By 2007 American standards, yes, probably Legal, given that we're "At War" and our Dear Leader exercises the right to violate ours at his slightest whim.
But by 1776 American standards? I'd say this bunch would be headed to the gallows for Treason.
There are several reasons for such byzantine rules.
1. There are so many tax cheats out there who will try anything, or parse any language to try to create loopholes - and in many cases, not even to save themselves a few bucks; in many cases, they do this out of principle, because they simply do not believe in taxes.
2. Where the government has the power to give and take, there are always ALWAYS criminals and con men (more frequently referred to as "politicians") who will use that power as a means to make themselves money, or "shake down" private citizens or businessmen. Where you find weak language that can be exploited as a loophole in tax code, the origin of such loopholes is usually a corrupt politician trying to "sell" a benefit to one lobby or another.
The result of politicians from various interests, all with their dirty little hands in the tax code, is absurd outcomes like this poor contest winner.
One reaction to this situation is the "we need a flat tax" folks. A noble sentiment. Sadly, such a tax would be far too punitive to the poor, and would be inadequate at providing the revenue for a functional modern government providing the services that we've all come to expect. If you cut an exception for the low-income folks, then you no longer have a "flat-tax"; and the disadvantage there is that you'll always have a segment of society that feels they're being cheated.
Actually - the latest Acrobat Reader (is it 8.0?) for OS X is wicked-fast compared to 7.0. I think what they did was ship it with the plugins disabled,:)
Given the recent history of the Republican Party - I, personally, am not likely to vote for anyone other than Hillary Clinton in the next Presidential election, should she turn out to be the "anointed one" of the Democratic party.
However, I would do so with grave reservations: She has a history of waffling, and parsing on the Iraq war. She has only begun to speak out against it since Bush's popularity began to slide. I really do not trust her on this issue. If she really meant what she now says, she would have acted, and shown some spine, some interest in anything other than self preservation. I did not like that quality in her husband, nor did I like it in John Kerry, nor did I like it in our current miserable failure of a President (examples dating all the way back to his governorship in Texas).
Another issue I have with her - she has far more money than any other candidate. I hear people; voters, not Republican Shills, say that they do not favor her - yet, suddenly the press is all abuzz with glorification of teh Hillary. (including this Wired article, and the collateral damage to this web site - amounting to a slashvertisement). It is the influence of money politics and lobbyists that drove the Republicans to where they are today. Doesn't America deserve a change? How many more election cycles of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" can this country stand, before we go the way of the Romans?
Finally; The Privacy Candidate? Bullshit. Watch her very carefully. She will rail against Bush's surveillance-state. But I guaran-fucking-tee you she will not lay a finger on the entertainment industry's beloved DMCA.
Clinton is the Corporatist Candidate.
I don't think there's a damn thing anyone can do to stop her. Given her incredible success over the past three weeks, it's just unbelievable how she shot up in the polls. She will very likely win the D nomination, and from there, I don't see any Republican candidates in the clip that could touch her. And honestly, I'd rather see her win than most of these others. But America deserves better than yet another high priest of the Cult of the Invisible Hand.
Better still, there's this little thing called the START MENU, that is a hierarchal set of directories containing shortcuts to all your programs, and wonder of wonders, you can navigate it with the arrow keys. . . .
Most places I work - when Managers screw up and overstaff (and they do this all the time), SUBCONTRACTORS are always the first to be let go.
In fact, that's one of the precursors to most layoffs. They cut the subcontractors, mark a hiring freeze, cut building maintenance, cut overtime for the hourlies, jack up the prices in the vending machines. . .
Yeah - and a bottle of Cipro in the US (if you have a perscription) is $45. In Canada, $25. In TJ (Tiujuana) $12.
It's called market segmentation. Yet another way Globalist Megacorporations profit, while shouting the sermons of the Cult of the Invisible Hand and the Holy Free Market.
Funny thing, but BSG's titles music is different in the US and European versions.
And when you buy the season boxed DVD set in the US market, the Euro theme music is on there, not the US version. (personally - I didn't really like the version they picked for the US-televised series - and I really wonder why they did this differently).
