That is only true if you have a multitude of independently-controlled routes data can take to travel from one point to another with no one central point that can fail, either accidentally or deliberately. That was the original idea of how the Internet would be constructed, but it isn't how it works today, at least not on the consumer side. So, unless you have multiple connections not controlled by a single entity coming into your house (and a government counts as a controlling entity, so getting connections from multiple providers under its jurisdiction doesn't count), and, unless the site you want to visit is networked the same way, your statement means nothing.
Actually, this old meme, IMHO, is dangerous. It implies that censorship can't happen, which is most certainly not true. This leads people to take threats of censorship less seriously because they mistakenly think that the censorship efforts will be futile, which is also not true. Sure, someone with enough knowledge and determination might get around it, but most folks won't. Ask the North Korean authorities about that. I'm sure they know that information still leaks in, but enough people are prevented from getting at it to make their censorship regime effective.
It isn't as simple as "oppressing the citizenry". That isn't how it works. The problem is that many people want to feel "safe", whatever that means. Look at all the gated communities out there and the hysteria that arises whenever the topic of crime, sex offenders, or terrorism comes up. Hell, my in-laws just moved into a house in a lower middle class, racially-mixed neighborhood in town, and a friend of mine went to great lengths to tell me that they shouldn't be buying that house because of all the crime there. If this person doesn't live in her little garden home, nestled in a neighborhood of garden homes outside of the city proper, she wouldn't feel safe. You get the idea.
OK, so you have all these people who are afraid that someone is going to come along and hurt them and/or take their stuff. So they demand action from their elected officials to protect them. So the politicians, being the pandering whores that they are, promise to keep them safe by any means necessary. And therein lies the problem. Since the danger is most often imaginary, it can't be reduced or eliminated by reasonable anti-crime measures. It's like trying to cure a hypochondriac of their disease. Since the disease isn't real, a cure won't work. And, just like a hypochondriac, the public demands more and more extreme measures be taken because, to them, the danger is real and the measures already in place obviously aren't working to reduce it. And the politicians go along because they know that, if they don't, someone else will come along promising to be tougher on crime, and the fearful public will elect them instead.
Oh, yes they do understand them. Social networks are a powerful communications tool, as powerful as the "official" media. Why do you think the first thing many Middle Eastern countries where protests erupted did was to block access to these services? The trouble with this is that, once you've set the precedent for blocking them in one situation, it becomes easier to do it in others. Riots? Sure. OK, what about during big protests that are turning ugly? Sounds good. Then what about big protests that might turn ugly? Probably would be prudent, you know, to keep the potential troublemakers from organizing. And if it keeps the protest small, so much the better.
Why wouldn't people go? People travel to Dubai all the time. And Jordan is much closer to Europe than the United States is, so Europeans would have an easier time going there than here, especially if the park were in, say, California. And you're also ignoring all the other things that can be staged in and around the park. They could put on the biggest Star Trek convention you've ever seen. And even if the thing only manages to break even, the boost to the local economy could be huge.
And who ever thought a theme park in the middle of a central Florida swamp would attract any visitors?
The answer is quite simple: It's because China is a huge market, and Western companies want to be there much more than they mind being attacked.
I can give you a perfect example of this. I have a buddy who is an engineer with a major auto manufacturer. A few years ago, he was telling me how the Chinese car companies are blatantly ripping off the designs of other companies. He even said that GM found that Cherry Motors was doing such a good job of it that their parts were identical to and interchangeable with Chevy parts. Still, the big car manufacturers were lining up to enter into partnerships with their Chinese counterparts. I asked him why they would do this, knowing full well that their designs would be ripped off. He said that, yes, they knew this would happen, but the Chinese market was so big that they felt they could still make money there, and besides, the Chinese companies were going to rip off their designs whether they were partners or not, so they might as well form partnerships and at least make some money.
Well, your first mistake is using a Galaxy S as comparison. The various models of that phone had all sorts of issues, the one that comes to mind right now is the faulty GPS on the Captivate. IMHO, HTC makes better-quality hardware.
I admit that Apple products are quite nice in terms of build quality for the most part, although putting the antenna on the outside was a boneheaded move. And I've even seen that become an issue on the Verizon model, although you have to put your hand on a slightly different part of the phone to cause it to short. Still, the arrogance of Steve Jobs' response to the issue is actually what kept me from buying an iPhone. I was very close, but the way he handled it really pushed me away.
