I said no to broadband because I live in the suburbs where there is only one "high speed" provider available (a cable company), and they suck ass.
I tried them, and they proved unreliable. They had to roll a truck 4 times in 2 months to fix wiring that they installed, dragging me away from my job which is 35 miles from home each time. Since I'd have to go back to work afterward, that made 140 miles on each of those days. Also figure in a total of 14 days of downtime in the 3 months that I had the service. Hell, I should have been charging THEM!
As soon as it seemed to start working right, I got a postcard in the mail detailing a rate increase to from $49.99 to $51.99/mo. + tax for my internet-only account (I have Directv for TV).
Goodbye, cable snake! I get 128k ISDN for $25 from a local shop now. Not as fast, but it costs half as much and it ALWAYS works.
Could be worse, I guess. I've got a friend that lives farther out in the sticks. He can actually get DSL, but he pays $109.95/mo for 1.5/256. Plus the phone. Ouch.
My sister is a photo archiver, and makes extensive use of her 3 1/2 year old 667 MHz G4 Powerbook. She purchased Applecare with the Powerbook, and in 3 years it has come in handy a few times - twice, I think, for a bad DVD drive.
A few months ago, the unthinkable happens - her Powerbook didn't chime upon powering up and smoke came bellowing up from the chassis. She dug around for her records, and holy shit - her 3 year Applecare term ran out 2 weeks earlier! She took the Powerbook to a local Apple shop, and upon post-mortem found a fried internal power supply. She was quoted $600+! The entire motherboard had to be replaced. Her latest project for her largest client was on it, and she couldn't afford to fix it (yes, I know, backups backups - it's not mine!). She was really just screwed!
I told her that maybe she should just call Apple, and plead her case to them. She took my advice and called. She told them what a loyal customer she was, and that she owned several other Macs (including a brand spanking new G5 iMac), and asked if they could help her out.
The rep put her on hold, made a few phone calls, then they actually agreed to FIX her Powerbook! They told her that they would be in touch with the repair shop, and that they would arrange to have the Powerbook repaired free of charge. They did just that. A week later, she's back in business! Her only charge was to the repair shop for backing up the data on the drive.
Now THAT is customer service! I am truly impressed with Apple on this one, and they've got my sister as a customer for life now!:)
Yeah, Ohio is a bad one to deal with. I live in Tennessee, and I'm a ham. I sometimes sell my old ham and computer junk at Hamvention in Dayton.
To be legal doing that, you have to purchase a "transient vendor's license" and file a tax return (with the tax collected) EVERY QUARTER as long as you have the license or be subject to fines or penalties for not doing so. So, to sell a couple hundred bucks worth of crap on one weekend, I had to go through all of that nonsense all year long.
As for what this has to do with the story, the Ohio Dept. of Taxation (the name of that dept. gets right to the point, doesn't it?) sent me updated tax tables for every county in the state every quarter. Yes, every QUARTER some county is changing its tax rate. Ridiculous. So you could only imagine being an online vendor having to keep up with that crap times however many other states that do the same thing.
Ohio even has revenue enforcement officers at Hamvention going from booth to booth (and from tailgate to tailgate) checking for licenses.
And, of course, after jumping through all of the legal hoops I get popped by the Ohio Stormtroopers of Death for not wearing a seat belt on my way to Dayton.
I finally called the ODT and told them that they could stick their transient vendor's license up their asses so that they would stop bothering me.
Makes me wonder why in the hell anyone would want to live there with that level of governmental nonsense. I make it a point to stay and eat in Richmond Indiana when I attend Hamvention just because I hate Ohio so much. I'll happily take my tax dollars to another state.
It is no wonder why the population of Ohio is stagnant or even shrinking.
Oh great. That's all we need. Yet another thing to distract people while they drive.
Several times per week on my suburban commute, I'll have to take evasive action to keep from getting creamed by some asshole driving and yapping on the phone, text messaging, playing with their GPS, radar detector or stereo, putting on lipstick or mascara, shaving, trimming nails, reading the newspaper or a magazine, eating, rubbernecking an accident on the other side of the interstate, breast feeding, kissing, fellating, fucking, or any combination of the above.
I mean, who the hell does everybody talk to at 6:30 in the morning?
