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Took Back My 360


Unstoppable

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On the back of the Circuit City receipt it says if you're not completely happy within 30 days then you can return the item. So I did and got 500$ back =P.(Had bought a 2 year warranty.) I wasn't really happy with it. I mean I beat Gears, Condemned, Halo 2. What I would play in 2007 I would play Halo 3, Bioshock, and Creed.

 

However when playing online I felt like I was in a box. I missed being able to chat and picking my own server. It's just not the same if you know what I mean. I think PC is superior. I've played them all. Wii, PS 3, 360. PC is going no where =P. I think that MMO's just bitch slap consoles at this point. There's no competition. Persistant worlds really may seem small till you realize you don't have em anymore.( and are stuck with resets every new match) Oh well i'm glad I live in good old U.S.A. Good thing I bought it from Circuit City :). Burning Crusade anyone =P?

Edited by Unstoppable
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Hmmm... The only console I would consider buying now is the Nintendo Wii and that's only because it has a simple controller and addictive games that you can play in the company of friends for a reasonable price! Then there is the reason that I rather have good game play then next gen graphics.

 

Besides that the obvious reason for not investing in either an XBOX 360 or PS3 is that for the price they ask for the bloody things. I can buy a PC that can do much more than either of those combined. Sure they have next gen graphics, but then a pc will have that too within the next year or so and is upgradeable and will last far longer for less money.

 

So that leaves the offer of the burning crusade ... hmmm i'd rather play a game of Warhammer: the dark crusade :P

"Curiouser and Curiouser" cried Alice!"
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After spending far too much time on WoW...I kind of like single player games as an escape, not a social replacement. I have a social life for that reason, and I really never enjoyed WoW that much.

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You might be interested in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

 

I have been looking forward to that game for ages :D however the fees will be the killer as will the time spent in it ... my life as i know it would come to an end :D So i stick to single player games for the most :D they only cost you once and if they are really good you play them over and over again :D Total annihiliation and deus ex and thief :D I can never tire of those games :D

 

greetzzz

"Curiouser and Curiouser" cried Alice!"
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A collegua of mine also purchased an X360 a few months ago, but so far I'm not impressed with his reports. He still defends it, but the first game didn't work (King Kong). Apparently the DVD had problems with some types of the XBox drives and it needed to be replaced. In the three months that he got it, he already replaced it two times, and the last time took him several weeks because Microsoft sent the replacement to Asia instead to Poland. :)

 

It was quite funny to listen in on his phonecalls to the helpdesk, which apparently is an Indian who barely speaks English and asks questions like "What is Germany?" :) From his phonecalls I gathered that my collegue already knows the helpdesk application better than the clerks, as he had several times exaplained to them how they should operate their application. :)

Gerhard

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My problem with Indian call centres is the opposite: A lot of the time I can't understand their accent, what with the terrible quality of the phone lines from India to Australia. It's easier to hang up than to try and find out what they're on about.

 

All of which goes to show that outsourcing helpdesks is a really stupid idea.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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I hate that, call centers manned by Asians, they barely understand my accent either, and I can't understand them much, so most of the conversations consist of 'what?'. 'sorry?' 'could you say that again?' etc.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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All of which goes to show that outsourcing helpdesks is a really stupid idea.

 

 

Not if you are trying to squeeze more from your bottom line, it makes perfect sense to send that work to an economy where you can get away with paying workers a fraction of what you would have to pay someone elsewhere. I see this at work here in the States all the time. Down the corner we have a CVS, a pharmacy and general store. In order to keep more of the profits, corporations like CVS regularly under staff their stores and force their remaining workers to do the work of two or more people. So now, when I stop in the store at around 4:30 or 5 PM to get some papertowels, you see staff stocking the shelves and busting open crates of new products IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BUSIEST PART OF THE SHOPPING DAY. They used to hire folks to come in at night and do that work but hey, just lay off the night shift, force the day shifts to do more on their time, pocket the extra salaries you have saved and when you the customer come up to the check out counter you see fifteen people standing in line at the only register with a cashier while the other three registers are unmanned. So you wait an extra five to ten minutes while all around you staff are running about trying to get their stocking chores done AND keep the customers moving in the line. Makes no sense for the workers or the customers, but it makes great sense if you are a CVS shareholder looking to raise the value of your investment.

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First rule of business economy: Your employee is your enemy. They only cost money and don't want to work (ever more).

Second rule of business economy: Your customers are your enemy. They only whin about bad service, bad products and so on, instead of taking what you graceously offer them and they keep you away from counting your cash.

Gerhard

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And then we have fear that if we raise minimum wage, companies will go under while those actually working on minimum wage don't have enough money to support their families and are needing to hit welfare.

