>Now Bell offers sattellite based internet access but the service is so bad that it's an insult that they're even offering it...
You should check out their new pricing then. It'll make you puke and gouge your eyeballs out at the same time! Let's assume your ISP costs $20 a month (because you pay for that on top of these fees).
- $22.50 per gigabyte (5x more expensive than getting an 80 GB HDD shipped to you with the info you want). After 4 GB the price is a comfortable $100 per gigabyte (26x more than the HDD).
Let's put that into terms that are more shocking: Every email with a picture attached to it will cost you the price of a postage stamp.
- or, $50 per month for limited "unlimited" access limited by their their FAP, 10 connections, and 60 hours (wow, if that's unlimited I can sell you an unlimited ticket to Canada's wonderland really cheap...)
I'm not making this pricing up people! Check it for yourself if you think $100/GB is extreme: http://www.expressvu.ca/en/serviceplans.html
I'd like to counter that. I'm living within minutes of Kitchener Waterloo (Ontario) in a semi-rural area and can't even get 56k conexant (or whatever the flavour of the week is... it was once switched 56).
Problem is Bell didn't think ahead when it came to phone wiring. Most city folk get DSL because they are close the exchange. A lot of city folk in KW (last time I checked -- Jan. 2001) still can't get DSL because their lines are too long (like me). Basically it seems to me Bell is only going to provide DSL if you are close to the exchange. Past that you can get lost.:-)
A lot of rural people are lucky because they are within a few Ks of the exchange. There's been quite a few of us in my area been bugging Bell to put a remote DSLAM in for us few hundred residents who were wired 15 km from the exchange. It won't ever happen. I'm certain of that now.
Why? I bought all the [expensive!] equipment for satellite internet last month and always, whenever I want high speed, something screws me over. It's been over a month and no peeps from Bell. So I'll say that I won (finally!). But it is a Pyrrhic victory -- I have to pay $55 US + Dial up fees each month for the privelege.
>I recall hearing that Canada will have high-speed access avaliable to everyone by 2004.
Bell told me that we'd see everyone wired at the end of this year, and that at the end of last year 90% of Ontario was supposed to be wired.
Are there only about 240 towns and cities between Ontario and Quebec? Because that's all there could possibly be if I was to believe Bell. But, of course, I don't. They can't even keep my phone line clear of noise, never mind keep their ads free of it.
>Around here things have always seemed to be ahead of thier times as far as technology goes (from a rural standpoint).
You must be living very close to Bell and the Cable Co. then. Fortunately Canada's cable companies got on the bandwagon quickly -- and helped Canada become the high-speed to the desktop nation it is. I don't think I'd say that about Bell, unless you consider the high speed fiber only huge corporations and universities can touch counts...:-)
Now, please note, this only applies to Ontario and Quebec. If you live outside of there you don't have Bell (I'm told) so perhaps this is why you have a better experience to report?
Re:This can't be for real
on
Duct Tape
·
· Score: 1
You might be right, but I recalled that little tidbit from an older biography of Albert Einstein I once read. Perhaps it was wrong, or my memory is faulty. Sorry.
Re:This can't be for real
on
Duct Tape
·
· Score: 1
I tried French once. I didn't like it (or did it not like me?).
I wrote the previous-previous comment, so I can be certain that English is my mother tongue. I figured some relentless moderator would mod me offtopic for fixing that mistake in my post. Guess it never did happen.
[Note to slashdot: How about a -1 score button for little things like that?]
But hey, thanks for the support (I think! 8-)
Re:This can't be for real
on
Duct Tape
·
· Score: 1
Albert Eistein failed math in greade school as well. This is the truth, feel free to check for verification online.
Keep that in mind when next time you dismiss someone as unintelligent because they can't pass a state written test.
I see a lot of miguided posts here suggesting that downloading music from napster is stealing.
Check your dictionary. It isn't stealing unless you take property from someone and therefore deny them access to it. Copying clearly does not stop the original user/purchaser from using their paid for music.
Using napster for copyrighted materials is copyright violation. Nothing more, nothing less.
