"The problem with HD storage is that all hard drives have a 100% failure rate."
While this is true, is there really any kind of storage that does not have a 100% failure rate? Given enough time, anything will fail.
"One solution to this is to buy one of those huge (GB-wise) external drives, periodically save your data to it and then unplug it."
Not necessarily. Even when unplugged, a hard drive can fail or become useless. Things can seize up if left alone for too long. The paramagmetic effect can take its toll. You could knock the drive over and it could break. The USB2.0 interface for could go obsolete. If the hard drive is defective to begin with (which is not unheard of, think of the IBM DeathStar,) then when you are actually using it, the thing could die.
That's why I think you solution, like 'security through obscurity,' is not sufficiently effective by itself. Only as a redundant component of a larger backup scheme can this be effective. For example, my digital photo colletion is mirrored on my notebook, my desktop, a mobile enclosure drive and on DVD+Rw.
Along with that, you must use high quality media. Those POS CD-R discs that you get for next to nothing will often be made by POS manufacturers. The discs will likely die in a few months' time. Therefore invest in the time necessary to find high quality media.
And one backup is not enough a bad batch of discs can still bite you in the butt. My important backups are done on mirrored DVDR of different brands, typically Taiyo Yuden and Mitsubishi Chemical Company. Or one on DVDR and one on a bunch of CDRs.
"If it's possible to create a chip this small, would it be possible to embed enough electronics in a piece of paper, while keeping it still flexible, to power a polymer based display, with data perhaps remotely recieved?"
Better question: How do they power the chip? Is there a power source embedded in the paper as well?
" So Slashdot readers need to apply tinfoil to their wallets as well as their hats..."
Already done as of 14 weeks ago. Since then I've taken four international flights between the US and Canada, as well as 2 domestic US flights and the airline security folks didn't complain.
"Speaking of which, what kinds of experiences do people on slashdot have with domain registrars? Are there any that won't screw you over, on this and other issues?"
If you just want economy hosting, it doesn't get much better than GoDaddy. If you want a bunch of e-mail management and forwarding options, I suggest DirectNIC. They are more expensive than GoDaddy but you get what you pay for. I have had no trouble from them, and also quick responses from their support, even when I was asking for help transferring a domain away from them as I did not need the more expensive services anymore.
" I've got upwards of 45 domains at godaddy, and have never received a single "spam" from them."
Strange. I have a whole ONE domain at GoDaddy, and while I don't receive any promotions from the company itself, I do regularly get spam from fools that harvested the address from the WHOIS database.
" I've had a.org domain for about 2.5 years. I used a unique address specifically for the admin e-mail in the WHOIS data, and never got any spam addressed to it... until a few months ago when a slow but steady trickle started. I changed the address to one of the form abuse@... and haven't had any more spam (so far) 8-)."
Interesting. Maybe spammers will filter out addresses with the word 'abuse' in them, so as not to provoke abuse desks?
It's already known that they clean their lists of addresses with the word 'spam' in them, so as to avoid "bob_IHateSpam_@bob.com" and such. So perhaps the domain contact address should be "AbuseAndSpamFree@mydomain.com" ?
"I would like to hear how other people solve the issue with the contact info on the domain records. Using fake information comes to mind but still, maybe there is a way to handle this without everyone knowing where I leave..."
For the physical address, I use the address of a Mail Boxes Etc receiving service which is basically like a P.O. Box, but it's named something like "123 Place Street, Suite 1234" so you can't know that just from looking at the WHOIS. This receiving address costs about $10 per month and it is certainly worth it! All my online purchases go there and I simply drop into MBE a couple of times per week and pick up my swag. (Considering it takes me about 3 minutes to drive there from work, it is no hassle.)
As to the e-mail address, it's an @mydomain.com forwarder to a throwaway webmail address. Of course I can make it forward to my real address if I'm going to do anything important with my domain name or the webmail provider folds.
While I consider the return policy to be a characteristic in itself as opposed to a subset of customer service, I do agree that it's hard to beat Costco in the return policy department.
Sounds like the "Canadian Computing Competition" that is (was?) run by the Univ. of Waterloo. You get five problems to solve through computer programming, as well as certain mathematical (CS-theory) questions of the worst-case execution time persuasion to answer. Each one was worth 20 points, though the first two were relatively easy and could be solved by bruteforce, and the last three took quite a bit of mathematical theory as well as programming skill to solve.
I took that test in HS and scored #1 in my school, somehow beating this brilliant Yugoslavian classmate (who was clearly far smarter a guy than me and did graduate and go to Waterloo) by exactly 1 point. (Marko, if you're reading this, I still think you're really smart.) The questions were actually pretty intelligent, though honestly my programming skills were pretty lame back then and I only answered two out of the five questions before the three hours expired.
