This is a silly misconception that many people have.
There are are entire websites that make money off of tracking domainss about to expire.
Here is what the sites do Create a database of domains Lookup links to/from that site (backlinks = good) Track PR (Page Rank) of the site When the site is about to expire.
Then when the domains start to expire in the database they either buy them up, or offer them up to members who pay the monthly fee to get the domain lists each day.
You expect them to hold your domain after you let it expire?
No only do they email you a few times about your domain to expire. As well as give you a warning about expired domains when you log into your account, but you can also even set your account to re-register domains names about to expire! There is simply no reason to complain about losing a dommain name when godaddy does everything to let you know about a domain name expiring short of sending you a physical email or phone call.
"Now go and ask Verizon how much they pay to upgrade entire neighborhoods with fiber-to-the-home. And remember, they are relying on the fact that the customer is almost always going to get the triple-service-deal (tv/internet/phone) which makes them the most money... TWC doesn't have that type of guarantee"
The goverment is paying for the majority of the costs for fiber to the home, which isn't really to the home, its to the curb. This was a big deal last year and I guess people just delt with it or forgot about it.
"TWC doesn't want to run an entirely new infrastructure just to satisfy the people who are using the most bandwidth. And if they are going to go through the trouble to upgrade infrastructure, they need to have a financial benefit to doing such (i.e. more users paying more for more bandwidth.) They are already going to have to invest in new lines once all the major cable networks go HD
It sucks for the high-bandwidth user, but it makes perfect sense."
No what makes perfect sense is charging people who use more bandwidth more and people who use less bandwidth less. Sure its great they can charge people who use more, but do you think people who only use their internet a couple times a week will get a break? I'm sure they wont.
Unlimited is not unlimited within what a company says someone is limited too.
"The system could also "automatically detect frustration or stress in the user" and "offer and provide assistance accordingly"."
I can't believe they actually added that to the patent filing. Just what every coder wants. Every few minutes some big brother style paper clip poping up on the screen asking them if they need assistance.... Or maybe a few streches.
The ironic part to this is so many people have complained about the xbox wireless losing connection or just working just plain badly. I guess Microsoft didn't think how badly the controlers would interfear with the wifi card for the xbox.
This isn't just a problem for microsoft though it will most likely be a problem with any console that deals with wireless lan access and wireless controllers that both function in the 2.6 spectrum.
I have taken naps at work many times. Infact after talking with my boss he realized that it was a good thing and other techies were allowed to take quick "cat naps" as long as it didn't interfer with daily work (missing meetings, snoring that type of thing).
What is better for a company, a half asleep employee who is just waiting to get done with work and is too tired to get anything done? Or an employee who takes a quick 10 minute nap who wakes up full of energy and a uncluttered head.
I was a bit worried about their end of life. Many people in the kiosk industry haven't upgraded from 2000 let alone XP to vista.
My guess is the majority of kiosks you see in stores will be running XP for many years. There is little (no?) reason for these kiosks to upgrade to vista which means in a very short time tens of thousands of machines around the world will be unsupported, unmonitored and over taken by bot networks or trojans.
Not only was this one of the first (console) game to have more then 1 or 2 disks (7!). It was one of the longest non repedative games made in its time, as well as having some of the best graphics, cut scenes, audio and story line.
It was also one of the first games to have the ability to have characters off in various stages of the game with the ability to switch back and forth between them.
The fact that this game wasn't even in the top 10, let alone on the list at all and the fact that only 5 games in the top 30 were not nintendo games shows these people are bias or fanboys.
I don't think any of the big companies will do this for a very long time. What I expect will happen is some startup company will offer this as a way to get that 1%-2% market share. Then once the big companies realize what they are doing they will follow behind. Because there is no point for them to offer it until someone is taking their business away from them.
So locking people into "open source" alternatives and formats though litigation is better then them using closed source by choice or the choice of their managers?
I think government agencies moving over to an open source format that could still be used by other agencies that have to transfer files between one another would be great, and would over time cause more to move to the open source formats, but forcing people to use open source?
No removable battery? Let me put it a different way; No replaceable battery? I'm sorry but not only is there no excuse to not be able to replace your battery as your phone ages (and the battery dies out) but its just obvious that not being able to replace your battery is such a great way to force users to upgrade as new versions (new iphones) to upgrade. This phone is only catered to the hipster fad of throw it away when their is something better.
Not only do I hope that this fails utterly if its push into an enterprise market, but I hope it makes companies like Apple realize that bullshit tactic's like this will not work with people on people who buy devices for work/business/enterprise.
Just naming something safe will not make it safe. Also this could give the clueless masses the illusion that the site IS safe at all times, when infact the site is just as secure without it, or just as insecure as it is with it.
