8. Sending marketing/sales email about other products the person didn't request information about just because they bought another of your products.
If I bought a product and signed up to recieve emails about updates to that product. I don't want to know about the 100 other products you also sell. I only want to know about support and updates for my purchase.
Marketing: If you have a mailing list for support of one product don't mix them together into one huge spam target list.
If companies really advertised the experience they were looking for, the work or job description, and most importantly the actual wages they would pay for various experience (education) levels -- then they may have a chance of a proper supply/demand economy when it came to hiring people.
Instead we have this weird game of buzzwords and vague requirements, no mention of salary but "pays well" (meaning 70% instead of 50% of industry average), the need of a super-star programmer, no benefit information or how to find out, no working condition information etc. Roll the dice and apply. Which party wastes the other party's time?
Haven't talked with John W for a while now. I knew about the language work he was doing. I'll check out the other two languages and OpenLazlo.
I've been playing with my own language ideas, similar to Self in that it only has prototyping and delegation as the language mechanism, the underlying engine is very Forth like (dual stack with a couple of addressing registers). The runtime always compiles to machine code through several compilers, simple/fast, simple+profiling, slow optimized compiler using profiled info; all depending on frequency of use. The modules/packages depend on other modules all automatically loaded and cached from the net. You can add hints to the compiler via assertions (that might be checked/utilized). Arrays of similar objects are first class objects allowing efficient packing of numerical/textual data. I'm paying careful attention to the runtime size and making sure that system level driver code could also be written without huge overheads. A real-time GC of course.
I'm hoping to prove it's viability by building a 3D game engine on top (similar to Blitz3D) that used OpenGL underneath, not thought too much about this at the moment. I do recognize that a new language is no good without an adequate well thought out library (NeWS's biggest problem was an immature library).
It will all be open source, just like Linux was/is. It should be possible to write portable applications across platforms, embed it into browsers and other applications. I probably won't release anything for another two years until everything runs well on a couple of platforms.
The syntax I'm working on is minimalistic, no static types, little in the way of variables and arguments (being stack based). It's a language for individual smart programmers, without being unreadable, who just want to get the job done. I'm tired of languages that pander to large teams of mediocre programmers.
In a world without laws you would be crazy not to own a gun. It wouldn't stop you from arguing for the establishment of law.
In our current litigious patent driven world Amazon would be crazy not to use patents to defend itself. Why should that stop Amazon from arguing for patent reform?
My own opinion is that 1-click should never have been granted, but when everything about the patent process is screwed up you have no choice but to use it to defend yourself until it gets reformed.
I reported to RISKS last April last year: Thieves were using bluetooth to target cars that have suspended laptops left unattended in parking lots, in my case Disney World parking.
It makes for guaranteed payoffs. If the Nokia phones are bluetooth visible while left in the car there's another easy target.
Any 'wireless' patent that involves doing something previously done over the internet should be invalid. The 'ethernet' evolved from the original 'Aloha' network protocol running over radio between islands and the university. They certainly had email and file transfers etc.
Wireless is just a return to the origins of the ethernet.
It is precisely the fact that science theories can be wrong, that makes it science. If there is no possibility that the theory is wrong -- that you must accept it on faith -- then it isn't science.
Science is all about "cause" and "effect". If all you have is "effect", and the "cause" must be accepted on faith as undiscoverable, then again it's not science.
Science is about finding the simplest explanation that fits all the known observations. When we find an observation that doesn't fit the current explanation we must conclude the earlier explanation was "wrong" and needs to be modified, or abandoned.
Science rejects the notion of a mysterious unknowable cause. Science abandons it's errors. That's what makes it trustworthy.
Science is not about good or bad, ethics, religion nor morality as these are not natural phenomenon subject to experimental testing, there is no cause and effect.
MS recently announced that it would be giving the US military 30 days to apply security patches before releasing them (and disclosing them) to the public.
