That works pretty well when you have only one ZIP to remember because it's the exception. When you have dozens, though, you it just changes the problem from "remembering which codes are which" to "remembering which mnemonic phrases are which". It might be easier, it might not, but it doesn't reduce the amount of information you need to remember.
An anonymous reader writes "The NYTimes (sign up for free subscription) is reporting about a person who wrote about a prior relationship with a former Miss Vermont.
So, an anonymous reader submits an article from the NYT and casually mentions right off that you can sign up for a free subscription?
Riiiiight...
I couldn't find an actual/. user account named "an anonymous reader", so I'll assume that this is a rather shameless plug that is aping the standard "NYT, free registration, blah, blah, blah" disclaimer attached to every NYT article. What do you want to bet that the anonymous poster works for the NYT? Maybe even wrote the article?
Isn't this a-tad-more-than-vaguely reminicent of Dr. Pepper's Raging Cow guerrilla blog-advertising tactics?
Can't the lameness filter reject this sort of thing, too?
I have found a new Way to express my outrage And comfort my pain.
I have spent my break Writing too many haiku To give you insight.
The phone company Stinking to highest heaven, Fetid like garbage.
Envelope: opened. What the hell is a PICC charge?! My bill is too high.
I called them right then To lodge a complaint, but I'm On hold forever.
Quick resolution? No way! I am getting the Complete runaround.
Customer service? Not a chance in this lifetime! "Screw you, consumers!"
"Your griping is in vain! We are a monopoly! Mu hu ha ha ha!"
Those money-grubbers! They own the damn F.C.C.! Just try to complain.
Frustrated, beaten. I pray for alternatives To these lame assclowns.
Please, V.O.I.P.! Release me from this bondage With new services.
I am willing to Pay through the nose for broadband To screw those bastards!
I just hope it works- The 'net is slow already And loaded with ads.
Aw, crap, I'll just pay! It's not like the ISPs could do much better.
Besides, they are all Owned by the telcos in one Form or another.
========
For those of you who are wondering, the stupid lameness filter rejected this in standard Haiku form (three lines per verse) because the line length average of 13.5 characters was too short. I had to add these extra lines at the bottom to get it through the posting engine. Sorry about that - at least I didn't have to indicate line breaks with '/' characters.
Now, I certainly think the/. editors do an outstanding job of maintaining a signal-to-noise ratio that far surpasses the internet average, but I'm starting to get a little frustrated with the ridiculous way it pre-emptively rejects comments based on arbitrary formatting criteria. That job should be left to the moderators.
I decided a long time ago that when I finally snap and turn to the dark side in a megalomaniacal frustration-induced rage solely bent on world domination, that I'm taking "The Phone Company" out first.
For the long-standing monopolistic pattern of deception, lies stupidity and fraud, they are ALL undeniably and unquestionably at the VERY TOP of my poop list.
I hate them more than mosquitos.
I hate them more than Michael Douglas.
I hate them more than MS Open Licensing 6.0.
I hate them more than the xxIAs.
I hate them more than credit card companies.
I hate them more than "Charles In Charge".
A POX ON THEM! They only fate they DESERVE is extermination, and *that* even lets them off easy if it isn't grotesquely painful.
Whew! (pant, pant, pant) I feel much better now that that's off my chest....
**DING!**
Whoops! Time for my Lithium.
(Gulp!)
Anyway, guys, thanks for listening to meee rannnt abbousyutt kdkdffffffffffffffffffffffffff
(drool, drool, drool)
[NO CARRIER]
P.S. HUMOR DISCLAIMER: This was supposed to be funny, so let me apologize in advance if I failed. Even though they probably deserve it, I'm not really going to do anything violent or evil to the telcos. Ever. Instead, I am completely willing to deal with my telco-frustration by posting stupid rants like this to/. and simply avoiding them as much as possible. If another competing service comes along to replace them, I'll be one of the first to cancel my account as soon as the alternative is practical.
I agree with you as long as the mobile phone carriers are being d*ckheads.
Why the hell would I want to pay $500 for a 'convergence device' that does everything if I'm going to have to RE-BUY it in three years when I want to switch carriers? This whole business of buying the phone with the service sucks, and it's the major reason I *won't* be getting anything more complicated than a standalone telephone anytime soon.