And let me expand on that from a user perspective. I manage 17 machines in my department, and I just upgraded to FF4. Well, naturally, it broke several extensions, which have finally all been updated by the developers to work. Now, I'm getting those damn popup messages wanting me to upgrade to 5.0. But guess what? Doing so breaks all the extensions I'm using, and I can't keep the damn popup from appearing day after day after day.
I've used Firefox from back when it was in early beta, and I've stuck with it and recommended it to many, many people, but this is almost too much. So let me lay it out for the developers, and pay close attention as I yell this at the top of my lungs: ISSUING RAPID-FIRE UPDATES THAT BREAK FEATURES THAT PREVIOUSLY WORKED IS GOING TO PISS OFF HOME USERS, BUSINESS USERS, AND DEVELOPERS! I'VE GOT A GAZILLION THINGS ON MY PLATE AS IT IS, SO DON'T MAKE MORE WORK FOR ME BY BUGGING ME TO UPGRADE TO A NEW VERSION EVERY OTHER WEEK AND THEN MAKING ME HAVE TO WAIT FOR EXTENSIONS TO CATCH UP. SO GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES AND STICK TO A SENSIBLE RELEASE CYCLE!!!
And you can be damn sure that this will come up at one of our bi-weekly technology committee meetings, so if Mozilla wants to lose a few thousand desktops, keep this shit up.
Are you employed? If you are, then you aren't paying $150. That's the part that comes directly out of your paycheck. There's also an employer contribution that is almost certainly more than the amount you pay. Call HR, and they can tell you how much it is. The thing is, even though you don't think it's coming out of your pocket, it really is, since it's money your employer is having to pay to keep you as an employee, which means it's money you won't be seeing in your salary.
And, just in case you're wondering why adding dependents onto your plan often costs so much, it's because most companies will either pay a smaller contribution for those folks or won't pay any at all, which means that you, the employee, pay most or all of the actual cost of coverage.
The solution is to stop letting HR people with no technical knowledge hire technical people.
This is what results in the common practice of putting a know-nothing idiot with good social skills in charge of doing technical work they can't handle.
HR? They aren't the problem, at least not in my organization. Here, as happens in many places, the hiring is decentralized, with HR just processing the applications and other assorted paperwork. No, the real problem is people hiring based on who knows who. Now, granted, looking more closely at a candidate who is referred by someone else isn't necessarily a bad thing, since those references often prove useful when evaluating their personality and work ethic. No, what I'm talking about is someone getting hired because they're buddies with the departmental manager or, even worse, somehow related to him/her. Then there are the cases where someone is putting pressure on the manager to hire someone, even though everyone knows that the applicant doesn't know a damn thing. It happens more times than I can count, and the outcome is usually either bad or sometimes disastrous. At that point, the employee is whisked off to some other position that his connected friend or relative can find for him, or the argument will be made that he was doing a fine job but had too many responsibilities on him, at which point he'll be promoted into a managerial position, and one or two people--the people who should have been in his original position in the first place--will be placed under him. He'll be a shitty manager, his underlings will do all the work, and, if things work out, he'll get all the credit, and, if things don't, he'll just fire and replace his underlings until he finds some who can make him look good.
We don't, but any time some idiotic self-centered little brat gets called out on national TV for a practice that's the bane of moviegoers, that's a good thing.
And there will also be manufacturers who will take their sweet time in even developing an update for their devices for the carriers to never release. Yes, I'm talking about you, Samsung.
The trouble is, handsets are being released at such a frenzied pace that, with the availability of updateable firmware, there's this rush to get products out the door that aren't entirely done, with the assumption that they'll be fixed via a software update. However, it also means that that new devices are steadily moving down the pipeline, meaning there's no time to develop and release those patches, and, even if there was time, the manufacturers would rather you buy a new device, so there's pressure to leave problems out there unresolved, since fixing them doesn't generate any revenue, but selling new devices does.
You did more research, but this idiot got all the press. He thought he had something, so he ran to the media with it, and they ate it up. Of course, he looks really stupid now, but that's only because others were more thorough.
You aren't going to be able to make them admit to their plagiarism or post your comment on their site, so forget about that. However, you can make damn sure that, should anyone search for petite giraffes or longislandpress.com, they'll have a good chance of reading about this incident. So go out there and work to get this into Google's search results for one or both of those searches.
