Uhh, how come the tiles on the bottom of the shuttle always looks like they've been patched together out of spare parts a couple of minutes before launch?
Geez, my 1975 Nova had a better paint job (alas, it was not able to exceed 45MPH, much less Mach 1)...
I've used Parallels for a couple of months now (they just very recently left beta) and am very pleased with it. It's had (and continues to have some minor ones) its share of issues (USB support being the biggest), but this is really a tremendous product. It delivers on what MS Virtual PC promised - a fast, stable method of running Windows under OS X.
Its potential for creating a dramatic increase in Mac converts should not be overlooked. To the point, I have a particular user (a CFO of a medium-sized manufacturing company) who spends most of her day working Excel spreadsheets, creating documents, emails and using a browser (webforms, webapps, browsing). It was a constant battle to keep her PC clean of virii and spyware. A perfect candidate for switching to a Mac, except for their base accounting system, which will only run in Windows. I got her a new Mac Mini Dlx, installed and configured Parallels with WinXP Pro and she could not be happier. She's running Mac:MS Office for Word, Entourage and Excel, uses Safari/FireFox for browsers (some of her sites won't behave on one or the other) and bounces into the other PCs on the network with COTVNC. And just a note to the non-consultant folks out there... It's always a very good thing to make the CFO happy.
One of the things I like most about Parallels is their "don't let Windows out of the box" approach. Coupled with an (admittedly similar to MS VPC) easy to backup set of files, should anything go wonky with the Windows install, it's a 2 minute job to restore it completely.
I can see this becoming a much more viable alternative to computer-savvy management level types.
This is already happening to a certain extent in my market at least. Just the other day I was watching Apocalypse Now (Resux) on Bravo and they kept on overlaying the bottom third of the screen with an ad for 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' or something. It was more than a tad annoying and disrupting. Although it was somewhat humorous during the Brando scene at the end where they're showing his big, fat sweaty head emerging from the darkness and there are these five gay guys posing for their mini-commercial underneath him.
And several channels (cable channels) are already in the habit of talking over the credits to a movie or squeezing them into the left third of the screen while they show mini-mercials. While I have no pressing desire to see who the 'Key Grip' was, occasionally I do want to see the name or artist of a song played. Anyway, it's just damn annoying and is making me want to watch those channels less and less...
Ultimately I think they'll find (the hard way for us) that they're decreasing their viewing audience with all these shenanigans. I mean, I'm willing to put up with 30 minutes of damn commercials in a two hour show because they're providing us valuable content. Once they diminish the value of that content enough, then they're going to lose me as a viewer.
As much as I bitch about eBay, when you start really looking at the issues involved, it's surprising it works as well (and as profitably) as it does. Just the balancing act of keeping both the sellers and the buyers happy (or at least, not too PO'd) is really quite amazing.
An excellent resource (aside from eBay's own discussion forums, which I find lacking in substance and too emotional) for informed discussion on sniping, the feedback system and eBay in general is Brad Templeton's website. Here's a link to a recent post on sniping and how it affects the delicate balance of power between the seller and buyer. Read the comments as well as they're also pretty good.
My point of contention was your assertion that it was not PayPal's responsibility. PayPal does not accept (or at least didn't last time I checked) as proof of delivery a non-physically signed delivery confirmation. This is a point of much lament for sellers on eBay.
As for the wisdom of electing not to get insurance on something which he apparently was so upset over losing, well, that's pretty obvious. IMO delivery confirmation with signature and insurance should be a mandatory part of the transaction (once the transaction exceeds a certain $$ amount) as it protects both the buyer and seller. The problem with that, unfortunately, is sellers will quite often pad the shipping & insurance costs more than they actually physically pad the item. And then there's the risk of receiving (with insurance and signed receipt) a box full of old newspapers (assuming you didn't buy a box full of old newspapers)...
" MS has been ordered to document the APIs of the interaction between their monopoly desktop OS and their non-monopoly server OS to allow competition."
