Apple’s bleeding edge
Apple loves to adopt brand new bleeding edge technologies and shun existing functional and supported technologies. Case in point, Apple’s new MacBook Pro line sports a new Thunderbolt (Lightpeak) port. So, yeah, while this port is capable of 10Gb per second, there are no peripherals yet available for this technology. But, instead of placing USB 3 ports (capable of 5Gb per second) onto the MacBook Pro, they instead decided to skip this recent technology. So, the MacBook Pro comes shipped with dog slow USB 2.0 ports running at a whopping 480Mb per second. That’s ok if the only thing you want to transfer is sync data to your iPhone or iPad. For hard drives, this speed is unbearably slow.
Apple’s own stupidity
We don’t want ports with no peripheral support. We want ports that are actually supported. Simply because Apple has adopted the Thunderbolt technology doesn’t mean that it will in any way become a standard. In fact, Apple’s bleeding edge adoption of the Thunderbolt port is about as risky as the Firewire (1394) port was way back when. And, where is Firewire now? Dead.
I just don’t get why you would stick old technology on a brand new notebook when new technology already exists? There are many USB 3 adapters and peripherals that could easily get users faster speeds until (or if) Thunderbolt actually takes off.
Apple needs to wake up and realize we want to connect fast drives to external ports. So, at least give us ports where we can do this. Sure, LaCie and other manufacturers will likely start making Thunderbolt compatible drive enclosures, but they probably won’t hit stores for months or possibly even as late as 2012. Until then, we have to live with USB 2.0 ports that suck rocks for speed.
Thanks Apple.
Parental Guidance Definitely Required
While this article’s header may sound related to movie ratings, it isn’t. On the other hand, in a way, it kind of is. No, what this article is about is parents not properly guiding their children’s behaviors in public places. Let’s explore.
Lack of Guidance
In recent years, more and more children seem to misbehave in public places. Parents seem to lack the parental skills to manage their children properly (probably at home also). Although, managing your child properly in public is more important. With that said, there are many behaviors from children that are just not appropriate in public, yet parents simply seem to ignore these disrupting behaviors. In addition to bad behaviors from children, included are some equally bad behaviors from the parents.
Top 12 list of bad public parenting
12. Strollers in crowded areas — When bringing children to very crowded venues, think twice about using anything more than an umbrella stroller. When pushing strollers along in crowded areas, you are likely to run the wheels over someone’s foot. It’s never pleasant to have a baby stroller scrape up your heel or run over your toes. If at all possible, leave the strollers at home and let the children walk. If the children are unable to walk and you can’t carry them, then perhaps that event is not the place for you and your family.
11. Newborns in public — While I know that mothers of newborns can get cabin fever, that’s the price you pay to take care of an infant. However, I regularly see mothers taking 1, 2 and 3 week old babies into malls, theme parks and various other venues. This is completely selfish behavior. The baby is far too small (and unprotected) to know where it is. Heading out to these places is solely for the mom and dad. For the baby, it’s not healthy. First, babies this small cannot regulate their body temperatures yet. Heading to an overly cold air-conditioned mall or to a theme park in sweltering heat is not what your baby needs. As the mother, you can’t (and shouldn’t) be riding anything (especially if you delivered by c-section). You’ve wasted your money by going to a place that requires an entry fee. The baby won’t even know it was ever there. Second, the baby basically has no immune system. Exposing this small of an infant to crowds of people is likely to get it sick. Coupling the germs with the unregulated temperatures, and you’re just asking for your baby to get sick. Stay home until the baby is older.
10. Feeding your children from unpaid groceries — While shopping, do not grab a pack of Twinkies, loose grapes, a pack of chips, cookies or any other food item, open and hand it to your child. I’ve seen many parents do this to keep their children occupied. Not only does this teach your children the wrong food habits, it’s stealing when you don’t pay for the food. Not only is the parent contributing to the child’s unhealthy eating habits, this behavior is also teaching the child that it’s ok to grab food from a store and eat it unpaid. Only open and consume foods outside of the store and only after you’ve paid for it. This teaches your child the correct shopping behavior.
9. Screaming and yelling — When your children are in public, it is on you as a parent to keep them under control. This also means keeping them from screaming and yelling. While you may be used to this behavior from your child, the rest of the public doesn’t want to hear it. If your child begins to act up by screaming and yelling, stop and take them outside of wherever you are. This is especially true when in a movie theater or a restaurant. In a movie, silence is the key and if your child cannot sit for longer than a few minutes before acting up, then do not bring them to a movie. Instead, wait and rent the movie to watch at home. Still, it’s probably more important to figure out how to control this behavior from your child. In a restaurant, people go for a relaxing dinner, not to hear your child scream at the top of their lungs.
8. Salad and hot food bars are not for children — Children under adult height should never be allowed anywhere near salad bars or buffet tables.
First, buffet tables can be dangerously hot. Unless you enjoy taking your child to the emergency room scalded or electrocuted, children should remain safely away from hot food bars. Second, children generally have little self control over their hands and fingers. Not only are children notoriously bad for not washing their hands, they will easily stick their fingers into and play with food on food bars easily leading to a burn or contaminating food. Yuck! Combine this problem with their lack of height and their faces being just below the sneeze guard, you end up with a very unsanitary situation. Again, too many children will place their hands into the food to play and possibly sneeze and generally breathe all over the food with nothing to block this. Again, very unsanitary. Third, by letting children serve themselves, you are not controlling what food or the amount of food they eat. It is important to control your child’s nutrition. Instead, you should choose their foods from the bars and bring their food to them plated. For all of these reasons, keep your children away from food bars. Although, if you really want to keep your child healthy, don’t eat off food bars and, instead, order directly from the menu. Salad bars and buffets are generally unsanitary and the foods are excessively high in calories, anyway.
7. Grocery carts are not toys or rides — Grocery carts are intended to be used for shopping. If you want to place your child in a grocery cart, then place them into it as intended (in the front with their legs hanging out of the holes sitting down and strapped in). Do not let them play under or in the basket itself. Children should never stand up in the basket part of the cart.
6. Children under foot — Keep your children with you at all times. Do not let them run around crowded events unattended. Not only is this a potential kidnapping situation, it’s simply dangerous as small children can be easily overlooked and tripped over or trampled. Children are not good at watching where they are going or what they are doing, so keeping hold of your child in crowded situations is very important. Remember, only you are watching out for your child. Other people aren’t watching your child. Although, other people may be judging you on your lack of parenting skills.
5. Restaurant booths, movie theater seats and airplane seats — Children should always be firmly seated. Do not let your child stand up in their seat. Your children also need to be occupied with something (coloring, reading, talking to them, etc). Otherwise, children will stand up, fidget and become a nuisance to the people sitting around them. For example, a child standing up in a restaurant booth can easily turn around and stare or otherwise disturb another table. When seated at the theater or on a plane, children can easily kick the back of the seat in front of them. Control your child. Keep them occupied so they don’t do this. If they stand up, sit them back down. If you can’t control them, leave. If you’re on a plane, find something for them to do. Also when traveling, plan ahead by packing enough activities, games, crayons, etc to occupy your child throughout the entire plane trip.
