Whether the rudeness reputation is deserved or not, it really has given all US tourists a bad name, and it's one that is going to be hard to get rid of. Part of the problem is how insular many people from the US are - it's a big country, with a big population and a lot going on.
A few years ago, I was on vacation (somewhere tropical) and met up with some German tourists, who were exceptionally polite and spoke good English.
They asked where I was from, and I said Seattle, in the US. They then asked me, seriously, "oh, we have a brother in Dallas, do you know him?" I had to explain exactly how far apart Seattle and Dallas were, that I've never been to Dallas and that, in fact, I've actually never been east of Las Vegas. Just thought it was funny-- Americans have a reputation for bad geography, but I think the problem might be more universal than we like to think.
Do you think the US does not have creatively-named microbrews? Shame on you. Beer is universal to all cultures. (Except maybe the deep south, where it's Bud and only Bud. Oh, and Utah, but it'd be a stretch to call anything in Utah "culture.")
There's nothing stopping you from writing a Ruby DOM interface, and modifying your favorite browser to understand [script type="text/ruby"] tags on websites. It's all designed to be language-neutral, I have no idea why there's never been an effort to create more language options. (Well, IE had ActiveX, but that was never picked-up for obvious reasons.)
The problem isn't anything Microsoft doing, it's users who don't upgrade their OS. Did you notice the part where this only affects IE6 and IE7? Upgrade to IE8, and, presto, you're immune!
We have meetings, but we also have Outlook on every computer and outside the meeting rooms. Computers are clocks.
Maybe you work with a paper-shuffling company and not a computer company, I dunno... I can't imagine a computer company that doesn't have the time displayed on multiple LCDs in every room. (Oh, wait, lemme guess: IBM?)
You never go to meet people for coffee and wonder if you've got time to look in a few shops before they will arrive? You never wonder how long it is until closing time to see if you've got enough time for another round before the bar closes?
Not obsessively enough to care whether the time-keeping device is in my pocket or on my wrist.
Download your e-mail at one end of the ride, go into offline mode, answer the e-mails, queue up the outgoing messages, and empty the queue into a mail server the next time you get WLAN. Such a work flow was incredibly common in the dial-up era.
Well there's two problems with that. One is that I don't get *that* much email that it takes me a solid 45 minutes to go through it all, so when I'm done with email I still wouldn't be able to get any work done. (I work in web analytics, so there's very little I can do without a connection.)
Secondly, the email traffic doesn't really start to pick up until I'm already on-route, meaning if I replied off-line I'd probably end up replying to out-dated threads and looking like an idiot.
Or is your position such that answering your e-mail necessarily involves looking things up on the web?
That too.
And more to the point, fucking Sound Transit advertises that they have wifi installed on their trains, don't you think it's their responsibility to make it actually WORK? Even worse, it works well enough to make my computer think it's going to work, then just drops all the connections.
(BTW: if you test network-aware software, PLEASE test it on a network like this. It's amazing how many programs simply can't cope... just because the OS says I have an Internet connection doesn't mean the packets go anywhere.)
A lot of people have posted this. What the hell do you guys do that you need to look at the time so often? I look at the time maybe once per day, max... at work, I can look at my computer screen (or the one on the projector at meetings), at home I have clocks in every room I need them in...
The only time I need to look at the clock is walking to the train station after work, and even then I only need to look if I happen to be running late. (I know about how long it takes, so if there's no risk of missing the train, no point in looking at my watch.
Computers were supposed to get rid of paper and they didn't. Phones won't either.
The only time we use paper in my office is when we're dealing with other (less civilized) companies-- like registering for benefits.
I mean, some people print out things for their own reference, but it's not required or even desired by the company itself.
If I am going to do work during my commute it will be on a laptop or netbook, not a mobile. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way.
Well, until damned Sound Transit fixes the wifi on the Sounder train, using a mobile is the only way to answer my email on my way to work. Not that I wouldn't love to use a laptop, but it's no good without wifi.
Lotus Notes is off-the-scale of slow apps. If you're trying to insult Windows using Lotus Notes as an example, that's completely unfair... Lotus Notes would be slower than OpenOffice on the fastest computer available, it's a gigantic hog.
