I do. Constantly. I used Amazon a lot before I was willing to start using it, but now I use it all the time.
Patent arguments aside, it's set up pretty well. If you just *use* the 1 click stuff, the login persists. That means that while it can charge my card without further authorization, it can only do so if it's also sending the product to my registered mailing address. That means that it can be sent right back if ever something gets screwed up.
To change mailing addresses, they DO prompt for a login confirmation, even if the session was just started.
I've got 1 click profiles for my personal purchases, joint purchases for both my wife and I and for tax-deductible business expenses.
The concept of having this stuff saved isn't that foreign. How many members on Slashdot have their credit cards saved in a Paypal account? One quick authentication and money is moving all over the place.
There was a great chart I saw a while back that describes the popularity/adoption/maturation curve on new technologies. It may have come from one of the "pundit companies" like Gartner, but was an insightful description nonetheless.
What it described was how tech goes from invention and obscurity to rapid adoption, to overapplication to final maturity. The last 2 steps are where managers, media pundits and others try to apply the new tech EVERYWHERE they can and the whole buzzword saturation happens. As those people who never really understood the tech start to be let down (by tech that never promised to do what they thought it would), the technology matures and settles into its natural niche.
OOP, Java J2EE,.NET, XML, etc. are all in various stages of this. How many managers are, right now, saying, "Just make it XML and that will fix it."?
Blogs are at that saturation point. Everyone is being told they need to use a blog for marketing, customer support, news gathering and dissemination, personal diaries, project management, and cleaning the kitchen sink (just checking if you're paying attention). The likely reality is that blogs are NOT the appropriate tool for much of this and will fail miserably. Then, blogs will mature and fill their natural role.
I'm not going to try to say for sure what that role is, but it certainly isn't "powering everything on the web".
Could be. It's not like I've got a binder of all of the ACLU's cases. The person to whom I was replying was making an argument that is often heard specifically from evangelical Protestant Christians that the ACLU sues Christians "just for sharing their message".
Also because the ACLU only has so many lawyers and so much money and aren't going to be involved in every single abuse of the 1st amendment. I'm not defending them entirely, but stating that in all of the high profile religious cases that *I* remember hearing the ACLU involved in, the link was definitely there between the government sponsorship and the religion and that link was the center of the suit.
Freedom from "speech", no. Freedom from *government sponsored speech*, absolutely. Remember, all of these freedoms are not about absolute freedom. They're about freedom from the government with regard to religion, speech, etc.
The government is not to establish religion. It's not to restrict speech or force speech upon citizens.
Freedom from government speech means I can choose not to watch the State of the Union speech. It means I can choose not to attend the visit of my city by the President and can choose not to have my radio tuned to said speech.
The only place that the ACLU is concerned with is with *government* and involvement. The times they go to court against Christians, it's over expressing their message on courtroom walls (courtrooms are part of the government), public school classrooms via government-paid staff, etc. The ACLU doesn't just sue random Christians expressing their message in a public forum. Rather, they get upset when 1 religion (usually modern Protestant Christianity) is granted *special* access to disseminate their message via the government.
By putting the 10 commandments on the wall and no other religious texts in similar positions, a particular religion or set of religions is being favored. That makes it a step toward the "establishment of a religion".
By having a teacher in a public school lead a specific religious ritual, i.e. Christian prayer, that's a step toward establishment.
Most of the Christians who are so outraged at the ACLU's actions in cases like these would be filing the suits themselves if, instead of sponsoring Christian prayer, the teacher handed out prayer mats, pointed out Mecca and urged for Islamic prayer instead. Or, if a judge decided to prominantly display a Buddha or other altar next to the jury box.
You missed the point. The "local computer handyman" charges market rate for skilled or semi-skilled labor (between $50 and $100/hr). When a new machine is $300, having the local handyman fix it is pointless. Have you priced TV repair lately? Ever tried to get a $15 Walman fixed? Ever used a disposable plate or glass? Use paper towels instead of a cloth? Additionally, many of these problems aren't just spyware or viruses, they're some random component overheating or a bad RAM module or a hard drive with bad sectors, etc. In other words, real problems.
