I remember a friend (or two or three) of mine went to the Arena in London for the Barrysworld Quake III European Championships last year with the Irish Team.
In the original format, the organisers were going to provide the mouse of choice for the compeditors (the machines being standard - I think they were AMD Athlons about 500 MHz). This was fine (most people going for the standard intellimouse) until the Swedish teams request was seen. They were looking for Razor Boomslangs with the spring at 32 (don't ask me what it means either, it's something to so with the spring tension:o) ) and the standard was 34. The cost would have been exorbitant (circa £40 - 60 per mouse), so the organisers decided that compeditors would bring their own mice.
As expected the Swedes got into the final. Unexpectedly, the Russians also got there. They were so used to playing with crap machines apparently (and even worse mice - theirs were £2 versions) that playing on the modern LAN was too easy! They beat the odds and the Swedes, and won the Comp!
No real point to this post, just like that story.
There was also a humorous episode involving an unnamed member of the Irish team and a transvestite, but we'll leave it at that!
Maybe it's because Intel got into bed with RAMBUS, and after a little foreplay signed the prenup. Then, on the honeymoon, after some more serious foreplay let their hand stray downwards, and found.....
Well, considering an article posted earlier, you can finish that in your own head.:o)
Add that to the fact that AMD's lower clocked chips are outperforming the P4's in many ways, and that Intel techs were giving out publicly about the design restrictions put on them by use of the RDRAM, and the general downturn in Tech company fortunes on the stock exchange recently, and you have many reasons.
Sorry about the serious (and incomplete) response, but I'm just too tired, and my sense of humour has gone to sleep without me (the bastard). *yawn*
I like the way he is supporting "unusual" research, though. It's the stuff that everyone considers insane that can work ou the coolest, like the Wright brothers and flying. Their neighbours must've thought them mad!
And I'd like to hear more on his ideas of "practical enviornmentalism". Too many enviornmentalists are radical thugs and enviornmentalism is excuse they are using now.
And the other end of the spectrum is just as bad (G.W Bush - "I'll protect the enviornment as long as those corporations that are my buddies don't need those areas to make more money than you, Joe Sixpack, could dream of". [BTW, I paraphrased])
Yes that last statement was flamebait, and I'm not even a citizen of the US. So sue me:o)
Maybe, but remember that not all Tech support has to do with übercomplicated programs/hardware. I was working in a call center for eircom (the Irish national telephone operator) in the internet section, and have recieved calls from people that flamed me because they couldn't get on the internet for reasons such as (in order of frequency)
1. No Modem
2. No Computer (Seriously!)
3. No landline to their location.
The first couple of times this happened I was amused, but some of the people who call up are plain insulting, and more than a few insisted on being referred to my supervisor to complain, and said some pretty horrible things about me. Thank god he had some brains, and was sympathetic. After a while stuff like that makes you bitter and twisted!
Incidentally, all of the above happened more than 10 times in 3 months.
That's because we're arrogant enough to assume our products are usable without support, and elitist enough to not care whether the people who need support get it or not.
No we're not. That's why tech support exists, we know that people will have problems. It's just that these services get used as crutches by lazy "lusers" who won't check the index on the manual before ringing the helpdesk. And stupid people who verbally assault their tech help because they know no better.
This debate is so muck bollocks. Capitalism is the system used today becaue it is the system that works with the technology and resources available today. In most countries it is tempered by a degree of socialism, and this is also a "Good Thing" tm. Social welfare is important so people who for various reasons cannot support themselves can be cared for.
However, this does not preclude technology from advancing enough to create a situation where a different system could work. Communism as practised in the former USSR has been proven not to work, but then, they didn't really practice communism (the ideal). A planned economy could possibly become viable sooner than most people think. Nanotechnology, especially, could tilt the balances crazily, with the ability to build almost anything from molecular level up. Durable, inexpensive to produce products requiring only the programming of the nanites for labour. See Iain M Bakes commentary on his culture series at http://members.nbci.com/theculture/culture-notes.h tml
There are some silly injustices abounding today. What single idividual needs a net worth over $20,000,000? Why do people starve if the world is producing enough to feed them, and farmers in the EU are being paid to produce less? Because charity costs too much? And, to bring this post back ontopic, the steady eroding of privacy and other basic rights.
