I fail to see how this is bad, actually. Theoretically, the parents are still somewhat responsible for their kids when they are minors.
That's exactly why this is bad. The parents should be responsible for what their kids do on the internet but this law passes that responsibility onto the websites.
I'd liken it to "colored" protesters back in the 60's who sat in the "whites only" sections fully intending to be arrested or to mothers who congregate and all breastfeed their babies together at a restaurant that bans breastfeeding everywhere except in the restroom stalls.
Protesting racial segregation laws is fine. Protesting against rules that a private business sets for behavior on their own property is a ridiculous idea. You are free not to go to their games if you don't like their rules (I don't know what "Southeastern Conference" is, but for I'm assuming it's a private business of some sort) just like breastfeeding feminists are free not to go to restaurants that don't allow breastfeeding. You have no more right to come to my property and act in a way that I disallow just because you happen to think it should be allowed than I have to come to your house and take a dump on your carpet just because I happen to think that's ok.
Actually there are plenty of Russian commercial airliners (some photos) but the GP point about simplicity and reliability may or may not apply to them. They tend to be operated by more or less the same countries who buy Russian military hardware. In recent years they also tended to crash more often than Boeing or Airbus ones but I'm not sure how much of it is related to human error and poor maintenance and how much to airplane design.
A lot of people are profiting from providing exactly the type of added value that a book (or training, or support, or packaging/distributing etc) provides on top of free software. Just ask Red Hat and a gazillion other for-profit companies built around open source. The bunch of programmers you mention presumably have their reasons for donating their work for free but that doesn't impose an obligation on anybody else to follow suit.
Maybe they could just move them next door to the next valley?
Does it even matter where the data center is physically located. I'd say go where the climate is such that it requires the lowest expense on cooling or heating, and where the land, hookers and beer are cheapest.
Not much really since those countries are unrepresentative of the Muslim world, and most, as you said, are mostly small and poor and don't have much internet access or facilities to censor it. Kosovo is arguably not a country as only a minority of the world's countries recognize it and it is under international (UN but in reality NATO) rule so it's not up to them, while Bosnia can't be called a Muslim country as only one third of the population are Muslims. On the other hand most of the *major* Muslim countries (not counting the occupied Iraq and Afghanistan) are classified as either black holes or under surveillance. Funnily enough, Australia is the ONLY non-Muslim and non-totalitarian, country that falls under either of those two classifications. Something to think about for you Aussies out there.
In case of Vista the behavior when detecting user annoyance will be to increase the number of confirmation dialogs for a given action to three (normally there are two) so that the user will get even more pissed off, leading to even more confirmation dialogs. The inevitable result is that the user will eventually smash his computer to bits and buy a new one = Profit!
I think you will have a very heard time convincing an American that paid taxes are *not* something you lose.
They are something you lose, even in Sweden. You lose the choice of what to spend your money on, and even if the choices others make for you sometimes happen to coincide with what you would have spent it on, they rarely match exactly.
But, I have no problem with having a part of my paycheck go to taxes that I do not directly benefit from, for the good of the country. But yeah, I guess I'm a communist.
But what about those who do have a problem with it? Can they opt out without going to jail? By the way, what is to stop you from giving money for the benefit of others and for the good of the country *voluntarily*? Why do you have to be forced by law to do so and why do you want to force other people to do so as well even if they don't want to?
I think you missed my point. I wasn't comparing the systems in USA and Sweden and saying the USA is better (except to the extent that the overall taxes are lower) - I think they are both bad and unfair. Still let me answer some of the points:
Sweden has many government services.
Well, it better. If I put 60% of my money into something I would expect to get at least something back. However, are those services worth it to you? Would you buy those same things if you had the money you earned and you had a choice of what to buy with it instead of that choice being made by the government? Maybe in Sweden everybody agrees on what their money should be spent on and don't want any personal choice in the matter (except voting for those who spend it for them), but I very much doubt it.
In the USA somebody who is rich and doesn't do any paperwork easily goes over 50% when its all added up
It is unlikely that anybody in the US is paying over 50% and only the people in states with high taxes such as California are getting close to that. In my state, which has no state tax, even the wealthiest will pay at most 30% in federal income tax and social security, and the rest (sales, property, inheritance taxes etc) obviously depend on the individual circumstances .
My property taxes are HIGH and the work over the last 20 years put into my house by MYSELF is costing me a ton of money everytime I have to let the city inspect and rate my house every 5 years. Oh, they NEVER lower the value; I buried the pool I DUG with a shovel and I'm STILL paying for it.
