... ICANN is likely just waiting to see if they can get some of the bidders to offer some additional revenue under the table for the names that more than one company wanted to buy. They certainly don't give a damn about coherence or ethics at ICANN.
If the iPad designer is now in charge of hardware design, that fits well with the rumors I've heard before that Apple will stop making hardware and switch to only making and selling i* devices and software.
What ever happened to the public option? You know, cutting the profit motive out of funding health care, so that people do not have to fight with their insurance companies or with hospitals just to get the treatment they need?
There isn't enough opportunity to make money in a public option. Even more so, the insurance companies own the vast majority of the people in the executive and legislative branches (and perhaps some of the judicial as well) from both parties.
In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone in either chamber of congress who hasn't taken money from the health insurance industry. In other words, the public option was killed by money.
Ask your wife and your youngest child. They are the ones you have to please with your decision. It doesn't matter how much more variety of programming you can bring in, or how much money you can save. What matters is who can use your TV in your house. I'd wager neither your wife nor your youngest child want to use a keyboard to watch TV. If they can't get all the shows they want with a regular TV remote - or at least something that looks like one - then you have a non-starter.
And no amount of monetary savings is worth screwing up your relationship with your family. If you make the system too difficult to use, they will direct their frustration back at you.
And of course, another oft-overlooked advantage of paying someone for your TV service is that when something goes wrong, you have someone you can turn to. Sure, there are plenty of forums for MythTV and the like but nobody who will answer the phone and bring you out a new box when you call.
So think long and hard before you cut the cord. And then when you think you have a solution, think some more.
By chance did they hire the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert?
Couldn't have. His ineptitude is at least entertaining.
The ineptitude of the bosses of ICANN can come across as entertaining - until of course you realize that the idiots making the unbelievably stupid and short-sighted decisions are supposed to be "experts".
She could have purchased it somewhere else and then sent it to Iran. I don't understand why it was important for her to go back to the Apple store other than to bring it to the news station. I'm pretty sure the clerks at Walmart would likely be less concerned about trade embargoes.
RIM has done an outstandingly crappy job of marketing their handsets lately as it is. They might as well spin it off and let someone else try.
That said, Microsoft sounds like a great way to drive the Blackberry handset brand in to oblivion. Short of the XBox I can't think of a Microsoft product that has been successfully marketed since... possibly the beginning of time. They have instead brought their products to the front of the pack in competition because they were brutal towards their competition. Going to Microsoft for marketing assistance is like going to the president of Syria for advice on how to handle a disapproving populace.
ICANN doesn't do shit these days (it can be argued they hardly ever did). All the current ICANN does is find more crappy ideas to make money off of. By chance did they hire the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert?
There aren't enough users left on this site for the slashdot effect to matter any more. It has been years since a site was taken down by being featured on the front page, load-balanced or not. Even your windows box should easily be able to handle all 30 slashdot users simultaneously loading the front page.
Within the umbrella of biomedicine, there are vastly different job outlooks. Some areas can't hire post-docs and staff scientists fast enough. Others can't afford to pay anyone other than a grad student (who works for less than minimum wage in most cases).
Every store I go in to seems to have Angry Birds figures, cereal, watches, and adult toys. They are all made in China already. Why not just finish it off and move the whole company over their if that is their top brand?
If anyone knows the meaning of FUD, its the slashdot crowd. Likely the only acronyms used more often in discussion here than FUD are MAFIAA and BHO. It's a waste of space and time to expand it.
They often seem to portray President Ahmadenijad as one of the world's greatest geniuses. I expect to see a patriotic picture of him flying one of these.
I was going to post this yesterday when I was watching it, but I figured "nah, slashdot will have already shown this by now, for sure!". Thanks for proving me wrong, guys.
Anyone familiar with what is going on knows that no hacking was involved. The State Department is paying people to post to the web sites in question to counter the Al-Qaeda propaganda.
I will wager that in 10 years, if she decides to practice medicine after having completed med school, she will be making more money than him. Facebook is on a giant bubble that will pop before then.
Exactly how is facebook cutting traffic for the carriers? If I send a text message via FB versus the sms application in my phone, are not the same amount of bytes being transferred? Actually, the FB transfer probably uses more traffic.
