I'm honestly not sure why I should be worried about a dozen missing nuclear bombs, many decades old, either destroyed in the accident or due to wear and decay over the intervening years.
There are a lot of bigger dangers to worry about in the world. This one doesn't even register on my scale.
It's a simple fact that 90% of everyone is incapable of critical thinking. People are, largely, stupid, venal, and weak. Some aren't, but they are a tiny minority.
The depressing part is that this is how it has always been, and how it always will be, and there is jack all you can do to change it.
The good news is that this is how it has always been, and yet we have reached the state we are in today anyway, proving that it is not an insurmountable obstacle.
If the retailer adds no value, why do people flock to him?
Oh that's right, because organization, inventory management, and sales are all added value.
If you want to buy your stuff directly from the sellers, go for it. But please don't think that you're somehow magically intelligent and everybody else is a complete moron for going through retailers.
First, that used market supports the price of the new game. A lot of people are spending $60 on a game knowing that when they're finished with it, they can sell it back to the store for $30 (or whatever the going price is for used game returns these days). If that suddenly ceases to work, then that's $30 of value that disappears from the game. They're going to be much less willing to put down $60 for the game if they can't resell it. The price that the game makers can charge goes down dramatically.
Second, it doesn't matter what bad effects the used game market has because they don't have a choice. If you're selling physical goods, those physical goods are going to get resold, period. People who buy physical goods expect them to be resellable. If the game makers want to disable reselling, then they will quickly find that their customer base disappearing.
To summarize: the used market does not hurt nearly as much as you think, and even if it does, it's just too damned bad.
In fact, in my experience, the ones from small towns are more likely to be open-minded. People who live in big cities tend to think that they are living at the apex of humanity, that they and their environment are the best, and that people in small towns don't know jack. Not all people in big cities are like this, of course, but my experience is that there's proportionately more of them than there are similarly close-minded people in small towns. Lots of people in small towns are aware of the wider world, enjoy the opportunity to visit other places including big cities, but simply don't live there for various legitimate reasons.
Palin, of course, is not one of these open-minded small town people. But she is the way she is because that's who she is, not because of where she lives. She'd be just as much of a clueless asshole if she had grown up in New York City.
Why do you want to punish those people? They're free people, doing what they want to do, and it hurts nobody. Why not just let them continue?
The idea that the used games market should somehow be bypassed is something I can't even grasp. You don't get to control your product once you sell it. That's just a basic fact of life. If you really don't want people selling your game used, make it so good that they want to keep it. The used market also serves to support prices in the new market, so it's not as if game makers derive no benefit from it.
A good company will make money by building a great product that people want to buy. A mediocre company will think that they're building a great product, will see that they don't enjoy the same success as a great company, and will start searching for ways to punish their customers or their potential customers for not giving them more money. Obviously these tactics never work out in the long term, but it doesn't stop them.
How is this going to entice non-customers into being customers?
"I see you've bought this game new! Even though we completely don't deserve it, please give us some more money so that you can have the full game. Have a nice day!"
This is not actually a very good strategy for making people buy your stuff.
Sure thing, to each his own. I don't even have any such places near me, so the loss is minimal. If you want to tolerate it then that's your right, but acting as though the search itself is some kind of benefit is a bit much.
This is why you should always make purchases with a credit or debit card.
If the clerk refuses your full refund, tell him that you're going to dispute the charge on your card. That should change his mind, because disputed charges are very bad news for merchants. If it doesn't, then simply call your card company and actually dispute the charge. You'll get your money back, the retailer will be out his money plus a chargeback fee, and although this is not a particularly worthwhile benefit in your case, you'll probably get to keep your merchandise too.
And you can still refuse, and leave. At which point you have breached your membership contract, and they then have every right to revoke your membership and carry out any other penalty clauses which might be in the contract. But no matter what the membership agreement says, they cannot prevent you from leaving without showing your receipt.
It's actually a pretty good analogy. Such a sign does not magically make women unable to refuse to have sex with you any more than a similar sign in a retail store magically makes you unable to refuse to let people search your property.
If they have already allowed you to buy something and then ask to search your stuff, you have every right to refuse. Their only recourse is to ask you to leave the store, which you were probably doing anyway, and to tell you that you are not allowed to return.
A store cannot enforce arbitrary policies simply because they own the property. If you get into a dispute with them over their policies then the only thing they can do to you to enforce their policies is to force you to leave and not come back. And if you have already purchased your items then they are your property and they have no right to search them, any more than they have a right to search anything else that does not belong to them.
People really need to get this straight. You do not give up your rights simply because you enter property which belongs to someone else. They can ask you to do anything they want, but you can simply refuse. At that point the only thing they can do, unless you have committed a crime (refusal to follow store policy does not qualify!) is to tell you that you are no longer welcome in the store and escort you out.
Did he physically block you? If so then you should have called the police. If he did not, then you should have ignored him and walked out anyway.
