>>>are all those broken XBox 360 units actually counted as new sales? I wouldn't put it past them...
Ironically that's the same question people asked about early PS2 units. Is the PS2 truly number one, or are the numbers inflated by the broken units counting as sales? Of course after the PS2 passed 110 million units, the whole question was moot. Even if you subtracted a million faulty units, that's still 109 million working consoles.
Too bad the "auto-update" window doesn't include a small comment box, so I could send Mozilla my totally honest and true feedback about their program to "nudge" users every day, twice a day, without end:
"New software available. Would you like to upgrade?"
"No. And fuck off for the thousandth time. No means no, just like in the bedroom. Go away."
Well as I stated elsewhere: Sometimes the upgrade IS the virus (or at least acts that way). Number of times a virus or other malware has broken my computer in the last thirty years:
1. A Commodore Amiga boot-sector virus ruined a Microprose game (late 80s). 2. A spybot hijacked Internet Exploder on Win 98 (early 2000s), and took it to a malware download site.
In both cases the damage was trivial and not a big deal. ----- Number of times a so-called "software upgrade" has broken my computer, or my video player, or my browser:
- more than I can count. - I've have upgrades break my older games. Break my older videos. Break my PowerDVD player. Break my Azureus bittorrent client. Break my ISP software so that it would crash instead of dial. Break my browser. And with Vista, break my hardware (lack of drivers), thereby forcing me to go back to my XP Restore CD. And you wonder why I consistently say "no" to automatic updates?!?!? It's because I'm tired of so-called "fixes" breaking my machine.
Maybe the autoupdates should more properly be called "malware" for all the harm it causes.
>>>That's because morons like you, with vintage software, are responsible for all the hundreds of thousands of bots flooding the net with spam
Yes. I'm a moron. Uh huh. I've only been using computers since the 1970s... clearly I know nothing about them, and I have worms crawling all through my XP-SP1 system.
Not.
Your reply merely proves my point about how programmers like to assume all their users are idiots. Here's A Clue: We're not. Here's Another Clue: Don't release buggy upgrades; perhaps if I could trust your upgrades not to break my machine, I'd follow your advice & get the latest version. HOWEVER I am sick-and-tired of a perfectly operational piece-of-software suddenly *not working* because you brilliant programmers shoved a broken piece'o'code into it.
Sometimes the upgrade IS the virus (or at least acts that way).
QED, I avoid upgrading until I'm sure the new version actually works.
And what if I, an author of novels, decide to write a book and share my creation via file-sharing. ($1 gets you access to the required *.torrent file.) Is that also considered "wrong" in your viewpoint?
File-sharing is more than just illegal activities. It also includes legal sharing of public domain creations and licensed files.
From the article: >>> Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure.
Well.
Duh.
The War on Bittorrent has been as much a failure as the War on Drugs or the Prohibition on Alcohol. People want their pleasures, and no amount of threats is going to stop them from acquiring want they desire. Gov't and corporate entities need to find a more effective solution to deal with these problems:
Drugs/Alcohol - legalized but strictly regulated w/ severe punishment for abusers (DUI)
Bittorrent - embrace the technology instead of trying to kill it; sell the episodes & movies for a low-cost rate of $1 per movie or 10 cents per episode
>>>The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming
If you define "hardcore" as "boring and overly complicated" then you hit it in one. I don't own any of these consoles, but I am leaning towards Wii because it returns gaming to its primary purpose - fun. It's like a return to the classic-era Nintendo, Sega, and Atari consoles, and it's probably the reason Wii rose to #1 worldwide.
I don't find much fun in reading esoteric manuals & memorizing complicated commands (as is often the case with my recent PS2 purchases) (especially when those games revolve around non-real fantasy junk). Studying a bunch of manuals and key commands feels more like MY DAY JOB rather than a fun diversion. I'll take the "twitch" adrenaline-filled Wii game instead.
>>>Dumping, on the other hand, is selling at a loss so that you can drive the other company out of business and then raise the price of that same item.
