If you're serious about trying out the software and would seriously consider purchasing it, giving them an e-mail so a representative can contact you for support makes sense
Giving them my email address so they can contact me for support makes sense????? Uh, yeah, okay. How about, if I fricking need support, I will ask for it, and at THAT point you wil have my email address. Same goes with trying it out. Even if I am seriously considering buying a piece of software, THEY don't need my address. I will make my decision, and if I want to buy it, I know where to find them. If not, no amount of emailing or phoning or anything else is going to change my mind. When you go into an electronics store, a car dealer, or any other place where you are considering buying something, do you want a damn salesperson hovering over your shoulder asking whether you need help deciding if you like the product? I sure don't. Again, if I need help or have a question, I know where to find them. They don't need my name, phone number, email address, or postal address to allow me to try out their product; they don't have any reason to contact me, and I sure don't want to be hearing from them unless I contact them first.
For me, and for many others in the world, the quickest way to lose my business is to give the appearance of pushy salespeople, and that is exactly the impression requiring me to fill out forms in order to try out your product gives me. Hell, even when I go and test drive a car, they usually only ask to photocopy my drivers license, if that.
If they're willing to go that low in Australia, I wonder what they have in store for Japan, where they have yet to institute a preice drop and where the XBox is being outsold by the PS1!
I don't think the problem in Japan is really the price, the Japanese have a history (well, for the last 15 or 20 years anyway) of paying big bucks for these toys. I think for them it is more an issue of national pride (why buy an American game console when you can buy a Japanese one). Also, I don't think MS has done well in releasing games that appeal to that particular market (or to any other market, for that matter. My friend got an x-box a while ago, and the only game he has found for it that he likes is Halo, which MS stole from Mac/PC (the bastards)).
More likely they just decided that the consumer HD market is too fiercely competitive, the very low profit margins totally unforgiving of any mistakes that requires warranty service. It's just a guess, but I'd say that replacing a faulty drive under warranty probably costs them more than they make from selling fifty of the suckers. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but really, hard drive profit margins have been incredibly low for the past few years.
Would it not be a better idea for Deutsche Bahn to use their excess cash to:
Secure Their Systems Find Better Ways to Transport Radioactive Waste
What better way to transport nuclear waste? Rail travel is the safest form of transportation in the world (yes, this includes walking). Maybe instead you should suggest that dumbasses like those that posted this sabotage crap on a web site should find something useful to do rather than teach people to destroy public or private property. Especially property like this, which is beneficial to everyone, and could possibly cause a dangerous situation. What exactly does slowing down the transport of these dangerous materials accomplish? Nothing, except increasing the likelihood of an accident, terrorist act, etc.
If you thought oil well fires were spectacular, I wonder what a hydrogen well fire would look like.
A hydrogen well fire would probably be a pretty boring sight, since hydrogen combusts with no visible flame. you would probably see a bunch of heat shimmer and maybe some clouds of water vapour forming around the edges.
The idea of an actual hydrogen car seems a little silly. Sure gas is explosive but a hydrogen car is a bomb. Ill take an electric/solar car thanks, and one powered by wind/sun/tides over one by hydrogen.
Hydrogen isn't really much more dangerous than gasoline. The main problem with it is that the molecules are so small they can easily escape through any opening, and even through many seemingly non-porous materials (think what happens when you fill a regular rubber balloon with helium, a molecule larger than hydrogen). However, unlike gasoline, hydrogen is lighter than air. So if you do have a leak, it escapes upwards rather than sitting along the ground forming a very explosive cloud.
The friendly folks at the Monorail Society [monorails.org] might disagree with you on that. Monorails are an efficient solution for crowded cities, since they can be built in the air, and as (by definition) the car is wider than the track they use less space than light rail. Their speed and capacity are more than sufficient for most applications, and they cost a lot less than building subways. This is why there has been a bit of a monorail renaissance lately, with cities as diverse as Las Vegas, Chiba, Kuala Lumpur and Okinawa (Naha) building monorail systems.