Check me if I'm wrong on this, but don't they have a different system in Japan where you buy any old phone you want, then your carrier gives you a smartcard or something that slips into the phone and holds everything that makes your phone yours - billing info, address book, ring tones, etc.? I think you can even test drive phones at the store by inserting your own card to make calls on your own account.
When the US mobile carriers can do that, I'll start paying attention.
P.S. (Worthless rant #2) While I'm on the subject (and getting fired up about it) -- Are you trying to tell me you have this enormous international telecommunications and computer billing network that can deny me access to service if my bill hasn't been paid, but you can't tell me how many minutes I have left this billing cycle? Right...
Cool - a real virtual wrath of God ghost town. I Like it. Can you still go there in the game and see it now that it's all dead and stuff? They should put up some signs there to warn people why it's a bad idea to cheat. Maybe they could even turn it into a folk tale or urban ledgend in the game that mothers tell their children to keep them from cheating. Maybe even build a ghost-town spook story quest around it.
Season passes? Is that where the box records the show whenever it's on on any channel? Yes, I have that, too.
I also have fast forward, reverse, slow-mo, all of it, but I can only scan through the part of the show that's been aired and watched/recorded already. (obviously:)
Ok, you're right, I was a little exhuberant -- sorry 'bout that and....
OH, CRAP! I JUST REMEMBERED THE BEST FEATURE:
It has TWO tuners!
I can record two shows at once, and it can do picture-in-picture through the PVR even though my TV can't. [grin]
Sorry, again, but when I found out about THAT feature, it was so unexpected I forgot all about it when I posted the first time.
Anyway, for me, there are several reasons why renting is attractive.
* The $5/month price tag (we have digital cable with the HBO package - it's $10/month if you don't get any movie channels) is far FAR lower than the $15-$20/month I expected when they announced the service was coming a few months ago. I think that's even below the TiVO monthly subscription. It used to be, anyway. Figuring on a $500 investment for a TiVO ($250 for the box, plus $250 for the lifetime subscription) gives me 100 months (8+ years!) of service through the cable company with an onsite hardware service contract, assuming rates don't increase. I'm pretty sure whatever TiVO or ReplayTV I would have gotten would have been obsolete well before 8 years were up.
* This is likely a non-issue, but I like the idea that the channel listings are updated at the same time by the cable company, so I don't have to worry about screwed up recordings while I wait for two services to get the new channel lineup correct.
* My wife has to be lured into new things like this. $500 isn't a lure, it's a yard swing.
* I wanted a cheap exit strategy in the unexected event that **I** didn't like it. To each his own, but I can call them tomorrow and have them pick it up and I'm out a grand total of five bucks.:)
We just traded our cable box for a PVR through our cable company. We got an integrated PVR/cable box with a 40 hour hard drive, and almost no DRM - we can record everything except pay-per-view. They even let us spit stuff out onto tape if we want.
All for $5 per month. (JOY!)
All the standard PVR features are there, though there's no commercial skip button.
Now, here's the interesting part:
The cable box is from Atlanta Scientific (not sure of the model number - 8???? I think), and declares itself as a Pioneer brand device on the firmware boot screen. The box itself is software upgradeable (by the cable company) and has what looks like:
* RCA inputs (tech told me video source will be functional in a few days, so these may be usable soon)
* 1 USB port
* 2 FireWire ports
* Something that looks like a smartcard slot
Anybody know anything about these and what the extra ports can be used for?
Maybe Microsoft's failure with the office assistants was that they tried to make them useful.
I'm pretty sure people don't want that - they just want a toy that does cute goofy stuff. My mom loves that little dog in Office, but AFAIK, she doesn't use it for anything, she just right-clicks and 'animates' it every so often to see it do something stupid.
Of course, anyone who remembers Catz and Dogz knows that's been tried already, too.
However, I'm willing to bet that neither solution is going to work because I suspect that SCO's license terms grants them exclusive rights to the property (like a lease) including the exclusive right to legal action.
I suspect that if Novell does anything, they'll terminate the license like you suggest, but they'd probably need another lawsuit and a court's help (staying orders, etc.) to close the door on this one.
