For as long as I've been in the IT industry, the rule of thumb has been never to buy a.0 release and never, never, never buy a 1.0 release. Look at the most respected versions of OS/2: 1.2, 2.1 and Warp Connect (which ought to have been 3.1). Look at the most stable versions of Windows (3.1.1, 95 OSR2, NT 3.5.1). Consider the 1.0 releases of Netscape Navigator, Word Perfect, Quatro Pro and more. It's always been rare (at least in the PC world) that the initial release has been stable.
Look at the context of the great-grandparent post. It wasn't speaking to Enron's energy commodity business but ``its internet services arm (which had at one time a deal with Blockbuster to sell movies over broadband). That arm was neither successful nor influential.
Also, you've made quite a few assertions that don't have anything to do with each other. That 97% of the music on iPods is from cd rips and pirated downloads says nothing about the whether or not the people buying from ITMS are geeks or not. ITMS customers are disproportionately 12 to 17 year olds which is not a demographic known for being IT geeks. They're also more likely to drive VWs and read Wired, FHM and Rolling Stone. I'm not certain that any of those are good indicators of geekdom except (and only arguably) reading Wired. In fact, I'd argue that the opposite is true, that the more tech savvy someone is, the less likely he or she is going to purchase music from ITMS. It isn't the gearheads who wander into the local CVS or Walgreen and pick up a ten dollar iTunes card as an impulse buy in the checkout lane.
Lastly, anyone who knows what a Cisco is and just what it has to do with wireless is probably is closer to being a geek than not a geek. Given how wrong you are about the ITMS user demographic, I have doubts that you're closer to the truth than me with regards to Airport.
That fundamentally altered the way the way people think of music and the internet. Same for Napster. Sure, there was file sharing before Napster and online purchasing of music before ITMS. But before Napster and ITMS, this was the realm of the geek rather than the everyday joe. Napster and ITMS fundamentally changed the way that most people looked at these things.
I suspect that you don't talk about computers very often to everyday people. For many, if not most, Airport is synonymous with Wireless networking. If I tell my father-in-law that I bought a new 802.11g wireless router, he looks at me in bewilderment. If I tell him it's like an Airport, he knows what it is despite the fact that he doesn't own any Apple hardware or software. (His computer is Dell.)
And you yourself point out why Enron was not influential. They failed. Not only did they fail, the failed without even making a big splash in that particular market. All the products on the list were winners for quite some time and the ones that eventually failed only did so after tremendously influencing the competition.
Look at their choices for the top digital cameras. They chose the ones that made it easy for people rather than the first out of the gate. Efforts like the Sony Mavica (and its floppy drive) brought a certain mass appeal to the market niche that previous efforts lacked.
The list was supposed to be of the top products that changed the way people compute. Several buggy crapfests were on the list from Microsoft's Excel and Windows 95 to Netscape Navigator 1.0. But buggy or not, these products were best of breed and fundamentally changed the consumer technology marketplace. OS X has not only radically altered Apple's product line but also has greatly influenced Microsoft's Windows and many of the operating environments for *nix.
Now, you might have a point if they defined `top' as `most defect free.' But they didn't.
It should have been titled, the fifty most commercially influential consumer gradeITproducts of the last thirty years. Electrical power plants, water treatment plants and the internal combustion engine (just to name three technical innovations) have far more impact on every day life than any of the products on that list. Or even relational databases and computer warehousing. Here's another example, the credit revolution that began in the eighties was entirely dependent on large mainframes being able to interconnect with various data sources to compile a credit score that has changed the way people work, shop and live far more than the number one product on that list, Netscape Navigator.
Consumer's Union, the organization behind Consumer Reports, buys all of the merchandise they test from retail stores so that they are testing the same kit that consumers are buying. The also develops fairly rigorous methodologies for testing. For example, in their vacuum cleaner review, they create dump the same amount of artificially concocted dirt on several different surfaces ranging from a deep shag carpet to a bare floor and record the results of having each model having a go. Does Which? take a similar approach or like most consumer magazines do they accept review models from manufacturers and simply hand them out to their staff try them out at home?
