I don't mind if someone has a few spelling mistakes or grammatical faux pas - we all make mistakes from time to time.
What I do hate - absofuckinglutely loathe - is shit like "u" instead of "you" and "4" instead of "for" and all that instant messenger shorthand when the person is clearly sitting at a regular keyboard and has plenty of time to compose a statement.
Rule of thumb: if you're IM'ing someone from your cell phone or trying to type quickly in a shoot-em-up, then fine, use shortcuts. If you're doing anything else - if you're not engaged in real-time communications - then at least make the effort to follow the rules.
Now, why am I so bugged by the "u" and "4" and all that shit? Because I'm somewhat dyslexic. When someone starts throwing stuff around like that, it takes me at least two or three times as long to parse it and make sense of it. I take the time to write clearly - I *agonize* over written communications I send out because I want to make absolutely sure that my point is getting across - it's important to me to know I'm understood.
So, if YOU don't treat what you're saying as important, then why the hell should I?
I've been a Civ fan since... well, since it was called Empire and a little before:)
What I would want would be three versions:
1) Blitz game that's highly abstracted and goes quickly. I like the trade-off between early development at the cost of war capability (but better ability to kick ass later) vs. swarming around the globe, but being very primitive. Basically, a turn-based RTS (yes, I know what RTS stands for) - 15-30 minute games at best.
2) Civ 3 style: Long enough to where you can indeed do all kinds of neat stuff (launch for AC or dominate, or whatever)
3) The ability to drill down to plenty of levels and go into sub-games, if you wanted. For example, every 4 years (or whatever) you might have a presidential election - give the player the ability to go and then play a presidential election sim if they'd like. Or you are about to attack an enemy with fighters - let the player take over if they want and fly the fighter mission like in a flight sim. Or a spy assault on a city turning the game into a stealth game, etc. The player wouldn't have to do these things, but they could. What could *really* make this neat is if one person were playing the Civ game and would export the world-file to someone else, who would then go and do all that cloak and dagger or fighter jock stuff and send the results back. Play By Email, for sure (would take a long time to resolve things) but could definitely be a neat way to play.
1 is certainly doable and there's likely the biggest market for that out there. 2 is getting towards the niche market - Civ sells well, but it's no Quake. 3 would have to be a labor of love OR, perhaps, all the individual sub-games could be developed and marketed individually, and then be linked together into one overarching game.
Some games do that partly - they give current players guest invitations they can give to their friends.
Why only to current players? Abuse. When people can get in for free the number of people who come in and play and pretty much piss in the well is HUGE. Linking these freebies to someone else's account at least makes people need to be somewhat accountable for their actions - if they behave badly, their friend who gave them the invite gets in trouble.
The forums for every major MMO require a person to have a current account to be able to post for this same reason. When it's opened to the public/non-account holding populace, everyone and everyone who's got some kind of psychotic axe to grind will jump right in and screw things up.
Now, if they made a single server for all these people to be put on and let them test there (and, perhaps, transfer their characters to real servers if they buy the game) that might not be too bad. Then again, I bet such a server would be such a raging cesspool that if anything, it'd have a negative impact.
Heck, even in games where you do pay, it's pretty clear that people who don't have any investment in the server/community they're in, even if they pay for an account - are douchebags. Look at any World of Warcraft Role-Play server on maintenance day - you've got hundreds of assholes who's regular servers are down who come in and just spam/rant/and otherwise piss about in the newbie zones purely because they know they can do it with near impunity - the GM's pretty much ignore complaints on maintenance days.
There's no reasonable way to prevent this behavior, but making sure people have the potential for financial loss if they shit on others is a good way to limit it a bit.
Illinois (where I live) has pretty detailed information about what the crime was, and also goes on to have definitions of what the various terms they use mean.
The site can be reached here . I'm ambivalent about these kinds of sites, but I will say that putting more information about the offenses is better than just saying "these people are sex offenders" and lumping the indecent exposure people with the serial child molesters.
Because, surely, the millions of sites out there that are put up by individuals not looking to make a profit aren't going to suddenly vanish.
Really, advertisers have themselves to blame. They make the ads so annoying that people feel it's worth the time to develop tools to block the ads. Then the advertisers make even more annoying ads that get around the first generation of tools, and more tools are developed etc. And what's funny is that the advertisers are not generating goodwill - they're pissing people off!
I've seen pop-ups for things that I would have considered buying, but, because they were advertised via pop-up, I chose not to. In some cases, I've sent email to the people selling the product in question explaining exactly this.
