It's about the only way I'd accept those bullshit laws that they are trying to pass.
I mean seriously, telemarketing has no place when I want something I perform research. The only thing that telemarketers are any good for is to vent frustrations at by trying to make them more miserable, lately I've been getting too much therapy that it is having the reverse effect.
The do not call list is as good as confirming an active number to these scum, I for one won't be using it.
I don't mind advertising in the general case, but there are some forms that I cannot stand.
1) Flashing: if an Ad flashes or wibbles or wobbles it distracts my eye from being able to read the text on the page, which defeats the purpose of the page and the advertising - I find these ones actually painful and headache inducing.
2) Garish Colours: If an Ad is overly bright relative to the surrounding text/sytle (ie: pages with white text, black background) it can make it overly hard to focus on the text.
3) Sound: There is absolutly no reason that an Ad should have or play sound. Hell there is no reason for an Ad to be flash - often times the volume is set too loud and it affects my usage of the computer.
4) Pop-ups: Its my browser, my PC dont run around making windows on it!
5) Spyware/Deceptive ads: I block advertising that is deliberatly misleading because that content should not be advertisable - the advertisers who allow people to peddle their scumware via that method should be shot along with their clients.
I specifically allow google and other text based ads, as they are usually more relevant and seem to fit in with the flow of a well designed site better. They get read more than the other crap. I'm sure most of the clicking of the flashing, wobbling ads is out of people trying to get them to sit still or shut the hell up.
M
Use this internet thing as a distribution method!
on
HBO Attacking BitTorrent
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
When will media companies get it.
I am more than willing to pay for shows - but make them available to me in the following ways/manner:
1) Don't artificially hold back on releases (Australia sometimes does not get shows for 6-12 months) 2) Make it available to watch on MY time scale 3) Not Streaming Only - DRM it if you think that will help, but P2P shows that it wont. 4) Don't over price it. AUD $1-$2 per show episode is acceptable - distribution could be achieved via P2P.
Because much as/. knocks them this is the sort of thing they can manage, astonishing turn arounds.
I am unsure as to how much of a good idea a massive change in development methodology is this/that late in the development cycle for this product, as all the engineers will be using new tools and a new methodology for a very large and very important project. I wonder if this won't actually cause the rise of a new type of commonly found bug enter into Vista. On the other hand a modular vista should be easier to patch with less likelyhood of flowon bugs in "unrelated" areas of the product popping up.
I want to be bankrupt with your definition of bankrupt - I mean sure they were losing millions of dollars a quarter, but i dont think anyone defines an entity with 4 billion dollars in the bank as bankrupt.
M
Good point. I would assume that sales volume would have to be very, very high to receive a Dell-like discount. I don't think Apple qualifies. Then again, Intel might give them a good discount to keep them onboard. Apple could always re-marry IBM.
I think that Apple have one thing Intel want and that is industrial design. Look at a Dell PC they are ugly rheally ugly and cheap and nasty. Look at an apple it is the antithesis of Dell. Intel have been pusing PC's / home entertainment crap for a while now (look at some of the design contests that they have sponsored). If anything the Apple design Haus is what will get Apple their discounts, for they can lead the way and show the clone makers how to shoe horn an intel based system into an elegant case.
I really was freaked out when it wanted IE (more specifically suggested anything other than IE was insecure) to be able to download the e-tax software. I mean I'm about to plug *MY* details into a website using the single largest spyware vector for Win32 PC presently.
Even though its not possible to spoof a.gov.au site (to the best of my knowledge) I was still irritated by their broken reasoning.
M
but thats the sneaky beauty of the GST its 10%, but thats 10% each time its sold which adds up to more than 10% for most things and everyone thinks they're only paying 10% more
*ding* Thanks for playing "I'm a tool" you are our new winner. That is explicitly not permitted under protiteering legislation relating to the GST. What ACTUALLY happens is that company B buys from company A, company A charges 10% GST on the item. When company B sells the item (to say Person P) they charge (Item Cost ex. GST + profit margin)+GST and claim an Input Tax credit on the GST they paid to Company A.
ITS NOT HARD! Mechanics, Welders, Fitters and Turners are all capable of understanding this WHY CANT YOU?!?
