oh, c'mon. Are you telling me that after 5 years you don't change things around? Different ISP... different Credit Card issued. And they didn't ask "security questions" when steam first started. In 5 years 2 of those individuals have moved twice or more.
Are people with accounts that had them raped from them? I personally know 11 people who had their passwords "reset" by the system. They didn't have access to their original email account any longer, hadn't made the changes to their steam accounts, and didn't have a security question so they lost their accounts. They basically just had the games they rightfully paid for stolen by Steam/Valve. In one case that was $300 worth of games that they can no longer play because Valve won't work with them to gain access to their account. They say "well, if you can fax us a copy of your driver's license and the credit card you used..." sure, can do the license. Can't exactly do the CC when the number has changed or the bank account has been closed.
I for one refuse to buy anything from Steam except for the one game I do play and that game's days are numbered. ETQW will kill off CS:S for me and it won't be coming a day too early.
I'm reminded of a story someone once gave when talking about issues like this....
Two shipping company owners were talking over drinks one night comparing their businesses. This is the conversation they had...
One: "Last year we only had 3 accidents all year long" Two: "We had 30" One: "Wow, that's really bad. What are you doing to fix it?" Two: "Let me ask you this. How many trucks do you have on the road?" One: "10" Two: "I have over 1000"
So sure, "other" commercial apps may have more flaws in a given month. But those "other" commercial apps have 100 times more applications that come packaged with the OS. So, if you do the actual math and come down with the number of flaws averaged against the amount of software packages available with the OS, I'll bet money that you're going to see that MS loses... again.
Of course it may different for your state as it's not nation wide that I'm aware of, but the fact still remains it is illegal in almost half the states in this country to "keep it quiet". More over, he WOULD be implimented in this mess as he knows of the problem and doesn't say anything. Either rate, as professionals...it falls on US to protect clients' and comsumers' data. Most ID theft is caused by poor business practices, not from anything that the individual has done and this is a perfect example of that.
On another note, wtf is this guy thinking having Win98 machines on a business network live on the 'net without firewall(s)? It's one thing to have to use it for legacy software, it's another to make it a juicy target. I hate to even bring this up since it would end up being flamebait or could label me as a Linux Zealot, but have you considered using Wine, dos4lin or anything to run the software? If it works at least then you'd have a current OS to run the software.
This is what happens when you use those cut rate registrars. I'm mean, c'mon. Is the headache really worth saving $2 per year? Domain Discover is your friend!
Since I don't use Google at all (I use search engines that don't fall prey to blackhat tactics as easy) and I use Wikipedia on a daily basis, I would have to say that Wikipedia is the one I go to first.
Never. I do not like Oracle. I don't like their DB products and I don't like their business practice(s). Like telling the state of California they needed more Oracle licenses than the state had employees that had computer access for example. I will not use, nor support Oracle....
So, with that in mind...I won't be one of their Linux customers either.
First you need to prove where the money was lost from in the first place. You can't instantly assume that it was a user falling for a phishing scam. Particularly after so many companies have been losing backup takes, customer records through social engineering, and the list goes on.
I'm all for the victim of phishing being responsible for their own finances. After all, it was their inability to take BASIC security precautions that we have been preaching for DECADES people...not a few years, DECADES!
However, as more and more companies are being found to have lax security on their own part....
Let's just say, that if the bank can PROVE that the customer lost it via phishing and they were duped into gaving up their username and password, then sure, they should suffer for it. After all it was THEIR fault and not the bank's. HOWEVER, until the bank can prove how that information was snagged, they should be responsible.
I know that twice this year (yes, I said twice this year) I've had my debit card cut off (without warning only to find out sitting at a gas station with an empty tank) simply because of a security breach in some financial institution. While I applaud the fact that they shut it down to make sure I wasn't a victim, they could have been a bit more proactive. After all, I have no transportation without gas and that card doubles as my ATM card. If it wasn't for the fact that I make it a habit to keep $30 on me at all times in case of emergency, I could very well have been stranded 100 miles from home.
So yeah, bank's problem unless proven isn't the customer's fault.
The problem with things like this is they don't usually work. BBB is worthless almost to the point that it should be dismantled as it does NOTHING for the consumer.
