I am currently taking a class in American Sign Language.
They use a surprising number of facial cues to go with the hand signing. For example furrowed eye brows for an open-ended question. This is on top of the regular body langauge, which we are encouraged to include.
This helps to deal with the lack of voice tone.
As someone that has unintentinoally come off sounding abrasive via email, I think that the real problem is the speed (as mentioned in the article). Often people want to communicate fast so emails get written without much thought as compared to hand written snailmail letters.
In my opinion the proper way to deal with this is to be more explicit and accept the fact that it will take you 1 minute to write the email instead of 20 seconds.
Personal experience with vonage.
on
Vonage going IPO
·
· Score: 1
I have to say, I am not sure I would WANT to invest in vonage. I use their service and had the following problems:
1) After four months they totally FAILED to transfer over my old phone number. (Note, the fact that they prominently advertised this ability was why I choose them over skype.)
2) Part of the problem was that their email system did not work correctly. I never recieved emails informing me that a problem existed, which caused their system to automatically close the attempt, so I had to restart it up again. A manager told me that the email they send when there is a problem is different from their standard email system and they had several problems with it. Note, I DID receive other communication from them, (including my bill), so it is not like yahoo was declaring vonage email as spam.
3) Despite the fact that this happened repeately, they never CALLED me. At one point, they were the ONLY people in the entire world that knew my phone number, but because of company policy (the STUPIDEST reason I ever heard for screwing you customers) they only communicated by email, never called the clients - even when they KNEW their email system did not work.
The phone service they give works, but the company itself is all screwed up. They need a massive shake-up.
4) Firefox must be intentionally downloaded as an alternate to Microsoft.
For these three reasons it is reasonable for Firefox to make Google the default, but it is not reasonable for Microsoft to make their own product the default.
Because Firefox does not gain from making Google a default, it is more permisable. As a monopoly induced dominant browser, Microsoft has additional responsibilities that Firefox does not have. As Google is more popular than Microsoft, it makes perfect sense for Firefox to default to the most popular engine. Because 99% of the people using Firefox do so because they DISLIKE Microsoft other product (I.E.), it even makes some sense not to bother including Microsoft search.
In a truly free economy, the seller does NOT have total pricing control. Instead it is supposed to be set by TWO values, A) The Supply and B) The Demand.
The concept of regional pricing is not designed to deal with supply issues such as the cost of maintaining offices in an area. Those costs are so minimal that they don't really affect the price.
Instead, the concept of regional pricing is designed to artifically manipulate Demand. Supposing the idea is that you set different prices based on demand. Where Demand is high the people are willing to pay more, so you set a higher price. Where demand is low, the peopel are not willing to pay more, so you set a lower price in order to get some sales. Historically you usually throw in a time delay so as nto to totally screw/piss off the high demand people (I.E. Americans pay more for first run Hollywood movies but get them faster than say Australians).
However, that does not appear to be what is going on here. If it were, then prices would be higher in Australia only for music that is in MORE demand in Australlia, and it should be CHEAPER for music that is less demand in Australia.
Instead, prices are higher across the board. That means that the music industry is using regional pricing to gouge Australians, which it is NOT supposed to do.
Nope. You need the ability to heal yourself to do the following:
1) Save money (you mentioned this)
2) Save skill (you mentioned this)
3) Save DETECTION (you failed to mention this). You only fix problems you realize are there. If you don't notice the tiny scratch, performance gets degraded without you realizing. Over the long term this builds up. With accurate healing, it doesn't.
4) Save TIME. Again, even if it were cheap and easy and instantly detectable, it takes time to fix. Healing happens slowly, but in the background. Most of the time it is quicker to let minor damage fix itself. For major damage, mechanical replamenets would be quicker. But Major damage is less common.
5) Reduce pollution. By using biological products, overall pollution is reduced. This can be very important.
and I am sure there are many other benefits. God/Evolution is not a fool, he choose biological over other building materials for good reason.
