Having worked as a Dell Level 1 tech back in the glory days (i.e. before overseas outsourcing), I have to say that I understand why they require these guys to go through the dumb questions. The VAST MAJORITY of the calls that come into tech support are really really stupid and I would say 75% or more of them are fixed by the time they make it through the standard checklist.
Surely the typical/. reader isn't going to call in unless they have already tried all that stuff, and I understand how frustrating it is to those who actually know something about computers, but believe me the tech's on the other end are not justified in assuming that incoming callers are competent users.
Insider Hint: the best way for the tech-savvy to get support is to use the online request service option. Avoid the phones like the plague. When you make an online request, take a few sentences to let the tech on the other end know that you have done all the obvious stuff. Since I know what they are looking for, I almost always get a "your part/tech is on the way" response within an hour.
Humorously, if you scroll outside of the U.S. in map mode, you just get ocean and then back to the U.S. again. It's as if Americans had just obliterated all the other countries...
I recently went through this issue myself and ended up settling on the Nikon N65. My reasons were somewhat arbitrary, but I have been happy.
I preferred it over similar Canon models becuase it has the ring that holds the lens is made of metal instead of plastic and it just feels sturdier. Also Nikon tends to make slightly better lenses than Canon.
I preferred it over the N55 becuase it has a depth-of-field preview button, which I come to deeply appreciate.
But mostly I picked it becuase it was around $100 (without any lenses) and I read lots of good reviews.
"This is a testament to the power of free software: this sort of innovation could never happen if it weren't for the free software nature of the underlying systems."
... or not. As I recall, BeOS had a fully functional database driven file systerm although it did not entirely through out the hierarchical side of things either (probably a good decision in my opinion). In fact, I recall reading a while back that future versions of Windows were supposed to have database driven file systems as well.
While free software is great, let's not get too cocky about what kind of innovations it can produce when we aren't aware of what the traditional software companies have already done.
Yes, because they have to balance their need for market share with their need for making money on every person who tries (and possibly abuses) the demo version. A company who tries too hard to make sure that nobody can get a free ride, is also one that makes sure that many people don't ride in the first place. Its a calculated risk. They are a small company competing with a rather nasty large company and at this point in the game they should consider it their most important task to get as many people trying out their software as possible. Winzip is still in buisness after all these years because they provide a well known, must-have ultility (at least until MS included unzipping natively in the OS) that people payed for even though they could have just kept on clicking through the nag screen. Other companies have done a better job at limiting their demo versions and getting around the limits is just not worth the hassle for most users especially if they have come to love the program and feel like it is worth the price.
There does not appear to be a demo version available on their website. At one level I understand that there are issues with demos that are difficult to get around. (I used WinZip and Paint Shop Pro for YEARS without registering them) But if they really want to make a dent in the Microsoft Office Monopoly they are going to have to earn the trust of the techs. There is simply no way that I will recommend to my boss that we switch away from the most popular piece of software ever without being able to play with it for at least a month. How am I going to justify buying another TOTALLY EXTRANEOUS office suite, just to test it out? Something for the Gobe guys, or any other MS competitor to ponder...
"But live animals generate biological waste, and slaughter on a spaceship would be a complicated affair. By growing just edible muscle, Benjaminson's breakthrough eliminates those steps altogether."
I can see no reason why these living cells should cease to produce waste products. While we can certainly see an awful lot of correlation between human brains and waste products, the nervous system is not an organism's major source of biological waste.
The creation of biological waste products is just a fact of life. It happens in the simplest cells and it would certainly happen in these living, eating, growing tissues.
Without a circulatory system, how are these waste products going to be taken out of the "meat"?
Just a point of clarification. Obviously bnetd is not copyright violation since it is reverse engineered. But this isn't why they are getting shut down...
