We need a Godwin rule, but for "Blackberry". Whoever introduces Blackberry into a conversation about usability and cool automatically losses the argument.
I can keep the iPod itself stuffed in my glove box (negating the "cool" factor if nobody sees it)
I think that's pretty cool--as do many of my friends and family. Cool means different things to people who get cool and those who don't (hint: we iPod users don't care what you think about our $150 consumer electronic device, no matter how cool you think we are trying to be).
The pure size of Microsoft alone will make them a more litigious than Apple could ever be. Just because you hear about an Apple lawsuit doesn't mean they are more litigious, from a volume standpoint.
iPod batteries as profit??? What a stupid, stupid argument. We have five iPods in our house, and we've NEVER replaced a single battery. We have a 2nd generation iPod up to the current Nano. Even IF these batteries ever die, the new iPods are compelling enough over their 3-5 year old counterparts to just buy a new one. There are more battery replacement services out there than Zune owners, so even when your granny's iPod battery dies, she'll have no problem getting a battery swapped.
User freedom? Has it ever occurred to you that we aren't all a bunch of Linux free-tards, and don't really care? You listed good design and UI, which to many of us, are more important than value and freedom. It's my money--deal with it.
Your anecdotal evidence that Apple struggles with quality control is offset by nearly every marketing research agency. Apple has been tops in quality for nearly a decade now.
Honestly, this phenomenon is what drives Apple's (general) superiority over equivalent Microsoft offerings at every turn. Necessity for Apple drive innovation. Complacency for Microsoft kills it.
And when you say "limited resources" what you really mean are uptight, greedy program managers under pressure to hit an insane and unrealistic profit margin. This is why most software sucks, pure-and-simply. Sure there are never enough talented developers, and customer time-lines are always unrealistic, but let's face it, our greed to make huge profits is the ONE factor that limits our resources the most.
And to provide jobs, and to provide services and to provide goods, and to provide for the betterment of society, and yes, to line the pockets of old white guys.
No, a government job is not a "good" job, it is a drain on the tax base because it generates no wealth.
Somebody has been listening to Rush Limbaugh for too long. There are plenty of "good" government jobs. I used to have one, and I know several government scientists that provide insane value to aerospace and national defense programs--far better than the greedy contractor model, where the company that bids the best wins (but ends up charging the most, and providing the worst product...yes, I'm looking at you Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup, et. al.).
So how is keeping a society functioning smoothly NOT patriotic? Other than fending off foreign invaders, I can't think of a single act more patriotic than paying taxes.
WA State is already heavily taxed, and Seattle is ridiculously expensive. If Ballmer were intelligent, he'd threaten to move to Raleigh, or Austin, or Boise, or Salt Lake, or Phoenix, or Denver, or any number of affordable cities with a decent tech culture.
How many $1.80 taxes does it take to eat away your paycheck?
About 500 a week? Government should be more accountable...blah blah blah. If they take $1.80 from me and fund their online task force, then there's no problem. I don't even have a problem if some of that money leaks into other, loosely related law-enforcement programs.
Why make legislators have worse retirement plans than regular people? Why don't "regular" people just become legislators if they don't like their retirement plans?
Yeah, they actually brought out this gem (page 2 line 1):
WHEREAS, Adolf Hitler and others have exploited the racist views of Darwin and those he influenced, such as German zoologist Ernst Haekel, to justify the annihilation of millions of purportedly racially inferior individuals.
Wow, I've never heard of a State Godwin-ing a law!
Part 2: Perhaps that is true, but going back to Part 1, Starbucks charges sales tax for gift cards at their stores, then charges you again when you use it. Why would The Home Depot get a pass?
Perhaps the issue here is the difference between a gift card and a gift certificate, as pedantic as that may sound.
I download music from net radio streams, and quite a few tracks from Youtube too. Why? Because it shifts the blame away from me. When I rip a stream, it's undetectable. When I extract audio from a Youtube video (shitty, granted), it's undetectable.
...undetectable until you are served with a warrant and they confiscate your computer...
No strawman in sight. As a society, we have no right to say "programs that benefit very few people and have little benefit to society in general" have no place in times of tight budgets. What you are clearly advocating is cutting programs that you don't like because they don't benefit you (or your immediate society). The answer is indeed a combination of ABCD, but your initial post just comes off as uptight conservative spouting the usual "government is bad!" and "taxes are bad!", is the only point I was making. My father once told me to "vote my pocket book", and ever since that day, I've been fighting this ignorant stance at every chance I see. Your initial post struck me as the same thing.
...it should do so by focusing on either cutting or reducing the budgets of programs that benefit the least people...If a program only benefits a small portion of the population, but costs everyone, then it should be higher up on the list of endangered programs than a program that benefits a larger proportion of the population.
