I didn't say, "all manufacturing equipment is made in the USA," so I'm not sure what your point is. Your comment implies it is identifying an error in my analysis, yet the substance fails to raise any point.
Yes, interestingly the US customers are also backing away from Chinese products for the same reasons the Chinese are backing away from American products. So who is hurt again? All you have to do to see who this hurts and who it benefits is to look at the trade balance. Since Americans buy more Chinese stuff than Chinese buy American stuff, it seems to me the obvious answer is that it will help the US "tech economy."
Also, most of the American exports are not commodity items that can be replaced, but factory machines and related equipment where there isn't strong competition. That is equipment they simply must buy in order to be competitive on export quality. So even in a trade war setting, US exports would only go down a little bit, and most of the "US brands" banned are actually manufactured in Asia. So they'd be cutting at their own face. Meanwhile, tech companies with US manufacturing like Texas Instruments would benefit substantially from any such conflict because trade wars drive production to return home.
I certainly agree there is likely to be a net negative for existing US brands, but most of that loss would be to local competition that is willing to manufacture here. The same American companies that are nervous about Chinese spying and backdoors are usually less worried about NSA spying, because the assumption is that the NSA acts to benefit US industry.
He doesn't need a citation to mention something easily searchable. Stop being a baby. I know you're new here, but you're not that green. Surely you're capable of doing a basic search on the context: "Idaho stop traffic safety." According to wikipedia there was 1 study and it showed a slight increase in safety.
The reason for "citation needed" when not actually posting to wikipedia is to challenge the accuracy of something asserted, where you believe the actual citation would disprove the claim, or prove biased sources.
In this case, you're requesting a citation, where you could have easily checked and found out that the only source agrees with the claim. People who actually care to read the study would have searched for it right away, and wouldn't have relied on a link anyways. They'd have to do a search even with the link, to find out if it was to the most relevant study.
Also, the maneuver in question increases bicycle rule compliance in general, it doesn't decrease it. The grandparent's logic for it being dangerous to children is absurd; children need to be supervised, and "what would children do if they don't learn anything and just try to mimic adult behavior" is not a valid basis for writing law. If a person bought into that, they'd have to agree to ban anything for adults that is not also suitable for children. It goes way beyond "think of the children" and is somehow even stupider.
If your stock investments are worth 1/2 what they were 8 years ago, that just proves you chose exclusively high-risk investments.
Guess what? "High risk" doesn't mean, "more money for free." The majority of your investments should be in something with low long-term risk, like the S&P 500 index. That is the standard thing that is recommended, and it beats the market. The most mainstream, brainless (that is a compliment here!) investment option you can choose, and it is 25%+ up over any historical high. That is what anybody's 401k should be at, 25%+ because 401k isn't for day trading or nonsense, it is just to sock retirement money away in an effective manner with tax advantages.
The fact that idiots can easily lose their retirement savings by choosing risk instead of retirement security, that is a good argument in favor of traditional pensions instead of 401k programs, but it doesn't tell you anything about the stock market, the economy, or economic trends.
Yeah, here we have both rules, if there was a cop there who cared about giving out tickets, they'd both get tickets, and the driver would be paying more.:)
Some places the details are hyper-technical, too; if you're required to yield to the person already there, there is no emergency, and there is no cause for the horn. This is true even if he was in violation of the crosswalk rules. And if he was scared back onto the island by the actions, that could actually be "criminal mischief," which often includes any time that you're making noise with the purpose of obstructing traffic. The driver could actually go to jail, except that cops only charge pedestrians with "criminal mischief" so it wouldn't happen. But if you scared them back, it would certainly be a failure to yield.
Where I am, drivers know to expect assertive pedestrians who take their turn when the light changes.
I gotta go with, when in Rome do as the Romans do, and the person who doesn't know the local customs should be proactively staying out of the way of the locals passing by them.
You're a real "piece of work" to be calling somebody names over that one, wow.
It is more effective to stop and give them a really nasty mean-face. Pretending to tie your shoes is so passive-aggressive you've lost the aggression, and any potential influence on their future behavior.
If you whack them in the head they'll just learn there are evil people who will assault them. It wouldn't work. But dirty looks in a context where they have to modify their behavior and go around, it can have deep psychological impact on their subconscious attitudes.
