Like spammers I dont think it will stop. I too am on this list, and while the donotcall.gov legality was being discussed I tried to gather telemarketer info as the site suggested, name of company, phone number, and address (if possible) to see how effective I could be when it became legal. What resulted is telemarketers just hanging up when they realized the direction I was taking and trying again later in the day or the next day. A game of cat and mouse it turned into as I masqueraded my interest and used that to extract the necessary info, still no dice.
One upside is I am glad its now enforceable since if it wasnt, that list could have just become a big telemarketers dream turning from a donotcall list to a here is a free list 50 million potential calls courtesy of the govt.
MontBlanc's are nice for a showy type snob appeal, but as a pen they are no different than others. I have found the ink to not be as fluid as they should be considering their cost.
For most cell phones these days there is a browser and some companies offer unlimited wireless internet figuring one isnt going to surf that much with the cell. Although you can get a USB cable to connect your phone to a computer and many people are doing just that, getting up to 2 channel ISDN speeds. Not great but hey if your paying for it and on the road its wonderful. Now that cell companies have figured out they arent making money on this or mis-projected what the usage would be they are telling customers that exceed 1GB of data a month that they are no longer allowed cell phone internet. When asked why "Excessive usage", when asked what is excessive usage there is usually no answer just some arbitrary number that changes with each rep you talk to.
Lets hope they dont start pulling this business with cable or DSL soon.
At this point buying a low end PC can be as much as $199.99 on a good sale day, with or without an OS. Sometimes you get lucky and Windows XX is on it. The cost of Virtual PC is already close to $199. Unless having a PC is so visually unappealing that you can only have Apple's around.
At any rate I can see it now, he will brave the waters and set a precedence then another garage startup will take the same idea and do it in China or South America take the same idea and produce the same thing at half the price. Then 10 years later you will be able to buy the parts from Fry's, CompUSA, or online and put together your own cars.
Which is more scary to take on Microsoft or Sony? Im sure Sony will immediately seek some remedies if RockStar moves forward on this. Why pay them millions for exclusivity only to be sidestepped on semantics. If I were on a jury I definitely would strike against Rockstar.
Someone's head should roll for that thing. They took a good franchise and ruined it. I wonder what the studios are going to do since that new Tomb Raider movie is coming soon and Im sure the quality of Angel of Darkness will affect the popularity of the movie as well.
Ok everyone is saying the dividend tax is lower. But come'on $10 billion, Uncle Sam has got to be happy about that even at a reduced percentage. I cant even picture 10 billion.
Or have I been under a rock and the double taxation is no longer a IRS advantage?
I used my Sidewinder joystick for Xwing, Tie Fighter, and Freespace. AFter Freespace there werent many compelling flight sim titles left and the Sidewinder has been gathering dust.
Its never even crossed my mind to get a steering wheel. Never thought a desktop steering wheel helped immerse me in the driving world, it always seemed to just be a exercise in frustration.
Bluetooth has been dead since its release. It was touted as all these great things, but got delayed left and right. When it did come out it wasnt all that great and worked 50%. Anyone that has worked with it will agree.
For some reason large comapanies are still selling their popular products with a Bluetooth version even though I have never seen anyone say " I have to go get this Bluetooth (fill in product)."
I hear the same thing from Doctors and Nurses all the time. People these days are educated enough to know not to drink and drive, smoking is bad, and drugs are not good for ones health, yet they see people carried in every night for at least one of these either dead or on the verge of death with no return.
People either dont care or think it just wont happen to them is how I rationalize it.
While the guy can tone down the anger I agree with him. I have the Cube and so far am highly disappointed with lack of online support and games. The only reason I havent given mine away or sold it is that another Star Wars game is slated for release only on GameCube, which is one reason I even have the GameCube, Rogue Squadron. Other than that the thing is a dud.
So he and other Microsoft upper management sells some shares. It doesnt matter, most likely Microsoft the corporation buys it back and over a couple years they will get those shares back from their contracts, bonuses, or whatever golden package those C level execs get.
He's probably just getting a little spending cash rather than accumulating more stock that he doesnt really need if he already has hundreds of millions of shares.
I saw the trailer first and thought Halo2 was the best game at E3. This was before I saw Half Life 2, which shows how Halo 2 is years behind what the developers of HL2 have accomplished.
This reminds me of a friend that started playing Wolfenstein and Doom on keyboard only. When Duke comes out I convince him to give the mouse keyboard combo a try. At first he wasnt familiar with it and thought it awkward. I believe his comment was the same as yours that keyboard only will prevail as the mouse made the character rather uncontrollable.
