I've had DirecTV for about two years now in the suburban Maryland / Washington DC Metropolian region. My roommates have comcast land-line cable via the local comcast franchise. So I've seen both and I'll report on my experiences.
1) Picture quality. I consider the picture quality of my DirecTV system and my roommate's comcast digital cable to be about the same. 98% of the time the picture is excellent and I'm impressed with the sharpness and colors on my Sony 27" Triniton. The other 2% of the time the broadcast provided to DirecTV by the supplier (such as TBS Superstation) is low-quality and pixellation and color problems are noticeable. Note that I can see the same problems with either digital cable or DirecTV when the supplied programming is low-quality. For things like HBO original content, the picture quality is excellent!
2) Viewing Experience: I have two DirecTivo units -- Tivos designed specifically for DirecTV satellite signals -- and I couldn't be happier. The combination being able to easily navigate channels, automatically record my favorite shows, record two shows while watching a third and suggest programs to Tivo that it will record onto unused disk space is a joy. I don't watch commercials anymore and I watch what I want when I want. This means sitcoms take about 22 minutes to watch when I skip the commercials, and I can watch West Wing with 2-3 clicks of a remote control while I'm eating breakfast the morning after it's aired. With my two DirecTivos, that's four tuners available at one time and about 200 hours of available on-demand programming.
3) Cost and Reliability: My DirecTV service costs about $39 a month for basic service and local channels re-broadcast through the satellite dish. I add another $12 for HBO and that's much lower than my roommate's would pay for the same service with comcast. I get a better experience at a lower price. I haven't had ANY downtime with my Tivos or my DirecTV service -- I experience none of the disruption others have complained about during rain or snow.
4) Comparison to cable: While I've had consistent good experiences with DirecTV, my roommates suffer the pains of our local comcast franchise. Perhaps our local company is not as good as others, but I have observed them going through week-long periods of having to call the cable company and fight their way through to clueful people in order to resolve problems with service. We have a long history of our house of bad experiences with comcast and it hasn't gotten any better.
I definitely recommend DirecTV -- especially WITH DirecTivo-style Tivo service -- to anyone that asks. Other than the price break you may receive with a land line cable tv + cable internet + phone package, I can't see why anyone would not want the DirecTV setup I have:)
Disclaimer: I'm an honest guy -- I receive no kickbacks, funds, bribes or other compensation from DirecTV. I'm worried about Rupert Murdoch owning DirecTV and things might not be as good in the future, but I'm happy with them enough to recommend them right now!
Why are there only 3 episodes of Good Eats on the DVDs? I was hoping for 6-9 considering they're only 30 minute shows.
Good Eats is one of the rare shows that is 1) instructional 2) entertaining and 3) re-watchable again and again.
Do you folks at good eats realize how much hard drive space Good Eats uses on my Tivo?
I want to buy the DVDs for permanent high-quality archives (as opposed to cheap VCR tapings), but it's more cost effective for me to buy more Tivo space than 3 episodes/$49 each:(
Looking forward to one of those PBS-style 14-DVD "Collector's Pack" sets with years of Good Eats:-)
For all the negative comments that can be said about SCO Openserver, this is one solid Unix system. I run five production systems on it and sudden, surprising crashes or other problems just don't happen. Not at all.
This means I can concentrate on writing new software or other activities instead of babysitting an unstable operating system.
I'd like to say the same about Linux, but Linux is changing too much. For example, my SCO Openserver systems were last reinstalled with a major hardware upgrade 2 years ago. I've gone through 2-3 versions of Redhat in that time, from 6.2 to 7.0, and then to 7.1, 7.2 and now 7.3.
I _love_ my Redhat systems, but the constant changes in the Linux community on the kernel level, the application level, and the distribution level make it very tough for anyone to pick a version, stick with it and gain confidence. This means as my Openserver systems go on for longer without problems, they gain my confidence and raise the bar as to OS quality. And each time I try a new Linux kernel, a new distribution level, I'm starting over and wondering what surprises I might have in store for me.
I'm hoping that, for me, Redhat 7.3 will be a strong, solid release and that combined with the 2.4.x series kernels slow and cautious development cycles, those of us that need to demonstrate long term stability will be able to deploy, test and enjoy.
The important stuff, like not being a victim of fraud, getting payments, transferring payments from PayPal or Billpoint to my bank account, has been pretty much the same with both services.
However, PayPal is as much a service as it is a tool. Easy access to information and activities on their website is important so I can review payment history, print records, monitor status of transfers and payments, etc. In this regard, I've found PayPal's website to be far more sensibly designed and user-friendly than Billpoint.
