On a previous IT job, BlackBerry support was part of the gig. I was surprised at how many of them failed; while I have no knowledge of what the user was doing when it died, I do know that they had a very high failure rate.
Having said that, I now carry a personal BlackBerry phone. It hasn't failed yet but it's not exactly bug free. If you think Microsoft products are poor quality, you should experience what RIM calls "release" software. Nothing that pulling the battery and waiting a few minutes for the thing to reinitialize won't fix, though.
If it didn't do email so well, I'd change it out in a heartbeat. If some other vendor would just get a clue and turn out a multi-function phone that actually does those functions well and stably they'd take over the market. I didn't get an IPhone because the service costs too damned much. I get BlackBerry service for about half what ATT / Apple charge for the Jesus phone.
If Apple would include UMA on the IPhone and break their tie to AT&T then I'd be interested. That's not likely to happen, though. What is likely to happen is another round of poorly implemented phones from the usual suspects.
I'm thinking of a previous Motorola phone that had voice activated functions - or so they thought. I could hit the side button and say "camera" and it'd activate the built in camera. There was no voice command to take a picture or exit the camera, though. Completely useless, but it did allow some corporate fool to mark a checkbox on the feature list.
There's still a long way to go on this stuff - the IPhone is arguably the best implementation available right now but it's got warts aplenty. If someone else would do better then they'd have a winner. Will this happen? I doubt it...
I found the idea that "real" encyclopedias were considered to be somehow more accurate to be questionable at best. Does Wikipedia contain multiple errors? You bet it does. Does the Encyclopedia Britannica contain multiple errors? Yup. The real difference is that while the "professional" compilations don't tell you how they collect or evaluate the material they present as absolute truth. Wikipedia doesn't hide where the information comes from or how it is evaluated - this provides valuable information that the others choose to hide.
The real danger is in assuming that any other source of information is significantly more accurate, complete or truthful than Wikipedia. You'd be better served by assuming that any / all of these references are not completely reliable.
Oooh - Pavilion laptop with a Nvidia chipset. Welcome to the club; back up your files early and often because that thing is going to fail soon. Good luck getting HP to fix it on warranty...
OK, we're IT people here. Imagine that super database that has all of these personal details in it - said database being run by the government, probably. What are the chances that such a database could be successfully constructed or operated, much less have any useful data mined from it? It's the tinfoil hat crowd that cry the loudest but they probably have the least to worry about.
Where this stuff can have very real impact is with people who are "public figures" or stalking victims, etc. For them, privacy and safety are closely related. And unlike some bureaucratic mess-ups, the people looking for these folks are very dedicated and spend hour upon hour teasing out every possible bit of information about their target.
If you're one of those targets and trying to stay out of the way - you quickly discover that the situation is even worse than the tinfoil hat people imagine. Your state and federal government NEED to know who and where you are and various agencies are tasked with collecting that data. The USPS keeps track of names / addresses and sells their lists to just about anyone who asks. Ever wonder how so many area businesses know when you move into a new home? Thank the USPS. You can't receive mail and stay off those lists. And most states use their DMV to keep tabs on their citizens. Same story here regarding lists - some quote fancy privacy policies, but if you want the information you can get it. Of course, you'll need ID or a driver's license so you'll be on their list, too.
Your bank is probably very good at keeping your account details private. But your credit / debit card issuer isn't laboring under any such restriction and once again it's not too difficult to get ahold of someone's credit / debit card records.
And that gets us back to those e-commerce websites. How often have you read their privacy policies? Many of them (I'm looking at you, Yahoo Stores) share their customer's data pretty freely.
So for the need to serve targeted ads and have more personalized marketing we've created a nightmare for some. Search the web for their name (there's more ways to search than Google), purchase their data from one of many web stores that they've probably bought something from, use the card number to access the card records and make note of what stores they buy from. The grocery store, the dry cleaners, the gas station - most of these charges will be within a few miles of the target's home. Now, go for the DMV records for that state and get their address. If the DMV address is out of date, send the target an empty envelope to their prior address and write on it "do not forward, address correction requested". You'll get the envelope back in a few days with one of those helpful yellow stickers on it with your target's current address.
It might cost a few bucks and take a week or two to pin them down - but nobody can hide. Not for long, not very well.
All this data that's being collected isn't much good for the stated purpose (targeted ads, better marketing, etc) but it's very well suited for pinpointing the location of persons of interest. There's so many sources of information and so many of they have lax or no security...
After five hardware failures in 18 months, my HP laptop died due to the Nvidia cheapset problem. HP says they've extended the warranty on the affected laptops but they refuse to honor their so-called warranty.
