What about a netbook with a built-in mobile broadband card? These can be had for $400 or less (probably much less if you can get the mobile provider to subsidize the device). Add a decent GPS software package that includes a USB receiver and you've got a ~$500 GPS that can do it all with no hacking required.
Hell, a high-end GPS unit with half the screen size will set you back the same. But with this setup, you can take it out of the car when you get to where you are going and have a handy little netbook.
Last time I had Time Warner/Roadrunner broadband, they had free dialup as well. It was a lifesaver when I was in PA once with my laptop and the hotel I was staying at had their wifi go down.
I realize that the article is talking about the UK here so I'm slightly OT, but is T-Mobile really worth all that trouble? Are they really that much better than AT&T?
Couldn't agree more. I found the Hobbit to be superior to the Lord of the Rings in many ways. The Hobbit was far more concentrated and therefore fun than LOTR. I read all of LOTR but couldn't tell you most of the details because entire chapters would go by that I couldn't remember reading, despite looking at every word on the page in sequence.
I think you missed my point entirely. I happen to like my job just fine and I don't mind helping someone do the same thing over and over. Those users are our bread and butter and the reason I have a job. It probably helps that I do internal support and I don't actually work with our end customers.
My post wasn't a rant against my job. Rather I'm illustrating the fact that some "newbies" stay newbies because they think they know what they need to know already and make bad assumptions on the way that computers work (i.e. the lady who thinks that "wireless ready" means that she has internet everywhere all the time). Other "newbies" are only newbies until they take the time to learn what the hell they are doing and how to do it right.
True enough, but there are still differences. The "newbie" referenced above doesn't care. She just makes random assumptions based on flawed marketing campaigns about how and why her PC should work the way that she wants it to.
The typical slashdot newbie asks why and how and strives to understand how it all works. Eventually, this person is no longer a newbie.
I see this all the time. I work a phone tech support position at a national cellphone carrier. There are two basic types of people who call in. One is the "problem child" who calls whenever their computer hiccups funny and we help them bring their Outlook account below quota for the third time in a month. The other type is the person who actually turns their brain on once in awhile and never calls us for the same issue twice.
Seriously. Make friends at work. They won't steal your stuff then and they'll help make sure that nobody else does either. At my new job, I've made it a point to make new friends and be friendly with everyone else. I feel completely comfortable leaving my iPod out on my desk during my lunch break. In fact, it seems that the person I've made friends with the most in my office is quite the gossip gal. Not my cup of tea per se but if my personal stuff were to go missing at work I don't think it will be hard to track.
I was kind of wondering this myself. If your boss is moving you from a locked office to an open cube then it sounds like his problem if his employees steal his equipment from your desk.
If you are bringing personal items (USB drive, iPod, cellphone, etc.) to work with you there are a few options:
Leave this stuff at home
Don't let it out of your sight and take it with you when you leave for lunch (this is what I do with my iPod/cellphone/etc. when working, although I can leave it out on my desk in plain sight and it will still be there later because my coworkers are not douchebags)
Keep these items in a plain unassuming backpack under your desk
Lock these items in a desk drawer when you are in the office and don't leave them at work
Also, why do you have a laptop if you're just going to leave it in the office when you go home? I've worked at places where that was grounds for dismissal. Don't they have a VPN where you work?
Ok Mr. Smartypants, what if I head over to www.creativecommons.org and archive.org and fill an iPod with 5,000 completely free (as in beer and freedom) mp3s? Then what?
Yeah, they didn't do this for me. I called this weekend because my son couldn't play the games I downloaded from my gamertag on the 360 before it was replaced. I spent an hour on the phone and the final resolution was for them to transfer the content license from the old console to the new one. This required me to fax them the exchange receipt from Best Buy and now I'm on day 3 of the 30 day wait for them to do this.
I'm not confident that this will ever get done, but luckily I have some recourse. Firstly I do have an Xbox Live Gold account, and from personal experience I know that the reps will bend over backward to keep you on the gold account if you call and cancel. I'm thinking that if needed, I can call to cancel and get them to give me enough freebie points to redownload all my stuff (not that I should have to, mind you).
