If you pay for a cheap unit and they give you an expensive one with the additional features disabled instead, you have no cause to whine about it being disabled, since you didn't pay for it - you got it for free.
Devil's Advocate: one could make the argument that the faster version of the printer breaks more frequently and, consequently, costs more to support with phone calls and replacements. By paying more, you're subsidizing the risks involved with the faster speeds. I'm not familiar with the printer but it's possible that perhaps the faster one was built a little differently to accommodate the added speed. In either way, I'd bet there are some hidden costs involved with the added speed (but yeah, the rest of the price difference is just trying to profit more)
Well actually, he was later told by a "Best Buy employee that they were told the same thing -- the locking up and freezing was intentional." It probably still came from somewhere near the bottom of the food chain, so I agree it's not a big deal.
More to the point, the author probably got the quote from his local Best Buy, in the same area as the EB Games. So I'd bet they were serviced by the same representative for the area.
Plus, let's be honest - most people who aren't knowledgeable in a certain area do believe everything they're told. You think your average mom in an EB Games location would question this logic at all? How many things in life are designed to fail or cause problems as part of their schematics? Your power is designed to fail in case of a problem (circuit breakers), your brakes are designed to make noises when the pads are running low, and your average ATM is designed to shut down if it thinks its being hacked. That a console would "lock up" on purpose isn't the most far fetched thing Joe Public's been handed to swallow.
Listening to music will probably be forbidden, thought you might sneak in some headphones and find out you don't hear your phone ringing when you have them on, and if you make the music quieter, you won't be able to listen to it from the phones ringing (catch 22).
Your general claims about the corporate world are valid, but - are you a programmer? I ask because in most good corporations, the programmers are the tiny gods (depending on what they're working on). You will have to answer phone calls but generally people realize that you're working on something so leave you the fuck alone. I've even seen corporations where the programmers don't even have phones and it's someone else's job to coordinate with people if anything is needed. And you can listen to music - usually through headphones (even if you have an office, since you don't want to shake the walls or anything). Anything that makes you more productive.
Yeah, there's corporations out there that treat their programmers the same way they treat their custodians or that treat them like easily exportable resources, but those aren't the smart ones. Companies who are smart and whose core strength is software or whatever the programmers are working on don't put limits on their programmers in the same way they would to their call center or help desk employees. Heck, this is the reason programmers are frequently hated in the corporate world - they have egos due to how well they're treated. This is the reason when things like offshoring show up people sometimes say "GOOD! SERVES THEM RIGHT!!! OUTSOURCE THEM ALL!!!" These people are similarly clueless.
The important question is.. How did the final count get altered?
Answer.. The card that does not contain a program actualy does contain a program. That program altered the result. Re-watch the film. The card contains much more than just the poll totals which is denied by the manufacture.
Well I thought they were saying that the card had hacked totals and that the executable on the card was allowing someone with a PC to do so (i.e., the totals hacking was done before the tallying). Are you saying the program on the card is run before the tallying and that's what "fixes" the totals?
I watched this documentary over the weekend and one thing didn't make sense to me (spoilers ahead, if such a thing can exist for a documentary everyone can see for free). They went on about how that one place in Florida had -16,000+ votes for Gore in 2000 and they near the end explain the concept of negative votes (implication being: someone hacked that memory card in Florida). They explain that the concept behind the negative votes is to subtract votes from the person you want to lose and add votes to the person you want to win in equal amounts so that when the votes are counted there aren't more votes on the card than voters (and so, someone really screwed up in Florida).
So the demonstration at the end showed how this could work - they voted in a fake election. They had six votes for "Yes" and two votes for "No". They put in the hacked memory card and it produces the initial printout which shows zero votes for no and zero votes for yes. After entering in the votes through the machine it comes out as seven for "Yes" and one for "No" (so I guess they had -5 "No" and +5 for "Yes" on the hacked card).
My question is - why did the initial printout show zero votes? Was this part of the hack to fool the printer, or did the machine just print "zero" for everything since it had just been turned on? And if the latter of those two is true, how in the blue *heck* did anyone think that this was a good idea? Hell, Diebold makes ATM machines - you wouldn't want those to always say zero at bootup. Is Diebold just so incompetent that this escaped them?
Offtopic, but... when they say "pray" in the Star Wars movies (happens more than once across all six movies) - what are they praying to, exactly? Didn't see a whole lot of religion in those movies...
