Kill RealOne and download Real Alternative. It lets you play Real files through media player or whatever else you choose to use without having to deal with realplayer, one of the most horrible pieces of software ever.
A lot of the major sites (Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City) don't charge for shipping on most orders. Most other sites charge relatively reasonable shipping fees. It's usually just the smaller sites that try to lure people in with low prices then overcharge for shipping that cause the problem.
If I save $10 in tax but have to bay $5 shipping, I still come out ahead and I don't even have to change out of my pajamas.
This reminds me of the Digital Picture Frame that I read about in Popular Science a while ago. Seems like a really neat idea, showing changing digital pictures in a picture frame-styled LCD screen. It's too bad they're so expensive - you could buy your own 14" LCD screen and show a screensaver on it for the price they want.
Joking aside, in XP I don't think I've used ctrl-alt-delete since I found out Windows Key + L locks the computer. Every once in a while, I'll do ctrl-shift-esc to bring up task manager and check CPU/Memory usage, but even that's rare. In fact, I don't even think you CAN restart the computer with ctrl-alt-delete anymore, unless you use it to get to the shutdown menu...
I'm sure it can be disabled, although it actually might be quite convenient for people running at high resolutions, assuming that it's extremely customizable and that you can put worthwhile things in there. I'd love a little sidebar with the time, weather, and stock reports in it. Put some winamp controls in there, move over the quick launch bar (more space for more programs) and system tray so they're not cluttering up your task bar, etc. I'd gladly lose a little desktop space for stuff like that.
I had to read that title a few times - the first couple readthroughs had me thinking this PC was the size of an antelope hand (which they don't have anyway), and that didn't help me very much when trying to picture how big it was.
How is this any different than any other MMORPG where you spend REAL dollars every month for the ability to go around the virtual world to get virtual stuff from killing virtual monsters?
This is just a slight variation on the MMORPG "pay for access to virtual stuff" game. The only real innovation here is that instead of getting just the users to pay for the stuff, they also get the advertisers to pay as well.
I doubt the real world opinion of people will be changed by this advertising any more than they would by television or internet advertising. The easily influenced people will think, "oh cool!" no matter what medium it's through, and the people who know better will just roll their eyes.
I login to my blog page and add to the running log. No place for people to spam.
With blogging places like Livejournal (most likely the most popular blogging site around), you can get comments on your posts. This is where the spammers post their advertisements.
Vaporware? You think the next version of Windows is vaporware? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to hype a new Windows version and then never come out with one. "Sorry! That project got killed! You'll have to stick with XP!"
Tauzin was a force behind the massive and convoluted 1996 Telecommunications Act that aspired to bring competition to local phone service and promulgate new, high-tech services, including high-definition television.
If only he'd bring competition to the movie industry and promulgate new, high-tech services (iFlicks?). That would be nice.
Well, he could get around that by cookieing them. Of course, he'd have to deal with people who don't accept cookies, but it would end up being a lot more accurate that way.
I think the issue is that the publishers claim they have the right to allow Amazon to do this, and that it has nothing to do with the actual author's wishes. If they do actually have that right, then Amazon is doing them quite a service by even offering an opt-out.
When I first read this, I thought, why on earth wouldn't they want this? Wouldn't it help sales?
After reading the article, it seems they have a point. Novels wouldn't really be hurt by it (and may actually be helped), but think about reference books and other things. All one would have to do is search for what they're looking for, then pull it right out of the result they're given. Although why they would go to Amazon instead of Google to find that information is beyond me.
Still, I'm not one to condone killing a technology just because it CAN be used for something bad. Plus, it looks like Amazon will take a book off the list if the author insists, so there really isn't too much of a problem here.
According to the article, a law goes into effect in January stating that people can sue companies for $1000 per spam e-mail they get. As much as we all hate spam, isn't $1000 per e-mail a bit excessive?
Think about how we react when we hear about the record companies suing people for thousands of dollars per song that they share. The normal reaction is, "There's no way that these people caused that much damage to the RIAA! They should only be able to sue for how much damage they can prove they incurred over that person sharing the song."
Why doesn't that apply here? Just because we don't like spam? One spam e-mail doesn't cause $1000 worth of damages just like one shared song doesn't cause $10000 worth of damages. Isn't there a bit of a double standard here? The people in the story got punished in a different way as well - they can't advertise anything over the internet for the next 10 years, not even their own marketing company.
Now, I'm all for spammers getting shut down and punished, but $1000 per e-mail seems a bit excessive when the actual damage to your time/bandwidth is nowhere near that.
Slashdot Mirror
Kill RealOne and download Real Alternative. It lets you play Real files through media player or whatever else you choose to use without having to deal with realplayer, one of the most horrible pieces of software ever.
A lot of the major sites (Amazon, Best Buy, Circuit City) don't charge for shipping on most orders. Most other sites charge relatively reasonable shipping fees. It's usually just the smaller sites that try to lure people in with low prices then overcharge for shipping that cause the problem.
If I save $10 in tax but have to bay $5 shipping, I still come out ahead and I don't even have to change out of my pajamas.