Agreed 100%. Marketing is the key. You can have the best product in the world, but it will fail if no one knows about it.
But, whatever they do, it needs to be user friendly. I remember talking with a friend of mine a few years ago about the truly awful documentation in some Linux programs. His response was that there is so much development going on that the programmers don't often stop and write clear manuals. Well, that's not just an annoyance; it's a problem, a damn big one, and I don't think it's gotten much better. I remember when the "new" OpenOffice.org site went online a few years ago, the thing was awful. Right there, right on the front page, were links toconferences, white papers, etc., but hardly anything about what the program was or how end users could benefit from it.
So, whatever they do with the site, they need to get some experienced marketing folks involved so it will actually broaden open source's appeal.
The fact that the girl has accused him of rape certainly makes people take this more seriously. Basically, he's been accused of a crime--a very serious one--and he has also offered money to have his accuser killed. But what really does him in is the follow-up post he posts after meeting with the police. Even if he'd have had the slimmest chance of arguing the first post was a joke, albeit a sick one, the second one makes it pretty clear that he's serious.
As for him needing to know some hitmen to make this post a real solicitation, that isn't true. There have been many cases where people get busted for trying to hire a hitman, only to end up being caught up in a police sting. In this particular case, the moron was dumb enough to do all the police's work for them. Even his defense attorney said that he'd pretty much convicted himself.
If I had to guess, I'd say that it's a way to keep the Tea Party from splitting the Republican vote. The guy probably figures that, as it stands, those who would want to vote for a far right candidate would end up costing a more mainstream Republican the election because they can't approve of both candidates. With a system like this, they could.
However, you can get other interesting outcomes. Suppose, for example, that you had an independent, centrist candidate that many people liked but that they were afraid to vote for because they aren't sure he can win. Currently, they'd likely hold their noses and vote for the major party that they object least to, figuring that, at least that way, the party they dislike most won't win. With a system like the one proposed, the independent candidate would stand a better chance because people could vote both for him and a major party candidate as a fallback position.
But, in the United States, we have the opposite problem. Here, you can choose between the Republicans and the Democrats, and that's pretty much it. Worse, the party primary system means that the candidates you ultimately choose from are the ones who have gotten the support of their party's most active members, which leads to candidates often holding extreme positions, especially those on the right. There are plenty of good candidates who might be more at home in other parties, but they must choose between the two major parties because, otherwise, they have little chance of getting elected. And, with the polarization we have right now, anything to increase the number of political voices out there is a good thing.
You know, I could see a setup like this being useful if I want to build a box that I'd like to be relatively tamper-proof. Well, except that it might instill a false sense of security. I mean, look at all the measures that console and phone makers have used to keep people from modding their devices, all in vain. Sooner or later--usually sooner--someone will find a way to crack whatever protection the manufacturers implement. If I wanted to know if my box had been opened, I think I'd rather rely on an old-fashioned seal that I can inspect. It's low-tech, but at least there isn't any software hack that will prevent it from tearing when the box is opened.
Let me make this short and sweet. George Lucas isn't a filmmaker. A real filmmaker has an appreciation for his creation and its significance within our culture. He treats it with respect. Lucas, OTOH, has taken every opportunity he can to take the original trilogy, rip them apart, stuff them with cheap special effects, repackage them, and sell them yet again. That behavior, as reprehensible as it is, can almost be forgiven if he had the decency to keep the original versions--the ones we all remember from our childhood--available. But NO, he refuses to do that. He is essentially spitting in the face of every Star Wars fan out there by denying them the opportunity to watch the unaltered, un-bastardized versions of the films they love and denying them the opportunity to show their children these cinematic gems. No, this man is not a true filmmaker with an appreciation of his creations and respect for the millions who enjoy those films; he's a shameless, money-grubbing hack who has made a mockery of his films and has essentially given their fans the finger.
I will not buy this man's dreck. I have downloaded rips of the old laserdiscs and burned those to disc. The quality is pretty awful, but at least they're the original films, and these are the ones I plan to show to my kids, and when they ask me why the quality is so bad, I'll tell them what George Lucas did and use it as an object lesson as to why unbridled greed and hubris are bad things.
Does anyone else remember with wonder those extended TV broadcasts where they spent all night on prime-time network TV to show off the latest incoming photos? And they even interviewed actual scientists about what the data meant.
It's amazing and truly sad how far we've fallen since then.
