Correct. That was Hollywood movie rentals back in the 70s, and TV websites (like scifi.com) and stores (like amazon.com) in the 90s that were the early adopters. Not porn, which although present, also exaggerates their influence the same way they exaggerate the size of their body parts.;-)
Of course if you think I'm wrong, then please provide some PROOF (i.e. numbers) to show that we owe the porn industry for the VHS and dot-com boom. Good luck. As with typical urban legends (like the guy waking-up in a bath and no kidneys), you won't find anything to back it up because it never happened.
>>>unwilling to take a bet on Betamax, no matter how superior it was
Yet another myth. Betamax and VHS have identical specs - 3 megahertz luma bandwidth (250 lines horizontal resolution) and 0.4 megahertz chroma bandwidth and 20-20,000 Hi-Fi sound. The only place they were not identical was Betamax's paltry 1-hour record limit, while the first VHS decks could do either 2 or 4 hours. From the point-of-view of the consumer 4 is a hell of a lot better than 1, especially if you want to record Monday night's football game.
Even later when Sony realized their mistake and extended Betamax's record time to 5 hours, it still couldn't match VHS' maximum 10.5 hour length. It was the battle over time that made VHS win consumer loyalty.
Good advice. Most places don't let you access the outside world except via the HTML browser.
I would take the ~$1300 if my boss wants to reimburse me for my laptop. I never turn-down money, and realistically I'm just an average schlub like everyone else. I'm NOT going to write the next great american novel. I'd just make sure that if I have any personal data, like pics of my kids, to offload it onto my home PC or a separate USB drive.
And of course keep silent. The boss doesn't need to know everything I type into his laptop. If I create a PS3 emulator, he doesn't need to know about it. Just offload it to my home PC and he'll never know it existed.
>>>There is well established precedence that fired employees must be given time to remove personal items from the office, company car, company apartment etc. >>>
Is there? When my contract expired a year ago, General Dynamics didn't even let me inside the building. Instead they carried everything out to me, and as it turned-out some items were missing, like the award I got from my previous employer Lockheed. They even went so far as to keep my music CDs and MAIL them back to me "after they were scanned" one week later. I threatened to call the local police, but it had no effect to change their minds.
Perhaps you better rethink your plan, because you might NOT get a chance to reclaim your personal hard drive from your desk (or wherever you store it).
The Welsh military has been issued a copyright violation notice by FOX Studios. They are expected to pay $1000 per second of song played without FOX's permission.
>>>A bigger question is whether the UK Courts can or will respect EU findings.
Well during the early years of the United States, many state governments simply ignored the rulings of the Federal or Supreme Courts. I suspect we'll see something similar within the European Union where states like the UK or France simply ignore the rulings.
In the U.S. the solution was to keep a standing army such that States were afraid to challenge the authority of the U.S. Perhaps the EU will follow a similar tactic, surrounding the UK Parliament and saying, "Comply or else."
My local GM dealer (now owned by the government) gave me a free MP4 player! Awesome. All I have to do is pay $29.99 in shipping costs. How generous of my government to do this for me./end sarcasm
That's basically what this boils down to. You are punished without a trial, or a chance to convince a jury of your peers that you don't deserve to be punished. Yes it's efficient but it's also tyrannical... like living under the old monarchy where punishment was swift but arbitrary.
>>>The problem with this arguement is that you apply it to monopolies as a whole
Actually I only applied it to cases where the monopolies were *granted* by the local or state governments. Companies like the phone or electric or cable companies. The agency responsible for giving the grant (example: California) should be the one who has control to regulate it, not some agency 2000 miles away in D.C.
My viewpoint is backed by the Communications Act which only gives the Congress/FCC authority to regulate *interstate* companies not intrastate (like Mom&Pop Cablevision).
.
>>>Suppose that New Jersey has no such regulation, and data through those pipes has a surcharge. It's safe to assume that ISP's will get greedy, so it's plausable that they will route traffic through New Jersey and other non-neutral states >>>
Yes they could. This is no different than how the interstate roads operate, with NJ charging exorbitant rates to drive its I-95 and/or Turnpike, and then of course those fees get passed onto you when you receive your mail or package in New York. So what? That's life. (shrug). Anyway... your home ISP up in New York doesn't have to go through NJ. He could route the data through Pennsylvania or Ohio instead where the lines are free.
