"Of course yes. Extended warranties are almost always a bad deal; the seller profits from them, therefore buyers on average lose."
I would agree if the product was a TV, telephone, or even a computer made by anybody else except apple. Mac laptops break. Ever person I know who has one has had to send it back at least once. With such lousy quality you definately have to shell out for the warranty.
Furthermore if you don't have the warranty the replacement parts for the mainboard are more then a thousand dollars. If it breaks you just throw it away.
Finder is crap. I don't understand how a company that prides itself on "just works" and "easy to use" allows finder to continue being shipped with it's product.
I have a jillion complaints but this is the one annoying me today.
Open a folder, sort by date. Download a file with the same name as an existing file into that folder (overwriting the file). The file does not sort. Now hold the down arrow and let it start touching the files, as soon as it touches your file the file immediately shoots to the top of the list taking the cursor with it. If that's not CRAP I don't know what is.
And lets be honest here, the Mac is full of crap like that. It's just that people ignore it because they just paid four thousand dollars for a black laptop and they would be ashamed to admit it's less then perfect.
Look at it this way. Would you buy any mac without also buying the applecare? Of course not. Everybody who has had a mac laptop will tell you that it's been broken down at least once (mine had to be sent back four times before it ran out of warranty and had to be junked). They have lousy quality control. They are nice to deal with and will promptly fix your laptop within a couple of weeks but that doesn't make up for the fact it keep breaking in the first place.
"hat's like when you see news saying "scientists agree with Al Gore" (as if there were none that don't), "
There will always be a minority in any group that disagrees with the group. There are scientists who don't believe in global warming, there are scientists that believe UFOs are aliens. The fact that there are dissenters isn't really relevant.
MOST republicans believe that the NYT reporters and NYT are "liberal" and should be punished for reporting facts. MOST republicans believe that they should be charged with treason (which is a capital offence).
I hope that clarifies it for you. It's really hard to tell the difference between shelleytherepublican and MOST republicans. It's impossible to tell the the difference between shelleytherepublican and PROMINENT REPUBLICAN LEADERS IN THE MEDIA. PROMINENT REPUBLICAN LEADERS IN THE MEDIA are more radical then she is.
"That being said, the blog in question is more subtly funny than, say, Steven Colbert. He was funnier when he was just appearing occasionally on Stewart's show and was a bit more of a cypher for the casual viewer."
I suspect MOST REPUBLICANS don't find colbert funny at all.
"Perhaps some form of social security is needed, but the current form just doesn't work for the majority of recipients (or payers)."
Once again you make outrageous statements based on some sort of religious conviction. What do you mean doesn't work? If the majority of recepients didn't like it they would not fight so hard for it and they would fight to change it. Maybe in your world recepients of social security don't interact with society and are not happy with SS but in my world that's just not true. Everybody I know who is on social security feels like they deserve every bit of what they got because they paid into it while they were young. They supported their elders and now it's your turn to support them.
"The problem with social nets of any kind is abuse - "
The problem with anything is abuse. The problem with corporaritism is abuse, the problem with police is abuse, the problem with liberterianism is abuse, the problem with courts is abuse, the problem with the military is abuse, the problem with govt is abuse, the problem with parents is abuse, the problem with schools is abuse, the problem with traffic is abuse, the problem with parking is abuse. Yes you can abuse anything. Just because you can abuse food that doesn't mean you should never eat.
I think it's obvious by now that the natural outgrowth of liberterianism is tyranny by corporations. We can easily see what the effects of these kinds of policies are in south america, africa and few other places in the world that have yet to adopt more socialist practices. Everything in the country owned by a dozen families or less. We can also see this in history too.
The entire sourceforge/gforge paradigm is not that useful to people trying to install it in a company. In a company all development efforts are seen as parts of a whole so it's really important to have a big picture view of things. Sourceforge is about managing hundreds or thousands of unrelated projects by people who don't belong to the same organization.
well seeing as how the republican bloggers are calling for the hunting down of the NY times reporters kids I'd say that it's pretty easy to get confuse shelley with a real republican. In many ways shelleytherepublican seems like a moderate republican when you read coulter, hannity, newsmax, free republic etc. At least I haven't herd her call for the hunting down of peoples kids.
