Windows XP comes installed on it, and you get no install CDs (well, ones that won't format your HDD automatically and reinstall it). You get a crappy 'starter' CD key or some other gimmick designed not to work with any other version of Windows XP.
Yet, you payed full price for it.
This is what makes big corporations different from small companies. Small companies need your business to stay afloat and show some kind of profit for their effort.
Big companies don't need your business. In fact, you need THEIR products most of the time, and they know it. They abuse their position of power to jerk you around.
Here's an example. I had a dead mobo/CPU and didn't know which part was bad, and had access to no comparable parts to do some troubleshooting with. So..I took it to some different computer shops.
CompUSA wanted $150 just for testing, and would need to keep it for a week.
Several smaller computer places I went to didn't try to get me to hand it over to them. They asked me troubleshooting questions (basics I had already tried, but they were trying to helP), and when they saw I had done them already, they offered to test the setup using their parts. I paid $20 to have the CPU and motherboard tested with 'known good' parts and if possible, diagnostic sotware. I got my system back the next day.
Another example.
I go to buy a case. Naturally, I check CompUSA first. All they had are cheap-ass thin-sharp alumnium cases that weighed less than a paperweight sans powersupply.
I go to a few smaller shops, and find that they have good, sturdy cases for similar prices. That and they were willing to sell me the case I wanted WITHOUT the power supply, when CompUSA would just tell me 'sorry'.
You can say all you want about how you can take your business somewhere else if one company is jerking you around, but I think that its way lamer to pirate a piece of software sold for a reasonable price rather than one sold at an unjustifiably high price just because people require it.
Imagine if there were an 'optimum speed' that the computer reccomended that everyone go to ensure smooth flow of traffic. It'd take a lot of processing power, but it could be done.
Now imagine this speed is broadcast out to cars and the speed could vary between lanes. So this pretty much eliminates unnecessary traffic jams and fixes the 'wave' effect of traffic.
Heavy handed doesn't begin to describe it.
By this reasoning, only criminals download the music and movies. Never mind if they already own the CD, they're still criminals and deserve to have their computers messed with.
I know a lot of people, myself included, will go out and buy a CD if it has a few tracks that I like. Now, the music industry wants me to buy the CD to find out or listen to five second clips of one or two tracks. I want to download the whole CD, listen to it once or twice, and then make my decision.
So what happens when I start downloading shit that doesn't work, ane EVERYONE on the node has that copy? Well, I forget about that CD and move on to something else I can think of that sounds good.
I mean, what if you walked into Wal-Mart, and everything in the store was sealed in white boxes. These white boxes have a price, a one-line description, and that's all. You ask if you can see one of these products, and they refuse, citing intellectual property laws. So when your help walks away, you open the box in a dark corner just to see if is what you want, and a goddamn cobra springs forth from the box and bites you.
Same thing.
I've got a Duron 1200 and am trying desperately to upgrade to an nForce2 / XP 3200+.
After a bad board and bad processor (from partspc!) blew a RAM chip I had bought for it, I ended up RMAing all three of them, likely with little or no compensation coming my way.
So here I am, after Christmas, stuck with one functional 512 stick of PC3200 Corsair after have spent $400 or more on my upgrade fest.
That's why I don't upgrade very often, besides the lack of money. Because I know that there's a good chance whatever I get isn't going to work as well as the old parts, thus stability is a good thing for me.
On the topic of "your money is ours and not giving it to us means that we lose it" mentality..
The law guarentees that car insurance companies make assloads of money. If you're driving and haven't posted several thousand dollars in escrow to prove 'financial responsibility' then you either have car insurance or are driving illegally.
Is that what they're going to get at? To look for some kind of law against CL and try to get it taken down? Why don't they have the RIAA spam their website host with C&Ds for no reason?
The bank said that I have to ship the parts back to them, but if they refuse another RMA (had RMA'ed it before, thought it was just a bad board, but both board and processor are bad, so I need a new RMA), what can I do then?
They're certainly in a dark alley of the internet. The parts I ordered from PartsPC were dead on arrival. They're now saying that I'd have to pay them a few 'fees' to return the parts and get a refund. The refund wouldn't even be what I paid for it, it'd be about 30% less due to 'market pricing'.
Anyone have an idea of what I can do here?
Also, can I dispute the charge with Visa? (using a Visa bank card)
Why should it matter? We should make all kinds of malware flat out illegal. With punishments being handed down to the individuals in the company, rather than the company.
