It's obvious they want the processors to help pilot their bombs and only the most overpriced name-brand computers have them. Duh. Terrorists aren't stupid you know.
Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it ever so much more rapidly.
I have Earthlink, sad as it is. I chose it when I got cable because I had them for Sprint DSL and their news servers were very good for free. Then they changed them and they suck now. I'd change to roadrunner, but every change I make is a 2 week interruption in service no matter what change I make, so I refuse to change anything.
I almost made that mistake of using OpenDNS as well. I used Level 3's servers instead.
Because Google's motto is 'Don't be evil' and not 'Don't be evil unless someone pisses you off, then do whatever the fsck you want.'
Google has done the very un-evilest thing they could in that situation. To attempt to further penalize those companies could (and probably would) be considered 'evil'.
Actually, our sales tax strikes me as a very good way to tax. It's the closest thing we have to a 'flat tax' that a lot of people push for. The rich buy more, so spend more on sales tax. The poor buy less, so pay less tax. (The exception is unprepared food. There is no tax on that. Exact expections vary from state to state, though.)
And yeah, there's another country. Canada. They actually have 3 different sales taxes in many places in Canada. Some of our states (I live in 1) only have 1 tax.
I'm sure there's other countries out there that do the same.
Unsurprisingly, most of that news didn't make the headlines here in the US. We only get the 'Terrorist found!' crap shoved down our throats. The retractions, you have to sit up until 1am to get those. I had heard something vague about 'nothing found' but it was still my impression they were thought to be guilty. Apparently not, and the whole 'no liquids' scare is even dumber in this light.
So my original statement stands: They haven't attacked us in 5 years.
Nope, didn't forget it. You should probably read before you type.
"1) Every Nintendo console so far has been $200 at launch. Obviously, they couldn't keep that up forever, especially since this system is quite a bit more complex than the previous ones."
Okay, first off, I have nothing against our troups, and their putting their lives on the line for their country, so I have quite a bit of respect for that.
As for whether we should be over there... I have strong views on that and they are actually irrelevant to the conversation.
They have not attacked our country for 5 years. If Country X sent soldiers over here to 'help control the terrorists' or whatever, you can bet your ass we'd fight them. It just wouldn't matter what they were here FOR. And maybe the military would leave them alone, due to some crazy pact or treaty or whatever. But you can bet militant groups would quickly form and harrass them. We would not be attacking Country X, we would simply be attacking the foreign presence on our soil.
According to our military, they have the means to hurt us, but they haven't done it for 5 years. No matter what we do to them over there, they just take it and sit tight on their bombs. That can only mean they have no bombs, or they love the position we've placed ourselves in. The popularity of the President is amazingly low. Many of us are angry about the way the government is stepping on our freedom. We turn more and more like a dictatorship with every passing year. All because of what they say and do.
I'm all for finding those bastards and blowing them out of existance. But I'm not for losing my freedom in order to do it. The US is still the 'free'est country on the planet. But once we aren't, expect to see a lot of clear-headed individuals haul ass for the new best country. And I don't even see that as unpatriotic. This country was founded on being free, and if it can't hold up the basic premise, those that like what it has become can stay. It would be interesting to see what would happen if there was a new land mass for a new country to use.
The comment is undoubtedly meant to assuage analysts nervous about the relatively late release date and somewhat higher than expected price for the Wii.
People have predicted for months that it would be $250. Only recently did the media put their fingers in and try to 'predict' it would be $225 or even $200. The only reason they even considered those crazy prices was:
1) Every Nintendo console so far has been $200 at launch. Obviously, they couldn't keep that up forever, especially since this system is quite a bit more complex than the previous ones.
2) Exchange rates. Any fool knows that exchange rates only set the price range of a product, not the exact price. The fact that it was $225US when converted on that date didn't mean anything except that it wasn't likely to be $200 here. Nobody in their right mind uses an odd number like $225 when pricing here, at least at launch.
As for the late date... Are we still predicting the PS3 will actually be out before that? I'm still predicting shortages and mayhem for the ps3 launch... It's still a tossup on the Wii launch. I'm hoping they have enough that I get one, but who knows? If there aren't enough ps3's, Mommy and Daddy are gonna buy Wii's for Johnny instead, so he'll have a Christmas present to open.
