I agree, that is crap, and I've been in similar situations too many times to count.
If you want to know why these assholes insist on long term contracts and deposits, I have two words for you: Quarters and Securitization.
Quarters: Every public company is so crazy about getting their quarterly numbers in consistently for Wall Street, many of them (esp. utitilities) would rather lose revenue by having you walk away without buying anything, than having you buy a service for a month and then stop using it. (Nothing worse for their stock price than a "reduction" in revenues.) If they lock you into a long contract, they've got you. A few of you will cancel, but the deposit/cancellation penalty mitigates the hit on their numbers.
Securitization: A lot of these businesses take your contracts and "securitize" them, which means they sell the revenue from your contracts into structured finance vehicles (ie, companies with no other business) that then issue bonds that get paid out using your expected revenues. If you stop paying them by canceling your service, the bonds' interest won't get paid (or it will be lower than the target rate). The more ways they can lock you in -- I'm always amazed how many people won't cancel a $100 a month 2-year service because they don't want to pay a $200 penalty -- the more likely they can keep the "asset pool" (ie, your contract) in good shape.
It sucks, but those are the realities. Try getting a health club, auto club, phone company, etc., to sell you something a la carte. They look at you like you have come in to kill them... because non-recurring revenue just doesn't make sense in their financial world.
When I had my first cashier job and had to count my own till, the night supervisor expressed shock and surprise at my cash count: It was the first time anyone had ever come in exactly on count, not a penny over, not a penny under.
Therefore I needed to be watched...:)
Which started me thinking, what the hell am I doing at this job if I am the first one ever to get it right??
I've been seeing a lot of hype lately about pressed bamboo being "more eco-friendly" than and supposedly "just as strong as" tree wood for various uses... like cutting boards. (OK, so I've been cheapass xmas shopping, and not on thinkgeek either.)
Has anyone tried building one of these houses out of pressed bamboo, bamboo paper, etc.? Or are we still living in a tree-based-wood world?
Absolutely. If a frikking city bus can run off a line in the air, and subways all have a third rail, there must be something similar we can do for personal automobiles.
But sorry, no more offroading. And those people who like to park up on the sidewalk will end up having to push their cars back to the street....
Re:I'd love a cheap, mass produced 200 mile electr
on
230mph Electric Car
·
· Score: 1
Uh, will they really bother to get a license? Probably making these things already for the home market...
This election, I got a ton of automated recorded campaigning calls that my telco's caller ID identified as VOIP calls. So I just turned my answering machine's volume way down and let it deal with them all.
Problem is, my (tragically few) long distance friends who use VOIP also had to wonder why I had stopped picking up the phone.
I don't particularly trust any regulator (state, federal or telcos themselves) but it sure would be nice if the Caller ID info that gets passed on here could be more specific. I don't care HOW someone calls me, but I do like to know WHO is calling...
The posters who said that diversification could/will kill Google may be on to something. Does anybody buy anything using froogle? Is Gmail (several months in beta and still crap) ready for prime time? Has Google Answers taken over the world? Etc...
I wish they would get all their people focused on fixing up some of the really cool stuff they *might* make but already announced -- but that hasn't yet lived up to its promise -- rather than getting the rumor machine going on ever more tenuous potential expansions of the Google brand.
One cynical interpretation of this is that despite all that admirable "don't be evil" stuff, Darth Schmidt knows that you have to feed novelty (or the appearance thereof) to the stock market or those options won't increase any further. Say it isn't so!
I'll believe everything once Gmail gets good enough to give up my Yahoo account and Froogle and Google Groups get as good as Deja.com was in 2000...
After going to iTunes 4.6, my iPod is now fried after the first isync since the update... all 38 gigs of songs have been wiped from the pod. Will have to go into damage control mode. Hopefully they're all still on the main Mac.
A *zine* is what blogs (or m'blogs??) used to be before Al Gore invented the net in 1998.
There used to be a great zine-publisher's coffeehouse called QuestionComma, where zineheadders could meet up to talk shop and check out each others' scooters -- now you know why they are called Mod Points -- until SCO had it shut down...
& ideally they would also have frikkin laser beams on their frikkin heads.
Don't order it from Apple.com - Re:Keyboard?
on
GarageBand Roundup
·
· Score: 1
Watch out; I ordered a Keystation 49e from Apple in January just after they launched GarageBand. (Shipping to US address.)
Couple of weeks later, Apple sent me an email saying it would not ship until March 15 - an almost two month delay!
Then, last week, they shipped me one. Problem is, the box didn't contain a Keystation 49e. Rather, the 49e box contained an *eKeys 49*, which appears to be functionally the same thing... but just try sending *that* back for a warranty repair down the line!
