Too true. I think if TPB asked for donations, they'd get a fortune - even if the "country" was only large enough to house the building their servers are stored in. I virtually never use TPB to get torrents, but I'd gladly give them $20 to help them out for what they stand for.
I live in Ohio and have never met a military person who ever spoke poorly of the military (unless they were criticizing the slowness of the beauracracy).
Only because citizens in the US decided that it "wasn't cool" to care about intellectual things. If the individual countries in Europe decided to keep their soverignty, they could make it work better. The key is to not allow the collective government the ability to tax, then it cannot offer bribes.
They might get orders to go arrest hundreds even to shoot them on site but a lot of them wouldn't do it and would be on our side.
You obviously know very different military people than I know. Every military person I know believes that the government is always right, no matter what, regardless of who is in charge.
Which is why the EU should have been designed like the US federal government was originally designed - very limited powers and existing only to provide mutual defence and make it easier to conduct business between the different states / countries. It was foolish of them to let the EU be able to completely trump individual governments laws on issues not regarding the economy or military.
While we have plenty of bad things going on in the US, the frequency that we hear stories like this (or spying on the public, arresting kids for climbing trees, etc) from the EU really amazes me that there are people who try to claim that you have more freedom in Europe than in the US.
Which is why they really do need to add mods (kept separate from your karma) for tracking how many people agree / disagree with you. Of course, the fan boys would probably still mod people troll just because they're trying to silence any dissenters.....
No, it can still be rigged. Lets say that we all vote for an independent president and an all new independent congress - do you really think that the Republicans and Democrats would let that happen? God no. They'd bust out the military, claim it was rigged, arrest hundreds of people and once people started openly calling them out on not following the election results, they'd start shooting people too.
And no, I wasn't saying it was the top brass who should be making the call. ANYONE in the military who is given an unconstitional order should either 1) take whatever measures to have the person who gave the order relieved of command or if that doesn't work 2) shoot them for treason.
Sad to see another anti-MS troll who's never bothered to use Win 7 and find out if it's good or not before bashing it. Vista sucked, as have most MS products. However, Win 7 is actually good. I know die-hard Mac fanboys who have tried Win 7 and loved it. The fact that you got modded insightful for trolling amazes me....
I think it's more the military's fault for not upholding their oath to protect the Constitution. Really, what can normal people do when elections are pretty much rigged on who you're can vote for and the military will blindly do whatever the government asks? If you dare to defy the government and try to uphold the Constitution, you're a "terrorist" and the military won't think twice about killing you for daring to defy the Fuhrer.
their marketing machine is in overdrive trying to spin a very bland OS as something exciting.
You obviously haven't used Windows 7. I've used it since February (or whenever the beta came out). It's the best Windows that they've done, and I'm a big fan of Linux.
Please, try using an OS before bashing it next time.
I agree, then there's also the fact that since the concept of marriage came from religions, the government has no authority to pass laws on marriage in any way.
The attitude of I'd like to see them make games cross platform, but due to people not using them businesses won't make the games and since businesses don't make the games, people don't use the OS? The problem is that the people making the OS need to give companies and incentive to start making games, then they'll start getting more people using Linux for games (most people don't want to shell out $3,000 for a Mac).
Really? How about you provide a list of quality games to buy "on alternative OS's". I'm betting it'll be a real short list. The fact is that the market share for anything other than Windows isn't big enough for most companies to give a crap about. Could they make it run on every OS? Sure, but the PHB doesn't want to take the extra time to do that for a increase in potential customers of a whopping 5-10%. Windows WILL be the OS for gaming until Linux and OS X gain enough market share for major companies to find it worth their time - also, unless companies band together and pay MS to release DirectX for other OS's, you won't find most game companies willing to program for Linux or OS X. Yes, there are a few companies that make games for Mac (Blizzard), but they typically don't come out until a significantly long time after the original release. Besides the small market share, I believe Apple helps limit the number of games available due to their advertising - have you ever seen (in recent times at least) an Apple ad where they promote gaming? Not that I've ever seen. They promote pictures and videos and Garage Band.....but no gaming........so what motivation is there for a casual gamer to buy a Mac?
Those are used by everyone (or at least the majority). I guess you skipped reading comprehension in school or you'd be able to understand that most people != "the few".
Good job dodging the question with yet another, completely unrelated, unsupported assertion.
I answered the question. The reason that they're "free" is because they're all paid for with taxes. If costs go up, taxes go up as well. I'm sorry that the truth ruins your delusions about socialist "utopias" where everything is free, but the government is not capable of providing anything for free - it all comes from tax money and tax money comes from citizens.