Then we can bitch at Microsoft. They're just riding an advantage given to them by those assholes that make a profit from $0.01 a 'view'.
AOL decides to stray farther and farther from the standard norm, taking the 'KISS' suggestion of software for granted.
Not only is this new browser coming, but they've announced a special line of email programs that require their own processor to use. These processors are identical in every way to the Intel Pentium 4, except for they are underclocked to 100MHz, and are missing pins to make it incompatible with current hardware.
AOL is also developing its own language, called AOLinguish, which will sound similar to Enlgish, but will be totally different in every way!
I bet its like those car dealerships you see where everyone that works there is an ex-high-school jock with gigantic muscles they got from working out four hours a day, six days a week.
Well, except for the programmer that they made their bitch and is doing all the work for minimum wage.
Its a cut-throat business, trying to make develop a de-facto standard.
A business where the best codec or standard isn't necessarily the one adopted by consumers/corporations.
Anything you want changed, just claim that its for the children. There's a big percentage of adults in this country that have kids. Most of these people are die-hard parents.
Their own children can do no wrong, are perfect angels, etc. Its easy to see where you could get something changed if you said for the children, because if you didn't approve, you're automatically against the children.
We all know that anyone against children is a terrorist. Are you a terrorist?
It's not a big deal to spoof. All you'd have to do is build a couple small GPS-emulator transmitters and aim them at the device, and have them tell the device that its sitting its comfortable office environment 5,000 miles away.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there some kind of guide comparing mislabeled AMD processors to the real deal?
That's no moon..
Lets say that you buy a new computer.
Windows XP comes installed on it, and you get no install CDs (well, ones that won't format your HDD automatically and reinstall it). You get a crappy 'starter' CD key or some other gimmick designed not to work with any other version of Windows XP.
Yet, you payed full price for it.
This is what makes big corporations different from small companies. Small companies need your business to stay afloat and show some kind of profit for their effort.
Big companies don't need your business. In fact, you need THEIR products most of the time, and they know it. They abuse their position of power to jerk you around.
Here's an example. I had a dead mobo/CPU and didn't know which part was bad, and had access to no comparable parts to do some troubleshooting with. So..I took it to some different computer shops.
CompUSA wanted $150 just for testing, and would need to keep it for a week.
Several smaller computer places I went to didn't try to get me to hand it over to them. They asked me troubleshooting questions (basics I had already tried, but they were trying to helP), and when they saw I had done them already, they offered to test the setup using their parts. I paid $20 to have the CPU and motherboard tested with 'known good' parts and if possible, diagnostic sotware. I got my system back the next day.
Another example.
I go to buy a case. Naturally, I check CompUSA first. All they had are cheap-ass thin-sharp alumnium cases that weighed less than a paperweight sans powersupply.
I go to a few smaller shops, and find that they have good, sturdy cases for similar prices. That and they were willing to sell me the case I wanted WITHOUT the power supply, when CompUSA would just tell me 'sorry'.
You can say all you want about how you can take your business somewhere else if one company is jerking you around, but I think that its way lamer to pirate a piece of software sold for a reasonable price rather than one sold at an unjustifiably high price just because people require it.
Imagine if there were an 'optimum speed' that the computer reccomended that everyone go to ensure smooth flow of traffic. It'd take a lot of processing power, but it could be done.
Now imagine this speed is broadcast out to cars and the speed could vary between lanes. So this pretty much eliminates unnecessary traffic jams and fixes the 'wave' effect of traffic.
Heavy handed doesn't begin to describe it. By this reasoning, only criminals download the music and movies. Never mind if they already own the CD, they're still criminals and deserve to have their computers messed with. I know a lot of people, myself included, will go out and buy a CD if it has a few tracks that I like. Now, the music industry wants me to buy the CD to find out or listen to five second clips of one or two tracks. I want to download the whole CD, listen to it once or twice, and then make my decision. So what happens when I start downloading shit that doesn't work, ane EVERYONE on the node has that copy? Well, I forget about that CD and move on to something else I can think of that sounds good. I mean, what if you walked into Wal-Mart, and everything in the store was sealed in white boxes. These white boxes have a price, a one-line description, and that's all. You ask if you can see one of these products, and they refuse, citing intellectual property laws. So when your help walks away, you open the box in a dark corner just to see if is what you want, and a goddamn cobra springs forth from the box and bites you. Same thing.
Might have something to do with that refurb ICBM in the previous post...
(minutes after launch)
This just in!
Rhode Island has been consumed in a fiery explosion!