I don't see the distinction. Sounds like classic Microsoft strategy to me. (They dumped Windows 1,2,3 below cost... and won the PC monopoly... so they could later sell XP and Vista at outrageous prices.)
IMHO programmers often have an elitist attitude towards their users. Yes I know I just insulted a lot of readers, but what other explanation is there for Firefox, Netscape, Windoze, or other programs to keep INSISTING that I MUST upgrade my software immediately OR ELSE face dire consequences?
Um.
Hello? I don't "must" do anything if I don't want to. I told the dialog box to go-away, now please stop bugging me. It's like hazing SS men pounding on my door. "Sir... sir... sir... you must upgrade your Firefox Browser from the tricolor 2.0 to the swastiki 3.0 immediately. Or else."
If I was going to provide a cheap computer based on 8-bit technology, I'd probably use a Commodore 64 or Atari 800 as my basis. Both were extremely popular, have thousands of readily-available programs for use, and even have modern-type programs like web browsers.
Using an NES as a computer would require a lot of software development, where the Commodore/Atari already have the necessary tools in exixtence.
I start charging the minute I walk through the door, so if I'm expect to "check company related email, stats, get your system booted, go aver any company alerts BEFORE you sign on," Apple can forget that. I'll sign on FIRST and then go read that other crap. If I'm working, they will pay me.
Same with teaching. Every hour I work, whether it's coaching afterschool or correcting homework at home, will get billed somewhere.
Now some people say "Well you're salaried".
Does not matter. If I end-up working 60 hours a week, my effective hourly rate is reduced to only $15. Might as well go get an easy-to-do factory job or sales job and get the same pay.
There's a difference between a traffic VIOLATION and a law. By obtaining a driver's license, you agree to be subject to any and all traffic regulations the State chooses to place upon you. (Similar to how signing a software agreement chains you to Microsoft's rules/regulations.) You have already given consent to be stopped and ticketed when you break one of those traffic regs, and the state can simply take away your license.
However the LAW still protects your person and property. Obtaining a license doesn't take away your Constitutional rights.
>>>Yeah, now try driving from LA to New York (about 3 times the distance you drove)
As I've said, I have flown. Back in 1999 I made that trip, but since then I've never needed to go longer than a 12-hour car trip. Therefore I could avoid the airplane-related annoyances.
Oh geez. That would be as much a waste of money as the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island. Last time I visited that bridge, nobody was even using it except me. (Granted it was winter, but still, why have a bridge if it's rarely used.) A trillion dollars spent on a bridge, when a $5000 ferry could do the same job.
That's like spending $10,000 to buy a flyswatter. Or $5000 to buy a hammer as the U.S. Pentagon likes to do.
That's the trouble with socialist governments. They have big gigantic hearts, and enjoy helping people, but they're stuck with teeny-tiny brains (kinda like dinosaurs). They waste money on foolish schemes.
In cases that take longer than 12 hours by car (like the Northeast to California), and if time is short, then I fly. Last time that happened was 1999.
But I still prefer to drive. One time I drove the circumference of the United States (I-92, I-5, I-10, I-95). In just 1.5 weeks I saw every type of climate: prairie, forest, mountain, pacific plateau, desert, swampland, tropical, altantic piedmont,...
Hardly. The girl pulled the trigger (or popped the pills) of her own free will. Nobody coerced her. She did it on her own.
Same as my foolish uncle knowingly stopped taking insulin shots & died. That was HIS choice; nobody else is guilty. Not me, not his doctor, not this mother/bitch.
In the real world it would be called "harassment" or "disorderly conduct", and the person would be fined or jailed.
As a judge, I would apply those same laws to the internet case.
As for the person committing suicide, she should have reported the harassment to the police, rather than choose such an idiotic solution. The mother is guilty of harassment/disorderly conduct, but only the person who killed herself is guilty of her own death.
er, I mean, "environmentalists" who need to watch the Penn & Teller episode "Recycling is Bullshit". The process of recycling costs three-to-four times as much energy (mostly in collection and cleaning costs) than simply making new product.