Not only did their "customer service" agent hang up on me - he called me back so he could hang up on me again. "Hello?" HP support here; "CLICK".
Anyone who considers buying a HP laptop should think carefully before buying - why buy an unreliable laptop from a vendor that won't honor their warranty when there's so many better choices out there?
If there's any HP management reading along then they should be aware that I'm just one of many customers that they ripped off. They knew the laptops had faulty chips in them and sold them anyway - and when the customers try to get them repaired all they get is abuse from HP's support. They should also be aware that every time someone posts a puff piece about HP I'll be there to remind people why they should consider a different brand.
Being someone who ran a large BBS back in the olden days I can offer some insight into why we verified each new account.
There were some significant expenses involved in supplying the service. An incoming phone line and high speed modem for each "node", rows of computers, file servers, networking - and all of this could only support a limited number of simultaneous users.
What we were trying to stop were the people who would register several accounts in order to use more online time - preventing others from being able to log in. The whole point of verified user accounts was just that - to insure that the resources of the BBS were shared fairly.
Things are different now; not many of us here remember when a good 9600 baud modem cost $1000. Multiply that by 25, then add the monthly charges for 25 phone lines, etc.
We couldn't just "add more lines" to support every person who wanted to use the system for as long as they wanted, so limiting the amount of online time was necessary. Verified user accounts were there to insure that everyone got their share because some felt it was their right to take more for themselves.
These days you can put up a website that does most of what a BBS did, support thousands of simultaneous users - and do it for far less than the cost of one of those modems. The sites that require registration (and don't verify that the registration is legitimate)- their motives are questionable at best. The information they're collecting has a very low signal to noise ratio due to services like Bug Me Not and the basic truth that most people fill those registration forms out with false information. Sometimes I suspect that those news sites require registration "because all the other news sites do it"...
Can't argue about those calculators - I remember getting on the waiting list for a HP-45 (showing my age, I guess). It was a great calculator; after I'd had it a year and a half I accidentally spilled a soft drink on it. All the keys were stuck; what a mess. But I wasn't going to throw it away; I pulled the battery and shipped the poor thing to HP for repair (it was out of warranty). A week later it was back - new keyboard, new battery pack and in perfect working condition. No charge for the repair. That's what HP used to be - high quality equipment, superb customer service.
I've still got the 45 and it still works. I use a 48GX these days and it's been very, very good to me. That's as far as my good experiences with HP go. These days, it's only a marketing company that manufactures very, very little of what it sells. Corners have been cut in every way and the products aren't what you'd call quality in any way. I'm still upset about my HP laptop that is dead due to that Nvidia problem and that HP has refused to repair under warranty. I was even more upset when it was revealed that Nvidia had notified HP of the problem and the fine folks at HP said "sell them anyway".
Back when Bill and Dave were running the company they instilled a strong sense of ethics in their employees. They took pride in doing the right thing in the right way. They're long gone now and all the current leadership is after is maximum profit and don't worry about that ethics thing; anything you can get away with is fine.
The arrangement between HP and Microsoft is - well, it's not going to go away any time soon. And HP knows who they're building computers for: they're building them for Microsoft, they're building them for corporate profit. The people who buy and use the machines - well, they'll take what HP gives them.
I guess that's the real problem with this whole idea right there: HP is competitive in personal computers because they get very good prices from their suppliers - including Microsoft. If they were to offer a Linux box - well, that just might cause them to have to pay more for Windows licenses. HP is big, but they're in a very competitive market and they can't just blow Microsoft off and survive.
We're talking about HP here, people. Remember pretexting? How about all the known defective laptops they've sold (and are STILL selling)? Ever buy a HP "all in one" and how long did it last? What about the price of a spoonful of ink in a plastic box? And how about their customer service?
It would be great if a major hardware manufacturer started polishing up Linux based machines and moving them into the market; this would help Linux along very nicely. But is HP the corporation you want "on your side"? They're not your friends you know...
Let's not blame HP for selling known defective notebooks, right? I mean, I've got one. The thing always ran hot and had problems with the wi-fi dropping out at odd times. But now it's dead; won't even power up.
So I contacted HP support about it. HP was so nice to extend the warranty on these turkeys and I thought it would be nice if they'd take care of THEIR problem. What actually happened was that their "support" agent hung up on me. Twice. I've escalated the issue with HP and nothing has happened. I've still got a dead laptop and they've got my money.
