saadly, a lot of people don't realize this, and stop going to stores that kept there prices low, but didn't have a card system. So those stores now have a card system, and increased there cost to pay for the system.
I suppose that's one good thing about Florida - Publix Supermarkets. Publix is entirely employee-owned, doesn't have any kind of card program in place, and has reasonable prices. Locally, they also have a guarantee that all the cashier lanes will be staffed between 5 and 7pm - I wish more supermarkets would follow their lead WRT customer service and focus.
Ask 'em. Most people at NASA are happy to talk about their work. It's not generally classified, and there's no NDA. When the really obvious or cool stuff is prefaced with "Why didn't you..." the response is almost always "We thought about that, but we didn't have the -foo- budget". Where foo is time, money, materials, weight or space. Often there are lots of cool ideas and the end result is much more simple and less featureful... but the remaining features are rock solid and tested 20 times to Sunday.
I have the privilege of counting as a friend an ex-Marshall Space Flight Center engineer that has some of his hardware on the way to Saturn at present, my ex-girlfriend's sister works at JPL (Opportunity is her team's baby), and my late uncle did quite a bit of work with the Saturn group out at the Cape, so I know of which you speak. From talking to them, I also know that things don't always go 100% according to plan, sometimes because the plan itself wasn't 100%.:-) It wasn't my intention to lessen any of the achievements that have come from any of these remarkable engineering teams, just to point out that people can and do make mistakes, regardless of their abilities.:-)
You're calling the people who built, launched and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space and landed it on another planet stupid?
On the surface, they would appear to be equally as smart as the people who built, launched, and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space, but failed to get it into orbit around Mars because of a mid-flight command error that most people would call stupid. I don't believe either team is stupid, but both teams are equally prone to honest mistakes. There are sometimes glaring design optimizations that could have been made, but somehow just were not thought about for whatever reason.
I don't think that's likely the case here, but just because they're rocket scientists, it doesn't magically mean they've become infallible.
I haven't had any luck with them yet. I'm on my sixth support call and pondering joining a class action that's being put together regarding this issue. I hate the whole class-action thing, since the lawyers are the only ones that actually make out in the end, but maybe it would make the issue a little more public.
Xbox. I own and Xbox, and mine has been fine. However, I know others who own them too, and all of theirs have GSOD problems... None of the retail stores in the area can keep an Xbox demo working for more than a couple months. They seem to die when they're on all the time, as one store owner explained to me. Definately the console most prone to failure - not far behind is the shoddily manufactured PS2 however.
And let's not forget the Thomson DVD problems the early Xboxes are prone to, that Microsoft still refuses to publicly acknowledge.
Less social infrastructure? Okay, let me see if I understand the argument you're presenting here properly - you say that we should go ahead and send work offshore because it makes life better for those in less-fortunate circumstances, and raises the standard of living for more people.
I don't guess it makes sense until you accept that part of the reason American labor costs more is because a First World society costs a lot of money to maintain. One would expect that an American company, enjoying the benefits of environmental regulation (don't have to breathe poisonous air, don't have to worry about what might be in the water, etc.) and other government-mandated rules and services that generally improve the quality of life here, would be expected to contribute to the maintenance of the nation in which it exists, regardless of where its labor force might be.
Why is it okay for India, Japan, and other nations to impose protectionist tariffs and immigration policies, but it's not okay for the United States to adopt similar practices? Why is it not okay for the United States to attempt to protect its own interests just because doing so may not be in the best interest of someone else? We certainly are not seeing any reciprocal concern for American interests.
There's always plumbing. If you can't make a living selling something that can be copied make a living selling something that can't. Nothing, not even copyright law, grants you the inherent right to make a living at a particular pursuit.
We gotta get you in a room with Jack Valenti and Cary Sherman....
I read about this yesterday and I think the story doesn't have a ton of value beyond it being a freak show type thing. The size of his losses and his inability to recognize what happened are like a traffic wreck- you can't help but look and say 'WOW'.
Maybe the story's value lies in the potential for the next clueless schmuck to read it and be discouraged from doing the same thing before he dumps any money into it.
If you want to get back at a company that screwed you over, don't turn around and give them $400.
