In all seriousness though, it does sound like he's just trolling. Either he's pissed he's not still apart of the titan that is Apple and secretly hates himself for it (motive for this tyrade?), or software's simply ran past him so fast that he's just not been able to keep up and he "misses the old days".
OR Maybe he's actually used the software and been unhappy with it and is in the fortunate position of being someone to whom people will listen. I've certainly seen enough of problems with Apple software: 1) Itunes leaving several TSR programs running all the time even though I don't have an ipod. 2) Newer copies of itunes won't install for some unknown reason on my system, and both Apple and installshield point the fingers at each other. Apple support has ZERO help to offer to fix the problem. 3) Try to download the latest version of quicktime, and it won't install, because it has itunes bundled, and itunes fails to install
And this is just on a PC. If you look, you can find enough complaints about OSX. There just aren't as many, because not as many people use it as Windows, and those that do are generally loyal beyond the point of fanatacism.
DEFINITELY not complete without the animated series...
But also could use the audiobook versions of Nimoy's "I am not Spock" and "I am Spock".
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 1
The door in your link is thin metal with a foam core. When I was in college, the dorm room doors were 2" thick solid hardwood. I wouldn't want to have people shooting at one with me on the other side of it, but I wouldn't want people shooting at me without one between us even more.:)
It might mean that there is no such thing as dark matter
Actually, I think this is incorrect. 'Dark matter' is simply all the mass of the universe that doesn't emit detectable radiation. All the planets, asteroids, and other chunks of rock floating around in space. The logical conclusion, if this paper is correct, is that there is no need to assume the existence of such enormous amounts of dark matter in order to explain the behavior of galaxies. It's like the modern-day version of man coming to understand there is no such thing as 'ether'. Except that in this case there actually is dark matter, just not as much as we'd misled ourselves to believe.
Do they have some way to recycle all this plastic? We're entering the biggest petroleum crisis in history, and they're finding new ways of wasting oil. Shouldn't there be a petroleum tax for something like this that creates so much waste?
Wow, we're all still trying to figure out ways to make more permanent data storage, and M$ has jumped light years ahead of us to making data storage that doesn't store data. WTG!!!
Good documentation in this industry is a rare thing.
Man, you got that right! Used to be, you would buy an O/S and get a truckload of in-depth books covering every aspect of it. Now, you're lucky if you get a CD-ROM that tells you how to change a few config options.
I think part of the problem is the very fast product cycle we now see. There just isn't time to produce quality docs. The other half of the problem is that there's no incentive to spend the money producing those docs when they can just make you pay to buy 'em separately, or even better, pay overinflated prices for a week of their training program.
1) No, I mean the forums where people go to get help from other users, because Palm support is sorely lacking in useful information. 3) Versamail is one of several inadequate 3rd-party apps. The best thing I've seen for the Treo is the current carrier-provided 'wireless sync' from Verizon. Unfortunately, you don't get this from Sprint, Cingular, T-Mobile (which doesn't even sell the 650's) etc. 5) Of course... you were upgrading from a Blackberry, so didn't have the memory issue, right? This problem was so prevalent, Handspring/PalmOne gave away free CF memory cards to people to deal with it. Some carriers had to wait so long for the 650's that by the time it was available for their users, the problem had been fixed. Google 'treo memory problem' dude.
Say what you will, practically everybody that used to carry a Blackberry, now carries a Treo. That's a technical success. How Palm has turned that into a losing business is the story.
Whoa! Where do you get your numbers??? I see more people with Blackberry's all the time. Wasn't the point of TFA how Palm's business has been hurting?
