I remember we had a document that Olaf and Mickey took to Sony that said they'd like to develop jointly the next hardware - the next game platform, with Sega, and here's what we think it ought to do. Sony apparently gave the green light to that. I took it to Sega of Japan and told them that this was what we thought an ideal platform would be - at least from an U.S. perspective - based on what we've learned from the Sega CD, and our involvement with Sony and our own people. Sega said not a chance. Why would it want to share a platform with Sony? Sega would be much better off just developing its own platform, and it's nice that we had some ideas on what that platform ought to be and they'd consider it, but the company would be developing its next platform itself.
Wow... So the entire reason that the Playstation is as big as it is now is because both Sega and Nintendo turned down agreements with them?!
I knew about Nintendo's part, but I had no idea that Sega was involved with Sony as well.
This is insane! Someone mod the interview +1 Insightful.
I remember reading about something like this in Popular Science back in late '05.
Can anyone tell me how close this is to the Hypo-sprays (sp?) from the Star Trek world? Do you still have to place is strategically, or is it a general point-and-click interface?
First comm badges. Then hypo-sprays. Warp speed, here we come!
Wi-Fi sounds like a big deal if you're comparing the player to the wire-bound iPod. But this is more than just another MP3 player. It will also compete with game players from Sony and Nintendo that have long had Wi-Fi and work as media players, Internet terminals and communication devices.
So Microsoft is looking for another loss investment? What, the XBox doesn't lose them enough money?
Nintendo does well in the hand-held market because they've spent almost 20 years learning what people want in a hand held device, as well as offering a large selection of software that is fun and speaks to a wide spectrum of people, not just your 14-24 male crowd.
Sony has been able to break into the handheld market (where many others have failed) because they have the brand name recognition, as well as ports for a lot of popular franchises, not to mention the nice movie viewing capability. (However, even Sony is beginning to sink, as the number of people speaking against the constant remakes are beginning to grow, and UMD movies have all but sunk.)
So Microsoft, which barely edged Nintendo out for second place in America, and is in third place in Japan by a far gap (even despite being the first "next-gen" system there), thinks that they can break into the handheld market with what sounds like another version of their "Origami" project, but geared more towards games? I would put down safe money that it sinks faster than the Game Gear. The idea of it being an XBox brand makes me think that the device will be bigger than the PSP, too.
"My, that backpack looks heavy. What do you have in there?" "My eXtreme-Box portable gaming system." "And what else?" "Uh, that's it."
Of course, no one would try to steal it, since the device would be useful as a bludguning instrument, as well. "Looks like the perp left a mark on his victim. What exactly is that?" "Looks like some sort of big X."
On the one hand, this a bastard of a patent. Patent law reform, change in the system, blah blah, it all needs to happen, because this is what we get otherwise.
The "Mario 128" demo you refer to for the Gamecube was nothing more than a tech demo. It had 128 Marios on a small sphere of a world walking around, hitting each other, tripping over each other, and doing a good deal of other stuff.
Just like the Meowth Pokemon singing video and the Link/Ganon fight, it was purely a tech demo. There was wild speculation about potential games arising from each demo, but I don't believe any of them were fruitful (well, except the Too Human demo, which apparently debuted to lackluster results on the XBox/360.)
Speaking of the Link/Ganon demo, while the graphics I've seen for Twilight Princess are awesome, I will be disappointed if I don't get some FMVs that look as beautiful as the originall 2001 demo did (especially since I plan on getting the Wii version).
Considering that eBay owns PayPal, a perceivable competitor to Google's Checkout program, could this be seen as an anti-competetive move? Considering that Google is pretty much the auction site, this would be a large portion of auction users that Google may try to target. It would be akin to Microsoft locking people out of using programs that weren't made by Microsoft.
Now that I think about it, eBay doesn't accept other payment websites such as YowCow, do they? Granted, YowCow has pretty much shut down now, but there are other similar businesses online. Could Google be able to gear up for a class-action suit against eBay, using both their own service and partnering with similar businesses to take on eBay?
I dispise landmines, but if they're going to be used, better to use this technology than to use what we currently have.
