We don't really need a self-important dolt to tell us why theaters aren't successful. There are hundreds of ways to dissect this problem and hundreds more ways to get creative in order to attempt to solve it and give a worthwhile experience/value to a movie-goer, but that's just a whole lot of words. Here's the bottom line:
What To Do = ( Home Experience > Theater Experience ) ? Stay Home : Go Out
Why don't we also ask Ebert to explain why Video Arcades died out as well... please, someone explain this!
Honestly... have you not yet learned that the MO here is to read the headline, maybe even the summary, and then comment / discuss / argue / flame.
Commenting on the actual merit or content of an article... for shame.
Come on, please say I'm not the only one. Anyone else read that headline and immediately wonder why a mixed martial arts (MMA) behemoth wanted to research the health of video games?
Why in the world would the UFC want to study video games and health? To give fighters a fast track to a jiu jistsu black belt through gaming?
Anyone? Ok, maybe I've just been tainted by the huge influx of MMA into the forefront of my mind.
While this may have some small amount of truth to it, there is much more to it than that. It's not the case that unbiased reviews don't exist. Problem is that people don't pay attention and still by the same recycled titles that they are comfortable with. Don't blame the press for people being sheepish. There have been quite a few instances recently where MANY review sources were raving about a given title and no matter how much they attempted to get the word out it just didn't do any good. So don't tell me that there is an "unbiased game review" syndrome keeping people from being people. That's just not true.
- Okami? Anyone?
- Psychonaughts? No, nothing?
Those are a couple of the recent titles that come to mind. Really made an attempt to do something unique that the critics loved, but the market did not. There are others. Look for Hotel Dusk for the DS to suffer this same fate.
I can't believe they put Ig to task like that. He's just trying to communicate with us earthlings and have us bow down in worship. What's so wrong with that?
CNN has a bit more info and a much better live action shot. Ig in all his lit up glory.
$ 250 : main system, etc.
$ 040 : extra Wii-mote
$ 020 : extra nunchucks
$ 050 : Zelda (who won't?)
-----------
$ 360 : Grand Total (LOL - good work Nintendo)
Look at that total, how ironic is that? Nintendo is taking my "360" and laughing all the way to the bank. Sorry Microsoft. I'll catch up with you next year, perhaps.
Honestly, this type of sensationalism is just ridiculous. This should all just be so obvious, it truly is.
TFA: It calls on the government to act to prevent the "death of childhood". The letter argues that real play has given way to hours spent staring at the television screen.
Yes, please get the goverment involved in telling me how to raise my children. Please decide how much technology I should subject them to and what is acceptable. Isn't it obvious that we need such guidance because we as parents can't be responsible enough to do that on our own. Please... spare me.
TFA: I don't think children use their imaginations any more.
For how long have we heard people saying this? For as long as I can remember. Since I was a kid, which was just a couple short decades ago. (careful there - leave out the old age jokes please, I got it)
Parent: I think we will be allright as long as parents bring some healthy balance to thier kids activities. When has that concept ever been new and fresh? It has always been that way.
I think the parent (no pun intended) poster is spot on when stating that it is all about balance. This is not a new concept. Having to work hard at being a good parent and obtaining good parenting skills is NOT a new concept. Breaking news there, I know. But apparently we need people to research this and tell us that it is technology at fault and not that of, get this, the PARENTS. Heaven forbid we put the correct logic in the forefront and state the obvious.
Speaking from personal experience I know this is the case. My children (both under age 4) are exposed to technology in many ways yet I see no lack in their imagination or "real play" as such. Yes, my daughter has exposure to things such as DVDs, Tivo (separate unit, parental controlled with only child-appropriate shows on it), iPods (seeing mom & dads), YouTube/Google Video (parent filtered / supervised), etc. At such a young age she can understand the difference between live TV and having access to what she wants to watch on her own time frame when Tivo is around. This kind of exposure is good as far as I can tell, I want her to know about and understand such things.