Ok, and I agree that this is a horrible situation and it should end. What's your point? You seem to argue in favor of taxes one moment and then against them the next.
Many college grads have a house worth of debt now; where in other nations college is subsidized.
Yes but you have to look at the both sides of the equation. Aren't people who don't go to college, who don't send their children to college or perhaps don't have any children being victimized by being forced to pay for other people's education? Why shouldn't those who use a service pay for it, as opposed to everybody.
Sorry but you are just poorly informed, which is not surprising since this issue has been avoided by the media and politicians ever since 1945. Japan has already made several attempts to surrender before the bombs were dropped, and under pretty much the same terms as those that were eventually accepted: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p508_Hoffman.html
Firebombing campaign probably wouldn't have been necessary either as it now seems pretty well confirmed that Japan was already trying to surrender before the bomb was dropped, and under the same terms that were eventually accepted: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p508_Hoffman.html
Ok let me rephrase: I don't think a country in which a person is forced by law to work nearly 60% of their working hours as an unpaid slave to others or else leave the country can be called civilized.
I'm sorry but you actually lack proportion and especially perspective. Simple facts: US has engaged in more wars, invaded more countries, dropped more nuclear bombs on cities, has more military bases in foreign countries, and in recent years undermined the international order and stability far more than any other country in the world: http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/26024.html
It's the same crappy industry that charged insane prices for crappy products and ripped off artists for many, many years and had enormous profits to show for it. That leaves us with suing its customers, but I suspect that that is a symptom, not a cause of its demise. So, for cause I'm afraid you have to look elsewhere (hint: file sharing). Not that I'm sorry at all that its going, but we might as well be honest. I am just curious to see what will replace it and will it be any better.
- anticompetitive business practices (price fixing, etc) that have given potential customers a sour attitude towards music labels
There is some truth in that, but come on. People really stopped buying music because of that?
- destruction of diversity in radio broadcasting (something the music industry ironically pushed for) via the death of media ownership regulations mid-'90s
Wrong. Radio hardly has any influence on what music people listen to these days.
And finally, the main reason:
- replacement of almost all talented acts that produced good music, with hyperproduced kiddie-shit "artists" whose assets are not musical talent or singing voices, but barely-covered bikini bottoms and tits. Just you wait: in 4 years, tops, "Hannah Montana" will be pulling a Britney-style selfdestruct. And neither of them are capable of producing "music" even remotely worth listening to.
I doubt very much that the music industry is replacing musicians who would sell more music with those who would sell less. What you or I might consider quality music doesn't come into it at all and shouldn't. If people like "hyperproduced kiddie-shit artists", which they obviously do, then that's what they get. Just like on a typical weekend out of the top 10 grossing movies I would consider 9 or more to be completely unwatchable garbage, but other people obviously have different tastes so how can I say that unless movie industry makes more movies that I would like its profits would suffer? Your personal problems with the music industry are not necessarily the same ones that are causing its troubles.
Who says that the program is about fuel efficiency? It seems pretty clear that it is designed to stimulate sales for the auto industry. Not that taking money from one set of people and giving it to others to encourage them to buy new cars is not a horribly wrong thing for the government to be doing anyway.
So that graduate schools and employers have something to go by when selecting candidates. Besides, is it fair to a student who worked hard for four years to start from the same point as someone who partied the whole time?
But my intelligence isn't proved in some one-time essay. It's all about how I create real solutions for real problems. It's never about some random problem that some dumbfuck in some ivory tower created.
Choosing to bypass testing is the right answer, no matter what the question.
Testing is not perfect but it does have a useful purpose. Yes, everybody is unique blah, blah, but there are millions of students at all levels in the USA and you got to classify them somehow by ability, so what method do you propose? The right answer is to keep improving the testing methods, not to bypass testing. A good test should present something like real world problems and take into account the difference in priorities for engineering students, versus, say English students etc. And by the way, the ability to communicate, including in writing, is very important even for nerds.
If it's true, as TFA suggests, that the Chinese guy who killed himself for losing an iphone prototype was involved in passing it on to knockoff manufacturers, then no you're not the first.
Slashdot Mirror
Must be, I hear he doesn't eat pork.
I fail to see how this is bad, actually. Theoretically, the parents are still somewhat responsible for their kids when they are minors.
That's exactly why this is bad. The parents should be responsible for what their kids do on the internet but this law passes that responsibility onto the websites.
I'd liken it to "colored" protesters back in the 60's who sat in the "whites only" sections fully intending to be arrested or to mothers who congregate and all breastfeed their babies together at a restaurant that bans breastfeeding everywhere except in the restroom stalls.
