Something Random

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,232
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I am omnipresent

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,232
Location
I am omnipresent
With all of HBO's original programming, I might find four or eight worthwhile hours of programming there in a typical month. I'd pay $10 to $15 for that, in line with what I'd pay for three movie tickets or a one month subscription to an MMO.

However, the day that HBO - which has always been the holy grail of cable TV subscriptions - becomes available without the middleman of cable TV service is the day that cable TV is simply no longer relevant.
 

MaxBurn

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
3,245
Location
SC
They would have to walk a balance, too high and people will cancel and only sign up when new content comes up. Beneath some pain point people would just let it ride and stay turned on.
 

MaxBurn

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
3,245
Location
SC
Dear American Express;

Regarding this change: "Important message: The Balance Tracking Account Alert has been renamed Approaching Limit." This needs to be changed back.

I don't want to see the words "approaching limit" when I reach the tracking point I set. This is confusing the problem of reaching the actual account "Credit Limit" which are the exact words mentioned in the message body.

Feedback sent.
 

Santilli

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 27, 2002
Messages
5,257
DD:
Thanks.
That guy did some cool stuff.
I always wanted to surf second or third reef pipe on my Sunset or Bay guns, then drive into the inside. I figured, as this guy did, that he would be in before the barrel experts could get into the wave.
Downside is turning a 9'4" gun in a Pipeline barrel can be bad for your health. Excellent surfer friend from Santa Cruz had his arse handed to him in injuries at Pipe, mainly crowd related, causing him to eat it in spots
that aren't good. A lot of the other stuff appears to be Phantoms, a fairly crowded big wave spot, north of Sunset. Another DD, Derrick Doerner, was always trying to get me to go out there, but, I was always at an outer reef that was less crowded, just as big, with friends. To be real, I'm not flexible enough right now to take the pounding those spots give you, or spots in Kali, like Mavericks, that compare.

I also can't paddle with that guy. Funny dreaming about doing it.
I loved the paddle in stuff at huge jaws.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Do Amex cards have limits? I thought one of the things you got with Amex was no pre-set limit on the cards? I don't know if mine does or not.

There are AMEX cards without limits, but you need to have some serious bank before they'll offer you one (especially now). Most AMEX cards just offer lots of benefits (protection, insurance, points, etc) but still have limits.
 

Chewy509

Wotty wot wot.
Joined
Nov 8, 2006
Messages
3,348
Location
Gold Coast Hinterland, Australia
I just burnt through 12GB downloading Windows 2008 R2 Server and MS SQL 2008 R2 and then installing and updating both of those... Not to mention the 1GB I needed for updates I did the other day after installing WinXP in a new VM...

Damn, Microsoft doesn't care about people download caps... (Win2008 ISO was 3GB, and SQL 2008 ISO was 4GB, then all the updates to go with them).

On a side note, has anyone run Win7 with 512MB RAM? How does it run? (I need a Win7 desktop to connect to the Win2008 server, and use IE on Win7 to test an ASP.NET application on the server).
 

CougTek

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 21, 2002
Messages
8,728
Location
Québec, Québec
Damn, Microsoft doesn't care about people download caps... (Win2008 ISO was 3GB, and SQL 2008 ISO was 4GB, then all the updates to go with them).

On a side note, has anyone run Win7 with 512MB RAM? How does it run? (I need a Win7 desktop to connect to the Win2008 server, and use IE on Win7 to test an ASP.NET application on the server).
Microsoft doesn't care for "people" regarding their entreprise softwares. Individuals aren't the targetted market for Windows Server OSes and SQL softwares. Companies usually have little worries about download caps. My internet service for instance, allow me 500GB of monthly traffic. A one time 12GB isn't even a day's worth of download. I suspect most corporate internet plans over the world (among developped countries, that is) are like this or better.

I ran Windows 7 on a 512MB-equipped oldy (Core 2 lineage) and while it was way better than the similar machine with Vista, I wouldn't recommend it. Disk activity was high and nothing was instantaneous. Think about it like a first-gen Pentium 4 or 1GHz Athlon under a fully patched Windows XP OS. Same kind of sluggish. At 1GB of RAM, it was a lot better and with 2GB it flied.
 

