Or they would have a huge overhead running all of those warehouses and the costs of running those businesses in each state when centralizing on just a few distribution centers nets them an overall larger profit through their internet sites.
I'm glad Newegg only has a handful of warehouses. It keeps their prices down. I just cry every time I purchase now that they have one in New Jersey and now sock me for sales tax. I still buy from them, the margin on the tax is still usually better and I often get ordered items the next day regardless of ship method.
I bought a car 6 years ago. Nissan wanted to give me an 8% interest rate on the loan and no extras. I told them I didn't like the interest rate (and couldn't pay off the car quickly knowing I'd need a 5 year loan). They gave me their 5 year extended warranty (the car is apparently only covered in some parts for the first 3) for about what I would have paid in interest over the life of the loan and knocked off the interest rate completely. Ultimately in the 4th year a sensor in the engine failed causing all sorts of problems and they had to replace a large section of the engine covered under the warranty. In the end I think it paid off many times over as that wasn't the only service it covered, but it was likely the most expensive.
It's a gamble. Sometimes it pays for itself, sometimes you just gave your money away.
I read your links. Seriously? "100% of Circuit City's profits are from warranties"
I seriously doubt that claim. It sounds a little like irresponsible journalism.
I wouldn't even say that 100% of the extended warranty is profit for Circuit City. In the cases where a product does fail, they subsidize the cost of a new TV from the extended warranties purchased by all of their customers.
So while I don't doubt they have good number crunchers doing the math to generate a fat profit on the extended warranties, I don't think it is nearly as bad as you say.
"First of all, the quality of the electronics and appliances is so good these days that the chance of them breaking is miniscule." But it only takes that miniscule percent for me to be pissed that the $1500 TV I bought is a month out of warranty and I could have saved myself the heartache by dropping another $60-100. If I build the cost of the warranty into my budget for what I am buying, who cares if I spend it.
At the worst, I'm paying for a process that the brick and mortar stores could be building into the price automatically to account for inventory they are required to take back. This way keeps them competitive and gives the consumer an option.
Now, when they refuse to honor such warranties, I have a problem, but then they'll have a problem with my local department of commerce/consumerism (and I know exactly where the office is and the phone number).
I'm an iPhone customer and I'd sign that anti-petition any day. It's a great device, but I'm smart enough to realize it's not Google or Inner Fence's fault. It's the crappy stranglehold cell phone companies have on their customers. There is no reason or excuse for cell phone customers to be charging so much for Text services. Maybe that's where the customer's voice and petitions should be aimed instead.
Actually his store manager was probably the least talented individual in the store. He probably did nothing more than organize a schedule each week for his workers to come in, yet earned 63K for that.
"So basically, paying as small wages as possible is a common-sense way of minimizing wage costs; in other words, it's motivated by greed."
Yep, managers who are looking to line their pockets, so they try to pay the "plebs" as little as they can to get things done.
This society is about personal profit, not sharing the greater good. That's a problem. It's why we are where we are economically and it's why the welfare system in place doesn't work either.
It's funny. A few years ago I worked for Gamestop who sold the plans. We were pushed for replacement plans, reserves on games and pushed to make subscription sales.
Fortunately our sales manager did not make us do anything letting us handle it and told us to try to make them where we could. We often hit the target but not all the time. Our district manager didn't like that. However in our ability to read customers we had the largest repeat customer base in the region. We boasted the largest sales numbers and the least shrinkage in the area.
After my store manager left (because they wouldn't promote him), I left. Then the store turned into a shithole and eventually closed because the new manager was a corporate kiss ass and people (myself included) stopped shopping there.
Kind of funny how that works. Start forcing crap on your customers and they are going to feel uncomfortable coming into the store and eventually find somewhere where they aren't being asked to buy into every crap deal the store has to offer. It also gives you an idea of what is wrong with this country today, management. There are too many managers, there are too many of them that are "management trained" instead of trained through experience. Hell I have 3 bosses in my current job, NONE of them have the technical experience with what I do and look at me like I'm foreign when I try to explain things in even the most layman terms. Yet they are where they are because they have a degree that says they know how to manage people. They couldn't manage someone out of a paper bag and yet they get paid more than me.
