The new'ish light rail (2-3 years ago) was a REAL improvement for those out in the western section of town (Littleton, Highlands Ranch).. that line makes it possible to get to downtown rather quickly actually..
Combine that with one of them Segways and your home free:)
Subject says it all. I do several thousand dollars worth of business with Best Buy every year. I can't find a good place to send my complaints, so if anyone has one.. I'd like to hear it:)
Re:What's even more disturbing...
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The thing is, the data-entry mistake could have occured higher up the chain. The people that they called simply have access to the price listed in the best buy system.
So... if the typo occured when the price was actually listed, then you could call the customer reps 600 times and they would all give you the same price.
What is more interesting to me is that this did seem like some kind of specially designed promotion. I don't know if the 200 dollar off quote is something that is generated by their pricing system (its not uncommon for the suggested retail price and the offering price to be compared and presented to the reps for sale purposes) or if it was part of a really botched promotional campaign that best buy realized was a big mistake, just to late. That to me is the meat of the question.
Fraud is not protected speech, period. False advertising is a form of fraud, as it is an attempt to "trick" the buying public by promising goods or services in a misleading way.
False advertising is very difficult to prove, however. Errors and unintentional ommisions are protected as just that, accidents. In order to win a false advertising suit you have to prove malicious intent.. and that's very very difficult to do.
I'm not really sure what occured in this case. It seems like Best Buy made a listing error, and then refused to honor. That would put them well within their legal rights.
This stuff is amazing to me, considering the shoddy quality of most video game reviews. I recently bought Triple Play 2002 (not a good game), which was rightfully blasted in a IGN review.
The problem is, it was blasted for all of the wrong reasons. These people literally played the game on the easiest setting for 15 minutes and said "Geee, you can score like 80 runs in 3 innings!". Anyone who has actually played the game knows that hitting gets much harder as you up the skill level. They completely ignored the actual problems that present themselves as the game play goes on (runners cover the base paths in record time, so good luck on double plays.. for example).
The point? Besides the fact that I like to rant I just think its incredibly frusturating that people can give cursory reviews of products and make out like bandits because of it. I mean, if I did my job (Software Engineer) like that.... well I certainly wouldn't get a free trip to anywhere but the unemployment line.
On the PC we are very bandwidth restricted when it comes to memory. The bus speeds on your typical X86 motherboard are generally rather slow and as a result a PC programmer constantly has to deal with this bottleneck. The solution has been (and still is) to basically read the data once and copy it into RAM, where it sits until its needed. Most games load up textures and geometry one "area" or "level" at a time into RAM and page it to the video card on demand. If you try to run things directly from storage, you will quickly choke the bus and things get rather ugly...(think virtual memory paging).
The PS2 on the other hand has a fairly robust bus system. The idea is that data is streamed from storage on demand, as opposed to simply dumping it in memory. You still need some memory to actually hold textures, but it is not uncommon for that memory to be refreshed every frame. It is possible to outrun the PS2 bus when basically every texture and every piece of geometry needs to change (this is the cause of the common "cut-scene slowdown" you see in some games)... As long as EQ's textures can fit into memory one frame at a time, things should go pretty well.. if you can't work in 8 megs (or whatever it has) of textures PER FRAME, you need to rethink your strategy.
This architecture can be difficult to get a handle on and requires a completely different approach to asset management... its also a large part of the reason that most programmers think the PS2 is hard to work with..
Have you compiled a few things lately? Most of the "major" Linux tools (desktops, database systems, etc..) can take HOURS to compile on my machine..
I don't NOT want to wait HOURS to install something... that sucks. We really do need a unified and efficient binary packaging scheme. For all intensive purposes the red-carpet type of services solve the problem very well.... I like network package resolution... To me this is the ideal way to handle our problems. I simply say "I want XXXX piece of software" and the network system figures out what packages I need, figures out if I have them, and downloads and installs the neccesary ones. The Mandrake package manger does this from CD, it would be nice if it could both access some network repository and the local media tho...
Does federal law not have supremacy over the laws of a state (even constintutional)? I know that the federal constitution most definitely supercedes all other laws, but what about 'run of the mill' federal laws?
