Letters to the Editor
speeder
Published Letters: 128 Editor's Choice: 12
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What I did not see today.
[Read the article: Washington Mutual's bad day ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Today, I did not even know about this till a few minutes ago. There were no long lines outside any of the Wamu's where I live. Nobody was speeding down the road trying to get their money out just in case. No reports that Wamu might face insolvency due to a run.
The New Deal. Saving American Capitalism from it's own exuberance since 1932.
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actually
[Read the article: Washington Mutual's bad day ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]FDIC came in around 1934 - so i guess it should read
The New Deal: Saving American Capitalism from it's own exuberance since 1934.
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This scares me.
[Read the article: Fake Springsteen praises Windows in heroically awful corporate video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Honestly, it really does. I mean what could this say about the people who could watch this and actually feel its intended affect? How could anyone be shown this and not feel massively condescended to? How could this not insult every fiber of dignity you have? This isn't Apple vs MS, this is about bad incredibly demeaning and insulting techniques to inspire or educate a sales force. Trying to get me excited about meeting my quota? Are you serious? I know that to some extent this is simply to make something which will point out what the management wants the sales team to use as there key selling points. But honestly if you don't know enough about the product you are selling without resorting to some gimmick, you shouldn't be selling it.
Seriously I think If I were on a Vista sales team and someone showed me this to get me excited about selling Vista I would need to exert massive control over myself before I punched them.
It would be a great triumph that I was only fired after saying, "Want me to get excited, why don't you make an OS that doesn't turn computers into, and I quote a Microsoft executive here, 'A 2000.00 dollar email machine,'" as opposed to being arrested for assault after beating my boss.
This is beyond "lipstick on a pig." this is putting bad Bratz branded glitter lipgloss on an ugly, undead rotting vampire pig.
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Conceptually not offensive
[Read the article: Ladies, fight rape with ankle bracelets]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But in the context of this being the main proposal a politician puts forward it is, it completely misses the point of societal responsibility.
As for a button your daughter can push to call the police. Depending on where you live your local authorities can respond to your position on certain cell phones. Add 911 to your address book, assign it a hot key, and presto - a one button press to get to the police. Or ad it to a voice activated menu, give her a bluetooth head set and she would not need to touch anything other than the side of her head.
Right now the tech is so so - most departments don't have the tech to actually track the phones, and the ones that do, it is not specific enough yet. But fairly soon, once the average cell phone is GPS enabled, there will probably be a push to set up a system where by your GPS data will be transmitted to the police.
On a practical note, I think it would be fairly hard for a woman to reach her ankle in many rape situations.
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Not just Engagement rings
[Read the article: Too bad to keep, too good to hock]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think this is more than just engagement rings. It's about all the various pieces of jewelry that accumulates in a relationship. Honestly if an ex of mine tried to give back stuff I had given her I would be a bit baffled. And conversely I have some pretty nice stuff (pens etc.) given to me by exes that ended up in a box somewhere because I did not want any reminders of them.
As for engagement rings. The Emily Post rule is as follows, if the man breaks up the engagement, the woman may keep the ring. If she breaks it off she is supposed to return it. Yes, this has it's origins in bride prices. It also just sort of makes sense. Calling off an engagement, breaking your fiances heart, then expecting the ring back seems pretty rude. As does keeping a ring if the woman breaks it off.
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Good Robots and bad Robots
[Read the article: Does a vagrant-fighting "bum bot" give robots a bad name?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the professor may be overemphasizing the negative here. While I don't have any statistical data showing how many positive robot models vs negative robot models exist in fiction. I can think of a large number of good robots/droids (let's be honest, in the general world people think they are the same thing)
Off the top of my head there is R2 D2, C 3PO, Rosie from the Jetsons, Tweekie on Buck Rogers, even in the world of the terminator we have more examples of Arnold playing a good terminator (T2 and T3) than a bad one not to mention Summer Glau from Sarah Connor Chronicles.
The first big Robot star, Robbie from Forbidden Planet, was fairly benevolent. Gort in Day the Earth stood still was only protecting his "human" master.
Even the Cylons have undergone a conversion from simple evil killing machines to complex characters.
In last years transformers, we barely had any involvement with the decepticons and the primary characters were Optimus Prime and Bumblebee.
In the Iron Giant the robot saves the town from being nuked.
And pretty soon Pixar's Wal-E will have the entire planet ready to embrace our robot overlords with loving hands.
And by the way - has anyone else noticed how much Wal-E looks like Johnny 5?
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Exception that proves the rule . . .
[Read the article: "Iron Man"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]See? Multiple writers isn't ALWAYS bad. Just usually.
Yes, but in this case, it is two sets of writing partners as opposed to four separate writers, so I'm not sure it counts.
I am happy to see this film getting such good reviews (I about fell out of my chair when I read Variety's) As soon as I heard Downey Jr. had been cast as Stark I got excited thinking this could be one of those superhero films that really gets it right.