If this was presented as a pollution problem, you could get the right-wingers on board. After all, Edmund Muskie sponsored the Clean Water Act in 1971, and despite Nixon's veto it was overrriden and became law. Republican members pretty much have supported it. When the EPA gets back to pollution control, they will find many right-wingers willing to support these efforts.
Sadly, they will also find many right- and left-wingers unwilling to pretend that any pollution controls within the U.S. will solve any significant global pollution problems. The developing countries will resist joining in, as it will raise costs and diminish growth, and China is quite literally a black hole of pollution with no intention of limiting growth or raising costs to even halt the increases, much less reduce.
In a way, we are entering a perfect storm of globalization, massive industrial development, fossil fuels as a cheap path to industrial prosperity, and the attendant rise in global pollution and genuine climate impact. CO2 is not so much of a problem as particulates, but it is much easier to sell punishing the developed countries rather than set new standards and prevent the avalance of underdeveloped countries spewing so much more. China will eclipse the US in this impact, if they haven't already, and we have no prospects of limiting their spew. Africa is next, and more is the pity, since Africa could be a miraculous eco-economy if they could bear to live a little below their industial potential and stop killing one another so wantonly. South American is well on its way to completely developing their lands, with the requisite loss of habitat and forest. We may one day realize that the deforestation of the Amazon did more to ruin Earth than every car and coal power plant ever built. And there are other forests under attack.
If were only so simple, but this global problem is not being addressed globally yet. And I see little hope for it to be so any time soon. Many developing countries want to 'get theirs', and get it now, figuring they can get the developed countries to either give up theirs, or fix it in technology. We might be able to, but probably not, unless it is a truly global solution. And there is no forum to discuss this honestly, so it will continue.
You mean using the existing solar input 'better', as opposed to going to the the Sun and turning it up a notch or two, right?
sheesh.
Re:Let's just be clear on what they mean here
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A Requiem For Saab
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· Score: 1
Saab was building FWD cars for DECADES before the NG900 debuted in 1994. Please, do not try and excuse their design choices as 'cutting their teeth' on anything. The NG900 was just a smaller chassis crammed full of engineering, and never intended to be services by the do-it-yourselfer.
Now, to be somewht fair, my local Saab dealer technician is superb, and one of the nationally recognized techs. And he does it ALL. Alignments, body work, electrical, transmision internals, he does everything, though he sends out body and paint because the dealer has a shop and he is too busy, even in Phoenix. But Saab techs, in general, do everything. Many a domestic make tech sends transmission work to the specialists, and even some electrical work. But to hear him tell me what he needs to do, well, damn, I'm not able to drop the subframe under the carport. Much that I just cannot do.
My '95 Explorer is completely different. At 300105 miles, I can change out most anything, and could even change the rear axle seals if I dared to. the radiator took an hour to change, including flush and repairing the heater valve. Alternator comes off like a prom dress. I could even change the rack by myself, with my wife manning a jackstand to hold the other end up.
Saabs were always interesting to work on. The NG900, 9-3, and 9-5 are just impossible. All the newer stuff, I challenge calling them Saabs. The influence of outsourcing, using other chassis designs, commonality (which failed) all lead to pretty average cars.
Oh well. I'll be looking for some junkers soon. I expect used prices to go up for a little bit, and then plummet.
Re:Let's just be clear on what they mean here
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A Requiem For Saab
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· Score: 1
Let me pile on here. Especially about the NG900, though 9000s deserve special mention for traction controls and $700 fuel pumps.
So Saabs are examples of superior engineering? How do you change the serpentine belt on an NG900? Take off the right front wheel first? remove the inner right front fender? Pus. DIC? Ball joints? Nothing is easy on these cars. NOTHING. Even the ignition switches fail. The leather is substandard. Self-adjusting clutch cable. Oh, and the hydraulic upgrade. My wife's '98 900STE Convertible is such a damned joy to work on. I can't wait to get in and fix the tonneau drive and get the windows aligned again so the wind noise is bearable. And of course I will soon find a decent manual transmission to resolve the blown 2nd gear synchros. It will be slightly easier to change the tranny than it is to change a main engine on the Shuttle. Yes, the key step is pulling the engine out by dropping out the subframe. The shift lever is like stirring warm butter with a straw. OMFG. I almost miss that old '93 900 she had.
You have to undo the friggin front underguard to get at anything the least important on the front of the engine, like radiator hoses. The ACC depends on this little muffin fan in the dash to get temperature, and of course like any muffin fan about 1/2" square, it fails predictably. Switches fail. Foglamp lenses are brittle. Let's not get started on the front end in general on the convertible, where Saab's reputation as a driver's car failed, under GM's influence I'm sure.
Oh, and the Swedish understood that you do not, in fact, have any genuine need for a cupholder. If you absolutely need one, they will graft one on in the most uncomfortable place, so you can knock your drink out with your right elbow at the most inopportune moment.
And God help me, I do live to drive it. The turbo takes you from 60 to 100 effortlessly. It will go forever, if you can afford it. And there's just something about a Saab driver that keeps people from assuming anything else about you, except stubbornness.
Really? NASA was adding unnecessary complexity to Ares?