Phones need carry only 300-3000 Hz. No more, no less. That's why there is no such thing as a 28,800 baud telephone-line modem. [Please flame me for that! I do have my flame retardant suit on!]
Here's a great little bit of info for you (more than you ever wanted to know about phones):
http://www.egyed.com/phonework.html
Now you can get your friends to marvel at your useless knowledge when you tell them to push octothorpe!
The difference between digital cameras, mp3, and minidisk are that digital cameras and mp3 aren't SDMI protected.
I can attempt to improve my poor digital camera image without signing NDAs. I can build my own mp3 player without paying Sony.
Try doing either of these with Minidisk.
Until Minidisk is a commodity (which it never will be as a proprietary product) it will never get better. It is WYSIWYG. Now, digital cameras and MP3 being non-proprietary, I see totally new stuff cropping up all the time. Not just new models, but totally new ideas. Like the replacement 35 mm film digital camera, where the digital camera is the film. Or the empeg/rio 60 Gig car MP3 player.
When was the last time someone came up with a totally new idea for using Minidisk that wasn't shot down as fast as a computer Minidisk player was (Did they ever make that again?)
But hey, feel free to enjoy your copy once, play wherever Sony wants you to player. I know I prefer my unlimited MP3 player. Even if it doesn't sound perfect -- I know that if I want that it's just a SoundBlaster Live/w Digital Out away.
One of my rules on slashdot is to surf at -1. Yeah, I hate those goatse.cx ASCII arts too, but without them I couldn't have a one letter title. Or, then again, without them I could. Ahh, such a tangled web we weave.
"a disk roughly the size of a handheld computer or PDA"
You know what else is rougly the size of a handheld computer and has more space? A hard drive.
You know what is roughly the size of a PDA and has more space? A laptop hard drive.
You know what costs the most, is proprietary, is not consumer tested, and comes from a company with a history of low quality drives? The new iomega drive.
Expensive, multisystem NTSC VCRs can also play PAL tapes (it works both ways!:-). Here's an example.
The difference between VCR and DVD machines is not just the intent of "region coding", but also the legality of defeating it. I can't find a region-free DVD player in any normal shop in Canada. I, however, can walk into Future Shop (think Circuit City, Best Buy) tomorrow and buy an NTSC and PAL compatible VCR (I wonder if it can play SECAM tapes?).
AT&T themselves doesn't even charge that. They'll give you 400 cell minutes for $40. That's just $0.10 a minute.
And here I was thinking of using Ricochet if it ever came here (fat chance), but if I have to pay $1,800 a month for the standard 120 hrs. most people 'round here use, well sir, no thanks.:-) I'd rather just build my own guerilla wireless network. It'd be cheaper.
"The fee to use all of the capabilities is 25 cents per minute, with a four-minute minimum. The unit accepts credit cards or cash - $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills - for payment."
Lesse, $15 an hour? I only want to rent it, not buy it. A mortgage on a house doesn't cost that much!
Somehow I think I'll just stick to using my RIM Pager for websurfing away from home.
My personal favourite, which happens ALL the time. I mean almost everyday for me (well, not that often, but this really isn't contrived at all):
You're on the highway. You have 4 seconds (more than enough) distance between you and the car infront. The 18 wheeler behind you leaves 1/2 second distance between you and him. A car uses your 4 seconds to cut in front of you. A tanker truck decides to follow you in your only "escape" lane. As with many highways, there's no shoulder, just concrete barriers. Now you have two choices: Slow down and have the 18 wheeler demolish your car, or continue with almost no stopping distance for the next mile decellerating by 1 or maybe 2 mph/h (that truck ain't gonna slow much more).
What do you choose? Conciously cause a collision between yourself and the truck (which, if you know it will happen, and cause it to happen, IS your fault, at least morally, and probably legally if you manage to hurt the truck driver or your passengers); or risk a lesser accident with the car infront (again, your fault)?
Read this thourogly and take the cop to court. That's what I would do. But I'm not a lawyer, so YMMV. Oh, and that is Canadian, but I wouldn't be surprised if much of that is still good advice in the US (just apply your local laws instead of the Canadian ones). Although I wouldn't trust Canadian technicalities being valid in the US.