Now we get to add watching TV on a 1.5-inch screen to the list. Yay.
...and people are pretty damned stupid when it comes to cell phones. There is a sucker born every minute, and they love phone crap.
I had the misfortune to work for Radio Shack for a while (which accepts Sprint payments). I had dozens of customers who were paying >$200/mo Sprint bills every month at my counter, and some that exceeded $500-600!
And (of course), the customer never hangs up the phone through the whole visit. These never sounded like intelligent family or business related calls - usually just mindless dribble to their boy/girlfriends. To add insult to injury, Sprint and RS nail them for another $5 just to take their money! There is a sucker born every minute. I mean, WTF?
These are the boneheads that will pay $2.49 per song because they just don't care! Sprint will make a bloody fortune off of it, like every other gee-whiz gadget that they have.
All that gave me a new found respect for my Tracfone.:)
Something tells me that the results would have been MUCH different if the Opteron 150 were used. About 10% higher clock speed and a full 1MB of L2 - much different indeed.
Anandtech took Intels fastest (and most expensive) offering and pitted a "middle of the pack" AMD (selling for a fraction of the price of the Xeon) against it.
Funny thing is, the consumer AMD *DID* kick its butt in some of the benchmarks.:)
I've been a happy Dish customer for years. I am proud of Charlie Ergen standing up to these jerkoffs. Because he has the stones to do what's right, our rates have increased at only about 1% per year over the past 5 years. Can any of you cable or DirecTV zealots say the same? I didn't think so. Dish Network is the only service that actively fights to keep its customers' rates down.
I might miss the Power Block on Spike TV, but won't lose any sleep over the loss of any of Viacom's programming - since 95% of it is crap and reruns of crap to me anyway (and that's before I figure in the endless commercials and the infomercials that occupy more than 12 hours a day per channel).
Would I be willing to pay more money to keep any of it? HELL NO! You get 'em Charlie!
I hope the FCC and the DOJ each break a boot off in Viacom's arse over these obviously illegal practices. --
Fuzzbuster gets busted by Escort and Car And Driver Mag for stuffing Escort guts inside of the Fuzzbuster supplied for radar detector review (1979):
http://www.valentine1.com/lab/MikesLabRpt5.asp While you're there, please check out a Valentine One. Mike Valentine makes by far the best detector on the planet, and he's a heck of a nice guy!:) --
I use and love Mandrake because it is an excellent product. Boycotting Mandrakesoft will do nothing to change French policy.
Mandrake Linux was developed by people worldwide, including Americans. Boycotting that would hurt everybody.
If the French product is superior, which in this case it is (versus your beloved Micro$oft), we are supposed to buy the inferior product just because it is American? That isn't patriotic, that is stupid.
Red Hat is an American corporation, yet you don't mention them. Since Red Hat was also developed by people worldwide (including French people), are we also supposed to boycott them?
God bless the U.S.A., German cars, and French operating systems:)
You, sir, are an idiot.
You wrote: "Dear fellow patriots: It is with great urgency and sincerity that I bring to your attention the Mandrake Boycott.
You may not be aware that Mandrake Linux is a French product. Indeed, you would never know because of their shallow attempts to conceal this fact." ____________________
Early this week, I bought a new Barracuda ATA 40GB drive, and was shocked to see a new plain-looking white label that says "Made in China". The drive is amazingly quiet, and very fast, but man... IT STINKS!
For two days after is was powered up, it emitted a foul odor - something like the smell of a transformer burning up. It was enough to stink up the whole room and the ones adjacent to it! No part of it seemed to be running hot.
I used another one of these several months ago, and it did not have that problem. It also had the earlier black label (with the cool Barracuda graphics) that didn't say "Made in China"!
I loved the way the last one worked out, so I didn't hesitate to buy another one - and paid more for it than I would have paid for other brands. Seagate: I'm disappointed in you!
The *stank* from it has finally subsided, but DAMN! It was NASTY! I'll buy a Maxtor next time. --
Yeah, most home users are so clueless that they fail to realize something is wrong. That, and most don't care anyways.
Like the idiot whose computer has been sending me Klez every 30 minutes while his machine is powered up for the past month (he is a Road Runner customer - yay, rah.) This despite actually looking him up and calling him on the phone to tell him that his computer is infected - weeks ago! He even admitted that he had caught Klez several times in the past few months. What an asshole!
