This is a good example of patent trolling/creation at its worse. The day comes when one company controls this kind of tech is a sad day for Americans. We need fuel efficient cars that drive well. Toyota has been at the forefront with that. It is time the ole American tech gets going creating our own technology for hybrid as well as electric and maybe hydrogen cars. We have to invent or get left behind. In this day and age most automobile companies are now owned in part by the federal government (except Ford at this time). Until we get Uncle Sam out of the car business this is unlikely to happen. Investments in tech is never a top priority with our government. It is always social programs and ripping off the tax payer as well as padding their own pockets. Maybe in this century this will change but it might take a revolution to do it.
As someone in tech at slightly older age (41) if you ever get the option to go management that is the way to go but like it has been said in other posts. Stay up with the tech and learn as much as you can. The more valuable you are with your employer/company the more likely it is that they will retain you and get rid of the "fat" in management that can't keep up. Plus in the event you have to switch jobs you can go back without having to relearn it. I can only hope somewhere down the line and soon I get that opportunity.
The real problem now is that the instances you usually have to wait now. With most of the 'veteran' players running end game content there is no resources left for lower level players including some that want to experience all the dungeons to do it except on off hours. I have played for almost an entire year and with LK this is my only gripe. There should be a reserve for lower level players to get in some of the now unplayed areas so they can experience the game and level faster. Not going to happen anytime soon however. Blizzard is too busy trying to cater to people who complain about a specific class having abilities that make them OP so they nerf them and another class now becomes OP. I have played many games (this is the second MMO) and my only comment is there are some WOW players that QQ too damn much. Death Knights were awesome when they came out. The first hero class. Now they are nothing more then glorified huntards with some abilities. My 2 cents.
Another good reason to consider moving to Vista. Everyone slams it but at least this exploit doesn't work on it. I am not sure about Opera. Does it handle Active X differently? If so may have to try it on any XP systems I have.
Taking government at face value and looking at their past they will introduce this but not totally do away with the fuel tax. It will be rolled back into effect so we are then paying for both. States like California and Illinois will be the first to tack on state taxes as well. I just got a GPS for my vehicle and it is a nice tool for travel but for the government to take something like this to "tax" people is just too much. This requirement alone will raise the cost of every vehicle because it will require one to be installed in the car. Then there will be the introduction of a yearly "fee" to use it for directions. Another boon for taxation and for companies that produce it.
It is available through the software update in the browser. I find it faster. Still have to play with some of the new settings but so far very nice improvements. Best of all my addons all worked right away!!!
As a WOW Player I think the reduction of time for the mounts makes sense. Walking around was the worst part of leveling. However leveling a "toon" from 1 to 80 should remain. That is how you learn how to play the toon. Especially if they are an entirely different class like cloth armor from plate. I have plate toons (Pally and DK) and I enjoy them at level 80 as well as when I was leveling them. Clothies have their advantages and I will be working on one for various reasons but starting at level 1 is good. I will have to learn how to attack and work on strategy to become proficient with the class. Changing this would be a mistake IMHO. Also allowing people to take a high level toon and switch sides I have mixed feelings about. I think if they allow it they should loose all achievments that are not available to the other side. Not get the equivalent. There should be a penalty for changing sides otherwise people will do it for various reasons that could ruin the game mechanics and achievments.
Excellent post. From someone who obviously read the article and understood what the complaint was. I too believe that Intel and AMD stretch what their "new and improved" CPUs deliver. It is the same in the desktop arena. Dual core versus Quad core. People buy the cheapest quad thinking they will be better off versus the faster (GHZ) dual core. Until the market can make good utilization of dual cores for the desktop (they are but not enough to warrant 3 or 4 cores) it is pointless. I always use Toms Hardware for real world comparison and it has always been a very good resource.
I am in the same boat. I am very happy with my Vista Home Premium 64 bit OS. Been stable and runs very well. I still have to load windows 7 RC to see for myself if it is any good. If not I will stay on Vista.
Exactly!! I had to go to Avast antivirus because all the "major" players (McAfee and Symantec) didn't support it. Avast has turned out to be a very good tool. It has found "junk" that others missed. My ISP gave out CA for antivirus for awhile. It was ok but Avast found things that CA should have. Needless to say CA is no longer on any machine I own and Avast home is on all of them. If M$ makes this a viable alternative and keeps the cost at $0 I might be tempted to try it out.
