Actually, that's incorrect - AT&T Broadband was via cable, and Comcast bought them out. Qwest (formerly US West) offers DSL in the area (Twin Cities, MN). That's what I have now... I ended up bitching about the "sat tax" to the consumer affairs reporter for KSTP-TV back then, and they interviewed me at my old workplace; the boss was cool with it, as long as I wore my work shirt with the logo prominently displayed...;-) However, all it got me was another 6 months at the $42.95/mo. rate - after which I switched to DSL, never to look back.
When the deal is complete, Comcast will raise the rates to carry their newly acquired channels to DirecTV, to ridiculously insane levels, just like they did with the Versus channel... all in an effort to try putting DirecTV out of business. After the royal shafting they tried sticking those of us with their Internet service, but not their cable TV service* (which they referred to as "bundling", but which was, in reality, a "satellite tax"), I will never spend another cent with those greedy bastards. Fuck Comcast.**
*I had AT&T Broadband, and when Comcast bought them out, they decided to modify their price structure to bring it in line with the rest of the country (their words). In doing so, my bill went from $32.95/mo., to $37.95, to $42.95, and then to $57.95/mo., in the span of less than 10 months. (No promotional rates were involved, either.) The last increase of FIFTEEN dollars a month was because I didn't have cable TV. Funny that I didn't have it at the beginning, and only paid $32.95 a month to AT&T, for the exact same level of speed and service. As far as I'm concerned, Comcast is even more evil and untrustworthy as Microsoft, which is really saying something. Stay classy, Comcast!
**Come on already, Qwest - where's the FTTH that your commercials keep trying to pitch to me, but I STILL can't get, less than 5 miles from Downtown St. Paul?!?
No worries... actually, I'm near the intersection of I-35E and Roselawn , in Maplewood; I can SEE the darn Shoreview towers from my street. I'm using a Samsung DTB-H260F receiver, with an Antennas Direct DB2 antenna, and plugging the HDMI output to my Samsung 204BW 20" monitor (this suddenly sounds like a commercial for Samsung!). This gives me a great picture - perhaps not 1080i, but still beautiful, and it's the perfect size screen for the bedroom. As for dropouts, during the Beijing Olympics, there were some dropouts on KARE-11, but it wasn't too bad; KTCA-2, on the other hand, had a great signal (full bars on the display), only to drop out every time a car went by the house; they seem to have fixed that as well, but I know I should be getting better overall signal here... I'll see what transpires when they start boosting the UHF transmitters to their permanent power settings in a short time now.
Here in the Twin Cities, even less than 10 miles away from the big antenna farm in Shoreview, MN, many channels don't come in reliably, even with an excellent antenna/RG-8 (BEL 9913) setup. I can't wait to see what improvements in signal stability will occur when they shut off the analog, and boost the digital transmitters.
Rowling, I believe is a billionaire. This isn't about money; it's about control. I'm guessing here, but I get the impression that these books mean much more to her than as something that got her out of poverty and made her one of the richest women in the World. Like many creative types, their creation is almost like a one of their children. And I'd be pretty pissed too if someone copied things from me and published them as their own work.
"...the performance difference is very minor compared to XP..."
EXACTLY.
Why is this "very minor" performance increase priced at $319.99 for the full Vista Ultimate version, or $219.99 for the upgrade version?!?
(Oh, and Best Buy has the upgrade version for sale at $189.99, or even cheaper, at only $69.99, if you buy a qualifying PC with Home Premium preloaded on it... and STILL, no one is buying it.)
Nope, you can't polish a turd - nor can you price it cheaper, evidently.
...from SCO Germany, trying to get them to buy 20,000 SCOSource licenses. This is exactly the sort of asshattery I would expect from an organization headed by Ralph Yarro and Darl McBride.
"Once tempers cool down, the article is unprotected. The problem is: There's a great amount of people who take great pleasure in poking Mr. Merkey with sticks, just so they can get a reaction out of him (the Yahoo SCO Message Board took great pleasure in trying to drive him insane, for example). In the ArbCom case that Mr. Merkey was banned from Wikipedia (again), three of his main annoyances, were also banished."
