By "spinning a platter" you mean "has an electric motor"? That's the only platter like object I can think of in a Hybrid drivetrain, and unless you're using some very strange motors they aren't platter-like at all.
The best way to get kicked out of those seminars is to actually work the numbers yourself on a napkin and then pipe up about how massively wrong they are, or how they're trying to sell an 800 sq. foot condo a hour outside of Disneyworld for over a million dollars. The downside is that they don't give you the free stuff until the end, so you typically have to be good and just sit through it if you want those free tickets.
How is that "mutual fund" you talked about not a pyramid scheme? They even had the classic pyramid scheme tactics (flash money like crazy and tell you to recruit everybody with a heartbeat).
The rule of thumb for those "seminars" is that the more they talk about the money the less reputable it is and the less money you would ever see from the scheme.
The scary thing is that there are people out there who drill holes in their head for fun. There are claims that it improves your thinking or wellness or something, but I can't help but to think that the people who actually do this aren't the kind of people I want to ask about improving my thinking.
I've always thought that the bigger scalping outfits must have friends inside of Ticketmaster who get them special deals or just early access to the seats between "Clearchannel partner" and "unwashed masses". I'm doubly suspicious when they have tickets for sale (with an even more outrageous markup) a couple of days before Ticketmaster actually opens them up to the public.
Does Ticketmaster actually do anything to stop scalpers? From what I've seen Scalpers seem to have a lot less trouble with their system than regular people. I really really hate buying tickets online from them. Lemme run down the experience:
1. You navigate to their website past the dozens of scalper pretenders and through their horrible interface.
2. Select your area and click go. It's not always clear where exactly the tickets are, but I guess if you do it enough you'll learn the terminology.
3. Now you have to do their Captcha, which usually has a bunch of 1s and Os, or Is and 0s, it's a bit of a crapshoot getting it right.
4. After a few minutes you get randomly given some seats. If you'd prefer to have one higher up but closer around a side or down the middle, well, tough. You can try to have more tickets randomly generated but they'll tend to be in the same area time and time again.
5. Now you have to high stress part of buying the tickets. You're presented with a huge form with your name, address, etc... and told that if you can't fill all of the info in within 2 minutes then you'll lose your tickets and have to start over
6. Do it again for the credit card info.
7. And for the delivery part. If the site is going to crash, it will usually do it here, or the next page will just take more than a minute to load and when you finally get it the page will already be timed out.
8. Otherwise you get the joy of spending $10 or $15 to have them email you a PDF and have you print it out on your own paper with your own ink. I'm sure glad they managed to email me for only $10.
At least once you have the PDF (which tells you very clearly to print out the whole thing on an 8.5x11 or it won't be valid, despite the fact that 75% of the page is just ads). When you get to the venue all they care about is the barcode on the bottom.
Every time I see the system I think I could write a website that could easily do the same thing for less than a dollar a ticket. The trick is of course that I wouldn't have the vast sums of money to buy out venues across the country to insure the monopoly.
From what I can tell it's a big downmod fest in this thread. If by "partisan modding" you mean "everybody who posts flamebait gets modded down" then yeah, it's partisan as hell. Also, I'd ask you to throw away your shrill internet whiner dictionary and buy a new one.
Doesn't the low density requirement turn it into even harder to get unobtanium? The problem with space elevators isn't really the safety aspect--nobody who matters lives on the equator anyway. >:) The real problem is the materials science. We don't have anything close to strong enough to build this thing with yet, and I'm not as enthusiastic about carbon nanotubes being the solution as a lot of the people in the industry.
I think that plan might backfire when they realize a great many "gamer girls" are hambeasts. Seriously, were they expecting their own private version of GamerGirlz or whatever?
Probably he never submitted it anywhere. Even Google doesn't know much about this site; the first page is all new articles about how it is shutting down. I'm wondering if he did any advertising at all (even free advertising by submitting articles to Slashdot and the like)?
Exactly. I went to the website to check it out (and hey, $7 albums aren't a bad deal and I'm willing to risk a few bucks on him closing up shop early and taking the money and running for a deal) and about the best I can say about it is that it looks "clean". While I like clean design, if I had stumbled across this website randomly I doubt I would have bought anything from it. It looks like a phishing site on the front page. The selection is also very thin, so if you're looking for anything specific you are almost certainly out of luck.
Honestly, I think Microsoft is in the right here. Someone playing with a modded XBox on XBL could wreck the experience for the other people using the system. They're protecting their other customers from jerks who just want to cheat or worse. I have no doubt that the console game writers have holes in their network code that could be exploited remotely if someone was on there with a modded client, and since the 360 has persistent storage there is danger for permanent harm to other people's systems.
Apple however is just protecting AT&T's revenue stream with their bricking, which goes against the Slashdot mantra of "Your failed business plan is not my problem".
