That is to say that after the extended warranty is up and you've not made a claim you may think, "Gee I should've put that money in an emergency fund."
However, unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. An extended warranty is not like having life insurance on your kids. With life insurance on the kids, you will only be making a single claim. An extended warranty of this nature would for example only cover you if the laptop was a total loss (i.e. stolen, burned up, etc).
An extended warranty is more like having health insurance. It covers everything -BUT- a total loss. This means that you may make several claims over the life time of the policy. In fact the only thing an extended warranty will not cover is something like theft or fire that results in a total loss.
Why is the distinction important? Well, if extended warranty coverage were like life insurance then you could budget accordingly. That is to say, you could have an emergency fund instead of the warranty so that if your laptop craps out you get it repaired or get another one. The problem is, what happens in this instance if in one month the repaired/new laptop craps out again? Most likely your budget hasn't accounted for this. Now if it were your kids dying, this wouldn't be a problem because this can't happen. They can only die once and you're not likely to get replacement kid within a month.
The extended warranty, like health insurance, helps you out here. It doesn't matter how many times you have to send the thing back, you're covered. You may not have life insurance on your kids, but I certainly hope you have health insurance for them (or are sufficiently wealthy enough to cover all possibilities including lingering illness).
It's only a waste of money if you don't get to use it...however if I could see into the future to know that, I'd be quite a wealthy person right now.
Possibly...however if you're willing to wait a little while you can rent them for about that much and they are a lot better than the rips. This is typically what I do except for movies I really want to see (i.e. Lord of the Rings).
Again another ridiculously modded post. You completely missed my point.
I never said that people taping movies in theatres were a serious threat to the economic livelihood of the MPAA or the theatre owners. I was countering a point where there original poster said that theatres need to entice viewers.
You see, theatres cannot possibly charge what bootleggers charge. People buy or download the bootlegs because they are cheap. Since the quality of the bootlegs are so crappy there is really nothing the theatre can do to compete in this particular demographic. It's a moot point.
What can the theatre do to compete with the bootleggers if the customers are willing to watch such a crappy quality copy? It obviously doesn't matter to these people that the copy sucks, only that it's cheap. Unfortunately the theatre can do many things to entice viewers, but it cannot lower prices to that of the bootlegs and that's what they'd have to do to provide the proper enticement.
No kidding, we just need to find a way to get everyone to show up to the movie 20 minutes late. I'd do it myself, except that I wouldn't be able to find a decent seat.
When I was reviewing films for a small magazine, I would often bring a small hand-held microcassette recorder to capture the thoughts and opinions that I had on a scene or sequence as it was playing on the screen. I would review the taped comments afterwards and type up a detailed and helpful movie review.
Now this is a felony?
No. Not unless you were -VIDEO- taping the movie. Using an audio recorder and recording your comments does not fit this description.
Plus if theatres are going to put twenty minutes of commercials and psuedo-news about the entertainment industry before showing the movie that we have paid for, then we should certainly be allowed to bring our own entertainment devices like portable DVD players and laptops to make productive use of this time. And since all digital devices today record as easily as playback data, then doing this is now a felony?
Not unless you use the devices to record the movie.
If the theatre owner were more concerned about providing the optimum movie-going experience to his paying customers, he wouldn't have to worry about anyone wanting to duplicate the experience outside of his venue.
Why's that? People often sell these bootleg copies. Furthermore there are always people out there willing to get something for nothing or next to nothing. How can a theatre owner compete with someone selling bootleg copies for $1.00 a piece? These people are already willing to watch a crappy camera rip. I don't see how the theatre experience is really relevant at this point.
The core problem of Hollywood is not how people chose to consume its product, it is that amount of time and money that people are willing to spend to consume its product is beginning to fall while the price of producing this product continues to rise uncontrollably.
Not true. The problem is, is that technology has made better and better quality rips (they still suck though) easy to do. Cameras have gotten much smaller, cheaper, and now they are digital making distribution a lot easier. It will always cost less for someone to video a movie than to produce it. Hence the cost for the bootlegs will always be less. As technology gets better the bootlegs will get better. As you know there will always be people willing to pay for an inferior product if it's considerably less.
Passing horseshit laws about camcorders in theatres doesn't address this core issue, and therefore will do nothing to solve it.
Ah, finally a somewhat true statement. Since according to the MPAA 77% of the bootleg copies are insider jobs, this will do nothing. However one thing it does do is take a portion of the piracy out of the theatre's control. Before the theatre had no incentive to kick people out for video taping movies. Now the police do it. I believe the punishment is crazy. I think confiscating the tape and maybe the camera would be much more reasonable. Reserve jail time for the people found selling the bootlegs. What's really nuts is that the punishment for doing this is worse than the one for a first offense DUI.
Um what did those weapons inspectors find? I don't dispute that Iraq at some point had a WMD program. However, it appears that they dismantled it after the Gulf War.
