Make sure you tell your school this! It may never go anywhere, but mail your school's administration, your district administration (I'm assuming this is a high school-type place), and your student-run media (newspaper, A/V club) and student council (class president, etc.). Show as many people as you can in that school (and those who support and help run it) that BitTorrent isn't a "rogue protocol," and make them look foolish (they're stifling creativity and even committing censorship by preventing the distribution of legally licensed, public materials -- sure, it's spin, but that's what they're already doing anyway!). Note that when I say "write," I really mean write -- send letters printed on real paper, not just e-mails or IMs. It has more impact that way. If your school district's superintendent gets a letter from a student about perceived censorship, s/he'll start to notice something's going on and might well step in to do something about it. That will put it on the radar. Post your results here:) It'll be fun.
Doing this kind of thing helps get rid of the "stigma" BitTorrent is acquiring, and relieving someone of his ignorance is always such a satisfying process >:)
Sure, the stuff linked here may well be of great interest to you! There's lots of music, released both by independent labels and artists, and by "bootleg-friendly" labels and bands. There's public-domain (or otherwise legally/freely distributable) videos, books, photos, music, and text strewn about all over the place if you know where to look, and this article links to plenty of great places to start. Download some music and have a listen. You may like it. I was stunned by how much good stuff is out there that I not only don't have to pay for but don't have to break any laws to legally obtain!
The Creative Commons Directory is a great place to find other stuff licensed under a free/open license (maybe not BitTorrent-distributed, but of course you can fix that by seeding and posting to any of these sites linked in the article!).
How is it the Slashdot editors' (or the question poster's) problem that you chose to bitch and moan about how easy it is to find an answer (not necessarily the right one) to the question? Seems to me you spent the time digging by choice; nobody put a gun to your head, did they?
The "quality" of Ask Slashdot has been on a steady decline lately, not because of a lack of quality of questions, but because of smartasses like yourself who'd rather complain than help.
There's exactly three kinds of Ask Slashdot replies I've seen in the last few months: 1) "Google it, you idiot!", 2) "Why would you ever want that, you idiot?", 3) The occasional, actually helpful, answer.
This is as idiotic as "concerned parents lobbying to get rid of violent TV" -- if you don't want to see questions that annoy you, take the Ask Slashdot section out of your preferences and quit reading the damned things!
I know, maybe you should post your smartass question as an Ask Slashdot question! That'd be fun. Harder to just claim "google it!" for that, isn't it?
And yes, I noticed you posted a link to some server, and included only its memory capacity. Does it match the other requirements in the Ask Slashdot question? You did actually read the whole question, right?
Er, well, yeah, because I can walk to any number of local commodity shops and buy 100% of what I need to put a PC together in a couple of hours. I can do the actual work with nothing more than the parts, a screwdriver, and a couple power outlets.
Should I decide "I'm going to build myself a car today!" I've got decidedly more work laid out ahead of me. And I'd better be damned good with that screwdriver...
Citizen, you are not authorized to disseminate this material to Infrared clearance citizens. You are also clearly not authorized to visit this underground "Slashdot" secret society network system. Please report for termination.
For your next clone's reference: there is no "fireball in the sky." There is no "outside." There are no "green lasers."
Nah, probably not so bad. If they handle it the same way previous Treo upgrades have gone, it works like this:
1) You sync all your stuff to a desktop/notebook (back everything up) 2) Load the firmware upgrade application to the device and run it 3) Firmware gets updated, effectively erasing (or at least rendering useless) the contents of memory 4) Device restarts, "virgin"-like, with new firmware 5) You re-sync your stuff back to the device 6) "And there was much rejoicing" "yay..."
If they do it the same way now for the 650, and manage to fix/patch the filesystem, reloading the data back onto the device will just automatically put things in memory in a more efficient way. Should clear up the problem with ten minutes' work (three minute sync, four minute flash, three minute re-sync).
The cheapest you can get is about $50 a month -- the cheapest phone service plan you can get for the Treo is $35 a month, and the data service is $15 extra. That $15 per month *is* Vision, and it is needed for any data connectivity (but it's unmetered).
I did read your whole question, so sorry for recommending what you said you're not eager to do anyway:)
You're paying $120-ish to get started, then $20 a month for service. Except it's mail, IM, and web only. No phone, SSH, other apps, expandability, etc.
Take a couple hundred dollars ($300 or so, I think), grab some rebates from amazon.com, and get a Treo 600 (or preorder a 650). It's a cell phone, that also runs PalmOS. It supports two-way SMS chat, web browser, IM clients galore (many of them free), IRC clients, mail clients (including POP3 and IMAP), SSH clients, etc. You can be on a phone call (with a headset or just on the normal stuff, or speakerphone) and still get into the other apps and do other things (phone and data are mutually exclusive, but you can play games, mess with the PDA apps, load cached browser pages, etc., while on a call).
You're paying more, yes (service starts at $50 a month), but you get a hell of a lot more, too. I think that's at least 300 national minutes on peak, unlimited off-peak and weekends, and data in unmetered. Using the same cable the beast comes with (though they make smaller/more portable ones that both charge and sync via USB -- even handier on the road), you can attach the phone to your desktop or notebook and get internet access at about 4x dialup speeds with better latency.
Add that you can throw in memory cards to increase storage room, use all its PDA stuff, add software (lots of it free, the rest pretty cheap), and it adds up to a *very* handy device. Use something like Trillian, which proxies your IM messages (on lots of different networks), you can maintain a constant online presence without having to have the client open all the time, etc.
Essentially it's worth the money. I had a Treo 300 for a year and a half (until a number of personal issues destroyed my ability to, um, pay any bills:) and loved it. The Treos are infinitely hackable, amazingly flexible, do lots and lots of stuff, and they're one of the few examples of really spiffy technology that actually works right and can help make life easier. Oh yeah, the 600 and 650 have one of those goofy cameras built in too.
So, um, yeah, my input may not be entirely helpful if you're really limited by budget, but if you can afford it, you will officially like the Treos if you give them a shot. I miss mine and intensely wish I still had mine in service or had a 600:)
At the very least, the Treo series have flash memory. Of course, Jack Flash and FlashPro appear not to work with it, but I have done the flash memory upgrades they've released (the Treo 300 runs PalmOS 3.x, I believe).
