Remember, its for my chick, who isn't going to be watching movies, listening to a vast mp3 collection, playing games, etc. She is doing a pretty neat project that involves a lot of internet research and Photoshop and needed something to work on. I doubt in 4 years she'll fill up 60 gigs. The laptop I use every day of my life for both work and home has only 20 gigs and I manage to do fine. If she really needs the extra space, we have a 300 gig external hard drive she can plug into. If the laptop was for myself I would of upgraded to the 100 gig, but for her I opted to go with the best video card upgrade I could get in order to help future-proof it. I can always get a larger hard drive later if she really needs it.
Yes, the 1920x1200 resolution is really really really hard to read. I mainly got it because I was trying to upgrade the laptop to $1999 so I could use a coupon for $750 off $1999, and I decided that she could use that screen resolution in her mobile Photoshop work. For normal use she puts it another resolution.
I just bought my girlfriend a laptop with 1 gig ram, 1.6 P-M chip, 128 meg x300 video card, 15.4 inch screen, 9 cell battery, 60 gig hard drive, and - get this - 1920x1200 resolution. Total cost? 1350 shipped from Dell. Her laptop goes 5 hours a charge during normal use, and runs totally cool the whole time.
Honestly you need to reevaluate your stance on laptops, and I need to reevaluate the fact that my girlfriend has a better computer than me..agrippa.
Why would I buy anything for my personal use? It would all be a business expense and owned by my LLC. Not only that, but I would buy everything using pre-tax dollars, and only pay taxes on the adjusted income of my LLC. That's a pretty standard practice, in fact I have several friends with businesses who do that already.
Well then, using your system, I would just create my own LLC, put all my assets into it, have a personal income of $0, and get everything for free. Honestly, I'm going to do that eventually, but I'd do it a lot quicker if I was force to pay your income-consumption tax.
You screw-the-rich attitude is dated and ineffective, because the rich are usually rich cause they are smart or can hire smart people and exploit the tax code. We need a fair flat-tax system that treats people equally and allows few, if any, loopholes.
"If the population continues exploding, then even within my lifetime there will be a hundred billionish people on Earth. How the heck are we going to get even a million people off the planet, let alone billions of them?"
The population of the world will continue to grow, then start declining midway through this century.
This is because of several factors:
1. The USA and Europe will go into population decline in about 20 years. Their birth rates have stagnated. EU will go faster if its member states don't start allowing more immigrants in to replace the dying population. The USA will be better off because of its immigration policies, but will still face population decline because there will be more old people than young workers to take their place.
2. As large nations (India, China, Brazil) transform economically, they will (and are) experiencing a declining birth rate. China already has reduced its birth rate rather substantially. This will dramatically slow down population expansion.
3. AIDS has killed off, and will continue to kill off, a substantial number of the younger population in Africa. Less young people = less kids = population decline over time.
4. Japan is already in the throes of population decline. In Japan there are regions almost devoid of children and schools closed down and turned into elderly care facilities. The birth rate in Japan is horribly low and they have more elderly than young. Their xenophobic culture restricts their resupply of young workers.
If you want a really good analysis of all of this, read The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett.
I have found that the lifetime of a laptop in a business enviroment is in direct relation to who you give it to. I have yet to see a laptop break in the hands of an programmer/sysadmin, and I have seen new laptops break within days of being in the hands of a salesman/PHB. Sure, some laptops are lemons, but I think stupid user error accounts for way more than poor build quality.
What's ironic is the Bush's Social Security reform isnt really all that much different than Clinton's first proposed Social Security reform. But back then the Republicans decried it as unnecessary and horrible, and the AARP came down squarely on their side. There are tons of quotes of Republicans praising and glorifying how wonderful AARP is and and equal number of Democrats railing against it.
Fast forward 10 years and its literally the same situation reversed, with the AARP squarely on the side of anti-Bush reform Democrats, and now you have Republicans decrying AARP and Democrats praising it. And, its almost the same proposed reforms, down to a similar private account initiative.
When its all said and done I hope Social Security reform quietly dies and the real issue, which is Medicare reform, sees the light of day. Medicare is projected to run out of money in something like 2012, making it much more of an immediate threat, not just to people who need it, but to everyone that pays taxes.
