This is a test. For the next thirty seconds, this game will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test. Once weekly. Not annoying yet?
I hope you're joking, and if you're not, you need to get a grip and calm down. MSFT puts BILLIONS into xbox live, they're not going to just regularly ruin people's games for no reason. This isn't PBS here. -Taylor
It's a fucking gaming network. People are focused on playing the game, not on your emergency announcement. Unless you have a way to literally stop the game (pissing anyone off that isn't affected by the alert) you're wasting your time sending the message.
I'm sick and tired of these idiotic experiments by business people who don't understand the technology and therefore can't work out how asinine what they're suggesting really is. Then between 6 months and 2 years later, when they do have a few people hooked and relying on their ill advised service, they decide the experiment failed and pulled the plug. Fucking tossers.
Uhh... really? It's an *EMERGENCY*. I think when someone tries to go attack New York again, people will be willing to miss a few headshots to get the best possible warning they can. Its not like these announcements are sent out often. At least, in my head, these are rare occurrences on the scale of Katrina and 9/11 that people would be notified. I think once a year if someone interrupts my game to say "Hey, we're being attacked by god/mormons/terrorists/etc, try not to die", I'll forgive them for ruining my game.
Or are you so insanely entrenched in your game that you'd rather die than be notified of an emergency? -Taylor
Aren't we expected to know that? This is/. after all...
Yeah, someone needs to write their own summary when things get that dumbed down. I also like how they seem to know how much main memory i have on my computer. Amazing! -Taylor
Are you sure you are really that good at computers?
....aaaand then there's all the linux users, plenty (not all!) of whom are only interested in belittling you when you have a problem.
Thanks for making that worse.
The audio card WAS supported, I'm not an idiot. It was trying to get all the different movies I have with audio encoded in different formats and in different numbers of channels to all downmix or upmix accordingly. I had audio in 2,4,4.1,5.1,6.1, and 7.1 channels from various files and I wanted it all to play nicely on my 5.1 channel surround system. Windows does it perfectly. Linux requires you to make a wacky.asoundrc file that is waaay more complicated than just checking a box that says "I have a 5.1 channel speaker setup", which should be possible. Aaaaand then everyone says "Just use PulseAudio", so I go to the package manager and get that, but now do I have two audio managers? Wait, what audio manager was I using before? Google it. Oh, it's changed a few times over the years. Ok, well, is it okay to have two? Anyway, try pulseaudio, makes no sense, still doesn't do what I want. Google for something else, try a few more suggestions. Decide to try.asoundrc again, mess with that for a while.... repeat, repeat, repeat. I JUST WANT SOUND!!!
Not fun.
I LOVE linux and always try to find an excuse to use it, but sometimes it just sucks. -Taylor
snip........I support our office of windows PCs and McAffee.......
These two statements are incongruous. McAfee is crap antivirus, worsted only by Norton.
Unless, of course, you work for a manager who picks products based on colour rather than the recommendation of their technical support person.
Well, I dunno. I'm a mechanical engineer who supports our 10 person office in my off time. McAfee works for us just fine. It sure as hell isn't as bad as Norton, which I hate.
I mostly deal with managing our network - we got a linux powered 2 bay NAS which is in a RAID for redundancy, and I also backup our files daily (incremental) and weekly (full) to a separate computer, and once a month bring in an external hard drive to copy off backups for off site, non-connected backups.
So I'm not a total dufus with computers (not that those things i do are hard, but it shows I know what's good practice, hopefully).
McAfee just works for us. I know there are others, but really I haven't had any problems. The only virus i got was one that people on forums said they got even with big nice enterprise level sophos and symantec, so I don't feel like its inadequate. -Taylor
I think you're allowed out of your contract if you move out of the service area, but I'm not sure of that.
They aren't relating the ETF directly to the phone you buy, but they are relating it to the class of phone you buy; the $350 fee only applies to "advanced devices."
Ah, i missed that. Well that's not as bad.
