loved playing TG16 version of R-Type (Gradius?). It was beautiful back then, and is still cool now. Though I have only been able to enjoy the TG16 through emulation, I can not agree with this statement more. Why they put the NES version of Gradius on the Virtual Console and not the TG16 version should be a crime. At least they gave us the TG16 version of Bomberman and thank god for Galaga.
I agree that Mario Kart 64 was good, however I offer Mario Kart DS as the best Mario Kart title yet. If you haven't played it, I really suggest that you do. The DS version is similar to 64, however the characters are 3D models instead of sprites with very much improved performance, online play is available as well as 8 player multiplay, the new tracks for this version are very very good and very creative, and some great tracks for the other titles were included.
The Dreamcast was an awesome system, but I just don't think it had enough of an impact on the market in general to be considered the best console ever.
Didn't have enough impact? What about industry impact? The XBOX is considered by many who know both consoles to be Dreamcast 1.5, and the 360 to be Dreamcast 2.0. Everything Microsoft learned from helping Sega with their version of Windows CE and the development tools for it went right into their console. Even their controllers are near identical: ( Dreamcast )( Xbox ).
Some of Nintendo's recent increase in creativity can even be attributed to what the Dreamcast pioneered.
Examples of the Dreamcast's impact on today's gaming:
1st console to have built in support for online gaming.
The force sensitive fishing rod that could be used like a wii remote for the game Tennis 2k2.
Rhythm game Samba de Amigo which used maracas as controllers and allowed you to download more songs online before the PS2 was even released!
Analog shoulder buttons
Though arguably beneficial, Windows CE was an optional development path for easy porting of Direct X games to the Dreamcast or vice versa. (XBOX).
I would consider going back if they did something similar to what Dark Age of Camelot did, which would be creating "classic" servers. They should have a couple servers that run the game the way it was before the revamp.
In my opinion they should have spent the time they spent on the new design in making the JTL part of the game more like X-Wing Alliance. The orignial design of Star Wars Galaxies with an X-Wing Alliance style space fighting would be my wet dream.
There was such a game, called Terminus. It was released around 2000 for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS all on the same disc. It promised a lot of what Eve:Online is doing, and infact the two games are very similar. Its just that this game has Newtonian physics, which people found out rather quickly isn't all that fun.
The rite aid ones are identical. I work at a Rite-Aid, and a customer brought in one from CVS. Looks exactly the same and plugged into the equipment for picture retrieval with no problems.
I haven't seen your link, but looking at the interface on the camera, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't just USB modified to act like a cartridge.
What a lot of people forget, and I know that you didn't, is that you had to go to a software store to buy a web browser back in the day the whole Netscape thing took place. Netscape made money selling browser software and webserver software.
Of course, this all ended when Microsoft bundled IE with the OS (later versions of '95) and then later "embeded" it within the OS (Beginning with '98, though an upgrade to IE4 had the same effect in '95). Also in '98 and in IE4, Microsoft tried to "embrace and extend" the web with its Internet Explorer Channels.
What a lot of people don't realize is why Microsoft bundled and intergrated their web browser to their OS. Navigator was quickly becoming a platform for which to program for. With Java and Javascript on the client side, and stuff like CGI on the server side programmers were no longer making Windows apps. It didn't matter what OS any user's or customer's or client's computer ran, write once run everywhere was the rule of thumb. This was the start of webbased tools. People no longer needed Windows. Bill Gates once said something akin to "the only way to survive is to make people need you." At the start of the internet boom, you didn't need Microsoft.
About the time Netscape was beginning to make a big fuss and the Government was starting to take Microsoft to court, my Pa and I went into an EB or something, and there was a copy of some encyclopedia software on clearance, but it was dated that year. It was like $5, and we kept staring at the box trying to figure out what the catch was. What was wrong with it. I started to look at the shelf at the others which costed around $70 - $100 and I found a copy of that same software in a different looking box, but was still dated the same year. We compared the backs and found that the cheap one was bundled with Navigator, and the much more expensive one was bundled with IE. Strangely enough, the expensive one also had Microsoft as the distributer and gave them as the ones to call for support, the cheaper one was some company whose name leaves me.
