The Republican species is extinct. I fail to see why people identify themselves with the party, except when they're using other people who call themselves Republicans as a source of polotical power.
The way I see it, the rug was pulled out from under the normal Republicans, and the neo-conservatives have taken their place using the people we normally associate as Republican to power their way up to the top. Naturally, being Republicans, they still vote Republican, because that's just what they do, and the New Republicans have taken advantage of this.
The neo-conservatives are like Cuckoo birds: they've laid their eggs in the Republicans' nest, the Republicans, serving as foster parents, have hatched the Cuckoo-Conservatives' eggs and have fed their chicks well. Soon enough, I expect that the Cuckoo-Conservative's offspring will push the Republican chicks out of the nest... Maybe we can call them Libertarians!
You must have missed the slashdot article a few days ago about the polling results that show 63% of Americans support the NSA operations.
Oh? Was that the same poll that was taken of 502 people who already proved that they were willing to have their privacy violated--by picking up the phone and saying that they're happy to give their opinions away?
In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
You assume that the terrorist act wasn't the will of the state, and that it wasn't a pretense manufactured for their own purposes.
Convicted felons have constraints placed on their rights. In many states, they can't ever vote. When you are convicted of a felony, even upon your release from incarceration you have fewer rights by law than people who aren't felons.
And that's bullshit. If they're fit enough to be released back to the public, they're fit enough to vote. Lord knows their views could hardly be any more twisted than most non-convicted people. Obviously, it stands to reason that felons should be watched more closely, especially those with a past of sexually abusing other people, and even more especially abusing kids... And it makes sense to keep convicted hackers away from computers for a certian amount of time... But not letting released convicts vote seems particularly screwed up to me. For one, it assumes that any law isn't flawed, and it dosen't give those convicted of man-made laws the least opportunity to change them. For example, it's possible to be convicted as a felon for criminal copyright infringement, and many would argue that some laws around that issue just aren't good laws.
No, it isn't bad. But you also aren't entitled to it.
Who says? Some shrinkwrapped EULA that is displayed only after I've opened the package and inserted the CD into my computer, thereby automatically ruining any chance that I could return that product for anything but another copy? Did it say somewhere sufficiently visible on the front of the package, that I wouldn't be able to make a backup copy of my bought software? I don't know where you're from, but here in the US we've got this thing called fair use. We are, in fact, entitled to it. It's right there in 17 USC section 117. Hell, even if I want to make multiple copies for my own personal use, I have the right to do so, under certian rules.
If they have a warning on the front of the box AND when an ELUA visible on the outside of a box becomes binding contract opon transaction that supercedes legal rights, maybe you'll be right. I'm not agruing inconvenices.
You have to recognize the fact that copy protection shcemes are not meant to be uncrackable. They're meant to be difficult enough to crack such that anyone who wants a copy of some software will have to obtain it through legitimate channels for the first few months after a programs' release date; that is to say, when most of the sales of that program are expected to take place! Even those in the copy protection business have acknowledged this.
This is true, and I probably underestimate the number of people that may participate on hacked servers, but at the same time, I think that it would be relatively easy on the part of the publishers and game associations to police these servers to the point that it would be effectively impossible to find one to play on; and that doing so would certainly be more friendly than to assume that all of your customers are criminals that would rob your bank accounts if given the chance. Of course, that kind of activity cannot be stopped, like file sharing... Even if you shut down every public P2P server around the world, there would still be tightly nit groups, and they'd become very secretive, and mostly invisible, just like kiddie porn traders--not that I'm equating the two. Efforts can be put forth that marginalize the number of people who don't pay to play, and they seem to work well enough... But it's like the old axiom: if you squeeze too hard, they'll slip through your fingers.
I think the real task for the developers and publishers alike is to make the potential customer feel that there is no worthy alternative to playing with a legit copy of the game, and not only because of the fact that more people will be playing on legit servers. Battlefield 2 has the ranks and unlocks, Diablo2 the items and characters stored on the realms, other FPS games have the clan communities, and that kind of thing is very appealing to many players. It's all about tying the community around these games to legit versions of the game, while making it comparatively unfavorable to play without a legit version, and not making your end users feel like dirt at the same time. I think a balance can be struck somewhere in there, and I think some publishers are close to that balance.
