Your post triggered me to look up the whole pledge of allegiance thing, since the very concept has always seemed quite alien to me. Now, the funny thing is that according to wikipedia, not only was the pledge written by a damn socialist, he didn't even put in the words "under god", which had to be officially added in the 1950's!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to call Glenn Beck, the US public school system is indoctrinating children with socialist values! Oh, wait...
Heh, same thing here (Europe). I really loved what we were allowed to do to achieve customer satisfaction, and have been a loyal customer myself ever since.
Ehmm, in the previous situation your typical clueless user had no idea there was such a thing as an alternative browser and thus among this specific group use of IE was 100%. Care to explain how presenting them with a choice will increase that number?
Because there's bound to be a company that produces crosses and once we crucify *their* CEO we'd get stuck in a recursive loop as the invisible hand of the free market pops out more and more new companies to produce crosses to meet the demand.
Good luck maintaining those speeds over any significant distance and still arriving in a presentable fashion though;-)
I can out-accelerate a lot of scooters and mopeds on my bike as well. Only downside is that as a bonus you get to outstink your colleagues unless you hit the showers after arriving at work.
Wow, these things are also monopolies in the US? I live in a country smaller than most of your states and I can pick from any of over a dozen different companies for my electricity or gas...you know, the whole free market thing you guys seem to be so fond of?
Of course the actual grid is a different company from the one selling the product...in theory(laws go fully into effect at the end of this year).
Note that changing provider does not constitute an interruption in service, it's just a matter of 1 day paying company X and the next day it'll be company Y.
Switzerland...a country full of mountains where the majority of households has an assault rifle and 2/3's of the male population has military training.
I was rather surprised the first time I got a mail from a business associate saying he wasn't going to be available for a few weeks, on account of him going off to crawl through mud, shoot heavy weapons and other fun activities. Not quite something you'd expect the typical porsche driving hot-shot business exec to do, let alone enjoy.
Google is a large corporation. The have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. So the whole "don't be evil" thing got dialed way back when they went public (remember when everyone wanted them to go public?) US law provides huge liability to corporations who pass up money-making opportunities for the sake of morality in the form of shareholder lawsuits.
You know, I keep hearing this over and over, yet I can't find anything to actually support it. Does US law actually say that a public corporation must at all times maximize profits over any other consideration? And in what time period?
Judging from the statements made during the IPO, google's message basically boiled down to "We're taking a long term view, and we will keep on doing things the way we like to do them. If you don't like it get shares in something else. There's even a good chance our shares will drop after the IPO and stay below that point for quite a while".
I'm not a parent nor am I prone to violence, but I can only think of one proper response to finding out some jackass has been secretly watching kids through school-issued laptops: a swift fist to the face.
Followed by criminal charges for both the fist and the watching and heck, it would be worth it...
The only exception really is EA, and those fuckers deserve a fiery death (in my opinion your honor)
And yet EA is the company that has toned the DRM way down and has opted for a carrot instead of a stick in the form of online registration for extra content etc.
I dislike them and their past as much as a lot of oldschool gamers, but among the really big boys they're one of the few that seem to understand that in order to sell a product it's probably not a bad idea if it's something your customers actually want.
Now if you'll excuse me, Commander Sheppard has to go and do some asskicking...
To tap into both your and the GP's post, I've actually used eg Perl to do a quick mockup of something I want to write in C down the road. That way I can focus on the actual problem and how to go about solving it first, and deal with stuff like memory allocation, horribly string processing and the other joys that pure C brings to the table.
Do you believe in heaven and live a good christian life?
No and yes. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and all that claptrap. Of course living a good "christian life" as depicted by modern christians isn't quite the same thing as the one ascribed to Christ himself in the bible, but that's a minor detail.
The parabel stands though. Just because there isn't a beared guy in the sky or emissions commitee that is going to punish you for not doing so doesn't making doing the right thing a bad idea.
The banking sector aren't that dissimilar from quantum physicists... they deal with gigantic magnitudes of imaginary "wealth" that ceases to exists as soon as someone actually scrutinizes the figures and collapses the waveform, causing it all to disappear.
Still at least we've managed to capture the Madoff Particle.
