So explain this: I'm in NH and I'm getting basic DSL with Verizon for $45/month. That's 3mbps. Our local cable company (metrocast) is similarly priced with very little difference in speed. I feel like I'm getting the shaft here!
Tactile feedback is making a big comeback in cars and I expect to see it stay in laptops. As in, when you hit another car, it gives you obvious physical feedback, such as smashing your face in with the dashboard?
No but seriously, I'm curious what you're talking about here.
Ok, thanks for missing the point completely. The Nintendo DS has two screens that are whatever size - let's say 3x3 inches. It would take precisely *no additional space* to have instead used one screen that was say 3x6 inches. Except that this one folds. a 3x6 requires bigger dimensions unless you can fold it.
Personally I'd like to see anyone desiring to be President to be required to dissociate him/herself from any party. Run on his own name alone. Independent. Even if somehow this came to be, you know the news stations would neatly lump all the candidates into the two categories and say "This candidate tends to be Democrat in his campaign." No matter what, the american people will see things in only two colors. Red and Blue.
And it's funny, because we all said, xbox, what the heck is wrong with microsoft!? They don't stand a chance. Playstation clearly holds this market! MS thinks they'll be the jack of all trades... Not a chance!
Years later, Xbox is pretty much the center of the console market. Well played.
And here we are saying, oh come on- Zune? Get real. Ipod has this market, they're not letting go! (truth be told, ipod, in my opinion, will be harder to gain ground against, since the ipod has something sony didn't have- style, and well, MS lacks this lately). But I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens with mp3 players.
So HDi? Microsoft knows that downloading content is the future, and I'll put my money on MS over Sony, since sony doesn't generally have much of a clue anyway! (root kits anybody?)
**Disclaimer. The only game system I have is a Nintendo Gamecube. The only mp3 player I own is a SanDisk sansa connect. And I have an old TV with a crappy DVD player hooked up to it, with no real interest in blue-ray. I'm actually waiting out for downloadable content.
Is there a particular reason you can't grab a copy of the official Windows OEM install disk? Or, you know, just sit in the Add/Remove Programs window for a few hours. Some people are just looking for reasons to glorify their fav distro... "God, this Media player crap that comes with windows is just junk! Thank god for linux! (What? What's winamp?)"
Preferably to them, you will buy the same movies again and again, on VHS, on Laserdisc, on DVD, on HD-DVD, on Blu-Ray, on Home-3D, on SHD-Home-3D, on Virtua-Realitiscope, on... Unforunately, adaptation to Virtua-Realitiscope will be slow thanks to the fact that Starwars won't be released for 10 years after this format hits the market, - the originals due to licensing restrictions with Laser Disc, the recent three, due to exclusive licensing through HD-DVD
So now, its proposing just upping the cost of its cable box by z$ by an amount big enough to make the same y$ ppv profit and pay the same $x ppv royalty, but without tracking ppv sales, and just letting everyone watch any ppv movie. Except the studios will want tracking, and will require royalties on numbers. What we're really doing is proposing to up the cost of the service to smooth over the possible high and low download counts so that they'll always make $y profit. It's really a gamble, and it kinda works out like insurance. As long as everybody's contributing, and not everybody downloads MAX/Month, they'll make money.
And no, the record companies will never take a fixed rate. They will demand royalties.
Symbolset is upset because it costs money and time to upgrade from.net 2003 to.net 2005. Yes, there were differences. But guess what, my VS6.0 apps still work just fine in Vista, so I really don't think it's an issue. Sounds like you're upset because whoever you work for (that is if you even have a job in programming, which it doesn't sound like you do) keeps opting to change languages mid-stream. That's a pain, but seriously, the migration between 1.1 and 2 wasn't a big deal. It was mostly painless.
But seriously, saying you need to memorize the entire language for security is just stupid. Should I memorize the GD library for PHP to make my email form secure? AND OMG! I should warn my clients that my shopping cart code is potentially insecure because I didn't have the SWF library memorized.
Ok now back to earth. Good security comes from knowing a lot about software architechure and design in general, not the small differences between functions in libraries that you don't use.
If someday, a client asked me for a program that did function XYZ, I'd know where to look to do it. That doesn't make me a bad programmer. Nobody knows everything, and anybody who claims to, probably knows less than those who don't.
