You hit the nail on the head. The military gets a cash infusion, multinational oil companies get protected, and the price of oil is stabilized. And the US taxpayer foots the bill.
We invaded Iraq for stability in Earth's largest oil-producing region. I can understand and respect the point of view that we didn't invade Iraq for "CHEAPER oil," but it cannot be fairly disputed that we invaded Iraq for oil. Either that, or we engaged in war for altruistic purposes (which I am not prepared to believe).
The media is hyper-jacking Egypt at us 24/7. It is giving us a lot of sound and fury, but not much of real substance. The journos crave Egypt-related stories to feed the firestorm. Kenneth Cole is tuned into the vibe and feeds the hungry journos. And the rest is history.
Imagine that you sell oil to people. You sell at a price that people are glad to pay and you have fantastic customer loyalty. Next, imagine that RIAA Oil Company decides to move into your market. They GIVE oil away for a full year. They can afford this because they are RICH. You can't compete with free. You try, but after a year, you are forced to go out of business. After you go out of business, RIAA Oil Company jacks up their prices. In a few years they recoup their losses. Prices are now much higher and consumer satisfaction sucks.
You are unemployed. Nobody cares about you because you believed in the imaginary thing called a free market. But people are worried for the consumers who ultimately are the ones victimized by the RIAA Oil Company's predatory policies.
The free market does not exist. What we CALL a free market is really a bunch of people who fight like mad to try to dominate the marketplace by forming cartels and monopolies. If we don't regulate them, they will regulate us--far more than any government can.
The California law wasn't enacted because liberal freakazoids had a theory that they needed to put into law (like the Tea Partiers and their theories). This law was the product of historical experience. Read about Standard Oil and what they did!!!!! Read about the Railroad companies at the turn of the 20th Century. Those businesses were absolutely ruthless and screwd consumers got these kinds of laws passed.
Every claim but one got hammered with attorney fees.
The one that got dismissed, but not hit with attorney fees was a claim based on a California statute that bars a vendor from selling or giving a product away for less than the vendor paid for it. Again, the plaintiff lost that one, but the defendant didn't get SLAPP sanctions for that.
SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. Anti-SLAPP laws are enacted to keep people from using crap lawsuits (or fear of them from) stifling free speech.
Reflect back on McDonalds' legal attack on the people who criticized its food. Anti-SLAPP laws are enacted to punish that kind of crap.
Apple is now running a marketplace. It is exercising an enormous amount of control over what is sold in that marketplace. It has a financial interest in every item sold in that marketplace.
It is a lot like a consignment store.
If a consignment store sold stolen property, it would belegally responsible for its acts. I'm NOT saying they would be liable, but rather that they could be held liable and that the "I was only a consignment store" defense would fail.
Apple's need to control is okay within its platform, but when that control reaches out and hurts third parties . ..they risk liability.
Your reasoning is blatantly flawed. You implicitly assume that logical and reliable rules cannot be created that will catch a subset of cheating behavior regardless of the "normalness" of the player. That assumption is ridiculous.
We don't know what subset of cheating behavior MS thinks they caught, so we can't evaluate the validity of the catch.
Besides, MS gets the privilege of defining cheating because they write the contract.
The bottom line is that we have no way of knowing whether the 11 year old autistic kid breached his contract with MS.
You are thinking like all of the anachronistic fighter pilots of the world want you to think.
The question isn't whether the foreign plane can splash a F-22 or F-35, the question is whether it can splash a legion of drones armed with the latest antiaircraft missiles and detection technology.
Not every good movie has to be a movie with "Hollywood" production values.
A do-it-yourself troupe with a solid contractual setup can make a decent looking movie. If the script, acting, directing, editing, and sound are good, people will tolerate so-so cinematography and imperfect sound.
Some genres, like epics, require big budgets. Other genres, like film noir, can be shot on a very small budget.
I've seen video productions on the internet (like "antimattershow" on youtube) I'd rather watch than a LOT of mainstream TV productions.
The big problem is distribution and promotion for the independent filmmaker. Once they make the movie, they've got to sell it--and that's the problem.
And why didn't we invade the North? Maybe because we didn't want another Korea . ..? There were limits imposed upon the USA that Johnson and Nixon had to recognize.
