When I was a kid (I'm 47 years old), they said that in 50 years flying cars would be commonplace. Funny how we're esentially getting around with the same--if only slightly improved--planes, trains and automobiles as before.
I've done several thousand dollars of rebates over the last three years and I have never not received them in the end.
That has *not* been my experience--especially with larger rebates.
My brother-in-law and I both bought Compaq notebooks at a big box electronics store with a $100 rebate from Compaq. Strangley, both of us got a notice saying that our rebates forms were illegible and to resubmit them. Of course those were rejected since they did not contain the *original* UPCs from the package since we sent them in on first go-round and they were not returned with the notice.
After numerous calls to Compaq with no resolution, I filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office. My brother-in-law did nothing. I got my refund in less than a week; my brother-in-law never received his. Coincidence? I think not.
Mod me off topic if you need to, but was it just me or did they just delete a dupe of the knoppix for secure banking article?
I would mod you (not off topic though) but that article that you mentioned ate my mod point! I'm serious. I modded someone, then the article disappeared--but it kept my mod point. Arghhhhh!!
I'm a shameless garbage picker and recently I found an old box with 8 mb memory running Windows 3.1. Being curious and hoping to get an old hard drive to running a smoothwall box, I snagged it and took it home.
Even though it was sitting in the rain, when I dried it off/out it booted right up and I played a little game of solitaire. But the really crazy thing is that it actually booted up much quicker than my Windows XP box with a AMD Athlon 2400+ & 1GB Memory.
Rebates serve 3 purposes. One is to take advantage of people who don't send them in. Another is to trick people by offering rebates that expire too soon for people to actually get them (see Tiger Direct - rebates often expire in a few days). And lastly, in a corporate environment I've heard of _people_ getting rebates for corporate purchases - this amounts to a way of bribing purchasers or other such corruption. If you want to offer a discount, just reduce the price. There's no ethically decent reason for rebates.
Rebates are also a way of squeezing out smaller competitors. I'm a VAR reseller who makes most of my money with services but we can usually match or beat Dell's price on an equivalent computer. But it's hard to compete with a $100 rebate on a $500 machine.
Of course I *could* offer rebates too, but obviously I can't risk losing my customers by pulling the kind of rebate shennanigans that apparently go on.
I get 90% of my rebates back, but those that I don't- I really have no recourse, and it's a ripoff.
My brother-in-law and I both bought Compaq notebooks at a big box electronics store with a $100 rebate from Compaq. Strangley, both of us got a notice saying that our rebates forms were illegible and to resubmit them. Of course those were rejected since they did not contain the original UPCs from the package since we sent them in on first go-round and they were not returned with the notice.
After numerous calls to Compaq with no resolution, I filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office. My brother-in-law did nothing. I got my refund in less than a week; my brother-in-law never received his. Coincidence? I think not.
It's Dell. They make inferior computers for people who don't know anything beyond how to turn it on.
A recent exchange:
Customer: Wow, that system your company built for us seems much faster than the other one we have--and it was even less expensive. Was there some sort of mistake?
Me: No mistake. It's because we only use AMD Athlon 64 processors in the computers we build. Your Dimension has an Intel Pentium processor which isn't nearly as fast and costs much more.
Customer: What? How can that be? Are you saying that you produce a better system for less money.
Me: Yep.
Customer (indignantly): Your system can't be faster than the Dimension--it's a Dell.
You're getting into what objective right and wrong are. There are plenty
of books on the topic, and I suggest you read them. Slashdot is not the right
place to get into something so complex.
Perhaps you are right, but it seems to me that the original post, as well as
the subsequent replies, invoked an ethical debate. As for the books, I
have read books on ethics from the ancients to the post-moderns, and I have
yet find a satisfactory answer. If you know of one that does answer the
question, please tell which one.
To put it in other terms: you don't need a god or a soul to make the world
a better place to live.
I couldn't agree with you more. But why you would want to and would it be wrong not to?
We can regard our capacity for empathy, remorse and compasion as noble if
we like, but that does not change the fact that they are simply responses to a
stimulus as evidenced by recent research which has begun to track down where
exactly in the brain visual empathy takes place.
If I were coming from a naturalistic or atheistic/agnostic position, I would
agree with that. And I could see how the perception of these emotions
would be an evolutionary advantage for group survival etc. But if emotions
are merely electrochemical pulses, what would that be wrong (in an ethical
sense) with ignoring or even causing pain in others?
And if it were not wrong, where does that lead us? I'm not claiming to have any answers--just questions.
Inside a developed human brain, an electrical pulse has an even higher meaning like pain or pleasure.
