* Posts by Rachel

37 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007

Woman sues over Vista to XP 'downgrade' charge

Rachel

Sounds like a vendor problem to me.

I really do not see this as Microsoft's fault. Either she did not make it clear to the vendor that she wanted XP and not Vista when she ordered the laptop or they just want extra money for reinstallation.

The way this article reads to me, it is just the vendor charging to reinstall the machine, not Microsoft charging some extra fee to downgrade.

Yes! It's the cardboard PC!

Rachel

Static?

Wouldn't a cardboard container be a static risk?

How to beat AVG's fake traffic spew

Rachel

@Tony72

Disabling/Enabling the link scanner is not that simple. I haven't attempted to reinstall to have the feature removed yet, but I do know if you simply "disable" the link scanner, then the virus program reports an alert icon in your system tray.

I find it really annoying to have the program reporting that there is a problem just because I disabled a "feature".

Net addiction a 'clinical disorder', says US shrink

Rachel

Socially awkward educated men

So, when is the study on socially awkward educated men, the net, and serial killers going to run?

I want to know how many might have turned to the net to fix some of their already screwed up lives rather than having to find real life alternate hobbies.

Usually people who are prone to an addiction get addicted to something, now, I'm not saying web addiction is a good thing, but it always makes you wonder what they might find as an alternative if it was not available.

Ofcom slaps Beeb for Live Earth swearing

Rachel

22 complaints?

A year later and this is still being worried about.

Nice to know that 22 people can waste how much money? I mean, imagine all of the wasted time in meetings and research over a few curse words.

Apple sued over 'inflated' iMac claims

Rachel

Love it

I love it, a company gets sued because they falsely advertise a new product and suddenly its back to the old wars of Mac is better than PC and whatnot.

Who even cares. The fact is, if you lie about something, you better cleanup your act.

If you like Mac and they are starting to slip in some lies, you better start screaming, or in a few years, you will find that you no longer like them. Don't run around with puppy dog eyes and blindingly trust them just because you dislike the current other options.

Sometimes corporations are like little kids. They want to know what they can get away with. If you dont' slap their hands now, next time they might be taking the hundred dollar bill instead of the quarter.

US allows visual inspections of nipple rings

Rachel

I swear

People are freaking out a bit too much over this.

This is an uncommon incident of a few select guards deciding to be jack-arses.

Its not like this is a normal occurance. Hell, I am from Texas and I didn't even know that Lubbock had an airport. It is not like its one of the main airports in the state. Your main flights leaving the state go from Dallas, Austin, and Houston, any other airports are pretty small and mainly have small jump flights over to the main airports before they leave the state.

So pretty much, you have more of a backwater airport with a couple of idiots who want to press their power just because they can.

I'm sorry, but there are quite a few of these guys who exist in the world.

Tolkien-inspired oil painting 'immortalizes' Silicon Valley rich people

Rachel

You know

Oh, let me get in on this.

For $100 a piece, half the price mind you!!, I can photoshop you into a scene from Lord of the Rings and then have it printed on canvas, just like an actual painting!

All you have to do is provide me with a decently high resolution photo!

Sociologists: Studying engineering turns you into a terrorist

Rachel

Maybe in Reverse

My main thoughts on this study is that they have things mixed up.

I mean, by the time you get to higher education, generally you have picked a general idea of what you want to do.

So, if I wanted to become a terrorist, wouldn't I then go study engineering? I mean, they just don't have a degree in terrorism.

I just think your terrorists are more likely to study engineering to further their careers. I mean, come on, what else are you going to study to try and get accepted at the local terrorism chapter?

BOFH: Friday madness

Rachel

Oh great

<sighs>

I am in Texas here..

I am just certain that after reading this it is now going to stay 7:25 am all day....

Woman admits fleecing shopping network of more than $412,000

Rachel

Paid

Generally, you try and pay out only the people who seek to inform you of these drastic problems, not those who try and scam you for all your worth.

She was up to 412,000, but its not like she was going to stop from the sounds of it.

Sorry, trying it out a couple times to see if it actually is a flaw is different than purchasing a ton of stuff and hawking it off on ebay.

Flaming kamikaze squirrel torches car

Rachel

Camera Phone

Oh... come on! Where is the camera phone when you need it. I was sooo hoping for a vid.

Oz censor bans Soldier Of Fortune: Payback

Rachel

Done before

This reminds me of the old game Rise of Triad. It did this same thing, except it is now pretty ancient and so quite a bit more cartoonish. They even had the body parts flying.

All they need to do is go in with a censor option like that game did. You could set different levels for the gore and I believe you could password lock it.

This emergency alert has been cancelled by Hotmail

Rachel

I can see it now.

Anyone else think that, after reading these comments, that the next phishing email is going to be an alert.

