Actually, I've compared prices and for a lot of things and Best Buy generally has some of the cheapest computers. For example, I am typing this on a Best Buy bought Toshiba that I picked up for $300, for a 15 inch screen, Celeron 900 CPU (at 2.2 ghz), 2 gigs of DDR2, a 160 GB HDD and 100% Linux compatability, its hard to beat it for the price if you are like me and are a student with minimal income. Yeah, for $100+ more you could get a really great laptop, but really, this laptop does everything I want, I can type all day on it without feeling strained (unlike a laptop) and runs all my programs just fine. And I just told them I don't want anything else and they didn't force it on me (not that I use my Windows partition anyways....).
Um, my guess would be millions. For a lot of people, Best Buy is the only physical retailer selling computers that have decent specs at a decent price. Yeah, some people will buy things online, but many times you can find pre-built systems cheaper at Best Buy than at any other retailer online or otherwise. It is really, really hard to beat a $300 laptop that does everything an average person wants while having a decent sized screen (15 inch) and decent sized keyboard.
We've tried doing this with physical plugs to no avail, even if one half conforms to a standard there will always be a few very popular device manufacturers -cough- Apple -cough- who will break the trend and inconvenience a large amount of users.
But that is also flawed because AT&T does more than mobile phones, T-Mobile is offered in many different English speaking countries, Sprint until 2006 had landlines, and Verizon has an ISP service.
There is no fair way to do this with Google because you don't know what context that is in. Does someone love their TV from AT&T or their mobile phone service from AT&T? Does someone hate T-Mobile in the US or T-Mobile in the UK? Does someone really love their fiber service by Verizon or their phone service? About the only somewhat fair result would be with Sprint because Sprint hasn't had anything other than mobile phones for ~4 years and even that could be swayed with people talking about landlines.
Ok, this is like if you have a Dell, you have AOL as your ISP and you are running Windows. When you have a problem with your computer you call Dell, when you have a problem with your internet you call AOL, when you have a problem with Windows you call Microsoft. A lot of these people have a problem with their phone and are calling Google, just like if you had a Dell and called Microsoft for support, or if you had a Windows problem and called AOL.
How exactly is it a problem that your cell phone provider doesn't know much about the hardware or software? Should your ISP give Windows tech support? According to the problem you said to Google, it was a problem with Verizon's network, not Google, not Motorola.
While I can see this working great for people out in the middle of nowhere that somehow have great internet and terrible cell service, I can't see this working for the average person to make free calls. For one, this solution would eliminate any encryption meaning your calls are able to be intercepted with ease, another is, I'm not entirely sure that Magic Jack would encrypt your calls going over the internet leading to possible interception there, and then if it was broadcast through another femtocell it could be intercepted through there again. In short, it may be a way for people to save a few bucks, but at the cost of any privacy.
They don't test (for example) shampoo by giving the test animal a nicer shower. You force the animal to ingest (to test what would happen if a child drank the bottle). Or dripping the shampoo into the test animal's eye. I'm sure you can imagine other scenarios.
...So they make sure that the shampoo won't kill a living being if it is ingested? I think that is a rather sane thing to do. Similarly with putting things in their eyes, I don't want shampoo that will blind me if I get a bit of it in my eye.
These tests are often unnecessary & you can't really be sure that the test animal & a human subject would react in the same way in any case.
Sure, but its a lot better for a dog to lose an eye than for a human being to. Or to kill a few mice rather than someone's toddler. And sure, you can't be 100% sure that they will react the same, but you can sure weed out any disastrous effects.
Seriously, if you thought about this for a fraction of a minute before posting, you would've figured this out. Are you some sort of retard who types without thinking?
Are you some kind of bleeding-heart idiot who thinks that a mouse's life is worth more than a human's life? Guess what? I think -all- of us have gotten shampoo in our eyes and probably managed to get some of it in our mouths at one point or another. I think you would have a quite different opinion of this issue if you were blinded/killed by your shampoo.
The thing is though, I'd much rather a dog, mouse, or even a monkey suffer compared to a human. Plus, how the hell does cosmetic testing make something feel pain? Unless you are putting acid in your mascara or something in which case I'd rather something live in agony then that make it to store shelves!
