Other people get me killed. In WoW, my rogue solos in places where a group would get wiped out. Particularly when all the group members don't know each others combat styles and adjust accordingly. I spend more time chatting with friends than questing with them.
Maybe I should go down to the Gulf of Mexico and clean up all the oil spills from the off-shore drilling rigs that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But there were none. Some bad stuff happened to some people though.
Ain't it gonna be a bitch if they prove that polution is a key factor in the record number of hurricanes we've had this year? Steroids in livestock, antibiotics in livestock, over fertilization of farm lands. Those won't ever affect us, will they? Clearcutting forests, we NEED that wood for houses. Think of the PEOPLE.
Here's the problem with attitudes like yours; you haven't learned that we have evolved to live in our current environment. When we change that, it eventually comes back to bite us in the ass. I'm not one of those people that thinks we're detroying the earth, that's pretty arrogant of us. Short of completely blowing it to hell, the Earth will be here long after we're gone. The question is, how long can we continue to change the environment and expect those PEOPLE you are worried about to still live here.
And to change it simply because it's too inconvenient to consider alternatives, well that's simply moronic. Iceland has found that they can use geothermal energy to produce hydrogen. Not only are they planning to stop importing oil entirely, they are looking for ways to export power to Europe. In the US, we won't do geothermal in Hawaii because it's "too noisy". No need to research quieter methods, it's 'cheaper' to just drill an oil well where we can't see it.
As far as Biodiesel is concerned, you are correct on the natural rubber problem on older vehicles. Biodiesel also has a detergent effect so older cars should have their tanks cleaned first, or you're liable to ruin your injectors.
Veggie oil has different problems. You still need diesel and you have to use it when you start up and shut down. So you need to maintain two fuel tanks. You'll also need to heat the oil in colder climates.
And if you decide to make your own fuel (ethanol, bio, or veggie) make sure you understand the tax implications. You are still responsible for road use taxes.
Well, as I see it, aren't the costs of those wars effectively subsidies on petrofuels?
Absolutely. The war in Iraq is a 19% subsidy on gasoline/diesel. Granted, that doesn't take into account other petroleum usage, but it also doesn't consider higher costs not directly related to the war, such as increased 'homeland security'.
1. Annul all gas taxes 2. Get rid of boutique fuel mixes making refineries wealthy
Neither of these is entirely under NY's control. $0.18 of tax per gallon is federal tax. And the special fuels are generally required because of air quality issues, which are regulated by the EPA.
In reality though, there's not much chance of biofuels taking off until Haliburton supplies them.
If you oppose drilling for oil in ANWR you ought to be forced to vacation there every year. It's a beautiful wilderness paradise, isn't it? Caribou are more important than people, aren't they? Go visit then.
And if you support drilling there, you should be forced to vacation cleaning up oil spills. Actually, I think you should probably live in an oil field or next to a refinery, but I think you'd find an oil spill distasteful enough.
But anyway, I have some vacation time coming up around June. I go spend a week at ANWR if you'll go clean oil off of previously pristine coastline.
I mean, because that's the only alternative, right? It's either people or caribou. You'll die without your 8 mpg SUV that couldn't possibly burn anything but dino fuel. Here's an interesting fact I just found; go to Ford's website and look at an Excursion. Fuel Economy: N/A. Note says look at the Excursion website. Excursion Website/Specifications - Fuel Econmay: N/A. Must be really high, don't ya think? And yet we give tax rebates for buying them.
Jeez, that reads like a NewEgg commercial. The only company I've ever been forced to do a chargeback on because they wouldn't stand behind their product. The VISA rep said it was the most bizarre response they have received from any merchant, and reversed the charges.
You have a narrow view of the market. I purchase gasoline with 10% ethanol. My purchase increases the demand for ethanol. That demand translates into the market price for ethanol. The market will find it's balance.
From another aspect, I recently had a conversation with consumer relations at Chrysler. I have decided my next vehicle purchase will be diesel. Chrysler manufactures a diesel Liberty annd they are considering the Commander, but not the Wrangler. Wrangler is all that interests me, I won't be buying a Jeep. My purchase will go towards the demand of a competing product. It will also translate to a change in demand for diesel cars in general, as well as diesel (or ideally, biodiesel) demand. In the future when Chrysler is making decisions for future models they will look at what is selling and what is not, and plan appropriately. Want to make a prediction on how many resources US automakers will allocate to big SUVs in the next few years? Personally, I expect a swing back towards smaller cars as a result of one person here and one person there influencing the market.
