Lots of comic fans in the Hugo ballot. The Captain came-in third place.
MY complaint is: Why are there two TV shows winning awards? We have the Doctor Who episode, and then Game of Thrones entire season. I would prefer that GOT be ineligible for the "long form" award so that we have one award for TV, and one award for movies. (I thought that was the original intent of splitting the Dramatic Presentation in the first place.)
>>>place a small inflatable pool on the ground where the wheels will go.
I'd rather live in a hotel. Oh wait. I already do that. You can find hotels that have Cable, internet, and of course hot showers, for the same price as renting an apartment would be. (In contrast an RV is expensive to buy and the camping rent is not exactly cheap.)
Having Apple rearrange your desktop is a "feature" for those artistic types that barely understand technology. They like that Apple comes along every +0.1 iteration and cleans-up the mess the artist or musician left behind. (Just like they enjoy a maid to come visit their house once in awhile, even if things end-up rearranged.)
False. Every time I bash Apple (mainly because it costs 2x as much) my post gets modded down into invisibility. This forum is very protective of the Apple brand and punished anybody who says something negative about it.
As for the Article, "reality" is the same as "perception" for most people. We all know that XP is being replaced in offices/homes by Seven. That XP share is shrinking & Seven share rising is not news.
And we all know that Apple's Mac OS is less than 10% of the market. Also not news.
Fraud? In what way? My cellular provider told me upfront that I wold get 2.5 gigabytes uncapped, and unlimited at 2xISDN speeds. It isn't fraud when you are told point-blank what to expect. (Better read your contract more carefully.)
>>>If they have too many customers in an area they need to build more towers.
Exactly right! I propose one fiber optic-connected tower for every home. Just locate it on the chimney so everybody in that home has a dedicated cellular.......... Hey wait a minute. If they do that, why can't they could just run the fiber directly into the home & forget about the towers. (ponder)
Same with Comcast (their video content does not count towards your 250GB cap). You see this is what happens when the government regulates..... instead of actual net neutrality (like we had before) it has created some other bastardization which allows Cable companies to treat their data favorably, while blocking outside companies via the cap.
>>>you want to use Netflix or Hulu. Under this scenario, their 250Gb cap may keep you from using Netflix as much as you'd like. OTOH, they don't charge against you cap to use their TV service
I'm guessing you mean 250GB? 250 gigabits would be a damn small cap (250/8== just 31 gigabytes). Anyway if Verizon wants to give me free and uncapped videos from their local computers, where's the harm in that? It doesn't cost me anything extra. I don't care where I go to see the latest episode of Warehouse13..... Hulu or Verizon. (shrug)
And what about radio and TV broadcast? Would you just run roughshod over those bands & block people's reception?? Fact is you DO have the WiFi bands open, and yet very few people setup mesh networks. Instead they lock-up their Wifi modems so nobody else can access them.
We started with wireless television broadcasting to everyone's home, but not we have wired television reaching most of the country. I see internet moving the same direction, towards more wired lines as time passes by. (Of course people will still have their cellphones & other portable gadgets, but that data will mostly be streaming through WiFi modems that hook-into the wired LAN lines.)
>>>you got the paid the full value of your work up front. Tolkien did not get paid up front, he gets paid based on market demand.
And that needs to change. The idea that somebody can write a popular book (or perform a song, or appear in a movie), and then sit on his ass doing nothing for 110 years is crazy. No other laborer gets to do that. We get paid; the end. Then we continue working, else we would starve.
>>>the terms of the contract say you will be paid over the course of twenty years
Every contract I ever signed said I had to WORK to fulfill the obligations of the contract. Not just work for 1 years and then sit on my laz\y ass for the next 19.
If you're like me you probably have a lot of old movies or TV shows that you never watch, due to lack of spare time. Last spring I went through my whole drive deleting the things I knew I had no interest in keeping. (And watching some items, discovering they were junk like Transformers2, and trashing them forever.)
Then I sorted through the remaining files dividing them into top folders like Movies, TV shows, Books, Music, etc. Then just by glancing through each directory I could immediately see the duplicates and erase them.
Took two weekends overall. My drive was 1 terabyte, but now it's down to 300 gigs of stuff, which is organized in a fashion that I can actually find the things I need.
People who *did not do the work* should not be receiving money. Tolkien deserves every penny he earned, because he's the guy who actually labored to product the product. His kids and grandkids did not. They just sat around doing nothing, and nos they are collecting millions in income. They should not be collecting "the spoils" for a book they did not labor to produce.