Any way, my dad bought it, and I installed it when we got home. The entire encyclopedia was html based. You could honestly just copy what it installed on any OS and open the start page in Navigator and have a full encyclopedia and atlas with embeded movies and animations. Best I could figure is this encyclopedia was exactly what Microsoft feared could happen. They bought them right away, fulfilled some promise made to those they bought it from by releasing an IE version, and then killed it.
Netscape was thus in Microsoft's sights as a threat to the Windows monopoly, and did the only thing they could to kill them: destory the web browser economy by making browsers cost nothing to consumers.
If you remember, when Navigator was around as a product, IE and Navigator jumped by leaps and bounds in development and updates. When Microsoft assumed the Netscape threat was over, IE has stagnated. This is what happens when there is no competition.
I totally agree with you. The three years I went to a highschool in Washington state, the highschool would buy two labs worth of new computers for the business education department -> always macs. My senior year Microsoft gave the school a ton of cash to teach MS software in classes. I signed up for MS Office Certification.
Here's the kicker -> The teacher, head of the Business Ed department, didn't have a clue. The whole class was us students doing projects out of an MS supplied text on our own. And the text was geared for windows, not the shinny new lickable iMacs the school had just bought. So what happened was the teacher would sit back and play Quake on his system while the rest of us would play java and flash games on the internet. Total and complete waste of time.
This upgrade cycle is Microsoft's longest. Its usually Win98->WinMe->WinXP. I can't remember how often pre-95 releases were made available. But there were three different versions of 3.x (3.0, 3.1, 3.11) and you had to pay for each upgrade, and I am sure time inbetween was few.
LOL! You have played console systems, right? It doesn't matter if the game requires you to twist the unit or not, its going to be twisted.
Watch people play racing games. You will see a lot of people "spinning" the controller as if it will help them turn their vehicle faster.
Have you ever seen an adolescent lose a game? The controler will go flying into the floor or some other mass that gets in its flight path.
With portable units like these, I can see how pressing up or down heavily on the directional stick while at the same time pressing heavily on the buttons might be enough to "twist" the unit enough to eject the umd. I am sure thats how the flaw was discovered.
I always find stories involving DNA and seeds as IP interesting. By some my great grandfather, Chris Christensen, is considered to have single handedly saved the stereotypical watermelon from extinction on a bet of $5.
Way back watermelon as we know them were nearly brought to extinction by a form of blight. Universities and such had developed breeds resistant to the disease, but either flavor, color, shape, and even the seeds were radically different from what we think of as the watermelon.
Frustrated, in about four years my great grandfather and cross-bred a breed that had black seeds, a red core, full flavor, and striped green that was nearly impervious to disease.
In his memoirs he comments on how people are amazed at how he didn't acquior a fortune on his creation. He talks about how natural life, such as watermelons, were on patentable and all anyone needed to produce them was the seed widely available from one of his melons.
Whenever stories like these crop up, I think about how rich my family could have been, and am always greatful that we aren't everytime I see a youngster enjoying a fresh cut melon. I am also grieved by the fact that patents like this even exist. And that companies, not the farmers, hold them and reap the financial benefit from them.
How long will it be before we will have to pay a licensing fee to cook with these IP laden herbs and vegetables?
To save time, I know I am stupid ingnorant American scum. But, for the sake of educating me, I must know:
How can the French citizenry see the actions of a man named Pierre Trudeau as "an attack on them by the English majority?
It could be just that this is only the case in the circles I have been in, though it must be said I have lived all over the US, so I am going to go out on a limb and generalize. But I think a great deal of Americans take their herritage fairly personally. We know what culture we came from (usually by last name) and have brotherly ties to those from the same background. There is no way someone with a French name would go around oppressing others with a French name.
