I love my city, but I swear... sometimes the odd mix and mashup of conspiracy theorists, psychics, faeries, burners, whacked hippy environmentalists really gets to me.
They're all good for amusement until the end up in local government, and we end up with policies like "we like Austin RIGHT NOW HOW IT IS. Adding, expanding, or improving roads/infrastructure will mean... more people will move here. So let's not do it." or "let's really invest in non-local sources of solar and wind power... and by invest, I mean rely heavily upon. Yeah, so electricity rates soar. Invest in additional infrastructure to handle demand? NO WAY! Brown-outs are good for the planet!" or my personal favorite, locating the homeless shelter and associated soup kitchen (that collectively take up most of a city block) right in the business/entertainment/prime real estate district.... and then wonder why people are getting turned off by aggressive panhandling and why there are criticisms about wasting a prime piece of real estate. After all, if we located it a few blocks (or miles) away, all the homeless people would no longer be near public transit and their downtown ecosystem.
I love Austin, but sometimes all I can do is giggle.
I cut my teeth on a Commodore PET that was donated to my school as part of a grant program. Most kids (and teachers) ran away, and I couldn't keep my hands off it. I actually had my mother drop me off at school early in order to get a couple of hours on it each morning. At night, I would hand-write out more program code.
By the time the VIC-20 and C64 rolled around I was hooked. We were poor and couldn't afford them, but a teacher at school brought his C64 in. From there, I saved (and saved... and saved) and eventually got into the Atari line for the better (to me) graphics and gaming potential. I lusted after the Apple ][ but certainly couldn't afford that.
Ahhhh, memories of direct memory manipulation, no look-asides, no threads. Back in my day....
Historically take a sample set of people considered to be at-risk for HIV, give them safer-sex counseling, and then track them against a control for infection rates.
This study was different (hate to say RTFA, but it does describe it):
Development of MVA-B is based on the insertion of four HIV genes in a previously used vaccine (MVA) for smallpox. When injected with the vaccine, a healthy immune system can react against the MVA, whilst the HIV genes are incapable of self-replicating. This guarantees a safe clinical trial for HIV free volunteers. Furthermore by trialing the vaccine on healthy patients, the immune system can learn how to detect and combat the HIV virus components. "It is like showing a picture of the HIV so that it is able to recognize it if it sees it again in the future", says Esteban.
So, in the article he does suggest some process is probably good. That's good. But then he suggests that "better" coders might need less. In practice, that is probably true, but his implication goes farther than "let's hold the hand of the junior guy a bit more."
So... how to architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers, graphic designers, technical writers, project managers, and, I dunno... just about every white (and blue, for that matter) collar employee stay "passionate" in the face of some level of process and bureaucracy? How would you like to go on a bridge (or a plane, as others have mentioned) built by folks who are so smart they don't need any process to validate their genius?
This sounds more like "I'm so good I don't need to do these dumb things that slow me down" and less "perhaps we should keep the process just at the point it is beneficial".
I just spent two years with a team of 6 refactoring a critical legacy application built and maintained by people who were "smarter" and "better" than code reviews, TDD, planning, documenting, or hell, breaking that 8K header file into header/class and maybe even into a couple of objects. And truth be told: they were ALL really, really smart.... and really, really willing to cut corners just to "get something done", resulting in an unmaintainable mess that cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.8MM to clean up.
To all you guys who are WAAAAAY too smart to have processes: that's awesome. Please just go work somewhere else, preferably someplace I'll never work.
You utterly, totally hit it out of the park. It's good to plan for contingencies, but you can be paralyzed by what-ifs. Rarely does one course of action ever define itself as singularly best with no risks or downsides.
Funny - I will have to add the Martian lizard baby bit to my list of what-ifs that I use to talk to customers who start worrying about edge conditions. I work in traffic, and when they start going down the lines of "...and then, if a semi jack-knifes while a motorcycle with a side car is going through the zone, and swerves into the should to avoid it, and..." I usually pull out the "...and a flying saucer swoops down low enough to go through the laser scanners but doesn't touch the sensors embedded in the road..."
You are so correct. Where are my mod points?
Their articles are actually really, really good. They're varied, too - not always the same thing. Most actually had some depth to them (unlike most mens' magazines, like Details or Maxim, that give you a paragraph and two pages of pictures).
Obviously, Playboy had dual-appeal - which is part of what made it sophisticated. The whole joke - "I read it for the articles" - came about BECAUSE of the quality of articles. That joke didn't start around Penthouse or Hustler for a reason.
Extremely true.
As a once almost-rich-and-famous musician, I can attest that's all *really* true... It's also why I'm writing software and posting to/.
It was fun, but boy you really get screwed even if you do well.
Agree. The whole "OMG you're telling CRIMINALS you're not home" is BS, and also sounds remarkably like the same argument used when answering machines came out... and when people put announcements of weddings and funerals in newspapers... and...