>>>it's trivial for any criminal with half a brain to simply leave their phone at home, so it's extremely reasonable to doubt the phone's location as proof of the owner's location.
You are right but I would weigh the evidence that shows His phone was at home, versus the evidence that they found a piece of skin in a woman's wallet, stuck to some money. I am aware of the fact that money travels between a lot of hands, especially for the defendent who is a taxi driver, so his DNA on a piece of money does not prove he murdered the woman. It just proves he touched that money.
I would consider "the phone was at home" to be enough doubt to make me say "not guilty". That doesn't mean he's innocent..... only that I don't think the government proved guilt. I would sooner let a murderer walk than jail an innocent person (as happened in Baltimore to a blackman who lost 30 years of his life for a crime he didn't commit).
>>>And I suppose being arrested for receiving stolen goods after taking advantage of a shady boot sale is also terribly unfair?
Nice analogy but not really how it works. The store I used to work for was caught selling items higher than the tagged price. For example $49.99 Rockport shoes for $99.99. The store argued these were obvious clerical errors and the customers should not expect to get shoes for half price, therefore they had no right to demand 50 dollar refunds. The Texas Government argued that the price on the tag is the price the customer pays, even if it was an obvious mistake, and fined our national chain 3 million dollars.
By right I think ArenaNet should also be fined by whatever state government holds juris diction. Marking items with wrong pricetags is a criminal offense in all 50 states. The government does not blame the customer; the government blames the store for shoddy pricetagging.
Actually almost all consumer protection laws are like this: They side with the customer and against the seller. Take for example "as is" goods. Many sellers think saying "as is" gives them license to sell junk, but the actual law says otherwise. If the customer was expecting an item that was used but otherwise flawless, and the seller does not reveal the paint is peeling or item does not turn on or is missing crucial working parts, the seller MUST refund the money to the customer, because he failed to reveal the damage.
Probably not but there are ways to get your money back anyway. (1) Return the game. (2) Wait 60 days. (3) Call the credit card company, provide the delivery confirmation number and say, "I returned this game but they never refunded my money." (4) Watch as the credit company reverses the charge.
Overall you've only lost about 3 dollars (media mail cost). If you return an empty envelope, you can cut your costs to $1.20 postage.
And once again: No I don't feel any guilt. ArenaNet is an asshole megacorp that treats its customers pisspoorly: banning the customer for a mistake that was obviously company's fault (incorrect pricetagging on goods). If this happened with a REAL retailer, where a product was discovered to be underpriced (for example: Rockport Shoes for $49.99 instead of $99.99) guess who would be blamed? No not the customer. The store. For violating state government's pricing laws.
>>>10p bread bargains as they could. People are terrible.
Reminds me of a Motel 6 I stayed. They had a "click 6" rate online that is 10% off the regular price. Since I knew I was staying at the motel every week til the end of the year, I reserved my room at that 10% rate.
The first few weeks went just fine, but then about the 25th week of so, the motel manager responded by saying, "I'm no longer honoring that rate." I called the central office and they overruled him: He must honor the website's reserved price.
The second week he did it again: Said he's not honoring the 10% sale price. I again called the central office and they overruled him. ----- He then kicked me out of the motel, making-up bogus stories about yelling at maids, having sex with the girl behind the counter, and vandalizing the room. Even called the cops on me.
Conclusion Who is the bad person here? The manager who mistakenly marked down his product 10% on the website? Or the "terrible person" who was just reserving his room in advance and did not realize the website price was an error. IMHO the customer is just buying what the pricetag says, whether that tag is on a motel reservation website, a grocery shelf, or an online game. The idiot who incorrently tagged the item is who should be blamed.
This presumes that the buyer knew it was "wrong". I've played lots of games where certain markets were selling items below cost, and that gave the gamer a chance to be a trader (buy low; sell high). Had I been playing this ArenaNet game I would have thought that was the case.
Also want to add: "Don't Talk to Police" in response to this part of the article. Opening your mouth is a great way to say the wrong thing & give police enough evidence to charge you. You have the right to remain silent. So become a mute.
The Ron Paul volunteer who was detained by the TSA handled it well (though not perfectly). Every time they asked where he got the $4000 in cash, he refused to answer. He didn't want the police to know the dollars were donations, since Missouri had decided to start arresting Ron Paul supporters as "potential terrorists" under the MIAC Report. So he shutup.
