but I can only actually remember 2 and 3 (which I thought were very good).
Maybe you're thinking of 2 and 4.
ST-III:The Search for Cash^WSpock was incredibly bad. The movie's only really notable for the theft and destruction of the original Enterprise ("no bloody A, B, C or D.")
You didn't like the crashing of the Enterprise-D's saucer section (twice)??
I remember being awed watching it crash the first time and seriously annoyed the second. I'm used to recycled footage in Sci-Fi as it has its place in meeting budgets, but playing that scene twice just screamed "NOT ENOUGH STORY FOR THE ALLOTED TIME, SORRY 'BOUT THAT."
You say that in jest, but I had a friend who watch V with me and then was dumb-founded by the trailer for VI a year-or-so later.
It was cruel, but we had to make her rent it to convince her she had actually seen it. As soon as Spock came up behind Kirk in rocket boots, it all came flooding back. She was curled-up into a ball pleading with us to turn it off.
Re:Can someone explain Star Trek V
on
Critics Pan Nemesis
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I do agree with you that overall STV wasn't as corny as IX, let alone IV (notwithstanding the rocketboots)
Just remember, you asked for it:
Row, row, row, your boat Gently down the stream Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream
Got problems with the shows TiVo records as suggestions? Well, try these methods to fix it:
Edit your "Channels You Receive" to remove channels you aren't interested in at all.
Look at the "TiVo Suggestions" for upcoming shows and rate them using the thumbs up/dowm method. Give three thumbs-down to major mistakes.
Take a moment to rate shows it has recorded before deleting them.
Rate your season passes. TiVo will automatically give anything you record 1 thumb-up. If you've got a season pass for something in a genre, or with actors, you'd typically dislike, rate the season pass with multiple thumbs-down (it'll still be recorded.) Do this as well for the one-off items you record (especially if your recording for guests.)
If all else fails, punch the reset button. Somewhere in setup you can tell TiVo to start over in building it's profile.
You boast about it took someone an _hour_ on the phone to kill up a mistake you made?
Actually, I boasted that all billing issues were resolved in the initial call. The longest I remember took an hour (instead of days of phone tag and evasion.)
IIRC, the long one was the result of someone paying with a third party check who hadn't bothered to identify their account. The payment wasn't, for obvious reasons, credited to their account, so it was suspended. For extra fun, the third party had his own account (to which the payment was credited.) It took a few minutes to unravel that.
Which do you want - the Internet as a toy or an effective, attractive, and respectable utility that people use for everyday activities and important business?
If you've worked in the industry for more than five minutes, you'd know the answer lies in between. NO ONE wants the Internet to be a utility if they understand what that means.
Remember the telephone calls in 2001? People actually believed that the telephone would get to be ludicrously cheap.
If the Internet were to reach utility status, it would become highly regulated. Complying with telco-like regulation would double costs. Small ISPs couldn't even afford the lawyers to keep their filings up to date. Net result: Massive consolidation, much higher prices, and terrible customer service. Working at ISPs, I've dealt with many telco's to resolve technical issues and I can tell you that I'd rather chew on broken glass than have to do that anymore. Currently, it takes some looking to find a good ISP, but atleast you can find one. Give me the name of a utility that's so good, you'd like them to run your ISP...
Make ISP's a utility and instead of getting your Internet service from Bob down the street, you'll be getting it from Ted in Atlanta.
Generally, when an account is suspended, the ISP doesn't keep their website up. Kind of lacks teeth when you do it that way.
That's all fine and well, I guess, for a personal site; however, if the person is running a business through their website, you're asking for trouble by taking down the site for an unresolved billing issue.
Imagine the phone company turning off a business phone the day after payment was due. They could be sued for that. Not because they have a right to a phone, but because they'd lose business. Suspending access to your account only affects you and if done properly remains a private issue between ISP and consumer. Had the issue been resolved promptly, she'd have gotten her email and the contract without the Discovery Channel ever finding out.
Also, you're assuming that the access-providing ISP hosts the site, which is often not the case. Many ISPs no fsck-all about hosting; which is a shame since ISPs that host can charge double for the same bandwidth: Hosting and access bandwidth tend to go in opposite directions. Hosting should be nearly all gravy to an ISP.
And what if, as in this case, the problem isn't your client being overdue at all, but your own ****-up?
We weren't immune to billing mistakes. I think it's a matter of how you handle them. Without exception, we resolved every billing dispute during the initial phone call. I think the longest any one took was an hour.
This ISP's costs should spike, by about the amount of damage that they did to this customer by screwing up.