Oh wait, someone wrote a better article about it than I can:
http://waxy.org/2010/02/regarding_foursquare_and_please_rob_me/
Actually, maybe we're already well into the world of the next sonic revolutionary: Andy Hildebrand, inventor of Auto-Tune. Although I'm not sure I'm ready for a world where the "Auto-Tune effect" is as popular as the twang of a Les Paul guitar.
Too late, it's all over everything. I spent a fair amount of time in recording studios, and used Auto-Tune from it's first release onward. It has a very distinctive sound, even when used subtly. Trust me when I say the overwhelming majority of recordings made nowadays use it to one extent or another - enough that you can hear it. And I'm not talking about just the obvious cases.
At least in modern music, it is more pervasive than the "rock guitar" sound.
It is easy to be angry at near-nameless, near-faceless entities who understand the mumbo-jumbo of computers and electronics... who do "things" that make "other things" not work, or who seem to take 1 second to actually fix a problem that has been going on for a week. Whether all that is *true* or not is immaterial. Perception is reality.
When your co-workers see you as a part of the company, the team, and a friendly person, their attitude will change. It's just harder to assume the worst about someone you're friendly with and know, unless they prove useless. Since you're self-described as doing a good job, this shouldn't be the case.
Much to my co-workers' dismay, I have a Model M. To be specific, I have *3* of them (one at work, one at home, one spare). My home one is a rare black one.
I love the clicky, tactile feel. I, too, learned to type on an electric-but-old (IBM Selectric) typewriter, which may have something to do with it.
The downside is that my co-workers can definitely tell when I'm *not* working...
If you choose not to subscribe to a particular work ethic (or any 'ethic', for that matter), good for you... but be prepared for the consequences.
I didn't like my job, and realized it would go nowhere, so I went back to school and got a new degree in a new field. I then shucked my high-paying job for an entry-level software engineering position... and worked my way back up.
I took the consequences. I worked the long hours with school. It was my choice.
If you choose not to do that, that's fine. If you want to spend your time rearing children (or whatever) instead of learning new skills, more power to you. Just be prepared to accept consequences.
For the overwhelming majority of people, life is about a series of compromises. What is so wrong with that?
I have to agree... no reason to take money out, and the post is essentially correct: the only reasonable way to commit to this is to allow people to do what they want without limit.
Maybe it's the Libertarian in me, but people should be able to pursue what they consider happiness. If it's doping your brain out because (you believe) you will be a better athlete, so be it. How different - really - is it than having the money and support for good tools, good meals, good medical care, and good training? How many countries don't compete in the Olympics (or whatever...) because they simply don't have the infrastructure in place?
How would that be different than countries affording more (or less, or properly supervised) medical doping? How is one advantage more or less fair than another (and I might add, it would be interesting to see how much effect top-notch training would be against top-notch drugs).
The idea that it's a fair playing field if and only if there is no doping is naive at best.
Exactly... I was trying to address the idea that video rental houses paid more for video tapes than end-users at retail. While isolated exceptions probably exist, that simply isn't true. The "I looked in a catalog and saw tapes for $100, and I see tapes on the shelf for $20" wasn't the full picture.
When video tapes first came out (pre-rental days), they were upwards of $80 each (in late 70s / early 80s dollars at that). Interestingly, Star Wars was first released on video very late (I want to say 1988 or 1989); it was expensive because it was special. By that time, retail video tapes had dropped tremendously in price. I remember this, because my family had a "secret stash" of bootlegs for special customers; Star Wars and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (both being older, popular, and unavailable on video) were extremely popular.
Also of note (in the "this doesn't matter and isn't relative" department, to be sure) is that the downward pressure on retail video movie prices had some interesting components. In addition to production being cheaper and there simply being lots of movies for the consumer to choose from, the "Blockbuster" model introduced the "previously viewed" or used tape. Rental houses (and this was pretty much started by Blockbuster) realized that movies rented more frequently at first. If they had more copies, they would do more business. When rentals on a particular movie slowed down, they would start selling the used copies. They had already made profit (generally) on the rental frequency; the sales were just gravy and helped the secondary problem of "what do I do with all these tapes".
Final pedantic point: in the mid- or late nineties, when the video rental market was at its peak, the movie houses were supremely irritated at the "previously viewed" market. They saw the recurring rental and then sale as infringing on potential profits (but legal because of first-sale). So, they actually tried a business approach (rather than a sue-you-to-oblivion approach). They entered into "revenue share" agreements with Blockbuster and Hollywood, where they got a cut of rental revenue in exchange for more movies. This caused a lot of Mom-and-Pop establishments grief, and lawsuits ensued (so, maybe it wasn't really better...)
