The "restaurant as a treat" has changed, as people are shortchanged of more and more of their free time. Take my own situation for example. I'm a divorced dad who has a 3 year old that lives with me full time. I'm expected to drive her to daycare in the morning before I go to work (about a 25-30 minute drive with traffic), work an 8 hour day or more, run back to daycare to pick her up, and head home again. She doesn't get fed dinner at daycare because I pick her up by 6PM, so she's complaining about being hungry from the time we get in the car.
Where do you propose I come up with the time and energy to rush home and prepare a home-cooked meal for both of us, while still finding time to clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, go shopping once in a while, and everything else that needs to be done?
Our meals are usually microwaved dinners, veggies out of a can, or something quick like a sandwich or hot-dog. Most likely not any more healthy than running by Subway and grabbing a sandwich and chips, really.
Lots of people find themselves in similar situations, except sometimes with more than just 1 kid. So sure, I can see why fast food is a "way of life".
Umm.... yes. But I haven't yet seen anyone successfully buy stock and start trading who didn't first have some money to do so. Ultimately, you're still sharing some of your "buying power" with others, and I don't see why that's any less of a gift than anything else.
What I'm thinking of here are all of the businesses that make use of cellphone GPS tracking as part of their normal operation. (EG. Most courier services in my area issue drivers Nextel 2-way radio/phones and track their location constantly via the phone's GPS system. The results are dumped into some routing software that dispatch uses to figure out who is closest to a customer calling in to have a delivery picked up.)
Even if legislation is written up that specifically prevents govt. and police from obtaining this type of info from the *cellular companies* without a warrant, would the same apply if they wanted it from a private business?
Quite frankly, unless you're willing to reject all of the "commercialization" of the Xmas holiday completely, and refuse to give *any* pre-built products as gifts - you can't escape what you're complaining about anyway!
I mean, what do you suggest? We all start making hand-made wooden gifts for everyone on our shopping list, so they "truly come from the heart"? Or maybe we should just write hand-written letters wishing them a happy holiday, and offer to mow their lawn a few times next summer, or shovel snow off their driveway for free?
Personally, I find it the exception rather than the rule where I feel I have a great gift idea for someone I know, and feel positive they'll appreciate it every bit as much as anything they'd find on their own if I gave them a gift card or cash. Xmas may be "about giving rather than receiving", but nobody really wants to be the one giving less than desireable gifts.
If anything, I'd venture to guess that most of the notion of "cash is such an impersonal gift" came from the mouths of retailers, scared some cash recipients might just save or invest the money, rather than spend it in their stores. IMHO, cash is a *very* personal gift, simply because you only earn money as a result of your labor. If someone thinks enough of me to give me a portion of their "buying power" they earned through hours and hours of work for someone else, I'm very thankful for that.
The problem is not so much that "the general population is too dumb to be educated", but rather, the typical person you run into "on the street" is walking around with a head full of misconceptions and urban legends, rumors and half-truths.
If you don't yet believe that a good 50% or so of the "general population" has irrational fears of such things as "radiation" and "nuclear energy", randomly ask some of them about such things. (EG. "Hello sir. Would you say that the possibility of getting brain cancer from using your cellphone too often is a real concern or not?"... or "Hi mam. What are your thoughts about potential health hazards of living in a house that's placed not too far away from some high power lines?")
To make things more complicated, a LOT of people make good money off sustaining these irrational/illogical fears. Sometimes, it's because they're part of a non-profit agency that needs this fear to ensure their continued existance. Other times, it's because some con-artists have a business selling useless devices that are only purchased by those who misunderstand the concepts. (You did buy your radiation blocking cell-phone sticker thingie off eBay, right?)
It still lacks a few critical things that force me to go back to using other clients occasionally. EG. Yahoo Messenger supports webcam video chat, and Adium doesn't.
Adium also doesn't seem to be inter-compatible with secure chat built into Trillian, which is a bummer when I want to chat with people using Trillian on a Windows machine.
I wasn't trying to make an argument that "core competencies" don't exist or matter! My point was, in today's electronics and computer marketplace, all of the serious "contenders" are sub-contracting out product manufacturing to the same people, overseas.
Some people still seem to believe the illusion that because Dell has a facility in Round Rock, Texas, or because Apple is headquartered in Cuppertino, California, that their products are assembled here in the United States.
Many others are savvy enough to know this is NOT the case at all, yet they still operate under the flawed idea that quality of product is directly related to the abilities of the engineers at the firm. As soon as you give up your manufacturing to a 3rd. party, you lose a large measure of control over the product's outcome. (EG. Your own engineer can specify that he/she wants X and Y out of a component, but who's to say that corners aren't being cut on the assembly line that will cause early failures down the road?)
I haven't ever seen a shred of evidence to support the notion that because Microsoft's "core business" is software, that they're unable to build a quality piece of hardware. I have one of their keyboards on my PC right now, and it's very high quality, balanced with a very reasonable retail price (about $24.95). I've used several of their mice, which I'd rank up there with the best the industry has to offer. When you have as much money as Microsoft, there's simply no reason you can't hire on the type of talent you need if and when you want to undertake a hardware project.
Yep, no mod points right now, or I'd give you one. Honestly, these days, it makes no difference who a company consists of for judging the relative quality of a hardware product they might produce. All that really matters is if they've got the money to bring it to market.
You can bet that the XBox 360 power supply was produced over in China, Taiwan, Korea, or another nation like that, where everyone else's power supplies get built too. Why does Apple have all of these well-known hardware screw-ups despite being primarily a "hardware company" full of engineers doing R&D? Same reason! When you hear complaints of inconsistent color and "pinkish edges" on the new 23" Cinema displays, exploding batteries on one model of older Powerbook, failing backplanes on revision A iMac G5's, and much more - they're primarily due to failures due to lack of quality control on shipments from these 3rd. world countries. (EG. Faulty capacitors caused the backplane problems... just as they caused motherboard problems for Asus, Abit, and most others last year. All a result of a Chinese capacitor company trying to save money by using inferior electrolyte in them.)
