As the inevitable cuts came, who do you think hung on to their job?
It's a trick question. Neither of them did, as the entire department was outsourced. Or right-sized. Or left-screwed. Or smart-wombatted. Or wang-smacked. Or whatever they're calling it these days.
A customer ordered a product, received something quite different which was not only not what she wanted but not something which she could use, called the vendor to complain and was told to just keep it "because it's better", instead of trying to return it. As a result, she couldn't get any of her work done as it required the original product which she had actually requested.
Why would I be surprised to find that she was dealing with Dell? Or that some smug bastard here has called it 'funny'?
And here I thought a 'Gantlet' was a chart which showed exactly when you would be hit with whips and staves, so that each hit would come after the ones before it and only when there were enough people and whips available to do it.
The thing was completely worthless; Anyone with an IQ over 90 could have figured out the "correct" answers.
Perhaps you misunderstood the purpose of the test.
Would you want to hire someone who couldn't even figure out how to lie convincingly during an interview for a position which would involve being in constant contact with the public?
A big part of dealing with customers is figuring out the "correct" answers. Basically, that the customer's concern is important to you, that the more expensive product really is a better choice, and that you really are going to be right back after checking the reserve stock section which really is located right near the break room.
If a simple test can filter out the applicants who are too honest or too clueless for a career in retail sales, why not use it?
Personal responsibility. If you can't bring a blanket and cover yourself up, go somewhere where we don't have to see you. This reinforces the notion that next time you'll bring a blanket! I fail to see how a lack of planning on their part constitutes a legitimate reason to expose themselves in front of me.
You seem to be confused about something. _You_ have chosen to be offended, so it it a time for _you_ to take some responsibility. Bring a blanket and put it over your own head and then you won't have to see anything you don't like. Why would you expect the entire world to get out of your way just because you can't be bothered to prepare for that?
Parents need to accept that there are a hundred little things that are "cute" to them but pretty distasteful to the general populace.
Oooooh kaay... Let me try to show you a different angle on this story. We'll start with a few simple statements and build up from there.
We'll start by assuming that breast feeding is somehow good for children. I know it seems a bit nutty, but the little fellers do need to eat and since most of them are mammals, they're kinda designed that way.
Next we can go one further and say that it's not just a good idea, it's really the best way to feed a baby. The World Health Organization agrees with that one, and you'd think they might know a thing or two about what's good for you. About the only people who believe that bottle feeding and formula are better for all babies are the ones trying to sell formula and bottles.
Okay, so it's good for babies. Why don't those pesky mothers just stay at home and do it there so that the rest of the world doesn't have to feel mild social awkwardness? That's where things start to get interesting.
Babies need to be fed. Often. In fact, many of them are quite lacking in patience and social graces and tend to get rather miffed when they aren't fed right away. By insisting that nursing mothers only feed in private you would be effectively telling women that they need to spend about a year locked up inside their homes. Not because of any risk to them or their children, but just to avoid reminding other people that babies exist. Quite a number of people take exception to that, seeing it as being a Civil Rights issue. Nobody wants to watch you eat nachos with your mouth wide open, but you still have the right to do it in public. Why should women be denied that?
What was that? Oh, you don't think that women should necessarily be shut up in their homes, they should just quietly duck out of the way when their noisy little spawn decide to get hungry. Like, maybe, sit in the ladies room where nobody will have to see them until they are done. First off, that's not very much different from sending them to the back of the bus and secondly, would you like to eat in a public washroom every day? That's not only demeaning it's also quite unsanitary.
So they should just feed their babies some other way? Like mixing up formula and using a bottle? Look back at the first two statements, which are that breastfeeding is only a good idea, it's the best thing for the baby.
