When I was 18 I went to college. I had had a little slice of weird music (Faith No More, some other Patton projects, Tool, but nothing too weird) before I left, but I was mostly a normal kid. Well, as normal as someone whose mom loved Black Sabbath.
How I found the music I like is simple: Napster. What I did was read some web sites, some reviews, and downloaded them. Then I looked through some of those users other music and downloaded stuff that seemed "interesting."
Would I have bought their albums straight away? Hell no. College students don't have that kind of bling-bling to throw around on purchases of stuff they haven't heard. They need beer and pizza money.
Since getting laid off from my first new job after college (the same day my daughter was born), I've been sampling some more music. I have a list of about 20 CDs I want once I get the funds.
The distribution channels are screwed, simply put. Lowest common denominator and broadest-strokes of the genre pen and other heavy-handed metaphors abound. I would not have found my favorite band and bought all their CDs if it weren't for MP3s. And sure, I haven't bought a CD since I lost my job, but when I find one (should get a call today or tomorrow about it), then I'll be pointing the browser to an on-line shop.
Hell, I like Godspeed You! Black Emperor so much that in November I may even just buy it if I have a job or not.
I know it's a story told again and again, but it's true. Educated consumers are hard to please, and keeping even more thousands of differant titles in stock is more expensive than a thousand of the same.
Perhaps I didn't write my post properly, because you seem to have misunderstood it.
Bandwidth as "right". It's not a right like life, as I said before, but rather it's such a simple problem to fix that it shouldn't even be an issue once you pay for access. Yes, I know the cable can be expensive, but the government has grants, I'm sure, to offset the costs.
And your last statement is totally asinine.
Of course the average person DOES have a sue for a server. They should have a platform for their views, and your statement shows what some of those views could be: generalizing and wrong.
I've run a server off my home PC for years, never serving any warez or anything, simply my web site and my own MP3s of my music. Nothing more, nothing less. Limit it to web pages, maybe. Not an ideal solution, I suppose.
I'm talking about speech here, and freedom of the new "digital" press. (God, I feel totally stupid putting it like that, it's almost as bad as ePress or something.) Banning servers could be, possibly, a restriction on that freedom (in the US). Not that would get 10 feet in a tossing contest if attemted to be proved in court. Sure, AT&T can be forced to open up their wires to competitors, but Joe Blow can't put up his web page to exercise 1st amendment freedoms.
Don't ya'll get it? We have this freedom, and we're giving it up because of mythical costs.
But I'm a near-socialist on the issue of bandwidth. Obviously a crackpot. Freedom is not important. Leave the cable laying and bandwidth allocating to the telecom industry, they're obviously upright citizens doing well for humanity. (Insert bullshit about delivering worth to stockholders here. Companies can't be idealistic. Whatever.)
Well, I don't know if you pay attention to stuff or not, but the advertisements for the cable modems here seem to push that kind of ideal.
"Always on. No busy signals. Fast downloads of multimedia."
Then they complain when we do exactly that. Don't advertise it unless you're willing to deliver it.
But, the question: Is it (bandwidth) a "right?"
I think so. Maybe. Hard to say. It's not a right like life or something that vital, but the limiting of servers and other "bandwidth issues" makes me concerned because it starts to make the internet a one way conduit of information instead of allowing all users to serve their own content, which is really not what the Internet is capable of or, IMO, the ideal usage of the 'net is.
Beyond those ideals, which I admit, probably aren't shared by C*O's around the world, it's important that companies that get into this broadband invest in increasing their own bandwidth. The bandwidth "limit" companies complain about is fixable, and it's only going to get worse if they refuse to make that bandwidth grow with their hopeful customer base.
There is money to be made with the promise of freedom. Are you more likely to go with an (otherwise idential) ISP that allows/encourages (even simply does not dis-allow) servers for your content as opposed to one that disallows & tries to block their use? Freedom is important, and people, especially now, are conginzant (sp) of that.
Yes, I use P2P, not gnutella or kazaa or popular ones but private hubs; take your salt as recommended by your physician.
"Whose Line is it Anyway" started out on BBC radio station 4 (Source) in '87. Then they moved to TV station 4 in '88. You might only be familiar with the version hosted by Drew Carey, but be aware that the show has a history.
