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Comment Re:Passcode (Score 1) 367

That states the requirements for warrants. It's meant to prevent general warrants, where English tax collectors would get a warrant to search through and seize ALL of your belongings to find evidence of wrongdoing. Warrants require probable cause, searches do not. Warrants are not always required (see, among others, consent and plain/open view searches).

Shoot me an email if you'd like to know more.

Comment Re:Monthly cost of a Windows Phone (Score 1) 181

We do have GSM. When I was a kid, I had a prepaid with Immix Wireless, they run a GSM network. I now use AT&T, also GSM, and the network is indeed fully interoperable. I've stepped on a plane on the East Coast and landed in Europe, and received text messages sent while I was in the air and my phone was off. In fact, the phone itself needed no adjustments to pick up data service.

While they're not required to unlock, AT&T is usually quite happy to give you the unlock code if you're going overseas. In fact, you can even tell them, "Well, you're just too expensive. I want to be able to buy a prepaid SIM." Unless it's an iPhone, you'll be given the code right then and there. I think the RDF keeps them from giving out unlock codes for iPhones.

Comment Re:FSZ's (Score 1) 566

Fellow Penn Stater!

Did you see the high school student who got slammed by State College police streaking, ruining his track career? A cop leaped out of a bush and tackled the kid, twisted his knee.

I gotta admit I didn't really like "Everywhere is a free speech zone!" at PSU either. There is nothing worse than having to deal with a few dozen fundamentalist Christians heckling you because you're hung over. I'm not talking about the Willard preacher, he's cool. I'm talking about the fundies that amass all the time on the north side of HUB. I've since graduated, but jeez.

The preacher says, "Did anyone here at the glorious Pennsylvania State University imbibe INTOXICATING LIQUORS this weekend?!"
The crowd goes, "YEAH!"
"Did anyone smoke the mary-joo-wanna this weekend??"
"YEAH!!"
"Did anyone FORNICATE outside of marriage this weekend??"
"YEAH!!!"
"THEN YOU'RE ALL GOING TO HELL!"
"YEAH!!!!!!!"

Wrong crowd, preacher.

Comment #DearNetflix (Score 3, Interesting) 349

You certainly made the "short list" of features that led to me giving up my Linux install and my wonderfully uber-compatible XBMC installation. In fact, you were the most important factor leading to the change. The fact that XBMC and MythTV work together as well as the Bundys when it comes to broadcast televison, well, now that I think of it, that's the only other reason. Rest assured, you were the reason for the switch.

Now, Microsoft made $50 on the transition; I'm a student. And Windows Media Center is pretty damn good, once sufficiently beaten into submission. I have it now as compatible with videos as XBMC, with metadata collection and display almost as good. However, you guys were nice enough to build an add-in to WMC, cool. $8 a month is pretty awesome for HD movies to just be THERE. Schweet.

However, that just ain't the case. Even though I'm a lucky bastard and can pull down about 3MB/s (and yes, I mean a little over two 1.44MB floppy disks, or maybe 0.0001 Libraries of Congress), "HD Video" just won't play. I don't use quotes for effect, I use them because that's what you call it, I can't get your player to cough up any information about what the hell resolution, frame rate, color profile, or codec. It skips and sputters, surely because Silverlight 4 isn't hardware-accelerated - but Silverlight 5 just isn't there either.

Now, I can: 1. Minimize WMC. 2. Start Firefox. 3. Go to your website. 4. Log in (WMC is logged in separately). 5. Go to My Account. 6. Click Video Steaming Settings (or whatever the hell it is) 7. Change the rate to 1GB/hr. and 8. Click Next. This gives me a 404 error, but it's been changed. 9. Return to WMC, completely stop the movie, and restart. Then we have video. I can't change that shit in the WMC client. That's cool, but it's not HD. Can I get a discount?

Now, I'd be cool with the fact that my HTPC (which is otherwise quite capable of 1080p, thankyouverymuch) isn't getting HD content, because I could at least have that thing playing and use another device, like my iPhone. Now, I was paying for the ability to stream HD to one device, and I wasn't getting that. I can't give you numbers for sure because your client is so locked down. However, I'm pretty sure that the SD-only stream my HTPC receives plus the mobile video on my iPhone still isn't the resolution I was paying for, but that's now blocked.

Can I have my money (and time) back?

(P.S. Dear Slashdot: You owe me karma back from the Google+ post. How the HELL did that end up there?)

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