This is one of the few devices I don't want the latest and greatest OS for -- this thing works (well) and I don't wanna screw with it. The *only* thing I would like to see improved is getting rid of that damned "Please Wait" crap when you flip the beast open and launch the phone app -- sometimes takes almost 20 seconds to launch it to make a call.
Then again, if that's the biggest complaint I have about a device, I'd say it's doing pretty good:)
That's reassuring (I have a debit card too, sadly:), but there's still a wrinkle with this.
When a credit card is stolen, and charges run up, you are temporarily unable to borrow the money that the thief charged to the account. When a debit card is stolen, and charges are piled up, that's real, hard cash you can't get access to until it's cleared up.
We're talking about an inconvenience (I can't charge my cell phone bill) versus a major problem (my mortgage check bounced because the debit card got stolen and the guy made enough charges to lock up too much of my account's funds).
Still, it's better than nothing; I can recall the early days of debit cards, when you were just left out in the cold when a card got stolen.
Debit cards can be exceedingly dangerous, namely in that you are not offered the same protections against fraud that you are automatically provided by a credit card.
Suppose your card is stolen and someone makes dozens of little purchases so as not to raise suspicion, or gets a fake I.D. with your name on it so he can charge up a storm. If it's a credit card, once you report it stolen, you're not liable for any of the charges made on it. If it's a debit card, real, actual money has been sucked out of your bank account, never to be seen again. Good luck getting that back. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm suggesting it's far more difficult.
Saying "chargeback is handled by the shop if you have the receipt" isn't the issue; suppose the shop rips you off. Suppose you pay in advance for something with a debit card but never receive the product? What does your bank do then?
Regarding point 7 -- credit lending is a fickle mistress, but does adhere to at least some principles:
When you have no credit history whatsoever, you normally cannot obtain a substantial amount of credit. A car loan (even on a new car) is about the best you can get (because it's a secured loan -- they can take real property if you default). A mortgage is usually impossible to obtain without previous credit unless you have a significant (30% or more) down payment ready to go. Generally credit is established by obtaining a fairly high-interest rate credit card with a low credit limit (say about $2,500 if you have good, verifiable income, lower if you your wages are single-digit figures per hour).
Your credit history is established as you charge to it and make payments every month. A common misconception is that paying off your credit card in full is noted on your credit report somehow and automatically/instantly improves your credit. This isn't quite correct, but the real effect this has is similar. See below.
Any decision to lend you money is taken based on your previously-established payment habits. Length of credit history is actually more important than your payment history -- your "score" goes up the longer you've had credit established. All sorts of events and ideas change your credit score:
A short credit history, of less than five, even ten years, lowers your score.
A missed payment (reported on your credit history; note most lenders are willing to forgive one missed payment, in the sense that if you pay it back and pay their fees, they won't report it) lowers your score.
Accounts in collection, valid or not, lower your score.
"Maxed out" revolving credit lines (carrying a $4,900 average balance on a $5,000 credit card line) hurts your score significantly (it is viewed as very poor money management skills since you keep the card charged up and pay only (or close to) its minimums every month).
Always-zero balances lower your score slightly. Here's where normal common sense goes out the window; it's generally a "good" thing to have credit available that hasn't been used, but lenders view it as potential debt you can run up after they've lent you money. It's a risk to lend you money and require a certain payment, knowing that later you could run up another debt with an already-established credit line that could make you unable to pay for this line of credit. This is reflected as a decrease of your score.
Having a long credit history but no "old" accounts (as in "card hopping" -- you get a new card every year at a lower interest rate or to take advantage of zero-fee/zero-interest transfers, and close your old cards) lowers your score. Personally I think they do this because it pisses 'em off that you're screwing them out of interest, but the official reason claimed is that you haven't established a long term reliable history with a single lender when you do this.
Unsecured cash loans reduce your score. You had to borrow money, one time, from somebody, and you owe it back. The payments rarely c
If it bothers you that much, and you are unwilling make one phone call
to an industry association to have your name placed on the industry's DNC list,
then you can rid yourself of the problem by getting rid of your phone
service.
Do you mean the current list (that you have to phone and write to in order
to get placed on, every two years, or you're automatically removed), that
telemarketing companies ignore, or do you mean the new one 50+ million people
have signed up for that the industry is now so eager to "honor" that they're
suing it out of existence?
We need to quit name-calling. Because I dislike telemarketing calls does not
make me an "activist type." All these "attacking the person" arguments are
pointless and aren't getting us anywhere.
There are real, legitimate problems with existing laws governing
telemarketing:
Loopholes - Companies love to seriously stretch the
definition of "previous established business relationship". Phone companies
(heh) frequently make it part of their "terms of service" agreements (that you
cannot negotiate, and must accept as-is even to get a dial tone) that they can
"share" information about you with "partners" (anybody with an advertising
budget can be a "partner) "as law permits". Even if you write to expressly
forbid them from distributing your phone number or mailing address (or other
personal information), they'll still do it if the law lets them. Questionably a
good thing for the credit reporting bureaus, but rarely "good" for
consumers.
Others bury permission to solicit you directly by phone or in person (or to
sell your contact information to others so they can do the same) in the fine
print when you sign up for something free or otherwise (it's not always just
the "you get what you pay for" things foolish folks sign up for in shopping
malls). I have no control whatsoever over how many damned "mortgage insurance"
companies my mortgage servicers (heh; took two mortgages to get this new house)
have sold my contact information to. I've asked them to stop, in writing and on
the phone, but I'm still getting at least one "protect your family!" mortgage
insurance pitches per week or more.
Companies see absolutely no problems whatsoever selling contact and
marketing demographic information to anybody willing to pay for it, regardless
of the express wishes of the people that information pertains to. I call it
unethical, and methinks it should be illegal, but alas, it happens all the
time.
All this is done under the guise of a "previous business relationship."
After all, you signed a little slip of paper to enter that contest for the free
car, right? Didn't you notice the fine print saying "we can call you to sell
you timeshare crap day and night"? Whoops; that's what we were hoping you'd
miss.
Unenforceability - I've done everything "by the book." When
telemarketers call me, I politely decline their offers, instruct them to place
me on their "do not call" lists, and disconnect the call.
...that's when they don't hang up on me first the instant they get the
impression I'm not going to buy, or the moment I start on the "please put me on
your don't call list" sentence.
