Ah. Alright, yeah, if you're paying 100/m for a smartphone... to be fair, I didn't include my smartphone - I don't think of it as a house utility - and my girlfriend is paying almost that much for her plan, so if you really need crazy unlimited everything fast all the time, there you go. I'm paying 15 bucks a month for my smartphone (if I use less than a hundred minutes, less than a hundred texts, and less than a hundred mb of data. Which I have no problems doing, personally. Even if you use more, though, you have to use quite a bit to make it up to 100 bucks a month. Ting for the win!)
(And I have heard a lot of people paying a lot more than we do in electricity. I don't totally understand it, but I'm happy about it anyway.)
300$ a month for utilities?! We're paying maybe a hundred, living in a normal condo in a normal city. Maybe 25-30 for electric, 10-15 for gas, 50 for phone and internet. And that's two people; I only had bills like that by myself in the middle of the summer, running the AC all the time. What crazy utilities are you paying for? (I guess there are probably other less exciting utilities, like water/trash/etc. that go into our HOA bill, but I can't imagine they come to 200 dollars a month...)
I agree that cost doesn't necessarily equate to fiscal transactions - I'm just saying that for me, and for many other people, the coin google works in is on which has value to google, but not to the consumer of the services. If you consider that a particular currency has no value, then a service that requires you to pay with that currency *is* free to you. (Yes, technically you could argue that google's service *technically* still aren't free: they cost bandwidth, electricity, your time to use them, etc. But that's just silly.)
Yes. But then you get to pay if there's an accident. Seems reasonable. How is that different from if you open the case, you void the warranty? (Which is also totally reasonable. You can do what you like, the company just won't clean up after you if you do.)
Except, giving out personal information doesn't actually *cost* me anything, so to me, it *is* free. If I give a dollar to Google, I can't give that dollar to someone else, or keep it in my wallet. But if I give out "here are all the blogs I read" to Google, and another site is willing to give me something else in exchange for the list of blogs I read, I can get both, and still have the list of blogs I read for my own use, too. So why should I care that Google has that list? (The only pieces of personal information I would be at *all* tentative about giving out to literally anyone who asks, are pieces of information that could either be easily used to trick a bank into giving someone who isn't me my cash (credit card number, debit pin number), or that could be used to specifically harass me (phone number, address)).
I don't think anyone would argue that RGB is "how the world works". I think RGB was just an easy model to visualize and to code for, that was good enough for most purposes. (As a colorblind person, I don't like it so much, but as a programmer, I like it tons.:p)
That's a good point. I'd pay a few dollars a year. Heck, I might even pay a few dollars a month. There really aren't any other rss feeds anywhere near as great as Reader is. I transitioned to Reader a year or so ago from a much worse system, when it started going from merely mediocre to downright terrible... I couldn't believe it'd taken me that long. RIP Reader. Long live nobody, they all suck compared to Reader.
Interestingly, the local symphony here in Long Beach just started an initiative obviously designed to appeal to a younger audience - changing the rules for the upper balcony to include, yes, "feel free to take your phone out and tweet" (which I think is dumb, but whatever, if you want to, as long as you dim it and leave it on silent...), and "feel free to leave and buy drinks during the concert and then come back" (doesn't appeal to me, but I bet they make more that way selling their overpriced drinks...). But the tickets for the upper balcony are also 20 dollars, compared to like 75-150. Guess what? We're going to the symphony now! I like classical music, and I like supporting local music, I just didn't like it 75 dollars worth.
Granted, this *is* confirmation that the possibility requires fewer additional variables than it would've without the findings, which is decent news, though not overly exciting. Still, I've read great speculative but not overly soft scifi in which life was found was found in a gas giant (Manta's Gift), even in a freaking star (Dragon's Egg). Almost anywhere *could* have supported life, for some definition of life.
No, in this case, it does look like he means "literally" - unless you're complaining because he isn't literally putting physical bills into a physical trash can? But I'd argue that sending money electronically something with the promise of a particular thing in return, and then not actually being able to use the thing you got in return (because it relies on a game being stable, that isn't), is close enough to throwing it away that the phrase fits...
