If a college being your ISP is a common carrier, then the network at any business would be a common carrier. It's not.
It's not a common carrier because the only people who have any access to the network are people who attend the school or work there. In dorm rooms, the university simply extends the privilages to those in the dorms and provides you a more liberal usage policy as compared to a business.
John Q. Smith on the street can't simply walk into campus and say "give me a connection." There may be some gray areas here, such as extending service to alumni or some other groups, but in general campus ISPs are not considered common carriers.
In more commercial and industrial situations, where it's more intelligent to get the vacuum off the floor, it's a good idea. But for home use, by the elderly, people with bad backs, and children old enough to push a vacuum but not carry one (my mother made me clean my room starting around age 9) it's not practical at all to have a backpack model.
When you consider the population at large, a floor model can be more versatile in terms of who can use it.
...is to switch to ubiquitous public transportation. The problem is that people at large are stupid. Driving is a dangerous activity and people get hurt or killed every day. And yet it's the only choice most of us have.
Lawmakers have to get out of this mindset of making laws for things to say what we can't do, and maybe work on rethinking the problem a bit.
Yes you can get physical exercise in phys ed, or you can get it elsewhere. You could also learn math or science from a private tutor, or your parents. Not all kids get activity they need. Studies don't show each and every single kid gets the activity they need.
According to this study that's true. However, this is one study. Let's look at others, like th studies that say active kids DO keep their weight down.
Obviously you haven't played the sports then. You can only learn so much as an armchair quarterback. You can learn more about a sport by playing it. It's that simple. It gives you a greater appreciation for it. It's education. You dismiss my argument as stupid because you cannot effectively refute it. School is about learning, so physical education is about learning physical activities. School is about exposing kids to lots of knowledge. Many people are willing to dismiss it because it's not the knowledge they want to learn, or find something stupid. I was once like that. I have no desire to read poetry, that doesn't mean I should be studying it in order to be exposed to it. Your same argument can be applied to anything else in a school.
You've put all your chips on one study that says physical education doesn't help obesity. But you haven't asked if it helps Stamina, sleep patterns, hand-eye coordination, speed, mental concentration, strength, dexterity or anything else. These are all important things too. You've not made a case to dismiss phys ed from the american education system. You seem to have a personal aversion to it, why I'm not sure.
Physical Education is just that Physical Education. I'm not an athlete, I'm a computer geek, but I fully support phys ed in school:
1) Phys Ed gives kids activity to expend energy. Studies show exercise helps not just the body but the mind.
2) Phys Ed encourages physical activity which is important as an Adult. Exercise may not help childhood obesity (which is still questionable, you know how these quack studies pop up on slashdot regularly just to drum up hits), but it definitely helps as you are an adult.
3) What's wrong with learning about Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Football, Lacrosse, Archery, Wrestling, track, tennis, softball, volleyball, bowling, or Badminton? If we shouldn't learn about these activities, then we shouldn't anything past the 6th grade. If this isn't important, then Shakespeare, Calculus, world history, and Chemistry aren't important.
As for Atkins, that's a half assed answer to health for kids. You don't just try diets to get a kids weight down. That's poor education. If you keep a kid active, regulate how much they eat and they are still obese, take them to a doctor and get it looked at. Otherwise don't obsess about their weight, and don't go crazy. Some kids will be fat, others won't. Teach them to feel good about themselves, don't teach them to go nuts about their weight and start getting them on ties as some kind of experiment.
I'm absolutely shocked by the ignorance some people about credit cards. Now I'm not talking about a Joe on the street, I'm talking about people taking the orders. Many merchants favor convenience over everything else.
For example, in the order processing system I support, we mask the first 12 digits of the credit card when you retrieve an existing order. It didn't always do that, but it eventually did as part of an upgrade to comply with the PCI standards above. That makes sense, lots of systems started doing that even before the standards and now all of them do. But one guy wanted to argue with me that it will hurt his customer service because he can't read the card number. I explained to him that it's out of my control and that Visa imposed these restrictions on all computer systems and you can't buy a system that doesn't have this feature any more. Further more merchants and software companies could be fined by Visa if they didn't have these restrictions.
I was going to explain why Visa mandated the changed and explain card security when he demanded: "We'll take the chance, change it back." If I were his customer, I'd have yanked my business, knowing that it's an easy inside job for him to steal my credit card.
Also, it's happened to me twice recently, where two major chains I visited (Superfresh and Target) took my card and made me sign an electronic signature capture device for my signature. In both cases, the signature pad and/or pen was broken and was basically reading garbage. I could not write my signature. In both cases they said "we don't need your signature" and just ushered me out of line. Okay they are major chains, and could eat a charge now and then, but hell you would think they would care about their signature pads a little more. Maybe close the line or have replacements on hand to easily swap out. Everyone going through that line that day was a potential risk to the merchant for a chargeback, just because they didn't capture a proper signature. And that exposes me as well because I'm unable to sign my signature which leaves me open for question when signing other receipts.
