I'd imagine it has to do with one person having complete creative control. While I have no idea what Gary Kurtz did as a producer, he was the producer of Star Wars and Empire, and nothing else. Lucas didn't direct Empire or Jedi, and Lawrence Kasdan was the screenwriter or at least scrpit doctor for those movies. Lucas couldn't do whatever he wanted with Star Wars, because it was unproven. With Empire and Jedi, he probably had more leeway due to his success, but he chose to let others take the reigns in important areas. Now, he seems to have complete control of everything, and, well, these are the results.
Yeah, no voice over in the directors cut, and the ending is what Ridlet Scott wanted it to be. You should check it out - I really liked the original, but the directors cut was leaps and bounds better.
The IMF treats all deficits the same. The U.S. is not some third world country that's going to start printing money to pay its bills. It has an active capital market where it can sell gov't bonds to people who would actually want them, and its treasury is seperate from the government so it can't be forced to just print print print.
The IMF has been complaining about the same thing ever since the Bush tax cuts were announced. They can't stomach deficits of any kind.
The other key to consider is that they're worried about deficits in general - trade and budget. This nation doesn't save, I think net saving in this country is -5%, which means the people+the govt borrow 5% of GDP every year. Of course this cannot continue indefinitely, but the governments budget deficits are not necessarily the bulk of the savings problem, which existed even when the budget was balanced.
Personally, I do think we're currently out of control, but the disorderly plunge isn't going to happen unless the govt starts printing money to pay its debts, which just isn't remotely likely in the short to mid (50+years) term or perhaps even possible. So worrying about a few billion dollars to NASA (with god knows what benefits from the expenditure) is a bit of a stretch. Heck, we give China $2billion every year in free money, which they seem to have spent on sending a guy into space. Why not just cut that money off and instead pay for our own trip to mars?
If you look here you'll find a wonderful book called "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". It chronicles many different financial and social schemes and trends which, in the end, amounted to nothing. My favorite story in the book (and maybe one of the more applicable here) is about speculation in tulips in fifteenth century Holland. While I'm not going to say that SCO's stock price is nothing but a delusion, it wouldn't be hard to make a case for it. People are greedy, people often make decisions rashly or for the short term, and people follow crowds. SCO stock wouldn't be the first thing or the last to be valued only due to speculation, and short term gains in stocks (such as 2.4% dec 26th) can be caused by a change in the weather, not any actual news or information. There is potential value in SCO stock - they could take their 5% chance of winning and turn it into a billion dollars - and perhaps the stock price reflects only that, peoples valuation of it as a lottery ticket. Perhaps the fervor of the speculation will push it to 50, like the tulips, or perhaps people will finally come to their senses and the price will bottom out even before a trial.
Uh, how exactly do they plan on offering DirecTV? DirecTV is now owned by NewsCorp, and they don't seem to have any incentive to do any deals with Verizon, or to sell the company they just bought.
This, of course, reminds me of a resume we once got at my old job where someone had literally listed "computer master" as a skill. He uh, didn't get an interview, though I admittedly begged to be allowed to interview him.
I totally agree...but I have a ton of CDs, and I'd say 70% of them have almost nothing in terms of an insert booklet - lots just have a single sheet with the cover art on one side and a track listing on the other, perhaps with a credits list.
Cover art alone isn't going to make me want to but a CD I don't think. CDs are just too small in their current casing. I'd probably have thrown away all of my CD cases by now if it wasn't for my packrat nature - as it is they're all in a box, with the CDs and booklets set in folders.
...at an elementary for quite a few years. While I still don't understand how this was possible, "computer class" mostly consisted of one class at a time coming into the lab to play educational games.
When the school bought new imacs to replace some of their older macs, instead of going into the lab the machines were claimed by some of the teachers for their classrooms, where they would collect dust.
At one point one of the teachers asked my mother for some help with her computer, as it wouldn't turn on. My mother went in, and traced the cable for the power strip that was wrapped crazily around the table leg and, in the end, plugged back into itself.
Even with all this computer spending, there is no reason to believe the students are even using the resources. If the teachers can't use the computers, why assume they can use them as teaching tools? While I can't imagine why you'd need a computer in the classroom (and I had a computer in every classroom since 2nd grade), it seems doubly ridiculous when the teachers can't use them anyway.