Really? So you are saying no corporation has ever lost money pursuing some product or service because the CEO was stroking his ego?
I know for a fact 75% of all decisions in the companies I worlked in were made from a position of ego. It mattered very much who came up with the idea, way more then what the idea was.
I am saying don't fix it. Let it be goofy and put some text on the bottom that says "If this web site doesn't look right you are using an inferior browser. Download firefox today and get a better browsing experience".
"Yes, it was a time called the Great Depression. The name should indicate it was an emergency, and Social Security was an emergency soluion. Where's the emergency now?"
Why did the great depression occur if private enterprise was so great? Maybe the great depression occured BECAUSE there was a weak govt and private enterpise ruled the day. Every think of that?
"Other nations have other cultures, other infrastructure, other politics, and other economies. So whatdo you think we could really learn from such a comparison?"
Political theories should be robust enough to compensate for cultural differences. Any political theory that says "this will only work in america" is useless and should be disregarded. Those are people, they are not animals, they are not aliens. They have the same types of motivations as all other humans do.
Nice dodge though. At least we narrowed your argument about the supremecy of the private enterprise to just the US.
And open source penetration in NZ is what? I have been there, the entire country is one big MS shop. People look at you weird when you say linux. Oh and MS does have a large building near the wharfs in Auckland. I might think there might be one or two programmers there.
What's the harm in telling your customers whose fault it is. Even if you support IE why not make it a little goofy, using ugly fonts or making the images slightly offset or something. Deliberiatly make it ugly and quirky in IE and then write the text below explaining that MS doesn't care about standards and that they are better off with firefox.
Oh and what if you don't have customers? I think every vanity and personal site on the internet should not even work with IE. Finally porn. Make a porn site that only works in firefox, that will get people to switch.
"Most Iraqis do support the new government, for example."
Interesting. How can we have fun with this simple statement. Let's see...
1) How do you know? Do you believe this because the US media told you? 2) Most Iraqis are shia. Most Iraqis belive in a shia controlled government. Is that good? 3) What does the approval rate of the current government have to do with US troops that are still in Iraq? Are you saying there is no difference between the govt of Iraq and the US troops? 4) Most Iraqis want the US troops out should we accept that majority rule? 5) Does the current Iraqi govt have any power to undo any of the orders bremmer wrote? 6) Does the current Iraqi govt have the power to arrest any american who walks up to any iraqi and shoots them in the head? Does it have to power any american who rape a young girl, kill her, and then burn her body to hide the evidence? 7) Can the current govt gain control over the oil wells? 8) If the answer to 5. 6 and 7 is no then what good is the current govt? What exactly are the iraqi people supporting anyway?
"And most terrorist organizations operating in Iraq are not run by Iraqis."
Well that's flat out false. Two seconds of googling ought to dig up at least one statement from the US military that says so. The only people who believe that are fox news and the people who watch it.
"The word is "fan" here, shmuck. There are people who like tools from Sears, cars from GM, and comic books from Marvel. In fact, I'd wager that most discusions on the 'net are from fans."
Fans of a corporation? How pathetic is that? If there are people on the internet singing the praises of sears then they are pathetic too. IT"S JUST A CORPORATION! it doesn't deserver your adoration.
"My one Grandma is more than smart enough to do a custom install, and the other is smart enough to decide that she doesn't need a computer to do anything but the basics. YOURS obviously were too stupid to teach you courtesy."
You already told me that your grandma was too stupid to post to her blog via email. You already told me she was too stupid to email from word. What makes you think your grandma is smart enough to install all of office except outlook? Who does that anyway?
as for your other point. Yes billions of people use word. Serious writers don't.
"I say let's operate on a minimalist approach to gov't welfare. Private organizastions tend to do a much better job of it anyway."
Didn't we have that at one time? Social security is a relatively new invention as are medicare, medicaid, etc. Apparently minimal govt thing wasn't working so well and private enterprise wasn't providing enough so we invented social security.
We don't like in a vacuum you know. There is a rich history of mankind without social benefits. Not only that but today, right now, there are governments which provide little or no retirement benefits. Why don't we look to see if people are better off in those countries then they are in the US or other countries which provide even more social benefits.