In Idaho bicycles can treat stop signs as yield signs. When a bike does a "rolling-stop" through a stop-sign, it is called an "Idaho stop." Many states are legalizing it. It passes most places it is considered. Expect it to be the norm in 20 years. Just like, there was a time where only a few states allowed a right turn at a red light; now it is nearly universal. Because it works. My dad told me a story about driving in the midwest when he was a kid, and they didn't have that rule yet. He made a right turn on red, and had people shouting at him for just brazenly running a light! lol "it just seemed so natural"
In my State bicycles are allowed to use the sidewalks. Also, vechicles with 3-or-less wheels that are hardware limited to 15mph or less are considered bicycles, and can also use the sidewalk. (this was to allow Segways without going into the weeds and endorsing specific wheel configurations) Luckily, pedestrians have the right-of-way and the bicycles are required to always yield.
The speed limit applies to the street, not the sidewalk. They'll beat that ticket. However, many places have a rule that bicycles on the sidewalk have to go walking speed, so there might be a different non-speeding ticket they can get. Most cyclists don't actually go over the 20MPH of a school zone, certainly not over 25 which is the normal real speed. (limit+5 is standard for cars, except in places where it is limit+8)
There are real problems with cyclists that ride poorly and don't follow the rules, but I'm not convinced you know the rules well enough that you're driving according to them.;)
It depends on the location. In the Pacific Northwest there are clear rules for sharing the road, and if you don't share it with bicyclists you will hit them, because they really do use the space allotted to them. You'll probably lose your license, too, if it was your fault. Vehicle-on-bicycle or -pedestrian is taken seriously. If your phone records show you were distracted, and you kill them, you'll go to prison. Real prison.
As a pedestrian, if it is my turn, I can walk. They *will* yield. I understand, in Boston I'd be dead and even the cops would blame me. But that isn't universal.
Except that in cities we have this concept of "keep right* except when passing." There is room for travel in both directions. If there isn't room, the obstruction is on one person's side, or the other person's side. The person on the side of the obstruction is expected to wait. Some people, mostly youngsters, haven't figured this out. But it is actually somewhat rare. Most of the people will sort themselves to the correct lane if you force them to. You're not in "their" way if you're on the right side of the sidewalk.
Actually, it is the best way to get through a rough neighborhood. If you can walk tall, confident, but not swaggering or strutting, you can pass right through almost anything. You do have to weave around gang-bangers, you can't crash into them, but if you maintain the right walk they usually won't even see you, you're just background. If they're also walking, they always make room for me, I only have to weave around them when they're loitering. I've done that in most major American cities, and I've never had a problem.
In fact, the places I have had problems have been small towns, usually without sidewalks. Places where it doesn't matter how you walk, because there isn't enough traffic for it to matter.
As somebody who lived in rough neighborhoods as a teen, one thing I picked up on: You're actually less likely to get shot/stabbed or randomly assaulted there. A lot of people have some means of self defense. Picking a fight could get you shot, so people don't pick fights unless you're obviously walking scared. You're unlikely to get robbed in a drug neighborhood, for example, because most people either don't have anything to steal, or have a weapon, or will fight to the death over their last $2. There are people getting robbed, but the perp knows the victim, and knows they have drugs, or knows they have money that they're trying to buy drugs with.
The neighborhood where you might get stabbed over stupid shit is usually a University Neighborhood, the same place where you're likely to be assaulted by strangers. Those high crime neighborhoods, they're stabbing/shooting people that they know, and have a real dispute with. Don't borrow/loan money, don't borrow/loan drugs, don't arrange drug deals that might go bad, etc., and they probably won't involve you.
If they maintain their lane, and just follow the traffic rules robotically then there is no problem. When I was a kid I'd walk and read a book at the same time, no problem. The problem is that people aren't following the traffic rules when they are paying attention, so when they're not paying attention they're just sortof stumbling into the street without knowing what the state is. If they're practiced in following the rules, they can do that on autopilot and they'll wait for the light to change before crossing without consciously even realizing they had stopped for it. And they'll maintain their lane, too.
I mostly agree. I refuse to negotiate over the last bit of the sidewalk on the right-hand side. If forced, I will simply stop and they can run into me, or go around. It is rare, maybe 1 in 250 people I pass, I have to stop. Maybe 1 in 50 waits until they're inside 5' before moving over. The vast majority identify that I'm in the correct lane, and move over. There is no need for negotiation unless you're doing it wrong.
