10% as good would be more realistic. Zed is one of the 10-times-better programmers mentioned in the mythical man month. It's one of the trade-offs you make when hiring a massively capable programmer in to an otherwise average team - they are unlikely to fit in perfectly, but their work will be astounding.
This may well be true. But he really better be that fucking good or he's not even going to be able to get a McJob.
Once Islam gets a sizable minority in European Russia, they'll take over, as the actual Russians will be too few and too old to stop the imposition of Sharia. At trhe same time, the Chicoms' 60 million young men will blitz Siberia in about 2 weeks.
What I am saying is, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with offering a service (as a standalone service, no warranty issues involved) where you replace a disk for a fee + cost of parts, but keep the old part.
There is a problem if you consider it reasonable for the customer to expect to get his disk back absent obvious information to the contrary (which I do), it is then the company's responsibility to make sure the customer is aware of this non-obvious clause.
I can see your point, but they've not been paid/contracted to wipe the data, so they're not really responsible for that. But handing over the wrong disk is a bit more of a bad move (they're very unlikely to have tracked it, so how are they meant to work out which disk is his anyway).
I'm not saying this is good service, and certainly not value for money. But if you are offering a basic drive installation service (which is all Apple do regardless of the price) that really is all you're offering. The problem was not explaining to the customer what the service entailed - it's quite reasonable to expect to get your drive back after all - not the actual service they are offering.
Very true, but that doesn't, in my opinion, negate the consumer's right to have their drive back if they so choose.
While I think Apple needed to make it plain to the customer he wouldn't get his old drive back, I don't think you can say that Apple should be obliged to offer a drive replacement with old drive back service. They're a private company after all.
* File a police report detailing how your drive was stolen from you.
- Not stolen, so can't do that.
* Complain to your state attorney general.
- Dunno the US well enough to know who this is.
* Complain to the BBB.
- Possibly worth it, since it should really have been made clear to him beforehand that he wasn't getting his old drive back.
* Make sure the Apple Store manager and Apple HQ gets copies of all of the above.
- Listen to the sound of yourself being ignored.
The best he can hope for is some kind of financial compensation for not having the service explained to him properly. Let's face it that won't be much even if he can be bothered to got through the BS he'll need to before getting to this point; what's the value of a used 80GB drive? Apple will take responsibility for his data when Satan skates to work.
He'll never get his drive back - even if they wanted to they're not going to be able to be certain who's drive is who's and the potential liability of giving him the wrong drive makes it a non-starter.
Moral of the story is don't use Apple for out of warranty repairs. They price themselves out of the market, and as this demonstrates their Ts&Cs are pretty shitty.
why not? Shouldn't there be some kind of client confidentiality involved here?
Why should there be?
Ignore child porn for a moment since it's always going to be a special case. You've got some confidential business info on your machine and you need to pay someone to get it fixed. You take it to me and later found out that I saw it and have been talking about it, what can you do?
Nothing without an NDA. Would I have signed an NDA? Not if I'm your standard PC repairman and have any sense whatsoever - I'm making a few bucks doing some hardware work, and if I screw up my total liability isn't going to be worse than the value of your hardware. Without some kind of insurance I'd be putting myself at risk of almost infinite liability if I made those sort of promises.
I'm sure there are people who will make those kind of promises - they are either fools, or they have insurance to cover themselves (and will charge you significantly more for the privilege).
I suppose you might have a case if there was no reason for me to have accessed the confidential files and I'd just been nosing through your drive, but assuming they are something I might encounter in the normal cause of work then I don't think you have any legal right to privacy unless it has been agreed beforehand.
But once you've done that you have to test the hell out of it, and probably go back to those sites, to deal with the inevitable browser bugs your going to find.
I'd *like* to use pure CSS layouts, but at the end of the day tables work; consistently and quickly.
set up a bank. don't charge yourself for credit card processing.
It wouldn't be a bank, it would be a credit card processor, but it's probably not a bad idea for a large company that does a huge number of cc charges - I'm not sure Microsoft would actually do enough to make it worthwhile but I dunno.
dabs.com (a big online UK tech retailer) does this.
The first 3 books were really quite amazing, and I was very prepared for a really great finale in book 4... which never happened
A lot of people seem to feel that way. I'm the complete opposite, I found the first 3 books to be well done, but essentially a standard coming-of-age type fantasy story. Not bad (at the age I was when I read the early books anyway), but nothing massively exciting.
From book 4 (where they basically come of age) it becomes something else - purely in my opinion by far the best fantasy work with the exception of Tolkien.
Just what works for you I guess, but it seems to be the way that the series progressed past book 3 that separates the fans from the deeply frustrated former readers.
Not everyone is treated simply as an exploitable commodity; really, this is true.
Now grandparent didn't say what he did, the environment he worked in, or how valuable his skills are, so maybe your correct about how his boss views him. You may not be though.