Yay, thanks for that. Now I'm scared to check my bank account balance. So long as I don't look, the money might still be there...
The great software writer Benjamin Franklin already wrote: They who can give up essential freedom to obtain a little temporary security, deserve neither freedom nor security.
And if the poor man knew how often that line would be quoted (badly or not) in a context that has absolutely nothing to do with what he meant, he'd be spinning in his grave fast enough to provide the entire planet with energy and knock us out of orbit at the same time.
Busses and trains tend not to stop in front of one's driveway/place of work, requiring one to at least self-propel to *some* extent to make use of them.
I walk/cycle about 2 clicks to take the train, with quite some luggage at times. Makes for excellent exercise;-)
I'm one of those that was very disappointed that I would even have to log into BNet just to play Diablo. What I find most amusing out of all of this is that the 'social aspect' that the younger crowd extols as being the be all end all of platforms, turns out more social misfits than I've seen in my life. Younger people are simply socially awkward in many aspects these days. They lack basic social skills. They get so used to hiding behind an IP address, that they just don't know how to interact very well when they are face to face with a real person.
Interesting. I somehow keep finding myself hooking up with people I meet while playing games online, going out for a few beers and on occasion waking up on the right side of the wrong bed.
Yes, there's 14 year old dickwads out there. There's also legions of bona-fide geeks in their 20's and 30's having a blast. A *good* social (gaming) network allows you to filter out the first group and have tons of fun with the second.
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Your post triggered me to look up the whole pledge of allegiance thing, since the very concept has always seemed quite alien to me. Now, the funny thing is that according to wikipedia, not only was the pledge written by a damn socialist, he didn't even put in the words "under god", which had to be officially added in the 1950's!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to call Glenn Beck, the US public school system is indoctrinating children with socialist values! Oh, wait...
Hell's fielding an olympic team this year then? Awesome!
Heh, same thing here (Europe). I really loved what we were allowed to do to achieve customer satisfaction, and have been a loyal customer myself ever since.
It's so manufacturers rightly don't have to cover warranty repairs for your accidental swim in the lake.
Hey, I resent that. I jumped in that lake on purpose you insensitive clod!
"Yes, we normally cover fire. However, this particular damage seems to have been caused by gunfire. From a bear. Which is clearly an act of nature."
Ehmm, in the previous situation your typical clueless user had no idea there was such a thing as an alternative browser and thus among this specific group use of IE was 100%. Care to explain how presenting them with a choice will increase that number?
Because there's bound to be a company that produces crosses and once we crucify *their* CEO we'd get stuck in a recursive loop as the invisible hand of the free market pops out more and more new companies to produce crosses to meet the demand.
Good luck maintaining those speeds over any significant distance and still arriving in a presentable fashion though ;-)
I can out-accelerate a lot of scooters and mopeds on my bike as well. Only downside is that as a bonus you get to outstink your colleagues unless you hit the showers after arriving at work.
Wow, these things are also monopolies in the US? I live in a country smaller than most of your states and I can pick from any of over a dozen different companies for my electricity or gas...you know, the whole free market thing you guys seem to be so fond of?
Of course the actual grid is a different company from the one selling the product...in theory(laws go fully into effect at the end of this year).
Note that changing provider does not constitute an interruption in service, it's just a matter of 1 day paying company X and the next day it'll be company Y.
I can almost imagine that robot driving around looking for dropped newspapers to solve the puzzles :P
Or worse...sitting outside a newspaper outlet and looking really really sad at people till it gets a fresh puzzle.
Switzerland...a country full of mountains where the majority of households has an assault rifle and 2/3's of the male population has military training.
I was rather surprised the first time I got a mail from a business associate saying he wasn't going to be available for a few weeks, on account of him going off to crawl through mud, shoot heavy weapons and other fun activities. Not quite something you'd expect the typical porsche driving hot-shot business exec to do, let alone enjoy.
Google is a large corporation. The have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. So the whole "don't be evil" thing got dialed way back when they went public (remember when everyone wanted them to go public?) US law provides huge liability to corporations who pass up money-making opportunities for the sake of morality in the form of shareholder lawsuits.