Protesting racial segregation laws is fine. Protesting against rules that a private business sets for behavior on their own property is a ridiculous idea. You are free not to go to their games if you don't like their rules (I don't know what "Southeastern Conference" is, but for I'm assuming it's a private business of some sort) just like breastfeeding feminists are free not to go to restaurants that don't allow breastfeeding. You have no more right to come to my property and act in a way that I disallow just because you happen to think it should be allowed than I have to come to your house and take a dump on your carpet just because I happen to think that's ok.
Actually there are plenty of Russian commercial airliners (some photos) but the GP point about simplicity and reliability may or may not apply to them. They tend to be operated by more or less the same countries who buy Russian military hardware. In recent years they also tended to crash more often than Boeing or Airbus ones but I'm not sure how much of it is related to human error and poor maintenance and how much to airplane design.
A lot of people are profiting from providing exactly the type of added value that a book (or training, or support, or packaging/distributing etc) provides on top of free software. Just ask Red Hat and a gazillion other for-profit companies built around open source. The bunch of programmers you mention presumably have their reasons for donating their work for free but that doesn't impose an obligation on anybody else to follow suit.
Twitter is a reflection of what people are interested in right now
Correction: Twitter is a reflection of what morons are interested in right now. Still, useful marketing information.
This answer always amuses me because it makes it seem like we have another choice. We don't -- or at least we have very little other options.
Actually, it is your answer that is amusing. You don't have a choice but to buy music from major labels?
Maybe they could just move them next door to the next valley?
Does it even matter where the data center is physically located. I'd say go where the climate is such that it requires the lowest expense on cooling or heating, and where the land, hookers and beer are cheapest.
For what it's worth
Not much really since those countries are unrepresentative of the Muslim world, and most, as you said, are mostly small and poor and don't have much internet access or facilities to censor it. Kosovo is arguably not a country as only a minority of the world's countries recognize it and it is under international (UN but in reality NATO) rule so it's not up to them, while Bosnia can't be called a Muslim country as only one third of the population are Muslims. On the other hand most of the *major* Muslim countries (not counting the occupied Iraq and Afghanistan) are classified as either black holes or under surveillance. Funnily enough, Australia is the ONLY non-Muslim and non-totalitarian, country that falls under either of those two classifications. Something to think about for you Aussies out there.
Which Muslim countries do not censor the Internet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_blackholes.svg
In case of Vista the behavior when detecting user annoyance will be to increase the number of confirmation dialogs for a given action to three (normally there are two) so that the user will get even more pissed off, leading to even more confirmation dialogs. The inevitable result is that the user will eventually smash his computer to bits and buy a new one = Profit!
I think you will have a very heard time convincing an American that paid taxes are *not* something you lose.
They are something you lose, even in Sweden. You lose the choice of what to spend your money on, and even if the choices others make for you sometimes happen to coincide with what you would have spent it on, they rarely match exactly.
But, I have no problem with having a part of my paycheck go to taxes that I do not directly benefit from, for the good of the country. But yeah, I guess I'm a communist.
But what about those who do have a problem with it? Can they opt out without going to jail? By the way, what is to stop you from giving money for the benefit of others and for the good of the country *voluntarily*? Why do you have to be forced by law to do so and why do you want to force other people to do so as well even if they don't want to?
I think you missed my point. I wasn't comparing the systems in USA and Sweden and saying the USA is better (except to the extent that the overall taxes are lower) - I think they are both bad and unfair. Still let me answer some of the points:
Sweden has many government services.
Well, it better. If I put 60% of my money into something I would expect to get at least something back. However, are those services worth it to you? Would you buy those same things if you had the money you earned and you had a choice of what to buy with it instead of that choice being made by the government? Maybe in Sweden everybody agrees on what their money should be spent on and don't want any personal choice in the matter (except voting for those who spend it for them), but I very much doubt it.
In the USA somebody who is rich and doesn't do any paperwork easily goes over 50% when its all added up
It is unlikely that anybody in the US is paying over 50% and only the people in states with high taxes such as California are getting close to that. In my state, which has no state tax, even the wealthiest will pay at most 30% in federal income tax and social security, and the rest (sales, property, inheritance taxes etc) obviously depend on the individual circumstances .
My property taxes are HIGH and the work over the last 20 years put into my house by MYSELF is costing me a ton of money everytime I have to let the city inspect and rate my house every 5 years. Oh, they NEVER lower the value; I buried the pool I DUG with a shovel and I'm STILL paying for it.
