These are little minimal wage workers with no training. They are there to sell what is on the shelves. At the end of the day, whatever is on the service plan contract is the way it is. I'm not saying its right or wrong. Thats just the way it is and to expect a company to bend a contract just because the signer didn't bother to read, comprehend and ask questions is stupid. Its like saying, I'm sorry, I didn't read my lease agreement, but I still want you to let me out of my lease early without penalty, because I didn't read it so I can't be held responsible.
I wouldn't call it misleading the customer, I would call it the employee being wrong and making a mistake on assuming exactly what is and isn't offered. Its a training problem, not a service plan agreement problem.
"The customer most of the time has to put some trust in the employee that he or she is not lying to them."
These people aren't buying a car. Whats the most expensive thing at best buy. A plasma tv or maybe a high end washing machine? These are appliances, if the buyer doesn't bother to do their homework to protect themselves then the shouldn't complain when something doesn't go the way they want it.
"Even with reading the contract, legalese is not a language skill that is taught in most schools."
Anyone that can READ can understand the service plans. They spit out exactly what the person is entitled to and what they aren't.
Customers ARE morons. They expect things immediately. If they have to wait in line they get pissed off then take it out on the employee. If a product is out of stock they get pissed off and take it out on an employee. If they don't fill out their rebate forms correctly and get denied they get pissed and take it out on the company. Anyone who has dealt in any kind of customer service job knows that customers are morons and extremely rude. Best Buy just has the balls to admit the truth.
I love how all the complaints about the service plans state "the employee told me it is like this". People never say "the contract I signed told me that it was like this..."
And then people wonder when something breaks why they don't get what the employee said and instead best buy follows what the contract says.
People are morons, customers are NOT always right (they aren't even occassionally right).
Thats all fine and dandy, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is what the contract says. If it says "any damage" then you have something to complain about but I bet you it doesn't.
Its your friends fault for not reading it before he paid for it.
"Any arguments I've seen "for" the right to crack/warez games fall apart."
BS. I got a laptop. It runs on battery power. I buy a game and want to play it on the road but not have the cd drive constantly spinning burning battery power or I don't want to bring the cd drive at all. So I install the entire game and apply a no-cd crack. Perfectly legit. Nothing illegal about it at all. But as more and more copy protection gets slammed down our throats people will buy less and less games. Its a simple fact. Make a good game and people will buy it. Make a shitty game and no one will, but the publisher will still blame it on piracy.
I don't know about anyone else but unless I can try a feature full demo or the actual real full game I will very rarely buy it. If I d/l the full thing and can't get it to run then I won't bother to go buy the real thing. I'll just delete it and move on.
If the demo is a really good demo then that will give me the info I need to decide whether I want to buy it or not, but demo's rarely are based on the full version and usually run slower or are buggy or only let you play for a little bit.
I'd be curious to see what titles are using this thing. Want to place bets that there aren't any A list titles?
I did last week and have had zero problems. I even have some of the problem applications. But that problem list only applies if you have the windows firewall turned on. The first thing after installing it will ask you about auto updates. Set it to whatever you like. The 2nd thing it does is launch the security center. If you already have one of those hardware firewalls, it won't see it. So just turn off all notification and turn off the XP firewall. I turned off everything in the security center except auto updates. There have been no problems.
I think the point is that there should be NO race based programs at all. Black, white, doesn't matter. If you want to go to college the applications should NOT ask what your race is. Race should not matter in anything. But since it does seem to matter to so many people it is a very one sided thing.
White, middle class, males have the raw end of the deal. And its only going to get worse.
"including images of black youths committing and reveling in violent street crime."
So if the "images" were of white people I guarantee you wouldn't see white people complaining and sueing. If they did they would be called racists. If the game takes place in a certain area of a city it doesn't make sense to have the images of people in the game when you are in that area be anything but what the race of the people are.
"Now, HL2 with online content will cost $10/mo., according to interviews with Valve's PR flack. If I use this game for 60 months, valve will end up with $600. That doesn't include the add-ons I'm sure they're going to sell (just like Everquest)."
I haven't heard that they are going to charge a monthly fee to play online HL2? Where did you hear this? If so it will flop big time. No one is going to go from paying for free with HL to having to pay to play with HL2 content. It'll never work.
This is just one of the many huge problems inside hospitals these days. Many people do not realize how often just a simple name and patient number gets assigned to the wrong person. Records get swapped with someone else or a gender or age gets changed. All these life threatening mistakes are human error. The problem is that the transcriptionists get paid per word. Not whether they word is correct and the document they transcribe is correct. It's also all about money and internal politics. They choose systems not based on whether its a good match for the hospital and the patients but based upon which board member is in bed with which company. They'll spend 10s of millions of dollars on a new system just because some higher up gets a kick back or has a golfing buddy. Then the system turns out to be total crap and they start the process all over. All the while they raise their cost of doing business and push it off to the patient.