Also just in, the word "oops" is heard around the world, supposedly originating from a team of scientists and launch coordinators..
I've got a Duron 1200 and am trying desperately to upgrade to an nForce2 / XP 3200+.
After a bad board and bad processor (from partspc!) blew a RAM chip I had bought for it, I ended up RMAing all three of them, likely with little or no compensation coming my way.
So here I am, after Christmas, stuck with one functional 512 stick of PC3200 Corsair after have spent $400 or more on my upgrade fest.
That's why I don't upgrade very often, besides the lack of money. Because I know that there's a good chance whatever I get isn't going to work as well as the old parts, thus stability is a good thing for me.
Its similar to natural selection.
The more stable the configuration, the more likely it is to form and stay for long periods of time.
On the topic of "your money is ours and not giving it to us means that we lose it" mentality..
The law guarentees that car insurance companies make assloads of money. If you're driving and haven't posted several thousand dollars in escrow to prove 'financial responsibility' then you either have car insurance or are driving illegally.
Is that what they're going to get at? To look for some kind of law against CL and try to get it taken down? Why don't they have the RIAA spam their website host with C&Ds for no reason?
Seems to work usually.
At what point do they decide that they want human flesh instead of flies/rotten apples?
Or better yet, at what point do they decide that they want to eat our crops instead of flies/rotten apples?
I, for one, welcome our new mechanical locust overlords.
What if someone were to find an exploit in a few cell phone OSes? Then find an exploit in the routing software/hardware of cell towers?
Infect their own phone, that infects every cell tower it cells to, and that tower infects every cell phone it can see, etc.
I'd make the payload somthing to either disable the ringer, or play some annoying loud-ass tone for hours.
So now I need tin foil for my cell phone, too.
Well, I don't really have a cell phone, but if I did..I'd need tin foil for it.
The bank said that I have to ship the parts back to them, but if they refuse another RMA (had RMA'ed it before, thought it was just a bad board, but both board and processor are bad, so I need a new RMA), what can I do then?
They're certainly in a dark alley of the internet. The parts I ordered from PartsPC were dead on arrival. They're now saying that I'd have to pay them a few 'fees' to return the parts and get a refund. The refund wouldn't even be what I paid for it, it'd be about 30% less due to 'market pricing'.
Anyone have an idea of what I can do here?
Also, can I dispute the charge with Visa? (using a Visa bank card)
Less competition for the rest of us computer guys that haven't been caught yet!
I'll believe it when I see it. Spammers have a way of packing up and vanishing from the face of the earth over night.
Why should it matter? We should make all kinds of malware flat out illegal. With punishments being handed down to the individuals in the company, rather than the company.
Then we can bitch at Microsoft. They're just riding an advantage given to them by those assholes that make a profit from $0.01 a 'view'.
AOL decides to stray farther and farther from the standard norm, taking the 'KISS' suggestion of software for granted.
Not only is this new browser coming, but they've announced a special line of email programs that require their own processor to use. These processors are identical in every way to the Intel Pentium 4, except for they are underclocked to 100MHz, and are missing pins to make it incompatible with current hardware.
AOL is also developing its own language, called AOLinguish, which will sound similar to Enlgish, but will be totally different in every way!
I bet its like those car dealerships you see where everyone that works there is an ex-high-school jock with gigantic muscles they got from working out four hours a day, six days a week.
Well, except for the programmer that they made their bitch and is doing all the work for minimum wage.
No, really?
Why do you think they hang down? If they were body temp, they couldn't produce it very effectively.
I guess next its going to be found that laying in the sun for too long will cause cancer.
Its a cut-throat business, trying to make develop a de-facto standard. A business where the best codec or standard isn't necessarily the one adopted by consumers/corporations.
How many of you didn't see this coming?
Shady programs attract shady characters and shady tactics.
Doesn't matter if its by a major corporation or John Q. Crackdealer.
For the children.
Go on, say it.
For the children.
Anything you want changed, just claim that its for the children. There's a big percentage of adults in this country that have kids. Most of these people are die-hard parents.
Their own children can do no wrong, are perfect angels, etc. Its easy to see where you could get something changed if you said for the children, because if you didn't approve, you're automatically against the children.
We all know that anyone against children is a terrorist. Are you a terrorist?
That's the same kind of shit these people pull.
It's not a big deal to spoof. All you'd have to do is build a couple small GPS-emulator transmitters and aim them at the device, and have them tell the device that its sitting its comfortable office environment 5,000 miles away.