Amen. I have a 5GB iPod that I bought in 2001 and thankfully have had no problems with it. I wish I could say the same of my Xbox - I've got one of the first run machines (even though I bought it mid-last year) with the well-documented Thomson DVD problem which prevents me from playing some games, although it wasn't until this year that I purchased the first game that gave me problems. I've attempted to get the issue resolved with MS, with no luck. So, my next course of action is to buy a replacement Samsung drive for the unit, make the needed mods to it, and install it myself. I told MS that I would content myself with the current stable of games that I already own, but never again would a new Xbox game or console cross the threshold of my home, and I intend to honor that promise. It's a real shame too, because IMHO the Xbox is the best console out there right now. I refuse to reward MS for this lack of support - if they want me to continue to purchase games for the system, they need to take the steps to ensure that any game I buy will run on my system, as should be reasonably expected. If I was in the same situation with Apple, I'd similarly tell them to go pack sand, and either buy a replacement battery myself, or purchase a competitor's product. In no case would I buy another iPod.
It seems to be symptomatic of public corporations these days to provide the least possible amount of product/service in order to maximize the short-term gain with no thought to the long-term relationship with the customer. I understand the whole corporate obligation to maximize shareholder value, but it seems rather counterproductive to piss a customer off over a $50 battery and potentially lose thousands of dollars in future business. Of course, if most of your customers are idiots like the original guy who whined about the battery issue then turned around and plunked down the cash for a new iPod, then they get what they deserve, I guess. Maybe it's more of a commentary on our society that we have people that complain about poor products, but don't have the backbone to refuse to patronize the vendors of said products?
It was an important product in it's day since it was the first multi-timbral (hence MT) synth meaning it could play more than one instrument at a time (e.g. piano and trumpet)
First cheap multitimbral synth. There were other synths available at the time that were multitimbral, just not many that were affordable. Also, the MT-32 wasn't an FM synth - it used wavetables for the attacks/releases and subtractive synthesis for the sustain, just like the D50 (love my D550) did only with a *lot* less memory and generally crappier sound.:-) IIRC, the only FM synths at the time were Yamaha's DX/TX line (love my DX5, DX7, and TX216), the Korg DS-8 (which used the Yamaha 4-op chipset), and the Synclavier (love them too, still can't afford one).
Interestingly, the Winnie The Pooh ride has a Toad reference in it. Near the beginning of the ride, if you look off to the left, there is a picture of Toad handing the deed to Toad Hall over to Owl. The irony of locating the Pooh gift shop where Hell was located in The Ride has not been lost on people either.:-)
Regarding the original Imagination rehab, rumor has it that when Michael Eisner rode the attraction, he asked the person responsible for the rehab, "Where is my five million dollars?" The newest rehab makes it substantially better, but it's still nowhere near as good as it originally was, IMO.
I'm a part-time monorail driver at WDW, and I think I found the worst place to get stuck this past summer. I was driving from the TTC to Epcot with a fairly full train during a pretty intense storm, and as I was passing the MK toll plaza we got word that a tornado warning had been issued. Nice, as I can't see more than 100 feet in front of me because of the rain. The fun started when I got about a third of the way around the Epcot teardrop and the entire system lost power for about 25 minutes. Not fun, as I had no idea where the reported tornado was. Turns out it was several miles south of me, but I still would not care to do that again. During the time we were stuck, there was also a direct lightning strike on the Innoventions East building about 100 feet away, which I'm sure freaked out a lot of people on the train.
All the spec is going to do is something computer people have wanted for years- to ditch the old archaic BIOS.
Open Firmware, anyone? It's only been available for around 15 years or so. Oh, and it's a real IEEE standard, unlike whatever thing Phoenix/Microsoft will be foisting on us.
I think in that situation, what would have happened is that Best Buy would have ended up with a whole bunch of pissed-off FatWallet readers once they got to the store and found the sale prices were not available. Certainly it would harm FatWallet's credibility, but at the expense of potential Best Buy customers, and I'm quite sure that a lot of people would consider the possibility that Best Buy had seeded bad information to FatWallet, which would make Best Buy look even worse.
I'll agree that involving the courts was not the thing to do, though. I believe that Best Buy's Best Bet would have been to simply suck it up this year, find someone else to print their flyers next year, and figure out some means of protecting that information in their contract with the printer.
The short, short answer is that home users only make up 15% of Dell's sales, so the cost savings by outsourcing more than make up for any lost sales or returns due to customer dissatisfaction. Translated into consumer English, that says "We don't sell enough to home users to make us give a damn"
Forget the photo - check out the CV. He states that he has "20 years of experience as a freelance reviewer, IT consultant and systems analyst", but his resume would seem to indicate otherwise. I also don't see anything on his resume to indicate that he really is qualified to talk about anything regarding networking, except for holding a CNE cert (do those even exist anymore?) - there's no real IT work on there except for his six years at Novell, mostly documentation management and technical writing.
