So now evil is "If you do not like our terms then we will stop doing business with you."?
Killer. So I can go to Target and I should be able to set the price I want to pay for an item and if they do not sell it to me for that price then they are evil bastards? So fucking awesome!
The company's "Don't Be Evil" motto used to be about their own actions -- that you would want to frequent the business because they WERE a moral positive. They've pretty much abandoned that stance, which is why they get so much flak with mocking "evil" comments.
They come across as the country club of cinemas. Deeply intolerant and with a sure sense of their own superiority.
Maybe we need a little bit more of that. The current theater experience can be unacceptably poor.
I'm with the GP. No problem if someone has their phone open, briefly. Perhaps they are being texted with information about who is picking them up?
There are ways to do it while minimizing distraction to other theater goers. I wear a t-shirt, and slide the phone under it to create a "hood" where no light escapes. You can use the armrest of a chair so that the screen never comes into the field of vision of someone else. Lots of people just hold their phones right up like the house lights were still on.
Gates McFadden (Crusher) left/was fired because she was not getting along with certain producers. Story supervisor Maurice Hurley in particular was singled out as creating a very "hostile work environment" (she will not confirm or deny it, but I'd seen reports that he was sexually harassing her). So she left the show after the first season. Enter Pulaski, who, unlike Crusher, had very little chemistry with the rest of the crew. I think her acting was fine, but she was very poorly written, a clone of Doctor McCoy all the way down to their penchant country medicine and their transporter phobia, and her irrational/mean-spirited dislike for Data (because he was Spock, get it??) They had to make other characters stupid around her in order to make her seem competent, which is rarely a good way to endear a character to an audience (re: Wesley Crusher). She still made very stupid decisions, often explaining them in quite arrogant terms, another less than endearing character trait. Riker mostly grew out of that phase, Pulaski never got the chance.
If she'd been given time, perhaps her character would have gotten better. After all, characterization in seasons 1 & 2 of TNG was pretty bad. But she was never added to the main cast, only credited as "Special Guest Star" in all her appearances.
Well Maurice Hurley burned enough bridges at Paramount that he left ST:TNG at the end of Season 2. That paved the way for McFadden to return.
It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. The more you run around with a "treat me equal you assholes" sign, the less you'll get it.
That's pathetic. It's like saying the only reason you smoke is because everybody treats you like a smoker. It's weak. Either own it or quit, but don't blame society for your behavior.
No, it's an acknowledgement that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you're trying to get allies, maybe brow-beating them when they haven't done wrong isn't a good tactic. Maybe it's more reflective on you than it is on them.
Anyway, as we are driving home she remarked about his pissed off she was. Guys just want to chat to her about bullshit because she is pretty. She puts up with it because that's just how it is.
Was he chatting, or out-right flirting? Chatting, even about the weather, is just trying to be friendly.
Huh. I chat with co-workers I barely know all the time about trivial things (yeah, bullshit), mostly because just standing there, not saying anything as if no one was there, is awkward bordering on rude. Should I only be chatting up my male co-workers now?
Town A has 5 police per thousand people, and 3 crimes reported per thousand people every day. The next year, they increase the number of police to 7 per thousand people, but crime rates go up to 5 crimes reported per day.
Despite the negative correlation, this doesn't disprove the idea that having a greater police presence reduces crime.
Ahem... I hate to have to tell you this, but yes it did. The simple fact is: you had greater police presence, but crime went up. Your hypothesis has been disproved.
I put a gallon of 50-degree water in a stock pot, put it on the burner and heat it for a few minutes. Then I pour in a gallon of 35-degree water and measure the temperature -- 43 degrees, less than the original. Have I just disproven the hypothesis that putting cold water on the burner makes the water warmer? No, of course not, because I didn't control for other variables.
You certainly can't say, given all the various variables that were changing, that greater police presence reduces crime. It does disprove that a greater police presence will ALWAYS reduce crime in EVERY circumstance. But that's a useless conclusion.
Perhaps only if you don't reach critical mass. Shoot more of them until the point is well understood.
Do you not realize that the "average person" would be absolutely horrified by political assassinations? The MASSES would be the ones angrily demanding a crackdown, and there would be no need for any media manipulation to convince it of them. Nothing would have a greater effect to increase the power of the surveillance state.
If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and all the founding fathers of USA all opted to be anonymous cowards they wouldn't dare to sign the Declaration of Independence in the first place, and of course there would never be any United States of America at all !
Man, you Americans have grown so weak and pussay !!
If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and all the founding fathers of USA were sitting at a table in a room with red-coats ringed around, inside and out, they probably wouldn't have spoken up too loudly. Or at all.
