If you don't have a simple 4 x 3 array of actual press buttons with numbers in the usual order, with perfect right angles (none of the snaking, swoopy rows), you've failed in making a decent phone. Do whatever you want with the rest of the UI, but don't mess with the basic phone function. I've seen and have had to use some pretty bad phone button designs (where you have to look for each button in order to press it), and to put it bluntly, "I've had it with $#$##@@# bad button design on this $#$##@#@##@@# ". It's not rocket science. Here is a badly designed phone and a well-designed phone. At least as far as being able to dial numbers goes.
Yes....Bruce Dern aboard a biodome space-ship with nothing but a few droids to keep him company. He's the last human being in existence. If you wonder why, you need to look no further than the vast warehouse levels filled with crates of green crackers.
I see. You are referring more to Voyager's lack of connection to the rich backdrop of the "Alpha Quadrant" species, history empires, politics, and other situations. As opposed to mere species. I agree. This helped dragged down the show. What made it worse was the writers' consistent inability to come up with any new Delta Quadrant species or cultural context of interest. The Kazon, Vidiians, and Telaxians just do not cut it. I liked the Hunter and Prey species, actually, but it was too little, too late.
"Voyager was disconnected from the normal species fans wanted to know about"
What species did fans like the most? Probably Vulcans, Klingons, and Borg would be my guess. "Voyager" was actually the first of the newer series to feature a Vulcan as a regular major character, so they had a connection to a "species fans wanted to know about" that the other shows did not have. They did have a half-Klingon, but no Klingon Empire, so there was a klingon element even if it was less than that in ST:TNG and ST:DS9. Borg? They ended up using them so much in "Voyager" that they outright wore them out.
Well, this means more room for such wonderful core sci-fi programming as ECW. They might be able to squeeze in a couple of "Caroline in the City" syndicated reruns now, too, right?
" landed on that living space ship thing with those little yellow robots and those damn crackers.."
The living ( = has biodome) spaceship with little yellow robots? Must be "Silent Running". But this classic film was not known for crackers. I think you confused it with another classic science fiction film known for its people-crackers.
Re:Chuck E Cheez - our robot elvis man-dog overlor
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 1
"Oh, Jesus, your parents made you watch the 'Banana Splits'??? Is it too late to sue them for child abuse????"
Pretty close. The Banana Splits could count as giant Elvis man-dogs, but I'm pretty sure they were of the 'walking Muppet' variety like Big Bird, and were not robots.
Either that, or they finally found a way to get to the end of the rainbow.
Re:Chuck E Cheez - our robot elvis man-dog overlor
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 1
"Hah, I used to work on a generic version of those beastly robots for a Chuck E. Cheese competitor."
I wonder where these things all went when the pizza-joints got rid of them. Who bought them all? I bet there's an entire generation of kids afraid of robots like kids used to be afraid of clowns. Anyway, keep watching Drudge and Google for news stories of rusty fur-covered animal robots lurching from North Korea into the DMZ as part of an attack. Of course, they'll move at 1 mile every 2 hours, fall over if you blow on them, and trip over dandelions and fall into 600 pieces, but they'll scare the beejebers out of everyone for at least a few minutes.
Re:Ok here's a nice war post template for /.
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 1
Or "I heard that George Bush, he married Exxon/They had half-human, half-oil babies/They named them Chevron and Halliburon/These oil babies, they look really strange."
"Who needs body armor when you're carrying around all those gadgets?"
And then you get some guy who goes all Rambo and takes out a few villages after he finds out that his iPod Mini got scratched somehow.
Chuck E Cheez - our robot elvis man-dog overlords.
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 5, Funny
"These soldiers aren't exactly enjoying an evening at Chuck E. Cheese, for pity's sake!"
Did you ever go to any of the last of the "old style" Chuck E Cheez's before they closed down? You know, the ones where you'd walk down a hall and look off to the side and there would be a huge auditorium, empty of humans, and on a stage was a band made of giant Elvis man-dog robots that shook and gyrated, with their crude mechanics making so much noise that the songs in the speakers couldn't even be heard? If this scene (and it was real) isn't as close as you can come to the future war with the robots, then nothing is.
