Oh, if New York is so liberal, then why doesn't a Democrat stand a chance in hell of ever becoming Mayor? The Republican party 0wnz NYC.
I submit that when a major news outlet takes on a story about a rich white girl being abducted as a major national newsworthy story, that illustrates a strong bias towards the right.
Thousands of kids go missing or are murdered every year - but watching the news, you would think that rich white kids are somehow in grave danger of being abducted from their bedrooms by armed home intruders.
It's not that republicans are looser with their wallets. It's that rich people tend to become republicans. They got theirs, now it's time to keep the government from taking it away from them. let the poor make their own fortune.
If they aren't fundamentally selfish - they don't stay rich for long. (boy did I learn THAT lesson the hard way. So long Internet Boom, I hardly knew ye).
Re:Micropayments maybe? - Re:Charging for content.
on
Salon in Dire Straits
·
· Score: 2
Maybe there's an alternate reason for it.
Nobody wants to RECEIVE micropayments. They all would much rather have macropayments. Wouldn't you?
The problem is, the overhead of dealing with micropayments is not worth the revenue one would get. The content market is absolutely certain that they can get customers to pay $30/yr for web subscriptions. Even to the point of going out of business for lack of trying the alternative. They don't feel it's too much to ask, and for some screwy reason, they feel that people should be able to afford that kind of money - because, surely, they can, why can't everyone else?
Steve Jobs thinks it's trivial to drop $3500 on a decent system. Why doesn't the other 95% of the computer market think so? Because there's a less costly alternative (never mind the value, TOC and features arguments).
But in the web-content space, pretty much all the free stuff is going away lately. So soon, the whole internet is going to drift into the AOL-world of pay-for-content (AND look at ads). Just like cable TV, print magazines, and newspapers.
If only those psychics could predict when a company was about to cook it's books, they could simply inform the press, so that good stocks wouldn't get taken down with the bad.
Well, I'm a Christian, I love The Lord, and all that. But I agree, we need to get rid of this "under God" bit and the "in God We Trust" - in my opinion, it's UnAmerican (TM).
IF you remove choice from a person, you remove their ability to be GOOD of their own free will. So what does a good deed mean when it's compulsory?
I've *never* said that an Atheist is making the wrong choice, and I fully support their right to be left alone to practice or not practice whatever ideology they want. We all should have the right to be left alone.
How do you know that "under God" and "in God We Trust" aren't the mark of the Beast? (under God being the mark on one's forhead - or thoughts, and in God we trust being the mark on your hand, or actions which money can certainly qualify as - also limiting your ability to do commerce.)
All you have to do is consider the current religion to be the opposite of what they want you to believe it is, and the illusion is complete.
I wish religious followers would leave children alone and let informed adults come to them when they reach an age appropraite to do so
That's a TERRIBLE idea.
Which "informed" adults?
From which church? Or which organization? (the Bureau of Logic and Truth?) With what biases? Armed with what information? With what to gain by the person's conversion to whatever "faith" he or she decides on?
Assuming you mean, atheists being the "informed" adult - informed about what exactly? About the cold, hard, fact that God does not exist? Surely you don't believe that that "fact" has been proven, do you? It's as logically shaky as the absolute faith in the "fact" that God does exist.
Add to that, that religion, more often than not, is more of a cultural element, and that there's a reason people mostly tend to choose the same religion their family belongs to (because those are the people they know, relate to, and live with, and sharing a culture makes it easier to know, relate to, and live with people) - it makes much more sense to continue the age old tradition of parental indoctrination for those who wish it.
If you want to impose a state "religion" or "pholosophy" or "world-view" - certainly, shield people from any thoughts of this nature until they're 18, then send in the "thought police" to tell them about the Truth of Existence.
Or maybe a bit of wisdom from the Bible: Jesus said to come to the Father with a mind as like a child - maybe it's not that children are too young to contemplate the philosophical and metaphysical consequences of a religious faith. Maybe it's that adults are too old.
I live in a VERY religious area of the country, and my kids are homeschooled. Homeschoolers can band together and do form "support networks" and even do some cooperative education. I, for one, do science demos from time to time for grade-school age homeschooled kids in my area. There are religious homeschool groups, and secular homeschool groups. We've dealt with both types. The religious ones DO tend to keep to themselves, and DO tend to harbor some views which I would classify as extremist (the evil atheist gummint is out to get us).
While the religious ones tend to be more helpful and generous and well-meaning, the secular groups tend to be better funded and more organized, and the parents seem to be more "into it".