4. Sit with your children — If you are a family of four, each parent should sit next to one of their children when possible. Don’t let young children sit together alone so the parents can sit together across the isle. If one of the children has an issue, you can’t easily manage it. Sitting next to the child, you can probably thwart the issue by catching it early. Of course, if you’re the Brady Bunch, that could make it harder. However, if you do have that many children, you’re probably in need of lots of help on long plane trips.. in which case, it might be better to take the train where you can have your own room.
3. Toy Stores — While the trip to the toy store may seem like a great idea, it really isn’t. To a child, a toy store is their dream-come-true. At the same time, it’s a parent’s worst nightmare come true. Don’t take your child to the toy store! Let me say that again. Do NOT take your child to a toy store. Instead, know what your child wants and go pick it up and bring it home or order it from Amazon. This way, there are no screaming fits, no “buy me this” chants and no unnecessary tantrums. The toy store should be used as only a good behavior treat. A once-in-a-blue-moon event. Some place you go only if your child has met some extremely high criteria and is extremely well behaved… and only when you’re intent on rewarding them with a toy.
2. Keeping your children out late — Children need stable and consistent sleep patterns. Therefore, as much as child may want to see a movie, don’t take them to see a movie in the theater after their normal bedtime hours. I have seen so many children out shopping, at the movies and running around after 11PM on weekends. This is wrong and bad parenting. Without consistent sleep patterns for your child, your child will want to get up late and be sleepy all day. Don’t do this. Children, especially babies, need to have a regular sleep pattern. If it’s late and your child is fussy, then you need to leave and take the child home to bed.
1. Running around stores (literally) — Stores are not playgrounds for your children. Stores are not babysitters. Stores are not day care facilities. Do not bring your children to stores and let them run around in public without any control. Stores are dangerous places for children to ‘play’. Simply because they sell bikes and skateboards doesn’t mean that’s where they are intended to be used. Remove your children from the bikes. Get them off of skateboards. Stop them from strapping on skates in stores. Don’t grab toys off of shelves to occupy them. Like foods mentioned above, giving your child a toy that you have no intention of buying teaches your child the wrong thing. If your child isn’t well behaved enough to visit a department store with you, then you probably don’t need to bring your child with you.
As a parent, it is up to you to teach your child correct behaviors in the early years. It is also up to you to make sure your child behaves correctly in public. If you are unable to control your children, then you probably haven’t enacted correct discipline in your home. If you are unable to implement proper discipline, you probably need the help of a nanny or someone who can help you improve your parenting skills. Simply because you have chosen to have children doesn’t mean that other people want to hear your child scream or run into them simply because they want to run around. As a parent, it is your sole responsibility and duty to keep control of your children. Discipline is important for a child. Yet, discipline does not mean using a belt or a paddle. Using other means, such as timeouts, can affect the same level of control without the need for physical interaction. Whatever you use to control your child, just remember… in public, we can all hear your child scream.
↩︎
Contacting Amazon.com support — where is that number?
Phone numbers have been updated for easy dialing. Click or tap to dial.
More and more, companies are hiding their support phone numbers behind layers and layers of web pages. They simply don’t want you to call in. They seem to think that their automated systems are so bulletproof that there is no need ever to talk to a human being. Well, Amazon has taken this to the extreme. Amazon is now so hands off, even their Amazon Web Services site has no sales phone number. As if the automated signup and sales process is so fool-proof that you won’t fall into any kind of trap… what a joke!
So, the question begs, how the heck are you supposed to ask questions about their services or about charges on your cards? Clearly, a company can’t do business like this long term. Customer Service is everything and hiding your support people behind layers of web pages is so completely counter to sales and support, I don’t understand how these companies even stay in business.
What are consumers to do except get more and more frustrated? Instead of getting frustrated, this article is here to expose these hard-to-find phone numbers for all to see and use.
Amazon’s Customer Service line:
- 1-866-216-1072 (they can transfer you to other departments, just ask)
- or 1-888-280-4331
- or 1-888-280-3321 (3321 may be discontinued in 2018)
- International customers: 1-206-266-2992. Charges may apply.
- For AWS subscribers, call the above number(s) and politely ask to be transferred to the AWS support team since there is no direct number for AWS.
- Keep in mind that you will need a paid phone support contract with AWS to talk to a representative. Without a contract, they may not talk to you.
- 1-866-540-3229 — Note, they require one-time use pin codes or press # if you don’t have it. It will likely expedite your call to set pincode up from the link. You’ll need to login to do this.
- 1-888-221-1161 — Note, need to login and set up one time-use pin code, but you may be able to skip this step when calling without one. It will probably expedite your call if you set one up.
Rakuten.com:
- 1-888-BEST-BUY (1-888-237-8289)
Frys.com:
- 1-800-856-9800
- International: 1-408-350-1484
- Sales/Customer Service Fax: 1-408-487-4700
- Email: service@cs.frys.com
Netflix.com:
- 1-866-716-0414 — Note, faster if you use the express code from your account
Redbox.com:
- 1-866-REDBOX3 (1-866-733-2693)
Hulu.com:
- 1-877-485-8411 (For Hulu Plus Subscribers)
Virgin Mobile:
- No Contract Plans / General: 1-888-322-1122
- Broadband2Go: 1-877-877-8443
- Assurance Wireless: 1-888-321-5880
Wells Fargo:
- Online Banking: 1-800-956-4442
Airlines:
- Delta
- Reservations: 1-800-221-1212
- App Support: 1-888-750-3284
- International Reservations: 1-800-241-4141
- Skymiles: 1-800-323-2323
- Disability Assistance: 1-404-209-3434
- 711 for hearing or speech assistance
- Frontier
- Reservations and Support: 1-801-401-9000
I’ll add more as I find them. Of course, if you find any new numbers that need to be here, feel free to comment. If any of these stop working, please comment as well.
Enjoy!
Voice ads during your cell phone calls?
Just when you thought that advertisers couldn’t get any more annoying, along comes yet another technology that, on the surface, seems quite intrusive and may even become a privacy issue. This time, it’s on your cell phone.
Paying to hear ads?
It’s not as if cell phone plans and cell plan minutes are cheap. The average cost per minute is around 10 cents. Some postpaid plans may be able to get the cost down to around 7-8 cents per minute, but that’s only for high dollar high volume plans. The average small to mid-sized plan is usually around 10 cents per minute after taxes, fees and other charges have been tallied. With prepaid, the cost is 10 cents per minute. I’ve yet to find one carrier that has less than 10 cents per minute prepaid plans.
That said, because you’re paying for your service, you are also implicitly paying to not have advertising on your phone during your conversations with other people. Advertisers need to learn that when consumers are paying for something, advertising on that space is off-limits. If the advertisers want to help subsidize our costs for something, then we will be willing to tolerate external advertising. It’s a give and take process here. So, advertisers (and those enabling this new technology) need to understand this part of the equation.
What exactly is this technology?
Good question. It doesn’t have a cleverly coined name yet, so let’s call it ‘jam’ (as in they’re jamming up the airwaves with advertising in your cell phone call.. and it also rhymes with spam :). This new technology plans to use the carriers to interject audio advertising into the cell phone’s audio stream during a call. Specifically, during hold music and other ‘dead air’ times.