Google has been managing to make *billions* with non-annoying, minimally invasive text ads. You'd think that the marketeers would take a look at what actually works on the internet and go with that, rather than just pissing people off because they have some completely out-of-touch idea that if they just scream loud enough, people will pay attention.
Heck, I *enjoy* Google's advertising. Some friends and I get a kick out of mentioning strange things in gmail conversations and seeing what ads are displayed alongside.
I know people do answer spam and they do click on pop-ups - but there are other models that work as well if not better. Given that there's a classy and a classless way to advertise (and both work), why would anyone want their product/service associated with the classless technique?
The griffons aren't so bad - I don't have to wait 10 minutes for a griffon, with everyone spamming and generally trying to be amusing. Shuttle waits were agonizing in SWG.
Even more agonizing was the fact that the ticket droids wouldn't take your ticket the first 2 or 3 times you'd click on it, and you'd often miss a shuttle because of that - requiring you to wait even more.
Time sinks are one thing - but purposly abusing your players by making them run around in a tedious fashion using a truly borked system - there've got to be better ways.
That is, more or less, what they did with Star Wars: Galaxies. I can criticize nearly every single aspect of that game, but the way they handled player cities and the whole player run economy was quite nice.
Unfortunately, credit duping and ridiculous overpayment for missions meant that nearly everyone was a multi-millionaire, at least amongst the first wave of players. I was nearly a billionaire (I think I racked up 850 million credits or so before I quit?) from selling armor and other merchanty things. Additionally, there was no way, in that wonderful high-tech environment, to do comparison shopping except to travel from store to store - so you'd have people selling something for half a million credits in one place (and getting it, perhaps 1x a week) and someone else selling the same or a better thing but for a few hundred credits. If you were rich - no problem, not like it's going to be a dent either way - but if you were a new player, it sure sucked to find out that you paid 50x more than you could have. And, really, the merchant interface was for shit - it became painful to manage stores, and that, ultimately, is why I quit. Please explain to me why, in such a high-tech universe, I had to actually, personally, run to a store and physically deposit maintenance funds into the structure, rather than being able to do so electronically? Lots of dumb things like this that are NO FUN and are just blatant time-sinks.
So, the take-aways would be: Yes, that idea works in MMO's, you just have to make damn sure you don't let bugs get exploited, and you need to give players really good tools for managing the content or it can become a huge pain in the ass.
Really, in the movie they tone down his abilities quite a bit in an attempt (I think) to make it more realistic.
It isn't Batman the World's Greatest Detective - it's Batman the guy who learned how to kick the shit out of people and who has the money to hire experts to handle the stuff that he isn't able to spend time on or just couldn't do himself.
Personally, I like it this way better.
The "adventures" of Young Luke?
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Star Wars 3D And TV
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I thought the whole point of him whining about life on Tatooine was because the only adventures he was having involved "zeroing" womp rats.
The problem with such Superboy-esque things is that they just can't do too much with them - we know he can't die, can't suffer any real loss or develop at all as a character (after all, the Luke we first met was hardly heroic - he whines a lot and builds model shuttles. Wow!)
Show me Han Solo's earlier life. Show me Leia's life - she at least seems to have been doing things for the rebellion. Show me anything, but god, please, don't show me 10 episodes of "Luke and his old pal Wompy get in trouble with Uncle Owen when they get sand in tender spots."
Why wouldn't lightsabers be more common in 1-3 than in 4-6?
In 1-3, there are a LOT of Jedi, and they are out doing things that require their lightsabers.
In 4-6, there are exactly 2 Jedi, one of whom is dead for 2 movies, the other only becomes even a Padawan about halfway through the second movie.
Hell, once Luke gets part of his training and runs off to fight Vader, it's like he never puts the damn thing down. Even before that, it was used to cut Luke free from ice, gut a tauntaun, and slice open an AT-AT.
So, we see a lot more lightsabery stuff in 1-3 because there are a lot more lightsabers - but they're still used for the same thing: as a tool and a weapon.
Sorry, but whoever modded the parent insightful pretty clearly hasn't actually seen the movies.
This is covered in the movie - I liked the way they handled it.
Re:So is this movie actually good?
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How the Batsuit Works
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· Score: 2, Informative
I felt that, if Batman were to exist in the real world, this isn't too far off from how it'd go.
One thing: this is NOT an action movie. It's a drama with some comic-booky elements, but the action in it is really not done in a spectacular form. The fights are not very clear - it's really hard to make out what they're doing to eachother when people fight. Some people have been complaining about that because they expected this to be one of those spectacles.
