We would be on the web page we actually were looking for to start with, reading the content we were wanted to find is my answer to them.
Instead, were getting sidetracked because we clicked on something we thought was a valid link and turned out to be an ad going to another company's site, or trying to read and article that was surrounded by blinking hit-the-monkey games and is broken [next] into several pages [next] pages when it could [next] have been on one [next] longer one.
Reminds me of when I used to be able to find the page I was looking for on Google in the first 5 results, because Google wasn't popular yet (late 90's). So its results were made up of more relevant search results and not advertising that had googlebombed its way up the list.
Add to this, less experienced users who are getting sidetracked by these ads are sometimes downloading and installing spy/crapware from those sites they are being taken to, causing the family IT person to be harassed with questions about pop-ups and slow system response more regularly.
Defects found on a Phoenix-enabled chip could be resolved by downloading a patch and applying it to the hardware. Torrellas believes this would give chips a shorter time to market, saying "If they know that they could fix the problems later on, they could beat the competition to market."
Oh, boy! Defective by (lack) of design... sooner! If there's anything wrong with hardware and software development, its that there isn't enough quality testing done prior to shipping. How does this do anything but encourage products to be rushed to market even more? This also requires additional expense in adding an interface to the product to receive those updates, rather than just building it right the first time.
Yeah, that's what I said. Reread my sentence. I can't think of a reason for the DSL providers to spread the idea you have to buy video and take a contract with a cableco, when they are breaking out of similar restrictions on their side already.
"Pricing broadband competition can be difficult. Broadband is rarely priced as a stand-alone service. Whether offered by a telephone company or a cable company, it is usually bundled with other services such as voice and video."
Wow, is this a DSL FUD campaign?
I work for a support outsourcing company. I've worked for three different cablecos and there are three more here right now, included in that six are all the major players (Time Warner, COX, Comcast). Not one of these six do not offer cable modem service as a stand-alone service. Also, except for special bundled pricing arrangements, all of them are month-to-month (no contracts).
Where are these mythical cable companies that force your to take video service and have contracts? Sounds like AT&T and co. are trying to draw parallels that don't exist between their refusal to sell naked DSL and their standard contracts vs. cable internet.
The problem is I know Verizon has contract-free DSL service, and I'm sure they offer service without phone included as well.
To me, the idea of signing up for any kind of contract for internet service with no quality-of-service guarantee is just stupid.
The reason for the excessive churn is simple: poor customer service, and poor billing policies to prevent it. To stop it, all companies would have to get together and agree to these rules.
Full promotional pricing only for new customers.
"Retention" promos need to be significantly less than full promotions in savings/length of time.
If a customer leaves for another provider, the waiting time before they would be eligible for another "new customer" promotion needs to be longer than the promotions themselves.
The way things are right now, the standard promotion is 6 mos-1 yr, and there is a 1 mos-3 mos waiting period for a new full promo. All that does is encourage "promotion hopping". Throw in the standard free installation and customers will happily jack-knife between providers each year so they're always on a promotion. If they call and threaten to cancel, they can many times get a temporary price cut that is close to what new customers get.
This all sounds great to customers, but it can mess with the market as a whole in terms of what the "standard rate of service" is. Many people think that broadband service is too expensive in the U.S. compared to what you get in other countries, and I'm not going to get into that, but when it's so easy to get a discounted price for service the very term "regular price" becomes meaningless. If broadband providers want to keep their customers around, they are going to have to work together so they eventually are stuck paying the "market rate". Once you have people having to evaluate service based on what the providers think its really worth, you're going to see some changes in what's considered acceptable service for the price and what the price is. Right now the people who lose out are the ones not on promotion who are having to subsidize the huge numbers that are on the provider's balance sheet. Customers who don't call and bitch about their bill every week should not be penalized like this.
"Although Intel has agreed to restore all data captured in the thousands of backup tapes it made and preserved, no one can say with any degree of confidence that this will put Humpty-Dumpty back together again," AMD said in a March 5 court statement.
I assume they are being given time to try to piece a backup together before the buzzer sounds.
So I think it's about as likely that the email messages in question got "accidentally" deleted as it is that the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was "accidentally" bombed.