Not being anywhere near the industry anymore (me or my family), I'm not sure why DVDs seemed to eliminate the high-priced-rental-to-low-priced-sell-thru model. It might be that they're so much cheaper to produce initially, and that in order to get acceptance of the format they priced them well to being with... and also realized, perhaps, that selling a ton at a still-inflated $30 before moving it to $12 made as much sense as the rental model.
With all due respect, I will have to agree with Cinnamon-Roll guy (my family, too, was involved with independant video rental business in the late 80s through the 00s).
Where I believe you are somewhat incorrect is that, in the catalog you saw, you saw prices higher on items not released for "general sell-thru". Recall back in pre-DVD days, many videos were available for rental only first (for a few months). This was because of the artificially high markup (around $100 a tape, circa 1998). Consumers simply wouldn't pay it. When the need for rental stores to buy 10 or 15 copies died down, it went to sell-thru. This was how the movie companies countered the rental market at the time. Interestingly, this was primarily brought about by the stores selling their used copied once the need to have a lot of copies of something died down. To the rental houses, the studios argued they had to make their money somehow, and it wasn't fair to sell a movie out for initial rental for just a few bucks and have it sold for nearly that much used.
Exceptions were made (think Disney or something that was thought to be a major-selling video, like "Titanic") - and for those that the consumer paid $19.95 for, the video stores paid about $15.
Agree: it did make for some fun explanations why that new release that baked in the hot (Michigan, in my case) sun in their car was $125 to replace, when they were used to spending $20 for a tape. It's all about the timing.
The germane point here is that they weren't paying a special licensing fee or anything to the studios (though, in later years, Blockbuster and Hollywood entered into "revenue sharing" agreements that allowed them to get a jillion copies of a movie) - they were simply paying an inflated price set by what was essentially a monopoly for a particular title: the studio.
I have to throw my towel in with you... and to nay-sayers, he (assuming 'he' because of 'guy' in username) is talking about Federal Income Tax, not all tax burden.
Plain and simple: the lower-income earners pay no Federal Income Tax. Any Federal Income Tax cuts, by definition, must come out of higher-income earners. Talk that tax cuts are for "the rich" don't tell the whole story; tax cuts are for the folks who pay the most taxes.
Now, to discuss other taxes... yes, (most) everyone pays them (e.g. gas taxes, sales taxes). As a total (but at the individual level), the middle-, upper-middle, and higher-class folks will pay more. They have more, they spend more, they're taxed more. However, as a proportion, these taxes burden the poorer person more - a greater proportion of their income is dedicated to meeting basic needs; a greater portion of their basic-needs income is spent on these taxes.
Shameless plug: want fair? Try the FairTax (http://www.fairtax.org). Make sure you understand before you criticize - every criticism I've heard is actually addressed by the actual bill in a 'favorable' manner and is really unwarranted.
Oh, wait... what does this have to do with collecting DNA? Darn! Forgot I was on/.
While arguing economic dogma is often akin to arguing religion, philosophy, or the rules of attraction (with a healthy splash of 20/20 hindsight thrown in), it is generally recognized as erroneous to attribute FDR's "New Deal" as solving the depression (the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal actually has a balanced and referenced discussion of the New Deal).
Regardless, I think it is unsupportable to argue that the repeal of parts of the legislation is the direct cause of any current poor circumstances (do you have anything to back that up?), and elements of it reek too closely to socialism and communism for my tastes. If by "stable" you mean "socialist", then you are correct. However, if this is indeed what you mean, your arguments against the current state of things (and my arguments that you are grossly incorrect) go far deeper than this.
I'll agree with most, for sure, especially around 'habits by genre'.
Some quick background - I was involved with a fringe music scene for about 15 years, from the late 80s until the early 00s. It will take much more than changes in the business side of music to stop the artistic side. How we get to the art will change - it has changed. The good news: it's easier and cheaper for artists to produce super-high-quality music. Distribution is near-free. Motivated, talented folks can keep more $$ in their pocket if they choose. Contrast this to just a decade ago - why, in the mid-nineties, burnable CDs cost dollars and not cents to utilize. The bad news: it's easier and cheaper for artists to produce. The noise-to-art ratio is high (by anyone's definition of 'art'), and the business side is scrambling to keep a hold of the cash cow, dangling the "promote or die, and we can afford it" carrot in front of the artist.
Oh, and by consumption I didn't necessarily mean purchase. I just meant that if people produce music and don't release it or play it for anyone, it is of no consequence. As soon as it is released or made available, the creative and business forces behind it will be subject to market forces and critique. It's a given - and it doesn't have to be popular to be consumed (or have merit), nor does popularity == more consumption == better art. But if you put something out there, people will choose their mode of consumption - single song, ignored, popular, mega-sales, (il)legal downloading... whatever.
