I've been using them less than a month, and I've had enough problems that I was already considering dumping them and going with DSL. It's already costing me more than local DSL providers charge.
A price increase would be the straw that broke the camel's back.
My provider is a (fairly) local one (southern Ontario/Quebec), and provides residential DSL (dynamic IP) for $30 CDN, but you have to get your own DSL modem.
The phone company around here (Bell) is $35 CDN + tax, including modem rental, so about $40 CDN after tax (in Ontario).
I don't know corporate level prices very well, just residential prices around here.
Have to be 18+ too, there goes the largest (I wouldn't say best, though) pool of shit-talking talent too. Looks like all of those Half-Life script kiddies who swear every second word can't enter.
Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably a GOOD thing...
Someone else has already mentioned that the contest is only open to "legal residents of the United States, excluding Florida, New York, and Rhode Island"...
Anybody else find it kind of strange that the game is set in New York, yet New Yorkers can't win the contest?:)
Yes, diesel is pretty common in North America because of trucking, farming, etc.
I haven't heard of any trucks (as in the big rigs, not pickups) that AREN'T diesel, and a lot of farm and construction equipment (espeically the bigger stuff) is diesel as well.
Pity the price of diesel has doubled recently over here, but with milage like that...
Better coffee (be it better tasting, just a bit cheaper because of larger crops, or something else) could lead to the NASA Engineers being able to pull more all nighters and get us to Mars sooner!
The road to Mars is paved with double cream, double sugar!
So we've gone from very low level and unadvanced in holo-technology to this?
Don't mind me if I'm a little bit skeptical.
Frankly, this is a bit too much out of the blue until there's a bit of proof to go with it.
Either these guys are geniouses - both in their ability to make this stuff and their ability to not have anybody find out until now, or the writer(s) of that article are exaggerating the abilities of this new technology.
Anybody who's done team-based programming competitions (at least those that were moderately successful, and even most of the ones that weren't) should know this from experience.
As someone who's done both team based and solo competitions, working in pairs GREATLY reduces debugging time, both in the other person catching errors when you make them, and having two sets of eyes looking for the bad code after the fact.
Oh, I remember that most of the big games came on more than one CD. FF7 would have been around 40-50 cartridges on the N64 though.
Imagine the boxes for those games, and the price of all of those cartridges.
And actually, there is ONE multi-cart game for the N64 that I know of, that Donkey Kong game. Can't remember the name, but it was on 2 cartridges. It was also noticably more expensive than other games.
Is emphasizing the platform really such a terrible thing when the platform is the best thing out there?
If you had a market strategy that worked well for you, would you change it to one similar to the one an opponent is (was) using?
The N64 was a far better platform than the PS1 as far as ability went, but there were 2 problems.
1) It used cartridges, greatly limiting what you could put in a game. Doesn't matter what the console can do if you can't fit it in the game. Cartridges were also more expensive. This isn't really relevant to the PS2, but I suspect if I hadn't mentioned it, somebody would have jumped down my throat.
2) It was a pain to program for. Their development kit was apparantly quite bad for the N64, and pretty much the only people that really knew how to program for it well were Nintendo's in-house programmers. The PS1 didn't really have that problem, but the PS2 has it in spades. Frankly, it doesn't matter how good the system is when you have to jump through a few hundred hoops to use the advanced features.
As for MS, odds are that the XBox will be made in such a way to allow for easy ports direct from PC. This makes it MUCH cheaper for developers to release their PC games for it. But frankly, the XBox specs (while quite impressive at first glace) aren't nearly as impressive compared to the PS2 or Gamecube when you know something about console architecture. Though I suspect there will be a whole lot of wanna-be's that are taken in by the clockspeed.
I can't speak for other juridictions, but in Ontario (as well as the rest of Canada, and I suspect the US as well), Engineers are legally liable for bad engineering. Engineering Ethics states that if they know of a flaw in a project they're working on that could lead to the loss of property or life, they're legally require to bring it to light. First with their employer, then with the customer (if it isn't an internal project), then to their Engineering Society (like the IEEE). Leaking it to the media is an absolute last resort, and is highly frowned upon.
If they don't, they risk losing their liscense to practice Engineering (like malpractice for doctors).
That's what bugs me the most about Challenger... the engineers KNEW about the fault that caused the explosion, they'd come close to having similar explosions during testing and knew the problem hadn't been fixed.
I immediately changed my plans for the future when that happened. Sure, I was only 6 at the time, but hey:)
At least some good things came from that disaster. The safety measures on shuttle launches have taken leaps and bounds forward because of that. Also, they (NASA) realized that shuttle launches shouldn't be treated as "routine" as they were then, no matter how many safety features there are.
It was just a tragedy that a disaster like that had to happen for all of those good things to happen.
