funny. i've been to ND, one parent from there and have family in minot and I have lived in Texas most of my life. I said minor differences and I meant it. Both Texas and ND share the same generic US culture 2011 AD. sure each one has local customs and flavor but you could take a resident of either state, drop them in the other and they wouldn't need a Fodor's guide to get around, understand the natives or stay out of trouble. Differences in accent don't account for crime rates.
Monaco and Singapore have little in common with either Texas or North Dakota. Texas and North Dakota however, are culturally the same. Yes there are some differences, but you're not comparing Japan and Yemen here. If they are nearly the same culturally, I find it more likely that the fact that there are 4 times as many people in Texas and more of them are poor to be a more reasonable cause for a higher murder rate than whether a state has/does not have the death penalty. Which is what i was responding to originally. I certainly never said that population was the only reason or applied when comparing vastly different locations.
well, many of the high poverty areas in dallas/houston/san antonio also have high gang activity which leads to higher violence. a lot of senseless killing for "respect" or lack of, payback, or debts (real or perceived).
take a look at this map of dallas homicides in 2010. South and South East Dallas is predominately minority and low income with high gang activity.
I've included a heat map of home prices just so you know I'm not guessing about those areas economically.
It's a chicken and egg question though as to crime/poverty and I won't even go there.
not likely in most US prisons which typically have a very large restricted area around them as well as patrols outside the fence. someone getting close enough to throw something inside is going to be the only person standing around in an area where no one should be standing around. Would be easier to just hang on to the item and give it to someone personally once you're escorted in for questioning about your prison interest.
yeah, detectors do seem to be a fast interim solution. I wonder do cell phones have an EM "fingerprint"? If so maybe you could whitelist staff phones to avoid false detections.
i'd think population and density has something to do with it...
Population (2009 est)
Texas - 24,782,302
North Dakota - 646,844
Density - Persons per sq mile (2000 est)
Texas - 79.6
North Dakota - 9.3
Dallas has 2x the population of North Dakota. More people, closer together, more chance for crime. Texas also has many more people below the poverty level.
src: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html
don't know about games but cycling made me the most uber-defensive driver on the planet. nothing like having 1 mm of lycra between you and insane people in cars to teach some situational awareness. I operate under the assumption that everyone on the road is out to get me and will do something stupid at any moment.
Hey, I have a news flash for you, shitty HD or 3D movie is shitty in 2D as well. I swear half these responses sound like "i went to see a movie i probably wouldn't have liked anyway but i saw it in 3d and also got a headache so 3d is the worst thing ever since hitler". I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it, but 3d probably wasn't the real problem.
Come on, Facebook only knows as much as you fill in. Don't want to share your address and phone number? Leave the fields blank. No one is forcing you to fill this in. If it's not there no app in the world can get it. If someone is really my "friend" they probably know where I live and have my phone number and email. If they are just an acquaintance, they can ask for it and I may or may not give it out. Just stop compulsively filling out anything blank on your screen.
what's an alarm clock? seriously, my wife and I haven't had one in the bedroom for years. We've also never had issues like this with alarms on any previous cell/smartphone.
As for lots of key presses, that's a one time event on most phones. Unlike a bedside phone, I can set multiple alarms. say one for weekdays and one for weekends, and one for that day i had to get up really freakin early. Reusing an alarm is as simple as tapping the toggle from off to on.
I'm just amazed by the number of people on here that are acting like it's the users fault this very basic fucntionality doesn't work. Oh, just don't use it. WTF? Of course when it's Apple, they get a pass on this kind of stuff. We're just holding it wrong, right?
that's interesting because I stopped going to Circuit City because I found I couldn't walk in there and just freaking browse without endless approaches from staff that couldn't take "NO" or "I'M JUST LOOKING" for an answer. For several years, Best Buy made very few attempts to actually SELL me something, unlike places like Circuit City or even Sears where the floor people work or worked on a commission. Every major chain does the annoying ever-present staff, the deal of the century up-sale, the can't live without it warranty...