I'm typing this post on a nice new Sony laptop. I'll never, NEVER ever buy anything from HP. Maybe some day they'll fix that dead HP laptop and I'll Ebay it. Or maybe I'll end up tossing it in the trash. But no matter what they do at this point there's nothing that could ever convince me to buy from them again.
What really smells about this whole deal is that Nvidia contacted HP about the problem. HP knew about it, knew that they had a batch of defective laptops. What did they do with this knowledge? Right, they concealed it and sold the laptops to the public. Now they're refusing to repair them - they've made pleasant press releases but if you have one of the defective items you'll find that what their press releases say and what they'll actually do are quite different.
HP are you listening? If so, be aware you've lost a customer for life - and as many other potential customers as I can warn about you. And the HP apologists posting here are pathetic. How can you defend a company which knowingly sells defective product? How can you defend a company which says "we'll take care of it" in public, but actually refuses to honor their warranty on these defective items?
The questions that should be asked are what should Nvidia and the vendors that installed their defective chips be doing to correct this issue. If you look into it carefully, you'll find that they're issuing "we'll fix it" press releases and actually doing NOTHING for the victims of their "business practices". If you believe that they are then I'll make you a great deal on a nice HP laptop that just needs some of that promised warranty service.
There's been a flood of "aggregators" lately. They don't have anything of their own to offer, they just pull information from others and present it.
Is this a good thing? I'm starting to think it's not. All this seems to be is just another set of middlemen pulling profit from other people's transactions.
But is Ryanair doing good by canceling tickets? Absolutely not. The customers bought tickets to travel Ryanair on good faith. If Ryanair doesn't like the aggregators, then they could bar future transactions. But by canceling transactions that were already made they've moved into lawsuit territory. If they want not to be included on the various airfare comparison sites then that's their right.
But punishing their customers for something that they didn't do - that's just plain evil. Ryanair executives should pay for this one...
This story is an excellent example with what's wrong with corporatism. The idea of insurance was that a group of people would contribute an equal amount to the pool, and that money would be used to pay the medical bills of those less fortunate. This provided a benefit to society; those unfortunate enough to contract a serious disease would be cared for and the expense would be shared by all the members of their group.
But now the "insurance" corporations are picking and choosing who they'll cover and adjusting insurance rates on those who they believe will require help. This isn't insurance at all - what's happening is that the "insurance" companies are turning into nothing more than middlemen in the medical industry. The push to obtain detailed records on their policy holders (and applicants) just further supports this change.
Now the benefit to society is gone. Those healthy individuals have no problem paying for their "insurance" but those with health problems are priced out of the market. The insurance corporations make bigger profits, but society suffers. The whole point of insurance was that everyone would have care no matter what.
It's just a matter of time before people (and our government) notice what's happening. If a corporation wants to collect $1000 from someone before they'll pay a $500 medical bill then they're not providing insurance at all...
If a company can arbitrarily bill their customers for incoming messages then what's wrong with the customers billing the company for having to deal with those unwanted messages? Show me in the contract where it says that customers will be required to pay for SMS spam...
Yesterday morning my HP DV2000 laptop died from this problem. Based on the symptoms and my previous experience with the "reliability" of that machine I stuck it on the dead pile and purchased a new Sony laptop with ATI video.
That HP was about 6 months out of warranty and I wasn't even going to consider paying for a replacement motherboard. Now that HP has generously extended the warranty on it, maybe I'll have them repair it - then sell it or give it away.
In the 18 months since it was new I've replaced the keyboard, a hard drive, the battery and two optical drives. That's five hardware failures in 18 months; make that six now that the motherboard is dead. How can they keep turning out cheap crap like this and stay in business?
Better yet, I'd like to see them explain how they knew about this problem before they sold me that machine? They sold hundreds of thousands of affected HP laptops knowing full well that the video chip had a process problem that caused it to fail prematurely. They could have repaired or scrapped these machines before selling them - they KNEW they were defective.
And now they want to "fix" the problem with a BIOS patch that runs the fan at high speed continuously? That is not a fix for the problem - all it does is delay the ultimate failure.
So the new HP works like this: Did we have a bunch of defective equipment manufactured for us? Sell it anyway! When people start having problems, pretend it doesn't exist and deny, deny, deny. Pressure from the public over the problem? Do the cheapest thing possible to make them go away.
I know I've learned my lesson: no more HP products!
In our modern "pay for performance" world, the metric used to determine the performance of teachers are the grades their students achieve on standardized tests.
Add some financial incentive via state and federal funding and it's now become important to not only the teachers but the schools to turn out students that excel on those standardized tests.
Being creative people, the school administrators found that the best and easiest way to obtain those high scores on the tests was to make the tests easier. The companies providing the tests were happy to comply with the wishes of their best (and only) customers.
