This happened to my Sony DSC-P71 digital camera. It was purchased in December 2002, and when I got back from my vacation in Montreal (condensation in the plane, high humidity in Montreal), the LCD was just dead. Took it in, Sony claimed there was nothing wrong. Took it in a again, Sony "cleaned" the camera. Third time, they finally got a message and changed a part--I don't have the warranty receipt with me at work, but I'm willing to bet they changed the CCD. Haven't had a problem since (though I got scared and bought "extra" warranty).
I didn't have to pay to fix it (apart from shipping it to the Sony warranty centre), but the people at the Sony Store gave me a very hard time, saying that there was nothing wrong with the camera (even with me turning it on right in front of them) and that I didn't know how to use it.
I hope the people at the Southgate Sony Store in Edmonton are reading this and eating their words.
We've had red light cameras and photo radar in Edmonton, Alberta for several years. I find that it doesn't help the speeding issue at all, since everyone who likes going over the limit has either a radar detector or listens to the traffic reports on the radio (they always announce where the speed traps are). If the media stopped announcing where the traps were, maybe it'd be more effective. I've also noticed that the police uses it more at the end of the month, when they haven't reached their ticket quota. I think that they should be using it more consistently.
As for the red light cameras, one huge problem I can think of is the issue of getting stuck in an intersection as the light's changing. Sometimes it happens, and because the ticket is issued by a machine and not an officer, it's pretty hard to appeal the ticket. They also don't seem to place them at the right intersections; all the intersections with a camera are marked, and I've just seem people speed through different intersections.
There apparently several ways around the cameras, such as placing this sheet of plastic covering (sorry, don't know what it's made from) over the plate so that when the camera flashes, the plastic reflects the flash back to the camera and makes the photo useless. I'm not sure how well this works, but I've seen a good percentage (about 30-35%) of the vehicles here that have them. I'm not quite sure what the Edmonton Police Service is doing about them, but I'm pretty sure they're not legal.
Conclusion: this would be so much more effective at stopping red-light burners and speeders if this was implemented more effectively (stop the media from divulging the locations of the cameras, don't mark the intersections, put the cameras in more intersections, make it illegal to get around the cameras)
Anyways, these are the two (Canadian) cents from a person who's lived in a town with this kind of technlogy for several years. My advice for D.C. and any other place that wants to implement this kind of technology: learn from Edmonton's mistakes.
I leech regularily from alt.binaries.anime and the related newsgroups. When the yEnc posts started coming in, I simply upgraded my newsreader to the newest version. But a LOT of people out there use Agent, and it was absolute pain to combine/decode all the yEnc posts that started popping up all over the place. The worst of it is that the yEnc posters were basically saying, "Start living in the present and upgrade". Nevermind that at the time that only yEnc-capable newsreaders were for Windows...
I mean, I don't know, but this sounds a lot like the OS wars that have been going on for quite some time. Some people simply don't want to have to switch newsreaders. Some people don't want to have to switch OSes. And that's fine, because it's a free world out there. I like the idea of yEnc (I get more out of my Easynews account), but I really don't think it should have been introduced so quickly.
One thing I like about the industry is the diversity of it all. You can walk in a store and be able to choose the product that better suits your needs. With Intel out of the (digital) picture (pun semi-intended), this might create doubt in the smaller manufacturers out there and make a few more drop out of the running. Worst case scenario, it might create a monopoly, at least, in the consumer electronics venue.
There's also Linuxnewbie.org. I like this one because the NHFs (Newbieized Help Files) are clear, consice and really easy to understand. My networking instructor wanted to show his students that yes, there ARE other OSes that can do file-sharing besides NT, and we set up Samba to do just that using the Samba NHF on their web site.
I don't see any kind of disclaimer on their site, but you might want to ask Sensei, the owner of the site, about it.
Unfortunately, this post may be a little vague (and LONG). Please bear with me, since a few people might learn from my mistakes.