Lightrail can be built in the air just as easily as Monorail. Lightrail trains are also wider than the track (have you ever seen a train that is narrower than it's track?). Lightrail is more efficient than monorails (steel wheel on track vs. rubber tires on concrete), and conventional rail can safely travel at higher speeds than monorail, though of course this is often not the main concern. Monorails have great popularity because they look "futuristic" rather than any real advantages they possess. Go take some transportation engineering classes. You will find that there is little reason to use monorail beyond the "cool" factor, which admittedly may be a slight bonus as it may encourage more people to use the transit system.
You are of course right, the rubber tires do allow monorails to deal better with grades (and they can handle much steeper grades). However, you can just as easily elevate light rail as monorail, and light rail is more efficient for the same reason as monorails can deal with higher grades - less friction.
Well, I'm one PS2 owner who isn't going to get it. EQ sucks. Every MMORPG I have tried has pretty much sucked. Single player, off-line RPGs are much better. And no, I'm not talking about console RPGs.
As for lack of hard drive, isn't the broadband adapter (ethernet card, whatever) supposed to be bundled with a hard drive? I thought I saw that somewhere, but I'm too lazy (well, too disinterested anyway) to look.
The field-upgradeable SSD system can hold 27 copies of the Human Genome and transfer data at a rate equivalent to 100 Human Genomes per second.
let's see, 80 GB/sec divided by 100 Genomes/sec uhh, give me a minute here.... 800 MB per genome! Hey, my computer holds WAY more than that! And I thought those genome thingy's were supposed to be complicated!
Monorails don't really have any place in modern transit. They don't really save any space advantage(the limiting factor is the width of the cars, not of the track) and they aren't any more efficient than your everyday lightrail or subway or whatever else you feel like building. In addition, they tend to be less efficient, and also less stable in turns and such.
I'm pretty sure there were many hundreds of other all-in-one computers with LCD screens well before this twentieth-anniversary-mac. They used to be called Notebook or Laptop computers. The difference is that the newer, all-in-one computers have been carefuly designed to be more difficult to move around.
Once again, mac-users claim a step forward when in actuality they have only taken a prettily-packaged step backwards (of course, all those PC makers like Gateway and Compaq seem intent on following them).
On a similar note, a friend recently introduced me to a cool little program called Earthviewer 3D. It is a (sort of) 3D globe that you can zoom in on smoothly, gives you very nice resolution in many areas (you can see individual cars on the Bay Bridge in S.F.). They have a free 14 day trial you can get here. Unfortunately, looks like it is Windows only. And I have no idea how much it costs. And it takes a decent 3D card. And probably a decent internet connection, since it downloads all the textures continously. But other than that, it is pretty fun.
So, ban corporate political donations altogether. Further, ban donations by any individual or group that cannot in itself vote. The government of the United States exists to serve and protect the rights and interests of the citizens of the United States, not the corporations. If it is in the best interest of the people of the U.S. to change laws to help corporations, then the members of those corporations can individually contribute to their chosen causes. Only American citizens have the right to vote because they are supposed to be the ones who decide the course of the nation; the people that make up corporations can choose to aid that corporation or not; the corporation as an entity should not have any influence on the course of the American Government. Similarly, no person deprived of the right to vote, or without that vote for any reason, should not be able to contribute to political campaigns because they are specifically meant NOT to be able to exert influence on the government.
For even more fun, set a limit for how much any one person is allowed to contribute towards a single candidate and/or group per year; say 5 or 10 thousand dollars. Sure, 95% of Americans can't afford to do that anyway, but it keeps the 5% that can afford it from doing more.
Uh, yeah. Anywya. Enough of that for now. (Note: This has not been proof-read or edited. Any spelling errors, mistakes or Stupid Ideas are due to my own laziness.)
Why don't these companies come out and sue right away if it such a blatant violation of a patent or something?
Because, if they sued right away the companies might actually be able to design a technology around the patents that wouldn't require them to pay royalties. Much better to wait until the companies have invested millions in products violating your patents before slapping them with the choice of either A. paying ryalties to you or B. wasting the millions they have already spent on the product.