You need a lesson in supply and demand. Arabs don't get to decide what Oil is worth. The market does over the long term. As demonstrated by the fact that prices went down after the crisis, the Arabs were attempting to charge MORE than it was worth at that time, not what it was worth.
The crisis was caused by Arab countries suddenly realizing the power that they were developing, and attempting to exercise it with a heavy hand to get more money for their product than it was worth. Eventually they realized their mistake and reduced the price to a value that the consumers were actually willing to spend.
What's more, those things you describe can be eliminated using biological methods. If we wanted to. Much of those kinds of things, such as the blink exist to INCREASE efficiancy. The only problem is they are not controlled.
Blinking is part of the human eye's maintance program. It is automatic.
Yes, we COULD design a piece of crap mechanical device that needs a human to remember to do a maintance clean up. Or we could have it automatically run in the back ground, just like Blink does.
Nope, you misunderstand what the article does. It is NOT just a souped up version of the Car defroster.
More specifically, it does not require mechanical removal of the ice.
Car heaters heat the entire ice evenly. By the nature of the process, it takes a lot of heat, and most of that heat is first transmitted deep into the ice. The surface of the ice touching the glass is still cold and loosely attached to it, so you need to wipe it away.
This process heats just a thin layer that normally is bonded to the glass. It makes the bit that sticks and only that bit into wet water. Then the Ice falls off all by itself. No wiper needed.
A lot of it is personal information. Here is a simple one.
You sign up for a grocery datamining card. You give them your name, phone, address, and they give you a card to scan when you buy groceries. Now you use it to buy things. Among other things you buy:
a six pack of beer. Every day.
tampons, even though you are a man.
stop buying tampons, but pick up some penicillian at the pharmacy in the back.
These things are very, very personal. And they have your name, number, address.
They totally failed to mention the real reason why no one has done this yet:
1) While yes, is IS possible to make viruses that target specific ethnic groups, there is no 100% method.
2) Any virus designed for one ethnic group can easily mutate (or be changed on purpose for vengence) to attack another.
Net result, is this weapon, while incredibally deadly, will almost certainly also attack your own friends, loved ones, etc.
While there exists many suicidal individuals that can be recruited to do-and-die, as of yet there is no real masochist group that has scientists smart enough and willing to create a virus that will almost certainly do as much damage to their own people and allies as it would to their enemeies.
Even the worst Hamas/Al Quaeda group does not want to risk killing their own brothers/sisters.
By that point of view, theatrical release movies are a niche, not a movie. Most don't make money, unless you include cable TV, and rental markets.
Similarly, if you want to look at RPGs, you have to INCLUDE all the fiction books, online tie-ins, and other related marketing stuff that is derived from the paper-and-pencil games.
Once you do that, you have a viable industry, not a niche.
Mid 20? over 6'? You don't know I am talking about. In fact you are clueless. The whole point of mentioning being 5'6" is that tall men get hit on. Women LIKE them, the way men like super-models. Even if you don't have sex with them, you get girl friends that you could have sex with, which means they talk to you, they touch you, they treat you like a person. And mid twenties is NOT what I am talking about. You waited what, 6/7/8 years after college? That was nothing. I did not even date till my mid twenties and I was fine. But I have friends that have never dated and never will.
More importantly, it is not the sex that makes people miserable it is the lack of COMPANIONSHIP. People like you get what you want and think that sex means the act. Yes if you get sex it is just the act. But to those that go decades without it, 'sex' means more than just the act. It also means the closeness and companionship that you don't get any other way.
I know people that did not have girlfriends, from the time of 15 to the time of 30. And, yes, they were miserable. I was so glad I was not one of them.
People like you, they are the people that are pitiable. You are average but think you are one of the 'dis-advantaged' and can speak for them. You think you know what the people with real social problems face, and look down on them because they are miserable
You have no idea what real unhappyness is till you have gone 15, 20 years with out a date. Then they realize they never will date someone without paying, and call me up and I have to listen without being able to tell them they are wrong without knowing I am lying.