Try asking people outside of your close circle of friends about any of the bands you like. Chances are they won't have heard of them. Also, 8,500 seats is pretty puny for a major venue even though it's great for an indy band. I've got quite a sizable collection of bands you have never heard of as well, but that's the thing. These bands will never be well known because the channels that make well known bands are sewn up tight by the major labels. You'll notice that I never said anything about producing your own music, as you pointed out that's easy to do, it's getting your CD in the major distribution channels (iTunes has been good in this regard, but try getting a CD into your average major chain record store) that ends up killing you.
I think the complaint is that they're basically loan sharks with lots of connections. You can't tour without a label because affiliated companies of the labels (Clearchannel) own a large percentage of the venues in the country. Granted you can always barhop and go to smaller venues, but that pretty much precludes doing it as a day job or getting that "superstar" status.
The idea that people couldn't produce their own records or with the help of a company that doesn't rip them off is getting more absurd by the day. What they really can't do is get those CDs into the hands of major distributors (owned by the record companies again) or get radio airplay (owned by the record companies) on anything outside of AM or college radio. For all of this what is the primary service of the record labels? To front some money to the band (not a salary, a loan) for the rights to everything they make and to get first cut on any money coming to the band. It sounds like you'd have to be crazy to take an offer like that, but really your choice is to wallow in obscurity for eternity or bend over and spread your cheeks for the big record company.
This is also why record companies find the internet to be so scary. Piracy is an issue, but the loss of control is a much more fundamental one. Even if it doesn't catch on directly, it gives bands more leverage at the bargaining table and that is the last thing the record companies want.
I have an Athlon XP 1700+ system with 1.25GB of memory (admittedly that was upgraded from 768MB) and a GeForce FX 5900 (upgraded from a crappy Geforce 4 Ti that broke after a year). I would install Vista on that machine if Vista wasn't a steaming pile of crap. I have no doubt that it would run well enough (assuming I could find drivers for all of the old hardware) with that kind of processing power.
Yeah, but think of the people who are running Firefox on a 265MB machine, with XP. I find on XP machines with a GB of RAM, Firefox leaks slowly enough that I never really notice it, and I've been known to leave it open for days. The only things that kill it are the occasional animated GIF that for some reason sucks down all of the cpu cycles on my box and drags Firefox to a crawl and flash plugin crashes (which are rare thanks to flashblock).
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that doesn't look at all like the guy held a lighter to it until the button deformed...
By "spinning a platter" you mean "has an electric motor"? That's the only platter like object I can think of in a Hybrid drivetrain, and unless you're using some very strange motors they aren't platter-like at all.
In short: What are you talking about?
Even shorter: Are you high?
The best way to get kicked out of those seminars is to actually work the numbers yourself on a napkin and then pipe up about how massively wrong they are, or how they're trying to sell an 800 sq. foot condo a hour outside of Disneyworld for over a million dollars. The downside is that they don't give you the free stuff until the end, so you typically have to be good and just sit through it if you want those free tickets.
How is that "mutual fund" you talked about not a pyramid scheme? They even had the classic pyramid scheme tactics (flash money like crazy and tell you to recruit everybody with a heartbeat).
The rule of thumb for those "seminars" is that the more they talk about the money the less reputable it is and the less money you would ever see from the scheme.
The scary thing is that there are people out there who drill holes in their head for fun. There are claims that it improves your thinking or wellness or something, but I can't help but to think that the people who actually do this aren't the kind of people I want to ask about improving my thinking.
I've always thought that the bigger scalping outfits must have friends inside of Ticketmaster who get them special deals or just early access to the seats between "Clearchannel partner" and "unwashed masses". I'm doubly suspicious when they have tickets for sale (with an even more outrageous markup) a couple of days before Ticketmaster actually opens them up to the public.
Does Ticketmaster actually do anything to stop scalpers? From what I've seen Scalpers seem to have a lot less trouble with their system than regular people. I really really hate buying tickets online from them. Lemme run down the experience:
1. You navigate to their website past the dozens of scalper pretenders and through their horrible interface.
2. Select your area and click go. It's not always clear where exactly the tickets are, but I guess if you do it enough you'll learn the terminology.
3. Now you have to do their Captcha, which usually has a bunch of 1s and Os, or Is and 0s, it's a bit of a crapshoot getting it right.
4. After a few minutes you get randomly given some seats. If you'd prefer to have one higher up but closer around a side or down the middle, well, tough. You can try to have more tickets randomly generated but they'll tend to be in the same area time and time again.
5. Now you have to high stress part of buying the tickets. You're presented with a huge form with your name, address, etc... and told that if you can't fill all of the info in within 2 minutes then you'll lose your tickets and have to start over
6. Do it again for the credit card info.
7. And for the delivery part. If the site is going to crash, it will usually do it here, or the next page will just take more than a minute to load and when you finally get it the page will already be timed out.
8. Otherwise you get the joy of spending $10 or $15 to have them email you a PDF and have you print it out on your own paper with your own ink. I'm sure glad they managed to email me for only $10.
At least once you have the PDF (which tells you very clearly to print out the whole thing on an 8.5x11 or it won't be valid, despite the fact that 75% of the page is just ads). When you get to the venue all they care about is the barcode on the bottom.
