Monks didn't invent beer. But they sure make some damned fine lambics.
(Beer, as a fermented grain based beverage, is much older than monks or monasteries. There is some evidence that suggests that using grain as a food is NOT what caused man to cease to be nomadic. Rather, some believe it was to ferment the grain. So, yes, we are all descended from people who were trying to get drunk on a regular basis.
Damn. Can't wait for that brown ale to finish carbonating...)
Isn't Connectiva largely based in South America? Yup. I thought Brazil was founded by Portugal, but that site looks like Spanish (of course, I have no idea what Portugeuse looks like, so...)
Oh. Here is the Spanish link. Start there. You don't have to load Debislackhat on their machines.
And I thought the iPod was overpriced. At least that has firewire. This thing... Convergence where none is needed. Or, likely, where convergence won't work.
It stores and serves up songs to multiple devices. Big deal. Several devices can do this for much less money. With more hard drive space.
So I can copy CD's? I'd like to see the interface. For that kind of money, it better be easier to use than Nero. A lot better. A whole hell of a lot better. As in it should read my mind, figure out what tracks I want on what CD, and burn it by itself.
Did anyone at this company not notice the dot-bomb fallout? Average slobs don't want this. This product appeals to those out-of-work dot-commers. And they're too busy trying to keep their Porsche out of the hands of the repo man.
Will someone please go to their offices with a big freakin' clue-stick, and administer the beatings to those people who so richly deserve them.
(BTW, how long until CT posts a glowing review of his donated 'review model'? Or, maybe he's already been denied one, hence the disparaging 'a bit pricey' comment? I don't know. But he sure has a lot of toys. And yes, I am jealous.)
Actually, I think the server logs show that either a bunch of people on/. use IE, or a bunch of people on/. changed their http-client string.
CT has mentioned it in the past. Granted, a smaller percentage use IE here than, say, www.yahoo.com, but it is still a significant (and if I remember, majority) browser.
Remember, lots of us are on here from work where we have no choice (I actually have the choice of Mozilla/Netscape, but am too lazy to install it, as IE 5.5 seems okay)
Good point. So explain to me why I have to pay for EverQuest? I can't use it without having their service, so.... Fuck 'em.
Seriously: with satellite TV, I get a free decoder, it's almost impossible to find a cell phone subscription without a free phone.
Sure, I can see making you pay for the expansion packs (much like you pay for a better phone or a better DSS receiver) but they should throw in the basic game.
Is not losing fair use rights, etc. a specific carve out, or does UK contract law not allow you to give up rights that you already have?
For instance, in the US, we (supposedly) have the right to free speach. But if we sign an agreement, we can give up that right. (I sue a company. Company agrees to settle as long as I keep my mouth shut about what the lawsuit was about.)
Renting sucks. I'd rather lease-to-own. Three years of payments, a small buyout, and done. I have my job largely because customer support sucks ass. And this is not just for M$ stuff, but custom apps (okay, semi-custom apps. Medical records and billing stuff.) We're running NT4 on almost all of our boxes. Why go to 2K or XP? They offer NO value to us. I will pay for upgrades to our clients, but why for new licenses?
Now, if someone cuts the license price, then it is possible. For example: one of our programs has a client license of $1000 per machine. After three years, that's the end of that. I'm done. Why would I pay for more than that? Now, why would I want to pay another $1000? Just to have a constant payment? I don't think so. Now, if the fee were... $200 for three years, then I would pay indefinately. (I'm just guessing at the numbers. There are formulae that would allow me to give an exact number of how I would equate the two).
Now, here's the rub: I have a medical records program that I don't like. Too many kludges, not open enough, etc, etc. But it's paid for. The cost of improving the kludge is (for example only) $10000. The cost for switching is $250000.
If I had to pay a rental, the cost for switching should be less (see two paragraphs ago). But even if the cost is the same (because our existing solution would be rented) then the cost of switching is dramatically lower. Because the vendor could take away our software at any time, I have almost no costs that will go away.
So, I can see this as being attractive for companies trying to break into a market, provided the rental rates are low enough to be comparable to a purchase rate. But there is no reason for large software companies to do this. M$ might want the revenue stream, but the justification to switch on a dollars and cents basis is now much easier if you don't own the license in perpetuity.
(As an aside: we've had problems with all sorts of vendors vis-a-vis bug fixes. Despite service contracts, it is not uncommon for firms not to fix bugs except in a new version. And in rereading the service contract, we have to upgrade to the new version. This is separate from the service contract, so we haven't paid for it. First time this happens, okay, we go for it. Second time this happens, we drop the service contract. Sounds crazy, but it made fiscal sense to pay for each 'service' call. Now, this will vary from situation to situation.