We don't care about standards. We care about the real world!
Well in all fairness that's not exactly what he said, he said that the developers come before the standards. The problem with being the #1 browser in the world is that if they did decide to fix everything all at once, then they break a LOT of websites. So they have to ease some of these things in gradually. Compare that with Mozilla/Opera who can afford to break things on every release (not saying they do) since they don't have much of a userbase and even Opera doesn't have a commercial interest anymore (as in, Opera for Windows is now free - I know they charge for some other platforms). Hell, Linux can break device drivers on every kernel release because there's no financial incentive for them not to do so (and then the Linux Zealots wonder why no one's moving to it)
The Firefox team sent the IE team a cake in return - it consumed most of the milk and just about all of the eggs from the local grocery store. When the grocery store complained about it, the Firefox team told the grocery store to move to a bigger location so they could hold more milk and eggs.
Re:On file sharing and leaking videos
on
An Ode To Al
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· Score: 1
It's completely awesome that Weird Al is charting better now than ever before.
That said, it could be that fewer people are buying CD's these days and therefore there's less competition.
When the record stores in malls are going out of business and no one cares, times are changing.
You do realize that this is the same Lt. Col. David Grossman who wrote a book on "Killology" where he basically says that FPS video games are "Murder Simulators" and is the original person to blame Columbine on DOOM, right?
I would consider any analogy from him to be sort of flawed from the outset.
If you'll recall, when 9/11 happened, Comedy Central just ran reruns of The Daily Show for a few weeks. Then they had Jon Stewart come on and give a little speech and at one point he says something like "I'm not sure what this show will be" and I was afraid that that meant that TDS was either getting cancelled (no one wanted to make fun of the news at that point) or was going to change into something timid.
Instead, TDS has wound up being the best show on television. They attack topics no one else will, they have guests you'd never expect - Presidents, Congressmen, pundits, etc. And Jon Stewart interviews them not as some hotshot journalist trying to further his/her career but in the same way we would - he asks the questions we'd ask if we had Former President Carter or Sentor McCain on our couch.
Their only problem is they can't report on anything not funny. When Mother Teresa or Steve Irwin died, it went without comment. And it took a while but they did get to making fun of America, Post-9/11. In some ways, 9/11 actually made TDS better since it gave TDS an even better reason to exist.
Also apparently the original versions are basically non-anamorphic transfers from the laser discs. So basically, they look terrible.
It's true they're non-anamporphic transfers from the Laserdiscs, but over at the forums on OriginalTrilogy.com a number of people have bought them and say that actually, they're pretty good. These are people who have more or less every bootleg transfer on the Internet and still have their original laserdiscs, high-end setups, etc. And many are reporting that while yes, their video quality can't really hold a candle to the quality of the 2004 versions of the movies, they do blow away every previous LD bootleg transfer, look better than the Laserdiscs (not too surprising) and actually hold up well when zoomed in (as you would need to do on a widescreen set). I don't own the discs nor do I have a high-end setup so I can't really vouch for any of this.
Microsoft is in the business of making operating systems (and other things). Their last OS was released almost six years ago (will probably be six years at least once Vista ships). They want to sell an upgrade and they've waited that long to do it.
I don't really know of course but I suspect that a number of the same people who call Vista overhyped and bloated are Mac fans. Mac fans who are perfectly willing every year and a half or so to plop down $129 for the latest Mac OSX upgrade.
If you send a message to Microsoft that XP is fine and you don't want an upgrade then all you get is Apple, charging for what should be service packs. Sure, Mac OSX upgrades are bigger deals than service packs but that's what XP SP3 would become - a slightly beefier than a service pack upgrade with a pricetag.
Businesses will just upgrade when they get the chance anyway. I don't see what the point of boycotting Vista is...
It only replaces walking, which is by far the number-one necessary motion for our population's health.
I always figured that the logic was something along the lines of this: There are places sufficiently far enough away from you that you get in your car and drive there. There are places close enough that you just walk. Then there are those places that are just far enough to where you don't want to walk, but driving would be a waste and a pain (parking, consumed gas, etc., short distance, etc.) The Segway is designed to where those locations are now easier to get to. Of course, like you said a Bicycle is almost perfect already plus it affords exercise. However if you don't want to exercise on the way to where you're going, risk the possibility of chain crease on your pants, etc. then a bicycle is not so hot. But the number of circumstances that meet all these conditions is, I guess, significantly small that the number of these things sold isn't a surprise.