Case in point: Recently, when I setup a 'firewall' bank account, I switched Paypal and ebay to point to that account for direct deposits. A subsequent attempt to get Billpoint to perform a transfer resulted in obscure EDI/Direct Deposit errors such as "Account is not an ECH member." That's not user-friendly for me. It took about 2 weeks to complete this transfer which included retyping in the bank account information, then waiting 2-3 days for another attempt to deposit the money.
Summary: Paypal feels better, but I don't know which one is more secure or reliable.
I'm afraid I'm not aware of what parts of credit card related consumer protection laws are Federal and State.
I do know, and enjoy, the fact that Maryland goes a bit beyond most states. As a resident of Maryland, all it takes is a plain letter mailed to each credit card company asking for a copy of your credit report and, once a year, they are required to provide it, FREE OF CHARGE.
I love this. Its one of those few laws that it clearly pro-consumer. I just wish more people knew about it!
I've been using PayPal for 3 months to sell a variety of items and I've been very happy with it.
My tips are:
1) Setup a "Firewall" bank account. This allows me to receive payments from sellers to my PayPal account, then have PayPal direct deposit the money into this "firewall" bank account. This bank account has no money in it and once money has been transferred from PayPal to this bank account, I use the bank's tools to transfer the money to a checking account or savings account. This way, if someone gets into my PayPal account, they'll have very little or no money to rob from my associated bank account.
2) Use a dedicated Credit Card for Payments. With so many Credit Cards offering me free cards with 0% interest rate, I have the ability to use one just for online transactions. When the bill comes every month, it is easy to review. Fraud, or simple mistakes like double billings, should stick out greater than they do on my primary card.
3) When making Payments, use an affinity credit card that provides you with some benefit instead of your bank account. Using a bank account is preferred by PayPal because the cost to withdraw money from your bank account is significantly lower than charging your credit card. But their savings doesn't give you anything, so turn this neutral into a positive. By using an affinity card you can earn points on each of your PayPal purchases. I even had one case where someone on ebay bought something for me from $300 and due to problems I had to refund it. His $300 went to my bank account, then $300 came from my credit card to refund it back to him through PayPal, then I used the $300 in my bank account to pay off my credit card. I lost a little bit of money in the process due to PayPal's receiving fees, but at least I got 300 frequent flyer miles out of it!
4) Withdraw money promptly from PayPal. ANY company can suddenly go bankrupt from bad financial decisions you don't know about. It is therefore wise to use PayPal as a payment service and not a virtual bank account. When someone makes a payment, transfer it to your firewall bank account immediately so that it's in your control.
5) Read the fine print on PayPal's website. They have some very good fraud protection services that will protect you from evil people. But these services require specific things like "advertising PayPal as the only electronic Payment service you will receive." This really isn't much of a problem, it seems, since 90% of my ebay electronic payments have been made through PayPal (other 10% are BillPoint/Ebay Payments or Money Orders.) But you need to realize that if you take them up on their fraud protection, they have many ways to disqualify you if you don't follow their rules.
6) Trust your credit card. If you're using Credit Cards to handle purchases, many states like Maryland have VERY tough credit card laws which protect consumers. If you're using a 'new' service like PayPal, hide behind more conservative, regulated things like traditional credit cards and bank accounts.
I've been selling quite a lot of stuff on ebay recently and I've been using FedEx Ground, a rather new service out of FedEx. When I sell items on ebay, I quote shipping prices via the USPS, FedEx and UPS websites. FedEx is consistently the most cost effective, being able to carry large, heavy boxes for $8-20 for most destinations. UPS Ground is almost always $5-10 more, and my personal experiences have been far better with FedEx than UPS for any priority.
If you're shipping on a regular basis, try comparing FedEx Ground to the others. I may be getting better prices since I've got a FedEx Worldwide shipping centre near me for drop-off, but I'm ALSO comparing to a local UPS Worldwide shipping center for drop off as well.
Disclaimer: I don't work for FedEx and honestly, I find all delivery people (UPS, FedEx, UPS and more) to be equally polite and helpful. Must be some pissed off people in the middle causing the problems!
When I was in high school, my county school system (Prince Georges County, Maryland, USA) had three or more HP3000 and one of them was at my school (Laurel). These were purchased and operated for a variety of reasons. First, the school system's data processing for grading, scheduling, and other classic applications ran on the HP3Ks. Next, applications for career exploration, guidance, and college scholarship searches were available to all students via the 3Ks. Finally, data processing classes used HP 3Ks instead of TRS-80s or other weak computers.
If I had been really lucky, they might have used Unix instead, but the fact that they had HP3Ks gave my computer training an amazing boost over solitary PCs or crap like TRS-80s.