Well with lawyers you can get them to do anything for some sticks and bottlecaps. Although an R&D team has creativeness and intelligence and you need only 1 to go off and post how they did it on some website or P2P for all to see, because information wants to be free... or at least thats what my R&D buddies that collect paychecks rather than sign them keep telling me.
At this point GM and Ford have become their own version of a Microsoft. Look at all the competitors they own Jaguar, Kia, Ashton Martin, Volvo, Mazda, Mercury, Lincoln, Hummer, Land Rover, Opel, Buick. And they even have joint ventures with Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes. Soon enough one of the two will gobble the other up and the transformation will be complete.
As someone already said they do this with the cars ECU or computer. People can get a scanner to get codes from the more popular cars but there are cars out there that only a dealer can work on. But then we also have modders there are garages that can modify the ECU for better fuel economy, more horsepower, or adjust it for optimal settings for whatever modifications you may have chose to make. Although now I hear many manufacturers have what they call learning ECU's. They sell it to the consumer as a way to get better fuel economy and emissions. But in reality whatever you try to do in terms of reprogramming and modifications get eventually set back to default as the computer learns itself back to its factory settings.
Considering how modders add lights and cases I dont know why they didnt just make the colors of the rainbow. Why blue and green? Add red, yellow, grey, purple, rasberry, tangerine, etc...
The die is the same its just the color of the plastic. Also where are the steady or blinking LEDs on the inside. Has it not been proven that blinking light things attract people like flies to poo? Cell phones, mice, computer cases, fans, Las Vegas...
I remember being asked to shell out $50.00 for the beta kit that supposedly had Revolt. I was going to, but figured the final release would have it and I wouldnt have to deal with lag or whatever might be beta. Well the final release didnt have it. It was one of few games I couldnt put down on the Dreamcast and would love to see a online version whether its Xbox or PS2.
Slashdot Mirror
Like spammers I dont think it will stop.
I too am on this list, and while the donotcall.gov legality was being discussed I tried to gather telemarketer info as the site suggested, name of company, phone number, and address (if possible) to see how effective I could be when it became legal. What resulted is telemarketers just hanging up when they realized the direction I was taking and trying again later in the day or the next day. A game of cat and mouse it turned into as I masqueraded my interest and used that to extract the necessary info, still no dice.
One upside is I am glad its now enforceable since if it wasnt, that list could have just become a big telemarketers dream turning from a donotcall list to a here is a free list 50 million potential calls courtesy of the govt.
MontBlanc's are nice for a showy type snob appeal, but as a pen they are no different than others.
I have found the ink to not be as fluid as they should be considering their cost.
and a Jolly Roger flag is all they need to become their very own Pirates of the Caribbean.
For most cell phones these days there is a browser and some companies offer unlimited wireless internet figuring one isnt going to surf that much with the cell.
Although you can get a USB cable to connect your phone to a computer and many people are doing just that, getting up to 2 channel ISDN speeds. Not great but hey if your paying for it and on the road its wonderful.
Now that cell companies have figured out they arent making money on this or mis-projected what the usage would be they are telling customers that exceed 1GB of data a month that they are no longer allowed cell phone internet. When asked why "Excessive usage", when asked what is excessive usage there is usually no answer just some arbitrary number that changes with each rep you talk to.
Lets hope they dont start pulling this business with cable or DSL soon.
At this point buying a low end PC can be as much as $199.99 on a good sale day, with or without an OS. Sometimes you get lucky and Windows XX is on it.
The cost of Virtual PC is already close to $199. Unless having a PC is so visually unappealing that you can only have Apple's around.
I was actually looking forward to it and was hoping that maybe it would prompt a sequel to Grim Fandango.
Reminds me of Tucker , I think..?
At any rate I can see it now, he will brave the waters and set a precedence then another garage startup will take the same idea and do it in China or South America take the same idea and produce the same thing at half the price. Then 10 years later you will be able to buy the parts from Fry's, CompUSA, or online and put together your own cars.
Which is more scary to take on Microsoft or Sony?
Im sure Sony will immediately seek some remedies if RockStar moves forward on this. Why pay them millions for exclusivity only to be sidestepped on semantics.
If I were on a jury I definitely would strike against Rockstar.
Someone's head should roll for that thing.
They took a good franchise and ruined it. I wonder what the studios are going to do since that new Tomb Raider movie is coming soon and Im sure the quality of Angel of Darkness will affect the popularity of the movie as well.
