They are known for pushing their in-house apps above Google's or the handset manufacturer's. They also had that deal with Microsoft that made Bing the default search engine on all their phones ("Droid" branded ones excluded, the rest of their Android phones did have it).

Around here, the private water company has what is called a "minimum bill" if you don't exceed a usage threshold. That takes care of the fixed costs. FWIW, the local water company claims that 1 US gallon (3.79L) of water costs less than one US cent at current utility rates.

Apple's requirements basically force you to be a dealer. Years ago, a computer store I worked at looked into becoming a AASP and the requirements were ridiculous compared to other brands. Running the numbers, it was actually cheaper to buy the parts through a 3rd party than going through the hassle of playing Apple's game. How many of those iDevice repair places are actually AASPs?

Yet there are plenty of 7+ year old PCs that can run Chrome just fine still....

All that work on Hackintoshes over the years came in handy. Wonder if they ever thought it would be used on actual Macs?

Remember the Quantum Bigfoot? It was big, but it was cheaper than the competition since it was 5.25" form factor. They turned out to be pretty reliable too.

Anyone who is proficient in programming shouldn't have a problem picking up a book (or website) and learning a new langauge, API, etc. in a weekend or two.

LOGO is a dialect of LISP, something that is (was?) widely used.

Postscript itself can be fun and interesting. Many folks have taken it well beyond a page description language. Don Lancaster has been using it as a general purpose programming language for years: http://www.tinaja.com/post01.s...

How about a Postscript web server? http://www.pugo.org:8080/

For Windows, try WinDV. It dumps the DV stream direct to an AVI file. Most DV capture problems in Windows can be tied to Firewire drivers, particularly in Windows 7. Some machines require the "legacy" IEEE-1394 drivers installed.

Like anything else, people thought they could make a quick buck doing what seems to be an easy process. Most of these places just hooked up a cheapo VCR to a run of the mill DVD recorder and hit record. The results were awful, over compressed, and filled with video dropouts. To do it right requires time and money, something that isn't going to happen at $10 a tape. Doing it yourself properly requires significant investment in hardware and time to get the capture setup "just right". Even the DIYers (like myself) will tell you that its cheaper to send them out to a qualified transfer service. In my case, I didn't have much of a choice since a few of my tapes were in Betamax format, something many transfer places don't handle.

This question came up on Ask Slashdot a few months ago. I'll repeat the list here

Recommended VCRs for transfer: http://www.digitalfaq.com/foru... Budget: $200-300
Note: They are a a transfer service, they have first hand experience with these decks. You'll see that everyone else recommends the same decks too.
Recommended capture cards: http://www.digitalfaq.com/foru... Budget: $25-50
AGP ATI All-in-Wonder cards can be had for about $30-40 with the required dongles and breakout boxes on ebay. Look for a decent Prescott P4 with an AGP slot at the thrift store or scrapper for your capture box. The cards require Windows XP as there is no official support in Vista/7. If you want to capture on your Windows 7 rig, try and find the ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB. It has working drivers, and captures clean video with no AGC issues.
External TBC: http://www.digitalfaq.com/foru... $150-200
Used to keep capture cards happy. Many capture devices are sensitive to unstable video signals found on VHS tapes and either completely drop frames, or falsely flag the video as having Macrovision.

You can optionally pick up things like a proc-amp ($150-200 for a decent one) for correcting video levels. For software, capture with VirtualDub. For compressing video to MPEG-2, one of the better commercial codecs is MainConcept, although most go with TMPGEnc or open source codecs (HC-Enc, etc.). For DVD mastering, the old ULead DVD Workshop 2.0 does a great job.

Along with Lagarith and to a lesser extent, UT Video. All of them are open source (so you can implement them on the platform of your choice in the future), lossless, and support 4:2:2 chroma subsampling.

If your source tapes do not require special handling (water damage, mold, etc), these guys can handle it and the prices are reasonable: http://www.digitalfaq.com/serv...

They'll output to whatever format you specify, including the above codecs. Any decent place should. If the places you looked at are limited to DV, that is a sure sign they are using analog to firewire bridges. With HuffYUV, you can fit one hour of video in roughly 25GB. In the age of TB sized hard drives, that is nothing. So space shouldn't be an excuse, particularly if the customer sends in a blank external HD for the final product.

While in college, I saw a frighting amount of CS majors that didn't know how to program. Those folks later graduated with a degree.

Most smartphones have a pretty high unsubsidized price tag. If you have a subsidized phone under contract, the insurance is a pretty good deal if your phone goes for a swim.

I don't think he realizes that he is dealing with the insurance carrier, and not the cell phone provider. The store stock he saw and the insurance carrier's stock are two separate inventories owned by separate entities. If I have to make a claim on accidental damage on my phone, I deal strictly with the insurance provider (Asurion). My provider could care less, all they did was offer the policy and handle the premium deduction on the monthly bill.