Courts are not a simple little thing that you can manipulate just because you are right.
Best summary of the law I've ever read:-)
If you go in front of a judge, you better be absolutely prepared...
I'm not saying I personally would have a hope in hell of winning against DirecTV's no doubt extensive and amoral team of legal barracudas. I just like to think that if I'd really done nothing wrong, that I wouldn't just roll over and send them the $3500 (not that I have that kind of money to send anyway). Wishful thinking perhaps, as I've never had to face down a threatening letter from a corporate law firm.
Sosa "doesn't care" because he's a doctor and he'd lose a lot more than $3500 in the time it'd take him to fight this (and be unlikely to recover those costs even if he did win). He said it himself, he's got a family to look after. Now if it was me, I'd send them a letter saying "See you in court", because I have nothing to lose. Compared to Dr. Sosa, my time is virtually worthless. I couldn't afford a lawyer, but I'd be willing to bet a judge would see it my way if I prepared a clear presentation explaining what I'd been using the device for (assuming I wasn't a pirate that is!). DirecTV would have NO proof I was using it to steal their signal, after all (since I wasn't).
The very poorest North Americans are wealthy by Third World standards.
Of course this truth underlies any discussion of poverty and class in North America. But you can't dismiss anyone's poverty based on the fact that there are poorer people elsewhere, living under different circumstances. A laborer living on $1.50 a day in Kenya will take small comfort in the fact that there are people living on $0.75 a day in rural Eritrea. He'll still feel poor.
OK, yeah, maybe you get a cheap PC from Wal-Mart, but on the other hand you just gave money to Wal-Mart. That money goes to help them destroy the economy of every small town they move into, efficiently union-busting and wage-cutting as they go. Because if you think Microsoft's "loss-leading" business model is obnoxious, you ain't seen nothin' yet. A Wal-Mart store can run at a loss for YEARS until all other stores in the vicinity are out of business.
Everyone dreams of going to space, everyone has looked up in the night sky and thought I wonder what it's really like up there, and everyone at one time growing up pretended they were an astronaut/cosmonaut.
Fortunately, by the time they grow up, most people have had these ludicrous, insane and unrealistic dreams beaten out of them by a financially gutted school system staffed with overworked, exhausted teachers, a government/media complex which constantly reminds us that bombers are a better investment than spaceships, and of course the neverending daily grind of merely surviving as a non-wealthy North American. After all, what would we have if everyone followed their dreams? Chaos, I tell you!
I think singapore is similarly protecting their young by killing drug dealers on the spot... which has dropped drug sales by a significant amount in their country.
Anybody who thinks this is "protecting" ANY kids has obviously never heard of corrupt cops, or read any Philip K. Dick (who explored the ability of a gov't to use a "drug war" to eliminate political dissenters). Kids in Singapore are only "safe" now, as long as they don't disagree with the gov't or piss off the wrong policeman.
Interesting point about eliminating youth hangouts though. Think "skate parks".
They didn't say ALL the technologies. Jetpacks, sick-sticks, those personal-mass-transit pods, all doable within about 50 years, and all based on existing or curently-researched tech. I'd say the precogs are more of a plot device than a "tech". If PKD or the filmmakers had really wanted to they could have worked around them and found some more "scientific" way to run Pre-Crime. Statistical analysis of human behaviour? Booooring! Not to mention it'd be unlikely to be believed unquestioningly.
Jeez dude, I'm surprised you weren't arrested. If you're lucky, they're reading this right now and realize you're just a harmless crackpot, worthy of being forever unable to board commercial airlines but not worth surveilling indefinitely.
Sounds a little more like a spoof on "The Sims" and a few other games. Does it take these characters an hour to eat a bag of chips, and half an hour to go to the bathroom? (now that people on TV _have_ bathrooms)
I rather enjoy any time I spend in a computer-free environment. I do other things like talk to people, watch people, have a drink, breathe the fresh air. I cannot succumb to the temptation to check my e-mail/Slashdot every 5 minutes, or play a game.
It is also nice to be able to sit the thing in my lap and sit in the same room as my wife and hold down a conversation instead of being relegating to one room while I aimlessly surf.
I think the key here is to not "aimlessly surf". Unless your wife is a horrible creature (which I'm guessing not, since you talk to her) I imagine her company is far more interesting than anything you turn up while aimlessly surfing. So don't do it, in the room with her or otherwise. The only reason I "aimlessly surf" is because I am single and often have nothing better to do with my time.
Yeah I guess I was just thinking how happy the US gov't would be to not need a presence in Saudi Arabia (or Turkey, another human rights hell-hole ally which serves to make them look like hypocrites).
