Booooooring. If you have a laptop, why the hell would you watch StockMarketTV? Watch a DVD or hell... play some scorched earth. I love my PDA when I take flights cause I just load a few DVD rips on my SD card and have enough juice and content to watch for about 8 hours.
How often do you fly? Once every few months? Once a year? Less than that? I expect that this is initially targetted to business travellers (read: people who care about financial and stock market news), because many of them fly weekly or monthly (if not daily, even). I'm sure they'll eventually have a "special" channel showing non-business related stuff (like holiday crap, since that's when a large number of non-business folks fly), but for now they're targetting their frequent customers. Makes (business) sense to me.
Normally, it is rare enough for people to give money , and I would not want to discourage that.
It really depends on the demographics, but amongst professionals (which one could argue includes a good percentage of Slashdot...) the charity donation rate is quite high (due in part to higher average incomes, tax deductions, and company-sponsored charity drives with matching donations). However, two of those three incentives are available year-round, and if you talk to the right people in your organization I'm sure you can get the third benefit outside of a corporate donation drive, especially if you're planning to donate money to buy your company's product (ie, a Dell employ pledging $X to buy computers for a local school). Unfortunately, the public awareness for charity donations is only heightened during holiday seasons, typically using guilt tactics. The rest of the year, nobody even thinks about it.
Look carefully for the right charity organization, and make sure that they do not spend it all on administration and other internal costs. The right organizations will spend their money at the right time and the right cause. Your favourite charity organization will save it for you (and probably get better intrest as well, being an organization).
Better yet, skip the organizations entirely. Donating to something like United Way is no better than throwing your money out with the trash, IMHO. Find a worthy cause (your local library, the public school where you were educated, the local volunteer food co-op, etc) and write them a check directly. Even if you're donating through a corporate-sponsored drive, any halfway-decent campaign will allow you to specify where you want the money to go (if you don't specify, it'll go to the United Way, so be specific). However, if you must donate to an umbrella charity company (what an oxymoron!), I really suggest you do so during the "off-season" for charity (ie, not Thanksgiving or Christmas). If the organization wants to stockpile your donation until the holiday season, that's their decision, but if I found out they were doing that I would find a different organization to give to next year.
Charity is supposed to be selfless. It's not supposed to be a competition to see who can donate the most money, nor is it supposed to be guilt-induced. Sadly, charity has become little more than a bullet point on a corporate resume or a cheerleading excercise to "beat" last year's total. If I give to charity, that's between me and the charity. I'm not saying I do or don't give, and it's none of your business.
Forget your computer for a few days. It won't mind. If you have extra money after getting your loved one's their gifts hwy not put it towards something more satisfying. How about donating it to some shelters or soup kitchens, or maybe toys for tots. I know it's not the American thing to do any more but damn it's more important then turning your pc into the digital equivilant to a rice-burner.
Even better, if you have some money left over after being forced to court debt to satisfy your greedy kin, why not put it in an interest bearing savings account or invest it in the market. Rather than feeling obligated to spend yourself into bankruptcy ever holiday season, you could be saving for your future.
If you'd like to donate to charity, feel free. However, may I suggest you wait and do that in April or May, or August? Right now, everybody and his dog is donating to charities because it's the "right" thing to do at holiday times. However, how much more important would your contribution be to needy families during a time of year when contributions are not pouring in from holiday guilt? Needy folks are needy year-round. They don't suddenly become needy between October and January.
It has been real since Office 97 (which also coincides with the introduction of the paperclip in Office -- I believe he existed before in Bob, like the dog and cat). Don't want the paperclip? Don't install the paperclip (Office Assistant) when you install Office. Simple. Done. Oh, yeah, and IIRC Office XP Office Assistants do not install by default (they're marked as "install on 1st use" or something like that, though if you don't even want that you can change it to "Not Available" -- see below).
If the paperclip is already installed and you want it gone, follow these simple steps (targetted to Office 2003, since that's what I have installed here, but the approach is similar for all recent versions of Office):
Open Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel
Find the Microsoft Office entry in the list, and click the "Change" button
Select "Add or Remove Features" if it's not already selected and click Next
Check "Choose advanced customization of applications" and click Next
Expand "Office Shared Features" in the tree view
Find "Office Assistant" in the newly expanded portion of the tree
Well just take another look and think that your job is helping raise a family.
As opposed to raising my own family? (not that I have or want a family to raise, but that doesn't mean that some other family is more deserving of my job than I am)
I was given a Playstation 2 by my sister because of DRE's. She used it to read DVD's most of the time and that's the prime reason why DRE's occur.
Since then my sister bought another Playstation 2
Doesn't your sister know she can buy a stand-alone DVD player for less than half the price of a PS2? And she'll get a real remote control with it rather than using a controller to play her DVDs.
