One that makes it, and an endless amount of imitators that will never make it. Unless of course they actually do something completely original, but the odds of that happening is fairy small... the phrase MMORPG itself is almost synonymous to World of Warcraft these days. If they say they are making an MMORPG, then they are most likley making a WoW-clone.
Huh, lucky you. Around here when I go to the theatre they offer a huge screen, slightly off focus for about a minute or two total spread out over the film's more critical scenes, sound that is so loud several of my friends have taken to bringing earplugs to the theatre just like to heavy metal concerts. It takes the pain away. Also you run the about one in five risk that there will be highly annoying people somewhere around you fiddling with cellphones or talking or just having a really annoying laugh.
I used to go to see a film about once or twice a month, but these days I just download a cam and if they are good I'll buy the dvd when they get out. It isn't worth the ticket money, petrol money and random annoyances just to see a film on a bigger screen.
Cinema is dead as far as I am concerned. I am quite convinced I am not the only one that believes so.
Oh, I fully intend to buy one or two, when the first wave of deliveries have gone out, which nicely coincides with a time when I have the room in my budget for such a purchase. Sadly even $150 is too much to spend recklessly when on a pension, even if the risk in my eyes is very slim. Since a lot of people have already ordered, I as before recommend other people to just wait and see - instead of trying desperately to find fault.
The numbers do add up in my opinion. Sure, it is obvious the profit is near nothing per unit, but you seem to think it is impossibly low. A cheap laptop today is about 4-5000sek (from major retailers), whereof half about is the cost for a vista license and other software, a nice quarter or so is retailers cut. Which leaves about 1000kr. From there down to the 800 or so that is hardware cost it isn't hard to go, considering the laptop I was comparing to had twice the harddrive, a dvdrw drive, twice the memory and so on.
Well yes. If it is a scam, then it might encourage people to bite if the first wave of orders got their laptops. But if it is not a scam, then the first wave of orders would also get their laptops. So basically you are saying there is still a chance the Apple store is a scam, just because they do deliver to the customers so far doesn't mean they are legit.
Really? I don't have money to waste, so I need to be careful... but your level of paranoia astounds me.
- Domains are registered for one year and then renewed yearly, aren't they? At least that was how our webhost did it back when I ran the company website five years ago. Is it far fetched that this guy who does everything as cheap as possible let a webhost register his domain?
- Oh give it a break. All blazing entrepeneurs have tons of old companies in their closet, how they end depend on if they idea made it or not.
- The guy isn't a lawyer, and I doubt he wants to pay one prime money to draw up something as silly as a privacy notice. Yet, he is required to have one, so a cut and paste is a fair guess. Still just as valid.
- So now it is proved they are photoshopped? for a while it seemed everyone thought they meant the laptop was really a clevo, or whatever it was called. Still, a photoshopped image of a product, or a photo of a prototype, would sort of be expected since they most likely wont actually build the laptop until you order it.
- That is not costs for advertising on the site, but to partner with them and have them hawk your stuff as official accessories. Also their own claims is 100K hits/month which wouldn't surprise me considering the hype they have just gotten by this discussion alone.
- the only way to contact them is at info@medisoncelebrity.com - the famous hotmail is in the whois, and not for official use at all.
- As they stated yesterday in an interview ay "Dagens Industri" (large swedish newspaper) They simply had such a rush of callers their phoneline (probably manned by just one or two people due to the small size of the startup) was overrun and couldn't handle it. So they decided only to take orders through the internet, not an uncommon practice these days. Many webshops I shop in never reveal a contactnumber. In most cases you don't even get the adress, just a form to mail questions in.
- They have an address in england, which is where they are registered. It isn't an office address, it is the official registrar address. Why would they need an official address in any other country considering it is all shipped from a central location? Do you want the address to their assembly plant? Do you want the address to the assembly plant of Dell or HP or Apple? Do they give it out?
- Half the price of the nearest competitor, yes. But the nearest competitor has newer hardware and software with paid for licenses, as well as a retailer cut in the price. So cut the nearest competitor by half and you will get the price from factory without os, which is what you supposedly get from Medison.
- Not more crap than any other business statements from the major companies. Medison has a hook - cheap computers because the user wants it. It might sound like crap, but it is simply a businessplan. They plan to make money because they are the only one selling laptops near the disposable pricerange. Laptops that is horrible performance wise, but still good enough to do office work on or homework for the kids or whatever.
