Starting last year I've gotten every member in my nuclear family to buy a Mac, because I'm sick and tired of supporting them. Started with one sister in college, then a brother heading to college, my mom, etc. Ever since then, besides one dropping a laptop, there have been next to no support issues.
Here's the weird thing, though: every time I go over to my mom's house for holidays and such, I have to check out the iMac. It's just a very nice machine. Sure, it isn't the fastest thing out there, but it's quiet and elegantly built. It looks nice -- it's something that actually looks ok in a living room. Plus, since the move to the Intel chips, it's actually pretty speed.
At this point, I'm considering getting a Mac myself. Since they run Windows as well (or Linux, or FreeBSD) why not?
While humor is invaluable to get through difficult situations, and self-deprecating humor is some of my favorite, like most things it should be measured and carefully directed. My father died of cancer and my mom, raising a family alone, got it. Fortunately she made it to remission, but one of the things that really kept us going was a tough outer shell and being able to laugh at the absurdity of life. We'd often crack jokes about how many horrible things could be fit into our daily schedules. We never joked about the cancer directly, though, and especially not about my mom.
And if you care, 1 of the 5 children does standup in Chicago's Second City. The rest of us have all retained a rather sharp wit. No jokes that mention cancer, though. That's just tasteless.
So far, I haven't had a single signed device driver crash my 2000/XP/2003 boxes. On the other hand, I've had many MANY unsigned drivers blue screen each OS to hell. If a developer needs to spend $500, which also means MS runs it through their hardware quality labs and ensure the stupid thing actually works, I'm all for it.
Besides, how many "freeware/open source" driver developers are out there for Windows?
1.9: Ahn'Qiraj World Event Ahn'Qiraj (20 and 40 man)
1.10: Weather
1.11: Undead Invasion Naxxaramas
1.12: Multi-Realm Battlegrounds World PVP
Granted, some of this stuff has been less impressive than others, but Blizzard has easily given away an expansion's worth of content. Try installing the game fresh now and patching up to 1.12 -- it's almost a CD's worth. Not to mention the thousands of tweaks and bug fixes.
They are about as far away as "lax" as you can possibly get.
Yes I know what you mean, after the fifth dialog that ended same way with "..so I need you to go and kill 10 whatevers." , one tends to not read any dialogs from then on and just press "Accept" right away.
Try playing the game more than a day before you make a judgement. Most of the story is in instances, not the levelling up quests.
I've never played WoW before, but what talent tree class do I belong to?
You'd probably belong to the "Stereotypical View of MMO Players" or "Stereotypical View of Nerds" classes. Their special ability is "+5 to Old Jokes That Should Have Been Retired in the 80s". Chance to crit(ically fail) is pretty high.
There was a vague notion of an overarching story, but an actual story line?
You must've missed the thousands of quests and literally tens of thousands of lines of text, dialog, etc. that describe the world, giving life to over a dozen books and 3 other games spanning 10 years. Easy to miss.
Or, alternatively, its due to one's parents actually being educated and intelligent, and picking a job that paid well without doing too much manual labor.
Having your kids live comfortably is not a bad thing. "Fending for oneself" is a trait everyone much learn, but if you're truely starving, you or your parents did not do a good job.
Where are you from that tremendous work ethic is not something to be admired?
Most cultures do not place labor as the be all and end all to life happiness. In America, success in one's career certainly carries major weight, but so does raising a family and excelling as an individual in other pursuits (socializing, physical health -- activities that don't necessarily have to do with one's job).
Take your example. I would presume the daughter goes to a normal American high school. This would mean roughly 7-8 hours of schooling, 8 hours of work and an indeterminate amount of extra time studying. When does she find time to be with her friends to socialize? When does she find time to be with her family (you said each family member works an 8-hour shift -- I presume they don't have much time to be with each other)? When does she sleep? When does she exercise? What you're describing seems truely unhealthy.
There is a popular book here called "Life is Not Work, Work is Not Life". You'll often find it on the desk of CEOs in major corporations, as they remind themselves there's more to life than punching in and punching out. If you find a copy, I'd suggest reading it.
My big complaint is that, up until now (I haven't checked their policies recently), you couldn't "just buy one" to try it out. Rather, you could, but if you customized it any way (even just adding more memory on the Apple Store site) they would charge a 15% restocking fee on a return. $150 on a $1000 box if you don't like it is A LOT of money. $450 on a Mac Pro with a few modifications is absurd. I can only hope they changed this considering how "configurable" the new Pro is supposed to be.
