Re:New Egg not one of my faves
on
A Look Inside Newegg
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Newegg has generally treated me pretty well; just last week paid a few bucks extra for a laptop HDD but I knew I'd get it quickly and sure enough, I did. But there was some funky thing about a 1-year subscription to PC Magazine that I could opt out of, and in doing so I could send a request to PC Magazine to get back the value of the subscription (something just under $10). I'm going to go ahead and send it in, but I tell you, stuff like that does nothing to endear a company to its customers. It feels like (and probably is) some kind of phoney-baloney bullshit; just doesn't come off as "reputable company" in my book.
It's surprising to me that there are so many places online to buy computer stuff that vary so widely in business practices... I remember well how some sites linked to by Pricewatch (such as BZ Boyz) would nickel and dime you to death on cpu/mobo combos, or infer that the quality of the components in the Pricewatch price that led you to their site in the first place were sub-standard and you should choose other (more expensive) options. Then places like Monarch Computer, who had few such shenanigans. It's so varied, but they all seem to stay in business.
I certainly can't say that Newegg has ever really treated me wrong, but still that last transaction left me feeling that if I wasn't paying attention I'd be sending PC Magazine some $$$ that I really didn't want to. I dunno, maybe it's a sweet deal and I just can't see it for what it is. Mostly, I just want to buy things at a fair price (not necessarily the cheapest) and have good service. I guess for the most part they've met that standard.
The comments regarding televisions above are right on. Solutions should actually be solutions.
But for goodness' sake, who thinks carrying around their relatively fragile PC is a good idea? I've dropped mine a few times without complete breakage over the seven years I've owned one (er, three) but I can't imagine a device of that form factor being relied upon for computing. Storage would absolutely need to be separate from the phone, regardless of whether it has removable flash; imagine carrying the only copy of all of your important files on a USB flash drive in your pants pocket. Theft or damage would be so likely, if not inevitable.
I can see wanting this to be a good idea... just don't see it actually being one.
We've had sub-micron CMOS processes for years now. Many of us are using computers with 90nm chips in them. But I've never heard of it called nanotech before. Maybe it's not inaccurate, but in my mind that term is more descriptive of other materials employing nanoscale materials that never did before (clothing comes to mind).
you can do that without even leaving the computer you're typing into now
Yes, I can indeed... I gots me a nice (reasonably) fat pipe cable modem. But like I had said, as long as people (meaning "other people") are going to continue to go to stores to buy their music, wouldn't "bring your own container" be a preferable distribution method? Yeah, it seems kinda "ivory tower pie in the sky" on the one hand, but not totally out there on the other.
And consider the sheer size of the U.S.; we don't have fat pipes into every home and likely won't for the forseeable future. Dial-up users aren't going to suffer through 128MB downloads, so the ol' physical media will be the distribution method of choice. A flash drive to replace the physical disks would be good for the environment at the very least; the savings pocketed by the music industry, no doubt.
you mean like they passed on the savings of distributing songs via iTunes?
I was being facetious; clearly they'll take all they can, and then some.
My perfect world lets artists make their works available directly, and allows consumers to get easy access to their music. Hey Google, ya listening? Or better yet, are ya way ahead of me on this one?;-)
Hey, while travelling in France I was taken to a small wine shop that sold wine in bulk; bring your container, they'd fill it up from what looked like a gas hose. Wouldn't it be nice to do the same with music and your flash drive? As long as there will be physical buildings where people go to buy their music, it would be great to avoid all the shipping of the physical media.
Plus I'm sure the music publishers would pass the savings on to us consumers.
There was a press release from U.C. Berkeley in 2000 (also discussed on Slashdot) that discussed a finding about a particular kind of algea that, when a key nutrient was withheld, produced hydrogen instead of oxygen. This is a conversion of solar energy into hydrogen that is certainly much more efficient than using electrolysis. The problem, as usual, is converting a laboratory observation into a viable commercial production method (assuming that it's viable at all and not just some side effect).