"I don't want to start a language flamewar, but I just finished reading a slashdot article comparing Ruby on Rails to Java + Spring/Hibernate and was hoping that was enough to interject into this conversation with the hope someone would click on my free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox link."
There are some major benefits to having your taxes done by a certified professional.
a) If you get audited by the IRS, your tax preparer is the one that talks to them instead of you. The IRS can pick just about any reason they want to audit you, from legitimate inaccuracies/questions they have to the sky being blue that day (ie a random audit)
b) Your tax preparer, if decent, should know more loopholes in the state/federal tax structures that are apropos to you than TurboTax or even you yourself know.
c) The fees you pay to a tax preparer are write-offs for next year's taxes.
I just had my taxes done this week. It cost me $370, which is obviously a lot higher than TurboTax would be. This year I had a lot of tricky stuff including multiple jobs (some contracting), a house purchase, stock sales, etc. Considering she got me over 3000 off my federal/state taxes, I feel that its worth it. Some of the exemptions she used were totally unknown to TurboTax, which I have used in years past.
It might not make sense to you, but to the really rich people they are being marketed to, 27k isn't that much. If you can afford to blow 100k+ a weekend in Vegas you probably don't care if some new toy costs 27k as long as its cool.
The leading ticket in the Iraqi elections is indeed Shiite, with a few leading clerics, but their platform was to avoid theocratic rule like their Iranian neighbors.
Afghanistan is/was 7th century precisely because they don't have many oil reserves, and thusly, no one cared about what happened to them after the Cold War until they started exporting terrorism. If Osama Bin Laden hadn't been based in Afghanistan and the Taliban didn't support global terrorism then they would still be in power, still oppressing their people, still violating human rights, and almost no one would care.
Over 80% (and growing every year) of the oil from the Middle East goes to countries outside of the US.
Protecting the oil in the Middle East wasnt just about America, take off your blinders. Would you have liked China to intervene instead in 5/10 years when its economy was being hamstrung by ineffecient access to oil?
Also, what do you think would of happened to the Middle East if they didn't have oil? Guess what, no one would really care. The various factions in the region would hack each other to pieces in religious/ethnic wars for decades, just like what is happening in the mass genocide in several parts of Africa, because frankly, if you don't have a resource the world cares about, the world doesn't care about you.
Oil is what keeps the world interested in not letting the Middle East degenerate into the 7th century.
In the closing months of our war with Germany, the Germans packed up tons of their research/secret weapons and shipped them to Japan. So, it wouldn't suprise me much if the Japanese had a much further along nuclear program than we suspected, mostly because the German research was transferred there.
I wrote a paper in college on the war for German scientists between the US and USSR in the days leading up to full Allied occupation - on the American side, it was called Operation Paperclip, and helped import much of the talent that founded and ran NASA.
"Either they buy you out, sue you into oblivion, or both (think mp3.com)."
Being as someone that worked for MP3.com since almost its beginning, I think I'm ok in saying the following:
1. Beam-it was a legal crapshoot, we knew this, and we lost. The day it was announced at a company meeting almost everyone knew we were going to get the shit sued out of us for doing it. There was a small legal gray area in copyright law Michael Robertson tried to exploit.
2. If not for losing hundreds of millions of dollars on lawyers/fines for doing Beam-it, MP3.com would probably still be in business today.
MP3.com's own stupidity lead to its downfall, not the RIAA. In fact, in an alternate universe, its probably still serving up Big Poo Generator while slowly burning through $400 million in IPO money.
"Maybe I'm wrong, but I've felt Google has gotten lazy. Lots of the search results are nothing but sales sites these days... with all that brain power they brag about, you'd think they could have done something about that by now."
Google didn't get lazy, in fact they got more determined, but not for your benefit. Being as Google is now public, their responsibility is first to their shareholders and not to people using their site for free.
The same thing happened to the old MP3.com when I worked there. When I originally signed on pre-IPO, it was about giving independent artists a home (and making a few bucks for Michael Robertson in the process). After we went public, the emphasis did a 180 almost overnight, switching from the artist community and users to almost 100% 'how can we make money from this', because Wall Street didn't care if our users/artist community liked the site, but if we were generating enough (or any haha) revenue.