I had to use musicmatch for my ipod, and it was one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. Musicmatch was kind enough to send me an e-mail alerting me that itunes would disable the musicmatch interaction with my ipod, unfortunately when I replied to the e-mail with "Thank god, your software is horrible" it didn't go to an actual person. Oh well.
I was worried. My Phenotype gives me a huge advantage, I'd hate for my Genotype to have something to hurt me. Hooray for discrimination only by things we can easily observe!
Governments (pretty much all of them) seem to be completely out of the loop and out of control when it comes to technology. Good decisions sometimes get made, but too often it seems they're just throwing darts at a dartboard, completely missing it and assuming that means Ban it or Tax it or Regulate it. And even if you like the idea of regulation for whatever it is, they always try to apply old rules to new things.
In this case, they're trying to treat VoIP as...a regular telephone. Charging them for the 911 setup? What? You want them to be a telecom and pay nebulous telecom fees, ok...why do these fees even exist? By the day I am feeling more and more lost in my own country. Or maybe it's just the world, no one seems to do it significantly better. on any kind of a regular basis.
This nation likes to call itself capitalist, but to me it just looks like a huge pile or regulation, largely designed to create monopolys but not really regulate them - combined with a ton of subsidies, kickbacks, whatever to already large buisiness interests that are also exceedingly anti-capitalist.
Ok to uh, keep on topic, this is ridiculous. VoIP is not the telephone. And why is this Minnesotas decision to make, shouldn't this be at a federal level? Seems like telephony has a pretty large interstate component.
I think you're missing the point of a game like Mechwarrior. I think they do an excellent job, because while I could go and learn all 87 commands and such, I never really needed to - all the really important things were on my joystick. Plus, the whole point of the game was to be a simulation, and to give people the feeling of control over their mech and perhaps their lance. If you want shoot em up bang bang mechs, Mechassault on the XBOX would work for you.
The game that I had a problem with recently for being overly complex was Tony Hawk 4. I started up the tutorials, and started to realize I'd need to memorize a huge amount of button/arrow combinations to do much of anything in the game. This is the type of complexity that drives me nuts, where it is some kind of combination of timing and memorization of a library of esoteric moves. Role playing games, mech simulators, they can be as complicated as they want (and I can always pause them to look up the button I forgot). Pausing Tony hawk because I need to remember the button combination to do a kick flip is a little different. There seemed like no way for me to pick up Tony Hawk easily, I would have to memorize a ton of moves before I could even try to play the game.
Ridiculous. Those important systems shouldn't even be on the same network as the office, much less attached to a network that can see the internet. I'm not talking firewalls/seperate vlans/whatever either, I mean physically no kind of connection at all. If they have to be accessible from a vpn, you better have a damned good idea of who will be doing that accessing.
When it comes to your average office network, sure, you can give the "oh they brought in an infected laptop" excuse, but this is quite a bit different.
Those people can buy WebTV. Hardware differences aren't the only issue here, software differences are. If microsofts automagic patch only kills computers running a few specific software programs, the whole default automagic updates is flawed. These boxes you talk about would have to have standard hardware and standard software, and I can't think of many people who would want that as their system.
"What we're finding now is that through a combination of the availability of broadband and customers wanting to stay up to date with security patches, and, most importantly, considering the kinds of threats out there now, that customers want us to keep them up to date automatically -- not just by downloading the patches for them but installing them as well."
I'm not sure who these customers are that want this...but to me this amounts to saying "our customers are lazy and stupid". Maybe I'm trolling, but...the "kinds of threats" that are out there are caused by microsoft writing vulnerable code in the first place! Sure everyone has bugs, but maybe, just maybe, they'll write a buggy patch too! I don't see how anyone could even be considering this as the default. If these people want microsoft to automatically update their computer...they can turn it on right now!
I know you hear this a lot here, but people need to either
a) have a working knowledge of their computer/operating system, including how to maintain it. b) have their computer regularly maintained by another live human being.