You conspire together first. When actual revolution comes, that's when you can band together in the open and hope you don't get completely crushed.
But attacking the FCC is sort of like going after park rangers. For better or worse (mostly better) it presided over the breakup of the Bells
I wouldn't say the FCC is like the park rangers, anymore.
The FCC is the perfect example of the phenomena called "regulatory capture," when a body that is supposed to act as a check upon an industry instead becomes completely taken over by the industry they were supposed to regulate. It's a specific form of political corruption, and it's the de facto situation at the FCC, where the revolving door of appointments go between the FCC and industry positions. A few examples:
Michael Powell, FCC chairman for four years and who oversaw deregulation and encouraged media consolidation, is now the chief lobbyist for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. His successor, Julius Genachowski was an FCC chairman for eight years. He was one of the executives who created Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting, and made $2.5 million when Vivendi bought Universal. His successor and current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, was a CEO for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, and before that president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. We see a pattern here, where chairmen are appointed from industry executives and are often rewarded by industry jobs when they leave the public sector.
I'm not a libertarian, I believe there can be a role in government to act as a check like the FCC was supposed to. But regulatory capture is one of the very best arguments libertarians can use to show -why- it is important to limit the power of the federal government.
Exactly. Like when you see a comment that's been modded "overrated" with no other mods whatsoever. That just means "-1 disagree".
Not necessarily. I've used the overrated mod before when someone posts just plain wrong information. It's not flamebait, trolling, off-topic, and you'd really have to twist the definition of redundant to make that apply. Sometimes incorrect posts are too-highly rated to stay at +2 or +1.
Larger employee pool means lower salaries in a market that already has starvation level wages.
Tech workers do not earn "starvation level wages." They are already over-payed nearly across the board. Yeah, I include animation and effects artists with that.
And this is the first time in awhile that I've heard that ignorance and suppression of knowledge were good things, as they drive costs (salaries) up. If that can happen, then it's a really good sign those workers are already over-payed.
I have a weirder problem. I have HBO (technically a friend pays) and regular comcast cable, but my Internet access is through obviously non-Comcastic DSL. I tried to use HBO GO's app on the PS3 to stream an HBO show... nope, not allowed. See, HBO had to craft deals with cable companies, ways to verify that a streamer is a cable subscriber. You MUST be subscribed to cable to stream over the Internet, otherwise the cable companies, which HBO is dependent on, scream bloody murder.
Well ok, so I'm a Comcast subscriber, so I should be good, right? I tried to sign up my PS3... no good, it's not a supported device. See, any device must be approved by the cable companies, and while Cox, DirectTV, and dozens of other companies authorized the PS3... Comcast did not. There is a working HBO app for the PS3, but you can't use it with Comcast. Same with the Roku. They support the XBox 360. They support Samsung TVs. But they snubbed PS3s and Rokus. Now I unroll an HDMI cable through the house to connect my desktop (and Nvidia has SHITTY HDMI support, holy crap. I thought it'd just work under Windows. Never did I believe my Linux support would be better) to the home theater.
Yeah, that's fucking brilliant. Let's package Netflix along with 105 other online services we'll never use, all for only $125 a month.
Moron.
Haha, I know, let's package up the Internet using a paradigm that everyone outside of the cable companies and (some) cable channels hate and ask to have changed.
At least the cable system had some bare technological reasons why it developed the way it did. The current Internet situation is all political and due to a monopoly trying to ensure it maintains an iron grip.
Then you keep pushing for change. And if the situation worsens, you push for change even more. "It could get worse" is no reason not to push for change of an abusive system.
Over 80% of the USA still just staples things to old telephone poles. Mostly because the businesses here are lazy as hell to do it right.
Also, to do any maintenance, upgrades, or repairs to the cables in the ground requires a lot of digging. I have read estimates that in many sections of the US that will increase cable roll-out costs by 3x. You can call it lazy, but many municipalities are truly cash-strapped.
Ballmer was a decent caretaker CEO. His biggest flaw was that he proceeded a visionary. He wasn't one himself, not even close.
He didn't blow up the company. Compare that to the CEOs of Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, most Silicon Valley firms over the same time, and pretty much ANY executive at HP.
Slashdot Mirror
So now evil is "If you do not like our terms then we will stop doing business with you."?
Killer. So I can go to Target and I should be able to set the price I want to pay for an item and if they do not sell it to me for that price then they are evil bastards? So fucking awesome!
The company's "Don't Be Evil" motto used to be about their own actions -- that you would want to frequent the business because they WERE a moral positive. They've pretty much abandoned that stance, which is why they get so much flak with mocking "evil" comments.
They come across as the country club of cinemas. Deeply intolerant and with a sure sense of their own superiority.