- Well I'm tired of hearing them, so that's okay. So far I haven't heard a single thing that clearly says scam, nor have I heard any single thing that clearly says they are not. I simply say... it is possible. People mob up against things like this without objectively looking at it from both sides, and the sort of things you state here is the sort of silly gibberish that sounds legit but really can be explained quite easily with just a modicum of insight into how small startups are handled and how life works. If you want it to be a scam, fine.
As for if I will order one... as I said elsewhere - I am one of those who will order when the first wave have been sent out. I recommend you all to hold of judgement until that happens.
Around $300? minus software and os, that's what, $200 left? minus retailers cut...
I don't see why people find this laptop so unbelievable. It is cheap parts and no OS. Cheapest laptop on a swedish pricewatch isn't that far off from the Medison one once one has subtracted the cost for Vista home edition and support and shipping and of course retailers cut... and that is still with twice the harddrive, dvdrw, bigger screen and twice the memory.
You have to remember there is a difference between expecting to make millions a month and actually having the money up front to pay for a dedicated server and professional made webpage with your own https solution and payment verification and whatnots. Why go through all those extra costs when you can get the same service from outside much cheaper and at a lower initial cost? Not to mention, this company never intended to sell to consumers, and I doubt they plan to stick to selling to consumers - they want to sell to retail but they want retail to keep a low price to consumer. So, since they couldn't cut a good deal with retail, now they sell to consumers for a while to get the product out there and put pressure on the retail stores by competition.
They might make millions a month in a few months... and by then they would probably get a better webpage and all... but then again with the low low low price maybe that's more a few thousand a month.
Their accessories page is ads from other vendors... where you can buy extra memory and add... AFTER purchase of the laptop. You are free to choose other vendors that write in english if you like, but don't expect medison to only refer you to english speaking websites since they started out as a swedish company.
Hmm. I am amongst those who will gladly pay $150 for a laptop, as soon as I see that everyone else starts getting theirs. It does provoke a certain amount of disbelief, yet... I can't help but see the reason as well. Let me respond to a few of your statements.
-- So the involved companies would just suddenly agree on not making any or have an extremely small margin? -- The laptop was initially meant to be sold in the supermarket. The main retailer chains wanted to have a per-unit profit of 100% or more - not unusual on cheap imported items that is still way below local prices. At this point the company would not sell to the consumer but to the retailer, but upon not being able to strike a deal resulting in what the company saw as a reasonable price to consumer, the company did not strike a deal with the retailers and instead started selling to consumers. So, the involved companies that would have raised the prices are no longer involved. The plan as I understand it would be to sell a large number of units at this low low low price, until the retailers want a piece of the action so badly that they agree on a lower price to consumer.
--- I would call it either a rush or a failure that the companies listed on your website dodn't know anything about you at first. Which one do you prefer? ---
I would call it life. The boss of a major company strikes a deal, when the deal goes through he informs his heads of departements, who in due course will fill in their employees. The low level employees who at first knew nothing of this company their boss had struck a deal with, simply had not yet been informed. With six to eight weeks for the first delivery it isn't exactly a rush to handle the lines.
--- I wasn't asking about why A company would have it like that. I was asking why YOUR company had it like this. Let me ask the question in another way: Would I correctly assume that your address stated on your site is just a forward or P.O Box like address, and that you don't really have any office in UK at all? If that is the case, do you have any office at all, and what would the visiting address be? & I would say that isn't common at all for any bigger companies, especially not in USA, and especially not for domain registrations due to the insecurity. And just an avoiding answer on the phone number. But if you want to look unserious, feel free, I won't bother. --- Okay, I lumped these two because they belong together. Most small companies start out from the ground up. Sure, major companies do not use a hotmail address in their whois info. But are you really thinking that a company that is trying to shave cents at every corner to be able to deliver the cheapest possible laptop waste money on a real office with secretaries and meeting facilities and whatnot? Legit or not this is most likely run out of a laptop and cellphone, as cheap as possible. Hotmail is cheap. I wouldn't use my isp email in a whois, I might not be on the same isp in two months. What else should I use? an email address on the very domain I register? No, I use a gmail. Granted hotmail is a bad choice, but it is free, and not everyone has gone to gmail yet. Besides, much important stuff ever get sent to your whois contact? As for the phone number I am betting it goes to someone with connections to the registrar, someone who can be reached even when the registrar is out of the country or whatnot. (No, using cellphones abroad costs extra, remember, need to keep the costs down)
--- I don't understand why you wouldn't answer this question? It just seems strange that you have had several companies that has either gone bankrupt or been unregistered. In your company history you put it in the way that it always has been the same successful company. Isn't this correct? --- Small companies do go bankrupt. It happens. A loan doesn't come through, an investor pulls out, the utilities bill falls behind the desk and isn't found until it is too late, and the late fees swallow the last of your available funds
Good tip, but if I understand it right it would counter only malware that renames themselves to your search query, and I have yet to encounter any of that on the emule network. I guess it is predominantly on the fasttrack network? Or possibly a tip for those who have a server list infected with fake servers.