I thought I was either crazy, or had horrible eyesight! Thanks for bringing this up. I agree! Even in a partially lit room, this is an issue. I was at dinner at an Applebees recently, they have neon signs at the bar. One was a blue beer sign, and I just couldn't focus on it. However, everything else looked normal. How strange. I wonder what the science is behind that...
I'm going to reply to both you and the guy above you.
So the costs of providing ppv is fixed. It costs the same to broadcast the movie if 0 people watch it, or 100, or 100,000.
unlike an all-you-can-eat buffet which the more you eat the more it costs the restaurant, digital downloads of songs already paid to record and produce cost (near) nothing (sure there are bandwidth costs but that is fractions of pennies per song).
For every view, or every listen- the content owner gets royalties. Even with Rhapsody- albeit a small royalty. The fact is, you pay $15/month for rhapsody and for each time you stream a track, Rhapsody sends $0.03 to the content owners. Every time. The idea is that you listen to less than you spend.
Same with pay per view (although easier to do math with), for every television playing an event, that adds to the royalties. However, it is fixed in the fact that there will never be so many viewers that the station goes upside down, because it's proportional to the number of viewers (and they all paid per view). But still, the cost of 0 vs 100 is different. Royalties... just nitpicking anyway. Sorry.
I'm one of the few that don't care about ads, show 'em. Keep services free! But only under the following conditions:
1. There's a subscription service to get rid of ads. I use sites like YouTube enough that I'd pay to get rid of 15 second ads every video play.
2. Non interrupting ads only. At the beginning, at the end, what have you. But none in the middle, please.
3. Get a variety of ads. I'm sick of HULU playing the same 2 ads every three minutes. Seriously, it makes me want the product they're advertising even less.
Here's how it works, They overcharge you an extra $1.
Some percentage of their cusomters will notice the $1, while most may not notice at all.
Out of the customers that notice, X amount will take action and call the company
The company Rep will respond that instead of receiving and immediate refund, they will put the "refund" into the system and it may take a while to process.
1 Month goes by and out of the small percentage that took action a month ago, a smaller percentage will realize that the refund never went through and call again.
The Rep will apologize and either deny the refund's existance, claim to "not have access to the records," or some other BS excuse. They will promptly "issue" a refund for you.
You may at this point recieve a $1 credit to next month's bill. Never a refund.
So by the end, 3-5% of the mis-billed customers may actually get their refund/credit. During the one and a half months it took to "process" the refund/credit, company that handles billing made X% interest on the overbilled cash. They made out like bandits on the refund thanks to the fact that it's done in such mass quantities. It benefits the company largely to have billing errors.
The other 95% of customer who never noticed lose $1 each. Cumulatively, the company with a 30 Million subscriber base makes $28 Million off a single billing error.
Of course, to make it look like a mistake, there won't be a 100% customer base billing error, but you get the idea.
The only way to rectify the issue is demand not only a refund but also interest on the money they stole, as well as credit towards the administrative overhead it took for you to navigate their phone menus for hours on end.
For this reason, Verizon doesn't suck for broadband uses. In my area, I have Verizon DSL (they haven't given us Fios yet, but they ran the fiber cables a few years back) and I don't have any port blocking (that's right folks, I can send email to ANY server), and they don't limit P2P or Bittorrent (My downloads are fast and fresh). And they haven't turned records over to the government (or at least not reportedly, yet). So far, in the category of BIG ISPs Comcast vs Verizon, Verizon is being the underdog. Which is funny, because start arguing cell phone policies and prices, and watch the argument change completely.
What angers you the most is that there doesn't seem to be much we can do about this... *sigh* Sure, elect new officials, that'll work. But what about bringing the real threat to our country to justice? I'm not proud to be an american under these circumstances- surely there's something more we can do that write a letter to our rep that will undoubtedly be thrown out, and vote in an election that has clearly been rigged for the past two elections.
How else do you say, we've already lost control, and apathy + a small sense that we might have control has kept us from doing anything about it. When it comes around to it, you realize voting will fix nothing, and writing that letter to your rep won't undo the bribes he's already taken.
I'd say I'm tech savvy, but I have the same limitations:
-I'd love a new phone, but I just don't have enough money to get one, and I can't justify spending on a new phone when my current one (LG 8100) works just fine *sigh*
-I won a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, but have no plans on installing it on any of my computers. It's that bad - and yes, I'm one of the few who was optimistic about it. Only after repeated attempts to get anything to work at all I've given up. Media Center- buggy as hell. File Copy- slow??? Games? Forget it. Nvidia drivers? Why won't it detect my TV anymore? It worked in XP!
