Beta did extremely well, just not as a consumer product. Betacam was the standard for the broadcast industry for years.
MiniDisc is *still* doing quite well, just not as a consumer product worldwide.
Just because they did not *win the war* so to speak for consumer home-use does not mean they failed in any real sense of the word. This is not like HD-DVD which was available for a year and a half and then nobody made it anymore...that was a failed format.
Both of these media formats have done quite well and made a lot of money for SONY.
Weight in this case has nothing to do with it, newegg will be charged by UPS or fedex for the dimensions of the box for a single fan, the fans are too light.
The shipping costs are also for UPS 3-day, which is not ground, and is a more expensive service. It should also be noted that your shipping cost per unit went DOWN when you ordered more than one item.
The fact that newegg can, and does, discount your shipping and handling fee on a bulk purchase does not mean they're ripping you off, or overcharging you when you've only purchased one. There are a variety of overheads involved that need to be covered, and newegg (like every company that does mail-order) tries to balance those costs over both the heavy and light items...this is not unfair, or even unusual, it's how the system works.
If you want to complain about price gouging, complain about the retail prices of cables in the world.
There is nothing abusive about a handling fee, you're not just paying some "minimum wage person" to throw one in a box, you're paying someone to verify the order, multiple someones to get the item from the warehouse, someone to prepare the item, which is the box/prills/packaging etc... there's a number of things to be covered here, not to mention cost of prills, box, tape, and labels. Also, the assumption that someone doing jobs like this deserves to be making only minimum wage is extremely foolish, insulting, and naive.
Shipping costs at newegg are calculated PER individual unit, and the price GOES DOWN with bulk purchasing. Which is why the shipping cost doesn't stay at $3.99 per unit when you order 4 of them.
You've already covered my warehouse manager and workers overhead for going and retrieving the items, and verifying the order for the most part with the purchase of the first item. Having them grab a second, third, or 10th one while they're already there doesn't cost me as much as the initial send, therefore the handling fee per unit goes down.
Shipping does the same thing, you are charged based on the general distance the item needs to be shipped, and the cost per pound goes down as the items weight grows...until you cross one or two particular thresholds.
Newegg is attempting to reward you by passing savings on to you for your bulk purchase, not ripping you off jackass.
When you work in a shipping dept. (as I have) you'll find firstly that Newegg does nothing different from anyone else regarding their shipping, with the exception of offering it *cheaper* than petty much anyone else on the market, and there's nothing unreasonable or manipulative about the process.
You will always find what appear to be outrageous shipping and handling fees on extremely small items unless they are shipped via the post office (and even then most of the time it's not any better), this is the nature of shipping companies and what resellers have adapted themselves to. There is nothing unusual about this practice, and you're going to have a difficult time finding any online company that does things differently.
The problem here is being highly misappropriated by the media coverage and even much of slashdot.
The real issue here is simple...people who do not know anything about computers should not be enrolled in ONLINE classes at their local university.
In fact, of the 3 universities I've worked at, all of them had a large amount of disclaimers essentially stating just that. "You will be responsible for your own technical issues, the university cannot provide for you in case of problems, please make sure that your computer is not only reliable, but that you understand how to configure your own internet, and computer maintenance before enrolling in online classes...blah blah blah"
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind from reading TFA that the woman here would have had just as many problems using Windows and Word, and then would be harassing some poor kid at a computer lab into doing all of her formatting, emailing, and homework submissions for her anyway.
We have not yet developed a stupid-user-friendly interface that is sufficient to handle the sort of person who is likely to struggle to find the power button...and the truth is, we shouldn't have to.
There is nothing wrong with requiring someone to know how to use their own tools in order to partake in a lesson.
PS2 version was developed and released first. In NA, they released the windows version before the PS2 version, but the game had already been running for a year in Japan.
How can you not define stress as a form of mental instability? It causes all sorts of changes in behavior, thinking, emotional reactions, physical changes can be highly dramatic...stress is too generic of a term, i really can run the gamut...and being stressed is not the natural state of a person.
Stress is indeed a form of instability, that's kind of what the word means.
You appear to have some serious issues with blame. Based on your comment...
If your friend kills him/herself your first response is to first blame yourself, then to make them wrong for it and hate and attack their character posthumously?
Dude, that's pretty fucked up.
Here's the thing you seem to be missing... It's their life, and their choice.
It doesn't mean anything about you, or the quality of your relationship.
Get over yourself and quit being an arrogant little twerp.
