If you can actually get through the series... it was so obtuse and there were so many factual errors that I'm amazed I finished even one of the three books. The other two are still collecting dust and I doubt I'll ever read it.
Don't try to fill your writing with statistics and scientific information if you're getting it wrong. Authors are allowed poetic license for a reason, but when you try to make it sound like a treatise detailing specifics of exactly how things get done, it falls flat when you get the details wrong.
Maybe it's a national thing but in my experience, corporations basically ignore letters that don't have an official letterhead or the word "summons" on them, even sent recorded-delivery. You get a half-arsed, useless reply that doesn't reply to any of your actual questions. And it takes MONTHS for anything to happen. And if anything DOES happen, you'll get a phone call from that same person "who can" to resolve the situation before any written reply could ever appear.
Varies by corporation. Part of my job is to read those letters. I read every single one of them, in English and in French, that gets sent to us, and I decide what, if any, action is needed on them. And I see too it that when action is required, it gets done. That means ensuring that customers are given the service to which they have a right, but it also means protecting the company's interests... generally, as long as your request is reasonable, I have a lot of authority to help you. But there has to be some compromise... if you're demanding that I replace your product years after you bought it because you dropped it off a balcony, and you're threatening to sue us if I don't (a request I got last week), my response is going to be an invitation to bring it on.
And I know for a fact that everybody who answers the phone knows exactly where to find information like our corporate mailing address so they can give it with minimum fuss when asked. Hell, it's on the transfer list of extensions we give to our operators, so you can call our toll free, press zero, and the first person who answers can give you our mailing address without any fuss. They've got our Canada head office contact information in Toronto, and they've got our Global head office contact information in the states, and they know exactly where to go on the intranet to find addresses for any of our global offices: it's part of their initial training.
But people on phones, when "shouted" at enough, will get you instantaneous feedback on your problems. I get a hundred times the result on a phone than I ever have by letter. I get a hundred times that result again in-person, but I don't do that for anything that isn't worth it. I've never had anyone complain about MY treatment of the agents in question.
That, again, varies by company. If you're not getting anywhere on the phone, you have a right to be frustrated. You're even entitled to raise your voice. But if you start to take those frustrations out on the person who's trying to help you as best they can, then our customer care, technical support, and sales teams are allowed to hang up on you. They are told, point blank, that they're not being paid to take abuse, and if they feel that you're abusing them, then it's at their discretion whether or not you've crossed the line. You get one warning, and then you get disconnected. And I've never seen anybody get fired over it... I've actually only ever seen one person get coaching on his call mangement skills. Management is there to protect the employees first. I've been with the company quite some time... I started in the sales department, and now I'm in customer relations. If you are wasting my time, and we are getting nowhere, I will tell you point blank: "these are your options, which do you want me to do?" If you don't take one of the options given, then I will tell you that at this point, there is nothing more to discuss, and I will hang up on you. We've actually severed business relations with customers rather than reverse my decisions on matters like that, too, at which point if they ever call again, they will be told "We choose not to do business with you, have a nice day." and be hung up on.
So be very careful who you yell at, because there are consequences.
Oh, and if you are in the US, the US really need to sort your law enforcement out. Our police would only bother to arrest you if you actually threatened violence or hit someone. Shouting isn't against the law. They woul
You've never worked in customer service, have you? In call centres especially, that little hold button is so useful when a caller starts getting abusive, as is the release button. I have released calls before when customers start shouting at me for no reason. One even took it upon himself to sue the company, and was ordered to pay our legal fees when our lawyers played the recording before the courts.
And if you do it in person, you need to understand that the newspaper is private property and they can have you escorted off the premises if you get abusive, and they can have you arrested if you don't cooperate with that. And the FBI and police are both law enforcement agencies, and they can throw you in jail for being abusive to them.
You get much farther when dealing with customer service if you are reasonable. A wise man once said... speak softly and carry a big stick. Be reasonable. Don't be abusive. And if you can't get anywhere over the phone, send a letter. Around here, at least, corporations are required, by law, to provide their mailing address when asked.