The problem here is of the second example - I managed to avoid the monetary cost of the switch to vista, so it's similar to the free upgrade to firefox. The problem is, despite it being free, I paid dearly with my time and my sanity. After spending hours trying to figure out why the "Force TV Detection" checkbox was disabled in my VISTA Nvidia control panel, I found out via a few web forums that the feature is kinda broken, and to wait for a new driver... What I really did was go back to trusty XP. I mean, why did I switch? What I was using was working just fine anyway!
My feeling is this- He's just upset that he doesn't know what to do with that new HD-DVD Player he bought. Firefox? Oh he knows better than that. Fool him once...
However, I do have to agree with you about the performance fanboys. Most games these days (and consoles haven't been spared either) seem to be more like tech demos to show off better and prettier graphics, while sacrificing gameplay. Agreed! Look at CNC3. Just came out in the past year, but the graphics don't even touch games like crysis. So why is it such a good seller? Gameplay. It's proven time and time again, gameplay trumps graphics by far. I'd rather have a game I think is fun than a game that's got flashy graphics but is just another FPS.
I have a plenty fast internet connection with Verizon. Every site works great. But whether a YouTube video will cache fast enough for flawless playback- that's always up for grabs. I'd say they should take care of their own bandwidth issues before upgrading.
Secondly- If they've got millions of videos that still need converting- I'm assuming that doesn't mean upscaling horrid quality videos- does that mean they've been keeping the originals this entire time?
I don't use any antivirus at all. I just don't get infected in the first place.
Use Opera to browse porno. (Or just about anything at all).
Don't run crack.exe (it's a trojan).
Problem Solved. Am I alone here? In the off chance that I get infected (Ok, I ran crack.exe), just take the hooks out of the system (hijack this, pv if neccessary, unlocker, done). Restart. Problem soved.
I'm sorry, but I've already got that one patented. Your only hope is a map and darts*. 1 out of every 40304592 throws may be a shipping center. Unfortunately, I also patented the method "using a phonebook" and I have patents pending for other forms of getting information that may be helpful- so good luck to you.
*On second thought, map and darts seems like the way a good portion of businesses do business, so I'm snatching up that patent as well. Think of the royalties I'll collect!
can the global economy take a 7 billion dollar a year hit to cyber crime every year, for the next 20 years? no it can't and that's why tracing criminal activity is Going to become standard. right now to credit card fraud, identity theft, and check fraud scams etc... i seem to recall hearing that europe and the usa were combined losing 7 billion dollars a year, but it was on dateline nbc, not on the internet so the figure might be off. The US and Europe losing 7 billion a year affects those local economies respectively (albeit very little), but on a global scale the money will become quickly re-invested, unless the scammers enjoy using the money for kindling.
Linux makes me think. Windows makes me a slob. Not to feed the trolls, but, isn't that more of a choice, rather than a result of an os? Seems likely your attitude towards windows makes you a slob.
I use windows with photoshop, my friend uses OSX with photoshop- he isn't more productive than me...
So explain this: I'm in NH and I'm getting basic DSL with Verizon for $45/month. That's 3mbps. Our local cable company (metrocast) is similarly priced with very little difference in speed. I feel like I'm getting the shaft here!
As in, when you hit another car, it gives you obvious physical feedback, such as smashing your face in with the dashboard?
No but seriously, I'm curious what you're talking about here.
Except that this one folds. a 3x6 requires bigger dimensions unless you can fold it.
Even if somehow this came to be, you know the news stations would neatly lump all the candidates into the two categories and say "This candidate tends to be Democrat in his campaign." No matter what, the american people will see things in only two colors. Red and Blue.
But isn't that methane? (just curious)
And it's funny, because we all said, xbox, what the heck is wrong with microsoft!? They don't stand a chance. Playstation clearly holds this market! MS thinks they'll be the jack of all trades... Not a chance!
Years later, Xbox is pretty much the center of the console market. Well played.
And here we are saying, oh come on- Zune? Get real. Ipod has this market, they're not letting go! (truth be told, ipod, in my opinion, will be harder to gain ground against, since the ipod has something sony didn't have- style, and well, MS lacks this lately). But I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens with mp3 players.
