If HP and other Companies are not printing their list prices, then no, I can't take my dollar elsewhere because I'm not getting accurate information. I'm stumbling around in the dark. This is no different than a Wall Street company refusing to share their quarterly profit reports, thereby blocking stock purchasers/customers from making informed decisions.
It doesn't bother me if someone gets, say Guitar Hero III, for $10 at Walmart. I just congratulate them and ask how I could get a similar deal. And then I keep my eyes open for future deals.
About two weeks ago, some guy tried to steal my car.
I pulled my gun and told him he either runs away, or he gets shot in the stomach. He ran. Why did I resort to self-defense? Because the car cost me several thousand dollars, and I'm not going to let some asshat steal a year's worth of my life (how long it took me to earn the money). If you mess with my multi-thousand dollar PC, and disable it, you and the car thief will have much in common.
I'm not angry right now, but if you turn my PC into an unusable brick, I will become VERY angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
Well many people argue that copied music doesn't cost a record company anything, because "bits" don't cost money. I can argue the same for spam. It doesn't cost anything to receive and then delete junk-mail. You lost no money, especially if you have automated filtering.
I can also argue that, since junk mail is allowed in normal paper-based mail, it's just as legal in virtual mail.
Contrariwise, I fail to see how formatting my c: and d: drives, and causing me the loss of thousands of dollars of purchased music/movies, can be justified in any way, shape, or form. I'm sure a court of law would agree with me when I sue your ass.
Who will I direct my anger against? The person who decided to hijack the spynet, and "Do me a favor" by disabling my networking or formatting my drives.
The disabling of net access is not really a big deal, but if they format my c: and d: hard drives, costing me thousands in lost downloaded music/movies, they might as well kiss their life goodbye. They are no better in my eyes than the Asshat who tried to steal my car.
"A person who uses their computer for little more than email and light web-surfing can not be held responsible if their system is compromised.
"A Windows machine with all the current security patches, a firewall, and AV software could still become infected.
"BTW - a spam email is not infringing on your property. It's not like it took a shit on your yard. You don't own that piece of your ISP's server that is storing that spam message"
>>>Why should I (and others) waste my time deleting the fucking spam your infected fucking computer keeps sending to my computer.
If you configured your computer properly you wouldn't get any Spam, anonymous coward. Don't blame me for your failure to take adequate measures to filter the junk emails.
Making using computers a crime would certainly solve the Politicians' problem of how to stop free speech, and restore control to the centralized media.
>>>if FireEye had so wished, we could have issued the "uninstall" command or updated the binary to render it useless. However, making unauthorized system changes on hundreds of thousands of systems is not something we're in the business of doing. [fireeye.com] >>>
Precisely. You have no business messing with MY machine. That makes you no better than the Sony Asshats who installed CD ROM protection software w/o permission.
What if I'm sitting here trying to compile a program, and it's due on Monday, and suddenly you (or someone) uses the spybot network to disable my machine with a "get your PC serviced" message??? You are causing serious, serious harm and jeopardizing my job (because I'll likely get fired when I tell the boss the program's not done). This is not in any way acceptable, and if I do lose my job as a result of your actions, I will make you pay the full measure of punishment.
>>>Sorry, but if it makes it into the black, I want my money back.
I agree with you in principle, but remember there's a multi-trillion dollar debt to pay off. Only after that debt is erased, and there is a true surplus, can government start giving money back to taxpayers.
Listening to the BBC is like listening to "Parliament News" or the American-equivalent "Bush/Obama News Network". The BBC is funded by the government and carry what the government wants them to say, and the government enjoys making war as much as the military-industrial complex.
Mazda has abandoned the ICE and replaced it with a rotary engine. In theory it should be as efficient as a rotary electric motor, but in reality it leaks hydrocarbons like a seive and just-barely passes California's ULEV requirements.
So they are trying, but so far not much success has been achieved. Others are experimenting with battery-powered electric cars, but they still have not overcome the minimum two-hour recharge time. Gasoline/diesel still has the advantage there of being recharged in just 5 minutes.
The best approach so far is to combine both electric and gasoline/diesel into a single car
(i.e. a rechargeable hybrid, preferably from a solar roof).
