lead free solder has caused more landfill with electronics dying early than lead solder’s pollutative effect.
lead free solder not good enough for military applications, hence there exemptional status from rohs standards as regards solder, though they’re still worried about of the shelf life of electronics they purchase using lead free solder designs.
tin whiskers being a major problem with lead free solder :
secondarily : stress fractures are more likely with components that get too hot , such as happened on the apple ibook G4 motherboards, pictured below.
stress fracture dry solder joint worse on lead free solder joints:
this 3% lead that is in solder to reduce tin whisker failure and increase longevity of solder joints under heat and expansion stress in general, is probably much less polluting that having lots of electronics fail early and go to landfill because of lead free solder, in reality who knows which has done more harm, I’d probably say the landfill and lifespan / little use issue is a much bigger problem than 3% lead in the solder but maybe im wrong.
Why is a brand new 24″ imac as standard shipped with a non full size keyboard ? its not like they cant afford to give you a full size one in the base price of the damn thing.
what is it that apple, seem to change the mini external display connectors on their computers all the damn time, more often than their damn shirts.
par example, here is a list of the different adapters they sell on the apple site that relate to the dvi standard.
this means your laptop could have one of these :
full size DV connector if your lucky g4 powerbooks and allot of early intel macbook pro laptops.
or possibly pointlessly confusing tiny size dvi standards like the following :
mini dvi
micro dvi
mini display port
and none of the above connectors will come with your machine as standard, and you are only likely to have full size dvi cables kicking around spare in your office, so basically apple is charging you a £20.00 tax to use that port after purchase, this kind of skinflintishness, when they are charging such a premium of say at least £400.00 over the cost of an equal spec pc laptop, is precisely the reason why a company like apple sits ontop a billion dollar cashpile/warchest. its at the loss of your hair and the increase of stress the user has in resolving such issues.
why they couldn’t have stuck with the first mini type of these connector types we will never know.
the speed of light : roughly 186,000 miles per second
to get our fastest spacecraft speed into the same units of seconds, as the speed of light : (150,000mph ÷ 60) ÷ 60) =
A: 41.6 miles per second is the fastest an unmanned human spacecraft has ever travelled.
Dividing the speed of light in miles per second, by our fastest speed in miles per second.
186,000 mps ÷ 41.6 mps = we currently are able to travel in space 4471.15 times slower than the speed of light.
so how long would it take to travel one way to a star 20.3 light years away ?
4471.15 × 20.3 light years = 90,764.345 years to reach a solar system only 20.3 light years away at a speed of 150,000 mph ?
ok lets enhance that situation by saying theyre might be a habitable planet in nearby alpha centauri 4.3 light years away were still talking.
4471.15 × 4.3 = 19,225.945 years of travel
to make this alpha visiting journey even a 100 year project would involve travelling at a velocity of 7998 miles per second which with accelerating and breaking slowly would no doubt involve going at some speeds faster than that at some point.
basically at a speed of 28,792,000 mph, anyone fancy manouevering at that speed ? through small but hard particles perhaps, the vaporiastion shield and random rock avoidance technology’s would have to be very very very advanced to say the least, steering manually might be out of the question.
being that the speed of light in mph is 6,69,600,000 mph.
and that in a year light travels 5 trillion 865 billion 696 million miles.
you can kind of see that travelling, just one light year is the kind of distance that means unless the LHC discovers something as yet incomprehensible, life is too separated by space to meet up, outside our solar system with current our understanding of science in relation to speed and distance travelled.
id be interested to hear anyone elses view on this
1,083,688 items listed on xstreetsl 120 lindens per annum to list each item will yield :
130,042,560 lindens in revenue, which will yield
$481,639 extra xstreetsl revenue compare this to the $1.600,000 dollar revenue from sales commision.
now obviosuly this $481,639 is presuming this to be on the basis of charging listing fees for all freebies too ? but could possibly generate a 25% jump in xstreetsl revenue.
note this statement from linden :
“Why are free listings on Xstreet SL a problem?
