I haven't really been following the story, so maybe I'm missing something, but on the surface, I think I may actually agree with Microsoft here. While I do think modding your 360 should be _legal_, I don't see why they should have to let you onto their network if you've done so. And if the Live service agreement states that you cannot use modded hardware (maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I don't know), I don't see why they should have to refund your subscription fee, either.
Am I the only one who's starting to think that as soon as we put all of our eggs in the solar energy basket, somebody will come along and say that we're almost out of sun?
In the old days the newspapers would be delivered on time. Now the EU has ordered the liberalisation of mail service and our national mail service is on the fast track to be privatised.
And that affects my delivery of the Chicago Tribune how?
I still enjoy reading the paper. I've been a daily subscriber to the Chicago Tribune for the past 8 years. However, in the past few months, their delivery service has taken a major turn for the worse. The paper is supposed to be on my driveway by 6:30AM, and it absolutely never is. I leave for the train at 7:00AM, and it took weeks of calling and threatening to cancel my subscription just to get them to start getting me the paper before 7:00. I still call most days to complain that it's not there by 6:30. I get a credit for the days that I call, so they're not making much money off of my subscription at this point. Overall, if anything is going to cause me to cancel my subscription, it's that the delivery service that used to be fantastic has become abysmal. Mostly I'm probably waiting for the larger, magazine-sized Kindle (or some competitor) to come out.
(The issue with H1N1 is not its lethality once it has infected a person, but how good a job it does of infecting those who are exposed)
From what I've heard, the issue with H1N1 is twofold. It spreads better than regular flu, because it's a novel strain, and most of us have absolutely no immunity to it. Also, mortality among groups of people who rarely die from seasonal flu (young people) is higher than with the seasonal flu. I've heard it theorized that this may be the case because older people may have been exposed to a similar strain of flu many years ago, but the rest of us have not.
I REALLY wanted a Mac Book Pro 17", but I couldn't justify the price tag at over $2k. I was able to purchase a fully-loaded Dell XPS 15" with a 3 year warranty for around $1,500 because Dell was running a nice $400-off special
So, without the the $400-off special, a 15" Dell cost only around $100 less than a 17" Mac? You don't think the extra 2" of screen real estate on a notebook is worth at least $100?
I'm reasonably certain it's been shown a number of times that if you build a PC with the exact same hardware as a Mac, you'll end up with a PC that costs about the same. The only difference is that PC makers offer systems with a wider range of hardware options (including lower-quality hardware on lower priced systems), and include more "Click here to try AOL" crap on the desktop, thus lowering the price... and creating a market for computer retailers to charge a fee to remove that crap from your new system...
Don't use them.
There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Or just use the Web Services APIs to get your data out... Google, Amazon, and Salesforce all offer APIs that make it relatively easy to move data in and out.
Haven't you learned anything from Slashdot? Physical access is total access. Cleaning crew could just pull out their hacker-ninja 1337 skillz and be back on the net in minutes.
And hacking into a computer is a good reason to fire somebody. Checking their email on an unlocked workstation, however, is a good reason to lock your screen.
How exactly is this quantum? Does it spin in both ways at once?
"In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum
What makes you think something has to spin both ways at once to be quantum?
At a previous job, we fired a cleaning crew because they logged into our computers to check their email while we were out.
We called to tell them why they weren't getting paid or allowed to come back, and the boss said, "they might have pressed some buttons when they were dusting."
We said, "the login we have here is 'john.smith123@hotmail.com'; the odds of that being pressed sequentially are 2.7^15 to 1 against."
Why didn't you just lock your screen when you left for the day?
Well, I don't think they're going either way... and that could be the problem. Right now, they're paying a lot of money for two solutions. Granted the Google solution is cheaper, but both are costing the taxpayers money. Hopefully they'll be making a decision soon and not continuing to cost the taxpayers for indecisiveness....
So call it a phased roll-out? We went through pretty much the same process at place where I work. We used Exchange when I started there. Then there was the option of switching over to Gmail. Then, when things seemed to be going smoothly, there was a forced deadline for when everybody had to switch.
Unfortunately, Amazon's S3 isn't really a great backup system. Its service agreement does not make any guarantees your data will actually be there when you want it.
The service agreement specifies 99.9% uptime, with service credits being paid if they fail to meet that mark: "AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon S3 available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.9% during any monthly billing cycle (the âoeService Commitmentâ). In the event Amazon S3 does not meet the Service Commitment, you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below."
It's not perfect, but I'm not aware of any companies offering any better uptime guarantees
Of course, it isn't that good example of a cloud in the first place. Amazon is still the sole provider, making it just another remote storage company.
I think you're confusing cloud computing with a distributed p2p network. I'm not knocking p2p, but the major players in cloud computing are pretty well accepted to be Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
But I don't *store* anything on google maps.. or the search engine. If it were to fail.. to fold.. or whatever, I'd still have basic service. I wouldn't have lost 10 years of documents..