Just before I started high school there, I acquired an account on their HP3000. I could dial into the 3K along with 40 or so others on 1200 baud modems. This was at a time (1985-1990) when the internet was available only at colleges and 'connected' organizations.
I had learned to program on my Atari home computer, but this gave me a chance to work in a real, proven, business class, multi-user environment. I learned Pascal, COBOL, BASIC as well as security, administration, and proper operation of a business class computer. We wrote our own programs for email, IRC style chat, user-friendly instant messaging, games, as well as programming utilities. Oh, we also learned how to write:
'Rape' a command that would take control of the input and output on a terminal, allowing you to fake a login prompt and have fun interacting with users that didn't know any better.
'Rabbit' jobs. These were batch jobs that recursively called themselves until the machines were overloaded with work.
.. improper use of various system calls to crash the system.
So, as you can see, the HP3K running MPE has a lot of parallels with a Unix/Linux environment. Multiuser, use of dial-in lines, fairly good programming environment, email, etc. Most of all: LOTS OF STUFF TO EXPLORE. We had access to printed manuals and were encouraged to use the machines as much as possible and learn all we could. As a result, I can count about 20-25 people that had access to these systems and later went on to get careers in computing directly related to the experienced they gained on this HP in high school.
I didn't realize until recently that we were participating in Free Software as well. We would write programs, collaborate with others, share and enhance in the same way people do using the net today. I can even recall programs that spanned 'generations' of students: A program written in 1983 would be modified by anyone in school at the time and was still in use in 1993-94 when I last logged on. Having the code and an environment where people shared information benefited me back then in ways I didn't appreciate until recently.
I'm glad to have had the opportunity to spend so much time on the HP. It provided me with an online community and programming environment similar to what kids have with Linux, the internet and IRC today, but I had it in 1985! It also gave me a good experience to see how engineers outside the Unix world attempted to implement the same kinds of things as all other computers such as filesystems, command line environments, software tools. It's an enjoyable eye opener to see a file copy command with a completely different use and implementation.
I appreciate Slashdot making an article of this. IMHO, the idea of an operating system being useable for 30 years, being able to invest in hardware, software, training and applications and have that investment perform for so long is something that Microsoft AND Linux/Unix should keep in mind. Not everybody likes to upgrade every few months/years, especially for systems that already work.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had DirecTV for about two years now in the suburban Maryland / Washington DC Metropolian region. My roommates have comcast land-line cable via the local comcast franchise. So I've seen both and I'll report on my experiences.
:)
1) Picture quality. I consider the picture quality of my DirecTV system and my roommate's comcast digital cable to be about the same. 98% of the time the picture is excellent and I'm impressed with the sharpness and colors on my Sony 27" Triniton. The other 2% of the time the broadcast provided to DirecTV by the supplier (such as TBS Superstation) is low-quality and pixellation and color problems are noticeable. Note that I can see the same problems with either digital cable or DirecTV when the supplied programming is low-quality. For things like HBO original content, the picture quality is excellent!
2) Viewing Experience: I have two DirecTivo units -- Tivos designed specifically for DirecTV satellite signals -- and I couldn't be happier. The combination being able to easily navigate channels, automatically record my favorite shows, record two shows while watching a third and suggest programs to Tivo that it will record onto unused disk space is a joy. I don't watch commercials anymore and I watch what I want when I want. This means sitcoms take about 22 minutes to watch when I skip the commercials, and I can watch West Wing with 2-3 clicks of a remote control while I'm eating breakfast the morning after it's aired. With my two DirecTivos, that's four tuners available at one time and about 200 hours of available on-demand programming.
3) Cost and Reliability: My DirecTV service costs about $39 a month for basic service and local channels re-broadcast through the satellite dish. I add another $12 for HBO and that's much lower than my roommate's would pay for the same service with comcast. I get a better experience at a lower price. I haven't had ANY downtime with my Tivos or my DirecTV service -- I experience none of the disruption others have complained about during rain or snow.
4) Comparison to cable: While I've had consistent good experiences with DirecTV, my roommates suffer the pains of our local comcast franchise. Perhaps our local company is not as good as others, but I have observed them going through week-long periods of having to call the cable company and fight their way through to clueful people in order to resolve problems with service. We have a long history of our house of bad experiences with comcast and it hasn't gotten any better.
I definitely recommend DirecTV -- especially WITH DirecTivo-style Tivo service -- to anyone that asks. Other than the price break you may receive with a land line cable tv + cable internet + phone package, I can't see why anyone would not want the DirecTV setup I have
Disclaimer: I'm an honest guy -- I receive no kickbacks, funds, bribes or other compensation from DirecTV. I'm worried about Rupert Murdoch owning DirecTV and things might not be as good in the future, but I'm happy with them enough to recommend them right now!