Comparing a 75-year-old engine versus a brand-new engine is not a fair balance. One should compare a pristine Ford in 1925 prior to it receiving a lifetime of abuse. And when brand-new those engines did indeed get around 25 miles per gallon.
Honda has stated that if they built a car today, but stripped it to the same level as a 1970s-era Honda, it would easily get 60 miles per gallon. Unfortunately people keep demanding more and more "things" which have almost doubled the weight of the car, plus additional requirements of meeting California ULEV requirements, so the average car gets around 30 mpg, same as the 1970s. The 2008-engine is more-efficient than a 1975 engine, but that efficiency is being weighed-down by a heavier chassis and catalytic/particulate matter filters. So no net increase in MPG.
One company did make a 60mpg gasoline car called the Geo Metro, and it was stripped to almost nothing but bare metal, but due to lack of customer demand it disappeared. People want features not economy.
>>>But compared to a 90% efficient brushless electric motor, a ICE is kinda crappy.
Yep.
Too bad that wonderful motor is tied to a chemical-based cell that is only 70% efficient, and a coal-to-electricity plant that is only 50% efficient, so the NET overall efficiency of a Battery-powered EV1 or RAV4 is no better than a gasoline-powered Civic or Prius Hybrid (and less efficient than an Insight or Lupo diesel). Source: greenercars.org, 2001 Databook.
The government can do whatever, but the free market still marches on.
Entrepreneurs have modified Priuses that can be recharged either from the wall, or via a solar-paneled roof, and thereby travel 20 miles as pure electrics (and oil-fueled for longer distances). When we stop wasting the sunlight beating our roofs and tap it for running our cars or homes, then we will achieve near-independence from oil.
I don't think it matters. Whatever you label something is merely semantics. What really matters is this sentence: "Only 24 per cent of the energy used to make the hydrogen does any useful work on the road."
A diesel-oil car does better than that. Volkwagen claims 50% efficiency for its 3-cylinder Lupo/Polo cars; the processing of oil into diesel is 90% efficient, so that's 45% overall - double what hydrogen can do. An electric vehicle gets a similar efficiency, and it has the advantage of being rechargeable at home via a solar-paneled roof. I've been reading about hydrogen for almost a decade now, and no matter what angle you look at it, it is probably the LEAST efficient method of powering a car as can be imagined.
An oil-powered or electric-powered car are the most-efficient methods ever designed.
Buying the game also sends money to Sony's SecuROM division, and that's the opposite of what we want to accomplish. We don't want to support SecuROM Virus/spybot shit. I think a better solution is to post a review to amazon like so (where many, many gamers will see it):
"I bought the Playstation [or Xbox] version instead. Why? Because they don't include copy-protection or frak up my computer. My copy cost ~$10 Used at my local gaming store, so Rockstar's decision to include Virus-like DRM software on the PC version cost them a $50 brand-new sale. Serves them right. Any company that seeks to damage my computer is not going to see a single penny from me."
cc: a copy to your printer and then physically-mail that Amazon.com review to the upper-level management. Make them aware that their decision to include SecuROM cost them a ~$50 retail sale.
I see amazon has diabled reviews. I guess they don't want a repeat of the previous debacle where gamers warned other gamers about the DRM Virus/spybot. So much for word-of-mouth.
The BEST way to send a message is to post a review on amazon about how you REFUSE to buy software that takes-over your machine like a virus or spybot:
"I bought the Playstation [or Xbox] version instead. Why? Because they don't include copy-protection or frak up my computer. My copy cost ~$10 Used at my local gaming store, so Rockstar's decision to include Virus-like DRM software on the PC version cost them a $50 brand-new sale. Serves them right. Any company that seeks to damage my computer is not going to see a single penny from me."
cc: A copy to your printer and then mail it to Rockstar management so they can see how they are hurting themselves financially.
Right on. I'm anenvironmentalist, but I think a lot of my "colleagues" like greenpeace are frakking idiots. Apple is what? 5% of the PC market? Probably less. Even if Apple decided to quit making PCs, there improvement to the environment would be negligible.