Not my *favorite* example of it (my favorite was a thread titled something like "Will Crysis 3 Run On Your Computer?" - NO!). Still, an excellent example of it. "Is Daylight Saving Time Worth Saving?" - NO!
Get the frack rid of it. Right now, preferably. Preferably *right* now, like before we lose an hour this weekend. But I'm aware these things take time. I honestly don't care one way or the other which side of the cycle we turn it off on, but please for the love of frell, just turn it off already, it's dumb.
I support the arts, in a large number of cases where I feel confident that any of the money I give to the supporting will actually go to the people creating the art in question. Live music, live drama, books, even recorded music from less mainstream musicians. But mainstream musicians signed to RIAA labels can suck it, and so can the whole broken tv-on-a-tv system.
While I do have vague recollections that the later Homecoming books were... a bit out there, it was -fantasy-. It did offend me slightly that he had wildly swerved, turning a series that was originally straight sci-fi, and pretty good at that, instead into the realm of straight fantasy (that was not the only time he did that, nor is he the only person to have annoyed me in that way, cough-new-BSG-cough). But, even though I did learn later that the whole series was supposed to be a retelling of the Book of Mormon, did I immediately see anything in it that led me to believe the guy was a bigoted lunatic.
There is, after all, a big difference between a character in a book having opinions you disagree with, even a character having opinions you disagree with and still being the hero of the book - and the entire *universe* of a book showing wildly implausible things to be true, while claiming to be our own universe.
While I certainly do agree that one should have the right to believe and speak whatever they want (discluding fire-in-theater situations, etc.), I'm not quite so convinced they should have the right to outright *campaign*, in the political sense, for it. That would imply they could *win*. I mean, I guess you could argue they could feel free to try to campaign for something that will have no chance? But that's the worry - it might. I mean, slavery was legal for a long time. Overt racism was legal for much longer. If some guy wanted to pass a law in a town saying "murder all the gays", and the town voted yes, it should still not be legal.
I do agree, though, people should not be shot merely for having disgusting views - they should be merely ridiculed. And potentially boycotted, if it gets that bad.
I always applauded him for being able to keep his personal brand of crazy out of it novels - it surprised me to learn how batshit insane he was, his novels always struck me as supremely rational. I did feel conflicted - on one hand, I didn't want to give monetary support to someone with such disgusting ideas, but on the other hand, I *did* want to support someone who wrote such beautiful stories.
Then I read his Empire - guess he was just saving up all his crazy for that book. I haven't read its sequel; I hear it's even worse. I haven't bought anything from him since then. I don't feel conflicted anymore.
Indeed it does. (Then underneath it links to the totally unrelated M band:D - I'm gonna go ahead and add a "if you were looking for" link there...)
Does remind me of a quote from a friend back in college, when he was working on some paper for a class: "How to stump Google: Try to find a painting called "Orchestra" by an artist who is much less famous than the orchestra conductor he shares a name with."
One library we use (itextsharp) actually does that: they have a free mailing list, which will get your questions answered if they aren't dumb or repeats, but one of the guys most responsible for answering questions there, also answers basically any questions on stackoverflow that are tagged "itextsharp" within a couple hours (also of course assuming they aren't dumb or repeats.) It's pretty cool.
Yep. Even better, "I'm listening to the recorded version of a Live album".
To be honest, those are some of my favorite band names. The The, The Who, The Band, etc. Someone on a forum once quipped that they'd love to start two bands who'd go on tours together, so they could announce, We're "Still Here"! Now stick around, for "More Crap"! I'd totally do that. (Barring having a second band, I suppose you could just name your band "Still Here", and have a song called "More Crap" instead.)
I was wondering what sort of crazy plan would lead to the use of Rock Band in a data center. Like, were they using those plastic drums to store hard drives in or something?
Last time I had an issue with a major company (I think it was FedEx, it might've been UPS), their website failed horribly, I called their support line, tried several times to speak to anyone, and eventually got auto-disconnected after waiting on hold for a bit. In frustration, googled how to talk to a person there, ended up on that site. Immediately got an actual person, and a minute later, everything was fixed. It's a pretty awesome site.