Knoppix is a great example because even though I have good broadband through RoadRunner (I **can** get 200KB/sec downloads from some servers, though it's usually around 100-150 from most servers -- not bad), Knoppix is notoriously difficult to get from anywhere.
All of the official Knoppix US mirrors (including those 200 miles from me) are overloaded or crap out after about 10%, which actually makes the slower (overseas) European mirrors far more preferrable.
Last week I had already downloaded ~400MB of the latest Knoppix ISO (over several hours) when the dude(s) that were feeding me closed their clients unexpectedly, thus dropping my download to 10KB/sec. It would be great if I could take the 400MB I already have and resume the.torrent from another server seed with more activity to pick up the rest.
That's why I'd like to switch seeds.
Now, I realize that BitTorrent is really a publishing/distibution protocol and not a P2P client. In fact, this sort of thing may not even be possible because it would require all of the publishers of such ISOs to coordinate their seed generation and server configs, essentially gutting BT of some of the stuff that makes it unique, but it's just something I was wondering about - you know to see if he'd considered it.
Are they still complaining about how they can't get their authentication layer to work correctly because MS won't open up the docs on their standard GINA? It's been a while since I had to do any serious NetWare work.
My favorite feature of BitTorrent is the way it designs a sort-of bizarre 'population inversion' into the distibution system: the more people that are downloading, the faster it goes. (Nothing is more frustrating than trying to grab the latest Knoppix ISO (shudder) at 4K/sec because you're the only person in the universe downloading from your.torrent seed.)
Any plans to implement a resume download feature or the ability to switch host streams?
SCO: "Oh, no, we were NEVER suing for patent infringment - it was ALWAYS a contract dispute over the LICENSING of the code."
So, Novell, how'd you like to make about a kajillion new fans?
License the code to IBM for a buck.
SCO is irrelevant, problem solved.
P.S. Didn't I hear somewhere that NW7 is going to be a services based connectivity, authentication and management layer running on Linux? Samba? LDAP? NIS? ACLs? THAT would be cool.
I dunno, but about 10 years ago or so, an urban ledgend went around the BBSs that someone had coded a PostScript document trojan that printed a pretty picture (of a tiger?) AND set the access password on your printer to a random string so you couldn't access the printer anymore.
Maybe, but don't be surprised if MS makes a few more of these "Licensing" payments a little further down the road. I think this is probably more about making sure SCO doesn't go out of bidness while they're twisting the knife. In short, Microsoft is funding the lawyers for the lawsuit because it will hurt Microsoft's competition. Remember, SCO *IS* 'financially troubled' so MS no doubt wants to make sure the air conditioning stays on.
What troubles me is why doesn't Microsoft just buy SCO outright? Unless the lawsuit really is bogus and MS just wants to make sure SCO has the financial backing to cause as many headaches as possible before time runs out, it would seem to me that if they are going to make sure the gun gets used, they might as well own it so they can decide where and when the trigger gets pulled. Have you ever known Bill and Steve to **NOT** want absolute total control of everything?
Re:The quarter is hard enough
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
A few years ago, my wife and I were returning home from vacation through Virginia on July 4th, so we stopped at Monticello for a little historic reflection -- you know, before the world was going to end in December? Anyway. Admission was, like $8, so if you give them a $10, they give you a $2 bill back, because Jefferson's picture is on it.
Cool, huh?
Shameless self promotion and attention-whoring!
on
Gentoo Games
·
· Score: 1
However, most people only found out about the DRM and Spyware *AFTER* buying the product and consequently pumping the sales numbers. Once it's in your hands, it's too late to *not* buy the software because you've been warned off. Even if you returned the software for a refund, I think that gets recorded in a separate part of the accounting books (IANAA!!!), so the sales numbers would remain inflated.
I think the *REAL* measure of how well it worked would have come next year, when all the PO'd customers would have left Intuit for the only viable alternative: TaxCut. That was my plan, and I suspect their pre-orders for next year were way way down as a result. That's probably what drove the decision, not this year's sales numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
How has the internet affected your opinions on things during these formative years?
Apparently, it is now much easier to write term papers.
"Domino's Pizza, this is Julian, can I help you?"
...KM ...KN ...KO ... AHHHHHHHRRRRRGH!"
