Whenever I come across a review on Newegg where the reviewer obviously didn't know what he was talking about, I use their review feedback system. Eventually, some of the more blatantly incorrect / uninformed reviews wind up having a line below them saying "0 out of N users found this review useful," or something similar. I don't think it will remove the review from the site, but at least it allows people to have a general idea of whether a reviewer knew what they were talking about or not. The better reviews usually wind up with a feedback tag ranking somewhere like 23 out of 25 users found this review useful.
The company I work for recently switched from Verizon landlines to some sort of business VOIP service they were offering, ostensibly to save money.
The switch happens, with a few hitches not relevant to this discussion, and everything is running fine. Then, we get our Verizon bill, which contains a contract termination fee from Verizon. Apparently, our copper was being services by one arm of Verizon, and the FlexIP VOIP service was another arm of Verizon entirely.
Management has been fighting for over a week to get the termination fee waived, hopefully it'll get sorted out.
In most modern manual transmission cars, the ECU will cut fuel to the engine if the wheels are keeping the engine cranking. This is generally referred to as DFCO, or "Deceleration Fuel Cutoff".
Many cars manufactured since 1999 have this feature, according to a quick google search.
Putting it in neutral or holding the clutch down will actually use more fuel going downhill. Not much, but still more than none, and you will accelerate unless you use the brakes, since the engine compression is no longer limiting wheel speed.
It was some sort of 15 minute cartoon series of the Clone Wars, and it wasn't really worth any attention. I watched it only because a friend had the series on DVD and we watched it with a group.
The animation and character design wasn't very impressive, and the "action" had a tendency to bore me. I have a feeling this won't be much different except this time it's CG and not traditional animation.
It's a shop. I can tell from some of the pixels and having seen a few photoshops in my time.
Re:I love it. I won't buy it.
on
Protoss For a Day
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Blizzard seems to design their games around the idea that anyone with a moderately decent computer purchased within the last 2 years or so should be able to play it.
It seems to make sense, because having system requirements that amount to "buy the computer when the game comes out" would severely limit their customer base. If they design around not making it too hardware intensive -- or have settings that can be turned down and not affect gameplay -- they can ensure that almost anyone who wishes to play it can on their current system.
Terrestrial stations pay the publishers and composters of the music they play, but are not required to pay the record label or the artists.
The basic reasoning behind this is that it is a mutually beneficial situation where airplay increases record sales for the label and tour attendance for the artists.
The Copyright Royalties Board recently (March 2, 2007) enacted new regulations which increase the "royalties" owed by internet broadcasters; instead of paying.007 cents per song streamed, the new rates go up to.019 centes by 2010. These rate changes are also retroactive to something like the beginning of this year. Also, there is apparently a $500 per channel minimum, in case your station is too small to generate enough revenue.
From what I understand, the "per song streamed" is calculated not by just how many songs you broadcast, but also how many listeners you had for each particular song. So if 10 people listened to a 30 Seconds From Mars track, it would count as 10 songs, not 1.
Who gets the money? SoundExchange. Under such protest, the generously offered webcasters the gracious offer of being able to pay the reduced rates for a little longer than originally scheduled. How nice of them!
Basically it boils down to the fact that terrestrial broadcasters pay no royalties whatsoever to the recording companies, but the recording industry wants to extort as much money as they can from the internet music business. Which, in turn, will most likely drive most internet radio out of the game.
As far as I can tell, it's a place called the Burp Castle, but I don't have the address on hand. My only grounds for this guess is that it was the first bar that came up in a search for "castle" in NYC on Yelp.
It sounds like a great bar, however. Lots of beers, knowledgable bartenders, and QUIET atmosphere.
Captcha: desist, seems fitting considering the discussion at hand.
They had me up until they said Cingular. I'll stick with my Sidekick 3, or maybe upgrade to a more "serious" smart phone, but I won't switch to Cingular from T-Mobile, thank you.
I did the math and T-Mobile was the best value for my needs.
I don't know about the EULAs for other MMO products out there, but Blizzard is fairly explicit in pointing out that every last character, item, piece of copper, and other property "your" character "owns" is the sole property of Blizzard Entertainment.
Yes, people do sell their accounts on ebay and such, and I do agree that such a transaction is indeed income, but officially there is no value whatsoever to the currency and items in game. If anyone were to be taxed for these in-game assets, it should be Blizzard, since they have sole ownership of everything in their game world.
