Are region free DVD players really that rare in your area?
Here (in Australia) any DVD player you get your hands on is either region free or trivial to unlock with a quick google. As a result my DVDs are a mix of region 4 and region 1 discs.
Sadly this does not apply to DVD drives and consoles.
The bus system works for my commute rather well. No trains, but I actually work near the closest train station to me, but I can walk for 10 minutes at a relaxed pace to the a main bus stop, get a bus to within reasonable walking distance from work. If I time things right I can even get one that stops just one block from work.
The buses are also typically reasonably close to the timetable too, within a few minutes on most days.
Sure there are cities with better transport, and it certainly requires a fair amount of work on fidxing and updating everything especially in terms of prices, but it is not as bad as you are making out.
When I had one PC, I just used my nickname on it.
After I had multiple I started using a very simple naming scheme. The prefix Ran, and any subsequent ones get numbers. Along with a title if I feel sufficiently motivated.
So I have RanPC 2 - Revenge of the PC, RanMac 2 - The Quickening (Macbook Pro, been a little less reliable than I would like), RanPod 2 - The Listening, RanShuffle, RanCar, RanPhone, Ran360, RanDS...
Really? The few speed comparisons I have seen don't seem to indicate that. Admittedly the main one I remember was this one from a few weeks ago on Slashdot.
If I had Applecare, I could continue to go back to them regarding the battery rather that if I chose to pursue it heading through the complaints departments and dealing with that process.
Also, the machine with the battery that was recalled is not the machine I'm wishing I had grabbed applecare for.
I wish I had your luck.
My powerbook's battery got so bad that it had a max charge of less than 20 minutes, before it was forunately replaced under a battery recall.
I replaced one MacBook Pro battery under warranty because it had started to lose charge, and the replacement has already dropped to about 30% of max charge (with less than 60 complete charge cycles).
The extra battery I bought because of I trip I was headed on is still going strong, but is less than 6 months old.
Note that the MacBook Pro is from 2007. I really wish I had invested in AppleCare now.
One of the reasons why they don't want to do that is that in Australia, the most they can get from anyone they sue is linked to the damages they suffered from them committing piracy. i.e. The cost of going to see the movie/purchasing the show on DVD, etc.
This gets especially squirrelly when you are talking about stuff on free to air.
This combines further with the aspect of the Australian legal system that means that the loser often has to pay most of the winner's legal fees. Especially if they had offered to settle for less/more than the damages awarded. So the prospect of going after the individual is especially painful and risky to these companies.
A lot more than that (their website says over 700,000), but you'd probably only want to send notices when you are confident that were legal action brought you would be able to demonstrate that that particular user was committing piracy.
Really? I didn't see that in either of the articles I have read. Would you be able to provide a link? I'd certainly be interested in reading it, and I agree that that is probably the most correct course of action.
That is because this case is unrelated to the filtering trial.
iiNet are being sued because they didn't do anything when the film companies sent them notices that some of their customers were pirating their media. They apparently sent 18 notices and iiNet refused to do anything because they were allegations rather than court ordered actions.
To be honest, this seems quite reasonable to me, iiNet should not have to cut people off just because someone says: That guy was pirating my stuff, here is an IP and a time. The companies should go after the individual, not the ISP.
Ultimately we will see what the federal courts decide. The media companies in question have stated that if this goes well, they will continue onto other Australian ISPs.
The general rule of thumb, at least here in Australia, that I use is that if someone has no idea of their typical usage, then they easily fit within a 1-3GB download package. Most people really don't download much with their typical behaviour.
Mind you, that certainly isn't the case for me, but I would find it very difficult to legitimately use all of my 80GB cap each month without spending a lot of money on Steam or something. I can't even do it on iTunes, my ISP evidently provides the bandwidth for the store in Australia, so downloads from there are not included.
Now if only iTunes Australia actually had reasonable pricing and availability compared to DVDs...
You're kidding right? Even if you had a dozen computers that had a very large patch come out that month for (say, 250MB), that is still less than 2% of the proposed quota here.
Software patches still are not that large, even if you need to download a lot of them you are in no danger of exceeding any sane cap.
Regionally tailored content I can understand, but you could:
Just do a check on the region, and have a default if you have no content tailored for that region
Region locking is especially painful when it comes to portable devices. When I travel, one of the advantages of a DS is that if I see a game I am interested in, I know I can buy it and play it regardless of where I bought my DS.
All I can say is that this greatly reduces my enthusiasm for the device as it becomes more clear that Nintendo want to keep the region restrictions that allow the crazy price variations viable. In Australia it is still cheaper to buy a console and games from the US and pay shipping than buying them from the actual storefront.