I agree. People got a bad "taste" when Vista came out with myself included. My hardware barely met the minimum hardware requirements. It sucked to say the least. I built a new machine which was needed anyway so I built it with the idea of running Vista 64 bit. That was the best idea. I have been very happy with Vista on 64 bit. I also run Ubuntu and Suse linux and enjoy those as well. I think people need to let XP go like windows 2000 and move on to the new desktop. Sure it may require new hardware but computers are not that expensive that can run Vista decent these days. The company I work for has started migrating to Vista and it is has been smooth. Of course we are in software so it wasn't a big move plus most of us are techies anyway. I think if anyone wants to continue to run XP let em but they should have to purchase a friggin retail pack CD and it should be more expensive then Vista and stop requiring the manufacturers to have the option to select it. They did the same with Windows 2000 when XP came out in retail outlets. I am getting ready to try Windows 7 RC at home on one of my systems and have tried it here at work. It has some nice improvements on Vista.Time to get in the 21st century and ditch XP. Enough said.
As someone in the support field the company I work for looks at the # of steps in the ticket to resolve the issue, the overall time in resolving the issue and the complexity of the issue. The goal is always to reduce the amount of calls and steps but call complexity also must be measured in the overall metric.
These corporate companies greed is pathetic. Let em go ahead and try to charge for the content. When no one visits their pathetic web sites they will have a choice of going back to free content or disapearing from the net altogether and with a business model like this they should go away. With the economy the way it is you shouldn't be trying to squeeze people for more money. Most people can do without the website and just watch TV. Than people can put up blogs with the information that people can continue to access for free. Doesn't Disney make enough money off their movie and theme parks?!? The cost of a Disney vacation takes the average family 3 to 5 years to save up for these days as it is!!
This can be good for the open source movement if it is done correctly. I agree with the previous posts that an application in their Linux products that would allow a customer to have an app that can download everything that will run and work for their Linux distro with an installer to make it easier for the non techies this would help adoption of Linux. I know Ubuntu and others have apt but if Novell does this with an option that would encourage donations to the writers with a safe option to donate without making people uncomfortable with transactions being safe this would work and get some much needed funds to the writers of the free software. A win win for open source and the developers. Again this would have to be done right. As a user at work with Suse Enterprise Desktop this would work as well as people who use the open version. I know there are some that hate Novell for the M$ pact so this won't matter to them. And yes I have given donations to open source development.
This is not a fair argument. Welfare moms take money from the government and what happens to the children from these families? Statistically they become welfare families because they learned how to "screw" the system. This is wrong but it happens all the time. This has nothing to do with the OP. The issue is most agree it takes some shady individual to buy up domain names expecting to sell them for a higher price. I say let em. It will be a cold day in hell before I pay em. I will come up with a different name. What really needs to happen is ICANN needs to restrict how many domains an individual can register/own. If they want more they have to show web traffic stats and use. If they just use the page to redirect or put up a under construction page this should not count. When this becomes a loosing proposition then and only then will it stop.
I agree. This would mean more revenue for Itunes. You don't have hardware lock in.... Oh that is anti Apple thinking there..... The only tangible reason Apple would sue is this would be in direct competition with its overprices Iphone. Plus you would not be locked in to AT&T or is AT&T the only vendor that will have this phone too?
Another company who isn't satisfied with the revenue stream from ads now wants to charge for content. Sorry. Not interested. I can watch my cable TV that I already pay for and if I want get a DVR and record my shows and watch them when I want!!! WOW what an idea!!! No I don't work for the cable company or a satellite TV company. I haven't been to their site but my kids have. Not worth the subscription unless it was like 2 or 3 bucks a year. 10 bucks a month can be spent more wisely in other areas.
After reading some of this story this device sounds like a large Ipod Touch without all the fancy Apple applications. I agree with the previous poster that a netbook would make a far better choice for this price. When they make a netbook around 190 bucks that is versatile enough I may get one. With most projects he wanted to keep the cost down but that is easier said then done.
Exactly! The US gave Sadam the WMD's and some have been found, some evidence he was mass killing his own people and areas where the stuff was stored or worked on. We should have completed the task in the first war. We would have found the stuff before we gave them the chance to move it or sell it to other countries. Syria is a probable country that got some of the WMD's and who knows what they will do with it. I think the second Bush administration knew about the WMDs going on the "open market" and needed to go in and stop them. Too bad most of the material is still hidden or moved to those countries. Let's face it. We never should have gotten involved with the war between Iraq and Iran in the first place. This country never seems to learn to stop meddling in cival or neighboring wars. When the US decides to stop being the policeman of the world and let em destroy each other maybe things will change.