Well, yes. Hence why I found it amusing that only two out of three downloads (of exactly the same files according to filename and versions and all... except filesize) warned about that particular trojan, which could logically be an indication of it containing the code it will later use. The third occasion warned for another trojan, which means that either that was the correct one, or it was infected with another trojan. Of course they were all infected, as was blatantly obvious hours later when I sandboxed them and tried the program out without antivirus protection.
Unfortunately for cheapskate scriptkiddies, only older versions of pinch is available free through simple means. To get the later version you'll have to cough up or have good connections. Unfortunately for the rest of us, older versions still do the trick... but then that is nothing new, there has been script kiddies with custom virus and trojan kits since the early days of the world wide web, so I don't think this is anything to panic over either.
Although fun to play with. And oh so tempting to bundle it back in itself and share on the mule. With a custom trojan contantly pinging the whitehouse with emails about terrorist threats.
Oh, actually a search for "pinch" on emule turns up quite a plethora of results... although once you've sorted out the porn and downloaded a few exe files (yes I know, for most geeks this is the exact reverse of the normal process), for some odd reason antivirus warnings start to pop up... apparently two out of three pinch downloads was infected with "Win32/PSW.LdPinch.P4 trojan" and the third with some other crap that I forgot to write down.
You can almost see the scriptkiddies sitting there with their brand new trojan going... "hmm, now if only I had some program to trick people into downloading... something I could merge my trojan with to start off my botfarm. Something I could put on fasttrack, and maybe emule... something idiots would download and run even if their antivirus goes off. Hey wait a minute, I'm an idiot and I just ran pinch even though 'norton' told me it was bad for me!"
EULA, Pinch, 2.60 I reserve the right to go ballistic on your ass if you rip me off. (But feel free to redistribute if you include your custom trojan in the file.)
EULA - most other software [four to six pages of nonsense much of it in all caps, mainly stating the exact same as above with the exclusion of the parenthesis but adding a page or two basically saying "I can also castrate you with a dull wooden spoon if you do something I would rather you pay me extra to get done."]
Ah well moral obligation is far from legal obligation. Mainly by the small detail that people that do not agree with your morals should feel free to not correct such mistakes, and should feel free to act against any other of your moral guidelines, while people who do not believe in the laws of the land still is under legal obligation to follow them regardless of any moral opinions.
Unfortunately the trend is to try to pass laws to enforce morals, which is where it all get rather sticky. Until such laws are passed, one can only say.... keep your morals out of any discussion about legality.
two to four times a day in my mind would mean you speak on the phone 2-6 hours a day and probably is in an area with bad reception. I am often out in nature in areas where I get bad reception and it can suck my batteries dry in a day - if I spend any time talking on the phone of course even quicker.
If you spend any less than that on the phone each day, or spend the days in an area with good reception, then I am sorry to say but yeah your brand new battery might actually be bad - it has happened to me.
Now, if you spend your days talking that much on the cellphone close enough to a plug to actually charge it, then I suggest you consider external antennas to help with the reception, and maybe an aftermarket battery with some extra charge to it. Oh and if you do get a new battery, don't forget that you have to charge them for something like 16 hours straight the first time... Even if this isn't mentioned in the manuals these days. Any less than this and you will definitely have a badly functioning battery afterwards.
Oh yeah, cause the razor has horrible battery life... I mean I am constantly charging mine - just plugged it in now for the third time this month. Absolutely horrible.
Come on, face it - battery life isn't an absolute measurement. If you use your cellphone as an emergency phone, then a razr will easily get a week on a charge, and I admit it is still not the best in battery life. Sure, if you sit and play java games all day it will run out in just about a day or two, and if you talk nonstop on it it will run out in mere hours. But then... all phones do.
What is it actually she wants? A phone that is as cheap as possible? Well, featureless phones run in smaller series, might have to be imported, and will thus be expensive. Just get whatever is cheapest, because features she does not use will not cost her anything. Or does she want a simple phone? No worries, calling a number on a cellphone is just about as simple on any model. Doesn't matter if it has two cameras, video, mp3, radio, and a small nuclear warhead, you still dial a number and press call. Or use the phonebook, which granted can be one or two keypresses more.