If hydrogen is to become viable for personal transportation, it will need to get past the need to use petrochemicals. I am optimistic that this will one day happen, but hopefully not before we've exhausted most of our oil resources. It would sure be nice to slow down consumption and save that for other uses.
I'll answer my own question. I'm 42 years old, and with that age (including a family with two amazing daughters that I scarecly deserve) comes a belief that there's something bigger than my not-so-amazing life... that the two children I fathered (and especially the wife who bore them) are somehow more wonderful than me, or anything I could imagine. A surprising consideration from someone who has developed a sense of wonder but who doesn't have a belief in the supernatural. I'm in awe of my progeny and the woman who agreed to share her life with me...
Why is it that the news of James' passing makes me think of this, here in the wee hours of the morning? I guess it's not hard to deconstruct... I think we'd all like to be the one who worked behind the scenes, the one who made things possible but never got the credit for it. It's a romantic thought that is powerful in me...
With the most reverent "I'm givin' 'er all she's got, Captain!",
Your mileage may vary, but regardless my point is that Firefox attempts to be more secure by not supporting that functionality... yet you simply bypass their attempt by using another product.
This is true, but not so much a concern for the security-aware. You're very, very unlikely to get in trouble using IE to connect to your bank or your company's website. So if you only use IE when you know it's likely to be safe and use Firefox the rest of the time, no real harm done. This has nothing to do with a site's reliance upon IE-only features; that's a separate (but important) issue.
Where the problem lies is with the non-geeks out there; all it takes is one site that doesn't work correctly in Firefox and they're back on IE full-time in a flash. That's the highly-undesirable outcome, and it's a pisser. So when I urge and cajole friends/family to use Firefox whenever possible, I still end up making sure SpywareBlaster gets installed so there's at least a modicrum of protection when they inevitably switch back to IE.
This might be beneficial to the consumer! Has it come to this, that the FCC is floundering so badly as to do something that might actually be good for the consumer?
But then again, is it beneficial? Or fair? Damn... all this stuff having to do with the power/communications infrastructure stuff is too darned complicated. My last dealings with the FCC were when I got my CB radio license back in, oh, 1980. What have they done for me lately? (cue Janet Jackson)
Now, I realize that no interconnected computer system can be 100% secure, but shouldn't a place like LexisNexis be able to keep kids like this out? Was he really that good, or are they just really lousy at computer security?
Who cares? I mean, I'm a dedicated, almost rabid Firefox user. I love the extensions that give me *exactly* the functionality I want. I recommend and advocate for Firefox to friends, family and folks online almost tirelessly. But this must be the fourth milestone announcement I've seen in, oh, the last few weeks. But who really cares? It's still a drop in the bucket, and anything could cause it to either have a sharp decline in the rate of adoption or even a reversal... why all the focus on these relatively small increases in numbers of downloads?
This inclusive community already gets it. We know our efforts to educate those close to us (or force said humanoid units to switch) are having a positive effect on the Firefox userbase. It's simply not quite clear to me what all the interest in the seemingly constant barrage of small milestone announcements is all about. As long as there are *enough* users to keep developer interest sufficiently high, I'm a happy camper. I can wish that the rest of the world would switch, but when I can't beat some family members into submission after their third jumpstart of their Windows boxen, I can't get all that excited about these little statistical announcements.
Bah... never mind... it's probably just the grape juice talkin'.
It would certainly aid in the evaluation of why the insulation fell off this time.
I noticed that the view from one of the tank-mounted cameras showed the tank kind of oscillating; going from perfectly round to oval in one direction then the other. It was really visible, clearly not an artifact of vibration. The struts, shuttle, etc. were perfectly still. I'm sure that's accounted for in the pliability of the foam insulation, but still it must be one of the challenges to keeping the foam intact.
If the server is going to be busy, OS X probably wouldn't be a good choice. AnandTech had a review of OS X as a server OS and found it couldn't keep up with Linux as the number of connections increased beyond a certain threshold.
Just something to consider; it will undoubtedly improve in the future, but for now a FOSS solution would likely suffice and not have this limitation.