I liked it as a movie and I liked it as a Batman story.
It's customarily done as a way to let the new administrator make changes without having to go out and actually fire those people. Avoids a lot of drama, and is a good thing.
That's a wonderful way to look at it... unfortunately, it is not a very popular way to look at it in the corporate world. Most companies will rabidly and stupidly refuse to make public things that might, if looked at from some bizarre, otherworldly view, maybe make them a nickel at some future date.
Different situation, but similar concept: Code from abandoned projects. It should be a no-brainer to open source the stuff or at least set up some kind of licensing scheme for it that lets someone else do all the heavy work and you can still make a profit, right? Unfortunately, those kinds of things don't happen much because of exactly the kind of short-sighted people who won't release specifications and interface docs.
I personally have worked on several projects, the code for which was nuked because the funders felt that selling the wiped drives at auction for $.05 on the dollar was worth more than putting the project out in the wild.
Community would be grand, but it can't do anything when the folks who own the information want to be stingy.
Docs written for internal use are not necessarily ones that are helpful for external use. Something that makes perfect sense to someone who's been working on the product in question and who is "in" on certain terms etc. may be complete jibberish to someone who is outside that group.
Taking the time to edit those docs to make them useful for the outside world would be a loss for them.
Even if they were to release the docs without editing, then they will be concerned about contacted by people who are trying to work with those products and that's another time drain.
Will they sell more widgets if they have specs out in the wild? Sure. But will it be enough extra widgets to justify the added expenses in releasing and supporting (at whatever level - from a reorded voice/automailer saying "RTFM, FOAD, KTHXBYE" to actual assistance)?
If I were a manufacturer/provider, I'd probably just support MSFT and call it a day, too - low hanging fruit and all that.
I live in a state and city that traditionally has a LOT of different races to vote on. We've had really great designs that made it *absolutely* clear who you were voting for. Some years, we've had some craptastic ones that were somewhat confusing because the layout was counter-intuitive and messy.
It is possible to make a good ballot that can handle a lot of candidates in a lot of races and be clear about who the vote was for. Instead of going digital, effort should be put into making excellent paper ballots instead.
10x more people counting the votes does not equate to 10x faster counting.
There is a phase change that happens between a nation of 33 million people and one of almost 300 million - it is not just a linear progression where everything maps proportionately.
Not that I disagree that having the paper votes - that the voter can look at and ensure that yes, it says they voted for the person they think they did - is what we should be doing.
The digital thing was, in my opinion, an incredibly wasteful and stupid move. I don't trust the results of the election. Not because my guy won or lost, but because there was a disconnect - a black box that did "something" - between my pressing a button (well, screen) - and the vote tally.
Some things should be digital. Some of them absolutely should not. Voting should be as concrete a thing as possible: anyone should be able to look at the finished ballot and know exactly who that ballot was cast for. The digital voting set-up did not do that.
The wonderful thing about blogs - and, in fact, about all media - is that you don't have to watch/listen to/read the stuff that doesn't interest you.
I think I'm more or less like you, Batman - I don't want to read about the size of someone's poo or hear about the stories they make up for their Hummel figurines. But, I am aware that there are people that find that stuff to be their cuppa - which is cool, they can have theirs, I can have mine.
As long as the chaff doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the wheat (and so far it hasn't, and doesn't look like it will), then I'm fine with everyone on the whole planet blogging about whatever their heart's content is.
Personally, I do wish MORE people would blog. Many times in the past, some kind of "pointless" writing exercise has turned into something quite interesting - so encouraging people to speak their minds, to go through the exercise of writing out their thoughts - may lead to something wonderful.
You clearly didn't actually get the point of what I wrote. Of course, I didn't write out some kind of essay on retail and interactions, covering every possible situation.
Let me clarify: I've no problem at all with people who are ignorant and can admit it - "Hi, I am not sure about what to get, perhaps you can help me" - is a fine thing, and I would work with someone like that. They don't have their ego invested in seeming like they know something they don't. They are genuinely looking for information and help.
Then there are people who begin a conversation like so: "I want more RAM for my AGP slot." My first response would be friendly and helpful: "Let me make sure I know what you're asking for so I can give you exactly what you need - do you mean to say you'd like an AGP video card that has more memory?" Now, about 25% of the time, I would get a "Yes, thank you - that's what I meant" and the exchange would go fine. The other 75% of the time I would get "Don't start trying to confuse me with your jargon!" or "No, you idiot - I want more fucking RAM to put in my fucking AGP slot!" When I would then - patient and friendly - explain that one does not put RAM directly in one's AGP slot, and that if they want more RAM or a better video card I'd need to look at selling them entirely different products, they proceed to get more agitated, demand to see the manager and in general make huge pains in the ass of themselves.