----------------------------------------------------

Timely Warning - Campus Crime Alert

Campus Shooting

A shooter has been reported on campus. Please call [insert number here] in order to receive more information on this situation.

----------------------------------------------------

Vulture goes awol from Scottish rescue centre

Rachel

The next google maps hunt?

Surely there will be a mass of people scouring the area in order to spot the amiable beastie!

Jack Thompson sets about Halo 3

Rachel

@Paul Darcy

Paul,

I think you should go pick up a copy of Halo and take your aggression out in game. It sounds like you are on the verge of a breakdown :P

So, go kill someone in game before you feel the need to do it in RL.

Facebook application hawks your personal opinions for cash

Rachel

If this was true

"Who are your true friends?: see who has the best opinion of you

Who are your best references?: see who has the highest professional and academic opinion of you

Your wins and losses: a question-by-question recounting of exactly who you won and lost to "

The developer responses seem to contradict the above mentioned comments. I would have to say if those terms are actually in the offer, then something is fishy, because it sounds like it will tell you who all the information you say would not be given out. So either the advertisement needs to be reworded or something.

Sony loses privacy complaint over Unfit Kids

Rachel

The problem

I think the problem here is that Sony threw a fit over some guys comment. They should have just funded their own broadcast or opted to do an interview to address this guys comments.

I mean, I'm sorry, but this guy is just crying because Sony didn't fund his little scheme and saying therefore Sony is anti-health.

You need a little more evidence than that.

Sorry, I at least know who Sony is.. Who is this other guy? and is he truly a good guy, is his charity non-profit, or is he siding a little cash on the side from this deal? I mean, he is definitely trying to slander a company because they didn't fork over some cash.

Women say no to pink tech toys

Rachel

Umm yeah

I have never cared for pink and I would never buy a phone, laptop, etc.. that was coated in it.

At the same time, I've always custom built my own PC and I always go for function over looks when it comes to the tower. Forge the fancy LEDs or the see-through case. I'd rather spend that extra money on an extra cooler, ram or video card.

Michael Dell 'not involved' in accounting fraud

Rachel

Really?

"If he didn't know, then he should have. All directors/members are required to sign off on the published accounts and SEC returns. They are responsible - it's almost the definition of 'director'."

You do realize that Dell isn't a small business with a single office right?

I mean, if someone wrote in that they only spent 1000 dollars on office supplies, but actually spent 1200. Would you actually know that the printer they put down as 200 dollars actually costed 400?

If you were brought a report that stated they sold 100 computers for 500 dollars each to x and x company, and it sounds reasonable, would you know that the deal was actually 450 dollars each?

I don't follow Dell that well to know how many PCs, printer, servers, accessories etc.. that they sell each year in how many different locations. But I am sure that one person couldn't know for a fact that every single item on this list was correct without putting some trust in someone else.

Drunk-astronauts doc says NASA is in denial

Rachel

MmmmHmm...

This guy just sounds a little off to me. He sounds like he is throwing a fit because NASA called him a liar, even though he can't point out any names, dates, or witnesses to substanciate any of his claims.

And of course being the wonderful citizen that he is, he waits until some chick goes off the deep end before trying to tell the public that astronauts have been flying drunk.

Not to mention that pretty much all of the shuttle launches are pretty well televised.

This is all just too convenient.

Light sabre on cargo manifest for next Shuttle mission

Rachel

"Tax Dollars"

Do some better reading.

NASA charges companies / people for taking props like this up. So they are making money and really, its possibly saving you tax dollars. That 10k might pay for those couple of welds that keep the heat shield intact the next run up. If they don't have to pay for more repairs or new crewman, then they won't need to request as high of a budget increase.

Families bond over video games: report

Rachel

re: title

"how about they take their kids to the park and play football? Or to a museum. Or out for a walk. Or to the beach. Or to the theatre"

Have to love assumptions.

1) Is there a nice clean park near their home? Distance from home? Time of day?

2) Are there any museums in the area? Can you really take children to the museum more than once and have them stay interested?

3) Walking. Whats the weather like? Is there a good place to walk? Time of day?

4) Beach. Ummmmm yeah.. everyone has one of these in their backyard.. or less than several hours of travel time away

5) Theatre. Cost? Is there one near or far? Time of day (yes, this matters, the kids probably have school)?

WHY do people assume that if you play games, you NEVER do anything but that. I mean sheesh... Outdoor activities are often limited by location, daylight, weather etc. Other activities like going to the theatre are limited by cost, travel, and time. I would hope a good portion of time you spend with your child would be during the week and not necessarily on the weekend, when alot of the other options become more viable.

If your looking for an indoor or near home activity to spend time with a child, then a computer game is a pretty good choice. It involves more participation and thought process than watching tv and not all kids are arts and crafts inclined.

