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Well, I would expect that if I do what I should like pay promptly and give a valid shipping address and promptly answer any questions a seller might have, then my part of the deal is done. If the product arrives unreasonably late or if there is a problem where a product is broken and the seller is unresponsive to giving a replacement or refund, or I have some other negative experience as a buyer, then how is retaliatory negative feedback warranted? I understand that things in a transaction can go wrong but if the seller will work with me, I'm not going to get whiny and leave bad feedback just because I'm pissed. But if they won't respond to e-mails, or I have to send over my shipping address 4 times (as the other reply to your post mentioned) then I think I've had a valid negative feedback experience.
I definitely agree that the feedback system is flawed, in more ways than one, though I have not been the victim of fraud. I have done a very small amount of buying and selling on eBay (like less than ten auctions and a few "Buy It Now"s, and I'm usually a buyer not seller). However, I still pride myself on my 100% rating because I do the right thing. But the fact that a single person could ruin that (1 negative with less than 10 transactions would be a big hit to the percentage of positive). And certainly, I shouldn't have to worry about negative feedback if I always do the right thing. However, I was shopping eBay for something recently and the seller had a blurb there about how great his customer service is, etc. followed by something to the effect of (paraphrasing) "My customer service is so good that there is absolutely no reason to leave negative feedback. Anyone leaving negative feedback will cause me to leave them negative feedback in return". Now, wtf? It seemed to be a decent auction, decent seller rating (surprise), good product price but not low enough to trigger a scam alarm. So, all I could do at that point was just pass it up. Certainly this is no loss to me. Its a loss to the seller and to eBay, but it got me to thinking that my feedback rating is so precious to me that I had actually become timid. There has to be a better way for eBay to be more proactive in resolving the fraud issues, but also in providing a better feedback mechanism that can't be used like blackmail.
If they're recording me and listen later, whatever, but I would be seriously pissed if I was on hold and a live person was sitting there listening. Its one thing if the rep goes off to find something out and puts me on hold, but it really sucks when I'm still waiting for the first contact with a person during the call sitting there on hold for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever. Now, to find out that maybe there's some QA person listening pisses me off. How about instead of paying someone to monitor the calls for QA, hire another friggin' person to answer the damn call so I'm not sitting there for an hour? I always assumed the calls were just recorded when they give that little disclaimer at the beginning.
How did this get modded "Informative"? The fact that Spaceship One made it to space tells me that Burt Rutan and team did what was required to get it there, repeated the feat, and pocketed the $10,000,000. Without proper academic scrutiny, it's not valid to credit stem cells for allowing a paralyzed woman to walk again. As another poster mentioned, perhaps the woman healed naturally (unlikely, but not impossible, right?) Scaled Composites doesn't need academic scrutiny to prove they did what they did. The techniques they developed in taking the X Prize will be certainly reviewed and analyzed by scientists as the technology is applied in the future but regardless of the findings, that doesn't change their achievement.
The Watchmen is much more than a simple comic book. I'm not a comic book geek at all. I read the Watchmen in college in the mid 90's as part of a literature course. We spent a lot of time on it and I thought it was great. The professor referred to The Watchmen as a "graphic novel". I don't know if that's just fancy talk for "comic book", but The Watchmen struck me as something that was much more than some ordinary superhero comic. So, I guess my point is that you don't really need to be deep into the comic book world to have heard of or read this work.
I understand your point about wanting to know if someone gets hurt or sick, but the difference is that I'm not going to live my life attached to a phone in case someone gets hurt or sick. I have a cell phone, in fact, I replaced my land line with a cell this year, and I use it. But, I have no issue with turning it off and being out of contact for periods of time. I'm 30 years old and 10 years ago this was never even an issue, as others have pointed out in this thread. I don't understand why everyone needs to be in constant contact now (I'm not talking about doctors or people like that who need to be in contact all the time).
Your point about putting the phone on vibrate is fine, except many people don't do that. That's why we're having this discussion in the first place.
