"it is also true the Macbook chassis is vastly superior to practically any "PC" notebook vendor."
It is most assuredly not true. I have a 2 year old MBP, and I replaced the hard drive last fall.
Let me tell you that is a nontrivial exercise because of a few factors:
1) The case is beautiful, but you must remove 20+ screws and you have to take the entire notebook apart to change the hard drive 2) The screws are very tiny, and the case doesn't really fit together that well. If you don't get just right, the clever magnetic catch doesn't release properly. Then you get to take it all apart again. 3) The cables are held in place with adhesive tape (!!!!) inside. 4) The holder for the hard drive was clearly built for cost and is not well engineered. 5) The wiring overall inside is cheaply done. 6) I've taken apart a Mac Mini, and the construction of the MBP internally is similar.
So I use my MacBook pro, and I like it, but I compared it to the laptop work provided me (a high-end HP).
1) Things like hard drives and memory come apart with no screws. They simply pop out without disassembling 2) There is no tape on the inside of a comparable HP laptop. If you have to disassemble it, it's pretty easy, and there are not 20 screws in the entire machine. The wiring is done far more intelligently.
The HP is simply engineered better than the MBP. Now I'm not saying every HP laptop is well engineered and put together, but the laptops that in the same price range as the MBP are simply better machines.
This is no different than the model that exists today, with the exception that music is readily available without "joining" or paying the apple tax or the RIAA member tax. The price is low enough that it becomes an impulse buy rather than "oh man, I've got to take 1/2 a day's pay" to buy an album.
I can't "guarantee" that this will work, but I can guarantee what the record execs are coming up with is DOA. I can guarantee that my method would have a shot at working. You want "evidence" that my idea would work, but you don't seem to want the same evidence about the record label's plan. What we know is that the plan doesn't change anything except he record company execs get more money. The artists get no more money, people are still getting sued, and the record companies are still trying to get people "kicked off the internet".
As to selling other people's copyrighted works on a website "cheaper", they're exactly the kind of copyright violations that the record companies should be going after.
The term "cockroach" is the ideal term for this behavior. When you turn on the lights and expose them, cockroaches run for cover. When the record company execs came up with a money grab, they ran for cover when it was exposed in the press. I think the analogy is apt.
And please don't hold back who you want to call "retarded clown". I live in mortal fear of anonymous comments on slashdot.
These people are like cockroaches; when you turn on the light, they scurry, and then claim you're being unfair. If any college president agrees with this, if any ISP agrees with this, it's proof that they're not smart enough to do their job.
Here's how to "fix" the download problem:
1) Make the downloads available without DRM 2) Charge a low price ($5/album) 3) Make the downloaded version more valuable than the CD... location transparency, ability to download to any device any time, something, more, better. 4) Go back to a model where a lot of new artists can be downloaded for little cost (perhaps $2.50/album). Make albums more than a few years old just as cheap 5) Try to be fair to the artists.
My idea is way better than theirs, and there's almost no overhead, other than servers and bandwidth.
Carriers only do these kinds of things because we let them. If people simply wouldn't pay the fees, then they'd stop in about 3 months. But too many people gotta have it now, so the carriers are actually *correct* in charging these fees. People will not only take it on the chin, but they'll pay for the privilege of doing so.
Your story, however, reminds me of the Motorola V710 I bought from Verizon about 4-5 years ago. It had bluetooth, but they locked it down so tight it was only useful for Bluetooth hands free. I'm sure you read about all the lawsuits (which came to nothing... Verizon offered to give you a few dollars off a new phone provided you signed up for 2 more years of service. Some deal), but hackers managed to come up with firmware that that enabled many of the profiles.
Thus, the phone became far more useful, although it "cheated" (haha) Verizon of 25 cents every time you snapped a photo, or loaded na mp3 for a ringtone, or use it in a way that they felt you shouldn't. Anyway, long story short, when I'd go into Verizon stores from one end of the country to the other with the phone, the Verizon reps would look at it and say "oh. you have one of *those* phones". And the employees were genuinely bitter and angry that people like myself had loaded the hacked firmware to make the phone useful.