Totally agree, but the only idea about it that I dislike at this moment is that EA is involved in any way with it. I can't help thinking that it'll be like Battlefield 2, in that it's a cool idea, and it's pretty fun even despite the frustrating bugs, crashes, and in game imperfections that make an otherwise excellent game merely mediocre...
Frankly, when the game comes out and it feels like it's a whole and complete, finished game, with a suitable level of polish, I'll be suprised. Then again, such a game might not be as likely to sell expansion packs!
And another thing that really irks me: Battlefield 2 copy protection. It makes you disable certian functions of CD drive emulators like Alcohol 120%, even if you're not using them to play the game! In the modern age of online multiplayer games, why the hell would a publishing company even care? The singleplayer mode isn't the draw of many gamers today. People want to go online and interact with other people. The key to going online is usually quite literally a unique key that is shipped with the game. If you haven't paid for the game, tough luck going online! A copy of the game is therefore useless for 99% of the people interested in playing it.
I like to make a CD image for games that require the presence of a CD in the CD reader, so I don't have to deal with it when I want to burn a CD, so I don't have to listen to the drive ramp up and down, and so I don't risk damaging my precious disc. Is that so bad? I still have to use my unique key to play online, and so does everyone else. There's not a practical way to cheat that system, so what's the deal?! iD didn't require that I have a CD in the drive to play any of their games since Quake3, I think. My Diablo II account was tied to my CDkey, so it didn't matter if I ripped it to the hard drive, and singleplayer was a yawnfest. That's something I actually like about STEAM; there's no need to screw around with discs and crap.
If someone wants to play the singleplayer aspect of a game there's usually a crack or two that will let one easily do this regardless of any protections the developers care to throw at us, so it's futile trying to protect a relatively miniscule part of a game that is clearly intended to be a multiplayer online game in that way. Make a compelling, fun, online game, and they will come--because they have no choice! Gaming is a unique industry because of this. If the music industry could make it so that you had to go online to get the full value of your music for whatever reason, they'd shit their pants with excitement.
Goddamned, that's a fucking crying shame. Demolish all that good stuff with a hammermill? *weeps* I'd park that F-14 out in my back yard, not a problem! Hell, I'd even start up a meuseum and charge admission!
That's why you mix it up a bit. On Mondays they get kicked in the balls, Tuesday they get poked repeatedly with a sharp stick, Wednsdays, they rip hair off a random body part with very sticky tape, Thursday is honey bath followed by a visit to the local African Stinging Ant farm day, and Friday they get conjugal visits from Bubba down at the state pen.
If they're willing to put up with this, they deserve to be a politician.
Indeed, I know a guy that has a prototype exhaust bell off of some old ICBM rocket which is now inverted and half buried in the ground. Obviously, it's now serving as a very stylish planter for geraniums. It's all titanium, and to decommission it, they took a torch and put a few holes in the bell it self, and demolished the tubo pumps. Luckily, he knew enough about welding titanium to at least fix it cosmetically!
There's this iButton thing that I was researching for use as a physical access key that I found around 1999. They said it would do SHA authentication by touching a hearing aid battery sized device attached to a key fob, to a receiver plate--in less than a tenth of a second.
I know that SHA is now found to have collision vulnerabilities, and that it can be brute forced with tons (and tons, and tons) of CPU time, but it would probably still be practical, and effective in preventing all but the NSA from breaking into your car.
I doubt that it would be terribly difficult to make a fairly strong public key encrypted radio operated lock that worked just as quickly. The main limiting factor would be the amount of power required to operate whatever dedicated processor was necessary, and how good of an antennae you could fit in the remote.
For some disposable items, such as baby formula...
