If flying were always voluntarily, I'd never fly again. As it is, I fly about twice a year, involuntarily. Regardless of that, though, it absolutely is the government violating my privacy. That I technically "consent" to it doesn't make it any less of a privacy invasion.
Even here, many of the highly rated comments are really just wisecracks which might be funny, but don't add anything to the discussion.
So? The point is that the readers here value those comments. The system works. Whether or not you think they should be valued is beside the point. A different site, with different readers, will value different kinds of comments.
Don't kill commenting just because Jezebel has a terrible commenting system. I've long known that Jezebel's system was bad from the perspective of a commenter, now I know that it's awful from the other side of the fence as well.
We finally got to the point where we have an effective standard and I no longer had to use all the various adapters to be able to plug various devices in. Now Type-C USB comes along to ruin that? Reversibility is a minor advance at best, certainly not enough to be worth giving up having to go back to cable adapters and such.
If you spend time in an urban area, basically anything remotely "downtown" then it is a BIG win.
This must depend on which urban area you live in. In mine, this is not a big win at all. It's a bit pointless, since you're almost always in range of a public wifi hotspot anyway.
determining the RL identities of the bullies likely would reduce bullying, as they could be held socially and legally accountable for what they are doing.
I don't see any reason to think this is true. The RL identities of most bullies are already known to those being bullied, yet the bullying persists.
You disregard all the harm that anonymity causes online, from bullying, to hate speech, to terrorism.
I haven't actually seen any evidence that anonymity causes any of those things. I have seen evidence that the lack of anonymity doesn't reduce those things. So yes, I disregard it until there is a good reason not to.
We need to find a middle ground that will help curtain online abuse with minimal impact on Freedom of Speech, but the statue quo is not sustainable.
Well, I don't agree that there is some kind of crisis that needs to be addressed immediately (let alone that we need to give up any rights for), but ignoring that: please explain how removing anonymity will curtail any of the things you bring up. Since it hasn't worked in parts of the internet where it's been tried, I seriously and honestly don't think it will.
Presumably, if you're paying a particular rate in exchange for service, that's because you believe that the service has at least that much value to you. As long as that's the case, then the company providing the service isn't "ripping you off."
This argument might make some sense if we're talking about a business where there's something like competition. However, at least where I live, there isn't. If you want broadband internet, your choice is Comcast, Comcast, or Comcast. In that situation, Comcast is absolutely ripping me off by charging an absurdly high rate (not to mention using my money in order to effect legislation that is harmful to the internet) even though I continue to do business with them. The alternative is to not have broadband at all -- which isn't an option for me.
Fortunately, I'm moving soon to an area where I'll have another option. And I'll take that other option.
I actually don't see what would be wrong with just explaining that you didn't feel that the service was a good value, and that you feel they don't display respect for their customers.
What's wrong with it is that it opens a time-wasting conversation that doesn't need to happen. Comcast doesn't care why you're dropping, they just use the question as a ploy to engage you so they can give you a sales pitch.
My main objection is that it provides no serious advantage over menus, it's hard to find the things that are used less frequently, it changes dynamically, meaning that I often have to hunt around to find the item I need rather than knowing exactly where it is no matter what, it's cluttered and visually confusing, it requires configuration to become remotely usable, and so on.
It doesn't take up meaningfully more space than the menu bar would (it takes significantly *less* space than a menu bar plus a single toolbar)
Not on my machines. I'm looking at the ribbon in Outlook right now, and it take up three times the space that a menu + toolbar does.
it scales to multiple resolutions and window sizes better than menus do, it makes it easy to see what the effect of an action will be before you click
I disagree with both of these assertions.
A lot of this (maybe most) boils down to taste, so let me just leave you with my #1 objection: I'm much less efficient working with the ribbon than with the menus. The ribbon just gets in my way.