You don't have to be a religious freak to be a homeschooler. Nor do you have to be a conspiracy theorist. You just have to care enough about your kids to take matters of their education into your own hands.
In my kids' case - it turned out that our son just wasn't socially ready for school when he went into kindergarten. But boy was he academically ready. He's way ahead of the other kids his age, especially in math and science. But socially, he's just a very sensitive kid, and we chose to protect him from the schoolyard politics until he gets a bit older. He's also shorter than average height, and just doesn't have the attention span necessary to deal with the pavlovian schedule of RING the bell, sit down, study subject X for 45 minutes, RING the bell, stand up, move on to subject Y. Sometimes, he'll be in the mood to do math, and he'll spend a whole week doing nothing but math. Then he'll move on to english, geography or history, or whatever. Sometimes he'll study all of them in a day - but the point is - he does not HAVE to, just to make it easier on the other kids' schedule. There are no other kids, or social distractions, and he sets his own schedule.
I believe that on the 4th of July, we should ALL burn an American flag - to celebrate the fact that we're FREE to do so.
Not only will it drive the point home to the fuckers in Washington, but it will also turn the act of flag burning from an act of protest into an act of patriotism.
Damn. When I'm Emporer, it will be so. Trust me on this.
And just what investor with $5000 to put into the market isn't terrorized by hearing that: 1) companies lie about their balance sheets 2) investment firms cheerlead simply to sell stocks so their bottom lines look better 3) accounting firms destroy evidence of wrongdoing for their clients 4) government regulation and oversight of these practices is very weak to an almost complicit level
Who isn't terrorized by that?
In fact - compare Arafat's complicity with Hamas' terrorist acts - and draw an analogy with the Bush administration's compliance to Enron's price fixing, manufacturing of an energy crisis, and cooking the books, and you have (in my opinion) a recipe for GW Bush being given a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay in an Orange Jumpsuit. Impeachment nothing. This is fucking high treason.
I think you'll find it in the preamble; ". . . to (sic) establish JUSTICE (emphasis mine) and pure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense (against bad guys, foreign and domestic, terrorist or white-collar criminal), promote the GENERAL (emphasis mine) welfare (make everybody prosperous, not just a select few) and secure the blessings of liberty (freedom abused is freedom in decline) to ourselves and our posterity (borrowing money now and making our children pay it off is double-plus-ungood). . . "
what sucks is that there ARE good companies out there with strong financials, and they're now getting the shaft because of these bastards. So even if I'm invested in a GOOD company, I get screwed.
I'd like to thank the members of the academy, and the Ronald Reagan administration and their policies of deregulation free-for-all coming home to roost after 20 years.
Freedom is a nice thing, but only when the free excercise a bit of responsibility and play fair.
I just wish that the government spent as much money and zeal in enforcing good corporate citizenship and accounting practices and trading rules as they apparently want to do for "terorism". Look at your headcount of the SEC compared to the headcount of the FBI and you'll see what I mean.
These guys are worse than the silly ragheads who hijacked a plane and killed 3000 people on September 11th. They've done more harm to our economy, I don't think that's up for debate. Good companies can now not get investment dollars because these bastards abused the system and lied and cheated.
So, tell me - if fucking up our economy causes people to lose jobs, lose houses, eat less healthy, and those of us still with jobs to work harder to health-threatening levels because we're afraid to get fired, and the massive amounts of poverty this generates, which leads to higher crime rates, teen pregnancy, illiteracy, and government default on loans, why the hell are we spending billions of dollars on a huge "ministry of truth" style agency to listen in on our phone calls for mad suicide bombers, and yet we leave organizations like the SEC critically underfunded to the point where they've got like a dozen underpaid accountants devoted to the job of monitoring tens of thousands of publicly traded companies.
Part of rebuilding after September 11th was improving security precautions on airline travel so that people could trust flying again.
Why in hell is nothing being done to restore people's faith in corporate accounting and the stock market?
For one, I hope we have armed federal martials at WorldCom RIGHT FUCKING NOW, making sure they're not shredding truckloads of documents. Because with Enron/Anderson, somebody dropped the fucking ball.
Is the song the PRODUCT, or is it promotional material for the REAL product, the actual CD and/or concert tickets?
Remember back in the 1970's when "music videos" were nothing more than promotional materials used to sell records to record store owners?
Then, the promotional materials themselves became the product when MTV was born (actually, when the Monkees were born, but that's almost a different subject entirely).
Kids would sit and watch MTV commercials to "fund" the content, which in effect, was just more commercials. THAT was a good scam.