The way security works now in credit cards I feel is good, and it's designed to increase the security on integrated systems. 80 to 85% of credit card number theft is an inside job. People stealing card numbers and internal information, and computers just make it easier to do that without restrictions on said computer. The merchant doesn't care if you get hit with fraud. Visa cares because if their cards are insecure, no one will use them. So Visa makes the merchant's care by assigning responsibility to them, because that's were most fraud occurs. It's very logical.
I've noticed those Japanese style RPGs there's not much of a level grind. Zelda is one that comes to mind, and the original Final Fantasy.
Zelda does this by combining the elements of a puzzle game with a little bit of FPS thrown in. There are no levels, you just get dramatically better because you get powerups and better equipment. However, how well you do is primarily based on your skill with the moves and the controller.
Final fantasy did this by basically pacing you through the areas of the game so that if you ran through each area straight through without stopping to "level grind" the game would in general level you to sufficient power. No "you must be this level to take this guy on." The natural course of the game gave you the power you needed.
In Spiderweb's games, there's very little need, or even ability, to grind. However, the one thing that both it's strength and weakness is that you need to switch tracks every now and then. It's nice to be able to feel like you can control where you go and organize how you tackle multiple quests, but sometimes I've run into situations where I'm simply not strong enough to tackle a question and I have to go do something else, which is mildly annoying.
The RPG grind back in the 80s wasn't that bad. The real problem with the grind is when you compare it to other people in MMORPGs. In the 80s, I played wizardry and bards tale. The grind was part of the game, but I loved it because I could track my progress, level, and move on. It was on my own terms and I felt good because it was the game challenging me and I pushed myself to do my best.
In MMORPGs, I can push to do my best, and then some asshole comes up to me and says "You aren't level 99 yet? You don't have a sword of +50 pwnz j00r azz yet? Where's your orb of ultimate sexiness? You suXX0rs d00d." MMORPGs are in general scaled to try to satisfy the most people in order to make the most money, and make you make an investment of time to get anywhere. And that's the problem. Jeff's right that MMORPGs are about time invested, and the reward is a measurable level of power or amount of gold or equipment. MMORPGs have become places where your penis size is measured by the number of levels you have, and can bring out the worst in people.
the price tag is never seen as that bad by many of these people because their six figure salary is (way) above their average customers income level.
History, especially recent history, and very especially the history of the iPod, has shown that's false. Execs are acutely aware of prices of their items. Sales price is the single most important thing to any exec because it's how you make money!! People think that because an iPod isn't $25 that it's not priced for the masses. Guess what? If you can only afford $25 for an mp3 player, then Apple is NOT targetting you. Execs spend boku bucks figuring out the right market for their goods and services.
Will they use market forces to keep their prices high? Sure. Corporations aren't by any means populist, they know exactly what they are doing.
Typical cop out. Attack the person instead of the argument. I knew you were full of flame bait. If my argument holds no water, please prove it and stop acting like you're in elementary school.
No Wikipedia is NOT slightly less accurate than Britannica, it's very very inaccurate. The study that wikiphiles like to quote was a stitch-up designed to show Wikipedia in the most favorable light.
OMG!!! Did you even read the Register article? Did you happen to notice the sources for said article? The only two significant sources for the article were the editor of Nature magazine, who published the article stating that Wikipedia and brittanica were roughly the same in accuracy... and Brittanica!!! All the bashing over the article was done by Brittanica lackeys! C'mon you have got to be kidding me. You're claiming this as proof? Show me independent studies, not an emotional article from a hack of an IT news site.
Brittanica may be right, but you've not sited a primary source which can be used to confirm this, and as such have fallen into the "bear trap" yourself.
Most of the time Wikipedia varies between mediocre and deeply flawed. Yes there's lots of interesting trivia in there but there are also gaping flaws that the unwary won't pick up on.
Perhaps you should site some examples? The whole argument about Wikipedia centers around siting sources and having proper references. You have given none, therefore you are as about as reliable as you say wikipedia is.
Nor can you avoid Wikipedia by just putting -wikipedia and -wiki in your search engine: there are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia and more are being setup by the day.
That's a technical issue I can't speak to, but just because someone annoyingly crawls every website in existance doesn't mean that it has any direct affect on article accuracy. You don't even have a very good correlation to work with here either.
Will Citizendium avoid the bear-trap that Wikipedia has fallen into? It depends very much on how much control the editors really have. It also depends on whether Citizendium's contributors continue to do so when they have no guarantee that their work ever sees the light of day.
The bear trap is making Wikipedia out to be a flawed attempt at the be all end all repository for human knowledge, and that's what you are doing here. Brittanica and Wikipedia are two different ways of trying to achieve the same goal, of creating an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is not the codex of ultimate wisdom and knowledge. It's a summary of significant points of fact in time and the world, and is meant to give you, the reader, a place to start in your quest for knowledge. However, the wise researcher knows to question everything, including the encyclopedia. Britannica has sources for every article, and if Wikipedia doesn't have a source for information, the article will tell you that it lacks a source and posts a note asking for someone who wants to update such a page.
