How long before you decide to rail against the cafeteria for not offering you the foods you want
Why shouldn't you rail against the cafeteria for not offering foods you want? Sure, it might be unreasonable to complain that your cafeteria doesn't offer caviar and smoked salmon, but if all they offer is ham sandwiches isn't it reasonable to ask them to expand their offerings?
Universities provide a service in exhange for money. It's not unreasonable for ask for adjustments to that service, especially when the service that is being provided is so far below what others in the "industry" are providing (as is the case here).
not that the staff in the store couldn't put the price inclusive of tax up
They can't. This is a consequence of the need to remain competetive. When we walk into stores we expect to see prices that don't include tax. A well-meaning store that tries to break from this and include tax in the price ends up looking way more expensive than its competetors, even though in reality it is not. Even if you include "taxes included!" on the sign there is a subconscious bias in the customer's mind against these seemingly high prices.
No, until every store is forced to do the same and include taxes it won't work. It's an unfortunate consequence of human nature.
And how often do we check the condition of the car? Do you need to go in monthly to validate the good condition of your tires? What about when the 16 year old son of the race car driver takes the car out? Does he get the +20kph license plate? Or does he have to unscrew it and put his on?
I think the logistics of the whole thing make it a rediculous undertaking for marginal benefit (is there even a benefit?)
My mom is a nurse, and her best friend was paralyzed from the flu shot. How's that instead of a @#$@ three days of down time?
And for every person paralyzed by the flu shot a greater number have been saved by it. No one is saying vaccines don't have risks, but that the benefits outweigh those risks. There's a reason we look at statistics instead of anecdotes.
CEO's and executives are convinced they know more than the engineers.
And engineers assume their perspective is the only one that matters. Part of being a manager is hearing input from every group in the company/organization/unit and evaluating their various perspectives to make a decision. Engineering considerations are only one aspect of a successful operation. Sometimes it's better to release a sub-optimal product (from an engineering perspective) for other benefits in timing, marketing, financial efficiency, etc.
I'm not weighing in on the correctness of the management decision in this case; I don't know enough of the details. But the statements you made seem to me to be very self-centred and naive of the complexities of the world.
Sure, life in the universe COULD be different than our carbon-based, water-needing forms. But there are restrictions on how many detectors etc. you can package on one rover. Given that difficult decisions need to be made in regards to equipping our search for life, it makes sense to search for life in a form that we are 100% sure exists at least one place in the universe.
IMHO tablets and "traditional" computers are, and will remain for the foreseeable future, complementary. Tablets provide a convenient means to check email, read the web, watch video, update your Facebook page, and play some quick games. But I'm not sure they're capable of replacing traditional computers for things like spreadsheets and proper document authoring. I recognize that spreadsheets and document authoring probably only make up 5% (or heck, maybe 2% if I'm pulling numbers out of my ass) of the total computing needs of Joe Smith American, but it's a 5% people aren't going to be willing to give up. It's the same reason our homes have three extra bedrooms and people complain about the range on electric cars; a small house and an electric car would meet people's needs for 364 days of the year, "But what about the inconvenience when Grandma comes to visit at Christmas or when we want to go on our annual road trip to Sea World!?!" Computers are no longer seen as luxury items, and my guess is that people will buy a computer AND a tablet (whether that's wise or not) rather than just ditch the computer for a tablet.
Who said this was a replacement for a real job?
Average pay for moonlight job: $12
Average pay for wasting time on the internet instead: $0
Its better than a kick in the balls.
That's assuming time on the internet is "wasted". I consider it leisure time, which has a non-zero value to me. If I really wanted to I could get a part-time job at a coffee shop to use up these hours where I'm not at work, but I value non-work hours more than I value the $40 I'd get doing a shift at Tim Horton's for the evening. There's more to life than making money.
I mean, if I can have this in combo with a battery that would be moderately cool. If it maintained standby power and I only drained from the battery when actively using the phone I'm sure it would reduce the frequency I'd have to recharge. Surely that's worth something.
In fact, it's worse, because the wind doesn't blow proprietary software from nearby windows and OS X boxes onto your linux systems, causing you to owe the IP owners money and disabling your ability to build your own software.
I think you're onto something here. My holiday project:
1. Make software titled "Wind"
2. Use Wind to distribute IP
3. Sue the shit out of receivers of IP
4. PROFIT!
I'm with GoDaddy for my domain name. When I was looking for a personal domain I checked out a bunch of domain sites. They all had basically identical annoying splash pages that tried to upsell me on everything. There was nothing to differentiate them except price. So I went with GoDaddy for its price and because I knew the name. When I get back to my computer after the holidays you can be sure I'll be ditching them and going with some of the good hosts suggested here.