To have to PAY the station for airtime for your "commercial" - that sounds completely fair to me. IF there was a demand to hear the music, people would go out and plop down their $20 for a CD, no radio necessary. Radio-played music is promotional material designed to create that demand.
. . . and to think I can tune my 30-year old smog-exempt Aircooled VW with a screwdriver.
Some stock setups, without catalytic converters, tuned properly, can still pass California's smog inspection. Some stock setups can still get 30 miles per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. Some *modified* setups can crank out upwards of 250 hp from a 2 litre four cylinder aircooled engine, drive a beetle, or karmann ghia upwards of 120 mph, and 0-60 in under 7 seconds.
My 72 karmann ghia has a 1.6 liter Porsche 912 engine that gets 25 miles per gallon, 0-60 in 8.5 seconds, tops out at 110+ (I don't dare take that body any faster without an air-dam, because the body produces too much lift). Doesn't need coolant, doesn't need no chips, I set the points and valve clearance and change the oil every 3000 miles, and it just plain runs.
The Stock VW engine can be overhauled; rebuilt, for under $500. A single person can remove the engine with a simple floor jack.
These cars DO have their limitations, but a lot of us Air Cooled enthusiasts often wonder whether there's been any real progress in the auto industry since 1973.
I knew this kid in high school who just said shit to people to raise their ire and see what happens. Well, what happened is that he got six teeth knocked out and his nose broken.
The day Apple tries this is the day I format my four macs and install LinuxPPC. And my next machine will be AMD-based Linux.
So far, Apple's stance on DRM has been "Piracy is a social issue, not a technological one, please do not steal music". I think that's a wise and level-headed stance.
But I'm sure it could change at a moment's notice.
I have to agree with this one. One of the most dreadfully wreched movies of all time. I admit that I did have fantasies about a "modern" remake, but the fact that it has George Clooney in it kind of scares me. What if they pull a "Starship Troopers" on it? I mean, isn't the whole concept of the story a bit too much for Hollywood to handle?
5. As a content-provider, buy a cable company (AOL/TW?), control massive broadband marketshare, and cap upstream bandwidth, deny static IP's, and tip off the FBI to folks to illegally violate copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
ah, then there are the religious nuts.
Oh, if New York is so liberal, then why doesn't a Democrat stand a chance in hell of ever becoming Mayor? The Republican party 0wnz NYC.
I submit that when a major news outlet takes on a story about a rich white girl being abducted as a major national newsworthy story, that illustrates a strong bias towards the right.
Thousands of kids go missing or are murdered every year - but watching the news, you would think that rich white kids are somehow in grave danger of being abducted from their bedrooms by armed home intruders.
It's not that republicans are looser with their wallets. It's that rich people tend to become republicans. They got theirs, now it's time to keep the government from taking it away from them. let the poor make their own fortune.
If they aren't fundamentally selfish - they don't stay rich for long. (boy did I learn THAT lesson the hard way. So long Internet Boom, I hardly knew ye).
Maybe there's an alternate reason for it.
Nobody wants to RECEIVE micropayments. They all would much rather have macropayments. Wouldn't you?
The problem is, the overhead of dealing with micropayments is not worth the revenue one would get. The content market is absolutely certain that they can get customers to pay $30/yr for web subscriptions. Even to the point of going out of business for lack of trying the alternative.
They don't feel it's too much to ask, and for some screwy reason, they feel that people should be able to afford that kind of money - because, surely, they can, why can't everyone else?
Steve Jobs thinks it's trivial to drop $3500 on a decent system. Why doesn't the other 95% of the computer market think so? Because there's a less costly alternative (never mind the value, TOC and features arguments).
But in the web-content space, pretty much all the free stuff is going away lately. So soon, the whole internet is going to drift into the AOL-world of pay-for-content (AND look at ads). Just like cable TV, print magazines, and newspapers.
If only those psychics could predict when a company was about to cook it's books, they could simply inform the press, so that good stocks wouldn't get taken down with the bad.
le sigh.
Well, I'm a Christian, I love The Lord, and all that. But I agree, we need to get rid of this "under God" bit and the "in God We Trust" - in my opinion, it's UnAmerican (TM).
IF you remove choice from a person, you remove their ability to be GOOD of their own free will. So what does a good deed mean when it's compulsory?
I've *never* said that an Atheist is making the wrong choice, and I fully support their right to be left alone to practice or not practice whatever ideology they want. We all should have the right to be left alone.
How do you know that "under God" and "in God We Trust" aren't the mark of the Beast?
(under God being the mark on one's forhead - or thoughts, and in God we trust being the mark on your hand, or actions which money can certainly qualify as - also limiting your ability to do commerce.)
