If we are going to put "force multiplier" into the equation, then we must also account for "force division".
Why do we have gun free zones again? Why do we go to such lengths to ensure that no law abiding citizen in a gun free zone can possibly fight back when confronted by a gun man? It's almost like we are cooperating with the gun men.
"You want to shoot up a bunch of people? That's bad, but hey! If you're intent on killing people, we'll just get hundreds of people massed together, where they can't defend themselves. Remember, it's bad to shoot people, but if you are determined, good luck!"
You've devoted a lot of time to mocking the concept that violent fantasy might encourage violent conduct.
I say that playing violent video games won't make a guy go out and kill people. But, the video games (and movies) probably help to encourage the freaks who are already prone to doing such things. The news coverage seems to have helped this particular shooter to plan his actions. He tallied up the scores, and went for the easiest targets, apparently hoping to get a record score.
If/when you can definitively prove that violent entertainment DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE to these incidents, then I'll listen to your arguments, and your scoffing.
Meanwhile, I'll point to the Hitler Youth as evidence that indoctrination can make unacceptable acts acceptable.
I thought that I already said that. I'm not signing a contract that basically makes me a junior partner in an advertising and sales scheme. I'm willing to sell 20,000 of their phones, because I think I can do it. I'm not willing to sign a contract that makes me liable if I fail to sell 50,000.
Maybe YOU should define "best military". Time and again, our military is sent overseas to - do what, exactly? Make the world a safer place? To police? To win hearts and minds? To build nations? And, when was our last victory?
Even when we actually win a military encounter, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, our politicians leave the military machine in place, in pursuit of impossible peripheral missions. In a war of attrition, being best is pointless. The numbers will win, eventually.
And - why do we CARE whether they are trivial to redevelop / certify? If they need the app, and the app doesn't work any more, they'll pay. If they don't pay, they don't have the app. I see no problem here. The scrambled bullshit is going away, one way or another. And, few of us really give a damn that it's going to cost the corporations something. Eventually, IE6 in a VM will no longer be an "acceptable solution" for getting things done.
As for the triviality - maybe what you're saying is, all the geniuses have passed away or something? Today's crop of hackers don't have the intelligence to reproduce yesterday's results, using the tools available today? Are you the result of the infamous "dumbing down of America"? Are you incapable of doing what your predecessors have done, even with their finished product in front of you?
Oh well. Maybe you can join the illegal aliens in digging ditches and roofing houses. Surely there is a future for a failed IT guy.
Uhh - the article suggests that the attack has been traced to a bank's own IP address. That doesn't seem to suggest the bank's IT department made some stupid mistake. To me, it sounds like that bank's server was compromised, then used to make the attack. Further investigation of that machine may demonstrate that it was an inside job, done by someone with physical access to that machine. Or, that NK or China accessed the machine via the internet. At this point, it's anyone's guess.
The anonymous submitter implies that he has time to play around, and to learn. He suggests that he is aware of the concept of learning curves, and that he is willing to study, and to work.
Such a person might benefit from Arch or Gentoo. Such a person will be more competent than I am at the end of a year of such serious work. More competent than some other folk on here who think they know it all, I suspect. Some of us just don't have the time to invest to be that good. Others of us just aren't that smart. And, face it, some of us just don't think the right way, no matter how smart we are.
Personally, I started on Suse, because that was the first distro that I managed to find all the drivers for, and made it actually work on my hardware. The learning curve was only moderately steep, and I managed. Had the curve been steeper, I may well have failed.
I'm also a distro hopper. I really suggest that people install a dozen or more distros, and make note of what they like about each, make note of what they do not like about each. I was on Ubuntu for awhile, and I might have stayed on it longer, if they hadn't moved to Unity.
Presently, I'm running Linux Mint Debian. I think it offers the best of all worlds. It's pretty simple, and doesn't require a lot of customization. But, it is quite customizable - I can change anything I want, anything, to work the way I want it to. It's not-quite cutting edge, but rolling release keeps it close to the cutting edge - or close enough for me. There are several desktops to choose from, of course - and Mate is my choice. It's very much like the first desktop I worked with on Suse, years ago. Sometimes, familiarity is a good thing.