So, given my experience with people: 25% of the time they behave appropriately and with common courtesy and 75% of the time they flip the fuck out and treat me like shit despite the fact that I am doing my level best to help them... Well, as I said, I used the first few questions they asked as a guide to future behavior.
Let me also point out that you began your interaction with me by saying "You're an asshole." You've never met me, I've never said the first rude thing to you - in fact, my response to your comments was polite and explained what I did not make clear in my original post. So, the situation we have is this:
1) I make a post in which I address specific behavior by some customers. I make no personal attacks on anyone in that post.
2) You call me an asshole and then rail on me.
3) I politely explain what I meant, despite a personal attack and insults.
In short, one of us has indeed been an asshole here, and it ain't me.
Actually, you're wrong. Working in retail is, like in any business, about maximizing profit. That often means maximizing sales, but not always.
Best Buy - who I daresay knows something about retail - has basically fired a whole bunch of "problem" customers. Certain customers simply were not profitable for them, and they decided to tell those customers to take their business elsewhere.
Here's a simple example:
Customer A comes in, picks up a $50 item, pays for it, and leaves.
Customer B comes in, asks the sales-clerk a clearly ignorant question about a $500 item and becomes irate when the clerk tries to politely educate him, so that B can make an informed decision. B takes 10 minutes of the clerks time, is making other customers nervous, insists on speaking with the manager, and basically makes everyone who works there hate their job. Customer B eventually buys the thing, but bitches to every single person he knows about how horrible that place was, and takes every opportunity to scream at the support staff if there is even the most minor of problems.
Which customer would you rather have? A, who spends less but creates absolutely no ill-will, doesn't take up a lot of time, and won't poison the well amongst his friends, or B, who will cost you more money to support and try to placate and will DEFINITELY cost you more money than they spent in lost sales?
And yes - people behave like that - it's like they think retail people are there to abuse and insult, and are sub-human creatures who should be berated when they dare to correct someone who's about to plonk money down. In fact, if you'd like some proof - take a look at many of the comments in this story: "What do you expect from someone so stupid they have to work retail" or "That's what you get from people who make $8.50 an hour."
People are assholes - retail just brings it to the surface.
The quality of the answers was directly related to how dumb her questions were.
I used to work in retail, selling PCs, and I have to say that I quickly used a triage system for customers. Being asked a relevant and technically accurate question (ex: Does this machine have an AGP slot? or What kind of memory does this one use?) would get friendly and helpful service. Being asked a bizarre question (ex: How many bauds can I fit in this hard-drive? [to which I responded "All of them, if you buy the extended warranty."]) would get less helpful responses from me. Why?
Because customers who ask random noise questions like that have no fucking idea what they're talking about, but it is clear that they either think they do, or at least want to portray the idea that they do so they don't get taken advantage of. People who approach a purchase with that kind of idea are not going to take well to being (gently) corrected by the person they're asking the questions of. They will, almost universally, go and bitch to the manager that the salesperson was throwing all kinds of complex jargon around like "mouse" and "keyboard" around, trying to confuse them.
If I worked at a game store, and someone asked me about progressive scan and online gaming, I'd give them answers. If they asked me which one had more polygons, I'd make fun of them - I'll get bitched at anyway, might as well get to enjoy myself first.
So, their article showed that, if you act like a moron, you'll be treated like one. What a shock!
Anything that blurs gender lines is taken by many to be an incredibly Bad Thing. Perhaps it's because, for the most part, our monkey brains still percieve someone who's cross-gendered as being a genetic fluke (think intersexed, hermaphrodite, etc) and non-viable.
I'm transgendered and currently in the process of changing my gender presentation. In my personal experience, people are at best curious and at worst outright violent/hostile.
I don't think this kind of thing - the earrings and tats at work - is a gender-prude thing, though. I think it's more of a "this cog is not like the other cogs" thing. Unless you're in a "creative" position or working for a firm that values self-expression on the job, looking different from everyone else makes the powers that be think you might behave different from everyone else. They don't want individuals - they want meat machines that fill a certain role in a predictable way.
Slashdot Mirror
Fucked Up Bankers - Oh, NASTY!
... then why should I care enough to read it?
I don't mind if someone has a few spelling mistakes or grammatical faux pas - we all make mistakes from time to time.
