The audiophiles I know pretty much don't listen to mp3, ever.
I can understand ones love for quality music reproduction. Some people take it to the extreme but to each his own. I define an audiophile as someone that lost entertainment value of the music and became overly concerned or even obsessive with nothing but the quality. An example is your statement above. Basically an audiophile is not happy with anything but the perfect listening environment using his own home made speaker interconnects, directional wires, and triple filtered power supplies. How can you enjoy music the other 98% of your day, like when on the subway, in your car, at a night club etc.. I truely enjoy a good relaxing listening environment (at least on a moderate budget) but I also can hear any track from Dark Side of the Moon on AM radio and still get enjoyment from it.
I had mine for about 3 years and it was relatively spam free until about 3 months ago. I don't know what happened but now it's a porn mail magnet. I wish there was a way to open the mails in text form, forward them without opening them, or prevent them from fetching outside images when you open them, with those options I might be able to filter them better without having to open them first, now I simply delete them without reading. My Hotmail was never free from spam. I was using their "block this sender option" but they have a very low limit on how many address you can input there.
Open source projects could knock these "Download me!" programs out of existence. Why don't we?
A lot of it is already there..
Time sync with NIST: http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/servic e/its.h tm There are hundreds of free/open source time tools out there.
Changing MTU, not a program but a quick guide: http://www.winguides.com/registry/display. php/30/
Download Accelerator, although not open source, it does claim to be free and free from spyware and adware: http://www.freshdevices.com/freshdown.htm l
I've used various freeware/public domain/open source weather tools before in the past so I know they are out there also.
There is almost always a spyware free/freeware/open source alternative to do simple tasks in the Win world, people just need to look for them. The problem is most of spyware apps are very deceiving or blatantly fuzzy about what they actually do and people do not look elsewhere.
Thats is an issue with a lot of aspects of IT and in the real world. It is hard to justify the cost of a backup, redundency, plan "B", virus software, firewall, faster network, more printers, wireless security, network intrusion detection, blah blah until you are burned by one or more of them.
Normally a consultant will try to justify your need for these things to you but of course they are always selling the $perfect_product for that job also so naturally you take the suggestions with a grain of salt.
The US may have needed a Department of Homeland Security years ago but no one wanted to jump on it until the WTC's.
Not only that but they gave the impression no one had problems using the old paper method. Actually noting that at times the network was fine but they decided to stick with the backup method until the issue was resolved because it was harder switching back and forth when the network was working. All in all though they made a point that no appointments were missed, no surgeries were cancelled etc.. Meaning business was as usual but using a backup manual method.
I have not read Network World enough to form an impression of their style, is it watered down to favor advertisers and the general IT purchasing people or is it really a nuts and bolts down to earth mag?
Secondly, they gotta offer direct PPP access as an alternative. No way I'm using their bloated client, no matter how many features they stuff into it.
They offer 'alternate' access to AOL. If you are an existing AOL dialup subscriber you can connect to AOL over any internet link or you can pay something like $10 a month for access minus the dialup ability. I am not a user so I do not know exactly what the difference is between coming in off ip or dialing directly in but a few of my relatives have used my Comcast cable to get into AOL with thier passwords. If they offer AOL special content and it was available for only $10 month it might be worth it for anyone with existing conectivity.
Okay. I decided to try that method, here's my experience. First I could not find my keys. Eventually I found them under the couch. It's cold outside so I had to let the car run for about 5 minutes to get the ice off the windows. About half way to the mall I got stcuk behind a garbage truck that was leaking stuff out the back, it would not have been so bad but he was going like 15 MPH under the speed limit. Luckily though I noticed I was on E, I stopped at the Circle-K and waited in line for gas. Back on the road I eventually made it to the mall. We must be apporaching the holiday season because the mall was packed, I could only find a decent spot near Sears, which is no where near the epicenter of the mall where the record store is. Finally in the record store I could not find the CD I wanted. They had some selections but I did not want to pay $17.99 for one song that I liked out of 10 on the cd, too bad they did not have a method of picking and choosing songs I wanted. I paid my dues and set sail in my Chrysler for home. Traffic was a little worse heading in that direction but I had a cd player in my car, boy was I surprized when my new cd would not play in my car. The label said something about PC only and I could not find the official phillips cd logo. Oh well, maybe I can rip it to MP3 and play it my portable when I get home, I wonder what that the PC only means??
