I thought the new policy was going to save me when my wife's iphone broke last fall. Except that when I read AT&T's announcement I found this:
San Antonio, Texas, March 31, 2008 Beginning on May 25, the company's new and renewing wireless customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements will no longer be required to pay a single, flat early termination fee. Instead, that fee, which is $175, will be progressively lowered by $5 during each month, every month, for the term of the contract. (The single, flat ETF will continue to apply to new and renewing customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements prior to May 25.)
So, for everyone who bought an iphone in the last 2 weeks the termination fee is only $175! The rest of us still have to pay what was on the contract the day we signed it.
Unfortunately it might not be that simple. Most credit card terms I've read state the shipping address must be within 100-150 miles of the billing address. An overseas shipment might not be disputable.
I hate to reply to myself, but the main page of the soaw site isn't very informative. Some background on the SOA, and the real reasons the site exists can be found on this page: http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8
I'll tell you who gives: Wal-Mart gives, Coca-Cola gives, Nike gives, and every other American company who makes money by building "sweat shop" facitilies in Latin American countries. Someone needs to steal the land from these poor people, right? Who better than the "guerillas" already living there! This is real stuff people, we train Latin American soldiers right here in the USA. Don't believe me? http://www.soaw.org/
I think Tranax deserves a serious WTF! here. I haven't seen a soda machine in 10 years that didn't require a key to be in place BEFORE any "master override" codes could be entered, but the money machine is wide open? WTF?!?!
FWIW, Ultima Online was the first major game in the genre. I have played MMORPG's since UO, although I never had overlapping accounts. I have a full-time job, a wife, a house, and 2 children. Needless to say my entertainment time and my money are very valuable to me as I don't have much "extra" of either of them. IMHO, games like UO or WoW cannot be compared with games like San Andreas or Madden '07 for various reasons. Some of the major ones off the top of my head would have to be:
- Blizzard spent 5 full years developing the game before launch (ROI on this must be overwhelming to consider for Bliz). - Blizzard admins currently maintain 174 "realms" around the globe (Very expensive leased lines, hardware maintenance, secured facilities, etc.) - WoW requires constant attention from paid employees (ie: game masters who are constantly investigating hacked accounts, assisting players, banning farmers, responding to abuse/complaints, etc).
This new game model absolutely requires some type of recurring income. It is obviously not viable to take $50 (less the distribution costs) one time from a customer and then allow that customer to play for the next 4 years without recovering any of the above costs. In my opinion the $15 monthly cost (3 packs of cigarettes?, 2 fast food meals?, 1 date at the movies?) is very easy to justify considering the infrastructure in place, and the entertainment value of the game. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot, but I have never been able to enjoy a single $50 game for more than a month or two. By that time I've either beaten it (seen all the content), or am frustrated/bored with it. At which point I would be back at the store laying down another $50 for the next few months entertainment. MMORPGS are in constant development, new content simply "appears" in the game via routine patches. Expansion packs and other major changes sometimes cost a little extra, but I still see this model as far superior to single purchase (ie: Madden) video games.
I read once a while back that deja vu was caused by the brain processing visual data from one eye marginally faster than from the other. This seems like a logical theory to me, but I am not a neurologist. Has anyone else heard of this?
Power connectivity is a little different than data connectivity. If your T1's get cut by the backhoe operator then you effectively have no way to reach the internet. If your electricity gets snipped by the backhoe operator then you have a UPS system and a backup generator (right?) to provide you with the power you need on-site until the electricity company can fix the problem. Hence, there is nothing wrong with getting 2 feeds from the same power company. Sure there is a chance that the redundancy might fail anyway, but there should be systems in place to handle that until the electricity problem is resolved. Data is an entirely different story. If your redundant data lines go down then you begin losing revenue immediately (assuming you make your money providing hosting services).
Obviously, MySpace decided that this was NOT someone's job. I don't understand the tone of your post anyway. The original poster was only pointing out the tradeoff between a little downtime on your social networking site versus the money, time, and effort needed to create a redundant topology. I realize the issue of lost revenue if your site relies heavily on advertising incoming, and is down. But in the scheme of things a 2 days of downtime over the course of a year is going to lose them less money than they would spend maintaining those redundant datacentres. As the original poster was pointing out - banks and MySpace are not the same. While it may be our job to setup redundant hosting for a bank, it is certainly not MySpace's responsibility to spend their money making sure you can post comments to your buddies 24/7.
I just wanted to add my own success story to the MMCache thread. We routinely deploy MMCache in shared and dedicated hosting environments. Collectively our servers are handling page requests for over 1,000 domains, and after several years we have not had a single problem with MMCache. This piece of software is excellent and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is not using a PHP cacher already, and has the access/permission to install it.
FYI, most everything in your home sucks energy even when turned to the "off" position if you leave it plugged into the wall. The article is discussing energy usage of the consoles in STANDBY - meaning that they are powered off. If you leave your console on 24/7 for a year then you can expect to pay more than $2 extra in utility bills.