Isn't what actually happens is that it is perceived as pain or pleasure.
I know it sounds nitpicky, but there is a distinction and, in the end, it is in
reality still only an electrochemical process.
Atheistically, what is the function of pain? According to some, pain only serves as a biological warning system to prevent or minimize damage.
My computer has AV software that performs the same function and I don't feel an
emotional/empathetic response for my computer when it detects as a virus.
I understand that this is an imperfect analogy, but I still think it is apropos. So, in the absence of the existence of a soul,
I ask you to explain to me why should I care if an organism is experiencing/perceiving pain?
You will find relatively few atheists or agnostics who do not believe in right and wrong, though, so obviously people are able to come to terms with that.
You seem like a thoughtful person engaging in the discussion in an honest
and genuine way, but I have a little trouble seeing how this the second part of
the preceding sentence has much weight in terms of supporting the first part.
After all, while you will also find relatively few theists who do not believe in some sort of God,
that does not necessarily mean that they are able to come to terms with the 'if God created the universe, who created God?' conundrum.
I hope you don't think that I'm being an ass, but I just cannot find any
credible answer to a number of atheistic/agnostic positions and this is one of
them. However, inconsistencies abound, and to be fair, there are quite a
few theistic positions that I have trouble with as well.
When you are your own business you end up putting up money for various things, and when your incomming payments start to lag, you can end up in serious trouble.
Which is why being under-capitalized is the number one reason new businesses fail.
I suppose that lawyers are some kind of new predator on the food chain
that's just a part of life now?
I think that you're right--without some serious reform, lawyers and lawsuits are
going wreck democracy. But it will never change because lawyers/law firms are
the largest
contributors to political campaigns. I hate to be so cynical, but I
think that the whole process has been compromised.
If it's a brand new computer, unless it's fully patched and defended against these specific threats, you would likely already be hit long before you browsed your first site, let alone a critical one.
That's a good reason not to buy your computer from BestBuy. Our company is a local reseller who offers as good (or better) prices than the big box stores, financing options, better components, better warranties, etc. When we deliver a system, it's fully patched, AV installed with latest defs, anti-spyware installed.
Strangely, we have the hardest time getting home users to buy our systems. For whatever reason, over 95% of our customers are businesses.
You will never convince anyone like this to start thinking critically.
Nor will you ever be able to convince someone who holds the opposite viewpoint. Critical thinking is a wonderful tool, but one that is rarely used by anyone when it conflicts with their particular beliefs, whether religious or atheistic.
For instance, whether you subscribe to a creationist or naturalistic ontology, that fact that anything at all exists is illogical. If God created everything, then who created God? But what are the options for naturlism? If you say that everything was created in the Big Bang, then everything came from nothing. If you say that the Big Bang came from a 'singularity, infinitely small and infinitely dense,' then you're saying that something exists for no reason. In all of the cases, including Creationism, there is an effect with no cause.
Once you throw out cause and effect, which is the basis for all understanding, what do you have?
By the same token, it could be argued that people decided what they wanted/didn't want, and constructed their religions to reflect their personal preferences. Some people like to kill, so they invent Mars. Some people like to drink and fuck, so they invent Bacchus, etc., ad infinitum.
Good point.
However, there does seem to be a common thread in Islam, Christianity and Judiasm that tends to restrict the things that people seem to want to do (drinking, fucking, killing) rather than promoting them. Conversley, these religions also seem to me to promote things that people tend to not want to do (chastity, charity, patience).
Is that a good thing? I say yes but I surmise that many others would say no.
But that's too risky; might accidentally invalidate their biases
My experience is that without religion (and sometimes with it) most people decide what they want to do/not do and then construct their ethical, scientific,
philosophical framework around that. That is why pedophiles belong to
Nambla in greater proportions than the
general population, why homosexuals are for gay marriage, why rich people are
for tax breaks for the wealthy, etc...
Example: I am generally skeptical of
government grants to non-profit organization since many of my customers are
501(c)3 and they waste taxpayers dollars in ways that frankly scare me.
But when my biggest customer faced the loss of municipal grants, which is their
largest source of funding and a big income source for me, I found myself
not-so-subtly wanting to change my attitude.
I wonder how many people are agnostic, atheist or whatever simply because it
squares with their sexual appetite? At least Aldous Huxley was honest when
he wrote the following:
For myself as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the
philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of
liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from
a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain
system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered
with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic
system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed
that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they
insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of
confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our
political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any
meaning whatsoever.
I guess this squares with what Jesus said in John 3:19-20, 'the light has
come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their
deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the
light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.'