Except for #4, BTW, everything you listed is either incorrect, or irrelevant. I'll enumerate:
1) Bluetooth works fine on the 650. Especially with the latest software 2) People are upgrading from Blackberrys, not older Treos, so this is irrelevant. 3) Every executive I know with a Treo runs third party e-mail software from Goodlink 4) Bullshit. Besides, company IT departments handle this. 5) What? This is just wrong. (Maybe it's true on Verizon?) 6) How is this different from any other device? 7) Wrong. 8) See #3 9) See #2 10) See #4 11) See #1
1) Bullshit, Their Bluetooth stinks. Go read some of the message boards. Completely incompatible with many car kits and headsets. No voice dialing profiles. Won't support voice dial even with 3rd party app. 2) Au contraire. My boss is on his 3rd Treo (180, 600, 650). People are upgrading from older Treos hoping the new one won't stink like the earlier versions. 3) Yeah, kinda sucks you have to buy 3rd-party software to do what Blackberry does natively. Isn't a $600 pricetag for the device enough? 4) I call Bullshit on you. The exec is not going to carry around an IT dept to help him use the thing. From the 600 to the 650, they changed the way you turn it on and off, the way you unlock it, the way you get to your home page, the way the dialer works... 5) Again, go back and look at the 650 history. It is VERY WELL documented that they changed the memory organization and that the first adopters couldn't upgrade, because of memory limitations. It was like DOS and the 640K limit all over again. If you don't know this one, you don't know jack shit about the Treo 650. 6) I'll give you this one, to a point. Every other device sucks, so the Treo should, too? \/\/ 7) Right. 8) See #3 9) See #2 10) I AM the IT dept and I can't get fuck-all support from Handspring. They insist you get support from your fucking carrier! 11) Again, regarding sound quality, go look at the complaints on message boards. The fact you don't even know about the memory issues with the 650 shows how much you know about issues with this product. I stand by my statements.
No way. The Treo 600/650 STINKS! I've had to work with the different 'versions' of this product from every major carrier.
1) Treo 600: no bluetooth Treo 650: bluetooth stinks/doesn't work right 2) Treo 600: one set of cradles/cables Treo 650: completely different set, cradle unavailable due to insufficient supply?! 3) Both: extremely insufficient email software doesn't integrate well or at all with corporate email 4) Both: management of applications is a STEEP learning curve for users 5) Treo 650: memory issues right out of the gate 6) Both: took forever to become available as different 'versions' were customized to each carrier. 7) Both: you have to hard-reset on a roughly weekly basis 8) Both: As has already been mentioned, shoddy PIM software included. 9) Treo 650: Changes MANY simple functions that users of the 600 had learned, so executives who don't like to learn new technology are forced to re-learn how to use the thing. 10) Support: Palm's support is the only thing worse than their products. 11) Both: Poor sound quality
Seriously, there are two things these devices need to do and do well: 1) Work as phones 2) Allow remote access to email (and calendar) The Treo really is not very good with either. I will NOT be purchasing one for myself, and will likely avoid the M$ version when it is available, because of the above list.
Topher Grace as Venom? He's so small/weak. The only thing that would be worse is if they cast his clone Tobey Mcquire as Spiderma....oh....wait.
Seriously, I can see Topher being absolutely evil in the role of Venom, with just enough humor to be scary.
WTF????! OK, I was excited to hear about Thomas Hayden Church... he's a dead ringer for Eddy Brock. I think they must have it mixed up. Of course, since the Venom character was a combination of Brock and an alien 'suit' that wants to kill Spidey for rejecting it, anybody could be inside, I'd just like to see Eddy (Olympic weightlifter) Brock played by someone a little meatier than Topher (male clone of Ally McBeal) Grace.
And a massive 99% of people don't need to understand that. Mail servers should be designed to ignore e-mails of a larger size than they can handle. It's not up to the users to understand KB, MB, GB, mail server loads, HTTP, FTP, SMTP, SSH, whatever.
The mail server may be able to handle the mail, but it may still cause problems upstream, say at the ISP level. I once saw a user mail a 75MB file to 250 people from his Exchange server. The server had no problem with that, but it tried to send a couple dozen copies at a time and saturated the connection. The designers of the mail server can't account for all situations, but the administrators who are in a position to prevent this kind of thing are at the mercy of powers-that-be who don't want any explanations, they just want it to work, dammit! So, you can't prevent the users doing stupid things. You can't teach the users to NOT do stupid things. You can only wait for them to do something stupid, clean it up, and slap 'em on the hand and say "don't do it again" knowing fully that they WILL do it again. It's kinda like running a day care.
I'm so sad that I have to agree with this. I remember how I used to swear by HP. 10 to 15 years ago, they couldn't be beat. Then they completely changed. Everything they put out became disposable and cheap. Their inkjet printers are the strongest example of how they went wrong. I have a friend who's still using his deskjet 500, after nearly 15 years. But in the mid-90's, they started selling not printers, but disposable ink-cartridge caddies. Even the cartridges were junk. You couldn't print 1/4 of the pages advertised before they gummed up so bad they were useless. I haven't bought an HP product in years.