>>>They drove [the tweeter] Paul to the police station and questioned him for two hours. After spending another hour in a cell, he was released while South Yorkshire police and the CPS decided how to proceed. His iPhone, which had been used to send the tweet, and two computers were impounded, despite the absence of any obvious reason why they would need to be examined.
>>>The Iranians have secretly launched a program that will allow them to enrich uranium to weapons grade
False claim made w/o ANY evidence to support it. At least when Idiot Bush attacked Iraq for having WMDs, he had some evidence (photos) to back him up. The current president has nothing and yet he's attacking anyway. That would be like if I said, "I don't know if you have a meth factory in your basement, and have zero evidence to back it up, but I'm going to start attacking your PCs with viruses anyway. I automatically presume guilt w/ no evidence."
>>> You are first obligated to try everything possible to resolve the situation using minimal force.
Tell that to the cop who found a homeless man *sitting down* and whittling some wood, told them man to drop the knife, and then fired 3 shots a mere 1/2 second later..... killing the guy who was doing nothing wrong.
At least in MY case I'm saving who is being brutally stabbed to death (by shooting the murderer). What's the cop's excuse?
>>>Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise Iâ(TM)m blowing the airport sky high!!
I'm tempted to post that on my Twitter and Facebook just to see what happens. Maybe like the marine from two weeks ago, I'll find the FBI or DHS dragging me off and jailing me for several days w/o charges. (And then have a judge scold them for being stupid.)
No it isn't partial. The Supreme Court has ruled that decision again-and-again, including one case where a 70s-era black civil rights protestor said, "I will kill you." The justices ruled that all speech is protected, including speech uttered during the heat of protest. The black man was freed.
And yes you can be sued for libel/slander, but that is a case between two citizens. Or a citizen and a business. The government is not involved. They have not made it illegal to slander/libel (though you might have to pay the financial... such as loss of business).
>>>If you inherit money or assets from your parents,
Not the same thing. Yes my siblings will inherit my money/physical goods, but they don't continue to get paid for a schematic or word document I created 50 years ago. Any residuals I get off that previous work should end when the original laborer dies. The idea that someone continue to college a waged, when they've done zero work on the schematic/document, makes no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
Lots of comic fans in the Hugo ballot. The Captain came-in third place.
MY complaint is: Why are there two TV shows winning awards? We have the Doctor Who episode, and then Game of Thrones entire season. I would prefer that GOT be ineligible for the "long form" award so that we have one award for TV, and one award for movies. (I thought that was the original intent of splitting the Dramatic Presentation in the first place.)
>>>place a small inflatable pool on the ground where the wheels will go.
I'd rather live in a hotel.
Oh wait. I already do that. You can find hotels that have Cable, internet, and of course hot showers, for the same price as renting an apartment would be. (In contrast an RV is expensive to buy and the camping rent is not exactly cheap.)
Having Apple rearrange your desktop is a "feature" for those artistic types that barely understand technology. They like that Apple comes along every +0.1 iteration and cleans-up the mess the artist or musician left behind. (Just like they enjoy a maid to come visit their house once in awhile, even if things end-up rearranged.)
>>>its cool to bash OS X / Apple here.
False. Every time I bash Apple (mainly because it costs 2x as much) my post gets modded down into invisibility. This forum is very protective of the Apple brand and punished anybody who says something negative about it.
As for the Article, "reality" is the same as "perception" for most people. We all know that XP is being replaced in offices/homes by Seven. That XP share is shrinking & Seven share rising is not news.
And we all know that Apple's Mac OS is less than 10% of the market. Also not news.
Fraud? In what way? My cellular provider told me upfront that I wold get 2.5 gigabytes uncapped, and unlimited at 2xISDN speeds. It isn't fraud when you are told point-blank what to expect. (Better read your contract more carefully.)
>>>If they have too many customers in an area they need to build more towers.
Exactly right! I propose one fiber optic-connected tower for every home. Just locate it on the chimney so everybody in that home has a dedicated cellular.......... Hey wait a minute. If they do that, why can't they could just run the fiber directly into the home & forget about the towers. (ponder)
Same with Comcast (their video content does not count towards your 250GB cap). You see this is what happens when the government regulates..... instead of actual net neutrality (like we had before) it has created some other bastardization which allows Cable companies to treat their data favorably, while blocking outside companies via the cap.