I do with the ETF dropped more quickly though. If you've got a dataphone, you're likely spending $80+ a month at verizon, but they only chip $10 off your ETF each month. I feel like they're making more than $10 a month off of me, so as long as they're getting their subsidy back plus a little extra, i should be able to terminate in 1 year without still having to pay $230. But then, I guess they have 2 years contracts to try to keep you for 2 years, so I dunno. -Taylor
Math with the current termination fee: $200 for the phone + $175 to immediately break your contract = $375 (You save $185 over the no-contract price)
Math with the new termination fee: $200 for the phone + $350 to immediately break your contract = $550 (You save $10 over the no-contract price)
Either way you save more than simply buying the phone without a contract. The new fee is high, but I can understand their reasoning.
Yeah, but what if you buy a cheapo phone and then move to a place where the service sucks and you want to switch? Now those people are screwed, and I imagine that plenty of people want to terminate for fair reasons like that.
Personally I think the termination fee should be related to the phone you get. -Taylor
Well, that is true, as long as they just want things Ubuntu does out of the box. For virus resistance, Linux rocks. I've had a hell of a time getting other features figured out with linux though.
I spent nearly every night of a two week span trying to get audio working properly on my HTPC setup (well, the first few days was video) with Ubuntu 9.04, and finally gave up.
Installed Windows 7, and it worked right away, I kid you not.
I am DAMN good with computers, and that all just baffled me. I seriously lost HOURS and hours of sleep for two weeks trying to figure it out.
It really turned me off of Linux. I've dabbled with it for years and I love some of the power it has for low level stuff, but man, just trying to get audio working on a surround setup over HDMI with *some* 2 channel audio clips and some 4, 5, or 6 channel clips was hell in a way I've NEVER had with Windows.
Anyway, i realize this article is about viruses and the users want simple functionality like web browsing that Linux would probably be fine for, but I feel like some people here would just recommend it by default as soon as they see the headline, and honestly, Ubuntu is really not the best answer.
I'm not sure what is though. I support our office of windows PCs and McAffee does a decent job of protecting us from viruses, but eventually I do have to go in an fix things. -Taylor
I lived in Santa Cruz for a year, and I absolutely love the entire area. Now I'm reminiscing and want to take my kids to visit the San Lorenzo River near the Felton area.
Next summer!
Yes! I grew up in Ben Lomond and I love Felton!:) If you haven't been, go check out the Garden of Eden on the San Lorenzo River. Absolutely beautiful.:)
I live in Silicon Valley now, but I miss Santa Cruz so much! I try to get out there as much as possible. -Taylor
If you've ever been to Santa Cruz then what the rest of the country would laugh at as ridiculous makes perfect sense there. I think its the magnetic waves from the Mystery Spot
also known as the World's Largest Open Air Mental Institution.
P.S. Sorry, but you'll probably only get this if you've actually visited the place.
Hahahahaha, I grew up there all my life (and I love it!) but you're TOTALLY right! Some people in Santa Cruz are just insanely out of touch hippies that just have no idea whats going on, haha.
One time a kid told me his brother was working on converting his *Buick* to run on solar power (and would make millions), and another guy kept raving about running your car on water (and how it's "The Man" stopping us from all doing it)...
When i saw this article i was in no way surprised that that was this guy's defense.
Santa Cruz is an interesting mix of totally wacked-out hippies and druggies, and then a bunch of normal (but generally liberal) people that like its because its pretty.
I love it for both the prettiness (it's SUCH a beautiful place if you know where to go), and the amusing wacked-out hippies.:) -Taylor
Isn't that always the case? Any invention is obvious as soon as someone else invented it.
Actually, it's funny that you mention that, only because the stuff my company makes is for such a niche market, that our stuff is one of the few things that doesn't follow that rule.
We're not the inventors of this stuff, just making new products for an existing market, but did you know that there is a pretty good market for underwater torque measurement?
It's funny when I tell people I build that stuff... they just look at me like... "why would you need to do that...?".
I get really annoyed by people getting this the wrong way around. If something's easy to learn, it has a steep learning curve: your ability rises rapidly over time, repetition or whatever your measure of effort is. If something is difficult, it has a shallow learning curve: your ability increases slowly against time, repetition or whatever. Yes, I know ``steep learning curve'' sounds all difficult and stuff, but you'd expect that Slashdot readers would at least think about that particular metaphor a little more carefully.
I'm gonna go with what other people are saying and say that to me, "Steep" sounds harder.