I know you're being facetious, but the limiting factor in the output of a bot on a botnet is its connection speed, not its processing power. A '486 can saturate a 10mbit connection without taking a severe performance hit. Seeing as most of us don't quite have gigabit internet connections at home, this thing wouldn't be any more valuable to a herder than your neighbour's $500 laptop.
Replying to you since I was late in reading this... that said, it does have something to do with what you're saying....
They compared old people to young people. That adds in another variable that TFS conveniently glosses over. It's entirely possible that the reduced brain activity is due to the age of the subjects and has absolutely nothing to do with Internet use. If they want to be able to conclude as TFS and TFA imply, then they need to compare people in the same age group. Or better yet, find people in a wide variety of demographics in both categories: those who have Internet, and those who don't.
A couple things could be affecting your performance... my first instinct says the hard drive, but there's other things that can affect you as well... I typically have a login screen after about a minute, but after I log in, I have a usable desktop after only about 2 minutes. Most of the work I do is with web-based applications, so the only things I really have to wait for are Office Communicator (typically about 30s-1m before it logs in and is useable), and MS Outlook (thankfully, IT hasn't forced me to upgrade to Office 2007 yet, but they did push Communicator 2007 down my throat yesterday). I'm just a user, not an admin, but from what I can see, the stuff I'm waiting for are login scripts, Java, and Symantec AV. I have a multimedia keyboard, but I don't need any software to use it, and all of the buttons work.
For reference, my desktop is: XP SP2, 1GB of RAM, and a 2.8GHz P4 with HT. It's actually a fairly old Dell Optiplex.
So it's entirely possible that the GP is telling the truth when he says he is able to log in that quickly.
There is also a potential for the crafty sex offender to possibly cause false positives by just registering an address that does not belong to them, thereby drawing in innocent bystanders.
1. Cui bono? Why would they bother to do this, except just to be a dick?
2. I rather suspect that the penalty for supplying false information will be comparably stiff to not supplying it at all, which would seem to be sufficient deterrent.
Create enough false positives, and there could be enough public outcry to get the law repealed, or at least neutered.
So... you're saying you'd rather have an old fart who's liable to die in office, and a VP who doesn't know what magazines she reads and believes that the world was created 6000 years ago, and that humans and dinosaurs coexisted?
I'm not saying he's specifically innocent. I don't know enough about his case to say one way or another. But we have an extradition treaty with the US, and have requested his repatriation through official channels. So how come he's still at Gitmo?
I can probably answer that for you... allowing botting and gold farming methods reduces the value of the gold that you have. If it's not a scarce resource, and it's something that everybody has, then the prices of items in world have to go up to reflect their actual value. What was 50g today could cost 500g tomorrow if everybody had that 50g. (and there are players in game with less than 1g to their name). Normal market forces.
That hurts the player in two ways: first, it causes hyperinflation. It's the same problem as if the government is printing money out of the basement.
The second way that hurts the player is that it serves as an obstacle to the players who don't have the time/resources, or who are new to the game. That's why there's a limit to how much gold you can have in game, btw... but if I'm new to the game, how can I possibly compete against somebody who's been accumulating gold, via botting, for years?
I could see a reason for wanting a fighter that could be launched from an underwater carrier... In a combat situation, I doubt very much that you'd be plunging into the ocean and continuing a dogfight under water, because the forces exerted on the plane would be obscene. Might as well try to fly through a concrete wall. To go back into the water, you would need to land safely on the surface, and submerge at a safe speed.
But going the other way... you could launch under water and take off into the air at high speed without the same worries. Submarines are naturally stealthier than a surface ship, and can go places that surface ships can't. Having the ability to launch from a submarine without surfacing would allow for better surprise/stealthy attacks.
Hmm... not too keen on them trying to copyright my national anthem... but the copyright on the use of the word "winter", I like. We get too much snow as it is. Mother nature fears a lawsuit...
Mars having 1/3 the gravity has more to do with its thin atmosphere than any lack of magnetic field. Having no magnetic field would remove protection from solar wind and radiation, making it unable to support life as we know it, but wouldn't actually affect how thick an atmosphere the planet could retain.