Let's keep in mind how telemarketers operate. Have you ever received
a phone call from a telemarketer whose name and phone number actually appear on
Caller ID? (That was rhetorical; by the way) These days, it's always "PRIVATE /
PRIVATE" or "Unavailable / Unavailable". So much for the utility of Caller ID.
Note you also cannot just "*69" them to get a callback number, even if you're
willing to pay the $1.00 or so fee to invoke the feature. You can try, but it
won't know what number the call came from. If you can somehow convince your
phone company to actually trace the call (good luck without police
involvement, or maybe a $2.00 fee per call), if they can actually produce the
number the call came from, you may find that number is hooked to a machine that
never accepts calls; it only
My most recent layoff experience was pretty obnoxious. I was a senior systems administrator for Global Crossing's Denver office in 2001, when the first round of layoffs were coming.
We all knew which Monday would be "axe day," and I'd even discussed that previous Friday with my manager what steps I should take once the layoffs started. He said I'd get a list, I'd need to deactivate the appropriate accounts, and might be needed to help update the phones and access card lists.
Monday came. I went to work, got started on my usual tasks, and it seemed like a normal day except for the air of dread hanging over everyone since they knew what day it was. Around 2:00pm, my boss came by and said "hey Will, you got a second?" I said "sure," and followed him to is office, expecting to be handed a list of people whose accounts needed to go away. Instead, as we approached his office, I noticed a woman sitting there waiting for us who I'd never seen before, and immediately recognized the classic "two witness firing trap" with my name all over it.
Getting fired or laid off never takes long. It took less than five minutes to explain my severance benefits (which they stopped paying when the company filed for bankruptcy -- the bastards) and to hand in my badge and keys. They'd set up a "career counselling" service that began with a twenty minute meeting right there at the office, which I annoyedly sat through. After that, they handed me a box, and let me collect my own things (under supervision of course). I would later learn that the very instant my boss collected me from my cubicle, another manager raced to it and ripped the power cords for my workstation out of the wall; apparently they were doing that to everybody worried that we'd all installed "dead man's switches" on the boxes or something. Heh.
That Friday, four days after my employment with GX ended, I got a call from one of the survivors asking for help on how to remove my accounts from their systems (I was their only remaining systems administrator for the office servers at t that point). Heh.
...also, don't open a magazine or newspaper, don't turn on a radio or television set at all, don't go outside (billboards, flying banners, cars and buses dolled up to be mobile ads, etc.), don't use public transportation, don't answer your phone, and don't answer your door. While you're home, don't look at web sites or check your e-mail, either.
Sorry, but the "ignore the problem if you don't like it" argument just doesn't cut it -- the problem certainly doesn't go away, and the ads get more and more incideous.
All advertisements are lies anyway; think about it -- they're an attempt to pursuade you to buy some product or service you wouldn't otherwise buy. This requires subterfuge of some sort, whether in the guise of making you laugh, making you believe you need something you don't, or "being informative" (and just handily offering exactly what you suddenly realized you have to have).
There's an easier way to destroy advertising: don't ignore it -- become aware of it, and forcibly eject it from your mind. TiVo your TV shows and skip the commercials. Listen to CDs or MP3s of your choice on your car stereo instead of the radio (radio's a lost cause, folks, sorry), argue with salesdrones who approach you on the street (visit any tourist trap like the Vegas strip to meet some) instead of just blowing them off, etc. When you can't actually avoid ads (magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc.), don't buy what they're selling. Tell others why you don't buy certain things. Educate. Relieve people of their ignorance. Make yourself (and others) understand what advertising tries to do to its victims, and learn how to stop it.
Hardline attitude towards advertising? You bet. But I didn't ask some bag of advertising execs to figure out how to "beat" me or "trick" me into buying their crap. I feel no guilt in peering straight through the scams, swindles, and other assorted sales pitches, and helping others to do so.
barely-profitable ways... You can't merely get cash
Um, what?
If you can actually manage to get and activate a credit card, especially one with a $4,000 limit, you will also most likely have access to (or be able to call in with enough "verification" info to change) the card's PIN number.
Of course this is why credit card companies set a cash limit much lower than your full card limit (half of your full limit is the highest I've ever seen permitted), but you could still easily be looking at $400 to $2,000 cash. Just walk up to a friendly ATM once a day and supplement your income.
If you live in Vegas (or anywhere else with a casino, or any other place willing to pay you cash in exchange for a charge to your credit card, plus a fee), all you need is a fake ID (sure, people check 'em, but not that closely) and you can pretty much cash out all the way up to the card's limit.
You leave a trail of incriminating evidence.
Not necessarily true. If you pay cash for a pre-paid, no-contract cell phone, steal someone's address/phone/SSN, apply for a card in their name, intercept both the card and the PIN number in their mail, activate the card from the cell phone (whose number you wrote on the "home phone" line on the credit app), and only use the card to snarf up cash, the only piece of identifying information you leave is the grainy surveillance video(s) from the ATM(s) you use to get the money. You're a moron if you only use one ATM, and even more a moron if you use ATMs near where you live; drive to Podunk Backwaters, AL(tm) or something to do it, and drive the speed limit, and don't spend extravagantly on your way there or back. Nothing but a vapor trail.
Heh. Shit. Does this mean because I've thought up a way to do this that I'll be going to jail soon?
My point, though, is that yes, this really is nearly as 1-2-3 as Cringely claims. You don't need access to a person's real phone; just obtain a new one anonymously or take advantage of someone foolishly leaving their phone unguarded, and use that number on the credit apps. Apply for many cards (at least a few will be approved), and snoop through the mail every day looking for cards or PINs. When they show, you have control of the phone that the credit card company will accept as authentication, so activation isn't a problem.
There's other stuff you can do to make it even easier (both to pull off, and to do without being caught) if you do more homework. But it's still not difficult.
And still, I'd love an explanation as to how buying numerous low-to-mid-priced items and selling them later isn't profitable -- you didn't pay for 'em in the first place, so whatever cash you get out of it is profit.
The only bet in the house that has decent odds is the odds on a pass line bet on the craps table.