But guess what, in spite of the fact that she has access to such technology my house is still strewn about with large buckets of plastic play food and mock kitchen sets with appliances and utensils, stuffed animals/dolls with all the cribs and carriages and accessories you can think of, die cast cars and building blocks, art supplies and modeling clay, and on and on and on. She has access to all kinds of tactile toys and activities and typically PREFERS such things. She would in a second pick going outside and becoming a magic princess in her swing set castle than sit in front of the TV. She does not lack in imagination or creativity, not by any means.
She also has a great need/desire to play with other children. She has cousins and friends that she loves to spend time with and would much rather play with them than park herself on a couch. Not that she won't sit and watch TV, because she will do that as well, but it is limited time - both by personal choice and by parent decision. And very soon there will be dance classes, gymnastics classes, soccer teams, and/or pre-school which will also give her more social opportunities as well. But again, there will need to be balance there. Too many activities and over-scheduling can also stifle childhood and "real play" because there is not time to play given all the structure. See, another problem we can have researched and have the government step in on. "The killing of childhood from over exposure to structured/scheduled activities." Where's that paper? I'll keep waiting.
The same thing I am sure will apply to my son, who is still just a couple months old and is too young to deal with any of this but will be soon. And we will expose him to all th
Here is a convenient pay-as-you-go site that works well. I for one prefer this model to the subscription model. More cost efficient if you go for long periods of time without a rental. Selection is decent as well, but not amazing. Either way, still worth a look if you don't like subscriptions.
<bias_notification>posted by member of googlebar dev team</bias_notification>
There are a lot of other additional features of the Googlebar which aren't supported by the default Firefox search (including mycroft) and some are also not going to all be incorporated into the official Google toolbar either.
Google Account and GMail integration (new mail notification, etc.)
Add web page thumbnails to search results
Search result navigation buttons to easily navigate between result pages
Google Suggest, find as you type search criteria (work in progress)
Google Maps integration (maps or satellite image options)
Lots of international support for searches AND news feeds
Specialty searches, including Google betas (video, print, scholar, mylocal, nocalc, etc.)
Desktop Search integration
Complete customization of toolbar (button locations, show/hide/reorder all toolbar search buttons)
Freedom, open source - speculation that Google will be a compiled object extension and/or obfuscated into oblivion
It would just be nice if naysayers would do their research before just stating that everything should just already be built into Firefox. This is far from true. However, if all you want is to just simply search Google (or Images or whatever) then JUST use the built in Firefox search box, mycroft, or bookmarklets - that will suffice. However, there is MUCH more to the Googlebar than just those simple search features.
On another note, Google will have the ability to support things we cannot. Notice that Googlebar does NOT support proprietary or protected technologies (PageRank, Compute) though there are other extensions to the project which attempt to fill those gaps as well. They will also have better support since they have a dedicated team for this task whereas the Googlebar is a rag-tag group of volunteers who do what they can when they can, which goes in spurts.
Bottom line is that you should just find which tools work for your searching needs and just use those. There are pros/cons/niches that are addressed by basically any of of these solutions (Firefox search box alone, Googlebar, soon to be Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, etc.) so just use the one that works best for you and don't try to convince everyone of what they don't need, espcially if you don't know what the potential options are that exist out there.
Someone should mod the parent comment up. This seems extremely insightful to me. IANAL and also didn't read the linked documents in their entirety but the comments seem to make sense.
Unfortunately this is extremely common in the litigious society we now live in. Get a high-powered lawyer and have that lawyer threaten a bunch of action based on a bunch of "lawyerspeak" that may or MAY NOT apply to the current situation, but sounds really scary to the average person - enough so that even if the threats are empty, it's enough to bring about the desired action.
Marvel got what they wanted, all material was removed so it will most likely end there. They sucessfully strong-armed the guy into throwing his hands up in the air and dumping everything just to avoid future problems because he didn't have the desire/means to fight it. And why should he? It was something he put money and effort into, not profited from. Why would he want to suffer more for something his was just doing for the common good.