Aside from being able to better take on an enemy, the mines can also be programmed to turn off after a set amount of time, can be disabled remotely, and, since they can move, can easily be recalled at the end of an encounter or war. They still have the same pitfalls of regular landmines (everyone is the enemy), but these advances at least offer a better way.
Even if you don't develop new, safer weapons, people will keep killing with the weapons they already have. Better to make something that can pick out enemy targets over civilians, that's non-lethal, or that doesn't affect organic compounds than to just say "We shouldn't make this!" and have people running around with regular ol' guns.
While these may not replace landmines already in the field, they would probably be used in future encounters.
Is eInk the brand, or the actual term?
I've always known the technology as LCD Paper. If it's call "eInk", then that would be why I got so few helpful hints.
Reading the blog, it looks like their "embargo" didn't really bar talking about it all, merely talking about certain things; in short, no spoilers (including character descriptions and CG movies) and no sampling/uploading of music from the game. The later seems somewhat obvious, as its most likely copyrighted (I've seen few news sites post just the music.)
However, they can't talk about spoilers? I can understand this demand if 1up got a scoop on a game that's still in production. I can understand this if 1up got a scoop about some utlra super secret sidequest and were to only do teasers until a certain date (or it became public some other way.)
But telling them to keep quiet about a game taht has been out in Japan for months, widely available to anyone with the money for an import? What, is Squeenix hoping that someone with a Geocities account can get details out earlier than a gaming site?
It doesn't look like they're threatening anything, either- it's just a "hey, if you would, could you not do this stuff please? kthx" letter.
Does anyone know if eInk is the only producer/provider of LCD/Electronic Paper? I have a few ideas for inventions that would make use of their paper, as well as projects for both work and college, but they want $3000 for a development kit, and I just can't afford that (I don't know if my company would cover the cost or not, at least for the ideas I have that are work-related.)
I thought there were more companies putting out LCD Paper itself, but so far I've only been able to find eInk.
Also, how much does LCD paper cost per sheet these days?
What holds true in one country doesn't necessarily hold true in another.
For instance, I'm sure that there are a lot of people in war-torn countries in Africa who would much rather hear a dentist's drill than the crunching sound of a tank.
Participate For Payout sites aren't anything new; I receive a lot of spam each week telling me how I can earn oodles by sitting on my ass and filling out forms. However, it seems that more and more legitamite PFP sites are coming out of the woodwork, seemingly differing from the PTS sites of yore.
The Pay To Surf (PTS) model requires you to do what you normally do while having banner ads running along some part of your screen. These have low pay out because it's simple to ignore the ads, so advertisers aren't willing to pay a lot for them to be shown.
PFP, on the other hand, requires more interaction with the user. One site that I've gotten into is Moola. Being a beta version, you need an invite to get in (I wonder where they got that idea from). The jist is that you play games to win money, but you are actually playing against another human competitor, and whoever wins gets all of the money in the pot. The "bait" for the site is that you could reach a $10 million payout, but only after you win 30 consecutive games on increasing levels, putting all your earnings so far on the line each time. The site gives you a penny to start out with. If you lose all your money, you get another penny and another go. Even if you lose, the games are fun (though there are only two right now) so you're entertained enough to play again.
How they make revenue is by forcing you to watch ads. You have a video ad, generally between 10 and 20 seconds, and after the ad you have to answer a question about it, forcing you to pay attention (if you get a repeat ad, they allow you to skip it and go straight to the question, which is nice.)
eefoff (Fuck off?) appears to be trying a similar model, but instead of creating content itself and letting users interact, it has a place to allow users to host the content, encouraging more content by offering a payout.
However, I imagine this is kind of a logistics and litigatious nightmare. Obviously, there will be some sort of report feature for media that is copyrighted, but how fast will they be able to respond? And what about non-copyrighted but popular content? I remember trying to find the "Juggernaut Bitch" video that got interest on the net on YouTube only to be greeted with 25 different copies of varying quality (even the original was pretty bad). How does eefoff plan to handle this kind of thing? (can't visit it cause I'm at work) If a popular video is downloaded by someone and then uploaded back to eefoof, that gives them basically free money, and takes away from the original creator/poster, making them less likely to provide more original content in the future.
