"Were they going to pay the guy during this year that he was supposed to wait before finding another job?"
At that level, it's pretty common to get a large sack of cash as part of a severance package. We're not exactly talking about some factory worker whose children will starve, you know.
Well, your benefactor was being wasteful, and generous; convenience of upgrading wasn't a significant expense to her, and you benefitted, yet you call her retarded? I generally try to be kind to people that help me out with their largesse.
"I think you're thinking of washing machines much older than 30 years."
Fair enough, but not that much over 30 years. Maytag still made residential wringer washers in the 1980s. I've seen wringer washers in use at service stations; they are good for cleaning work overalls and grease rags, particularly in situations where you must drain the wastewater somewhere other than the city sewer. They are efficient because they use much less water, on the order of hundreds of gallons per load.
"Does the 30 year old washing machine down the hall still wash clothes?"
Hey, there are strong arguments for the old-style washers, the kind you filled up manually, had an external motor and belt drive, where you'd periodically use the attached wringer... An anachronism, to be sure, but they may actually get your clothes cleaner using less soap and far less water! If you had to haul the water for your modern washer, or if you had to pay a dollar a gallon for it, you'd be looking for a wringer washing machine as well. Off-the-grid folks love them. They work.
Local production is something that seems to escape most posters. They want to frame the ethanol/biodiesel argument strictly in the idiom of petrol fuels. They do not tend to be people who grow their own food on their own land, etc., and they don't understand the self-sufficiency aspect. Some who argue about the expense of growing, e.g., corn, don't seem to realize just how much mass of a corn crop goes into mulch or is simply burned every year. People talk in terms of "tankers" and so on, and they don't see the benefit of local production of fuel for a farm or a factory.
Not everybody has an oil well and a refinery on his farm. But lots of people can grow 40 acres of corn. It's not that hard. I've done it in the Sonoran Desert with reclaimed water and no storebought fertilizers. It's really not that big a deal. People are so far removed from the process of feeding them, it seems to be some huge mystery. And when they hear about alternative fuels, they can only think of them as being useful in terms of their daily commute, since that's the only way they view their world.
1. Everything interesting in California has been filmed, and filmed again. There's no low-hanging fruit. There's not even any high fruit. It does not make any sense to make a movie in Hollywood or anywhere within a thousand miles of Hollywood. It's all been done. Every location. Every doorway. Every alley. Every mountain range. Every mansion. Everything. Everywhere.
2. Everybody who works in the entertainment industry, from the entry level gaffer to the headline star, demands too much, in the traditional movie venues. Going elsewhere, as Peter Jackson did in New Zealand, or as the Sci-Fi Channel did in Bulgaria, makes a great deal of fiscal sense. It's a better alternative than, say, the way Tarantino tried to use non-union labor in a union locale.
"Then it makes sense to ALLOW Day Pass Borrowing, not restrict it."
That's the point I was trying to make. The bean-counters in the department that wants to overbook admission tickets, may eventually clash with the bean-counters in the department that sells novelties and t-shirts and ear-hats, and they may even reach a functional compromise.
These people observe metrics. If they've created a problem that costs money somewhere, it will drive a policy change. On the other hand, if it ends up boosting revenue (or merely decreases the cost of giving service per customer), well, I suppose they will note that the policy was beneficial to the fiscal health of the enterprise.
Actually, I'm down with that. I adhere to the oversimplified philosophy of "the bigger they are the harder they fall." And Disney still isn't quite big enough for their fall to be completely satisfying.
We've done a few experiements: Sitting on a busy street corner with a cooler full of beer, for free to anyone who would ask for one (no takers!).
Walking around in a busy club district with a foam cup full of coins, saying "spare change?" -- meaning, "please take my spare change!" No takers here either.
"I think it's really a shame that it's come to this. Does Disney _really_ need the extra revenue that comes from not allowing people to use other people's ticket?"
If they can enforce nontransferability, they can overbook. Especially if they can analyze usage with metrics down to the individual pass holder!
I suspect that lots of people buy 3-day tickets and go for 2. Disney knows this, and also knows that the 3rd day ticket gets transferred. I'm sure they watch it happen right outside the gate. Isn't there a healthy scalper economy there?
As long as the passes can be transferred, they have a limited ability to overbook. You say you had leftover tickets. I suspect that is a very, very common scenario. I also suspect that it's more common for people to give their unused tickets to other people, than it is for them to eat the tickets.