Another reason they aren't worth a crap is their shitty driver support. You buy an HP workstation-class machine from the late 90's early 00's, and you get no support for win98, because it's a home O/S. They only have 2K drivers. Or you buy a 'home/home office' variety from that period, and there's no Win 2K drivers. This extended to their 'internet keyboards' too, which was the last HP item I ever bought.
Then they bought up Compaq, and even their server line now has issues. Ever tried to use their mounting rails? I never thought, back in the 90's that I'd pick a Dell server over HP/Compaq and be able to make the decision merely on the basis of their racks and rails!
What I'd like to find is a scanner that will do 8.5x14" paper. They could be found back before the scanner wars, when they were all SCSI and cost $1200 and up.
I haven't seen one in years. My company once had a very pricy HP scanner that had a document feeder. Even that one wouldn't scan 14" paper. It only got the first 12" or so and tried to do the rest as a separate sheet.
So a plane which can fly back is supposed to be 'cost effective'. But why does it have to be so big? You generally take big fat cargos up and then work on them. So take them in a big fucking can, which sits UNDER your small, human sized space plane which re-enters and holds the people, tools and control bits. You throw away the can. And under the cargo, you put the fat ass rockets.
The shuttle is NOT just a launch vehicle. It is the only vehicle capable of RETURNING a payload from orbit. It is also an orbital laboratory platform designed for a time when there was no ISS. The cargo bay can be outfitted with lab modules which make the round trip with the crew. Finally, it is also a maintenance platform, where satellites can be brought for repair. No other vehicle has yet been designed, much less built, that is all of these things. You can't just stick all that way up at the tip-top of a rocket. You can't just put it in a can and discard it, because the WHOLE THING has to come back, not just the crew compartment.
However, the shuttle is the product of design by committee, and it shows. Since the main engines themselves aren't used in landing (except for the deceleration burn to exit orbit) a different design could work that is a lander only. The problem is handling all that weight on the return. For a crew capsule, you only need parachutes. But chutes can't safely handle the enormous weights the shuttle returns to ground.
There is a revolting level of hypocracy in Google's ban on CNET, and it smells like the act of a child who has physically grown too quickly while remaining far too immature to adequately control their bulk.
I agree 100%. Google now has a tool to send SMS messages to any mobile phone number. My roommate sent a test to my work phone the other day. There was no identifying information, so the message was completely anonymous. When I contacted Google to see about privacy options and the ability to block your number, all I could find was a canned response directing you to contact your provider to block Google's sender address. How many providers out there will do that for you? Especially when it's a work-provided phone, and you don't have access to the account, anyway.
I can't think of a more accurate description than your 'overgrown child' analogy. As much as I love Google's various tools, there is a very strong streak of 'tough shit' running through their customer service attitude (look up click fraud sometime), and it seems to be getting worse.
What is the fixation with sex? Why would a child seeing two consenting adults having sex "corrupt" them. Sex is a natural thing that happens between two people who like each other a lot. It's nothing
to be shy about and really, rather than demonising it, we should be celebrating it. It's one of the activities that transcends all cultures on this planet and that is universally enjoyed.
Randy Marsh: You see, Token, when a man and a woman really love each other, the man puts his penis into the woman's vagina. It's called 'making love,' and its normal.
Token: And when the woman has 4 penises in her, and then stands above the guys and pees on them, is that love making? Five midgets beating a man covered in Thousand Island dressing. Is that love making?
j/k really. I agree with you completely, but the quotes occurred to me as fitting.
When things die, they decompose, releasing a plethora of various greenhouse gases. So while the O2 consumption is stopped, pollution is still increased.
One good whiff of ammonia gives me uncontrollable nose bleeds. One summer while I was still in high school, I spent a week in a major university dorm which used ammonia-based cleaners. I woke up after the second night there to find my pillow was solid red from the blood soaking in.
A couple years later, I worked in a paint factory with my dad. I was driving a forklift, moving empty containers (6'x6'x6') that had contained industrial-strength ammonia. The lids on these containers had not been replaced, and the vapors gave me a nosebleed that wouldn't quit for 2 hours.
