I don't know about other/.ers, but I've never had to call tech support for a game console, nor have I ever needed to use the warranty.
This/.er has. My (original) XBox blew up my home cinema amplifier. Dunno what was wrong with it (voltage spike when turned on?) but after a while the input that the XBox was on would break. (Sound which was identical on both channels was amplified as it should be; sounds which were only on one channel were not amplified at all, so couldn't be heard.) The first time it happened immediately, on an input I'd never used before, so I thought the amplifier was at fault. It happened again with the new amplifier, though, and this time only after a turning the XBox on a number of times.
So then I called M$ XBox Support. The friendly lady I talked with kindly informed my that since the manual only described how to connect the XBox to either a tv or a video, I was not covered by the warranty. I tried to remain civil, but probably didn't quite succeed (to put it mildly).
I went home, read all the small print in the XBox manual (including a phrase about how you could expect the thing to work like machinery of this kind tends to work, or words to that effect), and decided to call back. This time I got a 'Hmm, I've never heard of that happening.', and got passed up the chain of command several times. Before I reached Bill Gates, some middle manager (or some such) decided that they'd send someone over to come and pick up my XBox, and have one of their engineers look at it. A month or so later, your generic UPS-replacement came by with a package from M$.
This package contained an XBox, with a different serial number. Oh, and no save games on the harddrive. No letter of explanation, no phone call to explain, no mail, no nothing. From the serial number I guess they replaced the thing. What was wrong with it, I still don't know.
So I suppose it all ended well. I still spit fire when I think of the initial response I got, though. I wish I'd thought of asking to speak with her boss. (Or should I secretly be happy that M$ has such people working for them, as this will undoubtedly cost them business in the long term?)
In locations where net metering is available, utilities are required to credit consumers at the same price they would have charged during that period (e.g., selling back to the utility during peak hours means a credit at peak prices).
Now, err, I might be missing something here, but then you could charge your GridPoint during off-peak hours, and get charged off-peak prices. You could then discharge it during peak hours, ang get refunded peak prices. Depending on efficiency, you could make money that way. Capacity is 7 or 10 kwh. How much does a kwh cost, anyway?
So how many grams does one bit weigh? Kinda reminds me of the Dilbert strip where PHB gets told to erase files on the harddrive of his laptop to make it lighter.
Of course, since this compression works on random data, you can repeatedly apply it to previously compressed data. So if you get 100:1 on the first compression, you get 10000:1 on the second and 1000000:1 on the third.
Existing compression technologies are [...] limited in application to single or several pass reduction. ZeoSync's approach to the encoding of practically random sequences is expected to evolve into the reduction of already reduced information across many reduction iterations, producing a previously unattainable reduction capability.
It appears from the website that it is not 7.95 for
the first two months if you sign up now, but 7.95
per month until june if you sign up before february
28th.
the huge recurring monthly transport costs for central office aggregation to a node
Does anyone know what this means?
Re:Traveling Salesman
on
Does P = NP?
·
· Score: 1
It gives you a path in P time, that is moderately close to optimal.
In other words, it is not guaranteed to be optimal, so it doesn't solve the travelling salesman problem, only approximate it. P-time approximation algorithms are not new, including for the travelling salesman problem. The hard thing is to find the optimal solution.
Why is it ok to break the DMCA but not okay for me to go break the GPL? Seems like a pretty huge double standard to me.
Reply:
Because the GPL represents Free Speech, DMCA represents Corporate Censorship. big difference.
Oh, so if I was some big company, and you were some developer of GPLd software, then I would be expected to respect your rights, while you should be allowed to tramp all over mine? That hardly seems fair. We can not claim protection from the law if we don't respect the law ourselves.
On the other hand, if, as some people claim, the DMCA does in fact contradict the First Amendment, that would be a good reason to throw out the DMCA. Once that happens, obviously, we would no longer have to respect it.
Step six - Try to persuade them to set up a division reading Fantasy novels as well. Given that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, I may end up with that magic carpet I have been after for years, after all.