Maybe some see it as "nitpicking" - but it irritates me when I hear about these renewable natural resources in a state of "shortage". The fact is, all of the water we "use up" has to go someplace. Every gallon we take a shower or bath with or wash our dishes with goes back down the drain, returning to pretty much the same facility that pumped it out to our home to begin with.
A small amount, of course, evaporates, but that just ends up raining back down on us again.
Rather than widespread panic about our toilets flushing too much water and "using it all up", it would make a lot more sense to study the larger issue; water redistribution and processing. If you live in a natural desert climate, of course you're going to lack large amounts of drinkable, clean water. Therefore, you need to live elsewhere OR devise a system of transporting the water in from places where it's much more plentiful. California sits right along a thing called an ocean, which just happens to consist of LOTS of water. Desalination technology advancements should make that quite usable, really. It's just been ignored to a large extent due to cost.
Seriously, I've been involved in I.T. from a systems administration, PC Support and hardware repair/troubleshooting role for about 15 years now, and I've not truly seen a noticeable improvement in the sector since the bottom dropped out around 2001-2002. It's so bad for me that I've been forced to start working as a courier, doing package deliveries full-time, along with scraping by as a self-employed computer consultant - and that's just to keep my head above water. I'm still living in a very modest house in a not-so-great neighborhood and driving a 6 year old vehicle. So not exactly "living above my means" or expecting the world here.
Granted, I live in the midwest, where we're behind the curve a bit on employment trends. (I just saw a chart claiming that at least in the St. Louis, Missouri area where I live, employment rates have been changing about 10 months behind the national average. So if the economy starts improving, we won't really see it here for close to a year afterwards.) So maybe those on the coasts are seeing something better happening?
But no, as a rule, I can't see value in someone trying to just break into I.T. at this point, pouring thousands into a college education for the purpose. If your destiny truly is I.T., you're probably somebody that's been doing it since you could first hold a mouse and type on a keyboard - and you're going to completely ignore any advice to avoid it anyway. But otherwise, don't bother. My opinion is, there are far too many "guru quality" I.T. pros out there who can't even hang onto decent jobs - so why try to push your way into that whole mess?
Actually, I don't think I said "a lot" about a lack of attractive subscribers on these services. I merely mentioned that Lavalife seemed to have an exceptionally large number of less-than-attractive women using it, at least from my part of the country. In general, there are plenty of reasons why a woman might turn to online dating besides being "ugly, fat or mean". Having kids is a big one. Don't forget that 99% of the time, the women don't pay a thing to use online dating services (or even telephone-based dating services). Just like "ladies night" at the bars, women usually get access for free. Paid dating services are well aware that it's primarily the guys who would feel a need to pay for them.
Overall, I'd say that *legitimate* dating services offer a pretty similar cross-section to the "singles" you'd meet anywhere else in public. You've got your people only looking for sex, your pathetic losers who can't ever get a date because their social skills are severely lacking, your people who actually do want a long-term relationship, and pretty normal people just seeking someone to take out to dinner and a movie once in a while. The fraudulent services, by contrast, are filled with boiler-plate ads that sound like they all describe nearly perfect dates any guy would dream of meeting, coupled with beautiful photos.
Actually, I find this lawsuit interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I'm surprised it's taken so long to hear about such a thing. And second, it's interesting to note which companies are involved.
Like some other people here, I've "dabbled" in meeting women online ever since the "glory days" of the BBS in the 80's. Back in the BBS era, you just didn't find many women online, period. I ran my own fairly popular BBS though - and when the odd woman did call up and check it out, I found there was an extremely good chance she was going to be fairly compatible with me. I've never been into the dance club or bar scene, really. I always wanted a bit of a "geek girl" who would take it upon herself to learn a little about computers and technology - as opposed to the gals who claim an interest, but it's all based only on what previous boyfriends taught/told them. And she'd have to be above-average intelligence, with an interest in both reading and writing, and not shy away from the occasional good/heated debate. That would usually describe the type of female would would venture into the world of the BBS in the mid to late 80's. So I actually had a little bit of success way back then.
When the net became popular, I got into IRC chat and had quite a few dates (and even more new friends) from that. Sites like Match.com appeared somewhere in the middle of all that, but I never paid any attention to them. I couldn't see the need, when it was possible to meet people for free just by having online chat conversations. But instant messengers really took their toll on IRC, making the "city-based channels" on big networks like EFNet or Undernet sort of a "thing of the past". No longer did you have 40 or 50 locals congregating in a channel named after where you lived, all trying to organize a "get-together" for the weekened. Instead, people just put their closest friends in a "buddy list" and chatted with them one-on-one, giving up on IRC.
Considering my current situation (divorced and raising a 3 year old kid pretty much by myself) - traditional dating isn't much of an option for me these days. So I took another look at the idea of "online dating". It seems to me there are people raking in serious money on "dating sites" that are almost complete scams - such as anything "adult friend-finder" related. I would think THEY need to be sued long before Match.com. It seems they fill their sites with fake profiles and photos of women, just to reel in suckers who think the site is filled with women they'd really like to meet. Once they pay for their 6 month membersihp or whatever, they're stuck writing to people with non-existant email addresses, or who mysteriously keep ignoring them.
I tried Yahoo personals real briedly, because I supposedly got a "free month" with them as part of my SBC Yahoo Internet package. But I cancelled after the first week, due to an utter lack of interesting women in my city on there. They proceeded to bill me for the month anyway. (Gee, thanks Yahoo!)
I had a little bit of luck on Craigslist actually, where they let you post free personals. Only problem is, Craigslist seems to be unusually full of singles who act interested, correspond with people daily for a while, and then just vanish. (Both men and women complain about that on there quite a bit.) I think a lot of people just don't take it very seriously since it's free. They're just "fishing" for Mr. or Mrs. Perfect and if you're 80% of what they'd ideally like but not 100%, they "throw you back in the water" and try again.