Technically, the only legal option is to eat the ticket, since the thing says it's not transferrable. But that's widely ignored, of course. Disney knows this. It stops them from overbooking based on the numbers of people who buy a week, get bored after three days and go to the beach or something. (The real story here might be more along the lines of "Disney parks are boring and overpriced.")
"Who cares if they hand their day pass to someone else"
It's not about safety, it's about the calculus of overbooking.
There might even be some classism at work here. Those with credit cards and the luxury of being able to plan vacations months ahead have an advantage over someone who just wants to buy someone else's ticket today, to go to the park today. Disney is effectively limiting access to the former category, shutting out the others.
This plan has a side effect of cutting off scalpers, ebay sellers, and gifts.
Seems like it might correct itself, though. It might affect food, clothing, and novelty sales. That stuff is probably more significant than admission prices, and this stuff can play out dramatically as turf wars between business units. If the frozen pop and t-shirt bean counters notice a downward trend that correlates to the loss-prevention department's overbooking plan, policies will change faster than you can say bibbity-bobbity-boo.
"The fact is, that until a suicide bomber goes off, you can't tell him from a normal guy."
If he's packing anything that can really do damage, you should be able to tell him apart by the cloud of volatile nitrates that's emanating from him or his backpack.
"Didney does this merely to prevent the abuse of passes."
They haven't convinced me that transferring the pass constitutes an abuse. Trying to claim it wasn't paid for? I'm sure they are quite expensive.
"The terrorist who wants to blow people up will just get a job at one of the parks and wear 20 lbs. of explosives under his Goofy costume."
Either that, or they'd just hit one of the hotels. The whole amusement park thing really amounts to a market draw for the hotel business. People are all spread out when they're at the theme park. The only thing that makes it a risky target for a terrorist attack is the cultural prominence of the Micky Mouse icon. I don't believe the terrorists weigh that sort of importance as heavily as Disney's marketing people would like to think they do.
The Florida Legislature could fix this. Pass a law that compels an entertainment venue to allow multi-day passes to be transferrable. Simple as that.
You'd have to get the *people* on board, because those responsible for the entertainment industry have already applied some political influence.
The people weild all the power, but they have to work together and be organized. I think you'd discover if you tried it, that there are more people in Florida who'd support the Disney position.
If the people aren't upset, that's the end of the story.
I think there's a subculture of people who actually consider a visit to a Disney park as some kind of moral obligation. The more it costs, the more difficult it is to accomplish this pilgrimage, the more cognitive dissonance works to demand it.
Until recently, I assumed a trip to Disneyland would involve $30 bucks or so per person, a drive to Anaheim, and whatever you wanted to spend on food and souveniers. It had not occurred to me that the price would be orders of magnitude higher. Certainly, cognitive dissonance is going to be a strong force for someone defending the decision to attend.
>You haven't looked at ticket prices lately have >you?
Actually, I tried to look at ticket prices and found it difficult to do so. Certainly didn't find a definitive "Adult admission $35.00" or whatever.
Disneyland wouldn't be my thing anyway, even if I had kids. But I go back to the days of travelling carnies and unsafe rides, wooden rollercoasters, and when midway rides served a purpose for distracting kids while the grownups did their livestock and agriculture shows.
"where the frack are you supposed to take your business to when you have a governement protected never expiring monopoly ?"
I think the spirit of the foundation of this government is that when things get this bad, you are supposed to take your business, your life, and everything else you can muster, and do your damndest to end the tyranny. Once it's tyranny, it's a life-and-death problem, and transcends any value of the profitability of your business or even your life.
Don't have the influence needed to persuade tens of millions of others to join in your revolution? Maybe that's a sign that the problems are not yet to the "intolerable tyranny, life-and-death matter", level.
She chose to go to jail. From here, it looks like she chose to go to jail in order to protect a member of the current white house staff. Seems fair enough to me.
Slashdot Mirror
"Were they going to pay the guy during this year that he was supposed to wait before finding another job?"
At that level, it's pretty common to get a large sack of cash as part of a severance package. We're not exactly talking about some factory worker whose children will starve, you know.
Damn. I'm getting too old for this shit.
"I don't think it's worth the cost to have a few extra buttons on a keyboard."
Few extra buttons? You do realize the "cool thing" about this keyboard is that it has little graphics displays on the keytops, right?
>I wonder about the longevity of this keyboard.
I've got an IBM Model M that's seen daily abuse since 1988. Gave it a bath recently. It's like new.