Verizon has gone to much greater lengths in newer phones to prevent people from using their own property.
Fair point, we sold it almost 4 years ago for about $5K. The point is that the van would not have been usable if we had not made the repair. No radio, no air conditioning, doors not working, so we would have had to pay for the repairs anyway. I should have mentioned that we use up warranties quicker on mileage than time. That may play a role in determining if an extended warranty makes sense.
"I never needed to buy an extended warranty; it was just wasted money."
It depends... I had a 2001 Dodge Caravan that started to have little problems right as the warranty was about to run out, so I bargained hard for a 100K 6 year extended warranty, got it for $1400, directly from Dodge, so it was like the factory warranty.
Of course, we used it and used it hard... radio failures, lights on the dash kept burning out, and dodge's design meant that you had to replace entire dash components to replace the light. Door issues, air conditioning issues. Almost continuously. And Dodge fixed conservatively $10K worth of "stuff" under that warranty.
Just before the warranty ran out, we fixed everything. And then sold it. We couldn't afford another Dodge...;)
So, sometimes it pays. But I agree, that was a statistical anomoly.
"Another annoying practice Sears had was to offer "rebates" that had to redeemed from the central Chicago office. So customers come-in expected a sale, but instead they pay full price, and have to go through the hassle of mailing stuff to Chicago to get their refund. I had a LOT of customer come-in and complain they never received the check in the mail. At first we simply refunded the money out of the drawer, but then the stores stopped doing that."
We got screwed out of about $400 that way when the clerk made the mistake of saying we were taking the "free financing". We paid off the bill in 30 days. We appealed to the manager, but he/she (can't remember) said "My clerks never make mistakes". We pointed out the problem to sears, went all the way up the chain, they all said "sorry, that's the way it goes". I sent a letter to the president of sears and he sent us back to the same woman who said "sorry that's the way it goes".
I explained to sears that I buy thousands of dollars of appliances, tools, tractors, etc a year from them. They didn't budge.
You know how much they've gotten from us in 2 years? Nothing. Sears will fail *because they treat their customers poorly*. Sears saw the issue, said no, it didn't make any sense and then proceeded to screw me out of $400.
The thing is, I'm sure management gave itself a bonus because they eliminated good customer service, and then customers like me, lifetime customers for decades, are left holding the bag.
Doesn't Sears realize that Costco has better customer service and they're way cheaper? I don't think they understand they have competition.
Sears stole money from me, acknowledged it and won't pay it back. That's all I know. Nobody in that whole corporation has accountability. So I won't do business with them.
I think this has been a common feeling ever since cavemen were bartering for "stuff" with each other.
"Can you believe I got Urg to trade me an entire brontosaurus skin for the tusks of a woolly mammoth? What a dingbat!"
It's human nature, it's competitiveness. We can debate the morality of it certainly, but that attitude has always been with us and always will be with us.
It's not "double-dipping" and it was not "overlooked", it was an advertised feature of the plan, at least when they started. It made sense since Blockbuster was trying to take on an entrenched company.
I asked how it worked, and the store manager told me he would gather all the returned videos once a day and UPS them back to the Blockbuster's rental "central".
"Just like you feel you have the right to do whatever you want to stuff you buy, businesses feel that they have the right to protect their business model."
I agree with you 100%.
And where we might differ is that I don't see the government having any role in this equation, either through laws, enforcement, or anything. MS is on their own. So is the customer. May the better hacker win.
"Once my initial contract expired, I started getting frequent calls from VZW which went something like:"
Same thing happened to me last summer. We had 3 phones with Verizon wireless, and they called. They said, "if you agree to a new 2 year deal [$120/month on average], then we'll give you $50 towards a new phone".
I said "So in return for $2400, you offer me $50 *off*? One time?
They were taken aback. As if their offer was so generous, no one had ever told them no
"well, sir, this gives you not just that great verizon service, but you could use that money towards a new phone!"
