I don't know about Amazon specifically, but my wife is very susceptible to "sales" in general. She definitely looks at the "% Off" part of the sticker more than the price itself.
A product is worth whatever it fetches on the market. Unless your product is pretty niche, those websites are a pretty good indication of what a product is worth.
If you find a hunk of gold in the woods, it's not worth zero just because it didn't cost you anything. Similarly, if you spend 40 hours building some craft to post on Etsy and no one wants to pay more than $10 for it, that doesn't make it worth more than $10.
But in this case, the consumer has all the pricing information right at their fingertips. You can track almost any product's price history with CamelCamelCamel. Too much work to click a button? Use Wikibuy instead, which will pester you with a pop-up whenever you browse an item with a lower price elsewhere. In 2017, do I really need to mention PriceGrabber or NexTag? Hell, even Google links you to their own price comparison service nearly every time you search.
As freshmen, we had the somewhat torturous ritual of walking past a number of restaurants and food trucks on our way to the university-required foodplan cafeteria:) We hated it, but it was already paid for! I definitely did not step foot in there ever again after freshman year...
I wonder if the other center city Philly schools were as terrible. Aramark food service was native to Philly, and I think that was part of the problem. They switched to Marriott a little later and apparently that improved things, but I wouldn't know firsthand:)
Maybe it's city school vs country school or something? I went to a city school and so there were dozens of lunch options, including lunch trucks, fast food, bars, and the like. As a result, not a single faculty member used the cafeteria. For that matter, no one not required to buy the meal plan ate there. I suspect in a self-enclosed campus with fewer options, the faculty and students would demand better food.
Did you mean to reply to the parent? I'm arguing the exact opposite, that Verizon already fulfilled their side of the contract. The high usage people should congratulate themselves for finding a bargain while it lasted.
The "unlimited" plans were not unlimited in duration. They were just letting people ride along with old plans for reasons of customer satisfaction. Clearly they have changed their view, but that doesn't mean anyone is getting screwed - they held up their end of the bargain and some.
The "kill people and break things" is a catchy thing that Rush Limbaugh always says. I'm no fan of Rush, but think he often has a point on this topic. However in this case, you have to look at the baseline. The military now spends money cleaning up current and former bases that could be spent on killing people and breaking things if they had a less-polluting method. Even better if it also cleans up existing pollution. In short, if this works it might make them better at killing people and breaking things.
Agreed that you lose the shields, but you do not lose the libraries. Most/much of the Arduino libraries work fine with discrete ATMEL chips. The post I was replying to suggested using various boards with non-traditional layouts, so the shields were not a factor in the discussion. The last little fun project I did with the kids was modifying one of those "Useless Box" toys to have psuedo-random behavior and more capabilities, like vibrating and lighting up. Because I was space-constrained, I ended up using a ATTINY - but that required only minor changes from a code standpoint compared to a full-blown Arduino. I just had to download the correct board files and refrain from using ATMEGA-specific features. I still used the same Arduino IDE, motor libraries, etc.
My wife went to UCSF. It's a medical college - there are, to my knowledge, no other majors there and they run a major medical center. They do not teach IT, and IT is not their core competency. I think in this case, they are trying to fulfill their mission to train medical personnel and the question of who is doing their IT is (no offense meant) only technically different then what company comes to pick up their trash. I don't really know if outsourcing makes sense from a political standpoint, but from the narrow perspective of maximizing your education dollars used to fulfill your stated mission, it is completely rational. If we as a society want to force all government agencies to use only domestic labor and services, that's a reasonable thing. I will point out that most of their computer equipment likely comes from East Asia, all built by East Asians - so drawing the line at services seems somewhat arbitrary.
It's just a nod to the tradition of using a "blink" program as an introduction to micro-controllers. No different than referencing "hello world" in an article about programming. You can blink an led with a Frankenstein style throw switch and a monkey. Just make sure you include a current-limiting resistor.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh, that sounds like work. I'd just not do anything but complain really loudly.
I think it may have influenced my browser choice.
Don't forget to set up a second company that owns all of the equipment and leases it to the entity doing the bidding!
So in order to get real pricing information you need to submit to being data mined.
No. See my links - you do not need to run a browser extension unless you like the convenience.
It's too difficult to ask companies to be honest about their prices?
Yes, that's a huge and naive ask.
How long until those services start adjusting their prices based on kickbacks from the companies?
It would stand out like a sore thumb since there is a lot of overlap between competing sites.
Then we'll need new companies to track those companies.
We already have that, in a way. Consumer Reports, for instance, evaluates and recommends some of these sites. They also have their own tool.
a few decades ago people would swear companies would never lie about their prices
I'm 41, so maybe you are going back further than that? Marketing and sales have always been sleazy.
