Apple wanted to take over the publishing biz the same way they took over the music biz but with their snobby hardware attitude. Marketing elite feelings to people who buy Macs is one thing.
Trying to raise the price of everything in the marketplace isn't just elitist attitude, it is illegal, and also anti-Adam Smith.
Apple should have known they could sell more books if they sold them cheaper (just like mp3s) but since many execs write books, they have that same elitist attitude NY Times folks have, thinking they set the standard when the real standard for American popular 'news' writing is the National Enquirer.
I despise BMI and ASCAP because of how they funnel money to themselves and to already rich artists.
However, just yesterday while talking with a friend about the internet sales tax, I realized there is no other solution.
There are 6,000 different taxing districts in the USA with different taxes on different varieties of goods. Some tax food, some don't, some tax processed food, but not raw food, some classify foods differently. You cannot track all those categories of goods against all those different taxing districts.
For social efficiency, it doesn't make sense for each and every business on the web to make those billions of calculations. Oh, and the taxes can change at random on any day in any of the districts so you have to follow all the new laws all the time.
It would be a lot easier to have some org like BMI collect a set tax, say 5% for anything you sell, and have them distribute it back to the various government entities that keep society working.
I'm not against taxes, but I hate confusion and inefficiency. And since I hate illogical shit, too, I do not hate BMI and ASCAP as much as I used to. They provide a useful service, they just do a piss-poor job of it.
When the Chinese government issues secret warrants, it is PROOF to Fox News that communism is bad
When the Iraqi government issued secret warrants, it was PROOF to Fox News that Hussein was an evil dictator
When the US government issues secret warrants, it is PROOF to Fox News that the Republicans are fighting terrorism.
That's what I'm thinking. A lot of folks here are saying that karoshi phenomenon is coming to America, but I don't think so.
I think the American 1950s moved to Japan with widespread industrialism and now they are coming to their own versions of the counter-cultural 1960s where quite a few people turned on , tuned it, and dropped out instead of going corporate.
imo, the social question to ask is: What problem do you want?
Do you want losers hiding in their parent's houses in Japan or do you want to kick them out on the streets like in America and have them reproducing like feral cats?
I suspect as long as poor White trash Americans keep voting for Republicans, we'll probably continue to maintain our current policies.
the problem is that they have become essentially pets for their parents.
I disagree that they 'became pets.'
I think they always were pets from day one and that's a major part of the problem. The parents guide their child's activities the same way you guide a dog and never encourage/force decision-making and consequences for lack of making decisions.
If you want to think, try this: What do we really want for our children?
I believe most people want their kids to have an easier life than the parents did, not have a harder life.
So define what we mean by easier for an entire generation. Sitting around the house playing video games and smoking pot (I'm in Colorado;-) sure looks a lot easier than working some low-wage job.
The plural of anecdote is not data. If 15% of people are out of work, that means 85% of people are working.
If you yourself have a job, none of those facts above change regardless of personal gumption. sheesh.
It is true that both genders use their brains to think, just as both genders use their bodies to walk. However, the bodies are different AND SO ARE THE BRAINS. Look up "Hormones" and their effect on the body. That isn't to say all men are the same, but men and women, in general on average, have different hormones and _therefore_ have different thinking patterns.
I think the density and population pressure does matter and that talking about how Wyoming isn't very dense doesn't matter one fucking bit to the people living in Manhattan. I would like to see a breakdown of where these holed up folks are by popn density. It's probably in the cities, not the countryside (just a guess since cities are new and countrysides are not new).
It's kind of like the difference between Republican and Democratic counties in the USA. 885 people per square mile is the dividing line.
Agreed: adopting any methodology as-is is a recipe for disaster.
The problem is the methodology covers everything. We had a Project Planning document we had to follow, 35 pages not too bad, but the essential command was in the introduction:
For every project you are going to do, spend about 10% of the estimated time on planning. And here are some of the things you should consider for IT projects.
That's the way to do it. A week-long ad hoc project gets a few hours of planning, probably not all upfront. A year-long project ought to be planned a bit more in-depth.
What entitles us westerners to earn so much for much less risk, better working conditions, etc?
It's not entitlement; it is the fruit of civilization. We in the US reap the _benefits_ of increased density and mechanization, things that most people in the Western civilized societies complain about;-)
Calling it entitlement just makes it as cheap as any other complaint about people who apparently are able to choose their own parents. We each reap the costs and benefits of the society we are born in.
