The studios like to play it like they are doing this to please the fans, but it's really just to buff their bottom line.
And what's wrong with this? Capitalism is at its best when increasing a company's profits means pleasing its customers. As you point out in the rest of your post, there are still MANY problems with the motion picture industry, but the trend towards simultaneous release is a step forward. We shouldn't dismiss that just because the studios do it for selfish reasons. ALL companies do what they do for selfish reasons. As Adam Smith said, we do not appeal to the generosity of the baker for our daily bread, but rather to his self interest.
if they can sell DVDs profitably in India for the equivilant for $6 US, why are we paying $29 for the same thing.
Well, first of all, don't pay $29 for a dvd. Many dvds are more like $15, only super "special edition" dvds are $29, and those probably aren't released at all in India. Second, don't forget to account for markup. Rents and salaries are cheaper in India, so the retailers likely take a smaller cut. Third, movies are different from, say, alarm clocks, because the marginal cost is virtually zero. Most of the cost of a movie is a one time production charge, and then dvd dupication is much cheaper, maybe $1 including packaging? This is actually much the same as prescription drugs. As with prescription drugs, if price discrimination is not allowed, the movie companies would probably rather forgo the developing world entirely rather than cut prices in rich nations.
Well, the asteroid is clearly WAY out of the atmosphere, so it wouldn't make a fireball like that. I suppose it's possible that a smaller chunk broke off or something.
On the other hand, taxes don't just disappear. Every dollar taxed is a dollar spent on wages, on infrastructure, or on handouts (which can be counted as the same thing as wages, just wages for not doing anything). I'm all for cutting taxes and government expenditures, but don't think the economy would immediately double in size. There are plenty of companies, like Boeing, that depend heavily on governement defense contracts. There are plenty of individuals, such as SS recipients and government employees, who would lose their incomes. So NOT all of the customers would double their profits. In fact, simple economics shows that if you want to pull the country out of a depression, the way that gets you the most bang for your buck is government spending, not reduced taxes, because people will save some of the money that they get back in reduced taxes, whereas in increase in the government's budget will go 100% toward spending.
If you can think of a situation where America would be in a war that lasts long enough for us to need to import steel, and where every single steel producing nation is against us, then maybe you'd have a point. That kind of thing just doesn't happen any more. Any war big enough to have all the steel producing nations against us would be over in minutes (nukes). In any smaller war, we could import steel (I don't know off the top of my head who the big steel producers are, but I'd guess China and most of the former Warsaw Pact; the Soviets and Maoists were big on heavy industry).
As for the whole governemnt thing, he did specify "excessive" government interference, so I think he agrees that government interference is necessary. On the other hand, I don't think civil rights are necessarily a good example. The government, for a long time, was the biggest impediment to equality, by specifying "seperate but equal" for schools, by segregating public busses, etc. Civil rights laws were only passed because a majority of the US population was in favor of it, and if a majority of the population believed people should be equal, why did we need a law, anyway?
Teachers were asked not to mention it? Are you joking? There are thousands upon thousands of teachers in the US, how on earth is the government going to tell all of them not to talk about dwindling natural resources without word getting out? I think a more likely explanation is that you've just been out of school for about 5 years, and so, surprise, teachers aren't talking to you about it. As someone else mentioned, the estimates are always based on "proven reserves," which is to say "oil which is economical to extract at current prices." If prices rise or technology improves, or we just happen to find a big new oil field, proven reserves increase.
You'll be able to tell when we're running out of oil because prices will go through the roof. When middle east oil fields start running dry (which is unlikely to happen soon, some countries have over 200 years left at current extraction rates), individuals and nations will start hoarding oil, increasing demand as supply decreases. Prices will rise. I don't mean "go from $1.50 to $1.80 a gallon" like we've had happen in some areas recently. No, there will be no mistaking it when we run out of oil. Gas will go up to $10, $20, even $50 a gallon while car companies scramble to create new models that run on alchohol, propane, or biodiesel (whatever influence "big oil" might have over alternative energy research would obviously disappear as soon as there's no more oil. No car company would allow themselves to be destroyed because people can no longer buy gasoline). Not that I think we'll ever get to that point. Our proven reserves today are actually higher than they were 100 years ago.