I started a webpage a little bit after coming back from E3 1998 on Pokemon (yeah, I know). I was a big fan at the time, and I figured that making a webpage on the subject would be a good idea seeing that there were a total of TWO English webpages on it at the time. So I contacted the owner of one of the japanese sites I visited regularily, and kept in touch with him while getting more information about the Japanese shows.
My webpage was finally completed two months later. My site was being hosted by a service provider that I had been with for a while, and while I had to pay for my site to be hosted (I had another webpage at the time), it was TOO bad -- only $25 USD/year.
Not many people visited my site, since the craze hadn't started yet. I was barely getting any hits, and my daily bandwidth was virtually non-existent.
I'd also like to point out at this point that I didn't have a single banner ad on my site, and that yearly $25 USD was coming out of my own pocket. This was probably my first mistake.
In September of that year, I started Computer Systems Tech. at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. It's also when the craze REALLY started, and my bandwidth shot up like a rocket.
I was striving for my page to be the most complete page about the subject that was out there -- definetely my second mistake. My focus was entirely too wide, and as a result, it took me about 5-6 hours every night to update my page. Combined with married life and school, the whole thing was starting to become a big strain on me by December of that year. I was working alone on this page, and I didn't think of asking anyone to help me. (BIG mistake!)
I had on my page pictures, small MPEG movies and a ton of information. In January or February of the following year, I found that my bandwith had shot up to a whopping 1 GB per day. 1 GB! I didn't say anything to my service provider, since the rate for such traffic was higher than I could afford. I also found out that people were blatantly stealing my content, word for word, and placing it on their sites with MY links, and calling it their own. Updates were starting to get sparse at this point, since I was in second semester, and I was getting about 400 e-mails per day.
Around this time, my service provider got bought by another company, and their cheerfully advised me to lower my bandwith to 200 MB/day or they'd have to make me pay $1,000 USD/year to keep the page hosted. Considering that I was a jobless college student, I asked if there were ways so that people could stop linking to my stuff. They said that there was, and they'd "get back to me". They never did.
Finally, I think it was a few months after that that I gave up entirely on the site. It pained me because I had put in so much work, money and effort into it. They advised me that I had to pay the above amount in 15 days or my account would be locked. Strangely enough, the page hasn't been deleted yet (and it's been two years), but I can't even go into my account and delete everything myself to save face.
The moral of this story, webmasters, is this:
Banner ads may suck, but unfortunately, they bring in SOME form of revenue. It's hard to find tasteful adservers, but they're out there. Try to find an adserver that lets you customize the type of ads that show up on your page.
Get someone to help you! Put a notice on your page that you need help. If the person's genuinely interested and doesn't know a shred of HTML, take the time to teach them. You'll be rewarded in the end with a less work to do, and you'll have taught someone the wonderful ways of HTML.
Focus on one thing! Trying to focus on everything was my worst mistake. Taking 6-7 hours to update a page every night really sucks, no matter how much you love your site.
This was long, but I hope someone's going to benefit from this. The page is still out there, by the way, but I sure as heck won't put the URL here. It's not that I think my page sucks because of what the content is... it's that I'm ashamed to have been forced to just let it moulder out there in the vastness of cyberspace.
- Firecaster
29 days until I graduate
Maybe if they were less expensive...
on
Is Pinball Dying?
·
· Score: 1
I don't know about you people, but when my parents bought that shiny new Playboy pinball machine when I was a kid (and it was very clean and non-offensive, thank you), I recall my dad saying that it was in the four-digit price range. Now, I don't know the current prices for pinball machines, but I'll bet that nowadays the newer pinball machines cost three times that as much as the price my parents paid for the old one (which we ended up getting rid of:( ), and the older ones like Pinbot and Playboy cost even more because of the nostalgia value.