You do realize you have just made the most egocentric, self-centered argument ever don't you?
"HOW DARE THEY KILL THEMSELVES!!! WHAT ABOUT MEEEEEEEEEE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!???"
This is of course not getting into the fact that people who kill themselves more often than not believe that the world is honestly a better place without them.
You make it sound like they just up and off themselves with a random thought like they popped in for tea and decided to throw some arsenic in just for the extra kick one morning.
People who attempt to kill themselves tend to take their choices quite seriously.
Blizzard doesn't release multi-platform to somehow magically "improve" the quality of their games.
They do it to expand their market base and make more money!
And you can't compare quality between cross platform games and single platform games in the way you're suggesting because there's no way to *see* how releasing Gran Turismo for the Xbox systems would've improved the game for the playstation.
Now, if you're suggesting that a company that is spending the money and resources to develop cross platform has more at stake and due to this has an increased awareness regarding game "quality", you may have a point, but the fact that excellent single platform games exist makes your point completely moot and specious.
I upgrade my computer every 3 years and have never had any trouble playing a new game when it came out.
Sure I couldn't play oblivion with all of the graphic settings on high when it was released, but then nobody could.
My computer is virtually silent and crashes significantly less than the current console machines. In the end does it still cost more? Yes, of course, but I also get a lot more work done with it than I would a console beyond gaming. But the whole you're obsolete in 6 months argument is simply bullshit...the incremental increases in video technology that occur in 6 months do not lay waste to your current computer setup and make it impossible to play new games...
and if your computer is unstable then maybe you should learn something about putting together a computer and maintaining it properly.
Just because you're not using absolute cutting edge hardware doesn't mean you can't play Assassin's Creed when it's released on a PC...and in many cases I can still play new games with higher graphic quality and response than the consoles.
But did this 10x improvement happen with one invention or alteration of the technology?
I think that was OP's point...not that things don't improve by magnitudes over time, but that they don't tend to suddenly, out of the blue have spontaneous breakthroughs that create massive improvements all at once.
the real problem is that artists under our system don't make money at all for the most part. File-sharing has little to nothing to do with it...a decrepit, draconian, music industry does.
Slashdot Mirror
sounds like you steep too long or at the wrong temperature, or both.
Beta did extremely well, just not as a consumer product. Betacam was the standard for the broadcast industry for years.
MiniDisc is *still* doing quite well, just not as a consumer product worldwide.
Just because they did not *win the war* so to speak for consumer home-use does not mean they failed in any real sense of the word. This is not like HD-DVD which was available for a year and a half and then nobody made it anymore...that was a failed format.
Both of these media formats have done quite well and made a lot of money for SONY.
Weight in this case has nothing to do with it, newegg will be charged by UPS or fedex for the dimensions of the box for a single fan, the fans are too light.
The shipping costs are also for UPS 3-day, which is not ground, and is a more expensive service. It should also be noted that your shipping cost per unit went DOWN when you ordered more than one item.
The fact that newegg can, and does, discount your shipping and handling fee on a bulk purchase does not mean they're ripping you off, or overcharging you when you've only purchased one. There are a variety of overheads involved that need to be covered, and newegg (like every company that does mail-order) tries to balance those costs over both the heavy and light items...this is not unfair, or even unusual, it's how the system works.
If you want to complain about price gouging, complain about the retail prices of cables in the world.
There is nothing abusive about a handling fee, you're not just paying some "minimum wage person" to throw one in a box, you're paying someone to verify the order, multiple someones to get the item from the warehouse, someone to prepare the item, which is the box/prills/packaging etc... there's a number of things to be covered here, not to mention cost of prills, box, tape, and labels. Also, the assumption that someone doing jobs like this deserves to be making only minimum wage is extremely foolish, insulting, and naive.
Shipping costs at newegg are calculated PER individual unit, and the price GOES DOWN with bulk purchasing. Which is why the shipping cost doesn't stay at $3.99 per unit when you order 4 of them.
You've already covered my warehouse manager and workers overhead for going and retrieving the items, and verifying the order for the most part with the purchase of the first item. Having them grab a second, third, or 10th one while they're already there doesn't cost me as much as the initial send, therefore the handling fee per unit goes down.
Shipping does the same thing, you are charged based on the general distance the item needs to be shipped, and the cost per pound goes down as the items weight grows...until you cross one or two particular thresholds.
Newegg is attempting to reward you by passing savings on to you for your bulk purchase, not ripping you off jackass.