>>>you want to use Netflix or Hulu. Under this scenario, their 250Gb cap may keep you from using Netflix as much as you'd like. OTOH, they don't charge against you cap to use their TV service
I'm guessing you mean 250GB? 250 gigabits would be a damn small cap (250/8== just 31 gigabytes). Anyway if Verizon wants to give me free and uncapped videos from their local computers, where's the harm in that? It doesn't cost me anything extra. I don't care where I go to see the latest episode of Warehouse13..... Hulu or Verizon. (shrug)
Comcast already asked and received permission from the Obama-era FCC to buy NBC. You're not going to get an antitrust lawsuit.
And what about radio and TV broadcast? Would you just run roughshod over those bands & block people's reception?? Fact is you DO have the WiFi bands open, and yet very few people setup mesh networks. Instead they lock-up their Wifi modems so nobody else can access them.
We started with wireless television broadcasting to everyone's home, but not we have wired television reaching most of the country. I see internet moving the same direction, towards more wired lines as time passes by. (Of course people will still have their cellphones & other portable gadgets, but that data will mostly be streaming through WiFi modems that hook-into the wired LAN lines.)
>>>you got the paid the full value of your work up front. Tolkien did not get paid up front, he gets paid based on market demand.
And that needs to change. The idea that somebody can write a popular book (or perform a song, or appear in a movie), and then sit on his ass doing nothing for 110 years is crazy. No other laborer gets to do that. We get paid; the end. Then we continue working, else we would starve.
>>>the terms of the contract say you will be paid over the course of twenty years
Every contract I ever signed said I had to WORK to fulfill the obligations of the contract. Not just work for 1 years and then sit on my laz\y ass for the next 19.
I have a better idea:
DELETE FILES
If you're like me you probably have a lot of old movies or TV shows that you never watch, due to lack of spare time. Last spring I went through my whole drive deleting the things I knew I had no interest in keeping. (And watching some items, discovering they were junk like Transformers2, and trashing them forever.)
Then I sorted through the remaining files dividing them into top folders like Movies, TV shows, Books, Music, etc. Then just by glancing through each directory I could immediately see the duplicates and erase them.
Took two weekends overall. My drive was 1 terabyte, but now it's down to 300 gigs of stuff, which is organized in a fashion that I can actually find the things I need.
You didn't address my point at all:
People who *did not do the work* should not be receiving money. Tolkien deserves every penny he earned, because he's the guy who actually labored to product the product. His kids and grandkids did not. They just sat around doing nothing, and nos they are collecting millions in income. They should not be collecting "the spoils" for a book they did not labor to produce.
>>>it's trivial for any criminal with half a brain to simply leave their phone at home, so it's extremely reasonable to doubt the phone's location as proof of the owner's location.
You are right but I would weigh the evidence that shows His phone was at home, versus the evidence that they found a piece of skin in a woman's wallet, stuck to some money. I am aware of the fact that money travels between a lot of hands, especially for the defendent who is a taxi driver, so his DNA on a piece of money does not prove he murdered the woman. It just proves he touched that money.
I would consider "the phone was at home" to be enough doubt to make me say "not guilty". That doesn't mean he's innocent..... only that I don't think the government proved guilt. I would sooner let a murderer walk than jail an innocent person (as happened in Baltimore to a blackman who lost 30 years of his life for a crime he didn't commit).
>>>And I suppose being arrested for receiving stolen goods after taking advantage of a shady boot sale is also terribly unfair?
Nice analogy but not really how it works. The store I used to work for was caught selling items higher than the tagged price. For example $49.99 Rockport shoes for $99.99. The store argued these were obvious clerical errors and the customers should not expect to get shoes for half price, therefore they had no right to demand 50 dollar refunds. The Texas Government argued that the price on the tag is the price the customer pays, even if it was an obvious mistake, and fined our national chain 3 million dollars.
By right I think ArenaNet should also be fined by whatever state government holds juris diction. Marking items with wrong pricetags is a criminal offense in all 50 states. The government does not blame the customer; the government blames the store for shoddy pricetagging.
Actually almost all consumer protection laws are like this: They side with the customer and against the seller. Take for example "as is" goods. Many sellers think saying "as is" gives them license to sell junk, but the actual law says otherwise. If the customer was expecting an item that was used but otherwise flawless, and the seller does not reveal the paint is peeling or item does not turn on or is missing crucial working parts, the seller MUST refund the money to the customer, because he failed to reveal the damage.
Probably not but there are ways to get your money back anyway. (1) Return the game. (2) Wait 60 days. (3) Call the credit card company, provide the delivery confirmation number and say, "I returned this game but they never refunded my money." (4) Watch as the credit company reverses the charge.