ALSO you overlook the fact that if a megacorp like AT&T existed in both New York and New Jersey, they would be regulated by the FCC under the interstate commerce clause. I'd fully support the FCC saying, "No you're not allowed to do that" to AT&T, but I prefer they keep hands-off Mom&Pop intrastate companies.
>>>If you compare what the USA pays per capita for that health care, compared to developed European countries
Yes and if you compare the QUALITY of the cheap "bargain basement" European care, you'll see why the USA is still the better health system. The European may save money, but at the cost of rationing services such that citizens have shitty results:
UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES 8 months - cataract surgery 11 months- hip replacement 12 months- knee replacement 5 months - slipped disc 5 months - hernia repair SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE 100%- United States 90% - Canada 77% - United Kingdom
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards." Another young woman asked the UK System for a PAP smear to test for cervical cancer. She was refused three years in a row. And then she developed cancer and died at age 25. In the United States she could have simply *paid* to get the PAP smear, found the early cysts, and survived.
Yeah U.S. is expensive. But it's also LIBERATED so nobody controls your health except yourself. No silk-suited bastard in parliament can say "no" or otherwise run your life. Look at my signature.
The other question I should ask is where the U.S. was granted power to regulate intrastate telephone or cable or ISP businesses? The only relevant passage I can find is this: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," which suggests neither Congress nor its agencies has authority to regulate local wire-based companies.
>>>the FCC and it's equivalents around the world, have responsibility over telecommunications, that's phones for the not so bright.
Okay. You seem knowledgeable so rather than waste a lot of time going in circles, I'll just ask the expert: Please cite to me which Congressional bill grants the FCC authority over telephone lines. Or my local ISP (Suburban Cable).
Aside-
A quick peak at fcc.gov and the Communications Act of 1934 (and 96) says they have authority to regulate *interstate* phone companies. If a company like "Mom&Pop Telelphone" exists wholly-and-completely within a state, the FCC has to keep hands off. That company would be regulated by the State legislature.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that, just because Congress or a State Legislature gives (keyword) money to a private company like Microsoft or Ford, does not grant the politicians authority over privately-owned equipment.
>>>If you haven't bothered to read any work on the subject
Not only have I read the papers about the subject, but I have an Associates Degree in Environmental Science. Me - good. You - epic fail. The papers provide evidence that warming is happening but NONE of them have proven the cause. There's conjectures ranging from CO2 (manmade) to sunspots (natural) to earthmade (natural), but none have provided proof.
Those init strings didn't exist on 1200 baud (1.2 kbit/s) modems. Back then we still used the Hayes command set which was easy to use. AT==attention P==pulse D==dialtone. The & commands never made any sense to me.
>>>I'm sceptical of this man-made global warming crap.
You could have just stopped writing at this point. The key is whether or not warming is caused by man. We know warming has happened twice before - circa 3000 B.C. and again in 100 A.D. These events were certainly not caused by man, and neither was the cooling that happened from 1250 to 1850 and froze-over the river outside Philadelphia year-after-year.
These events were not manmade - why do presume the current event starting in 1850 was manmade? That's an awfully big presumption. And no it isn't about money - for politicians it's about control.
I agree. There's nothing wrong with the internet, so why bother fixing it? As you can see I can access it just fine and I never needed to upgrade one single bit of my equipment.
This is an urban legend that is not true either now (porn made the net boom), or back in the past (porn killed Betamax cause they chose VHS). If you look at the actual video output the porn industry is only ~5% of sales. The dominant force is Hollywood, followed by the school market, then local TV studios, finally business, and porn is a distant last place.
Oftentimes it's the *weight* that matters more than the age.
That's why Rebecca Romijn still looks darn hot compared to other 40-something fatties. She even looks hotter than a 20-something college coed, if said coed weighs 150 pounds or more. Overweight bodies are a real turnoff.
