Even better. My girlfriend went there many years ago to buy a cd player. The guy tried to upsell her by telling her the most expensive cd players were heavier, and that made them better. Yes, somehow the weight of the cd player affected the lasers ability to read a digital signal from a disk and send that to an amplifier.
Sadly, the light one she bought for less died about a year later, so we can also safely presume that lighter cd players are also less reliable.
I just order it next day from amazon for $3.99. Better and cheaper than wasting $5 worth of gas and an hour of my time.
Best Buy was okay for immediate stuff when you could order on-line and pick it up in the store within a few minutes. Mine closed the 'pick up' line and has you stand in the regular customer service line for half an hour. Then they havent pulled the item and have to send someone in the back for it. I stand in that long line waiting for the thing that was supposed to be ready for pickup, and I watch the dozens of blue shirts try to avoid making eye contact with me for fear of having to help me or actually service a customer in some manner. Then I complain to the manager, who doesnt care. At this point I only buy extremely discounted items that have free shipping from Best Buy. I see no reason to otherwise shop there, and they can go right out of business for all I care.
Sales tax? I avoid paying it at all costs. These bozo's waste more money than I can imagine. I have very little interest in funding another car pool lane that'll be empty most of the time, any more roadside beautification projects, and my very small town just built its 33rd park for $1.2M. On most days you can drive to all 33 and see maybe 5-10 kids total playing in them. I'll just keep as much of that money as I can going forward. When amazon capitulates and starts charging california sales tax, I'll be buying from one of the other 43,000 small non california etailers who are too small for California to bother knuckling.
Yep, when you're a money lender (and I am), you put the government workers to the front of the line, except for newer teachers. They rarely lose their jobs and usually pay the bills.
I do have to say that I'm impressed at how much gross incompetence exists within government. That we arent all marching down the street with pitchforks and torches speaks volumes about our inability to care about the fact that these morons are picking our pockets and blowing the money, and then they'll all head home ten years before the rest of us to enjoy their fat pensions.
We'll see how well the 'killing of the used game market' runs. I think its going to show a lot of signs of unintended consequences.
For example, I can buy a new release game for $35-50 when it comes out. I know I can play that (or my son will) for a month or two off and on and when I'm done, I can get $20-25 for it used. Now if the game is missing content for a used buyer or requires buying a $5-10 code to make everything work, then the used game is worth $10-20, which means I'm not particularly interested in spending $50 on it.
I also bought MANY used games, liked a franchise and bought the 2nd, 3rd or 4th game new.
At this point, I've been jabbed by 4-5 used games I bought in the last quarter of 2011, which required a code to fully operate. As a result of my disappointment, I wont be buying any games produced by those manufacturers. While I would have bought several games a month in Jan, Feb and Mar, I havent bought any. Likely to continue since this 'strategy' is being widely deployed.
So I wish the game manufacturers luck, they may find that they're going to need it. Because right now my plan is to buy 2 or 3 year old games new when they drop under $25 and never buy a release game again unless its free of codes and anti-resale tactics. The good news is there are dozens of awesome games for all of the platforms that are old, cheap and we havent played yet.
These shenanigans will also do a number on the game rental places, since none of those games will be fully operational without the code.
You've got it right. Sony and their copy protection is a lot like the war on drugs. Expensive, doesnt work, and everyone who really wants to can get anything they want anytime they want any way they want. The loser is the customers, most of which have no means or inclination to 'steal' movies and games. I'd say with no hesitation that I can get any movie, tv show or game for free and watch/play it before days end, probably with little or no effort or hassles.
My ps3 got relegated to a box in the closet since almost every time I turned it on in the last 3-4 months it'd want to spend 20 minutes doing a firmware update and a netflix update before I could watch a show. My roku player and google tv update about once a year, quietly in the middle of the night, and I've never seen it happen.
And you're right about control. Thing is, *I* like control too, so I make a point of helping myself to as much sony media as I can for free by whatever means. Heck, if its worth billions a year and pissing off their customers, who am I to argue?
I can explain why the mac users have less issues than the windows users. Most of the mac users you've talked to probably just got it and a nice new clean machine is always better than the POS windows box they'd been using for 4 years before that. Most of the windows users probably are using an older machine. I've found this funny little dichotomy to be true most of the time. Most people I know with new windows machines are also quite happy with their purchase.
I can also explain why linux doesnt fly on the desktop. Most people already got windows or osx with their computer, so they have to experience some sort of problem or demand that windows or osx wont satisfy. What the heck would that be again? The only time I've had a need to implement a capable operating system that every time you want to do something simple like change a setting you have to read stuff about it for 20 minutes and edit 5 files, while windows or osx has you check a box or type some text in a field somewhere.
