Netflix's streaming video quality is sub-par, sure; Hulu's quality is much, much better. I haven't tried the Roku, but I can't imagine that they're deliberately streaming lower quality video to PCs than to Rokus.
(For the record, I regularly watch Netflix streamed videos on a 21.5" monitor at 1920x1080, and the lower-quality-than-Hulu is extremely noticable.)
Does anyone know for sure? Anyone have inside knowledge, or empirical evidence?
Games workshop makes tabletop game mini, and rules to go with them. If someone starts making their own rules for them, that's a direct competition, and of course they shut it down.
You still need the miniatures (even if you're using alternate rules), which is where the real money is, so that's not really a good argument.
They may be within their rights, but they're still stupid.
It sounds high, but there's no state income tax, so it works out alright.
Re:it didn't detect my usb mouse so i can't instal
on
Fedora 12 Released
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· Score: 1
RHEL3 has issues with some chipsets here (causing USB mice to not work at all, or to work intermittently) at work; RHEL5 usually works fine on those same machines, but obviously I haven't taken a survey to find out for sure. I suppose it's possible that Fedora 12 has the same sort of issue with certain chipsets.
It's the same situation with Valve. I just moved to Seattle; I now have less incentive to buy on Steam over other online distributors, because Steam now charges me 10% sales tax, while others do not.
Subversion would meet your needs very well. It's quite stable enough for commercial development, and it of course doesn't care what kind of text you're working with.
I attempted to get a former employer to switch to Subversion from SourceSafe - but I guess pointing out that Microsoft's maximum recommended SourceSafe database size is 4GB, and that our SourceSafe database was 4GB, wasn't enough motivation.
Losing a month's worth of work when SourceSafe crashed horribly (and deleted all our revision history!) wasn't enough motivation either.
It took me six months to get them to move our third-party code into Subversion out of SourceSafe. I doubt they've moved yet, another six months later.
It didn't matter that I had already migrated their SourceSafe stuff into Subversion, preserving usernames and history and everything... they wanted to keep using SourceSafe. Ah well.
I got them to refund the fee, so there was no reason to leave for a competitor;)
In principle, I agree with you, and where possible I try to do so. However it's not always an option; if I want high speed internet, my choices right now are "Comcast" or "nothing"; that makes it hard to threaten to go to a competitor (well, the threat is easy, it's the "follow through on it" that's hard).
Of course it costs "them" something. It costs the tens of billions the carriers have to spend on their network infrastructure to SEND THE DAMN MESSAGE. So what if the carriers use free space in a channel that's already there anyway. If the network wasn't there - HOW WOULD YOU GET THE SMS TEXT??? Idiots.
That's silly. The networks exists to make phone calls. The networks existed long before text messaging was invented. Even if I concede that the cost of sending text messages is non-zero, it's still very close to zero percent; it's stupid to try to claim that "tens of billions" of dollars go specifically toward sending text messages.
Text messaging was added long after the cell networks were already up and running; they deliberately chose a method that would cost them nothing.
To turn around and act like their network exists to support text messaging is silly at best.
I'm not complaining about paying for service. I pay $30/month per line for a five-line family plan, and we have unlimited texting. I don't get nickel-and-dimed for text messages.
It's the people who dont' want to fork over $5 or $10 or $20 per month for text messaging that get nickeled and dimed, and they don't even have to do anything for it to happen - if other people send them texts, they get charged to receive them.
Yes, that's right. If I sign up for a plan without texting, and you decide to send me a text message, I get charged. If you decide to do it a lot, then you could drive up my bill!
If you don't have a problem with that, then something is seriously wrong with you.
(Yes, I know you can prevent texts to a certain line, but that's not always desirable.)
There is no difference between a phone call and a youtube video (cept its one way).
"cept its one way" is actually a very big difference.
When it comes to long-range over-the-air communication, one-way transmissions are easy (e.g. radio). Two-way is a bit harder, especially when you have a low-power device (e.g. a cheap cell phone) on one end.
But anyway, even if you're right, that doesn't mean cell phones themselves have been "usurped"; you've just been talking about some of the transmission tech that cell companies are using. Even if we switch everything to whatever you think has "usurped" current cell networks ("usurped" implies it has already replaced them, which is of course untrue), you're still going to need mobile communication devices, and that's all a cell phone is.