Yeah, your experience may not have been as bad but I think the author of the articles was not typical either. For the record, I like high quality recorded music, you will NOT get that in a compressed d/l, more so when it is converted from WMA to MP3. My kids are a different breed, my daughter would be more then happy to select and create her own 'CD' online for the same price if she could select the songs herself, she really likes the "Now xx" type of mix cd's and quality is not really an issue for her.
CC does a lot of weird things.. I bought a cd reader from them on black Friday last year, it was a 2 hour special. It was $50 but only $5 after rebate. When I installed it at home, it did not work. When I tried to take it back they offered me a different model in exchange as the one with the rebate was unavailable, of course this was $50 and no rebate. I was not paying that much for a cdrom drive, I only bought the damn thing initially because it was supposed to be $5. I refused and then they offered to take back the one I had for a $7 restocking fee. I argued back and forth and I was getting no where with the person that called himself manager at the time. I always take into consideration that there are two sides to every story, I try to see things from the others perspective when I deal with someone, this helps me understand a specific dealing and how to work with it. In this case I had a brain implosion as I could not understand the managers thought process or line of thinking. So, I took the next best step. I ripped the UPC symbol of the box, threw the cdrom and the rest of the box on the floor (with a decent force) and left the store. Yes it was somewhat irrational but I was very frustrated at what these guys were doing, we definitely had a misunderstanding.. It was cheaper for me in the end to send in the fucking rebate on the broken POS then it was to return it and pay a restocking fee. Previous to that I ran into a similar instance with them on a Sony car stereo, in the store the demo unit played every brand of cdr media and format (TAO/ DAO) I brought with me to test. I bought it and installed it in my car, well guess what, it only played like 2 of the 10 I tried in the store. Not specifically CC's fault but they refused to take the item back as in their eyes it was not defective. Their technical reasons (ie bullshit)for why it did not work were comical. Based on those experience and other smaller ones in the past, I made the assumption customer satisfaction is not one of their core initiatives.. I have not stepped foot in a CC since.
Hey, I agree.. I was not trying to compare the two. I assume that when you are creating a script or something in DOS, you really have no choice but DOS, like boot disks. You can do some elaborate things but it IS very limited. DOS is not even on the same field compared to *nix command line.
I was going to add that analogy also. You can also turn that into this:
The amount of extra bandwidth useage that one uncapper can use is equivelent to the cable company adding just 3 new users.
I don't know what kind of lawyer these people can afford, but it seems to me that the more information they can subpoena from the company the better.
Starting with:
Charts and graphs of outgoing company wide bandwidth broken down by hour to see at what points and how long the pipe is saturated.
The actual amount of bandwidth each of these people were actually using at what times to see if they were causing the saturation and potential slowdown of others.
The agreements they have with upstreams to see if bursting was used to limit the saturation.
They may not be able to provide all of this information. That's not going to look good when someone asks them point blank, "How much bandwidth was Joe Blow actually using and when?". It is my understanding of the law that you can only collect ACTUAL damages in court based on proof of loss, not what the damages could have been or what you think they could have been. With no individual bandwidth figures for these guys, you will have a hard pleading your case.
The loses could not be anywhere near what they are claiming.. Here's the way I see it..
The cable provider has a certain amount of bandwidth they provide their customers to the outside world. This is what they pay for. They pay that amount regardless of WHO is using it and when. The only loses the cable company should be able to claim is from the customers who cancelled their services because they were not getting expected rates and it can be proved these rates were lower because of a direct result of what these 11 people were doing. That is a very hard thing to prove. Compare the cancels/month directly related to bandwidth concerns before, during, and after these offenders were uncapping. If they are no different, there is no loses.
Even if they were originally capped at 1.5/128. The most you could really get out of a CM is what? 5mbit/500kbit maybe? The have the potential to get roughly just over 3 times what they were paying for. Divide this extra 3.5mbits among say 5000 subscribers and you get a potential loss of 700bit/sec per customer or roughly.0875kbytes/sec slowdown per violator (assuming they were all using it at the same time and maxxed out their own cable lines). You also have to assume that the CM companys outgoing pipes are already saturated, if they were not, the loss to everyone else is nothing. Again, this is bandwidth the company is already paying for regardless. Okay its late for me and my math may be off so please be easy if I made a dumb mistake and fell free reply with a recalc with your estimates if I am grossly underestimating something.