Its excessively complex and remains that way for two reasons. The first one is that nobody is in charge and nothing is the standard within linux, there are a bazillion combinations of kernels, ui's, apps and capabilities. Its TOO democratic vs the apple model of pretty much one guy telling everyone what to do. The second one is that linux is the prize of your more technical people, who despise the people who dont know it as well and will act like teenagers who know something that you dont should you get around to asking.
No marketing, no direction, too much compromise and variation, too complicated for the average user to install and operate at a fundamental level, and no killer app. That equals "aint gonna happen". The only time I installed linux on a permanent basis was on a laptop that I changed some hardware on and the windows OEM load wouldnt accept the change without a new windows license which was going to cost me $130. All I used the machine for was Chrome, so linux was fine for that.
Its not like I dont have any skills in the area, I was a developer for 35 years and worked on unix back in the at&t 3b series days and was a developer on the first version of Ultrix. I have a long time in with the basic fundamentals of unix. I just dont have a need for it that isnt met by something already available, free and capable.
...we'd sure stop giving a shit about what happens in the middle east, south america and a variety of other places. All countries full of poor people would be treated pretty much the way we treat most African nations...cant name them, couldnt find them on a map, dont care about what happens in them.
I think it'd be a most wonderful thing. We'd probably meddle in others affairs a lot less.
I worked from home for several years for a company that by and large doesnt do that and feels extremely uncomfortable with it. And I was quite successful! Heres what I did.
You have to overcome the fact that people wont see you, and that makes them suspicious of what you're doing, you have to make the short time you're physically together count as much as possible, and you have to make sure everyone knows what you're doing.
1) You work from home, but get into the office once a week for at least a few hours. Talk to as many people as possible to raise peoples awareness of you. Be as freaking positive and happy and "I love my job and everyone!" as you can. They're only seeing you a short time. The perception you want to leave is as positive as possible. If you have complaints and things that annoy you, tell your spouse and leave it at that.
2) Status reports. Put everything you do in them north of taking a dump. Send them to everyone until they ask you not to. I was sending a status report out to a hundred and fifty people. Key learnings for the week, key accomplishments, some useful tidbits, and then laborious project status.
3) Do not ever, ever, ever say anything to anyone at work about how great it is that you work at home. Someone will get jealous and fix that little problem for you.
4) Be reachable and available and respond quickly all the frigging time. Carry a smartphone with internet, have a business line at home, and have everything there or accessible that you might have at work. The first time you simper "But I dont have a fax" or "my printer doesnt do double sided printing" you're hosed. People I worked with used to call me "Mr Always On, Always Available". Booyah.
If you wrap it up with having everyone know who you are, what you do, that you're a great guy that loves to work for the company, and they have a fairly positive view of you, you're golden. If nobody knows who you are, what you do or where you are, you're doomed. If you dont get yanked back into the office, you're going to get the crap end of the stick at review time.
By the way, 100% of this stuff is equally good to do when you work IN the office.
It'd be nice if people knew what they were talking about before they started moving their fingers...
Excess calories and inactivity cause weight gain and eventually type 2 in many people. You may most certainly fully reverse this by losing the weight you gained, eating smarter and exercising more.
Carbs? Other than having a world population that is so big that its dependent on grains, roots and whatnot to feed all these people, I'm not sure why we consume carbs that require processing to be edible.
Who I find funny are people who look at a macdonalds value meal and want to crucify the meat and cheese. Its the drink, fries and bun.
For quite some time we've been told by doctors to eat margarine and transfats instead of butter and lard. We were told eggs would kill us. We've been told to eat mostly grains, root vegetables and sugar laden fruits along with considerable amounts of dairy. For quite some time we were told that cigarettes were good for you. We even had special cigarettes for asthma sufferers. I wonder how that worked out.
As a result of all of these ridiculously serious missteps, we're all fat, have coronary problems and diabetes. 75 years ago before all of this dietary "improvement" these illnesses werent anywhere near as common.
Hasnt anyone noticed how we feed cattle? We let them eat grass and whatever else they can find along with some cheap feed thats even included parts of other cows. But when they're ready to butcher, we send them to a feedlot to gain weight and fat marbling. Eating what? Grains.
Diet-wise, we're doing almost everything backwards. Not buying it? Last year I was 50lbs overweight, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, not in particularly good condition. I stopped eating most carbohydrates (but I'm not militant about it), eating mostly pasture raised eggs and meat from a local farm. I raised my exercise level slightly (like 30 minutes of walking or using a wii fit for an hour). I've now lost 43 pounds, my blood pressure is actually a little low, and my blood sugar is so low I have to sip a little orange juice once in a while to stop feeling faint.
Besides eating good foods, look for the biggest nutritional and flavor punches. Lets get off the feedlot.