Actually, I did address it, I just didn't mention it at the time.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
O M F G that is a good one. Quit while you're behind lolol
I'm not "cynical" at all, actually. That just adds to the humor. That they lie to you is the standard practice of their industry. Have you ever even seen the training materials? It isn't cynical it is top-shelf mainstream. Their job is not be moral and ethical, it is feed whatever crap their charts say will make users shut up. In many cases, well above half the callers will actually believe the crap, believe it was all their own fault, agree to faulty charges, agree to keep paying faulty charges every month. A lot of customers will agree to that just based on posturing.
It would be nice to live in a world where honestly was just assumed in customer service, but that isn't the world we live in. I always give people the benefit of the doubt; generally I'm accused of "supporting" all sorts of things that I don't support, just because I defend things when the accusations don't match the evidence. But here, the evidence actually matches standard practices that are taught in the industry.
It was a proper argument. I said, Woobles are to Blargs as Foobars are to Blaz. You obviously disagree, but you instead of trying to substantiate your own opinion, you made a faulty claim that my opinion isn't even able to be considered. I say you simply failed to understand it.
In the old days we had to fiddle with log analysis tools, now google handles that. That is what you use to track visitors to your own site. That is all it is; an analytics tool. All a website finds out about you is the same things it finds out if it is running its own tool; just the stuff that comes from your IP address, like location. They use the IP data for that; google actually knows where you are more accurately than by using the IP, but that is part of their private data about you. They don't give that out. They give out the IP-based guess, the same as any other tool.
The only privacy concern is, "gosh, google knows where I clicked." That isn't somebody selling data about you, which would be a different, bigger concern.
BTW, if you really cared about your privacy, you'd already know all this.
So, you think when you hand money to somebody, some sort of analytical knowledge of their business practices is transferred by osmosis? Do you have to make all your purchases under water, or do you use a reverse-osmosis film?
LOL buying stuff doesn't enhance your ability to understand it. D'Oh!
I guess I'm just not clique-y enough to be a European. It is very odd to get to the end of that and find that sort of appeal to idiocy. You're right, I'm not a platform partisan. People that stupid should be embarrassed to admit it.
The existence of a thing called "selection bias" doesn't make experience worthless or irrelevant. It just means it isn't objective data and can't be used as such. It is perfectly reasonable to base opinions on actual experience. And indeed, if I was deep in an echo chamber where all my friends were so much the same as me that we even used the same computers, it would have little value. But if I'm not in that sort of echo chamber, then it may be that I have at least a rough idea that there is a trend that exists among some people. I only have to know some of those people to know about it. Maybe there is a larger trend in another direction, and indeed, I might miss it. So if I used that experience as objective data, or as complete data, then that would be crazy. But OTOH if I simply use it to know that such people exist, that it is a trend, then it is not bias at all; it is just the parts I'm aware of.
As to the rest, you're trying to exclude the standard meanings of the words by using other meanings, and you bait-and-switch back and forth from just talking about Steam in general and the specific clients they put out. It is true that there are different meanings of "platform" and that they overlap, but the challenge for you is to understand the meaning I used. The existence of other meanings doesn't somehow refute what I said. Re-read, keep re-reading until it is a logical point that you disagree with. Then you'll know you understood it. If it looks not only like something you disagree with, but something that is factually incorrect, keep parsing; you didn't understand it yet.
That's a rather extreme accusation, to accuse outright fraud and the faking of screenshots. You'd need some kind of evidence, but you don't have any. That you saw a different thing on your screen tells me there is some difference, perhaps geography, service level, or simply having been randomly selected to receive a different interface.
Jumping straight to accusation of fraud without evidence is despicable, and gives you no right to even use the word "prove."
I haven't gone into the weeds of their accounting, but I'm assuming they were bundling different units together before, and now they're splitting parts off. I'd expect them to reverse it in the future and re-bundle. There are tricks and games at both ends of that cycle.
There is no guarantee that a loyal customer base means profit, or that the lack of profit is mismanagement. They have products that were high margin 30 years ago, that are low margin now, and if another company has cheaper supply for geo-political reasons then they won't compete well with that product. Customers might prefer their product, might even be willing to pay extra for it, but the willingness of the customers to pay extra won't be calibrated to the actual difference in margin. It will vary by product. Also, they have to be able to make these decisions without always knowing exactly what customers will pay. With high margin products a new fad can take the wind out of your sales, but with low margin any disruption and you can be losing money, not just making less. Sony has a lot of experience at losing money, and making it.