In the S.F. Bay area there used to be a program called "Value Star". It is still out there, and they have asked us to join like we were once members, but it fails miserably in what it is suppose to do as well. They do a good job of checking out each of their members and assigning a rating. However the business must be a member and pay dues. If they aren't a member, they don't get tracked. On top of that, there is really very little incentive for a business to be a member. My company was a full fledged member before I was an owner years ago. Not once did we ever have a customer tell us they came to us because we were gold star rated or found us on the value star website. Any consumer I asked about it had never heard of Value Star. So their point of helping consumers find good service providers fails simply because the consumer isn't aware of them. Plus it doesn't help that they have closed the doors on several occasions without warning but still sent out invoices for dues.
I was actually going to start something that was free and wiki-like in the hopes of having a good site for people to rate and find rating on companies nation wide, but sadly, I didn't have the time. That and thinking more about it I've realized that the only time people will look/use something like that is when they're getting bad service. Very few people actually take the time to say anything good about a company. When they get what they expect they stay silent. Hence the phrase "1 unhappy customer speaks louder than 500 happy ones".
Value Star has a good idea, but they don't do enough marketing for people to actually know it exists so it's a poor value for a business which of course means no businesses such as myself are members. And that means we're not rated good or bad.
Believe you me, they WILL continue to get the income from it one way or another. As a DSL provider myself, our circuit costs mysteriously went up 1 month before the FUSF fee was eliminated. FUSF has ALWAYS been nothing more than a slush fund for the telcos anyway. Which in and of itself is why they wanted to replace it with a service fee.
Because people keep using the telcos for things like this (money speaks louder than words with corperations) very few independant ISPs have the power to do anything about it. Look at it, Earthlink couldn't stop it, Covad couldn't stop it, and I know I sure couldn't have stopped it. If people quit using telcos for their DSL and went to the independant ISP we could actually fight stuff like this on capitol hill.
There's no sense in rehashing all this yet again so....'nough said
There has been so many letter and emails thrown out about so many things that falls on deaf ears in the U.S. (or even state and local fits in this group as well) Beauracracy that they can say whatever they want. The letters that would have gotten to HIM have been lost somewhere. Maybe not even lost, just flat out ignored. If there aren't greenbacks accompanying a letter, they could care less.
I know for a FACT that the FTC was informed about many things that were concerns about the SBC/AT&T and MCI/Verizon mergers. I know that the FCC was informed with letters about the whole data vs. voice and phone line issues. Because of the FCC ruling now Comcast has gotten into the VoIP market (and doing a horrible job of it I might add...)
So here's the question, data lines are being used for Voice, voice lines are being used for data. Why can't this still be under telecommunications. After all, that's kind of what we're doing. BAAAAAAAAAAAH
I'm really wishing Bush never made it into office. It's going to take decades to fix this mess he's caused. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in my lifetime the U.S. ends up in another civil war/rebellion at the rate we're going.
Keep in mind that I will never own an Xbox, and doubtful that I will buy a PS3. I don't mind consoles, but they don't give you the same type of gaming you get from a PC. Consoles are good for certain types of games, but without mouse and keyboard you're entirely too limited by my own personal opinion. However, my opinion on the PC gaming industry issue is this.
Hardware: Yes. That's definitely an issue, but at the same time people are getting too picky about what it looks like while playing. I usually go on a 2-3 year upgrade cycle. I buy a new vid card every 2 years, and upgrade CPU every 3. Never really have too much of a problem but before I upgrade the video I'm down to 800x600 resolution.
Titles: There are a huge amount of titles out there for a gamer to choose from and our economy still isn't the greatest. There's a finite amount of money to buy games. Which also causes part of the next one....
Poor Games: Many games don't have the "attraction" they should. They don't seem creative or keep you drawn into it. Doom 3 anyone? I installed it, even used the duct tape mod. I just couldn't enjoy the game. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Id fan, but Doom 3 was pretty, but WAAAAAAAAAY too dark. It didn't scare me, just annoyed me. However, I really am waiting for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. That's going to be awesome!
Poor Value: Many games are getting rather poor for game play. Very few games are played single player for longer than a week. It's hard to justify spending $60 for a game that will only give you a week's entertainment. This leaves multiplayer to cover the remainder of the cost.
Horrid Protection: More and more games are causing system problems. I don't mean to get into the StarForce debate, but every single game I've bought with SF protection has given me serious stability problems on 3 different machines. I currently have 8 games that I paid $39.95 or more for sitting on my shelf that can't be played for several reasons. SF is the biggest cause of that, but there are 2 that "don't like being played in any kind of drive that can write CDs".
Poor Quality: Aside from the above problems many games are seriously rushed to market. Tribes 2 is an excellent example. It took months before I was able to play that game without it locking up my system. By that time I completely lost interest. Of course it didn't help that every server could be configured differently and every player felt the need to use the in game voice crap constantly without any way to mute them. Similar problem with Diablo 2. $70 for it on the release day, I played it for 2 hours after spending 4 hours making it run on my system. It's never been installed again.