Of course they could get that from SF books also: Endymion, by Dan Simmons (or was it one of the other Hyperion books, I forget).
Now, genetically engineered dragons, that's a good reason to feed them fantasy books!
Yes, I do read a (paper, hardcopy, etc.) newspaper every day here in Stockholm, Sweden. It's called Metro, and it's free, distributed mostly in the local subway system. Over here, it's a great success. It's been introduced in several European and South American cities, where it also seems to be doing well. Introduction in the US has, however, been prevented by, hmm, it's been a while since I read the article, a law preventing the local (I forget which city) subway company from having anything to do with newspaper distribution or some such.
One of the supporting arguments that they use as to why this may not be as incredible as it may seem, is the fossilized remains of bacterias in this asteroid from Mars that was found a couple of years ago. Hasn't this been completely obliterated by peer review?
I remember reading that the things they thought were fossils actually weren't, according to other researchers, and the biochemical compounds they had found could also, according to yet another group, be formed by processes other than life. After all the smoke cleared, it seems like only the original group of people who claimed to have found these fossils still believed that they actually were fossils, and none of the other scientists in the field.
I personally would like to find out how easy it would be to switch to debian or another distro without losing everything in the process.
When upgrading my RedHat distribution, I've always kept at least one ext2 partition untouched. That way, you can keep a backup of/home and other important files there, and restore them later. I suppose that would work when switching from RedHat to Debian, too.
For some reason the link given in the article doesn't work for me. Even if I go to www.news.com and search for the article, I get a link to the article, but a broken one.
Did Microsoft make them pull the article, because they don't want the news to get out yet?
Good points in the article. Am I sure I want to post the comment I'm writing now? How long does/. archive comments, anyway? What if I ever get famous? Did I say anything I might regret later?
Not necessarily true. The reason they stated in the New Scientist article for dividing by a thousand is that only one in a thousand stars is close enough to a gamma burst to form rocky planets.
It seems likely that the star they discovered the planet of is relatively close by (in astronomical terms, that is). Therefore, if we were close enough, that other star was probably also close enough to the same gamma burst. (Or how much do stars drift in the 4.5 billion year span we're talking about, anyway?)
I want Drake's Equation to give a high answer as much as the next geek, but still...
Slashdot Mirror
TFA seems to have the date wrong, at least: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/25/apple_sends_out_invitations_for_sept_1_special_event.html
This /.er has. My (original) XBox blew up my home cinema amplifier. Dunno what was wrong with it (voltage spike when turned on?) but after a while the input that the XBox was on would break. (Sound which was identical on both channels was amplified as it should be; sounds which were only on one channel were not amplified at all, so couldn't be heard.) The first time it happened immediately, on an input I'd never used before, so I thought the amplifier was at fault. It happened again with the new amplifier, though, and this time only after a turning the XBox on a number of times.
So then I called M$ XBox Support. The friendly lady I talked with kindly informed my that since the manual only described how to connect the XBox to either a tv or a video, I was not covered by the warranty. I tried to remain civil, but probably didn't quite succeed (to put it mildly).
I went home, read all the small print in the XBox manual (including a phrase about how you could expect the thing to work like machinery of this kind tends to work, or words to that effect), and decided to call back. This time I got a 'Hmm, I've never heard of that happening.', and got passed up the chain of command several times. Before I reached Bill Gates, some middle manager (or some such) decided that they'd send someone over to come and pick up my XBox, and have one of their engineers look at it. A month or so later, your generic UPS-replacement came by with a package from M$.
This package contained an XBox, with a different serial number. Oh, and no save games on the harddrive. No letter of explanation, no phone call to explain, no mail, no nothing. From the serial number I guess they replaced the thing. What was wrong with it, I still don't know.
So I suppose it all ended well. I still spit fire when I think of the initial response I got, though. I wish I'd thought of asking to speak with her boss. (Or should I secretly be happy that M$ has such people working for them, as this will undoubtedly cost them business in the long term?)