Ok everyone is saying the dividend tax is lower. But come'on $10 billion, Uncle Sam has got to be happy about that even at a reduced percentage. I cant even picture 10 billion.
Or have I been under a rock and the double taxation is no longer a IRS advantage?
I used my Sidewinder joystick for Xwing, Tie Fighter, and Freespace. AFter Freespace there werent many compelling flight sim titles left and the Sidewinder has been gathering dust.
Its never even crossed my mind to get a steering wheel. Never thought a desktop steering wheel helped immerse me in the driving world, it always seemed to just be a exercise in frustration.
Well MS could always just do what they did with Bungie buy the company and release only on their Xbox.
Bluetooth has been dead since its release. It was touted as all these great things, but got delayed left and right. When it did come out it wasnt all that great and worked 50%.
Anyone that has worked with it will agree.
For some reason large comapanies are still selling their popular products with a Bluetooth version even though I have never seen anyone say " I have to go get this Bluetooth (fill in product)."
I hear the same thing from Doctors and Nurses all the time.
People these days are educated enough to know not to drink and drive, smoking is bad, and drugs are not good for ones health, yet they see people carried in every night for at least one of these either dead or on the verge of death with no return.
People either dont care or think it just wont happen to them is how I rationalize it.
While the guy can tone down the anger I agree with him.
I have the Cube and so far am highly disappointed with lack of online support and games.
The only reason I havent given mine away or sold it is that another Star Wars game is slated for release only on GameCube, which is one reason I even have the GameCube, Rogue Squadron. Other than that the thing is a dud.
Considering how crappy Enter the Matrix was put out by Atari. I will run from anything thats a movie tie in game from Atari.
So he and other Microsoft upper management sells some shares. It doesnt matter, most likely Microsoft the corporation buys it back and over a couple years they will get those shares back from their contracts, bonuses, or whatever golden package those C level execs get.
He's probably just getting a little spending cash rather than accumulating more stock that he doesnt really need if he already has hundreds of millions of shares.
I saw the trailer first and thought Halo2 was the best game at E3.
This was before I saw Half Life 2, which shows how Halo 2 is years behind what the developers of HL2 have accomplished.
This reminds me of a friend that started playing Wolfenstein and Doom on keyboard only.
When Duke comes out I convince him to give the mouse keyboard combo a try. At first he wasnt familiar with it and thought it awkward. I believe his comment was the same as yours that keyboard only will prevail as the mouse made the character rather uncontrollable.
Well with lawyers you can get them to do anything for some sticks and bottlecaps. Although an R&D team has creativeness and intelligence and you need only 1 to go off and post how they did it on some website or P2P for all to see, because information wants to be free... or at least thats what my R&D buddies that collect paychecks rather than sign them keep telling me.
At this point GM and Ford have become their own version of a Microsoft. Look at all the competitors they own Jaguar, Kia, Ashton Martin, Volvo, Mazda, Mercury, Lincoln, Hummer, Land Rover, Opel, Buick. And they even have joint ventures with Toyota, BMW, and Mercedes.
Soon enough one of the two will gobble the other up and the transformation will be complete.
As someone already said they do this with the cars ECU or computer. People can get a scanner to get codes from the more popular cars but there are cars out there that only a dealer can work on.
But then we also have modders there are garages that can modify the ECU for better fuel economy, more horsepower, or adjust it for optimal settings for whatever modifications you may have chose to make.
Although now I hear many manufacturers have what they call learning ECU's. They sell it to the consumer as a way to get better fuel economy and emissions. But in reality whatever you try to do in terms of reprogramming and modifications get eventually set back to default as the computer learns itself back to its factory settings.
Considering how modders add lights and cases I dont know why they didnt just make the colors of the rainbow. Why blue and green? Add red, yellow, grey, purple, rasberry, tangerine, etc...
The die is the same its just the color of the plastic. Also where are the steady or blinking LEDs on the inside.
Has it not been proven that blinking light things attract people like flies to poo? Cell phones, mice, computer cases, fans, Las Vegas...
First game that actually made me kinda scared was the original Resident Evil on PS.
On the PC Half Life did it for me. It was original and fun and load times were great for the time, almost none.
I remember being asked to shell out $50.00 for the beta kit that supposedly had Revolt. I was going to, but figured the final release would have it and I wouldnt have to deal with lag or whatever might be beta.
Well the final release didnt have it.
It was one of few games I couldnt put down on the Dreamcast and would love to see a online version whether its Xbox or PS2.
Anyone know?