Even if it could have been managed better, the sheer fact that the program can be exploited doesn't mean you should.
The coupon eligible boxes are all rather unimpressive mainly because of the limitations imposed on them. I wonder what percentage of these boxes will have been picked up because people think "free hardware" before they realize it's just a cheap circuit board and that they have no use for it.
These boxes are designed to do one thing: Allow old TVs which display a crappy analog signal to display the new digital signal in a crappy way.
That sums it up pretty good. To be specific, you have fourteen days "cooling off" period in Germany.
What I would recommend would be to make screenshots from the web page where she registered. If the price is in the small print for example, then it doesn't count.
These scams are actually quite common here. The problem is that the scammers get law firms to send letters to thousands of people, which scares a lot of them. An estimated 10% of people pay up, and even that doesn't stop the letters.
The best thing to do is probably to simply ignore the letters because there's no chance they'll try and put up a fight.
Because you have a totally retarded identification system? Birth certificates? Gas bills? Come on.
The British passport is the de-facto standard method of identification. If you haven't got one, you'll have a hard time doing business in the UK, and if you have, well the you've already got an ID card, but with a bulk of paper attached.
And good luck finding ANY MEP that represents your view if you're a Euro-sceptic. They don't exist.
They pervade every corner of the building. Everywhere you look you've got braindead "sceptics" with no agenda and who doesn't even understand the system they've been elected to. It makes it difficult to get to work when a large proportion of the Members like to barge in drunken and make a lot of noise. Oh, and because the media only seems to be interested in the Union whenever there's a referendum on a treaty, they can be sure that this type of public humiliation will totally evade the spotlight.
If you oppose EU-membership, then the place for your voice to be heard is the national parliament. Only they can decide on membership. Also, you should be in favor of the Lisbon treaty, because it formalizes withdrawal from the union.
iPhones are cheaper than any computers, even netbooks, and are not significantly different in price from other smartphones.
What the? Do I have to remind you that you spend almost two-thousand dollars over the space of two years to use an iPhone? Even compared to premium offerings, there's no way an iPhone makes more sense financially than a PC. And yes, they are a poor replacement. Let's not kid ourselves.
It's a bit of a stretch calling Apple products "luxery goods". "Premium mass-market" would be more appropriate here. They may be more expensive than other PCs, but the reason why Mac sales have been able to grow in recent years is that they are still affordable enough for the mass market and middle class people who are confident with their economic situation. In recent times, there have been a lot less of those people, so I see Apple products as particularly vulnerable.
Why should anyone be sued in the first place? The only problem here is that the woman didn't solve the problem or seek proper assistance, and it seems she had to wait for Mr. Newsman to contact Verizon or the University. The problem with this article is that it's just non-news. Do the report on people getting faulty drivers on Windows machines too? But it leaves uninformed viewers with a bad impression.
That would require 1960s style budgets;) And it would be wrong to assume that the engineering knowledge and expertise from making the Saturn V didn't go into the development of newer space technology. The Ares V actually looks like a better rocket than the Saturn V. It's just that designing one rocket is easier than designing two.
The Ares V looks pretty good. It's the Ares I that's the problem. They were intending to use two rockets anyway, so instead of having 120000 kg plus 25000 kg, the Jupiter would allow two times a payload of 110000 kg to LEO. And according to the DIRECT guys, this would be much cheaper than having to make the Ares I work and then design the Ares V.
If the Ares I is bottom heavy then it would at very least switch to top-heavy mid-flight as more and more solid fuel is burned. When applying a force to a body, you will want to be as close to center of mass as possible, to minimize unwanted torque. As far as aerodynamics are concerned, it would only be advantageous to be top-heavy if the craft was decelerating, not when you're trying to accelerate it up to space. Certainly if you look at past rockets, they all seem to be very much bottom heavy.
AFAIK, the reason the Ares V is isn't going to be man-rated (which BTW doesn't mean that it's less reliable, but they decided not to go through the testing) is because they intend to use the Ares I for launching the crew.
Reducing the power usage of TVs would have a rather substantial impact, and it wouldn't add much to the already expensive and difficult-to-dispose-of TV. Unlike CF lights.
10 years seems realistic, but I don't know any one who ever kept a TV for 20 years. Ever since the beginning of television there have always been constant improvements warranting an upgrade after some years. Not much has changed.
That's part of the trouble with the broken market of cable boxes. If they could just agree on standards, then there would be no need for people to put up shitty hardware any longer.
It's a response to the failure of the industry to do anything about it. It's really quite cheap and easy to make low-power devices which have standby-usages of much less than 1 Watt. On the other hand, it does add probably about $10 to the production cost. By "saving" these $10, the manufacturers reduce their expense at virtually no risk. When was the last time you decided against a purchase because of the high power usage? Never mind that the amount saved is easily dwarfed by the price cuts experienced in the markets, or the fact that it will cost the customer more in energy bills, these are 10 quick bucks for their pockets, and screw the planet.
