While I agree that BMI is not as accurate as other methods, its "problem" is that it defines averages, which obviously cannot apply to everyone. So in my case (similar to yours), I am deemed "overweight" not because of the amount of my total body weight that is fat, but because I, frankly, have a ginormous posterior and legs, which weigh a lot more than a potbelly.
But in your case, how much muscular weight can you put on, without the aid of juice, to push you from relative skinniness to obesity? Conversely, how much muscle mass (and consequently weight) do you lose in the 2 months of the rainy season? I have dealt with wrestlers and American football players, both of which have been known to wildly fluctuate in terms of body weight, and I've rarely seen (once someone reaches a certain level of fitness) the ability to swing so wildly in terms of muscular body weight. Body fat, yes, but not so much muscle.
Or - in less passive-aggressive terms - do you really go from "healthy" to "obese" (in BMI terms) in around 10 months with no increase in your body fat percentage? Especially considering you deem yourself skinny during the rainy season.
The DVD is there to get people into the store, with the knowledge that people who enter with the purpose of buying a DVD rarely leave with only the DVD in hand.
Yes - I understand the whole loss leader thing; my comments were more sarcastic than anything.
The problem I have with your 17.95 figure from the NY Post is then that nearly every single non-TV show DVD in the store (that is not HD or Blueray or full-frame) is a loss leader. Look at the new releases at Wal-Mart from September and make the exclusions (non-HD, etc.) that I have. They're all under 17 dollars, most under 16 dollars. (I recognize that not every DVD in the store is a new release, so it would be hard to set an average cost and an average price, but it's enough to make you wonder.)
Loss leaders are a great promotional tool for Wal-Mart because people invariably buy other items when they go in to buy the loss leader, plus there is the potential to bring in different shoppers because of the special. But the problems are obvious if you have too many loss leaders...or if you can generate just as many sales sans loss leader.
This is just my opinion, but I see the average Wal-Mart shopper, due to the type of store that Wal-Mart is, as filling their cart with other products -- TP, toothpaste, motor oil, a sweatshirt, whatever -- and then seeing a cheap DVD and tossing it in. (I think TFA mentioned something like this). Although the results look the same on paper, the loss leader was unnecessary because the person was at the store to buy necessities regardless of the presence of the loss leader. In this case, which would be difficult if not impossible to measure purely by numbers, it's a "pure loss" for Wal-Mart.
Wal-Mart starts in 1962 as Walton's Five and Dime and has large sales volumes.
Mothra starts in 1961 as a large blue egg.
Wal-Mart incorporates in 1969 and begins to grow.
Mothra hatches from the blue egg and, although only in the larval stage, destroys entire towns.
Wal-Mart erupts in the late 80's and destroys everything in its path.
Mothra spins its own cocoon and emerges as an awful, though somewhat puzzling, moth monster that destroys everything in its path.
An excellent and intriguing analogy, this one of Mothra. Quite clearly we cannot depend on Godzilla to battle Mothra. Where does a Spectreman-like figure that we can trust and that is capable of battling both 'Zilla and Mothra fit into the analogy?
First of all, just let me buy something online via a download without any digital coupons or anything like that. A novel concept would be that I would go to a website, pick a movie and download it. It's pretty complicated, granted, but I think it could be implemented. But that's neither here nor there...
Secondly, and completely unrelatedly, from TFA:
It [Wal-Mart] will sell "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" for $12.99, meaning it will take a hefty loss on each DVD to drive foot traffic in stores.
If they're taking a loss at $13 per DVD what's the real cost? If Wal-Mart buys 300,000 copies of something, do you mean to tell me they're paying more than $12.99 per movie?! I thought they were these great negotiators, cutthroat distributer killers. Or does that only work on toilet paper and tools made in China?
The problem with this analogy is that there could be a billion factors (or 2 or 3, I suppose) that have impacted movie ticket sales. For example, studios are using their clout more and more to release on a ridiculous number of screens. This inflates/distorts their metrics.
Another problem with this analogy is that it's basically an apples-to-oranges analogy; it is hard to connect the two scenarios. Buying a DVD costs something, just as buying a movie ticket costs something. How do you link the two scenarios, then, in regards to how buying nothing (relatively speaking) when you download a CD impacts whether or not you will pay for the same CD?***
It's not a direct correlation, but it wouldn't be too crazy to say that strong DVD sales are a result of strong movie ticket sales. You don't buy a DVD (in general) if you haven't seen the movie. But how does this relate to the downloading of music? I don't think it does (although I could be convinced otherwise).