Maybe my demand is like a grain of sand on the beach. Some markets are huge. But if everybody said "I'm too small to make a difference, so I won't bother", then there would be no demand and the product would fail.
At my local grocery I have noticed a subtle shift over the years. I live in a relatively small town and have shopped at the same place for 5 years. Products that I use on a regular basis have increased shelf space. Either I'm just lucky, or my demand has affected that store's buying practices.
Producers and consumers drive change. They are the market. If you think the market is irrational, you aren't looking at all of it's influences.
You answered your own question about why we don't use more bio-fuels. Bio-fuel isn't a silver bullet technology that will make fossil fuels go away overnight. That's what people are looking for. For every alternative energy that I have looked at for over two decades, there have been people saying they are too expensive, can't provide enough power, and are not cost effective. (Battery technology isn't good enough. Hydrogen is a storage medium, not a power source. Solar would require covering [pick your favorite western state] with cells to produce enough power. Wind turbines kill birds and change migratory paths. We can't dispose of nuclear waste.)
I particularly like the 'too expensive' argument. The cost of Biodiesel is roughly on par with dino diesel at current oil prices. Without even calculating in hidden fossil fuel costs, it's a reasonable alternative. Hidden costs? $80 billion a year in Iraq. 40 billion gallons of fuel at $2 a gallon. Of the cuff calculation; we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. A barrel produces 29 gallons of diesel/gasoline. One year in Iraq would pay for 69 days of fuel. So there is a 19% surcharge on fossil fuel. BTW, that leads me to one premise of the article that I disagree with; I don't believe people are looking at alternative fuels because they fear global warming. It's simply the outrageous increase in fuel costs. 50% increase in fuel, natural gas, and heating oil in a year.
But you are incorrect about one thing. You cannot use 100% ethanol in an unmodified gasoline engine. (at least not most, there are some special ones produced for E100) Ethanol burns too hot and it will destroy your engine. But gasohol (10% ethanol) can be used. 46k out of 50k miles on my truck were powered by gasohol.
Biodiesel seems like a better alternative than ethanol, because it can be used in any diesel motor manufactured in the last decade. And reasonably trivial to convert older motors. We should be encouraging car manufacturers to be test marketing more diesel cars in the US instead of hybrids, which are questionable in regards to ROI. It's a small step for them, they're are already building them for Europe.
Now they can meet their obligation with these little boxes rather than putting you up in a real room.
If your flight gets canceled, you are probably more interested in catching the earliest flight rather than the size of your room. Like others have said, 10 square meters isn't that small anyway.
The last time my flight got canceled, (Delta, mechanical problems on the first leg of the flight) I got to spend the night in Salt Lake City. It's 10pm, they've rebooked me on a 6am. So it's leave the gate, go to the ticket counter to get new tickets and various coupons for the night. Then wait for the hotel shuttle and get checked in. Make it to the room around 11:30. Next morning, up at 4am, get ready, check out, catch shuttle, and then wait for someone to show up at the gate. Do I really care about the room where I slept 4 hours and took a shower? As long as it's clean, quiet, and the alarm clock works. And if it had actually been in the terminal it would have given me another couple hours.
If I'm going to be annoyed at the airline, it would be because of the cancelled connecting flight. Which, BTW, is why I don't fly United if there is an option. I've never missed a connecting flight with them, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
DOB and SSN are what distinguish my name from my fathers. I'd say it's safe to say that we have both had the same address in the past. There are plenty of other people with the same experience. My best friend, for example.
Zipcode +4 doesn't necessarily distinguish a unique street address. Address comparisons are notoriously unreliable. My address for instance is on a Drive. It could be spelled out or abbreviated DR. It could be left off, or it could be confused with a nearby Lane or LN. All of which would get my mail to me, because my mailman is a human, but would all kick out in a computer comparison as different addresses.