I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of hearing people whining about how they can't be out of touch. They way I see it, if a family member dies when I'm in the theater, then they'll still be dead when I get out. If someone I know has an emergency, then I would hope they'd have enough sense to call 911, instead of calling me. When I walk into a theater with my phone in my pocket, I turn it *off*, because there just isn't any reason that I want to be bothered in the middle of a movie that's costing me $9+.
I'm somewhat similar to the description in the oringial question, except I don't think I'd ever refer to myself as "uniquely bright", and I'm certainly no genius.
My similarity occurs in the breadth of interests I have, and the approach I took in high school and college. I am working as a software engineer and am pretty happy doing it. But my first degree was in criminal justice. I enjoyed that just as much. I think, as the original poster, I like learning stuff, but I didn't really like school so much. Don't get me wrong. I didn't have any bad experiences in school and I didn't dislike it, mostly. But, my grades *definitely* could have been better. My approach to college was, that I'd pay attention and do well in the courses I was interested in or when I perceived a course as being "important" to my career interests. This sounds like a crappy attitude, but I firmly believe that there's no point in spending time doing something you don't want to, just because you're *supposed* to. Of course, this doesn't apply to the normal obligations in life and all. If you have a family or other obligations, then of course, you better be showing up for work and have a good job and all that.
It all comes down to how much you want to trade to be able to pursue your interests. I'm an avid golfer and have *seriously* considered leaving a good job to pursue golf as a career. I'd make a fraction of what I do now, but its almost like I wouldn't be able to stand living out my life never having tried it out. And it has nothing to do with not liking my job or not having an aptitude for it or whatever. Its like a constant pursuit of happiness or something. Its probably more of a personality flaw than anything, because even if I completely changed careers to pursue another interest, I'd probably be looking for some other path in a few years anyway. Hell, I even considered going back to college part time and getting a degree in history, just because it interests me. That's something I probably wouldn't really pursue because it's something I can do on my own. I'm also interested in learning languages and writing a novel. There's not enough time to do all the crap I'd like to try out.
So, I guess that my only advice to the original poster is do whatever the hell you want that makes you happy, doesn't affect anyone else negatively (like don't be mugging people or something:-), and gets you what you want out of life. Oh, and I'd probably also avoid going around and telling people how bright you are, because people have a knack for figuring out that sort of thing on their own.
On the Hidden Fortress DVD, there's an intro piece where George Lucas himself sits there and says how he was influenced by Kurosawa, and specifically by Hidden Fortress. Mainly the idea of the droids, and the idea of getting the princess to safety.
I'm going hiking in grizzly country this summer and this should do nicely. Along with the 40-50 lbs. of gear I already had, I'll throw in a 147lb grizzly-proof suit! Plus, it should help if I get run over by a car in the wilderness. I hear that's a real problem.
I said I wasn't stressed when I worked on the golf course, genius. My point was that I had a low paying, exhausting job that was not stressful compared to the high paying, sit-on-my-ass programming job I have now.
Hah! Believe me when I tell you, there's a point in your life that isn't too far from where you are now that you'll be missing college. That assumes that you're having a decent college experience already. If so, then you're going to miss that lifestyle at some point. Enjoy it while you can. This certainly doesn't take any other circumstances into account, like if you have to work to support a family or something. Don't worry too much about passing on opportunities right now. There's time to think about that later.
Just because life somewhere else in the world sucks way worse, that doesn't mean that the stress that someone feels should be discounted.
Modern living is, in fact, very stressful. When I was in college, I worked at a golf course. That work was hard at times. The days were long. I'd go home filthy and exhausted. It was hard work for low pay, but with none of the associated responsibility that I have now. I didn't experience the kind of stress that I experience now as a programmer with all the deadlines and other associated issues. Plus there's all the hectic running around in life outside of work. And I don't even have a family. I imagine it only gets more stressful. That being said, sure, I'd rather have my life that to be scrounging for food in a third world country. But don't tell me that I have nothing to be stressed about just because someone is worse off than I am.