When you work in a shipping dept. (as I have) you'll find firstly that Newegg does nothing different from anyone else regarding their shipping, with the exception of offering it *cheaper* than petty much anyone else on the market, and there's nothing unreasonable or manipulative about the process.
You will always find what appear to be outrageous shipping and handling fees on extremely small items unless they are shipped via the post office (and even then most of the time it's not any better), this is the nature of shipping companies and what resellers have adapted themselves to. There is nothing unusual about this practice, and you're going to have a difficult time finding any online company that does things differently.
The problem here is being highly misappropriated by the media coverage and even much of slashdot.
The real issue here is simple...people who do not know anything about computers should not be enrolled in ONLINE classes at their local university.
In fact, of the 3 universities I've worked at, all of them had a large amount of disclaimers essentially stating just that. "You will be responsible for your own technical issues, the university cannot provide for you in case of problems, please make sure that your computer is not only reliable, but that you understand how to configure your own internet, and computer maintenance before enrolling in online classes...blah blah blah"
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind from reading TFA that the woman here would have had just as many problems using Windows and Word, and then would be harassing some poor kid at a computer lab into doing all of her formatting, emailing, and homework submissions for her anyway.
We have not yet developed a stupid-user-friendly interface that is sufficient to handle the sort of person who is likely to struggle to find the power button...and the truth is, we shouldn't have to.
There is nothing wrong with requiring someone to know how to use their own tools in order to partake in a lesson.
PS2 version was developed and released first. In NA, they released the windows version before the PS2 version, but the game had already been running for a year in Japan.
I never realized ingesting small bits of glass would be considered food poisoning, but I guess it works.
How can you not define stress as a form of mental instability? It causes all sorts of changes in behavior, thinking, emotional reactions, physical changes can be highly dramatic...stress is too generic of a term, i really can run the gamut...and being stressed is not the natural state of a person.
Stress is indeed a form of instability, that's kind of what the word means.
You appear to have some serious issues with blame.
Based on your comment...
If your friend kills him/herself your first response is to first blame yourself, then to make them wrong for it and hate and attack their character posthumously?
Dude, that's pretty fucked up.
Here's the thing you seem to be missing...
It's their life, and their choice.
It doesn't mean anything about you, or the quality of your relationship.
Get over yourself and quit being an arrogant little twerp.
You do realize you have just made the most egocentric, self-centered argument ever don't you?
"HOW DARE THEY KILL THEMSELVES!!! WHAT ABOUT MEEEEEEEEEE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!???"
This is of course not getting into the fact that people who kill themselves more often than not believe that the world is honestly a better place without them.
You make it sound like they just up and off themselves with a random thought like they popped in for tea and decided to throw some arsenic in just for the extra kick one morning.
People who attempt to kill themselves tend to take their choices quite seriously.
How does this comment even make any damn sense?
Blizzard doesn't release multi-platform to somehow magically "improve" the quality of their games.
They do it to expand their market base and make more money!
And you can't compare quality between cross platform games and single platform games in the way you're suggesting because there's no way to *see* how releasing Gran Turismo for the Xbox systems would've improved the game for the playstation.
Now, if you're suggesting that a company that is spending the money and resources to develop cross platform has more at stake and due to this has an increased awareness regarding game "quality", you may have a point, but the fact that excellent single platform games exist makes your point completely moot and specious.
Sure I couldn't play oblivion with all of the graphic settings on high when it was released, but then nobody could.
My computer is virtually silent and crashes significantly less than the current console machines. In the end does it still cost more? Yes, of course, but I also get a lot more work done with it than I would a console beyond gaming. But the whole you're obsolete in 6 months argument is simply bullshit...the incremental increases in video technology that occur in 6 months do not lay waste to your current computer setup and make it impossible to play new games...
and if your computer is unstable then maybe you should learn something about putting together a computer and maintaining it properly.
Just because you're not using absolute cutting edge hardware doesn't mean you can't play Assassin's Creed when it's released on a PC...and in many cases I can still play new games with higher graphic quality and response than the consoles.
But did this 10x improvement happen with one invention or alteration of the technology?
I think that was OP's point...not that things don't improve by magnitudes over time, but that they don't tend to suddenly, out of the blue have spontaneous breakthroughs that create massive improvements all at once.
And we can vaporize a human target!
the real problem is that artists under our system don't make money at all for the most part. File-sharing has little to nothing to do with it...a decrepit, draconian, music industry does.
nearly everyone I know has replaced their battery at some point.