Off topic, but I must say, those PSC Photosmart 2510 printers are really cool. I don't own a printer myself, but I have setup many of those for clients. The wireless one takes a little fiddling with to get used to, but it works really well, and supports all the latest wireless technologies for authentication, including RADIUS and RADIUS-PSK. The installer is really good, very streamlined. I can't say the same for their cheap $50 printers though, as their installers are still just a string of installshield wizards.
I had this same problem, and I got the same speil, that their software had crashed. I told the man this is why I shouldn't be treated like a criminal when I purchase software and that I would need an activation code immediately. He told me their systems would be back up and running in about an hour, to which I told him I would happily wait with him, on the line (800'$ are great for this sort of bargaining), until the systems came back up.
He tried to keep telling me he couldn't wait with me, so I asked for a supervisor who would, and was escalated. I told the super that I was none too pleased with all this having to phone someone to use software I had just gone out and paid good money for, after some arguing, and mentioning I could have probably downloading some illegal software activation generator off the internet by now, he just told me a activation code, and I went on my merry way.
15 minutes later the scan completes, 5 minutes and a reboot to get rid of it, plus possibly another scan mid-boot to get rid of running software. Great, 30 minutes of my life gone. Google ad-bar disappears instantly and without (much) in the way of questions.
Plus, shouldn't you not have to wonder if an application is really gone? Is some timebomb app getting run that AdAware/SpyBot doesn't yet know about waiting to run and reinstall all the crap? I trust google, I also don't run IE. Their popup blocker could use some work, but works well for what it is, Mozilla could go for a way to "allow last popup" like google does.
Everquest has done something many games have tried in the past (and present) and failed at, keeping coin valuable. A platinum in everquest is still valuable to the average player. There are plenty of people with hundreds of thousands (even millions) of platinum in the bank, but it's still worth something to normal players. Most high end gear isn't tradeable, but plenty is, and it is traded for cash (as a general rule).
There is still a very large distinction between things which go for 100-300k, and that which sells for 1p. Only very rare or hard to get items cost that much, and nothing is too out of range. Think of it like buying a car, you can get junkers for a few hundred dollars, or a bently for a few hundred thousand dollars. The math still adds up to try and earn money in game.
Have you seen the lag on a windows machine going over a WAN for file services? Let alone having to FAX all those packets to and from our other location. I'll risk total compromise, thanks.
Unless the system (as previous posters suggested) throws UNKNOWN for any scan where it doesn't know 100% that it worked. FOUND-ALLOW, FOUND-DENY, and NOT-FOUND, and BAD-SCAN would all be valid states of the scanner. You sit there until the system gets a good scan of your iris or you go home. Americans travelling abroad? Make sure, before you leave your country, that the iris scanner can scan your eyes. Travelling abroad is a big risk, you get shots before you visit some countries, make sure you get your eyes and fingers looked at too.
Buy music at.99 cents, then when it goes up to a $1, stop. Cold. Use the feedback form on the iTMS and let them know you no longer feel the value from the 26 cent price increase or whatever. Encourage your friends to do the same. To any sane company (pretend...) this would send the message that the prices have gone above the value, and people aren't willing to pay it. Of course to the RIAA it means people have just gone back to file trading or whatnot, and this whole online music thing doesn't work.
I think this kinda goes along the lines of druggies who can still get fixed up at a county hospital. You almost killed yourself doing speed, but they will still try and fix you up. Of course the police are notified, if they can get any ID out of you before you run out the front door.
You fuck yourself up doing illegal things? Back of the line at the emergency room. You download a security patch using a pirated version of windows? Get the "special version", which fixes it via disabling your tcp stack or something. Call Microsoft with a credit card number in hand to reactivate.
I imagine these could also be used to do things like counteract minor problems casual runners get in to, minor off balances causing a stutter in the jog not a fall to the ground. Or maybe there is some math in there to help prevent ankle/knee injuries from bad angles. I'm sure theres a "real world" use for an extra $50 in electronics and weight.
I do believe the difference here is the fact that he (and I) sign up for catalogs of things I might be interested in. My mom get things from LL Bean and some home gardening stuff, I get crutchfield, and one or two others. These don't spam, "SC Magazine" spam, and then send me a card saying if I don't pay up my subscription will expire! Oh no!
I mean, do you hate it when your radio is interupted by commercials? Buy XM. Do you hate it when your favorite free website has a few ads? Pay a subscription.