I think it is one of the best sources of news out there
I think that the papers
troubles
have tarnished its reputation quite a bit. Perhaps rightfully so--after
all, you have to be able to trust a news source to think it one of the best.
Having said that, I will certainly be willing to concede that the NYT has
some of the best *writing* around. Being a literature buff, and really
enjoying good writing, it's awful hard to read my local newspaper's hackneyed
attempts at journalism after reading the Times.
It's also worth remembering that there is so much functionality integrated
into modern motherboards these days, that the need for more than one PCI card is
shrinking.
Yeah, yeah--that is until someone comes out with a hot new technology and you
don't have enough slots. Or maybe the onboard NIC (or some other device)
craps out on you and you have to replace the whole board.
Is it just me or does it sound like you'll have a big fat case of buyer's
remorse in a year or two if you buy this thing?
The Law of Unintended Consequences can be applied to argue against all
future scientific research ever.
That hardly invalidates the point. After all, I'm sure you're not
saying that we should stop evaluating proposed scientific research on a
risk/reward basis, are you? And since you brought out the broad brush, I
guess that I could also say that your statement could conceivably be used to
argue for any 'scientific research,' no matter how ill-conceived or foolhardy.
Example:
Me: Honey, I'm going to build and test my own nuclear bomb in the back
yard.
Wife: I don't know dear, that sounds dangerous.
Me: Nothing's gonna happen...I've got it all under control. I've
thought it all through and the potential benefits are enormous. Once we
become a nuclear power, that should put a stop to the neighbors letting their
dogs crap on our lawn.
Wife: Well, I'm not sure, what if there's something you can't foresee or
haven't thought of? What about the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Me: The Law of Unintended Consequences can be applied to argue against all
future scientific research ever. Now where's that yellowcake uranium I
bought at the flea market?
Everyone has their limit of comfort with potential risk--this particular
matter just crosses mine. That doesn't make me an anti-science
reactionary.
This is the problem:
The Law of
Unintended Consequences. As complexity of an endeavor increases so do
the amount of unintended consequences.
I'm not saying that there aren't compelling reasons for pursuing this type of
thing, I'm just saying that the downside risk is just too great. Like any
other great catastrophe, this potential one would come from an unforeseen
unknown/error.
So the tired antihero motif that has been beaten to death?
Not that either--that's as much of a cliché as
TJ Hooker. I guess something a little closer to reality. All
I can say is check it out for yourself. I don't think that you will be
disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a kid (I'm 47 years old), they said that in 50 years flying cars would be commonplace. Funny how we're esentially getting around with the same--if only slightly improved--planes, trains and automobiles as before.
I think that you proved my point--not yours.
I've done several thousand dollars of rebates over the last three years and I have never not received them in the end.
That has *not* been my experience--especially with larger rebates.
My brother-in-law and I both bought Compaq notebooks at a big box electronics store with a $100 rebate from Compaq. Strangley, both of us got a notice saying that our rebates forms were illegible and to resubmit them. Of course those were rejected since they did not contain the *original* UPCs from the package since we sent them in on first go-round and they were not returned with the notice.
After numerous calls to Compaq with no resolution, I filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office. My brother-in-law did nothing. I got my refund in less than a week; my brother-in-law never received his. Coincidence? I think not.
Oh crap--is that the end for Compy 386?
Mod me off topic if you need to, but was it just me or did they just delete a dupe of the knoppix for secure banking article?
I would mod you (not off topic though) but that article that you mentioned ate my mod point! I'm serious. I modded someone, then the article disappeared--but it kept my mod point. Arghhhhh!!
I'm a shameless garbage picker and recently I found an old box with 8 mb memory running Windows 3.1. Being curious and hoping to get an old hard drive to running a smoothwall box, I snagged it and took it home.
Even though it was sitting in the rain, when I dried it off/out it booted right up and I played a little game of solitaire. But the really crazy thing is that it actually booted up much quicker than my Windows XP box with a AMD Athlon 2400+ & 1GB Memory.
Go figure!
Rebates serve 3 purposes. One is to take advantage of people who don't send them in. Another is to trick people by offering rebates that expire too soon for people to actually get them (see Tiger Direct - rebates often expire in a few days). And lastly, in a corporate environment I've heard of _people_ getting rebates for corporate purchases - this amounts to a way of bribing purchasers or other such corruption. If you want to offer a discount, just reduce the price. There's no ethically decent reason for rebates.
Rebates are also a way of squeezing out smaller competitors. I'm a VAR reseller who makes most of my money with services but we can usually match or beat Dell's price on an equivalent computer. But it's hard to compete with a $100 rebate on a $500 machine.