One of the tricks in these decisions is that it requires a level of financial expertise that most IT admins don't have, or a level of IT expertise that most financiers don't have. Because of this, vendors can frequently get away with murder.
My company is lucky to have a genius in both areas;)
When I was a poor student (as opposed to a poor workaday slob) I would sneak bags of chips (crisps to you Brits), candy, cans of soda in under my jacket.
Similarly, you can use other systems. Granted, getting past M$ may be harder than getting past the slack-jawed, pimply-faced ticket taker... But not much.
To answer the question: I think it's wait and see at this point. Until they broadcast for a few weeks/months, what is the programming really like? How is the quality?
Personally, I'm quite interested. Not for the car (my commute is about 8 minutes) but for home. HOA prevents aerials (and I'm too lazy to put one in the attic) and the local cable doesn't carry radio stations over the coax (and I refuse digital cable, as I won't have a decoder box, nor do I want to pipe radio signals through my TV just to go out the stereo).
But, at $300 for a unit? I don't think so. I'll let some early adopters decide which company will win, and force them into "sign up for a year, and get the decoder/receiver for free".
If Slashdot can effectively remove comments from view (setting comments at -2 does this. Yes, I think it can be changed by manually editing the URL, but this is pure lawyerism, and not likely to stand up very well in court) then how can they defend themselves against M$?
Remember the lawsuit they got alleging that/. was aiding and abetting in dissemination of stolen materials or some such? (Don't have a link, and too lazy to look)./. claimed that they don't censor anything. Clearly this is false.
I've got no problem with dropped submissions. But bitchslapping, tracking IP's, etc... Sounds like in the effort to make it easier to appeal to advertisers,/. is painting themselves into a legal corner.
The trick is that he is paying for CNN, A&E, etc. Would your father still pay if he only got the local over the air stations?
I know I wouldn't, and I (shamefully:) admit to watching a hell of a lot of tv. But about 50% of it is NOT on ABC, CBS, etc, etc. It's on Discovery, Nick at Nite, Sci-Fi, etc.
I've got one of these. Heck, I even backed up my system once about 7 months ago:)
Looking at the messages during kernel loading, it seems that support is even getting better for the little buggers.
My suggestion: put it on a separate IDE channel. I have no idea how much (if at all) it improves the backup speed, but the mental effect is nice.
Re:I must be missing something
on
Review: SliMP3
·
· Score: 2
Ethernet is not as lossy as a good sized run of RCA cables.
Without having looked at anything other than the review and comments, if you can hook up more than one of these units, then that offers a little more flexibility than a sound card (although I suppose that in Linux you can put in multiple cards./dev/dsp,/dev/dsp1,/dev/dsp2 etc.)
All in all, I'd rather have the audiotron. SMB, while M$'s child (basically) is freely available through Samba and fairly widespread.
T&H interview: 23 months ago
CNeal: 9.5 months ago
JK: 22 months ago
Okay, CowboyNeal probably has nothing new to add, but the other interviews are so old that it's worth revisiting. Hell, there are nearly duplicate "Ask Slashdot" questions that are only six months old (and answerable via gg:ask slashdot).
I'm not sure how much it costs for online stuff, but for bricks and mortar stores, you can lease the equipment cheap, and the fees per transaction are not much. You are much better protected in this case.
So double check your needs. Maybe you can rationalize accepting credit cards directly.
Good. Those fuckers don't caption their DVD's. I'd rather see ANYONE get it than Universal.
(And yes, they carry the [CC] mark on the box, but they are subtitles, not captions. And they are bad subtitles. Look at JP for an example. Yellow text on white/tan/yellow backgrounds aren't conducive to reading.)
Actually, it doesn't even have to take
up an explansion slot per se. It will take a
slot from the case, but if there are more slots
on the case than the mobo, then you plunk it in
one of those slots, that has nothing behind it.
I'm looking at two two-year old cases (ATX) and
neither has an extra slot, but there are several
cases at work like this (I think they are AT
style cases). The white box shops tended to stuff
parallel ports and serial ports in 'em. But, you
can mount those into knockouts rather easily.
Slashdot Mirror
Monks didn't invent beer. But they sure make some damned fine lambics.
(Beer, as a fermented grain based beverage, is much older than monks or monasteries. There is some evidence that suggests that using grain as a food is NOT what caused man to cease to be nomadic. Rather, some believe it was to ferment the grain. So, yes, we are all descended from people who were trying to get drunk on a regular basis.
Damn. Can't wait for that brown ale to finish carbonating...)