...But if no one is living there, do the "crimes" committed there really harm anyone? Really, if someone was, say, 5 miles from anyone and it was all their own property and they got high, publicly drunk, did every type of drug imaginable, discharged low-power rifles with a range of less than 5 miles, set off fireworks, played music cursing at a very high volume, and did just about every type of crime able to be committed in that time, would it harm anyone other than themselves? No.
Yeah, because we all know how the story about the little boy who cried wolf ended with everyone running to his aid when there really was a wolf... oh wait...
Look at e-mail virus "Alerts", yeah, sometimes there is some truth to what they are saying but most of the time anyone who is the least computer savvy deletes them on sight. Do we want real alerts to be like this? Do we want SMS alerts to be so trivial that people won't even read them before deleting them? Do we want radio alerts to be so common that people just switch to a CD whenever they hear the annoying tone?
Of course not, so we need to use them very sparingly otherwise people will tune out.
The problem is, if someone warns me that there is an earthquake/fire/tornado/etc and there isn't -anything- I'm going to be a lot less willing to believe them a second time, or a third time. Think about car alarms, how many times have you thought "Someone's car is getting stolen! I should make sure to go out and check the parking lot to help assist the police!" my guess is, you've never thought of that, you thought "Someone shut that alarm off!". Now, do you really want emergency broadcasters to make warnings that are simply annoyances?
Communication may save lives, but if its annoying, misinformed communication people will soon tune them out.
This is the government. They will start shooting for 100%, budget cuts will cut it to 85%, lobbyists will cut it to 80%, and by the end of the program only 65% will be helped.
Not only are there those issues, but the fact that every single refreshment costs five times as much as it would at a store for no more convenience or taste. I mean, I don't mind paying $3 for a really good burger because there isn't a way I could cook it that way and it would turn out that good. Sure, I might be able to make a burger that costs $.50 but I'd still have to make it and it wouldn't taste as good. With popcorn it takes what? 2 minutes in the microwave (less time than you would be waiting in line) and costs five times less. Same with drinks, I can get a 2 liter of soda for $1 or so, it costs more for a small drink at the theater.
If I'm paying $15 per person to enjoy a movie (ticket+popcorn/drink), it better be high quality enjoyment. That means A) Very high definition B) Great sound system C) People actually acting decently. Because, really the masses have determined a view of a movie in standard to be worth $1 for a family (look at how successful Redbox is), plus with a DVD you can pause, rewind, skip through boring parts, etc. that you can't in the theater. But instead when you pay $5 per person for a ticket you get generally pretty low quality, a sound system that is only focused on being LOUD, terrible people, terrible options for refreshments, and when you have to pee midway through the movie there is no way you can get them to pause/rewind it for you.
No wonder piracy/rentals have taken up the way they have.
So that makes it OK to steal my bandwidth and annoy me? Fuck that!
Yeah, "stealing" that oh so precious 5Kb of bandwidth.
Linkedin sent me email from a known spammer. This was not "recruitment", it was spam.
By your logic every time I get a friend request from a random person and Facebook sends me a message that is spam.
Name them. Name one that will send you OBVIOUS spam, even when you tell them it's spam and you don't want to receive it, just because they want you to join their service.
Lets see (granted, this is biased based on the mail I have received):
A) Scholarship "search" sites
B) Random colleges in the middle of nowhere
C) Any random software program that wants you to "register"
Of course, none of this mail makes it into my real mailbox because I have 2 main E-mail accounts, one is my personal e-mail that I only give out to people I know, and another where I sign up for all my sites. If I don't have to click a registration link, the second spam e-mail account rarely gets checked.
Lets see, how did they manage to boycott their government and win.
A) They had the right and ability to bear arms that were comparable across the board. Having a 9MM simi-auto pistol may protect you against a robber with a handgun, knife or any other type of small arm, but its not going to do anything to a tank, a person with a fully-auto weapon with lots of ammo, a trained sniper, etc. When both groups use muskets its a lot more fair than one group's highest weapons are simi-automatic weapons and the other group has cruise missiles, tanks, nuclear weapons, helicopters, planes, etc.
