I'd call that stupid for you, for not having done your research in advance.
Please explain, how is it worse for you to have a product available in a language that you do not speak than it is to not have that product available at all?
It was a question, thus the question mark. How do you propose to keep clueless people away from such an important issue? You keep complaining about it but I don't see any answers. Not that you need to have them, but you make it sound like you do.
This issue is FAR TOO IMPORTANT to be handled/influenced by people and special interest groups, whether they admit how clueless they are or falsefy their expertise.
So what are you going to do about it? It's also far too important to avoid attracting the attention of such groups. A dictatorship of scientists? I'm not convinced that would work any better in the end.
Eventually, BluRay will be as cheap or cheaper than DVD's, and at that point it will make no sense NOT to upgrade.
By the time that happens, it probably won't make sense for most people to obtain their movies on round plastic discs at all.
Certainly I'm not going to upgrade. I already have things that play DVD. It's a sunk cost. The cost of getting a BluRay player is always going to be greater than zero. As it is I barely use my DVD players, so it's going to be very hard to justify upgrading hardware I rarely use anyway.
That's like saying that Alan Turing just threw some random parts together and suddenly cracked the Enigma.
In both cases it so downplays the enormous amount of education, study, and preparation undertaken by each of them that the end result simply has no resemblance to reality.
"Tool" is a perfectly standard way to insult someone in a particular way. It's not a misspelling. It's not my fault if you don't know what it means.
Are you sure you don't use metaphors? When you call someone a "motherfucker" are you truly accusing them of incest? When you call them a jackass are you saying that they are literally a donkey? Is a "piece of shit" something that literally came from someone's anus?
"Better"? No, it's not. But code is surely a lot safer just because the source code is available. Even if I don't read the code, if the program is at all popular I can be sure that a lot of people do read it, and that if anything nefarious were going on that somebody would make a stink about it. The threshold for this is significantly higher in a closed source app where you have to disassemble and reverse engineer it to see what it's up to.
I don't see it as a straw man at all. If you mean "far better for the common uses of SMS", you ought to say so.
The purpose of my post was two-fold. First was to point out why SMS can be very useful in ways that other things can't. Second was to find out if, in fact, there was some wonderful technology I didn't know about that was better than SMS even for this scenario.
The masking effect comes from a sort of tug-of-war in what goes into the air.
CO2 increases the greenhouse effect and is generally considered to be a prime driver of global warming. But we all knew that already.
There's also a lot of particulates released into the air, however. These particulates block sunlight from reaching the surface, reducing the total incoming energy from the Sun, and thus acting to reduce global temperatures.
The trick is that particulates fall out of the atmosphere in months to years, and only persist if continually replaced. Whereas CO2 sticks around forever until it's absorbed somehow.
So when there's a big jump it pollution, you can get what appears to be a much smaller effect on global warming than what it will actually have in the long term. The "masking" effect is only temporary.
I "conveniently" trimmed my quote because that was the portion that I was responding to. I'm not saying that this is why it's insanely popular. I'm simply saying that there are ways in which SMS is simply the best service available. These supposedly better technologies are not, in fact, better in every way. The fact that SMS's key advantage has nothing to do with its popularity is irrelevant to what I'm saying.
The person I responded to said, "There are far better FREE mobile messinging techs out there".
Well, I'm not aware of any free mobile messaging technology which is better than SMS in the particular aspect that I discussed. If there is one, I would really like to know about it.
So, I'm out in the middle of nowhere. My cell phone has a weak signal, enough to show up on the network but not enough to support an understandable conversation. I need to tell some people where I am. Instead of using SMS to give them my coordinates, I should _____________. (Please fill in the blank here.)
Dreaded for them, not for me. It's a powerful tool, like threatening to sue, or to call the police. Chargebacks are painful for merchants, costing a lot of money and, if they get too many, costing their ability to accept credit cards at all. It's a very big stick and so I don't like to use it until smaller sticks have definitively failed.
With a couple of my credit cards, I get one-time CC numbers by signing on to their web site, then clicking the option for it. It's often called by a silly marketing name, like "ShopSafe" or "Virtual Account Number". I put in a couple of options, like a dollar limit and a time limit, then it generates a number and displays it on the screen for me. Not all credit cards offer this kind of thing, so ask your card company and ask around if you're signing up for a new one. It will depend on the individual issuer, not just Visa/MasterCard/whatever.
By that measure WoWers are affected because they get less exercise and have less money.
In any case, that sure isn't how I think of addiction and I don't think that's how it's officially defined. Addiction is a matter of dependence, either physical dependence in the case of the hard-core old-school medical definition, or psychological dependence in the more modern touchy-feely sense. In other words, it's not so much what it does to you while you do it as it is what it does to you when you quit.
Not letting your lawn fill up with weeds does go beyond mere eye candy. But merely keeping it lush and green instead of browning and decrepit is pure eye candy. It's nothing more than makeup. And just like with women, it's purely superficial.