You got that right. SMS uses virtually no traffic for the carrier, it is well above 99% profit. Facebook isn't hurting their traffic - it is actually increasing their traffic. Rather, it is hurting their bottom line because they can't get away with marking up data rates to the degree they can mark up text rates. This "story" is basically just the carriers whining that their profit margins are decreasing because they got too comfortable with the obscene returns they were getting from text messages.
Unregulated free markets absolutely require an oppressed underclass and an immobilized middle class in order to generate the desired outcome of maximum profitability for the people at the top. Any other configuration is suboptimal for those aims.
Nonsense. This is precisely what I called making shit up. If one looks at real markets that are as close to unregulated as they get, such as the stock markets, one doesn't see any of these features.
I did no such thing. Just because it does not fit your ideology does not mean it automatically qualifies as "making shit up".
Profit, which is what players in the market seek, comes when a commodity is sold below or above its cost. Profit is maximized only when people are exploited. If everything on the market sold strictly at cost then there would be no exploitation but also no profit.
And in order for there to be people to exploit (to maxmize profit) there needs to be distinct divisions of economic class. A free market that is optimized for profit is also optimized for exploitation of the under classes.
I don't know why you conflate markets with other social problems, but markets aren't responsible for class structures nor oppression of others. That's the domain of human beings who've been doing it longer than the idea of free markets have been around.
You are almost right on that matter. Of course, you likely either won't read this far in my reply or you will misinterpret what I just said. I already said that the market itself can't hurt people, but you conveniently overlooked it because you would rather focus on furthering your misinterpretation of my demonstration that your ayn rand / ron paul fantasy world would require oppression and exploitation. ,br>
A market itself is just as agnostic towards the condition as a gun is agnostic towards a murder. Both can be used as instruments of destruction but neither is responsible on their own for the destruction. However much as a gun makes murder easier, a completely unregulated market accelerates exploitation of lower economic classes because that is what must exist to maximize profit.
If a completely unregulated free market truly presented equal opportunity for all, then profit would approach zero. As profit moves further from zero, so does exploitation, oppression, and destruction of opportunity.
It means "does not follow" and refers to any argument
And when you use it as an excuse to not respond to a comment that was a direct response to something you said, you are using the term non sequitur in a non sequitur fashion.
I speak of free markets and you speak of completely unrelated stuff.
No, I am speaking of the consequences of a free market. It is directly related to the free markets of which you wish you speak. Just because you don't want to discuss the consequences of a free market - which is what I was discussing before you inserted yourself in to the conversation - doesn't mean that they are "completely unrelated stuff".
And trades happen because the trade is better than what the traders had. It's voluntary and mutually agreeable. So right there, we have a bunch of net positive actions among the many "oppressed", who use the market to their advantage.
You are discussing only the trade on the terms of those who are most directly involved in the trade. However in a completely unregulated free market there are many who are affected by the trade yet have no role in its terms. That is where the oppression and exploitation come from, when the people with the power to make the trading decisions are making decisions only for their own benefit, passing harm down to those who lack power.
A decent example of a working market that is fairly free is the stock market. It's worked well for centuries. Sure, there are bubble/crashes and other manifestations of social hysteria, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deliver value to the majority of its participants. What it does mean, is that you do have to take care in what you purchase.
The stock market is also a good example of the powerful exploiting the powerless. The trades and deals that occur on the market have downstream effects that can ruin lives of the lower classes.
I think the problem here is that a certain part of society wants to suborn the role played by free markets
I have no intention to make a free market do anything unlawful. Indeed a better argument would be that people who want a completely unregulated market are likely interested in using such a thing to do unlawful (or at the very least immoral) things themselves.
Since they don't have a credible argument against them, they just make shit up.
At this point it looks like you are guilty of that more so than anyone else in this discussion.
Let's take a look at these historical examples of which you speak, and we'll see whether you have any legitimate case or not.
I see no reason to expect that you would actually consider any historical examples, but we could start with Somalia in its current state. We could more on to Afghanistan as well; and for that matter the Russian market has little actual control as well. if you want an older historical example look at feudal Europe and feudal Japan.
Unregulated free markets absolutely require an oppressed underclass and an immobilized middle class in order to generate the desired outcome of maximum profitability for the people at the top. Any other configuration is suboptimal for those aims.
I am not familiar with this strange new definition of freedom you offer, where more power is concentrated in the hands of fewer people
Non sequiturs are irrelevant, by definition.
Calling a direct response non sequitur is itself non sequitur, at best.