That's the beauty of internet and modern communications. You can actually look things like this up rather then accept on faith that private enterprise would take care of people or that people who live in countries with no social benefits are richer, happiers, live longer, are better educated, and all around better off.
Because they would be moving to montana where people HATE newcomers. If somebody moves to montana from the east coast (the left coast as they call it over there) or california it doesn't matter who they are. LIbertrians are also against logging, ranching, farming, grazing subsidies too so that doesn't sit too well in places like Montana where they get two dollars in federal welfare for every dollar they pay in taxes. There is an old joke there. "why did the rancher want to be buried in a shallow grave?. Because we wanted to keep his hand out".
Funny but true. Montana and wyoming (and most of the farming ranching states) are welfare states. Without federal money they would all collapse.
"First things first -- I'm not an astro turer. They get paid, or at least recognized by Microsoft. I don't. In fact, there isn't a blood thing that MS has ever given me that a random guy of the street can't get for free."
Sorry. I should have called you a shill instead. Personally I would not have admitted that if I were you. I don't know if there is anything worse then an unpaid shill. I mean what kind of a pathethic human being attaaches themselves that strongly to a corporation they have no interest in.
"not from within Word. Office's email functionality is based in Outlook, and neither I nor anyone whose computer I touch installs Outlook."
First of all you are wrong. Word will use whatever is your default email client. Secondly office comes with outlook and your grandmother is too stupid to do a custom install and not install it. Thirdly outlook express is already installed on your grandmothers computer.
"The new format is a few zipped XML files. (Gosh, where have I ever seen that?) In fact, it's not greatly different from Word's "OpenXML" format. (And it won't corrupt, since unlike.doc it's not a binary memory dump.)"
Right. Of course. I could I have so stupid. MS products always work perfectly.
"Sure they do. I know it's hard for you to understant outside of your physics-paper / OSS clique, but most serious writers DO use office."
"I can't, and neither can Grandma, after she heard that Outlook has viruses. "
You can't send emails? Your grandma needs the new version of word so she can post her blog but she can't deal with sending an email to post her blog?
Man that's a new low for the astro turfers. You really need a better argument then that.
"Everyone who's ever complained about Office's proprietary file type, who's ever bitched about the size of a word document, or who's ever had a word document spontaneously corrupt."
The new format is still proprietary and it will probably corrupt still.
"he simple fact is that unless you're a serious writer, you don't care one way or another and won't either spend the cash to get office or spend the time to get OOo."
Serious writers don't use Office. Sorry to burst your bubble.
MS does this tactic (They consistently steal form apple for example) so I think OSS should do it too.
I would love it if MS sued an open source project for patent infringement. It would be the best day ever. They would end up being humiliated like SCO did. They are too cowardly to sue. They will license it to a third party and fund their suit like they did with SCO.
Can I work for you? I promise never to disagree with you or tell you something you don't want to hear. I just want you to send me to japan where I can drink and sing karaoke all night and get paid for it.
I wish people would not make fun of my favorite corporation. It's just not fair that ordinary people should critize or mock my favorite corporation. I mean sure they have a billion dollar marketing budget and all but how are they supposed to stand up to the abuse ordinary people on slashdot heap on them.
Thank god MS has people like you to stand up for them. What would they ever do without you defending them against the unwashed masses!.
BTW: My favorite corporation is maytag. I hang out at washing machine forums and defend maytag anytime anybody critizes them, says their products are not that good, or mocks them.
I think people who critize corporations are so sad. They probably still live in their mothers basement or something. If they were adults they too would adopt a corporation and defend them valiently on public forums. Too bad there are not more people like you and me.
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course yes. Extended warranties are almost always a bad deal; the seller profits from them, therefore buyers on average lose."
I would agree if the product was a TV, telephone, or even a computer made by anybody else except apple. Mac laptops break. Ever person I know who has one has had to send it back at least once. With such lousy quality you definately have to shell out for the warranty.
Furthermore if you don't have the warranty the replacement parts for the mainboard are more then a thousand dollars. If it breaks you just throw it away.