Combine this with high school classes where half or more of the final grade is based on attendance (!) and what kind of education do you think our children are really getting?
Something that would bear thinking about are the behaviors that will emerge as computer technology continues to leap ahead while human beings remain pretty much the same.
We're pretty adaptable as a species, but we're creating an environment that evolution probably didn't prepare us for. Some very interesting things are going to happen in the near future - and some of them should be predictable.
Considering these difficult issues now may very well prevent us from rushing headlong into bad choices. Consider one probable near future development: small, generally available computers with human-equivalent (or better) processing and storage capability. So how would we put these to work? Who would control them - the owner / user, or some other entity? What would their legal status be?
By asking now we can have workable answers ready when they're needed. And they will be needed; if you've got "Spock's Brain" managing your stock portfolio then how could it enter into a contract or initiate a trade? What would it use for money? Who would be responsible for any mistakes it makes? And who does the proceeds of that business venture belong to?
Sounds simple at first, but finding workable answers to these (and the related) questions that don't incidentally devalue humanity will be quite tricky. This is just the tip of the iceberg - what if it's an actual human mind running on that machine; a copy of yours, maybe. Now, could you just pull the plug without murdering it?
Weird times coming, it's just around the corner...
HIV is a polymorphic virus - it changes its "shape" often, making vaccines difficult / impossible to create. Sure, they can create a vaccine for variation 32b, but there's a bunch of variants and new ones show up from time to time. A nice simple AIDS vaccine that you can give to kids is - as far as we know at this time - impossible.
But this technology may provide a way to defend against this virus. By changing the "shape" of our T-cells it will prevent the virus from recognizing its target. This would render it ineffective and be effective against the numerous variants.
Of course, this is still early in the development cycle. There's always the chance of unintended consequences...
The products don't teleport into online vendor stores either. All retailers (most, anyway) bear the cost of transporting goods to their store location. Both online and brick / mortar stores pay this expense; it's a wash.
Where the difference is - it's how the product gets into the purchaser's hands. Brick / mortar stores hand it to the customer, online stores have to ship it to the customer. That's where the difference in final price due to shipping comes from.
So while it may increase the cost of all purchases - it will increase the cost far more for online purchases. Those products have to be shipped TWICE.
Use tax is an interesting thing. It's essentially a sales tax on out-of-state purchases; they give it a different name but it looks and acts the same way. The vast majority of people simply ignore it; I don't think anyone has challenged the legality of this tax, and because of the small amounts involved it's not likely that it'll become a legal issue any time soon. Here's a tip that might help: you'll find a line on your state tax return for use tax, but if you read the instructions carefully you'll probably find that it's voluntary (may vary with state). I'm also unaware of anyone every being prosecuted for failing to pay their personal use tax...
Let's see - at this point we've got 20 comments that basically say "we don't believe anything Microsoft says" and one guy that's still sucking his thumb. I think maybe the majority have a valid point here...
Over the last decade, online and brick/mortar businesses have settled into a workable relationship. Each has benefits and disadvantages; if you buy online you don't pay sales tax but you do pay shipping. If you buy from a retail store you don't have to pay for shipping but you do pay sales tax.
So for items costing around $100, there's essentially no real price difference. You can get it today or wait a week but the final cost is pretty much the same.
But things are changing; the rapidly increasing cost of oil is having a profound impact on the shipping companies. For most of those shipping companies the largest expense they have is the cost of fuel to run their trucks, delivery vans, airplanes, etc. These companies are scrambling to find ways to cut costs and stay profitable without increasing their rates - laying off employees, cutting back on "non essential" services, consolidating routes, etc. This is only a temporary fix; energy costs continue to rise and it's just a matter of time before the cost to ship a package increases substantially.
That'll increase the total cost of online purchases - I wouldn't be surprised to see the shipping costs double over the next couple of years. This will translate directly into a loss of business for online stores and more than a few of them will shut down.
Adding sales tax into the mix will make things even worse. That would mean that instead of a $100 item costing $108 after paying for shipping it would become $124 after paying for "new improved" shipping and sales tax. The bricks/mortar store will still be able to sell for $108.
The end result of this ill conceived plan will be that we will no longer be able to access a wide range of products - or if we can they'll be a lot more expensive. The brick/mortar stores will still only carry the items that sell in large numbers (as they do now). The state governments will receive a small increase in their tax collections. And us, the consumers, will pay for all of it. Less choice, higher prices. Thank your governor for their fine public service...