Mistakes are a fact of life. It's how you handle them that makes the difference. If the ISP in question dragged out resolving the issue, then maybe they opened themselves up to liability. They should have fixed the mistake as soon as she questioned the billing; or, at the very least, restored service while they researched it.
However, you'd be surprised at the high percentage of billing issues that arise from the customer not understanding the process. 95% of our billing issues resulted from customers not understanding that the first month was pro-rated even though it was explained during the sign-up proceedure.
Not all bounced mail gets returned to the sender. If the account holder has a contact form on their website that emails them the results, there's a good chance that bouncing those messages will result in lost messages (e.g., sent back to nobody@webserver.)
Email gets relayed from point to point and sometimes is a oneway thing (automated error messages would be another example.) Most one-way messages, like spam, you don't want anyway; but what about the lists and ezines you subscribe to? If someone's mail is made to bounce, many lists will remove failed addresses automagically; or the list operator will receive the bounce and remove the address manually without any follow-up.
Bouncing someone's email is the equivalent of the telephonic error: "The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service." If you called someone who was negotiating a contact with you and got that message, would you still award the contract? I think not.
I ran an ISP with the same suspension policy. Email was allowed to pile up because to bounce it might damage the credibility of the account holder more than their not responding.
If a suspended customer wanted mail bounced or forwarded, we would honor that request; but the default was to simply lock the account. Nearly all suspended customers resolved their situation within hours (poor, addicted L-users), and many of the unresolved suspensions were the result of clients moving or dying (really.)
I feel for her, but the only alternative for ISPs is to pursue collections of overdue accounts. This is simply way too expensive. Bill in advance and suspend non-payers is the only efficient model. Anything else spikes your costs.
Personally I think the key to tort reform is to remove the profit insentive to lawsuits by diverting punative damages to education.
A few of problems with that:
First, as I see it, the truely disenfranchised (i.e., flat broke) victims of Huge-Mega-Corp's actions would not be able to attract lawyers willing to sue on purely contingency basis; and the lawyers who do so would be taking their cut out of the actual damages.
Second, the flow of cash into an education fund like you describe would likely create a government agency to administer it. Give the government a source of money to play with and two things will happen: Much will be allocated as pork, and revenue will be sought to maintain the pork programs when the fund runs low.
Third, restricting the punative damages to a single geographic area, if small enough, may give the tax payers who make up the jury a bias toward the plaintiff as it may reduce their school taxes.
Instead, what might be better, would be a statuatory compensation rate for lawyers who are granted punative judgements (say 10%, up to $500/hour.) The jury could then allocate the balance of the punative judgement to government (local, state, or federal) and/or 501c3 charitable institutions suggested by the plaintiff(s). Obviously, the plaintiff's list would be submitted only after the jury reaches a verdict and determines the amount of the penalty.
If you have, or can get, a TiVo that is seperate from your DirecTV receiver, you can try the following:
1. Run the DirecTV Video straight to the tube. 2. Connect the Audio from your Radio Tuner to the Audio In on the TiVo. 3. Watch the DirctTV feed and listen to the TiVo feed. 4. Pause/Fast Forward the TiVo until the audio is in sync with what you're seeing.
To make sure the TiVo doesn't decide to change channels or anything, you might program it to record something as long as the game (like the game.)
Actually, I deal can deal the game but cannot stand playing it. In most places in the US, the dealer gets one card down and one card up. If the up card is an ace, the players are offered a chance to insure their hand against a blackjack. The dealer is supposed to settle insurance bets before checking their "hole" card, but they don't always.
Anyway, if the dealer has an Ace or Ten showing, they have to check their hole card and in most places the dealer knows the value of the hole card once they've checked. Some dealers can give away the value through body language; many don't even realize they do it. If the dealer has a 10 showing and a 5 in the hole, the dealer knows they are likely to bust. If they give away this fact reliably, you can alter your play accordingly. If the deck is rich in 10's, you can go to town against a dealer with 15 or 16.
I know it's a small distinction, but I think that the moment you move away from one individual's math and observation skills, and towards a team approach you have crossed the (admittedly fuzzy) ethical line between skill and cheating.
I concur. The general rule of thumb I've been taught as a dealer was that an individual can use any knowledge they gather about the game to their advantage as long as the information is gathered passively. Working with a team isn't passive.
Of course, the casino can boot you for any reason they want, so...
Ummm... No, it's not illegal. If a casino spots a card counter, all they can do is ask you to leave. If you refuse, you can be charged with trespassing.