So HDi? Microsoft knows that downloading content is the future, and I'll put my money on MS over Sony, since sony doesn't generally have much of a clue anyway! (root kits anybody?)
**Disclaimer. The only game system I have is a Nintendo Gamecube. The only mp3 player I own is a SanDisk sansa connect. And I have an old TV with a crappy DVD player hooked up to it, with no real interest in blue-ray. I'm actually waiting out for downloadable content.
Except the studios will want tracking, and will require royalties on numbers. What we're really doing is proposing to up the cost of the service to smooth over the possible high and low download counts so that they'll always make $y profit. It's really a gamble, and it kinda works out like insurance. As long as everybody's contributing, and not everybody downloads MAX/Month, they'll make money.
And no, the record companies will never take a fixed rate. They will demand royalties.
Symbolset is upset because it costs money and time to upgrade from .net 2003 to .net 2005. Yes, there were differences. But guess what, my VS6.0 apps still work just fine in Vista, so I really don't think it's an issue. Sounds like you're upset because whoever you work for (that is if you even have a job in programming, which it doesn't sound like you do) keeps opting to change languages mid-stream. That's a pain, but seriously, the migration between 1.1 and 2 wasn't a big deal. It was mostly painless.
But seriously, saying you need to memorize the entire language for security is just stupid. Should I memorize the GD library for PHP to make my email form secure? AND OMG! I should warn my clients that my shopping cart code is potentially insecure because I didn't have the SWF library memorized.
Ok now back to earth. Good security comes from knowing a lot about software architechure and design in general, not the small differences between functions in libraries that you don't use.
If someday, a client asked me for a program that did function XYZ, I'd know where to look to do it. That doesn't make me a bad programmer. Nobody knows everything, and anybody who claims to, probably knows less than those who don't.
I thought I was either crazy, or had horrible eyesight! Thanks for bringing this up. I agree! Even in a partially lit room, this is an issue. I was at dinner at an Applebees recently, they have neon signs at the bar. One was a blue beer sign, and I just couldn't focus on it. However, everything else looked normal. How strange. I wonder what the science is behind that...
So the costs of providing ppv is fixed. It costs the same to broadcast the movie if 0 people watch it, or 100, or 100,000.
unlike an all-you-can-eat buffet which the more you eat the more it costs the restaurant, digital downloads of songs already paid to record and produce cost (near) nothing (sure there are bandwidth costs but that is fractions of pennies per song).
For every view, or every listen- the content owner gets royalties. Even with Rhapsody- albeit a small royalty. The fact is, you pay $15/month for rhapsody and for each time you stream a track, Rhapsody sends $0.03 to the content owners. Every time. The idea is that you listen to less than you spend.
Same with pay per view (although easier to do math with), for every television playing an event, that adds to the royalties. However, it is fixed in the fact that there will never be so many viewers that the station goes upside down, because it's proportional to the number of viewers (and they all paid per view). But still, the cost of 0 vs 100 is different. Royalties... just nitpicking anyway. Sorry.
I'm one of the few that don't care about ads, show 'em. Keep services free! But only under the following conditions:
1. There's a subscription service to get rid of ads. I use sites like YouTube enough that I'd pay to get rid of 15 second ads every video play.
2. Non interrupting ads only. At the beginning, at the end, what have you. But none in the middle, please.
3. Get a variety of ads. I'm sick of HULU playing the same 2 ads every three minutes. Seriously, it makes me want the product they're advertising even less.
Here's how it works, They overcharge you an extra $1.
Some percentage of their cusomters will notice the $1, while most may not notice at all.
Out of the customers that notice, X amount will take action and call the company
The company Rep will respond that instead of receiving and immediate refund, they will put the "refund" into the system and it may take a while to process.
1 Month goes by and out of the small percentage that took action a month ago, a smaller percentage will realize that the refund never went through and call again.
The Rep will apologize and either deny the refund's existance, claim to "not have access to the records," or some other BS excuse. They will promptly "issue" a refund for you.
You may at this point recieve a $1 credit to next month's bill. Never a refund.
So by the end, 3-5% of the mis-billed customers may actually get their refund/credit. During the one and a half months it took to "process" the refund/credit, company that handles billing made X% interest on the overbilled cash. They made out like bandits on the refund thanks to the fact that it's done in such mass quantities. It benefits the company largely to have billing errors.
