I'm sorry, but what you say is patently false in my case. I was paying more to a non-Telco ISP but was forced to switch to a Telco.
I was a happy Speakeasy customer until I developed a line problem. They tried and tried and tried to get SBC to fix it. No dice. At one point, a Speakeasy rep told me: your best bet is to get SBC DSL so they actually want to fix the problem.
Well, long story short: they did fix it, but it took about 3 tries... an effort they would not put in when I was with another ISP. (The "fix" was for me to use a remote terminal. Even though I was within the distance limitations of ADSL, my hood has old wires and there was some problem somewhere they didn't want to find. After hooking me up to a remote terminal, the problem went away. Speakeasy customers do not have access to SBC's remote terminals. By law, SBC doesn't have to share them.)
Right now I'm hooked into SBC *or* and SBC reseller. I'd be happy to go with an SBC reseller, but I'd have to cancel my service, put in the order to the reseller and wait. I'd have 10-20 days downtime, which I can't afford.
As long as our options depend on infrastructure owned by a single entitiy, this will be a problem.
There's another reason to steer people clear of Sony hardware: it sucks. In the 80's Sony made quality stuff. I still have (but no longer use) a Sony betamax deck. That thing that built like you wouldn't believe. The quality was really stunning.
In the 90's I had a bunch of consumer electronics with the Sony brand just die, most shortly after the warranty period expired. It wasn't too long after that a few friends that were staunch Sony supporters did the same thing (mostly over laptops, though).
Combine the low quality with the fact that Sony products are consistently overpriced (as much as 20% higher than equivalent other brands), this is really quite amazing.
My hypothesis is they realized they could charge a premium based on their good name (from the 80s), all the while cutting costs to increase profit. This resulted in dramatically lower quality and them losing market share. They are but a shadow of what they used to be. Very sad.
As the future of Unix, Apple is also making strong claims on the server and super computer markets.
I call bullshit. We run almost every flavor of UNIX available (AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD, various Linux distros, Tru64, HP-UX, Mac OS X, yada, yada, yada), and I can tell you without a doubt: Mac OS X is the least stable and the most difficult OS to deal with.
Look at something like AMD (the automounter, not the chip) and NFS. Wanna lock up your Mac OS X box? Merely access the automount point (/net for us). The finder and AMD don't mix. WTF? It's been this way from 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and now 10.4. Yes, 10.4 is better. Waaaaay better than just a couple of revs ago. Mature it is not. In 10 years it might have a chance, though remote, of being as stable as Linux and Solaris are today.
In general, when I have some opensource package I need to compile and install on all the UNIX boxes here, what system will make me spend 90% of the time on it? That's right, Mac OS X. Yes, 10.4 is better, but I could waste whole days trying to get crap to compile on 10.3 and before.
That communicate with the user via a GUI. Yeah, some programs have command line arguments that you can use to automate things, but not having a significant number of programs that operate on stdin and print to stdout is a severe limitation.
The royalties that people pay for the sale of music are fixed by ASCAP. The reason allofmp3 can charge so little is that with the exchange rate of the crappy Russian currency that rate is cheap for us (paying in US$ converted to whatever their currency is called).
Does the Russian mob run allofmp3.com? I doubt it. If they are, then they have a credible puppet.
I've bought quite a few "CDs" from allofmp3.com. Very few of them I'd have bought at the going rate (US$15, or there abouts). I think the point the original poster (that we're all replying to) was making is that the music industry is their own worst enemy. If I could by an album for US$5, I wouldn't use allofmp3.com (except for really questionable purhases that I didn't think was even worth US$5).
4) Buy from Russian site... Artists probably won't get paid.
I think they'll get paid, just at a much lower rate (an order of magnitude less). At least, I believe this to be true of allofmp3.com. The biggest problems with this option are: quality (improving) and selection (improving very, very slowly).
I had one 650 replacement. The first kept crashing, but the 2nd one has been rock solid. I don't use or even know what VolumeCare is. I have an iPod, so I don't use the phone as an MP3 player. I feel too limited by a 1GB SD card (or having to carry a bunch of them).
It's certainly a relief not to have to carry a separate PDA.
When 40GB SD cards exist (3-5 years?), I'll definitely get rid of my iPod and just carry one device.
And, let's not forget the monthly fee for DirecTivo is $4.99 (per device). I just got a 2nd DirecTivo for the wife at BestBuy. It was $99 (+ tax) and came with a $100 rebate. So, I paid about $8 ($99 + $9 - $100) for the unit.