I told them "Not good enough. I want all 3 phones on my account with the same plans for $60/month"
"We're not authorized to do that"
"goodbye"
Business is too good if all you're willing to give as a discount is 2% to a multi-year customer. They have high customer acquisition costs, but they're unwilling to give customers any kind of real break to renew.
They're either geniuses or stupid. I can't tell which. But they certainly aren't getting $120/month from me anymore. So I have my own theory.
"Do you think that my carrier gave me a discount or let me sign up without a contract because I did this? Pffft, fat chance. "
Yep, the idea that the phones are subsidized is a lie, if you consider that if you renew past 1 or 2 years with a carrier with the same phone they don't give you a discount on monthly service.
It's more like the cheap phone is an incentive to sign with them in the first place, but the cost of the service is the same regardless of the price of the phone.
Well, that's not even a close analogy. The merchant is asking you to give them money. They're not threatening you in any way. They simply say "Okay, you gave us some money, now give us some more". By contrast a mugger threatens you with harm. I don't see where the situations are in any way analogous to each other.
I think I see where the issue lies. Labor is a commodity at a macro level, but when you actually see some poor guy working twelve hour days for minimum wage trying to raise a family, it strikes everyone as basically unfair that the guy at the top reaps the benefits of the guys labor.
Here's the thing. The world is a very harsh place. To make it in this world, you've got to equip yourself with skills that people will pay a lot for. And unfortunately, choices made at an early age tend to influence what you end up as later in life. The reality is that some people choose wisely in terms of career paths. The reality is that some people are really smart and work hard/smart to make themselves more valuable. And of course, another reality is that some people are just plain lucky.
I don't think there's a fix for these types of issues. I think we have to accept at a certain level that people will do whatever it takes to earn a buck and plan accordingly.
No. You *stop shopping there*. Office Depot isn't the only place to buy computers, it's probably not even the best. If people didn't give them money, they wouldn't sell overpriced service plans.
If Office Depot's market is people who are technically inept who fall for dumb marketing, and they can make a profit, good for them!
But if you walk in buy a computer for $400 and then walk out with a $200 service plan, you can't blame Office Depot for trying. You can primarily blame yourself for being an uninformed consumer.
>>EVERYONE, whether you're a business owner or not, always wants to sell high and buy low.That's not greed. It's common sense.
>Nope. Still greed.
Not really. If you're buying a used car from a guy, and he's asking for $5K, and book value is $4K is he being greedy?
What if you offer him $3K? Are you being greedy?
I think the answer to that is no. It's not immoral to sell things for as much as you can, nor is it immoral to buy things for as low as you can. Even communists do that. Nobody gives away stuff to be a nice guy. Nobody pays too much because they feel it's "the right thing to do". That applies to cars, widgets or labor. It's all a commodity.
"Sharing someone else's copyrighted material is still not legal"
Actually, it may or may not be. There are music sites, based in the U.S. that share music of artists for free. The music is fully copyrighted. But as the artist is not famous they would for the present time prefer to get people to listen and thus do not charge.
Or consider last.fm or Hulu. Or lots of other sites that let you download copyrighted, mainstream entertainment for free. Or if I have a copy of music on my hard drive and I copy it to my laptop over the internet.
Can you come up with a blanket rule that can be enforced from the ISP rule that seems less arbitrary than "well, Joe's records complained about you 3 times, therefore you're cut off?". What if Joe is full of nonsense and just wants me to get cut off? Will Joe's record get cut off?
It all seems fair until you think about a practical application of such a law.
"Apple will destroy them financially by tying everything up in court."
Now imagine if they took those resources and used them to get in front of the developer requests for iPhone/iPod. They would build a better system for developers and users and would easily win competing on the merits of what they sell rather than an attempt to stifle what I think is legitimate competition.
