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Comment Small ISP. (Score 2) 301

by Daas (#34974196) Attached to: 60% of AOL's Profits Come From Misinformed Customers

I used to worked at an ISP who had about 25 000 dialup subscribers. (And about 10 000 DSL) They were playing around with the idea of charging a couple more bucks for the service. I got asked to generate a connection usage report. Turns out 60% of the dialup customers had not connected to their service in the past 3 months. (That was 2 years ago, so 75% today would not surprise me at all)

When people are used to automatic billing either on their bank account or their credit card, they tend to forget that they're paying for some services they are not using.

Comment Sorry what? (Score 1) 342

by Daas (#32077310) Attached to: Rest In Peas — the Death of Speech Recognition
When talking to someone else, we can politely stop them and ask : "Sorry, what did you say?". As someone whose first language is not english, I tend to use these words a lot, mostly because of differences in pronunciation. Computers, on the other hand, are supposed to get everything right the first time! Why can't they, like us, ask those simple words instead of making stupid guesses??

Comment Re:Placebo No Treatment? (Score 1) 507

by Daas (#31248704) Attached to: NHS Should Stop Funding Homeopathy, Says Parliamentary Committee
I've heard this a lot, if there's no risk then why bother? You have to consider that people who really need treatment sometimes go see an homeopath instead of a real doctor or won't go trough chemotherapy or some other kind of treatment because of these qwacks.

I love the placebo effect, only when used at the right time, on the right people. The fact that they are selling homeopathic products at the pharmacy here in Canada is, in my opinion, a perversion of the professional title that pharmacists hold.

Comment Re:What's the point? (Score 1) 289

by Daas (#29093419) Attached to: TomTom Releases iPhone Navigation App
As a Canadian going in the US in the next few weeks, the idea of using my cellphone (For voice or data) scares the crap out of me. I wouldn't mind using a GPS app like this one while having the phone in airplane mode.

99$ is still pretty expensive.
The Courts

Can Avatars Make Contracts? 134

Posted by Soulskill from the +1-tax-ledger-of-smiting dept.
edadams sends in a story about the legal questions that are starting to crop up over property disputes in virtual worlds. A lawsuit in March 2008 that stopped one Second Life user from selling a virtual product created by another user marked the beginning of a significant amount of casework for several law firms, in large part due to the way Second Life's currency interacts closely with real money. (And yes, apparently the product in that particular case was for cybersex — did you have to ask?) "As transactions grow in volume, it's inevitable that disagreements will crop up. Linden says that although it will enforce its terms of service, including its ban on violating other users' intellectual property, it can't settle most disputes for users." A lawyer for one intellectual property firm handled a case in which the co-ownership of virtual real estate had to be determined, ending with a financial settlement given to two users who helped a virtual land developer run a group of Second Life islands. As virtual worlds get more popular and their business models more directly affect real-life finances, we can expect these legal issues to become more common as well.
Power

Submission + - New Gen Nuclear Power Plant Breaks Ground in China (mediaroom.com)

Submitted by
Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward writes: "The construction of first next-generation Westinghouse nuclear power reactor breaks ground in Sanmen, China. The reactor, expected to generate 12.7 Megawatts by 2013, costs 40 billion Yuan (~US$6 billion; that's a lot of iPods.) According to Westinghouse, "The AP1000 is the safest and most economical nuclear power plant available in the worldwide commercial marketplace, and is the only Generation III+ reactor to receive Design Certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)." However, Chinese netizens suspect China is being used as a white rat to test unproven nuclear technologies (comments in Chinese)."

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It's a naive, domestic operating system without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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