Indeed. I would *totally* buy a smart-watch. I would *love* an awesome smart-watch. I certainly wouldn't be a first-generation one, and I wouldn't buy one from Apple anyway, but I would totally buy a device in that form-factor, designed to go on a wrist, after they've perfected the concept. (I give it 10 or 20 years, assuming the concept catches on rather than fizzling out. Which is also totally possible, but would be kind of too bad.)
Except we *did* have a vested interest in those studios, in the form of "we liked their games". EA buys companies, guts them, then makes crappy games with the IP (or just buries it completely). Meaning if you liked the games the previous studio made, now you either get nothing, or crap. Why *shouldn't* we be pissed at that? Alright, yes, the guys at the top of the previous company probably got money out of it, and if I were at the top of a company, I'd be tempted too, but it still sucks for everyone else.
Meanwhile, here in one of the bigger cities in California, US, 10 years from now we'll still probably be stuck at a whopping 5Mbps, for about what that guy's paying for 100Mbps. I think his situation is just fine. (Though admittedly, we don't have to pay for tv, which is good, since we never use it... but we do have to pay for a -phone- line we never use... thanks, Verizon.)
I'd love 100mbit internet. I'd love frelling *10* mbit internet. But not from Time Warner (if they even existed in my area, which they don't), and not from either of the two providers in my area, for their current price. As hundreds of people have already said in this thread, it's pretty laughable. Duh, nobody wants to buy your overpriced crap if they have a choice, and if you give them a choice between somewhat overpriced crap, and hypothetically-faster-if-you're-lucky crap that's priced out of the price range of all but the ludicrously rich (or corporations), nobody is going to choose the latter.
Now, granted, I'll also admit, given the choice between paying a reasonable amount for 10mbit, slightly more for 100mbit, or slightly more than that for 1000mbit, I'd probably go for the hundred. I'm sure people would go for the thousand, too, though, if all three were in the price range an average consumer could legitimately afford to spend on connectivity.
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Ah. Alright, yeah, if you're paying 100/m for a smartphone... to be fair, I didn't include my smartphone - I don't think of it as a house utility - and my girlfriend is paying almost that much for her plan, so if you really need crazy unlimited everything fast all the time, there you go. I'm paying 15 bucks a month for my smartphone (if I use less than a hundred minutes, less than a hundred texts, and less than a hundred mb of data. Which I have no problems doing, personally. Even if you use more, though, you have to use quite a bit to make it up to 100 bucks a month. Ting for the win!)
(And I have heard a lot of people paying a lot more than we do in electricity. I don't totally understand it, but I'm happy about it anyway.)
300$ a month for utilities?! We're paying maybe a hundred, living in a normal condo in a normal city. Maybe 25-30 for electric, 10-15 for gas, 50 for phone and internet. And that's two people; I only had bills like that by myself in the middle of the summer, running the AC all the time. What crazy utilities are you paying for? (I guess there are probably other less exciting utilities, like water/trash/etc. that go into our HOA bill, but I can't imagine they come to 200 dollars a month...)
I agree that cost doesn't necessarily equate to fiscal transactions - I'm just saying that for me, and for many other people, the coin google works in is on which has value to google, but not to the consumer of the services. If you consider that a particular currency has no value, then a service that requires you to pay with that currency *is* free to you. (Yes, technically you could argue that google's service *technically* still aren't free: they cost bandwidth, electricity, your time to use them, etc. But that's just silly.)
Yes. But then you get to pay if there's an accident. Seems reasonable. How is that different from if you open the case, you void the warranty? (Which is also totally reasonable. You can do what you like, the company just won't clean up after you if you do.)
Except, giving out personal information doesn't actually *cost* me anything, so to me, it *is* free. If I give a dollar to Google, I can't give that dollar to someone else, or keep it in my wallet. But if I give out "here are all the blogs I read" to Google, and another site is willing to give me something else in exchange for the list of blogs I read, I can get both, and still have the list of blogs I read for my own use, too. So why should I care that Google has that list? (The only pieces of personal information I would be at *all* tentative about giving out to literally anyone who asks, are pieces of information that could either be easily used to trick a bank into giving someone who isn't me my cash (credit card number, debit pin number), or that could be used to specifically harass me (phone number, address)).