All you have to do is consider the current religion to be the opposite of what they want you to believe it is, and the illusion is complete.
I wish religious followers would leave children alone and let informed adults come to them when they reach an age appropraite to do so
That's a TERRIBLE idea.
Which "informed" adults?
From which church?
Or which organization? (the Bureau of Logic and Truth?)
With what biases?
Armed with what information?
With what to gain by the person's conversion to whatever "faith" he or she decides on?
Assuming you mean, atheists being the "informed" adult - informed about what exactly? About the cold, hard, fact that God does not exist? Surely you don't believe that that "fact" has been proven, do you? It's as logically shaky as the absolute faith in the "fact" that God does exist.
Add to that, that religion, more often than not, is more of a cultural element, and that there's a reason people mostly tend to choose the same religion their family belongs to (because those are the people they know, relate to, and live with, and sharing a culture makes it easier to know, relate to, and live with people) - it makes much more sense to continue the age old tradition of parental indoctrination for those who wish it.
If you want to impose a state "religion" or "pholosophy" or "world-view" - certainly, shield people from any thoughts of this nature until they're 18, then send in the "thought police" to tell them about the Truth of Existence.
Or maybe a bit of wisdom from the Bible: Jesus said to come to the Father with a mind as like a child - maybe it's not that children are too young to contemplate the philosophical and metaphysical consequences of a religious faith. Maybe it's that adults are too old.
Rasta was not a god - he was a prophet.
That's bullshit.
I live in a VERY religious area of the country, and my kids are homeschooled. Homeschoolers can band together and do form "support networks" and even do some cooperative education. I, for one, do science demos from time to time for grade-school age homeschooled kids in my area. There are religious homeschool groups, and secular homeschool groups.
We've dealt with both types. The religious ones DO tend to keep to themselves, and DO tend to harbor some views which I would classify as extremist (the evil atheist gummint is out to get us).
While the religious ones tend to be more helpful and generous and well-meaning, the secular groups tend to be better funded and more organized, and the parents seem to be more "into it".
You don't have to be a religious freak to be a homeschooler. Nor do you have to be a conspiracy theorist. You just have to care enough about your kids to take matters of their education into your own hands.
In my kids' case - it turned out that our son just wasn't socially ready for school when he went into kindergarten. But boy was he academically ready. He's way ahead of the other kids his age, especially in math and science. But socially, he's just a very sensitive kid, and we chose to protect him from the schoolyard politics until he gets a bit older. He's also shorter than average height, and just doesn't have the attention span necessary to deal with the pavlovian schedule of RING the bell, sit down, study subject X for 45 minutes, RING the bell, stand up, move on to subject Y.
Sometimes, he'll be in the mood to do math, and he'll spend a whole week doing nothing but math. Then he'll move on to english, geography or history, or whatever. Sometimes he'll study all of them in a day - but the point is - he does not HAVE to, just to make it easier on the other kids' schedule. There are no other kids, or social distractions, and he sets his own schedule.
I believe that on the 4th of July, we should ALL burn an American flag - to celebrate the fact that we're FREE to do so.
Not only will it drive the point home to the fuckers in Washington, but it will also turn the act of flag burning from an act of protest into an act of patriotism.
Damn. When I'm Emporer, it will be so. Trust me on this.
ok - you'll shortly be receiving dozens of emails with the subject "Make money at home fast!"
And just what investor with $5000 to put into the market isn't terrorized by hearing that:
1) companies lie about their balance sheets
2) investment firms cheerlead simply to sell stocks so their bottom lines look better
3) accounting firms destroy evidence of wrongdoing for their clients
4) government regulation and oversight of these practices is very weak to an almost complicit level
Who isn't terrorized by that?
In fact - compare Arafat's complicity with Hamas' terrorist acts - and draw an analogy with the Bush administration's compliance to Enron's price fixing, manufacturing of an energy crisis, and cooking the books, and you have (in my opinion) a recipe for GW Bush being given a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay in an Orange Jumpsuit.
Impeachment nothing. This is fucking high treason.
I think you'll find it in the preamble;
". . . to (sic) establish JUSTICE (emphasis mine) and pure domestic tranquility, provide for common defense (against bad guys, foreign and domestic, terrorist or white-collar criminal), promote the GENERAL (emphasis mine) welfare (make everybody prosperous, not just a select few) and secure the blessings of liberty (freedom abused is freedom in decline) to ourselves and our posterity (borrowing money now and making our children pay it off is double-plus-ungood). . . "
(I agree with you re: CA).
what sucks is that there ARE good companies out there with strong financials, and they're now getting the shaft because of these bastards. So even if I'm invested in a GOOD company, I get screwed.