If you read my comment, then you might possibly get the joke. I debated humor "tags" for about five minutes while I was writing the post, but thought that the avg. Slashdot reader would actually read it and be capable of understanding humor. Not the first time I've been wrong.
The fact that I don't have a life doesn't change the fact that you just didn't get it, and instead felt the need to flame randomly, but really, all you did was get yourself burned.
It's obvious what's going on here. For those of you not in the know, the BBC is actually a toy of the British government, supported by taxes (including the infamous television tax). These taxes bring us things like "Are You Being Served," "Whose Line is it Anyway?," and "1840 House: The Greatest Generation," but also the BBC News Service, who used to be a great, possibly the best, English (as in language) news source, until recently.
What's dastardly about these "news" stories is the trend of the BBC to overlook certain details. It reads like classic PR techniques applied in the American media for decades: News by Press Release. One theory is that BBC is feeling the effects of the global economic trouble, and more people are hiding their TVs than ever, decreasing funding while demand still increases. That's what some so-called investigators will tell you, but I've got the real truth.
There are two possibilities here, but I'm only going to go over in detail the most probable. Microsoft bought the BBC in a massive, but secret, merger, in an effort to compete with the bohemoth AOL/TW. The secrecy is required in order to avoid anti-trust processes from recurring.
Why not just hijack the public radio & TV here in the US? Trust. Your average joe user trusts the BBC; PBS in the US is kind of like the Discovery Channel for poor folk that can't afford basic cable, especially to see the topless natives.
People trust the BBC mostly because it's British, and most Americans trust the British for some reason. I, personally, haven't trusted them since the war of '76.
Why would London sell the BBC? The British government needs the money from MS to support the stupidly extravigant(sp) lifestyle afforded the royal family, especially since the Faulklands War in the early 80's, and the Royals are still a source of pride for the British people, well, at least the ones with bad teeth.
The other possiblity involves the Masons, Bush's not-so-secret Shadow Government, and Heidi Klum.
Actually, now that I think about it, there remains a final possiblity that seems really remote, but worth stating, at least in brief. Maybe, just possibly, perhaps perhaps perhaps it could be that the technical details were the focus of the article, and not the evil EULA. I'm not going to hedge my bets this way, though. It's obviously a conspiracy on a massive level.
I know I'd buy more music if I had a job. Unemployment has cut out most unessentials, I can barely keep gas in my car to look for a job, esp. in my area, where industrial work is a heavy part of the local economy.
Maybe I put too many things I know on my resume.
Any how. It doesn't help, as the article states, that a lot of newish pop music is throw-away stuff. I don't care about Ms. Spears and how many records she sells. Gimme good music, and I'll support them. (New Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Nov.! Yay!)
My problem with the Fox News Channel is they claim to be unbiased, when they're the worst news channel w/r/t that particular vice. Of course, whether or not it's even possible to be unbiased remains to be seen.
I can argue with him all day from the comfort of my living room, but unfortunately, I ain't a pundit. He's more of a bully than brilliant, like many other talk show hosts, they're more into discussing unrelated issues.
Example: The whole banning "under god" from the pledge in the US. Regardless of if you agree or not, she invited the fellow who brought the lawsuit, and instead of discussing the issue (the establishment clause, seperation of church & state), she kept implying he was a bad parent, and when he wouldn't play ball, she dropped into just repeating herself, like he didn't understand the questions. He obviously wanted to stay on topic, unlike her and this post.
Any how. O'Reilly does the same thing, and is especially condecending (sp).
It takes a bit. Depends on your software. If you're familiar with belzier tools (common in Flash or Illustrator), it's just a matter of time. Most often, you end up skipping a lot of the "optional" characters, like # or & or () or whatever, just doing the numbers and (latin) letters and basic punctuation.
The hardest thing to do is maintain your vision throughout the set.
The number of full fonts I've made because of that last thing means I've finished 0 projects.
How regularly? The few admins I know are ran frazzled by lack of help dealing with normal, simple user complaints.
Of course, he'd notice a dreamcast sitting somewhere in the open, but under a desk, plugged into a network mini-hub? Hell, in the unlocked server closet, which also shares room with housekeeping stuff.
It's easy to say "any admin worth their salt" would do such-and-such, but sometimes that just isn't the case, not because they don't want to, but rather because they don't have the time.