If you have any type of credit card, loan, or bank account and they don't have your SSN, then you definately live in a different world than I do. And you can bet, given that they have this unique data point, it is the first means of comparison they use.
6. they are misfiled in a million tape library. 7. the boxes were improperly labeled when they were sent to offsite storage and are misfiled. 8. they were accidentally destroyed with other old tapes. 9. the tapes were mislabeled. (internal label doesn't match physical label)
BTW, that's Tape Ape. You're confusing that with Code Monkey.
They need to keep your SSN for tax purposes. Depending on your agreement, the loan to 'buy' your timeshare is considered a mortgage. So they need to report interest to the IRS. Not to mention, a credit agency is going to use your SSN to avoid simple name collisions.
As far as keeping your credit card number, they could be requiring it to cover maintenance fees or it's possible customers are automatically having their loan payments charged to their credit card. I do that with a couple of my monthly expenses so I don't have to write a check. (having both electronic withdrawals and automatic billing to credit cards, I prefer the latter)
While I suppose you can get around these by buying the timeshare outright, and prepaying maintenance fees, most customers do not want to do that.
IS continues to evolve. If you have the chance, take a look at the upcoming release of IIS7. It has some great features, including >4GB memory addressing to run robust ASP.NET applications in high demand areas.
4gb to run web applications is just obscene.
I'll admit Apache is a stable platform. But the internals and complexity of the code have pushed in into a risky venture for business as there doesn't appear to be a forth-coming upgrade or maintenance schedule.
One of the nicest things about Apache is I have never been pressured to upgrade. I run Apache 1.3x on all my servers. I run it in an enterprise environment. Apache acts as the SOAP middletier (database access and business logic) for hundreds of users. On top of that, it shares the machine with the barcode printer printserver and host service (custom telnet) for all of our wireless scanners. If I remember correctly, that machine has 512m RAM, and runs on a PII 450 with Win2k Server. In that environment, Apache takes less CPU/RAM than TrendMicro's virus scanner. And yes, this is a business critical server.
BTW, that system has plenty of available CPU, although I'm getting a little worried about the 6 or 7 year old HDs.
If you consider Axapta, do your homework and get your staff trained. You need people who are good at tuning servers. Axapta doesn't scale well. There are very few resources available, short of hiring a solutions partner. You should also plan to use the stock configuration whenever possible, it will make life much easier. And of course like you said, deep pockets.
That's ok, I have a bunch of WinCE (Windows Mobile) wireless scanners that have web servers running on them. They aren't configured to do anything, just sit there and eat up precious resources. I'd turn them off, but that means a 4 day detour through HQ every time one goes in for repair. Even better, the web server and it's configuration are stored on the 'safe' part of the drive, but the NIC configuration is stored on ramdisk.
We've made progress over the years, but we're still fighting clueless configuration defaults. I don't think it's a comsumer vs corporate thing. I think they just find something they thing is 'cool' and want us all to use it, whether it's useful or not.
Whereas in MMOs you generally concern yourself with uptime and bandwidth limits.:)
Not really. What you need is uptime and reasonable latency. You'll see a difference between 150ms and 500ms, and if it gets higher it will start frustrating players. Bandwidth really isn't a concern for the players, the game are low traffic. (if you're on dialup, the latency is the problem, not the bandwidth)
Years ago there was a rumor going around that Time Warner was going to start metering their cable to deal with P2P users. At the time I was playing AC, so I checked it's traffic. You'll transfer more data reading Slashdot for an hour than AC will in a day. I haven't checked WoW, but I doubt it's much worse. A lot of processing is passed to the client so they don't have to invest any more $$$ in server hardware than necessary.
The only time bandwidth is a concern is when Blizzard steals their customers resources to distribute their patches.
Over the last year I have seen two changes in my Roadrunner service. An increase from 2mbit to 5mbit, that I hardly noticed. And a decrease in my monthly charge from $45 to $29 when competition came to town. Until some new killer app comes around, I'm more interested in universal service than I am faster connections. I want to buy a few acres and move out of town, but I'm not willing to go back to dialup. (or a wired phone)
I've seen this posted in a lot in replies here. I don't think it matters. I work with users of all levels of expertise. People who can't log into windows because someone has changed the login name to MCSEs. I don't think a window being too large has ever been a problem. Also, inexperienced users don't tend to have the super large displays either. At home they buy the budget machines, and at work they get the 'trickle down' equipment when the more savvy users upgrade. From my experience, if you are worried about inexperienced users, you'll want to design for the smaller displays.