No, seriously, can anyone explain to me why some people insist on capitalizing every letter in their e-mails and/or comments? I've been wondering about this for years, and I've never been able to figure it out. I seriously doubt these folks write in all caps when they use a pen (or do they???), so why do they do it on a computer? What is their "logic" for this?
I don't think this will have much of an impact on Android. First, the folks who really want an iPhone will have already gotten one. Also, I don't think that people chose Android as a "poor man's iPhone". In fact, I think that many folks who get Android do it because they don't want the iPhone. And people are viewing this from a U.S. perspective, as if the iPhone and Android are only sold here. If you want to see how this may all play out, look overseas, where the iPhone is often sold by multiple carriers in a single country. In those places, Android is doing just fine.
But, on a side note, if Verizon does get the iPhone, I think a lot of people are going to be schooled on the incompatibility of different carriers' networks when they try to take their AT&T iPhones to be activated on Verizon and learn that they'll need to buy another handset. Mark my words, people are going to freak out, and this will definitely make it onto the tech section of CNN's Web site.
While I think there are more important things that Congress ought to be doing, the advertisers have only themselves to blame. They've known for decades that loud commercials piss people off, they've been told over and over that they should stop this practice, yet they've ignored all of this.
And some of the blame can also be laid at the feet of the local TV stations and cable systems, whose commercials can air at much higher volume than the network feed they're inserted into because someone is too lazy to adjust the fucking levels properly. Is it so damn hard to fix your equipment so that, when I have the volume set to enjoy "Mythbusters" at a moderate sound level, the ad for Billy Bob's Gently Used Washing Machine Emporium doesn't set off car alarms three blocks away?
And, while we're at it, can we do something about businesses that insist on using little kids in their ads, apparently in the belief that cute kids drive up sales? There's a local furniture store here that uses the owner's kids in every single ad. Those kids should sue the guy for child exploitation. And does anyone else find this practice as nausiating as I do? If you're going to show me an ad, just cut to the chase and tell me about how much I can buy a decent couch for and leave your kids at home where they belong.
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That is only true if you have a multitude of independently-controlled routes data can take to travel from one point to another with no one central point that can fail, either accidentally or deliberately. That was the original idea of how the Internet would be constructed, but it isn't how it works today, at least not on the consumer side. So, unless you have multiple connections not controlled by a single entity coming into your house (and a government counts as a controlling entity, so getting connections from multiple providers under its jurisdiction doesn't count), and, unless the site you want to visit is networked the same way, your statement means nothing.
Actually, this old meme, IMHO, is dangerous. It implies that censorship can't happen, which is most certainly not true. This leads people to take threats of censorship less seriously because they mistakenly think that the censorship efforts will be futile, which is also not true. Sure, someone with enough knowledge and determination might get around it, but most folks won't. Ask the North Korean authorities about that. I'm sure they know that information still leaks in, but enough people are prevented from getting at it to make their censorship regime effective.
It isn't as simple as "oppressing the citizenry". That isn't how it works. The problem is that many people want to feel "safe", whatever that means. Look at all the gated communities out there and the hysteria that arises whenever the topic of crime, sex offenders, or terrorism comes up. Hell, my in-laws just moved into a house in a lower middle class, racially-mixed neighborhood in town, and a friend of mine went to great lengths to tell me that they shouldn't be buying that house because of all the crime there. If this person doesn't live in her little garden home, nestled in a neighborhood of garden homes outside of the city proper, she wouldn't feel safe. You get the idea.
OK, so you have all these people who are afraid that someone is going to come along and hurt them and/or take their stuff. So they demand action from their elected officials to protect them. So the politicians, being the pandering whores that they are, promise to keep them safe by any means necessary. And therein lies the problem. Since the danger is most often imaginary, it can't be reduced or eliminated by reasonable anti-crime measures. It's like trying to cure a hypochondriac of their disease. Since the disease isn't real, a cure won't work. And, just like a hypochondriac, the public demands more and more extreme measures be taken because, to them, the danger is real and the measures already in place obviously aren't working to reduce it. And the politicians go along because they know that, if they don't, someone else will come along promising to be tougher on crime, and the fearful public will elect them instead.
Oh, yes they do understand them. Social networks are a powerful communications tool, as powerful as the "official" media. Why do you think the first thing many Middle Eastern countries where protests erupted did was to block access to these services? The trouble with this is that, once you've set the precedent for blocking them in one situation, it becomes easier to do it in others. Riots? Sure. OK, what about during big protests that are turning ugly? Sounds good. Then what about big protests that might turn ugly? Probably would be prudent, you know, to keep the potential troublemakers from organizing. And if it keeps the protest small, so much the better.