Do you really think that the only reason people could hate the ribbon is because they don't know how to use it? That's simply delusional. At least now I know where the equally mistaken belief that the only reason people could hate Metro is because they don't know how to use it comes from.
The advent of all games involving a "social" context, requiring access to the internet, and the use of DLC and micropayments, is what made me give quit gaming entirely. The cheat code business is a side-effect of this. This is one of the items on my short list of things that the internet has made worse.
A number of things, but the three worst, in my view, are that it is very often extremely slow to load (and sometimes fails to load at all), it requires me to allow Disqus to run Javascript, and it involves a third party (Disqus) sitting between me and the blog -- which means that I have to allow myself to be tracked across multiple websites just so I can make a comment.
Sites that use Disqus are sites that don't allow comments as far as I'm concerned.
I was looking for a used car, found one one craigslist. Got a cashiers check to pay for it received the car and title payed with the check. Tried to get a temporary tag from the dmv but the car was never registered to the guy i got it from.
You should never pay until after the title check and a mechanic has taken a look at the car. Then you don't have to worry about this type of problem.
What are my options? Am i just out of luck?
You have the same options that you'd have if a dealer did this to you: sue. Although if I were in your shoes and the check never cleared, I'd just park the car in the guy's driveway, drop the title & keys in his mailbox and walk away.
But basically, we have different priorities. You feel this isn't stressful. I would find having to validate the title to be stressful.
Clearly we do. A title check is just a stop to the DMV website. It's no more or less stressful than online shopping.
I've had good luck with warranties. Most have been close to break-even.
If I had such experience, I would probably feel differently. But, seriously, I can't think of a single time that I actually used a warranty on anything I had. It's all just burnt money.
I'm afraid that you misread me -- I have no anger at all. I was just surprised to see Best Buy cited as an example of something being done right because that doesn't square with my experience.
I'm also not comparing website prices. I'm comparing prices of equipment sold in my local brick & mortar Best Buy with the same equipment sold in a nearby computer parts store. The nearby store, on average, is priced 2/3 to 1/2 of what Best Buy prices are. This might be influenced by the types of products I tend to buy -- I don't buy Rokus or movies there. I buy networking items: switches, cables, drive enclosures, that sort of thing.
All I know is that literally every item I've priced at Best Buy can be had from other retailers for at least half the price, and when I have gone into Best Buy I have always been pressured to buy stuff I don't want.
The "sleazy" part pretty much comes from the Geek Squad, which is a pure ripoff operation.
Wait until you get a car from a local person that turns out to not have a good title- or was in an accident and reconditioned. Talk about stress.
Not stressful at all, because I can, and do, easily run title and accident checks and get exactly the same information that a dealership would have. Plus, I don't have to worry that the dealership is withholding important information.
As I said above- internet bidding is VERY low stress and laying an 8 year warranty over the top of that erases stress.
Warranties don't decrease my stress level at all -- they merely increase the sense that I've just got ripped off. But that's a personal issue. In any case, you may find the internet bidding process to be low stress, but that certainly isn't true for everybody. The stress comes from interacting with a dealership, and internet bidding doesn't eliminate that.
I keep my cars a long time (or until a high school student totals them from behind).
Right now, Tesla will send technicians to you. Once there are enough electric cars on the roads, though, independent mechanic will certainly be able to repair them as well.
Many aspects of the dealership people find unpleasant will still be there with a manufacturer run dealership. One of them is the credit checks for the loans.
I seriously doubt that the credit check for a loan even appears on list of things that people find unpleasant about dealerships. If it does, it's certain to be dead last. At least, when I hear people complaining about dealerships (and in my own complaints about them), "the credit check" has never, ever been mentioned.
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If flying were always voluntarily, I'd never fly again. As it is, I fly about twice a year, involuntarily. Regardless of that, though, it absolutely is the government violating my privacy. That I technically "consent" to it doesn't make it any less of a privacy invasion.