Finder is crap. I don't understand how a company that prides itself on "just works" and "easy to use" allows finder to continue being shipped with it's product.
I have a jillion complaints but this is the one annoying me today.
Open a folder, sort by date. Download a file with the same name as an existing file into that folder (overwriting the file). The file does not sort. Now hold the down arrow and let it start touching the files, as soon as it touches your file the file immediately shoots to the top of the list taking the cursor with it. If that's not CRAP I don't know what is.
And lets be honest here, the Mac is full of crap like that. It's just that people ignore it because they just paid four thousand dollars for a black laptop and they would be ashamed to admit it's less then perfect.
Look at it this way. Would you buy any mac without also buying the applecare? Of course not. Everybody who has had a mac laptop will tell you that it's been broken down at least once (mine had to be sent back four times before it ran out of warranty and had to be junked). They have lousy quality control. They are nice to deal with and will promptly fix your laptop within a couple of weeks but that doesn't make up for the fact it keep breaking in the first place.
Even when I use windows I use my favorite applications like firefox, thunderbird, eclipse, jedit, etc.
Oh and photoshop runs under wine. So if you have to run that piece of software you stole you can.
"Mac nerds? Are they the same sort of people as Windows hackers and Linux gamers?"
Did you know that you can play PS2 games in linux?
"hat's like when you see news saying "scientists agree with Al Gore" (as if there were none that don't), "
There will always be a minority in any group that disagrees with the group. There are scientists who don't believe in global warming, there are scientists that believe UFOs are aliens. The fact that there are dissenters isn't really relevant.
MOST republicans believe that the NYT reporters and NYT are "liberal" and should be punished for reporting facts. MOST republicans believe that they should be charged with treason (which is a capital offence).
I hope that clarifies it for you. It's really hard to tell the difference between shelleytherepublican and MOST republicans. It's impossible to tell the the difference between shelleytherepublican and PROMINENT REPUBLICAN LEADERS IN THE MEDIA. PROMINENT REPUBLICAN LEADERS IN THE MEDIA are more radical then she is.
"That being said, the blog in question is more subtly funny than, say, Steven Colbert. He was funnier when he was just appearing occasionally on Stewart's show and was a bit more of a cypher for the casual viewer."
I suspect MOST REPUBLICANS don't find colbert funny at all.
"Perhaps some form of social security is needed, but the current form just doesn't work for the majority of recipients (or payers)."
Once again you make outrageous statements based on some sort of religious conviction. What do you mean doesn't work? If the majority of recepients didn't like it they would not fight so hard for it and they would fight to change it. Maybe in your world recepients of social security don't interact with society and are not happy with SS but in my world that's just not true. Everybody I know who is on social security feels like they deserve every bit of what they got because they paid into it while they were young. They supported their elders and now it's your turn to support them.
"The problem with social nets of any kind is abuse - "
The problem with anything is abuse. The problem with corporaritism is abuse, the problem with police is abuse, the problem with liberterianism is abuse, the problem with courts is abuse, the problem with the military is abuse, the problem with govt is abuse, the problem with parents is abuse, the problem with schools is abuse, the problem with traffic is abuse, the problem with parking is abuse. Yes you can abuse anything. Just because you can abuse food that doesn't mean you should never eat.
I think it's obvious by now that the natural outgrowth of liberterianism is tyranny by corporations. We can easily see what the effects of these kinds of policies are in south america, africa and few other places in the world that have yet to adopt more socialist practices. Everything in the country owned by a dozen families or less. We can also see this in history too.
The entire sourceforge/gforge paradigm is not that useful to people trying to install it in a company. In a company all development efforts are seen as parts of a whole so it's really important to have a big picture view of things. Sourceforge is about managing hundreds or thousands of unrelated projects by people who don't belong to the same organization.
well seeing as how the republican bloggers are calling for the hunting down of the NY times reporters kids I'd say that it's pretty easy to get confuse shelley with a real republican. In many ways shelleytherepublican seems like a moderate republican when you read coulter, hannity, newsmax, free republic etc. At least I haven't herd her call for the hunting down of peoples kids.
Just to re-enforce what you saying...