File and Print Sharing: The Service functions as a Local Area Network (LAN) in that each Customer is a node on the network. As such, users outside the Customer's home may be able to access the Customer's computer. Additionally, some software may permit other users across a network such as the Service and the Internet to gain access to Customer's computer and to the software, files and data stored on the computer. For example, operating systems such as Windows 95 and Apple Macintosh include file sharing and print sharing capabilities which, when enabled, will permit other users to gain access to the Customer's computer even if the Customer is not using the Service. Comcast therefore recommends that the Customer connect only a single computer to the Service and that the Customer disable file and print sharing and other capabilities that allow users to gain access to the Customer's computer. Any Customer who chooses to participate in the Service using other than a single computer or who chooses to enable capabilities such as file sharing, print sharing, or other capabilities that allow users to gain access to the Customer's computer, acknowledges and agrees that the Customer does so at the Customer's own risk, and that neither Comcast nor its Underlying Providers shall have any liability whatsoever for any claims, losses, actions, damages, suits or proceedings arising out of or otherwise relating to such use by the Customer.
And in the FAQ (NOT from the TOS):
Can I use the service on more than one computer?
Yes, customers with home networks may order additional network addresses in order to connect several computers to the service through one cable modem.
You must first subscribe to the basic Comcast High-Speed Internet Service.
Once you become a subscriber, you can sign up for a second and third address.
You will need to have access to network expertise because Comcast High-Speed Internet Service neither installs nor supports networks.
The cost is $6.95 per month for each additional outlet. Customers can have two additional addresses, for a total of three.
Comcast will install the network card and software on a second and third computer for a change of $49 for each computer.
Those were the only references to multiple computers I could find anywhere in the TOS or FAQ.
As you can see, it doesn't say anything about multiple computers sharing access not being allowed. However...
Users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, or degrade any other user's use of the Services, nor represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast High-Speed Internet Service) an unusually large burden on the network itself. In addition, users must ensure that their activity does not improperly restrict, inhibit, disrupt, degrade or impede Comcast High-Speed Internet Service's ability to deliver the Services and monitor the Services, backbone, network nodes, and/or other network services.
This paragraph gives Comcast considerable leeway in deciding what degrades another user's service, so they could conceivably argue that having multiple computers simultaneously connected could degrade other user's service (though I don't think paying more money for extra addresses would improve other user's service any).
It doesn't say that multiple computers cannot be used on one address. It only states that a customer may order additional network addresses, not that a customer must order additional network addresses in order to connect multiple computers. It basically sidesteps the question of whether a customer may use more than one computer sharing a single network address.
If, as other people have stated, this is the only place that addresses networked computers then they don't seem to be saying that networked computers sharing a single network address are against the TOS. What it DOES seem to be doing is trying to get the average user to think that in order to connect more than one computer they NEED more than one network address, and so must pay more. Just another misleading statement aimed at increasing profits by charging the uneducated masses more than they might need to pay.
Re:This isn't a troll, and not that rare an opinio
on
Lord of the Geeks
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· Score: 1
I believe strongly that if Tolkien had never lived, the main difference in fantasy literature would be no mentions of Tolkien in the reviews. There would still be stories about fireball-hurling wizards, sneaking goblins, vicious trolls, haughty elves, talking trees, and tough dwarves. Tales would still revolve around the world-threatening artifact and would still commonly feature the fish-out-of-water everyman-hero.
If Newton had not lived, we would most likely still know about the laws of motion, we would still have classical physics, etc. Does this mean Newton wasn't an incredibly important and influential person? Of course not. Someone else would have come along and discovered the things he did, he just happened to be the one to do it. I'm not saying Tolkien was on the same level as Newton, I'm just pointing out that this argument of yours is ridiculous.