Then there's the famous "Harry Potter and the Stupid Americans' Stone"
So while in the age of the internet, this seems silly, it's nothing new.
all i'm saying is that the nirvana of the perfect nonlethal crowd control/ imlpement of war is not very easy to obtain. all you do is trade in one kind of potential for damage/ death for another kind of potential for damage/ death. tragedy is not so easily avoided.
Of course, when, in our "civilized" country, a significant percentage of people favors just shooting protestors - the idea of a "less than lethal" weapon that occasionally proves lethal, just doesn't elicit all that much concern.
Remember Soylent Green? The "Scoops"? This little baby will COOK the food first.
I guarantee this weapon will be abused - for torture, and curtailment of free speech rights.
And I guarantee that there is not a damn thing anyone, any activist, or politician, or bureaucrat, or DoD safety-manual writer can to to stop it.
This weapon is a bad, bad thing. And it is coming to a protest, or detention center near you.
(what, you don't think that our privatized prison system won't want these for riot-control? You think that's ALL it would be used for?)
And they will be sold to tinpot dictators the world over.
And the bad guys will also figure out how to make these. And maybe the Somalian or Pakistani version won't be as well engineered for the target's safety as this version is. Maybe they'll come with a control knob that turns this into a lethal weapon.
The jackboot is now obsolete.
That said; this technology is also a very, very good thing, because it will also be used to save lives.
My particular beef is that human beings can't be trusted with something like this.
Actually, since he's not pumping pollutants into the air I breathe, he's doing me a favor.
And since he's also buying a product, which increases that product's demand, which increases its manufacturer's incentive to invest in improving capacity, which lowers retail prices, he's doing me another favor by making this stuff more affordable and widespread.
And the more affordable and widespread solar becomes, the less carbon we will spew into the atmosphere, thus helping to slow down the process of global warming. And for that, he is doing my children, their children, and every future generation of humanity a favor.
And all you libertarians can think of is your damned $300 tax rebate check you got in 2001.
Solar water-heaters on the other hand are beneficial. Especially if you live in an area with plenty of sun *and* have a large family that likes to frequently shower in the summer, it can be a huge win.
That's the thing; I only really like to take hot showers at about 6 am, on winter mornings before the sun comes up. Seriously. In the summer, I just don't feel the need for it to be a hot shower. More like; warm. Without a pool, I don't see the benefit of a solar water heater. But I've been juiced up about photovoltaics for several years now - I just haven't had the money to scrape together and DO it. (A large part of the cost is wrapped up in the finance and installation rackets that most suppliers bundle their panels with - there's substantial savings if you can install them yourself, and also self-finance).
It's not clean. There is waste, and you even talked about it.
The waste is heat.
Not all heat can be claimed or converted into energy.
Nuclear plants also generate waste heat, and in some cases, there is significant environmental impact from the discharge (warming of streams, lakes, or seawater near the discharge outlets causes harm to marine life, sometimes even creating "dead-zones"). This is why many plants have the hyperbolic-shaped cooling towers, which release the waste heat as big clouds of steam.
As far as a waste-product goes; heat isn't really that bad.
They concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations.
So, mister consumer, would you prefer a turd sandwich, or a shit sandwich? Or perhaps a diarrhea shake? We're offering you a choice here. . . I don't see what your complaint is.
Forcing a company to alter their product with the force of law is never ethical.
Yeah, because we'd all be so much better off in this country if we didn't have seatbelts, bumpers, or airbags in our cars. (let alone catalytic converters).
Standard trick of dishonest regulators. Selective enforcement. (this is not a rant against regulation. It's a rant against regulations with no teeth, and regulators willing to be the fox guarding the henhouse).
Things the iPod does well that makes up for it's lack of features among high-end MP3 players;
Form factor (nano). The nano is the smallest of the high-end MP3 players. Form-factor is very important. If I could get the functionality and storage of the nano in the form factor of the shuffle, you bet I'd pick that instead. Smaller the better, as far as I'm concerned. Embed it in an earbud, and bluetooth the audio to the other earbud.
iTunes integration; Fairplay is the least burdensome DRM there is, and by that measure, people can download music fairly cheaply without the worry of the midnight knock on the door by RIAA thugs. (we hope). The mainstream accepts DRM as an unpleasant fact of life. (for now). FairPlay doesn't get in your face that much, and the purchase price of tracks is low enough for most people. (me? no way. A nickel a track sounds more reasonable, given the limitations of the format).