I suppose this could just be a defense mechanism American immigrants created in resistance to the "melting pot," and why there are some ethnic clashes. But I think most of the ethnic clashes, at least in modern times, are between 1st, 2nd maybe third generation immigrants of different ethniticites.
One of the few times public school teaches anything about American atrocities in the states is when they talk about the Japaneese internmant camps. I believe their are only two other instances:
First of all, entrenching formerly illegal actions into law is NOT a good thing. The fact that they were being done before isn't a valid reason at all to make them legal.
I thought that was the logic behind legalizing such controlled substances like marijuana. What is your stance on that?
In the sake of playing devil's advocate, of course.:)
I got the 4 meg file pretty easily off of gnutella using Limewire Pro. Downloaded at 40k/sex.
I am sure there is a lot of potential here, but at least the file on gnutella has way too much compression. Couldn't really make the moon out except as it came out of eclipse as maybe 10-12 very white pixels.
I was using Windows Media Player for mac, so maybe that has something to do with it.
LOL, when did I say I was a Bush supporter. Actually, my google searches were on the requiored oaths to see Bush speeches. Did you even go to the links or read my post?
And I completely agree with you on the PATRIOT Act. Its unconstitutional garbage.
I've friends who were arrested for wearing trenchcoats in high school. This was in the wake of Columbine. And they had worn these coats before the shootings occured. You can't possibly blame Clinton for the ignorance of school staff and local law enforcement. Just like you can't blame who ever is in office for the harassment of t-shirt wearers in a mall.
Your logic is correct, the point of a campaign is to gather more votes. This has made me a bit skeptical. A quick search on google only came up with two stories about a Cheney speech at a middle school in New Mexico. One quotes the chairman of the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election commitee in the Southwest as being surprised and ignorant of the event.
Another talks about the Green Party doing the same for their national convention in 2000.
Say what you want about the republicans (I am unaffiliated with any party, personally I believe all political parties are inherently corrupt, and should be outlawed like they were when the country was new) but they are usually pretty smart when it comes to business. And these oaths are definitely bad business when it comes to an election.
They do searches at concerts for drug paraphenilia, recording devices, cameras, and weapons. Keep in mind the only people highly visibly there a measly entertainers.
Here is an event the President of the United States will be attending. He will be making a speech, and will be extremely visible and prone to attack by his and America's enemies. They better damn well be doing searches on everyone. Especially moraless pot smoking democratic teenagers. (Sorry to offend anyone, but the parent offended me)
As you said, the fact that the kid had a pro Kerry sticker is no reason to arrest anyone. However, the fact that the kid, and his parents, were hiding these anti-bush tee-shirts are pretty incriminating. If they felt they had to hide such a simple means of political expression, you have to wonder what other disturbances of the peace they might have had planned to do once they had safely gotten inside to get their message across.
Security made their call and felt it was unsafe for this group to gain access to the assembly. They told them they wouldn't be let in, and that their presence in the assembly would be considered a trespass. And trespassing is worthy of arrest. That doesn't necessarily mean they felt they were a risk to the security of the President. They could have equally been just as concerned for the safety of the family in question.
Imagine what might have happened at the Million Man March if a similer family of whites beared KKK uniforms in the middle of things. The Panthers would have massacured them.
The law is intended to promote peace and safety, not to surpress one's 1st ammendment rights. And I don't belive it was invoked in this case was not in the spirit to do so either. It was a question of safety of all those involved.
The real design flaw was not using the microphone. Nearly all phones that I know of, when it makes loud noise to get attention, will use the microphone as the output device to make sure things like this don't happen.
I had been using T*mobile for two years. This past year I started using text messaging and the AOL IM feature a lot more, bringing my cell phone costs upwards to $200-$300 thanks to overage fees. Ofcourse, the highest they could sell me was 1000, which I would quickly go over before halfway through the month.