Actually, most people who avoid Myspace can't stand piss-poor webdesign, pages that take forever to load and endless tirades by teenagers. Never mind the fact that most kids "grow out of Myspace", apparently, when they head off to college (Read this in a CNN article recently. Google it).
I still don't see the attraction of hosting on Myspace. It costs, what, 5 bucks to rent a box nowadays? And you have total control of your content, not what News Coporation deems is appropriate.
All Myspace is a virtual gym class from high school. A place to socialize and learn people skills (albiet online) before heading off to a work environment. In that regard, it's a success -- but by those standards any social networking site that gets large enough is a success. In every other instance (design, marketing, etc.) it's a failure.
Keeping the same (or very similar) designs is purely intentional. They're basically saying to the world "We can put G5s in here, Intel chips in here, etc. It's still the same Mac." It also tries to deflate the consensus that PCs run hotter, by putting them in the exact same physical space.
I think it was actually very smart of Apple's design team to intentionally draw comparisons.
And before I get comments, yes, I said "the 'bossman' has been backing up every file you create, every site you visit, etc. for decades". I should have probably said "the 'bossman' has been looking at every site you visit for years and backing up every file you've created for decades".
Because Slashdot's way is to debunk several paragraphs of text based on one sentence.:P
All modern day file systems use this technique already. When you delete files in NTFS (or do a "quick format") all it's doing is changing the writeover bits in the file allocation table. The data is then free to be written over when the OS chooses. You can, in theory, restore files by scanning for table, doing a comparison to what's on the disk and seeing if the data has been written over. This is how 3rd-party recovery utilities work on XP.
The trouble is a UI issue, not a technical one. Many users in the DOS-era (that knew about the utility) started to rely on it to recover data. It was really just a crapshoot, though. Since computing was going mainstream, you needed something easier to understand that would "undelete" the file every time.
When MacOS and Windows came about, they introduced the concept of a temporary holding area for "deleted" files (the Trash Can and Recycling Bin respectively). The companies told users "put stuff here when you want to delete it, drag it out when you want to 'undelete'". It was a concept much easier to understand and "always worked" (as long as people put stuff in the can/bin and didn't delete fully the first time).
Now, users in work situations are getting used to regular backups and being able to call the IT guys any time a file goes missing (or they need an earlier version). Many people, however, do not have a reliable backup system at home. All MS is shifting the onus of backups away from the user to an automated system. (One that, coincidentally, can still be controlled by the IT guys).
VSS, as a tech, actually works quite well. It's used in almost every major backup solution on Windows because it reliably "freezes" files that are locked before backup. I think VSS will be a good solution to the "mother calling son because she deleted a recipe" problem.
System Protection will probably include System Restore, which is pretty much an invaluable feature. It's saved my ass (and people's asses I know) more than a few times when we're working on Windows boxen. You never know when the registry is going to crap out.
Truely, MS is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
How many times has your mother/father/other family member called you over because they deleted "that one file" they never backed up (it's usually never just "that one file", but that's the typical excuse)? So you head over and, sure enough, the thing is gone. The only recourse is to buy some overpriced Norton Utilities or whatnot (that will probably slow down the system to crawl) and cross fingers.
So, Microsoft enables a feature that's been built-in to the OS for a while and the reaction is instantly negative? Never mind that, daily, petabytes upon petabytes are backed up using VSS around the world, as almost all decent backup software uses it on Windows. Never mind that, if "privacy concerns" get in the way, you can always remove versions in VSS or disable it entirely.
Seems much ado about nothing, personally. Don't like it? Turn it off.
And if you're in a company, well, you don't get a choice. I'm not really sure I understand the "bossman" comments -- in most big companies, the "bossman" has been backing up every file you create, every site you visit, etc. for decades. Granted, 99.99% of it will never be looked at, but in these post-SOX days, you're pretty much mandated to catch that 0.01%. And if you don't like it, well, I guess you can always start a company with your own rules.
Personally, I think this thing is going to be a tremendous blessing. When a relative calls me still using Windows (I've been trying to push them all to Mac), and says "My god, I deleted this crumb cake recipe! I'm doomed!" I'll be able to get it back after a couple clicks. Sounds great to me.
It depends on the game. I don't know how you could possibly play a game like Madden with a trackball. Or a game like Street Fighter. It would be terrible.
