If they would stop seeing how fucking small and light they could make them maybe it would help a little? I mean really, is 1.5lbs TOO FUCKING HEAVY for you lazy bastards?!
I want a PDA that has a screen that is 6 inches wide and 3 inches tall. That's enough for me to write fairly comfortably on. I want an additional 3/4inch of rubber and plastic all over the thing to keep it from snapping in half whenever I bump it against the table. For crying out loud, some of these things are not much bigger than a good sized pocket watch and I still hear people bitching about how heavy they are!
Yes, I acknowledged my choice and I'm happy with it. And as for parents having income remember that a lot of their income is going to be tied up with medical bills, house payments, car payments, etc... Not available for them to spend on crap for their kids. Also I am more likely to have more income in general than parents studies have shown that people in higher income brackets have fewer kids, frequently none. Of course, Bill Gates has kids, so that screws the whole average.>:)
And contractors like him are the reason NOBODY likes contractors. And customers like the one I mentioned before are the reason that a lot of contractors hate all of their customers... Crazy market relations.
Part of it is location, I've made a choice to not have a car for various reasons. So I'm limited in the distance I can travel. Luckily I live in an area where I don't have to shop at walmart, or rent movies from blockbuster. So this isn't a problem for me personally.
However, you people with kids cost stores a lot more than I do. Your kids mess up the ailes, futz with the merchandise, handle the food, make messes that the employees have to clean up and annoy the other customers (Not necessarily your kids in particular, but possibly). I on the other hand, go in, buy all my stuff and leave. I make life easy for the cashiers, and I have more disposable income than most parents.
Oh, and as a point to ponder, the childfree population is growing rapidly, so someday you just might have to deal with the opposite situation where your kids aren't allowed into a resteraunt after 8pm, or can't get into certain movie theatres, etc... because the childfree people want to have their dinner and see their movie without being disturbed by your babbling brood of sub-literate vermin. No offense meant to you personally or your family, and children, just a comment on the general state of children and parents in my area.
Heh, my dad doesn't do contracting work anymore. But when he did, he didn't just sit around watching or anything. He had his own building crew that would frequently handle large amounts of the labor at lower prices than most sub contractors. And sometimes he would come in and frame houses by himself on weekends when it needed to be done. As for the customer, I wasn't saying that was a special case, that's an example of the kind of requests that ALL contractors get from homeowners that don't know shit about shit.
I don't know what kind of contractors you've worked with but I've known mostly good contractors around here...
I don't like the way you seem to be defining 'Family' here. What you REALLY mean is children, right? Me and my Wife are a family. We enjoy porn, or even just slightly racy magazines, etc...
You're talking about the entire world catering to a section of the population under the age of 18 to make sure that they don't see anything that might offend their parents, who can't be bothered to teach them the values that will innure them to such influence. I'm constantly annoyed that I can't rent decent porn at blockbuster when me and my wife have a romantic weekend. The reason blockbuster doesn't carry it is that 'Family' friendly image. What they really mean to say is that they worship at the cult of baby and don't give a rats ass what the single/childfree people with disposable income want.
If the sound is transmitted via bone resonancy then subvocalisation may be enough to transfer hearable and understandable speech without it being detectable by people around you under normal conditions. Implanting the mike ontop of the voice box or just placing it securely over the voice box might be enough to allow this.
My dad did was a contractor or sub-contractor for most of my life, and when a contractor says someone is an asshole, they usually mean something like the following scenario has occured:
Owner: I want a big brick fireplace and chimney on the north facing wall of the living room.
Contractor: Ok! Are you sure about that?
Owner: Of course I'm sure! What am I paying you for? To ask stupid questions or to build my house?!
Contractor: No problem then... *makes the necessary arrangements for the fireplace to be built*
*Fast forward a couple of weeks, finished fireplace*
Owner: Y'know, I changed my mind about that fireplace. We decided fireplaces are dangerous so we don't want it anymore. Can you rip it out and just make it look like the rest of the wall?
Contractor: Ummm... sure, but I'll have to charge you for the additional labor and whatnot.
Owner: WHAT?!?!?! I ALREADY PAID FOR THE FIREPLACE AND I DON'T WANT IT! I WANT YOU TO FIX IT FOR FREE!
Contractor: I can't do that.
Owner: Then you're fired! I'll get a new contractor!
