For some reason, your diatribe hit something in me. I got the distinct feeling that when you spoke of doctor recommendations, you were specifically speaking about marijuana for medicinal purposes.
I have a problem with outsourcing, in that it lowers the standard of living in the country where *I* live. I don't believe in a global economy until all the other economies of the world stabilize themselves. Our programmers CANNOT compete with Indian workers, who will program for $5k a year, which in many places is well above the standard of living there. The poverty line in the US is $19k a year, so I'm just mystified as to how you believe that we would EVER be able to compete without becoming a third world country ourselves?
Unfortunately, this is actually making the assumption that a majority of these issues are first looked over by an internal IT person, checked for common problems, and then referred to Dell support. This is not the case. With the exception of a couple of well known customers (Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers), the majority of callers were just end users whose management took advantage of the 24-7 lifetime support of Dell to tighten the budget strings on their IT department. Why hire more IT when Dell support was FREE forever?
Corporate calls, on average, were not really much better than home users, except that the corporate customers usually had more attitude, because they spent "so much money" on those Dell computers.
My only problem with this is that almost all Next Business Day tech contracts, and I know this to be the case with Dell specifically, have provisions for items that are considered Customer Replaceable Parts. You don't send out a tech to replace RAM. Or a floppy drive. These parts take two minutes to replace even if you're nearly incompetent, and since NBD service doesn't cover software installation and/or the drive comes pre-loaded with factory default, what good is the tech for, besides pulling a few screws and buckling two cables? A waste of his time AND yours, because if they sent the part to YOU, they overnight it, but if they send a tech, they usually send the part TO the tech, and if the tech doesn't show up the next day, well, you've just lost a day. Or two. Or five.
I have a large monitor, great sound card, incredible speakers..but my experience watching movies in a theater are FAR more pleasing. Hell, my computer and downloaded movies (none of which are DVD quality without incredible download sizes, often on overloaded or slow P2P servers) are never comparable to DVDs. Music, sure, but video just hasn't caught up to the point that makes it worthwhile for me. I will download obscure things (see: The unedited version of the Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker movie), but if I can get it in DVD or rent it, I usually do.
If I am calling it damn well WILL be a problem on your end. Because I am not going to waste your time or mine. But people like you INSIST on wasting mine, and I do NOT like it. After an hour fiddling with it and after 3 hours of hold music and then another hour of 'running the script' I am NOT a happy person. Then when you INSIST on running the script and will not do/try ANYTHING I ask I maybe, just maybe, might get a tad angry.
Yes SIR, Mister SIR SIR! Look, you call me, I don't know you from Adam. If I had a nickel for every "if I had a nickel" story for easy fixes I've done for MCSE's, sys-admins, and people who "knew what they were doing, don't waste my time", I'd have hired an army of gold plated monkeys to type this reply to you. However, seeing as how I don't, instead, I'm going to VERIFY that EVERY SINGLE THING was done, and done properly, not just trust you with the blanket "I did everything already". EVERYONE has done EVERYTHING already, except, you know, that thing that actually FIXES it. I'm afraid that the veritable ARMADA of MCSE, CCIE, System Admins, and CTOs who called before you and couldn't fix a simple problem have ruined it for you. So don't get angry with me because I do my job, and you can get angry and hang up on me, and my manager will support me 100%, and his manager will support him 100%, because to them, you're just being an asshole, because if you're really competent, it takes FOUR MINUTES to walk through 99% of the steps that would be required to verify your issue, and FIFTEEN arguing with you why you're too busy. My Level 2 and Level 3 techs don't TAKE calls unless we've verified these things. Moan all you want, but if you FORCE me to escalate you to Level 2 without verifying simple things, they will not only force you to do those things themselves, but they will be UNWILLING to go the extra mile for a customer who can't give us the same courtesy back.
I havent called in a year or so. Because it is rock solid. I do not need to regsvr32 urlmon.dll or blow away my tcpip stack. Bet you can not tell me WHY that actually does work for you, and yes I actually do know why.