Worse, the box didn't include the promised software or USB cable.
My question: did M-Audio make a boo boo at the factory, or did Mac send me a refurb or a returned item without disclosing this? Either way, I'm pissed.
Also: if you need the best keyboard available, get one with knobs (see http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.subfa mily&ID=usbmidicontrollers ) it will do more for you than the bare bones 49e.
I recently worked at a big company with a huge IT dept. In my office, our laptops all came with a boot-up password that was -- get this -- the first name of the head of the IT dept.
But things were MUCH better for our user login passwords. The default login password for every user was "password" and as I recall the system was set up so that you didn't have to change it.
Around a year ago, after a few waves of "security" "improvements" they started requiring one capital letter and one number in passwords. From then on, the default password was "Password1", but you were strongly encouraged to change it. And every time somebody forgot their password (which was ALL the time for some reason) the IT guys would automatically reset it to "Password1".
I'd bet there are 250 people running around right now with Password1 at that place...
In response to these kinds of file size/convenience/privacy concerns, some people use various shortcuts to get Word-generated text into emails sent through Outlook. (Also, if you do that, the recipient can listen to the email's contents using remote access systems, etc., that may not work with attachments.)
Question: if you cut and paste (MS) Word text into an (MS) Outlook email message, how much of the hidden/deleted data will follow along into the email? Does the answer depend on the "format" of the email (html, etc)?
What about if you use the "send as email" feature in Word?
--If you have a really small apartment, a laptop takes up less room than a desktop. Also, a laptop only uses one electrical socket; my last desktop used 3 or 4 once you had plugged all the crap in (this was pre-USB, though). Sure, you can use power strips, but what a freaking mess!
--If you don't have a desk, you can't use a desktop. (What am I thinking, this is Slashdot - if y'all don't have room, you get rid of the bed, not the desk...) But try crashing at a friend's place and bringing your G5 and 23" monitor.
--If your roommates are making too much noise, you can take your laptop somewhere else (for the hour or two the *&$^":; batteries really last). Now that home wireless networks exist, this is finally worth doing
*More pro-palmtop (v. desktop) arguments:
--Palmtops are still crap, but I recently used my Palm Tungsten to search in and edit a 200 page MS Word document in a business meeting. It wasn't that bad, and took zero time to boot up. Then I emailed the revised document via my bluetooth cellphone. (This may still be easier to do outside the US than inside the US... US telcos really seem to lag behind. I can't do this thru my US mobile provider yet)
--If you travel with a laptop, airport security will often make you turn the damn thing on to "prove" that isn't a bomb or something. (Seems like a bullshit test, though.) They NEVER do that with palmtops
--If your palmtop crashes while traveling, you can just synch all the data in when you get back home in about 15 minutes. Try doing that with a PC!!
My wish list to add to the above list of realistic expectations. Surely these are also within reach:
--It all has to come in a shockproof, G force resistant, waterproof watch. In the early 1980s, I saw a $2000 wristwatch in a store window with had a little black and white TV on the watch face. My dad said, "Son, in 10 years we'll all have these -- and they'll be in COLOR." The liar!
--OK, I would settle for a watch or an earpiece (of course the thing should also run on voice) and a bluetooth link to a pocket-sized Palm or Ipod or whatever basestation with a few hundred terabytes of storage. (Moore's law says no problem)
--If you wear glasses, one or both lenses should be able to double as a (bluetoothed) vid screen -- like in the New Order video!
--All your personal info, ever, has to be in there -- and continually backed up, automatically -- both a personal copy somewhere and one stored by subscription in a converted NORAD vault. (Because the next wave of international terrorism could be against data storage facilities.)
--You shouldn't need a wallet anymore. The thing should have some kind of secure, anonymous e-cash feature. It should also work as a substitute for your credit, debit, etc. cards. This kind of technology already exists but isn't fully exploited. (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=74281&cid=666 3027)
--It has to function as a driver's license, car key, passport (http://www.immigration.gov/graphics/howdoi/inspas s.htm), health insurance token, etc., if you want it to.
--Notwithstanding the above and the pandora's box of privacy issues, it needs a TOTALLY ANONYMOUS mode. Which means Microsoft has to be nowhere near its development. And no DRM either! (If this isn't implemented properly, we will all have to wear tinfoil hats.)
--GPS would be nice but then you'll have to increase the size to act as an antenna. Could your bloodstream function as an antenna?
--Traveling internationally should mean not having to lug around giant black cubes to convert the power. Can this thing be motion-powered? Is solar power ever going anywhere? Cosmic ray catcher-powered? Human powered? (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/ 04/2224201&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=134 )
Sadly, however, SCO has patents on all of the above...
