> Are you insinuating that AOL users frequently piss themselves?
Only when they see what competitors are charging.
I just don't get it anymore. I have people coming into the store complaining of poor access speeds through dialup. Fair enough, perhaps dialup is best suited for your need. But then I find out that some of them have purchased a second line. That is when I scratch my head and ask why the hell they are not using cable or DSL.
Let's do the math:
Extra phone line ($~20) + ISP fee (~$20) = $40/month!
Or the alternative: Our town has DSL and Cable Modems priced at $30/month for 384kbit or $40 for 768kbit cable.
Let's say for a minute that you don't have a second phone line. Fine, but your AOL/MSN/Earthlink account is costing you $22/month for service anyway. Why not pay the extra $8 for broadband DSL or Cable?! It's worth it. Really!
I also love these people that buy the latest and greatest 2.5GHz computer with a DVD burner and half a gig of RAM only to bring it home and plug a phone line into it. Ugh! What a shame.
I'm not so sure about that. A large portion of the
typical portable player audience is probably geeks. If there was a single popular player out there that was the only one to offer Ogg, I can bet a significant number of the millions of Slashdot readers would take notice. Maybe it would only cause a 2% increase in sales the first year, but would the extra revenue be worth the firmware changes? Apparently not, according to Nomad, but I think there is something to be said about being the only OGG product on the market with any sort of brand recognition.
You gotta remember too, when the average customer talks to a typical blue shirt at Best Buy, the salesperson will say "Well, this one gives you an extra hour of playback at a *higher* quality than the others." Even though the customer may have no clue what OGG is, the salesperson does.
Contrary to popular belief, that computer salespeople at Best Buy are not all nitwits. Most of them know what they are talking about but are hindered by corporate policy.
Microsoft does want Rare... They have their own developers, who are more familiar with their platform. They also have their own politics and big-wigs.
Microsoft wants Donkey Kong (TM), Golden Eye (TM), and RC Pro-Am (TM). If MS bought Sega, do you think it would be for their mad skillz on the Dreamcast platform or for Sonic (TM)?
> My congratulations to UC Irvine. This sounds like an excellent solution.
Excellent solution indeed. I tried to download the latest Debian ISO the other day, but in my own stupidity I decided to risk it and get it from an HTTP server instead of FTP.
The damn University throttled me back to rates below that of dialup until the transfer dropped. Wasted 2 hours.
First of all, much of what I do on Debian is academic. Second, why can't I download one damn ISO before getting throttled, and why does it throttle it SO low (I've seen it capped down to 1-2kb/sec before).
Not only that, PAID cable modems, which get a $20 discount when you go through the University, are throttled too! If you don't want to deal with the throttling you can pay the full $50, but is it really necessary to bar be from downloading a Debian ISO for a couple of hours on my 512k cable modem? Apparently. bandwidth throttling sucks!
Once upon a time, I was looking for a free alternative to CuteFTP. I love Cute, but I was always sick of finding a crack for it whenever I reinstalled it, and I liked using they 2.8 version as their newer version have some annoyances. I am unemployed and money is tight, so even though I would love to pay the $40 for CuteFTP since I use it so much, rent came first. So I went to find an FTP client that had similar features to my favorite version of my favorite FTP program.
What a challenge. There are some truly aweful FTP clients out there for Windows. I downloaded pretty much every FTP client on download.com and thought there was no decent FTP client out there. Finally, I did a search on sourceforge.net. The first hit came up with FileZilla.
FileZilla is a great app, nicely modeled after the GOOD features of CuteFTP with not of the crap. It's free and open source. It's a must have for anyone looking for a decent, free FTP client for Windows.
The same institutions who are fighting that which will rely strongly on a decentralized infrastructure (P2P networks of today and tomorrow) are also researching ways to improve it.
Ok, I know universities generally aren't against P2P technology, just what it is being used for.
> Secondly, adding a faster disk only matters if you do tasks which are heavily disk I/O intensive, which the overwhelming majority are not (especially because people have so much memory, and hence disk cache).