This is pretty well hosed-up. They (Congress, Obama, and the commision) think starting over is faster than rinishing Ares?
Mind you, I don't think Ares is so great, but if we aren't going to just build Saturn Vs, we might as well finish the Ares.
Unless you're looking to make more jobs and spend more money, in which this idea might be perfect. But it isn't about getting heavy lift capacity online as soon as practical.
This is why I run a beater. Much simpler to just swing and let the spellchuckers throw over you, so long as there's a healer that can raise you without comps, or someone who will bestow some PoY to de-age you after. Sucks to die old.
I've always run Ninjas in Avatar, an old NovaNET game (now on cyber1,apologies for/.ing them) which I started in on in about 1985 or so (hard to remember when). I know Jim, and I was the first of the =mainei signons to get whacked, having offended many UICU ops, admins, and profs with my political views in =events (at the time UICU was infested with leftists, Marxists, and socialists. Probably still is.)
I still play Avatar on cyber1, God forgive me, and I'm in my third year of learning to manage a healer and wizard. But I digress...
This is the age-old problem in all role-playing games. How 'realistic' do you want your fantasy?
Realisticaly, you would be an unusual specimen if you could in fact master all three major classes. Just the time needed to build knowledge and physique makes it impractical, as if fantasy is realistic at all. So games that enforce the three-class paradigm make sense. But more to the point, most good role-playing games are founded on team building.
Think about it. Playing D&D with just you, the all-powerful master, and a DM who tries to make you dead, and no one else? Pointless. A decent weekend playing D&D needed about a dozen people. Someone had to get pizza, beer, and toilet paper. Cmon, man.
So team play had to, from the beginning, be designed in. Best way to do that is to divide skills so that you need at least two on a team to survive surprise encounters, and of course three or more to challenge demigods. How many to thrash a boss? This is why I'm not the least into WoW or any of that, though Diablo II almost got my attention.
At some point, these games devolve into simple (?) problem-solving, and while the graphics are pretty, they genuinely never match up to my imagination. The last interation of Avatar on NovaNET statted off with a detailed description of many things, suchas the dungeon, monsters, and player characters. Well, I always thought Wyvern Skin was not very stinky, and there were LOTS of monsters taller than 9 feet. And the dungeon was sometimes pretty clean, and sometimes pretty nasty, and it didn't matter now deep you were. But telling me what the writers' concepts were was not good. Avatar is a graphics-challenged game. You needed an imagination if you were the least into fantasy.
Now, Avatar on cyber1 is dominated by problem-solvers, who cruise the bottom to find the next insanely great thing. And I run a beater because, sadly, I don't have to time to be part of a team and do more stuff. So my challenges are to survive surprises with really harsh monsters, beat down the rich ones, amass the next billion in gold, and find a damned RoTP please, if you don't mind, there has to be ONE MORE LEFT, ok?
The class complaint is just another variation on 'I want to be all-powerful'. Many a DM punished those who expressed that sentiment in their presence. No different with the video versions.
Of course, AT&T Wireless isn't a monolith, and hasn't actually existed before, I think, 2006?
Before AT&T Wireless, it was Cingular. Before that, it was *gasp* AT&T Wireless (ATTWS).
Before that, mostly regional carriers that got gobbled up, like Cellular One in Maine, I think. Or was it Maine Cellular, they all blur together.
Which I remember well.
So AT&T has had a few years to demonstrate their slavery to the profit motive (proper for a corporation) and moderate disdain for customers (not so proper). Of course Sprint holds the trophy for putting profit ahead of service, when they canned a bunch of customers because they called too often to complain. I think that was a brilliant move on their part, BTW, as they ditched people that called more than once a day. These are dissatified customers, and giving them a get-off-of-Sprint-free card was perfect. Many didn't want to leave. They like to complain. For those, we have/. which is relatively free.
It's not so much incompetence, as it is profit-seeking. Blowing out your network to accomodate massive data use is expensive, and cuts profits. The balance is difficult to achieve.
And AT&T should probably work on detecting tethering and enforcing their TOS. At least they can defend that on legal grounds. Though they can change the TOS any time, and watch customers bail when they have the get-off-of-AT&T-free card as well. Good riddance. Every carrier dreams of having a customer base that demands less service. Doh.
Maybe they will flood to TMO. Wait, iPhones don't do TMO 3G. Darn. They will need to stay. Captives. Blame Apple.
Bring a Thai woman home and see how this works out. Rentals are usually cheaper in both exotic cars and exotic women.
And eeePCs seem so cool, but after a while the thrill is gone, the keyboard hurts, and the screen is just too small. Ask my mother-in-law. She would pay more for a better machine. Of course, she's 87 and just got her Facebook page up 2 months ago, so something is working right. Depending on your perspective.
Expensive is a misnomer. I'm trying to find a good pair of Bluetooth stereo headphones. The Moto S705(?) is cute, and great range, but it's not very good in sound quality and I still have wired headphones involved. Only cost $19 at a TMO store on closeout. My Altec BackBeat 903 sound very good, but sadly is not at all sweat-resistant, and when it gets moist it likes to call the last number over and over and over and over, faster than I can kill the call. and it needs to be blown out to clear the speakers. And the controls fail. I know why it isn't tolerating sweat, and acn't figure out a way to fix it. So... I'm looking at reviews for other headsets and hoping that buying the 'best' pans out. It never failed before, but technology has its own reward.