>The second is clearly a trademark and copyright violation, so why isn't the first?
To violate copyright you must copy something, that's why. In the same manner, to violate trademark law you must use the company trademark, which, in this case, is Ford, on a product similar to something they have the trademark registered for. That's why I seem to recall there being more than one company called Acme, although I bet they all have that name trademarked for the purposes of what they are selling.
I don't think you can't just say "I sell everything" unless you do. I may be wrong, but I think you can lose your trademark if you don't actively defend it, or actively make product under its name.
Does Ford sell Unlawful Carnal Knowledge? If not, I'm not so sure they deserve to win this case, but IANAL, so who knows?:-D (IANAL, get it? Oh boy, it's been way too long a night for that...)
Maybe you might not consider them such, but most do. An objet d'Art is what you like. A grose monstrosity is what you don't.
Like it or lump it, NFB & Telefilm shows don't even make good filler for the "We're having technical difficulty" signs because most people would rather watch nothing than a crudely drawn carton trumpet (literally) on about nothing...
Here's some of your tax dollars at work:
Skullduggery - Ah yes, tasteful production at it's best.
The best part is, you have to actually PAY to see those movies. They aren't even totally free because this is Telefilm Canada, not the NFB! Yes, my Canadian freinds, you helped PAY for it, you INVESTED in it, and now you get to PAY again. Kinda like surtax. Such fun I haven't seen!
- Betamax stores about 10 or 20 more lines of resolution than plain VHS. Whoopty...
- Don't forget the heads on all those old players (since you'd be hard pressed to find one new) are worn out.
- BetaCam (the studio format) is EXPENSIVE and not exactly availiable in RadioShack.
Sorry, but SVHS wins. It is a very good (but not the best, for that you need BetaCam) quality tape format. It holds about 400 lines of resolution (Am I remembering right that DVDs hold about this many too?). It can be had at radio shack and most finer home audio shops too (here, in Canada, FutureShop sells the tapes), and the VCRs are in stores right now for less than $199 US! That and the tapes are about $5 US each.
I've got a JVC HR-S3600U SVHS deck that I'm impressed with, and I've never done any production before (never mind that I've never taken a broadcasting class before).:-)
When I was doing it (1992/1993) I found that it worked; sometimes. The secret was to open the door to the media and see if it was translucent. If it was, you're in luck.
I have disks from back then that were double punched, and hacked to 1.72 MB that still read today. And yes, I have some that don't. Such is the life of a cheapskate.:-)
I now officially give up on the w3c HTML validator.
It can't even validate a page with URLs (oh, so sorry, URIs today) containing the ampersand (&). According to them it is wrong because it makes old, old, old browsers fail. They don't mention anything about it being valid HTML or not.
That, and other than the missing </DIV> tag, I didn't see anything wrong that should cause it not to display in any graphical browser (maybe it wouldn't look nice in Lynx, missing all those ALT tags)...
If the software was separate and freely downloadable, that's perfectly fine. If it was included on a "bonus" CD I'd be questioning it a little, but I think I'd be ok with it.
Why? Because then you can decide if you want the extra software or not. Forcing this stuff upon people by including it by default with the O/S (and I'm sure making it a horrible PITA to remove) means non-computer wizards don't get a choice. No choice == monopoly.
Give people a choice of whether they want to download the MS stuff or the competition's stuff and then there's no problem. I don't care about the price. A lot of the competition offers some or all of their products for free (RealNetworks, and Netscape, for example).
I might assume that if the spam is for a US service, and you can get the US service to admit they sent you the email, then they'd be liable. I might be wrong though.
You wouldn't believe how many spammers I've gotten to admit right to my face they've sent me spam (got some spam from Utah one day, sat on their 800 phone line for nearly an hour [from Canada] arguing about how spamming is wrong).
Slashdot Mirror
>Now Bell offers sattellite based internet access but the service is so bad that it's an insult that they're even offering it...
You should check out their new pricing then. It'll make you puke and gouge your eyeballs out at the same time! Let's assume your ISP costs $20 a month (because you pay for that on top of these fees).