This kind of stuff really makes me sick. Marvel does have the right to protect their property, but at some point there were people within the company supporting him - or so he says. And now this. They definitely beat him into submission as he states -
I have decided to retire from the world of skinning. Not surprisingly, it has lost any sense of enjoyment and wonder for me.
In fact it appears as though he has pulled all content from the site, and not just the questionable Marvel content - guess we have those bastards to thank for that as well.
Oh, and good luck getting this guy to supply this bit of info -
Given the apparent willful nature of your actions, Marvel demands that skindex.net disclose all of its activities with respect to its use of Marvel's properties, including but not limited to all sales or distribution of any products bearing any Marvel intellectual property, the names and contact information for all companies that have purchased or downloaded those items, as well as the addresses of any other websites where the infringing properties have been posted.
So it goes, on and on... this is not the first and will surely not be the last story like this posted on/.
I have read a few insightful and interesting comments in reply to this article that are based on common sense. Mainly this...
If security is increased and piracy goes down, then price of games should go down as well because the reason for the high prices in the first place was to make up for loss of profits due to piracy.
That makes complete sense if of course that was the real reason. I mean, come on, of course piracy wasn't the real reason behind high prices - duh! That is nothing but some marketing/PR spin to justify those high prices.
I have another theory which I think also relies on common sense, but looks at it from a money-snagging business ploy that I would implement if I was in that industry. To me it makes perfect (business) sense to raise prices while increasing the level of security / anti-pirate technology. People are forced to pay the hiked up prices because it is now even more difficult to circumvent the protections in place, plus you have the added benefit of protection against circumvention thanks to the unbelievably awful DMCA.
I mean you're all set...
Force people to buy higher priced products (because they will anyway) under protection of obnoxious law
Profit!
There is no missing middle step, that's all it takes.
Raise prices when people are forced to pay them and have less alternative options. Does this make the consumer happy? Of course not! But it sure does make the industry happy to see the extra money come in, because no matter how idealistic people like try be in saying, "That's the final straw, I'm not supporting this industry any more. They won't get my money!" - which will work for a small minority of people, but won't for the majority of people who will fork out more cash for the new games. The other unfortunate thing is that many games of late seem to be rushed to completion before they're ready and don't even deserve the higher prices on their own merit.
I know the parent post is being sarcastic but I know similar consersations have happened many times in the past between many different couples, myself included.
I had a little explaining to do when my wife saw the following bookmark in my browser -
What is tightrack.com, hmmmm?
Welcome to the tight rack home?!?!
Needless to say I had a little explaining to do but things were quickly cleared up. BTW, this is a site for a really cool pool table accessory that they actually use in the professional ranks. Safe to view from work.
Hey, look on the bright side...
on
NYT on RFID Tags
·
· Score: 5, Funny
There actually could be some benefits to this. With this type of technology you could find many upsides such as:
Never having to worry about losing things like remote controls, car keys, and pets (wearing a collar with an RFID of course).
Know who is at your doorstep without the use peepholes or cameras.
Being able to be at the office and say, "Hey, going commando again today, huh? It's not even casual Friday."
The possiblities are endless! Embrace the benifits of new technology, it's all for your own good.
Ok, I'm done - sarcasm off. I still think the office thing would be fun though.
Let me clarify a little, but your point is well taken. The extended warranty wasn't required to get any repair. I would have had to deal directly with the manufacturer (Mitsubishi) and would have had to deliver the TV myself to the repair shop.
Trying to move a TV that is nearly 5' long, 4.5' high, and weighs over 300 lbs didn't sound like too much fun - so I obviously opted to kick in the extended warranty and have them come out and service the TV at my location.
Last January I purchased a Mitsubishi Platinum HDTV unit from a big-name electronics store. Just a few weeks ago (less than 11 months after purchase) the TV went out. Ugh, what a bummer!