I am not saying what they did was justified, but the damage estimates are WAY off..
Considering this article already has over 260 comments and its only been up less then 2 hours I would say there is some type of positive response from it (positive meaning total responses, maybe not useful responses). You have the option to edit your user preferences and delselect articles from MS from showing up. I've done this in the past for certain things before..
Perhaps it will indeed save them money when deploying their new infrastructure, but god forbid this guy move out of the area!
So what are you saying? This small town is loaded with competent MS Admins that can also support the system and/or with MS it can be administrated correctly by the secretaries? What about the network support? A MS based server/client solution is no more self sustaining then a Linux based solution. Based on my experience, its just the opposite. I would also say that for every local Linux guru that leaves, there is probably two more that could take his/her place.
Halon DO NOT replace oxygen in the room to extinguish the fire.
It cools, replaces O2 and works to break the chemical chain. At least according to this
There is a fire triangle. The points of the triangle represent heat, oxygen, and a combustable material. If you take any one of the three away a fire will go out. Halon and other devices (Baking Soda, AFFF, PKP, etcc) replaces or prevents introduction of O2 causing the fire to go out. Use of water removes the heat, CO2 replaces the O2 and has a slight cooling effect. Halon also breaks the chemical reaction. A problem with O2 removing substances is if the temperature has not gone down, reintoduction of O2 will cause a reflash (like opening the door to early).
http://www.nifc.gov/pres_visit/whatisfire.html http://www.usbr.gov/power/data/fist/fist5~2/5~2_1. htm http://www.princeton.edu/~ehs/theater/Appendi xA.ht ml
Athenanews.com, interesting. Any first hand comments on their completion rate or retention? I could not find any info on the web site relating to that. The opinions I found with Google varied widely. Good prices though.
I was not trying to argue about what rights you may or may not have, just trying to point out there are other uses to a modded Xbox that has nothing to do with pirated games. Although I do agree with your statement, maybe you should read the entire thread before posting such a response...
You have a pretty shallow concept of uses of a modded Xbox and/or you are missing the point completely..
There is a big difference in hacking/copying a game and trying to play it online than what MS is apparently doing. They are forbidding a modded Xbox from even being online, this has nothing to do with the the authentcity of the game you are trying to play online. You can mod your Xbox to boot Linux/whatever and try to use it to play a store bought game later and you are forever banned. This is not game software copy checking, this is Xbox hardware checking.
I may be way off base here but.. I have never myself or even know of anyone who has ever called or even thought of calling a console maker for some kind of tech support. Do you really think that has anything to do with why they were banned?
What happens is that people get desensitized to the concern's about bad fast food.
That's a neat way of saying "I know the down side but I don't care". I did not care about fast food either until I got pancreatis from high triglycerides. Now I do! Actually fast food was a small contributor but genetics was the major cause, either way I no longer eat it. People do not eat fast food because of being desensitized, they eat it because they like it, it is convienent, and it is cheap. An ad for Mcdonalds wether in a game or on TV might get you to go to McD's over BK but it is not going to prevent you from eating a healthy salad with low fat dressing and jogging in the morning.
You know I am always open to suggestions for better service but I have found the exact opposite from Giganews. Their speed comes close to my 1.5mbps that Comcast provides me (the peak hours can be ~25% slower though). Their article completion rate is well over 99.9% (based on my experience, not what I've read) with 15 day retention in multipart and 60 day retention in non-multipart binary groups.
I did check around before and found services that were close. Just checking your link above for usenet.com, their Gold service offers 250MB/day for $14.95 month. That's roughly 7.5GB which is slighly more then my 6.3GB (with free headers and posting) I get now for $11.95. So the price is roughly the same but I am not limited per day and since I do not find 250MB worth d/l'ing everyday I would loose out (I have had a few 2GB days before) Again.. I am not using Giganews because I like them personally and not because I dislike any of the others, I tried it and was happy with the service. I am open to suggestions though.