Not true. Half of California was blacked out a couple years ago, apparently because some idiot dropped a wrench and caused a short circuit. The parent is right, they've been happening but you haven't been paying attention.
As I understand it, deregulation is not about power transmission, just power generation. Similarly, AT&T, MCI, Sprint, etc. all compete to provide long distance, even though it's all going through the same local wires. The idea is to keep whatever is unavoidably a local monopoly regulated (which is to say, the actual wires), but to take whatever is not local and make companies compete on that.
The California crisis was mainly caused by two issues. The first was illegal fraud and price fixing on the part of Enron. The second was the fact that prices for consumers were fixed, but prices for suppliers were not, so suppliers were required to sell electricity for a loss.
Goddamn, isn't each 1 pound coin equivalent to about a buck fifty? How expensive IS laundry in the UK?
As for this specific vending machine issue, if they were worried about people taking all their change, why not just have it return the same coins that were put in? That's what most vending machines here in the States seem to do. And what kind of a laundromat doesn't have change machines anyway?
I had been planning on buying Photoshop this year, to take advantage of my educational discount before I'm kicked out into the cold cruel world. But if I have to buy seperate copies for my desktop and tablet, forget it. The ONLY way it makes sense for Adobe to do this is if it's accompanied by a price cut. If you eliminate casual copying, you've effectively doubled or tripled the price of your product to people like me who have multiple computers. Frankly, the GIMP does all I need anyway, and I think Adobe is making a BIG mistake by making Photoshop effectively unaffordable to groups that buy a single copy, and casually pirate it maybe 3 or 4 times. Not only will they no longer get that one sale, but they'll also start making alternatives, such as the GIMP of PSP more standard among the low end.
The problem is, many of these "classically trained experimental musicians" are rebelling simply for the sake of rebelling. It is, in fact, their classical training which inspires them to be so bad. My girlfriend is a student at the Oberlin Conservatory, and she talks all the time about all of the music theory assignments they get where they have to compose music that complies with about 8,000 different rules. The teachers do this for a reason: many of these rules are good starting points to help in the creation of good music, just as following the rules of perspective will help to create good 2d visual art.
However, as soon as the students get out of these introductory classes, instead of saying "I'm glad I know all these rules now, and though following them all would be too constrictive, I will use them as the basis for my artistic statements" they say "those rules are stupid, and I'm going to deliberately violate every one of them in order to establish myself as an avante garde rebel." When Beethoven wrote his Emperor Concerto, he didn't deliberately violate every established tenet of composing, he was careful in picking and choosing what to discard. It was this selectivity that made it a powerful piece, and introduced the world to the piano as an instrument with a power and forcefulness nearly equivalent to that of the entire rest of the orchestra. If, instead of using the conventions of sonata form, he'd simply banged on the piano for 20 minutes straight, he might have created a piece that was equally loud, but it would not have inspired.
What they seem not to realize is that simply violating rules doesn't make your music good, it just makes it different. And even then, many musicians throughout history have composed pieces which violate the rules, and it was the fact that these pieces were BAD that prompted creation of these rules in the first place. Impressionism and surrealism in painting may have abandoned pure realism, but they made their statements within loose guidelines. Surrealism painted things which were not real, but it was portrayed in a realistic manner. Impressionism abandoned fine detail, but kept overall shapes.
Experimental music today is frequently no more interesting than those canvases which are painted pure black. There's just nothing there, except the declaration "I am different." It's masturbation. It conveys nothing to the viewer, the entirety of the meaning is to the creator.
If you hate Apple so much, please, do me a favor and go use Windows instead!
What, consumers aren't allowed to complain anymore when a company fucks things up? They're just expected to sit down and shut up, or else throw away their $2000 system (plus software costs) and buy a new one? This sounds like the people who say "if you question the government, the terrorists win!" and "why do you hate America so much?" As far as I'm concerned, the louder people complain, the more they make it clear that this kind of an "update" is NOT ACCEPTABLE, the less likely it'll be to reccur in the future.