Now, spam, and companies which freely sign me up for their mailings (You opted in by buying BS) do annoy the hell out of me. I've called an said "If I cared for your cataloug I would request it specifically, obviously I found out about you somehow, and it will save you the $1 to mail it to me". Month later buying from the same person who promised to get me off the list and tell someone about it had a checkbox "include catalog?". I will do business with them again.
The problem is international bandwidth. Sending even the single file over to servers on other continents is pricy, no matter which way you cut it. trans-atlantic/pacific lines are expensive to install and maintain, and as such have a very finite capacity, couple that with the fact that America basically tells other countries to pay for both TX and RX, unless something changed very recently.
I thought the government or someone told the isp's to back off on that "thou shalt not network" thing?
Either way, none of the major players would dare deny multiple computers to use the same broadband connection anymore, their competition would eat them alive. Plus, the point they are making is wireless routers people buy (say their one computer only has a wireless card, laptop perhaps) come default to "allow all", and most people just plug them in and run. Why spend another $75 to have ComputerPerson come to their house and set it up right?
I was activly searching my town (east la county), neighboring ones (san bernadino county) and even a few stores in Santa Barbara california. It took about 3-4 weeks before the damn LAKERS caps went away so I could buy iTunes caps. Won about 6 or 7 songs in 10 bottles.
Would be funny to reprogram the cars computer to not check for the clutch-in state and show your friends how you can lurch forward with the starter engine.
At least 2 or 3 times until your starter became a small pile of dust underneath your car.:)
Truely I'm curious. Where on the back of a DVD does it say I must use a "licensed" DVD player and if I don't use a licensed DVD player than I'm infringing on someone's copyright?
In looking at a DVD (I'm now at home) it does not explicitly say it must be used in a DVD player. The logos indicate merely that it is compliant with the DVD standard. I do believe however that while working around CSS is a viable argument, decoding the MPEG-2 is not, as it is a patented technology. If you were to pony up to the MPEG whatever license fee they want, then it would be perfectly legal for you to implement MPEG-2, possibly even call it that. (Assume MPEG, MPEG-2 are trademarks of the MPEG) Sane patent and copyright laws allow for all of these protections. You have the legal right to the movie, but don't own the license to render it. Buy it on VHS or use a licensed player. No they are not required to make a QNX compatible DVD player.
Furthermore someone using a logo without paying for it isn't my problem. I have committed no crime purchasing such a device to watch DVDs on. The manufacturer may be committing a crime but I'm not.
Avocados are a pretty special lot though when it comes to freshness, since they can sit out on a shelf for awhile before they ripen to a point where you can eat them. You have to brown-bag them if you want to eat them in any short period of time.
The other thing to consider if cost of transport, surely trucking them from distro to store is cheaper than distro->{truck|train}[->truck]->store should keep them up in cost.
Hey now, the "start" position on your car has many more features. If you quickly try and start your car twice in a row you get a screaching noise (double click), similar to if you turn it from run->start while the car is on, if you only do it for half a second the car sputters and stalls, and in a manual trans car you get no response at all unless you clutch-turn.
Wrong. Only with pharmaceuticals am I only allowed to do what the directions say. I am allowed to use the glue in any way I see fit. Some ways may kill me , others might not, but those directions are merely a reccomended way to get optimal performance out of XCEL Glue.
If I want to use it as a thickening agent in my food and it kills me, it's not illegal (suicide laws aside), but it's certainly stupid.
The directions in my car say I should shift every 2500 rpm or so, but if I run it up to 4000 all I'm doing is wearing the engine and draining my gas money. Nothing illegal in that.
What it boils down to is that, like CD's, they only publish their content on Digital Versatile Discs (DVD's) which someone took the time and effort to design. The DVD Consortium holds the keys (patents, trademarks) to accessing a DVD. I'm not too familiar with their licensing patterns, but for most of this stuff to hold water it must be two fold.
1. You license the hardware. A laser capable of reading dual layered high density optical discs. This is what gets that vancy DVD logo on the front of your DVD-ROM drive. This is the same as with CD players. If you ever buy a drive w/o this logo on it which claims to support it, they are shady at best, illegal at worse. If they include the logo without paying up, they are in for a major lawsuit should someone find out.