Knowing what I know there is no way in hell I will ever go to a hospital unless I'm already dead. Cause they'll kill you just sitting in the waiting area.
So your blaming microsoft because you don't have a firewall? If you had a firewall you wouldn't have gotten hit by a virus because it wouldn't have gotten to your box.
AGP is going to be around for awhile still. If you are even remotely thinking of getting one of the new ATI or nvidia video cards go AGP. It is impossible to find a pci express version of the card. You can find older cards that are now pci express but not the new 6800 or x800 series cards.
I would place a bet that AGP will still be around and strong this time next year and maybe even the year after. There is too large of a user base to just drop it entirely.
Get a northwood P4. The actual differences between amd and intel are mainly benchmark numbers. Real life differences are not that large.
If you get a 775 based prescott you will have a hard time finding a pci express video card to go along with that new processor. I just bought (last week) a 3.4Ghz northwood core P4 instead of a prescott and a 875 chipset motherboard to go along with it.
A lot of folks here will probably say go AMD and give a reason like "its 64bit". Don't let that sway you. Currently its useless unless you want to install a beta version of windows which would be pretty stupid too. If you can wait Intel is dropping prices on Aug 22nd.
Wrong. The ultra cards have 2 dvi ports only and the GT cards have vga and dvi. But all the dvi ports work just fine with the adaptor for a normal crt that they include in the box.
You must not do much of anything with your PC then, either that or you don't care when you have to sit there waiting and waiting for data to swap off the HD into memory. Just having mozilla, outlook, instant messaging, and a few telnet sessions open is horrible under 256MB. I cannot imagine it even running with 128. Talk about massive swapping taking place.
Right now I've got outlook, ultraedit, 3 telnet sessions, mozilla and IM open under windows 2000 and its taking 322MB.
Minimum usually means the installer will let you install the game. The executable will let you launch the game. The engine will run the game, but will it be playable at an acceptable level? Usually the answer is no.
I seriously doubt there is going to be a shortage of this game. They know how high the demand is. This isn't going to be a case of "we didn't know the game was going to be that successful".
Slashdot Mirror
There is a difference. This is not a sequel, just an update. Think of it as CS 1.8 (or whatever version they are up to now).
These are little minimal wage workers with no training. They are there to sell what is on the shelves. At the end of the day, whatever is on the service plan contract is the way it is. I'm not saying its right or wrong. Thats just the way it is and to expect a company to bend a contract just because the signer didn't bother to read, comprehend and ask questions is stupid. Its like saying, I'm sorry, I didn't read my lease agreement, but I still want you to let me out of my lease early without penalty, because I didn't read it so I can't be held responsible.
I wouldn't call it misleading the customer, I would call it the employee being wrong and making a mistake on assuming exactly what is and isn't offered. Its a training problem, not a service plan agreement problem.
"The customer most of the time has to put some trust in the employee that he or she is not lying to them."
These people aren't buying a car. Whats the most expensive thing at best buy. A plasma tv or maybe a high end washing machine? These are appliances, if the buyer doesn't bother to do their homework to protect themselves then the shouldn't complain when something doesn't go the way they want it.
"Even with reading the contract, legalese is not a language skill that is taught in most schools."
Anyone that can READ can understand the service plans. They spit out exactly what the person is entitled to and what they aren't.
Customers ARE morons. They expect things immediately. If they have to wait in line they get pissed off then take it out on the employee. If a product is out of stock they get pissed off and take it out on an employee. If they don't fill out their rebate forms correctly and get denied they get pissed and take it out on the company. Anyone who has dealt in any kind of customer service job knows that customers are morons and extremely rude. Best Buy just has the balls to admit the truth.
I love how all the complaints about the service plans state "the employee told me it is like this". People never say "the contract I signed told me that it was like this..."
And then people wonder when something breaks why they don't get what the employee said and instead best buy follows what the contract says.
People are morons, customers are NOT always right (they aren't even occassionally right).
Thats all fine and dandy, but at the end of the day the only thing that matters is what the contract says. If it says "any damage" then you have something to complain about but I bet you it doesn't.
Its your friends fault for not reading it before he paid for it.
They'll mark it up and charge $30 for it to make a larger profit.
"Any arguments I've seen "for" the right to crack/warez games fall apart."
BS. I got a laptop. It runs on battery power. I buy a game and want to play it on the road but not have the cd drive constantly spinning burning battery power or I don't want to bring the cd drive at all. So I install the entire game and apply a no-cd crack. Perfectly legit. Nothing illegal about it at all. But as more and more copy protection gets slammed down our throats people will buy less and less games. Its a simple fact. Make a good game and people will buy it. Make a shitty game and no one will, but the publisher will still blame it on piracy.
I don't know about anyone else but unless I can try a feature full demo or the actual real full game I will very rarely buy it. If I d/l the full thing and can't get it to run then I won't bother to go buy the real thing. I'll just delete it and move on.
If the demo is a really good demo then that will give me the info I need to decide whether I want to buy it or not, but demo's rarely are based on the full version and usually run slower or are buggy or only let you play for a little bit.