I couldn't agree less. Importance isn't measured by the number of people who benefit from a program. Cancer cure research, for example, is at the top of my list, even though I know nobody who has cancer, and, although tragic, it doesn't affect very many people (in the grand scheme). This is the root of the entire argument, and this is why the majority doesn't get to pick what is deemed important or not.
The last one I bought and paid sales tax on was a $100 Visa gift card purchased at The Home Depot. I see no reason why it would be taxed because it's a Visa card versus having purchased a $100 gift certificate from The Home Depot. Maybe they are taxing me 8% for the plastic card, valued at $100?
I just bought a Starbucks gift card yesterday. It was also taxed.
I cannot imagine paying sales tax on a gift card that is to be used at the same location from which I just bought the card and that I know what I buy with the card will be taxed again.
Then I guess you won't be buying any gift cards in Texas;-)
I don't care what the "majority of Americans" think about wool subsidies (or anything else for that matter), because we aren't a majority-rules country. The day we start running this country based on the majority is the day I move to Canada.
Shall we look at how mismanaged and full of fraud, waste, and abuse FEMA, CIA, FBI, IRS, ATF, or pretty much any other government agency is?
No, let's look at how out-of-control crime and violence would be in this country if we DIDN'T have those agencies. That's the problem with those who don't want to pay taxes--you can live on your compound, and hoard your food and ammo all you want, but I prefer civilization, which requires taxes and *gasp* government agencies to keep us safe.
You do pay sales taxes on the gift card (in Texas) and then the person who uses the card pays taxes again. I think it is a genius way to stimulate the economy...buy a bunch of $100 pre-paid Visa cards and pay double taxes!
If I won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, I'd have to pay taxes on that. (Assuming deductions/exemptions were unavailable/already used)
This is unfortunately true--and completely unfair. I bought a $100 gift certificate for a friend who helped me move. After taxes, it cost me $108. My friend then bought $100 worth of stuff, and guess what--he paid $108. Double-taxation.
When somebody posts [citation needed], did it ever occur to you that maybe they don't disagree with you, but are just saying you still need to cite that which could be deemed to be a dubious claim by the uninformed? Unless it is a widely accepted truth, you must cite (APA Writing Style, 5th ed., for example).
Slashdot Mirror
I would posit that drinking beer while driving is inherently safer than talking or texting on a phone.
We need a Godwin rule, but for "Blackberry". Whoever introduces Blackberry into a conversation about usability and cool automatically losses the argument.
I can keep the iPod itself stuffed in my glove box (negating the "cool" factor if nobody sees it)
I think that's pretty cool--as do many of my friends and family. Cool means different things to people who get cool and those who don't (hint: we iPod users don't care what you think about our $150 consumer electronic device, no matter how cool you think we are trying to be).
The pure size of Microsoft alone will make them a more litigious than Apple could ever be. Just because you hear about an Apple lawsuit doesn't mean they are more litigious, from a volume standpoint.
iPod batteries as profit??? What a stupid, stupid argument. We have five iPods in our house, and we've NEVER replaced a single battery. We have a 2nd generation iPod up to the current Nano. Even IF these batteries ever die, the new iPods are compelling enough over their 3-5 year old counterparts to just buy a new one. There are more battery replacement services out there than Zune owners, so even when your granny's iPod battery dies, she'll have no problem getting a battery swapped.
User freedom? Has it ever occurred to you that we aren't all a bunch of Linux free-tards, and don't really care? You listed good design and UI, which to many of us, are more important than value and freedom. It's my money--deal with it.
Your anecdotal evidence that Apple struggles with quality control is offset by nearly every marketing research agency. Apple has been tops in quality for nearly a decade now.
Honestly, this phenomenon is what drives Apple's (general) superiority over equivalent Microsoft offerings at every turn. Necessity for Apple drive innovation. Complacency for Microsoft kills it.
And when you say "limited resources" what you really mean are uptight, greedy program managers under pressure to hit an insane and unrealistic profit margin. This is why most software sucks, pure-and-simply. Sure there are never enough talented developers, and customer time-lines are always unrealistic, but let's face it, our greed to make huge profits is the ONE factor that limits our resources the most.
The purpose of business is to make money.
And to provide jobs, and to provide services and to provide goods, and to provide for the betterment of society, and yes, to line the pockets of old white guys.
No, a government job is not a "good" job, it is a drain on the tax base because it generates no wealth.
Somebody has been listening to Rush Limbaugh for too long. There are plenty of "good" government jobs. I used to have one, and I know several government scientists that provide insane value to aerospace and national defense programs--far better than the greedy contractor model, where the company that bids the best wins (but ends up charging the most, and providing the worst product...yes, I'm looking at you Boeing, Lockheed, Northrup, et. al.).