I think okcupid.com is pretty cool too. But I haven't yet met a woman from it. (There's one gal who emailed me a couple times just to talk politics, since we had that in common... but no interest in actually meeting.) I'm just impressed with how it does the "compatibility scores" and testing, and offers so much for free. It seems like it's *got* to work for somebody.
The only service I actually paid anything for was Lavalife, and I'd say it was another waste of money.
After reading all of this, I'm thinking a few things.
1. Isn't "nerd" the appropriate term to use when you want to refer to a socially-inept but smart individual with possibly poor hygiene or clothing choices? The famous movies weren't called "Revenge of the Geeks" after all. I've always thought that "geek" was intended to be a more positive term used within the community of people who were really into computer and technology. (EG. I've been into computers since I got my hands on a Timex Sinclair 1000 back in the early 80's - but I don't wear pocket protectors and glasses, and I even played guitar in a rock band for several years. So I don't think I fit the definition of a "nerd" at all. What am I supposed to call myself, if I want a quick word defining my primary interest? Geek is the only term that fits.)
2. CS degrees never made much sense to me, because they're primarily "glorified math majors". Fine if you're going to go into the designing of new motherboard or CPUs, I suppose. But for what most "comp. sci" people intend on doing in the workplace after college, I fail to see the relevance. I think an IS/MIS major is much more in line with things for most of us. Unfortunately, back when I was in college in the early 90's, practically nobody offered such a thing as an MIS major. My choices were "data processing" or "comp sci.".
I started a new courier job, and was amazed by how much paperwork is required to ship a package on a flight and pick one up from the cargo terminal these days! They even have a federal security agent who randomly walks around the terminal lot trying to open the doors of your vehicle while you're inside trying to drop off an outgoing package or pick up an incoming one. If he/she is able to - then you're immediately stopped from making the delivery or receiving it.
(The theory being "You're responsible for the security of your delivery from the moment you accept it until you drop it off for shipment.")
IMHO, this is just more assinine posturing -- because let's face it. The courier himself might be the one sabotaging the delivery, right? He'd have the most access to the package of anyone. And furthermore, an unlocked vehicle door on the airport lot is no guarantee the person kept the doors locked during the rest of the package's transit.
Well - we *do* already seem to have virtually "unhackable" DRM out there right now. Anyone see a working hack for DirecTV receivers using the "P4" series cards?
The problem I've always had with this photography example is I've never quite been convinced the photographer's act of taking a picture constitutes a copyrightable work. I know the law currently seems to be treating it as such, but developing a software application requires construction from scratch. So does writing a book or a song or pretty much any other copyrightable work.
Taking a picture, on the other hand, seems like more of a "service industry" function. Yes, there is a great deal of skill involved in taking good photos - but it's technical knowledge, such as knowing the best shutter speed to select, the best placement of lighting, the right type and speed of film for the job, etc. I wouldn't expect to pay a carpenter to put in a new hardwood floor in a room of my house, only to find out he copyrighted my floor and retained all rights to it afterwards. That's how I feel about these wedding photographers and the like, claiming they own rights to pictures bearing the unique images of people I know personally. All they *really* did was creatively use a complex image-capturing device and provide the printed results on paper. Calling that copyrightable art is a stretch.....
Yeah, you're partially correct. The thing is, most games I've seen don't *require* these hugely expensive video cards to play them. They only need them to run in "high detail", with all the "eye candy" options turned on. If you turn all that stuff down, the game will be quite playable on a much less expensive setup.
But so many gamers can't stand the fact that a game can possibly overwhelm their computer, so they fork over the money to upgrade - and then complain about it.
Personally, I think the alternative of releasing games that don't "scale back" to older hardware at all would be much worse.
That's rarely a solution either, but places do that all the time already - despite not spelling out a "mandatory happiness" type of rule. The question you have to ask yourself is, why was this "whiner" hired in the first place, if he or she really exhibits such a constantly negative attitude? Most likely, he/she WASN'T initially that bad! Sometimes, all the complaining is an expression of "the squeaky wheel gets the oil" attitude. Something is wrong and needs fixing, and this is an employee who actually cares enough to keep griping - instead of sitting down, shutting iup, and letting the inefficiency, mis-management, or other issue continue.
To an extent, I think it depends on the type of job one holds, too. If you work in a customer service capacity, you obviously are expected to get along with and listen patiently to your customers. Not being able to do so means you're not performing your job properly. But in a number of office jobs, being a "team player" is highly overrated. People concentrating on getting their work done instead of chatting it up with all their cubicle-mates are more efficient.
Well, I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you. Though I never expected a lot from Samsung, my parents have one of their older IDE drives in their machine to this day that still performs just fine - at least 6 or 7 years now. Only problem now is, it just doesn't have enough capacity for modern OS's and software.
Meanwhile, I was always a traditional supporter of both WD and Maxtor (because frankly, I used a lot of Seagates and always had crashes/failures with 'em), but the warranty situation today is CRAP!
1 year only on any new retail-boxed Maxtor drive?? 1 year only on any WD drive that's not labeled a "special edition"? What's so "special" about a decent quality of build??
My 250GB SATA Maxtor DiamondMax drive just died on me, only 3 months past the 1 year warranty - and I'm now counting the days before the second one of mine does the same - since I bought both from the same place, at the same time - and both have the same manufacture date stamped on them.
I actually went back to buying Seagate for my newer SATA drives, because they're backing them with a 5 year warranty. It seems like the rules of "who is good, and who is junk" have changed around in recent years - so we'll see. If not, then at least Seagate will be swapping my drives out for free for me every so often over the next 4 or 5 years.
"If a software company releases software that causes (through bugs, incompetence, negligence) damage, financial harm, or physical harm (ie bad software controls for automatic equipment) they are somehow held NOT responsible?"
