I signed up for my state's (Indiana) no-call list. I have since then received 3 e-mails from the state's Attorney General office letting me know about potential federal legislation that could restrict my no-call list rights.
Not 3 different e-mail, the same e-mail sent three times... I got rid of telemarketers just to get more spam...
Another fine example of how corporations get to pick and choose which laws apply to Joe Consumer.
I remember when this law was being discussed, as it was important to RCA/Thompson (a local company that builds DirecTV receivers) that consumers actually be able to install these things when so many housing covenants disallowed satellite dishes. This of course was back when satellite dishes were still 8' or larger and ugly.
Although it did turn out to be to our benefit, I'm sure that RCA wasn't worried about us when they lobbied the FCC, just their own bottom line.
I live in a fair sized town just South of a major metropolis. I had small town cable before upgrading to satellite. I know for a fact that the small town cable company replaced ads shown on 'national' channels with local ads (I seriously doubt that my local Chevy dealership would bother to buy advertisements on Discovery Channel, but that's where they were appearing - and once I switched to satellite I no longer see those local ads on 'national' channels). In addition, you would often times see the first 1/2 second of that 'national' commercial that they were replacing.
I do not know if big city cable companies do the same thing, but if they do, I can see why they would be concerned about lost ad revenue when the networks might not be complaining.
A better question would be why aren't the networks complaining that they're losing ad revenue when the ads they've sold are being covered up (gator.com style) by the local cable company...?
Re:IDE Raid, inexpensive but major hassle
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IDE RAID Examined
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3 - I don't own a Tivo
2 - If I buy a Tivo I won't have enough room in my entertainment center
1 - Tivo is just a slow overpriced computer.
Uh, if you can, find the manual to your VCR, it will show you how to make the flashing "12:00" go away, and explain how you can program it to (now follow closely here...) record TV shows when you're not even there!
I watched the behind the scenes for Taken that SciFi ran and it looks like there is going to be some zero-g love making going on, with some possibly very blurry nudity... sounds like maybe your prediction will come true.
This is no worse than my company sending out a new e-mail policy as an attached Word document.
It had no fancy formatting, and was essentially a list of do's and don'ts for corporate e-mail usage. One of the items on the list was "don't include unnecessary attachments - if it can be said in plain text, don't make it a Word document"...
So, you're saying that if an IT manager who was concerned about his bottom line had his choice of paying for Microsoft products *or* free (as in beer) software that would read and write files from Microsoft users, he wouldn't jump at the chance to reduce costs?
Your browser/system sends a packet requesting information.
Software on your PC modifies the return IP address on each outgoing packet, replacing it with the IP of your satellite system.
The packet navigates it's way through the internet via your dial-up modem.
The returning packets navigate via the internet to the satellite uplink facility (Washington state, IIRC).
The packets are then sent into space and back down to your house at the speed of light
On average, my ping times were seldom under 500 ms and were quite often in the 1500-1750 ms times.
This made it impossible to do voice over IP, play any sort of online game (except things like Chess where ping times aren't important) and just about anything that required high speed. When I would try to browse to a new page, it could take 2 - 3 seconds before the page would start to fill in, especially if it was graphics intensive. Once it started, it did fill in quickly, but it was like having a really fast car that was dragging an anchor behind it. The potential for speed was there, but it just never really took off like you would have hoped for...
You live in an area where satellite is your only option for high speed internet connectivity
Certain amount of uber-geek coolness
Uh... can't think of any others.
Cons:
Round trip ping times are extreme and completely unusable for online gaming
Capped and throttled bandwidth - sure, they promise you X bits per second, but that's assuming that not all of the other customers are currently using the system - and if you use too much bandwidth, they'll either cut your speed, charge you more money, or just drop you for lower bandwidth customers
Initial setup costs and fees. I had DirecPC for a while, and it cost me $300 for the initial equipment and that did not include installation. I had to buy a dish installation kit ($30) a hammer-drill to drill holes in a brick chimney ($50, probably not needed by most people), silicone sealant, coaxial cable, drilling holes into the house to run cable, etc.