" The chicken story reminded me the opposite scene I saw at Costco (love their customer service btw)."
What customer service? What I love about costco is that they practically have no people on the floor to bother you, aside from those people checking the receipts at the exit.
"One critical difference is that unlike Best Buy -- which likes to advertise that its staff is entirely non-commission -- most Future Shop staff are very dependent on commission."
While this is true, it can also be used to your advantage. Those boys want their commission badly, so you can easily refuse to go wait in the long line at checkout, saying that you want to buy it now or you'll leave. They'll instantly check you out through the little 'service islands' in the middle of the store as opposed to making you go through the checkout. They get their commission and you get faster service.
"Well, I have been told Future Shop is owned now by Best Buy (for the last year or so).. can anyone confirm this?"
Indeed, as listed on their own web site: "Future Shop stores are a division of Burnaby-based Best Buy Canada Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY)"
I never really liked Future Shop that much. Still I find that they have slightly better selection that Best Buy. Perhaps this is a remenant of the days when they were not owned by Worst Buy.
"The extended warranty basically covers the period in between when the equiment is not expected to fail, therefore it's a waste of money (besides most people forgetting the receipt, not caring to use it, etc.)."
I think that this is true a lot of the time, but not all of the time. For example I think it's a good idea to get the extended warranty on notebook computers as the whole thing is a 'moving part' . In my immediate family, we've gone through 10+ notebooks over the last 5 years or so from Compaq, IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC, Acer and Apple and every single one had an issue after the warranty period with the exception of the Fujitsu. Extended warranties on notebooks have paid off for us in a big way. In fact I think that this is a good practice for anything with moving parts. For example, the 40 dollar extended warranty on our microwave got us free repair (normally $300+) when the motor of the spinning motor failed a few days after the normal warranty died.
Mind you, we are absolutely religious about keeping all paperwork and receipts. With a little digging, I can find the receipt for absolutely any piece of electronics I bought, or anything I purchased over the internet since 2001.
Though my rule of thumb is to avoid getting the extended warranty on items that are sold at a loss, particularly in quickly advancing areas of technology. For example it would be folly to get an extended warranty on an inkjet printer. If it fails after 1 year, you can get one 4X as good for the same price. The same applies for low end DVD players.
"I used to do most my shopping on buy.com, though I had some problems with DVDs ariving scratched. While they replaced them free of charge (including shipping) both times, it was a hassle. Since then I have used amazon.com and have been very happy with them."
I buy 2-3 DVDs per week online and I can tell you that amazon is one of the best when it comes to dealing with things that got damaged during shipment, even if it's just a case of the disc popping off the hub. They will not hesistate to re-ship or refund as appropriate, postage paid in their dime all the way as long as it's not international. (Though on more than one occasion, I've had amazon.com either send me a new one and saying I can keep the defective one, or giving me a total refund due to the cost of shipping internationally from Canada.)
Amazon's prices may not be the best, but they still get plenty of my business because they have earned it through excellent customer service.
Firstly, at no point did I say that I liked to pay a levy on my blank media or that I supported it as the best way to do things. (I burn hundreds of discs a year in legit backups of data and purchased audio CDs and this levy certainly adds up.)
I would gladly trade a refund on the levies at the cost of paying for the exactly 11 unpurchased songs on my iPod. (Heck, iTMS is coming to Canada very soon; I could just buy those tracks and still make a hefty profit. I probably will do that.)
My point is that the levy is in line with the precedents in Canada and I understand why it is there, and how it makes sense within that framework of thinking. And as long as I am paying for it, I might as well reap the legal benefits. As to your plan of creating a 'fake' music corporation, that's abuse of the system and it doesn't count as an example.
Fortunately it looks like these 'Canadian content protection' schemes are slowly being removed. Recently it was ruled that there's nothing wrong with receiving DISH Network or DirecTV in Canada. (Of course those companies will have something to day.) But really, on this specific issue, I think entertainment should not be subsidised because it is Canadian. It should simply win or lose on virtue of whether or not it is worthwhile. Subsidies do not make for better music.
"I don't listen to music anymore (I can say for about 1.5 years now.) On radio I only listen to talk-shows (good ones in Toronto area.)
BTW. when I buy blank CDs I am forced to pay a tax on it to 'help the artists'. Shit, I don't even care about any artists anymore, why am I forced to help them?"
"Why I am forced to pay taxes into healthcare even though I don't get sick very often?"
