the raping of great companies through the blindness of their absentee owners is just one of those disasters that takes a while to play out
Curiously, when thinking about companies that don't value their brand, I started thinking of one that does and is also rewarded handsomely for it: Apple.
With them being the exception to that rule (a quality one could arguably describe to Jobs' iron fist and intense RDF), do you think that something like that can be maintained by any CEO, such as Cook, or does it really take a truly unique personality to do that for a company and its brand(s)?
They could support blu ray and their own proprietary format from the same drive. Though Apple being Apple they'd probably not support Blu Ray even if their drive were physically capable of doing so, or if they did of charge $20 or something to enable the functionality.
Good grief, are you really that dumb? Presumption of innocence means you are not guilty until proven otherwise (ie at trial). It does NOT refer to what the police do or who they consider guilty (a suspect).
Answering your question? Yes, he is.
Shit like this is why you see memes spring out of places like 4chan. An apt, pejorative nickname that describes the behavior of an internet denizen. A good example could be the "White Knight." "Troll" is so well known and obvious that the metaphor contained therein is completely dead; it quite literally means "asshole on the internet who derives increasing satisfaction from the emotional degree of a response solicited by provoking others."
I suggest we coin a new one for "asshole who takes three sentences of legal concepts, refuses to understand them, points out contradictions that hold only against that ignorance, and then proceeds to rally support from those with just as much or more ignorance (...to be fair, those people are usually called 'sheep')."
I would propose "iANALyst," but so many people fail so damn hard at finding either shift key, that the integrated puns would likely be lost in propagation. Regarding the shift-key location failure, Slashdot is thankfully the exception, rather than the rule.
The only thing they've really allowed here is for volunteer developers to contribute to their proprietary product. Gee, thanks.
I like the idea. I can't even begin to list how many games would benefit greatly from something like this....
...Projects like GHost++, which is a full client/server implementation for Warcraft III, enables the game to take advantage of current, high-bandwidth internet connections and provides administrative control over what was designed to be a "head-to-head" protocol. It is one of the few things that let popular mods, like DotA, grow to what they are today.
It was painstakingly built through years of reverse engineering and tweaking. Source code access, or even official documentation, would have made it a hell of a lot easier, I'm sure.
It helps significantly if you have the assembly manual but not required.
I won't disassemble or reassemble any laptop that wasn't my own, for love nor money, unless I've got a manual... which pretty much limits that to Dell machines (LOVE their documentation online) or Apple computers (due solely to the existence of iFixit), but that's just IME, of course.
Granted, when I first attempted tearing apart and repairing laptops (It's a computer, how hard could it be!), I either was unable to fix them, or ended up making the problem worse, or ended up with "extra" screws, or whatever. It's been many years, though. Perhaps newer machines are more friendly on the inside... but I somehow doubt it:P
Fuck AT&T & Verizon's 20 bucks a month for texting, that's all I'm saying.
And you should say it loudly and proudly.
I switched phones and had trouble with data services pulling in after moving a SIM. It required customer service to override my features because "$5/month for 200 SMS" doesn't fucking exist as an option anymore. The only pricing tiers left are "YAY Unlimited SMS for $20" and "Teenager on your account == Rape."
We went ahead and purchased a document camera (this model) because it really seems like it'll do the job perfectly.
I'm still investigating computer-based solutions, in the event that they perform better or that the document camera turns out not to provide quite what he needs. A very excellent suggestion, dearest AC:)
I have an EyeClops, basically a toy microscope that hooks up to a TV. This is cheap but would let you get as close as you want to anything. Amazon Link
I went ahead and ordered one of these. While it doesn't solve the primary need as elegantly as what I'm looking for, at $40, it could be useful in a pinch. Thanks!
As far as e-books go, I actually like that suggestion. It may even work well with the magic trackpad (which I'm eyeballing as a way to eliminate a traditional keyboard from the equation) for things like page turning and zooming. I'll bring that up and see what they say.
So along those lines, I'm thinking of something like an iPad 2 in a fixed stand, probably with the home button covered up (prevent accidental presses). From there, mirror the display out to an Apple TV 2, attached to the LCD TV. Without using a system of mirrors though, the tablet would have to lay perfectly flat, but there's room in there for hardware hackery.