The television repair person came out to diagnose the problem but couldn't figure it out - of course. So he took the guts out of the TV for diagnosing back at the shop. On his way out he mentioned that Mitisubishi has been having problems recently with the reliablilty of their picutre tubes so he thought that may be the problem. (hint #1 that these can be unreliable)
Come to find out that it was not the picture tube but the power supply of all things - my goodness, how hard is it to put a good quality power supply into a piece of electronic equipment that cost over $3k. (hint #2 that these can be unreliable)
Well at least I will be getting my TV put back together tomorrow and all it really cost me was time away from the big screen and my Tivo - which isn't really a bad thing. Luckily the extended service warranty paid off for once, didn't pay a cent.
Just as an aside I don't usually buy those extended warranties but it was less than %10 of the cost of the item and I don't consider this type of item a throw-away item - the author of the article considers his DVD player tossable after a year - this TV is a little different I think.
Just my $.02 - I had heard that Mitsubishi was pretty good in the realiability department on their TVs but personal experience has proven otherwise for me. We'll see how long until the next issue arises - hopefully long into the future.
Why? Because of this simple reason, this probably doesn't apply to you. Believe it or not there are many of us out there that can't get cable or dsl where we live - imagine that. Satellite access is for folks like myself (and the submitter) who have this problem -
As someone who probably won't live long enough to see DSL or cable Internet reach my rural neighborhood...
True satellite access isn't useful for gaming and other such things due to high latency issues but it's better than dialup, IMO. Especially since they now offer 2-way satellite access at relatively good speeds so that you don't need a line for dialing up to do uploads.
Lucky for me they now offer a wireless point to point in my rural area that offers high speeds with low latency (under 5ms) but they have a monopoly in the area and are charging an arm and a leg for relatively low speeds - $60/month for 256k and $90/month for 512k (this is for residential, businesses have more options).
Again, not ideal but I'll gladly pay their unfortunately high costs because I want high speed bad enough and they're the only other game in town that meets my needs (besides dialup or satellite).
Come July 1, 2003, those who fail to disclose that a breach has occurred could be liable for civil damages or face class actions.
They (the CA government) don't need to audit or enforce anything. It is self-enforcing for those businesses that feel they may be sued and have to pay monetary payments for NOT reporting the incident. If a given company doesn't feel it can be successfully sued due to the incident then there probably wouldn't be a public reporting of it.
It's just a CYA that would have to be handled on a case by case basis for each company and wouldn't be enforced by auditors and the like.
Actually, this is of no surprise to many that have followed Oracle over the past few years (perhaps 5+).
Oracle has been incoporating many open standards into their products recently which has been necessary to help keep the company in a (relatively) good position in the database server market. In the past all of their technologies were proprietary with their custom SQL extensions and their custom language for stored procedures and triggers (PL/SQL). Oh, and Linux - forget about it.
However much of that has changed and now they support Linux, XML, Java (I believe the first to have Java stored procedures), and a large portion of the J2EE platform with things like OC4J (their java app server based on Orion).
See these links for just a sampling of what I'm talking about.
An excellent list I must say and quite useful, however I think there is one important item that is missing...
<sarcasm>
Head to your nearest merchant and pick up a case of your preferred adult beverage - this will be necessary for dealing with the endless number of frustrations you will encounter when learning to become a UNIX admin using this 'learn-by-doing' methodology
</sarcasm>
Truly, the list in the parent post is a good way to pick up these skills. But believe you me, it will cause some grief fumbling around trying to figure out the nuances of all the various types of systems and getting them to interoperate.
Determining the right infrastructure...
on
Geek-Chic Power Houses
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· Score: 5, Insightful
... on a budget is a frustrating problem.