Excellent sound quality. The nano and shuffle are consistently rated among the top as far as MP3 players go. Yes - MP3 and Audio Quality are somewhat of an oxymoron - but if the file-format is bad enough, why make life even more difficult with system noise poor base response, and other annoyances.
I have strongly resisted, for years, getting an iPod, because they're just priced insultingly high. Yet, when I look at other MP3 players in the 8-10 gig flash market, the iPod wins. Would I like a voice recorder or fm receiver? Sure, I'd even sacrifice video capability (who the fuck wants to watch TV on a 1" screen - and sacrifice half your music storage? not me.)
So now, I'm considering getting a nano. Unless or until something better comes along, or I actually spring the cash to do it. (soon).
I bet many or maybe even most of the people who start buying the stocks being spammed, buy them in the expectancy that the spamming will make the value of that stock rise.
I think you just described the entire decade of the 1990's.
Everyone KNEW that the stocks were way overvalued (just as they know that today). Yet they bought them anyway (myself included) because they (we) knew that; though they would eventually pop back down, in the short-term, it would be an excellent opportunity to get the kind of money that would be impossible to ever earn just working an honest job.
In fact, I think this is the fundamental dynamic that our entire economy and civilization is based on.
Something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Even if it isn't.
. . . why aren't the computers more secure to begin with?
The fundamental rule of corrupt politicians is that they are corrupt, because they are lazy and stupid, and have obtained power through means other than being clever and working hard (ie. lying, and being well-connected).
The idea of PAYING someone to do the hard work of securing their computers is an anathema to them. They would rather spend their money BRIBING the police to not investigate them. Unfortunately for them, they seem to have stumbled on to the rare "good" cop. (or their offering price wasn't high enough).
Well, one can only hope that this leads to some wider sweeping reforms, because as it stands now, the market is way too influenced by widespread fraud and insider trading. It's not anywhere close to being a legitimate market, it's more like a casino where a few favored gamblers get the nod, and even fewer just get lucky, and the rest lose, and maybe this wave of spam will spur some real change on the law enforcement side.
Or maybe mail servers will just start rejecting all binary attachments.
Hell - we Americans have reversed Constitutional Amendments. (The 21st is my favorite. Many disagree with me, instead favoring the First (Free Speech) - but I say; what good is Free Speech if you can't get drunk enough to say what you really mean?)
This is precisely why EchoStar lost a class-action lawsuit for their craptacular DishPlayer DVR. It wasn't enough that the thing had technical problems. They had to hide the support info as well, so customers calling in to their support line could not get a rep who was even familiar with the issue.
They could likely have saved themselves millions of dollars in phone-rep bandwidth if customers could look this up on their FAQ. You'd call one guy, and he'd walk you through troubleshooting the problem, a week later, you call back, and nobody knows a damn thing. As for the same rep by name, and "he's transferred" or "we can't redirect you to a specific rep".
Customers got mad - one of them was a lawyer, and they sued. EchoStar lost to the tune of 8 figures. (which, of course, filtered down to the customers in the form of PPV coupons).
But still - Apple is setting themselves up here. The whole point of a support forum is to get your customers to do some of the heavy lifting, and automate the basic troubleshooting (including eliminating KNOWN PROBLEMS).
Well, we're talking about what the definition of "rich" and "poor" is.
And I define it as; Having a relatively secure financial future.
If you can afford to put food on the table, a roof over your head and not live in fear for your life, health or well-being, it is hard to justify a claim of 'poor'.
Hunter-gatherer societies could do this. As long as they accepted a certain standard of living, primitive (and I don't intend to use the word disparagingly here) humans really never had to worry about becoming homeless or starving due to mainly external factors.
If you lost your job (through no fault of your own; layoff, or whatever), how quickly would you (and your family) be on the street if you couldn't locate another source of income?
I think that's probably the most important question to ask if one is defining a line between rich and poor.
And having a million dollars on paper doesn't cut it.
Slashdot Mirror
By 2007 American standards, yes, probably Legal, given that we're "At War" and our Dear Leader exercises the right to violate ours at his slightest whim.
But by 1776 American standards? I'd say this bunch would be headed to the gallows for Treason.
