Well, I haven't had a major coporation lose an order of mine. However, I'm a small sample set.
I've just moved to the UK, and the incompetence of various companies has absolutely astounded me. I've just set up Banking Phone Internet Mobile Phones Insurance
Not once - NOT A SINGLE TIME - has the company not cocked up something that has required me to phone them back (and queue on the phone) at least once. Several cases have require multiple such calls (the worst required me to ditch them and go with someone else). Seriously, corporations suck - in my experience they're much more hopeless than government organisations. I reckon that whoever says the opposite has an agenda.
"You. Do. Not. Fuck over your strongest advocates."
Err.. surely their "strongest advocates" would be keen to get the laptops to the children, which (after all) is the whole friggin point of the exercise!
For some reason, the term "fair weather friends" is coming into my mind...
"Starry-eyed desire to save the world is a good drive, but fulfilling the orders and delivering on the promises requires a lot of mundane work."
Post-modern cynicism sounds really sophisticated and cool, but actually saying something meaningful requires some knowledge of the specifics and not merely sweeping generalisations.
And as another poster has noted, since when do corporations "provide consistently good service"??
Who would be prepared to sacrifice their personal privacy if it meant that all political/coporate interactions were public knowledge? Bribary, embezzlement, collusion... all could see the light of day..
Hell, if that happened we might even get a free market!
Unfortunately, I expect it might be a more one-sided loss of privacy in practice.
I'm not an authority, but I think this is incorrect. But to be honest, you don't sound like you really know what you're talking about either. Can I recommend again reading the article? (I know the LRB is a bit left, but there are a lot of interesting things in the article).
"the Government did the wrong thing in guaranteeing saver's deposits."
This is a big (belatedly-recognised) problem with the arrangement at the moment, and is discussed in the article to which I linked. The banks lended out (to unsafe borrowers) too much money. Why do this? Because they were trying to make money for their shareholders. So, essentially the bank was risking depositors money, and leveraging it to pay dividends to shareholders. Sound unfair to you? This is (according to some speculators) the only reason the government stepped in - shareholders are aware of the risks in the sharemarket, but people's money in the bank _should_ be safe.
Now, I go on a bit about this, cause I think it's disgusting that banks sell shares. The shareholders _should_ be the people who've put their money in there. (yes yes, naive idealism, I know)
I think it has, actually. The UK government injected a huge amount of tax-payers money into it, and there has been talk of forced nationalisation.
The London Review of books has a very interesting article about it that also gives quite a bit of financial background (eg. regarding futures, options, and the way that banks operate) that helped me to better understand the context of the whole thing.
"if cow A is good to eat, then a clone of cow A should be just as good to eat."
readers please observe the following disclaimer:
"clone" does not mean "exact copy" "should": refers to ideal scenario only, and is not necessarily applicable to the real world "just as good": does not necessarily refer to consumer satisfaction
IMO, the parent comment is just the sort of response you'd expect from a computer science crowd trying to comment on biological systems. Cloning a cow is not the same as cloning a partition on a hard disk.
And then imagine having every -1 Troll automatically modded +5 insightful. At least the/. moderation scheme is somewhat democratic - unlike the current media.
"In the meantime, some of us quite enjoy the odd Hollywood blockbuster or music video or album or novel that someone could afford to produce only because copyright law enabled them"
How lovely for you. I hope you don't expect us to hold our culture and freedom in shackles so that you can enjoy your Hollywood movies. The whole point of copyright is that it must be a _consensus_ - if the majority decide they don't want it, we shouldn't have it. To hell with big companies trying to dictate policy.
Exactly - what is to stop the labels reimplementing DRM when there are many small online music sellers? Small retailers wont be in a position to stand up to them in the way that Apple did.
...this is the voting power of your dollar at work
I dont think thats true. I think it was more the stubbornness and vendor-lock-in of the ITMS, and that this is a response of the labels to attempt to reduce Apples power (and hence increase their own power).
If there was only one shop that sold to consumers, and they insisted on a reasonable price, there isnt much the labels could do about it. If there are many shops, the labels could threaten to cut them off - that ol divide and conquer thing...
After the gnashing of teeth when XP was released, it amuses me greatly that people are now looking back to the "good ol' days" of XP with wistful nostalgia..
"Digital converted to analog, sent thru a cable at maximum capacity, converted back to digital will, by definition, look worse than a fully digital signal converted perfectly for each single pixel."
While that is true, it is my understanding that monitors generally convert a DVI signal to analogue prior to display anyway (at least this was the case a year or two ago). In that case, the only advantage to DVI is that there is no cable noise. My qualitative assessment says that this is not an issue (unless you have a very long monitor cable).
Having everything in one cable is nice, but really - how good are the average monitor (or TV) speakers anyway? Wouldn't you rather a separate cable going to your stereo?