Actually placing a call doesnt increase in difficulty depending on the features of the phone. Sure it feels odd to have a beefed up porche when you never drive faster than 60, but if it costs the same, why not? Just keep away from the nos and you'll never really know the difference.
hmm... seems the internet has expanded since then, I found links out of that page which redirected me elsewhere and I was back in it all again. This however, http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm is the proper end of the internet, as I was referred to by google reader.
Here in sweden prices are approaching 7 dollars a gallon, and sorry to dissapoint you but people still drive everywhere. It isn't really because they have to, it is because it is convenient, and because public transportation is not convenient, or in many cases not even a viable alternative.
Example: My friend works a three shift rotation, going mornings, afternoons and nights alternately. Two out of three shifts he can not get public transportation one or both ways, and on the third he will have to wait several hours for a bus that will cost him about as much as driving himself.
I could give many more examples... and know the subject pretty well since I myself is something of a green environmentalist nutjob, that has in the past been working politically to right the problem. And the one conclusive thing I've learned... high gasoline prices just hurts people who doesn't have a choice but to take the car, such as people in rural areas or handicapped people. It also raises the prices of public transportation, making people less willing to use it as an alternative, and raises the costs for the society itself by making ambulances, police vehicles and so on more expensive to run.
And yes, the entire price difference between your price and our price is a special "environmental tax" on gasoline, put there just for the purpose of making people drive less.
So, they have a lot of people who like warcraft stuffing money in their left pocket. They make a starcraft MMORPG, and a lot of people who like starcraft starts putting money in their right pocket. Some of those previously stuffing money in their left pocket now stuff it in the right pocket instead.
So in the end, they keep the current audience, and gain even more customers.
Now add to this the idea that someone is tired of WoW and is about to stop playing. They look for another MMORPG that is more fun, and find.... a competitor. Or, they find another game from Blizzard and keeps stuffing blizzards pockets full of money.
So no, I don't feel Blizzard would need to wait until WoW is waning. In fact it would be silly to do so. But all things considered, no I don't believe this announcement to be in regards to a StarCraft MMO. And if I am wrong, I would expect the announcement to have a release of 2010 at the earliest.
Most likely this is just StarCraft 2, in a 3D engine. Something that will be a huge hit in korea, and amongst any other fans of the game.
I have a 10Mb/s (both ways) connection with a monthly cost of under $30. This is a step down from my previous ADSL (24Mb/s) when it comes to downlink speed, but a step up of course when it comes to uplink speed. And definitely a step down in price since the previous ADSL cost me around $60 a month.
However, neither ISP has batted an eyelash at how much I have downloaded. And yes, depending on luck and quality of torrents, a terabyte takes typically less than two weeks to download.
Conclusion? Move to Sweden. I don't know if broadband is cheaper than USPS here because I can't be bothered to do the numbers, but I bet you my ping wins.
Well in Sweden ADSL comes in most towns in 24 Mbit/s flavours, and if you live in a larger city you might even have access to 100 Mbit/s fibre. I currently have access to 10/10 from the citywide network, or up to about 24/1 from ADSL. This is not unusual in this country to have a nice connection. I would hazard a guess it is more towards the norm.
Now, I have a video store around the corner. Maybe 2 minute walk. So no, I can not download a movie quicker than I could rent it. But the video store closest doesn't take card payment, so you would have to factor in a trip to the nearest ATM, which is another 5 minutes, and considerably out of my way.
Now, this might not be a shock since this is slashdot after all, but I don't go out that much. I am not to fond of the world outside my doors, for my own insane reasons. I sit by my computer most of the day, for work or hobby or a combination thereof, and I chat pretty much constantly to my girlfriend. I have no problem downloading anywhere from one to ten movies while I am doing this. If it where to slow down my computer, I could always leave it ticking on one of my others... this is slashdot after all.
So this service would definitely be more easy for me to use once it gets into our homes than say going to the video store. But would it get used? not by me. I don't see the need to download 9GB of material when I get a movie in decent viewing quality on about a tenth of that. If I want the extras and hyper quality of DVD, then I will order a dvd. They sell those on the internet as well you know, I can even get them delivered in my mailbox. And I wont have to pay for the blank discs, and I wont have to get upset at burns that error out and I can still download ten other movies that I just want to check out.
Adults do not accept their failure. They sue someone in an outbreak of anger befitting a three-year-old. Or at least enough so called adults are so childish as to do that, which of course is the reason colleges have to protect themselves by having policies in place to hire people who know how to coddle the sensitive sensibilities of a class full of potential lawsuits and media disasters.