The resolutions and inspectors were to insure that Iraq did not have WMD. Certainly because Iraq did have a WMD program at one time, these were rather prudent measures. I've got no problem with that.
I do have a problem with our government lying to the country and saying they HAD WMD when they had absolutely no proof that this was true. Now that we are all over Iraq where are these WMDs? What Saddam isn't talking? No one involved is talking? Give me a break. They didn't have crap over there.
Perhaps Iraq was helping Al Queda. How is this going to change now? It's not like Saddam was the only one over there sympathetic to the PLO or to people who hate us. The only way we can combat terrorism is to make an effort to address the issues that have people so pissed off over there. The US through it's foreign policy in the middle east has done quite a few things that give some parties sufficient reason to be upset. Think about it, the terrorists are willing to die. How do you combat that? Bombing them certainly isn't going to stop terrorism.
Oooh...Haliburton got booted from some projects for price gouging. Yeah, I just bet they are really hurting for money. Wow, they got caught doing something bad and got a little slap on the wrist.
Finally, how can you talk on one hand about closure and sympathy for the suffering of the Iraqi people in one paragraph and in the next suggest transfering AIDS funding to cancer and heart disease research areas? I'm in absolute awe of your enormous respect for human life. The number of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan is peanuts compared to the number of people AIDS has killed and will kill. A cure for AIDS would do a hell of a lot more for humanity than our war on terrorism.
Right...terrorists are going to kill us all. Exactly what threat did Iraq pose to the US? How exactly are we safer now? The people who actually did attack us are still free. It is fairly clear at this point that Iraq did not have WMD just like they said they didn't. In fact our government lied about the WMDs in the first place with that bogus CIA report fiasco. So why are we there? Simple, because a war was the best way to take everyone's mind off the fact that we couldn't find Bin Laden, the corporate scandals (ala worldcom and enron), and the crappy economy. Now that we have control of Iraq, as a bonus our government gets to give tons of lucrative contracts to corporations with the government's ear (cough cough Cheney-Haliburton) to help rebuild it.
Notice you hardly hear about Bin Laden anymore, and even better according to polls most people think Sadam was responsible for 9/11 or at least paid a big role in it. So as far as many people are concerned we did catch the bad guy and won a big battle in the war on terrorism.
Nevermind the whole thing is a lie and tail is totally wagging the dog (rent the movie and watch it if you haven't). We're wasting tons of money, the world hates us more, and we are no safer than we were before (arguably we're worse off because the terrorists have even more reason to hate us), and the terrorists are still free.
Another thing, people blew the whole 9/11 thing out of proportion. Granted it was a terrible tragedy but consider that only 3000 people died. Far far far more people die every year from other things like cancer, heart disease, poverty, auto accidents, etc. Why aren't these problems being attacked with the same zeal as Iraq? Heck 100 billion would go a long way toward cancer research, and at least then if I get cancer (much more likely than me dying in a terrorist attack) I might have a better chance of living.
The PSAT tense? Is that like first person but in a practice test taking environment? Sometimes things on those standardized tests can get confusing, but don't sweat it, it's a trial run.
Theft is about taking something and depriving the original owner.
It is not about taking something and depriving the original owner of potential gains.
For example if I steal $500 from you, do you think a criminal court will charge me for having stolen $1000 from you or $1000000 from you because you could've used that $500 to buy a lotto ticket which may have been a winning ticket? If I steal your car and you can't get to work, will I be charged with two counts of grand theft; one from the auto and another from stealing your potential work wages?
The reason taking $500 from you is theft is because you no longer have $500. You have been deprived of that. Same with your car.
Now lets say I download for free a track being offered for sale for $0.99. Does the person selling the audio track still have it? Yes. Did I steal a dollar from them? No, they have just as much money as before. In order for it to be theft they had to have been deprived of something they already had.
Even using your argument it's ridiculous. Let's assume that depriving someone of potential gains is theft (which it most certainly is not). Let's say one store is selling the track for $0.99 and another is selling it for $5.00. If I download it for free, how much did I steal $0.99 or $5.00?
Furthermore because we're innocent until proven guilty (at least in the US and most western countries) you'd have to prove that I would've otherwise paid for it in the first place. Let's say I testify and say I would never have bought that track. Doesn't matter if I made purchases from the store before or made purchases from other stores before. If I say would never have bought that particular track, how do you plan to prove that I deprived them of a potential sale?
Finally as other's have pointed out. How does it follow that a track that is being sold for $0.99 is worth $0.99 to me if I download it for free? Maybe I value it as much as I value the results of my morning crap. After all I spend a lot more time making that then I do downloading an mp3. I also spend more than $0.99 making it (unless it's ramen noodles or something). Frankly you really don't know how much I value it. You only know how much the store values it (i.e. $0.99). However that's fine because they still have it.
He was trying to help someone else commit a crime.