Oh, I can explain that one. You see, apparently there was a gross misunderstanding of the commander's lunch order of "Take-out, Chinese".
I`m not a lawyer or anything but.. I think when you're a corporation of this size and so much influence, you're expected to keep records of everything that happens, and be publically responsible for any harm you do, should someone question your procedure in court.
Yes but why are we expecting the corporation to keep track of its own records? Isn't this like having the fox guarding the chicken coop and then requiring him to promptly report if he eats any chickens during his watch? Why would the the law seriously expect a company to follow through on this?
Less storage then a regular size iPod. More than twice the cost of two 8GB iPod nanos. Other than for the sheer sake of proving it can be done, why is this hack impressive again?
So, I guess what you're trying to say is that... for use in a Video iPod, this flash memory HD replacement is not adequate... in space?
There's something about a long tube that seems to suggest to people that maybe conversation should be kept to a minimum. Not only planes, but buses and subways and trains too.
In my experience riding Amtrak long distance, the white noise generated by the ventilation system and the noise from the train riding over the tracks keeps conversations fairly localized in the cabin.
You do realize that if AOL goes of and dies then AIM will stop working, right?
Yeah, but who cares? We're using Pidgin, the multi-protocol Instant Messenger Client. We'll just be using our MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr usrenames or chatting on IRC instead.
Can most software companies afford to pay hackers the $300,000-500,000 a year that a good one could easily make off a single exploit?
What if they tried holding their programmers to higher standards in the security of the products they produce, and then paid the ones that made the cut twice as much?
Re:Vonage is money for nothing
on
The End for Vonage?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The problem is that Vonage is 100% dependent on the telephone network they are competing with. They are selling a service which requires their competitor to operate. This is generally a bad business model, except it can generate extremely high profits for a short period of time. Vonage can't put Verizon out of business as it would eliminate their ability to operate.
That doesn't make any sense. If Verizon went out of business Vonage would still be able to operate because either:
Someone would buy up all Verizon's copper and start operating it themselves, in which case Vonage would simply be reaching all those people still using POTS through what is now their network.
Or, assuming this means everyone has dropped Verizon as a phone provider (pretty far fetched), why would Vonage need them to route calls? There's nobody left to talk to through them! All calls would now be going to other Vonage subscribers (and not even leaving the network) or would be getting routed through other providers phone services.
Major utility companies (and I'm going to lump large cablecos in there) do not just "go out of business". The name on the front may change but utility service is like nature, it abhors a vacuum. You're not going to have a major piece of infrastructure fall off the map and cut off a bunch of people, someone else will come in and buy it out and operate it generally exactly like it was operating before, at least in the immediate term, with no interruption in service for the people who where with the old company.
Even if Verizon were to lose all their POTS customers due to Vonage, they would undoubtedly gain lots of new DSL subscribers from people needing access to make Vonage work. It would just be a major change in business direction for Verizon, not a death sentence. It's also a transition I'm sure they are trying to initiate anyway with their own VoIP offering.
InformationWeek reports the Windows.ANI bug at issue first surfaced -- and was patched -- two years ago, in early 2005.... Microsoft claims this.ANI vulnerability is different from the old, but beyond that they're not talking."
So now we can say that Windows actually had twice as many ANI bugs as we originally thought and Microsoft admitted so themselves.
On my service (6mbps/$29.95 month) I have a 6GB/month cap (which I feel is far too low nowadays) and additional blocks of 10GB are $10 each. The counting is done by calendar month, so I can call and add additional blocks at any time during the month if I realize I've already gone over midway through the month. The blocks are added as a monthly service so I have to call to have them stop billing me for them the next month if I don't want to continue them indefinitely. If I don't buy extra bandwidth usage proactively I'm charged $2.00 per GB for going over limit. But you have to go over a ways to actually get charged, as I've been over by a couple gigs before and not seen a fee added to my next bill.
As far as BitTorrent goes, I think they do throttle eventually due to heavy usage, but they don't block it. I was doing a large download running over a few days and had been getting 160-200kbps when I first started, then a couple days later was trying to download some other, smaller things and I was only able to get about 30-35kbps, even with plenty of seeders and peers. A week or two later with no heavy downloading, BitTorrent downloads were back up to the high 100's.
