you trust the vendor to do what's in your best interest, especially when they make a big deal about free slots for extra memory
Who is "they"? You are the one who made the big deal about memory slots. And if you trust the vendor to do what's in your best interest, you need a reality check. The vendor is out to maximize profit, period.
If you weren't around for the $100/4MB memory days,
Uh, "weren't around"? That's cute. I know slashdot UIDs aren't really a good indicator, but the fact that mine is less than 1/4th of yours should tell you something. If not, I assure you, I was "around" for those days. $100 was a deal compared to what I paid for my first 4MB SIMMs.
Even if you go by today's standards, memory chips with twice as much memory are usually less than double the money.
On the mid to high end (in terms of capacity), the larger chips cost the same or more. Keep in mind, this is for manufacturer prices, not yours. Getting larger chips in fewer slots is almost never cheaper.
Let's assume you're right. Tell me two things then: A) Why did Gateway give you 4x4MB chips when it would have been more expensive to do so? B) Assuming you have an answer to that, why would you be upset when your 4x4MB chips were worth "more" than the 8MB chips you wanted?
The price Dell charges for Red Hat support is precisely what Red Hat charges for support, assuming no discount. In any case, you'd be stupid to order it from them if your level 1 and 2 support has to go through them like it does if you order it through Sun. You're better off paying Red Hat, as their support is top-notch.
If a 4MB chip cost $100 back then (I don't think it did), you bet your ass that an 8MB chip didn't cost only twice that. You probably could have specified that you wanted open memory slots, but didn't know any better, or wanted a reason to bitch. In any case, it certainly wasn't the vendor's fault. It was your fault, or a result of your ignorance.
I'd consider the screen size to be pretty important on a portable video device. That's where a lot of the size and weight come from. Would you want to watch video on a screen that was even the size of the entire iPod? I wouldn't.
I was kind of being sarcastic. What I meant was, instead of all that, why wouldn't you just hook up the unit itself to the TV? I see your point with the Airport Express, but obviously for video, the device would have to be far more sophisticated (and therefore expensive).
Yeah... and then you'd have... a way to watch video on your computer!
Or... wait... have a receiver that you hook to the TV that could receive the wireless transmission from the iPod on the dock attached to your computer!
Wow, this comes up twice in the same day. Re-post from my earlier comment:
Finally someone that agrees with me. I listened to the hype for so long, and finally bought into it. It was an expensive purchase (Dual G5). I found OSX to be rather unintuitive, and I did give it time. It doesn't provide enough flexibility for me, though admittedly I'm not an average user. And no, things didn't "just work" in OSX. The machine was a lemon, to boot. Thank goodness for Apple Care.
Luckily, the fanaticism ensures a great resale market. I got nearly what I paid for it, and that's even after the latest G5s having been released in between. With the money, I'm going to build a new system for SUSE. And buy a 42" plasma TV. No, I'm not kidding.
Why? How about a UI with the ease-of-use of... Google? In every offering from Google that I have used, I have found the UI to be very good. I don't get OSX. I don't think it is easy to use. I tried it, I don't like it. It just doesn't work for me.
Finally someone that agrees with me. I listened to the hype for so long, and finally bought into it. It was an expensive purchase (Dual G5). I found OSX to be rather unintuitive, and I did give it time. It doesn't provide enough flexibility for me, though admittedly I'm not an average user. And no, things didn't "just work" in OSX. The machine was a lemon, to boot. Thank goodness for Apple Care.
Luckily, the fanaticism ensures a great resale market. I got nearly what I paid for it, and that's even after the latest G5s having been released in between. With the money, I'm going to build a new system for SUSE. And a 42" plasma TV. No, I'm not kidding.
I started up my laptop, and thought for sure that I had forgotten to refresh all the tabs on my browser. Sure enough, I had. I should have known better!
Slashdot needs a "last refreshed" time on the page, so that you'll know if you've left your browser open, or if you're seeing a dupe.
to provide a wired pathway for bandwidth/security reasons.
We've got bluetooth headsets, we're able to plug usb stick/flash storage into things. What would it take to have a wirelessly-accessible hard drive in your backpack/jacket pocket?