Barring that, all my MS points were purchased on a debit MasterCard issued by a small community credit union that actually cares about it's clients. All I need to do is sit down and fill out a form saying that I didn't get what I paid for when I bought those points, and 24 hours later the cash is back in my account and MS gets hit with the chargeback. It's ugly, but it might be necessary. Mind you, I won't do this unless I've exhausted all other options and made Microsoft well aware of my intent before actually doing it.
Personally, I think that the games should work as long as the account in question is present on the Xbox they are to be played on. That way if I log in to my friend's Xbox and re-download Geometry Wars, he can play it as long as my account is resident on his system. Once I remove the memory card holding my account or recover the account to a different Xbox, the game is rendered unplayable. If MS doesn't want to do that, then how about the option to self-transfer the license a-la the iTunes method of invalidating the license on the old console. Let users do this once every 6 months to a year. That way if someone upgrades from an Arcade to a Pro or Elite or whatever, they can know that their games will work.
I think you're missing the point. The IFPI need only be accused of piracy instead of actually having committed it. That's kind of the point of this article: wrongfully disconnecting users who are only accused of piracy, regardless if the accusation is valid or not.
This has happened with plenty other "unlimited" plans too. Remember AOL when their dialup went "unlimited"? It was basically down for most people for weeks while they sorted it out. I think some companies have learned something from that (be ready for the initial surge) but your point is quite valid.
Look at what Time Warner is doing with their broadband now.
I'm waiting for the day when Google does exactly that. Hell, I'd even let Microsoft take a crack at it if they are more consumer-friendly than eBay. Not that Microsoft really knows what that means.
I've done plenty of buying and selling on eBay, and here's my take:
As a buyer, I hate it when sellers don't leave feedback after payment. I bid on and paid for an item. I fulfilled my end of the deal and expect positive feedback. Most sellers these days won't leave any feedback from a buyer unless the buyer leaves feedback first. This isn't how eBay is supposed to work, but it does unfortunately. This pretty much leaves a good buyer screwed. If he can't resolve a situation with a seller and has no other recourse than to leave negative feedback, then he's pretty much guaranteed negative feedback in return despite being a good buyer.
As a seller, same rules as above apply. I leave positive feedback for a buyer as soon as I have verified that payment was actually made. That means that the Paypal funds were successfully transferred to my bank account or their check cleared. Then I leave them positive feedback, sometimes even before I've shipped the item.
I think what eBay should do, and should have done long ago, is to force the feedback system to work as designed. Make it so a buyer cannot leave any feedback for a seller unless the seller has already left feedback for the buyer. Even better (although admittedly hard to implement) would be an automatic positive feedback for a buyer who makes some sort of verified automatic payment using Paypal.
I'm 25, married, have a son, and a baby on the way. When my son and I are not playing Lego Star Wars together, I play plenty of M-rated games. I also regularly bring my DS to work with me for something to do on my downtime. Right now my gamerscore is at a modest 5970 but I'm hoping to surpass 10,000 by the end of the winter. Got any other short-sighted blanket-statements to make?
I regularly go to LAN parties with other grown adults who also have jobs/families/spouses and we have a great time playing Halo 3, COD4, and Guitar Hero. I know that I'm not alone, even among the non-slashdot crowd.
I hate to quote statistics when I can't find the link, but perhaps someone else can point me in the right direction. Anyways, the average gamer is over 18. 24 is far from the "high" age range. Anyone who is 30 today was about 5 years old when the NES came out and revolutionized home gaming. Most of the people who grew up gaming still find it to be a perfectly acceptable thing to do as an adult. When games are sixty bucks a pop you practically need the patience and the bank account of an adult to properly research and purchase them.
Your mistake is assuming that the RIAA has any clue what customer relations is.
"What the hell is a customer? Wait? Is that the senile grandmas and disabled single mothers we take to court? Yeah, they are good customers. We get tons of money from those suckers!"
I want to relate some semi-personal experiences that tie-in with your post.
In the fall and winter of 2001, my (now ex) girlfriend and I were living in Minneapolis and she worked at one of the busier Best Buy stores (Minnetonka for those who know the area and care). She worked in the "Media Department" which is BB's term for movies, music, games, etc.
All through the holiday shopping season, constantly, parents would come ask for this game or that game for their children. My girlfriend, when asked for the title of a non-kid-friendly game, would immediately ask the age of the child. Then, she would explain the specifics of that title and if the child was very young, suggest an age-appropriate title.