In Consumer Reports, Eureka, Hoover and Kenmore models usually grab the top spots. Of course different models by these same companies usually grab some of the lowest spots as well. All of Dyson's models usually come in at the middle of the pack which is kind of curious given that it costs about twice as much as the top rated Hoovers and Kenmores and three to four times as much as the top rated Eurekas.
By leaving out the tuner, they left out two of the four killer apps for a set top box: pausing live TV and season passes for time shifting TV shows. Of the other two killer apps (streaming content from the internet and from one's private network) one is a bit of a pain because you have to go to a dedicated workstation to buy movies off of the internet. As of right now, I'd rather buy a Mac mini with an EyeTV dongle and add DVD playback and a tv tuner for just over double the cost of the AppleTV.
Too bad I can't afford to do that.
Not that I'm arguing that this product won't be successful. It just won't be as successful as it could have been. I'll wager, though, that Apple will add the missing feature by the end of this calendar year.
One of the biggest mistakes I've seen people make is to get certified for something which they have no professional experience. The only that does is to waste recruiters time. The cert ends up with a bunch of phone calls from headhunters that see the cert on a resume that end in this:
recruiter: how much experience do you have with X
applicant: none
recruiter:...
phone line: click.
But having a cert + experience will get you far more interviews than experience alone and in situations where it's you being compared to others with equivalent experience but no certifications, you'll stand out from the pack in a good way
But far better than a cert is a degree from a well respected university. I earned my degree in a non-IT field in my thirties from a decent school. I was utterly surprised by how much easier it was to find an IT job with that degree than before I had it. A degree from a good school grabs eyeballs.
Has anyone plotted the number of hardcore gamers against the unemployment rate? It seems to me that I would expect to see a decrease in the number of hardcore gamers as a society moves towards full employment rates.
Most people don't have HDTVs or computer monitors large enough to give buying HD content any advantage over regular DVDs. The average consumer isn't yet ready to drop $500 on a new TV and another $500 on a new disk player, and an additional $50 per month for the HDTV digital cable package. So right now, the market consists entirely of those with very large discretionary incomes.
My VCR crapped out last month. I priced out HD kit and was quite disappointed at the present state of affairs. I would need to buy a 36" set to get the same size picture as my present 24" set for analog signals. I/might/ be able to pull down HDTV content over a terrestrial antenna, but that's a crapshoot. The reason I buy cable is precisely because my terrestrial reception is pants. So to be assured of HDTV reception, I'd have to upgrade to the digital cable package and pay extra for the HDTV rider. It's insane.
So I won't be buying HDTV anything for at least another two years. Maybe by then prices will be feasible. And once HD content is a true commodity and past the early adopter series, then we'll see whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will be the winner.
In most states in small claims court, the parties have to represent themselves. While a corporation that sues may very well send a lawyer to represent them, it can't be outside legal counsel and her or she won't be acting as a lawyer but as a representative of the company. There are quite a few good books on how small claims court works. Consider searching your local library for some.
It won't be long before it gets into the set top box range. All it lacks is a tuner which is a minimal cost and I predict will start to be included sometime soon.
But also, please note that I was replying to a post specifying that an old and beat up laptop would solve the problem. It isn't that I don't believe a solution isn't workable so much as I think it will take ten to twenty years for that solution to permeate living rooms in the US to the point where bricks and mortar rental stores are in peril.
Sure you can quantify some things such as how much a nation is able and willing to spend on protective gear. And certainly failure rates and cost/benefit analysis is somewhat appropriate there.
But I don't believe for a minute that the protective gear purchased by the Pentagon or any other military institution is purchased based on the odds of having to pay out life insurance, train replacements, etc. Rather what happens is that a budget is set by Congress and the President and the decisions makers in the Pentagon are given X amount of money for purpose Y and figure out the best way to spend it. I'd be very surprised if the sorts of analysis brought up in this thread past the actual cost of production and testing for fitness of use are considered at all.