So now MS will have 30 days exposure for every security breach.
I look forward to a new report from the same guys next year showing these results. Oh, I forgot, they won't be able to get the funding from MS.
This prediction should be benchmarked against my prediction:
that for the next 10 year earthquakes >5 will occur within an 11 mile radius of any location where an earthquake (>2) has occured in the past 100 years.
Let's compare the area of land I cover, and what this
prediction covers. Not much different would be my guess, but I can't tell from their information.
I would bet that I've actually predicted all 16 CA earthquakes. I'll also bet that I predict more of the
earthquakes in the next 10 years than they will.
Predicting/Guessing where using this pseudo-scientific method is easy compared to when. It's of little practical use, doesn't appear to be measured against any real controls.
There will always be a need for space based telescopes.
A land based telescope maybe cheaper and have a higher resolution but it will always suffer from the effects of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption and scattering by the atmosphere.
The electromagnetic spectrum is huge compared to visible light or the small proportion that we can receive below the atmosphere.
The troposphere (less than 50km) contains mostly water, gas and pollution. At high frequencies (10GHz) rain and water vapor cause significant scattering. Above 25GHz the water and oxygen absorb much of the signal.
The ionosphere (greater than 50km) contains ionized oxygen. It acts like a mirror for low frequencies. It's mostly invisible above 50MHz. It is the reason low frequency radio can travel (bounce) around the world. However low frequency radio from space isn't visible on the ground. Let's not forget the huge amount of VHF/UHF noise created by television, radio, cell phones etc.
Using only the portion of the spectrum available on the surface to understand the galaxy/universe is the equivalent of trying to do science when all you can see and measure is a very narrow shade of red instead of all the colors.
Space based telescopes will always "see" more things.
(The previous post was "Plain Old Text" but unnoticed by me slashdot software interpreted the -less than- character and -greater than- characters as html - BUG. I also forgot to log in, the day is not shaping up well.)
The first entity, government or company, to establish a set of satellites around the moon with the ability to defend themselves and knock out any transgressors will write the law for the moon.
Anything written prior on 'Earth' will be meaningless posturing.
Once that entity exists, no-one on Earth will be able to touch them. Earth would take a minimum of two weeks to mount any sort of retaliation. Any moon based entity has an enormous ability to threaten any country on Earth with a miss-delivered payload. The cost of directing something from the moon toward the earth is much cheaper than Earth launching something at the moon.
They will always be able to find a buyer somewhere on Earth for their products. They will be able to participate in an Earth based economy no matter what sanctions are placed on them.
I worked for a small company belonging to IBM. We had a VP from IBM come and tell us they "had no intention of shutting us down, we were a great asset", two months later they shut us down.
IBM VPs will say whatever people want to hear at the time. What they say and what they do are entirely disconnected.
Consider it a warning instead... they're thinking about it.
The problem with contract programming is that most people are incredibly bad at describing preconditions and postconditions. They either over specify or worse leave something out; the result is that the contract is invalid.
The code gets written and it turns out to have bugs anyway. We go back to examine everything and notice missing details in the contracts. We fix those problems, the code gets re-written and the cycle continues. In the end we've not achieved much in the way of program correctness, efficiency of code, or reduction of the programers time.
Trivial examples all show the benifits of whatever new language feature has been added. It's really only after significant use and experience that we can judge how good something is in a large scale appplication.
I remember getting excited about the "Z specification" language in 1986, but in the end it was just too damn hard for everyone. The programs were absolutely correct but if you wanted to change something later, you were back to square one. Forget about anything large involving multiple people.
Correctness isn't always necessary, some times good enough is all that is required. If you want to spend a couple of months proving that your implementation of sqrt() is correct I hope you have the funding (I see government money... enough said). Most of us can't afford this level of correctness.
Give me a sandbox, lego bricks, and let me play.. go away I don't like your rules.