Why wouldn't people go? People travel to Dubai all the time. And Jordan is much closer to Europe than the United States is, so Europeans would have an easier time going there than here, especially if the park were in, say, California. And you're also ignoring all the other things that can be staged in and around the park. They could put on the biggest Star Trek convention you've ever seen. And even if the thing only manages to break even, the boost to the local economy could be huge.
And who ever thought a theme park in the middle of a central Florida swamp would attract any visitors?
The answer is quite simple: It's because China is a huge market, and Western companies want to be there much more than they mind being attacked.
I can give you a perfect example of this. I have a buddy who is an engineer with a major auto manufacturer. A few years ago, he was telling me how the Chinese car companies are blatantly ripping off the designs of other companies. He even said that GM found that Cherry Motors was doing such a good job of it that their parts were identical to and interchangeable with Chevy parts. Still, the big car manufacturers were lining up to enter into partnerships with their Chinese counterparts. I asked him why they would do this, knowing full well that their designs would be ripped off. He said that, yes, they knew this would happen, but the Chinese market was so big that they felt they could still make money there, and besides, the Chinese companies were going to rip off their designs whether they were partners or not, so they might as well form partnerships and at least make some money.
Well, your first mistake is using a Galaxy S as comparison. The various models of that phone had all sorts of issues, the one that comes to mind right now is the faulty GPS on the Captivate. IMHO, HTC makes better-quality hardware.
I admit that Apple products are quite nice in terms of build quality for the most part, although putting the antenna on the outside was a boneheaded move. And I've even seen that become an issue on the Verizon model, although you have to put your hand on a slightly different part of the phone to cause it to short. Still, the arrogance of Steve Jobs' response to the issue is actually what kept me from buying an iPhone. I was very close, but the way he handled it really pushed me away.
I wish I had mod points to mod you up!
And let me expand on that from a user perspective. I manage 17 machines in my department, and I just upgraded to FF4. Well, naturally, it broke several extensions, which have finally all been updated by the developers to work. Now, I'm getting those damn popup messages wanting me to upgrade to 5.0. But guess what? Doing so breaks all the extensions I'm using, and I can't keep the damn popup from appearing day after day after day.
I've used Firefox from back when it was in early beta, and I've stuck with it and recommended it to many, many people, but this is almost too much. So let me lay it out for the developers, and pay close attention as I yell this at the top of my lungs: ISSUING RAPID-FIRE UPDATES THAT BREAK FEATURES THAT PREVIOUSLY WORKED IS GOING TO PISS OFF HOME USERS, BUSINESS USERS, AND DEVELOPERS! I'VE GOT A GAZILLION THINGS ON MY PLATE AS IT IS, SO DON'T MAKE MORE WORK FOR ME BY BUGGING ME TO UPGRADE TO A NEW VERSION EVERY OTHER WEEK AND THEN MAKING ME HAVE TO WAIT FOR EXTENSIONS TO CATCH UP. SO GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES AND STICK TO A SENSIBLE RELEASE CYCLE!!!
And you can be damn sure that this will come up at one of our bi-weekly technology committee meetings, so if Mozilla wants to lose a few thousand desktops, keep this shit up.
Are you employed? If you are, then you aren't paying $150. That's the part that comes directly out of your paycheck. There's also an employer contribution that is almost certainly more than the amount you pay. Call HR, and they can tell you how much it is. The thing is, even though you don't think it's coming out of your pocket, it really is, since it's money your employer is having to pay to keep you as an employee, which means it's money you won't be seeing in your salary.
And, just in case you're wondering why adding dependents onto your plan often costs so much, it's because most companies will either pay a smaller contribution for those folks or won't pay any at all, which means that you, the employee, pay most or all of the actual cost of coverage.
The solution is to stop letting HR people with no technical knowledge hire technical people.
This is what results in the common practice of putting a know-nothing idiot with good social skills in charge of doing technical work they can't handle.
