on still popular classic game X we could dig up the board from the old Sega game Y from the same year that we binned years ago and find the same chip on the similar board.
The arcade I worked at had a lot of classic machines and the head tech actually started reverse engineering and building hardware emulators from scratch for a lot of classics that would die frequently from design flaws. (he was a really bright guy, and IIRC he was the head of the EE department at RI tech, the arcade was just his part time summer job).
There are however quite a few games that were encrypted or had some other form of copy protection to keep arcade operators from cloning machines by dumping the roms to similar hardware from a cheaper game. Even still many of the popular classics have legal roms available for sale. I seem to recall at least one of those "classic games in a joystick" packages coming with a CD that included legal, MAME usable roms; or maybe I'm imagining things.
In any case there are legal ways to obtain roms... though personally I prefer to just use the original hardware too.
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well I would think there are some exceptions for user serviceable parts... otherwise they could void your warranty for changing the ink in your printer or the tires on your car.
Where would it stop with a PC? What if I put in a bigger hard drive, or more ram, or a new drive or card? Should the OS be considered a user serviceable part?
Depending how shady you're feeling you could probably pop out the factory hard drive and plug in a clean one to install Linux, then when if you start having problems swap the drives back to get the repairs done.
Actually you can register a Gamertag and an Xbox Live Silver for free without even owning an Xbox. Just click the link above.
your application line up looks remarkably similar to my own. Some Differences: -I use WinRAR instead of 7zip... I've never used 7zip but Winrar gives me customizable right click commands that I can use to compress and decompress files in rar or zip format as if the function was built into windows. Opening up WinRar complete is a little bloated but the shell integration is quite nice -I use PSPad instead of editpad... it has tabbed file viewing as well but it's catered towards code as it has a colored highlighter, line numbers and a whole slew of other functions. Overall it's quite lite too. everything else you've got listed I use myself too, with the exception of thunderbird and putty simply because I don't need an email editor (I just use gmail) or telnet/ssh
I used to use notepad quite a bit for that stuff but I recently switched to PSPad... I have no idea how much space or resources it actually uses but it doesn't seem to be any heftier than notepad or word pad. The nice part is it will color highlight all your code, provide line numbering and allow you to have multiple files open in tabs along with all sorts of other handy stuff for writing code.
I still use notepad for quite a bit but if if I'm working with html/php/javascript etc. I'll use PSPad.
you are correct... I meant to say anti-embryonic-stem cell research
Interesting... it would seem that using adult stem cells has more than one benefit. It almost makes me think that all the Anti-Stem cell research rallying had a silver lining in that it shifted work towards adult stem cells.
If not for being being denied the ability to work with undeveloped stem cells would as much work have been done with Adult Stem cells? and would we still be seeing these kinds of results today?
They did the same damn thing with Assassin's Creed.
It almost seems to me that they're hiding the 360 in hopes that Sony will see the hype and offer some cash to buy exclusivity.
I also don't understand how this is news considering pretty much NOTHING has changed.
No, But I think Viacom leagally used the video because it was on YouTube... if you read YouTube's policy you give up all your rights to whatever you upload and they take legal ownership of it. Viacom only needed to ask YouTube (the legal owner of the clip) for permission. IANAL so I don't know the extent of the agreement but as far as I can tell this guy is actually violating copyright, but not his own because he no longer retains ownership of that video clip.
As someone who lives in the great state of NH I can easily say: Welcome to NH, b*tch.
I can say that at least half of my co-workers live in areas where they just can't get cable or DSL because the lines end X thousand feet from their house.
This isn't an Uncommon problem here and the local Cable provider that offers cable internet to most of the state (Metrocast) is very good at telling you exactly where service is and where service isn't. Go on ahead and check their website for youself... plug in Gilsum's zip "03448" right at the top of the metrocast page and see what you get.
Even still, the receptionists have tools to test the lines out to the exact address you specify and tell you if service is available there. In many cases even if you offer to pay to have the line extended to your house the distance from the ISP is such that it will be quite a shoddy and unreliable connection and they tell you to wait until they put in another distribution center closer to your location.
Of course the article leaves out that detail. Would you rather an ISP say "sorry even if you pay to have the lines extended the quality will be too damn low so it's not worth doing" or "sure give us $7000" while you drop the cash only to get screwed by unreliable lines.