When you get in at 6 in the morning and leave at 9 at night every night, are you really in the mood for staying an hour later and looking at the logs? Should he? Probably, but admins are human, and the man I'm thinking of isn't getting paid hourly.
Of course, he is my boss, and I just feel bad because I probably didn't work as hard as I should've. Maybe I should stop putting him down as a reference in my job search. Heh.
Anyhow. There's a company called Lamar that does billboards around here (Rockford, IL area). When the billboards aren't being rented by other companies, the pictures are of brightly colored tropical fishes caught by a hook in the mouth, with "Got ya!" and the phone number, whatever.
This is how the marketing department sees people. Of course, other marketing departments see the marketers as fishes, too, to be yanked out of the water, filleted and cooked to a nice color.
A book I recently read called Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke says that marketing as we know it is irrelevant now, because the mass market ideal consumer doesn't exist any more. He mentions the Internet, too, a lot. I think this is leading to the massive saturation.
Consumer's ignoring/resenting commericals-->diminishing returns-->more commercials to compensate->more ignoring/resentment-->more ads--> etc.
Also mentions in passing that the commercials and programming are aimed at the lowest common denominator in order to net the largest audience.
As my t-shirt says, "Why do you think they call it programming?"
Because it has all the support people need. Writing letters, listening to music, browsing the web, and a unix backend. Almost all recent games are out for MacOS.
The only thing keeping me from a new iMac on my desk is the price, and my perpetual unemployment. I deal with XP until I get my first paycheck.
Though I'd avoid it, is "Games & More" on State Street near E. State and Alpine. The staff is unprofessional and pretentious, but ya'll didn't ask for just the Good stores, did you?
No theatres, as far as I'm aware, until you get down to Champaign, IL, near University of Illinois.
Re:I'm helping a Liberal Arts major design a websi
on
Built For Use
·
· Score: 1
Limiting Creativity:
Tell her that the best work has artificial constraints upon it. Obvious one is music. If you wanted true "creative control" you would use all the notes available, but most people (who know what they're doing) don't, but rather use scales, or a certain subset of notes.
Happens in literature all the time, too, as in art. "Why limit yourself to oil paint? Because it helps you think "outside the box" to do stuff you want."
Maybe. She might be a shitty artist and unwilling to experiment.
I've noticed that seemingly every resume I send on-line somewhere goes in the bit-bucket. I imagine huge circular servers with everything relocated to dev/null. This may be the case, but possibly not, maybe I really ain't qualified for anything. (Hate that feeling, I do.)
Does Google use some of its own technology to sort through the deluge of resumes I'm sure it receives? Have you had or even thought of marketing this possible technology to companies?
Great, so YOU'RE the reason I can't get a job. Looking back at stupid messages I posted back in high school now that I've graduated college and have a child . . . I can CHANGE! GOD DAMN YOU! I CAN CHANGE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, I CAN CHANGE!
I promise I won't post any grotesque misspellings on Usenet any more! I promise I won't post to the alt.talk.origins newsgroups! I promise I'll be good! I'll never play Quake again!!!
IRC is bad. I know how to use it to find the things I'm looking for, but I'd prefer not.
Why?
The people are annoying.
Give me a decent P2P client any day, so I don't have to deal with the elite hAx0rZ, and my cable modem's intermittent problem cause me to lose connections when I'm 99% done (minspeed 5k/s! Get a T1!).
Slashdot Mirror
When I was 18 I went to college. I had had a little slice of weird music (Faith No More, some other Patton projects, Tool, but nothing too weird) before I left, but I was mostly a normal kid. Well, as normal as someone whose mom loved Black Sabbath.
How I found the music I like is simple: Napster. What I did was read some web sites, some reviews, and downloaded them. Then I looked through some of those users other music and downloaded stuff that seemed "interesting."
Would I have bought their albums straight away? Hell no. College students don't have that kind of bling-bling to throw around on purchases of stuff they haven't heard. They need beer and pizza money.
Since getting laid off from my first new job after college (the same day my daughter was born), I've been sampling some more music. I have a list of about 20 CDs I want once I get the funds.
The distribution channels are screwed, simply put. Lowest common denominator and broadest-strokes of the genre pen and other heavy-handed metaphors abound. I would not have found my favorite band and bought all their CDs if it weren't for MP3s. And sure, I haven't bought a CD since I lost my job, but when I find one (should get a call today or tomorrow about it), then I'll be pointing the browser to an on-line shop.