Suppose you are building a new piece of software: - you've already searched the existing patents - are fairly sure that none cover your tech.
How many people do you need to review every new patent granted monthly, assume: - 30 minutes per patent to figure out if you are using something covered by the new patent, - we're only talking about software patents... anyone?
(Really anyone have this estimate?)
These people need to be law trained and know everything about your technology as it is being built, maybe a senior programmer with a law background, expensive labor... could always offshore it I guess.
How big does your company have to be to support this pure overhead?
Where'd all the small companies suddenly go?
What happens to you if you *miss* one, and get sued. If they can prove you saw the patent and ignored it, can't they now sue you for willful infringement with bigger penalties?
you should know all household robots have to include a beer holder - it's part of the law of modern robotics.
The only reason Roomba is succeeding is the expansion pack that adds a can holder on top and a little more intelligence to seek the person beside the cooler and then carry the can to the person that is whistling.
I totally agree with you that CD quality is better than most people can perceive.
I'm not complaining about the 16bit 44KHz recording but rather the current state of removing the scratches and removing the recording device noise. They've only just developed the technology. Who's to say that in 10 years we don't realize they had a bug in the tech (unheard of I know) and we could do better.
If all that they archive is the resulting 16bit restoration and not the images of the original vinyl recording then I still think we're not doing the right thing.
If the digital image of the recording grooved is preserved in the LoC that's a wonderful result. As we get better at removing the noise, and modeling the original recording technology, the quality of the available reproductions should get better.
On the other hand, if all they end up archiving is the result of the image+model+noise reduction into 16bit CD wav tracks then we've really gained very little. Only capturing 2004's reproduction technology.
Articles are a little unclear about which is being archived.
While I may be creating a public work as part of a worldwide effort, I will certainly be listening to people that are using it and complaining about problems.
I'll carefully decide where I put my available time. It maybe completing features I believe are needed or fixing things lots of people are complaining about. John's individual problem won't be fixed if it doesn't fall into those categories.
However from John's perspective we're not fixing his bug... and therefore we are not creating a public work? John's the one being selfish.
I've probably told him or others like him that his problem isn't high on my/our list of priorities. I've probably told him to either contribute a fix himself or pay someone else to fix his problem.
That's right John - your most cost effective solution might be to buy another piece of software and that's ok. I won't have to listen to yet another selfish person demanding I place his problem before everyone elses needs.
Around 1993 there was enormous interest from the cable TV companies and the networks to produce interactive set-top boxes to replace the cable-TV boxes. All of the trials failed for similar reasons.
People have a budget for entertainment; some number of hours per week, and some amount they are willing to spend per month. There is very little people can do to expand their budget, they have a fixed income, what little is left over after everything else is paid can be used for entertainment. They have jobs that are demanding more of their time, what is left after household chores, is what's available for entertainment.
Everyone behaves in a way to maximize the enjoyment of this limited budget. This had a number of direct consequences:
- you could not convince people to spend more money on a new
service, instead if the new service was, it took the revenue
from the old service. Interactive TV games took
away normal TV watching. Networks hated this as their revenue was
from advertising and there was less opportunity for ads in
games.
- If people could get a hour of entertainment, instead of 45
minutes entertainment + 15 minutes of ads then they would of
course reject the ads, even if the entertainment was of a
slightly lower quality. Quantity outweighed quality.
- New cable content could only take revenue away from old cable
content. People went to see movies, or out for the night before
watching TV.
- DVDs were guaranteed to take revenue from TV, no ads.
- People preferred interacting with other people more than
watching TV by themselves, the entertainment value was higher.
Multi-player games would appeal to people more than TV.
PS2/Xbox/GameCube games are a much higher quality than the games in 1993. Games like HalfLife, FinalFantasy that provide an unfolding plot are capturing people who also want a good story. It's not surprising that TV is losing out even if the quality hadn't slipped.