Maybe we need a little bit more of that. The current theater experience can be unacceptably poor.
I'm with the GP. No problem if someone has their phone open, briefly. Perhaps they are being texted with information about who is picking them up?
There are ways to do it while minimizing distraction to other theater goers. I wear a t-shirt, and slide the phone under it to create a "hood" where no light escapes. You can use the armrest of a chair so that the screen never comes into the field of vision of someone else. Lots of people just hold their phones right up like the house lights were still on.
Because if you like Google's and their ilks' never-ending surveillance, you must be a MS or Apple fanboy?
Seems like the second is acceptable; it's GoDaddy's entire Superbowl commercial campaign.
He could have said "dickweed" and that would be a pretty disgusting male reference. A "douchebag" IS a fairly disgusting item, no getting around that.
It's a little more complex than that, even!
Gates McFadden (Crusher) left/was fired because she was not getting along with certain producers. Story supervisor Maurice Hurley in particular was singled out as creating a very "hostile work environment" (she will not confirm or deny it, but I'd seen reports that he was sexually harassing her). So she left the show after the first season. Enter Pulaski, who, unlike Crusher, had very little chemistry with the rest of the crew. I think her acting was fine, but she was very poorly written, a clone of Doctor McCoy all the way down to their penchant country medicine and their transporter phobia, and her irrational/mean-spirited dislike for Data (because he was Spock, get it??) They had to make other characters stupid around her in order to make her seem competent, which is rarely a good way to endear a character to an audience (re: Wesley Crusher). She still made very stupid decisions, often explaining them in quite arrogant terms, another less than endearing character trait. Riker mostly grew out of that phase, Pulaski never got the chance.
If she'd been given time, perhaps her character would have gotten better. After all, characterization in seasons 1 & 2 of TNG was pretty bad. But she was never added to the main cast, only credited as "Special Guest Star" in all her appearances.
Well Maurice Hurley burned enough bridges at Paramount that he left ST:TNG at the end of Season 2. That paved the way for McFadden to return.
It's a self-fullfilling prophecy. The more you run around with a "treat me equal you assholes" sign, the less you'll get it.
That's pathetic. It's like saying the only reason you smoke is because everybody treats you like a smoker. It's weak. Either own it or quit, but don't blame society for your behavior.
No, it's an acknowledgement that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. If you're trying to get allies, maybe brow-beating them when they haven't done wrong isn't a good tactic. Maybe it's more reflective on you than it is on them.
Anyway, as we are driving home she remarked about his pissed off she was. Guys just want to chat to her about bullshit because she is pretty. She puts up with it because that's just how it is.
Was he chatting, or out-right flirting? Chatting, even about the weather, is just trying to be friendly.
Huh. I chat with co-workers I barely know all the time about trivial things (yeah, bullshit), mostly because just standing there, not saying anything as if no one was there, is awkward bordering on rude. Should I only be chatting up my male co-workers now?
I'm no tea party faithful, but calling them a "para-terrorist organization" is going a bit far.
This is just full of stupid.
Town A has 5 police per thousand people, and 3 crimes reported per thousand people every day. The next year, they increase the number of police to 7 per thousand people, but crime rates go up to 5 crimes reported per day.
Despite the negative correlation, this doesn't disprove the idea that having a greater police presence reduces crime.
Ahem... I hate to have to tell you this, but yes it did. The simple fact is: you had greater police presence, but crime went up. Your hypothesis has been disproved.
I put a gallon of 50-degree water in a stock pot, put it on the burner and heat it for a few minutes. Then I pour in a gallon of 35-degree water and measure the temperature -- 43 degrees, less than the original. Have I just disproven the hypothesis that putting cold water on the burner makes the water warmer? No, of course not, because I didn't control for other variables.
You certainly can't say, given all the various variables that were changing, that greater police presence reduces crime. It does disprove that a greater police presence will ALWAYS reduce crime in EVERY circumstance. But that's a useless conclusion.
Perhaps only if you don't reach critical mass. Shoot more of them until the point is well understood.
Do you not realize that the "average person" would be absolutely horrified by political assassinations? The MASSES would be the ones angrily demanding a crackdown, and there would be no need for any media manipulation to convince it of them. Nothing would have a greater effect to increase the power of the surveillance state.
Bush. Bush. Bush. Bush. Who the fuck started this?
"He started it" didn't work in 3rd grade, it sure as hell doesn't work here either. Give that up.
If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and all the founding fathers of USA all opted to be anonymous cowards they wouldn't dare to sign the Declaration of Independence in the first place, and of course there would never be any United States of America at all !
Man, you Americans have grown so weak and pussay !!