Big boobs on a big girl? Not the same return on investment as big boobs on a small girl. Natural is always more expensive, it's the TCO my friend.
Small girls have significantly higher upkeep:
Clothes: Size 0 seems to cost mostly the same as size 16, but size 0 girls seem to need a LOT more of them. Shoes: Well, maybe not shoes.
Other maintenance items:
Competition: Seems like everybody is bird-dogging your cute little girl. This costs in dates, travel, etc, which of course increases competiitive opportunities. A vicious circle.
Competition: Seems like your little girl is always trying to keep up with her little girl friends. This is expensive.
And just as an aside, the whole mouth thing has nothing to do with anything. Except maybe cigarettes, and I'm not too sure about those. It's a individual thing, though you should, according to several of my nieces, look for the DSL thing. They claim that's a dead give-away, though I think it's more likely jealousy. They don't much like scrawny actresses. Go figure.
Oh, then there's the whole small v tiny v scrawny thing. Kinda Eva Longoria v Pia Zadora v Olsen twins. A matter of taste, perception, and relevance.
The Metro was not much fun for most people, even for 100k. Acceleration as a suggestion, a ride like a water buffalo, though a buddy tells me the seats were pretty good.
But my '95 Explorer will go 300k this week. Got the trans rebuilt at 234K, other than that the engine is original, and it sure is a nicer ride than your Metro was. Yes, more expensive. My point is that your Metro needed to go 200K to be such a deal. Otherwise, small + cheap != good.
I have no sacred cows. I can see past the imperfections, even in logic, though that is more choice than goal.
- Wicked cool device hits the market. - Hacked and liberated. - Provider(s) lose money due to the liberation. - Tug-of-war between provider(s) and hackers. - Provider(s) give up and more on after losing too much money.
I expect the cell connection will be firewalled pretty soon unless they completely munged the process and can't. Expect some OTA updates pronto to keep the rooters out. Tug-of-war over rooting. Eventually new TOS to make you a criminal for using the cell connection in ways other than expected. Dead Nooks all over the place.
I'm kinda tempted to buy one just to root it. I had a LOT OF FUN with my v5 I-Opener. Short-lived, but it made my soldering iron useful again, and kept my GF's 9-year-old daughter entertained and safer than with a standard PC, until she discovered LimeWire. Ugh.
I wonder if Cyanogen has any interest in Nook rooting. He's the best right now.
I have GPS in my phone, and it is adequate for my purposes.
But having on on the dash running all the time is the height of gadget stupidity.
I drive the same route to work Monday thru Friday. The guy who also does in the 2009 Challenger has his GPS unit right in the driver's side corner of the windshield. Always on.
And the traffic delays and congestion are as predictable as the sun. Every day, unless it's a holiday week when they are only easier.
And the DVD players in the front dash are even worse.
Don't blame the manufacturers. We easily fall for gadgets, don't we?
ISPs DO IN FACT have to pay for the data you send and receive. Yes, they do.
Peering arrangements do not cover the cost of the connection to the NAP. If, say Cox Cable in Arizona wants to interconnect to the other Cox state networks, they can do so and it's just their way of dealing with interconnection. But when they decide to connect so, say MAE-West, they pay for the connection into the NAP. It may be an OC-148, or something truly studly, like a really hot fiber. These circuits are not free, as they require right-of-way, actual genuine fiber (which they may share sometimes with others in the jacket - true), and of course the hardware to make it work. Price out some of that some time.
Now, true, the cost is shared amongst the many many subscribers, and they could choose to peer in one NAP, though in fact that would be bad practice, with single point of failure stuff and all.
But the reality is that not only would Cox (as an example) have to provision enogh connections and capacity to at least prevent customers from flooding the lines with 'I can't get' calls, but most peering arrangements at the NAP require you to provide enough bandwidth to actually receive what other peers send to you (on request from your subscribers, usually) or they see you as not playing fair. This gets you either booted off the NAP or throttled (or ignored, see Cogent v Sprint) and your users get poorer performance. Providing adequate service in a NAP peering is non-trivial, and the big carriers do not let you off. If you're a small ISP, you usually partner with a bigger one to avoid this sort of thing. I know. I was a small ISP. My carrier was MCI for a long time, and they had me 3 hops from MAE-East, a nice multi T1 connection. When we downsized to BBN, we got a dual T1 that was 25 hops away from a midwest NAP, which was a little off the beaten path and increased our latency about 12ms on average. But it was cheaper. Boss wins.
The concept that somehow your ISP doesn't really pay for their ultimate connection to the 'Internet' is ludicrous and misleading.
And having said that, Cox cable is probably more interested in the high-volume users that 'distort' the local networks and might be causing congestion. This is where most 'oversubscribing' is noticeable, and where the pproblems for the ISP are most difficult, IMHO. And where they need to decide what level of service they wish to provide.
That should be interesting. That's where individual customers will be hurt, and will fight back.