TV quality has slipped enormously in my personal opinion. I hate most reality shows - petty human behavior isn't real entertainment. I want to get away from that, I see enough around me everyday.
My wife and I are 40 and our entertainment priorities have changed in the past five years. In order of priority:
- Live theater - Dining with friends - Movies in theater - Board games with friends. - News and browsing on the Internet - PS2 games - Reading books. - DVDs - some select TV shows through PVR, on our schedule, skipping ads.
Hardly ever watch the news on TV as it's mostly content free. - live TV, almost never.
Except that ink really isn't like a part for a car, instead it's like fuel. If the car requires 92 octane and you keep running it on 87 with all the timing problems. No court will make the manufacturer fix the problems caused by you using the wrong fuel.
Some inks (wax based mainy) have different operating temperatures, different viscosity. If you use the wrong one and screw up your printer -- bad luck, don't expect a manufacturer to honor the warranty. Now if you can prove that the ink is in fact the same, from the same ink formula, just rebranded then you have a case under the MM Warranty Act.
These figures only refer to the number of people that are collecting unemployment benifits. They stop after six months and people no longer count in this number but they are still unemployed.
A better number to look at is the total number of tax receipts recieved from employed people, that number is also dropping indicating that less people are working. The government publishes this number but rarely points it out at press conferences.
The USA job market is shrinking... during a recovery. No, it's not lots of people retiring and living the good life.
Observation:- In every country that has started requiring the student to also pay for their tertiary education, instead of only meeting an educational standard, the quality of that education has declined. The educational institution feels some obligation to provide the degree to the student because they "paid" for it.
Slashdot Mirror
8. Sending marketing/sales email about other products the person didn't request information about just because they bought another of your products.
If I bought a product and signed up to recieve emails about updates to that product. I don't want to know about the 100 other products you also sell. I only want to know about support and updates for my purchase.
Marketing: If you have a mailing list for support of one product don't mix them together into one huge spam target list.
If companies really advertised the experience they were looking for, the work or job description, and most importantly the actual wages they would pay for various experience (education) levels -- then they may have a chance of a proper supply/demand economy when it came to hiring people.
Instead we have this weird game of buzzwords and vague requirements, no mention of salary but "pays well" (meaning 70% instead of 50% of industry average), the need of a super-star programmer, no benefit information or how to find out, no working condition information etc. Roll the dice and apply. Which party wastes the other party's time?
That's not a market that's a lottery.
:%s/\n/,/
vi's CLI did the work before you defined the graphical macro.
Hey Don.
Haven't talked with John W for a while now. I knew about the language work he was doing. I'll check out the other two languages and OpenLazlo.
I've been playing with my own language ideas, similar to Self in that it only has prototyping and delegation as the language mechanism, the underlying engine is very Forth like (dual stack with a couple of addressing registers). The runtime always compiles to machine code through several compilers, simple/fast, simple+profiling, slow optimized compiler using profiled info; all depending on frequency of use. The modules/packages depend on other modules all automatically loaded and cached from the net. You can add hints to the compiler via assertions (that might be checked/utilized). Arrays of similar objects are first class objects allowing efficient packing of numerical/textual data. I'm paying careful attention to the runtime size and making sure that system level driver code could also be written without huge overheads. A real-time GC of course.
I'm hoping to prove it's viability by building a 3D game engine on top (similar to Blitz3D) that used OpenGL underneath, not thought too much about this at the moment. I do recognize that a new language is no good without an adequate well thought out library (NeWS's biggest problem was an immature library).
It will all be open source, just like Linux was/is. It should be possible to write portable applications
across platforms, embed it into browsers and other applications. I probably won't release anything for
another two years until everything runs well on a couple of platforms.
The syntax I'm working on is minimalistic, no static types, little in the way of variables and arguments (being stack based). It's a language for individual smart programmers, without being unreadable, who just want to get the job done. I'm tired of languages that pander to large teams of mediocre programmers.