Is "jewishness" a race? Sometimes it is (you are an anti semite!). Sometimes it's a religion. Sometimes it's a nationality. Sometimes it's a culture.
These things are very fluid in their definitions hence anybody who critizes the actions of the israeli government is automatically a racist.
Really? So you are saying no corporation has ever lost money pursuing some product or service because the CEO was stroking his ego?
I know for a fact 75% of all decisions in the companies I worlked in were made from a position of ego. It mattered very much who came up with the idea, way more then what the idea was.
I am saying don't fix it. Let it be goofy and put some text on the bottom that says "If this web site doesn't look right you are using an inferior browser. Download firefox today and get a better browsing experience".
"Yes, it was a time called the Great Depression. The name should indicate it was an emergency, and Social Security was an emergency soluion. Where's the emergency now?"
Why did the great depression occur if private enterprise was so great? Maybe the great depression occured BECAUSE there was a weak govt and private enterpise ruled the day. Every think of that?
"Other nations have other cultures, other infrastructure, other politics, and other economies. So whatdo you think we could really learn from such a comparison?"
Political theories should be robust enough to compensate for cultural differences. Any political theory that says "this will only work in america" is useless and should be disregarded. Those are people, they are not animals, they are not aliens. They have the same types of motivations as all other humans do.
Nice dodge though. At least we narrowed your argument about the supremecy of the private enterprise to just the US.
And open source penetration in NZ is what? I have been there, the entire country is one big MS shop. People look at you weird when you say linux. Oh and MS does have a large building near the wharfs in Auckland. I might think there might be one or two programmers there.
"Disclaimer. I am a developer, not for Microsoft, and I work on developing, recommending and implementing software based on open source products."
Why not say that you are liar and save all that typing?
What's the harm in telling your customers whose fault it is. Even if you support IE why not make it a little goofy, using ugly fonts or making the images slightly offset or something. Deliberiatly make it ugly and quirky in IE and then write the text below explaining that MS doesn't care about standards and that they are better off with firefox.
Oh and what if you don't have customers? I think every vanity and personal site on the internet should not even work with IE. Finally porn. Make a porn site that only works in firefox, that will get people to switch.
"Most Iraqis do support the new government, for example."
Interesting. How can we have fun with this simple statement. Let's see...
1) How do you know? Do you believe this because the US media told you?
2) Most Iraqis are shia. Most Iraqis belive in a shia controlled government. Is that good?
3) What does the approval rate of the current government have to do with US troops that are still in Iraq? Are you saying there is no difference between the govt of Iraq and the US troops?
4) Most Iraqis want the US troops out should we accept that majority rule?
5) Does the current Iraqi govt have any power to undo any of the orders bremmer wrote?
6) Does the current Iraqi govt have the power to arrest any american who walks up to any iraqi and shoots them in the head? Does it have to power any american who rape a young girl, kill her, and then burn her body to hide the evidence?
7) Can the current govt gain control over the oil wells?
8) If the answer to 5. 6 and 7 is no then what good is the current govt? What exactly are the iraqi people supporting anyway?
"And most terrorist organizations operating in Iraq are not run by Iraqis."
Well that's flat out false. Two seconds of googling ought to dig up at least one statement from the US military that says so. The only people who believe that are fox news and the people who watch it.
"The word is "fan" here, shmuck. There are people who like tools from Sears, cars from GM, and comic books from Marvel. In fact, I'd wager that most discusions on the 'net are from fans."
Fans of a corporation? How pathetic is that? If there are people on the internet singing the praises of sears then they are pathetic too. IT"S JUST A CORPORATION! it doesn't deserver your adoration.
"My one Grandma is more than smart enough to do a custom install, and the other is smart enough to decide that she doesn't need a computer to do anything but the basics. YOURS obviously were too stupid to teach you courtesy."
You already told me that your grandma was too stupid to post to her blog via email. You already told me she was too stupid to email from word. What makes you think your grandma is smart enough to install all of office except outlook? Who does that anyway?
as for your other point. Yes billions of people use word. Serious writers don't.
"I say let's operate on a minimalist approach to gov't welfare. Private organizastions tend to do a much better job of it anyway."