Re:I saw [multiple] Saturn V launch[es] myself.
on
Build Your Own Saturn V
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Yeah, I grew up just south of PAFB, had both parents who worked out there, and watched 'em all (excepting Apollo 17 and Skylab, I was off in Hawaii playing tag with 10 meter waves)
Looks like we were neighbors - my dad was stationed at PAFB in the early/mid 70's, at the radar site at the corner of A1A and Pineda Causeway. I saw all of the post-Apollo 11 launches, all the Skylab launches, have seen probably about half of the Shuttle launches, and was unfortunately in Rockledge watching when the Challenger exploded.
I'd agree that the Shuttle launches are spectacular, but they simply don't compare to the Saturns.:-)
I work for a company that builds laser marking/engraving systems, and I've been bitten a few times by 50W CO2s. It really sucks, since the CO2 beam is so readily absorbed by the skin - you get a really nasty burn before you even know it, and it's the gift that keeps on giving. Contrast that to a 100W Q-switched YAG IR laser, which you can happily run all over your hand while only feeling a slight warmth (provided you're not near focus, otherwise things aren't quite so pleasant). This is not something I recommend doing, however.
The three brothers that won the settlement the other day are by far the biggest creditor, so I assume that they get first crack at any assets when X10 goes under
Well, it's done on a percentage basis according to the amount owed and the available assets unless there are tax liabilities involved, in which case the IRS gets first crack to recover the full value of the taxes owed, and everyone else gets to divvy up whatever is left, if anything. IANAL, but I have been a creditor in bankruptcy proceedings, and it really sucks when the IRS gets *everything* when there are taxes owed in excess of the assets, leaving nothing for the other creditors, including employees that may not have been paid.
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saadly, a lot of people don't realize this, and stop going to stores that kept there prices low, but didn't have a card system. So those stores now have a card system, and increased there cost to pay for the system.
I suppose that's one good thing about Florida - Publix Supermarkets. Publix is entirely employee-owned, doesn't have any kind of card program in place, and has reasonable prices. Locally, they also have a guarantee that all the cashier lanes will be staffed between 5 and 7pm - I wish more supermarkets would follow their lead WRT customer service and focus.
Ask 'em. Most people at NASA are happy to talk about their work. It's not generally classified, and there's no NDA. When the really obvious or cool stuff is prefaced with "Why didn't you..." the response is almost always "We thought about that, but we didn't have the -foo- budget". Where foo is time, money, materials, weight or space. Often there are lots of cool ideas and the end result is much more simple and less featureful... but the remaining features are rock solid and tested 20 times to Sunday.
:-) It wasn't my intention to lessen any of the achievements that have come from any of these remarkable engineering teams, just to point out that people can and do make mistakes, regardless of their abilities. :-)
I have the privilege of counting as a friend an ex-Marshall Space Flight Center engineer that has some of his hardware on the way to Saturn at present, my ex-girlfriend's sister works at JPL (Opportunity is her team's baby), and my late uncle did quite a bit of work with the Saturn group out at the Cape, so I know of which you speak. From talking to them, I also know that things don't always go 100% according to plan, sometimes because the plan itself wasn't 100%.
You're calling the people who built, launched and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space and landed it on another planet stupid?
On the surface, they would appear to be equally as smart as the people who built, launched, and sent a semi-autonomous probe through space, but failed to get it into orbit around Mars because of a mid-flight command error that most people would call stupid. I don't believe either team is stupid, but both teams are equally prone to honest mistakes. There are sometimes glaring design optimizations that could have been made, but somehow just were not thought about for whatever reason.
I don't think that's likely the case here, but just because they're rocket scientists, it doesn't magically mean they've become infallible.
I haven't had any luck with them yet. I'm on my sixth support call and pondering joining a class action that's being put together regarding this issue. I hate the whole class-action thing, since the lawyers are the only ones that actually make out in the end, but maybe it would make the issue a little more public.
Xbox. I own and Xbox, and mine has been fine. However, I know others who own them too, and all of theirs have GSOD problems... None of the retail stores in the area can keep an Xbox demo working for more than a couple months. They seem to die when they're on all the time, as one store owner explained to me. Definately the console most prone to failure - not far behind is the shoddily manufactured PS2 however.
And let's not forget the Thomson DVD problems the early Xboxes are prone to, that Microsoft still refuses to publicly acknowledge.