If you execute a person, their heirs get to inherit (whatever the dead guy had).
If you execute a corporation, their shareholders get zip. No, wait a minute, they get the liquidation value of the corp's assets -- wait, that's zip too!
--"With Alexa, they could count not just that you visited a site, but how long you spent and where else you went. This is at least part of the basis for Amazon's recommendation system for books and other geegaws they sell."--
Interesting. So if I surf on-and-off all day while at the office and periodically right-click several links at a time -- but only read the resulting pages much later when the boss isn't looking -- do all these windows that have been sitting open for hours count as "positive feedback"?
Maybe *that* explains why I get such crappy recommendations on Amazon!
---who wants to wade through results and rank them? I came here to search!--
Reminds me of... "Who wants to wade through posts and MOD them? I came here to read!"
But seriously, wouldn't we all benefit in the long run from giving feedback to a search engine (provided the thing can be troll- and bot-proofed)? They'll never build a good AI to take over the world and obliterate life as we know it until we COOPERATE and slowly divulge the network of associations that make us human.
So what if they don't pay taxes directly? It all works out in the end for the mass of the non-illegals -- and especially the desk-jockey/. readers!
Step 1: They get a shitty low wage to do a shitty menial job, much lower than YOU would want to do the job. Step 2: You get to take the good desk job with the high wage in a nice office. Step 2.1: Your spouse/signif other has a good job at a high wage too! (Not like the bad old days of scrubbing and ironing) Step 2.5: You eat a cheap lunch they made, they clean your office at night, they make the cheap clothes you bought (ever notice real prices are going down even for domestic goods?). Bet you can afford an illegal cleaning lady at home even if you think you're broke right now. Step 2.9: OK, you pay some taxes. Step 3.0: The illegals get some social services, etc., if they can qualify. They hit your car, it goes on your insurance -- not theirs.
But you were ex ante compensated by Step 2!
Aside from the fact that LIFE SUCKS for the illegals, what exactly is the problem for you the non-illegal?
Slashdot Mirror
Strange, I thought "CopyNight" referred to the legendary obscene things people do on the Xerox after returning drunk from the office Xmas party...
I agree, that is crap, and I've been in similar situations too many times to count.
If you want to know why these assholes insist on long term contracts and deposits, I have two words for you: Quarters and Securitization.
Quarters:
Every public company is so crazy about getting their quarterly numbers in consistently for Wall Street, many of them (esp. utitilities) would rather lose revenue by having you walk away without buying anything, than having you buy a service for a month and then stop using it. (Nothing worse for their stock price than a "reduction" in revenues.) If they lock you into a long contract, they've got you. A few of you will cancel, but the deposit/cancellation penalty mitigates the hit on their numbers.
Securitization:
A lot of these businesses take your contracts and "securitize" them, which means they sell the revenue from your contracts into structured finance vehicles (ie, companies with no other business) that then issue bonds that get paid out using your expected revenues. If you stop paying them by canceling your service, the bonds' interest won't get paid (or it will be lower than the target rate). The more ways they can lock you in -- I'm always amazed how many people won't cancel a $100 a month 2-year service because they don't want to pay a $200 penalty -- the more likely they can keep the "asset pool" (ie, your contract) in good shape.
It sucks, but those are the realities. Try getting a health club, auto club, phone company, etc., to sell you something a la carte. They look at you like you have come in to kill them... because non-recurring revenue just doesn't make sense in their financial world.
When I had my first cashier job and had to count my own till, the night supervisor expressed shock and surprise at my cash count: It was the first time anyone had ever come in exactly on count, not a penny over, not a penny under.
:)
Therefore I needed to be watched...
Which started me thinking, what the hell am I doing at this job if I am the first one ever to get it right??
I've been seeing a lot of hype lately about pressed bamboo being "more eco-friendly" than and supposedly "just as strong as" tree wood for various uses... like cutting boards. (OK, so I've been cheapass xmas shopping, and not on thinkgeek either.)
Has anyone tried building one of these houses out of pressed bamboo, bamboo paper, etc.? Or are we still living in a tree-based-wood world?
Absolutely. If a frikking city bus can run off a line in the air, and subways all have a third rail, there must be something similar we can do for personal automobiles.
But sorry, no more offroading. And those people who like to park up on the sidewalk will end up having to push their cars back to the street....
Uh, will they really bother to get a license? Probably making these things already for the home market...
This election, I got a ton of automated recorded campaigning calls that my telco's caller ID identified as VOIP calls. So I just turned my answering machine's volume way down and let it deal with them all.