What I do hate - absofuckinglutely loathe - is shit like "u" instead of "you" and "4" instead of "for" and all that instant messenger shorthand when the person is clearly sitting at a regular keyboard and has plenty of time to compose a statement.
Rule of thumb: if you're IM'ing someone from your cell phone or trying to type quickly in a shoot-em-up, then fine, use shortcuts. If you're doing anything else - if you're not engaged in real-time communications - then at least make the effort to follow the rules.
Now, why am I so bugged by the "u" and "4" and all that shit? Because I'm somewhat dyslexic. When someone starts throwing stuff around like that, it takes me at least two or three times as long to parse it and make sense of it. I take the time to write clearly - I *agonize* over written communications I send out because I want to make absolutely sure that my point is getting across - it's important to me to know I'm understood.
So, if YOU don't treat what you're saying as important, then why the hell should I?
I've been a Civ fan since... well, since it was called Empire and a little before :)
What I would want would be three versions:
1) Blitz game that's highly abstracted and goes quickly. I like the trade-off between early development at the cost of war capability (but better ability to kick ass later) vs. swarming around the globe, but being very primitive. Basically, a turn-based RTS (yes, I know what RTS stands for) - 15-30 minute games at best.
2) Civ 3 style: Long enough to where you can indeed do all kinds of neat stuff (launch for AC or dominate, or whatever)
3) The ability to drill down to plenty of levels and go into sub-games, if you wanted. For example, every 4 years (or whatever) you might have a presidential election - give the player the ability to go and then play a presidential election sim if they'd like. Or you are about to attack an enemy with fighters - let the player take over if they want and fly the fighter mission like in a flight sim. Or a spy assault on a city turning the game into a stealth game, etc. The player wouldn't have to do these things, but they could. What could *really* make this neat is if one person were playing the Civ game and would export the world-file to someone else, who would then go and do all that cloak and dagger or fighter jock stuff and send the results back. Play By Email, for sure (would take a long time to resolve things) but could definitely be a neat way to play.
1 is certainly doable and there's likely the biggest market for that out there. 2 is getting towards the niche market - Civ sells well, but it's no Quake. 3 would have to be a labor of love OR, perhaps, all the individual sub-games could be developed and marketed individually, and then be linked together into one overarching game.
Some games do that partly - they give current players guest invitations they can give to their friends.
Why only to current players? Abuse. When people can get in for free the number of people who come in and play and pretty much piss in the well is HUGE. Linking these freebies to someone else's account at least makes people need to be somewhat accountable for their actions - if they behave badly, their friend who gave them the invite gets in trouble.
The forums for every major MMO require a person to have a current account to be able to post for this same reason. When it's opened to the public/non-account holding populace, everyone and everyone who's got some kind of psychotic axe to grind will jump right in and screw things up.
Now, if they made a single server for all these people to be put on and let them test there (and, perhaps, transfer their characters to real servers if they buy the game) that might not be too bad. Then again, I bet such a server would be such a raging cesspool that if anything, it'd have a negative impact.
Heck, even in games where you do pay, it's pretty clear that people who don't have any investment in the server/community they're in, even if they pay for an account - are douchebags. Look at any World of Warcraft Role-Play server on maintenance day - you've got hundreds of assholes who's regular servers are down who come in and just spam/rant/and otherwise piss about in the newbie zones purely because they know they can do it with near impunity - the GM's pretty much ignore complaints on maintenance days.
There's no reasonable way to prevent this behavior, but making sure people have the potential for financial loss if they shit on others is a good way to limit it a bit.
Illinois (where I live) has pretty detailed information about what the crime was, and also goes on to have definitions of what the various terms they use mean.
The site can be reached here . I'm ambivalent about these kinds of sites, but I will say that putting more information about the offenses is better than just saying "these people are sex offenders" and lumping the indecent exposure people with the serial child molesters.
Because, surely, the millions of sites out there that are put up by individuals not looking to make a profit aren't going to suddenly vanish.
Really, advertisers have themselves to blame. They make the ads so annoying that people feel it's worth the time to develop tools to block the ads. Then the advertisers make even more annoying ads that get around the first generation of tools, and more tools are developed etc. And what's funny is that the advertisers are not generating goodwill - they're pissing people off!
I've seen pop-ups for things that I would have considered buying, but, because they were advertised via pop-up, I chose not to. In some cases, I've sent email to the people selling the product in question explaining exactly this.
