You got screwed by a seller who didn't ship the item you paid them for. I don't see why this is PayPal's fault. Maybe PayPal didn't do enough to help you get your money back after the fact, but they weren't the ones that screwed you.
For the most part, I agree with you. The theater experience is getting hard to justify, cost wise. But there are a few points I want to make.
1) Many of us can't afford a huge home theater. I watch movies on a 27" TV with two external speakers. It's good enough for most movies, but huge movies like Braveheart or Lord of the Rings really deserve the big screen.
2) Don't blame the theaters for ticket prices. They break even on admission. They make virtually all of their profits on food. The movie studios are screwing the theaters over on what it costs to show a movie. The best example is the recent Godzilla. The studio (Sony IIRC) doubled their regular cost to the theaters and promised a gate similar to Independance Day (same creative team). When the theater execs finally saw the movie a week or so before it came out, there was a white collar riot where execs actually threw things and demanded their money back.
Several big theater chains (Lowes comes to mind) have failed recently, even with $8 tickets. Maybe if the studios would make more movies worth 8 bucks, they would get more butts in the seats.
I don't have the exact numbers, but I think the space shuttle computer is somewhere on par with the Mac Classic. I'm no fan of the space shuttle, but it does get people to space and back.
You don't need to land a probe on the surface to get microbes into the upper atmosphere. I don't know the names, but I'm pretty sure that the US has sent probes into the atomsphere as well as ditching orbiting craft into it. Even if those probes completely burned up on reentry, they still traveled through the very top levels of the atmosphere at relatively low temperatures.
Never mind the fact that Bush is nominating far right wing folks, knowing full well the Senate won't confirm any of them. Then he gets to point the finger at the Democrats for obstruction. Karl Rove is a damn genius. Does it bother anyone else that he runs the country?
Did you ever notice the Fi part of SciFi? That part stands for Fiction, as in "not real".
If you want real science shows, try Discovery and The Learning Channel.
If you're looking for a misnamed network, go to Comedy Central. It has evolved into the 18-30 male geek demographic network. They did bring us Crank Yankers, the funniest show I've seen this year, so I can't be too harsh on them.
I've talked to a lot of girls about this, and 9 times out of 10 pick up lines work against you. Girls can smell a canned line like a fart in a car. Even if its not a huge cliche, girls know that you've used the same line on 5 girls in the same bar. That makes them not feel special. If a girl doesn't feel special, then it's no time for love, Dr. Jones. The best thing to do is sit down next to a girl who is just about done with her drink. Say hi, tell her your name, and spend the next minute making sure there isn't something obviously horribly wrong with her. Then order a drink for yourself (chug whatever you had and ditch it before walking over...the little extra liquid courage can't hurt) and order another of whatever she's drinking for her. If you feel the need to use a "line", make it original and make it funny. If all else fails, try "I love those shoes". She has to have cool shoes on and she's going to think you're gay for a minute, but girls love it when guys notice thier shoes, become most of them are just staring at their boobs. Once you start talking to her, ask open ended questions and LISTEN to what she says. And always be polite. Ok, that's all I've got. Use this advice at your own risk, my geeky brethren. Good luck.
Actually, almost every drug company has gotten out of the vaccine business. The government is by far the largest buyer of vaccines and their budget would dictate how much they could pay. Companies couldn't make a profit selling for what the government was paying, so they just stopped doing it. Due to Wyeth-Ayerst dropping out of the tetanus vaccine market, there is almost none available in the country. Tetanus is a horrible disease that virtually nobody gets. Nobody gets it because up until now, the vaccine against it has been highly effective and rather inexpensive. That may be changing in the near future.
I love free markets, but for certain things "the market" isn't the answer. People's health and safety need to take precedence.
reference: http://archive.salon.com/tech/featur e/2001/03/08/t etanus/index.html - take the space out after you paste
I write code and I've let more bugs out than I could possibly remember. They happen, it's part of the game. But two things make this type of thing mock-worthy. 1) MS has more net worth than most countries. They need to be held to a standard that their size and resources dictates. 2) Bill has quite publicly stated that security is now their number one priority. I for one have not seen any improvement in that department.