Britannica's philosophy is a closed system of researchers and scholars working for a company that is out to make money. Their advantage is also their disadvantage, in that not just anyone can edit their articles. A centralized authority keeps the jokers and morons out, but it is subject to bias, no matter how hard they try. Also, I absolutely hate that brittanica.com is a pay site. Knowledge should be free.
Wikipedia's philosophy is an open system of researchers and scholars donating their time to create a free and open site that anyone can read. Their advantage is also their disadvantage, in that anyone can contribute. They have moderation controls in place to help this out. It's still a problem with heated articles about current political figures who want to cast themselves in a heroic light, despite the dumb shit they've done. Noise is a problem but I frequently read several articles to learn something new I never knew about, and get a good starting point for more research. Despite complaints I continue to see, I've never seen anything like COWBOYNEAL IS TACO'S BITCH in any article, nor have I read anything to lead me to believe there's severe bias or tremendous amounts
She posted his name...hardly anything criminal or immoral. It's not her fault people know how to use google (in fact...if *you* knew how to use google, you could easily find the "complete exchange"). She's also not responsible for other people making threats against him.
If she posted his name in order to single him out, along with his picture, exactly what did she expect? A lot of nicely formatted disgruntled little letters asking him to be slapped on the wrist? He does have an expectation of privacy as an individual. As a corporation, one of the employees did something bad, and she's singling out an employee as a person, not the company who's responsible for the actions of one person.
And by all means, find the complete exchange and post it here. Of course a site like this is going to get slashdotted, why don't you *service* the community and post a link here please?
As a *customer service* rep. (no way he's a manager), it IS his responsibility to not be an asshat. He failed...I blame him for that...I blame the company for hiring him.
Did he set the policy that deleted her email? No? did he actually delete her mail? No. The company set the policy and the company deleted the mail. As a *customer service* rep, it's his responsibility to do what he can to assist the customer, using the tools and policies set down by his company. As the face of the company, yes he is an asshat. The problem is that this action makes him out to be the person who was at fault for deleting the email. He's an asshat for being rude, not an asshat for deleting the email.
And I think he is a manager, because most customer service department are chop shops (hell, how much specialized knowledge does one need to support email). I have the pleasure (kinda) of working in a business to business support desk. The pay is higher, call volume is lower, but the consequences are higher for not doing a good job on service. He'd never be a manager in my company.
He was an ass from the get-go...he was trying to extort money from her (and, actually, the $5.95 plan ensures "Account Preservation" so trying to force the $19.95 plan on her was even more over the top.
Again, not his issue. You are attacking an individual, not a company. He's an asshat for being rude. He personally cannot restore emails. However, I think Lycos should own up to a mistake and do their best to help out. I'm not saying he didn't fuck up. I'm saying she's created a undeserved shitstorm.
Like I said...she just posted his name...everyone else took it from there.
Like I said, what did she expect? Scare him into being a good rep from now on? Posting specific names does no good and only could end up doing harm.
If you were competent, polite, and social perhaps you wouldn't get so much shit. Most of the CS reps I've dealt/worked with know how to read a troubleshooting flowchart and that's about the extent of their "competence". You deserve the shit you get.
Ah... I see now, you are a troll. Because if you weren't a troll you'd have realized you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. My job, personally, is way more complicated than a troubleshooting flowchart. Come, come sit at my job, find out how much money I make, and then see if you can do it without getting the shit I get. I get yelled at when there's a bug in the program, and I'm polite. I get yelled at when I won't give something to someone for free when if I did, I'd get fired, and I'm polite. I get yelled at when I don't have time to look at 8 system downs because my department is understaved, and I'm polite.
The customer is not always right. Customers are asshats too. In this case, what I'm saying is that both people are asshats. And you're an asshat for insulting me at my job.
Other support departments yes have to read a flowchart, but that's all the training they get. My job actually requires thinking outside the box, where as typical support jobs don't.
His response sucked. I'm a supervisor and if I was his boss, I'd have severely reprimanded him. At the same time, I have no idea what their complete exchange was because the sites have been/.ed.
I will say this. If she's posting personal information and people are identifying him and sending death threats, I want this woman prosecuted, persecuted, and hung from her toenails. As a support rep, personally attacking someone and putting their life in danger is immoral and wrong on so many levels.
1) You singled out a peon who works at a big company, even if he is the supervisor. He doesn't make policy, he only enforces it. Blame the company, not a single person.
2) It's email. It's not a kidney transplant. You had a lot of opportunities to get it back, and it's not the end of the world. Okay, if one of the emails contains the formula for nuclear fusion or the location of your small child and you can't find it anywhere else, I'll understand. Otherwise get over it.
3) You want help? Take the high road. This is the low road. To said "he's a jerk and I'm making fun of you for ever and ever." How mature is that?
4) He's getting death threats. OMG I'm going to find YOUR address and YOUR picture and get a bunch of support reps to give you death threats, you stupid bitch, and see how you like it! Death threats are nothing to laugh at, and are completely over the top, no matter what he said about your email.