Bzzzt. I think you meant don't pass plus odds:)... From Wizard of Odds, a straight Pass bet has a house edge of 1.41%, while Don't Pass Line is 1.364%. Add odds betting in (let's use double odds, 2X), and combined house edge for Pass plus double odds is 0.606%, while Don't Pass plus double odds is 0.455%. If you can find a spot with a low table minimum and 100X odds, and you can actually afford to play full odds on the Don't Pass on that table, you enjoy probably the best house edge of any casino game, at a paltry 0.014%. Of course... even at a dollar table, you've got $201 laid out on the table just to get those odds, and if you actually win a hundred bucks when the seven comes out, everybody at the table is going to be really pissed at you:)
You're standing in a national chain of price-hiking game stores and expecting a bargain on, well, anything?
Sorry, but places like EBX, Electronics Boutique, Software Etc., and really any other game shop that is big enough to live in a mall, are major clip joints. "Trade in your old system (like, say, a Dreamcast:) plus fifty of your old games and we'll give you a two dollar credit towards a new game, and price your old stuff to sell at just a bit under original retail!"
Try the game shops that live in strip malls instead. Buy Back Games, GameStop (again, not the ones in "regular" malls), and Game Force, just to name a few. Many retailers have dropped their prices on DC games. It's just the idiots in the malls that still think they can sell Dreamcast games for list price. Show 'em how wrong they are.:)
There's a few unfortunate blocks in the way stopping this being a useful solution for a great many people:
Basic phone service is usually less expensive (sometimes much less expensive) than even the cheapest cellular phone plans, both on a monthly and per-minute basis. Even with all these wonderful service fees and taxes that get tacked onto everything these days, a local phone line will cost, on average, about $15 to $20 per month depending on municipality. I'm talking basic service here, not Caller ID, three-way calling, voice mail, etc. I mean a dialtone that lets you place calls to anyone in your local area or to toll-free numbers. You'll also never exceed any minutes allotment on a land line either on local calls. Accidentally placing a call by mashing buttons or by having a child present (they're good for this kind of thing:) won't normally send a three or four-digit invoice your way each month, and you can talk as much as you want without worrying about minutes.
Basic land line service can be used with any phone made by any manufacturer (provided the device has passed the governing body's testing processes). This means if your phone breaks, a replacement can be purchased for less than twenty dollars. For a family that can barely afford phone service in the first place, it's important that replacement equipment be available inexpensively. If a cell phone breaks, good luck finding a replacement cheaply. Cellular phones are routinely priced at over one hundred dollars each, with attractive rebates available to new signups. These rebates are not available when it comes time to order a replacement. Additionally, replacing a cellular phone, even on the same service account, requires coordination between the buyer and the provider, since the provider must authorize and activate the new unit, while disabling the old. Replacing a land line phone is a simple matter of unplugging the old one and plugging in the new one.
Modems and fax machines cannot make use of cellular phones (with very few, expensive, and limited exceptions -- the few cell phone to standard device couplers I've seen are specific to one model and brand of phone, and were a hundred bucks each). This means if you liked your land line phone (perhaps a good multiple-handset line sharing headset compatible system with an all-digital answering machine) or have a TiVo, satellite receiver, or anything else that dials home every once in awhile, you're stuck with a land line anyway.
Telemarketers do not play by the rules. This is part of why most people hate them so much, but is also another reason why abandoning your land line to avoid telemarketing doesn't work. As others have mentioned, telemarketers still call cell phones anyway. Sure, it might be illegal where you live, but that doesn't usually stop them.
As others have mentioned, emergency service (911) is not as reliable or accurate on cellular phones as it is on land line phones.
Some of these reasons are mutually exclusive (if you can afford something with a modem in it, cost is not likely a major factor), but they're still valid. Besides, just because you can afford something doesn't mean you should buy it.
The bottom line is essentially that cellular phones cannot yet replace land lines entirely.
If you can't afford a cell phone, it's not an option to dealing with telemarketers. If you have devices that require a land line for even occasional use, and you expect to continue using them, you cannot eliminate the land line. If you're just doing it to dodge telemarketers, it won't work anyway.
In my case, given that I do not currently have a cellular phone, the financials break down like this: switching from a land line ($25 per month) to a cellular phone ($30 per month, at least) means spending five more dollars per month, stopping my DirecTiVo calling home when needed for updates (or spending another $70 and some time shovelling TivoNet into it), losing my ability t
Very true. And note that the market's response to this seems to be "okay, guess we'll stop buying Lexmark printers then."
Here, certainly, the crowd is quite displeased with this practice. I surely won't buy from Lexmark. I know if Epson suddenly takes action and kills all the third-party ink cartridges for its printers, I'll stockpile as much of them as I can while they're cheap, fire off an angry letter to Epson (I know, big !@#$ing deal, but at least I won't just be silent), and never buy from them again.
Competition is still present in this market; it's just that the players have a dirty trick (the DMCA) to play if they think things are taking a turn for the worse. Whether this trick actually helps or not has yet to be seen. It's taking a long time, but it really does feel like the average "consumer" these days is becoming aware of being constantly screwed by the companies s/he does business with.
There's no brand loyalty these days, and it doesn't take many mistakes to shake people off one brand of printer (or any product, really) onto another.
I agree completely that this is what the manufacturers must have in mind; we'll buy the latest-and-greatest new printer every year and will use up the ink before the third-party vendors come up with compatible cartridges.
The problem with this kind of reasoning, though, is that people like me exist.:) Heh, okay, let me clarify.
I bought an Epson Stylus Photo 890 recently, for a number of reasons, ranging from full-on (i.e. better print quality than Windows) Linux support (over USB, even!), printer resolution and speed, 6-color cartridge and separate black cartridge, low price ($300 list, $240-ish on pricegrabber), and a $100 rebate.
It is not Epson's newest printer. It was among their cheapest (after rebates and shopping around). It's one of the best supported inkjets in Linux land. It handles lots of media types, including cardstock and glossy paper on rolls (heh; I still want to find 8.5" wide rolls of paper... like a hundred feet of the stuff! Imagine the obscene high-quality pornobanners!:), and prints fast.
Oh, and the aftermarket cartridges for the damned thing are five bucks a piece including shipping. Let my cats dye themselves black (or cyan, yellow, red, whatever) by stumbling upon my spare cartridges and sharpening their teeth; I'll laugh at them and consider it five bucks well spent:)
So this idea won't work with people like me. I only paid $140 for this thing after the rebate check arrived, but if it dies after only going through 25 cartridges or so, I'm still going to be pissed, and I'll switch to another brand (if I still need to print anything when/if this happens).