I've tried and tried to get Road Runner's attention about it - by numerous emails and a few phone calls - to no avail.
Other than driving 600 miles to his state and kicking the shit out of him, what can I do? I'm sure everyone else in his address book is getting nailed, too. --
This is yet another reason to dump cable TV for satellite LIKE I DID!
It is not enough that my local cable provider (Comcast) charges about 40-50% more for digital cable for programming equivalent to what I get on Dish Network, but local digtal cable subscribers get spammed with advertising on the program guide and channel info display!
Want to know what channel you are looking at? Here you go, along with a few words from our sponsors... Click here for septic tank help!
At least Dish Network has not (yet) done that crap, and they are happy to sell you a PVR.
Comcast even sends sales people knocking on doors of houses with satellite dishes trying assimilate more drones. I get pestered about 6 or 7 times a year by them.
Funny - I had one of the sales guys ask what I paid for satellite service. I told him $39.99/mo for about 160 channels (Dish Top 150) He said, "Damn. Thats not bad." and walked off! I laughed my ass off!! ----
Slashdot Mirror
I said no to broadband because I live in the suburbs where there is only one "high speed" provider available (a cable company), and they suck ass.
I tried them, and they proved unreliable. They had to roll a truck 4 times in 2 months to fix wiring that they installed, dragging me away from my job which is 35 miles from home each time. Since I'd have to go back to work afterward, that made 140 miles on each of those days. Also figure in a total of 14 days of downtime in the 3 months that I had the service. Hell, I should have been charging THEM!
As soon as it seemed to start working right, I got a postcard in the mail detailing a rate increase to from $49.99 to $51.99/mo. + tax for my internet-only account (I have Directv for TV).
Goodbye, cable snake! I get 128k ISDN for $25 from a local shop now. Not as fast, but it costs half as much and it ALWAYS works.
Could be worse, I guess. I've got a friend that lives farther out in the sticks. He can actually get DSL, but he pays $109.95/mo for 1.5/256. Plus the phone. Ouch.
My sister is a photo archiver, and makes extensive use of her 3 1/2 year old 667 MHz G4 Powerbook. She purchased Applecare with the Powerbook, and in 3 years it has come in handy a few times - twice, I think, for a bad DVD drive.
:)
A few months ago, the unthinkable happens - her Powerbook didn't chime upon powering up and smoke came bellowing up from the chassis. She dug around for her records, and holy shit - her 3 year Applecare term ran out 2 weeks earlier! She took the Powerbook to a local Apple shop, and upon post-mortem found a fried internal power supply. She was quoted $600+! The entire motherboard had to be replaced. Her latest project for her largest client was on it, and she couldn't afford to fix it (yes, I know, backups backups - it's not mine!). She was really just screwed!
I told her that maybe she should just call Apple, and plead her case to them. She took my advice and called. She told them what a loyal customer she was, and that she owned several other Macs (including a brand spanking new G5 iMac), and asked if they could help her out.
The rep put her on hold, made a few phone calls, then they actually agreed to FIX her Powerbook! They told her that they would be in touch with the repair shop, and that they would arrange to have the Powerbook repaired free of charge. They did just that. A week later, she's back in business! Her only charge was to the repair shop for backing up the data on the drive.
Now THAT is customer service! I am truly impressed with Apple on this one, and they've got my sister as a customer for life now!
To be legal doing that, you have to purchase a "transient vendor's license" and file a tax return (with the tax collected) EVERY QUARTER as long as you have the license or be subject to fines or penalties for not doing so. So, to sell a couple hundred bucks worth of crap on one weekend, I had to go through all of that nonsense all year long.
As for what this has to do with the story, the Ohio Dept. of Taxation (the name of that dept. gets right to the point, doesn't it?) sent me updated tax tables for every county in the state every quarter. Yes, every QUARTER some county is changing its tax rate. Ridiculous. So you could only imagine being an online vendor having to keep up with that crap times however many other states that do the same thing.