5) I'm shocked and amazed at people who torment support reps as incompetant, rude, and unsocial. Do you realize how much shit we get thrown at us every day and how hard this job is because people like this? The nicer you are to me, the nicer I am for you. I get people yelling at me every day, and I help them, but I don't wanna, and I can't help that feeling. When I call someone for service, and I never yell at the person on the phone. I know form personal experience that being nice is the way to go. Now you've completely ruined your chance at ever getting your email back because, when an asshole pissed you off, you decided to be an even bigger asshole.
He has every right to sue her, and I hope she gets taken to the cleaners. Yes I'm emotional about this because this is scary to me. You don't take out your petty problems on a support rep. The support rep is just a cog in a wheel. Keep it oiled and it will do the job, but don't take a wrench to it just because it won't do what the machine can't do.
This is a slight tangent, but I also wanted to point out the pharmaceutical industry on a whole has profit margins in the order of 30%. That's not on a drug, or before nondrug expenses... that's after EVERYTHING. Marketing, HR, salaries, operating expenses.... everything. 30 cents of every dollar that the company makes goes directly into the company's bank account. That's the best margin in any industry in the world.
While we are on h2g2, don't forget the sirius cybernetics corporation slogan!
Remember, the letters were so large, the sign sunk half way into the ground, and in an alien language, the top half of the letters translate to "Go stick your head in a pig."
I have to say the development/testing/design team is pretty good. I've had my issues with them in the past but over all they are well above most.
That being said, I'm really sick and tired of Blizzard super media hype attitude. I'm tired of anyone in the computer industry using the word "innovative" to describe their next itteration of software. World of Starcraft will be fun, if that's what they do, but it will not be "innovative." You keep using that fucking word! I do not fucking think it means what you think it goddamn means!
(apologies to Mandy Potenkin)
Blizzard tries to do everything better than the next guy in terms of design, gameplay, and quality. Trying hard to make the game balance out while giving people lots of options and strategies. Trying hard to have good quality graphics that won't break machines not sold by alienware. Trying to kill as many bugs as possible. Trying to make sure the game isn't dominated by one trick ponies. Providing an background to the game so that players can feel more immersed.
It's better, yes, but more of the same. Warcraft was their first success. They made a second one. then they tried their hand at Diablo. Good game, that was reasonably innovative. Then they made Starcraft and the innovation stopped. Starcraft was fun, but it was orcs in space, stop kidding yourself. It wasn't "all new." It was only "all new" in that "All new 2007 Toyota Camry" kind of way. Then Diablo 2, then WC3. Then they saw two of their successful francises and merged the idea of the two together and now you have WoW. Recycling old ideas with improvements, and giving people the same thing as before.
I'm not belittling Blizzard or their games, I'm just really tired of their marketing department making sound like they are going to sell software that will give you instant multiple orgasms.
At a public corp where I worked for a while, the only thing I ever observed affecting the stock price was press. Good news or bad news didn't seem to matter, just that if we were mentioned in the press, the stock went up.
If you were in the news, traders got wind of you, and more people bought stock.
Many corporations do not pay dividends at all.
Very true, leaving only supply and demand as the factor on those stocks. In fact my point is that the major driving force in stock prices is supply and demand.
Curiously, changes in supply don't always affect demand in any way that can be reliably measured.
In terms of economics, supply doesn't affect demand. Supply and demand are technically separate forces that work together to set the price of goods and services. Supply is affected by how much in raw materials, how many people you have, your physical plant to make things, etc. Demand is generally affected by who wants it. These factors brought together help you set a price.
Stock has an artificial supply. One stock is a share in the company, and you can print as many pieces of stock as you want. There is limited amount of the stock, but the stock is constantly trading so there is constant, if not infinite, supply. Demand is simply how many shares have been bought and if people will think the value of the stock will go up. So primarily, the stock goes up and down as people buy and sell it. The more you buy, the more the price goes up, the more you sell, the more the price goes down.
Trading stocks short term simply about learning about stock trends and getting ahead of those trends before anyone else does.
Simple. Not because there are tons of gullable people, but because there are tons of greedy Stock brokers trying to get a piece of the action.
Pump n dump is all about timing. There are two things important to a stocks price. One is the amount of dividends that the stock pays out at the end of the fiscal year. The other is simple supply and demand. Dividends is only for long term investors. In the short term, it's simple supply and demand. The more you buy, the more the price goes up.
So the spammers are taking advantage of greed. They buy stock, the price goes up. The traders look and say "oohhhh a scam, better get in on the ground floor and see if I can take advantage of the scam too." The scammers then bail, and leave the traders to fend for themselves. Some of these traders make out like bandits, some get reasonable profits, many get screwed by selling to late.
The spammers are just looking for a bunch of day traders or short term investors who are as greedy as they are.
Slashdot Mirror
With the typical women who spend most of their time online, they probably outweigh online males too...
Spoken like a true arrogant netgeek lardass male.
If a college being your ISP is a common carrier, then the network at any business would be a common carrier. It's not.
It's not a common carrier because the only people who have any access to the network are people who attend the school or work there. In dorm rooms, the university simply extends the privilages to those in the dorms and provides you a more liberal usage policy as compared to a business.