So do you have some tips for designing a site's top bar so that it will look good both in a 1600 pixel wide window and in a 320 pixel wide window?
It's kind of interesting; sites whose original, or primary focus was the web tend to get it right. Slashdot, Yahoo, The Register, Wired. Big media companys, OTOH, have absolutely no concept of sizeable web sites. Look at CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, for good examples on how NOT to do it.
Something you should remember as a web site designer; many people do not wish to devote the entire screen to our browser. It doesn't matter whether I'm at 1024 on my laptop or 1280 on my desktop, you're not getting the whole thing. Few apps get maximized; my IDE and games. Everything else has to share. As a result, if I have to scroll to read your site, I'm not likely to be a regular visitor. I also find it hugely annoying when websites have music, but that's a whole other rant.
Assuming that your goal is to attract visitors, you're better to design for a lower resolution and then expand when possible.
It's not that T/M rated games would become more difficult to find because of this legislation. It's that they wouldn't be made at all (or at least there would be many fewer of lesser quality), because what company is going to spend millions of dollars on something that it basically can't sell?
You're right. That's why we don't have alcohol, cigarettes, and guns. Playboy and Penthouse went out of business when they couldn't be sold to just anyone. And obviously, if you can't get your product on the shelves at the #1 retailer in America you should just give up making it.
The problem with AO rated games is NOT a fear of fines or an inability to get them into game stores. The problem is that the market is too small to earn the profits that game producers expect. Every step you go up the ratings ladder cuts your potential market. If you can make 2 games this year, do you want to be able to sell to 25% of the game playing market or 100%?
don't know a single person at work or friends that downloads music from iTunes or any other pay-per-song service. It's too expensive! Yes, I think a buck a song is too much - especially considering that the artist get almost nothing, Apple gets a little more, and the RIAA gets the rest.
I looked at iTunes and thought, you want to cut out all the distribution costs and charge me as much or more? For that privilege I get DRM laden data files and NO tangible product. Of course, with this whole Sony rootkit thing, I'm now wondering what I risk by using one of their CDs in my computer. Riskier CDs don't make iTunes any better, they just makes me more apprehensive about buying music in general. Once upon a time the worst thing you had to worry about is one hit CDs.
Why, there's no problem at all. Unless, err, um, stores start refusing to carry *anything* rated higher than 'E' because of the fines involved. Then *no one* will be able to buy T or M rated games, because they won't be made any more.
Walmart doesn't carry any music that has a 'Parental Advisory', does that make it unavailable? Possibly more difficult to find, if you can say anything is difficult to find in the age of the Internet, and certainly will cut into sales for adult content providers, but it hasn't ceased to exist.
There was never any justification for that content to be in the game. This is not like "oh, we forgot to turn off the debug code". From a management perspective, it's questionable whether the content should have ever been created. That isn't the audience the game was targetting, and it's simply immature that it was ever inserted into the game. If I intentionally did something that caused my employer that level of liability, I'd expect to be escorted from the building.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with ratings meaning what they are supposed to mean. And if the gaming industry can't police themselves, then maybe a few regulations will help. Either that, or we can just rate all Rockstar games as Adult until they prove there is no 'accidental' content.
And no, it's not like the Playboy channel. Playboy specifically targets a particular market. They don't hide the fact. Your cable company publically states that the content is available. They don't say "well, it wasn't supposed to be there, but if you hadn't hacked our signal you wouldn't have seen it". And if someone tried to sue them for it, they wouldn't spout a load of bullshit, they'd turn around and sue for cable theft.
Of course, then again, I think I'd find the Playboy channel less objectionable that some of the games on the market today.
Slashdot Mirror
Other people get me killed. In WoW, my rogue solos in places where a group would get wiped out. Particularly when all the group members don't know each others combat styles and adjust accordingly. I spend more time chatting with friends than questing with them.
Maybe I should go down to the Gulf of Mexico and clean up all the oil spills from the off-shore drilling rigs that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But there were none. Some bad stuff happened to some people though.