I've often thought of leaving it all behind to go somewhere and just work some low stress job. In fact, I actually kind of miss my golf course job. It was outdoors which was nice. The work was simple, from a mental perspective. And, I got to play golf for free. If I could make enough to have the standard of living that I desire, then I'd go back to it. But that won't ever happen.
I love open source and appreciate what open source developers do. (Here it comes...) My one annoying thing is the amount of dependencies involved in getting something to work. If I want to install and run Project X, it really bothers me when I have to go and download/configure/install dependencies A through W just to get to X. As a programmer/linux weenie, I can get through it, but the point is, I don't really want to. I almost wish I could download a huge precompiled binary of Project X. Give me statically linked libraries and all that. I just want some convienience. I'd even take a huge source tarball with all the dependent libraries in the tree, so I don't have to fuss with different versions and all that.
This isn't meant as a knock on the people who work open source projects. I really have a lot of respect for people who do that. But this sort of stuff can't get past us in the geek community and out into the larger community until issues like this are addressed IMHO. There were some other posts that indicated that open source projects are not meant for the non-geeks. Well, I can only say that it seems true at this point.
...the empty lots littered with needles, homeless people, trash, and crack vials would become lush fairways. Sounds like property values are on the way up!
So, would you rather pay $2 per channel and only get the 30 or so channels you watch, or $40 and get 300 channels? I know I'd opt for the first
That would be great if it turned out that I wasn't paying anything for the 290 channels of stuff I don't care about. I exaggerate when I say I only want 10 channels...maybe its 20, but still. I realize that DirecTV and DISH are only serving up the same shitburger that they're forced to eat, but I don't have to like it. If I have to pay something for the rest of the stations that I don't want, then it annoys me (but only mildly, really). Its a crock that I have to support some wacky niche stations just to get the ones I want. If it turns out that out of my $70/month, the channels I want would only cost me $40 in a per-station system, then I think I'd be much happier doing that. And since MythTV became a part of my TV viewing life, I'm really not getting my money's worth. Channel surfing is a thing of the past;-)
Dish and Direct TV both should be forced to carry programming on a RAND basis. Their customers should be able to choose what they want with a finer grained degree than they do now.
Amen to that. I've had DirecTV for years now I've felt that way since the beginning. It has always annoyed me that I have to pay a ton of money to get the 10 channels that I really want, just because I can't mix and match the plans to get what I want. If I want the Golf Channel, I have to get the stupid local sports package with crap that I'll never watch. Oh, and to top it off, I live in the Philadelphia area so I can't even get my local sports station (Comcast Sportsnet) because Comcast won't allow it on the dish (for obvious reasons). In the end, the consumers always get the shaft, especially in these corporate pissing contests.
Sounds like a nice (rather ambitious) idea. But living in a somewhat rural area, I'll take my grain of salt. I can see it coming along when cable TV, DSL, and decent cell phone service finally do.
When the cost gets out of control, I can just see the number crunchers saying "well, we can avoid $X by not running fiber all those miles to only serve a few people.
I've had DirecTv since it was virtually brand new. I can't think of a negative thing to say about it.
The weather outages are virtually a non issue for me. It only seems to happen during heavy snow or during heavy thunderstorms, and its typically not for longer than a few minutes. It happens maybe a few times a year, that I notice. I can't recall ever having an outage for any other reason, which is more than you can say for cable.
Another thing I have to say, is that customer service has always been outstanding with DirecTv, in my experience. You can pretty much do everything like pay the bill and change programming online these days, but in the few times I've had to call, the service was good and they didn't treat me like I was wasting their time (another area where cable lacks in a lot of cases).
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Godwin's Law in just over an hour....must be an effect of the Christmas cheer. (Sorry for using the C-word).