John Q. Smith on the street can't simply walk into campus and say "give me a connection." There may be some gray areas here, such as extending service to alumni or some other groups, but in general campus ISPs are not considered common carriers.
Actually, I think it just reflects the tastes of the average slashdotter... we tend to be more discerning and have more sophisticated interests.
In more commercial and industrial situations, where it's more intelligent to get the vacuum off the floor, it's a good idea. But for home use, by the elderly, people with bad backs, and children old enough to push a vacuum but not carry one (my mother made me clean my room starting around age 9) it's not practical at all to have a backpack model.
When you consider the population at large, a floor model can be more versatile in terms of who can use it.
...unless it has a Starbuck's.
...is to switch to ubiquitous public transportation. The problem is that people at large are stupid. Driving is a dangerous activity and people get hurt or killed every day. And yet it's the only choice most of us have.
Lawmakers have to get out of this mindset of making laws for things to say what we can't do, and maybe work on rethinking the problem a bit.
Yes you can get physical exercise in phys ed, or you can get it elsewhere. You could also learn math or science from a private tutor, or your parents. Not all kids get activity they need. Studies don't show each and every single kid gets the activity they need.
According to this study that's true. However, this is one study. Let's look at others, like th studies that say active kids DO keep their weight down.
Obviously you haven't played the sports then. You can only learn so much as an armchair quarterback. You can learn more about a sport by playing it. It's that simple. It gives you a greater appreciation for it. It's education. You dismiss my argument as stupid because you cannot effectively refute it. School is about learning, so physical education is about learning physical activities. School is about exposing kids to lots of knowledge. Many people are willing to dismiss it because it's not the knowledge they want to learn, or find something stupid. I was once like that. I have no desire to read poetry, that doesn't mean I should be studying it in order to be exposed to it. Your same argument can be applied to anything else in a school.
You've put all your chips on one study that says physical education doesn't help obesity. But you haven't asked if it helps Stamina, sleep patterns, hand-eye coordination, speed, mental concentration, strength, dexterity or anything else. These are all important things too. You've not made a case to dismiss phys ed from the american education system. You seem to have a personal aversion to it, why I'm not sure.
Physical Education is just that Physical Education. I'm not an athlete, I'm a computer geek, but I fully support phys ed in school:
1) Phys Ed gives kids activity to expend energy. Studies show exercise helps not just the body but the mind.
2) Phys Ed encourages physical activity which is important as an Adult. Exercise may not help childhood obesity (which is still questionable, you know how these quack studies pop up on slashdot regularly just to drum up hits), but it definitely helps as you are an adult.
3) What's wrong with learning about Baseball, Basketball, Hockey, Football, Lacrosse, Archery, Wrestling, track, tennis, softball, volleyball, bowling, or Badminton? If we shouldn't learn about these activities, then we shouldn't anything past the 6th grade. If this isn't important, then Shakespeare, Calculus, world history, and Chemistry aren't important.
As for Atkins, that's a half assed answer to health for kids. You don't just try diets to get a kids weight down. That's poor education. If you keep a kid active, regulate how much they eat and they are still obese, take them to a doctor and get it looked at. Otherwise don't obsess about their weight, and don't go crazy. Some kids will be fat, others won't. Teach them to feel good about themselves, don't teach them to go nuts about their weight and start getting them on ties as some kind of experiment.
In a desparate attempt to get FFXI installed on my linux machine I resorted to attempting to use VMware
Ummm... Exactly how desperate does one have to be to attempt that???
Was I the only one who skimmed the story header and thought of Thiotimoline?
Yes.
We can test it by using it on the moon first, and use it to download porn of Amazon women. I bet there will be plenty of volunteers to test that out.
I'm absolutely shocked by the ignorance some people about credit cards. Now I'm not talking about a Joe on the street, I'm talking about people taking the orders. Many merchants favor convenience over everything else.
For example, in the order processing system I support, we mask the first 12 digits of the credit card when you retrieve an existing order. It didn't always do that, but it eventually did as part of an upgrade to comply with the PCI standards above. That makes sense, lots of systems started doing that even before the standards and now all of them do. But one guy wanted to argue with me that it will hurt his customer service because he can't read the card number. I explained to him that it's out of my control and that Visa imposed these restrictions on all computer systems and you can't buy a system that doesn't have this feature any more. Further more merchants and software companies could be fined by Visa if they didn't have these restrictions.
I was going to explain why Visa mandated the changed and explain card security when he demanded: "We'll take the chance, change it back." If I were his customer, I'd have yanked my business, knowing that it's an easy inside job for him to steal my credit card.
Also, it's happened to me twice recently, where two major chains I visited (Superfresh and Target) took my card and made me sign an electronic signature capture device for my signature. In both cases, the signature pad and/or pen was broken and was basically reading garbage. I could not write my signature. In both cases they said "we don't need your signature" and just ushered me out of line. Okay they are major chains, and could eat a charge now and then, but hell you would think they would care about their signature pads a little more. Maybe close the line or have replacements on hand to easily swap out. Everyone going through that line that day was a potential risk to the merchant for a chargeback, just because they didn't capture a proper signature. And that exposes me as well because I'm unable to sign my signature which leaves me open for question when signing other receipts.