If something takes longer than about 3 seconds, I usually flip to another window. The constant task switching *is* a hell of a lot less efficient than if the email opened more quickly.
More to the point, computer speed is subjective anyway-- If an OS runs apps 50% faster, but each button press takes 50% longer to refresh the screen, that OS is slower. Welcome to "Human Beings 101".
Atom based netbooks are already too slow for anything *but* web surfing
Ever actually use one?
My Windows 7 netbook has no problem playing full-screen MP4 video, that's a bit more hardcore than web surfing. Of course, you can find websites now that do full-screen HD video, so I guess maybe that falls under the definition of "web surfing."
Frankly, the Atom CPU is about 5 times faster than my first Windows XP PC. And I did a hell of a lot with that.
MST3K wasn't even really sci-fi. Only about half the movies they did were sci-fi in the first place, and most of those were horror movies that just used sci-fi to generate their "monster-of-the-week," which hardly count.
But it kind of depends on what you consider sci-fi-- would you say Squirm, worms that become carnivores after being struck by lightning, is sci-fi? How about A Touch of Satan which features supernatural powers? I wouldn't say so, personally.
To be fair, they did some real sci-fi. Parts: The Clonus Horror comes immediately to mind, as does Time Chasers.
But in general, MST3K is much, much more about making fun of movies, not about sci-fi.
And science fiction writers are more responsible than anybody for making people afraid of Nuclear power. Scary radiation made a great story theme for lazy writers.
Bing, Google, and Yahoo all censor results in China.
The only difference here is that Bing doesn't differentiate between Chinese language, and Chinese location-- so if you're searching in Chinese, even if you're in the US, you still get the censored results. I don't believe this is really that big a deal, frankly... maybe in BC.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether the rudeness reputation is deserved or not, it really has given all US tourists a bad name, and it's one that is going to be hard to get rid of. Part of the problem is how insular many people from the US are - it's a big country, with a big population and a lot going on.
A few years ago, I was on vacation (somewhere tropical) and met up with some German tourists, who were exceptionally polite and spoke good English.
They asked where I was from, and I said Seattle, in the US. They then asked me, seriously, "oh, we have a brother in Dallas, do you know him?" I had to explain exactly how far apart Seattle and Dallas were, that I've never been to Dallas and that, in fact, I've actually never been east of Las Vegas. Just thought it was funny-- Americans have a reputation for bad geography, but I think the problem might be more universal than we like to think.
Do you think the US does not have creatively-named microbrews? Shame on you. Beer is universal to all cultures. (Except maybe the deep south, where it's Bud and only Bud. Oh, and Utah, but it'd be a stretch to call anything in Utah "culture.")
Last time I flew with British Airways, you could wile away the time just looking at their gorgeous flight attendants.
Have their standards fallen so low that you'd bring a book? Damn.
Shellembler code.
Common mistake.
I know, I'm going to have to stop saving and trying to execute all my incoming spam messages.
Maybe I'll try executing my IMs...
You're selling video games short.
For example, there's usually amnesia involved also.
Maybe it's a homage to the first Mega Man box art: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/video-game-article/mega-box-art.php
(But I doubt it.)
Whine, whine. I never said it would be easy, I said it's possible.
There's nothing stopping you from writing a Ruby DOM interface, and modifying your favorite browser to understand [script type="text/ruby"] tags on websites. It's all designed to be language-neutral, I have no idea why there's never been an effort to create more language options. (Well, IE had ActiveX, but that was never picked-up for obvious reasons.)
First National Bank of Low Tech. Seriously, though, wall clocks are like $8... your company hates you.
Well, they don't have a time machine, so you'll just have to cope with that somehow.
The problem isn't anything Microsoft doing, it's users who don't upgrade their OS. Did you notice the part where this only affects IE6 and IE7? Upgrade to IE8, and, presto, you're immune!
We have meetings, but we also have Outlook on every computer and outside the meeting rooms. Computers are clocks.
Maybe you work with a paper-shuffling company and not a computer company, I dunno... I can't imagine a computer company that doesn't have the time displayed on multiple LCDs in every room. (Oh, wait, lemme guess: IBM?)
You never go to meet people for coffee and wonder if you've got time to look in a few shops before they will arrive? You never wonder how long it is until closing time to see if you've got enough time for another round before the bar closes?