Casinos want people to believe it's illegal and actively encourage such beliefs, but it's not. As long as you don't tamper with the game, you're not cheating. Here are some other non-cheats:
Observe how the dealer reacts to their hole card. Some dealers will give a consistent visual tell when their hole card makes 21. Spot it, and you're right to insure when normally only an idiot would.
In roulette, track the numbers by dealer in relationship to their relative positions on the wheel. Lazy dealers can make the game VERY non-random.
In craps, bad dealers can forget to take down some loosing bets as much as 25% of the time. Spot a dealer who does this and remind him to pay your winning bets and let him forget your losing bets.
In many games, without making any effort, cards will be revealed to you that shouldn't be. (e.g., a neighbor may show you his hand) If you see other cards, through no effort of your own, that knowledge gives you an edge without cheating.
Using any information available to you without action on your part is not cheating. Counting cards, spotting roulette fields, and dealers with bad procedure are all legit player advantages.
A casino may ask you to leave for any reason. You might be winning due to pure luck, and they can still ask you to leave. If they think you're actually cheating (i.e., marking cards; switching dice) they'll have you arrested.
Hmm.. Why would that be stupid? Why would that reveal me as a cheater?
Speaking as another Vegan, and a trained dealer, let me answer that:
Dramatically changing your bet, in any game, is usually considered a sign that you've spotted a way to tilt the odds to your advantage. Usually, this is the result of finding a bad dealer (e.g., tells their hole card in Blackjack)
While card counting is not cheating, a casino can refuse your business for any reason. If they think you're counting, they'll ask you to stop playing. Refuse, and you're trespassing.
An Anonymous Coward writes: Stallman and the other's mode of "democratic revolution" is no more effective at altering those people's perceptives who make the laws, than an Anonymous Coward's flame is at changing your opinion.
Oh, great! No I have to go out and get a new irony detector.
Using TiVo as an example: While the interface is simple to understand, almost too simple, it doesn't make the concepts under the interface simple.
PVRs are a new concept. While you can relate some features with ease to someone who has a VCR, other features still confound people.
So, while we all talk about making the interface easier and easier, give people time to understand the underlying concept or you're wasting your time...
Meanwhile, those of us who "get it", have to confirm every fscking delete. It'd be nice if some of these friendly interfaces let you make the interface less friendly. I'd rather take my chances with an accidental delete every now and then, for example, instead of confirming each one.
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but I can only actually remember 2 and 3 (which I thought were very good).
Maybe you're thinking of 2 and 4.
ST-III:The Search for Cash^WSpock was incredibly bad. The movie's only really notable for the theft and destruction of the original Enterprise ("no bloody A, B, C or D.")
You didn't like the crashing of the Enterprise-D's saucer section (twice)??
I remember being awed watching it crash the first time and seriously annoyed the second. I'm used to recycled footage in Sci-Fi as it has its place in meeting budgets, but playing that scene twice just screamed "NOT ENOUGH STORY FOR THE ALLOTED TIME, SORRY 'BOUT THAT."
There was a fifth one?
You say that in jest, but I had a friend who watch V with me and then was dumb-founded by the trailer for VI a year-or-so later.
It was cruel, but we had to make her rent it to convince her she had actually seen it. As soon as Spock came up behind Kirk in rocket boots, it all came flooding back. She was curled-up into a ball pleading with us to turn it off.
Just remember, you asked for it:
STV is, by far, as bad as it ever got.
Is there a setting in preferences to filter out duplicates?
But I never want it to record the 700 Club,
Find the 700 Club in the listings and give it 3 thumbs-down, or if TiVo is suggesting it, give the suggestion 3 thumbs-down before deleting it.
Alternatively, drop the entire channel it airs on from the list of channels you receive. The whole channel's run by Pat Robertson anyway.
You boast about it took someone an _hour_ on the phone to kill up a mistake you made?
Actually, I boasted that all billing issues were resolved in the initial call. The longest I remember took an hour (instead of days of phone tag and evasion.)
IIRC, the long one was the result of someone paying with a third party check who hadn't bothered to identify their account. The payment wasn't, for obvious reasons, credited to their account, so it was suspended. For extra fun, the third party had his own account (to which the payment was credited.)
It took a few minutes to unravel that.
Which do you want - the Internet as a toy or an effective, attractive, and respectable utility that people use for everyday activities and important business?
If you've worked in the industry for more than five minutes, you'd know the answer lies in between. NO ONE wants the Internet to be a utility if they understand what that means.