>>>being unable to find a place to dump glass, and other kinds of waste at a walking distance from my house,
You ought to download the Penn & Teller episode of Bullshit (circa season 2), which explains why recycling glass wastes THREE TIMES more energy than just making a new glass bottle. It will help alleviate your conscience when you dump your bottles in the garbage.
I've always prefered the word "steal". It's so much more accurate (and honest). Of course if you own the CD you are ripping or burning, then it's really just copying ("I copied my CD over to my Ipod."). I try to avoid slang like "burn" or "rip", because it's just so imprecise. Can you imagine if we used that kind of slang back in the 80s:
- "I 'ripped' an INXS tape to my Commodore=64." - "Awesome! 'Magnetize' me a copy onto a floppy."
- "Wouldn't you prefer I 'etched' a record instead?" - "No man, etching records is so 1970s."
As long as the Volleyball Team keeps wearing bikinis, I'm good.
.
The removal of artistic points from Ice Figure Skating ruined that sport. Now it's just a bunch of jumpers and very little artistry or beauty. She/he who jumps the most wins, even if they create an ugly-looking performance. I wonder if the same will happen with Gymnastics.
"Degree of difficulty" is no more subjective than deciding a touchdown deserves 6 points, and kick deserves 1 point. Why 6 for a touchdown? Why not 5? Or 7? Why does a kick through the posts only get 1 point when 2 would be more appropriate?
There's a "degree of difficulty" baseline in ALL sports. That's how the points are assigned. Gymnastics is no different with its array of assigned points for different "goals" achieved or failed.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>are all those broken XBox 360 units actually counted as new sales? I wouldn't put it past them...
Ironically that's the same question people asked about early PS2 units. Is the PS2 truly number one, or are the numbers inflated by the broken units counting as sales? Of course after the PS2 passed 110 million units, the whole question was moot. Even if you subtracted a million faulty units, that's still 109 million working consoles.
Probably the same will be true of the X360.
Microsoft routinely undercut other IBM-compatible OSes, thereby driving them into extinction.
They did the same with WordPerfect, Lotus, and so on.
>>>"mozilla-plans-to-nudge-firefox-2-0-users-to-upgrade"
Too bad the "auto-update" window doesn't include a small comment box, so I could send Mozilla my totally honest and true feedback about their program to "nudge" users every day, twice a day, without end:
"New software available. Would you like to upgrade?"
"No. And fuck off for the thousandth time. No means no, just like in the bedroom. Go away."
I don't expect companies to support old software.
I just want me to stop reminding me that it's old & I need to update. With Firefox it gets to the point of nagging. Like my wife.
Well as I stated elsewhere: Sometimes the upgrade IS the virus (or at least acts that way). Number of times a virus or other malware has broken my computer in the last thirty years:
1. A Commodore Amiga boot-sector virus ruined a Microprose game (late 80s).
2. A spybot hijacked Internet Exploder on Win 98 (early 2000s), and took it to a malware download site.
In both cases the damage was trivial and not a big deal. ----- Number of times a so-called "software upgrade" has broken my computer, or my video player, or my browser:
- more than I can count.
- I've have upgrades break my older games. Break my older videos. Break my PowerDVD player. Break my Azureus bittorrent client. Break my ISP software so that it would crash instead of dial. Break my browser. And with Vista, break my hardware (lack of drivers), thereby forcing me to go back to my XP Restore CD. And you wonder why I consistently say "no" to automatic updates?!?!? It's because I'm tired of so-called "fixes" breaking my machine.
Maybe the autoupdates should more properly be called "malware" for all the harm it causes.
>>>That's because morons like you, with vintage software, are responsible for all the hundreds of thousands of bots flooding the net with spam
Yes. I'm a moron. Uh huh. I've only been using computers since the 1970s... clearly I know nothing about them, and I have worms crawling all through my XP-SP1 system.
Not.