It seems another "best" solution to this problem doesn't involve the government at all, but people just refusing to buy the latest and greatest model because the front facade looks cute and it can bake cookies. At least wait until aftermarket cartridges are available.
Am I the only one here who remembers The 11th Hour? Getting that damned Bink player to run at *all* on any machine ever built was hard as hell. Best I could ever manage (with every combination of video cards and systems at my disposal at the time) was *black and white* video playback.
The reason no free players offer the performance of Bink is because the authors of those free players desired to release applications that can actually play videos:)
His basic thesis is that satellite plus PVR will eat cable companies' lunches?
[dances a jig]
I long for the day that this happens. Cable companies can suck it -- they lie, overcharge for service, send out incompetent "installers" who invariably screw things up, put unjustified maximum download caps on their cable modems (which share bandwidth with neighbors), and engage in disinformation and scare tactics against the only competition (satellites) they've had ever.
Comcast pays people just to give them addresses and/or phone numbers of people they see using satellite dishes. Comcast pays them *more* if they actually get a "conversion." I'm disappointed nobody "turned me in"... I'd have loved to get into another argument with AT&T about why their digital cable offering sucks (not all channels are digital, must pay multiple fees for multiple receivers, etc.; meanwhile my DirecTiVo can snarf programming off two satellite channels simultaneously and I don't pay an extra fee for the second "tuner").
AT&T (and I imagine all of them now, as Cox Communications even blasts satellite on their "on-hold" musak) badmouths satellite at every opportunity. For a few months before we figured out how to get around not having a south-facing balcony, we were stuck with AT&T Digital Cable. *Every* commercial break (this was before we were blessed with our lovely TiVo:) they had a commercial spewing FUD about satellite versus cable. It was very Microsoftian.
These cable companies are old, outdated, and hopefully won't be around much longer.
I wouldn't *mind* paying a bit more for television programming if it didn't suck like it does now. But if these people actually succeed in turning television entirely into a pay-per-view, no time-shifting, no recording and playing back programs without buying it again type of medium, my television will only be used for video games. We don't watch much these days anyway; it's either movies or games or TiVo'd stuff, and there's plenty of other things to do if we decide to just "switch off."
I don't care if your purpose is to shove your ads into my brain. I won't have it, and if you manage to kill my ability to stop advertisements from bombarding me, I'll simply switch it off, and stop watching entirely. And I'll continue to adamantly oppose advertising in all its forms.
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Make sure you tell your school this! It may never go anywhere, but mail your school's administration, your district administration (I'm assuming this is a high school-type place), and your student-run media (newspaper, A/V club) and student council (class president, etc.). Show as many people as you can in that school (and those who support and help run it) that BitTorrent isn't a "rogue protocol," and make them look foolish (they're stifling creativity and even committing censorship by preventing the distribution of legally licensed, public materials -- sure, it's spin, but that's what they're already doing anyway!). Note that when I say "write," I really mean write -- send letters printed on real paper, not just e-mails or IMs. It has more impact that way. If your school district's superintendent gets a letter from a student about perceived censorship, s/he'll start to notice something's going on and might well step in to do something about it. That will put it on the radar. Post your results here :) It'll be fun.
Doing this kind of thing helps get rid of the "stigma" BitTorrent is acquiring, and relieving someone of his ignorance is always such a satisfying process >:)
Sure, the stuff linked here may well be of great interest to you! There's lots of music, released both by independent labels and artists, and by "bootleg-friendly" labels and bands. There's public-domain (or otherwise legally/freely distributable) videos, books, photos, music, and text strewn about all over the place if you know where to look, and this article links to plenty of great places to start. Download some music and have a listen. You may like it. I was stunned by how much good stuff is out there that I not only don't have to pay for but don't have to break any laws to legally obtain!
The Creative Commons Directory is a great place to find other stuff licensed under a free/open license (maybe not BitTorrent-distributed, but of course you can fix that by seeding and posting to any of these sites linked in the article!).
Heh, yeah :) You're guilty of it too, though :P
How is it the Slashdot editors' (or the question poster's) problem that you chose to bitch and moan about how easy it is to find an answer (not necessarily the right one) to the question? Seems to me you spent the time digging by choice; nobody put a gun to your head, did they?
The "quality" of Ask Slashdot has been on a steady decline lately, not because of a lack of quality of questions, but because of smartasses like yourself who'd rather complain than help.
There's exactly three kinds of Ask Slashdot replies I've seen in the last few months: 1) "Google it, you idiot!", 2) "Why would you ever want that, you idiot?", 3) The occasional, actually helpful, answer.
This is as idiotic as "concerned parents lobbying to get rid of violent TV" -- if you don't want to see questions that annoy you, take the Ask Slashdot section out of your preferences and quit reading the damned things!
I know, maybe you should post your smartass question as an Ask Slashdot question! That'd be fun. Harder to just claim "google it!" for that, isn't it?
And yes, I noticed you posted a link to some server, and included only its memory capacity. Does it match the other requirements in the Ask Slashdot question? You did actually read the whole question, right?
Then again, neither is the baby Mac being discussed here :)
Er, well, yeah, because I can walk to any number of local commodity shops and buy 100% of what I need to put a PC together in a couple of hours. I can do the actual work with nothing more than the parts, a screwdriver, and a couple power outlets.
Should I decide "I'm going to build myself a car today!" I've got decidedly more work laid out ahead of me. And I'd better be damned good with that screwdriver...
Citizen, you are not authorized to disseminate this material to Infrared clearance citizens. You are also clearly not authorized to visit this underground "Slashdot" secret society network system. Please report for termination.
For your next clone's reference: there is no "fireball in the sky." There is no "outside." There are no "green lasers."
Thank you for your cooperation!
Nah, probably not so bad. If they handle it the same way previous Treo upgrades have gone, it works like this:
1) You sync all your stuff to a desktop/notebook (back everything up)
2) Load the firmware upgrade application to the device and run it
3) Firmware gets updated, effectively erasing (or at least rendering useless) the contents of memory
4) Device restarts, "virgin"-like, with new firmware
5) You re-sync your stuff back to the device
6) "And there was much rejoicing" "yay..."
