If that. I got by with only excising 3 frames from a film that got stuck (and melted). That came up to 3/4"x3 (little over 2 inches) or 1/8th of a second of film. The most I've ever had to cut out was 8 frames worth (1/3rd of a sec). Then again, the projectors at the theater I worked at may have been extra gentle compared to the norm.
There are probably viruses, bacteria, and parasites that would wipe out the colonials.
Totally agree, moving beyond the silliness of the colonials abandoning the technology that kept them alive for all those years... This was a perfect opportunity for the writers to let us know this is why settling on earth without Hera would have ended in disaster. It's like they forgot the episode where her blood cured cancer? It could have been subtle too:
Whoever:"Will we adapt to this planets diseases?" (Pan to Hera on the field) The Doctor:"I think we'll be allright"
1. Baltar takes down the Cylon mothership by uploading a virus using his Macbook. "Giving it a cold" indeed! Well played Dr. Baltar! 2. All the sixes move to what later becomes modern day Sweden.
. What probably would've happened after Lee recommended all technology go away is a split between those who still wanted it and those who didn't.
I know, that was the moment I could no longer suspend disbelief. The writers worked so hard to make the 40-50 thousand refugees believable (with conflicts, indecision, even mutiny and greed). But on what would have been the most shocking decision to date they all suddenly agreed?
I agree with you on the split, but the dissenters could have lived on an island, away from the rest, along with all their culture and tech. Wasn't there a battlestar called Atlantia? So they could have explained the dissenters as one of the lost civilizations of myth by having them don the name of one of the lost battlestars of the fleet.
Maybe you should switch to Netflix, where they won't send you any movies until you return the ones you have.
Each service had it's own value added option: A. Blockbuster had the exchange at the store deal. B. Netflix has the instant view option.
Option A you have to drive to the store, pick out the movie (out of a limited stock), wait in line, drive back and then get to watch it. Option B you need fast internet and a Windows PC, a Mac, or an X-Box 360. There may not be as many new releases available, but overall you have more choices and no chance of all copies of all the good movies being checked out. You can watch several movies/shows back to back without expending any additional time to acquire more entertainment or wasting gas.
So yes, now that using option A with blockbuster means a delay in getting new rentals in the mail it is a poorer choice than Netflix (at least to those that have tried the instant view).
They're not (or were not when I was using it) using synaptic as a package manager.
Trust me, you don't know package management pain till you use a package manager you have to first setup (or it will only install packages from the install CDs) to be useful (unlike Ubuntu which comes ready to use the online repositories out of the box). Then as I stated, all operations were slower than synaptic, no option to "reinstall", and the package manager will silently fail on such things such as one of your repos being offline.
I have now been using Ubuntu for a couple of years (was testing it alongside Mandriva for most of that) and I've never encountered that issue. Note that I'm not dissing on Mandriva just for the hell of it. I consider Mandriva to be one heck of a distro with only 2 major flaws that if addressed would hands down make it the best distro (imo).
Keep in mind, I haven't used Mandriva since version 2008 (or 2008.1) so things may have improved. YMMV, etc.
See the standard form that credit card companies have to include with any offer (which displays in a neat table your APR, Yearly Fee, Penalty APR, etc). Why can't we have something like that for phone service? A neat table, monthly plan, minutes, termination fee, contract length, etc.
Now as has been pointed out by several posters and Consumer Reports, despite the fact that a contract rate is supposed to subsidize the cost of a handset: 1) providers won't let you buy your own phone and sign up w/o a contract and/or at a lower rate 2) The rate doesn't change at the end of the contract period. 3) Despite owning the phone, the consumer is unable to (or has to jump through hoops) in order to use the phone with a different provider (should the other provider use the same network technology).
So essentially the providers are bundling the sale of a handset with your service, just as many computer companies would bundle Windows with the sale of every PC. Now imagine if other businesses started doing this? Comcast requiring you buy a new cable modem each year (or pay for it just the same). This is a wasteful and unfair practice.
One last thing, though there is a cost for signing up a new customer (which some companies have used as an excuse for requiring contracts of all customers) this is what the activation fee should take care of.
While some may think you're trolling, you hit the nail on the head. I was a longtime Mandriva/Mandrake user (even gladly paid the yearly membership), but once I discovered the goodness that was Debian's Snyaptic vs Mandriva's own package manager, I couldn't go back.
Granted I have yet to see anything equal Drakconf (Mandriva's control panel) in ease and usability. But, being able to easily update and upgrade my system with more reliable package sources outweighs that benefit.