Ain't it gonna be a bitch if they prove that polution is a key factor in the record number of hurricanes we've had this year? Steroids in livestock, antibiotics in livestock, over fertilization of farm lands. Those won't ever affect us, will they? Clearcutting forests, we NEED that wood for houses. Think of the PEOPLE.
Here's the problem with attitudes like yours; you haven't learned that we have evolved to live in our current environment. When we change that, it eventually comes back to bite us in the ass. I'm not one of those people that thinks we're detroying the earth, that's pretty arrogant of us. Short of completely blowing it to hell, the Earth will be here long after we're gone. The question is, how long can we continue to change the environment and expect those PEOPLE you are worried about to still live here.
And to change it simply because it's too inconvenient to consider alternatives, well that's simply moronic. Iceland has found that they can use geothermal energy to produce hydrogen. Not only are they planning to stop importing oil entirely, they are looking for ways to export power to Europe. In the US, we won't do geothermal in Hawaii because it's "too noisy". No need to research quieter methods, it's 'cheaper' to just drill an oil well where we can't see it.
ANWR is a short sighted and short lived solution.
Pretty much all major auto manufacturers produce cars ready for operation on straight ethanol these days, IIRC.
m l
They are available, but most cars can NOT run E85 without modifications
http://www.gm.com/company/onlygm/fuel_flexible.ht
As far as Biodiesel is concerned, you are correct on the natural rubber problem on older vehicles. Biodiesel also has a detergent effect so older cars should have their tanks cleaned first, or you're liable to ruin your injectors.
Veggie oil has different problems. You still need diesel and you have to use it when you start up and shut down. So you need to maintain two fuel tanks. You'll also need to heat the oil in colder climates.
And if you decide to make your own fuel (ethanol, bio, or veggie) make sure you understand the tax implications. You are still responsible for road use taxes.
Well, as I see it, aren't the costs of those wars effectively subsidies on petrofuels?
Absolutely. The war in Iraq is a 19% subsidy on gasoline/diesel. Granted, that doesn't take into account other petroleum usage, but it also doesn't consider higher costs not directly related to the war, such as increased 'homeland security'.
If New York wants cheaper fuel, do two things:
1. Annul all gas taxes
2. Get rid of boutique fuel mixes making refineries wealthy
Neither of these is entirely under NY's control. $0.18 of tax per gallon is federal tax. And the special fuels are generally required because of air quality issues, which are regulated by the EPA.
In reality though, there's not much chance of biofuels taking off until Haliburton supplies them.
If you oppose drilling for oil in ANWR you ought to be forced to vacation there every year. It's a beautiful wilderness paradise, isn't it? Caribou are more important than people, aren't they? Go visit then.
And if you support drilling there, you should be forced to vacation cleaning up oil spills. Actually, I think you should probably live in an oil field or next to a refinery, but I think you'd find an oil spill distasteful enough.
But anyway, I have some vacation time coming up around June. I go spend a week at ANWR if you'll go clean oil off of previously pristine coastline.
I mean, because that's the only alternative, right? It's either people or caribou. You'll die without your 8 mpg SUV that couldn't possibly burn anything but dino fuel. Here's an interesting fact I just found; go to Ford's website and look at an Excursion. Fuel Economy: N/A. Note says look at the Excursion website. Excursion Website/Specifications - Fuel Econmay: N/A. Must be really high, don't ya think? And yet we give tax rebates for buying them.
Jeez, that reads like a NewEgg commercial. The only company I've ever been forced to do a chargeback on because they wouldn't stand behind their product. The VISA rep said it was the most bizarre response they have received from any merchant, and reversed the charges.
You have a narrow view of the market. I purchase gasoline with 10% ethanol. My purchase increases the demand for ethanol. That demand translates into the market price for ethanol. The market will find it's balance.
From another aspect, I recently had a conversation with consumer relations at Chrysler. I have decided my next vehicle purchase will be diesel. Chrysler manufactures a diesel Liberty annd they are considering the Commander, but not the Wrangler. Wrangler is all that interests me, I won't be buying a Jeep. My purchase will go towards the demand of a competing product. It will also translate to a change in demand for diesel cars in general, as well as diesel (or ideally, biodiesel) demand. In the future when Chrysler is making decisions for future models they will look at what is selling and what is not, and plan appropriately. Want to make a prediction on how many resources US automakers will allocate to big SUVs in the next few years? Personally, I expect a swing back towards smaller cars as a result of one person here and one person there influencing the market.