I think a fast disk IS important for anyone who wants to improve speed. Modern Windows is disk intensive, as are many applications at startup. My computer went considerable faster when I upgraded from a 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm RAID without upgrading the CPU (1.3GHz P4) or memory (384MB of RDRAM). I think I have about as much disk access as anyone (I am not running my machine as a server except for the occasionaly Kazaa, which I do not leave open 24x7), but my computer went noticeably faster. I say upgrade the hard disk before you upgrade the CPU.
> The $5k servers are justified because it's so much easier for them to administrate.
Yeah, that fact alone will make it easier for me to part with my $100 - to make their job easier. I do agree you get what you pay for, for the most part, but $100/year seems very steep.
> They spent MILLIONS replacing 3000 mail servers with 32 Domino servers
Seems to me their biggest problem isn't switching to 100% Windows, it's running Domino as their mail server (for all your database needs! w00t!). Whoever thought of that brilliant idea should be shot. Then again, IBM seems to have some good salesmen and women. GOD HOW I MISS NOTES' INTUITIVE USER-FREIDNLY INTERFACE.
A couple of years ago when I was doing research for the best CONSUMER 3 megapixel camera on the market, Nikon spanked them all. Although I paid close to $1000 for the camera, it has been a rockstar ever since. I have no regrets about buying this wonderful piece of equipment.
It's the Nikon Coolpix 990, by the way. They have a 995 out now.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Do you think they would have said "MySQL is superior to DB2" if that was the result of their tests? I doubt it.
Obviously, the criteria used matters. I bet MySQL could prove that MySQL is "better" than DB2 if their criteria were based heavily on price/performance and used a relatively small number of transactions to test.
Ok, perhaps I should have done more research before posting. I searched for the very top article on Slashdot using news.google.com, and it appeared and said "Slashdot - 31 minutes ago". So they must be using Slashdot's XML source to watch for headlines.
My guess is that they are using a number of methods to catch the news. Screen scraping? XML syndication? Partnerships? Innovative.
I did a search on "Kazaa" just to see if I'd get the "Tiscali teams up with KaZaA" article that was just posted on Slashdot. It came up as the first hit and even had the Slashdot article as the second hit. Pretty impressive since I searched at 12:43PM CST and the article was posted on Slashdot at 11:02AM (timezone unknown). Regardless of time zones, there could have only been a matter of hours or less since it was posted on Slashdot and Google News picked it up. Very neat.
So the government is worried about attacks. What about the rest of us who hate putting out personal information in the whois database? Although it's easy enough to falsify, why should I have to?
I think it's clever how they are basically reducing the price of the computer by delaying the $99 registration fee that any novice would probably need to subscribe to if they hoped to have any applications.
However, this doesn't seem like a good deal. I mean, you are basically paying $99 for a version of Linux that is available for free (Xandros). It's roughly the same price as Windows with next to no compatibility with their favorite applications! I might as well buy Windows and get 100% compatibility.
I realize the average lay-person isn't going to know how to install Xandros for free, but Walmart is already bundling Mandrake with their cheap PCs and Xandros would be just as easy to bundle.
I really don't see ANY benefit from running Linux unless you merely want to promote open-source and/or free software. My hat's off to you.
Slashdot Mirror
> Are you insinuating that AOL users frequently piss themselves?
Only when they see what competitors are charging.
I just don't get it anymore. I have people coming into the store complaining of poor access speeds through dialup. Fair enough, perhaps dialup is best suited for your need. But then I find out that some of them have purchased a second line. That is when I scratch my head and ask why the hell they are not using cable or DSL.
Let's do the math:
Extra phone line ($~20) + ISP fee (~$20) = $40/month!
Or the alternative: Our town has DSL and Cable Modems priced at $30/month for 384kbit or $40 for 768kbit cable.
Let's say for a minute that you don't have a second phone line. Fine, but your AOL/MSN/Earthlink account is costing you $22/month for service anyway. Why not pay the extra $8 for broadband DSL or Cable?! It's worth it. Really!