Now, I don't think Google will follow the same self destructive path MP3.com did, but their emphasis certainly has changed.
"I don't think I used inflammatory rhetoric, but I did make up the numbers. I told you I made them up and I told you how I made them up. I made them up the way I did because I thought that whatever side you were on you were likely to see them as concervative minimums."
You made up numbers in a highly emotional debate and then have the gall to defend yourself as having some noble purpose.
Have you considered running for Congress? You'd be perfect for either party. You'll find lots of made up numbers and even more heartstrings to tug at using them.
Do you ever think before you post, or do you just froth at the mouth so much to be heard on Slashdot you never consider what you are posting on? It is the honest truth that almost everytime I casually read Slashdot and come across a posting that really makes no sense at all to the topic at hand, it has your name attached to it.
If you had taken the time to read, you would of realized they were not ranked by sales, but ranked by a subjective, opinionated review of everything the DVD came with.
You put a lot of thought into explaining yourself into an endless loop of trite crap to defend one of the most corrupt world leaders ever.
I marvel at your ability to transverse google looking for whatever straws to grasp at in order to defend your clearly delusional concept of world events.
I never said what Reagan did was good, I said at least he could defend himself saying it was national interest. Kofi Annan, his son, his personal staff were all involved in a scheme to SELL BAD FOOD TO IRAQIS FOR KICKBACKS. I can't believe your audacity to defend that type of action. Ohh, only 5 billion was made off feeding Iraqis bad food! It wasn't that bad (never mind that its estimated at 23 billion by international investigations, not 5)! You sir, sicken me.
Wake up and smell the roses. Your hero Annan couldn't, or wouldn't, intervene in mass genocide in Africa, slaughter in Croatia, etc, WHILE LEADING THE ONLY WORLD BODY EVER CREATED TO DEAL WITH SUCH SITUATIONS, but oh boy, is he fast to give amnesty to his friends that knowningly sell rotten food. At best, he's a useless tool, at worst, he's a criminal.
Kofi Annan's son was a participant in a scheme that sold rotten, diseased food (as good food) to Iraq's dictator in order to receive a kickback on the profits of the oil, and benefitted Sadaam to the tune of 23 billion dollars that he used not to help his people, but to reinvest in his military and hide in bank accounts overseas.
Reagan sold arms to Iran to free Americans held captive and used the proceeds to fund essentially anti-Communists during the Cold War.
Maybe Reagan (if he was still alive) in your analogy could argue he was acted at least in national interests, what can Kofi Annan's son argue? That Iraqis like diseased food? I fail to see the basis for your comparison.
Its time to face the music. Kofi Annan has been the singular most ineffective leader the UN has ever had, and when his term is over, I hope the world collectively cheers. It pains me to say it but I think Clinton would be an excellent choice to replace him.
Theaters charge that much because the studios take most of the first week's revenue of movies. It is on a sliding scale payout (starting at ~95% to studios) and only after like 4 weeks of being out does a theatre realize any decent revenue on ticket sales alone. Since most movies are played out after 4 weeks, that's not a lot of profit. Therefore theaters charge 700% margins on the snack bar to turn a profit.
Essentially, theaters exist almost exclusively to sell you popcorn and candy and soda at ridiculous prices and use the movies they are playing to lure you in.
"I sat in an office of AIS and saw three different people on one high speed connection post about Sollog. They were all called the same person and Sollog. Then I went to local Starbucks and saw another person post to Wikipedia pro Sollog statements and they too were called Sollog."
You are half right on your first point. The US takes about 20% of the oil from the middle east right now. That means 80% goes somewhere else, with a large (and ever-growing) part going to Asia (China a big percentage of that) and India. Therefore having a stable middle east is in the best interests of not just the US, but the up-and-coming developing super economies.
China doesn't have the capacity to have a military presence in the middle east just yet, and they probably never will. China needs the US to buy their goods, European banks to invest in them, and Arabs to provide them with oil. Therefore you won't see China pissing off any of them with a military intervention in the middle east.