And suddenly, a million MicroSerfs screamed as one....
The only thing a programmer hates worse than a pin-headed boss is documenting code...
Most people don't realize what a time-consuming and labor intensive task (proper) documentation can be. I imagine it must be quite a daunting task in this case if MS is offering source code instead of documentation and then taking this financial hit...
"How is failed delivery PayPal's responsibility? The buyer and seller appear to have held up their end of the agreement, which is where PayPal's responsibility ends. What on Earth do you expect them to do, call the Post Office for you and hound them until they find your book? Give you your money back on an item that was shipped uninsured? It sucks to lose stuff in the mail, but you take that risk whenever you ship without insurance."
This reply was modded insightful?! Since when is ignorance insightful? PayPal offers 'Buyer Protection'. PayPal SAYS that you are PROTECTED against FAILED DELIVERIES. Admittedly, this protection is little more than lip service and a marketing tool (the eligibility requirements are high and they deduct a $25 processing fee from whatever funds they MAY recover...), but it is there...
Personally, I can't wait for some service (hopefully 'do no evil' Gbuy) to pee in PayPal's cereal. PayPal truly sucks in so many ways (just Google PayPal sucks...hey, wait a minute....), but they're absolutely essential for doing business on eBay. And to be honest, despite their suckiness, I prefer making payments via PayPal instead of littering my credit card info all over the web...
An excellent resource for the different possible solutions is Brad Templeton's website. A recent article on ebay sniping, touching on most of its facets can be found here (read the comments too as they expand on it).
"The strategy of sniping would require that he actually be present to bid on the item at the last minute. Now if there were some sort of automated software (and there probably is) that would snipe for you, that'd be a different story. But if it means extra work to snipe, then that's a tradeoff."
Khallow, I prominently mentioned two such services (eSnipe and AuctionSniper) in the post from which you selectively quoted, so I'm not sure if I understand your concern. I've been using eSnipe for the past six years and have found it to be extraordinarily reliable and indispensable as a sniping tool (an AUTOMATED sniping tool). Take a moment to check out one of the many FULLY AUTOMATED sniping services for yourself.
And even if one were to manually snipe (although I'll never understand people who don't do research....c'mon people, "GOOGLE: ebay snipe"), while it would certainly be more time-consuming and inconvenient, the original poster didn't mention those criteria, but rather the 'fact' that a proxy bidder would win more auctions at a lower price than a sniper. That was my point of contention. Quite frankly, it's in my best interest that less people use sniping services, but my whole point in replying to the O.P. was its egregious misstatement of facts and erroneous conclusions (two things that drive me batty).
With all due respect gatesvp, I'm having some trouble understanding your reasoning.
You're stating that sniping is worse for you than using eBay's proxy bidding (when you place your max bid up front and let eBay dispense the increases as necessary)? I can't think of a single possible scenario (assuming no outages, early endings, etc..) where placing a bid earlier (and thusly, announcing your intentions to all possible competitors) is better than placing a bid as late in the game as possible.
And that's not even considering the fact that the majority of snipers use automated sniping sites (www.esnipe.com and www.auctionsniper.com for example), that allow you to set up your bid ahead of time, JUST LIKE EBAY, except you're not locked into it. You can go back and review it, edit it or cancel it up to 5 minutes before the end of the auction. You can't do that with eBay proxy bidding. Once you've placed your eBay proxy bid, you're locked in (except for retracting your bid which is a no-no).
Better yet, the two aforementioned sniping sites allow you to group a collection of bids together in 'bid groups' so that you can try sniping multiple similar auctions and once one of them wins, the other bids will automatically be cancelled.
Here's an excellent resource for sniping information which will be of benefit to anyone looking for logical arguments and reasons for sniping and not illogical, flawed reasons not to.
I, for one, have received phishmails WITH my real, full name in them. Only my superior intellect and proper personal hygiene have allowed me to recognize them for what they were.
They all used the tactic of showing a 'confirmation' of a recent purchase for an iPod, a digital camera, a cellphone, etc.. with a convenient link to dispute this transaction.