Actually, that's not correct. France doubted that the threat of force was necessary to induce Iraq to eliminate their WMD. Indeed, they had vowed to veto any resolution which threatened force for non-compliance. THAT was what led to the breakdown in UN talks.
If you need high tech gadgets to find a movie interesting, and character development bores you, perhaps you ought to stick with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I think that the pod race would be well suited to your level of sophistication.
Are you INSANE? The first Back to the Future had a great premise: a kid goes back in time and helps his parents grow up and become more confident in themselves. It raises the issue of what, if any, authority parents have over their children. Beneath the comic veneer, there was actually some social commentary.
What was 2 about? Oh, 2 was a lot of fun, the vision of the future was terrific, but it only held together because we already cared about the characters. It had no real point tying it together, other than "stop the evil Biff."
I believe it's meant as a piece of modern art. The site's pretty well/.ed now, but I believe that's what it said when I visited. Meant as a comment on how tourism is destroying a small town, or something like that.
I'm afraid I can't speak to 4.0, but I ran 3.x under Red Hat 7.2 on a Dell Latitude, Celeron 233 mhz processor, with (IIRC) 64 mb of RAM. It may have only been 32 mb, can't remember for certain (I just replaced the laptop a month ago). As someone who had previously only used KDE and Gnome, I found it the easiest to use of the various "light" window managers. Also nice is the fact that it's been designed to interoperate with Gnome and KDE, so programs look nice, copy and paste well, and it proviedes access to the Gnome and KDE menus, so you don't have to rewrite all those menus that your distro provides premade for Gnome and KDE.
Others complained about Mozilla usage, but I found it tolerable, and Phoenix (ahem, excuse me, Firebird) ran just fine.
The only complaint I had was that there didn't seem to be a way to force the menu bar to stay on top, so sometimes it could be obscured by other windows. That's really a pretty mild thing though.
As others have said, if you can run X, XFce should be fine, it adds litle overhead.
Well, frankly, I don't care one way or the other, it just drove me nuts seeing someone moderated up for saying "they shouldn't have been punished for filing 5 minutes late" when a simple reading of the article would have pointed out that, in fact, they were not punished.
That aside, I'm generally inclined to agree with you, to some extent. Yes, they should have filed on time. If the deadline had been set at a specific time for a reason, I'd definately agree with you. If, for example, the deadline had been 5 pm on Friday so that the judge could read the document over the weekend, or noon on Wednesday so that a clerk could do whatever it is that clerks do with documents that afternoon (not meant as an attack, I'm merely admitting ignorance of the legal process), I'd agree with you 100%. In this case though, the deadline was clearly not set at midnight for any reason. It was totally arbitrary, and missing the deadline didn't delay anything. The court was closed, and no one was doing anything with the document until the next day anyway. So I think the judge was being entirely reasonable.
As for mocking the plaintiff for even making the request, you've got a point there. This judge does have a history of bullying from the bench, someone else in this story has a link posted.
What's the point? If you agree that making a phone call is not a speech right, why are we arguing? If it's not a speech right, the 1st amendment doesn't apply.
And by the way, Judaism and Catholocism are choices, as are all religions.
Well, when you said "Jew," I assumed you were referring to the race, rather than the organized religion. Generally, anti-Semetic laws have targeted Jews as a race, as in the Nuremberg Laws, rather than only those who actually worship in a synagogue.
Let us posit that the do not call list allowed you to opt out of calls from Republicans, but exluded you from opting out of calls from Democrats. Make it vice versa if you wish. Makes no nevermind to me.
Actually, that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I believe it would be perfectly constitutional. As others have said, free speech gives them no right to make a phone call to you.
How about a law forbiding only certain speech rights to Jews/Niggers/Kikes/Micks and Catholics?
