On the plane of existence where if the studios get their way Netflix dies and they implement their own streaming services for $50 / month, or for $3 per movie streamed.
$3? Surely you jest!
I was bored the other night and decided to check out the options/apps that come with my PS3, and lo and behold, they rent HD streams for $5.99 for a decent movie. $4.99 for a shitty one. For RENTING a damned stream.
That's what the movie companies think is fair -- as long as it's cheaper than a theater price, it's a bargain.
McCaffrey's love scenes, wooing, and relationships were very different from typical SF fare. Typical for a romance novel, perhaps?
They seemed slightly anachronistic. Her romantic story lines would have fitted into an Austen or Bronte novel with little modification, just a very different backdrop. I think that's part of the appeal of her stories. The only slightly grating aspect was the fact that her homosexual (male) characters always seemed to end up in stable sexual relationships with women...
I didn't read the latter books, so I may be a bit ignorant over any characters introduced later, but I also remember being a bit.. annoyed that her gay characters seemed fairly bitchy, likely due to the emotionally volatile nature of the admittedly-randy green dragons. It's clear she was thinking of gay characters early on, as they were mentioned (not stated as 'gay' but males were were shown in relationships, and this was depicted as not being unusual at all). But well, this was the late 70s, and somewhat young-adult fiction, so there was only so much you could write in before getting into trouble!
Interestingly, I don't think it was ever mentioned that dragons would be a gay (another example of the "only humans can be homosexual" trope), but part of that may be due to their being genetically designed. Homosexuality is fine for very large populations, but for small populations, like the dozen-ish dragon progenitors, it's a biological dead end. The dragons had the best sense of "gaydar" ever devised though, and green females who picked male riders tended to choose boys or teens who would become gay/bi males -- all so that a male-male human pairing would always result in a male-female dragon pairing. The dragons' initial creator was a big "traditionalist" (to the extent that queens stayed at home with the eggs), so it's amusing she would have thought of that in the first place.
EPA ratings are shit, and don't reflect real world numbers.
Yeah, but they way in which they're shit is that the actual miles per gallon seen is almost always far less than the EPA ratings.
I can't find any mention of being able to reach 49 mpg on the wiki page, the closest it came was 43 mpg (imperial) which translates to 36 mpg (US). Not that I would consider a wiki page authoritative, and I sure as hell wouldn't trust numbers from saturnfans.com.
I could say that one of his greatest leadership failures was he couldn't bring the fractured Democrats in and couldn't push any of his big promises through. Instead, you got over-compromised agreements like the health care bill which makes little sense without the all-important public option.
Then what the OP said is only partially untrue. Obama did enter office with no intention of bipartisanship/compromise (remember the "back of the bus" comment)? The only thing that stood between him and forcing his agenda down our throats was the divided Democrat party. And that's why I consider the claims of Republican obstructionism to be revisionist history at its finest. Even with a supermajority, Obama couldn't get that public option through.
The Democrats had a supermajority in Congress, but they needed more than that to pass their agenda -- they needed 60% in the Senate to break a filibuster, as the Republicans deployed the nuclear option and filibustered almost everything. The problem was always that the Dems had a majority, but you need more than that to bring cloture.
They will be perfectly happy to raise taxes on the bottom 50%! They tell me all the time. The non-paying 47% need to pay more. Seniors on Social Security, college students and the unemployed are all ok to tax more, but don't tax anybody with money, and no cutting at the pentagon. Why won't these d-bags go away?
I think they would say they don't want to increase taxes overall. Just shift them around a bit more so that other people are paying for it.
Most of the Tea Party does NOT have a problem with increased taxes
Is that why almost all Republicans signed Grover Norquist's pledge that they will not raise taxes? Not just "don't raise taxes unless it's important" or "fine, raise taxes if it pays off the debt." Just no raising taxes period. At all.
Increasing spending at a level under inflation is a real spending cut. It might not be as much of a cut as you want, or think is necessary, but it's still a real-world cut.
Obama wasn't looking for bipartisanship or compromise when he took office - he just stated "we won" (the Democrats) and shoved his socialist agenda down the USA's throat to the delight of the Democrats
Holy shit, what revisionism.
I could say that one of his greatest leadership failures was he couldn't bring the fractured Democrats in and couldn't push any of his big promises through. Instead, you got over-compromised agreements like the health care bill which makes little sense without the all-important public option.
Now George Bush... he got stuff -done-. And he got it done by saying he won the election and didn't have to listen to the folks who didn't vote for him.
Yep. The old adage about young communists and old conservatives has nothing to do with heart and brains, and everything with stuff. It's amazing how bad communism sounds to you when you finally earned enough money to purchase a house, a nice TV and are looking at retiring with some nice toys.