Overall you've only lost about 3 dollars (media mail cost). If you return an empty envelope, you can cut your costs to $1.20 postage.
And once again: No I don't feel any guilt. ArenaNet is an asshole megacorp that treats its customers pisspoorly: banning the customer for a mistake that was obviously company's fault (incorrect pricetagging on goods). If this happened with a REAL retailer, where a product was discovered to be underpriced (for example: Rockport Shoes for $49.99 instead of $99.99) guess who would be blamed? No not the customer. The store. For violating state government's pricing laws.
>>>10p bread bargains as they could. People are terrible.
Reminds me of a Motel 6 I stayed. They had a "click 6" rate online that is 10% off the regular price. Since I knew I was staying at the motel every week til the end of the year, I reserved my room at that 10% rate.
The first few weeks went just fine, but then about the 25th week of so, the motel manager responded by saying, "I'm no longer honoring that rate." I called the central office and they overruled him: He must honor the website's reserved price.
The second week he did it again: Said he's not honoring the 10% sale price. I again called the central office and they overruled him. ----- He then kicked me out of the motel, making-up bogus stories about yelling at maids, having sex with the girl behind the counter, and vandalizing the room. Even called the cops on me.
Conclusion
Who is the bad person here? The manager who mistakenly marked down his product 10% on the website? Or the "terrible person" who was just reserving his room in advance and did not realize the website price was an error. IMHO the customer is just buying what the pricetag says, whether that tag is on a motel reservation website, a grocery shelf, or an online game. The idiot who incorrently tagged the item is who should be blamed.
This presumes that the buyer knew it was "wrong". I've played lots of games where certain markets were selling items below cost, and that gave the gamer a chance to be a trader (buy low; sell high). Had I been playing this ArenaNet game I would have thought that was the case.
Also want to add: "Don't Talk to Police" in response to this part of the article. Opening your mouth is a great way to say the wrong thing & give police enough evidence to charge you. You have the right to remain silent. So become a mute.
The Ron Paul volunteer who was detained by the TSA handled it well (though not perfectly). Every time they asked where he got the $4000 in cash, he refused to answer. He didn't want the police to know the dollars were donations, since Missouri had decided to start arresting Ron Paul supporters as "potential terrorists" under the MIAC Report. So he shutup.
>>>They drove [the tweeter] Paul to the police station and questioned him for two hours. After spending another hour in a cell, he was released while South Yorkshire police and the CPS decided how to proceed. His iPhone, which had been used to send the tweet, and two computers were impounded, despite the absence of any obvious reason why they would need to be examined.
>>>The Iranians have secretly launched a program that will allow them to enrich uranium to weapons grade
False claim made w/o ANY evidence to support it. At least when Idiot Bush attacked Iraq for having WMDs, he had some evidence (photos) to back him up. The current president has nothing and yet he's attacking anyway. That would be like if I said, "I don't know if you have a meth factory in your basement, and have zero evidence to back it up, but I'm going to start attacking your PCs with viruses anyway. I automatically presume guilt w/ no evidence."
>>> You are first obligated to try everything possible to resolve the situation using minimal force.
Tell that to the cop who found a homeless man *sitting down* and whittling some wood, told them man to drop the knife, and then fired 3 shots a mere 1/2 second later..... killing the guy who was doing nothing wrong.
At least in MY case I'm saving who is being brutally stabbed to death (by shooting the murderer). What's the cop's excuse?
>>>Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise Iâ(TM)m blowing the airport sky high!!
I'm tempted to post that on my Twitter and Facebook just to see what happens. Maybe like the marine from two weeks ago, I'll find the FBI or DHS dragging me off and jailing me for several days w/o charges. (And then have a judge scold them for being stupid.)
No it isn't partial. The Supreme Court has ruled that decision again-and-again, including one case where a 70s-era black civil rights protestor said, "I will kill you." The justices ruled that all speech is protected, including speech uttered during the heat of protest. The black man was freed.
And yes you can be sued for libel/slander, but that is a case between two citizens. Or a citizen and a business. The government is not involved. They have not made it illegal to slander/libel (though you might have to pay the financial... such as loss of business).
>>>If you inherit money or assets from your parents,
Not the same thing. Yes my siblings will inherit my money/physical goods, but they don't continue to get paid for a schematic or word document I created 50 years ago. Any residuals I get off that previous work should end when the original laborer dies. The idea that someone continue to college a waged, when they've done zero work on the schematic/document, makes no sense.