So sit home with your wife and thank your lucky stars that you WON the genetics lottery. You got the height, you don't have major disfiguring marks
So have a little compassion instead of disgust for those that are not as lucky as you.
If you are single, but over 6', not bald, and not very over-weight, chances are you have sex at least 1/year.
But if you are single, 5'6", overweight, bald, and addicted to a video game, then chances are you had sex once last decade.
Women are just as shallow as men can be. If you are 30 and did not have sex in your 20's, then being single is miserable.
P.S. I find that when I comment about these things, some people get the idea that I am in type two, the super-single dweeb. To those people, may I point out that the world actually has some people that have compassion for the less fortunate. I happen to fall smack in the middle between the two types I listed.
Look, one of the MAJOR problems out there is not spammers, but instead the "legitamate" mass mailers.
Yes, I said it, the legiatamate mass mailers are part of the problem.
What would you say if a corporation started one of the following as business practoces:
A) Because of the high crime rate among conveience stores, all clerks will be issued guns and told to point them at the customer at all times.
B) Our salesman will run up to you, whip out a bottle of perfume point it at you and say PAY ME $25!
C) When you arrive at our gas car wash, masked men will remove you from your car, get in, and drive it into the carwash.
Customers would object to this. They have the right to object to this. The problem is that the activities being proposed, while they may be legal, APPEAR illegal. It is both stupid and irresponsible for businesses to engage in activities that are that close to being illegal.
It is the responsibility of the legitamate mass-emailers to distinguish themselves from spam. If they can't do this, then they should not be engaging in mass-emailing at all. If you can't convince hotmail that you are not spam, then you have an unethical business model.
Yes, this may force people to STOP using mass-email. There is no right to use it. Yes, you may like it, but it is argueable about ANY of it being 'legitamate', and it is up to you to find a way to prove you are legitamate, not up to the email service suppliers to prove you are not legiatamate.
There are lots of ways to deal with sending out large amounts of data daily. Message boards work fine. The g-d d-mned adware junk could also be converted to legitamate use, downloading your message once/day instead of via email.
If you can't clean up your act so your so called legitamate email is indistinguishable from spam, then you business model deserves to go down in flames.
That just means they need to put in smarter controls, rather than none.
For example, you can easily arrange for all accounts to be limited to 50 outgoing email/day unless the person has a valid credit card that gets charged a $1 set up fee, or they receive by regular mail a form, that they must sign and mail back.
The few NON-spammers that send more than 50 out going/day should be either willing to wait for their 51st email per day or pay $1. I can't see anyone except spammers being pissed off about this.
There are several quantum mechanic theories that claim:
1) It is possible to create a negative gravitational field representing negative mass.
2) By creating a negative gravity field, you can use quantum mechanics to effectively move objects at speeds faster than light breaking the most famous of all laws.
The short article did not mention negative gravity, so I am betting it could not create negative
1) Right now, you are sending spam. The fact that any person reads it and complains about it pretty much means it IS spam. Yeah, they signed up for it. So what? 90% of spammers think (or at least claim) that the recepients signed up for it. Having "opt-in" does not make something not-spam. For a real mass-emailing not to be spam, it should NEVER have that problem. If it gets to the point where people "forgot they signed up", you are spaming people. If you have a problem with recepients labelling it as spam, sorry to tell you, but it IS spam. The simplest way to fix the problem is to send an email that states "You must reply to this or be taken off the list". But companies like yours don't do that cause you know most people don't want your stuff and that you will lose too much of your 'willing subscribers'. No, you can NOT require people to 'opt-out' once they 'opt-in' because spammers routinely use the 'opt-out' method to harvest new email addresses to sell to other people.
2) If your email recepients are not willing to white list you, you are sending spam. If they are willing, you are not. Yes it might take a bit of education to teach the people to do this. This is called change. The internet is growing up, and it WILL happen. Deal with it.