The Segway was unveiled in December, 2001, meaning it was a scant three months and change after 9/11. I've always thought that something that hurt the Segway in the marketplace was the fact that here was the USA (where the thing was unveiled, invented, target market, etc.) recovering from its worst attack in history (terrorist or otherwise), the economy is in the shitter, and here's some eccentric genius trying to get everyone excited about a $5,000 scooter.
Perhaps the Segway would have met the same "meh" fate either way but does anyone think that, had 9/11 never happened, the Segway would have met a better response?
XNA isn't the program, it's the suite of tools/technologies to allow programs to build for PC and XBox 360. It's what they've been using to make Prey, Quake 4 and Oblivion debut on PC and XB360 simultaneously.
The easy solution for this is to follow the lead of Las Vegas casinos
On some level, stores already do this. Notice how with the exception of the front of the store there's no windows. If they do then they're tinted. Notice how newer grocery stores only have "windows" in the respect that the doors are made of glass - and they're only on the opposing sides of the store (as opposed to the middle). Also there's never any clocks in the store, ever. The reason? Don't ever let the consumer know what time of day it is - they might realize they're running late and leave quicker.
Also, notice how in most grocery stores the milk is at the back of the store - if there's one entrance to the store then the milk is as far away from the store as possible - this means you walk past a lot of the store just getting there. Since milk is something you have to buy often (it goes bad quickly and lots of recipes use it, as well as cereal) they know you'll be there semi-frequently just to get it. So make sure the customer sees as much other stuff as possible. The margins at grocery stores are razor thin so one impulse item makes a huge difference.
As for the buffet - well, they do have free samples of stuff a lot of the time. That lady with the shower cap on and lots of food items with toothpicks in them.
What you've actually "bought" is the packaging and distribution methods - not the stuff on the disk.
I think the idea goes like this
I go buy an Xbox. I open it up and take it apart. I take the DVD-ROM drive out of it. I put the DVD-ROM drive in another computer. I sell that computer. Have I done anything wrong? Unless MS has some whack-ass EULA, no. Since I own the Xbox, I can take it apart, take a component from it, put it in something I made, and sell that. Microsoft may be scratching their heads as to why I didn't just buy some DVD-ROM drive (and kinda pissed that they won't see game sales for that Xbox) but as I own the hardware, I can do what I want.
However, I can't take the graphics and models from a game I bought and use them in a game I made and sell. If I "owned" the game it might imply that I can take it apart, put parts in something else, and sell that. This is why you "license" games instead of "own" them - they don't want to set the precedent of claiming you own the game and then be able to use assets in something you sell.
I know copyright law covers some of this but when you're trying to protect your content, you pretty much cover your bases. Just be glad they're not patenting shit.
It's true that you have to go with Steam in order to play the game, store-purchased or not. It's true you have to have a Steam account and you have to associate your purchase with Steam using an Internet connection. If these are deal-breakers for you then that's a position you're free to take. The number of people who take issue with this notion to the point of refusing to partake in HL2 or SiN:Ep is small enough to ignore.
However, a few points to make:
- You have to have an Internet connection all of once. If you only play SiN:Ep then you never have to have Steam online again. Like HL2, it can be played offline. Actually until the multiplayer addon is released, it's offline-only. It's not like CSS where Valve can reserve the right to ban you for cheating.
- The main logic of having it done through Steam is to unify future updates. This way when they release new contents or patches, they do it through Steam and everyone gets it, no matter how they bought it. Ask anyone whose Direct2Drive copy of Oblivion is impossible to update how much this notion is convenient.
Their use of Steam is less devious than you give them credit for. I think you may be confusing software licensing and episodic content.
Every gamer I know buys from Amazon, EB Games, Gamestop, Best Buy, CompUSA, etc... but NONE of them go to Wal-Mart for their games.
Unless they're significantly cheaper. Serious Sam II debuted at $29.99 everywhere except for Wal-Mart where it's always been $19.97. That's 1/3 off - enough to make it a shoo-in.
Where is everyone else getting their hideously noisy jet-engine PCs from? Or am I just lucky?