I don't think anyone would argue that RGB is "how the world works". I think RGB was just an easy model to visualize and to code for, that was good enough for most purposes. (As a colorblind person, I don't like it so much, but as a programmer, I like it tons. :p)
That's a good point. I'd pay a few dollars a year. Heck, I might even pay a few dollars a month. There really aren't any other rss feeds anywhere near as great as Reader is. I transitioned to Reader a year or so ago from a much worse system, when it started going from merely mediocre to downright terrible... I couldn't believe it'd taken me that long. RIP Reader. Long live nobody, they all suck compared to Reader.
Interestingly, the local symphony here in Long Beach just started an initiative obviously designed to appeal to a younger audience - changing the rules for the upper balcony to include, yes, "feel free to take your phone out and tweet" (which I think is dumb, but whatever, if you want to, as long as you dim it and leave it on silent...), and "feel free to leave and buy drinks during the concert and then come back" (doesn't appeal to me, but I bet they make more that way selling their overpriced drinks...). But the tickets for the upper balcony are also 20 dollars, compared to like 75-150. Guess what? We're going to the symphony now! I like classical music, and I like supporting local music, I just didn't like it 75 dollars worth.
So yeah. They're doing something right.
Granted, this *is* confirmation that the possibility requires fewer additional variables than it would've without the findings, which is decent news, though not overly exciting. Still, I've read great speculative but not overly soft scifi in which life was found was found in a gas giant (Manta's Gift), even in a freaking star (Dragon's Egg). Almost anywhere *could* have supported life, for some definition of life.
No, in this case, it does look like he means "literally" - unless you're complaining because he isn't literally putting physical bills into a physical trash can? But I'd argue that sending money electronically something with the promise of a particular thing in return, and then not actually being able to use the thing you got in return (because it relies on a game being stable, that isn't), is close enough to throwing it away that the phrase fits...
Not my *favorite* example of it (my favorite was a thread titled something like "Will Crysis 3 Run On Your Computer?" - NO!). Still, an excellent example of it. "Is Daylight Saving Time Worth Saving?" - NO!
Get the frack rid of it. Right now, preferably. Preferably *right* now, like before we lose an hour this weekend. But I'm aware these things take time. I honestly don't care one way or the other which side of the cycle we turn it off on, but please for the love of frell, just turn it off already, it's dumb.
*turns on the tunnel*
I have *no* idea what you're talking about. *shifty eyes*
I support the arts, in a large number of cases where I feel confident that any of the money I give to the supporting will actually go to the people creating the art in question. Live music, live drama, books, even recorded music from less mainstream musicians. But mainstream musicians signed to RIAA labels can suck it, and so can the whole broken tv-on-a-tv system.
While I do have vague recollections that the later Homecoming books were... a bit out there, it was -fantasy-. It did offend me slightly that he had wildly swerved, turning a series that was originally straight sci-fi, and pretty good at that, instead into the realm of straight fantasy (that was not the only time he did that, nor is he the only person to have annoyed me in that way, cough-new-BSG-cough). But, even though I did learn later that the whole series was supposed to be a retelling of the Book of Mormon, did I immediately see anything in it that led me to believe the guy was a bigoted lunatic.
There is, after all, a big difference between a character in a book having opinions you disagree with, even a character having opinions you disagree with and still being the hero of the book - and the entire *universe* of a book showing wildly implausible things to be true, while claiming to be our own universe.
While I certainly do agree that one should have the right to believe and speak whatever they want (discluding fire-in-theater situations, etc.), I'm not quite so convinced they should have the right to outright *campaign*, in the political sense, for it. That would imply they could *win*. I mean, I guess you could argue they could feel free to try to campaign for something that will have no chance? But that's the worry - it might. I mean, slavery was legal for a long time. Overt racism was legal for much longer. If some guy wanted to pass a law in a town saying "murder all the gays", and the town voted yes, it should still not be legal.