Well, I would expect that if I do what I should like pay promptly and give a valid shipping address and promptly answer any questions a seller might have, then my part of the deal is done. If the product arrives unreasonably late or if there is a problem where a product is broken and the seller is unresponsive to giving a replacement or refund, or I have some other negative experience as a buyer, then how is retaliatory negative feedback warranted? I understand that things in a transaction can go wrong but if the seller will work with me, I'm not going to get whiny and leave bad feedback just because I'm pissed. But if they won't respond to e-mails, or I have to send over my shipping address 4 times (as the other reply to your post mentioned) then I think I've had a valid negative feedback experience.
I definitely agree that the feedback system is flawed, in more ways than one, though I have not been the victim of fraud. I have done a very small amount of buying and selling on eBay (like less than ten auctions and a few "Buy It Now"s, and I'm usually a buyer not seller). However, I still pride myself on my 100% rating because I do the right thing. But the fact that a single person could ruin that (1 negative with less than 10 transactions would be a big hit to the percentage of positive). And certainly, I shouldn't have to worry about negative feedback if I always do the right thing. However, I was shopping eBay for something recently and the seller had a blurb there about how great his customer service is, etc. followed by something to the effect of (paraphrasing) "My customer service is so good that there is absolutely no reason to leave negative feedback. Anyone leaving negative feedback will cause me to leave them negative feedback in return". Now, wtf? It seemed to be a decent auction, decent seller rating (surprise), good product price but not low enough to trigger a scam alarm. So, all I could do at that point was just pass it up. Certainly this is no loss to me. Its a loss to the seller and to eBay, but it got me to thinking that my feedback rating is so precious to me that I had actually become timid. There has to be a better way for eBay to be more proactive in resolving the fraud issues, but also in providing a better feedback mechanism that can't be used like blackmail.
I've nearly given up on C++ as an Effective language.
;-)
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
Gee...I never would have guessed...
If they're recording me and listen later, whatever, but I would be seriously pissed if I was on hold and a live person was sitting there listening. Its one thing if the rep goes off to find something out and puts me on hold, but it really sucks when I'm still waiting for the first contact with a person during the call sitting there on hold for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever. Now, to find out that maybe there's some QA person listening pisses me off. How about instead of paying someone to monitor the calls for QA, hire another friggin' person to answer the damn call so I'm not sitting there for an hour? I always assumed the calls were just recorded when they give that little disclaimer at the beginning.
And just hope they've never heard of cron.
How did this get modded "Informative"? The fact that Spaceship One made it to space tells me that Burt Rutan and team did what was required to get it there, repeated the feat, and pocketed the $10,000,000. Without proper academic scrutiny, it's not valid to credit stem cells for allowing a paralyzed woman to walk again. As another poster mentioned, perhaps the woman healed naturally (unlikely, but not impossible, right?) Scaled Composites doesn't need academic scrutiny to prove they did what they did. The techniques they developed in taking the X Prize will be certainly reviewed and analyzed by scientists as the technology is applied in the future but regardless of the findings, that doesn't change their achievement.
The Watchmen is much more than a simple comic book. I'm not a comic book geek at all. I read the Watchmen in college in the mid 90's as part of a literature course. We spent a lot of time on it and I thought it was great. The professor referred to The Watchmen as a "graphic novel". I don't know if that's just fancy talk for "comic book", but The Watchmen struck me as something that was much more than some ordinary superhero comic. So, I guess my point is that you don't really need to be deep into the comic book world to have heard of or read this work.
I understand your point about wanting to know if someone gets hurt or sick, but the difference is that I'm not going to live my life attached to a phone in case someone gets hurt or sick. I have a cell phone, in fact, I replaced my land line with a cell this year, and I use it. But, I have no issue with turning it off and being out of contact for periods of time. I'm 30 years old and 10 years ago this was never even an issue, as others have pointed out in this thread. I don't understand why everyone needs to be in constant contact now (I'm not talking about doctors or people like that who need to be in contact all the time).
Your point about putting the phone on vibrate is fine, except many people don't do that. That's why we're having this discussion in the first place.