The coffee table's legs are held on with chewing gum, and well, let's just say little Jenny's always been a free spirit, just like her ol' man... Thanks for the ten-spot though.
(ok, so it's late and i'm feeling a little silly...)
I see this as part of an effort for the US to shuck off the need for military bases on foreign soil and "bring the boys back home", thus decreasing their need to give a flying &#^%* what the rest of the world thinks of their foreign policy. Of course I first saw this next to a story about how the US wants its current allies to deny the International Criminal Court, so maybe I'm seeing patterns here...
I think I saw a sale on Slowly Rotating Industrial Fans, Large Mysterious Machines and Clunky Bolted Iron Bulkheads over at Base Depot. If you're lucky you might find a bunch of Raggy Neo-Tribal Garments, and Sweaters With Holes for your military, for half-off at the same mall.
Good point. Arguably, this is the benefit to any domesticated animal - protection and nurture by humans. Granted, some of them are eaten later but as a species, cows, pigs and chickens are astonishingly successful, due to domestication by us. Being "domesticable" was a fitness boost for their wild ancestors, compared to other species which were hunted or merely eradicated for the sake of convenience. The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" provides some useful data on which species benefited this way through human history.
you can bet your bottom dollar that the US government would intervene if a movie were to be released in the country showed terrorism in a positive light.
The Matrix does. Think of all those people killed on the Freeway as the big guns duked it out over the future of their world. Now think of all the people who dies in the Murrow Federal Bldg. How do we know that McVeigh and co. didn't blow up that building to destroy a secret gov't laboratory manufacturing water-soluble mind-control agents? We don't. Any more than the people in that car knew what was at stake when an Agent suddently jumped on their hood, destroying their car and sending them hurtling into the concrete barrier at 60 mph. I'm not saying that Al-Qaeda or the army of God or whoever are not evil wack jobs, but if they were in fact fighting a secret war for the greater good, against a shadowy over-power, would we know why innocent people had to die?
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Courts are not a simple little thing that you can manipulate just because you are right.
:-)
Best summary of the law I've ever read
If you go in front of a judge, you better be absolutely prepared...
I'm not saying I personally would have a hope in hell of winning against DirecTV's no doubt extensive and amoral team of legal barracudas. I just like to think that if I'd really done nothing wrong, that I wouldn't just roll over and send them the $3500 (not that I have that kind of money to send anyway). Wishful thinking perhaps, as I've never had to face down a threatening letter from a corporate law firm.
Sosa "doesn't care" because he's a doctor and he'd lose a lot more than $3500 in the time it'd take him to fight this (and be unlikely to recover those costs even if he did win). He said it himself, he's got a family to look after. Now if it was me, I'd send them a letter saying "See you in court", because I have nothing to lose. Compared to Dr. Sosa, my time is virtually worthless. I couldn't afford a lawyer, but I'd be willing to bet a judge would see it my way if I prepared a clear presentation explaining what I'd been using the device for (assuming I wasn't a pirate that is!). DirecTV would have NO proof I was using it to steal their signal, after all (since I wasn't).
Call me naive, or what?
... because rockets don't have any atmosphere to "push against" in space. It's simple common sense.
It had to be said.
Could be worse, I get an urge to go find a hooker every time I skin my knee.
The very poorest North Americans are wealthy by Third World standards.
Of course this truth underlies any discussion of poverty and class in North America. But you can't dismiss anyone's poverty based on the fact that there are poorer people elsewhere, living under different circumstances. A laborer living on $1.50 a day in Kenya will take small comfort in the fact that there are people living on $0.75 a day in rural Eritrea. He'll still feel poor.
OK, yeah, maybe you get a cheap PC from Wal-Mart, but on the other hand you just gave money to Wal-Mart. That money goes to help them destroy the economy of every small town they move into, efficiently union-busting and wage-cutting as they go. Because if you think Microsoft's "loss-leading" business model is obnoxious, you ain't seen nothin' yet. A Wal-Mart store can run at a loss for YEARS until all other stores in the vicinity are out of business.
Everyone dreams of going to space, everyone has looked up in the night sky and thought I wonder what it's really like up there, and everyone at one time growing up pretended they were an astronaut/cosmonaut.
Fortunately, by the time they grow up, most people have had these ludicrous, insane and unrealistic dreams beaten out of them by a financially gutted school system staffed with overworked, exhausted teachers, a government/media complex which constantly reminds us that bombers are a better investment than spaceships, and of course the neverending daily grind of merely surviving as a non-wealthy North American. After all, what would we have if everyone followed their dreams? Chaos, I tell you!
Three jet aircraft take off. Two jets at either end of a long piece of knicker elastic.
Further proof that an already fairly amusing joke can always be made funnier by the use of British words.