There’s really only one place in the call flow where such advertising can be injected with new audio and that’s on the carrier’s equipment. It’s also possible that it could happen right on the handset through an actively running app. Either way, ‘jam’ isn’t what people want.
Advertising during dead air? Why would we want that?
Well, the answer is as consumers, we don’t. So, why enable this technology? Because someone can. That and that someone thinks they can make money from this service as well. Good luck with that business model. Anyway, the idea is relatively simple, but definitely not pleasant. Worse, though, is that the advertiser may even have your personal buying habits and interject ‘relevant’ advertising into your call. Not that relevant advertising is bad, but it’s rather creepy when it’s injected into audio conversations of a cell phone. So, you’re on hold waiting for someone to fix your computer and then injected audio steps in and advertises for that vacation to Hawaii you searched on the web just an hour before you called. Ugh, creepy.
Worse, though, is what happens if their dead air recognizing routine fails and it begins injecting advertising in the middle of your conversation? Ewww… now not only will you hear the ad, but likely so will your caller. If you happen to be on a business call… well, all I can say is ewww.. messy and embarrassing.
Opt-out
For such a technology to have any hope of working to even any degree, there must be an opt-out mechanism. If there isn’t such an opt-out system, users will be calling their carriers to complain, that’s a guarantee… especially if such an advertisement interrupts a business call.
Jam on businesses
The primary target for this advertising system is during hold time. I admit that hold music is often boring and repetitive. But, does that give the right to an unrelated third party to inject jam into your phone for their benefit? And, what of the business on the other end providing hold music? They may have advertising that they are counting on to up-sell their newest products. Yet, if jam interrupts and begins selling ‘relevant’ advertising in the form of a competitor, how is fair to the company you’re calling? This system has now injected competitive advertisements without that company’s consent. I see this as a lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Carrier and phone level access
Frankly, I’m surprised that the wireless carriers would even allow this level of access into their network. Unless, of course, these companies can figure out a way of doing it directly into the handset. Either way, it will require very low level access to either the handset or the carrier network to inject this level of audio into a conversation. The trouble, of course, is what happens when their system goes haywire and injects audio at inappropriate times? And, you know this will happen. This isn’t going to make either caller very happy, especially if this happens during a business call or a conference call. I just see failure written all over this.
2010 in review
Year 2010 Randosity at a Glance. Thanks everyone for making 2010 a great year. Let’s make 2011 even better!
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.
The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships.
In 2010, there were 34 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 82 posts. There were 4 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 317kb.
The busiest day of the year was November 25th with 201 views. The most popular post that day was Cell Phone: Prepaid vs Postpaid.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were google.com, ifreestores.com, twitter.com, google.it, and search.conduit.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for battlestar galactica religious undertones, itunes vista problems, empire efi virtualbox, dave levey leaves araxi, and install mac leopard 10.6.2 in virtualbox.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
Cell Phone: Prepaid vs Postpaid June 2010
5 comments
Running / Installing Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) on VirtualBox June 2010
36 comments
iTunes can corrupt your iPod’s iTunes library January 2009
26 comments
The reality behind Reality TV: Hell’s Kitchen Edition October 2009
Is Battlestar Galactica Christian allegory? Certainly appears so. January 2009
14 comments
A call to boycott ABC’s V series
[Update: V has been cancelled as of May 13th. Bye ‘V’.].
I have personally decided to boycott watching the new V series. No, not because the series isn’t good. It’s a reasonably good series, so far. No, it’s also not for any creative or story reasons you might think. The reason I have decided to boycott the V series is that whomever owns the rights or produces this series has decided to no longer allow streaming of new episodes in any form or on any Internet site, like Hulu or iTunes.
No more V on Hulu?
It’s not just Hulu that’s cut out of streaming for this show. It’s all streaming sites including ABC’s very own ABC.com site. You would think that since ABC owns the broadcast rights to the series and, in fact, are the ones who make the very decision whether V lives or dies as a series, that ABC would have the rights to stream this program online. No, apparently they do not. Very odd. It’s also not available on iTunes or Amazon either.
It almost seems like the producers are biting the hand that feeds them (in more ways than just one). Seriously, not even allowing ABC.com to stream episodes of V on their own site? This seems like the kiss of death for this series.
Rationale behind this decision
I have no inside scoop here, so I really have no idea what the producers were thinking. But, I can only guess that the reasoning is to force viewers to watch the show live on ABC (the TV channel) and only on the TV channel for its first run. So, on the one hand, this seems like a ratings bonanza. On the other hand, let’s explore the downside of this decision.
Viewer Demographics
Because V is very much a long continuous story arc format, if you miss even two episodes, you’re hopelessly lost. V isn’t a one-off monster-of-the-week series where you can watch an episode now and then. No, it is a long deep story arc that needs to be watched one episode at a time in order.
On top of the long story arc format, it is a science fiction program involving heavy uses of technology and intrigue. This genre choice automatically limits the types of viewers. So, the types of viewers that V tends to draw in are those who tend to be younger, tech savvy, internet knowledgeable types. Basically, the kind of viewers who tend to watch things on Hulu and download content from iTunes.
Producer miscalculation
So, on the one hand, the appearance is that this decision should allow the program to get higher ratings by forcing people to watch it live. On the other hand, Hulu and iTunes (and others) no longer have the rights to carry the back catalog of episodes to allow people to catch up. If viewers can’t catch up, they’ll not watch it live either. If you get lost, there is no reason to watch as you can’t understand what’s going on anyway. So, turn the channel and watch something else.
By alienating the exact demographic who tends to watch programs on Hulu combined with the lack of back catalog of episodes on Hulu for people to catch up with missed episodes, my guess is that this decision will seriously backfire on the producers. The ratings will, instead, drop and drop precipitously as the season progresses. In fact, I’d venture to guess that this decision may, in fact, be the sole reason for the death of this series. It’s clear that ABC won’t keep V on the air without viewers. We know that. But, you can’t keep viewers watching V by trying to appeal to the wrong demographic or by pissing on the fan base.
The streaming and Internet genie is out of the bottle. You can’t go back to a time before the Internet and Hulu existed. The producers seriously need to understand this. It’s unfortunate that the producers chose V for this experiment. So far, V appears to be a good series and is probably worth watching. But, the producers also need to realize that removing choices of where and how this program can be viewed is not the answer. You need more viewers, not less.
Underground distribution
Of course, that just means that people will create xvids or mp4s of the show and distribute them via torrents. Instead of seeing legitimate views on legitimate sites with legitimate ad revenue, the whole thing now gets pushed underground where there is no ad revenue and views don’t help the show or the producers at all. Not smart. Not smart at all.
What is the answer?
The answer lies with Neilsen Ratings. In a time where streaming and instant (day after) releases are nearly common place, Neilsen still has no strategy to cover this media with ratings. TV ratings are still and only counted by live views. This company is seriously antiquated. It still solely relies on active Neilsen households watching programs live. Hulu views, DVR views and iTunes downloads do not count towards viewership or ratings. Yet, these ‘day after’ views can be just as relevant (or even more) today than live views. Today, counting only live views is fundamentally wrong.