I think many people remember Circuit City from when it's employees were paid on commission (and were competent). I worked for them for 2 years in that time while I saved up for college, and I was amazed at the education and professionalism of the staff there. The sales people (Sales "Counselors" at the time) were encouraged to spend their time ensuring all the equipment was in good operating order, tidy up displays, and study up on new product info. They even had a monthly magazine for "each" department where they would have pretty in depth articles.
Here's the important thing, most sales people knew that the way to make the big bucks in sales was to get your customers to remember you *and* recommend you to friends. This meant wowing them, being polite, and giving them sound advice. Through caring about their customers many of the salespeople of that time were pulling between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. Yes the extended warranties sucked but the salespeople were required to sell a certain percentage of their volume in them.
As far as the service, CC was proactive in pricematching the competition, when the website came up, they matched their on-line pricing, and most importantly, they had one of the best customer data systems I've seen. Though it looked dated, the system CC used allowed any employee to quickly pull up any old receipts for any product you've bought. This meant that returning or exchanging an item without the original receipt was a painfree experience.
Open box items were always marked down aggressively to move them off the floor (which also gave an incentive to visit some stores frequently). This is in stark contrast to other stores which will mark down a product a paltry 5-10%.
I'll miss Circuit City, mainly because of the quality store it was. Though it had changed in recent years, I still got better service from CC stores than I did at their main competitor. I'll miss idly stopping by the stores to check up on open box deals. Lastly I'll miss my Sunday morning routine of digging through the paper for the burgundy colored sales ads.
Should also note that they have free demo.rpm and.deb so it's easy to give the game a try and see if it's worth your $20 (which as Parent pointed out, it really is).
3) They shut down Lik-Sang * through multiple lawsuits in different languages in different European countries for selling *Sony's* PSP (japanese model) in Europe.
The lawsuit claimed that these devices (made by Sony) were untested and therefore unsafe for the European market. Just this last week I prevented someone from buying two very large screen Sony flatpanels (combined cost of ~$6,000 or more) and instead educated them on the different brand choices from which they bough instead (doing my part!).
* Lik-Sang was one of the best places to import hard (or nearly impossible to find) games and game accessories. They had one hell of a dreamcast accessory section too...
Ditto. I was looking forward to adding a Blu-ray drive to my myth setup and buying tons of movies this christmas, but really there's no point now. It was already a pain (with having to rip the movie to the HDD first), without having to worry about some movies not working outright.
Guess I'll stick to my old DVDs a bit longer! Good one Sony!
Seriously, who willingly hands over money to Sony when there are better alternatives? Just buy titanium edition ($20 at circuit city or $9 used at half.com or amazon.com), install, don't patch (use special launch command), pick server, ???, profit!
Oh and it runs fine under wine to boot. Best part is I can look at the server side code and submit improvements that help everybody else!
You forgot after: "* Management fired long-term, experienced and expensive salespersons and hires unqualified but cheaper people instead." You need to add: * Immediately after, give huge bonuses to the upper executives to offset practically any savings from firing employees and further harbor ill will"
"In an SEC filing yesterday, the company revealed that it is giving cash awards to senior vice-presidents ($600,000, cha-ching) and executive vice-presidents ($1,000,000, big cha-ching), in order to "ensure the stability of the company's leadership.""
I'm very sad by this, I really liked Circuit City. Not only was it my first job (during the commission sales times) which allowed me to get a good amount of savings to tackle college, but I really liked their selection, pricing, and aggressive pricing on open box items.
Also they're one of the few stores who match their online store prices (and typically their in-store price is the same as their online price). I hope they can stick around, but if not they'll be missed (I'll have to get my Onkyo/Polk stuff online...).
To think they were wealthy enough at one point to start a successful chain of auto dealerships (CarMax).
"Punishing people for being successful is wrong on any level and for any reason. It encourages business owners to leave the country for greener pastures."
So I guess Reagan was a socialist? The highest income tax bracket under Reagan was 70% then 50% in his first 6 or so years. He didn't see it fit to drop it to "modern" levels until practically his last year as president (to 38%). So he allowed socialism to go on his watch for at least 3/4ths of it...
Oh and the Obama tax plan would take us to 1993-2000 upper bracket tax levels, which are slightly higher than Reagan's last year (39.6% vs 38) and MUCH MUCH lower than his first 6.