Ammonia definitely is a hazardous chemical, and you don't even wanna know what happens if you mix it with bleach.
I'm 31, and I almost covered MY eyes during that scene. C'mon, are we THAT desensitized??? It was AWFUL and heartbreaking. It was ONE thing that Lucas got right, and it should not be the kind of thing that children are taught to laugh at, and there WERE children in the theater laughing at that scene when I watched it.
Actually, Second Life already has seen reports of sweatshop laborers. In this case, it appears they were trying to collect and hoard land, which is arguably the most scarce resource in Second Life. Any time you have a limited, transferrable resource, you have an opening for this kind of activity. It seems to me the only way to combat it is to either make the resource unlimited or non-transferrable.
The bottom line from a game developer's standpoint is that we're not satisfied with the state of the industry in a lot of ways either. I don't want to have to work on a commercial blockbuster in order to get anyone to actually play my games. But based on all of the successful games in today's market, it's obvious that graphics *are* actually the dominant factor in determining what game you're going to spend your hard earned dough on. Because of the burden this places on the artwork, this necessitates a $25M+ budget for a title to have a hope of being truly successful. As soon as people stop rushing out to by the next Halo or the next Half-life or the next Doom, or Quake (or Unreal), (or a game based on one of those engines), then I'll have a little more faith that I can make a game with a more modest and reasonable budget that will be successful.
No, graphics are NOT what I'm going to spend my hard-earned dough on. All this talk about graphics==$ale$ seems to me to ignore completely how marketing factors into the equation. People buying Doom or Halo or Half-Life don't necessarily do it because of the graphics. That might have been one of the reasons, but they also bought it because of word-of-mouth or cool box art, or because they saw a blurb on TV somewhere. People buy Doom3, Half-Life 2, and Halo X, because a) the first one was good and b) the mega-conglomerate producers are counting on the sequel factor and are throwing in untold amounts of cash on marketing to recoup their development dollars.
The flip side of your coin is: don't say you'll quit selling shit when people quit buying it. Quit selling shit, and people will quit buying it!
For the record, I have bought none of these games. The original Doom was all the exposure I needed to FPS. By the time Quake showed up, one could see where the industry was heading. It got caught in a loop, with ever more powerful hardware needing ever more powerful software to justify it and vice-versa. I think what made those games so successful originally was that they were so different, so realistic, and so immersive compared to what came before. Wolfenstein was really no less bloody than Doom, but Doom made it more convincing, and was faster and had more convincing gore. But there's a point beyond which that doesn't really matter.
Here's a thought experiment: Let's just take as given that any game will need at least a $25million budget for the graphics / art / music / voices. Let's therefore leave these out of the test and just assume that any game we produce has been given that budget and has those visuals. Now, what's going to sell better, a poorly-marketed game based on a completely new concept with incredible gameplay that violates none of the 20 rules listed in the manifesto... OR A heavily-marketed POS sequel that consists of the same crap we've been getting but with a photo-realistic hot chick on the cover shooting rockets out of her jubblies. The solution to this is left up to the gentle reader.
But here's a hint: word of mouth CANNOT compete with the Sequel Factor and a marketing budget that doubles the development budget of the game.
In short: quit selling us shit, and we'll quit buying it.
And what's wrong with the pencil/paper solution? Paper is a non-volatile memory so you don't have to worry about system crashes or forgetting to save your documents.
Until you forget and wash your pants with the paper still in the pocket. I've lost several business cards and even checks (ouch!) that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Aha! But solar power derives its energy from the nucleus.
Think about it.
OR Maybe he's actually used the software and been unhappy with it and is in the fortunate position of being someone to whom people will listen. I've certainly seen enough of problems with Apple software:
1) Itunes leaving several TSR programs running all the time even though I don't have an ipod.
2) Newer copies of itunes won't install for some unknown reason on my system, and both Apple and installshield point the fingers at each other. Apple support has ZERO help to offer to fix the problem.
3) Try to download the latest version of quicktime, and it won't install, because it has itunes bundled, and itunes fails to install
And this is just on a PC. If you look, you can find enough complaints about OSX. There just aren't as many, because not as many people use it as Windows, and those that do are generally loyal beyond the point of fanatacism.
DEFINITELY not complete without the animated series...
But also could use the audiobook versions of Nimoy's "I am not Spock" and "I am Spock".
