from my experience there are no markets with real competition. DSL has never been able to compete with cable for speed. I would be far more willing to spend more money for cable for the speeds I get (and no, I have never had good service w/DSL and always have had killer speeds w/cable -- TW and ATT/Comcast).
DSL here is 640/160 IIRC. Cable here is 3000/256. DSL is $59.99/mo (plus phone service) where Cable is $42.95/45.95 (own modem/their modem plus cable service) or 60.95/63.95 (own modem/their modem no cable service).
Ok, so we have Cable where I live (no DSL available at my particular residence). If Burnsville, MN decides to setup a Fiber access for the town and offers something identical in speed (I don't care about "extra services" like email and webhosting) I would see that as a reason for Comcast to drop the price.
What real competition does Comcast have when I can't get DSL and even if I could it would be about 1/5th the speed?
amazingly enough CDs still are quite expensive and I don't see any true ramifications from this ruling (like forcing the CDs to cost what they should).
I purchased well over 50 CDs in my lifetime. I get back $13? From my quick calculations I feel that I should be getting back about $300 instead.
I figure that CDs should be no more than $6.00/ea (before tax) so I should get back at least 50% of the money I spent.
Instead these idiots get off by shelling out $67 million plus free CDs to educational institutions so that they can have kids listen to their music? I hope that these CDs aren't ones they own... I want them to be TRULY taxed when they have to give away that money.
New Mexico has periodic (annual, IIRC) vehicle safety inspections. If your interlock were disabled, you wouldn't get your inspection sticker and couldn't legally drive your car.
And this is why you join the ranks of plenty of other US citizens in registering your car out of state. People in MN do it all the time because of the fucking bastards in MN that charge astronomical rates for license plates and taxes on those plates (ie I pay taxes on the price of my car that are $3000 more than what I actually paid because the State gets to determine how much I paid not the dealer).
Why is this modded up? This is no different than mandating seatbelts yet I get modded to hell when I mention that I don't think it should be LAW that we have to wear them.
BUT BUT it could hurt someone else if you are ejected... Well this could save people's lives too.
But it's true, I wouldn't expect any lawsuits between ASL- and GPL-using free software authors any time soon.
Why would they bother? They would lose a HUGE portion of their installed-base. People who use Apache do so from plenty of free OSs. Does anyone really think that someone from Apache is going to freak out and sue someone for distributing under the GPL? Darl, obviously, does not count.
They are compatible. Whether or not they are considered compatible by the FSF is an opinion only they can make, but given that a derivative work consisting of both Apache Licensed code and GPL code can be distributed under the GPL (according to *our* opinion), there really isn't anything to be discussed.
They obviously don't care if it is distributed under the GPL, which means that they won't fight anything having to do with it being distributed in that manner, so what's the difference?
Of course it's not a major problem. I know very few people that still use Yahoo as their first choice in search engines (and I am not talking about computer saavy people either).
My mother uses the Google toolbar and knew about it w/o me telling her. My father refuses to use anything other than Google as his homepage.
My number one reason for believing that Google is the all important, #1 search engine: My girlfriend's parents said, "I'll just google for it." at dinner one night (and this is a family where they have a shortcut to every file on the desktop and they use AOL 6.0).
This is infantile. If you are being forced to change your name, just do it. Having a name like Lin---s.com is just plain dumb. The graphic on the one site is hangman with D,O,W remaining.
Other programs have had to do this before and at least they had the decency to come up with something more original. I suppose when you start out with something as unoriginal as Windows/Lindows they what do you expect?
Wow, this is "Insightful"? Hmm, no, it's really not. Golden Tee (now at 2004 BTW) has graphics that suit the game just fine. Although, honestly, I am far less interested in seeing a game that looks realistic and one that plays realistically...
I wasn't aware he said not to spend money... IIRC (which I do) he said he didn't want them to spend SO much fucking money.
I live in the fine state of Minnesota. We have a governor who thinks he knows it all but really has his head so far up his fucking ass that he is pretty much clueless...
So, for example, instead of improving post-secondary education or paying state employees better or plowing the roads in an acceptable fashion we are going to spent $8,000,000 on a fucking life-sized ice-palace which we are going to close down at 11pm Saturday so that some moron can use it to get married in it on Sunday.
