I don't think Walmart is as dangerous as you seem to, though I haven't been in a WalMart in ages. I think that in the race to the bottom, Wlamart is definitely the winner, but I don't see hiring unhelpful workers to sell crap products in dirty stores as a viable long-term strategy.
I don't know of anyone who actually likes to shop at Walmart, though I have a friend who goes there occasionally to stock up on stuff you can't screw up (like paper towels). But everyone in my (not large) social circle has pretty much stopped shopping at Walmart because (as I said above) the employees are surly, the stores are dirty, and the stuff that they sell is crap.
Circuit City failed at least in part because there was a perception that their prices weren't great. But the terrible sales staff and knock-off quality stuff they sold was part of it, too. I expect that in the end, Walmart is going to find out that treating suppliers, customers, and employees like crap isn't winning combination.
I think the point is more that if you're working at the kind of place where it's "up or out" and 80-hour weeks, you've probably made a bad decision somewhere along the line. If you WANT to work in that environment with those kinds of hours, you should probably see a shrink.
Those of us with a life outside of work (you know, wife and kids, hobbies, outside interests, a social life) can clue you in: you're not going to take any of that stuff you're buying with you when you die, and you're not going to get any of those hours back. Ever. I can guarantee that I'm not going to regret quiet evenings spent reading with my wife, afternoons spent at the pool with my daughter, or any of the many other things I enjoy doing. I doubt you can say the same for the myriad hours you're spending in the pursuit of money you don't have the time to enjoy.
Seriously, the guy has essentially unlimited email (sans attachments) and is worried about surfing. Unless he's looking for pron as opposed to info, Lynx is sufficient for most uses (ASCII porn?) and pretty speedy.
When I was stationed in Italy (in the north, about mid-way between Milan and Venice) our first night off post we stopped to get a "real" Italian pizza. Imagine our surprise when, after it came out of the over, the server proceeded to pour about 1/2 cup of olive oil over the whole thing. As if pizza weren't greasy enough!
On the other hand, every bite of pasta I ate during my three years in Italy was divine.
But when those people whom it "meant something to" are all gone, will their music still be considered worth listening to? When all the 60-70 YO Beatles fans die off, will there be lots of people saying that they made amazing music?
I don't have a strong sense of this one way or the other. After all, the cult of Elvis seems to have lived on, and that started 10 years before the cult of the Beatles.
My point is merely that the idealistic people who were listening to the Beatles while stoned probably have a different view of them than people who grew up since (or who will come well after the dew is off the rose).
Back when I got my first Palm (a IIIe) in 2000 or so, Palm was the epitome of gadgety-goodness: simple to use, long battery life, and open to development. I'm not even trained a programmer and I tinkered with Palm programming (heck, for a couple of months I was actually working on a Palm program for an employer). I owned that original IIIe, a IIIc (with color!), a T-3 and two Treos. Palm devices were simple, fast, and reliable--with a user interface that wasn't cloned from a desktop metaphore (curse you, Bill Gates, and your idiotic WinCE, too).
Unfortunately, as the world of mobile computing moved on around Palm (and my Palm devices), Palm stood still. The Treo was still using the hideous Blazer browser and the applications and interface were stuck in the 90's. I kept hoping against hope that Palm would come out with their forever-promised-but-never-delivered Linux OS, but it never happened.
When my second Treo died an untimely death in an unfortunate swimming pool accident, I bought "just a phone" and never looked back.
I think that for most people interested in Smart Phones, Palm says: old-fashioned, poorly supported, and not really up-to-snuff. Much like American car manufacturers have to fight the poor-quality, unreliable image long after their cars have become competitive, Palm will have an image problem for quite some time.
As you know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. And really, that's all this is, except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking life. I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you, so let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so... be honest. How do you feel?
Just a quick comment on usability: most (MS) programs are written for what you might call the "perpetual beginner."