Change needs to come with the ratings companies, not by producers trying to force the 70s viewing style in 2011. Neilsen needs to count all views of a program no matter where they are or when they are. The ratings game needs to change and must change to accommodate the future of TV. As TVs become Internet connected, this change will become even more important. Eventually, TV programming will be seamlessly delivered over the Internet. In fact, there will come a time when you ‘tune in’ and you won’t even know if it’s streamed or over the air. In fact, why should you care? A view is a view whether live or a month later.
Understanding Neilsen’s antiquated system
Of course, once you understand Neilsen’s outdated model, you can also understand why Neilsen is not counting any ratings other than live TV. Why is that? Because counting any other medium than live TV threatens the very existence of Neilsen’s service. Once broadcasters realize they can gather these numbers through Hulu, Roku, Slingbox, Netflix and other DVR and on-demand technologies directly, there is no need for Neilsen. That is, once we’ve moved to streaming TV 100% it’s easy to get accurate counts. Neilsen’s service was born out of the need to track viewers in a time when the Internet did not exist. With the Internet, it’s much easier to track viewer activity and data in real time. It’s also easy to get this information right from the places that have rights to stream. So, with these real-time reporting methodologies, Neilsen really is no longer necessary.
Neilsen has always used an extrapolation methodology for its ratings statistics, anyway. That is, only a tiny subset of homes throughout the country are Neilsen households. So, when these Neilsen households watch, these small numbers are extrapolated to the larger population, even though there is really no way to know what non-Neilsen households are watching. So, Neilsen’s ratings systems are actually very inaccurate. Counting the numbers of views from Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, Roku, Slingbox, Netflix and other streaming sites and technologies are exact and spot-on accurate. In fact, these numbers are so exact, they can even be traced back to specific hardware devices and specific households, something Neilsen’s rating systems have never been capable of doing. This is why Neilsen is scared to count online views. This is why Neilsen is no longer needed.
Goodbye V
It was nice knowing ya. My instincts all say that the fan backlash from this decision will be swift and final. If this series manages to make it to the end of the 2011 spring season without cancellation, I’ll be amazed. However, if ABC cancels this show before June, that won’t surprise me. So, unless the producers make an about-face really fast with regards to this no-streaming experiment, this series is likely already cancelled… it just doesn’t yet know it. I’d also urge anyone reading (and especially Neilsen households) to boycott the new V series and send a message to the producers that not offering streaming options is not acceptable and that your program is dead without them. I can tell you that I won’t watch this series again until streaming options become available. This is not really a problem for me as there are plenty of other TV shows available. The problem here is for the cast and crew. These people are dedicating their time, effort and livelihoods to putting this series together only to be screwed over by the producers. Such is life in Hollywood, I guess.
Installing Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) in VMWare Player 3
With this article, I’ll start by saying.. please purchase your copy of Mac OS X desktop software from Apple. It’s $29 and you get the original media (which is always good to have on hand).
To start, here are the softwares you will need:
- VMWare Player 3 (need to create login to download)
- Empire EFI 1.3.2 for VMWare
- Snow Leopard Install Media (Disk or ISO)
- 7zip (for opening Empire EFI archive)
- ImageBurn (for making ISO images from CD Media)
Installing Mac OS X on VMWare Player is a pretty simple install, but note that there are some important issues that aren’t yet resolved. I’ll explain the issues, however, after the install steps.
Installation
Inside the Empire EFI 1.3.2 archive, you will see the following files:
You will see that the extracted ‘Snowy_VM’ folder contains several files besides just the EFI media. Inside the Mac OS X Server*.vmwarevm directory, you’ll see it contains two .vmx templates for VMWare. Use the .vmx file without the underscore at the beginning. Note, you’ll need to use this template to get the install going. It’s far simpler to use their existing template than trying to figure out all the proper VMWare Player settings. So, use what’s given rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. If you absolutely feel you want to reinvent, then I’ll leave that for you to determine what’s necessary.
To begin, inside VMWare Player, select File->Open a Virtual Machine. Find the .vmx file mentioned just above and open it. Once opened, it will appear as ‘Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental)’ in the VMWare Player selection panel. From here, you will need to modify the settings for the CDROM device under this machine. Choose the ‘Mac OS X Server 10.6 (experimental)’ imported machine and choose ‘Edit virtual machine settings’ on the bottom right of the window. Now click the on the CDROM device and under ‘Connection’ change it to ‘Use ISO image’ and browse to and select the darwin_snow.iso image inside the Snowy_VM directory’. Click ‘OK’.
You’re now ready to boot. So, click ‘Play Virtual Machine’. Once the machine has started and the system begins searching for a CDROM (read the text on the screen), you will need to change the CDROM to the Mac OS X Snow Leopard media. I recommend using an ISO media to install. So, I will assume you are using an ISO image here. At the bottom of the active VM Window, right click the CDROM icon which may now be greyed out (disconnected) and choose ‘Settings’. Locate the Snow Leopard media on your hard drive and click ‘OK’ to accept it. Check the box next to ‘Connected’ at the top of the window and click ‘OK’ at the bottom.
The system should recognize the disk change and begin to boot the media in about 10 seconds. Once the install begins, you are now installing Mac OS X. Follow the steps to install Mac OS X. Once Mac OS X is installed, reboot. Note the hard drive given in this Snowy_VM archive is ‘ready to go’. So you don’t need to format it.
Booting issues with VMWare Player and Mac OS X
Let’s pause and explain this. When you reboot the first time, the system may or may not boot up. There are two behaviors you should watch for. The first behavior is that you get to the Apple Logo screen with the spinning lines. If it never progresses beyond this grey screen, then you will need to reboot and try again.
The second behavior is that it may get past the grey screen, but then Finder never appears and you see a forever spinning cursor. If you see this, you will need to reboot and try again.
These issues are annoying, but that’s why this is ‘experimental’. So, we live with these issues.
The third issue is that you will need to continually leave the darwin_snow.iso image in the drive all of the time to boot up Mac OS X. Hey, at least it works. Leaving it in the drive is really not a problem as it boots up so quickly. Perhaps they can create a standalone booter later, but for now this works.
Note, I recommend setting up a second CDROM drive inside your Mac OS X virtual machine’s settings. This way, you leave one CDROM always set up with darwin_snow.iso and you use the second one to load/unload other ISO images. If you like, you can set the second one up to your physical drive also so you can pop real CDs in the drives as you need. Note that if you change the darwin_snow.iso image to something else, you have to remember to set it back when you’re done. If you don’t do this, Mac OS X won’t boot. So, this is why I recommend setting up a second drive for loading ISO images.
Booting up successfully
After getting through any unsuccessful boot attempts (or not), you should get to the registration screen. After going through all of the registration screens you will be at the standard Finder desktop. At this point, you might want to change things like Sound and Display. Note that the sound and display drivers are just about as good as what’s in Virtual Box. In fact, Virtual Box’s resolution setup is a bit more complete than this. So, don’t expect a whole lot here.
Suffice it to say that you will need to follow editing of the apple.com.Boot.plist file as in the ‘Installing Mac OS X on VirtualBox‘ article on Randosity. Add in the lines related to the graphics. Once you have done this, edit the virtual machine in VMWare player and choose the Display setup. Under ‘Monitors’ change it to ‘Specify Monitor Settings’ and manually change the maximum resolution to ‘1366×768’. When you reboot, Mac OS X should go into this mode. If it doesn’t work, then you may have to fiddle with the apple.com.Boot.plist file until it works. Note that the resolutions here are limited, so don’t try to set up some odd resolution as it won’t work.