. And pay attention this time. You said:
If the government pitched in $5,000 to everyone who attended college, colleges would simply increase tuition by exactly $5,000.
Actually, YOU need to pay attention, that was someone else who said that, not me. But I'll respond to it anyways. That would not actually happen given that just about every state in the US has a cap on how much (percentage wise) schools can increase tuition from year to year. I believe it's typically around 1.5% or so - regardless of the rate, unless you're going to an insanely expensive school (Yale, Harvard, MIT), it won't be $5,000 in a year, so in fact, students would pay less for school (though their real income would be less once they graduated due to the increase in taxes.
So, once again, if Europe and Canada subsidize education, and the result is education that, to the student, costs 10% of an equivalent US degree, why wouldn't a similar approach work in the US?
It wouldn't work here because we still have some semblance of freedom. While state colleges / universities are subsidized some, that only makes up a small amount of the budget because they realize that since a great many people don't go to college (and those who do, most don't get a higher degree after their Bachelor's), it is not fair to heavily tax everyone to give luxuries to the few. I'd also suspect the reason that they get away with it in those countries is because the schools are told how much they are allowed to charge and that they are not allowed to charge much at all.
No, higher interest rates are what allows uncredit-worthy people to borrow. It's the same with pretty much any uncertain activity - the greater the risk, the greater the reward if you succeed. If financial institutions couldn't charge higher rates to risky people, then those risky people would not be offered loans / credit cards at all. The financial institutions take a big risk (of the person not repaying) so the only way that they will consent to lend them that money is if they will make a larger profit off of it than with people who they know will pay back.
Don't try to enslave people with debt and pass it off as anything other than greed, because that's all it is.
No, it's not. Read the above. There are people of all income levels who have bad credit. High interest rates are the only way that they can borrow money. Sure, we can get rid of high interest rates on loans. Then anyone with poor credit (like college students) won't be able to get loans.
Our system of educational financing should not penalize individuals who want to pursue an advanced education, and right now it does.
It doesn't penalize them. It expects people to pay for a good / service - just like with everything else. If you want a car, you must pay for it. If you want a haircut, you must pay for it. You just don't want to pay for your education, which is total BS.
I am a taxpayer and believe that the government should subsidize education FAR more that it does right now.
No, as someone who wants an advanced degree without having to pay for it, you believe that the government should take money from everyone else to pay for your degree. Do I want to get my masters? Definitely. Will I? Who knows. Unfortunately the few schools in my area that offer a masters in my field do not offer any evening classes, meaning that I would have to stop working in order to go to grad school. However, unlike you, I am not arrogant enough to think that other people should be forced to pay for me to not work while I go get my masters degree.
1) Was this "public undergraduate institution" in your state or in another state?
2) "the people the government and banks should be supporting" - the government should not be supporting anyone. That's called "being a parasite". It is your responsibility to succeed, no one else's.
Before you try to complain that I'm some rich person, I just graduated from college with $25k in loans and worked to pay the rest myself - I also didn't get a decent job until 6 months after I graduated (not a big surprise with this economy) and even then I'm the only hourly employee at my company and due to the economy, I haven't been working full time so I've had to live cheap to make sure I pay the bills. However, I'm not going to whine and say that someone else should be forced to pay for me to have all the things I want. I take responsibility for my life and my choices.
So what are those countries in Europe doing that makes college so cheap?
Taxing the shit out of their citizens, that's what. Not only do they have higher income taxes for the same income levels, but they pay way more taxes on everything else as well.
That's the incredibly annoying thing when people talk about "free" or "cheap" education in socialist countries - just because they don't hand you a bill for it doesn't mean it's free. You pay for it every day you work for your entire life. That means in the long term, the countries with "free" education end up paying a hell of a lot more than someone in the US does.
The first one is doubtful. Since the new companies are paying the "old" companies to use their pipes, the old companies still make plenty of money even if the number of subscribers decreases.
The second point is incredibly doubtful because the new companies would have such a small profit margin (due to the extra cost of paying to use the pipes instead of owning their own) that it would take an insane amount of time, if ever, for them to save up enough money to do those things.
Are those two things possible? Sure. Are they likely. Hell no.
Slashdot Mirror
Too true. I think if TPB asked for donations, they'd get a fortune - even if the "country" was only large enough to house the building their servers are stored in. I virtually never use TPB to get torrents, but I'd gladly give them $20 to help them out for what they stand for.
I live in Ohio and have never met a military person who ever spoke poorly of the military (unless they were criticizing the slowness of the beauracracy).