Never once did a parent complain. Maybe it wasn't her place to suggest as some people seem to think. But if someone doesn't educate the parents, then who will? I'm sure Jen's actions led to plenty of pissed off 8-year-olds who unwrapped Fantavision instead of GTA, but hopefully the parents will know better next time than to just buy little Johnny and Sally whatever games they ask for.
The root cause of this is, of course, that many older adults see video games as an activity for kids, rather than an activity for adults (as is the case with many M-rated games) or kids and adults together.
Along with Xzzy above I feel the need to point out that every single Xbox 360 game that I own that has a strong multiplayer component has an equally strong single player game as well. This includes: Halo 3, 4 of 5 games in "The Orange Box", Call of Duty 2-4, Gears of War, and a few others. These games are often cited as the pinnacle of online console multiplayer, but they are perfectly playable and enjoyable offline as well. In fact, one of the reasons that I like Call of Duty 4 so much is that all 1000 achievement points are for the single-player campaign, so I don't have to play multiplayer to get them.
Yes I know, I'm in the minority: a single-player or co-op only gamer. I don't like the multiplayer games. They're no fun when you are playing against a bunch of 14 year olds with no job, children, spouse, or responsibilities (all things that I have in abundance) who have all the time they need to figure out all the little tricks that make gaming frustrating for me.
About the true meaning of "retrospect". Since all the signals our body produce take time to register in the brain, wouldn't all events by some strange definition always be "in retrospect"?
I have been in a few car accidents in my time, and I can say that time really does seem to slow down in that moment. I don't know if it's just the way I'm remembering those moments in time or if, at that exact moment, I really did feel like time slowed.
I wonder if the experiment mentioned was skewed by the fact that the subjects were never in any actual danger. They knew that they were in an experiment and there was little chance of harm. In a real-world situation, the potential for danger is real.
Slashdot Mirror
What about a netbook with a built-in mobile broadband card? These can be had for $400 or less (probably much less if you can get the mobile provider to subsidize the device). Add a decent GPS software package that includes a USB receiver and you've got a ~$500 GPS that can do it all with no hacking required.
Hell, a high-end GPS unit with half the screen size will set you back the same. But with this setup, you can take it out of the car when you get to where you are going and have a handy little netbook.
Last time I had Time Warner/Roadrunner broadband, they had free dialup as well. It was a lifesaver when I was in PA once with my laptop and the hotel I was staying at had their wifi go down.
I realize that the article is talking about the UK here so I'm slightly OT, but is T-Mobile really worth all that trouble? Are they really that much better than AT&T?
Sounds like New Rome, OH. Also: http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/hot_lists/high_performance/features_classic_cars/town_without_pity_feature
Couldn't agree more. I found the Hobbit to be superior to the Lord of the Rings in many ways. The Hobbit was far more concentrated and therefore fun than LOTR. I read all of LOTR but couldn't tell you most of the details because entire chapters would go by that I couldn't remember reading, despite looking at every word on the page in sequence.
I think you missed my point entirely. I happen to like my job just fine and I don't mind helping someone do the same thing over and over. Those users are our bread and butter and the reason I have a job. It probably helps that I do internal support and I don't actually work with our end customers.
My post wasn't a rant against my job. Rather I'm illustrating the fact that some "newbies" stay newbies because they think they know what they need to know already and make bad assumptions on the way that computers work (i.e. the lady who thinks that "wireless ready" means that she has internet everywhere all the time). Other "newbies" are only newbies until they take the time to learn what the hell they are doing and how to do it right.
True enough, but there are still differences. The "newbie" referenced above doesn't care. She just makes random assumptions based on flawed marketing campaigns about how and why her PC should work the way that she wants it to.
The typical slashdot newbie asks why and how and strives to understand how it all works. Eventually, this person is no longer a newbie.
I see this all the time. I work a phone tech support position at a national cellphone carrier. There are two basic types of people who call in. One is the "problem child" who calls whenever their computer hiccups funny and we help them bring their Outlook account below quota for the third time in a month. The other type is the person who actually turns their brain on once in awhile and never calls us for the same issue twice.
I was wondering if Scilon was going to catch on. For me, this is my first sighting "in the wild". Kudos!
