Actually, it does cost Sprint money. If a credit card charge is declined the card issue charges Sprint a fee. Failed billing is actually a huge issue for telecommunications companies.
I wrote billing software for a large telecommunications company and dealt directly with this issue. Something like 40% of all attempted credit card charges failed for one reason or another. That is a lot of money lost to no good end.
I implemented the system which would attempt to authorize (not withdraw) one month's worth of billing from new credit card signups. It is amazing how many people hit their credit limit when you check to see if $45 is there. And even then a large number of those who pass that check will fail to pay their bill when you attempt to charge.
Asking for (and storing! WTF) SSNs to sign up for a service contract is heinous, I agree. But there is a *lot* of money lost to attempting to charge the credit cards of people who then fail to pay their bills.
If I'm reading a good wikipedia article, I can easily find myself opening 5 new tabs for each article I read. It can easily approach exponential growth as I open tabs from each of the linked articles. On some topics the pages end up linking back to each other but many branch out openly to other subjects. At that point it's down to self-discipline to keep me from having dozens of open tabs.
I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin where there is a significant Scandinavian influence and knew several folks who spoke Swedish. It really does seem to lilt and bubble along. It is very lyrical and pleasant to hear:) There's a combination of altered pitch and rhythmic emphasis which is very unlike American English.
Another thing that was very striking to me was hearing English spoken with that same bubbling style. It took me quite some time to be able to really understand it, but it was very interesting. (I grew up in the American South and had a very heavy accent when I moved to WI. It took me about six months to be able to comfortably communicate with the Wisconsinites! These days after moving around quite a bit more I speak something extremely close to what my theater-major friends call "American Standard" which is not actually native to any one area of the US. Kind of an interesting evolution.)
Anyway, I find dialects, languages, pronunciations,and inflections fascinating. This is just my two cents as someone who does not speak Swedish, but has known people who do.
I used to live near Lake Norman in North Carolina. The reactor there kept part of the lake warm year-round... it made for some great water-skiing in the late fall.
$278 a month? I'd kill for insurance at those rates. When I was unemployed about a year back, I was paying well over $400 / mo. for lousy insurance through my ex-employer's COBRA plan. For reference, that was more than I was paying in rent + gas + vehicle insurance. One of the main reasons I came on as a full-time employee at my current job instead of as a contractor is so that I could go on the employee health plan. Sure, it takes a chunk out of my paycheck, but it's a hell of a lot less than self-paying for everything. You just can't buy insurance at the rates the employee plans can negotiate. The whole system is rigged against individuals. The only thing more expensive than paying for individual insurance is not having insurance. Either way you can go broke very, very quickly.
So yeah, buying new toys was right out. Fixing them is the much more economical solution. As the old saying goes, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."
This is why in my state at least, (Missouri) you can gift a car to someone. My folks did this for me when they wanted to give me their old junker. There was no tax on the transaction, but I did have to pay $100 for new plates.
I do like the sound of Nevada's approach to it though.
Do a google search on "Tetris dreams". This is a pretty well-known phenomenon. Usually it's caused by your unconscious mind exploring the possibility space of a given constrained set of circumstances. In the classic Tetris study, the subjects' gameplay skills improved dramatically after playing to the point where they had dreams about the game. Their minds were 'pre-solving' Tetris and evaluating different strategies.
Heh, I get this effect the most when I've been playing a lot of Soul Calibur.
WXIII was... ok. It was much more of a horror flick than anything, and it introduced a new cast of characters, which was disappointing to me. While the animation and production quality was very good the story itself didn't do anything for me.
That's an interesting observation. I've noticed something like this in myself. I have a background heavy in music and video games, and lately I've been playing many rhythm games such as Guitar Hero and Donkey Konga. Mentally I count out rhythms in a vocal manner. "1-e-and-uh 2-e-and-uh 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta 1-2-3-uh-4" and so on. Despite the fact that neither of these games requires the use of the mouth or vocalizations, I am completely unable to speak while playing them. My mind is entirely occupied by the rhythm and counting involved in playing. My friends get a great laugh out of asking me questions while I'm playing. I hear and process their questions internally, but the most I'm able to respond with is a labored "yes" or "no".