Your reply merely proves my point about how programmers like to assume all their users are idiots. Here's A Clue: We're not. Here's Another Clue: Don't release buggy upgrades; perhaps if I could trust your upgrades not to break my machine, I'd follow your advice & get the latest version. HOWEVER I am sick-and-tired of a perfectly operational piece-of-software suddenly *not working* because you brilliant programmers shoved a broken piece'o'code into it.
Sometimes the upgrade IS the virus (or at least acts that way).
QED, I avoid upgrading until I'm sure the new version actually works.
Didn't you know?
Godwin was a Nazi trying to erase history by silencing talk about it. Don't fall for Godwin's ploy. ;-)
>>>File Sharing is WRONG!
And what if I, an author of novels, decide to write a book and share my creation via file-sharing. ($1 gets you access to the required *.torrent file.) Is that also considered "wrong" in your viewpoint?
File-sharing is more than just illegal activities. It also includes legal sharing of public domain creations and licensed files.
From the article: >>> Some are wondering if the campaign has shaped up as an utter failure.
Well.
Duh.
The War on Bittorrent has been as much a failure as the War on Drugs or the Prohibition on Alcohol. People want their pleasures, and no amount of threats is going to stop them from acquiring want they desire. Gov't and corporate entities need to find a more effective solution to deal with these problems:
Drugs/Alcohol - legalized but strictly regulated w/ severe punishment for abusers (DUI)
Bittorrent - embrace the technology instead of trying to kill it; sell the episodes & movies for a low-cost rate of $1 per movie or 10 cents per episode
>>>The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming
If you define "hardcore" as "boring and overly complicated" then you hit it in one. I don't own any of these consoles, but I am leaning towards Wii because it returns gaming to its primary purpose - fun. It's like a return to the classic-era Nintendo, Sega, and Atari consoles, and it's probably the reason Wii rose to #1 worldwide.
I don't find much fun in reading esoteric manuals & memorizing complicated commands (as is often the case with my recent PS2 purchases) (especially when those games revolve around non-real fantasy junk). Studying a bunch of manuals and key commands feels more like MY DAY JOB rather than a fun diversion. I'll take the "twitch" adrenaline-filled Wii game instead.
If that makes me "casual" in your eyes, so be it.
Troy (gamer since 1977)
>>>Dumping, on the other hand, is selling at a loss so that you can drive the other company out of business and then raise the price of that same item.
I don't see the distinction. Sounds like classic Microsoft strategy to me. (They dumped Windows 1,2,3 below cost... and won the PC monopoly... so they could later sell XP and Vista at outrageous prices.)
IMHO programmers often have an elitist attitude towards their users. Yes I know I just insulted a lot of readers, but what other explanation is there for Firefox, Netscape, Windoze, or other programs to keep INSISTING that I MUST upgrade my software immediately OR ELSE face dire consequences?
Um.
Hello? I don't "must" do anything if I don't want to. I told the dialog box to go-away, now please stop bugging me. It's like hazing SS men pounding on my door. "Sir... sir... sir... you must upgrade your Firefox Browser from the tricolor 2.0 to the swastiki 3.0 immediately. Or else."
Go. Away.
BACK TO TOPIC:
If I was going to provide a cheap computer based on 8-bit technology, I'd probably use a Commodore 64 or Atari 800 as my basis. Both were extremely popular, have thousands of readily-available programs for use, and even have modern-type programs like web browsers.
Using an NES as a computer would require a lot of software development, where the Commodore/Atari already have the necessary tools in exixtence.
I ALWAYS compensate myself for "unpaid" work.
I start charging the minute I walk through the door, so if I'm expect to "check company related email, stats, get your system booted, go aver any company alerts BEFORE you sign on," Apple can forget that. I'll sign on FIRST and then go read that other crap. If I'm working, they will pay me.
Same with teaching. Every hour I work, whether it's coaching afterschool or correcting homework at home, will get billed somewhere.
Now some people say "Well you're salaried".
Does not matter. If I end-up working 60 hours a week, my effective hourly rate is reduced to only $15. Might as well go get an easy-to-do factory job or sales job and get the same pay.
