Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Yahoo!

Submission + - Mass Manufacturing of Defective Products

Submitted by
LostIt1278
LostIt1278 writes: "Companies have been selling less than quality software for years and they have been getting paid for it. It seems that worked out so well that now manufacturing and selling defective hardware is common place. Every time I drive the 20 miles to get to the "city" to buy anything I have to drive back 2 days (give or take a week) to return at least half the items I bought because it has a manufacturer's defect. Example (TRUE!!) I received an XBOX 360 as a gift for the holiday season in December. It has already been returned because it decided that it wasn't an XBOX 360. When inserting a game (any of them!) it told me to please place the disc in an XBOX 360 to play it. I know, no big surprise there, everyone has been having problems with the poorly made 360. I have also had to return a $60 wireless Guitar Hero guitar controller (the yellow button didn't work), an original XBOX controller (made by Pelican that just made you spin in game), a PSP with a scratch on the backside of the LCD screen, 2 Mad Catz racing wheels for the original XBOX (I was told they shipped a whole batch of defective ones and not to buy anymore from that store), 2 Toshiba laptops (1 hard drive failure in the first month, the other a defective touch pad I noticed out of the box), an iPaq Pocket PC that refused to acknowledge any SD card, and that's just what I've returned recently. I have my own IT business and I spend a lot of money on technology. I, personally, am sick of having to drive 40 miles round trip every time I buy something just because some manufacturer wants to shave a few more pennies off of their costs by making their products cheap. Am I the the only one seeing this trend grow? It's getting a bit ridiculous and it's only getting worse. I literally have to return half of the items I buy. When will it end or won't it? How do we stop such a wide spread trend? I haven't even mentioned the some what often "less than helpful" customer service I've received while returning defective products. That's a topic all to itself but maybe another article eh Best Buy?"
User Journal

Journal Journal: Great new addicitve online puzzle game: Bloktonik

Journal by pixcom
Quite possibly the next Bejeweled, a very addicitive online puzzle game by Robotube Games: Bloktonik http://robotubegames.com/play_game.php?gameid=33 The latest puzzle game addiction has arrived. Bloktonik, already available around the world on Mobile Phones, is now playable online in this new, deluxe version! Bloks come raining in from 4 directions, and it's your job to land them on the central cluster, based on the direction they
Wii

Submission + - Wiinja - Wii modchip

Submitted by
Andreas
Andreas writes: "The first modchip for Wii making it possible to play backups have surfaced. The chip, like so many other, requires some soldering, but with only five wires it has to be considered a pretty simple solution. Tools for opening Nintendo's console can be bought on eBay for practically nothing. While games appeared already a month ago on peer-to-peer networks, they have not been playable until now. There is a catch with the chip though, the games has to be of the same region as the console, which shouldn't be a problem though if you really are playing backups. Videos (here and here) seem to confirm the authenticity of the chip."
Biotech

Submission + - Indoor air filtration products

Submitted by
alshithead
alshithead writes: "Products abound making many claims of improving indoor air quality. My wife and I have a need to provide the best possible air environment for our four pet parrots and the many foster birds (two to six at any given time) that reside temporarily in our home. Parrots (Psittacines) and birds in general, require a better quality of air than we do, hence the "canary in a coal mine". Birds have been used for centuries to monitor air quality and alert us humans to environmental dangers.

We are considering purchasing a device of some kind to help condition the air quality within our home. Stand alone devices and devices that tie into our HVAC are under consideration. Several of our parrots (Congo African Grey, Moluccan Cockatoo, Goffin's Cockatoo) naturally generate a fair amount of very fine dust/dander. This is potentially harmful to other parrot species, especially macaws. Reducing the danger of bacterial growth and infection is also a concern. We also have a Doberman, two chihuahuas, and a foster chihuahua. Despite our menagerie, we manage to keep a fairly clean house. The desire to do even better by improving our indoor air quality leads us to look for options in addition to regular vacuuming and changing our HVAC filter weekly instead of monthly.

Under consideration are HEPA, negative ion generation, and ozone generation. HEPA filters seem to require more maintenance as they trap everything (including bacteria) and need frequent cleaning. Negative ion generation seems to cause particles to attach themselves to surfaces and therefore additional action needs to be taken to remove the particles from the environment. Ozone generation is touted by many products but the US EPA seems to state there is no benefit in reducing bacteria or odors without generating levels that are dangerous to people, pets, and plants (http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html). There are multiple products that use any one or multiple combinations of the three.

Have any fellow Slashdotters out there needed to modify their environment's air quality for biological reasons and if so, how?"
AMD

AMD Says Barcelona Will Outperform Clovertown 153

Posted by kdawson from the horse-race dept.
Dysfnctnl85 points out a ZDNet Blog posting in which AMD claims that its upcoming quad-core "Barcelona" chipset should be 40% faster than "Clovertown," Intel's quad-core Xeon 5300 line. AMD says that the introduction of Barcelona marks a shift in their strategy from emphasizing price to performance. The post goes on: "Intel is eager to claw back some of the server market share from AMD, and this is where Clovertown comes in... The Xeon 5300 line will represent excellent value for money since Intel plans on pricing them the same as its dual core Xeon 5100 processors. That could make things tough for AMD."
Privacy

Journal Journal: Medical privacy: You have none. Psych notes are public

Journal by nbauman

Your most private thoughts that you share with your psychotherapist have been scanned and merged with your general medical records, where they are now available to anybody who sues your insurance company over a fender-bender auto accident, if your hospital is like Stanford Hospital & Clinics (and most are). That's what Patricia Galvin found out when she sued her therapist, clinical psychologist Rachel Manber, for disclosing her therapy notes, even though Manber assure
Handhelds

Journal Journal: single baord computers

Journal by dman76
Some people and I are trying to develop a gamers pda system and we need suggestion for really good SBC's around 500mhz with pc functionally at a really good low price per. any help would be appreciated
Privacy

The Failing Right of Laptop Privacy 315

Posted by Zonk from the don't-tread-on-my-data dept.
davidwr writes "Wired has an interesting editorial on laptop searches and seizures. It raises some interesting issues, including employee rights against police searches in the workplace, routine vs. non-routine searches at ports of entry, and police use of unrelated data found in a database search. The article ends saying: 'Of course, there's a chance that the courts will not recognize the different scope of privacy interests at stake in computer searches, or will not be adept at crafting a rule that gives enough leeway and guidance to law enforcement, while also protecting privacy. At that point, the Constitution may fail us, and we will have to turn to Congress to create rules that are better adapted for the information age.'"

Slashdot Top Deals

UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver lightning with a laserbeam kicker. -- Michael Jay Tucker

Close