Note, this is the best resolution I could find. Note that in the above directory, you’ll see the file ‘EnsoniqAudioPCI.mpkg.tar’. This is a Mac OS X driver for audio. I have tried installing this without success. But, your mileage may go farther. The trick is in getting this into the Mac. So, you’ll need to start a browser and download the EFI file again on the Mac. Then extract it, find this file and install it.
At this point, you should be all set. You may run into the booting issues from time to time, just reboot until it boots up. Hopefully this booting issue will be fixed at some point. Good luck and happy installing.
If you’re looking for something that boots consistently for Mac OS X, has better video mode support and working sound, then I would suggest setting up Mac OS X on VirtualBox. The setup for VirtualBox is a little more complex, but it boots consistently every time, has its own standalone boot loader and offers a few more features.
If you have questions, please leave a comment below.
Are electric cars really good for our environment?
On the surface, this question seems like it has a simple answer. And that simple answer is ‘Yes’… or is it? Let’s explore.
Green or Brown?
Electric cars seem like such a great idea until you realize that you have to plug it into the power grid to recharge the thing. So, how is this car greener than, say, its gasoline counterparts? On the one hand, the car itself runs clean. No fossil fuels to burn so no emissions to speak of. This is a good thing. The bad thing is that it has to pull from fossil fuel derived electrical energy to recharge. This ultimately means that while the electric car itself is no longer the gross polluter, that pollution has been pushed off onto the electrical suppliers. So they, in turn, have to ramp up more fossil fuel production to handle the added load to charge these 240v batteries in electric cars.
So, how did that exactly save us anything? Maybe it makes the buyer of the electric vehicle feel more environmentally conscious until we consider where and how the power was generated to recharge that electric vehicle.
I should point out here, though, that the tires, the plastic parts and the moving parts are all derived from or utilize fossil fuels. For example, nearly all lubrication is almost always fossil fuel derived.
Alternative energy sources
As more and more electric vehicles are deployed onto the nation’s roads, the power grids will have to be enhanced to support the power generation needed to recharge these cars. That means, ultimately, more fossil fuels being burned to create that energy to send it down the line to recharge your car to let you go to work.
We need to rethink this entire process. We need to find a way to get clean power generation from nature. Unfortunately, energies derived from solar, wind or water are temperamental and, at times, impractical. That is, we can’t rely on solar, wind and water derived energy to support the numbers of people who want to buy into electric vehicles let alone power the entirety of people living in the US. So, the grid suppliers have to dip into fossil fuel derived energy generation to provide electricity across the board. As more and more of these vehicles hit the road, the grid may eventually become overtaxed by the cars and we may, once again, end up in rolling blackouts.
So, we need more stable forms of energy that are renewable for a lot longer than fossil fuels.
Running out
It has already been predicted that we are on the downward slope of fossil fuel supplies on earth (i.e., peak fossil fuel supplies). Those rich abundant supplies that were once everywhere are slowly drying up. If we, as a society, don’t find more clean renewable power generation, our information age may come to a halt leaving us squarely back at a time without electric power or natural gas. A time when there were no cell phones, no cars and no grocery stores.
If you think about the things that are all around you every day that derive their existence from fossil fuels, you begin to understand the scope of a society where fossil fuels have run out. That means, no new plastic, no gasoline, no fossil fuel generated power, no oil for motors, no computers, no iPods and no cell phones. In fact, there won’t be much of our present society left if the earth runs out of fossil fuels. This also includes lack of medicine and all that that implies, but let’s stay focused on energy sources.
Clean burning, natural, renewable energy sources
Are there any? Sure, if you count water, wind and solar. But, as I said, these are temperamental. What other power generation tools do we have? Well, there’s also atomic energy that heats water to steam and turns turbines. Unfortunately, the safeguards necessary to prevent another Chernobyl are too prone to human error. Atomic energy generation is just too risky. So, are there any others? Yes.
Thermal energy
Not just any thermal energy, the earth is home to lots of geothermal energy. The difficulty with geothermal energy is getting to it and, secondarily, preventing the creation of accidental volcanoes and eruptions. So, where could we utilize geothermal energy and maximize the energy generation? In the ocean, of course. There’s plenty of water to steam and turn turbines. There are plenty of open geothermal pockets under the ocean that lead into the water. So, we should be able to figure out a way to take advantage of these open pockets to turn ocean water to steam and generate electric power. The trouble, of course, is getting the power from the ocean floor back to a distribution grid to send the power out.
Geothermal energy is about the only energy on the planet that can be easily harnessed, that exists on its own and that is completely renewable. Unless the Earth dies, geothermal energy is about the only source that we can rely on as constant. Just look at Old Faithful to see just how stable geothermal energy can be. The only difficulty is in trying to find a reasonably consistent geothermal vent that can be reliably used to generate energy using steam turbines. However, once enough of these are found, these can be used to eventually replace burning of fossil fuels to generate heat to generate steam to to turn turbines to create energy.
Energy deficit
Fossil fuel sources should be considered as previously stored energy pockets. Energy that was created by the sun. The sun first fostered the growth of plants and animals here and then these plants and animals died, decayed and converted into fossil fuels. These fuels from many many years ago are now being used today to operate our economy. The trouble is, these fossil fuels are finite and we are using them very rapidly. In fact, we may have used more than half of all of what’s on Earth to operate our economy from day to day. Consider when we drilled our first oil well vs how much fossil fuel we use today. As a result and because these resources are finite, we will eventually run out of it. Since we really have no idea how much more we have until it all ends, we should now consider that we are living in an energy deficit, and on borrowed time. That is, we are using more energy now than we should in order to allow for support of future generations.
So, while people continue to have babies, they aren’t asking when these babies become adults will they have a future? And, what of these kid’s babies? Where will they be? This is why we are now living on borrowed time at the expense of our future generations who may find themselves looking back at us thinking how selfish we were. And they will be living at a time when they may be burning candles, eating locally grown foods and doing subsistence farming just to keep food on the table. They may have our technology, but no energy to run it. What will become the currency of that day? Perhaps seed. Once the world ends up as local economies without contact to other remote economies, the government won’t be able to keep order. So, the government as we know it will cease to exist. Without cars, then there’s no need for driver’s licenses or car license tags or any other governmental taxes or fees as they won’t make sense in a local economy.
Without thinking ahead for renewable energy sources, our future generations may have no future. At least, not the future we see today. In fact, their future may not resemble anything of our information society. This is very likely where we will end up without finding a new fuel source for power generation. This is the importance of finding clean renewable energy that is synergistic with the Earth.
Electricity is not a power source
Electricity generation is the end result of the work from some other device (i.e., burning fossil fuel turns turbines that generate power). Electricity is not a power source itself, however. But, electricity is what drives every part of our economy today. Just think what the world would be without electric power. Without locating and instituting a replacement for fossil fuel electric power generation, the world’s economy will likely end as we know it when our fossil fuel supplies dry up. Our dependence on fossil fuel power generation is nearly 70% of all power generation in the US as of 2009 (and it is likely similar if you look at the world overall).