Seriously. Make friends at work. They won't steal your stuff then and they'll help make sure that nobody else does either. At my new job, I've made it a point to make new friends and be friendly with everyone else. I feel completely comfortable leaving my iPod out on my desk during my lunch break. In fact, it seems that the person I've made friends with the most in my office is quite the gossip gal. Not my cup of tea per se but if my personal stuff were to go missing at work I don't think it will be hard to track.
If you are bringing personal items (USB drive, iPod, cellphone, etc.) to work with you there are a few options:
- Leave this stuff at home
- Don't let it out of your sight and take it with you when you leave for lunch (this is what I do with my iPod/cellphone/etc. when working, although I can leave it out on my desk in plain sight and it will still be there later because my coworkers are not douchebags)
- Keep these items in a plain unassuming backpack under your desk
- Lock these items in a desk drawer when you are in the office and don't leave them at work
Also, why do you have a laptop if you're just going to leave it in the office when you go home? I've worked at places where that was grounds for dismissal. Don't they have a VPN where you work?...condensation. Bad idea. Maybe a gutted mini-fridge would work, but a running laptop in a running mini-fridge is a recipe for disaster.
Ok Mr. Smartypants, what if I head over to www.creativecommons.org and archive.org and fill an iPod with 5,000 completely free (as in beer and freedom) mp3s? Then what?
Yeah, they didn't do this for me. I called this weekend because my son couldn't play the games I downloaded from my gamertag on the 360 before it was replaced. I spent an hour on the phone and the final resolution was for them to transfer the content license from the old console to the new one. This required me to fax them the exchange receipt from Best Buy and now I'm on day 3 of the 30 day wait for them to do this.
I'm not confident that this will ever get done, but luckily I have some recourse. Firstly I do have an Xbox Live Gold account, and from personal experience I know that the reps will bend over backward to keep you on the gold account if you call and cancel. I'm thinking that if needed, I can call to cancel and get them to give me enough freebie points to redownload all my stuff (not that I should have to, mind you).
Barring that, all my MS points were purchased on a debit MasterCard issued by a small community credit union that actually cares about it's clients. All I need to do is sit down and fill out a form saying that I didn't get what I paid for when I bought those points, and 24 hours later the cash is back in my account and MS gets hit with the chargeback. It's ugly, but it might be necessary. Mind you, I won't do this unless I've exhausted all other options and made Microsoft well aware of my intent before actually doing it.
Personally, I think that the games should work as long as the account in question is present on the Xbox they are to be played on. That way if I log in to my friend's Xbox and re-download Geometry Wars, he can play it as long as my account is resident on his system. Once I remove the memory card holding my account or recover the account to a different Xbox, the game is rendered unplayable. If MS doesn't want to do that, then how about the option to self-transfer the license a-la the iTunes method of invalidating the license on the old console. Let users do this once every 6 months to a year. That way if someone upgrades from an Arcade to a Pro or Elite or whatever, they can know that their games will work.
I think you're missing the point. The IFPI need only be accused of piracy instead of actually having committed it. That's kind of the point of this article: wrongfully disconnecting users who are only accused of piracy, regardless if the accusation is valid or not.
This has happened with plenty other "unlimited" plans too. Remember AOL when their dialup went "unlimited"? It was basically down for most people for weeks while they sorted it out. I think some companies have learned something from that (be ready for the initial surge) but your point is quite valid.
Look at what Time Warner is doing with their broadband now.
We're just not going to get an article with this one? Are we supposed to take Kdawson's word for it? Way to go!
I'm waiting for the day when Google does exactly that. Hell, I'd even let Microsoft take a crack at it if they are more consumer-friendly than eBay. Not that Microsoft really knows what that means.
I've done plenty of buying and selling on eBay, and here's my take:
As a buyer, I hate it when sellers don't leave feedback after payment. I bid on and paid for an item. I fulfilled my end of the deal and expect positive feedback. Most sellers these days won't leave any feedback from a buyer unless the buyer leaves feedback first. This isn't how eBay is supposed to work, but it does unfortunately. This pretty much leaves a good buyer screwed. If he can't resolve a situation with a seller and has no other recourse than to leave negative feedback, then he's pretty much guaranteed negative feedback in return despite being a good buyer.