I've always bought mostly used older games for my younger kids. Now of course they put single-use DLC in just about every game that enables a major portion of the game like online play or useful characters or portions of the game content.
So you have to spend $5-10 to get the DLC code, which just about makes up the difference in the cost of the new and used games. Which I know was the obvious intent, but here is the unintended consequence portion of the program.
If I buy a game with one-time DLC, I cant sell it for as much used as I could before they did that. So as far as I'm concerned the game brand new is worth less to me because its residual value is going to be worse. I also cant just go and install the game on some other console I own with a different xbox live ID.
Similarly, I wont pay as much for used games and I'd expect their prices to drift down a little.
In my instance, this attempted killing of the cheaper used games market isnt going to produce an "Awww, you got me. I'll just pony up $60 for a new game". Its going to produce me paying less for used games and either buying the codes or culturing the kids to play 90% of the game they have access to and moving on. Or we'll only buy 3-4 year old games that have dropped in price.
At the end of the day, if I'm left with no other options I'll just pirate 1/4 or 1/2 of the games to create my own offset. $60 is too much for a video game unless its some epic thing that'll take a month to play and have great replay value.
I suspect there are a whole range of people who can afford gaming due to the used market and will simply buy less or buy nothing.
Sigh. Its tired because despite obvious information to support the claim, people still dont want to admit it. But one can raise an awful lot of polish and functionality while employing slave labor and parting those easily tricked by great marketing from large amounts of their cash.
On black friday I bought a 4.1" motorola phone for $135 and pay $25 a month for unlimited internet and text plus 300 minutes talk.
I cant find an iphone 4s for less than a couple of hundred bucks and a 2 year contract where I pay at least $60-70 a month for limited internet, unlimited text and 300 minutes. Of course, if you want to own it outright, you're looking at $500+ to buy one.
I have extensively used an iphone 4s along with my own phone. Aside from not running itunes, the motorola phone runs every single app or a similar app in much the same way to perform exactly the same functions. It has a keypad, it makes and receives phone calls. It has a text app. It has a facebook app. It has a web browser.
Usually along this line someone wants to push their 'functionality' and 'polish' squishies. The real a-holes go for super squishies like 'elegant' and 'ease of use'.
Oh, and I almost forgot. All the playbooks and touchpads you could every have wanted to buy for under $250. I picked up a chinatab with about the same innards as the original ipad for $150 last year. Its a little bigger and thicker than the ipad but about the same size as the ipad3. It runs every single app or a similar app in much the same way to perform the same functions as any ipad I've ever used. I could buy it for $99 right now.
The thing you guys keep forgetting is that people use applications and an app on a mac, iphone, android tablet or a windows machine all look pretty much the same and work pretty much the same. Any inferred or vaporous benefits of the operating system dont seem to bring much to the party. I've yet to see android or ios leap to the forefront while I'm browsing the web, reading email or checking facebook and bring me any benefits. Not many people linger in the operating system screens enjoying all of this mystical functionality and polish that doesnt really exist.
Apple makes it easier for developers simply because they abandon older platforms and dont give operating system updates to them, and because there are very few variations in the supported platform.
This is simply a case of Google and Microsoft being arms suppliers and Apple offering a full closed, proprietary product offering. Now that Google looks to be wrapping up their motorola mobility acquisition and having improved their "market" offering, they should be able to offer the same limited hardware and platform products at a very competitive price. I wouldnt be shocked to see Amazon also launch a phone and a big tablet with a lot more features and the same one-stop-shopping, limited platform, stable service offerings. I'm betting that their solutions will cost about half of what Apples does.
People spending $600 on a phone or tablet and $2000 on a computer are over.
I thought it was only a troll if it wasnt true and the lie only perpetuated to inflame.
iPad, around $500-600. Any other tablet that I like just fine that does everything the ipad does are easily found for under $200.
21" imac, $1200, equivalent i5 desktop machine with far more ram and storage goes routinely for under $500 with the monitor.
15" i7 macbook, $1800, equivalent i7 laptop with more ram and storage can be had for under $600. Ha ha ha...they want $200 to bump it from 4 to 8GB of ram. What is that, like $30 on sale from newegg?
As far as whether they buy the software on the ipad/ipod/iphone? I dont have any broad numbers but everyone I know that has one has dozens and dozens of apps on it.
In any case, is this all really any sort of news? When you button up a platform and offer limited options and configurations and everything comes from the same company, its going to be easier to develop for and manage. So why doesnt apple software, apps, accessories and other stuff cost less than windows? After all, its a lot simpler to develop for.
It doesnt mean Android is a bad product or an ipad is especially great. Its just that the latter has a lot less permutations. If lack of choice and paying at least a 100% premium somehow turns out to be appealing in exchange for fewer things that could go wrong, I guess I'm missing that appeal. If I wanted that, I'd buy a single vendor stable platform.