Hell, I like Godspeed You! Black Emperor so much that in November I may even just buy it if I have a job or not.
I know it's a story told again and again, but it's true. Educated consumers are hard to please, and keeping even more thousands of differant titles in stock is more expensive than a thousand of the same.
way off topic:
At the end of LOTR, I heard someone say, I am not joking:
"They left that wide open for a sequel."
As far as I can tell, she wasn't joking, either.
Perhaps I didn't write my post properly, because you seem to have misunderstood it.
Bandwidth as "right". It's not a right like life, as I said before, but rather it's such a simple problem to fix that it shouldn't even be an issue once you pay for access. Yes, I know the cable can be expensive, but the government has grants, I'm sure, to offset the costs.
And your last statement is totally asinine.
Of course the average person DOES have a sue for a server. They should have a platform for their views, and your statement shows what some of those views could be: generalizing and wrong.
I've run a server off my home PC for years, never serving any warez or anything, simply my web site and my own MP3s of my music. Nothing more, nothing less. Limit it to web pages, maybe. Not an ideal solution, I suppose.
I'm talking about speech here, and freedom of the new "digital" press. (God, I feel totally stupid putting it like that, it's almost as bad as ePress or something.) Banning servers could be, possibly, a restriction on that freedom (in the US). Not that would get 10 feet in a tossing contest if attemted to be proved in court. Sure, AT&T can be forced to open up their wires to competitors, but Joe Blow can't put up his web page to exercise 1st amendment freedoms.
Don't ya'll get it? We have this freedom, and we're giving it up because of mythical costs.
But I'm a near-socialist on the issue of bandwidth. Obviously a crackpot. Freedom is not important. Leave the cable laying and bandwidth allocating to the telecom industry, they're obviously upright citizens doing well for humanity. (Insert bullshit about delivering worth to stockholders here. Companies can't be idealistic. Whatever.)
re: The "always on" mentality:
Well, I don't know if you pay attention to stuff or not, but the advertisements for the cable modems here seem to push that kind of ideal.
"Always on. No busy signals. Fast downloads of multimedia."
Then they complain when we do exactly that. Don't advertise it unless you're willing to deliver it.
But, the question: Is it (bandwidth) a "right?"
I think so. Maybe. Hard to say. It's not a right like life or something that vital, but the limiting of servers and other "bandwidth issues" makes me concerned because it starts to make the internet a one way conduit of information instead of allowing all users to serve their own content, which is really not what the Internet is capable of or, IMO, the ideal usage of the 'net is.
Beyond those ideals, which I admit, probably aren't shared by C*O's around the world, it's important that companies that get into this broadband invest in increasing their own bandwidth. The bandwidth "limit" companies complain about is fixable, and it's only going to get worse if they refuse to make that bandwidth grow with their hopeful customer base.
There is money to be made with the promise of freedom. Are you more likely to go with an (otherwise idential) ISP that allows/encourages (even simply does not dis-allow) servers for your content as opposed to one that disallows & tries to block their use? Freedom is important, and people, especially now, are conginzant (sp) of that.
Yes, I use P2P, not gnutella or kazaa or popular ones but private hubs; take your salt as recommended by your physician.
"Whose Line is it Anyway" started out on BBC radio station 4 (Source) in '87. Then they moved to TV station 4 in '88. You might only be familiar with the version hosted by Drew Carey, but be aware that the show has a history.
If you read my comment, then you might possibly get the joke. I debated humor "tags" for about five minutes while I was writing the post, but thought that the avg. Slashdot reader would actually read it and be capable of understanding humor. Not the first time I've been wrong.
The fact that I don't have a life doesn't change the fact that you just didn't get it, and instead felt the need to flame randomly, but really, all you did was get yourself burned.
It's obvious what's going on here. For those of you not in the know, the BBC is actually a toy of the British government, supported by taxes (including the infamous television tax). These taxes bring us things like "Are You Being Served," "Whose Line is it Anyway?," and "1840 House: The Greatest Generation," but also the BBC News Service, who used to be a great, possibly the best, English (as in language) news source, until recently.