What's next, the IRS is going to have a WoW account and send tax letters in game to collect my gold pieces? Then they'll turn around and sell them for $15 per 100gp!
This is especially maddening. I once received a call looking for -- get this -- my brother's mother-in-law! She doesn't even have the same last name or live anywhere near me, and I'm still not sure how the agency even figured out we were related. My brother doesn't even have the same last name as I do, thanks to a name change.
Lately, I have been getting calles from a "Ken Hughes", simply stating to call a toll free number, and that it is not a solicitation. If you google his name, you'll find some interesting opinions on him and his company.
I have been considering calling back and threatening to report them to the attorney general here in New York, but sometimes I wonder if it is really worth all the bother.
If you're talking about Laser Squad Nemesis, it was deveolped by the authors of Laser Squad and X-Com -- you'd notice if you paid more attention to the game description. I suppose making a new version of your own game is a clone, but it would be less derisive to call it a sequel. The game is actually quite good, and has been around for a few years now. I'd played the demo but wasn't interested in the full version due to the fact that I don't know anyone that would be interested enough to play against me, and I'd rather play multiplayer than single player.
This reminds of of when Dungeon Keeper 2 used to say things like: "Your nocturnal habits have earned you a tip: GO TO BED" and "Hello, are you still there? The imps want to lock up."
Slashdot Mirror
Whenever I come across a review on Newegg where the reviewer obviously didn't know what he was talking about, I use their review feedback system. Eventually, some of the more blatantly incorrect / uninformed reviews wind up having a line below them saying "0 out of N users found this review useful," or something similar. I don't think it will remove the review from the site, but at least it allows people to have a general idea of whether a reviewer knew what they were talking about or not. The better reviews usually wind up with a feedback tag ranking somewhere like 23 out of 25 users found this review useful.
"Anyone who says that the solution is to educate the users hasn't ever met an actual user."
-- Bruce Schneier
I know all about the Verizon deal!
The company I work for recently switched from Verizon landlines to some sort of business VOIP service they were offering, ostensibly to save money.
The switch happens, with a few hitches not relevant to this discussion, and everything is running fine. Then, we get our Verizon bill, which contains a contract termination fee from Verizon. Apparently, our copper was being services by one arm of Verizon, and the FlexIP VOIP service was another arm of Verizon entirely.
Management has been fighting for over a week to get the termination fee waived, hopefully it'll get sorted out.
I can't speak for anyone else, but it's against my ISP's Terms of Service to provide others with access to my internet connection.
Even if I just left my access point open, I'd be in violation.
I'm tempted to root my phone to use this trick. It almost makes me wish I bought the developer handset.
Wrong.
In most modern manual transmission cars, the ECU will cut fuel to the engine if the wheels are keeping the engine cranking. This is generally referred to as DFCO, or "Deceleration Fuel Cutoff".
Many cars manufactured since 1999 have this feature, according to a quick google search.
Putting it in neutral or holding the clutch down will actually use more fuel going downhill. Not much, but still more than none, and you will accelerate unless you use the brakes, since the engine compression is no longer limiting wheel speed.
For some reason, the Kohl's Shopping Center in nearby Port Chester is also blurred a bit, though I can't fathom why.
I've been thinking about starting a blog containing pictures of places that are obscured on Google Maps for no apparent reason.
http://tinyurl.com/4ysydq is the shopping center's view.
I'd say it's a waste of money, since it's an opt-in license and costs you more money to obtain than a regular driver's license.
Is anyone else getting tired of the sensationalist misuse of the term "bricked" around here?
Unless it's nigh unrecoverable, your hardware isn't bricked.
It was some sort of 15 minute cartoon series of the Clone Wars, and it wasn't really worth any attention. I watched it only because a friend had the series on DVD and we watched it with a group.
The animation and character design wasn't very impressive, and the "action" had a tendency to bore me. I have a feeling this won't be much different except this time it's CG and not traditional animation.
I saw the "trailer" or whatever they're passing off that "we're talking this up and showing as little actual footage as possible" video as.
As soon as I saw the "quality" of the CG and character design, I lost what little interest I had in watching these clone wars.
And here I thought it couldn't get much worse than the animated shorts they had on Cartoon Network a few years back.
It's a shop. I can tell from some of the pixels and having seen a few photoshops in my time.
