Sure, the 5 year warranty is nice, but I submited a RMA on 4/1/2006 for a 300 gig seagate drive and I still don't have a replacement because they are apparantly out of stock. Apparantly sata versions were oos as well... Kind of annoying.
Also, the company that produces and markets defective products get screwed
Do they? Because the majority of class action suits I've seen involve giving the class a 20% off coupon at the offending company's online store, something like the netflix settlement or something that pretty much ensures that any financial reward the members of the class received will go to the offending company. I'd be surprised if a majority of companies lost money overall due to the suits.
What are these people doing??? Making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in "legal fees" from a case that will eventually get all the people in the class 5 free songs off iTunes.
Typical class action stuff. The lawyers win, we get screwed.
I saw (somewhere) that there would be a boot mode option (i.e. in the same menu as safe mode, debug, etc) for non-signed drivers. Not sure whether it was limited to 32 bit versions or if it would also be a possiblity in the 64 bit version. (Then again, which version of vista?, there are several)
And yes, verisign will make a shitload of money off this and this won't exactly be a detterent to anyone who wants to make rootkit level malware.
Remember windows xp 64 bit edition, x64 server 2003? Drivers for x64 are still a problem and a fair bit of time has passed. The drivers that have been released suck - the ide controller driver is _slow_ and screws with audio, etc in x64. I'm actually installing 2k3 32 bit on that box today, and have been looking forward to telling that indian shitbird at the activation line why I am doing so...
You haven't tried to install XP using a 5 year old CD on a box with a pci express card lately, have you? It dies during the install, so you have to slipstream sp2 and re-burn. The drivers on the CD are slowly updated...
If there was a sound system included... It looks like this is marketed to bored college students, which, I suppose, is fine, although I've installed about 10 systems that put this to shame in the last year or so. Those folks weren't making killer money, but were well established in their jobs...
Cost of the "dream package" is $2500 according to the article. It really depends what demographic they are trying to appeal to. If they are trying to appeal to students, sure, it is a great package, but if they are trying to appeal to folks who already do higher end work in game design, this isn't all that much. Heck, a 34" TV is about the smallest tv you can buy without going to the "tiny on purpose because you're going to put it in the kitchen" TVs. The runner up prizes were worth under $400
At the very least, they could of have dropped in a lot of more games (5?) to push the price up. I'm sure they don't pay sticker.
Give an inch.... they take a mile. What it basically comes down to is that there are enough corrupt politicians pretty much everywhere in the world for abusive legislation to get passed. These people, combined with the politicians who don't actually care about the issues to educate themselves is why we have problems. Not too many geeks going into politics....
That a "Xbox 360 console, a 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories" is closer to "okay (or even feh)" than a "dream setup"? Seems that the prizes are kind of cheap. I'm pretty sure Microsoft will get some pretty decent code out of this (or, if not code, ideas), but is only going to give something away as a token gesture. Just another step in the devauluation of programmers and IT folks, I guess.
It fits a basic good v. bad story model, as it's hard for there to be much of a grey area when one side is shoving people into furnaces and gas chambers.
Maybe you missed this in your history books, but the allies repeatedly and intentionally made cities into ovens with the use of firebombs and the Russians left a trail of atrocities from Moscow to Berlin.
Not defending the SS, of course, you reap what you sow, but as for good and evil, somethimes the line blurs a bit. The allies did some pretty nasty stuff and most of it didn't happen by accident.
If you want an off-site backup -- simply arrange with a like-minded person (or company) to exchange your (encrypted) backups via the internet.
This becomes somewhat of a pain if you have over 30 gigs or so to back up each night. Now, that isn't a problem for 95+% of the businesses out there, although a lot of those smaller businesses are still using horribly slow tape drives which is probably what drives the perception that tape sucks (and to be completely honest, it does, if you're using it in that sort of environment with that sort of hardware). We backup our stuff to a couple different places on the net for additional redundancy, but there have been times when a webhost or a backup partner is down, so I'd have to argue that uploading the backup to more than 1 place is necessary.
If, instead of pulling out lembas bread in the movie, would it have been better if Sam would have pulled out Go-GURT® brand Yogurt? No, but take for example a games like F.E.A.R, Doom 3 or Duke 3D. A coke, pepsi or vending machine isn't exactly out of place, and to be completely honest, not seeing one is odd. Ditto with billboards, or anything "painted" on the side of a building (instead of the same boring texture over and over).
And, of course, it would be pretty damn strange to have a coke ad in an RTS, although IIRC, Blizzard had rotating banner ads in the online game rooms in Starcraft (not quite "in game", I know, but...)