I'm a hockey fan, hell more than that I'm a sports fan. There, I said it.. and your probably wondering how this is at all relevant.
Well here in Central Arkansas (SEC country) we have a serious issue with our ABC affiliate. In order to bring more Arkansas Razorback games to us, they have entered into a contract with Jefferson Pilot sports. This contract forces ABC to show a bunch of SEC sports programs in lieu of the regular national programs. This means that we rarely get to see the big matchup football games. We regularly miss out on big college football games, hockey games (at least until basketball season is over), and anything else that is nationally shown on Saturday.
This isn't the only issue, however. Take my parents.. they live in a strange valley RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF LITTLE ROCK. The geography of this neighborhood makes it nearly impossible to actually get the local stations via broadcast. So if my parents want to use a satellite (and they do, being from Colorado they like the sports packages that allow them to see Colorado sports games) they have to do without local programming... and this means missing anything broadcast on these stations... They attempted to get a waiver signed by the local affiliates.. but that didn't work out. So now they are forced into "watching" local stations they can not even receive...
So here we have this DSS technology which would allow us to see the games we want (no SEC specials) clearly... and yet it is regulated away from us. Someone fix this... please.
What law where you fighting? I'm just curious, as we have long standing underage curfew laws here in Arkansas... I'm wondering if it is something that has been thrown out in other states ( I was arrested several times for breaking curfew before turning 18).
Java word processors do exist, and they aren't bad really.
I've used two at different times (one was.. "Freedom to something" I don't really recall the name. A quick google search did not turn it up, but trust me.. it at least existed at one point.
This is really not only applicable to this guy, but everyone in the Linux community. These Java word processors are really applicable to the Linux environment.. and in that respect really deserve to be looked at.
Actually the game development industry follows the 80/20 law quite well.
Per capita profits have been consistently down over the last 5 or 6 years as the number of developers has DRASTICALLY grown. So while overall profits are way up, that isn't really a good indication of the whole picture.
The problem? The game publishers are incredibly poorly managed. They do throw money at a lot of projects that have nothing going for them but a rather well known employee or owner (Ionstorm springs to mind immediatly). They also refuse to fund some projects with the talent and design to really create a solid game... Its a funny industry.
The word democracy has absolutely no connection with the word freedom. You can be very free and live in a theocracy, monarchy, or dictatorship. You can be incredibly repressed in a democracy as well.
In a pure direct democracy you are likely to have very FEW freedoms if you differ greatly from the majority.
A democratic nation can certainly limit freedoms, and any fruitful democracy does. In this case the democracy has thus far decided (although not clearly in one direction or the other) that the moral cost of stem cell research is not worth the scientific gain. Arriving at this decision is complex and cumbersome process.. that is the wonder of democracy. The people have effectively put controls on this research themselves.
A communist nation (or dictatorship) has another method of arriving at decisions. In this case a single ruler (or single party) gets to make the decisions about what freedoms to limit. Traditionally China has placed great limits on the freedom of its people, but in this case the ruler has chosen to let stem cell research continue. This shouldn't really be surprising, it is certainly easier to convince a communist leader with limited responsibility to the wants of the people to pursue a potentially controversial policy.
This mirrors what we saw in the Soviet Union. They accelerated their space program because the leadership had limited responsibility for the lives of the people involved. They didn't have to care what the people thought.
IIRC the appeals court did not overturn the IE ruling, they simlpy repealed the punishment back to the lower courts (which is where the DOJ promptly dropped the case).
This isn't a communist nation or a dicatorship people. The artists get themselves into these contracts. If they don't like it, then don't do it. Simple.. get a real job like everyone else. The fact is that the record labels KNOW they can find suitable talent willing to work for basically nothing, and until that changes (this is basic economics after all) then what exactly are they doing wrong? Its like a worker at McDonals. Teenagers are willing to put up with quite a bit for 5.15 an hour so McDonalds has no incentive to pay them more. Rock stars are willing to work for similiar, and so the labels don't have to pay them more. Good for them.