"We should all share everything" sounds great when you have nothing to share.
It actually kinda surprised me...when did nigger become a 4-letter word? Pretty recently...I remember fondly listening to Richard Pryor records as a kid....and seeing his performances in movies.
I doubt even HE could get away with it today, in the hyper PC environment we're currently living in. I mean...you can get away with saying shit or even the occasional fuck on tv...but have to say the "N" word as a euphemism for nigger, even though you might be actually quoting what someone said??
I've finally come to the decision that the "No True Scotsman fallacy" is a fallacy in itself. I've yet to see it used properly. It's supposed to counter a universal assumption, but I always see it -bolstering- universal assumptions instead.
And why can't we just let trademark and fraud law handle this the old fashioned way in court?
Oh they'll get involved too. And it wastes a gigantic amount of resources.
The legal system is supposed to be in place to keep companies from pulling shenanigans in the first place,
No, the legal system is supposed to be in place to keep anyone, whether on behalf of a company or not, from pulling shenanigans in the first place, or at least a way to get recompense if shenanigans are pulled.
Why on Earth nobody else had the guts to stand up against MS if prior art seems to be so easy to find?
Because "standing on principle" often means you get screwed while your competitors jump ahead. "Being Right," rarely means you actually get the money you think you're owed.
Later on, Gates bought the rights to Unix, merged it with DOS and then sold Xenix on 286s. When it had zero performance, it was others that pointed out how foolish he was. ANother set of employees had to convince him to stick with DOS and skip Xenix.
I kindof wish that MS had sunk its resources into improving Xenix instead of going the DOS route. How different could things have been?
Then gates ran around screaming that 640K was more than enough.
As far as we can tell, that quote is apocryphal and never happened. Despite its supposedly been issued in 1981, the very earliest reference to it was made in 1985, but again, a reference that was only ever repeated second-hand. There appears to be no first-hand evidence that Gates ever said that in any interview, speech, and so on. The closest we can get to something Gates actually said was a 1989 speech: "I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn’t – it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem." So we know at least he was surprised that applications hit the 640k limit so soon. But there's no evidence he thought no one would ever need more.
I'd like it to be true, but I've never seen any evidence that it is. It seems like one of those stories that circulates, like the one of Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake" (she didn't).
Why the hell is AFL-CIO for SOPA? And why are they considered a relevant party to testify? As a matter of fact, why is MasterCard for it? Visa is against it. MPAA is obvious, and Pfizer I can understand (they want to block sites that sell knock-off drugs).
Censorship on behalf of the entertainment media is a very liberal-left sort of thing, and one of the few things that I agree with right-wingers on.
I don't know who modded this down as "troll", but I think the parent comment here deserves a second look. There's some solid information there.
The parent made some good points, but also threw in a number of needless insults for the grandparent poster. That warrants a downmod, along with all other posts that do similar.
The truth is that gun rights have gotten a lot better in the last 3 years.
Just curious. How much of that improvement has happened because of Obama, and how much because of legal actions by the NRA?
Ooooo, I'm not sure I like the sound of that. It sounds like you're saying if something bad happens, it's the President's fault, if something good happens, it's only because of pressure from lobbyists.
That doesn't mean the license is not transferable. You can put anything you want in fine print, that doesn't mean it's the law.
Sadly, with the DOJ talking about violating the TOS of a site as being a crime... what you say may not be true for long.
There was always a difference between a boilerplate "license" written on the back of an album and a TOS agreement. You have to agree to a TOS, and that's what makes it binding. But you never had to agree to anything to play an LP, cassette, or CD. That's how things have changed and why the pendulum of power has swung so far to the media companies, because technological measures force people to agree to onerous licenses, and the law (mostly) forbids distributing tools to break technological access controls.
It doesn't matter where you are- refuse. When they can't hire anyone, they'll get the point. It's not like you're blue collar labor- you're an expensive to find and replace resource as a programmer.
Hahaha. Oh man.
Look, this isn't 1999 or 2007 anymore. Yes, even in the talented IT worker sector there are quite a few more people looking for work than there actually are jobs. "When they can't hire anyone?" What makes you think they won't be able to hire anyone? People are desperate enough for work that this clause won't be a big disincentive to them. Maybe they don't actually do tech side projects -- it's usually the last thing I want to do after I get home after a long day.
At this point, the employers are in control, because the talent pool out there available is pretty good. The only hassle is in retraining time.
Slashdot Mirror
On the plane of existence where if the studios get their way Netflix dies and they implement their own streaming services for $50 / month, or for $3 per movie streamed.
$3? Surely you jest!