The problem with competetive puzzle gaming is that you would need an unbiased authority to generate a new game each time, or good randomization of the puzzle variables, rendering it down to the same kind of academic competitions you get that are done with pen and paper, like those Mathlympics things.
A recently completed non-randomized puzzle is trivial compared an unencountered puzzle.
However the replayability and demonstration of a different skillset is also immediately apparent in multiplayer first person shooters.
Basically if you want a puzzle competition, in many ways these things already exist in a pen and paper format, they could be converted over, but then you have more factors to add in to the balance for what gain?
The inability to have my laptop connect to the net via the iPhone is what has been preventing me from obtaining one. And yes, it is allowed by the terms of the Telstra browsing pack which is what I use.
That is the only way I can justify the cost of data to myself, since that way I can still go out whilst on call. I don't see the iPhone being able to connect to my work's VPN nor run remote desktop at this stage.
Looking at the details of the competition, found by following a link in the article, it appears that the competition does not finish after one machine is cracked, but if this were a vulnerability that could be used to also compromise another machine (through say the way they run safari in windows) it is not a valid vulnerability to use to attack the other machine.
Also, the guy who won the MacBook Air and the cash can't try for the other laptops as well.
Or it doesn't work at all because there is no provided driver and you either need to wait until the next version of OS X or next time you get a mac to have hope of getting a proper driver from Apple and instead you have to search around to find the various scripts and the like for the mostly unsupported hardware and use a much less pleasant manual hacky type approach.
For instance my phone is not one of the ones supported off the bat by Leopard, so instead I had to find the modem scripts for it online, the right plug in for iSync and then look up the correct details for connecting to Telstra via it.
Or on windows I use the disc that came with the phone/install the software from the manufacturers website, connect the phone, select Telstra from the list of phone companies and hit connect and it works.
Slashdot Mirror
Are region free DVD players really that rare in your area? Here (in Australia) any DVD player you get your hands on is either region free or trivial to unlock with a quick google. As a result my DVDs are a mix of region 4 and region 1 discs. Sadly this does not apply to DVD drives and consoles.
The bus system works for my commute rather well. No trains, but I actually work near the closest train station to me, but I can walk for 10 minutes at a relaxed pace to the a main bus stop, get a bus to within reasonable walking distance from work. If I time things right I can even get one that stops just one block from work.
The buses are also typically reasonably close to the timetable too, within a few minutes on most days.
Sure there are cities with better transport, and it certainly requires a fair amount of work on fidxing and updating everything especially in terms of prices, but it is not as bad as you are making out.
When I had one PC, I just used my nickname on it. After I had multiple I started using a very simple naming scheme. The prefix Ran, and any subsequent ones get numbers. Along with a title if I feel sufficiently motivated.
So I have RanPC 2 - Revenge of the PC, RanMac 2 - The Quickening (Macbook Pro, been a little less reliable than I would like), RanPod 2 - The Listening, RanShuffle, RanCar, RanPhone, Ran360, RanDS...
It's a very flexible naming system.
Really? The few speed comparisons I have seen don't seem to indicate that. Admittedly the main one I remember was this one from a few weeks ago on Slashdot.
You sort them randomly! Every time the OS is installed it fires up the good old phase of the moon generator and sorts em randomly.
Irritating for support yes, but it avoids the who is at the top problem.
Yep, because it would be make things more convenient and easy, I agree it's a stupid situation, but I'm lazy.
Of course, what I need to do because I didn't get Applecare is to take up this issue with Apple.
If I had Applecare, I could continue to go back to them regarding the battery rather that if I chose to pursue it heading through the complaints departments and dealing with that process.
Also, the machine with the battery that was recalled is not the machine I'm wishing I had grabbed applecare for.
I wish I had your luck. My powerbook's battery got so bad that it had a max charge of less than 20 minutes, before it was forunately replaced under a battery recall. I replaced one MacBook Pro battery under warranty because it had started to lose charge, and the replacement has already dropped to about 30% of max charge (with less than 60 complete charge cycles). The extra battery I bought because of I trip I was headed on is still going strong, but is less than 6 months old. Note that the MacBook Pro is from 2007. I really wish I had invested in AppleCare now.
One of the reasons why they don't want to do that is that in Australia, the most they can get from anyone they sue is linked to the damages they suffered from them committing piracy. i.e. The cost of going to see the movie/purchasing the show on DVD, etc.
This gets especially squirrelly when you are talking about stuff on free to air.
This combines further with the aspect of the Australian legal system that means that the loser often has to pay most of the winner's legal fees. Especially if they had offered to settle for less/more than the damages awarded. So the prospect of going after the individual is especially painful and risky to these companies.
