If the theft occurs when you aren't there, the shotgun is useless. This isn't related to the ability to defend yourself. This is about being able to monitor when you aren't there. A shotgun will not help with that. At all.
-Not that I'm against shotguns per se. I just don't see how one would help here.
I would have to suggest some combination of:
Patronage, which currently provides us with museums, and libraries, (granted that the 'patrons' in this case are the taxpayers);
Collectors, who tend to pay for physical objects anyway, even if the book is already available at the library for 0$, but owning it has considerable attraction anyway to many, and the same can go for recordings, just to a lesser extent;
Performance, which doesn't apply to everybody, but the cinema experience will I hope always be worth a little something, especially if it's anything like the 'premium' cinema I often go to for dates (real food, real booze, comfy seats, 21+ showings, and plush leather recliners), obviously musicians were making money on performances long before there were recordings, and professors have, classically, been required to teach for a living, the book deals are more to get people into the university;
Finally, Service, which is sort of the performance model for software and like products, by which I mean anything from making software available, as with Google apps, to providing support for software, as with RedHat, to maintaining and fact checking information, which is what Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, and a host of other organizations do.
Intellectual pursuits may become slightly less profitable in the future, somewhat more inline with skilled manual work, but most of the people who are in these fields are in them because they love them, and it would be no bad thing if average incomes for skilled labor were a little less widely scattered.
Ultimately, it seems to me, there are only three reliable ways to make money: Selling something, whether it be physical goods or services/performances, Working for someone else, basically just selling labor or knowledge, and Leasing something, whether it be renting a house, investing in a company, providing credit cards, or leasing bandwidth.
Most companies are leasing, but many companies, and even some industries are far from clear on whether they're Selling service or Leasing stuff, and they need to get they're acts together, figure out which it is, and who is paying them.
If you can't figure out which one you're doing, you might be exploiting someone, and if that's the case, they're likely to be unhappy about it, and sooner or later, they're going to do an end run around you.
How do people out there on Slashdot feel about the decline of intellectual property rights and does anyone have any good solutions to the problems that this would hypothetically... plague those who depend on intellectual property for their survival? I would have to suggest some combination of:
Patronage, which currently provides us with museums, and libraries, (granted that the 'patrons' in this case are the taxpayers);
Collectors, who tend to pay for physical objects anyway, even if the book is already available at the library for 0$, but owning it has considerable attraction anyway to many, and the same can go for recordings, just to a lesser extent;
Performance, which doesn't apply to everybody, but the cinema experience will I hope always be worth a little something, especially if it's anything like the 'premium' cinema I often go to for dates (real food, real booze, comfy seats, 21+ showings, and plush leather recliners), obviously musicians were making money on performances long before there were recordings, and professors have, classically, been required to teach for a living, the book deals are more to get people into the university;
Finally, Service, which is sort of the performance model for software and like products, by which I mean anything from making software available, as with Google apps, to providing support for software, as with RedHat, to maintaining and fact checking information, which is what Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, and a host of other organizations do.
Intellectual pursuits may become slightly less profitable in the future, somewhat more inline with skilled manual work, but most of the people who are in these fields are in them because they love them, and it would be no bad thing if average incomes for skilled labor were a little less widely scattered.
Ultimately, it seems to me, there are only three reliable ways to make money:
Selling something, whether it be physical goods or services/performances,
Working for someone else, basically just selling labor or knowledge,
and Leasing something, whether it be renting a house, investing in a company, providing credit cards, or leasing bandwidth.
Most companies are leasing, but many companies, and even some industries are far from clear on whether they're Selling service or Leasing stuff, and they need to get they're acts together, figure out which it is, and who is paying them. If you can't figure out which one you're doing, you might be exploiting someone, and if that's the case, they're likely to be unhappy about it, and sooner or later, they're going to do an end run around you.