What about the cost of moving? Note that you cannot sell your land/property to pay for moving. it is a total loss. That is a catastrophe, a slow-moving one but catastrophic nonetheless.
And the cost of migration is terrible. Folks in the Florida Keys can move to someplace else in the USA such as Colorado.
Folks on independent island archipelagos such as Togo or Micronesia can move to any country that has room to take them which at my last count stands at Zero.
Basically the complainants are aledgeing that the water is making them sick with no evidence what so ever as to the link between the water and the sickness. There was an offer to test the water that was declined therefore no evidence could be gathered.
egads. Shades of Monsanto. that means if I complain about the taste of fracking fluids in my water, the oil companies can tell me it is unfounded and ship me off to Guantanamo?
Damn. "Uh, no officers, I tole the doc that this water gives off such a wondrous aroma of money that it makes me shit funny."
Actually, terrorism is determined by its methods.
I agree that method of determination is garbage, nevertheless, that is how human social morality works.
Terrorists target 'innocent' civilians. Of course, if your entire way of life is at stake, no one on the other side is innocent.
For example, take the Sioux Indians in 1865 getting run off of their land by Caucasian invaders.
Suppose they sent someone over to Europe to stop the flow of money supporting the invasion, maybe breach a few dikes in Holland and give those Protestant bankers something else to spend their money on.
It would have definitely been terrorism.
Of course, that's what running people off their land with soldiers is also, except if its your tribe that ends up with the land, we call it Homeland Security instead of Terrorism.Like I said, Basic human social morality. Popularity makes the name sound like it's right instead of wrong but it's the same exact thing.
The purpose of the Federal Government is to guarantee and secure our freedom and rights. Of course this asshole and most others in the Fed have lost sight of this.
Let me see if I've got this straight. Other people and the government (which is apparently a different thang than 'other people') are the ones who are supposed to protect each and every one of us against other people and the government taking away our rights?
There's a reason I think the term 'rights' is pretty much just philosophic bullshit.
Pretend you're an analyst trying to define the requirement of rights for a society. Splain how that would work.
Looks like the gamers know what the letter has been in some spot a few milli seconds later. It probably explains why gamers playing real baseball with real bats seem to be hitting where the ball had been a few milliseconds instead of where the ball is now.
Are you talking about video gamers who have never played baseball?
If so, then compare their abilities to no-gamers who have never played baseball. Everyone starts by swinging too late.
Compare apples to apples. Don't compare pros to specific types of n00bs and then believe it tells you anything about anything.
I have a nephew who is a classic example of the video game addicted kid... only he's not a kid any more. Sure, he's got the boost in hand-eye coordination, but where does it benefit his life?
I have friend who is an alcoholic. That doesn't mean everyone who drinks wine is a loser.
An anecdote or single example is not a statistic, much less a trend.
How much better off would your nephew be if he didn't play games but merely watched Reality TV shows and Justin Bieber concerts?
There are many different ways to be a loser.
And there are many different skills in the world. I'd rather have arthroscopic surgery done by a doc who is also a gamer than one who isn't and doesn't have the hand-eye coordination or the brain practice to understand what he sees on the screen.
The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
For _most_ people, the system will adapt backwards. But the reason the experiment was only performed once at the Univ of WA in the 1970s was because when the students first put on the glasses, their brains flipped the scenes within 48 hours.
But when they took them off, a couple student's brains didn't un-reverse for several weeks. I believe there was a lawsuit.
This is impossible for hackers to fake - they can never know the PIN.
You probably believe God created the heavens and the earth in six days, too.
The pirate quote that three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead is only close to the truth. How may folks have asked if you yourself can keep a secret as they get ready to tell you one of their own? I always say I can't yet they tell me their secret anyway.
We have a secret code, a secret algorithm, an unbreakable cipher. Like kids in a tree house with a sign saying No Grrrlz Allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple wanted to take over the publishing biz the same way they took over the music biz but with their snobby hardware attitude. Marketing elite feelings to people who buy Macs is one thing.
Trying to raise the price of everything in the marketplace isn't just elitist attitude, it is illegal, and also anti-Adam Smith.
Apple should have known they could sell more books if they sold them cheaper (just like mp3s) but since many execs write books, they have that same elitist attitude NY Times folks have, thinking they set the standard when the real standard for American popular 'news' writing is the National Enquirer.