Edited by Ombrenuit
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when you the customer come up to the check out counter you see fifteen people standing in line at the only register with a cashier while the other three registers are unmanned.
If you still shop there after seeing that, then you're part of the problem. If businesses that pulled that kind of shit quickly lost all their customers, they'd be forced to learn or go bankrupt.
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First rule of business economy: Your employee is your enemy. They only cost money and don't want to work (ever more).

Second rule of business economy: Your customers are your enemy. They only whin about bad service, bad products and so on, instead of taking what you graceously offer them and they keep you away from counting your cash.

 

People like to suffer under the illusion that we are "served" by big business, that somehow the best way to get about with our lives is to let a small group of folks get filthy rich while selling us overpriced garbage. Customers are to be exploited, they are there to give up the most while receiving the least in return. Employees are to be exploited, they too are there to give up the most while receiving the least in return. Who can defend this, except the parasites who get to sit atop the shit heap?

 

And then we have fear that if we raise minimum wage, companies will go under while those actually working on minimum wage don't have enough money to support their families and are needing to hit welfare.

 

Companies have been saying that for time out of mind. While its true that smaller companies can suffer from raising the minimum wage, the large ones have no excuse when corporate profits are at all time record highs. Here in the Plantation Nation, CEOs are making something like 400 times what the average worker brings home but everyone thinks this is the good and the right way to run things. Everytime they talk about raising the minimum wage or regulating pollution or some such, the business community screams about lost jobs, closing plants, etc. In some instances this may actually be true, but the majority of the time its simply scare tactics. Paying a living wage is an overall good for an economy, it builds stability, allows for savings, raises quality of life, and strengthens the average individual. Here in the U.S., the minimum wage is something like **26** years behind the times and already business is whining and moaning about the lost jobs and lost productivity and yap yap yap. But a well paid worker is more productive, and a growing economy can provide new jobs to replace those lost when a business cannot make it work anymore. By and large, such complaints are simply business propaganda.

 

If you still shop there after seeing that, then you're part of the problem. If businesses that pulled that kind of shit quickly lost all their customers, they'd be forced to learn or go bankrupt.

 

 

Ahh, but the problem there Gildoran is that CVS has bought out and shut down most of its competitors. See, unregulated business is like a tumor, it grows and grows unchecked by regulation or market forces until it swallows up all competition. A quick case in point: When I was in school at Bloomsburg State Uni. in Pennsylvania, we had the Eppley family pharmacy downtown. A CVS came in, bought out the store with promises of staying put in town and even went so far as to hire Mr. Eppley to work at their counter. The town loved the new business, and people could still walk to get their medications cause of its central location.

 

Well, that lasted about 6 months. CVS shut down the store in town, laid off old Mr. Eppley, and built a much bigger store that was about 2 miles outside town, closer to the interstate. Great for CVS, now they can get all that highway traffic business and deliveries are easier to make and the real estate was probably a lot cheaper out there. But it screwed the townsfolk, many of them retired or sick, who now had to drive to get their meds or pay for a delivery service. This model of business can be seen everywhere over here, buy out the mom and pop store, promise the town fabulous dreams of incoming wealth and steady jobs, and then you do whatever the fuck you like and screw the local morons. In some states like New Jersey you can come to an intersection of a highway and see 3 Big Box stores marring the landscape while a few miles down the road you come to, well, another intersection with the SAME THREE BIG BOX STORES. How many of the very same store do you need in a five mile stretch? Only one if you are a resident but if you are attempting to swallow up competition by buying up available store sites you need half a dozen. Of course, they all claim its to better service their customers but any fool can see its simply big business duking it out while the little guys get pushed around or underfoot. There is a saying from somewhere in Africa, when elephants fight the grass is the loser.

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This model of business can be seen everywhere over here, buy out the mom and pop store, promise the town fabulous dreams of incoming wealth and steady jobs, and then you do whatever the fuck you like and screw the local morons.
If it keeps on happening all the time, why do people keep on falling for it? I have problems with communities who give unfair advantages (such as tax breaks) to large businesses to encourage them to move in. But aside from that I think consumers are partly to blame when businesses are able to squash competition... if you mindlessly seek out the lowest prices, without regard to the nature of the business you're buying from, you allow yourself and others to be enslaved. If people act like mindless sheep, is it so surprising that businesses treat them as such?

 

Don't get me wrong... I don't like businesses such as Walmart... I'm just saying lack of diligence on the part of the average citizen plays a role too. Anybody who expects CEOs to pay employees a living wage out of altruism knows nothing of human nature.

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Economic rationalism. Don't we all just love it. :angry:

 

(Rule of thumb: If something has the word "rational" in its title, it's probably completely irrational. Only crazy people feel the need to insist that they're sane.)

 

Capitalism doesn't work when the only notion of "cost" it considers is monetary cost. Social cost is just as bad as economic cost, and if the economists would realise this then maybe we could start fixing it.