Didn't we have that at one time? Social security is a relatively new invention as are medicare, medicaid, etc. Apparently minimal govt thing wasn't working so well and private enterprise wasn't providing enough so we invented social security.
We don't like in a vacuum you know. There is a rich history of mankind without social benefits. Not only that but today, right now, there are governments which provide little or no retirement benefits. Why don't we look to see if people are better off in those countries then they are in the US or other countries which provide even more social benefits.
That's the beauty of internet and modern communications. You can actually look things like this up rather then accept on faith that private enterprise would take care of people or that people who live in countries with no social benefits are richer, happiers, live longer, are better educated, and all around better off.
No need for faith or zealotry. Just look it up!
Because they would be moving to montana where people HATE newcomers. If somebody moves to montana from the east coast (the left coast as they call it over there) or california it doesn't matter who they are. LIbertrians are also against logging, ranching, farming, grazing subsidies too so that doesn't sit too well in places like Montana where they get two dollars in federal welfare for every dollar they pay in taxes. There is an old joke there. "why did the rancher want to be buried in a shallow grave?. Because we wanted to keep his hand out".
Funny but true. Montana and wyoming (and most of the farming ranching states) are welfare states. Without federal money they would all collapse.
"First things first -- I'm not an astro turer. They get paid, or at least recognized by Microsoft. I don't. In fact, there isn't a blood thing that MS has ever given me that a random guy of the street can't get for free."
.doc it's not a binary memory dump.)"
Sorry. I should have called you a shill instead. Personally I would not have admitted that if I were you. I don't know if there is anything worse then an unpaid shill. I mean what kind of a pathethic human being attaaches themselves that strongly to a corporation they have no interest in.
"not from within Word. Office's email functionality is based in Outlook, and neither I nor anyone whose computer I touch installs Outlook."
First of all you are wrong. Word will use whatever is your default email client. Secondly office comes with outlook and your grandmother is too stupid to do a custom install and not install it. Thirdly outlook express is already installed on your grandmothers computer.
"The new format is a few zipped XML files. (Gosh, where have I ever seen that?) In fact, it's not greatly different from Word's "OpenXML" format. (And it won't corrupt, since unlike
Right. Of course. I could I have so stupid. MS products always work perfectly.
"Sure they do. I know it's hard for you to understant outside of your physics-paper / OSS clique, but most serious writers DO use office."
No they don't.
"I can't, and neither can Grandma, after she heard that Outlook has viruses.
"
You can't send emails? Your grandma needs the new version of word so she can post her blog but she can't deal with sending an email to post her blog?
Man that's a new low for the astro turfers. You really need a better argument then that.
"Everyone who's ever complained about Office's proprietary file type, who's ever bitched about the size of a word document, or who's ever had a word document spontaneously corrupt."
The new format is still proprietary and it will probably corrupt still.
"he simple fact is that unless you're a serious writer, you don't care one way or another and won't either spend the cash to get office or spend the time to get OOo."
Serious writers don't use Office. Sorry to burst your bubble.
MS does this tactic (They consistently steal form apple for example) so I think OSS should do it too.
I would love it if MS sued an open source project for patent infringement. It would be the best day ever. They would end up being humiliated like SCO did. They are too cowardly to sue. They will license it to a third party and fund their suit like they did with SCO.
Can I work for you? I promise never to disagree with you or tell you something you don't want to hear. I just want you to send me to japan where I can drink and sing karaoke all night and get paid for it.
I wish people would not make fun of my favorite corporation. It's just not fair that ordinary people should critize or mock my favorite corporation. I mean sure they have a billion dollar marketing budget and all but how are they supposed to stand up to the abuse ordinary people on slashdot heap on them.
Thank god MS has people like you to stand up for them. What would they ever do without you defending them against the unwashed masses!.
BTW: My favorite corporation is maytag. I hang out at washing machine forums and defend maytag anytime anybody critizes them, says their products are not that good, or mocks them.
I think people who critize corporations are so sad. They probably still live in their mothers basement or something. If they were adults they too would adopt a corporation and defend them valiently on public forums. Too bad there are not more people like you and me.