So... where were we? On one hand, breastfeeding is good for babies so it should be encouraged. On the other hand, seeing babies being fed makes some people feel a little bit awkward. So we as a society have a choice. We can either define breastfeeding as "inappropriate" or "indecent", condemning mothers for the crime of being mammals and pressuring them into using less healthy alternatives like bottle feeding with formula, or we can just get over it and acknowledge that we are, in fact, the product of either millions of years of evolution or a divine six day drunken bender depending on what kind of education you had, but either way we're mammals and that's how we work.
Since this is Slashdot, let's wrap this up with a little analogy. Would you support a rule which required all children under the age of five to be chloroformed and have their mouths duct taped shut when they were out in a public area? Or perhaps mandatory handcuffs for all mothers with a chain just long enough to reach the stove? Defining breastfeeding as "indecent" or even "inappropriate" behaviour has the same effect. And _that_ is why people get upset when they are told by groups like the Facebook management that they should just cover up or go away. It's not because they have a desperate need to show the world pictures of their boobs, it's because they want to live in a world where women can do the right thing without it being considered somehow shameful or distasteful.
The Total War games are each set in a single time period.
Which is why, to expand on your own example, the Egyptian armies in R:TW appear to have fallen through a time warp from 800 years earlier while the British ride about in chariots from 300 years in the future.
They had always had auxiliary archer units and/or Roman archers called sagiterii.
That's the late Roman Empire talking, when Rome could recruit auxilia from the middle east. R:TW is set in 240 BC where slingers were all the rage.
You mean Celtic warriors wearing nothing save a torc and a liberal coating of woad on their faces? Much was exaggerated about the "barbarity" of the northern barbarians by classical Roman and Greek historians, but they certainly did have some quite unorthodox battle tactics.
Like hurling hundreds of flaming heads at their enemies to set them on fire? Or entire legions made up of women who do nothing but scream in German? Like the giant packs of war dogs and flaming pigs these are not without some historical precedent, but their depiction in the game is completely at odds with historical records.
I'm not saying that the Total War series are _bad games_, only that they take liberties with their source material and that this irritates some of their fans.
Are you one of those gamers who wanted Fallout 3 to be turn based, isometric and 2D....in 2008?
No, I wanted it turn based, isometric, 2D and released in 1999. Why would I insist on a nine year delay?
it may not have been developed by Black Isle, but it's still a Fallout game and claiming otherwise is just being curmudgeonly.
Uh huh. And is it also just being curmudgeonly to make a distinction between the original Star Trek series and randomly chosen results from a Google search for Star Trek Slash? Or to carry on stubbornly believing that the Very Secret Diaries are not actually part of the Lord of the Rings? Or that the random scribblings that I did in crayon last weekend are not really Sherlock Holmes stories which can stand up with the best of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work?
Fallout 3 may have been inspired by Fallout and Fallout 2, but with none of the original writers or developers involved its branding with the 'Fallout' name is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.
I haven't played the games myself. But... aren't they giving you control over an entire campaign? I'm not sure how they can give you any significant freedom while still retaining historical accuracy, other than in a fairly broad sense regarding period tactics, strategies, and military technologies.
Imagine, for the moment, being given complete control over the American Civil War. You would play the North under Douglas MacArthur and start with a division of Panzer tanks and two battalions of chariots from Pennsylvania. The South is split up into three different kingdoms, each headed by its own Pope, and you will need to capture their three holy cities of Pensacola, Columbus and Houston in order to win. Fortunately, swashbuckling pirates from Antigua show up every few turns to offer their services as mercenaries in your Grande Armée.
That's about what playing Rome: Total War is like. It's entertaining, but has very little to do with actual history. It's not that the events of the campaign are wrong, it's more that the armies and people involved have all been picked from different time periods or fantasy novels and thrown together into a blender set to "purée". The end result is a reasonably enjoyable, somewhat balanced game, but it is filled with bizarre inaccuracies like the Roman legions fielding companies of archers, and Julius Caesar riding around the battlefield at the head of his own band of Teutonic knights. Don't even start with the crazy armies that come out of Briton.