Business Model: I won't bash Vivendi even though they need it, it's probably all been said already. But games like BF2, that's just rediculous. I wanted to run a server for it but unless I handed a huge amount of additional $ to them, I couldn't. So even though I kind of liked the demo and wanted to try out the full thing, I didn't buy it since I couldn't maintain my own server(s) for it.
Over all, after more than 15 years of gaming, I get a bad vibe from the industry as a whole. I understand their need to protect their property so I do understand copy protection. But that doesn't mean it needs to damage a system and it needs to take into consideration that systems have burners in them...period. There are other reasons the industry is having a problem. Not because of piracy, if anything that helps the strong games because the gamer decides they like it and buys it. More often than not it is because of poor business decisions. Rushing to market, bad copy protection, stifling creativity.
Oh, and Steam....SUCKS! Valve, you've really gotta learn how to manage your software better. Every patch breaks something else. Your software acts....odd at times. Oh, and while you're saving money by doing everything from the 'net instead of pressing CDs, I'd rather have the disk in my hand. Plus, I don't like having things preloaded on my system. Particularly when I own the CD already and "uninstalled" the preload twice before. If I wanted HL/CS installed on my system, I would put in the CD, I don't need Steam to do it for me.
Since I'm stealing Dell, HP, Gateway AND Apple customers on a fairly regular basis anymore. Reasons given vary from "not what I expected and I feel I was ripped off" to "the support was so horrible that I paid $1000 for a paperweight until you fixed it for me".
We can't forget that Dell has been installing KNOWN spyware on PCs they've been selling of late as well as all the trialware that gets installed on systems to lower the cost to the customer due to "ad revenue".
No, I don't think that computer sales will be a problem any time in the near future for those that actually do still care about customer support.
Same can be said for Comcast and AT&T. Customers are leaving both of them for the same reasons. The consumer is getting smarter if corperations would just stop trying to rip people off then they wouldn't be having these problems.
It's their fault of course. They overtax the lines, they put money in the hands of the stock holders and talking head company leads instead of back into their network. They've been paid to do things they haven't done.
They can't honestly tell me they aren't making money. It's all just a ploy (that we've all seen before) where they make it appear they aren't making money so they can justify (and almost always get permission from the gov) raising prices, or doing whatever other monopolistic tactic they wish to perform.
Either rate, I get rather frustrated with this crap. It's like no matter what you do it always goes the worse direction possible because the people in charge don't know enough about the problem to make an intelligent choice, or they've been "greased" to look at things a certain way.
One that isn't just in it for the money. They are in it to preform a service and have a belief about how that service should be provided. IE, not bugging the @#$%@#$^% out of your costomers to the point where they go to some other site and spend their money. Or they stop coming to your site because it's hard to navigate. Or......
The list can go on and on. I for one applaud craigslist, and the fact that they DON'T advertise on their site is the reason I use it more than just about any other site.
Yup, there's a huge difference when dealing with a company that's responsible to the customer vs. one that's responsible to the stock holder. $59.95 still seems a bit high even for a static IP product, but as long as you're happy, that's what matters.
As you're finding out even though independant ISPs MAY cost more there's a reason they have customer retention. The fact that their products just work without all the "'net experience controlling software" and whatever else you want to talk about.
Usually find the middle ground with an independant company and rarely have to call support and never have to call india.
This coming from our service record. We have customers that have been with us since 1998 and the only reason they've EVER called us is for non-internet related issues. You know, like buying a new gaming rig, notebook, server...whatever. Looks aren't everything. I once had a '74 cutlass that was beat to crap rusted out, and sounded like the engine was dying. That is until I pulled the cutouts and the exhaust stopped going through the mufflers that had holes poked all through them.
anyway, back to DSL.... Top that off with $16.95/mth for 6 months and $29.95/mth after that you're still beating cable prices and price compares with AT&T out of term.
I won't go into the fact that DSL can be just as fast or faster than cable without the shared network problem of cable. 6meg DSL anyone?
Call me a troll if you want, but I'm not just talking about my own services. There are thousands of other independant ISPs out there and most of them offer better service than all the television advertised ISPs.
While of course Microsoft wants interoperability now that Linux is showing that it's growing and there's nothing MS can do about it. They even have the advantage. They could simply read the code of the "offending" interoperability problem and make their own code for it.