I'm also curious about how they plan to do revenue. Plastering the site with ads will only drive consumers away. You can insert video ads before someone watches a video, but what about the rest? How do they plan to make enough money with online advertisement to facilitate not only the storing and displaying of various media, but also cutting members a percentage?
Of course, if this takes off it would be useful for indie producers, as they could share their vision with the world and get a little cash towards their next project.
That is most likely the number one most feared sound in America. Not a police siren. Not a gun shot. Not a cry of pain. The dentist's drill.
As a kid, there was nothing like that sound to make me remember to brush my teeth (well, for a few days, at least.)
Even as an adult, the sound makes me cringe whenever I go to the dentist (which, granted, hasn't been for a few years:).
Reasons for corporate setups
on
Freedb.org Ending
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
While I believe that free, open source software is very good and should be used more widely, this is an example of where corporate solutions can prevail.
I've used FreeDB for a while now with the CD ripping program I use (Goldwave, highly recommended), and it had its pros and cons.
On the plus side, I could find listings for more foreign/anime CDs than I could using CDDB (a corporate company, used by the likes of WinAmp and WMP, I believe).
On the minus side, there were a few moderately popular to very popular CDs that had no listing. Also, more than a few CDs (including the foreign CDs mentioned) had more than one listing, each with small differences (some with large differences, such as translated song titles, or even just misspelled words), so you had to go through each one to find one that suited you. (One might argue that the choice was good, but in this case it was just annoying.)
The reason that FreeDB stopped is because those in the lead couldn't come to a decision. This would almost never happen in a corporate environment. Any dispute would go up the chain until it hit the CEO or board of directors, where a firm decision one way or another would be made. In the mean time, the product would merely remain unchanged (unless company policy specifies otherwise), so there would be no interruption in service.
Had FreeDB used a similar hierarchy (which they may have had, but it just fell apart), this might have been avoided. The programmers/engineers would dispute something, and the project lead/lead engineer would hear both sides and say "This is this, and that's that."
Certainly, this will be an inconvenience to those who use programs that use FreeDB, but have no idea that the program does.
I don't see this as a valid claim. Yeah, I'd be pissed if my rank suddenly dropped, but this is Google's site. For the most part, you don't pay to go into the rankings. The Adsense stuff might have some validity, but I wasn't certain if KinderStart had AdSense and were getting less money from it, or if hits from their own ad in AdSense had decreased.
As for the anti-trust thing, I don't think that sticks, either. This isn't Microsoft telling stores they'll lose product if they stock non-MS stuff. Google isn't stopping anyone from going to that site. Google hasn't blacklisted KinderStart. KinderStart probably has retained its rankings in other search engines.
This is exactly what I was thinking upon reading the article.
I went to the 419Eater page for it, and all the e-mails appear to have come from the same person. So, it could be that he throught that $25,000 was worth it, and actually went through the trouble of having someone make these (which, from the looks of it, were not bad.)
However, there is always the chance that he had a friend genuinely interested in doing artwork. Considering the area he was supposedly writing from, it wouldn't be unknown for the friend to not have e-mail or regular PC access.
The work he received might be considered theft, or conspiracy; after all, he was promising a chance at money, and someone was submitting their artwork for a chance toward that money (when there was none.) It would be the same as selling some guy raffle tickets at $5, when there is no actual raffle, let alone a prize.
Then there was the fact that he posed as a police officer, which I believe is a felony here in the States.
The little note at the end somewhat consoles my worries, though; it looks like the guy contacted him again to work in a scam ring.
Don't get me wrong; scamming 419 scammers isn't inherently bad. The longer we can string them along, the less time they have to go after innocent people, and the more wary they are about making actual contact. But things like this cross the line, in my opinion; getting money or items from them is no better than them trying to get items or money from us. After all, if someone breaks into your house and steals something of yours, you can break into their house to steal it back (or steal something else!)
To fight the wrong and win, you cannot drop to their level, lest you become what you fight.
I don't think it's the Apple users being more picky as it is Windows users being more apathetic.
You see the same thing with FireFox. (Or, at least, I do.) Lots of people download and love it, but a lot of those same people are often asking for help on doing this or that or fixing this little nuance in the program. Is it that they're picky? Not really. It's more that they care to have a working product, crafted towards their desires.
Of course, maybe they're picky in the first place because they wanted a more secure, less virus-prone OS or browser.