Cops cuff man for burning Burning Man man

Rachel

Look at it this way

If your planning a barbeque for Saturday and some univited guest decides to cook and eat everything 2 days before the party, you'd be pretty pissed. You'd also have to run out and buy new meat, charcoal etc.

It doesn't really matter that you were planning to cook it anyways, you have to replace the food on short notice and may not be able to get the same quantity and quality of meat on such short notice.

So yeah, if someone comes and trashes someone elses property, he should be locked up. Destroying someone else's property, even if it is public or community property, is just f'd up.

BioShockers delivered from DRM hell

Rachel

Got to love it

You have to love it when they screw over the few people who actually pay for legit copies of the game.

They are ensuring that there are widely available cracks and warez copies available for this game. So, where-as the newb little warez want to be might not have been able to find a working version and might have had to resort to begging mum and dad for a legal copy, now there will be an amass of easy to find cracked and ripped copies.

Personally, I don't deal with technical support unless I'm trying to get a replacement for a broken legit cd/dvd. If something doesn't work, I'm going to find a fix or a crack online.

And yes, after reading this, it discourages me from purchasing a copy.

Google: Kill all the patent trolls

Rachel

"If you haven't made it, you haven't invented it"

Sit and think about this a moment. For most inventions, they have made it. Maybe on a small scale, maybe in a less than cosmetically profound stage.

Now, I would aggree that theories shouldn't be patented, if you just think it could work, even if you have the calculations to back it up, it really shouldn't be patented unless you have tested it, but many of your inventions are past that stage, they have discovered it and tested it. They may have even sold a couple on small scale, but depending on where they live, what resources or sponsors they have available, they may not be able to market it large scale.

This is what it gets down to. These legit people may just even need time to try and find that corporate sponsor or whatnot in order to get their product in the market place. If they do not have a patent, someone else may find out about it and snag it. Hell, it might even be one of the companies they attempted to negotiate with for sponsorship.

Chinese tuck into Texas turtles

Rachel

They aren't always sweet and cuddly

Ok, ok, so it is not a turtle. But you get the point.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-266564220525571346&q=rabbit+snake&total=1384&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

Sprint boots 1,000 phone customers for talking too much

Rachel

Good for them!

Ok, if you have ever worked support, you know that some people are never happy unless everything is free and done for them.

I applaud Sprint for kicking them to the curb.

As far as phone customer support goes, I've found that pretty much, if you have a problem, all of them suck. If something goes wrong, it's a battle to try and get it fixed. I have had problems with Sprint, but they have also been better than the others I have messed with.

Ebuyer in hard-drive warranty debacle

Rachel

Waranties

For some reading this, it sounds like they haven't looked at the parts warranties much.

Generally there is a manufacturer waranty. And yes retail waranties generally go a bit longer, to something like the 3-5 year mark.

It sounds like ebuyer had a mixup and stated a manufacturer waranty of 5 years when it was a 1 year waranty.

So really they aren't doing that bad in honoring the additional 4 years through their site, rather than directing you through the manufacturer.

Your still getting the same drive. When you buy OEM your generally getting the base hardware. You don't get the extended manufacturer warranty or possibly the extra goodies that might be packed with the retail device (cpu fan for cpu, software etc..).

The main problem for the consumer is that you might have to keep track of more paperwork and the return system may not be as easily tracked. Most of your drive manufacturers track everything by the serial number you'll find easily posted on the drive. So if the drive does fail in 4 years, you can reference everything through the SN and manufacturer and generally track its progress through the site. With the warranty through ebuyer, you need to remember that you purchased it from them and then deal with them as a middle man.

Hacking WoW and the pursuit of knowledge

Rachel

Ok, lets put this into comparable terms.

To start off with, this guy is screwed up. Hacking these games really screws with alot of people.

For everyone who says "Its just a game" and "People are just stupid to value it", let me put this in common terms for you.

Its entertainment. If you go to a night football game and someone shuts off the electricity and you paid to get in there, you'd get pretty pissed off. Hell, you might want your money back depending on the seats you got. You probably especially would want your night back if you made a long drive.

If you go to watch a movie in the theater, and the sound cuts out, the video halts, etc.. you'd be pretty upset as well. Once again, you'd probably be asking for your money back.

Now these games, you so despise, are the exact same things. This is someone's entertainment, you can compare it to live sports or a rented movie, the movie theater, or a poker game, it doesn't really matter. Hackers generally screw these people over. Things disappear that shoudn't, if your playing competetively, then its like someone can see your cards in a poker game.

And you can say that nothing in the game has real monetary value, but generally it does. We rate time as money. It is the reason we pay people to do things like mow the yard, because everyone's time is limitted. You only get so much time to watch movies or go to parties or actually sit and have a beer. If it took you time to do something and someone screws it up and you paid for that timme, then you lost money.