Yep, that's about the best thing to do with it--dispose of it. Anyone brave enough to feed their offspring with Wal-Mart® Brand "Organic" Baby Formula surely won't be expecting the Wal-Mart® "Organic" Chemical Brainwashing System to be included at no extra cost, all but guranteeing said offspring to be a life-long loyal Wal-Mart shopper.
Not that anyone who would feed their children thus would be likely to discern their childrens' enthusiastic patronage and fervent pro Wal-Mart agenda from anything but ordinary.
You're beginning to sound like a Wal-Mart PR person, or like a holocaust denier, or even apologist. Either you're immune to common sense, or you chose to be
Dude, it's called TAX BASE. Cities and towns adjacent to towns without Wal-Marts want them, because it draws in money that would have otherwise stayed outside of their community, and therefore, outside of their coffers.
I have a saying, "There are five kinds of people: those with jobs they like, those with jobs that they tolerate, people who don't have a job but want one--any one, people who want a job, but don't want any of the ones that are available, and people who just plain don't want jobs." Can you guess which ones Wal-Mart employees and perspectives employees fall into?
It's not that cities invite Wal-Marts in because having Wal-Marts causes money and jobs to appear from nowhere, it's because it causes money vacuums, much like how pressure centers in the atmosphere cause different weather patterns. When the pressure is high, the sun is out, the sky is bright, and there ain't a cloud in the sky. When pressure is low, the clouds and rain move in. Same with money. Affluent areas are populated by big homes and Mercedes owners, poor areas are populated by apartments and broken down Toyotas, it's that simple, and money goes back and forth, and in observable patterns!
Money moves just like wind, and it's even describable as a fluid--a fluid that is directed by a certain amount of logic. It is ***IMPOSSIBLE*** to make money come from nowhere, unless you're a Fed, or a counterfeiter.
First, your statement "If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself." exuded a bit of naivety about how it all works. If that wasn't an invitation, I don't know what is.
Call me crazy when I say that Wal-Mart is a traitor to our nation, but that's what they are. It's not about low, low prices, or even low, low wages to Wal-Mart employees... It's that they're dragging middle class America down to lower class, and they're teaching other companies that it's not only okay to rape the life out of the bottom rung employees, but that it's necessary to stay competitive; and in the process making it more expensive to buy the same cheap Chinese crap they loft onto us because of manipulation of the world's economies... Of course, it's by no mistake.
Put your money where you mouth is. If you think it's so bloody easy to start a new business that will have a signifigant impact on the economy, maybe you're the man to do it. You know what? I do employ a few people, but not in the retail business, and it's not the easiest thing to do, remain solvent, and pay yourself and your employees decently at the same time. Luckily, I've got patent liscences that help me along. If you're so special that you think business is a cakewalk, take that silver spoon out of your mouth and go get to work.
When you say that a company can opt out of selling to Wal-Mart, or that someone can co start a business to create jobs or to do all these different things, like in the OP where I replied "If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself.", and in this post "And if you're dealing with WM as a supplier, you can opt out (as recently mentioned here on/. ), or you can sell them stuff."
For one, it's easy enough to opt out of supplying Wal-Mart if you haven't already been involved with them at all or not long enough for them to become a signifigant part of your sales In the case of Snapper Mowers, which I suppose is the reference you're citing, Wal-Mart wasn't a signifigant part of their sales, because most of their sales (some 80% of their revenue) came through the more lucrative independent dealerships, and they were making basically nothing supplying Wal-Mart, and they wanted even more blood. When Wal-Mart accounts for 50+% of your revenue, it's downright impossible to quit them, and remain a viable business, especially if you're on the downward spiral like Vlassic, or the other companies that Wal-Mart has almost destroyed in their wake. When you're on the downward spiral, you can't decline them.
My favorite aspect of Wal-mart is how all my friends complain about their evil work practices, but when I mention that nobody is forcing you to work at Wal-mart and you do have a choice to leave,
Wal-Mart dosen't just play in its own little sandbox, in its own backyard--and leave everyone else alone in the process. It goes to the beach and knocks over the kiddies' sand castles, even if it dosen't mean to do it on purpose (I think they do), it's so obnoxiously large, it blots out the sun from sunbathers, and worst of all, Wal-Mart wears Speedos to the beach. Have you ever seen an 800lb company wear Speedos to the beach? It's downright antisocial! I mean, look at a mirror, for crying out loud!