Mars has a magnetic field, btw. It's Venus that doesn't.
to install W95, you needed about 60MB worth of CAB files. The rest of the stuff on the disc could safely be ignored. W98 and 98SE were 95MB. ME was 130. NT4 was 55MB. W2K was 120 or so.
I had (and still have) a CD that I made, which included W95 OSR2, W95 OSR2 French, W98SE, W98SE French, and NT4 English/French install discs, all on a single 650MB disc. And I'll go one better: because of options that were available in the install ini files, they were all headless installs, and didn't need me to choose any options or enter a product key.:)
Actually I used to work for a Pontiac/Buick/GMC/Hummer dealer, in the service department.
In this case, using the words "tune up" is a rhetorical device. People tend to glaze over when they hear a phrase like "regularly scheduled maintenance". It's too many syllables for most of them. People are dumb, and don't think of their cars as needing nearly as much maintenance as they actually do. "Tune up" means the same thing to them, however, and is only two syllables.
You'd think, on a place like this website, that people would understand that users don't generally have a clue *how* what they're using works, and really only care *that* it works. If you want to impress on users what they need to do to take care of something, you have to put it in words that they can understand and relate to.
If I were an engineer building this perfect device, zero buildup would be one of its technical requirements, be it through buildup-proof construction or self cleaning.
It's where you draw the circle.
You might want to start with the combustion cycle itself, then. Most of the gunk that builds up is unburned fuel. If you're going to engineer it to be buildup-proof, you're going to have to engineer a way to burn 100% of the fuel, which likely means changing the fuel itself.
As for making it self-cleaning, a mechanical solution is probably not going to work because it would be small moving parts inside a high pressure combustion chamber. The way printers self-clean is by periodically blasting ink through the injector at much higher than normal pressure, which kinda defeats the purpose of trying to engineer it to *not* waste fuel.
I realize you're trying to make a point, but you're completely ignoring my original point, which was that people aren't taking care of their cars. We both know that such a perfect device isn't possible with current methods, especially if you concede your technical requirement, so we should really focus on educating car owners on what they can do to improve their fuel economy, starting with recognizing that their cars are precision machines that need to be maintained in order to keep working properly.
In other words, don't attack a rhetorical device at a technical level. The technical details aren't relevant to the point.
Slashdot Mirror
Right... proofread, post when awake... Doom predates Starcraft, too. The rest stands....
Um... Doom predates Warcraft 3. And I was creating maps for my friends in Wolfenstein 3D before Doom was even released.
Blocked by work firewall... but my first thought when I heard about successful mods were things like GameGenie or Gameshark....
4) Still need fuel, whether it's fossil or otherwise.
If you can actually get through the series... it was so obtuse and there were so many factual errors that I'm amazed I finished even one of the three books. The other two are still collecting dust and I doubt I'll ever read it.
Don't try to fill your writing with statistics and scientific information if you're getting it wrong. Authors are allowed poetic license for a reason, but when you try to make it sound like a treatise detailing specifics of exactly how things get done, it falls flat when you get the details wrong.
Varies by corporation. Part of my job is to read those letters. I read every single one of them, in English and in French, that gets sent to us, and I decide what, if any, action is needed on them. And I see too it that when action is required, it gets done. That means ensuring that customers are given the service to which they have a right, but it also means protecting the company's interests... generally, as long as your request is reasonable, I have a lot of authority to help you. But there has to be some compromise... if you're demanding that I replace your product years after you bought it because you dropped it off a balcony, and you're threatening to sue us if I don't (a request I got last week), my response is going to be an invitation to bring it on.
And I know for a fact that everybody who answers the phone knows exactly where to find information like our corporate mailing address so they can give it with minimum fuss when asked. Hell, it's on the transfer list of extensions we give to our operators, so you can call our toll free, press zero, and the first person who answers can give you our mailing address without any fuss. They've got our Canada head office contact information in Toronto, and they've got our Global head office contact information in the states, and they know exactly where to go on the intranet to find addresses for any of our global offices: it's part of their initial training.