I personally enjoyed R:TW, and am willing to forgive a lot of the changes having been made in the name of game balance, but it looks like the Creative Assembly team skipped doing some of their homework there. Fans of the Total War series have been hoping for some time that the development team would have an unpleasant encounter with a ruler-wielding nun who would remind them to take their research a little more seriously with their next game.
Recently I've seen comments similar to yours stating that "Where's Waldo?" is not "real" literature like Tolstoy's "War and Peace". So I picked up a copy of the book and read it. It's big, but I had plenty of time could figure out most of the words. The opening page had the title of the book written on it, much like "Where's Waldo?" did and then there I was on the first chapter. It had a bunch of words in it (like "Where's Waldo?"), and there was a little sketch of some people on the next page (like "Where's Waldo?"). Sure, it was a lot longer, but at it's (why did I never learn how to spell that word) core "War and Peace" is not that much different from "Where's Waldo?". So it seemed to me that "Where's Waldo" IS a classic work of nineteenth century Russian literature.
Okay, yeah, you got me there. The differences are so slight you would need a microscope to point them out.
Oh yeah, not enough war games. We need more of those. Less creative, new, differing games. Those blow. We need Halo 4, we need Guitar Hero 37, we need Fallout 9.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just never played the two real Fallout games. Otherwise I might have to take exception to the final item in that list.
First, he equates horrid price/performance setups to "THE GAMING PC" as if "THE GAMING PC" had always meant morons with too much money and too little sense.
Now why would he be used to dealing with morons with too much money and too little sense? Hmm... If only there was some sort of clue in the article summary...
"Rahul Sood, HP's CTO of gaming, argues that [...]"
Right. He only works with people who buy from HP. That explains everything.
Not only slavery and capital punishment for most crimes but also paedophilia was rampant as was casual murder, rapings, slaughterings, sackings, bestiality, whippings, beatings, maulings and worse.
Those ancient people have a long way to go before they are as advanced a society as us today ( around 2000 years to go )
That's right. They would have to put all of that on television and present it as entertainment in order to match today's society.
If only the Blackberry were designed with a little more security in mind then this wouldn't happen.
Maybe if it were possible to set a password on the thing, making the entire handheld unusable without entering it, and if it could wipe its memory after ten failed password attempts. That would be nice.
And perhaps there should be some kind of "Enterprise Server" that could manage the things remotely, with the ability to set security policies and disable them entirely when they were no longer needed. That would be nice too.
But, sadly, those options don't seem to be there. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have been used?
That won't mean anything to a chinese company willing to sell a netbook online for a hundred bucks.
Which won't mean a thing when that Chinese company suddenly finds that its exports have been blocked and that the US media is filled with stories about how they use lead, melanine, or Polonium-210 in their manufacturing processes.
Nothing that can be proven, of course, but then have you ever asked to see proof when that has happened before?
Slashdot Mirror
It's a trick question. Neither of them did, as the entire department was outsourced. Or right-sized. Or left-screwed. Or smart-wombatted. Or wang-smacked. Or whatever they're calling it these days.
You'll have to excuse him. He's from Barcelona.
localhost. root.localhost. ( 1 3600 1200 3600000 86400 ) always worked just fine for me. Why complicate things by throwing an MP3 player into the mix?
A customer ordered a product, received something quite different which was not only not what she wanted but not something which she could use, called the vendor to complain and was told to just keep it "because it's better", instead of trying to return it. As a result, she couldn't get any of her work done as it required the original product which she had actually requested.
Why would I be surprised to find that she was dealing with Dell? Or that some smug bastard here has called it 'funny'?
And here I thought a 'Gantlet' was a chart which showed exactly when you would be hit with whips and staves, so that each hit would come after the ones before it and only when there were enough people and whips available to do it.
Perhaps you misunderstood the purpose of the test.
Would you want to hire someone who couldn't even figure out how to lie convincingly during an interview for a position which would involve being in constant contact with the public?