For instance, studies have shown that people who are long-term users of menu-based interfaces memorize the "location" of menu items, rather than reading them when the menu opens. For instance, if the "Font" menu item is the third one down in the "Format" menu, which is second from the left, experienced users find it by going two over and three down, not reading the menu tree: 1) file 2) format, then 1) borders 2) numbers 3) font Oh there it is! But Microsoft's flagship products (Windows and Office) ship by default with "custom menus" turned on, which irritatingly moves menu items based on usage.
This is one of the greatest difficulties with good UI design--making an interface that is simple and intuitive enough for beginners to learn and become comfortable with, but that still is efficient for those who have mastered the basics and are becoming "power users"
In other words, there is no "normal" user--each individual's use of software changes over time. Designing for this is what makes UI work so tough.
If you're a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, there's no reason for California to raise taxes--they can simply cut expenses. Why is what is a requirement for individual citizens an impossibility for government?
Conversely, if you happen to big a big-budget, "think of the children" liberal, there's no reason California can't raise the sales tax to 12% and increase the income tax.
The idea that "compromise" is somehow the ultimate solution to a problem is part of the reason things are so screwed up in this country. When you compromise on important issues (like whether the state's budget is appropriate or not) you wind up getting the worst of all possible worlds: your Republicans fight for an insufficient tax increase and your Democrats fight tooth and nail to preserve programs that should have died out in the 50s.
I prefer politicians who have the courage of their convictions (though they're few and far between). Give me a Regan or Obama over a Clinton or McCain.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is completely fed up with this "it's for the children" crap. I bet someone living in New York could name 10 or 20 programs that not only deserve to be cut, but eliminated. But when it's time for the clowns who sit in the State House to set a new budget, any cuts have to come from some popular program, not from "$1,000,000 to study the impact of electric light on fungus" or "$100,000 to rename a state park after some pork-barreler and build a statue"
Personally, I'd like to implement a new system, where every year we decimate the ranks of politicians--if you served in public office during the year, we put your name on a list and we randomly shoot 1 in 10 of the people on the list.
Or just nuke congress from orbit--it's the only way to be sure.
Public sentiment would've been 100% behind the Iraq war if it would've been justified, like in the first Iraq war.
The media was already questioning the war long before the WMD claims were debunked. And the public's earliest distaste for the war was much more driven by the nightly-reported casualty reports than the fact that WMDs were never found.
As a counter-point, Clinton's foray into Somalia was "justified", but ultimately unsustainable when casualties occurred and the citizenry was appalled by the sight of American service members' bodies being dragged through the streets.
Having said all that, I agree that Americans tend to be fat and happy and generally come across as not-too-bright to the rest of the world, but it's not wise to tweak the sleeping tiger.
As a former teacher, I have to agree that teachers unions are part of the problem. No where else do you see so many self-serving initiatives sold as "for the children." And teachers unions are practically a byword for resistance to change and accountability.
Of course you're going to have some difficulty determining who is doing a good job. But that's true in a lot of places--there's no objective measure of trumpet playing, but the New York Phil seems to be able to reward their first chair trumpeter in an appropriate fashion. Does the fact that something is difficult mean we throw up our hands and say "it can't be done" without looking for an answer?
I don't have a perfect solution for our educational problems. One of the reasons that I gave up teaching after three years is that I believe that most of them stem from underlying societal problems that are uncorrectable. Things like the complete breakdown of personal responsibility, the modern focus on self esteem (little Johnny can't get a failing grade, because he might not feel good about himself) and the inability of parents to accept the truth about their children (Oh, little Suzy would never do that! It must have been someone else).
Whatever the solution is, I don't think that throwing computers are the problem is going to be it.
The net connections to schools may be provided by commercial suppliers, but the two school districts that I worked for did their own network setup (including wiring between buildings and the rest of the installation) and they had on-staff network admins.
When you spend all your days on Slashdot, it's hard to notice, but believe it or not, not everyone gives a damn.
This is one danger of on-line communities like Slashdot. It's not necessarily a group-think problem, though you do see that too--it's a problem of assuming that, like the crowd you're running with, everyone cares about the same things. But like the vi vs. Emacs argument (nice sig, BTW, but which one is the rocks?) not only is arguing about this only relevant to the geek crowd, most people don't just not care, they haven't even heard of text editors other than notepad.
