Things that are better than they should be / worse than they should be

In My Humble Opinion
1

Better than it should be: Wikipedia.

(The obvious example, but hey, I gotta start somewhere.)

As we all know perfectly well, the Internet is overwhelmingly populated by gremlins, lunatics, captioned cat picture enthusiasts, teenagers whose first and only language is 1337, and whatever kind of hideous primordial slime that is responsible for the comments on YouTube. You’re telling me that those guys are going to get together and create an encyclopedia? One that anyone can edit? HA! Yeah, that’s going to turn out well…

Oh, wait…

Worse than it should be: Porn (well, 98% of it - I checked).

Oh, I’m sorry - I mean gentleman’s special interest multimedia products.

OK, mr. porn director - you have the girls there, and they all seem to be pleasant, charming and, dare I say it, not displeasing to the eye. You have the expensive cameras and lighting gear and stuff, all good. As far as I can tell, you have every opportunity to make a very nice erotic movie. Something beautiful for us all to enjoy. Something tasteful and stylish, yet stimulating. Can’t see what’s holding you back, really. You can’t really fail at this point…

Oh, I see, you’d rather make another piece of evil, sick, misogynistic, tasteless, stupid shit instead. Makes sense, really. My mistake.

2

I concur about Wikipedia. It’s surprisingly useful and balanced (at least on technical subjects).

A Worse Thing:
In this day and age, why are textbooks so expensive? You’d think competition from ebooks and online resources would put at least a little downward pressure on textbooks, but no. Maybe there aren’t enough ebooks and whatnot, I don’t know. I found a sort-of-not-really-decent free e-textbook to use for one of my physics classes, but in my other class I needed something a little more rigorous, so I chose a ‘real’ textbook. Cost to students: $180. YIKES. Crap. Sorry students. I didn’t know the new edition was going to be that expensive. The old edition was way cheaper.

For a German class I’m taking this semester, the book was $140. The electronic version (for Kindle) was over $100. Seriously?

There’s got to be a better way.

3

You should be able to put Amazon MP3s into some sort of shopping cart before checking out, but you can’t.

You have to buy the MP3s one at a time (or one album at a time) then when you are done with your purchase either search again for something else or hit the BACK button to go back to where you were before you started your last purchase.

It’s really annoying if you want to buy 2 or 3 tracks from one album or artist (use the BACK button to get back to the page that lists them all) or if say you are going through the $5 album list (use the BACK button to get back to the list once you purchased one album.)

They do aggregate your purchases into one purchase for your credit card. BUT it’s only in, say, 10 minute spans. So if you buy 2 songs and then browse a bit and buy a third one 10 minutes later, you will have one credit card charge for 1.98 and one for .99.

I’ve heard bad things about the programming culture at Amazon, and I didn’t really believe it until I started buying MP3s there.

I do love everything else about their MP3s, tho. I obviously buy enough to make this all super annoying!

4

Why do vacuum cleaners and leaf blowers have to be so noisy?

5

Just the other day I was wondering when Dyson would come out with a leaf blower.

6

Minor hijack.

I currently work at a small company that produces digital textbooks, so perhaps I can help answer this question. What a lot of people don’t realize is how long it takes to produce a textbook, even at the larger companies. From the time the authors first begin writing to the first physical sale usually takes about five years. There’s just so much work that needs to be done – content writing, exercises, solutions, visuals, layout, revising, indexing, etc.

Still, you might wonder “What about the digital guys? Why can’t they do it better?” Well, we do. Faster and cheaper. The problem that arises with digital textbooks is building up awareness. Schools use physical textbooks from the big-name publishers because they know the content will be good, or because they have long-term deals with the companies. No one wants to use textbooks produced by a company they’ve never heard of. It’s the same sort of paradox as trying to get your first job: “You can’t get a job until you have experience, but you can’t get experience until you have a job.” The result is that a lot of man hours get put into marketing, many of which are essentially wasted since the schools just don’t want to hear it.

The other problem is that even if a school is looking to explore cheaper/digital options, there are often serious f*cking hoops to jump through before they’ll even consider a company’s product. “Oh, you want us to use your digital textbook? Pay a $50 application fee, fax us this 10-page application, and ship us five physical copies of each textbook. If they aren’t on our desk at 9:00 AM next Monday morning, they won’t be eligible for consideration. Have fun!”

End hijack.

7

I’d say mass transportation is worse than it should be. Why can’t all trains, planes and buses have two floors? One for sitting and one for drinkin’/gamblin’/chillin’ etc? I appreciate tunnels are a bit restrictive where trains are concerned but there’s a captive audience in a tube for x hours so why not try and make a little money while they’re there? If they’re on the top or bottom floor they’d still weigh the same to carry.

Better than they should be - Nuclear bombs. Why, when no one in their right mind is ever going to use them, are there 26,000 of the things in existence? Why have hundreds of trillions of dollars been spent making them better and better at blowing stuff up when we could’ve annihilated everyone in the World decades ago?

8

Better Than They Should Be

mp3 players. I am still amazed that a gizmo the size of a deck of cards (and surprisingly inexpensive) can store and play every song I’ve ever owned, and show a picture of the album while it’s playing, and with a series of button presses can be made to skip randomly from song to song throughout my entire music collection. If I wanted to go through a few extra steps, I could put videos on it and watch those, too. And it doesn’t use batteries!