The only military force with the capacity to go somewhere not next door and do something once it gets there is the US, as the US has the world's only true blue water navy. China's military may eventually rival the US around 2025, but many economists, to our Pentagon's war planning division's dismay, believe that China will concentrate more on their economic development and less on trying to be a near-peer competitor military to the US.
So, basically the only force able, and willing, to stabalize the middle east is the US, and someone needs to stabalize it for the world's sake. Economies that aren't being taxed heavily to buy oil are economies that can grow. Conversely, economies that are forced to pay out the nose for oil aren't going to grow and the newbie powerhouse ones (read: Brazil, India, China) will start to decay. Note: this is not an argument that invading Iraq was justified just yet, but it was probably inevitable. The US will need to concentrate much more on coalition building than Bush thinks it does in order to lead an effective peacekeeping and nation building force.
I contracted for about 6 months this year after working full time for the past 5 years since leaving college. Even though I was making decent money as a contractor, I really detested the fact that I had no health benefits, no 401k, etc, and that I had to save up a large percentage of what I made just to pay taxes. In the end I was making less contracting than I had made at my previous job, even though my paychecks were bigger. I needed more stability so when one of my friends had an opening at his company I took that. About the only benefit to me of being a contractor was I was able to put in 1 hour notice (it was structured in my contract I could leave at anytime).
On the other hand, I have friends who swear by contracting and love the free time and ability to choose their jobs. It wasn't for me though.
No, that doesn't solve the problem. You seriously don't understand many in the independant artist community. If this gets popular enough, its abolutely trivial to, and someone will, write a program that creates a wide variety of dummy "interests", but also include their own music and the music of the people they agreed to promote. Thusly the system will have been corrupted.
This has similarities to the application I wrote for MP3.com called Stations, which a few months after it was released was abused almost by exploiting artists who screwed it over it to the point of uselessness.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember, its for my chick, who isn't going to be watching movies, listening to a vast mp3 collection, playing games, etc. She is doing a pretty neat project that involves a lot of internet research and Photoshop and needed something to work on. I doubt in 4 years she'll fill up 60 gigs. The laptop I use every day of my life for both work and home has only 20 gigs and I manage to do fine. If she really needs the extra space, we have a 300 gig external hard drive she can plug into. If the laptop was for myself I would of upgraded to the 100 gig, but for her I opted to go with the best video card upgrade I could get in order to help future-proof it. I can always get a larger hard drive later if she really needs it.
.agrippa.
Yes, the 1920x1200 resolution is really really really hard to read. I mainly got it because I was trying to upgrade the laptop to $1999 so I could use a coupon for $750 off $1999, and I decided that she could use that screen resolution in her mobile Photoshop work. For normal use she puts it another resolution.
I just bought my girlfriend a laptop with 1 gig ram, 1.6 P-M chip, 128 meg x300 video card, 15.4 inch screen, 9 cell battery, 60 gig hard drive, and - get this - 1920x1200 resolution. Total cost? 1350 shipped from Dell. Her laptop goes 5 hours a charge during normal use, and runs totally cool the whole time.
.agrippa.
Honestly you need to reevaluate your stance on laptops, and I need to reevaluate the fact that my girlfriend has a better computer than me.
Why would I buy anything for my personal use? It would all be a business expense and owned by my LLC. Not only that, but I would buy everything using pre-tax dollars, and only pay taxes on the adjusted income of my LLC. That's a pretty standard practice, in fact I have several friends with businesses who do that already.
.agrippa.
Well then, using your system, I would just create my own LLC, put all my assets into it, have a personal income of $0, and get everything for free. Honestly, I'm going to do that eventually, but I'd do it a lot quicker if I was force to pay your income-consumption tax.
.agrippa.
You screw-the-rich attitude is dated and ineffective, because the rich are usually rich cause they are smart or can hire smart people and exploit the tax code. We need a fair flat-tax system that treats people equally and allows few, if any, loopholes.
"If the population continues exploding, then even within my lifetime there will be a hundred billionish people on Earth. How the heck are we going to get even a million people off the planet, let alone billions of them?"
.agrippa.
The population of the world will continue to grow, then start declining midway through this century.