>we used punch cards
:-)
We used paper tape (actually, mylar tape, same reader) to boot a DEC as recently as 1994. I left that shop, but they might still be using it
>people are retarded man.
Well, your benefactor was being wasteful, and generous; convenience of upgrading wasn't a significant expense to her, and you benefitted, yet you call her retarded? I generally try to be kind to people that help me out with their largesse.
>we're just playing with toys.
His toys were part of Navy Jets. Your toys are part of middle management.
"I think you're thinking of washing machines much older than 30 years."
. htm
Fair enough, but not that much over 30 years.
Maytag still made residential wringer washers in the 1980s. I've seen wringer washers in use at service stations; they are good for cleaning work overalls and grease rags, particularly in situations where you must drain the wastewater somewhere other than the city sewer. They are efficient because they use much less water, on the order of hundreds of gallons per load.
http://frugalliving.about.com/cs/laundry/a/030700
"Does the 30 year old washing machine down the hall still wash clothes?"
Hey, there are strong arguments for the old-style washers, the kind you filled up manually, had an external motor and belt drive, where you'd periodically use the attached wringer... An anachronism, to be sure, but they may actually get your clothes cleaner using less soap and far less water! If you had to haul the water for your modern washer, or if you had to pay a dollar a gallon for it, you'd be looking for a wringer washing machine as well. Off-the-grid folks love them. They work.
> what kind of kid had email in 1992?
By '92 you didn't have to be all that resourceful to figure out how stuff like fidonet/internet gateways worked.
Not exactly "kids" I guess, but pretty much anyone at a university had email by then too, at least, those who were interested in having it.
Local production is something that seems to escape most posters. They want to frame the ethanol/biodiesel argument strictly in the idiom of petrol fuels. They do not tend to be people who grow their own food on their own land, etc., and they don't understand the self-sufficiency aspect. Some who argue about the expense of growing, e.g., corn, don't seem to realize just how much mass of a corn crop goes into mulch or is simply burned every year. People talk in terms of "tankers" and so on, and they don't see the benefit of local production of fuel for a farm or a factory.
Not everybody has an oil well and a refinery on his farm. But lots of people can grow 40 acres of corn. It's not that hard. I've done it in the Sonoran Desert with reclaimed water and no storebought fertilizers. It's really not that big a deal. People are so far removed from the process of feeding them, it seems to be some huge mystery. And when they hear about alternative fuels, they can only think of them as being useful in terms of their daily commute, since that's the only way they view their world.
>Half the stuff I have will run on XP but not
>Windows 2000.
What do you have that will run on XP but not 2000?
1. Everything interesting in California has been filmed, and filmed again. There's no low-hanging fruit. There's not even any high fruit. It does not make any sense to make a movie in Hollywood or anywhere within a thousand miles of Hollywood. It's all been done. Every location. Every doorway. Every alley. Every mountain range. Every mansion. Everything. Everywhere.
2. Everybody who works in the entertainment industry, from the entry level gaffer to the headline star, demands too much, in the traditional movie venues. Going elsewhere, as Peter Jackson did in New Zealand, or as the Sci-Fi Channel did in Bulgaria, makes a great deal of fiscal sense. It's a better alternative than, say, the way Tarantino tried to use non-union labor in a union locale.
"Then it makes sense to ALLOW Day Pass Borrowing, not restrict it."
That's the point I was trying to make.
The bean-counters in the department that wants to overbook admission tickets, may eventually clash with the bean-counters in the department that sells novelties and t-shirts and ear-hats, and they may even reach a functional compromise.
These people observe metrics. If they've created a problem that costs money somewhere, it will drive a policy change. On the other hand, if it ends up boosting revenue (or merely decreases the cost of giving service per customer), well, I suppose they will note that the policy was beneficial to the fiscal health of the enterprise.
Actually, I'm down with that. I adhere to the oversimplified philosophy of "the bigger they are the harder they fall." And Disney still isn't quite big enough for their fall to be completely satisfying.
>Try setting up a lemonade stand
We've done a few experiements: Sitting on a busy
street corner with a cooler full of beer, for free to anyone who would ask for one (no takers!).
Walking around in a busy club district with a foam cup full of coins, saying "spare change?" -- meaning, "please take my spare change!" No takers here either.
"I think it's really a shame that it's come to this. Does Disney _really_ need the extra revenue that comes from not allowing people to use other people's ticket?"
If they can enforce nontransferability, they can overbook. Especially if they can analyze usage with metrics down to the individual pass holder!