For me, it's not a matter of "bragging". Rather, I'm making an entirely pragmatic decision. On most weekdays, I have about 2 hours that I can fill with non-necessities. That's the time after taking care of work, the house, bills, grocery shopping, lawncare, etc. So, about 10 hours. If I have to spend more than 1 night fighting with a problem and a solution can be had for $100, it's no question. If the problem may take longer, the number goes up and a seriously FUBARed machine and $300 tips the equation in the direction of a new PC and tips it HARD for a PC that's over a year old. For many, many products, as their price declines, they slide into a territory called "disposable". As that slide happens, there are people who rush to make them so, make the decision on a case by case basis and those who fervently seek to hold the tide back. Your refrain is the latter in this particular instance. However, it's always the same: Product X can be fixed or reused or brought back to a state of usefulness through effort Y.
I'm in the middle. When Y is greater than the effort/money for a new X, Y doesn't get done.
When asked by a friend or family, the prospect is often 6 hours of first helping them do the backup they never did (despite instructions typed up, CD-ROM's provided and explicit orders to do so), run the antivirus that they also deliberately disabled, etc. Back when those machines were $2000, I was willing to spend most of Christmas day fixing family PC's. At $300, the time just isn't worth it.
And, the open source line about referring to "more secure software" or "more secure operating systems" is yet another example of the great quote about Linux only being free if your time has no value. I've looked at putting Linux on a machine for some of these people. However, that still requires an investment in time to make sure all of their settings work, that their bank website works, that their Pampered Chef and accountant specific accounting packages work under WINE, etc. When the shortage is time, that doesn't improve the situation much.
Given that the skills to solve these problems *unassisted* is nearly none, these products are quickly becoming disposable. I *know* the solutions. I run Linux on my servers, haven't had a virus or spyware infection since Monkey.B infected a floppy in a university lab in 1996, have Windows machines that stay up for months at a time, etc. There is some stuff I will fix.
However, when a $15 CDRW drive is acting a bit weird, I don't spend time diagnosing it. I throw it aside and get another and get on with the work that required the damn drive in the first place.
I'd rather spend my time using the computer than working on it. That goes double for anyone else's computer. I used to feel bad when I suggested that someone just get a new computer, but don't any more.
"I'm finding it hard to think of a circumstance that a user would benefit from buying a new machine."
Here's the exact way to tell. When a user is faced with paying market rate for any sort of labor to fix the problem. That's when. With billed labor costs in the US typically running from $50-100/hr, it doesn't take much to reach 75%-100% of a new PC's cost in labor.
People often go on and on about the cost of Windows contributing to the PC (and it's a valid point as prices dip into this range). However, when compared to the cost of labor the gap gets even wider.
[warning: car analogy ahead] Imagine if repairs or maintenance for your car was similarly priced to PC services at the current pricepoints. "Setup" from GeekSquad is somewhere around $150. That's 50% for *setup*. However, for an on-site call, compared to other labor-based services, that's not an unreasonable rate.
It's not just computers though. Paying directly for labor is much more expensive than spreading that across thousands of customers like a product does.
You can always offset these costs if you are able to do the labor yourself. Brake pads aren't expensive, but paying someone to bleed the lines is. Electrical outlets and wire aren't expensive, but paying someone to install a new GFI outlet in your bathroom is.
The more expensive the product, the more reasonable paying for services is. I'm OK paying $200 for some work on my car (which costs $15,000 when new), but not $200 for work on a PC that I can replace for $300. PC's used to be in the $2000 range, but just aren't anymore.
As prices have fallen, I've quickly reached a point where getting a new machine every 6-12 months is pretty normal (though I still tend to stay on the lower end of the spectrum). However, people still keep wanting advice on keeping their 700Mhz machine running when it's clearly not working so well anymorre. I just picked up a 1.1Ghz/256MB/40GB machine last week for $100. I still tend to put lower end machines to use (firewalls, fileservers, webservers, etc.), but for general consumers, PC's have reached disposable pricing. When you look at what places like GeekSquad charge per hour for diagnosis and repair, it gets pretty hard to recommend anything other than a new box when things go bad.
When asked, "I've got this problem. How would you fix it?" I now pretty much just say, "Personally, I'd just buy a new machine."