I couldn't agree more. I'm tired of hearing people whining about how they can't be out of touch. They way I see it, if a family member dies when I'm in the theater, then they'll still be dead when I get out. If someone I know has an emergency, then I would hope they'd have enough sense to call 911, instead of calling me. When I walk into a theater with my phone in my pocket, I turn it *off*, because there just isn't any reason that I want to be bothered in the middle of a movie that's costing me $9+.
I'm somewhat similar to the description in the oringial question, except I don't think I'd ever refer to myself as "uniquely bright", and I'm certainly no genius.
:-), and gets you what you want out of life. Oh, and I'd probably also avoid going around and telling people how bright you are, because people have a knack for figuring out that sort of thing on their own.
My similarity occurs in the breadth of interests I have, and the approach I took in high school and college. I am working as a software engineer and am pretty happy doing it. But my first degree was in criminal justice. I enjoyed that just as much. I think, as the original poster, I like learning stuff, but I didn't really like school so much. Don't get me wrong. I didn't have any bad experiences in school and I didn't dislike it, mostly. But, my grades *definitely* could have been better. My approach to college was, that I'd pay attention and do well in the courses I was interested in or when I perceived a course as being "important" to my career interests. This sounds like a crappy attitude, but I firmly believe that there's no point in spending time doing something you don't want to, just because you're *supposed* to. Of course, this doesn't apply to the normal obligations in life and all. If you have a family or other obligations, then of course, you better be showing up for work and have a good job and all that.
It all comes down to how much you want to trade to be able to pursue your interests. I'm an avid golfer and have *seriously* considered leaving a good job to pursue golf as a career. I'd make a fraction of what I do now, but its almost like I wouldn't be able to stand living out my life never having tried it out. And it has nothing to do with not liking my job or not having an aptitude for it or whatever. Its like a constant pursuit of happiness or something. Its probably more of a personality flaw than anything, because even if I completely changed careers to pursue another interest, I'd probably be looking for some other path in a few years anyway. Hell, I even considered going back to college part time and getting a degree in history, just because it interests me. That's something I probably wouldn't really pursue because it's something I can do on my own. I'm also interested in learning languages and writing a novel. There's not enough time to do all the crap I'd like to try out.
So, I guess that my only advice to the original poster is do whatever the hell you want that makes you happy, doesn't affect anyone else negatively (like don't be mugging people or something
Obviously, the dinosaurs were ignorant of the "Duck And Cover" method for surviving an incinerating holocaust. Or is that only for nukes?
On the Hidden Fortress DVD, there's an intro piece where George Lucas himself sits there and says how he was influenced by Kurosawa, and specifically by Hidden Fortress. Mainly the idea of the droids, and the idea of getting the princess to safety.
I'm going hiking in grizzly country this summer and this should do nicely. Along with the 40-50 lbs. of gear I already had, I'll throw in a 147lb grizzly-proof suit! Plus, it should help if I get run over by a car in the wilderness. I hear that's a real problem.
I said I wasn't stressed when I worked on the golf course, genius. My point was that I had a low paying, exhausting job that was not stressful compared to the high paying, sit-on-my-ass programming job I have now.
Hah! Believe me when I tell you, there's a point in your life that isn't too far from where you are now that you'll be missing college. That assumes that you're having a decent college experience already. If so, then you're going to miss that lifestyle at some point. Enjoy it while you can. This certainly doesn't take any other circumstances into account, like if you have to work to support a family or something. Don't worry too much about passing on opportunities right now. There's time to think about that later.
Just because life somewhere else in the world sucks way worse, that doesn't mean that the stress that someone feels should be discounted.
Modern living is, in fact, very stressful. When I was in college, I worked at a golf course. That work was hard at times. The days were long. I'd go home filthy and exhausted. It was hard work for low pay, but with none of the associated responsibility that I have now. I didn't experience the kind of stress that I experience now as a programmer with all the deadlines and other associated issues. Plus there's all the hectic running around in life outside of work. And I don't even have a family. I imagine it only gets more stressful. That being said, sure, I'd rather have my life that to be scrounging for food in a third world country. But don't tell me that I have nothing to be stressed about just because someone is worse off than I am.