Full circle
So, that electric car you buy today borrows against fossil fuel power generation (coal, natural gas & petroleum) to recharge your brand new electric car. Obtaining power from the local power grid ensures that at least 70% of the energy placed into your electric vehicle was generated by coal or natural gas, both of these resources are finite and coal does not burn clean. So, a renewable synergistic power generation source is a must for the Earth and the future of humanity, let alone the electric vehicle which is only truly green once we have this renewable power source.
In addition to regenerative braking, we also need to consider more car regenerative power sources to keep the car from requiring recharging nearly as often and to allow for farther traveling distances. For example, someone could invent a paint that acts as a huge solar panel. So, every inch of the external painted surface could double as a huge solar power generation panel while driving in the sun. Additionally, alternating polarity magnets could be placed below highways to generate current as you drive over them which continually recharges your car’s batteries as you drive. Thus, drastically increasing the mileage of an electric vehicle with far less need to recharge as often. Also, fans could be placed behind the grill of the vehicle to capture wind energy as you drive. Again, all of these techniques add even more power generation to the vehicle that increases mileage while also keeping that car aesthetically pleasing.
Looking at today’s electric vehicles, these designs seem so infantile compared to what could be achieved with proper governmental infrastructure support of electric vehicles. Right now, electric vehicles look green, but really aren’t. Once we harness truly clean renewable energy sources (like geothermal energy) combined with more extensive regenerative power sources, we might finally be able to call the electric vehicle green.
Movie Dissection: Tron Legacy
To start off, I am a reasonably big fan of the original Tron film. Yes, the first Tron story was a bit of a letdown, but it worked for what it was. After all, it was the first film to use computer graphics to that level within a film. Definitely a ground breaker.
Achievements
Tron Legacy is also a ground breaker once again, but much less so. Its technological advancements in film are much more subtle. A lot of people may not have thought about this, but Tron Legacy is the first film to use an actual actor’s likeness in a film to play the actor at a younger age using a CG head and real body. I had predicted that this would happen eventually, and here we are. Tron Legacy now opens doors up to creation of new films by Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Granted, the animation on the face is a bit stilted and unnatural, but it works for the CLU character. It doesn’t work so much for Kevin Flynn’s younger self. Nevertheless, the character works in most instances. If they had spent just a bit more time on the face, they could have made it look and act even better. Avatar is proof of that.
Story
While I really wanted this story to work well, it doesn’t come together as I had hoped. Basically, the CG is so strong that the story has to be twice as strong to overcome the incredible visuals. The trouble is, it doesn’t. But then, the same can be said of the first Tron film.
However, the two main problems with this film are 1) lack of a formidable villain and, by association, lack of a real payoff at the end and 2) Tron is not the main character and is visibly absent most of the film. After all, this film is named ‘Tron’. Tron is the character we expect to see. We do see him in flashbacks and, without spoiling the film, in other places as well. However, for 95% of the film, Tron is absent. In the small parts he’s in, Tron really contributes little to the overall story.
I realize that this one is about the ‘Legacy’ aspect of Kevin Flynn (i.e., Sam Flynn). So, Sam takes the front stage in this production. That’s okay were Sam Flynn a super likable character. Unfortunately, he’s not. I liked him well enough, but not nearly as much as I liked Kevin Flynn in Tron. In the first Tron film, we the viewers felt just like Kevin who was plopped into this fantasy world unexpectedly. So, we’re experiencing it all for the first time just like he is. With Tron Legacy, the audience already understands much about the world having seen the first film. So, wasting time on the introductions of the world isn’t really necessary. To their credit, the producers/writers did try to skip much of it. But, the whole clothes cutting and redressing scene was a bit overkill and kind of showed us just how cheesy the costumes were. Like the first film, it would have worked better and saved lots of time if Sam had awoken in the world fully costumed. That whole costuming scene could have been skipped (which was awkward anyway). I understand the setup between him and one of the female dressers, but that meet-and-greet could have happened in a different way.
Tron original film rules ignored
I also keep thinking more and more about Tron Legacy vs Tron and I keep coming up with more and more holes. Holes that are big enough to drive a truck through. It’s really very obvious that the writers (former writers from Lost, I might add) just didn’t consult the original film before writing this story. Without consulting the original film, they just arrived at an idea that didn’t really take into account all of the previous rules that had been established in Tron. Worse, it seems like the writers and producers thumbed their noses at the fans by not following these rules. Following the rules, however, would have made Tron Legacy much more complete and true to the original film. It would have also made Tron Legacy far better than it is now. And, it would have shown that the writers were committed to providing a full experience to not only the casual viewer, but also to the die-hard fans of Tron. Instead, this film only appeals to the casual viewer and completely ignores and, worse, insults the die-hard fan.
First example, the whole reason the game grid exists in Tron is as a result of the arcade video games in real life. The game grid is a virtualized, but identical active game as what the gamer sees on the arcade CRT. Just as the gamer plays the game in real life in an arcade, so the game progresses identically in the virtual world with 3D people. As a result, the game grid exists because of real life gamers. As the gamers play games, so too do the game grid games. In 2010, with games like World of Warcraft, Halo 3 and Assassin’s Creed, the writers could have had a field day with such an updated game grid. Yes, it might have ruined the aesthetic of the game world to see people dressed as Master Chief or Ezio, but it would have made Tron Legacy far more true to what’s going on today in gaming and, at the same time, make Tron Legacy a lot more fun to watch.
In Tron Legacy, this entire arcade to game grid aspect was either forgotten or intentionally dropped. The trouble is, this rule has already been established. So, the movie should have at least popped out to the real world to see gamers playing on mobile phones, computers and Xbox 360s to show that the virtual game grid is still tied to a real world game.
Second issue… although, I have to admit I didn’t initially think of this one and don’t necessarily agree with the thinking behind it. Some people have surmised that the Encom mainframe had been shut off the whole time between Tron and Tron Legacy and thus the virtual world wouldn’t have existed. The reality is, there was a computer in Flynn’s Arcade that appeared to contain the virtual world. So, while Encom’s computers may have been shut off, it appears Flynn had moved the entire world into his own personal server. So, while some people seem to find this part of the film a problem, I don’t. Flynn was the CEO of Encom and easily had enough money and power to build a hugely powerful computer system in the basement of Flynn’s arcade to manage this world. Sure, it might have been shut down for a time, but it certainly appears that Flynn had successfully transferred both the world and the computer into the arcade’s basement. He certainly had enough money to do this. It also appears that this computer is fully functional when Sam arrives at the arcade. So, I don’t see an issue with this part of the movie.
Third issue (see Encom below for more of this). When Flynn took control over Encom after Tron defeated the MCP and released the files incriminating Ed Dillinger, I full well expected Flynn to drive Encom to become a game development company. In fact, had this premise been realized, this would strengthen the idea behind the game grid and the existence of the virtual world. Instead, for whatever reasons, the writers decided to turn Encom into an operating system company like Microsoft. Now, that doesn’t mean that Encom doesn’t make video games, but it does mean that it is not Encom’s core business. If that whole board room meeting had been related to a new video game title, the whole Tron Legacy story would have been dramatically strengthened. Also, in Tron, Encom was an R&D group think tank. That is, they designed extremely cutting edge prototyping products, like the digitizing laser. The very same laser technology that digitizes and transports both Sam and Kevin into the virtual world. Again, the writers ignored this part of Encom’s business completely to the detriment of Tron Legacy. Considering that that digitizing laser was designed in 1982, I would have expected to see that digitizing system being sold on the market and people entering into their own virtual worlds (separate from Flynn’s world) by 2010. Yet another lost opportunity for the writers to create an interesting spin on what happened with Encom.
