The reason some people with the TW DVR (aka Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000) can schedule first-run-only recordings and others can't is because there are two types of software for this box: Passport (from Pioneer) and SARA (from Scientific Atlanta). Which kind you get depends on whether your cable system runs Pioneer or SA equipment.
Passport is widely believed to be the better of the two. Passport, for one thing, does allow you to choose "All Episodes" or "Record First Run Only".
Re:Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays.
on
Orwellian Tech Support
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· Score: 2, Informative
Initech is the horrible company depicted in "Office Space", a movie which should be required reading at Star Fleet Academy.
Sure, but that doesn't help with the other bad effects of spyware: slowing the system down, causing crashes, changing the home page in IE, etc. IMHO, the actual SPYING done by spyware is the least of its annoyances.
It's also one of the quickest ways to make all of upper tier support utterly loathe you, which in the long run is a bad idea. So I would advise only doing this if you've got a truly serious problem, or if you're planning on not being a long-term customer...
Oh man, you hit it on the HEAD. What the "jump right to the sales rep" people don't understand is that you'll get the same support if you just go through tech support channels as you would if you immediately go crying to your sales guy. Work with tech support, don't have an attitude, and your problem will get fixed faster than if you get arrogant and obnoxious.
So even if we, the techs, knew an entire city was out, we'd still be forced to drag you, the customer, through half an hour of fruitless troubleshooting.
Man, I have LONG been sure that ISPs were doing this but it's good to hear it from the horse's mouth.
Advertiser gives money to site for ad space clicks.
Advertiser gets 100000 clicks and NO SALES.
Advertiser goes away, site runs out of money.
Agreed, but that's because the banner advertising model is misunderstood by the people running the advertisements. They think online ads are somehow DIFFERENT from old media ads. They'll willingly run ads in print, TV, and radio knowing that the benefit from these ads is hard to quantify. Traditional ads' value lies in strengthening brand name and recognition; such advertisements don't cause sales to just pop out of the ether 10 seconds after they're seen. But when these same people run online ads, they expect a magical "views=instant sales" paradigm to materialize, and it doesn't.
Once advertisers realize that the internet is just another medium, and they understand that online ads shouldn't be expected to do anything more than conventional ads do, the market will settle down and become sustainable at some (probably low, I admit) level.
Micropayments, on the other hand, will only become viable when there is a universal standard that allows anybody, anywhere, to make a payment RIGHT NOW to see a page. As it is now, the micropayment model is a mess and a hassle for surfers to deal with, and the vast majority of people will just bail rather than jump through hoops in order to pay a nickel or a quarter to see a web page.
You'd rather, but will you? All too few people put their money where their mouths are and actually pony up the dough when given the opportunity to micropay. That's the whole problem with this model.
That wasn't really an Architect. It was George Costanza pretending to be an Architect.
Re:Walmart is evil (was: Re:Walmart = sleaze)
on
Walmart to Push RFID
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· Score: 1
I'm not so sure their decision to sell some things and not others makes them evil. It's their business; they should be able to sell whatever that want.
The censorship issue brought up in the article is not about the poor spammers' freedom of speech being infringed upon. It's about legitimate organizations like peacefire.org, who have found themselves on blacklists as "collateral damage" and have had a hellacious time getting off those lists due to the way blacklist maintainers (particularly SPEWS) tend to be anonymous and difficult to reach. A related problem that's brought up is the way anonymous list maintainers can, if they choose, put someone on their blacklist as part of a vendetta instead of for legitimate reasons.
How about when they ask how often you have sex, and what positions you use?
Unfortunately, in my case, that would be one seriously short interview.
At any rate, I think we do need so rules as to who is and is not allowed access to our credit reports, and why. What's ostendibly a means for lenders to check on our ability to pay them back has become a half-assed, catchall method of "measuring" our worth as human beings.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason some people with the TW DVR (aka Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000) can schedule first-run-only recordings and others can't is because there are two types of software for this box: Passport (from Pioneer) and SARA (from Scientific Atlanta). Which kind you get depends on whether your cable system runs Pioneer or SA equipment. Passport is widely believed to be the better of the two. Passport, for one thing, does allow you to choose "All Episodes" or "Record First Run Only".
It like totally never happened. There is a Powergenitalia.com website, but it has nothing to do with the UK company Powergen.
Don't say "Master/Slave". Say "Master/Shake".
Oh man, you hit it on the HEAD. What the "jump right to the sales rep" people don't understand is that you'll get the same support if you just go through tech support channels as you would if you immediately go crying to your sales guy. Work with tech support, don't have an attitude, and your problem will get fixed faster than if you get arrogant and obnoxious.
So even if we, the techs, knew an entire city was out, we'd still be forced to drag you, the customer, through half an hour of fruitless troubleshooting.
Man, I have LONG been sure that ISPs were doing this but it's good to hear it from the horse's mouth.
Advertiser gets 100000 clicks and NO SALES.
Advertiser goes away, site runs out of money.
Agreed, but that's because the banner advertising model is misunderstood by the people running the advertisements. They think online ads are somehow DIFFERENT from old media ads. They'll willingly run ads in print, TV, and radio knowing that the benefit from these ads is hard to quantify. Traditional ads' value lies in strengthening brand name and recognition; such advertisements don't cause sales to just pop out of the ether 10 seconds after they're seen. But when these same people run online ads, they expect a magical "views=instant sales" paradigm to materialize, and it doesn't.
Once advertisers realize that the internet is just another medium, and they understand that online ads shouldn't be expected to do anything more than conventional ads do, the market will settle down and become sustainable at some (probably low, I admit) level.
Micropayments, on the other hand, will only become viable when there is a universal standard that allows anybody, anywhere, to make a payment RIGHT NOW to see a page. As it is now, the micropayment model is a mess and a hassle for surfers to deal with, and the vast majority of people will just bail rather than jump through hoops in order to pay a nickel or a quarter to see a web page.
You'd rather, but will you? All too few people put their money where their mouths are and actually pony up the dough when given the opportunity to micropay. That's the whole problem with this model.
That wasn't really an Architect. It was George Costanza pretending to be an Architect.
I'm not so sure their decision to sell some things and not others makes them evil. It's their business; they should be able to sell whatever that want.
The censorship issue brought up in the article is not about the poor spammers' freedom of speech being infringed upon. It's about legitimate organizations like peacefire.org, who have found themselves on blacklists as "collateral damage" and have had a hellacious time getting off those lists due to the way blacklist maintainers (particularly SPEWS) tend to be anonymous and difficult to reach. A related problem that's brought up is the way anonymous list maintainers can, if they choose, put someone on their blacklist as part of a vendetta instead of for legitimate reasons.
Unfortunately, in my case, that would be one seriously short interview.
At any rate, I think we do need so rules as to who is and is not allowed access to our credit reports, and why. What's ostendibly a means for lenders to check on our ability to pay them back has become a half-assed, catchall method of "measuring" our worth as human beings.