Maybe my demand is like a grain of sand on the beach. Some markets are huge. But if everybody said "I'm too small to make a difference, so I won't bother", then there would be no demand and the product would fail.
At my local grocery I have noticed a subtle shift over the years. I live in a relatively small town and have shopped at the same place for 5 years. Products that I use on a regular basis have increased shelf space. Either I'm just lucky, or my demand has affected that store's buying practices.
Producers and consumers drive change. They are the market. If you think the market is irrational, you aren't looking at all of it's influences.
As a real solution to the problem of producing significant amounts of liquid fuel, it's a ghastly crime against nature.
I guess strip mining and oil spills are just misdemeanors? And those refineries sure are perty.
You answered your own question about why we don't use more bio-fuels. Bio-fuel isn't a silver bullet technology that will make fossil fuels go away overnight. That's what people are looking for. For every alternative energy that I have looked at for over two decades, there have been people saying they are too expensive, can't provide enough power, and are not cost effective. (Battery technology isn't good enough. Hydrogen is a storage medium, not a power source. Solar would require covering [pick your favorite western state] with cells to produce enough power. Wind turbines kill birds and change migratory paths. We can't dispose of nuclear waste.)
I particularly like the 'too expensive' argument. The cost of Biodiesel is roughly on par with dino diesel at current oil prices. Without even calculating in hidden fossil fuel costs, it's a reasonable alternative. Hidden costs? $80 billion a year in Iraq. 40 billion gallons of fuel at $2 a gallon. Of the cuff calculation; we use 20 million barrels of oil a day. A barrel produces 29 gallons of diesel/gasoline. One year in Iraq would pay for 69 days of fuel. So there is a 19% surcharge on fossil fuel. BTW, that leads me to one premise of the article that I disagree with; I don't believe people are looking at alternative fuels because they fear global warming. It's simply the outrageous increase in fuel costs. 50% increase in fuel, natural gas, and heating oil in a year.
But you are incorrect about one thing. You cannot use 100% ethanol in an unmodified gasoline engine. (at least not most, there are some special ones produced for E100) Ethanol burns too hot and it will destroy your engine. But gasohol (10% ethanol) can be used. 46k out of 50k miles on my truck were powered by gasohol.
Biodiesel seems like a better alternative than ethanol, because it can be used in any diesel motor manufactured in the last decade. And reasonably trivial to convert older motors. We should be encouraging car manufacturers to be test marketing more diesel cars in the US instead of hybrids, which are questionable in regards to ROI. It's a small step for them, they're are already building them for Europe.
Now they can meet their obligation with these little boxes rather than putting you up in a real room.
If your flight gets canceled, you are probably more interested in catching the earliest flight rather than the size of your room. Like others have said, 10 square meters isn't that small anyway.
The last time my flight got canceled, (Delta, mechanical problems on the first leg of the flight) I got to spend the night in Salt Lake City. It's 10pm, they've rebooked me on a 6am. So it's leave the gate, go to the ticket counter to get new tickets and various coupons for the night. Then wait for the hotel shuttle and get checked in. Make it to the room around 11:30. Next morning, up at 4am, get ready, check out, catch shuttle, and then wait for someone to show up at the gate. Do I really care about the room where I slept 4 hours and took a shower? As long as it's clean, quiet, and the alarm clock works. And if it had actually been in the terminal it would have given me another couple hours.
If I'm going to be annoyed at the airline, it would be because of the cancelled connecting flight. Which, BTW, is why I don't fly United if there is an option. I've never missed a connecting flight with them, but it wasn't for lack of trying.
DOB and SSN are what distinguish my name from my fathers. I'd say it's safe to say that we have both had the same address in the past. There are plenty of other people with the same experience. My best friend, for example.