If they designed their system so that the vehicles could form ad-hoc mesh networks - this would have some real potential. It would extend the operational range beyond the limits of the cell network and allow users to make use of other's unused bandwidth to boost transfer speeds.
Probably wishful thinking. I've got a Chrysler with UConnect and it works surprisingly well for a piece of automotive high-tech candy. But it could be much better; some of the shortcomings could be because it was designed to a price point, but much of what's not quite right can only be explained by rushed / sloppy design and unfinished coding.
They'll probably follow the same design model for this upgrade too. They'll probably manage to make it so it works if you configure your laptop just exactly right but is absolutely intolerant of any variations in configuration. It'll have DHCP, but they'll hardcode the netmask - or some other boneheaded blunder such as only working with certain Microsoft operating systems.
While some good points are made about the current state of the internet and how technical improvements could be made - his article lost credibility at the point where he states that the proper way to correct the problems is for "industry" to do it.
Of course, the "industry" he's talking about are the corporations that control large chunks of the infrastructure. As we've established time and time again, those corporations aren't acting in the public interest. Their only interest is in what makes their corporation the largest profit. To those interests, blocking competing services or forcing popular websites to pay more to stay online are quite reasonable things to do.
This is why net neutrality is such an important idea. Look at what has been accomplished so far with our "ad hoc" arrangement of computers connected to a crazy quilt of networks. All that you see is just the beginning - but a better future will never come to pass if the corporate interests are allowed to filter / segregate / block network traffic.
Think about it for a minute: consider AT&T. They own a substantial amount of internet infrastructure and they're also the major telephone company. When they look at Skype and discuss how to limit the loss of business to this competitor - you'd better believe they consider blocking VOIP on the backbone. Call it a benefit to the customer and put a competitor out of business; another good day in corporate headquarters.
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Having said that, I now carry a personal BlackBerry phone. It hasn't failed yet but it's not exactly bug free. If you think Microsoft products are poor quality, you should experience what RIM calls "release" software. Nothing that pulling the battery and waiting a few minutes for the thing to reinitialize won't fix, though.
If it didn't do email so well, I'd change it out in a heartbeat. If some other vendor would just get a clue and turn out a multi-function phone that actually does those functions well and stably they'd take over the market. I didn't get an IPhone because the service costs too damned much. I get BlackBerry service for about half what ATT / Apple charge for the Jesus phone.
If Apple would include UMA on the IPhone and break their tie to AT&T then I'd be interested. That's not likely to happen, though. What is likely to happen is another round of poorly implemented phones from the usual suspects.
I'm thinking of a previous Motorola phone that had voice activated functions - or so they thought. I could hit the side button and say "camera" and it'd activate the built in camera. There was no voice command to take a picture or exit the camera, though. Completely useless, but it did allow some corporate fool to mark a checkbox on the feature list.
There's still a long way to go on this stuff - the IPhone is arguably the best implementation available right now but it's got warts aplenty. If someone else would do better then they'd have a winner. Will this happen? I doubt it...
http://www.grandcentral.com/
It does all that's been mentioned in this thread and a lot more. Give it a try someday.
Mine lasted just over a year. Read up on what you're going to have to deal with:
http://mobile.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/01/0142219
The real danger is in assuming that any other source of information is significantly more accurate, complete or truthful than Wikipedia. You'd be better served by assuming that any / all of these references are not completely reliable.
Oooh - Pavilion laptop with a Nvidia chipset. Welcome to the club; back up your files early and often because that thing is going to fail soon. Good luck getting HP to fix it on warranty...
Where this stuff can have very real impact is with people who are "public figures" or stalking victims, etc. For them, privacy and safety are closely related. And unlike some bureaucratic mess-ups, the people looking for these folks are very dedicated and spend hour upon hour teasing out every possible bit of information about their target.
If you're one of those targets and trying to stay out of the way - you quickly discover that the situation is even worse than the tinfoil hat people imagine. Your state and federal government NEED to know who and where you are and various agencies are tasked with collecting that data. The USPS keeps track of names / addresses and sells their lists to just about anyone who asks. Ever wonder how so many area businesses know when you move into a new home? Thank the USPS. You can't receive mail and stay off those lists. And most states use their DMV to keep tabs on their citizens. Same story here regarding lists - some quote fancy privacy policies, but if you want the information you can get it. Of course, you'll need ID or a driver's license so you'll be on their list, too.
Your bank is probably very good at keeping your account details private. But your credit / debit card issuer isn't laboring under any such restriction and once again it's not too difficult to get ahold of someone's credit / debit card records.
And that gets us back to those e-commerce websites. How often have you read their privacy policies? Many of them (I'm looking at you, Yahoo Stores) share their customer's data pretty freely.