And you wrote:
"ISP's per-MB usage charge is just added there to discourage customers to actually use their connection."
That's one pricing formulation. Another would be to price higher volume users to recover costs, while not discouraging them or losing them to competitors. This formula is not so commonly used, since real competition is ineffective in most of the U.S., though there are other pressures and this is not nearly so simple as most of us would like to believe. Of course, the impact is plain and obvious, so we tend to think that the cause is also plain and obvious.
Don't think I am defending packet inspection and service filtering, nor am I defending the US ISP marketers. But let's keep our focus on reality. They should be expected to carry any traffic their users request, without discriminating on the basis of volume or source, and they should either price their service as necessary (or desireable) or describe their services accurately so customers can make informed decisions and have reasonable expectations. And MOST importantly, they should not discriminate on the basis of the source of the data. For instance, throttle based on URL (hulu.com, for example) or traffic type (H.323, for example) and then offer an unthrottled service of their own which is substantially identical (HD video streaming, for example) and delivered via the same method (TCP/IP). This would be discriminatory in a way we should not accept - like restraint of trade, the ISP could throttle some vi
"I'll buy that argument once religious whackadoodles promise to renounce their faith because of televangelists and pedo-priests."
Um, the proper thing to do (for me, anyways) is to renounce the televangelists and pedo-priests.
It's a common mistake you made, and you need not apologize.
We shouldn't shut down the climate change debate EVEN if it is proven that the climate change evangelists have cooked the data and obstructed debate. But we should, at least, be dealing with the best available data and rigorous scrutiny of the data and the analysis.
From what I've seen of the scandal, it's apparent that some the global warming crowd can't tolerate dissent, and some of those least tolerant are also most influential. But this isn't news to me, personally. I've been trying to find current global temperature data for almost 3 years, and I've found that data for the last 10 years is being hidden. All we get are conclusions. And data from before is rapidly disappearing.
It's this hiding of the data that concerns me. You can't even stand the light of your own data? Something is wrong there.
ps- The argument that we need to develop renewable energy sources is important, but misses a huge point. Climate change is the reason that so many draconian measures are being proposed, from cap 'n trade to outright bans on useful things. Developing renewable energy need not require such measures. It makes sense on purely economic grounds, if oil is going to run out. And it is defensible on purely stewardship grounds - clean energy is preferable to dirty energy. Maybe a better sales job on that would work. Sadly, the readily available clean energy (nuclear fission) is alrady demonized in the U.S. Solar requires both capital and resources (real estate). Wind? Just to set the record straight, hydro power is not clean, it just makes pretty lakes out of pretty rivers, which changes the ecology greatly. Ask the fish. But we sent men to walk on the Moon. We can solve this if we get focused and make the decision to 'do it'. So, Mr. President, how about directing some of that TARP money into solving *real* problems?
If nothing else, maybe improve our transportation infrastructure - some impact there, like reducing drive times? Making public transit work? Making alternatives like car-trains and autopilot driving possible? We haven't begun to explore the solutions. We're just waxing on about how serious the problem is, and how someone has to do somethign about it.
"The name 'bada,' means 'ocean' in Korean and was chosen to convey the 'limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform.'"
That statement is almost as meaningless as this post. Personally, I prefer actual applications to 'potential applications'. Of course, would you release a new phone OS with a name that conveyed a limited variety of potential applications? To heck with actual applications.
It is not a good decision to try and convince your users to use your service less. AT&T may want to re-think this, as their heaviest users are possibly also the most loyal, least price-sensitive, and more likely to upgrade.
Then again, if ditching 3% of your users gives you a 40% capacity gain, the choice is obvious. They are gone.
But this is about more than just bytes. If there are geographic concentrations of heavy users, then billing is a way to smite those who are causing others some pain. It sure is easier than managing your network correctly, or expanding capacity, or getting the lower-volume users to pony up more money for nothing.
I'll be watching to see how AT&T can convince users to use less.
Of course, this is the beginning of the net neutrality fight on cell networks. Expect AT&T to start blaming content providers for making such attractive nuisances. Then the phone manufacturers for making such demanding devices.
Except for Apple. They will be blameless, since AT&T sees them as the source of revenue that makes it all worthwhile.
Pathetique. I wonder how many executives at AT&T remember the Sprint debacle?
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If this was presented as a pollution problem, you could get the right-wingers on board. After all, Edmund Muskie sponsored the Clean Water Act in 1971, and despite Nixon's veto it was overrriden and became law. Republican members pretty much have supported it. When the EPA gets back to pollution control, they will find many right-wingers willing to support these efforts.
Sadly, they will also find many right- and left-wingers unwilling to pretend that any pollution controls within the U.S. will solve any significant global pollution problems. The developing countries will resist joining in, as it will raise costs and diminish growth, and China is quite literally a black hole of pollution with no intention of limiting growth or raising costs to even halt the increases, much less reduce.