Keep in mind, this is coming from a person who's a diehard shooter fanatic. Keyboard/mouse (still) is the best control method for that genre.
The problem is that most PC gamers think "MMO, shooter, RTS..." only. Those are all game genres that are better played with keyboard/mouse. There's many more genres out there.
As with most things, there are some heavy shades of gray with the bnetd thing.
Most people were using bnetd not only to emulate Battle.net servers, but pirate the games. There is no DRM on any Blizzard CDs. People were logging into bnetd because there was no CD key check like batt.net.
Slashdot users cleverly ignore the fact that the majority (nay, nearly all) bnetd users were using it to get around buying the games from Blizzard. I personally get rather tired of this "Blizzard/Vivendi is evil" crap when the users themselves were the unethical ones.
I normally try to avoid the Slashdot groupthink ("Apple good! M$ bad! blah blah blah") but this is one instance where ridicule is warranted.
Microsoft has NEVER owned the enterprise search space. They don't have a single corporate appliance to help search large volumes. Their search in Exchange is downright disgraceful. Personally, I won't touch their indexing service (about a month after it came out in Windows 2000, they found security holes with it. Thanks but no thanks).
If they're talking about local search, things are just as bad. Their puppy mascot takes forever to find files, and if a file is removed or deleted from the search window, explorer.exe gets freaked out and sometimes puts up an error message.
It says volumes that 3rd-party companies have an easier time finding files on Microsoft volumes than MS's own tools. I personally use Google desktop. While it can take forever to load, it finds files and emails lightning quick. If you download it, be sure to try searching in email (both using Outlook's search and Google's toolbar) -- you'll be amazed at the difference.
MS has to produce something, anything, that says their serious about search. Windows Vista is their one shot, and it's looking pretty bad. It does something from a UI standpoint I find kind of ludicrous: you open the Start Menu, type a few letters to find a program and, if it can't find it, it looks for files and then searches the web through MSN. Huh? MS put it in the Programs menu -- it should search for programs. For reference, if you use the Spotlight search feature on Mac within System Preferences, it searches just that -- System Preferences. It doesn't look for files or search the web.
Where did I say small businesses were crappy? I'm simply arguing that the replier's original point (owning a business is better than working at one) is untrue. You get out of both what you put into both.
I've known a lot (I mean a LOT) of small businesses where the owner was bright, eager to work, but failed miserably. In my opinion, unless you have a really good idea that you can back up with solid funding, owning a small business is usually an exercise in failure. In fact, I forget the exact statistic (we learned this in one of our MBA courses -- owning a small business was the subject of one of them) but something like 50% of all small businesses fail in the first year. Personally, if it's a decision between feeding my family in a large corporation and creating a small business that has a 50% chance of failing, I'll feed my family.
And to imply that a person with an MBA will be stuck in middle management is ludicrous. The MBA is a step on the ladder. In many cases you HAVE to take to that step to get to director or CIO or whatever. It's akin to saying elementary school is ridiculous, because you can't get anywhere on an elementary school education. It's a step, not the end result.
My guess, you're either one of those guys in a "cube farm" sucking it up to a horrible manager, or own a small business that's failing. Belittling others because they don't want to be you, will not improve your situation.
Uh, yeah. I stopped reading after I glanced at your signature (I'm a democrat, personally, but that kind of crap is why we're been in the hole the last two elections).
Why should I listen to you, by the way? You sound like a college kid at my local Exxon that pumps gas. You don't sound like a writer (or even someone who knows anything about grammar).
Keep up that minimum wage job! Great career, there.
Some of this is arguably a matter of style instead of grammar, but let's just say that your style could use some serious editing.
See, what's surprising about this is, like I mentioned, I do write professionally.
* Starting a statement off with a conjunction is writer's license. It's the way I write. If you're interested, I actually use this because it's very similar to human dialogue (if you listen to most people, you'll hear they often start statements off with conjunctions, as well as dangle their participles on occasion). * Either a -- or... would worked here. I tend to think of -- as a short, quick break, while... is more of a lull. I prefer using - or --. * Either way is correct. The way I wrote it, the rhythm and flaw is much better. If you read the two phrases, you'll see mine rolls a bit better off the tongue. * I think the extra "you" is redundant. Who's "trying"? "You". Who might "knock it"? "You". It doesn't need to be said twice.
Slashdot Mirror
Starting last year I've gotten every member in my nuclear family to buy a Mac, because I'm sick and tired of supporting them. Started with one sister in college, then a brother heading to college, my mom, etc. Ever since then, besides one dropping a laptop, there have been next to no support issues.