So for the need to serve targeted ads and have more personalized marketing we've created a nightmare for some. Search the web for their name (there's more ways to search than Google), purchase their data from one of many web stores that they've probably bought something from, use the card number to access the card records and make note of what stores they buy from. The grocery store, the dry cleaners, the gas station - most of these charges will be within a few miles of the target's home. Now, go for the DMV records for that state and get their address. If the DMV address is out of date, send the target an empty envelope to their prior address and write on it "do not forward, address correction requested". You'll get the envelope back in a few days with one of those helpful yellow stickers on it with your target's current address.
It might cost a few bucks and take a week or two to pin them down - but nobody can hide. Not for long, not very well.
All this data that's being collected isn't much good for the stated purpose (targeted ads, better marketing, etc) but it's very well suited for pinpointing the location of persons of interest. There's so many sources of information and so many of they have lax or no security...
Not only did their "customer service" agent hang up on me - he called me back so he could hang up on me again. "Hello?" HP support here; "CLICK".
Anyone who considers buying a HP laptop should think carefully before buying - why buy an unreliable laptop from a vendor that won't honor their warranty when there's so many better choices out there?
If there's any HP management reading along then they should be aware that I'm just one of many customers that they ripped off. They knew the laptops had faulty chips in them and sold them anyway - and when the customers try to get them repaired all they get is abuse from HP's support. They should also be aware that every time someone posts a puff piece about HP I'll be there to remind people why they should consider a different brand.
There were some significant expenses involved in supplying the service. An incoming phone line and high speed modem for each "node", rows of computers, file servers, networking - and all of this could only support a limited number of simultaneous users.
What we were trying to stop were the people who would register several accounts in order to use more online time - preventing others from being able to log in. The whole point of verified user accounts was just that - to insure that the resources of the BBS were shared fairly.
Things are different now; not many of us here remember when a good 9600 baud modem cost $1000. Multiply that by 25, then add the monthly charges for 25 phone lines, etc.
We couldn't just "add more lines" to support every person who wanted to use the system for as long as they wanted, so limiting the amount of online time was necessary. Verified user accounts were there to insure that everyone got their share because some felt it was their right to take more for themselves.
These days you can put up a website that does most of what a BBS did, support thousands of simultaneous users - and do it for far less than the cost of one of those modems. The sites that require registration (and don't verify that the registration is legitimate)- their motives are questionable at best. The information they're collecting has a very low signal to noise ratio due to services like Bug Me Not and the basic truth that most people fill those registration forms out with false information. Sometimes I suspect that those news sites require registration "because all the other news sites do it"...
I've still got the 45 and it still works. I use a 48GX these days and it's been very, very good to me. That's as far as my good experiences with HP go. These days, it's only a marketing company that manufactures very, very little of what it sells. Corners have been cut in every way and the products aren't what you'd call quality in any way. I'm still upset about my HP laptop that is dead due to that Nvidia problem and that HP has refused to repair under warranty. I was even more upset when it was revealed that Nvidia had notified HP of the problem and the fine folks at HP said "sell them anyway".
Back when Bill and Dave were running the company they instilled a strong sense of ethics in their employees. They took pride in doing the right thing in the right way. They're long gone now and all the current leadership is after is maximum profit and don't worry about that ethics thing; anything you can get away with is fine.
The arrangement between HP and Microsoft is - well, it's not going to go away any time soon. And HP knows who they're building computers for: they're building them for Microsoft, they're building them for corporate profit. The people who buy and use the machines - well, they'll take what HP gives them.
I guess that's the real problem with this whole idea right there: HP is competitive in personal computers because they get very good prices from their suppliers - including Microsoft. If they were to offer a Linux box - well, that just might cause them to have to pay more for Windows licenses. HP is big, but they're in a very competitive market and they can't just blow Microsoft off and survive.
It would be great if a major hardware manufacturer started polishing up Linux based machines and moving them into the market; this would help Linux along very nicely. But is HP the corporation you want "on your side"? They're not your friends you know...
So I contacted HP support about it. HP was so nice to extend the warranty on these turkeys and I thought it would be nice if they'd take care of THEIR problem. What actually happened was that their "support" agent hung up on me. Twice. I've escalated the issue with HP and nothing has happened. I've still got a dead laptop and they've got my money.
I'm typing this post on a nice new Sony laptop. I'll never, NEVER ever buy anything from HP. Maybe some day they'll fix that dead HP laptop and I'll Ebay it. Or maybe I'll end up tossing it in the trash. But no matter what they do at this point there's nothing that could ever convince me to buy from them again.