So who's the socialist? But seriously, even a flat tax is "wealth redistribution" since the guy that made 10k will only pay 3k on a 30% tax scheme while the poor unfortunate guy that made 200k would have to pay 60k in taxes (under a flat tax!). So one person is (in absolute terms) paying 20x the taxes of another!
Now if you really want to combat socialism, lets talk about wealth redistribution. What would you say to taxing the heck out of companies and then using that money to write checks for all US citizens? That would be socialist, wouldn't it?
Now what would you say about taxing oil companies (in say... Alaska?) and redistributing this wealth to all Alaskan citizens? Wouldn't *that* be socialist?
Man sorry you had to go through that. I wanted to chime in and say that my GF had a similar experience (with the $700 headhunter). She did wait to talk to me before agreeing to anything though.
Simple truth is a headhunter makes that or more a month on an skilled employee they can supply for an employer. So I simply explained to her, that if you're a "people" salesperson, and you make lots off of each person, would you want to willfully diminish your inventory by a stupid fee like that?
Further we did the math and figured out that on her last contract (which paid her *incredibly* well) the employment agency was pulling in $1500 to $2000 a month. We were able to figure this out since her last boss accidentally let her know how much the employment agency was getting paid (and they in turn paid my GF).
Again, not insulting you Davidseyes. If I were in your position I too would be looking at any opportunity for work. But people like that "Headhunter", that prey on the desperate are the lowest kind of low (in my opinion, up there with Rent to Own places and Mortgage Brokers that tack huge fees on people's mortgages on top of the commission they get from the bank).
That said, maybe it would be a good idea to talk to legitimate employment agencies and ask them how to deal with scammers like that.
Slashdot Mirror
If that. I got by with only excising 3 frames from a film that got stuck (and melted). That came up to 3/4"x3 (little over 2 inches) or 1/8th of a second of film. The most I've ever had to cut out was 8 frames worth (1/3rd of a sec). Then again, the projectors at the theater I worked at may have been extra gentle compared to the norm.
There's an alternate simulation here.
You don't know MS, they'll call it something simple, like: MS Idea(TM).
There are probably viruses, bacteria, and parasites that would wipe out the colonials.
Totally agree, moving beyond the silliness of the colonials abandoning the technology that kept them alive for all those years... This was a perfect opportunity for the writers to let us know this is why settling on earth without Hera would have ended in disaster. It's like they forgot the episode where her blood cured cancer? It could have been subtle too:
Whoever:"Will we adapt to this planets diseases?"
(Pan to Hera on the field)
The Doctor:"I think we'll be allright"
Ok, I suck at writing, but you get my drift.
1. Baltar takes down the Cylon mothership by uploading a virus using his Macbook. "Giving it a cold" indeed! Well played Dr. Baltar!
2. All the sixes move to what later becomes modern day Sweden.
. What probably would've happened after Lee recommended all technology go away is a split between those who still wanted it and those who didn't.
I know, that was the moment I could no longer suspend disbelief. The writers worked so hard to make the 40-50 thousand refugees believable (with conflicts, indecision, even mutiny and greed). But on what would have been the most shocking decision to date they all suddenly agreed?
I agree with you on the split, but the dissenters could have lived on an island, away from the rest, along with all their culture and tech. Wasn't there a battlestar called Atlantia? So they could have explained the dissenters as one of the lost civilizations of myth by having them don the name of one of the lost battlestars of the fleet.
***SPOILER***
The Cylons reach their kill limit and shut down.
Maybe you should switch to Netflix, where they won't send you any movies until you return the ones you have.
Each service had it's own value added option:
A. Blockbuster had the exchange at the store deal.
B. Netflix has the instant view option.
Option A you have to drive to the store, pick out the movie (out of a limited stock), wait in line, drive back and then get to watch it.
Option B you need fast internet and a Windows PC, a Mac, or an X-Box 360. There may not be as many new releases available, but overall you have more choices and no chance of all copies of all the good movies being checked out. You can watch several movies/shows back to back without expending any additional time to acquire more entertainment or wasting gas.
So yes, now that using option A with blockbuster means a delay in getting new rentals in the mail it is a poorer choice than Netflix (at least to those that have tried the instant view).
They're not (or were not when I was using it) using synaptic as a package manager.
Trust me, you don't know package management pain till you use a package manager you have to first setup (or it will only install packages from the install CDs) to be useful (unlike Ubuntu which comes ready to use the online repositories out of the box). Then as I stated, all operations were slower than synaptic, no option to "reinstall", and the package manager will silently fail on such things such as one of your repos being offline.