So no, cell phones haven't been "usurped":P
You'll note that I've been putting "usurp" in quotes. There's a reason... you don't appear to know what it means, because nothing you've said qualifies under its definition, even if you assume the existence of ubiquitous tech superior to current cell networks. I've continued the conversation under the assumption that when you say "usurped" you mean "replaced by something better", but as I've said, that's quite untrue.
Because the MPAA didn't ask for anything to be shut down? I did say that, and yes, it does answer the question.
Yes, the county overreacted. It didn't need to shut down the network. But that was the county's decision, not the MPAA's, and it's counter-productive for Doctorow to claim the MPAA maliciously tried to shut down "municipal wifi".
The only thing the MPAA did was notify the ISP that someone on that IP address downloaded a movie. It was probably a form letter. The form letter doesn't request that the customer's account be shut down.
Furthermore, the ISP did not shut down the internet access, the county merely turned off the publicly-accessible wireless network.
Again, the MPAA was barely involved, and it's stupid to call the county's overreaction "an overreaction of the MPAA".
Calling it "yellow-bellied bending over by the city" implies that the MPAA threatened the city. There is absolutely no evidence that the MPAA even contacted the city, let alone issued a threat, and they certainly didn't start a lawsuit.
Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. By that logic, anyone with an open wireless access point is running "municipal WiFi".
And it's even more ridiculous to use that as an excuse to refer to what happened as "OMG THE MPAA KILLED A TOWN'S MUNI WIFI", because that doesn't even vaguely reflect reality.
According to my understanding of Verizon's data plans (I just went to verizonwireless.com and looked at them) you're charged $1.99/MB per month.
In other words, if you only hit the browser button once, yeah, you'd be charged $2, but you'd have to hit the browser button a whole lot more to get charged another $2. (You'd have to load the home page enough times to go into the second megabyte.)
Because the MPAA didn't ask for the network to be shut down, which you'd know if you had bothered to read past my second sentence.
All the MPAA did was notify the ISP - they didn't even track down who the user was, they just told the ISP "$IP on your network downloaded a movie".
The ISP told the county, the county shut down the network. The MPAA was barely involved.
My point is, Doctorow is acting like thousands of people are now without internet because of some evil MPAA lawsuit. That doesn't even vaguely reflect the situation.
To be fair I'm sure the SMS is compressed to about 70bytes, maybe less.
Nah, it's sent uncompressed. It uses some free space in the command channel of the cell network (meaning it's being sent anyway, so it's literally free). They have no incentive to compress it.
Long distance calls cost more on cellphones
Not on any plan I've seen. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all include long distance at no extra charge. (I'm of course referring to domestic long distance.)
Cellphone bills cost something like 90$/mo w/ a data plan.
Well the easiest way to save money on cell phones is to get a family plan. I share 700 minutes between five phones, and we pay for unlimited messaging.
My bill comes to almost exactly $150/month - that's just $30 per line including tax. That's a far better deal than getting five landlines (and long distance calling from them).
None of us have phones that really need data, but if I get an iPhone, then I have to get an unlimited data plan for my line. (Data plans are per-line.) That means I'd pay an extra $30/month or so for unlimited data on my phone. It's easy to use that enough to make it worth the money.
Don't get me wrong - I think cell phone companies charge way too much for non-plan text messaging, they definitely charge way too much for phone hardware, and they have a tendency toward nickel-and-diming unsuspecting customers. But if you use enough data that you need an unlimited data plan, you're not getting ripped off; and $30/month for a phone you can take anywhere and with which you can call anywhere is well worth the money.
Slashdot Mirror
That was me :)
I'm an avid Netflix streaming video watcher, and I have been since they switched from Flash to Silverlight. I was not impressed by the change.
I suppose they could have increased their quality over time since the switch, but they still suck compared to Hulu.
Netflix's streaming video quality is sub-par, sure; Hulu's quality is much, much better. I haven't tried the Roku, but I can't imagine that they're deliberately streaming lower quality video to PCs than to Rokus.
(For the record, I regularly watch Netflix streamed videos on a 21.5" monitor at 1920x1080, and the lower-quality-than-Hulu is extremely noticable.)