So don't get so annoyed about people misunderstanding something when really it might be you misunderstanding it.
Most people don't actually think about a plot of amount learned versus time invested, they think "steep is hard". You've got to understand people to understand a language. -Taylor
Actually, this is so stupid I don't even feel like making a snarky comment. All I really have to say is the obvious: Screwing people only drives them towards piracy. People rent a movie because they don't want to pay $20-30 for something they will only watch once. Doing this won't change that, so if the option goes from "pirate it or rent it for $5" to "pirate it or buy it for $20", do you really think that's gonna help the studios? So fucking stupid. -Taylor
I didn't say I need time travel. I'm not saying I don't either, actually. The point is just that I wish we had it, for the magic of it all. So that my childhood dreams can come true. -Taylor
i brought this up before, and was shouted down a little bit.
i think it's less like the future leaking back to prevent the present, and more like the present just isn't capable of reaching the future we expect.
it's like the first time you ever put two little toy magnets together, north pole to north pole. not really knowing anything about them, you think they might stay, but one flips as soon as you take away your hand. try as you might, there is no way for you, as a child, to keep them together effectively. eventually you give up and walk away. your present can't reach a future in which the magnets stay aligned in a way which you desire.
Yeah, that's pretty reasonable, but I think the argument is that things we know normally work have broken, before we've even powered them on. I think. I lose track of LHC news. I'm just trying to enjoy life before the LHC kills us all.;) -Taylor
Kdawson's name is on this, why am I not surprised. I don't mean to troll, but wow does that editor have some interesting stories to his/her name. I mean honestly, a bonified, "time travel is killing the LHC", story?
Actually you kind of are trolling, because that's not what this article is. This is not a "time travel is doing something" article, it's a "two otherwise respectable scientists are saying something pretty crazy" article. And that is notable, because that does not normally happen. -Taylor
This theory actually kind of makes sense to me... almost.
If the universe were indeed so much more complex than we imagined (which I fully believe is possible) that something like this could happen, I still don't think it would happen this way - that the future universe is coming back in time, just to break some magnets. Nature is rarely so subtle.
I do believe in the possibility of multiverse theory being correct, which also allows me to believe in some form of time travel, but a more natural extension of this all is that the particles created in the future tear a hole in time-space and destroy the collision center of the machine, not some magnets around the edge (unless an accidental collision occurred elsewhere, i suppose).
Plus, I've never figured out if time-space would follow the earth in its orbit, or if these things would just happen out in space somewhere, at the spot in orbit the earth was going to be at.
I really hope this is kind of correct, or the universe would be a much less interesting place. I fear that one day we'll figure everything about this stuff out, and that it won't be a magical world of multiverses and time travel. -Taylor
Chisel binary onto stone slabs. 4000 years from now it'll be displayed in a history museum.
Come on now, this is Slashdot! Laser etch a slab of titanium man!
Maybe even use a product like Cermark, which bonds to metal and turns black, when exposed to a laser. Apparently the military uses it, it's supposed to be good stuff! -Taylor
Best Buy's sales staff are not paid on commission, as far as I'm aware.
Backing that up, my buddy worked there for years. They were big on how they don't pay commission. Unless that's changed recently, they still don't get commission. -Taylor
You seriously think only 30% of your hearing comes through the air into your ears but most - 70% comes in through your bones? That's absurd. Turn on your stereo and compare the volume with ear plugs in and with them out. Does that sound like only a 30% reduction in volume? It's less absurd to suggest that 70% of your own voice is heard by bone conduction, but I'd even be skeptical of that.
Well, I can see louder sounds affecting your skull more than quiet ones.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a test. For the next thirty seconds, this game will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test. Once weekly. Not annoying yet?
I hope you're joking, and if you're not, you need to get a grip and calm down. MSFT puts BILLIONS into xbox live, they're not going to just regularly ruin people's games for no reason. This isn't PBS here.
-Taylor
.. would be good for tornado warning:
"There is a tornado in your area. It is OUTSIDE. You do remember where OUTSIDE is, right?"
Follwed by: "Just stay there in your mom's basement, and everything will be fine."