However, it would seem to me that MS needs to start opening things up to the OSS community. After all, as it's growing MS's server market will decline. Since many of their "functions" need the server side products to interact with it's hurting them slowly but surely.
I won't buy Microsoft's sincerity until I see 2 products available for linux. Microsoft Office (including things like Visio) and Exchange. Granted, I HIGHLY doubt these products would sell well as there are lower cost and usually better alternatives out there in the Linux Market. But the point here isn't to make sales, it's to prove a REAL and ernest desire to interoperate. Until that happens, anything they say about wanting to interoperate is complete and utter B.S. After all, we've already seen time and time again what MS does to gain market share.
As an added note. I'm happy to see that MS is realizing there's no way they can win against Linux. As far as I know this is the first time MS has been beaten and it's going to continue to grow.
What does it matter if the admin is/was less than knowledgable. Isn't that part of the point? My mail servers scan for all viruses and spam and....yadda yadda, but there are still those people out there that simply don't know. What about those people just learning linux? What about those rare cases where someone's filtering daemon isn't working and to allow mail to continue to pass while it's being repaired the filtering is bypassed? Or for that matter, I seem to remember a time when email filtering wasn't done and it wasn't all that long ago.
It's a mistake to act holier than thou and label someone an idiot because they simply because something isn't/wasn't being done. I'm just saying that calling someone an idiot isn't exactly helpful to ANY problem. As a perfect example...
You're narrow-minded and part of the *NIX stigmata since you think that everyone should have as much knowledge about IT as you do, if they don't they're instantly stupid. Try lending a hand instead of calling someone an idiot. For all you know they could literally be a nuclear physicist.
Didn't exactly like that comment much, did you? Which do you think got my point across better and will illicit a better response? Paragraph 2 or Paragraph 3?
Sorry to get off-topic, and I don't really mean any true insult. Just making a point.
Well, on the Windows platform it's well justified doom and gloom. But like with any corperation (read greedy) that sells a product, they are going to want to boost sales. So it's their job to state the reason(s) why their product is necessary. Many times the truth gets skewed in that process.
But regardless of the fact that ANY software producer will hype their product (As I'm sure you've seen by reading/. the words Microsoft and Yankee Group should spring to mind) you have to take that hype with a grain of salt. You can't buy into everything otherwise you're the gullible little sheep that they need/expect to survive. The aptly named Phantom console is a perfect example or even Duke Nukem Forever. However, I don't want to bash Kaspersky since after all, I prefer their AV software to any other mainstream product out there.
Either rate, Antivirus is a necessary evil. Using *NIX doesn't remove you from the responsibility of not forwarding an email virus because it's a funny joke. You may laugh, but there have been several times I've had people on Linux forwards me "jokes" with Windows viruses attached.
But you'll also not impossible combinations. Using their logest uptime the top 3 are using BSD as OS and Microsoft IIS 5.0 and 6.0. Can't happen. Netcraft states that it's because of the polling and methods that companies use for load sharing and whatnot.
In otherwords, I'll lay dollars to pennies that every single MS server on there is behind some firewall that is reporting IT'S uptime and not the uptime of the actual server.
I had several servers being monitored by netcraft at one time. 2 linux and 2 Windows. Average uptime on the windows servers was the expected 30 days. Average uptime on the Linux servers were....sporatic to say the least. At one time I had a server with over over 300 days uptime but netcraft never took it above 50. It would get to 57 and start over.
Either rate, netcraft is so over rated it's not even funny. It was a good idea, but it's barely worth a mountain of fleas now.
Netcraft is pointless anymore. They can't read linux uptimes any longer, and more over if a site comes off their list, it will never get back on no matter what you do.
Part of "Do no evil" means sticking to your priciples. If you don't stand by what you say, then you're integrety is tarnished. Once that happens people believe you just a little bit less. A corperation with a motto "Do no evil" is pretty rediculous anyway for one simple reason....
Define evil.
For one person evil could be not being 100% truthful at all times. After all "thou shall not lie"
For another evil is as long as noone gets hurt....and again, define hurt.
You see, that statement is entirely too open to interpretation to take it for anything other than it is...market speak. Why do we believe google saying something like that and we won't believe a politician who says the same thing?
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time believing ANY corperation who is responsible to stock holders. They aren't looking out for anyone's interest other than themselves and those stock holders.
Slashdot Mirror
oh, c'mon. Are you telling me that after 5 years you don't change things around? Different ISP... different Credit Card issued. And they didn't ask "security questions" when steam first started. In 5 years 2 of those individuals have moved twice or more.