On a related note, I didn't go with GoDaddy for my page hosting because I found holeinthewallhosting.com. Honestly, they're awesome. Nice clean pages, no upselling, awesome price. I dunno how good reliability is, but it's certainly good enough for my person page.
The phone issue is interesting. I was just on the "How Much Data Do You Need?" page for a local provider. You slide the bar for various things, like how many web pages you visit in a month (as if anyone really knows that). Their assumption was 0.17MB/page. I know there are mobile versions of pages and such, but this still seems like a gross underestimate given this story.
Second: I don't really have a problem with caps. I mean, is it really, truly reasonable to expect unlimited bandwidth? And before you flame me, take a moment to calm your gut reaction nerd rage in regards to this issue. I mean, that shit's not free. There should be some expectation that people pay for what they use. We don't expect unlimited electricity, so why would we here. That being said: the overage charges need to be reasonable. I have no idea of what the marginal costs to Bell are for each gigabyte over the cap. One *hopes* their overage charges are somewhat in line with this, but who knows.
Third, in relation to that last point: When I lived in Ontario a few years ago I had Bell. I lived in a house with six other guys, and we sucked bandwidth. I don't remember what they charged us per extra gigabyte, but I do remember that the overage charges were capped at $30/month. *If* Bell still has this overage charge cap, then I think this is an especially reasonable thing.
If we are going to have that sort of free-for-all marketplace then I also want all warning labels removed from all products, all drugs to be legal and unrestricted [...]
Careful. There are a lot of people on slashdot who would love to see this happen.
Slashdot Mirror
How long before you decide to rail against the cafeteria for not offering you the foods you want
Why shouldn't you rail against the cafeteria for not offering foods you want? Sure, it might be unreasonable to complain that your cafeteria doesn't offer caviar and smoked salmon, but if all they offer is ham sandwiches isn't it reasonable to ask them to expand their offerings?
Universities provide a service in exhange for money. It's not unreasonable for ask for adjustments to that service, especially when the service that is being provided is so far below what others in the "industry" are providing (as is the case here).
If they fired someone because they were gay, yes.
not that the staff in the store couldn't put the price inclusive of tax up
They can't. This is a consequence of the need to remain competetive. When we walk into stores we expect to see prices that don't include tax. A well-meaning store that tries to break from this and include tax in the price ends up looking way more expensive than its competetors, even though in reality it is not. Even if you include "taxes included!" on the sign there is a subconscious bias in the customer's mind against these seemingly high prices.
No, until every store is forced to do the same and include taxes it won't work. It's an unfortunate consequence of human nature.
And how often do we check the condition of the car? Do you need to go in monthly to validate the good condition of your tires? What about when the 16 year old son of the race car driver takes the car out? Does he get the +20kph license plate? Or does he have to unscrew it and put his on?
I think the logistics of the whole thing make it a rediculous undertaking for marginal benefit (is there even a benefit?)
It's posts like these that made be wish Slashdot could go to +10 or had a, "this post is highlighted so everyone will look at it" mod option.
Nice straw man.
According to Wikipedia, "On average 41,400 people died each year in the United States between 1979 and 2001 from influenza."
My mom is a nurse, and her best friend was paralyzed from the flu shot. How's that instead of a @#$@ three days of down time?
And for every person paralyzed by the flu shot a greater number have been saved by it. No one is saying vaccines don't have risks, but that the benefits outweigh those risks. There's a reason we look at statistics instead of anecdotes.
CEO's and executives are convinced they know more than the engineers.
And engineers assume their perspective is the only one that matters. Part of being a manager is hearing input from every group in the company/organization/unit and evaluating their various perspectives to make a decision. Engineering considerations are only one aspect of a successful operation. Sometimes it's better to release a sub-optimal product (from an engineering perspective) for other benefits in timing, marketing, financial efficiency, etc.
I'm not weighing in on the correctness of the management decision in this case; I don't know enough of the details. But the statements you made seem to me to be very self-centred and naive of the complexities of the world.
That sounds to me more like a failure of the police car design rather than a consequence of scan errors.
Except there's a whole segment of the population who thinks they are too skilled to ever crash...
And Nova Scotia (since maybe last summer or the one before).
But sitting behind a student doodling is not as near distracting as sitting behind a student playing WoW or watching porn (I've seen both).
The ones I really hate are the ones that come up over the content and you have to search for a way to close it
I'm looking at you Wired...