But, until a guy has fooled around, at least passingly, with several distros, he can't even know what it is that he wants from a distro. The things that I think are great about LMDE may mean absolutely nothing to someone else. Real gurus often tell us that they have no use for the "fancy" desktop environment which I prefer.
Install something, anything, and drive it for a few days, even a week or two. Nuke from orbit, and try another distro. Repeat until you think you actually know what you expect from a distro, then shop around for the distro that offers what you expect.
I'll mention Sabayon Linux here. It's a very user-friendly Gentoo derivative. I ran it for a couple years on one machine, until the hardware crapped out. I just haven't reinstalled it on anything since.
Huh, wut? A home that is worth less than $200k means wealth? We've seen shoddy-ass apartments "sell" for a million dollars in this country. Alright, so the housing bubble finally burst, and things have returned partway toward real value pricing. Still - a $200k home isn't exactly a sign of wealth. This isn't the 1970's anymore.
Are you arguing that "This is business as usual." or are you arguing that "This is the RIGHT WAY to do business."??
I'm saying it's wrong, and I'm not going to play the game. In fact, the telcos seem to be doing something about it. They are talking to the EU, informing the regulators that Apple is trying to bend them over a barrel, and isn't even using any vaseline. I'm all for the telcos, in this case.
THERE IS NO REASON FOR THEM TO ACCEPT THE CONDITIONS THAT APPLE WANTS TO IMPOSE.
Maybe it's "legal" in the states for Apple to rape the telcos. And, maybe it's not so legal in the EU.
How long have you been in the retail world? Hang around - you may get a lesson or two in the near future.
I disagree. The supplier telling me how many phones I must buy is anti-competitive. "You can't have 40,000 phones, Pal. You'll take 70,000, or nothing. Take it or leave it!" That is complete and utter bullshit. And, it's ANTI-competitive.
If I own a telco, and I have - say 100,000 customers, and I'm sure that I can sell 50,000 phones within a twelve month period - then I should decide how many of them I want. I want 20,000 Apple devices, and I want 20,000 Android devices, and I want a few hundreds of each of several other brands.
For Apple or Android, or anyone else to tell me that I MUST purchase X amount over what I have decided is WRONG!!!
Screw Apple and their minimum purchase. I just won't sell any. I'm going to push Android, and all the other competitors, and squash Apple within my own market.
Apple will probably come back with an offer more to my liking when they see me selling all those Androids.
"can operate a power drill" isn't going to get you much of a gun. I can do a lot more than that, but I fear that my first attempt to make a rifle would be pretty shoddy. It would take a few runs to turn out something acceptable, if you are the least bit demanding. For good quality workmanship, you had better find a toolmaker or machinist. Or, take the classes and take a job for OJT to become as qualified as a toolmaker or machinist.
Carry a funnel. No big deal. There is always a funnel in my cars and trucks anyway. I hate pouring half a cup of oil over the exhaust manifold when adding a quart to the crank case. I also hate spilling antifreeze on the ground. Carry a funnel, and you can eliminate spillage of vehicle fluids, AND get your fuel in the tank.
Old truck driver here. Drivers use "fuel" in their trucks. Motorists use "gas". Brits use "petrol". Maybe you should get to know some truck drivers. Like rherbert, I've never heard an American use the term "petrol". Not on the east coast, not on the west coast, and nowhere in between. The only person in recent memory to use the word, is an imported guy from England. We mostly keep him around to laugh at. When his jokes run out, his accent is still hilarious.
Jim Baen sold books, rather than software. But his views are pertinent to any digital distributor. Anyone who bothers to ask slashdot about digital rights has obviously given things some semi-serious thought. Include Jim's ideas in your thinking.
First few paragraphs of that page follow:
Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )
Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.
The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.
There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!
Alles in ordnung!
I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:
1. Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.
2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc.
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.
In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen. He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors — how about you, Eric? — were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.
The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right. After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And — hey, whaddaya know? — over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!
And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.
Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode a
"So this is why I pay extortion amounts of money for an OS that sucks balls every other release?"
No, not at all. You pay those extortionate amounts of money because you are unable or unwilling to "Just say "NO!"" I paid for three legitimate installations of that company's operating systems. Then, I found alternatives. Yeah, it takes a little bit of work, but it's not that hard.
Hmmm. Useless? Pretty much so. You can't barter dollars for gold or anything, using just that knowledge.