What really smells about this whole deal is that Nvidia contacted HP about the problem. HP knew about it, knew that they had a batch of defective laptops. What did they do with this knowledge? Right, they concealed it and sold the laptops to the public. Now they're refusing to repair them - they've made pleasant press releases but if you have one of the defective items you'll find that what their press releases say and what they'll actually do are quite different.
HP are you listening? If so, be aware you've lost a customer for life - and as many other potential customers as I can warn about you. And the HP apologists posting here are pathetic. How can you defend a company which knowingly sells defective product? How can you defend a company which says "we'll take care of it" in public, but actually refuses to honor their warranty on these defective items?
The questions that should be asked are what should Nvidia and the vendors that installed their defective chips be doing to correct this issue. If you look into it carefully, you'll find that they're issuing "we'll fix it" press releases and actually doing NOTHING for the victims of their "business practices". If you believe that they are then I'll make you a great deal on a nice HP laptop that just needs some of that promised warranty service.
Is this a good thing? I'm starting to think it's not. All this seems to be is just another set of middlemen pulling profit from other people's transactions.
But is Ryanair doing good by canceling tickets? Absolutely not. The customers bought tickets to travel Ryanair on good faith. If Ryanair doesn't like the aggregators, then they could bar future transactions. But by canceling transactions that were already made they've moved into lawsuit territory. If they want not to be included on the various airfare comparison sites then that's their right.
But punishing their customers for something that they didn't do - that's just plain evil. Ryanair executives should pay for this one...
But now the "insurance" corporations are picking and choosing who they'll cover and adjusting insurance rates on those who they believe will require help. This isn't insurance at all - what's happening is that the "insurance" companies are turning into nothing more than middlemen in the medical industry. The push to obtain detailed records on their policy holders (and applicants) just further supports this change.
Now the benefit to society is gone. Those healthy individuals have no problem paying for their "insurance" but those with health problems are priced out of the market. The insurance corporations make bigger profits, but society suffers. The whole point of insurance was that everyone would have care no matter what.
It's just a matter of time before people (and our government) notice what's happening. If a corporation wants to collect $1000 from someone before they'll pay a $500 medical bill then they're not providing insurance at all...
If a company can arbitrarily bill their customers for incoming messages then what's wrong with the customers billing the company for having to deal with those unwanted messages? Show me in the contract where it says that customers will be required to pay for SMS spam...
That HP was about 6 months out of warranty and I wasn't even going to consider paying for a replacement motherboard. Now that HP has generously extended the warranty on it, maybe I'll have them repair it - then sell it or give it away.
In the 18 months since it was new I've replaced the keyboard, a hard drive, the battery and two optical drives. That's five hardware failures in 18 months; make that six now that the motherboard is dead. How can they keep turning out cheap crap like this and stay in business?
Better yet, I'd like to see them explain how they knew about this problem before they sold me that machine? They sold hundreds of thousands of affected HP laptops knowing full well that the video chip had a process problem that caused it to fail prematurely. They could have repaired or scrapped these machines before selling them - they KNEW they were defective.
And now they want to "fix" the problem with a BIOS patch that runs the fan at high speed continuously? That is not a fix for the problem - all it does is delay the ultimate failure.
So the new HP works like this: Did we have a bunch of defective equipment manufactured for us? Sell it anyway! When people start having problems, pretend it doesn't exist and deny, deny, deny. Pressure from the public over the problem? Do the cheapest thing possible to make them go away.
I know I've learned my lesson: no more HP products!
Start by searching hard drives for JPG, MPG, and MP3 files. Copy the good stuff to a USB drive; you can compile quite a collection this way...
Unfortunately, their web server was unprepared for the onslaught of nerds and is currently suffering from unresolved emotional issues.
Add some financial incentive via state and federal funding and it's now become important to not only the teachers but the schools to turn out students that excel on those standardized tests.
Being creative people, the school administrators found that the best and easiest way to obtain those high scores on the tests was to make the tests easier. The companies providing the tests were happy to comply with the wishes of their best (and only) customers.
Combine this with high school classes where half or more of the final grade is based on attendance (!) and what kind of education do you think our children are really getting?
We're pretty adaptable as a species, but we're creating an environment that evolution probably didn't prepare us for. Some very interesting things are going to happen in the near future - and some of them should be predictable.
Considering these difficult issues now may very well prevent us from rushing headlong into bad choices. Consider one probable near future development: small, generally available computers with human-equivalent (or better) processing and storage capability. So how would we put these to work? Who would control them - the owner / user, or some other entity? What would their legal status be?