I love the smell of FUD in the afternoon - hrrm I recognise that FUD its the brand that was used when they were introducing the GST.
Are we going to have to start charging tax on purchases at our Yard/Tag/Garage sales?
In Australia that's exactly what you're required by law to do.
No you are very wrong. You are only required to be registered for GST if you are using it as a form of income where it exceeds 50,000 AUD per annum.
If i want to sell my car privatly no GST needs to be paid.
If I sell cars for a living and sell less than $50,000 AUD per annum I will need an ABN but no GST needs to be paid. (Income tax on the profit does though!!)
If I sell lots of cars for a living (more than 50,000 AUD) I need to be registered for GST and pay GST on those cars regardless of source (although I can claim input tax credits).
Seeing as you obviously dont understand the tax system I suggest that you call the ATO or have a read of the publically available information . Personally I found that they are very helpful with phone calls.
If I decided to get a DS for some other reason, then I would probably pickup Mario 64, but not just FOR that game.
If they refresh-released Super Mario 3 - Warioland (was for the original gameboy) that is one game that I would purchase a DS for, it was the most addictive game I ever played and conquered solo.
A dual-core G4 would be cooler and clock-for-clock faster than the G5. Apple would be nuts to put a case-melting G5 in a PB before they take advantage of the new dual-core G4...
Excuse me but that is just pure 100% shit. The prescott from intel draws more power than the G5. I'm not saying that it is a cool chip but certainly comparable to an Athlon FX class CPU for power usage. Apple went with the whole liquid cooling as a means of being EFFICIENT and QUIET.
The interviews were more blurbs than anything else:(.
I tend to find that WoW is the sweet spot as far as MMO games go (i once said there was no way in hell that you would get me playing a pay for play game) I find that WoW allows me to play and play at a pace that I can find comfortable and I get rewarded for in game for coming back. I dont have to play 4-8 hours a night to get anywhere and I am satisfied with what I am paying as per in game "progress".
I work and my hours are sometimes annoying when I get home I dont want to play a character for 4 hours to get to the next level or find some peice of equipment I want to be able to get instant satisfaction when I want it, allowing me to have time for friends family etal. I think WoW allows for this nicely.
as we are now discovering with the enforced copyright law changes thank to our "Free Trade" agreement.
Research my lad, research. If you decide to go and do some research what the FEDRAL copyright laws brought in by the F.T.A. have to do with the ones decided on by the STATES. As I understand it the copyright aspects of the FTA dont mean squat to most Australias and the federal government cannot mandate legislation to the states, ergo its mostly irrelevant that the old/existing laws will hold.
I really hate it when a company tries to grab your email address (say you want to download a demo, patch, PDF etal) I find it really annoying, so the solution is to put something like "idontwantyourbloodyspam@$theirdomain" where $theirdomain is their actual domain ie: real.com, microsoft.com, mcaffee.com.
Personally I can see NO need for a company to collect my email address unless *I* want to give it to them. I dont want to be in any databases, I *dont* want to know about new versions, I dont care!
Still, unless Apple gave a substantial incentive, it seem extravagant to purchase 1100 G5s and the tower accommodating racks to house them, only to upgrade them a few months later.
Perhaps they were having issues with the G5 towers which dont have or support ECC memory, and someone being a tad embarressed about it is hiding the mistake under "room, power and space" reasoning:). I know I would if there were problems:)
Actually, the $150 Million from MS was a drop in the bucket. Apple had $400 Million in liquid currency sitting around at the time of the deal. What they got out of it was shiny new versions of Office and IE, a MS development team working full-time in Cupertino on Apple solutions, and a lot of good press assuring people that Apple was not going away any time soon.
you are out by a factor of 10. (4000 million == 4 billion)!
I hung out waiting for macworld to see if apple would announce a smaller iPod (data/size/price) for just that reason, I mean a little iPod for use at the gym would be good. 2GB would last me way beyond any workout I could think of doing. (128MB flash jobbies, dont quite cut it) but this is just stupid!
Size (physical) is good, design is good, HDD size is great, but price, WTF were they thinking. (I can see them pissing people off if they released it cheaper and they got MASSIVE amounts of orders for it.)