Zipcode +4 doesn't necessarily distinguish a unique street address. Address comparisons are notoriously unreliable. My address for instance is on a Drive. It could be spelled out or abbreviated DR. It could be left off, or it could be confused with a nearby Lane or LN. All of which would get my mail to me, because my mailman is a human, but would all kick out in a computer comparison as different addresses.
If you have any type of credit card, loan, or bank account and they don't have your SSN, then you definately live in a different world than I do. And you can bet, given that they have this unique data point, it is the first means of comparison they use.
6. they are misfiled in a million tape library.
7. the boxes were improperly labeled when they were sent to offsite storage and are misfiled.
8. they were accidentally destroyed with other old tapes.
9. the tapes were mislabeled. (internal label doesn't match physical label)
BTW, that's Tape Ape. You're confusing that with Code Monkey.
They need to keep your SSN for tax purposes. Depending on your agreement, the loan to 'buy' your timeshare is considered a mortgage. So they need to report interest to the IRS. Not to mention, a credit agency is going to use your SSN to avoid simple name collisions.
As far as keeping your credit card number, they could be requiring it to cover maintenance fees or it's possible customers are automatically having their loan payments charged to their credit card. I do that with a couple of my monthly expenses so I don't have to write a check. (having both electronic withdrawals and automatic billing to credit cards, I prefer the latter)
While I suppose you can get around these by buying the timeshare outright, and prepaying maintenance fees, most customers do not want to do that.
IS continues to evolve. If you have the chance, take a look at the upcoming release of IIS7. It has some great features, including >4GB memory addressing to run robust ASP.NET applications in high demand areas.
4gb to run web applications is just obscene.
I'll admit Apache is a stable platform. But the internals and complexity of the code have pushed in into a risky venture for business as there doesn't appear to be a forth-coming upgrade or maintenance schedule.
One of the nicest things about Apache is I have never been pressured to upgrade. I run Apache 1.3x on all my servers. I run it in an enterprise environment. Apache acts as the SOAP middletier (database access and business logic) for hundreds of users. On top of that, it shares the machine with the barcode printer printserver and host service (custom telnet) for all of our wireless scanners. If I remember correctly, that machine has 512m RAM, and runs on a PII 450 with Win2k Server. In that environment, Apache takes less CPU/RAM than TrendMicro's virus scanner. And yes, this is a business critical server.
BTW, that system has plenty of available CPU, although I'm getting a little worried about the 6 or 7 year old HDs.
If you consider Axapta, do your homework and get your staff trained. You need people who are good at tuning servers. Axapta doesn't scale well. There are very few resources available, short of hiring a solutions partner. You should also plan to use the stock configuration whenever possible, it will make life much easier. And of course like you said, deep pockets.
That's ok, I have a bunch of WinCE (Windows Mobile) wireless scanners that have web servers running on them. They aren't configured to do anything, just sit there and eat up precious resources. I'd turn them off, but that means a 4 day detour through HQ every time one goes in for repair. Even better, the web server and it's configuration are stored on the 'safe' part of the drive, but the NIC configuration is stored on ramdisk.
We've made progress over the years, but we're still fighting clueless configuration defaults. I don't think it's a comsumer vs corporate thing. I think they just find something they thing is 'cool' and want us all to use it, whether it's useful or not.
Whereas in MMOs you generally concern yourself with uptime and bandwidth limits. :)
Not really. What you need is uptime and reasonable latency. You'll see a difference between 150ms and 500ms, and if it gets higher it will start frustrating players. Bandwidth really isn't a concern for the players, the game are low traffic. (if you're on dialup, the latency is the problem, not the bandwidth)
Years ago there was a rumor going around that Time Warner was going to start metering their cable to deal with P2P users. At the time I was playing AC, so I checked it's traffic. You'll transfer more data reading Slashdot for an hour than AC will in a day. I haven't checked WoW, but I doubt it's much worse. A lot of processing is passed to the client so they don't have to invest any more $$$ in server hardware than necessary.
The only time bandwidth is a concern is when Blizzard steals their customers resources to distribute their patches.
Over the last year I have seen two changes in my Roadrunner service. An increase from 2mbit to 5mbit, that I hardly noticed. And a decrease in my monthly charge from $45 to $29 when competition came to town. Until some new killer app comes around, I'm more interested in universal service than I am faster connections. I want to buy a few acres and move out of town, but I'm not willing to go back to dialup. (or a wired phone)
Inexperienced users don't know that.