I also tried to get them to automatically take the monthly charges from my Visa check card (same card I used for manual billing) and every month they would fail to debit the account, and they would shut off my phone until I gave em a ring to give them the same credit card number they were supposed to be automatically billing.
Now, I hadn't switched providers up to this point because T*Mobile offers the best coverage in my area, and I knew if I switched, not only would I have to get one of those newer shoddy flip phones (yuck) but it most likely wouldn't get any signal where I live.
About the end of June, they once again shut my phone off, and I figured maybe if I didn't call them they would figure it out that they were supposed to use the SwiftPay service for the automatic billing. They had the phone completely booted off the system (the phone wouldn't log in at all) by a few weeks ago. So, I gave in and tried logging in online to pay the bill. The website acted like they never had my number setup!
So I called them up on the land line. They charged me for June, July, and August, though I was unable to use the phone the entire time, and August it was booted off the network. I was furious at this and there respose was pretty much too bad too sad. So I told them I didn't want service from them any more and that was that.
Then they gave me a buzz the other day asking me to come back and try their new UNLIMITED text messaging! What a crock! I have actually been happier with out the cell phone these last couple months, and don't plan on getting another provider.
I happen to work at Rite Aid, and hear customers complain about *my* Single Check Rebates. They say how they hate all that paper work, and that the fact that we are showing that you can get say $3 back for such and such an item, but we can't do it at the register is misleading. But what no one seems to understand is that the rebates are actually manufacturer rebates. Rite Aid goes out AS A SERVICE TO THE CUSTOMER to find out what the manufacturer is offering as far as rebates are concerened. Rite Aid then places it in a little booklet, and advertises it on the item in question. Then, AS A SERVICE TO THE CUSTOMER, it takes care of most of the paper work. Instead of you the customer, filling out a form for each manufacturer to get 1 to three dollars here and there, you fill out one form FOR THE WHOLE MONTH, and Rite Aid cuts you A SINGLE CHECK for all the REBATES you are entitled to during that period. With rebates, the store in question is not trying to make the customer jump through hoops for an extra buck here and there. They are just trying to help you save a few bucks here and there that you might not other wise know about. I am sorry about the rant, but if you don't like rebates, tell the manufacturer. The local store really feels like its doing you a service and, like me, doesn't quite understand why the anger is directed towards them.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that Mario Kart 64 was good, however I offer Mario Kart DS as the best Mario Kart title yet. If you haven't played it, I really suggest that you do. The DS version is similar to 64, however the characters are 3D models instead of sprites with very much improved performance, online play is available as well as 8 player multiplay, the new tracks for this version are very very good and very creative, and some great tracks for the other titles were included.
Didn't have enough impact? What about industry impact? The XBOX is considered by many who know both consoles to be Dreamcast 1.5, and the 360 to be Dreamcast 2.0. Everything Microsoft learned from helping Sega with their version of Windows CE and the development tools for it went right into their console. Even their controllers are near identical: ( Dreamcast ) ( Xbox ).
Some of Nintendo's recent increase in creativity can even be attributed to what the Dreamcast pioneered.
Examples of the Dreamcast's impact on today's gaming:
I, for one, would like to welcome Don Hopkins: our sim-hacking overlord.
Not to mention, Nautilus was created by a bunch of k e y developers of the orignal macintosh.
In my opinion they should have spent the time they spent on the new design in making the JTL part of the game more like X-Wing Alliance. The orignial design of Star Wars Galaxies with an X-Wing Alliance style space fighting would be my wet dream.
There was such a game, called Terminus. It was released around 2000 for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS all on the same disc. It promised a lot of what Eve:Online is doing, and infact the two games are very similar. Its just that this game has Newtonian physics, which people found out rather quickly isn't all that fun.