Maybe you're just trolling, but I'm going to assume you're not for the purposes of this reply since I've got something I want to say on this subject.
FUCK OFF! You and those like you are fucking braindead. The idea that complete nonentities like you should be able to use violence and intimidation to force your crackpot ideas of morality on the rest of us disgusts me. The fact that you dickheads might actually be able to retard progress on medical experiments by your idiocy means that I hate you rather than simply holding you in contempt.
I hope you die of one of those diseases that you are fighting so hard to prevent cures being developed for. I hope you die in pain and before the end you realise just how wrong you are.
Quite, I'm not a huge FPS fan and I doubt I'll play this game, but I'm always pleased when a sequel is made to a game I like.
There seems to be a carry over from the dislike of movie sequels into games as far as I can tell. I hate sequels to great movies - almost without exception they're made simply because they're a safe bet; an attempt to recreate a previous success by doing more of the same with the expectation that name recognition will ensure a profit. They don't add anything to the original, they simply (and obviously) try to cash in on its success.
Games aren't like that. At the end of the day it is the gameplay that is important in a game - yes the plot might advance in a sequel, but this isn't what the sequel is about. The sequel is the same game, but with several years more development and user feedback incorporated into it - it's an improved version of the same game. When I like a game this is what I want.
I loved the original Civilisation. Civ2 was the same game but so much better. Civ3 built on the Civ2 base and refined it considerably [I know there are some who hate anything after Civ2, I've never really understood why myself]. Civ4 (now on it's second expansion pack) is a really great game that I'm playing at the moment.
I wouldn't play the original Civ anymore - it was amazing at the time, but things move on. But the ongoing development of the Civilisation series has provided me with a string of great games for more years than I want to count.
At the end of the day a game is about the gameplay mechanics. The same game with improved gameplay is better than the original. While I agree that new original games are a good thing, that doesn't stop me appreciating incremental improvements to existing games,
To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.
That's the old Clause IV of the British Labour party constitution. That's socialism. I seriously doubt that, now or ever, a US President could be elected on a manifesto such as that.
It must really piss you off that the only reason that people like you have the freedom to voice that opinion is that people like him have been willing to kill and die to defend that right.
WalMart is accused by those it outcompetes of being an unscrupulous retailer who does the socio-economic equivalent of "strip mining" wherever they take root.
A small charge may be someone verifying that the card is still valid - do a small instant transaction which has a good chance of escaping detection and then use the known-good card for a larger fraudulent purchase.
If this was the case Jazz Inc would be an unwitting third party - your bank might have noticed a pattern of a small charge with them followed by a large fraud attempt.
While I'm not saying the view that Rome collapsed under it's own decadence is necessarily completely wrong, it should be noted that much of this view comes from Romans themselves - not just any Romans, but those who chose to spend their time writing histories and deploring the current state of Rome when compared to the glorious fortitude of their fathers.
We are not the men are fathers were is a common refrain through centuries of Roman writings - maybe they're right, but I can't help but think that they're ancestors must have been truly formidable people if they really fell that far for that long.
You're right. What I meant was that the labelling of the various nomadic tribes around the Empire's borders as barbarians comes directly from the sources. And the sources for the Roman Empire are almost without exception Roman (although the best source for this period describes himself as "a former soldier and a Greek" he was writing for a Roman audience).
Historical determinism is attractive, but ultimately you're reducing complex interactions between vast numbers of people to simple rules. You have to cut off to much to get it to fit the model for the results to mean anything IMO.
Something I should have put in my previous post: if you're interested in the period I'd strongly recommend reading the major primary source for the late roman empire - Ammianus Marcellinus's Res Gestae. You can probably find a free translation online somewhere, although a good modern annotated edition is well worth it.
I was a pretty mediocre undergraduate student about ten years ago, so don't put too much store in this, and I've never heard that theory.
It doesn't really fit with the explanation that made the best sense to me - which really means that it was the view my lecturer inclined towards.
The fall of the empire in the west was a long event, not barbarian invaders overrunning the empire so much as the central authority withering on the vine. You can trace this to the reforms made by Diocletian which brought the empire out of the "third century crisis" - there's debate about how well the word crisis describes this period but anyway, there had been a time of multiple Emperors fighting for control, the silver currency had collapsed due to repeated debasement and the Empire was effectively a barter economy.
In the early Empire, there had always been massive incentives for local elites to stay with Rome - they got titles, authority and Rome didn't mess with how they governed their regions. After Diocletian they got hit with more and more demands in exchange for less and less benefits. A later emperor allowed barbarian auxilleries to serve and settle (land in the empire was a standard reward) under their own commanders. Effectively this created new power structures on a local level, while the old imperial structures were generally detested by the local elites. Barbarian warlords replaced the Emperor's agents as the power on the ground, and the empire in the west died with a wimper over several decades.