I despise BMI and ASCAP because of how they funnel money to themselves and to already rich artists.
However, just yesterday while talking with a friend about the internet sales tax, I realized there is no other solution.
There are 6,000 different taxing districts in the USA with different taxes on different varieties of goods. Some tax food, some don't, some tax processed food, but not raw food, some classify foods differently. You cannot track all those categories of goods against all those different taxing districts.
For social efficiency, it doesn't make sense for each and every business on the web to make those billions of calculations. Oh, and the taxes can change at random on any day in any of the districts so you have to follow all the new laws all the time.
It would be a lot easier to have some org like BMI collect a set tax, say 5% for anything you sell, and have them distribute it back to the various government entities that keep society working.
I'm not against taxes, but I hate confusion and inefficiency. And since I hate illogical shit, too, I do not hate BMI and ASCAP as much as I used to. They provide a useful service, they just do a piss-poor job of it.
When the Chinese government issues secret warrants, it is PROOF to Fox News that communism is bad
When the Iraqi government issued secret warrants, it was PROOF to Fox News that Hussein was an evil dictator
When the US government issues secret warrants, it is PROOF to Fox News that the Republicans are fighting terrorism.
That's what I'm thinking. A lot of folks here are saying that karoshi phenomenon is coming to America, but I don't think so.
I think the American 1950s moved to Japan with widespread industrialism and now they are coming to their own versions of the counter-cultural 1960s where quite a few people turned on , tuned it, and dropped out instead of going corporate.
imo, the social question to ask is: What problem do you want?
Do you want losers hiding in their parent's houses in Japan or do you want to kick them out on the streets like in America and have them reproducing like feral cats?
I suspect as long as poor White trash Americans keep voting for Republicans, we'll probably continue to maintain our current policies.
If I have friends on Facebook, isn't that almost the same as having real friends? ;-)
the problem is that they have become essentially pets for their parents.
I disagree that they 'became pets.'
I think they always were pets from day one and that's a major part of the problem. The parents guide their child's activities the same way you guide a dog and never encourage/force decision-making and consequences for lack of making decisions.
I agree you are full of buzzwords
;-) sure looks a lot easier than working some low-wage job.
If you want to think, try this: What do we really want for our children?
I believe most people want their kids to have an easier life than the parents did, not have a harder life.
So define what we mean by easier for an entire generation. Sitting around the house playing video games and smoking pot (I'm in Colorado
What are our expectations for a utopia?
The plural of anecdote is not data. If 15% of people are out of work, that means 85% of people are working.
If you yourself have a job, none of those facts above change regardless of personal gumption. sheesh.
It is true that both genders use their brains to think, just as both genders use their bodies to walk. However, the bodies are different AND SO ARE THE BRAINS. Look up "Hormones" and their effect on the body. That isn't to say all men are the same, but men and women, in general on average, have different hormones and _therefore_ have different thinking patterns.
I think the density and population pressure does matter and that talking about how Wyoming isn't very dense doesn't matter one fucking bit to the people living in Manhattan. I would like to see a breakdown of where these holed up folks are by popn density. It's probably in the cities, not the countryside (just a guess since cities are new and countrysides are not new).
It's kind of like the difference between Republican and Democratic counties in the USA. 885 people per square mile is the dividing line.
Agreed: adopting any methodology as-is is a recipe for disaster.
The problem is the methodology covers everything. We had a Project Planning document we had to follow, 35 pages not too bad, but the essential command was in the introduction:
For every project you are going to do, spend about 10% of the estimated time on planning. And here are some of the things you should consider for IT projects.
That's the way to do it. A week-long ad hoc project gets a few hours of planning, probably not all upfront. A year-long project ought to be planned a bit more in-depth.
What entitles us westerners to earn so much for much less risk, better working conditions, etc?
It's not entitlement; it is the fruit of civilization. We in the US reap the _benefits_ of increased density and mechanization, things that most people in the Western civilized societies complain about ;-)
Calling it entitlement just makes it as cheap as any other complaint about people who apparently are able to choose their own parents. We each reap the costs and benefits of the society we are born in.
What about the cost of moving? Note that you cannot sell your land/property to pay for moving. it is a total loss. That is a catastrophe, a slow-moving one but catastrophic nonetheless.