Generic Windows users, on the other hand, are used to their OS and hardware giving them shit, and if they can't take the computer back to Best Buy to have it fixed, they just kind of shrug and go on with life, or plunk down $600 for another computer.
I've been working as an intern internal programmer for a large company for about four months now. I've had to fix programs left and right that shouldn't have worked in the first place (to the point that I've just completely re-written some programs.) When I prod some of the users who bring issues to me about how long they've had the problem, I sometimes get the answer "Months". This company (at least, in this building) uses nothing but Microsoft products. I think they've become accustomed to programs not working, and think that it won't do much good to submit a problem ticket.
Or the company has just always hired useless programmers and they've gotten used to that.
The counter to market inflation is production cost reduction, that is, the longer something is in production, the cheaper it should be.
In a perfect world, inflation and cost reduction would cancel each other out for everything. For things like video games, it somewhat has; although the the development costs have skyrocketed up, the cost of the actual media, shipping, and distribution has become cheaper, and so with more gamers buying games the sale price changes little (percentage wise.)
With commodities such as oil, copper, and wood, that economic idea doesn't work. There are a lot of extra variables that can go into it, like scarcity, problems reaching the material, and greedy bastard executives, which is why it fluctuates.
(And in the case of oil, rapidly increases. $3.17 for a gallon of gas, holy shit)
Well, my uncle's friend has a brother that works as a contractor for the cleaning company that Microsoft uses (thought he doesn't contract to Microsoft himself), and he says that he found a half-shredded sheet of paper in a trash can that he believes came from the Microsoft compound that more or less confirms the story of the Windows support guy.
Rain comes down, creates a small flood. Car skids out, goes into the side of the road where the wire is buried. The soft mud allows it to dig in far enough that it breaks through and exposes the wire. Now all the water around it is electrocuted, probably for a good distance (I can't say just how wide the area would be.)
Obviously, they'd probably have a few layers around it, to fight off burrowing critters as well as incidents like those (or the random retard with a shovel).
Plus, it would cost a lot to move all the wires underground. Could you imagine an entire town with the sides of the roads dug up? No one wants that.
However, new towns, or expanding towns, could easily put the wires under ground to save hastle and money.
Slashdot Mirror
I knew about Nintendo's part, but I had no idea that Sega was involved with Sony as well.
This is insane! Someone mod the interview +1 Insightful.
Does this mean I can get a doctor's note telling my boss to get me the latest and greatest LCD monitor?
Dear U.S.,
Thank you for helping boost our banking economy with your latest crazy laws.
Sincerely,
Switzerland
I remember reading about something like this in Popular Science back in late '05.
Can anyone tell me how close this is to the Hypo-sprays (sp?) from the Star Trek world? Do you still have to place is strategically, or is it a general point-and-click interface?
First comm badges. Then hypo-sprays. Warp speed, here we come!
Nintendo does well in the hand-held market because they've spent almost 20 years learning what people want in a hand held device, as well as offering a large selection of software that is fun and speaks to a wide spectrum of people, not just your 14-24 male crowd.
Sony has been able to break into the handheld market (where many others have failed) because they have the brand name recognition, as well as ports for a lot of popular franchises, not to mention the nice movie viewing capability. (However, even Sony is beginning to sink, as the number of people speaking against the constant remakes are beginning to grow, and UMD movies have all but sunk.)
So Microsoft, which barely edged Nintendo out for second place in America, and is in third place in Japan by a far gap (even despite being the first "next-gen" system there), thinks that they can break into the handheld market with what sounds like another version of their "Origami" project, but geared more towards games? I would put down safe money that it sinks faster than the Game Gear. The idea of it being an XBox brand makes me think that the device will be bigger than the PSP, too.
"My, that backpack looks heavy. What do you have in there?"
"My eXtreme-Box portable gaming system."
"And what else?"
"Uh, that's it."
Of course, no one would try to steal it, since the device would be useful as a bludguning instrument, as well. "Looks like the perp left a mark on his victim. What exactly is that?" "Looks like some sort of big X."
On the one hand, this a bastard of a patent. Patent law reform, change in the system, blah blah, it all needs to happen, because this is what we get otherwise.