Isn't Connectiva largely based in South America? Yup. I thought Brazil was founded by Portugal, but that site looks like Spanish (of course, I have no idea what Portugeuse looks like, so...)
Oh. Here is the Spanish link. Start there. You don't have to load Debislackhat on their machines.
It may find a market with them, but aren't these people likely to piss and moan about the quality of CD extraction, the lossiness of mp3's, etc?
And I thought the iPod was overpriced. At least that has firewire. This thing... Convergence where none is needed. Or, likely, where convergence won't work.
It stores and serves up songs to multiple devices. Big deal. Several devices can do this for much less money. With more hard drive space.
So I can copy CD's? I'd like to see the interface. For that kind of money, it better be easier to use than Nero. A lot better. A whole hell of a lot better. As in it should read my mind, figure out what tracks I want on what CD, and burn it by itself.
Did anyone at this company not notice the dot-bomb fallout? Average slobs don't want this. This product appeals to those out-of-work dot-commers. And they're too busy trying to keep their Porsche out of the hands of the repo man.
Will someone please go to their offices with a big freakin' clue-stick, and administer the beatings to those people who so richly deserve them.
(BTW, how long until CT posts a glowing review of his donated 'review model'? Or, maybe he's already been denied one, hence the disparaging 'a bit pricey' comment? I don't know. But he sure has a lot of toys. And yes, I am jealous.)
Actually, I think the server logs show that either a bunch of people on /. use IE, or a bunch of people on /. changed their http-client string.
CT has mentioned it in the past. Granted, a smaller percentage use IE here than, say, www.yahoo.com, but it is still a significant (and if I remember, majority) browser.
Remember, lots of us are on here from work where we have no choice (I actually have the choice of Mozilla/Netscape, but am too lazy to install it, as IE 5.5 seems okay)
I swear on my mother's life that you must be one of our vendors.
:)
Good point. So explain to me why I have to pay for EverQuest? I can't use it without having their service, so.... Fuck 'em.
Seriously: with satellite TV, I get a free decoder, it's almost impossible to find a cell phone subscription without a free phone.
Sure, I can see making you pay for the expansion packs (much like you pay for a better phone or a better DSS receiver) but they should throw in the basic game.
Is not losing fair use rights, etc. a specific carve out, or does UK contract law not allow you to give up rights that you already have?
For instance, in the US, we (supposedly) have the right to free speach. But if we sign an agreement, we can give up that right. (I sue a company. Company agrees to settle as long as I keep my mouth shut about what the lawsuit was about.)
Opinion from a $3.5Million business.
Renting sucks. I'd rather lease-to-own. Three years of payments, a small buyout, and done. I have my job largely because customer support sucks ass. And this is not just for M$ stuff, but custom apps (okay, semi-custom apps. Medical records and billing stuff.) We're running NT4 on almost all of our boxes. Why go to 2K or XP? They offer NO value to us. I will pay for upgrades to our clients, but why for new licenses?
Now, if someone cuts the license price, then it is possible. For example: one of our programs has a client license of $1000 per machine. After three years, that's the end of that. I'm done. Why would I pay for more than that? Now, why would I want to pay another $1000? Just to have a constant payment? I don't think so. Now, if the fee were... $200 for three years, then I would pay indefinately. (I'm just guessing at the numbers. There are formulae that would allow me to give an exact number of how I would equate the two).
Now, here's the rub: I have a medical records program that I don't like. Too many kludges, not open enough, etc, etc. But it's paid for. The cost of improving the kludge is (for example only) $10000. The cost for switching is $250000.
If I had to pay a rental, the cost for switching should be less (see two paragraphs ago). But even if the cost is the same (because our existing solution would be rented) then the cost of switching is dramatically lower. Because the vendor could take away our software at any time, I have almost no costs that will go away.
So, I can see this as being attractive for companies trying to break into a market, provided the rental rates are low enough to be comparable to a purchase rate. But there is no reason for large software companies to do this. M$ might want the revenue stream, but the justification to switch on a dollars and cents basis is now much easier if you don't own the license in perpetuity.
(As an aside: we've had problems with all sorts of vendors vis-a-vis bug fixes. Despite service contracts, it is not uncommon for firms not to fix bugs except in a new version. And in rereading the service contract, we have to upgrade to the new version. This is separate from the service contract, so we haven't paid for it. First time this happens, okay, we go for it. Second time this happens, we drop the service contract. Sounds crazy, but it made fiscal sense to pay for each 'service' call. Now, this will vary from situation to situation.
One of the tricks in these decisions is that it requires a level of financial expertise that most IT admins don't have, or a level of IT expertise that most financiers don't have. Because of this, vendors can frequently get away with murder.