I would have to echo these comments. I too run Windows Vista 64 bit for the last year and no problems at all!! XP used to give me issues after 5 to 6 months. Vista 64 bit has been great. I know Linux is a great OS but for the non techie people using PCs Vista 64 bit is a very good OS with the proper hardware and with hardware costs where they are it is not expensive to spec or build your own system that will run it very efficiently. I hate to say it but the whole reason Vista has a bad reputation is not so much the OS itself it was the system requirements. People who run single core CPUs and less than 1 gig of ram should not run Vista or at least run 2 gigs of ram. That makes a huge difference. I haven't tried Windows 7 yet but may look at it soon to see what is coming. My main system will remain on Vista for all my daily computing.
The stigma surrounding using IE with a windows machine is that it is too tied within the OS. I remember reading and hearing comments like these awhile back. I use Firefox exclusively at home and around 50% at work. Firefox is better designed and with the add-ons make the browser superior and more import you can tailor it to your needs. Until IE comes out with something that will make people want to use it over the competition it will be a losing proposition and their market share will drop every year. This along with people migrating to Linux or Mac OS as well and they have no interest in creating Internet Exploder (LOL) for Linux or other operating systems.
Until someone comes up with the next MMO with the depth of World of Warcraft it will remain in first place. As a player of the game I enjoy the world events and achievement system. You have other things to do besides grinding for levels. Plus some of the people (I stress the word some) are really nice people who enjoy the game and are willing to help out new players. I am in the middle of that as a player of less then 1 year but I help out new players as I can. The only drawback is the time it can take to get to the end game content. With all the different races you can create a different character and the story lines are different until you go "out in the world" then things become more familiar.
My system is updating this morning to the latest release. Ubuntu makes updating a breeze. At least I hope this one will work like the last one did. Anyone had any issues updating versus loading from scratch?
That is why I have spam filtering setup in Thunderbird. When spam does show up in my email box I add the email address or subject line to the filter so it goes to my trash folder which gets emptied when I exit the program. No fuss no muss.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a good example of patent trolling/creation at its worse. The day comes when one company controls this kind of tech is a sad day for Americans. We need fuel efficient cars that drive well. Toyota has been at the forefront with that. It is time the ole American tech gets going creating our own technology for hybrid as well as electric and maybe hydrogen cars. We have to invent or get left behind. In this day and age most automobile companies are now owned in part by the federal government (except Ford at this time). Until we get Uncle Sam out of the car business this is unlikely to happen. Investments in tech is never a top priority with our government. It is always social programs and ripping off the tax payer as well as padding their own pockets. Maybe in this century this will change but it might take a revolution to do it.
As someone in tech at slightly older age (41) if you ever get the option to go management that is the way to go but like it has been said in other posts. Stay up with the tech and learn as much as you can. The more valuable you are with your employer/company the more likely it is that they will retain you and get rid of the "fat" in management that can't keep up. Plus in the event you have to switch jobs you can go back without having to relearn it. I can only hope somewhere down the line and soon I get that opportunity.
The real problem now is that the instances you usually have to wait now. With most of the 'veteran' players running end game content there is no resources left for lower level players including some that want to experience all the dungeons to do it except on off hours. I have played for almost an entire year and with LK this is my only gripe. There should be a reserve for lower level players to get in some of the now unplayed areas so they can experience the game and level faster. Not going to happen anytime soon however. Blizzard is too busy trying to cater to people who complain about a specific class having abilities that make them OP so they nerf them and another class now becomes OP. I have played many games (this is the second MMO) and my only comment is there are some WOW players that QQ too damn much. Death Knights were awesome when they came out. The first hero class. Now they are nothing more then glorified huntards with some abilities. My 2 cents.
Another good reason to consider moving to Vista. Everyone slams it but at least this exploit doesn't work on it. I am not sure about Opera. Does it handle Active X differently? If so may have to try it on any XP systems I have.
Taking government at face value and looking at their past they will introduce this but not totally do away with the fuel tax. It will be rolled back into effect so we are then paying for both. States like California and Illinois will be the first to tack on state taxes as well. I just got a GPS for my vehicle and it is a nice tool for travel but for the government to take something like this to "tax" people is just too much. This requirement alone will raise the cost of every vehicle because it will require one to be installed in the car. Then there will be the introduction of a yearly "fee" to use it for directions. Another boon for taxation and for companies that produce it.