"Yeah, I want a large pepperoni pizza delivered."
"That's $11.99, what's the address?"
"Sure, it's X8F32 8F2KL.
That works pretty well when you have only one ZIP to remember because it's the exception. When you have dozens, though, you it just changes the problem from "remembering which codes are which" to "remembering which mnemonic phrases are which". It might be easier, it might not, but it doesn't reduce the amount of information you need to remember.
An anonymous reader writes "The NYTimes (sign up for free subscription) is reporting about a person who wrote about a prior relationship with a former Miss Vermont.
So, an anonymous reader submits an article from the NYT and casually mentions right off that you can sign up for a free subscription?
Riiiiight...
I couldn't find an actual
Isn't this a-tad-more-than-vaguely reminicent of Dr. Pepper's Raging Cow guerrilla blog-advertising tactics?
Can't the lameness filter reject this sort of thing, too?
I have found a new
/. editors do an outstanding job of maintaining a signal-to-noise ratio that far surpasses the internet average, but I'm starting to get a little frustrated with the ridiculous way it pre-emptively rejects comments based on arbitrary formatting criteria. That job should be left to the moderators.
Way to express my outrage
And comfort my pain.
I have spent my break
Writing too many haiku
To give you insight.
The phone company
Stinking to highest heaven,
Fetid like garbage.
Envelope: opened.
What the hell is a PICC charge?!
My bill is too high.
I called them right then
To lodge a complaint, but I'm
On hold forever.
Quick resolution?
No way! I am getting the
Complete runaround.
Customer service?
Not a chance in this lifetime!
"Screw you, consumers!"
"Your griping is in vain!
We are a monopoly!
Mu hu ha ha ha!"
Those money-grubbers!
They own the damn F.C.C.!
Just try to complain.
Frustrated, beaten.
I pray for alternatives
To these lame assclowns.
Please, V.O.I.P.!
Release me from this bondage
With new services.
I am willing to
Pay through the nose for broadband
To screw those bastards!
I just hope it works-
The 'net is slow already
And loaded with ads.
Aw, crap, I'll just pay!
It's not like the ISPs
could do much better.
Besides, they are all
Owned by the telcos in one
Form or another.
========
For those of you who are wondering, the stupid lameness filter rejected this in standard Haiku form (three lines per verse) because the line length average of 13.5 characters was too short. I had to add these extra lines at the bottom to get it through the posting engine. Sorry about that - at least I didn't have to indicate line breaks with '/' characters.
Now, I certainly think the
I decided a long time ago that when I finally snap and turn to the dark side in a megalomaniacal frustration-induced rage solely bent on world domination, that I'm taking "The Phone Company" out first.
For the long-standing monopolistic pattern of deception, lies stupidity and fraud, they are ALL undeniably and unquestionably at the VERY TOP of my poop list.
I hate them more than mosquitos.
I hate them more than Michael Douglas.
I hate them more than MS Open Licensing 6.0.
I hate them more than the xxIAs.
I hate them more than credit card companies.
I hate them more than "Charles In Charge".
A POX ON THEM! They only fate they DESERVE is extermination, and *that* even lets them off easy if it isn't grotesquely painful.
Whew! (pant, pant, pant) I feel much better now that that's off my chest....
**DING!**
Whoops! Time for my Lithium.
(Gulp!)
Anyway, guys, thanks for listening to meee rannnt abbousyutt kdkdffffffffffffffffffffffffff
(drool, drool, drool)
[NO CARRIER]
P.S. HUMOR DISCLAIMER: This was supposed to be funny, so let me apologize in advance if I failed. Even though they probably deserve it, I'm not really going to do anything violent or evil to the telcos. Ever. Instead, I am completely willing to deal with my telco-frustration by posting stupid rants like this to
I agree with you as long as the mobile phone carriers are being d*ckheads.
Why the hell would I want to pay $500 for a 'convergence device' that does everything if I'm going to have to RE-BUY it in three years when I want to switch carriers? This whole business of buying the phone with the service sucks, and it's the major reason I *won't* be getting anything more complicated than a standalone telephone anytime soon.