DOE/CORBA was one of the primary reasons I left Sun. I couldn't
see any future in such a bloated, slow protocol.
I often thought that M. Powel started DOE so that he could slide
what was left of the Spring OS underneath. Never happened.
In a world without laws you would be crazy not to own a gun.
It wouldn't stop you from arguing for the establishment of law.
In our current litigious patent driven world Amazon would be crazy not to use patents to defend itself.
Why should that stop Amazon from arguing for patent reform?
My own opinion is that 1-click should never have been granted, but when everything about the patent
process is screwed up you have no choice but to use it to defend yourself until it gets reformed.
I reported to RISKS last April last year:
Thieves were using bluetooth to target cars that have suspended laptops left
unattended in parking lots, in my case Disney World parking.
It makes for guaranteed payoffs. If the Nokia phones are bluetooth visible
while left in the car there's another easy target.
Any 'wireless' patent that involves doing something previously done over the internet should be invalid. The 'ethernet' evolved from the original 'Aloha' network protocol running over radio between islands and the university. They certainly had email and file transfers etc.
Wireless is just a return to the origins of the ethernet.
The USPTO should be sent back to school.
It is precisely the fact that science theories can be wrong, that makes it science. If there is no possibility that the theory is wrong -- that you must accept it on faith -- then it isn't science.
Science is all about "cause" and "effect". If all you have is "effect", and the "cause" must be accepted on faith as undiscoverable, then again it's not science.
Science is about finding the simplest explanation that fits all the known observations. When we find an observation that doesn't fit the current explanation we must conclude the earlier explanation was "wrong" and needs to be modified, or abandoned.
Science rejects the notion of a mysterious unknowable cause. Science abandons it's errors. That's what makes it trustworthy.
Science is not about good or bad, ethics, religion nor morality as these are not natural phenomenon subject to experimental testing, there is no cause and effect.
MS recently announced that it would be giving the US military 30 days to apply security patches before releasing them (and disclosing them) to the public.
So now MS will have 30 days exposure for every security breach.
I look forward to a new report from the same guys next year showing these results.
Oh, I forgot, they won't be able to get the funding from MS.
This prediction should be benchmarked against my prediction:
Let's compare the area of land I cover, and what this prediction covers. Not much different would be my guess, but I can't tell from their information.
I would bet that I've actually predicted all 16 CA earthquakes. I'll also bet that I predict more of the earthquakes in the next 10 years than they will.
Predicting/Guessing where using this pseudo-scientific method is easy compared to when. It's of little practical use, doesn't appear to be measured against any real controls.
There will always be a need for space based telescopes.
A land based telescope maybe cheaper and have a higher resolution but it will always suffer from the effects of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption and scattering by the atmosphere.
The electromagnetic spectrum is huge compared to visible light or the small proportion that we can receive below the atmosphere.
The troposphere (less than 50km) contains mostly water, gas and pollution. At high frequencies (10GHz) rain and water vapor cause significant scattering. Above 25GHz the water and oxygen absorb much of the signal.
The ionosphere (greater than 50km) contains ionized oxygen. It acts like a mirror for low frequencies. It's mostly invisible above 50MHz. It is the reason low frequency radio can travel (bounce) around the world. However low frequency radio from space isn't visible on the ground. Let's not forget the huge amount of VHF/UHF noise created by television, radio, cell phones etc.
Using only the portion of the spectrum available on the surface to understand the galaxy/universe is the equivalent of trying to do science when all you can see and measure is a very narrow shade of red instead of all the colors.
Space based telescopes will always "see" more things.
(The previous post was "Plain Old Text" but unnoticed by me slashdot software interpreted the -less than- character and -greater than- characters as html - BUG. I also forgot to log in, the day is not shaping up well.)
The first entity, government or company, to establish a set of satellites
around the moon with the ability to defend themselves and knock out any
transgressors will write the law for the moon.
