Note that the following is not just a rant; it's a rant with a good ending. I've tried to simplify it but it's still quite rambling. Read at your own risk, or skip down to the bottom to learn the outcome before you spend time reading.
You, good person, are lucky. My Sprint Galaxy S hasn't worked on 4G since the day I bought it. Though their website showed my area as with the highest quality of 4G the reality is that I've never found access (that exists more than a few seconds) anywhere in Riverside California at all.
When I went back to the Sprint store to return it, they told me the area was still building out. When I found out that ClearWire had stopped building I waited until I owed Sprint hundreds of dollars (I'm one of their premium (or whatever they call it customers [the plan they just sent me a letter on telling me they were dropping it] I don't get shut off right away when I'm very late). Then I went back to the Sprint store, told them they could either take the phone back and revert my account to exactly what it was (I still had the old phone), or lose my business in a very public way (I said I'd create a Youtube video of me destroying the phone because it was worthless) and then I'd leave for MetroPCS. I specifically said that if I wanted fsck'd up service (replace one letter for the word I used) I might as well pay only $40 a month. I told them that I knew they neither try to collect disputed balances on early disconnects, nor do they attempt unapproved charges on card numbers they have, nor do they report unpaid balances to credit reporting agencies (I had it on good authority).
One person there gave me a phone number of someone who could solve my problem.
I went home fully believing it was more BS and that I'd deal with their crap again, or just leave
I called the number, got a guy who listened patiently when I told him I was leaving and why. I added that I'd never again wade through their horrid phone menus; that they'd only know I'd left when someone working for them saw the Youtube video, or I started sending back their mail as refused, and turned off the email address I'd created just for them when I opened the account. I explained that if he couldn't make me an offer I couldn't refuse I'd simply hang up in the middle of the conversation, and walk down the street to the MetroPCS store. I told him (you decide if I was wholly truthful) that I didn't need any of the features of the phone, but I wanted them. And if I couldn't have them then there was no reason I couldn't just buy the cheapest phone on an unlimited plan, and a competitor to their MiFi device, from a company offering me service as I needed it with no contract.
Then I gave him a target. I told him he had to lower my bill to no more than $100/month for the same services I had now. And I gave him five minutes or I'd hang up without warning.
He didn't come up with the $100 limit unless I'd turn off the MiFi, but he said I could turn it off without early penalty, and that he'd give me information on an unadvertised plan that lets you turn it on when you need it and off when you don't. He gave me an entire month free, and he gave me a 20% discount for the life of my stay with Sprint.
I told him i'd wait until I received a bill showing the changes and credit, and until then I'd only pay $100/month (it sometimes takes months for the Sprint bills to catch up to promises, if ever). I told him that if I was threatened with disconnection in the meantime I'd ignore the notices, and if I actually was disconnected I'd walk over to the MetroPCS store. I hung up without waiting for his reply.
And it all came to pass. Really
I've been a Sprint company since about 1978 (when I became a vendor to them as well, doing the typesetting for those little cards you could carry in your wallet to use Sprint dial-around long distance service, and since then I've had Sprint long distance, Sprint local, and Sprint PCS. Would I have left that day. Absolutely. If they hadn't done something.
But they did. Maybe they will for you too, if you act tough, hang tough, and stay tough.
I actually did this back in the '60s (yeah, I'm old). Friends of mine did it too.
The most infamous one I remember (neither mine nor my friend's) was called "this is the letter that will change your life". That's what was printed on the outside of the envelope. It told you how to send almost exactly the same letter. The product was simple one-page information sheets you got the rights to reprint. You got to sell them to others to send out to people who ordered from their mailings. The idea was that since you were actually selling something it wasn't and endless chain mailing, and wouldn't get you in trouble. If I recall correctly the guy who started it eventually signed a consent agreement with the USPO rather than risk prosecution, but only after he'd made a few million dollars.
While trying to reserch this reply I discovered there really is one thing that Google has no record of, but remember this was the 60s.
I've got a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S phone, and when I try to get it, the download system tells me it's not compatible. So maybe it's 4.5 phones (only some Galaxy S phones).
Whatever you do, don't try Kubuntu. I'm running 10.04 (LTS), and after an entire year of bug-fixes and security fixes, I still need to shut down akonadi every time I start the system before Kontact almost works. But then I have to restart Kontact every hour or so if I want the Contacts to work. And when finding emails I can't get the find results sorted into date order no matter what I try. Nor does locate fom the command line work, nor the automatic search facility in Dolphin.. Searching within thousands of files is impossible, though touted as a feature, The find command from the command line works.