I suspect that lots of people buy 3-day tickets and go for 2. Disney knows this, and also knows that the 3rd day ticket gets transferred. I'm sure they watch it happen right outside the gate.
Isn't there a healthy scalper economy there?
As long as the passes can be transferred, they have a limited ability to overbook. You say you had leftover tickets. I suspect that is a very, very common scenario. I also suspect that it's more common for people to give their unused tickets to other people, than it is for them to eat the tickets.
Technically, the only legal option is to eat the ticket, since the thing says it's not transferrable. But that's widely ignored, of course. Disney knows this. It stops them from overbooking based on the numbers of people who buy a week, get bored after three days and go to the beach or something. (The real story here might be more along the lines of "Disney parks are boring and overpriced.")
"Who cares if they hand their day pass to someone else"
It's not about safety, it's about the calculus of overbooking.
There might even be some classism at work here. Those with credit cards and the luxury of being able to plan vacations months ahead have an advantage over someone who just wants to buy someone else's ticket today, to go to the park today. Disney is effectively limiting access to the former category, shutting out the others.
This plan has a side effect of cutting off scalpers, ebay sellers, and gifts.
Seems like it might correct itself, though. It might affect food, clothing, and novelty sales. That stuff is probably more significant than admission prices, and this stuff can play out dramatically as turf wars between business units.
If the frozen pop and t-shirt bean counters notice a downward trend that correlates to the loss-prevention department's overbooking plan, policies will change faster than you can say bibbity-bobbity-boo.
"The fact is, that until a suicide bomber goes off, you can't tell him from a normal guy."
If he's packing anything that can really do damage, you should be able to tell him apart by the cloud of volatile nitrates that's emanating from him or his backpack.
"Didney does this merely to prevent the abuse of passes."
They haven't convinced me that transferring the pass constitutes an abuse. Trying to claim it wasn't paid for? I'm sure they are quite expensive.
"The terrorist who wants to blow people up will just get a job at one of the parks and wear 20 lbs. of explosives under his Goofy costume."
Either that, or they'd just hit one of the hotels.
The whole amusement park thing really amounts to a market draw for the hotel business. People are all spread out when they're at the theme park. The only thing that makes it a risky target for a terrorist attack is the cultural prominence of the Micky Mouse icon. I don't believe the terrorists weigh that sort of importance as heavily as Disney's marketing people would like to think they do.
"My favorites were all of the people that got upset the first weekend of June each year..."
What happened the first weekend of June?
The Florida Legislature could fix this.
Pass a law that compels an entertainment venue to allow multi-day passes to be transferrable. Simple as that.
You'd have to get the *people* on board, because those responsible for the entertainment industry have already applied some political influence.
The people weild all the power, but they have to work together and be organized. I think you'd discover if you tried it, that there are more people in Florida who'd support the Disney position.
If the people aren't upset, that's the end of the story.
I think there's a subculture of people who actually consider a visit to a Disney park as some kind of moral obligation. The more it costs, the more difficult it is to accomplish this pilgrimage, the more cognitive dissonance works to demand it.
Until recently, I assumed a trip to Disneyland would involve $30 bucks or so per person, a drive to Anaheim, and whatever you wanted to spend on food and souveniers. It had not occurred to me that the price would be orders of magnitude higher. Certainly, cognitive dissonance is going to be a strong force for someone defending the decision to attend.
>You haven't looked at ticket prices lately have
>you?
Actually, I tried to look at ticket prices and found it difficult to do so. Certainly didn't find a definitive "Adult admission $35.00" or whatever.
Disneyland wouldn't be my thing anyway, even if I had kids. But I go back to the days of travelling carnies and unsafe rides, wooden rollercoasters, and when midway rides served a purpose for distracting kids while the grownups did their livestock and agriculture shows.
"where the frack are you supposed to take your business to when you have a governement protected never expiring monopoly ?"
I think the spirit of the foundation of this government is that when things get this bad, you are supposed to take your business, your life, and everything else you can muster, and do your damndest to end the tyranny. Once it's tyranny, it's a life-and-death problem, and transcends any value of the profitability of your business or even your life.
Don't have the influence needed to persuade tens of millions of others to join in your revolution? Maybe that's a sign that the problems are not yet to the "intolerable tyranny, life-and-death matter", level.
She chose to go to jail. From here, it looks like she chose to go to jail in order to protect a member of the current white house staff. Seems fair enough to me.