So you had a bad experience at a Best Buy, but I'm dying to know how coming in for a loss leader item led to an adversarial or confrontational shopping experience unless you told some pimply sales kid to piss off every time you were approached. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing any more 'hounding and harrassing' from this chain than I've seen at any other. Maybe what you took as corporate policy was just an idiot of a store manager.
wow, what's with all the best buy hate around here? Yes, the staff is clueless. Yes the prices are ridiculous on some things. However, they are no worse than most other brick and mortar electronics stores. You want bad? Bad was the late and unlamented Circuit City. They took everything you don't like about Best Buy to another level. What other options are there? Frys? Great prices, but often not so great locations and as of last week they still check your receipt at the door. There are other chain electronics stores like Conn's. Which ironically was just sued not so long ago by the TX attorney general for false advertising, not honoring extended warranties they sold and just being sneaky in general.For a completely generic item then you might find it at Walmart or Target, but good luck if you need some help. If you want to pay even MORE than Best Buy, you can probably find a Radio Shack and play 20 questions while overpaying.
Really, I'm no fan of Best Buy. When I absolutely need something now and they have a comparable price, then I'll go there. However, they don't have a lock on clueless employees, overpricing, receipt checking or any of the other complaints I've seen here. Show me a chain electronics retailer that gives great customer service and is even close to amazon, newegg, or even Frys pricing. Personally, I've yet to see one. The good stores are expensive, the bad stores are cheap. Pick one.
ignorance? now wait a sec...i know wikipedia is by no means infallible but the numbers in this article are reasonable current (Oct 2010) and from a variety of sources. I think before calling someone ignorant, you should do a little fact finding. I'm a geek, with a geek job and geek friends, and the vast majority of my encounters with any variant of Linux are servers.
I'm just gonna snip out the relevant parts from the market share table. If you want to see all the OS's and platform types click the smegging link...
Desktops & laptops (based on web usage) Linux 1.08%, Windows 88.21%, Mac OS 6.82%
Servers Linux 43.4%, Windows 42.2%
Now, even if these numbers aren't 100% accurate, they aren't wildly inaccurate either. They certainly indicate more Linux on servers,"heavy shit" as the OP says, rather than desktop.
"Plus, I mean, come on - Netflix streaming works on PS3, Xbox, wii, mac, windows, iphone, ipad, a number of set-top TV boxes like the Roku and the WD ones, several TVs with integrated instant watch, and several Blu-Ray players. They're trying to get as many eyes in front of their product as they can. It's not like they're forcing you into a small subset of products."
this right here hits the nail on the head. How many ways is Netflix obligated to provide you to view their stuff? Seriously, all of the options listed above cover 95% of potential users. Stop whining about being in the neglected 5% and pick one. Crap, you can get the cheapest Roku box for $59 right now and a quick google turns up a freakin Blu-Ray player w/ Netflix for $69. You got your OS for free, stop being a cheapskate. The cost to get into the Netflix club is miniscule.
Why don't you guys spend some time complaining about Apple? They claim more Open Source street cred than just about anyone. How many ways can you view iTunes movies (w/out converting or otherwise stripping the DRM)? Show me all those iTunes ready consoles, tv's and dvd players. Oh waaaait. There aren't any. I think Netflix is doing a hell of a lot more than most anyone else in this game when it comes to accessibility and unobtrusive DRM.
It all depends on what you're protecting against. Data loss from "accidental deletion or hardware failure" is a much more likely event for most people than a fire or flood. For those things an external drive is a perfectly reasonable, relatively cheap and effective way to backup data. Then again very few people I know actually bother to backup, they just cry to me after they lose everything. Far better to have that external drive storing your crap than to just skip backing up because it's "too much work"...
Besides, in the event of a fire or other catastrophe all i need to do is snatch my external drive from on top of my PC on my way out the door and years of pictures, documents, projects and anything else I'd freak out about losing is in my pocket and on its way to safety. let the PC burn, I know my stuff is recoverable. And yes, that's part of our home emergency plan, grab kids, let pets out, wallets, phones and external drive and run for your life. Now that I think about it I need to put together a new go bag. I see too many news stories this time of year where people have only the clothes on their back.
are you a republican by chance? The philosophy of "it didn't happen to me so it must not be happening" seems to be very common among repubs. I didn't lose MY house, so people aren't losing houses... I didn't lose MY job so job loss is a liberal lie...apologies if you are not republican...
on topic... it's sad that SOP for many industries these days is to ignore reality, then beg for public money when ignoring reality bites you in the ass.