This isn't that hard. People have this perception of computers as the same as their television or washing machine in terms of support - don't touch it unless it's obviously unusably broken. They don't work that way, they're much closer to cars. Sure, some people don't maintain their cars either, but those people aren't in the majority.
I'm rambling at this point, but really this is a disaster waiting to happen. What, are we going to end up testing EULAS in court finally when microsoft breaks ten million computers automagically and then says "well, you clicked the agreement"? I guess that could be agreeable. Please, I know most people here know what they're doing with their computers, but this problem is not just caused by microsoft. Educate everyone you know about the needs for computer mainenence! Make them pay you, I don't care, do something. Of course, the stupid IT department here got the worm too, so maybe it's completely hopeless.
I don't see what any of this (right or wrong) has to do with my post. None of this changes the fact that a straight sales tax as mentioned in the post I replied to is regressive. All of these suggestions you make have at least some merit (a few have a great deal), but why direct them at me?
If you vote "no", you then cannot vote for Davis as his own replacement. Thats my point, and my problem with the situation. Yes, the recall process needs to get a 50% vote to even happen, as it should, but I don't feel that Davis should be under the same burden when he was already elected governor.
Originally, the recall process was not even going to allow people who voted against the recall to vote for a new governor. While that has been changed, I find it hard to swallow that the new governor would be legitimate if, say, the recall only gets 55% of the vote, and no candidate gets over 40% of the "who should replace davis" vote. This would imply that the recall candidate could not beat Davis even when the Davis supporters were allowed to vote twice.
My reasoning for the seperate ballots is only to allow Davis to actually run in the recall election if he is recalled, which I feel is only fair, especially since I think he would win. If they placed his name on the "who should replace Davis" side of the ballot it would be pretty much the same thing, I mostly suggested the month seperation because I think people would get really confused to see Davis on both sides.
It's moot either way. But I wonder how easy it would be to just run another recall drive for whoever wins. I can't imagine a winning candidate who doesn't get over 30% of the vote being very secure against another recall.
I'd have no problem with the recall if it didn't put the incumbent at such a disadvantage in terms of vote requirements. If he doesn't get 50% of the vote, he loses. 49% of the people can say "no" to a recall, and the winning replacement candidate would win, no matter what percentage of the vote they get. This is ridiculous, they should be seperate ballots entirely. First people should vote on the recall itself, yes or no. Then, a month or whatever later, a new "who should be the governor" election, which Davis can also run in. The only problem with this plan, for me, is that Davis would almost definitely win, and I can't say I really want him as governor.
I replied to the poster saying basically the same thing. I'm pretty sure, however, that of anything he would be supportive of this article at the cato institute explaing the workings and benefits of having soley a national sales tax. One stipulation of the plan is that all income below $18,858 is tax exempt.
I think you're on the right track, but the idea that "sales taxes are the most fair methods of taxation" is a little problematic.
Sales taxes are, by their nature, regressive. The poorer you are, the bigger a burden they are on you - you have to spend a larger percentage of your income, while richer people can save or invest their money and not pay the sales tax (not to mention any other benefits of being richer). Now I know there are plenty of people in here who think that that's just dandy, and since this isn't really on topic,lets just say it really is obviously not a good idea to tax those most who make the least.
Thinking a vote of no confidence is fair does not make the recall fair. In the recall, davis has to get 50%+ of the votes (votes against the recall). If he does not, he cannot win, even if no other candidate gets more votes than there were against the recall. While I do not know, I do not believe this 50% burden applies in votes of no confidence.
The moment a new governor is elected (if one is), I believe a new recall action could begin. How would someone who only got, say, 25-30% of the vote in the recall election win against another recall? The whole process is absurd and needs to be stopped. I'd imagine whoever the new governor is their first order of business will be to get the recall process scrapped.
I agree that pretty much all kazaa users are looters. But I don't agree that you have to pour the tea in the harbor for it to be civil disobedience. Thoreau gives an example of himself not paying the poll tax - I highly doubt he then flushed the money he saved down the toilet. But it was still civil disobedience, regardless of his financial savings. Perhaps there is something more noble in protecting what you have than in taking something, but I'm sure examples can be found of governments or other powers keeping things from people that they needed.