Frankly, I'm willing to bet that if you ask your average person in the mall they don't even know that their phone has an OS, nor which one it is. And more, I'm willing to bet that not only do they not know that their phone has an OS, they couldn't tell you what an OS is or why it's important.
Call me cynical, but get back to us on "great service" when you're no longer an early adopter test-case but just another of thousands of customers. Sure Clearwire is working hard to make it work for you--that's what always happens a first. They want to use you to get the bug out of their system, so of course they're on top of things and "working hard for you"
In about three years when Clearwire has thousands of customers, try to get customer service . Given past experience, I'm pretty confident their service will be on par what's offered by their partners Comcast and TimeWarner--two of the worst customer service departments I've ever had the misfortune to deal with.
Note that I'm not saying you aren't getting good service now; I'm making a prediction about the future--past experience does not guarantee future performance.
My wife and I (she's the math major and very detail oriented) pay bills online, manually. I don't like "automatic" because it's easy to set up, but difficult to stop. I'm not sure I see any big difference between writing "1000" on a slip of paper (which is not legal tender) or putting numbers into a field on a form.
I also can't imagine anyone not reconciling their bank and credit card statements against their records each month. We keep a detailed budget that shows every transaction (credit, checking or cash) and we reconcile the bank and credit card statements against it each month. As frequently as banks screw up, it just makes sense.
Of course, our money is in a credit union, not a big national bank, so I like to think we get better service when we do have an issue. It's certainly much better than other big banks where we've had accounts *cough-citibank-*cough and had terrible service.
Better still, a separate report issued yesterday by Ofcom revealed that the majority of broadband users had no idea about the speed of their connection anyway.
My bet is that these are closely related. If consumers knew about their comparatively low speed connection (i.e., knew enough to know they should care and how to figure it out) then they'd be pushing for faster speeds. They'd leave providers who are providing "slow broadband" and move to better ones, and the screwups would have to get right or get out of the broadband business.
But your average Peter Pint doesn't know enough to know better. (Hey, I'm not putting down you folks over the pond--the average Joe Sixpack thinks broadband is a woman's belt)
Modern prisons (especially lower security ones) aren't built like they used to be, where every prisoner is in a cell by themselves or with a single roommate. Oftentimes there are dormitory-like conditions where a dozen or so inmates are in a room together. In addition, there are frequently common-areas (other than the cafeteria) when inmates are gathered in groups. These types of situations make it easier for inmates to hide contraband, especially where other inmates have an interest in assisting or at least no interest in actively preventing it. Add to this modern construction techniques (drop ceilings in a prison? WTF?) and you're asking for trouble.
You can argue all day long about whether sentences are supposed to be punitive or rehabilitative, but the current situation (with regards to prison rape, drug use, and other contraband) is a direct result of these modern innovations (dorms, common areas, etc.)
An ideal prison (IMO) would be more like Alcatraz, where each individual prisoner was kept in an separate, concrete block cell. I think if you had this kind of control, you'd be more able to do rehabilitative things (like provide access to computers, etc) whereas now the risks are too high.
Of course, that kind of facility wouldn't be cheap, and since we're running so many prisons I don't see it happening.
There are folks here who irrationally hate Microsoft, no doubt. But it's not irrational to be wary of a company that has embraced, extended, and extinguished before.
Keep in mind that Moonlight is an OS implementation of a proprietary format, which Microsoft may arbitrarily change at any time--and if past experience is a predictor of future behavior, then Moonlight doesn't seem any better than Flash.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think Walmart is as dangerous as you seem to, though I haven't been in a WalMart in ages. I think that in the race to the bottom, Wlamart is definitely the winner, but I don't see hiring unhelpful workers to sell crap products in dirty stores as a viable long-term strategy.
