The Vent and Rant Thread

[nomesque]

Originally Posted by Slite

Serious? I thought that was just something kids did back in the late 70's and early 80's. How stupid.

Still big over here in the very low, very un-mobile socioeconomic groups. ie, the people who've been poor and ill-educated for a couple of generations now, and they're stuck in a cycle of poor nutrition and child abuse/neglect. From what I can see, that is. The kids who do it most probably know the effects and don't care. *sniff*

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by phenomshel

Release Candidate.

ah. I hate acronyms mostly.

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by kennyc

ah. I hate acronyms mostly.

My favourite one is the alternative meaning for PCMCIA - people can't memorise computer industry acronyms

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by nomesque

Still big over here in the very low, very un-mobile socioeconomic groups. ie, the people who've been poor and ill-educated for a couple of generations now, and they're stuck in a cycle of poor nutrition and child abuse/neglect. From what I can see, that is. The kids who do it most probably know the effects and don't care. *sniff*

I just read a story - An Ex-mas Feast - in "Say You're One of Them" by Uwem Akpan that included this glue-sniffing as part of the story. Very stark, realistic story of poverty and survival in Nigeria(I think...didn't really say).

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

Hopefully it was a one off and you can go back to liking it!

I prefer it to Vista...

But I still prefer OSX

See below:

Originally Posted by Dylrob

IMO Microsoft has yet to top Windows XP. Thus I'm sticking with it for as long as possible. (though unfortunately this laptop is really starting to show its age)

Couldn't agree more! I couldn't even get Vista to work (and my laptop is "vista capable") so I didn't even see that one... I'll stick with XP for some time to come.

Originally Posted by ShortNCuddlyAm

My favourite one is the alternative meaning for PCMCIA - people can't memorise computer industry acronyms

Oh, I thought it was Personal Computer Mafia Central Intelligence Agency...

[GizmoPlanet]

Originally Posted by montsnmags

I recall this one time that I had bought a book from Dymocks. I'm not sure why I'd gone to Dymocks - perhaps they were the nearest bookstore, and I was on my lunch hour. I know it wouldn't have been because of the excellent service or well-stocked shelves or pleasant staff or sensible store layout or, what most would consider a prerequisite of a bookstore, a basic ability to file things in alphabetical order, because, as I said, this was Dymocks. Imagine the government trying to run a retail establishment, and imagine that by "government" I mean "large shoal of krill" and by "run a retail establishment" I mean "perform brain surgery on an unsedated gibbon", and you are welcomed to the wonderful world of Dymocks.

Dymocks is that kind of bookstore. They're an Australian legacy, and that legacy leaves them as one of the few major bookselling chains in Australia.

Subsequently, considering their market-dominance, they care about as much for you as a truck cares for the fly whose arse just came through it's own head to hit the windscreen too.

They're the kind of store that places three million copies of a newly released second book in a series in a cardboard stand at the front that you need crampons, ropes and pitons to get past to get the rest of the way into the store that has not a single copy of the first book, but they "can order it in", by which they mean take your name and phone number and sell it to blackmarket organ-harvesters because they're never going to use it to ring you back, nor have the book in at any stage before the next ice age.

They're the kind of store that files "The Origin of Species" under "Science Fiction" ("coz, like, you know, he wrote Planet of the Apes, dint he?") and "W.H.Auden" under "Gay/Lesbian" ("Yeah, that really cool poem in 4 weddings and a funeral. I *so* cried in that movie").

[...] remainder snipped for brevity's sake

In the meantime, remember, Dymocks aren't evil; they just suck harder than Paris Hilton in a post-game football locker room.

See, that's a rant. I feel somewhat better now.

Ah, I see you've experienced what I call 'the English shopkeeper mentality':

'There it is, that's the price, we only have one in stock, an' if yer don't bleedin' like it, yer can sod off!'

We have the same problem (to an extent) in Canada. It tends to happen most with the smaller players who figure they can get away with it because they were here before anyone else. Canada tends to be somewhat of a closed market for retail goods, with limited selection and availability, with equally small-minded, closed-off retailers. And some items which are virtual commodities in the US are virtual examples of 'unobtainium' here.