Are people with accounts that had them raped from them? I personally know 11 people who had their passwords "reset" by the system. They didn't have access to their original email account any longer, hadn't made the changes to their steam accounts, and didn't have a security question so they lost their accounts. They basically just had the games they rightfully paid for stolen by Steam/Valve. In one case that was $300 worth of games that they can no longer play because Valve won't work with them to gain access to their account. They say "well, if you can fax us a copy of your driver's license and the credit card you used..." sure, can do the license. Can't exactly do the CC when the number has changed or the bank account has been closed.
I for one refuse to buy anything from Steam except for the one game I do play and that game's days are numbered. ETQW will kill off CS:S for me and it won't be coming a day too early.
I'm reminded of a story someone once gave when talking about issues like this....
Two shipping company owners were talking over drinks one night comparing their businesses. This is the conversation they had...
One: "Last year we only had 3 accidents all year long"
Two: "We had 30"
One: "Wow, that's really bad. What are you doing to fix it?"
Two: "Let me ask you this. How many trucks do you have on the road?"
One: "10"
Two: "I have over 1000"
So sure, "other" commercial apps may have more flaws in a given month. But those "other" commercial apps have 100 times more applications that come packaged with the OS. So, if you do the actual math and come down with the number of flaws averaged against the amount of software packages available with the OS, I'll bet money that you're going to see that MS loses... again.
In many states now there are consumer protection acts that require companies to inform those that may have had their information comprimised.
- breaches-law.html?fsrc=rss-security
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/010606-data
Of course it may different for your state as it's not nation wide that I'm aware of, but the fact still remains it is illegal in almost half the states in this country to "keep it quiet". More over, he WOULD be implimented in this mess as he knows of the problem and doesn't say anything. Either rate, as professionals...it falls on US to protect clients' and comsumers' data. Most ID theft is caused by poor business practices, not from anything that the individual has done and this is a perfect example of that.
On another note, wtf is this guy thinking having Win98 machines on a business network live on the 'net without firewall(s)? It's one thing to have to use it for legacy software, it's another to make it a juicy target. I hate to even bring this up since it would end up being flamebait or could label me as a Linux Zealot, but have you considered using Wine, dos4lin or anything to run the software? If it works at least then you'd have a current OS to run the software.
This is what happens when you use those cut rate registrars. I'm mean, c'mon. Is the headache really worth saving $2 per year? Domain Discover is your friend!
Since I don't use Google at all (I use search engines that don't fall prey to blackhat tactics as easy) and I use Wikipedia on a daily basis, I would have to say that Wikipedia is the one I go to first.
And just for the record....
. html
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/tech_top
Read it completely. Later information pointed to the fact that Oracle employees assisted in the "correct licensing" for the state.
Never. I do not like Oracle. I don't like their DB products and I don't like their business practice(s). Like telling the state of California they needed more Oracle licenses than the state had employees that had computer access for example. I will not use, nor support Oracle....
So, with that in mind...I won't be one of their Linux customers either.
First you need to prove where the money was lost from in the first place. You can't instantly assume that it was a user falling for a phishing scam. Particularly after so many companies have been losing backup takes, customer records through social engineering, and the list goes on.
I'm all for the victim of phishing being responsible for their own finances. After all, it was their inability to take BASIC security precautions that we have been preaching for DECADES people...not a few years, DECADES!
However, as more and more companies are being found to have lax security on their own part....
Let's just say, that if the bank can PROVE that the customer lost it via phishing and they were duped into gaving up their username and password, then sure, they should suffer for it. After all it was THEIR fault and not the bank's. HOWEVER, until the bank can prove how that information was snagged, they should be responsible.
I know that twice this year (yes, I said twice this year) I've had my debit card cut off (without warning only to find out sitting at a gas station with an empty tank) simply because of a security breach in some financial institution. While I applaud the fact that they shut it down to make sure I wasn't a victim, they could have been a bit more proactive. After all, I have no transportation without gas and that card doubles as my ATM card. If it wasn't for the fact that I make it a habit to keep $30 on me at all times in case of emergency, I could very well have been stranded 100 miles from home.
So yeah, bank's problem unless proven isn't the customer's fault.
The problem with things like this is they don't usually work. BBB is worthless almost to the point that it should be dismantled as it does NOTHING for the consumer.