According to recent news pieces on TV I've seen, Air Canada plans on introducing this within the next six months. Boeing should be rolling out the planes for that within that time period.
Whether or not those planes are modified specifically for Air Canada or for Boeing's larger plan, I don't know.
Not true. The tax only applies to commercially sold media. Recording companies have access to wholesale media, and if they're pressing CDs instead of burning them, then it's different media anyway.
Bulk orders on blank media aren't being levvied in Canada.
You're seeing the piracy issue, good for you. This isn't about that.
Know that disclaimer at the end of most sporting events (like Major League Baseball games)? Or other re-transmission disclaimers on many TV shows?
Most of them mention not only the illegal stuff, but specifically do not include recording it for private use. If you aren't re-transmitting it or profiting from it in any way, then it's generally legal.
Note this generally only applies to something on TV, not to rentals, etc. Don't think it applies to Pay-Per-View either, could be wrong.
I can't remember how many months I spent before the release of Diablo II trying to tell people that the realms didn't make it hack-proof, just harder to hack. Saying it was hack-proof was inviting trouble.
The only computer that can't be hacked over the internet is a computer that can't be accessed over the internet.
The thing that has to be noted is the difference between innovation and invention, that's what the article is saying. Invention is indicating that it didn't exist before in the span of human knowledge (or at least in the span of the inventor's knowledge), nor did anything similar. It is something that has no direct predecessor.
Innovation, however, indicates a refinement or improvement on existing inventions.
Yes, innovation was at a much higher level in the past 50 years than ever before, but how much of that was NEW? Bigger, better, faster, cheaper - yes, but actually new? Completely unseen before?
This article wasn't trying to say that inventions haven't improved faster in the last 50 years, but that the impact of those improvements has been minimal compared to the inventions from the first 50 years of the century.
Guess this means that script kiddies can nuke countries instead of just other computers now...
(I know, it's not quite that bad)
But in all seriousness, this could be pretty bad. Who knows what kind of information is "protected" on windows machines. Who knows who might get their hands on plans for various weapons, etc, or just cause havoc with various databases throughout governments worldwide.
Maybe they should get some of those copy protected hard drives:)
Well, you have to remember that there has to be ALTERNATIVES for a boycott to work.
For many of the more technically inclined, Linux works for that. But what about those that aren't knowledgable (or at least don't think they are) to run those alternatives? These are the people who use their computers for mostly office work, and will stick to the big name products (primarily MS Offic, and Corel WordPerfect to a lesser extent).
And just to remind you, they are the major market share. If the big name products start requiring this, then they WILL follow.
However, MS does appear to be against this (probably requires a lot of recoding for some Windows routines - just a guess), lending some very big resistance. I suspect many other software developers might be against it to, such as Symantec and McAfee (I wonder what that would do to virus writing - might make them close to impossible to remove).
Microsoft on the side of freedom of access? Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?
Then there's the issue of liscencing. If this becomes the standard, and software starts requiring it, what happens if companies start getting denied the liscence to put this in their storage media? It's a potential monopoly problem as well.
Though with all the demons this releases from it's Pandora's Box, remember that there are very good uses for this technology - specifically where there is a need to protect critical data. Just think of all of those government and corporate servers around the world that this could be used in to protect confidential data.
I'd like to see this technology get into that sector, just keep it away from the standard for consumer electronics.
If the discrimination has a rational basis, then what's wrong with it?
That's just it - the genetic tests only reveal the CHANCE that something is wrong.
Or more accurately, the increased chance that something (specific) might go wrong. Same thing you can more or less get from geneology records. Are you suggesting that someone should be fired because his father and grandfather both died of cancer?
How about men over 40, who have an increased chance of prostate cancer? Or older women, with an increased chance of breast cancer?
It's basically a stereotype. "Oh, so-and-so has such-and-such a gene, they're going to get (insert disease here)!"
It'd be like firing someone who is gay because they're more likely to get AIDS - illegal and wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using them less than a month, and I've had enough problems that I was already considering dumping them and going with DSL. It's already costing me more than local DSL providers charge.
A price increase would be the straw that broke the camel's back.
I live in Canada, yeah :)
My provider is a (fairly) local one (southern Ontario/Quebec), and provides residential DSL (dynamic IP) for $30 CDN, but you have to get your own DSL modem.
The phone company around here (Bell) is $35 CDN + tax, including modem rental, so about $40 CDN after tax (in Ontario).
I don't know corporate level prices very well, just residential prices around here.
She was paying $50 US a month for residential-level DSL service?
I don't blame her for cancelling it!
If you're paying anywhere NEAR that much for residential DSL, somebody is ripping you off somewhere along the line.
You shouldn't be paying more than $35 US unless you're using corporate level DSL, or have a static IP and are renting the DSL modem...
