If day is light directly from the sun, and night is light from the sun reflected off of Saturn... how can the night possibly be brighter than the day? Light loses intensity as it reflects.
Not possible. There still would be at least the executive board of the company (CEO, CFO, and whoever else might be on the board of directors). They may be unpaid, but they are in effect the responsible entities for the corporation. By definition (both legally and practically) you cannot have a corporation without an executive board.
I don't think you understand, he was saying that if I didn't purchase Fry's warranty plan, then if something went wrong, I would have to personally pay for shipping the unit to Japan instead of just bringing it back to Fry's for a replacement. This was the brazen lie. Nintendo pays for consumer warranty shipping, and the warranty center is in California, not Japan.
And the sales associate at Fry's, while trying to sell me the extended warranty, said that warranty replacements on the Wii take forever and are expensive because you have to pay to ship to Japan.
He was flat-out lying, as warranties for North American Nintendo sales go through a center in California, and Nintendo pays for the shipping. But the Fry's employee (a department manager nonetheless) insisted that the shipping/replacement costs and delays were a reason to purchase their warranty instead.
Never underestimate the sleazy, underhanded attempts that a salesperson will go through to get your money, especially if they work on any kind of commission. As a corollary, the less knowledge and understanding the salesperson has about the product they are pushing, the more likely they are to be underhanded in their push.
The basic Digital Cable package with 1 Teir, (which would get me what I want) is $45/month, plus $7 service fee, and at least $4/month for equipment rental. That's $56 month plus taxes. They don't list the "basic" cost that doesn't include 1 Tier, and they stopped allowing new analog customers about 3 months ago. I've been watching their rate pages.
I don't. I've looked at the channel lineups and pricing structures offered by my cable company (digging waaaay down into the website to find the real listings and prices). I recheck every couple months, and I'm still sticking with OTA. My HD is OTA anyways.
1) Digital. My local cable provider will no longer sell analog to new customers. And three months ago, when they still did, analog was intentionally priced higher to get people to move to digital (so they could sell their VOIP and ISP services as well)
2) In the US it basically comes down to availability. The providers that have digital in your area, want you to move to digital. Those that still sell analog only do because they must.
3) Depends on the individual apartment building. But most I've seen in my area require you to get your own service and don't provide any shared access. They'll have the wiring installed, but nothing turned on.
Good luck getting the City of Los Angeles to slap around Time Warner Cable.... they didn't even care when TW bought up all the competition in the area.
The basic Digital Cable package with 1 Teir, (which would get me what I want) is $45/month, plus $7 service fee, and at least $4/month for equipment rental. That's $56 month plus taxes. They don't list the "basic" cost that doesn't include 1 Tier, and they stopped allowing new analog customers about 3 months ago. I've been watching their rate pages.
Yes, they'll make more... from the standpoint of lowering prices can induce more purchasing.
Take my situation for example:
I can spend $40/month for basic cable, which only gets me my already free over-the-air channels, 10 local public access channels, and 2 or 3 nation-wide basic cable channels (like WGN, CSPAN, and TNT).
I don't watch any of those additional channels, so what's the point?
In order to get the 3 or 4 extra channels I do want (Cartoon Network, Disney, Food, SciFi) I need to buy a $60/month package that gets me an extra 15-20 channels that I don't care for, simply because of how the pricing tiers are structured.
I would be more than willing to buy those 3-4 channels ala carte. I would pay $10/month for those channels as they are things I want to watch that I cannot get over the air. I am not going to pay $60/month (plus fees) to get those channels.
So, the cable company would get another customer, and make more money, by simply offering ala carte programming. I doubt I am the only person in a similar situation.
Alternatives? Satellite, but as a renter, I'm limited in what I can attach to the building, or buying programs individually on iTunes. Other than that, I don't have any legal options, so I just go without.
The same logic is used for music sales. Price an album at $16 and 10 people buy it, garnering you $160 in sales. Make the songs individually available for $1 and 200 people buy individual songs, garnering $200 in sales, simply by putting things in a different pricing scheme. Similarly, it's been noticed that people are more willing to spend $25/month on individual songs, than to spend $40 every 2 months on full albumns.
Is this preference for OSS or Microsoft a true reflection of differing political philosophies? And, more importantly, will Linux win the next election?
No and No.
If you honestly believe that a candidate's webserver reflects their political leanings, you're sadly delusional.
If you're planning your vote based on the candidates choice of webserver OS, then you're really missing the bigger issues.
There is not a single thing done on any of the candidate sites that are platform specific. And I doubt any of them developed their sites "in-house" (within the campaign staff). I would bet that every single one of them found a developer and/or hosting company to design and build their site. And they probably went with whatever that developer/hosting provider recommended for a hosting plan.