The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which illegally modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software or bypasses anti-circumvention technology
The reason Blizzard is panicked about bnetd is that it bypasses their "anti-circumvention technology". In other words, Blizzard will claim that the BattleNet servers are their method of ensuring that people don't illegally copy their games. It is the only time that they check to make sure that you aren't using somebody else's licence. At least in the past, Blizzard game installations have not checked with centralized servers to make sure you don't install on multiple machines. The only thing that you couldn't do if you installed on multiple machines with the same licence was play on BattleNet. Now that has been taken away from them and there is nothing that a copied version of a Blizzard game lacks.
It seems like there are few solutions to this (other than legal ones which are costly and only piss people off):
Blizzard could take a Microsoft approach and check a centralized database when you install the game to make sure that licence wasn't installed on somebody else's computer. In other words, they could come up with another method of anti-circumvention technology
The bnetd guys could try to cooperate with them. They could somehow check with BattleNet to make sure that multiple users aren't using the same licence even if they are on a bnetd server. (I think CounterStrike does something like this since I tried to get it to work with a cracked version of Half-Life and it yelled at me saying I had a bad registration code.)
The bnetd guys could build a set of features not offered at all in the regular BattleNet servers. This seems like the most important thing for them to do since if the only difference between their version and the official one is that it allows users to play without legit codes, Blizzard could definitely peg them as "circumvention technology". They may already offer a better feature set, I've never used it. I'm just saying that this will be their strongest point.
Anyways, I hate to see big companies picking on fan-made tools, but I guess I understand why Blizzard feels threatened. I hope they can come to a mutually satisfying agreement that will let us all have more fun with Blizzard games but still lets Blizzard make money since they work long and hard to make quality games (far better games than any free-software group has ever made IMHO).
Perhaps the X-Box will become an all purpose standard for gaming hardware (much like in the early days of sound cards when the Soundblaster was the standard and all other brands attempted compatibility with it).
If all new video cards had "X-Box compatibility", wouldn't it make game development a little easier? New features could always be added, but the X-Box could define a base set of features that developers could depend on. In effect this could maintain the benefits of console development (fixed hardware) while allowing competitive products to keep the market price down (of course, Microsoft is the only one with enough monopoly power to actually sell below cost) and allow new features to be added if necessary.
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Having worked as a Dell Level 1 tech back in the glory days (i.e. before overseas outsourcing), I have to say that I understand why they require these guys to go through the dumb questions. The VAST MAJORITY of the calls that come into tech support are really really stupid and I would say 75% or more of them are fixed by the time they make it through the standard checklist.
Surely the typical /. reader isn't going to call in unless they have already tried all that stuff, and I understand how frustrating it is to those who actually know something about computers, but believe me the tech's on the other end are not justified in assuming that incoming callers are competent users.
Insider Hint: the best way for the tech-savvy to get support is to use the online request service option. Avoid the phones like the plague. When you make an online request, take a few sentences to let the tech on the other end know that you have done all the obvious stuff. Since I know what they are looking for, I almost always get a "your part/tech is on the way" response within an hour.
Although the map portion of maps.google is still only for the U.S., the satelite mode has the whole globe, but only at a large scale.
Here is England, for instance
Humorously, if you scroll outside of the U.S. in map mode, you just get ocean and then back to the U.S. again. It's as if Americans had just obliterated all the other countries...
I recently went through this issue myself and ended up settling on the Nikon N65. My reasons were somewhat arbitrary, but I have been happy.
I preferred it over similar Canon models becuase it has the ring that holds the lens is made of metal instead of plastic and it just feels sturdier. Also Nikon tends to make slightly better lenses than Canon.
I preferred it over the N55 becuase it has a depth-of-field preview button, which I come to deeply appreciate.
But mostly I picked it becuase it was around $100 (without any lenses) and I read lots of good reviews.
Hope that helps!
"This is a testament to the power of free software: this sort of innovation could never happen if it weren't for the free software nature of the underlying systems."