This information obtained mostly through here.
I agree that they really should be going for a the pirates but I can see why they really do not want to.
A lot more than that (their website says over 700,000), but you'd probably only want to send notices when you are confident that were legal action brought you would be able to demonstrate that that particular user was committing piracy.
Ah, thanks, I somehow managed to miss that on my first read through. My bad.
Really? I didn't see that in either of the articles I have read. Would you be able to provide a link? I'd certainly be interested in reading it, and I agree that that is probably the most correct course of action.
That is because this case is unrelated to the filtering trial.
iiNet are being sued because they didn't do anything when the film companies sent them notices that some of their customers were pirating their media. They apparently sent 18 notices and iiNet refused to do anything because they were allegations rather than court ordered actions.
To be honest, this seems quite reasonable to me, iiNet should not have to cut people off just because someone says: That guy was pirating my stuff, here is an IP and a time. The companies should go after the individual, not the ISP.
Ultimately we will see what the federal courts decide. The media companies in question have stated that if this goes well, they will continue onto other Australian ISPs.
The general rule of thumb, at least here in Australia, that I use is that if someone has no idea of their typical usage, then they easily fit within a 1-3GB download package. Most people really don't download much with their typical behaviour.
Mind you, that certainly isn't the case for me, but I would find it very difficult to legitimately use all of my 80GB cap each month without spending a lot of money on Steam or something. I can't even do it on iTunes, my ISP evidently provides the bandwidth for the store in Australia, so downloads from there are not included.
Now if only iTunes Australia actually had reasonable pricing and availability compared to DVDs...
You're kidding right? Even if you had a dozen computers that had a very large patch come out that month for (say, 250MB), that is still less than 2% of the proposed quota here.
Software patches still are not that large, even if you need to download a lot of them you are in no danger of exceeding any sane cap.
Regionally tailored content I can understand, but you could:
Just do a check on the region, and have a default if you have no content tailored for that region
Region locking is especially painful when it comes to portable devices. When I travel, one of the advantages of a DS is that if I see a game I am interested in, I know I can buy it and play it regardless of where I bought my DS.
All I can say is that this greatly reduces my enthusiasm for the device as it becomes more clear that Nintendo want to keep the region restrictions that allow the crazy price variations viable. In Australia it is still cheaper to buy a console and games from the US and pay shipping than buying them from the actual storefront.
At 3 frames per second I don't think he will be playing Real Time Strategy games, I think any game he tries will qualify for Turn based.
The problem with competetive puzzle gaming is that you would need an unbiased authority to generate a new game each time, or good randomization of the puzzle variables, rendering it down to the same kind of academic competitions you get that are done with pen and paper, like those Mathlympics things. A recently completed non-randomized puzzle is trivial compared an unencountered puzzle. However the replayability and demonstration of a different skillset is also immediately apparent in multiplayer first person shooters. Basically if you want a puzzle competition, in many ways these things already exist in a pen and paper format, they could be converted over, but then you have more factors to add in to the balance for what gain?
Whilst this is true, I suspect that his company will be paying for it. That does not change the hilariously high pricing though.
And run remote desktop to get to my work machine? Or run the various applications I need?
The inability to have my laptop connect to the net via the iPhone is what has been preventing me from obtaining one. And yes, it is allowed by the terms of the Telstra browsing pack which is what I use. That is the only way I can justify the cost of data to myself, since that way I can still go out whilst on call. I don't see the iPhone being able to connect to my work's VPN nor run remote desktop at this stage.
Except that EA doesn't own Take Two. Not yet at any rate.
I'm not suprised EA didn't advertise it, since Take Two were the publishers for BioShock.
Looking at the details of the competition, found by following a link in the article, it appears that the competition does not finish after one machine is cracked, but if this were a vulnerability that could be used to also compromise another machine (through say the way they run safari in windows) it is not a valid vulnerability to use to attack the other machine. Also, the guy who won the MacBook Air and the cash can't try for the other laptops as well.
Or it doesn't work at all because there is no provided driver and you either need to wait until the next version of OS X or next time you get a mac to have hope of getting a proper driver from Apple and instead you have to search around to find the various scripts and the like for the mostly unsupported hardware and use a much less pleasant manual hacky type approach. For instance my phone is not one of the ones supported off the bat by Leopard, so instead I had to find the modem scripts for it online, the right plug in for iSync and then look up the correct details for connecting to Telstra via it. Or on windows I use the disc that came with the phone/install the software from the manufacturers website, connect the phone, select Telstra from the list of phone companies and hit connect and it works.