Most of the time, both of these can fix problems that might be otherwise fixed by direct editing of a registry file. However, that requires knowing the faulty value, and what the correct value should be, and trusting the customer to not change something essential while in the registry. Other times, they might have become corrupted by various vulnerabilities due to lack of patching (buffer overruns, etc). But even if you get a tech who DOESN'T know WHY they work, the fact of the matter is, THEY DO. My managers want LESS call time, not more. They aren't paying me to play a game of footsie, which means they're not going to recommend that I actually perform a troubleshooting step unless it has been proven to be VALID. Obviously, these are 50-50 fixes. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and if they don't, well, it's time to talk to your hardware manufacturer, because your problem isn't with your ISP anymore. But we try to be thorough, and we try to ensure that the customer gets fixed on the FIRST call, every time, so that customer stays happy AND a customer. NO ONE has the monopoly on ISP services, so there isn't a lot of wiggle room for us to display poor customer service. Even AOL can lose a big bite of their market, what does a (relatively) little fish stand to lose?
Because I know that we aren't responsible for viruses that you download. Nor are we responsible for damage caused by port scans, system attacks, or anything of that nature, but generally, we'll take your logs and try to see if we can't null route the IP that's doing it. When you connect with your ISP, you are paying for one thing and one thing only: direct connection from my network to yours. I get paid $12.00/hr, and a network configuration specialist makes 5 times that. So, if you need advanced network configuration, realize that even though *I* might know it, most of the people sitting next to me probably don't, and probably no one does short of the engineers we pay to maintain the network, who we pay far too much and employ far too few of to help you out.
I'm not arguing that some support isn't bad, but lying to technical support, or intimidating them, is the most likely route to getting HORRIBLE assistance, and to be honest, every company I've ever worked for would rather tell a problem customer to go away and not buy our products than to jump through unreasonable hoops from people who think that THEY should be allowed to bypass the process.
I have proven this to be true with customer time and time again. Reboot your router/DSL modem/computer willy-nilly. No fix? Fine. Now, do this:
-Turn of your computer -Power off your router -Unplug the powercord from the back of the Broadband modem.
Give it about 15 seconds.
-Plug your broadband modem in. Wait for all those lights to indicate sync. -Now, plug in your router, be sure all the lights indicate good connectivity. -Now, turn on your computer.
It works?! Praise Jesus! They wonder why, when they powercycled already, it worked when I did it, and I explained it: For some unfathomable reason, order is important, especially when working with the non-pro routers, like the Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link router stuff.
Just because you rebooted your router doesn't mean it's fixed. There are far too many variables that we work with every day. We don't have you reboot stuff because we like being on the phone. We have you do it because we've seen your problem, and it's WORKED before. If it doesn't work this time, hey, that's fine, but when I do escalate it to Level 2 and Level 3 and they say, "Did you do an ordered powercycle", I can say "yes", and they won't make me call you back and do it before they work on it.
Obviously, exactly as hard as it is for you to believe that the VAST majority of people calling are NOT as proficient as we are, and the people are are UNBELIEVABLY more proficient than we are generally don't call at all.
Your proficiency may be equal to mine, but you can't send out a new hard drive for everyone in the world who says, "Look, I don't have time, I know computers, just send me a new fucking drive." I don't care if you ARE the CEO or VP of whatever, if you're calling me, you better be MAKING the time to prove that your hardware is faulty. It's what we are PAID to do, and if you don't care for that, take it up with OUR CEO, who would love for you to explain to him the cost-benefit of drop-shipping new hardware to users without first verifying hardware failure through tried and tested methods. OR, as a customer, perhaps you'd like to pay $300 more for your item so that you have this luxury?
I work technical support for a large ISP that provides high speed access through both DSL and cable services. Do you have ANY idea how many calls I get every day from people whose equipment isn't the problem, the problem is on our end? Very literally, 1 in a THOUSAND of these callers is right. Thus, if you are that 1 customer, you're going to be treated initially as the 999 who are NOT right.