I also love these people that buy the latest and greatest 2.5GHz computer with a DVD burner and half a gig of RAM only to bring it home and plug a phone line into it. Ugh! What a shame.
Mmmmmmmm, dialup!
I actually work at Best Buy :D
> OGG support will not be beneficial to sales.
I'm not so sure about that. A large portion of the typical portable player audience is probably geeks. If there was a single popular player out there that was the only one to offer Ogg, I can bet a significant number of the millions of Slashdot readers would take notice. Maybe it would only cause a 2% increase in sales the first year, but would the extra revenue be worth the firmware changes? Apparently not, according to Nomad, but I think there is something to be said about being the only OGG product on the market with any sort of brand recognition.
You gotta remember too, when the average customer talks to a typical blue shirt at Best Buy, the salesperson will say "Well, this one gives you an extra hour of playback at a *higher* quality than the others." Even though the customer may have no clue what OGG is, the salesperson does.
Contrary to popular belief, that computer salespeople at Best Buy are not all nitwits. Most of them know what they are talking about but are hindered by corporate policy.
Don't forget Half.com. Get a better deal on a slightly used book and boost your eBay karma to boot!
Will these camcorder jamming devices be affordable enough to buy/rent one for my wedding?
I thought I would save my future kids the embarrassment... (look what I found in the attic, kids, it's a V-C-R. And look, old videos of my wedding!)
> Think I can download it off of Kazaa?
Perhaps, but I reckon you'll see it rerun on Fox before your Kazaa download finishes.
Status: More sources needed...
Microsoft does want Rare... They have their own developers, who are more familiar with their platform. They also have their own politics and big-wigs.
Microsoft wants Donkey Kong (TM), Golden Eye (TM), and RC Pro-Am (TM). If MS bought Sega, do you think it would be for their mad skillz on the Dreamcast platform or for Sonic (TM)?
> My congratulations to UC Irvine. This sounds like an excellent solution.
Excellent solution indeed. I tried to download the latest Debian ISO the other day, but in my own stupidity I decided to risk it and get it from an HTTP server instead of FTP.
The damn University throttled me back to rates below that of dialup until the transfer dropped. Wasted 2 hours.
First of all, much of what I do on Debian is academic. Second, why can't I download one damn ISO before getting throttled, and why does it throttle it SO low (I've seen it capped down to 1-2kb/sec before).
Not only that, PAID cable modems, which get a $20 discount when you go through the University, are throttled too! If you don't want to deal with the throttling you can pay the full $50, but is it really necessary to bar be from downloading a Debian ISO for a couple of hours on my 512k cable modem? Apparently. bandwidth throttling sucks!
Once upon a time, I was looking for a free alternative to CuteFTP. I love Cute, but I was always sick of finding a crack for it whenever I reinstalled it, and I liked using they 2.8 version as their newer version have some annoyances. I am unemployed and money is tight, so even though I would love to pay the $40 for CuteFTP since I use it so much, rent came first. So I went to find an FTP client that had similar features to my favorite version of my favorite FTP program.
What a challenge. There are some truly aweful FTP clients out there for Windows. I downloaded pretty much every FTP client on download.com and thought there was no decent FTP client out there. Finally, I did a search on sourceforge.net. The first hit came up with FileZilla.
FileZilla is a great app, nicely modeled after the GOOD features of CuteFTP with not of the crap. It's free and open source. It's a must have for anyone looking for a decent, free FTP client for Windows.
The same institutions who are fighting that which will rely strongly on a decentralized infrastructure (P2P networks of today and tomorrow) are also researching ways to improve it.
Ok, I know universities generally aren't against P2P technology, just what it is being used for.
> Signed... Someone that happens to start their new job at best buy in 3 days :p
:) I'm in Wisconsin, where are you?
Funny you should say that. I start my job at Best Buy on Saturday, 3 days from now!