It's funny, I usually stop for yellows, but every so often (particularly in areas where there's a light on a 35+ mph road) the light changes to yellow when I am within 3 car lengths of the intersection. I then have two choices: hit the brakes so hard I skid, reflexively, risk being rear ended, and leaving burnt rubber into the bargain, or assess the situation. But by the time I've assessed the situation, I have less than two car lengths, and so I can either skid to screeching halt in the middle of the intersection, or carry on. I carry on. The light turns red... with me still halfway into the intersection. What should I have done? Gunned it, to make it through the yellow, skidded to a halt in the middle of the intersection, or slammed on my brakes without even checking to see what's around me?
The problem with that is that that method suggests that everyone should slow down as they approach... green lights. Consider Ioldanach's post further down regarding stopping distances and thinking times. If a 45mph road has a light on it (common where I live) and you approach that light at 45, you physically cannot stop in time safely past about 200 feet from the light. So the way learned to drive, I would have to slow as I approached that light, down to 35 by 150 feet, down to 25 at 75-100 feet, etc. That dramatically slows traffic through the intersection, and at most of these intersections, that is a bad thing. Often, in fact, the light defaults to green for the major road, and doesn't cycle until a car approaches on the side st. But nonetheless, everyone would have to brake for the green, under your system. At that point, it's more likely that the light will be removed, and it will become difficult or unsafe to cross or turn from the side st.
Fair enough. I do wish broadband was a "properly operating market", because I would be very interested in seeing what billing models were on offer if everyone and their mother was an ISP...
To be fair, the broadband industry isn't a "properly operating market" either. It's a collection of local monopolies and oligarchies with obscenely high barriers to entry, both legal and financial, in place that keep it that way. Community owned last mile cable, equally available to anyone who wants to put in a co-lo might help a bit there.
The big thing I'm always wanting? A few more pixels. The speed on my HTC Mogul is enough, but using it for www quickly gets annoying, because the web is designed for 1024x768, or 1280x1024, and even 480x800 isn't quite there. If the 4gig EEEpc, or this, or any of the others I'd looked had a 10x7 screen, (without costing over 500$), I would be tempted. Otherwise, well, my phone costs 500$ without any rebate, is pocket-size, has a good 8+ hours of battery, and supports wi-fi, bluetooth, and mini-usb. What's more, for around 400$, I could buy a keyboard/screen combo for it that would make the combination as big as a umpc, but would ADD battery life. Why haven't I? Because the screen still isn't big enough.
My problem with today's Democrats primarily revolves around the degree to which they seem to love the Socialist Nanny State, (Which of course, requires a strong central government).
My problem with today's Republicans primarily revolves around the degree to which they seem to love the Oligarchical Police State, (Which of course, requires a strong central government).
Nobody who advocates censorship, (of basically anything, for any reason), nobody in favor of stronger law enforcement, nobody in favor of stronger gun control, and certainly nobody in favor of laws (and worse, amendments) enshrining religious ideals and concepts, could be considered to be in favor of states rights or the constitution. What matters is not whether you like strong central government, but whether you want it to be the kind that considers you a cog in the great profit machine or the kind that considers you an oppressor because you are neither a minority nor disabled.
I'm sorry, this is more cynical than I really feel about it, it's just that while I agree that the federal government is too large, and needs to be cut down a bit, I think that the Republicans have made it clear that they don't. Since Clinton, they've had all the opportunities they need, and instead they've given us the REAL ID act and the USA PATRIOT act, both so atrocious that some states have passed resolutions refusing to comply. They haven't exactly cut taxes, budgets, or deficits either.
As a resident of Massachusetts, who lived under Mitt Romney for basically his entire term (I arrived around the same time he took office), I got the distinct sense that he was either the least competent governor ever. It was under his leadership that Massachusetts achieved that peculiar and glorious crown of most public money spent on a single project ever. My parents got a moon landing for what we paid for a highway that goes under some water. Not a great deal of water, like the Chunnel, either. Also unlike the Chunnel, ours leaks, and bits of concrete occasionally fall from the ceiling and kill people.