The items are a large percentage of transactions which have associated costs but no value, which means that cost must be shared by all users.”
if the freebie listings do not pay listing fees except for this L$100 a month listing fee, then this L$10 per item per month listing is mainly there to tax the general seller, its specifically not targeted at the freebie sellers, as the average user will pay L$120 lindens per item per annum to list an item and the freebie seller will pay L$100 per month to sell freebie items full stop, these changes will encourage cheaper items not fair pricing at all. And non of these tactics will tackle freebie listings or dorment items, this is just all about revenue generation, pure and simple, yet i dont think linden have properly targetted this taxation to hit the correct party to deal with overpriced, non selling listings or the tons of low commisions low quality freebie tat, that will clog the listings.
I would personally prefer higher commision rates even up to 10% if necessary to sustain xstreetsl’s running costs, than listing fees, xstreetsl want listing fees because it enables them to control pricing from two angles and thereby confusing the seller so as to get more from them, without it being apparent. I beleive that the 25% jump in revenue could be generated by other more palatable means. and that listing fees is just subdiffuge and camoflage.
second life abuses the power it received, by its takeover of xstreetsl, here is the post related to this abuse on the jira, now philip has gone I guess this gouging of the client base will be the norm, the endless commercialism will kill the game.
they use the these following excuses to take these actions :
Why are free listings on Xstreet SL a problem?
1: The items are a large percentage of transactions which have associated costs but no value, which means that cost must be shared by all users.
:retort: well since the users are currently paying that cost and it is shared by all users then it is our choice as to whether to accept it or not, or whether we would prefer the changes you are offering, in my opinion taxation is more proportionate when taken from a single point. if your charging a transaction fee, then you may not also introduce listing fees which is what you are doing, or vice versa. I would probably even prefer to set a minimum commission price in lindens of items upto L$10 before introducing listing fees.
I also severely doubt if a way was found to reduce the burden of freebie sellers delivery costs, on listers who generate commission from sales of non freebie items. that the we would see any reduction in commission charge as a result, thereby I state this suggested benefit to us the users is a false proposal, As these changes are not really about reducing costs to users who sells items that generate commission at all.
2. They decrease the price that other merchants can charge within a category.
retort : Rubbish > Freebies help create competitive pricing models, but in reality I have in no way lowered my prices to compete with freebies nor would any sensible seller. you want something cheap you get a freebie, you want something decent you have to pay for quality. there are some exception to this rule but generally its true.
3. They hinder the shopping experience because a “sort by price” puts all freebies first
They garner so much attention that Residents are driven toward the freebies instead of quality, fairly priced items.
: retort : whining bullcrap, name a webstore anyone uses, where you cannot order items by price ? that is an essential feature ? drowned out by freebies ? come on people might buy them to see the quality ? then once they have, if theyre too rubbish they will buy a better item and pay real lindens thats obvious, the words “quality” and “fairly priced” are so unbeleiveably subjective, and there use in the above statement, seems to be farcical in the extreme. If you want to solve the search result issues first then why not prevent people listing dresses in 30 colours and calling them nonsensicle things, such that they drown people out in listings, such as searching for a pear reveals dresses, jewellery laptops , before it reveals the fruit itself ? these are more of a pritorty to sort.
My conclusion :
This isn’t about benefiting the users, this is more about subtle revenue increase for Linden Labs itself now philip has left, ie Nows the time to start squeezing the users of the game for whatever can be made from them. Second life already receives good revenues by commision on decent item sales, if these introductions were about unburdening us from supporting the freebie community as listers, then i would prefer a system whereby there was minimum linden commision on items even freebies when delivered from the site, whereas in game freebies would still carry no commision. The real issue here in my opinion is not freebies. Its the subtle back door listing fess for all sellers, the following are the two really evil concepts. Now if costs and revenue scenarion of xstreetsl doesnt add up and more revenue needs to be generated, then please changel the pricing model but do not introduce listing fees onto users who regulalrly sells items as this is complicating the pricing model and like ebay auctions is utterly irritating, a simple pricing model is best, charging to list will deter sellers.
