The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver had a very similar situation (probably more than one). TELUS, the major telco in BC/Alberta is a founding sponsor of the olympics, providing massive amounts of support, arranging charity events and driving the process to get the olympics to BC. In the end though.. a non local company with more $$$ (Bell) took the win with more advertising $$ pledged.
Yeah.. i was one of those early thinkers of; "login? create an id? what kinda bs is this?" - so I was late to actually acquire a numbered ID. But.. ask Mr. Malda, I wonder if he still has my BOFH desk name plaque I sent him back in 97, along with a big box of other crap I sent him during an early "send me a box of weird crap contest". Ahh memories.
Thinking back though.. I think CnD was '96-97. OMG. I've been reading this site religiously on a daily basis for 10 years now. Egad.
You know you might be a geek when you say things like: Or if you read that post through as though it was perfect, normal english and didn't skip a beat:)
It's true.. my wife is from vietnam where they use the standard cheap flourescent lighting everywhere - flickering and all. Her question to me after a few months of staying in America was - why does everyone have those dark dingy lights here?
They were all just the evolution from Doom.. a local computer shop was very quick to get in on the game and had late-night doom playing nights with a good amount of PCs.. it became the popular haven for the computer-inclined in my town (Kelowna BC).. for me at least, doom was where networked, real-time, first person, multiplayer began.
Saying negative things in a reference is not illegal. If someone is asking you for historical performance you must relay the facts, positive or negative. A negative opinion or reference is highly sue-able, but it's not illegal. The fact is, if you lie and say a positive thing when that wasn't the case, you open yourself to more liability.
At my company, giving business references is strictly prohibitied. You can only give "personal references".
I dunno.. i'm a business analyst for a large telco that purchases millions of dollars in Cisco equipment. What does this tell me about Cisco when they are stooping so low as to photoshop an unused "trademark" into the picture as a last ditch effort to secure some lawsuit $$$?
This is extremely relevent to/. and it's users.
I'm sure this is not the first case of this either.
Simple - one can easily draw up a case for the benefits of distributed downloading for service providers - distribution of traffic is always a good thing, and if it's for this one protocol, rules are easily assembled on how to distribute that traffic to capitalize on the distribution to an even greater extent. One simply needs to assign a dollar amount to the savings or efficiences gained to garner acceptance.
Funny.. because I'm 29, and this article has me dead on. I'm not impatient like I was when i was a young buck (don't need to have everything NOW!) and I have more important things to spend my money on (like investments, mortgage payments, groceries, etc). My broadband connection is consistently fast and reliable and I have huge hard drives. I setup a number of bittorrent downloads and let them complete when they will. There are always 5-10 on the go, and there's always something new to watch when I have the time to sit down and enjoy a movie. The ones that are corrupt or fake - not a big deal, i delete them and move on to the next 100 downloads.
So.. the thrill of stealing of movie? Not so. I had that thrill stealing chocolate bars when i was 13 - downloading a movie doesn't give me that thrill. Fact is, I think the only real stealing going on is what movie houses, rental places etc.. charge for movies. Especially because they're churning out crap lately.
The fact is, this 18% represents where the market needs to be. Fast, easily downloaded, watch-when-i-want movies. I would pay a nominal fee for this. The structure has to change. Going out to the movies is fine for 15 yr olds.. i'm not going there to pay nearly $50 for my wife and I to have popcorn and catch the latest flick.
Instead, i'll sit at home, comfortable (where i can pause the movie to pee or get a drink), watch movies when i want, eat what i want and enjoy high quality sound and picture with the home theatre gear i purchased with all the money i saved not going to the movies.
C'mon movie industry.. catch up. Delivering a service means giving people what they want - the people are telling you in a very obvious way now, you aren't doing that.
Has anyone noticed that all the latest XP updates released by Microsoft are components that make XP compatible with Vista on the same LAN? I've been googling articles about these updates and the majority of them actually kill some backwards compatibility for XP if you perform them. As it is now, I have 7 updates in my microsoft update window that I haven't selected for download because they all have to do with Vista XP interopability that I don't need. I wonder if/when I will have to perform these upgrades and shut the door on some features i use now...
