Slashdot Mirror
RIAA About to Transform?
It has been reported for a while that the RIAA was suffering some cutbacks and dwindling support, but techdirt is reporting that the cuts may be even deeper than most originally suspected. Who knew suing potential customers would ruin your business? "I'm sure some will somehow 'blame piracy' for this turn of events, but it's hard to see how that's even remotely the issue. The real issue is that the RIAA has basically managed to run one of the dumbest, most self-defeating strategies over the last decade. Rather than helping major record labels adjust to the changing market, it continually, repeatedly and publicly destroyed its own reputation and the reputation of the labels — each time shrinking their potential market by blaming the very people they should have been working to turn into customers."
Let's force banks to lend to idiots who can't pay back loans.
Hay everyone! It's time for Yet Another Debunking! Frankly, at this point, I'm not going to bother digging up the sites because most likely if you're still repeating these tired old talking points you either don't care about the truth or you're active enough that you can google up the appropriate congressional testimony yourself.
Bush cancelled Clinton's CRA regulations sometime around '03 yet the lending institutions (by that time 50% of the loans were created by brokers and investment firms that were never regulated by the CRA) continued to make crazy loans well into '06 and beyond. Why is this, mister "wah the government made me stupid!!!1!"? (No, sorry, "teh j00z did it!" is incorrect) How about this: the institutions were getting rich. Of course, this was rich in "debt dollars" which the institutions were allowed to invent exchange rates for. So back then they were hojillionaires with mortgages worth zillions of dollars each.
Oh, and also no matter how hard you try to pretend, drug testing is still allowed, and there are plenty of elite schools that take you based on the fact that your daddy has a million dollars rather than based on your age/sex/race or whatever.
It may be helpful to give subscribers the ability to post a minute or so before normal users. But I am biased.
What about preventing anonymous posts for a minute or two?