There are several reasons for such byzantine rules.
1. There are so many tax cheats out there who will try anything, or parse any language to try to create loopholes - and in many cases, not even to save themselves a few bucks; in many cases, they do this out of principle, because they simply do not believe in taxes.
2. Where the government has the power to give and take, there are always ALWAYS criminals and con men (more frequently referred to as "politicians") who will use that power as a means to make themselves money, or "shake down" private citizens or businessmen. Where you find weak language that can be exploited as a loophole in tax code, the origin of such loopholes is usually a corrupt politician trying to "sell" a benefit to one lobby or another.
The result of politicians from various interests, all with their dirty little hands in the tax code, is absurd outcomes like this poor contest winner.
One reaction to this situation is the "we need a flat tax" folks. A noble sentiment. Sadly, such a tax would be far too punitive to the poor, and would be inadequate at providing the revenue for a functional modern government providing the services that we've all come to expect. If you cut an exception for the low-income folks, then you no longer have a "flat-tax"; and the disadvantage there is that you'll always have a segment of society that feels they're being cheated.
Actually - the latest Acrobat Reader (is it 8.0?) for OS X is wicked-fast compared to 7.0. I think what they did was ship it with the plugins disabled, :)
Given the recent history of the Republican Party - I, personally, am not likely to vote for anyone other than Hillary Clinton in the next Presidential election, should she turn out to be the "anointed one" of the Democratic party.
However, I would do so with grave reservations:
She has a history of waffling, and parsing on the Iraq war. She has only begun to speak out against it since Bush's popularity began to slide. I really do not trust her on this issue. If she really meant what she now says, she would have acted, and shown some spine, some interest in anything other than self preservation. I did not like that quality in her husband, nor did I like it in John Kerry, nor did I like it in our current miserable failure of a President (examples dating all the way back to his governorship in Texas).
Another issue I have with her - she has far more money than any other candidate. I hear people; voters, not Republican Shills, say that they do not favor her - yet, suddenly the press is all abuzz with glorification of teh Hillary. (including this Wired article, and the collateral damage to this web site - amounting to a slashvertisement). It is the influence of money politics and lobbyists that drove the Republicans to where they are today. Doesn't America deserve a change? How many more election cycles of "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" can this country stand, before we go the way of the Romans?
Finally; The Privacy Candidate? Bullshit. Watch her very carefully. She will rail against Bush's surveillance-state. But I guaran-fucking-tee you she will not lay a finger on the entertainment industry's beloved DMCA.
Clinton is the Corporatist Candidate.
I don't think there's a damn thing anyone can do to stop her. Given her incredible success over the past three weeks, it's just unbelievable how she shot up in the polls. She will very likely win the D nomination, and from there, I don't see any Republican candidates in the clip that could touch her. And honestly, I'd rather see her win than most of these others. But America deserves better than yet another high priest of the Cult of the Invisible Hand.
My guess:
If it's smarmy backroom deals, and South Korea - most likely has something to do with the Reverend Moon. . .
Better still, there's this little thing called the START MENU, that is a hierarchal set of directories containing shortcuts to all your programs, and wonder of wonders, you can navigate it with the arrow keys. . . .
Most places I work - when Managers screw up and overstaff (and they do this all the time), SUBCONTRACTORS are always the first to be let go.
In fact, that's one of the precursors to most layoffs. They cut the subcontractors, mark a hiring freeze, cut building maintenance, cut overtime for the hourlies, jack up the prices in the vending machines. . .
Yeah - and a bottle of Cipro in the US (if you have a perscription) is $45. In Canada, $25. In TJ (Tiujuana) $12.
It's called market segmentation.
Yet another way Globalist Megacorporations profit, while shouting the sermons of the Cult of the Invisible Hand and the Holy Free Market.
Funny thing, but BSG's titles music is different in the US and European versions.
And when you buy the season boxed DVD set in the US market, the Euro theme music is on there, not the US version. (personally - I didn't really like the version they picked for the US-televised series - and I really wonder why they did this differently).
Then there's the famous "Harry Potter and the Stupid Americans' Stone"
So while in the age of the internet, this seems silly, it's nothing new.