***Spare me the soapbox try-before-you-buy sermons, friends. Self-satisfied do-gooders do exist; however, for every one of them, there are a thousand evil downloaders. [insert evil laugh]
Yeah - I hear ya. But even when the evaluation is anonymous, it doesn't change the way people think about their companies, especially larger companies.
For example, let's say I think I need a new phone, PDA or whatever in order to do my job better. Let's also say my manager has to approve that piece of equipment. If the manager declines it (for a good reason) most folks would still be more likely to think less of the manager than recognize that their own desire for a cooler piece of equipment may not factor well into budgeting, overall team morale, etc. Some folks would be able to recognize that and in those cases, your idea would work very well.
Yes - it won't work because you get what you measure. So you'll get a bunch of managers that may or may not know what the heck they're doing, but still get good marks from their underlings because they learn to be what their underlings want. You would end up with more and more of an already-too-existent nerd peeve -- the person with poor skills who gets by because they can work people.
You can't escape the fact that the things that make someone evaluate a person as a good manager would almost ALWAYS bump into the things that a company (and even some of its employees) would deem to be good managerial qualities. A good manager is a good manager because he or she can balance real business needs with real human needs. But the majority of employees don't care about the business needs (except all the ones that will respond to this saying how mature and fantastic they are, of course) and won't factor this into their evaluation.
Furthermore, said fines, damages and the (now almost cliche) ensuing rebates or deals that will follow can only give them a reason to raise their prices in order to recoup the corresponding "losses". This is a real "win-win".
Sometimes it implies that you're actually smarter than me, and you've used terminology I haven't heard yet -- and sometimes it means you're less knowledgeable than me, and you've invented terminology for things you don't really know about.
Perhaps I should clarify. My point is that the use of the "um" filler, while certainly understandable in speaking (as you've described) does not translate in the same way with the written word. Your consistent use of the word "say" shows that you recognize this concept, although I could be too strictly interpreting your usage of that word.
There's no need to use fillers (or stall for time as your brain is working) when writing something because the reader is interpreting a final written product and doesn't care if it took you 10 seconds or 10 minutes to write the response to their drivel. Writing and reading is not the same as conversing, so I maintain that, whatever your intentions, the use of "um" serves only to make a certain point to the reader and nothing more.
They should add a mod for use of "Ummm..." and the like. It's so pretentious. Why can't people just correct someone without the ego-driven need for the um?
If the polar bear population folds into the brown bear gene pool during
periods of warming, that would explain how the polar bears survived the
previous warm periods
I'm not a scientist, so my question is how do they unfold once the warm period is over?
I can only speak for myself, but I live 35 miles (56 km) from my workplace. So I can't go grab a bite to eat with my friends because they're all at least that far away. The friends I want to eat with are my friends here at work.
Secondly, my place of work also requires that you drive if you want to go grab something to eat for lunch. This is a pain and adds to the cost of going out.
Now - I work in a suburban area. I would imagine those who work in urban areas, as well as those who live closer to their work place, might have more convenient choices for going out, visiting with friends, etc., without the hassle of driving.
Finally, I may be guilty of cultural ignorance here (OH NO!), but I eat at work because I am hungry -- not for some kind of social time. The sooner I finish my work, the sooner I go home and enjoy the things I actually enjoy, not the the things I enjoy because they pay me money to do them. Do I enjoy the lunches I have with coworkers? Yeah. Would I trade them for more time to do as I please at home or somewhere else? Indeed.
No - I don't think it's actually a really smart thing to do. TFA talks about certain words that elicit more evilware than others. For instance, if you search for 'kazaa' or 'bearshare' or 'enormous jugs', etc. Should users expect Google to weed out the "bad" sites among the results considering that nearly all the results from some searches, especially the most popular, point to evilware-type sites?
The school I went to had a warning page set up that would pop up whenever someone would access a posting about pranks that were mislabled as "best ever". It worked great and I'm considering setting it up on my own network right now.