DirecTivo's can record two shows at once (if you have the correct hookups from your dish), and let me tell you I use that, a lot.
doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing.
Yeah.. so what? The title of the article is "Intel stand up for consumers". They are not standing up for consumers they are standing up for themselves, and it just happens to benefit consumers.
The groups which are exempt from the Do-Not-Call list are still calling, albeit in small numbers. I have noticed, however, that every single time that I ask to be put on their private do not call list they are very rude, even though I ask in a very nice way.
The "your solution" needs amending, though: add playback. When I tried to manage a large number of shows being recorded, I always f***ked up and missed shows, or had to spend a lot of time finding a show. The markers that some VCRs lay down at the beginning of shows helped some, but not a huge amount.
FWIW, my experience with a single processor AMD Opteron Sun (I don't recall the model number, but it has an Opteron 150 in it) has been fine. No problems at all. The thing is wicked fast and a pleasure to use.
Ha, you wish (it was just my opinion). Convergence of the PDA and cell phone already happened. It was a success, unless you didn't see it. Treo's sell like hotcakes. I have one, and it's a great device.
Your mistake is thinking that the ROKR is a anything but a joke. The ROKR will fail, and it should. That doesn't mean all cell/mp3 players in the future are doomed. When the right tech is applied, in who knows how many years from now, it will work and it will be successful.
Wow, what a stunningly ignorant post. I currently have a Treo 650. It's a phone. It's an mp3 player. It's a PDA. The phone/PDA was correctly converged. I'll never carry both those devices separately again. The mp3 player sucks. When it's as good as my iPod, I'll upgrade to converge my phone/PDA and iPod into a single device, thus deducing the crap I have to carry yet again.
The other reply that said convergence works when it's done well was right. I'd go so far as to say there is NO convergence until the merged device is as useful or more useful than the devices it replaces. The ROKR does not pass that test. It's a joke of an mp3 player.
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I'm sorry, but what you say is patently false in my case. I was paying more to a non-Telco ISP but was forced to switch to a Telco.
I was a happy Speakeasy customer until I developed a line problem. They tried and tried and tried to get SBC to fix it. No dice. At one point, a Speakeasy rep told me: your best bet is to get SBC DSL so they actually want to fix the problem.
Well, long story short: they did fix it, but it took about 3 tries... an effort they would not put in when I was with another ISP. (The "fix" was for me to use a remote terminal. Even though I was within the distance limitations of ADSL, my hood has old wires and there was some problem somewhere they didn't want to find. After hooking me up to a remote terminal, the problem went away. Speakeasy customers do not have access to SBC's remote terminals. By law, SBC doesn't have to share them.)
Right now I'm hooked into SBC *or* and SBC reseller. I'd be happy to go with an SBC reseller, but I'd have to cancel my service, put in the order to the reseller and wait. I'd have 10-20 days downtime, which I can't afford.
As long as our options depend on infrastructure owned by a single entitiy, this will be a problem.
But Stephen isn't dumb enough to believe the hype of the liberal media, on both counts (that global warming exists and that bears are dying).
Can anyone find the top 10 for last year? Yeah, the ones from 15 years ago seem lame, but the relative comparison is against last year.
Hmmmmm, very timely. Since I started reading reddit, I rarely see anything new on slashdot.
There's another reason to steer people clear of Sony hardware: it sucks. In the 80's Sony made quality stuff. I still have (but no longer use) a Sony betamax deck. That thing that built like you wouldn't believe. The quality was really stunning.
In the 90's I had a bunch of consumer electronics with the Sony brand just die, most shortly after the warranty period expired. It wasn't too long after that a few friends that were staunch Sony supporters did the same thing (mostly over laptops, though).
Combine the low quality with the fact that Sony products are consistently overpriced (as much as 20% higher than equivalent other brands), this is really quite amazing.
My hypothesis is they realized they could charge a premium based on their good name (from the 80s), all the while cutting costs to increase profit. This resulted in dramatically lower quality and them losing market share. They are but a shadow of what they used to be. Very sad.
Look at something like AMD (the automounter, not the chip) and NFS. Wanna lock up your Mac OS X box? Merely access the automount point (/net for us). The finder and AMD don't mix. WTF? It's been this way from 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 and now 10.4. Yes, 10.4 is better. Waaaaay better than just a couple of revs ago. Mature it is not. In 10 years it might have a chance, though remote, of being as stable as Linux and Solaris are today.