It is available through the software update in the browser. I find it faster. Still have to play with some of the new settings but so far very nice improvements. Best of all my addons all worked right away!!!
As a WOW Player I think the reduction of time for the mounts makes sense. Walking around was the worst part of leveling. However leveling a "toon" from 1 to 80 should remain. That is how you learn how to play the toon. Especially if they are an entirely different class like cloth armor from plate. I have plate toons (Pally and DK) and I enjoy them at level 80 as well as when I was leveling them. Clothies have their advantages and I will be working on one for various reasons but starting at level 1 is good. I will have to learn how to attack and work on strategy to become proficient with the class. Changing this would be a mistake IMHO. Also allowing people to take a high level toon and switch sides I have mixed feelings about. I think if they allow it they should loose all achievments that are not available to the other side. Not get the equivalent. There should be a penalty for changing sides otherwise people will do it for various reasons that could ruin the game mechanics and achievments.
Excellent post. From someone who obviously read the article and understood what the complaint was. I too believe that Intel and AMD stretch what their "new and improved" CPUs deliver. It is the same in the desktop arena. Dual core versus Quad core. People buy the cheapest quad thinking they will be better off versus the faster (GHZ) dual core. Until the market can make good utilization of dual cores for the desktop (they are but not enough to warrant 3 or 4 cores) it is pointless. I always use Toms Hardware for real world comparison and it has always been a very good resource.
I am in the same boat. I am very happy with my Vista Home Premium 64 bit OS. Been stable and runs very well. I still have to load windows 7 RC to see for myself if it is any good. If not I will stay on Vista.
Exactly!! I had to go to Avast antivirus because all the "major" players (McAfee and Symantec) didn't support it. Avast has turned out to be a very good tool. It has found "junk" that others missed. My ISP gave out CA for antivirus for awhile. It was ok but Avast found things that CA should have. Needless to say CA is no longer on any machine I own and Avast home is on all of them. If M$ makes this a viable alternative and keeps the cost at $0 I might be tempted to try it out.
I agree. People got a bad "taste" when Vista came out with myself included. My hardware barely met the minimum hardware requirements. It sucked to say the least. I built a new machine which was needed anyway so I built it with the idea of running Vista 64 bit. That was the best idea. I have been very happy with Vista on 64 bit. I also run Ubuntu and Suse linux and enjoy those as well. I think people need to let XP go like windows 2000 and move on to the new desktop. Sure it may require new hardware but computers are not that expensive that can run Vista decent these days. The company I work for has started migrating to Vista and it is has been smooth. Of course we are in software so it wasn't a big move plus most of us are techies anyway. I think if anyone wants to continue to run XP let em but they should have to purchase a friggin retail pack CD and it should be more expensive then Vista and stop requiring the manufacturers to have the option to select it. They did the same with Windows 2000 when XP came out in retail outlets. I am getting ready to try Windows 7 RC at home on one of my systems and have tried it here at work. It has some nice improvements on Vista.Time to get in the 21st century and ditch XP. Enough said.
As someone in the support field the company I work for looks at the # of steps in the ticket to resolve the issue, the overall time in resolving the issue and the complexity of the issue. The goal is always to reduce the amount of calls and steps but call complexity also must be measured in the overall metric.
These corporate companies greed is pathetic. Let em go ahead and try to charge for the content. When no one visits their pathetic web sites they will have a choice of going back to free content or disapearing from the net altogether and with a business model like this they should go away. With the economy the way it is you shouldn't be trying to squeeze people for more money. Most people can do without the website and just watch TV. Than people can put up blogs with the information that people can continue to access for free. Doesn't Disney make enough money off their movie and theme parks?!? The cost of a Disney vacation takes the average family 3 to 5 years to save up for these days as it is!!
This can be good for the open source movement if it is done correctly. I agree with the previous posts that an application in their Linux products that would allow a customer to have an app that can download everything that will run and work for their Linux distro with an installer to make it easier for the non techies this would help adoption of Linux. I know Ubuntu and others have apt but if Novell does this with an option that would encourage donations to the writers with a safe option to donate without making people uncomfortable with transactions being safe this would work and get some much needed funds to the writers of the free software. A win win for open source and the developers. Again this would have to be done right. As a user at work with Suse Enterprise Desktop this would work as well as people who use the open version. I know there are some that hate Novell for the M$ pact so this won't matter to them. And yes I have given donations to open source development.
