Raptor85 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (31) comment rss

  • On the post: Web Services Face Reliability Challenge

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2007 @ 08:51am

    That's not it's only problem...

    I've had rhapsody for a very long time, and since i had a very stable internent connection it was a very cheap alternative to cd's for the amount of music I listened too, and since my interests in music change quite often I wasnt too hurt by the fact i couldnt keep it. Years ago when I started my account, the program worked great, all songs in the catalog played just fine, and my $9 a month unlimited account actually seemed unlimited. It also didnt seem to bother with DRM to burn to the cd if you bothered to purchase a cd through it, and it ran great under WINE. Then version 3 came out, HORRIBLE interface, wont run under WINE because of it's drm requirements, and half of the songs on my playlist suddenly turned "purchase only", so you're paying $9 a month for a bunch of 30 second previews now instead of the full songs, and if you want the other songs you had before you get to pay full price per track for them, or $10 for the full cd (90% of my library became unavailable for "unlimited users")

    Needless to say, don't have them anymore, ill stick with independant music now that you've taken away the last decent way i had to listen to everything else, thanks for saving me some money Real !

  • On the post: Why Blacking Out March Madness Online Doesn't Make Sense

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2007 @ 04:09pm

    Re: Re: Re: WARNING RANT - BLACKINFIDEL

    @AC :America doesn't have an official language, a few of our states though have passed "english" as an official language, and some have "english + spainish" as official, louisiana has "english + french" both recognised as official, hawaii has "hawaiian + english" . Many states have their official documents in dozens of languages.

    back on topic, this is increadibly stupid of CBS. The main point of being able to watch online is that you dont have access to a TV or a station that's currently playing the game. Just yet another case of the old media companies trying desperately to control how people view their content, just like other outdated media they view the internet as a threat to their buisness instead of a tool to further it.

  • On the post: Is It Illegal To Help Someone Watch TV Over Their Computer?

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2007 @ 10:06am

    this would have been great

    i would have easily replaced my $80 /month cable with about 4 good channels at my old apartment with this. DSL was great there, but i could only get cable because DirectTV you have to be able to point the dish in the correct direction, and in an apartment complex at least 50% are going to be facing the wrong way. I was facing the wrong way.Cant mount it on the roof or something either, We were allowed to have a dish, but it couldnt be attached to the building itself. (some people had them mounted on tables on their balcony areas, some on tripod looking things) This is a great idea for Time Warner (ex Adelphia) bound area's like this... What i ended up doing was just canceling my tv service after the first 3 months, and didnt have anything at all for the next 21 months. (and really, after the initial month, i didnt miss tv at all)

    Even now i don't watch tv too often, even though my roommate's in my house have directtv, so thanks to restrictions on use and crap like this they've showed me i dont need them at all :)

  • On the post: Can A Web Crawler Enter Into A Contract?

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2007 @ 09:52am

    Re: Re: We need Old West Justice.

    Some establishments do this.

    For instance if I go to a comedy club I have to pay for a two drink minimum per person even if I were not going to drink.

    slightly different, buy why do I have to pay for drinks I do not want, since I purchased a ticket to the event that they will make money on.
    Every one i've seen it's written right on the ticket you buy, and is listed when you buy the tickets if there's a minimum. Going to a website and you're bound by a contract just by being there? It doesn't work that way.... you cant passively agree to be bound to a contract without knowing about it. Seeing as she was practicing law without a license you'd think she'd at least know something about the law.

  • On the post: Patent Office Says File Sharing Is A National Security Risk

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2007 @ 03:16pm

    i call BS

    Anyone whos ever worked on a govt. facility has had to sit throught training at least once on securing classified information, even if you dont work with it it's required, and they do tell you this in there..

    Classified systems DO NOT touch the public internet, they do have a network but it's seperate from even the unclassified DOD systems. Hell, they arnt even in the same room as the unclassified ones, they have to be in secured areas.

  • On the post: There's A Reason So Many Government Tech Projects End In Failure

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2007 @ 08:59am

    bad management

    Anyone who's worked IT for the U.S. Govt knows that the reason almost all projects crash and burn is because they didn't make any sense in the first place. You get things being pushed down from halfway across the country that comes in a mandate that pretty much says "so and so does it this way, so we are mandating ALL our people do it this way" and they'll do things like, say, make you "Upgrade" the help desk system that you just spent a hundred thousand dollars on to their version with half as many features and only works on NT4 under a blue moon on saturdays.....

    of course this might just be ain airforce thing...

  • On the post: Who Needs Linux When You Can Get Windows 2000 On The Cheap?

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2007 @ 04:35pm

    Re: Re: Someone

    WINE (Wine. Is. Not. an Emulator.)

    intel code is intel code, runs the same on linux or windows, wine only trapps the "windows only" calls and routes them to the linux equivilants. It's as much an emulator as directx & opengl emulates graphics card functions.

    It is perfectly possible, and does actually happen quite often where Wine can execute windows code faster than windows can.