Your "friends" are frustrated at you because you can't see the forest through the trees, and they're trying to open your eyes through appeals to your conscious; unfortunately for them, they haven't yet learned that you haven't one.
Their wages are too low? Oh, come on! Just pretend Wal-Mart doesn't exist, and work elsewhere, but don't complain about them. If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself.
Oh, look up in the sky! There's a black hole that's about to suck up the outer reaches of our solar system, and it'll be here, soon enough. What do you think we aught to do? Go about our lives, and not complain! Well, if we start soon enough, we might build some ships that could save our race. Screw that, it'll cost too much, we don't know it'll really work, and hey, it might veer off and leave us alone!
That's the problem with Wal-Mart. It's a black hole for wages. You think they're screwing with only people that are in their obrit at this moment, that is to say employees of Wal-Mart... But it's been shown that Wal-Mart adversely affects other employers in all markets that they buy from. So, they're influencing everything.
If you chose to stick your head in the ground and wait for the black hole to come, fine, but don't balk when everyone else wants to bail out.
Don't go patting yourselves on the back until you lock the musical monstrosity that is Celine Dion into some dank Quebecian dungeon, because she alone offests any other merit you Canadians have brought to this world, even including The Red Green Show; and that, as you know, says a lot!
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The Republican species is extinct. I fail to see why people identify themselves with the party, except when they're using other people who call themselves Republicans as a source of polotical power.
The way I see it, the rug was pulled out from under the normal Republicans, and the neo-conservatives have taken their place using the people we normally associate as Republican to power their way up to the top. Naturally, being Republicans, they still vote Republican, because that's just what they do, and the New Republicans have taken advantage of this.
The neo-conservatives are like Cuckoo birds: they've laid their eggs in the Republicans' nest, the Republicans, serving as foster parents, have hatched the Cuckoo-Conservatives' eggs and have fed their chicks well. Soon enough, I expect that the Cuckoo-Conservative's offspring will push the Republican chicks out of the nest... Maybe we can call them Libertarians!
You must have missed the slashdot article a few days ago about the polling results that show 63% of Americans support the NSA operations.
Oh? Was that the same poll that was taken of 502 people who already proved that they were willing to have their privacy violated--by picking up the phone and saying that they're happy to give their opinions away?
In the book 1984, the government maintained a perpetual state of phoney war to distract the population. Today, the opposite is happening. We are in a real war with terrorist networks groups that swear they will kill us any way they can, yet the myopic deny reality and imagine that the war is phoney.
You assume that the terrorist act wasn't the will of the state, and that it wasn't a pretense manufactured for their own purposes.
I'm not willing to make that same assumption.
Convicted felons have constraints placed on their rights. In many states, they can't ever vote. When you are convicted of a felony, even upon your release from incarceration you have fewer rights by law than people who aren't felons.
And that's bullshit. If they're fit enough to be released back to the public, they're fit enough to vote. Lord knows their views could hardly be any more twisted than most non-convicted people. Obviously, it stands to reason that felons should be watched more closely, especially those with a past of sexually abusing other people, and even more especially abusing kids... And it makes sense to keep convicted hackers away from computers for a certian amount of time... But not letting released convicts vote seems particularly screwed up to me. For one, it assumes that any law isn't flawed, and it dosen't give those convicted of man-made laws the least opportunity to change them. For example, it's possible to be convicted as a felon for criminal copyright infringement, and many would argue that some laws around that issue just aren't good laws.
The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
Or better yet, the DVD installs the Sony rootkit! If that's not poetic justice, nothing is!
Drunkards system, you say?
I'll drink to that!
No, it isn't bad. But you also aren't entitled to it.