In general, when I have some opensource package I need to compile and install on all the UNIX boxes here, what system will make me spend 90% of the time on it? That's right, Mac OS X. Yes, 10.4 is better, but I could waste whole days trying to get crap to compile on 10.3 and before.
That communicate with the user via a GUI. Yeah, some programs have command line arguments that you can use to automate things, but not having a significant number of programs that operate on stdin and print to stdout is a severe limitation.
The royalties that people pay for the sale of music are fixed by ASCAP. The reason allofmp3 can charge so little is that with the exchange rate of the crappy Russian currency that rate is cheap for us (paying in US$ converted to whatever their currency is called).
Does the Russian mob run allofmp3.com? I doubt it. If they are, then they have a credible puppet.
I've bought quite a few "CDs" from allofmp3.com. Very few of them I'd have bought at the going rate (US$15, or there abouts). I think the point the original poster (that we're all replying to) was making is that the music industry is their own worst enemy. If I could by an album for US$5, I wouldn't use allofmp3.com (except for really questionable purhases that I didn't think was even worth US$5).
4) Buy from Russian site... Artists probably won't get paid.
I think they'll get paid, just at a much lower rate (an order of magnitude less). At least, I believe this to be true of allofmp3.com. The biggest problems with this option are: quality (improving) and selection (improving very, very slowly).
I had one 650 replacement. The first kept crashing, but the 2nd one has been rock solid. I don't use or even know what VolumeCare is. I have an iPod, so I don't use the phone as an MP3 player. I feel too limited by a 1GB SD card (or having to carry a bunch of them).
It's certainly a relief not to have to carry a separate PDA.
When 40GB SD cards exist (3-5 years?), I'll definitely get rid of my iPod and just carry one device.
For his paycheck, they told him he'd have to have his memory wiped at the end of each job.
This is why you don't need to worry.
And, let's not forget the monthly fee for DirecTivo is $4.99 (per device). I just got a 2nd DirecTivo for the wife at BestBuy. It was $99 (+ tax) and came with a $100 rebate. So, I paid about $8 ($99 + $9 - $100) for the unit.
DirecTivo's can record two shows at once (if you have the correct hookups from your dish), and let me tell you I use that, a lot.
Yeah.. so what? The title of the article is "Intel stand up for consumers". They are not standing up for consumers they are standing up for themselves, and it just happens to benefit consumers.
In reality, few get through. I get 1 call a month from charities, police, etc.
I agree about the Do-Not-Fax. Here at work we're always getting the junk faxes, and it's annoying.
The groups which are exempt from the Do-Not-Call list are still calling, albeit in small numbers. I have noticed, however, that every single time that I ask to be put on their private do not call list they are very rude, even though I ask in a very nice way.
rootkit revealer.
What makes you think you know what the vast majority of people do? You just saying so isn't proof of anything.
I have a 40GB iPod almost full of 100% legit music. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that 15 years of buying CDs could do that.
The grandparent was a troll or stupid.
The "your solution" needs amending, though: add playback. When I tried to manage a large number of shows being recorded, I always f***ked up and missed shows, or had to spend a lot of time finding a show. The markers that some VCRs lay down at the beginning of shows helped some, but not a huge amount.
FWIW, my experience with a single processor AMD Opteron Sun (I don't recall the model number, but it has an Opteron 150 in it) has been fine. No problems at all. The thing is wicked fast and a pleasure to use.
Ha, you wish (it was just my opinion). Convergence of the PDA and cell phone already happened. It was a success, unless you didn't see it. Treo's sell like hotcakes. I have one, and it's a great device.
Your mistake is thinking that the ROKR is a anything but a joke. The ROKR will fail, and it should. That doesn't mean all cell/mp3 players in the future are doomed. When the right tech is applied, in who knows how many years from now, it will work and it will be successful.
Wow, what a stunningly ignorant post. I currently have a Treo 650. It's a phone. It's an mp3 player. It's a PDA. The phone/PDA was correctly converged. I'll never carry both those devices separately again. The mp3 player sucks. When it's as good as my iPod, I'll upgrade to converge my phone/PDA and iPod into a single device, thus deducing the crap I have to carry yet again.
The other reply that said convergence works when it's done well was right. I'd go so far as to say there is NO convergence until the merged device is as useful or more useful than the devices it replaces. The ROKR does not pass that test. It's a joke of an mp3 player.
WTF is this about? It took a long time.
(It happened when I started iTunes 5 for the first time.)