Here's the weird thing, though: every time I go over to my mom's house for holidays and such, I have to check out the iMac. It's just a very nice machine. Sure, it isn't the fastest thing out there, but it's quiet and elegantly built. It looks nice -- it's something that actually looks ok in a living room. Plus, since the move to the Intel chips, it's actually pretty speed.
At this point, I'm considering getting a Mac myself. Since they run Windows as well (or Linux, or FreeBSD) why not?
While humor is invaluable to get through difficult situations, and self-deprecating humor is some of my favorite, like most things it should be measured and carefully directed. My father died of cancer and my mom, raising a family alone, got it. Fortunately she made it to remission, but one of the things that really kept us going was a tough outer shell and being able to laugh at the absurdity of life. We'd often crack jokes about how many horrible things could be fit into our daily schedules. We never joked about the cancer directly, though, and especially not about my mom.
And if you care, 1 of the 5 children does standup in Chicago's Second City. The rest of us have all retained a rather sharp wit. No jokes that mention cancer, though. That's just tasteless.
So far, I haven't had a single signed device driver crash my 2000/XP/2003 boxes. On the other hand, I've had many MANY unsigned drivers blue screen each OS to hell. If a developer needs to spend $500, which also means MS runs it through their hardware quality labs and ensure the stupid thing actually works, I'm all for it.
Besides, how many "freeware/open source" driver developers are out there for Windows?
Are you kidding? There have been 11 major patches since release, for chrissakes.
1.2:
Maraudon
Gurubashi Arena
Feast of Great-Winter Event
1.3:
Dire Maul
Azuregos
Lord Kazzak
1.4:
PVP Honor System
1.5:
Battlegrounds
1.6:
Blackwing Lair
Darkmoon Faire
1.7:
Zul'Gurub
Arathi Basin
Strangethorn Fishing Contest
1.8:
Silithus
Four Dragons
1.9:
Ahn'Qiraj World Event
Ahn'Qiraj (20 and 40 man)
1.10:
Weather
1.11:
Undead Invasion
Naxxaramas
1.12:
Multi-Realm Battlegrounds
World PVP
Granted, some of this stuff has been less impressive than others, but Blizzard has easily given away an expansion's worth of content. Try installing the game fresh now and patching up to 1.12 -- it's almost a CD's worth. Not to mention the thousands of tweaks and bug fixes.
They are about as far away as "lax" as you can possibly get.
Try playing the game more than a day before you make a judgement. Most of the story is in instances, not the levelling up quests.
You'd probably belong to the "Stereotypical View of MMO Players" or "Stereotypical View of Nerds" classes. Their special ability is "+5 to Old Jokes That Should Have Been Retired in the 80s". Chance to crit(ically fail) is pretty high.
You must've missed the thousands of quests and literally tens of thousands of lines of text, dialog, etc. that describe the world, giving life to over a dozen books and 3 other games spanning 10 years. Easy to miss.
Or, alternatively, its due to one's parents actually being educated and intelligent, and picking a job that paid well without doing too much manual labor.
Having your kids live comfortably is not a bad thing. "Fending for oneself" is a trait everyone much learn, but if you're truely starving, you or your parents did not do a good job.
Most cultures do not place labor as the be all and end all to life happiness. In America, success in one's career certainly carries major weight, but so does raising a family and excelling as an individual in other pursuits (socializing, physical health -- activities that don't necessarily have to do with one's job).
Take your example. I would presume the daughter goes to a normal American high school. This would mean roughly 7-8 hours of schooling, 8 hours of work and an indeterminate amount of extra time studying. When does she find time to be with her friends to socialize? When does she find time to be with her family (you said each family member works an 8-hour shift -- I presume they don't have much time to be with each other)? When does she sleep? When does she exercise? What you're describing seems truely unhealthy.
There is a popular book here called "Life is Not Work, Work is Not Life". You'll often find it on the desk of CEOs in major corporations, as they remind themselves there's more to life than punching in and punching out. If you find a copy, I'd suggest reading it.
...get a look now before the pics disappear.
My big complaint is that, up until now (I haven't checked their policies recently), you couldn't "just buy one" to try it out. Rather, you could, but if you customized it any way (even just adding more memory on the Apple Store site) they would charge a 15% restocking fee on a return. $150 on a $1000 box if you don't like it is A LOT of money. $450 on a Mac Pro with a few modifications is absurd. I can only hope they changed this considering how "configurable" the new Pro is supposed to be.