Re-read what I said, but this time assume I know what all the words mean, I chose them on purpose, I'm over 30, and I know at least a little bit about what I'm talking about.
T-Mobile isn't Comcast, but did you know that my state has to fine Comcast multiple times per year over persistent "mistakes" in how they organize their bill? You'd think after decades of saying, "no, that's a lie, no, that is intentionally unclear, no that is a lie, etc." that they would learn to write a clear bill. And indeed, it becomes obvious eventually that none of these are mistakes or misunderstandings.
When the person on the phone doesn't know the answer, but they claim to know it and guess, and are wrong, that isn't a misunderstanding. That is somebody telling a lie. That they know the answer is the lie.
If you look at the actual accusations and the screen shots, there are numerous examples where to defend them the best you can do is say it is a smaller lie than it appears to be. But none of that makes it into misunderstandings. They didn't misunderstand, they lied about various things while at the same time also misunderstanding the (incorrect) numbers on the screen.
That you're a fan of their service overall tells you nothing at all about if it was a lie or a misunderstanding. And if you were close to my age, you'd have seen these same things from so many companies for so long, you'd realize that the workers in that call center have been dealing with these issues for decades. The guy on the phone may be new, but his boss isn't. They do actually know what they are doing. And if you also read business news, you'd know that their industry media tells them to do these things. It is a known way of doing business, to keep the customer in the dark and feed them shit. They have formal analysis that tells them it makes them more money than providing good service. That is another reason it is not believable when they pretend to accidentally do exactly the things their industry rags tell them will make them more money. They're experts in their field, and they're doing things the way they intended. And that's why so many companies are doing it exactly the same way.
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I didn't say, "all manufacturing equipment is made in the USA," so I'm not sure what your point is. Your comment implies it is identifying an error in my analysis, yet the substance fails to raise any point.
Yes, interestingly the US customers are also backing away from Chinese products for the same reasons the Chinese are backing away from American products. So who is hurt again? All you have to do to see who this hurts and who it benefits is to look at the trade balance. Since Americans buy more Chinese stuff than Chinese buy American stuff, it seems to me the obvious answer is that it will help the US "tech economy."
Also, most of the American exports are not commodity items that can be replaced, but factory machines and related equipment where there isn't strong competition. That is equipment they simply must buy in order to be competitive on export quality. So even in a trade war setting, US exports would only go down a little bit, and most of the "US brands" banned are actually manufactured in Asia. So they'd be cutting at their own face. Meanwhile, tech companies with US manufacturing like Texas Instruments would benefit substantially from any such conflict because trade wars drive production to return home.
I certainly agree there is likely to be a net negative for existing US brands, but most of that loss would be to local competition that is willing to manufacture here. The same American companies that are nervous about Chinese spying and backdoors are usually less worried about NSA spying, because the assumption is that the NSA acts to benefit US industry.
He doesn't need a citation to mention something easily searchable. Stop being a baby. I know you're new here, but you're not that green. Surely you're capable of doing a basic search on the context: "Idaho stop traffic safety." According to wikipedia there was 1 study and it showed a slight increase in safety.
The reason for "citation needed" when not actually posting to wikipedia is to challenge the accuracy of something asserted, where you believe the actual citation would disprove the claim, or prove biased sources.
In this case, you're requesting a citation, where you could have easily checked and found out that the only source agrees with the claim. People who actually care to read the study would have searched for it right away, and wouldn't have relied on a link anyways. They'd have to do a search even with the link, to find out if it was to the most relevant study.
Also, the maneuver in question increases bicycle rule compliance in general, it doesn't decrease it. The grandparent's logic for it being dangerous to children is absurd; children need to be supervised, and "what would children do if they don't learn anything and just try to mimic adult behavior" is not a valid basis for writing law. If a person bought into that, they'd have to agree to ban anything for adults that is not also suitable for children. It goes way beyond "think of the children" and is somehow even stupider.
If your stock investments are worth 1/2 what they were 8 years ago, that just proves you chose exclusively high-risk investments.