When we go down in an area, most of our call queues light up like it's Christmas, regardless of time of day. If you tell me that internet in suburban Cleveland must be down, and we've got 16 people sitting in available, then you need to get on the floor and unplug your router, because the problem IS on your end, regardless of your education, certification, or self-teaching.
And don't tell me "it worked fine yesterday when I went to bed" or "it was working a few minutes ago". Hardware doesn't mail you Formal Invitation to it's inevitable failure. It's going to go, and it's probably going to go all at once, and just because you can access internal LAN on your router doesn't mean that it's still properly accessing WAN connections.
The worst part of all this is that I could go on all day. Everyone knows what they are doing when they call us. Everything is a problem on our end, and cant POSSIBLY be fixed by reinstalling DUN, registering URLMON.DLL, recreating your connection, reinstalling TCP/IP, netsh'ing your TCP/IP stack, disconnecting your router, disabling antivirus software and hardware/software firewalls, or powercycling your broadband modem. The problem must be on OUR end, and must be affecting every user in the southeastern United States, which is why the four guys next to me are playing Bejeweled and looking bored.
The "Div" tag is a W3C compliant STANDARD that is completely independent of IE (per HTML 4.0). The Layer tag, to my knowledge, has always been a Netscape thing, and it was deprecated as of HTML 4.0.
So, if you're still using Layer tags in your web design, then they probably need some additional schooling.
The point I'm making is aside from the fact that there will be hooligans wherever you go. I lived in Germany for a number of years, and Europe by and large has a healthier understanding of sex, alcohol, and violence than we do. I understand that being from Boston, you might have some puritanical views about such freedom of thought establishments called strip clubs and adult book stores, infesting the minds of your children with their diabolical influences, but trying to teach children by shielding them only makes it more difficult for them when they get into the real world, which is a much crueler and darker place than the mythical utopia that is Boston, I can assure you.
Japan is known for it's sexually repressive atmosphere, beyond what America even has. However, they also have the largest selection of freaky bondage, kink sex, porn cartoons, and miscellaneous fetish activity of any country on the planet. They get out their sexual frustrations on video cassette for the most part, but here, we even think THAT'S wrong.
Violence has been a part of our culture since day 1. Violence against our "food", violence against each other, violence against ourselves, against God. We are a violent society. Fooling ourselves does no good.
My personal CD spending habits have increased with exposure to MP3's. My friend sends me an MP3, I listen, I like, I buy the CD. To me, I'd rather buy a CD than chase a thousand broken links to find the whole album. Between time outs, drop offs, network congestion, etc, it's MUCH more convenient for me to go out and get the cd, and much more enjoyable, as well.
Ahhh, hate is a good word. You see, America, which is almost the youngest country on planet Earth in terms of government and social policy, is also the most ass-backwards in terms of social policy. You believe that it's the laws responsibility to protect and educate your children so that you aren't faced with the awful burden of having them ask too many questions that your Roman Catholic upbringing made you unprepared to answer with any serious reply (explain to your child "God says it's Bad! Don't do it!" Hahahahah).
The point is, if Americans (and I am an American), weren't so totally backward in every respect socially, to the point where we are the rednecks of the free world, then we wouldn't HAVE to protect our children from seeing violence and sex, because they would UNDERSTAND it. They would respect it.
NS 6.0 does not fully implement CSS. IE has the best implementation of CSS as the standards are SUPPOSED to work. NS6.0 will still not properly display nested "DIV", has problems with style sheets on the fly, absolute positioning, and a number of other issues, all of which work fine in every bit of code that I write when I view it in IE. No matter how I "fudge" the code, there are things that Netscape WILL NOT DO, and so I'm forced to limit myself for cross browser compatibility.
But I don't. Screw Netscape. Screw W3C. They need to move on these standards, and implement things that we are going to use. Once that's done, I'll be more than happy to run Netscape on my unit.