I can't help but think that product placements mar otherwise highly-polished stories. The fact of the matter is that most of the games out there are actually pretty shallow, so filling them with advertising doesn't do all that much damage. That said, if you want to, you can make in game ads annoying. If every 10th building is a mcdonalds or whatever... yeah, there you go. I realize that you do have to fit all your maps and textures onto a cd or dvd, so there is a limititation on the game designers there, but that really isn't an excuse. I would miss the usually funny in-game ads for ficticious products in FPS's though.
Sure, but let's be honest, the DVD player in the PS2 sucked. Skipping, freezing, a pain in the ass to control unless you bought the remote. I'm not exaggerating when I say that every single person I know that owns a PS2 bought a stand alone DVD player after the fact.
I never understood this, why isn't the plaintiff responsible for the defendant's legal costs if they lose? Mainly because that if a single person sues a big company, and the big company wins, the little guy is automatically forced into bankruptcy because he can't afford to pay the 150 lawyers the company has on retainer without selling his house, wife, kids and dog.
...before we celebrate, let's just hope that the result of this isn't that big companies will simply ignore / attempt to perpetually delay a judgement in order to bankrupt the little guy. After all, patent lawyers are among the most expensive lawyers out there and realistically, not everyone can afford to hire one for a year or two. And lawyers being lawyers, you'll have a hard time finding one that will stick around after you run out of money. And really, patent trolls will still be able to hunt for judges (and more importantly, travel cross country to for the court dates) and will still send out threatening letters and generally act like the leeches that they are. Meanwhile, the uspto will still grant stupid patents...
You seem to underestimate the power of tenure, especially when the professor and 25 of his best buddies (who teach your other class and may even be on the exam board) have it. People can be cunts in the academic world and get away with it.
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Did the fact that the drive is about 1/2 the cost of a 146 gig 15k cheetah give it away?
Sure, the 5 year warranty is nice, but I submited a RMA on 4/1/2006 for a 300 gig seagate drive and I still don't have a replacement because they are apparantly out of stock. Apparantly sata versions were oos as well... Kind of annoying.
Encouraging? How?
Did I post something like "CALL THAT FUCKING NUMBER OVER AND OVER! MAKE THEM PAAAAAAATYY!!11"
No, I did not.
Did I post something like "Sign up for a free account with skype for an more or less anonymous number"
No, I did not.
Also, the company that produces and markets defective products get screwed
Do they? Because the majority of class action suits I've seen involve giving the class a 20% off coupon at the offending company's online store, something like the netflix settlement or something that pretty much ensures that any financial reward the members of the class received will go to the offending company.
I'd be surprised if a majority of companies lost money overall due to the suits.
You're probably right :(
http://www.dmlaws.com
Phone numbers
866.827.6537 Toll Free
614.224.6000 Local
614.224.6066 Fax
Address
The Arena District
401 North Front Street
Suite 350
Columbus, Ohio 43215
If you wait outside their offices, you might even be able to say "Hi" to them and have a conversation about the case.
What's that? You don't know what they look like? Sure you do.
David P. Meyer, principal
Marnie C. Lambert, Associate Attorney Possible home address Possible home phone: (614) 469-1400
Patrick G. Warner, Associate Attorney
Shelly J. Coffman, consumer claims investigator
What are these people doing???
Making hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in "legal fees" from a case that will eventually get all the people in the class 5 free songs off iTunes.
Typical class action stuff. The lawyers win, we get screwed.
I saw (somewhere) that there would be a boot mode option (i.e. in the same menu as safe mode, debug, etc) for non-signed drivers. Not sure whether it was limited to 32 bit versions or if it would also be a possiblity in the 64 bit version. (Then again, which version of vista?, there are several)
And yes, verisign will make a shitload of money off this and this won't exactly be a detterent to anyone who wants to make rootkit level malware.
Remember windows xp 64 bit edition, x64 server 2003?
Drivers for x64 are still a problem and a fair bit of time has passed. The drivers that have been released suck - the ide controller driver is _slow_ and screws with audio, etc in x64.
I'm actually installing 2k3 32 bit on that box today, and have been looking forward to telling that indian shitbird at the activation line why I am doing so...
You haven't tried to install XP using a 5 year old CD on a box with a pci express card lately, have you?
It dies during the install, so you have to slipstream sp2 and re-burn. The drivers on the CD are slowly updated...
If there was a sound system included...
It looks like this is marketed to bored college students, which, I suppose, is fine, although I've installed about 10 systems that put this to shame in the last year or so. Those folks weren't making killer money, but were well established in their jobs...
Cost of the "dream package" is $2500 according to the article. It really depends what demographic they are trying to appeal to. If they are trying to appeal to students, sure, it is a great package, but if they are trying to appeal to folks who already do higher end work in game design, this isn't all that much. Heck, a 34" TV is about the smallest tv you can buy without going to the "tiny on purpose because you're going to put it in the kitchen" TVs.