On the other hand, this could get rid of MySpace.
Which side to choose, which side to choose...
The "Mario 128" demo you refer to for the Gamecube was nothing more than a tech demo. It had 128 Marios on a small sphere of a world walking around, hitting each other, tripping over each other, and doing a good deal of other stuff.
Just like the Meowth Pokemon singing video and the Link/Ganon fight, it was purely a tech demo. There was wild speculation about potential games arising from each demo, but I don't believe any of them were fruitful (well, except the Too Human demo, which apparently debuted to lackluster results on the XBox/360.)
Speaking of the Link/Ganon demo, while the graphics I've seen for Twilight Princess are awesome, I will be disappointed if I don't get some FMVs that look as beautiful as the originall 2001 demo did (especially since I plan on getting the Wii version).
Considering that eBay owns PayPal, a perceivable competitor to Google's Checkout program, could this be seen as an anti-competetive move? Considering that Google is pretty much the auction site, this would be a large portion of auction users that Google may try to target. It would be akin to Microsoft locking people out of using programs that weren't made by Microsoft.
Now that I think about it, eBay doesn't accept other payment websites such as YowCow, do they? Granted, YowCow has pretty much shut down now, but there are other similar businesses online. Could Google be able to gear up for a class-action suit against eBay, using both their own service and partnering with similar businesses to take on eBay?
This is a horrible idea.
After all, I don't know if I'll have enough saved up to buy all the Wii stuff I want by then!
Hell, I can tell you that without reading the article.
Mosquitoes like:
-that humans have blood
Mosquitoes hate:
-that humans squash them
There you go.
I dispise landmines, but if they're going to be used, better to use this technology than to use what we currently have.
Aside from being able to better take on an enemy, the mines can also be programmed to turn off after a set amount of time, can be disabled remotely, and, since they can move, can easily be recalled at the end of an encounter or war. They still have the same pitfalls of regular landmines (everyone is the enemy), but these advances at least offer a better way.
Even if you don't develop new, safer weapons, people will keep killing with the weapons they already have. Better to make something that can pick out enemy targets over civilians, that's non-lethal, or that doesn't affect organic compounds than to just say "We shouldn't make this!" and have people running around with regular ol' guns.
While these may not replace landmines already in the field, they would probably be used in future encounters.
Is eInk the brand, or the actual term? I've always known the technology as LCD Paper. If it's call "eInk", then that would be why I got so few helpful hints.
Reading the blog, it looks like their "embargo" didn't really bar talking about it all, merely talking about certain things; in short, no spoilers (including character descriptions and CG movies) and no sampling/uploading of music from the game. The later seems somewhat obvious, as its most likely copyrighted (I've seen few news sites post just the music.)
However, they can't talk about spoilers? I can understand this demand if 1up got a scoop on a game that's still in production. I can understand this if 1up got a scoop about some utlra super secret sidequest and were to only do teasers until a certain date (or it became public some other way.)
But telling them to keep quiet about a game taht has been out in Japan for months, widely available to anyone with the money for an import? What, is Squeenix hoping that someone with a Geocities account can get details out earlier than a gaming site?
It doesn't look like they're threatening anything, either- it's just a "hey, if you would, could you not do this stuff please? kthx" letter.
Does anyone know if eInk is the only producer/provider of LCD/Electronic Paper? I have a few ideas for inventions that would make use of their paper, as well as projects for both work and college, but they want $3000 for a development kit, and I just can't afford that (I don't know if my company would cover the cost or not, at least for the ideas I have that are work-related.)
I thought there were more companies putting out LCD Paper itself, but so far I've only been able to find eInk.
Also, how much does LCD paper cost per sheet these days?
What holds true in one country doesn't necessarily hold true in another.
For instance, I'm sure that there are a lot of people in war-torn countries in Africa who would much rather hear a dentist's drill than the crunching sound of a tank.
Participate For Payout sites aren't anything new; I receive a lot of spam each week telling me how I can earn oodles by sitting on my ass and filling out forms. However, it seems that more and more legitamite PFP sites are coming out of the woodwork, seemingly differing from the PTS sites of yore.
The Pay To Surf (PTS) model requires you to do what you normally do while having banner ads running along some part of your screen. These have low pay out because it's simple to ignore the ads, so advertisers aren't willing to pay a lot for them to be shown.