Or you don't have a clue what a free market is
I am well aware of what a free market is.
could you at least learn the actual definitions of phrases, not what Big Brother claims?
That statement of yours is non sequitur to be kind, though to be more accurate it is complete bullshit. This has nothing to do with "Big Brother" or whatever you might think that phrase means.
There's no slavery, bondage, or war. It's just a market.
The market itself does not enslave, however the people who exploit it do. When you have a completely unregulated market, power will inevitably concentrate in the hands of those who are most adept at exploiting it. As a result a great number of people will be oppressed by the market because that is what those at the top need in order to retain their profit and power.
A free market creates great opportunity for a very small number of people, and results in the oppression of opportunity for the vast majority of the rest. There is no other way that a free market can work, any student of history can tell you that.
Is that really what the free market wants - economic oppression of the majority of the population?
To the contrary, that's the whole point of free markets: to provide in that market the greatest degree of economic freedom.
I am not familiar with this strange new definition of freedom you offer, where more power is concentrated in the hands of fewer people - and more people find themselves oppressed by the people who have all the power. Either you think it is opposite day or you subscribe to the "happiness in slavery, freedom in bondage, peace in war" mentality.
The very USPS page that is linked to from this summary says that batteries that are in devices are generally exempt from this. Essentially you can ship all the iPods/iPads/iPhones you want. It is external (ie not built-in) batteries that have additional restrictions, though those are not very severe.
for luxury cars it's lexus and acura here with infiniti not so much anymore
Acura? I don't know where you live, but where I live I see a lot more BMW than Acura. And for that matter if you drop the well dressed Camry that poses as a luxury car (Lexus ES series) you see about as many Audis as Lexuses (or whatever the plural form of Lexus is).
Though I do agree that Inifiti is a niche player at best. Nissan never could seem to figure out what they wanted to do with that brand. The only advantage they had was they were the first Japanese luxury brand with a convertible, but it didn't take long for Lexus to deliver a more popular model.
Slashdot Mirror
... ICANN is likely just waiting to see if they can get some of the bidders to offer some additional revenue under the table for the names that more than one company wanted to buy. They certainly don't give a damn about coherence or ethics at ICANN.
If the iPad designer is now in charge of hardware design, that fits well with the rumors I've heard before that Apple will stop making hardware and switch to only making and selling i* devices and software.
What ever happened to the public option? You know, cutting the profit motive out of funding health care, so that people do not have to fight with their insurance companies or with hospitals just to get the treatment they need?
There isn't enough opportunity to make money in a public option. Even more so, the insurance companies own the vast majority of the people in the executive and legislative branches (and perhaps some of the judicial as well) from both parties.
In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone in either chamber of congress who hasn't taken money from the health insurance industry. In other words, the public option was killed by money.
Ask your wife and your youngest child. They are the ones you have to please with your decision. It doesn't matter how much more variety of programming you can bring in, or how much money you can save. What matters is who can use your TV in your house. I'd wager neither your wife nor your youngest child want to use a keyboard to watch TV. If they can't get all the shows they want with a regular TV remote - or at least something that looks like one - then you have a non-starter.
And no amount of monetary savings is worth screwing up your relationship with your family. If you make the system too difficult to use, they will direct their frustration back at you.
And of course, another oft-overlooked advantage of paying someone for your TV service is that when something goes wrong, you have someone you can turn to. Sure, there are plenty of forums for MythTV and the like but nobody who will answer the phone and bring you out a new box when you call.
So think long and hard before you cut the cord. And then when you think you have a solution, think some more.
All the news agencies had already covered and forgotten this story by now.
Frankly, I think a tortoise could have gotten this story up on his own front page in less time...
By chance did they hire the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert?
Couldn't have. His ineptitude is at least entertaining.
The ineptitude of the bosses of ICANN can come across as entertaining - until of course you realize that the idiots making the unbelievably stupid and short-sighted decisions are supposed to be "experts".
She could have purchased it somewhere else and then sent it to Iran. I don't understand why it was important for her to go back to the Apple store other than to bring it to the news station. I'm pretty sure the clerks at Walmart would likely be less concerned about trade embargoes.
RIM has done an outstandingly crappy job of marketing their handsets lately as it is. They might as well spin it off and let someone else try.