Mercutio

Fatwah on Western Digital
Joined
Jan 17, 2002
Messages
22,232
Location
I am omnipresent
I don't have much of a life, but folding a paper airplane and making it go really far is still a pretty cool art and also a test of engineering discipline.
 

CougTek

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 21, 2002
Messages
8,728
Location
Québec, Québec
I don't have much of a life, but folding a paper airplane and making it go really far is still a pretty cool art and also a test of engineering discipline.
I prefer folding proteins than folding paper airplanes. Probably more useful for humanity too. I'll probably never make it to the Guiness record book, but that's fine. I prefer it that way.
 

BingBangBop

Storage is cool
Joined
Nov 15, 2009
Messages
667
Not if you have a limited BW and have oversold it. You have to do something to drop the latency that results from people trying to use far more BW than you offer. They can try costly overage charges and expensive tiered data plans but you know people don't like those either.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
Not if you have a limited BW and have oversold it. You have to do something to drop the latency that results from people trying to use far more BW than you offer. They can try costly overage charges and expensive tiered data plans but you know people don't like those either.

If people who had phone service regularly picked up their receivers and couldn't get a dial-tone due to overprovisioning, the FCC would be all over the telcos. If overprovisioning is perceptible by the user, it is an error on the carrier's part that they need to rectify.
 

MaxBurn

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
3,245
Location
SC
Hmm today I got another amex email "Account Alert: Your Spend Tracking". Looking in the account I see a limit and tracking slider and for some reason the limit was below the tracking point I set. I don't know if I did that at some point or what but I fixed the two so hopefully things will be a little more understandable now. I have to have these things turned on, between my online activities and work travel my credit card info gets stolen about once a year or two.
 

ddrueding

Fixture
Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
19,719
Location
Horsens, Denmark
You mean party lines?

No, it is a hypothetical. If the telephone company actually owned such a small amount of infrastructure that you couldn't get a dial-tone any time you wanted, the government would step in and make them build a decent product.

Extending that, the ISPs (particularly cellular) are saying that their infrastructure can't keep up, and that it is the (paying) customer's fault. By creating this false scarcity in the first place the ISPs are able to do things like data caps, traffic shaping, and other rate limiting BS.
 

MaxBurn

Storage Is My Life
Joined
Jan 20, 2004
Messages
3,245
Location
SC
All they really wanted was a new way to bill for the same usage and they have it now. I'm sure there are parallels to enron and the power shortages in CA. Do they still have rolling scheduled blackouts there?

The only talks I see in the regulation direction are the talks about cell jammers and deciding if they are illegal or not in some places.
 

Handruin

Administrator
Joined
Jan 13, 2002
Messages
13,916
Location
USA
Asteroid passing by very close to us in 2013.

NASA's data shows the 60-meter asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, will whistle by Earth in 11 months. Its trajectory will bring it within a hair’s breadth of our planet, raising fears of a possible collision.

The asteroid, known as DA14, will pass by our planet in February 2013 at a distance of under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is closer than the geosynchronous orbit of some satellites.
 

CougTek

Hairy Aussie
Joined
Jan 21, 2002
Messages
8,728
Location
Québec, Québec
If it hit Québec, you'd lose some sleep.
I made a simulation if the asteriod would hit Earth at 500Km from my home (Québec is 1500Km wide from South to North). I haven't read about the composition and angle of the asteroid, but assumed it is made of porrous rock and that it would hit Earth at a 45 degree angle, which is typical for an asteroid collision. The majority of Québec is covered with granit rock, so that's what I chose for the ground where the asteroid would gently land.

The results can be viewed here.

At a 500 Km from the impact, I would barely notice it. There would be no airblast whatsoever. Like I said, I won't lose sleep over it.
 

LunarMist

I can't believe I'm a Fixture
Joined
Feb 1, 2003
Messages
17,454
Location
USA
No, it is a hypothetical. If the telephone company actually owned such a small amount of infrastructure that you couldn't get a dial-tone any time you wanted, the government would step in and make them build a decent product.

Extending that, the ISPs (particularly cellular) are saying that their infrastructure can't keep up, and that it is the (paying) customer's fault. By creating this false scarcity in the first place the ISPs are able to do things like data caps, traffic shaping, and other rate limiting BS.

But you can't get a line any time you want. Any time there is a crisis or emergency all the cell phones
 
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