What's dastardly about these "news" stories is the trend of the BBC to overlook certain details. It reads like classic PR techniques applied in the American media for decades: News by Press Release. One theory is that BBC is feeling the effects of the global economic trouble, and more people are hiding their TVs than ever, decreasing funding while demand still increases. That's what some so-called investigators will tell you, but I've got the real truth.
There are two possibilities here, but I'm only going to go over in detail the most probable. Microsoft bought the BBC in a massive, but secret, merger, in an effort to compete with the bohemoth AOL/TW. The secrecy is required in order to avoid anti-trust processes from recurring.
Why not just hijack the public radio & TV here in the US? Trust. Your average joe user trusts the BBC; PBS in the US is kind of like the Discovery Channel for poor folk that can't afford basic cable, especially to see the topless natives.
People trust the BBC mostly because it's British, and most Americans trust the British for some reason. I, personally, haven't trusted them since the war of '76.
Why would London sell the BBC? The British government needs the money from MS to support the stupidly extravigant(sp) lifestyle afforded the royal family, especially since the Faulklands War in the early 80's, and the Royals are still a source of pride for the British people, well, at least the ones with bad teeth.
The other possiblity involves the Masons, Bush's not-so-secret Shadow Government, and Heidi Klum.
Actually, now that I think about it, there remains a final possiblity that seems really remote, but worth stating, at least in brief. Maybe, just possibly, perhaps perhaps perhaps it could be that the technical details were the focus of the article, and not the evil EULA. I'm not going to hedge my bets this way, though. It's obviously a conspiracy on a massive level.
HEY!
What does it matter if she's got a Midieval Studies degree? Plenty of smart people got them, some idiots are bound to.
Of course, I got a "worthless" degree. Then again, I don't have a job, either.
I know I'd buy more music if I had a job. Unemployment has cut out most unessentials, I can barely keep gas in my car to look for a job, esp. in my area, where industrial work is a heavy part of the local economy.
Maybe I put too many things I know on my resume.
Any how. It doesn't help, as the article states, that a lot of newish pop music is throw-away stuff. I don't care about Ms. Spears and how many records she sells. Gimme good music, and I'll support them. (New Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Nov.! Yay!)
My problem with the Fox News Channel is they claim to be unbiased, when they're the worst news channel w/r/t that particular vice. Of course, whether or not it's even possible to be unbiased remains to be seen.
I can argue with him all day from the comfort of my living room, but unfortunately, I ain't a pundit. He's more of a bully than brilliant, like many other talk show hosts, they're more into discussing unrelated issues.
Example: The whole banning "under god" from the pledge in the US. Regardless of if you agree or not, she invited the fellow who brought the lawsuit, and instead of discussing the issue (the establishment clause, seperation of church & state), she kept implying he was a bad parent, and when he wouldn't play ball, she dropped into just repeating herself, like he didn't understand the questions. He obviously wanted to stay on topic, unlike her and this post.
Any how. O'Reilly does the same thing, and is especially condecending (sp).
Well, sorry, had to rant.
It takes a bit. Depends on your software. If you're familiar with belzier tools (common in Flash or Illustrator), it's just a matter of time. Most often, you end up skipping a lot of the "optional" characters, like # or & or () or whatever, just doing the numbers and (latin) letters and basic punctuation.
The hardest thing to do is maintain your vision throughout the set.
The number of full fonts I've made because of that last thing means I've finished 0 projects.
Well, anyway. Back to procrastinating.
My friend's got one of those, and the only complaint I get from him is the 14.4 speed limit on the modem.
And the fact that he has to use voicestream.
And that it cost 600 bucks.
But he said the first one had something to do with a limit of the GSM. I dunno about that, literally. Anything. Neither does he.
Re: Treehouse of Horror:
Their Anthology of Interests are similar, but less holiday orientedness.
The funniest one, IMO, is the one where "life is like a video game."
But that's just me.
How regularly? The few admins I know are ran frazzled by lack of help dealing with normal, simple user complaints.
Of course, he'd notice a dreamcast sitting somewhere in the open, but under a desk, plugged into a network mini-hub? Hell, in the unlocked server closet, which also shares room with housekeeping stuff.
It's easy to say "any admin worth their salt" would do such-and-such, but sometimes that just isn't the case, not because they don't want to, but rather because they don't have the time.
When you get in at 6 in the morning and leave at 9 at night every night, are you really in the mood for staying an hour later and looking at the logs? Should he? Probably, but admins are human, and the man I'm thinking of isn't getting paid hourly.