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I'd imagine it has to do with one person having complete creative control. While I have no idea what Gary Kurtz did as a producer, he was the producer of Star Wars and Empire, and nothing else. Lucas didn't direct Empire or Jedi, and Lawrence Kasdan was the screenwriter or at least scrpit doctor for those movies. Lucas couldn't do whatever he wanted with Star Wars, because it was unproven. With Empire and Jedi, he probably had more leeway due to his success, but he chose to let others take the reigns in important areas. Now, he seems to have complete control of everything, and, well, these are the results.
Yeah, no voice over in the directors cut, and the ending is what Ridlet Scott wanted it to be. You should check it out - I really liked the original, but the directors cut was leaps and bounds better.
not if they're overpriced to the point where they can't SELL them
The IMF treats all deficits the same. The U.S. is not some third world country that's going to start printing money to pay its bills. It has an active capital market where it can sell gov't bonds to people who would actually want them, and its treasury is seperate from the government so it can't be forced to just print print print.
The IMF has been complaining about the same thing ever since the Bush tax cuts were announced. They can't stomach deficits of any kind.
The other key to consider is that they're worried about deficits in general - trade and budget. This nation doesn't save, I think net saving in this country is -5%, which means the people+the govt borrow 5% of GDP every year. Of course this cannot continue indefinitely, but the governments budget deficits are not necessarily the bulk of the savings problem, which existed even when the budget was balanced.
Personally, I do think we're currently out of control, but the disorderly plunge isn't going to happen unless the govt starts printing money to pay its debts, which just isn't remotely likely in the short to mid (50+years) term or perhaps even possible. So worrying about a few billion dollars to NASA (with god knows what benefits from the expenditure) is a bit of a stretch. Heck, we give China $2billion every year in free money, which they seem to have spent on sending a guy into space. Why not just cut that money off and instead pay for our own trip to mars?
If you look here you'll find a wonderful book called "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds". It chronicles many different financial and social schemes and trends which, in the end, amounted to nothing. My favorite story in the book (and maybe one of the more applicable here) is about speculation in tulips in fifteenth century Holland. While I'm not going to say that SCO's stock price is nothing but a delusion, it wouldn't be hard to make a case for it. People are greedy, people often make decisions rashly or for the short term, and people follow crowds. SCO stock wouldn't be the first thing or the last to be valued only due to speculation, and short term gains in stocks (such as 2.4% dec 26th) can be caused by a change in the weather, not any actual news or information. There is potential value in SCO stock - they could take their 5% chance of winning and turn it into a billion dollars - and perhaps the stock price reflects only that, peoples valuation of it as a lottery ticket. Perhaps the fervor of the speculation will push it to 50, like the tulips, or perhaps people will finally come to their senses and the price will bottom out even before a trial.
Uh, how exactly do they plan on offering DirecTV? DirecTV is now owned by NewsCorp, and they don't seem to have any incentive to do any deals with Verizon, or to sell the company they just bought.
This, of course, reminds me of a resume we once got at my old job where someone had literally listed "computer master" as a skill. He uh, didn't get an interview, though I admittedly begged to be allowed to interview him.
I totally agree...but I have a ton of CDs, and I'd say 70% of them have almost nothing in terms of an insert booklet - lots just have a single sheet with the cover art on one side and a track listing on the other, perhaps with a credits list.
Cover art alone isn't going to make me want to but a CD I don't think. CDs are just too small in their current casing. I'd probably have thrown away all of my CD cases by now if it wasn't for my packrat nature - as it is they're all in a box, with the CDs and booklets set in folders.
...at an elementary for quite a few years. While I still don't understand how this was possible, "computer class" mostly consisted of one class at a time coming into the lab to play educational games.
When the school bought new imacs to replace some of their older macs, instead of going into the lab the machines were claimed by some of the teachers for their classrooms, where they would collect dust.
At one point one of the teachers asked my mother for some help with her computer, as it wouldn't turn on. My mother went in, and traced the cable for the power strip that was wrapped crazily around the table leg and, in the end, plugged back into itself.