2. You license a player capable of decrypting (or causing to be decrypted) the content of the DVD-Video. This is needed to decode and render the MPEG-2 video from the disc, as well as use the other features of the disc. There is a standard which you must adhere to for features you have to support. (Menu's, locking keys out (FBI warning anyone?), etc)
Here is where your rights come in to play. When you buy a copyrighted material on a DVD you know you are required to use a DVD-compliant player in the right region to use it, it says so on the back. While they cannot make it illegal to copy the work itself (take the component video/audio jacks on the back and record it elsewhere), they do not have to make it easy either. No one is forcing you to go down to the store and purchase a DVD or a DVD Player. If they don't offer it in a format you accept, tough. Pay the DVD people for your license and design your own.
If they refuse to allow you to use an item the way you wish, then don't purchase it. The broadcast flag on over-the-air tv is another issue all together. The government doesn't own DVDs, a private entity does. If enough people don't buy them, and let them know why, change will be effected when the shareholders notice the bottom line being affected.
Unless that DVD doesn't play in DVD Licensed players (remember the CD's that are broken in digital players?) then you have no leg to stand on, because you know what the format is when you buy it. Unless you aren't an educated consumer, which you tout yourself to be.
True story, California avocados cost more in California than they do in Canada. I don't know the exact price, but an avocado here is $1USD, an avocado in Canada is.80CAN. As you can see, there is a massive price difference there even if you don't account for the exchange rate.
BTW, Supermarkets in a mall is a cool idea. Hint Hint. (I visited Canada ~year.5 ago when I noticed these differences)
Is NetBSD a registered non- or not-for- profit organization? If so, who is to say they didn't get some of the work pro-bono as a tax write off? Offer many hours free in exchange for repayment of real out of pocket expenses and write the rest off as donation to a non-profit.
Organizations like these have many friends in many places. Who is to say a spouse or friend of a NetBSD developer/PR person didn't write some of these documents in their spare time? Friend of mine traded some internet access and good social engineering for a few hours of lawyer time to draw up some TOS and 1year contracts for the wireless internet he was going to sell to his neighbors.
Slashdot Mirror
Off topic, but I must say, those PSC Photosmart 2510 printers are really cool. I don't own a printer myself, but I have setup many of those for clients. The wireless one takes a little fiddling with to get used to, but it works really well, and supports all the latest wireless technologies for authentication, including RADIUS and RADIUS-PSK. The installer is really good, very streamlined. I can't say the same for their cheap $50 printers though, as their installers are still just a string of installshield wizards.
Supposedly I get ROI from the time I spend here, voluntarily. I enjoy it.
Can't say the same about spyware.
--
Humourless Twit
I had this same problem, and I got the same speil, that their software had crashed. I told the man this is why I shouldn't be treated like a criminal when I purchase software and that I would need an activation code immediately. He told me their systems would be back up and running in about an hour, to which I told him I would happily wait with him, on the line (800'$ are great for this sort of bargaining), until the systems came back up.
He tried to keep telling me he couldn't wait with me, so I asked for a supervisor who would, and was escalated. I told the super that I was none too pleased with all this having to phone someone to use software I had just gone out and paid good money for, after some arguing, and mentioning I could have probably downloading some illegal software activation generator off the internet by now, he just told me a activation code, and I went on my merry way.
15 minutes later the scan completes, 5 minutes and a reboot to get rid of it, plus possibly another scan mid-boot to get rid of running software. Great, 30 minutes of my life gone. Google ad-bar disappears instantly and without (much) in the way of questions.
Plus, shouldn't you not have to wonder if an application is really gone? Is some timebomb app getting run that AdAware/SpyBot doesn't yet know about waiting to run and reinstall all the crap? I trust google, I also don't run IE. Their popup blocker could use some work, but works well for what it is, Mozilla could go for a way to "allow last popup" like google does.
Everquest has done something many games have tried in the past (and present) and failed at, keeping coin valuable. A platinum in everquest is still valuable to the average player. There are plenty of people with hundreds of thousands (even millions) of platinum in the bank, but it's still worth something to normal players. Most high end gear isn't tradeable, but plenty is, and it is traded for cash (as a general rule).
There is still a very large distinction between things which go for 100-300k, and that which sells for 1p. Only very rare or hard to get items cost that much, and nothing is too out of range. Think of it like buying a car, you can get junkers for a few hundred dollars, or a bently for a few hundred thousand dollars. The math still adds up to try and earn money in game.
There would be endless debates on whether garbage collection is a good thing.
Taking a look at my room, I can say garbage collection is definitly a good thing.