Teen pregnancy rates will probably drop, because now instead of living in Victorian-style ignorance ("Orgasm? What's an orgasm?"), the teens will finally learn what "sex" is thanks to watching these no-longer restricted videos, and what not to do if you don't want to become a mommy or daddy.
>>>>>The State of Utah can ban playboy from bookstores (and they have)
>>Absolutely wrong. They can pass whatever laws they want, but if those laws are superseded by federal law, federal law overrides their state laws.
(sigh) Yet another product of our horrible government-run education. YOU are absolutely wrong. Federal laws are superseded by Constitutional laws, and in regards to playboy magazine sales, the Constitution is clear - the power is reserved to the States. Therefore Utah is free to ban the magazine from bookstores.
>>>So as a business owner wanting to run a bookstore in the US (let's say an internet one)
It's not illegal to sell Playboy by mail-order in Utah. It's only illegal to display them in stores located within the state. But to answer your question - yes you must comply with local laws. So if you were Borders Bookstore, you would have to make sure not to sell playboys to all our nationwide stores, except the ones in Utah. Otherwise you'll find yourself in a suit, Utah v. Borders, for breaking the law.
Another example is California which forbids cars unless they are at least LEV-II in pollution control. Volkswagen's diesel cars did not pass, so they made the conscious decision not to sell diesels to California from 2002 to 2006, but still sold them everywhere else. They resumed selling to Californians once they had developed newer, cleaner cars.
Yes Utah citizens CAN be arrested by federal police, but such an act would be declared unconstitutional, because no power was ever given to Congress to ban marijuana (see Constitution). In fact many federal judges have already reached that conclusion and are freeing people from prison.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>It tends to be driven by early adopters,
Correct. That was Hollywood movie rentals back in the 70s, and TV websites (like scifi.com) and stores (like amazon.com) in the 90s that were the early adopters. Not porn, which although present, also exaggerates their influence the same way they exaggerate the size of their body parts. ;-)
Of course if you think I'm wrong, then please provide some PROOF (i.e. numbers) to show that we owe the porn industry for the VHS and dot-com boom. Good luck. As with typical urban legends (like the guy waking-up in a bath and no kidneys), you won't find anything to back it up because it never happened.
>>>unwilling to take a bet on Betamax, no matter how superior it was
Yet another myth. Betamax and VHS have identical specs - 3 megahertz luma bandwidth (250 lines horizontal resolution) and 0.4 megahertz chroma bandwidth and 20-20,000 Hi-Fi sound. The only place they were not identical was Betamax's paltry 1-hour record limit, while the first VHS decks could do either 2 or 4 hours. From the point-of-view of the consumer 4 is a hell of a lot better than 1, especially if you want to record Monday night's football game.
Even later when Sony realized their mistake and extended Betamax's record time to 5 hours, it still couldn't match VHS' maximum 10.5 hour length. It was the battle over time that made VHS win consumer loyalty.
Good advice. Most places don't let you access the outside world except via the HTML browser.
I would take the ~$1300 if my boss wants to reimburse me for my laptop. I never turn-down money, and realistically I'm just an average schlub like everyone else. I'm NOT going to write the next great american novel. I'd just make sure that if I have any personal data, like pics of my kids, to offload it onto my home PC or a separate USB drive.
And of course keep silent. The boss doesn't need to know everything I type into his laptop. If I create a PS3 emulator, he doesn't need to know about it. Just offload it to my home PC and he'll never know it existed.
>>>There is well established precedence that fired employees must be given time to remove personal items from the office, company car, company apartment etc.
>>>
Is there? When my contract expired a year ago, General Dynamics didn't even let me inside the building. Instead they carried everything out to me, and as it turned-out some items were missing, like the award I got from my previous employer Lockheed. They even went so far as to keep my music CDs and MAIL them back to me "after they were scanned" one week later. I threatened to call the local police, but it had no effect to change their minds.
Perhaps you better rethink your plan, because you might NOT get a chance to reclaim your personal hard drive from your desk (or wherever you store it).
Who cares if they're virgins, so long as they are young with firm boobies and tiny butts.