I seem to recall a Sega Genesis game that covered this kind of territory
That would be Mutant League Football, which is an EA property (based on the Madden engine of the time). This exclusive deal won't bring back MLF, and I wouldn't put it past EA to try to litigate anyone who attempts to do something similar.
Personally, I preferred Base Wars (sorry for the bad link, feel free to Google for it).
I have always thought that the HDD acronym is stupid. What's wrong with HD as in Hard Disk and/or Hard Drive?
HDD, or Hard Disk Drive, tells you what kind of drive it is. It's a "Hard Disk" drive, as opposed to a "Floppy Disk" drive, or a "Tape" drive, or "CD-ROM" drive.
HDD is like Internet Web or PC Computer.
But the "World Wide Web" typically refers to HTTP(S) traffic, while "Internet" refers to the network on which the WWW is built. Therefore it does make some sort of sense to say "Internet Web", as opposed to "Internet2 Web" or "My Private Network Web". You'll still sound funny saying it, but it makes sense.
PC Computer is as bad as ATM Machine or NIC card, though.
when microsoft screwed over their xbox live members
To be fair, Microsoft "screwed" their Live! customers only by changing gamertag requirements (they initially allowed spaces as unique characters, but had to change that for some reason). Yes, you may have lost your "Master Chief 1337" gamertag, but you didn't lose your 2093784 hours invested in Final Fantasy X or Gran Turismo 3. Also, as I understand it, your Friends list stayed the same, and your friends were automatically updated with your new gamertag. The only reason they finally started offering a free game (PGR2, which just recently became "bargain bin", and is still an excellent game even though it's a year old) to get the last few stragglers to change their tags. Also, I believe they gave you the choice of a free year of Live! or a copy of PGR2 (same price, since Live! is ~$50 and PGR2 was still $50 at the time).
You sir, are a fucking moron...yes they can tell you have a router hooked up you dolt...unless of course you hooked it up wrong which by your statement I could believe....see when the little packets can't reach the modem or they can't see your pc because of the router, it's pretty much a dead giveaway!!!!
Uh, yeah. Okay. First off, a router's not going to stop them from pinging your modem, because the router is on the internal side, between the modem and your computers. Aside from that, they have no business pinging my PC (and if they try, I'll just tell them that I'm running an "approved" firewall like XP's firewall). So no, from the phone support's desk, they can't tell whether or not I'm using a router on my internal network.
You're missing the most obvious option, though -- remove the router before you call. As part of your own troubleshooting steps, you should try connecting a PC directly to the modem to make sure your router isn't the problem. Leave it that way when you call tech support, and you won't have to lie, because you're not using a router (that you normally do use a router is none of their business).
I worked a few years in helpdesks before law school, and most people on these lines are lazy- they want you off the phone as quick as possible.
While the people may be lazy, most of them are also paid by the number of calls they handle, and how quickly they handle them. They're paid this way because it's easy to track, nevermind that it incentivizes the agents to not help the customer. If they had a good way of tracking customer satisfaction, agents could then be paid by a CSat score. The problem is that it's difficult to track. Most customers just want their problem fixed, and they're not going to hang on the line to answer a poll, nor are they going to want you to email them with a follow-up questionnaire (you can do it, but your response rates will be very low).
In the absence of any meaningful metrics, call centers will use what they know -- number of calls handled, and time per call.
Remember, they're contractors;) Some good, some bad... try to be nice though. It's not all their fault.
I was always nice when a tech came out, and a number of them were very knowledgeable (within certain domains, of course -- a few guys could rewire an entire house for cable with their eyes closed, but needed a cheat sheet for their laptop; no disrespect meant at all because I'm lucky not to cross-thread the cable on my modem:). I also realize that the dispatchers have these guys running all over the place, and Seattle's horrible morning rush hour traffic can't help. That said, I really don't relish wasting an entire morning waiting for a tech to show up. After a few tech visits, the phone support folks told me I could actually request a 2-hour window, but it seems like they will only do that for you if you've had several tech visits and haven't solved the problem yet (ie, you've got a bad case that they need to solve to keep your goodwill).
My main beef is not the four-hour windows or the techs getting delayed by idjit customers, but that phone support can't seem to do anything but walk you through rebooting your modem. Beyond that, a technician visit is required, which just seems backwards to me. Surely they have tools on their end to troubleshoot problems, especially since oftentimes the techs will come out and then spend the time on their cell phone with a different level of phone support.
Good idea, but many ISPs (Comcast) don't support routers.