Recent studies on it have actually found it to be the paint used on it that made it go up in flames.
Have to be 18+ too, there goes the largest (I wouldn't say best, though) pool of shit-talking talent too. Looks like all of those Half-Life script kiddies who swear every second word can't enter.
Actually, now that I think about it, that's probably a GOOD thing...
Dark Nexus
Someone else has already mentioned that the contest is only open to "legal residents of the United States, excluding Florida, New York, and Rhode Island"...
:)
Anybody else find it kind of strange that the game is set in New York, yet New Yorkers can't win the contest?
Dark Nexus
Yes, diesel is pretty common in North America because of trucking, farming, etc.
I haven't heard of any trucks (as in the big rigs, not pickups) that AREN'T diesel, and a lot of farm and construction equipment (espeically the bigger stuff) is diesel as well.
Pity the price of diesel has doubled recently over here, but with milage like that...
Dark Nexus
Better coffee (be it better tasting, just a bit cheaper because of larger crops, or something else) could lead to the NASA Engineers being able to pull more all nighters and get us to Mars sooner!
The road to Mars is paved with double cream, double sugar!
Dark Nexus
So we've gone from very low level and unadvanced in holo-technology to this?
Don't mind me if I'm a little bit skeptical.
Frankly, this is a bit too much out of the blue until there's a bit of proof to go with it.
Either these guys are geniouses - both in their ability to make this stuff and their ability to not have anybody find out until now, or the writer(s) of that article are exaggerating the abilities of this new technology.
Dark Nexus
Anybody who's done team-based programming competitions (at least those that were moderately successful, and even most of the ones that weren't) should know this from experience.
As someone who's done both team based and solo competitions, working in pairs GREATLY reduces debugging time, both in the other person catching errors when you make them, and having two sets of eyes looking for the bad code after the fact.
Dark Nexus
Oh, I remember that most of the big games came on more than one CD. FF7 would have been around 40-50 cartridges on the N64 though.
Imagine the boxes for those games, and the price of all of those cartridges.
And actually, there is ONE multi-cart game for the N64 that I know of, that Donkey Kong game. Can't remember the name, but it was on 2 cartridges. It was also noticably more expensive than other games.
Dark Nexus
Is emphasizing the platform really such a terrible thing when the platform is the best thing out there?
If you had a market strategy that worked well for you, would you change it to one similar to the one an opponent is (was) using?
The N64 was a far better platform than the PS1 as far as ability went, but there were 2 problems.
1) It used cartridges, greatly limiting what you could put in a game. Doesn't matter what the console can do if you can't fit it in the game. Cartridges were also more expensive. This isn't really relevant to the PS2, but I suspect if I hadn't mentioned it, somebody would have jumped down my throat.
2) It was a pain to program for. Their development kit was apparantly quite bad for the N64, and pretty much the only people that really knew how to program for it well were Nintendo's in-house programmers. The PS1 didn't really have that problem, but the PS2 has it in spades. Frankly, it doesn't matter how good the system is when you have to jump through a few hundred hoops to use the advanced features.
As for MS, odds are that the XBox will be made in such a way to allow for easy ports direct from PC. This makes it MUCH cheaper for developers to release their PC games for it. But frankly, the XBox specs (while quite impressive at first glace) aren't nearly as impressive compared to the PS2 or Gamecube when you know something about console architecture. Though I suspect there will be a whole lot of wanna-be's that are taken in by the clockspeed.
Dark Nexus
I know....
But as I said, they're bound to go above their bosses if their bosses ignore the problem. At least here in Ontario.
But then, that's now. Events like that could have changed the regulations regarding Engineering Ethics as well.
Dark Nexus
I can't speak for other juridictions, but in Ontario (as well as the rest of Canada, and I suspect the US as well), Engineers are legally liable for bad engineering. Engineering Ethics states that if they know of a flaw in a project they're working on that could lead to the loss of property or life, they're legally require to bring it to light. First with their employer, then with the customer (if it isn't an internal project), then to their Engineering Society (like the IEEE). Leaking it to the media is an absolute last resort, and is highly frowned upon.
If they don't, they risk losing their liscense to practice Engineering (like malpractice for doctors).
That's what bugs me the most about Challenger... the engineers KNEW about the fault that caused the explosion, they'd come close to having similar explosions during testing and knew the problem hadn't been fixed.
Dark Nexus
I immediately changed my plans for the future when that happened. Sure, I was only 6 at the time, but hey :)
At least some good things came from that disaster. The safety measures on shuttle launches have taken leaps and bounds forward because of that. Also, they (NASA) realized that shuttle launches shouldn't be treated as "routine" as they were then, no matter how many safety features there are.