Well.. don't let it bother you too much - these folks aren't the first. People have been living "off grid" for thousands of years, and people have been taking themselves "off-grid" since "the grid" was built.
There are many ways to do this, and whole communities that do this on a fairly freuqent basis in the US and Canada that I know of. Whole households can easily be powered by a small stream with enough drop or "head" to push a small hydroelectric generator. Heck, you can build one of these setups easily with generator from a scrap car and a couple batteries! - the trick is having a creek or stream nearbye that can push your homeade generator. Or wind? do some googling, there are alot of cheap ways to go "off grid".
My brother lived in a cabin for a few years that had only one small solar panel and one car battery. It was enough to power what limited lighting he needed.. and on occasion run a tv when he just had to catch an episode of whatever was popular at the time..
it can be done, it's being done... as with anything in this life, dollars can usually be substituted with hard work.
The solution here is not to completely go off-grid. Solutions like this must be revenue generating or revenue neutral and people adopting this technology must be allowed to sell excess power back, and use the grid when they aren't producing enough. Having massive amounts of batteries and other devices that are harmful to the environment, isn't solving the problem. In effect "the grid" needs to be the batteries for these setups, allowing you to push and pull as needed. I haven't fully made my mind up about hydrogen use.. but our use of it is likely to change some balance in the earth. What will the effects be of all that steam being generated? Rain clouds everywhere? I think a purely solar solution, that's plug and play, sits on your roof and puts energy back into the grid is what will save our society's energy problem. you also get the added effect of absorbing solar energy that would otherwise be heating up our planet. We're solving more than one problem here...
Slashdot Mirror
The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver had a very similar situation (probably more than one). TELUS, the major telco in BC/Alberta is a founding sponsor of the olympics, providing massive amounts of support, arranging charity events and driving the process to get the olympics to BC. In the end though.. a non local company with more $$$ (Bell) took the win with more advertising $$ pledged.
That's ten time more funny if you read it in the voice of Stephen Colbert.
This isn't canada, it's government or the CRTC. It's labour unions and other dumb asses that think they can get some more money.
It's not the light.. it's the BIG BAG OF MUSHROOMS you ate before turning them on.
I count 4 minutes.. but.. yeah that's probably the longest first post delay ever. heh.
Yeah.. i was one of those early thinkers of; "login? create an id? what kinda bs is this?" - so I was late to actually acquire a numbered ID. But.. ask Mr. Malda, I wonder if he still has my BOFH desk name plaque I sent him back in 97, along with a big box of other crap I sent him during an early "send me a box of weird crap contest". Ahh memories.
Thinking back though.. I think CnD was '96-97. OMG. I've been reading this site religiously on a daily basis for 10 years now. Egad.
Oh man.. I've been on slashdot since it was chips-n-dips... and that was my first 'first post' ever! what a waste of my 15 minutes.
ah well.. party at my house - everyones invited!
...I just happen to be sitting midway through an all day brain storming session on service mangement.
I can feel my brain atrophy.
Yoda is here, we're saved!
Perhaps a good comparison is to look at the adoption of DVD over VCD, which is very prominent in markets outside of North America.
It's true.. my wife is from vietnam where they use the standard cheap flourescent lighting everywhere - flickering and all. Her question to me after a few months of staying in America was - why does everyone have those dark dingy lights here?
They were all just the evolution from Doom.. a local computer shop was very quick to get in on the game and had late-night doom playing nights with a good amount of PCs.. it became the popular haven for the computer-inclined in my town (Kelowna BC).. for me at least, doom was where networked, real-time, first person, multiplayer began.
Humans created the problem... and humans shall solve it with a giant solar-radiation blocking shield comprised of small bits of metal. we're saved!
Soon those saturn bastards will envy OUR ring!!
Saying negative things in a reference is not illegal. If someone is asking you for historical performance you must relay the facts, positive or negative. A negative opinion or reference is highly sue-able, but it's not illegal. The fact is, if you lie and say a positive thing when that wasn't the case, you open yourself to more liability.
At my company, giving business references is strictly prohibitied. You can only give "personal references".
I dunno.. i'm a business analyst for a large telco that purchases millions of dollars in Cisco equipment. What does this tell me about Cisco when they are stooping so low as to photoshop an unused "trademark" into the picture as a last ditch effort to secure some lawsuit $$$?