No, he was already insane - we just got tired of his attention whoring.
(Yes, I was one of his frivolous lawsuit targets, but a timely e-mail to the EFF kind of fucked up that whole ridiculous charade; of course, the idiot blamed it on P.J., but I have the messages to prove him wrong.)
One other thing; is Wikipedia a cult? It sure seems like it. To me, it sounds like an endless meeting of Golgafrinchams...
I thought that, in the IT world, progress was supposed to lower costs - witness many technology items that have gotten cheaper over the years. However, when it comes to anti-Linux FUD, it seems the price keeps going *up*.
Fake Steve Jobs? That's not the only thing he's faked being... How about fake journalist? Fake analyst? Fake intellectual?
The guy is firmly attached to the corporate teat, and things like Linux scare him to death, because he can't figure out how to make money on it. When Fake SCO came along, he started spouting anti-Linux vitriol at every turn; here's just a sample;
"In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will agree."
Of course, when it turned out we Linux supporters had it right all along, Dan jumped off of the SCO bandwagon while it was hurtling downhill at warp speed, and he nearly broke both of his ankles in the process. His "apology" basically blamed Darl McBride, saying all Dan did was repeat what Darl and company told him. Excuse me? You're trying to pawn yourself off as a journalist, yet you take the word of a litigious, all hat, no cattle wannabe cowboy, and then fail to research the whole story? If anything, Dan Lyons is an even worse shill than Rob Enderle - at least Rob has the decency to reply to people directly, as he has done with me on several occasions; Dan is too chickenshit to admit he was wrong, on his own accord. (I'd bring up the poor quality of his "blook" here, but that would mean I'd have to detail all of the material he blatantly stole from the regulars of the Yahoo SCOX message board, which I don't have the time for right now; I will say that when you read the material there, you've gotten exactly what you paid for; I don't see how Dan can live with himself for trying to *charge* for it in print!) -saltydogmn on Yahoo SCOX
P.S. Dan, if you're reading this, make sure to have Darl send me my $699/cpu invoice for running Linux on my computers; I have 3 of them, including this IBM laptop; 2 running Kubuntu, and 1 Xubuntu. Where should I send the check, and, more importantly, WHY? kthxbye
Does even one cent of those profits go to anyone at Sony in Japan?
If so, boycott Sony AND BMG.
I have, and everyone who asks me for my geek advice on purchasing any tech equipment will be, too.
(I just helped one of my best friends set up his home theater/HDTV at his condo last weekend, which was purchased with my input. Panasonic home theater sound system, and Samsung HDTV - no Sony to speak of. His game console will be a Wii, too, when he gets his tax rebate.)
By the way, that Boycott_BMG account looks pretty new - you don't work for Sony, do you?
Over at the Yahoo and InvestorVillage SCOX message boards, we have reason to believe that Dan (or someone that defends him WAY too strongly) has been spending every waking moment trolling for comments from the anti-SCOX crowd... every time he gets brought up, a cadre of fake Indians comes along trying to drown out the discussion. (If you don't think that's possible, we already know that SCOX supporters (like Mike Anderer), employees (like Erik Hughes and Ryan Tibbetts), and Darl's wife, if not actually Darl, have posted there - search the Yahoo SCOX board for the account names treycc, anmcbride, pathetic_geeks, and tibbcat.
One of my cohorts there, Tim, has written an excellent summary of why Dan Lyons is deserving of nothing but the same utter contempt that I hold for the management and fellow yellow journalists and shills the The SCO Group used to spread this FUD campaign. You can read it here;
"...The "money quote", as Dan likes to put it, in his "mea culpa" is this:
>
Translation: *Please*, for the love of God, *ignore* all *the other stuff* I have yet to apologize for! Also, *pretend* that the *misrepresentations* I'm insulting your intelligence with (I was "poking fun"! Yeah, that's the ticket!) in this empty gesture aren't just more sophistry! When I say that the "truth" is "simply this", what I mean is *do not look anywhere else*!