Small claims caps vary from state to state, but there aren't many states where the full value of even a two year mobile contract surpasses the limit. In some states the cap is as high as 15k USD.
You may be correct about this being about all credit records and not just your credit report. But people should be aware that credit reports from the big bureaus contain far more information than just the credit score. Among other things, your full credit report includes for each financial obligation you have:
The date you opened the account
The original credit limit on the account (or the original amount of the loan)
How much you presently owe on the account
How many times you've been reported delinquent and how long you've been delinquent each time
At least in the US, if you dispute any item on your credit report, the credit bureau has thirty days to investigate. Unless the entity that placed the negative information sends proof of its claim, the item has to be removed. In a case like yours where Rogers most likely has a signed contract, the onus of proving that they breached the contract is on you. If you never received service you ought to have taken them to court rather than simply not paying.
But (at least in the US) both the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and the federal Financial Privacy Act regulate who is and who is not allowed to get a copy of your credit report.
It may be true that as a matter of practicality that anyone with a federal tax id can get a copy of your full credit report, unless they have permission from you they are breaking the law in doing so. There are some exceptions to this such as the limited version (mostly your credit score and contact information) of the credit report provided to third parties who regularly pay the credit bureaus for mailing lists of people in a certain demographic target market.
It is illegal for a company to order your full credit report without your consent. Look at the fine print next time you fill out the paperwork for a loan. Among other things it will detail that you're giving permission for them to get your credit report.
Credit bureaus are allowed to offer very limited versions to other companies without your consent. These mostly just contain your credit score and your contact information. Further, you're allowed to opt out should you contact the credit bureau.
It's is also perfectly reasonable for them to assume that the data is correct until told otherwise. There are many ways that a person can be liable for an account opened prior to their birth. For example, a parent or grandparent could have opened an account prior to some-one's date of birth and then later added that person to the account as a joint holder. As a joint account holder, that younger person would be financially liable for an account opened before they were born.
Situations like these are not all that uncommon. It isn't unusual at all for a parent to add a child as a joint account holder for a credit card so that the child gets a card with his or her name on it. In cases where the parent conscientiously makes the payment, this also helps establish a credit history for the child. Regrettably, if the parent is not so responsible, it lies a bad foundation for the child.
Upon notification of an error in your credit report, the reporting agencies are required to either correct the mistake or confirm the disputed information within 30 days. See section 611(a)(1)(A) of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. There is no mention of requiring that notification of a dispute take place by letter. Notifying a credit bureau by certified mail is the wisest choice but mostly because it serves as proof that the bureau was notified on the day that you claim.
In cases such as yours and your acquaintances where the information is bad on the face of it, a phone call should be all it takes. Even if it the agency doesn't immediately remove the disputed information, it is required to immediately list the information as being disputed and the reason for which you are disputing it.
Perhaps you misremember and it was the lendor who required you to send the letter from Macy's in order to validate your claim that you bore no responsibility for the account. After all it is not all that unusualy for someone to have finanical liability for an account created before he or she was born. One of your grandparents could have opened the account before you were born and later added you as a joint account holder. As a joint account holder, you would then have been jointly liable for any missed payments for an account opened before your date of birth.
Another possibility is that your anecdote predates the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The reason Congress first passed the act ten years ago was precisely the type of abuse contained within your anecdote.
It seems to me that it is more likely that the $600 Mac mini (lacking only the TV tuner) will lower in price below $500 before dedicated set top boxes like the $350 nVidia box will add a hard disk, tuner and optical drive and stay below $500.
Does it have an optical drive to play existing DVD libraries, a tuner and enough disk space to use for a DVR in addition to being able to play streaming media?
The salient point being that these solutions are not wide spread and there are large obstacles to widespread adoption. Consequently, the video rental store has quite a bit of life left.
1. It may be trivial, but it hasn't happened yet and I know of no plans for streaming media software providers to implement it.
2. It doesn't matter why it is the case. The fact of the matter is that it is not the case and, except in the high end of the market, I know of no plans to implement it.