/. and it's users.
This is extremely relevent to
I'm sure this is not the first case of this either.
Simple - one can easily draw up a case for the benefits of distributed downloading for service providers - distribution of traffic is always a good thing, and if it's for this one protocol, rules are easily assembled on how to distribute that traffic to capitalize on the distribution to an even greater extent. One simply needs to assign a dollar amount to the savings or efficiences gained to garner acceptance.
I was actually going to make this into a bumper sticker:
Canada: No Bush - plenty of beaver!
Made all your damn movies.. you think we're going to buy them when you try and sell it back to us?
Geez.. what's your price on good beer, clean water, and softwood lumber these days anyway?
you mean that's not normal?
Funny.. because I'm 29, and this article has me dead on. I'm not impatient like I was when i was a young buck (don't need to have everything NOW!) and I have more important things to spend my money on (like investments, mortgage payments, groceries, etc). My broadband connection is consistently fast and reliable and I have huge hard drives. I setup a number of bittorrent downloads and let them complete when they will. There are always 5-10 on the go, and there's always something new to watch when I have the time to sit down and enjoy a movie. The ones that are corrupt or fake - not a big deal, i delete them and move on to the next 100 downloads.
So.. the thrill of stealing of movie? Not so. I had that thrill stealing chocolate bars when i was 13 - downloading a movie doesn't give me that thrill. Fact is, I think the only real stealing going on is what movie houses, rental places etc.. charge for movies. Especially because they're churning out crap lately.
The fact is, this 18% represents where the market needs to be. Fast, easily downloaded, watch-when-i-want movies. I would pay a nominal fee for this. The structure has to change. Going out to the movies is fine for 15 yr olds.. i'm not going there to pay nearly $50 for my wife and I to have popcorn and catch the latest flick.
Instead, i'll sit at home, comfortable (where i can pause the movie to pee or get a drink), watch movies when i want, eat what i want and enjoy high quality sound and picture with the home theatre gear i purchased with all the money i saved not going to the movies.
C'mon movie industry.. catch up. Delivering a service means giving people what they want - the people are telling you in a very obvious way now, you aren't doing that.
Has anyone noticed that all the latest XP updates released by Microsoft are components that make XP compatible with Vista on the same LAN? I've been googling articles about these updates and the majority of them actually kill some backwards compatibility for XP if you perform them. As it is now, I have 7 updates in my microsoft update window that I haven't selected for download because they all have to do with Vista XP interopability that I don't need. I wonder if/when I will have to perform these upgrades and shut the door on some features i use now...
Well.. don't let it bother you too much - these folks aren't the first. People have been living "off grid" for thousands of years, and people have been taking themselves "off-grid" since "the grid" was built.
There are many ways to do this, and whole communities that do this on a fairly freuqent basis in the US and Canada that I know of. Whole households can easily be powered by a small stream with enough drop or "head" to push a small hydroelectric generator. Heck, you can build one of these setups easily with generator from a scrap car and a couple batteries! - the trick is having a creek or stream nearbye that can push your homeade generator. Or wind? do some googling, there are alot of cheap ways to go "off grid".
My brother lived in a cabin for a few years that had only one small solar panel and one car battery. It was enough to power what limited lighting he needed.. and on occasion run a tv when he just had to catch an episode of whatever was popular at the time..
it can be done, it's being done... as with anything in this life, dollars can usually be substituted with hard work.
The solution here is not to completely go off-grid. Solutions like this must be revenue generating or revenue neutral and people adopting this technology must be allowed to sell excess power back, and use the grid when they aren't producing enough. Having massive amounts of batteries and other devices that are harmful to the environment, isn't solving the problem. In effect "the grid" needs to be the batteries for these setups, allowing you to push and pull as needed. I haven't fully made my mind up about hydrogen use.. but our use of it is likely to change some balance in the earth. What will the effects be of all that steam being generated? Rain clouds everywhere? I think a purely solar solution, that's plug and play, sits on your roof and puts energy back into the grid is what will save our society's energy problem. you also get the added effect of absorbing solar energy that would otherwise be heating up our planet. We're solving more than one problem here...