If they do it the same way now for the 650, and manage to fix/patch the filesystem, reloading the data back onto the device will just automatically put things in memory in a more efficient way. Should clear up the problem with ten minutes' work (three minute sync, four minute flash, three minute re-sync).
The cheapest you can get is about $50 a month -- the cheapest phone service plan you can get for the Treo is $35 a month, and the data service is $15 extra. That $15 per month *is* Vision, and it is needed for any data connectivity (but it's unmetered).
I did read your whole question, so sorry for recommending what you said you're not eager to do anyway :)
You're paying $120-ish to get started, then $20 a month for service. Except it's mail, IM, and web only. No phone, SSH, other apps, expandability, etc.
Take a couple hundred dollars ($300 or so, I think), grab some rebates from amazon.com, and get a Treo 600 (or preorder a 650). It's a cell phone, that also runs PalmOS. It supports two-way SMS chat, web browser, IM clients galore (many of them free), IRC clients, mail clients (including POP3 and IMAP), SSH clients, etc. You can be on a phone call (with a headset or just on the normal stuff, or speakerphone) and still get into the other apps and do other things (phone and data are mutually exclusive, but you can play games, mess with the PDA apps, load cached browser pages, etc., while on a call).
You're paying more, yes (service starts at $50 a month), but you get a hell of a lot more, too. I think that's at least 300 national minutes on peak, unlimited off-peak and weekends, and data in unmetered. Using the same cable the beast comes with (though they make smaller/more portable ones that both charge and sync via USB -- even handier on the road), you can attach the phone to your desktop or notebook and get internet access at about 4x dialup speeds with better latency.
Add that you can throw in memory cards to increase storage room, use all its PDA stuff, add software (lots of it free, the rest pretty cheap), and it adds up to a *very* handy device. Use something like Trillian, which proxies your IM messages (on lots of different networks), you can maintain a constant online presence without having to have the client open all the time, etc.
Essentially it's worth the money. I had a Treo 300 for a year and a half (until a number of personal issues destroyed my ability to, um, pay any bills :) and loved it. The Treos are infinitely hackable, amazingly flexible, do lots and lots of stuff, and they're one of the few examples of really spiffy technology that actually works right and can help make life easier. Oh yeah, the 600 and 650 have one of those goofy cameras built in too.
So, um, yeah, my input may not be entirely helpful if you're really limited by budget, but if you can afford it, you will officially like the Treos if you give them a shot. I miss mine and intensely wish I still had mine in service or had a 600 :)
At the very least, the Treo series have flash memory. Of course, Jack Flash and FlashPro appear not to work with it, but I have done the flash memory upgrades they've released (the Treo 300 runs PalmOS 3.x, I believe).
This is one of the few devices I don't want the latest and greatest OS for -- this thing works (well) and I don't wanna screw with it. The *only* thing I would like to see improved is getting rid of that damned "Please Wait" crap when you flip the beast open and launch the phone app -- sometimes takes almost 20 seconds to launch it to make a call.
Then again, if that's the biggest complaint I have about a device, I'd say it's doing pretty good :)
That's reassuring (I have a debit card too, sadly :), but there's still a wrinkle with this.
When a credit card is stolen, and charges run up, you are temporarily unable to borrow the money that the thief charged to the account. When a debit card is stolen, and charges are piled up, that's real, hard cash you can't get access to until it's cleared up.
We're talking about an inconvenience (I can't charge my cell phone bill) versus a major problem (my mortgage check bounced because the debit card got stolen and the guy made enough charges to lock up too much of my account's funds).
Still, it's better than nothing; I can recall the early days of debit cards, when you were just left out in the cold when a card got stolen.
Debit cards can be exceedingly dangerous, namely in that you are not offered the same protections against fraud that you are automatically provided by a credit card.
Suppose your card is stolen and someone makes dozens of little purchases so as not to raise suspicion, or gets a fake I.D. with your name on it so he can charge up a storm. If it's a credit card, once you report it stolen, you're not liable for any of the charges made on it. If it's a debit card, real, actual money has been sucked out of your bank account, never to be seen again. Good luck getting that back. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm suggesting it's far more difficult.
Saying "chargeback is handled by the shop if you have the receipt" isn't the issue; suppose the shop rips you off. Suppose you pay in advance for something with a debit card but never receive the product? What does your bank do then?
Regarding point 7 -- credit lending is a fickle mistress, but does adhere to at least some principles:
If it bothers you that much, and you are unwilling make one phone call to an industry association to have your name placed on the industry's DNC list, then you can rid yourself of the problem by getting rid of your phone service.
Do you mean the current list (that you have to phone and write to in order to get placed on, every two years, or you're automatically removed), that telemarketing companies ignore, or do you mean the new one 50+ million people have signed up for that the industry is now so eager to "honor" that they're suing it out of existence?
We need to quit name-calling. Because I dislike telemarketing calls does not make me an "activist type." All these "attacking the person" arguments are pointless and aren't getting us anywhere.
There are real, legitimate problems with existing laws governing telemarketing:
Others bury permission to solicit you directly by phone or in person (or to sell your contact information to others so they can do the same) in the fine print when you sign up for something free or otherwise (it's not always just the "you get what you pay for" things foolish folks sign up for in shopping malls). I have no control whatsoever over how many damned "mortgage insurance" companies my mortgage servicers (heh; took two mortgages to get this new house) have sold my contact information to. I've asked them to stop, in writing and on the phone, but I'm still getting at least one "protect your family!" mortgage insurance pitches per week or more.
Companies see absolutely no problems whatsoever selling contact and marketing demographic information to anybody willing to pay for it, regardless of the express wishes of the people that information pertains to. I call it unethical, and methinks it should be illegal, but alas, it happens all the time.
All this is done under the guise of a "previous business relationship." After all, you signed a little slip of paper to enter that contest for the free car, right? Didn't you notice the fine print saying "we can call you to sell you timeshare crap day and night"? Whoops; that's what we were hoping you'd miss.
...that's when they don't hang up on me first the instant they get the impression I'm not going to buy, or the moment I start on the "please put me on your don't call list" sentence.