Spammers who have actions taken against them usually have thousands of reports against them, from hundreds or thousands of disparate sources, over an extended period of time.
While I do not intend to negate your point, it is possible to cause havoc on a small webhost/registrar with little effort. The spammer is not always the only email user on the system in question. If the system were blacklisted, then email from all domains is affected. Likewise, if GoDaddy shuts down 400 domains in my account due to the actions of one - innocent users can and will be affected. It is also common for spammers to use injection attacks against a poorly written web-to-email form, allowing them to send spam from a machine they do not have authorization to use. Again, if this server becomes blacklisted then all innocent users are affected on that server - for the actions of one. The point is, so far as those innocent GoDaddy users are aware they could in fact suffer the consequences for actions which they are not even aware and certainly cannot control.
Personally I think that if GoDaddy wants to police their registered domains then they should have that right. If they want to extort innocent customers by suspending their domains and requiring fees then in short time they will drive everyone away. There are always two sides to every story, perhaps this Russian registrar was "bulletproof" with the intention to harbor domains for spammers...in which case - GoDaddy!!
Why blame the guy looking for the porn? Is he not now the legal owner of the drive and consequently the data stored on it? Is it his fault that BBY breached a verbal contract with the customer and failed to destroy the drive properly? Browsing files on your own hard drive is not the same as walking into someone elses open house...
Your statistic is not quite correct...What Mr. Seacrest said was that more people voted in the finals than any SINGLE PRESIDENT has ever received in an election. Somewhere around 63-64 million people. If you check stats for the 2004 election, you will see that in total over 122 million votes were cast..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidenti al_election,_2004
A few years ago I managed a retail health/nutrition shop. Shortly before I left there was lots of commotion over new research involving certain myostatin inhibitors. Once such product was made from a special marine algae. You can read a review about it here.
Unfortunately, I left the position before I had a chance to discuss with any first-hand users of these things, but it looks like they're still being sold at various web sites, so somebody must think they're working.
My company was informed of this bonded sender program by MSN/Hotmail support 2 months ago. At the time they claimed the Bonded Sender program was a third-party service with no affiliation to MSN/Hotmail or Microsoft. At the same time, they also claimed that even if you DO subscribe to the bonded sender program MSN/Hotmail will give no guarantee that your emails will be delivered!
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the new policy was going to save me when my wife's iphone broke last fall. Except that when I read AT&T's announcement I found this:
San Antonio, Texas, March 31, 2008
Beginning on May 25, the company's new and renewing wireless customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements will no longer be required to pay a single, flat early termination fee. Instead, that fee, which is $175, will be progressively lowered by $5 during each month, every month, for the term of the contract. (The single, flat ETF will continue to apply to new and renewing customers who enter into one- or two-year service agreements prior to May 25.)
So, for everyone who bought an iphone in the last 2 weeks the termination fee is only $175! The rest of us still have to pay what was on the contract the day we signed it.
Unfortunately it might not be that simple. Most credit card terms I've read state the shipping address must be within 100-150 miles of the billing address. An overseas shipment might not be disputable.
I hate to reply to myself, but the main page of the soaw site isn't very informative. Some background on the SOA, and the real reasons the site exists can be found on this page: http://www.soaw.org/new/type.php?type=8
I'll tell you who gives: Wal-Mart gives, Coca-Cola gives, Nike gives, and every other American company who makes money by building "sweat shop" facitilies in Latin American countries. Someone needs to steal the land from these poor people, right? Who better than the "guerillas" already living there! This is real stuff people, we train Latin American soldiers right here in the USA. Don't believe me? http://www.soaw.org/
I think Tranax deserves a serious WTF! here. I haven't seen a soda machine in 10 years that didn't require a key to be in place BEFORE any "master override" codes could be entered, but the money machine is wide open? WTF?!?!
FWIW, Ultima Online was the first major game in the genre. I have played MMORPG's since UO, although I never had overlapping accounts. I have a full-time job, a wife, a house, and 2 children. Needless to say my entertainment time and my money are very valuable to me as I don't have much "extra" of either of them. IMHO, games like UO or WoW cannot be compared with games like San Andreas or Madden '07 for various reasons. Some of the major ones off the top of my head would have to be:
- Blizzard spent 5 full years developing the game before launch (ROI on this must be overwhelming to consider for Bliz).
- Blizzard admins currently maintain 174 "realms" around the globe (Very expensive leased lines, hardware maintenance, secured facilities, etc.)
- WoW requires constant attention from paid employees (ie: game masters who are constantly investigating hacked accounts, assisting players, banning farmers, responding to abuse/complaints, etc).