Check me if I'm wrong on this, but don't they have a different system in Japan where you buy any old phone you want, then your carrier gives you a smartcard or something that slips into the phone and holds everything that makes your phone yours - billing info, address book, ring tones, etc.? I think you can even test drive phones at the store by inserting your own card to make calls on your own account.
When the US mobile carriers can do that, I'll start paying attention.
P.S. (Worthless rant #2) While I'm on the subject (and getting fired up about it) -- Are you trying to tell me you have this enormous international telecommunications and computer billing network that can deny me access to service if my bill hasn't been paid, but you can't tell me how many minutes I have left this billing cycle? Right...
Cool - a real virtual wrath of God ghost town. I Like it. Can you still go there in the game and see it now that it's all dead and stuff? They should put up some signs there to warn people why it's a bad idea to cheat. Maybe they could even turn it into a folk tale or urban ledgend in the game that mothers tell their children to keep them from cheating. Maybe even build a ghost-town spook story quest around it.
Correct.
Season passes? Is that where the box records the show whenever it's on on any channel? Yes, I have that, too.
I also have fast forward, reverse, slow-mo, all of it, but I can only scan through the part of the show that's been aired and watched/recorded already. (obviously
Ok, you're right, I was a little exhuberant -- sorry 'bout that and....
OH, CRAP! I JUST REMEMBERED THE BEST FEATURE:
It has TWO tuners!
I can record two shows at once, and it can do picture-in-picture through the PVR even though my TV can't. [grin]
Sorry, again, but when I found out about THAT feature, it was so unexpected I forgot all about it when I posted the first time.
Anyway, for me, there are several reasons why renting is attractive.
* The $5/month price tag (we have digital cable with the HBO package - it's $10/month if you don't get any movie channels) is far FAR lower than the $15-$20/month I expected when they announced the service was coming a few months ago. I think that's even below the TiVO monthly subscription. It used to be, anyway. Figuring on a $500 investment for a TiVO ($250 for the box, plus $250 for the lifetime subscription) gives me 100 months (8+ years!) of service through the cable company with an onsite hardware service contract, assuming rates don't increase. I'm pretty sure whatever TiVO or ReplayTV I would have gotten would have been obsolete well before 8 years were up.
* This is likely a non-issue, but I like the idea that the channel listings are updated at the same time by the cable company, so I don't have to worry about screwed up recordings while I wait for two services to get the new channel lineup correct.
* My wife has to be lured into new things like this. $500 isn't a lure, it's a yard swing.
* I wanted a cheap exit strategy in the unexected event that **I** didn't like it. To each his own, but I can call them tomorrow and have them pick it up and I'm out a grand total of five bucks.
I must be the luckiest guy in the world....
We just traded our cable box for a PVR through our cable company. We got an integrated PVR/cable box with a 40 hour hard drive, and almost no DRM - we can record everything except pay-per-view. They even let us spit stuff out onto tape if we want.
All for $5 per month. (JOY!)
All the standard PVR features are there, though there's no commercial skip button.
Now, here's the interesting part:
The cable box is from Atlanta Scientific (not sure of the model number - 8???? I think), and declares itself as a Pioneer brand device on the firmware boot screen. The box itself is software upgradeable (by the cable company) and has what looks like:
* RCA inputs (tech told me video source will be functional in a few days, so these may be usable soon)
* 1 USB port
* 2 FireWire ports
* Something that looks like a smartcard slot
Anybody know anything about these and what the extra ports can be used for?
Maybe Microsoft's failure with the office assistants was that they tried to make them useful.
I'm pretty sure people don't want that - they just want a toy that does cute goofy stuff. My mom loves that little dog in Office, but AFAIK, she doesn't use it for anything, she just right-clicks and 'animates' it every so often to see it do something stupid.
Of course, anyone who remembers Catz and Dogz knows that's been tried already, too.
Holy cow, they're still selling them.
Oh, it's Ubisoft.
I agree, that's an even better idea.
However, I'm willing to bet that neither solution is going to work because I suspect that SCO's license terms grants them exclusive rights to the property (like a lease) including the exclusive right to legal action.
I suspect that if Novell does anything, they'll terminate the license like you suggest, but they'd probably need another lawsuit and a court's help (staying orders, etc.) to close the door on this one.
Grab your popcorn, this is gonna be fun.