I have now been using Ubuntu for a couple of years (was testing it alongside Mandriva for most of that) and I've never encountered that issue. Note that I'm not dissing on Mandriva just for the hell of it. I consider Mandriva to be one heck of a distro with only 2 major flaws that if addressed would hands down make it the best distro (imo).
Keep in mind, I haven't used Mandriva since version 2008 (or 2008.1) so things may have improved. YMMV, etc.
Regulation makes the market work better.
See the standard form that credit card companies have to include with any offer (which displays in a neat table your APR, Yearly Fee, Penalty APR, etc). Why can't we have something like that for phone service? A neat table, monthly plan, minutes, termination fee, contract length, etc.
Now as has been pointed out by several posters and Consumer Reports, despite the fact that a contract rate is supposed to subsidize the cost of a handset:
1) providers won't let you buy your own phone and sign up w/o a contract and/or at a lower rate
2) The rate doesn't change at the end of the contract period.
3) Despite owning the phone, the consumer is unable to (or has to jump through hoops) in order to use the phone with a different provider (should the other provider use the same network technology).
So essentially the providers are bundling the sale of a handset with your service, just as many computer companies would bundle Windows with the sale of every PC. Now imagine if other businesses started doing this? Comcast requiring you buy a new cable modem each year (or pay for it just the same). This is a wasteful and unfair practice.
One last thing, though there is a cost for signing up a new customer (which some companies have used as an excuse for requiring contracts of all customers) this is what the activation fee should take care of.
While some may think you're trolling, you hit the nail on the head. I was a longtime Mandriva/Mandrake user (even gladly paid the yearly membership), but once I discovered the goodness that was Debian's Snyaptic vs Mandriva's own package manager, I couldn't go back.
Granted I have yet to see anything equal Drakconf (Mandriva's control panel) in ease and usability. But, being able to easily update and upgrade my system with more reliable package sources outweighs that benefit.
Why is their death sad?
I think many people remember Circuit City from when it's employees were paid on commission (and were competent). I worked for them for 2 years in that time while I saved up for college, and I was amazed at the education and professionalism of the staff there. The sales people (Sales "Counselors" at the time) were encouraged to spend their time ensuring all the equipment was in good operating order, tidy up displays, and study up on new product info. They even had a monthly magazine for "each" department where they would have pretty in depth articles.
Here's the important thing, most sales people knew that the way to make the big bucks in sales was to get your customers to remember you *and* recommend you to friends. This meant wowing them, being polite, and giving them sound advice. Through caring about their customers many of the salespeople of that time were pulling between $25,000 and $50,000 a year. Yes the extended warranties sucked but the salespeople were required to sell a certain percentage of their volume in them.
As far as the service, CC was proactive in pricematching the competition, when the website came up, they matched their on-line pricing, and most importantly, they had one of the best customer data systems I've seen. Though it looked dated, the system CC used allowed any employee to quickly pull up any old receipts for any product you've bought. This meant that returning or exchanging an item without the original receipt was a painfree experience.
Open box items were always marked down aggressively to move them off the floor (which also gave an incentive to visit some stores frequently). This is in stark contrast to other stores which will mark down a product a paltry 5-10%.
I'll miss Circuit City, mainly because of the quality store it was. Though it had changed in recent years, I still got better service from CC stores than I did at their main competitor. I'll miss idly stopping by the stores to check up on open box deals. Lastly I'll miss my Sunday morning routine of digging through the paper for the burgundy colored sales ads.
who is going to be liable if 100,000 people get irradiated with low-power microwaves?
I can see it now... A bag of microwave popcorn will be the canary of the 21st century:
Oh my god Ellie Mae! The Bag's poppin'! Get the kids indoors and make sure they got their tin foil outfits on!
Should also note that they have free demo .rpm and .deb so it's easy to give the game a try and see if it's worth your $20 (which as Parent pointed out, it really is).
http://worldofgoo.com/dl2.php?lk=demo
3) They shut down Lik-Sang * through multiple lawsuits in different languages in different European countries for selling *Sony's* PSP (japanese model) in Europe.
The lawsuit claimed that these devices (made by Sony) were untested and therefore unsafe for the European market. Just this last week I prevented someone from buying two very large screen Sony flatpanels (combined cost of ~$6,000 or more) and instead educated them on the different brand choices from which they bough instead (doing my part!).
* Lik-Sang was one of the best places to import hard (or nearly impossible to find) games and game accessories. They had one hell of a dreamcast accessory section too...