The runner up prizes were worth under $400
At the very least, they could of have dropped in a lot of more games (5?) to push the price up. I'm sure they don't pay sticker.
Give an inch.... they take a mile.
What it basically comes down to is that there are enough corrupt politicians pretty much everywhere in the world for abusive legislation to get passed. These people, combined with the politicians who don't actually care about the issues to educate themselves is why we have problems. Not too many geeks going into politics....
That a "Xbox 360 console, a 34-inch HDTV, games, and accessories" is closer to "okay (or even feh)" than a "dream setup"?
Seems that the prizes are kind of cheap. I'm pretty sure Microsoft will get some pretty decent code out of this (or, if not code, ideas), but is only going to give something away as a token gesture.
Just another step in the devauluation of programmers and IT folks, I guess.
It fits a basic good v. bad story model, as it's hard for there to be much of a grey area when one side is shoving people into furnaces and gas chambers.
Maybe you missed this in your history books, but the allies repeatedly and intentionally made cities into ovens with the use of firebombs and the Russians left a trail of atrocities from Moscow to Berlin.
Not defending the SS, of course, you reap what you sow, but as for good and evil, somethimes the line blurs a bit. The allies did some pretty nasty stuff and most of it didn't happen by accident.
When a 500 GB hard drive costs $75, can be thrown across the room and have a chance of working
I have yet to see a tape that could survive being thrown across the room.
If you want an off-site backup -- simply arrange with a like-minded person (or company) to exchange your (encrypted) backups via the internet.
This becomes somewhat of a pain if you have over 30 gigs or so to back up each night.
Now, that isn't a problem for 95+% of the businesses out there, although a lot of those smaller businesses are still using horribly slow tape drives which is probably what drives the perception that tape sucks (and to be completely honest, it does, if you're using it in that sort of environment with that sort of hardware).
We backup our stuff to a couple different places on the net for additional redundancy, but there have been times when a webhost or a backup partner is down, so I'd have to argue that uploading the backup to more than 1 place is necessary.
I'd just like to point out that 5 years predictions (and plans based on those predictions) worked stunningly well for quite a few communist countries.
Please, for the love of god, NO. Floppies need to die.
If, instead of pulling out lembas bread in the movie, would it have been better if Sam would have pulled out Go-GURT® brand Yogurt?
No, but take for example a games like F.E.A.R, Doom 3 or Duke 3D. A coke, pepsi or vending machine isn't exactly out of place, and to be completely honest, not seeing one is odd. Ditto with billboards, or anything "painted" on the side of a building (instead of the same boring texture over and over).
And, of course, it would be pretty damn strange to have a coke ad in an RTS, although IIRC, Blizzard had rotating banner ads in the online game rooms in Starcraft (not quite "in game", I know, but...)
I can't help but think that product placements mar otherwise highly-polished stories.
The fact of the matter is that most of the games out there are actually pretty shallow, so filling them with advertising doesn't do all that much damage. That said, if you want to, you can make in game ads annoying. If every 10th building is a mcdonalds or whatever... yeah, there you go.
I realize that you do have to fit all your maps and textures onto a cd or dvd, so there is a limititation on the game designers there, but that really isn't an excuse.
I would miss the usually funny in-game ads for ficticious products in FPS's though.
Sure, but let's be honest, the DVD player in the PS2 sucked. Skipping, freezing, a pain in the ass to control unless you bought the remote. I'm not exaggerating when I say that every single person I know that owns a PS2 bought a stand alone DVD player after the fact.
Will this be any different with the ps3?
I never understood this, why isn't the plaintiff responsible for the defendant's legal costs if they lose?
Mainly because that if a single person sues a big company, and the big company wins, the little guy is automatically forced into bankruptcy because he can't afford to pay the 150 lawyers the company has on retainer without selling his house, wife, kids and dog.
...before we celebrate, let's just hope that the result of this isn't that big companies will simply ignore / attempt to perpetually delay a judgement in order to bankrupt the little guy.
After all, patent lawyers are among the most expensive lawyers out there and realistically, not everyone can afford to hire one for a year or two. And lawyers being lawyers, you'll have a hard time finding one that will stick around after you run out of money.
And really, patent trolls will still be able to hunt for judges (and more importantly, travel cross country to for the court dates) and will still send out threatening letters and generally act like the leeches that they are.
Meanwhile, the uspto will still grant stupid patents...
Just don't let Hillary have the list she will probably want to check and see if I have called the local Gun Store.
But, as we all know, the government, regardless of who is president, would never, never turn over such records.
Riight.
Open your eyes bucko.
You seem to underestimate the power of tenure, especially when the professor and 25 of his best buddies (who teach your other class and may even be on the exam board) have it.
People can be cunts in the academic world and get away with it.