A big part of dealing with customers is figuring out the "correct" answers. Basically, that the customer's concern is important to you, that the more expensive product really is a better choice, and that you really are going to be right back after checking the reserve stock section which really is located right near the break room.
If a simple test can filter out the applicants who are too honest or too clueless for a career in retail sales, why not use it?
To the Liberty Dollar's what?
I can see that you haven't met many Mac owners yet.
I see that you either never used multitasking operating systems back then, or have simply blocked out the horrifying memories.
You seem to be confused about something. _You_ have chosen to be offended, so it it a time for _you_ to take some responsibility. Bring a blanket and put it over your own head and then you won't have to see anything you don't like. Why would you expect the entire world to get out of your way just because you can't be bothered to prepare for that?
Oooooh kaay... Let me try to show you a different angle on this story. We'll start with a few simple statements and build up from there.
We'll start by assuming that breast feeding is somehow good for children. I know it seems a bit nutty, but the little fellers do need to eat and since most of them are mammals, they're kinda designed that way.
Next we can go one further and say that it's not just a good idea, it's really the best way to feed a baby. The World Health Organization agrees with that one, and you'd think they might know a thing or two about what's good for you. About the only people who believe that bottle feeding and formula are better for all babies are the ones trying to sell formula and bottles.
Okay, so it's good for babies. Why don't those pesky mothers just stay at home and do it there so that the rest of the world doesn't have to feel mild social awkwardness? That's where things start to get interesting.
Babies need to be fed. Often. In fact, many of them are quite lacking in patience and social graces and tend to get rather miffed when they aren't fed right away. By insisting that nursing mothers only feed in private you would be effectively telling women that they need to spend about a year locked up inside their homes. Not because of any risk to them or their children, but just to avoid reminding other people that babies exist. Quite a number of people take exception to that, seeing it as being a Civil Rights issue. Nobody wants to watch you eat nachos with your mouth wide open, but you still have the right to do it in public. Why should women be denied that?
What was that? Oh, you don't think that women should necessarily be shut up in their homes, they should just quietly duck out of the way when their noisy little spawn decide to get hungry. Like, maybe, sit in the ladies room where nobody will have to see them until they are done. First off, that's not very much different from sending them to the back of the bus and secondly, would you like to eat in a public washroom every day? That's not only demeaning it's also quite unsanitary.
So they should just feed their babies some other way? Like mixing up formula and using a bottle? Look back at the first two statements, which are that breastfeeding is only a good idea, it's the best thing for the baby.
So... where were we? On one hand, breastfeeding is good for babies so it should be encouraged. On the other hand, seeing babies being fed makes some people feel a little bit awkward. So we as a society have a choice. We can either define breastfeeding as "inappropriate" or "indecent", condemning mothers for the crime of being mammals and pressuring them into using less healthy alternatives like bottle feeding with formula, or we can just get over it and acknowledge that we are, in fact, the product of either millions of years of evolution or a divine six day drunken bender depending on what kind of education you had, but either way we're mammals and that's how we work.
Since this is Slashdot, let's wrap this up with a little analogy. Would you support a rule which required all children under the age of five to be chloroformed and have their mouths duct taped shut when they were out in a public area? Or perhaps mandatory handcuffs for all mothers with a chain just long enough to reach the stove? Defining breastfeeding as "indecent" or even "inappropriate" behaviour has the same effect. And _that_ is why people get upset when they are told by groups like the Facebook management that they should just cover up or go away. It's not because they have a desperate need to show the world pictures of their boobs, it's because they want to live in a world where women can do the right thing without it being considered somehow shameful or distasteful.
But let's get back to your original comment..
What it is is a cautionary tale advocating that all IT support people should be issued spines before being allowed anywhere near real live servers.
Not to mention a number of odd web sites that show up in our blocked site logs with disturbing regularity.