Knoppix is a great example because even though I have good broadband through RoadRunner (I **can** get 200KB/sec downloads from some servers, though it's usually around 100-150 from most servers -- not bad), Knoppix is notoriously difficult to get from anywhere.
.torrent from another server seed with more activity to pick up the rest.
All of the official Knoppix US mirrors (including those 200 miles from me) are overloaded or crap out after about 10%, which actually makes the slower (overseas) European mirrors far more preferrable.
Last week I had already downloaded ~400MB of the latest Knoppix ISO (over several hours) when the dude(s) that were feeding me closed their clients unexpectedly, thus dropping my download to 10KB/sec. It would be great if I could take the 400MB I already have and resume the
That's why I'd like to switch seeds.
Now, I realize that BitTorrent is really a publishing/distibution protocol and not a P2P client. In fact, this sort of thing may not even be possible because it would require all of the publishers of such ISOs to coordinate their seed generation and server configs, essentially gutting BT of some of the stuff that makes it unique, but it's just something I was wondering about - you know to see if he'd considered it.
Are they still complaining about how they can't get their authentication layer to work correctly because MS won't open up the docs on their standard GINA? It's been a while since I had to do any serious NetWare work.
My favorite feature of BitTorrent is the way it designs a sort-of bizarre 'population inversion' into the distibution system: the more people that are downloading, the faster it goes. (Nothing is more frustrating than trying to grab the latest Knoppix ISO (shudder) at 4K/sec because you're the only person in the universe downloading from your
Any plans to implement a resume download feature or the ability to switch host streams?
SCO: "Oh, no, we were NEVER suing for patent infringment - it was ALWAYS a contract dispute over the LICENSING of the code." So, Novell, how'd you like to make about a kajillion new fans? License the code to IBM for a buck. SCO is irrelevant, problem solved. P.S. Didn't I hear somewhere that NW7 is going to be a services based connectivity, authentication and management layer running on Linux? Samba? LDAP? NIS? ACLs? THAT would be cool.
I dunno, but about 10 years ago or so, an urban ledgend went around the BBSs that someone had coded a PostScript document trojan that printed a pretty picture (of a tiger?) AND set the access password on your printer to a random string so you couldn't access the printer anymore.
Yeah, really! I mean they don't even have it as an Active-X plugin - how lame is that?!
Let's see,
Big, round head....
Tiny little dot eyes....
No nose to speak of....
Holy crap! The Martians look like Charlie Brown!
Maybe, but don't be surprised if MS makes a few more of these "Licensing" payments a little further down the road. I think this is probably more about making sure SCO doesn't go out of bidness while they're twisting the knife. In short, Microsoft is funding the lawyers for the lawsuit because it will hurt Microsoft's competition. Remember, SCO *IS* 'financially troubled' so MS no doubt wants to make sure the air conditioning stays on.
What troubles me is why doesn't Microsoft just buy SCO outright? Unless the lawsuit really is bogus and MS just wants to make sure SCO has the financial backing to cause as many headaches as possible before time runs out, it would seem to me that if they are going to make sure the gun gets used, they might as well own it so they can decide where and when the trigger gets pulled. Have you ever known Bill and Steve to **NOT** want absolute total control of everything?
A few years ago, my wife and I were returning home from vacation through Virginia on July 4th, so we stopped at Monticello for a little historic reflection -- you know, before the world was going to end in December? Anyway. Admission was, like $8, so if you give them a $10, they give you a $2 bill back, because Jefferson's picture is on it.
Cool, huh?
Hey everyone, check it out: I was right!
However, most people only found out about the DRM and Spyware *AFTER* buying the product and consequently pumping the sales numbers. Once it's in your hands, it's too late to *not* buy the software because you've been warned off. Even if you returned the software for a refund, I think that gets recorded in a separate part of the accounting books (IANAA!!!), so the sales numbers would remain inflated.
I think the *REAL* measure of how well it worked would have come next year, when all the PO'd customers would have left Intuit for the only viable alternative: TaxCut. That was my plan, and I suspect their pre-orders for next year were way way down as a result. That's probably what drove the decision, not this year's sales numbers.
YAY! HUMANS ARE STILL SPECIAL!!!!
(If you think this is off topic, think again - it's dead center on topic. Read between the lines.)