"Digital" has become the new "MHz" - people don't seem to understand that analogue is not inherently worse (except in the case of making copies from copies from copies...).
I'll tell you this - I sure as hell won't be investing my $$$ in HDMI when there's no perceptible (and possibly little/no theoretical) difference, and DRM lockin..
while I agree with you, it potentially means a cut to our standard of living (particularly when things like global warming are considered). Also, the wealthiest people see this as an opportunity to increase their wealth, power and influence - they have no intention of becoming "less wealthy" for the global good.
I think we need to change our priorities. We need meaningful lives, not a new TV and car every 12 months.
At risk of putting words into your mouth (hence, I'll make this general and not aim it at you), there are people who would be up in arms if John Howard (ex PM) introduced this, but say things like "it's Labor, our team*, I guess it's not that bad."
This decision sucks, and I say that as a left-leaning voter. What the hell are Labor thinking? They don't have a mandate for this - there's plenty of other stuff for them to get on with. Please drop the politics Labor.
*To go on a little more - we need to lose this my team/your team thing if we're gonna survive as a species. You see it everywhere - good people supporting bad people because they're the same colour, religion, etc.
Something that might be relevant there is that in order to prevent clipping, it's common to only use about half the dynamic range when recording. It's only during final mixing that the gain is adjusted so that the loudest sounds are near maximum* volume. Perhaps this is the reason why you noticed such a big difference?
I'm not convinced. Would it not make more sense to talk about the genetic variance of the population, as compared with the mean? I would expect (gut feeling) average distance from the genetic mean of the population now to be larger than during Neanderthal times... what do you think?
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Well, I haven't had a major coporation lose an order of mine. However, I'm a small sample set.
I've just moved to the UK, and the incompetence of various companies has absolutely astounded me. I've just set up
Banking
Phone
Internet
Mobile Phones
Insurance
Not once - NOT A SINGLE TIME - has the company not cocked up something that has required me to phone them back (and queue on the phone) at least once. Several cases have require multiple such calls (the worst required me to ditch them and go with someone else). Seriously, corporations suck - in my experience they're much more hopeless than government organisations. I reckon that whoever says the opposite has an agenda.
"You. Do. Not. Fuck over your strongest advocates."
Err.. surely their "strongest advocates" would be keen to get the laptops to the children, which (after all) is the whole friggin point of the exercise!
For some reason, the term "fair weather friends" is coming into my mind...
"Starry-eyed desire to save the world is a good drive, but fulfilling the orders and delivering on the promises requires a lot of mundane work."
Post-modern cynicism sounds really sophisticated and cool, but actually saying something meaningful requires some knowledge of the specifics and not merely sweeping generalisations.
And as another poster has noted, since when do corporations "provide consistently good service"??
What's this nonsense? Ubuntu is Ubuntu. ...and that's kinda related to Mac, right? Just... more browner.
You've got it round the wrong way. GP was talking about running the windows GUI on Linux (a stupid idea), not KDE on windows (a great idea).
"How long before we can run a Windows GUI on Linux?"
Why the hell would you want to? As far as I can see, the only advantage that windows has is that it runs software written for windows.
(mostly)
Hmm. Interesting idea
Who would be prepared to sacrifice their personal privacy if it meant that all political/coporate interactions were public knowledge? Bribary, embezzlement, collusion... all could see the light of day..
Hell, if that happened we might even get a free market!
Unfortunately, I expect it might be a more one-sided loss of privacy in practice.
"zzzzzzZZZzzttttt and the 'fly' becomes a lay still and collect dust"
...and say hello to the lawsuit...
You can kiss goodbye all of your, and your neighbours' electronics (PC, phone, car, pacemaker)...
"It isn't tax money ...."
I'm not an authority, but I think this is incorrect. But to be honest, you don't sound like you really know what you're talking about either. Can I recommend again reading the article? (I know the LRB is a bit left, but there are a lot of interesting things in the article).
"the Government did the wrong thing in guaranteeing saver's deposits."
This is a big (belatedly-recognised) problem with the arrangement at the moment, and is discussed in the article to which I linked. The banks lended out (to unsafe borrowers) too much money. Why do this? Because they were trying to make money for their shareholders. So, essentially the bank was risking depositors money, and leveraging it to pay dividends to shareholders. Sound unfair to you? This is (according to some speculators) the only reason the government stepped in - shareholders are aware of the risks in the sharemarket, but people's money in the bank _should_ be safe.
Now, I go on a bit about this, cause I think it's disgusting that banks sell shares. The shareholders _should_ be the people who've put their money in there. (yes yes, naive idealism, I know)
"Northern Rock has not collapsed."
I think it has, actually. The UK government injected a huge amount of tax-payers money into it, and there has been talk of forced nationalisation.