"Just the same, the folks that spoke for Sony yesterday honestly seemed like passionate businessmen with an interest in making a good product"
No, Sony could give a crap less about making a good product, just like they could give a crap less about making a good movie, music, game, hardware, software or ANYTHING.
If they make a good anything it's simply a BYPRODUCT of trying to make money, which is all sony has ever cared about.
"Hmm. Someone tells lies about you that might damage your reputation or livelihood. "
Yes but it also has the reversed affect, where companies and people can now sue anyone or everyone for posting/saying anything negative about them.
So for example you can not post on a rating site your opinion based on an expierence of a company/services unless its good without fear of a lawsuit. Which I had to deal with 2 years ago.
I wonder how many millions of dollars have all ready been spent simply catching,detaining,transporting, legal fees and so on have all ready been spent to get this awful criminal to pay for his crime.
"IBM plans to also roll this out in-house to 5% of their 320,000 employees worldwide. This sure seems like a promising endeavor. "
So out of their 320,000 employees they will have about 16,000 employees using this new open desktop solution. It would seem like a hard solution to sell to other's if the company selling it will barley be using it.
If IBM really wanted to make this a proven solution as an alternative to "big business" they should show that a company as large as them could roll out sure a large change to software to a wide variety of employee types.
I can only speak for myself and from a few friends that I have talked with about the subject, but the biggest problem I have with java applets is the fact that its very confusing finding what you need to install just for applets, the always updating program that is just annoying, and the 120+ meg install and 300-400 megs worth of files that seem to be collected over a few months time.
For my self, its just not worth having another program sucking up memory, bandwidth, and disk space just to use it for a few random applects.
Yes its too bad that it seems to be going down the crapper, but maybe it should. Maybe once it hits rock bottom there will be life put into it again and it will be done right this time.
Most likely it is for the software registration and to check to the software is registered too / what features you have and to make sure you have a valid registration.
One of the companies I work for do the same thing. What happens is each time application is run it collects some information from the users hardware. If then makes a magic number and sends it to a web service to compare to the magic number that was created when the person registered the program.
If the numbers dont match then the software is not valid and the program wont allow the users to access the program.
And yes if the person does upgrade their hardware they have to re-register the software.
I remember when this idea was brought up as another step in the login and authenication protection when users login. It was mainly an attempt to keep automated data harvesters from collecting infromation from thousands of users at one time (collecting data from a large list of stolen user infromation) as well as protecting users from having their username and password sniffed over a network. If the user had their user/pass stolen the theif would still need to know what image they had pre-selected.
For the last 3 years I have worked for another pay to use wireless service. I won't say the name but we supply most of the wireless service in Hiltons, Radisons and Embassy suites in the united states.
Thankfully it sounds like they are not even trying to lie about what is happening, and are say they are trying to push advertisements to their wireless users so I don't need to explain why they wouldn't be using a proxey.
After a user authenticates at a location there is no need for any of this redirecting per page every time a user tries going to a different site. Any good wireless gateway (and many bad ones) simply track each user using a session assigned to their mac address on the gateway, Nothing needs to be done to track service usage as long as they are active.
The only reason (and I don't know why they haven't been using this as the excuse) is to be able to claim monitoring illegal web usage such as kiddy porn or illegal music downloads. We had a few places claim they needed to be able to track this, but we dropped them instead of willingly tracking users for a b.s. reason.
This is just another case where a company that is charging for a service are trying to make even more money doing secretive and underhanded business practices.
Very true, but thankfully peoples ignorance will not(or shouldn't!) be a good enough excuese for the RIAA to be able to win this lawsuit.
To download anything on the site you have to register, and on the registration page you have to read and agree to everything, which specifically states "You shall not download audio and video files from AllOFMP3.com if the Terms are in conflict with the laws of your country of residence."
Its legal in Russia and they are not breaking any rules so the RIAA should be powerless against them, but in the end the RIAA will win because of their politicial power.
I havent read much about the online gameplay for the wii or ps3, (I'm a xbox fan). Will these devices connect to a server so you can play against people who want to play simular online titles, and keep track of scrores/ladderboards. Or is it a client to client connection where the ps3/wii require connecting directly to friends?
The reason I ask is because the xbox monthly subscription to live allows you to play in a way where you dont need to contact people. With the xbox you can search through people or running games and pick and choose who you want to play against. Is the ps3/wii service free because it costs these two companies nothing to allow you to play against friends (and not strangers)?
Buy a pay per use phone. They cost 30-60 dollars at places like walmart, checks cashed places, and dollar stores. And they come with some free time on them. Many of them you can replace the uid card with a different one (one supplied by your provider. There small and have no features.
But most likely for many who want a basic phone it will be too basic for them.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a silly misconception that many people have.
There are are entire websites that make money off of tracking domainss about to expire.