The door in your link is thin metal with a foam core. When I was in college, the dorm room doors were 2" thick solid hardwood. I wouldn't want to have people shooting at one with me on the other side of it, but I wouldn't want people shooting at me without one between us even more. :)
It might mean that there is no such thing as dark matter
Actually, I think this is incorrect. 'Dark matter' is simply all the mass of the universe that doesn't emit detectable radiation. All the planets, asteroids, and other chunks of rock floating around in space. The logical conclusion, if this paper is correct, is that there is no need to assume the existence of such enormous amounts of dark matter in order to explain the behavior of galaxies. It's like the modern-day version of man coming to understand there is no such thing as 'ether'. Except that in this case there actually is dark matter, just not as much as we'd misled ourselves to believe.
Do they have some way to recycle all this plastic? We're entering the biggest petroleum crisis in history, and they're finding new ways of wasting oil. Shouldn't there be a petroleum tax for something like this that creates so much waste?
Wow, we're all still trying to figure out ways to make more permanent data storage, and M$ has jumped light years ahead of us to making data storage that doesn't store data. WTG!!!
Man, you got that right! Used to be, you would buy an O/S and get a truckload of in-depth books covering every aspect of it. Now, you're lucky if you get a CD-ROM that tells you how to change a few config options.
I think part of the problem is the very fast product cycle we now see. There just isn't time to produce quality docs. The other half of the problem is that there's no incentive to spend the money producing those docs when they can just make you pay to buy 'em separately, or even better, pay overinflated prices for a week of their training program.
1) No, I mean the forums where people go to get help from other users, because Palm support is sorely lacking in useful information.
3) Versamail is one of several inadequate 3rd-party apps. The best thing I've seen for the Treo is the current carrier-provided 'wireless sync' from Verizon. Unfortunately, you don't get this from Sprint, Cingular, T-Mobile (which doesn't even sell the 650's) etc.
5) Of course... you were upgrading from a Blackberry, so didn't have the memory issue, right? This problem was so prevalent, Handspring/PalmOne gave away free CF memory cards to people to deal with it. Some carriers had to wait so long for the 650's that by the time it was available for their users, the problem had been fixed. Google 'treo memory problem' dude.
Whoa! Where do you get your numbers??? I see more people with Blackberry's all the time. Wasn't the point of TFA how Palm's business has been hurting?
1) Bullshit, Their Bluetooth stinks. Go read some of the message boards. Completely incompatible with many car kits and headsets. No voice dialing profiles. Won't support voice dial even with 3rd party app.
2) Au contraire. My boss is on his 3rd Treo (180, 600, 650). People are upgrading from older Treos hoping the new one won't stink like the earlier versions.
3) Yeah, kinda sucks you have to buy 3rd-party software to do what Blackberry does natively. Isn't a $600 pricetag for the device enough?
4) I call Bullshit on you. The exec is not going to carry around an IT dept to help him use the thing. From the 600 to the 650, they changed the way you turn it on and off, the way you unlock it, the way you get to your home page, the way the dialer works...
5) Again, go back and look at the 650 history. It is VERY WELL documented that they changed the memory organization and that the first adopters couldn't upgrade, because of memory limitations. It was like DOS and the 640K limit all over again. If you don't know this one, you don't know jack shit about the Treo 650.
6) I'll give you this one, to a point. Every other device sucks, so the Treo should, too? \/\/
7) Right.
8) See #3
9) See #2
10) I AM the IT dept and I can't get fuck-all support from Handspring. They insist you get support from your fucking carrier!
11) Again, regarding sound quality, go look at the complaints on message boards. The fact you don't even know about the memory issues with the 650 shows how much you know about issues with this product. I stand by my statements.
No way. The Treo 600/650 STINKS! I've had to work with the different 'versions' of this product from every major carrier.
1) Treo 600: no bluetooth Treo 650: bluetooth stinks/doesn't work right
2) Treo 600: one set of cradles/cables Treo 650: completely different set, cradle unavailable due to insufficient supply?!
3) Both: extremely insufficient email software doesn't integrate well or at all with corporate email
4) Both: management of applications is a STEEP learning curve for users
5) Treo 650: memory issues right out of the gate
6) Both: took forever to become available as different 'versions' were customized to each carrier.