Public transit suffered under budget cuts, meaning that even when gas prices skyrocketed, it was still cheaper and easier to drive into the city than take the "Commuter Rail."
Not that I like Huckabee, but I only object to him on one issue, religion. He thinks government should be run according to religious principles, I think that DC being nuked would be preferable. For all religions too, I wouldn't really prefer living in a Buddhist state to a Cristian state, or an Islamic state, or an Atheist state. (I don't care if Atheism is a religion, it is an exclusive religious position). The state should be kept as far away from religion as can be achieved.
It only doesn't penalize people for voting for third party candidates by completely removing them. So the primaries are held to determine the two spots for the final election, right? So we have some free for all election system, where we pick two candidates out of a pool of N, and then have another election, where we elect one of the two? I think I have this wrong, but is that what you're describing?
To be fair, the implication is that it's paying 20-40$ to go to a show, and 30$ for a T-Shirt, that's supporting them. I will also say that I have never bought tickets to a show by an artist I didn't discover through piracy. Same goes for most of the albums I've bought since about 1996. I don't watch broadcast TV, and I don't listen to the radio, so I discover music when someone I know 'lends' it to me.
Mostly because the price disparity between bundled and standalone content is so massive. If I want the Orange Box, but I also want HL:Source, and HL2:DM, I pay 74$. For that, I might as well get the Source Premier Pack. (I do, however, own HL, but somebody else has already registered my key, thanks to a keygen, so I'll be expected to pay 10$ to unlock a game I already own...) Think of it as the same basic issue as cable, the bundled prices make the regular prices look like gouging. I'll probably wind up with the premier pack, because I doubt I can upgrade the Orange Box later. I still like the store, I just wish that the bundles were a little bit more flexible.
It gets particularly annoying when an 8 hour episode can cost as much as a 20 hour expansion pack, more than half as much as a 40 hour game. I'm not just looking at Valve here, although their bundling plans do frustrate me.
No, the point is that in a 'free market', the people who obtain a monopoly are personally liable for the debts incurred, and lawsuit payouts. When the government allows you to shield your personal assets and limit your liability, it also needs to limit your rights, in order to protect the rest of society.
Note to self: Showing up at this guys house in a nice blue uniform with a good plastic badge == obtaining getting his social, drivers license, maybe even some cc numbers.
Seriously, not that long ago, NY state had issues with carjackers dressing up as cops, putting blue flashers on their dashboards, and pulling people over on highways, then shooting them and stealing their cars.
Aside from the fact that cops themselves can be crooked, there's always the danger that the nice man asking for your ID is just pretending to be a cop. Despite this, most cops get really annoyed when you ask them for ID, badge number, etc.
The way I see it, they deserve a little of their own back.
All of that is of course mostly irrelevant, the really important point is that we don't have to show ID because we live in a free country, if we did have to show ID, it wouldn't be a free country, and when the cops try to act otherwise, they need to be sued, as a reminder of how far their rights go.
Yeah, but the BBC has persistently and rudely turned down all of my offers of Top Gear related money, including the one that went "Don't persecute the torrent sites and will personally send you 5$ for every episode I have so far downloaded through them." Their letters tend to sound like "We don't care about America, and we have no plans to sell or broadcast this in America, but we don't want you watching it either."
Maybe if it fixes some of the damnable DRM issues. The big difference that most of see between the "I'll never load XP" people and the "I'll never load Vista" people is that more of the Vista people are switching to linux, rather than staying put.
Damn straight. I believe that Valve would *probably* not screw this up quite that horribly if they go by the wayside, but *probably* has never been a big selling point for me.
Calendar: I don't mostly use this for work, but for personal stuff, weekend trips, gaming sessions and the like. Since the sort of plans that need to wind up on there rarely get made within spitting distance of a computer, having a calendar that can be accessed PDA style is the only way I'll ever get the use out of it that I want.
