Well see, we have this massive bureaucracy in the USA called the "Food and Drug Administration", whose job it is to kill people by impeding medical research.
The job of the FDA with regards to medical research is to ensure that what's called "medical research" is actually both "medical" and "research" by reasonable definitions of those words. Do you really not understand why this is necessary?
All of the current in the world conflicts involve third-world shitholes with corrupt officials and are coincidental to the rather benign posturing of the major powers against each other. Third-world shitholes are volatile from start to finish.
Um, yeah... except for the wars the major powers are fighting in third-world shitholes.
The primary reason there hasn't been a WWIII is global trade. You don't need to invade the other guy's turf to get his resources if he will dig it out, put it on a ship, and send it to you for a reasonable fee. "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will." -- Frédéric Bastiat
Sentiments like that were very common in the 19th and early 20th centuries; Bastiat came of age in France in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, and it may have seemed like a natural conclusion to him. Many Europeans kept believing it all the way up to 1914.
And then, well, 1914 happened. Anyone who, after that year, seriously believes that trade stops wars is hopelessly naive.
Seriously, it's obvious from the story that there is, indeed, "such a thing in this world." Windows users love to accuse Mac and Linux users of fanaticism, but honestly, there's nothing more fanatical than a Windows drone who can say something like "[Windows] really is the only OS built for very large enterprises" and believe it.
Back in the newstand days, superheros were a lesser phenomenon behind war comics, western comics, romance comics, etc.
True, but irrelevant. Marvel, as a company, came into existence at the beginning of the big superhero boom in the 60's, and almost all its commercial success has come from superhero books. Talking about "the comic industry getting back to its roots," which would be a fine thing if someone could pull it off (I have my doubts) is all well and good -- but very different from talking about "Marvel getting back to its roots," which is nonsensical since its roots are in the same genre of comics it's doing now.
Okay, maybe "always" is too strong, by just a bit. But it was superhero comics, starting in the early 60's, that made Marvel a major player. For two generations, almost their entire corporate history, that's what their market's been based on. What Lee and Kirby, themselves, did before that is kind of irrelevant; for Marvel as a company to attempt to return to the comic market of the 50's or before would be absurd.
Disney could of course solve this problem for themselves by ordering their pet legislators to pass laws limiting the term of copyright, say an automatic fourteen years, with one optional fourteen-year extension by the original author if he's still alive -- I think I heard that one somewhere before. Then they could make all the movies about Jack Kirby characters they wanted, and his heirs couldn't say a damn thing. I wonder why they don't go for such an obvious and reasonable solution?
I love comics. I don't like super hero books.... Marvel needs to get back to it's roots selling comics that everyone wants to read
The Marvel "comics that everyone wants to read" have always been about superheroes. You may not like superhero comics, or Marvel's current crop of them, or whatever, that's fine -- but suggesting that Marvel return to its "roots" by selling something other than superhero books is pretty silly.
The same thing that happened here: Nothing, provided it's legal to do so under the laws of that State.
Your faith in our glorious leaders and the wise laws they have created to protect the workers and peasants is noted and appreciated, Comrade. Keep up the good work.
Libertarians didn't lead this nation into war, that was the doing of NEOCONSERVATIVES. Neocons are seperate and distinct from the more common conservatives, many of whom have been duped into following the neocons.
Both of these statements are true. It is also true that a great many libertarians and old-school conservatives continue to support the Republican party despite the fact that its agenda has been neocon-dominated for at least fifteen years. If you vote Republican, neocon policies are what you're voting for. So it's kind of hard for us lefties to believe people who say, "Well, here's what real [libertarians|conservatives] believe..." when they're the exact same people who gave us Gingrich and Bush.
Actually, I do have some sympathy -- I'm a pro-gun liberal, so when I vote Democratic, I'm aware that I'm voting against a portion of my interests. But I don't try to hide it, or pretend otherwise. I can't say "real liberals support gun rights" when I can look around and see that the vast majority of people who call themselves liberals are, in fact, anti-gun. I just have to deal with it, and hopefully be honest about what I'm doing. It would be refreshing to see some of the same honesty from the other side of the aisle.