So how is keeping a society functioning smoothly NOT patriotic? Other than fending off foreign invaders, I can't think of a single act more patriotic than paying taxes.
WA State is already heavily taxed, and Seattle is ridiculously expensive. If Ballmer were intelligent, he'd threaten to move to Raleigh, or Austin, or Boise, or Salt Lake, or Phoenix, or Denver, or any number of affordable cities with a decent tech culture.
How many $1.80 taxes does it take to eat away your paycheck?
About 500 a week? Government should be more accountable...blah blah blah. If they take $1.80 from me and fund their online task force, then there's no problem. I don't even have a problem if some of that money leaks into other, loosely related law-enforcement programs.
Why make legislators have worse retirement plans than regular people? Why don't "regular" people just become legislators if they don't like their retirement plans?
Yeah, they actually brought out this gem (page 2 line 1):
WHEREAS, Adolf Hitler and others have exploited the racist views of Darwin and those he influenced, such as German zoologist Ernst Haekel, to justify the annihilation of millions of purportedly racially inferior individuals.
Wow, I've never heard of a State Godwin-ing a law!
Part 1: Yes. Purchased at Starbucks...
Part 2: Perhaps that is true, but going back to Part 1, Starbucks charges sales tax for gift cards at their stores, then charges you again when you use it. Why would The Home Depot get a pass?
Perhaps the issue here is the difference between a gift card and a gift certificate, as pedantic as that may sound.
I download music from net radio streams, and quite a few tracks from Youtube too. Why? Because it shifts the blame away from me. When I rip a stream, it's undetectable. When I extract audio from a Youtube video (shitty, granted), it's undetectable.
...undetectable until you are served with a warrant and they confiscate your computer...
No strawman in sight. As a society, we have no right to say "programs that benefit very few people and have little benefit to society in general" have no place in times of tight budgets. What you are clearly advocating is cutting programs that you don't like because they don't benefit you (or your immediate society). The answer is indeed a combination of ABCD, but your initial post just comes off as uptight conservative spouting the usual "government is bad!" and "taxes are bad!", is the only point I was making. My father once told me to "vote my pocket book", and ever since that day, I've been fighting this ignorant stance at every chance I see. Your initial post struck me as the same thing.
I couldn't agree less. Importance isn't measured by the number of people who benefit from a program. Cancer cure research, for example, is at the top of my list, even though I know nobody who has cancer, and, although tragic, it doesn't affect very many people (in the grand scheme). This is the root of the entire argument, and this is why the majority doesn't get to pick what is deemed important or not.
The last one I bought and paid sales tax on was a $100 Visa gift card purchased at The Home Depot. I see no reason why it would be taxed because it's a Visa card versus having purchased a $100 gift certificate from The Home Depot. Maybe they are taxing me 8% for the plastic card, valued at $100?
I just bought a Starbucks gift card yesterday. It was also taxed.
I cannot imagine paying sales tax on a gift card that is to be used at the same location from which I just bought the card and that I know what I buy with the card will be taxed again.
Then I guess you won't be buying any gift cards in Texas ;-)
I don't care what the "majority of Americans" think about wool subsidies (or anything else for that matter), because we aren't a majority-rules country. The day we start running this country based on the majority is the day I move to Canada.
Shall we look at how mismanaged and full of fraud, waste, and abuse FEMA, CIA, FBI, IRS, ATF, or pretty much any other government agency is?
No, let's look at how out-of-control crime and violence would be in this country if we DIDN'T have those agencies. That's the problem with those who don't want to pay taxes--you can live on your compound, and hoard your food and ammo all you want, but I prefer civilization, which requires taxes and *gasp* government agencies to keep us safe.
You do pay sales taxes on the gift card (in Texas) and then the person who uses the card pays taxes again. I think it is a genius way to stimulate the economy...buy a bunch of $100 pre-paid Visa cards and pay double taxes!
Where is "here"? Because in Texas, I spent $108 on a $100 gift card, then my friend was taxed $8 on that $100 when he spent it.
If I won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, I'd have to pay taxes on that. (Assuming deductions/exemptions were unavailable/already used)
This is unfortunately true--and completely unfair. I bought a $100 gift certificate for a friend who helped me move. After taxes, it cost me $108. My friend then bought $100 worth of stuff, and guess what--he paid $108. Double-taxation.
Dammit. Why wasn't this the first post? I could have saved 20 minutes of reading a bunch of stupid, self-serving posts by wannabe lawyers.
Well, you could always point to the iTunes free download of the week, for price comparison.
When somebody posts [citation needed], did it ever occur to you that maybe they don't disagree with you, but are just saying you still need to cite that which could be deemed to be a dubious claim by the uninformed? Unless it is a widely accepted truth, you must cite (APA Writing Style, 5th ed., for example).