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Comment Original iPhone 2G (Score 5, Funny) 422

My iPhone 2G has survived almost three years of AT&T's spotty reception, their failure to offer a reasonably priced rate plan for people who don't talk much but need data service, their woeful customer service, and their lack of 3G coverage outside metropolitan areas. Other than that, it's been very enjoyable.

Comment how much damage can an iPhone take (Score 1) 422

The iPhone has a glass screen that is very prone to cracking. I imagine it's a case of form over function, since glass looks nicer than plastic. It's not so pretty if ever the phone falls on a hard surface flat on the screen. This means an iPhone won't survive the ninja powers of a 2-year old who managed to grab your phone when you least expected it, to use as a hand grenade...

Also, for some stupid reason the screen was designed in such a way that changing it means also replacing the digitizer (the touch pad - glued to it) so you end up paying quite a pretty penny for repairs (between 1/3 and 1/2 of the price of the phone!).

Comment Re:Timeline (Score 1) 578

No, they can't because it's an illusion. Your brain gets into a tight sensing/remembering loop for a short time, so it seems like you're recalling stuff that just happened, but it's the other way around. You're not used to that, so it's confusing and easily misinterpreted.

I thought it was because the brain was mixing up short-term and long-term memories, putting things you just experienced into the "long-term" area.

Comment Re:Timeline (Score 1) 578

I, too, have experienced highly accurate dreams about future events that I could not possibly have known about (much less predicted down to the day weeks in advance). Time is definitely *not* linear. Anyone who says otherwise is either narrow-minded or hasn't ventured out very far into the real world. Or maybe most people don't experience these things and we're just weird. Hard to say.

Comment Re:Timeline (Score 1) 578

You're thinking of time dilation as being related to your "brain clock" or the way your brain recognizes time. It isn't. Time itself is relative, and it works at a level below body chemistry. If you're traveling at near light speed, time will appear to pass normally to you (and to your cells, and to a digital clock that you're carrying, and to anything else with you), but in fact external observers will appear to age faster. To them, you're aging slowly and they're aging normally.

The key word is time. The progression of time itself changes, not the time it takes for biological processes to happen. One second is still one second, and the same things happen to you in one second as they would otherwise, it's just that your second isn't equal to the outside world's second.

Comment Re:Large sector size good? (Score 3, Informative) 165

IBM's GPFS is one, though it ain't free it does support Linux and Windows both mounting the same file system at the same time. They reckon the optimum block size for the file system is 1MB. I am not convinced of that myself, but always give my GPFS file systems 1MB block sizes.

Then there is XFS that for small files will put the data in with the metadata to save space. However unless you have millions of files forget about it. With modern drive sizes the loss of space is not important. If you have millions of files stop using the file system as a database.

Comment Google has no competition (Score 2, Interesting) 113

I run a small-medium sized web site that targets K-12 teachers. We started out small with very targeted ads, advertising on Google with a budget of $10/day and started making decent sales. We were doing so well that we decided to try Yahoo. We used the exact same ads and the exact same keywords as the ones for Google that were doing well. We put $100 in our Yahoo ads account to start with, and burned through the whole amount in 4 days without a single sale. Needless to say, we turned it off immediately and have never tried it again. Now we are making many more sales from our Google ads. I don't see how Yahoo's search marketing can be so inefficient and terrible. BTW, we also tried MSN/Live search and it's been active for about a year with a $20/day budget. The amount of money we give Microsoft every month is about $5. In other words, Microsoft search has absolutely no volume at all.

Comment Re:Fees (Score 3, Interesting) 525

The difference when buying a car you get to have a look at it, generally a drive around in it. You get to make your choice of satisfaction prior to making the purchase. So you in fact get BETTER than a money refund. If you don't like it, you don't buy it. If I had the choice of listening to an album before making a purchase, there would be a lot of music I wouldn't have bought over time.

Quoted For Truth.

Also I wanted to add, like you, I've wasted a lot of money on junk CDs or junk DVDs. I have tapes/discs laying around collecting dust that, if I had been able to hear them FIRST before buying, I never would have bought them. And of course taking them back to the store does no good, because there's no "satisfaction guaranteed or money back" warranty like virtually all other products have.

Now that the internet is fast enough to transfer this stuff, I throw away virtually no money. I can hear or watch the product first before I buy it. That's how it should be:

- Let the customer try a product before throwing away his/her money
-or-
- Don't let the customer try a product, but be able to return it if they don't like it (like a candybar or other food products)

Comment Re:Part of a general pattern (Score 3, Interesting) 276

More exact it was a vote of over 100.000 people in Switzerland about the fate of their nation which was 'threatened' by a total of 4 (you read it right, four) minarets. A mayor factor why these people voted for the ban is the christian party in the country... Exactly like the ban on violent games the ban on minarets was engineered by a few conservatives who use fear to get a lot of people to vote their way. In the case of minarets they even had propaganda-posters like this: http://warincontext.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/swiss-anti-minaret-campaign1.jpg

Maybe it's tyranny, but the majority is just cattle...

Comment this really saddens me (Score 3, Insightful) 461

I used to be a fan of my C64 games as a kid and I loved playing PC games for years. So much in fact I tried breaking into game development and ran the local IGDA chpater for some years. My heart is still with games and I think they are a wonderful extension to the artforms of literature, cinema and storytelling. When I see how the game dev industry treats its customers these days, I really get the feeling they are way beyond stretching their welcome. Games (especially console games) are so icredibly overpriced and lacking of creativity and intellectual depth that I wonder why gamers are still interested in buying/playing them. I haven't upgraded my gaming pc for almost 8 years now and I only have a Wii because my wife like the balance board games (and admittedly I love being her audience). The only games I occassionaly play are the really old ones, like Civ II/III Baldur's Gate stuff, the good old Sierra point and clicks (Larry, 2D King Quest) because of the humor and fun in these games. Also I really love firing up the C64 emulator for a quick round of classics. When will they stop squeezing customers for every penny and drop the incredible graphics/hardware performance race that has been polluting the game content for the past decade. I don't give a damn about 3D performnace or yet another FPS, come up with something new, interesting exciting. Something that doesn't insult my intelligence and challenges and entertains me in a more subtle way. Dear Douglas Adams I miss you, you were well on your way to solve this problem but you passed too soon. Oh god, is no one going to change this rotten game dev industry we're having? Perhaps I'm just an old fool blabbering about the lost good old days, but doesn't anyone agree that it's not supposed to be like this? *sigh*

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