But, it gives you a bit of information, with which you can make more accurate value judgements.
Q: Are the oil companies crooked? A: Almost certainly.
Q: How crooked are the oil companies? They've increased prices by about 1500% since I was a boy! A: While they are crooked, they aren't THAT crooked. Based on the price of gold, gas and oil costs nearly the same as when you were a boy. Inflation is the primary cause of your higher prices, not the oil company's greed.
Q: You're saying that those liberal newspapers that I read are wrong? The oil companies aren't the greediest and crookedest on earth? A: Careful, young whippersnapper. The liberal rags have truth in them, along with a whole bunch of bullshit. They are no different than the conservative media - some truth, buried under piles and piles of bullshit.
Q: So you don't think that I should sign the petition to nationalize the oil industry? A: No, if oil were nationalized, your prices wouldn't drop in the long run. They would stay nearly the same, but a different bunch of thieves would be pocketing all the profit.
And, if anyone is interested, the price of gasoline when I was in high school ran from 29 cents up to 36 cents. The 36 cent stuff was super high octane racing fuel, the 29 cent stuff was plain regular leaded gas. I can remember my grandpa buying gas for 24 cents, but I can't really recall what year that was - sometime between '67 and '70.
You are, of course, correct. The gold bubble will suck for anyone who bought into it.
But "investing in gold" and "gold standard" have little to do with each other.
Oh - one of life's smaller mysteries: In high school, before we cashed in the gold standard, we had inflation. Not very high, but it was there. The news heads would announce periodically what the inflation rate actually was - 1/2% or 3% or whatever. Since we ditched the gold standard, I haven't heard those numbers announced on the news. The devaluation of the dollar is quietly swept under the rug, and no one takes notice.
People like Lumpy, who I responded to, just assume that higher prices at the pumps means that oil has gone up in price.
True - you pay more coins for the same amount of oil, today. But the problem isn't that the oil is more expensive. The problem is that the dollar is worth less. Almost worthless, in fact.
There will be a squad of self-appointed economics experts along soon, to remind us why the gold standard sucks. Of course, economics experts allowed the housing bubble and the subsequent crash, so take their explanations with a few grains of salt. Or a few shots of tequila and salt - whatever floats your boat.
Calibre is my favorite. Convert anything to anything. You can load up one reader with anything and everything from any source, then load up your friend's competing reader with any or all of the same content. And, you don't even need the reader, of course - your laptop or desktop works perfectly well for all of it. I haven't done it, but I suppose you can send any of your content to your phone as well.
I think you slipped up there. RIAA is NOT a content producer. RIAA is a parasitic organization that has never produced anything other than a sense of satisfaction for it's members, and grief for consumers. Some of RIAA's members produce content, but RIAA produces nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
If we are going to put "force multiplier" into the equation, then we must also account for "force division".
Why do we have gun free zones again? Why do we go to such lengths to ensure that no law abiding citizen in a gun free zone can possibly fight back when confronted by a gun man? It's almost like we are cooperating with the gun men.
"You want to shoot up a bunch of people? That's bad, but hey! If you're intent on killing people, we'll just get hundreds of people massed together, where they can't defend themselves. Remember, it's bad to shoot people, but if you are determined, good luck!"
You've devoted a lot of time to mocking the concept that violent fantasy might encourage violent conduct.
I say that playing violent video games won't make a guy go out and kill people. But, the video games (and movies) probably help to encourage the freaks who are already prone to doing such things. The news coverage seems to have helped this particular shooter to plan his actions. He tallied up the scores, and went for the easiest targets, apparently hoping to get a record score.
If/when you can definitively prove that violent entertainment DOES NOT CONTRIBUTE to these incidents, then I'll listen to your arguments, and your scoffing.
Meanwhile, I'll point to the Hitler Youth as evidence that indoctrination can make unacceptable acts acceptable.
I thought that I already said that. I'm not signing a contract that basically makes me a junior partner in an advertising and sales scheme. I'm willing to sell 20,000 of their phones, because I think I can do it. I'm not willing to sign a contract that makes me liable if I fail to sell 50,000.
It's Apple's loss, of a sale of 20,000 phones.
So - Coneheads are really Japanese?