So, where are our priorities? Education, road safety, or huge fucking chunks of ice which are going to be thrown into the Mississippi River to "melt"?
Do you really enjoy sitting at home learning a game by yourself? I don't. The simple reason for this is that by watching someone else play (in an arcade or at least in person) I learn something new that I probably would not have figured out in any short order.
Golden Tee is a perfect example. You learn all the trick shots, shortcuts, methods, etc, by watching some random guy just kick the shit out of the machine. He might not know what you know and he learns from you back.
It's unlikely that you and your small group of friends will know everything there is to know like the rest of the world does.
It gets you out of the house. You might be surrounded by other geeks but at least they are likely to be different people than you are used to.
The fact is, players need to practice titles like Virtua Fighter to be any good at them, because games today are more complex than ever. Some titles -- specifically fighting games -- can even be overbearing for players, as these games demand a significant amount of time and money for a player to learn the gameplay intricacies.
Exactly, you can sit down at Arkanoid, Centipede, Ms. Pacman, etc (the "old-school" arcade games) and immediately grasp 90% of the necessary game play. With newer games such as just about every fighting game after Mortal Kombat and racing games you need to A) sink $1.00+ into the machine to even play, B) read instructions on how to just do the most basic of moves, and C) you get about 3 minutes of playing time almost regardless of your previous skills with similar games.
Golden Tee (which they don't seem to mention by name) has been taking off because it is absolutely addictive and it is ALL over the place. My group of friends used to play GT two or three times a day, every day. We were ok, nothing super spectacular (-20 or so), but we had fun doing it. Try sinking $12.00 into a racecar game and playing with four friends and that $12.00 is gone in less than 5 minutes, at least 18 holes of Golden Tee takes almost an hour...
The home market I suppose has something to do with it. It happens to be driving the industry into making these super flashy games that they think will compete... They don't because of the never-ending costs. A $50 console game will allow you to play forever. $50.00 will give you 10 to 20 games of some random Racecar X 2054! arcade game.
I'll stick to the old-school games and Golden Tee, at least I get my money's worth and actually enjoy the time spent playing.
Cut down the prices to 25 cents again or make the games have better game play. That's what I think will work.
Recently, hole in the wall arcades have started to be replaced by bigger entertainment centers like GameWorks and Dave & Busters.
While these two places serve their purpose they aren't exactly what I would consider something I would prefer over "hole-in-the-wall" arcades. They are basically overpriced bars with a lot of arcade games for adults. Sure they have a lot of titles and they have the old-school games (up and out of the way usually) but they are more into serving food/drinks than they are about charging reasonable prices for the games. I am sure they make plenty money w/o having to overcharge for the games, yet they do. So instead of going out and blowing $5.00 on games you blow well over $50 + food/drinks. Bring back the old-school arcades!
I agree w/you completely.. What I want to know is if I can now drop my service and get out of my contract (as they have broken the terms because they are no longer AT&T).
I want to switch to T-mobile for the data service and better Twin Cities coverage.
I am less worried about that and more worried about the CONSTANT threat of fire at the ethanol plant.
Not only does the fucking plant make a 5+ mile radius (depending on winds I guess) smell like complete and udder shit but it is also ALWAYS in the news for being on fire.
My other problem with ethanol is that they have it in the gas here and it makes your car run like shit unless the engine was specifically engineered to run on ethanol mix.
Fuck ethanol, fuck the commercials promoting ethanol, and fuck the morons that decided that here in Minnesota we needed this.
the problem isn't with the people protecting their interests... The problem is that large conglomorates own portions of everything and have a direct influence on the business practices and politics involved.
That's called a monopoly and is generally frowned upon...
Slashdot Mirror
wow, you're lying. It took 10 seconds for the first page of the ad alone.
and all the old encoders will still work too.
from my experience there are no markets with real competition. DSL has never been able to compete with cable for speed. I would be far more willing to spend more money for cable for the speeds I get (and no, I have never had good service w/DSL and always have had killer speeds w/cable -- TW and ATT/Comcast).
DSL here is 640/160 IIRC. Cable here is 3000/256. DSL is $59.99/mo (plus phone service) where Cable is $42.95/45.95 (own modem/their modem plus cable service) or 60.95/63.95 (own modem/their modem no cable service).