And maybe that's Nintendo's logic... Capitalize on the failure of Sony. If they launch before Sony, they aren't quite as 'new'. If they launch soon after, amid Sony's sellout chaos, they can pick up extra launch sales and make the figures look better.
I could just see the media spin: Nintendo fails to sell out, slow start for Wii.
But if they wait until after: Sony sells out, loses sales to Nintendo's Wii Launch.
Have they bothered attacking us in the last 5 years or so? Not really. They attacked some airplanes in other countries that were headed here, but that's about it.
I think that in itself tells us something. Either they are Running Scared, or Pleased As Punch.
They believe it is their duty to terrorize us, so I seriously doubt they are scared at all.
No, I think they are probably tremendously happy at how they've made us all cower in fear and totally redirected the majority of our President's efforts towards a completely unfruitful campaign against them and a huge backlash on us denying us the very freedoms we are supposed to be fighting for.
"The GPL is a license that grants users far more rights than copyright law would normally allow."
I love this statement. I especially love rephrasing it: "We'd normally chop off your whole arm for this, but we're only going to chop off your hand. Consider yourself lucky."
I've been using it for months as a non-subscriber also, but originally it was a random popup opt-in thing. I don't know how they picked people after that, but I thought it was the same. I'm guessing subscribers automatically got the option at some point, and the rest of us got the popup.
I personally really like it. especially the 'some other content' feature... It was annoying to have to pick and choose what to read. Now that it tells me what I should read, life is much easier.;) (I'm actually only half-sarcastic... I really do like it.)
A 'satisfied' customer has no need of 'customer service'. I suspect your definition of 'satisfied' is something like 'well, life sucks, you know, but that's the way it is, so I'm content' where the actual definition is "Filled with satisfaction; content: a very satisfied customer." http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=satisfied If you are 'filled' with satisfaction, you cannot be more satisfied.
The satisfied customer does not feel the need to have any issues solved. They do not call up customer service to chat about how much fun they are having. They call up to have customer service fix a problem they are having, real or imagined. This includes 'expectations outside of the norm' and 'irregular event's.
If I buy a black toaster, and it arrives yellow... I call customer service.
If I buy a black toaster and the cord is 2 ft long and this displeases me and I think they should do something about it, despite the 10 inch tall letters on that ordering form stating this... I call customer service.
If I buy a black toaster and hate the 2 ft long cord and don't call customer service, this does -not- mean I am satisfied. Merely that I an unwilling to deal with the hassle of trying to get a better cord or my money back.
If I buy a black toaster and it's black and has a standard 4ft cord. I'm satisfied. I do not call customer service and tell them how satisfied I am.
Customer service for MMORPGs is no different. Just because they don't try the AOL 'you can't quit' crap doesn't mean it isn't customer service's job to do their best to satisfy this customer. (Who will now probably be both an ex-customer and a potential re-customer.)
If you are in the customer service industry and you honestly believe that customer service is not about satisfying customers, please quit your job and find something else to do.
On the other hand, there's plenty of us that think that paying a company to work for you, knowing that they have a tendency towards dirty and underhanded tactics... That's the same as supporting that company's tactics. And the same as supporting 'evil'. Most people that were worried about their image simply wouldn't deal with a company that had done these things. This is especially true when politics are concerned.
If my name was RMS or Linus, I could expect that, yes. But in the world of IT, I'm nobody. Anyone who heeds just anyone who screams is crazy. You have to have a way to filter out the liars, cheats, scammers, etc. And lack of proof is pretty compelling.
" it may be entirely possible to cut customer service offerings down entirely to a set of automated tools and save the money spent designing for satisfied customers."
Customer service's job is to turn unsatisfied customers into satisfied customers. Since everyone will eventually have some issue they need customer service for, and most everyone hates automated systems, this sounds like a great way to guarantee failure.
If you just say 'I found a vulnerability in Product X' nobody will listen seriously. A few will say 'where', which you can't respond to under your own example. Even those few will then ignore you without any proof of the problem.