Google Docs allows you to export to a pretty wide variety of formats, so you can always keep a local backup of your documents. I use Google Docs pretty extensively at work because it allows multiple people to collaborate on documents without having to email the documents around, and it includes versioning so I can see who made what change to any given document. I make regular local exported backups of the files that I'm working on. They're till missing some features, when compared with Microsoft or Open Office, but overall, it actually works pretty darn well.
I've seen "Cloud Computing" around as a buzzword but I never really cared to investigate what it really was.
I'm assuming it is essentially paying a data center to host my data from my home system? Why in the hell would I even WANT to do that?
Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed?
You're probably already doing it. Do you use Gmail or do you have a single server somewhere? Ever use Google Docs for collaborative authoring of documents? Ever use an online backup service (that probably uses Amazon S3 in the background)? Ever use one of the iPhone apps that broke when S3 went down a year or so ago?
Sadly, the average Obama lemming-uhhh-supporter doesn't realize that, so they voted for Obama based on his promises.
It's not possible that we voted for him based on the fact that we generally agree with his position on most issues, and we had serious concerns about the sanity of the other guy's VP choice? I like McCain. I think had he been president over the past 8 years, the country would be in a much better position right now, but overall, I don't see much in the Republican party worth voting for. I don't care much about guns...I'm not against them, they're just not an issue for me. I don't have one, I don't want one. If you want one, great. It can be an issue for you. The abortion thing... It's never going to be illegal. It's just a wedge issue, and I guess it always will be. Even if it were illegal, it wouldn't stop people from getting abortions. Poor people would DIY it, and others would just go to Canada or Europe. Backing programs to reduce the overall number of abortions seems like a better route to me. Plenty of us "lemmings" are plenty well educated, and understand the issues. He made some overly optimistic promises before the election, but all politicians do that. It's part of the process. I think he's doing pretty well so far, considering all of the problems he inherited.
Slashdot Mirror
var topic = "cell phone"
if(yourRant != topic)
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return null;
}
You're right. If I had any mod points, I would mod you down for being offtopic and excessively confrontational.
I haven't really been following the story, so maybe I'm missing something, but on the surface, I think I may actually agree with Microsoft here. While I do think modding your 360 should be _legal_, I don't see why they should have to let you onto their network if you've done so. And if the Live service agreement states that you cannot use modded hardware (maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, I don't know), I don't see why they should have to refund your subscription fee, either.
Am I the only one who's starting to think that as soon as we put all of our eggs in the solar energy basket, somebody will come along and say that we're almost out of sun?
Which would be relevant if MP3 wasn't a lossy format...
Meanwhile, 36K acres to power 150K homes?
Who cares? There's plenty of open land in Texas...
In the old days the newspapers would be delivered on time. Now the EU has ordered the liberalisation of mail service and our national mail service is on the fast track to be privatised.
And that affects my delivery of the Chicago Tribune how?
I still enjoy reading the paper. I've been a daily subscriber to the Chicago Tribune for the past 8 years. However, in the past few months, their delivery service has taken a major turn for the worse. The paper is supposed to be on my driveway by 6:30AM, and it absolutely never is. I leave for the train at 7:00AM, and it took weeks of calling and threatening to cancel my subscription just to get them to start getting me the paper before 7:00. I still call most days to complain that it's not there by 6:30. I get a credit for the days that I call, so they're not making much money off of my subscription at this point. Overall, if anything is going to cause me to cancel my subscription, it's that the delivery service that used to be fantastic has become abysmal. Mostly I'm probably waiting for the larger, magazine-sized Kindle (or some competitor) to come out.
But I can look cool doing a track stand at red lights.
Never underestimate the hipsters ability to drain the parents wallet.
Where do you think they get the money to buy those ridiculous bikes?
Delivering stuff on them?
(The issue with H1N1 is not its lethality once it has infected a person, but how good a job it does of infecting those who are exposed)
From what I've heard, the issue with H1N1 is twofold. It spreads better than regular flu, because it's a novel strain, and most of us have absolutely no immunity to it. Also, mortality among groups of people who rarely die from seasonal flu (young people) is higher than with the seasonal flu. I've heard it theorized that this may be the case because older people may have been exposed to a similar strain of flu many years ago, but the rest of us have not.
I REALLY wanted a Mac Book Pro 17", but I couldn't justify the price tag at over $2k. I was able to purchase a fully-loaded Dell XPS 15" with a 3 year warranty for around $1,500 because Dell was running a nice $400-off special
So, without the the $400-off special, a 15" Dell cost only around $100 less than a 17" Mac? You don't think the extra 2" of screen real estate on a notebook is worth at least $100?
I'm reasonably certain it's been shown a number of times that if you build a PC with the exact same hardware as a Mac, you'll end up with a PC that costs about the same. The only difference is that PC makers offer systems with a wider range of hardware options (including lower-quality hardware on lower priced systems), and include more "Click here to try AOL" crap on the desktop, thus lowering the price... and creating a market for computer retailers to charge a fee to remove that crap from your new system...