You bet. Those folks are already used to spending two or three times as much on stuff that isnt even that great. Anyone could make money selling stuff to Apple consumers.
You prefer AMD to Intel due to thermal protection? You do realize that Intel cpu's have always had thermal protection, while AMD didnt include it for many, many years to save money? The number of intel cpu's that die from excess heat caused by the cpu is extremely low, while there have been thousands of AMD cpu's that have died from excess heat.
Its one thing to grasp at weak features to outline a preference. Its another thing to claim a benefit where there isnt any.
The cpu you had that 'melted' probably experienced user failure.
Ah, I just presumed that in spending $2700 per student that Apple products had to be involved. Because I could buy a desktop pc, a laptop, a tablet and a phone, all pretty decent stuff, and still have money leftover from $2700. In fact, I'd still have half of it.
But if they were mac products, I could see eating all of that on one desktop.
Then replace them with powerful low cost computers. Apple doesnt make any of those.
Buying apple products for a school is a waste of money. Kids and teachers arent in need of retail technology therapy purchasing to help their self image.
Shoot, buy cheap components by the box full and get the older kids to construct the computers and teach the younger kids how to use them. Load them up with linux and windows. You know, the stuff they'll actually be using at work and most likely be buying for their home?
I've yet to see a well done study that shows that technology of any kind advances education. Besides enormous hardware and software costs, the planning, architecture, design and implementation of a strategy that properly integrates the technology into the lesson planning is complicated, expensive, and frankly requires more smarts than the average school IT guy can muster.
A great example of stupid school spending is happening in California schools all over the state right now. We're in the middle of a huge budget crunch. The governor plans to cut all school transportation. Our school superintendent says we'll be cutting PE and library headcount to zero soon. We're laying off teachers and class sizes are ballooning.
Whats the solution you say? Buy ipads for every class room! A running program right now is equipping all California class rooms with 5 ipads! Thats approximately $100K per school.
Why arent the ipads helping? First off, the schools break up the classes into reading groups. As far as I know, none of the schools in CA have 5 kids per reading group, ours has six. So when I volunteer, one kid has to wait for the other 5 to finish with the ipads, then they can go. The kids have to log into an account with a long complex user name and password, for security you know. Of course they cant remember it. The kids also easily get out of the testing applications and start playing games.
The mechanics are thus: we read the book and then answer a quiz on the ipad, which gives a score. That information then has to be transcribed onto paper because its not integrated into the other school education systems, and then re-entered elsewhere.
So the bottom line is that our nice relatively calm reading courses are now filled with "I dont wanna be the one who has to wait", half my time is spent fixing technical shenanigans, and the outcome is everyone doing the teaching is working harder for a lesser outcome.
So how about we hire teachers, buy books, if we're going to buy tablets buy 25 of the $69 or $99 ones and outfit it with apps that actually make life easier so every kid in the class has one? Maybe when the economy is flush and we have more money than we know what to do with, then we can buy overpriced apple do-dads for a small number of kids.
The first argument I get on bringing up the stupidity of this whole thing is that these are allegedly donated. Fine. Then one of the hundreds of education and political people involved with that size donation should have educated the donor on how he or she was wasting an awful lot of money on something that would actually be a negative as far as education of the children go. But I dont think they'd give a crap. Someone with a big heart and no understanding of education thought you could just throw ipads out there like Johnny Appleseed and the kids would just get smarter. Just like the ads say. Buy an ipad and your kid will instantly become a creative genius and learn automatically!
I was just saying the other day that I'd had three people driving a prius do ridiculously stupid and aggressive things to me in the past week. Now theres a study that proves its true!
I'd vote for incompetence. Probably nobody actually checked anything, they just relied on the automated results. When the onus isnt on you to do an effective job but rather on a random anonymous person who is the one on the hook for the money, just relax in your office for 8 hours a day and let the poor SOB prove he's innocent.
Now, PG&E adjusting their weather weighting on winter gas savings credits so I'm 1/100th of a therm over the limit to receive a 20% credit and so I dont get it...thats a bald faced lie.
Ah, you've gotta be kidding me. The cable/satellite companies and content owners are stumbling around liberally applying ineffective protectionism and half-assed policies. Eventually our $100 tv and $50 internet bills will turn into a $150 internet bill with the cable and satellite companies providing the bandwidth.
Unless they're idiots who still believe Jenny was right. These are parents who didn't listen to their doctors vs a quack and a playboy playmate. I'd presume they'd be lousy customers too.
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Even better. My girlfriend went there many years ago to buy a cd player. The guy tried to upsell her by telling her the most expensive cd players were heavier, and that made them better. Yes, somehow the weight of the cd player affected the lasers ability to read a digital signal from a disk and send that to an amplifier.