Greenpeace should target Microsoft and Microsoft-compatible Windows PCs. That's where they will make the maximum amount of change to improve conditions. Target the big guys and leave the small frys alone.
Well, I fell asleep after just ten minutes of reading the LOTR books. Okay not really, but I was bored out of my mind. That man rambled on more than my delusional grandmother. I never did get past the halfway point of book 1 because it was like listening to my English prof drone on-and-on-and-on.
As for Foundation, it's not really a novel. It's a series of short stories and I don't know how it can be adapted to a movie, since the cast of characters is constantly changing, and I can't imagine the movie makers constantly changing actors every twenty minutes. The result will probably be some bastardized mess that fails to properly span one hundred years of history. When you have a series of stories like Foundation, it makes more sense to handle it like Star Trek TOS - each episode is a standalone independent of the others. They should create an "Issac Asimov Presents" show with each episode covering a different short story, including his Foundation, Robot, and Empire short stories.
>>>misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall.
I have to disagree with this statement. Yeah the B-grade movies were bad, but I thought Bicentennial Man was faithful to the original text, and I Robot was an original non-asimov story, but still stayed true to Asimov's original Four Robot Laws (1,2,3, and 0). I saw that movie three times and enjoyed it every time. I wish they'd go back and adapt a few more (but this time stick to the text).
About two weeks ago, some guy tried to steal my car.
I pulled my gun and told him he either runs away, or he gets shot in the stomach. He ran. Why did I resort to self-defense? Because the car cost me several thousand dollars, and I'm not going to let some asshat steal a year's worth of my life (how long it took me to earn the money for the car). If you mess with my multi-thousand dollar PC, and disable it, you and the car thief will have much in common.
I'm not angry right now, but if you turn my PC into an usuable brick, I will become VERY angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
Slashdot Mirror
If HP and other Companies are not printing their list prices, then no, I can't take my dollar elsewhere because I'm not getting accurate information. I'm stumbling around in the dark. This is no different than a Wall Street company refusing to share their quarterly profit reports, thereby blocking stock purchasers/customers from making informed decisions.
It doesn't bother me if someone gets, say Guitar Hero III, for $10 at Walmart. I just congratulate them and ask how I could get a similar deal. And then I keep my eyes open for future deals.
About two weeks ago, some guy tried to steal my car.
I pulled my gun and told him he either runs away, or he gets shot in the stomach. He ran. Why did I resort to self-defense? Because the car cost me several thousand dollars, and I'm not going to let some asshat steal a year's worth of my life (how long it took me to earn the money). If you mess with my multi-thousand dollar PC, and disable it, you and the car thief will have much in common.
I'm not angry right now, but if you turn my PC into an unusable brick, I will become VERY angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
Well many people argue that copied music doesn't cost a record company anything, because "bits" don't cost money. I can argue the same for spam. It doesn't cost anything to receive and then delete junk-mail. You lost no money, especially if you have automated filtering.
I can also argue that, since junk mail is allowed in normal paper-based mail, it's just as legal in virtual mail.
Contrariwise, I fail to see how formatting my c: and d: drives, and causing me the loss of thousands of dollars of purchased music/movies, can be justified in any way, shape, or form. I'm sure a court of law would agree with me when I sue your ass.
Who will I direct my anger against? The person who decided to hijack the spynet, and "Do me a favor" by disabling my networking or formatting my drives.
The disabling of net access is not really a big deal, but if they format my c: and d: hard drives, costing me thousands in lost downloaded music/movies, they might as well kiss their life goodbye. They are no better in my eyes than the Asshat who tried to steal my car.
Quoted for truth:
"A person who uses their computer for little more than email and light web-surfing can not be held responsible if their system is compromised.
"A Windows machine with all the current security patches, a firewall, and AV software could still become infected.
"BTW - a spam email is not infringing on your property. It's not like it took a shit on your yard. You don't own that piece of your ISP's server that is storing that spam message"
>>>Why should I (and others) waste my time deleting the fucking spam your infected fucking computer keeps sending to my computer.
If you configured your computer properly you wouldn't get any Spam, anonymous coward. Don't blame me for your failure to take adequate measures to filter the junk emails.