Java is not a language meant to be run in a single environment. The platform you are running on is Java (the platform).. not Linux, Windows, or any other operating system. If you are needing to check the process ID then you are stepping outside of the platform and probably should not be utilizing Java in the first place.
I find that Java provides me with precisely everything I need to effectively program in most domains. Of course I have never tried to step outside of the platform which I am developing for.
They have a simple opt-out policy for this. They sent a message about a month ago (IIRC). It was pretty detailed and outlined their policy. Basically they said something to the effect that they would not be linking this data to an individual user.. it was to be collected purely in aggregate. While they CAN know what you watch.. you can keep them from finding out if you are so inclined. The clarity of their policy has helped me make the decision to let them sample me all they want:)
Tivo gave us a VERY detailed message about this... along with a very easy opt-out system. They outlined that the information being collected was purely statistical and would not be linked to an individual user. I thought they handled it well.
I know you don't want to hear this.. and I hate to say it, but its capitlism in action and it makes perfect sense.
The disease you describe is fairly rare. Other diseases are not. If the drug companies spend their valuable resources fixing your sons disease then they have less resources to allocate to diseases that have a higher value to them. Why do they have a higher value? Because certain disesases have more customers (read: victims). Aids and various Cancers are examples of diseases that are worth the time and effort of research for the drug companies. These diseases affect millions of people worldwide. They can save more lives fixing these diseases, and make more money in the process.
It doesn't seem fair when life throws a rare disease your way, but it doesn't change the simple fact that this is the most efficient use of resources. When society begins to place more value on fixing this liver disease (presumably because more people suffer from it) then the drug companies will put the time and effort into fixing it, because the profit will be there for them.
It sounds mean and cruel, but it really is the best way.
Re:Duplication of Effort is *Okay* (not always)
on
OpenPKG 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Where you see multiple options, I see what are essentially forks.
Linux is a mess of different systems right now, and that is NOT a good thing. Competition makes things better, I completely agree. However, when you have to compete with your own side along with everyone else.. now that is a problem. Consider that most projects have a team of people who do nothing but build for the different distributions. Right now most projects put out individually packaged versions for:
Redhat 7.x - whatever redhat is at now
Mandrake 7.x - 8.x
Debian
Suse
It is not uncommon for a Linux user to have to choose between 20 or 30 different packages to get the one that is right for their system!
This is a problem of not having a standard. The fact that we have all of these distributions is a problem. The fact that we have two major desktop environments is a problem. All of this is a serious problem because the Linux world is split into lots of tiny factions competeing with each other for the already small number of Linux users out there.
All of this quickly frusturates a Linux newbie.. and all but a hearty few tuck tail and run back to Windows. The reason is simple. Without some standards in place, the entire Linux movement is hopeleslly duplicating a wide variety of projects and aims. I will not argue that this is poor allocation of resources, the open source world doesn't swing that way. I WILL argue, however, that it creates a rather twisted world for the Linux user. Simply because your machine boots a Linux Kernel does not mean that you are priviliged to all of the software that fashions itself as Linux compatible. A windows user can be fairly secure in the knowledge that they can and will be able to run just about anything out there. This is what I want for Linux.
This long winded response does need a disclaimer, however. I do beleive that some measure of competition is good... I see little danger in multiple distributions just as long as Linux in general can standardize on the important things (packaging and desktop for instance). When this has been discussed in the past everyone always said something to the effect of "Eventually the better technology will win out and that will become the standard"
Of course that hasn't (and will never) happened. In the major overlapping projects no clear winner has emerged, no standard has been produced. Instead the waters are as murky as ever and I can not see anything changing that. That leads linux advocates to make this competition is good!!! argument, and tucking away the repurcussions of that competition (a much higher barrier to entry) away..
Slashdot Mirror
Just to point out..
The new'ish light rail (2-3 years ago) was a REAL improvement for those out in the western section of town (Littleton, Highlands Ranch).. that line makes it possible to get to downtown rather quickly actually..
Combine that with one of them Segways and your home free:)
I was travelling in Rome and someone in our party was pickpocketed.. and the guy literally took of down the subway tunnel with the wallet.