They don't do tech support on the routers because they don't know how you've set them up. If your router is the cause of a problem (you've blocked all outgoing traffic, asked-for or otherwise, for example), they don't want to waste the time on you. That doesn't mean they don't support routers on their network (as in, routers won't work). They do. If you know your router is fine, next time lie to them. They can't tell.
have called Comcast when their crappy connection goes up and down (happens about once per week these days for a whole day).
I had a similar problem where my net connection would go down at night, and come back up during the day, making it completely useless to me (I'm at work during the day). After months of dealing with this and several technician visits, one finally decided to check the connections from the street to my house. Lo and behold, there was water damage at one of the connection points. During the day when it was warm, the connection would warm up and expand enough to work. At night when it cooled down, it would contract and lose signal. A 5 minute splice job later and everything worked perfectly. That was almost a year and a half ago, and I've not had any problems since.
Comcast is a monopoly where I and many others live. Let's hope the Supremes force them to open their cable lines to competitors. The result of them forcing BellSouth to do so has resulted (finally) in my recent switch to an unlimited local and long distance provider for $45/month.
I take it you've never had a DSL line. The infrastructure owners are required to allow others to sell their lines, but it results in no lower prices, no better service (tech support), and in fact causes even more problems by adding layers. When I was on DSL and had a problem, I first had to call my ISP (Speakeasy, who have some shady business practices regardless of the good geek press they get), who would then have to call my CLEC (Covad) if it wasn't Speakeasy's problem, and Covad would then have to call my ILEC (Verizon) if the problem was anything other than their DSLAM in the local CO. Verizon was quick enough to come out and solve any loop issues if it really was their problem, but you could literally spend days trying to figure out what was going on and where the problem was at (you're only allowed to contact your ISP directly; Covad and Verizon wouldn't even recognize me as a customer when I tried calling them directly). I'm not saying that the local monopoly of cable is any better, but in this one case I can know where the problem is -- if it's not my equipment, then it's Comcast.
Of course, Comcast's tech support is pretty much teh suck, anyway. Their extent of knowledge doesn't go past, "Did you reboot your modem?" If that doesn't work, you have to schedule a technician visit, in 4 hour windows, during working hours (ie, if you work a normal day job, be prepared to call in sick or late while you wait for the Comcast van to show up, typically at the very end of their 4 hour window).
Hillary's right, it does "take a village", but not "to raise a kid". It takes a village to pay for a kid. Parents, think about that the next time you're lobbying for new additions to the local school, or for speed bumps every 10 feet because you're afraid your kid will get run over, etc. We child-free folks pay just as much as you do for those items (ie, in most states property taxes are used to pay for public schooling, and the amount of property tax you pay relies only on the value of your property and not the number of children you have attending a public school), and we don't use the provided services nearly as much as the childed. Consider the catch-22 of moving to a new community because it has a "better" school. Chances are, in many cases that's because the community and school are small, with a low number of students per teacher so that teachers can spend more time per student. You see that and drag in your three progeny. Others do the same and before you know it the school with an average class size of 16 has now skyrocketed to an average size of 35-40, hemmoraging teachers left and right because of the added stress, increasing property taxes to pay for school additions and increased community infrastructure (more/wider roads so all of your huge SUVs can drive junior to school in the morning), etc. Of course, then you start complaining about how bad the school is, or how the community is no longer the quaint place you thought you were moving into, or that you're getting reamed by property taxes. Here's a little video worth watching. (warning: this will likely offend parents, and it's definitely an example of an extreme belief, but the concept is still sound and the video is funny, IMHO)
As for "family values", can anyone define "family values" for me? I'm not considered a family (single, no kids), so why should I embrace "family values"? Who says what a family is, anyway? Is a childless married couple a family? What about a single father with custody of his kid(s)? What about a same-sex domestic partnership (with or without children)? Are those families? If not, why should they "act in ways that value families?" There's nothing in it for them.
(Note: I read your post to be in jest, making fun of Hillary, anti-gun nuts, etc. I just decided to rant.)
Actually, according to Masters of Doom, Alien was one of the ideas bouncing around before they decided upon Doom:
I haven't read the book, but what you quoted sounds quite a bit different than the original poster's "Doom originally used an Aliens license". That they kicked around the idea of maybe doing a game based on Aliens doesn't mean that they ever pursued the license or even seriously considered it (I would think that checking for rights is routine, and not necessarily an indication of seriousness).
Aliens was part of what Doom was based on. In fact, Doom originally used an Aliens license.
I'm pretty sure that's not the case, though Alien(s) as an inspiration for Doom isn't hard to see. More likely you're thinking about the Aliens modification for Quake that was "Foxed" (independent modders decided to make a Quake Total Conversion (TC) based on Aliens, but Fox shut it down on copyright infringment, giving rise to the term "Foxed" for something being stopped because it uses copyrighten (copyrighted?) material without permission).