> Secondly, adding a faster disk only matters if you do tasks which are heavily disk I/O intensive, which the overwhelming majority are not (especially because people have so much memory, and hence disk cache).
I think a fast disk IS important for anyone who wants to improve speed. Modern Windows is disk intensive, as are many applications at startup. My computer went considerable faster when I upgraded from a 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm RAID without upgrading the CPU (1.3GHz P4) or memory (384MB of RDRAM). I think I have about as much disk access as anyone (I am not running my machine as a server except for the occasionaly Kazaa, which I do not leave open 24x7), but my computer went noticeably faster. I say upgrade the hard disk before you upgrade the CPU.
> All I do anymore is install kde libs and gnome libs, blackbox, bbconf, bbkeys, and link to the applications I like/need/etc.
LOL. I'll alert the blue shirts at Best Buy and let them know there is an alternative. Their customers will appreciate not having to buy Windows.
> The $5k servers are justified because it's so much easier for them to administrate.
Yeah, that fact alone will make it easier for me to part with my $100 - to make their job easier. I do agree you get what you pay for, for the most part, but $100/year seems very steep.
> They spent MILLIONS replacing 3000 mail servers with 32 Domino servers
Seems to me their biggest problem isn't switching to 100% Windows, it's running Domino as their mail server (for all your database needs! w00t!). Whoever thought of that brilliant idea should be shot. Then again, IBM seems to have some good salesmen and women. GOD HOW I MISS NOTES' INTUITIVE USER-FREIDNLY INTERFACE.
-- ex-Lotus Admin and Flamebait since 1978
A couple of years ago when I was doing research for the best CONSUMER 3 megapixel camera on the market, Nikon spanked them all. Although I paid close to $1000 for the camera, it has been a rockstar ever since. I have no regrets about buying this wonderful piece of equipment.
It's the Nikon Coolpix 990, by the way. They have a 995 out now.
Suck it, Gates!
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. Do you think they would have said "MySQL is superior to DB2" if that was the result of their tests? I doubt it.
Obviously, the criteria used matters. I bet MySQL could prove that MySQL is "better" than DB2 if their criteria were based heavily on price/performance and used a relatively small number of transactions to test.
Ok, perhaps I should have done more research before posting. I searched for the very top article on Slashdot using news.google.com, and it appeared and said "Slashdot - 31 minutes ago". So they must be using Slashdot's XML source to watch for headlines.
My guess is that they are using a number of methods to catch the news. Screen scraping? XML syndication? Partnerships? Innovative.
I did a search on "Kazaa" just to see if I'd get the "Tiscali teams up with KaZaA" article that was just posted on Slashdot. It came up as the first hit and even had the Slashdot article as the second hit. Pretty impressive since I searched at 12:43PM CST and the article was posted on Slashdot at 11:02AM (timezone unknown). Regardless of time zones, there could have only been a matter of hours or less since it was posted on Slashdot and Google News picked it up. Very neat.
"What a maroon..ha ha...what an ignoramaus"
Lemme Hear It
So the government is worried about attacks. What about the rest of us who hate putting out personal information in the whois database? Although it's easy enough to falsify, why should I have to?
> Now I can keep my pesky roommates out of my palm's oh-so-full social calendar.
Actually, this can be taken in more than one way, especially since "palm" isn't capitalized.
Majority of US college students on the Net
I think it's clever how they are basically reducing the price of the computer by delaying the $99 registration fee that any novice would probably need to subscribe to if they hoped to have any applications.
However, this doesn't seem like a good deal. I mean, you are basically paying $99 for a version of Linux that is available for free (Xandros). It's roughly the same price as Windows with next to no compatibility with their favorite applications! I might as well buy Windows and get 100% compatibility.
I realize the average lay-person isn't going to know how to install Xandros for free, but Walmart is already bundling Mandrake with their cheap PCs and Xandros would be just as easy to bundle.
I really don't see ANY benefit from running Linux unless you merely want to promote open-source and/or free software. My hat's off to you.