I was bored the other night and decided to check out the options/apps that come with my PS3, and lo and behold, they rent HD streams for $5.99 for a decent movie. $4.99 for a shitty one. For RENTING a damned stream.
That's what the movie companies think is fair -- as long as it's cheaper than a theater price, it's a bargain.
McCaffrey's love scenes, wooing, and relationships were very different from typical SF fare. Typical for a romance novel, perhaps?
They seemed slightly anachronistic. Her romantic story lines would have fitted into an Austen or Bronte novel with little modification, just a very different backdrop. I think that's part of the appeal of her stories. The only slightly grating aspect was the fact that her homosexual (male) characters always seemed to end up in stable sexual relationships with women...
I didn't read the latter books, so I may be a bit ignorant over any characters introduced later, but I also remember being a bit.. annoyed that her gay characters seemed fairly bitchy, likely due to the emotionally volatile nature of the admittedly-randy green dragons. It's clear she was thinking of gay characters early on, as they were mentioned (not stated as 'gay' but males were were shown in relationships, and this was depicted as not being unusual at all). But well, this was the late 70s, and somewhat young-adult fiction, so there was only so much you could write in before getting into trouble!
Interestingly, I don't think it was ever mentioned that dragons would be a gay (another example of the "only humans can be homosexual" trope), but part of that may be due to their being genetically designed. Homosexuality is fine for very large populations, but for small populations, like the dozen-ish dragon progenitors, it's a biological dead end. The dragons had the best sense of "gaydar" ever devised though, and green females who picked male riders tended to choose boys or teens who would become gay/bi males -- all so that a male-male human pairing would always result in a male-female dragon pairing. The dragons' initial creator was a big "traditionalist" (to the extent that queens stayed at home with the eggs), so it's amusing she would have thought of that in the first place.
Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. >_>
EPA ratings are shit, and don't reflect real world numbers.
Yeah, but they way in which they're shit is that the actual miles per gallon seen is almost always far less than the EPA ratings.
I can't find any mention of being able to reach 49 mpg on the wiki page, the closest it came was 43 mpg (imperial) which translates to 36 mpg (US). Not that I would consider a wiki page authoritative, and I sure as hell wouldn't trust numbers from saturnfans.com.
Indeed, Michael Whelan's cover art was fantastic, introducing a whole group of people to late 70s, early 80s fantasy.
Samples:
Dragonflight
Dragonquest
The White Dragon
Then what the OP said is only partially untrue. Obama did enter office with no intention of bipartisanship/compromise (remember the "back of the bus" comment)? The only thing that stood between him and forcing his agenda down our throats was the divided Democrat party. And that's why I consider the claims of Republican obstructionism to be revisionist history at its finest. Even with a supermajority, Obama couldn't get that public option through.
The Democrats had a supermajority in Congress, but they needed more than that to pass their agenda -- they needed 60% in the Senate to break a filibuster, as the Republicans deployed the nuclear option and filibustered almost everything. The problem was always that the Dems had a majority, but you need more than that to bring cloture.
They will be perfectly happy to raise taxes on the bottom 50%! They tell me all the time. The non-paying 47% need to pay more. Seniors on Social Security, college students and the unemployed are all ok to tax more, but don't tax anybody with money, and no cutting at the pentagon. Why won't these d-bags go away?
I think they would say they don't want to increase taxes overall. Just shift them around a bit more so that other people are paying for it.
Most of the Tea Party does NOT have a problem with increased taxes
Is that why almost all Republicans signed Grover Norquist's pledge that they will not raise taxes? Not just "don't raise taxes unless it's important" or "fine, raise taxes if it pays off the debt." Just no raising taxes period. At all.
Increasing spending at a level under inflation is a real spending cut. It might not be as much of a cut as you want, or think is necessary, but it's still a real-world cut.
Inflation is the all-important number here.
Obama wasn't looking for bipartisanship or compromise when he took office - he just stated "we won" (the Democrats) and shoved his socialist agenda down the USA's throat to the delight of the Democrats
Holy shit, what revisionism.
I could say that one of his greatest leadership failures was he couldn't bring the fractured Democrats in and couldn't push any of his big promises through. Instead, you got over-compromised agreements like the health care bill which makes little sense without the all-important public option.
Now George Bush... he got stuff -done-. And he got it done by saying he won the election and didn't have to listen to the folks who didn't vote for him.
Yep. The old adage about young communists and old conservatives has nothing to do with heart and brains, and everything with stuff. It's amazing how bad communism sounds to you when you finally earned enough money to purchase a house, a nice TV and are looking at retiring with some nice toys.
"We should all share everything" sounds great when you have nothing to share.
It actually kinda surprised me...when did nigger become a 4-letter word? Pretty recently...I remember fondly listening to Richard Pryor records as a kid....and seeing his performances in movies.