B) They were far away from the government. When it took a month at best to send orders back and forth between Europe and the US, the generals are going to be unable to get orders from their government compared to the fast action of the colonists.
C) They had support of a superpower at the time (France) which helped them win the war.
D) They won. If they lost their names would be cursed as traitors, George Washington's name would have been the same as calling someone a "Benedict Arnold" today.
For the conditions of the revolution to be replicated today, the average American needs to have a fully-automatic weapon at their disposal, having a plane wouldn't be uncommon, the wealthy would own atomic bombs, and the middle class would need to be able to afford a cruise missile. Cell phones would need to have 20 day or more lag to connect to the other line, the revolutionaries would need to have support of a superpower either of a major European country, or a major Asian country. And the revolutionaries would need to win.
Face it, the American Revolution was a rare revolution in terms of timing and could not be replicated today.
The problem is, if people don't like what the government is doing there is no real way for rapid change. An international boycott of Google could both change its plans quickly and perhaps put it out of business. Any time you'd try that with the government you would simply get thrown in jail.
Most of the time the way that an unboxing video can make it to YouTube is that some retailers sell things in advance. I mean, Harry Potter, which everyone -knew- the release date and had it printed on all the boxes still made it out to store shelves early. How much more likely is it that some Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere gets a box of shiny gadgets and decides to put them on sale?
The problem is, there are some things Apple simply won't do. For one, they want to release gadgets in generations. Just look at the iPod, first it was a black and white screen, then it was a color screen, then it could play videos then it had a touch screen, etc. If Apple doesn't see any way to easily upgrade a device, they won't make it. Unlike most "geek centered" devices, Apple's gadgets usually are lower-speced than their competitors but bring polish to the market. Look at the iPod, it wasn't exactly the largest media player at the time, nor did it have the most specs.
Exactly. Engadget, Gizmodo, and the rest of the Apple-centered gadget blogs get a big boost if they can get the latest leak, even if it is nothing more than an ad for Apple.
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Actually, I've compared prices and for a lot of things and Best Buy generally has some of the cheapest computers. For example, I am typing this on a Best Buy bought Toshiba that I picked up for $300, for a 15 inch screen, Celeron 900 CPU (at 2.2 ghz), 2 gigs of DDR2, a 160 GB HDD and 100% Linux compatability, its hard to beat it for the price if you are like me and are a student with minimal income. Yeah, for $100+ more you could get a really great laptop, but really, this laptop does everything I want, I can type all day on it without feeling strained (unlike a laptop) and runs all my programs just fine. And I just told them I don't want anything else and they didn't force it on me (not that I use my Windows partition anyways....).
Um, my guess would be millions. For a lot of people, Best Buy is the only physical retailer selling computers that have decent specs at a decent price. Yeah, some people will buy things online, but many times you can find pre-built systems cheaper at Best Buy than at any other retailer online or otherwise. It is really, really hard to beat a $300 laptop that does everything an average person wants while having a decent sized screen (15 inch) and decent sized keyboard.
People in NYC are going to be a lot more aware of hype surrounding something because of all the ads in NYC.
We've tried doing this with physical plugs to no avail, even if one half conforms to a standard there will always be a few very popular device manufacturers -cough- Apple -cough- who will break the trend and inconvenience a large amount of users.
However, you have to realize that if Google messes this up, many more companies will pop up to deliver the same service.
Does that mean we can nuke jupiter?
But that is also flawed because AT&T does more than mobile phones, T-Mobile is offered in many different English speaking countries, Sprint until 2006 had landlines, and Verizon has an ISP service.
There is no fair way to do this with Google because you don't know what context that is in. Does someone love their TV from AT&T or their mobile phone service from AT&T? Does someone hate T-Mobile in the US or T-Mobile in the UK? Does someone really love their fiber service by Verizon or their phone service? About the only somewhat fair result would be with Sprint because Sprint hasn't had anything other than mobile phones for ~4 years and even that could be swayed with people talking about landlines.
Ok, this is like if you have a Dell, you have AOL as your ISP and you are running Windows. When you have a problem with your computer you call Dell, when you have a problem with your internet you call AOL, when you have a problem with Windows you call Microsoft. A lot of these people have a problem with their phone and are calling Google, just like if you had a Dell and called Microsoft for support, or if you had a Windows problem and called AOL.