Even with all this computer spending, there is no reason to believe the students are even using the resources. If the teachers can't use the computers, why assume they can use them as teaching tools? While I can't imagine why you'd need a computer in the classroom (and I had a computer in every classroom since 2nd grade), it seems doubly ridiculous when the teachers can't use them anyway.
I had to use musicmatch for my ipod, and it was one of the worst pieces of software I've ever used. Musicmatch was kind enough to send me an e-mail alerting me that itunes would disable the musicmatch interaction with my ipod, unfortunately when I replied to the e-mail with "Thank god, your software is horrible" it didn't go to an actual person. Oh well.
I was worried. My Phenotype gives me a huge advantage, I'd hate for my Genotype to have something to hurt me. Hooray for discrimination only by things we can easily observe!
The weather of NoCal is not available in Georgia, just like the giant killer mosquitos of Georgia are not available in NoCal.
My Parents moved from SoCal to Georgia. I don't visit much.
Governments (pretty much all of them) seem to be completely out of the loop and out of control when it comes to technology. Good decisions sometimes get made, but too often it seems they're just throwing darts at a dartboard, completely missing it and assuming that means Ban it or Tax it or Regulate it. And even if you like the idea of regulation for whatever it is, they always try to apply old rules to new things.
In this case, they're trying to treat VoIP as...a regular telephone. Charging them for the 911 setup? What? You want them to be a telecom and pay nebulous telecom fees, ok...why do these fees even exist? By the day I am feeling more and more lost in my own country. Or maybe it's just the world, no one seems to do it significantly better. on any kind of a regular basis.
This nation likes to call itself capitalist, but to me it just looks like a huge pile or regulation, largely designed to create monopolys but not really regulate them - combined with a ton of subsidies, kickbacks, whatever to already large buisiness interests that are also exceedingly anti-capitalist.
Ok to uh, keep on topic, this is ridiculous. VoIP is not the telephone. And why is this Minnesotas decision to make, shouldn't this be at a federal level? Seems like telephony has a pretty large interstate component.
I think you're missing the point of a game like Mechwarrior. I think they do an excellent job, because while I could go and learn all 87 commands and such, I never really needed to - all the really important things were on my joystick. Plus, the whole point of the game was to be a simulation, and to give people the feeling of control over their mech and perhaps their lance. If you want shoot em up bang bang mechs, Mechassault on the XBOX would work for you.
The game that I had a problem with recently for being overly complex was Tony Hawk 4. I started up the tutorials, and started to realize I'd need to memorize a huge amount of button/arrow combinations to do much of anything in the game. This is the type of complexity that drives me nuts, where it is some kind of combination of timing and memorization of a library of esoteric moves. Role playing games, mech simulators, they can be as complicated as they want (and I can always pause them to look up the button I forgot). Pausing Tony hawk because I need to remember the button combination to do a kick flip is a little different. There seemed like no way for me to pick up Tony Hawk easily, I would have to memorize a ton of moves before I could even try to play the game.
Ridiculous. Those important systems shouldn't even be on the same network as the office, much less attached to a network that can see the internet. I'm not talking firewalls/seperate vlans/whatever either, I mean physically no kind of connection at all. If they have to be accessible from a vpn, you better have a damned good idea of who will be doing that accessing.
When it comes to your average office network, sure, you can give the "oh they brought in an infected laptop" excuse, but this is quite a bit different.
Those people can buy WebTV. Hardware differences aren't the only issue here, software differences are. If microsofts automagic patch only kills computers running a few specific software programs, the whole default automagic updates is flawed. These boxes you talk about would have to have standard hardware and standard software, and I can't think of many people who would want that as their system.
I'm not sure who these customers are that want this...but to me this amounts to saying "our customers are lazy and stupid". Maybe I'm trolling, but...the "kinds of threats" that are out there are caused by microsoft writing vulnerable code in the first place! Sure everyone has bugs, but maybe, just maybe, they'll write a buggy patch too! I don't see how anyone could even be considering this as the default. If these people want microsoft to automatically update their computer...they can turn it on right now!
I know you hear this a lot here, but people need to either
a) have a working knowledge of their computer/operating system, including how to maintain it.
b) have their computer regularly maintained by another live human being.