Despite the high number of my peers who are without service you really do have to live out in the boonies to not have it around here. I've lived in this state most of my life and moved around quite a bit, I've never found myself in a location without service. A good rule of thumb is if you live within 15miles of a highway you've got a good chance of having internet access... heck I even know a whole lot of people who live on unpaved roads and still have cable internet. (and for you city folk, yes we do have quite a few unpaved roads up here in NH.)
I stand by that this schmuck just didn't do one iota of research before buying his house.
I like my security system the best... I drive a PoS. Nothing deters theft more than apathy!
The first thing I thought of in terms of MTV & Movies was Joe's Apartment but Alas it's not on that list. For whatever reason it's listed under MTV Networks. After browsing through that page I'm reminded of all the crappy TV shows they made. Though interesting enough Mr Wizard's World was listed there so I guess they can't be all bad.
There was also a similar promotion with Cadillac and PGR3.
Fine by me... it just means I get more free cars to play with, if anything this is good. Rather than Developer X paying heaps of money for licensing they auto makers pay the game developer to include their cars... As long as they steer clear of the "make sure our car outperforms our competitors car in the game" then it can greatly reduce development costs.
No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that . . . is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under this title in a work or a portion thereof The real question here is when does it cross the line into becoming a protection circumvention device?
Most, if not all modchips are nothing but microcontrollers with some code on them. Xbox modchips are just regular PC bios chips that ship with a Linux kernel that doesn't actually circumvent copy protection. Wii and playstation modchips are nothing but PIC and Atmel MCUs. If I write the code myself is that considered "manufacturing" Obviously the chip is "part" of the device so why are Microchip and Atmel allowed to make any of their MCUs? Early Wii hacks were nothing but some open source code running on a computer and connecting to the Wii via the RS-232 port, are we going to start confiscating all the computers manufactured by Dell because they can be used in part to circumvent copy protection? What if I just tell someone how to do it? What if I give them the code but not the hardware? Where is the line drawn.
I don't know what's worse, the soulless corporations that lobby for such broad and unspecific laws that place the interests of capitalism above that of American freedoms, the ignorant (or not ignorant but equally soulless, take your pick) politician who seem to have no hesitation towards passing these laws, or the apathetic and oblivious American public that is too busy arguing about Gay Marrage, and voting on American Idol to care about all the technological freedoms being taken out back and executed one by one.
They got data from nearly every major retailer about return rates and saw that most stores were getting 1/4 to 1/3 (25%-33%) returned. Some of the stores supplied more concrete numbers than others but it was the first article to actually put a real number behind the failure rates beyond speculation from executive double speak.
Reading the article it would seem most stores fall on the lower end of the spectrum, more towards 25%, but up until that point the only numbers we had were from MS saying it was between 3 and 5%.
So while it is exaggerated, it's not complete BS and it is based on something... I'll hold my comment about the people who think they can somehow determine the failure rate from MS's claimed cost of the recall.
sad but true, at least in my experience...
You're assuming that $LESSER_QUALITY_THINK is actually lesser quality than $HIGHER_QUALITY_THING. I don't know about most providers but having used TiVo and both my Cable providers DVRs (it's a local cable provider not a national chain) the Cable Companies box actually looked to have better recording quality and aside from a couple of trivial features the interface was nearly identical and just as fast.
I don't own a TiVo or the Cable provider's DVR but my parents owned a TiVo and after trying the cable company's DVR for a few weeks they decided they actually liked it better. Just because you're paying less for one doesn't actually make it a "lesser quality thing" purchase price does not equal quality.
Even assuming that TiVo is a better product, what encourages people to go out an drop several hundred dollars one to even see if it's better than what the cable company offers? If you're looking to get a DVR and you're faced with free vs $X hundred + subscription What would encourage joe consumer to even try out TiVo instead of just calling and requesting that the cable company sent them a box?
yeah, IMO this is the problem with TiVo... well that and subscription fees.
My local cable company offers a DVR for a $5 a month rental, if I order the HD Cable package I get one for free. Where is my incentive to buy a Tivo? Not only will have to pay $X hundred up front for the device but I STILL have to pay a subscription fee. Not only that but the HD models aren't compatible with my cable providers HD service.