Sorry about the rant, but hey, I'm a sheep, and I go with the crowd:o)
But the thing is, then the companies that make up the RIAA would have to hire ugly people if they could make good music!!! Look at the mass-produced mega-stars out there, all with perfect teeth and smooth complexions. Life is NOT like that. It's got to the stage where videos are as important as the song. Hell, one famous manager here in Ireland has said on air that "the first thing I do is see if they're good looking. If they're not - tough luck." Just as well the Beatles didn't go to him!
Look at the tons of albums with 1 (if that many) good song on an album with 12-14 tracks. The filler music. The companies simply can't get away with that if services like napster abound. I wouldn't buy any album that bad. For the record, 100% of the albums I own I got after listening to them in MP3 format.
Enough of that rant, I'm going back to my/. browsing daze:o)
If you look at the statistics for napster users, you will see that there is quite a user-base built up. Given that maybe 1/2 of these are Americans, if they all wrote to their congressman, maybe the aforementioned congressman would take heed.
The MPAA and RIAA are would not be worried if it were hurting them in the *real* world. Being Irish, I can't send a letter to your congressman, but they should listen if they get enough mails.
Re:I can see the medical claims rolling in...
on
Surround Lights
·
· Score: 4
Muhahaha
I have rigged all your systems to hypnotically cause everyone in the world to sleep until death.....
Hmmm...I would think that would rip the guts out of any "choice-of-law" clause, unless (as I'm guessing here) there are no federal laws regarding online interstate commerce and licensing.
Will someone tell me exactly how online commerce between states is different from "ordinary" commerce between states? If there is no specific online law, then normal laws apply. i.e. We sold you this from WA and you recieved it in MD. Makes sense to me. If the law then proves inadequate, a specific clause dealing with online cases can be drafted.
On the topic of customer support, is there an agency you can refer complaints to, or are the courts the only step? If I wasn't getting what I paid for, I'd sure kick up a fuss if I could:o)
Reminds me of the battle between the PS1 and its competitors at the time. Nintendo and Sega were far more established (even if Sega was better known for its arcade systems) and along comes the PS1. It forces its way into the market by one simple expedient. By the time it hit market there were already loads of games available, and this didn't change. For a while it was probably the platform most games were released on, and its popularity soared. The PS2 is riding on the back of that success (the PS1 games are better IMHO) at the moment. Of course, the huge publicity campaign helped:o)
I think (again IMHO!) that if Linux ever wants to challenge M$ for the home-users market, it's going to have to start offering a similar wealth of games. Now, if developers could be persuaded to release a couple of high profile games on Linux only, it could raise the profile a bit....
I use a dual boot Win98/RH 6.2 system, with win only for games, and at the moment, that seems to be all it's used for!
The point is that NO artists _care_ whether you transfer a CD you've ALREADY BOUGHT onto tape, or copy onto MP3. It's the publisher. Who afrtifically hold the prices high. We accpet this because we're used to the high prices.
Everyone KNOWS that when a movie is played on television it can, and will be copied. Rights to display movies are only sold to television stations after most of the profit potential has been milked out of them. (In the cinema)
These examples are "fair use" and are accepted. The point is that things like the DMCA change that. It exists specifically to enable the coporations (NOT artists) to make more money from something that is already making obscene amounts of money. Like, for instance, not being able skip ads on something you've already paid money for because the publisher says so. You expect that in the cinema, not at home. You get DVD's so you don't have to watch ads. You can bet your ass there's a lot of money in that for the companies.
And totally aside from that, in the current climate, people like Elton John can afford to spend £40,000,000 (yes that's 40 million stg) in 20 months on frivolious things (like £300,000 on flowers) and still have enough left to fight a court case against his accountants for "financial mismanagement"!!!
Folks, they're already making enough money...in fact, obscene amounts of money, why should they force stuff like this on us so they can make more?
And remember, they're alreasy forcing things like boy bands at us (by making it difficult for anything else to get recording contracts).
Anyway, this directive has to be processed into law in each seperate EU member state, and it depends exactly how the laws are worded what effect it has. Remember, there are a lot of elections coming up. Especially in the UK. You pommies put pressure on that crocodile you call a PM to make sure that this is interpreted sensibly!!