The real question from there, I suppose, is, "What's the killer app that makes it work?"
Possibly, but I couldn't say for sure. Browsing their products appears to yield a rather impressive array of optical magnifiers. Do they happen to have anything more along the lines of what I'm talking about in the summary?
That's the kind of product that I'm finding online, and their prices seem to be about the same as the ones I've already seen. The key point behind my post is that it seems that I can build something similar for significantly less money. And it would be a fun project:)
If he's looking to purchase new books to read - what about a Kindle DX with the font size jacked all of the way up?
When I first started thinking about it, a tablet or an e-reader such as the kindle was my very first suggestion. The problem with it was that, on a 10" screen, he needs things zoomed so high that he may only be able to view a single sentence at a time. The camera/monitor approach preserves the dead-tree look and feel (and the UI, hehe) but adds the ability to enlarge the text.
Wouldn't be a bad idea if there was a 24" kindle, though:)
One of my work colleges is working on an identical project. You two should talk. Email me at jasonmac404 atsymbol gmail.... and I'll put you two in contact.
Much appreciated! I'll keep on top of the comments here for the next few hours and then get in contact.
Audio books are a good alternative for certain, but when I brought up the idea, his desire is specifically to read printed material. I suspect that, when even assistive devices no longer cut it for him (if it gets to that point, of course) that audio books may be more amenable at that time.
I'll bring it up again though, because it is still a very good point. Thanks!
Yup. Would anyone have installed Silverlight if it hadn't been for Netflix?
At least Silverlight can be kept current with Windows update.
It drives me insane that a user needs to spend 30 seconds or more, and ONLY after rebooting, to say "Yes, yes, I agree, and I would like to install the flash player update that won't let websites WTFPWN the shit out of my computer. OH you meant 'Download.' Okay, yes, please install. *zip* Yay you're installed, now go away." Whereas it takes less than one second to dismiss the dialog, effectively saying, "Nope, serious security holes are FINE BY ME!"
It's quite possibly the one thing that Google's automation with Chrome updates has done right: If you want vulnerable, out of date software and want to have upgrading it be something you need to go out of your way to do, it should be more difficult to have your system operate that way.
People don't care that their software is out of date until AFTER it bites them in the ass.
Does that really matter that much? I can't recall the last time I didn't opt for the torrent download. It's always been the fastest way for me to get it, and I suspect the same is true in most situations.
Let's start with the length of the cell phone contract and work from there. If they're going to sell 2-year contracts, you should reasonably expect that the phone you buy will receive updates during that time.
Here's my definitive answer:
Locked bootloader? No contract.
Unlocked bootloader? Contract acceptable.
Locked bootloader with $CONTRACT_DURATION guarantee of security updates with a 90 day window before the carrier is forced to release the contract? Contract acceptable.
Honestly, and I rarely say something like this due to lobbyists ability to fuck up good intentions, this kind of stuff should probably be legislated.
So if the 'work' taken is that of the user's, and the user opted in, what's the problem?
That was the real question with this whole incident, but it got rather smothered by the fact that Bing was returning search results that Google provided.
Quite frankly, with whatever analyses go into search result ranking, the more data there is, the better. What Microsoft did with the Bing toolbar, quite frankly, was extremely smart and likely quite effective. I know that Google would certainly do the same thing with the shoe on the other foot, especially since it's not illegal.
People got pissed off because, after analyzing ALL of the information available, that story was about a matter of taste between two opponents who play a game that has no rules. People "play dirty" because it's a very effective method of winning.
While you might call him a jerk or dishonest, I think you'd be hard-pressed to call the man who "brings a gun to a knife fight" an idiot. The odds would also be against him as the loser.
Slashdot Mirror
the raping of great companies through the blindness of their absentee owners is just one of those disasters that takes a while to play out
Curiously, when thinking about companies that don't value their brand, I started thinking of one that does and is also rewarded handsomely for it: Apple.
With them being the exception to that rule (a quality one could arguably describe to Jobs' iron fist and intense RDF), do you think that something like that can be maintained by any CEO, such as Cook, or does it really take a truly unique personality to do that for a company and its brand(s)?