How well I've remembered this, how well I understood it to start with, and how it chimes with current historical thought on the issue I don't know, but it suggests to me that even a massive malaria outbreak would be peripheral (perhaps leading to the Empire being forced to rely more on barbarian mercenaries, which was certainly a feature of the latter years in the west).
Slashdot Mirror
You mean the big bang theory?
I dunno. I'm a convinced atheist and I'd put the scam potential at about the same...
This may well be true. But he really better be that fucking good or he's not even going to be able to get a McJob.
Meanwhile, back in reality..
What I am saying is, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with offering a service (as a standalone service, no warranty issues involved) where you replace a disk for a fee + cost of parts, but keep the old part.
There is a problem if you consider it reasonable for the customer to expect to get his disk back absent obvious information to the contrary (which I do), it is then the company's responsibility to make sure the customer is aware of this non-obvious clause.
I can see your point, but they've not been paid/contracted to wipe the data, so they're not really responsible for that. But handing over the wrong disk is a bit more of a bad move (they're very unlikely to have tracked it, so how are they meant to work out which disk is his anyway).
I'm not saying this is good service, and certainly not value for money. But if you are offering a basic drive installation service (which is all Apple do regardless of the price) that really is all you're offering. The problem was not explaining to the customer what the service entailed - it's quite reasonable to expect to get your drive back after all - not the actual service they are offering.
While I think Apple needed to make it plain to the customer he wouldn't get his old drive back, I don't think you can say that Apple should be obliged to offer a drive replacement with old drive back service. They're a private company after all.
* File a police report detailing how your drive was stolen from you.
- Not stolen, so can't do that.
* Complain to your state attorney general.
- Dunno the US well enough to know who this is.
* Complain to the BBB.
- Possibly worth it, since it should really have been made clear to him beforehand that he wasn't getting his old drive back.
* Make sure the Apple Store manager and Apple HQ gets copies of all of the above.
- Listen to the sound of yourself being ignored.
The best he can hope for is some kind of financial compensation for not having the service explained to him properly. Let's face it that won't be much even if he can be bothered to got through the BS he'll need to before getting to this point; what's the value of a used 80GB drive? Apple will take responsibility for his data when Satan skates to work.
He'll never get his drive back - even if they wanted to they're not going to be able to be certain who's drive is who's and the potential liability of giving him the wrong drive makes it a non-starter.
Moral of the story is don't use Apple for out of warranty repairs. They price themselves out of the market, and as this demonstrates their Ts&Cs are pretty shitty.
Why should there be?
Ignore child porn for a moment since it's always going to be a special case. You've got some confidential business info on your machine and you need to pay someone to get it fixed. You take it to me and later found out that I saw it and have been talking about it, what can you do?
Nothing without an NDA. Would I have signed an NDA? Not if I'm your standard PC repairman and have any sense whatsoever - I'm making a few bucks doing some hardware work, and if I screw up my total liability isn't going to be worse than the value of your hardware. Without some kind of insurance I'd be putting myself at risk of almost infinite liability if I made those sort of promises.
I'm sure there are people who will make those kind of promises - they are either fools, or they have insurance to cover themselves (and will charge you significantly more for the privilege).
I suppose you might have a case if there was no reason for me to have accessed the confidential files and I'd just been nosing through your drive, but assuming they are something I might encounter in the normal cause of work then I don't think you have any legal right to privacy unless it has been agreed beforehand.
But once you've done that you have to test the hell out of it, and probably go back to those sites, to deal with the inevitable browser bugs your going to find.
I'd *like* to use pure CSS layouts, but at the end of the day tables work; consistently and quickly.
It wouldn't be a bank, it would be a credit card processor, but it's probably not a bad idea for a large company that does a huge number of cc charges - I'm not sure Microsoft would actually do enough to make it worthwhile but I dunno.
dabs.com (a big online UK tech retailer) does this.
A lot of people seem to feel that way. I'm the complete opposite, I found the first 3 books to be well done, but essentially a standard coming-of-age type fantasy story. Not bad (at the age I was when I read the early books anyway), but nothing massively exciting.
From book 4 (where they basically come of age) it becomes something else - purely in my opinion by far the best fantasy work with the exception of Tolkien.
Just what works for you I guess, but it seems to be the way that the series progressed past book 3 that separates the fans from the deeply frustrated former readers.
Sometimes I really love love my job...
Not everyone is treated simply as an exploitable commodity; really, this is true.
Now grandparent didn't say what he did, the environment he worked in, or how valuable his skills are, so maybe your correct about how his boss views him. You may not be though.
Monica?
Maybe you're just trolling, but I'm going to assume you're not for the purposes of this reply since I've got something I want to say on this subject.