Ok, and I agree that this is a horrible situation and it should end. What's your point? You seem to argue in favor of taxes one moment and then against them the next.
Many college grads have a house worth of debt now; where in other nations college is subsidized.
Yes but you have to look at the both sides of the equation. Aren't people who don't go to college, who don't send their children to college or perhaps don't have any children being victimized by being forced to pay for other people's education? Why shouldn't those who use a service pay for it, as opposed to everybody.
Sorry but you are just poorly informed, which is not surprising since this issue has been avoided by the media and politicians ever since 1945. Japan has already made several attempts to surrender before the bombs were dropped, and under pretty much the same terms as those that were eventually accepted: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p508_Hoffman.html
Firebombing campaign probably wouldn't have been necessary either as it now seems pretty well confirmed that Japan was already trying to surrender before the bomb was dropped, and under the same terms that were eventually accepted: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p508_Hoffman.html
Ok let me rephrase: I don't think a country in which a person is forced by law to work nearly 60% of their working hours as an unpaid slave to others or else leave the country can be called civilized.
Happy?
I don't think a country in which a person is forced by law to work 60% of their working hours as an unpaid slave to others can be called civilized.
I'm sorry but you actually lack proportion and especially perspective. Simple facts: US has engaged in more wars, invaded more countries, dropped more nuclear bombs on cities, has more military bases in foreign countries, and in recent years undermined the international order and stability far more than any other country in the world: http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/26024.html
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things to like about USA and I agree with most points for example in this article: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NmFlMzViMWZmYjY5ZmUzNDg2N2JiMGMxZDllYjA2MmM= . But a peaceful nation who refuses to exercise any semblance of imperialism!? You must be joking.
It's the same crappy industry that charged insane prices for crappy products and ripped off artists for many, many years and had enormous profits to show for it. That leaves us with suing its customers, but I suspect that that is a symptom, not a cause of its demise. So, for cause I'm afraid you have to look elsewhere (hint: file sharing). Not that I'm sorry at all that its going, but we might as well be honest. I am just curious to see what will replace it and will it be any better.
- anticompetitive business practices (price fixing, etc) that have given potential customers a sour attitude towards music labels
There is some truth in that, but come on. People really stopped buying music because of that?
- destruction of diversity in radio broadcasting (something the music industry ironically pushed for) via the death of media ownership regulations mid-'90s
Wrong. Radio hardly has any influence on what music people listen to these days.
And finally, the main reason: - replacement of almost all talented acts that produced good music, with hyperproduced kiddie-shit "artists" whose assets are not musical talent or singing voices, but barely-covered bikini bottoms and tits. Just you wait: in 4 years, tops, "Hannah Montana" will be pulling a Britney-style selfdestruct. And neither of them are capable of producing "music" even remotely worth listening to.
I doubt very much that the music industry is replacing musicians who would sell more music with those who would sell less. What you or I might consider quality music doesn't come into it at all and shouldn't. If people like "hyperproduced kiddie-shit artists", which they obviously do, then that's what they get. Just like on a typical weekend out of the top 10 grossing movies I would consider 9 or more to be completely unwatchable garbage, but other people obviously have different tastes so how can I say that unless movie industry makes more movies that I would like its profits would suffer? Your personal problems with the music industry are not necessarily the same ones that are causing its troubles.
Who says that the program is about fuel efficiency? It seems pretty clear that it is designed to stimulate sales for the auto industry. Not that taking money from one set of people and giving it to others to encourage them to buy new cars is not a horribly wrong thing for the government to be doing anyway.
So that graduate schools and employers have something to go by when selecting candidates. Besides, is it fair to a student who worked hard for four years to start from the same point as someone who partied the whole time?
But my intelligence isn't proved in some one-time essay. It's all about how I create real solutions for real problems. It's never about some random problem that some dumbfuck in some ivory tower created. Choosing to bypass testing is the right answer, no matter what the question.
Testing is not perfect but it does have a useful purpose. Yes, everybody is unique blah, blah, but there are millions of students at all levels in the USA and you got to classify them somehow by ability, so what method do you propose? The right answer is to keep improving the testing methods, not to bypass testing. A good test should present something like real world problems and take into account the difference in priorities for engineering students, versus, say English students etc. And by the way, the ability to communicate, including in writing, is very important even for nerds.
No, some will be offered Wiitirement, while others will be Wiideployed.
If it's true, as TFA suggests, that the Chinese guy who killed himself for losing an iphone prototype was involved in passing it on to knockoff manufacturers, then no you're not the first.