He bought your resumé? At what price? If you can sell that, you're in the wrong business.
It's got PERFECT DRM on it. He can sell a different copy to everyone!
They could support blu ray and their own proprietary format from the same drive. Though Apple being Apple they'd probably not support Blu Ray even if their drive were physically capable of doing so, or if they did of charge $20 or something to enable the functionality.
I don't usually do this, but: FTFY.
Good grief, are you really that dumb? Presumption of innocence means you are not guilty until proven otherwise (ie at trial). It does NOT refer to what the police do or who they consider guilty (a suspect).
Answering your question? Yes, he is.
Shit like this is why you see memes spring out of places like 4chan. An apt, pejorative nickname that describes the behavior of an internet denizen. A good example could be the "White Knight." "Troll" is so well known and obvious that the metaphor contained therein is completely dead; it quite literally means "asshole on the internet who derives increasing satisfaction from the emotional degree of a response solicited by provoking others."
I suggest we coin a new one for "asshole who takes three sentences of legal concepts, refuses to understand them, points out contradictions that hold only against that ignorance, and then proceeds to rally support from those with just as much or more ignorance (...to be fair, those people are usually called 'sheep')."
I would propose "iANALyst," but so many people fail so damn hard at finding either shift key, that the integrated puns would likely be lost in propagation. Regarding the shift-key location failure, Slashdot is thankfully the exception, rather than the rule.
It's a little easier to gouge out the back of the slot ;)
Which of ignorance or superstition was it to claim that a large number of bats were responsible for his unwanted surplus of bat guano?
We may never know---I suspect he has gone batshit crazy.
The only thing they've really allowed here is for volunteer developers to contribute to their proprietary product. Gee, thanks.
I like the idea. I can't even begin to list how many games would benefit greatly from something like this....
...Projects like GHost++, which is a full client/server implementation for Warcraft III, enables the game to take advantage of current, high-bandwidth internet connections and provides administrative control over what was designed to be a "head-to-head" protocol. It is one of the few things that let popular mods, like DotA, grow to what they are today.
It was painstakingly built through years of reverse engineering and tweaking. Source code access, or even official documentation, would have made it a hell of a lot easier, I'm sure.
It helps significantly if you have the assembly manual but not required.
I won't disassemble or reassemble any laptop that wasn't my own, for love nor money, unless I've got a manual... which pretty much limits that to Dell machines (LOVE their documentation online) or Apple computers (due solely to the existence of iFixit), but that's just IME, of course.
:P
Granted, when I first attempted tearing apart and repairing laptops (It's a computer, how hard could it be!), I either was unable to fix them, or ended up making the problem worse, or ended up with "extra" screws, or whatever. It's been many years, though. Perhaps newer machines are more friendly on the inside... but I somehow doubt it
It'd probably be cheaper and more practical for you to just get a copy of AnyDVD HD and play Blu-Rays to your heart's content.
Fuck AT&T & Verizon's 20 bucks a month for texting, that's all I'm saying.
And you should say it loudly and proudly.
I switched phones and had trouble with data services pulling in after moving a SIM. It required customer service to override my features because "$5/month for 200 SMS" doesn't fucking exist as an option anymore. The only pricing tiers left are "YAY Unlimited SMS for $20" and "Teenager on your account == Rape."
We went ahead and purchased a document camera (this model) because it really seems like it'll do the job perfectly.
:)
I'm still investigating computer-based solutions, in the event that they perform better or that the document camera turns out not to provide quite what he needs. A very excellent suggestion, dearest AC
At least it wasn't ATI/AMD, then it would be fast, but crash a lot...
And then there would be the Android malware mining bitcoins, too!
I have an EyeClops, basically a toy microscope that hooks up to a TV. This is cheap but would let you get as close as you want to anything. Amazon Link
I went ahead and ordered one of these. While it doesn't solve the primary need as elegantly as what I'm looking for, at $40, it could be useful in a pinch. Thanks!
As far as e-books go, I actually like that suggestion. It may even work well with the magic trackpad (which I'm eyeballing as a way to eliminate a traditional keyboard from the equation) for things like page turning and zooming. I'll bring that up and see what they say.