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In a word, yep! When the Y2K issue came up, an awful lot of companies paid millions (or at least thousands) to fix the bugs themselves. If all the software authors were held liable for the error, it should have all amounted to no-charge fixes instead. When my Pinnacle Video Studio software didn't properly talk to my JVC camcorder, rendering it useless, the only recourse I had was waiting and hoping they'd provide a bug fix on their own. The list is endless here, and I'm not saying it's "right" or "wrong", but just that it "is". Right now, software isn't treated the same way as more tangible products. You can make all sorts of claims on the outside of the box, but if your software product fails to function properly (including not even running at all on your hardware!), you're pretty much stuck trying to resell it as "used" on eBay or something, or opting to keep it, hoping the developer will be generous enough to provide a free "fix" for you.
One big problem with Dell is, they don't really give as high a "value" as the initial price tag makes it seem. As another person posted, their tech. support is decidely "low value" when you consider all the time you wait on hold or waste talking to a foreigner who is tough to understand, and who makes you go through 30 minutes of useless "troubleshooting" including "make sure the power cord is firmly attached to the back of your monitor" and "please shut down and restart Windows" to get a faulty video card or display replaced, or worse yet - may not let you get a defective memory DIMM replaced until you humor them by letting them swap out the CPU, motherboard and who knows what else first, over multiple support calls.
Is Apple "perfect" by comparison? Hell no... But they do a lot of things right in this area. For one, you usually do get native English speaking support reps when you call the toll-free support number in the U.S. - and my hold time has been 5 minutes or less. On the iMacs, they have a self-service system over the web, so you can order your own warranty replacement parts without getting permission first from some support rep. over the phone. They're also pretty good about eventually extending warranties to cover products with known major flaws - instead of just screwing over everyone who bought one with only a standard 1 year warranty. (By contrast, I was burnt on 2 Dell Latitude CPi series laptops now, because of design flaws and poor construction that Dell never officially admitted to.)
I don't think it's really possible to achieve "trendiness" with a shoddy/substandard product. There's simply not anything "cool" about some product that was inexpensive up-front, but most users end up underwhelmed or just "so-so" about over the long haul.
I might actually say not.... The slice of watermelon requires a lot more work to eat. All those seeds to remove, and a messy outer skin you're left with afterwards too. The grape = instant enjoyment.
So too, it is with Apple. They might always just be a "niche company" compared to the PC/Windows market, but millions in profit is still millions in profit - and heading up a company you can truly be proud of can mean a LOT more than even more millions in profit on your ledger sheet.
As it was recently pointed out with portable MP3 players, how "cool" and "stylish" or "trendy" is it right now to wear around a player with a big, blue DELL logo stamped on the front of it? Compare that to carrying around an Apple iPod. Apple has achieved something no other computer company has ever really achieved -- the ability to make computers and technology "hip" instead of "nerdy/geeky/dorky".
So no, Michael Dell isn't "crying". He has one of the most successful businesses around mass-producing PCs as commodity items at as low a price as possible. But if I could be another Micahel Dell or another Steve Jobs, I'd have to pick Jobs. His company actually does R&D, experiments with possible product ideas just for the sake of seeing how they work out, and he still has time to head up Pixar - a company creatively doing very fun AND profitable things with computers.
Well, I have mixed feelings on this story. On one hand, yeah - we all know Slashdot is going to latch on tightly to any news item that puts Microsoft in a negative light, so it's immediately suspect.
On the other hand, the part that bothers me is the accusation that MS is intentionally ordering stores to "sell out" on a pre-agreed date, or trying to ensure that the "sold out" notices are prominently displayed.
There's a difference between announcing a new product and not really having much supply of it for a little while after the announcement, and orchestrating the whole thing into a sales gimmick.
I'm an Apple user/fan myself, and I think all of us are aware of Apple's "standard practice" of announcing new products before production is ramped up enough to really supply the demand. But to the best of my knowledge, Apple never pressured any resellers to sign agreements to guarantee they were "sold out" at preset dates/times, or to handle the fact they sold out in a particular fashion. That goes far above and beyond simple inability or unwillingness to supply initial demand for a new product.
If you can't accept the Randi foundation as fair and unbiased in testing the paranormal, what alternatives do you think are better?
It seems to me this is a group which has given more thought than anyone else to applying science and logic to the whole thing. I don't think they're necessarily less motivated to hand over their prize money than anyone else would be who offered something like that up? I mean, no - nobody probably wants to give away a million bucks that's earning them a tidy sum of interest in a bank account someplace. But the claim that the Randi foundation would just "go away" if they had to give away the prize seems blatantly false. They'd simply be able to continue doing what they've done.... proving that 99.9% of the claims of having ESP, paranormal "powers" and so forth are fraudulent. If they were only able to find one real psychic after all these years, that wouldn't really change much for them, other than Randi having to admit that he finally found 1 isolated instance of someone having a power he never before believed really existed. That would probably make them look MORE legitimate, as it would heighten everyone's interest in finding out who is a scam and who isn't.
It occurs to me that setting up this powerful of a search tool throughout the typical business means at least initially, people are going to dredge up all sorts of unexpected and perhaps unwanted things. (Say, just for example, a middle manager is working on plans for giving out raises or pay cuts for the next year. He might have an Excel or Word document or two out on a shared network drive mentioning some of his rough drafts for the idea. Bad idea of course, because he should be saving that stuff in a more secure place - but you know how things go. Might have even saved a version of a file there completely by accident? Traditionally, it would go unnoticed in most cases. But what if another employee is playing with the search tools, looking for all documents related to salary - and finds out what all of his co-workers are going to get paid next year?)
It'll only take one or two such incidents before management will demand removal or a serious lock-down of people's ability to use the search tools.
Also, think of the shock some people might get when their boss starts searching the contents of everyone's corporate email for key phrases. Once again, sure - we all get the general idea that "business email is not private", but how many of us took what seemed to be an infinitely small risk and made a couple off-color jokes, jabs at management, or other such things in an outgoing email written to a buddy over lunch break or something? Did you remember to make sure all that stuff was removed from your "sent items" or "deleted items" folders?