What plot? From what I can recall the plot went something like "Demons. Bad. Kill them all."...
As simplistic as the plot is, they've still managed to fuck it up. Also, your plot is a little thin. It's more like, "You, Space Marine. Them, Demons from Hell. On Mars. Kill them all." And yet, the movie does not have space marines, demons, hellspawn, or Mars. It may not be the strongest of plots, but it's what makes Doom recognizable. Without at least space marines and hellspawn, you don't have a Doom movie.
What's next? Will there be a Halo movie with no Master Chief, no Covenant, and no Halo? How about a Metroid movie with no Samus Aran and no Metroid, or a Half-Life movie with no Gordon Freeman, no G-Man, and no aliens from Xen?
Who thought this skin looked good? I mean, sure, Netscape is understaffed and all (being nothing more than a name), but you'd think that AOL could afford a UI designer that wasn't blind!
Folks, this is why skinning an application is bad. For every attractive skin that gets published (and those really are few and far between), there's thousands of craptacular skins just like this that people think look good. Excuse me while I go poke out my eyes. I just can't take the seafoam green any more...
And then I became a parent and everything changed. In particular I learnt the phrase the terrible twos Simply to keep my sanity I learnt a number of tricks to placate the little ball of frutration that cannot articulate his thoughts or his needs
Ever consider the possibility that you weren't cut out for parenthood? Changing your beliefs simply because it got "hard" doesn't sound like someone with the strength of conviction to be a good parent. But what do I know? I'm not a parent, and I guess it all changes when you do become one (*cough*crock of shit*cough*).
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and I'm very proud of my teenage son.
Ask yourself, does the pudding taste good just because you made it, or would others tell you it tastes good as well (and mean it)? What has your son done to make you proud, aside from springing from your loins? I'm not saying you don't have reason to be proud of your son; I'm just curious about what makes you proud of him.
you certainly haven't got the right to tell me how to do it.
So I suppose you pay for all of your child's schooling on your own, and all of your child's medical care, and his impact on the environment, society, and myself, however indirect is no greater than if he hadn't been born at all? Until the day comes that my taxes do not pay for your child's schooling, my insurance premiums do not pay for the cost of your child birth, your expanding family's need for increased infrastructure is paid from your own pocket, etc, I damn well do have a right to tell you how to do it. You're not parenting in a vacuum, and you're not raising a child on your own dime. While I don't believe it "takes a village to raise a child," (it takes two loving, supportive parents who aren't afraid of punishment when it's required), I do believe it "takes a village to PAY for a child." To that extent I very well deserve a say in how my money is used.
There's a whole lot of people who think just like us and don't want the stress and responsibility of raising kids.
The concept definitely has potential, but unfortunately the list of links is woefully outdated (many redirect to off-topic sites, or come up 404ed). Perhaps this is an indication that we childless have better things to do?:)
I'm not so sure discussion groups and segregated activities really help the cause, though. Doing that just ends up preaching to the choir, and reinforces the idea that there's something "wrong" with our lifestyle choice*, similar to AA or other "support groups"**
* "Lifestyle choice" sounds synonomous with "gay", but there are many of us heterosexuals who choose to be childless as well.
** Not that there's anything wrong with AA or support groups, but a support group usually goes hand in hand with a problem (AA and alcholism, cancer survivors and cancer, etc). The groups are often intended to help "fix"*** the problem. Choosing to be child-free is not a problem, and doesn't need to be "fixed". Although, "getting fixed" is a good way to be child-free. (ooo! bad pun!)
*** I quoted "fix" with AA in mind. While many support groups do work, and I'm sure AA has helped a number of people as well, I find it odd that a religion-sponsored, religious-oriented "support group" can be mandated by courts for alcohol-related infractions. As well, the "Alcohol Treatment" industry is hugely corrupt, with an astounding number of people being labelled "acoholics" with no real supporting evidence. I'm not denying that alcoholism is a real problem. I'm just saying that it's nowhere near as rampant as courts and "experts" would have you believe.
Re:No it ain't dead.
on
The VHS is Dead
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Let me guess how many kids you've got...
Zero, right? No matter what you try, most toddlers don't have patience. It isn't something you can teach a 2 year old. If you really think that you can, you've got a big surprise coming when you do have kids.
It doesn't take having kids to know how to raise them, nor does having kids make you a good parent. While the anonymous parent may not have any kids, what makes you think he's never spent time with kids? Cousins, nieces and nephews, younger siblings, children of friends, etc; there are plenty of ways to experience child rearing without doing it first-hand. Moreover, if you can't teach your child a little patience and respect for belongings, perhaps you shouldn't have had a kid in the first place? The last thing this world needs is another parent (I'd say "set of parents", but that seems to be the exception these days) who can't control his ankle biter.