Google has been managing to make *billions* with non-annoying, minimally invasive text ads. You'd think that the marketeers would take a look at what actually works on the internet and go with that, rather than just pissing people off because they have some completely out-of-touch idea that if they just scream loud enough, people will pay attention.
Heck, I *enjoy* Google's advertising. Some friends and I get a kick out of mentioning strange things in gmail conversations and seeing what ads are displayed alongside.
I know people do answer spam and they do click on pop-ups - but there are other models that work as well if not better. Given that there's a classy and a classless way to advertise (and both work), why would anyone want their product/service associated with the classless technique?
The griffons aren't so bad - I don't have to wait 10 minutes for a griffon, with everyone spamming and generally trying to be amusing. Shuttle waits were agonizing in SWG.
Even more agonizing was the fact that the ticket droids wouldn't take your ticket the first 2 or 3 times you'd click on it, and you'd often miss a shuttle because of that - requiring you to wait even more.
Time sinks are one thing - but purposly abusing your players by making them run around in a tedious fashion using a truly borked system - there've got to be better ways.
That is, more or less, what they did with Star Wars: Galaxies. I can criticize nearly every single aspect of that game, but the way they handled player cities and the whole player run economy was quite nice.
Unfortunately, credit duping and ridiculous overpayment for missions meant that nearly everyone was a multi-millionaire, at least amongst the first wave of players. I was nearly a billionaire (I think I racked up 850 million credits or so before I quit?) from selling armor and other merchanty things. Additionally, there was no way, in that wonderful high-tech environment, to do comparison shopping except to travel from store to store - so you'd have people selling something for half a million credits in one place (and getting it, perhaps 1x a week) and someone else selling the same or a better thing but for a few hundred credits. If you were rich - no problem, not like it's going to be a dent either way - but if you were a new player, it sure sucked to find out that you paid 50x more than you could have. And, really, the merchant interface was for shit - it became painful to manage stores, and that, ultimately, is why I quit. Please explain to me why, in such a high-tech universe, I had to actually, personally, run to a store and physically deposit maintenance funds into the structure, rather than being able to do so electronically? Lots of dumb things like this that are NO FUN and are just blatant time-sinks.
So, the take-aways would be: Yes, that idea works in MMO's, you just have to make damn sure you don't let bugs get exploited, and you need to give players really good tools for managing the content or it can become a huge pain in the ass.
He said it to someone who knew his secret.
Really, in the movie they tone down his abilities quite a bit in an attempt (I think) to make it more realistic.
It isn't Batman the World's Greatest Detective - it's Batman the guy who learned how to kick the shit out of people and who has the money to hire experts to handle the stuff that he isn't able to spend time on or just couldn't do himself.
Personally, I like it this way better.
I thought the whole point of him whining about life on Tatooine was because the only adventures he was having involved "zeroing" womp rats.
The problem with such Superboy-esque things is that they just can't do too much with them - we know he can't die, can't suffer any real loss or develop at all as a character (after all, the Luke we first met was hardly heroic - he whines a lot and builds model shuttles. Wow!)
Show me Han Solo's earlier life. Show me Leia's life - she at least seems to have been doing things for the rebellion. Show me anything, but god, please, don't show me 10 episodes of "Luke and his old pal Wompy get in trouble with Uncle Owen when they get sand in tender spots."
Why wouldn't lightsabers be more common in 1-3 than in 4-6?
In 1-3, there are a LOT of Jedi, and they are out doing things that require their lightsabers.
In 4-6, there are exactly 2 Jedi, one of whom is dead for 2 movies, the other only becomes even a Padawan about halfway through the second movie.
Hell, once Luke gets part of his training and runs off to fight Vader, it's like he never puts the damn thing down. Even before that, it was used to cut Luke free from ice, gut a tauntaun, and slice open an AT-AT.
So, we see a lot more lightsabery stuff in 1-3 because there are a lot more lightsabers - but they're still used for the same thing: as a tool and a weapon.
Sorry, but whoever modded the parent insightful pretty clearly hasn't actually seen the movies.
This is covered in the movie - I liked the way they handled it.
I felt that, if Batman were to exist in the real world, this isn't too far off from how it'd go.
One thing: this is NOT an action movie. It's a drama with some comic-booky elements, but the action in it is really not done in a spectacular form. The fights are not very clear - it's really hard to make out what they're doing to eachother when people fight. Some people have been complaining about that because they expected this to be one of those spectacles.
I liked it as a movie and I liked it as a Batman story.
It's customarily done as a way to let the new administrator make changes without having to go out and actually fire those people. Avoids a lot of drama, and is a good thing.