Less social infrastructure? Okay, let me see if I understand the argument you're presenting here properly - you say that we should go ahead and send work offshore because it makes life better for those in less-fortunate circumstances, and raises the standard of living for more people.
I don't guess it makes sense until you accept that part of the reason American labor costs more is because a First World society costs a lot of money to maintain. One would expect that an American company, enjoying the benefits of environmental regulation (don't have to breathe poisonous air, don't have to worry about what might be in the water, etc.) and other government-mandated rules and services that generally improve the quality of life here, would be expected to contribute to the maintenance of the nation in which it exists, regardless of where its labor force might be.
Why is it okay for India, Japan, and other nations to impose protectionist tariffs and immigration policies, but it's not okay for the United States to adopt similar practices? Why is it not okay for the United States to attempt to protect its own interests just because doing so may not be in the best interest of someone else? We certainly are not seeing any reciprocal concern for American interests.
There's always plumbing. If you can't make a living selling something that can be copied make a living selling something that can't. Nothing, not even copyright law, grants you the inherent right to make a living at a particular pursuit.
We gotta get you in a room with Jack Valenti and Cary Sherman....
I read about this yesterday and I think the story doesn't have a ton of value beyond it being a freak show type thing. The size of his losses and his inability to recognize what happened are like a traffic wreck- you can't help but look and say 'WOW'.
Maybe the story's value lies in the potential for the next clueless schmuck to read it and be discouraged from doing the same thing before he dumps any money into it.
If you want to get back at a company that screwed you over, don't turn around and give them $400.
Amen. I have a 5GB iPod that I bought in 2001 and thankfully have had no problems with it. I wish I could say the same of my Xbox - I've got one of the first run machines (even though I bought it mid-last year) with the well-documented Thomson DVD problem which prevents me from playing some games, although it wasn't until this year that I purchased the first game that gave me problems. I've attempted to get the issue resolved with MS, with no luck. So, my next course of action is to buy a replacement Samsung drive for the unit, make the needed mods to it, and install it myself. I told MS that I would content myself with the current stable of games that I already own, but never again would a new Xbox game or console cross the threshold of my home, and I intend to honor that promise. It's a real shame too, because IMHO the Xbox is the best console out there right now. I refuse to reward MS for this lack of support - if they want me to continue to purchase games for the system, they need to take the steps to ensure that any game I buy will run on my system, as should be reasonably expected. If I was in the same situation with Apple, I'd similarly tell them to go pack sand, and either buy a replacement battery myself, or purchase a competitor's product. In no case would I buy another iPod.
It seems to be symptomatic of public corporations these days to provide the least possible amount of product/service in order to maximize the short-term gain with no thought to the long-term relationship with the customer. I understand the whole corporate obligation to maximize shareholder value, but it seems rather counterproductive to piss a customer off over a $50 battery and potentially lose thousands of dollars in future business. Of course, if most of your customers are idiots like the original guy who whined about the battery issue then turned around and plunked down the cash for a new iPod, then they get what they deserve, I guess. Maybe it's more of a commentary on our society that we have people that complain about poor products, but don't have the backbone to refuse to patronize the vendors of said products?
It was an important product in it's day since it was the first multi-timbral (hence MT) synth meaning it could play more than one instrument at a time (e.g. piano and trumpet)
:-) IIRC, the only FM synths at the time were Yamaha's DX/TX line (love my DX5, DX7, and TX216), the Korg DS-8 (which used the Yamaha 4-op chipset), and the Synclavier (love them too, still can't afford one).
First cheap multitimbral synth. There were other synths available at the time that were multitimbral, just not many that were affordable. Also, the MT-32 wasn't an FM synth - it used wavetables for the attacks/releases and subtractive synthesis for the sustain, just like the D50 (love my D550) did only with a *lot* less memory and generally crappier sound.
As far as Toad is concerned, there are a *lot* of photographs and video available to draw from, not all of it taken by guests. :-)
Interestingly, the Winnie The Pooh ride has a Toad reference in it. Near the beginning of the ride, if you look off to the left, there is a picture of Toad handing the deed to Toad Hall over to Owl. The irony of locating the Pooh gift shop where Hell was located in The Ride has not been lost on people either. :-)
Regarding the original Imagination rehab, rumor has it that when Michael Eisner rode the attraction, he asked the person responsible for the rehab, "Where is my five million dollars?" The newest rehab makes it substantially better, but it's still nowhere near as good as it originally was, IMO.