Subject says it all. I do several thousand dollars worth of business with Best Buy every year. I can't find a good place to send my complaints, so if anyone has one.. I'd like to hear it:)
The thing is, the data-entry mistake could have occured higher up the chain. The people that they called simply have access to the price listed in the best buy system.
So... if the typo occured when the price was actually listed, then you could call the customer reps 600 times and they would all give you the same price.
What is more interesting to me is that this did seem like some kind of specially designed promotion. I don't know if the 200 dollar off quote is something that is generated by their pricing system (its not uncommon for the suggested retail price and the offering price to be compared and presented to the reps for sale purposes) or if it was part of a really botched promotional campaign that best buy realized was a big mistake, just to late. That to me is the meat of the question.
Anti-free speech? Are you NUTS?
Fraud is not protected speech, period. False advertising is a form of fraud, as it is an attempt to "trick" the buying public by promising goods or services in a misleading way.
False advertising is very difficult to prove, however. Errors and unintentional ommisions are protected as just that, accidents. In order to win a false advertising suit you have to prove malicious intent.. and that's very very difficult to do.
I'm not really sure what occured in this case. It seems like Best Buy made a listing error, and then refused to honor. That would put them well within their legal rights.
This stuff is amazing to me, considering the shoddy quality of most video game reviews. I recently bought Triple Play 2002 (not a good game), which was rightfully blasted in a IGN review.
The problem is, it was blasted for all of the wrong reasons. These people literally played the game on the easiest setting for 15 minutes and said "Geee, you can score like 80 runs in 3 innings!". Anyone who has actually played the game knows that hitting gets much harder as you up the skill level. They completely ignored the actual problems that present themselves as the game play goes on (runners cover the base paths in record time, so good luck on double plays.. for example).
The point? Besides the fact that I like to rant I just think its incredibly frusturating that people can give cursory reviews of products and make out like bandits because of it. I mean, if I did my job (Software Engineer) like that.... well I certainly wouldn't get a free trip to anywhere but the unemployment line.
You have to understand the PS2 architecture...
On the PC we are very bandwidth restricted when it comes to memory. The bus speeds on your typical X86 motherboard are generally rather slow and as a result a PC programmer constantly has to deal with this bottleneck. The solution has been (and still is) to basically read the data once and copy it into RAM, where it sits until its needed. Most games load up textures and geometry one "area" or "level" at a time into RAM and page it to the video card on demand. If you try to run things directly from storage, you will quickly choke the bus and things get rather ugly...(think virtual memory paging).
The PS2 on the other hand has a fairly robust bus system. The idea is that data is streamed from storage on demand, as opposed to simply dumping it in memory. You still need some memory to actually hold textures, but it is not uncommon for that memory to be refreshed every frame. It is possible to outrun the PS2 bus when basically every texture and every piece of geometry needs to change (this is the cause of the common "cut-scene slowdown" you see in some games)... As long as EQ's textures can fit into memory one frame at a time, things should go pretty well.. if you can't work in 8 megs (or whatever it has) of textures PER FRAME, you need to rethink your strategy.
This architecture can be difficult to get a handle on and requires a completely different approach to asset management... its also a large part of the reason that most programmers think the PS2 is hard to work with..
Nick
Have you compiled a few things lately? Most of the "major" Linux tools (desktops, database systems, etc..) can take HOURS to compile on my machine..
I don't NOT want to wait HOURS to install something... that sucks. We really do need a unified and efficient binary packaging scheme. For all intensive purposes the red-carpet type of services solve the problem very well.... I like network package resolution... To me this is the ideal way to handle our problems. I simply say "I want XXXX piece of software" and the network system figures out what packages I need, figures out if I have them, and downloads and installs the neccesary ones. The Mandrake package manger does this from CD, it would be nice if it could both access some network repository and the local media tho...
The obvious question here...
Does federal law not have supremacy over the laws of a state (even constintutional)? I know that the federal constitution most definitely supercedes all other laws, but what about 'run of the mill' federal laws?
Apple Cinema Display is absolutely coveted by most of the graphics designers i've met in the last year or so.