Who says? Some shrinkwrapped EULA that is displayed only after I've opened the package and inserted the CD into my computer, thereby automatically ruining any chance that I could return that product for anything but another copy? Did it say somewhere sufficiently visible on the front of the package, that I wouldn't be able to make a backup copy of my bought software? I don't know where you're from, but here in the US we've got this thing called fair use. We are, in fact, entitled to it. It's right there in 17 USC section 117. Hell, even if I want to make multiple copies for my own personal use, I have the right to do so, under certian rules.
If they have a warning on the front of the box AND when an ELUA visible on the outside of a box becomes binding contract opon transaction that supercedes legal rights, maybe you'll be right. I'm not agruing inconvenices.
You have to recognize the fact that copy protection shcemes are not meant to be uncrackable. They're meant to be difficult enough to crack such that anyone who wants a copy of some software will have to obtain it through legitimate channels for the first few months after a programs' release date; that is to say, when most of the sales of that program are expected to take place! Even those in the copy protection business have acknowledged this.
Good deal, thanks for the tip, I'll definitely be checking that out!
wah wah wah wah wah. I bet you sound like all the adults from the Peanuts holiday specials.
This is true, and I probably underestimate the number of people that may participate on hacked servers, but at the same time, I think that it would be relatively easy on the part of the publishers and game associations to police these servers to the point that it would be effectively impossible to find one to play on; and that doing so would certainly be more friendly than to assume that all of your customers are criminals that would rob your bank accounts if given the chance. Of course, that kind of activity cannot be stopped, like file sharing... Even if you shut down every public P2P server around the world, there would still be tightly nit groups, and they'd become very secretive, and mostly invisible, just like kiddie porn traders--not that I'm equating the two. Efforts can be put forth that marginalize the number of people who don't pay to play, and they seem to work well enough... But it's like the old axiom: if you squeeze too hard, they'll slip through your fingers.
I think the real task for the developers and publishers alike is to make the potential customer feel that there is no worthy alternative to playing with a legit copy of the game, and not only because of the fact that more people will be playing on legit servers. Battlefield 2 has the ranks and unlocks, Diablo2 the items and characters stored on the realms, other FPS games have the clan communities, and that kind of thing is very appealing to many players. It's all about tying the community around these games to legit versions of the game, while making it comparatively unfavorable to play without a legit version, and not making your end users feel like dirt at the same time. I think a balance can be struck somewhere in there, and I think some publishers are close to that balance.
Totally agree, but the only idea about it that I dislike at this moment is that EA is involved in any way with it. I can't help thinking that it'll be like Battlefield 2, in that it's a cool idea, and it's pretty fun even despite the frustrating bugs, crashes, and in game imperfections that make an otherwise excellent game merely mediocre...
Frankly, when the game comes out and it feels like it's a whole and complete, finished game, with a suitable level of polish, I'll be suprised. Then again, such a game might not be as likely to sell expansion packs!
And another thing that really irks me: Battlefield 2 copy protection. It makes you disable certian functions of CD drive emulators like Alcohol 120%, even if you're not using them to play the game! In the modern age of online multiplayer games, why the hell would a publishing company even care? The singleplayer mode isn't the draw of many gamers today. People want to go online and interact with other people. The key to going online is usually quite literally a unique key that is shipped with the game. If you haven't paid for the game, tough luck going online! A copy of the game is therefore useless for 99% of the people interested in playing it.
I like to make a CD image for games that require the presence of a CD in the CD reader, so I don't have to deal with it when I want to burn a CD, so I don't have to listen to the drive ramp up and down, and so I don't risk damaging my precious disc. Is that so bad? I still have to use my unique key to play online, and so does everyone else. There's not a practical way to cheat that system, so what's the deal?! iD didn't require that I have a CD in the drive to play any of their games since Quake3, I think. My Diablo II account was tied to my CDkey, so it didn't matter if I ripped it to the hard drive, and singleplayer was a yawnfest. That's something I actually like about STEAM; there's no need to screw around with discs and crap.