Have you seen the lag on a windows machine going over a WAN for file services? Let alone having to FAX all those packets to and from our other location. I'll risk total compromise, thanks.
Unless the system (as previous posters suggested) throws UNKNOWN for any scan where it doesn't know 100% that it worked. FOUND-ALLOW, FOUND-DENY, and NOT-FOUND, and BAD-SCAN would all be valid states of the scanner. You sit there until the system gets a good scan of your iris or you go home. Americans travelling abroad? Make sure, before you leave your country, that the iris scanner can scan your eyes. Travelling abroad is a big risk, you get shots before you visit some countries, make sure you get your eyes and fingers looked at too.
Buy music at .99 cents, then when it goes up to a $1, stop. Cold. Use the feedback form on the iTMS and let them know you no longer feel the value from the 26 cent price increase or whatever. Encourage your friends to do the same. To any sane company (pretend...) this would send the message that the prices have gone above the value, and people aren't willing to pay it. Of course to the RIAA it means people have just gone back to file trading or whatnot, and this whole online music thing doesn't work.
I think this kinda goes along the lines of druggies who can still get fixed up at a county hospital. You almost killed yourself doing speed, but they will still try and fix you up. Of course the police are notified, if they can get any ID out of you before you run out the front door.
You fuck yourself up doing illegal things? Back of the line at the emergency room. You download a security patch using a pirated version of windows? Get the "special version", which fixes it via disabling your tcp stack or something. Call Microsoft with a credit card number in hand to reactivate.
I imagine these could also be used to do things like counteract minor problems casual runners get in to, minor off balances causing a stutter in the jog not a fall to the ground. Or maybe there is some math in there to help prevent ankle/knee injuries from bad angles. I'm sure theres a "real world" use for an extra $50 in electronics and weight.
I do believe the difference here is the fact that he (and I) sign up for catalogs of things I might be interested in. My mom get things from LL Bean and some home gardening stuff, I get crutchfield, and one or two others. These don't spam, "SC Magazine" spam, and then send me a card saying if I don't pay up my subscription will expire! Oh no!
I mean, do you hate it when your radio is interupted by commercials? Buy XM. Do you hate it when your favorite free website has a few ads? Pay a subscription.
Now, spam, and companies which freely sign me up for their mailings (You opted in by buying BS) do annoy the hell out of me. I've called an said "If I cared for your cataloug I would request it specifically, obviously I found out about you somehow, and it will save you the $1 to mail it to me". Month later buying from the same person who promised to get me off the list and tell someone about it had a checkbox "include catalog?". I will do business with them again.
The problem is international bandwidth. Sending even the single file over to servers on other continents is pricy, no matter which way you cut it. trans-atlantic/pacific lines are expensive to install and maintain, and as such have a very finite capacity, couple that with the fact that America basically tells other countries to pay for both TX and RX, unless something changed very recently.
I thought the government or someone told the isp's to back off on that "thou shalt not network" thing?
Either way, none of the major players would dare deny multiple computers to use the same broadband connection anymore, their competition would eat them alive. Plus, the point they are making is wireless routers people buy (say their one computer only has a wireless card, laptop perhaps) come default to "allow all", and most people just plug them in and run. Why spend another $75 to have ComputerPerson come to their house and set it up right?
Thats fine an all, but the tax payers don't pay for the patent office (Short of the laws which make the office work..), the applicants do.
I believe so, as it's not your mechanism to implement. However, this would be the source of a hot debate. ;-)
It would all stem from the license applied to the mechanism by the patent holder.
I was activly searching my town (east la county), neighboring ones (san bernadino county) and even a few stores in Santa Barbara california. It took about 3-4 weeks before the damn LAKERS caps went away so I could buy iTunes caps. Won about 6 or 7 songs in 10 bottles.
Distribution sucked majorly.
Would be funny to reprogram the cars computer to not check for the clutch-in state and show your friends how you can lurch forward with the starter engine.
:)
At least 2 or 3 times until your starter became a small pile of dust underneath your car.
Truely I'm curious. Where on the back of a DVD does it say I must use a "licensed" DVD player and if I don't use a licensed DVD player than I'm infringing on someone's copyright?