"nice weasel words with the phrase "you feel it's caused", as if there's some question, there. "
It's not a weasel word. It's not even a weasel phrase. You've simply stated an opinion as to a problem with a set of measures you think will correct it. I think you're just blue-skying with a point of view that doesn't match reality. Everybody is entitled to do it. For example, I think that nobody should be allowed to drive until they can use a manual transmission and can fully control their car in a four-wheel drift at high speeds. I'm not sure it will help anything, but it makes me feel better to think it. Likewise, just charging people more for gas to make them stop using so much is not something I even disagree with; I can probably afford the gas, and it will keep the poor schmucks packed on public transport while I make it into work very quickly and efficiently.
So you see, I'm agreeing with your goal. But you still haven't said what you'd do with the money. When government takes money from people it should be for a purpose, rather than just to teach us a lesson.
"The fact you don't understand this makes me think you don't actually understand these issues. "
Is that a debating style you kids use on Xbox Live or something? Is it generally effective?;)
"The government should tax gas by enough to offset the cost of the environmental damaged caused by digging it out of the ground, refining it, and burning it."
I don't agree, but for the sake of argument, I'll go along.
Now then, Mr. Government, now that you've collected money on gas, how will you use that money to undo the environmental damage that you feel it's caused? Or is it simply a punitive measure?
"and we have an inherent fear of diesel, thanks to the loud, smoky GM diesels of the 1980s."
Actually I don't believe that's why diesel cars are unpopular in the U.S.
When you take the high price of diesel, combine it with the higher initial purchase price of a diesel automobile, and combine it with the poor availability of diesel fuel, it only makes sense for people who drive a lot of miles over the course of the vehicle life (perhaps 150K-200K).
Buying a diesel automobile is supposed to be an economic decision, not a feel-good measure.
Slashdot Mirror
"Guns were necessary for slavery"
I wonder how the Egyptians had slaves thousands of years before the invention of firearms? http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/slaves.htm
Perhaps those ancient cultures were so *clever* that they tricked the slaves into thinking they had invented guns?
"it is also true the Macbook chassis is vastly superior to practically any "PC" notebook vendor."
It is most assuredly not true. I have a 2 year old MBP, and I replaced the hard drive last fall.
Let me tell you that is a nontrivial exercise because of a few factors:
1) The case is beautiful, but you must remove 20+ screws and you have to take the entire notebook apart to change the hard drive
2) The screws are very tiny, and the case doesn't really fit together that well. If you don't get just right, the clever magnetic catch doesn't release properly. Then you get to take it all apart again.
3) The cables are held in place with adhesive tape (!!!!) inside.
4) The holder for the hard drive was clearly built for cost and is not well engineered.
5) The wiring overall inside is cheaply done.
6) I've taken apart a Mac Mini, and the construction of the MBP internally is similar.
So I use my MacBook pro, and I like it, but I compared it to the laptop work provided me (a high-end HP).
1) Things like hard drives and memory come apart with no screws. They simply pop out without disassembling
2) There is no tape on the inside of a comparable HP laptop. If you have to disassemble it, it's pretty easy, and there are not 20 screws in the entire machine. The wiring is done far more intelligently.
The HP is simply engineered better than the MBP. Now I'm not saying every HP laptop is well engineered and put together, but the laptops that in the same price range as the MBP are simply better machines.
This is no different than the model that exists today, with the exception that music is readily available without "joining" or paying the apple tax or the RIAA member tax. The price is low enough that it becomes an impulse buy rather than "oh man, I've got to take 1/2 a day's pay" to buy an album.
I can't "guarantee" that this will work, but I can guarantee what the record execs are coming up with is DOA. I can guarantee that my method would have a shot at working. You want "evidence" that my idea would work, but you don't seem to want the same evidence about the record label's plan. What we know is that the plan doesn't change anything except he record company execs get more money. The artists get no more money, people are still getting sued, and the record companies are still trying to get people "kicked off the internet".
As to selling other people's copyrighted works on a website "cheaper", they're exactly the kind of copyright violations that the record companies should be going after.
The term "cockroach" is the ideal term for this behavior. When you turn on the lights and expose them, cockroaches run for cover. When the record company execs came up with a money grab, they ran for cover when it was exposed in the press. I think the analogy is apt.