- $22.50 per gigabyte (5x more expensive than getting an 80 GB HDD shipped to you with the info you want). After 4 GB the price is a comfortable $100 per gigabyte (26x more than the HDD).
Let's put that into terms that are more shocking: Every email with a picture attached to it will cost you the price of a postage stamp.
- or, $50 per month for limited "unlimited" access limited by their their FAP, 10 connections, and 60 hours (wow, if that's unlimited I can sell you an unlimited ticket to Canada's wonderland really cheap...)
I'm not making this pricing up people! Check it for yourself if you think $100/GB is extreme: http://www.expressvu.ca/en/serviceplans.html
I'd like to counter that. I'm living within minutes of Kitchener Waterloo (Ontario) in a semi-rural area and can't even get 56k conexant (or whatever the flavour of the week is... it was once switched 56).
:-)
:-)
Problem is Bell didn't think ahead when it came to phone wiring. Most city folk get DSL because they are close the exchange. A lot of city folk in KW (last time I checked -- Jan. 2001) still can't get DSL because their lines are too long (like me). Basically it seems to me Bell is only going to provide DSL if you are close to the exchange. Past that you can get lost.
A lot of rural people are lucky because they are within a few Ks of the exchange. There's been quite a few of us in my area been bugging Bell to put a remote DSLAM in for us few hundred residents who were wired 15 km from the exchange. It won't ever happen. I'm certain of that now.
Why? I bought all the [expensive!] equipment for satellite internet last month and always, whenever I want high speed, something screws me over. It's been over a month and no peeps from Bell. So I'll say that I won (finally!). But it is a Pyrrhic victory -- I have to pay $55 US + Dial up fees each month for the privelege.
>I recall hearing that Canada will have high-speed access avaliable to everyone by 2004.
Bell told me that we'd see everyone wired at the end of this year, and that at the end of last year 90% of Ontario was supposed to be wired.
Are there only about 240 towns and cities between Ontario and Quebec? Because that's all there could possibly be if I was to believe Bell. But, of course, I don't. They can't even keep my phone line clear of noise, never mind keep their ads free of it.
>Around here things have always seemed to be ahead of thier times as far as technology goes (from a rural standpoint).
You must be living very close to Bell and the Cable Co. then. Fortunately Canada's cable companies got on the bandwagon quickly -- and helped Canada become the high-speed to the desktop nation it is. I don't think I'd say that about Bell, unless you consider the high speed fiber only huge corporations and universities can touch counts...
Now, please note, this only applies to Ontario and Quebec. If you live outside of there you don't have Bell (I'm told) so perhaps this is why you have a better experience to report?
You might be right, but I recalled that little tidbit from an older biography of Albert Einstein I once read. Perhaps it was wrong, or my memory is faulty. Sorry.
I tried French once. I didn't like it (or did it not like me?).
I wrote the previous-previous comment, so I can be certain that English is my mother tongue. I figured some relentless moderator would mod me offtopic for fixing that mistake in my post. Guess it never did happen.
[Note to slashdot: How about a -1 score button for little things like that?]
But hey, thanks for the support (I think! 8-)
Albert Eistein failed math in greade school as well. This is the truth, feel free to check for verification online.
Keep that in mind when next time you dismiss someone as unintelligent because they can't pass a state written test.
I see a lot of miguided posts here suggesting that downloading music from napster is stealing.
Check your dictionary. It isn't stealing unless you take property from someone and therefore deny them access to it. Copying clearly does not stop the original user/purchaser from using their paid for music.
Using napster for copyrighted materials is copyright violation. Nothing more, nothing less.
Phones need carry only 300-3000 Hz. No more, no less. That's why there is no such thing as a 28,800 baud telephone-line modem. [Please flame me for that! I do have my flame retardant suit on!]
Here's a great little bit of info for you (more than you ever wanted to know about phones):
http://www.egyed.com/phonework.html
Now you can get your friends to marvel at your useless knowledge when you tell them to push octothorpe!
http://webreference.com/roadmap/map08.html
That should answer your question.
TTYL + HAND!