If you're interested in stuff seeing the light of day, check out CD-Baby http://www.cdbaby.com/ . Type in your favorite band or genre, and get served up a whole host of music. I guarantee you will like at least 10 or 20% of it, and that you will have heard of little or none of it. As a distribution network, they are fair and honest, they pay the artists what they say they will (and on time).
From the artists' points of view (please note the distinction between artists' and artistic), I would say that you are correct (about people's shallow music taste).
However, if one assumes art is not made in a vacuum, and that some form of consumption (even in the form of a negative reaction) constitutes non-vacuum, then I'd say the ability to cherry-pick either represents a status quo (where previous people would buy whole albums just to get a track or two, disregarding the rest) or does indeed represent a true evolution (where the consumption of art reflects its true value), since people listen/react/consume on a more granular level.
Yes, I've bought albums and loved B-sides. The converse is also true. Importantly, it does give a message to the record labels. My interpretation is that it is a statement about what kind of things (songs) people want to buy, and how much they wish to pay. Yes, it's different than years past. Yes, it's got good points and bad.
However, I do not interpret it as a direct correlation that people are more shallow. They're simply more in control and the market is a different beast. Just about the only thing today's music-buying demographic has in common with the identical demographic of about 10 years ago is that, somewhere in the pipe, there is music.
Hmmm.... From the stories *you* link to (which is the only stuff I've checked out); scroll down to the actual news reports:
"By then, another friend had driven Lukus' car to the Glenns' house. His parents heard windows smashing. Their son punched out a back window of one of their cars, then grabbed a shovel and knocked out a window on another."
"Another officer fired several bean-bag rounds, which didn't knock Lukus Glenn down.
"He just kind of looked at them," Morales said.
Glenn grabbed both sides of his baggy pants and turned toward the house, gasping, his mother said.
Then four to five gunshots followed. "
"They also disclosed that Tigard police Officer Andrew Pastore, 29, came to the scene because he was equipped with a less-than-lethal beanbag shotgun. Several beanbag rounds hit Glenn but appeared to have little or no effect, officials said.
Pastore also was placed on routine leave after the shooting.
But other details surrounding the shooting were not available, including whether Gerba or Mateski carried Tasers or whether results from the autopsy on Glenn were available.
Washington County Sheriff Rob Gordon on Monday recounted the facts of the shooting as he understood them: The Garden Home youth would not drop the knife, he ran toward a house, and officers shot him to protect the people inside."
"Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston, was among the thousands of people who listened to the 9-1-1 call made by Lukus Glenn's mother to emergency dispatchers. It was clear, he said, that Glenn had committed 'suicide by cop.'
These quotes (again, provided by what you linked to) are from the Oregonian, a legitimate news source. Not that "online and elsewhere" that you allude to cannot be legitimate (or that newspapers cannot be wrong or biased), but they do seem like balanced reports, calling into question if the officers did the right thing, that the family is upset (as they should be), et. al. The Taser issue is only germane if they actually had them with them.
As one of the articles points out, it's easy to armchair quarterback something that happened in the past. I'm certainly *not* saying the cops did the right thing; in retrospect, they probably didn't. But not only doesn't that mean that they could have reasonably known that at the time (they were in the heat of the moment; only knew what they saw + what the dispatcher told them; the guy was armed, ignored requests to stop AND wasn't affected by the bean-bag shots [an account the family doesn't dispute - and they were there]) would result in the "better" decision not to shoot him. More importantly, your post implies that the cops are regularly and as a matter of course harassing and executing innocent civilians for little or no reason. The evidence you supplied as an example does *not* support that.
So, no, I will not back down on my position. My position is that your perspective is slanted and biased, yet presented as fact. My position is that the proof you offer up actually supports a more moderate view. My position is that the moderate view presented by the articles that you link to are probably more in line with the truth than the position you forward.
I can appreciate your position, especially if you are indeed regularly harassed for absolutely no reason. But I suspect that your assessment of that is like your assessment of the news story. I mean no umbrage by that; I just don't happen to agree.
I have several friends who live in Portland (though I do not, so this is also second-hand) but none have any stories like you relate about your or your friend's personal experience. I do not believe you express the totality of the police experience there (or anywhere); one wonders what you may (or may not) be doing to attract such conspicuous yet unwarranted attention.
Additionally, your "A couple summers ago..." suicidal story's link actually tells a different picture. It goes on to talk about a guy who had a severe drinking problem, threatened to kill not just himself but his family, and was armed. Yes, there's a lot of uncertainty in the articles as to whether or not it was handled properly, but there are compelling arguments on both side.
You make it sound as if there was an angst-filled teen who said to his mom, "I'm going to off myself", she called the police, and they summarily came out and did it for him.
One wonders if the objectivity of your "I am a clean looking law abiding white male" and related experiences is slanted as well?