How would this be different then someone coming up to you and saying, "Hey give me some money so I can buy a gun to rob this bank, if you do I'll give you half of what I take." Then you do it and they run off with your money.
It's not like these scammers were posing as some charity or something. They involved him in a scheme to take millions of dollars from a dead man's bank account. Clearly not a legal thing to do.
As for not spreading the message clearly, the police even warned the guy it was a scam. How much clearer can it get than that?
Why should I feel sorry for that? The guy entered into an illegal conspiracy to defraud a bank and a government and he got taken.
Perhaps next time when presented with an opportunity to rip someone off he'll pass on it.
Did anyone have a problem filling out the survey with Firebird? Whenever I submitted it, it said that I hadn't answered all the questions. Then it highlighted almost all the questions, all of which were answered.
Yes it can be tricky to press down instead of in a direction but I think your description is a little off. Only at the main screen will down choose the contact list, right choose the menu, left choose the calendar and up open the browser. It's not like a slip of the joystick in _other_ menus will suddenly take you away to some other area entirely. The worst that happens is you scroll down one menu item instead of selecting the one that was highlighted and have to go back one level and try again.
I'm not trying to be apologetic, but make sure your descriptions are accurate enough so that other people can make good decisions.
That's what I meant...just had a lot of points to go through.
I 'm sorry, I found this a little commical. Are you the "Can you hear me now?" guy or something?
I don't know about most people but the only time I'm checking the signal strength is when the quality is poor or I can't make a call. I suppose some people may obssess over their signal strength constantly, or maybe they're graphing it in MRTG or something, I dunno.:)
Interesting that you decided to focus on just the signal strength while ignoring the rest of the point. FYI, I was concerned about the signal strength because this was a new phone and new service. When evaluating a new phone/service it's generally a good idea to "obssess" over signal strength before entering into a two year contract. Besides I do like to check the signal from time to time just so I know where I get signal and where I don't. It'd be nice not to have to hit a button to do that.
BTW...with GSM you can be the "can you hear me now" guy. The coverage is not nearly as good as TDMA or CDMA, at least not yet.
The only thing I can say to this is if you have your Light set to Automatic instead of On then what good is a screensaver with lots of information going to do for you anyway? To make a screensaver with info useful would mean setting the Light to On (and doing so gives you a warning about a drain on your standby time.) If your Light is On all the time (so you could see the "Info Saver" (TM) then a bump in your pocket won't make any difference.
If you didn't notice, the screen shows a clock when in screen saver mode. You can see the clock can't you? Why not have a similar thing with an envelope or signal bars on the screen? They don't have to be exceedingly bright...just visible like the clock is. I doubt this consumes a ton of power...but if it does, make an option for it (i.e. no screen saver, clock, or Info Screen). Info Screen would certainly consume less power than having the light always on. Of course, when you consider that the light will come on whenever you hit a key even if key lock is on, it may make sense to leave the light always on. I personally would rather have a phone that had a standby time of more than a day or so though.
I just tried the phone out for two weeks, and while it's a nice phone I had some issues with it.
1. You have to press down on the joystick to bring up the menu and to make selections. However, the joystick is also used to access certain functions. For example if you move the joystick down it will select the call list. If you move it up it will select (at least with AT&T anyway) mMode. This is pretty annoying because often when trying to push the joystick to make a selection, I will instead move it a bit and it won't register a down push and it'll go to the call log or mMode.
Nokias have a similar interface, but the joystick is never used for selection, so it's much harder to screw up.
2. The phone will not display battery life, messages waiting, calls missed, or signal strength unless you push it a button on it. I know it does this to save battery life, but why can't the screensaver show more useful information than the time? Furthermore if left idle it will go back to the screen saver (again to save battery life), but because the screen saver doesn't show anything useful, I find myself having to hit a button over and over to check signal strength while going places.
3. Similar to number 2, when pressing a button on the phone the screen lights up, even if the keys are locked. This means a constant drain on your phone's battery if you carry your phone in your pocket and the buttons get inadvertantly pushed.
4. I had total issues with sunlight and seeing the screen. Granted, you can usually position the phone such that you can see the screen, but I still found it to be an annoyance. Particularly when in the car.
5. This is a minor gripe, but still...why doesn't the phone come with a normal ring by default? I absolutely hate ring tones. I just want the phone to do a normal ring instead of the crappy sounding little tunes it comes with. The closest I could get was an old fashioned phone ring tone.
6. Whenever you miss calls, the phone will not show all the times the person tried to call. It only shows the last time.
I did like the camera, and the big screen. The phone was quite colorful and did have a good number of options, but it's the little things that will make me go with a Nokia 6200 I think.
The question isn't how hard...the question is how much harder is it.
If the typical computer user has a choice between an access point that they just plugin and use, or one that they have to mess with, which do you think they'll most likely pick?
The windows update bit comes from the part where you suggest that users only install patches to problems that apply to their system and related security updates.