As much as Lyons would like the "truth" to be "simply this", I feel that perhaps we are doing the "truth" a disservice by *omitting* all the other stuff Dan has written in the last few years that his "mea culpa" studiously avoids (notice he doesn't provide links to the articles he does mention? Go figure). I guess misrepresenting his Revenge of the Nerds as "poking fun" felt like enough BS per character, or however he rationalizes it..."
The bottom line is this - Dan is a hack, and he's as bad at apologizing as he is at being Fake Steve Jobs, let alone the possibility of pretending to be an outraged fake Indian; no integrity, no intellect, and if he insists on snuggling up to Steve Ballmer, no future. -the saltydog aka saltydogmn
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that's incorrect - AT&T Broadband was via cable, and Comcast bought them out. Qwest (formerly US West) offers DSL in the area (Twin Cities, MN). That's what I have now... I ended up bitching about the "sat tax" to the consumer affairs reporter for KSTP-TV back then, and they interviewed me at my old workplace; the boss was cool with it, as long as I wore my work shirt with the logo prominently displayed... ;-) However, all it got me was another 6 months at the $42.95/mo. rate - after which I switched to DSL, never to look back.
When the deal is complete, Comcast will raise the rates to carry their newly acquired channels to DirecTV, to ridiculously insane levels, just like they did with the Versus channel... all in an effort to try putting DirecTV out of business. After the royal shafting they tried sticking those of us with their Internet service, but not their cable TV service* (which they referred to as "bundling", but which was, in reality, a "satellite tax"), I will never spend another cent with those greedy bastards. Fuck Comcast.**
*I had AT&T Broadband, and when Comcast bought them out, they decided to modify their price structure to bring it in line with the rest of the country (their words). In doing so, my bill went from $32.95/mo., to $37.95, to $42.95, and then to $57.95/mo., in the span of less than 10 months. (No promotional rates were involved, either.) The last increase of FIFTEEN dollars a month was because I didn't have cable TV. Funny that I didn't have it at the beginning, and only paid $32.95 a month to AT&T, for the exact same level of speed and service. As far as I'm concerned, Comcast is even more evil and untrustworthy as Microsoft, which is really saying something. Stay classy, Comcast!
**Come on already, Qwest - where's the FTTH that your commercials keep trying to pitch to me, but I STILL can't get, less than 5 miles from Downtown St. Paul?!?
You can hear Kent Hovind's head exploding as I type, all the way from his prison cell... heh heh...
It's 3.9 billion dollars being sucked out of Dell's coffers.
Well, either that, or there's a Packers game on TV.
http://www.twincities.com/ci_12112297
(Tried submitting this, but I don't know if it will be seen, so why not put it in a D & D thread?)
Hell, MPC can do it, and has been able to for quite some time. VLC seems reluctant to do so; why?
If not, I'm out. I'll never install that POS on any of my systems. Period.
No worries... actually, I'm near the intersection of I-35E and Roselawn , in Maplewood; I can SEE the darn Shoreview towers from my street. I'm using a Samsung DTB-H260F receiver, with an Antennas Direct DB2 antenna, and plugging the HDMI output to my Samsung 204BW 20" monitor (this suddenly sounds like a commercial for Samsung!). This gives me a great picture - perhaps not 1080i, but still beautiful, and it's the perfect size screen for the bedroom. As for dropouts, during the Beijing Olympics, there were some dropouts on KARE-11, but it wasn't too bad; KTCA-2, on the other hand, had a great signal (full bars on the display), only to drop out every time a car went by the house; they seem to have fixed that as well, but I know I should be getting better overall signal here... I'll see what transpires when they start boosting the UHF transmitters to their permanent power settings in a short time now.
Here in the Twin Cities, even less than 10 miles away from the big antenna farm in Shoreview, MN, many channels don't come in reliably, even with an excellent antenna/RG-8 (BEL 9913) setup. I can't wait to see what improvements in signal stability will occur when they shut off the analog, and boost the digital transmitters.
"...decission...elequent...infristructure...undoubtably...decissions...Undoubtably...dissapointed..."
Let us hope one of those difficult "decissions" is to improve education... ;-)
Someone finally comes up with a machine that can handle Vista Ultimate... who else did you think could do it - Gateway?!?
