My take is that there are too many free alternatives for most people. Any time I want a simple program to, say, convert audio files, I end up spending several hours searching, finding a stack of programs that sound like they'll do what I want, and installing them one at a time only to find out that I don't like the UI or they don't do what I want how I want it. Then I have to uninstall all but one, and it ends up being a big PITA sometimes.
Of course, other times I find a complete gem of a program, but it is the sorting and trying that blows.
People like to go down and buy up Microsoft crap Office for the same reason they like to go to Panda Express instead of trying all the non-franchised Chinese places in hope of finding a better / cheaper one. Panda Express might suck, but you know what you're going to get there.
Probably because many people never shut their machine down, so unless it crashes there *is* no first boot. I know, I know, Windows sux0rs BSOD etc etc, but my XP PC easily stays up for 3 weeks at a time, which would be a long time to go with no virus protection.
Part of the problem is the widening gap between lower and upper classes - the upper classes (with the Hummers and plasma TVs you mentioned) generally don't want to get out and rally - why would they? They're doing fine. The lower classes can't even take a day off to be sick, let alone go to a protest.
Not only that, but every time there's a controversy, they pull a new Osama video out to scare the public back in line. Or a "gay marriage" bill. They use whatever tactics they can to distract us and scare us.
Is it coincidence that Kerry was slated to win in 2004, and then just 4 days prior to the election a new video surfaced? And Bush's polls jumped 10%?
I play mine on a 1982 Sharp VZ 3500, a pretty decent setup (about $1500 back in the day) which has auto both-sides-play for LPs and auto-detects and queues the size of record you've inserted. It will be even more awesome once I get the bad switches fixed (they aren't connecting fully, they're old and dirty).
No, I realize that the market isn't composed solely of gas-guzzlers - but that is what's easiest to find, and what's most likely to be passed down from uncle Bob when he gets a new car. A car dealer friend was lamenting that everyone comes looking for a V-6 pickup, and he can't help them because so many manufactured in the 90s were V-8.
My real point is that rising gas prices don't hurt Hummer owners, or Lincoln Aviator owners - these people lose around $20,000 in depreciation alone in the first 2 years they own the vehicle. They do not and will not care about a $2 raise in fuel prices. Their behavior will not change. Same as any other price increase, the people it hits hardest are the ones who can least afford it - people who can't really cut back, either, as they're already forgoing vacations and random drives around town.
We've already cut down from around 32,000 miles yearly to under 10,000. Short of bumming rides off people (my work schedule is incompatible with the limited bus route), I can't really cut back more.
I supposedly put 15.15 gallons in my car....and the max tank capacity is 15.4.
I have run this car completely out of gas before, and it takes 14.8 gallons to fill. (As with most cars, you cannot use every bit of gas in the tank, as the bottom.5-1 gallons exists for the fuel pump to sit in.)
Now, how did I put.35 more gallons in than it took when empty? The tank wasn't topped off either time. I don't know whether it was deliberate, or whether the pump malfunctioned. Both fill-ups were at the same station.
How many people ACTUALLY have a Hummer? The people that do, don't care about gas prices. Why would they, they've got money coming out their ears.
The reality for more of us is that we can only afford a 10 year old car...and guess what was most popular 10 years ago? Gas guzzling SUVs. Not-particularly-efficient sedans. So those who can *least* afford the increase in gas are the same people who are locked into old, gas guzzling cars.
Personally, I would love to get a new, more fuel-efficient car...but my old 1996 Altima is paid for, I only drive about 800 miles a month, so gas would have to go up to about $16/gallon before the additional gas money would pay for a car payment on a more efficient car.
It doesn't mean the SELLER is taking more of my money. It means eBay / UPS is taking more. This is good for neither seller nor buyer.
Re:My own tips from almost 4 years ago
on
The Science of eBay
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· Score: 0, Troll
I disagree completely on the lots. I just plain don't bid on things unless they're in a lot. Not worth my time and money to find 10 separate auctions and try to win them all and then have to dick around with the shipping arrangements. eBay is only cost-effective when you're buying in quantity. Likewise as a seller, once you factor in the listing fee, photo fee, bolding fee, BIN fee, overall fee scale, etc etc you can easily save $20 by putting like items together. Let alone the time involved in listing separate auctions and dealing with the multiple buyers.
FWIW, I never once got an email from someone who wanted to break up the lot. Not once.
I am not saying to make stupid lots, putting a bunch of unrelated crap together, but when you have like items that will be desired by the same buyer, combine them! Take great photos of individual items, describe everything in detail, and your "lot" auctions will be very successful. The reason so many "lot" auctions fail is that the seller just throws a pile of stuff on their floor and photographs it. You can't even tell what you're buying.
cmd-D navigates the "open" dialogue to the desktop. and, in the "open" dialogue, ENTER opens folders. But I am sure you knew that.