You don't live north of 45, do you?
The difference between digital cameras, mp3, and minidisk are that digital cameras and mp3 aren't SDMI protected.
/w Digital Out away.
I can attempt to improve my poor digital camera image without signing NDAs. I can build my own mp3 player without paying Sony.
Try doing either of these with Minidisk.
Until Minidisk is a commodity (which it never will be as a proprietary product) it will never get better. It is WYSIWYG. Now, digital cameras and MP3 being non-proprietary, I see totally new stuff cropping up all the time. Not just new models, but totally new ideas. Like the replacement 35 mm film digital camera, where the digital camera is the film. Or the empeg/rio 60 Gig car MP3 player.
When was the last time someone came up with a totally new idea for using Minidisk that wasn't shot down as fast as a computer Minidisk player was (Did they ever make that again?)
But hey, feel free to enjoy your copy once, play wherever Sony wants you to player. I know I prefer my unlimited MP3 player. Even if it doesn't sound perfect -- I know that if I want that it's just a SoundBlaster Live
Is that the title you wanted?
:-)
Go ahead... ask how.
One of my rules on slashdot is to surf at -1. Yeah, I hate those goatse.cx ASCII arts too, but without them I couldn't have a one letter title. Or, then again, without them I could. Ahh, such a tangled web we weave.
"-- removable media should kick hard drive's asses, assuming the media cost isn't ridiculous."
;-)
"while the disks will retail at $160 for 10 gigabytes and $200 for 20 gigabytes. "
Does that answer your question? I can get 80 Gigs of regular HDD at those prices. And the HDD is proven, unlike this drive.
"a disk roughly the size of a handheld computer or PDA"
:-/
You know what else is rougly the size of a handheld computer and has more space? A hard drive.
You know what is roughly the size of a PDA and has more space? A laptop hard drive.
You know what costs the most, is proprietary, is not consumer tested, and comes from a company with a history of low quality drives? The new iomega drive.
I can only think of three words right now:
Thanks for nothing.
Expensive, multisystem NTSC VCRs can also play PAL tapes (it works both ways! :-). Here's an example.
The difference between VCR and DVD machines is not just the intent of "region coding", but also the legality of defeating it. I can't find a region-free DVD player in any normal shop in Canada. I, however, can walk into Future Shop (think Circuit City, Best Buy) tomorrow and buy an NTSC and PAL compatible VCR (I wonder if it can play SECAM tapes?).
$0.25 a minute for a cell call?
:-) I'd rather just build my own guerilla wireless network. It'd be cheaper.
AT&T themselves doesn't even charge that. They'll give you 400 cell minutes for $40. That's just $0.10 a minute.
And here I was thinking of using Ricochet if it ever came here (fat chance), but if I have to pay $1,800 a month for the standard 120 hrs. most people 'round here use, well sir, no thanks.
[Honk!]
"The fee to use all of the capabilities is 25 cents per minute, with a four-minute minimum. The unit accepts credit cards or cash - $1, $5, $10 and $20 bills - for payment."
Lesse, $15 an hour? I only want to rent it, not buy it. A mortgage on a house doesn't cost that much!
Somehow I think I'll just stick to using my RIM Pager for websurfing away from home.
My personal favourite, which happens ALL the time. I mean almost everyday for me (well, not that often, but this really isn't contrived at all):
:-)
You're on the highway. You have 4 seconds (more than enough) distance between you and the car infront. The 18 wheeler behind you leaves 1/2 second distance between you and him. A car uses your 4 seconds to cut in front of you. A tanker truck decides to follow you in your only "escape" lane. As with many highways, there's no shoulder, just concrete barriers. Now you have two choices: Slow down and have the 18 wheeler demolish your car, or continue with almost no stopping distance for the next mile decellerating by 1 or maybe 2 mph/h (that truck ain't gonna slow much more).
What do you choose? Conciously cause a collision between yourself and the truck (which, if you know it will happen, and cause it to happen, IS your fault, at least morally, and probably legally if you manage to hurt the truck driver or your passengers); or risk a lesser accident with the car infront (again, your fault)?