Laws obviously differ from state to state but I am confident that a private security guard does not have the right to detain you unless he has positive evidence that you have committed a crime. Security guards don't have any special status under the law. If they detain someone it is under the aegis of a citizen's arrest, and such a thing cannot be legally performed unless a crime has actually been committed. Refusal to show a receipt is not a crime in any American jurisdiction I have ever heard of.
So what? Go to another town. Petition a chain to open another pharmacy in your town. Open your own pharmacy.
If your local supermarket didn't sell alcohol because the owners didn't believe it was morally right, would you think it acceptable to force them to sell alcohol against their will and against their religion?
There is no "right to a full-service pharmacy within convenient driving distance".
Can you elaborate a bit more on exactly what you're referring to? My understanding of the term "post-secondary education" is that it refers to any higher education beyond high school, including community college, regular universities, graduate school, and any other such things. None of which, as far as I'm aware, get you out of high school sooner or get the government to pay for it all.
That really depends on your definition of "right" and "left".
In the US these days, where the "right" includes such things as evolution denialism, global warming denialism, and other anti-science positions, it's pretty much justified to say that reality has a liberal bias.
In times or places where the "right" is not anti-reality but is simply fiscally or socially conservative, then it would no longer be true.
I'm about as un-religious as they come, and I think birth control is fine.
That said, your position seems awfully twisted. Pharmacists are not government employees. They are free individuals. How is it that letting pharmacists refuse to do certain types of business is "subjecting others to your religion", but forcing pharmacists to take actions that go against their religion is "freedom of religion"?
I think that all pharmacists should fill any prescription taken to them. But I also think that forcing pharmacists to fill prescriptions against their will is wrong. It's unfortunate if they do it, but the correct action is to take your business elsewhere, not get the government to force people to compromise their beliefs.
The nice thing about this purported cure is that it's really quite simple and obvious. It's one of those things where now that I've heard of it I'm amazed it wasn't tried earlier.
HIV feasts on the human immune system. The human immune system lives in the bone marrow, which can be transplanted between people. Some people are naturally immune to HIV. It's really very simple when you think about it, almost mechanical.
Of course it could end up being crap for one reason or another, but given how it supposedly works I'd say there's a much greater reason to believe that this one will really come through.
Slashdot Mirror
All the money is spent on Earth and most of it goes into the pockets of American citizens.
And all of it came from the pockets of American citizens too.
Except that it is no big deal, so there's nothing Orwellian about it.
I'm honestly not sure why I should be worried about a dozen missing nuclear bombs, many decades old, either destroyed in the accident or due to wear and decay over the intervening years.
There are a lot of bigger dangers to worry about in the world. This one doesn't even register on my scale.
It's a simple fact that 90% of everyone is incapable of critical thinking. People are, largely, stupid, venal, and weak. Some aren't, but they are a tiny minority.
The depressing part is that this is how it has always been, and how it always will be, and there is jack all you can do to change it.
The good news is that this is how it has always been, and yet we have reached the state we are in today anyway, proving that it is not an insurmountable obstacle.
Imagine if you could buy a house, live in it for a few years, then re-sell the house to a friend who can live in it for a few years too!
If the retailer adds no value, why do people flock to him?
Oh that's right, because organization, inventory management, and sales are all added value.
If you want to buy your stuff directly from the sellers, go for it. But please don't think that you're somehow magically intelligent and everybody else is a complete moron for going through retailers.
You are missing a couple of key points.
First, that used market supports the price of the new game. A lot of people are spending $60 on a game knowing that when they're finished with it, they can sell it back to the store for $30 (or whatever the going price is for used game returns these days). If that suddenly ceases to work, then that's $30 of value that disappears from the game. They're going to be much less willing to put down $60 for the game if they can't resell it. The price that the game makers can charge goes down dramatically.
Second, it doesn't matter what bad effects the used game market has because they don't have a choice. If you're selling physical goods, those physical goods are going to get resold, period. People who buy physical goods expect them to be resellable. If the game makers want to disable reselling, then they will quickly find that their customer base disappearing.
To summarize: the used market does not hurt nearly as much as you think, and even if it does, it's just too damned bad.
In fact, in my experience, the ones from small towns are more likely to be open-minded. People who live in big cities tend to think that they are living at the apex of humanity, that they and their environment are the best, and that people in small towns don't know jack. Not all people in big cities are like this, of course, but my experience is that there's proportionately more of them than there are similarly close-minded people in small towns. Lots of people in small towns are aware of the wider world, enjoy the opportunity to visit other places including big cities, but simply don't live there for various legitimate reasons.
Palin, of course, is not one of these open-minded small town people. But she is the way she is because that's who she is, not because of where she lives. She'd be just as much of a clueless asshole if she had grown up in New York City.
Why do you want to punish those people? They're free people, doing what they want to do, and it hurts nobody. Why not just let them continue?
The idea that the used games market should somehow be bypassed is something I can't even grasp. You don't get to control your product once you sell it. That's just a basic fact of life. If you really don't want people selling your game used, make it so good that they want to keep it. The used market also serves to support prices in the new market, so it's not as if game makers derive no benefit from it.