And please don't hold back who you want to call "retarded clown". I live in mortal fear of anonymous comments on slashdot.
These people are like cockroaches; when you turn on the light, they scurry, and then claim you're being unfair. If any college president agrees with this, if any ISP agrees with this, it's proof that they're not smart enough to do their job.
Here's how to "fix" the download problem:
1) Make the downloads available without DRM
2) Charge a low price ($5/album)
3) Make the downloaded version more valuable than the CD... location transparency, ability to download to any device any time, something, more, better.
4) Go back to a model where a lot of new artists can be downloaded for little cost (perhaps $2.50/album). Make albums more than a few years old just as cheap
5) Try to be fair to the artists.
My idea is way better than theirs, and there's almost no overhead, other than servers and bandwidth.
Carriers only do these kinds of things because we let them. If people simply wouldn't pay the fees, then they'd stop in about 3 months. But too many people gotta have it now, so the carriers are actually *correct* in charging these fees. People will not only take it on the chin, but they'll pay for the privilege of doing so.
Your story, however, reminds me of the Motorola V710 I bought from Verizon about 4-5 years ago. It had bluetooth, but they locked it down so tight it was only useful for Bluetooth hands free. I'm sure you read about all the lawsuits (which came to nothing... Verizon offered to give you a few dollars off a new phone provided you signed up for 2 more years of service. Some deal), but hackers managed to come up with firmware that that enabled many of the profiles.
Thus, the phone became far more useful, although it "cheated" (haha) Verizon of 25 cents every time you snapped a photo, or loaded na mp3 for a ringtone, or use it in a way that they felt you shouldn't. Anyway, long story short, when I'd go into Verizon stores from one end of the country to the other with the phone, the Verizon reps would look at it and say "oh. you have one of *those* phones". And the employees were genuinely bitter and angry that people like myself had loaded the hacked firmware to make the phone useful.
Verizon has gone to much greater lengths in newer phones to prevent people from using their own property.
I'm no longer with Verizon, BTW.
Fair point, we sold it almost 4 years ago for about $5K. The point is that the van would not have been usable if we had not made the repair. No radio, no air conditioning, doors not working, so we would have had to pay for the repairs anyway. I should have mentioned that we use up warranties quicker on mileage than time. That may play a role in determining if an extended warranty makes sense.
"I never needed to buy an extended warranty; it was just wasted money."
It depends... I had a 2001 Dodge Caravan that started to have little problems right as the warranty was about to run out, so I bargained hard for a 100K 6 year extended warranty, got it for $1400, directly from Dodge, so it was like the factory warranty.
Of course, we used it and used it hard... radio failures, lights on the dash kept burning out, and dodge's design meant that you had to replace entire dash components to replace the light. Door issues, air conditioning issues. Almost continuously. And Dodge fixed conservatively $10K worth of "stuff" under that warranty.
Just before the warranty ran out, we fixed everything. And then sold it. We couldn't afford another Dodge... ;)
So, sometimes it pays. But I agree, that was a statistical anomoly.
"Another annoying practice Sears had was to offer "rebates" that had to redeemed from the central Chicago office. So customers come-in expected a sale, but instead they pay full price, and have to go through the hassle of mailing stuff to Chicago to get their refund. I had a LOT of customer come-in and complain they never received the check in the mail. At first we simply refunded the money out of the drawer, but then the stores stopped doing that."
We got screwed out of about $400 that way when the clerk made the mistake of saying we were taking the "free financing". We paid off the bill in 30 days. We appealed to the manager, but he/she (can't remember) said "My clerks never make mistakes". We pointed out the problem to sears, went all the way up the chain, they all said "sorry, that's the way it goes". I sent a letter to the president of sears and he sent us back to the same woman who said "sorry that's the way it goes".
I explained to sears that I buy thousands of dollars of appliances, tools, tractors, etc a year from them. They didn't budge.