At risk of naively responding to someone who posted something in order to make a point, libertarianism is a philosophy based on the principle that individuals should be allowed complete freedom of action as long as they do not infringe on the same freedom of others. I'm not a libertarian, but I'm guessing they'd lump poisoning (whether the victim is limp-penised or not) under the whole freedom of others thingee.
That said, the interesting part of the discussion (besides connecting the dots in order to equate putting spyware on a machine with poisoning someone) is finding out where exactly you draw the line in terms of determining real infringement. Maybe that's where "libertarianism" falls apart.
"Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety"
Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?
Generally, disk encryption is great if a machine is stolen; however, it doesn't offer you any benefits should the machine be compromised following login of the encyption product (generally at boot). Some products have timeout modes kind of like a screensaver where it forces a login to the encrpytion package following a period of inactivity, but basically disk encryption isn't a safe bet for complete safety. For instance, it can do nothing if someone remotes in to the machine or a "rogue" employee accesses the machine after login. This is where content encryption offers benefits. Disk encryption alone is just a hassle for the user (in terms of an extra password to remember) in order to placate suits who want the company's rear end covered, but don't want to spend the money and resources (which can be substantial) on a complete package that would handle both disk and content encryption. Just my 2 cents.
Do you really think people need the government's help to "remain" stupid? That if the government stopped this secret plan of stupid-keeping, then somehow, some way, everyone would suddenly be educated and enlightened (like you) and everything would change?
No - it's not about communication. Nor is it a conspiracy to brainwash the youth into thinking [insert your favorite 24-hr-news-channel, newspaper, etc. here] offers anything more than poorly thought-out, ridiculous ideas.
A blog isn't only a means of dissent. For every opposition blog, there's a blog that supports political decisions.
So it wouldn't make sense to try to eliminate something that helps you just as much as it "hurts" you.
It's about winning votes from misinformed constituents.
How many tools not only posted the same joke about redirecting to microsoft.com, but also thought they were they first one to think of it?
Predictably ridiculous. And tiresome.
When was the last time McDonald's had "crunch time" ?
I'm not sure about McDonald's itself, but I'd say pretty much every time I bite into a fresh, hot and crispy McDonald's french fry would be my own personal "crunch time".
What is this "telephone" you write of? By your use of "speak", it's sounds like some sort of device that may require social skills that we have not mastered. How am I to pretend I am smart and important and not a shy, sweaty loser if the person on the other end can actually interact with me without the social, soft and hard firewalls to which I've become accustomed? And this "telephone" is real time, too? Yikes!
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While I agree that BMI is not as accurate as other methods, its "problem" is that it defines averages, which obviously cannot apply to everyone. So in my case (similar to yours), I am deemed "overweight" not because of the amount of my total body weight that is fat, but because I, frankly, have a ginormous posterior and legs, which weigh a lot more than a potbelly.
But in your case, how much muscular weight can you put on, without the aid of juice, to push you from relative skinniness to obesity? Conversely, how much muscle mass (and consequently weight) do you lose in the 2 months of the rainy season? I have dealt with wrestlers and American football players, both of which have been known to wildly fluctuate in terms of body weight, and I've rarely seen (once someone reaches a certain level of fitness) the ability to swing so wildly in terms of muscular body weight. Body fat, yes, but not so much muscle.
Or - in less passive-aggressive terms - do you really go from "healthy" to "obese" (in BMI terms) in around 10 months with no increase in your body fat percentage? Especially considering you deem yourself skinny during the rainy season.
Yes - I understand the whole loss leader thing; my comments were more sarcastic than anything.
The problem I have with your 17.95 figure from the NY Post is then that nearly every single non-TV show DVD in the store (that is not HD or Blueray or full-frame) is a loss leader. Look at the new releases at Wal-Mart from September and make the exclusions (non-HD, etc.) that I have. They're all under 17 dollars, most under 16 dollars. (I recognize that not every DVD in the store is a new release, so it would be hard to set an average cost and an average price, but it's enough to make you wonder.)
Loss leaders are a great promotional tool for Wal-Mart because people invariably buy other items when they go in to buy the loss leader, plus there is the potential to bring in different shoppers because of the special. But the problems are obvious if you have too many loss leaders...or if you can generate just as many sales sans loss leader.