Fourth issue, after Sam ends up back in the real world at the end of Tron Legacy, he’s fully dressed in street clothes. As far as I know, he didn’t pack an extra set of clothes. So, the whole costuming process inside the virtual world (where his clothes were cut off and discarded) doesn’t make sense. Worse, Quorra, who isn’t even human, also pops out into the real world fully clothed in street clothes. Again, where did these clothes come from? I’m quite sure that Sam didn’t expect to be leaving Flynn’s with a female companion. So, I’m quite sure that an old dusty arcade wouldn’t have such clothes stashed away. So, again, this is a problem. Although, some people surmise that Quorra didn’t actually make it out. Instead, Sam is somehow having a delusion or an hallucination of Quorra and she’s not actually there. I don’t know that I agree with this. I have my suspicions as to what’s going on, but I’ll leave that for Tron 3 to fully explain.
[Updated 1/16/2011]
Fifth issue is that the original digitizing laser consumed the space of at least 2-3 building stories and at least one football field. This is a huge laser equipment laboratory. In Tron Legacy, this digitizing laser is now located in the basement of Flynn’s Arcade? Unfortunately, I just don’t think that this sized laser equipment fit within Flynn’s arcade basement space. So, the question is, where is the rest of the huge laser infrastructure? Just not thought out well enough. However, if one of Encom’s newest products had been a self-contained USB digitizing laser (for home use) and that had been what was being discussed in the board room, then having this laser in Flynn’s basement would have made a lot more sense. And, it would have made sense from a time perspective (all technology gets smaller). But no, this issue was not addressed at all.
Sixth issue.. this is not so much an issue, but an observation about how the laser works. According to the first film, the molecules are digitized and then suspended in the laser beam. When the molecule model is played back, the object reintegrates. With Quorra, it actually does make sense that she could end up in the real world. How? Well, there were two users in that world: Kevin and Sam. Two real world users with real world molecules. Kevin’s molecules would still have been suspended in the laser beam. When Kevin explodes after reintegrating with CLU, those molecules are still trapped in the laser beam. There’s nothing that says that those molecules have to play back out as Kevin. In fact, Quorra could use Kevin’s suspended molecules to play back into her form and become human. Of course, that would leave no more suspended molecules for anyone else to exit the grid. That also means that for someone to leave the grid with a real form, that a real person would have to enter the virtual world. I’m assuming that as long as that person lives, those molecules are tied to that individual. If the user dies in the grid, then an ISO or another program could exit into the real world using that dead user’s molecules. Another issue is that Kevin’s molecules would be suspended in Kevin’s form when he went in. It would take at least Yori to reconfigure the laser beam protocol to play out Kevin’s molecules into Quorra’s form. Yori was the program designed by Lora to manage parts of the digitizing system. Unfortunately, Yori isn’t in Tron Legacy. So, Quorra should have exited the virtual world in Kevin’s form and clothing.
Encom 2010
Other than the bored room meetings (pun intended), we really get very little of what Encom does in the present. With technologies like the digitizing system that are displayed in Tron, I would have expected Encom to be a lot farther along in technological breakthroughs than selling ‘the latest greatest operating system’ (ala Microsoft). Clearly, this part of the film is an afterthought. It wastes screen time without really telling us much about Encom. It is really used as a vehicle to set up Sam Flynn’s character. However, even that vehicle falls flat. Honestly, the film would have been served better by not knowing or seeing that specific Sam Flynn escapade.
Villainy
Unfortunately, CLU isn’t the appropriate ‘Program’ to be a villain. First, CLU is supposed to be Kevin Flynn’s helper program. So, it seems odd that he has gone rogue anyway. Secondarily, he isn’t really designed to be a villain. So, turning him into one just seems somehow wrong. Worse, he really isn’t a worthy adversary in the games. If he is as good as he is supposed to be (along with his black guard henchman), they both should be able to best Sam Flynn easily. So, this whole part of the film just doesn’t really work. But then, Quorra interrupts the games early. Kind of convenient, but at the same time gives us no payoff.
Adversary
Unlike Tron, which has the MCP, we have no such villain in Tron Legacy. CLU is it, but CLU just doesn’t come across as a proper villain. He seems more like a henchman for something bigger. Yet, that something bigger just never materializes. I actually expected to see Kevin Flynn emerge as the villain in this film. That would have been something. It would have really justified the ending of this film, showed us a completely different side to Kevin and, at the same time, have given us a huge payoff at the end. Alas, that doesn’t happen.
Action
The movie definitely starts the pacing off on the right foot and continues at a pretty solid pace until just after Sam Flynn exits the game grid. After that, the story comes to a crawl, as does the action. So, unfortunately too, this leads to a lack of payoff. It also doesn’t give Sam Flynn any screen time to kick butt and take names which this film so desperately needs. The wins we see with Sam are more out of luck and accidents than out of skill. Sam never does get enough screen time to show that he has any skills that are translated from the real world. Even his lightcycle skills don’t show through no matter how much Ducati footage is included in the opening. We need to see Sam win at something where the stakes are substantial. Something that at the end of it, we cheer for him and his win.
Visuals and Audio
What’s to say about the visuals other than, “stunning”. The music by Daft Punk and the audio effects are superb at doing what movies do best: set the mood and tone.
Payoff
In the end, there really is no payoff. In the first film, Tron’s first goal is to get a message to his user. So, Tron fights his way through to a communication tower. In Tron Legacy, Sam’s and Kevin’s only objective is to get to the exit portal (not unlike the communication tower in Tron). When they finally get to the portal, it seems trivially easy. There is really no opposition along the way. Just a quick trip with a Solar Sailer and they’re basically there. No grid bugs, no hidden Mickey Mouse heads, no Recognizer chases, etc. Just a trip without any incidents. In Tron, getting to the communication tower is only half the way through the story. Tron still must battle the MCP. At the end of Tron Legacy, there was no battle. In fact, there was nothing to battle at all, other than Kevin’s own guilt.
Unfortunately, the ending was really explained by Quorra about 20 minutes before the end. So, I won’t give it away, even though Quorra does. But at the portal, there is no real payoff with CLU or Tron. In fact, there is no real positive payoff at all. The ending leaves more questions than answers. So, unless Disney plans on Tron 3, we may never know what happens. This really feels like half of a film. It feels like we’re missing the other half of this film.
Overall
The story could have been far better. However, the producers rely on the visuals and the music (which, granted, both were very impressive) to carry this film. Again I say, the plot could have been far far better. We need at least one payoff and we don’t get it. I was even hoping for a little payoff with Sam on the game grid, but even that doesn’t happen. Sam, like Kevin in Tron, also needed to befriend someone in the virtual world besides Quorra. He needed another companion to travel around the virtal world and show him the ropes. For a split second, I thought it might actually happen when one of his lightcycle mates almost gets his bike wand back. That is until CLU runs him over and Quorra steps in.