... or not. As I recall, BeOS had a fully functional database driven file systerm although it did not entirely through out the hierarchical side of things either (probably a good decision in my opinion). In fact, I recall reading a while back that future versions of Windows were supposed to have database driven file systems as well.
While free software is great, let's not get too cocky about what kind of innovations it can produce when we aren't aware of what the traditional software companies have already done.
Yes, because they have to balance their need for market share with their need for making money on every person who tries (and possibly abuses) the demo version. A company who tries too hard to make sure that nobody can get a free ride, is also one that makes sure that many people don't ride in the first place. Its a calculated risk. They are a small company competing with a rather nasty large company and at this point in the game they should consider it their most important task to get as many people trying out their software as possible. Winzip is still in buisness after all these years because they provide a well known, must-have ultility (at least until MS included unzipping natively in the OS) that people payed for even though they could have just kept on clicking through the nag screen. Other companies have done a better job at limiting their demo versions and getting around the limits is just not worth the hassle for most users especially if they have come to love the program and feel like it is worth the price.
There does not appear to be a demo version available on their website. At one level I understand that there are issues with demos that are difficult to get around. (I used WinZip and Paint Shop Pro for YEARS without registering them) But if they really want to make a dent in the Microsoft Office Monopoly they are going to have to earn the trust of the techs. There is simply no way that I will recommend to my boss that we switch away from the most popular piece of software ever without being able to play with it for at least a month. How am I going to justify buying another TOTALLY EXTRANEOUS office suite, just to test it out? Something for the Gobe guys, or any other MS competitor to ponder...
In general a pretty good program, but a little crude when compared to MS Office. We will see if it can hold up to the onslaught.
"But live animals generate biological waste, and slaughter on a spaceship would be a complicated affair. By growing just edible muscle, Benjaminson's breakthrough eliminates those steps altogether."
I can see no reason why these living cells should cease to produce waste products. While we can certainly see an awful lot of correlation between human brains and waste products, the nervous system is not an organism's major source of biological waste.
The creation of biological waste products is just a fact of life. It happens in the simplest cells and it would certainly happen in these living, eating, growing tissues.
Without a circulatory system, how are these waste products going to be taken out of the "meat"?
Just a point of clarification. Obviously bnetd is not copyright violation since it is reverse engineered. But this isn't why they are getting shut down...
The aforementioned site either hosts or distributes software which illegally
modifies and/or alters Blizzard Entertainment copyrighted software or
bypasses anti-circumvention technology
The reason Blizzard is panicked about bnetd is that it bypasses their "anti-circumvention technology". In other words, Blizzard will claim that the BattleNet servers are their method of ensuring that people don't illegally copy their games. It is the only time that they check to make sure that you aren't using somebody else's licence. At least in the past, Blizzard game installations have not checked with centralized servers to make sure you don't install on multiple machines. The only thing that you couldn't do if you installed on multiple machines with the same licence was play on BattleNet. Now that has been taken away from them and there is nothing that a copied version of a Blizzard game lacks.
It seems like there are few solutions to this (other than legal ones which are costly and only piss people off):
Anyways, I hate to see big companies picking on fan-made tools, but I guess I understand why Blizzard feels threatened. I hope they can come to a mutually satisfying agreement that will let us all have more fun with Blizzard games but still lets Blizzard make money since they work long and hard to make quality games (far better games than any free-software group has ever made IMHO).
Perhaps the X-Box will become an all purpose standard for gaming hardware (much like in the early days of sound cards when the Soundblaster was the standard and all other brands attempted compatibility with it).
If all new video cards had "X-Box compatibility", wouldn't it make game development a little easier? New features could always be added, but the X-Box could define a base set of features that developers could depend on. In effect this could maintain the benefits of console development (fixed hardware) while allowing competitive products to keep the market price down (of course, Microsoft is the only one with enough monopoly power to actually sell below cost) and allow new features to be added if necessary.