3. Not only does the friend need broadband, but they need the right software and a connected computer in the room where you're going to watch the show and you need to trust your friend's computer enough to log into your account from it. Then there is the issue of wanting to watch the flick on your laptop while on the bus or in the back seat of your parent's car on that five hour road trip.
I don't know of many people that want an ugly workstation permanently plugged into their TV or that are willing to plug their laptop in every time they want to stream a film. There is no real danger to the bricks and mortar rental places until TVs (or set top boxes) that can accept the streaming become ubiquitous. IMO, the killer appliance would be a DVR priced less than 500 USD with a DVD drive and a network interface capable of pulling movies from all the PCs in the house as well as services such as this.
Also, as I mentioned in a different post, there is the closed captioning issue. I suspect, but I'm not positive, that Netflick's player app is not CC aware. Heck, Apple's Quicktime isn't going to be CC aware until the next release.
And then there is the issue of being able to stuff a physical disk into your bag and take it to work, school, a friend's house...
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For as long as I've been in the IT industry, the rule of thumb has been never to buy a .0 release and never, never, never buy a 1.0 release. Look at the most respected versions of OS/2: 1.2, 2.1 and Warp Connect (which ought to have been 3.1). Look at the most stable versions of Windows (3.1.1, 95 OSR2, NT 3.5.1). Consider the 1.0 releases of Netscape Navigator, Word Perfect, Quatro Pro and more. It's always been rare (at least in the PC world) that the initial release has been stable.
Look at the context of the great-grandparent post. It wasn't speaking to Enron's energy commodity business but ``its internet services arm (which had at one time a deal with Blockbuster to sell movies over broadband). That arm was neither successful nor influential.
Also, you've made quite a few assertions that don't have anything to do with each other. That 97% of the music on iPods is from cd rips and pirated downloads says nothing about the whether or not the people buying from ITMS are geeks or not. ITMS customers are disproportionately 12 to 17 year olds which is not a demographic known for being IT geeks. They're also more likely to drive VWs and read Wired, FHM and Rolling Stone. I'm not certain that any of those are good indicators of geekdom except (and only arguably) reading Wired. In fact, I'd argue that the opposite is true, that the more tech savvy someone is, the less likely he or she is going to purchase music from ITMS. It isn't the gearheads who wander into the local CVS or Walgreen and pick up a ten dollar iTunes card as an impulse buy in the checkout lane.
Lastly, anyone who knows what a Cisco is and just what it has to do with wireless is probably is closer to being a geek than not a geek. Given how wrong you are about the ITMS user demographic, I have doubts that you're closer to the truth than me with regards to Airport.
That fundamentally altered the way the way people think of music and the internet. Same for Napster. Sure, there was file sharing before Napster and online purchasing of music before ITMS. But before Napster and ITMS, this was the realm of the geek rather than the everyday joe. Napster and ITMS fundamentally changed the way that most people looked at these things.
I suspect that you don't talk about computers very often to everyday people. For many, if not most, Airport is synonymous with Wireless networking. If I tell my father-in-law that I bought a new 802.11g wireless router, he looks at me in bewilderment. If I tell him it's like an Airport, he knows what it is despite the fact that he doesn't own any Apple hardware or software. (His computer is Dell.)
And you yourself point out why Enron was not influential. They failed. Not only did they fail, the failed without even making a big splash in that particular market. All the products on the list were winners for quite some time and the ones that eventually failed only did so after tremendously influencing the competition.
Look at their choices for the top digital cameras. They chose the ones that made it easy for people rather than the first out of the gate. Efforts like the Sony Mavica (and its floppy drive) brought a certain mass appeal to the market niche that previous efforts lacked.
The list was supposed to be of the top products that changed the way people compute. Several buggy crapfests were on the list from Microsoft's Excel and Windows 95 to Netscape Navigator 1.0. But buggy or not, these products were best of breed and fundamentally changed the consumer technology marketplace. OS X has not only radically altered Apple's product line but also has greatly influenced Microsoft's Windows and many of the operating environments for *nix.