3) The fact that your 'legitamate' company is using something that people sometimes 'mistake' for spam is a HUGE problem. What would you think if a Publisher's Clearing House started sending out letters that start with "I run a Nigerian company and need to get some money out of the country. If you help me move my money, I will give you a portion of it..."? Even if your actions are not in fact real spam, they are irresponsible and the rest of the world does NOT have to help you blur the lines between spam and real email. Not all business models are legal, and not all legal models are respectable.
They should be charging 2 cents and refunding 1/2 the money collected to subscribers.
You want to send me spam email, pay me.
Also, EVERYONE complaining about this is a spammer. They don't think they are spammers, but they are. If the recepients want you on their email, they will put you in their address book and you won't be charged a thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I am currently taking a class in American Sign Language.
They use a surprising number of facial cues to go with the hand signing. For example furrowed eye brows for an open-ended question. This is on top of the regular body langauge, which we are encouraged to include.
This helps to deal with the lack of voice tone.
As someone that has unintentinoally come off sounding abrasive via email, I think that the real problem is the speed (as mentioned in the article). Often people want to communicate fast so emails get written without much thought as compared to hand written snailmail letters.
In my opinion the proper way to deal with this is to be more explicit and accept the fact that it will take you 1 minute to write the email instead of 20 seconds.
1) After four months they totally FAILED to transfer over my old phone number. (Note, the fact that they prominently advertised this ability was why I choose them over skype.)
2) Part of the problem was that their email system did not work correctly. I never recieved emails informing me that a problem existed, which caused their system to automatically close the attempt, so I had to restart it up again. A manager told me that the email they send when there is a problem is different from their standard email system and they had several problems with it. Note, I DID receive other communication from them, (including my bill), so it is not like yahoo was declaring vonage email as spam.
3) Despite the fact that this happened repeately, they never CALLED me. At one point, they were the ONLY people in the entire world that knew my phone number, but because of company policy (the STUPIDEST reason I ever heard for screwing you customers) they only communicated by email, never called the clients - even when they KNEW their email system did not work.
The phone service they give works, but the company itself is all screwed up. They need a massive shake-up.
1) Firefox does not own Google.
2) Firefox is NOT the dominant browser.
3) Google IS the dominant search engine.
4) Firefox must be intentionally downloaded as an alternate to Microsoft.
For these three reasons it is reasonable for Firefox to make Google the default, but it is not reasonable for Microsoft to make their own product the default.
Because Firefox does not gain from making Google a default, it is more permisable. As a monopoly induced dominant browser, Microsoft has additional responsibilities that Firefox does not have. As Google is more popular than Microsoft, it makes perfect sense for Firefox to default to the most popular engine. Because 99% of the people using Firefox do so because they DISLIKE Microsoft other product (I.E.), it even makes some sense not to bother including Microsoft search.
In a truly free economy, the seller does NOT have total pricing control. Instead it is supposed to be set by TWO values, A) The Supply and B) The Demand.
The concept of regional pricing is not designed to deal with supply issues such as the cost of maintaining offices in an area. Those costs are so minimal that they don't really affect the price.
Instead, the concept of regional pricing is designed to artifically manipulate Demand. Supposing the idea is that you set different prices based on demand. Where Demand is high the people are willing to pay more, so you set a higher price. Where demand is low, the peopel are not willing to pay more, so you set a lower price in order to get some sales. Historically you usually throw in a time delay so as nto to totally screw/piss off the high demand people (I.E. Americans pay more for first run Hollywood movies but get them faster than say Australians).
However, that does not appear to be what is going on here. If it were, then prices would be higher in Australia only for music that is in MORE demand in Australlia, and it should be CHEAPER for music that is less demand in Australia.
Instead, prices are higher across the board. That means that the music industry is using regional pricing to gouge Australians, which it is NOT supposed to do.