You know, I keep hearing this over and over, yet I can't find anything to actually support it. Does US law actually say that a public corporation must at all times maximize profits over any other consideration? And in what time period?
Judging from the statements made during the IPO, google's message basically boiled down to "We're taking a long term view, and we will keep on doing things the way we like to do them. If you don't like it get shares in something else. There's even a good chance our shares will drop after the IPO and stay below that point for quite a while".
I'm not a parent nor am I prone to violence, but I can only think of one proper response to finding out some jackass has been secretly watching kids through school-issued laptops: a swift fist to the face.
Followed by criminal charges for both the fist and the watching and heck, it would be worth it...
The only exception really is EA, and those fuckers deserve a fiery death (in my opinion your honor)
And yet EA is the company that has toned the DRM way down and has opted for a carrot instead of a stick in the form of online registration for extra content etc.
I dislike them and their past as much as a lot of oldschool gamers, but among the really big boys they're one of the few that seem to understand that in order to sell a product it's probably not a bad idea if it's something your customers actually want.
Now if you'll excuse me, Commander Sheppard has to go and do some asskicking...
To tap into both your and the GP's post, I've actually used eg Perl to do a quick mockup of something I want to write in C down the road. That way I can focus on the actual problem and how to go about solving it first, and deal with stuff like memory allocation, horribly string processing and the other joys that pure C brings to the table.
And yes, I too am strictly an amateur.
Do you believe in heaven and live a good christian life?
No and yes. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and all that claptrap. Of course living a good "christian life" as depicted by modern christians isn't quite the same thing as the one ascribed to Christ himself in the bible, but that's a minor detail.
The parabel stands though. Just because there isn't a beared guy in the sky or emissions commitee that is going to punish you for not doing so doesn't making doing the right thing a bad idea.
The banking sector aren't that dissimilar from quantum physicists ... they deal with gigantic magnitudes of imaginary "wealth" that ceases to exists as soon as someone actually scrutinizes the figures and collapses the waveform, causing it all to disappear.
Still at least we've managed to capture the Madoff Particle.
Yay, thanks for that. Now I'm scared to check my bank account balance. So long as I don't look, the money might still be there...
Schrodinger's Savings and Loans anyone?
Sorry, already done.
Pretty lame compared to the real thing though...
The great software writer Benjamin Franklin already wrote:
They who can give up essential freedom to obtain a little temporary security, deserve neither freedom nor security.
And if the poor man knew how often that line would be quoted (badly or not) in a context that has absolutely nothing to do with what he meant, he'd be spinning in his grave fast enough to provide the entire planet with energy and knock us out of orbit at the same time.
Please provide examples. Humans can last a long time without food. You could probably go weeks without it.
Only if you don't mind having no muscle tissue left after the fact. At least for those of us with no notable fat reserves to speak of.
Busses and trains tend not to stop in front of one's driveway/place of work, requiring one to at least self-propel to *some* extent to make use of them.
I walk/cycle about 2 clicks to take the train, with quite some luggage at times. Makes for excellent exercise ;-)
Actually, you'd probably create a secondary market where us skinny folks could sell our "extra" weight allowance.
Fatass credits?
Stephen Colbert for president!
Seriously, he can't be any worse than all the other folks you guys keep electing.
Hail to the cheese!
I'm one of those that was very disappointed that I would even have to log into BNet just to play Diablo. What I find most amusing out of all of this is that the 'social aspect' that the younger crowd extols as being the be all end all of platforms, turns out more social misfits than I've seen in my life. Younger people are simply socially awkward in many aspects these days. They lack basic social skills. They get so used to hiding behind an IP address, that they just don't know how to interact very well when they are face to face with a real person.
Interesting. I somehow keep finding myself hooking up with people I meet while playing games online, going out for a few beers and on occasion waking up on the right side of the wrong bed.
Yes, there's 14 year old dickwads out there. There's also legions of bona-fide geeks in their 20's and 30's having a blast. A *good* social (gaming) network allows you to filter out the first group and have tons of fun with the second.
More like "be suspicious when one looks after yours because it's totally not in their interests to do so".
Indeed. God forbid corporations treating their customers properly in order to ensure repeat business.
I knew those girls at the checkout with their smiles are up to something!