The rite aid ones are identical. I work at a Rite-Aid, and a customer brought in one from CVS. Looks exactly the same and plugged into the equipment for picture retrieval with no problems.
I haven't seen your link, but looking at the interface on the camera, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't just USB modified to act like a cartridge.
Only because of their Windows/Office monopoly.
Without that, the Xbox would be dead this generation.
Of course, this all ended when Microsoft bundled IE with the OS (later versions of '95) and then later "embeded" it within the OS (Beginning with '98, though an upgrade to IE4 had the same effect in '95). Also in '98 and in IE4, Microsoft tried to "embrace and extend" the web with its Internet Explorer Channels.
What a lot of people don't realize is why Microsoft bundled and intergrated their web browser to their OS. Navigator was quickly becoming a platform for which to program for. With Java and Javascript on the client side, and stuff like CGI on the server side programmers were no longer making Windows apps. It didn't matter what OS any user's or customer's or client's computer ran, write once run everywhere was the rule of thumb. This was the start of webbased tools. People no longer needed Windows. Bill Gates once said something akin to "the only way to survive is to make people need you." At the start of the internet boom, you didn't need Microsoft.
About the time Netscape was beginning to make a big fuss and the Government was starting to take Microsoft to court, my Pa and I went into an EB or something, and there was a copy of some encyclopedia software on clearance, but it was dated that year. It was like $5, and we kept staring at the box trying to figure out what the catch was. What was wrong with it. I started to look at the shelf at the others which costed around $70 - $100 and I found a copy of that same software in a different looking box, but was still dated the same year. We compared the backs and found that the cheap one was bundled with Navigator, and the much more expensive one was bundled with IE. Strangely enough, the expensive one also had Microsoft as the distributer and gave them as the ones to call for support, the cheaper one was some company whose name leaves me.
Any way, my dad bought it, and I installed it when we got home. The entire encyclopedia was html based. You could honestly just copy what it installed on any OS and open the start page in Navigator and have a full encyclopedia and atlas with embeded movies and animations. Best I could figure is this encyclopedia was exactly what Microsoft feared could happen. They bought them right away, fulfilled some promise made to those they bought it from by releasing an IE version, and then killed it.
Netscape was thus in Microsoft's sights as a threat to the Windows monopoly, and did the only thing they could to kill them: destory the web browser economy by making browsers cost nothing to consumers.
If you remember, when Navigator was around as a product, IE and Navigator jumped by leaps and bounds in development and updates. When Microsoft assumed the Netscape threat was over, IE has stagnated. This is what happens when there is no competition.
I totally agree with you. The three years I went to a highschool in Washington state, the highschool would buy two labs worth of new computers for the business education department -> always macs. My senior year Microsoft gave the school a ton of cash to teach MS software in classes. I signed up for MS Office Certification.
Here's the kicker -> The teacher, head of the Business Ed department, didn't have a clue. The whole class was us students doing projects out of an MS supplied text on our own. And the text was geared for windows, not the shinny new lickable iMacs the school had just bought. So what happened was the teacher would sit back and play Quake on his system while the rest of us would play java and flash games on the internet. Total and complete waste of time.
This upgrade cycle is Microsoft's longest.
Its usually Win98->WinMe->WinXP. I can't remember how often pre-95 releases were made available. But there were three different versions of 3.x (3.0, 3.1, 3.11) and you had to pay for each upgrade, and I am sure time inbetween was few.
LOL! You have played console systems, right?
It doesn't matter if the game requires you to twist the unit or not, its going to be twisted.
Watch people play racing games. You will see a lot of people "spinning" the controller as if it will help them turn their vehicle faster.
Have you ever seen an adolescent lose a game? The controler will go flying into the floor or some other mass that gets in its flight path.
With portable units like these, I can see how pressing up or down heavily on the directional stick while at the same time pressing heavily on the buttons might be enough to "twist" the unit enough to eject the umd. I am sure thats how the flaw was discovered.