If you say 'I found a vulnerability in Product X when you do Y', even without any details, the blackhats already know where to look and the kind of things to look for. For example, if you tell me that a program has a vulnerability related to images, I'm immediately going to think about the different types of buffer overflows in images. There are quite a few, but you have narrowed the search from the entire app to just the portions that deal directly with images.
This is what happened with the Apple wireless stuff recently. We were told 'it has to do with wireless, and you have to have it set to accept any connection available.' Oh man, that's almost POINTING at the problem. Unsurprisingly, black hats figured it out in time for their conference a couple weeks later and did a presentation on it.
And yes, it goes without saying that if you don't tell the vendor, you've done wrong.
There's the opposite side of that story, you know.
You happen upon an easy vulnerability. A blackhat finds it in a month. You stay quiet for 4 months. Patch comes after a full year from when you find it. A single blackhat has used it for a year.
You happen upon an easy vulnerability. You announce it to the public. Every half-assed blackhat in the world finds it and uses it for a full year before the patch comes out.
Yeah, I experienced that in the demo, but wasn't sure what was really happening.
Is there fewer souls to shoot each time you die? And after a while (yeah, I'm incompetent with the controller) they started to dive at me, and I think they were trying to kill me again. But the demo wasn't long enough to see, and I haven't gotten very far since I rented it.
Are you seriously telling me that with languages like VB.net, C#, Ruby, javascript and other 'easy' languages, kids can't learn to code these days? I call BS on this. Sure, I started on an Apple IIe in 4th grade, and gradually moved up to real languages (C, PHP, etc etc) eventually, but that doesn't mean the 'lack' of BASIC stops kids from coding.
There are even languages developed solely to interest kids in programming.
Slashdot Mirror
It's obvious they want the processors to help pilot their bombs and only the most overpriced name-brand computers have them. Duh. Terrorists aren't stupid you know.
Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it ever so much more rapidly.
Oh wait, there'd be nothing of your post left.
I have Earthlink, sad as it is. I chose it when I got cable because I had them for Sprint DSL and their news servers were very good for free. Then they changed them and they suck now. I'd change to roadrunner, but every change I make is a 2 week interruption in service no matter what change I make, so I refuse to change anything.
I almost made that mistake of using OpenDNS as well. I used Level 3's servers instead.
Because Google's motto is 'Don't be evil' and not 'Don't be evil unless someone pisses you off, then do whatever the fsck you want.'
Google has done the very un-evilest thing they could in that situation. To attempt to further penalize those companies could (and probably would) be considered 'evil'.
I hearby move that we change "Your Rights Online" to "Y'all's Rights Online" to prevent further confusion.
Actually, our sales tax strikes me as a very good way to tax. It's the closest thing we have to a 'flat tax' that a lot of people push for. The rich buy more, so spend more on sales tax. The poor buy less, so pay less tax. (The exception is unprepared food. There is no tax on that. Exact expections vary from state to state, though.)
And yeah, there's another country. Canada. They actually have 3 different sales taxes in many places in Canada. Some of our states (I live in 1) only have 1 tax.
I'm sure there's other countries out there that do the same.
Unsurprisingly, most of that news didn't make the headlines here in the US. We only get the 'Terrorist found!' crap shoved down our throats. The retractions, you have to sit up until 1am to get those. I had heard something vague about 'nothing found' but it was still my impression they were thought to be guilty. Apparently not, and the whole 'no liquids' scare is even dumber in this light.
So my original statement stands: They haven't attacked us in 5 years.
"Obviously, they couldn't keep that up forever, "
This is the part that refers to inflation. The 'especially' part after it means there are additional factors as well, which I listed.
According to the GPL zealots, they aren't 'entitling' them, they are 'releasing them from copyright restrictions.'
And you know, if they land here, we'll arrest them for it.
http://www.google.com/notebook/public/087409738544 07940442/BDQqFIwoQ_Iv2w88h
I'm sure there's plenty more out there. It was big news and people are still bitching about not being allowed to carry water onto a plane.
Nope, didn't forget it. You should probably read before you type.
"1) Every Nintendo console so far has been $200 at launch. Obviously, they couldn't keep that up forever, especially since this system is quite a bit more complex than the previous ones."
Okay, first off, I have nothing against our troups, and their putting their lives on the line for their country, so I have quite a bit of respect for that.