Remember the telephone calls in 2001? People actually believed that the telephone would get to be ludicrously cheap.
If the Internet were to reach utility status, it would become highly regulated. Complying with telco-like regulation would double costs. Small ISPs couldn't even afford the lawyers to keep their filings up to date. Net result: Massive consolidation, much higher prices, and terrible customer service. Working at ISPs, I've dealt with many telco's to resolve technical issues and I can tell you that I'd rather chew on broken glass than have to do that anymore. Currently, it takes some looking to find a good ISP, but atleast you can find one. Give me the name of a utility that's so good, you'd like them to run your ISP...
Make ISP's a utility and instead of getting your Internet service from Bob down the street, you'll be getting it from Ted in Atlanta.
Generally, when an account is suspended, the ISP doesn't keep their website up. Kind of lacks teeth when you do it that way.
That's all fine and well, I guess, for a personal site; however, if the person is running a business through their website, you're asking for trouble by taking down the site for an unresolved billing issue.
Imagine the phone company turning off a business phone the day after payment was due. They could be sued for that. Not because they have a right to a phone, but because they'd lose business. Suspending access to your account only affects you and if done properly remains a private issue between ISP and consumer. Had the issue been resolved promptly, she'd have gotten her email and the contract without the Discovery Channel ever finding out.
Also, you're assuming that the access-providing ISP hosts the site, which is often not the case. Many ISPs no fsck-all about hosting; which is a shame since ISPs that host can charge double for the same bandwidth: Hosting and access bandwidth tend to go in opposite directions. Hosting should be nearly all gravy to an ISP.
And what if, as in this case, the problem isn't your client being overdue at all, but your own ****-up?
We weren't immune to billing mistakes. I think it's a matter of how you handle them. Without exception, we resolved every billing dispute during the initial phone call. I think the longest any one took was an hour.
This ISP's costs should spike, by about the amount of damage that they did to this customer by screwing up.
Mistakes are a fact of life. It's how you handle them that makes the difference. If the ISP in question dragged out resolving the issue, then maybe they opened themselves up to liability. They should have fixed the mistake as soon as she questioned the billing; or, at the very least, restored service while they researched it.
However, you'd be surprised at the high percentage of billing issues that arise from the customer not understanding the process. 95% of our billing issues resulted from customers not understanding that the first month was pro-rated even though it was explained during the sign-up proceedure.
Oh yeah, forgot one other thing:
Not all bounced mail gets returned to the sender. If the account holder has a contact form on their website that emails them the results, there's a good chance that bouncing those messages will result in lost messages (e.g., sent back to nobody@webserver.)
Email gets relayed from point to point and sometimes is a oneway thing (automated error messages would be another example.) Most one-way messages, like spam, you don't want anyway; but what about the lists and ezines you subscribe to? If someone's mail is made to bounce, many lists will remove failed addresses automagically; or the list operator will receive the bounce and remove the address manually without any follow-up.
Bouncing someone's email is the equivalent of the telephonic error: "The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service." If you called someone who was negotiating a contact with you and got that message, would you still award the contract? I think not.
I ran an ISP with the same suspension policy. Email was allowed to pile up because to bounce it might damage the credibility of the account holder more than their not responding.
If a suspended customer wanted mail bounced or forwarded, we would honor that request; but the default was to simply lock the account. Nearly all suspended customers resolved their situation within hours (poor, addicted L-users), and many of the unresolved suspensions were the result of clients moving or dying (really.)
I feel for her, but the only alternative for ISPs is to pursue collections of overdue accounts. This is simply way too expensive. Bill in advance and suspend non-payers is the only efficient model. Anything else spikes your costs.
I'm surprised they haven't tried to give pigs wings. Who here hasn't been told, atleast once, that they'll get what they want when pigs fly.
Personally I think the key to tort reform is to remove the profit insentive to lawsuits by diverting punative damages to education.
A few of problems with that:
First, as I see it, the truely disenfranchised (i.e., flat broke) victims of Huge-Mega-Corp's actions would not be able to attract lawyers willing to sue on purely contingency basis; and the lawyers who do so would be taking their cut out of the actual damages.
Second, the flow of cash into an education fund like you describe would likely create a government agency to administer it. Give the government a source of money to play with and two things will happen: Much will be allocated as pork, and revenue will be sought to maintain the pork programs when the fund runs low.
Third, restricting the punative damages to a single geographic area, if small enough, may give the tax payers who make up the jury a bias toward the plaintiff as it may reduce their school taxes.