And what other provider should I choose? That other Cable company that is not in my area? That DSL provider that refuses to service my area? These providers are government sanctioned monopolies. That is way they can change what they want when they want, for the most part you DO NOT have a choice. They also conspire between each other to offer similar services and pricing structures. I do have the option of dialup but this is not in the same playing field.
Considering marathoners go about 12 MPH, and sprinters go about about 20 MPH and they are both legal on the sidewalk
Dude, legal maybe but come on.. When have you ever seen someone sprinting 20MPH down a busy sidewalk? I may have come close a few times trying to catch the early bus but that is NOT an easy task. I imagine if more people were actually sprinting down the sidewalk it would become a nuisance and probably illegal.
"The Segway Human Transporter is one of the most famous and anticipated product introductions of all time," Jeff Bezos, chief executive and founder of Amazon.com
By who? I heard the same thing about that Ronco rotissory cooker, the vaccuum storage bags, and at least 5 different home gyms.
It may be a very interesting product but lets be realistic here.
Not only are they still calling it "Unlimited", in certain areas they are offering even more unlimited...
I just got a snail mail from Comcast advertising a new service (at least in northern VA)... It is based on "allowing the whole family to be online at the same time" plan. Yes folks, these are the same high speed providers that cry wolf and complain about bandwidth hogs.
A 802.11b wireless CM router all in one unit and 2/256 service for $64.99 with up to 5 machines. I currently pay $49 +$5 CM rental and only get 1.5/128 connectivity for one machine. So now we want your whole family to enjoy the internet all at once [until you hit that bandwidth limit].
The advertisment has nice color pictures of the whole family online d/l things, graphs of speed comparisons of large media files, and all the power of the internet etc.., I saw nothing about d/l limits. One week they offer something but the next they are trying some behind the scene limits? They are advertising one thing to get your money then switch you later. BAIT AND SWITCH.
Another twist is their usenet service. They outsource and provide 1GB with Giganews paid per month and if you want more they over a special deal with Giganews to get a discount on other packages. Well guess what, I did. I got a second account for 6 more GB/month and I use it all every month.
Slashdot Mirror
The audiophiles I know pretty much don't listen to mp3, ever.
I can understand ones love for quality music reproduction. Some people take it to the extreme but to each his own. I define an audiophile as someone that lost entertainment value of the music and became overly concerned or even obsessive with nothing but the quality. An example is your statement above. Basically an audiophile is not happy with anything but the perfect listening environment using his own home made speaker interconnects, directional wires, and triple filtered power supplies. How can you enjoy music the other 98% of your day, like when on the subway, in your car, at a night club etc.. I truely enjoy a good relaxing listening environment (at least on a moderate budget) but I also can hear any track from Dark Side of the Moon on AM radio and still get enjoyment from it.
I had mine for about 3 years and it was relatively spam free until about 3 months ago. I don't know what happened but now it's a porn mail magnet. I wish there was a way to open the mails in text form, forward them without opening them, or prevent them from fetching outside images when you open them, with those options I might be able to filter them better without having to open them first, now I simply delete them without reading.
My Hotmail was never free from spam. I was using their "block this sender option" but they have a very low limit on how many address you can input there.
Open source projects could knock these "Download me!" programs out of existence. Why don't we?
c e/its.h tm
. php/30/
m l
A lot of it is already there..
Time sync with NIST:
http://www.boulder.nist.gov/timefreq/servi
There are hundreds of free/open source time tools out there.
Changing MTU, not a program but a quick guide:
http://www.winguides.com/registry/display
Download Accelerator, although not open source, it does claim to be free and free from spyware and adware:
http://www.freshdevices.com/freshdown.ht
I've used various freeware/public domain/open source weather tools before in the past so I know they are out there also.
There is almost always a spyware free/freeware/open source alternative to do simple tasks in the Win world, people just need to look for them. The problem is most of spyware apps are very deceiving or blatantly fuzzy about what they actually do and people do not look elsewhere.
Thats is an issue with a lot of aspects of IT and in the real world. It is hard to justify the cost of a backup, redundency, plan "B", virus software, firewall, faster network, more printers, wireless security, network intrusion detection, blah blah until you are burned by one or more of them.
Normally a consultant will try to justify your need for these things to you but of course they are always selling the $perfect_product for that job also so naturally you take the suggestions with a grain of salt.