Oh what a dream. Reading this article makes it all seem so joyous and wonderful. Especially when you don't have budget limitations and have the monetary freedom to completely scrap something that becomes obsolete in a couple of years and replace it with the latest and greatest thing out there. *Drool*
Speaking from the experience of going through the ups and downs of building a new house this year - trying to determine what technologies to use now and how to leave room for future upgrades/changes with such obstacles as:
1. A realistic budget
2. An uninformed contractor
3. Conflicting opinions from all directions
It is tough to know where to jump in and what is cost effective and useful technology that can be expanded and upgraded without costing an arm and a leg.
Typically a contractor is very informed about housing issues (plumbing, electrical, etc.) and can be a great source of information and recommendations but when it came to the tech infrastructure it was hard to find someone knowledgeable in the small town that I live in.
I pretty much had to do all the research myself and inform him on what I thought would be best. It was all a little odd considering I'm not a builder by any stretch of the imagination.
Ugh, makes my head hurt. We ended up going cat-5 with pre-wiring and space for wireless access points in the attic and conduit in the walls to pull fiber (or something else) later when it becomes feasible. It seemed best for us at the current time, hopefully it will continue to be a good decision a few years down the line.
Slashdot Mirror
We don't really need a self-important dolt to tell us why theaters aren't successful. There are hundreds of ways to dissect this problem and hundreds more ways to get creative in order to attempt to solve it and give a worthwhile experience/value to a movie-goer, but that's just a whole lot of words. Here's the bottom line:
What To Do = ( Home Experience > Theater Experience ) ? Stay Home : Go Out
Why don't we also ask Ebert to explain why Video Arcades died out as well... please, someone explain this!
Honestly... have you not yet learned that the MO here is to read the headline, maybe even the summary, and then comment / discuss / argue / flame. Commenting on the actual merit or content of an article... for shame.
</sarcasm>
Come on, please say I'm not the only one. Anyone else read that headline and immediately wonder why a mixed martial arts (MMA) behemoth wanted to research the health of video games? Why in the world would the UFC want to study video games and health? To give fighters a fast track to a jiu jistsu black belt through gaming? Anyone? Ok, maybe I've just been tainted by the huge influx of MMA into the forefront of my mind.
While this may have some small amount of truth to it, there is much more to it than that. It's not the case that unbiased reviews don't exist. Problem is that people don't pay attention and still by the same recycled titles that they are comfortable with. Don't blame the press for people being sheepish. There have been quite a few instances recently where MANY review sources were raving about a given title and no matter how much they attempted to get the word out it just didn't do any good. So don't tell me that there is an "unbiased game review" syndrome keeping people from being people. That's just not true.
- Okami? Anyone?
- Psychonaughts? No, nothing?
Those are a couple of the recent titles that come to mind. Really made an attempt to do something unique that the critics loved, but the market did not. There are others. Look for Hotel Dusk for the DS to suffer this same fate.
I can't believe they put Ig to task like that. He's just trying to communicate with us earthlings and have us bow down in worship. What's so wrong with that?
/ index.html
CNN has a bit more info and a much better live action shot. Ig in all his lit up glory.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare
So... let's do a little lunch math here.
$ 250 : main system, etc.
$ 040 : extra Wii-mote
$ 020 : extra nunchucks
$ 050 : Zelda (who won't?)
-----------
$ 360 : Grand Total (LOL - good work Nintendo)
Look at that total, how ironic is that? Nintendo is taking my "360" and laughing all the way to the bank. Sorry Microsoft. I'll catch up with you next year, perhaps.
Yes, please get the goverment involved in telling me how to raise my children. Please decide how much technology I should subject them to and what is acceptable. Isn't it obvious that we need such guidance because we as parents can't be responsible enough to do that on our own. Please... spare me.
For how long have we heard people saying this? For as long as I can remember. Since I was a kid, which was just a couple short decades ago. (careful there - leave out the old age jokes please, I got it)
I think the parent (no pun intended) poster is spot on when stating that it is all about balance. This is not a new concept. Having to work hard at being a good parent and obtaining good parenting skills is NOT a new concept. Breaking news there, I know. But apparently we need people to research this and tell us that it is technology at fault and not that of, get this, the PARENTS. Heaven forbid we put the correct logic in the forefront and state the obvious.