It was just a tragedy that a disaster like that had to happen for all of those good things to happen.
Dark Nexus
According to recent news pieces on TV I've seen, Air Canada plans on introducing this within the next six months. Boeing should be rolling out the planes for that within that time period.
Whether or not those planes are modified specifically for Air Canada or for Boeing's larger plan, I don't know.
Dark Nexus
Not true. The tax only applies to commercially sold media. Recording companies have access to wholesale media, and if they're pressing CDs instead of burning them, then it's different media anyway.
Bulk orders on blank media aren't being levvied in Canada.
Dark Nexus
You're seeing the piracy issue, good for you. This isn't about that.
Know that disclaimer at the end of most sporting events (like Major League Baseball games)? Or other re-transmission disclaimers on many TV shows?
Most of them mention not only the illegal stuff, but specifically do not include recording it for private use. If you aren't re-transmitting it or profiting from it in any way, then it's generally legal.
Note this generally only applies to something on TV, not to rentals, etc. Don't think it applies to Pay-Per-View either, could be wrong.
Dark Nexus
Some people have suggested it is a technical problem, which is quite possible.
:)
But if it isn't technical, doesn't this infringe on fair use?
Someone should start a class action lawsuit against Sony for infringing on fair use of CD-Rs
But in all seriousness, where would the law stand on something like that? Does such a thing actually infringe on fair use?
After all, making compilation CDs of music you already own is perfectly legal.
Could be worth looking into.
Dark Nexus
I can't remember how many months I spent before the release of Diablo II trying to tell people that the realms didn't make it hack-proof, just harder to hack. Saying it was hack-proof was inviting trouble.
The only computer that can't be hacked over the internet is a computer that can't be accessed over the internet.
Dark Nexus
The thing that has to be noted is the difference between innovation and invention, that's what the article is saying. Invention is indicating that it didn't exist before in the span of human knowledge (or at least in the span of the inventor's knowledge), nor did anything similar. It is something that has no direct predecessor.
Innovation, however, indicates a refinement or improvement on existing inventions.
Yes, innovation was at a much higher level in the past 50 years than ever before, but how much of that was NEW? Bigger, better, faster, cheaper - yes, but actually new? Completely unseen before?
This article wasn't trying to say that inventions haven't improved faster in the last 50 years, but that the impact of those improvements has been minimal compared to the inventions from the first 50 years of the century.
Dark Nexus
Guess this means that script kiddies can nuke countries instead of just other computers now...
:)
(I know, it's not quite that bad)
But in all seriousness, this could be pretty bad. Who knows what kind of information is "protected" on windows machines. Who knows who might get their hands on plans for various weapons, etc, or just cause havoc with various databases throughout governments worldwide.
Maybe they should get some of those copy protected hard drives
Dark Nexus
Well, you have to remember that there has to be ALTERNATIVES for a boycott to work.
For many of the more technically inclined, Linux works for that. But what about those that aren't knowledgable (or at least don't think they are) to run those alternatives? These are the people who use their computers for mostly office work, and will stick to the big name products (primarily MS Offic, and Corel WordPerfect to a lesser extent).
And just to remind you, they are the major market share. If the big name products start requiring this, then they WILL follow.
However, MS does appear to be against this (probably requires a lot of recoding for some Windows routines - just a guess), lending some very big resistance. I suspect many other software developers might be against it to, such as Symantec and McAfee (I wonder what that would do to virus writing - might make them close to impossible to remove).
Microsoft on the side of freedom of access? Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?
Then there's the issue of liscencing. If this becomes the standard, and software starts requiring it, what happens if companies start getting denied the liscence to put this in their storage media? It's a potential monopoly problem as well.
Though with all the demons this releases from it's Pandora's Box, remember that there are very good uses for this technology - specifically where there is a need to protect critical data. Just think of all of those government and corporate servers around the world that this could be used in to protect confidential data.
I'd like to see this technology get into that sector, just keep it away from the standard for consumer electronics.
Dark Nexus
If it is illegal, then why did she loose her insurance coverage
It probably wasn't HER insurance coverage, but an employee health plan. Lose your job, lose the coverage.
Dark Nexus
If the discrimination has a rational basis, then what's wrong with it?
That's just it - the genetic tests only reveal the CHANCE that something is wrong.
Or more accurately, the increased chance that something (specific) might go wrong. Same thing you can more or less get from geneology records. Are you suggesting that someone should be fired because his father and grandfather both died of cancer?
How about men over 40, who have an increased chance of prostate cancer? Or older women, with an increased chance of breast cancer?
It's basically a stereotype. "Oh, so-and-so has such-and-such a gene, they're going to get (insert disease here)!"
It'd be like firing someone who is gay because they're more likely to get AIDS - illegal and wrong.
Dark Nexus