I'm looking into mint. So far, the Gnome version of ubuntu works well in live CD tests, even with Kontact. Thinking seriously about switching.
I'm having a bit of a problem with this quote of John Dvorak, from the article (this is about NorthStar BASIC):
you got their OS and their BASIC, which by all accounts was superiror to Microsoft BASIC since it did BCD math which engineers needed.
Engineers actually it wasn't the engineers who needed the BCD math; engineers understood and generally preferred floating point math. It was accountants who needed BCD math, because it didn't have rounding errors.
CBasic, from the same people who sold CP/M, used BCD math as well.
The TRS-80 Model III had only 48k when introduced in '81, according to oldcomputers.net. It was an all-in-one, as opposed to the TRS-80 Model I, introduced in 1977, which was a keyboard/processor unit. With an expansion interface, it went all the way to 48k. They only ran TRS-DOS and various TRS-DOS workalikes.
The Lobo Max-80, introduced a year later, went all the way to 128k, which was a lot in those days. Physically it was a lot like the TRS-80 Model 1, but didn't need an expansion interface.It ran either L-DOS, in which case it looked a lot like a TRS-80 Model I, but with a lot more power, and also CP/M 2.x. When CPM 3 came out for The Max 80 it could bank switch 4 32K banks, which made it the best implementation of CPM 3 (also known as CPM Plus) according to Gary Kildall.
But from his experience he's right. You get a gold-plated $200 HDMI cable, he gets a raise/commission/bonus/whatever, and after a few of these he can afford one of those high end 102" sets with incredible contrast, etc., and HE gets a much better picture. So if he gets a better picture, why shouldn't you?
Microsoft is just going to have to bloody well compete in the modern market place
They can do that. They did it once before, when Bill Gates realized the Internet was leaving them behind. It will be harder for them to do it again, because they no longer have a visionary (if only a commercial visionary) in charge of the company, but they can do it.
And oh, just to make myself clear, out of the ten PCs in my home, only one, an old laptop, runs Windows, and that's only so I can see how viewers on the Windows platform will experience our websites.
I'm don't drink Windows koolade; I simply look at what's happening in the world.
Only if you're willing to not accept email that doesn't have the stamp, and if spammers don't figure out how to forge the stamp.
Me? I'm not willing to only accet mail from someone who's bought a stamp, and I'm certainly not willing to believe spammers won't figure out how to forge the stamp.
What you can do, if you're near a Frys, is buy an OEM Microsoft package, license and CD, without buying any hardware.
Really.
I don't remember the price, and I'm about 35 miles away from the nearest Frys, so I'm not driving by to look, but I remember from my last visit; they had the availability (and pricing) posted, and I asked their sales guy if I had to buy a drive or motherboard to qualify; he said that I didn't, that I could buy it alone.
Anyone in the world can register a domain name with any business name in the co.uk 2nd level tld; there's no advance vetting.
What's more telling is that asus.co.uk is registered at 1and1; asus.com is registered at Network Solutions.
That said: asus.co.uk was registered on 23-May-1997, though by a "UK Individual" rather than a company.
My first thought was some scamster created a site where everything redirects to asus.com except the one page he wants everyone to find to give his scam site some credibility...
If Joe Blow visits the Computer Fair (running this weekend) in Los Angeles, he knows. Several different brands of questionable legality are sold on the shelves by a multiplicity of vendors.
I remember a few years ago when the big software company with the initials M$ (and a few others) had the FBI raid the same venue a few times. I'm surprised the mafiaa still haven't tried to enlist the FBI in using that tactic now. Or perhaps they no longer get involved in civil matters?
Years ago I made the first Light Pen for the then popular TRS-80. We were selling them for $19.95. They had about $2.50 worth of parts (including the Bic Click pens we bought as advertising specialty pens, imprinted with our trademark, less the value of the refills we took out and sold separately) and we paid a $2.00 royalty to the inventor on each one we sold, paid about a quarter for the cassette tapes holding the software, and paid another quarter to the sheltered workshop which used handicapped labor to assemble them. We invested our own money in the software; gave away a minimal package and sold other software separately.
One day a prospect called to ask us why he should pay $19.95 for a light pen that he could duplicate himself for about $15.00.