This isn't that hard. People have this perception of computers as the same as their television or washing machine in terms of support - don't touch it unless it's obviously unusably broken. They don't work that way, they're much closer to cars. Sure, some people don't maintain their cars either, but those people aren't in the majority.
I'm rambling at this point, but really this is a disaster waiting to happen. What, are we going to end up testing EULAS in court finally when microsoft breaks ten million computers automagically and then says "well, you clicked the agreement"? I guess that could be agreeable. Please, I know most people here know what they're doing with their computers, but this problem is not just caused by microsoft. Educate everyone you know about the needs for computer mainenence! Make them pay you, I don't care, do something. Of course, the stupid IT department here got the worm too, so maybe it's completely hopeless.
Yeah, but thats when he's not painting.
I don't see what any of this (right or wrong) has to do with my post. None of this changes the fact that a straight sales tax as mentioned in the post I replied to is regressive. All of these suggestions you make have at least some merit (a few have a great deal), but why direct them at me?
If you vote "no", you then cannot vote for Davis as his own replacement. Thats my point, and my problem with the situation. Yes, the recall process needs to get a 50% vote to even happen, as it should, but I don't feel that Davis should be under the same burden when he was already elected governor.
Originally, the recall process was not even going to allow people who voted against the recall to vote for a new governor. While that has been changed, I find it hard to swallow that the new governor would be legitimate if, say, the recall only gets 55% of the vote, and no candidate gets over 40% of the "who should replace davis" vote. This would imply that the recall candidate could not beat Davis even when the Davis supporters were allowed to vote twice.
My reasoning for the seperate ballots is only to allow Davis to actually run in the recall election if he is recalled, which I feel is only fair, especially since I think he would win. If they placed his name on the "who should replace Davis" side of the ballot it would be pretty much the same thing, I mostly suggested the month seperation because I think people would get really confused to see Davis on both sides.
It's moot either way. But I wonder how easy it would be to just run another recall drive for whoever wins. I can't imagine a winning candidate who doesn't get over 30% of the vote being very secure against another recall.
I'd have no problem with the recall if it didn't put the incumbent at such a disadvantage in terms of vote requirements. If he doesn't get 50% of the vote, he loses. 49% of the people can say "no" to a recall, and the winning replacement candidate would win, no matter what percentage of the vote they get. This is ridiculous, they should be seperate ballots entirely. First people should vote on the recall itself, yes or no. Then, a month or whatever later, a new "who should be the governor" election, which Davis can also run in. The only problem with this plan, for me, is that Davis would almost definitely win, and I can't say I really want him as governor.
I replied to the poster saying basically the same thing. I'm pretty sure, however, that of anything he would be supportive of this article at the cato institute explaing the workings and benefits of having soley a national sales tax. One stipulation of the plan is that all income below $18,858 is tax exempt.
I think you're on the right track, but the idea that "sales taxes are the most fair methods of taxation" is a little problematic.
Sales taxes are, by their nature, regressive. The poorer you are, the bigger a burden they are on you - you have to spend a larger percentage of your income, while richer people can save or invest their money and not pay the sales tax (not to mention any other benefits of being richer). Now I know there are plenty of people in here who think that that's just dandy, and since this isn't really on topic,lets just say it really is obviously not a good idea to tax those most who make the least.
Thinking a vote of no confidence is fair does not make the recall fair. In the recall, davis has to get 50%+ of the votes (votes against the recall). If he does not, he cannot win, even if no other candidate gets more votes than there were against the recall. While I do not know, I do not believe this 50% burden applies in votes of no confidence.
The moment a new governor is elected (if one is), I believe a new recall action could begin. How would someone who only got, say, 25-30% of the vote in the recall election win against another recall? The whole process is absurd and needs to be stopped. I'd imagine whoever the new governor is their first order of business will be to get the recall process scrapped.
I agree that pretty much all kazaa users are looters. But I don't agree that you have to pour the tea in the harbor for it to be civil disobedience. Thoreau gives an example of himself not paying the poll tax - I highly doubt he then flushed the money he saved down the toilet. But it was still civil disobedience, regardless of his financial savings. Perhaps there is something more noble in protecting what you have than in taking something, but I'm sure examples can be found of governments or other powers keeping things from people that they needed.