Have you noticed that iPod pricing is suspiciously consistent across retailers?
The Trade Practices Act prohibits price coercion, doesn’t it?
How are Apple getting around this?
I suspect that there’s next to no margin on the iPods themselves, but the accessories are high margin. So there’s no room to discount, but the profit comes from the impulse upsell. But this theory doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me, unless Apple’s making their money on iTunes rather than the iPods.
A couple of weeks ago Josh posted about virtualising your overloaded, slow, not-rebuilt-for-years PC, and keeping it on standby within a new build in case you need anything on it.
How about the idea of keeping that new build clean — putting on only your most frequently used, essential applications, with everything else going onto a virtual PC?
For me, that would mean Office, Firefox, my usual web-building stuff (Photopaint, UltraEdit, Filezilla), Nero, and one or two others, such as perhaps Trillian. I’d draw a line under them, and anything else not worthy of a permanent spot in my Windows setup would be virtualised, possibly in various separate virtual PCs, setup for different roles: one for Visual Studio, one for trying out freebie apps from mags, a Linux setup for LAMP development, one for stupid software that insists on running as Administrator, etc, etc.
What to use for the virtual machines? There’s a few different options.
The freebie Virtual Server will only support Windows NT 4 and above, and only server OS’s, which to my mind would unnecessarily weigh down your virtual machines with more than they need. (Linux as a guest OS seems to be coming.)
Another option is the free VMWare Server, which will host a wider range of guest OSs.
The non-free Virtual PC will host just about any x86 operating system. If you don’t want to try the 45 day free trial, it’ll set you back A$215 or so, or it’s available via MSDN Universal.
A problem would be performance, of course. It’s not like emulating a 2Mhz 6502 under BeebEm. But then, hopefully it’s not as bad as what I’ve seen on my brother-in-law’s PowerPC Mac trying to run x86 AutoCad in Windows 2000.
Nonetheless games and other performance-intensive apps may not perform well under virtualisation, especially if they require particular hardware. And yet they would benefit the most, as they often have installers that wreak havoc on Windows setups, chucking weird-arse DLLs everywhere. As the “Virtual PC Guy” is fond of telling us, a lot of the older games run okay, but newer ones might be a problem.
Maybe the only solution there is to put them on a completely separate computer, or move up to Intel’s latest chips which have better support for virtualisation.
Or give the whole thing up and resign yourself to a slow computer with rebuilds every year or two.
I think I’ll try Win98 with a couple of recent-ish games (say, Midtown Madness 1 and 2) and see how it goes.
Them iPods are funky devices, “designed in California”, so the box says. And, as revealed by the UK’s Mail On Sunday, built in factories in China in somewhat squalid conditions. One factory has 15-hour workdays for US$50 per month. Another is slightly better: 12-hour days for US$100 per month (but about half of that is paid back for housing and food).
Mind you, I suspect this isn’t unusual in the consumer electronics business. Just about nothing’s made in Japan or the USA or other high-cost (read: decent wage) countries.
The only thing I can think of that I’ve got is a Loewe TV, made in Germany.
Update Monday: Apple says: “”Apple is committed to ensuring that working conditions in our supply chain are safe, workers are treated with respect and dignity, and manufacturing processes are environmentally responsible” and is investigating the claims.
Geoff has built a Homemade Air Conditioner – by running ice water (made from ice-cubes, and bottles of water he’s frozen in his freezer) through copper tubing at the back of a stand fan – fluid motion provided via capillary action.
Once the water runs out, the house has cooled off enough that the fan alone provides sufficient cooling.
That would be evaporative cooling, Geoff.
Geoff also suggests adding salt to your mix, because
this will drop the freezing point of the water and increase the cooling effect of the fan.
Uh, no. That would be lowering the freezing point of the water. It doesn’t lower the temperature of the water, it means that it takes more energy to freeze the water in the first place. But you’re already dumping frozen water into your water bucket, so you’re too late.