For what it's worth, it says a lot about a person's parenting skills when they use videos as a babysitting mechanism. How about you try spending some time with your child, instead? You could certainly do that by watching a video, during which time you also teach him how to handle the media and respect your property. Saying that you can't teach patience to a 2 year old is a cop-out. Have you tried? Do you realize that sometimes you do have to punish a child? If he breaks a DVD, it's a good time to teach him that actions have consequences. "Sorry, but your <Insert kid's movie title here> is broken, so you can't watch it. No, I'm not going to go out and buy you another one. If you wanted to watch it, you shouldn't have broken it in the first place." You might feel bad about doing this, but tough shit. It's your job to educate your child and help him grow up into a responsible, considerate human being. This is a lesson he needs to learn sooner or later, so why not use this chance to teach it? Otherwise, you just unleash another spoiled brat on the rest of us, expecting to get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, and damn the consequences.
And before you lash out at me with your wonderful wit, no, I don't have children. Nor do I want children, because I know that I don't have the time or patience be a good parent (at least not now, nor for the forseeable future). I don't need babies to fulfill me or give me a sense of purpose, and I'm not poorer because of it.
Slashdot Mirror
How often do you fly? Once every few months? Once a year? Less than that? I expect that this is initially targetted to business travellers (read: people who care about financial and stock market news), because many of them fly weekly or monthly (if not daily, even). I'm sure they'll eventually have a "special" channel showing non-business related stuff (like holiday crap, since that's when a large number of non-business folks fly), but for now they're targetting their frequent customers. Makes (business) sense to me.
It really depends on the demographics, but amongst professionals (which one could argue includes a good percentage of Slashdot ...) the charity donation rate is quite high (due in part to higher average incomes, tax deductions, and company-sponsored charity drives with matching donations). However, two of those three incentives are available year-round, and if you talk to the right people in your organization I'm sure you can get the third benefit outside of a corporate donation drive, especially if you're planning to donate money to buy your company's product (ie, a Dell employ pledging $X to buy computers for a local school). Unfortunately, the public awareness for charity donations is only heightened during holiday seasons, typically using guilt tactics. The rest of the year, nobody even thinks about it.
Better yet, skip the organizations entirely. Donating to something like United Way is no better than throwing your money out with the trash, IMHO. Find a worthy cause (your local library, the public school where you were educated, the local volunteer food co-op, etc) and write them a check directly. Even if you're donating through a corporate-sponsored drive, any halfway-decent campaign will allow you to specify where you want the money to go (if you don't specify, it'll go to the United Way, so be specific). However, if you must donate to an umbrella charity company (what an oxymoron!), I really suggest you do so during the "off-season" for charity (ie, not Thanksgiving or Christmas). If the organization wants to stockpile your donation until the holiday season, that's their decision, but if I found out they were doing that I would find a different organization to give to next year.
Charity is supposed to be selfless. It's not supposed to be a competition to see who can donate the most money, nor is it supposed to be guilt-induced. Sadly, charity has become little more than a bullet point on a corporate resume or a cheerleading excercise to "beat" last year's total. If I give to charity, that's between me and the charity. I'm not saying I do or don't give, and it's none of your business.
Even better, if you have some money left over after being forced to court debt to satisfy your greedy kin, why not put it in an interest bearing savings account or invest it in the market. Rather than feeling obligated to spend yourself into bankruptcy ever holiday season, you could be saving for your future.
If you'd like to donate to charity, feel free. However, may I suggest you wait and do that in April or May, or August? Right now, everybody and his dog is donating to charities because it's the "right" thing to do at holiday times. However, how much more important would your contribution be to needy families during a time of year when contributions are not pouring in from holiday guilt? Needy folks are needy year-round. They don't suddenly become needy between October and January.
It has been real since Office 97 (which also coincides with the introduction of the paperclip in Office -- I believe he existed before in Bob, like the dog and cat). Don't want the paperclip? Don't install the paperclip (Office Assistant) when you install Office. Simple. Done. Oh, yeah, and IIRC Office XP Office Assistants do not install by default (they're marked as "install on 1st use" or something like that, though if you don't even want that you can change it to "Not Available" -- see below).