I've often thought of leaving it all behind to go somewhere and just work some low stress job. In fact, I actually kind of miss my golf course job. It was outdoors which was nice. The work was simple, from a mental perspective. And, I got to play golf for free. If I could make enough to have the standard of living that I desire, then I'd go back to it. But that won't ever happen.
I love open source and appreciate what open source developers do. (Here it comes...) My one annoying thing is the amount of dependencies involved in getting something to work. If I want to install and run Project X, it really bothers me when I have to go and download/configure/install dependencies A through W just to get to X. As a programmer/linux weenie, I can get through it, but the point is, I don't really want to. I almost wish I could download a huge precompiled binary of Project X. Give me statically linked libraries and all that. I just want some convienience. I'd even take a huge source tarball with all the dependent libraries in the tree, so I don't have to fuss with different versions and all that.
This isn't meant as a knock on the people who work open source projects. I really have a lot of respect for people who do that. But this sort of stuff can't get past us in the geek community and out into the larger community until issues like this are addressed IMHO. There were some other posts that indicated that open source projects are not meant for the non-geeks. Well, I can only say that it seems true at this point.
...the empty lots littered with needles, homeless people, trash, and crack vials would become lush fairways. Sounds like property values are on the way up!
Easy on the paranoia....the approximate release time frame for Episodes I-III has been known for years, since before Episode I.
So, would you rather pay $2 per channel and only get the 30 or so channels you watch, or $40 and get 300 channels? I know I'd opt for the first
;-)
That would be great if it turned out that I wasn't paying anything for the 290 channels of stuff I don't care about. I exaggerate when I say I only want 10 channels...maybe its 20, but still. I realize that DirecTV and DISH are only serving up the same shitburger that they're forced to eat, but I don't have to like it. If I have to pay something for the rest of the stations that I don't want, then it annoys me (but only mildly, really). Its a crock that I have to support some wacky niche stations just to get the ones I want. If it turns out that out of my $70/month, the channels I want would only cost me $40 in a per-station system, then I think I'd be much happier doing that. And since MythTV became a part of my TV viewing life, I'm really not getting my money's worth. Channel surfing is a thing of the past
Dish and Direct TV both should be forced to carry programming on a RAND basis. Their customers should be able to choose what they want with a finer grained degree than they do now.
Amen to that. I've had DirecTV for years now I've felt that way since the beginning. It has always annoyed me that I have to pay a ton of money to get the 10 channels that I really want, just because I can't mix and match the plans to get what I want. If I want the Golf Channel, I have to get the stupid local sports package with crap that I'll never watch. Oh, and to top it off, I live in the Philadelphia area so I can't even get my local sports station (Comcast Sportsnet) because Comcast won't allow it on the dish (for obvious reasons). In the end, the consumers always get the shaft, especially in these corporate pissing contests.
Sounds like a nice (rather ambitious) idea. But living in a somewhat rural area, I'll take my grain of salt. I can see it coming along when cable TV, DSL, and decent cell phone service finally do.
When the cost gets out of control, I can just see the number crunchers saying "well, we can avoid $X by not running fiber all those miles to only serve a few people.
I've had DirecTv since it was virtually brand new. I can't think of a negative thing to say about it.
The weather outages are virtually a non issue for me. It only seems to happen during heavy snow or during heavy thunderstorms, and its typically not for longer than a few minutes. It happens maybe a few times a year, that I notice. I can't recall ever having an outage for any other reason, which is more than you can say for cable.
Another thing I have to say, is that customer service has always been outstanding with DirecTv, in my experience. You can pretty much do everything like pay the bill and change programming online these days, but in the few times I've had to call, the service was good and they didn't treat me like I was wasting their time (another area where cable lacks in a lot of cases).