Service was $50 per month for "unlimited" usage between 6:00 pm and 6:00 am on weekdays and 24 hrs on weekends. But only as long as I stayed under some arbitrary (and classified) download limits, if I exceeded what they thought was an appropriate amount they would cut my speed in half until my average daily throughput fell back into their range. How exactly can you sell something as unlimited and then start setting limits without revealing what those limits are? The short answer is, you can't. That would explain why they (DirecPC) were the target of a class action lawsuit that forced them to reveal their arbitrary limits and to reword all their marketing materials to no longer promise unlimited access. The $50 per month did not include a dial-up account which was necessary to be able to use the service, so I had to continue paying $18 per month for my local ISP so I could dial up and be able to access the internet and, if I wanted to be able to talk on the phone while on the net, I had to pay for a second phone line.
I now have DSL with a set speed, there is no slow down to other users, there are no arbitrary limits or thresholds (except on their crummy news servers which I don't use anyways), I have 24/7 access without the loss of a phone line and I only pay $49.99 per month. It's hard to beat that.
At the Kroger grocery store nearest to my home, when they opened, they had LCD panels attached to the grocery carts with a roughly 11" diagonal screen.
There were some sort of sensors on the top of the panel (IR maybe?) that would receive information from transmitters suspended from the ceiling in each aisle.
The carts would let you know which items were on sale in that aisle, could provide a map of the store or direct you to specific items that you were searching for.
The big problem was that everyone who brought their kids shopping let their kids push the carts so they could play with the displays, and the kids wouldn't watch where they were going (some of the adults didn't, either!) and so they would constantly be running into each other, knocking into displays in the aisles, etc.
After about 3 months, they gave up and removed all the displays from the carts and I've been able to shop safely without worrying about someone ramming a cart into my achilles tendons every few minutes...
I personally don't miss them and I'm glad to see them gone.
At Home: Games, games, games. With all due respect to the Linux game coders out there, my favorite games are all PC based. I have yet to find one MMORPG with a Linux client available. There are a limited selection of games available for Linux, and since I don't play Warcraft or most of the other games with Linux clients available, I use Windows to get to games.
At Work: Company policy. Our corporate IT group is very anal about what is and isn't allowed. According to policy, I can't even hook my personally owned PDA to a corporate PC. I do have a laptop running Linux at my side, though.
I work for a multi-national corporation, with a lot of people in Germany. For the longest time I would get very offended by e-mails I would get from our German colleagues.
For example, we would send around a proposal for how we thought we might do something in the future.
A German colleague would respond with a tersely worded message to the effect of "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. If you don't do it this way, it will lead to the end of the company and we'll all be unemployed."
After a while, and after actually meeting many of these people face to face, I discovered that's just their way of saying "Hmm, that's not a bad idea, but maybe you should consider this..."
After reading the letter from the CSR, I realized that this is probably the same situation. It sounds really harsh, but it's not intended to be that way.
There are huge cultural differences between America and Germany, and it's important to try and understand those differences before over reacting.
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The reason the fiber is going unused is that there is nothing on either end of the fiber.
It's a like a big garden hose that's not attached to a faucet on one end or a sprinkler on the other.
It's just laying there waiting for someone to spend the billions of $$$ it will take to attach something to it.
I signed up for my state's (Indiana) no-call list. I have since then received 3 e-mails from the state's Attorney General office letting me know about potential federal legislation that could restrict my no-call list rights.
Not 3 different e-mail, the same e-mail sent three times... I got rid of telemarketers just to get more spam...
Erm, why the Centre for Disease Control?
Lead poisoning and air poisoning could be considered diseases...
Religion: which is the one true faith?
Based on this article, I would guess the one with the most guns?
My opinion of the "Guns Kill People" theory. I have guns. I haven't killed anyone.