As for typing the URL, I wholeheartedly agree. In fact in my browser I have a bookmark tab set up called 'Manage', under which I have all my financial account links (online banking, PayPal, etc.). The easier you make it to properly and securely access your account, the more likely you'll be to do so instead of clicking on a link.
In the not so distant future when the Guhvmint starts data mining slashdot, you might want to avoid plagiarism charges by providing proper attribution...
My favorite part about this video is how even in his 'coming clean', he's really only correcting the people who have incorrectly 'deconstructed' his trolling methodology before.
He mentions that in the first five seconds of the vid.
If Dvorak was a serial killer, he'd be the one that's caught because he's just so damn proud of his body of work and smug enough to want to get caught so that he could explain to the great unwashed masses how brilliant he really is (not that it would help, because there's only so much the great unwashed can comprehend...).
The sad truth of the matter is that Macs will never be as viable a gaming platform as PCs. As we all (should) know, it comes down to market share. With Macs having slightly better than 2% of the market (I know, quarterly sales are not a true indicator as Macs enjoy a much longer service life) it's not surprising that many game authors ignore it completely. And even the ones who eventually do release a Mac version, it's usually not up to par (design-wise) with the PC version. Instead it's ported over with the bare minimum to make it work and with hardly any consideration to Mac UI or general application guidelines.
Case in point - I just picked up Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 for the Mac this week to run on my G5 (2x2.0, 2GB ram) and have run into several issues which are largely OS related. While I understand that I should be grateful that these titles were released at all for the Mac (and, ashamedly, I am grateful), I'm having a hard time getting over paying $50 a title for games that were ported over with little thought.
"Sounds hazardous to me - little airborne filaments?"
Quite the opposite, while in the theater you unwittingly breathe in these little nanobot f**ers and then receive a full nanobot diagnostic upon leaving. Sure would be cool to be able to catch a flick and possibly head off some serious disease with early detection. Then for a small fee the nanodoctor software would be run (I'm thinking some type of vending machine in the lobby could handle this) to fix whatever ails you from the inside.
And should you decline the 'very reasonable' diagnostic fee, the nanoasassin software would be run instead and you'd watch helplessly as your body robot-walks back into the theater and starts bludgeoning the cellphone users and incessant chatters to death...
"A virtual coaster appears underneath it. You may customize this to your level of desired geekdom. For some, a nice lace doiley. For others, damaged floppy disks or burn-failed CDs and DVDs."
HA!! And I hear After Dark is developing a coffee ring screensaver...
Whoa, why do all you slashdotters take everything so negatively?!
Think of all the cool stuff you could do with your own private home surveillance cam:
- Put on little mini-plays every night illustrating the various methods of murder from "Friday the 13th" movie series.
- position the camera onto the cat's litter box
- place a TV monitor in front of the camera and loop "A Clockwork Orange"
- position a picture to fill up the surveillance frame and then install a new pic every day. I'd start with goatse...
The possibilities truly are endless.
Seriously, am I really the only one that would be donning a 'Leatherface' mask, cranking up the chainsaw (with chain removed of course) and putting on a little show for my 'law enforcement surveillors'?
Slashdot Mirror
Geez, my 1975 Nova had a better paint job (alas, it was not able to exceed 45MPH, much less Mach 1)...
Its potential for creating a dramatic increase in Mac converts should not be overlooked. To the point, I have a particular user (a CFO of a medium-sized manufacturing company) who spends most of her day working Excel spreadsheets, creating documents, emails and using a browser (webforms, webapps, browsing). It was a constant battle to keep her PC clean of virii and spyware. A perfect candidate for switching to a Mac, except for their base accounting system, which will only run in Windows. I got her a new Mac Mini Dlx, installed and configured Parallels with WinXP Pro and she could not be happier. She's running Mac:MS Office for Word, Entourage and Excel, uses Safari/FireFox for browsers (some of her sites won't behave on one or the other) and bounces into the other PCs on the network with COTVNC. And just a note to the non-consultant folks out there... It's always a very good thing to make the CFO happy.