Oh, such rubbish. M$'s first OS was bought for $10,000 from a small company down the street from their first offices, and resold to IBM for $250,000 when Mr William Gates realised that his company couldn't make the ship date for a desktop OS that he had promised IBM. (I'm not TOO sure about the numbers. Consider them approximate.)Hence M$DOS.
He then created a GUI (Windows) for the IBM architecture which "borrowed" heavily from Apples GUI. Then, in a logical next step, they incorporated their DOS with their GUI. This same windows has been re-released again, and again. WinME is Win 95 5th ed (or is it 6th. I get confused), and not just in looks!
Windows was going to be a winner from the start, because it arrived to a "virgin market" and had already been proven sucessful by Apple.
M$ in the main have taken ideas from others and refined them useing thier greater available monies. Great business sense, but it hardly makes Gates a geek!
Yes, hmmmm.... Amazing, isn't it that a patch can be written, tested and released soooo quickly.
Just a little sussed to me. Is it possible that this problem was discovered before release, but was left on the grounds that fixing it would delay the release date? So the release goes ahead, but the patch is written to be added later, in a service pack. People have been accusing M$ of building in bugs so that people feel they _have_ to upgrade for _years_.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you:o)
See Iain M. Banks Culture series. If life were to be extended to 300-400 years, think of what we could accomplish! All the fun you could have! All the things that you wanted to so that you really could
Of course, we'd have to drastically change our economy, style of living, attitudes towards each other and ourselves and the like. Imagine working a 9-5 office job for 250 years! Man that'd suck!
Anyway, can you imagine immortality on a social welfare scheme! Only thoose able to afford it would profit.
Slashdot Mirror
That link is a classic! It should have been submitted as a story!
That's cheered me up no end!
Hmmm, that was meant to be "sucker, er, customer"
It's 4.40am and I finish in 20 mins, so mistakes are excusable. Right?
I'm off home for a spam......no, a beer!
Mmmmmm beer
"This didn't work, but it was full of fiber and I was very regular!"
I take it that the "sucker, er, gusher" was not referring to spam then!
I reckon the dietary options were:
1. Spam
2. Egg, sausage and spam
3. Egg, sausage, spam, beans and spam
4. Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, beans and spam
5. Sausage, spam, spam, spam, eggs, beans and spam
6. Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam and spam
I remember a friend (or two or three) of mine went to the Arena in London for the Barrysworld Quake III European Championships last year with the Irish Team.
:o) ) and the standard was 34. The cost would have been exorbitant (circa £40 - 60 per mouse), so the organisers decided that compeditors would bring their own mice.
In the original format, the organisers were going to provide the mouse of choice for the compeditors (the machines being standard - I think they were AMD Athlons about 500 MHz). This was fine (most people going for the standard intellimouse) until the Swedish teams request was seen. They were looking for Razor Boomslangs with the spring at 32 (don't ask me what it means either, it's something to so with the spring tension
As expected the Swedes got into the final. Unexpectedly, the Russians also got there. They were so used to playing with crap machines apparently (and even worse mice - theirs were £2 versions) that playing on the modern LAN was too easy! They beat the odds and the Swedes, and won the Comp!
No real point to this post, just like that story.
There was also a humorous episode involving an unnamed member of the Irish team and a transvestite, but we'll leave it at that!
Maybe it's because Intel got into bed with RAMBUS, and after a little foreplay signed the prenup. Then, on the honeymoon, after some more serious foreplay let their hand stray downwards, and found.....
:o)
:o)
Well, considering an article posted earlier, you can finish that in your own head.
Add that to the fact that AMD's lower clocked chips are outperforming the P4's in many ways, and that Intel techs were giving out publicly about the design restrictions put on them by use of the RDRAM, and the general downturn in Tech company fortunes on the stock exchange recently, and you have many reasons.
Sorry about the serious (and incomplete) response, but I'm just too tired, and my sense of humour has gone to sleep without me (the bastard). *yawn*
I like the way he is supporting "unusual" research, though. It's the stuff that everyone considers insane that can work ou the coolest, like the Wright brothers and flying. Their neighbours must've thought them mad!