Here is what the sites do
Create a database of domains
Lookup links to/from that site (backlinks = good)
Track PR (Page Rank) of the site
When the site is about to expire.
Then when the domains start to expire in the database they either buy them up, or offer them up to members who pay the monthly fee to get the domain lists each day.
You expect them to hold your domain after you let it expire?
No only do they email you a few times about your domain to expire. As well as give you a warning about expired domains when you log into your account, but you can also even set your account to re-register domains names about to expire! There is simply no reason to complain about losing a dommain name when godaddy does everything to let you know about a domain name expiring short of sending you a physical email or phone call.
"Now go and ask Verizon how much they pay to upgrade entire neighborhoods with fiber-to-the-home. And remember, they are relying on the fact that the customer is almost always going to get the triple-service-deal (tv/internet/phone) which makes them the most money... TWC doesn't have that type of guarantee"
The goverment is paying for the majority of the costs for fiber to the home, which isn't really to the home, its to the curb. This was a big deal last year and I guess people just delt with it or forgot about it.
"TWC doesn't want to run an entirely new infrastructure just to satisfy the people who are using the most bandwidth. And if they are going to go through the trouble to upgrade infrastructure, they need to have a financial benefit to doing such (i.e. more users paying more for more bandwidth.) They are already going to have to invest in new lines once all the major cable networks go HD
It sucks for the high-bandwidth user, but it makes perfect sense."
No what makes perfect sense is charging people who use more bandwidth more and people who use less bandwidth less. Sure its great they can charge people who use more, but do you think people who only use their internet a couple times a week will get a break? I'm sure they wont.
Unlimited is not unlimited within what a company says someone is limited too.
"The system could also "automatically detect frustration or stress in the user" and "offer and provide assistance accordingly"."
I can't believe they actually added that to the patent filing. Just what every coder wants. Every few minutes some big brother style paper clip poping up on the screen asking them if they need assistance.... Or maybe a few streches.
The ironic part to this is so many people have complained about the xbox wireless losing connection or just working just plain badly. I guess Microsoft didn't think how badly the controlers would interfear with the wifi card for the xbox.
This isn't just a problem for microsoft though it will most likely be a problem with any console that deals with wireless lan access and wireless controllers that both function in the 2.6 spectrum.
I have taken naps at work many times. Infact after talking with my boss he realized that it was a good thing and other techies were allowed to take quick "cat naps" as long as it didn't interfer with daily work (missing meetings, snoring that type of thing).
What is better for a company, a half asleep employee who is just waiting to get done with work and is too tired to get anything done? Or an employee who takes a quick 10 minute nap who wakes up full of energy and a uncluttered head.
I was a bit worried about their end of life. Many people in the kiosk industry haven't upgraded from 2000 let alone XP to vista.
My guess is the majority of kiosks you see in stores will be running XP for many years. There is little (no?) reason for these kiosks to upgrade to vista which means in a very short time tens of thousands of machines around the world will be unsupported, unmonitored and over taken by bot networks or trojans.
Not only was this one of the first (console) game to have more then 1 or 2 disks (7!). It was one of the longest non repedative games made in its time, as well as having some of the best graphics, cut scenes, audio and story line.
It was also one of the first games to have the ability to have characters off in various stages of the game with the ability to switch back and forth between them.
The fact that this game wasn't even in the top 10, let alone on the list at all and the fact that only 5 games in the top 30 were not nintendo games shows these people are bias or fanboys.
I don't think any of the big companies will do this for a very long time. What I expect will happen is some startup company will offer this as a way to get that 1%-2% market share. Then once the big companies realize what they are doing they will follow behind. Because there is no point for them to offer it until someone is taking their business away from them.
So locking people into "open source" alternatives and formats though litigation is better then them using closed source by choice or the choice of their managers?
I think government agencies moving over to an open source format that could still be used by other agencies that have to transfer files between one another would be great, and would over time cause more to move to the open source formats, but forcing people to use open source?
No removable battery? Let me put it a different way; No replaceable battery? I'm sorry but not only is there no excuse to not be able to replace your battery as your phone ages (and the battery dies out) but its just obvious that not being able to replace your battery is such a great way to force users to upgrade as new versions (new iphones) to upgrade. This phone is only catered to the hipster fad of throw it away when their is something better.
Not only do I hope that this fails utterly if its push into an enterprise market, but I hope it makes companies like Apple realize that bullshit tactic's like this will not work with people on people who buy devices for work/business/enterprise.
Just naming something safe will not make it safe. Also this could give the clueless masses the illusion that the site IS safe at all times, when infact the site is just as secure without it, or just as insecure as it is with it.
Worthless idea, and I hope it gets shot down.