I'll be very honest here. If I write a book in which two people go about in a red spaceship and blast up a few people for no other reason than a joyride, and you tell me "Oh, this represents the modern decline of society in unthoughtful amoralism", and I just meant it to be a fun jaunt about to people in a red spaceship blasting people for no reason, then I'm going to tell you that YOU, sir, are full of crap. To the brim.
I create characters. I own the characters. I own their intentions, their futures, their pasts. They do what I say, and they MEAN what I say, and if they do something different in the future, well, that's my call, not someone saying "Oh, but so and so would NEVER do that!". Bloody hell they WOULD, if I say so.
The point is, as an artist, I create. As a viewer, you peruse that creation. If you do not get the message that I intended, then I have failed as a writer. If you enjoy it for some perceived message, by all means, recommend the book to your friends so they will buy copies. But nothing you imagine in your mind will change the intended meaning of the book, nor make the book MEAN what you care to make it mean. The characters motives and meaning are MINE to decide, and then you get to gauge the job I've done.
However, it's nice to be ambiguous about those meanings. It helps you to fail less.
2. You're taking this "evil empire" thing a little too far, ne? In fact, hell, I'm going to buy and EXTRA X-Box to make up for the revenue they lose from you. Then I'll buy two version of X-Box Halo, and then I'm going to hook it up to my broadband connection, and spit on the N64 while I beat down on some chumpies online.
Slashdot Mirror
For some reason, your diatribe hit something in me. I got the distinct feeling that when you spoke of doctor recommendations, you were specifically speaking about marijuana for medicinal purposes.
Okay, that made me laugh out loud.
I have a problem with outsourcing, in that it lowers the standard of living in the country where *I* live. I don't believe in a global economy until all the other economies of the world stabilize themselves. Our programmers CANNOT compete with Indian workers, who will program for $5k a year, which in many places is well above the standard of living there. The poverty line in the US is $19k a year, so I'm just mystified as to how you believe that we would EVER be able to compete without becoming a third world country ourselves?
Unfortunately, this is actually making the assumption that a majority of these issues are first looked over by an internal IT person, checked for common problems, and then referred to Dell support. This is not the case. With the exception of a couple of well known customers (Ernst & Young, PriceWaterhouseCoopers), the majority of callers were just end users whose management took advantage of the 24-7 lifetime support of Dell to tighten the budget strings on their IT department. Why hire more IT when Dell support was FREE forever?
Corporate calls, on average, were not really much better than home users, except that the corporate customers usually had more attitude, because they spent "so much money" on those Dell computers.
Actually, you almost are. They speak British English primarily, and we speak American English.
My only problem with this is that almost all Next Business Day tech contracts, and I know this to be the case with Dell specifically, have provisions for items that are considered Customer Replaceable Parts. You don't send out a tech to replace RAM. Or a floppy drive. These parts take two minutes to replace even if you're nearly incompetent, and since NBD service doesn't cover software installation and/or the drive comes pre-loaded with factory default, what good is the tech for, besides pulling a few screws and buckling two cables? A waste of his time AND yours, because if they sent the part to YOU, they overnight it, but if they send a tech, they usually send the part TO the tech, and if the tech doesn't show up the next day, well, you've just lost a day. Or two. Or five.
Not sure I quite understand:
I have a large monitor, great sound card, incredible speakers..but my experience watching movies in a theater are FAR more pleasing. Hell, my computer and downloaded movies (none of which are DVD quality without incredible download sizes, often on overloaded or slow P2P servers) are never comparable to DVDs. Music, sure, but video just hasn't caught up to the point that makes it worthwhile for me. I will download obscure things (see: The unedited version of the Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker movie), but if I can get it in DVD or rent it, I usually do.
To address a few of your points:
If I am calling it damn well WILL be a problem on your end. Because I am not going to waste your time or mine. But people like you INSIST on wasting mine, and I do NOT like it. After an hour fiddling with it and after 3 hours of hold music and then another hour of 'running the script' I am NOT a happy person. Then when you INSIST on running the script and will not do/try ANYTHING I ask I maybe, just maybe, might get a tad angry.