As for whether we should be over there... I have strong views on that and they are actually irrelevant to the conversation.
They have not attacked our country for 5 years. If Country X sent soldiers over here to 'help control the terrorists' or whatever, you can bet your ass we'd fight them. It just wouldn't matter what they were here FOR. And maybe the military would leave them alone, due to some crazy pact or treaty or whatever. But you can bet militant groups would quickly form and harrass them. We would not be attacking Country X, we would simply be attacking the foreign presence on our soil.
According to our military, they have the means to hurt us, but they haven't done it for 5 years. No matter what we do to them over there, they just take it and sit tight on their bombs. That can only mean they have no bombs, or they love the position we've placed ourselves in. The popularity of the President is amazingly low. Many of us are angry about the way the government is stepping on our freedom. We turn more and more like a dictatorship with every passing year. All because of what they say and do.
I'm all for finding those bastards and blowing them out of existance. But I'm not for losing my freedom in order to do it. The US is still the 'free'est country on the planet. But once we aren't, expect to see a lot of clear-headed individuals haul ass for the new best country. And I don't even see that as unpatriotic. This country was founded on being free, and if it can't hold up the basic premise, those that like what it has become can stay. It would be interesting to see what would happen if there was a new land mass for a new country to use.
The comment is undoubtedly meant to assuage analysts nervous about the relatively late release date and somewhat higher than expected price for the Wii.
People have predicted for months that it would be $250. Only recently did the media put their fingers in and try to 'predict' it would be $225 or even $200. The only reason they even considered those crazy prices was:
1) Every Nintendo console so far has been $200 at launch. Obviously, they couldn't keep that up forever, especially since this system is quite a bit more complex than the previous ones.
2) Exchange rates. Any fool knows that exchange rates only set the price range of a product, not the exact price. The fact that it was $225US when converted on that date didn't mean anything except that it wasn't likely to be $200 here. Nobody in their right mind uses an odd number like $225 when pricing here, at least at launch.
As for the late date... Are we still predicting the PS3 will actually be out before that? I'm still predicting shortages and mayhem for the ps3 launch... It's still a tossup on the Wii launch. I'm hoping they have enough that I get one, but who knows? If there aren't enough ps3's, Mommy and Daddy are gonna buy Wii's for Johnny instead, so he'll have a Christmas present to open.
And maybe that's Nintendo's logic... Capitalize on the failure of Sony. If they launch before Sony, they aren't quite as 'new'. If they launch soon after, amid Sony's sellout chaos, they can pick up extra launch sales and make the figures look better.
I could just see the media spin: Nintendo fails to sell out, slow start for Wii.
But if they wait until after: Sony sells out, loses sales to Nintendo's Wii Launch.
"Are the terrorists laughing at us?"
Have they bothered attacking us in the last 5 years or so? Not really. They attacked some airplanes in other countries that were headed here, but that's about it.
I think that in itself tells us something. Either they are Running Scared, or Pleased As Punch.
They believe it is their duty to terrorize us, so I seriously doubt they are scared at all.
No, I think they are probably tremendously happy at how they've made us all cower in fear and totally redirected the majority of our President's efforts towards a completely unfruitful campaign against them and a huge backlash on us denying us the very freedoms we are supposed to be fighting for.
Go us! Whoo! -sigh-
"The GPL is a license that grants users far more rights than copyright law would normally allow."
I love this statement. I especially love rephrasing it: "We'd normally chop off your whole arm for this, but we're only going to chop off your hand. Consider yourself lucky."
Less restrictive is still restrictive.
I've been using it for months as a non-subscriber also, but originally it was a random popup opt-in thing. I don't know how they picked people after that, but I thought it was the same. I'm guessing subscribers automatically got the option at some point, and the rest of us got the popup.
;) (I'm actually only half-sarcastic... I really do like it.)
I personally really like it. especially the 'some other content' feature... It was annoying to have to pick and choose what to read. Now that it tells me what I should read, life is much easier.
A 'satisfied' customer has no need of 'customer service'. I suspect your definition of 'satisfied' is something like 'well, life sucks, you know, but that's the way it is, so I'm content' where the actual definition is "Filled with satisfaction; content: a very satisfied customer." http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=satisfied If you are 'filled' with satisfaction, you cannot be more satisfied.