If the paperclip is already installed and you want it gone, follow these simple steps (targetted to Office 2003, since that's what I have installed here, but the approach is similar for all recent versions of Office):
- Open Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel
- Find the Microsoft Office entry in the list, and click the "Change" button
- Select "Add or Remove Features" if it's not already selected and click Next
- Check "Choose advanced customization of applications" and click Next
- Expand "Office Shared Features" in the tree view
- Find "Office Assistant" in the newly expanded portion of the tree
- Click the down-arrow, and select Not Available
- Click Update and finish out the wizard
Voila (not "viola"), no more paperclip.As opposed to raising my own family? (not that I have or want a family to raise, but that doesn't mean that some other family is more deserving of my job than I am)
And here I thought it was just because you didn't understand what we meant when we said "missile defense program".
Doesn't your sister know she can buy a stand-alone DVD player for less than half the price of a PS2? And she'll get a real remote control with it rather than using a controller to play her DVDs.
That would be Mutant League Football, which is an EA property (based on the Madden engine of the time). This exclusive deal won't bring back MLF, and I wouldn't put it past EA to try to litigate anyone who attempts to do something similar.
Personally, I preferred Base Wars (sorry for the bad link, feel free to Google for it).
HDD, or Hard Disk Drive, tells you what kind of drive it is. It's a "Hard Disk" drive, as opposed to a "Floppy Disk" drive, or a "Tape" drive, or "CD-ROM" drive.
But the "World Wide Web" typically refers to HTTP(S) traffic, while "Internet" refers to the network on which the WWW is built. Therefore it does make some sort of sense to say "Internet Web", as opposed to "Internet2 Web" or "My Private Network Web". You'll still sound funny saying it, but it makes sense.
PC Computer is as bad as ATM Machine or NIC card, though.
Were the best.
Wear the best?
To be fair, Microsoft "screwed" their Live! customers only by changing gamertag requirements (they initially allowed spaces as unique characters, but had to change that for some reason). Yes, you may have lost your "Master Chief 1337" gamertag, but you didn't lose your 2093784 hours invested in Final Fantasy X or Gran Turismo 3. Also, as I understand it, your Friends list stayed the same, and your friends were automatically updated with your new gamertag. The only reason they finally started offering a free game (PGR2, which just recently became "bargain bin", and is still an excellent game even though it's a year old) to get the last few stragglers to change their tags. Also, I believe they gave you the choice of a free year of Live! or a copy of PGR2 (same price, since Live! is ~$50 and PGR2 was still $50 at the time).
Uh, yeah. Okay. First off, a router's not going to stop them from pinging your modem, because the router is on the internal side, between the modem and your computers. Aside from that, they have no business pinging my PC (and if they try, I'll just tell them that I'm running an "approved" firewall like XP's firewall). So no, from the phone support's desk, they can't tell whether or not I'm using a router on my internal network.
You're missing the most obvious option, though -- remove the router before you call. As part of your own troubleshooting steps, you should try connecting a PC directly to the modem to make sure your router isn't the problem. Leave it that way when you call tech support, and you won't have to lie, because you're not using a router (that you normally do use a router is none of their business).
While the people may be lazy, most of them are also paid by the number of calls they handle, and how quickly they handle them. They're paid this way because it's easy to track, nevermind that it incentivizes the agents to not help the customer. If they had a good way of tracking customer satisfaction, agents could then be paid by a CSat score. The problem is that it's difficult to track. Most customers just want their problem fixed, and they're not going to hang on the line to answer a poll, nor are they going to want you to email them with a follow-up questionnaire (you can do it, but your response rates will be very low).
In the absence of any meaningful metrics, call centers will use what they know -- number of calls handled, and time per call.
I was always nice when a tech came out, and a number of them were very knowledgeable (within certain domains, of course -- a few guys could rewire an entire house for cable with their eyes closed, but needed a cheat sheet for their laptop; no disrespect meant at all because I'm lucky not to cross-thread the cable on my modem :). I also realize that the dispatchers have these guys running all over the place, and Seattle's horrible morning rush hour traffic can't help. That said, I really don't relish wasting an entire morning waiting for a tech to show up. After a few tech visits, the phone support folks told me I could actually request a 2-hour window, but it seems like they will only do that for you if you've had several tech visits and haven't solved the problem yet (ie, you've got a bad case that they need to solve to keep your goodwill).
My main beef is not the four-hour windows or the techs getting delayed by idjit customers, but that phone support can't seem to do anything but walk you through rebooting your modem. Beyond that, a technician visit is required, which just seems backwards to me. Surely they have tools on their end to troubleshoot problems, especially since oftentimes the techs will come out and then spend the time on their cell phone with a different level of phone support.
They don't do tech support on the routers because they don't know how you've set them up. If your router is the cause of a problem (you've blocked all outgoing traffic, asked-for or otherwise, for example), they don't want to waste the time on you. That doesn't mean they don't support routers on their network (as in, routers won't work). They do. If you know your router is fine, next time lie to them. They can't tell.