Even here, many of the highly rated comments are really just wisecracks which might be funny, but don't add anything to the discussion.
So? The point is that the readers here value those comments. The system works. Whether or not you think they should be valued is beside the point. A different site, with different readers, will value different kinds of comments.
Don't kill commenting just because Jezebel has a terrible commenting system. I've long known that Jezebel's system was bad from the perspective of a commenter, now I know that it's awful from the other side of the fence as well.
We finally got to the point where we have an effective standard and I no longer had to use all the various adapters to be able to plug various devices in. Now Type-C USB comes along to ruin that? Reversibility is a minor advance at best, certainly not enough to be worth giving up having to go back to cable adapters and such.
If you spend time in an urban area, basically anything remotely "downtown" then it is a BIG win.
This must depend on which urban area you live in. In mine, this is not a big win at all. It's a bit pointless, since you're almost always in range of a public wifi hotspot anyway.
determining the RL identities of the bullies likely would reduce bullying, as they could be held socially and legally accountable for what they are doing.
I don't see any reason to think this is true. The RL identities of most bullies are already known to those being bullied, yet the bullying persists.
You disregard all the harm that anonymity causes online, from bullying, to hate speech, to terrorism.
I haven't actually seen any evidence that anonymity causes any of those things. I have seen evidence that the lack of anonymity doesn't reduce those things. So yes, I disregard it until there is a good reason not to.
We need to find a middle ground that will help curtain online abuse with minimal impact on Freedom of Speech, but the statue quo is not sustainable.
Well, I don't agree that there is some kind of crisis that needs to be addressed immediately (let alone that we need to give up any rights for), but ignoring that: please explain how removing anonymity will curtail any of the things you bring up. Since it hasn't worked in parts of the internet where it's been tried, I seriously and honestly don't think it will.
Presumably, if you're paying a particular rate in exchange for service, that's because you believe that the service has at least that much value to you. As long as that's the case, then the company providing the service isn't "ripping you off."
This argument might make some sense if we're talking about a business where there's something like competition. However, at least where I live, there isn't. If you want broadband internet, your choice is Comcast, Comcast, or Comcast. In that situation, Comcast is absolutely ripping me off by charging an absurdly high rate (not to mention using my money in order to effect legislation that is harmful to the internet) even though I continue to do business with them. The alternative is to not have broadband at all -- which isn't an option for me.
Fortunately, I'm moving soon to an area where I'll have another option. And I'll take that other option.
I actually don't see what would be wrong with just explaining that you didn't feel that the service was a good value, and that you feel they don't display respect for their customers.
What's wrong with it is that it opens a time-wasting conversation that doesn't need to happen. Comcast doesn't care why you're dropping, they just use the question as a ploy to engage you so they can give you a sales pitch.
What other disadvantages do you ascribe to it?
My main objection is that it provides no serious advantage over menus, it's hard to find the things that are used less frequently, it changes dynamically, meaning that I often have to hunt around to find the item I need rather than knowing exactly where it is no matter what, it's cluttered and visually confusing, it requires configuration to become remotely usable, and so on.
It doesn't take up meaningfully more space than the menu bar would (it takes significantly *less* space than a menu bar plus a single toolbar)
Not on my machines. I'm looking at the ribbon in Outlook right now, and it take up three times the space that a menu + toolbar does.
it scales to multiple resolutions and window sizes better than menus do, it makes it easy to see what the effect of an action will be before you click
I disagree with both of these assertions.
A lot of this (maybe most) boils down to taste, so let me just leave you with my #1 objection: I'm much less efficient working with the ribbon than with the menus. The ribbon just gets in my way.
It's very similar to the osx launchpad.
You say that as if that were a good thing...
Do you really think that the only reason people could hate the ribbon is because they don't know how to use it? That's simply delusional. At least now I know where the equally mistaken belief that the only reason people could hate Metro is because they don't know how to use it comes from.