Sadly, the light one she bought for less died about a year later, so we can also safely presume that lighter cd players are also less reliable.
I just order it next day from amazon for $3.99. Better and cheaper than wasting $5 worth of gas and an hour of my time.
Best Buy was okay for immediate stuff when you could order on-line and pick it up in the store within a few minutes. Mine closed the 'pick up' line and has you stand in the regular customer service line for half an hour. Then they havent pulled the item and have to send someone in the back for it. I stand in that long line waiting for the thing that was supposed to be ready for pickup, and I watch the dozens of blue shirts try to avoid making eye contact with me for fear of having to help me or actually service a customer in some manner. Then I complain to the manager, who doesnt care. At this point I only buy extremely discounted items that have free shipping from Best Buy. I see no reason to otherwise shop there, and they can go right out of business for all I care.
Sales tax? I avoid paying it at all costs. These bozo's waste more money than I can imagine. I have very little interest in funding another car pool lane that'll be empty most of the time, any more roadside beautification projects, and my very small town just built its 33rd park for $1.2M. On most days you can drive to all 33 and see maybe 5-10 kids total playing in them. I'll just keep as much of that money as I can going forward. When amazon capitulates and starts charging california sales tax, I'll be buying from one of the other 43,000 small non california etailers who are too small for California to bother knuckling.
preferably landing on your face.
Yep, when you're a money lender (and I am), you put the government workers to the front of the line, except for newer teachers. They rarely lose their jobs and usually pay the bills.
I do have to say that I'm impressed at how much gross incompetence exists within government. That we arent all marching down the street with pitchforks and torches speaks volumes about our inability to care about the fact that these morons are picking our pockets and blowing the money, and then they'll all head home ten years before the rest of us to enjoy their fat pensions.
We'll see how well the 'killing of the used game market' runs. I think its going to show a lot of signs of unintended consequences.
For example, I can buy a new release game for $35-50 when it comes out. I know I can play that (or my son will) for a month or two off and on and when I'm done, I can get $20-25 for it used. Now if the game is missing content for a used buyer or requires buying a $5-10 code to make everything work, then the used game is worth $10-20, which means I'm not particularly interested in spending $50 on it.
I also bought MANY used games, liked a franchise and bought the 2nd, 3rd or 4th game new.
At this point, I've been jabbed by 4-5 used games I bought in the last quarter of 2011, which required a code to fully operate. As a result of my disappointment, I wont be buying any games produced by those manufacturers. While I would have bought several games a month in Jan, Feb and Mar, I havent bought any. Likely to continue since this 'strategy' is being widely deployed.
So I wish the game manufacturers luck, they may find that they're going to need it. Because right now my plan is to buy 2 or 3 year old games new when they drop under $25 and never buy a release game again unless its free of codes and anti-resale tactics. The good news is there are dozens of awesome games for all of the platforms that are old, cheap and we havent played yet.
These shenanigans will also do a number on the game rental places, since none of those games will be fully operational without the code.
You've got it right. Sony and their copy protection is a lot like the war on drugs. Expensive, doesnt work, and everyone who really wants to can get anything they want anytime they want any way they want. The loser is the customers, most of which have no means or inclination to 'steal' movies and games. I'd say with no hesitation that I can get any movie, tv show or game for free and watch/play it before days end, probably with little or no effort or hassles.
My ps3 got relegated to a box in the closet since almost every time I turned it on in the last 3-4 months it'd want to spend 20 minutes doing a firmware update and a netflix update before I could watch a show. My roku player and google tv update about once a year, quietly in the middle of the night, and I've never seen it happen.
And you're right about control. Thing is, *I* like control too, so I make a point of helping myself to as much sony media as I can for free by whatever means. Heck, if its worth billions a year and pissing off their customers, who am I to argue?
I can explain why the mac users have less issues than the windows users. Most of the mac users you've talked to probably just got it and a nice new clean machine is always better than the POS windows box they'd been using for 4 years before that. Most of the windows users probably are using an older machine. I've found this funny little dichotomy to be true most of the time. Most people I know with new windows machines are also quite happy with their purchase.
I can also explain why linux doesnt fly on the desktop. Most people already got windows or osx with their computer, so they have to experience some sort of problem or demand that windows or osx wont satisfy. What the heck would that be again? The only time I've had a need to implement a capable operating system that every time you want to do something simple like change a setting you have to read stuff about it for 20 minutes and edit 5 files, while windows or osx has you check a box or type some text in a field somewhere.
Its excessively complex and remains that way for two reasons. The first one is that nobody is in charge and nothing is the standard within linux, there are a bazillion combinations of kernels, ui's, apps and capabilities. Its TOO democratic vs the apple model of pretty much one guy telling everyone what to do. The second one is that linux is the prize of your more technical people, who despise the people who dont know it as well and will act like teenagers who know something that you dont should you get around to asking.