Monthly Listing Fee of L$10 for all items L$1 or greater
in other words even items with commission still get a lsiting fee charge regardless of whether they sell ? of L$120 per annum is they may as well say to list any item on xstreetsl will cost you about 44c per annum or 27p per anumm in money before youve sold anything, it is much better to make it fully commission based.
Separate freebies into their own category
hmm that just seems silly to be honest. because if you really want to find a good item in xstreetsl, you have to use the advanced option and search under multiple criteria anyway, why not have those advanced options on by default ? or change the default order by which things are listed when a simple search for an item is conducted ? ie like the pear search under a basic search yields such logically off results ? if someone puts in pear theyre looking for a fruit !, not a dress or a laptop or a peice of jewellery. As for users you consulted approving these changes this seems strange, who were they ? what was the group consulted nuber of people and demographic ? I certainly as a seller wasnt, this to me as per usual strikes me as vocal commercial minority, who are massivley self interested being pissed of that some people are more philanthropic with their time and give things away for less money than others, this is because they are generous and this is a good thing, Second life was really founded on programmers and users generosity crossed with a restrained form of commerce, and to change that ethos now, will only drive away more users. it seesm that these programmatic changes being made to this website are not about enhancing the web page for users and more about tweaking the money model, to create more income for Linden labs.
My Solution :
I would handle it this way, with the following amendments to the changes , if it is necessary because xstreetsl is loss making ?
A: Put a minimum commision on all freebie items sold through xstreetsl of one linden upto a 100 linden dollar monthly maximum charge for freebies listings per xstreetsl user. Thereby not penalising the Person who sells the odd freebie. make this payable either by the seller or the purchaser choosable when listing, so as to account for both promotional advertising and genorosity.
B: No listing per month fee at all, for any item above L$10 that has generated a single sales commission within a month in which it is listed.
C: maybe all items under L$5, can only be listed if they provide a second life link/landmark where they can be visibly seen and purchased, so as to reduce people purchasing freebies for the sake of determining their quality, and then storing objects that dont meet theyre quality requirements for an indefinite period of stagnation in their inventory.
D: retain in game freebie items, distributable from vendors and objects.
E: when an item hasn’t sold even once in a year then add a dorment tag onto it and remove it from general listing searches such, that if a seller wants it to re-appear in listings they have to rejuvinate the dorment listing visible from within the seller control panel by changing it in some way, for it to then re-appear. This would be a way of reducing search load for items that are practically never purchased.
F: or make a special category of freebie the seller can use, that has no commision or listing charge, that is not delivered via the website, and may only contain one image and an sl link/landmark and description, such that if your depserate for a freebie you have to visit in game to get it, this would reduce xstreetsl website server load and increase in game activity to attain freebies, thereby deterring unnecesary xstreetsl freebie purchasing load.
G: or even make it so the user can choose to a pay a L$1 commission to xstreetsl directly when purchasing to receive freebie objects direct, rather than use the in game link in the freebie listing so as to reduce server load. With the condition maybe that a user with a linden balance below L$200 are not charged for delivery to their inventory of their first x number of freebie items.
certainly amongst my suggestions above I think is a better mix of pragmatic compromise ? listing fees is what i really object too, as it complicates the pricing model for the average seller, so if listing fees are to be implemented to cover costs make sure perhaps they affect the listings on which no practical commision is occuring, prior to the listing being made dorment or something.
I was kinda lucky to have access to allot of computers as my father ran a business and after hours i got access to his computers at his premises, and used allot of early stuff, as he seemed to buy computers, just on the basis, that he liked a particular model and indulged in it, as an interest whether you actually got value out of the machines / investment was less of interest in those days, it was all just so new and exciting, people bought computers just for the excitement of exploring what they could do, its a long list but here goes with some of my favourites :
The first computer I laid hands on ? was the Apple II with two external 5.25″ disk II floppy disk drives sitting under a green screen monitor – no colours except green. not sure if that was just not being able to afford the luxury of a colour screen at the graphics i believe were 4 bit by some jiggery pokery with some rules as to what colour/tones could be next to each other on screen.