It's fascinating that you mention the person who could talk but not read while timing things. I wonder if he would have trouble say, playing music from sheet music but be able to hold a steady rhythm while singing or playing from memory.
I play FFXI seriously on the PC. I can vouch for these statements. I use my keyboard for communication and my dual-shock style gamepad for everything else. Heck, I turn off my wireless mouse when I play because it just gets in the way. It saves batteries and frustration when I accidentally jostle it.
Honestly, this is pretty cool. I'd love to get a PS3 to play around with the Cell processor. This is really a new thing - far from discouraging homebrew hacking on their system, Sony is making it possible to install a full-blown Linux system on *launch day*. The hardware in the system is all standard stuff so everything should Just Work. I imagine that the community will have the custom graphics processor up and running in no time. If I understand correctly, the seven Cell cores are already supported by Linux due to IBM's desire to have the Cell architecture be used in more than just PS3s. It's just the custom graphics chipset which needs to have drivers written.
I can understand why Sony hasn't written such drivers - it looks like they've architected the system to be easy to install alternative OSes, but they haven't gone out of their way to write code for a particular 3rd party OS vendor. I look forward to seeing where this all goes.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it does cost Sprint money. If a credit card charge is declined the card issue charges Sprint a fee. Failed billing is actually a huge issue for telecommunications companies.
I wrote billing software for a large telecommunications company and dealt directly with this issue. Something like 40% of all attempted credit card charges failed for one reason or another. That is a lot of money lost to no good end.
I implemented the system which would attempt to authorize (not withdraw) one month's worth of billing from new credit card signups. It is amazing how many people hit their credit limit when you check to see if $45 is there. And even then a large number of those who pass that check will fail to pay their bill when you attempt to charge.
Asking for (and storing! WTF) SSNs to sign up for a service contract is heinous, I agree. But there is a *lot* of money lost to attempting to charge the credit cards of people who then fail to pay their bills.
The awesomebar in FF3 and the https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890 Tree Style Tab work almost exactly as you describe. I think they're great.
pwnies!
37signals has long had a history of ignoring customer feature requests. And they consider this a feature, not a defect!
Actually, I saw "SQL".
Guess what I'm getting bleary-eyed working on today.
Though, I suppose that proves your point rather than discounting it.
If I'm reading a good wikipedia article, I can easily find myself opening 5 new tabs for each article I read. It can easily approach exponential growth as I open tabs from each of the linked articles. On some topics the pages end up linking back to each other but many branch out openly to other subjects. At that point it's down to self-discipline to keep me from having dozens of open tabs.
When I lived one mile from work, I walked.
When I lived three miles from work, I biked.
Now that I live twenty-six miles from work, I drive.
My waist has suffered but unfortunately my wallet would suffer much more if I tried to live closer to the office.
Can we standardize telecommuting yet? Wouldn't help the waist but I could cut down my consumption, at least.
Shouldn't that be "you have nothing to loose but your change"?
No no no. Conslutants do it for fun. Consultants do it for the money!
I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin where there is a significant Scandinavian influence and knew several folks who spoke Swedish. It really does seem to lilt and bubble along. It is very lyrical and pleasant to hear :) There's a combination of altered pitch and rhythmic emphasis which is very unlike American English.
Another thing that was very striking to me was hearing English spoken with that same bubbling style. It took me quite some time to be able to really understand it, but it was very interesting. (I grew up in the American South and had a very heavy accent when I moved to WI. It took me about six months to be able to comfortably communicate with the Wisconsinites! These days after moving around quite a bit more I speak something extremely close to what my theater-major friends call "American Standard" which is not actually native to any one area of the US. Kind of an interesting evolution.)