I didn't hear any of this condemnation from them when left-wing groups exercised their 1st amendment rights while Bush was in office.
That's because left-wingers who tried to get into Bush rallies were denied entry, and/or promptly thrown out if they did manage to get in. Even wearing a patriotic t-shirt was enough, as long as it was the kind of patriotism (i.e., the real kind) that the right-wingers didn't like.
Also, none of them were armed. Seriously, what do you think would have happened to someone carrying a gun and an anti-Bush sign anywhere within a mile of where Bush, or any Republican politician, was speaking?
"Bullshit" is a slang term, of obvious derivation, and it can mean anything from "You're lying and we both know it" to "I know you're telling the truth but I don't want to admit it," or anything in between. Anyone who claims it has a precise meaning is, well, bullshitting.
The problem with the line from Atlas Shrugged is that Ferris (like almost all of Rand's antagonists) is cartoon Evil. Evil that knows it's Evil. Evil that spends all day twirling its mustache and saying, "Look how Evil I am!" But that's not how real evil works.
Real evil thinks it's good. Real evil says, "We need this law to protect (whatever)" -- and believes it. In regards to this particular discussion, real evil believes that putting every single thing ever committed to disk, paper, parchment, or clay tablets under perpetual copyright is a positive good, and it regards anyone who disagrees with it as -- that's right -- evil.
Yes, of course the final effect of passing laws to "protect" everything imaginable is a nightmare of labyrinthine and often mutally contradictory laws, such that everyone is a criminal. But no one ever intends for it to work that way. And if you expect the people who create this situation (which ultimately would be We, the People) to have such transparent and cartoonish motivations, to be so obviously and blatantly Evil, then you will have no idea how to deal with real evil when it presents itself.
When the business is the people who are paying you it's not a very good business practice to kill them off.
Um... tobacco? Alcohol? Fast food? Automobiles? The corporate world has never shown any aversion to killing its customers if it thinks it can get new ones to replace the ones who've died.
What the heck is "human-rated spacecraft" other than a bureaucratic term for "rigorously tested until all innovation has been expelled". The statistical improvements in avoiding failure have been small, very small in fact, over a simple engineering consensus.
Human-rated (they used to call it "man-rated") has always meant engineering consensus -- and there's nothing "simple" about it. Believe it or not, the people who build rockets to carry other people into space tend to be very, very picky about these things; it has been the case since Mercury that the engineers tend to be more cautious than the bureaucrats, not less.
And that's if you use the all too common screwball definition that doesn't consider companies like Boeing and Lockheed as private.
To be fair, Boeing and Lockheed developed much of their tech on government contracts, and these remain a major source of their revenue. I get the general impression (and will happily admit to being wrong, if I am) that most of the space tech Lockheed, especially, sells is basically recycled military equipment.
Goddamn. I kept waiting for that to happen when I was living there, right smack in the middle of the coverage area... and it looks like they got it up and running just after I left.
got PhDs (e.g. Cornell, Hopkins, one a nationally known professor) fired
Given how difficult it is to fire tenured faculty -- and how even if it happens at a state university, to say nothing of the really famous private ones, it makes the national news -- I'm going to have to go with [citation needed] on this one.
I think you have no idea how horrible things in Russia actually were before the Revolution. "Earn something for a full days work," bwahahaha. Yes, in retrospect Communism was a terrible mistake. But it didn't happen in a vacuum -- there was a reason people were willing to fight against the existing system.
Whoever modded parent "troll" is a jackass. Tetris really was a profoundly important game; given its popularity and the market it spawned, it's probably up there with, say, Visicalc and Mosaic on the list of (so to speak) game-changing software -- programs that weren't just commercially successful, but created a market for a whole new type of computing. Given that today's cell phone games -- many of which are very Tetris-like -- use more processing power than what was generally available on the desktop when Tetris was first introduced, dismissing its importance because it was "just a game" is a mistake.
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Well see, we have this massive bureaucracy in the USA called the "Food and Drug Administration", whose job it is to kill people by impeding medical research.
The job of the FDA with regards to medical research is to ensure that what's called "medical research" is actually both "medical" and "research" by reasonable definitions of those words. Do you really not understand why this is necessary?