Slashdot Mirror
One that makes it, and an endless amount of imitators that will never make it. Unless of course they actually do something completely original, but the odds of that happening is fairy small... the phrase MMORPG itself is almost synonymous to World of Warcraft these days. If they say they are making an MMORPG, then they are most likley making a WoW-clone.
Huh, lucky you. Around here when I go to the theatre they offer a huge screen, slightly off focus for about a minute or two total spread out over the film's more critical scenes, sound that is so loud several of my friends have taken to bringing earplugs to the theatre just like to heavy metal concerts. It takes the pain away. Also you run the about one in five risk that there will be highly annoying people somewhere around you fiddling with cellphones or talking or just having a really annoying laugh.
I used to go to see a film about once or twice a month, but these days I just download a cam and if they are good I'll buy the dvd when they get out. It isn't worth the ticket money, petrol money and random annoyances just to see a film on a bigger screen.
Cinema is dead as far as I am concerned. I am quite convinced I am not the only one that believes so.
Oh, I fully intend to buy one or two, when the first wave of deliveries have gone out, which nicely coincides with a time when I have the room in my budget for such a purchase. Sadly even $150 is too much to spend recklessly when on a pension, even if the risk in my eyes is very slim. Since a lot of people have already ordered, I as before recommend other people to just wait and see - instead of trying desperately to find fault.
The numbers do add up in my opinion. Sure, it is obvious the profit is near nothing per unit, but you seem to think it is impossibly low. A cheap laptop today is about 4-5000sek (from major retailers), whereof half about is the cost for a vista license and other software, a nice quarter or so is retailers cut. Which leaves about 1000kr. From there down to the 800 or so that is hardware cost it isn't hard to go, considering the laptop I was comparing to had twice the harddrive, a dvdrw drive, twice the memory and so on.
Well yes. If it is a scam, then it might encourage people to bite if the first wave of orders got their laptops. But if it is not a scam, then the first wave of orders would also get their laptops. So basically you are saying there is still a chance the Apple store is a scam, just because they do deliver to the customers so far doesn't mean they are legit.
Really? I don't have money to waste, so I need to be careful... but your level of paranoia astounds me.
- Domains are registered for one year and then renewed yearly, aren't they? At least that was how our webhost did it back when I ran the company website five years ago. Is it far fetched that this guy who does everything as cheap as possible let a webhost register his domain?
- Oh give it a break. All blazing entrepeneurs have tons of old companies in their closet, how they end depend on if they idea made it or not.
- The guy isn't a lawyer, and I doubt he wants to pay one prime money to draw up something as silly as a privacy notice. Yet, he is required to have one, so a cut and paste is a fair guess. Still just as valid.
- So now it is proved they are photoshopped? for a while it seemed everyone thought they meant the laptop was really a clevo, or whatever it was called. Still, a photoshopped image of a product, or a photo of a prototype, would sort of be expected since they most likely wont actually build the laptop until you order it.
- That is not costs for advertising on the site, but to partner with them and have them hawk your stuff as official accessories. Also their own claims is 100K hits/month which wouldn't surprise me considering the hype they have just gotten by this discussion alone.
- the only way to contact them is at info@medisoncelebrity.com - the famous hotmail is in the whois, and not for official use at all.
- As they stated yesterday in an interview ay "Dagens Industri" (large swedish newspaper) They simply had such a rush of callers their phoneline (probably manned by just one or two people due to the small size of the startup) was overrun and couldn't handle it. So they decided only to take orders through the internet, not an uncommon practice these days. Many webshops I shop in never reveal a contactnumber. In most cases you don't even get the adress, just a form to mail questions in.
- They have an address in england, which is where they are registered. It isn't an office address, it is the official registrar address. Why would they need an official address in any other country considering it is all shipped from a central location? Do you want the address to their assembly plant? Do you want the address to the assembly plant of Dell or HP or Apple? Do they give it out?
- Half the price of the nearest competitor, yes. But the nearest competitor has newer hardware and software with paid for licenses, as well as a retailer cut in the price. So cut the nearest competitor by half and you will get the price from factory without os, which is what you supposedly get from Medison.
- Not more crap than any other business statements from the major companies. Medison has a hook - cheap computers because the user wants it. It might sound like crap, but it is simply a businessplan. They plan to make money because they are the only one selling laptops near the disposable pricerange. Laptops that is horrible performance wise, but still good enough to do office work on or homework for the kids or whatever.
- Well I'm tired of hearing them, so that's okay. So far I haven't heard a single thing that clearly says scam, nor have I heard any single thing that clearly says they are not. I simply say... it is possible. People mob up against things like this without objectively looking at it from both sides, and the sort of things you state here is the sort of silly gibberish that sounds legit but really can be explained quite easily with just a modicum of insight into how small startups are handled and how life works. If you want it to be a scam, fine.