You answered your own question before you even asked it. This would take a fast, low-power, secure wireless transport. We just aren't there yet.
Except that no one is the executive, we're not talking about stock, and no one owns shares of anything. Analogies don't really work out all that well, do they?
Only something made by Apple would have this problem. That is, only something currently sold by Apple would be barely better than something they sold 4 years ago. [ ducks ]
Like the parent to your post, I was doing lots of searches for Powermac G5s. I wrote a Perl script to search auctions matching a specific search, and put the results in an HTML page. In doing so, I found tons of auctions like you describe.
Since the accounts have positive feedback, I came up with the theory that they are phished accounts. They have the same common indicators: expensive item, cheap price, email address in the body of the auction, and usually pre-approval is required to bid. Lots of times they'll have pictures of an item different than they're describing. They sometimes contain poor English.
You can have fun emailing the "seller" and fucking with them a little. They always want you to send them your contact info so you can complete payment through Square Trade, who does not accept payments. I'm guessing the next step is a fake escrow site and a Western Union payment, but I haven't gotten that far.
As you know, you can report these auctions, in the eBay security center. I can't give a URL, because my stupid web filtering software flags that part of eBay's site as phishing/fraud. I report the ones I see, and they're usually taken down very quickly. My view is that I'm helping people who may not be quite as wise.
Slashdot Mirror
you trust the vendor to do what's in your best interest, especially when they make a big deal about free slots for extra memory
Who is "they"? You are the one who made the big deal about memory slots. And if you trust the vendor to do what's in your best interest, you need a reality check. The vendor is out to maximize profit, period.
If you weren't around for the $100/4MB memory days,
Uh, "weren't around"? That's cute. I know slashdot UIDs aren't really a good indicator, but the fact that mine is less than 1/4th of yours should tell you something. If not, I assure you, I was "around" for those days. $100 was a deal compared to what I paid for my first 4MB SIMMs.
Even if you go by today's standards, memory chips with twice as much memory are usually less than double the money.
On the mid to high end (in terms of capacity), the larger chips cost the same or more. Keep in mind, this is for manufacturer prices, not yours. Getting larger chips in fewer slots is almost never cheaper.
Let's assume you're right. Tell me two things then: A) Why did Gateway give you 4x4MB chips when it would have been more expensive to do so? B) Assuming you have an answer to that, why would you be upset when your 4x4MB chips were worth "more" than the 8MB chips you wanted?
The price Dell charges for Red Hat support is precisely what Red Hat charges for support, assuming no discount. In any case, you'd be stupid to order it from them if your level 1 and 2 support has to go through them like it does if you order it through Sun. You're better off paying Red Hat, as their support is top-notch.
If a 4MB chip cost $100 back then (I don't think it did), you bet your ass that an 8MB chip didn't cost only twice that. You probably could have specified that you wanted open memory slots, but didn't know any better, or wanted a reason to bitch. In any case, it certainly wasn't the vendor's fault. It was your fault, or a result of your ignorance.
I'd consider the screen size to be pretty important on a portable video device. That's where a lot of the size and weight come from. Would you want to watch video on a screen that was even the size of the entire iPod? I wouldn't.
There are solutions to this but they are not cheap and easily accessible to the average consumer.
Yeah, because Apple is great at making things that are cheap.
See my reply above for what I was getting at.
I was kind of being sarcastic. What I meant was, instead of all that, why wouldn't you just hook up the unit itself to the TV? I see your point with the Airport Express, but obviously for video, the device would have to be far more sophisticated (and therefore expensive).
These groups of people would probably go bananas over a video iPod, if it was done right.
It was,, but it doesn't say Apple on it. Hence, no bananas.
Yeah... and then you'd have... a way to watch video on your computer!
Or... wait... have a receiver that you hook to the TV that could receive the wireless transmission from the iPod on the dock attached to your computer!
Seriously, what are you getting at here?
Wow, this comes up twice in the same day. Re-post from my earlier comment:
Finally someone that agrees with me. I listened to the hype for so long, and finally bought into it. It was an expensive purchase (Dual G5). I found OSX to be rather unintuitive, and I did give it time. It doesn't provide enough flexibility for me, though admittedly I'm not an average user. And no, things didn't "just work" in OSX. The machine was a lemon, to boot. Thank goodness for Apple Care.