Based on your user number, you probably weren't around here in 1997, but Slashdot was a blog before that made-up term ever even entered into the press' lexicon.
Most early blogs found interesting links and stories and entered their personal comments and opinions on that information. That's pretty much what Slashdot was. Over time, it's morphed quite a bit, become much more corporate, etc. but that is still there somewhat. Simple point is that much of the little consensus that does exist was formed by the few sites like Slashdot that existed in 1997-1999.
Only when every college freshman and high school student started "blogging" did they become all about "Oh, my God, I drank SO MUCH last night and ended up sleeping in the trunk of my car in my own filth." or even the more "enlightened" versions spouting home-brewed philosophy, corporate blogs, etc.
I'm completely OK with what my blog is. The ramblings of just one idiot.
I also agree about twists in movies. If they are the sole payoff, there's no real re-watchability to them. A lot of horror and suspense movies have this problem. I generally prefer movies where you can enjoy them at least as much and sometimes MORE if you know how it turns out.
That and the fact that Annakin's fall to the dark side surprise is sort of the flip-side to the parenthood surprise. If you watch in numeric order, that Annakin falls is "new" to you. If you watch in release order, it's obvious that he's going to fall, but the parenthood is a surprise.
Either way, if you're entirely new to the series, there is a surprise.
Paying interest isn't dumb. Paying *unnecessary* interest is.
If you can find someone to lend you $300,000 with an interest free grace period, give me a call so I can take advantage as well. When I borrow $300,000, on a 30 year amortization, even though it will cost closer to $700,000 in the end (worse than the $5 and $10 example), I'll *still* make money on the deal and much much more than the few bucks messing with credit card interest. While that $300,000 will cost a grand total of $700,000, that property will be worth about $1.7 million 30 years later, meaning I triple the money and, given my recent 0% down setup, will be tripling money that I don't even have to come up with, resulting in a situation where, for the cost of rent, by being willing to pay $2 for $1 over the long haul, I make $1 million net in 30 years.
"I'll happily give you this $5 bill for one of your $10 bills."
You mean like every credit card, loan and other money lending scheme on earth? They'll lend you this $5 in exchange for $10 over the life of the loan in interest.
As in all licenses and laws, when the spirit of the law and the letter of the law grow distant, the wording is at fault.
A properly written legal document's "letter" shouldn't require someone applying the document to make large interpretations or follow additional "traditions" not stated in the legal document.
Or you ditch all of the extra crap that isn't needed. No one in my household speaks French, Spanish or most other secondary audio, menus, director's commentary, etc. On an awful lot of DL discs, the movie itself is still under 5GB. If not, a 10%-15% compression is fine. If that's not OK, it's probably a movie you care enough about to buy a copy. I've got several movies where I've got the regular DVD and also bought the Superbit as well because I wanted the better copy.
And, if you're paying over a buck for DVD+-R's, you need to visit even a mainstream site like meritline.com where they're more like $0.25 or $0.40 and not a buck.
Trust me, we're not talking about crappy McJob's. I do Fortune 500 web consulting and charge decidedly more than minimum wage.
Incidentally, the smackdown often wouldn't have come from anyone official. If you're in a cubical next to me, playing your music loud enough for me to hear, *I'll* be the one delivering the smackdown.
See, the fact that you can even hear sound from your PC at work is a foreign concept to me. Everywhere I've worked, hooking actual speakers to a workstation would get you smacked down pretty quickly. If you actually need the sound, they've invented tiny speakers you can temporarily strap to your ears that let you hear the sound without anyone else having to.
I'd never even think to warn about the sound on a site because I don't have publicly audible speakers connected to any PC I own except the one in my home theater.
I'd *never* knock the placebo effect. Heck, if I could figure out a way to trick myself into the placebo effect in a few places, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Quite frankly, placebo is one of the most effective medications on the planet.
I just wanted to make sure that those who were considering it did so in the light of all of the facts.
"I use dial up, I want an *Internet* connection, not a web connection. I also do not want to pay business rates to have an Internet connection. NAT is a hack. Real geeks prefer an elegant system over a hack."