As for whether Tolkien was a good writer, my personal opinion is that he is easily one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He was very influential, and he simply wrote very well (what is this about a lack of psychological conflict in his writing? Just because it isn't directly stated doesn't mean it isn't there). The only thing going against him in this respect is his incredible popularity, as critics who agree with the majority of people aren't too useful. (Have you noticed, critics always pan popular works of any kind? It doesn't really matter whether they are good or not.)
Re:Flywheels are a great solution
on
Flywheel UPS
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· Score: 1
This is more of a problem with vehicles, where the flywheel is subject to tradeoffs between operating at a very high speed to store a lot of energy, practical limits on flywheel size and weight, and the weight of the armor around the flywheel needed to prevent potentally deadly chunks from flying loose if it does disintegrate. I understand they're trying to develop graphite composite flywheels for vehicles
isn't the idea of flywheels that they store energy kinetically? Wouldn't you therefore want the flywheel to be as massive as possible in order to store the most energy at a given rotational speed? It seems odd to be trying to build a lightweight flywheel for a vehicle, almost backwards for some reason.
I know this isn't feasible (at least, not yet), but is the next step going to be to try to get light to travel through a vaccuum?
I understand (with my crude understanding of physics) that the more 'stuff' you have in the way of the photons, the more it gets blocked. What if there were a way to take everything out of the light's path?
From what he article said, you need a material around the transmission material (in this case, air) with a lower index of refraction to keep the light going along the transmission line. I'm not sure, but I would guess a perfect vacuum would have a very low refraction index, so the problem of finding a material with a lower index of refraction to surround the vacuum with would be even more difficult than with air.
"What if it's not that it CAN'T talk to us, but that it doesn't WANT to?"
Re:Genetic engineering, the media, dams, and 42
on
Spidergoats
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· Score: 1
"I find it a constant source of amazment that a group of people who think nothing of daming rivers for electricity to run their computers, (one of the more environmently friendly forms of energy creation actually). "
Actually, there is evidence that reservoirs contribute significantly to air pollution. All those gases from decomposing trees and such actually appear to cause a significant amount of air pollution, something I never would have thought of. You don't normally think of a big body of nice, clean water as being a pollution hazard.
Speaking of MagLev, there was supposed to be a ballot issue in November 2000 for the construction of a high speed rail system in California. I think it has been pushed back to 2001 (the ballot issue, that is), anyone know more about it? IIRC, they were looking at eitehr standard electrical traction (steel-wheel-on-rail), which they were estimating would cost around $21 billion, or a MagLev system that would cost around $27 billion.
Oh, hey, check out www.cahighspeedrail.org
if you are interested.
Slashdot Mirror
Giving them my email address so they can contact me for support makes sense????? Uh, yeah, okay. How about, if I fricking need support, I will ask for it, and at THAT point you wil have my email address. Same goes with trying it out. Even if I am seriously considering buying a piece of software, THEY don't need my address. I will make my decision, and if I want to buy it, I know where to find them. If not, no amount of emailing or phoning or anything else is going to change my mind. When you go into an electronics store, a car dealer, or any other place where you are considering buying something, do you want a damn salesperson hovering over your shoulder asking whether you need help deciding if you like the product? I sure don't. Again, if I need help or have a question, I know where to find them. They don't need my name, phone number, email address, or postal address to allow me to try out their product; they don't have any reason to contact me, and I sure don't want to be hearing from them unless I contact them first.
For me, and for many others in the world, the quickest way to lose my business is to give the appearance of pushy salespeople, and that is exactly the impression requiring me to fill out forms in order to try out your product gives me. Hell, even when I go and test drive a car, they usually only ask to photocopy my drivers license, if that.
I don't think the problem in Japan is really the price, the Japanese have a history (well, for the last 15 or 20 years anyway) of paying big bucks for these toys. I think for them it is more an issue of national pride (why buy an American game console when you can buy a Japanese one). Also, I don't think MS has done well in releasing games that appeal to that particular market (or to any other market, for that matter. My friend got an x-box a while ago, and the only game he has found for it that he likes is Halo, which MS stole from Mac/PC (the bastards)).