Slashdot Mirror
I love my city, but I swear... sometimes the odd mix and mashup of conspiracy theorists, psychics, faeries, burners, whacked hippy environmentalists really gets to me.
They're all good for amusement until the end up in local government, and we end up with policies like "we like Austin RIGHT NOW HOW IT IS. Adding, expanding, or improving roads/infrastructure will mean... more people will move here. So let's not do it." or "let's really invest in non-local sources of solar and wind power... and by invest, I mean rely heavily upon. Yeah, so electricity rates soar. Invest in additional infrastructure to handle demand? NO WAY! Brown-outs are good for the planet!" or my personal favorite, locating the homeless shelter and associated soup kitchen (that collectively take up most of a city block) right in the business/entertainment/prime real estate district.... and then wonder why people are getting turned off by aggressive panhandling and why there are criticisms about wasting a prime piece of real estate. After all, if we located it a few blocks (or miles) away, all the homeless people would no longer be near public transit and their downtown ecosystem.
I love Austin, but sometimes all I can do is giggle.
I'm with you as well.
I cut my teeth on a Commodore PET that was donated to my school as part of a grant program. Most kids (and teachers) ran away, and I couldn't keep my hands off it. I actually had my mother drop me off at school early in order to get a couple of hours on it each morning. At night, I would hand-write out more program code.
By the time the VIC-20 and C64 rolled around I was hooked. We were poor and couldn't afford them, but a teacher at school brought his C64 in. From there, I saved (and saved... and saved) and eventually got into the Atari line for the better (to me) graphics and gaming potential. I lusted after the Apple ][ but certainly couldn't afford that.
Ahhhh, memories of direct memory manipulation, no look-asides, no threads. Back in my day....
Development of MVA-B is based on the insertion of four HIV genes in a previously used vaccine (MVA) for smallpox. When injected with the vaccine, a healthy immune system can react against the MVA, whilst the HIV genes are incapable of self-replicating. This guarantees a safe clinical trial for HIV free volunteers. Furthermore by trialing the vaccine on healthy patients, the immune system can learn how to detect and combat the HIV virus components. "It is like showing a picture of the HIV so that it is able to recognize it if it sees it again in the future", says Esteban.
So, in the article he does suggest some process is probably good. That's good. But then he suggests that "better" coders might need less. In practice, that is probably true, but his implication goes farther than "let's hold the hand of the junior guy a bit more."
So... how to architects, civil engineers, electrical engineers, graphic designers, technical writers, project managers, and, I dunno... just about every white (and blue, for that matter) collar employee stay "passionate" in the face of some level of process and bureaucracy? How would you like to go on a bridge (or a plane, as others have mentioned) built by folks who are so smart they don't need any process to validate their genius?
This sounds more like "I'm so good I don't need to do these dumb things that slow me down" and less "perhaps we should keep the process just at the point it is beneficial".
I just spent two years with a team of 6 refactoring a critical legacy application built and maintained by people who were "smarter" and "better" than code reviews, TDD, planning, documenting, or hell, breaking that 8K header file into header/class and maybe even into a couple of objects. And truth be told: they were ALL really, really smart.... and really, really willing to cut corners just to "get something done", resulting in an unmaintainable mess that cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.8MM to clean up.
To all you guys who are WAAAAAY too smart to have processes: that's awesome. Please just go work somewhere else, preferably someplace I'll never work.
You utterly, totally hit it out of the park. It's good to plan for contingencies, but you can be paralyzed by what-ifs. Rarely does one course of action ever define itself as singularly best with no risks or downsides.
..." I usually pull out the "...and a flying saucer swoops down low enough to go through the laser scanners but doesn't touch the sensors embedded in the road..."
Funny - I will have to add the Martian lizard baby bit to my list of what-ifs that I use to talk to customers who start worrying about edge conditions. I work in traffic, and when they start going down the lines of "...and then, if a semi jack-knifes while a motorcycle with a side car is going through the zone, and swerves into the should to avoid it, and
You are so correct. Where are my mod points? Their articles are actually really, really good. They're varied, too - not always the same thing. Most actually had some depth to them (unlike most mens' magazines, like Details or Maxim, that give you a paragraph and two pages of pictures). Obviously, Playboy had dual-appeal - which is part of what made it sophisticated. The whole joke - "I read it for the articles" - came about BECAUSE of the quality of articles. That joke didn't start around Penthouse or Hustler for a reason.
Extremely true. As a once almost-rich-and-famous musician, I can attest that's all *really* true... It's also why I'm writing software and posting to /.
It was fun, but boy you really get screwed even if you do well.
Agree. The whole "OMG you're telling CRIMINALS you're not home" is BS, and also sounds remarkably like the same argument used when answering machines came out... and when people put announcements of weddings and funerals in newspapers... and ...