Worse Than They [It] Should Be

Satellite radio. Don’t get me wrong: I still consider my satellite radio some of the best money I ever spent, and I will never go back to terrestrial radio. But sometimes I think XM/Sirius is phoning it in. One of the things I hate the most about terrestrial radio - inane banter from the DJ’s - is, unfortunately, present on satellite radio, in spades. Indeed, I think the XM/Sirius jazz channel devotes as much time to talking about jazz as it does to playing jazz. And when it’s playing jazz, it tends to focus way too heavily on be-bop (jazz at its lowest point, IMHO), to the exclusion of most other forms of jazz. Furthermore, the service is advertised as being commercial-free; which is true, to a point, on some of the music channels. But others have their fair share of commercials. Indeed, one of their country channels is simply a Nashville terrestrial station broadcast on the XM feed; so if you’re interested in Nashville commercials, and Nashville news, traffic, and weather, just kick over to XM channel 59 (or whatever).

9

Actually, TV is worse than it should be.

“Wow, I have this magical gadget that can show me pictures of what is happening anywhere in the world at any time, on a squillion different channels! Amazing! I bet it can teach me lots I didn’t know about the wonders of the world! Let’s see what’s on!”

click Stupid sitcom… stupid sitcom… partisan news channel… stupid talent show… some sports thing… oh, well, at least there’s House in few days.

Turns TV off, goes back to the Dope

10

Better than it should be: MY COMPUTER

Here I have a wondrous machine that allows me to:
Rejoin the U.S. Army as an infantryman/chopper pilot/tank commander and fight in modern “Takistan” playing Arma 2; Rip my old vinyl LPs and convert/store/listen to them as MP3s; Help my girlfriend with her business school homework by using video editing software to put together a commercial for a fictional watch she created; Get in contact with old classmates/army buddies/ex-girlfriends and extended family I never knew through Facebook; Save the world as a one of the superheroes I’d originally created back in the early 80’s playing the MMORPG “Champions Online”; Visit The Straight Dope and laugh myself silly/shake my head in shame/burn with disgust at some of the posts here. And to be able to do this AND SO MUCH MORE with the click of a mouse, and hitting a few keys!

Worse than it should be: TV and MOVIES
There’s a reason I have cable Internet but don’t have cable TV: the glut of “reality TV” and the constant repeats of low budget crap on the premium channels. And don’t get me started on the Hollywood theatrical releases of old TV shows. (Seriously? “The Beverly Hillbillies”? “21 Jump Street”? Ugh!) However, I do get critically acclaimed shows on DVD when they’re available and enjoy watching the growth of the characters over a period of weeks rather than having to wait YEARS for a show to play through. (I recently watched all 5 seasons of “The Wire” and I’m now working my way through ST: DS9.)

11

I was wondering that about lawn mowers and… other powered garden equipment known by multiple names across the world.

I think Blu-Ray discs aren’t as good as they ought to be. They try so hard to be fancy and several steps above DVDs, but fall short in true helpfulness. Such as, after your first watch a disc, it should skip the trailers for all subsequent viewings. They should remember what language setting you chose, or even better assume all discs be the same language you always choose. They should start faster. And stuff.

12

Better than it should be (for me): public television and radio. Among the 4 PBS tv channels I get, I can always find a good documentary, with no commercials. With NPR, I can always find intelligent and interesting analysis.
Also, topdocumentaryfilms and sdmb, bc they provide me with unlimited free entertainment commercial free.

13

Worse than they should be:

Traffic control devices. <<< They completely ignore reality, and work mostly based on formulas on some trained monkey’s worksheets (trained monkey = traffic ‘engineer’)

Better than they should be:

Unemployment rates in the U.S. <<<How in Og’s name is the U.S. not crippled by 20-30% unemployment at this point? Maybe what is broken is the method to count actual unemployment.

.

14

I am appalled at how bad most movies are, and have been for the last few years. There are a handful of exceptions. But I can’t believe how much money is spent for such stupid stories, featuring such blah actors. Rom-coms, movies about toys, movies about drunken fat frat boys, gruesome torture porn, karate and 'splosions and heists. Can’t remember the last time I went to see something greatly anticipated in a movie theater. I look at the Redbox outside the supermarket - nothing there I have any desire to rent. I go to the Family Video store once in a blue moon and it’s like back in the 80’s, the same stupid old crap on all the shelves, plus 5000 copies of the latest flavor-of-the-month. … OK, I know I’m not in the buying demographic and most crap is put out there in theaters so young couples on a date have somewhere to go, and to keep teenage boys off the street for a couple of hours. But really - movies seem SO bad, all noise and CGI and stupidity.

I think TCM on my TV is a godsend, movies and no commercials. They show a lot of junk, too, but mostly classics that have at least a plot, dialogue, and a few good scenes. (And these were all made LONG before I was born, so its not nostalgia here.)

15

I totally hear you, but why would the 9th edition of a very old textbook cost $180? Does the 9th edition really need to cost $180 to recoup an investment made 22 years ago?