This scenario actually happened to my dad. He spoke with the contractor that was hired after him and that contractor said the owner had tried to get him to rip out the fireplace for free and had really badmouthed my dad. That contractor was also fired when refusing to do the work for free. These are the kinds of homeowners who are total assholes and have no idea what they want.
Some contractors will actually underbid a job, and then plan for the homeowner to change their mind three or four times so that they can charge them huge amounts of extra money based on no-change clauses in the contract. Those contractors love flighty customers, because they can work the same house for over a year and constantly be getting paid.
All of Dell's desktop machines come with a version of this as well, if the case gets opened it will display a warning to that effect every time you boot the system, unless you disable the message.
I was going for a play on the Owning a Katana = Wife beating inmate, by saying Girlfriend, and threatening to commit a violent crime, while planning to purchase a Katana. So that by the time I DO own a Katana, I would be married, and in jail.>:) It didn't quite work as well as I was hoping it would.
I hate this game. You have to dodge a LONG ways to get it to register dodging. And I'm trained not to waste movement like that, so I only move the few inches necessary to not get hit IRL. So I always get hit in this game. My wife though does the exaggerated dodging that the game likes, and can beat the first few guys with ease.
I take exception to your implication that owning a Katana automatically makes me a prison bound wife beater. I think I'll hunt you down and stab you to death after I finish smacking my girlfriend around...
>:) Kintanon Disclaimer: I do not yet own a Katana, I will be making that purchase in a couple of months.
Quality and Accessibility. I like Kid Rock, I wish to own his latest CD. I have downloaded many of the tracks from his latest CD in mp3 format. The quality is not up to my standards, even though it's encoded at 128. I also don't have a way of making my mp3s travel with me. Perhaps that will change in the future, but I will still purchase CDs so that I can rip them at a decent quality level for my own listening pleasure. I also like owning CDs. I own almost every REM CD ever released. I'm very happy about that. I also have most of those tracks in mp3 format. Many people hold these same views on quality of music.
This experiment does not provide a way to manipulate anything. He is MEASURING a previously suspected but unverified gravitic wave of some kind. There is no manipulation of this. This may LEAD (In 100 years) to a reactionless drive, but it's not going to let you stick one of these things in your spaceship and set out for mars tommorow morning.
Did that happen to be The Great Gatsby? Almost every copy of that book I've seen is filled with notes (unless it's brand new) and invariably every damn one of them has something to that effect right in the middle of the book.
You don't visit a lot of game shops do you? You can buy D30's almost anywhere that sells dice. Several of my friends own them. I never needed them because I don't have any characters wielding plasma rifles...
I'm going to submit my Steam/Clockwork based fantasy medieval setting. "Wizards" are distinguished by the amount of gadgets they carry. Players essentially start (As wizards) with a bag of parts and some basic tools to create their "spells" with. It's very fun. The fighter and rogue classes also rely heavily on objects created by the wizards for them. I doubt I will win, or even be a finalist or whatever, but what the hell...
Contract? What contract? I didn't sign any contract with anyone.... I never even SAW a contract. I think that if I were going to sign a contract that involved my telivision service I would certainly demand that I get ONLY the channels I want. And pay for nothing else. And I would demand that commercials be between the shows only so as not to mess up my continuity, and that no single commerical could exceed 20 seconds, and no block of comercials could exceed 3 minutes. I would sign that contract.
My point was that playing computer games doesn't automatically mean someone is going to be unhealthy. Nor does it mean they are doing nothing but. People shouldn't be discouraged from playing video games just because you think it might be less healthy for them than running track. If I get my physical excersise outside of school via rock-climbing, Martial arts, or whatever, and I want to play computer games at school then why shouldn't I be able to? Just because some couch potato who wouldn't participate in a physical activity even if forced might be slightly less healthy for it? If people aren't going to excersise then they aren't. You can't force them to.
Point 1. You obviously don't play Go. The hand movements necessary to place stones on a board that's mostly full without messing the board up are very delicate and very stressful. Inexperienced players frequently drop stones when they first switch to the correct grip.
Point 2. Basketball, Baseball, and Football on a high school level are not accessible to all students. I couldn't have played Football in my highschool even if I had wanted to. I was just too bloody small. (I did wrestle though)
Point 3. Injuries during sports are more severe than anything you can sustain typing. Knee, elbow and shoulder injuries are very common in all high school sports. I broke 2 ribs and my thumb during my 1.5 year wrestling career. In my 8 year Martial Arts career I've never broken a bone. Though I have had my forehead opened up pretty messily.