Bah! If you'd rather have regular old paper instead of a power-consuming, ridiculously expensive toy, you don't belong here!
Or you could just buy a $50 DVD player and burn the images to CD then put it on slideshow.
This reminds me of the Digital Picture Frame that I read about in Popular Science a while ago. Seems like a really neat idea, showing changing digital pictures in a picture frame-styled LCD screen. It's too bad they're so expensive - you could buy your own 14" LCD screen and show a screensaver on it for the price they want.
Only if you enable that feature.
You've been on Slashdot this long and you still haven't learned that nobody actually reads the dates on articles to see if they're current?
If you think that's the most paranoid comment, you must not read any RFID tag threads here yet.
Nothing's hidden, it's all there, it's all searchable from the white house website, just not from search engines.
Joking aside, in XP I don't think I've used ctrl-alt-delete since I found out Windows Key + L locks the computer. Every once in a while, I'll do ctrl-shift-esc to bring up task manager and check CPU/Memory usage, but even that's rare. In fact, I don't even think you CAN restart the computer with ctrl-alt-delete anymore, unless you use it to get to the shutdown menu...
I'm sure it can be disabled, although it actually might be quite convenient for people running at high resolutions, assuming that it's extremely customizable and that you can put worthwhile things in there. I'd love a little sidebar with the time, weather, and stock reports in it. Put some winamp controls in there, move over the quick launch bar (more space for more programs) and system tray so they're not cluttering up your task bar, etc. I'd gladly lose a little desktop space for stuff like that.
I had to read that title a few times - the first couple readthroughs had me thinking this PC was the size of an antelope hand (which they don't have anyway), and that didn't help me very much when trying to picture how big it was.
How is this any different than any other MMORPG where you spend REAL dollars every month for the ability to go around the virtual world to get virtual stuff from killing virtual monsters?
This is just a slight variation on the MMORPG "pay for access to virtual stuff" game. The only real innovation here is that instead of getting just the users to pay for the stuff, they also get the advertisers to pay as well.
I doubt the real world opinion of people will be changed by this advertising any more than they would by television or internet advertising. The easily influenced people will think, "oh cool!" no matter what medium it's through, and the people who know better will just roll their eyes.
I login to my blog page and add to the running log. No place for people to spam.
With blogging places like Livejournal (most likely the most popular blogging site around), you can get comments on your posts. This is where the spammers post their advertisements.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Methinks this is just vaporware.
Vaporware? You think the next version of Windows is vaporware? Somehow I don't think Microsoft is going to hype a new Windows version and then never come out with one. "Sorry! That project got killed! You'll have to stick with XP!"
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I would tend to agree with this thinking.
I would, if I could decipher that first sentence.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Is there a reason why DRM shouldn't be labeled "real technology" besides the fact that you don't like it?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Tauzin was a force behind the massive and convoluted 1996 Telecommunications Act that aspired to bring competition to local phone service and promulgate new, high-tech services, including high-definition television.
If only he'd bring competition to the movie industry and promulgate new, high-tech services (iFlicks?). That would be nice.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
What organization wouldn't want that?
The paranoid people of Slashdot who think that everybody is out to get them?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Well, he could get around that by cookieing them. Of course, he'd have to deal with people who don't accept cookies, but it would end up being a lot more accurate that way.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I think the issue is that the publishers claim they have the right to allow Amazon to do this, and that it has nothing to do with the actual author's wishes. If they do actually have that right, then Amazon is doing them quite a service by even offering an opt-out.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Why on earth would you go to Amazon for that info instead of Google, though?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
When I first read this, I thought, why on earth wouldn't they want this? Wouldn't it help sales?
After reading the article, it seems they have a point. Novels wouldn't really be hurt by it (and may actually be helped), but think about reference books and other things. All one would have to do is search for what they're looking for, then pull it right out of the result they're given. Although why they would go to Amazon instead of Google to find that information is beyond me.
Still, I'm not one to condone killing a technology just because it CAN be used for something bad. Plus, it looks like Amazon will take a book off the list if the author insists, so there really isn't too much of a problem here.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
... of course, the software is just as much to blame.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
According to the article, a law goes into effect in January stating that people can sue companies for $1000 per spam e-mail they get. As much as we all hate spam, isn't $1000 per e-mail a bit excessive?
Think about how we react when we hear about the record companies suing people for thousands of dollars per song that they share. The normal reaction is, "There's no way that these people caused that much damage to the RIAA! They should only be able to sue for how much damage they can prove they incurred over that person sharing the song."
Why doesn't that apply here? Just because we don't like spam? One spam e-mail doesn't cause $1000 worth of damages just like one shared song doesn't cause $10000 worth of damages. Isn't there a bit of a double standard here? The people in the story got punished in a different way as well - they can't advertise anything over the internet for the next 10 years, not even their own marketing company.
Now, I'm all for spammers getting shut down and punished, but $1000 per e-mail seems a bit excessive when the actual damage to your time/bandwidth is nowhere near that.
-- Dr. Eldarion --