Only because citizens in the US decided that it "wasn't cool" to care about intellectual things. If the individual countries in Europe decided to keep their soverignty, they could make it work better. The key is to not allow the collective government the ability to tax, then it cannot offer bribes.
They might get orders to go arrest hundreds even to shoot them on site but a lot of them wouldn't do it and would be on our side.
You obviously know very different military people than I know. Every military person I know believes that the government is always right, no matter what, regardless of who is in charge.
Which is why the EU should have been designed like the US federal government was originally designed - very limited powers and existing only to provide mutual defence and make it easier to conduct business between the different states / countries. It was foolish of them to let the EU be able to completely trump individual governments laws on issues not regarding the economy or military.
While we have plenty of bad things going on in the US, the frequency that we hear stories like this (or spying on the public, arresting kids for climbing trees, etc) from the EU really amazes me that there are people who try to claim that you have more freedom in Europe than in the US.
Which is why they really do need to add mods (kept separate from your karma) for tracking how many people agree / disagree with you. Of course, the fan boys would probably still mod people troll just because they're trying to silence any dissenters.....
No, it can still be rigged. Lets say that we all vote for an independent president and an all new independent congress - do you really think that the Republicans and Democrats would let that happen? God no. They'd bust out the military, claim it was rigged, arrest hundreds of people and once people started openly calling them out on not following the election results, they'd start shooting people too.
And no, I wasn't saying it was the top brass who should be making the call. ANYONE in the military who is given an unconstitional order should either 1) take whatever measures to have the person who gave the order relieved of command or if that doesn't work 2) shoot them for treason.
XP requires TONS more ram than Window 3.1 and would be much slower on the same hardware. Do you not agree that XP is progression from 3.1?
My country for a mod point!
Sad to see another anti-MS troll who's never bothered to use Win 7 and find out if it's good or not before bashing it. Vista sucked, as have most MS products. However, Win 7 is actually good. I know die-hard Mac fanboys who have tried Win 7 and loved it. The fact that you got modded insightful for trolling amazes me....
I think it's more the military's fault for not upholding their oath to protect the Constitution. Really, what can normal people do when elections are pretty much rigged on who you're can vote for and the military will blindly do whatever the government asks? If you dare to defy the government and try to uphold the Constitution, you're a "terrorist" and the military won't think twice about killing you for daring to defy the Fuhrer.
What's the current world record for the longest game of Monopoly?
Microsoft? no wait... US Steal??? damnit.. I'm no good at pop quiz's...
Wrong on both counts. The correct answer was government . Government is the longest running monopoly of all time. Thanks for playing though!
I'd love to, but I'd rather buy a new car instead of a Mac Pro if I'm going to be dropping down $25k.
their marketing machine is in overdrive trying to spin a very bland OS as something exciting.
You obviously haven't used Windows 7. I've used it since February (or whenever the beta came out). It's the best Windows that they've done, and I'm a big fan of Linux.
Please, try using an OS before bashing it next time.
I agree, then there's also the fact that since the concept of marriage came from religions, the government has no authority to pass laws on marriage in any way.
The attitude of I'd like to see them make games cross platform, but due to people not using them businesses won't make the games and since businesses don't make the games, people don't use the OS? The problem is that the people making the OS need to give companies and incentive to start making games, then they'll start getting more people using Linux for games (most people don't want to shell out $3,000 for a Mac).
Really? How about you provide a list of quality games to buy "on alternative OS's". I'm betting it'll be a real short list. The fact is that the market share for anything other than Windows isn't big enough for most companies to give a crap about. Could they make it run on every OS? Sure, but the PHB doesn't want to take the extra time to do that for a increase in potential customers of a whopping 5-10%. Windows WILL be the OS for gaming until Linux and OS X gain enough market share for major companies to find it worth their time - also, unless companies band together and pay MS to release DirectX for other OS's, you won't find most game companies willing to program for Linux or OS X. Yes, there are a few companies that make games for Mac (Blizzard), but they typically don't come out until a significantly long time after the original release. Besides the small market share, I believe Apple helps limit the number of games available due to their advertising - have you ever seen (in recent times at least) an Apple ad where they promote gaming? Not that I've ever seen. They promote pictures and videos and Garage Band.....but no gaming........so what motivation is there for a casual gamer to buy a Mac?
This pretty much sums up gaming on a Mac - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxPXFptzQRY
Those are used by everyone (or at least the majority). I guess you skipped reading comprehension in school or you'd be able to understand that most people != "the few".
Good job dodging the question with yet another, completely unrelated, unsupported assertion.