While looking at the differences makes for an interesting exercise in alleviating boredom, it says nothing about the overall race or candidate's positions and abilities.
And I say this as a web developer who works on both Windows and *NIX servers and usually recommends Apache on Linux or FreeBSD.
If they are collecting money for bands that aren't even affiliated with them, then they aren't giving these bands any money either, so basically they are just taking money
a) The bands are "affiliated" with them because the government chose SoundExchange as the arbiter of the royalties. Complain to the CRB if you don't like that.
b) The bands are free to secure their royalties from SoundExchange at any point. The CRB website has links to the necessary forms, IIRC.
Actually, I just spoke with my bandmate, an IP lawyer, who also happens to be the producer. We are frequently played on both Live365 and Yahoo's Launch. We've been in the top 30 for our genre multiple times, and apparently we regularly have had over 30,000 'plays' in a month. He has this information because he has contacts in Yahoo Launch and Live365.
Here's the kicker. Even though we're registered will all the appropriate trade organizations as both the music group, the production entity, and the record label, we haven't seen a cent from SoundExchange (even under the old rate structure). In fact, after calling them several times, SoundExchange doesn't even know we exist. So what are they doing with the data that Yahoo Launch and Live365 are giving them? Obviously with the number of plays we're having, we aren't just slipping under the radar.
We aren't RIAA members, but SoundExchange is collecting royalties on our 'behalf' and then disavows any knowledge of us. Pile on top the huge increase in 'administrative fees' and royalty rates, and it sounds very suspiciously like an abuse of their position.
My bandmate is pretty ambivalent at this point, especially considering we've never seen any kind of royalties from internet radio play. Even previous to the changes in the royalty rates, there should have been some kind of payment. All our earnings have been from CD and MP3 sales. Personally, I'm of the opinion that internet radio should be treated the same as terrestrial broadcast radio, meaning that it's treated as promotional. But then again, the band isn't of a for-profit nature.
It's a tough fence to straddle. Independent artists currently get little to no compensation for radio play (internet or otherwise) except for 'free' promotion. On the other hand, independent internet radio broadcasters will be screwed by the new royalty rates. Even the 'big guys' are barely profitable in this new industry, and terrestrial radio only slightly more.
3. "m8", "2moz" and other such l33t use of digits. Here's a thought for those smackards: not everyone is a native English speaker, so their reflex reading of a digit will be in their mother tongue, not in English. So is it "macht"? (8 = Acht in German. "Macht" = power, or the Force.) Mocho? Mhuit? Or what? You're forcing someone to effectively translate it back and forth, piece by piece, just to discover what it means.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments, I know a couple of English-speaking IRC chats where I frequently see people type "n8" when they log off. Nacht. So maybe it encourages multiculturalism.
ATT&T/Cingular doesn't charge flat or per-useage data rates like the other carriers do. AT&T/Cingular instead charges you for a data plan that is based on your phone. In other words, the data plan for X model of Blackberry is different than the data plan for Y model of Treo. I assume this is because they're basically charging for the different services that different devices support. Me, I like Sprint's method better. $15 flat rate for unlimited data usage, more if you want additional "Vision" services like TV, online games, but still fixed tiers. If your phone doesn't support a specific service, don't order that service level.
That's because instead of using the built-in Windows font smoothing (eg. ClearType) they decided to implement some bastardized version of the OSX font smoothing. The font smoothing on OSX is very nice, but Safari on Windows looks like crap! I would much prefer to use the built in font smoothing on Windows (like Firefox does).
I don't think that IE has much to fear from this. I think the project most in trouble by Safari on Windows is Firefox.
Firefox is already very easy to get and setup. And most people who have switched from IE have decided to go with FF.
I'm one of those people who think FF is getting bloated. Just look at the preferences panels... they used to be simple and clean, even nicer than what Safari currently has, but with each version, they've been getting more and more like the kludgey ones in IE and Mozilla (pre seamonkey).
And if Safari starts getting bundled with iTunes, then watch the install base soar, and the Firefox user market shrink.
I'd call the low end $500-$1000. Apple's not even in that market.
Lets see... the Mac Mini is $599 or $799 (without custom-build upgrades).
Compare what you get in that to the $599 or $799 Dell, HP, etc. I think you'll be very surprised with what Apple is able to provide at that price point, especially when you factor in the tiny form factor the machine has.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, $2000 should just about cover one night's tab at The Standard...
If day is light directly from the sun, and night is light from the sun reflected off of Saturn... how can the night possibly be brighter than the day? Light loses intensity as it reflects.