Email: Again, I don't care much about work email, if I'm not at a computer there's not much work I can do, but for various personal reasons I frequently find a more data-centric, easily archived form of communication useful. If you've ever tried to sell something on Craigslist, you can appreciate what I mean here.
Google Maps: This should be obvious.
Office documents: I do shopping lists on the PC anyway. For that matter, when DMing at a not home location, it's nice to have my digital notes around, and not have to lug a laptop.
Web: IMDB and Wikipedia to settle arguments in bars, online banking and Netflix so that things can be done when I think of them, instead of later when I've forgotten the details.
The one's from that series that I've seen have looked really cool, but I can't get them to work with Sprint, and I haven't seen anything in the prices for plans from other carriers that makes me happy. Plus, my wife and I are on the same plan, so we would ideally need a carrier that could give us two rebated phones at sign up, and since half the people we call are on Sprint, the free mobile to mobile calling becomes an issue.
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If the theft occurs when you aren't there, the shotgun is useless. This isn't related to the ability to defend yourself. This is about being able to monitor when you aren't there. A shotgun will not help with that. At all. -Not that I'm against shotguns per se. I just don't see how one would help here.
I would have to suggest some combination of:
Patronage, which currently provides us with museums, and libraries, (granted that the 'patrons' in this case are the taxpayers);
Collectors, who tend to pay for physical objects anyway, even if the book is already available at the library for 0$, but owning it has considerable attraction anyway to many, and the same can go for recordings, just to a lesser extent;
Performance, which doesn't apply to everybody, but the cinema experience will I hope always be worth a little something, especially if it's anything like the 'premium' cinema I often go to for dates (real food, real booze, comfy seats, 21+ showings, and plush leather recliners), obviously musicians were making money on performances long before there were recordings, and professors have, classically, been required to teach for a living, the book deals are more to get people into the university;
Finally, Service, which is sort of the performance model for software and like products, by which I mean anything from making software available, as with Google apps, to providing support for software, as with RedHat, to maintaining and fact checking information, which is what Britannica, the Oxford English Dictionary, and a host of other organizations do.
Intellectual pursuits may become slightly less profitable in the future, somewhat more inline with skilled manual work, but most of the people who are in these fields are in them because they love them, and it would be no bad thing if average incomes for skilled labor were a little less widely scattered.
Ultimately, it seems to me, there are only three reliable ways to make money: Selling something, whether it be physical goods or services/performances, Working for someone else, basically just selling labor or knowledge, and Leasing something, whether it be renting a house, investing in a company, providing credit cards, or leasing bandwidth.
Most companies are leasing, but many companies, and even some industries are far from clear on whether they're Selling service or Leasing stuff, and they need to get they're acts together, figure out which it is, and who is paying them.
If you can't figure out which one you're doing, you might be exploiting someone, and if that's the case, they're likely to be unhappy about it, and sooner or later, they're going to do an end run around you.
It's funny, I usually stop for yellows, but every so often (particularly in areas where there's a light on a 35+ mph road) the light changes to yellow when I am within 3 car lengths of the intersection. I then have two choices: hit the brakes so hard I skid, reflexively, risk being rear ended, and leaving burnt rubber into the bargain, or assess the situation. But by the time I've assessed the situation, I have less than two car lengths, and so I can either skid to screeching halt in the middle of the intersection, or carry on. I carry on. The light turns red... with me still halfway into the intersection. What should I have done? Gunned it, to make it through the yellow, skidded to a halt in the middle of the intersection, or slammed on my brakes without even checking to see what's around me?
The problem with that is that that method suggests that everyone should slow down as they approach... green lights. Consider Ioldanach's post further down regarding stopping distances and thinking times. If a 45mph road has a light on it (common where I live) and you approach that light at 45, you physically cannot stop in time safely past about 200 feet from the light. So the way learned to drive, I would have to slow as I approached that light, down to 35 by 150 feet, down to 25 at 75-100 feet, etc. That dramatically slows traffic through the intersection, and at most of these intersections, that is a bad thing. Often, in fact, the light defaults to green for the major road, and doesn't cycle until a car approaches on the side st. But nonetheless, everyone would have to brake for the green, under your system. At that point, it's more likely that the light will be removed, and it will become difficult or unsafe to cross or turn from the side st.