Anything written prior on 'Earth' will be meaningless posturing.
Once that entity exists, no-one on Earth will be able to touch them. Earth
would take a minimum of two weeks to mount any sort of retaliation. Any moon
based entity has an enormous ability to threaten any country on Earth with a
miss-delivered payload. The cost of directing something from the moon toward
the earth is much cheaper than Earth launching something at the moon.
They will always be able to find a buyer somewhere on Earth for their
products. They will be able to participate in an Earth based economy
no matter what sanctions are placed on them.
I worked for a small company belonging to IBM.
We had a VP from IBM come and tell us they
"had no intention of shutting us down, we were a great asset",
two months later they shut us down.
IBM VPs will say whatever people want to hear at the time.
What they say and what they do are entirely disconnected.
Consider it a warning instead... they're thinking about it.
The problem with contract programming is that most people are incredibly bad at describing preconditions and postconditions. They either over specify or worse leave something out; the result is that the contract is invalid.
The code gets written and it turns out to have bugs anyway. We go back to examine everything and notice missing details in the contracts. We fix those problems, the code gets re-written and the cycle continues. In the end we've not achieved much in the way of program correctness, efficiency of code, or reduction of the programers time.
Trivial examples all show the benifits of whatever new language feature has been added. It's really only after significant use and experience that we can judge how good something is in a large scale appplication.
I remember getting excited about the "Z specification" language in 1986, but in the end it was just too damn
hard for everyone. The programs were absolutely correct but if you wanted to change something later, you were back to square one. Forget about anything large involving multiple people.
Correctness isn't always necessary, some times good enough is all that is required. If you want to spend a couple of months proving that your implementation of sqrt() is correct I hope you have the funding (I see government money... enough said). Most of us can't afford this level of correctness.
Give me a sandbox, lego bricks, and let me play.. go away I don't like your rules.
Suppose you are building a new piece of software:
... anyone?
... could always offshore it I guess.
- you've already searched the existing patents
- are fairly sure that none cover your tech.
How many people do you need to review every new patent granted monthly, assume:
- 30 minutes per patent to figure out if you are using something covered by the new patent,
- we're only talking about software patents
(Really anyone have this estimate?)
These people need to be law trained and know everything about your technology as it is being built, maybe a senior programmer with a law background, expensive labor
How big does your company have to be to support this pure overhead?
Where'd all the small companies suddenly go?
What happens to you if you *miss* one, and get sued. If they can prove you saw the patent and ignored it, can't they now sue you for willful infringement with bigger penalties?
Ignorance is probably cheaper in the long run.
you should know all household robots have to include a beer holder - it's part of the law of modern robotics.
The only reason Roomba is succeeding is the expansion pack that adds a can holder on top and a little more intelligence to seek the person beside the cooler and then carry the can to the person that is whistling.
It's a drink holder and a floor cleaner.
I totally agree with you that CD quality is better than most people can perceive.
I'm not complaining about the 16bit 44KHz recording but rather the current state of removing the scratches and
removing the recording device noise. They've only just developed the technology. Who's to say that in 10 years we don't realize they had a bug in the tech (unheard of I know) and we could do better.
If all that they archive is the resulting 16bit restoration and not the images of the original vinyl recording then I still think we're not doing the right thing.
If the digital image of the recording grooved is preserved in the LoC that's a wonderful result. As we get better at removing the noise, and modeling the original recording technology, the quality of the available reproductions should get better.
On the other hand, if all they end up archiving is the result of the image+model+noise reduction into 16bit
CD wav tracks then we've really gained very little. Only capturing 2004's reproduction technology.
Articles are a little unclear about which is being archived.
While I may be creating a public work as part of a worldwide effort, I will certainly be listening to people that are using it and complaining about problems.
I'll carefully decide where I put my available time. It maybe completing features I believe are needed or fixing things lots of people are complaining about. John's individual problem won't be fixed if it doesn't fall into those categories.