One of the things I like most about Parallels is their "don't let Windows out of the box" approach. Coupled with an (admittedly similar to MS VPC) easy to backup set of files, should anything go wonky with the Windows install, it's a 2 minute job to restore it completely.
I can see this becoming a much more viable alternative to computer-savvy management level types.
And several channels (cable channels) are already in the habit of talking over the credits to a movie or squeezing them into the left third of the screen while they show mini-mercials. While I have no pressing desire to see who the 'Key Grip' was, occasionally I do want to see the name or artist of a song played. Anyway, it's just damn annoying and is making me want to watch those channels less and less...
Ultimately I think they'll find (the hard way for us) that they're decreasing their viewing audience with all these shenanigans. I mean, I'm willing to put up with 30 minutes of damn commercials in a two hour show because they're providing us valuable content. Once they diminish the value of that content enough, then they're going to lose me as a viewer.
Sure, there'd be a guano-management issue, but you'd be able to seriously scare the neighborhood kids...
An excellent resource (aside from eBay's own discussion forums, which I find lacking in substance and too emotional) for informed discussion on sniping, the feedback system and eBay in general is Brad Templeton's website. Here's a link to a recent post on sniping and how it affects the delicate balance of power between the seller and buyer. Read the comments as well as they're also pretty good.
Cheers,
Ed T.
As for the wisdom of electing not to get insurance on something which he apparently was so upset over losing, well, that's pretty obvious. IMO delivery confirmation with signature and insurance should be a mandatory part of the transaction (once the transaction exceeds a certain $$ amount) as it protects both the buyer and seller. The problem with that, unfortunately, is sellers will quite often pad the shipping & insurance costs more than they actually physically pad the item. And then there's the risk of receiving (with insurance and signed receipt) a box full of old newspapers (assuming you didn't buy a box full of old newspapers)...
And suddenly, a million MicroSerfs screamed as one....
The only thing a programmer hates worse than a pin-headed boss is documenting code...
Most people don't realize what a time-consuming and labor intensive task (proper) documentation can be. I imagine it must be quite a daunting task in this case if MS is offering source code instead of documentation and then taking this financial hit...
This reply was modded insightful?! Since when is ignorance insightful? PayPal offers 'Buyer Protection'. PayPal SAYS that you are PROTECTED against FAILED DELIVERIES. Admittedly, this protection is little more than lip service and a marketing tool (the eligibility requirements are high and they deduct a $25 processing fee from whatever funds they MAY recover...), but it is there...
Personally, I can't wait for some service (hopefully 'do no evil' Gbuy) to pee in PayPal's cereal. PayPal truly sucks in so many ways (just Google PayPal sucks...hey, wait a minute....), but they're absolutely essential for doing business on eBay. And to be honest, despite their suckiness, I prefer making payments via PayPal instead of littering my credit card info all over the web...
An excellent resource for the different possible solutions is Brad Templeton's website. A recent article on ebay sniping, touching on most of its facets can be found here (read the comments too as they expand on it).
Khallow, I prominently mentioned two such services (eSnipe and AuctionSniper) in the post from which you selectively quoted, so I'm not sure if I understand your concern. I've been using eSnipe for the past six years and have found it to be extraordinarily reliable and indispensable as a sniping tool (an AUTOMATED sniping tool). Take a moment to check out one of the many FULLY AUTOMATED sniping services for yourself.
And even if one were to manually snipe (although I'll never understand people who don't do research....c'mon people, "GOOGLE: ebay snipe"), while it would certainly be more time-consuming and inconvenient, the original poster didn't mention those criteria, but rather the 'fact' that a proxy bidder would win more auctions at a lower price than a sniper. That was my point of contention. Quite frankly, it's in my best interest that less people use sniping services, but my whole point in replying to the O.P. was its egregious misstatement of facts and erroneous conclusions (two things that drive me batty).