Being in.AU we dont see the iPod mini untill APRIL! FFS I hate Steve!
Whats to stop someone with 1000 boxes running their own apt suppository (i know, i prefer this term, seems more errr accurate) from paying $60 per annum for a single box with every package installed, and simply copying the rpm packages from the/var/cache/path to the repository?
M
The oldest GeForce with numbers in Tom's review was the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, pulling 55.7 fps in the same 1024x768@32/4xFSAA/etc. By my own inference, I'd guess the GeForce4 would be lucky to do a solid 30fps
As we are talking about BF1942 and the GeForce4 series, I can say that it DOES pull more than 30 fps *most* of the time when playing this game at 32bit colour and 4xFSAA (40-45 on an Ath1900+)(Actually i disabled FSAA due to the fact it rendered the ingame text virtually unreadable). On a more capable CPU and motherboard I would expect this value to to increase. The GF4Ti series were are still excellent performers when compared to the FX series midrange cards, especially for games that do not use ANY DX9 functionality.
Personally I could not give a rats arse about banners (.gif or.jpg) on web sites.
What really shit me off are ones that constantly move, flash ones that make sounds and big arse chunky adds that look like something that they are not.
As an Australian, very few are relevant to me, those that I have clicked on in from Australian sites, I decided not to purchase anything because I was not interested in the product sufficiently or because it was to expensive from that source. I will not purchase anything from anyone that uses pop-ups, and am getting right shitted off with the sites that try and install spyware and their ilk. (I still use IE for my online comics because mozilla does not seem to overwrite the bookmark with the latest one, as I always read one day behind).
Death of the free internet, my arse! If I put shit up on a web page, its for people to read for free, not to have them pay for my server/bandwidth or time. (look at maddox.xmission.com -- no adds there)
Slashdot Mirror
It's about the only way I'd accept those bullshit laws that they are trying to pass.
I mean seriously, telemarketing has no place when I want something I perform research. The only thing that telemarketers are any good for is to vent frustrations at by trying to make them more miserable, lately I've been getting too much therapy that it is having the reverse effect.
The do not call list is as good as confirming an active number to these scum, I for one won't be using it.
I don't mind advertising in the general case, but there are some forms that I cannot stand.
1) Flashing: if an Ad flashes or wibbles or wobbles it distracts my eye from being able to read the text on the page, which defeats the purpose of the page and the advertising - I find these ones actually painful and headache inducing.
2) Garish Colours: If an Ad is overly bright relative to the surrounding text/sytle (ie: pages with white text, black background) it can make it overly hard to focus on the text.
3) Sound: There is absolutly no reason that an Ad should have or play sound. Hell there is no reason for an Ad to be flash - often times the volume is set too loud and it affects my usage of the computer.
4) Pop-ups: Its my browser, my PC dont run around making windows on it!
5) Spyware/Deceptive ads: I block advertising that is deliberatly misleading because that content should not be advertisable - the advertisers who allow people to peddle their scumware via that method should be shot along with their clients.
I specifically allow google and other text based ads, as they are usually more relevant and seem to fit in with the flow of a well designed site better. They get read more than the other crap. I'm sure most of the clicking of the flashing, wobbling ads is out of people trying to get them to sit still or shut the hell up.
M
When will media companies get it.
I am more than willing to pay for shows - but make them available to me in the following ways/manner:
1) Don't artificially hold back on releases (Australia sometimes does not get shows for 6-12 months)
2) Make it available to watch on MY time scale
3) Not Streaming Only - DRM it if you think that will help, but P2P shows that it wont.
4) Don't over price it. AUD $1-$2 per show episode is acceptable - distribution could be achieved via P2P.
When will these fools get it?
Because much as /. knocks them this is the sort of thing they can manage, astonishing turn arounds.
I am unsure as to how much of a good idea a massive change in development methodology is this/that late in the development cycle for this product, as all the engineers will be using new tools and a new methodology for a very large and very important project. I wonder if this won't actually cause the rise of a new type of commonly found bug enter into Vista. On the other hand a modular vista should be easier to patch with less likelyhood of flowon bugs in "unrelated" areas of the product popping up.
Apple was bankrupt.