Every time I see the system I think I could write a website that could easily do the same thing for less than a dollar a ticket. The trick is of course that I wouldn't have the vast sums of money to buy out venues across the country to insure the monopoly.
Wow, flamebait much? I bet you're a big hit with the Bible Literalists too.
Yeah, darn those non-Japanese Wiis and DSes. I can't believe the gall of whomever makes those things.
So...you have to sync it again after the update? I know it's fashionable to hate anything that is popular, but this seems weak to me.
Don't worry the weekend is coming up, prime time for dups!
Even the Millennium Falcon couldn't catch up with that joke as it flew over your head.
From what I can tell it's a big downmod fest in this thread. If by "partisan modding" you mean "everybody who posts flamebait gets modded down" then yeah, it's partisan as hell. Also, I'd ask you to throw away your shrill internet whiner dictionary and buy a new one.
Well, there were two devices. I was assuming one had a bus 5mm long, and the other had a bus 7mm long.
Doesn't the low density requirement turn it into even harder to get unobtanium? The problem with space elevators isn't really the safety aspect--nobody who matters lives on the equator anyway. >:) The real problem is the materials science. We don't have anything close to strong enough to build this thing with yet, and I'm not as enthusiastic about carbon nanotubes being the solution as a lot of the people in the industry.
I think that plan might backfire when they realize a great many "gamer girls" are hambeasts. Seriously, were they expecting their own private version of GamerGirlz or whatever?
You need some sort of flamebait in the writeup, that way kdawson will approve it for sure.
Probably he never submitted it anywhere. Even Google doesn't know much about this site; the first page is all new articles about how it is shutting down. I'm wondering if he did any advertising at all (even free advertising by submitting articles to Slashdot and the like)?
Exactly. I went to the website to check it out (and hey, $7 albums aren't a bad deal and I'm willing to risk a few bucks on him closing up shop early and taking the money and running for a deal) and about the best I can say about it is that it looks "clean". While I like clean design, if I had stumbled across this website randomly I doubt I would have bought anything from it. It looks like a phishing site on the front page. The selection is also very thin, so if you're looking for anything specific you are almost certainly out of luck.
Wow, that was a lot of work to demonstrate that a number ending in a 5 isn't prime.
Honestly, I think Microsoft is in the right here. Someone playing with a modded XBox on XBL could wreck the experience for the other people using the system. They're protecting their other customers from jerks who just want to cheat or worse. I have no doubt that the console game writers have holes in their network code that could be exploited remotely if someone was on there with a modded client, and since the 360 has persistent storage there is danger for permanent harm to other people's systems.
Apple however is just protecting AT&T's revenue stream with their bricking, which goes against the Slashdot mantra of "Your failed business plan is not my problem".
Try asking people outside of your close circle of friends about any of the bands you like. Chances are they won't have heard of them. Also, 8,500 seats is pretty puny for a major venue even though it's great for an indy band. I've got quite a sizable collection of bands you have never heard of as well, but that's the thing. These bands will never be well known because the channels that make well known bands are sewn up tight by the major labels. You'll notice that I never said anything about producing your own music, as you pointed out that's easy to do, it's getting your CD in the major distribution channels (iTunes has been good in this regard, but try getting a CD into your average major chain record store) that ends up killing you.
I think the complaint is that they're basically loan sharks with lots of connections. You can't tour without a label because affiliated companies of the labels (Clearchannel) own a large percentage of the venues in the country. Granted you can always barhop and go to smaller venues, but that pretty much precludes doing it as a day job or getting that "superstar" status.
The idea that people couldn't produce their own records or with the help of a company that doesn't rip them off is getting more absurd by the day. What they really can't do is get those CDs into the hands of major distributors (owned by the record companies again) or get radio airplay (owned by the record companies) on anything outside of AM or college radio. For all of this what is the primary service of the record labels? To front some money to the band (not a salary, a loan) for the rights to everything they make and to get first cut on any money coming to the band. It sounds like you'd have to be crazy to take an offer like that, but really your choice is to wallow in obscurity for eternity or bend over and spread your cheeks for the big record company.
This is also why record companies find the internet to be so scary. Piracy is an issue, but the loss of control is a much more fundamental one. Even if it doesn't catch on directly, it gives bands more leverage at the bargaining table and that is the last thing the record companies want.
I have an Athlon XP 1700+ system with 1.25GB of memory (admittedly that was upgraded from 768MB) and a GeForce FX 5900 (upgraded from a crappy Geforce 4 Ti that broke after a year). I would install Vista on that machine if Vista wasn't a steaming pile of crap. I have no doubt that it would run well enough (assuming I could find drivers for all of the old hardware) with that kind of processing power.
Yeah, but think of the people who are running Firefox on a 265MB machine, with XP. I find on XP machines with a GB of RAM, Firefox leaks slowly enough that I never really notice it, and I've been known to leave it open for days. The only things that kill it are the occasional animated GIF that for some reason sucks down all of the cpu cycles on my box and drags Firefox to a crawl and flash plugin crashes (which are rare thanks to flashblock).