In the S.F. Bay area there used to be a program called "Value Star". It is still out there, and they have asked us to join like we were once members, but it fails miserably in what it is suppose to do as well. They do a good job of checking out each of their members and assigning a rating. However the business must be a member and pay dues. If they aren't a member, they don't get tracked. On top of that, there is really very little incentive for a business to be a member. My company was a full fledged member before I was an owner years ago. Not once did we ever have a customer tell us they came to us because we were gold star rated or found us on the value star website. Any consumer I asked about it had never heard of Value Star. So their point of helping consumers find good service providers fails simply because the consumer isn't aware of them. Plus it doesn't help that they have closed the doors on several occasions without warning but still sent out invoices for dues.
I was actually going to start something that was free and wiki-like in the hopes of having a good site for people to rate and find rating on companies nation wide, but sadly, I didn't have the time. That and thinking more about it I've realized that the only time people will look/use something like that is when they're getting bad service. Very few people actually take the time to say anything good about a company. When they get what they expect they stay silent. Hence the phrase "1 unhappy customer speaks louder than 500 happy ones".
Value Star has a good idea, but they don't do enough marketing for people to actually know it exists so it's a poor value for a business which of course means no businesses such as myself are members. And that means we're not rated good or bad.
Believe you me, they WILL continue to get the income from it one way or another. As a DSL provider myself, our circuit costs mysteriously went up 1 month before the FUSF fee was eliminated. FUSF has ALWAYS been nothing more than a slush fund for the telcos anyway. Which in and of itself is why they wanted to replace it with a service fee.
Because people keep using the telcos for things like this (money speaks louder than words with corperations) very few independant ISPs have the power to do anything about it. Look at it, Earthlink couldn't stop it, Covad couldn't stop it, and I know I sure couldn't have stopped it. If people quit using telcos for their DSL and went to the independant ISP we could actually fight stuff like this on capitol hill.
There's no sense in rehashing all this yet again so....'nough said
There has been so many letter and emails thrown out about so many things that falls on deaf ears in the U.S. (or even state and local fits in this group as well) Beauracracy that they can say whatever they want. The letters that would have gotten to HIM have been lost somewhere. Maybe not even lost, just flat out ignored. If there aren't greenbacks accompanying a letter, they could care less.
I know for a FACT that the FTC was informed about many things that were concerns about the SBC/AT&T and MCI/Verizon mergers. I know that the FCC was informed with letters about the whole data vs. voice and phone line issues. Because of the FCC ruling now Comcast has gotten into the VoIP market (and doing a horrible job of it I might add...)
So here's the question, data lines are being used for Voice, voice lines are being used for data. Why can't this still be under telecommunications. After all, that's kind of what we're doing. BAAAAAAAAAAAH
I'm really wishing Bush never made it into office. It's going to take decades to fix this mess he's caused. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in my lifetime the U.S. ends up in another civil war/rebellion at the rate we're going.
Keep in mind that I will never own an Xbox, and doubtful that I will buy a PS3. I don't mind consoles, but they don't give you the same type of gaming you get from a PC. Consoles are good for certain types of games, but without mouse and keyboard you're entirely too limited by my own personal opinion. However, my opinion on the PC gaming industry issue is this.
Hardware: Yes. That's definitely an issue, but at the same time people are getting too picky about what it looks like while playing. I usually go on a 2-3 year upgrade cycle. I buy a new vid card every 2 years, and upgrade CPU every 3. Never really have too much of a problem but before I upgrade the video I'm down to 800x600 resolution.
Titles: There are a huge amount of titles out there for a gamer to choose from and our economy still isn't the greatest. There's a finite amount of money to buy games. Which also causes part of the next one....
Poor Games: Many games don't have the "attraction" they should. They don't seem creative or keep you drawn into it. Doom 3 anyone? I installed it, even used the duct tape mod. I just couldn't enjoy the game. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Id fan, but Doom 3 was pretty, but WAAAAAAAAAY too dark. It didn't scare me, just annoyed me. However, I really am waiting for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. That's going to be awesome!
Poor Value: Many games are getting rather poor for game play. Very few games are played single player for longer than a week. It's hard to justify spending $60 for a game that will only give you a week's entertainment. This leaves multiplayer to cover the remainder of the cost.
Horrid Protection: More and more games are causing system problems. I don't mean to get into the StarForce debate, but every single game I've bought with SF protection has given me serious stability problems on 3 different machines. I currently have 8 games that I paid $39.95 or more for sitting on my shelf that can't be played for several reasons. SF is the biggest cause of that, but there are 2 that "don't like being played in any kind of drive that can write CDs".
Poor Quality: Aside from the above problems many games are seriously rushed to market. Tribes 2 is an excellent example. It took months before I was able to play that game without it locking up my system. By that time I completely lost interest. Of course it didn't help that every server could be configured differently and every player felt the need to use the in game voice crap constantly without any way to mute them. Similar problem with Diablo 2. $70 for it on the release day, I played it for 2 hours after spending 4 hours making it run on my system. It's never been installed again.