However from John's perspective we're not fixing his bug... and therefore we are not creating a public work? John's the one being selfish.
I've probably told him or others like him that his problem isn't high on my/our list of priorities. I've probably told him to either contribute a fix himself or pay someone else to fix his problem.
That's right John - your most cost effective solution might be to buy another piece of software and that's ok. I won't have to listen to yet another selfish person demanding I place his problem before everyone elses needs.
Democracy. Land of the Free. This is what it looks like, is it?
... sports events.
"Do you have your travel papers?".
We all know politians who extended temporary
taxes, or broadened policies. We've seen laws
extended to cover things they were never intended for.
Next stop: trains, state borders
Yellow's such a pretty color.
Around 1993 there was enormous interest from the cable TV
companies and the networks to produce interactive set-top
boxes to replace the cable-TV boxes. All of the trials failed
for similar reasons.
People have a budget for entertainment; some number of hours
per week, and some amount they are willing to spend per month.
There is very little people can do to expand their budget, they
have a fixed income, what little is left over after everything
else is paid can be used for entertainment. They have jobs that
are demanding more of their time, what is left after household
chores, is what's available for entertainment.
Everyone behaves in a way to maximize the enjoyment of this
limited budget. This had a number of direct consequences:
- you could not convince people to spend more money on a new
service, instead if the new service was, it took the revenue
from the old service. Interactive TV games took
away normal TV watching. Networks hated this as their revenue was
from advertising and there was less opportunity for ads in
games.
- If people could get a hour of entertainment, instead of 45
minutes entertainment + 15 minutes of ads then they would of
course reject the ads, even if the entertainment was of a
slightly lower quality. Quantity outweighed quality.
- New cable content could only take revenue away from old cable
content. People went to see movies, or out for the night before
watching TV.
- DVDs were guaranteed to take revenue from TV, no ads.
- People preferred interacting with other people more than
watching TV by themselves, the entertainment value was higher.
Multi-player games would appeal to people more than TV.
PS2/Xbox/GameCube games are a much higher quality than the games
in 1993. Games like HalfLife, FinalFantasy that provide an unfolding
plot are capturing people who also want a good story. It's not
surprising that TV is losing out even if the quality hadn't slipped.
TV quality has slipped enormously in my personal opinion. I hate
most reality shows - petty human behavior isn't real entertainment.
I want to get away from that, I see enough around me everyday.
My wife and I are 40 and our entertainment priorities have changed
in the past five years. In order of priority:
- Live theater
- Dining with friends
- Movies in theater
- Board games with friends.
- News and browsing on the Internet
- PS2 games
- Reading books.
- DVDs
- some select TV shows through PVR, on our schedule, skipping ads.
Hardly ever watch the news on TV as it's mostly content free.
- live TV, almost never.
Except that ink really isn't like a part for a car, instead it's like fuel. If the car requires 92 octane and you keep running it on 87 with all the timing problems. No court will make the manufacturer fix the problems caused by you using the wrong fuel.
Some inks (wax based mainy) have different operating temperatures, different viscosity. If you use the wrong one and screw up your printer -- bad luck, don't expect a manufacturer to honor the warranty. Now if you can prove that the ink is in fact the same, from the same ink formula, just rebranded then you have a case under the MM Warranty Act.
These figures only refer to the number of people that are collecting unemployment benifits. They stop after six months and people no longer count in this number but they are still unemployed.
A better number to look at is the total number of tax receipts recieved from employed people, that number is also dropping indicating that less people are working. The government publishes this number but rarely points it out at press conferences.
The USA job market is shrinking... during a recovery. No, it's not lots of people retiring and living the good life.
Observation :- In every country that has started requiring the student to also pay for their tertiary education, instead of only meeting an educational standard, the quality of that education has declined. The educational institution feels some obligation to provide the degree to the student because they "paid" for it.