-Taylor
It's a fucking gaming network. People are focused on playing the game, not on your emergency announcement. Unless you have a way to literally stop the game (pissing anyone off that isn't affected by the alert) you're wasting your time sending the message.
I'm sick and tired of these idiotic experiments by business people who don't understand the technology and therefore can't work out how asinine what they're suggesting really is. Then between 6 months and 2 years later, when they do have a few people hooked and relying on their ill advised service, they decide the experiment failed and pulled the plug. Fucking tossers.
Uhh... really? It's an *EMERGENCY*. I think when someone tries to go attack New York again, people will be willing to miss a few headshots to get the best possible warning they can. Its not like these announcements are sent out often.
At least, in my head, these are rare occurrences on the scale of Katrina and 9/11 that people would be notified. I think once a year if someone interrupts my game to say "Hey, we're being attacked by god/mormons/terrorists/etc, try not to die", I'll forgive them for ruining my game.
Or are you so insanely entrenched in your game that you'd rather die than be notified of an emergency?
-Taylor
(most modern PCs have just one or two processors)
Aren't we expected to know that? This is /. after all...
Yeah, someone needs to write their own summary when things get that dumbed down. I also like how they seem to know how much main memory i have on my computer. Amazing!
-Taylor
Put a supported one.
Are you sure you are really that good at computers?
....aaaand then there's all the linux users, plenty (not all!) of whom are only interested in belittling you when you have a problem.
Thanks for making that worse.
The audio card WAS supported, I'm not an idiot. It was trying to get all the different movies I have with audio encoded in different formats and in different numbers of channels to all downmix or upmix accordingly. I had audio in 2,4,4.1,5.1,6.1, and 7.1 channels from various files and I wanted it all to play nicely on my 5.1 channel surround system. Windows does it perfectly. Linux requires you to make a wacky .asoundrc file that is waaay more complicated than just checking a box that says "I have a 5.1 channel speaker setup", which should be possible. Aaaaand then everyone says "Just use PulseAudio", so I go to the package manager and get that, but now do I have two audio managers? Wait, what audio manager was I using before? Google it. Oh, it's changed a few times over the years. Ok, well, is it okay to have two? Anyway, try pulseaudio, makes no sense, still doesn't do what I want. Google for something else, try a few more suggestions. Decide to try .asoundrc again, mess with that for a while.... repeat, repeat, repeat. I JUST WANT SOUND!!!
Not fun.
I LOVE linux and always try to find an excuse to use it, but sometimes it just sucks.
-Taylor
I am DAMN good with computers........
snip ........I support our office of windows PCs and McAffee.......
These two statements are incongruous. McAfee is crap antivirus, worsted only by Norton.
Unless, of course, you work for a manager who picks products based on colour rather than the recommendation of their technical support person.
Well, I dunno. I'm a mechanical engineer who supports our 10 person office in my off time. McAfee works for us just fine. It sure as hell isn't as bad as Norton, which I hate.
I mostly deal with managing our network - we got a linux powered 2 bay NAS which is in a RAID for redundancy, and I also backup our files daily (incremental) and weekly (full) to a separate computer, and once a month bring in an external hard drive to copy off backups for off site, non-connected backups.
So I'm not a total dufus with computers (not that those things i do are hard, but it shows I know what's good practice, hopefully).
McAfee just works for us. I know there are others, but really I haven't had any problems. The only virus i got was one that people on forums said they got even with big nice enterprise level sophos and symantec, so I don't feel like its inadequate.
-Taylor
I think you're allowed out of your contract if you move out of the service area, but I'm not sure of that.
They aren't relating the ETF directly to the phone you buy, but they are relating it to the class of phone you buy; the $350 fee only applies to "advanced devices."
Ah, i missed that. Well that's not as bad.
I do with the ETF dropped more quickly though. If you've got a dataphone, you're likely spending $80+ a month at verizon, but they only chip $10 off your ETF each month. I feel like they're making more than $10 a month off of me, so as long as they're getting their subsidy back plus a little extra, i should be able to terminate in 1 year without still having to pay $230. But then, I guess they have 2 years contracts to try to keep you for 2 years, so I dunno.
-Taylor
Using the DROID as an example:
The DROID with no contract is $560.