Ditto. I was looking forward to adding a Blu-ray drive to my myth setup and buying tons of movies this christmas, but really there's no point now. It was already a pain (with having to rip the movie to the HDD first), without having to worry about some movies not working outright.
Guess I'll stick to my old DVDs a bit longer! Good one Sony!
I'm on a private server!
Seriously, who willingly hands over money to Sony when there are better alternatives? Just buy titanium edition ($20 at circuit city or $9 used at half.com or amazon.com), install, don't patch (use special launch command), pick server, ???, profit!
Oh and it runs fine under wine to boot. Best part is I can look at the server side code and submit improvements that help everybody else!
P.S. Thank you EQEmu and Project EQ!
You forgot after:
"* Management fired long-term, experienced and expensive salespersons and hires unqualified but cheaper people instead."
You need to add:
* Immediately after, give huge bonuses to the upper executives to offset practically any savings from firing employees and further harbor ill will"
From: http://dailybriefing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2007/12/21/circuit-city-profits-no-bonuses-yes/
"In an SEC filing yesterday, the company revealed that it is giving cash awards to senior vice-presidents ($600,000, cha-ching) and executive vice-presidents ($1,000,000, big cha-ching), in order to "ensure the stability of the company's leadership.""
I'm very sad by this, I really liked Circuit City. Not only was it my first job (during the commission sales times) which allowed me to get a good amount of savings to tackle college, but I really liked their selection, pricing, and aggressive pricing on open box items.
Also they're one of the few stores who match their online store prices (and typically their in-store price is the same as their online price). I hope they can stick around, but if not they'll be missed (I'll have to get my Onkyo/Polk stuff online...).
To think they were wealthy enough at one point to start a successful chain of auto dealerships (CarMax).
"Yo baby, i have HIV immunity"
(Wakes up the next morning in a bathtub filled with ice and a note that says "Your bone marrow has been removed, seek immediate medical attention!)
We'll see what the lines are like tomorrow, when it's the Republican's turn to vote! Don't get too cocky yet you crazy liberals!
Pfft.... All they have to do is not open the e-mail!
"Punishing people for being successful is wrong on any level and for any reason. It encourages business owners to leave the country for greener pastures."
So I guess Reagan was a socialist? The highest income tax bracket under Reagan was 70% then 50% in his first 6 or so years. He didn't see it fit to drop it to "modern" levels until practically his last year as president (to 38%). So he allowed socialism to go on his watch for at least 3/4ths of it...
Oh and the Obama tax plan would take us to 1993-2000 upper bracket tax levels, which are slightly higher than Reagan's last year (39.6% vs 38) and MUCH MUCH lower than his first 6.
So who's the socialist? But seriously, even a flat tax is "wealth redistribution" since the guy that made 10k will only pay 3k on a 30% tax scheme while the poor unfortunate guy that made 200k would have to pay 60k in taxes (under a flat tax!). So one person is (in absolute terms) paying 20x the taxes of another!
Now if you really want to combat socialism, lets talk about wealth redistribution. What would you say to taxing the heck out of companies and then using that money to write checks for all US citizens? That would be socialist, wouldn't it?
Now what would you say about taxing oil companies (in say... Alaska?) and redistributing this wealth to all Alaskan citizens? Wouldn't *that* be socialist?
Man sorry you had to go through that. I wanted to chime in and say that my GF had a similar experience (with the $700 headhunter). She did wait to talk to me before agreeing to anything though.
Simple truth is a headhunter makes that or more a month on an skilled employee they can supply for an employer. So I simply explained to her, that if you're a "people" salesperson, and you make lots off of each person, would you want to willfully diminish your inventory by a stupid fee like that?
Further we did the math and figured out that on her last contract (which paid her *incredibly* well) the employment agency was pulling in $1500 to $2000 a month. We were able to figure this out since her last boss accidentally let her know how much the employment agency was getting paid (and they in turn paid my GF).
Again, not insulting you Davidseyes. If I were in your position I too would be looking at any opportunity for work. But people like that "Headhunter", that prey on the desperate are the lowest kind of low (in my opinion, up there with Rent to Own places and Mortgage Brokers that tack huge fees on people's mortgages on top of the commission they get from the bank).
That said, maybe it would be a good idea to talk to legitimate employment agencies and ask them how to deal with scammers like that.
"The list includes the number 2010"
Bad Religion has a hit song called 10 in 2010. Wonder if they'll get a notice next?
As long as it can surf Hulu and play its media, it would be well worth it.