Fair enough. I do wish broadband was a "properly operating market", because I would be very interested in seeing what billing models were on offer if everyone and their mother was an ISP...
To be fair, the broadband industry isn't a "properly operating market" either. It's a collection of local monopolies and oligarchies with obscenely high barriers to entry, both legal and financial, in place that keep it that way. Community owned last mile cable, equally available to anyone who wants to put in a co-lo might help a bit there.
The big thing I'm always wanting? A few more pixels. The speed on my HTC Mogul is enough, but using it for www quickly gets annoying, because the web is designed for 1024x768, or 1280x1024, and even 480x800 isn't quite there. If the 4gig EEEpc, or this, or any of the others I'd looked had a 10x7 screen, (without costing over 500$), I would be tempted. Otherwise, well, my phone costs 500$ without any rebate, is pocket-size, has a good 8+ hours of battery, and supports wi-fi, bluetooth, and mini-usb. What's more, for around 400$, I could buy a keyboard/screen combo for it that would make the combination as big as a umpc, but would ADD battery life. Why haven't I? Because the screen still isn't big enough.
Thing is, security at the gate means no beverages on the plane. I say no security. That'll solve it.
My problem with today's Democrats primarily revolves around the degree to which they seem to love the Socialist Nanny State, (Which of course, requires a strong central government). My problem with today's Republicans primarily revolves around the degree to which they seem to love the Oligarchical Police State, (Which of course, requires a strong central government). Nobody who advocates censorship, (of basically anything, for any reason), nobody in favor of stronger law enforcement, nobody in favor of stronger gun control, and certainly nobody in favor of laws (and worse, amendments) enshrining religious ideals and concepts, could be considered to be in favor of states rights or the constitution. What matters is not whether you like strong central government, but whether you want it to be the kind that considers you a cog in the great profit machine or the kind that considers you an oppressor because you are neither a minority nor disabled. I'm sorry, this is more cynical than I really feel about it, it's just that while I agree that the federal government is too large, and needs to be cut down a bit, I think that the Republicans have made it clear that they don't. Since Clinton, they've had all the opportunities they need, and instead they've given us the REAL ID act and the USA PATRIOT act, both so atrocious that some states have passed resolutions refusing to comply. They haven't exactly cut taxes, budgets, or deficits either.
As a resident of Massachusetts, who lived under Mitt Romney for basically his entire term (I arrived around the same time he took office), I got the distinct sense that he was either the least competent governor ever. It was under his leadership that Massachusetts achieved that peculiar and glorious crown of most public money spent on a single project ever. My parents got a moon landing for what we paid for a highway that goes under some water. Not a great deal of water, like the Chunnel, either. Also unlike the Chunnel, ours leaks, and bits of concrete occasionally fall from the ceiling and kill people. Public transit suffered under budget cuts, meaning that even when gas prices skyrocketed, it was still cheaper and easier to drive into the city than take the "Commuter Rail." Not that I like Huckabee, but I only object to him on one issue, religion. He thinks government should be run according to religious principles, I think that DC being nuked would be preferable. For all religions too, I wouldn't really prefer living in a Buddhist state to a Cristian state, or an Islamic state, or an Atheist state. (I don't care if Atheism is a religion, it is an exclusive religious position). The state should be kept as far away from religion as can be achieved.
Damn Straight
It only doesn't penalize people for voting for third party candidates by completely removing them. So the primaries are held to determine the two spots for the final election, right? So we have some free for all election system, where we pick two candidates out of a pool of N, and then have another election, where we elect one of the two? I think I have this wrong, but is that what you're describing?