Making using computers a crime would certainly solve the Politicians' problem of how to stop free speech, and restore control to the centralized media.
>>>if FireEye had so wished, we could have issued the "uninstall" command or updated the binary to render it useless. However, making unauthorized system changes on hundreds of thousands of systems is not something we're in the business of doing. [fireeye.com]
>>>
Precisely. You have no business messing with MY machine. That makes you no better than the Sony Asshats who installed CD ROM protection software w/o permission.
What if I'm sitting here trying to compile a program, and it's due on Monday, and suddenly you (or someone) uses the spybot network to disable my machine with a "get your PC serviced" message??? You are causing serious, serious harm and jeopardizing my job (because I'll likely get fired when I tell the boss the program's not done). This is not in any way acceptable, and if I do lose my job as a result of your actions, I will make you pay the full measure of punishment.
In my state 10 year olds are allowed to drive on the roads.
You don't need a license to use a bike, or ride a horse, or operate a carriage on the People's highways. There is no age limit. That's called freedom.
>>>Sorry, but if it makes it into the black, I want my money back.
I agree with you in principle, but remember there's a multi-trillion dollar debt to pay off. Only after that debt is erased, and there is a true surplus, can government start giving money back to taxpayers.
Listening to the BBC is like listening to "Parliament News" or the American-equivalent "Bush/Obama News Network". The BBC is funded by the government and carry what the government wants them to say, and the government enjoys making war as much as the military-industrial complex.
Mazda has abandoned the ICE and replaced it with a rotary engine. In theory it should be as efficient as a rotary electric motor, but in reality it leaks hydrocarbons like a seive and just-barely passes California's ULEV requirements.
So they are trying, but so far not much success has been achieved. Others are experimenting with battery-powered electric cars, but they still have not overcome the minimum two-hour recharge time. Gasoline/diesel still has the advantage there of being recharged in just 5 minutes.
The best approach so far is to combine both electric and gasoline/diesel into a single car
(i.e. a rechargeable hybrid, preferably from a solar roof).
Skip the hydrogen and just dump the electricity directly into a Honda Civic or Prius Hybrid's battery.
"We have a winner!" :-)
Comparing a 75-year-old engine versus a brand-new engine is not a fair balance. One should compare a pristine Ford in 1925 prior to it receiving a lifetime of abuse. And when brand-new those engines did indeed get around 25 miles per gallon.
Honda has stated that if they built a car today, but stripped it to the same level as a 1970s-era Honda, it would easily get 60 miles per gallon. Unfortunately people keep demanding more and more "things" which have almost doubled the weight of the car, plus additional requirements of meeting California ULEV requirements, so the average car gets around 30 mpg, same as the 1970s. The 2008-engine is more-efficient than a 1975 engine, but that efficiency is being weighed-down by a heavier chassis and catalytic/particulate matter filters. So no net increase in MPG.
One company did make a 60mpg gasoline car called the Geo Metro, and it was stripped to almost nothing but bare metal, but due to lack of customer demand it disappeared. People want features not economy.
>>>But compared to a 90% efficient brushless electric motor, a ICE is kinda crappy. Yep. Too bad that wonderful motor is tied to a chemical-based cell that is only 70% efficient, and a coal-to-electricity plant that is only 50% efficient, so the NET overall efficiency of a Battery-powered EV1 or RAV4 is no better than a gasoline-powered Civic or Prius Hybrid (and less efficient than an Insight or Lupo diesel). Source: greenercars.org, 2001 Databook.
How about the "Americans are idiots who spend money they don't have and now they defaulted on their loans" recession.
The average American carries $150,000 in housing and credit card debt. There is no other adjective that fits that situation than "idiot".
The government can do whatever, but the free market still marches on.
Entrepreneurs have modified Priuses that can be recharged either from the wall, or via a solar-paneled roof, and thereby travel 20 miles as pure electrics (and oil-fueled for longer distances). When we stop wasting the sunlight beating our roofs and tap it for running our cars or homes, then we will achieve near-independence from oil.
I don't think it matters. Whatever you label something is merely semantics. What really matters is this sentence: "Only 24 per cent of the energy used to make the hydrogen does any useful work on the road."