Uh oh...something's come up.
I must go.
This just in.....
The Welsh military has been issued a copyright violation notice by FOX Studios. They are expected to pay $1000 per second of song played without FOX's permission.
>>>A bigger question is whether the UK Courts can or will respect EU findings.
Well during the early years of the United States, many state governments simply ignored the rulings of the Federal or Supreme Courts. I suspect we'll see something similar within the European Union where states like the UK or France simply ignore the rulings.
In the U.S. the solution was to keep a standing army such that States were afraid to challenge the authority of the U.S. Perhaps the EU will follow a similar tactic, surrounding the UK Parliament and saying, "Comply or else."
>>>Lord Mandelson of Sith
I'm waiting for the trumpets of the Grand Republic to start playing. Ahhh... here comes Chancellor Palpatine now.
>>>Wonder if they bought him a iPod or something?
My local GM dealer (now owned by the government) gave me a free MP4 player! Awesome. All I have to do is pay $29.99 in shipping costs. How generous of my government to do this for me. /end sarcasm
That's basically what this boils down to. You are punished without a trial, or a chance to convince a jury of your peers that you don't deserve to be punished. Yes it's efficient but it's also tyrannical... like living under the old monarchy where punishment was swift but arbitrary.
Yeah but where's the topless women, promiscuity, and blood sacrifices? (I've watched the BBC's Rome - it must be true.)
>>>The problem with this arguement is that you apply it to monopolies as a whole
Actually I only applied it to cases where the monopolies were *granted* by the local or state governments. Companies like the phone or electric or cable companies. The agency responsible for giving the grant (example: California) should be the one who has control to regulate it, not some agency 2000 miles away in D.C.
My viewpoint is backed by the Communications Act which only gives the Congress/FCC authority to regulate *interstate* companies not intrastate (like Mom&Pop Cablevision).
.
>>>Suppose that New Jersey has no such regulation, and data through those pipes has a surcharge. It's safe to assume that ISP's will get greedy, so it's plausable that they will route traffic through New Jersey and other non-neutral states
>>>
Yes they could. This is no different than how the interstate roads operate, with NJ charging exorbitant rates to drive its I-95 and/or Turnpike, and then of course those fees get passed onto you when you receive your mail or package in New York. So what? That's life. (shrug). Anyway... your home ISP up in New York doesn't have to go through NJ. He could route the data through Pennsylvania or Ohio instead where the lines are free.
ALSO you overlook the fact that if a megacorp like AT&T existed in both New York and New Jersey, they would be regulated by the FCC under the interstate commerce clause. I'd fully support the FCC saying, "No you're not allowed to do that" to AT&T, but I prefer they keep hands-off Mom&Pop intrastate companies.
>>>If you compare what the USA pays per capita for that health care, compared to developed European countries
Yes and if you compare the QUALITY of the cheap "bargain basement" European care, you'll see why the USA is still the better health system. The European may save money, but at the cost of rationing services such that citizens have shitty results:
UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES
8 months - cataract surgery
11 months- hip replacement
12 months- knee replacement
5 months - slipped disc
5 months - hernia repair
SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE
100%- United States
90% - Canada
77% - United Kingdom
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards." Another young woman asked the UK System for a PAP smear to test for cervical cancer. She was refused three years in a row. And then she developed cancer and died at age 25. In the United States she could have simply *paid* to get the PAP smear, found the early cysts, and survived.
Yeah U.S. is expensive. But it's also LIBERATED so nobody controls your health except yourself. No silk-suited bastard in parliament can say "no" or otherwise run your life. Look at my signature.
The other question I should ask is where the U.S. was granted power to regulate intrastate telephone or cable or ISP businesses? The only relevant passage I can find is this: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," which suggests neither Congress nor its agencies has authority to regulate local wire-based companies.
>>>the FCC and it's equivalents around the world, have responsibility over telecommunications, that's phones for the not so bright.
Okay. You seem knowledgeable so rather than waste a lot of time going in circles, I'll just ask the expert: Please cite to me which Congressional bill grants the FCC authority over telephone lines. Or my local ISP (Suburban Cable).