The US may have needed a Department of Homeland Security years ago but no one wanted to jump on it until the WTC's.
Not only that but they gave the impression no one had problems using the old paper method. Actually noting that at times the network was fine but they decided to stick with the backup method until the issue was resolved because it was harder switching back and forth when the network was working. All in all though they made a point that no appointments were missed, no surgeries were cancelled etc.. Meaning business was as usual but using a backup manual method.
I have not read Network World enough to form an impression of their style, is it watered down to favor advertisers and the general IT purchasing people or is it really a nuts and bolts down to earth mag?
Secondly, they gotta offer direct PPP access as an alternative. No way I'm using their bloated client, no matter how many features they stuff into it.
They offer 'alternate' access to AOL. If you are an existing AOL dialup subscriber you can connect to AOL over any internet link or you can pay something like $10 a month for access minus the dialup ability. I am not a user so I do not know exactly what the difference is between coming in off ip or dialing directly in but a few of my relatives have used my Comcast cable to get into AOL with thier passwords. If they offer AOL special content and it was available for only $10 month it might be worth it for anyone with existing conectivity.
Okay.
I decided to try that method, here's my experience.
First I could not find my keys. Eventually I found them under the couch. It's cold outside so I had to let the car run for about 5 minutes to get the ice off the windows. About half way to the mall I got stcuk behind a garbage truck that was leaking stuff out the back, it would not have been so bad but he was going like 15 MPH under the speed limit. Luckily though I noticed I was on E, I stopped at the Circle-K and waited in line for gas. Back on the road I eventually made it to the mall. We must be apporaching the holiday season because the mall was packed, I could only find a decent spot near Sears, which is no where near the epicenter of the mall where the record store is. Finally in the record store I could not find the CD I wanted. They had some selections but I did not want to pay $17.99 for one song that I liked out of 10 on the cd, too bad they did not have a method of picking and choosing songs I wanted. I paid my dues and set sail in my Chrysler for home. Traffic was a little worse heading in that direction but I had a cd player in my car, boy was I surprized when my new cd would not play in my car. The label said something about PC only and I could not find the official phillips cd logo. Oh well, maybe I can rip it to MP3 and play it my portable when I get home, I wonder what that the PC only means??
Yeah, your experience may not have been as bad but I think the author of the articles was not typical either. For the record, I like high quality recorded music, you will NOT get that in a compressed d/l, more so when it is converted from WMA to MP3. My kids are a different breed, my daughter would be more then happy to select and create her own 'CD' online for the same price if she could select the songs herself, she really likes the "Now xx" type of mix cd's and quality is not really an issue for her.
CC does a lot of weird things..
I bought a cd reader from them on black Friday last year, it was a 2 hour special. It was $50 but only $5 after rebate. When I installed it at home, it did not work. When I tried to take it back they offered me a different model in exchange as the one with the rebate was unavailable, of course this was $50 and no rebate. I was not paying that much for a cdrom drive, I only bought the damn thing initially because it was supposed to be $5. I refused and then they offered to take back the one I had for a $7 restocking fee. I argued back and forth and I was getting no where with the person that called himself manager at the time. I always take into consideration that there are two sides to every story, I try to see things from the others perspective when I deal with someone, this helps me understand a specific dealing and how to work with it. In this case I had a brain implosion as I could not understand the managers thought process or line of thinking. So, I took the next best step. I ripped the UPC symbol of the box, threw the cdrom and the rest of the box on the floor (with a decent force) and left the store. Yes it was somewhat irrational but I was very frustrated at what these guys were doing, we definitely had a misunderstanding..
It was cheaper for me in the end to send in the fucking rebate on the broken POS then it was to return it and pay a restocking fee. Previous to that I ran into a similar instance with them on a Sony car stereo, in the store the demo unit played every brand of cdr media and format (TAO/ DAO) I brought with me to test. I bought it and installed it in my car, well guess what, it only played like 2 of the 10 I tried in the store. Not specifically CC's fault but they refused to take the item back as in their eyes it was not defective. Their technical reasons (ie bullshit)for why it did not work were comical. Based on those experience and other smaller ones in the past, I made the assumption customer satisfaction is not one of their core initiatives.. I have not stepped foot in a CC since.