And, if the mentioned system were to be pushed forward, it would likely result in a cottage industry supporting "real" dialup. This exists in the DSL market right now. You can take the PPPoE setup on a shared phone wire pair that Qwest/MSN et al hand out or you can call up Speakeasy.net and get a dedicated loop with no phone on it at all (what I have).
Yes, but much like a 7th grade kid, who is on the "friend" list changes like the weather. Oh, the big ones are consistent for longer: Cuba and North Korea are on the longtime non-friend list and Great Britain would probably have to burn the White House again to fall off the friend list, but watching countries like Iraq (with no change in leadership) go from being backed to being the number 1 threat in the world over a few years makes it much more a case of $friend being declared a variable rather than FRIEND as a constant.
I don't think it really burst because they couldn't make money. When you are choosing between $5 million an episode for actors vs. $50,000 in prize money, there's clearly a lower threshold for profitibility. However, if you can take $50,000 and make $5 million, you get a 100x return on the money, but turning the $5 million into $20 makes you more dollars. The networks were all excited at 100x investments but when it didn't scale, they pretty much picked the couple that *did* scale and went to cloning their non-reality programming to the nth degree.
3 CSI's, who knows how many Law and Orders, etc. There will still be a jump in reality programming for the summer as it still does pay better than reruns or the rest of the summer alternatives.
Have you seen the original trailer for the original Star Wars (before it was labeled A New Hope)? There is NO way that Lucas:
1. Planned for 6 movies back then. 2. Knew that Leia and Luke were brother and sister. There are clips strung together of Luke and Leia with voiceovers talking about a story that includes "romance".
I think that, much like other artists, he's prone to not only historical retrofits, but possibly has actually convinced himself that these stories are actually true. He made *a* movie, got lucky and it turned out wildly successful and popular. Then, like thousands before him, he sat down to figure out how to extend that success. 30 years later, he's stuck in a GOTO loop.
Slashdot Mirror
I do. Constantly. I used Amazon a lot before I was willing to start using it, but now I use it all the time.
Patent arguments aside, it's set up pretty well. If you just *use* the 1 click stuff, the login persists. That means that while it can charge my card without further authorization, it can only do so if it's also sending the product to my registered mailing address. That means that it can be sent right back if ever something gets screwed up.
To change mailing addresses, they DO prompt for a login confirmation, even if the session was just started.
I've got 1 click profiles for my personal purchases, joint purchases for both my wife and I and for tax-deductible business expenses.
The concept of having this stuff saved isn't that foreign. How many members on Slashdot have their credit cards saved in a Paypal account? One quick authentication and money is moving all over the place.
There was a great chart I saw a while back that describes the popularity/adoption/maturation curve on new technologies. It may have come from one of the "pundit companies" like Gartner, but was an insightful description nonetheless.
.NET, XML, etc. are all in various stages of this. How many managers are, right now, saying, "Just make it XML and that will fix it."?
What it described was how tech goes from invention and obscurity to rapid adoption, to overapplication to final maturity. The last 2 steps are where managers, media pundits and others try to apply the new tech EVERYWHERE they can and the whole buzzword saturation happens. As those people who never really understood the tech start to be let down (by tech that never promised to do what they thought it would), the technology matures and settles into its natural niche.
OOP, Java J2EE,
Blogs are at that saturation point. Everyone is being told they need to use a blog for marketing, customer support, news gathering and dissemination, personal diaries, project management, and cleaning the kitchen sink (just checking if you're paying attention). The likely reality is that blogs are NOT the appropriate tool for much of this and will fail miserably. Then, blogs will mature and fill their natural role.
I'm not going to try to say for sure what that role is, but it certainly isn't "powering everything on the web".
Could be. It's not like I've got a binder of all of the ACLU's cases. The person to whom I was replying was making an argument that is often heard specifically from evangelical Protestant Christians that the ACLU sues Christians "just for sharing their message".
Also because the ACLU only has so many lawyers and so much money and aren't going to be involved in every single abuse of the 1st amendment. I'm not defending them entirely, but stating that in all of the high profile religious cases that *I* remember hearing the ACLU involved in, the link was definitely there between the government sponsorship and the religion and that link was the center of the suit.