The London Review of books has a very interesting article about it that also gives quite a bit of financial background (eg. regarding futures, options, and the way that banks operate) that helped me to better understand the context of the whole thing.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n01/lanc01_.html
Does making those kind of confessions on a public (and probably traceable) forum bother you?
"if cow A is good to eat, then a clone of cow A should be just as good to eat."
readers please observe the following disclaimer:
"clone" does not mean "exact copy"
"should": refers to ideal scenario only, and is not necessarily applicable to the real world
"just as good": does not necessarily refer to consumer satisfaction
IMO, the parent comment is just the sort of response you'd expect from a computer science crowd trying to comment on biological systems. Cloning a cow is not the same as cloning a partition on a hard disk.
Well, I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the pirate bay if they weren't making a shitload of money from advertising (~$50k/month, iirc).
Sorry to hear about the woes with your game - looks interesting, I'll check it out. As a "creative-type" myself, I wish you luck selling it.
And then imagine having every -1 Troll automatically modded +5 insightful. At least the /. moderation scheme is somewhat democratic - unlike the current media.
As a Firefox user with Adblock, I wasn't aware of it either.
;-)
In fact, I didn't even know that the internet had (non-text-based) advertising at all.
"In the meantime, some of us quite enjoy the odd Hollywood blockbuster or music video or album or novel that someone could afford to produce only because copyright law enabled them"
How lovely for you. I hope you don't expect us to hold our culture and freedom in shackles so that you can enjoy your Hollywood movies.
The whole point of copyright is that it must be a _consensus_ - if the majority decide they don't want it, we shouldn't have it. To hell with big companies trying to dictate policy.
Exactly - what is to stop the labels reimplementing DRM when there are many small online music sellers? Small retailers wont be in a position to stand up to them in the way that Apple did.
Free market my ass.
...this is the voting power of your dollar at work
I dont think thats true. I think it was more the stubbornness and vendor-lock-in of the ITMS, and that this is a response of the labels to attempt to reduce Apples power (and hence increase their own power).
If there was only one shop that sold to consumers, and they insisted on a reasonable price, there isnt much the labels could do about it. If there are many shops, the labels could threaten to cut them off - that ol divide and conquer thing...
After the gnashing of teeth when XP was released, it amuses me greatly that people are now looking back to the "good ol' days" of XP with wistful nostalgia..
Boiling frogs, anyone?
"Digital converted to analog, sent thru a cable at maximum capacity, converted back to digital will, by definition, look worse than a fully digital signal converted perfectly for each single pixel."
While that is true, it is my understanding that monitors generally convert a DVI signal to analogue prior to display anyway (at least this was the case a year or two ago). In that case, the only advantage to DVI is that there is no cable noise. My qualitative assessment says that this is not an issue (unless you have a very long monitor cable).
Having everything in one cable is nice, but really - how good are the average monitor (or TV) speakers anyway? Wouldn't you rather a separate cable going to your stereo?
"Digital" has become the new "MHz" - people don't seem to understand that analogue is not inherently worse (except in the case of making copies from copies from copies...).
I'll tell you this - I sure as hell won't be investing my $$$ in HDMI when there's no perceptible (and possibly little/no theoretical) difference, and DRM lockin..
I just don't get this. I have a 22" LCD widescreen Acer monitor - 1680x1050, and it only has a VGA connector. It looks beautiful.
To be honest, I'm fairly skeptical about the claims of superiority of HDMI. Are people being suckered?
while I agree with you, it potentially means a cut to our standard of living (particularly when things like global warming are considered). Also, the wealthiest people see this as an opportunity to increase their wealth, power and influence - they have no intention of becoming "less wealthy" for the global good.
I think we need to change our priorities. We need meaningful lives, not a new TV and car every 12 months.
At risk of putting words into your mouth (hence, I'll make this general and not aim it at you), there are people who would be up in arms if John Howard (ex PM) introduced this, but say things like "it's Labor, our team*, I guess it's not that bad."
This decision sucks, and I say that as a left-leaning voter. What the hell are Labor thinking? They don't have a mandate for this - there's plenty of other stuff for them to get on with. Please drop the politics Labor.
*To go on a little more - we need to lose this my team/your team thing if we're gonna survive as a species. You see it everywhere - good people supporting bad people because they're the same colour, religion, etc.
Something that might be relevant there is that in order to prevent clipping, it's common to only use about half the dynamic range when recording. It's only during final mixing that the gain is adjusted so that the loudest sounds are near maximum* volume. Perhaps this is the reason why you noticed such a big difference?
* I'm ignoring the "loudness wars" here...
I'm not convinced. Would it not make more sense to talk about the genetic variance of the population, as compared with the mean? I would expect (gut feeling) average distance from the genetic mean of the population now to be larger than during Neanderthal times... what do you think?