Ohio even has revenue enforcement officers at Hamvention going from booth to booth (and from tailgate to tailgate) checking for licenses. And, of course, after jumping through all of the legal hoops I get popped by the Ohio Stormtroopers of Death for not wearing a seat belt on my way to Dayton.
I finally called the ODT and told them that they could stick their transient vendor's license up their asses so that they would stop bothering me.
Makes me wonder why in the hell anyone would want to live there with that level of governmental nonsense. I make it a point to stay and eat in Richmond Indiana when I attend Hamvention just because I hate Ohio so much. I'll happily take my tax dollars to another state.
It is no wonder why the population of Ohio is stagnant or even shrinking.
Could it be that music just sucks 0.44% more than the previous quarter? :)
Oh great. That's all we need. Yet another thing to distract people while they drive.
Several times per week on my suburban commute, I'll have to take evasive action to keep from getting creamed by some asshole driving and yapping on the phone, text messaging, playing with their GPS, radar detector or stereo, putting on lipstick or mascara, shaving, trimming nails, reading the newspaper or a magazine, eating, rubbernecking an accident on the other side of the interstate, breast feeding, kissing, fellating, fucking, or any combination of the above.
I mean, who the hell does everybody talk to at 6:30 in the morning?
Now we get to add watching TV on a 1.5-inch screen to the list. Yay.
See Carl demonstrating this big, bad computer in action:
/ s3/ep47/edork4.jpg
http://myweb.usf.edu/~tyblagg/hungerforce/epstuff
Ohhhh, you've been a bad, bad chicken....
...and people are pretty damned stupid when it comes to cell phones. There is a sucker born every minute, and they love phone crap.
:)
I had the misfortune to work for Radio Shack for a while (which accepts Sprint payments). I had dozens of customers who were paying >$200/mo Sprint bills every month at my counter, and some that exceeded $500-600!
And (of course), the customer never hangs up the phone through the whole visit. These never sounded like intelligent family or business related calls - usually just mindless dribble to their boy/girlfriends. To add insult to injury, Sprint and RS nail them for another $5 just to take their money! There is a sucker born every minute. I mean, WTF?
These are the boneheads that will pay $2.49 per song because they just don't care! Sprint will make a bloody fortune off of it, like every other gee-whiz gadget that they have.
All that gave me a new found respect for my Tracfone.
Preach it loud. Until now, I liked Anandtech.
:)
Something tells me that the results would have been MUCH different if the Opteron 150 were used. About 10% higher clock speed and a full 1MB of L2 - much different indeed.
Anandtech took Intels fastest (and most expensive) offering and pitted a "middle of the pack" AMD (selling for a fraction of the price of the Xeon) against it.
Funny thing is, the consumer AMD *DID* kick its butt in some of the benchmarks.
--
I dunno... Spike TV has also been running the scrolling Viacom propaganda lately.
--
I've been a happy Dish customer for years. I am proud of Charlie Ergen standing up to these jerkoffs. Because he has the stones to do what's right, our rates have increased at only about 1% per year over the past 5 years. Can any of you cable or DirecTV zealots say the same? I didn't think so. Dish Network is the only service that actively fights to keep its customers' rates down.
I might miss the Power Block on Spike TV, but won't lose any sleep over the loss of any of Viacom's programming - since 95% of it is crap and reruns of crap to me anyway (and that's before I figure in the endless commercials and the infomercials that occupy more than 12 hours a day per channel).
Would I be willing to pay more money to keep any of it? HELL NO! You get 'em Charlie!
I hope the FCC and the DOJ each break a boot off in Viacom's arse over these obviously illegal practices.
--
Fuzzbuster gets busted by Escort and Car And Driver Mag for stuffing Escort guts inside of the Fuzzbuster supplied for radar detector review (1979):
:)
http://www.valentine1.com/lab/MikesLabRpt5.asp
While you're there, please check out a Valentine One. Mike Valentine makes by far the best detector on the planet, and he's a heck of a nice guy!
--
Considering the non-emphasis on gaming, and the desire for a general purpose "family" machine at low cost, what is Windows XP for?
:)
Everything that he desired is included with Mandrake. (except, of course, the anti-virus stuff - which he won't need with Mandrake.)
Just my $0.02...
--
That was awesome!
--
Inclusive as we can - Ha! That's a loaded statement! What he means: Microsoft can't / won't.