I'd love to see an answer to this.
Read this thourogly and take the cop to court. That's what I would do. But I'm not a lawyer, so YMMV. Oh, and that is Canadian, but I wouldn't be surprised if much of that is still good advice in the US (just apply your local laws instead of the Canadian ones). Although I wouldn't trust Canadian technicalities being valid in the US.
>The second is clearly a trademark and copyright violation, so why isn't the first?
:-D (IANAL, get it? Oh boy, it's been way too long a night for that...)
To violate copyright you must copy something, that's why. In the same manner, to violate trademark law you must use the company trademark, which, in this case, is Ford, on a product similar to something they have the trademark registered for. That's why I seem to recall there being more than one company called Acme, although I bet they all have that name trademarked for the purposes of what they are selling.
I don't think you can't just say "I sell everything" unless you do. I may be wrong, but I think you can lose your trademark if you don't actively defend it, or actively make product under its name.
Does Ford sell Unlawful Carnal Knowledge? If not, I'm not so sure they deserve to win this case, but IANAL, so who knows?
Maybe you might not consider them such, but most do. An objet d'Art is what you like. A grose monstrosity is what you don't. Like it or lump it, NFB & Telefilm shows don't even make good filler for the "We're having technical difficulty" signs because most people would rather watch nothing than a crudely drawn carton trumpet (literally) on about nothing... Here's some of your tax dollars at work:
The best part is, you have to actually PAY to see those movies. They aren't even totally free because this is Telefilm Canada, not the NFB! Yes, my Canadian freinds, you helped PAY for it, you INVESTED in it, and now you get to PAY again. Kinda like surtax. Such fun I haven't seen!
- Betamax stores about 10 or 20 more lines of resolution than plain VHS. Whoopty...
:-)
- Don't forget the heads on all those old players (since you'd be hard pressed to find one new) are worn out.
- BetaCam (the studio format) is EXPENSIVE and not exactly availiable in RadioShack.
Sorry, but SVHS wins. It is a very good (but not the best, for that you need BetaCam) quality tape format. It holds about 400 lines of resolution (Am I remembering right that DVDs hold about this many too?). It can be had at radio shack and most finer home audio shops too (here, in Canada, FutureShop sells the tapes), and the VCRs are in stores right now for less than $199 US! That and the tapes are about $5 US each.
I've got a JVC HR-S3600U SVHS deck that I'm impressed with, and I've never done any production before (never mind that I've never taken a broadcasting class before).
I remember doing the same thing with a drill.
:-)
When I was doing it (1992/1993) I found that it worked; sometimes. The secret was to open the door to the media and see if it was translucent. If it was, you're in luck.
I have disks from back then that were double punched, and hacked to 1.72 MB that still read today. And yes, I have some that don't. Such is the life of a cheapskate.
I now officially give up on the w3c HTML validator.
It can't even validate a page with URLs (oh, so sorry, URIs today) containing the ampersand (&). According to them it is wrong because it makes old, old, old browsers fail. They don't mention anything about it being valid HTML or not.
That, and other than the missing </DIV> tag, I didn't see anything wrong that should cause it not to display in any graphical browser (maybe it wouldn't look nice in Lynx, missing all those ALT tags)...
If the software was separate and freely downloadable, that's perfectly fine. If it was included on a "bonus" CD I'd be questioning it a little, but I think I'd be ok with it.
Why? Because then you can decide if you want the extra software or not. Forcing this stuff upon people by including it by default with the O/S (and I'm sure making it a horrible PITA to remove) means non-computer wizards don't get a choice. No choice == monopoly.
Give people a choice of whether they want to download the MS stuff or the competition's stuff and then there's no problem. I don't care about the price. A lot of the competition offers some or all of their products for free (RealNetworks, and Netscape, for example).
I might assume that if the spam is for a US service, and you can get the US service to admit they sent you the email, then they'd be liable. I might be wrong though.
You wouldn't believe how many spammers I've gotten to admit right to my face they've sent me spam (got some spam from Utah one day, sat on their 800 phone line for nearly an hour [from Canada] arguing about how spamming is wrong).