No lines at the Apple stores around here; most of them are inside of shopping malls and they would simply laugh if people tried to queue up before the day of a product launch.

I'm wondering if they're concerned about how this sells, and they're only manufacturing a limited number to start with, so if there's not a lot of interest then they're not stuck with hundreds of thousands of unwanted watches.

Hell, I'm still wearing a decades-old Bulova Accutron, the kind with the actual tuning fork mechanism. No way that's getting replaced with something that will be obsolete in a few months.

Yes. In Boston there are subway stations with Dunkin' Donuts in them. Driving through Chelsea there are DDs at all of the major corners. It isn't until you get pretty far out into the suburbs that you can't find a Dunkin' Donuts every quarter-mile. When they're everywhere it's easy to see why people will get their coffee, donuts, and breakfast sandwiches there even if they'd rather have something better or different.

No, think that hey! summed it up fairly well. Fiorina has been extremely successful, even to the point of literally being phenomenal, for her own interests. The problem is, her interests are most every other person's interests are not necessarily compatible and may be outright hostile. One can argue that her success, while bad for just about everyone else that she has done business with, is still good for her.

Take another look at Mitt Romney for a moment, in the sense that his corporate interests have been successful, by and large, for shareholders in the firms that his loyalties have been to. He could at least claim that his policies were beneficial for shareholders and for the company, but even with such claims he still lost an election. I expect that many of the stories of companies purchased and stripped by Romney's companies, promptly laying-off thousands of workers in the process.

If Romney couldn't win despite having arguably a successful track-record, then I don't see how Fiorina could.

Why would we complain about Slashdot on Twitter when we can complain about Slashdot on Slashdot?

Expressing opinions is just fine, but it's not in these businesses' interests to provide a forum for it when this forum is not in their control. It's opening the flood-gates to let a trickle of a stream into the town downstream and being surprised when the entire reservoir rushes down the valley.

Are they happy, or have businesses like this managed to simply become the path of least resistance to where they've become a habit to the patrons?

I used to stop at QuikTrip convenience stores twice a day while doing my rounds, to get soft-drink refills and sometimes to buy beef jerky or other snacks. It didn't make me happy or improve my quality of life, I was doing it because it was very easy and had become one of my habits.

I don't hate QuikTrip now, but I did realize that I'm better off not patronizing them so much.

These situations are all proof that one cannot control the feedback that one receives. That's the whole point of feedback, by the way, to attempt to gauge a realistic view of what's going on. Asking for a negative review or asking for a positive review has already prejudiced the review process, and will usually rile-up people that have had the opposite experience that have the opposite view of the asker.

If the distinguished lady from Oregon wanted realistic feedback then she should have simply asked for feedback. If she asked for positive feedback (as an attempt at reverse-psychology), knowing that she was against the ACA, she would have gotten positive feedback by a motivated crowd. Asking for negative feedback, know that she was against the ACA, she got positive feedback by a motivated crowd.

It doesn't matter if you're squeaky-clean, there are plenty of people that would demean anyway even if they've never done business with you. Just reading through the comments on items purchased on Amazon is proof enough of that.

They're called trolls. And we should all be well aware of them, we've all probably been them at some point or another.

I've wanted a Spaceballs: The Flame Thrower since I was a kid. Mel Brooks was right, the kids love this one.

I like how also it has nothing to do with the movie, except that it's shown in the movie as something available as a movie tie-in. Reminds me of that Spock helmet.

I had to go through jury selection a few months back for a capital case, going through three or four rounds of appearances and interviews. Part of what struck me about the experience is how incredibly poor the paperwork was. They gave us number cards when there were 250+ people to go through in my group, they were all handwritten even though the numbers corresponded with the computer-generated numbers we were assigned when the original mailing for service was sent. Forms and questionnaires looked like they were generated in Clarisworks by first-time users in elementary school. Nothing had letterhead, nothing had any sort of official feel.

Your story about no letterhead and using fax machines is totally believable to me, and I'm amazed that it isn't abused more often.

I doubt it. There is no legal agreement between the new employer and Amazon in this context.

Where I live no-competes are not enforceable, so here it doesn't matter. Even skilled technical workers that make real product-design contributions can change employers without penalty. One can go from Intel to Motorola to Honeywell and work in all of their IC packaging divisions without any penalty.

This is true, but it's also not universally a given either.

Free-markets would probably limit utilities to higher-density urban areas only. Regulation is supposed to force companies to do business that is not necessarily profitable in a small number of cases in order to reap the reward of the easy profitable business in urban areas.

What needs to happen here is enforcement against the monopoly that they have to provide service.