You know how much they've gotten from us in 2 years? Nothing. Sears will fail *because they treat their customers poorly*. Sears saw the issue, said no, it didn't make any sense and then proceeded to screw me out of $400.
The thing is, I'm sure management gave itself a bonus because they eliminated good customer service, and then customers like me, lifetime customers for decades, are left holding the bag.
Doesn't Sears realize that Costco has better customer service and they're way cheaper? I don't think they understand they have competition.
Sears stole money from me, acknowledged it and won't pay it back. That's all I know. Nobody in that whole corporation has accountability. So I won't do business with them.
I think this has been a common feeling ever since cavemen were bartering for "stuff" with each other.
"Can you believe I got Urg to trade me an entire brontosaurus skin for the tusks of a woolly mammoth? What a dingbat!"
It's human nature, it's competitiveness. We can debate the morality of it certainly, but that attitude has always been with us and always will be with us.
It's not "double-dipping" and it was not "overlooked", it was an advertised feature of the plan, at least when they started. It made sense since Blockbuster was trying to take on an entrenched company.
I asked how it worked, and the store manager told me he would gather all the returned videos once a day and UPS them back to the Blockbuster's rental "central".
"Just like you feel you have the right to do whatever you want to stuff you buy, businesses feel that they have the right to protect their business model."
I agree with you 100%.
And where we might differ is that I don't see the government having any role in this equation, either through laws, enforcement, or anything. MS is on their own. So is the customer. May the better hacker win.
"Once my initial contract expired, I started getting frequent calls from VZW which went something like:"
Same thing happened to me last summer. We had 3 phones with Verizon wireless, and they called. They said, "if you agree to a new 2 year deal [$120/month on average], then we'll give you $50 towards a new phone".
I said "So in return for $2400, you offer me $50 *off*? One time?
They were taken aback. As if their offer was so generous, no one had ever told them no
"well, sir, this gives you not just that great verizon service, but you could use that money towards a new phone!"
I told them "Not good enough. I want all 3 phones on my account with the same plans for $60/month"
"We're not authorized to do that"
"goodbye"
Business is too good if all you're willing to give as a discount is 2% to a multi-year customer. They have high customer acquisition costs, but they're unwilling to give customers any kind of real break to renew.
They're either geniuses or stupid. I can't tell which. But they certainly aren't getting $120/month from me anymore. So I have my own theory.
"Do you think that my carrier gave me a discount or let me sign up without a contract because I did this? Pffft, fat chance. "
Yep, the idea that the phones are subsidized is a lie, if you consider that if you renew past 1 or 2 years with a carrier with the same phone they don't give you a discount on monthly service.
It's more like the cheap phone is an incentive to sign with them in the first place, but the cost of the service is the same regardless of the price of the phone.
Well, that's not even a close analogy. The merchant is asking you to give them money. They're not threatening you in any way. They simply say "Okay, you gave us some money, now give us some more". By contrast a mugger threatens you with harm. I don't see where the situations are in any way analogous to each other.
I think I see where the issue lies. Labor is a commodity at a macro level, but when you actually see some poor guy working twelve hour days for minimum wage trying to raise a family, it strikes everyone as basically unfair that the guy at the top reaps the benefits of the guys labor.
Here's the thing. The world is a very harsh place. To make it in this world, you've got to equip yourself with skills that people will pay a lot for. And unfortunately, choices made at an early age tend to influence what you end up as later in life. The reality is that some people choose wisely in terms of career paths. The reality is that some people are really smart and work hard/smart to make themselves more valuable. And of course, another reality is that some people are just plain lucky.
I don't think there's a fix for these types of issues. I think we have to accept at a certain level that people will do whatever it takes to earn a buck and plan accordingly.
"Alright, so you just roll over and take it?"
No. You *stop shopping there*. Office Depot isn't the only place to buy computers, it's probably not even the best. If people didn't give them money, they wouldn't sell overpriced service plans.
If Office Depot's market is people who are technically inept who fall for dumb marketing, and they can make a profit, good for them!