People have argued about forcing MS to pay dividends for a long time. The founders decided a long time ago that a cash horde was more important than paying back investors a little at a time. History seems to have proven them right on that decision. Investors plunked down billion after billion knowing full well that the company just did not believe in dividends and they were fine with that. They knew that share price gains would make them more money than any dividend. Now that the price has stalled, people are looking at dividends as a way to make some money. That wasn't what they signed up for and MS shouldn't be forced to change the deal. And based on their past experiences with the government, they're not going to be forced into anything any time soon.
So do you still sleep in your old bedroom or did you move all the Christmas decorations out of the basement and set up a "bachelor pad" down there?
You read an article about MS lowering manufacturing costs on a hardware product that they're already losing their asses on, and you respond with the phrase "thought crime". And then someone else thinks you're on target and donates a mod point to make you "interesting". I would have chosen "breathless, unfounded Microsoft bashing using phrases from an excellent book that in no way apply".
I was always hoping that when Geordi or Data was sending the chronoton/tachyon burst that was going to set things straight after that week's temporal anomoly, that as soon as he hit the last button on the control panel some secondary character would just blink out of existence. The crew would look at each other, shrug, and go on with their business.
In a lot of the new 2/3/5 packs of cigarettes, they have customer surveys. Fill out the survey and say that you regularly smoke thier biggest competitor's brand. They will send you a handfull of coupons to try and get your business. If you respond that you smoke their brand already, they don't need to send you anything. Smokers are the number 1 brand consious consumers. Use that to your advantage.
It's not just that American business don't trust the US government. Europoean (and other foreign) businesses really don't trust the US government. I don't how much of it was proven, but people say that the NSA was stealing internal Airbus information and sending it to Boeing. Then on top of that, do you think that any foreign government would think for two seconds about buying software that the FBI had back door keys to?
I want to vouch for the HP 4000, not on price or speed, but on durability. My department was accidentally shipped one, which the dealer refused to take back because they didn't have any record of sending us one (duh). Since we never officially ordered it, it was not covered by our office service plan. For the next three years anywhere from 4-8 developers printed everything a normal developer prints, specs, cheat codes, whatever. We did nothing except put new toner in it probably 5 times a year. No cleaning, no upkeep, no nothing for three years.
Whenever you design any electrical product, you have to make priorities. Those priorities should be close or identical to the features that will cause consumers to pick your product over others. For all of the devices you mentioned at the bottom of your post, cell phones being #1, power consumption is a high design priority. For all of the devices you list at the top, power comes from a wall outlet. As far as the guys who designed your Tivo and UPS are concerned, your wall outlet is an unending source of free power. They don't pay your bills. And they can get away with that because not one person has ever looked a monitor salesman in the eye and said, "Well, I like that big Sony...but it draws and aweful lot of current...I'll go with the smaller one."
CPUs are a special case because they do care about power consumption but not really. They care in the sense that power turns into heat, and heat is bad. But again, nobody bases a CPU buying decision on power consumption per se.
And realistically, nothing is going to change until electricity gets many many times more expensive than it is now and power consumption moves up that priority list. But considering how short sighted US energy policy is since we elected Texas oilmen to the top two jobs in the country, it may not take that long.
I'm an American and I'm the first to admit that plenty of times Americans forget about or just don't care about the rest of the world (our leader worse than most). This is not the case for cell phones. Most people don't need a cell phone that works on multiple continents. If different standards are adopted in different countries, I don't think it's a big deal. We have different voltages and socket design, different TV standards and drive on different sides of the road, but things still work pretty well. If we've resisted the vastly superior metric system for about 200 years, we can probably hold out on GPRS. I would bet a dollar that we all end up with UMTS before too long.
Slashdot Mirror
You got screwed by a seller who didn't ship the item you paid them for. I don't see why this is PayPal's fault. Maybe PayPal didn't do enough to help you get your money back after the fact, but they weren't the ones that screwed you.
For the most part, I agree with you. The theater experience is getting hard to justify, cost wise. But there are a few points I want to make.
1) Many of us can't afford a huge home theater. I watch movies on a 27" TV with two external speakers. It's good enough for most movies, but huge movies like Braveheart or Lord of the Rings really deserve the big screen.