"I agree that poaching endangered species is a terrible crime, but death penalty seems excessive unless you also want to apply it to the subhumans who jack deer up in Wisconsin."
the difference being while deer may be scarce where you are, they are nowhere close to endangered and in some places are right up there with rats as an overpopulated nuisance. You want more deer? Ship them in. You want more rhinos? Ship them...wait a sec...
not standing up for deer jackers, just pointing out that killing 1 of 30 million deer (source wikipedia) is a less serious matter than killing 1 of 4000 rhinos (source world wildlife fund). Do people go to SA for anything besides safari type vacations? Lose a few more species and watch tourism decline to the detriment of the entire country. Still not sure if it should be a capital offense, but it's serious.
Hey, can we stop complaining already? NASA and the rest of the space "industry" has had 50 years to make the geek dream of going into space possible for the (more or less) common man. Sub-orbital still counts as space, although it would seem it's not "enough" space for some.
NASA's manned program hasn't done much more than allow a select few to pedal circles around the planet since the end of Apollo. Sure, there were some amazing developments and innovations from that, but the act of getting to orbit? Who cares? You did that 50-ish years ago as well. The shuttle should never have gotten off the ground, and certainly should have been mothballed after Challenger. It was obvious by then that the program was vastly more expensive than expected anyway. All those satellites would have still gone up on conventional rockets, and much of the science could have been sent up in automated labs.
Imagine what 10 or 15 years of the manned spaceflight budget going into finding some other way into orbit might have produced. There have been proposals and ideas for decades, but with the shuttle eating up most of the budget, there was never the funding to really TRY. Sure it may have produced nothing at all (unlikely i think), but we'll never know.
Not trying to sound like a NASA hater, I love space and spaceflight. What I don't love is trillions of dollars spent to go in circles and make work for the astronaut corps.
"The problem with 3D as it currently stands is that I never forget that I'm watching a 3D movie. I never feel immersed in the effect, I always am aware of it and think "Ohhh, they did a 3D thing here." It feels more like a gimmick than a natural part of the experience."
well, be honest now, when sound and color came to movies, i'd be willing to bet plenty of people had the same experience. It's new, it's different, of course you will notice it. The more movies you see in 3d, the less you will be distracted by it. Unless they throw something at you.
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funny. i've been to ND, one parent from there and have family in minot and I have lived in Texas most of my life. I said minor differences and I meant it. Both Texas and ND share the same generic US culture 2011 AD. sure each one has local customs and flavor but you could take a resident of either state, drop them in the other and they wouldn't need a Fodor's guide to get around, understand the natives or stay out of trouble. Differences in accent don't account for crime rates.
Monaco and Singapore have little in common with either Texas or North Dakota. Texas and North Dakota however, are culturally the same. Yes there are some differences, but you're not comparing Japan and Yemen here. If they are nearly the same culturally, I find it more likely that the fact that there are 4 times as many people in Texas and more of them are poor to be a more reasonable cause for a higher murder rate than whether a state has/does not have the death penalty. Which is what i was responding to originally. I certainly never said that population was the only reason or applied when comparing vastly different locations.
well, many of the high poverty areas in dallas/houston/san antonio also have high gang activity which leads to higher violence. a lot of senseless killing for "respect" or lack of, payback, or debts (real or perceived).
take a look at this map of dallas homicides in 2010. South and South East Dallas is predominately minority and low income with high gang activity.
I've included a heat map of home prices just so you know I'm not guessing about those areas economically.
It's a chicken and egg question though as to crime/poverty and I won't even go there.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/graphics/homicides/
http://www.trulia.com/home_prices/Texas/Dallas-heat_map/
not likely in most US prisons which typically have a very large restricted area around them as well as patrols outside the fence. someone getting close enough to throw something inside is going to be the only person standing around in an area where no one should be standing around. Would be easier to just hang on to the item and give it to someone personally once you're escorted in for questioning about your prison interest.
yeah, detectors do seem to be a fast interim solution. I wonder do cell phones have an EM "fingerprint"? If so maybe you could whitelist staff phones to avoid false detections.
i'd think population and density has something to do with it...
Population (2009 est)
Texas - 24,782,302
North Dakota - 646,844
Density - Persons per sq mile (2000 est)
Texas - 79.6
North Dakota - 9.3
Dallas has 2x the population of North Dakota. More people, closer together, more chance for crime. Texas also has many more people below the poverty level. src: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html
"So, do I get payed via check or direct transfer or what?"
iTunes gift cards probably.
don't know about games but cycling made me the most uber-defensive driver on the planet. nothing like having 1 mm of lycra between you and insane people in cars to teach some situational awareness. I operate under the assumption that everyone on the road is out to get me and will do something stupid at any moment.