Let's keep in mind how telemarketers operate. Have you ever received a phone call from a telemarketer whose name and phone number actually appear on Caller ID? (That was rhetorical; by the way) These days, it's always "PRIVATE / PRIVATE" or "Unavailable / Unavailable". So much for the utility of Caller ID. Note you also cannot just "*69" them to get a callback number, even if you're willing to pay the $1.00 or so fee to invoke the feature. You can try, but it won't know what number the call came from. If you can somehow convince your phone company to actually trace the call (good luck without police involvement, or maybe a $2.00 fee per call), if they can actually produce the number the call came from, you may find that number is hooked to a machine that never accepts calls; it only
My most recent layoff experience was pretty obnoxious. I was a senior systems administrator for Global Crossing's Denver office in 2001, when the first round of layoffs were coming.
We all knew which Monday would be "axe day," and I'd even discussed that previous Friday with my manager what steps I should take once the layoffs started. He said I'd get a list, I'd need to deactivate the appropriate accounts, and might be needed to help update the phones and access card lists.
Monday came. I went to work, got started on my usual tasks, and it seemed like a normal day except for the air of dread hanging over everyone since they knew what day it was. Around 2:00pm, my boss came by and said "hey Will, you got a second?" I said "sure," and followed him to is office, expecting to be handed a list of people whose accounts needed to go away. Instead, as we approached his office, I noticed a woman sitting there waiting for us who I'd never seen before, and immediately recognized the classic "two witness firing trap" with my name all over it.
Getting fired or laid off never takes long. It took less than five minutes to explain my severance benefits (which they stopped paying when the company filed for bankruptcy -- the bastards) and to hand in my badge and keys. They'd set up a "career counselling" service that began with a twenty minute meeting right there at the office, which I annoyedly sat through. After that, they handed me a box, and let me collect my own things (under supervision of course). I would later learn that the very instant my boss collected me from my cubicle, another manager raced to it and ripped the power cords for my workstation out of the wall; apparently they were doing that to everybody worried that we'd all installed "dead man's switches" on the boxes or something. Heh.
That Friday, four days after my employment with GX ended, I got a call from one of the survivors asking for help on how to remove my accounts from their systems (I was their only remaining systems administrator for the office servers at t that point). Heh.
...also, don't open a magazine or newspaper, don't turn on a radio or television set at all, don't go outside (billboards, flying banners, cars and buses dolled up to be mobile ads, etc.), don't use public transportation, don't answer your phone, and don't answer your door. While you're home, don't look at web sites or check your e-mail, either.
Sorry, but the "ignore the problem if you don't like it" argument just doesn't cut it -- the problem certainly doesn't go away, and the ads get more and more incideous.
All advertisements are lies anyway; think about it -- they're an attempt to pursuade you to buy some product or service you wouldn't otherwise buy. This requires subterfuge of some sort, whether in the guise of making you laugh, making you believe you need something you don't, or "being informative" (and just handily offering exactly what you suddenly realized you have to have).
There's an easier way to destroy advertising: don't ignore it -- become aware of it, and forcibly eject it from your mind. TiVo your TV shows and skip the commercials. Listen to CDs or MP3s of your choice on your car stereo instead of the radio (radio's a lost cause, folks, sorry), argue with salesdrones who approach you on the street (visit any tourist trap like the Vegas strip to meet some) instead of just blowing them off, etc. When you can't actually avoid ads (magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc.), don't buy what they're selling. Tell others why you don't buy certain things. Educate. Relieve people of their ignorance. Make yourself (and others) understand what advertising tries to do to its victims, and learn how to stop it.
Hardline attitude towards advertising? You bet. But I didn't ask some bag of advertising execs to figure out how to "beat" me or "trick" me into buying their crap. I feel no guilt in peering straight through the scams, swindles, and other assorted sales pitches, and helping others to do so.
barely-profitable ways ... You can't merely get cash
Um, what?
If you can actually manage to get and activate a credit card, especially one with a $4,000 limit, you will also most likely have access to (or be able to call in with enough "verification" info to change) the card's PIN number.
Of course this is why credit card companies set a cash limit much lower than your full card limit (half of your full limit is the highest I've ever seen permitted), but you could still easily be looking at $400 to $2,000 cash. Just walk up to a friendly ATM once a day and supplement your income.
If you live in Vegas (or anywhere else with a casino, or any other place willing to pay you cash in exchange for a charge to your credit card, plus a fee), all you need is a fake ID (sure, people check 'em, but not that closely) and you can pretty much cash out all the way up to the card's limit.
You leave a trail of incriminating evidence.
Not necessarily true. If you pay cash for a pre-paid, no-contract cell phone, steal someone's address/phone/SSN, apply for a card in their name, intercept both the card and the PIN number in their mail, activate the card from the cell phone (whose number you wrote on the "home phone" line on the credit app), and only use the card to snarf up cash, the only piece of identifying information you leave is the grainy surveillance video(s) from the ATM(s) you use to get the money. You're a moron if you only use one ATM, and even more a moron if you use ATMs near where you live; drive to Podunk Backwaters, AL(tm) or something to do it, and drive the speed limit, and don't spend extravagantly on your way there or back. Nothing but a vapor trail.
Heh. Shit. Does this mean because I've thought up a way to do this that I'll be going to jail soon?
My point, though, is that yes, this really is nearly as 1-2-3 as Cringely claims. You don't need access to a person's real phone; just obtain a new one anonymously or take advantage of someone foolishly leaving their phone unguarded, and use that number on the credit apps. Apply for many cards (at least a few will be approved), and snoop through the mail every day looking for cards or PINs. When they show, you have control of the phone that the credit card company will accept as authentication, so activation isn't a problem.
There's other stuff you can do to make it even easier (both to pull off, and to do without being caught) if you do more homework. But it's still not difficult.
And still, I'd love an explanation as to how buying numerous low-to-mid-priced items and selling them later isn't profitable -- you didn't pay for 'em in the first place, so whatever cash you get out of it is profit.
The only bet in the house that has decent odds is the odds on a pass line bet on the craps table.