As for if I will order one... as I said elsewhere - I am one of those who will order when the first wave have been sent out. I recommend you all to hold of judgement until that happens.
The M540V is a core2duo computer with 120GB harddrive and so on... even a quick glance shows that they are far from comparable.
Around $300? minus software and os, that's what, $200 left? minus retailers cut...
I don't see why people find this laptop so unbelievable. It is cheap parts and no OS. Cheapest laptop on a swedish pricewatch isn't that far off from the Medison one once one has subtracted the cost for Vista home edition and support and shipping and of course retailers cut... and that is still with twice the harddrive, dvdrw, bigger screen and twice the memory.
You have to remember there is a difference between expecting to make millions a month and actually having the money up front to pay for a dedicated server and professional made webpage with your own https solution and payment verification and whatnots. Why go through all those extra costs when you can get the same service from outside much cheaper and at a lower initial cost? Not to mention, this company never intended to sell to consumers, and I doubt they plan to stick to selling to consumers - they want to sell to retail but they want retail to keep a low price to consumer. So, since they couldn't cut a good deal with retail, now they sell to consumers for a while to get the product out there and put pressure on the retail stores by competition.
They might make millions a month in a few months... and by then they would probably get a better webpage and all... but then again with the low low low price maybe that's more a few thousand a month.
Their accessories page is ads from other vendors... where you can buy extra memory and add... AFTER purchase of the laptop. You are free to choose other vendors that write in english if you like, but don't expect medison to only refer you to english speaking websites since they started out as a swedish company.
Hmm. I am amongst those who will gladly pay $150 for a laptop, as soon as I see that everyone else starts getting theirs. It does provoke a certain amount of disbelief, yet... I can't help but see the reason as well. Let me respond to a few of your statements.
--
So the involved companies would just suddenly agree on not making any or have an extremely small margin?
--
The laptop was initially meant to be sold in the supermarket. The main retailer chains wanted to have a per-unit profit of 100% or more - not unusual on cheap imported items that is still way below local prices. At this point the company would not sell to the consumer but to the retailer, but upon not being able to strike a deal resulting in what the company saw as a reasonable price to consumer, the company did not strike a deal with the retailers and instead started selling to consumers. So, the involved companies that would have raised the prices are no longer involved. The plan as I understand it would be to sell a large number of units at this low low low price, until the retailers want a piece of the action so badly that they agree on a lower price to consumer.
---
I would call it either a rush or a failure that the companies listed on your website dodn't know anything about you at first. Which one do you prefer?
---
I would call it life. The boss of a major company strikes a deal, when the deal goes through he informs his heads of departements, who in due course will fill in their employees. The low level employees who at first knew nothing of this company their boss had struck a deal with, simply had not yet been informed. With six to eight weeks for the first delivery it isn't exactly a rush to handle the lines.
---
I wasn't asking about why A company would have it like that. I was asking why YOUR company had it like this. Let me ask the question in another way: Would I correctly assume that your address stated on your site is just a forward or P.O Box like address, and that you don't really have any office in UK at all? If that is the case, do you have any office at all, and what would the visiting address be?
&
I would say that isn't common at all for any bigger companies, especially not in USA, and especially not for domain registrations due to the insecurity. And just an avoiding answer on the phone number. But if you want to look unserious, feel free, I won't bother.
---
Okay, I lumped these two because they belong together. Most small companies start out from the ground up. Sure, major companies do not use a hotmail address in their whois info. But are you really thinking that a company that is trying to shave cents at every corner to be able to deliver the cheapest possible laptop waste money on a real office with secretaries and meeting facilities and whatnot? Legit or not this is most likely run out of a laptop and cellphone, as cheap as possible. Hotmail is cheap. I wouldn't use my isp email in a whois, I might not be on the same isp in two months. What else should I use? an email address on the very domain I register? No, I use a gmail. Granted hotmail is a bad choice, but it is free, and not everyone has gone to gmail yet. Besides, much important stuff ever get sent to your whois contact? As for the phone number I am betting it goes to someone with connections to the registrar, someone who can be reached even when the registrar is out of the country or whatnot. (No, using cellphones abroad costs extra, remember, need to keep the costs down)
---
I don't understand why you wouldn't answer this question? It just seems strange that you have had several companies that has either gone bankrupt or been unregistered. In your company history you put it in the way that it always has been the same successful company. Isn't this correct?