This is not a fair argument. Welfare moms take money from the government and what happens to the children from these families? Statistically they become welfare families because they learned how to "screw" the system. This is wrong but it happens all the time. This has nothing to do with the OP. The issue is most agree it takes some shady individual to buy up domain names expecting to sell them for a higher price. I say let em. It will be a cold day in hell before I pay em. I will come up with a different name. What really needs to happen is ICANN needs to restrict how many domains an individual can register/own. If they want more they have to show web traffic stats and use. If they just use the page to redirect or put up a under construction page this should not count. When this becomes a loosing proposition then and only then will it stop.
I agree. This would mean more revenue for Itunes. You don't have hardware lock in.... Oh that is anti Apple thinking there..... The only tangible reason Apple would sue is this would be in direct competition with its overprices Iphone. Plus you would not be locked in to AT&T or is AT&T the only vendor that will have this phone too?
Another company who isn't satisfied with the revenue stream from ads now wants to charge for content. Sorry. Not interested. I can watch my cable TV that I already pay for and if I want get a DVR and record my shows and watch them when I want!!! WOW what an idea!!! No I don't work for the cable company or a satellite TV company. I haven't been to their site but my kids have. Not worth the subscription unless it was like 2 or 3 bucks a year. 10 bucks a month can be spent more wisely in other areas.
After reading some of this story this device sounds like a large Ipod Touch without all the fancy Apple applications. I agree with the previous poster that a netbook would make a far better choice for this price. When they make a netbook around 190 bucks that is versatile enough I may get one. With most projects he wanted to keep the cost down but that is easier said then done.
Exactly! The US gave Sadam the WMD's and some have been found, some evidence he was mass killing his own people and areas where the stuff was stored or worked on. We should have completed the task in the first war. We would have found the stuff before we gave them the chance to move it or sell it to other countries. Syria is a probable country that got some of the WMD's and who knows what they will do with it. I think the second Bush administration knew about the WMDs going on the "open market" and needed to go in and stop them. Too bad most of the material is still hidden or moved to those countries. Let's face it. We never should have gotten involved with the war between Iraq and Iran in the first place. This country never seems to learn to stop meddling in cival or neighboring wars. When the US decides to stop being the policeman of the world and let em destroy each other maybe things will change.
I would have to echo these comments. I too run Windows Vista 64 bit for the last year and no problems at all!! XP used to give me issues after 5 to 6 months. Vista 64 bit has been great. I know Linux is a great OS but for the non techie people using PCs Vista 64 bit is a very good OS with the proper hardware and with hardware costs where they are it is not expensive to spec or build your own system that will run it very efficiently. I hate to say it but the whole reason Vista has a bad reputation is not so much the OS itself it was the system requirements. People who run single core CPUs and less than 1 gig of ram should not run Vista or at least run 2 gigs of ram. That makes a huge difference. I haven't tried Windows 7 yet but may look at it soon to see what is coming. My main system will remain on Vista for all my daily computing.
It would have been more challenging if they were going in separate directions and tried to link up. That would have been worth seeing.
The stigma surrounding using IE with a windows machine is that it is too tied within the OS. I remember reading and hearing comments like these awhile back. I use Firefox exclusively at home and around 50% at work. Firefox is better designed and with the add-ons make the browser superior and more import you can tailor it to your needs. Until IE comes out with something that will make people want to use it over the competition it will be a losing proposition and their market share will drop every year. This along with people migrating to Linux or Mac OS as well and they have no interest in creating Internet Exploder (LOL) for Linux or other operating systems.
Until someone comes up with the next MMO with the depth of World of Warcraft it will remain in first place. As a player of the game I enjoy the world events and achievement system. You have other things to do besides grinding for levels. Plus some of the people (I stress the word some) are really nice people who enjoy the game and are willing to help out new players. I am in the middle of that as a player of less then 1 year but I help out new players as I can. The only drawback is the time it can take to get to the end game content. With all the different races you can create a different character and the story lines are different until you go "out in the world" then things become more familiar.
My system is updating this morning to the latest release. Ubuntu makes updating a breeze. At least I hope this one will work like the last one did. Anyone had any issues updating versus loading from scratch?
That is why I have spam filtering setup in Thunderbird. When spam does show up in my email box I add the email address or subject line to the filter so it goes to my trash folder which gets emptied when I exit the program. No fuss no muss.