More likely they just decided that the consumer HD market is too fiercely competitive, the very low profit margins totally unforgiving of any mistakes that requires warranty service. It's just a guess, but I'd say that replacing a faulty drive under warranty probably costs them more than they make from selling fifty of the suckers. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but really, hard drive profit margins have been incredibly low for the past few years.
The first hard drive on my very own computer was 40 megabytes. I managed to fit Wing Commander 2 on it twice, though why I did this escapes me...
Secure Their Systems
Find Better Ways to Transport Radioactive Waste
What better way to transport nuclear waste? Rail travel is the safest form of transportation in the world (yes, this includes walking). Maybe instead you should suggest that dumbasses like those that posted this sabotage crap on a web site should find something useful to do rather than teach people to destroy public or private property. Especially property like this, which is beneficial to everyone, and could possibly cause a dangerous situation. What exactly does slowing down the transport of these dangerous materials accomplish? Nothing, except increasing the likelihood of an accident, terrorist act, etc.
A hydrogen well fire would probably be a pretty boring sight, since hydrogen combusts with no visible flame. you would probably see a bunch of heat shimmer and maybe some clouds of water vapour forming around the edges.
Hydrogen isn't really much more dangerous than gasoline. The main problem with it is that the molecules are so small they can easily escape through any opening, and even through many seemingly non-porous materials (think what happens when you fill a regular rubber balloon with helium, a molecule larger than hydrogen).
However, unlike gasoline, hydrogen is lighter than air. So if you do have a leak, it escapes upwards rather than sitting along the ground forming a very explosive cloud.
The friendly folks at the Monorail Society [monorails.org] might disagree with you on that. Monorails are an efficient solution for crowded cities, since they can be built in the air, and as (by definition) the car is wider than the track they use less space than light rail. Their speed and capacity are more than sufficient for most applications, and they cost a lot less than building subways. This is why there has been a bit of a monorail renaissance lately, with cities as diverse as Las Vegas, Chiba, Kuala Lumpur and Okinawa (Naha) building monorail systems.
Lightrail can be built in the air just as easily as Monorail. Lightrail trains are also wider than the track (have you ever seen a train that is narrower than it's track?). Lightrail is more efficient than monorails (steel wheel on track vs. rubber tires on concrete), and conventional rail can safely travel at higher speeds than monorail, though of course this is often not the main concern. Monorails have great popularity because they look "futuristic" rather than any real advantages they possess. Go take some transportation engineering classes. You will find that there is little reason to use monorail beyond the "cool" factor, which admittedly may be a slight bonus as it may encourage more people to use the transit system.
You are of course right, the rubber tires do allow monorails to deal better with grades (and they can handle much steeper grades). However, you can just as easily elevate light rail as monorail, and light rail is more efficient for the same reason as monorails can deal with higher grades - less friction.
Well, I'm one PS2 owner who isn't going to get it. EQ sucks. Every MMORPG I have tried has pretty much sucked. Single player, off-line RPGs are much better. And no, I'm not talking about console RPGs.
As for lack of hard drive, isn't the broadband adapter (ethernet card, whatever) supposed to be bundled with a hard drive? I thought I saw that somewhere, but I'm too lazy (well, too disinterested anyway) to look.
let's see, 80 GB/sec divided by 100 Genomes/sec
uhh, give me a minute here....
800 MB per genome! Hey, my computer holds WAY more than that! And I thought those genome thingy's were supposed to be complicated!
Monorails don't really have any place in modern transit. They don't really save any space advantage(the limiting factor is the width of the cars, not of the track) and they aren't any more efficient than your everyday lightrail or subway or whatever else you feel like building. In addition, they tend to be less efficient, and also less stable in turns and such.
I'm pretty sure there were many hundreds of other all-in-one computers with LCD screens well before this twentieth-anniversary-mac. They used to be called Notebook or Laptop computers. The difference is that the newer, all-in-one computers have been carefuly designed to be more difficult to move around.
Once again, mac-users claim a step forward when in actuality they have only taken a prettily-packaged step backwards (of course, all those PC makers like Gateway and Compaq seem intent on following them).