Ok, so we have Cable where I live (no DSL available at my particular residence). If Burnsville, MN decides to setup a Fiber access for the town and offers something identical in speed (I don't care about "extra services" like email and webhosting) I would see that as a reason for Comcast to drop the price.
What real competition does Comcast have when I can't get DSL and even if I could it would be about 1/5th the speed?
amazingly enough CDs still are quite expensive and I don't see any true ramifications from this ruling (like forcing the CDs to cost what they should).
So we didn't 0wn0rz anyone.
I purchased well over 50 CDs in my lifetime. I get back $13? From my quick calculations I feel that I should be getting back about $300 instead.
I figure that CDs should be no more than $6.00/ea (before tax) so I should get back at least 50% of the money I spent.
Instead these idiots get off by shelling out $67 million plus free CDs to educational institutions so that they can have kids listen to their music? I hope that these CDs aren't ones they own... I want them to be TRULY taxed when they have to give away that money.
New Mexico has periodic (annual, IIRC) vehicle safety inspections. If your interlock were disabled, you wouldn't get your inspection sticker and couldn't legally drive your car.
And this is why you join the ranks of plenty of other US citizens in registering your car out of state. People in MN do it all the time because of the fucking bastards in MN that charge astronomical rates for license plates and taxes on those plates (ie I pay taxes on the price of my car that are $3000 more than what I actually paid because the State gets to determine how much I paid not the dealer).
Why is this modded up? This is no different than mandating seatbelts yet I get modded to hell when I mention that I don't think it should be LAW that we have to wear them.
BUT BUT it could hurt someone else if you are ejected... Well this could save people's lives too.
But it's true, I wouldn't expect any lawsuits between ASL- and GPL-using free software authors any time soon.
Why would they bother? They would lose a HUGE portion of their installed-base. People who use Apache do so from plenty of free OSs. Does anyone really think that someone from Apache is going to freak out and sue someone for distributing under the GPL? Darl, obviously, does not count.
the FSF should change, not the GPL. The GPL is fine where it stands. The FSF is forcing this issue onto everyone else and creating drama.
They are compatible. Whether or not they are considered compatible by the FSF is an opinion only they can make, but given that a derivative work consisting of both Apache Licensed code and GPL code can be distributed under the GPL (according to *our* opinion), there really isn't anything to be discussed.
They obviously don't care if it is distributed under the GPL, which means that they won't fight anything having to do with it being distributed in that manner, so what's the difference?
bad analogy. Not all spammers are commiting fraud. All drug dealers and call people who commit fraud should go to jail. Not all spammers should.
or you have to realize that this isn't exactly a trusted news-source, no matter what other posters have said.
Cum grano salis kids.
Of course it's not a major problem. I know very few people that still use Yahoo as their first choice in search engines (and I am not talking about computer saavy people either).
My mother uses the Google toolbar and knew about it w/o me telling her. My father refuses to use anything other than Google as his homepage.
My number one reason for believing that Google is the all important, #1 search engine: My girlfriend's parents said, "I'll just google for it." at dinner one night (and this is a family where they have a shortcut to every file on the desktop and they use AOL 6.0).
Microsoft would still sue them for using a character that appeared in Windings #94.
This is infantile. If you are being forced to change your name, just do it. Having a name like Lin---s.com is just plain dumb. The graphic on the one site is hangman with D,O,W remaining.
Other programs have had to do this before and at least they had the decency to come up with something more original. I suppose when you start out with something as unoriginal as Windows/Lindows they what do you expect?
Wow, this is "Insightful"? Hmm, no, it's really not. Golden Tee (now at 2004 BTW) has graphics that suit the game just fine. Although, honestly, I am far less interested in seeing a game that looks realistic and one that plays realistically...
I wasn't aware he said not to spend money... IIRC (which I do) he said he didn't want them to spend SO much fucking money.
I live in the fine state of Minnesota. We have a governor who thinks he knows it all but really has his head so far up his fucking ass that he is pretty much clueless...
So, for example, instead of improving post-secondary education or paying state employees better or plowing the roads in an acceptable fashion we are going to spent $8,000,000 on a fucking life-sized ice-palace which we are going to close down at 11pm Saturday so that some moron can use it to get married in it on Sunday.