Point 4. Playing Computer Games is not physically unhealthy. I play a LOT of computer games. And I bet I can outrun you, out fight you, and probably pound for pound out benchpress you. I know I squat more weight than you do. And I'm only 5'7", 125.
A word about Fund raising. And a disclaimer, disclaimer first: I was on my highschools Academic Bowl team, in the Technology Student Association, a member of the Strategic Gaming Club, a Tutor for elementary school students, and a Wrestler, so I had experience with all of the various types of organizations at the school.
The Football team was allowed an unlimited number of fundraising events as well as their ticket sales, etc... As wrestlers we were allowed 2 fund raisers per year, as was Band, cheerleading, etc... Academic Bowl was allowed 1 fund raiser per year, TSA was allowed 0, the gaming club was allowed 0. In Academic Bowl we were using a buzzer system that was 15+ years old and frequently didn't work properly, in TSA we had incredibly outdated equipment and very very limited tools. Wrestling hadn't had new equipment in 4 years because the money from Wrestling, Cheerleading, etc... went into a global 'Sports Activity' fund that was doled out mostly to the Softball team, which was part of that group and allowed only 1 fund raiser. The Strategic Gaming club used chess boards, go boards, cards, etc... donated by the members or brought in to use for the sessions. We had 0$ from the school in the way of funding. When my younger brother founded the Chess club my parents paid for every chess board they had. Even when they took 12th out of 50 or so schools at the State competition, the school didn't even consider giving them any money for anything. They were allowed 0 fund raisers.
So the system whereby clubs in MY old high school were allowed to raise money for themselves was SERIOUSLY weighted against the intellectual groups and even the lesser sports. And highly skewed towards the football team. So even if we wanted to go out and try to raise money for our Gaming club, we weren't allowed to. Sucks eh?
Slashdot Mirror
If they would stop seeing how fucking small and light they could make them maybe it would help a little? I mean really, is 1.5lbs TOO FUCKING HEAVY for you lazy bastards?!
I want a PDA that has a screen that is 6 inches wide and 3 inches tall. That's enough for me to write fairly comfortably on. I want an additional 3/4inch of rubber and plastic all over the thing to keep it from snapping in half whenever I bump it against the table. For crying out loud, some of these things are not much bigger than a good sized pocket watch and I still hear people bitching about how heavy they are!
Kintanon
I just spent almost my entire day at work reading all of the stories on that page. You bastard! You killed my productivity!
Kintanon
Yes, I acknowledged my choice and I'm happy with it.
And as for parents having income remember that a lot of their income is going to be tied up with medical bills, house payments, car payments, etc... Not available for them to spend on crap for their kids. Also I am more likely to have more income in general than parents studies have shown that people in higher income brackets have fewer kids, frequently none. Of course, Bill Gates has kids, so that screws the whole average.>:)
Kintanon
And contractors like him are the reason NOBODY likes contractors. And customers like the one I mentioned before are the reason that a lot of contractors hate all of their customers... Crazy market relations.
Kintanon
Part of it is location, I've made a choice to not have a car for various reasons. So I'm limited in the distance I can travel. Luckily I live in an area where I don't have to shop at walmart, or rent movies from blockbuster. So this isn't a problem for me personally.
However, you people with kids cost stores a lot more than I do. Your kids mess up the ailes, futz with the merchandise, handle the food, make messes that the employees have to clean up and annoy the other customers (Not necessarily your kids in particular, but possibly). I on the other hand, go in, buy all my stuff and leave. I make life easy for the cashiers, and I have more disposable income than most parents.
Oh, and as a point to ponder, the childfree population is growing rapidly, so someday you just might have to deal with the opposite situation where your kids aren't allowed into a resteraunt after 8pm, or can't get into certain movie theatres, etc... because the childfree people want to have their dinner and see their movie without being disturbed by your babbling brood of sub-literate vermin.
No offense meant to you personally or your family, and children, just a comment on the general state of children and parents in my area.
Kintanon
Heh, my dad doesn't do contracting work anymore. But when he did, he didn't just sit around watching or anything. He had his own building crew that would frequently handle large amounts of the labor at lower prices than most sub contractors. And sometimes he would come in and frame houses by himself on weekends when it needed to be done.
As for the customer, I wasn't saying that was a special case, that's an example of the kind of requests that ALL contractors get from homeowners that don't know shit about shit.