I'd be curious to see what titles are using this thing. Want to place bets that there aren't any A list titles?
I did last week and have had zero problems. I even have some of the problem applications. But that problem list only applies if you have the windows firewall turned on. The first thing after installing it will ask you about auto updates. Set it to whatever you like. The 2nd thing it does is launch the security center. If you already have one of those hardware firewalls, it won't see it. So just turn off all notification and turn off the XP firewall. I turned off everything in the security center except auto updates. There have been no problems.
Ahhh...wouldn't be a thread about tv or tv technology without some idiot spouting on about how there is nothing worth watching.
Fine, you don't like/watch tv. We get it. But at the same time we don't care.
I think the point is that there should be NO race based programs at all. Black, white, doesn't matter. If you want to go to college the applications should NOT ask what your race is. Race should not matter in anything. But since it does seem to matter to so many people it is a very one sided thing.
White, middle class, males have the raw end of the deal. And its only going to get worse.
"including images of black youths committing and reveling in violent street crime."
So if the "images" were of white people I guarantee you wouldn't see white people complaining and sueing. If they did they would be called racists. If the game takes place in a certain area of a city it doesn't make sense to have the images of people in the game when you are in that area be anything but what the race of the people are.
There are too many people in this field as it is. I don't think we need to "attract" anyone. Male or female.
"Now, HL2 with online content will cost $10/mo., according to interviews with Valve's PR flack. If I use this game for 60 months, valve will end up with $600. That doesn't include the add-ons I'm sure they're going to sell (just like Everquest)."
I haven't heard that they are going to charge a monthly fee to play online HL2? Where did you hear this? If so it will flop big time. No one is going to go from paying for free with HL to having to pay to play with HL2 content. It'll never work.
This is just one of the many huge problems inside hospitals these days. Many people do not realize how often just a simple name and patient number gets assigned to the wrong person. Records get swapped with someone else or a gender or age gets changed. All these life threatening mistakes are human error. The problem is that the transcriptionists get paid per word. Not whether they word is correct and the document they transcribe is correct. It's also all about money and internal politics. They choose systems not based on whether its a good match for the hospital and the patients but based upon which board member is in bed with which company. They'll spend 10s of millions of dollars on a new system just because some higher up gets a kick back or has a golfing buddy. Then the system turns out to be total crap and they start the process all over. All the while they raise their cost of doing business and push it off to the patient.
Knowing what I know there is no way in hell I will ever go to a hospital unless I'm already dead. Cause they'll kill you just sitting in the waiting area.
I wouldn't say anyone is "scrambling" for it. The people that are, are in such a small minority that it doesn't really matter.
Personally I'm gonna wait and see what it breaks which should be known in a few days.
So your blaming microsoft because you don't have a firewall? If you had a firewall you wouldn't have gotten hit by a virus because it wouldn't have gotten to your box.
AGP is going to be around for awhile still. If you are even remotely thinking of getting one of the new ATI or nvidia video cards go AGP. It is impossible to find a pci express version of the card. You can find older cards that are now pci express but not the new 6800 or x800 series cards.
I would place a bet that AGP will still be around and strong this time next year and maybe even the year after. There is too large of a user base to just drop it entirely.
Get a northwood P4. The actual differences between amd and intel are mainly benchmark numbers. Real life differences are not that large.
If you get a 775 based prescott you will have a hard time finding a pci express video card to go along with that new processor. I just bought (last week) a 3.4Ghz northwood core P4 instead of a prescott and a 875 chipset motherboard to go along with it.
A lot of folks here will probably say go AMD and give a reason like "its 64bit". Don't let that sway you. Currently its useless unless you want to install a beta version of windows which would be pretty stupid too. If you can wait Intel is dropping prices on Aug 22nd.
Thats my birthday but no way in hell will I pay $200 for a portable gaming machine.
"These new graphics cards support DVI only."
Wrong. The ultra cards have 2 dvi ports only and the GT cards have vga and dvi. But all the dvi ports work just fine with the adaptor for a normal crt that they include in the box.
You must not do much of anything with your PC then, either that or you don't care when you have to sit there waiting and waiting for data to swap off the HD into memory. Just having mozilla, outlook, instant messaging, and a few telnet sessions open is horrible under 256MB. I cannot imagine it even running with 128. Talk about massive swapping taking place.
Right now I've got outlook, ultraedit, 3 telnet sessions, mozilla and IM open under windows 2000 and its taking 322MB.
Only problem with that is you'll have to play a first person shooter at a lower resolution on a tv with a controller.
Minimum usually means the installer will let you install the game. The executable will let you launch the game. The engine will run the game, but will it be playable at an acceptable level? Usually the answer is no.
Learn a little bit about the products you own. You cannot get burn in from DLP. There is nothing there to cause the burn.
I seriously doubt there is going to be a shortage of this game. They know how high the demand is. This isn't going to be a case of "we didn't know the game was going to be that successful".