Indeed.
So along those lines, I'm thinking of something like an iPad 2 in a fixed stand, probably with the home button covered up (prevent accidental presses). From there, mirror the display out to an Apple TV 2, attached to the LCD TV. Without using a system of mirrors though, the tablet would have to lay perfectly flat, but there's room in there for hardware hackery.
The real question from there, I suppose, is, "What's the killer app that makes it work?"
http://lighthouse-sf.org/
Surely his doctors have mentioned these people?
Possibly, but I couldn't say for sure. Browsing their products appears to yield a rather impressive array of optical magnifiers. Do they happen to have anything more along the lines of what I'm talking about in the summary?
That's the kind of product that I'm finding online, and their prices seem to be about the same as the ones I've already seen. The key point behind my post is that it seems that I can build something similar for significantly less money. And it would be a fun project :)
If he's looking to purchase new books to read - what about a Kindle DX with the font size jacked all of the way up?
When I first started thinking about it, a tablet or an e-reader such as the kindle was my very first suggestion. The problem with it was that, on a 10" screen, he needs things zoomed so high that he may only be able to view a single sentence at a time. The camera/monitor approach preserves the dead-tree look and feel (and the UI, hehe) but adds the ability to enlarge the text.
:)
Wouldn't be a bad idea if there was a 24" kindle, though
One of my work colleges is working on an identical project. You two should talk. Email me at jasonmac404 atsymbol gmail .... and I'll put you two in contact.
Much appreciated! I'll keep on top of the comments here for the next few hours and then get in contact.
Audio books are a good alternative for certain, but when I brought up the idea, his desire is specifically to read printed material. I suspect that, when even assistive devices no longer cut it for him (if it gets to that point, of course) that audio books may be more amenable at that time.
I'll bring it up again though, because it is still a very good point. Thanks!
Yup. Would anyone have installed Silverlight if it hadn't been for Netflix?
At least Silverlight can be kept current with Windows update.
It drives me insane that a user needs to spend 30 seconds or more, and ONLY after rebooting, to say "Yes, yes, I agree, and I would like to install the flash player update that won't let websites WTFPWN the shit out of my computer. OH you meant 'Download.' Okay, yes, please install. *zip* Yay you're installed, now go away." Whereas it takes less than one second to dismiss the dialog, effectively saying, "Nope, serious security holes are FINE BY ME!"
It's quite possibly the one thing that Google's automation with Chrome updates has done right: If you want vulnerable, out of date software and want to have upgrading it be something you need to go out of your way to do, it should be more difficult to have your system operate that way.
People don't care that their software is out of date until AFTER it bites them in the ass.
Does that really matter that much? I can't recall the last time I didn't opt for the torrent download. It's always been the fastest way for me to get it, and I suspect the same is true in most situations.
Let's start with the length of the cell phone contract and work from there. If they're going to sell 2-year contracts, you should reasonably expect that the phone you buy will receive updates during that time.
Here's my definitive answer:
Locked bootloader? No contract.
Unlocked bootloader? Contract acceptable.
Locked bootloader with $CONTRACT_DURATION guarantee of security updates with a 90 day window before the carrier is forced to release the contract? Contract acceptable.
Honestly, and I rarely say something like this due to lobbyists ability to fuck up good intentions, this kind of stuff should probably be legislated.
So if the 'work' taken is that of the user's, and the user opted in, what's the problem?
That was the real question with this whole incident, but it got rather smothered by the fact that Bing was returning search results that Google provided.
Quite frankly, with whatever analyses go into search result ranking, the more data there is, the better. What Microsoft did with the Bing toolbar, quite frankly, was extremely smart and likely quite effective. I know that Google would certainly do the same thing with the shoe on the other foot, especially since it's not illegal.
People got pissed off because, after analyzing ALL of the information available, that story was about a matter of taste between two opponents who play a game that has no rules. People "play dirty" because it's a very effective method of winning.
While you might call him a jerk or dishonest, I think you'd be hard-pressed to call the man who "brings a gun to a knife fight" an idiot. The odds would also be against him as the loser.