I played space invaders on it, which was a mean and almost perfect conversion from the arcade version I had pumped many 10 pences into.
I tried out all the various software. Of which there were some pretty funky demos, including one with an interactive room, which was pretty cool, that could have been an early hypercard demo maybe ? I don’t think it was “mystery house” as it was more bitmap graphics than vectors, a picture that winked at you, things in the room that did things, but certainly cant find any reference to it on the web. Perhaps a little too early at that stage although i didnt know what software was used to build that room demo. Although I did think it was highly original at the time and not many other computers had done anything like it.
After that, I got my hands on the first portable computer – the Osborne 1 Luggable :
For those days the size of a family suitcase was considered portable, it didnt have allot of software, but it run cpm and came with mbasic which you could then use to run colossal cave adventure – from, man I got a kick out of that game late night with that little vector green screen, I can never explain what a revelation it was, to play that game, xyzzy, plugh are the magic words, and dont forget to get the lamp, the items stick in my memory, the egg the bird, the cage the rusty wand, and getting lost the the maze “You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike” the pirate stealing things, it was all fantastic. you painted the pictures in your own imagination, a cup of coffee and few custard creams and I was off on an adventure – for hours, a revelation and in those does a relatively small scene of people, the UK in those early 80’s days was leading the world in home grown – home computing, as america was still mainyl atari and nintendo players, now were just a backwater of the tech industry. I blame thatcher being from an era that couldn’t the full importance of sustaining the industry through a collapse period.
After those two memorable and seminal machines there were many others a pdp 11, Apricot’s, xen’s, viglen’s, almarcs, sirius’s, husky portable’s, IBM’s, I remember using the GEM operating system which was my first experience of a gui and wimp environment and using gem paint, to paint my first artistic pictures on a computer, all simple blue and black silhouettes with moonlight, if i’d have left school at the tender age of 11, I would have been an early ZX81 game developer, probably no smarter move could have been made. writing in my bedroom and replicating tapes on home made duplicators and selling far and wide by post. Theres a good documentary on this era coming called “from bedrooms to billions” hopefully this documentary going to capture this unrecorded era of early UK computer history.
My father also was probably the first man in hampshire to buy an original apple laserwriter, I remember switching toner cartridges for metallic effect ones etc, interesting stuff.
The first laser printer publicly avallable for personal use in the UK
Also the first I’d heard of to have a Hi-res Hercules graphics card for desktop publishing (720×348 in 1bit) way ahead the word DTP reaching the public consciousness.
and a winchester drive 30mb in size ? I think it was called a winchester because it was the equivalent of two of the biggest drives at the time and was therefore double, like a double barrel winchester rifle, although maybe i’ve misunderstood this. A few duller ones too the amstrad PC1512 pc clones struck me as particularly meagre ham fisted machines, compared to their genius CPC brethren, Though the PCW’s were probably the most purchased and functionally used business machines of those times to enhance productivity in actual businesses in the UK.
a computer of my own (well to share with my brother :] )
Upto this point id been using the machines in my dads business, rather than having my own machine, at about the age of 12, the parents clubbed together a feat considering they broke up before I was 1, way back when. And at considerable expense bought me and my brother a ZX81 to share for christmas, crikey a computer of my own ;).
with cassette tapecorder, and ran it off an old B/W television. We laboriously typed in games from listings in magazines and loaded a few cassette games into it, only having 1k of Ram meant you had to be totally ingenious to write games for it, as in the 1K of ram could only store about 10 long lines of code before the memory ran out, none the less I learned to write in basic on that machine, and to be honest never have I seen before or after, a more suitable machine for anyone to learn basic coding on- as one … theres was nothing else to do and two the restraint of 10 lines only, kept the coding short and haiku like, switch on and away you type, no distractions or anything. there wasn’t at that time much else to do on computers then, except to code, whereas today less people learn to code because computers have so many other inumerate distractions built in. Never bought the ram expansion for it the machine even at £99.00 was only just affordable by a familys in the UK in those days, hacking hardware to make the most of it, existed even then, for instance one of them frigged sound on a machine with no sound, by making you turn the volume on the television to maximum, they worked out how you could modulate the interference noise sent to the television from the natural hum of the internal circuitry to create an actual tune without a sound chip anywhere in the machine !
