I was yanked three and a half decades back today, and Rority had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Two things from the past reached thirty five years into the future and snagged me for their apparent enjoyment. They were books.
Uhmmm, my credit union prints their own cards right in the branch and hands them to you when you open an account. With raised numbers like a normal card. The card printers for making properly-embossed cards are not that expensive.
That may be the case, but it's a moot point considering that some cards received in the mail (such as Discover IT cards) are now switching to flat printed (unembossed) formats. It's no longer an issue of how expensive embossing machines are.
Here's an article on the subject from MSE Money: http://money.msn.com/credit-cards/4-ways-credit-cards-are-changing
Yes, exactly. That "Wandering POV" annoyed me to no end in the only Patterson book I read (I wanted to see why he was so popular, I still don't know). In Mars, Ho!" the first person part is Knolls' report itself. Chapter 22 will be the CEO and Bob on the golf course, with the CEO only having read half of the report. The last chapter (or last chapters, I don't know yet) will be Knolls meeting with the CEO again and will be third person. I think I can make it work without jarring the reader. I hope so, anyway.
All that is true, but monopolies like Amazon's often don't last. Look at Microsoft, they had the browser market and OS market sewn up fifteen years ago, now more people are on iOS and Android than Windows. MS can hardly sell a phone or tablet. Or look at IBM, who owned the computer market in 1985.
B&N remind me of the old ads for Avis rent-a-car, "we're #2, we try harder". Any publisher or manufacturer who gets a nasty note "why isn't [product] at Amazon?" would likely send a polite reply that "we are sorry, but we cannot force a retailer to carry our product, but you can obtain it at [list of Amazon's competitors]." At least, that's what I'd do if I got a note like that (although my books are at Amazon so I have no worries about that). Me, if I can't find it at Amazon, I figure "so what?" I can always get it elsewhere. I wouldn't be annoyed at the publisher or manufacturer, I would be annoyed at Amazon (but yeah, I agree that most people are irrational and emotional).
I won't order anything but books and movies from Amazon since I bought a replacement battery for my laptop and had to return it; it was the wrong battery. I got the right one directly from Acer, which is what I should have done in the first place.
I read a library copy of Andy Weir's The Martian. The only versions available at Amazon are ebook and audiobook, at B&N all versions are there, so it must be a publisher that Amazon is fighting with. I hope Baen isn't on Amazon's blacklist, I'm going to try to get them to publish my next book, self-publishing a hardcover is a whole lot of work and expensive for both writer and reader. It's a real PITA.
IINM, ebooks that are Amazon Only are usually if not always ebook-only books that Amazon itself publishes.
There job is to look for threats.
For FSM's sake, why can't you kids handle homophones? Sorry, kid, but I take no stock whatever in what a semiliterate who very obviously never reads anything not on the internet says.
A little unwanted education, you fucking football player who probably doesn't belong here, it's THEIR. The possessive. THEIR. "There" is a place.
For other aliterate dumbasses (look up "aliterate"), it's "They're angry that their car is over there."
Someone please mod me offtopic, this is meant for the ignorant kid alone. This is a fucking nerd site and I don't like seeing comments that belong on Reddit or Fox or Yahoo where the ignorant, non-reading dumbasses usually hang out.
Sorry, this stupidity pisses me off. Our education system sucks donkey balls or that guy wouldn't be such an ignoramus.
Kid, just shut the fuck up. You should be ashamed at your lack of BASIC writing skills (like third grade, idiot).
I think Amazon is getting arrogant and stupid, and think they own the market and have no competition. My books aren't affected, they're available at Amazon. But they're cheaper from Barnes & Noble, and B&N listed them in their catalog two days before Amazon did (I'm my own publisher, no hatchets are war nerd brothers).
I think it's dumb, B&N will eat their lunch. Want a WB movie or Hatchette book? B&N. And probably a hundred other places.
Several chapters ago I decided to see if I could do what James Patterson did (badly IMO) in that one book of his I read, mixing first and third person. A few months ago I figured out how to do it with this book, and wrote a new chapter one that goes before the posted chapter one.
I was on a roll yesterday, adding 3000 words, some scattered through the entire existing book but most at the end, past where we are now.
The only multi-tasking ability I wish they would add (back) to the Kindle is the MP3 player/audio. I hate having to use a second device to listen to music while I'm reading
Why? The Kindle is a "second device", you have a phone in your pocket that is perfectly capable of playing MP3s (and radio) already.
Free as in "over the air radio" which isn't really free, having commercials in it is what you pay to listen. TuneIn has an audio ad that plays every time you turn it on, and video ads at the bottom of the screen. That's a fair enough price, but they want to raise the price by adding my address book to the payment. Nope, it's like cable TV. Cable stations used to have no commercials, Now there are ads on-screen even when the content is playing. It's really stupid; OTA TV fed from cable used to be a lot better picture and sound, no static, ghosts, or snow so you were paying for the content by watching ads and paying the cable company for clarity, as well as extra programming, mostly excellent and without commercials. Now that it's digital, over the air serves a better picture than cable. And cable may have hundreds of channels, but hundreds of channels I have no intention of ever watching. They think I'll pay for that? They're insane, I dropped cable over ten years ago.
I can drop TuneIn just as easily, and if it stops working without the update I'll just uninstall it*, which will make their real product less valuable. They surely have competitors.
*Then I'll email radio stations I listen to and let them know they lost a listener, and why. Most stations have their own apps anyway, TuneIn is really only useful because you only have to install the one app.
When I first saw this I thought "finally Apple has given folks a good reason to shell out the extra cash. Now if they were only waterproof and shock resistant like my cheap Kyocera..."
I keep location services shut off as well, but on my phone turning it on or off is just a swipe and a touch. And it's extremely annoying that apps with no real use except stalking me keep nagging me to turn it on. It's why I refuse to upgrade my TuneIn app, the upgrade wants my address book! WTF? Stupid developers writing stupid apps for stupid people. I wish they'd knock off their intrusive, annoying, STUPID stalking. But it seems that most businesspeople these days are sociopathic morons with absolutely no respect for their paying customers (there are places here where they demand that elderly people show ID to buy beer. Guess what? They don't get my business, I prefer to keep my money away from arrogant morons who insist on insulting the very idea of intelligence).
That's a pretty low bar. So to pass the test a computer needs three very low IQ subjects and seven normal people? Hell, the Alice program would probably pass. How about a more reasonable percentage, like 95%?
Yep, for a little over two years. Hated it, except when I got to "fly" a C5-A simulator and walk around inside the computer that ran it. I've never seen so many printed circuit boards in one place before or since. But that lasted maybe an hour
"In space. no one can hear you scream like a little girl." -Mark Watney
I'll be succinct before I become verbose: This is the best book I've read in years, including the ones I wrote.
If you like my stuff, you'll love this book. This guy writes like me only a lot better. Seriously. What's more, he looks to be half my age so damn it, you'll read more of his books than I will, I'm ageing.
This is his first book. I want a second.
Mow there are some saying "you brought him home, what about the tourists that got captured?" Well DUH, they were idiots for visiting a war zone. In the military you don't have the luxury of choice, you go where they send you. I certainly didn't want to be in Delaware, especially since there was nothing there and the climate played hell with my arthritis (which seldom bothers me now that I'm old and not in Delaware).
And as you said, if he was AWOL the army will take care of the matter.
The answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is... Four day work week, Two ply toilet paper!