We simply couldn't take Hanoi with ground troops. We never tried that because we NEVER could have done that. That was never realistic. Nobody, except the crazies, thought that was a viable option at the time.
Your suggestion that Russia and China were communist allies is also invalid. There was no communist monolith. Examine the Russo-Chinese border "incidents" of the 1960s.
We got enmeshed in Vietnam and the Russians and the Chinese worked to make it worse and worse for us. It got to the point where we were fighting in Vietnam simply because we were fighting in Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh may have "forced a revolution," but he was no "outsider." He was home grown all the way and he was no puppet to the Chinese. Examine the China-Vietnamese border incidents.
You are just arguing that we had to destroy Vietnam in order to save it from evil Communism.
The war was "lost" because the ARVN wouldn't fight. We tried and tried, but we couldn't get the ARVN to fight. If we can't get the ARVN to fight and we can't rip out the heart of the North, then there was NO WAY WE COULD WIN. That's why we were in Vietnam for ten years.
We never should have "escalated" in the first place. Eisenhower never would have buried us there. A few advisors, and that should have been it. We never should have let ourselves get entangled propping up a South Vietnamese regime that never could sustain itself.
Slashdot Mirror
You hit the nail on the head. The military gets a cash infusion, multinational oil companies get protected, and the price of oil is stabilized. And the US taxpayer foots the bill.
We invaded Iraq for stability in Earth's largest oil-producing region. I can understand and respect the point of view that we didn't invade Iraq for "CHEAPER oil," but it cannot be fairly disputed that we invaded Iraq for oil. Either that, or we engaged in war for altruistic purposes (which I am not prepared to believe).
Good post. Not only is capitalism dependent upon the free sale of products, it is also dependent upon the free exchange of the means of production.
Keeping things free, though, means a never-ending regulatory struggle.
Build your own computer. Free yourself from bloatware.
Otherwise, GET OFF MY LAWN!
Yeah! Led Zepplin did it too! What's wrong with them?
The media is hyper-jacking Egypt at us 24/7. It is giving us a lot of sound and fury, but not much of real substance. The journos crave Egypt-related stories to feed the firestorm. Kenneth Cole is tuned into the vibe and feeds the hungry journos. And the rest is history.
It's not a bad law.
Imagine that you sell oil to people. You sell at a price that people are glad to pay and you have fantastic customer loyalty. Next, imagine that RIAA Oil Company decides to move into your market. They GIVE oil away for a full year. They can afford this because they are RICH. You can't compete with free. You try, but after a year, you are forced to go out of business. After you go out of business, RIAA Oil Company jacks up their prices. In a few years they recoup their losses. Prices are now much higher and consumer satisfaction sucks.
You are unemployed. Nobody cares about you because you believed in the imaginary thing called a free market. But people are worried for the consumers who ultimately are the ones victimized by the RIAA Oil Company's predatory policies.
The free market does not exist. What we CALL a free market is really a bunch of people who fight like mad to try to dominate the marketplace by forming cartels and monopolies. If we don't regulate them, they will regulate us--far more than any government can.
The California law wasn't enacted because liberal freakazoids had a theory that they needed to put into law (like the Tea Partiers and their theories). This law was the product of historical experience. Read about Standard Oil and what they did!!!!! Read about the Railroad companies at the turn of the 20th Century. Those businesses were absolutely ruthless and screwd consumers got these kinds of laws passed.
Every claim but one got hammered with attorney fees.
The one that got dismissed, but not hit with attorney fees was a claim based on a California statute that bars a vendor from selling or giving a product away for less than the vendor paid for it. Again, the plaintiff lost that one, but the defendant didn't get SLAPP sanctions for that.
SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. Anti-SLAPP laws are enacted to keep people from using crap lawsuits (or fear of them from) stifling free speech.
Reflect back on McDonalds' legal attack on the people who criticized its food. Anti-SLAPP laws are enacted to punish that kind of crap.
Apple is now running a marketplace. It is exercising an enormous amount of control over what is sold in that marketplace. It has a financial interest in every item sold in that marketplace.
It is a lot like a consignment store.