WoW is the first game to "do it right" with Wintergrasp.
It's a territory that constantly flip flops. The winner of it gives players of that faction a bonus for the next 2 to 3 hours. There are daily quests to be done there to entice people to at least show up once a day. It requires the defending team to actually attack to win.
Asheron's Call's combat system sucked for most of its thriving life. It was dominated by the ability to cast Drain Health at instant speed and quickly apply healing kits to yourself. You also needed to master "strafe casting" which was a bug in the game engine that allowed you to cast while moving. And there was no reason to pvp other than to pvp someone and harass them, that is lame. Losing everything wasn't terribly exciting either because everything usually amounted to people only using gear that they could easily afford to lose and stack money notes and other high value items that didn't matter if you lost.
While donation seems like a good idea, I know my local school system has a VERY strict computing policy and currently only uses hardware built into their policy.
The purpose is to save money by eliminating specialized configurations that will cause higher troubleshooting costs.
You do realize that Google also licenses out their applications for you to run internally right? Or how about the fact that even government applications experience outtages, it's not like the hardware they purchase is magically protected by a "never goes down" forcefield. Google as an entity isn't going anywhere and you can't call a business a single point of failure, trust me, their infrastructure is well built to sustain multiple failure. Better yet, I would prefer if our government leveraged Google's superior and private workforce and farm of server hardware that has proven itself than try to build the infrastructure from the ground up. Particularly if in 4 years or 8 years when the administration changes all of that work setting it up prefers to go with M$ exchange or Zimbra, or Netscape Mail, or Lotus, etc.
I work in government IT. Government doesn't have the buying power to hire the trained workstaff to set up an infrastructure like this reliably. I would prefer they "outsource" to Google.
In other words, shut the hell up because you don't know what you're talking about.
Go back and read your documentation. There is support for booting of partitions in VirtualBox, but get ready to go to the command line to do a little down and dirty work.
I've had no trouble with USB support. You just need to understand you can't just plug a device in and expect it to work, you often need to play with their "filters" system.
It does everything Fusion and Parallels did for me. None of the three really lived up to the DirectX hype they tout.
Don't worry, there is a selective portion of the population that will continue to have children in decision to abstain and continue to leech what does exist in our "retarded health care system". I believe one of them just had 8 more kids.
"the kind of people who make the greatest contribution to the US economy and to business and job growth"
What we need in this world is fewer overpaid managers. Who do you think is authorizing massive bonuses despite profit loss in these large corporations? That's right, management. Who does the least amount of the down and dirty work, managers. Who typically has the highest payroll? Management. Who typically wants to find the cheapest workforce and lacks general understanding of their projects? Management!
Workers I will take, educated people willing to earn a good pay (stressing the earn), but I have no use for managers or people that did nothing to learn a trade fully first before seeing the end of the rainbow by trying to START in management.
Valve has already stated that prior to shutting down Steam if it ever came to that (it's current success indicates that the service will never shut down wholesale), they would release patches to make the games available offline.
After looking at the cost of some of the indie stuff that is as good as or better than some of the block busters out there and at 1/3 to 1/2 the price.
The most useful compiz feature I've found is the ADD helper.
You can customize it to turn off and on with a keystroke as well as degree of effect. Mine is set to (otherwise known as the windows key) + P. When active all windows aside from the current active one can be faded to a darker shade (or complete black if so desired) so that you won't be as distracted by anything in the background. It makes reading web pages a whole lot easier and gaming in a window a lot easier on the eyes without completely blurring out the background or other silly effects.
Compiz is great, assuming you want to configure it.
Slashdot Mirror
Or they would have a huge overhead running all of those warehouses and the costs of running those businesses in each state when centralizing on just a few distribution centers nets them an overall larger profit through their internet sites.
I'm glad Newegg only has a handful of warehouses. It keeps their prices down. I just cry every time I purchase now that they have one in New Jersey and now sock me for sales tax. I still buy from them, the margin on the tax is still usually better and I often get ordered items the next day regardless of ship method.