I stand by my point that batch files suck.
Hey, I agree.. I was not trying to compare the two. I assume that when you are creating a script or something in DOS, you really have no choice but DOS, like boot disks. You can do some elaborate things but it IS very limited. DOS is not even on the same field compared to *nix command line.
Here's a very good reference for DOS scripting. DOS does have its limits but it is still useful..
The amount of extra bandwidth useage that one uncapper can use is equivelent to the cable company adding just 3 new users.
I don't know what kind of lawyer these people can afford, but it seems to me that the more information they can subpoena from the company the better.
Starting with:
Charts and graphs of outgoing company wide bandwidth broken down by hour to see at what points and how long the pipe is saturated.
The actual amount of bandwidth each of these people were actually using at what times to see if they were causing the saturation and potential slowdown of others.
The agreements they have with upstreams to see if bursting was used to limit the saturation.
They may not be able to provide all of this information. That's not going to look good when someone asks them point blank, "How much bandwidth was Joe Blow actually using and when?". It is my understanding of the law that you can only collect ACTUAL damages in court based on proof of loss, not what the damages could have been or what you think they could have been. With no individual bandwidth figures for these guys, you will have a hard pleading your case.
The loses could not be anywhere near what they are claiming.. Here's the way I see it..
.0875kbytes/sec slowdown per violator (assuming they were all using it at the same time and maxxed out their own cable lines). You also have to assume that the CM companys outgoing pipes are already saturated, if they were not, the loss to everyone else is nothing. Again, this is bandwidth the company is already paying for regardless.
The cable provider has a certain amount of bandwidth they provide their customers to the outside world. This is what they pay for. They pay that amount regardless of WHO is using it and when. The only loses the cable company should be able to claim is from the customers who cancelled their services because they were not getting expected rates and it can be proved these rates were lower because of a direct result of what these 11 people were doing. That is a very hard thing to prove. Compare the cancels/month directly related to bandwidth concerns before, during, and after these offenders were uncapping. If they are no different, there is no loses.
Even if they were originally capped at 1.5/128. The most you could really get out of a CM is what? 5mbit/500kbit maybe? The have the potential to get roughly just over 3 times what they were paying for. Divide this extra 3.5mbits among say 5000 subscribers and you get a potential loss of 700bit/sec per customer or roughly
Okay its late for me and my math may be off so please be easy if I made a dumb mistake and fell free reply with a recalc with your estimates if I am grossly underestimating something.
I am not saying what they did was justified, but the damage estimates are WAY off..
Considering this article already has over 260 comments and its only been up less then 2 hours I would say there is some type of positive response from it (positive meaning total responses, maybe not useful responses). You have the option to edit your user preferences and delselect articles from MS from showing up. I've done this in the past for certain things before..
Perhaps it will indeed save them money when deploying their new infrastructure, but god forbid this guy move out of the area!
So what are you saying? This small town is loaded with competent MS Admins that can also support the system and/or with MS it can be administrated correctly by the secretaries? What about the network support? A MS based server/client solution is no more self sustaining then a Linux based solution. Based on my experience, its just the opposite. I would also say that for every local Linux guru that leaves, there is probably two more that could take his/her place.
Halon DO NOT replace oxygen in the room to extinguish the fire.
http://www.usbr.gov/power/data/fist/fist5~2/5~2_1. htmi xA.ht ml
It cools, replaces O2 and works to break the chemical chain. At least according to this
There is a fire triangle. The points of the triangle represent heat, oxygen, and a combustable material. If you take any one of the three away a fire will go out. Halon and other devices (Baking Soda, AFFF, PKP, etcc) replaces or prevents introduction of O2 causing the fire to go out. Use of water removes the heat, CO2 replaces the O2 and has a slight cooling effect. Halon also breaks the chemical reaction. A problem with O2 removing substances is if the temperature has not gone down, reintoduction of O2 will cause a reflash (like opening the door to early).
http://www.nifc.gov/pres_visit/whatisfire.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~ehs/theater/Append
Athenanews.com, interesting. Any first hand comments on their completion rate or retention? I could not find any info on the web site relating to that. The opinions I found with Google varied widely. Good prices though.