I don't know what kind of contractors you've worked with but I've known mostly good contractors around here...
Kintanon
I don't like the way you seem to be defining 'Family' here. What you REALLY mean is children, right? Me and my Wife are a family. We enjoy porn, or even just slightly racy magazines, etc...
You're talking about the entire world catering to a section of the population under the age of 18 to make sure that they don't see anything that might offend their parents, who can't be bothered to teach them the values that will innure them to such influence. I'm constantly annoyed that I can't rent decent porn at blockbuster when me and my wife have a romantic weekend. The reason blockbuster doesn't carry it is that 'Family' friendly image. What they really mean to say is that they worship at the cult of baby and don't give a rats ass what the single/childfree people with disposable income want.
Kintanon
If the sound is transmitted via bone resonancy then subvocalisation may be enough to transfer hearable and understandable speech without it being detectable by people around you under normal conditions. Implanting the mike ontop of the voice box or just placing it securely over the voice box might be enough to allow this.
Kintanon
My dad did was a contractor or sub-contractor for most of my life, and when a contractor says someone is an asshole, they usually mean something like the following scenario has occured:
Owner: I want a big brick fireplace and chimney on the north facing wall of the living room.
Contractor: Ok! Are you sure about that?
Owner: Of course I'm sure! What am I paying you for? To ask stupid questions or to build my house?!
Contractor: No problem then... *makes the necessary arrangements for the fireplace to be built*
*Fast forward a couple of weeks, finished fireplace*
Owner: Y'know, I changed my mind about that fireplace. We decided fireplaces are dangerous so we don't want it anymore. Can you rip it out and just make it look like the rest of the wall?
Contractor: Ummm... sure, but I'll have to charge you for the additional labor and whatnot.
Owner: WHAT?!?!?! I ALREADY PAID FOR THE FIREPLACE AND I DON'T WANT IT! I WANT YOU TO FIX IT FOR FREE!
Contractor: I can't do that.
Owner: Then you're fired! I'll get a new contractor!
This scenario actually happened to my dad. He spoke with the contractor that was hired after him and that contractor said the owner had tried to get him to rip out the fireplace for free and had really badmouthed my dad. That contractor was also fired when refusing to do the work for free.
These are the kinds of homeowners who are total assholes and have no idea what they want.
Some contractors will actually underbid a job, and then plan for the homeowner to change their mind three or four times so that they can charge them huge amounts of extra money based on no-change clauses in the contract. Those contractors love flighty customers, because they can work the same house for over a year and constantly be getting paid.
Kintanon
All of Dell's desktop machines come with a version of this as well, if the case gets opened it will display a warning to that effect every time you boot the system, unless you disable the message.
Kintanon
I was going for a play on the Owning a Katana = Wife beating inmate, by saying Girlfriend, and threatening to commit a violent crime, while planning to purchase a Katana. So that by the time I DO own a Katana, I would be married, and in jail.>:) It didn't quite work as well as I was hoping it would.
Kintanon
I hate this game. You have to dodge a LONG ways to get it to register dodging. And I'm trained not to waste movement like that, so I only move the few inches necessary to not get hit IRL. So I always get hit in this game. My wife though does the exaggerated dodging that the game likes, and can beat the first few guys with ease.
Kintanon
There's a pretty good SciFi book about this called '"A" for Anything'.
Kintanon
I take exception to your implication that owning a Katana automatically makes me a prison bound wife beater. I think I'll hunt you down and stab you to death after I finish smacking my girlfriend around...
>:)
Kintanon
Disclaimer: I do not yet own a Katana, I will be making that purchase in a couple of months.
Quality and Accessibility. I like Kid Rock, I wish to own his latest CD. I have downloaded many of the tracks from his latest CD in mp3 format. The quality is not up to my standards, even though it's encoded at 128. I also don't have a way of making my mp3s travel with me. Perhaps that will change in the future, but I will still purchase CDs so that I can rip them at a decent quality level for my own listening pleasure. I also like owning CDs. I own almost every REM CD ever released. I'm very happy about that. I also have most of those tracks in mp3 format. Many people hold these same views on quality of music.
Kintanon
The wall jump in that movie is wireless. I can perform it on any random brick wall.
Kintanon
This experiment does not provide a way to manipulate anything. He is MEASURING a previously suspected but unverified gravitic wave of some kind. There is no manipulation of this. This may LEAD (In 100 years) to a reactionless drive, but it's not going to let you stick one of these things in your spaceship and set out for mars tommorow morning.