I suspect that it is looking for the conventional thinking with conventional word structure. As such, it is NOT a good idea i
1) Save money (you mentioned this)
2) Save skill (you mentioned this)
3) Save DETECTION (you failed to mention this). You only fix problems you realize are there. If you don't notice the tiny scratch, performance gets degraded without you realizing. Over the long term this builds up. With accurate healing, it doesn't.
4) Save TIME. Again, even if it were cheap and easy and instantly detectable, it takes time to fix. Healing happens slowly, but in the background. Most of the time it is quicker to let minor damage fix itself. For major damage, mechanical replamenets would be quicker. But Major damage is less common.
5) Reduce pollution. By using biological products, overall pollution is reduced. This can be very important.
and I am sure there are many other benefits. God/Evolution is not a fool, he choose biological over other building materials for good reason.
Lasik surgery, with a bit of luck, can give you 20/10
The crisis was caused by Arab countries suddenly realizing the power that they were developing, and attempting to exercise it with a heavy hand to get more money for their product than it was worth. Eventually they realized their mistake and reduced the price to a value that the consumers were actually willing to spend.
What's more, those things you describe can be eliminated using biological methods. If we wanted to. Much of those kinds of things, such as the blink exist to INCREASE efficiancy. The only problem is they are not controlled.
Blinking is part of the human eye's maintance program. It is automatic.
Yes, we COULD design a piece of crap mechanical device that needs a human to remember to do a maintance clean up. Or we could have it automatically run in the back ground, just like Blink does.
More specifically, it does not require mechanical removal of the ice.
Car heaters heat the entire ice evenly. By the nature of the process, it takes a lot of heat, and most of that heat is first transmitted deep into the ice. The surface of the ice touching the glass is still cold and loosely attached to it, so you need to wipe it away.
This process heats just a thin layer that normally is bonded to the glass. It makes the bit that sticks and only that bit into wet water. Then the Ice falls off all by itself. No wiper needed.
For over 1,000 photos, I suggest you buy a high end scanner for over $500 and pay a teenager $20/hour to do it.
We stack the pictures in, face down, they get fed through to a flatbed scanner. But I doubt you would be willing to pay what we did to get the device.
A GOOD digital photo store should have a similar setup.
Whether they will charge you a reasonable price with a discount for bulk is another matter.
You sign up for a grocery datamining card. You give them your name, phone, address, and they give you a card to scan when you buy groceries. Now you use it to buy things. Among other things you buy:
a six pack of beer. Every day.
tampons, even though you are a man.
stop buying tampons, but pick up some penicillian at the pharmacy in the back.
These things are very, very personal. And they have your name, number, address.
Another thing is that it is only usefull for information we don't already know.
We don't exactly need data mining to realize that people that buy diapers also buy baby food.
I mean really, it has been how many years since the sued the canadian company for broadcasting their stuff on the internet?
1) While yes, is IS possible to make viruses that target specific ethnic groups, there is no 100% method.
2) Any virus designed for one ethnic group can easily mutate (or be changed on purpose for vengence) to attack another.
Net result, is this weapon, while incredibally deadly, will almost certainly also attack your own friends, loved ones, etc.
While there exists many suicidal individuals that can be recruited to do-and-die, as of yet there is no real masochist group that has scientists smart enough and willing to create a virus that will almost certainly do as much damage to their own people and allies as it would to their enemeies.
Even the worst Hamas/Al Quaeda group does not want to risk killing their own brothers/sisters.
Similarly, if you want to look at RPGs, you have to INCLUDE all the fiction books, online tie-ins, and other related marketing stuff that is derived from the paper-and-pencil games.
Once you do that, you have a viable industry, not a niche.
More importantly, it is not the sex that makes people miserable it is the lack of COMPANIONSHIP. People like you get what you want and think that sex means the act. Yes if you get sex it is just the act. But to those that go decades without it, 'sex' means more than just the act. It also means the closeness and companionship that you don't get any other way.
I know people that did not have girlfriends, from the time of 15 to the time of 30. And, yes, they were miserable. I was so glad I was not one of them.