PFP, on the other hand, requires more interaction with the user. One site that I've gotten into is Moola. Being a beta version, you need an invite to get in (I wonder where they got that idea from). The jist is that you play games to win money, but you are actually playing against another human competitor, and whoever wins gets all of the money in the pot. The "bait" for the site is that you could reach a $10 million payout, but only after you win 30 consecutive games on increasing levels, putting all your earnings so far on the line each time. The site gives you a penny to start out with. If you lose all your money, you get another penny and another go. Even if you lose, the games are fun (though there are only two right now) so you're entertained enough to play again.
How they make revenue is by forcing you to watch ads. You have a video ad, generally between 10 and 20 seconds, and after the ad you have to answer a question about it, forcing you to pay attention (if you get a repeat ad, they allow you to skip it and go straight to the question, which is nice.)
eefoff (Fuck off?) appears to be trying a similar model, but instead of creating content itself and letting users interact, it has a place to allow users to host the content, encouraging more content by offering a payout.
However, I imagine this is kind of a logistics and litigatious nightmare. Obviously, there will be some sort of report feature for media that is copyrighted, but how fast will they be able to respond? And what about non-copyrighted but popular content? I remember trying to find the "Juggernaut Bitch" video that got interest on the net on YouTube only to be greeted with 25 different copies of varying quality (even the original was pretty bad). How does eefoff plan to handle this kind of thing? (can't visit it cause I'm at work) If a popular video is downloaded by someone and then uploaded back to eefoof, that gives them basically free money, and takes away from the original creator/poster, making them less likely to provide more original content in the future.
I'm also curious about how they plan to do revenue. Plastering the site with ads will only drive consumers away. You can insert video ads before someone watches a video, but what about the rest? How do they plan to make enough money with online advertisement to facilitate not only the storing and displaying of various media, but also cutting members a percentage?
Of course, if this takes off it would be useful for indie producers, as they could share their vision with the world and get a little cash towards their next project.
Will it still have that "WHIIIIIRRRRR" sound?
:).
That is most likely the number one most feared sound in America. Not a police siren. Not a gun shot. Not a cry of pain. The dentist's drill.
As a kid, there was nothing like that sound to make me remember to brush my teeth (well, for a few days, at least.)
Even as an adult, the sound makes me cringe whenever I go to the dentist (which, granted, hasn't been for a few years
While I believe that free, open source software is very good and should be used more widely, this is an example of where corporate solutions can prevail.
I've used FreeDB for a while now with the CD ripping program I use (Goldwave, highly recommended), and it had its pros and cons.
On the plus side, I could find listings for more foreign/anime CDs than I could using CDDB (a corporate company, used by the likes of WinAmp and WMP, I believe).
On the minus side, there were a few moderately popular to very popular CDs that had no listing. Also, more than a few CDs (including the foreign CDs mentioned) had more than one listing, each with small differences (some with large differences, such as translated song titles, or even just misspelled words), so you had to go through each one to find one that suited you. (One might argue that the choice was good, but in this case it was just annoying.)
The reason that FreeDB stopped is because those in the lead couldn't come to a decision. This would almost never happen in a corporate environment. Any dispute would go up the chain until it hit the CEO or board of directors, where a firm decision one way or another would be made. In the mean time, the product would merely remain unchanged (unless company policy specifies otherwise), so there would be no interruption in service.
Had FreeDB used a similar hierarchy (which they may have had, but it just fell apart), this might have been avoided. The programmers/engineers would dispute something, and the project lead/lead engineer would hear both sides and say "This is this, and that's that."
Certainly, this will be an inconvenience to those who use programs that use FreeDB, but have no idea that the program does.
I don't see this as a valid claim. Yeah, I'd be pissed if my rank suddenly dropped, but this is Google's site. For the most part, you don't pay to go into the rankings. The Adsense stuff might have some validity, but I wasn't certain if KinderStart had AdSense and were getting less money from it, or if hits from their own ad in AdSense had decreased.
As for the anti-trust thing, I don't think that sticks, either. This isn't Microsoft telling stores they'll lose product if they stock non-MS stuff. Google isn't stopping anyone from going to that site. Google hasn't blacklisted KinderStart. KinderStart probably has retained its rankings in other search engines.