7) Both: you have to hard-reset on a roughly weekly basis
8) Both: As has already been mentioned, shoddy PIM software included.
9) Treo 650: Changes MANY simple functions that users of the 600 had learned,
so executives who don't like to learn new technology are forced to re-learn how to use the thing.
10) Support: Palm's support is the only thing worse than their products.
11) Both: Poor sound quality
Seriously, there are two things these devices need to do and do well:
1) Work as phones
2) Allow remote access to email (and calendar)
The Treo really is not very good with either. I will NOT be purchasing one for myself, and will likely avoid the M$ version when it is available, because of the above list.
WTF????! OK, I was excited to hear about Thomas Hayden Church... he's a dead ringer for Eddy Brock. I think they must have it mixed up. Of course, since the Venom character was a combination of Brock and an alien 'suit' that wants to kill Spidey for rejecting it, anybody could be inside, I'd just like to see Eddy (Olympic weightlifter) Brock played by someone a little meatier than Topher (male clone of Ally McBeal) Grace.
The mail server may be able to handle the mail, but it may still cause problems upstream, say at the ISP level. I once saw a user mail a 75MB file to 250 people from his Exchange server. The server had no problem with that, but it tried to send a couple dozen copies at a time and saturated the connection. The designers of the mail server can't account for all situations, but the administrators who are in a position to prevent this kind of thing are at the mercy of powers-that-be who don't want any explanations, they just want it to work, dammit! So, you can't prevent the users doing stupid things. You can't teach the users to NOT do stupid things. You can only wait for them to do something stupid, clean it up, and slap 'em on the hand and say "don't do it again" knowing fully that they WILL do it again. It's kinda like running a day care.
I'd love to see someone take on the relatively untapped genre of non-3dFPS games. I yearn for the days of King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry.
Could a game like Civilization or Sim City get off the ground today? Not likely.
I'm so sad that I have to agree with this. I remember how I used to swear by HP. 10 to 15 years ago, they couldn't be beat. Then they completely changed. Everything they put out became disposable and cheap. Their inkjet printers are the strongest example of how they went wrong. I have a friend who's still using his deskjet 500, after nearly 15 years. But in the mid-90's, they started selling not printers, but disposable ink-cartridge caddies. Even the cartridges were junk. You couldn't print 1/4 of the pages advertised before they gummed up so bad they were useless. I haven't bought an HP product in years.
Another reason they aren't worth a crap is their shitty driver support. You buy an HP workstation-class machine from the late 90's early 00's, and you get no support for win98, because it's a home O/S. They only have 2K drivers. Or you buy a 'home/home office' variety from that period, and there's no Win 2K drivers. This extended to their 'internet keyboards' too, which was the last HP item I ever bought.
Then they bought up Compaq, and even their server line now has issues. Ever tried to use their mounting rails? I never thought, back in the 90's that I'd pick a Dell server over HP/Compaq and be able to make the decision merely on the basis of their racks and rails!
What I'd like to find is a scanner that will do 8.5x14" paper. They could be found back before the scanner wars, when they were all SCSI and cost $1200 and up.
I haven't seen one in years. My company once had a very pricy HP scanner that had a document feeder. Even that one wouldn't scan 14" paper. It only got the first 12" or so and tried to do the rest as a separate sheet.
The shuttle is NOT just a launch vehicle. It is the only vehicle capable of RETURNING a payload from orbit. It is also an orbital laboratory platform designed for a time when there was no ISS. The cargo bay can be outfitted with lab modules which make the round trip with the crew. Finally, it is also a maintenance platform, where satellites can be brought for repair. No other vehicle has yet been designed, much less built, that is all of these things. You can't just stick all that way up at the tip-top of a rocket. You can't just put it in a can and discard it, because the WHOLE THING has to come back, not just the crew compartment.
However, the shuttle is the product of design by committee, and it shows. Since the main engines themselves aren't used in landing (except for the deceleration burn to exit orbit) a different design could work that is a lander only. The problem is handling all that weight on the return. For a crew capsule, you only need parachutes. But chutes can't safely handle the enormous weights the shuttle returns to ground.