This would violate the Equal Protection clause, because it's making laws aimed at a particular group of people, who cannot change their blackness, or whatever. Anyway, you're still using the term "speech rights." Making a phone call is not a speech right, anymore than knocking on someone's door is a speech right.
I read your earlier post, but I don't agree. With this law, you have the option available to exclude yourself from certain types of commercial calls. Without this law, you have no such option. How does striking down this law improve our right to choose anything? Sure, it would be EVEN BETTER if there were a second list which let us opt out of non-profit and political calls as well, but some choice is better than none at all. Calling this a victory for "right to choose" is just stupid.
Besides, as others have already pointed out, many non-profits and political campaigns will likely abide by the do-not-call list anyway, simply because people who are on that list will be FURIOUS when they get these unsolicited calls.
Yes, that is what the judge thought, too. Do you need reading comprehension lessons or something? Allow me to quote:
Wounded though this court may be by Microsoft's four minute and twenty-seven second dereliction of duty, it will transcend the affront and forgive the tardiness. Indeed, to demonstrate the even-handedness of its magnanimity, the court will allow Hyperphrase on some future occasion in this case to e-file a motion four minutes and thirty seconds late, with supporting documents to follow up to seventy-two minutes later.
The judge is forgiving Microsoft for filing late, and is basically telling Hyperphrase to stop being a pain in the ass.
Yes, but the questions are chosen communally, so I think I'm well within my rights to point out questions that I think are stupid, in the hope that it will convince moderators to mod it back down in favor of questions which are actually interesting.
Well great, so there you go, either he would alter the non-religious pantheon in American Gods to reflect 9/11 or he wouldn't. I'm sure they wouldn't be major characters (security is still nowhere as big as television), and that wouldn't alter the plot significantly. If this is really what the guy is wondering, why not simply ask, "what do you think about the post-9/11 security legislation?" Why try to imply that American Gods is an obsolete book because it doesn't address it?
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And what's wrong with this? Capitalism is at its best when increasing a company's profits means pleasing its customers. As you point out in the rest of your post, there are still MANY problems with the motion picture industry, but the trend towards simultaneous release is a step forward. We shouldn't dismiss that just because the studios do it for selfish reasons. ALL companies do what they do for selfish reasons. As Adam Smith said, we do not appeal to the generosity of the baker for our daily bread, but rather to his self interest.
Well, first of all, don't pay $29 for a dvd. Many dvds are more like $15, only super "special edition" dvds are $29, and those probably aren't released at all in India. Second, don't forget to account for markup. Rents and salaries are cheaper in India, so the retailers likely take a smaller cut. Third, movies are different from, say, alarm clocks, because the marginal cost is virtually zero. Most of the cost of a movie is a one time production charge, and then dvd dupication is much cheaper, maybe $1 including packaging? This is actually much the same as prescription drugs. As with prescription drugs, if price discrimination is not allowed, the movie companies would probably rather forgo the developing world entirely rather than cut prices in rich nations.
Well, the asteroid is clearly WAY out of the atmosphere, so it wouldn't make a fireball like that. I suppose it's possible that a smaller chunk broke off or something.
On the other hand, taxes don't just disappear. Every dollar taxed is a dollar spent on wages, on infrastructure, or on handouts (which can be counted as the same thing as wages, just wages for not doing anything). I'm all for cutting taxes and government expenditures, but don't think the economy would immediately double in size. There are plenty of companies, like Boeing, that depend heavily on governement defense contracts. There are plenty of individuals, such as SS recipients and government employees, who would lose their incomes. So NOT all of the customers would double their profits. In fact, simple economics shows that if you want to pull the country out of a depression, the way that gets you the most bang for your buck is government spending, not reduced taxes, because people will save some of the money that they get back in reduced taxes, whereas in increase in the government's budget will go 100% toward spending.
As for the whole governemnt thing, he did specify "excessive" government interference, so I think he agrees that government interference is necessary. On the other hand, I don't think civil rights are necessarily a good example. The government, for a long time, was the biggest impediment to equality, by specifying "seperate but equal" for schools, by segregating public busses, etc. Civil rights laws were only passed because a majority of the US population was in favor of it, and if a majority of the population believed people should be equal, why did we need a law, anyway?