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Small companies do go bankrupt. It happens. A loan doesn't come through, an investor pulls out, the utilities bill falls behind the desk and isn't found until it is too late, and the late fees swallow the last of your available funds
Good tip, but if I understand it right it would counter only malware that renames themselves to your search query, and I have yet to encounter any of that on the emule network. I guess it is predominantly on the fasttrack network? Or possibly a tip for those who have a server list infected with fake servers.
Well, yes. Hence why I found it amusing that only two out of three downloads (of exactly the same files according to filename and versions and all... except filesize) warned about that particular trojan, which could logically be an indication of it containing the code it will later use. The third occasion warned for another trojan, which means that either that was the correct one, or it was infected with another trojan. Of course they were all infected, as was blatantly obvious hours later when I sandboxed them and tried the program out without antivirus protection.
Unfortunately for cheapskate scriptkiddies, only older versions of pinch is available free through simple means. To get the later version you'll have to cough up or have good connections. Unfortunately for the rest of us, older versions still do the trick... but then that is nothing new, there has been script kiddies with custom virus and trojan kits since the early days of the world wide web, so I don't think this is anything to panic over either.
Although fun to play with. And oh so tempting to bundle it back in itself and share on the mule. With a custom trojan contantly pinging the whitehouse with emails about terrorist threats.
Oh, actually a search for "pinch" on emule turns up quite a plethora of results... although once you've sorted out the porn and downloaded a few exe files (yes I know, for most geeks this is the exact reverse of the normal process), for some odd reason antivirus warnings start to pop up... apparently two out of three pinch downloads was infected with "Win32/PSW.LdPinch.P4 trojan" and the third with some other crap that I forgot to write down.
You can almost see the scriptkiddies sitting there with their brand new trojan going... "hmm, now if only I had some program to trick people into downloading... something I could merge my trojan with to start off my botfarm. Something I could put on fasttrack, and maybe emule... something idiots would download and run even if their antivirus goes off. Hey wait a minute, I'm an idiot and I just ran pinch even though 'norton' told me it was bad for me!"
EULA, Pinch, 2.60
I reserve the right to go ballistic on your ass if you rip me off. (But feel free to redistribute if you include your custom trojan in the file.)
EULA - most other software
[four to six pages of nonsense much of it in all caps, mainly stating the exact same as above with the exclusion of the parenthesis but adding a page or two basically saying "I can also castrate you with a dull wooden spoon if you do something I would rather you pay me extra to get done."]
Ah well moral obligation is far from legal obligation. Mainly by the small detail that people that do not agree with your morals should feel free to not correct such mistakes, and should feel free to act against any other of your moral guidelines, while people who do not believe in the laws of the land still is under legal obligation to follow them regardless of any moral opinions.
Unfortunately the trend is to try to pass laws to enforce morals, which is where it all get rather sticky. Until such laws are passed, one can only say.... keep your morals out of any discussion about legality.
two to four times a day in my mind would mean you speak on the phone 2-6 hours a day and probably is in an area with bad reception. I am often out in nature in areas where I get bad reception and it can suck my batteries dry in a day - if I spend any time talking on the phone of course even quicker.
If you spend any less than that on the phone each day, or spend the days in an area with good reception, then I am sorry to say but yeah your brand new battery might actually be bad - it has happened to me.
Now, if you spend your days talking that much on the cellphone close enough to a plug to actually charge it, then I suggest you consider external antennas to help with the reception, and maybe an aftermarket battery with some extra charge to it. Oh and if you do get a new battery, don't forget that you have to charge them for something like 16 hours straight the first time... Even if this isn't mentioned in the manuals these days. Any less than this and you will definitely have a badly functioning battery afterwards.
Oh yeah, cause the razor has horrible battery life... I mean I am constantly charging mine - just plugged it in now for the third time this month. Absolutely horrible.
Come on, face it - battery life isn't an absolute measurement. If you use your cellphone as an emergency phone, then a razr will easily get a week on a charge, and I admit it is still not the best in battery life. Sure, if you sit and play java games all day it will run out in just about a day or two, and if you talk nonstop on it it will run out in mere hours. But then... all phones do.
What is it actually she wants? A phone that is as cheap as possible? Well, featureless phones run in smaller series, might have to be imported, and will thus be expensive. Just get whatever is cheapest, because features she does not use will not cost her anything. Or does she want a simple phone? No worries, calling a number on a cellphone is just about as simple on any model. Doesn't matter if it has two cameras, video, mp3, radio, and a small nuclear warhead, you still dial a number and press call. Or use the phonebook, which granted can be one or two keypresses more.