That's the attitude the industry has, and that's why we need regulation.
I have a DVB-S DVR which records to USB devices, so I can use an external hard drive which I can manually switch off or record to a silent USB thumb drive.
I suppose you could use one of those time-programmable wall switches, but that takes the ease out of selecting the programs to record I guess.
Standby isn't as bad as people make it out to be. If you use a switched mode power supply, and many of the renowned TV brands do, then the power usage in standby can be virtually eliminated.
All my device chargers have them, which is handy cause they're much smaller and weigh less and I can even use my Laptop charger for both American and European voltages. I just bought a new Satellite PVR which also has and extremely efficient power supply, and my TV uses next to nothing in Standby. Just a little clever design is all it takes to save power. Unfortunately, it's not what people think of when making a purchasing decision.
You can buy energy saving switches that can turn off the power supply to your TV by recognizing the Standby signal on your remote, but people don't buy them, even though they cost 15 bucks and save more money in a year than they cost.
The only way to go is through regulation (if there isn't any in place already. I'm not into requirements for electrical devices.)
Patents don't do a very good job. They're too short for encouraging fundamental research, where it could take much longer than the patent term for any financial benefit to result.
They're too long for the relatively trivial innovations which make up the vast majority of granted patents. By the time the patent is released, then technology is probably almost obsolete.
The whole monopoly thing is bullshit too. While there isn't much harm by done by not allowing people to create Mickey-Mouse cartoons, patents on technology and medicine allow active exploitation and put many people's lives at risk.
Media Hard Drives? The only one's I've seen have been by relatively well-known companies. The lack of upgradability is a downside, but if you keep to one format you should be alright and is like any other media device other than a HTPC.
And a digital sound decoder isn't that expensive. And it will certainly give a much better result than mainboard sound or a cheap sound card. Interference from within the computer case is a nightmare.
Other's have pointed out the extra costs when driving. But here's another thing to consider: I bet them 5 hours of driving weren't really much fun. Sitting back in the train however, is much more "me-time". You can catch up on the sleep you lost by getting up earlier, you can listen to music or watch movies on your laptop, and if the dicks in management were to get off their asses, we might even see widespread WiFi deployment on passenger trains.
Don't forget that Comparing land area isn't relevant for track coverage. Tracks scale linearly, wheras the area is two dimensional. It would make more sense to compare it to the square root of the area.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if it could have been managed better, the sheer fact that the program can be exploited doesn't mean you should.
The coupon eligible boxes are all rather unimpressive mainly because of the limitations imposed on them. I wonder what percentage of these boxes will have been picked up because people think "free hardware" before they realize it's just a cheap circuit board and that they have no use for it.
These boxes are designed to do one thing: Allow old TVs which display a crappy analog signal to display the new digital signal in a crappy way.
That sums it up pretty good. To be specific, you have fourteen days "cooling off" period in Germany.
What I would recommend would be to make screenshots from the web page where she registered. If the price is in the small print for example, then it doesn't count.
These scams are actually quite common here. The problem is that the scammers get law firms to send letters to thousands of people, which scares a lot of them. An estimated 10% of people pay up, and even that doesn't stop the letters.
The best thing to do is probably to simply ignore the letters because there's no chance they'll try and put up a fight.
Because you have a totally retarded identification system? Birth certificates? Gas bills? Come on.
The British passport is the de-facto standard method of identification. If you haven't got one, you'll have a hard time doing business in the UK, and if you have, well the you've already got an ID card, but with a bulk of paper attached.
Not a lot of people give to charity, so when you're the only one paying you get screwed twice.
And good luck finding ANY MEP that represents your view if you're a Euro-sceptic. They don't exist.
They pervade every corner of the building. Everywhere you look you've got braindead "sceptics" with no agenda and who doesn't even understand the system they've been elected to. It makes it difficult to get to work when a large proportion of the Members like to barge in drunken and make a lot of noise. Oh, and because the media only seems to be interested in the Union whenever there's a referendum on a treaty, they can be sure that this type of public humiliation will totally evade the spotlight.
If you oppose EU-membership, then the place for your voice to be heard is the national parliament. Only they can decide on membership. Also, you should be in favor of the Lisbon treaty, because it formalizes withdrawal from the union.
Ummm...
iPhones are cheaper than any computers, even netbooks, and are not significantly different in price from other smartphones.
What the? Do I have to remind you that you spend almost two-thousand dollars over the space of two years to use an iPhone? Even compared to premium offerings, there's no way an iPhone makes more sense financially than a PC.
And yes, they are a poor replacement. Let's not kid ourselves.
It's a bit of a stretch calling Apple products "luxery goods". "Premium mass-market" would be more appropriate here.
They may be more expensive than other PCs, but the reason why Mac sales have been able to grow in recent years is that they are still affordable enough for the mass market and middle class people who are confident with their economic situation. In recent times, there have been a lot less of those people, so I see Apple products as particularly vulnerable.