Oh wait, someone wrote a better article about it than I can:
http://waxy.org/2010/02/regarding_foursquare_and_please_rob_me/
Actually, maybe we're already well into the world of the next sonic revolutionary: Andy Hildebrand, inventor of Auto-Tune. Although I'm not sure I'm ready for a world where the "Auto-Tune effect" is as popular as the twang of a Les Paul guitar.
Too late, it's all over everything. I spent a fair amount of time in recording studios, and used Auto-Tune from it's first release onward. It has a very distinctive sound, even when used subtly. Trust me when I say the overwhelming majority of recordings made nowadays use it to one extent or another - enough that you can hear it. And I'm not talking about just the obvious cases. At least in modern music, it is more pervasive than the "rock guitar" sound.
All really good advice.
It is easy to be angry at near-nameless, near-faceless entities who understand the mumbo-jumbo of computers and electronics... who do "things" that make "other things" not work, or who seem to take 1 second to actually fix a problem that has been going on for a week. Whether all that is *true* or not is immaterial. Perception is reality.
When your co-workers see you as a part of the company, the team, and a friendly person, their attitude will change. It's just harder to assume the worst about someone you're friendly with and know, unless they prove useless. Since you're self-described as doing a good job, this shouldn't be the case.
Much to my co-workers' dismay, I have a Model M. To be specific, I have *3* of them (one at work, one at home, one spare). My home one is a rare black one.
I love the clicky, tactile feel. I, too, learned to type on an electric-but-old (IBM Selectric) typewriter, which may have something to do with it.
The downside is that my co-workers can definitely tell when I'm *not* working...
Hear hear! Right on. You just forgot to mention that the sky is falling, and the world will end Tuesday.
Well put!
If you choose not to subscribe to a particular work ethic (or any 'ethic', for that matter), good for you... but be prepared for the consequences.
I didn't like my job, and realized it would go nowhere, so I went back to school and got a new degree in a new field. I then shucked my high-paying job for an entry-level software engineering position... and worked my way back up.
I took the consequences. I worked the long hours with school. It was my choice.
If you choose not to do that, that's fine. If you want to spend your time rearing children (or whatever) instead of learning new skills, more power to you. Just be prepared to accept consequences.
For the overwhelming majority of people, life is about a series of compromises. What is so wrong with that?
I have to agree... no reason to take money out, and the post is essentially correct: the only reasonable way to commit to this is to allow people to do what they want without limit.
Maybe it's the Libertarian in me, but people should be able to pursue what they consider happiness. If it's doping your brain out because (you believe) you will be a better athlete, so be it. How different - really - is it than having the money and support for good tools, good meals, good medical care, and good training? How many countries don't compete in the Olympics (or whatever...) because they simply don't have the infrastructure in place?
How would that be different than countries affording more (or less, or properly supervised) medical doping? How is one advantage more or less fair than another (and I might add, it would be interesting to see how much effect top-notch training would be against top-notch drugs).
The idea that it's a fair playing field if and only if there is no doping is naive at best.
Teeny weeny peeny perhaps?
Exactly... I was trying to address the idea that video rental houses paid more for video tapes than end-users at retail. While isolated exceptions probably exist, that simply isn't true. The "I looked in a catalog and saw tapes for $100, and I see tapes on the shelf for $20" wasn't the full picture.
When video tapes first came out (pre-rental days), they were upwards of $80 each (in late 70s / early 80s dollars at that). Interestingly, Star Wars was first released on video very late (I want to say 1988 or 1989); it was expensive because it was special. By that time, retail video tapes had dropped tremendously in price. I remember this, because my family had a "secret stash" of bootlegs for special customers; Star Wars and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (both being older, popular, and unavailable on video) were extremely popular.
Also of note (in the "this doesn't matter and isn't relative" department, to be sure) is that the downward pressure on retail video movie prices had some interesting components. In addition to production being cheaper and there simply being lots of movies for the consumer to choose from, the "Blockbuster" model introduced the "previously viewed" or used tape. Rental houses (and this was pretty much started by Blockbuster) realized that movies rented more frequently at first. If they had more copies, they would do more business. When rentals on a particular movie slowed down, they would start selling the used copies. They had already made profit (generally) on the rental frequency; the sales were just gravy and helped the secondary problem of "what do I do with all these tapes".
Final pedantic point: in the mid- or late nineties, when the video rental market was at its peak, the movie houses were supremely irritated at the "previously viewed" market. They saw the recurring rental and then sale as infringing on potential profits (but legal because of first-sale). So, they actually tried a business approach (rather than a sue-you-to-oblivion approach). They entered into "revenue share" agreements with Blockbuster and Hollywood, where they got a cut of rental revenue in exchange for more movies. This caused a lot of Mom-and-Pop establishments grief, and lawsuits ensued (so, maybe it wasn't really better...)