Of course I *could* offer rebates too, but obviously I can't risk losing my customers by pulling the kind of rebate shennanigans that apparently go on.
I get 90% of my rebates back, but those that I don't- I really have no recourse, and it's a ripoff.
My brother-in-law and I both bought Compaq notebooks at a big box electronics store with a $100 rebate from Compaq. Strangley, both of us got a notice saying that our rebates forms were illegible and to resubmit them. Of course those were rejected since they did not contain the original UPCs from the package since we sent them in on first go-round and they were not returned with the notice.
After numerous calls to Compaq with no resolution, I filed a complaint with my state's Attorney General's office. My brother-in-law did nothing. I got my refund in less than a week; my brother-in-law never received his. Coincidence? I think not.
It's Dell. They make inferior computers for people who don't know anything beyond how to turn it on.
...Sigh...
A recent exchange:
Customer: Wow, that system your company built for us seems much faster than the other one we have--and it was even less expensive. Was there some sort of mistake?
Me: No mistake. It's because we only use AMD Athlon 64 processors in the computers we build. Your Dimension has an Intel Pentium processor which isn't nearly as fast and costs much more.
Customer: What? How can that be? Are you saying that you produce a better system for less money.
Me: Yep.
Customer (indignantly): Your system can't be faster than the Dimension--it's a Dell.
Me:
I walked out at Sam's Club one time without showing my receipt.
I could see how Sam's Club could be different--they probably have something in their member agreement that will allow them to yank your membership.
You're getting into what objective right and wrong are. There are plenty of books on the topic, and I suggest you read them. Slashdot is not the right place to get into something so complex.
Perhaps you are right, but it seems to me that the original post, as well as the subsequent replies, invoked an ethical debate. As for the books, I have read books on ethics from the ancients to the post-moderns, and I have yet find a satisfactory answer. If you know of one that does answer the question, please tell which one.
To put it in other terms: you don't need a god or a soul to make the world a better place to live.
I couldn't agree with you more. But why you would want to and would it be wrong not to?
We can regard our capacity for empathy, remorse and compasion as noble if we like, but that does not change the fact that they are simply responses to a stimulus as evidenced by recent research which has begun to track down where exactly in the brain visual empathy takes place.
If I were coming from a naturalistic or atheistic/agnostic position, I would agree with that. And I could see how the perception of these emotions would be an evolutionary advantage for group survival etc. But if emotions are merely electrochemical pulses, what would that be wrong (in an ethical sense) with ignoring or even causing pain in others?
And if it were not wrong, where does that lead us? I'm not claiming to have any answers--just questions.
Isn't what actually happens is that it is perceived as pain or pleasure. I know it sounds nitpicky, but there is a distinction and, in the end, it is in reality still only an electrochemical process.
Atheistically, what is the function of pain? According to some, pain only serves as a biological warning system to prevent or minimize damage. My computer has AV software that performs the same function and I don't feel an emotional/empathetic response for my computer when it detects as a virus. I understand that this is an imperfect analogy, but I still think it is apropos. So, in the absence of the existence of a soul, I ask you to explain to me why should I care if an organism is experiencing/perceiving pain?
You will find relatively few atheists or agnostics who do not believe in right and wrong, though, so obviously people are able to come to terms with that.
You seem like a thoughtful person engaging in the discussion in an honest and genuine way, but I have a little trouble seeing how this the second part of the preceding sentence has much weight in terms of supporting the first part. After all, while you will also find relatively few theists who do not believe in some sort of God, that does not necessarily mean that they are able to come to terms with the 'if God created the universe, who created God?' conundrum.
I hope you don't think that I'm being an ass, but I just cannot find any credible answer to a number of atheistic/agnostic positions and this is one of them. However, inconsistencies abound, and to be fair, there are quite a few theistic positions that I have trouble with as well.
When you are your own business you end up putting up money for various things, and when your incomming payments start to lag, you can end up in serious trouble.
Which is why being under-capitalized is the number one reason new businesses fail.
I suppose that lawyers are some kind of new predator on the food chain that's just a part of life now?
I think that you're right--without some serious reform, lawyers and lawsuits are going wreck democracy. But it will never change because lawyers/law firms are the largest contributors to political campaigns. I hate to be so cynical, but I think that the whole process has been compromised.
If it's a brand new computer, unless it's fully patched and defended against these specific threats, you would likely already be hit long before you browsed your first site, let alone a critical one.
That's a good reason not to buy your computer from BestBuy. Our company is a local reseller who offers as good (or better) prices than the big box stores, financing options, better components, better warranties, etc. When we deliver a system, it's fully patched, AV installed with latest defs, anti-spyware installed.