"quaid start the reactor"
--Kuato
"Just the same, the folks that spoke for Sony yesterday honestly seemed like passionate businessmen with an interest in making a good product"
No, Sony could give a crap less about making a good product, just like they could give a crap less about making a good movie, music, game, hardware, software or ANYTHING.
If they make a good anything it's simply a BYPRODUCT of trying to make money, which is all sony has ever cared about.
"Hmm. Someone tells lies about you that might damage your reputation or livelihood. "
Yes but it also has the reversed affect, where companies and people can now sue anyone or everyone for posting/saying anything negative about them.
So for example you can not post on a rating site your opinion based on an expierence of a company/services unless its good without fear of a lawsuit. Which I had to deal with 2 years ago.
I wonder how many millions of dollars have all ready been spent simply catching,detaining,transporting, legal fees and so on have all ready been spent to get this awful criminal to pay for his crime.
"IBM plans to also roll this out in-house to 5% of their 320,000 employees worldwide. This sure seems like a promising endeavor. "
So out of their 320,000 employees they will have about 16,000 employees using this new open desktop solution. It would seem like a hard solution to sell to other's if the company selling it will barley be using it.
If IBM really wanted to make this a proven solution as an alternative to "big business" they should show that a company as large as them could roll out sure a large change to software to a wide variety of employee types.
I can only speak for myself and from a few friends that I have talked with about the subject, but the biggest problem I have with java applets is the fact that its very confusing finding what you need to install just for applets, the always updating program that is just annoying, and the 120+ meg install and 300-400 megs worth of files that seem to be collected over a few months time.
For my self, its just not worth having another program sucking up memory, bandwidth, and disk space just to use it for a few random applects.
Yes its too bad that it seems to be going down the crapper, but maybe it should. Maybe once it hits rock bottom there will be life put into it again and it will be done right this time.
Most likely it is for the software registration and to check to the software is registered too / what features you have and to make sure you have a valid registration.
One of the companies I work for do the same thing. What happens is each time application is run it collects some information from the users hardware. If then makes a magic number and sends it to a web service to compare to the magic number that was created when the person registered the program.
If the numbers dont match then the software is not valid and the program wont allow the users to access the program.
And yes if the person does upgrade their hardware they have to re-register the software.
I remember when this idea was brought up as another step in the login and authenication protection when users login. It was mainly an attempt to keep automated data harvesters from collecting infromation from thousands of users at one time (collecting data from a large list of stolen user infromation) as well as protecting users from having their username and password sniffed over a network. If the user had their user/pass stolen the theif would still need to know what image they had pre-selected.
For the last 3 years I have worked for another pay to use wireless service. I won't say the name but we supply most of the wireless service in Hiltons, Radisons and Embassy suites in the united states.
Thankfully it sounds like they are not even trying to lie about what is happening, and are say they are trying to push advertisements to their wireless users so I don't need to explain why they wouldn't be using a proxey.
After a user authenticates at a location there is no need for any of this redirecting per page every time a user tries going to a different site. Any good wireless gateway (and many bad ones) simply track each user using a session assigned to their mac address on the gateway, Nothing needs to be done to track service usage as long as they are active.
The only reason (and I don't know why they haven't been using this as the excuse) is to be able to claim monitoring illegal web usage such as kiddy porn or illegal music downloads. We had a few places claim they needed to be able to track this, but we dropped them instead of willingly tracking users for a b.s. reason.
This is just another case where a company that is charging for a service are trying to make even more money doing secretive and underhanded business practices.
Very true, but thankfully peoples ignorance will not(or shouldn't!) be a good enough excuese for the RIAA to be able to win this lawsuit.
To download anything on the site you have to register, and on the registration page you have to read and agree to everything, which specifically states "You shall not download audio and video files from AllOFMP3.com if the Terms are in conflict with the laws of your country of residence."
Its legal in Russia and they are not breaking any rules so the RIAA should be powerless against them, but in the end the RIAA will win because of their politicial power.
Why is it people like this are in charge of running America?
I havent read much about the online gameplay for the wii or ps3, (I'm a xbox fan). Will these devices connect to a server so you can play against people who want to play simular online titles, and keep track of scrores/ladderboards. Or is it a client to client connection where the ps3/wii require connecting directly to friends?
The reason I ask is because the xbox monthly subscription to live allows you to play in a way where you dont need to contact people. With the xbox you can search through people or running games and pick and choose who you want to play against. Is the ps3/wii service free because it costs these two companies nothing to allow you to play against friends (and not strangers)?
Buy a pay per use phone. They cost 30-60 dollars at places like walmart, checks cashed places, and dollar stores. And they come with some free time on them. Many of them you can replace the uid card with a different one (one supplied by your provider. There small and have no features.
But most likely for many who want a basic phone it will be too basic for them.