That, again, varies by company. If you're not getting anywhere on the phone, you have a right to be frustrated. You're even entitled to raise your voice. But if you start to take those frustrations out on the person who's trying to help you as best they can, then our customer care, technical support, and sales teams are allowed to hang up on you. They are told, point blank, that they're not being paid to take abuse, and if they feel that you're abusing them, then it's at their discretion whether or not you've crossed the line. You get one warning, and then you get disconnected. And I've never seen anybody get fired over it... I've actually only ever seen one person get coaching on his call mangement skills. Management is there to protect the employees first. I've been with the company quite some time... I started in the sales department, and now I'm in customer relations. If you are wasting my time, and we are getting nowhere, I will tell you point blank: "these are your options, which do you want me to do?" If you don't take one of the options given, then I will tell you that at this point, there is nothing more to discuss, and I will hang up on you. We've actually severed business relations with customers rather than reverse my decisions on matters like that, too, at which point if they ever call again, they will be told "We choose not to do business with you, have a nice day." and be hung up on.
So be very careful who you yell at, because there are consequences.
You've never worked in customer service, have you? In call centres especially, that little hold button is so useful when a caller starts getting abusive, as is the release button. I have released calls before when customers start shouting at me for no reason. One even took it upon himself to sue the company, and was ordered to pay our legal fees when our lawyers played the recording before the courts.
And if you do it in person, you need to understand that the newspaper is private property and they can have you escorted off the premises if you get abusive, and they can have you arrested if you don't cooperate with that. And the FBI and police are both law enforcement agencies, and they can throw you in jail for being abusive to them.
You get much farther when dealing with customer service if you are reasonable. A wise man once said... speak softly and carry a big stick. Be reasonable. Don't be abusive. And if you can't get anywhere over the phone, send a letter. Around here, at least, corporations are required, by law, to provide their mailing address when asked.
I know you're being facetious, but the limiting factor in the output of a bot on a botnet is its connection speed, not its processing power. A '486 can saturate a 10mbit connection without taking a severe performance hit. Seeing as most of us don't quite have gigabit internet connections at home, this thing wouldn't be any more valuable to a herder than your neighbour's $500 laptop.
You probably have, but they're usually encapsulated in a container format like AVI or MKV. :)
Replying to you since I was late in reading this... that said, it does have something to do with what you're saying....
They compared old people to young people. That adds in another variable that TFS conveniently glosses over. It's entirely possible that the reduced brain activity is due to the age of the subjects and has absolutely nothing to do with Internet use. If they want to be able to conclude as TFS and TFA imply, then they need to compare people in the same age group. Or better yet, find people in a wide variety of demographics in both categories: those who have Internet, and those who don't.
A couple things could be affecting your performance... my first instinct says the hard drive, but there's other things that can affect you as well... I typically have a login screen after about a minute, but after I log in, I have a usable desktop after only about 2 minutes. Most of the work I do is with web-based applications, so the only things I really have to wait for are Office Communicator (typically about 30s-1m before it logs in and is useable), and MS Outlook (thankfully, IT hasn't forced me to upgrade to Office 2007 yet, but they did push Communicator 2007 down my throat yesterday). I'm just a user, not an admin, but from what I can see, the stuff I'm waiting for are login scripts, Java, and Symantec AV. I have a multimedia keyboard, but I don't need any software to use it, and all of the buttons work.
For reference, my desktop is:
XP SP2, 1GB of RAM, and a 2.8GHz P4 with HT. It's actually a fairly old Dell Optiplex.
So it's entirely possible that the GP is telling the truth when he says he is able to log in that quickly.
Create enough false positives, and there could be enough public outcry to get the law repealed, or at least neutered.
*@*.gov
^_^
So... you're saying you'd rather have an old fart who's liable to die in office, and a VP who doesn't know what magazines she reads and believes that the world was created 6000 years ago, and that humans and dinosaurs coexisted?
Would a Canadian do?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr
I'm not saying he's specifically innocent. I don't know enough about his case to say one way or another. But we have an extradition treaty with the US, and have requested his repatriation through official channels. So how come he's still at Gitmo?