This new game model absolutely requires some type of recurring income. It is obviously not viable to take $50 (less the distribution costs) one time from a customer and then allow that customer to play for the next 4 years without recovering any of the above costs. In my opinion the $15 monthly cost (3 packs of cigarettes?, 2 fast food meals?, 1 date at the movies?) is very easy to justify considering the infrastructure in place, and the entertainment value of the game. I don't know about the rest of Slashdot, but I have never been able to enjoy a single $50 game for more than a month or two. By that time I've either beaten it (seen all the content), or am frustrated/bored with it. At which point I would be back at the store laying down another $50 for the next few months entertainment. MMORPGS are in constant development, new content simply "appears" in the game via routine patches. Expansion packs and other major changes sometimes cost a little extra, but I still see this model as far superior to single purchase (ie: Madden) video games.
I read once a while back that deja vu was caused by the brain processing visual data from one eye marginally faster than from the other. This seems like a logical theory to me, but I am not a neurologist. Has anyone else heard of this?
Power connectivity is a little different than data connectivity. If your T1's get cut by the backhoe operator then you effectively have no way to reach the internet. If your electricity gets snipped by the backhoe operator then you have a UPS system and a backup generator (right?) to provide you with the power you need on-site until the electricity company can fix the problem. Hence, there is nothing wrong with getting 2 feeds from the same power company. Sure there is a chance that the redundancy might fail anyway, but there should be systems in place to handle that until the electricity problem is resolved. Data is an entirely different story. If your redundant data lines go down then you begin losing revenue immediately (assuming you make your money providing hosting services).
Obviously, MySpace decided that this was NOT someone's job. I don't understand the tone of your post anyway. The original poster was only pointing out the tradeoff between a little downtime on your social networking site versus the money, time, and effort needed to create a redundant topology. I realize the issue of lost revenue if your site relies heavily on advertising incoming, and is down. But in the scheme of things a 2 days of downtime over the course of a year is going to lose them less money than they would spend maintaining those redundant datacentres. As the original poster was pointing out - banks and MySpace are not the same. While it may be our job to setup redundant hosting for a bank, it is certainly not MySpace's responsibility to spend their money making sure you can post comments to your buddies 24/7.
just my 2c as an admin working in the field...
I just wanted to add my own success story to the MMCache thread. We routinely deploy MMCache in shared and dedicated hosting environments. Collectively our servers are handling page requests for over 1,000 domains, and after several years we have not had a single problem with MMCache. This piece of software is excellent and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is not using a PHP cacher already, and has the access/permission to install it.
FYI, most everything in your home sucks energy even when turned to the "off" position if you leave it plugged into the wall. The article is discussing energy usage of the consoles in STANDBY - meaning that they are powered off. If you leave your console on 24/7 for a year then you can expect to pay more than $2 extra in utility bills.
Spammers who have actions taken against them usually have thousands of reports against them, from hundreds or thousands of disparate sources, over an extended period of time.
While I do not intend to negate your point, it is possible to cause havoc on a small webhost/registrar with little effort. The spammer is not always the only email user on the system in question. If the system were blacklisted, then email from all domains is affected. Likewise, if GoDaddy shuts down 400 domains in my account due to the actions of one - innocent users can and will be affected. It is also common for spammers to use injection attacks against a poorly written web-to-email form, allowing them to send spam from a machine they do not have authorization to use. Again, if this server becomes blacklisted then all innocent users are affected on that server - for the actions of one. The point is, so far as those innocent GoDaddy users are aware they could in fact suffer the consequences for actions which they are not even aware and certainly cannot control.
Personally I think that if GoDaddy wants to police their registered domains then they should have that right. If they want to extort innocent customers by suspending their domains and requiring fees then in short time they will drive everyone away. There are always two sides to every story, perhaps this Russian registrar was "bulletproof" with the intention to harbor domains for spammers...in which case - GoDaddy!!
Why blame the guy looking for the porn? Is he not now the legal owner of the drive and consequently the data stored on it? Is it his fault that BBY breached a verbal contract with the customer and failed to destroy the drive properly? Browsing files on your own hard drive is not the same as walking into someone elses open house...
Your statistic is not quite correct...What Mr. Seacrest said was that more people voted in the finals than any SINGLE PRESIDENT has ever received in an election. Somewhere around 63-64 million people. If you check stats for the 2004 election, you will see that in total over 122 million votes were cast..http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidenti al_election,_2004
A few years ago I managed a retail health/nutrition shop. Shortly before I left there was lots of commotion over new research involving certain myostatin inhibitors. Once such product was made from a special marine algae. You can read a review about it here.
Unfortunately, I left the position before I had a chance to discuss with any first-hand users of these things, but it looks like they're still being sold at various web sites, so somebody must think they're working.
My company was informed of this bonded sender program by MSN/Hotmail support 2 months ago. At the time they claimed the Bonded Sender program was a third-party service with no affiliation to MSN/Hotmail or Microsoft. At the same time, they also claimed that even if you DO subscribe to the bonded sender program MSN/Hotmail will give no guarantee that your emails will be delivered!