Man, the moment I read the headline I immediately thought about Philip K. Dick's short story, "Second Variety". What a great story. I never saw the movie based upon it, "Screamers"; I wonder if it was any good? Hmmm, methinks the Netflix queue is about to get an update.
I didn't RTFA, but I'm going to assume there will be no deployable blades springing out from these swarmbots. I mean, it could be, but why take the chance and ruin a good nights' sleep?
However, after coming from large enterprise environments, where the UNIX boys do the UNIX stuff and the NT guys do the Windows stuff [snip]
After watching friends in the IT industry deal with difficult employment situations in Silicon Vally, I have to say that cross-functionality is a must. One friend in particular has been forced to accept positions at relatively small companies, and the people that run these places just don't understand, well, much of anything about computer infrastructure. One choice quote: "If the CEO isn't having any problems, he thinks that no one else is either." The same guy that thinks a four-hour per week IT consultant can keep their systems, network infrastructure and Windows boxen all running happily. Decisions are made more through egotistical and micromanagerial mechanisms rather than entrusting the computing environment to the ones knowledgeable enough to make those decisions.
So while the enterprise may have more vertical job functions, the smaller shops have a variety of needs dictated more by the (lack of) knowledge of the management than the real needs of the computing infrastructure. You should probably increase your employability by getting your MCSE, but at the same time be wary of those smaller shops. Without wanting to be a pessimist, I'd assume the worst if you're going to be the sole IT guy/gal, or even part of a team of three or less.
What a lame-ass thing to do, I used to think. Now Intel is more than just a brand, it's a platform; business bought into it, and you'll find there are many corporations that won't even consider AMD-powered equipment. I bet that's changing now, but nevertheless it's amazing the brand recognition a chip company managed to achieve.
Apple is to me quite the enigma. The company gets far more press and adulation relative to its size than any other company I can think of (not that I'm trying that hard; I'm sure someone will come up with some excellent examples). But its hardware has just about all of the issues that Dell and other PC makers have, be it computers or consumer electronics. Yet the overall feeling about Apple seems to range from more of a warm fuzzy to outright adoration; who else has managed anything even close besides Google?
I've seen a 10 years old kid who knew how to rip/burn protected CDs because "he wanted it" and "his friends shown him how to do it."
I sure remember how much more interesting/fun something seemed as a kid if it was something I was told I shouldn't do. Back then it was something like swinging on the rope swing that swung out over the sheer 150 foot cliff behind my house; take intrinsic danger and add a large helping of "I'd not better catch you on that rope swing EVER AGAIN!" and boy, it was irresistable.
Later is was figuring out the copy protection used by the "Space Quest" video game (inserting debug break commands [cc, which was "int 3" IIRC] to make using debug harder); I still bought the game, but I couldn't help but go figure out how to break the copy protection. No harm, no foul; never shared what I figured out.
With music piracy, kids now perceive little if any danger. Adding weak copy protection may just make them feel like they have to break it just to get away with something. For the little geeks out there, at any rate. I don't see how it could possibly curb casual copying, nor why three copies is considered "okay". It's just weird.
I just posted a longish rebuttal to the author's article. That's got to be the worst supporting evidence I've ever seen to a thesis in ages. He may know security, but he knows squat about hardware. Where does he get this idea of "cheap hard disks"? And feature changes during OS upgrades are bad? Oh brother...
I was hoping for an enlightening look at underlying security models from a security professional and what I got was bullet points my mother would have come up with. That's pathetic.
Toyota is doing what GM and Ford couldn't do. It's letting it's customers help fund it's R&D related to the transition from gas to electric.
Like I had said, that's why I paid the early-adopter penalty; as jaded as I may be, it's not going to stop me from trying. Toyota is losing money on every Prius they sell, by normal accounting standards (or so I've read in several places) but the mindshare they gain is an investment in the future -- ours and theirs.
GM bet big on the mammoth SUV, and they (and their shareholders) are paying for it now. I couldn't be happier about that little development.