Oh, and all the spare "ENTER" hits were because QuarkXPress 4.0 is always fussing about some page layout reflow baloney and so one has to go through a bunch of dialogues to open a document.
Anyway, I am female.:-\
Well not that I want to keep going on about this, but I'm not arguing for autocomplete OR tab-autocomplete. I don't want to have a box in which to type the filename at all. Why do I need that separate file name box? I want to hit ctrl-o, and the open dialogue pops up, and the list of files in the current location is the selected part. I want to type a "p" and have it jump to the first file or folder that starts with p. If I hit enter, open it. Or, I could type "p o" and get the first file/folder that starts with the combo po. To be fair, it's not just XP that is lacking this, OSX doesn't have it either.
BTW, the likelihood of having folders with the same name is 0 if you set it up that way on purpose.
Anyway, how about this solution? How about an OS with shortcuts as customizable as they are in Adobe Photoshop or InDesign nowadays? I bet that would make us BOTH happy.
But I don't want autocomplete. I want to type the first letter of the folder and hit enter. I don't want to type the first letter, hit tab or something else to autocomplete and then "enter". That is the unnecessary keystrokes I was talking about.
I know windows-D is go to desktop, but in an "open" dialogue, it minimizes my dialog and everything else. What is the shortcut to make the dialogue browsing location the desktop?
But it is sort of because XP has bad shortcuts.
I spent 4 years on OS9, and even though it's not my operating system of choice, I am super-fast at it thanks to shortcuts. The most helpful thing was setting up all my directories so each started with a different letter. To open a photo file, I would hit cmd-o cmd-d p enter d enter f enter enter ENTER, the p, d, and f navigating through the folders. I knew every directory's location in relation to the desktop and had aliases set up from folder to folder to speed things up. I knew the cmd-down and cmd-up way to navigate folders in finder. I could (and did) operate the machine for 45 minutes without once touching the mouse.
XP doesn't let me do that. I actually am MORE experienced on XP, and it is my preferred OS, but I'm not as fast at it. To my knowledge there's no handy "go-up-a-folder" shortcut or "go-to-desktop" shortcut when in the "open" or "save" dialog. There ARE shortcuts, but none are the ones I used most frequently. Navigating folders/files by keystroke alone is more tedious.
I'm sure that advertisers would like us to sit through something longer. I'm sure they'd like for us to do nothing but watch ads. They need to make the ad fit the medium, in this case short videos.
You know, I TRIED to do that...I tried to watch nothing but ads...there used to be a fun, free service where I could sit and watch ads. Maybe you remember it - it was called adcritic? You know what happened? It went to subscription. For a while it was around $400/year. Now it is $99/year. WTF? How is that youtube is free, with the amount of bandwith they surely use, but a site that is NOTHING BUT ADS costs $99/year??
Um, I know...but I am! It was one of those "You're obviously not female, 'cause if you were (like I am) you would know that women's clothing sizes are notoriously unreliable and easily thrown off by small details like breast size anyway." There is no "buying without trying" if you are a woman who wants things to actually fit.
I prefer song lyrics as an endless source of good passwords. For example, suppose I like the Foo Fighters. I'll choose a song I like, say, Monkey Wrench, and choose a line, say "what do you do when all your enemies are friends?" and then get "wdydw@yeaf" for a password. If I DO have to leave a sticky on my monitor for a week after the change, it might say "monkey wrench", or "all this time to make amends" which is the preceding line. Generally enough to remind ME but not enough for Joe Average to bother guessing what it is.
Bonus, every time I type my password my favorite line from whatever song runs through my head.
It's depressing, huh? We like to think we're a civilized culture, but here we are doing genital cutting on non-consenting children, often without anesthetic*. It's actually illegal to do that to a dog, but you can do it to a male child if you choose.
*A Chicago study of medical records from 1999-2004 showed that in only about 33% of circumcisions was anesthetic even ordered.
I'm a female, working in the US for a MAJOR company, and our standard is "repeated, unwanted attention" if it's verbal. One mistake will not get you in trouble - you have to say something offensive, be told not to, and then repeat the action in order to be disciplined.
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Of course, other times I find a complete gem of a program, but it is the sorting and trying that blows.
People like to go down and buy up Microsoft crap Office for the same reason they like to go to Panda Express instead of trying all the non-franchised Chinese places in hope of finding a better / cheaper one. Panda Express might suck, but you know what you're going to get there.
Probably because many people never shut their machine down, so unless it crashes there *is* no first boot. I know, I know, Windows sux0rs BSOD etc etc, but my XP PC easily stays up for 3 weeks at a time, which would be a long time to go with no virus protection.
Part of the problem is the widening gap between lower and upper classes - the upper classes (with the Hummers and plasma TVs you mentioned) generally don't want to get out and rally - why would they? They're doing fine. The lower classes can't even take a day off to be sick, let alone go to a protest.
Is it coincidence that Kerry was slated to win in 2004, and then just 4 days prior to the election a new video surfaced? And Bush's polls jumped 10%?