There's a difference between a traffic VIOLATION and a law. By obtaining a driver's license, you agree to be subject to any and all traffic regulations the State chooses to place upon you. (Similar to how signing a software agreement chains you to Microsoft's rules/regulations.) You have already given consent to be stopped and ticketed when you break one of those traffic regs, and the state can simply take away your license.
However the LAW still protects your person and property. Obtaining a license doesn't take away your Constitutional rights.
>>>Yeah, now try driving from LA to New York (about 3 times the distance you drove)
As I've said, I have flown. Back in 1999 I made that trip, but since then I've never needed to go longer than a 12-hour car trip. Therefore I could avoid the airplane-related annoyances.
Oh geez. That would be as much a waste of money as the Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island. Last time I visited that bridge, nobody was even using it except me. (Granted it was winter, but still, why have a bridge if it's rarely used.) A trillion dollars spent on a bridge, when a $5000 ferry could do the same job.
That's like spending $10,000 to buy a flyswatter.
Or $5000 to buy a hammer as the U.S. Pentagon likes to do.
That's the trouble with socialist governments. They have big gigantic hearts, and enjoy helping people, but they're stuck with teeny-tiny brains (kinda like dinosaurs). They waste money on foolish schemes.
True.
In cases that take longer than 12 hours by car (like the Northeast to California), and if time is short, then I fly. Last time that happened was 1999.
But I still prefer to drive. One time I drove the circumference of the United States (I-92, I-5, I-10, I-95). In just 1.5 weeks I saw every type of climate: prairie, forest, mountain, pacific plateau, desert, swampland, tropical, altantic piedmont, ...
Hardly. The girl pulled the trigger (or popped the pills) of her own free will. Nobody coerced her. She did it on her own.
Same as my foolish uncle knowingly stopped taking insulin shots & died. That was HIS choice; nobody else is guilty. Not me, not his doctor, not this mother/bitch.
In the real world it would be called "harassment" or "disorderly conduct", and the person would be fined or jailed.
As a judge, I would apply those same laws to the internet case.
As for the person committing suicide, she should have reported the harassment to the police, rather than choose such an idiotic solution. The mother is guilty of harassment/disorderly conduct, but only the person who killed herself is guilty of her own death.
There are a lot of religious folks.....
er, I mean, "environmentalists" who need to watch the Penn & Teller episode "Recycling is Bullshit". The process of recycling costs three-to-four times as much energy (mostly in collection and cleaning costs) than simply making new product.
>>>being unable to find a place to dump glass, and other kinds of waste at a walking distance from my house,
You ought to download the Penn & Teller episode of Bullshit (circa season 2), which explains why recycling glass wastes THREE TIMES more energy than just making a new glass bottle. It will help alleviate your conscience when you dump your bottles in the garbage.
I know it worked for me.
I've always prefered the word "steal". It's so much more accurate (and honest). Of course if you own the CD you are ripping or burning, then it's really just copying ("I copied my CD over to my Ipod."). I try to avoid slang like "burn" or "rip", because it's just so imprecise. Can you imagine if we used that kind of slang back in the 80s:
- "I 'ripped' an INXS tape to my Commodore=64."
- "Awesome! 'Magnetize' me a copy onto a floppy."
- "Wouldn't you prefer I 'etched' a record instead?"
- "No man, etching records is so 1970s."
As long as the Volleyball Team keeps wearing bikinis, I'm good.
.
The removal of artistic points from Ice Figure Skating ruined that sport. Now it's just a bunch of jumpers and very little artistry or beauty. She/he who jumps the most wins, even if they create an ugly-looking performance. I wonder if the same will happen with Gymnastics.
"Degree of difficulty" is no more subjective than deciding a touchdown deserves 6 points, and kick deserves 1 point. Why 6 for a touchdown? Why not 5? Or 7? Why does a kick through the posts only get 1 point when 2 would be more appropriate?
There's a "degree of difficulty" baseline in ALL sports. That's how the points are assigned. Gymnastics is no different with its array of assigned points for different "goals" achieved or failed.