Hey, I have a news flash for you, shitty HD or 3D movie is shitty in 2D as well. I swear half these responses sound like "i went to see a movie i probably wouldn't have liked anyway but i saw it in 3d and also got a headache so 3d is the worst thing ever since hitler". I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it, but 3d probably wasn't the real problem.
Come on, Facebook only knows as much as you fill in. Don't want to share your address and phone number? Leave the fields blank. No one is forcing you to fill this in. If it's not there no app in the world can get it. If someone is really my "friend" they probably know where I live and have my phone number and email. If they are just an acquaintance, they can ask for it and I may or may not give it out. Just stop compulsively filling out anything blank on your screen.
have you been to the library of congress site? i've pulled up several images in their collections that are over 10MB
Another perspective: http://www.cringely.com/2011/01/2011-predictions-one-word-bufferbloat-or-is-that-two-words/
well that explains why i haven't seen it. that sucks.
that's interesting, i just sent several texts this morning on my android 2.1 phone and got replies from the correct people. what's this bug again?
what's an alarm clock? seriously, my wife and I haven't had one in the bedroom for years. We've also never had issues like this with alarms on any previous cell/smartphone.
As for lots of key presses, that's a one time event on most phones. Unlike a bedside phone, I can set multiple alarms. say one for weekdays and one for weekends, and one for that day i had to get up really freakin early. Reusing an alarm is as simple as tapping the toggle from off to on.
I'm just amazed by the number of people on here that are acting like it's the users fault this very basic fucntionality doesn't work. Oh, just don't use it. WTF? Of course when it's Apple, they get a pass on this kind of stuff. We're just holding it wrong, right?
that's interesting because I stopped going to Circuit City because I found I couldn't walk in there and just freaking browse without endless approaches from staff that couldn't take "NO" or "I'M JUST LOOKING" for an answer. For several years, Best Buy made very few attempts to actually SELL me something, unlike places like Circuit City or even Sears where the floor people work or worked on a commission. Every major chain does the annoying ever-present staff, the deal of the century up-sale, the can't live without it warranty...
So you had a bad experience at a Best Buy, but I'm dying to know how coming in for a loss leader item led to an adversarial or confrontational shopping experience unless you told some pimply sales kid to piss off every time you were approached. I guess I'm just having trouble seeing any more 'hounding and harrassing' from this chain than I've seen at any other. Maybe what you took as corporate policy was just an idiot of a store manager.
wow, what's with all the best buy hate around here? Yes, the staff is clueless. Yes the prices are ridiculous on some things. However, they are no worse than most other brick and mortar electronics stores. You want bad? Bad was the late and unlamented Circuit City. They took everything you don't like about Best Buy to another level. What other options are there? Frys? Great prices, but often not so great locations and as of last week they still check your receipt at the door. There are other chain electronics stores like Conn's. Which ironically was just sued not so long ago by the TX attorney general for false advertising, not honoring extended warranties they sold and just being sneaky in general.For a completely generic item then you might find it at Walmart or Target, but good luck if you need some help. If you want to pay even MORE than Best Buy, you can probably find a Radio Shack and play 20 questions while overpaying.
Really, I'm no fan of Best Buy. When I absolutely need something now and they have a comparable price, then I'll go there. However, they don't have a lock on clueless employees, overpricing, receipt checking or any of the other complaints I've seen here. Show me a chain electronics retailer that gives great customer service and is even close to amazon, newegg, or even Frys pricing. Personally, I've yet to see one. The good stores are expensive, the bad stores are cheap. Pick one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
I'm just gonna snip out the relevant parts from the market share table. If you want to see all the OS's and platform types click the smegging link...
Desktops & laptops (based on web usage) Linux 1.08%, Windows 88.21%, Mac OS 6.82%
Servers Linux 43.4%, Windows 42.2%
Now, even if these numbers aren't 100% accurate, they aren't wildly inaccurate either. They certainly indicate more Linux on servers,"heavy shit" as the OP says, rather than desktop.