HR? They aren't the problem, at least not in my organization. Here, as happens in many places, the hiring is decentralized, with HR just processing the applications and other assorted paperwork. No, the real problem is people hiring based on who knows who. Now, granted, looking more closely at a candidate who is referred by someone else isn't necessarily a bad thing, since those references often prove useful when evaluating their personality and work ethic. No, what I'm talking about is someone getting hired because they're buddies with the departmental manager or, even worse, somehow related to him/her. Then there are the cases where someone is putting pressure on the manager to hire someone, even though everyone knows that the applicant doesn't know a damn thing. It happens more times than I can count, and the outcome is usually either bad or sometimes disastrous. At that point, the employee is whisked off to some other position that his connected friend or relative can find for him, or the argument will be made that he was doing a fine job but had too many responsibilities on him, at which point he'll be promoted into a managerial position, and one or two people--the people who should have been in his original position in the first place--will be placed under him. He'll be a shitty manager, his underlings will do all the work, and, if things work out, he'll get all the credit, and, if things don't, he'll just fire and replace his underlings until he finds some who can make him look good.
We don't, but any time some idiotic self-centered little brat gets called out on national TV for a practice that's the bane of moviegoers, that's a good thing.
Say what you will about Anderson Cooper, but he rips this drunk chick a new one in this video:
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2011/06/07/exp.ac.ridiculist.talk.text.movie.cnn.html
I don't live in Austin, but if I visit, I'll make a point to go to this theater.
Please mod parent up.
And there will also be manufacturers who will take their sweet time in even developing an update for their devices for the carriers to never release. Yes, I'm talking about you, Samsung.
The trouble is, handsets are being released at such a frenzied pace that, with the availability of updateable firmware, there's this rush to get products out the door that aren't entirely done, with the assumption that they'll be fixed via a software update. However, it also means that that new devices are steadily moving down the pipeline, meaning there's no time to develop and release those patches, and, even if there was time, the manufacturers would rather you buy a new device, so there's pressure to leave problems out there unresolved, since fixing them doesn't generate any revenue, but selling new devices does.
You did more research, but this idiot got all the press. He thought he had something, so he ran to the media with it, and they ate it up. Of course, he looks really stupid now, but that's only because others were more thorough.
You aren't going to be able to make them admit to their plagiarism or post your comment on their site, so forget about that. However, you can make damn sure that, should anyone search for petite giraffes or longislandpress.com, they'll have a good chance of reading about this incident. So go out there and work to get this into Google's search results for one or both of those searches.
Agreed 100%. Marketing is the key. You can have the best product in the world, but it will fail if no one knows about it.
But, whatever they do, it needs to be user friendly. I remember talking with a friend of mine a few years ago about the truly awful documentation in some Linux programs. His response was that there is so much development going on that the programmers don't often stop and write clear manuals. Well, that's not just an annoyance; it's a problem, a damn big one, and I don't think it's gotten much better. I remember when the "new" OpenOffice.org site went online a few years ago, the thing was awful. Right there, right on the front page, were links toconferences, white papers, etc., but hardly anything about what the program was or how end users could benefit from it.
So, whatever they do with the site, they need to get some experienced marketing folks involved so it will actually broaden open source's appeal.
The fact that the girl has accused him of rape certainly makes people take this more seriously. Basically, he's been accused of a crime--a very serious one--and he has also offered money to have his accuser killed. But what really does him in is the follow-up post he posts after meeting with the police. Even if he'd have had the slimmest chance of arguing the first post was a joke, albeit a sick one, the second one makes it pretty clear that he's serious.
As for him needing to know some hitmen to make this post a real solicitation, that isn't true. There have been many cases where people get busted for trying to hire a hitman, only to end up being caught up in a police sting. In this particular case, the moron was dumb enough to do all the police's work for them. Even his defense attorney said that he'd pretty much convicted himself.
If I had to guess, I'd say that it's a way to keep the Tea Party from splitting the Republican vote. The guy probably figures that, as it stands, those who would want to vote for a far right candidate would end up costing a more mainstream Republican the election because they can't approve of both candidates. With a system like this, they could.
However, you can get other interesting outcomes. Suppose, for example, that you had an independent, centrist candidate that many people liked but that they were afraid to vote for because they aren't sure he can win. Currently, they'd likely hold their noses and vote for the major party that they object least to, figuring that, at least that way, the party they dislike most won't win. With a system like the one proposed, the independent candidate would stand a better chance because people could vote both for him and a major party candidate as a fallback position.