:) ... From Wizard of Odds, a straight Pass bet has a house edge of 1.41%, while Don't Pass Line is 1.364%. Add odds betting in (let's use double odds, 2X), and combined house edge for Pass plus double odds is 0.606%, while Don't Pass plus double odds is 0.455%. If you can find a spot with a low table minimum and 100X odds, and you can actually afford to play full odds on the Don't Pass on that table, you enjoy probably the best house edge of any casino game, at a paltry 0.014%. Of course ... even at a dollar table, you've got $201 laid out on the table just to get those odds, and if you actually win a hundred bucks when the seven comes out, everybody at the table is going to be really pissed at you :)
Bzzzt. I think you meant don't pass plus odds
You're standing in a national chain of price-hiking game stores and expecting a bargain on, well, anything?
Sorry, but places like EBX, Electronics Boutique, Software Etc., and really any other game shop that is big enough to live in a mall, are major clip joints. "Trade in your old system (like, say, a Dreamcast :) plus fifty of your old games and we'll give you a two dollar credit towards a new game, and price your old stuff to sell at just a bit under original retail!"
Try the game shops that live in strip malls instead. Buy Back Games, GameStop (again, not the ones in "regular" malls), and Game Force, just to name a few. Many retailers have dropped their prices on DC games. It's just the idiots in the malls that still think they can sell Dreamcast games for list price. Show 'em how wrong they are. :)
There's a few unfortunate blocks in the way stopping this being a useful solution for a great many people:
Some of these reasons are mutually exclusive (if you can afford something with a modem in it, cost is not likely a major factor), but they're still valid. Besides, just because you can afford something doesn't mean you should buy it.
The bottom line is essentially that cellular phones cannot yet replace land lines entirely.
If you can't afford a cell phone, it's not an option to dealing with telemarketers. If you have devices that require a land line for even occasional use, and you expect to continue using them, you cannot eliminate the land line. If you're just doing it to dodge telemarketers, it won't work anyway.
In my case, given that I do not currently have a cellular phone, the financials break down like this: switching from a land line ($25 per month) to a cellular phone ($30 per month, at least) means spending five more dollars per month, stopping my DirecTiVo calling home when needed for updates (or spending another $70 and some time shovelling TivoNet into it), losing my ability t
Here, certainly, the crowd is quite displeased with this practice. I surely won't buy from Lexmark. I know if Epson suddenly takes action and kills all the third-party ink cartridges for its printers, I'll stockpile as much of them as I can while they're cheap, fire off an angry letter to Epson (I know, big !@#$ing deal, but at least I won't just be silent), and never buy from them again.
Competition is still present in this market; it's just that the players have a dirty trick (the DMCA) to play if they think things are taking a turn for the worse. Whether this trick actually helps or not has yet to be seen. It's taking a long time, but it really does feel like the average "consumer" these days is becoming aware of being constantly screwed by the companies s/he does business with.
There's no brand loyalty these days, and it doesn't take many mistakes to shake people off one brand of printer (or any product, really) onto another.
The problem with this kind of reasoning, though, is that people like me exist. :) Heh, okay, let me clarify.
I bought an Epson Stylus Photo 890 recently, for a number of reasons, ranging from full-on (i.e. better print quality than Windows) Linux support (over USB, even!), printer resolution and speed, 6-color cartridge and separate black cartridge, low price ($300 list, $240-ish on pricegrabber), and a $100 rebate.
It is not Epson's newest printer. It was among their cheapest (after rebates and shopping around). It's one of the best supported inkjets in Linux land. It handles lots of media types, including cardstock and glossy paper on rolls (heh; I still want to find 8.5" wide rolls of paper ... like a hundred feet of the stuff! Imagine the obscene high-quality pornobanners! :), and prints fast.
Oh, and the aftermarket cartridges for the damned thing are five bucks a piece including shipping. Let my cats dye themselves black (or cyan, yellow, red, whatever) by stumbling upon my spare cartridges and sharpening their teeth; I'll laugh at them and consider it five bucks well spent :)
So this idea won't work with people like me. I only paid $140 for this thing after the rebate check arrived, but if it dies after only going through 25 cartridges or so, I'm still going to be pissed, and I'll switch to another brand (if I still need to print anything when/if this happens).
It seems another "best" solution to this problem doesn't involve the government at all, but people just refusing to buy the latest and greatest model because the front facade looks cute and it can bake cookies. At least wait until aftermarket cartridges are available.
Re-read *his* post -- he suggested the *hardware* page, not the software itself :)
Am I the only one here who remembers The 11th Hour? Getting that damned Bink player to run at *all* on any machine ever built was hard as hell. Best I could ever manage (with every combination of video cards and systems at my disposal at the time) was *black and white* video playback.
The reason no free players offer the performance of Bink is because the authors of those free players desired to release applications that can actually play videos :)
I long for the day that this happens. Cable companies can suck it -- they lie, overcharge for service, send out incompetent "installers" who invariably screw things up, put unjustified maximum download caps on their cable modems (which share bandwidth with neighbors), and engage in disinformation and scare tactics against the only competition (satellites) they've had ever.
Comcast pays people just to give them addresses and/or phone numbers of people they see using satellite dishes. Comcast pays them *more* if they actually get a "conversion." I'm disappointed nobody "turned me in" ... I'd have loved to get into another argument with AT&T about why their digital cable offering sucks (not all channels are digital, must pay multiple fees for multiple receivers, etc.; meanwhile my DirecTiVo can snarf programming off two satellite channels simultaneously and I don't pay an extra fee for the second "tuner").
AT&T (and I imagine all of them now, as Cox Communications even blasts satellite on their "on-hold" musak) badmouths satellite at every opportunity. For a few months before we figured out how to get around not having a south-facing balcony, we were stuck with AT&T Digital Cable. *Every* commercial break (this was before we were blessed with our lovely TiVo :) they had a commercial spewing FUD about satellite versus cable. It was very Microsoftian.
These cable companies are old, outdated, and hopefully won't be around much longer.
I wouldn't *mind* paying a bit more for television programming if it didn't suck like it does now. But if these people actually succeed in turning television entirely into a pay-per-view, no time-shifting, no recording and playing back programs without buying it again type of medium, my television will only be used for video games. We don't watch much these days anyway; it's either movies or games or TiVo'd stuff, and there's plenty of other things to do if we decide to just "switch off."
I don't care if your purpose is to shove your ads into my brain. I won't have it, and if you manage to kill my ability to stop advertisements from bombarding me, I'll simply switch it off, and stop watching entirely. And I'll continue to adamantly oppose advertising in all its forms.