Freedom from "speech", no. Freedom from *government sponsored speech*, absolutely. Remember, all of these freedoms are not about absolute freedom. They're about freedom from the government with regard to religion, speech, etc.
The government is not to establish religion. It's not to restrict speech or force speech upon citizens.
Freedom from government speech means I can choose not to watch the State of the Union speech. It means I can choose not to attend the visit of my city by the President and can choose not to have my radio tuned to said speech.
The only place that the ACLU is concerned with is with *government* and involvement. The times they go to court against Christians, it's over expressing their message on courtroom walls (courtrooms are part of the government), public school classrooms via government-paid staff, etc. The ACLU doesn't just sue random Christians expressing their message in a public forum. Rather, they get upset when 1 religion (usually modern Protestant Christianity) is granted *special* access to disseminate their message via the government.
By putting the 10 commandments on the wall and no other religious texts in similar positions, a particular religion or set of religions is being favored. That makes it a step toward the "establishment of a religion".
By having a teacher in a public school lead a specific religious ritual, i.e. Christian prayer, that's a step toward establishment.
Most of the Christians who are so outraged at the ACLU's actions in cases like these would be filing the suits themselves if, instead of sponsoring Christian prayer, the teacher handed out prayer mats, pointed out Mecca and urged for Islamic prayer instead. Or, if a judge decided to prominantly display a Buddha or other altar next to the jury box.
You missed the point. The "local computer handyman" charges market rate for skilled or semi-skilled labor (between $50 and $100/hr). When a new machine is $300, having the local handyman fix it is pointless. Have you priced TV repair lately? Ever tried to get a $15 Walman fixed? Ever used a disposable plate or glass? Use paper towels instead of a cloth? Additionally, many of these problems aren't just spyware or viruses, they're some random component overheating or a bad RAM module or a hard drive with bad sectors, etc. In other words, real problems.
For me, it's not a matter of "bragging". Rather, I'm making an entirely pragmatic decision. On most weekdays, I have about 2 hours that I can fill with non-necessities. That's the time after taking care of work, the house, bills, grocery shopping, lawncare, etc. So, about 10 hours. If I have to spend more than 1 night fighting with a problem and a solution can be had for $100, it's no question. If the problem may take longer, the number goes up and a seriously FUBARed machine and $300 tips the equation in the direction of a new PC and tips it HARD for a PC that's over a year old. For many, many products, as their price declines, they slide into a territory called "disposable". As that slide happens, there are people who rush to make them so, make the decision on a case by case basis and those who fervently seek to hold the tide back. Your refrain is the latter in this particular instance. However, it's always the same: Product X can be fixed or reused or brought back to a state of usefulness through effort Y.
I'm in the middle. When Y is greater than the effort/money for a new X, Y doesn't get done.
When asked by a friend or family, the prospect is often 6 hours of first helping them do the backup they never did (despite instructions typed up, CD-ROM's provided and explicit orders to do so), run the antivirus that they also deliberately disabled, etc. Back when those machines were $2000, I was willing to spend most of Christmas day fixing family PC's. At $300, the time just isn't worth it.
And, the open source line about referring to "more secure software" or "more secure operating systems" is yet another example of the great quote about Linux only being free if your time has no value. I've looked at putting Linux on a machine for some of these people. However, that still requires an investment in time to make sure all of their settings work, that their bank website works, that their Pampered Chef and accountant specific accounting packages work under WINE, etc. When the shortage is time, that doesn't improve the situation much.
Given that the skills to solve these problems *unassisted* is nearly none, these products are quickly becoming disposable. I *know* the solutions. I run Linux on my servers, haven't had a virus or spyware infection since Monkey.B infected a floppy in a university lab in 1996, have Windows machines that stay up for months at a time, etc. There is some stuff I will fix.
However, when a $15 CDRW drive is acting a bit weird, I don't spend time diagnosing it. I throw it aside and get another and get on with the work that required the damn drive in the first place.
I'd rather spend my time using the computer than working on it. That goes double for anyone else's computer. I used to feel bad when I suggested that someone just get a new computer, but don't any more.
"I'm finding it hard to think of a circumstance that a user would benefit from buying a new machine."