That's a wonderful way to look at it... unfortunately, it is not a very popular way to look at it in the corporate world. Most companies will rabidly and stupidly refuse to make public things that might, if looked at from some bizarre, otherworldly view, maybe make them a nickel at some future date.
Different situation, but similar concept: Code from abandoned projects. It should be a no-brainer to open source the stuff or at least set up some kind of licensing scheme for it that lets someone else do all the heavy work and you can still make a profit, right? Unfortunately, those kinds of things don't happen much because of exactly the kind of short-sighted people who won't release specifications and interface docs.
I personally have worked on several projects, the code for which was nuked because the funders felt that selling the wiped drives at auction for $.05 on the dollar was worth more than putting the project out in the wild.
Community would be grand, but it can't do anything when the folks who own the information want to be stingy.
Docs written for internal use are not necessarily ones that are helpful for external use. Something that makes perfect sense to someone who's been working on the product in question and who is "in" on certain terms etc. may be complete jibberish to someone who is outside that group.
Taking the time to edit those docs to make them useful for the outside world would be a loss for them.
Even if they were to release the docs without editing, then they will be concerned about contacted by people who are trying to work with those products and that's another time drain.
Will they sell more widgets if they have specs out in the wild? Sure. But will it be enough extra widgets to justify the added expenses in releasing and supporting (at whatever level - from a reorded voice/automailer saying "RTFM, FOAD, KTHXBYE" to actual assistance)?
If I were a manufacturer/provider, I'd probably just support MSFT and call it a day, too - low hanging fruit and all that.
I live in a state and city that traditionally has a LOT of different races to vote on. We've had really great designs that made it *absolutely* clear who you were voting for. Some years, we've had some craptastic ones that were somewhat confusing because the layout was counter-intuitive and messy.
It is possible to make a good ballot that can handle a lot of candidates in a lot of races and be clear about who the vote was for. Instead of going digital, effort should be put into making excellent paper ballots instead.
10x more people counting the votes does not equate to 10x faster counting.
There is a phase change that happens between a nation of 33 million people and one of almost 300 million - it is not just a linear progression where everything maps proportionately.
Not that I disagree that having the paper votes - that the voter can look at and ensure that yes, it says they voted for the person they think they did - is what we should be doing.
The digital thing was, in my opinion, an incredibly wasteful and stupid move. I don't trust the results of the election. Not because my guy won or lost, but because there was a disconnect - a black box that did "something" - between my pressing a button (well, screen) - and the vote tally.
Some things should be digital. Some of them absolutely should not. Voting should be as concrete a thing as possible: anyone should be able to look at the finished ballot and know exactly who that ballot was cast for. The digital voting set-up did not do that.
The wonderful thing about blogs - and, in fact, about all media - is that you don't have to watch/listen to/read the stuff that doesn't interest you.
I think I'm more or less like you, Batman - I don't want to read about the size of someone's poo or hear about the stories they make up for their Hummel figurines. But, I am aware that there are people that find that stuff to be their cuppa - which is cool, they can have theirs, I can have mine.
As long as the chaff doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of the wheat (and so far it hasn't, and doesn't look like it will), then I'm fine with everyone on the whole planet blogging about whatever their heart's content is.
Personally, I do wish MORE people would blog. Many times in the past, some kind of "pointless" writing exercise has turned into something quite interesting - so encouraging people to speak their minds, to go through the exercise of writing out their thoughts - may lead to something wonderful.
You clearly didn't actually get the point of what I wrote. Of course, I didn't write out some kind of essay on retail and interactions, covering every possible situation.
Let me clarify: I've no problem at all with people who are ignorant and can admit it - "Hi, I am not sure about what to get, perhaps you can help me" - is a fine thing, and I would work with someone like that. They don't have their ego invested in seeming like they know something they don't. They are genuinely looking for information and help.
Then there are people who begin a conversation like so: "I want more RAM for my AGP slot." My first response would be friendly and helpful: "Let me make sure I know what you're asking for so I can give you exactly what you need - do you mean to say you'd like an AGP video card that has more memory?" Now, about 25% of the time, I would get a "Yes, thank you - that's what I meant" and the exchange would go fine. The other 75% of the time I would get "Don't start trying to confuse me with your jargon!" or "No, you idiot - I want more fucking RAM to put in my fucking AGP slot!" When I would then - patient and friendly - explain that one does not put RAM directly in one's AGP slot, and that if they want more RAM or a better video card I'd need to look at selling them entirely different products, they proceed to get more agitated, demand to see the manager and in general make huge pains in the ass of themselves.