I resisted the urge to laugh. But I didn't resist much else. I explained to him that the best reason to buy it for $19.95 was that we were soon going to raise the price to $24.95 (and we eventually did). I explained to him that we included software; he didn't seem to care; my guess was that he knew someone who had the pen, and would just take the software.
Knowing I wasn't going to get the sale, but wanting to at least ruin the guy's day, I explained to him that if we had to pay $15 to make the pens we'd be selling them for $75, and in fact our cost was only about $5.00. As I recall, he didn't believe me, and hung up. I don't think he ever bought it, and that was fine with us.
Years ago I was in the shmata (clothing) business in Los Angeles. We made jeans but the markup is similar across the board: it's called twice keystone + 10 and it means the markup is 100%, then 10%, and then another 100% and then another 10%.
In other words, let's take a pair of jeans that cost us $9 to make. 100% of that is another $9, so it's now at $18. 10% of that is $1.80; it's now $19.80.
Now add another 100% of that; it's now $39.60. And then another 10% of that ($3.96) makes it $43.56.
Round it up a bit, and that's how a $9 pair of jeans ends up selling for $45.00.
And why there's still significant profit after the retailer marks it down 50% (to $22.50) in an end-of-the-season clearance.
Slashdot Mirror
Sprint never built out WiMAX; that was ClearWire. Partially owned by Sprint.
ClearWire has stopped building out WiMAX and is moving towards LTE themselves.
Either return your phone today while you still can, or read my previous post made earlier today on how to deal with Sprint.
Note that the following is not just a rant; it's a rant with a good ending. I've tried to simplify it but it's still quite rambling. Read at your own risk, or skip down to the bottom to learn the outcome before you spend time reading.
You, good person, are lucky. My Sprint Galaxy S hasn't worked on 4G since the day I bought it. Though their website showed my area as with the highest quality of 4G the reality is that I've never found access (that exists more than a few seconds) anywhere in Riverside California at all.
When I went back to the Sprint store to return it, they told me the area was still building out. When I found out that ClearWire had stopped building I waited until I owed Sprint hundreds of dollars (I'm one of their premium (or whatever they call it customers [the plan they just sent me a letter on telling me they were dropping it] I don't get shut off right away when I'm very late). Then I went back to the Sprint store, told them they could either take the phone back and revert my account to exactly what it was (I still had the old phone), or lose my business in a very public way (I said I'd create a Youtube video of me destroying the phone because it was worthless) and then I'd leave for MetroPCS. I specifically said that if I wanted fsck'd up service (replace one letter for the word I used) I might as well pay only $40 a month. I told them that I knew they neither try to collect disputed balances on early disconnects, nor do they attempt unapproved charges on card numbers they have, nor do they report unpaid balances to credit reporting agencies (I had it on good authority).
One person there gave me a phone number of someone who could solve my problem.
I went home fully believing it was more BS and that I'd deal with their crap again, or just leave
I called the number, got a guy who listened patiently when I told him I was leaving and why. I added that I'd never again wade through their horrid phone menus; that they'd only know I'd left when someone working for them saw the Youtube video, or I started sending back their mail as refused, and turned off the email address I'd created just for them when I opened the account. I explained that if he couldn't make me an offer I couldn't refuse I'd simply hang up in the middle of the conversation, and walk down the street to the MetroPCS store. I told him (you decide if I was wholly truthful) that I didn't need any of the features of the phone, but I wanted them. And if I couldn't have them then there was no reason I couldn't just buy the cheapest phone on an unlimited plan, and a competitor to their MiFi device, from a company offering me service as I needed it with no contract.
Then I gave him a target. I told him he had to lower my bill to no more than $100/month for the same services I had now. And I gave him five minutes or I'd hang up without warning.
He didn't come up with the $100 limit unless I'd turn off the MiFi, but he said I could turn it off without early penalty, and that he'd give me information on an unadvertised plan that lets you turn it on when you need it and off when you don't. He gave me an entire month free, and he gave me a 20% discount for the life of my stay with Sprint.
I told him i'd wait until I received a bill showing the changes and credit, and until then I'd only pay $100/month (it sometimes takes months for the Sprint bills to catch up to promises, if ever). I told him that if I was threatened with disconnection in the meantime I'd ignore the notices, and if I actually was disconnected I'd walk over to the MetroPCS store. I hung up without waiting for his reply.
And it all came to pass. Really
I've been a Sprint company since about 1978 (when I became a vendor to them as well, doing the typesetting for those little cards you could carry in your wallet to use Sprint dial-around long distance service, and since then I've had Sprint long distance, Sprint local, and Sprint PCS. Would I have left that day. Absolutely. If they hadn't done something.