Whoosh! That went over my head.
Rowling, I believe is a billionaire. This isn't about money; it's about control. I'm guessing here, but I get the impression that these books mean much more to her than as something that got her out of poverty and made her one of the richest women in the World. Like many creative types, their creation is almost like a one of their children. And I'd be pretty pissed too if someone copied things from me and published them as their own work.
(Come and get me, BitterOldGUy!)
Actually, vinyl most definitely *is*...
Of course, the namesakes of the process involved are complete and total bastards, but at least we've talked about them before;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization
"...the performance difference is very minor compared to XP..."
EXACTLY.
Why is this "very minor" performance increase priced at $319.99 for the full Vista Ultimate version, or $219.99 for the upgrade version?!?
(Oh, and Best Buy has the upgrade version for sale at $189.99, or even cheaper, at only $69.99, if you buy a qualifying PC with Home Premium preloaded on it... and STILL, no one is buying it.)
Nope, you can't polish a turd - nor can you price it cheaper, evidently.
That's what *I'm* waiting for.
They called me a criminal for using Linux.
I'm calling them criminals for running an extortion/stock pump and dump/fraud scheme.
They were wrong. I'm not. When will the SEC finally put these all hat, no cattle rustlers behind bars?
Oh, and by the way, if you had the UNIX copyrights, why did you insist on asking Novell for them - repeatedly?
Bunch of lying scumbag bastard pricks - every single supporter of this fiaSCO. (Yes, that includes you, too, Rudy de Haas. Fucking asshat.)
...more than likely, this will be their *only* opportunity to be buried deep in the bush.
(Sorry, I couldn't resist, nor could I be bothered to read at -1 to see if anyone else had mentioned it. It's just how I roll.)
...from SCO Germany, trying to get them to buy 20,000 SCOSource licenses.
This is exactly the sort of asshattery I would expect from an organization headed by Ralph Yarro and Darl McBride.
I can see/hear it now...
"Comcast claims they have the fastest broadband speeds in the country. What good is that, when *THEY* decide what they will let you connect it to?"
"Want to grab the latest official game patch on BitTorrent? Sorry, Comcast is blocking it."
"There's a new Linux distro that just got released - but Comcast says you're not allowed to download it via P2P."
"What's next? No, you can't go to YouTube, but you can get the same content at comcastcrappyonlinevideos.com?"
"Try cutting the cable, and go with Qwest. You pay for the connection, and we'll get you connected - but YOU can decide what to connect to."
"Once tempers cool down, the article is unprotected. The problem is: There's a great amount of people who take great pleasure in poking Mr. Merkey with sticks, just so they can get a reaction out of him (the Yahoo SCO Message Board took great pleasure in trying to drive him insane, for example). In the ArbCom case that Mr. Merkey was banned from Wikipedia (again), three of his main annoyances, were also banished."
No, he was already insane - we just got tired of his attention whoring.
(Yes, I was one of his frivolous lawsuit targets, but a timely e-mail to the EFF kind of fucked up that whole ridiculous charade; of course, the idiot blamed it on P.J., but I have the messages to prove him wrong.)
One other thing; is Wikipedia a cult? It sure seems like it. To me, it sounds like an endless meeting of Golgafrinchams...
I thought that, in the IT world, progress was supposed to lower costs - witness many technology items that have gotten cheaper over the years. However, when it comes to anti-Linux FUD, it seems the price keeps going *up*.
Why is that?
2600 Magazine prints an article on how to hack into the billboards?
(Cue the Bush/Cheney billboard photoshops!)
Personally, I want to see the Fark Ha! Ha! Guy on it. That would be a coffee/keyboard moment for me.
Fake Steve Jobs? That's not the only thing he's faked being...
How about fake journalist? Fake analyst? Fake intellectual?