No marketing, no direction, too much compromise and variation, too complicated for the average user to install and operate at a fundamental level, and no killer app. That equals "aint gonna happen". The only time I installed linux on a permanent basis was on a laptop that I changed some hardware on and the windows OEM load wouldnt accept the change without a new windows license which was going to cost me $130. All I used the machine for was Chrome, so linux was fine for that.
Its not like I dont have any skills in the area, I was a developer for 35 years and worked on unix back in the at&t 3b series days and was a developer on the first version of Ultrix. I have a long time in with the basic fundamentals of unix. I just dont have a need for it that isnt met by something already available, free and capable.
...we'd sure stop giving a shit about what happens in the middle east, south america and a variety of other places. All countries full of poor people would be treated pretty much the way we treat most African nations...cant name them, couldnt find them on a map, dont care about what happens in them.
I think it'd be a most wonderful thing. We'd probably meddle in others affairs a lot less.
I worked from home for several years for a company that by and large doesnt do that and feels extremely uncomfortable with it. And I was quite successful! Heres what I did.
You have to overcome the fact that people wont see you, and that makes them suspicious of what you're doing, you have to make the short time you're physically together count as much as possible, and you have to make sure everyone knows what you're doing.
1) You work from home, but get into the office once a week for at least a few hours. Talk to as many people as possible to raise peoples awareness of you. Be as freaking positive and happy and "I love my job and everyone!" as you can. They're only seeing you a short time. The perception you want to leave is as positive as possible. If you have complaints and things that annoy you, tell your spouse and leave it at that.
2) Status reports. Put everything you do in them north of taking a dump. Send them to everyone until they ask you not to. I was sending a status report out to a hundred and fifty people. Key learnings for the week, key accomplishments, some useful tidbits, and then laborious project status.
3) Do not ever, ever, ever say anything to anyone at work about how great it is that you work at home. Someone will get jealous and fix that little problem for you.
4) Be reachable and available and respond quickly all the frigging time. Carry a smartphone with internet, have a business line at home, and have everything there or accessible that you might have at work. The first time you simper "But I dont have a fax" or "my printer doesnt do double sided printing" you're hosed. People I worked with used to call me "Mr Always On, Always Available". Booyah.
If you wrap it up with having everyone know who you are, what you do, that you're a great guy that loves to work for the company, and they have a fairly positive view of you, you're golden. If nobody knows who you are, what you do or where you are, you're doomed. If you dont get yanked back into the office, you're going to get the crap end of the stick at review time.
By the way, 100% of this stuff is equally good to do when you work IN the office.
It'd be nice if people knew what they were talking about before they started moving their fingers...
Excess calories and inactivity cause weight gain and eventually type 2 in many people. You may most certainly fully reverse this by losing the weight you gained, eating smarter and exercising more.
Carbs? Other than having a world population that is so big that its dependent on grains, roots and whatnot to feed all these people, I'm not sure why we consume carbs that require processing to be edible.
Who I find funny are people who look at a macdonalds value meal and want to crucify the meat and cheese. Its the drink, fries and bun.
For quite some time we've been told by doctors to eat margarine and transfats instead of butter and lard. We were told eggs would kill us. We've been told to eat mostly grains, root vegetables and sugar laden fruits along with considerable amounts of dairy. For quite some time we were told that cigarettes were good for you. We even had special cigarettes for asthma sufferers. I wonder how that worked out.
As a result of all of these ridiculously serious missteps, we're all fat, have coronary problems and diabetes. 75 years ago before all of this dietary "improvement" these illnesses werent anywhere near as common.
Hasnt anyone noticed how we feed cattle? We let them eat grass and whatever else they can find along with some cheap feed thats even included parts of other cows. But when they're ready to butcher, we send them to a feedlot to gain weight and fat marbling. Eating what? Grains.
Diet-wise, we're doing almost everything backwards. Not buying it? Last year I was 50lbs overweight, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, not in particularly good condition. I stopped eating most carbohydrates (but I'm not militant about it), eating mostly pasture raised eggs and meat from a local farm. I raised my exercise level slightly (like 30 minutes of walking or using a wii fit for an hour). I've now lost 43 pounds, my blood pressure is actually a little low, and my blood sugar is so low I have to sip a little orange juice once in a while to stop feeling faint.
Besides eating good foods, look for the biggest nutritional and flavor punches. Lets get off the feedlot.
http://www.spacedoc.com/saturated_fat_is_good_for_you_1
http://www.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller38.1.html
http://www.menshealth.com/health/saturated-fat
I've always bought mostly used older games for my younger kids. Now of course they put single-use DLC in just about every game that enables a major portion of the game like online play or useful characters or portions of the game content.