The way security works now in credit cards I feel is good, and it's designed to increase the security on integrated systems. 80 to 85% of credit card number theft is an inside job. People stealing card numbers and internal information, and computers just make it easier to do that without restrictions on said computer. The merchant doesn't care if you get hit with fraud. Visa cares because if their cards are insecure, no one will use them. So Visa makes the merchant's care by assigning responsibility to them, because that's were most fraud occurs. It's very logical.
I've noticed those Japanese style RPGs there's not much of a level grind. Zelda is one that comes to mind, and the original Final Fantasy.
Zelda does this by combining the elements of a puzzle game with a little bit of FPS thrown in. There are no levels, you just get dramatically better because you get powerups and better equipment. However, how well you do is primarily based on your skill with the moves and the controller.
Final fantasy did this by basically pacing you through the areas of the game so that if you ran through each area straight through without stopping to "level grind" the game would in general level you to sufficient power. No "you must be this level to take this guy on." The natural course of the game gave you the power you needed.
In Spiderweb's games, there's very little need, or even ability, to grind. However, the one thing that both it's strength and weakness is that you need to switch tracks every now and then. It's nice to be able to feel like you can control where you go and organize how you tackle multiple quests, but sometimes I've run into situations where I'm simply not strong enough to tackle a question and I have to go do something else, which is mildly annoying.
The RPG grind back in the 80s wasn't that bad. The real problem with the grind is when you compare it to other people in MMORPGs. In the 80s, I played wizardry and bards tale. The grind was part of the game, but I loved it because I could track my progress, level, and move on. It was on my own terms and I felt good because it was the game challenging me and I pushed myself to do my best.
In MMORPGs, I can push to do my best, and then some asshole comes up to me and says "You aren't level 99 yet? You don't have a sword of +50 pwnz j00r azz yet? Where's your orb of ultimate sexiness? You suXX0rs d00d." MMORPGs are in general scaled to try to satisfy the most people in order to make the most money, and make you make an investment of time to get anywhere. And that's the problem. Jeff's right that MMORPGs are about time invested, and the reward is a measurable level of power or amount of gold or equipment. MMORPGs have become places where your penis size is measured by the number of levels you have, and can bring out the worst in people.
Global warming is made of people!!!!
(pun intended)
the price tag is never seen as that bad by many of these people because their six figure salary is (way) above their average customers income level.
History, especially recent history, and very especially the history of the iPod, has shown that's false. Execs are acutely aware of prices of their items. Sales price is the single most important thing to any exec because it's how you make money!! People think that because an iPod isn't $25 that it's not priced for the masses. Guess what? If you can only afford $25 for an mp3 player, then Apple is NOT targetting you. Execs spend boku bucks figuring out the right market for their goods and services.
Will they use market forces to keep their prices high? Sure. Corporations aren't by any means populist, they know exactly what they are doing.
Typical cop out. Attack the person instead of the argument. I knew you were full of flame bait. If my argument holds no water, please prove it and stop acting like you're in elementary school.
No Wikipedia is NOT slightly less accurate than Britannica, it's very very inaccurate. The study that wikiphiles like to quote was a stitch-up designed to show Wikipedia in the most favorable light.
OMG!!! Did you even read the Register article? Did you happen to notice the sources for said article? The only two significant sources for the article were the editor of Nature magazine, who published the article stating that Wikipedia and brittanica were roughly the same in accuracy... and Brittanica!!! All the bashing over the article was done by Brittanica lackeys! C'mon you have got to be kidding me. You're claiming this as proof? Show me independent studies, not an emotional article from a hack of an IT news site.
Brittanica may be right, but you've not sited a primary source which can be used to confirm this, and as such have fallen into the "bear trap" yourself.
Most of the time Wikipedia varies between mediocre and deeply flawed. Yes there's lots of interesting trivia in there but there are also gaping flaws that the unwary won't pick up on.
Perhaps you should site some examples? The whole argument about Wikipedia centers around siting sources and having proper references. You have given none, therefore you are as about as reliable as you say wikipedia is.
Nor can you avoid Wikipedia by just putting -wikipedia and -wiki in your search engine: there are at least 965 domains that scrape Wikipedia and more are being setup by the day.
That's a technical issue I can't speak to, but just because someone annoyingly crawls every website in existance doesn't mean that it has any direct affect on article accuracy. You don't even have a very good correlation to work with here either.
Will Citizendium avoid the bear-trap that Wikipedia has fallen into? It depends very much on how much control the editors really have. It also depends on whether Citizendium's contributors continue to do so when they have no guarantee that their work ever sees the light of day.
The bear trap is making Wikipedia out to be a flawed attempt at the be all end all repository for human knowledge, and that's what you are doing here. Brittanica and Wikipedia are two different ways of trying to achieve the same goal, of creating an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia is not the codex of ultimate wisdom and knowledge. It's a summary of significant points of fact in time and the world, and is meant to give you, the reader, a place to start in your quest for knowledge. However, the wise researcher knows to question everything, including the encyclopedia. Britannica has sources for every article, and if Wikipedia doesn't have a source for information, the article will tell you that it lacks a source and posts a note asking for someone who wants to update such a page.
