I remember when they first changed the intranet site to match in-store pricing only. It makes sense since the internet is going after a mostly different demographic and would have to make prices even lower to compete (which they STILL save money on because running a warehouse costs much less than shipping it to a store and have to pay salespersons wages).
Anyway, I was an employee at BBY when they started this switch, and, embarrasingly enough, I didn't notice the switch for over 2 months - and I was a customer service senior. They never even bothered to tell us!! (and i worked at Richfield, MN - just across the street from corporate HQ) - they were most probably thinking that we would deny the price match out of ignorance.
But, in my stores defense, once we found out of the switch we checked through the internet website and even went as far as printing it off if they had to go to another store to pick up the item.
Basically, with any corporation you will have great stores and horrible stores - it all depends on who the GM is. I've had good ones that make a great customer atmosphere and horrible GM's that make me deny price matches and basically be a bitch to the customer. But one thing I've found to be true no matter what GM I have is that the customer initiatives at the corporate level are in the right place - which is much more than I can say for most other Fortune 500 companies out there.
At a time like this the marketplace has already reached saturation. Their target market for the Zune has got to be around %50-%80 of people who already own an iPod. I couldn't imagine these people upgrading to Zune, which gives wireless and FM capabilities for $250. They are basically buying a second iPod and the only increase in value are trivial features that less than %10 of the owners of an iPod would want. I'm also guessing that that same %10 either loves Apple, hates Microsoft, or a fuzzy combination of the two.
Remember, this is just the release of the console. Back when the NES and SNES came out there wasn't $300, $400 and $+++ consoles on the market to be competing against. It looks as if the market has seen a substantial inflation over the years, whereas Nintendos inflation with the Wii may only be minimal. If you are thinking $5-$10 for a legit copy of classic games is an overhaul, you can just get out of my house. An overwhelming majority of the population does not use roms/emus, so they have gone without the classics for quite a long time (generally, people don't dust off the ole' N64, SNES, or earlier that often)
Reminder: These are the release prices, the only direction they will go from here is down.
$2.50 for the whole Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 2009.... need I say more?
So just how did you come to the conclusion that you are 'vastly overqualified'? Was it the fact that you know a monitor connection isn't just blue, but it's also a trapezoid? Amazing. But not to flame, I am seriously wondering why you are overqualified?
This is completely explainable as an analogy to the movie industry as the headline suggests. In the movie industry you have your same movie plots made over and over that are always brining in the money. People watch because other people are watching most of the time. The majority of moviegoers are willing to sacrifice plot to see better special effects and today's sexiest stars. The game industry is similar with every new game a copy of a previous one, but we keep coming back for the special effects and the sexiest CGI girls.
Then there are movies like Napoleon Dynamite... which may not be the bestexample - but there certainly are many others. Pulp Fiction was an indie and won picture of the year. Blair Witch was also huge. These three movies (and many more, just go to your local movie store) all have one thing in common. The way they tell the story and the story being told are completely abstract to what we are used to in the mainstream. Blair Witch tries to be a documentary gone wrong, Napoleon Dynamite gets into the life of the biggest dork in the nation; and Pulp Fiction was made by Quentin Tarantino... enough said.
Now with that background in the movie industry, what do indie games offer us? I don't really know for sure! Maybe you could argue a flash game like Defend Your Castle is an indie game gone popular (everybody has played that game, right?) The gameplay and plot are completely different than any other game I've played in the past 10 years - and that's what I love about it. But looking at the game industry as a whole, you don't see very many of these games; even if you look! The reason for this is that there are only so many different ways to tell a story in a video game. With movies you can be told the story from every different characters perspective; whereas in a video you are you! Also video games need to take longer than three hours to complete like a movie would; otherwise the consumers feel like they are being ripped off. This leads to the same grind we've seen over and over again. Lastly, just another point I want to make - how is it possible for there to be a video game about romance? We bearly see any comedy video games. That doesn't leave very much left to choose from.
When I was an age that would be effected by this kind of ruling I was the rebel. Worse yet, I was an intelligent rebel. I was the one in my high school who would look up rulings by the supreme court made forty years ago; print out eighty sheets of conjecture, highlight what was important and fight to the death so the dean wouldn't suspend me for wearing an inappropriate halloween costume. Again and again it boiled down to a few dissapointing key facts: 1. They do NOT need proof of a crime / action to hold you completely accountable. 2. Minors are not completely citizens of the U.S., and therefore, are not protected by all of the laws. 3. Schools, while run by the government, definitely don't protect you with the same Bill of Rights as our government. 4. No matter what, you're screwed.