My point is that pinball was getting pretty old when I was a kid, back in the 80's. But it won't die because those who were raised with the sounds of flippers clacking and bumpers bouncing that shiny lead ball across the table's surface will want to stick a quarter (or two, nowadays) in a pinball machine and play. I know for a fact that I'll want my children to experience the simple, harmless pleasure of playing a good game of pinball. But I know that it'll be hard for me to buy a pinball machine if the prices don't go down, unless I land a really good job after I graduate.;)
Slashdot Mirror
This happened to my Sony DSC-P71 digital camera. It was purchased in December 2002, and when I got back from my vacation in Montreal (condensation in the plane, high humidity in Montreal), the LCD was just dead. Took it in, Sony claimed there was nothing wrong. Took it in a again, Sony "cleaned" the camera. Third time, they finally got a message and changed a part--I don't have the warranty receipt with me at work, but I'm willing to bet they changed the CCD. Haven't had a problem since (though I got scared and bought "extra" warranty).
I didn't have to pay to fix it (apart from shipping it to the Sony warranty centre), but the people at the Sony Store gave me a very hard time, saying that there was nothing wrong with the camera (even with me turning it on right in front of them) and that I didn't know how to use it.
I hope the people at the Southgate Sony Store in Edmonton are reading this and eating their words.
We've had red light cameras and photo radar in Edmonton, Alberta for several years. I find that it doesn't help the speeding issue at all, since everyone who likes going over the limit has either a radar detector or listens to the traffic reports on the radio (they always announce where the speed traps are). If the media stopped announcing where the traps were, maybe it'd be more effective. I've also noticed that the police uses it more at the end of the month, when they haven't reached their ticket quota. I think that they should be using it more consistently.
As for the red light cameras, one huge problem I can think of is the issue of getting stuck in an intersection as the light's changing. Sometimes it happens, and because the ticket is issued by a machine and not an officer, it's pretty hard to appeal the ticket. They also don't seem to place them at the right intersections; all the intersections with a camera are marked, and I've just seem people speed through different intersections.
There apparently several ways around the cameras, such as placing this sheet of plastic covering (sorry, don't know what it's made from) over the plate so that when the camera flashes, the plastic reflects the flash back to the camera and makes the photo useless. I'm not sure how well this works, but I've seen a good percentage (about 30-35%) of the vehicles here that have them. I'm not quite sure what the Edmonton Police Service is doing about them, but I'm pretty sure they're not legal.
Conclusion: this would be so much more effective at stopping red-light burners and speeders if this was implemented more effectively (stop the media from divulging the locations of the cameras, don't mark the intersections, put the cameras in more intersections, make it illegal to get around the cameras)
Anyways, these are the two (Canadian) cents from a person who's lived in a town with this kind of technlogy for several years. My advice for D.C. and any other place that wants to implement this kind of technology: learn from Edmonton's mistakes.
~ Firecaster ~
... the implementation sucked.
I leech regularily from alt.binaries.anime and the related newsgroups. When the yEnc posts started coming in, I simply upgraded my newsreader to the newest version. But a LOT of people out there use Agent, and it was absolute pain to combine/decode all the yEnc posts that started popping up all over the place. The worst of it is that the yEnc posters were basically saying, "Start living in the present and upgrade". Nevermind that at the time that only yEnc-capable newsreaders were for Windows...
I mean, I don't know, but this sounds a lot like the OS wars that have been going on for quite some time. Some people simply don't want to have to switch newsreaders. Some people don't want to have to switch OSes. And that's fine, because it's a free world out there. I like the idea of yEnc (I get more out of my Easynews account), but I really don't think it should have been introduced so quickly.
~ Firecaster ~One thing I like about the industry is the diversity of it all. You can walk in a store and be able to choose the product that better suits your needs. With Intel out of the (digital) picture (pun semi-intended), this might create doubt in the smaller manufacturers out there and make a few more drop out of the running. Worst case scenario, it might create a monopoly, at least, in the consumer electronics venue.
There's also Linuxnewbie.org. I like this one because the NHFs (Newbieized Help Files) are clear, consice and really easy to understand. My networking instructor wanted to show his students that yes, there ARE other OSes that can do file-sharing besides NT, and we set up Samba to do just that using the Samba NHF on their web site.