This is because of several factors:
1. The USA and Europe will go into population decline in about 20 years. Their birth rates have stagnated. EU will go faster if its member states don't start allowing more immigrants in to replace the dying population. The USA will be better off because of its immigration policies, but will still face population decline because there will be more old people than young workers to take their place.
2. As large nations (India, China, Brazil) transform economically, they will (and are) experiencing a declining birth rate. China already has reduced its birth rate rather substantially. This will dramatically slow down population expansion.
3. AIDS has killed off, and will continue to kill off, a substantial number of the younger population in Africa. Less young people = less kids = population decline over time.
4. Japan is already in the throes of population decline. In Japan there are regions almost devoid of children and schools closed down and turned into elderly care facilities. The birth rate in Japan is horribly low and they have more elderly than young. Their xenophobic culture restricts their resupply of young workers.
If you want a really good analysis of all of this, read The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett.
I have found that the lifetime of a laptop in a business enviroment is in direct relation to who you give it to. I have yet to see a laptop break in the hands of an programmer/sysadmin, and I have seen new laptops break within days of being in the hands of a salesman/PHB. Sure, some laptops are lemons, but I think stupid user error accounts for way more than poor build quality.
.agrippa.
What's ironic is the Bush's Social Security reform isnt really all that much different than Clinton's first proposed Social Security reform. But back then the Republicans decried it as unnecessary and horrible, and the AARP came down squarely on their side. There are tons of quotes of Republicans praising and glorifying how wonderful AARP is and and equal number of Democrats railing against it.
.agrippa.
Fast forward 10 years and its literally the same situation reversed, with the AARP squarely on the side of anti-Bush reform Democrats, and now you have Republicans decrying AARP and Democrats praising it. And, its almost the same proposed reforms, down to a similar private account initiative.
When its all said and done I hope Social Security reform quietly dies and the real issue, which is Medicare reform, sees the light of day. Medicare is projected to run out of money in something like 2012, making it much more of an immediate threat, not just to people who need it, but to everyone that pays taxes.
Cheer up. It could of been renamed to "Manspire".
.agrippa.
What you meant to type was:
.agrippa.
"I don't want to start a language flamewar, but I just finished reading a slashdot article comparing Ruby on Rails to Java + Spring/Hibernate and was hoping that was enough to interject into this conversation with the hope someone would click on my free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox link."
Don't worry, it happens.
There are some major benefits to having your taxes done by a certified professional.
.agrippa.
a) If you get audited by the IRS, your tax preparer is the one that talks to them instead of you. The IRS can pick just about any reason they want to audit you, from legitimate inaccuracies/questions they have to the sky being blue that day (ie a random audit)
b) Your tax preparer, if decent, should know more loopholes in the state/federal tax structures that are apropos to you than TurboTax or even you yourself know.
c) The fees you pay to a tax preparer are write-offs for next year's taxes.
I just had my taxes done this week. It cost me $370, which is obviously a lot higher than TurboTax would be. This year I had a lot of tricky stuff including multiple jobs (some contracting), a house purchase, stock sales, etc. Considering she got me over 3000 off my federal/state taxes, I feel that its worth it. Some of the exemptions she used were totally unknown to TurboTax, which I have used in years past.
It might not make sense to you, but to the really rich people they are being marketed to, 27k isn't that much. If you can afford to blow 100k+ a weekend in Vegas you probably don't care if some new toy costs 27k as long as its cool.
.agrippa.
The leading ticket in the Iraqi elections is indeed Shiite, with a few leading clerics, but their platform was to avoid theocratic rule like their Iranian neighbors.
.agrippa.
Afghanistan is/was 7th century precisely because they don't have many oil reserves, and thusly, no one cared about what happened to them after the Cold War until they started exporting terrorism. If Osama Bin Laden hadn't been based in Afghanistan and the Taliban didn't support global terrorism then they would still be in power, still oppressing their people, still violating human rights, and almost no one would care.
Over 80% (and growing every year) of the oil from the Middle East goes to countries outside of the US.
.agrippa.
Protecting the oil in the Middle East wasnt just about America, take off your blinders. Would you have liked China to intervene instead in 5/10 years when its economy was being hamstrung by ineffecient access to oil?