Much like the classic bumpersticker:
"Ted Kennedy's Car Has Killed More People Than My Gun(s)"
Another fine example of how corporations get to pick and choose which laws apply to Joe Consumer.
I remember when this law was being discussed, as it was important to RCA/Thompson (a local company that builds DirecTV receivers) that consumers actually be able to install these things when so many housing covenants disallowed satellite dishes. This of course was back when satellite dishes were still 8' or larger and ugly.
Although it did turn out to be to our benefit, I'm sure that RCA wasn't worried about us when they lobbied the FCC, just their own bottom line.
I live in a fair sized town just South of a major metropolis. I had small town cable before upgrading to satellite. I know for a fact that the small town cable company replaced ads shown on 'national' channels with local ads (I seriously doubt that my local Chevy dealership would bother to buy advertisements on Discovery Channel, but that's where they were appearing - and once I switched to satellite I no longer see those local ads on 'national' channels). In addition, you would often times see the first 1/2 second of that 'national' commercial that they were replacing.
I do not know if big city cable companies do the same thing, but if they do, I can see why they would be concerned about lost ad revenue when the networks might not be complaining.
A better question would be why aren't the networks complaining that they're losing ad revenue when the ads they've sold are being covered up (gator.com style) by the local cable company...?
Is that the new ATA666 standard?
Also couldn't resist.
3 - I don't own a Tivo
2 - If I buy a Tivo I won't have enough room in my entertainment center
1 - Tivo is just a slow overpriced computer.
Uh, if you can, find the manual to your VCR, it will show you how to make the flashing "12:00" go away, and explain how you can program it to (now follow closely here...) record TV shows when you're not even there!
I watched the behind the scenes for Taken that SciFi ran and it looks like there is going to be some zero-g love making going on, with some possibly very blurry nudity... sounds like maybe your prediction will come true.
Gee, a Steven Spielberg movie about UFOs and it reminded you of Close Encounters... who would have ever thought that was going to happen
This is no worse than my company sending out a new e-mail policy as an attached Word document.
It had no fancy formatting, and was essentially a list of do's and don'ts for corporate e-mail usage. One of the items on the list was "don't include unnecessary attachments - if it can be said in plain text, don't make it a Word document"...
So, you're saying that if an IT manager who was concerned about his bottom line had his choice of paying for Microsoft products *or* free (as in beer) software that would read and write files from Microsoft users, he wouldn't jump at the chance to reduce costs?
Your browser/system sends a packet requesting information.
Software on your PC modifies the return IP address on each outgoing packet, replacing it with the IP of your satellite system.
The packet navigates it's way through the internet via your dial-up modem.
The returning packets navigate via the internet to the satellite uplink facility (Washington state, IIRC).
The packets are then sent into space and back down to your house at the speed of light
On average, my ping times were seldom under 500 ms and were quite often in the 1500-1750 ms times.
This made it impossible to do voice over IP, play any sort of online game (except things like Chess where ping times aren't important) and just about anything that required high speed. When I would try to browse to a new page, it could take 2 - 3 seconds before the page would start to fill in, especially if it was graphics intensive. Once it started, it did fill in quickly, but it was like having a really fast car that was dragging an anchor behind it. The potential for speed was there, but it just never really took off like you would have hoped for...
You live in an area where satellite is your only option for high speed internet connectivity
Certain amount of uber-geek coolness
Uh... can't think of any others.
Cons:
Round trip ping times are extreme and completely unusable for online gaming
Capped and throttled bandwidth - sure, they promise you X bits per second, but that's assuming that not all of the other customers are currently using the system - and if you use too much bandwidth, they'll either cut your speed, charge you more money, or just drop you for lower bandwidth customers
Initial setup costs and fees. I had DirecPC for a while, and it cost me $300 for the initial equipment and that did not include installation. I had to buy a dish installation kit ($30) a hammer-drill to drill holes in a brick chimney ($50, probably not needed by most people), silicone sealant, coaxial cable, drilling holes into the house to run cable, etc.