But if you walk in buy a computer for $400 and then walk out with a $200 service plan, you can't blame Office Depot for trying. You can primarily blame yourself for being an uninformed consumer.
>>EVERYONE, whether you're a business owner or not, always wants to sell high and buy low.That's not greed. It's common sense.
>Nope. Still greed.
Not really. If you're buying a used car from a guy, and he's asking for $5K, and book value is $4K is he being greedy?
What if you offer him $3K? Are you being greedy?
I think the answer to that is no. It's not immoral to sell things for as much as you can, nor is it immoral to buy things for as low as you can. Even communists do that. Nobody gives away stuff to be a nice guy. Nobody pays too much because they feel it's "the right thing to do". That applies to cars, widgets or labor. It's all a commodity.
"Sharing someone else's copyrighted material is still not legal"
Actually, it may or may not be. There are music sites, based in the U.S. that share music of artists for free. The music is fully copyrighted. But as the artist is not famous they would for the present time prefer to get people to listen and thus do not charge.
Or consider last.fm or Hulu. Or lots of other sites that let you download copyrighted, mainstream entertainment for free. Or if I have a copy of music on my hard drive and I copy it to my laptop over the internet.
Can you come up with a blanket rule that can be enforced from the ISP rule that seems less arbitrary than "well, Joe's records complained about you 3 times, therefore you're cut off?". What if Joe is full of nonsense and just wants me to get cut off? Will Joe's record get cut off?
It all seems fair until you think about a practical application of such a law.
"Apple will destroy them financially by tying everything up in court."
Now imagine if they took those resources and used them to get in front of the developer requests for iPhone/iPod. They would build a better system for developers and users and would easily win competing on the merits of what they sell rather than an attempt to stifle what I think is legitimate competition.
"woosh"
Exactly!
That stuff looks bad when you write it all down like that, but I'd rather look at Kim Jong Il as just somebody very ronery.
No seriously, if the U.S. and S. Korea were just nicer to the North none of this would've happened.
"nice weasel words with the phrase "you feel it's caused", as if there's some question, there. "
It's not a weasel word. It's not even a weasel phrase. You've simply stated an opinion as to a problem with a set of measures you think will correct it. I think you're just blue-skying with a point of view that doesn't match reality. Everybody is entitled to do it. For example, I think that nobody should be allowed to drive until they can use a manual transmission and can fully control their car in a four-wheel drift at high speeds. I'm not sure it will help anything, but it makes me feel better to think it. Likewise, just charging people more for gas to make them stop using so much is not something I even disagree with; I can probably afford the gas, and it will keep the poor schmucks packed on public transport while I make it into work very quickly and efficiently.
So you see, I'm agreeing with your goal. But you still haven't said what you'd do with the money. When government takes money from people it should be for a purpose, rather than just to teach us a lesson.
"The fact you don't understand this makes me think you don't actually understand these issues. "
Is that a debating style you kids use on Xbox Live or something? Is it generally effective? ;)
Have a good week, my friend.
"The government should tax gas by enough to offset the cost of the environmental damaged caused by digging it out of the ground, refining it, and burning it."
I don't agree, but for the sake of argument, I'll go along.
Now then, Mr. Government, now that you've collected money on gas, how will you use that money to undo the environmental damage that you feel it's caused? Or is it simply a punitive measure?
"and we have an inherent fear of diesel, thanks to the loud, smoky GM diesels of the 1980s."
Actually I don't believe that's why diesel cars are unpopular in the U.S.
When you take the high price of diesel, combine it with the higher initial purchase price of a diesel automobile, and combine it with the poor availability of diesel fuel, it only makes sense for people who drive a lot of miles over the course of the vehicle life (perhaps 150K-200K).
Buying a diesel automobile is supposed to be an economic decision, not a feel-good measure.
I've never heard Algol described as being "Object Oriented", in fact, that term was unknown in 1965 when Algol was invented.
At best, it facilitated "structured programming", but even later languages based on Algol weren't Object Oriented (i.e. PL/I).