I don't see any kind of disclaimer on their site, but you might want to ask Sensei, the owner of the site, about it.
Hope this helps!
- Firecaster
12 days until I graduate
Unfortunately, this post may be a little vague (and LONG). Please bear with me, since a few people might learn from my mistakes.
I started a webpage a little bit after coming back from E3 1998 on Pokemon (yeah, I know). I was a big fan at the time, and I figured that making a webpage on the subject would be a good idea seeing that there were a total of TWO English webpages on it at the time. So I contacted the owner of one of the japanese sites I visited regularily, and kept in touch with him while getting more information about the Japanese shows.
My webpage was finally completed two months later. My site was being hosted by a service provider that I had been with for a while, and while I had to pay for my site to be hosted (I had another webpage at the time), it was TOO bad -- only $25 USD/year.
Not many people visited my site, since the craze hadn't started yet. I was barely getting any hits, and my daily bandwidth was virtually non-existent.
I'd also like to point out at this point that I didn't have a single banner ad on my site, and that yearly $25 USD was coming out of my own pocket. This was probably my first mistake.
In September of that year, I started Computer Systems Tech. at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. It's also when the craze REALLY started, and my bandwidth shot up like a rocket.
I was striving for my page to be the most complete page about the subject that was out there -- definetely my second mistake. My focus was entirely too wide, and as a result, it took me about 5-6 hours every night to update my page. Combined with married life and school, the whole thing was starting to become a big strain on me by December of that year. I was working alone on this page, and I didn't think of asking anyone to help me. (BIG mistake!)
I had on my page pictures, small MPEG movies and a ton of information. In January or February of the following year, I found that my bandwith had shot up to a whopping 1 GB per day. 1 GB! I didn't say anything to my service provider, since the rate for such traffic was higher than I could afford. I also found out that people were blatantly stealing my content, word for word, and placing it on their sites with MY links, and calling it their own. Updates were starting to get sparse at this point, since I was in second semester, and I was getting about 400 e-mails per day.
Around this time, my service provider got bought by another company, and their cheerfully advised me to lower my bandwith to 200 MB/day or they'd have to make me pay $1,000 USD/year to keep the page hosted. Considering that I was a jobless college student, I asked if there were ways so that people could stop linking to my stuff. They said that there was, and they'd "get back to me". They never did.
Finally, I think it was a few months after that that I gave up entirely on the site. It pained me because I had put in so much work, money and effort into it. They advised me that I had to pay the above amount in 15 days or my account would be locked. Strangely enough, the page hasn't been deleted yet (and it's been two years), but I can't even go into my account and delete everything myself to save face.
The moral of this story, webmasters, is this:
This was long, but I hope someone's going to benefit from this. The page is still out there, by the way, but I sure as heck won't put the URL here. It's not that I think my page sucks because of what the content is... it's that I'm ashamed to have been forced to just let it moulder out there in the vastness of cyberspace.
- Firecaster
29 days until I graduate
I don't know about you people, but when my parents bought that shiny new Playboy pinball machine when I was a kid (and it was very clean and non-offensive, thank you), I recall my dad saying that it was in the four-digit price range. Now, I don't know the current prices for pinball machines, but I'll bet that nowadays the newer pinball machines cost three times that as much as the price my parents paid for the old one (which we ended up getting rid of :( ), and the older ones like Pinbot and Playboy cost even more because of the nostalgia value.
;)
My point is that pinball was getting pretty old when I was a kid, back in the 80's. But it won't die because those who were raised with the sounds of flippers clacking and bumpers bouncing that shiny lead ball across the table's surface will want to stick a quarter (or two, nowadays) in a pinball machine and play. I know for a fact that I'll want my children to experience the simple, harmless pleasure of playing a good game of pinball. But I know that it'll be hard for me to buy a pinball machine if the prices don't go down, unless I land a really good job after I graduate.
- Firecaster