Addiction has nothing to do with negative medical consequences if you continue. It's perfectly possible to be addicted to something otherwise harmless. And anyway, the lack of exercise that 60 hours/week of WoW implies will kill you just as dead.
So despite nicotine being an enormously addictive substance, those millions of people who smoke cigarettes constantly and can't quit even though they want to but still manage to carry on normal lives aren't actually addicted?
This reminds me of one instance where I was the victim of a very minor fraud.
I ordered from a somewhat shady company, and so used a one-time credit card number with a limit set exactly at my total bill.
A few days later I check my credit card online and, guess what, Shady Company has charged me $10 more for shipping than they said they would.
First thing I did was call my credit card company and ask how this was possible. Oh, they said, we always allow for up to 10% excess because people forget about shipping charges and such....
Frickin idiots!
I was able to get my $10 back, and it only cost me four separate calls to Shady Company and about an hour of my time. (I was nearly ready to resort to the Dreaded Chargeback when they finally gave me my refund.) But still, if the one-time-use card number had done what it was supposed to have done, that would have been an hour of my time that I wouldn't have had to waste.
Well, you did get instant action. It was just followed up with more, negative action....
Your experience is pretty atypical from what I know of. I've never really experienced credit card fraud departments directly. The closest I've come was one card where the card company caught the fraud themselves, and automatically cancelled my card and gave me a new one. This was a bit stupid on their part because they forgot to actually tell me about this so I was very surprised one day when my card quit working, but there's a reason I always carry several.
But more importantly, even though you went through a lot of crap that you shouldn't have, you still won out in the end, and you still had a lot of options left at that point. The great thing about credit cards is that they only get your money when you give it to them. So whenever you're defrauded or the company screws you over, you are the one with the money and therefore you are the one with the power. If they try to screw you over, they still have to convince you to actually pay the mistaken charges and fees. You may take a hit on your credit score by refusing to pay, but even then you should (should!) be able to get that removed by explaining the situation to the credit agencies, and even if you can't it's still a small price to pay.
This is, incidentally, why I never use a debit card. With a debit card the money comes straight out of your bank account leaving your bank with the money and the power.
Probably because most people are clueless about their rights as credit card customers. People simply aren't aware that they can call their credit card company and get instant action on any fraudulent charge.
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I'd call that stupid for you, for not having done your research in advance.
Please explain, how is it worse for you to have a product available in a language that you do not speak than it is to not have that product available at all?
It was a question, thus the question mark. How do you propose to keep clueless people away from such an important issue? You keep complaining about it but I don't see any answers. Not that you need to have them, but you make it sound like you do.
This issue is FAR TOO IMPORTANT to be handled/influenced by people and special interest groups, whether they admit how clueless they are or falsefy their expertise.
So what are you going to do about it? It's also far too important to avoid attracting the attention of such groups. A dictatorship of scientists? I'm not convinced that would work any better in the end.
Eventually, BluRay will be as cheap or cheaper than DVD's, and at that point it will make no sense NOT to upgrade.
By the time that happens, it probably won't make sense for most people to obtain their movies on round plastic discs at all.
Certainly I'm not going to upgrade. I already have things that play DVD. It's a sunk cost. The cost of getting a BluRay player is always going to be greater than zero. As it is I barely use my DVD players, so it's going to be very hard to justify upgrading hardware I rarely use anyway.
That's like saying that Alan Turing just threw some random parts together and suddenly cracked the Enigma.
In both cases it so downplays the enormous amount of education, study, and preparation undertaken by each of them that the end result simply has no resemblance to reality.
"Tool" is a perfectly standard way to insult someone in a particular way. It's not a misspelling. It's not my fault if you don't know what it means.
Are you sure you don't use metaphors? When you call someone a "motherfucker" are you truly accusing them of incest? When you call them a jackass are you saying that they are literally a donkey? Is a "piece of shit" something that literally came from someone's anus?
This is where it comes in handy that not everybody is identical. Everybody else is not saying the same thing.
"Better"? No, it's not. But code is surely a lot safer just because the source code is available. Even if I don't read the code, if the program is at all popular I can be sure that a lot of people do read it, and that if anything nefarious were going on that somebody would make a stink about it. The threshold for this is significantly higher in a closed source app where you have to disassemble and reverse engineer it to see what it's up to.
I don't see it as a straw man at all. If you mean "far better for the common uses of SMS", you ought to say so.
The purpose of my post was two-fold. First was to point out why SMS can be very useful in ways that other things can't. Second was to find out if, in fact, there was some wonderful technology I didn't know about that was better than SMS even for this scenario.
The masking effect comes from a sort of tug-of-war in what goes into the air.
CO2 increases the greenhouse effect and is generally considered to be a prime driver of global warming. But we all knew that already.
There's also a lot of particulates released into the air, however. These particulates block sunlight from reaching the surface, reducing the total incoming energy from the Sun, and thus acting to reduce global temperatures.