Now, err, I might be missing something here, but then you could charge your GridPoint during off-peak hours, and get charged off-peak prices. You could then discharge it during peak hours, ang get refunded peak prices. Depending on efficiency, you could make money that way. Capacity is 7 or 10 kwh. How much does a kwh cost, anyway?
For those who are interested: Part I and Part II.
tons (almost literally) of software
So how many grams does one bit weigh? Kinda reminds me of the Dilbert strip where PHB gets told to erase files on the harddrive of his laptop to make it lighter.
I quote from their press release:
Existing compression technologies are [...] limited in application to single or several pass reduction. ZeoSync's approach to the encoding of practically random sequences is expected to evolve into the reduction of already reduced information across many reduction iterations, producing a previously unattainable reduction capability.
Not so far from that April first joke, is it?
It appears from the website that it is not 7.95 for
the first two months if you sign up now, but 7.95
per month until june if you sign up before february
28th.
Now I can finally rip all my cds at the bitrate they deserve!
the huge recurring monthly transport costs for central office aggregation to a node
Does anyone know what this means?
In other words, it is not guaranteed to be optimal, so it doesn't solve the travelling salesman problem, only approximate it. P-time approximation algorithms are not new, including for the travelling salesman problem. The hard thing is to find the optimal solution.
HP apologizes for any inconvenience and confusion caused as a result of this unintentional error.
One wonders what other kinds of errors HP makes.
A very appropriate remark, while guessing what MS might reply. :)
Why is it ok to break the DMCA but not okay for me to go break the GPL? Seems like a pretty huge double standard to me.
Reply:
Because the GPL represents Free Speech, DMCA represents Corporate Censorship. big difference.
Oh, so if I was some big company, and you were some developer of GPLd software, then I would be expected to respect your rights, while you should be allowed to tramp all over mine? That hardly seems fair. We can not claim protection from the law if we don't respect the law ourselves.
On the other hand, if, as some people claim, the DMCA does in fact contradict the First Amendment, that would be a good reason to throw out the DMCA. Once that happens, obviously, we would no longer have to respect it.
Of course they could get that from SF books also: Endymion, by Dan Simmons (or was it one of the other Hyperion books, I forget).
Now, genetically engineered dragons, that's a good reason to feed them fantasy books!
Yes, I do read a (paper, hardcopy, etc.) newspaper every day here in Stockholm, Sweden. It's called Metro, and it's free, distributed mostly in the local subway system. Over here, it's a great success. It's been introduced in several European and South American cities, where it also seems to be doing well. Introduction in the US has, however, been prevented by, hmm, it's been a while since I read the article, a law preventing the local (I forget which city) subway company from having anything to do with newspaper distribution or some such.
I remember reading that the things they thought were fossils actually weren't, according to other researchers, and the biochemical compounds they had found could also, according to yet another group, be formed by processes other than life. After all the smoke cleared, it seems like only the original group of people who claimed to have found these fossils still believed that they actually were fossils, and none of the other scientists in the field.
When upgrading my RedHat distribution, I've always kept at least one ext2 partition untouched. That way, you can keep a backup of /home and other important files there, and restore them later. I suppose that would work when switching from RedHat to Debian, too.
For some reason the link given in the article doesn't work for me. Even if I go to www.news.com and search for the article, I get a link to the article, but a broken one.
Did Microsoft make them pull the article, because they don't want the news to get out yet?
Well, I guess I'm pretty safe this time.
Perhaps it already does. I mean, at that size, it's not like you'd see it lying around or anything...
Not necessarily true. The reason they stated in the New Scientist article for dividing by a thousand is that only one in a thousand stars is close enough to a gamma burst to form rocky planets.
It seems likely that the star they discovered the planet of is relatively close by (in astronomical terms, that is). Therefore, if we were close enough, that other star was probably also close enough to the same gamma burst. (Or how much do stars drift in the 4.5 billion year span we're talking about, anyway?)
I want Drake's Equation to give a high answer as much as the next geek, but still...