Moreover, if earning $85 completely removed the $600 from the equation, wouldn't you earn "$60"?
You know, with finger quotes around it?
I play mine on a 1982 Sharp VZ 3500, a pretty decent setup (about $1500 back in the day) which has auto both-sides-play for LPs and auto-detects and queues the size of record you've inserted. It will be even more awesome once I get the bad switches fixed (they aren't connecting fully, they're old and dirty).
My real point is that rising gas prices don't hurt Hummer owners, or Lincoln Aviator owners - these people lose around $20,000 in depreciation alone in the first 2 years they own the vehicle. They do not and will not care about a $2 raise in fuel prices. Their behavior will not change. Same as any other price increase, the people it hits hardest are the ones who can least afford it - people who can't really cut back, either, as they're already forgoing vacations and random drives around town.
We've already cut down from around 32,000 miles yearly to under 10,000. Short of bumming rides off people (my work schedule is incompatible with the limited bus route), I can't really cut back more.
I supposedly put 15.15 gallons in my car....and the max tank capacity is 15.4.
I have run this car completely out of gas before, and it takes 14.8 gallons to fill. (As with most cars, you cannot use every bit of gas in the tank, as the bottom .5-1 gallons exists for the fuel pump to sit in.)
Now, how did I put .35 more gallons in than it took when empty? The tank wasn't topped off either time. I don't know whether it was deliberate, or whether the pump malfunctioned. Both fill-ups were at the same station.
The reality for more of us is that we can only afford a 10 year old car...and guess what was most popular 10 years ago? Gas guzzling SUVs. Not-particularly-efficient sedans. So those who can *least* afford the increase in gas are the same people who are locked into old, gas guzzling cars.
Personally, I would love to get a new, more fuel-efficient car...but my old 1996 Altima is paid for, I only drive about 800 miles a month, so gas would have to go up to about $16/gallon before the additional gas money would pay for a car payment on a more efficient car.
That's about right, in 2001 I was paying roughly $1/gal in these parts. How I long for the days when my 1991 Sentra got 400 miles on $13...
It doesn't mean the SELLER is taking more of my money. It means eBay / UPS is taking more. This is good for neither seller nor buyer.
FWIW, I never once got an email from someone who wanted to break up the lot. Not once.
I am not saying to make stupid lots, putting a bunch of unrelated crap together, but when you have like items that will be desired by the same buyer, combine them! Take great photos of individual items, describe everything in detail, and your "lot" auctions will be very successful. The reason so many "lot" auctions fail is that the seller just throws a pile of stuff on their floor and photographs it. You can't even tell what you're buying.
cmd-D navigates the "open" dialogue to the desktop. and, in the "open" dialogue, ENTER opens folders. But I am sure you knew that.
Oh, and all the spare "ENTER" hits were because QuarkXPress 4.0 is always fussing about some page layout reflow baloney and so one has to go through a bunch of dialogues to open a document. Anyway, I am female. :-\
BTW, the likelihood of having folders with the same name is 0 if you set it up that way on purpose.
Anyway, how about this solution? How about an OS with shortcuts as customizable as they are in Adobe Photoshop or InDesign nowadays? I bet that would make us BOTH happy.
I know windows-D is go to desktop, but in an "open" dialogue, it minimizes my dialog and everything else. What is the shortcut to make the dialogue browsing location the desktop?
XP doesn't let me do that. I actually am MORE experienced on XP, and it is my preferred OS, but I'm not as fast at it. To my knowledge there's no handy "go-up-a-folder" shortcut or "go-to-desktop" shortcut when in the "open" or "save" dialog. There ARE shortcuts, but none are the ones I used most frequently. Navigating folders/files by keystroke alone is more tedious.
You know, I TRIED to do that...I tried to watch nothing but ads...there used to be a fun, free service where I could sit and watch ads. Maybe you remember it - it was called adcritic? You know what happened? It went to subscription. For a while it was around $400/year. Now it is $99/year. WTF? How is that youtube is free, with the amount of bandwith they surely use, but a site that is NOTHING BUT ADS costs $99/year??
Um, I know...but I am! It was one of those "You're obviously not female, 'cause if you were (like I am) you would know that women's clothing sizes are notoriously unreliable and easily thrown off by small details like breast size anyway."
There is no "buying without trying" if you are a woman who wants things to actually fit.
Bonus, every time I type my password my favorite line from whatever song runs through my head.
You're obviously not female.
*A Chicago study of medical records from 1999-2004 showed that in only about 33% of circumcisions was anesthetic even ordered.
Um, what do you mean?
How do I take that "What the hell"?
I'm a female, working in the US for a MAJOR company, and our standard is "repeated, unwanted attention" if it's verbal. One mistake will not get you in trouble - you have to say something offensive, be told not to, and then repeat the action in order to be disciplined.
Hah - I was wishing for that this morning. I bet most of the users here would have a bad case of the angles though.