Aside from the "insufficient technical information" statement, this ruling is going to prevent someone from having violence done to them because of their inane constant droning to any and all within earshot.
Of course, with internet access allowed on planes, what's to stop people from droning on with Skype calls?
The employees all wear walkie-talkies and I've heard them come on with an obviously computer synthesized voice telling them a "guest" needed assistance in _____ dept. Or more team members were needed to cashier, ect requesting to know who would address the issue. And they would answer back to it just like they were acknowledging their boss's orders.
So by your definition every single OS that comes out should use less resources than it's predecessor?
Every version of OSX up to this point has been more responsive than the previous. Doesn't that imply the OS is using less resources that than its predecessor?
I just returned from a 5 day geocaching trip to a competition in Missouri (we take it annually) and several RVs were parked in the area that had DirecTV satellite dishes out front. I'm not sure why DirecTV is offering this solution when it's apparent that their standard dishes can be used by these types of campers w/o much issue.
Because I'm sure their "portable" solution is more expensive than just using the standard equipment, and by offering a "portable" solution, customers will mislead themselves into thinking they cannot use their normal dishes and receivers in a portable capacity.
Slashdot Mirror
In Post-Soviet Russia, the government reports on the media.
Sorry, everyone. I don't have a proper meme joke for this one.
We would be on the web page we actually were looking for to start with, reading the content we were wanted to find is my answer to them.
Instead, were getting sidetracked because we clicked on something we thought was a valid link and turned out to be an ad going to another company's site, or trying to read and article that was surrounded by blinking hit-the-monkey games and is broken [next] into several pages [next] pages when it could [next] have been on one [next] longer one.
Reminds me of when I used to be able to find the page I was looking for on Google in the first 5 results, because Google wasn't popular yet (late 90's). So its results were made up of more relevant search results and not advertising that had googlebombed its way up the list.
Add to this, less experienced users who are getting sidetracked by these ads are sometimes downloading and installing spy/crapware from those sites they are being taken to, causing the family IT person to be harassed with questions about pop-ups and slow system response more regularly.
Oh, boy! Defective by (lack) of design... sooner!
If there's anything wrong with hardware and software development, its that there isn't enough quality testing done prior to shipping. How does this do anything but encourage products to be rushed to market even more? This also requires additional expense in adding an interface to the product to receive those updates, rather than just building it right the first time.
Yeah, that's what I said. Reread my sentence. I can't think of a reason for the DSL providers to spread the idea you have to buy video and take a contract with a cableco, when they are breaking out of similar restrictions on their side already.
Wow, is this a DSL FUD campaign?
I work for a support outsourcing company. I've worked for three different cablecos and there are three more here right now, included in that six are all the major players (Time Warner, COX, Comcast). Not one of these six do not offer cable modem service as a stand-alone service. Also, except for special bundled pricing arrangements, all of them are month-to-month (no contracts).
Where are these mythical cable companies that force your to take video service and have contracts? Sounds like AT&T and co. are trying to draw parallels that don't exist between their refusal to sell naked DSL and their standard contracts vs. cable internet.
The problem is I know Verizon has contract-free DSL service, and I'm sure they offer service without phone included as well.
To me, the idea of signing up for any kind of contract for internet service with no quality-of-service guarantee is just stupid.
The reason for the excessive churn is simple: poor customer service, and poor billing policies to prevent it. To stop it, all companies would have to get together and agree to these rules.
The way things are right now, the standard promotion is 6 mos-1 yr, and there is a 1 mos-3 mos waiting period for a new full promo. All that does is encourage "promotion hopping". Throw in the standard free installation and customers will happily jack-knife between providers each year so they're always on a promotion. If they call and threaten to cancel, they can many times get a temporary price cut that is close to what new customers get.
This all sounds great to customers, but it can mess with the market as a whole in terms of what the "standard rate of service" is. Many people think that broadband service is too expensive in the U.S. compared to what you get in other countries, and I'm not going to get into that, but when it's so easy to get a discounted price for service the very term "regular price" becomes meaningless. If broadband providers want to keep their customers around, they are going to have to work together so they eventually are stuck paying the "market rate". Once you have people having to evaluate service based on what the providers think its really worth, you're going to see some changes in what's considered acceptable service for the price and what the price is. Right now the people who lose out are the ones not on promotion who are having to subsidize the huge numbers that are on the provider's balance sheet. Customers who don't call and bitch about their bill every week should not be penalized like this.