Here's the exact way to tell. When a user is faced with paying market rate for any sort of labor to fix the problem. That's when. With billed labor costs in the US typically running from $50-100/hr, it doesn't take much to reach 75%-100% of a new PC's cost in labor.
People often go on and on about the cost of Windows contributing to the PC (and it's a valid point as prices dip into this range). However, when compared to the cost of labor the gap gets even wider.
[warning: car analogy ahead] Imagine if repairs or maintenance for your car was similarly priced to PC services at the current pricepoints. "Setup" from GeekSquad is somewhere around $150. That's 50% for *setup*. However, for an on-site call, compared to other labor-based services, that's not an unreasonable rate.
It's not just computers though. Paying directly for labor is much more expensive than spreading that across thousands of customers like a product does.
You can always offset these costs if you are able to do the labor yourself. Brake pads aren't expensive, but paying someone to bleed the lines is. Electrical outlets and wire aren't expensive, but paying someone to install a new GFI outlet in your bathroom is.
The more expensive the product, the more reasonable paying for services is. I'm OK paying $200 for some work on my car (which costs $15,000 when new), but not $200 for work on a PC that I can replace for $300. PC's used to be in the $2000 range, but just aren't anymore.
As prices have fallen, I've quickly reached a point where getting a new machine every 6-12 months is pretty normal (though I still tend to stay on the lower end of the spectrum). However, people still keep wanting advice on keeping their 700Mhz machine running when it's clearly not working so well anymorre. I just picked up a 1.1Ghz/256MB/40GB machine last week for $100. I still tend to put lower end machines to use (firewalls, fileservers, webservers, etc.), but for general consumers, PC's have reached disposable pricing. When you look at what places like GeekSquad charge per hour for diagnosis and repair, it gets pretty hard to recommend anything other than a new box when things go bad.
When asked, "I've got this problem. How would you fix it?" I now pretty much just say, "Personally, I'd just buy a new machine."
Based on your user number, you probably weren't around here in 1997, but Slashdot was a blog before that made-up term ever even entered into the press' lexicon.
Most early blogs found interesting links and stories and entered their personal comments and opinions on that information. That's pretty much what Slashdot was. Over time, it's morphed quite a bit, become much more corporate, etc. but that is still there somewhat. Simple point is that much of the little consensus that does exist was formed by the few sites like Slashdot that existed in 1997-1999.
Only when every college freshman and high school student started "blogging" did they become all about "Oh, my God, I drank SO MUCH last night and ended up sleeping in the trunk of my car in my own filth." or even the more "enlightened" versions spouting home-brewed philosophy, corporate blogs, etc.
I'm completely OK with what my blog is. The ramblings of just one idiot.
"After the second movie, I was hoping the "separatists" would evolve into the rebellion as they figured out what was going on."
But that would have ended up with a script that couldn't have been written in a 7th grade study hall, which the was clearly a requirement.
I also agree about twists in movies. If they are the sole payoff, there's no real re-watchability to them. A lot of horror and suspense movies have this problem. I generally prefer movies where you can enjoy them at least as much and sometimes MORE if you know how it turns out.
That and the fact that Annakin's fall to the dark side surprise is sort of the flip-side to the parenthood surprise. If you watch in numeric order, that Annakin falls is "new" to you. If you watch in release order, it's obvious that he's going to fall, but the parenthood is a surprise.
Either way, if you're entirely new to the series, there is a surprise.
Paying interest isn't dumb. Paying *unnecessary* interest is.
If you can find someone to lend you $300,000 with an interest free grace period, give me a call so I can take advantage as well. When I borrow $300,000, on a 30 year amortization, even though it will cost closer to $700,000 in the end (worse than the $5 and $10 example), I'll *still* make money on the deal and much much more than the few bucks messing with credit card interest. While that $300,000 will cost a grand total of $700,000, that property will be worth about $1.7 million 30 years later, meaning I triple the money and, given my recent 0% down setup, will be tripling money that I don't even have to come up with, resulting in a situation where, for the cost of rent, by being willing to pay $2 for $1 over the long haul, I make $1 million net in 30 years.
"I'll happily give you this $5 bill for one of your $10 bills."
You mean like every credit card, loan and other money lending scheme on earth? They'll lend you this $5 in exchange for $10 over the life of the loan in interest.