Why are there only 3 episodes of Good Eats on the DVDs? I was hoping for 6-9 considering they're only 30 minute shows.
:(
:-)
Good Eats is one of the rare shows that is 1) instructional 2) entertaining and 3) re-watchable again and again.
Do you folks at good eats realize how much hard drive space Good Eats uses on my Tivo?
I want to buy the DVDs for permanent high-quality archives (as opposed to cheap VCR tapings), but it's more cost effective for me to buy more Tivo space than 3 episodes/$49 each
Looking forward to one of those PBS-style 14-DVD "Collector's Pack" sets with years of Good Eats
This means I can concentrate on writing new software or other activities instead of babysitting an unstable operating system.
I'd like to say the same about Linux, but Linux is changing too much. For example, my SCO Openserver systems were last reinstalled with a major hardware upgrade 2 years ago. I've gone through 2-3 versions of Redhat in that time, from 6.2 to 7.0, and then to 7.1, 7.2 and now 7.3.
I _love_ my Redhat systems, but the constant changes in the Linux community on the kernel level, the application level, and the distribution level make it very tough for anyone to pick a version, stick with it and gain confidence. This means as my Openserver systems go on for longer without problems, they gain my confidence and raise the bar as to OS quality. And each time I try a new Linux kernel, a new distribution level, I'm starting over and wondering what surprises I might have in store for me.
I'm hoping that, for me, Redhat 7.3 will be a strong, solid release and that combined with the 2.4.x series kernels slow and cautious development cycles, those of us that need to demonstrate long term stability will be able to deploy, test and enjoy.
The important stuff, like not being a victim of fraud, getting payments, transferring payments from PayPal or Billpoint to my bank account, has been pretty much the same with both services.
However, PayPal is as much a service as it is a tool. Easy access to information and activities on their website is important so I can review payment history, print records, monitor status of transfers and payments, etc. In this regard, I've found PayPal's website to be far more sensibly designed and user-friendly than Billpoint.
Case in point: Recently, when I setup a 'firewall' bank account, I switched Paypal and ebay to point to that account for direct deposits. A subsequent attempt to get Billpoint to perform a transfer resulted in obscure EDI/Direct Deposit errors such as "Account is not an ECH member." That's not user-friendly for me. It took about 2 weeks to complete this transfer which included retyping in the bank account information, then waiting 2-3 days for another attempt to deposit the money.
Summary: Paypal feels better, but I don't know which one is more secure or reliable.
I'm afraid I'm not aware of what parts of credit card related consumer protection laws are Federal and State.
I do know, and enjoy, the fact that Maryland goes a bit beyond most states. As a resident of Maryland, all it takes is a plain letter mailed to each credit card company asking for a copy of your credit report and, once a year, they are required to provide it, FREE OF CHARGE.
I love this. Its one of those few laws that it clearly pro-consumer. I just wish more people knew about it!
I've been using PayPal for 3 months to sell a variety of items and I've been very happy with it.
My tips are:
1) Setup a "Firewall" bank account. This allows me to receive payments from sellers to my PayPal account, then have PayPal direct deposit the money into this "firewall" bank account. This bank account has no money in it and once money has been transferred from PayPal to this bank account, I use the bank's tools to transfer the money to a checking account or savings account. This way, if someone gets into my PayPal account, they'll have very little or no money to rob from my associated bank account.
2) Use a dedicated Credit Card for Payments. With so many Credit Cards offering me free cards with 0% interest rate, I have the ability to use one just for online transactions. When the bill comes every month, it is easy to review. Fraud, or simple mistakes like double billings, should stick out greater than they do on my primary card.
3) When making Payments, use an affinity credit card that provides you with some benefit instead of your bank account. Using a bank account is preferred by PayPal because the cost to withdraw money from your bank account is significantly lower than charging your credit card. But their savings doesn't give you anything, so turn this neutral into a positive. By using an affinity card you can earn points on each of your PayPal purchases. I even had one case where someone on ebay bought something for me from $300 and due to problems I had to refund it. His $300 went to my bank account, then $300 came from my credit card to refund it back to him through PayPal, then I used the $300 in my bank account to pay off my credit card. I lost a little bit of money in the process due to PayPal's receiving fees, but at least I got 300 frequent flyer miles out of it!