How exactly is it a problem that your cell phone provider doesn't know much about the hardware or software? Should your ISP give Windows tech support? According to the problem you said to Google, it was a problem with Verizon's network, not Google, not Motorola.
While I can see this working great for people out in the middle of nowhere that somehow have great internet and terrible cell service, I can't see this working for the average person to make free calls. For one, this solution would eliminate any encryption meaning your calls are able to be intercepted with ease, another is, I'm not entirely sure that Magic Jack would encrypt your calls going over the internet leading to possible interception there, and then if it was broadcast through another femtocell it could be intercepted through there again. In short, it may be a way for people to save a few bucks, but at the cost of any privacy.
They don't test (for example) shampoo by giving the test animal a nicer shower. You force the animal to ingest (to test what would happen if a child drank the bottle). Or dripping the shampoo into the test animal's eye. I'm sure you can imagine other scenarios.
These tests are often unnecessary & you can't really be sure that the test animal & a human subject would react in the same way in any case.
Sure, but its a lot better for a dog to lose an eye than for a human being to. Or to kill a few mice rather than someone's toddler. And sure, you can't be 100% sure that they will react the same, but you can sure weed out any disastrous effects.
Seriously, if you thought about this for a fraction of a minute before posting, you would've figured this out. Are you some sort of retard who types without thinking?
Are you some kind of bleeding-heart idiot who thinks that a mouse's life is worth more than a human's life? Guess what? I think -all- of us have gotten shampoo in our eyes and probably managed to get some of it in our mouths at one point or another. I think you would have a quite different opinion of this issue if you were blinded/killed by your shampoo.
If making eyeliner burns skin or gives ulcers, I'd say the cosmetic company is doing something seriously, terribly wrong.
The thing is though, I'd much rather a dog, mouse, or even a monkey suffer compared to a human. Plus, how the hell does cosmetic testing make something feel pain? Unless you are putting acid in your mascara or something in which case I'd rather something live in agony then that make it to store shelves!
...But if no one is living there, do the "crimes" committed there really harm anyone? Really, if someone was, say, 5 miles from anyone and it was all their own property and they got high, publicly drunk, did every type of drug imaginable, discharged low-power rifles with a range of less than 5 miles, set off fireworks, played music cursing at a very high volume, and did just about every type of crime able to be committed in that time, would it harm anyone other than themselves? No.
Yeah, because we all know how the story about the little boy who cried wolf ended with everyone running to his aid when there really was a wolf... oh wait...
Look at e-mail virus "Alerts", yeah, sometimes there is some truth to what they are saying but most of the time anyone who is the least computer savvy deletes them on sight. Do we want real alerts to be like this? Do we want SMS alerts to be so trivial that people won't even read them before deleting them? Do we want radio alerts to be so common that people just switch to a CD whenever they hear the annoying tone?
Of course not, so we need to use them very sparingly otherwise people will tune out.
The problem is, if someone warns me that there is an earthquake/fire/tornado/etc and there isn't -anything- I'm going to be a lot less willing to believe them a second time, or a third time. Think about car alarms, how many times have you thought "Someone's car is getting stolen! I should make sure to go out and check the parking lot to help assist the police!" my guess is, you've never thought of that, you thought "Someone shut that alarm off!". Now, do you really want emergency broadcasters to make warnings that are simply annoyances?
Communication may save lives, but if its annoying, misinformed communication people will soon tune them out.
This is the government. They will start shooting for 100%, budget cuts will cut it to 85%, lobbyists will cut it to 80%, and by the end of the program only 65% will be helped.
And I assume you go to the movies once a year?
Not only are there those issues, but the fact that every single refreshment costs five times as much as it would at a store for no more convenience or taste. I mean, I don't mind paying $3 for a really good burger because there isn't a way I could cook it that way and it would turn out that good. Sure, I might be able to make a burger that costs $.50 but I'd still have to make it and it wouldn't taste as good. With popcorn it takes what? 2 minutes in the microwave (less time than you would be waiting in line) and costs five times less. Same with drinks, I can get a 2 liter of soda for $1 or so, it costs more for a small drink at the theater.