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The "restaurant as a treat" has changed, as people are shortchanged of more and more of their free time. Take my own situation for example. I'm a divorced dad who has a 3 year old that lives with me full time. I'm expected to drive her to daycare in the morning before I go to work (about a 25-30 minute drive with traffic), work an 8 hour day or more, run back to daycare to pick her up, and head home again. She doesn't get fed dinner at daycare because I pick her up by 6PM, so she's complaining about being hungry from the time we get in the car.
Where do you propose I come up with the time and energy to rush home and prepare a home-cooked meal for both of us, while still finding time to clean the house, wash the dishes, do the laundry, go shopping once in a while, and everything else that needs to be done?
Our meals are usually microwaved dinners, veggies out of a can, or something quick like a sandwich or hot-dog. Most likely not any more healthy than running by Subway and grabbing a sandwich and chips, really.
Lots of people find themselves in similar situations, except sometimes with more than just 1 kid. So sure, I can see why fast food is a "way of life".
Umm.... yes. But I haven't yet seen anyone successfully buy stock and start trading who didn't first have some money to do so. Ultimately, you're still sharing some of your "buying power" with others, and I don't see why that's any less of a gift than anything else.
What I'm thinking of here are all of the businesses that make use of cellphone GPS tracking as part of their normal operation. (EG. Most courier services in my area issue drivers Nextel 2-way radio/phones and track their location constantly via the phone's GPS system. The results are dumped into some routing software that dispatch uses to figure out who is closest to a customer calling in to have a delivery picked up.)
Even if legislation is written up that specifically prevents govt. and police from obtaining this type of info from the *cellular companies* without a warrant, would the same apply if they wanted it from a private business?
Quite frankly, unless you're willing to reject all of the "commercialization" of the Xmas holiday completely, and refuse to give *any* pre-built products as gifts - you can't escape what you're complaining about anyway!
I mean, what do you suggest? We all start making hand-made wooden gifts for everyone on our shopping list, so they "truly come from the heart"? Or maybe we should just write hand-written letters wishing them a happy holiday, and offer to mow their lawn a few times next summer, or shovel snow off their driveway for free?
Personally, I find it the exception rather than the rule where I feel I have a great gift idea for someone I know, and feel positive they'll appreciate it every bit as much as anything they'd find on their own if I gave them a gift card or cash. Xmas may be "about giving rather than receiving", but nobody really wants to be the one giving less than desireable gifts.
If anything, I'd venture to guess that most of the notion of "cash is such an impersonal gift" came from the mouths of retailers, scared some cash recipients might just save or invest the money, rather than spend it in their stores. IMHO, cash is a *very* personal gift, simply because you only earn money as a result of your labor. If someone thinks enough of me to give me a portion of their "buying power" they earned through hours and hours of work for someone else, I'm very thankful for that.
The problem is not so much that "the general population is too dumb to be educated", but rather, the typical person you run into "on the street" is walking around with a head full of misconceptions and urban legends, rumors and half-truths.
... or "Hi mam. What are your thoughts about potential health hazards of living in a house that's placed not too far away from some high power lines?")
If you don't yet believe that a good 50% or so of the "general population" has irrational fears of such things as "radiation" and "nuclear energy", randomly ask some of them about such things. (EG. "Hello sir. Would you say that the possibility of getting brain cancer from using your cellphone too often is a real concern or not?"
To make things more complicated, a LOT of people make good money off sustaining these irrational/illogical fears. Sometimes, it's because they're part of a non-profit agency that needs this fear to ensure their continued existance. Other times, it's because some con-artists have a business selling useless devices that are only purchased by those who misunderstand the concepts. (You did buy your radiation blocking cell-phone sticker thingie off eBay, right?)
It still lacks a few critical things that force me to go back to using other clients occasionally. EG. Yahoo Messenger supports webcam video chat, and Adium doesn't.
Adium also doesn't seem to be inter-compatible with secure chat built into Trillian, which is a bummer when I want to chat with people using Trillian on a Windows machine.
But overall, yes - Adium is great!
I wasn't trying to make an argument that "core competencies" don't exist or matter! My point was, in today's electronics and computer marketplace, all of the serious "contenders" are sub-contracting out product manufacturing to the same people, overseas.
Some people still seem to believe the illusion that because Dell has a facility in Round Rock, Texas, or because Apple is headquartered in Cuppertino, California, that their products are assembled here in the United States.
Many others are savvy enough to know this is NOT the case at all, yet they still operate under the flawed idea that quality of product is directly related to the abilities of the engineers at the firm. As soon as you give up your manufacturing to a 3rd. party, you lose a large measure of control over the product's outcome. (EG. Your own engineer can specify that he/she wants X and Y out of a component, but who's to say that corners aren't being cut on the assembly line that will cause early failures down the road?)
I haven't ever seen a shred of evidence to support the notion that because Microsoft's "core business" is software, that they're unable to build a quality piece of hardware. I have one of their keyboards on my PC right now, and it's very high quality, balanced with a very reasonable retail price (about $24.95). I've used several of their mice, which I'd rank up there with the best the industry has to offer. When you have as much money as Microsoft, there's simply no reason you can't hire on the type of talent you need if and when you want to undertake a hardware project.
Yep, no mod points right now, or I'd give you one. Honestly, these days, it makes no difference who a company consists of for judging the relative quality of a hardware product they might produce. All that really matters is if they've got the money to bring it to market.
... just as they caused motherboard problems for Asus, Abit, and most others last year. All a result of a Chinese capacitor company trying to save money by using inferior electrolyte in them.)
You can bet that the XBox 360 power supply was produced over in China, Taiwan, Korea, or another nation like that, where everyone else's power supplies get built too. Why does Apple have all of these well-known hardware screw-ups despite being primarily a "hardware company" full of engineers doing R&D? Same reason! When you hear complaints of inconsistent color and "pinkish edges" on the new 23" Cinema displays, exploding batteries on one model of older Powerbook, failing backplanes on revision A iMac G5's, and much more - they're primarily due to failures due to lack of quality control on shipments from these 3rd. world countries. (EG. Faulty capacitors caused the backplane problems
Maybe some see it as "nitpicking" - but it irritates me when I hear about these renewable natural resources in a state of "shortage". The fact is, all of the water we "use up" has to go someplace. Every gallon we take a shower or bath with or wash our dishes with goes back down the drain, returning to pretty much the same facility that pumped it out to our home to begin with.