Which is why, to expand on your own example, the Egyptian armies in R:TW appear to have fallen through a time warp from 800 years earlier while the British ride about in chariots from 300 years in the future.
That's the late Roman Empire talking, when Rome could recruit auxilia from the middle east. R:TW is set in 240 BC where slingers were all the rage.
Like hurling hundreds of flaming heads at their enemies to set them on fire? Or entire legions made up of women who do nothing but scream in German? Like the giant packs of war dogs and flaming pigs these are not without some historical precedent, but their depiction in the game is completely at odds with historical records.
I'm not saying that the Total War series are _bad games_, only that they take liberties with their source material and that this irritates some of their fans.
No, I wanted it turn based, isometric, 2D and released in 1999. Why would I insist on a nine year delay?
Uh huh. And is it also just being curmudgeonly to make a distinction between the original Star Trek series and randomly chosen results from a Google search for Star Trek Slash? Or to carry on stubbornly believing that the Very Secret Diaries are not actually part of the Lord of the Rings? Or that the random scribblings that I did in crayon last weekend are not really Sherlock Holmes stories which can stand up with the best of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work?
Fallout 3 may have been inspired by Fallout and Fallout 2, but with none of the original writers or developers involved its branding with the 'Fallout' name is nothing more than a marketing gimmick.
Imagine, for the moment, being given complete control over the American Civil War. You would play the North under Douglas MacArthur and start with a division of Panzer tanks and two battalions of chariots from Pennsylvania. The South is split up into three different kingdoms, each headed by its own Pope, and you will need to capture their three holy cities of Pensacola, Columbus and Houston in order to win. Fortunately, swashbuckling pirates from Antigua show up every few turns to offer their services as mercenaries in your Grande Armée.
That's about what playing Rome: Total War is like. It's entertaining, but has very little to do with actual history. It's not that the events of the campaign are wrong, it's more that the armies and people involved have all been picked from different time periods or fantasy novels and thrown together into a blender set to "purée". The end result is a reasonably enjoyable, somewhat balanced game, but it is filled with bizarre inaccuracies like the Roman legions fielding companies of archers, and Julius Caesar riding around the battlefield at the head of his own band of Teutonic knights. Don't even start with the crazy armies that come out of Briton.
I personally enjoyed R:TW, and am willing to forgive a lot of the changes having been made in the name of game balance, but it looks like the Creative Assembly team skipped doing some of their homework there. Fans of the Total War series have been hoping for some time that the development team would have an unpleasant encounter with a ruler-wielding nun who would remind them to take their research a little more seriously with their next game.
Okay, yeah, you got me there. The differences are so slight you would need a microscope to point them out.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just never played the two real Fallout games. Otherwise I might have to take exception to the final item in that list.
Now why would he be used to dealing with morons with too much money and too little sense? Hmm... If only there was some sort of clue in the article summary...
Right. He only works with people who buy from HP. That explains everything.
It has the X Window System. If you're going to be pedantic, at least try to be right.
That's right. They would have to put all of that on television and present it as entertainment in order to match today's society.
Maybe if it were possible to set a password on the thing, making the entire handheld unusable without entering it, and if it could wipe its memory after ten failed password attempts. That would be nice.
And perhaps there should be some kind of "Enterprise Server" that could manage the things remotely, with the ability to set security policies and disable them entirely when they were no longer needed. That would be nice too.
But, sadly, those options don't seem to be there. Otherwise, why wouldn't they have been used?
Which won't mean a thing when that Chinese company suddenly finds that its exports have been blocked and that the US media is filled with stories about how they use lead, melanine, or Polonium-210 in their manufacturing processes.
Nothing that can be proven, of course, but then have you ever asked to see proof when that has happened before?
82% of viewers think that the Emperor is a very snappy dresser.
...until I read the headline again and found that it didn't actually say "Lenovo Service Disassembles Laptops With a Text Message".
Being able to remotely pop out all of the screws, clips and other fiddly bits would have been much cooler than just shutting it down.