This requires interpretation on the part of the user as to which updates are applicable to them. In many cases this a tall order when they really don't understand what it is the update is doing. We're talking about people that don't understand the difference between memory and diskspace because both are measured using the same units.
It's quite easy to instruct users to install just the critical updates on windows updates and how to defrag and what not.
It's not rocket science...but neither is keeping a linux system healthy. In fact to keep a linux system healthy, all the user has to do is install patches. Same as on Windows except that patches are almost never toxic (I've never had a toxic patch, and have never known anyone to have a toxic patch. I only say this because I'm sure someone at some point has installed a patch that had major adverse effects.) and are always easy to reverse. In fact linux is arguably easier because you don't have a registry, you don't have to defrag, you don't have a temp file issue, etc.
The problem and hence the instability comes from the fact that it's much much easier to screw up a windows system by doing routine things such as installing products from the same company that writes your OS. Why should a user think to not install MS Office or the latest version of IE? If they don't they'll have a hard time interacting with the rest of the world that does.
As the other poster said, why on earth should installing non-malicious software result in a screwed up system? Why should anything a user does in a user capacity (not an admin one) screw up the system? It's unreasonable to expect people at home to not install software or to call their support person to ask if a certain piece of software is going to kill their machine.
My comment was a joke...My Windows installs last about a year or so before needing a reinstall on my home machine. Typically I get one of three things:
1. Random BSODs. 2. BSOD on boot up. 3. Random hard lockups.
It possible that #1 (crap drivers) is the culprit. It's not 2 or 3.
I'm sure that yes if hard pressed I could get the system working right again, but it's so much easier just to wipe it and start fresh. The chief reasons for this is the registry where a single screwed up setting can cause disasterous results and the fact that software installations often modify system files and settings.
Another lovely thing that happens under Windows is patches from Microsoft that blow out your system. It's very hard to recover from an update that Microsoft says is un-uninstallable. This involves using the recovery disk and CD and telling it to restore your system files. 9 times out of 10 some strange registry setting related to the new patches will cause your system to be completely out of whack even with the old files.
And yes, I know about XP's system restore feature. However, in my experience what it "restores" is pretty much random and it tends to leave the system in a some sort of quasi limbo state which is some combination of the way your computer used to be and the way it was before running the restore.
In general it's just not worth it. Keep your data on a seperate partition, ghost windows when it's setup right and just reghost your machine when it starts acting funny.
95, 98, and ME have the above problems...but they also have one more. If any application crashes, you're typically looking at a reboot. If that application crashes while writing to the registry you may be looking at a reinstall.
Serious question: Can a default linux install survive three years of daily abuse and neglect, by clueless users who nonetheless stick their fingers into everything in reach, and still be functional enough to be merely "annoying" (the state at which most folk give up on a neglected WinSetup)??
Probably not, but that's not the point. The point is that Windows cannot survive three years of normal usage by non-clueless users without taking very special care of it.
A properly maintained Linux system will last as long as the hardware it's running on does. You should never ever have to reinstall Linux for any reason unless you do something incredibly stupid like delete the whole system or something.
With linux, do a default installation and you have most of the software you'll ever need. Any additional software you can install in your home directory without even touching the system. Power goes out while installing Open Office, no problem...just delete the Open Office directory and start over. With Windows, if you're installing Microsoft Office and the power goes out in the middle you have some chance of being screwed. This is because Unix (Linux) applications are typically designed around the fact that the users running and installing them do not have full access to the system. This means they don't replace system files, don't change system settings, etc.
Since the default install usually sets up a firewall which is on by default and uses sensable firewalling rules you probably could get by without ever even patching it (not recommended). Furthermore when I do patch a linux system I don't hold my breath on reboot and pray it's not blown out when it comes back up. Why? Because if there is a complication due to the patch, I can fix it very easily by using a cd based linux distro such as Knoppix. You have very limited options under a similar situation in Windows with NTFS (ironically Knoppix is a lifesaver here too).
Linux never needs to be defragged because it has a filesystem that isn't crap.
Linux doesn't need a virus scanner. Even if you were infected by a virus, the absolute worst thing it would do is screw up your home directory and data. Login as someone else and the system is 100%
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It's only wiser in hindsight.
That is to say that after the extended warranty is up and you've not made a claim you may think, "Gee I should've put that money in an emergency fund."
However, unfortunately, life doesn't work that way. An extended warranty is not like having life insurance on your kids. With life insurance on the kids, you will only be making a single claim. An extended warranty of this nature would for example only cover you if the laptop was a total loss (i.e. stolen, burned up, etc).
An extended warranty is more like having health insurance. It covers everything -BUT- a total loss. This means that you may make several claims over the life time of the policy. In fact the only thing an extended warranty will not cover is something like theft or fire that results in a total loss.