I've seen this posted in a lot in replies here. I don't think it matters. I work with users of all levels of expertise. People who can't log into windows because someone has changed the login name to MCSEs. I don't think a window being too large has ever been a problem. Also, inexperienced users don't tend to have the super large displays either. At home they buy the budget machines, and at work they get the 'trickle down' equipment when the more savvy users upgrade. From my experience, if you are worried about inexperienced users, you'll want to design for the smaller displays.
So do you have some tips for designing a site's top bar so that it will look good both in a 1600 pixel wide window and in a 320 pixel wide window?
It's kind of interesting; sites whose original, or primary focus was the web tend to get it right. Slashdot, Yahoo, The Register, Wired. Big media companys, OTOH, have absolutely no concept of sizeable web sites. Look at CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, for good examples on how NOT to do it.
Something you should remember as a web site designer; many people do not wish to devote the entire screen to our browser. It doesn't matter whether I'm at 1024 on my laptop or 1280 on my desktop, you're not getting the whole thing. Few apps get maximized; my IDE and games. Everything else has to share. As a result, if I have to scroll to read your site, I'm not likely to be a regular visitor. I also find it hugely annoying when websites have music, but that's a whole other rant.
Assuming that your goal is to attract visitors, you're better to design for a lower resolution and then expand when possible.
It's not that T/M rated games would become more difficult to find because of this legislation. It's that they wouldn't be made at all (or at least there would be many fewer of lesser quality), because what company is going to spend millions of dollars on something that it basically can't sell?
You're right. That's why we don't have alcohol, cigarettes, and guns. Playboy and Penthouse went out of business when they couldn't be sold to just anyone. And obviously, if you can't get your product on the shelves at the #1 retailer in America you should just give up making it.
The problem with AO rated games is NOT a fear of fines or an inability to get them into game stores. The problem is that the market is too small to earn the profits that game producers expect. Every step you go up the ratings ladder cuts your potential market. If you can make 2 games this year, do you want to be able to sell to 25% of the game playing market or 100%?
don't know a single person at work or friends that downloads music from iTunes or any other pay-per-song service. It's too expensive! Yes, I think a buck a song is too much - especially considering that the artist get almost nothing, Apple gets a little more, and the RIAA gets the rest.
I looked at iTunes and thought, you want to cut out all the distribution costs and charge me as much or more? For that privilege I get DRM laden data files and NO tangible product. Of course, with this whole Sony rootkit thing, I'm now wondering what I risk by using one of their CDs in my computer. Riskier CDs don't make iTunes any better, they just makes me more apprehensive about buying music in general. Once upon a time the worst thing you had to worry about is one hit CDs.
Why, there's no problem at all. Unless, err, um, stores start refusing to carry *anything* rated higher than 'E' because of the fines involved. Then *no one* will be able to buy T or M rated games, because they won't be made any more.
Walmart doesn't carry any music that has a 'Parental Advisory', does that make it unavailable? Possibly more difficult to find, if you can say anything is difficult to find in the age of the Internet, and certainly will cut into sales for adult content providers, but it hasn't ceased to exist.
There was never any justification for that content to be in the game. This is not like "oh, we forgot to turn off the debug code". From a management perspective, it's questionable whether the content should have ever been created. That isn't the audience the game was targetting, and it's simply immature that it was ever inserted into the game. If I intentionally did something that caused my employer that level of liability, I'd expect to be escorted from the building.
Frankly, I don't have a problem with ratings meaning what they are supposed to mean. And if the gaming industry can't police themselves, then maybe a few regulations will help. Either that, or we can just rate all Rockstar games as Adult until they prove there is no 'accidental' content.
And no, it's not like the Playboy channel. Playboy specifically targets a particular market. They don't hide the fact. Your cable company publically states that the content is available. They don't say "well, it wasn't supposed to be there, but if you hadn't hacked our signal you wouldn't have seen it". And if someone tried to sue them for it, they wouldn't spout a load of bullshit, they'd turn around and sue for cable theft.
Of course, then again, I think I'd find the Playboy channel less objectionable that some of the games on the market today.