Maybe too little too late, maybe not. I took my chances, and I'm hoping for the best.
Hybrid cars seem like the answer to rising gas prices, increased pollution and growing dependence on foreign oil
Although I am the proud owner of a new Toyota Prius, I can unoquivically say that hybrid cars are not the answer; they are a stop-gap measure that may extend the period of time that oil is a primary fuel on the planet Earth. However, they are too little too late; I have the income to allow me to "do the right thing" but really, I should either move closer to where I work or take public transportation to really do the right thing. I'm not going to do that, and my neighbors are going to bitch about how much it costs to drive their SUVs but they don't look like they're selling them anytime soon.
So who cares what the mileage figures are? The hybrids are far better than the other cars on the road, but they won't amount to any appreciable percentage of the cars on the road until gasoline is priced high enough to force it, or the government mandates it. Neither is going to happen, so unless there's some miraculous breakthrough that provides a cheap source of hydrogen pretty damned soon, it's all moot.
Yeah, I'm kinda pessimistic about energy usage in the U.S. We're kinda like the guy who jumped off the really tall building saying, "Nothing will happen!" who could be heard saying as he fell past each floor "So far, so good!"
Still, I bought a Prius to support the company that made the R&D investment to give us a stop-gap solution, even if we're not moving to a viable alternate energy source with the urgency we should. Meaning, I don't know if my partial gesture will matter, but it's better than driving the car it replaced at half the mileage.
Phishing Scams like these I actually forward on to Pay Pal and Ebay's fraud units.
They sure don't make it easy... I tried forwarding one *twice* today to spoof.ebay.com and they rejected it each time because it wasn't done just the way they wanted. If I can figure out how to tie the pretty bow they want around the forwarded message, I might even succeed in giving them the information next time!
Slashdot Mirror
Newegg has generally treated me pretty well; just last week paid a few bucks extra for a laptop HDD but I knew I'd get it quickly and sure enough, I did. But there was some funky thing about a 1-year subscription to PC Magazine that I could opt out of, and in doing so I could send a request to PC Magazine to get back the value of the subscription (something just under $10). I'm going to go ahead and send it in, but I tell you, stuff like that does nothing to endear a company to its customers. It feels like (and probably is) some kind of phoney-baloney bullshit; just doesn't come off as "reputable company" in my book.
It's surprising to me that there are so many places online to buy computer stuff that vary so widely in business practices... I remember well how some sites linked to by Pricewatch (such as BZ Boyz) would nickel and dime you to death on cpu/mobo combos, or infer that the quality of the components in the Pricewatch price that led you to their site in the first place were sub-standard and you should choose other (more expensive) options. Then places like Monarch Computer, who had few such shenanigans. It's so varied, but they all seem to stay in business.
I certainly can't say that Newegg has ever really treated me wrong, but still that last transaction left me feeling that if I wasn't paying attention I'd be sending PC Magazine some $$$ that I really didn't want to. I dunno, maybe it's a sweet deal and I just can't see it for what it is. Mostly, I just want to buy things at a fair price (not necessarily the cheapest) and have good service. I guess for the most part they've met that standard.
The comments regarding televisions above are right on. Solutions should actually be solutions.
But for goodness' sake, who thinks carrying around their relatively fragile PC is a good idea? I've dropped mine a few times without complete breakage over the seven years I've owned one (er, three) but I can't imagine a device of that form factor being relied upon for computing. Storage would absolutely need to be separate from the phone, regardless of whether it has removable flash; imagine carrying the only copy of all of your important files on a USB flash drive in your pants pocket. Theft or damage would be so likely, if not inevitable.
I can see wanting this to be a good idea... just don't see it actually being one.
... the freakin' sharks with laser beams!