To be fair, the implication is that it's paying 20-40$ to go to a show, and 30$ for a T-Shirt, that's supporting them. I will also say that I have never bought tickets to a show by an artist I didn't discover through piracy. Same goes for most of the albums I've bought since about 1996. I don't watch broadcast TV, and I don't listen to the radio, so I discover music when someone I know 'lends' it to me.
Mostly because the price disparity between bundled and standalone content is so massive. If I want the Orange Box, but I also want HL:Source, and HL2:DM, I pay 74$. For that, I might as well get the Source Premier Pack. (I do, however, own HL, but somebody else has already registered my key, thanks to a keygen, so I'll be expected to pay 10$ to unlock a game I already own...) Think of it as the same basic issue as cable, the bundled prices make the regular prices look like gouging. I'll probably wind up with the premier pack, because I doubt I can upgrade the Orange Box later. I still like the store, I just wish that the bundles were a little bit more flexible.
It gets particularly annoying when an 8 hour episode can cost as much as a 20 hour expansion pack, more than half as much as a 40 hour game. I'm not just looking at Valve here, although their bundling plans do frustrate me.
No, the point is that in a 'free market', the people who obtain a monopoly are personally liable for the debts incurred, and lawsuit payouts. When the government allows you to shield your personal assets and limit your liability, it also needs to limit your rights, in order to protect the rest of society.
Note to self: Showing up at this guys house in a nice blue uniform with a good plastic badge == obtaining getting his social, drivers license, maybe even some cc numbers. Seriously, not that long ago, NY state had issues with carjackers dressing up as cops, putting blue flashers on their dashboards, and pulling people over on highways, then shooting them and stealing their cars. Aside from the fact that cops themselves can be crooked, there's always the danger that the nice man asking for your ID is just pretending to be a cop. Despite this, most cops get really annoyed when you ask them for ID, badge number, etc. The way I see it, they deserve a little of their own back. All of that is of course mostly irrelevant, the really important point is that we don't have to show ID because we live in a free country, if we did have to show ID, it wouldn't be a free country, and when the cops try to act otherwise, they need to be sued, as a reminder of how far their rights go.
We can hope, however, that this demonstration of ridiculousness gets the attention of a judge finally.
Yeah, but the BBC has persistently and rudely turned down all of my offers of Top Gear related money, including the one that went "Don't persecute the torrent sites and will personally send you 5$ for every episode I have so far downloaded through them." Their letters tend to sound like "We don't care about America, and we have no plans to sell or broadcast this in America, but we don't want you watching it either."
Ahh, morbid yet hilarious.
Maybe if it fixes some of the damnable DRM issues. The big difference that most of see between the "I'll never load XP" people and the "I'll never load Vista" people is that more of the Vista people are switching to linux, rather than staying put.
Damn straight. I believe that Valve would *probably* not screw this up quite that horribly if they go by the wayside, but *probably* has never been a big selling point for me.
Calendar: I don't mostly use this for work, but for personal stuff, weekend trips, gaming sessions and the like. Since the sort of plans that need to wind up on there rarely get made within spitting distance of a computer, having a calendar that can be accessed PDA style is the only way I'll ever get the use out of it that I want. Email: Again, I don't care much about work email, if I'm not at a computer there's not much work I can do, but for various personal reasons I frequently find a more data-centric, easily archived form of communication useful. If you've ever tried to sell something on Craigslist, you can appreciate what I mean here. Google Maps: This should be obvious. Office documents: I do shopping lists on the PC anyway. For that matter, when DMing at a not home location, it's nice to have my digital notes around, and not have to lug a laptop. Web: IMDB and Wikipedia to settle arguments in bars, online banking and Netflix so that things can be done when I think of them, instead of later when I've forgotten the details.
The one's from that series that I've seen have looked really cool, but I can't get them to work with Sprint, and I haven't seen anything in the prices for plans from other carriers that makes me happy. Plus, my wife and I are on the same plan, so we would ideally need a carrier that could give us two rebated phones at sign up, and since half the people we call are on Sprint, the free mobile to mobile calling becomes an issue.