My company is lucky to have a genius in both areas;)
When I was a poor student (as opposed to a poor workaday slob) I would sneak bags of chips (crisps to you Brits), candy, cans of soda in under my jacket.
Similarly, you can use other systems. Granted, getting past M$ may be harder than getting past the slack-jawed, pimply-faced ticket taker... But not much.
I now see what you are saying. Okay. Understand.
To answer the question: I think it's wait and see at this point. Until they broadcast for a few weeks/months, what is the programming really like? How is the quality?
Personally, I'm quite interested. Not for the car (my commute is about 8 minutes) but for home. HOA prevents aerials (and I'm too lazy to put one in the attic) and the local cable doesn't carry radio stations over the coax (and I refuse digital cable, as I won't have a decoder box, nor do I want to pipe radio signals through my TV just to go out the stereo).
But, at $300 for a unit? I don't think so. I'll let some early adopters decide which company will win, and force them into "sign up for a year, and get the decoder/receiver for free".
Then we can talk.
If Slashdot can effectively remove comments from view (setting comments at -2 does this. Yes, I think it can be changed by manually editing the URL, but this is pure lawyerism, and not likely to stand up very well in court) then how can they defend themselves against M$?
/. was aiding and abetting in dissemination of stolen materials or some such? (Don't have a link, and too lazy to look). /. claimed that they don't censor anything. Clearly this is false.
/. is painting themselves into a legal corner.
Remember the lawsuit they got alleging that
I've got no problem with dropped submissions. But bitchslapping, tracking IP's, etc... Sounds like in the effort to make it easier to appeal to advertisers,
The trick is that he is paying for CNN, A&E, etc. Would your father still pay if he only got the local over the air stations?
I know I wouldn't, and I (shamefully:) admit to watching a hell of a lot of tv. But about 50% of it is NOT on ABC, CBS, etc, etc. It's on Discovery, Nick at Nite, Sci-Fi, etc.
I don't think you even need a new directory. I believe tar can do incremental backups. I know there are some Win** utilities to do similar.
Also look at this comment which offers very similar advice.
Even with grip, ripping, categorizing, encoding more than a few cd's is a pain in the butt.
I've got one of these. Heck, I even backed up my system once about 7 months ago:)
Looking at the messages during kernel loading, it seems that support is even getting better for the little buggers.
My suggestion: put it on a separate IDE channel. I have no idea how much (if at all) it improves the backup speed, but the mental effect is nice.
Ethernet is not as lossy as a good sized run of RCA cables.
/dev/dsp, /dev/dsp1, /dev/dsp2 etc.)
Without having looked at anything other than the review and comments, if you can hook up more than one of these units, then that offers a little more flexibility than a sound card (although I suppose that in Linux you can put in multiple cards.
All in all, I'd rather have the audiotron. SMB, while M$'s child (basically) is freely available through Samba and fairly widespread.
No, I've never tried to setup a CC system without a storefront. That's why I prepended my comment with a statement to that effect.
BTW, not sure why it should be such a PITA. Is it possible to use your home address as a physical address?
T&H interview: 23 months ago
CNeal: 9.5 months ago
JK: 22 months ago
Okay, CowboyNeal probably has nothing new to add, but the other interviews are so old that it's worth revisiting. Hell, there are nearly duplicate "Ask Slashdot" questions that are only six months old (and answerable via gg:ask slashdot).
I'm not sure how much it costs for online stuff, but for bricks and mortar stores, you can lease the equipment cheap, and the fees per transaction are not much. You are much better protected in this case.
So double check your needs. Maybe you can rationalize accepting credit cards directly.
Good. Those fuckers don't caption their DVD's. I'd rather see ANYONE get it than Universal.
(And yes, they carry the [CC] mark on the box, but they are subtitles, not captions. And they are bad subtitles. Look at JP for an example. Yellow text on white/tan/yellow backgrounds aren't conducive to reading.)
Same story, except that I started with RH 6.2 and switched to Progeny.
Luckily, my cable modem was installed about a week after I decided to switch from Progeny to testing.
Actually, it doesn't even have to take
up an explansion slot per se. It will take a
slot from the case, but if there are more slots
on the case than the mobo, then you plunk it in
one of those slots, that has nothing behind it.
I'm looking at two two-year old cases (ATX) and
neither has an extra slot, but there are several
cases at work like this (I think they are AT
style cases). The white box shops tended to stuff
parallel ports and serial ports in 'em. But, you
can mount those into knockouts rather easily.
As long as this never is...
No, the problem is that the tree-huggers are citing wetlands violations.