As in all licenses and laws, when the spirit of the law and the letter of the law grow distant, the wording is at fault.
A properly written legal document's "letter" shouldn't require someone applying the document to make large interpretations or follow additional "traditions" not stated in the legal document.
Or you ditch all of the extra crap that isn't needed. No one in my household speaks French, Spanish or most other secondary audio, menus, director's commentary, etc. On an awful lot of DL discs, the movie itself is still under 5GB. If not, a 10%-15% compression is fine. If that's not OK, it's probably a movie you care enough about to buy a copy. I've got several movies where I've got the regular DVD and also bought the Superbit as well because I wanted the better copy.
And, if you're paying over a buck for DVD+-R's, you need to visit even a mainstream site like meritline.com where they're more like $0.25 or $0.40 and not a buck.
Trust me, we're not talking about crappy McJob's. I do Fortune 500 web consulting and charge decidedly more than minimum wage.
Incidentally, the smackdown often wouldn't have come from anyone official. If you're in a cubical next to me, playing your music loud enough for me to hear, *I'll* be the one delivering the smackdown.
See, the fact that you can even hear sound from your PC at work is a foreign concept to me. Everywhere I've worked, hooking actual speakers to a workstation would get you smacked down pretty quickly. If you actually need the sound, they've invented tiny speakers you can temporarily strap to your ears that let you hear the sound without anyone else having to.
I'd never even think to warn about the sound on a site because I don't have publicly audible speakers connected to any PC I own except the one in my home theater.
Except here in Minnesota where 79% of eligible (not registered) voters voted in that election.
I'd *never* knock the placebo effect. Heck, if I could figure out a way to trick myself into the placebo effect in a few places, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Quite frankly, placebo is one of the most effective medications on the planet.
I just wanted to make sure that those who were considering it did so in the light of all of the facts.
Of course there's also this study which shows little to no benefit to melatonin supplements.
Even he knows what an idiot he is. He's been doing parody commercials of himself lately.
"I use dial up, I want an *Internet* connection, not a web connection. I also do not want to pay business rates to have an Internet connection. NAT is a hack. Real geeks prefer an elegant system over a hack."
And, if the mentioned system were to be pushed forward, it would likely result in a cottage industry supporting "real" dialup. This exists in the DSL market right now. You can take the PPPoE setup on a shared phone wire pair that Qwest/MSN et al hand out or you can call up Speakeasy.net and get a dedicated loop with no phone on it at all (what I have).
Install a copy of autohotkeys (open source on Windows) and map whatever you want on your normal keyboard to launch calculator.
Yes, but much like a 7th grade kid, who is on the "friend" list changes like the weather. Oh, the big ones are consistent for longer: Cuba and North Korea are on the longtime non-friend list and Great Britain would probably have to burn the White House again to fall off the friend list, but watching countries like Iraq (with no change in leadership) go from being backed to being the number 1 threat in the world over a few years makes it much more a case of $friend being declared a variable rather than FRIEND as a constant.
I don't think it really burst because they couldn't make money. When you are choosing between $5 million an episode for actors vs. $50,000 in prize money, there's clearly a lower threshold for profitibility. However, if you can take $50,000 and make $5 million, you get a 100x return on the money, but turning the $5 million into $20 makes you more dollars. The networks were all excited at 100x investments but when it didn't scale, they pretty much picked the couple that *did* scale and went to cloning their non-reality programming to the nth degree.
3 CSI's, who knows how many Law and Orders, etc. There will still be a jump in reality programming for the summer as it still does pay better than reruns or the rest of the summer alternatives.
"he would have told that story first"
Have you seen the original trailer for the original Star Wars (before it was labeled A New Hope)? There is NO way that Lucas:
1. Planned for 6 movies back then.
2. Knew that Leia and Luke were brother and sister. There are clips strung together of Luke and Leia with voiceovers talking about a story that includes "romance".
I think that, much like other artists, he's prone to not only historical retrofits, but possibly has actually convinced himself that these stories are actually true. He made *a* movie, got lucky and it turned out wildly successful and popular. Then, like thousands before him, he sat down to figure out how to extend that success. 30 years later, he's stuck in a GOTO loop.