I'd like to thank the members of the academy, and the Ronald Reagan administration and their policies of deregulation free-for-all coming home to roost after 20 years.
Freedom is a nice thing, but only when the free excercise a bit of responsibility and play fair.
I don't think capitalism is all that bad.
I just wish that the government spent as much money and zeal in enforcing good corporate citizenship and accounting practices and trading rules as they apparently want to do for "terorism". Look at your headcount of the SEC compared to the headcount of the FBI and you'll see what I mean.
These guys are worse than the silly ragheads who hijacked a plane and killed 3000 people on September 11th. They've done more harm to our economy, I don't think that's up for debate. Good companies can now not get investment dollars because these bastards abused the system and lied and cheated.
So, tell me - if fucking up our economy causes people to lose jobs, lose houses, eat less healthy, and those of us still with jobs to work harder to health-threatening levels because we're afraid to get fired, and the massive amounts of poverty this generates, which leads to higher crime rates, teen pregnancy, illiteracy, and government default on loans, why the hell are we spending billions of dollars on a huge "ministry of truth" style agency to listen in on our phone calls for mad suicide bombers, and yet we leave organizations like the SEC critically underfunded to the point where they've got like a dozen underpaid accountants devoted to the job of monitoring tens of thousands of publicly traded companies.
Part of rebuilding after September 11th was improving security precautions on airline travel so that people could trust flying again.
Why in hell is nothing being done to restore people's faith in corporate accounting and the stock market?
For one, I hope we have armed federal martials at WorldCom RIGHT FUCKING NOW, making sure they're not shredding truckloads of documents. Because with Enron/Anderson, somebody dropped the fucking ball.
I guess the whole point is:
Is the song the PRODUCT, or is it promotional material for the REAL product, the actual CD and/or concert tickets?
Remember back in the 1970's when "music videos" were nothing more than promotional materials used to sell records to record store owners?
Then, the promotional materials themselves became the product when MTV was born (actually, when the Monkees were born, but that's almost a different subject entirely).
Kids would sit and watch MTV commercials to "fund" the content, which in effect, was just more commercials. THAT was a good scam.
To have to PAY the station for airtime for your "commercial" - that sounds completely fair to me. IF there was a demand to hear the music, people would go out and plop down their $20 for a CD, no radio necessary. Radio-played music is promotional material designed to create that demand.
. . . and to think I can tune my 30-year old smog-exempt Aircooled VW with a screwdriver.
Some stock setups, without catalytic converters, tuned properly, can still pass California's smog inspection.
Some stock setups can still get 30 miles per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline.
Some *modified* setups can crank out upwards of 250 hp from a 2 litre four cylinder aircooled engine, drive a beetle, or karmann ghia upwards of 120 mph, and 0-60 in under 7 seconds.
My 72 karmann ghia has a 1.6 liter Porsche 912 engine that gets 25 miles per gallon, 0-60 in 8.5 seconds, tops out at 110+ (I don't dare take that body any faster without an air-dam, because the body produces too much lift). Doesn't need coolant, doesn't need no chips, I set the points and valve clearance and change the oil every 3000 miles, and it just plain runs.
The Stock VW engine can be overhauled; rebuilt, for under $500. A single person can remove the engine with a simple floor jack.
These cars DO have their limitations, but a lot of us Air Cooled enthusiasts often wonder whether there's been any real progress in the auto industry since 1973.
"I'd like to get me some of that Arcturian poon-tang" ."
"Yeah, but the one you had was a male"
"but with an Arcturian, it don't matter. .
I knew this kid in high school who just said shit to people to raise their ire and see what happens. Well, what happened is that he got six teeth knocked out and his nose broken.
The day Apple tries this is the day I format my four macs and install LinuxPPC. And my next machine will be AMD-based Linux.
So far, Apple's stance on DRM has been "Piracy is a social issue, not a technological one, please do not steal music". I think that's a wise and level-headed stance.
But I'm sure it could change at a moment's notice.
Solarish?
I have to agree with this one. One of the most dreadfully wreched movies of all time. I admit that I did have fantasies about a "modern" remake, but the fact that it has George Clooney in it kind of scares me. What if they pull a "Starship Troopers" on it? I mean, isn't the whole concept of the story a bit too much for Hollywood to handle?
5. As a content-provider, buy a cable company (AOL/TW?), control massive broadband marketshare, and cap upstream bandwidth, deny static IP's, and tip off the FBI to folks to illegally violate copyright.