If I'm paying $15 per person to enjoy a movie (ticket+popcorn/drink), it better be high quality enjoyment. That means A) Very high definition B) Great sound system C) People actually acting decently. Because, really the masses have determined a view of a movie in standard to be worth $1 for a family (look at how successful Redbox is), plus with a DVD you can pause, rewind, skip through boring parts, etc. that you can't in the theater. But instead when you pay $5 per person for a ticket you get generally pretty low quality, a sound system that is only focused on being LOUD, terrible people, terrible options for refreshments, and when you have to pee midway through the movie there is no way you can get them to pause/rewind it for you.
No wonder piracy/rentals have taken up the way they have.
...Except this experiment used mice and does more or less prove causation.....
So that makes it OK to steal my bandwidth and annoy me? Fuck that!
Yeah, "stealing" that oh so precious 5Kb of bandwidth.
Linkedin sent me email from a known spammer. This was not "recruitment", it was spam.
By your logic every time I get a friend request from a random person and Facebook sends me a message that is spam.
Name them. Name one that will send you OBVIOUS spam, even when you tell them it's spam and you don't want to receive it, just because they want you to join their service.
Lets see (granted, this is biased based on the mail I have received):
A) Scholarship "search" sites
B) Random colleges in the middle of nowhere
C) Any random software program that wants you to "register"
Of course, none of this mail makes it into my real mailbox because I have 2 main E-mail accounts, one is my personal e-mail that I only give out to people I know, and another where I sign up for all my sites. If I don't have to click a registration link, the second spam e-mail account rarely gets checked.
Lets see, how did they manage to boycott their government and win.
A) They had the right and ability to bear arms that were comparable across the board. Having a 9MM simi-auto pistol may protect you against a robber with a handgun, knife or any other type of small arm, but its not going to do anything to a tank, a person with a fully-auto weapon with lots of ammo, a trained sniper, etc. When both groups use muskets its a lot more fair than one group's highest weapons are simi-automatic weapons and the other group has cruise missiles, tanks, nuclear weapons, helicopters, planes, etc.
B) They were far away from the government. When it took a month at best to send orders back and forth between Europe and the US, the generals are going to be unable to get orders from their government compared to the fast action of the colonists.
C) They had support of a superpower at the time (France) which helped them win the war.
D) They won. If they lost their names would be cursed as traitors, George Washington's name would have been the same as calling someone a "Benedict Arnold" today.
For the conditions of the revolution to be replicated today, the average American needs to have a fully-automatic weapon at their disposal, having a plane wouldn't be uncommon, the wealthy would own atomic bombs, and the middle class would need to be able to afford a cruise missile. Cell phones would need to have 20 day or more lag to connect to the other line, the revolutionaries would need to have support of a superpower either of a major European country, or a major Asian country. And the revolutionaries would need to win.
Face it, the American Revolution was a rare revolution in terms of timing and could not be replicated today.
The problem is, if people don't like what the government is doing there is no real way for rapid change. An international boycott of Google could both change its plans quickly and perhaps put it out of business. Any time you'd try that with the government you would simply get thrown in jail.
Most of the time the way that an unboxing video can make it to YouTube is that some retailers sell things in advance. I mean, Harry Potter, which everyone -knew- the release date and had it printed on all the boxes still made it out to store shelves early. How much more likely is it that some Wal-Mart in the middle of nowhere gets a box of shiny gadgets and decides to put them on sale?
The problem is, there are some things Apple simply won't do. For one, they want to release gadgets in generations. Just look at the iPod, first it was a black and white screen, then it was a color screen, then it could play videos then it had a touch screen, etc. If Apple doesn't see any way to easily upgrade a device, they won't make it. Unlike most "geek centered" devices, Apple's gadgets usually are lower-speced than their competitors but bring polish to the market. Look at the iPod, it wasn't exactly the largest media player at the time, nor did it have the most specs.
Exactly. Engadget, Gizmodo, and the rest of the Apple-centered gadget blogs get a big boost if they can get the latest leak, even if it is nothing more than an ad for Apple.
Yeah, what I really meant was for the conventional explosive to go off to set off the nuclear component, but I slightly messed up in the wording ;)