I assume they are being given time to try to piece a backup together before the buzzer sounds.
Oh, I can explain that one.
You see, apparently there was a gross misunderstanding of the commander's lunch order of "Take-out, Chinese".
Yes but why are we expecting the corporation to keep track of its own records? Isn't this like having the fox guarding the chicken coop and then requiring him to promptly report if he eats any chickens during his watch? Why would the the law seriously expect a company to follow through on this?
The building where PCs were born, now only stocks Apples.
There's no place to spend your money... in space.
So, I guess what you're trying to say is that... for use in a Video iPod, this flash memory HD replacement is not adequate... in space?
In space... no one can hear you ping!
This can only mean one thing...
SCO is a front for IBM!
No, wait...
In my experience riding Amtrak long distance, the white noise generated by the ventilation system and the noise from the train riding over the tracks keeps conversations fairly localized in the cabin.
I'm tagging this "pigsflying" which will group it with the story about Vista being released to manufacturing.
Yeah, but who cares? We're using Pidgin, the multi-protocol Instant Messenger Client. We'll just be using our MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, Gadu-Gadu, SILC, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, and Zephyr usrenames or chatting on IRC instead.
What if they tried holding their programmers to higher standards in the security of the products they produce, and then paid the ones that made the cut twice as much?
That doesn't make any sense. If Verizon went out of business Vonage would still be able to operate because either:
Major utility companies (and I'm going to lump large cablecos in there) do not just "go out of business". The name on the front may change but utility service is like nature, it abhors a vacuum. You're not going to have a major piece of infrastructure fall off the map and cut off a bunch of people, someone else will come in and buy it out and operate it generally exactly like it was operating before, at least in the immediate term, with no interruption in service for the people who where with the old company.
Even if Verizon were to lose all their POTS customers due to Vonage, they would undoubtedly gain lots of new DSL subscribers from people needing access to make Vonage work. It would just be a major change in business direction for Verizon, not a death sentence. It's also a transition I'm sure they are trying to initiate anyway with their own VoIP offering.
So now we can say that Windows actually had twice as many ANI bugs as we originally thought and Microsoft admitted so themselves.
On my service (6mbps/$29.95 month) I have a 6GB/month cap (which I feel is far too low nowadays) and additional blocks of 10GB are $10 each. The counting is done by calendar month, so I can call and add additional blocks at any time during the month if I realize I've already gone over midway through the month. The blocks are added as a monthly service so I have to call to have them stop billing me for them the next month if I don't want to continue them indefinitely. If I don't buy extra bandwidth usage proactively I'm charged $2.00 per GB for going over limit. But you have to go over a ways to actually get charged, as I've been over by a couple gigs before and not seen a fee added to my next bill.
As far as BitTorrent goes, I think they do throttle eventually due to heavy usage, but they don't block it. I was doing a large download running over a few days and had been getting 160-200kbps when I first started, then a couple days later was trying to download some other, smaller things and I was only able to get about 30-35kbps, even with plenty of seeders and peers. A week or two later with no heavy downloading, BitTorrent downloads were back up to the high 100's.
Of course, with internet access allowed on planes, what's to stop people from droning on with Skype calls?
I know, probably latency, but still...
It will come in handy for all those people using the FireChicken browser. :-)
They already do this at Target.
The employees all wear walkie-talkies and I've heard them come on with an obviously computer synthesized voice telling them a "guest" needed assistance in _____ dept. Or more team members were needed to cashier, ect requesting to know who would address the issue. And they would answer back to it just like they were acknowledging their boss's orders.
Every version of OSX up to this point has been more responsive than the previous. Doesn't that imply the OS is using less resources that than its predecessor?
Because I'm sure their "portable" solution is more expensive than just using the standard equipment, and by offering a "portable" solution, customers will mislead themselves into thinking they cannot use their normal dishes and receivers in a portable capacity.
In other words, it about money.