... possibly the beginning of time. They have instead brought their products to the front of the pack in competition because they were brutal towards their competition. Going to Microsoft for marketing assistance is like going to the president of Syria for advice on how to handle a disapproving populace.
That said, Microsoft sounds like a great way to drive the Blackberry handset brand in to oblivion. Short of the XBox I can't think of a Microsoft product that has been successfully marketed since
ICANN doesn't do shit these days (it can be argued they hardly ever did). All the current ICANN does is find more crappy ideas to make money off of. By chance did they hire the pointy-haired boss from Dilbert?
There aren't enough users left on this site for the slashdot effect to matter any more. It has been years since a site was taken down by being featured on the front page, load-balanced or not. Even your windows box should easily be able to handle all 30 slashdot users simultaneously loading the front page.
Within the umbrella of biomedicine, there are vastly different job outlooks. Some areas can't hire post-docs and staff scientists fast enough. Others can't afford to pay anyone other than a grad student (who works for less than minimum wage in most cases).
Every store I go in to seems to have Angry Birds figures, cereal, watches, and adult toys. They are all made in China already. Why not just finish it off and move the whole company over their if that is their top brand?
If anyone knows the meaning of FUD, its the slashdot crowd. Likely the only acronyms used more often in discussion here than FUD are MAFIAA and BHO. It's a waste of space and time to expand it.
In the summary he is first named Ra, and then later referred to as "Mr. Ray". Which one is correct?
They often seem to portray President Ahmadenijad as one of the world's greatest geniuses. I expect to see a patriotic picture of him flying one of these.
I was going to post this yesterday when I was watching it, but I figured "nah, slashdot will have already shown this by now, for sure!". Thanks for proving me wrong, guys.
Anyone familiar with what is going on knows that no hacking was involved. The State Department is paying people to post to the web sites in question to counter the Al-Qaeda propaganda.
Even NPR was smart enough to blatantly state this was not hacking. Why is slashdot so out of touch with such a basic technology story?
I will wager that in 10 years, if she decides to practice medicine after having completed med school, she will be making more money than him. Facebook is on a giant bubble that will pop before then.
Exactly how is facebook cutting traffic for the carriers? If I send a text message via FB versus the sms application in my phone, are not the same amount of bytes being transferred? Actually, the FB transfer probably uses more traffic.
You got that right. SMS uses virtually no traffic for the carrier, it is well above 99% profit. Facebook isn't hurting their traffic - it is actually increasing their traffic. Rather, it is hurting their bottom line because they can't get away with marking up data rates to the degree they can mark up text rates. This "story" is basically just the carriers whining that their profit margins are decreasing because they got too comfortable with the obscene returns they were getting from text messages.
Unregulated free markets absolutely require an oppressed underclass and an immobilized middle class in order to generate the desired outcome of maximum profitability for the people at the top. Any other configuration is suboptimal for those aims.
Nonsense. This is precisely what I called making shit up. If one looks at real markets that are as close to unregulated as they get, such as the stock markets, one doesn't see any of these features.
I did no such thing. Just because it does not fit your ideology does not mean it automatically qualifies as "making shit up".
Profit, which is what players in the market seek, comes when a commodity is sold below or above its cost. Profit is maximized only when people are exploited. If everything on the market sold strictly at cost then there would be no exploitation but also no profit.
And in order for there to be people to exploit (to maxmize profit) there needs to be distinct divisions of economic class. A free market that is optimized for profit is also optimized for exploitation of the under classes.
I don't know why you conflate markets with other social problems, but markets aren't responsible for class structures nor oppression of others. That's the domain of human beings who've been doing it longer than the idea of free markets have been around.
You are almost right on that matter. Of course, you likely either won't read this far in my reply or you will misinterpret what I just said. I already said that the market itself can't hurt people, but you conveniently overlooked it because you would rather focus on furthering your misinterpretation of my demonstration that your ayn rand / ron paul fantasy world would require oppression and exploitation.
,br> A market itself is just as agnostic towards the condition as a gun is agnostic towards a murder. Both can be used as instruments of destruction but neither is responsible on their own for the destruction. However much as a gun makes murder easier, a completely unregulated market accelerates exploitation of lower economic classes because that is what must exist to maximize profit.
If a completely unregulated free market truly presented equal opportunity for all, then profit would approach zero. As profit moves further from zero, so does exploitation, oppression, and destruction of opportunity.