Why is the distinction important? Well, if extended warranty coverage were like life insurance then you could budget accordingly. That is to say, you could have an emergency fund instead of the warranty so that if your laptop craps out you get it repaired or get another one. The problem is, what happens in this instance if in one month the repaired/new laptop craps out again? Most likely your budget hasn't accounted for this. Now if it were your kids dying, this wouldn't be a problem because this can't happen. They can only die once and you're not likely to get replacement kid within a month.
The extended warranty, like health insurance, helps you out here. It doesn't matter how many times you have to send the thing back, you're covered. You may not have life insurance on your kids, but I certainly hope you have health insurance for them (or are sufficiently wealthy enough to cover all possibilities including lingering illness).
It's only a waste of money if you don't get to use it...however if I could see into the future to know that, I'd be quite a wealthy person right now.
This is what they do with hurricanes. Evacuate the people and leave emergency personnel in place.
Possibly...however if you're willing to wait a little while you can rent them for about that much and they are a lot better than the rips. This is typically what I do except for movies I really want to see (i.e. Lord of the Rings).
Again another ridiculously modded post. You completely missed my point.
I never said that people taping movies in theatres were a serious threat to the economic livelihood of the MPAA or the theatre owners. I was countering a point where there original poster said that theatres need to entice viewers.
You see, theatres cannot possibly charge what bootleggers charge. People buy or download the bootlegs because they are cheap. Since the quality of the bootlegs are so crappy there is really nothing the theatre can do to compete in this particular demographic. It's a moot point.
What can the theatre do to compete with the bootleggers if the customers are willing to watch such a crappy quality copy? It obviously doesn't matter to these people that the copy sucks, only that it's cheap. Unfortunately the theatre can do many things to entice viewers, but it cannot lower prices to that of the bootlegs and that's what they'd have to do to provide the proper enticement.
Gee I dunno...go out and buy bootleg copies of movies?
No kidding, we just need to find a way to get everyone to show up to the movie 20 minutes late. I'd do it myself, except that I wouldn't be able to find a decent seat.
Why was this modded as Insightful?
When I was reviewing films for a small magazine, I would often bring a small hand-held microcassette recorder to capture the thoughts and opinions that I had on a scene or sequence as it was playing on the screen. I would review the taped comments afterwards and type up a detailed and helpful movie review.
Now this is a felony?
No. Not unless you were -VIDEO- taping the movie. Using an audio recorder and recording your comments does not fit this description.
Plus if theatres are going to put twenty minutes of commercials and psuedo-news about the entertainment industry before showing the movie that we have paid for, then we should certainly be allowed to bring our own entertainment devices like portable DVD players and laptops to make productive use of this time. And since all digital devices today record as easily as playback data, then doing this is now a felony?
Not unless you use the devices to record the movie.
If the theatre owner were more concerned about providing the optimum movie-going experience to his paying customers, he wouldn't have to worry about anyone wanting to duplicate the experience outside of his venue.
Why's that? People often sell these bootleg copies. Furthermore there are always people out there willing to get something for nothing or next to nothing. How can a theatre owner compete with someone selling bootleg copies for $1.00 a piece? These people are already willing to watch a crappy camera rip. I don't see how the theatre experience is really relevant at this point.
The core problem of Hollywood is not how people chose to consume its product, it is that amount of time and money that people are willing to spend to consume its product is beginning to fall while the price of producing this product continues to rise uncontrollably.
Not true. The problem is, is that technology has made better and better quality rips (they still suck though) easy to do. Cameras have gotten much smaller, cheaper, and now they are digital making distribution a lot easier. It will always cost less for someone to video a movie than to produce it. Hence the cost for the bootlegs will always be less. As technology gets better the bootlegs will get better. As you know there will always be people willing to pay for an inferior product if it's considerably less.
Passing horseshit laws about camcorders in theatres doesn't address this core issue, and therefore will do nothing to solve it.
Ah, finally a somewhat true statement. Since according to the MPAA 77% of the bootleg copies are insider jobs, this will do nothing. However one thing it does do is take a portion of the piracy out of the theatre's control. Before the theatre had no incentive to kick people out for video taping movies. Now the police do it. I believe the punishment is crazy. I think confiscating the tape and maybe the camera would be much more reasonable. Reserve jail time for the people found selling the bootlegs. What's really nuts is that the punishment for doing this is worse than the one for a first offense DUI.
Um what did those weapons inspectors find? I don't dispute that Iraq at some point had a WMD program. However, it appears that they dismantled it after the Gulf War.
The resolutions and inspectors were to insure that Iraq did not have WMD. Certainly because Iraq did have a WMD program at one time, these were rather prudent measures. I've got no problem with that.
I do have a problem with our government lying to the country and saying they HAD WMD when they had absolutely no proof that this was true. Now that we are all over Iraq where are these WMDs? What Saddam isn't talking? No one involved is talking? Give me a break. They didn't have crap over there.