Don't use them. There's nothing like keeping your own data on your own system..
Or just use the Web Services APIs to get your data out... Google, Amazon, and Salesforce all offer APIs that make it relatively easy to move data in and out.
There's Klingons on the starboard bow!
Haven't you learned anything from Slashdot? Physical access is total access. Cleaning crew could just pull out their hacker-ninja 1337 skillz and be back on the net in minutes.
And hacking into a computer is a good reason to fire somebody. Checking their email on an unlocked workstation, however, is a good reason to lock your screen.
How exactly is this quantum? Does it spin in both ways at once?
"In physics, a quantum (plural: quanta) is an indivisible entity of a quantity that has the same units as the Planck constant and is related to both energy and momentum of elementary particles of matter (called fermions) and of photons and other bosons." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum
What makes you think something has to spin both ways at once to be quantum?
At a previous job, we fired a cleaning crew because they logged into our computers to check their email while we were out.
We called to tell them why they weren't getting paid or allowed to come back, and the boss said, "they might have pressed some buttons when they were dusting."
We said, "the login we have here is 'john.smith123@hotmail.com'; the odds of that being pressed sequentially are 2.7^15 to 1 against."
Why didn't you just lock your screen when you left for the day?
Well, I don't think they're going either way... and that could be the problem. Right now, they're paying a lot of money for two solutions. Granted the Google solution is cheaper, but both are costing the taxpayers money. Hopefully they'll be making a decision soon and not continuing to cost the taxpayers for indecisiveness....
So call it a phased roll-out? We went through pretty much the same process at place where I work. We used Exchange when I started there. Then there was the option of switching over to Gmail. Then, when things seemed to be going smoothly, there was a forced deadline for when everybody had to switch.
Unfortunately, Amazon's S3 isn't really a great backup system. Its service agreement does not make any guarantees your data will actually be there when you want it.
The service agreement specifies 99.9% uptime, with service credits being paid if they fail to meet that mark: "AWS will use commercially reasonable efforts to make Amazon S3 available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.9% during any monthly billing cycle (the âoeService Commitmentâ). In the event Amazon S3 does not meet the Service Commitment, you will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below."
It's not perfect, but I'm not aware of any companies offering any better uptime guarantees
Of course, it isn't that good example of a cloud in the first place. Amazon is still the sole provider, making it just another remote storage company.
I think you're confusing cloud computing with a distributed p2p network. I'm not knocking p2p, but the major players in cloud computing are pretty well accepted to be Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
But I don't *store* anything on google maps.. or the search engine. If it were to fail.. to fold.. or whatever, I'd still have basic service. I wouldn't have lost 10 years of documents..
Google Docs allows you to export to a pretty wide variety of formats, so you can always keep a local backup of your documents. I use Google Docs pretty extensively at work because it allows multiple people to collaborate on documents without having to email the documents around, and it includes versioning so I can see who made what change to any given document. I make regular local exported backups of the files that I'm working on. They're till missing some features, when compared with Microsoft or Open Office, but overall, it actually works pretty darn well.
I've seen "Cloud Computing" around as a buzzword but I never really cared to investigate what it really was.
I'm assuming it is essentially paying a data center to host my data from my home system? Why in the hell would I even WANT to do that?
Or did I completely miss the bus? Something I missed?
You're probably already doing it. Do you use Gmail or do you have a single server somewhere? Ever use Google Docs for collaborative authoring of documents? Ever use an online backup service (that probably uses Amazon S3 in the background)? Ever use one of the iPhone apps that broke when S3 went down a year or so ago?
The data connection in downtown Chicago is pretty spotty. In the suburbs it's much better. Haven't had any troubles with voice or SMS.
I wonder why they didn't just drill down?
Sadly, the average Obama lemming-uhhh-supporter doesn't realize that, so they voted for Obama based on his promises.
It's not possible that we voted for him based on the fact that we generally agree with his position on most issues, and we had serious concerns about the sanity of the other guy's VP choice? I like McCain. I think had he been president over the past 8 years, the country would be in a much better position right now, but overall, I don't see much in the Republican party worth voting for. I don't care much about guns...I'm not against them, they're just not an issue for me. I don't have one, I don't want one. If you want one, great. It can be an issue for you. The abortion thing... It's never going to be illegal. It's just a wedge issue, and I guess it always will be. Even if it were illegal, it wouldn't stop people from getting abortions. Poor people would DIY it, and others would just go to Canada or Europe. Backing programs to reduce the overall number of abortions seems like a better route to me. Plenty of us "lemmings" are plenty well educated, and understand the issues. He made some overly optimistic promises before the election, but all politicians do that. It's part of the process. I think he's doing pretty well so far, considering all of the problems he inherited.