Yes SIR, Mister SIR SIR! Look, you call me, I don't know you from Adam. If I had a nickel for every "if I had a nickel" story for easy fixes I've done for MCSE's, sys-admins, and people who "knew what they were doing, don't waste my time", I'd have hired an army of gold plated monkeys to type this reply to you. However, seeing as how I don't, instead, I'm going to VERIFY that EVERY SINGLE THING was done, and done properly, not just trust you with the blanket "I did everything already". EVERYONE has done EVERYTHING already, except, you know, that thing that actually FIXES it. I'm afraid that the veritable ARMADA of MCSE, CCIE, System Admins, and CTOs who called before you and couldn't fix a simple problem have ruined it for you. So don't get angry with me because I do my job, and you can get angry and hang up on me, and my manager will support me 100%, and his manager will support him 100%, because to them, you're just being an asshole, because if you're really competent, it takes FOUR MINUTES to walk through 99% of the steps that would be required to verify your issue, and FIFTEEN arguing with you why you're too busy. My Level 2 and Level 3 techs don't TAKE calls unless we've verified these things. Moan all you want, but if you FORCE me to escalate you to Level 2 without verifying simple things, they will not only force you to do those things themselves, but they will be UNWILLING to go the extra mile for a customer who can't give us the same courtesy back.
I havent called in a year or so. Because it is rock solid. I do not need to regsvr32 urlmon.dll or blow away my tcpip stack. Bet you can not tell me WHY that actually does work for you, and yes I actually do know why.
Most of the time, both of these can fix problems that might be otherwise fixed by direct editing of a registry file. However, that requires knowing the faulty value, and what the correct value should be, and trusting the customer to not change something essential while in the registry. Other times, they might have become corrupted by various vulnerabilities due to lack of patching (buffer overruns, etc). But even if you get a tech who DOESN'T know WHY they work, the fact of the matter is, THEY DO. My managers want LESS call time, not more. They aren't paying me to play a game of footsie, which means they're not going to recommend that I actually perform a troubleshooting step unless it has been proven to be VALID. Obviously, these are 50-50 fixes. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and if they don't, well, it's time to talk to your hardware manufacturer, because your problem isn't with your ISP anymore. But we try to be thorough, and we try to ensure that the customer gets fixed on the FIRST call, every time, so that customer stays happy AND a customer. NO ONE has the monopoly on ISP services, so there isn't a lot of wiggle room for us to display poor customer service. Even AOL can lose a big bite of their market, what does a (relatively) little fish stand to lose?
Hopefully, the tech guy you get will be a moron.
Because I know that we aren't responsible for viruses that you download. Nor are we responsible for damage caused by port scans, system attacks, or anything of that nature, but generally, we'll take your logs and try to see if we can't null route the IP that's doing it. When you connect with your ISP, you are paying for one thing and one thing only: direct connection from my network to yours. I get paid $12.00/hr, and a network configuration specialist makes 5 times that. So, if you need advanced network configuration, realize that even though *I* might know it, most of the people sitting next to me probably don't, and probably no one does short of the engineers we pay to maintain the network, who we pay far too much and employ far too few of to help you out.
I'm not arguing that some support isn't bad, but lying to technical support, or intimidating them, is the most likely route to getting HORRIBLE assistance, and to be honest, every company I've ever worked for would rather tell a problem customer to go away and not buy our products than to jump through unreasonable hoops from people who think that THEY should be allowed to bypass the process.
Yes, but did you do the mysterious VOODOO reboot?
I have proven this to be true with customer time and time again. Reboot your router/DSL modem/computer willy-nilly. No fix? Fine. Now, do this:
-Turn of your computer
-Power off your router
-Unplug the powercord from the back of the Broadband modem.
Give it about 15 seconds.
-Plug your broadband modem in. Wait for all those lights to indicate sync.
-Now, plug in your router, be sure all the lights indicate good connectivity.
-Now, turn on your computer.