Maybe it should be something old. . .
all i'm saying is that the nirvana of the perfect nonlethal crowd control/ imlpement of war is not very easy to obtain. all you do is trade in one kind of potential for damage/ death for another kind of potential for damage/ death. tragedy is not so easily avoided.
Of course, when, in our "civilized" country, a significant percentage of people favors just shooting protestors - the idea of a "less than lethal" weapon that occasionally proves lethal, just doesn't elicit all that much concern.
Remember Soylent Green? The "Scoops"? This little baby will COOK the food first.
I guarantee this weapon will be abused - for torture, and curtailment of free speech rights.
And I guarantee that there is not a damn thing anyone, any activist, or politician, or bureaucrat, or DoD safety-manual writer can to to stop it.
This weapon is a bad, bad thing.
And it is coming to a protest, or detention center near you.
(what, you don't think that our privatized prison system won't want these for riot-control? You think that's ALL it would be used for?)
And they will be sold to tinpot dictators the world over.
And the bad guys will also figure out how to make these. And maybe the Somalian or Pakistani version won't be as well engineered for the target's safety as this version is. Maybe they'll come with a control knob that turns this into a lethal weapon.
The jackboot is now obsolete.
That said; this technology is also a very, very good thing, because it will also be used to save lives.
My particular beef is that human beings can't be trusted with something like this.
Then I met a girl, and got married. Since she turned out to be a complete psycho bitch (I should have known...should have known)
Of course you should have known. They're ALL psycho bitches.
Actually, since he's not pumping pollutants into the air I breathe, he's doing me a favor.
And since he's also buying a product, which increases that product's demand, which increases its manufacturer's incentive to invest in improving capacity, which lowers retail prices, he's doing me another favor by making this stuff more affordable and widespread.
And the more affordable and widespread solar becomes, the less carbon we will spew into the atmosphere, thus helping to slow down the process of global warming. And for that, he is doing my children, their children, and every future generation of humanity a favor.
And all you libertarians can think of is your damned $300 tax rebate check you got in 2001.
Solar water-heaters on the other hand are beneficial. Especially if you live in an area with plenty of sun *and* have a large family that likes to frequently shower in the summer, it can be a huge win.
That's the thing;
I only really like to take hot showers at about 6 am, on winter mornings before the sun comes up. Seriously. In the summer, I just don't feel the need for it to be a hot shower. More like; warm. Without a pool, I don't see the benefit of a solar water heater. But I've been juiced up about photovoltaics for several years now - I just haven't had the money to scrape together and DO it. (A large part of the cost is wrapped up in the finance and installation rackets that most suppliers bundle their panels with - there's substantial savings if you can install them yourself, and also self-finance).
It's not clean. There is waste, and you even talked about it.
The waste is heat.
Not all heat can be claimed or converted into energy.
Nuclear plants also generate waste heat, and in some cases, there is significant environmental impact from the discharge (warming of streams, lakes, or seawater near the discharge outlets causes harm to marine life, sometimes even creating "dead-zones"). This is why many plants have the hyperbolic-shaped cooling towers, which release the waste heat as big clouds of steam.
As far as a waste-product goes; heat isn't really that bad.
They concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations.
So, mister consumer, would you prefer a turd sandwich, or a shit sandwich? Or perhaps a diarrhea shake? We're offering you a choice here. . . I don't see what your complaint is.
Forcing a company to alter their product with the force of law is never ethical.
Yeah, because we'd all be so much better off in this country if we didn't have seatbelts, bumpers, or airbags in our cars. (let alone catalytic converters).
Oh they SAY they will do it.
But what's my guarantee they WILL.
Standard trick of dishonest regulators. Selective enforcement.
(this is not a rant against regulation. It's a rant against regulations with no teeth, and regulators willing to be the fox guarding the henhouse).
Things the iPod does well that makes up for it's lack of features among high-end MP3 players;
Form factor (nano). The nano is the smallest of the high-end MP3 players. Form-factor is very important. If I could get the functionality and storage of the nano in the form factor of the shuffle, you bet I'd pick that instead. Smaller the better, as far as I'm concerned. Embed it in an earbud, and bluetooth the audio to the other earbud.
iTunes integration; Fairplay is the least burdensome DRM there is, and by that measure, people can download music fairly cheaply without the worry of the midnight knock on the door by RIAA thugs. (we hope). The mainstream accepts DRM as an unpleasant fact of life. (for now). FairPlay doesn't get in your face that much, and the purchase price of tracks is low enough for most people. (me? no way. A nickel a track sounds more reasonable, given the limitations of the format).