Perhaps Iraq was helping Al Queda. How is this going to change now? It's not like Saddam was the only one over there sympathetic to the PLO or to people who hate us. The only way we can combat terrorism is to make an effort to address the issues that have people so pissed off over there. The US through it's foreign policy in the middle east has done quite a few things that give some parties sufficient reason to be upset. Think about it, the terrorists are willing to die. How do you combat that? Bombing them certainly isn't going to stop terrorism.
Oooh...Haliburton got booted from some projects for price gouging. Yeah, I just bet they are really hurting for money. Wow, they got caught doing something bad and got a little slap on the wrist.
Finally, how can you talk on one hand about closure and sympathy for the suffering of the Iraqi people in one paragraph and in the next suggest transfering AIDS funding to cancer and heart disease research areas? I'm in absolute awe of your enormous respect for human life. The number of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan is peanuts compared to the number of people AIDS has killed and will kill. A cure for AIDS would do a hell of a lot more for humanity than our war on terrorism.
Right...terrorists are going to kill us all. Exactly what threat did Iraq pose to the US? How exactly are we safer now? The people who actually did attack us are still free. It is fairly clear at this point that Iraq did not have WMD just like they said they didn't. In fact our government lied about the WMDs in the first place with that bogus CIA report fiasco. So why are we there? Simple, because a war was the best way to take everyone's mind off the fact that we couldn't find Bin Laden, the corporate scandals (ala worldcom and enron), and the crappy economy. Now that we have control of Iraq, as a bonus our government gets to give tons of lucrative contracts to corporations with the government's ear (cough cough Cheney-Haliburton) to help rebuild it.
Notice you hardly hear about Bin Laden anymore, and even better according to polls most people think Sadam was responsible for 9/11 or at least paid a big role in it. So as far as many people are concerned we did catch the bad guy and won a big battle in the war on terrorism.
Nevermind the whole thing is a lie and tail is totally wagging the dog (rent the movie and watch it if you haven't). We're wasting tons of money, the world hates us more, and we are no safer than we were before (arguably we're worse off because the terrorists have even more reason to hate us), and the terrorists are still free.
Another thing, people blew the whole 9/11 thing out of proportion. Granted it was a terrible tragedy but consider that only 3000 people died. Far far far more people die every year from other things like cancer, heart disease, poverty, auto accidents, etc. Why aren't these problems being attacked with the same zeal as Iraq? Heck 100 billion would go a long way toward cancer research, and at least then if I get cancer (much more likely than me dying in a terrorist attack) I might have a better chance of living.
Geeze...Click and Clik! Get it? They gave their product the same name as a symptom of one of their other products (infamous) failures.
This would be like Firestone coming out with the brand new "Explorer" tire or Jack in the Box coming out with a new burger named the "Ecoli".
While you might buy a burger named the "Ecoli" I'd be willing to bet it'd be a failure in the market place.
The PSAT tense? Is that like first person but in a practice test taking environment? Sometimes things on those standardized tests can get confusing, but don't sweat it, it's a trial run.
Just don't mess up on the real thing!
That's chump change compared to other things the government wastes billions on. Look at how much the war on terrorism is costing us.
Theft is about taking something and depriving the original owner.
It is not about taking something and depriving the original owner of potential gains.
For example if I steal $500 from you, do you think a criminal court will charge me for having stolen $1000 from you or $1000000 from you because you could've used that $500 to buy a lotto ticket which may have been a winning ticket? If I steal your car and you can't get to work, will I be charged with two counts of grand theft; one from the auto and another from stealing your potential work wages?
The reason taking $500 from you is theft is because you no longer have $500. You have been deprived of that. Same with your car.
Now lets say I download for free a track being offered for sale for $0.99. Does the person selling the audio track still have it? Yes. Did I steal a dollar from them? No, they have just as much money as before. In order for it to be theft they had to have been deprived of something they already had.
Even using your argument it's ridiculous. Let's assume that depriving someone of potential gains is theft (which it most certainly is not). Let's say one store is selling the track for $0.99 and another is selling it for $5.00. If I download it for free, how much did I steal $0.99 or $5.00?
Furthermore because we're innocent until proven guilty (at least in the US and most western countries) you'd have to prove that I would've otherwise paid for it in the first place. Let's say I testify and say I would never have bought that track. Doesn't matter if I made purchases from the store before or made purchases from other stores before. If I say would never have bought that particular track, how do you plan to prove that I deprived them of a potential sale?
Finally as other's have pointed out. How does it follow that a track that is being sold for $0.99 is worth $0.99 to me if I download it for free? Maybe I value it as much as I value the results of my morning crap. After all I spend a lot more time making that then I do downloading an mp3. I also spend more than $0.99 making it (unless it's ramen noodles or something). Frankly you really don't know how much I value it. You only know how much the store values it (i.e. $0.99). However that's fine because they still have it.
He was trying to help someone else commit a crime.