Luckily, the fanaticism ensures a great resale market. I got nearly what I paid for it, and that's even after the latest G5s having been released in between. With the money, I'm going to build a new system for SUSE. And buy a 42" plasma TV. No, I'm not kidding.
Why? How about a UI with the ease-of-use of... Google? In every offering from Google that I have used, I have found the UI to be very good. I don't get OSX. I don't think it is easy to use. I tried it, I don't like it. It just doesn't work for me.
Finally someone that agrees with me. I listened to the hype for so long, and finally bought into it. It was an expensive purchase (Dual G5). I found OSX to be rather unintuitive, and I did give it time. It doesn't provide enough flexibility for me, though admittedly I'm not an average user. And no, things didn't "just work" in OSX. The machine was a lemon, to boot. Thank goodness for Apple Care.
Luckily, the fanaticism ensures a great resale market. I got nearly what I paid for it, and that's even after the latest G5s having been released in between. With the money, I'm going to build a new system for SUSE. And a 42" plasma TV. No, I'm not kidding.
What if you love earning money? :-)
I wonder when the people so annoyed by people complaining about dupes will just stop reading the posts about dupes.
/.'s fault, not ours.
Subscribers expecting more might be irritating, but that's
I started up my laptop, and thought for sure that I had forgotten to refresh all the tabs on my browser. Sure enough, I had. I should have known better!
Slashdot needs a "last refreshed" time on the page, so that you'll know if you've left your browser open, or if you're seeing a dupe.
How come TiVo gets all the attention?
Because they toe the line better than Replay, and haven't gone under like replay has. Twice.
News flash: Not every computer with Firefox is configured exactly like yours.
One comment, and their server is un-responding to requests. How's that for satire?
to provide a wired pathway for bandwidth/security reasons.
We've got bluetooth headsets, we're able to plug usb stick/flash storage into things. What would it take to have a wirelessly-accessible hard drive in your backpack/jacket pocket?
You answered your own question before you even asked it. This would take a fast, low-power, secure wireless transport. We just aren't there yet.
Except that no one is the executive, we're not talking about stock, and no one owns shares of anything. Analogies don't really work out all that well, do they?
Um, what the hell has this to do with Microsoft? HDCP has to do with hardware, and last I checked, Microsoft doesn't sell monitors.
Somehow it's always their fault, I guess.
Dude, come on. He was looking for any conceivable reason to bitch, and you had to go and take it away from him. That wasn't very nice of you.
Only something made by Apple would have this problem. That is, only something currently sold by Apple would be barely better than something they sold 4 years ago. [ ducks ]
So, in summary: Google had a good reason for choosing Linux. Thanks for your 3 paragraph jusitification that everyone has known for the last 4 years.
90 is nearly 100 right?
:-)
It can't be 100, they said "hundreds".
90 is "hundreds". 0.9 of them.
Like the parent to your post, I was doing lots of searches for Powermac G5s. I wrote a Perl script to search auctions matching a specific search, and put the results in an HTML page. In doing so, I found tons of auctions like you describe.
Since the accounts have positive feedback, I came up with the theory that they are phished accounts. They have the same common indicators: expensive item, cheap price, email address in the body of the auction, and usually pre-approval is required to bid. Lots of times they'll have pictures of an item different than they're describing. They sometimes contain poor English.
You can have fun emailing the "seller" and fucking with them a little. They always want you to send them your contact info so you can complete payment through Square Trade, who does not accept payments. I'm guessing the next step is a fake escrow site and a Western Union payment, but I haven't gotten that far.
As you know, you can report these auctions, in the eBay security center. I can't give a URL, because my stupid web filtering software flags that part of eBay's site as phishing/fraud. I report the ones I see, and they're usually taken down very quickly. My view is that I'm helping people who may not be quite as wise.
Sun posted a loss last year (albeit a much smaller one than the year before).
I got it now:
1) Lose money
2) Lose less money next year
3) Profit???
Doesn't sound right...