 

Of course, it'll never happen, because of all the vested interests.

 

As for getting customers to boycott the exploitative companies: That's a nice idea, but it's not that easy. Monopoly tactics work really really well. If the big store is the only one within reasonable driving distance, and nobody else sells what you need, what are you going to do?

 

Even if you do manage to convince many of the customers from going to the store, here's a newsflash: They don't need you. The really, really big companies have so many interests in so many different countries that a boycott can't hurt them unless it's truly huge.

My games | Public Service Announcement: TDM is not set in the Thief universe. The city in which it takes place is not the City from Thief. The player character is not called Garrett. Any person who contradicts these facts will be subjected to disapproving stares.
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There's an overwhelming and strong trust in big business in the American public, to the point that if one denies the supposed honesty of these corporations, it is often perceived as the equivalent of denying the honesty of government (In my experiences, anyways).

 

Sometimes, I really hate living in this place.

 

I want to get out some day.

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I think that that (re: trust) depends on the culture of the people you're hanging out with.

 

I'm a lawyer and practically everything is built on a kind of blase working cynicism of both corporations and the gov't. It's kind of funny, but it definately keeps us from thinking we can expect too much from them. For example, we take it for granted that a corporation is rational in maintaining an harmful activity (inadvertantly, not illegally) if the cost of fixing the problem is greater than the court judgments/settlements for harm; it's cheaper for them to just always pay damages. We can expect Coke will continue producing bottles that explode on (rare) occassion and not produce more expensive caps.

 

We have a snappy equation for the idea: B<PL. Unreasonable behavior iff "Total Benefit" is less than "Probability (of harm)" * "(magnitude of) Loss". Coke isn't acting legally unreasonable unless the price of the new caps were *less* than the settlements (oh, small footnote or it doesn't make sense, sorry, Coke still has to pay because it's strict product liability, doesn't matter if they were reasonable or not, but in practice it works out to the same thing: Coke does what is cheaper, fix the bottles or pay damages, institutionalized cynicism if ever there was. For other activities, where you don't have such rigid economic thinking, "unreasonable" behavior is necessary for liability, and you compute it in the same way so you get the same result. Incentive to do the "right thing" if it's cheaper than damages; no need if it's not).

 

It seems healthier to me to just take cynicisms as a starting-point, and not lose much sleep over it.

 

-------------------------------------------

 

The bottom line for me has always been (maybe pushing the topic a little, but it's what I'm thinking): you can't expect anything of spiritual or real cultural value from anything corporate (or gov't/administrative) ... Even if it happened inadvertantly, you can expect it will probably get tainted sooner or later (Star Wars).

 

You can only expect it from individuals or groups who are very talented, very scheming (to get the resources needed to do it), and bucking the system as a full-on ethos ... But when it works best, it doesn't happen often in history (e.g., the interwar Paris avant gard, maybe postwar NY scene), and even then it's a kind of living paradox (anti-capititalist yet supported by capitalist benefactors).

 

When I think about the culture of grads concentrating in video game technology, it's a far cry from this.

 

My feeling is, it's really the duty of any individual that actually cares about the cultural worth of something to really take the initiative themselves and work towards lifting standards, to themselves stay on a high level and try to persuade others the value of higher standards, while flat-out assuming the cultural industry and its markets won't really be sensitive to it, nor would we really want them to be. Let them go as they will. No need for us to go through the motions of being "shocked" or "betrayed".

Edited by demagogue

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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As for getting customers to boycott the exploitative companies: That's a nice idea, but it's not that easy. Monopoly tactics work really really well. If the big store is the only one within reasonable driving distance, and nobody else sells what you need, what are you going to do?

 

And there is also another problem. Most people earn average wages, which are high enough to live from it, but not high enough to have to many spare money. So that means that people essentially HAVE to go to the cheapest stores and disregard why it is so cheap. If you have extra money you can support honest shops but not if you getting along so lala and every coin counts.

Gerhard

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We can expect Coke will continue producing bottles that explode on (rare) occassion and not produce more expensive caps.

 

That's not really surprising. I always wondered why construction sites are staying open so long without somebody working there. But somebody told me that it is much cheaper to leave the site and move on to the next one, then dissassembling the crane store it on your own place and then, when you actually need it, move it to the new site and assemble it there. It's simply cheaper to pay the penality then maintaining a storage place and constantly assemble and dissassemble them unneccessary.

Gerhard

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There's an overwhelming and strong trust in big business in the American public, to the point that if one denies the supposed honesty of these corporations, it is often perceived as the equivalent of denying the honesty of government (In my experiences, anyways).

 

Someone needs to tell the American public that "patriotism" means "loyalty to one's country" NOT "loyalty to one's government".

 

In more or less any country in Europe if you suggested that people should believe in the honesty of either government or corporations you would be laughed out of town.

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