I'm a hockey fan, hell more than that I'm a sports fan. There, I said it.. and your probably wondering how this is at all relevant.
Well here in Central Arkansas (SEC country) we have a serious issue with our ABC affiliate. In order to bring more Arkansas Razorback games to us, they have entered into a contract with Jefferson Pilot sports. This contract forces ABC to show a bunch of SEC sports programs in lieu of the regular national programs. This means that we rarely get to see the big matchup football games. We regularly miss out on big college football games, hockey games (at least until basketball season is over), and anything else that is nationally shown on Saturday.
This isn't the only issue, however. Take my parents.. they live in a strange valley RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF LITTLE ROCK. The geography of this neighborhood makes it nearly impossible to actually get the local stations via broadcast. So if my parents want to use a satellite (and they do, being from Colorado they like the sports packages that allow them to see Colorado sports games) they have to do without local programming... and this means missing anything broadcast on these stations... They attempted to get a waiver signed by the local affiliates.. but that didn't work out. So now they are forced into "watching" local stations they can not even receive...
So here we have this DSS technology which would allow us to see the games we want (no SEC specials) clearly... and yet it is regulated away from us. Someone fix this... please.
What law where you fighting? I'm just curious, as we have long standing underage curfew laws here in Arkansas... I'm wondering if it is something that has been thrown out in other states ( I was arrested several times for breaking curfew before turning 18).
Java word processors do exist, and they aren't bad really.
I've used two at different times (one was.. "Freedom to something" I don't really recall the name. A quick google search did not turn it up, but trust me.. it at least existed at one point.
This is really not only applicable to this guy, but everyone in the Linux community. These Java word processors are really applicable to the Linux environment.. and in that respect really deserve to be looked at.
Actually the game development industry follows the 80/20 law quite well.
Per capita profits have been consistently down over the last 5 or 6 years as the number of developers has DRASTICALLY grown. So while overall profits are way up, that isn't really a good indication of the whole picture.
The problem? The game publishers are incredibly poorly managed. They do throw money at a lot of projects that have nothing going for them but a rather well known employee or owner (Ionstorm springs to mind immediatly). They also refuse to fund some projects with the talent and design to really create a solid game... Its a funny industry.
The word democracy has absolutely no connection with the word freedom. You can be very free and live in a theocracy, monarchy, or dictatorship. You can be incredibly repressed in a democracy as well.
In a pure direct democracy you are likely to have very FEW freedoms if you differ greatly from the majority.
Ok troll, i'll play.
Democracy != absolute freedom.
A democratic nation can certainly limit freedoms, and any fruitful democracy does. In this case the democracy has thus far decided (although not clearly in one direction or the other) that the moral cost of stem cell research is not worth the scientific gain. Arriving at this decision is complex and cumbersome process.. that is the wonder of democracy. The people have effectively put controls on this research themselves.
A communist nation (or dictatorship) has another method of arriving at decisions. In this case a single ruler (or single party) gets to make the decisions about what freedoms to limit. Traditionally China has placed great limits on the freedom of its people, but in this case the ruler has chosen to let stem cell research continue. This shouldn't really be surprising, it is certainly easier to convince a communist leader with limited responsibility to the wants of the people to pursue a potentially controversial policy.
This mirrors what we saw in the Soviet Union. They accelerated their space program because the leadership had limited responsibility for the lives of the people involved. They didn't have to care what the people thought.
IIRC the appeals court did not overturn the IE ruling, they simlpy repealed the punishment back to the lower courts (which is where the DOJ promptly dropped the case).
This isn't a communist nation or a dicatorship people. The artists get themselves into these contracts. If they don't like it, then don't do it. Simple.. get a real job like everyone else. The fact is that the record labels KNOW they can find suitable talent willing to work for basically nothing, and until that changes (this is basic economics after all) then what exactly are they doing wrong? Its like a worker at McDonals. Teenagers are willing to put up with quite a bit for 5.15 an hour so McDonalds has no incentive to pay them more. Rock stars are willing to work for similiar, and so the labels don't have to pay them more. Good for them.