Anyway, I find dialects, languages, pronunciations,and inflections fascinating. This is just my two cents as someone who does not speak Swedish, but has known people who do.
<3, even.
Stupid filters.
So how long until we see "less than 3" in there? 3
I used to live near Lake Norman in North Carolina. The reactor there kept part of the lake warm year-round... it made for some great water-skiing in the late fall.
$278 a month? I'd kill for insurance at those rates. When I was unemployed about a year back, I was paying well over $400 / mo. for lousy insurance through my ex-employer's COBRA plan. For reference, that was more than I was paying in rent + gas + vehicle insurance. One of the main reasons I came on as a full-time employee at my current job instead of as a contractor is so that I could go on the employee health plan. Sure, it takes a chunk out of my paycheck, but it's a hell of a lot less than self-paying for everything. You just can't buy insurance at the rates the employee plans can negotiate. The whole system is rigged against individuals. The only thing more expensive than paying for individual insurance is not having insurance. Either way you can go broke very, very quickly.
So yeah, buying new toys was right out. Fixing them is the much more economical solution. As the old saying goes, "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without."
This is why in my state at least, (Missouri) you can gift a car to someone. My folks did this for me when they wanted to give me their old junker. There was no tax on the transaction, but I did have to pay $100 for new plates.
I do like the sound of Nevada's approach to it though.
Do a google search on "Tetris dreams". This is a pretty well-known phenomenon. Usually it's caused by your unconscious mind exploring the possibility space of a given constrained set of circumstances. In the classic Tetris study, the subjects' gameplay skills improved dramatically after playing to the point where they had dreams about the game. Their minds were 'pre-solving' Tetris and evaluating different strategies.
Heh, I get this effect the most when I've been playing a lot of Soul Calibur.
WXIII was... ok. It was much more of a horror flick than anything, and it introduced a new cast of characters, which was disappointing to me. While the animation and production quality was very good the story itself didn't do anything for me.
I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
thx bai
The answer is none. None more black.
Ugh. Is there a +1 disturbing rating?
That's an interesting observation. I've noticed something like this in myself. I have a background heavy in music and video games, and lately I've been playing many rhythm games such as Guitar Hero and Donkey Konga. Mentally I count out rhythms in a vocal manner. "1-e-and-uh 2-e-and-uh 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta 1-2-3-uh-4" and so on. Despite the fact that neither of these games requires the use of the mouth or vocalizations, I am completely unable to speak while playing them. My mind is entirely occupied by the rhythm and counting involved in playing. My friends get a great laugh out of asking me questions while I'm playing. I hear and process their questions internally, but the most I'm able to respond with is a labored "yes" or "no".
It's fascinating that you mention the person who could talk but not read while timing things. I wonder if he would have trouble say, playing music from sheet music but be able to hold a steady rhythm while singing or playing from memory.
Yes, but... you just *know* it comes in that invulnerable plastic packaging when you order it.
I play FFXI seriously on the PC. I can vouch for these statements. I use my keyboard for communication and my dual-shock style gamepad for everything else. Heck, I turn off my wireless mouse when I play because it just gets in the way. It saves batteries and frustration when I accidentally jostle it.
Only on /. can we read about how cancer is like a zerg rush, and have it *make sense*.
Honestly, this is pretty cool. I'd love to get a PS3 to play around with the Cell processor. This is really a new thing - far from discouraging homebrew hacking on their system, Sony is making it possible to install a full-blown Linux system on *launch day*. The hardware in the system is all standard stuff so everything should Just Work. I imagine that the community will have the custom graphics processor up and running in no time. If I understand correctly, the seven Cell cores are already supported by Linux due to IBM's desire to have the Cell architecture be used in more than just PS3s. It's just the custom graphics chipset which needs to have drivers written.
I can understand why Sony hasn't written such drivers - it looks like they've architected the system to be easy to install alternative OSes, but they haven't gone out of their way to write code for a particular 3rd party OS vendor. I look forward to seeing where this all goes.