But they did. Maybe they will for you too, if you act tough, hang tough, and stay tough.
I actually did this back in the '60s (yeah, I'm old). Friends of mine did it too.
The most infamous one I remember (neither mine nor my friend's) was called "this is the letter that will change your life". That's what was printed on the outside of the envelope. It told you how to send almost exactly the same letter. The product was simple one-page information sheets you got the rights to reprint. You got to sell them to others to send out to people who ordered from their mailings. The idea was that since you were actually selling something it wasn't and endless chain mailing, and wouldn't get you in trouble. If I recall correctly the guy who started it eventually signed a consent agreement with the USPO rather than risk prosecution, but only after he'd made a few million dollars.
While trying to reserch this reply I discovered there really is one thing that Google has no record of, but remember this was the 60s.
I've got a Sprint Samsung Galaxy S phone, and when I try to get it, the download system tells me it's not compatible. So maybe it's 4.5 phones (only some Galaxy S phones).
Whatever you do, don't try Kubuntu. I'm running 10.04 (LTS), and after an entire year of bug-fixes and security fixes, I still need to shut down akonadi every time I start the system before Kontact almost works. But then I have to restart Kontact every hour or so if I want the Contacts to work. And when finding emails I can't get the find results sorted into date order no matter what I try. Nor does locate fom the command line work, nor the automatic search facility in Dolphin.. Searching within thousands of files is impossible, though touted as a feature, The find command from the command line works. I'm looking into mint. So far, the Gnome version of ubuntu works well in live CD tests, even with Kontact. Thinking seriously about switching.
I'm having a bit of a problem with this quote of John Dvorak, from the article (this is about NorthStar BASIC):
you got their OS and their BASIC, which by all accounts was superiror to Microsoft BASIC since it did BCD math which engineers needed.
Engineers actually it wasn't the engineers who needed the BCD math; engineers understood and generally preferred floating point math. It was accountants who needed BCD math, because it didn't have rounding errors.
CBasic, from the same people who sold CP/M, used BCD math as well.
The TRS-80 Model III had only 48k when introduced in '81, according to oldcomputers.net. It was an all-in-one, as opposed to the TRS-80 Model I, introduced in 1977, which was a keyboard/processor unit. With an expansion interface, it went all the way to 48k. They only ran TRS-DOS and various TRS-DOS workalikes.
The Lobo Max-80, introduced a year later, went all the way to 128k, which was a lot in those days. Physically it was a lot like the TRS-80 Model 1, but didn't need an expansion interface.It ran either L-DOS, in which case it looked a lot like a TRS-80 Model I, but with a lot more power, and also CP/M 2.x. When CPM 3 came out for The Max 80 it could bank switch 4 32K banks, which made it the best implementation of CPM 3 (also known as CPM Plus) according to Gary Kildall.
So as long as I don't allow any black/white/red/green people into my restaurant, it's okay for me to discriminate?
But from his experience he's right. You get a gold-plated $200 HDMI cable, he gets a raise/commission/bonus/whatever, and after a few of these he can afford one of those high end 102" sets with incredible contrast, etc., and HE gets a much better picture. So if he gets a better picture, why shouldn't you?
Microsoft is just going to have to bloody well compete in the modern market place
They can do that. They did it once before, when Bill Gates realized the Internet was leaving them behind. It will be harder for them to do it again, because they no longer have a visionary (if only a commercial visionary) in charge of the company, but they can do it.
And oh, just to make myself clear, out of the ten PCs in my home, only one, an old laptop, runs Windows, and that's only so I can see how viewers on the Windows platform will experience our websites.
I'm don't drink Windows koolade; I simply look at what's happening in the world.
input your city and state.
Then, at that next page, input your ZIP code.
Save your typing and your clicks... at that first page, where you're asked for city and state, just enter your zipcode. It works!
Why Chicagoans haven't burned City Hall to the ground is beyond me.
Probably because Oprah uses a limo.
it sounds like a good idea to me
Only if you're willing to not accept email that doesn't have the stamp, and if spammers don't figure out how to forge the stamp.
Me? I'm not willing to only accet mail from someone who's bought a stamp, and I'm certainly not willing to believe spammers won't figure out how to forge the stamp.
Any ISP with under 10,000 clients can ignore this, as well small companies, universities, and libraries...