Geoff apparently had to “poke a little hole” through his flywire for the exhaust of his water tube, but draws the line at digging up his landlord’s garden to make a geothermal cooling system. I’m glad for his landlord, but what’s the problem with digging up a backyard only to cover it up again? A hole in your flywire is there for good!
Geoff goes on to suggest that if you hang a car radiator off your fan – in a bid to increase the efficiency of the system – you might want to check it can handle the weight.
Nice work Geoff.
Full, step-by-step instructions (with pcitures) on building your own cheap and easy Digital Picture Frame. Answering an unasked question on the selection of componentry, the author says:
Why a toggle switch? Because toggle switches rule, that’s why. We don’t want no puny sliding power switches. Oh no, this power switch is 25 percent functional, 75 percent hardcore awesome.
But why do this? You can buy one for a few hundred bucks. I guess it’s just the whole DIY thing, isn’t it? I guess you’re also recycling unloved tech into totally hardcore awesome tech.
The price of a minimally speced Windows box keeps going down. So the portion of the price that is the OS keeps going up. I predict that eventually Microsoft will just give you a computer with each of copy of Windows. Oh, they already do that: it’s called the XBox!
I use Microsoft products every day, and indeed make my living off them. Doesn’t stop me slagging-off Bill Gates regularly of course, though Danny Katz would like us to leave him alone.
One of my pet hates has been the dumping of support for legacy hardware. It’s not just a Microsoft issue of course; the vendors are equally to blame (often even more-so). My own experience was that an old Diamond Viper V550 graphics card I have in one of my machines would do astounding 3D things when DirectX 7 was the latest version, but somewhere between 7 and 9, the 3D stuff went out the window. (Knoppix Linux didn’t like it, either.)
I’d long given-up on this particular issue, hoping to find the time at some stage to get super-brave and attempt to downgrade DirectX, which is theoretically possible, but certainly not for the faint-hearted.
Then the other day on a whim I decided to go searching for updated drivers for the card. Turns out NVidia (who bought Diamond) have put some new ones out. Well, newish. Okay, three years ago. Did I not find this the last time I looked, or was it really longer ago that I last tried?
Downloaded, installed. They work. Now my kids can play Midtown Madness 2 with fast graphics again.
I’m even pondering upgrading that ol’ Win2K to XP, now that you can get an Academic XP Pro for under $100. 512Mb RAM and a 1.something Ghz processor, so hopefully it should be able to hack it. Would avoid the kids arguing over who gets to use Windows MovieMaker. Must check the driver situation out first, though. That old dodgy TV capture card will be the tricky one…
Some Americans hate IVR systems. Oh, that’s Interactive voice response.
Some kid has hooked up what he calls MIDAS: Multifunction In-Dorm Automation System, which seems to be something to turn on a laser light show at the press of a button. It’s also got CCTV monitoring, touchscreens, web-control and a smoke machine.
You know what? I don’t think anyone would want any of these features in a home automation system, perhaps save the CCTV.
It’s been long known that outdated computer equipment could have direct consequences for productivity, by slowing the workers down to the speed of their machinery. But a new survey concludes that it also has effects on morale in offices, causing not just unhappiness, but also more issues with things like eye fatigue, headaches and RSI.
(Hey boss, can I have a new PC?)
Check it out! The US military is trying to blow stuff up with lasers – project starfire, I think it’s called. They’re trying to use atmospheric distortion to focus a wide laser onto a teeny-tiny satellite. Of all the stupid ideas… oh well, at least all they’re doing is spending buckets of money.
Some people responded to the question, What is on your USB memory stick?
Best response: IF_FOUND_RETURN_TO.txt or REWARD_IF_FOUND.txt
Interesting: heavily encrypted financial data / keys
Interesting: run anywhere Firefox
My memory stick is also my MP3 player, so it’s mainly songs. Plus an old version of a website I was putting together, plus some miscellaneous crap like resume/CV. I think I’ll put the reward thingy on it.
So, what have you got on your memory stick?