4) Withdraw money promptly from PayPal. ANY company can suddenly go bankrupt from bad financial decisions you don't know about. It is therefore wise to use PayPal as a payment service and not a virtual bank account. When someone makes a payment, transfer it to your firewall bank account immediately so that it's in your control.
5) Read the fine print on PayPal's website. They have some very good fraud protection services that will protect you from evil people. But these services require specific things like "advertising PayPal as the only electronic Payment service you will receive." This really isn't much of a problem, it seems, since 90% of my ebay electronic payments have been made through PayPal (other 10% are BillPoint/Ebay Payments or Money Orders.) But you need to realize that if you take them up on their fraud protection, they have many ways to disqualify you if you don't follow their rules.
6) Trust your credit card. If you're using Credit Cards to handle purchases, many states like Maryland have VERY tough credit card laws which protect consumers. If you're using a 'new' service like PayPal, hide behind more conservative, regulated things like traditional credit cards and bank accounts.
I've been selling quite a lot of stuff on ebay recently and I've been using FedEx Ground, a rather new service out of FedEx. When I sell items on ebay, I quote shipping prices via the USPS, FedEx and UPS websites. FedEx is consistently the most cost effective, being able to carry large, heavy boxes for $8-20 for most destinations. UPS Ground is almost always $5-10 more, and my personal experiences have been far better with FedEx than UPS for any priority.
If you're shipping on a regular basis, try comparing FedEx Ground to the others. I may be getting better prices since I've got a FedEx Worldwide shipping centre near me for drop-off, but I'm ALSO comparing to a local UPS Worldwide shipping center for drop off as well.
Disclaimer: I don't work for FedEx and honestly, I find all delivery people (UPS, FedEx, UPS and more) to be equally polite and helpful. Must be some pissed off people in the middle causing the problems!
:TELL @.@; This is my story
When I was in high school, my county school system (Prince Georges County, Maryland, USA) had three or more HP3000 and one of them was at my school (Laurel). These were purchased and operated for a variety of reasons. First, the school system's data processing for grading, scheduling, and other classic applications ran on the HP3Ks. Next, applications for career exploration, guidance, and college scholarship searches were available to all students via the 3Ks. Finally, data processing classes used HP 3Ks instead of TRS-80s or other weak computers.
If I had been really lucky, they might have used Unix instead, but the fact that they had HP3Ks gave my computer training an amazing boost over solitary PCs or crap like TRS-80s.
Just before I started high school there, I acquired an account on their HP3000. I could dial into the 3K along with 40 or so others on 1200 baud modems. This was at a time (1985-1990) when the internet was available only at colleges and 'connected' organizations.
I had learned to program on my Atari home computer, but this gave me a chance to work in a real, proven, business class, multi-user environment. I learned Pascal, COBOL, BASIC as well as security, administration, and proper operation of a business class computer. We wrote our own programs for email, IRC style chat, user-friendly instant messaging, games, as well as programming utilities. Oh, we also learned how to write:
'Rape' a command that would take control of the input and output on a terminal, allowing you to fake a login prompt and have fun interacting with users that didn't know any better.
'Rabbit' jobs. These were batch jobs that recursively called themselves until the machines were overloaded with work.
.. improper use of various system calls to crash the system.
So, as you can see, the HP3K running MPE has a lot of parallels with a Unix/Linux environment. Multiuser, use of dial-in lines, fairly good programming environment, email, etc. Most of all: LOTS OF STUFF TO EXPLORE. We had access to printed manuals and were encouraged to use the machines as much as possible and learn all we could. As a result, I can count about 20-25 people that had access to these systems and later went on to get careers in computing directly related to the experienced they gained on this HP in high school.
I didn't realize until recently that we were participating in Free Software as well. We would write programs, collaborate with others, share and enhance in the same way people do using the net today. I can even recall programs that spanned 'generations' of students: A program written in 1983 would be modified by anyone in school at the time and was still in use in 1993-94 when I last logged on. Having the code and an environment where people shared information benefited me back then in ways I didn't appreciate until recently.
I'm glad to have had the opportunity to spend so much time on the HP. It provided me with an online community and programming environment similar to what kids have with Linux, the internet and IRC today, but I had it in 1985! It also gave me a good experience to see how engineers outside the Unix world attempted to implement the same kinds of things as all other computers such as filesystems, command line environments, software tools. It's an enjoyable eye opener to see a file copy command with a completely different use and implementation.
I appreciate Slashdot making an article of this. IMHO, the idea of an operating system being useable for 30 years, being able to invest in hardware, software, training and applications and have that investment perform for so long is something that Microsoft AND Linux/Unix should keep in mind. Not everybody likes to upgrade every few months/years, especially for systems that already work.
:bye
duh. :]