As a seller, same rules as above apply. I leave positive feedback for a buyer as soon as I have verified that payment was actually made. That means that the Paypal funds were successfully transferred to my bank account or their check cleared. Then I leave them positive feedback, sometimes even before I've shipped the item.
I think what eBay should do, and should have done long ago, is to force the feedback system to work as designed. Make it so a buyer cannot leave any feedback for a seller unless the seller has already left feedback for the buyer. Even better (although admittedly hard to implement) would be an automatic positive feedback for a buyer who makes some sort of verified automatic payment using Paypal.
I'm 25, married, have a son, and a baby on the way. When my son and I are not playing Lego Star Wars together, I play plenty of M-rated games. I also regularly bring my DS to work with me for something to do on my downtime. Right now my gamerscore is at a modest 5970 but I'm hoping to surpass 10,000 by the end of the winter. Got any other short-sighted blanket-statements to make?
I regularly go to LAN parties with other grown adults who also have jobs/families/spouses and we have a great time playing Halo 3, COD4, and Guitar Hero. I know that I'm not alone, even among the non-slashdot crowd.
I hate to quote statistics when I can't find the link, but perhaps someone else can point me in the right direction. Anyways, the average gamer is over 18. 24 is far from the "high" age range. Anyone who is 30 today was about 5 years old when the NES came out and revolutionized home gaming. Most of the people who grew up gaming still find it to be a perfectly acceptable thing to do as an adult. When games are sixty bucks a pop you practically need the patience and the bank account of an adult to properly research and purchase them.
Your mistake is assuming that the RIAA has any clue what customer relations is.
"What the hell is a customer? Wait? Is that the senile grandmas and disabled single mothers we take to court? Yeah, they are good customers. We get tons of money from those suckers!"
I want to relate some semi-personal experiences that tie-in with your post.
In the fall and winter of 2001, my (now ex) girlfriend and I were living in Minneapolis and she worked at one of the busier Best Buy stores (Minnetonka for those who know the area and care). She worked in the "Media Department" which is BB's term for movies, music, games, etc.
All through the holiday shopping season, constantly, parents would come ask for this game or that game for their children. My girlfriend, when asked for the title of a non-kid-friendly game, would immediately ask the age of the child. Then, she would explain the specifics of that title and if the child was very young, suggest an age-appropriate title.
Never once did a parent complain. Maybe it wasn't her place to suggest as some people seem to think. But if someone doesn't educate the parents, then who will? I'm sure Jen's actions led to plenty of pissed off 8-year-olds who unwrapped Fantavision instead of GTA, but hopefully the parents will know better next time than to just buy little Johnny and Sally whatever games they ask for.
The root cause of this is, of course, that many older adults see video games as an activity for kids, rather than an activity for adults (as is the case with many M-rated games) or kids and adults together.
Along with Xzzy above I feel the need to point out that every single Xbox 360 game that I own that has a strong multiplayer component has an equally strong single player game as well. This includes: Halo 3, 4 of 5 games in "The Orange Box", Call of Duty 2-4, Gears of War, and a few others. These games are often cited as the pinnacle of online console multiplayer, but they are perfectly playable and enjoyable offline as well. In fact, one of the reasons that I like Call of Duty 4 so much is that all 1000 achievement points are for the single-player campaign, so I don't have to play multiplayer to get them.
Yes I know, I'm in the minority: a single-player or co-op only gamer. I don't like the multiplayer games. They're no fun when you are playing against a bunch of 14 year olds with no job, children, spouse, or responsibilities (all things that I have in abundance) who have all the time they need to figure out all the little tricks that make gaming frustrating for me.
This isn't a conspiracy at all. To me, this shady behavior is out in plain sight for any of us to see.
How is this not exactly what they are already doing?
About the true meaning of "retrospect". Since all the signals our body produce take time to register in the brain, wouldn't all events by some strange definition always be "in retrospect"?
I have been in a few car accidents in my time, and I can say that time really does seem to slow down in that moment. I don't know if it's just the way I'm remembering those moments in time or if, at that exact moment, I really did feel like time slowed.
I wonder if the experiment mentioned was skewed by the fact that the subjects were never in any actual danger. They knew that they were in an experiment and there was little chance of harm. In a real-world situation, the potential for danger is real.