"Why do people have to pay taxes into the public school system, even if they send their children to private school?"
Because that is the way things are spun in this country. Social responsibility and social subsidising are facts of the way the country has chosen to run itself. It's a facet of the way Canada works and it has its advantages and disadvantages. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better with what many other nations put up with.
"In Canada, we pay taxes on blank tapes and CDs, and now minidiscs and MP3 players. In exchange, we can make personal copies onto these media. However, AFAIK, it does not cover downloads. So your $35 tax was to allow you to copy music from your CD's and put them on your iPod, or even borrow somebody else's CD and do the same, or take one out of the library, but NOT download them from the internet."
"Right, but it does nothing to help the artist. Even for musicians and bands who're on RIAA-represented labels (who receive next to nothing for album sales), new album purchases serve as an important popularity gauge. The *only* entity you're helping when you purchase used music is the store you're buying from. Might as well just download the music for what it's worth."
If I like the artist, I go to the concert. This helps him or her out much more than a CD purchase, out of which they only receive a tiny fraction.
Downloading music is something I almost never do anymore. If I do, it's typically because I want to test it so I can get the CD, it's only available in other parts of the world, or it's out of print and I can't find it via the used disc outlets. Very rarely do I actually 'steal' music, which is legal here in Canada anyway. I didn't pay the $35 musician-levy on my iPod for nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
While this is true, is there really any kind of storage that does not have a 100% failure rate? Given enough time, anything will fail.
"One solution to this is to buy one of those huge (GB-wise) external drives, periodically save your data to it and then unplug it."
Not necessarily. Even when unplugged, a hard drive can fail or become useless. Things can seize up if left alone for too long. The paramagmetic effect can take its toll. You could knock the drive over and it could break. The USB2.0 interface for could go obsolete. If the hard drive is defective to begin with (which is not unheard of, think of the IBM DeathStar,) then when you are actually using it, the thing could die.
That's why I think you solution, like 'security through obscurity,' is not sufficiently effective by itself. Only as a redundant component of a larger backup scheme can this be effective. For example, my digital photo colletion is mirrored on my notebook, my desktop, a mobile enclosure drive and on DVD+Rw.
And one backup is not enough a bad batch of discs can still bite you in the butt. My important backups are done on mirrored DVDR of different brands, typically Taiyo Yuden and Mitsubishi Chemical Company. Or one on DVDR and one on a bunch of CDRs.
Better question: How do they power the chip? Is there a power source embedded in the paper as well?
Already done as of 14 weeks ago. Since then I've taken four international flights between the US and Canada, as well as 2 domestic US flights and the airline security folks didn't complain.
Funny, I thought the market for Firefox was bigger than that. Remember, all users in the market for whatever product don't necessarily use it.
If you just want economy hosting, it doesn't get much better than GoDaddy. If you want a bunch of e-mail management and forwarding options, I suggest DirectNIC. They are more expensive than GoDaddy but you get what you pay for. I have had no trouble from them, and also quick responses from their support, even when I was asking for help transferring a domain away from them as I did not need the more expensive services anymore.
Strange. I have a whole ONE domain at GoDaddy, and while I don't receive any promotions from the company itself, I do regularly get spam from fools that harvested the address from the WHOIS database.
Interesting. Maybe spammers will filter out addresses with the word 'abuse' in them, so as not to provoke abuse desks?
It's already known that they clean their lists of addresses with the word 'spam' in them, so as to avoid "bob_IHateSpam_@bob.com" and such. So perhaps the domain contact address should be "AbuseAndSpamFree@mydomain.com" ?
For the physical address, I use the address of a Mail Boxes Etc receiving service which is basically like a P.O. Box, but it's named something like "123 Place Street, Suite 1234" so you can't know that just from looking at the WHOIS. This receiving address costs about $10 per month and it is certainly worth it! All my online purchases go there and I simply drop into MBE a couple of times per week and pick up my swag. (Considering it takes me about 3 minutes to drive there from work, it is no hassle.)
As to the e-mail address, it's an @mydomain.com forwarder to a throwaway webmail address. Of course I can make it forward to my real address if I'm going to do anything important with my domain name or the webmail provider folds.
While I consider the return policy to be a characteristic in itself as opposed to a subset of customer service, I do agree that it's hard to beat Costco in the return policy department.
Considering the site's URL, I am deeply disappointed that they don't carry fembots, or at least room defenders with frickin' laser beams.
I took that test in HS and scored #1 in my school, somehow beating this brilliant Yugoslavian classmate (who was clearly far smarter a guy than me and did graduate and go to Waterloo) by exactly 1 point. (Marko, if you're reading this, I still think you're really smart.) The questions were actually pretty intelligent, though honestly my programming skills were pretty lame back then and I only answered two out of the five questions before the three hours expired.