If I'm going to spend a few hundred dollars I'd rather build myself a SageTV or MythTV box and forget about the subscription fees. At least then I can use the hardware for whatever I want instead of just TV recording duties.
With the options available I simply can't justify buying a TiVo, it's the most expansive, least upgradeable, and least compatible of all the options. And while you could say the same for some wildly popular Apple products, those products sell themselves on style and ease of use... which is something that TiVo doesn't have either, considering it's interface is only marginally better than the alternatives, and style wise I (and probably most people) find it rather ugly. At least with a homebuilt box I can pick the case that best matches my media room.
Actually I was thinking more that that 360 had a low session time due to the high session count. Caused by the fact that games get frequent updates and whenever you update a game you have to log-off while the update takes place. It only takes a few seconds but the stats would show a regular 1 session lasting about 1 minute followed by another session lasting 2 hours... If I pop in a game that I haven't played in a month or two there is almost guaranteed to be another game update that needs to occur, and if you pop in a game for the first time, it almost always has an update available. It's sad but when I bought the darkness last week I was almost shocked that it didn't have to update but instead just played straight away.
Obviously that would give you an average session of about an hour but it's not a very accurate statistic because despite the fact that the system logs it as two separate sessions it really is just one. There is no description about accounting for this and it sounds like they're using the built in profile system which would lead me to believe that they're not.
well I've never participated in phone sex or SL sex, nor do I know anyone who has. I can tell you that if my significant other was participating in either, anonymous or not, I would consider it a violation of our commitment. I would imagine if you wanted to keep phone sex anonymous you could (I'm sure you could give you # to your SL "friend"/find some anonymous phone service) and similarly if you wanted to make SL sex not-anonymous you could as well. Either interface could be used either way.
Why does anonymity make it ok? if your wife wore a mask and went to an orgy where everyone else was wearing masks would that be ok? If she was flirting with another man on SL NOT anonymously would that be ok? Where is the line drawn?
A relationship is more than just physical sex, it's about sharing intimacy in all aspects of your life, sharing that with someone other than your significant other, whether you know them or not, whether it's physically in the same room or not, is IMO disrespectful to your significant other.
Maybe I'm just not open minded... but for those of you that "are", have fun on Jerry Springer.
there is quite a large difference, one is playing back pre-recorded video, the other is creating a relationship with another person through an electronic interface.
By your standards it'd be a-ok for your wife to have phone sex with someone else too, right? What's the difference if it's over the cell or over the net?
You're absolutely right... most of the older B&W games (read: pre 79) didn't have roms but just ridiculous amounts of logic circuits. The versions of those games on MAME aren't actually rips of the original roms but roms created from scratch to emulate the original hardware. I'm not quite sure where that falls in the legal spectrum of things where on the one hand it is a new piece of software completely reverse engineered from the original hardware, and on the other hand the end result is an exact duplication of the original.
Many of the popular classics from this era were re-released down the road in ROM form.
You don't have to do any winking at all... You can find boards for most classic games on ebay for $2-$40 depending on the game (more modern or rare games can go up to $200) and you can get an EPROM reader for about $50 and rip your own ROMs from the boards that YOU OWN. I know because I've done it.
I worked for 3 years as an arcade tech while I was in college, we'd have bins and bins of scrapped gameboards, most of them had good ROMs and were just tossed in a bin once the cabinet was converted to a more lucrative game. We then scavenged spare parts off these boards for when active machines had problems. It was a great resource for the arcade because when a obsolete proprietary Sega chip failed on still popular classic game X we could dig up the board from the old Sega game Y from the same year that we binned years ago and find the same chip on the similar board.
The arcade I worked at had a lot of classic machines and the head tech actually started reverse engineering and building hardware emulators from scratch for a lot of classics that would die frequently from design flaws. (he was a really bright guy, and IIRC he was the head of the EE department at RI tech, the arcade was just his part time summer job).
There are however quite a few games that were encrypted or had some other form of copy protection to keep arcade operators from cloning machines by dumping the roms to similar hardware from a cheaper game. Even still many of the popular classics have legal roms available for sale. I seem to recall at least one of those "classic games in a joystick" packages coming with a CD that included legal, MAME usable roms; or maybe I'm imagining things.
In any case there are legal ways to obtain roms... though personally I prefer to just use the original hardware too.