Business Model: I won't bash Vivendi even though they need it, it's probably all been said already. But games like BF2, that's just rediculous. I wanted to run a server for it but unless I handed a huge amount of additional $ to them, I couldn't. So even though I kind of liked the demo and wanted to try out the full thing, I didn't buy it since I couldn't maintain my own server(s) for it.
Over all, after more than 15 years of gaming, I get a bad vibe from the industry as a whole. I understand their need to protect their property so I do understand copy protection. But that doesn't mean it needs to damage a system and it needs to take into consideration that systems have burners in them...period. There are other reasons the industry is having a problem. Not because of piracy, if anything that helps the strong games because the gamer decides they like it and buys it. More often than not it is because of poor business decisions. Rushing to market, bad copy protection, stifling creativity.
Oh, and Steam....SUCKS! Valve, you've really gotta learn how to manage your software better. Every patch breaks something else. Your software acts....odd at times. Oh, and while you're saving money by doing everything from the 'net instead of pressing CDs, I'd rather have the disk in my hand. Plus, I don't like having things preloaded on my system. Particularly when I own the CD already and "uninstalled" the preload twice before. If I wanted HL/CS installed on my system, I would put in the CD, I don't need Steam to do it for me.
Since I'm stealing Dell, HP, Gateway AND Apple customers on a fairly regular basis anymore. Reasons given vary from "not what I expected and I feel I was ripped off" to "the support was so horrible that I paid $1000 for a paperweight until you fixed it for me".
We can't forget that Dell has been installing KNOWN spyware on PCs they've been selling of late as well as all the trialware that gets installed on systems to lower the cost to the customer due to "ad revenue".
No, I don't think that computer sales will be a problem any time in the near future for those that actually do still care about customer support.
Same can be said for Comcast and AT&T. Customers are leaving both of them for the same reasons. The consumer is getting smarter if corperations would just stop trying to rip people off then they wouldn't be having these problems.
It's their fault of course. They overtax the lines, they put money in the hands of the stock holders and talking head company leads instead of back into their network. They've been paid to do things they haven't done.
They can't honestly tell me they aren't making money. It's all just a ploy (that we've all seen before) where they make it appear they aren't making money so they can justify (and almost always get permission from the gov) raising prices, or doing whatever other monopolistic tactic they wish to perform.
Either rate, I get rather frustrated with this crap. It's like no matter what you do it always goes the worse direction possible because the people in charge don't know enough about the problem to make an intelligent choice, or they've been "greased" to look at things a certain way.
One that isn't just in it for the money. They are in it to preform a service and have a belief about how that service should be provided. IE, not bugging the @#$%@#$^% out of your costomers to the point where they go to some other site and spend their money. Or they stop coming to your site because it's hard to navigate. Or......
The list can go on and on. I for one applaud craigslist, and the fact that they DON'T advertise on their site is the reason I use it more than just about any other site.
Yup, there's a huge difference when dealing with a company that's responsible to the customer vs. one that's responsible to the stock holder. $59.95 still seems a bit high even for a static IP product, but as long as you're happy, that's what matters.
As you're finding out even though independant ISPs MAY cost more there's a reason they have customer retention. The fact that their products just work without all the "'net experience controlling software" and whatever else you want to talk about.
Usually find the middle ground with an independant company and rarely have to call support and never have to call india.
This coming from our service record. We have customers that have been with us since 1998 and the only reason they've EVER called us is for non-internet related issues. You know, like buying a new gaming rig, notebook, server...whatever. Looks aren't everything. I once had a '74 cutlass that was beat to crap rusted out, and sounded like the engine was dying. That is until I pulled the cutouts and the exhaust stopped going through the mufflers that had holes poked all through them.
anyway, back to DSL.... Top that off with $16.95/mth for 6 months and $29.95/mth after that you're still beating cable prices and price compares with AT&T out of term.
I won't go into the fact that DSL can be just as fast or faster than cable without the shared network problem of cable. 6meg DSL anyone?
Call me a troll if you want, but I'm not just talking about my own services. There are thousands of other independant ISPs out there and most of them offer better service than all the television advertised ISPs.
While of course Microsoft wants interoperability now that Linux is showing that it's growing and there's nothing MS can do about it. They even have the advantage. They could simply read the code of the "offending" interoperability problem and make their own code for it.