Now, you might have a point if they defined `top' as `most defect free.' But they didn't.
It should have been titled, the fifty most commercially influential consumer grade ITproducts of the last thirty years. Electrical power plants, water treatment plants and the internal combustion engine (just to name three technical innovations) have far more impact on every day life than any of the products on that list. Or even relational databases and computer warehousing. Here's another example, the credit revolution that began in the eighties was entirely dependent on large mainframes being able to interconnect with various data sources to compile a credit score that has changed the way people work, shop and live far more than the number one product on that list, Netscape Navigator.
Consumer's Union, the organization behind Consumer Reports, buys all of the merchandise they test from retail stores so that they are testing the same kit that consumers are buying. The also develops fairly rigorous methodologies for testing. For example, in their vacuum cleaner review, they create dump the same amount of artificially concocted dirt on several different surfaces ranging from a deep shag carpet to a bare floor and record the results of having each model having a go. Does Which? take a similar approach or like most consumer magazines do they accept review models from manufacturers and simply hand them out to their staff try them out at home?
In Consumer Reports, Eureka, Hoover and Kenmore models usually grab the top spots. Of course different models by these same companies usually grab some of the lowest spots as well. All of Dyson's models usually come in at the middle of the pack which is kind of curious given that it costs about twice as much as the top rated Hoovers and Kenmores and three to four times as much as the top rated Eurekas.
By leaving out the tuner, they left out two of the four killer apps for a set top box: pausing live TV and season passes for time shifting TV shows. Of the other two killer apps (streaming content from the internet and from one's private network) one is a bit of a pain because you have to go to a dedicated workstation to buy movies off of the internet. As of right now, I'd rather buy a Mac mini with an EyeTV dongle and add DVD playback and a tv tuner for just over double the cost of the AppleTV.
Too bad I can't afford to do that.
Not that I'm arguing that this product won't be successful. It just won't be as successful as it could have been. I'll wager, though, that Apple will add the missing feature by the end of this calendar year.
One of the biggest mistakes I've seen people make is to get certified for something which they have no professional experience. The only that does is to waste recruiters time. The cert ends up with a bunch of phone calls from headhunters that see the cert on a resume that end in this:
recruiter: how much experience do you have with X ...
applicant: none
recruiter:
phone line: click.
But having a cert + experience will get you far more interviews than experience alone and in situations where it's you being compared to others with equivalent experience but no certifications, you'll stand out from the pack in a good way
But far better than a cert is a degree from a well respected university. I earned my degree in a non-IT field in my thirties from a decent school. I was utterly surprised by how much easier it was to find an IT job with that degree than before I had it. A degree from a good school grabs eyeballs.
Has anyone plotted the number of hardcore gamers against the unemployment rate? It seems to me that I would expect to see a decrease in the number of hardcore gamers as a society moves towards full employment rates.
Most people don't have HDTVs or computer monitors large enough to give buying HD content any advantage over regular DVDs. The average consumer isn't yet ready to drop $500 on a new TV and another $500 on a new disk player, and an additional $50 per month for the HDTV digital cable package. So right now, the market consists entirely of those with very large discretionary incomes.
/might/ be able to pull down HDTV content over a terrestrial antenna, but that's a crapshoot. The reason I buy cable is precisely because my terrestrial reception is pants. So to be assured of HDTV reception, I'd have to upgrade to the digital cable package and pay extra for the HDTV rider. It's insane.
My VCR crapped out last month. I priced out HD kit and was quite disappointed at the present state of affairs. I would need to buy a 36" set to get the same size picture as my present 24" set for analog signals. I
So I won't be buying HDTV anything for at least another two years. Maybe by then prices will be feasible. And once HD content is a true commodity and past the early adopter series, then we'll see whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray will be the winner.
In most states in small claims court, the parties have to represent themselves. While a corporation that sues may very well send a lawyer to represent them, it can't be outside legal counsel and her or she won't be acting as a lawyer but as a representative of the company. There are quite a few good books on how small claims court works. Consider searching your local library for some.