So you have to spend $5-10 to get the DLC code, which just about makes up the difference in the cost of the new and used games. Which I know was the obvious intent, but here is the unintended consequence portion of the program.
If I buy a game with one-time DLC, I cant sell it for as much used as I could before they did that. So as far as I'm concerned the game brand new is worth less to me because its residual value is going to be worse. I also cant just go and install the game on some other console I own with a different xbox live ID.
Similarly, I wont pay as much for used games and I'd expect their prices to drift down a little.
In my instance, this attempted killing of the cheaper used games market isnt going to produce an "Awww, you got me. I'll just pony up $60 for a new game". Its going to produce me paying less for used games and either buying the codes or culturing the kids to play 90% of the game they have access to and moving on. Or we'll only buy 3-4 year old games that have dropped in price.
At the end of the day, if I'm left with no other options I'll just pirate 1/4 or 1/2 of the games to create my own offset. $60 is too much for a video game unless its some epic thing that'll take a month to play and have great replay value.
I suspect there are a whole range of people who can afford gaming due to the used market and will simply buy less or buy nothing.
Apparently you dont have a downdraft fan on your recycle bin.
Sigh. Its tired because despite obvious information to support the claim, people still dont want to admit it. But one can raise an awful lot of polish and functionality while employing slave labor and parting those easily tricked by great marketing from large amounts of their cash.
On black friday I bought a 4.1" motorola phone for $135 and pay $25 a month for unlimited internet and text plus 300 minutes talk.
I cant find an iphone 4s for less than a couple of hundred bucks and a 2 year contract where I pay at least $60-70 a month for limited internet, unlimited text and 300 minutes. Of course, if you want to own it outright, you're looking at $500+ to buy one.
I have extensively used an iphone 4s along with my own phone. Aside from not running itunes, the motorola phone runs every single app or a similar app in much the same way to perform exactly the same functions. It has a keypad, it makes and receives phone calls. It has a text app. It has a facebook app. It has a web browser.
Usually along this line someone wants to push their 'functionality' and 'polish' squishies. The real a-holes go for super squishies like 'elegant' and 'ease of use'.
Oh, and I almost forgot. All the playbooks and touchpads you could every have wanted to buy for under $250. I picked up a chinatab with about the same innards as the original ipad for $150 last year. Its a little bigger and thicker than the ipad but about the same size as the ipad3. It runs every single app or a similar app in much the same way to perform the same functions as any ipad I've ever used. I could buy it for $99 right now.
The thing you guys keep forgetting is that people use applications and an app on a mac, iphone, android tablet or a windows machine all look pretty much the same and work pretty much the same. Any inferred or vaporous benefits of the operating system dont seem to bring much to the party. I've yet to see android or ios leap to the forefront while I'm browsing the web, reading email or checking facebook and bring me any benefits. Not many people linger in the operating system screens enjoying all of this mystical functionality and polish that doesnt really exist.
Apple makes it easier for developers simply because they abandon older platforms and dont give operating system updates to them, and because there are very few variations in the supported platform.
This is simply a case of Google and Microsoft being arms suppliers and Apple offering a full closed, proprietary product offering. Now that Google looks to be wrapping up their motorola mobility acquisition and having improved their "market" offering, they should be able to offer the same limited hardware and platform products at a very competitive price. I wouldnt be shocked to see Amazon also launch a phone and a big tablet with a lot more features and the same one-stop-shopping, limited platform, stable service offerings. I'm betting that their solutions will cost about half of what Apples does.
People spending $600 on a phone or tablet and $2000 on a computer are over.
Yes, but you can huck them into a wood chipper or the recycle bin when they're old.
I thought it was only a troll if it wasnt true and the lie only perpetuated to inflame.
iPad, around $500-600. Any other tablet that I like just fine that does everything the ipad does are easily found for under $200.
21" imac, $1200, equivalent i5 desktop machine with far more ram and storage goes routinely for under $500 with the monitor.
15" i7 macbook, $1800, equivalent i7 laptop with more ram and storage can be had for under $600. Ha ha ha...they want $200 to bump it from 4 to 8GB of ram. What is that, like $30 on sale from newegg?
As far as whether they buy the software on the ipad/ipod/iphone? I dont have any broad numbers but everyone I know that has one has dozens and dozens of apps on it.
In any case, is this all really any sort of news? When you button up a platform and offer limited options and configurations and everything comes from the same company, its going to be easier to develop for and manage. So why doesnt apple software, apps, accessories and other stuff cost less than windows? After all, its a lot simpler to develop for.