You said it yourself that your video card was cheap and fanless. Most expensive video cards have fans, so that's one source. CPU fan is another, but those are mostly quiet. But I think it's really this - most gamers that build their own systems (you bought yours from Dell) will spend all their money on the motherboard, CPU, card, etc. but then go and get the cheapest case and PSU they can find. I should know, that's what I did. I had this decent metal case for seven years until recently. And when my PSU would go out I would go out and buy the cheapest PSU with the most watts. The 500W CompUSA $24.99 special? I'm so there.
Then recently I started to learn how cheap offbrand PSU's are bad. And I got a Antec Sonata II case, not because of noise but because it just looked cool (it was that or the Antec P180 but that one was too big). The Sonata II comes with a 450W power supply so I just used that. And I booted it up and damn, it was quiet. I used to think only wimps needed quiet PC's. I used to think a loud PC was just an expression of how good and powerful it was. Boy, that was stupid.
So to sum up, Dells have been pretty quiet for years now, but most hardcore gamers don't run Dells. Some even scoff at Alienware. Personally, I just like having full control - I reccomend Dell to anyone who doesn't want full control (or who I don't want to have to support on the phone)
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Plus, let's be honest - most people who aren't knowledgeable in a certain area do believe everything they're told. You think your average mom in an EB Games location would question this logic at all? How many things in life are designed to fail or cause problems as part of their schematics? Your power is designed to fail in case of a problem (circuit breakers), your brakes are designed to make noises when the pads are running low, and your average ATM is designed to shut down if it thinks its being hacked. That a console would "lock up" on purpose isn't the most far fetched thing Joe Public's been handed to swallow.
Yeah, there's corporations out there that treat their programmers the same way they treat their custodians or that treat them like easily exportable resources, but those aren't the smart ones. Companies who are smart and whose core strength is software or whatever the programmers are working on don't put limits on their programmers in the same way they would to their call center or help desk employees. Heck, this is the reason programmers are frequently hated in the corporate world - they have egos due to how well they're treated. This is the reason when things like offshoring show up people sometimes say "GOOD! SERVES THEM RIGHT!!! OUTSOURCE THEM ALL!!!" These people are similarly clueless.
So the demonstration at the end showed how this could work - they voted in a fake election. They had six votes for "Yes" and two votes for "No". They put in the hacked memory card and it produces the initial printout which shows zero votes for no and zero votes for yes. After entering in the votes through the machine it comes out as seven for "Yes" and one for "No" (so I guess they had -5 "No" and +5 for "Yes" on the hacked card).
My question is - why did the initial printout show zero votes? Was this part of the hack to fool the printer, or did the machine just print "zero" for everything since it had just been turned on? And if the latter of those two is true, how in the blue *heck* did anyone think that this was a good idea? Hell, Diebold makes ATM machines - you wouldn't want those to always say zero at bootup. Is Diebold just so incompetent that this escaped them?
The Firefox team sent the IE team a cake in return - it consumed most of the milk and just about all of the eggs from the local grocery store. When the grocery store complained about it, the Firefox team told the grocery store to move to a bigger location so they could hold more milk and eggs.
That said, it could be that fewer people are buying CD's these days and therefore there's less competition.
When the record stores in malls are going out of business and no one cares, times are changing.
I would consider any analogy from him to be sort of flawed from the outset.
Instead, TDS has wound up being the best show on television. They attack topics no one else will, they have guests you'd never expect - Presidents, Congressmen, pundits, etc. And Jon Stewart interviews them not as some hotshot journalist trying to further his/her career but in the same way we would - he asks the questions we'd ask if we had Former President Carter or Sentor McCain on our couch.
Their only problem is they can't report on anything not funny. When Mother Teresa or Steve Irwin died, it went without comment. And it took a while but they did get to making fun of America, Post-9/11. In some ways, 9/11 actually made TDS better since it gave TDS an even better reason to exist.
Microsoft is in the business of making operating systems (and other things). Their last OS was released almost six years ago (will probably be six years at least once Vista ships). They want to sell an upgrade and they've waited that long to do it.
I don't really know of course but I suspect that a number of the same people who call Vista overhyped and bloated are Mac fans. Mac fans who are perfectly willing every year and a half or so to plop down $129 for the latest Mac OSX upgrade.
If you send a message to Microsoft that XP is fine and you don't want an upgrade then all you get is Apple, charging for what should be service packs. Sure, Mac OSX upgrades are bigger deals than service packs but that's what XP SP3 would become - a slightly beefier than a service pack upgrade with a pricetag.