But also, please note that I was replying to a post specifying that an old and beat up laptop would solve the problem. It isn't that I don't believe a solution isn't workable so much as I think it will take ten to twenty years for that solution to permeate living rooms in the US to the point where bricks and mortar rental stores are in peril.
But I don't believe for a minute that the protective gear purchased by the Pentagon or any other military institution is purchased based on the odds of having to pay out life insurance, train replacements, etc. Rather what happens is that a budget is set by Congress and the President and the decisions makers in the Pentagon are given X amount of money for purpose Y and figure out the best way to spend it. I'd be very surprised if the sorts of analysis brought up in this thread past the actual cost of production and testing for fitness of use are considered at all.
Small claims caps vary from state to state, but there aren't many states where the full value of even a two year mobile contract surpasses the limit. In some states the cap is as high as 15k USD.
At least in the US, if you dispute any item on your credit report, the credit bureau has thirty days to investigate. Unless the entity that placed the negative information sends proof of its claim, the item has to be removed. In a case like yours where Rogers most likely has a signed contract, the onus of proving that they breached the contract is on you. If you never received service you ought to have taken them to court rather than simply not paying.
It may be true that as a matter of practicality that anyone with a federal tax id can get a copy of your full credit report, unless they have permission from you they are breaking the law in doing so. There are some exceptions to this such as the limited version (mostly your credit score and contact information) of the credit report provided to third parties who regularly pay the credit bureaus for mailing lists of people in a certain demographic target market.
Credit bureaus are allowed to offer very limited versions to other companies without your consent. These mostly just contain your credit score and your contact information. Further, you're allowed to opt out should you contact the credit bureau.
Situations like these are not all that uncommon. It isn't unusual at all for a parent to add a child as a joint account holder for a credit card so that the child gets a card with his or her name on it. In cases where the parent conscientiously makes the payment, this also helps establish a credit history for the child. Regrettably, if the parent is not so responsible, it lies a bad foundation for the child.
In cases such as yours and your acquaintances where the information is bad on the face of it, a phone call should be all it takes. Even if it the agency doesn't immediately remove the disputed information, it is required to immediately list the information as being disputed and the reason for which you are disputing it.
Perhaps you misremember and it was the lendor who required you to send the letter from Macy's in order to validate your claim that you bore no responsibility for the account. After all it is not all that unusualy for someone to have finanical liability for an account created before he or she was born. One of your grandparents could have opened the account before you were born and later added you as a joint account holder. As a joint account holder, you would then have been jointly liable for any missed payments for an account opened before your date of birth.
Another possibility is that your anecdote predates the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The reason Congress first passed the act ten years ago was precisely the type of abuse contained within your anecdote.
It seems to me that it is more likely that the $600 Mac mini (lacking only the TV tuner) will lower in price below $500 before dedicated set top boxes like the $350 nVidia box will add a hard disk, tuner and optical drive and stay below $500.
Does it have an optical drive to play existing DVD libraries, a tuner and enough disk space to use for a DVR in addition to being able to play streaming media?
The salient point being that these solutions are not wide spread and there are large obstacles to widespread adoption. Consequently, the video rental store has quite a bit of life left.
2. It doesn't matter why it is the case. The fact of the matter is that it is not the case and, except in the high end of the market, I know of no plans to implement it.
3. Not only does the friend need broadband, but they need the right software and a connected computer in the room where you're going to watch the show and you need to trust your friend's computer enough to log into your account from it. Then there is the issue of wanting to watch the flick on your laptop while on the bus or in the back seat of your parent's car on that five hour road trip.
Also, as I mentioned in a different post, there is the closed captioning issue. I suspect, but I'm not positive, that Netflick's player app is not CC aware. Heck, Apple's Quicktime isn't going to be CC aware until the next release.
And then there is the issue of being able to stuff a physical disk into your bag and take it to work, school, a friend's house ...