Way back watermelon as we know them were nearly brought to extinction by a form of blight. Universities and such had developed breeds resistant to the disease, but either flavor, color, shape, and even the seeds were radically different from what we think of as the watermelon.
Frustrated, in about four years my great grandfather and cross-bred a breed that had black seeds, a red core, full flavor, and striped green that was nearly impervious to disease.
In his memoirs he comments on how people are amazed at how he didn't acquior a fortune on his creation. He talks about how natural life, such as watermelons, were on patentable and all anyone needed to produce them was the seed widely available from one of his melons.
Whenever stories like these crop up, I think about how rich my family could have been, and am always greatful that we aren't everytime I see a youngster enjoying a fresh cut melon. I am also grieved by the fact that patents like this even exist. And that companies, not the farmers, hold them and reap the financial benefit from them.
How long will it be before we will have to pay a licensing fee to cook with these IP laden herbs and vegetables?
How can the French citizenry see the actions of a man named Pierre Trudeau as "an attack on them by the English majority?
It could be just that this is only the case in the circles I have been in, though it must be said I have lived all over the US, so I am going to go out on a limb and generalize. But I think a great deal of Americans take their herritage fairly personally. We know what culture we came from (usually by last name) and have brotherly ties to those from the same background. There is no way someone with a French name would go around oppressing others with a French name.
I suppose this could just be a defense mechanism American immigrants created in resistance to the "melting pot," and why there are some ethnic clashes. But I think most of the ethnic clashes, at least in modern times, are between 1st, 2nd maybe third generation immigrants of different ethniticites.
One of the few times public school teaches anything about American atrocities in the states is when they talk about the Japaneese internmant camps. I believe their are only two other instances:
Slavery and its side effects centuries later
And McCartnyism
I thought that was the logic behind legalizing such controlled substances like marijuana. What is your stance on that?
In the sake of playing devil's advocate, of course. :)
I got the 4 meg file pretty easily off of gnutella using Limewire Pro. Downloaded at 40k/sex.
I am sure there is a lot of potential here, but at least the file on gnutella has way too much compression. Couldn't really make the moon out except as it came out of eclipse as maybe 10-12 very white pixels.
I was using Windows Media Player for mac, so maybe that has something to do with it.
LOL, when did I say I was a Bush supporter. Actually, my google searches were on the requiored oaths to see Bush speeches. Did you even go to the links or read my post?
And I completely agree with you on the PATRIOT Act. Its unconstitutional garbage.
I've friends who were arrested for wearing trenchcoats in high school. This was in the wake of Columbine. And they had worn these coats before the shootings occured. You can't possibly blame Clinton for the ignorance of school staff and local law enforcement. Just like you can't blame who ever is in office for the harassment of t-shirt wearers in a mall.
I was unaware the two events were unrealated.
Your logic is correct, the point of a campaign is to gather more votes. This has made me a bit skeptical. A quick search on google only came up with two stories about a Cheney speech at a middle school in New Mexico. One
quotes the chairman of the Bush-Cheney '04 re-election commitee in the Southwest as being surprised and ignorant of the event.
Another talks about the Green Party doing the same for their national convention in 2000.
Say what you want about the republicans (I am unaffiliated with any party, personally I believe all political parties are inherently corrupt, and should be outlawed like they were when the country was new) but they are usually pretty smart when it comes to business. And these oaths are definitely bad business when it comes to an election.
It was more of giving him a taste of his own medicine ;)
They do searches at concerts for drug paraphenilia, recording devices, cameras, and weapons. Keep in mind the only people highly visibly there a measly entertainers.
Here is an event the President of the United States will be attending. He will be making a speech, and will be extremely visible and prone to attack by his and America's enemies. They better damn well be doing searches on everyone. Especially moraless pot smoking democratic teenagers. (Sorry to offend anyone, but the parent offended me)
As you said, the fact that the kid had a pro Kerry sticker is no reason to arrest anyone. However, the fact that the kid, and his parents, were hiding these anti-bush tee-shirts are pretty incriminating. If they felt they had to hide such a simple means of political expression, you have to wonder what other disturbances of the peace they might have had planned to do once they had safely gotten inside to get their message across.