A small amount, of course, evaporates, but that just ends up raining back down on us again.
Rather than widespread panic about our toilets flushing too much water and "using it all up", it would make a lot more sense to study the larger issue; water redistribution and processing. If you live in a natural desert climate, of course you're going to lack large amounts of drinkable, clean water. Therefore, you need to live elsewhere OR devise a system of transporting the water in from places where it's much more plentiful. California sits right along a thing called an ocean, which just happens to consist of LOTS of water. Desalination technology advancements should make that quite usable, really. It's just been ignored to a large extent due to cost.
Seriously, I've been involved in I.T. from a systems administration, PC Support and hardware repair/troubleshooting role for about 15 years now, and I've not truly seen a noticeable improvement in the sector since the bottom dropped out around 2001-2002. It's so bad for me that I've been forced to start working as a courier, doing package deliveries full-time, along with scraping by as a self-employed computer consultant - and that's just to keep my head above water. I'm still living in a very modest house in a not-so-great neighborhood and driving a 6 year old vehicle. So not exactly "living above my means" or expecting the world here.
Granted, I live in the midwest, where we're behind the curve a bit on employment trends. (I just saw a chart claiming that at least in the St. Louis, Missouri area where I live, employment rates have been changing about 10 months behind the national average. So if the economy starts improving, we won't really see it here for close to a year afterwards.) So maybe those on the coasts are seeing something better happening?
But no, as a rule, I can't see value in someone trying to just break into I.T. at this point, pouring thousands into a college education for the purpose. If your destiny truly is I.T., you're probably somebody that's been doing it since you could first hold a mouse and type on a keyboard - and you're going to completely ignore any advice to avoid it anyway. But otherwise, don't bother. My opinion is, there are far too many "guru quality" I.T. pros out there who can't even hang onto decent jobs - so why try to push your way into that whole mess?
Actually, I don't think I said "a lot" about a lack of attractive subscribers on these services. I merely mentioned that Lavalife seemed to have an exceptionally large number of less-than-attractive women using it, at least from my part of the country. In general, there are plenty of reasons why a woman might turn to online dating besides being "ugly, fat or mean". Having kids is a big one. Don't forget that 99% of the time, the women don't pay a thing to use online dating services (or even telephone-based dating services). Just like "ladies night" at the bars, women usually get access for free. Paid dating services are well aware that it's primarily the guys who would feel a need to pay for them.
Overall, I'd say that *legitimate* dating services offer a pretty similar cross-section to the "singles" you'd meet anywhere else in public. You've got your people only looking for sex, your pathetic losers who can't ever get a date because their social skills are severely lacking, your people who actually do want a long-term relationship, and pretty normal people just seeking someone to take out to dinner and a movie once in a while. The fraudulent services, by contrast, are filled with boiler-plate ads that sound like they all describe nearly perfect dates any guy would dream of meeting, coupled with beautiful photos.
Actually, I find this lawsuit interesting for a couple of reasons. First, I'm surprised it's taken so long to hear about such a thing. And second, it's interesting to note which companies are involved.
Like some other people here, I've "dabbled" in meeting women online ever since the "glory days" of the BBS in the 80's. Back in the BBS era, you just didn't find many women online, period. I ran my own fairly popular BBS though - and when the odd woman did call up and check it out, I found there was an extremely good chance she was going to be fairly compatible with me. I've never been into the dance club or bar scene, really. I always wanted a bit of a "geek girl" who would take it upon herself to learn a little about computers and technology - as opposed to the gals who claim an interest, but it's all based only on what previous boyfriends taught/told them. And she'd have to be above-average intelligence, with an interest in both reading and writing, and not shy away from the occasional good/heated debate. That would usually describe the type of female would would venture into the world of the BBS in the mid to late 80's. So I actually had a little bit of success way back then.
When the net became popular, I got into IRC chat and had quite a few dates (and even more new friends) from that. Sites like Match.com appeared somewhere in the middle of all that, but I never paid any attention to them. I couldn't see the need, when it was possible to meet people for free just by having online chat conversations. But instant messengers really took their toll on IRC, making the "city-based channels" on big networks like EFNet or Undernet sort of a "thing of the past". No longer did you have 40 or 50 locals congregating in a channel named after where you lived, all trying to organize a "get-together" for the weekened. Instead, people just put their closest friends in a "buddy list" and chatted with them one-on-one, giving up on IRC.
Considering my current situation (divorced and raising a 3 year old kid pretty much by myself) - traditional dating isn't much of an option for me these days. So I took another look at the idea of "online dating". It seems to me there are people raking in serious money on "dating sites" that are almost complete scams - such as anything "adult friend-finder" related. I would think THEY need to be sued long before Match.com. It seems they fill their sites with fake profiles and photos of women, just to reel in suckers who think the site is filled with women they'd really like to meet. Once they pay for their 6 month membersihp or whatever, they're stuck writing to people with non-existant email addresses, or who mysteriously keep ignoring them.
I tried Yahoo personals real briedly, because I supposedly got a "free month" with them as part of my SBC Yahoo Internet package. But I cancelled after the first week, due to an utter lack of interesting women in my city on there. They proceeded to bill me for the month anyway. (Gee, thanks Yahoo!)
I had a little bit of luck on Craigslist actually, where they let you post free personals. Only problem is, Craigslist seems to be unusually full of singles who act interested, correspond with people daily for a while, and then just vanish. (Both men and women complain about that on there quite a bit.) I think a lot of people just don't take it very seriously since it's free. They're just "fishing" for Mr. or Mrs. Perfect and if you're 80% of what they'd ideally like but not 100%, they "throw you back in the water" and try again.