The guy is firmly attached to the corporate teat, and things like
Linux scare him to death, because he can't figure out how to make
money on it. When Fake SCO came along, he started spouting anti-Linux
vitriol at every turn; here's just a sample;
"In other words, like many religious folk, the Linux-loving crunchies
in the open-source movement are a) convinced of their own
righteousness, and b) sure the whole world, including judges, will
agree."
http://www.forbes.com/2003/06/18/cz_dl_0618linux_print.html
Of course, when it turned out we Linux supporters had it right all
along, Dan jumped off of the SCO bandwagon while it was hurtling
downhill at warp speed, and he nearly broke both of his ankles in the
process. His "apology" basically blamed Darl McBride, saying all Dan
did was repeat what Darl and company told him. Excuse me? You're
trying to pawn yourself off as a journalist, yet you take the word of
a litigious, all hat, no cattle wannabe cowboy, and then fail to
research the whole story?
If anything, Dan Lyons is an even worse shill than Rob Enderle - at
least Rob has the decency to reply to people directly, as he has done
with me on several occasions; Dan is too chickenshit to admit he was
wrong, on his own accord.
(I'd bring up the poor quality of his "blook" here, but that would
mean I'd have to detail all of the material he blatantly stole from
the regulars of the Yahoo SCOX message board, which I don't have the
time for right now; I will say that when you read the material there,
you've gotten exactly what you paid for; I don't see how Dan can live
with himself for trying to *charge* for it in print!) -saltydogmn on
Yahoo SCOX
P.S. Dan, if you're reading this, make sure to have Darl send me my $699/cpu invoice for running Linux on my computers; I have 3 of them, including this IBM laptop; 2 running Kubuntu, and 1 Xubuntu. Where should I send the check, and, more importantly, WHY? kthxbye
Does even one cent of those profits go to anyone at Sony in Japan?
If so, boycott Sony AND BMG.
I have, and everyone who asks me for my geek advice on purchasing any tech equipment will be, too.
(I just helped one of my best friends set up his home theater/HDTV at his condo last weekend, which was purchased with my input.
Panasonic home theater sound system, and Samsung HDTV - no Sony to speak of. His game console will be a Wii, too, when he gets his tax rebate.)
By the way, that Boycott_BMG account looks pretty new - you don't work for Sony, do you?
Over at the Yahoo and InvestorVillage SCOX message boards, we have reason to believe that Dan (or someone that defends him WAY too strongly) has been spending every waking moment trolling for comments from the anti-SCOX crowd... every time he gets brought up, a cadre of fake Indians comes along trying to drown out the discussion.
(If you don't think that's possible, we already know that SCOX supporters (like Mike Anderer), employees (like Erik Hughes and Ryan Tibbetts), and Darl's wife, if not actually Darl, have posted there - search the Yahoo SCOX board for the account names treycc, anmcbride, pathetic_geeks, and tibbcat.
One of my cohorts there, Tim, has written an excellent summary of why Dan Lyons is deserving of nothing but the same utter contempt that I hold for the management and fellow yellow journalists and shills the The SCO Group used to spread this FUD campaign. You can read it here;
http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?mb=1911&pt=msg&mn=44164
Here's an excerpt...
"...The "money quote", as Dan likes to put it, in his "mea culpa" is this:
>
Translation: *Please*, for the love of God, *ignore* all *the other stuff* I have yet to apologize for! Also, *pretend* that the *misrepresentations* I'm insulting your intelligence with (I was "poking fun"! Yeah, that's the ticket!) in this empty gesture aren't just more sophistry! When I say that the "truth" is "simply this", what I mean is *do not look anywhere else*!
As much as Lyons would like the "truth" to be "simply this", I feel that perhaps we are doing the "truth" a disservice by *omitting* all the other stuff Dan has written in the last few years that his "mea culpa" studiously avoids (notice he doesn't provide links to the articles he does mention? Go figure). I guess misrepresenting his Revenge of the Nerds as "poking fun" felt like enough BS per character, or however he rationalizes it..."
The bottom line is this - Dan is a hack, and he's as bad at apologizing as he is at being Fake Steve Jobs, let alone the possibility of pretending to be an outraged fake Indian; no integrity, no intellect, and if he insists on snuggling up to Steve Ballmer, no future.
-the saltydog aka saltydogmn
...bound for Pyongyang - I hear the weather will be enchanting there in a few months.
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of criminal scam artists.