No difference! Unbunch your panties
Execpt my perfectly good* LCD monitor from six years ago doesn't have HDMI.
I could accept ditching my six year old monitor in the name of progress if I really did think HDMI was progress over DVI, but it's not.
*I bought it large at the time so it's still great by today's standards
Sure, life in the universe COULD be different than our carbon-based, water-needing forms. But there are restrictions on how many detectors etc. you can package on one rover. Given that difficult decisions need to be made in regards to equipping our search for life, it makes sense to search for life in a form that we are 100% sure exists at least one place in the universe.
IMHO tablets and "traditional" computers are, and will remain for the foreseeable future, complementary. Tablets provide a convenient means to check email, read the web, watch video, update your Facebook page, and play some quick games. But I'm not sure they're capable of replacing traditional computers for things like spreadsheets and proper document authoring. I recognize that spreadsheets and document authoring probably only make up 5% (or heck, maybe 2% if I'm pulling numbers out of my ass) of the total computing needs of Joe Smith American, but it's a 5% people aren't going to be willing to give up. It's the same reason our homes have three extra bedrooms and people complain about the range on electric cars; a small house and an electric car would meet people's needs for 364 days of the year, "But what about the inconvenience when Grandma comes to visit at Christmas or when we want to go on our annual road trip to Sea World!?!" Computers are no longer seen as luxury items, and my guess is that people will buy a computer AND a tablet (whether that's wise or not) rather than just ditch the computer for a tablet.
Who said this was a replacement for a real job? Average pay for moonlight job: $12 Average pay for wasting time on the internet instead: $0 Its better than a kick in the balls.
That's assuming time on the internet is "wasted". I consider it leisure time, which has a non-zero value to me. If I really wanted to I could get a part-time job at a coffee shop to use up these hours where I'm not at work, but I value non-work hours more than I value the $40 I'd get doing a shift at Tim Horton's for the evening. There's more to life than making money.
I mean, if I can have this in combo with a battery that would be moderately cool. If it maintained standby power and I only drained from the battery when actively using the phone I'm sure it would reduce the frequency I'd have to recharge. Surely that's worth something.
It's not our fault you've allowed pharm companies to rape you up the ass.
If only there was a group of individuals representing, say, 99% of the people already.
Don't we call those "Unions"?
In fact, it's worse, because the wind doesn't blow proprietary software from nearby windows and OS X boxes onto your linux systems, causing you to owe the IP owners money and disabling your ability to build your own software.
I think you're onto something here. My holiday project:
1. Make software titled "Wind"
2. Use Wind to distribute IP
3. Sue the shit out of receivers of IP
4. PROFIT!
I'm with GoDaddy for my domain name. When I was looking for a personal domain I checked out a bunch of domain sites. They all had basically identical annoying splash pages that tried to upsell me on everything. There was nothing to differentiate them except price. So I went with GoDaddy for its price and because I knew the name. When I get back to my computer after the holidays you can be sure I'll be ditching them and going with some of the good hosts suggested here.
On a related note, I didn't go with GoDaddy for my page hosting because I found holeinthewallhosting.com. Honestly, they're awesome. Nice clean pages, no upselling, awesome price. I dunno how good reliability is, but it's certainly good enough for my person page.
The phone issue is interesting. I was just on the "How Much Data Do You Need?" page for a local provider. You slide the bar for various things, like how many web pages you visit in a month (as if anyone really knows that). Their assumption was 0.17MB/page. I know there are mobile versions of pages and such, but this still seems like a gross underestimate given this story.
First: I'm glad to see traffic shaping gone.
Second: I don't really have a problem with caps. I mean, is it really, truly reasonable to expect unlimited bandwidth? And before you flame me, take a moment to calm your gut reaction nerd rage in regards to this issue. I mean, that shit's not free. There should be some expectation that people pay for what they use. We don't expect unlimited electricity, so why would we here. That being said: the overage charges need to be reasonable. I have no idea of what the marginal costs to Bell are for each gigabyte over the cap. One *hopes* their overage charges are somewhat in line with this, but who knows.
Third, in relation to that last point: When I lived in Ontario a few years ago I had Bell. I lived in a house with six other guys, and we sucked bandwidth. I don't remember what they charged us per extra gigabyte, but I do remember that the overage charges were capped at $30/month. *If* Bell still has this overage charge cap, then I think this is an especially reasonable thing.
If we are going to have that sort of free-for-all marketplace then I also want all warning labels removed from all products, all drugs to be legal and unrestricted [...]
Careful. There are a lot of people on slashdot who would love to see this happen.