Guess what? "High risk" doesn't mean, "more money for free." The majority of your investments should be in something with low long-term risk, like the S&P 500 index. That is the standard thing that is recommended, and it beats the market. The most mainstream, brainless (that is a compliment here!) investment option you can choose, and it is 25%+ up over any historical high. That is what anybody's 401k should be at, 25%+ because 401k isn't for day trading or nonsense, it is just to sock retirement money away in an effective manner with tax advantages.
The fact that idiots can easily lose their retirement savings by choosing risk instead of retirement security, that is a good argument in favor of traditional pensions instead of 401k programs, but it doesn't tell you anything about the stock market, the economy, or economic trends.
Yeah, here we have both rules, if there was a cop there who cared about giving out tickets, they'd both get tickets, and the driver would be paying more. :)
Some places the details are hyper-technical, too; if you're required to yield to the person already there, there is no emergency, and there is no cause for the horn. This is true even if he was in violation of the crosswalk rules. And if he was scared back onto the island by the actions, that could actually be "criminal mischief," which often includes any time that you're making noise with the purpose of obstructing traffic. The driver could actually go to jail, except that cops only charge pedestrians with "criminal mischief" so it wouldn't happen. But if you scared them back, it would certainly be a failure to yield.
Where I am, drivers know to expect assertive pedestrians who take their turn when the light changes.
I gotta go with, when in Rome do as the Romans do, and the person who doesn't know the local customs should be proactively staying out of the way of the locals passing by them.
You're a real "piece of work" to be calling somebody names over that one, wow.
It is more effective to stop and give them a really nasty mean-face. Pretending to tie your shoes is so passive-aggressive you've lost the aggression, and any potential influence on their future behavior.
If you whack them in the head they'll just learn there are evil people who will assault them. It wouldn't work. But dirty looks in a context where they have to modify their behavior and go around, it can have deep psychological impact on their subconscious attitudes.
All but 1 of those things are the correct, legal way to ride in most places.
In Idaho bicycles can treat stop signs as yield signs. When a bike does a "rolling-stop" through a stop-sign, it is called an "Idaho stop." Many states are legalizing it. It passes most places it is considered. Expect it to be the norm in 20 years. Just like, there was a time where only a few states allowed a right turn at a red light; now it is nearly universal. Because it works. My dad told me a story about driving in the midwest when he was a kid, and they didn't have that rule yet. He made a right turn on red, and had people shouting at him for just brazenly running a light! lol "it just seemed so natural"
In my State bicycles are allowed to use the sidewalks. Also, vechicles with 3-or-less wheels that are hardware limited to 15mph or less are considered bicycles, and can also use the sidewalk. (this was to allow Segways without going into the weeds and endorsing specific wheel configurations) Luckily, pedestrians have the right-of-way and the bicycles are required to always yield.
The speed limit applies to the street, not the sidewalk. They'll beat that ticket. However, many places have a rule that bicycles on the sidewalk have to go walking speed, so there might be a different non-speeding ticket they can get. Most cyclists don't actually go over the 20MPH of a school zone, certainly not over 25 which is the normal real speed. (limit+5 is standard for cars, except in places where it is limit+8)
There are real problems with cyclists that ride poorly and don't follow the rules, but I'm not convinced you know the rules well enough that you're driving according to them. ;)
It depends on the location. In the Pacific Northwest there are clear rules for sharing the road, and if you don't share it with bicyclists you will hit them, because they really do use the space allotted to them. You'll probably lose your license, too, if it was your fault. Vehicle-on-bicycle or -pedestrian is taken seriously. If your phone records show you were distracted, and you kill them, you'll go to prison. Real prison.
As a pedestrian, if it is my turn, I can walk. They *will* yield. I understand, in Boston I'd be dead and even the cops would blame me. But that isn't universal.
He didn't say that. He said might makes win.
Except that in cities we have this concept of "keep right* except when passing." There is room for travel in both directions. If there isn't room, the obstruction is on one person's side, or the other person's side. The person on the side of the obstruction is expected to wait. Some people, mostly youngsters, haven't figured this out. But it is actually somewhat rare. Most of the people will sort themselves to the correct lane if you force them to. You're not in "their" way if you're on the right side of the sidewalk.
* Some locations use a different side than this.
I do that already, and they really do move after you stop. They'll only crash into you when you're both in motion and it is no-fault.