Java is not a language meant to be run in a single environment. The platform you are running on is Java (the platform).. not Linux, Windows, or any other operating system. If you are needing to check the process ID then you are stepping outside of the platform and probably should not be utilizing Java in the first place.
I find that Java provides me with precisely everything I need to effectively program in most domains. Of course I have never tried to step outside of the platform which I am developing for.
Are we allowed to sue whenever a companies actions raise the cost of us 'doing business (buying a product)' and hurt consumers?
After all, it seems like we should have ample reason to sue the RIAA (large markup on CD's, hurts consumers) or the DVD people.
Double standards are fun.
They have a simple opt-out policy for this. They sent a message about a month ago (IIRC). It was pretty detailed and outlined their policy. Basically they said something to the effect that they would not be linking this data to an individual user.. it was to be collected purely in aggregate. While they CAN know what you watch.. you can keep them from finding out if you are so inclined. The clarity of their policy has helped me make the decision to let them sample me all they want:)
Just to elaborate on the other responses...
Tivo gave us a VERY detailed message about this... along with a very easy opt-out system. They outlined that the information being collected was purely statistical and would not be linked to an individual user. I thought they handled it well.
I know you don't want to hear this.. and I hate to say it, but its capitlism in action and it makes perfect sense.
The disease you describe is fairly rare. Other diseases are not. If the drug companies spend their valuable resources fixing your sons disease then they have less resources to allocate to diseases that have a higher value to them. Why do they have a higher value? Because certain disesases have more customers (read: victims). Aids and various Cancers are examples of diseases that are worth the time and effort of research for the drug companies. These diseases affect millions of people worldwide. They can save more lives fixing these diseases, and make more money in the process.
It doesn't seem fair when life throws a rare disease your way, but it doesn't change the simple fact that this is the most efficient use of resources. When society begins to place more value on fixing this liver disease (presumably because more people suffer from it) then the drug companies will put the time and effort into fixing it, because the profit will be there for them.
It sounds mean and cruel, but it really is the best way.
Where you see multiple options, I see what are essentially forks.
Linux is a mess of different systems right now, and that is NOT a good thing. Competition makes things better, I completely agree. However, when you have to compete with your own side along with everyone else.. now that is a problem. Consider that most projects have a team of people who do nothing but build for the different distributions. Right now most projects put out individually packaged versions for:
Redhat 7.x - whatever redhat is at now
Mandrake 7.x - 8.x
Debian
Suse
It is not uncommon for a Linux user to have to choose between 20 or 30 different packages to get the one that is right for their system!
This is a problem of not having a standard. The fact that we have all of these distributions is a problem. The fact that we have two major desktop environments is a problem. All of this is a serious problem because the Linux world is split into lots of tiny factions competeing with each other for the already small number of Linux users out there.
All of this quickly frusturates a Linux newbie.. and all but a hearty few tuck tail and run back to Windows. The reason is simple. Without some standards in place, the entire Linux movement is hopeleslly duplicating a wide variety of projects and aims. I will not argue that this is poor allocation of resources, the open source world doesn't swing that way. I WILL argue, however, that it creates a rather twisted world for the Linux user. Simply because your machine boots a Linux Kernel does not mean that you are priviliged to all of the software that fashions itself as Linux compatible. A windows user can be fairly secure in the knowledge that they can and will be able to run just about anything out there. This is what I want for Linux.
This long winded response does need a disclaimer, however. I do beleive that some measure of competition is good... I see little danger in multiple distributions just as long as Linux in general can standardize on the important things (packaging and desktop for instance). When this has been discussed in the past everyone always said something to the effect of "Eventually the better technology will win out and that will become the standard"
Of course that hasn't (and will never) happened. In the major overlapping projects no clear winner has emerged, no standard has been produced. Instead the waters are as murky as ever and I can not see anything changing that. That leads linux advocates to make this competition is good!!! argument, and tucking away the repurcussions of that competition (a much higher barrier to entry) away..
Aren't most non-OEM machines upgrade eligible for Windows? Does that not run something like $89?
How would I justify that extar $10 just to run something that is near windows? It doesn't make much sense to me really.
Nick