This is just my opinion, but I see the average Wal-Mart shopper, due to the type of store that Wal-Mart is, as filling their cart with other products -- TP, toothpaste, motor oil, a sweatshirt, whatever -- and then seeing a cheap DVD and tossing it in. (I think TFA mentioned something like this). Although the results look the same on paper, the loss leader was unnecessary because the person was at the store to buy necessities regardless of the presence of the loss leader. In this case, which would be difficult if not impossible to measure purely by numbers, it's a "pure loss" for Wal-Mart.
An excellent and intriguing analogy, this one of Mothra. Quite clearly we cannot depend on Godzilla to battle Mothra. Where does a Spectreman-like figure that we can trust and that is capable of battling both 'Zilla and Mothra fit into the analogy?
First of all, just let me buy something online via a download without any digital coupons or anything like that. A novel concept would be that I would go to a website, pick a movie and download it. It's pretty complicated, granted, but I think it could be implemented. But that's neither here nor there...
Secondly, and completely unrelatedly, from TFA:
If they're taking a loss at $13 per DVD what's the real cost? If Wal-Mart buys 300,000 copies of something, do you mean to tell me they're paying more than $12.99 per movie?! I thought they were these great negotiators, cutthroat distributer killers. Or does that only work on toilet paper and tools made in China?
The problem with this analogy is that there could be a billion factors (or 2 or 3, I suppose) that have impacted movie ticket sales. For example, studios are using their clout more and more to release on a ridiculous number of screens. This inflates/distorts their metrics.
Another problem with this analogy is that it's basically an apples-to-oranges analogy; it is hard to connect the two scenarios. Buying a DVD costs something, just as buying a movie ticket costs something. How do you link the two scenarios, then, in regards to how buying nothing (relatively speaking) when you download a CD impacts whether or not you will pay for the same CD?***
It's not a direct correlation, but it wouldn't be too crazy to say that strong DVD sales are a result of strong movie ticket sales. You don't buy a DVD (in general) if you haven't seen the movie. But how does this relate to the downloading of music? I don't think it does (although I could be convinced otherwise).
***Spare me the soapbox try-before-you-buy sermons, friends. Self-satisfied do-gooders do exist; however, for every one of them, there are a thousand evil downloaders. [insert evil laugh]
Yeah - I hear ya. But even when the evaluation is anonymous, it doesn't change the way people think about their companies, especially larger companies.
For example, let's say I think I need a new phone, PDA or whatever in order to do my job better. Let's also say my manager has to approve that piece of equipment. If the manager declines it (for a good reason) most folks would still be more likely to think less of the manager than recognize that their own desire for a cooler piece of equipment may not factor well into budgeting, overall team morale, etc. Some folks would be able to recognize that and in those cases, your idea would work very well.
Yes - it won't work because you get what you measure. So you'll get a bunch of managers that may or may not know what the heck they're doing, but still get good marks from their underlings because they learn to be what their underlings want. You would end up with more and more of an already-too-existent nerd peeve -- the person with poor skills who gets by because they can work people.
You can't escape the fact that the things that make someone evaluate a person as a good manager would almost ALWAYS bump into the things that a company (and even some of its employees) would deem to be good managerial qualities. A good manager is a good manager because he or she can balance real business needs with real human needs. But the majority of employees don't care about the business needs (except all the ones that will respond to this saying how mature and fantastic they are, of course) and won't factor this into their evaluation.
Whoa! You've got a BMW and an Audi?
Furthermore, said fines, damages and the (now almost cliche) ensuing rebates or deals that will follow can only give them a reason to raise their prices in order to recoup the corresponding "losses". This is a real "win-win".
Another horror story!
Why's it always an SUV? Why not a sports car? Or a Harley?
Sometimes it implies that you're actually smarter than me, and you've used terminology I haven't heard yet -- and sometimes it means you're less knowledgeable than me, and you've invented terminology for things you don't really know about.
Perhaps I should clarify. My point is that the use of the "um" filler, while certainly understandable in speaking (as you've described) does not translate in the same way with the written word. Your consistent use of the word "say" shows that you recognize this concept, although I could be too strictly interpreting your usage of that word.
There's no need to use fillers (or stall for time as your brain is working) when writing something because the reader is interpreting a final written product and doesn't care if it took you 10 seconds or 10 minutes to write the response to their drivel. Writing and reading is not the same as conversing, so I maintain that, whatever your intentions, the use of "um" serves only to make a certain point to the reader and nothing more.