In a way, we are entering a perfect storm of globalization, massive industrial development, fossil fuels as a
cheap path to industrial prosperity, and the attendant rise in global pollution and genuine climate impact. CO2 is not so much of a problem as particulates, but it is much easier to sell punishing the developed countries rather than set new standards and prevent the avalance of underdeveloped countries spewing so much more. China will eclipse the US in this impact, if they haven't already, and we have no prospects of limiting their spew. Africa is next, and more is the pity, since Africa could be a miraculous eco-economy if they could bear to live a little below their industial potential and stop killing one another so wantonly. South American is well on its way to completely developing their lands, with the requisite loss of habitat and forest. We may one day realize that the deforestation of the Amazon did more to ruin Earth than every car and coal power plant ever built. And there are other forests under attack.
If were only so simple, but this global problem is not being addressed globally yet. And I see little hope for it to be so any time soon. Many developing countries want to 'get theirs', and get it now, figuring they can get the developed countries to either give up theirs, or fix it in technology. We might be able to, but probably not, unless it is a truly global solution. And there is no forum to discuss this honestly, so it will continue.
You mean using the existing solar input 'better', as opposed to going to the the Sun and turning it up a notch or two, right?
sheesh.
Saab was building FWD cars for DECADES before the NG900 debuted in 1994. Please, do not try and excuse their design choices as 'cutting their teeth' on anything. The NG900 was just a smaller chassis crammed full of engineering, and never intended to be services by the do-it-yourselfer.
Now, to be somewht fair, my local Saab dealer technician is superb, and one of the nationally recognized techs. And he does it ALL. Alignments, body work, electrical, transmision internals, he does everything, though he sends out body and paint because the dealer has a shop and he is too busy, even in Phoenix. But Saab techs, in general, do everything. Many a domestic make tech sends transmission work to the specialists, and even some electrical work. But to hear him tell me what he needs to do, well, damn, I'm not able to drop the subframe under the carport. Much that I just cannot do.
My '95 Explorer is completely different. At 300105 miles, I can change out most anything, and could even change the rear axle seals if I dared to. the radiator took an hour to change, including flush and repairing the heater valve. Alternator comes off like a prom dress. I could even change the rack by myself, with my wife manning a jackstand to hold the other end up.
Saabs were always interesting to work on. The NG900, 9-3, and 9-5 are just impossible. All the newer stuff, I challenge calling them Saabs. The influence of outsourcing, using other chassis designs, commonality (which failed) all lead to pretty average cars.
Oh well. I'll be looking for some junkers soon. I expect used prices to go up for a little bit, and then plummet.
Let me pile on here. Especially about the NG900, though 9000s deserve special mention for traction controls and $700 fuel pumps.
So Saabs are examples of superior engineering? How do you change the serpentine belt on an NG900? Take off the right front wheel first? remove the inner right front fender? Pus. DIC? Ball joints? Nothing is easy on these cars. NOTHING. Even the ignition switches fail. The leather is substandard. Self-adjusting clutch cable. Oh, and the hydraulic upgrade. My wife's '98 900STE Convertible is such a damned joy to work on. I can't wait to get in and fix the tonneau drive and get the windows aligned again so the wind noise is bearable. And of course I will soon find a decent manual transmission to resolve the blown 2nd gear synchros. It will be slightly easier to change the tranny than it is to change a main engine on the Shuttle. Yes, the key step is pulling the engine out by dropping out the subframe. The shift lever is like stirring warm butter with a straw. OMFG. I almost miss that old '93 900 she had.
You have to undo the friggin front underguard to get at anything the least important on the front of the engine, like radiator hoses. The ACC depends on this little muffin fan in the dash to get temperature, and of course like any muffin fan about 1/2" square, it fails predictably. Switches fail. Foglamp lenses are brittle. Let's not get started on the front end in general on the convertible, where Saab's reputation as a driver's car failed, under GM's influence I'm sure.
Oh, and the Swedish understood that you do not, in fact, have any genuine need for a cupholder. If you absolutely need one, they will graft one on in the most uncomfortable place, so you can knock your drink out with your right elbow at the most inopportune moment.
And God help me, I do live to drive it. The turbo takes you from 60 to 100 effortlessly. It will go forever, if you can afford it. And there's just something about a Saab driver that keeps people from assuming anything else about you, except stubbornness.
If you wanted a laptop with heft, you would have bought a Thinkpad. The X and T series still hold up, and are the only ones I would buy used.
And the X41 tablet I snagged this summer is a champ. Not as fast as current stuff, but it was dirt cheap, half the price of a netbook.
I would buy a clean T43 for the right price. Solid machine. Tough as any Apple.
I meant that the US seems to be asking other countries what to do.
We've pretty much left Canada out to dry lately. Not bad for them.
It was written to annoy the whackos, and amuse most of the rest of us.
It's not useful to argue that your flavor of Kool-Aid is better.
No, no, NO!
That's America you're referring to. Stop mixing up your politics, please, we are confused enough down here.
Thanks!
Really? NASA was adding unnecessary complexity to Ares?
This is pretty well hosed-up. They (Congress, Obama, and the commision) think starting over is faster than rinishing Ares?
Mind you, I don't think Ares is so great, but if we aren't going to just build Saturn Vs, we might as well finish the Ares.
Unless you're looking to make more jobs and spend more money, in which this idea might be perfect. But it isn't about getting heavy lift capacity online as soon as practical.