Aside-
A quick peak at fcc.gov and the Communications Act of 1934 (and 96) says they have authority to regulate *interstate* phone companies. If a company like "Mom&Pop Telelphone" exists wholly-and-completely within a state, the FCC has to keep hands off. That company would be regulated by the State legislature.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that, just because Congress or a State Legislature gives (keyword) money to a private company like Microsoft or Ford, does not grant the politicians authority over privately-owned equipment.
>>>If you haven't bothered to read any work on the subject
Not only have I read the papers about the subject, but I have an Associates Degree in Environmental Science. Me - good. You - epic fail. The papers provide evidence that warming is happening but NONE of them have proven the cause. There's conjectures ranging from CO2 (manmade) to sunspots (natural) to earthmade (natural), but none have provided proof.
Those init strings didn't exist on 1200 baud (1.2 kbit/s) modems. Back then we still used the Hayes command set which was easy to use. AT==attention P==pulse D==dialtone. The & commands never made any sense to me.
>>>I'm sceptical of this man-made global warming crap.
You could have just stopped writing at this point. The key is whether or not warming is caused by man. We know warming has happened twice before - circa 3000 B.C. and again in 100 A.D. These events were certainly not caused by man, and neither was the cooling that happened from 1250 to 1850 and froze-over the river outside Philadelphia year-after-year.
These events were not manmade - why do presume the current event starting in 1850 was manmade? That's an awfully big presumption. And no it isn't about money - for politicians it's about control.
Politicians love having power to run your life.
ATDT 5601750
(beep beep boop beep bleep blep boop)
(squuuuuuooooosh)
(aaaaeeeh)
.
.
.
CONNECT 1200
I agree. There's nothing wrong with the internet, so why bother fixing it? As you can see I can access it just fine and I never needed to upgrade one single bit of my equipment.
+++
ATH
@&%*@... &*(&%(*... CARRIER LOST
False.
This is an urban legend that is not true either now (porn made the net boom), or back in the past (porn killed Betamax cause they chose VHS). If you look at the actual video output the porn industry is only ~5% of sales. The dominant force is Hollywood, followed by the school market, then local TV studios, finally business, and porn is a distant last place.
Oftentimes it's the *weight* that matters more than the age.
That's why Rebecca Romijn still looks darn hot compared to other 40-something fatties. She even looks hotter than a 20-something college coed, if said coed weighs 150 pounds or more. Overweight bodies are a real turnoff.
Teen pregnancy rates will probably drop, because now instead of living in Victorian-style ignorance ("Orgasm? What's an orgasm?"), the teens will finally learn what "sex" is thanks to watching these no-longer restricted videos, and what not to do if you don't want to become a mommy or daddy.
>>>>>The State of Utah can ban playboy from bookstores (and they have)
>>Absolutely wrong. They can pass whatever laws they want, but if those laws are superseded by federal law, federal law overrides their state laws.
(sigh) Yet another product of our horrible government-run education. YOU are absolutely wrong. Federal laws are superseded by Constitutional laws, and in regards to playboy magazine sales, the Constitution is clear - the power is reserved to the States. Therefore Utah is free to ban the magazine from bookstores.
>>>So as a business owner wanting to run a bookstore in the US (let's say an internet one)
It's not illegal to sell Playboy by mail-order in Utah. It's only illegal to display them in stores located within the state. But to answer your question - yes you must comply with local laws. So if you were Borders Bookstore, you would have to make sure not to sell playboys to all our nationwide stores, except the ones in Utah. Otherwise you'll find yourself in a suit, Utah v. Borders, for breaking the law.
Another example is California which forbids cars unless they are at least LEV-II in pollution control. Volkswagen's diesel cars did not pass, so they made the conscious decision not to sell diesels to California from 2002 to 2006, but still sold them everywhere else. They resumed selling to Californians once they had developed newer, cleaner cars.
Yes Utah citizens CAN be arrested by federal police, but such an act would be declared unconstitutional, because no power was ever given to Congress to ban marijuana (see Constitution). In fact many federal judges have already reached that conclusion and are freeing people from prison.