You can just customize it though, just add your commonly used tasks to the home tab of the ribbon and you're set.
True enough. But that doesn't stop the ribbon from sucking.
The advent of all games involving a "social" context, requiring access to the internet, and the use of DLC and micropayments, is what made me give quit gaming entirely. The cheat code business is a side-effect of this. This is one of the items on my short list of things that the internet has made worse.
A number of things, but the three worst, in my view, are that it is very often extremely slow to load (and sometimes fails to load at all), it requires me to allow Disqus to run Javascript, and it involves a third party (Disqus) sitting between me and the blog -- which means that I have to allow myself to be tracked across multiple websites just so I can make a comment.
Sites that use Disqus are sites that don't allow comments as far as I'm concerned.
I disagree. I HATE HATE HATE reddit's commenting system.
This. Disqus is horrible. Even if it worked right, it would still be horrible.
...which is precisely why I don't (and won't) use such commenting systems. Single sign-on is a terrible idea.
I was looking for a used car, found one one craigslist. Got a cashiers check to pay for it received the car and title payed with the check. Tried to get a temporary tag from the dmv but the car was never registered to the guy i got it from.
You should never pay until after the title check and a mechanic has taken a look at the car. Then you don't have to worry about this type of problem.
What are my options? Am i just out of luck?
You have the same options that you'd have if a dealer did this to you: sue. Although if I were in your shoes and the check never cleared, I'd just park the car in the guy's driveway, drop the title & keys in his mailbox and walk away.
But basically, we have different priorities. You feel this isn't stressful. I would find having to validate the title to be stressful.
Clearly we do. A title check is just a stop to the DMV website. It's no more or less stressful than online shopping.
I've had good luck with warranties. Most have been close to break-even.
If I had such experience, I would probably feel differently. But, seriously, I can't think of a single time that I actually used a warranty on anything I had. It's all just burnt money.
I'm afraid that you misread me -- I have no anger at all. I was just surprised to see Best Buy cited as an example of something being done right because that doesn't square with my experience.
I'm also not comparing website prices. I'm comparing prices of equipment sold in my local brick & mortar Best Buy with the same equipment sold in a nearby computer parts store. The nearby store, on average, is priced 2/3 to 1/2 of what Best Buy prices are. This might be influenced by the types of products I tend to buy -- I don't buy Rokus or movies there. I buy networking items: switches, cables, drive enclosures, that sort of thing.
All I know is that literally every item I've priced at Best Buy can be had from other retailers for at least half the price, and when I have gone into Best Buy I have always been pressured to buy stuff I don't want.
The "sleazy" part pretty much comes from the Geek Squad, which is a pure ripoff operation.
Wait until you get a car from a local person that turns out to not have a good title- or was in an accident and reconditioned. Talk about stress.
Not stressful at all, because I can, and do, easily run title and accident checks and get exactly the same information that a dealership would have. Plus, I don't have to worry that the dealership is withholding important information.
As I said above- internet bidding is VERY low stress and laying an 8 year warranty over the top of that erases stress.
Warranties don't decrease my stress level at all -- they merely increase the sense that I've just got ripped off. But that's a personal issue. In any case, you may find the internet bidding process to be low stress, but that certainly isn't true for everybody. The stress comes from interacting with a dealership, and internet bidding doesn't eliminate that.
I keep my cars a long time (or until a high school student totals them from behind).
As do I.
Right now, Tesla will send technicians to you. Once there are enough electric cars on the roads, though, independent mechanic will certainly be able to repair them as well.
Many aspects of the dealership people find unpleasant will still be there with a manufacturer run dealership. One of them is the credit checks for the loans.
I seriously doubt that the credit check for a loan even appears on list of things that people find unpleasant about dealerships. If it does, it's certain to be dead last. At least, when I hear people complaining about dealerships (and in my own complaints about them), "the credit check" has never, ever been mentioned.
There have been numerous such expose's over the past 50 years or so.