Problem is, my (tragically few) long distance friends who use VOIP also had to wonder why I had stopped picking up the phone.
I don't particularly trust any regulator (state, federal or telcos themselves) but it sure would be nice if the Caller ID info that gets passed on here could be more specific. I don't care HOW someone calls me, but I do like to know WHO is calling...
Perhaps a name change to "Borgle" is in order?
The posters who said that diversification could/will kill Google may be on to something. Does anybody buy anything using froogle? Is Gmail (several months in beta and still crap) ready for prime time? Has Google Answers taken over the world? Etc...
I wish they would get all their people focused on fixing up some of the really cool stuff they *might* make but already announced -- but that hasn't yet lived up to its promise -- rather than getting the rumor machine going on ever more tenuous potential expansions of the Google brand.
One cynical interpretation of this is that despite all that admirable "don't be evil" stuff, Darth Schmidt knows that you have to feed novelty (or the appearance thereof) to the stock market or those options won't increase any further. Say it isn't so!
I'll believe everything once Gmail gets good enough to give up my Yahoo account and Froogle and Google Groups get as good as Deja.com was in 2000...
After going to iTunes 4.6, my iPod is now fried after the first isync since the update... all 38 gigs of songs have been wiped from the pod. Will have to go into damage control mode. Hopefully they're all still on the main Mac.
Anyone else experience this?
A *zine* is what blogs (or m'blogs??) used to be before Al Gore invented the net in 1998.
There used to be a great zine-publisher's coffeehouse called QuestionComma, where zineheadders could meet up to talk shop and check out each others' scooters -- now you know why they are called Mod Points -- until SCO had it shut down...
Their lawyers may well instruct them to delete the filing in the results
& ideally they would also have frikkin laser beams on their frikkin heads.
Watch out; I ordered a Keystation 49e from Apple in January just after they launched GarageBand. (Shipping to US address.)
a mily&ID=usbmidicontrollers ) it will do more for you than the bare bones 49e.
Couple of weeks later, Apple sent me an email saying it would not ship until March 15 - an almost two month delay!
Then, last week, they shipped me one. Problem is, the box didn't contain a Keystation 49e. Rather, the 49e box contained an *eKeys 49*, which appears to be functionally the same thing... but just try sending *that* back for a warranty repair down the line!
Worse, the box didn't include the promised software or USB cable.
My question: did M-Audio make a boo boo at the factory, or did Mac send me a refurb or a returned item without disclosing this? Either way, I'm pissed.
Also: if you need the best keyboard available, get one with knobs (see http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.subf
In Soviet Russia... the combat vehicles drive you!
I recently worked at a big company with a huge IT dept. In my office, our laptops all came with a boot-up password that was -- get this -- the first name of the head of the IT dept.
But things were MUCH better for our user login passwords. The default login password for every user was "password" and as I recall the system was set up so that you didn't have to change it.
Around a year ago, after a few waves of "security" "improvements" they started requiring one capital letter and one number in passwords. From then on, the default password was "Password1", but you were strongly encouraged to change it. And every time somebody forgot their password (which was ALL the time for some reason) the IT guys would automatically reset it to "Password1".
I'd bet there are 250 people running around right now with Password1 at that place...
In response to these kinds of file size/convenience/privacy concerns, some people use various shortcuts to get Word-generated text into emails sent through Outlook. (Also, if you do that, the recipient can listen to the email's contents using remote access systems, etc., that may not work with attachments.)
Question: if you cut and paste (MS) Word text into an (MS) Outlook email message, how much of the hidden/deleted data will follow along into the email? Does the answer depend on the "format" of the email (html, etc)?
What about if you use the "send as email" feature in Word?
*More pro-laptop (v. desktop) arguments:
--If you have a really small apartment, a laptop takes up less room than a desktop. Also, a laptop only uses one electrical socket; my last desktop used 3 or 4 once you had plugged all the crap in (this was pre-USB, though). Sure, you can use power strips, but what a freaking mess!
--If you don't have a desk, you can't use a desktop. (What am I thinking, this is Slashdot - if y'all don't have room, you get rid of the bed, not the desk...) But try crashing at a friend's place and bringing your G5 and 23" monitor.