I had a similar problem where my net connection would go down at night, and come back up during the day, making it completely useless to me (I'm at work during the day). After months of dealing with this and several technician visits, one finally decided to check the connections from the street to my house. Lo and behold, there was water damage at one of the connection points. During the day when it was warm, the connection would warm up and expand enough to work. At night when it cooled down, it would contract and lose signal. A 5 minute splice job later and everything worked perfectly. That was almost a year and a half ago, and I've not had any problems since.
I take it you've never had a DSL line. The infrastructure owners are required to allow others to sell their lines, but it results in no lower prices, no better service (tech support), and in fact causes even more problems by adding layers. When I was on DSL and had a problem, I first had to call my ISP (Speakeasy, who have some shady business practices regardless of the good geek press they get), who would then have to call my CLEC (Covad) if it wasn't Speakeasy's problem, and Covad would then have to call my ILEC (Verizon) if the problem was anything other than their DSLAM in the local CO. Verizon was quick enough to come out and solve any loop issues if it really was their problem, but you could literally spend days trying to figure out what was going on and where the problem was at (you're only allowed to contact your ISP directly; Covad and Verizon wouldn't even recognize me as a customer when I tried calling them directly). I'm not saying that the local monopoly of cable is any better, but in this one case I can know where the problem is -- if it's not my equipment, then it's Comcast.
Of course, Comcast's tech support is pretty much teh suck, anyway. Their extent of knowledge doesn't go past, "Did you reboot your modem?" If that doesn't work, you have to schedule a technician visit, in 4 hour windows, during working hours (ie, if you work a normal day job, be prepared to call in sick or late while you wait for the Comcast van to show up, typically at the very end of their 4 hour window).
Hillary's right, it does "take a village", but not "to raise a kid". It takes a village to pay for a kid. Parents, think about that the next time you're lobbying for new additions to the local school, or for speed bumps every 10 feet because you're afraid your kid will get run over, etc. We child-free folks pay just as much as you do for those items (ie, in most states property taxes are used to pay for public schooling, and the amount of property tax you pay relies only on the value of your property and not the number of children you have attending a public school), and we don't use the provided services nearly as much as the childed. Consider the catch-22 of moving to a new community because it has a "better" school. Chances are, in many cases that's because the community and school are small, with a low number of students per teacher so that teachers can spend more time per student. You see that and drag in your three progeny. Others do the same and before you know it the school with an average class size of 16 has now skyrocketed to an average size of 35-40, hemmoraging teachers left and right because of the added stress, increasing property taxes to pay for school additions and increased community infrastructure (more/wider roads so all of your huge SUVs can drive junior to school in the morning), etc. Of course, then you start complaining about how bad the school is, or how the community is no longer the quaint place you thought you were moving into, or that you're getting reamed by property taxes. Here's a little video worth watching. (warning: this will likely offend parents, and it's definitely an example of an extreme belief, but the concept is still sound and the video is funny, IMHO)
As for "family values", can anyone define "family values" for me? I'm not considered a family (single, no kids), so why should I embrace "family values"? Who says what a family is, anyway? Is a childless married couple a family? What about a single father with custody of his kid(s)? What about a same-sex domestic partnership (with or without children)? Are those families? If not, why should they "act in ways that value families?" There's nothing in it for them.
(Note: I read your post to be in jest, making fun of Hillary, anti-gun nuts, etc. I just decided to rant.)
I haven't read the book, but what you quoted sounds quite a bit different than the original poster's "Doom originally used an Aliens license". That they kicked around the idea of maybe doing a game based on Aliens doesn't mean that they ever pursued the license or even seriously considered it (I would think that checking for rights is routine, and not necessarily an indication of seriousness).
I'm pretty sure that's not the case, though Alien(s) as an inspiration for Doom isn't hard to see. More likely you're thinking about the Aliens modification for Quake that was "Foxed" (independent modders decided to make a Quake Total Conversion (TC) based on Aliens, but Fox shut it down on copyright infringment, giving rise to the term "Foxed" for something being stopped because it uses copyrighten (copyrighted?) material without permission).
As simplistic as the plot is, they've still managed to fuck it up. Also, your plot is a little thin. It's more like, "You, Space Marine. Them, Demons from Hell. On Mars. Kill them all." And yet, the movie does not have space marines, demons, hellspawn, or Mars. It may not be the strongest of plots, but it's what makes Doom recognizable. Without at least space marines and hellspawn, you don't have a Doom movie.
What's next? Will there be a Halo movie with no Master Chief, no Covenant, and no Halo? How about a Metroid movie with no Samus Aran and no Metroid, or a Half-Life movie with no Gordon Freeman, no G-Man, and no aliens from Xen?