All of the current in the world conflicts involve third-world shitholes with corrupt officials and are coincidental to the rather benign posturing of the major powers against each other. Third-world shitholes are volatile from start to finish.
Um, yeah ... except for the wars the major powers are fighting in third-world shitholes.
The primary reason there hasn't been a WWIII is global trade. You don't need to invade the other guy's turf to get his resources if he will dig it out, put it on a ship, and send it to you for a reasonable fee. "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will." -- Frédéric Bastiat
Sentiments like that were very common in the 19th and early 20th centuries; Bastiat came of age in France in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, and it may have seemed like a natural conclusion to him. Many Europeans kept believing it all the way up to 1914.
And then, well, 1914 happened. Anyone who, after that year, seriously believes that trade stops wars is hopelessly naive.
No, he got the joke just fine. He's just pointing out that in this context, it doesn't make any sense. And he's right.
Thank you for providing such a fine example of what I was talking about.
Is there even such a thing in this world?
Yes. Next question?
Seriously, it's obvious from the story that there is, indeed, "such a thing in this world." Windows users love to accuse Mac and Linux users of fanaticism, but honestly, there's nothing more fanatical than a Windows drone who can say something like "[Windows] really is the only OS built for very large enterprises" and believe it.
Back in the newstand days, superheros were a lesser phenomenon behind war comics, western comics, romance comics, etc.
True, but irrelevant. Marvel, as a company, came into existence at the beginning of the big superhero boom in the 60's, and almost all its commercial success has come from superhero books. Talking about "the comic industry getting back to its roots," which would be a fine thing if someone could pull it off (I have my doubts) is all well and good -- but very different from talking about "Marvel getting back to its roots," which is nonsensical since its roots are in the same genre of comics it's doing now.
Okay, maybe "always" is too strong, by just a bit. But it was superhero comics, starting in the early 60's, that made Marvel a major player. For two generations, almost their entire corporate history, that's what their market's been based on. What Lee and Kirby, themselves, did before that is kind of irrelevant; for Marvel as a company to attempt to return to the comic market of the 50's or before would be absurd.
Disney could of course solve this problem for themselves by ordering their pet legislators to pass laws limiting the term of copyright, say an automatic fourteen years, with one optional fourteen-year extension by the original author if he's still alive -- I think I heard that one somewhere before. Then they could make all the movies about Jack Kirby characters they wanted, and his heirs couldn't say a damn thing. I wonder why they don't go for such an obvious and reasonable solution?
I love comics. I don't like super hero books. ... Marvel needs to get back to it's roots selling comics that everyone wants to read
The Marvel "comics that everyone wants to read" have always been about superheroes. You may not like superhero comics, or Marvel's current crop of them, or whatever, that's fine -- but suggesting that Marvel return to its "roots" by selling something other than superhero books is pretty silly.
What then is my motivation to produce for distribution future works?
If you're worth a damn as a writer, you don't have to ask that question.
The same thing that happened here: Nothing, provided it's legal to do so under the laws of that State.
Your faith in our glorious leaders and the wise laws they have created to protect the workers and peasants is noted and appreciated, Comrade. Keep up the good work.
Libertarians didn't lead this nation into war, that was the doing of NEOCONSERVATIVES. Neocons are seperate and distinct from the more common conservatives, many of whom have been duped into following the neocons.
Both of these statements are true. It is also true that a great many libertarians and old-school conservatives continue to support the Republican party despite the fact that its agenda has been neocon-dominated for at least fifteen years. If you vote Republican, neocon policies are what you're voting for. So it's kind of hard for us lefties to believe people who say, "Well, here's what real [libertarians|conservatives] believe ..." when they're the exact same people who gave us Gingrich and Bush.
Actually, I do have some sympathy -- I'm a pro-gun liberal, so when I vote Democratic, I'm aware that I'm voting against a portion of my interests. But I don't try to hide it, or pretend otherwise. I can't say "real liberals support gun rights" when I can look around and see that the vast majority of people who call themselves liberals are, in fact, anti-gun. I just have to deal with it, and hopefully be honest about what I'm doing. It would be refreshing to see some of the same honesty from the other side of the aisle.