Actually, most people who avoid Myspace can't stand piss-poor webdesign, pages that take forever to load and endless tirades by teenagers. Never mind the fact that most kids "grow out of Myspace", apparently, when they head off to college (Read this in a CNN article recently. Google it).
I still don't see the attraction of hosting on Myspace. It costs, what, 5 bucks to rent a box nowadays? And you have total control of your content, not what News Coporation deems is appropriate.
All Myspace is a virtual gym class from high school. A place to socialize and learn people skills (albiet online) before heading off to a work environment. In that regard, it's a success -- but by those standards any social networking site that gets large enough is a success. In every other instance (design, marketing, etc.) it's a failure.
Keeping the same (or very similar) designs is purely intentional. They're basically saying to the world "We can put G5s in here, Intel chips in here, etc. It's still the same Mac." It also tries to deflate the consensus that PCs run hotter, by putting them in the exact same physical space.
I think it was actually very smart of Apple's design team to intentionally draw comparisons.
"Lug"? What's your model made out of? Titanium?
e sents-the-ipod-invisa-on-snl/).
Maybe you need an iPod Pequeno (http://www.engadget.com/2005/11/20/steve-jobs-pr
And before I get comments, yes, I said "the 'bossman' has been backing up every file you create, every site you visit, etc. for decades". I should have probably said "the 'bossman' has been looking at every site you visit for years and backing up every file you've created for decades".
:P
Because Slashdot's way is to debunk several paragraphs of text based on one sentence.
All modern day file systems use this technique already. When you delete files in NTFS (or do a "quick format") all it's doing is changing the writeover bits in the file allocation table. The data is then free to be written over when the OS chooses. You can, in theory, restore files by scanning for table, doing a comparison to what's on the disk and seeing if the data has been written over. This is how 3rd-party recovery utilities work on XP.
The trouble is a UI issue, not a technical one. Many users in the DOS-era (that knew about the utility) started to rely on it to recover data. It was really just a crapshoot, though. Since computing was going mainstream, you needed something easier to understand that would "undelete" the file every time.
When MacOS and Windows came about, they introduced the concept of a temporary holding area for "deleted" files (the Trash Can and Recycling Bin respectively). The companies told users "put stuff here when you want to delete it, drag it out when you want to 'undelete'". It was a concept much easier to understand and "always worked" (as long as people put stuff in the can/bin and didn't delete fully the first time).
Now, users in work situations are getting used to regular backups and being able to call the IT guys any time a file goes missing (or they need an earlier version). Many people, however, do not have a reliable backup system at home. All MS is shifting the onus of backups away from the user to an automated system. (One that, coincidentally, can still be controlled by the IT guys).
VSS, as a tech, actually works quite well. It's used in almost every major backup solution on Windows because it reliably "freezes" files that are locked before backup. I think VSS will be a good solution to the "mother calling son because she deleted a recipe" problem.
System Protection will probably include System Restore, which is pretty much an invaluable feature. It's saved my ass (and people's asses I know) more than a few times when we're working on Windows boxen. You never know when the registry is going to crap out.
Truely, MS is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
How many times has your mother/father/other family member called you over because they deleted "that one file" they never backed up (it's usually never just "that one file", but that's the typical excuse)? So you head over and, sure enough, the thing is gone. The only recourse is to buy some overpriced Norton Utilities or whatnot (that will probably slow down the system to crawl) and cross fingers.
So, Microsoft enables a feature that's been built-in to the OS for a while and the reaction is instantly negative? Never mind that, daily, petabytes upon petabytes are backed up using VSS around the world, as almost all decent backup software uses it on Windows. Never mind that, if "privacy concerns" get in the way, you can always remove versions in VSS or disable it entirely.
Seems much ado about nothing, personally. Don't like it? Turn it off.
And if you're in a company, well, you don't get a choice. I'm not really sure I understand the "bossman" comments -- in most big companies, the "bossman" has been backing up every file you create, every site you visit, etc. for decades. Granted, 99.99% of it will never be looked at, but in these post-SOX days, you're pretty much mandated to catch that 0.01%. And if you don't like it, well, I guess you can always start a company with your own rules.
Personally, I think this thing is going to be a tremendous blessing. When a relative calls me still using Windows (I've been trying to push them all to Mac), and says "My god, I deleted this crumb cake recipe! I'm doomed!" I'll be able to get it back after a couple clicks. Sounds great to me.