I want to be bankrupt with your definition of bankrupt - I mean sure they were losing millions of dollars a quarter, but i dont think anyone defines an entity with 4 billion dollars in the bank as bankrupt.
M
Good point. I would assume that sales volume would have to be very, very high to receive a Dell-like discount. I don't think Apple qualifies. Then again, Intel might give them a good discount to keep them onboard. Apple could always re-marry IBM.
I think that Apple have one thing Intel want and that is industrial design. Look at a Dell PC they are ugly rheally ugly and cheap and nasty. Look at an apple it is the antithesis of Dell. Intel have been pusing PC's / home entertainment crap for a while now (look at some of the design contests that they have sponsored). If anything the Apple design Haus is what will get Apple their discounts, for they can lead the way and show the clone makers how to shoe horn an intel based system into an elegant case.
M
I really was freaked out when it wanted IE (more specifically suggested anything other than IE was insecure) to be able to download the e-tax software. I mean I'm about to plug *MY* details into a website using the single largest spyware vector for Win32 PC presently. Even though its not possible to spoof a .gov.au site (to the best of my knowledge) I was still irritated by their broken reasoning.
M
but thats the sneaky beauty of the GST its 10%, but thats 10% each time its sold which adds up to more than 10% for most things and everyone thinks they're only paying 10% more
*ding* Thanks for playing "I'm a tool" you are our new winner. That is explicitly not permitted under protiteering legislation relating to the GST. What ACTUALLY happens is that company B buys from company A, company A charges 10% GST on the item. When company B sells the item (to say Person P) they charge (Item Cost ex. GST + profit margin)+GST and claim an Input Tax credit on the GST they paid to Company A.
ITS NOT HARD! Mechanics, Welders, Fitters and Turners are all capable of understanding this WHY CANT YOU?!?
I love the smell of FUD in the afternoon - hrrm I recognise that FUD its the brand that was used when they were introducing the GST.
Are we going to have to start charging tax on purchases at our Yard/Tag/Garage sales?
In Australia that's exactly what you're required by law to do.
No you are very wrong. You are only required to be registered for GST if you are using it as a form of income where it exceeds 50,000 AUD per annum.
If i want to sell my car privatly no GST needs to be paid.
If I sell cars for a living and sell less than $50,000 AUD per annum I will need an ABN but no GST needs to be paid. (Income tax on the profit does though!!)
If I sell lots of cars for a living (more than 50,000 AUD) I need to be registered for GST and pay GST on those cars regardless of source (although I can claim input tax credits).
Seeing as you obviously dont understand the tax system I suggest that you call the ATO or have a read of the publically available information . Personally I found that they are very helpful with phone calls.
If I decided to get a DS for some other reason, then I would probably pickup Mario 64, but not just FOR that game.
If they refresh-released Super Mario 3 - Warioland (was for the original gameboy) that is one game that I would purchase a DS for, it was the most addictive game I ever played and conquered solo.
A dual-core G4 would be cooler and clock-for-clock faster than the G5. Apple would be nuts to put a case-melting G5 in a PB before they take advantage of the new dual-core G4...
Excuse me but that is just pure 100% shit. The prescott from intel draws more power than the G5. I'm not saying that it is a cool chip but certainly comparable to an Athlon FX class CPU for power usage. Apple went with the whole liquid cooling as a means of being EFFICIENT and QUIET.
The interviews were more blurbs than anything else :(.
I tend to find that WoW is the sweet spot as far as MMO games go (i once said there was no way in hell that you would get me playing a pay for play game) I find that WoW allows me to play and play at a pace that I can find comfortable and I get rewarded for in game for coming back. I dont have to play 4-8 hours a night to get anywhere and I am satisfied with what I am paying as per in game "progress".
I work and my hours are sometimes annoying when I get home I dont want to play a character for 4 hours to get to the next level or find some peice of equipment I want to be able to get instant satisfaction when I want it, allowing me to have time for friends family etal. I think WoW allows for this nicely.
M
Doh. Why do I constantly grab sticks by the wrong end >. M
as we are now discovering with the enforced copyright law changes thank to our "Free Trade" agreement.