So, where are our priorities? Education, road safety, or huge fucking chunks of ice which are going to be thrown into the Mississippi River to "melt"?
Do you really enjoy sitting at home learning a game by yourself? I don't. The simple reason for this is that by watching someone else play (in an arcade or at least in person) I learn something new that I probably would not have figured out in any short order.
Golden Tee is a perfect example. You learn all the trick shots, shortcuts, methods, etc, by watching some random guy just kick the shit out of the machine. He might not know what you know and he learns from you back.
It's unlikely that you and your small group of friends will know everything there is to know like the rest of the world does.
It gets you out of the house. You might be surrounded by other geeks but at least they are likely to be different people than you are used to.
Why must video game playing be so solitary?
The fact is, players need to practice titles like Virtua Fighter to be any good at them, because games today are more complex than ever. Some titles -- specifically fighting games -- can even be overbearing for players, as these games demand a significant amount of time and money for a player to learn the gameplay intricacies.
Exactly, you can sit down at Arkanoid, Centipede, Ms. Pacman, etc (the "old-school" arcade games) and immediately grasp 90% of the necessary game play. With newer games such as just about every fighting game after Mortal Kombat and racing games you need to A) sink $1.00+ into the machine to even play, B) read instructions on how to just do the most basic of moves, and C) you get about 3 minutes of playing time almost regardless of your previous skills with similar games.
Golden Tee (which they don't seem to mention by name) has been taking off because it is absolutely addictive and it is ALL over the place. My group of friends used to play GT two or three times a day, every day. We were ok, nothing super spectacular (-20 or so), but we had fun doing it. Try sinking $12.00 into a racecar game and playing with four friends and that $12.00 is gone in less than 5 minutes, at least 18 holes of Golden Tee takes almost an hour...
The home market I suppose has something to do with it. It happens to be driving the industry into making these super flashy games that they think will compete... They don't because of the never-ending costs. A $50 console game will allow you to play forever. $50.00 will give you 10 to 20 games of some random Racecar X 2054! arcade game.
I'll stick to the old-school games and Golden Tee, at least I get my money's worth and actually enjoy the time spent playing.
Cut down the prices to 25 cents again or make the games have better game play. That's what I think will work.
Recently, hole in the wall arcades have started to be replaced by bigger entertainment centers like GameWorks and Dave & Busters.
While these two places serve their purpose they aren't exactly what I would consider something I would prefer over "hole-in-the-wall" arcades. They are basically overpriced bars with a lot of arcade games for adults. Sure they have a lot of titles and they have the old-school games (up and out of the way usually) but they are more into serving food/drinks than they are about charging reasonable prices for the games. I am sure they make plenty money w/o having to overcharge for the games, yet they do. So instead of going out and blowing $5.00 on games you blow well over $50 + food/drinks. Bring back the old-school arcades!
I agree w/you completely.. What I want to know is if I can now drop my service and get out of my contract (as they have broken the terms because they are no longer AT&T).
I want to switch to T-mobile for the data service and better Twin Cities coverage.
this would certainly be nice... On a trip to IL from MN in August I found that the roaming charges were just absolutely astronomical.
Perhaps they will also fix the horrible AT&T CSR attitudes and their insistance on hanging up on you when they don't feel like helping.
Or, maybe not.
but I can record faster, edit cleaner, have less hand cramping, and have more readable text with a computer.
I absolutely hate writing notes in a notebook. I have a difficult time reading different handwriting styles, pen/pencil darkness, etc.
To each his own.
I am less worried about that and more worried about the CONSTANT threat of fire at the ethanol plant.
Not only does the fucking plant make a 5+ mile radius (depending on winds I guess) smell like complete and udder shit but it is also ALWAYS in the news for being on fire.
My other problem with ethanol is that they have it in the gas here and it makes your car run like shit unless the engine was specifically engineered to run on ethanol mix.
Fuck ethanol, fuck the commercials promoting ethanol, and fuck the morons that decided that here in Minnesota we needed this.
the problem isn't with the people protecting their interests... The problem is that large conglomorates own portions of everything and have a direct influence on the business practices and politics involved.
That's called a monopoly and is generally frowned upon...
the longer something is reported incorrectly the more people believe it to be true.
Just ask the Slashbots.