It works?! Praise Jesus! They wonder why, when they powercycled already, it worked when I did it, and I explained it: For some unfathomable reason, order is important, especially when working with the non-pro routers, like the Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link router stuff.
Just because you rebooted your router doesn't mean it's fixed. There are far too many variables that we work with every day. We don't have you reboot stuff because we like being on the phone. We have you do it because we've seen your problem, and it's WORKED before. If it doesn't work this time, hey, that's fine, but when I do escalate it to Level 2 and Level 3 and they say, "Did you do an ordered powercycle", I can say "yes", and they won't make me call you back and do it before they work on it.
Obviously, exactly as hard as it is for you to believe that the VAST majority of people calling are NOT as proficient as we are, and the people are are UNBELIEVABLY more proficient than we are generally don't call at all.
Your proficiency may be equal to mine, but you can't send out a new hard drive for everyone in the world who says, "Look, I don't have time, I know computers, just send me a new fucking drive." I don't care if you ARE the CEO or VP of whatever, if you're calling me, you better be MAKING the time to prove that your hardware is faulty. It's what we are PAID to do, and if you don't care for that, take it up with OUR CEO, who would love for you to explain to him the cost-benefit of drop-shipping new hardware to users without first verifying hardware failure through tried and tested methods. OR, as a customer, perhaps you'd like to pay $300 more for your item so that you have this luxury?
Noooo siree.
I work technical support for a large ISP that provides high speed access through both DSL and cable services. Do you have ANY idea how many calls I get every day from people whose equipment isn't the problem, the problem is on our end? Very literally, 1 in a THOUSAND of these callers is right. Thus, if you are that 1 customer, you're going to be treated initially as the 999 who are NOT right.
When we go down in an area, most of our call queues light up like it's Christmas, regardless of time of day. If you tell me that internet in suburban Cleveland must be down, and we've got 16 people sitting in available, then you need to get on the floor and unplug your router, because the problem IS on your end, regardless of your education, certification, or self-teaching.
And don't tell me "it worked fine yesterday when I went to bed" or "it was working a few minutes ago". Hardware doesn't mail you Formal Invitation to it's inevitable failure. It's going to go, and it's probably going to go all at once, and just because you can access internal LAN on your router doesn't mean that it's still properly accessing WAN connections.
The worst part of all this is that I could go on all day. Everyone knows what they are doing when they call us. Everything is a problem on our end, and cant POSSIBLY be fixed by reinstalling DUN, registering URLMON.DLL, recreating your connection, reinstalling TCP/IP, netsh'ing your TCP/IP stack, disconnecting your router, disabling antivirus software and hardware/software firewalls, or powercycling your broadband modem. The problem must be on OUR end, and must be affecting every user in the southeastern United States, which is why the four guys next to me are playing Bejeweled and looking bored.
The "Div" tag is a W3C compliant STANDARD that is completely independent of IE (per HTML 4.0). The Layer tag, to my knowledge, has always been a Netscape thing, and it was deprecated as of HTML 4.0.
/Azure Khan/
So, if you're still using Layer tags in your web design, then they probably need some additional schooling.
Red Kryptonite is involved.
/azure khan/
The point I'm making is aside from the fact that there will be hooligans wherever you go. I lived in Germany for a number of years, and Europe by and large has a healthier understanding of sex, alcohol, and violence than we do. I understand that being from Boston, you might have some puritanical views about such freedom of thought establishments called strip clubs and adult book stores, infesting the minds of your children with their diabolical influences, but trying to teach children by shielding them only makes it more difficult for them when they get into the real world, which is a much crueler and darker place than the mythical utopia that is Boston, I can assure you.
Japan is known for it's sexually repressive atmosphere, beyond what America even has. However, they also have the largest selection of freaky bondage, kink sex, porn cartoons, and miscellaneous fetish activity of any country on the planet. They get out their sexual frustrations on video cassette for the most part, but here, we even think THAT'S wrong.
Violence has been a part of our culture since day 1. Violence against our "food", violence against each other, violence against ourselves, against God. We are a violent society. Fooling ourselves does no good.