Speaking from personal experience I know this is the case. My children (both under age 4) are exposed to technology in many ways yet I see no lack in their imagination or "real play" as such. Yes, my daughter has exposure to things such as DVDs, Tivo (separate unit, parental controlled with only child-appropriate shows on it), iPods (seeing mom & dads), YouTube/Google Video (parent filtered / supervised), etc. At such a young age she can understand the difference between live TV and having access to what she wants to watch on her own time frame when Tivo is around. This kind of exposure is good as far as I can tell, I want her to know about and understand such things.
But guess what, in spite of the fact that she has access to such technology my house is still strewn about with large buckets of plastic play food and mock kitchen sets with appliances and utensils, stuffed animals/dolls with all the cribs and carriages and accessories you can think of, die cast cars and building blocks, art supplies and modeling clay, and on and on and on. She has access to all kinds of tactile toys and activities and typically PREFERS such things. She would in a second pick going outside and becoming a magic princess in her swing set castle than sit in front of the TV. She does not lack in imagination or creativity, not by any means.
She also has a great need/desire to play with other children. She has cousins and friends that she loves to spend time with and would much rather play with them than park herself on a couch. Not that she won't sit and watch TV, because she will do that as well, but it is limited time - both by personal choice and by parent decision. And very soon there will be dance classes, gymnastics classes, soccer teams, and/or pre-school which will also give her more social opportunities as well. But again, there will need to be balance there. Too many activities and over-scheduling can also stifle childhood and "real play" because there is not time to play given all the structure. See, another problem we can have researched and have the government step in on. "The killing of childhood from over exposure to structured/scheduled activities." Where's that paper? I'll keep waiting.
The same thing I am sure will apply to my son, who is still just a couple months old and is too young to deal with any of this but will be soon. And we will expose him to all th
Here is a convenient pay-as-you-go site that works well. I for one prefer this model to the subscription model. More cost efficient if you go for long periods of time without a rental. Selection is decent as well, but not amazing. Either way, still worth a look if you don't like subscriptions.
http://dvdovernight.com/
There are a lot of other additional features of the Googlebar which aren't supported by the default Firefox search (including mycroft) and some are also not going to all be incorporated into the official Google toolbar either.
It would just be nice if naysayers would do their research before just stating that everything should just already be built into Firefox. This is far from true. However, if all you want is to just simply search Google (or Images or whatever) then JUST use the built in Firefox search box, mycroft, or bookmarklets - that will suffice. However, there is MUCH more to the Googlebar than just those simple search features.
On another note, Google will have the ability to support things we cannot. Notice that Googlebar does NOT support proprietary or protected technologies (PageRank, Compute) though there are other extensions to the project which attempt to fill those gaps as well. They will also have better support since they have a dedicated team for this task whereas the Googlebar is a rag-tag group of volunteers who do what they can when they can, which goes in spurts.
Bottom line is that you should just find which tools work for your searching needs and just use those. There are pros/cons/niches that are addressed by basically any of of these solutions (Firefox search box alone, Googlebar, soon to be Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, etc.) so just use the one that works best for you and don't try to convince everyone of what they don't need, espcially if you don't know what the potential options are that exist out there.
Someone should mod the parent comment up. This seems extremely insightful to me. IANAL and also didn't read the linked documents in their entirety but the comments seem to make sense.
Unfortunately this is extremely common in the litigious society we now live in. Get a high-powered lawyer and have that lawyer threaten a bunch of action based on a bunch of "lawyerspeak" that may or MAY NOT apply to the current situation, but sounds really scary to the average person - enough so that even if the threats are empty, it's enough to bring about the desired action.
Marvel got what they wanted, all material was removed so it will most likely end there. They sucessfully strong-armed the guy into throwing his hands up in the air and dumping everything just to avoid future problems because he didn't have the desire/means to fight it. And why should he? It was something he put money and effort into, not profited from. Why would he want to suffer more for something his was just doing for the common good.