I was not trying to argue about what rights you may or may not have, just trying to point out there are other uses to a modded Xbox that has nothing to do with pirated games.
Although I do agree with your statement, maybe you should read the entire thread before posting such a response...
You have a pretty shallow concept of uses of a modded Xbox and/or you are missing the point completely..
There is a big difference in hacking/copying a game and trying to play it online than what MS is apparently doing. They are forbidding a modded Xbox from even being online, this has nothing to do with the the authentcity of the game you are trying to play online. You can mod your Xbox to boot Linux/whatever and try to use it to play a store bought game later and you are forever banned. This is not game software copy checking, this is Xbox hardware checking.
I may be way off base here but..
I have never myself or even know of anyone who has ever called or even thought of calling a console maker for some kind of tech support. Do you really think that has anything to do with why they were banned?
What happens is that people get desensitized to the concern's about bad fast food.
That's a neat way of saying "I know the down side but I don't care". I did not care about fast food either until I got pancreatis from high triglycerides. Now I do! Actually fast food was a small contributor but genetics was the major cause, either way I no longer eat it. People do not eat fast food because of being desensitized, they eat it because they like it, it is convienent, and it is cheap. An ad for Mcdonalds wether in a game or on TV might get you to go to McD's over BK but it is not going to prevent you from eating a healthy salad with low fat dressing and jogging in the morning.
You know I am always open to suggestions for better service but I have found the exact opposite from Giganews. Their speed comes close to my 1.5mbps that Comcast provides me (the peak hours can be ~25% slower though). Their article completion rate is well over 99.9% (based on my experience, not what I've read) with 15 day retention in multipart and 60 day retention in non-multipart binary groups.
I did check around before and found services that were close. Just checking your link above for usenet.com, their Gold service offers 250MB/day for $14.95 month. That's roughly 7.5GB which is slighly more then my 6.3GB (with free headers and posting) I get now for $11.95. So the price is roughly the same but I am not limited per day and since I do not find 250MB worth d/l'ing everyday I would loose out (I have had a few 2GB days before) Again.. I am not using Giganews because I like them personally and not because I dislike any of the others, I tried it and was happy with the service. I am open to suggestions though.
And what other provider should I choose? That other Cable company that is not in my area? That DSL provider that refuses to service my area? These providers are government sanctioned monopolies. That is way they can change what they want when they want, for the most part you DO NOT have a choice. They also conspire between each other to offer similar services and pricing structures. I do have the option of dialup but this is not in the same playing field.
Considering marathoners go about 12 MPH, and sprinters go about about 20 MPH and they are both legal on the sidewalk
Dude, legal maybe but come on.. When have you ever seen someone sprinting 20MPH down a busy sidewalk? I may have come close a few times trying to catch the early bus but that is NOT an easy task. I imagine if more people were actually sprinting down the sidewalk it would become a nuisance and probably illegal.
"The Segway Human Transporter is one of the most famous and anticipated product introductions of all time," Jeff Bezos, chief executive and founder of Amazon.com
By who?
I heard the same thing about that Ronco rotissory cooker, the vaccuum storage bags, and at least 5 different home gyms.
It may be a very interesting product but lets be realistic here.
Not only are they still calling it "Unlimited", in certain areas they are offering even more unlimited...
I just got a snail mail from Comcast advertising a new service (at least in northern VA)... It is based on "allowing the whole family to be online at the same time" plan. Yes folks, these are the same high speed providers that cry wolf and complain about bandwidth hogs.
A 802.11b wireless CM router all in one unit and 2/256 service for $64.99 with up to 5 machines. I currently pay $49 +$5 CM rental and only get 1.5/128 connectivity for one machine. So now we want your whole family to enjoy the internet all at once [until you hit that bandwidth limit].
The advertisment has nice color pictures of the whole family online d/l things, graphs of speed comparisons of large media files, and all the power of the internet etc.., I saw nothing about d/l limits. One week they offer something but the next they are trying some behind the scene limits? They are advertising one thing to get your money then switch you later. BAIT AND SWITCH.
Another twist is their usenet service. They outsource and provide 1GB with Giganews paid per month and if you want more they over a special deal with Giganews to get a discount on other packages. Well guess what, I did. I got a second account for 6 more GB/month and I use it all every month.