I don't know of anyone who actually likes to shop at Walmart, though I have a friend who goes there occasionally to stock up on stuff you can't screw up (like paper towels). But everyone in my (not large) social circle has pretty much stopped shopping at Walmart because (as I said above) the employees are surly, the stores are dirty, and the stuff that they sell is crap.
Circuit City failed at least in part because there was a perception that their prices weren't great. But the terrible sales staff and knock-off quality stuff they sold was part of it, too. I expect that in the end, Walmart is going to find out that treating suppliers, customers, and employees like crap isn't winning combination.
I hope I'm not wrong :-)
The Kama Sutra?
I think the point is more that if you're working at the kind of place where it's "up or out" and 80-hour weeks, you've probably made a bad decision somewhere along the line. If you WANT to work in that environment with those kinds of hours, you should probably see a shrink.
Those of us with a life outside of work (you know, wife and kids, hobbies, outside interests, a social life) can clue you in: you're not going to take any of that stuff you're buying with you when you die, and you're not going to get any of those hours back. Ever. I can guarantee that I'm not going to regret quiet evenings spent reading with my wife, afternoons spent at the pool with my daughter, or any of the many other things I enjoy doing. I doubt you can say the same for the myriad hours you're spending in the pursuit of money you don't have the time to enjoy.
Lynx, FTW!
Seriously, the guy has essentially unlimited email (sans attachments) and is worried about surfing. Unless he's looking for pron as opposed to info, Lynx is sufficient for most uses (ASCII porn?) and pretty speedy.
Mod parent funny.
ubergamer1337 was the story submitter, for mods that missed it.
This is because Italian pizza is CRAZY.
When I was stationed in Italy (in the north, about mid-way between Milan and Venice) our first night off post we stopped to get a "real" Italian pizza. Imagine our surprise when, after it came out of the over, the server proceeded to pour about 1/2 cup of olive oil over the whole thing. As if pizza weren't greasy enough!
On the other hand, every bite of pasta I ate during my three years in Italy was divine.
But when those people whom it "meant something to" are all gone, will their music still be considered worth listening to? When all the 60-70 YO Beatles fans die off, will there be lots of people saying that they made amazing music?
I don't have a strong sense of this one way or the other. After all, the cult of Elvis seems to have lived on, and that started 10 years before the cult of the Beatles.
My point is merely that the idealistic people who were listening to the Beatles while stoned probably have a different view of them than people who grew up since (or who will come well after the dew is off the rose).
I think that would be hard for Palm to do.
Back when I got my first Palm (a IIIe) in 2000 or so, Palm was the epitome of gadgety-goodness: simple to use, long battery life, and open to development. I'm not even trained a programmer and I tinkered with Palm programming (heck, for a couple of months I was actually working on a Palm program for an employer). I owned that original IIIe, a IIIc (with color!), a T-3 and two Treos. Palm devices were simple, fast, and reliable--with a user interface that wasn't cloned from a desktop metaphore (curse you, Bill Gates, and your idiotic WinCE, too).
Unfortunately, as the world of mobile computing moved on around Palm (and my Palm devices), Palm stood still. The Treo was still using the hideous Blazer browser and the applications and interface were stuck in the 90's. I kept hoping against hope that Palm would come out with their forever-promised-but-never-delivered Linux OS, but it never happened.
When my second Treo died an untimely death in an unfortunate swimming pool accident, I bought "just a phone" and never looked back.
I think that for most people interested in Smart Phones, Palm says: old-fashioned, poorly supported, and not really up-to-snuff. Much like American car manufacturers have to fight the poor-quality, unreliable image long after their cars have become competitive, Palm will have an image problem for quite some time.
Too bad, really. They were giants, once.
As you know, the concept of the suction pump is centuries old. And really, that's all this is, except that instead of sucking water, I'm sucking life. I've just sucked one year of your life away. I might one day go as high as five, but I really don't know what that would do to you, so let's just start with what we have. What did this do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so... be honest. How do you feel?
Just a quick comment on usability: most (MS) programs are written for what you might call the "perpetual beginner."