So, given my experience with people: 25% of the time they behave appropriately and with common courtesy and 75% of the time they flip the fuck out and treat me like shit despite the fact that I am doing my level best to help them... Well, as I said, I used the first few questions they asked as a guide to future behavior.
Let me also point out that you began your interaction with me by saying "You're an asshole." You've never met me, I've never said the first rude thing to you - in fact, my response to your comments was polite and explained what I did not make clear in my original post. So, the situation we have is this:
1) I make a post in which I address specific behavior by some customers. I make no personal attacks on anyone in that post.
2) You call me an asshole and then rail on me.
3) I politely explain what I meant, despite a personal attack and insults.
In short, one of us has indeed been an asshole here, and it ain't me.
Actually, you're wrong. Working in retail is, like in any business, about maximizing profit. That often means maximizing sales, but not always.
Best Buy - who I daresay knows something about retail - has basically fired a whole bunch of "problem" customers. Certain customers simply were not profitable for them, and they decided to tell those customers to take their business elsewhere.
Here's a simple example:
Customer A comes in, picks up a $50 item, pays for it, and leaves.
Customer B comes in, asks the sales-clerk a clearly ignorant question about a $500 item and becomes irate when the clerk tries to politely educate him, so that B can make an informed decision. B takes 10 minutes of the clerks time, is making other customers nervous, insists on speaking with the manager, and basically makes everyone who works there hate their job. Customer B eventually buys the thing, but bitches to every single person he knows about how horrible that place was, and takes every opportunity to scream at the support staff if there is even the most minor of problems.
Which customer would you rather have? A, who spends less but creates absolutely no ill-will, doesn't take up a lot of time, and won't poison the well amongst his friends, or B, who will cost you more money to support and try to placate and will DEFINITELY cost you more money than they spent in lost sales?
And yes - people behave like that - it's like they think retail people are there to abuse and insult, and are sub-human creatures who should be berated when they dare to correct someone who's about to plonk money down. In fact, if you'd like some proof - take a look at many of the comments in this story: "What do you expect from someone so stupid they have to work retail" or "That's what you get from people who make $8.50 an hour."
People are assholes - retail just brings it to the surface.
The quality of the answers was directly related to how dumb her questions were.
I used to work in retail, selling PCs, and I have to say that I quickly used a triage system for customers. Being asked a relevant and technically accurate question (ex: Does this machine have an AGP slot? or What kind of memory does this one use?) would get friendly and helpful service. Being asked a bizarre question (ex: How many bauds can I fit in this hard-drive? [to which I responded "All of them, if you buy the extended warranty."]) would get less helpful responses from me. Why?
Because customers who ask random noise questions like that have no fucking idea what they're talking about, but it is clear that they either think they do, or at least want to portray the idea that they do so they don't get taken advantage of. People who approach a purchase with that kind of idea are not going to take well to being (gently) corrected by the person they're asking the questions of. They will, almost universally, go and bitch to the manager that the salesperson was throwing all kinds of complex jargon around like "mouse" and "keyboard" around, trying to confuse them.
If I worked at a game store, and someone asked me about progressive scan and online gaming, I'd give them answers. If they asked me which one had more polygons, I'd make fun of them - I'll get bitched at anyway, might as well get to enjoy myself first.
So, their article showed that, if you act like a moron, you'll be treated like one. What a shock!
I'm getting a vision of my mother calling me up and going off like that - "OMFG! i gav birf 2 u! WTFXOR!!! LOL!11"
Makes me laugh because my mom called me up the other day and, in a triumphant tone, said "Guess what I'm doing? I'm GOOGLING!"
Five minutes later, I was still cracking up, and even now I get a smile.
Anything that blurs gender lines is taken by many to be an incredibly Bad Thing. Perhaps it's because, for the most part, our monkey brains still percieve someone who's cross-gendered as being a genetic fluke (think intersexed, hermaphrodite, etc) and non-viable.
I'm transgendered and currently in the process of changing my gender presentation. In my personal experience, people are at best curious and at worst outright violent/hostile.
I don't think this kind of thing - the earrings and tats at work - is a gender-prude thing, though. I think it's more of a "this cog is not like the other cogs" thing. Unless you're in a "creative" position or working for a firm that values self-expression on the job, looking different from everyone else makes the powers that be think you might behave different from everyone else. They don't want individuals - they want meat machines that fill a certain role in a predictable way.
Someone points out that Microsoft isn't Sega?