Does anyone know for sure? Anyone have inside knowledge, or empirical evidence?
The quality of Netflix's streaming video went down significantly when they switched to Silverlight.
Also, even if their streaming app works under Moonlight, we'll never know, because you can't fool it into trying.
Games workshop makes tabletop game mini, and rules to go with them. If someone starts making their own rules for them, that's a direct competition, and of course they shut it down.
You still need the miniatures (even if you're using alternate rules), which is where the real money is, so that's not really a good argument.
They may be within their rights, but they're still stupid.
Yes, but that requires having a credit card whose billing address is outside of WA.
I don't know whether purchasing using a Paypal account would allow you to circumvent sales tax or not.
I remember living in Hawaii with its 4% sales tax when I was a kid...
Of course, food was more expensive, what with having to ship it from the mainland, so my parents ended up spending more anyway.
It sounds high, but there's no state income tax, so it works out alright.
RHEL3 has issues with some chipsets here (causing USB mice to not work at all, or to work intermittently) at work; RHEL5 usually works fine on those same machines, but obviously I haven't taken a survey to find out for sure. I suppose it's possible that Fedora 12 has the same sort of issue with certain chipsets.
Oops.
Missed a spot.
It's the same situation with Valve. I just moved to Seattle; I now have less incentive to buy on Steam over other online distributors, because Steam now charges me 10% sales tax, while others do not.
Yeah, but I figured I'd mention it in case someone were to decide to give SourceSafe a try...
Subversion would meet your needs very well. It's quite stable enough for commercial development, and it of course doesn't care what kind of text you're working with.
I attempted to get a former employer to switch to Subversion from SourceSafe - but I guess pointing out that Microsoft's maximum recommended SourceSafe database size is 4GB, and that our SourceSafe database was 4GB, wasn't enough motivation.
Losing a month's worth of work when SourceSafe crashed horribly (and deleted all our revision history!) wasn't enough motivation either.
It took me six months to get them to move our third-party code into Subversion out of SourceSafe. I doubt they've moved yet, another six months later.
It didn't matter that I had already migrated their SourceSafe stuff into Subversion, preserving usernames and history and everything... they wanted to keep using SourceSafe. Ah well.
You don't need SourceSafe at all to do any sort of .NET development. Subversion, git, CVS, etc. all work fine for .NET development.
SourceSafe would be better off forgotten entirely.
I got them to refund the fee, so there was no reason to leave for a competitor ;)
In principle, I agree with you, and where possible I try to do so. However it's not always an option; if I want high speed internet, my choices right now are "Comcast" or "nothing"; that makes it hard to threaten to go to a competitor (well, the threat is easy, it's the "follow through on it" that's hard).
Of course it costs "them" something. It costs the tens of billions the carriers have to spend on their network infrastructure to SEND THE DAMN MESSAGE. So what if the carriers use free space in a channel that's already there anyway. If the network wasn't there - HOW WOULD YOU GET THE SMS TEXT??? Idiots.
That's silly. The networks exists to make phone calls. The networks existed long before text messaging was invented. Even if I concede that the cost of sending text messages is non-zero, it's still very close to zero percent; it's stupid to try to claim that "tens of billions" of dollars go specifically toward sending text messages.
Text messaging was added long after the cell networks were already up and running; they deliberately chose a method that would cost them nothing.
To turn around and act like their network exists to support text messaging is silly at best.
I'm not complaining about paying for service. I pay $30/month per line for a five-line family plan, and we have unlimited texting. I don't get nickel-and-dimed for text messages.
It's the people who dont' want to fork over $5 or $10 or $20 per month for text messaging that get nickeled and dimed, and they don't even have to do anything for it to happen - if other people send them texts, they get charged to receive them.
Yes, that's right. If I sign up for a plan without texting, and you decide to send me a text message, I get charged. If you decide to do it a lot, then you could drive up my bill!
If you don't have a problem with that, then something is seriously wrong with you.
(Yes, I know you can prevent texts to a certain line, but that's not always desirable.)
There is no difference between a phone call and a youtube video (cept its one way).
"cept its one way" is actually a very big difference.
When it comes to long-range over-the-air communication, one-way transmissions are easy (e.g. radio). Two-way is a bit harder, especially when you have a low-power device (e.g. a cheap cell phone) on one end.