Also, what do you think would of happened to the Middle East if they didn't have oil? Guess what, no one would really care. The various factions in the region would hack each other to pieces in religious/ethnic wars for decades, just like what is happening in the mass genocide in several parts of Africa, because frankly, if you don't have a resource the world cares about, the world doesn't care about you.
Oil is what keeps the world interested in not letting the Middle East degenerate into the 7th century.
In the closing months of our war with Germany, the Germans packed up tons of their research/secret weapons and shipped them to Japan. So, it wouldn't suprise me much if the Japanese had a much further along nuclear program than we suspected, mostly because the German research was transferred there.
.agrippa.
I wrote a paper in college on the war for German scientists between the US and USSR in the days leading up to full Allied occupation - on the American side, it was called Operation Paperclip, and helped import much of the talent that founded and ran NASA.
"Either they buy you out, sue you into oblivion, or both (think mp3.com)."
.agrippa.
Being as someone that worked for MP3.com since almost its beginning, I think I'm ok in saying the following:
1. Beam-it was a legal crapshoot, we knew this, and we lost. The day it was announced at a company meeting almost everyone knew we were going to get the shit sued out of us for doing it. There was a small legal gray area in copyright law Michael Robertson tried to exploit.
2. If not for losing hundreds of millions of dollars on lawyers/fines for doing Beam-it, MP3.com would probably still be in business today.
MP3.com's own stupidity lead to its downfall, not the RIAA. In fact, in an alternate universe, its probably still serving up Big Poo Generator while slowly burning through $400 million in IPO money.
"Maybe I'm wrong, but I've felt Google has gotten lazy. Lots of the search results are nothing but sales sites these days ... with all that brain power they brag about, you'd think they could have done something about that by now."
.agrippa.
Google didn't get lazy, in fact they got more determined, but not for your benefit. Being as Google is now public, their responsibility is first to their shareholders and not to people using their site for free.
The same thing happened to the old MP3.com when I worked there. When I originally signed on pre-IPO, it was about giving independent artists a home (and making a few bucks for Michael Robertson in the process). After we went public, the emphasis did a 180 almost overnight, switching from the artist community and users to almost 100% 'how can we make money from this', because Wall Street didn't care if our users/artist community liked the site, but if we were generating enough (or any haha) revenue.
Now, I don't think Google will follow the same self destructive path MP3.com did, but their emphasis certainly has changed.
"I don't think I used inflammatory rhetoric, but I did make up the numbers. I told you I made them up and I told you how I made them up. I made them up the way I did because I thought that whatever side you were on you were likely to see them as concervative minimums."
.agrippa.
You made up numbers in a highly emotional debate and then have the gall to defend yourself as having some noble purpose.
Have you considered running for Congress? You'd be perfect for either party. You'll find lots of made up numbers and even more heartstrings to tug at using them.
Do you ever think before you post, or do you just froth at the mouth so much to be heard on Slashdot you never consider what you are posting on? It is the honest truth that almost everytime I casually read Slashdot and come across a posting that really makes no sense at all to the topic at hand, it has your name attached to it.
.agrippa.
If you had taken the time to read, you would of realized they were not ranked by sales, but ranked by a subjective, opinionated review of everything the DVD came with.
You put a lot of thought into explaining yourself into an endless loop of trite crap to defend one of the most corrupt world leaders ever.
.agrippa.
I marvel at your ability to transverse google looking for whatever straws to grasp at in order to defend your clearly delusional concept of world events.
I never said what Reagan did was good, I said at least he could defend himself saying it was national interest. Kofi Annan, his son, his personal staff were all involved in a scheme to SELL BAD FOOD TO IRAQIS FOR KICKBACKS. I can't believe your audacity to defend that type of action. Ohh, only 5 billion was made off feeding Iraqis bad food! It wasn't that bad (never mind that its estimated at 23 billion by international investigations, not 5)! You sir, sicken me.
Wake up and smell the roses. Your hero Annan couldn't, or wouldn't, intervene in mass genocide in Africa, slaughter in Croatia, etc, WHILE LEADING THE ONLY WORLD BODY EVER CREATED TO DEAL WITH SUCH SITUATIONS, but oh boy, is he fast to give amnesty to his friends that knowningly sell rotten food. At best, he's a useless tool, at worst, he's a criminal.