However, it would seem to me that MS needs to start opening things up to the OSS community. After all, as it's growing MS's server market will decline. Since many of their "functions" need the server side products to interact with it's hurting them slowly but surely.
I won't buy Microsoft's sincerity until I see 2 products available for linux. Microsoft Office (including things like Visio) and Exchange. Granted, I HIGHLY doubt these products would sell well as there are lower cost and usually better alternatives out there in the Linux Market. But the point here isn't to make sales, it's to prove a REAL and ernest desire to interoperate. Until that happens, anything they say about wanting to interoperate is complete and utter B.S. After all, we've already seen time and time again what MS does to gain market share.
As an added note. I'm happy to see that MS is realizing there's no way they can win against Linux. As far as I know this is the first time MS has been beaten and it's going to continue to grow.
What does it matter if the admin is/was less than knowledgable. Isn't that part of the point? My mail servers scan for all viruses and spam and....yadda yadda, but there are still those people out there that simply don't know. What about those people just learning linux? What about those rare cases where someone's filtering daemon isn't working and to allow mail to continue to pass while it's being repaired the filtering is bypassed? Or for that matter, I seem to remember a time when email filtering wasn't done and it wasn't all that long ago.
It's a mistake to act holier than thou and label someone an idiot because they simply because something isn't/wasn't being done. I'm just saying that calling someone an idiot isn't exactly helpful to ANY problem. As a perfect example...
You're narrow-minded and part of the *NIX stigmata since you think that everyone should have as much knowledge about IT as you do, if they don't they're instantly stupid. Try lending a hand instead of calling someone an idiot. For all you know they could literally be a nuclear physicist.
Didn't exactly like that comment much, did you? Which do you think got my point across better and will illicit a better response? Paragraph 2 or Paragraph 3?
Sorry to get off-topic, and I don't really mean any true insult. Just making a point.
Well, on the Windows platform it's well justified doom and gloom. But like with any corperation (read greedy) that sells a product, they are going to want to boost sales. So it's their job to state the reason(s) why their product is necessary. Many times the truth gets skewed in that process.
/. the words Microsoft and Yankee Group should spring to mind) you have to take that hype with a grain of salt. You can't buy into everything otherwise you're the gullible little sheep that they need/expect to survive. The aptly named Phantom console is a perfect example or even Duke Nukem Forever. However, I don't want to bash Kaspersky since after all, I prefer their AV software to any other mainstream product out there.
But regardless of the fact that ANY software producer will hype their product (As I'm sure you've seen by reading
Either rate, Antivirus is a necessary evil. Using *NIX doesn't remove you from the responsibility of not forwarding an email virus because it's a funny joke. You may laugh, but there have been several times I've had people on Linux forwards me "jokes" with Windows viruses attached.
But you'll also not impossible combinations. Using their logest uptime the top 3 are using BSD as OS and Microsoft IIS 5.0 and 6.0. Can't happen. Netcraft states that it's because of the polling and methods that companies use for load sharing and whatnot.
In otherwords, I'll lay dollars to pennies that every single MS server on there is behind some firewall that is reporting IT'S uptime and not the uptime of the actual server.
I had several servers being monitored by netcraft at one time. 2 linux and 2 Windows. Average uptime on the windows servers was the expected 30 days. Average uptime on the Linux servers were....sporatic to say the least. At one time I had a server with over over 300 days uptime but netcraft never took it above 50. It would get to 57 and start over.
Either rate, netcraft is so over rated it's not even funny. It was a good idea, but it's barely worth a mountain of fleas now.
Netcraft is pointless anymore. They can't read linux uptimes any longer, and more over if a site comes off their list, it will never get back on no matter what you do.
]# uptime
09:55:37 up 396 days, 20:32, 1 user, load average: 0.04, 0.12, 0.17
But yet our windows servers must be rebooted about every 30 days. Thank you patch Tuesday.
I think that pretty much says it all, really.
Part of "Do no evil" means sticking to your priciples. If you don't stand by what you say, then you're integrety is tarnished. Once that happens people believe you just a little bit less. A corperation with a motto "Do no evil" is pretty rediculous anyway for one simple reason....
Define evil.
For one person evil could be not being 100% truthful at all times. After all "thou shall not lie"
For another evil is as long as noone gets hurt....and again, define hurt.
You see, that statement is entirely too open to interpretation to take it for anything other than it is...market speak. Why do we believe google saying something like that and we won't believe a politician who says the same thing?
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time believing ANY corperation who is responsible to stock holders. They aren't looking out for anyone's interest other than themselves and those stock holders.