And I'd like to hear more on his ideas of "practical enviornmentalism". Too many enviornmentalists are radical thugs and enviornmentalism is excuse they are using now.
And the other end of the spectrum is just as bad (G.W Bush - "I'll protect the enviornment as long as those corporations that are my buddies don't need those areas to make more money than you, Joe Sixpack, could dream of". [BTW, I paraphrased])
Yes that last statement was flamebait, and I'm not even a citizen of the US. So sue me
Maybe, but remember that not all Tech support has to do with übercomplicated programs/hardware. I was working in a call center for eircom (the Irish national telephone operator) in the internet section, and have recieved calls from people that flamed me because they couldn't get on the internet for reasons such as (in order of frequency)
1. No Modem
2. No Computer (Seriously!)
3. No landline to their location.
The first couple of times this happened I was amused, but some of the people who call up are plain insulting, and more than a few insisted on being referred to my supervisor to complain, and said some pretty horrible things about me. Thank god he had some brains, and was sympathetic. After a while stuff like that makes you bitter and twisted!
Incidentally, all of the above happened more than 10 times in 3 months.
That's because we're arrogant enough to assume our products are usable without support, and elitist enough to not care whether the people who need support get it or not.
No we're not. That's why tech support exists, we know that people will have problems. It's just that these services get used as crutches by lazy "lusers" who won't check the index on the manual before ringing the helpdesk. And stupid people who verbally assault their tech help because they know no better.
I know what you mean. I need to be able to type one-handed whilst stirring/drinking coffee
No, you use African for LAN's, and European for everthing else!
This debate is so muck bollocks. Capitalism is the system used today becaue it is the system that works with the technology and resources available today. In most countries it is tempered by a degree of socialism, and this is also a "Good Thing" tm. Social welfare is important so people who for various reasons cannot support themselves can be cared for.
h tml
:o)
However, this does not preclude technology from advancing enough to create a situation where a different system could work. Communism as practised in the former USSR has been proven not to work, but then, they didn't really practice communism (the ideal). A planned economy could possibly become viable sooner than most people think. Nanotechnology, especially, could tilt the balances crazily, with the ability to build almost anything from molecular level up. Durable, inexpensive to produce products requiring only the programming of the nanites for labour. See Iain M Bakes commentary on his culture series at http://members.nbci.com/theculture/culture-notes.
There are some silly injustices abounding today. What single idividual needs a net worth over $20,000,000? Why do people starve if the world is producing enough to feed them, and farmers in the EU are being paid to produce less? Because charity costs too much? And, to bring this post back ontopic, the steady eroding of privacy and other basic rights.
Sorry about the rant, but hey, I'm a sheep, and I go with the crowd
But the thing is, then the companies that make up the RIAA would have to hire ugly people if they could make good music!!! Look at the mass-produced mega-stars out there, all with perfect teeth and smooth complexions. Life is NOT like that. It's got to the stage where videos are as important as the song. Hell, one famous manager here in Ireland has said on air that "the first thing I do is see if they're good looking. If they're not - tough luck." Just as well the Beatles didn't go to him!
/. browsing daze :o)
Look at the tons of albums with 1 (if that many) good song on an album with 12-14 tracks. The filler music. The companies simply can't get away with that if services like napster abound. I wouldn't buy any album that bad. For the record, 100% of the albums I own I got after listening to them in MP3 format.
Enough of that rant, I'm going back to my
If you look at the statistics for napster users, you will see that there is quite a user-base built up. Given that maybe 1/2 of these are Americans, if they all wrote to their congressman, maybe the aforementioned congressman would take heed.
The MPAA and RIAA are would not be worried if it were hurting them in the *real* world. Being Irish, I can't send a letter to your congressman, but they should listen if they get enough mails.
Muhahaha
I have rigged all your systems to hypnotically cause everyone in the world to sleep until death.....
Unless you pay me 1 MILLION dollars!
Will someone tell me exactly how online commerce between states is different from "ordinary" commerce between states? If there is no specific online law, then normal laws apply. i.e. We sold you this from WA and you recieved it in MD. Makes sense to me. If the law then proves inadequate, a specific clause dealing with online cases can be drafted.