This is why I run a beater. Much simpler to just swing and let the spellchuckers throw over you, so long as there's a healer that can raise you without comps, or someone who will bestow some PoY to de-age you after. Sucks to die old.
I've always run Ninjas in Avatar, an old NovaNET game (now on cyber1,apologies for /.ing them) which I started in on in about 1985 or so (hard to remember when). I know Jim, and I was the first of the =mainei signons to get whacked, having offended many UICU ops, admins, and profs with my political views in =events (at the time UICU was infested with leftists, Marxists, and socialists. Probably still is.)
I still play Avatar on cyber1, God forgive me, and I'm in my third year of learning to manage a healer and wizard. But I digress...
This is the age-old problem in all role-playing games. How 'realistic' do you want your fantasy?
Realisticaly, you would be an unusual specimen if you could in fact master all three major classes. Just the time needed to build knowledge and physique makes it impractical, as if fantasy is realistic at all. So games that enforce the three-class paradigm make sense. But more to the point, most good role-playing games are founded on team building.
Think about it. Playing D&D with just you, the all-powerful master, and a DM who tries to make you dead, and no one else? Pointless. A decent weekend playing D&D needed about a dozen people. Someone had to get pizza, beer, and toilet paper. Cmon, man.
So team play had to, from the beginning, be designed in. Best way to do that is to divide skills so that you need at least two on a team to survive surprise encounters, and of course three or more to challenge demigods. How many to thrash a boss? This is why I'm not the least into WoW or any of that, though Diablo II almost got my attention.
At some point, these games devolve into simple (?) problem-solving, and while the graphics are pretty, they genuinely never match up to my imagination. The last interation of Avatar on NovaNET statted off with a detailed description of many things, suchas the dungeon, monsters, and player characters. Well, I always thought Wyvern Skin was not very stinky, and there were LOTS of monsters taller than 9 feet. And the dungeon was sometimes pretty clean, and sometimes pretty nasty, and it didn't matter now deep you were. But telling me what the writers' concepts were was not good. Avatar is a graphics-challenged game. You needed an imagination if you were the least into fantasy.
Now, Avatar on cyber1 is dominated by problem-solvers, who cruise the bottom to find the next insanely great thing. And I run a beater because, sadly, I don't have to time to be part of a team and do more stuff. So my challenges are to survive surprises with really harsh monsters, beat down the rich ones, amass the next billion in gold, and find a damned RoTP please, if you don't mind, there has to be ONE MORE LEFT, ok?
The class complaint is just another variation on 'I want to be all-powerful'. Many a DM punished those who expressed that sentiment in their presence. No different with the video versions.
Good luck, and good hunting.
AT&T / VERIZON
These two control a lot of market. But not all.
Monopoly is not the card you want to play. Try net neutrality after you play the disclosure and terms for life of the contract vs change with notice.
AT&T isn't a monopoly any more. Being evil is enough.
That AT&T was broke up before cell phones were a dream.
But why kill ATTWS? You now have competition. Go get a new plan when AT&T changes your plan.
Of course, AT&T Wireless isn't a monolith, and hasn't actually existed before, I think, 2006?
Before AT&T Wireless, it was Cingular. Before that, it was *gasp* AT&T Wireless (ATTWS).
Before that, mostly regional carriers that got gobbled up, like Cellular One in Maine, I think. Or was it Maine Cellular, they all blur together.
Which I remember well.
So AT&T has had a few years to demonstrate their slavery to the profit motive (proper for a corporation) and moderate disdain for customers (not so proper). Of course Sprint holds the trophy for putting profit ahead of service, when they canned a bunch of customers because they called too often to complain. I think that was a brilliant move on their part, BTW, as they ditched people that called more than once a day. These are dissatified customers, and giving them a get-off-of-Sprint-free card was perfect. Many didn't want to leave. They like to complain. For those, we have /. which is relatively free.
It's not so much incompetence, as it is profit-seeking. Blowing out your network to accomodate massive data use is expensive, and cuts profits. The balance is difficult to achieve.
And AT&T should probably work on detecting tethering and enforcing their TOS. At least they can defend that on legal grounds. Though they can change the TOS any time, and watch customers bail when they have the get-off-of-AT&T-free card as well. Good riddance. Every carrier dreams of having a customer base that demands less service. Doh.
Maybe they will flood to TMO. Wait, iPhones don't do TMO 3G. Darn. They will need to stay. Captives. Blame Apple.
Bring a Thai woman home and see how this works out. Rentals are usually cheaper in both exotic cars and exotic women.
And eeePCs seem so cool, but after a while the thrill is gone, the keyboard hurts, and the screen is just too small. Ask my mother-in-law. She would pay more for a better machine. Of course, she's 87 and just got her Facebook page up 2 months ago, so something is working right. Depending on your perspective.
Expensive is a misnomer. I'm trying to find a good pair of Bluetooth stereo headphones. The Moto S705(?) is cute, and great range, but it's not very good in sound quality and I still have wired headphones involved. Only cost $19 at a TMO store on closeout. My Altec BackBeat 903 sound very good, but sadly is not at all sweat-resistant, and when it gets moist it likes to call the last number over and over and over and over, faster than I can kill the call. and it needs to be blown out to clear the speakers. And the controls fail. I know why it isn't tolerating sweat, and acn't figure out a way to fix it. So... I'm looking at reviews for other headsets and hoping that buying the 'best' pans out. It never failed before, but technology has its own reward.