But, in the United States, we have the opposite problem. Here, you can choose between the Republicans and the Democrats, and that's pretty much it. Worse, the party primary system means that the candidates you ultimately choose from are the ones who have gotten the support of their party's most active members, which leads to candidates often holding extreme positions, especially those on the right. There are plenty of good candidates who might be more at home in other parties, but they must choose between the two major parties because, otherwise, they have little chance of getting elected. And, with the polarization we have right now, anything to increase the number of political voices out there is a good thing.
That sounds reasonable.
You know, I could see a setup like this being useful if I want to build a box that I'd like to be relatively tamper-proof. Well, except that it might instill a false sense of security. I mean, look at all the measures that console and phone makers have used to keep people from modding their devices, all in vain. Sooner or later--usually sooner--someone will find a way to crack whatever protection the manufacturers implement. If I wanted to know if my box had been opened, I think I'd rather rely on an old-fashioned seal that I can inspect. It's low-tech, but at least there isn't any software hack that will prevent it from tearing when the box is opened.
Yeah, but that creates a huge problem if the device is no longer responsive. Makes servicing any kind of major failure pretty much impossible.
Let me make this short and sweet. George Lucas isn't a filmmaker. A real filmmaker has an appreciation for his creation and its significance within our culture. He treats it with respect. Lucas, OTOH, has taken every opportunity he can to take the original trilogy, rip them apart, stuff them with cheap special effects, repackage them, and sell them yet again. That behavior, as reprehensible as it is, can almost be forgiven if he had the decency to keep the original versions--the ones we all remember from our childhood--available. But NO, he refuses to do that. He is essentially spitting in the face of every Star Wars fan out there by denying them the opportunity to watch the unaltered, un-bastardized versions of the films they love and denying them the opportunity to show their children these cinematic gems. No, this man is not a true filmmaker with an appreciation of his creations and respect for the millions who enjoy those films; he's a shameless, money-grubbing hack who has made a mockery of his films and has essentially given their fans the finger.
I will not buy this man's dreck. I have downloaded rips of the old laserdiscs and burned those to disc. The quality is pretty awful, but at least they're the original films, and these are the ones I plan to show to my kids, and when they ask me why the quality is so bad, I'll tell them what George Lucas did and use it as an object lesson as to why unbridled greed and hubris are bad things.
Does anyone else remember with wonder those extended TV broadcasts where they spent all night on prime-time network TV to show off the latest incoming photos? And they even interviewed actual scientists about what the data meant.
It's amazing and truly sad how far we've fallen since then.
No, seriously, can anyone explain to me why some people insist on capitalizing every letter in their e-mails and/or comments? I've been wondering about this for years, and I've never been able to figure it out. I seriously doubt these folks write in all caps when they use a pen (or do they???), so why do they do it on a computer? What is their "logic" for this?
I don't think this will have much of an impact on Android. First, the folks who really want an iPhone will have already gotten one. Also, I don't think that people chose Android as a "poor man's iPhone". In fact, I think that many folks who get Android do it because they don't want the iPhone. And people are viewing this from a U.S. perspective, as if the iPhone and Android are only sold here. If you want to see how this may all play out, look overseas, where the iPhone is often sold by multiple carriers in a single country. In those places, Android is doing just fine.
But, on a side note, if Verizon does get the iPhone, I think a lot of people are going to be schooled on the incompatibility of different carriers' networks when they try to take their AT&T iPhones to be activated on Verizon and learn that they'll need to buy another handset. Mark my words, people are going to freak out, and this will definitely make it onto the tech section of CNN's Web site.
While I think there are more important things that Congress ought to be doing, the advertisers have only themselves to blame. They've known for decades that loud commercials piss people off, they've been told over and over that they should stop this practice, yet they've ignored all of this.
And some of the blame can also be laid at the feet of the local TV stations and cable systems, whose commercials can air at much higher volume than the network feed they're inserted into because someone is too lazy to adjust the fucking levels properly. Is it so damn hard to fix your equipment so that, when I have the volume set to enjoy "Mythbusters" at a moderate sound level, the ad for Billy Bob's Gently Used Washing Machine Emporium doesn't set off car alarms three blocks away?
And, while we're at it, can we do something about businesses that insist on using little kids in their ads, apparently in the belief that cute kids drive up sales? There's a local furniture store here that uses the owner's kids in every single ad. Those kids should sue the guy for child exploitation. And does anyone else find this practice as nausiating as I do? If you're going to show me an ad, just cut to the chase and tell me about how much I can buy a decent couch for and leave your kids at home where they belong.