Britannica's philosophy is a closed system of researchers and scholars working for a company that is out to make money. Their advantage is also their disadvantage, in that not just anyone can edit their articles. A centralized authority keeps the jokers and morons out, but it is subject to bias, no matter how hard they try. Also, I absolutely hate that brittanica.com is a pay site. Knowledge should be free.
Wikipedia's philosophy is an open system of researchers and scholars donating their time to create a free and open site that anyone can read. Their advantage is also their disadvantage, in that anyone can contribute. They have moderation controls in place to help this out. It's still a problem with heated articles about current political figures who want to cast themselves in a heroic light, despite the dumb shit they've done. Noise is a problem but I frequently read several articles to learn something new I never knew about, and get a good starting point for more research. Despite complaints I continue to see, I've never seen anything like COWBOYNEAL IS TACO'S BITCH in any article, nor have I read anything to lead me to believe there's severe bias or tremendous amounts
She posted his name...hardly anything criminal or immoral. It's not her fault people know how to use google (in fact...if *you* knew how to use google, you could easily find the "complete exchange"). She's also not responsible for other people making threats against him.
If she posted his name in order to single him out, along with his picture, exactly what did she expect? A lot of nicely formatted disgruntled little letters asking him to be slapped on the wrist? He does have an expectation of privacy as an individual. As a corporation, one of the employees did something bad, and she's singling out an employee as a person, not the company who's responsible for the actions of one person.
And by all means, find the complete exchange and post it here. Of course a site like this is going to get slashdotted, why don't you *service* the community and post a link here please?
As a *customer service* rep. (no way he's a manager), it IS his responsibility to not be an asshat. He failed...I blame him for that...I blame the company for hiring him.
Did he set the policy that deleted her email? No? did he actually delete her mail? No. The company set the policy and the company deleted the mail. As a *customer service* rep, it's his responsibility to do what he can to assist the customer, using the tools and policies set down by his company. As the face of the company, yes he is an asshat. The problem is that this action makes him out to be the person who was at fault for deleting the email. He's an asshat for being rude, not an asshat for deleting the email.
And I think he is a manager, because most customer service department are chop shops (hell, how much specialized knowledge does one need to support email). I have the pleasure (kinda) of working in a business to business support desk. The pay is higher, call volume is lower, but the consequences are higher for not doing a good job on service. He'd never be a manager in my company.
He was an ass from the get-go...he was trying to extort money from her (and, actually, the $5.95 plan ensures "Account Preservation" so trying to force the $19.95 plan on her was even more over the top.
Again, not his issue. You are attacking an individual, not a company. He's an asshat for being rude. He personally cannot restore emails. However, I think Lycos should own up to a mistake and do their best to help out. I'm not saying he didn't fuck up. I'm saying she's created a undeserved shitstorm.
Like I said...she just posted his name...everyone else took it from there.
Like I said, what did she expect? Scare him into being a good rep from now on? Posting specific names does no good and only could end up doing harm.
If you were competent, polite, and social perhaps you wouldn't get so much shit. Most of the CS reps I've dealt/worked with know how to read a troubleshooting flowchart and that's about the extent of their "competence". You deserve the shit you get.
Ah... I see now, you are a troll. Because if you weren't a troll you'd have realized you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. My job, personally, is way more complicated than a troubleshooting flowchart. Come, come sit at my job, find out how much money I make, and then see if you can do it without getting the shit I get. I get yelled at when there's a bug in the program, and I'm polite. I get yelled at when I won't give something to someone for free when if I did, I'd get fired, and I'm polite. I get yelled at when I don't have time to look at 8 system downs because my department is understaved, and I'm polite.
The customer is not always right. Customers are asshats too. In this case, what I'm saying is that both people are asshats. And you're an asshat for insulting me at my job.
Other support departments yes have to read a flowchart, but that's all the training they get. My job actually requires thinking outside the box, where as typical support jobs don't.
His response sucked. I'm a supervisor and if I was his boss, I'd have severely reprimanded him. At the same time, I have no idea what their complete exchange was because the sites have been /.ed.
I will say this. If she's posting personal information and people are identifying him and sending death threats, I want this woman prosecuted, persecuted, and hung from her toenails. As a support rep, personally attacking someone and putting their life in danger is immoral and wrong on so many levels.
1) You singled out a peon who works at a big company, even if he is the supervisor. He doesn't make policy, he only enforces it. Blame the company, not a single person.
2) It's email. It's not a kidney transplant. You had a lot of opportunities to get it back, and it's not the end of the world. Okay, if one of the emails contains the formula for nuclear fusion or the location of your small child and you can't find it anywhere else, I'll understand. Otherwise get over it.
3) You want help? Take the high road. This is the low road. To said "he's a jerk and I'm making fun of you for ever and ever." How mature is that?