games on the ZX81 :
a 3D maze game on the ZX81 the grandaddy of 1st person perspective and the FPS games to come:
The precursor of elite > “trader” a 16k game i could only dream of running in my wildest fantasys :
The keyboard was as most remember a legendary pain to use, but hey Sinclair did make computers personal and affordable, without sinclair there would be no personal / home computer industry in the UK, and to think we once had a silicon valley in the UK, and now we have nought, quite sad really.
they even managed to hack high res graphics onto a ZX81, so the 16k games looked more like spectrum games.
My next machine was a total revelation the only good thing Alan Michael Sugar ever helped bring to creation – in my opinion (unless you consider crass entertainment like the apprentice, interesting), the cpc series is what I will only ever remember him for, as specification wise it was a stroke of genius, the best machine his company ever made the Amstrad CPC6128 :
This machine was like moving into modern day computing in comparison to the ZX81, amazing colour – amazing sound, a disk drive, the machine was far superior to its nearest competition, but the machine was expensive, I knew I was very lucky in getting one i suppose my endeavours on the Sinclair were deemed worth encouraging. It had an amazing paint program OCP art studio, the games were amazing it had many graphics modes one even running in 640×200 with 2 colours ? would have been considered hi-def by those days standards, the quality of the games were amazing, later platforms did not have such good games it must have been quite good to program games on, Gauntlet was amazingly close to the arcade version, Zombie by UBI-soft amazing (Amazing intro screen and music blew me away). one of UBI-softs first games ? if not their first ?
Cauldron had fantastic music and was a great if tough game :
As you can see by the following video almost every game genre played today in just an uprated form, was well established on these early platforms at this time, apart from god sims (actually even little computer person could be considered the precursor of the sims).
Even 3d games such as doom were represented by maze games and elite etc. As a gaming and basic learning computer it had it all.
I also played my first mmo on this computer via my first modem circa 1986-1988 ! 23 years ago ! I think it was 300baud and you used connect to micronet
which was run by prestel part created on post office premises and run by BT which i think was a BBS a bulletin board system, and from that you could telnet ? to “shades” mud
this was a truly stunning experience for the day, so few had been online at that time let alone played in an online game ! it was basically a Multi user text based adventure game where you could see other peoples action and chat. And was the first time I saw online griefing from a character ?(so long ago its almost madness) Each character had a name, and there was this one user who was called Reepicheep aka that mouse from narnia, anyway he used to find a place where people were congregating to go into a castle etc and he used to make allot of futile chat and fill the screen with rubbish, in this game you could kick another character and it would show that action to other users, so everyone took turn to give Reepicheep a liitle kick so the screen instead was full “xxxxx kicks Reepicheep hard” etc to stop him from blathering and filling screens with useless text, eventually he got the message, I got the feeling he was just to excited at being in an online game.
believe or not some genius has ressurected this game in java form presumably no extra players though ?
On my machine it turned out to be trying to copy a file bigger than 4gb onto a fat32 drive, so be warned, most likely to occur when copying to a nas drive, on the PC you will get no warning when copying a file bigger than 4gb onto Fat32 I beleive, you just get a corrupt file. Go for NTFS on the PC side and use the NTFS format drive accessing plugin created for MacFuse. ALthough having said that the problem was resolved by copying to a USB drive which was mac formatted rather than the internal I was trying to copying to and failing which was Fat32. So I’m assuming it was a FAT32 4gb file limit error. but hey maybe the error was the difference between copyng on the internal sata chain v external USB, but I deem that a much less likely explanation than the Fat32 4gb file limit so I would always check first to make sure your not trying to copy a file that is large than 4gb to a FAT32 fromatted drive.
Syncing the quantity of information that people handle today (a normal iphoto library per se) via the net is nigh impossible due to ADSL upstream speed. ADSL doesnt enable the possibility of syncing large uploads, we should of had SDSL from the start. But thats not in the favour of isp’s and hosting services.