Of course, he is my boss, and I just feel bad because I probably didn't work as hard as I should've. Maybe I should stop putting him down as a reference in my job search. Heh.
Good . . . but he forgot the Dude From Dell.
Anyhow. There's a company called Lamar that does billboards around here (Rockford, IL area). When the billboards aren't being rented by other companies, the pictures are of brightly colored tropical fishes caught by a hook in the mouth, with "Got ya!" and the phone number, whatever.
This is how the marketing department sees people. Of course, other marketing departments see the marketers as fishes, too, to be yanked out of the water, filleted and cooked to a nice color.
A book I recently read called Gonzo Marketing by Christopher Locke says that marketing as we know it is irrelevant now, because the mass market ideal consumer doesn't exist any more. He mentions the Internet, too, a lot. I think this is leading to the massive saturation.
Consumer's ignoring/resenting commericals-->diminishing returns-->more commercials to compensate->more ignoring/resentment-->more ads--> etc.
Also mentions in passing that the commercials and programming are aimed at the lowest common denominator in order to net the largest audience.
As my t-shirt says, "Why do you think they call it programming?"
Anyhow.
Because decent doesn't mean large.
Besides GTA3, the only other game I really want is Warcraft III, which is out/coming for mac.
Works for me, eh. I'm not interested in all the others. . . unless dues ex II comes out any time soon.
not a delusional mac user, just picky:
Yes, NT will install on that machine.
I did it, on a p 60 for a while.
Back in the day.
95 or 96.
Because it has all the support people need. Writing letters, listening to music, browsing the web, and a unix backend. Almost all recent games are out for MacOS.
The only thing keeping me from a new iMac on my desk is the price, and my perpetual unemployment. I deal with XP until I get my first paycheck.
I don't have a passport account I use on monster.com.
They're seperate, tho' I get bugged to try a free passport membership every time I go on monster.
Of course I have one, but didn't check it for 60 days, so it's gone into inactive. Doh.
Though I'd avoid it, is "Games & More" on State Street near E. State and Alpine. The staff is unprofessional and pretentious, but ya'll didn't ask for just the Good stores, did you?
No theatres, as far as I'm aware, until you get down to Champaign, IL, near University of Illinois.
Limiting Creativity:
Tell her that the best work has artificial constraints upon it. Obvious one is music. If you wanted true "creative control" you would use all the notes available, but most people (who know what they're doing) don't, but rather use scales, or a certain subset of notes.
Happens in literature all the time, too, as in art. "Why limit yourself to oil paint? Because it helps you think "outside the box" to do stuff you want."
Maybe. She might be a shitty artist and unwilling to experiment.
Relatively off-topic, maybe.
I've noticed that seemingly every resume I send on-line somewhere goes in the bit-bucket. I imagine huge circular servers with everything relocated to dev/null. This may be the case, but possibly not, maybe I really ain't qualified for anything. (Hate that feeling, I do.)
Does Google use some of its own technology to sort through the deluge of resumes I'm sure it receives? Have you had or even thought of marketing this possible technology to companies?
Did I just give away a really good idea?
Great, so YOU'RE the reason I can't get a job. Looking back at stupid messages I posted back in high school now that I've graduated college and have a child . . . I can CHANGE! GOD DAMN YOU! I CAN CHANGE! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY, I CAN CHANGE!
I promise I won't post any grotesque misspellings on Usenet any more! I promise I won't post to the alt.talk.origins newsgroups! I promise I'll be good! I'll never play Quake again!!!
So, can I have a job now?
my girlfriend loves these Maxis games.
Hopefully, though, they'll rethink their canning of the potentially really interesting SimsVille, which I might even deign to play.
It's been my hope for a while that they tie all the Sim* games together.
IRC is bad. I know how to use it to find the things I'm looking for, but I'd prefer not.
Why?
The people are annoying.
Give me a decent P2P client any day, so I don't have to deal with the elite hAx0rZ, and my cable modem's intermittent problem cause me to lose connections when I'm 99% done (minspeed 5k/s! Get a T1!).
Depends how you bought it, some credit-card companies will do price matching for you.
It was relatively common when I got my first one (early ninetys), I'm not sure about yours, if you even have one, and what those options are now.