I bought a car 6 years ago. Nissan wanted to give me an 8% interest rate on the loan and no extras. I told them I didn't like the interest rate (and couldn't pay off the car quickly knowing I'd need a 5 year loan). They gave me their 5 year extended warranty (the car is apparently only covered in some parts for the first 3) for about what I would have paid in interest over the life of the loan and knocked off the interest rate completely. Ultimately in the 4th year a sensor in the engine failed causing all sorts of problems and they had to replace a large section of the engine covered under the warranty. In the end I think it paid off many times over as that wasn't the only service it covered, but it was likely the most expensive.
It's a gamble. Sometimes it pays for itself, sometimes you just gave your money away.
I read your links. Seriously? "100% of Circuit City's profits are from warranties"
I seriously doubt that claim. It sounds a little like irresponsible journalism.
I wouldn't even say that 100% of the extended warranty is profit for Circuit City. In the cases where a product does fail, they subsidize the cost of a new TV from the extended warranties purchased by all of their customers.
So while I don't doubt they have good number crunchers doing the math to generate a fat profit on the extended warranties, I don't think it is nearly as bad as you say.
"First of all, the quality of the electronics and appliances is so good these days that the chance of them breaking is miniscule."
But it only takes that miniscule percent for me to be pissed that the $1500 TV I bought is a month out of warranty and I could have saved myself the heartache by dropping another $60-100. If I build the cost of the warranty into my budget for what I am buying, who cares if I spend it.
At the worst, I'm paying for a process that the brick and mortar stores could be building into the price automatically to account for inventory they are required to take back. This way keeps them competitive and gives the consumer an option.
Now, when they refuse to honor such warranties, I have a problem, but then they'll have a problem with my local department of commerce/consumerism (and I know exactly where the office is and the phone number).
Yeah, but you're on Sprint's crappy network. I can't even get service standing next to one of their active network towers.
I'm an iPhone customer and I'd sign that anti-petition any day. It's a great device, but I'm smart enough to realize it's not Google or Inner Fence's fault. It's the crappy stranglehold cell phone companies have on their customers. There is no reason or excuse for cell phone customers to be charging so much for Text services. Maybe that's where the customer's voice and petitions should be aimed instead.
A clever manager would be able to point to the clause that states normal wear through proper usage is not covered.
He probably wasn't clever enough for that though.
Actually his store manager was probably the least talented individual in the store. He probably did nothing more than organize a schedule each week for his workers to come in, yet earned 63K for that.
"So basically, paying as small wages as possible is a common-sense way of minimizing wage costs; in other words, it's motivated by greed."
Yep, managers who are looking to line their pockets, so they try to pay the "plebs" as little as they can to get things done.
This society is about personal profit, not sharing the greater good. That's a problem. It's why we are where we are economically and it's why the welfare system in place doesn't work either.
It's funny. A few years ago I worked for Gamestop who sold the plans. We were pushed for replacement plans, reserves on games and pushed to make subscription sales.
Fortunately our sales manager did not make us do anything letting us handle it and told us to try to make them where we could. We often hit the target but not all the time. Our district manager didn't like that. However in our ability to read customers we had the largest repeat customer base in the region. We boasted the largest sales numbers and the least shrinkage in the area.
After my store manager left (because they wouldn't promote him), I left. Then the store turned into a shithole and eventually closed because the new manager was a corporate kiss ass and people (myself included) stopped shopping there.
Kind of funny how that works. Start forcing crap on your customers and they are going to feel uncomfortable coming into the store and eventually find somewhere where they aren't being asked to buy into every crap deal the store has to offer. It also gives you an idea of what is wrong with this country today, management. There are too many managers, there are too many of them that are "management trained" instead of trained through experience. Hell I have 3 bosses in my current job, NONE of them have the technical experience with what I do and look at me like I'm foreign when I try to explain things in even the most layman terms. Yet they are where they are because they have a degree that says they know how to manage people. They couldn't manage someone out of a paper bag and yet they get paid more than me.
WoW is the first game to "do it right" with Wintergrasp.