Our Borders-clone, known as Chapters, isn't too bad, but I've often found that rather inexplicably, some books that are popular (or should be) are listed as 'special order' or 'website order only' items.

Good rant, though.

[Sweetpea]

*pulls out her hair*


Argghhh!

Acceptation testers! I could do without them perfectly, I think...


I work on a content generator. We're in the last stages of development (monday will be release day). So, I fixed a last few bugs and put them on the test server. I then notified the tester that a new release was ready. Within 5 minutes, I get an email from a test, saying she generated it this morning (it's way past noon right now) and it's still not fixed...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

*pulls out her hair*


Argghhh!

Acceptation testers! I could do without them perfectly, I think...


I work on a content generator. We're in the last stages of development (monday will be release day). So, I fixed a last few bugs and put them on the test server. I then notified the tester that a new release was ready. Within 5 minutes, I get an email from a test, saying she generated it this morning (it's way past noon right now) and it's still not fixed...

Hugs! I know and hate that. At least you actually have testers and QA! I sometimes wonder if this company I work for has ever heard of testing.

[Slite]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Hugs! I know and hate that. At least you actually have testers and QA! I sometimes wonder if this company I work for has ever heard of testing.

I know mine hasn't... after every servicewindow everything is borked and I need to spend hours trying to get everything working again.

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Hugs! I know and hate that. At least you actually have testers and QA! I sometimes wonder if this company I work for has ever heard of testing.

Actually, the tester herself is good (hey, she's my collegue!) but the acceptation testers are just normal employees who only got "drafted" in testing the application they'll be using for the next 6 months (as that's when the next release is out again).

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Dylrob

IMO Microsoft has yet to top Windows XP. Thus I'm sticking with it for as long as possible. (though unfortunately this laptop is really starting to show its age)

We all have such short memories. When XP came out there was a firestorm against it. Many apps didn't run on it... alot of devices didn't have the correct drivers. People said... Windows 2000 was the best ever and they would not be switching to XP.

Of course the above is really funny, because there were many people that said XP was no different than Win 2000 and it just added the "cartoony" UI theme.

Vista had the same exact issues. Win7 not so much because the driver and security model is the same as Vista. At this point in time most apps and drivers work without issue on Vista.

Bottom line... animals do the strangest things. That said, if you have XP on an existing machine you might as well stick with it. However, if you are buying a new machine get Windows 7 (or even better, get a Mac).

BOb

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

.... That said, if you have XP on an existing machine you might as well stick with it. However, if you are buying a new machine get Windows 7 (or even better, get a Mac).

BOb

Gotta agree with that. And that is the plan I mean to follow.

[Slite]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

We all have such short memories. When XP came out there was a firestorm against it. Many apps didn't run on it... alot of devices didn't have the correct drivers. People said... Windows 2000 was the best ever and they would not be switching to XP.

Of course the above is really funny, because there were many people that said XP was no different than Win 2000 and it just added the "cartoony" UI theme.

Vista had the same exact issues. Win7 not so much because the driver and security model is the same as Vista. At this point in time most apps and drivers work without issue on Vista.

Bottom line... animals do the strangest things. That said, if you have XP on an existing machine you might as well stick with it. However, if you are buying a new machine get Windows 7 (or even better, get a Mac).

BOb

I'm quite happy with my Vista currently, got a x64 Ultimate edition that has been working more or less flawlessly for the last year. No crashing, no wierd stuff.

First things I did was of course to turn of UAC and Indexing though

[ShortNCuddlyAm]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

We all have such short memories. When XP came out there was a firestorm against it. Many apps didn't run on it... alot of devices didn't have the correct drivers. People said... Windows 2000 was the best ever and they would not be switching to XP.

I switched to XP fairly early on (OK - I got it the day it came out after playing with it in beta at work) and never really had any problems with it. Apart from needing to tweak the interface to look a little better. Can't remember now what I thought of 2000. 95 was OK for what it was (NT4 was better ), 98 was so-so and ME was dire.

Bottom line... animals do the strangest things. That said, if you have XP on an existing machine you might as well stick with it. However, if you are buying a new machine get Windows 7 (or even better, get a Mac).

BOb

Wise words there

[kennyc]

I remember driver problems with xp, but thought it worked well other than that.