How would this be different then someone coming up to you and saying, "Hey give me some money so I can buy a gun to rob this bank, if you do I'll give you half of what I take." Then you do it and they run off with your money.
It's not like these scammers were posing as some charity or something. They involved him in a scheme to take millions of dollars from a dead man's bank account. Clearly not a legal thing to do.
As for not spreading the message clearly, the police even warned the guy it was a scam. How much clearer can it get than that?
Why should I feel sorry for that? The guy entered into an illegal conspiracy to defraud a bank and a government and he got taken.
Perhaps next time when presented with an opportunity to rip someone off he'll pass on it.
This guy probably is a runner up for a Darwin award many times over...
I doubt it, I thought that one of the criteria to be considered for the award was that you had to die first.
Get Sirius and stream it over the net. Granted, you'll still need two subscriptions for the receivers in the cars, but you won't need 4.
Actually you are probably far less likely to get hepatitis from Chi Chi's now. After an incident like this, I would think they would be extra careful.
Pam Anderson is another matter. She's probably a walking petri dish.
Did anyone have a problem filling out the survey with Firebird? Whenever I submitted it, it said that I hadn't answered all the questions. Then it highlighted almost all the questions, all of which were answered.
The replication protocol for WINS servers (which is why samba can't be a backup WINS server).
I wonder what Steve Jobs would say if he sees people doing such things to his machines!!
Nothing, despite what IP proponents would have you believe, once you buy the machine it's not his anymore.
Yes it can be tricky to press down instead of in a direction but I think your description is a little off. Only at the main screen will down choose the contact list, right choose the menu, left choose the calendar and up open the browser. It's not like a slip of the joystick in _other_ menus will suddenly take you away to some other area entirely. The worst that happens is you scroll down one menu item instead of selecting the one that was highlighted and have to go back one level and try again.
:)
I'm not trying to be apologetic, but make sure your descriptions are accurate enough so that other people can make good decisions.
That's what I meant...just had a lot of points to go through.
I 'm sorry, I found this a little commical. Are you the "Can you hear me now?" guy or something?
I don't know about most people but the only time I'm checking the signal strength is when the quality is poor or I can't make a call. I suppose some people may obssess over their signal strength constantly, or maybe they're graphing it in MRTG or something, I dunno.
Interesting that you decided to focus on just the signal strength while ignoring the rest of the point. FYI, I was concerned about the signal strength because this was a new phone and new service. When evaluating a new phone/service it's generally a good idea to "obssess" over signal strength before entering into a two year contract. Besides I do like to check the signal from time to time just so I know where I get signal and where I don't. It'd be nice not to have to hit a button to do that.
BTW...with GSM you can be the "can you hear me now" guy. The coverage is not nearly as good as TDMA or CDMA, at least not yet.
The only thing I can say to this is if you have your Light set to Automatic instead of On then what good is a screensaver with lots of information going to do for you anyway? To make a screensaver with info useful would mean setting the Light to On (and doing so gives you a warning about a drain on your standby time.) If your Light is On all the time (so you could see the "Info Saver" (TM) then a bump in your pocket won't make any difference.
If you didn't notice, the screen shows a clock when in screen saver mode. You can see the clock can't you? Why not have a similar thing with an envelope or signal bars on the screen? They don't have to be exceedingly bright...just visible like the clock is. I doubt this consumes a ton of power...but if it does, make an option for it (i.e. no screen saver, clock, or Info Screen). Info Screen would certainly consume less power than having the light always on. Of course, when you consider that the light will come on whenever you hit a key even if key lock is on, it may make sense to leave the light always on. I personally would rather have a phone that had a standby time of more than a day or so though.
I just tried the phone out for two weeks, and while it's a nice phone I had some issues with it.
1. You have to press down on the joystick to bring up the menu and to make selections. However, the joystick is also used to access certain functions. For example if you move the joystick down it will select the call list. If you move it up it will select (at least with AT&T anyway) mMode. This is pretty annoying because often when trying to push the joystick to make a selection, I will instead move it a bit and it won't register a down push and it'll go to the call log or mMode.
Nokias have a similar interface, but the joystick is never used for selection, so it's much harder to screw up.
2. The phone will not display battery life, messages waiting, calls missed, or signal strength unless you push it a button on it. I know it does this to save battery life, but why can't the screensaver show more useful information than the time? Furthermore if left idle it will go back to the screen saver (again to save battery life), but because the screen saver doesn't show anything useful, I find myself having to hit a button over and over to check signal strength while going places.
3. Similar to number 2, when pressing a button on the phone the screen lights up, even if the keys are locked. This means a constant drain on your phone's battery if you carry your phone in your pocket and the buttons get inadvertantly pushed.
4. I had total issues with sunlight and seeing the screen. Granted, you can usually position the phone such that you can see the screen, but I still found it to be an annoyance. Particularly when in the car.