" the sort of intellectual property criminals they are interested in are large-scale DVD bootleggers, not individual downloaders"
The law won't discriminate. Neither will the lawyers.
If they write it, someone will sue.
Well, if we're going down this road...
Big boobs on a big girl? Not the same return on investment as big boobs on a small girl. Natural is always more expensive, it's the TCO my friend.
Small girls have significantly higher upkeep:
Clothes: Size 0 seems to cost mostly the same as size 16, but size 0 girls seem to need a LOT more of them.
Shoes: Well, maybe not shoes.
Other maintenance items:
Competition: Seems like everybody is bird-dogging your cute little girl. This costs in dates, travel, etc, which of course increases competiitive opportunities. A vicious circle.
Competition: Seems like your little girl is always trying to keep up with her little girl friends. This is expensive.
And just as an aside, the whole mouth thing has nothing to do with anything. Except maybe cigarettes, and I'm not too sure about those. It's a individual thing, though you should, according to several of my nieces, look for the DSL thing. They claim that's a dead give-away, though I think it's more likely jealousy. They don't much like scrawny actresses. Go figure.
Oh, then there's the whole small v tiny v scrawny thing. Kinda Eva Longoria v Pia Zadora v Olsen twins. A matter of taste, perception, and relevance.
Maybe it isn't so simnple after all...
The Metro was not much fun for most people, even for 100k. Acceleration as a suggestion, a ride like a water buffalo, though a buddy tells me the seats were pretty good.
But my '95 Explorer will go 300k this week. Got the trans rebuilt at 234K, other than that the engine is original, and it sure is a nicer ride than your Metro was. Yes, more expensive. My point is that your Metro needed to go 200K to be such a deal. Otherwise, small + cheap != good.
I have no sacred cows. I can see past the imperfections, even in logic, though that is more choice than goal.
True for laptops, laptop batteries, cars, women.
With exceptions that prove the rule.
Small + Good = Expensive. Eva Longoria, Tesla, Laptops.
Small + Cheap != Good. Geo Metro only example needed.
Feel free to feel offended. Way it is.
There is the possibility that lawnmowers are just cheaper in some other way, but I'm betting it's about making small batteries fit interesting spaces.
Remember the I-Opener?
I predict a similar fate to the Nook:
- Wicked cool device hits the market.
- Hacked and liberated.
- Provider(s) lose money due to the liberation.
- Tug-of-war between provider(s) and hackers.
- Provider(s) give up and more on after losing too much money.
I expect the cell connection will be firewalled pretty soon unless they completely munged the process and can't. Expect some OTA updates pronto to keep the rooters out. Tug-of-war over rooting. Eventually new TOS to make you a criminal for using the cell connection in ways other than expected. Dead Nooks all over the place.
I'm kinda tempted to buy one just to root it. I had a LOT OF FUN with my v5 I-Opener. Short-lived, but it made my soldering iron useful again, and kept my GF's 9-year-old daughter entertained and safer than with a standard PC, until she discovered LimeWire. Ugh.
I wonder if Cyanogen has any interest in Nook rooting. He's the best right now.
I have GPS in my phone, and it is adequate for my purposes.
But having on on the dash running all the time is the height of gadget stupidity.
I drive the same route to work Monday thru Friday. The guy who also does in the 2009 Challenger has his GPS unit right in the driver's side corner of the windshield. Always on.
And the traffic delays and congestion are as predictable as the sun. Every day, unless it's a holiday week when they are only easier.
And the DVD players in the front dash are even worse.
Don't blame the manufacturers. We easily fall for gadgets, don't we?
Please, please mail to your representatives a copy of the United States Constitution.
They clearly need one to refer to when this legislation ceoms before them for consideration.
ISPs DO IN FACT have to pay for the data you send and receive. Yes, they do.
Peering arrangements do not cover the cost of the connection to the NAP. If, say Cox Cable in Arizona wants to interconnect to the other Cox state networks, they can do so and it's just their way of dealing with interconnection. But when they decide to connect so, say MAE-West, they pay for the connection into the NAP. It may be an OC-148, or something truly studly, like a really hot fiber. These circuits are not free, as they require right-of-way, actual genuine fiber (which they may share sometimes with others in the jacket - true), and of course the hardware to make it work. Price out some of that some time.
Now, true, the cost is shared amongst the many many subscribers, and they could choose to peer in one NAP, though in fact that would be bad practice, with single point of failure stuff and all.
But the reality is that not only would Cox (as an example) have to provision enogh connections and capacity to at least prevent customers from flooding the lines with 'I can't get' calls, but most peering arrangements at the NAP require you to provide enough bandwidth to actually receive what other peers send to you (on request from your subscribers, usually) or they see you as not playing fair. This gets you either booted off the NAP or throttled (or ignored, see Cogent v Sprint) and your users get poorer performance. Providing adequate service in a NAP peering is non-trivial, and the big carriers do not let you off. If you're a small ISP, you usually partner with a bigger one to avoid this sort of thing. I know. I was a small ISP. My carrier was MCI for a long time, and they had me 3 hops from MAE-East, a nice multi T1 connection. When we downsized to BBN, we got a dual T1 that was 25 hops away from a midwest NAP, which was a little off the beaten path and increased our latency about 12ms on average. But it was cheaper. Boss wins.