This is exactly what I was thinking upon reading the article.
I went to the 419Eater page for it, and all the e-mails appear to have come from the same person. So, it could be that he throught that $25,000 was worth it, and actually went through the trouble of having someone make these (which, from the looks of it, were not bad.)
However, there is always the chance that he had a friend genuinely interested in doing artwork. Considering the area he was supposedly writing from, it wouldn't be unknown for the friend to not have e-mail or regular PC access.
The work he received might be considered theft, or conspiracy; after all, he was promising a chance at money, and someone was submitting their artwork for a chance toward that money (when there was none.) It would be the same as selling some guy raffle tickets at $5, when there is no actual raffle, let alone a prize.
Then there was the fact that he posed as a police officer, which I believe is a felony here in the States.
The little note at the end somewhat consoles my worries, though; it looks like the guy contacted him again to work in a scam ring.
Don't get me wrong; scamming 419 scammers isn't inherently bad. The longer we can string them along, the less time they have to go after innocent people, and the more wary they are about making actual contact. But things like this cross the line, in my opinion; getting money or items from them is no better than them trying to get items or money from us. After all, if someone breaks into your house and steals something of yours, you can break into their house to steal it back (or steal something else!)
To fight the wrong and win, you cannot drop to their level, lest you become what you fight.
I don't think it's the Apple users being more picky as it is Windows users being more apathetic. You see the same thing with FireFox. (Or, at least, I do.) Lots of people download and love it, but a lot of those same people are often asking for help on doing this or that or fixing this little nuance in the program. Is it that they're picky? Not really. It's more that they care to have a working product, crafted towards their desires. Of course, maybe they're picky in the first place because they wanted a more secure, less virus-prone OS or browser. Generic Windows users, on the other hand, are used to their OS and hardware giving them shit, and if they can't take the computer back to Best Buy to have it fixed, they just kind of shrug and go on with life, or plunk down $600 for another computer. I've been working as an intern internal programmer for a large company for about four months now. I've had to fix programs left and right that shouldn't have worked in the first place (to the point that I've just completely re-written some programs.) When I prod some of the users who bring issues to me about how long they've had the problem, I sometimes get the answer "Months". This company (at least, in this building) uses nothing but Microsoft products. I think they've become accustomed to programs not working, and think that it won't do much good to submit a problem ticket. Or the company has just always hired useless programmers and they've gotten used to that.
"Pedometer? What the hell is that?"
"It's that thing that babies suck on."
"No, dumbass, that's a pedophile."
The counter to market inflation is production cost reduction, that is, the longer something is in production, the cheaper it should be.
In a perfect world, inflation and cost reduction would cancel each other out for everything. For things like video games, it somewhat has; although the the development costs have skyrocketed up, the cost of the actual media, shipping, and distribution has become cheaper, and so with more gamers buying games the sale price changes little (percentage wise.)
With commodities such as oil, copper, and wood, that economic idea doesn't work. There are a lot of extra variables that can go into it, like scarcity, problems reaching the material, and greedy bastard executives, which is why it fluctuates.
(And in the case of oil, rapidly increases. $3.17 for a gallon of gas, holy shit)
Well, my uncle's friend has a brother that works as a contractor for the cleaning company that Microsoft uses (thought he doesn't contract to Microsoft himself), and he says that he found a half-shredded sheet of paper in a trash can that he believes came from the Microsoft compound that more or less confirms the story of the Windows support guy.
I think that's is all the proof you really need.
Rain fall is probably part of the thinking.
Look at it this way.
Rain comes down, creates a small flood. Car skids out, goes into the side of the road where the wire is buried. The soft mud allows it to dig in far enough that it breaks through and exposes the wire. Now all the water around it is electrocuted, probably for a good distance (I can't say just how wide the area would be.)
Obviously, they'd probably have a few layers around it, to fight off burrowing critters as well as incidents like those (or the random retard with a shovel).
Plus, it would cost a lot to move all the wires underground. Could you imagine an entire town with the sides of the roads dug up? No one wants that.
However, new towns, or expanding towns, could easily put the wires under ground to save hastle and money.