Not being anywhere near the industry anymore (me or my family), I'm not sure why DVDs seemed to eliminate the high-priced-rental-to-low-priced-sell-thru model. It might be that they're so much cheaper to produce initially, and that in order to get acceptance of the format they priced them well to being with... and also realized, perhaps, that selling a ton at a still-inflated $30 before moving it to $12 made as much sense as the rental model.
OK, I'm done...
With all due respect, I will have to agree with Cinnamon-Roll guy (my family, too, was involved with independant video rental business in the late 80s through the 00s).
Where I believe you are somewhat incorrect is that, in the catalog you saw, you saw prices higher on items not released for "general sell-thru". Recall back in pre-DVD days, many videos were available for rental only first (for a few months). This was because of the artificially high markup (around $100 a tape, circa 1998). Consumers simply wouldn't pay it. When the need for rental stores to buy 10 or 15 copies died down, it went to sell-thru. This was how the movie companies countered the rental market at the time. Interestingly, this was primarily brought about by the stores selling their used copied once the need to have a lot of copies of something died down. To the rental houses, the studios argued they had to make their money somehow, and it wasn't fair to sell a movie out for initial rental for just a few bucks and have it sold for nearly that much used.
Exceptions were made (think Disney or something that was thought to be a major-selling video, like "Titanic") - and for those that the consumer paid $19.95 for, the video stores paid about $15.
Agree: it did make for some fun explanations why that new release that baked in the hot (Michigan, in my case) sun in their car was $125 to replace, when they were used to spending $20 for a tape. It's all about the timing.
The germane point here is that they weren't paying a special licensing fee or anything to the studios (though, in later years, Blockbuster and Hollywood entered into "revenue sharing" agreements that allowed them to get a jillion copies of a movie) - they were simply paying an inflated price set by what was essentially a monopoly for a particular title: the studio.
I have to throw my towel in with you... and to nay-sayers, he (assuming 'he' because of 'guy' in username) is talking about Federal Income Tax, not all tax burden.
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Plain and simple: the lower-income earners pay no Federal Income Tax. Any Federal Income Tax cuts, by definition, must come out of higher-income earners. Talk that tax cuts are for "the rich" don't tell the whole story; tax cuts are for the folks who pay the most taxes.
Now, to discuss other taxes... yes, (most) everyone pays them (e.g. gas taxes, sales taxes). As a total (but at the individual level), the middle-, upper-middle, and higher-class folks will pay more. They have more, they spend more, they're taxed more. However, as a proportion, these taxes burden the poorer person more - a greater proportion of their income is dedicated to meeting basic needs; a greater portion of their basic-needs income is spent on these taxes.
Shameless plug: want fair? Try the FairTax (http://www.fairtax.org). Make sure you understand before you criticize - every criticism I've heard is actually addressed by the actual bill in a 'favorable' manner and is really unwarranted.
Oh, wait... what does this have to do with collecting DNA? Darn! Forgot I was on
While arguing economic dogma is often akin to arguing religion, philosophy, or the rules of attraction (with a healthy splash of 20/20 hindsight thrown in), it is generally recognized as erroneous to attribute FDR's "New Deal" as solving the depression (the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_deal actually has a balanced and referenced discussion of the New Deal).
Regardless, I think it is unsupportable to argue that the repeal of parts of the legislation is the direct cause of any current poor circumstances (do you have anything to back that up?), and elements of it reek too closely to socialism and communism for my tastes. If by "stable" you mean "socialist", then you are correct. However, if this is indeed what you mean, your arguments against the current state of things (and my arguments that you are grossly incorrect) go far deeper than this.
I'll agree with most, for sure, especially around 'habits by genre'.
Some quick background - I was involved with a fringe music scene for about 15 years, from the late 80s until the early 00s. It will take much more than changes in the business side of music to stop the artistic side. How we get to the art will change - it has changed. The good news: it's easier and cheaper for artists to produce super-high-quality music. Distribution is near-free. Motivated, talented folks can keep more $$ in their pocket if they choose. Contrast this to just a decade ago - why, in the mid-nineties, burnable CDs cost dollars and not cents to utilize. The bad news: it's easier and cheaper for artists to produce. The noise-to-art ratio is high (by anyone's definition of 'art'), and the business side is scrambling to keep a hold of the cash cow, dangling the "promote or die, and we can afford it" carrot in front of the artist.
Oh, and by consumption I didn't necessarily mean purchase. I just meant that if people produce music and don't release it or play it for anyone, it is of no consequence. As soon as it is released or made available, the creative and business forces behind it will be subject to market forces and critique. It's a given - and it doesn't have to be popular to be consumed (or have merit), nor does popularity == more consumption == better art. But if you put something out there, people will choose their mode of consumption - single song, ignored, popular, mega-sales, (il)legal downloading... whatever.