You'll be able to tell when we're running out of oil because prices will go through the roof. When middle east oil fields start running dry (which is unlikely to happen soon, some countries have over 200 years left at current extraction rates), individuals and nations will start hoarding oil, increasing demand as supply decreases. Prices will rise. I don't mean "go from $1.50 to $1.80 a gallon" like we've had happen in some areas recently. No, there will be no mistaking it when we run out of oil. Gas will go up to $10, $20, even $50 a gallon while car companies scramble to create new models that run on alchohol, propane, or biodiesel (whatever influence "big oil" might have over alternative energy research would obviously disappear as soon as there's no more oil. No car company would allow themselves to be destroyed because people can no longer buy gasoline). Not that I think we'll ever get to that point. Our proven reserves today are actually higher than they were 100 years ago.
Not true. Half of California was blacked out a couple years ago, apparently because some idiot dropped a wrench and caused a short circuit. The parent is right, they've been happening but you haven't been paying attention.
The California crisis was mainly caused by two issues. The first was illegal fraud and price fixing on the part of Enron. The second was the fact that prices for consumers were fixed, but prices for suppliers were not, so suppliers were required to sell electricity for a loss.
As for this specific vending machine issue, if they were worried about people taking all their change, why not just have it return the same coins that were put in? That's what most vending machines here in the States seem to do. And what kind of a laundromat doesn't have change machines anyway?
I had been planning on buying Photoshop this year, to take advantage of my educational discount before I'm kicked out into the cold cruel world. But if I have to buy seperate copies for my desktop and tablet, forget it. The ONLY way it makes sense for Adobe to do this is if it's accompanied by a price cut. If you eliminate casual copying, you've effectively doubled or tripled the price of your product to people like me who have multiple computers. Frankly, the GIMP does all I need anyway, and I think Adobe is making a BIG mistake by making Photoshop effectively unaffordable to groups that buy a single copy, and casually pirate it maybe 3 or 4 times. Not only will they no longer get that one sale, but they'll also start making alternatives, such as the GIMP of PSP more standard among the low end.
However, as soon as the students get out of these introductory classes, instead of saying "I'm glad I know all these rules now, and though following them all would be too constrictive, I will use them as the basis for my artistic statements" they say "those rules are stupid, and I'm going to deliberately violate every one of them in order to establish myself as an avante garde rebel." When Beethoven wrote his Emperor Concerto, he didn't deliberately violate every established tenet of composing, he was careful in picking and choosing what to discard. It was this selectivity that made it a powerful piece, and introduced the world to the piano as an instrument with a power and forcefulness nearly equivalent to that of the entire rest of the orchestra. If, instead of using the conventions of sonata form, he'd simply banged on the piano for 20 minutes straight, he might have created a piece that was equally loud, but it would not have inspired.
What they seem not to realize is that simply violating rules doesn't make your music good, it just makes it different. And even then, many musicians throughout history have composed pieces which violate the rules, and it was the fact that these pieces were BAD that prompted creation of these rules in the first place. Impressionism and surrealism in painting may have abandoned pure realism, but they made their statements within loose guidelines. Surrealism painted things which were not real, but it was portrayed in a realistic manner. Impressionism abandoned fine detail, but kept overall shapes.
Experimental music today is frequently no more interesting than those canvases which are painted pure black. There's just nothing there, except the declaration "I am different." It's masturbation. It conveys nothing to the viewer, the entirety of the meaning is to the creator.
What, consumers aren't allowed to complain anymore when a company fucks things up? They're just expected to sit down and shut up, or else throw away their $2000 system (plus software costs) and buy a new one? This sounds like the people who say "if you question the government, the terrorists win!" and "why do you hate America so much?" As far as I'm concerned, the louder people complain, the more they make it clear that this kind of an "update" is NOT ACCEPTABLE, the less likely it'll be to reccur in the future.