A good company will make money by building a great product that people want to buy. A mediocre company will think that they're building a great product, will see that they don't enjoy the same success as a great company, and will start searching for ways to punish their customers or their potential customers for not giving them more money. Obviously these tactics never work out in the long term, but it doesn't stop them.
How is this going to entice non-customers into being customers?
"I see you've bought this game new! Even though we completely don't deserve it, please give us some more money so that you can have the full game. Have a nice day!"
This is not actually a very good strategy for making people buy your stuff.
When you decide to start punishing non-customers rather than finding ways to entice them into being customers, that's a really bad sign.
Thanks for the information and for satisfying my curiosity. That looks like a very worthy program.
Sure thing, to each his own. I don't even have any such places near me, so the loss is minimal. If you want to tolerate it then that's your right, but acting as though the search itself is some kind of benefit is a bit much.
This is why you should always make purchases with a credit or debit card.
If the clerk refuses your full refund, tell him that you're going to dispute the charge on your card. That should change his mind, because disputed charges are very bad news for merchants. If it doesn't, then simply call your card company and actually dispute the charge. You'll get your money back, the retailer will be out his money plus a chargeback fee, and although this is not a particularly worthwhile benefit in your case, you'll probably get to keep your merchandise too.
And you can still refuse, and leave. At which point you have breached your membership contract, and they then have every right to revoke your membership and carry out any other penalty clauses which might be in the contract. But no matter what the membership agreement says, they cannot prevent you from leaving without showing your receipt.
That's nice, except that it's something I can do by myself without having people treat me like a criminal just for shopping at their store.
It's actually a pretty good analogy. Such a sign does not magically make women unable to refuse to have sex with you any more than a similar sign in a retail store magically makes you unable to refuse to let people search your property.
If they have already allowed you to buy something and then ask to search your stuff, you have every right to refuse. Their only recourse is to ask you to leave the store, which you were probably doing anyway, and to tell you that you are not allowed to return.
A store cannot enforce arbitrary policies simply because they own the property. If you get into a dispute with them over their policies then the only thing they can do to you to enforce their policies is to force you to leave and not come back. And if you have already purchased your items then they are your property and they have no right to search them, any more than they have a right to search anything else that does not belong to them.
People really need to get this straight. You do not give up your rights simply because you enter property which belongs to someone else. They can ask you to do anything they want, but you can simply refuse. At that point the only thing they can do, unless you have committed a crime (refusal to follow store policy does not qualify!) is to tell you that you are no longer welcome in the store and escort you out.
Did he physically block you? If so then you should have called the police. If he did not, then you should have ignored him and walked out anyway.
Laws obviously differ from state to state but I am confident that a private security guard does not have the right to detain you unless he has positive evidence that you have committed a crime. Security guards don't have any special status under the law. If they detain someone it is under the aegis of a citizen's arrest, and such a thing cannot be legally performed unless a crime has actually been committed. Refusal to show a receipt is not a crime in any American jurisdiction I have ever heard of.
So what? Go to another town. Petition a chain to open another pharmacy in your town. Open your own pharmacy.
If your local supermarket didn't sell alcohol because the owners didn't believe it was morally right, would you think it acceptable to force them to sell alcohol against their will and against their religion?
There is no "right to a full-service pharmacy within convenient driving distance".
Can you elaborate a bit more on exactly what you're referring to? My understanding of the term "post-secondary education" is that it refers to any higher education beyond high school, including community college, regular universities, graduate school, and any other such things. None of which, as far as I'm aware, get you out of high school sooner or get the government to pay for it all.
That really depends on your definition of "right" and "left".
In the US these days, where the "right" includes such things as evolution denialism, global warming denialism, and other anti-science positions, it's pretty much justified to say that reality has a liberal bias.
In times or places where the "right" is not anti-reality but is simply fiscally or socially conservative, then it would no longer be true.
Didn't you know? A single dose of cocoaine can completely destroy the Presidential centers of your brain!
I'm about as un-religious as they come, and I think birth control is fine.
That said, your position seems awfully twisted. Pharmacists are not government employees. They are free individuals. How is it that letting pharmacists refuse to do certain types of business is "subjecting others to your religion", but forcing pharmacists to take actions that go against their religion is "freedom of religion"?
I think that all pharmacists should fill any prescription taken to them. But I also think that forcing pharmacists to fill prescriptions against their will is wrong. It's unfortunate if they do it, but the correct action is to take your business elsewhere, not get the government to force people to compromise their beliefs.
The nice thing about this purported cure is that it's really quite simple and obvious. It's one of those things where now that I've heard of it I'm amazed it wasn't tried earlier.
HIV feasts on the human immune system. The human immune system lives in the bone marrow, which can be transplanted between people. Some people are naturally immune to HIV. It's really very simple when you think about it, almost mechanical.
Of course it could end up being crap for one reason or another, but given how it supposedly works I'd say there's a much greater reason to believe that this one will really come through.