If you're interested in stuff seeing the light of day, check out CD-Baby http://www.cdbaby.com/ . Type in your favorite band or genre, and get served up a whole host of music. I guarantee you will like at least 10 or 20% of it, and that you will have heard of little or none of it. As a distribution network, they are fair and honest, they pay the artists what they say they will (and on time).
There. Now please mod me down off-topic.
From the artists' points of view (please note the distinction between artists' and artistic), I would say that you are correct (about people's shallow music taste).
However, if one assumes art is not made in a vacuum, and that some form of consumption (even in the form of a negative reaction) constitutes non-vacuum, then I'd say the ability to cherry-pick either represents a status quo (where previous people would buy whole albums just to get a track or two, disregarding the rest) or does indeed represent a true evolution (where the consumption of art reflects its true value), since people listen/react/consume on a more granular level.
Yes, I've bought albums and loved B-sides. The converse is also true. Importantly, it does give a message to the record labels. My interpretation is that it is a statement about what kind of things (songs) people want to buy, and how much they wish to pay. Yes, it's different than years past. Yes, it's got good points and bad.
However, I do not interpret it as a direct correlation that people are more shallow. They're simply more in control and the market is a different beast. Just about the only thing today's music-buying demographic has in common with the identical demographic of about 10 years ago is that, somewhere in the pipe, there is music.
Hmmm.... From the stories *you* link to (which is the only stuff I've checked out); scroll down to the actual news reports:
"By then, another friend had driven Lukus' car to the Glenns' house. His parents heard windows smashing. Their son punched out a back window of one of their cars, then grabbed a shovel and knocked out a window on another."
"Another officer fired several bean-bag rounds, which didn't knock Lukus Glenn down. "He just kind of looked at them," Morales said. Glenn grabbed both sides of his baggy pants and turned toward the house, gasping, his mother said. Then four to five gunshots followed. "
"They also disclosed that Tigard police Officer Andrew Pastore, 29, came to the scene because he was equipped with a less-than-lethal beanbag shotgun. Several beanbag rounds hit Glenn but appeared to have little or no effect, officials said. Pastore also was placed on routine leave after the shooting. But other details surrounding the shooting were not available, including whether Gerba or Mateski carried Tasers or whether results from the autopsy on Glenn were available. Washington County Sheriff Rob Gordon on Monday recounted the facts of the shooting as he understood them: The Garden Home youth would not drop the knife, he ran toward a house, and officers shot him to protect the people inside."
"Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston, was among the thousands of people who listened to the 9-1-1 call made by Lukus Glenn's mother to emergency dispatchers. It was clear, he said, that Glenn had committed 'suicide by cop.'
These quotes (again, provided by what you linked to) are from the Oregonian, a legitimate news source. Not that "online and elsewhere" that you allude to cannot be legitimate (or that newspapers cannot be wrong or biased), but they do seem like balanced reports, calling into question if the officers did the right thing, that the family is upset (as they should be), et. al. The Taser issue is only germane if they actually had them with them.
As one of the articles points out, it's easy to armchair quarterback something that happened in the past. I'm certainly *not* saying the cops did the right thing; in retrospect, they probably didn't. But not only doesn't that mean that they could have reasonably known that at the time (they were in the heat of the moment; only knew what they saw + what the dispatcher told them; the guy was armed, ignored requests to stop AND wasn't affected by the bean-bag shots [an account the family doesn't dispute - and they were there]) would result in the "better" decision not to shoot him. More importantly, your post implies that the cops are regularly and as a matter of course harassing and executing innocent civilians for little or no reason. The evidence you supplied as an example does *not* support that.
So, no, I will not back down on my position. My position is that your perspective is slanted and biased, yet presented as fact. My position is that the proof you offer up actually supports a more moderate view. My position is that the moderate view presented by the articles that you link to are probably more in line with the truth than the position you forward.
I can appreciate your position, especially if you are indeed regularly harassed for absolutely no reason. But I suspect that your assessment of that is like your assessment of the news story. I mean no umbrage by that; I just don't happen to agree.
I have several friends who live in Portland (though I do not, so this is also second-hand) but none have any stories like you relate about your or your friend's personal experience. I do not believe you express the totality of the police experience there (or anywhere); one wonders what you may (or may not) be doing to attract such conspicuous yet unwarranted attention.
Additionally, your "A couple summers ago..." suicidal story's link actually tells a different picture. It goes on to talk about a guy who had a severe drinking problem, threatened to kill not just himself but his family, and was armed. Yes, there's a lot of uncertainty in the articles as to whether or not it was handled properly, but there are compelling arguments on both side.
You make it sound as if there was an angst-filled teen who said to his mom, "I'm going to off myself", she called the police, and they summarily came out and did it for him.
One wonders if the objectivity of your "I am a clean looking law abiding white male" and related experiences is slanted as well?
Where are my ++mod points when I need them? Well put, well put.