Not obsessively enough to care whether the time-keeping device is in my pocket or on my wrist.
Download your e-mail at one end of the ride, go into offline mode, answer the e-mails, queue up the outgoing messages, and empty the queue into a mail server the next time you get WLAN. Such a work flow was incredibly common in the dial-up era.
Well there's two problems with that. One is that I don't get *that* much email that it takes me a solid 45 minutes to go through it all, so when I'm done with email I still wouldn't be able to get any work done. (I work in web analytics, so there's very little I can do without a connection.)
Secondly, the email traffic doesn't really start to pick up until I'm already on-route, meaning if I replied off-line I'd probably end up replying to out-dated threads and looking like an idiot.
Or is your position such that answering your e-mail necessarily involves looking things up on the web?
That too.
And more to the point, fucking Sound Transit advertises that they have wifi installed on their trains, don't you think it's their responsibility to make it actually WORK? Even worse, it works well enough to make my computer think it's going to work, then just drops all the connections.
(BTW: if you test network-aware software, PLEASE test it on a network like this. It's amazing how many programs simply can't cope... just because the OS says I have an Internet connection doesn't mean the packets go anywhere.)
A lot of people have posted this. What the hell do you guys do that you need to look at the time so often? I look at the time maybe once per day, max... at work, I can look at my computer screen (or the one on the projector at meetings), at home I have clocks in every room I need them in...
The only time I need to look at the clock is walking to the train station after work, and even then I only need to look if I happen to be running late. (I know about how long it takes, so if there's no risk of missing the train, no point in looking at my watch.
Computers were supposed to get rid of paper and they didn't. Phones won't either.
The only time we use paper in my office is when we're dealing with other (less civilized) companies-- like registering for benefits.
I mean, some people print out things for their own reference, but it's not required or even desired by the company itself.
If I am going to do work during my commute it will be on a laptop or netbook, not a mobile. I suspect a lot of people feel the same way.
Well, until damned Sound Transit fixes the wifi on the Sounder train, using a mobile is the only way to answer my email on my way to work. Not that I wouldn't love to use a laptop, but it's no good without wifi.
Lotus Notes is off-the-scale of slow apps. If you're trying to insult Windows using Lotus Notes as an example, that's completely unfair... Lotus Notes would be slower than OpenOffice on the fastest computer available, it's a gigantic hog.
If something takes longer than about 3 seconds, I usually flip to another window. The constant task switching *is* a hell of a lot less efficient than if the email opened more quickly.
More to the point, computer speed is subjective anyway-- If an OS runs apps 50% faster, but each button press takes 50% longer to refresh the screen, that OS is slower. Welcome to "Human Beings 101".
Atom based netbooks are already too slow for anything *but* web surfing
Ever actually use one?
My Windows 7 netbook has no problem playing full-screen MP4 video, that's a bit more hardcore than web surfing. Of course, you can find websites now that do full-screen HD video, so I guess maybe that falls under the definition of "web surfing."
Frankly, the Atom CPU is about 5 times faster than my first Windows XP PC. And I did a hell of a lot with that.
Uh... ha ha?
MST3K wasn't even really sci-fi. Only about half the movies they did were sci-fi in the first place, and most of those were horror movies that just used sci-fi to generate their "monster-of-the-week," which hardly count.
But it kind of depends on what you consider sci-fi-- would you say Squirm, worms that become carnivores after being struck by lightning, is sci-fi? How about A Touch of Satan which features supernatural powers? I wouldn't say so, personally.
To be fair, they did some real sci-fi. Parts: The Clonus Horror comes immediately to mind, as does Time Chasers.
But in general, MST3K is much, much more about making fun of movies, not about sci-fi.
And science fiction writers are more responsible than anybody for making people afraid of Nuclear power. Scary radiation made a great story theme for lazy writers.
Bing, Google, and Yahoo all censor results in China.
The only difference here is that Bing doesn't differentiate between Chinese language, and Chinese location-- so if you're searching in Chinese, even if you're in the US, you still get the censored results. I don't believe this is really that big a deal, frankly... maybe in BC.
Yeah, that's why everybody's switching to steampunk. Plenty of steam.