--If your roommates are making too much noise, you can take your laptop somewhere else (for the hour or two the *&$^":; batteries really last). Now that home wireless networks exist, this is finally worth doing
*More pro-palmtop (v. desktop) arguments:
--Palmtops are still crap, but I recently used my Palm Tungsten to search in and edit a 200 page MS Word document in a business meeting. It wasn't that bad, and took zero time to boot up. Then I emailed the revised document via my bluetooth cellphone. (This may still be easier to do outside the US than inside the US... US telcos really seem to lag behind. I can't do this thru my US mobile provider yet)
--If you travel with a laptop, airport security will often make you turn the damn thing on to "prove" that isn't a bomb or something. (Seems like a bullshit test, though.) They NEVER do that with palmtops
--If your palmtop crashes while traveling, you can just synch all the data in when you get back home in about 15 minutes. Try doing that with a PC!!
I called tech support and they said "just reboot, it'll be OK after that". Now their line's dead...
My wish list to add to the above list of realistic expectations. Surely these are also within reach:
6 3027)
s s.htm), health insurance token, etc., if you want it to.
/ 04/2224201&mode=thread&tid=126&tid=134 )
--It all has to come in a shockproof, G force resistant, waterproof watch. In the early 1980s, I saw a $2000 wristwatch in a store window with had a little black and white TV on the watch face. My dad said, "Son, in 10 years we'll all have these -- and they'll be in COLOR." The liar!
--OK, I would settle for a watch or an earpiece (of course the thing should also run on voice) and a bluetooth link to a pocket-sized Palm or Ipod or whatever basestation with a few hundred terabytes of storage. (Moore's law says no problem)
--If you wear glasses, one or both lenses should be able to double as a (bluetoothed) vid screen -- like in the New Order video!
--All your personal info, ever, has to be in there -- and continually backed up, automatically -- both a personal copy somewhere and one stored by subscription in a converted NORAD vault. (Because the next wave of international terrorism could be against data storage facilities.)
--You shouldn't need a wallet anymore. The thing should have some kind of secure, anonymous e-cash feature. It should also work as a substitute for your credit, debit, etc. cards. This kind of technology already exists but isn't fully exploited. (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=74281&cid=66
--It has to function as a driver's license, car key, passport (http://www.immigration.gov/graphics/howdoi/inspa
--Notwithstanding the above and the pandora's box of privacy issues, it needs a TOTALLY ANONYMOUS mode. Which means Microsoft has to be nowhere near its development. And no DRM either! (If this isn't implemented properly, we will all have to wear tinfoil hats.)
--GPS would be nice but then you'll have to increase the size to act as an antenna. Could your bloodstream function as an antenna?
--Traveling internationally should mean not having to lug around giant black cubes to convert the power. Can this thing be motion-powered? Is solar power ever going anywhere? Cosmic ray catcher-powered? Human powered? (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08
Sadly, however, SCO has patents on all of the above...
If you execute a person, their heirs get to inherit (whatever the dead guy had).
If you execute a corporation, their shareholders get zip. No, wait a minute, they get the liquidation value of the corp's assets -- wait, that's zip too!
--"With Alexa, they could count not just that you visited a site, but how long you spent and where else you went. This is at least part of the basis for Amazon's recommendation system for books and other geegaws they sell."--
Interesting. So if I surf on-and-off all day while at the office and periodically right-click several links at a time -- but only read the resulting pages much later when the boss isn't looking -- do all these windows that have been sitting open for hours count as "positive feedback"?
Maybe *that* explains why I get such crappy recommendations on Amazon!
---who wants to wade through results and rank them? I came here to search!--
Reminds me of... "Who wants to wade through posts and MOD them? I came here to read!"
But seriously, wouldn't we all benefit in the long run from giving feedback to a search engine (provided the thing can be troll- and bot-proofed)? They'll never build a good AI to take over the world and obliterate life as we know it until we COOPERATE and slowly divulge the network of associations that make us human.
Now excuse me while I go find my tinfoil hat...
Cool, which cities? What can you do with it?
So what if they don't pay taxes directly? It all works out in the end for the mass of the non-illegals -- and especially the desk-jockey /. readers!
Step 1: They get a shitty low wage to do a shitty menial job, much lower than YOU would want to do the job.
Step 2: You get to take the good desk job with the high wage in a nice office.
Step 2.1: Your spouse/signif other has a good job at a high wage too! (Not like the bad old days of scrubbing and ironing)
Step 2.5: You eat a cheap lunch they made, they clean your office at night, they make the cheap clothes you bought (ever notice real prices are going down even for domestic goods?). Bet you can afford an illegal cleaning lady at home even if you think you're broke right now.
Step 2.9: OK, you pay some taxes.
Step 3.0: The illegals get some social services, etc., if they can qualify. They hit your car, it goes on your insurance -- not theirs.
But you were ex ante compensated by Step 2!
Aside from the fact that LIFE SUCKS for the illegals, what exactly is the problem for you the non-illegal?