If George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and all the founding fathers of USA were sitting at a table in a room with red-coats ringed around, inside and out, they probably wouldn't have spoken up too loudly. Or at all.
You conspire together first. When actual revolution comes, that's when you can band together in the open and hope you don't get completely crushed.
we call ourselves "the land of the free, home of the braves" ?
Only in Atlanta. The rest of us prefer "Home of the brave."
But attacking the FCC is sort of like going after park rangers. For better or worse (mostly better) it presided over the breakup of the Bells
I wouldn't say the FCC is like the park rangers, anymore.
The FCC is the perfect example of the phenomena called "regulatory capture," when a body that is supposed to act as a check upon an industry instead becomes completely taken over by the industry they were supposed to regulate. It's a specific form of political corruption, and it's the de facto situation at the FCC, where the revolving door of appointments go between the FCC and industry positions. A few examples:
Michael Powell, FCC chairman for four years and who oversaw deregulation and encouraged media consolidation, is now the chief lobbyist for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. His successor, Julius Genachowski was an FCC chairman for eight years. He was one of the executives who created Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting, and made $2.5 million when Vivendi bought Universal. His successor and current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, was a CEO for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, and before that president of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association. We see a pattern here, where chairmen are appointed from industry executives and are often rewarded by industry jobs when they leave the public sector.
I'm not a libertarian, I believe there can be a role in government to act as a check like the FCC was supposed to. But regulatory capture is one of the very best arguments libertarians can use to show -why- it is important to limit the power of the federal government.
Your fucking obtuse what?
Your fucking obtuse face is stupid.
Exactly. Like when you see a comment that's been modded "overrated" with no other mods whatsoever. That just means "-1 disagree".
Not necessarily. I've used the overrated mod before when someone posts just plain wrong information. It's not flamebait, trolling, off-topic, and you'd really have to twist the definition of redundant to make that apply. Sometimes incorrect posts are too-highly rated to stay at +2 or +1.
They -know- it's international, their distributors just don't care. International viewers don't really bring in the ad revenue.
Larger employee pool means lower salaries in a market that already has starvation level wages.
Tech workers do not earn "starvation level wages." They are already over-payed nearly across the board. Yeah, I include animation and effects artists with that.
And this is the first time in awhile that I've heard that ignorance and suppression of knowledge were good things, as they drive costs (salaries) up. If that can happen, then it's a really good sign those workers are already over-payed.
I have a weirder problem. I have HBO (technically a friend pays) and regular comcast cable, but my Internet access is through obviously non-Comcastic DSL. I tried to use HBO GO's app on the PS3 to stream an HBO show... nope, not allowed. See, HBO had to craft deals with cable companies, ways to verify that a streamer is a cable subscriber. You MUST be subscribed to cable to stream over the Internet, otherwise the cable companies, which HBO is dependent on, scream bloody murder.
Well ok, so I'm a Comcast subscriber, so I should be good, right? I tried to sign up my PS3... no good, it's not a supported device. See, any device must be approved by the cable companies, and while Cox, DirectTV, and dozens of other companies authorized the PS3... Comcast did not. There is a working HBO app for the PS3, but you can't use it with Comcast. Same with the Roku. They support the XBox 360. They support Samsung TVs. But they snubbed PS3s and Rokus. Now I unroll an HDMI cable through the house to connect my desktop (and Nvidia has SHITTY HDMI support, holy crap. I thought it'd just work under Windows. Never did I believe my Linux support would be better) to the home theater.
So Fuck King Joffrey and Fuck Comcast too.
Yeah, that's fucking brilliant. Let's package Netflix along with 105 other online services we'll never use, all for only $125 a month.
Moron.
Haha, I know, let's package up the Internet using a paradigm that everyone outside of the cable companies and (some) cable channels hate and ask to have changed.
At least the cable system had some bare technological reasons why it developed the way it did. The current Internet situation is all political and due to a monopoly trying to ensure it maintains an iron grip.
That's what they said back then.
Then you keep pushing for change. And if the situation worsens, you push for change even more.
"It could get worse" is no reason not to push for change of an abusive system.
Over 80% of the USA still just staples things to old telephone poles. Mostly because the businesses here are lazy as hell to do it right.
Also, to do any maintenance, upgrades, or repairs to the cables in the ground requires a lot of digging. I have read estimates that in many sections of the US that will increase cable roll-out costs by 3x. You can call it lazy, but many municipalities are truly cash-strapped.
Ballmer was a decent caretaker CEO. His biggest flaw was that he proceeded a visionary. He wasn't one himself, not even close.
He didn't blow up the company.
Compare that to the CEOs of Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, most Silicon Valley firms over the same time, and pretty much ANY executive at HP.