Well, lets see..
.agrippa.
Kofi Annan's son was a participant in a scheme that sold rotten, diseased food (as good food) to Iraq's dictator in order to receive a kickback on the profits of the oil, and benefitted Sadaam to the tune of 23 billion dollars that he used not to help his people, but to reinvest in his military and hide in bank accounts overseas.
Reagan sold arms to Iran to free Americans held captive and used the proceeds to fund essentially anti-Communists during the Cold War.
Maybe Reagan (if he was still alive) in your analogy could argue he was acted at least in national interests, what can Kofi Annan's son argue? That Iraqis like diseased food? I fail to see the basis for your comparison.
Its time to face the music. Kofi Annan has been the singular most ineffective leader the UN has ever had, and when his term is over, I hope the world collectively cheers. It pains me to say it but I think Clinton would be an excellent choice to replace him.
Theaters charge that much because the studios take most of the first week's revenue of movies. It is on a sliding scale payout (starting at ~95% to studios) and only after like 4 weeks of being out does a theatre realize any decent revenue on ticket sales alone. Since most movies are played out after 4 weeks, that's not a lot of profit. Therefore theaters charge 700% margins on the snack bar to turn a profit.
.agrippa.
Essentially, theaters exist almost exclusively to sell you popcorn and candy and soda at ridiculous prices and use the movies they are playing to lure you in.
from http://www.247news.net/2004/20041211-wikipedia.sht ml
.agrippa.
"I sat in an office of AIS and saw three different people on one high speed connection post about Sollog. They were all called the same person and Sollog. Then I went to local Starbucks and saw another person post to Wikipedia pro Sollog statements and they too were called Sollog."
You are half right on your first point. The US takes about 20% of the oil from the middle east right now. That means 80% goes somewhere else, with a large (and ever-growing) part going to Asia (China a big percentage of that) and India. Therefore having a stable middle east is in the best interests of not just the US, but the up-and-coming developing super economies.
.agrippa.
China doesn't have the capacity to have a military presence in the middle east just yet, and they probably never will. China needs the US to buy their goods, European banks to invest in them, and Arabs to provide them with oil. Therefore you won't see China pissing off any of them with a military intervention in the middle east.
The only military force with the capacity to go somewhere not next door and do something once it gets there is the US, as the US has the world's only true blue water navy. China's military may eventually rival the US around 2025, but many economists, to our Pentagon's war planning division's dismay, believe that China will concentrate more on their economic development and less on trying to be a near-peer competitor military to the US.
So, basically the only force able, and willing, to stabalize the middle east is the US, and someone needs to stabalize it for the world's sake. Economies that aren't being taxed heavily to buy oil are economies that can grow. Conversely, economies that are forced to pay out the nose for oil aren't going to grow and the newbie powerhouse ones (read: Brazil, India, China) will start to decay. Note: this is not an argument that invading Iraq was justified just yet, but it was probably inevitable. The US will need to concentrate much more on coalition building than Bush thinks it does in order to lead an effective peacekeeping and nation building force.
I contracted for about 6 months this year after working full time for the past 5 years since leaving college. Even though I was making decent money as a contractor, I really detested the fact that I had no health benefits, no 401k, etc, and that I had to save up a large percentage of what I made just to pay taxes. In the end I was making less contracting than I had made at my previous job, even though my paychecks were bigger. I needed more stability so when one of my friends had an opening at his company I took that. About the only benefit to me of being a contractor was I was able to put in 1 hour notice (it was structured in my contract I could leave at anytime).
.agrippa.
On the other hand, I have friends who swear by contracting and love the free time and ability to choose their jobs. It wasn't for me though.
No, that doesn't solve the problem. You seriously don't understand many in the independant artist community. If this gets popular enough, its abolutely trivial to, and someone will, write a program that creates a wide variety of dummy "interests", but also include their own music and the music of the people they agreed to promote. Thusly the system will have been corrupted.
.agrippa.
This has similarities to the application I wrote for MP3.com called Stations, which a few months after it was released was abused almost by exploiting artists who screwed it over it to the point of uselessness.