For instance, studies have shown that people who are long-term users of menu-based interfaces memorize the "location" of menu items, rather than reading them when the menu opens. For instance, if the "Font" menu item is the third one down in the "Format" menu, which is second from the left, experienced users find it by going two over and three down, not reading the menu tree: 1) file 2) format, then 1) borders 2) numbers 3) font Oh there it is! But Microsoft's flagship products (Windows and Office) ship by default with "custom menus" turned on, which irritatingly moves menu items based on usage.
This is one of the greatest difficulties with good UI design--making an interface that is simple and intuitive enough for beginners to learn and become comfortable with, but that still is efficient for those who have mastered the basics and are becoming "power users"
In other words, there is no "normal" user--each individual's use of software changes over time. Designing for this is what makes UI work so tough.
Wait, Steve Jobs is Hitler? I know he's not the most popular guy on slashdot, but come on--he's no Hitler :-)
Both sides do NOT have to give ground.
If you're a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, there's no reason for California to raise taxes--they can simply cut expenses. Why is what is a requirement for individual citizens an impossibility for government?
Conversely, if you happen to big a big-budget, "think of the children" liberal, there's no reason California can't raise the sales tax to 12% and increase the income tax.
The idea that "compromise" is somehow the ultimate solution to a problem is part of the reason things are so screwed up in this country. When you compromise on important issues (like whether the state's budget is appropriate or not) you wind up getting the worst of all possible worlds: your Republicans fight for an insufficient tax increase and your Democrats fight tooth and nail to preserve programs that should have died out in the 50s.
I prefer politicians who have the courage of their convictions (though they're few and far between). Give me a Regan or Obama over a Clinton or McCain.
I wish you could be modded higher than +5
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is completely fed up with this "it's for the children" crap. I bet someone living in New York could name 10 or 20 programs that not only deserve to be cut, but eliminated. But when it's time for the clowns who sit in the State House to set a new budget, any cuts have to come from some popular program, not from "$1,000,000 to study the impact of electric light on fungus" or "$100,000 to rename a state park after some pork-barreler and build a statue"
Personally, I'd like to implement a new system, where every year we decimate the ranks of politicians--if you served in public office during the year, we put your name on a list and we randomly shoot 1 in 10 of the people on the list.
Or just nuke congress from orbit--it's the only way to be sure.
How about a VM that you snapshot after installing a browser and then revert to that "blank slate" snap each time you use it?
I have to disagree with
The media was already questioning the war long before the WMD claims were debunked. And the public's earliest distaste for the war was much more driven by the nightly-reported casualty reports than the fact that WMDs were never found.
As a counter-point, Clinton's foray into Somalia was "justified", but ultimately unsustainable when casualties occurred and the citizenry was appalled by the sight of American service members' bodies being dragged through the streets.
Having said all that, I agree that Americans tend to be fat and happy and generally come across as not-too-bright to the rest of the world, but it's not wise to tweak the sleeping tiger.
As a former teacher, I have to agree that teachers unions are part of the problem. No where else do you see so many self-serving initiatives sold as "for the children." And teachers unions are practically a byword for resistance to change and accountability.
Of course you're going to have some difficulty determining who is doing a good job. But that's true in a lot of places--there's no objective measure of trumpet playing, but the New York Phil seems to be able to reward their first chair trumpeter in an appropriate fashion. Does the fact that something is difficult mean we throw up our hands and say "it can't be done" without looking for an answer?
I don't have a perfect solution for our educational problems. One of the reasons that I gave up teaching after three years is that I believe that most of them stem from underlying societal problems that are uncorrectable. Things like the complete breakdown of personal responsibility, the modern focus on self esteem (little Johnny can't get a failing grade, because he might not feel good about himself) and the inability of parents to accept the truth about their children (Oh, little Suzy would never do that! It must have been someone else).
Whatever the solution is, I don't think that throwing computers are the problem is going to be it.
The net connections to schools may be provided by commercial suppliers, but the two school districts that I worked for did their own network setup (including wiring between buildings and the rest of the installation) and they had on-staff network admins.