You can't forget Metroid Metal, the best darned metal remix of Metroid music ever!
Who thought this skin looked good? I mean, sure, Netscape is understaffed and all (being nothing more than a name), but you'd think that AOL could afford a UI designer that wasn't blind!
Folks, this is why skinning an application is bad. For every attractive skin that gets published (and those really are few and far between), there's thousands of craptacular skins just like this that people think look good. Excuse me while I go poke out my eyes. I just can't take the seafoam green any more ...
Ever consider the possibility that you weren't cut out for parenthood? Changing your beliefs simply because it got "hard" doesn't sound like someone with the strength of conviction to be a good parent. But what do I know? I'm not a parent, and I guess it all changes when you do become one (*cough*crock of shit*cough*).
Ask yourself, does the pudding taste good just because you made it, or would others tell you it tastes good as well (and mean it)? What has your son done to make you proud, aside from springing from your loins? I'm not saying you don't have reason to be proud of your son; I'm just curious about what makes you proud of him.
So I suppose you pay for all of your child's schooling on your own, and all of your child's medical care, and his impact on the environment, society, and myself, however indirect is no greater than if he hadn't been born at all? Until the day comes that my taxes do not pay for your child's schooling, my insurance premiums do not pay for the cost of your child birth, your expanding family's need for increased infrastructure is paid from your own pocket, etc, I damn well do have a right to tell you how to do it. You're not parenting in a vacuum, and you're not raising a child on your own dime. While I don't believe it "takes a village to raise a child," (it takes two loving, supportive parents who aren't afraid of punishment when it's required), I do believe it "takes a village to PAY for a child." To that extent I very well deserve a say in how my money is used.
Funny you should say that ...
The concept definitely has potential, but unfortunately the list of links is woefully outdated (many redirect to off-topic sites, or come up 404ed). Perhaps this is an indication that we childless have better things to do? :)
I'm not so sure discussion groups and segregated activities really help the cause, though. Doing that just ends up preaching to the choir, and reinforces the idea that there's something "wrong" with our lifestyle choice*, similar to AA or other "support groups"**
* "Lifestyle choice" sounds synonomous with "gay", but there are many of us heterosexuals who choose to be childless as well.
** Not that there's anything wrong with AA or support groups, but a support group usually goes hand in hand with a problem (AA and alcholism, cancer survivors and cancer, etc). The groups are often intended to help "fix"*** the problem. Choosing to be child-free is not a problem, and doesn't need to be "fixed". Although, "getting fixed" is a good way to be child-free. (ooo! bad pun!)
*** I quoted "fix" with AA in mind. While many support groups do work, and I'm sure AA has helped a number of people as well, I find it odd that a religion-sponsored, religious-oriented "support group" can be mandated by courts for alcohol-related infractions. As well, the "Alcohol Treatment" industry is hugely corrupt, with an astounding number of people being labelled "acoholics" with no real supporting evidence. I'm not denying that alcoholism is a real problem. I'm just saying that it's nowhere near as rampant as courts and "experts" would have you believe.
It doesn't take having kids to know how to raise them, nor does having kids make you a good parent. While the anonymous parent may not have any kids, what makes you think he's never spent time with kids? Cousins, nieces and nephews, younger siblings, children of friends, etc; there are plenty of ways to experience child rearing without doing it first-hand. Moreover, if you can't teach your child a little patience and respect for belongings, perhaps you shouldn't have had a kid in the first place? The last thing this world needs is another parent (I'd say "set of parents", but that seems to be the exception these days) who can't control his ankle biter.
For what it's worth, it says a lot about a person's parenting skills when they use videos as a babysitting mechanism. How about you try spending some time with your child, instead? You could certainly do that by watching a video, during which time you also teach him how to handle the media and respect your property. Saying that you can't teach patience to a 2 year old is a cop-out. Have you tried? Do you realize that sometimes you do have to punish a child? If he breaks a DVD, it's a good time to teach him that actions have consequences. "Sorry, but your <Insert kid's movie title here> is broken, so you can't watch it. No, I'm not going to go out and buy you another one. If you wanted to watch it, you shouldn't have broken it in the first place." You might feel bad about doing this, but tough shit. It's your job to educate your child and help him grow up into a responsible, considerate human being. This is a lesson he needs to learn sooner or later, so why not use this chance to teach it? Otherwise, you just unleash another spoiled brat on the rest of us, expecting to get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it, and damn the consequences.
And before you lash out at me with your wonderful wit, no, I don't have children. Nor do I want children, because I know that I don't have the time or patience be a good parent (at least not now, nor for the forseeable future). I don't need babies to fulfill me or give me a sense of purpose, and I'm not poorer because of it.