"Plus, I mean, come on - Netflix streaming works on PS3, Xbox, wii, mac, windows, iphone, ipad, a number of set-top TV boxes like the Roku and the WD ones, several TVs with integrated instant watch, and several Blu-Ray players. They're trying to get as many eyes in front of their product as they can. It's not like they're forcing you into a small subset of products."
this right here hits the nail on the head. How many ways is Netflix obligated to provide you to view their stuff? Seriously, all of the options listed above cover 95% of potential users. Stop whining about being in the neglected 5% and pick one. Crap, you can get the cheapest Roku box for $59 right now and a quick google turns up a freakin Blu-Ray player w/ Netflix for $69. You got your OS for free, stop being a cheapskate. The cost to get into the Netflix club is miniscule.
Why don't you guys spend some time complaining about Apple? They claim more Open Source street cred than just about anyone. How many ways can you view iTunes movies (w/out converting or otherwise stripping the DRM)? Show me all those iTunes ready consoles, tv's and dvd players. Oh waaaait. There aren't any. I think Netflix is doing a hell of a lot more than most anyone else in this game when it comes to accessibility and unobtrusive DRM.
It all depends on what you're protecting against. Data loss from "accidental deletion or hardware failure" is a much more likely event for most people than a fire or flood. For those things an external drive is a perfectly reasonable, relatively cheap and effective way to backup data. Then again very few people I know actually bother to backup, they just cry to me after they lose everything. Far better to have that external drive storing your crap than to just skip backing up because it's "too much work"...
Besides, in the event of a fire or other catastrophe all i need to do is snatch my external drive from on top of my PC on my way out the door and years of pictures, documents, projects and anything else I'd freak out about losing is in my pocket and on its way to safety. let the PC burn, I know my stuff is recoverable. And yes, that's part of our home emergency plan, grab kids, let pets out, wallets, phones and external drive and run for your life. Now that I think about it I need to put together a new go bag. I see too many news stories this time of year where people have only the clothes on their back.
are you a republican by chance? The philosophy of "it didn't happen to me so it must not be happening" seems to be very common among repubs. I didn't lose MY house, so people aren't losing houses... I didn't lose MY job so job loss is a liberal lie...apologies if you are not republican...
on topic... it's sad that SOP for many industries these days is to ignore reality, then beg for public money when ignoring reality bites you in the ass.
"I agree that poaching endangered species is a terrible crime, but death penalty seems excessive unless you also want to apply it to the subhumans who jack deer up in Wisconsin."
the difference being while deer may be scarce where you are, they are nowhere close to endangered and in some places are right up there with rats as an overpopulated nuisance. You want more deer? Ship them in. You want more rhinos? Ship them...wait a sec...
not standing up for deer jackers, just pointing out that killing 1 of 30 million deer (source wikipedia) is a less serious matter than killing 1 of 4000 rhinos (source world wildlife fund). Do people go to SA for anything besides safari type vacations? Lose a few more species and watch tourism decline to the detriment of the entire country. Still not sure if it should be a capital offense, but it's serious.
hope this doesn't alter the taste of the creamy nougat.
Hey, can we stop complaining already? NASA and the rest of the space "industry" has had 50 years to make the geek dream of going into space possible for the (more or less) common man. Sub-orbital still counts as space, although it would seem it's not "enough" space for some.
NASA's manned program hasn't done much more than allow a select few to pedal circles around the planet since the end of Apollo. Sure, there were some amazing developments and innovations from that, but the act of getting to orbit? Who cares? You did that 50-ish years ago as well. The shuttle should never have gotten off the ground, and certainly should have been mothballed after Challenger. It was obvious by then that the program was vastly more expensive than expected anyway. All those satellites would have still gone up on conventional rockets, and much of the science could have been sent up in automated labs.
Imagine what 10 or 15 years of the manned spaceflight budget going into finding some other way into orbit might have produced. There have been proposals and ideas for decades, but with the shuttle eating up most of the budget, there was never the funding to really TRY. Sure it may have produced nothing at all (unlikely i think), but we'll never know.
Not trying to sound like a NASA hater, I love space and spaceflight. What I don't love is trillions of dollars spent to go in circles and make work for the astronaut corps.
"The problem with 3D as it currently stands is that I never forget that I'm watching a 3D movie. I never feel immersed in the effect, I always am aware of it and think "Ohhh, they did a 3D thing here." It feels more like a gimmick than a natural part of the experience."
well, be honest now, when sound and color came to movies, i'd be willing to bet plenty of people had the same experience. It's new, it's different, of course you will notice it. The more movies you see in 3d, the less you will be distracted by it. Unless they throw something at you.
Musicians that abuse them for decades and are still alive are rather more rare.