I answered the question. The reason that they're "free" is because they're all paid for with taxes. If costs go up, taxes go up as well. I'm sorry that the truth ruins your delusions about socialist "utopias" where everything is free, but the government is not capable of providing anything for free - it all comes from tax money and tax money comes from citizens.
. And pay attention this time. You said:
If the government pitched in $5,000 to everyone who attended college, colleges would simply increase tuition by exactly $5,000.
Actually, YOU need to pay attention, that was someone else who said that, not me. But I'll respond to it anyways. That would not actually happen given that just about every state in the US has a cap on how much (percentage wise) schools can increase tuition from year to year. I believe it's typically around 1.5% or so - regardless of the rate, unless you're going to an insanely expensive school (Yale, Harvard, MIT), it won't be $5,000 in a year, so in fact, students would pay less for school (though their real income would be less once they graduated due to the increase in taxes.
So, once again, if Europe and Canada subsidize education, and the result is education that, to the student, costs 10% of an equivalent US degree, why wouldn't a similar approach work in the US?
It wouldn't work here because we still have some semblance of freedom. While state colleges / universities are subsidized some, that only makes up a small amount of the budget because they realize that since a great many people don't go to college (and those who do, most don't get a higher degree after their Bachelor's), it is not fair to heavily tax everyone to give luxuries to the few. I'd also suspect the reason that they get away with it in those countries is because the schools are told how much they are allowed to charge and that they are not allowed to charge much at all.
No, higher interest rates are what allows uncredit-worthy people to borrow. It's the same with pretty much any uncertain activity - the greater the risk, the greater the reward if you succeed. If financial institutions couldn't charge higher rates to risky people, then those risky people would not be offered loans / credit cards at all. The financial institutions take a big risk (of the person not repaying) so the only way that they will consent to lend them that money is if they will make a larger profit off of it than with people who they know will pay back.
Don't try to enslave people with debt and pass it off as anything other than greed, because that's all it is.
No, it's not. Read the above. There are people of all income levels who have bad credit. High interest rates are the only way that they can borrow money. Sure, we can get rid of high interest rates on loans. Then anyone with poor credit (like college students) won't be able to get loans.
Our system of educational financing should not penalize individuals who want to pursue an advanced education, and right now it does.
It doesn't penalize them. It expects people to pay for a good / service - just like with everything else. If you want a car, you must pay for it. If you want a haircut, you must pay for it. You just don't want to pay for your education, which is total BS.
I am a taxpayer and believe that the government should subsidize education FAR more that it does right now.
No, as someone who wants an advanced degree without having to pay for it, you believe that the government should take money from everyone else to pay for your degree. Do I want to get my masters? Definitely. Will I? Who knows. Unfortunately the few schools in my area that offer a masters in my field do not offer any evening classes, meaning that I would have to stop working in order to go to grad school. However, unlike you, I am not arrogant enough to think that other people should be forced to pay for me to not work while I go get my masters degree.
Two things:
1) Was this "public undergraduate institution" in your state or in another state?
2) "the people the government and banks should be supporting" - the government should not be supporting anyone. That's called "being a parasite". It is your responsibility to succeed, no one else's.
Before you try to complain that I'm some rich person, I just graduated from college with $25k in loans and worked to pay the rest myself - I also didn't get a decent job until 6 months after I graduated (not a big surprise with this economy) and even then I'm the only hourly employee at my company and due to the economy, I haven't been working full time so I've had to live cheap to make sure I pay the bills. However, I'm not going to whine and say that someone else should be forced to pay for me to have all the things I want. I take responsibility for my life and my choices.
So what are those countries in Europe doing that makes college so cheap?
Taxing the shit out of their citizens, that's what. Not only do they have higher income taxes for the same income levels, but they pay way more taxes on everything else as well.
That's the incredibly annoying thing when people talk about "free" or "cheap" education in socialist countries - just because they don't hand you a bill for it doesn't mean it's free. You pay for it every day you work for your entire life. That means in the long term, the countries with "free" education end up paying a hell of a lot more than someone in the US does.
Remember, the US was largely built up by people who thought that making a buck was more important than staying close to family and friends.
Remember, the US was largely built up by people who thought that making a buck was more important than mooching off family and friends.
Just because you're a lazy bastard doesn't mean that people who are responsible and motivated are "evil".
The first one is doubtful. Since the new companies are paying the "old" companies to use their pipes, the old companies still make plenty of money even if the number of subscribers decreases.
The second point is incredibly doubtful because the new companies would have such a small profit margin (due to the extra cost of paying to use the pipes instead of owning their own) that it would take an insane amount of time, if ever, for them to save up enough money to do those things.
Are those two things possible? Sure. Are they likely. Hell no.