This is one danger of on-line communities like Slashdot. It's not necessarily a group-think problem, though you do see that too--it's a problem of assuming that, like the crowd you're running with, everyone cares about the same things. But like the vi vs. Emacs argument (nice sig, BTW, but which one is the rocks?) not only is arguing about this only relevant to the geek crowd, most people don't just not care, they haven't even heard of text editors other than notepad.
Frankly, I'm willing to bet that if you ask your average person in the mall they don't even know that their phone has an OS, nor which one it is. And more, I'm willing to bet that not only do they not know that their phone has an OS, they couldn't tell you what an OS is or why it's important.
Call me cynical, but get back to us on "great service" when you're no longer an early adopter test-case but just another of thousands of customers. Sure Clearwire is working hard to make it work for you--that's what always happens a first. They want to use you to get the bug out of their system, so of course they're on top of things and "working hard for you"
In about three years when Clearwire has thousands of customers, try to get customer service . Given past experience, I'm pretty confident their service will be on par what's offered by their partners Comcast and TimeWarner--two of the worst customer service departments I've ever had the misfortune to deal with.
Note that I'm not saying you aren't getting good service now; I'm making a prediction about the future--past experience does not guarantee future performance.
Just what I was thinking...
My wife and I (she's the math major and very detail oriented) pay bills online, manually. I don't like "automatic" because it's easy to set up, but difficult to stop. I'm not sure I see any big difference between writing "1000" on a slip of paper (which is not legal tender) or putting numbers into a field on a form.
I also can't imagine anyone not reconciling their bank and credit card statements against their records each month. We keep a detailed budget that shows every transaction (credit, checking or cash) and we reconcile the bank and credit card statements against it each month. As frequently as banks screw up, it just makes sense.
Of course, our money is in a credit union, not a big national bank, so I like to think we get better service when we do have an issue. It's certainly much better than other big banks where we've had accounts *cough-citibank-*cough and had terrible service.
My bet is that these are closely related. If consumers knew about their comparatively low speed connection (i.e., knew enough to know they should care and how to figure it out) then they'd be pushing for faster speeds. They'd leave providers who are providing "slow broadband" and move to better ones, and the screwups would have to get right or get out of the broadband business.
But your average Peter Pint doesn't know enough to know better. (Hey, I'm not putting down you folks over the pond--the average Joe Sixpack thinks broadband is a woman's belt)
Just my two cents
Hymtric?
MOSFET is a pretty common "spoken acronym" in the electronics world.
Modern prisons (especially lower security ones) aren't built like they used to be, where every prisoner is in a cell by themselves or with a single roommate. Oftentimes there are dormitory-like conditions where a dozen or so inmates are in a room together. In addition, there are frequently common-areas (other than the cafeteria) when inmates are gathered in groups. These types of situations make it easier for inmates to hide contraband, especially where other inmates have an interest in assisting or at least no interest in actively preventing it. Add to this modern construction techniques (drop ceilings in a prison? WTF?) and you're asking for trouble.
You can argue all day long about whether sentences are supposed to be punitive or rehabilitative, but the current situation (with regards to prison rape, drug use, and other contraband) is a direct result of these modern innovations (dorms, common areas, etc.)
An ideal prison (IMO) would be more like Alcatraz, where each individual prisoner was kept in an separate, concrete block cell. I think if you had this kind of control, you'd be more able to do rehabilitative things (like provide access to computers, etc) whereas now the risks are too high.
Of course, that kind of facility wouldn't be cheap, and since we're running so many prisons I don't see it happening.
There are folks here who irrationally hate Microsoft, no doubt. But it's not irrational to be wary of a company that has embraced, extended, and extinguished before.
Keep in mind that Moonlight is an OS implementation of a proprietary format, which Microsoft may arbitrarily change at any time--and if past experience is a predictor of future behavior, then Moonlight doesn't seem any better than Flash.
You need help parsing sentences.
I pledge allegiance ... to the Republic for which it stands.