Now some of you might say it would be absurd to have a trial by jury every time a teen flings gum at the teacher; or that screaming for 40 seconds at the top of your lungs in the middle of your AP gov test should be covered under freedom of speech. I agree with you, and furthermore, I agree with the three facts I stated above.
(Though it REALLY pains me to say this) Students shouldn't be protected by the BoR. If they were, more chaos would ensue than if there were no rules at all. If I was back in school and I could wear a costume of a priest with a 2 foot boner while chasing a picture of a 3 yr old hanging a foot in front of my face (...I actually did...) then why not? If I could say the teacher is a homosexual to their face and have it be protected speech, I WOULD have! Many students would have. And thats kind of the point, the more you let them get away with, the more they will get away with.
Now let's apply what we've learned to the situation at hand. 1. Even though your admitting to an action on myspace isn't even CLOSE to proof (confessions not under oath aren't proof in the real world. Furthermore, someone could take a picture of you and make a myspace account in your name to frame you!) And as we know, schools do not need proof to hold you accountable. 2. These students are minors, like we learned before - fetuses in the third trimester have more rights than a minor!!! 3. While MySpace servers aren't in your school, they can be acccessed from school. Good enough for the deans! 4. Sorry son, you got pwned.
Whatever happened to the good old days when people conspired about all of the secret technologies that the U.S. Government has in store? It's kind of pathetic to think that the private sector is making more innovations than the most powerful government in the world. I must say I've expected more out of NASA.
While pointing out the size of an australopitchecus' brain comapred to a homosapiens brain may seem relevant, it's actually not. Cromagnon had a brain much larger than that of homosapien, thing is that they didn't use it as well.
For all intents and purposes these people were anatomically modern, only differing from their modern day descendants in Europe by their slightly more robust physiology and brains which had about 4 % larger capacity than that of modern humans.
Is there absolutely no middle road? So nobody uses the bus currently. Are you saying that after just one public service message commercial per month will make them crowded and nobody will like it?
Also, you are forgetting what our goal is. Our goal isn't to make everybody comfortable on a bus by giving them lots of leg room; our goal is saving the Earth! If people have to be a little closer to one anothe, fine! I'm sure you've never been to Japan and never seen their public transportation system.
Im not going to attack your idea, but moreso your message.
you dont want us to focus on the ploutonium problem, which would surely affect the future of mankind.
but you do want us to focus on the global warming problem, which affects the future of mankind but not presently.
im a little confused if whether u want us to fix problems of the now or problems 100, 1000, or 100000 years from now
Anybody with a high school degree education in US Government knows that our government was purposefully made to be redundant.
It's called Checks and Balances and it's why our government is still in operation (though many will argue its effectiveness). We separate the powers of law making between the senate and the house and give the president a veto. Wow, Redundant! We even have these crazy people that can even interpret these laws in crazy ways so as to fit the current times.
Recap: Bill goes through house and senate, gets signed by president then gets interpreted by judges. And who's complaining about only a second body of redundancy in England?
I don't know about everybody else, but I like the fact that the huge record companies are making less. Music isn't about making money to anybody who gets into it for the right reason. If these trends continue, we can expect less-corporate-MTV like atmosphere. Look back at the 90's with its anti-corporate grunge phase; I think we could use more of that! If anything, I would love it if these trends produced a culture with more independent music.
Maybe the next Ashlee Simpson or Christina Augilara will be able to actually sing???
I thought that the invention of the blog was made for the REpressed views and opinions of the average person not outgoing enough to make their voice heard in a public forum. The blog was invented to draw attention TO the publisher, not away - making him/her anonymous.
It would seem to me that this new perogative goes directly against the principals that the first blog was based on.
Or, maybe I am just way overthinking this subject - maybe we all are...
It's interesting that the article is so focused on the effect that swear words have on the people hearing them (or even just seeing them). I think the story of how swear words come into being wasn't nearly touched on enough in the article as it should have.
Why is it that words come to be 'forbidden' after normal usage before. At one time, none of the swear words used today existed. Remember, someone had to invent all of these words. On the flip side, why is it that swear words, after repeated use, lose their 'evilness'?
Nowadays, the phrase, "Oh, golly!" may be considered almost comically wholesome, but it was not always so. "Golly" is a compaction of "God's body" and, thus, was once a profanity.