We've had sub-micron CMOS processes for years now. Many of us are using computers with 90nm chips in them. But I've never heard of it called nanotech before. Maybe it's not inaccurate, but in my mind that term is more descriptive of other materials employing nanoscale materials that never did before (clothing comes to mind).
you can do that without even leaving the computer you're typing into now
Yes, I can indeed... I gots me a nice (reasonably) fat pipe cable modem. But like I had said, as long as people (meaning "other people") are going to continue to go to stores to buy their music, wouldn't "bring your own container" be a preferable distribution method? Yeah, it seems kinda "ivory tower pie in the sky" on the one hand, but not totally out there on the other.
And consider the sheer size of the U.S.; we don't have fat pipes into every home and likely won't for the forseeable future. Dial-up users aren't going to suffer through 128MB downloads, so the ol' physical media will be the distribution method of choice. A flash drive to replace the physical disks would be good for the environment at the very least; the savings pocketed by the music industry, no doubt.
you mean like they passed on the savings of distributing songs via iTunes?
;-)
I was being facetious; clearly they'll take all they can, and then some.
My perfect world lets artists make their works available directly, and allows consumers to get easy access to their music. Hey Google, ya listening? Or better yet, are ya way ahead of me on this one?
Hey, while travelling in France I was taken to a small wine shop that sold wine in bulk; bring your container, they'd fill it up from what looked like a gas hose. Wouldn't it be nice to do the same with music and your flash drive? As long as there will be physical buildings where people go to buy their music, it would be great to avoid all the shipping of the physical media.
Plus I'm sure the music publishers would pass the savings on to us consumers.
There was a press release from U.C. Berkeley in 2000 (also discussed on Slashdot) that discussed a finding about a particular kind of algea that, when a key nutrient was withheld, produced hydrogen instead of oxygen. This is a conversion of solar energy into hydrogen that is certainly much more efficient than using electrolysis. The problem, as usual, is converting a laboratory observation into a viable commercial production method (assuming that it's viable at all and not just some side effect).
If hydrogen is to become viable for personal transportation, it will need to get past the need to use petrochemicals. I am optimistic that this will one day happen, but hopefully not before we've exhausted most of our oil resources. It would sure be nice to slow down consumption and save that for other uses.
I'll answer my own question. I'm 42 years old, and with that age (including a family with two amazing daughters that I scarecly deserve) comes a belief that there's something bigger than my not-so-amazing life... that the two children I fathered (and especially the wife who bore them) are somehow more wonderful than me, or anything I could imagine. A surprising consideration from someone who has developed a sense of wonder but who doesn't have a belief in the supernatural. I'm in awe of my progeny and the woman who agreed to share her life with me...
Why is it that the news of James' passing makes me think of this, here in the wee hours of the morning? I guess it's not hard to deconstruct... I think we'd all like to be the one who worked behind the scenes, the one who made things possible but never got the credit for it. It's a romantic thought that is powerful in me...
With the most reverent "I'm givin' 'er all she's got, Captain!",
- Leo
Your mileage may vary, but regardless my point is that Firefox attempts to be more secure by not supporting that functionality... yet you simply bypass their attempt by using another product.
This is true, but not so much a concern for the security-aware. You're very, very unlikely to get in trouble using IE to connect to your bank or your company's website. So if you only use IE when you know it's likely to be safe and use Firefox the rest of the time, no real harm done. This has nothing to do with a site's reliance upon IE-only features; that's a separate (but important) issue.
Where the problem lies is with the non-geeks out there; all it takes is one site that doesn't work correctly in Firefox and they're back on IE full-time in a flash. That's the highly-undesirable outcome, and it's a pisser. So when I urge and cajole friends/family to use Firefox whenever possible, I still end up making sure SpywareBlaster gets installed so there's at least a modicrum of protection when they inevitably switch back to IE.
This might be beneficial to the consumer! Has it come to this, that the FCC is floundering so badly as to do something that might actually be good for the consumer?
But then again, is it beneficial? Or fair? Damn... all this stuff having to do with the power/communications infrastructure stuff is too darned complicated. My last dealings with the FCC were when I got my CB radio license back in, oh, 1980. What have they done for me lately? (cue Janet Jackson)
breaking in to data broker LexisNexis' systems
Now, I realize that no interconnected computer system can be 100% secure, but shouldn't a place like LexisNexis be able to keep kids like this out? Was he really that good, or are they just really lousy at computer security?