Strangely, we have the hardest time getting home users to buy our systems. For whatever reason, over 95% of our customers are businesses.
./ed arghhh
You will never convince anyone like this to start thinking critically.
Nor will you ever be able to convince someone who holds the opposite viewpoint. Critical thinking is a wonderful tool, but one that is rarely used by anyone when it conflicts with their particular beliefs, whether religious or atheistic.
For instance, whether you subscribe to a creationist or naturalistic ontology, that fact that anything at all exists is illogical. If God created everything, then who created God? But what are the options for naturlism? If you say that everything was created in the Big Bang, then everything came from nothing. If you say that the Big Bang came from a 'singularity, infinitely small and infinitely dense,' then you're saying that something exists for no reason. In all of the cases, including Creationism, there is an effect with no cause.
Once you throw out cause and effect, which is the basis for all understanding, what do you have?
By the same token, it could be argued that people decided what they wanted/didn't want, and constructed their religions to reflect their personal preferences. Some people like to kill, so they invent Mars. Some people like to drink and fuck, so they invent Bacchus, etc., ad infinitum.
Good point.
However, there does seem to be a common thread in Islam, Christianity and Judiasm that tends to restrict the things that people seem to want to do (drinking, fucking, killing) rather than promoting them. Conversley, these religions also seem to me to promote things that people tend to not want to do (chastity, charity, patience).
Is that a good thing? I say yes but I surmise that many others would say no.
My experience is that without religion (and sometimes with it) most people decide what they want to do/not do and then construct their ethical, scientific, philosophical framework around that. That is why pedophiles belong to Nambla in greater proportions than the general population, why homosexuals are for gay marriage, why rich people are for tax breaks for the wealthy, etc...
Example: I am generally skeptical of government grants to non-profit organization since many of my customers are 501(c)3 and they waste taxpayers dollars in ways that frankly scare me. But when my biggest customer faced the loss of municipal grants, which is their largest source of funding and a big income source for me, I found myself not-so-subtly wanting to change my attitude.
I wonder how many people are agnostic, atheist or whatever simply because it squares with their sexual appetite? At least Aldous Huxley was honest when he wrote the following:
I guess this squares with what Jesus said in John 3:19-20, 'the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.'
I think it is one of the best sources of news out there
I think that the papers troubles have tarnished its reputation quite a bit. Perhaps rightfully so--after all, you have to be able to trust a news source to think it one of the best.
Having said that, I will certainly be willing to concede that the NYT has some of the best *writing* around. Being a literature buff, and really enjoying good writing, it's awful hard to read my local newspaper's hackneyed attempts at journalism after reading the Times.
From the article:
It's also worth remembering that there is so much functionality integrated into modern motherboards these days, that the need for more than one PCI card is shrinking.
Yeah, yeah--that is until someone comes out with a hot new technology and you don't have enough slots. Or maybe the onboard NIC (or some other device) craps out on you and you have to replace the whole board.
Is it just me or does it sound like you'll have a big fat case of buyer's remorse in a year or two if you buy this thing?
The Law of Unintended Consequences can be applied to argue against all future scientific research ever.
That hardly invalidates the point. After all, I'm sure you're not saying that we should stop evaluating proposed scientific research on a risk/reward basis, are you? And since you brought out the broad brush, I guess that I could also say that your statement could conceivably be used to argue for any 'scientific research,' no matter how ill-conceived or foolhardy. Example:
Me: Honey, I'm going to build and test my own nuclear bomb in the back yard.
Wife: I don't know dear, that sounds dangerous.
Me: Nothing's gonna happen...I've got it all under control. I've thought it all through and the potential benefits are enormous. Once we become a nuclear power, that should put a stop to the neighbors letting their dogs crap on our lawn.
Wife: Well, I'm not sure, what if there's something you can't foresee or haven't thought of? What about the Law of Unintended Consequences?
Me: The Law of Unintended Consequences can be applied to argue against all future scientific research ever. Now where's that yellowcake uranium I bought at the flea market?
Everyone has their limit of comfort with potential risk--this particular matter just crosses mine. That doesn't make me an anti-science reactionary.
This is the problem: The Law of Unintended Consequences. As complexity of an endeavor increases so do the amount of unintended consequences.
I'm not saying that there aren't compelling reasons for pursuing this type of thing, I'm just saying that the downside risk is just too great. Like any other great catastrophe, this potential one would come from an unforeseen unknown/error.
So the tired antihero motif that has been beaten to death?
Not that either--that's as much of a cliché as TJ Hooker. I guess something a little closer to reality. All I can say is check it out for yourself. I don't think that you will be disappointed.