FUCK OFF! You and those like you are fucking braindead. The idea that complete nonentities like you should be able to use violence and intimidation to force your crackpot ideas of morality on the rest of us disgusts me. The fact that you dickheads might actually be able to retard progress on medical experiments by your idiocy means that I hate you rather than simply holding you in contempt.
I hope you die of one of those diseases that you are fighting so hard to prevent cures being developed for. I hope you die in pain and before the end you realise just how wrong you are.
Quite, I'm not a huge FPS fan and I doubt I'll play this game, but I'm always pleased when a sequel is made to a game I like.
There seems to be a carry over from the dislike of movie sequels into games as far as I can tell. I hate sequels to great movies - almost without exception they're made simply because they're a safe bet; an attempt to recreate a previous success by doing more of the same with the expectation that name recognition will ensure a profit. They don't add anything to the original, they simply (and obviously) try to cash in on its success.
Games aren't like that. At the end of the day it is the gameplay that is important in a game - yes the plot might advance in a sequel, but this isn't what the sequel is about. The sequel is the same game, but with several years more development and user feedback incorporated into it - it's an improved version of the same game. When I like a game this is what I want.
I loved the original Civilisation. Civ2 was the same game but so much better. Civ3 built on the Civ2 base and refined it considerably [I know there are some who hate anything after Civ2, I've never really understood why myself]. Civ4 (now on it's second expansion pack) is a really great game that I'm playing at the moment.
I wouldn't play the original Civ anymore - it was amazing at the time, but things move on. But the ongoing development of the Civilisation series has provided me with a string of great games for more years than I want to count.
At the end of the day a game is about the gameplay mechanics. The same game with improved gameplay is better than the original. While I agree that new original games are a good thing, that doesn't stop me appreciating incremental improvements to existing games,
That's the old Clause IV of the British Labour party constitution. That's socialism. I seriously doubt that, now or ever, a US President could be elected on a manifesto such as that.
It must really piss you off that the only reason that people like you have the freedom to voice that opinion is that people like him have been willing to kill and die to defend that right.
Fixed it for you.
A small charge may be someone verifying that the card is still valid - do a small instant transaction which has a good chance of escaping detection and then use the known-good card for a larger fraudulent purchase.
If this was the case Jazz Inc would be an unwitting third party - your bank might have noticed a pattern of a small charge with them followed by a large fraud attempt.
While I'm not saying the view that Rome collapsed under it's own decadence is necessarily completely wrong, it should be noted that much of this view comes from Romans themselves - not just any Romans, but those who chose to spend their time writing histories and deploring the current state of Rome when compared to the glorious fortitude of their fathers.
We are not the men are fathers were is a common refrain through centuries of Roman writings - maybe they're right, but I can't help but think that they're ancestors must have been truly formidable people if they really fell that far for that long.
You're right. What I meant was that the labelling of the various nomadic tribes around the Empire's borders as barbarians comes directly from the sources. And the sources for the Roman Empire are almost without exception Roman (although the best source for this period describes himself as "a former soldier and a Greek" he was writing for a Roman audience).
Historical determinism is attractive, but ultimately you're reducing complex interactions between vast numbers of people to simple rules. You have to cut off to much to get it to fit the model for the results to mean anything IMO.
Something I should have put in my previous post: if you're interested in the period I'd strongly recommend reading the major primary source for the late roman empire - Ammianus Marcellinus's Res Gestae. You can probably find a free translation online somewhere, although a good modern annotated edition is well worth it.
I was a pretty mediocre undergraduate student about ten years ago, so don't put too much store in this, and I've never heard that theory.
It doesn't really fit with the explanation that made the best sense to me - which really means that it was the view my lecturer inclined towards.
The fall of the empire in the west was a long event, not barbarian invaders overrunning the empire so much as the central authority withering on the vine. You can trace this to the reforms made by Diocletian which brought the empire out of the "third century crisis" - there's debate about how well the word crisis describes this period but anyway, there had been a time of multiple Emperors fighting for control, the silver currency had collapsed due to repeated debasement and the Empire was effectively a barter economy.
In the early Empire, there had always been massive incentives for local elites to stay with Rome - they got titles, authority and Rome didn't mess with how they governed their regions. After Diocletian they got hit with more and more demands in exchange for less and less benefits. A later emperor allowed barbarian auxilleries to serve and settle (land in the empire was a standard reward) under their own commanders. Effectively this created new power structures on a local level, while the old imperial structures were generally detested by the local elites. Barbarian warlords replaced the Emperor's agents as the power on the ground, and the empire in the west died with a wimper over several decades.
How well I've remembered this, how well I understood it to start with, and how it chimes with current historical thought on the issue I don't know, but it suggests to me that even a massive malaria outbreak would be peripheral (perhaps leading to the Empire being forced to rely more on barbarian mercenaries, which was certainly a feature of the latter years in the west).