I agree 100%. Google now has a tool to send SMS messages to any mobile phone number. My roommate sent a test to my work phone the other day. There was no identifying information, so the message was completely anonymous. When I contacted Google to see about privacy options and the ability to block your number, all I could find was a canned response directing you to contact your provider to block Google's sender address. How many providers out there will do that for you? Especially when it's a work-provided phone, and you don't have access to the account, anyway.
I can't think of a more accurate description than your 'overgrown child' analogy. As much as I love Google's various tools, there is a very strong streak of 'tough shit' running through their customer service attitude (look up click fraud sometime), and it seems to be getting worse.
Randy Marsh: You see, Token, when a man and a woman really love each other, the man puts his penis into the woman's vagina. It's called 'making love,' and its normal.
Token: And when the woman has 4 penises in her, and then stands above the guys and pees on them, is that love making? Five midgets beating a man covered in Thousand Island dressing. Is that love making?
j/k really. I agree with you completely, but the quotes occurred to me as fitting.
When things die, they decompose, releasing a plethora of various greenhouse gases. So while the O2 consumption is stopped, pollution is still increased.
Death is a Republican.
One good whiff of ammonia gives me uncontrollable nose bleeds. One summer while I was still in high school, I spent a week in a major university dorm which used ammonia-based cleaners. I woke up after the second night there to find my pillow was solid red from the blood soaking in.
A couple years later, I worked in a paint factory with my dad. I was driving a forklift, moving empty containers (6'x6'x6') that had contained industrial-strength ammonia. The lids on these containers had not been replaced, and the vapors gave me a nosebleed that wouldn't quit for 2 hours.
Ammonia definitely is a hazardous chemical, and you don't even wanna know what happens if you mix it with bleach.
I'm 31, and I almost covered MY eyes during that scene. C'mon, are we THAT desensitized??? It was AWFUL and heartbreaking. It was ONE thing that Lucas got right, and it should not be the kind of thing that children are taught to laugh at, and there WERE children in the theater laughing at that scene when I watched it.
And I AM serious.
I thought they were going to have to use a picocell, anyway. Isn't a 747 just one big flying Faraday cage???
Actually, Second Life already has seen reports of sweatshop laborers. In this case, it appears they were trying to collect and hoard land, which is arguably the most scarce resource in Second Life. Any time you have a limited, transferrable resource, you have an opening for this kind of activity. It seems to me the only way to combat it is to either make the resource unlimited or non-transferrable.
No, graphics are NOT what I'm going to spend my hard-earned dough on. All this talk about graphics==$ale$ seems to me to ignore completely how marketing factors into the equation. People buying Doom or Halo or Half-Life don't necessarily do it because of the graphics. That might have been one of the reasons, but they also bought it because of word-of-mouth or cool box art, or because they saw a blurb on TV somewhere. People buy Doom3, Half-Life 2, and Halo X, because a) the first one was good and b) the mega-conglomerate producers are counting on the sequel factor and are throwing in untold amounts of cash on marketing to recoup their development dollars.
The flip side of your coin is: don't say you'll quit selling shit when people quit buying it. Quit selling shit, and people will quit buying it!
For the record, I have bought none of these games. The original Doom was all the exposure I needed to FPS. By the time Quake showed up, one could see where the industry was heading. It got caught in a loop, with ever more powerful hardware needing ever more powerful software to justify it and vice-versa. I think what made those games so successful originally was that they were so different, so realistic, and so immersive compared to what came before. Wolfenstein was really no less bloody than Doom, but Doom made it more convincing, and was faster and had more convincing gore. But there's a point beyond which that doesn't really matter.
Here's a thought experiment: Let's just take as given that any game will need at least a $25million budget for the graphics / art / music / voices. Let's therefore leave these out of the test and just assume that any game we produce has been given that budget and has those visuals. Now, what's going to sell better, a poorly-marketed game based on a completely new concept with incredible gameplay that violates none of the 20 rules listed in the manifesto... OR A heavily-marketed POS sequel that consists of the same crap we've been getting but with a photo-realistic hot chick on the cover shooting rockets out of her jubblies. The solution to this is left up to the gentle reader.
But here's a hint: word of mouth CANNOT compete with the Sequel Factor and a marketing budget that doubles the development budget of the game.
In short: quit selling us shit, and we'll quit buying it.
Until you forget and wash your pants with the paper still in the pocket. I've lost several business cards and even checks (ouch!) that way.