If the distant explosions are caused by aliens
It was caused by the Vogons. I read about it in the meeting minutes of a planetary planning meeting somewhere in around Alpha Centauri awhile back.
Who cares? I mean, I'm a dedicated, almost rabid Firefox user. I love the extensions that give me *exactly* the functionality I want. I recommend and advocate for Firefox to friends, family and folks online almost tirelessly. But this must be the fourth milestone announcement I've seen in, oh, the last few weeks. But who really cares? It's still a drop in the bucket, and anything could cause it to either have a sharp decline in the rate of adoption or even a reversal... why all the focus on these relatively small increases in numbers of downloads?
This inclusive community already gets it. We know our efforts to educate those close to us (or force said humanoid units to switch) are having a positive effect on the Firefox userbase. It's simply not quite clear to me what all the interest in the seemingly constant barrage of small milestone announcements is all about. As long as there are *enough* users to keep developer interest sufficiently high, I'm a happy camper. I can wish that the rest of the world would switch, but when I can't beat some family members into submission after their third jumpstart of their Windows boxen, I can't get all that excited about these little statistical announcements.
Bah... never mind... it's probably just the grape juice talkin'.
It would certainly aid in the evaluation of why the insulation fell off this time.
I noticed that the view from one of the tank-mounted cameras showed the tank kind of oscillating; going from perfectly round to oval in one direction then the other. It was really visible, clearly not an artifact of vibration. The struts, shuttle, etc. were perfectly still. I'm sure that's accounted for in the pliability of the foam insulation, but still it must be one of the challenges to keeping the foam intact.
If the server is going to be busy, OS X probably wouldn't be a good choice. AnandTech had a review of OS X as a server OS and found it couldn't keep up with Linux as the number of connections increased beyond a certain threshold.
Just something to consider; it will undoubtedly improve in the future, but for now a FOSS solution would likely suffice and not have this limitation.
Man, the moment I read the headline I immediately thought about Philip K. Dick's short story, "Second Variety". What a great story. I never saw the movie based upon it, "Screamers"; I wonder if it was any good? Hmmm, methinks the Netflix queue is about to get an update.
I didn't RTFA, but I'm going to assume there will be no deployable blades springing out from these swarmbots. I mean, it could be, but why take the chance and ruin a good nights' sleep?
However, after coming from large enterprise environments, where the UNIX boys do the UNIX stuff and the NT guys do the Windows stuff [snip]
After watching friends in the IT industry deal with difficult employment situations in Silicon Vally, I have to say that cross-functionality is a must. One friend in particular has been forced to accept positions at relatively small companies, and the people that run these places just don't understand, well, much of anything about computer infrastructure. One choice quote: "If the CEO isn't having any problems, he thinks that no one else is either." The same guy that thinks a four-hour per week IT consultant can keep their systems, network infrastructure and Windows boxen all running happily. Decisions are made more through egotistical and micromanagerial mechanisms rather than entrusting the computing environment to the ones knowledgeable enough to make those decisions.
So while the enterprise may have more vertical job functions, the smaller shops have a variety of needs dictated more by the (lack of) knowledge of the management than the real needs of the computing infrastructure. You should probably increase your employability by getting your MCSE, but at the same time be wary of those smaller shops. Without wanting to be a pessimist, I'd assume the worst if you're going to be the sole IT guy/gal, or even part of a team of three or less.
What a lame-ass thing to do, I used to think. Now Intel is more than just a brand, it's a platform; business bought into it, and you'll find there are many corporations that won't even consider AMD-powered equipment. I bet that's changing now, but nevertheless it's amazing the brand recognition a chip company managed to achieve.
Apple is to me quite the enigma. The company gets far more press and adulation relative to its size than any other company I can think of (not that I'm trying that hard; I'm sure someone will come up with some excellent examples). But its hardware has just about all of the issues that Dell and other PC makers have, be it computers or consumer electronics. Yet the overall feeling about Apple seems to range from more of a warm fuzzy to outright adoration; who else has managed anything even close besides Google?