"This is a fabric for someone to do e-commerce that's independent of the operating systems that are out there."
Someone, just not Microsoft.
Yup. :)
Let's face it, the music these days isn't what it used to be. I guess only the young whippersnappers get it, huh? ROFL!
--
Want to know how to avoid being sued by the RIAA? STOP SHARING THEIR MUSIC!!
I'm not trying to be flamebait - I hate them as much as any of the rest of you - but get a clue, folks!
The way to really do something about the whole 800 lb. gorilla that is the record industry is to STOP SHARING THE MUSIC.
When everyone stops, and their record sales continue to plummet, they won't be able to blame the internet for their problems.
"Gee, maybe it's not the internet! Maybe its the quality of our music and the money that we're charging for it."
--
Maybe they did ;)
--
Mod it down?
:)
Hell, this is the funniest thing I've seen all week!
Dammit! Now that I think of it, you're probably right.
You've gotta love Slahdot.
hahahahaha!
Its a joke. Laugh.
______
I use and love Mandrake because it is an excellent product. Boycotting Mandrakesoft will do nothing to change French policy.
:)
Mandrake Linux was developed by people worldwide, including Americans. Boycotting that would hurt everybody.
If the French product is superior, which in this case it is (versus your beloved Micro$oft), we are supposed to buy the inferior product just because it is American? That isn't patriotic, that is stupid.
Red Hat is an American corporation, yet you don't mention them. Since Red Hat was also developed by people worldwide (including French people), are we also supposed to boycott them?
God bless the U.S.A., German cars, and French operating systems
You, sir, are an idiot.
You wrote:
"Dear fellow patriots: It is with great urgency and sincerity that I bring to your attention the Mandrake Boycott.
You may not be aware that Mandrake Linux is a French product. Indeed, you would never know because of their shallow attempts to conceal this fact."
____________________
I thought Micro$oft was supposed to be against spam...
:)
Oh, I get it - they are against *everybody elses* spam.
hahahaha
-----------
Early this week, I bought a new Barracuda ATA 40GB drive, and was shocked to see a new plain-looking white label that says "Made in China". The drive is amazingly quiet, and very fast, but man... IT STINKS!
For two days after is was powered up, it emitted a foul odor - something like the smell of a transformer burning up. It was enough to stink up the whole room and the ones adjacent to it! No part of it seemed to be running hot.
I used another one of these several months ago, and it did not have that problem. It also had the earlier black label (with the cool Barracuda graphics) that didn't say "Made in China"!
I loved the way the last one worked out, so I didn't hesitate to buy another one - and paid more for it than I would have paid for other brands. Seagate: I'm disappointed in you!
The *stank* from it has finally subsided, but DAMN! It was NASTY! I'll buy a Maxtor next time.
--
Yeah, most home users are so clueless that they fail to realize something is wrong. That, and most don't care anyways.
Like the idiot whose computer has been sending me Klez every 30 minutes while his machine is powered up for the past month (he is a Road Runner customer - yay, rah.) This despite actually looking him up and calling him on the phone to tell him that his computer is infected - weeks ago! He even admitted that he had caught Klez several times in the past few months. What an asshole!
I've tried and tried to get Road Runner's attention about it - by numerous emails and a few phone calls - to no avail.
Other than driving 600 miles to his state and kicking the shit out of him, what can I do? I'm sure everyone else in his address book is getting nailed, too.
--
This is yet another reason to dump cable TV for satellite LIKE I DID!
It is not enough that my local cable provider (Comcast) charges about 40-50% more for digital cable for programming equivalent to what I get on Dish Network, but local digtal cable subscribers get spammed with advertising on the program guide and channel info display!
Want to know what channel you are looking at? Here you go, along with a few words from our sponsors... Click here for septic tank help!
At least Dish Network has not (yet) done that crap, and they are happy to sell you a PVR.
Comcast even sends sales people knocking on doors of houses with satellite dishes trying assimilate more drones. I get pestered about 6 or 7 times a year by them.
Funny - I had one of the sales guys ask what I paid for satellite service. I told him $39.99/mo for about 160 channels (Dish Top 150) He said, "Damn. Thats not bad." and walked off! I laughed my ass off!!
----