4) He's getting death threats. OMG I'm going to find YOUR address and YOUR picture and get a bunch of support reps to give you death threats, you stupid bitch, and see how you like it! Death threats are nothing to laugh at, and are completely over the top, no matter what he said about your email.
5) I'm shocked and amazed at people who torment support reps as incompetant, rude, and unsocial. Do you realize how much shit we get thrown at us every day and how hard this job is because people like this? The nicer you are to me, the nicer I am for you. I get people yelling at me every day, and I help them, but I don't wanna, and I can't help that feeling. When I call someone for service, and I never yell at the person on the phone. I know form personal experience that being nice is the way to go. Now you've completely ruined your chance at ever getting your email back because, when an asshole pissed you off, you decided to be an even bigger asshole.
He has every right to sue her, and I hope she gets taken to the cleaners. Yes I'm emotional about this because this is scary to me. You don't take out your petty problems on a support rep. The support rep is just a cog in a wheel. Keep it oiled and it will do the job, but don't take a wrench to it just because it won't do what the machine can't do.
This is a slight tangent, but I also wanted to point out the pharmaceutical industry on a whole has profit margins in the order of 30%. That's not on a drug, or before nondrug expenses... that's after EVERYTHING. Marketing, HR, salaries, operating expenses.... everything. 30 cents of every dollar that the company makes goes directly into the company's bank account. That's the best margin in any industry in the world.
While we are on h2g2, don't forget the sirius cybernetics corporation slogan!
Remember, the letters were so large, the sign sunk half way into the ground, and in an alien language, the top half of the letters translate to "Go stick your head in a pig."
I have to say the development/testing/design team is pretty good. I've had my issues with them in the past but over all they are well above most.
That being said, I'm really sick and tired of Blizzard super media hype attitude. I'm tired of anyone in the computer industry using the word "innovative" to describe their next itteration of software. World of Starcraft will be fun, if that's what they do, but it will not be "innovative." You keep using that fucking word! I do not fucking think it means what you think it goddamn means!
(apologies to Mandy Potenkin)
Blizzard tries to do everything better than the next guy in terms of design, gameplay, and quality. Trying hard to make the game balance out while giving people lots of options and strategies. Trying hard to have good quality graphics that won't break machines not sold by alienware. Trying to kill as many bugs as possible. Trying to make sure the game isn't dominated by one trick ponies. Providing an background to the game so that players can feel more immersed.
It's better, yes, but more of the same. Warcraft was their first success. They made a second one. then they tried their hand at Diablo. Good game, that was reasonably innovative. Then they made Starcraft and the innovation stopped. Starcraft was fun, but it was orcs in space, stop kidding yourself. It wasn't "all new." It was only "all new" in that "All new 2007 Toyota Camry" kind of way. Then Diablo 2, then WC3. Then they saw two of their successful francises and merged the idea of the two together and now you have WoW. Recycling old ideas with improvements, and giving people the same thing as before.
I'm not belittling Blizzard or their games, I'm just really tired of their marketing department making sound like they are going to sell software that will give you instant multiple orgasms.
An Australian startup believes that the best way to protect your children online is through an artificially intelligent software program.
The moment you read this, you should have immediately moved onto the next article. That or went to Digg.com
At a public corp where I worked for a while, the only thing I ever observed affecting the stock price was press.
Good news or bad news didn't seem to matter, just that if we were mentioned in the press, the stock went up.
If you were in the news, traders got wind of you, and more people bought stock.
Many corporations do not pay dividends at all.
Very true, leaving only supply and demand as the factor on those stocks. In fact my point is that the major driving force in stock prices is supply and demand.
Curiously, changes in supply don't always affect demand in any way that can be reliably measured.
In terms of economics, supply doesn't affect demand. Supply and demand are technically separate forces that work together to set the price of goods and services. Supply is affected by how much in raw materials, how many people you have, your physical plant to make things, etc. Demand is generally affected by who wants it. These factors brought together help you set a price.
Stock has an artificial supply. One stock is a share in the company, and you can print as many pieces of stock as you want. There is limited amount of the stock, but the stock is constantly trading so there is constant, if not infinite, supply. Demand is simply how many shares have been bought and if people will think the value of the stock will go up. So primarily, the stock goes up and down as people buy and sell it. The more you buy, the more the price goes up, the more you sell, the more the price goes down.
Trading stocks short term simply about learning about stock trends and getting ahead of those trends before anyone else does.
Simple. Not because there are tons of gullable people, but because there are tons of greedy Stock brokers trying to get a piece of the action.
Pump n dump is all about timing. There are two things important to a stocks price. One is the amount of dividends that the stock pays out at the end of the fiscal year. The other is simple supply and demand. Dividends is only for long term investors. In the short term, it's simple supply and demand. The more you buy, the more the price goes up.
So the spammers are taking advantage of greed. They buy stock, the price goes up. The traders look and say "oohhhh a scam, better get in on the ground floor and see if I can take advantage of the scam too." The scammers then bail, and leave the traders to fend for themselves. Some of these traders make out like bandits, some get reasonable profits, many get screwed by selling to late.
The spammers are just looking for a bunch of day traders or short term investors who are as greedy as they are.