5. This is a minor gripe, but still...why doesn't the phone come with a normal ring by default? I absolutely hate ring tones. I just want the phone to do a normal ring instead of the crappy sounding little tunes it comes with. The closest I could get was an old fashioned phone ring tone.
6. Whenever you miss calls, the phone will not show all the times the person tried to call. It only shows the last time.
I did like the camera, and the big screen. The phone was quite colorful and did have a good number of options, but it's the little things that will make me go with a Nokia 6200 I think.
The question isn't how hard...the question is how much harder is it.
If the typical computer user has a choice between an access point that they just plugin and use, or one that they have to mess with, which do you think they'll most likely pick?
The windows update bit comes from the part where you suggest that users only install patches to problems that apply to their system and related security updates.
This requires interpretation on the part of the user as to which updates are applicable to them. In many cases this a tall order when they really don't understand what it is the update is doing. We're talking about people that don't understand the difference between memory and diskspace because both are measured using the same units.
It's quite easy to instruct users to install just the critical updates on windows updates and how to defrag and what not.
It's not rocket science...but neither is keeping a linux system healthy. In fact to keep a linux system healthy, all the user has to do is install patches. Same as on Windows except that patches are almost never toxic (I've never had a toxic patch, and have never known anyone to have a toxic patch. I only say this because I'm sure someone at some point has installed a patch that had major adverse effects.) and are always easy to reverse. In fact linux is arguably easier because you don't have a registry, you don't have to defrag, you don't have a temp file issue, etc.
The problem and hence the instability comes from the fact that it's much much easier to screw up a windows system by doing routine things such as installing products from the same company that writes your OS. Why should a user think to not install MS Office or the latest version of IE? If they don't they'll have a hard time interacting with the rest of the world that does.
As the other poster said, why on earth should installing non-malicious software result in a screwed up system? Why should anything a user does in a user capacity (not an admin one) screw up the system? It's unreasonable to expect people at home to not install software or to call their support person to ask if a certain piece of software is going to kill their machine.
My comment was a joke...My Windows installs last about a year or so before needing a reinstall on my home machine. Typically I get one of three things:
1. Random BSODs.
2. BSOD on boot up.
3. Random hard lockups.
It possible that #1 (crap drivers) is the culprit. It's not 2 or 3.
I'm sure that yes if hard pressed I could get the system working right again, but it's so much easier just to wipe it and start fresh. The chief reasons for this is the registry where a single screwed up setting can cause disasterous results and the fact that software installations often modify system files and settings.
Another lovely thing that happens under Windows is patches from Microsoft that blow out your system. It's very hard to recover from an update that Microsoft says is un-uninstallable. This involves using the recovery disk and CD and telling it to restore your system files. 9 times out of 10 some strange registry setting related to the new patches will cause your system to be completely out of whack even with the old files.
And yes, I know about XP's system restore feature. However, in my experience what it "restores" is pretty much random and it tends to leave the system in a some sort of quasi limbo state which is some combination of the way your computer used to be and the way it was before running the restore.
In general it's just not worth it. Keep your data on a seperate partition, ghost windows when it's setup right and just reghost your machine when it starts acting funny.
95, 98, and ME have the above problems...but they also have one more. If any application crashes, you're typically looking at a reboot. If that application crashes while writing to the registry you may be looking at a reinstall.
Serious question: Can a default linux install survive three years of daily abuse and neglect, by clueless users who nonetheless stick their fingers into everything in reach, and still be functional enough to be merely "annoying" (the state at which most folk give up on a neglected WinSetup)??
Probably not, but that's not the point. The point is that Windows cannot survive three years of normal usage by non-clueless users without taking very special care of it.
A properly maintained Linux system will last as long as the hardware it's running on does. You should never ever have to reinstall Linux for any reason unless you do something incredibly stupid like delete the whole system or something.
With linux, do a default installation and you have most of the software you'll ever need. Any additional software you can install in your home directory without even touching the system. Power goes out while installing Open Office, no problem...just delete the Open Office directory and start over. With Windows, if you're installing Microsoft Office and the power goes out in the middle you have some chance of being screwed. This is because Unix (Linux) applications are typically designed around the fact that the users running and installing them do not have full access to the system. This means they don't replace system files, don't change system settings, etc.
Since the default install usually sets up a firewall which is on by default and uses sensable firewalling rules you probably could get by without ever even patching it (not recommended). Furthermore when I do patch a linux system I don't hold my breath on reboot and pray it's not blown out when it comes back up. Why? Because if there is a complication due to the patch, I can fix it very easily by using a cd based linux distro such as Knoppix. You have very limited options under a similar situation in Windows with NTFS (ironically Knoppix is a lifesaver here too).
Linux never needs to be defragged because it has a filesystem that isn't crap.
Linux doesn't need a virus scanner. Even if you were infected by a virus, the absolute worst thing it would do is screw up your home directory and data. Login as someone else and the system is 100%