Why should anyone be sued in the first place? The only problem here is that the woman didn't solve the problem or seek proper assistance, and it seems she had to wait for Mr. Newsman to contact Verizon or the University.
The problem with this article is that it's just non-news. Do the report on people getting faulty drivers on Windows machines too? But it leaves uninformed viewers with a bad impression.
It's not funny without the Video: http://www.videovat.com/videos/5600/TEAM-AMERICA-Montage.aspx
Which would still shift the center of mass if all your payload is above the SRB.
That would require 1960s style budgets ;)
And it would be wrong to assume that the engineering knowledge and expertise from making the Saturn V didn't go into the development of newer space technology. The Ares V actually looks like a better rocket than the Saturn V. It's just that designing one rocket is easier than designing two.
The Ares V looks pretty good. It's the Ares I that's the problem.
They were intending to use two rockets anyway, so instead of having 120000 kg plus 25000 kg, the Jupiter would allow two times a payload of 110000 kg to LEO.
And according to the DIRECT guys, this would be much cheaper than having to make the Ares I work and then design the Ares V.
If the Ares I is bottom heavy then it would at very least switch to top-heavy mid-flight as more and more solid fuel is burned.
When applying a force to a body, you will want to be as close to center of mass as possible, to minimize unwanted torque.
As far as aerodynamics are concerned, it would only be advantageous to be top-heavy if the craft was decelerating, not when you're trying to accelerate it up to space. Certainly if you look at past rockets, they all seem to be very much bottom heavy.
AFAIK, the reason the Ares V is isn't going to be man-rated (which BTW doesn't mean that it's less reliable, but they decided not to go through the testing) is because they intend to use the Ares I for launching the crew.
Reducing the power usage of TVs would have a rather substantial impact, and it wouldn't add much to the already expensive and difficult-to-dispose-of TV. Unlike CF lights.
10 years seems realistic, but I don't know any one who ever kept a TV for 20 years.
Ever since the beginning of television there have always been constant improvements warranting an upgrade after some years. Not much has changed.
That's part of the trouble with the broken market of cable boxes. If they could just agree on standards, then there would be no need for people to put up shitty hardware any longer.
It's a response to the failure of the industry to do anything about it.
It's really quite cheap and easy to make low-power devices which have standby-usages of much less than 1 Watt.
On the other hand, it does add probably about $10 to the production cost.
By "saving" these $10, the manufacturers reduce their expense at virtually no risk. When was the last time you decided against a purchase because of the high power usage?
Never mind that the amount saved is easily dwarfed by the price cuts experienced in the markets, or the fact that it will cost the customer more in energy bills, these are 10 quick bucks for their pockets, and screw the planet.
That's the attitude the industry has, and that's why we need regulation.
I have a DVB-S DVR which records to USB devices, so I can use an external hard drive which I can manually switch off or record to a silent USB thumb drive.
I suppose you could use one of those time-programmable wall switches, but that takes the ease out of selecting the programs to record I guess.
Standby isn't as bad as people make it out to be.
If you use a switched mode power supply, and many of the renowned TV brands do, then the power usage in standby can be virtually eliminated.
All my device chargers have them, which is handy cause they're much smaller and weigh less and I can even use my Laptop charger for both American and European voltages.
I just bought a new Satellite PVR which also has and extremely efficient power supply, and my TV uses next to nothing in Standby.
Just a little clever design is all it takes to save power. Unfortunately, it's not what people think of when making a purchasing decision.
You can buy energy saving switches that can turn off the power supply to your TV by recognizing the Standby signal on your remote, but people don't buy them, even though they cost 15 bucks and save more money in a year than they cost.
The only way to go is through regulation (if there isn't any in place already. I'm not into requirements for electrical devices.)
Patents don't do a very good job.
They're too short for encouraging fundamental research, where it could take much longer than the patent term for any financial benefit to result.
They're too long for the relatively trivial innovations which make up the vast majority of granted patents. By the time the patent is released, then technology is probably almost obsolete.
The whole monopoly thing is bullshit too. While there isn't much harm by done by not allowing people to create Mickey-Mouse cartoons, patents on technology and medicine allow active exploitation and put many people's lives at risk.
Media Hard Drives? The only one's I've seen have been by relatively well-known companies. The lack of upgradability is a downside, but if you keep to one format you should be alright and is like any other media device other than a HTPC.
And a digital sound decoder isn't that expensive. And it will certainly give a much better result than mainboard sound or a cheap sound card. Interference from within the computer case is a nightmare.
Other's have pointed out the extra costs when driving. But here's another thing to consider: I bet them 5 hours of driving weren't really much fun. Sitting back in the train however, is much more "me-time".
You can catch up on the sleep you lost by getting up earlier, you can listen to music or watch movies on your laptop, and if the dicks in management were to get off their asses, we might even see widespread WiFi deployment on passenger trains.
Don't forget that Comparing land area isn't relevant for track coverage. Tracks scale linearly, wheras the area is two dimensional.
It would make more sense to compare it to the square root of the area.