If a consignment store sold stolen property, it would belegally responsible for its acts. I'm NOT saying they would be liable, but rather that they could be held liable and that the "I was only a consignment store" defense would fail.
Apple's need to control is okay within its platform, but when that control reaches out and hurts third parties . . .they risk liability.
They have the authority to interdict material illegally brought into the US.
That is so funny! Thanks for reminding me that many people actually (really, truly) are so naive and complacent.
Piracy . . . Hack . . . PS3 . . . Jailbreak . . . etc.
Every website should have these words. That's free speech, isn't it?
The money spent on ebooks should be donated to libraries to buy those exact same ebooks. The books could then be shared.
It is a tragedy that this is not happening.
Jesus saves, but Esposito scores on the rebound!
I wonder how many patents Mr. Dewitt's activity undermines!
Your reasoning is blatantly flawed. You implicitly assume that logical and reliable rules cannot be created that will catch a subset of cheating behavior regardless of the "normalness" of the player. That assumption is ridiculous.
We don't know what subset of cheating behavior MS thinks they caught, so we can't evaluate the validity of the catch.
Besides, MS gets the privilege of defining cheating because they write the contract.
The bottom line is that we have no way of knowing whether the 11 year old autistic kid breached his contract with MS.
The BBC erased their archive of great black and white 60's show videos "to save money" by reusing old tapes.
Those boys are wizards, that's for sure!
You are thinking like all of the anachronistic fighter pilots of the world want you to think.
The question isn't whether the foreign plane can splash a F-22 or F-35, the question is whether it can splash a legion of drones armed with the latest antiaircraft missiles and detection technology.
It is the salvation of mankind! It is the end of poverty.
Uh, haven't I been here before?
You got it. The glass may be half empty or the glass may be half full, but if you don't have a glass . . . you can't drink.
Not every good movie has to be a movie with "Hollywood" production values.
A do-it-yourself troupe with a solid contractual setup can make a decent looking movie. If the script, acting, directing, editing, and sound are good, people will tolerate so-so cinematography and imperfect sound.
Some genres, like epics, require big budgets. Other genres, like film noir, can be shot on a very small budget.
I've seen video productions on the internet (like "antimattershow" on youtube) I'd rather watch than a LOT of mainstream TV productions.
The big problem is distribution and promotion for the independent filmmaker. Once they make the movie, they've got to sell it--and that's the problem.
The costs of production can be managed.
If you can convince 12 people off the street (a jury) that copying took place, then you can win googlebucks in a lawsuit.
Juries are strange and unpredictable.
Engineer binary thinking gets its ass kicked in court all the time by word-painting artists (lawyers and their experts).
It's a high stakes crapshoot.
Thanks for the helpful post.
Google copycatting will cost them Googlebucks.
Maybe there is an issue out there, but TFA is slanted like Goebbels propaganda. Anybody have a link to an evenhanded report on the matter?
And why didn't we invade the North? Maybe because we didn't want another Korea . . .? There were limits imposed upon the USA that Johnson and Nixon had to recognize.
We simply couldn't take Hanoi with ground troops. We never tried that because we NEVER could have done that. That was never realistic. Nobody, except the crazies, thought that was a viable option at the time.
Your suggestion that Russia and China were communist allies is also invalid. There was no communist monolith. Examine the Russo-Chinese border "incidents" of the 1960s.
We got enmeshed in Vietnam and the Russians and the Chinese worked to make it worse and worse for us. It got to the point where we were fighting in Vietnam simply because we were fighting in Vietnam.
Ho Chi Minh may have "forced a revolution," but he was no "outsider." He was home grown all the way and he was no puppet to the Chinese. Examine the China-Vietnamese border incidents.
You are just arguing that we had to destroy Vietnam in order to save it from evil Communism.
The war was "lost" because the ARVN wouldn't fight. We tried and tried, but we couldn't get the ARVN to fight. If we can't get the ARVN to fight and we can't rip out the heart of the North, then there was NO WAY WE COULD WIN. That's why we were in Vietnam for ten years.
We never should have "escalated" in the first place. Eisenhower never would have buried us there. A few advisors, and that should have been it. We never should have let ourselves get entangled propping up a South Vietnamese regime that never could sustain itself.
It was a stupid war.