I didn't hear any of this condemnation from them when left-wing groups exercised their 1st amendment rights while Bush was in office.
That's because left-wingers who tried to get into Bush rallies were denied entry, and/or promptly thrown out if they did manage to get in. Even wearing a patriotic t-shirt was enough, as long as it was the kind of patriotism (i.e., the real kind) that the right-wingers didn't like.
Also, none of them were armed. Seriously, what do you think would have happened to someone carrying a gun and an anti-Bush sign anywhere within a mile of where Bush, or any Republican politician, was speaking?
"Bullshit" is a slang term, of obvious derivation, and it can mean anything from "You're lying and we both know it" to "I know you're telling the truth but I don't want to admit it," or anything in between. Anyone who claims it has a precise meaning is, well, bullshitting.
The problem with the line from Atlas Shrugged is that Ferris (like almost all of Rand's antagonists) is cartoon Evil. Evil that knows it's Evil. Evil that spends all day twirling its mustache and saying, "Look how Evil I am!" But that's not how real evil works.
Real evil thinks it's good. Real evil says, "We need this law to protect (whatever)" -- and believes it. In regards to this particular discussion, real evil believes that putting every single thing ever committed to disk, paper, parchment, or clay tablets under perpetual copyright is a positive good, and it regards anyone who disagrees with it as -- that's right -- evil.
Yes, of course the final effect of passing laws to "protect" everything imaginable is a nightmare of labyrinthine and often mutally contradictory laws, such that everyone is a criminal. But no one ever intends for it to work that way. And if you expect the people who create this situation (which ultimately would be We, the People) to have such transparent and cartoonish motivations, to be so obviously and blatantly Evil, then you will have no idea how to deal with real evil when it presents itself.
When the business is the people who are paying you it's not a very good business practice to kill them off.
Um ... tobacco? Alcohol? Fast food? Automobiles? The corporate world has never shown any aversion to killing its customers if it thinks it can get new ones to replace the ones who've died.
What the heck is "human-rated spacecraft" other than a bureaucratic term for "rigorously tested until all innovation has been expelled". The statistical improvements in avoiding failure have been small, very small in fact, over a simple engineering consensus.
Human-rated (they used to call it "man-rated") has always meant engineering consensus -- and there's nothing "simple" about it. Believe it or not, the people who build rockets to carry other people into space tend to be very, very picky about these things; it has been the case since Mercury that the engineers tend to be more cautious than the bureaucrats, not less.
And that's if you use the all too common screwball definition that doesn't consider companies like Boeing and Lockheed as private.
To be fair, Boeing and Lockheed developed much of their tech on government contracts, and these remain a major source of their revenue. I get the general impression (and will happily admit to being wrong, if I am) that most of the space tech Lockheed, especially, sells is basically recycled military equipment.
One's a Serb, one's a Croat. May I suggest "ethniklashinauts?"
Quite seriously, good for them.
Goddamn. I kept waiting for that to happen when I was living there, right smack in the middle of the coverage area ... and it looks like they got it up and running just after I left.
... unless you count political manipulation by telecoms as a "technology."
got PhDs (e.g. Cornell, Hopkins, one a nationally known professor) fired
Given how difficult it is to fire tenured faculty -- and how even if it happens at a state university, to say nothing of the really famous private ones, it makes the national news -- I'm going to have to go with [citation needed] on this one.
I think you have no idea how horrible things in Russia actually were before the Revolution. "Earn something for a full days work," bwahahaha. Yes, in retrospect Communism was a terrible mistake. But it didn't happen in a vacuum -- there was a reason people were willing to fight against the existing system.
Whoever modded parent "troll" is a jackass. Tetris really was a profoundly important game; given its popularity and the market it spawned, it's probably up there with, say, Visicalc and Mosaic on the list of (so to speak) game-changing software -- programs that weren't just commercially successful, but created a market for a whole new type of computing. Given that today's cell phone games -- many of which are very Tetris-like -- use more processing power than what was generally available on the desktop when Tetris was first introduced, dismissing its importance because it was "just a game" is a mistake.
... we hatesss it, Preciousss, yesss we doesss.