But anyway, even if you're right, that doesn't mean cell phones themselves have been "usurped"; you've just been talking about some of the transmission tech that cell companies are using. Even if we switch everything to whatever you think has "usurped" current cell networks ("usurped" implies it has already replaced them, which is of course untrue), you're still going to need mobile communication devices, and that's all a cell phone is.
So no, cell phones haven't been "usurped" :P
You'll note that I've been putting "usurp" in quotes. There's a reason... you don't appear to know what it means, because nothing you've said qualifies under its definition, even if you assume the existence of ubiquitous tech superior to current cell networks. I've continued the conversation under the assumption that when you say "usurped" you mean "replaced by something better", but as I've said, that's quite untrue.
"what does blue sound like?"
Blue sounds like seven. Didn't anyone tell you?
Because the MPAA didn't ask for anything to be shut down? I did say that, and yes, it does answer the question.
Yes, the county overreacted. It didn't need to shut down the network. But that was the county's decision, not the MPAA's, and it's counter-productive for Doctorow to claim the MPAA maliciously tried to shut down "municipal wifi".
The only thing the MPAA did was notify the ISP that someone on that IP address downloaded a movie. It was probably a form letter. The form letter doesn't request that the customer's account be shut down.
Furthermore, the ISP did not shut down the internet access, the county merely turned off the publicly-accessible wireless network.
Again, the MPAA was barely involved, and it's stupid to call the county's overreaction "an overreaction of the MPAA".
Calling it "yellow-bellied bending over by the city" implies that the MPAA threatened the city. There is absolutely no evidence that the MPAA even contacted the city, let alone issued a threat, and they certainly didn't start a lawsuit.
Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. By that logic, anyone with an open wireless access point is running "municipal WiFi".
And it's even more ridiculous to use that as an excuse to refer to what happened as "OMG THE MPAA KILLED A TOWN'S MUNI WIFI", because that doesn't even vaguely reflect reality.
I don't have a data plan, either.
It's not something I'd call AT&T to complain about, but it's worth mentioning in the context of nickel-and-diming, because that's exactly what it is.
I think the TFA is being misleading.
According to my understanding of Verizon's data plans (I just went to verizonwireless.com and looked at them) you're charged $1.99/MB per month.
In other words, if you only hit the browser button once, yeah, you'd be charged $2, but you'd have to hit the browser button a whole lot more to get charged another $2. (You'd have to load the home page enough times to go into the second megabyte.)
From a technological POV cellphones have been usurped completely.
Usurped by...?
Because the MPAA didn't ask for the network to be shut down, which you'd know if you had bothered to read past my second sentence.
All the MPAA did was notify the ISP - they didn't even track down who the user was, they just told the ISP "$IP on your network downloaded a movie".
The ISP told the county, the county shut down the network. The MPAA was barely involved.
My point is, Doctorow is acting like thousands of people are now without internet because of some evil MPAA lawsuit. That doesn't even vaguely reflect the situation.
To be fair I'm sure the SMS is compressed to about 70bytes, maybe less.
Nah, it's sent uncompressed. It uses some free space in the command channel of the cell network (meaning it's being sent anyway, so it's literally free). They have no incentive to compress it.
Long distance calls cost more on cellphones
Not on any plan I've seen. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all include long distance at no extra charge. (I'm of course referring to domestic long distance.)
Cellphone bills cost something like 90$/mo w/ a data plan.
Well the easiest way to save money on cell phones is to get a family plan. I share 700 minutes between five phones, and we pay for unlimited messaging.
My bill comes to almost exactly $150/month - that's just $30 per line including tax. That's a far better deal than getting five landlines (and long distance calling from them).
None of us have phones that really need data, but if I get an iPhone, then I have to get an unlimited data plan for my line. (Data plans are per-line.) That means I'd pay an extra $30/month or so for unlimited data on my phone. It's easy to use that enough to make it worth the money.
Don't get me wrong - I think cell phone companies charge way too much for non-plan text messaging, they definitely charge way too much for phone hardware, and they have a tendency toward nickel-and-diming unsuspecting customers. But if you use enough data that you need an unlimited data plan, you're not getting ripped off; and $30/month for a phone you can take anywhere and with which you can call anywhere is well worth the money.