Hmm.... Flash on OSX works consistently, even on 64bit hardware... same with Flash on WinXP 64bit...
Flash on 64bit hardware running Linux or FreeBSD would be something else entirely.
Not possible. There still would be at least the executive board of the company (CEO, CFO, and whoever else might be on the board of directors). They may be unpaid, but they are in effect the responsible entities for the corporation. By definition (both legally and practically) you cannot have a corporation without an executive board.
At a font size of 40pt, you'll be lucky to get a single English sentence on a sheet of paper. ;)
Bizarrely enough, your comment works equally well in the previous story regarding Verizon and the FCC radio spectrum auction.
I don't think you understand, he was saying that if I didn't purchase Fry's warranty plan, then if something went wrong, I would have to personally pay for shipping the unit to Japan instead of just bringing it back to Fry's for a replacement. This was the brazen lie. Nintendo pays for consumer warranty shipping, and the warranty center is in California, not Japan.
I didn't know at the time while he was trying to sell it to me. I didn't want it regardless.
And the sales associate at Fry's, while trying to sell me the extended warranty, said that warranty replacements on the Wii take forever and are expensive because you have to pay to ship to Japan.
He was flat-out lying, as warranties for North American Nintendo sales go through a center in California, and Nintendo pays for the shipping. But the Fry's employee (a department manager nonetheless) insisted that the shipping/replacement costs and delays were a reason to purchase their warranty instead.
Never underestimate the sleazy, underhanded attempts that a salesperson will go through to get your money, especially if they work on any kind of commission. As a corollary, the less knowledge and understanding the salesperson has about the product they are pushing, the more likely they are to be underhanded in their push.
Don't believe me?
Here is the closest thing I can find on Time Warner's website for my area:
Time Warner pricing for Culver City
The basic Digital Cable package with 1 Teir, (which would get me what I want) is $45/month, plus $7 service fee, and at least $4/month for equipment rental. That's $56 month plus taxes. They don't list the "basic" cost that doesn't include 1 Tier, and they stopped allowing new analog customers about 3 months ago. I've been watching their rate pages.
And here's their channel lineup
I don't. I've looked at the channel lineups and pricing structures offered by my cable company (digging waaaay down into the website to find the real listings and prices). I recheck every couple months, and I'm still sticking with OTA. My HD is OTA anyways.
Time Warner pricing for Culver City
Answers:
1) Digital. My local cable provider will no longer sell analog to new customers. And three months ago, when they still did, analog was intentionally priced higher to get people to move to digital (so they could sell their VOIP and ISP services as well)
2) In the US it basically comes down to availability. The providers that have digital in your area, want you to move to digital. Those that still sell analog only do because they must.
3) Depends on the individual apartment building. But most I've seen in my area require you to get your own service and don't provide any shared access. They'll have the wiring installed, but nothing turned on.
Good luck getting the City of Los Angeles to slap around Time Warner Cable.... they didn't even care when TW bought up all the competition in the area.
Here is the closest thing I can find on Time Warner's website for my area:
Time Warner pricing for Culver City
The basic Digital Cable package with 1 Teir, (which would get me what I want) is $45/month, plus $7 service fee, and at least $4/month for equipment rental. That's $56 month plus taxes. They don't list the "basic" cost that doesn't include 1 Tier, and they stopped allowing new analog customers about 3 months ago. I've been watching their rate pages.
Yes, they'll make more... from the standpoint of lowering prices can induce more purchasing.
Take my situation for example:
I can spend $40/month for basic cable, which only gets me my already free over-the-air channels, 10 local public access channels, and 2 or 3 nation-wide basic cable channels (like WGN, CSPAN, and TNT).
I don't watch any of those additional channels, so what's the point?
In order to get the 3 or 4 extra channels I do want (Cartoon Network, Disney, Food, SciFi) I need to buy a $60/month package that gets me an extra 15-20 channels that I don't care for, simply because of how the pricing tiers are structured.
I would be more than willing to buy those 3-4 channels ala carte. I would pay $10/month for those channels as they are things I want to watch that I cannot get over the air. I am not going to pay $60/month (plus fees) to get those channels.
So, the cable company would get another customer, and make more money, by simply offering ala carte programming. I doubt I am the only person in a similar situation.
Alternatives? Satellite, but as a renter, I'm limited in what I can attach to the building, or buying programs individually on iTunes. Other than that, I don't have any legal options, so I just go without.
The same logic is used for music sales. Price an album at $16 and 10 people buy it, garnering you $160 in sales. Make the songs individually available for $1 and 200 people buy individual songs, garnering $200 in sales, simply by putting things in a different pricing scheme. Similarly, it's been noticed that people are more willing to spend $25/month on individual songs, than to spend $40 every 2 months on full albumns.