1. Move to Germany.
2. Start ISP
3. Advertise you don't censor
4. When you reach 9,999 clients close your business to new clients, start a new ISP, and loop back to step 2.
When you care to, exit loop and retire with all your money. :)
Maybe, maybe not.
What you can do, if you're near a Frys, is buy an OEM Microsoft package, license and CD, without buying any hardware.
Really.
I don't remember the price, and I'm about 35 miles away from the nearest Frys, so I'm not driving by to look, but I remember from my last visit; they had the availability (and pricing) posted, and I asked their sales guy if I had to buy a drive or motherboard to qualify; he said that I didn't, that I could buy it alone.
Agreed, it is a shame, the null terminated came in C very late in game
C doesn't implement strings. All implementations of C that I know of implement libraries that make it possible to use strings in C.
But there's nothing to stop you from linking to your own library.
Anyone in the world can register a domain name with any business name in the co.uk 2nd level tld; there's no advance vetting.
What's more telling is that asus.co.uk is registered at 1and1; asus.com is registered at Network Solutions.
That said: asus.co.uk was registered on 23-May-1997, though by a "UK Individual" rather than a company.
My first thought was some scamster created a site where everything redirects to asus.com except the one page he wants everyone to find to give his scam site some credibility...
But the domain was created over ten years ago.
Interesting.
By the way, my very first hard drive upgrade was on a Mac SE. 30MB. Got it for US$300. It was a hell of a bargain at the time!
My first hard drive was 5MB for a TRS-80 model 3; it cost me about the same.
It appears that not only was your disk bigger than mine, but you had more drive as well.
Maybe that's why I keep getting all that enlargement spam
You could put over 200 movies on a 1TB hard drive, currently selling in this neck of the woods for well under us$100.
Does that change your model a bit?
If Joe Blow visits the Computer Fair (running this weekend) in Los Angeles, he knows. Several different brands of questionable legality are sold on the shelves by a multiplicity of vendors.
I remember a few years ago when the big software company with the initials M$ (and a few others) had the FBI raid the same venue a few times. I'm surprised the mafiaa still haven't tried to enlist the FBI in using that tactic now. Or perhaps they no longer get involved in civil matters?
My father was in the restaurant business. The markup was then, and still is today, on average between 400% and 500%. Really.
Years ago I made the first Light Pen for the then popular TRS-80. We were selling them for $19.95. They had about $2.50 worth of parts (including the Bic Click pens we bought as advertising specialty pens, imprinted with our trademark, less the value of the refills we took out and sold separately) and we paid a $2.00 royalty to the inventor on each one we sold, paid about a quarter for the cassette tapes holding the software, and paid another quarter to the sheltered workshop which used handicapped labor to assemble them. We invested our own money in the software; gave away a minimal package and sold other software separately.
One day a prospect called to ask us why he should pay $19.95 for a light pen that he could duplicate himself for about $15.00.
I resisted the urge to laugh. But I didn't resist much else. I explained to him that the best reason to buy it for $19.95 was that we were soon going to raise the price to $24.95 (and we eventually did). I explained to him that we included software; he didn't seem to care; my guess was that he knew someone who had the pen, and would just take the software.
Knowing I wasn't going to get the sale, but wanting to at least ruin the guy's day, I explained to him that if we had to pay $15 to make the pens we'd be selling them for $75, and in fact our cost was only about $5.00. As I recall, he didn't believe me, and hung up. I don't think he ever bought it, and that was fine with us.
Years ago I was in the shmata (clothing) business in Los Angeles. We made jeans but the markup is similar across the board: it's called twice keystone + 10 and it means the markup is 100%, then 10%, and then another 100% and then another 10%.
In other words, let's take a pair of jeans that cost us $9 to make. 100% of that is another $9, so it's now at $18. 10% of that is $1.80; it's now $19.80.
Now add another 100% of that; it's now $39.60. And then another 10% of that ($3.96) makes it $43.56.
Round it up a bit, and that's how a $9 pair of jeans ends up selling for $45.00.
And why there's still significant profit after the retailer marks it down 50% (to $22.50) in an end-of-the-season clearance.
So now that you know, what next? Become a nudist?
This morning I saw this crawler at the bottom of an ABC telecast:
Doctors say Hawking will completely recover.
It reminded me of the following:
Patient: Will I be able to play the piano after the surgery?
Surgeon: Absolutely!
Patient: That's great. I never could before.
Then fork it.
Notice that I said fork, which is not exactly what I mean.