People like you, they are the people that are pitiable. You are average but think you are one of the 'dis-advantaged' and can speak for them. You think you know what the people with real social problems face, and look down on them because they are miserable
You have no idea what real unhappyness is till you have gone 15, 20 years with out a date. Then they realize they never will date someone without paying, and call me up and I have to listen without being able to tell them they are wrong without knowing I am lying.
So sit home with your wife and thank your lucky stars that you WON the genetics lottery. You got the height, you don't have major disfiguring marks
So have a little compassion instead of disgust for those that are not as lucky as you.
If you are single, but over 6', not bald, and not very over-weight, chances are you have sex at least 1/year. But if you are single, 5'6", overweight, bald, and addicted to a video game, then chances are you had sex once last decade.
Women are just as shallow as men can be. If you are 30 and did not have sex in your 20's, then being single is miserable.
P.S. I find that when I comment about these things, some people get the idea that I am in type two, the super-single dweeb. To those people, may I point out that the world actually has some people that have compassion for the less fortunate. I happen to fall smack in the middle between the two types I listed.
Yes, I said it, the legiatamate mass mailers are part of the problem.
What would you say if a corporation started one of the following as business practoces:
A) Because of the high crime rate among conveience stores, all clerks will be issued guns and told to point them at the customer at all times.
B) Our salesman will run up to you, whip out a bottle of perfume point it at you and say PAY ME $25!
C) When you arrive at our gas car wash, masked men will remove you from your car, get in, and drive it into the carwash.
Customers would object to this. They have the right to object to this. The problem is that the activities being proposed, while they may be legal, APPEAR illegal. It is both stupid and irresponsible for businesses to engage in activities that are that close to being illegal.
It is the responsibility of the legitamate mass-emailers to distinguish themselves from spam. If they can't do this, then they should not be engaging in mass-emailing at all. If you can't convince hotmail that you are not spam, then you have an unethical business model.
Yes, this may force people to STOP using mass-email. There is no right to use it. Yes, you may like it, but it is argueable about ANY of it being 'legitamate', and it is up to you to find a way to prove you are legitamate, not up to the email service suppliers to prove you are not legiatamate.
There are lots of ways to deal with sending out large amounts of data daily. Message boards work fine. The g-d d-mned adware junk could also be converted to legitamate use, downloading your message once/day instead of via email.
If you can't clean up your act so your so called legitamate email is indistinguishable from spam, then you business model deserves to go down in flames.
For example, you can easily arrange for all accounts to be limited to 50 outgoing email/day unless the person has a valid credit card that gets charged a $1 set up fee, or they receive by regular mail a form, that they must sign and mail back.
The few NON-spammers that send more than 50 out going/day should be either willing to wait for their 51st email per day or pay $1. I can't see anyone except spammers being pissed off about this.
1) It is possible to create a negative gravitational field representing negative mass.
2) By creating a negative gravity field, you can use quantum mechanics to effectively move objects at speeds faster than light breaking the most famous of all laws.
The short article did not mention negative gravity, so I am betting it could not create negative
2) If your email recepients are not willing to white list you, you are sending spam. If they are willing, you are not. Yes it might take a bit of education to teach the people to do this. This is called change. The internet is growing up, and it WILL happen. Deal with it.
3) The fact that your 'legitamate' company is using something that people sometimes 'mistake' for spam is a HUGE problem. What would you think if a Publisher's Clearing House started sending out letters that start with "I run a Nigerian company and need to get some money out of the country. If you help me move my money, I will give you a portion of it..."? Even if your actions are not in fact real spam, they are irresponsible and the rest of the world does NOT have to help you blur the lines between spam and real email. Not all business models are legal, and not all legal models are respectable.
You are underestimateing AOL. AOL does not class real order confirmations as spam. Their algorithyms are better than that.
You want to send me spam email, pay me.
Also, EVERYONE complaining about this is a spammer. They don't think they are spammers, but they are. If the recepients want you on their email, they will put you in their address book and you won't be charged a thing.