Maybe YOU should define "best military". Time and again, our military is sent overseas to - do what, exactly? Make the world a safer place? To police? To win hearts and minds? To build nations? And, when was our last victory?
Even when we actually win a military encounter, such as Iraq and Afghanistan, our politicians leave the military machine in place, in pursuit of impossible peripheral missions. In a war of attrition, being best is pointless. The numbers will win, eventually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln8-Y-fIbqM
And - why do we CARE whether they are trivial to redevelop / certify? If they need the app, and the app doesn't work any more, they'll pay. If they don't pay, they don't have the app. I see no problem here. The scrambled bullshit is going away, one way or another. And, few of us really give a damn that it's going to cost the corporations something. Eventually, IE6 in a VM will no longer be an "acceptable solution" for getting things done.
As for the triviality - maybe what you're saying is, all the geniuses have passed away or something? Today's crop of hackers don't have the intelligence to reproduce yesterday's results, using the tools available today? Are you the result of the infamous "dumbing down of America"? Are you incapable of doing what your predecessors have done, even with their finished product in front of you?
Oh well. Maybe you can join the illegal aliens in digging ditches and roofing houses. Surely there is a future for a failed IT guy.
Uhh - the article suggests that the attack has been traced to a bank's own IP address. That doesn't seem to suggest the bank's IT department made some stupid mistake. To me, it sounds like that bank's server was compromised, then used to make the attack. Further investigation of that machine may demonstrate that it was an inside job, done by someone with physical access to that machine. Or, that NK or China accessed the machine via the internet. At this point, it's anyone's guess.
The anonymous submitter implies that he has time to play around, and to learn. He suggests that he is aware of the concept of learning curves, and that he is willing to study, and to work.
Such a person might benefit from Arch or Gentoo. Such a person will be more competent than I am at the end of a year of such serious work. More competent than some other folk on here who think they know it all, I suspect. Some of us just don't have the time to invest to be that good. Others of us just aren't that smart. And, face it, some of us just don't think the right way, no matter how smart we are.
Personally, I started on Suse, because that was the first distro that I managed to find all the drivers for, and made it actually work on my hardware. The learning curve was only moderately steep, and I managed. Had the curve been steeper, I may well have failed.
I'm also a distro hopper. I really suggest that people install a dozen or more distros, and make note of what they like about each, make note of what they do not like about each. I was on Ubuntu for awhile, and I might have stayed on it longer, if they hadn't moved to Unity.
Presently, I'm running Linux Mint Debian. I think it offers the best of all worlds. It's pretty simple, and doesn't require a lot of customization. But, it is quite customizable - I can change anything I want, anything, to work the way I want it to. It's not-quite cutting edge, but rolling release keeps it close to the cutting edge - or close enough for me. There are several desktops to choose from, of course - and Mate is my choice. It's very much like the first desktop I worked with on Suse, years ago. Sometimes, familiarity is a good thing.
But, until a guy has fooled around, at least passingly, with several distros, he can't even know what it is that he wants from a distro. The things that I think are great about LMDE may mean absolutely nothing to someone else. Real gurus often tell us that they have no use for the "fancy" desktop environment which I prefer.
Install something, anything, and drive it for a few days, even a week or two. Nuke from orbit, and try another distro. Repeat until you think you actually know what you expect from a distro, then shop around for the distro that offers what you expect.
I'll mention Sabayon Linux here. It's a very user-friendly Gentoo derivative. I ran it for a couple years on one machine, until the hardware crapped out. I just haven't reinstalled it on anything since.
Huh, wut? A home that is worth less than $200k means wealth? We've seen shoddy-ass apartments "sell" for a million dollars in this country. Alright, so the housing bubble finally burst, and things have returned partway toward real value pricing. Still - a $200k home isn't exactly a sign of wealth. This isn't the 1970's anymore.
Are you arguing that "This is business as usual." or are you arguing that "This is the RIGHT WAY to do business."??
I'm saying it's wrong, and I'm not going to play the game. In fact, the telcos seem to be doing something about it. They are talking to the EU, informing the regulators that Apple is trying to bend them over a barrel, and isn't even using any vaseline. I'm all for the telcos, in this case.
THERE IS NO REASON FOR THEM TO ACCEPT THE CONDITIONS THAT APPLE WANTS TO IMPOSE.