Research my lad, research. If you decide to go and do some research what the FEDRAL copyright laws brought in by the F.T.A. have to do with the ones decided on by the STATES. As I understand it the copyright aspects of the FTA dont mean squat to most Australias and the federal government cannot mandate legislation to the states, ergo its mostly irrelevant that the old/existing laws will hold.
Patents on the other hand....
I really hate it when a company tries to grab your email address (say you want to download a demo, patch, PDF etal) I find it really annoying, so the solution is to put something like "idontwantyourbloodyspam@$theirdomain" where $theirdomain is their actual domain ie: real.com, microsoft.com, mcaffee.com.
Personally I can see NO need for a company to collect my email address unless *I* want to give it to them. I dont want to be in any databases, I *dont* want to know about new versions, I dont care!
I'd resisted the earlier iPods due to the disk drive ---didn't think it would stand up to daily trips to the gym.
You are aware that the iPod mini's also contain disk drive storage technology? M
Well taking a slash is used widely in South Australia here.
Still, unless Apple gave a substantial incentive, it seem extravagant to purchase 1100 G5s and the tower accommodating racks to house them, only to upgrade them a few months later.
:). I know I would if there were problems :)
Perhaps they were having issues with the G5 towers which dont have or support ECC memory, and someone being a tad embarressed about it is hiding the mistake under "room, power and space" reasoning
Actually, the $150 Million from MS was a drop in the bucket. Apple had $400 Million in liquid currency sitting around at the time of the deal. What they got out of it was shiny new versions of Office and IE, a MS development team working full-time in Cupertino on Apple solutions, and a lot of good press assuring people that Apple was not going away any time soon.
you are out by a factor of 10. (4000 million == 4 billion)!
I hung out waiting for macworld to see if apple would announce a smaller iPod (data/size/price) for just that reason, I mean a little iPod for use at the gym would be good. 2GB would last me way beyond any workout I could think of doing. (128MB flash jobbies, dont quite cut it) but this is just stupid!
.AU we dont see the iPod mini untill APRIL! FFS I hate Steve!
Size (physical) is good, design is good, HDD size is great, but price, WTF were they thinking. (I can see them pissing people off if they released it cheaper and they got MASSIVE amounts of orders for it.)
Being in
Shit, my brain just dumped core.
You can change your own shit filled pants, I want nothing to do with that which was once part of your brain.
1) WMA only, which means no iTunes compatability, and no iPod which I desperately want.
2) $2 AUD a pop, screw that, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to expensive.
3) No mention of bit-rate used and source. (yes I read the "info" section and was unable to find it)
4) The web page looks shit, which does not bode well for the future!
Whats to stop someone with 1000 boxes running their own apt suppository (i know, i prefer this term, seems more errr accurate) from paying $60 per annum for a single box with every package installed, and simply copying the rpm packages from the /var/cache/path to the repository?
M
The oldest GeForce with numbers in Tom's review was the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra, pulling 55.7 fps in the same 1024x768@32/4xFSAA/etc. By my own inference, I'd guess the GeForce4 would be lucky to do a solid 30fps
As we are talking about BF1942 and the GeForce4 series, I can say that it DOES pull more than 30 fps *most* of the time when playing this game at 32bit colour and 4xFSAA (40-45 on an Ath1900+)(Actually i disabled FSAA due to the fact it rendered the ingame text virtually unreadable). On a more capable CPU and motherboard I would expect this value to to increase. The GF4Ti series were are still excellent performers when compared to the FX series midrange cards, especially for games that do not use ANY DX9 functionality.
Personally I could not give a rats arse about banners (.gif or .jpg) on web sites.
What really shit me off are ones that constantly move, flash ones that make sounds and big arse chunky adds that look like something that they are not.
As an Australian, very few are relevant to me, those that I have clicked on in from Australian sites, I decided not to purchase anything because I was not interested in the product sufficiently or because it was to expensive from that source. I will not purchase anything from anyone that uses pop-ups, and am getting right shitted off with the sites that try and install spyware and their ilk. (I still use IE for my online comics because mozilla does not seem to overwrite the bookmark with the latest one, as I always read one day behind).
Death of the free internet, my arse! If I put shit up on a web page, its for people to read for free, not to have them pay for my server/bandwidth or time. (look at maddox.xmission.com -- no adds there)