2) Don't blame the theaters for ticket prices. They break even on admission. They make virtually all of their profits on food. The movie studios are screwing the theaters over on what it costs to show a movie. The best example is the recent Godzilla. The studio (Sony IIRC) doubled their regular cost to the theaters and promised a gate similar to Independance Day (same creative team). When the theater execs finally saw the movie a week or so before it came out, there was a white collar riot where execs actually threw things and demanded their money back.
Several big theater chains (Lowes comes to mind) have failed recently, even with $8 tickets. Maybe if the studios would make more movies worth 8 bucks, they would get more butts in the seats.
-B
I don't have the exact numbers, but I think the space shuttle computer is somewhere on par with the Mac Classic. I'm no fan of the space shuttle, but it does get people to space and back.
-B
You don't need to land a probe on the surface to get microbes into the upper atmosphere. I don't know the names, but I'm pretty sure that the US has sent probes into the atomsphere as well as ditching orbiting craft into it. Even if those probes completely burned up on reentry, they still traveled through the very top levels of the atmosphere at relatively low temperatures.
-B
Never mind the fact that Bush is nominating far right wing folks, knowing full well the Senate won't confirm any of them. Then he gets to point the finger at the Democrats for obstruction. Karl Rove is a damn genius. Does it bother anyone else that he runs the country?
-B
Did you ever notice the Fi part of SciFi? That part stands for Fiction, as in "not real".
If you want real science shows, try Discovery and The Learning Channel.
If you're looking for a misnamed network, go to Comedy Central. It has evolved into the 18-30 male geek demographic network. They did bring us Crank Yankers, the funniest show I've seen this year, so I can't be too harsh on them.
-B
Have you ever watched a movie? The bad guy always taunts the hero with an anagram.
-B
AOD quote sigs rule.
-B
I've talked to a lot of girls about this, and 9 times out of 10 pick up lines work against you. Girls can smell a canned line like a fart in a car. Even if its not a huge cliche, girls know that you've used the same line on 5 girls in the same bar. That makes them not feel special. If a girl doesn't feel special, then it's no time for love, Dr. Jones. The best thing to do is sit down next to a girl who is just about done with her drink. Say hi, tell her your name, and spend the next minute making sure there isn't something obviously horribly wrong with her. Then order a drink for yourself (chug whatever you had and ditch it before walking over...the little extra liquid courage can't hurt) and order another of whatever she's drinking for her. If you feel the need to use a "line", make it original and make it funny. If all else fails, try "I love those shoes". She has to have cool shoes on and she's going to think you're gay for a minute, but girls love it when guys notice thier shoes, become most of them are just staring at their boobs. Once you start talking to her, ask open ended questions and LISTEN to what she says. And always be polite. Ok, that's all I've got. Use this advice at your own risk, my geeky brethren. Good luck.
-B
That was a promotion that I believe is over. I just signed up for a new service at NonStopGames.com that's similar. Check it out.
-B
And everyone in the computer lab could know your password by just looking at your hand. What a great idea.
My gesture password would certainly be the international sign for "jerk off".
-B
Actually, almost every drug company has gotten out of the vaccine business. The government is by far the largest buyer of vaccines and their budget would dictate how much they could pay. Companies couldn't make a profit selling for what the government was paying, so they just stopped doing it. Due to Wyeth-Ayerst dropping out of the tetanus vaccine market, there is almost none available in the country. Tetanus is a horrible disease that virtually nobody gets. Nobody gets it because up until now, the vaccine against it has been highly effective and rather inexpensive. That may be changing in the near future.
r e/2001/03/08/t etanus/index.html - take the space out after you paste
I love free markets, but for certain things "the market" isn't the answer. People's health and safety need to take precedence.
reference:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/featu
-B
Noise is insignificant, as long as the computer is in another room. When you sleep 10 feet from it, noise moves up the list quickly.
-B
Your sarcasm is noted.
I write code and I've let more bugs out than I could possibly remember. They happen, it's part of the game. But two things make this type of thing mock-worthy. 1) MS has more net worth than most countries. They need to be held to a standard that their size and resources dictates. 2) Bill has quite publicly stated that security is now their number one priority. I for one have not seen any improvement in that department.