  • On the post: Who Needs Linux When You Can Get Windows 2000 On The Cheap?

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2007 @ 03:13pm

    Re: What about...

    ahh, windows 2000, how much i hate to support you.... I for one will not be sad to see the day it goes the way of the dodo. Granted It wasnt a bad OS for it's time, hell, i'll admit it used to be my OS of choice for laptops...but that was a long time ago.

    now to go COMPLETELY off topic...

    I'll just put my little disclaimer here first that im a linux user, a programmer, a govt. contractor, and a heavy gamer. (min 3 hours a day :) )

    First off, though im a bit pissed at them now, an out of the box install of SuSE 10.1 always worked perfectly for me, and I installed it on friends and family machines with default installs no problem. Not one hardware problem, even though a laptop i installed it on had problems installing XP. (creating the NTFS partition always failed with no error code, tried two different hard drives too...)
    I've put it on friends and family's machines and enabled the "redmond" theme in the built in theme manager (all gui based in kde) and voila, they're none the wiser that it isnt windows, their office works, their internet works, their video's work, etc... and that's what users really want. the ONLY problems with the install were licensing issues, NOT technical ones. Installing the mp3 codec (a download and one click + pw installl) and Installing the WMV codec( same as mp3). Not a as big a point as most normal users would never install windows themselves anyways. The machine's have been being used heavily by NON TECHY users for a long time now with absolutely no problems. and hell, it's helped me too, not a single call ("i think i have a virus", "my internet stopped working!", "everything's running slow!"). Hell, now i have to call and check in, and actually ask them how it's goin.

    also, linux not good for games? hell, someone complaining about that earlier mentioned a few games that have linux native versions! My UT2k4 came with the linux and window's installs on the cd, doom3 does require you download the client from id and install it. (easy rpm install, no harder than double clicking a .exe, just with password :) ) Others i'll admit took about 2 more clicks than in windows, though there was no performance hit. The $9 i spent on cedega was way worth it, run cedega installer, insert game cd, install game, poof, it plays. Half life 2, battlefield 2, world of warcraft, ultima online, neverwinter nights is native linux. Wireless lan? works great on my cards, no drivers needed. no virus scanners on my system, no spyware blockers or other resource hogs. Got my hardware firewall and good practices, cant do much more than that on any os.

    No, linux isnt perfect, its far from it. but this "not an alternative" crap gets old.

    come online and get owned sometime, my fav ut2k4 servers...www.rosebum.com and fat jimmies vctf, uo shard origin

  • On the post: Vista: The OS That Does Less, Costs More, And Can't Protect Squat

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2006 @ 12:54pm

    Re: Vista is a must

    "DirectX 10 will be on Vista only. Well then, that seals the deal, if you want next-gen gaming, it's Vista or go get a console. Since I'm not a console fan, it's Vista and next-gen video card (i can wait a generation, got a 7800GTX)." What about opengl2.0? granted only maybe a 1/3 of the new high end games will support it (as is with opengl 1.5 right now) but generally those are the best ones :) (like ut2k4) Besides, it's only a matter of time before transgaming gets 10 workin under cedega

  • On the post: Our Upstream Tubes Remain Clogged

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2006 @ 12:37pm

    Re: Re: other reasons

    quoting from Bumbling Old Fool Again, completely backwards. They pipes they chose to provide to the consumers is geared towards higher dl/ul ratio, because that is cheaper for them. They do NOT treat their business customers in this way, and they deliver the business class service over the same ...pipes... and they will even deliver the business class service to a residential location. However, the business class service is exorbitantly more in price and requires you to provide a federal tax id (even tho its not used for a damn thing). I'm a Verizon small buisness DSL customer, and really the bandwith isnt any better than the home user packages (3m down 768k up), what they mostly charge you for is the static ip. (that's all i really get that's not in the home package) I'd love FIOS, but unfortunately it's not offered here yet, it'll be at least another year. Also, your federal tax id is your SSN if you dont have a seperate one for a buisness.

  • On the post: In-Game Ads Toe A Fine Line

    Raptor85 ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2006 @ 01:56pm

    Re: by Anonymous Coward

    Dont remember the eula perfectly, but if i remember correctly you cant sell a mod unless you license the engine, which is no different than any other commercial game. I wasnt even aware Valve gave them money for it, more than likely they didnt have to and could have just taken it.

    Generally you dont do mods for the money, you do it cause you think its cool. If you do get any money out of it, i'd have to say it's more from drawing people to your community (ads on your website, or selling reserved slots on your server)

    back on topic, it seems we've almost made full circle here. anyone remember the NES and early SNES era? Yo Noid? TMNT? A good number of those games were sponsored and contained ads, and the games were still fun. That's what needs to be done in todays games. Medeval/fantasy type games i think would be hardest though, cant really advertise for pepsi in the dark ages... hmm, or can you... (tasty witches brew that causes "charm" on target maybe?)