Blizzard seems to design their games around the idea that anyone with a moderately decent computer purchased within the last 2 years or so should be able to play it.
It seems to make sense, because having system requirements that amount to "buy the computer when the game comes out" would severely limit their customer base. If they design around not making it too hardware intensive -- or have settings that can be turned down and not affect gameplay -- they can ensure that almost anyone who wishes to play it can on their current system.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Terrestrial stations pay the publishers and composters of the music they play, but are not required to pay the record label or the artists.
The basic reasoning behind this is that it is a mutually beneficial situation where airplay increases record sales for the label and tour attendance for the artists.
Ok here we go:
.007 cents per song streamed, the new rates go up to .019 centes by 2010. These rate changes are also retroactive to something like the beginning of this year. Also, there is apparently a $500 per channel minimum, in case your station is too small to generate enough revenue.
The Copyright Royalties Board recently (March 2, 2007) enacted new regulations which increase the "royalties" owed by internet broadcasters; instead of paying
From what I understand, the "per song streamed" is calculated not by just how many songs you broadcast, but also how many listeners you had for each particular song. So if 10 people listened to a 30 Seconds From Mars track, it would count as 10 songs, not 1.
Who gets the money? SoundExchange. Under such protest, the generously offered webcasters the gracious offer of being able to pay the reduced rates for a little longer than originally scheduled. How nice of them!
Basically it boils down to the fact that terrestrial broadcasters pay no royalties whatsoever to the recording companies, but the recording industry wants to extort as much money as they can from the internet music business. Which, in turn, will most likely drive most internet radio out of the game.
I'm kind of glad on this point, only for the reason that I listen to last.fm at work and it makes my day that much more tolerable.
I guess I shouldn't even listen to them, though, for that day and just bring some CDs to work.
As far as I can tell, it's a place called the Burp Castle, but I don't have the address on hand.
My only grounds for this guess is that it was the first bar that came up in a search for "castle" in NYC on Yelp.
It sounds like a great bar, however. Lots of beers, knowledgable bartenders, and QUIET atmosphere.
Captcha: desist, seems fitting considering the discussion at hand.
Sorry, Craigslist's new phone service is 1-800-GOOG-412.
They had me up until they said Cingular. I'll stick with my Sidekick 3, or maybe upgrade to a more "serious" smart phone, but I won't switch to Cingular from T-Mobile, thank you.
I did the math and T-Mobile was the best value for my needs.
I don't know about the EULAs for other MMO products out there, but Blizzard is fairly explicit in pointing out that every last character, item, piece of copper, and other property "your" character "owns" is the sole property of Blizzard Entertainment.
Yes, people do sell their accounts on ebay and such, and I do agree that such a transaction is indeed income, but officially there is no value whatsoever to the currency and items in game. If anyone were to be taxed for these in-game assets, it should be Blizzard, since they have sole ownership of everything in their game world.
What's next, the IRS is going to have a WoW account and send tax letters in game to collect my gold pieces?
Then they'll turn around and sell them for $15 per 100gp!
This is especially maddening. I once received a call looking for -- get this -- my brother's mother-in-law! She doesn't even have the same last name or live anywhere near me, and I'm still not sure how the agency even figured out we were related. My brother doesn't even have the same last name as I do, thanks to a name change.
Lately, I have been getting calles from a "Ken Hughes", simply stating to call a toll free number, and that it is not a solicitation. If you google his name, you'll find some interesting opinions on him and his company.
I have been considering calling back and threatening to report them to the attorney general here in New York, but sometimes I wonder if it is really worth all the bother.
She won't bite. :o
Maybe, if you're lucky, she will!
And one of the games, an xcom clone [snip]
If you're talking about Laser Squad Nemesis, it was deveolped by the authors of Laser Squad and X-Com -- you'd notice if you paid more attention to the game description. I suppose making a new version of your own game is a clone, but it would be less derisive to call it a sequel. The game is actually quite good, and has been around for a few years now. I'd played the demo but wasn't interested in the full version due to the fact that I don't know anyone that would be interested enough to play against me, and I'd rather play multiplayer than single player.
This reminds of of when Dungeon Keeper 2 used to say things like:
"Your nocturnal habits have earned you a tip: GO TO BED" and
"Hello, are you still there? The imps want to lock up."
if you were playing it late at night.