It's a territory that constantly flip flops. The winner of it gives players of that faction a bonus for the next 2 to 3 hours. There are daily quests to be done there to entice people to at least show up once a day. It requires the defending team to actually attack to win.
Asheron's Call's combat system sucked for most of its thriving life. It was dominated by the ability to cast Drain Health at instant speed and quickly apply healing kits to yourself. You also needed to master "strafe casting" which was a bug in the game engine that allowed you to cast while moving. And there was no reason to pvp other than to pvp someone and harass them, that is lame. Losing everything wasn't terribly exciting either because everything usually amounted to people only using gear that they could easily afford to lose and stack money notes and other high value items that didn't matter if you lost.
Been so nice to know you, and glad you proved me right when all those people who left WoW told me Warhammer was the next "it" game.
Sorry, but Blizzard announcing opening of servers, not closing them. You need to be moving in that direction if you expect to beat them.
While donation seems like a good idea, I know my local school system has a VERY strict computing policy and currently only uses hardware built into their policy.
The purpose is to save money by eliminating specialized configurations that will cause higher troubleshooting costs.
At least you still have your kidney.
You do realize that Google also licenses out their applications for you to run internally right? Or how about the fact that even government applications experience outtages, it's not like the hardware they purchase is magically protected by a "never goes down" forcefield. Google as an entity isn't going anywhere and you can't call a business a single point of failure, trust me, their infrastructure is well built to sustain multiple failure. Better yet, I would prefer if our government leveraged Google's superior and private workforce and farm of server hardware that has proven itself than try to build the infrastructure from the ground up. Particularly if in 4 years or 8 years when the administration changes all of that work setting it up prefers to go with M$ exchange or Zimbra, or Netscape Mail, or Lotus, etc.
I work in government IT. Government doesn't have the buying power to hire the trained workstaff to set up an infrastructure like this reliably. I would prefer they "outsource" to Google.
In other words, shut the hell up because you don't know what you're talking about.
...At least Microsoft won't hold a monopoly on that title anymore.
Wrong.
Go back and read your documentation. There is support for booting of partitions in VirtualBox, but get ready to go to the command line to do a little down and dirty work.
I've had no trouble with USB support. You just need to understand you can't just plug a device in and expect it to work, you often need to play with their "filters" system.
It does everything Fusion and Parallels did for me. None of the three really lived up to the DirectX hype they tout.
You know, since it does exactly the same thing as both and is completely free.
Don't worry, there is a selective portion of the population that will continue to have children in decision to abstain and continue to leech what does exist in our "retarded health care system". I believe one of them just had 8 more kids.
"the kind of people who make the greatest contribution to the US economy and to business and job growth"
What we need in this world is fewer overpaid managers. Who do you think is authorizing massive bonuses despite profit loss in these large corporations? That's right, management. Who does the least amount of the down and dirty work, managers. Who typically has the highest payroll? Management. Who typically wants to find the cheapest workforce and lacks general understanding of their projects? Management!
Workers I will take, educated people willing to earn a good pay (stressing the earn), but I have no use for managers or people that did nothing to learn a trade fully first before seeing the end of the rainbow by trying to START in management.
"Individual Americans are some of the most decent people I've met. Collectively, though, you people scare me."
A person is decent, people are scary. Please do not limit this to Americans only. It's like that everywhere.
Get over it. You CAN in fact get paid to work with and develop on open source platforms daily.
Your statement shows your ignorance of what open source is.
Valve has already stated that prior to shutting down Steam if it ever came to that (it's current success indicates that the service will never shut down wholesale), they would release patches to make the games available offline.
After looking at the cost of some of the indie stuff that is as good as or better than some of the block busters out there and at 1/3 to 1/2 the price.
Yep.
The most useful compiz feature I've found is the ADD helper.
You can customize it to turn off and on with a keystroke as well as degree of effect. Mine is set to (otherwise known as the windows key) + P. When active all windows aside from the current active one can be faded to a darker shade (or complete black if so desired) so that you won't be as distracted by anything in the background. It makes reading web pages a whole lot easier and gaming in a window a lot easier on the eyes without completely blurring out the background or other silly effects.
Compiz is great, assuming you want to configure it.