And the cost of migration is terrible. Folks in the Florida Keys can move to someplace else in the USA such as Colorado.
Folks on independent island archipelagos such as Togo or Micronesia can move to any country that has room to take them which at my last count stands at Zero.
Basically the complainants are aledgeing that the water is making them sick with no evidence what so ever as to the link between the water and the sickness. There was an offer to test the water that was declined therefore no evidence could be gathered.
egads. Shades of Monsanto. that means if I complain about the taste of fracking fluids in my water, the oil companies can tell me it is unfounded and ship me off to Guantanamo?
Damn. "Uh, no officers, I tole the doc that this water gives off such a wondrous aroma of money that it makes me shit funny."
Actually, terrorism is determined by its methods.
I agree that method of determination is garbage, nevertheless, that is how human social morality works.
Terrorists target 'innocent' civilians. Of course, if your entire way of life is at stake, no one on the other side is innocent.
For example, take the Sioux Indians in 1865 getting run off of their land by Caucasian invaders.
Suppose they sent someone over to Europe to stop the flow of money supporting the invasion, maybe breach a few dikes in Holland and give those Protestant bankers something else to spend their money on.
It would have definitely been terrorism.
Of course, that's what running people off their land with soldiers is also, except if its your tribe that ends up with the land, we call it Homeland Security instead of Terrorism.Like I said, Basic human social morality. Popularity makes the name sound like it's right instead of wrong but it's the same exact thing.
The purpose of the Federal Government is to guarantee and secure our freedom and rights. Of course this asshole and most others in the Fed have lost sight of this.
Let me see if I've got this straight. Other people and the government (which is apparently a different thang than 'other people') are the ones who are supposed to protect each and every one of us against other people and the government taking away our rights?
There's a reason I think the term 'rights' is pretty much just philosophic bullshit.
Pretend you're an analyst trying to define the requirement of rights for a society. Splain how that would work.
Looks like the gamers know what the letter has been in some spot a few milli seconds later. It probably explains why gamers playing real baseball with real bats seem to be hitting where the ball had been a few milliseconds instead of where the ball is now.
Are you talking about video gamers who have never played baseball?
If so, then compare their abilities to no-gamers who have never played baseball. Everyone starts by swinging too late.
Compare apples to apples. Don't compare pros to specific types of n00bs and then believe it tells you anything about anything.
I have a nephew who is a classic example of the video game addicted kid... only he's not a kid any more. Sure, he's got the boost in hand-eye coordination, but where does it benefit his life?
I have friend who is an alcoholic. That doesn't mean everyone who drinks wine is a loser.
An anecdote or single example is not a statistic, much less a trend.
How much better off would your nephew be if he didn't play games but merely watched Reality TV shows and Justin Bieber concerts?
There are many different ways to be a loser.
And there are many different skills in the world.
I'd rather have arthroscopic surgery done by a doc who is also a gamer than one who isn't and doesn't have the hand-eye coordination or the brain practice to understand what he sees on the screen.
The first few layers of the visual cortex are highly malleable. Wear a set of glasses that flip the world upside down (or angle the field of view by 10 degrees) and the system will adapt within a couple of days - the user will see the world as normal.
But also - when the user stops wearing the glasses the system quickly adapts back.
For _most_ people, the system will adapt backwards. But the reason the experiment was only performed once at the Univ of WA in the 1970s was because when the students first put on the glasses, their brains flipped the scenes within 48 hours.
But when they took them off, a couple student's brains didn't un-reverse for several weeks. I believe there was a lawsuit.
This is impossible for hackers to fake - they can never know the PIN.
You probably believe God created the heavens and the earth in six days, too.
The pirate quote that three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead is only close to the truth. How may folks have asked if you yourself can keep a secret as they get ready to tell you one of their own? I always say I can't yet they tell me their secret anyway.
We have a secret code, a secret algorithm, an unbreakable cipher. Like kids in a tree house with a sign saying No Grrrlz Allowed.
You'd have a current fighting tides. Probably end up with square waves like in British Columbia Canada west coast.
And Panama is 0wned by the USA. Has been since 1989.
Uhhhhh, arresting Noriega in his own country merely made the 0wning obvious. The US has 0wned Panama since we built the canal.
your post is absolutely correct but misses one point. China _is_ currently in the midst of its Manifest Destiny (empire expansion) period
Hell China probably stole the plans for the canal from US contractors ;-)