The concept that somehow your ISP doesn't really pay for their ultimate connection to the 'Internet' is ludicrous and misleading.
And having said that, Cox cable is probably more interested in the high-volume users that 'distort' the local networks and might be causing congestion. This is where most 'oversubscribing' is noticeable, and where the pproblems for the ISP are most difficult, IMHO. And where they need to decide what level of service they wish to provide.
That should be interesting. That's where individual customers will be hurt, and will fight back.
And you wrote:
"ISP's per-MB usage charge is just added there to discourage customers to actually use their connection."
That's one pricing formulation. Another would be to price higher volume users to recover costs, while not discouraging them or losing them to competitors. This formula is not so commonly used, since real competition is ineffective in most of the U.S., though there are other pressures and this is not nearly so simple as most of us would like to believe. Of course, the impact is plain and obvious, so we tend to think that the cause is also plain and obvious.
Don't think I am defending packet inspection and service filtering, nor am I defending the US ISP marketers. But let's keep our focus on reality. They should be expected to carry any traffic their users request, without discriminating on the basis of volume or source, and they should either price their service as necessary (or desireable) or describe their services accurately so customers can make informed decisions and have reasonable expectations. And MOST importantly, they should not discriminate on the basis of the source of the data. For instance, throttle based on URL (hulu.com, for example) or traffic type (H.323, for example) and then offer an unthrottled service of their own which is substantially identical (HD video streaming, for example) and delivered via the same method (TCP/IP). This would be discriminatory in a way we should not accept - like restraint of trade, the ISP could throttle some vi
"I'll buy that argument once religious whackadoodles promise to renounce their faith because of televangelists and pedo-priests."
Um, the proper thing to do (for me, anyways) is to renounce the televangelists and pedo-priests.
It's a common mistake you made, and you need not apologize.
We shouldn't shut down the climate change debate EVEN if it is proven that the climate change evangelists have cooked the data and obstructed debate. But we should, at least, be dealing with the best available data and rigorous scrutiny of the data and the analysis.
From what I've seen of the scandal, it's apparent that some the global warming crowd can't tolerate dissent, and some of those least tolerant are also most influential. But this isn't news to me, personally. I've been trying to find current global temperature data for almost 3 years, and I've found that data for the last 10 years is being hidden. All we get are conclusions. And data from before is rapidly disappearing.
It's this hiding of the data that concerns me. You can't even stand the light of your own data? Something is wrong there.
ps- The argument that we need to develop renewable energy sources is important, but misses a huge point. Climate change is the reason that so many draconian measures are being proposed, from cap 'n trade to outright bans on useful things. Developing renewable energy need not require such measures. It makes sense on purely economic grounds, if oil is going to run out. And it is defensible on purely stewardship grounds - clean energy is preferable to dirty energy. Maybe a better sales job on that would work. Sadly, the readily available clean energy (nuclear fission) is alrady demonized in the U.S. Solar requires both capital and resources (real estate). Wind? Just to set the record straight, hydro power is not clean, it just makes pretty lakes out of pretty rivers, which changes the ecology greatly. Ask the fish. But we sent men to walk on the Moon. We can solve this if we get focused and make the decision to 'do it'. So, Mr. President, how about directing some of that TARP money into solving *real* problems?
If nothing else, maybe improve our transportation infrastructure - some impact there, like reducing drive times? Making public transit work? Making alternatives like car-trains and autopilot driving possible? We haven't begun to explore the solutions. We're just waxing on about how serious the problem is, and how someone has to do somethign about it.
Meh.
"The name 'bada,' means 'ocean' in Korean and was chosen to convey the 'limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform.'"
That statement is almost as meaningless as this post. Personally, I prefer actual applications to 'potential applications'. Of course, would you release a new phone OS with a name that conveyed a limited variety of potential applications? To heck with actual applications.
Deliver us from marketers. What drivel.
It is not a good decision to try and convince your users to use your service less. AT&T may want to re-think this, as their heaviest users are possibly also the most loyal, least price-sensitive, and more likely to upgrade.
Then again, if ditching 3% of your users gives you a 40% capacity gain, the choice is obvious. They are gone.
But this is about more than just bytes. If there are geographic concentrations of heavy users, then billing is a way to smite those who are causing others some pain. It sure is easier than managing your network correctly, or expanding capacity, or getting the lower-volume users to pony up more money for nothing.
I'll be watching to see how AT&T can convince users to use less.
Of course, this is the beginning of the net neutrality fight on cell networks. Expect AT&T to start blaming content providers for making such attractive nuisances. Then the phone manufacturers for making such demanding devices.
Except for Apple. They will be blameless, since AT&T sees them as the source of revenue that makes it all worthwhile.
Pathetique. I wonder how many executives at AT&T remember the Sprint debacle?