The other 95% of customer who never noticed lose $1 each. Cumulatively, the company with a 30 Million subscriber base makes $28 Million off a single billing error.
Of course, to make it look like a mistake, there won't be a 100% customer base billing error, but you get the idea.
The only way to rectify the issue is demand not only a refund but also interest on the money they stole, as well as credit towards the administrative overhead it took for you to navigate their phone menus for hours on end.
For this reason, Verizon doesn't suck for broadband uses. In my area, I have Verizon DSL (they haven't given us Fios yet, but they ran the fiber cables a few years back) and I don't have any port blocking (that's right folks, I can send email to ANY server), and they don't limit P2P or Bittorrent (My downloads are fast and fresh). And they haven't turned records over to the government (or at least not reportedly, yet). So far, in the category of BIG ISPs Comcast vs Verizon, Verizon is being the underdog. Which is funny, because start arguing cell phone policies and prices, and watch the argument change completely.
What angers you the most is that there doesn't seem to be much we can do about this... *sigh* Sure, elect new officials, that'll work. But what about bringing the real threat to our country to justice? I'm not proud to be an american under these circumstances- surely there's something more we can do that write a letter to our rep that will undoubtedly be thrown out, and vote in an election that has clearly been rigged for the past two elections.
How else do you say, we've already lost control, and apathy + a small sense that we might have control has kept us from doing anything about it. When it comes around to it, you realize voting will fix nothing, and writing that letter to your rep won't undo the bribes he's already taken.
I was just thinking the same thing when I came across your comment. Remember when we said it's just a "slippery slope?"
Welcome to the bottom of that slope. Enjoy!
I'd say I'm tech savvy, but I have the same limitations: -I'd love a new phone, but I just don't have enough money to get one, and I can't justify spending on a new phone when my current one (LG 8100) works just fine *sigh* -I won a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, but have no plans on installing it on any of my computers. It's that bad - and yes, I'm one of the few who was optimistic about it. Only after repeated attempts to get anything to work at all I've given up. Media Center- buggy as hell. File Copy- slow??? Games? Forget it. Nvidia drivers? Why won't it detect my TV anymore? It worked in XP! The problem here is of the second example - I managed to avoid the monetary cost of the switch to vista, so it's similar to the free upgrade to firefox. The problem is, despite it being free, I paid dearly with my time and my sanity. After spending hours trying to figure out why the "Force TV Detection" checkbox was disabled in my VISTA Nvidia control panel, I found out via a few web forums that the feature is kinda broken, and to wait for a new driver... What I really did was go back to trusty XP. I mean, why did I switch? What I was using was working just fine anyway! My feeling is this- He's just upset that he doesn't know what to do with that new HD-DVD Player he bought. Firefox? Oh he knows better than that. Fool him once...
Due to the fact that those games are already hot sellers, I'd say they were already pretty much guaranteed up through GTA 2013.
I have a plenty fast internet connection with Verizon. Every site works great. But whether a YouTube video will cache fast enough for flawless playback- that's always up for grabs. I'd say they should take care of their own bandwidth issues before upgrading.
Secondly- If they've got millions of videos that still need converting- I'm assuming that doesn't mean upscaling horrid quality videos- does that mean they've been keeping the originals this entire time?
I don't use any antivirus at all. I just don't get infected in the first place.
Use Opera to browse porno. (Or just about anything at all).
Don't run crack.exe (it's a trojan).
Problem Solved. Am I alone here?
In the off chance that I get infected (Ok, I ran crack.exe), just take the hooks out of the system (hijack this, pv if neccessary, unlocker, done). Restart. Problem soved.
I'm sorry, but I've already got that one patented. Your only hope is a map and darts*. 1 out of every 40304592 throws may be a shipping center. Unfortunately, I also patented the method "using a phonebook" and I have patents pending for other forms of getting information that may be helpful- so good luck to you.
*On second thought, map and darts seems like the way a good portion of businesses do business, so I'm snatching up that patent as well. Think of the royalties I'll collect!
The US and Europe losing 7 billion a year affects those local economies respectively (albeit very little), but on a global scale the money will become quickly re-invested, unless the scammers enjoy using the money for kindling.
Not to feed the trolls, but, isn't that more of a choice, rather than a result of an os? Seems likely your attitude towards windows makes you a slob.
I use windows with photoshop, my friend uses OSX with photoshop- he isn't more productive than me...