I do agree, though, people should not be shot merely for having disgusting views - they should be merely ridiculed. And potentially boycotted, if it gets that bad.
I always applauded him for being able to keep his personal brand of crazy out of it novels - it surprised me to learn how batshit insane he was, his novels always struck me as supremely rational. I did feel conflicted - on one hand, I didn't want to give monetary support to someone with such disgusting ideas, but on the other hand, I *did* want to support someone who wrote such beautiful stories.
Then I read his Empire - guess he was just saving up all his crazy for that book. I haven't read its sequel; I hear it's even worse. I haven't bought anything from him since then. I don't feel conflicted anymore.
Indeed it does. (Then underneath it links to the totally unrelated M band :D - I'm gonna go ahead and add a "if you were looking for" link there...)
Does remind me of a quote from a friend back in college, when he was working on some paper for a class:
"How to stump Google:
Try to find a painting called "Orchestra" by an artist who is much less famous than the orchestra conductor he shares a name with."
One library we use (itextsharp) actually does that: they have a free mailing list, which will get your questions answered if they aren't dumb or repeats, but one of the guys most responsible for answering questions there, also answers basically any questions on stackoverflow that are tagged "itextsharp" within a couple hours (also of course assuming they aren't dumb or repeats.) It's pretty cool.
Yep. Even better, "I'm listening to the recorded version of a Live album".
To be honest, those are some of my favorite band names. The The, The Who, The Band, etc. Someone on a forum once quipped that they'd love to start two bands who'd go on tours together, so they could announce, We're "Still Here"! Now stick around, for "More Crap"! I'd totally do that. (Barring having a second band, I suppose you could just name your band "Still Here", and have a song called "More Crap" instead.)
I was wondering what sort of crazy plan would lead to the use of Rock Band in a data center. Like, were they using those plastic drums to store hard drives in or something?
http://gethuman.com/
Last time I had an issue with a major company (I think it was FedEx, it might've been UPS), their website failed horribly, I called their support line, tried several times to speak to anyone, and eventually got auto-disconnected after waiting on hold for a bit. In frustration, googled how to talk to a person there, ended up on that site. Immediately got an actual person, and a minute later, everything was fixed. It's a pretty awesome site.
Indeed. I would *totally* buy a smart-watch. I would *love* an awesome smart-watch. I certainly wouldn't be a first-generation one, and I wouldn't buy one from Apple anyway, but I would totally buy a device in that form-factor, designed to go on a wrist, after they've perfected the concept. (I give it 10 or 20 years, assuming the concept catches on rather than fizzling out. Which is also totally possible, but would be kind of too bad.)
Except we *did* have a vested interest in those studios, in the form of "we liked their games". EA buys companies, guts them, then makes crappy games with the IP (or just buries it completely). Meaning if you liked the games the previous studio made, now you either get nothing, or crap. Why *shouldn't* we be pissed at that? Alright, yes, the guys at the top of the previous company probably got money out of it, and if I were at the top of a company, I'd be tempted too, but it still sucks for everyone else.
Meanwhile, here in one of the bigger cities in California, US, 10 years from now we'll still probably be stuck at a whopping 5Mbps, for about what that guy's paying for 100Mbps. I think his situation is just fine. (Though admittedly, we don't have to pay for tv, which is good, since we never use it... but we do have to pay for a -phone- line we never use... thanks, Verizon.)
I'd love 100mbit internet. I'd love frelling *10* mbit internet. But not from Time Warner (if they even existed in my area, which they don't), and not from either of the two providers in my area, for their current price. As hundreds of people have already said in this thread, it's pretty laughable. Duh, nobody wants to buy your overpriced crap if they have a choice, and if you give them a choice between somewhat overpriced crap, and hypothetically-faster-if-you're-lucky crap that's priced out of the price range of all but the ludicrously rich (or corporations), nobody is going to choose the latter.
Now, granted, I'll also admit, given the choice between paying a reasonable amount for 10mbit, slightly more for 100mbit, or slightly more than that for 1000mbit, I'd probably go for the hundred. I'm sure people would go for the thousand, too, though, if all three were in the price range an average consumer could legitimately afford to spend on connectivity.