Is it that profanity is in the eye of the beholder? If I were talking to somebody in a room can call the person a 'fucktard', chances are the person I'm talking to would take offense. But in a different scenario I'm talking with a French man that doesn't know a word of english. Now I can call him whatever-the-hell I want to. And just as long as I'm using the inflections in my voice as if I were telling a joke, he wouldn't know any better than if I were telling a joke.
What makes a word a word? It's not the arrangement of the english characters on the post card that offend me - the association between the arranged letters on the notecard and my past experience with that word that makes it vulgar. Ever since we have been children we have known which words not to say - not by the letters F U C and K, but by the face on my pissed off mother. That surely would explain why a child, illiterate or foreigner wouldn't find our swear words offensive.
So, after reading the article, I question the reactions that the tested subjects had to the swear word on the card. We aren't born with these conections in our head, they are learned.
Lastly, another question for the readers: Can swear words be taught out of existence? You would think that if people stopped taking offense to swear words that people would stop using them. It would make sense that if we were taught that 'shit' was a synonym for Cotton Candy, then it wouldn't really be offensive.
Slashdot Mirror
if she stands for the american peoples by not having known already, then she deserves to be smacked.
Anyway, I was an employee at BBY when they started this switch, and, embarrasingly enough, I didn't notice the switch for over 2 months - and I was a customer service senior. They never even bothered to tell us!! (and i worked at Richfield, MN - just across the street from corporate HQ) - they were most probably thinking that we would deny the price match out of ignorance.
But, in my stores defense, once we found out of the switch we checked through the internet website and even went as far as printing it off if they had to go to another store to pick up the item.
Basically, with any corporation you will have great stores and horrible stores - it all depends on who the GM is. I've had good ones that make a great customer atmosphere and horrible GM's that make me deny price matches and basically be a bitch to the customer. But one thing I've found to be true no matter what GM I have is that the customer initiatives at the corporate level are in the right place - which is much more than I can say for most other Fortune 500 companies out there.
are you completely stoned in that reply?
The stores do not work with ROWE, only the corporate office does. BBY isn't open 24/7.
How much more pr0n?
I guess they weren't expecting it.....
Simple question here: Do you have free will?
At a time like this the marketplace has already reached saturation. Their target market for the Zune has got to be around %50-%80 of people who already own an iPod. I couldn't imagine these people upgrading to Zune, which gives wireless and FM capabilities for $250. They are basically buying a second iPod and the only increase in value are trivial features that less than %10 of the owners of an iPod would want. I'm also guessing that that same %10 either loves Apple, hates Microsoft, or a fuzzy combination of the two.
mod parent up higher
Reminder: These are the release prices, the only direction they will go from here is down.
$2.50 for the whole Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 2009.... need I say more?
So just how did you come to the conclusion that you are 'vastly overqualified'? Was it the fact that you know a monitor connection isn't just blue, but it's also a trapezoid? Amazing. But not to flame, I am seriously wondering why you are overqualified?
Then there are movies like Napoleon Dynamite... which may not be the bestexample - but there certainly are many others. Pulp Fiction was an indie and won picture of the year. Blair Witch was also huge. These three movies (and many more, just go to your local movie store) all have one thing in common. The way they tell the story and the story being told are completely abstract to what we are used to in the mainstream. Blair Witch tries to be a documentary gone wrong, Napoleon Dynamite gets into the life of the biggest dork in the nation; and Pulp Fiction was made by Quentin Tarantino... enough said.
Now with that background in the movie industry, what do indie games offer us? I don't really know for sure! Maybe you could argue a flash game like Defend Your Castle is an indie game gone popular (everybody has played that game, right?) The gameplay and plot are completely different than any other game I've played in the past 10 years - and that's what I love about it. But looking at the game industry as a whole, you don't see very many of these games; even if you look! The reason for this is that there are only so many different ways to tell a story in a video game. With movies you can be told the story from every different characters perspective; whereas in a video you are you! Also video games need to take longer than three hours to complete like a movie would; otherwise the consumers feel like they are being ripped off. This leads to the same grind we've seen over and over again. Lastly, just another point I want to make - how is it possible for there to be a video game about romance? We bearly see any comedy video games. That doesn't leave very much left to choose from.
Now some of you might say it would be absurd to have a trial by jury every time a teen flings gum at the teacher; or that screaming for 40 seconds at the top of your lungs in the middle of your AP gov test should be covered under freedom of speech. I agree with you, and furthermore, I agree with the three facts I stated above.