You're stating that sniping is worse for you than using eBay's proxy bidding (when you place your max bid up front and let eBay dispense the increases as necessary)? I can't think of a single possible scenario (assuming no outages, early endings, etc..) where placing a bid earlier (and thusly, announcing your intentions to all possible competitors) is better than placing a bid as late in the game as possible.
And that's not even considering the fact that the majority of snipers use automated sniping sites (www.esnipe.com and www.auctionsniper.com for example), that allow you to set up your bid ahead of time, JUST LIKE EBAY, except you're not locked into it. You can go back and review it, edit it or cancel it up to 5 minutes before the end of the auction. You can't do that with eBay proxy bidding. Once you've placed your eBay proxy bid, you're locked in (except for retracting your bid which is a no-no).
Better yet, the two aforementioned sniping sites allow you to group a collection of bids together in 'bid groups' so that you can try sniping multiple similar auctions and once one of them wins, the other bids will automatically be cancelled.
Here's an excellent resource for sniping information which will be of benefit to anyone looking for logical arguments and reasons for sniping and not illogical, flawed reasons not to.
Moderation +1
100% Witty Sarcasm
Cut them some slack, they're from India...
They all used the tactic of showing a 'confirmation' of a recent purchase for an iPod, a digital camera, a cellphone, etc.. with a convenient link to dispute this transaction.
As for typing the URL, I wholeheartedly agree. In fact in my browser I have a bookmark tab set up called 'Manage', under which I have all my financial account links (online banking, PayPal, etc.). The easier you make it to properly and securely access your account, the more likely you'll be to do so instead of clicking on a link.
Source article
Dude, are you SURE you removed them? I just googled 'Anonymous Coward' and got like a gazillion hits...
He mentions that in the first five seconds of the vid.
If Dvorak was a serial killer, he'd be the one that's caught because he's just so damn proud of his body of work and smug enough to want to get caught so that he could explain to the great unwashed masses how brilliant he really is (not that it would help, because there's only so much the great unwashed can comprehend...).
Okay, that certainly makes sense. Thanks.
Just curious as I've seen it done before and thought it might be to prevent RIAA Google hits, but thought we'd want just the opposite...
Thanks,
Ed T.
Case in point - I just picked up Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 for the Mac this week to run on my G5 (2x2.0, 2GB ram) and have run into several issues which are largely OS related. While I understand that I should be grateful that these titles were released at all for the Mac (and, ashamedly, I am grateful), I'm having a hard time getting over paying $50 a title for games that were ported over with little thought.
No, 2% doesn't buy a lot these days... :-(
127.0.0.1
Nope, the phone and vid DOES NOT come out of your 15/2, it's separate. There's a good discussion on it here. Cheers, Ed T.
Quite the opposite, while in the theater you unwittingly breathe in these little nanobot f**ers and then receive a full nanobot diagnostic upon leaving. Sure would be cool to be able to catch a flick and possibly head off some serious disease with early detection. Then for a small fee the nanodoctor software would be run (I'm thinking some type of vending machine in the lobby could handle this) to fix whatever ails you from the inside.
And should you decline the 'very reasonable' diagnostic fee, the nanoasassin software would be run instead and you'd watch helplessly as your body robot-walks back into the theater and starts bludgeoning the cellphone users and incessant chatters to death...
HA!! And I hear After Dark is developing a coffee ring screensaver...
Whoa, why do all you slashdotters take everything so negatively?! Think of all the cool stuff you could do with your own private home surveillance cam: - Put on little mini-plays every night illustrating the various methods of murder from "Friday the 13th" movie series. - position the camera onto the cat's litter box - place a TV monitor in front of the camera and loop "A Clockwork Orange" - position a picture to fill up the surveillance frame and then install a new pic every day. I'd start with goatse... The possibilities truly are endless. Seriously, am I really the only one that would be donning a 'Leatherface' mask, cranking up the chainsaw (with chain removed of course) and putting on a little show for my 'law enforcement surveillors'?