It depends on the game. I don't know how you could possibly play a game like Madden with a trackball. Or a game like Street Fighter. It would be terrible.
Keep in mind, this is coming from a person who's a diehard shooter fanatic. Keyboard/mouse (still) is the best control method for that genre.
The problem is that most PC gamers think "MMO, shooter, RTS..." only. Those are all game genres that are better played with keyboard/mouse. There's many more genres out there.
As with most things, there are some heavy shades of gray with the bnetd thing.
Most people were using bnetd not only to emulate Battle.net servers, but pirate the games. There is no DRM on any Blizzard CDs. People were logging into bnetd because there was no CD key check like batt.net.
Slashdot users cleverly ignore the fact that the majority (nay, nearly all) bnetd users were using it to get around buying the games from Blizzard. I personally get rather tired of this "Blizzard/Vivendi is evil" crap when the users themselves were the unethical ones.
I normally try to avoid the Slashdot groupthink ("Apple good! M$ bad! blah blah blah") but this is one instance where ridicule is warranted.
Microsoft has NEVER owned the enterprise search space. They don't have a single corporate appliance to help search large volumes. Their search in Exchange is downright disgraceful. Personally, I won't touch their indexing service (about a month after it came out in Windows 2000, they found security holes with it. Thanks but no thanks).
If they're talking about local search, things are just as bad. Their puppy mascot takes forever to find files, and if a file is removed or deleted from the search window, explorer.exe gets freaked out and sometimes puts up an error message.
It says volumes that 3rd-party companies have an easier time finding files on Microsoft volumes than MS's own tools. I personally use Google desktop. While it can take forever to load, it finds files and emails lightning quick. If you download it, be sure to try searching in email (both using Outlook's search and Google's toolbar) -- you'll be amazed at the difference.
MS has to produce something, anything, that says their serious about search. Windows Vista is their one shot, and it's looking pretty bad. It does something from a UI standpoint I find kind of ludicrous: you open the Start Menu, type a few letters to find a program and, if it can't find it, it looks for files and then searches the web through MSN. Huh? MS put it in the Programs menu -- it should search for programs. For reference, if you use the Spotlight search feature on Mac within System Preferences, it searches just that -- System Preferences. It doesn't look for files or search the web.
Keep talking, anonymous coward. Keep talking.
Where did I say small businesses were crappy? I'm simply arguing that the replier's original point (owning a business is better than working at one) is untrue. You get out of both what you put into both.
I've known a lot (I mean a LOT) of small businesses where the owner was bright, eager to work, but failed miserably. In my opinion, unless you have a really good idea that you can back up with solid funding, owning a small business is usually an exercise in failure. In fact, I forget the exact statistic (we learned this in one of our MBA courses -- owning a small business was the subject of one of them) but something like 50% of all small businesses fail in the first year. Personally, if it's a decision between feeding my family in a large corporation and creating a small business that has a 50% chance of failing, I'll feed my family.
And to imply that a person with an MBA will be stuck in middle management is ludicrous. The MBA is a step on the ladder. In many cases you HAVE to take to that step to get to director or CIO or whatever. It's akin to saying elementary school is ridiculous, because you can't get anywhere on an elementary school education. It's a step, not the end result.
My guess, you're either one of those guys in a "cube farm" sucking it up to a horrible manager, or own a small business that's failing. Belittling others because they don't want to be you, will not improve your situation.
Uh, yeah. I stopped reading after I glanced at your signature (I'm a democrat, personally, but that kind of crap is why we're been in the hole the last two elections).
Why should I listen to you, by the way? You sound like a college kid at my local Exxon that pumps gas. You don't sound like a writer (or even someone who knows anything about grammar).
Keep up that minimum wage job! Great career, there.
See, what's surprising about this is, like I mentioned, I do write professionally.
* Starting a statement off with a conjunction is writer's license. It's the way I write. If you're interested, I actually use this because it's very similar to human dialogue (if you listen to most people, you'll hear they often start statements off with conjunctions, as well as dangle their participles on occasion).
* Either a -- or
* Either way is correct. The way I wrote it, the rhythm and flaw is much better. If you read the two phrases, you'll see mine rolls a bit better off the tongue.
* I think the extra "you" is redundant. Who's "trying"? "You". Who might "knock it"? "You". It doesn't need to be said twice.