Businesses will just upgrade when they get the chance anyway. I don't see what the point of boycotting Vista is...
The Segway was unveiled in December, 2001, meaning it was a scant three months and change after 9/11. I've always thought that something that hurt the Segway in the marketplace was the fact that here was the USA (where the thing was unveiled, invented, target market, etc.) recovering from its worst attack in history (terrorist or otherwise), the economy is in the shitter, and here's some eccentric genius trying to get everyone excited about a $5,000 scooter.
Perhaps the Segway would have met the same "meh" fate either way but does anyone think that, had 9/11 never happened, the Segway would have met a better response?
XNA isn't the program, it's the suite of tools/technologies to allow programs to build for PC and XBox 360. It's what they've been using to make Prey, Quake 4 and Oblivion debut on PC and XB360 simultaneously.
Also, notice how in most grocery stores the milk is at the back of the store - if there's one entrance to the store then the milk is as far away from the store as possible - this means you walk past a lot of the store just getting there. Since milk is something you have to buy often (it goes bad quickly and lots of recipes use it, as well as cereal) they know you'll be there semi-frequently just to get it. So make sure the customer sees as much other stuff as possible. The margins at grocery stores are razor thin so one impulse item makes a huge difference.
As for the buffet - well, they do have free samples of stuff a lot of the time. That lady with the shower cap on and lots of food items with toothpicks in them.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
What do you mean by Visual Basic exactly? VB6? VB.NET? 2003 or 2005? VBScript?
1 08690845702685296
One of my pet peeves is when people don't specify which VB they mean.
http://www.schnapple.com/2004_06_06_archive.html#
I go buy an Xbox. I open it up and take it apart. I take the DVD-ROM drive out of it. I put the DVD-ROM drive in another computer. I sell that computer. Have I done anything wrong? Unless MS has some whack-ass EULA, no. Since I own the Xbox, I can take it apart, take a component from it, put it in something I made, and sell that. Microsoft may be scratching their heads as to why I didn't just buy some DVD-ROM drive (and kinda pissed that they won't see game sales for that Xbox) but as I own the hardware, I can do what I want.
However, I can't take the graphics and models from a game I bought and use them in a game I made and sell. If I "owned" the game it might imply that I can take it apart, put parts in something else, and sell that. This is why you "license" games instead of "own" them - they don't want to set the precedent of claiming you own the game and then be able to use assets in something you sell.
I know copyright law covers some of this but when you're trying to protect your content, you pretty much cover your bases. Just be glad they're not patenting shit.
It's true that you have to go with Steam in order to play the game, store-purchased or not. It's true you have to have a Steam account and you have to associate your purchase with Steam using an Internet connection. If these are deal-breakers for you then that's a position you're free to take. The number of people who take issue with this notion to the point of refusing to partake in HL2 or SiN:Ep is small enough to ignore.
However, a few points to make:
- You have to have an Internet connection all of once. If you only play SiN:Ep then you never have to have Steam online again. Like HL2, it can be played offline. Actually until the multiplayer addon is released, it's offline-only. It's not like CSS where Valve can reserve the right to ban you for cheating.
- The main logic of having it done through Steam is to unify future updates. This way when they release new contents or patches, they do it through Steam and everyone gets it, no matter how they bought it. Ask anyone whose Direct2Drive copy of Oblivion is impossible to update how much this notion is convenient.
Their use of Steam is less devious than you give them credit for. I think you may be confusing software licensing and episodic content.
I've always found that particular phrasing ("asked to leave") sorta funny - what if they said no?
It took ten years of work to figure out how...
Then recently I started to learn how cheap offbrand PSU's are bad. And I got a Antec Sonata II case, not because of noise but because it just looked cool (it was that or the Antec P180 but that one was too big). The Sonata II comes with a 450W power supply so I just used that. And I booted it up and damn, it was quiet. I used to think only wimps needed quiet PC's. I used to think a loud PC was just an expression of how good and powerful it was. Boy, that was stupid.
So to sum up, Dells have been pretty quiet for years now, but most hardcore gamers don't run Dells. Some even scoff at Alienware. Personally, I just like having full control - I reccomend Dell to anyone who doesn't want full control (or who I don't want to have to support on the phone)