I'm a part-time monorail driver at WDW, and I think I found the worst place to get stuck this past summer. I was driving from the TTC to Epcot with a fairly full train during a pretty intense storm, and as I was passing the MK toll plaza we got word that a tornado warning had been issued. Nice, as I can't see more than 100 feet in front of me because of the rain. The fun started when I got about a third of the way around the Epcot teardrop and the entire system lost power for about 25 minutes. Not fun, as I had no idea where the reported tornado was. Turns out it was several miles south of me, but I still would not care to do that again. During the time we were stuck, there was also a direct lightning strike on the Innoventions East building about 100 feet away, which I'm sure freaked out a lot of people on the train.
I think you're thinking of Body Wars, which is a simulator attraction in the Wonders Of Life pavilion at Epcot. Body Wars opened in 1989, IIRC.
I am one of the biggest Disney weenies in the world. I've had an AP since I was 15, and I long for a return to the old days of Disneyland.
:-)
For those that are not big Disney weenies like CleverNickName and myself, "AP" refers to "annual pass".
Actually, WDW opened in October of 1971, but your point still stands - the article is wrong, as The Ride closed in 1998.
All the spec is going to do is something computer people have wanted for years- to ditch the old archaic BIOS.
Open Firmware, anyone? It's only been available for around 15 years or so. Oh, and it's a real IEEE standard, unlike whatever thing Phoenix/Microsoft will be foisting on us.
I think in that situation, what would have happened is that Best Buy would have ended up with a whole bunch of pissed-off FatWallet readers once they got to the store and found the sale prices were not available. Certainly it would harm FatWallet's credibility, but at the expense of potential Best Buy customers, and I'm quite sure that a lot of people would consider the possibility that Best Buy had seeded bad information to FatWallet, which would make Best Buy look even worse.
I'll agree that involving the courts was not the thing to do, though. I believe that Best Buy's Best Bet would have been to simply suck it up this year, find someone else to print their flyers next year, and figure out some means of protecting that information in their contract with the printer.
The short, short answer is that home users only make up 15% of Dell's sales, so the cost savings by outsourcing more than make up for any lost sales or returns due to customer dissatisfaction. Translated into consumer English, that says "We don't sell enough to home users to make us give a damn"
Forget the photo - check out the CV. He states that he has "20 years of experience as a freelance reviewer, IT consultant and systems analyst", but his resume would seem to indicate otherwise. I also don't see anything on his resume to indicate that he really is qualified to talk about anything regarding networking, except for holding a CNE cert (do those even exist anymore?) - there's no real IT work on there except for his six years at Novell, mostly documentation management and technical writing.
Yeah, I grew up just south of PAFB, had both parents who worked out there, and watched 'em all (excepting Apollo 17 and Skylab, I was off in Hawaii playing tag with 10 meter waves)
:-)
Looks like we were neighbors - my dad was stationed at PAFB in the early/mid 70's, at the radar site at the corner of A1A and Pineda Causeway. I saw all of the post-Apollo 11 launches, all the Skylab launches, have seen probably about half of the Shuttle launches, and was unfortunately in Rockledge watching when the Challenger exploded.
I'd agree that the Shuttle launches are spectacular, but they simply don't compare to the Saturns.
Dang it - I even previewed the damn post and screwed up the law firm's URL. Here it is: Oppedahl & Larson LLP:
Not quite true. From a patent law firm's website:
"A patent permits its owner to exclude members of the public from making, using, or selling the claimed invention."
I work for a company that builds laser marking/engraving systems, and I've been bitten a few times by 50W CO2s. It really sucks, since the CO2 beam is so readily absorbed by the skin - you get a really nasty burn before you even know it, and it's the gift that keeps on giving. Contrast that to a 100W Q-switched YAG IR laser, which you can happily run all over your hand while only feeling a slight warmth (provided you're not near focus, otherwise things aren't quite so pleasant). This is not something I recommend doing, however.
The three brothers that won the settlement the other day are by far the biggest creditor, so I assume that they get first crack at any assets when X10 goes under
Well, it's done on a percentage basis according to the amount owed and the available assets unless there are tax liabilities involved, in which case the IRS gets first crack to recover the full value of the taxes owed, and everyone else gets to divvy up whatever is left, if anything. IANAL, but I have been a creditor in bankruptcy proceedings, and it really sucks when the IRS gets *everything* when there are taxes owed in excess of the assets, leaving nothing for the other creditors, including employees that may not have been paid.