If someone wants to play the singleplayer aspect of a game there's usually a crack or two that will let one easily do this regardless of any protections the developers care to throw at us, so it's futile trying to protect a relatively miniscule part of a game that is clearly intended to be a multiplayer online game in that way. Make a compelling, fun, online game, and they will come--because they have no choice! Gaming is a unique industry because of this. If the music industry could make it so that you had to go online to get the full value of your music for whatever reason, they'd shit their pants with excitement.
Goddamned, that's a fucking crying shame. Demolish all that good stuff with a hammermill? *weeps* I'd park that F-14 out in my back yard, not a problem! Hell, I'd even start up a meuseum and charge admission!
That's why you mix it up a bit. On Mondays they get kicked in the balls, Tuesday they get poked repeatedly with a sharp stick, Wednsdays, they rip hair off a random body part with very sticky tape, Thursday is honey bath followed by a visit to the local African Stinging Ant farm day, and Friday they get conjugal visits from Bubba down at the state pen.
If they're willing to put up with this, they deserve to be a politician.
Indeed, I know a guy that has a prototype exhaust bell off of some old ICBM rocket which is now inverted and half buried in the ground. Obviously, it's now serving as a very stylish planter for geraniums. It's all titanium, and to decommission it, they took a torch and put a few holes in the bell it self, and demolished the tubo pumps. Luckily, he knew enough about welding titanium to at least fix it cosmetically!
There's this iButton thing that I was researching for use as a physical access key that I found around 1999. They said it would do SHA authentication by touching a hearing aid battery sized device attached to a key fob, to a receiver plate--in less than a tenth of a second.
I know that SHA is now found to have collision vulnerabilities, and that it can be brute forced with tons (and tons, and tons) of CPU time, but it would probably still be practical, and effective in preventing all but the NSA from breaking into your car.
I doubt that it would be terribly difficult to make a fairly strong public key encrypted radio operated lock that worked just as quickly. The main limiting factor would be the amount of power required to operate whatever dedicated processor was necessary, and how good of an antennae you could fit in the remote.
For some disposable items, such as baby formula...
Yep, that's about the best thing to do with it--dispose of it. Anyone brave enough to feed their offspring with Wal-Mart® Brand "Organic" Baby Formula surely won't be expecting the Wal-Mart® "Organic" Chemical Brainwashing System to be included at no extra cost, all but guranteeing said offspring to be a life-long loyal Wal-Mart shopper.
Not that anyone who would feed their children thus would be likely to discern their childrens' enthusiastic patronage and fervent pro Wal-Mart agenda from anything but ordinary.
WM can't give the town money.
You're beginning to sound like a Wal-Mart PR person, or like a holocaust denier, or even apologist. Either you're immune to common sense, or you chose to be
Dude, it's called TAX BASE. Cities and towns adjacent to towns without Wal-Marts want them, because it draws in money that would have otherwise stayed outside of their community, and therefore, outside of their coffers.
I have a saying, "There are five kinds of people: those with jobs they like, those with jobs that they tolerate, people who don't have a job but want one--any one, people who want a job, but don't want any of the ones that are available, and people who just plain don't want jobs." Can you guess which ones Wal-Mart employees and perspectives employees fall into?
It's not that cities invite Wal-Marts in because having Wal-Marts causes money and jobs to appear from nowhere, it's because it causes money vacuums, much like how pressure centers in the atmosphere cause different weather patterns. When the pressure is high, the sun is out, the sky is bright, and there ain't a cloud in the sky. When pressure is low, the clouds and rain move in. Same with money. Affluent areas are populated by big homes and Mercedes owners, poor areas are populated by apartments and broken down Toyotas, it's that simple, and money goes back and forth, and in observable patterns!
Money moves just like wind, and it's even describable as a fluid--a fluid that is directed by a certain amount of logic. It is ***IMPOSSIBLE*** to make money come from nowhere, unless you're a Fed, or a counterfeiter.
No sufficiently complex system can ever be completely bug-free.
What do you get if you multiply six by nine?!
First, your statement "If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself." exuded a bit of naivety about how it all works. If that wasn't an invitation, I don't know what is.