Maybe it's "legal" in the states for Apple to rape the telcos. And, maybe it's not so legal in the EU.
How long have you been in the retail world? Hang around - you may get a lesson or two in the near future.
Awesome. Simply freaking AWESOME! So, that's the way it's supposed to work?
Next question - who the hell does that? ;^)
I disagree. The supplier telling me how many phones I must buy is anti-competitive. "You can't have 40,000 phones, Pal. You'll take 70,000, or nothing. Take it or leave it!" That is complete and utter bullshit. And, it's ANTI-competitive.
Agreed.
If I own a telco, and I have - say 100,000 customers, and I'm sure that I can sell 50,000 phones within a twelve month period - then I should decide how many of them I want. I want 20,000 Apple devices, and I want 20,000 Android devices, and I want a few hundreds of each of several other brands.
For Apple or Android, or anyone else to tell me that I MUST purchase X amount over what I have decided is WRONG!!!
Screw Apple and their minimum purchase. I just won't sell any. I'm going to push Android, and all the other competitors, and squash Apple within my own market.
Apple will probably come back with an offer more to my liking when they see me selling all those Androids.
"can operate a power drill" isn't going to get you much of a gun. I can do a lot more than that, but I fear that my first attempt to make a rifle would be pretty shoddy. It would take a few runs to turn out something acceptable, if you are the least bit demanding. For good quality workmanship, you had better find a toolmaker or machinist. Or, take the classes and take a job for OJT to become as qualified as a toolmaker or machinist.
Carry a funnel. No big deal. There is always a funnel in my cars and trucks anyway. I hate pouring half a cup of oil over the exhaust manifold when adding a quart to the crank case. I also hate spilling antifreeze on the ground. Carry a funnel, and you can eliminate spillage of vehicle fluids, AND get your fuel in the tank.
Old truck driver here. Drivers use "fuel" in their trucks. Motorists use "gas". Brits use "petrol". Maybe you should get to know some truck drivers. Like rherbert, I've never heard an American use the term "petrol". Not on the east coast, not on the west coast, and nowhere in between. The only person in recent memory to use the word, is an imported guy from England. We mostly keep him around to laugh at. When his jokes run out, his accent is still hilarious.
Yep - AC is pretty much on target.
What do they call a manual shift transmission, again? Oh yeah, a "standard shift".
http://www.baen.com/library/intro.asp
Jim Baen sold books, rather than software. But his views are pertinent to any digital distributor. Anyone who bothers to ask slashdot about digital rights has obviously given things some semi-serious thought. Include Jim's ideas in your thinking.
First few paragraphs of that page follow:
Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. We're calling it the Baen Free Library. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. (Later we may ask for an extremely simple, name & email only, registration. ) Or, if you prefer, you can download the books in one of several formats. Again, with no conditions or strings attached. (URLs to sites which offer the readers for these format are also listed. )
Why are we doing this? Well, for two reasons.
The first is what you might call a "matter of principle." This all started as a byproduct of an online "virtual brawl" I got into with a number of people, some of them professional SF authors, over the issue of online piracy of copyrighted works and what to do about it.
There was a school of thought, which seemed to be picking up steam, that the way to handle the problem was with handcuffs and brass knucks. Enforcement! Regulation! New regulations! Tighter regulations! All out for the campaign against piracy! No quarter! Build more prisons! Harsher sentences!
Alles in ordnung!
I, ah, disagreed. Rather vociferously and belligerently, in fact. And I can be a vociferous and belligerent fellow. My own opinion, summarized briefly, is as follows:
1. Online piracy — while it is definitely illegal and immoral — is, as a practical problem, nothing more than (at most) a nuisance. We're talking brats stealing chewing gum, here, not the Barbary Pirates.
2. Losses any author suffers from piracy are almost certainly offset by the additional publicity which, in practice, any kind of free copies of a book usually engender. Whatever the moral difference, which certainly exists, the practical effect of online piracy is no different from that of any existing method by which readers may obtain books for free or at reduced cost: public libraries, friends borrowing and loaning each other books, used book stores, promotional copies, etc.