This kind of stuff really makes me sick. Marvel does have the right to protect their property, but at some point there were people within the company supporting him - or so he says. And now this. They definitely beat him into submission as he states -
In fact it appears as though he has pulled all content from the site, and not just the questionable Marvel content - guess we have those bastards to thank for that as well.
Oh, and good luck getting this guy to supply this bit of info -
So it goes, on and on... this is not the first and will surely not be the last story like this posted on /.
I have read a few insightful and interesting comments in reply to this article that are based on common sense. Mainly this...
That makes complete sense if of course that was the real reason. I mean, come on, of course piracy wasn't the real reason behind high prices - duh! That is nothing but some marketing/PR spin to justify those high prices.
I have another theory which I think also relies on common sense, but looks at it from a money-snagging business ploy that I would implement if I was in that industry. To me it makes perfect (business) sense to raise prices while increasing the level of security / anti-pirate technology. People are forced to pay the hiked up prices because it is now even more difficult to circumvent the protections in place, plus you have the added benefit of protection against circumvention thanks to the unbelievably awful DMCA.
I mean you're all set...
There is no missing middle step, that's all it takes.
Raise prices when people are forced to pay them and have less alternative options. Does this make the consumer happy? Of course not! But it sure does make the industry happy to see the extra money come in, because no matter how idealistic people like try be in saying, "That's the final straw, I'm not supporting this industry any more. They won't get my money!" - which will work for a small minority of people, but won't for the majority of people who will fork out more cash for the new games. The other unfortunate thing is that many games of late seem to be rushed to completion before they're ready and don't even deserve the higher prices on their own merit.
Just my $.02
And on a related note, I would also like to know how to drink a recipe?
Is that like trying to smell the color nine (which, obviously, is difficult)
up and running is now like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
*rimshot*
Thanks /.
I know the parent post is being sarcastic but I know similar consersations have happened many times in the past between many different couples, myself included.
I had a little explaining to do when my wife saw the following bookmark in my browser -
Welcome to the tight rack home?!?!
Needless to say I had a little explaining to do but things were quickly cleared up. BTW, this is a site for a really cool pool table accessory that they actually use in the professional ranks. Safe to view from work.
There actually could be some benefits to this. With this type of technology you could find many upsides such as:
The possiblities are endless! Embrace the benifits of new technology, it's all for your own good.
Ok, I'm done - sarcasm off. I still think the office thing would be fun though.
I guess it's my turn now to cash in on the 1, 2, 3 profit making list. According to this post you have inadvertently filled in the elusive step 2.
I am sure you meant to say "unprofitability" which is much more desirable and I think is what you were after.
If not then may God help us all, there is someone pushing for profitability of spammers on slashdot - Noooooo!
Let me clarify a little, but your point is well taken. The extended warranty wasn't required to get any repair. I would have had to deal directly with the manufacturer (Mitsubishi) and would have had to deliver the TV myself to the repair shop.
Trying to move a TV that is nearly 5' long, 4.5' high, and weighs over 300 lbs didn't sound like too much fun - so I obviously opted to kick in the extended warranty and have them come out and service the TV at my location.
Last January I purchased a Mitsubishi Platinum HDTV unit from a big-name electronics store. Just a few weeks ago (less than 11 months after purchase) the TV went out. Ugh, what a bummer!
The television repair person came out to diagnose the problem but couldn't figure it out - of course. So he took the guts out of the TV for diagnosing back at the shop. On his way out he mentioned that Mitisubishi has been having problems recently with the reliablilty of their picutre tubes so he thought that may be the problem. (hint #1 that these can be unreliable)
Come to find out that it was not the picture tube but the power supply of all things - my goodness, how hard is it to put a good quality power supply into a piece of electronic equipment that cost over $3k. (hint #2 that these can be unreliable)
Well at least I will be getting my TV put back together tomorrow and all it really cost me was time away from the big screen and my Tivo - which isn't really a bad thing. Luckily the extended service warranty paid off for once, didn't pay a cent.