I think okcupid.com is pretty cool too. But I haven't yet met a woman from it. (There's one gal who emailed me a couple times just to talk politics, since we had that in common... but no interest in actually meeting.) I'm just impressed with how it does the "compatibility scores" and testing, and offers so much for free. It seems like it's *got* to work for somebody.
The only service I actually paid anything for was Lavalife, and I'd say it was another waste of money.
After reading all of this, I'm thinking a few things.
1. Isn't "nerd" the appropriate term to use when you want to refer to a socially-inept but smart individual with possibly poor hygiene or clothing choices? The famous movies weren't called "Revenge of the Geeks" after all. I've always thought that "geek" was intended to be a more positive term used within the community of people who were really into computer and technology. (EG. I've been into computers since I got my hands on a Timex Sinclair 1000 back in the early 80's - but I don't wear pocket protectors and glasses, and I even played guitar in a rock band for several years. So I don't think I fit the definition of a "nerd" at all. What am I supposed to call myself, if I want a quick word defining my primary interest? Geek is the only term that fits.)
2. CS degrees never made much sense to me, because they're primarily "glorified math majors". Fine if you're going to go into the designing of new motherboard or CPUs, I suppose. But for what most "comp. sci" people intend on doing in the workplace after college, I fail to see the relevance. I think an IS/MIS major is much more in line with things for most of us. Unfortunately, back when I was in college in the early 90's, practically nobody offered such a thing as an MIS major. My choices were "data processing" or "comp sci.".
I started a new courier job, and was amazed by how much paperwork is required to ship a package on a flight and pick one up from the cargo terminal these days! They even have a federal security agent who randomly walks around the terminal lot trying to open the doors of your vehicle while you're inside trying to drop off an outgoing package or pick up an incoming one. If he/she is able to - then you're immediately stopped from making the delivery or receiving it.
(The theory being "You're responsible for the security of your delivery from the moment you accept it until you drop it off for shipment.")
IMHO, this is just more assinine posturing -- because let's face it. The courier himself might be the one sabotaging the delivery, right? He'd have the most access to the package of anyone. And furthermore, an unlocked vehicle door on the airport lot is no guarantee the person kept the doors locked during the rest of the package's transit.
Well - we *do* already seem to have virtually "unhackable" DRM out there right now. Anyone see a working hack for DirecTV receivers using the "P4" series cards?
The problem I've always had with this photography example is I've never quite been convinced the photographer's act of taking a picture constitutes a copyrightable work. I know the law currently seems to be treating it as such, but developing a software application requires construction from scratch. So does writing a book or a song or pretty much any other copyrightable work.
Taking a picture, on the other hand, seems like more of a "service industry" function. Yes, there is a great deal of skill involved in taking good photos - but it's technical knowledge, such as knowing the best shutter speed to select, the best placement of lighting, the right type and speed of film for the job, etc. I wouldn't expect to pay a carpenter to put in a new hardwood floor in a room of my house, only to find out he copyrighted my floor and retained all rights to it afterwards. That's how I feel about these wedding photographers and the like, claiming they own rights to pictures bearing the unique images of people I know personally. All they *really* did was creatively use a complex image-capturing device and provide the printed results on paper. Calling that copyrightable art is a stretch.....
Yeah, you're partially correct. The thing is, most games I've seen don't *require* these hugely expensive video cards to play them. They only need them to run in "high detail", with all the "eye candy" options turned on. If you turn all that stuff down, the game will be quite playable on a much less expensive setup.
But so many gamers can't stand the fact that a game can possibly overwhelm their computer, so they fork over the money to upgrade - and then complain about it.
Personally, I think the alternative of releasing games that don't "scale back" to older hardware at all would be much worse.
That's rarely a solution either, but places do that all the time already - despite not spelling out a "mandatory happiness" type of rule. The question you have to ask yourself is, why was this "whiner" hired in the first place, if he or she really exhibits such a constantly negative attitude? Most likely, he/she WASN'T initially that bad! Sometimes, all the complaining is an expression of "the squeaky wheel gets the oil" attitude. Something is wrong and needs fixing, and this is an employee who actually cares enough to keep griping - instead of sitting down, shutting iup, and letting the inefficiency, mis-management, or other issue continue.
To an extent, I think it depends on the type of job one holds, too. If you work in a customer service capacity, you obviously are expected to get along with and listen patiently to your customers. Not being able to do so means you're not performing your job properly. But in a number of office jobs, being a "team player" is highly overrated. People concentrating on getting their work done instead of chatting it up with all their cubicle-mates are more efficient.
Well, I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you. Though I never expected a lot from Samsung, my parents have one of their older IDE drives in their machine to this day that still performs just fine - at least 6 or 7 years now. Only problem now is, it just doesn't have enough capacity for modern OS's and software.
Meanwhile, I was always a traditional supporter of both WD and Maxtor (because frankly, I used a lot of Seagates and always had crashes/failures with 'em), but the warranty situation today is CRAP!
1 year only on any new retail-boxed Maxtor drive?? 1 year only on any WD drive that's not labeled a "special edition"? What's so "special" about a decent quality of build??
My 250GB SATA Maxtor DiamondMax drive just died on me, only 3 months past the 1 year warranty - and I'm now counting the days before the second one of mine does the same - since I bought both from the same place, at the same time - and both have the same manufacture date stamped on them.
I actually went back to buying Seagate for my newer SATA drives, because they're backing them with a 5 year warranty. It seems like the rules of "who is good, and who is junk" have changed around in recent years - so we'll see. If not, then at least Seagate will be swapping my drives out for free for me every so often over the next 4 or 5 years.
"If a software company releases software that causes (through bugs, incompetence, negligence) damage, financial harm, or physical harm (ie bad software controls for automatic equipment) they are somehow held NOT responsible?"