A diesel-oil car does better than that. Volkwagen claims 50% efficiency for its 3-cylinder Lupo/Polo cars; the processing of oil into diesel is 90% efficient, so that's 45% overall - double what hydrogen can do. An electric vehicle gets a similar efficiency, and it has the advantage of being rechargeable at home via a solar-paneled roof. I've been reading about hydrogen for almost a decade now, and no matter what angle you look at it, it is probably the LEAST efficient method of powering a car as can be imagined.
An oil-powered or electric-powered car are the most-efficient methods ever designed.
Buying the game also sends money to Sony's SecuROM division, and that's the opposite of what we want to accomplish. We don't want to support SecuROM Virus/spybot shit. I think a better solution is to post a review to amazon like so (where many, many gamers will see it):
"I bought the Playstation [or Xbox] version instead. Why? Because they don't include copy-protection or frak up my computer. My copy cost ~$10 Used at my local gaming store, so Rockstar's decision to include Virus-like DRM software on the PC version cost them a $50 brand-new sale. Serves them right. Any company that seeks to damage my computer is not going to see a single penny from me."
cc: a copy to your printer and then physically-mail that Amazon.com review to the upper-level management. Make them aware that their decision to include SecuROM cost them a ~$50 retail sale.
P.S.
I see amazon has diabled reviews. I guess they don't want a repeat of the previous debacle where gamers warned other gamers about the DRM Virus/spybot. So much for word-of-mouth.
The BEST way to send a message is to post a review on amazon about how you REFUSE to buy software that takes-over your machine like a virus or spybot:
"I bought the Playstation [or Xbox] version instead. Why? Because they don't include copy-protection or frak up my computer. My copy cost ~$10 Used at my local gaming store, so Rockstar's decision to include Virus-like DRM software on the PC version cost them a $50 brand-new sale. Serves them right. Any company that seeks to damage my computer is not going to see a single penny from me."
cc: A copy to your printer and then mail it to Rockstar management so they can see how they are hurting themselves financially.
Right on. I'm anenvironmentalist, but I think a lot of my "colleagues" like greenpeace are frakking idiots. Apple is what? 5% of the PC market? Probably less. Even if Apple decided to quit making PCs, there improvement to the environment would be negligible.
Greenpeace should target Microsoft and Microsoft-compatible Windows PCs. That's where they will make the maximum amount of change to improve conditions. Target the big guys and leave the small frys alone.
Well, I fell asleep after just ten minutes of reading the LOTR books. Okay not really, but I was bored out of my mind. That man rambled on more than my delusional grandmother. I never did get past the halfway point of book 1 because it was like listening to my English prof drone on-and-on-and-on.
As for Foundation, it's not really a novel. It's a series of short stories and I don't know how it can be adapted to a movie, since the cast of characters is constantly changing, and I can't imagine the movie makers constantly changing actors every twenty minutes. The result will probably be some bastardized mess that fails to properly span one hundred years of history. When you have a series of stories like Foundation, it makes more sense to handle it like Star Trek TOS - each episode is a standalone independent of the others. They should create an "Issac Asimov Presents" show with each episode covering a different short story, including his Foundation, Robot, and Empire short stories.
>>>misguided Will Smith feature I, Robot, the lame Bicentennial Man with Robin Williams, and two B-grade adaptations of Nightfall.
I have to disagree with this statement. Yeah the B-grade movies were bad, but I thought Bicentennial Man was faithful to the original text, and I Robot was an original non-asimov story, but still stayed true to Asimov's original Four Robot Laws (1,2,3, and 0). I saw that movie three times and enjoyed it every time. I wish they'd go back and adapt a few more (but this time stick to the text).
About two weeks ago, some guy tried to steal my car.
I pulled my gun and told him he either runs away, or he gets shot in the stomach. He ran. Why did I resort to self-defense? Because the car cost me several thousand dollars, and I'm not going to let some asshat steal a year's worth of my life (how long it took me to earn the money for the car). If you mess with my multi-thousand dollar PC, and disable it, you and the car thief will have much in common.
I'm not angry right now, but if you turn my PC into an usuable brick, I will become VERY angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.