Damn you! Do you realize how many times that has shown up in my inbox! It's your fault!
No and No.
If you honestly believe that a candidate's webserver reflects their political leanings, you're sadly delusional.
If you're planning your vote based on the candidates choice of webserver OS, then you're really missing the bigger issues.
There is not a single thing done on any of the candidate sites that are platform specific. And I doubt any of them developed their sites "in-house" (within the campaign staff). I would bet that every single one of them found a developer and/or hosting company to design and build their site. And they probably went with whatever that developer/hosting provider recommended for a hosting plan.
While looking at the differences makes for an interesting exercise in alleviating boredom, it says nothing about the overall race or candidate's positions and abilities.
And I say this as a web developer who works on both Windows and *NIX servers and usually recommends Apache on Linux or FreeBSD.
Actually, I just spoke with my bandmate, an IP lawyer, who also happens to be the producer. We are frequently played on both Live365 and Yahoo's Launch. We've been in the top 30 for our genre multiple times, and apparently we regularly have had over 30,000 'plays' in a month. He has this information because he has contacts in Yahoo Launch and Live365.
Here's the kicker. Even though we're registered will all the appropriate trade organizations as both the music group, the production entity, and the record label, we haven't seen a cent from SoundExchange (even under the old rate structure). In fact, after calling them several times, SoundExchange doesn't even know we exist. So what are they doing with the data that Yahoo Launch and Live365 are giving them? Obviously with the number of plays we're having, we aren't just slipping under the radar.
We aren't RIAA members, but SoundExchange is collecting royalties on our 'behalf' and then disavows any knowledge of us. Pile on top the huge increase in 'administrative fees' and royalty rates, and it sounds very suspiciously like an abuse of their position.
My bandmate is pretty ambivalent at this point, especially considering we've never seen any kind of royalties from internet radio play. Even previous to the changes in the royalty rates, there should have been some kind of payment. All our earnings have been from CD and MP3 sales. Personally, I'm of the opinion that internet radio should be treated the same as terrestrial broadcast radio, meaning that it's treated as promotional. But then again, the band isn't of a for-profit nature.
It's a tough fence to straddle. Independent artists currently get little to no compensation for radio play (internet or otherwise) except for 'free' promotion. On the other hand, independent internet radio broadcasters will be screwed by the new royalty rates. Even the 'big guys' are barely profitable in this new industry, and terrestrial radio only slightly more.
While I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiments, I know a couple of English-speaking IRC chats where I frequently see people type "n8" when they log off. Nacht. So maybe it encourages multiculturalism.
ATT&T/Cingular doesn't charge flat or per-useage data rates like the other carriers do. AT&T/Cingular instead charges you for a data plan that is based on your phone. In other words, the data plan for X model of Blackberry is different than the data plan for Y model of Treo. I assume this is because they're basically charging for the different services that different devices support. Me, I like Sprint's method better. $15 flat rate for unlimited data usage, more if you want additional "Vision" services like TV, online games, but still fixed tiers. If your phone doesn't support a specific service, don't order that service level.
And isn't that precisely the same thing Microsoft got nailed for?
Yes, but Microsoft got in trouble for abusing its monopoly position to create a monopoly in other markets.
Apple, as prevalent as iTunes is, does not have a monopoly on music sales.
That's because instead of using the built-in Windows font smoothing (eg. ClearType) they decided to implement some bastardized version of the OSX font smoothing. The font smoothing on OSX is very nice, but Safari on Windows looks like crap! I would much prefer to use the built in font smoothing on Windows (like Firefox does).
I don't think that IE has much to fear from this. I think the project most in trouble by Safari on Windows is Firefox.
Firefox is already very easy to get and setup. And most people who have switched from IE have decided to go with FF.
I'm one of those people who think FF is getting bloated. Just look at the preferences panels... they used to be simple and clean, even nicer than what Safari currently has, but with each version, they've been getting more and more like the kludgey ones in IE and Mozilla (pre seamonkey).
And if Safari starts getting bundled with iTunes, then watch the install base soar, and the Firefox user market shrink.
Lets see... the Mac Mini is $599 or $799 (without custom-build upgrades).
Compare what you get in that to the $599 or $799 Dell, HP, etc. I think you'll be very surprised with what Apple is able to provide at that price point, especially when you factor in the tiny form factor the machine has.
Actually, it's much worse. I just had my wisdom teeth removed 2 weeks ago. 25 minutes under general anesthesia and they were out and gone.
It takes a lot more time and a lot more pain, swearing, and cursing to remove a Norton product...