On a similar note, a friend recently introduced me to a cool little program called Earthviewer 3D. It is a (sort of) 3D globe that you can zoom in on smoothly, gives you very nice resolution in many areas (you can see individual cars on the Bay Bridge in S.F.). They have a free 14 day trial you can get here. Unfortunately, looks like it is Windows only. And I have no idea how much it costs. And it takes a decent 3D card. And probably a decent internet connection, since it downloads all the textures continously. But other than that, it is pretty fun.
For even more fun, set a limit for how much any one person is allowed to contribute towards a single candidate and/or group per year; say 5 or 10 thousand dollars. Sure, 95% of Americans can't afford to do that anyway, but it keeps the 5% that can afford it from doing more.
Uh, yeah. Anywya. Enough of that for now. (Note: This has not been proof-read or edited. Any spelling errors, mistakes or Stupid Ideas are due to my own laziness.)
Because, if they sued right away the companies might actually be able to design a technology around the patents that wouldn't require them to pay royalties. Much better to wait until the companies have invested millions in products violating your patents before slapping them with the choice of either A. paying ryalties to you or B. wasting the millions they have already spent on the product.
And in the FAQ (NOT from the TOS):
Those were the only references to multiple computers I could find anywhere in the TOS or FAQ.
As you can see, it doesn't say anything about multiple computers sharing access not being allowed. However...
This paragraph gives Comcast considerable leeway in deciding what degrades another user's service, so they could conceivably argue that having multiple computers simultaneously connected could degrade other user's service (though I don't think paying more money for extra addresses would improve other user's service any).
So, what's the problem?
If, as other people have stated, this is the only place that addresses networked computers then they don't seem to be saying that networked computers sharing a single network address are against the TOS. What it DOES seem to be doing is trying to get the average user to think that in order to connect more than one computer they NEED more than one network address, and so must pay more. Just another misleading statement aimed at increasing profits by charging the uneducated masses more than they might need to pay.
If Newton had not lived, we would most likely still know about the laws of motion, we would still have classical physics, etc. Does this mean Newton wasn't an incredibly important and influential person? Of course not. Someone else would have come along and discovered the things he did, he just happened to be the one to do it. I'm not saying Tolkien was on the same level as Newton, I'm just pointing out that this argument of yours is ridiculous.
As for whether Tolkien was a good writer, my personal opinion is that he is easily one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He was very influential, and he simply wrote very well (what is this about a lack of psychological conflict in his writing? Just because it isn't directly stated doesn't mean it isn't there). The only thing going against him in this respect is his incredible popularity, as critics who agree with the majority of people aren't too useful. (Have you noticed, critics always pan popular works of any kind? It doesn't really matter whether they are good or not.)
isn't the idea of flywheels that they store energy kinetically? Wouldn't you therefore want the flywheel to be as massive as possible in order to store the most energy at a given rotational speed? It seems odd to be trying to build a lightweight flywheel for a vehicle, almost backwards for some reason.
From what he article said, you need a material around the transmission material (in this case, air) with a lower index of refraction to keep the light going along the transmission line. I'm not sure, but I would guess a perfect vacuum would have a very low refraction index, so the problem of finding a material with a lower index of refraction to surround the vacuum with would be even more difficult than with air.
"What if it's not that it CAN'T talk to us, but that it doesn't WANT to?"
Actually, there is evidence that reservoirs contribute significantly to air pollution. All those gases from decomposing trees and such actually appear to cause a significant amount of air pollution, something I never would have thought of. You don't normally think of a big body of nice, clean water as being a pollution hazard.
Speaking of MagLev, there was supposed to be a ballot issue in November 2000 for the construction of a high speed rail system in California. I think it has been pushed back to 2001 (the ballot issue, that is), anyone know more about it? IIRC, they were looking at eitehr standard electrical traction (steel-wheel-on-rail), which they were estimating would cost around $21 billion, or a MagLev system that would cost around $27 billion. Oh, hey, check out www.cahighspeedrail.org if you are interested.