By asking now we can have workable answers ready when they're needed. And they will be needed; if you've got "Spock's Brain" managing your stock portfolio then how could it enter into a contract or initiate a trade? What would it use for money? Who would be responsible for any mistakes it makes? And who does the proceeds of that business venture belong to?
Sounds simple at first, but finding workable answers to these (and the related) questions that don't incidentally devalue humanity will be quite tricky. This is just the tip of the iceberg - what if it's an actual human mind running on that machine; a copy of yours, maybe. Now, could you just pull the plug without murdering it?
Weird times coming, it's just around the corner...
But this technology may provide a way to defend against this virus. By changing the "shape" of our T-cells it will prevent the virus from recognizing its target. This would render it ineffective and be effective against the numerous variants.
Of course, this is still early in the development cycle. There's always the chance of unintended consequences...
Where the difference is - it's how the product gets into the purchaser's hands. Brick / mortar stores hand it to the customer, online stores have to ship it to the customer. That's where the difference in final price due to shipping comes from.
So while it may increase the cost of all purchases - it will increase the cost far more for online purchases. Those products have to be shipped TWICE.
Use tax is an interesting thing. It's essentially a sales tax on out-of-state purchases; they give it a different name but it looks and acts the same way. The vast majority of people simply ignore it; I don't think anyone has challenged the legality of this tax, and because of the small amounts involved it's not likely that it'll become a legal issue any time soon. Here's a tip that might help: you'll find a line on your state tax return for use tax, but if you read the instructions carefully you'll probably find that it's voluntary (may vary with state). I'm also unaware of anyone every being prosecuted for failing to pay their personal use tax...
Let's see - at this point we've got 20 comments that basically say "we don't believe anything Microsoft says" and one guy that's still sucking his thumb. I think maybe the majority have a valid point here...
So for items costing around $100, there's essentially no real price difference. You can get it today or wait a week but the final cost is pretty much the same.
But things are changing; the rapidly increasing cost of oil is having a profound impact on the shipping companies. For most of those shipping companies the largest expense they have is the cost of fuel to run their trucks, delivery vans, airplanes, etc. These companies are scrambling to find ways to cut costs and stay profitable without increasing their rates - laying off employees, cutting back on "non essential" services, consolidating routes, etc. This is only a temporary fix; energy costs continue to rise and it's just a matter of time before the cost to ship a package increases substantially.
That'll increase the total cost of online purchases - I wouldn't be surprised to see the shipping costs double over the next couple of years. This will translate directly into a loss of business for online stores and more than a few of them will shut down.
Adding sales tax into the mix will make things even worse. That would mean that instead of a $100 item costing $108 after paying for shipping it would become $124 after paying for "new improved" shipping and sales tax. The bricks/mortar store will still be able to sell for $108.
The end result of this ill conceived plan will be that we will no longer be able to access a wide range of products - or if we can they'll be a lot more expensive. The brick/mortar stores will still only carry the items that sell in large numbers (as they do now). The state governments will receive a small increase in their tax collections. And us, the consumers, will pay for all of it. Less choice, higher prices. Thank your governor for their fine public service...
Probably wishful thinking. I've got a Chrysler with UConnect and it works surprisingly well for a piece of automotive high-tech candy. But it could be much better; some of the shortcomings could be because it was designed to a price point, but much of what's not quite right can only be explained by rushed / sloppy design and unfinished coding.
They'll probably follow the same design model for this upgrade too. They'll probably manage to make it so it works if you configure your laptop just exactly right but is absolutely intolerant of any variations in configuration. It'll have DHCP, but they'll hardcode the netmask - or some other boneheaded blunder such as only working with certain Microsoft operating systems.
Of course, the "industry" he's talking about are the corporations that control large chunks of the infrastructure. As we've established time and time again, those corporations aren't acting in the public interest. Their only interest is in what makes their corporation the largest profit. To those interests, blocking competing services or forcing popular websites to pay more to stay online are quite reasonable things to do.
This is why net neutrality is such an important idea. Look at what has been accomplished so far with our "ad hoc" arrangement of computers connected to a crazy quilt of networks. All that you see is just the beginning - but a better future will never come to pass if the corporate interests are allowed to filter / segregate / block network traffic.
Think about it for a minute: consider AT&T. They own a substantial amount of internet infrastructure and they're also the major telephone company. When they look at Skype and discuss how to limit the loss of business to this competitor - you'd better believe they consider blocking VOIP on the backbone. Call it a benefit to the customer and put a competitor out of business; another good day in corporate headquarters.