-B
People have argued about forcing MS to pay dividends for a long time. The founders decided a long time ago that a cash horde was more important than paying back investors a little at a time. History seems to have proven them right on that decision. Investors plunked down billion after billion knowing full well that the company just did not believe in dividends and they were fine with that. They knew that share price gains would make them more money than any dividend. Now that the price has stalled, people are looking at dividends as a way to make some money. That wasn't what they signed up for and MS shouldn't be forced to change the deal. And based on their past experiences with the government, they're not going to be forced into anything any time soon.
Actually the white stuff in bird poop is urea, aka pee without the water. The brown stuff in the middle is feces, aka poop.
Back on topic, it would take a fiscal act of God to make MS bankrupt. They have an insane ammount of cash.
So do you still sleep in your old bedroom or did you move all the Christmas decorations out of the basement and set up a "bachelor pad" down there?
You read an article about MS lowering manufacturing costs on a hardware product that they're already losing their asses on, and you respond with the phrase "thought crime". And then someone else thinks you're on target and donates a mod point to make you "interesting". I would have chosen "breathless, unfounded Microsoft bashing using phrases from an excellent book that in no way apply".
Signet rings have been used to imprint wax seals on important communications for a long long time.
Very few things are actually new.
I was always hoping that when Geordi or Data was sending the chronoton/tachyon burst that was going to set things straight after that week's temporal anomoly, that as soon as he hit the last button on the control panel some secondary character would just blink out of existence. The crew would look at each other, shrug, and go on with their business.
In a lot of the new 2/3/5 packs of cigarettes, they have customer surveys. Fill out the survey and say that you regularly smoke thier biggest competitor's brand. They will send you a handfull of coupons to try and get your business. If you respond that you smoke their brand already, they don't need to send you anything. Smokers are the number 1 brand consious consumers. Use that to your advantage.
-B
It's not just that American business don't trust the US government. Europoean (and other foreign) businesses really don't trust the US government. I don't how much of it was proven, but people say that the NSA was stealing internal Airbus information and sending it to Boeing. Then on top of that, do you think that any foreign government would think for two seconds about buying software that the FBI had back door keys to?
-B
I want to vouch for the HP 4000, not on price or speed, but on durability. My department was accidentally shipped one, which the dealer refused to take back because they didn't have any record of sending us one (duh). Since we never officially ordered it, it was not covered by our office service plan. For the next three years anywhere from 4-8 developers printed everything a normal developer prints, specs, cheat codes, whatever. We did nothing except put new toner in it probably 5 times a year. No cleaning, no upkeep, no nothing for three years.
-B
Whenever you design any electrical product, you have to make priorities. Those priorities should be close or identical to the features that will cause consumers to pick your product over others. For all of the devices you mentioned at the bottom of your post, cell phones being #1, power consumption is a high design priority. For all of the devices you list at the top, power comes from a wall outlet. As far as the guys who designed your Tivo and UPS are concerned, your wall outlet is an unending source of free power. They don't pay your bills. And they can get away with that because not one person has ever looked a monitor salesman in the eye and said, "Well, I like that big Sony...but it draws and aweful lot of current...I'll go with the smaller one."
CPUs are a special case because they do care about power consumption but not really. They care in the sense that power turns into heat, and heat is bad. But again, nobody bases a CPU buying decision on power consumption per se.
And realistically, nothing is going to change until electricity gets many many times more expensive than it is now and power consumption moves up that priority list. But considering how short sighted US energy policy is since we elected Texas oilmen to the top two jobs in the country, it may not take that long.
-B
No, it's just that the Danish have something that Santa Clarans don't, big open pieces of land that aren't insanely expensive.
-B
I'm an American and I'm the first to admit that plenty of times Americans forget about or just don't care about the rest of the world (our leader worse than most). This is not the case for cell phones. Most people don't need a cell phone that works on multiple continents. If different standards are adopted in different countries, I don't think it's a big deal. We have different voltages and socket design, different TV standards and drive on different sides of the road, but things still work pretty well. If we've resisted the vastly superior metric system for about 200 years, we can probably hold out on GPRS. I would bet a dollar that we all end up with UMTS before too long.
-B