The satisfied customer does not feel the need to have any issues solved. They do not call up customer service to chat about how much fun they are having. They call up to have customer service fix a problem they are having, real or imagined. This includes 'expectations outside of the norm' and 'irregular event's.
If I buy a black toaster, and it arrives yellow... I call customer service.
If I buy a black toaster and the cord is 2 ft long and this displeases me and I think they should do something about it, despite the 10 inch tall letters on that ordering form stating this... I call customer service.
If I buy a black toaster and hate the 2 ft long cord and don't call customer service, this does -not- mean I am satisfied. Merely that I an unwilling to deal with the hassle of trying to get a better cord or my money back.
If I buy a black toaster and it's black and has a standard 4ft cord. I'm satisfied. I do not call customer service and tell them how satisfied I am.
Customer service for MMORPGs is no different. Just because they don't try the AOL 'you can't quit' crap doesn't mean it isn't customer service's job to do their best to satisfy this customer. (Who will now probably be both an ex-customer and a potential re-customer.)
If you are in the customer service industry and you honestly believe that customer service is not about satisfying customers, please quit your job and find something else to do.
On the other hand, there's plenty of us that think that paying a company to work for you, knowing that they have a tendency towards dirty and underhanded tactics... That's the same as supporting that company's tactics. And the same as supporting 'evil'. Most people that were worried about their image simply wouldn't deal with a company that had done these things. This is especially true when politics are concerned.
If my name was RMS or Linus, I could expect that, yes. But in the world of IT, I'm nobody. Anyone who heeds just anyone who screams is crazy. You have to have a way to filter out the liars, cheats, scammers, etc. And lack of proof is pretty compelling.
" it may be entirely possible to cut customer service offerings down entirely to a set of automated tools and save the money spent designing for satisfied customers."
Customer service's job is to turn unsatisfied customers into satisfied customers. Since everyone will eventually have some issue they need customer service for, and most everyone hates automated systems, this sounds like a great way to guarantee failure.
If you just say 'I found a vulnerability in Product X' nobody will listen seriously. A few will say 'where', which you can't respond to under your own example. Even those few will then ignore you without any proof of the problem.
If you say 'I found a vulnerability in Product X when you do Y', even without any details, the blackhats already know where to look and the kind of things to look for. For example, if you tell me that a program has a vulnerability related to images, I'm immediately going to think about the different types of buffer overflows in images. There are quite a few, but you have narrowed the search from the entire app to just the portions that deal directly with images.
This is what happened with the Apple wireless stuff recently. We were told 'it has to do with wireless, and you have to have it set to accept any connection available.' Oh man, that's almost POINTING at the problem. Unsurprisingly, black hats figured it out in time for their conference a couple weeks later and did a presentation on it.
And yes, it goes without saying that if you don't tell the vendor, you've done wrong.
There's the opposite side of that story, you know.
You happen upon an easy vulnerability. A blackhat finds it in a month. You stay quiet for 4 months. Patch comes after a full year from when you find it. A single blackhat has used it for a year.
You happen upon an easy vulnerability. You announce it to the public. Every half-assed blackhat in the world finds it and uses it for a full year before the patch comes out.
I ca... Oh crap.
Yeah, I experienced that in the demo, but wasn't sure what was really happening.
Is there fewer souls to shoot each time you die? And after a while (yeah, I'm incompetent with the controller) they started to dive at me, and I think they were trying to kill me again. But the demo wasn't long enough to see, and I haven't gotten very far since I rented it.
But yeah, also a nice way to handle it.
Are you seriously telling me that with languages like VB.net, C#, Ruby, javascript and other 'easy' languages, kids can't learn to code these days? I call BS on this. Sure, I started on an Apple IIe in 4th grade, and gradually moved up to real languages (C, PHP, etc etc) eventually, but that doesn't mean the 'lack' of BASIC stops kids from coding.
There are even languages developed solely to interest kids in programming.
http://www.kidsprogramminglanguage.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_(software)
I'm sure there's more out there, but Alice was the one I remembered, and found KPL on the way.
No, there are no more barriers to programming than any other science.