Call me crazy when I say that Wal-Mart is a traitor to our nation, but that's what they are. It's not about low, low prices, or even low, low wages to Wal-Mart employees... It's that they're dragging middle class America down to lower class, and they're teaching other companies that it's not only okay to rape the life out of the bottom rung employees, but that it's necessary to stay competitive; and in the process making it more expensive to buy the same cheap Chinese crap they loft onto us because of manipulation of the world's economies... Of course, it's by no mistake.
Put your money where you mouth is. If you think it's so bloody easy to start a new business that will have a signifigant impact on the economy, maybe you're the man to do it. You know what? I do employ a few people, but not in the retail business, and it's not the easiest thing to do, remain solvent, and pay yourself and your employees decently at the same time. Luckily, I've got patent liscences that help me along. If you're so special that you think business is a cakewalk, take that silver spoon out of your mouth and go get to work.
/. ), or you can sell them stuff."
When you say that a company can opt out of selling to Wal-Mart, or that someone can co start a business to create jobs or to do all these different things, like in the OP where I replied "If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself.", and in this post "And if you're dealing with WM as a supplier, you can opt out (as recently mentioned here on
For one, it's easy enough to opt out of supplying Wal-Mart if you haven't already been involved with them at all or not long enough for them to become a signifigant part of your sales In the case of Snapper Mowers, which I suppose is the reference you're citing, Wal-Mart wasn't a signifigant part of their sales, because most of their sales (some 80% of their revenue) came through the more lucrative independent dealerships, and they were making basically nothing supplying Wal-Mart, and they wanted even more blood. When Wal-Mart accounts for 50+% of your revenue, it's downright impossible to quit them, and remain a viable business, especially if you're on the downward spiral like Vlassic, or the other companies that Wal-Mart has almost destroyed in their wake. When you're on the downward spiral, you can't decline them.
My favorite aspect of Wal-mart is how all my friends complain about their evil work practices, but when I mention that nobody is forcing you to work at Wal-mart and you do have a choice to leave,
Wal-Mart dosen't just play in its own little sandbox, in its own backyard--and leave everyone else alone in the process. It goes to the beach and knocks over the kiddies' sand castles, even if it dosen't mean to do it on purpose (I think they do), it's so obnoxiously large, it blots out the sun from sunbathers, and worst of all, Wal-Mart wears Speedos to the beach. Have you ever seen an 800lb company wear Speedos to the beach? It's downright antisocial! I mean, look at a mirror, for crying out loud!
Your "friends" are frustrated at you because you can't see the forest through the trees, and they're trying to open your eyes through appeals to your conscious; unfortunately for them, they haven't yet learned that you haven't one.
Their wages are too low? Oh, come on! Just pretend Wal-Mart doesn't exist, and work elsewhere, but don't complain about them. If you think, wages should be higher and general, and there should be more jobs, provide some yourself.
Oh, look up in the sky! There's a black hole that's about to suck up the outer reaches of our solar system, and it'll be here, soon enough. What do you think we aught to do? Go about our lives, and not complain! Well, if we start soon enough, we might build some ships that could save our race. Screw that, it'll cost too much, we don't know it'll really work, and hey, it might veer off and leave us alone!
That's the problem with Wal-Mart. It's a black hole for wages. You think they're screwing with only people that are in their obrit at this moment, that is to say employees of Wal-Mart... But it's been shown that Wal-Mart adversely affects other employers in all markets that they buy from. So, they're influencing everything.
If you chose to stick your head in the ground and wait for the black hole to come, fine, but don't balk when everyone else wants to bail out.
I agree with #2, but #1? If there is any universal truth, it's that insurance bills never go down!
Don't go patting yourselves on the back until you lock the musical monstrosity that is Celine Dion into some dank Quebecian dungeon, because she alone offests any other merit you Canadians have brought to this world, even including The Red Green Show; and that, as you know, says a lot!
A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the tongue where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through nerve fibers to the brain.
Oh my, that's gross!