Excellent sound quality. The nano and shuffle are consistently rated among the top as far as MP3 players go. Yes - MP3 and Audio Quality are somewhat of an oxymoron - but if the file-format is bad enough, why make life even more difficult with system noise poor base response, and other annoyances.
I have strongly resisted, for years, getting an iPod, because they're just priced insultingly high.
Yet, when I look at other MP3 players in the 8-10 gig flash market, the iPod wins.
Would I like a voice recorder or fm receiver? Sure, I'd even sacrifice video capability (who the fuck wants to watch TV on a 1" screen - and sacrifice half your music storage? not me.)
So now, I'm considering getting a nano. Unless or until something better comes along, or I actually spring the cash to do it. (soon).
I bet many or maybe even most of the people who start buying the stocks being spammed, buy them in the expectancy that the spamming will make the value of that stock rise.
I think you just described the entire decade of the 1990's.
Everyone KNEW that the stocks were way overvalued (just as they know that today).
Yet they bought them anyway (myself included) because they (we) knew that; though they would eventually pop back down, in the short-term, it would be an excellent opportunity to get the kind of money that would be impossible to ever earn just working an honest job.
In fact, I think this is the fundamental dynamic that our entire economy and civilization is based on.
Something is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it. Even if it isn't.
. . . why aren't the computers more secure to begin with?
The fundamental rule of corrupt politicians is that they are corrupt, because they are lazy and stupid, and have obtained power through means other than being clever and working hard (ie. lying, and being well-connected).
The idea of PAYING someone to do the hard work of securing their computers is an anathema to them. They would rather spend their money BRIBING the police to not investigate them. Unfortunately for them, they seem to have stumbled on to the rare "good" cop. (or their offering price wasn't high enough).
Well, one can only hope that this leads to some wider sweeping reforms, because as it stands now, the market is way too influenced by widespread fraud and insider trading. It's not anywhere close to being a legitimate market, it's more like a casino where a few favored gamblers get the nod, and even fewer just get lucky, and the rest lose, and maybe this wave of spam will spur some real change on the law enforcement side.
Or maybe mail servers will just start rejecting all binary attachments.
Hell - we Americans have reversed Constitutional Amendments.
(The 21st is my favorite. Many disagree with me, instead favoring the First (Free Speech) - but I say; what good is Free Speech if you can't get drunk enough to say what you really mean?)
This is precisely why EchoStar lost a class-action lawsuit for their craptacular DishPlayer DVR. It wasn't enough that the thing had technical problems. They had to hide the support info as well, so customers calling in to their support line could not get a rep who was even familiar with the issue.
They could likely have saved themselves millions of dollars in phone-rep bandwidth if customers could look this up on their FAQ. You'd call one guy, and he'd walk you through troubleshooting the problem, a week later, you call back, and nobody knows a damn thing. As for the same rep by name, and "he's transferred" or "we can't redirect you to a specific rep".
Customers got mad - one of them was a lawyer, and they sued. EchoStar lost to the tune of 8 figures. (which, of course, filtered down to the customers in the form of PPV coupons).
But still - Apple is setting themselves up here.
The whole point of a support forum is to get your customers to do some of the heavy lifting, and automate the basic troubleshooting (including eliminating KNOWN PROBLEMS).
Well, we're talking about what the definition of "rich" and "poor" is.
And I define it as;
Having a relatively secure financial future.
If you can afford to put food on the table, a roof over your head and not live in fear for your life, health or well-being, it is hard to justify a claim of 'poor'.
Hunter-gatherer societies could do this. As long as they accepted a certain standard of living, primitive (and I don't intend to use the word disparagingly here) humans really never had to worry about becoming homeless or starving due to mainly external factors.
If you lost your job (through no fault of your own; layoff, or whatever), how quickly would you (and your family) be on the street if you couldn't locate another source of income?
I think that's probably the most important question to ask if one is defining a line between rich and poor.
And having a million dollars on paper doesn't cut it.