So that is where Perry went.
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 5, Funny
"No more Perry Como forced down our soldier's throats"
Ah. Soylent Green day at the mess tent. I bet he went down smooooooth too.
Look for this to be retracted by tomorrow when someone at the DoD says "Sorry, we thought that 'OSS' referred to the agency that was the predecessor to the CIA".
"The MPEG "standard" that MP3 is a part of is heavily patented. Patent law creates legal and financial obligations. Therefore, MP3 is encumbered."
I didn't say it was entirely unencumbered. Just relatively unencumbered. The situation allows people to create MP3 devices and files, and to use and play them with very little restriction (in practice). In fact, the hassle from the "encumbrance" of MP3 is so little that the main advantages of unencumbered OGG end up being technical rather than its lack of emcumbrance.
"Yeah, wal-mart is the paragon of customer service. Oh wait."
The most important part of customer service is the willingness to serve the customers. You can go to a mom-and-pop store and bang on the door for 3 hours at 7 AM (until it opens at 10:00). Or you can go to Wal-Mart, which is already open at that time....and it will be open for hours after the crummy main-street store closes.
"And the reason they can charge so little is that they pay their workers far below what a local "rip-off" store would"
Actually, the little small businesses tend to pay the bare minimum (minimum wage). Wal-Mart tends to pay 20% or more above this.
"It is impossible for any "small business" to compete with a company that has annual sales of one quarter of a TRILLION dollars"
It's easy, if the company decides to serve the customer and also not to overcharge for what it sells. Wal-Mart does not kill any businesses. However, some businesses decide to run themselves into the ground with their own poor decisions.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't have a simple 4 x 3 array of actual press buttons with numbers in the usual order, with perfect right angles (none of the snaking, swoopy rows), you've failed in making a decent phone. Do whatever you want with the rest of the UI, but don't mess with the basic phone function. I've seen and have had to use some pretty bad phone button designs (where you have to look for each button in order to press it), and to put it bluntly, "I've had it with $#$##@@# bad button design on this $#$##@#@##@@# ". It's not rocket science. Here is a badly designed phone and a well-designed phone. At least as far as being able to dial numbers goes.
Yes....Bruce Dern aboard a biodome space-ship with nothing but a few droids to keep him company. He's the last human being in existence. If you wonder why, you need to look no further than the vast warehouse levels filled with crates of green crackers.
"Because we all know how often Americans travel overseas."
Hey, I went to New Mexico twice in the last 6 years. That's fairly often, I think.
"Mr.... let's see 5AVE On Va1iumViagraCialis? Yes, everything checks out. Welcome to America!"
"about how they've been found in the trunk of Ballmer's car"
I thought the trunk was one of Ballmer's physical features.
"If you go to Z'ha'dum, you will die."
I see. You are referring more to Voyager's lack of connection to the rich backdrop of the "Alpha Quadrant" species, history empires, politics, and other situations. As opposed to mere species. I agree. This helped dragged down the show. What made it worse was the writers' consistent inability to come up with any new Delta Quadrant species or cultural context of interest. The Kazon, Vidiians, and Telaxians just do not cut it. I liked the Hunter and Prey species, actually, but it was too little, too late.
"At this point, why would you want to stay at your present job if you need a lawyer to keep it"
Ask former President Clinton. Ask Bush after he concludes this term.
First they demote him from being a lt. commander. Then they attach him to AOL. Somewhere Lore must be pulling the strings.
"Voyager was disconnected from the normal species fans wanted to know about"
What species did fans like the most? Probably Vulcans, Klingons, and Borg would be my guess. "Voyager" was actually the first of the newer series to feature a Vulcan as a regular major character, so they had a connection to a "species fans wanted to know about" that the other shows did not have. They did have a half-Klingon, but no Klingon Empire, so there was a klingon element even if it was less than that in ST:TNG and ST:DS9. Borg? They ended up using them so much in "Voyager" that they outright wore them out.