Just as an aside I don't usually buy those extended warranties but it was less than %10 of the cost of the item and I don't consider this type of item a throw-away item - the author of the article considers his DVD player tossable after a year - this TV is a little different I think.
Just my $.02 - I had heard that Mitsubishi was pretty good in the realiability department on their TVs but personal experience has proven otherwise for me. We'll see how long until the next issue arises - hopefully long into the future.
Crud, already can't get to the site. Well here is some information not included in the article...
Here is a image of what the[begin image]
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Why? Because of this simple reason, this probably doesn't apply to you. Believe it or not there are many of us out there that can't get cable or dsl where we live - imagine that. Satellite access is for folks like myself (and the submitter) who have this problem -
True satellite access isn't useful for gaming and other such things due to high latency issues but it's better than dialup, IMO. Especially since they now offer 2-way satellite access at relatively good speeds so that you don't need a line for dialing up to do uploads.
Lucky for me they now offer a wireless point to point in my rural area that offers high speeds with low latency (under 5ms) but they have a monopoly in the area and are charging an arm and a leg for relatively low speeds - $60/month for 256k and $90/month for 512k (this is for residential, businesses have more options).
Again, not ideal but I'll gladly pay their unfortunately high costs because I want high speed bad enough and they're the only other game in town that meets my needs (besides dialup or satellite).
From the article...
They (the CA government) don't need to audit or enforce anything. It is self-enforcing for those businesses that feel they may be sued and have to pay monetary payments for NOT reporting the incident. If a given company doesn't feel it can be successfully sued due to the incident then there probably wouldn't be a public reporting of it.
It's just a CYA that would have to be handled on a case by case basis for each company and wouldn't be enforced by auditors and the like.
Actually, this is of no surprise to many that have followed Oracle over the past few years (perhaps 5+).
Oracle has been incoporating many open standards into their products recently which has been necessary to help keep the company in a (relatively) good position in the database server market. In the past all of their technologies were proprietary with their custom SQL extensions and their custom language for stored procedures and triggers (PL/SQL). Oh, and Linux - forget about it.
However much of that has changed and now they support Linux, XML, Java (I believe the first to have Java stored procedures), and a large portion of the J2EE platform with things like OC4J (their java app server based on Orion).
See these links for just a sampling of what I'm talking about.
Java StuffLinux Stuff
An excellent list I must say and quite useful, however I think there is one important item that is missing...
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Truly, the list in the parent post is a good way to pick up these skills. But believe you me, it will cause some grief fumbling around trying to figure out the nuances of all the various types of systems and getting them to interoperate.
Oh what a dream. Reading this article makes it all seem so joyous and wonderful. Especially when you don't have budget limitations and have the monetary freedom to completely scrap something that becomes obsolete in a couple of years and replace it with the latest and greatest thing out there. *Drool*
Speaking from the experience of going through the ups and downs of building a new house this year - trying to determine what technologies to use now and how to leave room for future upgrades/changes with such obstacles as:
1. A realistic budget
2. An uninformed contractor
3. Conflicting opinions from all directions
It is tough to know where to jump in and what is cost effective and useful technology that can be expanded and upgraded without costing an arm and a leg.
Typically a contractor is very informed about housing issues (plumbing, electrical, etc.) and can be a great source of information and recommendations but when it came to the tech infrastructure it was hard to find someone knowledgeable in the small town that I live in.
I pretty much had to do all the research myself and inform him on what I thought would be best. It was all a little odd considering I'm not a builder by any stretch of the imagination.
Ugh, makes my head hurt. We ended up going cat-5 with pre-wiring and space for wireless access points in the attic and conduit in the walls to pull fiber (or something else) later when it becomes feasible. It seemed best for us at the current time, hopefully it will continue to be a good decision a few years down the line.