What customer service? What I love about costco is that they practically have no people on the floor to bother you, aside from those people checking the receipts at the exit.
Or maybe he knows that they're clueless so they'll go to Worst Buy for support instead of badgering him.
While this is true, it can also be used to your advantage. Those boys want their commission badly, so you can easily refuse to go wait in the long line at checkout, saying that you want to buy it now or you'll leave. They'll instantly check you out through the little 'service islands' in the middle of the store as opposed to making you go through the checkout. They get their commission and you get faster service.
Indeed, as listed on their own web site: "Future Shop stores are a division of Burnaby-based Best Buy Canada Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY)"
I never really liked Future Shop that much. Still I find that they have slightly better selection that Best Buy. Perhaps this is a remenant of the days when they were not owned by Worst Buy.
I think that this is true a lot of the time, but not all of the time. For example I think it's a good idea to get the extended warranty on notebook computers as the whole thing is a 'moving part' . In my immediate family, we've gone through 10+ notebooks over the last 5 years or so from Compaq, IBM, Toshiba, Fujitsu, NEC, Acer and Apple and every single one had an issue after the warranty period with the exception of the Fujitsu. Extended warranties on notebooks have paid off for us in a big way. In fact I think that this is a good practice for anything with moving parts. For example, the 40 dollar extended warranty on our microwave got us free repair (normally $300+) when the motor of the spinning motor failed a few days after the normal warranty died.
Mind you, we are absolutely religious about keeping all paperwork and receipts. With a little digging, I can find the receipt for absolutely any piece of electronics I bought, or anything I purchased over the internet since 2001.
Though my rule of thumb is to avoid getting the extended warranty on items that are sold at a loss, particularly in quickly advancing areas of technology. For example it would be folly to get an extended warranty on an inkjet printer. If it fails after 1 year, you can get one 4X as good for the same price. The same applies for low end DVD players.
What is a Pom? And what is compo?
Congratulations!
Here's to an excellent release that shows what the power of open source and community effort can really accomplish. Well done!
If you don't believe him, look at his posting history. ;)
I buy 2-3 DVDs per week online and I can tell you that amazon is one of the best when it comes to dealing with things that got damaged during shipment, even if it's just a case of the disc popping off the hub. They will not hesistate to re-ship or refund as appropriate, postage paid in their dime all the way as long as it's not international. (Though on more than one occasion, I've had amazon.com either send me a new one and saying I can keep the defective one, or giving me a total refund due to the cost of shipping internationally from Canada.)
Amazon's prices may not be the best, but they still get plenty of my business because they have earned it through excellent customer service.
I would gladly trade a refund on the levies at the cost of paying for the exactly 11 unpurchased songs on my iPod. (Heck, iTMS is coming to Canada very soon; I could just buy those tracks and still make a hefty profit. I probably will do that.)
My point is that the levy is in line with the precedents in Canada and I understand why it is there, and how it makes sense within that framework of thinking. And as long as I am paying for it, I might as well reap the legal benefits. As to your plan of creating a 'fake' music corporation, that's abuse of the system and it doesn't count as an example.
Fortunately it looks like these 'Canadian content protection' schemes are slowly being removed. Recently it was ruled that there's nothing wrong with receiving DISH Network or DirecTV in Canada. (Of course those companies will have something to day.) But really, on this specific issue, I think entertainment should not be subsidised because it is Canadian. It should simply win or lose on virtue of whether or not it is worthwhile. Subsidies do not make for better music.
"Why I am forced to pay taxes into healthcare even though I don't get sick very often?"
"Why do people have to pay taxes into the public school system, even if they send their children to private school?"
Because that is the way things are spun in this country. Social responsibility and social subsidising are facts of the way the country has chosen to run itself. It's a facet of the way Canada works and it has its advantages and disadvantages. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better with what many other nations put up with.
While the levy paid on music players may or may not make downloading legal, that does not change the fact that downloading music from P2P is 100% legal in Canada. If you are confused about your rights, please see the CBC's music download FAQ.
If I like the artist, I go to the concert. This helps him or her out much more than a CD purchase, out of which they only receive a tiny fraction.
Downloading music is something I almost never do anymore. If I do, it's typically because I want to test it so I can get the CD, it's only available in other parts of the world, or it's out of print and I can't find it via the used disc outlets. Very rarely do I actually 'steal' music, which is legal here in Canada anyway. I didn't pay the $35 musician-levy on my iPod for nothing.