I can probably answer that for you... allowing botting and gold farming methods reduces the value of the gold that you have. If it's not a scarce resource, and it's something that everybody has, then the prices of items in world have to go up to reflect their actual value. What was 50g today could cost 500g tomorrow if everybody had that 50g. (and there are players in game with less than 1g to their name). Normal market forces.
That hurts the player in two ways: first, it causes hyperinflation. It's the same problem as if the government is printing money out of the basement.
The second way that hurts the player is that it serves as an obstacle to the players who don't have the time/resources, or who are new to the game. That's why there's a limit to how much gold you can have in game, btw... but if I'm new to the game, how can I possibly compete against somebody who's been accumulating gold, via botting, for years?
I could see a reason for wanting a fighter that could be launched from an underwater carrier... In a combat situation, I doubt very much that you'd be plunging into the ocean and continuing a dogfight under water, because the forces exerted on the plane would be obscene. Might as well try to fly through a concrete wall. To go back into the water, you would need to land safely on the surface, and submerge at a safe speed.
But going the other way... you could launch under water and take off into the air at high speed without the same worries. Submarines are naturally stealthier than a surface ship, and can go places that surface ships can't. Having the ability to launch from a submarine without surfacing would allow for better surprise/stealthy attacks.
Yeah, it would be nice if nobody crapflooded /. ever, so they didn't have to come up with such restrictions...
they'd also have to fire some of the editors to get rid of all the crap that gets posted here, though...
Hmm... not too keen on them trying to copyright my national anthem... but the copyright on the use of the word "winter", I like. We get too much snow as it is. Mother nature fears a lawsuit...
No, I'm trying to tell you that gravitational forces play a part in retaining an atmosphere.
bleh... that'll teach me to post when awake... Mars has no magnetic field, Venus has a very very weak one.
Mars having 1/3 the gravity has more to do with its thin atmosphere than any lack of magnetic field. Having no magnetic field would remove protection from solar wind and radiation, making it unable to support life as we know it, but wouldn't actually affect how thick an atmosphere the planet could retain.
Mars has a magnetic field, btw. It's Venus that doesn't.
to install W95, you needed about 60MB worth of CAB files. The rest of the stuff on the disc could safely be ignored. W98 and 98SE were 95MB. ME was 130. NT4 was 55MB. W2K was 120 or so.
I had (and still have) a CD that I made, which included W95 OSR2, W95 OSR2 French, W98SE, W98SE French, and NT4 English/French install discs, all on a single 650MB disc. And I'll go one better: because of options that were available in the install ini files, they were all headless installs, and didn't need me to choose any options or enter a product key. :)
Actually I used to work for a Pontiac/Buick/GMC/Hummer dealer, in the service department.
In this case, using the words "tune up" is a rhetorical device. People tend to glaze over when they hear a phrase like "regularly scheduled maintenance". It's too many syllables for most of them. People are dumb, and don't think of their cars as needing nearly as much maintenance as they actually do. "Tune up" means the same thing to them, however, and is only two syllables.
You'd think, on a place like this website, that people would understand that users don't generally have a clue *how* what they're using works, and really only care *that* it works. If you want to impress on users what they need to do to take care of something, you have to put it in words that they can understand and relate to.
You might want to start with the combustion cycle itself, then. Most of the gunk that builds up is unburned fuel. If you're going to engineer it to be buildup-proof, you're going to have to engineer a way to burn 100% of the fuel, which likely means changing the fuel itself.
As for making it self-cleaning, a mechanical solution is probably not going to work because it would be small moving parts inside a high pressure combustion chamber. The way printers self-clean is by periodically blasting ink through the injector at much higher than normal pressure, which kinda defeats the purpose of trying to engineer it to *not* waste fuel.
I realize you're trying to make a point, but you're completely ignoring my original point, which was that people aren't taking care of their cars. We both know that such a perfect device isn't possible with current methods, especially if you concede your technical requirement, so we should really focus on educating car owners on what they can do to improve their fuel economy, starting with recognizing that their cars are precision machines that need to be maintained in order to keep working properly.
In other words, don't attack a rhetorical device at a technical level. The technical details aren't relevant to the point.