Actually placing a call doesnt increase in difficulty depending on the features of the phone. Sure it feels odd to have a beefed up porche when you never drive faster than 60, but if it costs the same, why not? Just keep away from the nos and you'll never really know the difference.
hmm... seems the internet has expanded since then, I found links out of that page which redirected me elsewhere and I was back in it all again. This however, http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm is the proper end of the internet, as I was referred to by google reader.
Here in sweden prices are approaching 7 dollars a gallon, and sorry to dissapoint you but people still drive everywhere. It isn't really because they have to, it is because it is convenient, and because public transportation is not convenient, or in many cases not even a viable alternative.
Example: My friend works a three shift rotation, going mornings, afternoons and nights alternately. Two out of three shifts he can not get public transportation one or both ways, and on the third he will have to wait several hours for a bus that will cost him about as much as driving himself.
I could give many more examples... and know the subject pretty well since I myself is something of a green environmentalist nutjob, that has in the past been working politically to right the problem. And the one conclusive thing I've learned... high gasoline prices just hurts people who doesn't have a choice but to take the car, such as people in rural areas or handicapped people. It also raises the prices of public transportation, making people less willing to use it as an alternative, and raises the costs for the society itself by making ambulances, police vehicles and so on more expensive to run.
And yes, the entire price difference between your price and our price is a special "environmental tax" on gasoline, put there just for the purpose of making people drive less.
So, they have a lot of people who like warcraft stuffing money in their left pocket. They make a starcraft MMORPG, and a lot of people who like starcraft starts putting money in their right pocket. Some of those previously stuffing money in their left pocket now stuff it in the right pocket instead.
So in the end, they keep the current audience, and gain even more customers.
Now add to this the idea that someone is tired of WoW and is about to stop playing. They look for another MMORPG that is more fun, and find.... a competitor. Or, they find another game from Blizzard and keeps stuffing blizzards pockets full of money.
So no, I don't feel Blizzard would need to wait until WoW is waning. In fact it would be silly to do so. But all things considered, no I don't believe this announcement to be in regards to a StarCraft MMO. And if I am wrong, I would expect the announcement to have a release of 2010 at the earliest.
Most likely this is just StarCraft 2, in a 3D engine. Something that will be a huge hit in korea, and amongst any other fans of the game.
I have a 10Mb/s (both ways) connection with a monthly cost of under $30. This is a step down from my previous ADSL (24Mb/s) when it comes to downlink speed, but a step up of course when it comes to uplink speed. And definitely a step down in price since the previous ADSL cost me around $60 a month.
However, neither ISP has batted an eyelash at how much I have downloaded. And yes, depending on luck and quality of torrents, a terabyte takes typically less than two weeks to download.
Conclusion?
Move to Sweden. I don't know if broadband is cheaper than USPS here because I can't be bothered to do the numbers, but I bet you my ping wins.
Well in Sweden ADSL comes in most towns in 24 Mbit/s flavours, and if you live in a larger city you might even have access to 100 Mbit/s fibre. I currently have access to 10/10 from the citywide network, or up to about 24/1 from ADSL. This is not unusual in this country to have a nice connection. I would hazard a guess it is more towards the norm.
Now, I have a video store around the corner. Maybe 2 minute walk. So no, I can not download a movie quicker than I could rent it. But the video store closest doesn't take card payment, so you would have to factor in a trip to the nearest ATM, which is another 5 minutes, and considerably out of my way.
Now, this might not be a shock since this is slashdot after all, but I don't go out that much. I am not to fond of the world outside my doors, for my own insane reasons. I sit by my computer most of the day, for work or hobby or a combination thereof, and I chat pretty much constantly to my girlfriend. I have no problem downloading anywhere from one to ten movies while I am doing this. If it where to slow down my computer, I could always leave it ticking on one of my others... this is slashdot after all.
So this service would definitely be more easy for me to use once it gets into our homes than say going to the video store. But would it get used? not by me. I don't see the need to download 9GB of material when I get a movie in decent viewing quality on about a tenth of that. If I want the extras and hyper quality of DVD, then I will order a dvd. They sell those on the internet as well you know, I can even get them delivered in my mailbox. And I wont have to pay for the blank discs, and I wont have to get upset at burns that error out and I can still download ten other movies that I just want to check out.
Adults do not accept their failure. They sue someone in an outbreak of anger befitting a three-year-old. Or at least enough so called adults are so childish as to do that, which of course is the reason colleges have to protect themselves by having policies in place to hire people who know how to coddle the sensitive sensibilities of a class full of potential lawsuits and media disasters.
the metric in paper is right there... it is 210x297 millimeters... not inches. so... metric.