My personal CD spending habits have increased with exposure to MP3's. My friend sends me an MP3, I listen, I like, I buy the CD. To me, I'd rather buy a CD than chase a thousand broken links to find the whole album. Between time outs, drop offs, network congestion, etc, it's MUCH more convenient for me to go out and get the cd, and much more enjoyable, as well.
/azure khan/
Yes, yes, I do realize it's a joke. However, it's funny, and you can't let people miss out on good stuff like that.
/azure khan/
Actually, you CAN run a webserver on a potato. :)
/azure khan/
For all those that missed it the first time
Ahhh, hate is a good word. You see, America, which is almost the youngest country on planet Earth in terms of government and social policy, is also the most ass-backwards in terms of social policy. You believe that it's the laws responsibility to protect and educate your children so that you aren't faced with the awful burden of having them ask too many questions that your Roman Catholic upbringing made you unprepared to answer with any serious reply (explain to your child "God says it's Bad! Don't do it!" Hahahahah).
/Azure Khan/
The point is, if Americans (and I am an American), weren't so totally backward in every respect socially, to the point where we are the rednecks of the free world, then we wouldn't HAVE to protect our children from seeing violence and sex, because they would UNDERSTAND it. They would respect it.
Worthless cattle.
NS 6.0 does not fully implement CSS. IE has the best implementation of CSS as the standards are SUPPOSED to work. NS6.0 will still not properly display nested "DIV", has problems with style sheets on the fly, absolute positioning, and a number of other issues, all of which work fine in every bit of code that I write when I view it in IE. No matter how I "fudge" the code, there are things that Netscape WILL NOT DO, and so I'm forced to limit myself for cross browser compatibility.
/Azure Khan/
But I don't. Screw Netscape. Screw W3C. They need to move on these standards, and implement things that we are going to use. Once that's done, I'll be more than happy to run Netscape on my unit.
I'll be very honest here. If I write a book in which two people go about in a red spaceship and blast up a few people for no other reason than a joyride, and you tell me "Oh, this represents the modern decline of society in unthoughtful amoralism", and I just meant it to be a fun jaunt about to people in a red spaceship blasting people for no reason, then I'm going to tell you that YOU, sir, are full of crap. To the brim.
/Azure Khan/
I create characters. I own the characters. I own their intentions, their futures, their pasts. They do what I say, and they MEAN what I say, and if they do something different in the future, well, that's my call, not someone saying "Oh, but so and so would NEVER do that!". Bloody hell they WOULD, if I say so.
The point is, as an artist, I create. As a viewer, you peruse that creation. If you do not get the message that I intended, then I have failed as a writer. If you enjoy it for some perceived message, by all means, recommend the book to your friends so they will buy copies. But nothing you imagine in your mind will change the intended meaning of the book, nor make the book MEAN what you care to make it mean. The characters motives and meaning are MINE to decide, and then you get to gauge the job I've done.
However, it's nice to be ambiguous about those meanings. It helps you to fail less.
I agree that people drink too much cheap beer, and have little taste for the good stuff.
/Azure Khan/
However, if'n you disrespect Guinness again, I'll have to open a 4 pack of nitro-charged whoop-ass on you. Texas Style.
Much obliged.
I have to concur with Nicolas. Your post lacks any sort of cohesive meaning whatsoever.
Ummm...America is ALL about using force to accomplish whatever they want. Hell, we killed a hell of a lot of Brits just to BECOME the country we are.
Kim, Kim, Kim..
You've misspelled "foreplay" again.
Honest mistake.
Azure Khan
A couple of things, sfoalex:
1. "par-a-graphs"
2. You're taking this "evil empire" thing a little too far, ne? In fact, hell, I'm going to buy and EXTRA X-Box to make up for the revenue they lose from you. Then I'll buy two version of X-Box Halo, and then I'm going to hook it up to my broadband connection, and spit on the N64 while I beat down on some chumpies online.
Mmmm...super sweet.
Azure Khan.