Actually, that's not correct. France doubted that the threat of force was necessary to induce Iraq to eliminate their WMD. Indeed, they had vowed to veto any resolution which threatened force for non-compliance. THAT was what led to the breakdown in UN talks.
If you need high tech gadgets to find a movie interesting, and character development bores you, perhaps you ought to stick with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. I think that the pod race would be well suited to your level of sophistication.
What was 2 about? Oh, 2 was a lot of fun, the vision of the future was terrific, but it only held together because we already cared about the characters. It had no real point tying it together, other than "stop the evil Biff."
I believe it's meant as a piece of modern art. The site's pretty well /.ed now, but I believe that's what it said when I visited. Meant as a comment on how tourism is destroying a small town, or something like that.
Others complained about Mozilla usage, but I found it tolerable, and Phoenix (ahem, excuse me, Firebird) ran just fine.
The only complaint I had was that there didn't seem to be a way to force the menu bar to stay on top, so sometimes it could be obscured by other windows. That's really a pretty mild thing though.
As others have said, if you can run X, XFce should be fine, it adds litle overhead.
That aside, I'm generally inclined to agree with you, to some extent. Yes, they should have filed on time. If the deadline had been set at a specific time for a reason, I'd definately agree with you. If, for example, the deadline had been 5 pm on Friday so that the judge could read the document over the weekend, or noon on Wednesday so that a clerk could do whatever it is that clerks do with documents that afternoon (not meant as an attack, I'm merely admitting ignorance of the legal process), I'd agree with you 100%. In this case though, the deadline was clearly not set at midnight for any reason. It was totally arbitrary, and missing the deadline didn't delay anything. The court was closed, and no one was doing anything with the document until the next day anyway. So I think the judge was being entirely reasonable.
As for mocking the plaintiff for even making the request, you've got a point there. This judge does have a history of bullying from the bench, someone else in this story has a link posted.
What's the point? If you agree that making a phone call is not a speech right, why are we arguing? If it's not a speech right, the 1st amendment doesn't apply.
And by the way, Judaism and Catholocism are choices, as are all religions.
Well, when you said "Jew," I assumed you were referring to the race, rather than the organized religion. Generally, anti-Semetic laws have targeted Jews as a race, as in the Nuremberg Laws, rather than only those who actually worship in a synagogue.
Actually, that doesn't bother me in the slightest. I believe it would be perfectly constitutional. As others have said, free speech gives them no right to make a phone call to you.
How about a law forbiding only certain speech rights to Jews/Niggers/Kikes/Micks and Catholics?
This would violate the Equal Protection clause, because it's making laws aimed at a particular group of people, who cannot change their blackness, or whatever. Anyway, you're still using the term "speech rights." Making a phone call is not a speech right, anymore than knocking on someone's door is a speech right.
Besides, as others have already pointed out, many non-profits and political campaigns will likely abide by the do-not-call list anyway, simply because people who are on that list will be FURIOUS when they get these unsolicited calls.
Wounded though this court may be by Microsoft's four minute and twenty-seven second dereliction of duty, it will transcend the affront and forgive the tardiness. Indeed, to demonstrate the even-handedness of its magnanimity, the court will allow Hyperphrase on some future occasion in this case to e-file a motion four minutes and thirty seconds late, with supporting documents to follow up to seventy-two minutes later.
The judge is forgiving Microsoft for filing late, and is basically telling Hyperphrase to stop being a pain in the ass.
Yes, but the questions are chosen communally, so I think I'm well within my rights to point out questions that I think are stupid, in the hope that it will convince moderators to mod it back down in favor of questions which are actually interesting.
Well great, so there you go, either he would alter the non-religious pantheon in American Gods to reflect 9/11 or he wouldn't. I'm sure they wouldn't be major characters (security is still nowhere as big as television), and that wouldn't alter the plot significantly. If this is really what the guy is wondering, why not simply ask, "what do you think about the post-9/11 security legislation?" Why try to imply that American Gods is an obsolete book because it doesn't address it?
What is this about? American Gods is only 2 years old! I don't think 2 years would radically alter how Neil Gaiman would write his book.