"What kind of games do you expect psycho killers to enjoy: doom3 or oregon trail?"
Actually, playing Oregon Trail made me into a cannibal. "Donner? Party of 81?"
I think singapore is similarly protecting their young by killing drug dealers on the spot... which has dropped drug sales by a significant amount in their country.
Anybody who thinks this is "protecting" ANY kids has obviously never heard of corrupt cops, or read any Philip K. Dick (who explored the ability of a gov't to use a "drug war" to eliminate political dissenters). Kids in Singapore are only "safe" now, as long as they don't disagree with the gov't or piss off the wrong policeman.
Interesting point about eliminating youth hangouts though. Think "skate parks".
They didn't say ALL the technologies. Jetpacks, sick-sticks, those personal-mass-transit pods, all doable within about 50 years, and all based on existing or curently-researched tech. I'd say the precogs are more of a plot device than a "tech". If PKD or the filmmakers had really wanted to they could have worked around them and found some more "scientific" way to run Pre-Crime. Statistical analysis of human behaviour? Booooring! Not to mention it'd be unlikely to be believed unquestioningly.
... carrying it around in your wallet won't destroy it. That's gotta be worth something.
Jeez dude, I'm surprised you weren't arrested. If you're lucky, they're reading this right now and realize you're just a harmless crackpot, worthy of being forever unable to board commercial airlines but not worth surveilling indefinitely.
What was wrong with the originals?
Sounds a little more like a spoof on "The Sims" and a few other games. Does it take these characters an hour to eat a bag of chips, and half an hour to go to the bathroom? (now that people on TV _have_ bathrooms)
I rather enjoy any time I spend in a computer-free environment. I do other things like talk to people, watch people, have a drink, breathe the fresh air. I cannot succumb to the temptation to check my e-mail/Slashdot every 5 minutes, or play a game.
It is also nice to be able to sit the thing in my lap and sit in the same room as my wife and hold down a conversation instead of being relegating to one room while I aimlessly surf.
I think the key here is to not "aimlessly surf". Unless your wife is a horrible creature (which I'm guessing not, since you talk to her) I imagine her company is far more interesting than anything you turn up while aimlessly surfing. So don't do it, in the room with her or otherwise. The only reason I "aimlessly surf" is because I am single and often have nothing better to do with my time.
Yeah I guess I was just thinking how happy the US gov't would be to not need a presence in Saudi Arabia (or Turkey, another human rights hell-hole ally which serves to make them look like hypocrites).
The coffee table's legs are held on with chewing gum, and well, let's just say little Jenny's always been a free spirit, just like her ol' man... Thanks for the ten-spot though.
(ok, so it's late and i'm feeling a little silly...)
I see this as part of an effort for the US to shuck off the need for military bases on foreign soil and "bring the boys back home", thus decreasing their need to give a flying &#^%* what the rest of the world thinks of their foreign policy. Of course I first saw this next to a story about how the US wants its current allies to deny the International Criminal Court, so maybe I'm seeing patterns here...
There's so much of it that it seems unlikely that it's organics, but that's a very good point.
I suppose it'd be pretty handy if it turned out to be hydrazine (rocket fuel)...
I think I saw a sale on Slowly Rotating Industrial Fans, Large Mysterious Machines and Clunky Bolted Iron Bulkheads over at Base Depot. If you're lucky you might find a bunch of Raggy Neo-Tribal Garments, and Sweaters With Holes for your military, for half-off at the same mall.
No, and I suspect it won't hinder your ability to grab the latest Playboy and "kill them" either...
Good point. Arguably, this is the benefit to any domesticated animal - protection and nurture by humans. Granted, some of them are eaten later but as a species, cows, pigs and chickens are astonishingly successful, due to domestication by us. Being "domesticable" was a fitness boost for their wild ancestors, compared to other species which were hunted or merely eradicated for the sake of convenience. The book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" provides some useful data on which species benefited this way through human history.
you can bet your bottom dollar that the US government would intervene if a movie were to be released in the country showed terrorism in a positive light.
The Matrix does. Think of all those people killed on the Freeway as the big guns duked it out over the future of their world. Now think of all the people who dies in the Murrow Federal Bldg. How do we know that McVeigh and co. didn't blow up that building to destroy a secret gov't laboratory manufacturing water-soluble mind-control agents? We don't. Any more than the people in that car knew what was at stake when an Agent suddently jumped on their hood, destroying their car and sending them hurtling into the concrete barrier at 60 mph. I'm not saying that Al-Qaeda or the army of God or whoever are not evil wack jobs, but if they were in fact fighting a secret war for the greater good, against a shadowy over-power, would we know why innocent people had to die?