Actually, it is the best way to get through a rough neighborhood. If you can walk tall, confident, but not swaggering or strutting, you can pass right through almost anything. You do have to weave around gang-bangers, you can't crash into them, but if you maintain the right walk they usually won't even see you, you're just background. If they're also walking, they always make room for me, I only have to weave around them when they're loitering. I've done that in most major American cities, and I've never had a problem.
In fact, the places I have had problems have been small towns, usually without sidewalks. Places where it doesn't matter how you walk, because there isn't enough traffic for it to matter.
As somebody who lived in rough neighborhoods as a teen, one thing I picked up on: You're actually less likely to get shot/stabbed or randomly assaulted there. A lot of people have some means of self defense. Picking a fight could get you shot, so people don't pick fights unless you're obviously walking scared. You're unlikely to get robbed in a drug neighborhood, for example, because most people either don't have anything to steal, or have a weapon, or will fight to the death over their last $2. There are people getting robbed, but the perp knows the victim, and knows they have drugs, or knows they have money that they're trying to buy drugs with.
The neighborhood where you might get stabbed over stupid shit is usually a University Neighborhood, the same place where you're likely to be assaulted by strangers. Those high crime neighborhoods, they're stabbing/shooting people that they know, and have a real dispute with. Don't borrow/loan money, don't borrow/loan drugs, don't arrange drug deals that might go bad, etc., and they probably won't involve you.
If they maintain their lane, and just follow the traffic rules robotically then there is no problem. When I was a kid I'd walk and read a book at the same time, no problem. The problem is that people aren't following the traffic rules when they are paying attention, so when they're not paying attention they're just sortof stumbling into the street without knowing what the state is. If they're practiced in following the rules, they can do that on autopilot and they'll wait for the light to change before crossing without consciously even realizing they had stopped for it. And they'll maintain their lane, too.
I mostly agree. I refuse to negotiate over the last bit of the sidewalk on the right-hand side. If forced, I will simply stop and they can run into me, or go around. It is rare, maybe 1 in 250 people I pass, I have to stop. Maybe 1 in 50 waits until they're inside 5' before moving over. The vast majority identify that I'm in the correct lane, and move over. There is no need for negotiation unless you're doing it wrong.
Your UID (the actual name for what re referred to as "the number") might be lower, but you're definitely on my lawn.
Proven, you really did just show up. Give grandma her laptop back before she grounds you.
Actually, I did address it, I just didn't mention it at the time.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
O M F G that is a good one. Quit while you're behind lolol
I'm not "cynical" at all, actually. That just adds to the humor. That they lie to you is the standard practice of their industry. Have you ever even seen the training materials? It isn't cynical it is top-shelf mainstream. Their job is not be moral and ethical, it is feed whatever crap their charts say will make users shut up. In many cases, well above half the callers will actually believe the crap, believe it was all their own fault, agree to faulty charges, agree to keep paying faulty charges every month. A lot of customers will agree to that just based on posturing.
It would be nice to live in a world where honestly was just assumed in customer service, but that isn't the world we live in. I always give people the benefit of the doubt; generally I'm accused of "supporting" all sorts of things that I don't support, just because I defend things when the accusations don't match the evidence. But here, the evidence actually matches standard practices that are taught in the industry.
It was a proper argument. I said, Woobles are to Blargs as Foobars are to Blaz. You obviously disagree, but you instead of trying to substantiate your own opinion, you made a faulty claim that my opinion isn't even able to be considered. I say you simply failed to understand it.
If you don't even know whose lawn this is, you're new to slashdot. Who did you buy your account from? Some kid, from the number.
I use their service on all sides, yes. I really *DO* know what it is.
Next time, just assume that. You know know you don't know, but you don't know if I know. It is a bad time to bluff. ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... There you go, now you know. ;)
In the old days we had to fiddle with log analysis tools, now google handles that. That is what you use to track visitors to your own site. That is all it is; an analytics tool. All a website finds out about you is the same things it finds out if it is running its own tool; just the stuff that comes from your IP address, like location. They use the IP data for that; google actually knows where you are more accurately than by using the IP, but that is part of their private data about you. They don't give that out. They give out the IP-based guess, the same as any other tool.
The only privacy concern is, "gosh, google knows where I clicked." That isn't somebody selling data about you, which would be a different, bigger concern.
BTW, if you really cared about your privacy, you'd already know all this.
So, you think when you hand money to somebody, some sort of analytical knowledge of their business practices is transferred by osmosis? Do you have to make all your purchases under water, or do you use a reverse-osmosis film?