On the topic of customer support, is there an agency you can refer complaints to, or are the courts the only step? If I wasn't getting what I paid for, I'd sure kick up a fuss if I could :o)
Good point about the catch 22 situation.
:o)
Reminds me of the battle between the PS1 and its competitors at the time. Nintendo and Sega were far more established (even if Sega was better known for its arcade systems) and along comes the PS1. It forces its way into the market by one simple expedient. By the time it hit market there were already loads of games available, and this didn't change. For a while it was probably the platform most games were released on, and its popularity soared. The PS2 is riding on the back of that success (the PS1 games are better IMHO) at the moment. Of course, the huge publicity campaign helped
I think (again IMHO!) that if Linux ever wants to challenge M$ for the home-users market, it's going to have to start offering a similar wealth of games. Now, if developers could be persuaded to release a couple of high profile games on Linux only, it could raise the profile a bit....
I use a dual boot Win98/RH 6.2 system, with win only for games, and at the moment, that seems to be all it's used for!
No, No , no, you've completeley missed the point
The point is that NO artists _care_ whether you transfer a CD you've ALREADY BOUGHT onto tape, or copy onto MP3. It's the publisher. Who afrtifically hold the prices high. We accpet this because we're used to the high prices.
Everyone KNOWS that when a movie is played on television it can, and will be copied. Rights to display movies are only sold to television stations after most of the profit potential has been milked out of them. (In the cinema)
These examples are "fair use" and are accepted. The point is that things like the DMCA change that. It exists specifically to enable the coporations (NOT artists) to make more money from something that is already making obscene amounts of money. Like, for instance, not being able skip ads on something you've already paid money for because the publisher says so. You expect that in the cinema, not at home. You get DVD's so you don't have to watch ads. You can bet your ass there's a lot of money in that for the companies.
And totally aside from that, in the current climate, people like Elton John can afford to spend £40,000,000 (yes that's 40 million stg) in 20 months on frivolious things (like £300,000 on flowers) and still have enough left to fight a court case against his accountants for "financial mismanagement"!!!
Folks, they're already making enough money...in fact, obscene amounts of money, why should they force stuff like this on us so they can make more?
And remember, they're alreasy forcing things like boy bands at us (by making it difficult for anything else to get recording contracts).
Anyway, this directive has to be processed into law in each seperate EU member state, and it depends exactly how the laws are worded what effect it has. Remember, there are a lot of elections coming up. Especially in the UK. You pommies put pressure on that crocodile you call a PM to make sure that this is interpreted sensibly!!
End of rant.
Oh, such rubbish. M$'s first OS was bought for $10,000 from a small company down the street from their first offices, and resold to IBM for $250,000 when Mr William Gates realised that his company couldn't make the ship date for a desktop OS that he had promised IBM. (I'm not TOO sure about the numbers. Consider them approximate.)Hence M$DOS.
He then created a GUI (Windows) for the IBM architecture which "borrowed" heavily from Apples GUI. Then, in a logical next step, they incorporated their DOS with their GUI. This same windows has been re-released again, and again. WinME is Win 95 5th ed (or is it 6th. I get confused), and not just in looks!
Windows was going to be a winner from the start, because it arrived to a "virgin market" and had already been proven sucessful by Apple.
M$ in the main have taken ideas from others and refined them useing thier greater available monies. Great business sense, but it hardly makes Gates a geek!
Yes, hmmmm.... Amazing, isn't it that a patch can be written, tested and released soooo quickly.
:o)
Just a little sussed to me. Is it possible that this problem was discovered before release, but was left on the grounds that fixing it would delay the release date? So the release goes ahead, but the patch is written to be added later, in a service pack. People have been accusing M$ of building in bugs so that people feel they _have_ to upgrade for _years_.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you
See Iain M. Banks Culture series. If life were to be extended to 300-400 years, think of what we could accomplish! All the fun you could have! All the things that you wanted to so that you really could
Of course, we'd have to drastically change our economy, style of living, attitudes towards each other and ourselves and the like. Imagine working a 9-5 office job for 250 years! Man that'd suck!
Anyway, can you imagine immortality on a social welfare scheme! Only thoose able to afford it would profit.