- Leo
I've seen a 10 years old kid who knew how to rip/burn protected CDs because "he wanted it" and "his friends shown him how to do it."
I sure remember how much more interesting/fun something seemed as a kid if it was something I was told I shouldn't do. Back then it was something like swinging on the rope swing that swung out over the sheer 150 foot cliff behind my house; take intrinsic danger and add a large helping of "I'd not better catch you on that rope swing EVER AGAIN!" and boy, it was irresistable.
Later is was figuring out the copy protection used by the "Space Quest" video game (inserting debug break commands [cc, which was "int 3" IIRC] to make using debug harder); I still bought the game, but I couldn't help but go figure out how to break the copy protection. No harm, no foul; never shared what I figured out.
With music piracy, kids now perceive little if any danger. Adding weak copy protection may just make them feel like they have to break it just to get away with something. For the little geeks out there, at any rate. I don't see how it could possibly curb casual copying, nor why three copies is considered "okay". It's just weird.
I just posted a longish rebuttal to the author's article. That's got to be the worst supporting evidence I've ever seen to a thesis in ages. He may know security, but he knows squat about hardware. Where does he get this idea of "cheap hard disks"? And feature changes during OS upgrades are bad? Oh brother...
I was hoping for an enlightening look at underlying security models from a security professional and what I got was bullet points my mother would have come up with. That's pathetic.
Toyota is doing what GM and Ford couldn't do. It's letting it's customers help fund it's R&D related to the transition from gas to electric.
Like I had said, that's why I paid the early-adopter penalty; as jaded as I may be, it's not going to stop me from trying. Toyota is losing money on every Prius they sell, by normal accounting standards (or so I've read in several places) but the mindshare they gain is an investment in the future -- ours and theirs.
GM bet big on the mammoth SUV, and they (and their shareholders) are paying for it now. I couldn't be happier about that little development.
Maybe too little too late, maybe not. I took my chances, and I'm hoping for the best.
- Leo
Hybrid cars seem like the answer to rising gas prices, increased pollution and growing dependence on foreign oil
Although I am the proud owner of a new Toyota Prius, I can unoquivically say that hybrid cars are not the answer; they are a stop-gap measure that may extend the period of time that oil is a primary fuel on the planet Earth. However, they are too little too late; I have the income to allow me to "do the right thing" but really, I should either move closer to where I work or take public transportation to really do the right thing. I'm not going to do that, and my neighbors are going to bitch about how much it costs to drive their SUVs but they don't look like they're selling them anytime soon.
So who cares what the mileage figures are? The hybrids are far better than the other cars on the road, but they won't amount to any appreciable percentage of the cars on the road until gasoline is priced high enough to force it, or the government mandates it. Neither is going to happen, so unless there's some miraculous breakthrough that provides a cheap source of hydrogen pretty damned soon, it's all moot.
Yeah, I'm kinda pessimistic about energy usage in the U.S. We're kinda like the guy who jumped off the really tall building saying, "Nothing will happen!" who could be heard saying as he fell past each floor "So far, so good!"
Still, I bought a Prius to support the company that made the R&D investment to give us a stop-gap solution, even if we're not moving to a viable alternate energy source with the urgency we should. Meaning, I don't know if my partial gesture will matter, but it's better than driving the car it replaced at half the mileage.
- Leo
Phishing Scams like these I actually forward on to Pay Pal and Ebay's fraud units.
They sure don't make it easy... I tried forwarding one *twice* today to spoof.ebay.com and they rejected it each time because it wasn't done just the way they wanted. If I can figure out how to tie the pretty bow they want around the forwarded message, I might even succeed in giving them the information next time!
- Leo
Submitter omitted information
Well, yes, this is Slashdot, after all...
But seriously, I assumed that... but I couldn't think of any angle to be funny that way. I gots to take my yuks where I can gets 'em.
- Leo