The trick is that particulates fall out of the atmosphere in months to years, and only persist if continually replaced. Whereas CO2 sticks around forever until it's absorbed somehow.
So when there's a big jump it pollution, you can get what appears to be a much smaller effect on global warming than what it will actually have in the long term. The "masking" effect is only temporary.
I "conveniently" trimmed my quote because that was the portion that I was responding to. I'm not saying that this is why it's insanely popular. I'm simply saying that there are ways in which SMS is simply the best service available. These supposedly better technologies are not, in fact, better in every way. The fact that SMS's key advantage has nothing to do with its popularity is irrelevant to what I'm saying.
Nice straw man there, did you build it yourself?
The person I responded to said, "There are far better FREE mobile messinging techs out there".
Well, I'm not aware of any free mobile messaging technology which is better than SMS in the particular aspect that I discussed. If there is one, I would really like to know about it.
So, I'm out in the middle of nowhere. My cell phone has a weak signal, enough to show up on the network but not enough to support an understandable conversation. I need to tell some people where I am. Instead of using SMS to give them my coordinates, I should _____________. (Please fill in the blank here.)
"Cosmetic appearance" is just another word for eye candy. It may be eye candy which affects property values, but it's still just eye candy.
Dreaded for them, not for me. It's a powerful tool, like threatening to sue, or to call the police. Chargebacks are painful for merchants, costing a lot of money and, if they get too many, costing their ability to accept credit cards at all. It's a very big stick and so I don't like to use it until smaller sticks have definitively failed.
With a couple of my credit cards, I get one-time CC numbers by signing on to their web site, then clicking the option for it. It's often called by a silly marketing name, like "ShopSafe" or "Virtual Account Number". I put in a couple of options, like a dollar limit and a time limit, then it generates a number and displays it on the screen for me. Not all credit cards offer this kind of thing, so ask your card company and ask around if you're signing up for a new one. It will depend on the individual issuer, not just Visa/MasterCard/whatever.
So, you're point is that women are superficial?
Are you saying they're not?
So according to you, nicotine is a tool, not an addiction. Sure is not what every other person I have ever talked to says about it.
By that measure WoWers are affected because they get less exercise and have less money.
In any case, that sure isn't how I think of addiction and I don't think that's how it's officially defined. Addiction is a matter of dependence, either physical dependence in the case of the hard-core old-school medical definition, or psychological dependence in the more modern touchy-feely sense. In other words, it's not so much what it does to you while you do it as it is what it does to you when you quit.
Not letting your lawn fill up with weeds does go beyond mere eye candy. But merely keeping it lush and green instead of browning and decrepit is pure eye candy. It's nothing more than makeup. And just like with women, it's purely superficial.
Addiction has nothing to do with negative medical consequences if you continue. It's perfectly possible to be addicted to something otherwise harmless. And anyway, the lack of exercise that 60 hours/week of WoW implies will kill you just as dead.
So despite nicotine being an enormously addictive substance, those millions of people who smoke cigarettes constantly and can't quit even though they want to but still manage to carry on normal lives aren't actually addicted?
This reminds me of one instance where I was the victim of a very minor fraud.
I ordered from a somewhat shady company, and so used a one-time credit card number with a limit set exactly at my total bill.
A few days later I check my credit card online and, guess what, Shady Company has charged me $10 more for shipping than they said they would.
First thing I did was call my credit card company and ask how this was possible. Oh, they said, we always allow for up to 10% excess because people forget about shipping charges and such....
Frickin idiots!
I was able to get my $10 back, and it only cost me four separate calls to Shady Company and about an hour of my time. (I was nearly ready to resort to the Dreaded Chargeback when they finally gave me my refund.) But still, if the one-time-use card number had done what it was supposed to have done, that would have been an hour of my time that I wouldn't have had to waste.
Well, you did get instant action. It was just followed up with more, negative action....
Your experience is pretty atypical from what I know of. I've never really experienced credit card fraud departments directly. The closest I've come was one card where the card company caught the fraud themselves, and automatically cancelled my card and gave me a new one. This was a bit stupid on their part because they forgot to actually tell me about this so I was very surprised one day when my card quit working, but there's a reason I always carry several.
But more importantly, even though you went through a lot of crap that you shouldn't have, you still won out in the end, and you still had a lot of options left at that point. The great thing about credit cards is that they only get your money when you give it to them. So whenever you're defrauded or the company screws you over, you are the one with the money and therefore you are the one with the power. If they try to screw you over, they still have to convince you to actually pay the mistaken charges and fees. You may take a hit on your credit score by refusing to pay, but even then you should (should!) be able to get that removed by explaining the situation to the credit agencies, and even if you can't it's still a small price to pay.
This is, incidentally, why I never use a debit card. With a debit card the money comes straight out of your bank account leaving your bank with the money and the power.
Probably because most people are clueless about their rights as credit card customers. People simply aren't aware that they can call their credit card company and get instant action on any fraudulent charge.