I doubt even HE could get away with it today, in the hyper PC environment we're currently living in. I mean...you can get away with saying shit or even the occasional fuck on tv...but have to say the "N" word as a euphemism for nigger, even though you might be actually quoting what someone said??
Ah, the Nigger Family!
I've finally come to the decision that the "No True Scotsman fallacy" is a fallacy in itself. I've yet to see it used properly. It's supposed to counter a universal assumption, but I always see it -bolstering- universal assumptions instead.
And why can't we just let trademark and fraud law handle this the old fashioned way in court?
Oh they'll get involved too. And it wastes a gigantic amount of resources.
The legal system is supposed to be in place to keep companies from pulling shenanigans in the first place,
No, the legal system is supposed to be in place to keep anyone, whether on behalf of a company or not, from pulling shenanigans in the first place, or at least a way to get recompense if shenanigans are pulled.
Interesting. A factual investigation of whether Gates mentioned the quote is "Flamebait?"
Why on Earth nobody else had the guts to stand up against MS if prior art seems to be so easy to find?
Because "standing on principle" often means you get screwed while your competitors jump ahead. "Being Right," rarely means you actually get the money you think you're owed.
Later on, Gates bought the rights to Unix, merged it with DOS and then sold Xenix on 286s. When it had zero performance, it was others that pointed out how foolish he was. ANother set of employees had to convince him to stick with DOS and skip Xenix.
I kindof wish that MS had sunk its resources into improving Xenix instead of going the DOS route. How different could things have been?
Then gates ran around screaming that 640K was more than enough.
As far as we can tell, that quote is apocryphal and never happened. Despite its supposedly been issued in 1981, the very earliest reference to it was made in 1985, but again, a reference that was only ever repeated second-hand. There appears to be no first-hand evidence that Gates ever said that in any interview, speech, and so on. The closest we can get to something Gates actually said was a 1989 speech: "I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn’t – it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem." So we know at least he was surprised that applications hit the 640k limit so soon. But there's no evidence he thought no one would ever need more.
I'd like it to be true, but I've never seen any evidence that it is. It seems like one of those stories that circulates, like the one of Marie Antoinette saying "let them eat cake" (she didn't).
Why the hell is AFL-CIO for SOPA? And why are they considered a relevant party to testify? As a matter of fact, why is MasterCard for it? Visa is against it. MPAA is obvious, and Pfizer I can understand (they want to block sites that sell knock-off drugs).
Censorship on behalf of the entertainment media is a very liberal-left sort of thing, and one of the few things that I agree with right-wingers on.
Unfortunately, he got modded to 5 anyway.
I don't know who modded this down as "troll", but I think the parent comment here deserves a second look. There's some solid information there.
The parent made some good points, but also threw in a number of needless insults for the grandparent poster. That warrants a downmod, along with all other posts that do similar.
Just curious. How much of that improvement has happened because of Obama, and how much because of legal actions by the NRA?
Ooooo, I'm not sure I like the sound of that. It sounds like you're saying if something bad happens, it's the President's fault, if something good happens, it's only because of pressure from lobbyists.
Sadly, with the DOJ talking about violating the TOS of a site as being a crime ... what you say may not be true for long.
There was always a difference between a boilerplate "license" written on the back of an album and a TOS agreement. You have to agree to a TOS, and that's what makes it binding. But you never had to agree to anything to play an LP, cassette, or CD. That's how things have changed and why the pendulum of power has swung so far to the media companies, because technological measures force people to agree to onerous licenses, and the law (mostly) forbids distributing tools to break technological access controls.
Ever look at the fine print on an old LP? Same thing applies.
That was never legal or enforceable in the first place. It didn't matter what they wrote on LPs.
It doesn't matter where you are- refuse. When they can't hire anyone, they'll get the point. It's not like you're blue collar labor- you're an expensive to find and replace resource as a programmer.
Hahaha. Oh man.
Look, this isn't 1999 or 2007 anymore. Yes, even in the talented IT worker sector there are quite a few more people looking for work than there actually are jobs.
"When they can't hire anyone?" What makes you think they won't be able to hire anyone? People are desperate enough for work that this clause won't be a big disincentive to them. Maybe they don't actually do tech side projects -- it's usually the last thing I want to do after I get home after a long day.
At this point, the employers are in control, because the talent pool out there available is pretty good. The only hassle is in retraining time.
Dude, this is the area that had Marion Barry as mayor from the 70s to the 90s.
The supply is MUCH larger than you could imagine.
No, they ran out.
Marion Barry used it all.
I think he's a robot.
Or a cut-n-paster, with one original sentence among the 10 boiler-plate.