In looking at a DVD (I'm now at home) it does not explicitly say it must be used in a DVD player. The logos indicate merely that it is compliant with the DVD standard. I do believe however that while working around CSS is a viable argument, decoding the MPEG-2 is not, as it is a patented technology. If you were to pony up to the MPEG whatever license fee they want, then it would be perfectly legal for you to implement MPEG-2, possibly even call it that. (Assume MPEG, MPEG-2 are trademarks of the MPEG) Sane patent and copyright laws allow for all of these protections. You have the legal right to the movie, but don't own the license to render it. Buy it on VHS or use a licensed player. No they are not required to make a QNX compatible DVD player.
Furthermore someone using a logo without paying for it isn't my problem. I have committed no crime purchasing such a device to watch DVDs on. The manufacturer may be committing a crime but I'm not.
Never said you were.
Avocados are a pretty special lot though when it comes to freshness, since they can sit out on a shelf for awhile before they ripen to a point where you can eat them. You have to brown-bag them if you want to eat them in any short period of time.
The other thing to consider if cost of transport, surely trucking them from distro to store is cheaper than distro->{truck|train}[->truck]->store should keep them up in cost.
Hey now, the "start" position on your car has many more features. If you quickly try and start your car twice in a row you get a screaching noise (double click), similar to if you turn it from run->start while the car is on, if you only do it for half a second the car sputters and stalls, and in a manual trans car you get no response at all unless you clutch-turn.
Wrong. Only with pharmaceuticals am I only allowed to do what the directions say. I am allowed to use the glue in any way I see fit. Some ways may kill me , others might not, but those directions are merely a reccomended way to get optimal performance out of XCEL Glue.
If I want to use it as a thickening agent in my food and it kills me, it's not illegal (suicide laws aside), but it's certainly stupid.
The directions in my car say I should shift every 2500 rpm or so, but if I run it up to 4000 all I'm doing is wearing the engine and draining my gas money. Nothing illegal in that.
What it boils down to is that, like CD's, they only publish their content on Digital Versatile Discs (DVD's) which someone took the time and effort to design. The DVD Consortium holds the keys (patents, trademarks) to accessing a DVD. I'm not too familiar with their licensing patterns, but for most of this stuff to hold water it must be two fold.
1. You license the hardware. A laser capable of reading dual layered high density optical discs. This is what gets that vancy DVD logo on the front of your DVD-ROM drive. This is the same as with CD players. If you ever buy a drive w/o this logo on it which claims to support it, they are shady at best, illegal at worse. If they include the logo without paying up, they are in for a major lawsuit should someone find out.
2. You license a player capable of decrypting (or causing to be decrypted) the content of the DVD-Video. This is needed to decode and render the MPEG-2 video from the disc, as well as use the other features of the disc. There is a standard which you must adhere to for features you have to support. (Menu's, locking keys out (FBI warning anyone?), etc)
Here is where your rights come in to play. When you buy a copyrighted material on a DVD you know you are required to use a DVD-compliant player in the right region to use it, it says so on the back. While they cannot make it illegal to copy the work itself (take the component video/audio jacks on the back and record it elsewhere), they do not have to make it easy either. No one is forcing you to go down to the store and purchase a DVD or a DVD Player. If they don't offer it in a format you accept, tough. Pay the DVD people for your license and design your own.
If they refuse to allow you to use an item the way you wish, then don't purchase it. The broadcast flag on over-the-air tv is another issue all together. The government doesn't own DVDs, a private entity does. If enough people don't buy them, and let them know why, change will be effected when the shareholders notice the bottom line being affected.
Unless that DVD doesn't play in DVD Licensed players (remember the CD's that are broken in digital players?) then you have no leg to stand on, because you know what the format is when you buy it. Unless you aren't an educated consumer, which you tout yourself to be.
True story, California avocados cost more in California than they do in Canada. I don't know the exact price, but an avocado here is $1USD, an avocado in Canada is .80CAN. As you can see, there is a massive price difference there even if you don't account for the exchange rate.
BTW, Supermarkets in a mall is a cool idea. Hint Hint. (I visited Canada ~year.5 ago when I noticed these differences)
Is NetBSD a registered non- or not-for- profit organization? If so, who is to say they didn't get some of the work pro-bono as a tax write off? Offer many hours free in exchange for repayment of real out of pocket expenses and write the rest off as donation to a non-profit.
Organizations like these have many friends in many places. Who is to say a spouse or friend of a NetBSD developer/PR person didn't write some of these documents in their spare time? Friend of mine traded some internet access and good social engineering for a few hours of lawyer time to draw up some TOS and 1year contracts for the wireless internet he was going to sell to his neighbors.