I don't know about Amazon specifically, but my wife is very susceptible to "sales" in general. She definitely looks at the "% Off" part of the sticker more than the price itself.
A product is worth whatever it fetches on the market. Unless your product is pretty niche, those websites are a pretty good indication of what a product is worth.
If you find a hunk of gold in the woods, it's not worth zero just because it didn't cost you anything. Similarly, if you spend 40 hours building some craft to post on Etsy and no one wants to pay more than $10 for it, that doesn't make it worth more than $10.
Yes - my instructor was a 10 year old boy at school. Talk to Dale.
3M makes a variety of copyright circumvention adhesive tapes.
Just make sure you pre-screen the source and set your levels! :)
Let me know when your dad buys a new prerecorded album at all, let alone on cassette. I don't think this story is about your dad.
You are worried that people might not be able to play a CD-RW, but you seem unconcerned that people need a find a working tape deck?
This has to be a troll.
But in this case, the consumer has all the pricing information right at their fingertips. You can track almost any product's price history with CamelCamelCamel. Too much work to click a button? Use Wikibuy instead, which will pester you with a pop-up whenever you browse an item with a lower price elsewhere. In 2017, do I really need to mention PriceGrabber or NexTag? Hell, even Google links you to their own price comparison service nearly every time you search.
As freshmen, we had the somewhat torturous ritual of walking past a number of restaurants and food trucks on our way to the university-required foodplan cafeteria :) We hated it, but it was already paid for! I definitely did not step foot in there ever again after freshman year...
I wonder if the other center city Philly schools were as terrible. Aramark food service was native to Philly, and I think that was part of the problem. They switched to Marriott a little later and apparently that improved things, but I wouldn't know firsthand :)
Lesson: go to a massive agricultural school with an active food science department :)
Maybe it's city school vs country school or something? I went to a city school and so there were dozens of lunch options, including lunch trucks, fast food, bars, and the like. As a result, not a single faculty member used the cafeteria. For that matter, no one not required to buy the meal plan ate there. I suspect in a self-enclosed campus with fewer options, the faculty and students would demand better food.
I went to school in Philadelphia, and even the cheesesteaks were nasty in the cafeteria. That's sacrilegious in those parts.
Boy, the quality of the food must have increased markedly since I was in school in the 90s. The only edible thing was the Lucky Charms.
Did you mean to reply to the parent? I'm arguing the exact opposite, that Verizon already fulfilled their side of the contract. The high usage people should congratulate themselves for finding a bargain while it lasted.
The "unlimited" plans were not unlimited in duration. They were just letting people ride along with old plans for reasons of customer satisfaction. Clearly they have changed their view, but that doesn't mean anyone is getting screwed - they held up their end of the bargain and some.
Someone has to install a browser, but not the end user on any machine since the early 2000s.
The "kill people and break things" is a catchy thing that Rush Limbaugh always says. I'm no fan of Rush, but think he often has a point on this topic. However in this case, you have to look at the baseline. The military now spends money cleaning up current and former bases that could be spent on killing people and breaking things if they had a less-polluting method. Even better if it also cleans up existing pollution. In short, if this works it might make them better at killing people and breaking things.
Agreed that you lose the shields, but you do not lose the libraries. Most/much of the Arduino libraries work fine with discrete ATMEL chips. The post I was replying to suggested using various boards with non-traditional layouts, so the shields were not a factor in the discussion. The last little fun project I did with the kids was modifying one of those "Useless Box" toys to have psuedo-random behavior and more capabilities, like vibrating and lighting up. Because I was space-constrained, I ended up using a ATTINY - but that required only minor changes from a code standpoint compared to a full-blown Arduino. I just had to download the correct board files and refrain from using ATMEGA-specific features. I still used the same Arduino IDE, motor libraries, etc.
My wife went to UCSF. It's a medical college - there are, to my knowledge, no other majors there and they run a major medical center. They do not teach IT, and IT is not their core competency. I think in this case, they are trying to fulfill their mission to train medical personnel and the question of who is doing their IT is (no offense meant) only technically different then what company comes to pick up their trash. I don't really know if outsourcing makes sense from a political standpoint, but from the narrow perspective of maximizing your education dollars used to fulfill your stated mission, it is completely rational. If we as a society want to force all government agencies to use only domestic labor and services, that's a reasonable thing. I will point out that most of their computer equipment likely comes from East Asia, all built by East Asians - so drawing the line at services seems somewhat arbitrary.
It's just a nod to the tradition of using a "blink" program as an introduction to micro-controllers. No different than referencing "hello world" in an article about programming. You can blink an led with a Frankenstein style throw switch and a monkey. Just make sure you include a current-limiting resistor.