Game companies aren't really the ones who get screwed over in this. The hundreds of thousands of people who get affected by it get screwed over.

And not everyone who plays these games are crazy. Some people just find it more interesting to spend 15 dollars on a game they can play any time than to spend 15 dollars on movies that can get old quick if you try and watch them a second or third go round.

US car thieves floored by manual gearbox

Rachel

Sheesh.. jump to conclusions why don't you!

My god, don't assume that noone knows how to drive a manual in the US. For one, the owner of the car of course knew how.

And if there is some future auto-delete set for the manual drive, I do not see it happening anytime soon and it would probably be more of a global thing saying that all your car manufacturers are doing their best to push out vehicles on a global market.

Sorry guys, I'm an American and everyone in my family knows how to drive a stick shift.

So far, every car I've owned has been one and generally I prefer it that way.

But you have a wide range of areas here due to the diversity of the country. Here in Texas, just about everyone owns a vehicle, its hard to imagine living in New York or somewhere where few people do.

Why is Hotmail so bad at spam?

Rachel

"manage your email address"

Anyone crack up reading that comment??

I mean seriously!?!? I created a webpage a year and a half ago. Picked up a new domain to place my portfolio online for job applications. I created a nice new email address on my new domain and used this email only for job applications / references.

Guess what, it got spammed. Pisses me off really.

The simple fact is that spam programs try to spam variations on any domain that they can find. They try and hunt your email down from legitimate sites that you might get your email associated with. There is so much spyware out there, that one of your trustworthy contacts might get a tracker installed that would snoop your email from their list.

Its a vicious cycle. Your email might stay safe for a while, but don't go pointing the finger saying that it was someone's fault they started getting spam.

You can be totally legitimate and stingy with your address and still get spam.

Paris Hilton released for 'medical reasons'

Rachel

"Er..."

Here is the problem with that theory.

If she had a valid medical complaint, then why is the world just told "medical reasons"?

Its not like she hasn't flaunted her entire body worldwide.

They knew the world would react this way. Also, usually these problems just don't suddenly appear unless self inflicted. If she had a severe medical issue prior to this, it would have probably been brought up in the courts before she was actually jailed.

If it is self inflicted, then we should probably ship her off in a nice white jacket for 40 days, rather than a cozy mansion where she could have all kinds of fun items stashed.

Nope... she conducted herself horribly getting into this mess, was even more childish and ultimately lame during the court proceedings and now she's slinked out of jail due to hazy medical issues.

She's not going to the hospital, not to the shrink.. she's going home.

Sometimes, you just have to call the black kettle black.

Substitute teacher's conviction for porn popups set aside

Rachel

"Sue the School"

Bad idea this. Unless its a private school, the schools generally don't have money. It is sad but true.

If you sue the district, either you'll loose even more teachers or learning programs. The school isn't going to really pull more money from the government due to a lawsuit, instead it would try to pull more tax money from the district.

Now a suit to get your job back might be worthwhile if you could put up with the harassment from the area.

Book publisher steals Google laptops

Rachel

Confused?? Chris Matchett??

Ok, I read your post, and to me it seems a bit unclear.

Are you saying that people are off-based by comparing copying to theft and that it is a wrong analogy by saying hardware cannot be copied.

Hardware can be copied and it is a patent theft to do so. So the analogy fits. If I go and make an Ipod copy all the hardware and then start panning it out as my product, then of course I'll be sued and accused of stealing a product.

Now thats a little different from this instance, but still, if you put it say, in terms of software, if I make a copy of a piece of retail software and then put it online for anyone to download, then its called warez and yes, its illegal. Its pretty much the same thing.

Overall, its a good analogy.

Don't let Paris Hilton do bird

Rachel

Lame

"I have people who do that for me," she said. "I just sign what people tell me to sign."

Someone toss the petition for her to stay in jail under her nose and tell her to sign it.

Money or fame should not be a get out of jail free card.

She may not have hit someone this time, but if she has no respect for authority, she might next time.

And dipstick is not the only cute or rich girl in the world.

Wipe your arse less, suggests Sheryl Crow

Rachel

Sorry, but no...

Sheryl can do whatever she wants, but personally I don't care to have all this stuff forced on others.

I hate those stupid dryers in bathrooms, they never actually dry your hands, and either your holding up a line trying to get them dry or your just picking up more germs by touching something on the way out with those damp hands.

And I'm sorry, my grandpa actually carried around one of those old time handkerchiefs and I would never resort to using one of those unless it was a state of emergency. I really doubt wiping your mouth on your sleeve a dozen times would be much different.

How about just ensuring they recycle that paper eh?