3. Any cure which relies on tighter regulation of the market — especially the kind of extreme measures being advocated by some people — is far worse than the disease. As a widespread phenomenon rather than a nuisance, piracy occurs when artificial restrictions in the market jack up prices beyond what people think are reasonable. The "regulation-enforcement-more regulation" strategy is a bottomless pit which continually recreates (on a larger scale) the problem it supposedly solves. And that commercial effect is often compounded by the more general damage done to social and political freedom.
In the course of this debate, I mentioned it to my publisher Jim Baen. He more or less virtually snorted and expressed the opinion that if one of his authors — how about you, Eric? — were willing to put up a book for free online that the resulting publicity would more than offset any losses the author might suffer.
The minute he made the proposal, I realized he was right. After all, Dave Weber's On Basilisk Station has been available for free as a "loss leader" for Baen's for-pay experiment "Webscriptions" for months now. And — hey, whaddaya know? — over that time it's become Baen's most popular backlist title in paper!
And so I volunteered my first novel, Mother of Demons, to prove the case. And the next day Mother of Demons went up online, offered to the public for free.
Sure enough, within a day, I received at least half a dozen messages (some posted in public forums, others by private email) from people who told me that, based on hearing about the episode a
"So this is why I pay extortion amounts of money for an OS that sucks balls every other release?"
No, not at all. You pay those extortionate amounts of money because you are unable or unwilling to "Just say "NO!"" I paid for three legitimate installations of that company's operating systems. Then, I found alternatives. Yeah, it takes a little bit of work, but it's not that hard.
Hmmm. Useless? Pretty much so. You can't barter dollars for gold or anything, using just that knowledge.
But, it gives you a bit of information, with which you can make more accurate value judgements.
Q: Are the oil companies crooked?
A: Almost certainly.
Q: How crooked are the oil companies? They've increased prices by about 1500% since I was a boy!
A: While they are crooked, they aren't THAT crooked. Based on the price of gold, gas and oil costs nearly the same as when you were a boy. Inflation is the primary cause of your higher prices, not the oil company's greed.
Q: You're saying that those liberal newspapers that I read are wrong? The oil companies aren't the greediest and crookedest on earth?
A: Careful, young whippersnapper. The liberal rags have truth in them, along with a whole bunch of bullshit. They are no different than the conservative media - some truth, buried under piles and piles of bullshit.
Q: So you don't think that I should sign the petition to nationalize the oil industry?
A: No, if oil were nationalized, your prices wouldn't drop in the long run. They would stay nearly the same, but a different bunch of thieves would be pocketing all the profit.
And, if anyone is interested, the price of gasoline when I was in high school ran from 29 cents up to 36 cents. The 36 cent stuff was super high octane racing fuel, the 29 cent stuff was plain regular leaded gas. I can remember my grandpa buying gas for 24 cents, but I can't really recall what year that was - sometime between '67 and '70.
You are, of course, correct. The gold bubble will suck for anyone who bought into it.
But "investing in gold" and "gold standard" have little to do with each other.
Oh - one of life's smaller mysteries: In high school, before we cashed in the gold standard, we had inflation. Not very high, but it was there. The news heads would announce periodically what the inflation rate actually was - 1/2% or 3% or whatever. Since we ditched the gold standard, I haven't heard those numbers announced on the news. The devaluation of the dollar is quietly swept under the rug, and no one takes notice.
People like Lumpy, who I responded to, just assume that higher prices at the pumps means that oil has gone up in price.
Oil costs just about the same today, as it did in 1950's.
http://pricedingold.com/crude-oil/
True - you pay more coins for the same amount of oil, today. But the problem isn't that the oil is more expensive. The problem is that the dollar is worth less. Almost worthless, in fact.
There will be a squad of self-appointed economics experts along soon, to remind us why the gold standard sucks. Of course, economics experts allowed the housing bubble and the subsequent crash, so take their explanations with a few grains of salt. Or a few shots of tequila and salt - whatever floats your boat.
Calibre is my favorite. Convert anything to anything. You can load up one reader with anything and everything from any source, then load up your friend's competing reader with any or all of the same content. And, you don't even need the reader, of course - your laptop or desktop works perfectly well for all of it. I haven't done it, but I suppose you can send any of your content to your phone as well.
I think you slipped up there. RIAA is NOT a content producer. RIAA is a parasitic organization that has never produced anything other than a sense of satisfaction for it's members, and grief for consumers. Some of RIAA's members produce content, but RIAA produces nothing.