Instead, what might be better, would be a statuatory compensation rate for lawyers who are granted punative judgements (say 10%, up to $500/hour.) The jury could then allocate the balance of the punative judgement to government (local, state, or federal) and/or 501c3 charitable institutions suggested by the plaintiff(s). Obviously, the plaintiff's list would be submitted only after the jury reaches a verdict and determines the amount of the penalty.
If you have, or can get, a TiVo that is seperate from your DirecTV receiver, you can try the following:
1. Run the DirecTV Video straight to the tube.
2. Connect the Audio from your Radio Tuner to the Audio In on the TiVo.
3. Watch the DirctTV feed and listen to the TiVo feed.
4. Pause/Fast Forward the TiVo until the audio is in sync with what you're seeing.
To make sure the TiVo doesn't decide to change channels or anything, you might program it to record something as long as the game (like the game.)
Have you ever played casino blackjack?
Actually, I deal can deal the game but cannot stand playing it. In most places in the US, the dealer gets one card down and one card up. If the up card is an ace, the players are offered a chance to insure their hand against a blackjack. The dealer is supposed to settle insurance bets before checking their "hole" card, but they don't always.
Anyway, if the dealer has an Ace or Ten showing, they have to check their hole card and in most places the dealer knows the value of the hole card once they've checked. Some dealers can give away the value through body language; many don't even realize they do it. If the dealer has a 10 showing and a 5 in the hole, the dealer knows they are likely to bust. If they give away this fact reliably, you can alter your play accordingly. If the deck is rich in 10's, you can go to town against a dealer with 15 or 16.
I know it's a small distinction, but I think that the moment you move away from one individual's math and observation skills, and towards a team approach you have crossed the (admittedly fuzzy) ethical line between skill and cheating.
I concur. The general rule of thumb I've been taught as a dealer was that an individual can use any knowledge they gather about the game to their advantage as long as the information is gathered passively. Working with a team isn't passive.
Of course, the casino can boot you for any reason they want, so
Ummm... No, it's not illegal. If a casino spots a card counter, all they can do is ask you to leave. If you refuse, you can be charged with trespassing.
Casinos want people to believe it's illegal and actively encourage such beliefs, but it's not. As long as you don't tamper with the game, you're not cheating. Here are some other non-cheats:
Using any information available to you without action on your part is not cheating. Counting cards, spotting roulette fields, and dealers with bad procedure are all legit player advantages.
A casino may ask you to leave for any reason. You might be winning due to pure luck, and they can still ask you to leave. If they think you're actually cheating (i.e., marking cards; switching dice) they'll have you arrested.
Hmm.. Why would that be stupid? Why would that reveal me as a cheater?
Speaking as another Vegan, and a trained dealer, let me answer that:
Dramatically changing your bet, in any game, is usually considered a sign that you've spotted a way to tilt the odds to your advantage. Usually, this is the result of finding a bad dealer (e.g., tells their hole card in Blackjack)
While card counting is not cheating, a casino can refuse your business for any reason. If they think you're counting, they'll ask you to stop playing. Refuse, and you're trespassing.
An Anonymous Coward writes: Stallman and the other's mode of "democratic revolution" is no more effective at altering those people's perceptives who make the laws, than an Anonymous Coward's flame is at changing your opinion.
Oh, great! No I have to go out and get a new irony detector.
Actually, it's a little-known fact that all CD-ROMs do keep the CD stationary, and simply spin the rest of the universe around it. True fact. ;)
Yeah, right. Next you're gonna tell me that CDs are flat and if you read too far you'll fall off the edge.
Sounds like bad news for 8000+ Internet users in Iowa ;)
Is Internet Navigator publically traded?
They can get $20B by simply diverting funds from their efforts to stop Moose & Squirrel.
But seriously, no sane person would even contemplate using shuttle technology to launch a Mars mission, so you're math is almost certainly whack.
As someone else eluded to, the fuel for the return trip could be produced on Mars and even be waiting for the cosmonauts to arrive.
A serious Mars mission would send supplies and "still" ahead and then the crew later when the ability to return was assured.
Using TiVo as an example: While the interface is simple to understand, almost too simple, it doesn't make the concepts under the interface simple.
PVRs are a new concept. While you can relate some features with ease to someone who has a VCR, other features still confound people.
So, while we all talk about making the interface easier and easier, give people time to understand the underlying concept or you're wasting your time...
Meanwhile, those of us who "get it", have to confirm every fscking delete. It'd be nice if some of these friendly interfaces let you make the interface less friendly. I'd rather take my chances with an accidental delete every now and then, for example, instead of confirming each one.