LOL buying stuff doesn't enhance your ability to understand it. D'Oh!
I guess I'm just not clique-y enough to be a European. It is very odd to get to the end of that and find that sort of appeal to idiocy. You're right, I'm not a platform partisan. People that stupid should be embarrassed to admit it.
The existence of a thing called "selection bias" doesn't make experience worthless or irrelevant. It just means it isn't objective data and can't be used as such. It is perfectly reasonable to base opinions on actual experience. And indeed, if I was deep in an echo chamber where all my friends were so much the same as me that we even used the same computers, it would have little value. But if I'm not in that sort of echo chamber, then it may be that I have at least a rough idea that there is a trend that exists among some people. I only have to know some of those people to know about it. Maybe there is a larger trend in another direction, and indeed, I might miss it. So if I used that experience as objective data, or as complete data, then that would be crazy. But OTOH if I simply use it to know that such people exist, that it is a trend, then it is not bias at all; it is just the parts I'm aware of.
As to the rest, you're trying to exclude the standard meanings of the words by using other meanings, and you bait-and-switch back and forth from just talking about Steam in general and the specific clients they put out. It is true that there are different meanings of "platform" and that they overlap, but the challenge for you is to understand the meaning I used. The existence of other meanings doesn't somehow refute what I said. Re-read, keep re-reading until it is a logical point that you disagree with. Then you'll know you understood it. If it looks not only like something you disagree with, but something that is factually incorrect, keep parsing; you didn't understand it yet.
That's a rather extreme accusation, to accuse outright fraud and the faking of screenshots. You'd need some kind of evidence, but you don't have any. That you saw a different thing on your screen tells me there is some difference, perhaps geography, service level, or simply having been randomly selected to receive a different interface.
Jumping straight to accusation of fraud without evidence is despicable, and gives you no right to even use the word "prove."
I haven't gone into the weeds of their accounting, but I'm assuming they were bundling different units together before, and now they're splitting parts off. I'd expect them to reverse it in the future and re-bundle. There are tricks and games at both ends of that cycle.
There is no guarantee that a loyal customer base means profit, or that the lack of profit is mismanagement. They have products that were high margin 30 years ago, that are low margin now, and if another company has cheaper supply for geo-political reasons then they won't compete well with that product. Customers might prefer their product, might even be willing to pay extra for it, but the willingness of the customers to pay extra won't be calibrated to the actual difference in margin. It will vary by product. Also, they have to be able to make these decisions without always knowing exactly what customers will pay. With high margin products a new fad can take the wind out of your sales, but with low margin any disruption and you can be losing money, not just making less. Sony has a lot of experience at losing money, and making it.
Re-read what I said, but this time assume I know what all the words mean, I chose them on purpose, I'm over 30, and I know at least a little bit about what I'm talking about.
T-Mobile isn't Comcast, but did you know that my state has to fine Comcast multiple times per year over persistent "mistakes" in how they organize their bill? You'd think after decades of saying, "no, that's a lie, no, that is intentionally unclear, no that is a lie, etc." that they would learn to write a clear bill. And indeed, it becomes obvious eventually that none of these are mistakes or misunderstandings.
When the person on the phone doesn't know the answer, but they claim to know it and guess, and are wrong, that isn't a misunderstanding. That is somebody telling a lie. That they know the answer is the lie.
If you look at the actual accusations and the screen shots, there are numerous examples where to defend them the best you can do is say it is a smaller lie than it appears to be. But none of that makes it into misunderstandings. They didn't misunderstand, they lied about various things while at the same time also misunderstanding the (incorrect) numbers on the screen.
That you're a fan of their service overall tells you nothing at all about if it was a lie or a misunderstanding. And if you were close to my age, you'd have seen these same things from so many companies for so long, you'd realize that the workers in that call center have been dealing with these issues for decades. The guy on the phone may be new, but his boss isn't. They do actually know what they are doing. And if you also read business news, you'd know that their industry media tells them to do these things. It is a known way of doing business, to keep the customer in the dark and feed them shit. They have formal analysis that tells them it makes them more money than providing good service. That is another reason it is not believable when they pretend to accidentally do exactly the things their industry rags tell them will make them more money. They're experts in their field, and they're doing things the way they intended. And that's why so many companies are doing it exactly the same way.