I'm not stupid, I'm just poor.

The data is what has value. If people create services that access their data for profit they will need to pay fees.

That's just a generic response from the CMS when it's set to down for maintenance.

In late 2018 Jason Scott from textfiles.com made a total backup (nearly 800 gigs) of the site and the site owner responded back with "So can I delete it not".

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Ftextfiles%2Fstatus%2F1029021450978643968

It has been expected for years now so it's no surprise it finally happened.

I live in Seattle where we get access to Amazon Fresh, the Amazon grocery delivery service and would it would be my guess they will be testing our their own product lines out here first. And I will be surprised if Amazon food products will sell at all. I've lived with maybe a dozen people and known a bunch of other people who have used this service. And the bulk of the stuff people buy are stuff they know, namely products by their brand names, because that's what they know they like, and what to search for. People who are not worried about price (Amazon Fresh rarely has stuff on sale, doesn't have coupons, and no card/point system) are not going to buy low quality products that will not be much cheaper then brand name items. Amazon Fresh is always much more expensive then local chains in general, so if you're buying from Fresh, you're not going to buy off brand chicken (oh it's $.50 cheaper then brand name, but $1.50 more in your local chain).

I'm not going to bother touching on the ongoing debate of which sounds better or which format is generally better. I personally believe the difference of vinyl and other audio formats is the process involved with vinyl and the a lack of a better word the intimacy people have with it.

I always tell friends who ask about my collection that vinyl is to digital media what home cooked meals are to microwave dinners. Some people don't like cooking and choose easy and fact meals they can just eat so they are no longer hungry. While other people enjoy the process of cooking for hours to make a meal they are proud of and enjoy. Is the home cooked meal better? To the person who cooked it yes it most likely is because of their involvement.

These days with digital media you simply browse a site/app click a few buttons and the song or album is lost into your collection. It becomes background noise after listing to it a few times and has no real relevance to the person. With vinyl (specifically hard to find albums) a person can spend years searching for the album. They might go to stores weekly talking with employees and building friendships so they can get items held for them or called when a big collection just comes in, or spend hours walking around the city searching all the stores. Nearly all my records have stories like this.

There is also the process of playing the albums vs simply hitting shuffle on your computer. You have to search your collection deciding what you want to listen to, start up your equipment, maybe you have to clean the record before hand. You also have a tangible object you need to interact with. There is involvement.

So like I said; some people want quick and easy music that requires no involvement. Some of us do. I love the process and thinking about what I went though to get an album I'm listening to, or who I talked to when they suggested something or the show I picked the album up at. Personally I could care less if one or the other sounds better and I still personally listen to streaming music/mp3's when I simply want background noise, but when I want to listen to music I turn to my vinyl.

If ubisoft and EA have shown us anything over the last few years its that always on never works. Interruption at home? Yep you lose all your unsaved game. Interruption with your ISP, major node some where, at the data center, or maybe a server failure, slight down time (anywhere) and you get to replay everything again.

I'm also going to assume that this activation code that will be required to be used will not give me the ability to download the game if the disk is lost or destroyed, or if I lose my game I will not be able to get a discounted price for the physical disk? Oh and I'm just guessing here but if I did buy a new copy my old save games wouldn't work with the different "game" will they?

Its like they WANT people to pirate games and software. Why go though all this when I can simply download/burn the game and play it for free? Sounds much easier.

Am I the only person who generates easy to remember yet difficult to read / crack passwords based on things like movie / cartoon / book quotes or music lyrics? I don't think I have ever make a totally random password for myself and instead create easy to remember passwords from all sorts of phrases. The only problem with this is when sites disallow long passwords (so many limit passwords under 10,12,20 characters).

Take for example (random things off the top of my head) the sun will come up to morrow, to morrow. Tswcu2m2m. Or Dance your cares away Worrys for another day DycaWfad. Throw in a few !! or $$ at the beginning or ending and you're set.

I'd say I hate HP more because I have at some point in the past used a Ebay/Paypal service.

Or music videos. Or playlists not following album releases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge vinyl collector and would never pay for a digital download (as I enjoy the entire album experience) but once you give in you basically throw out your entire excuse and invalidate everything you have previously said.

" How far do we have to go to ensure we are diverse?""

By not ensuring it and let it happen organically? Doing it any other way defeats the purpose of trying to be diverse.

Ubisoft has been trying to use DRM in their games for years and has failed at every attempt at a functional DRM that dosen't limit the person who "purchased" the game.

I recently bought Heroes of Might and Magic VI not realizing it was owned by Ubisoft. I was unable to play the game right after I downloaded it (their Authentication system was down to login to). After waiting several hours I was finally able to login and play. After about 2 hours of play I was disconnected again because the connection to their DRM server was lost. This meant I couldn't continue my game (and all saved data was lost too). After waiting a day it was finally back up. And on weekends you deal with the same problem.

Plenty of other games, systems, etc have been able to do very simple and very easy DRM on games. Look at battle.net and all of blizzards games. Their DRM management is so effective you don't even realize your dealing with any type of DRM or license authentication.

Gamers are willing to deal with DRM if it allows them to play their damn games they bought (forever) and have to deal with very little when dealing with the DRM. Ubisoft hasn't realize this and it will (and should be) the death of the company.

The problem is that no one wants to spend an extra $500 - $1000 for a 3D tv while most tv manufactures are trying to cover all their losses over the last 4 years from the mistake of trying to push this silly technology.

Once the focus is back to standard TV's with increasingly better displays at a reasonable price then people will start buying again instead off holding onto their all ready "good enough" LED / LCD tv's.

I take it you have never had to deal with identity theft before?

If your credit card / account was used in a different country or obviously not possible to be you making the transactions then you are damn lucky. In most cases though you are dealing with identify theft in your general area like a city or state. In these situations you have to prove that you are Innocent which is damn near impossible. In fact the credit card companies try to make it as difficult as possible for you to prove your Innocent.

So during Christmas time and banks dealing with thousands (tens of thousands?) of extra malice credit card transactions on top of what they normally would at this time of year I can't imagine the banks trying to make it easier for their customers. It will be in fact the most difficult time of the year for the customers to deal with this.

I've stood behind many of the things Anonymous has done in the past but this just seems stupid.

The only thing this will do is cost charities millions in audits, time, etc and make many lose services they use to collect donations. You know what will happen if a charity receives illicit funds through paypal? Their bank account gets frozen and paypal will in most cases never allow them to use their service again.

If they want to be dicks they should use these attacks through online services that the music/movie industries run / make money from, or big evil online retails like walmart and bestbuy or make payments to other banks customers mortgages / dept.

Did a quick re-read and it turns out they are going to offer it for free to developers in hopes of forcing customers to click on a button to get charged for better network speeds.

Somehow if their network is too saturated this client api will speed up their network they are saying. Oh, no it wont, they will simply throttle other paying customers while charging you an additional fee for a service you are all ready paying for.

Oh and a great quote from the article :

  "And just because you request a high quality of service doesn't mean you're gonna get it."