Kintanon
"This is why he dies at the end."
Did that happen to be The Great Gatsby? Almost every copy of that book I've seen is filled with notes (unless it's brand new) and invariably every damn one of them has something to that effect right in the middle of the book.
Kintanon
Never heard of it. What system is it in? I might have to go hunt it down...
Kintanon
You don't visit a lot of game shops do you? You can buy D30's almost anywhere that sells dice. Several of my friends own them. I never needed them because I don't have any characters wielding plasma rifles...
Kintanon
I'm going to submit my Steam/Clockwork based fantasy medieval setting. "Wizards" are distinguished by the amount of gadgets they carry. Players essentially start (As wizards) with a bag of parts and some basic tools to create their "spells" with. It's very fun. The fighter and rogue classes also rely heavily on objects created by the wizards for them. I doubt I will win, or even be a finalist or whatever, but what the hell...
Kintanon
Contract? What contract? I didn't sign any contract with anyone.... I never even SAW a contract. I think that if I were going to sign a contract that involved my telivision service I would certainly demand that I get ONLY the channels I want. And pay for nothing else. And I would demand that commercials be between the shows only so as not to mess up my continuity, and that no single commerical could exceed 20 seconds, and no block of comercials could exceed 3 minutes.
I would sign that contract.
Kintanon
My point was that playing computer games doesn't automatically mean someone is going to be unhealthy. Nor does it mean they are doing nothing but. People shouldn't be discouraged from playing video games just because you think it might be less healthy for them than running track. If I get my physical excersise outside of school via rock-climbing, Martial arts, or whatever, and I want to play computer games at school then why shouldn't I be able to? Just because some couch potato who wouldn't participate in a physical activity even if forced might be slightly less healthy for it? If people aren't going to excersise then they aren't. You can't force them to.
Kintanon
Point 1. You obviously don't play Go. The hand movements necessary to place stones on a board that's mostly full without messing the board up are very delicate and very stressful. Inexperienced players frequently drop stones when they first switch to the correct grip.
Point 2. Basketball, Baseball, and Football on a high school level are not accessible to all students. I couldn't have played Football in my highschool even if I had wanted to. I was just too bloody small. (I did wrestle though)
Point 3. Injuries during sports are more severe than anything you can sustain typing. Knee, elbow and shoulder injuries are very common in all high school sports. I broke 2 ribs and my thumb during my 1.5 year wrestling career. In my 8 year Martial Arts career I've never broken a bone. Though I have had my forehead opened up pretty messily.
Point 4. Playing Computer Games is not physically unhealthy. I play a LOT of computer games. And I bet I can outrun you, out fight you, and probably pound for pound out benchpress you. I know I squat more weight than you do. And I'm only 5'7", 125.
Kintanon
A word about Fund raising. And a disclaimer, disclaimer first: I was on my highschools Academic Bowl team, in the Technology Student Association, a member of the Strategic Gaming Club, a Tutor for elementary school students, and a Wrestler, so I had experience with all of the various types of organizations at the school.
The Football team was allowed an unlimited number of fundraising events as well as their ticket sales, etc... As wrestlers we were allowed 2 fund raisers per year, as was Band, cheerleading, etc... Academic Bowl was allowed 1 fund raiser per year, TSA was allowed 0, the gaming club was allowed 0.
In Academic Bowl we were using a buzzer system that was 15+ years old and frequently didn't work properly, in TSA we had incredibly outdated equipment and very very limited tools. Wrestling hadn't had new equipment in 4 years because the money from Wrestling, Cheerleading, etc... went into a global 'Sports Activity' fund that was doled out mostly to the Softball team, which was part of that group and allowed only 1 fund raiser.
The Strategic Gaming club used chess boards, go boards, cards, etc... donated by the members or brought in to use for the sessions. We had 0$ from the school in the way of funding. When my younger brother founded the Chess club my parents paid for every chess board they had. Even when they took 12th out of 50 or so schools at the State competition, the school didn't even consider giving them any money for anything. They were allowed 0 fund raisers.
So the system whereby clubs in MY old high school were allowed to raise money for themselves was SERIOUSLY weighted against the intellectual groups and even the lesser sports. And highly skewed towards the football team. So even if we wanted to go out and try to raise money for our Gaming club, we weren't allowed to. Sucks eh?
Kintanon