Well, this means more room for such wonderful core sci-fi programming as ECW. They might be able to squeeze in a couple of "Caroline in the City" syndicated reruns now, too, right?
" landed on that living space ship thing with those little yellow robots and those damn crackers.."
The living ( = has biodome) spaceship with little yellow robots? Must be "Silent Running". But this classic film was not known for crackers. I think you confused it with another classic science fiction film known for its people-crackers.
"Oh, Jesus, your parents made you watch the 'Banana Splits'??? Is it too late to sue them for child abuse????"
Pretty close. The Banana Splits could count as giant Elvis man-dogs, but I'm pretty sure they were of the 'walking Muppet' variety like Big Bird, and were not robots.
"wtf are you talking about...!? i'm 27, and clowns still scare the crap out of me..."
It's not too late to register yourself as "Aclownmenaced Coward"
"I've alerted the authorities, and the Science Police will soon arrest them for breaking the Laws of Thermodynamics."
Just hide out a while, and wait for the situation to cool down (it always will). And then it will be safe to come out.
Either that, or they finally found a way to get to the end of the rainbow.
"Hah, I used to work on a generic version of those beastly robots for a Chuck E. Cheese competitor."
I wonder where these things all went when the pizza-joints got rid of them. Who bought them all? I bet there's an entire generation of kids afraid of robots like kids used to be afraid of clowns. Anyway, keep watching Drudge and Google for news stories of rusty fur-covered animal robots lurching from North Korea into the DMZ as part of an attack. Of course, they'll move at 1 mile every 2 hours, fall over if you blow on them, and trip over dandelions and fall into 600 pieces, but they'll scare the beejebers out of everyone for at least a few minutes.
Or "I heard that George Bush, he married Exxon/They had half-human, half-oil babies/They named them Chevron and Halliburon/These oil babies, they look really strange."
"Who needs body armor when you're carrying around all those gadgets?"
And then you get some guy who goes all Rambo and takes out a few villages after he finds out that his iPod Mini got scratched somehow.
"These soldiers aren't exactly enjoying an evening at Chuck E. Cheese, for pity's sake!"
Did you ever go to any of the last of the "old style" Chuck E Cheez's before they closed down? You know, the ones where you'd walk down a hall and look off to the side and there would be a huge auditorium, empty of humans, and on a stage was a band made of giant Elvis man-dog robots that shook and gyrated, with their crude mechanics making so much noise that the songs in the speakers couldn't even be heard? If this scene (and it was real) isn't as close as you can come to the future war with the robots, then nothing is.
"No more Perry Como forced down our soldier's throats"
Ah. Soylent Green day at the mess tent. I bet he went down smooooooth too.
Look for this to be retracted by tomorrow when someone at the DoD says "Sorry, we thought that 'OSS' referred to the agency that was the predecessor to the CIA".
"The MPEG "standard" that MP3 is a part of is heavily patented. Patent law creates legal and financial obligations. Therefore, MP3 is encumbered."
I didn't say it was entirely unencumbered. Just relatively unencumbered. The situation allows people to create MP3 devices and files, and to use and play them with very little restriction (in practice). In fact, the hassle from the "encumbrance" of MP3 is so little that the main advantages of unencumbered OGG end up being technical rather than its lack of emcumbrance.
"Yeah, wal-mart is the paragon of customer service. Oh wait."
The most important part of customer service is the willingness to serve the customers. You can go to a mom-and-pop store and bang on the door for 3 hours at 7 AM (until it opens at 10:00). Or you can go to Wal-Mart, which is already open at that time....and it will be open for hours after the crummy main-street store closes.
"And the reason they can charge so little is that they pay their workers far below what a local "rip-off" store would"
Actually, the little small businesses tend to pay the bare minimum (minimum wage). Wal-Mart tends to pay 20% or more above this.
"It is impossible for any "small business" to compete with a company that has annual sales of one quarter of a TRILLION dollars"
It's easy, if the company decides to serve the customer and also not to overcharge for what it sells. Wal-Mart does not kill any businesses. However, some businesses decide to run themselves into the ground with their own poor decisions.