Math with the current termination fee:
$200 for the phone +
$175 to immediately break your contract =
$375 (You save $185 over the no-contract price)
Math with the new termination fee:
$200 for the phone +
$350 to immediately break your contract =
$550 (You save $10 over the no-contract price)
Either way you save more than simply buying the phone without a contract. The new fee is high, but I can understand their reasoning.
Yeah, but what if you buy a cheapo phone and then move to a place where the service sucks and you want to switch?
Now those people are screwed, and I imagine that plenty of people want to terminate for fair reasons like that.
Personally I think the termination fee should be related to the phone you get.
-Taylor
No. Try Ubuntu.
Well, that is true, as long as they just want things Ubuntu does out of the box. For virus resistance, Linux rocks. I've had a hell of a time getting other features figured out with linux though.
I spent nearly every night of a two week span trying to get audio working properly on my HTPC setup (well, the first few days was video) with Ubuntu 9.04, and finally gave up.
Installed Windows 7, and it worked right away, I kid you not.
I am DAMN good with computers, and that all just baffled me. I seriously lost HOURS and hours of sleep for two weeks trying to figure it out.
It really turned me off of Linux. I've dabbled with it for years and I love some of the power it has for low level stuff, but man, just trying to get audio working on a surround setup over HDMI with *some* 2 channel audio clips and some 4, 5, or 6 channel clips was hell in a way I've NEVER had with Windows.
Anyway, i realize this article is about viruses and the users want simple functionality like web browsing that Linux would probably be fine for, but I feel like some people here would just recommend it by default as soon as they see the headline, and honestly, Ubuntu is really not the best answer.
I'm not sure what is though. I support our office of windows PCs and McAffee does a decent job of protecting us from viruses, but eventually I do have to go in an fix things.
-Taylor
I lived in Santa Cruz for a year, and I absolutely love the entire area. Now I'm reminiscing and want to take my kids to visit the San Lorenzo River near the Felton area.
Next summer!
Yes! I grew up in Ben Lomond and I love Felton! :) :)
If you haven't been, go check out the Garden of Eden on the San Lorenzo River. Absolutely beautiful.
I live in Silicon Valley now, but I miss Santa Cruz so much! I try to get out there as much as possible.
-Taylor
If you've ever been to Santa Cruz then what the rest of the country would laugh at as ridiculous makes perfect sense there. I think its the magnetic waves from the Mystery Spot
Haha, good ol' Mystery Spot. :)
also known as the World's Largest Open Air Mental Institution.
P.S. Sorry, but you'll probably only get this if you've actually visited the place.
Hahahahaha, I grew up there all my life (and I love it!) but you're TOTALLY right! Some people in Santa Cruz are just insanely out of touch hippies that just have no idea whats going on, haha.
One time a kid told me his brother was working on converting his *Buick* to run on solar power (and would make millions), and another guy kept raving about running your car on water (and how it's "The Man" stopping us from all doing it)...
When i saw this article i was in no way surprised that that was this guy's defense.
Santa Cruz is an interesting mix of totally wacked-out hippies and druggies, and then a bunch of normal (but generally liberal) people that like its because its pretty.
I love it for both the prettiness (it's SUCH a beautiful place if you know where to go), and the amusing wacked-out hippies. :)
-Taylor
Isn't that always the case? Any invention is obvious as soon as someone else invented it.
Actually, it's funny that you mention that, only because the stuff my company makes is for such a niche market, that our stuff is one of the few things that doesn't follow that rule.
We're not the inventors of this stuff, just making new products for an existing market, but did you know that there is a pretty good market for underwater torque measurement?
It's funny when I tell people I build that stuff... they just look at me like... "why would you need to do that...?".
Heh.
-Taylor
I get really annoyed by people getting this the wrong way around. If something's easy to learn, it has a steep learning curve: your ability rises rapidly over time, repetition or whatever your measure of effort is. If something is difficult, it has a shallow learning curve: your ability increases slowly against time, repetition or whatever. Yes, I know ``steep learning curve'' sounds all difficult and stuff, but you'd expect that Slashdot readers would at least think about that particular metaphor a little more carefully.
I'm gonna go with what other people are saying and say that to me, "Steep" sounds harder.