Service was $50 per month for "unlimited" usage between 6:00 pm and 6:00 am on weekdays and 24 hrs on weekends. But only as long as I stayed under some arbitrary (and classified) download limits, if I exceeded what they thought was an appropriate amount they would cut my speed in half until my average daily throughput fell back into their range. How exactly can you sell something as unlimited and then start setting limits without revealing what those limits are? The short answer is, you can't. That would explain why they (DirecPC) were the target of a class action lawsuit that forced them to reveal their arbitrary limits and to reword all their marketing materials to no longer promise unlimited access. The $50 per month did not include a dial-up account which was necessary to be able to use the service, so I had to continue paying $18 per month for my local ISP so I could dial up and be able to access the internet and, if I wanted to be able to talk on the phone while on the net, I had to pay for a second phone line.
I now have DSL with a set speed, there is no slow down to other users, there are no arbitrary limits or thresholds (except on their crummy news servers which I don't use anyways), I have 24/7 access without the loss of a phone line and I only pay $49.99 per month. It's hard to beat that.
At the Kroger grocery store nearest to my home, when they opened, they had LCD panels attached to the grocery carts with a roughly 11" diagonal screen.
There were some sort of sensors on the top of the panel (IR maybe?) that would receive information from transmitters suspended from the ceiling in each aisle.
The carts would let you know which items were on sale in that aisle, could provide a map of the store or direct you to specific items that you were searching for.
The big problem was that everyone who brought their kids shopping let their kids push the carts so they could play with the displays, and the kids wouldn't watch where they were going (some of the adults didn't, either!) and so they would constantly be running into each other, knocking into displays in the aisles, etc.
After about 3 months, they gave up and removed all the displays from the carts and I've been able to shop safely without worrying about someone ramming a cart into my achilles tendons every few minutes...
I personally don't miss them and I'm glad to see them gone.
Wow, isn't that the truth...
I haven't been to a Comdex for over 2 years and I still get spam mail from them.
The last Comdex I went to (Chicago), I did manage to pick up some nice swag, including several Linux distro CDs, so it wasn't a total waste...
At Home: Games, games, games. With all due respect to the Linux game coders out there, my favorite games are all PC based. I have yet to find one MMORPG with a Linux client available. There are a limited selection of games available for Linux, and since I don't play Warcraft or most of the other games with Linux clients available, I use Windows to get to games.
At Work: Company policy. Our corporate IT group is very anal about what is and isn't allowed. According to policy, I can't even hook my personally owned PDA to a corporate PC. I do have a laptop running Linux at my side, though.
This year's "Evil Nation" is... MADAGASCAR!
Not sure why, but that actually made me laught out loud...
The rear pockets are sealed with velcro for "piece-of-mind"?
Huh? I thought it was supposed to be for "PEACE-of-mind"...
And on ebay as well, this one includes the light-gun for Duck Hunt!
Click here
I work for a multi-national corporation, with a lot of people in Germany. For the longest time I would get very offended by e-mails I would get from our German colleagues.
For example, we would send around a proposal for how we thought we might do something in the future.
A German colleague would respond with a tersely worded message to the effect of "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. If you don't do it this way, it will lead to the end of the company and we'll all be unemployed."
After a while, and after actually meeting many of these people face to face, I discovered that's just their way of saying "Hmm, that's not a bad idea, but maybe you should consider this..."
After reading the letter from the CSR, I realized that this is probably the same situation. It sounds really harsh, but it's not intended to be that way.
There are huge cultural differences between America and Germany, and it's important to try and understand those differences before over reacting.
Clubs and bars use ultraviolet lights all the time
Most of the dancers don't keep any part of their body within 2" of the blacklights for any appreciable length of time...
At least that's what I've heard...
I've got a Logitech optical mouse with iFeel haptic feedback (it vibrates), I doubt the cats would like that...
Correction:
You said Only a drugged up lesbian designer would think Gluing hay on a wall was a good idea
What you should have said was Only a drugged up lesbian designer who has no children would think Gluing hay on a wall was a good idea