They should add a mod for use of "Ummm..." and the like. It's so pretentious. Why can't people just correct someone without the ego-driven need for the um?
If the polar bear population folds into the brown bear gene pool during periods of warming, that would explain how the polar bears survived the previous warm periods
I'm not a scientist, so my question is how do they unfold once the warm period is over?
I can only speak for myself, but I live 35 miles (56 km) from my workplace. So I can't go grab a bite to eat with my friends because they're all at least that far away. The friends I want to eat with are my friends here at work.
Secondly, my place of work also requires that you drive if you want to go grab something to eat for lunch. This is a pain and adds to the cost of going out.
Now - I work in a suburban area. I would imagine those who work in urban areas, as well as those who live closer to their work place, might have more convenient choices for going out, visiting with friends, etc., without the hassle of driving.
Finally, I may be guilty of cultural ignorance here (OH NO!), but I eat at work because I am hungry -- not for some kind of social time. The sooner I finish my work, the sooner I go home and enjoy the things I actually enjoy, not the the things I enjoy because they pay me money to do them. Do I enjoy the lunches I have with coworkers? Yeah. Would I trade them for more time to do as I please at home or somewhere else? Indeed.
No - I don't think it's actually a really smart thing to do. TFA talks about certain words that elicit more evilware than others. For instance, if you search for 'kazaa' or 'bearshare' or 'enormous jugs', etc. Should users expect Google to weed out the "bad" sites among the results considering that nearly all the results from some searches, especially the most popular, point to evilware-type sites?
The school I went to had a warning page set up that would pop up whenever someone would access a posting about pranks that were mislabled as "best ever". It worked great and I'm considering setting it up on my own network right now.
At risk of naively responding to someone who posted something in order to make a point, libertarianism is a philosophy based on the principle that individuals should be allowed complete freedom of action as long as they do not infringe on the same freedom of others. I'm not a libertarian, but I'm guessing they'd lump poisoning (whether the victim is limp-penised or not) under the whole freedom of others thingee.
That said, the interesting part of the discussion (besides connecting the dots in order to equate putting spyware on a machine with poisoning someone) is finding out where exactly you draw the line in terms of determining real infringement. Maybe that's where "libertarianism" falls apart.
"Users can't count on search engines to protect them; to the contrary, we find that search result rankings often do not reflect site safety" Are users really depending on search engines to protect them? Even foolish users?
Generally, disk encryption is great if a machine is stolen; however, it doesn't offer you any benefits should the machine be compromised following login of the encyption product (generally at boot). Some products have timeout modes kind of like a screensaver where it forces a login to the encrpytion package following a period of inactivity, but basically disk encryption isn't a safe bet for complete safety. For instance, it can do nothing if someone remotes in to the machine or a "rogue" employee accesses the machine after login. This is where content encryption offers benefits. Disk encryption alone is just a hassle for the user (in terms of an extra password to remember) in order to placate suits who want the company's rear end covered, but don't want to spend the money and resources (which can be substantial) on a complete package that would handle both disk and content encryption. Just my 2 cents.
Do you really think people need the government's help to "remain" stupid? That if the government stopped this secret plan of stupid-keeping, then somehow, some way, everyone would suddenly be educated and enlightened (like you) and everything would change?
No - it's not about communication. Nor is it a conspiracy to brainwash the youth into thinking [insert your favorite 24-hr-news-channel, newspaper, etc. here] offers anything more than poorly thought-out, ridiculous ideas. A blog isn't only a means of dissent. For every opposition blog, there's a blog that supports political decisions. So it wouldn't make sense to try to eliminate something that helps you just as much as it "hurts" you. It's about winning votes from misinformed constituents.
How many tools not only posted the same joke about redirecting to microsoft.com, but also thought they were they first one to think of it? Predictably ridiculous. And tiresome.
When was the last time McDonald's had "crunch time" ?
I'm not sure about McDonald's itself, but I'd say pretty much every time I bite into a fresh, hot and crispy McDonald's french fry would be my own personal "crunch time".
What is this "telephone" you write of? By your use of "speak", it's sounds like some sort of device that may require social skills that we have not mastered. How am I to pretend I am smart and important and not a shy, sweaty loser if the person on the other end can actually interact with me without the social, soft and hard firewalls to which I've become accustomed? And this "telephone" is real time, too? Yikes!