So don't get so annoyed about people misunderstanding something when really it might be you misunderstanding it.
Most people don't actually think about a plot of amount learned versus time invested, they think "steep is hard".
You've got to understand people to understand a language.
-Taylor
How about they release the source code for their old voting machines.
You know, the ones that aren't "optical-scan".
Last I checked, the touchscreen ones are the voting machines that have caused so much grief.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking! I think they are doing this in hopes people will forget about that.
-Taylor
Actually, this is so stupid I don't even feel like making a snarky comment.
All I really have to say is the obvious: Screwing people only drives them towards piracy. People rent a movie because they don't want to pay $20-30 for something they will only watch once. Doing this won't change that, so if the option goes from "pirate it or rent it for $5" to "pirate it or buy it for $20", do you really think that's gonna help the studios?
So fucking stupid.
-Taylor
I'll wait to move there until they establish the right to winters that don't drop below zero.
Trust me, they never have fewer than zero winters per year.
-Taylor
Seriously. What would you need time travel for?
I didn't say I need time travel. I'm not saying I don't either, actually. The point is just that I wish we had it, for the magic of it all. So that my childhood dreams can come true.
-Taylor
i brought this up before, and was shouted down a little bit.
i think it's less like the future leaking back to prevent the present, and more like the present just isn't capable of reaching the future we expect.
it's like the first time you ever put two little toy magnets together, north pole to north pole. not really knowing anything about them, you think they might stay, but one flips as soon as you take away your hand. try as you might, there is no way for you, as a child, to keep them together effectively. eventually you give up and walk away. your present can't reach a future in which the magnets stay aligned in a way which you desire.
Yeah, that's pretty reasonable, but I think the argument is that things we know normally work have broken, before we've even powered them on. I think. I lose track of LHC news. I'm just trying to enjoy life before the LHC kills us all. ;)
-Taylor
Kdawson's name is on this, why am I not surprised. I don't mean to troll, but wow does that editor have some interesting stories to his/her name. I mean honestly, a bonified, "time travel is killing the LHC", story?
Actually you kind of are trolling, because that's not what this article is. This is not a "time travel is doing something" article, it's a "two otherwise respectable scientists are saying something pretty crazy" article. And that is notable, because that does not normally happen.
-Taylor
that the Higgs boson is abhorrent to Nature is ridiculous.
Please don't anthropomorphize particles. They don't like when you do that.
Hahahaha, I hope people get that, that's very good.
-Taylor
This theory actually kind of makes sense to me... almost.
If the universe were indeed so much more complex than we imagined (which I fully believe is possible) that something like this could happen, I still don't think it would happen this way - that the future universe is coming back in time, just to break some magnets. Nature is rarely so subtle.
I do believe in the possibility of multiverse theory being correct, which also allows me to believe in some form of time travel, but a more natural extension of this all is that the particles created in the future tear a hole in time-space and destroy the collision center of the machine, not some magnets around the edge (unless an accidental collision occurred elsewhere, i suppose).
Plus, I've never figured out if time-space would follow the earth in its orbit, or if these things would just happen out in space somewhere, at the spot in orbit the earth was going to be at.
I really hope this is kind of correct, or the universe would be a much less interesting place. I fear that one day we'll figure everything about this stuff out, and that it won't be a magical world of multiverses and time travel.
-Taylor
Chisel binary onto stone slabs. 4000 years from now it'll be displayed in a history museum.
Come on now, this is Slashdot! Laser etch a slab of titanium man!
Maybe even use a product like Cermark, which bonds to metal and turns black, when exposed to a laser. Apparently the military uses it, it's supposed to be good stuff!
-Taylor
Best Buy's sales staff are not paid on commission, as far as I'm aware.
Backing that up, my buddy worked there for years. They were big on how they don't pay commission. Unless that's changed recently, they still don't get commission.
-Taylor
You seriously think only 30% of your hearing comes through the air into your ears but most - 70% comes in through your bones? That's absurd. Turn on your stereo and compare the volume with ear plugs in and with them out. Does that sound like only a 30% reduction in volume? It's less absurd to suggest that 70% of your own voice is heard by bone conduction, but I'd even be skeptical of that.
Well, I can see louder sounds affecting your skull more than quiet ones.