It means "does not follow" and refers to any argument
And when you use it as an excuse to not respond to a comment that was a direct response to something you said, you are using the term non sequitur in a non sequitur fashion.
I speak of free markets and you speak of completely unrelated stuff.
No, I am speaking of the consequences of a free market. It is directly related to the free markets of which you wish you speak. Just because you don't want to discuss the consequences of a free market - which is what I was discussing before you inserted yourself in to the conversation - doesn't mean that they are "completely unrelated stuff".
And trades happen because the trade is better than what the traders had. It's voluntary and mutually agreeable. So right there, we have a bunch of net positive actions among the many "oppressed", who use the market to their advantage.
You are discussing only the trade on the terms of those who are most directly involved in the trade. However in a completely unregulated free market there are many who are affected by the trade yet have no role in its terms. That is where the oppression and exploitation come from, when the people with the power to make the trading decisions are making decisions only for their own benefit, passing harm down to those who lack power.
A decent example of a working market that is fairly free is the stock market. It's worked well for centuries. Sure, there are bubble/crashes and other manifestations of social hysteria, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deliver value to the majority of its participants. What it does mean, is that you do have to take care in what you purchase.
The stock market is also a good example of the powerful exploiting the powerless. The trades and deals that occur on the market have downstream effects that can ruin lives of the lower classes.
I think the problem here is that a certain part of society wants to suborn the role played by free markets
I have no intention to make a free market do anything unlawful. Indeed a better argument would be that people who want a completely unregulated market are likely interested in using such a thing to do unlawful (or at the very least immoral) things themselves.
Since they don't have a credible argument against them, they just make shit up.
At this point it looks like you are guilty of that more so than anyone else in this discussion.
Let's take a look at these historical examples of which you speak, and we'll see whether you have any legitimate case or not.
I see no reason to expect that you would actually consider any historical examples, but we could start with Somalia in its current state. We could more on to Afghanistan as well; and for that matter the Russian market has little actual control as well. if you want an older historical example look at feudal Europe and feudal Japan.
Unregulated free markets absolutely require an oppressed underclass and an immobilized middle class in order to generate the desired outcome of maximum profitability for the people at the top. Any other configuration is suboptimal for those aims.
I am not familiar with this strange new definition of freedom you offer, where more power is concentrated in the hands of fewer people
Non sequiturs are irrelevant, by definition.
Calling a direct response non sequitur is itself non sequitur, at best.
Or you don't have a clue what a free market is
I am well aware of what a free market is.
could you at least learn the actual definitions of phrases, not what Big Brother claims?
That statement of yours is non sequitur to be kind, though to be more accurate it is complete bullshit. This has nothing to do with "Big Brother" or whatever you might think that phrase means.
There's no slavery, bondage, or war. It's just a market.
The market itself does not enslave, however the people who exploit it do. When you have a completely unregulated market, power will inevitably concentrate in the hands of those who are most adept at exploiting it. As a result a great number of people will be oppressed by the market because that is what those at the top need in order to retain their profit and power.
A free market creates great opportunity for a very small number of people, and results in the oppression of opportunity for the vast majority of the rest. There is no other way that a free market can work, any student of history can tell you that.
Is that really what the free market wants - economic oppression of the majority of the population?
To the contrary, that's the whole point of free markets: to provide in that market the greatest degree of economic freedom.
I am not familiar with this strange new definition of freedom you offer, where more power is concentrated in the hands of fewer people - and more people find themselves oppressed by the people who have all the power. Either you think it is opposite day or you subscribe to the "happiness in slavery, freedom in bondage, peace in war" mentality.
The very USPS page that is linked to from this summary says that batteries that are in devices are generally exempt from this. Essentially you can ship all the iPods/iPads/iPhones you want. It is external (ie not built-in) batteries that have additional restrictions, though those are not very severe.
for luxury cars it's lexus and acura here with infiniti not so much anymore
Acura? I don't know where you live, but where I live I see a lot more BMW than Acura. And for that matter if you drop the well dressed Camry that poses as a luxury car (Lexus ES series) you see about as many Audis as Lexuses (or whatever the plural form of Lexus is).
Though I do agree that Inifiti is a niche player at best. Nissan never could seem to figure out what they wanted to do with that brand. The only advantage they had was they were the first Japanese luxury brand with a convertible, but it didn't take long for Lexus to deliver a more popular model.