It doesnt mean Android is a bad product or an ipad is especially great. Its just that the latter has a lot less permutations. If lack of choice and paying at least a 100% premium somehow turns out to be appealing in exchange for fewer things that could go wrong, I guess I'm missing that appeal. If I wanted that, I'd buy a single vendor stable platform.
You bet. Those folks are already used to spending two or three times as much on stuff that isnt even that great. Anyone could make money selling stuff to Apple consumers.
You prefer AMD to Intel due to thermal protection? You do realize that Intel cpu's have always had thermal protection, while AMD didnt include it for many, many years to save money? The number of intel cpu's that die from excess heat caused by the cpu is extremely low, while there have been thousands of AMD cpu's that have died from excess heat.
Its one thing to grasp at weak features to outline a preference. Its another thing to claim a benefit where there isnt any.
The cpu you had that 'melted' probably experienced user failure.
Ah, I just presumed that in spending $2700 per student that Apple products had to be involved. Because I could buy a desktop pc, a laptop, a tablet and a phone, all pretty decent stuff, and still have money leftover from $2700. In fact, I'd still have half of it.
But if they were mac products, I could see eating all of that on one desktop.
The same guy that'd support the overpriced, crappy apple machines.
Then replace them with powerful low cost computers. Apple doesnt make any of those.
Buying apple products for a school is a waste of money. Kids and teachers arent in need of retail technology therapy purchasing to help their self image.
Shoot, buy cheap components by the box full and get the older kids to construct the computers and teach the younger kids how to use them. Load them up with linux and windows. You know, the stuff they'll actually be using at work and most likely be buying for their home?
I've yet to see a well done study that shows that technology of any kind advances education. Besides enormous hardware and software costs, the planning, architecture, design and implementation of a strategy that properly integrates the technology into the lesson planning is complicated, expensive, and frankly requires more smarts than the average school IT guy can muster.
A great example of stupid school spending is happening in California schools all over the state right now. We're in the middle of a huge budget crunch. The governor plans to cut all school transportation. Our school superintendent says we'll be cutting PE and library headcount to zero soon. We're laying off teachers and class sizes are ballooning.
Whats the solution you say? Buy ipads for every class room! A running program right now is equipping all California class rooms with 5 ipads! Thats approximately $100K per school.
Why arent the ipads helping? First off, the schools break up the classes into reading groups. As far as I know, none of the schools in CA have 5 kids per reading group, ours has six. So when I volunteer, one kid has to wait for the other 5 to finish with the ipads, then they can go. The kids have to log into an account with a long complex user name and password, for security you know. Of course they cant remember it. The kids also easily get out of the testing applications and start playing games.
The mechanics are thus: we read the book and then answer a quiz on the ipad, which gives a score. That information then has to be transcribed onto paper because its not integrated into the other school education systems, and then re-entered elsewhere.
So the bottom line is that our nice relatively calm reading courses are now filled with "I dont wanna be the one who has to wait", half my time is spent fixing technical shenanigans, and the outcome is everyone doing the teaching is working harder for a lesser outcome.
So how about we hire teachers, buy books, if we're going to buy tablets buy 25 of the $69 or $99 ones and outfit it with apps that actually make life easier so every kid in the class has one? Maybe when the economy is flush and we have more money than we know what to do with, then we can buy overpriced apple do-dads for a small number of kids.
The first argument I get on bringing up the stupidity of this whole thing is that these are allegedly donated. Fine. Then one of the hundreds of education and political people involved with that size donation should have educated the donor on how he or she was wasting an awful lot of money on something that would actually be a negative as far as education of the children go. But I dont think they'd give a crap. Someone with a big heart and no understanding of education thought you could just throw ipads out there like Johnny Appleseed and the kids would just get smarter. Just like the ads say. Buy an ipad and your kid will instantly become a creative genius and learn automatically!
Ehh...no.
I was just saying the other day that I'd had three people driving a prius do ridiculously stupid and aggressive things to me in the past week. Now theres a study that proves its true!
I'd vote for incompetence. Probably nobody actually checked anything, they just relied on the automated results. When the onus isnt on you to do an effective job but rather on a random anonymous person who is the one on the hook for the money, just relax in your office for 8 hours a day and let the poor SOB prove he's innocent.
Now, PG&E adjusting their weather weighting on winter gas savings credits so I'm 1/100th of a therm over the limit to receive a 20% credit and so I dont get it...thats a bald faced lie.
Ah, you've gotta be kidding me. The cable/satellite companies and content owners are stumbling around liberally applying ineffective protectionism and half-assed policies. Eventually our $100 tv and $50 internet bills will turn into a $150 internet bill with the cable and satellite companies providing the bandwidth.
Unless they're idiots who still believe Jenny was right. These are parents who didn't listen to their doctors vs a quack and a playboy playmate. I'd presume they'd be lousy customers too.