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In a word, yep! When the Y2K issue came up, an awful lot of companies paid millions (or at least thousands) to fix the bugs themselves. If all the software authors were held liable for the error, it should have all amounted to no-charge fixes instead. When my Pinnacle Video Studio software didn't properly talk to my JVC camcorder, rendering it useless, the only recourse I had was waiting and hoping they'd provide a bug fix on their own. The list is endless here, and I'm not saying it's "right" or "wrong", but just that it "is". Right now, software isn't treated the same way as more tangible products. You can make all sorts of claims on the outside of the box, but if your software product fails to function properly (including not even running at all on your hardware!), you're pretty much stuck trying to resell it as "used" on eBay or something, or opting to keep it, hoping the developer will be generous enough to provide a free "fix" for you.
One big problem with Dell is, they don't really give as high a "value" as the initial price tag makes it seem. As another person posted, their tech. support is decidely "low value" when you consider all the time you wait on hold or waste talking to a foreigner who is tough to understand, and who makes you go through 30 minutes of useless "troubleshooting" including "make sure the power cord is firmly attached to the back of your monitor" and "please shut down and restart Windows" to get a faulty video card or display replaced, or worse yet - may not let you get a defective memory DIMM replaced until you humor them by letting them swap out the CPU, motherboard and who knows what else first, over multiple support calls.
Is Apple "perfect" by comparison? Hell no... But they do a lot of things right in this area. For one, you usually do get native English speaking support reps when you call the toll-free support number in the U.S. - and my hold time has been 5 minutes or less. On the iMacs, they have a self-service system over the web, so you can order your own warranty replacement parts without getting permission first from some support rep. over the phone. They're also pretty good about eventually extending warranties to cover products with known major flaws - instead of just screwing over everyone who bought one with only a standard 1 year warranty. (By contrast, I was burnt on 2 Dell Latitude CPi series laptops now, because of design flaws and poor construction that Dell never officially admitted to.)
I don't think it's really possible to achieve "trendiness" with a shoddy/substandard product. There's simply not anything "cool" about some product that was inexpensive up-front, but most users end up underwhelmed or just "so-so" about over the long haul.
I might actually say not.... The slice of watermelon requires a lot more work to eat. All those seeds to remove, and a messy outer skin you're left with afterwards too. The grape = instant enjoyment.
So too, it is with Apple. They might always just be a "niche company" compared to the PC/Windows market, but millions in profit is still millions in profit - and heading up a company you can truly be proud of can mean a LOT more than even more millions in profit on your ledger sheet.
As it was recently pointed out with portable MP3 players, how "cool" and "stylish" or "trendy" is it right now to wear around a player with a big, blue DELL logo stamped on the front of it? Compare that to carrying around an Apple iPod. Apple has achieved something no other computer company has ever really achieved -- the ability to make computers and technology "hip" instead of "nerdy/geeky/dorky".
So no, Michael Dell isn't "crying". He has one of the most successful businesses around mass-producing PCs as commodity items at as low a price as possible. But if I could be another Micahel Dell or another Steve Jobs, I'd have to pick Jobs. His company actually does R&D, experiments with possible product ideas just for the sake of seeing how they work out, and he still has time to head up Pixar - a company creatively doing very fun AND profitable things with computers.
Well, I have mixed feelings on this story. On one hand, yeah - we all know Slashdot is going to latch on tightly to any news item that puts Microsoft in a negative light, so it's immediately suspect.
On the other hand, the part that bothers me is the accusation that MS is intentionally ordering stores to "sell out" on a pre-agreed date, or trying to ensure that the "sold out" notices are prominently displayed.
There's a difference between announcing a new product and not really having much supply of it for a little while after the announcement, and orchestrating the whole thing into a sales gimmick.
I'm an Apple user/fan myself, and I think all of us are aware of Apple's "standard practice" of announcing new products before production is ramped up enough to really supply the demand. But to the best of my knowledge, Apple never pressured any resellers to sign agreements to guarantee they were "sold out" at preset dates/times, or to handle the fact they sold out in a particular fashion. That goes far above and beyond simple inability or unwillingness to supply initial demand for a new product.
If you can't accept the Randi foundation as fair and unbiased in testing the paranormal, what alternatives do you think are better?
.... proving that 99.9% of the claims of having ESP, paranormal "powers" and so forth are fraudulent. If they were only able to find one real psychic after all these years, that wouldn't really change much for them, other than Randi having to admit that he finally found 1 isolated instance of someone having a power he never before believed really existed. That would probably make them look MORE legitimate, as it would heighten everyone's interest in finding out who is a scam and who isn't.
It seems to me this is a group which has given more thought than anyone else to applying science and logic to the whole thing. I don't think they're necessarily less motivated to hand over their prize money than anyone else would be who offered something like that up? I mean, no - nobody probably wants to give away a million bucks that's earning them a tidy sum of interest in a bank account someplace. But the claim that the Randi foundation would just "go away" if they had to give away the prize seems blatantly false. They'd simply be able to continue doing what they've done
It occurs to me that setting up this powerful of a search tool throughout the typical business means at least initially, people are going to dredge up all sorts of unexpected and perhaps unwanted things. (Say, just for example, a middle manager is working on plans for giving out raises or pay cuts for the next year. He might have an Excel or Word document or two out on a shared network drive mentioning some of his rough drafts for the idea. Bad idea of course, because he should be saving that stuff in a more secure place - but you know how things go. Might have even saved a version of a file there completely by accident? Traditionally, it would go unnoticed in most cases. But what if another employee is playing with the search tools, looking for all documents related to salary - and finds out what all of his co-workers are going to get paid next year?)
It'll only take one or two such incidents before management will demand removal or a serious lock-down of people's ability to use the search tools.
Also, think of the shock some people might get when their boss starts searching the contents of everyone's corporate email for key phrases. Once again, sure - we all get the general idea that "business email is not private", but how many of us took what seemed to be an infinitely small risk and made a couple off-color jokes, jabs at management, or other such things in an outgoing email written to a buddy over lunch break or something? Did you remember to make sure all that stuff was removed from your "sent items" or "deleted items" folders?