Also, there are lots of subtle things that just don’t work or are missing. For example, as a user in Tron (first film), Kevin is able to absorb energy and use it in unusual ways. Clearly, he is still able to do that to create CLU in Tron Legacy. He also uses this power to steal a non-working Recognizer in Tron. However, the writers don’t explore this aspect with Sam at all. It could have helped out in several instances and would have made for a more cohesive film. There was also no comic relief element like the ‘bit’ in the Recognizer in Tron. Not that we need ‘bit’ in this film, but I think that humor could have helped in places.
Even though the story is a bit weak in the film, the story for Tron Evolution (video game) is much stronger than this film. In fact, it has many of the elements and payoffs that the movie lacks, including a proper villain with Abraxas. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s the best game of 2010. Far from it. However, the story is definitely better than the Tron Legacy story. If you’re really into Tron lore, you should check out Tron Evolution to fill in the story gaps that the movie doesn’t fully explain (i.e., the ISOs). I am disappointed that the film glosses over the ISO storyline and, instead, leaves it to the video game to fully explain these concepts.
I like the film, but the story really needed to be far stronger to match the visuals. Overall, I rate this film 7.5 out of 10 stars.
Online ordering: Some companies just don’t get it
In the past week, I’ve run into two different companies that obviously haven’t the first clue about running their online presence. I’ll bet that this is just the tip of the iceberg, but there it is.
Online ordering with store pickup
Fry Electronics doesn’t get it. The point to online ordering with store pickup is to save time. Unfortunately, using Fry’s store pickup by ordering online saves you no time. In fact, it takes more time than just buying directly in the store and leaves more questions than answers.
I found an item on Frys.com web site that I wanted to buy and noticed they now offered store pickup. I thought, “Great”. So, I proceeded to place the order online. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a profile with Frys.com, so I had to create one along with entering shipping and billing info, credit card number and various other information they required. So, this usually takes about 5 minutes to complete. Granted, it doesn’t take that long to enter this information, but you’ll soon see that this time was completely wasted.
So, I enter the information they require, choose my store for pickup and click ‘Place Order’ like you normally do on any e-commerce site. So, the order is all placed, I have my receipt in hand and on the receipt it says to to remember to bring the card you used to the store. I think, “No problem”. I ordered after hours. So, I knew that I would have to pick up the order the next day.
The next day I take my printed receipt with the order number to the store, like they request. I walk into the store and ask where to pick up online orders.
First mistake
The door greeter tells me to get in line and pick up the online ordered item at any cashier in the front. I thought, “Uh oh, this is not starting off well”. No dedicated desk means the cashiers will be completely inexperienced in this process and, to my lack of surprise, they were inexperienced. Anyway, I step up to the cashier and hand her the online receipt. She proceeds to type something into the register, looks confused about something and then tells me to hold on while she goes and locates the order.
Second mistake
Twenty minutes later, after wandering around and disappearing, she finally comes back with the item in hand. I could have wandered the store, found the item, visited a cashier and exited Fry’s in the time it took her to locate the item.
Third mistake
With item in hand, she proceeds to tell me that I need to finish paying for the order at her station. I’m thinking, “What?” I had thought I already paid on the Frys.com web site as I was given fully completed receipt for the order with a valid order number. So, I attempt to validate this information and ask, “I have to pay again? I thought I already paid on the web site”. She proceeds to explain that it’s not actually an order but a ‘reservation’ for an item. I asked, then why do I have to give fully detailed information (billing, shipping, credit card, CVV, etc) for a reservation? Of course, she’s a non-native English speaker and plays dumb like she didn’t understand what I said. So, I try to verify this again and she says that I won’t be double-charged (which is, of course, my first thought considering I had to provide my CC card info full and complete).
So, not only did they waste my time online asking for information they didn’t need to create a ‘reservation’, the cashier wasted 20 minutes trying to locate the item in the store which wasn’t picked and stored properly from my order. Worse, after walking out of the store, I still have no idea if my card is to be charged twice.
I head home and call Frys.com to clarify what the hell went on. I explained that what they are doing is less than clear and the whole process is time wasteful. Every other online order with store pickup system I’ve used at other stores charges for the order online and then only requires identification to pickup at the store. They might or might not even print a receipt. But, you definitely don’t pay for the item in the store like Fry’s requires.
Fry’s made major mistakes in this process. Wasting my time by making me enter all of that information, not properly picking the the item requiring the cashier to wander the store in search of the item, and then requiring the consumer to pay at the register for an item that already appears to have been paid. The additional mistake that Fry’s made was not having a dedicated pickup desk to handle online pickups. There is no reason to require the consumer to stand in line for a cashier. Online ordering with store pickup is supposed to save time. In fact, I probably doubled the amount of time that was needed to get the item. I would have been better off just heading to the store, finding the item and heading up to the cashiers to pay. What a waste.
Out of stock ordering
Virgin Mobile doesn’t get it. This issue isn’t limited to Virgin mobile, it just happens to be the most recent example of this problem. So, I decide want to buy one of Virgin Mobile’s MiFi 2200 devices. I visit the site and try to place the item in my cart. Instead, I see a red error message that says ‘Sorry, that item is currently unavailable’. It doesn’t say anything about being out of stock. Just that it is unavailable (whatever that means). Ok, here’s the issue. If the item is ‘Out of Stock’, that’s fine. Just tell us this. No cryptic messages.
First Mistake
Even if the item is out of stock, but you know you’ll have more back in stock tomorrow, then take the order against the future stock. The mistake here is that Virgin has lost a sale. I may not come back tomorrow and purchase. I want to purchase today. I made the decision to purchase today. Tomorrow I may change my mind and go with something else. In fact, I may go with something else simply from the stupid fact that Virgin mobile wouldn’t sell it even when it’s ‘Out of Stock’.
Second Mistake
I called the sales line and the ‘sales rep’ proceeded to transfer me to the ‘Broadband help desk’. Where they transferred my call is not an order line. It’s a help desk / customer service portal. No where on the line does it say ‘Press 1 for sales’. In fact, it doesn’t mention sales anywhere on the line. So, I press on and get through to an operator. The first time I call, the representative on the ‘help desk’ tells me that there is web site trouble and I should order tomorrow (see Virgin Mobile first mistake above). I call back and the second person says the item is ‘Out of Stock’ and they should have them in ‘tomorrow’.
So, I’m at a loss. If you’re in a company selling online, an item is out of stock but you know it will be back in stock tomorrow, why would you want to prevent taking orders against that future stock? I mean, seriously, this is stupid. Just tell the consumer when they should be back in stock. The consumer can make the decision to wait or not. If you prevent ordering altogether, you’re losing sales.
You would think companies the size of Fry’s and Virgin Mobile would have their act together, but they don’t. Companies wonder why their sales suck, yet they don’t look at these convoluted processes that don’t work and that throw roadblocks in front of the buyer. So, instead of the buyer buying, we walk away and don’t buy.
Retailers, wake up. Just because you think a process is working for you, you need to reevaluate just how it impacts the consumer.
Random Thoughts - Randocity! 
2 comments