(Though it REALLY pains me to say this) Students shouldn't be protected by the BoR. If they were, more chaos would ensue than if there were no rules at all. If I was back in school and I could wear a costume of a priest with a 2 foot boner while chasing a picture of a 3 yr old hanging a foot in front of my face (...I actually did...) then why not? If I could say the teacher is a homosexual to their face and have it be protected speech, I WOULD have! Many students would have. And thats kind of the point, the more you let them get away with, the more they will get away with.
Now let's apply what we've learned to the situation at hand. 1. Even though your admitting to an action on myspace isn't even CLOSE to proof (confessions not under oath aren't proof in the real world. Furthermore, someone could take a picture of you and make a myspace account in your name to frame you!) And as we know, schools do not need proof to hold you accountable. 2. These students are minors, like we learned before - fetuses in the third trimester have more rights than a minor!!! 3. While MySpace servers aren't in your school, they can be acccessed from school. Good enough for the deans! 4. Sorry son, you got pwned.
Whatever happened to the good old days when people conspired about all of the secret technologies that the U.S. Government has in store? It's kind of pathetic to think that the private sector is making more innovations than the most powerful government in the world. I must say I've expected more out of NASA.
Also, you are forgetting what our goal is. Our goal isn't to make everybody comfortable on a bus by giving them lots of leg room; our goal is saving the Earth! If people have to be a little closer to one anothe, fine! I'm sure you've never been to Japan and never seen their public transportation system.
Im not going to attack your idea, but moreso your message. you dont want us to focus on the ploutonium problem, which would surely affect the future of mankind. but you do want us to focus on the global warming problem, which affects the future of mankind but not presently. im a little confused if whether u want us to fix problems of the now or problems 100, 1000, or 100000 years from now
It's called Checks and Balances and it's why our government is still in operation (though many will argue its effectiveness). We separate the powers of law making between the senate and the house and give the president a veto. Wow, Redundant! We even have these crazy people that can even interpret these laws in crazy ways so as to fit the current times.
Recap: Bill goes through house and senate, gets signed by president then gets interpreted by judges. And who's complaining about only a second body of redundancy in England?
Nobody Even Likes Them!
I swear officer, I didn't know she was 8
Suddenly it seems like a pretty good argument, no?
oh? ohhhhhhhh yea, thats right... maybe he will get a movie deal out of it? 1. Spam 2. Get $11B fine 3. movie deal for $12B
I don't know about everybody else, but I like the fact that the huge record companies are making less. Music isn't about making money to anybody who gets into it for the right reason. If these trends continue, we can expect less-corporate-MTV like atmosphere. Look back at the 90's with its anti-corporate grunge phase; I think we could use more of that! If anything, I would love it if these trends produced a culture with more independent music. Maybe the next Ashlee Simpson or Christina Augilara will be able to actually sing???
It would seem to me that this new perogative goes directly against the principals that the first blog was based on.
Or, maybe I am just way overthinking this subject - maybe we all are...
Why is it that words come to be 'forbidden' after normal usage before. At one time, none of the swear words used today existed. Remember, someone had to invent all of these words. On the flip side, why is it that swear words, after repeated use, lose their 'evilness'?
Nowadays, the phrase, "Oh, golly!" may be considered almost comically wholesome, but it was not always so. "Golly" is a compaction of "God's body" and, thus, was once a profanity.
Is it that profanity is in the eye of the beholder? If I were talking to somebody in a room can call the person a 'fucktard', chances are the person I'm talking to would take offense. But in a different scenario I'm talking with a French man that doesn't know a word of english. Now I can call him whatever-the-hell I want to. And just as long as I'm using the inflections in my voice as if I were telling a joke, he wouldn't know any better than if I were telling a joke.
What makes a word a word? It's not the arrangement of the english characters on the post card that offend me - the association between the arranged letters on the notecard and my past experience with that word that makes it vulgar. Ever since we have been children we have known which words not to say - not by the letters F U C and K, but by the face on my pissed off mother. That surely would explain why a child, illiterate or foreigner wouldn't find our swear words offensive.
So, after reading the article, I question the reactions that the tested subjects had to the swear word on the card. We aren't born with these conections in our head, they are learned.
Lastly, another question for the readers: Can swear words be taught out of existence? You would think that if people stopped taking offense to swear words that people would stop using them. It would make sense that if we were taught that 'shit' was a synonym for Cotton Candy, then it wouldn't really be offensive.
Feasible? bs? i dunno...
But seriously, ... no, I have nothing serious.
lee-nukes - thats how linus says it. the largest arguement is whether or not to pay attention to his accent, which is the cause of the pronunciation.