Security made their call and felt it was unsafe for this group to gain access to the assembly. They told them they wouldn't be let in, and that their presence in the assembly would be considered a trespass. And trespassing is worthy of arrest. That doesn't necessarily mean they felt they were a risk to the security of the President. They could have equally been just as concerned for the safety of the family in question.
Imagine what might have happened at the Million Man March if a similer family of whites beared KKK uniforms in the middle of things. The Panthers would have massacured them.
The law is intended to promote peace and safety, not to surpress one's 1st ammendment rights. And I don't belive it was invoked in this case was not in the spirit to do so either. It was a question of safety of all those involved.
The real design flaw was not using the microphone. Nearly all phones that I know of, when it makes loud noise to get attention, will use the microphone as the output device to make sure things like this don't happen.
I had been using T*mobile for two years. This past year I started using text messaging and the AOL IM feature a lot more, bringing my cell phone costs upwards to $200-$300 thanks to overage fees. Ofcourse, the highest they could sell me was 1000, which I would quickly go over before halfway through the month.
I also tried to get them to automatically take the monthly charges from my Visa check card (same card I used for manual billing) and every month they would fail to debit the account, and they would shut off my phone until I gave em a ring to give them the same credit card number they were supposed to be automatically billing.
Now, I hadn't switched providers up to this point because T*Mobile offers the best coverage in my area, and I knew if I switched, not only would I have to get one of those newer shoddy flip phones (yuck) but it most likely wouldn't get any signal where I live.
About the end of June, they once again shut my phone off, and I figured maybe if I didn't call them they would figure it out that they were supposed to use the SwiftPay service for the automatic billing. They had the phone completely booted off the system (the phone wouldn't log in at all) by a few weeks ago. So, I gave in and tried logging in online to pay the bill. The website acted like they never had my number setup!
So I called them up on the land line. They charged me for June, July, and August, though I was unable to use the phone the entire time, and August it was booted off the network. I was furious at this and there respose was pretty much too bad too sad. So I told them I didn't want service from them any more and that was that.
Then they gave me a buzz the other day asking me to come back and try their new UNLIMITED text messaging! What a crock! I have actually been happier with out the cell phone these last couple months, and don't plan on getting another provider.
I happen to work at Rite Aid, and hear customers complain about *my* Single Check Rebates. They say how they hate all that paper work, and that the fact that we are showing that you can get say $3 back for such and such an item, but we can't do it at the register is misleading. But what no one seems to understand is that the rebates are actually manufacturer rebates. Rite Aid goes out AS A SERVICE TO THE CUSTOMER to find out what the manufacturer is offering as far as rebates are concerened. Rite Aid then places it in a little booklet, and advertises it on the item in question. Then, AS A SERVICE TO THE CUSTOMER, it takes care of most of the paper work. Instead of you the customer, filling out a form for each manufacturer to get 1 to three dollars here and there, you fill out one form FOR THE WHOLE MONTH, and Rite Aid cuts you A SINGLE CHECK for all the REBATES you are entitled to during that period. With rebates, the store in question is not trying to make the customer jump through hoops for an extra buck here and there. They are just trying to help you save a few bucks here and there that you might not other wise know about. I am sorry about the rant, but if you don't like rebates, tell the manufacturer. The local store really feels like its doing you a service and, like me, doesn't quite understand why the anger is directed towards them.
If Smith is a *son of a bitch,* that would mean his mother would be *a bitch*. By calling the Oracle *Mother,* he essentially calls her *a bitch.*
This would be akin to your girl friend calling you *a son of a bitch,* and you replying to her *you would know, Mother.*
IE "Takes one to know one."