I own and run VIPMinistry.com, a church print co-operative. We used color laser printers for the first few months and they were slow and painful to watch. Then we discovered Xerox's Phaser LED printers -- basically a laser, but with a "full width" of LEDs spanning the width of the page. Now they crank out double-sided sheets about 6 times faster than single-sided sheets (full color). With just 4 of these printers, we have replaced 12 lasers, and likely could replace 24 of them. They're mega-fast.
Inkjet printers are still my favorite if not for the high cost of ink and the inability to work with a wide variety of paper. LEDs/Lasers are very maintenance heavy (drums, toner, a billion rollers, LED/Lasers over time, waste cartridges, etc, etc). I love the idea of a full-width printhead, though.
The biggest problem with inkjets is ink technology. I'd love to find a solvent-based printer or something closer to an Indigo. Instead of working on faster printers (which help business more than the home), I think they should be working on newer printhead+ink technology.
...respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.
That's an Amendment to the Constitution, better known as the First Amendment. The Constitution, folks, was written to restrict government's reach -- it was not written to protect our rights or to restict people.
Our Federal government has absolutely zero power to regulate the Internet. The Interstate Commerce Act has been stretched to give Congress power, but the Act was not intended to actually allow the government to regulate commerce but to prevent the Individual States from perverting commerce between them. Read the Federalist papers to see more on that debate.
We already have anti-porn powers in place -- it's called the Power of Parenting. No government official can legislate control over how a parent decides to introduce their children to various topics. I fear that heavy-handed moralists may decide that sites with breast-feeding or basic sex information might get censored along with bestiality sites. For me, neither matter since I don't have kids, but should I decide to, I want to regulate what my children can look at. I also want to regulate at what age they are free to start deciding for themselves what they want to look at.
I grew up in the early BBS days (1983 or so). My parents didn't regulate me at all. My BBS that I ran, starting in my pre-teens, ended up having a small porn download/sharing section. It was probably viewed by some youths, but the vast majority of visitors there were adults (we did telephone authorization to give people access). I don't recall spending more than a few minutes in that section myself, since I preferred the online forums and the chat area (we were multinode early). My parents both visited the BBS on a few occasions, and they never scolded me for any section. They did warn me to be careful not to break any laws, but in our household, their regulations were the only laws that I had to work to obey. I did obey, until I moved out, at which point I realized that a lot of what my friends' parents restricted them from were the very things they clung to when they reached a point of maturity. Forbidden fruits create many jams, I guess.
Let's keep government out of our households. Let's remember that the Constitution was written to prevent Federal government from going bonkers and destroying our ability to not just choose for ourselves, but also reap what we sow when we make mistakes (and when we work hard). Equalizing everyone's chances is what government tries to do, at the restriction of those outside the box who really can venture forth in success by working hard outside of the box. I don't like the box, and I don't want to be restricted to living there, even if you do.
Surely if the entire world have the indwelling Holy Spirit, then the fruit of the Spirit in everyone's life would be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Think of how this would radically change the world.
I agree with part of what you're saying, but I don't agree that it is "all or nothing" in terms of fruit of the Spirit. I do believe that all men have the Holy Spirit within, but not all men care to listen (not even Christians, necessarily). When you listen to the guidance, surely you bear good fruit. I think you're sort of saying that "Every man planted tomato seeds, why don't we all have tomatoes?" That's because not everyone allows them to grow, and some ignore the seeds once they're planted and they wither and die.
Reality check: evil abounds on planet Earth. Look around you, this definitely ain't a New Heaven and a New Earth. Has God wiped away all our tears yet? Is there pain and suffering still? There is still alot of pain and tears in this world.
That's another great point. Evil does abound, but evil != sin. Sin merely means falling short of God's demands, and if Christ fulfilled all of God's demands for us, there are no demands to fall short of, hence there is no sin. We will have mortal desires because we don't have completely knowledge as God does. As to pain/suffering/tears, that reference in the New Testament refers to Psalm 116, which actually associated death with pain/suffering/tears. I believe there is no death (spiritual, that is), so we don't have to associate the pain/suffering/tears any more. I think from an English translation perspective it is a stretch, and to delve into the Hebrew/Greek deeper would occupy much more space than I have, but I will write an article about it in the near future -- it is definitely something I am comfortable continuing the debate on, but we have to dive a little deeper into WHY certain words were chosen. For me, much of the NT is eschatological in nature, which shows fulfillment of prophecy in the way that the previous prophecies were fulfilled -- same words, same terms, same imagery.
In your opinion, what is the Great White Throne judgement? Judgement Seat of Christ? The Second Death? When are/were these?
All happened in the past with the destruction of the Great Temple, the death of Nero and the great war. 63AD to 70AD (7 years).
You are saying everyone is now clean, but many "clean" people reject Christ's sacrafice! There is no longer a sacrafice for their sin it would seem. Therefore God's judgement is on them. How does your view handle this scripture?
I don't believe Christ died for our sins for MAN, He did it for the Father to reconcile man to God. God's judgment only occurs when we fall short of His expectations, but His expectations were fulfilled completely in the Life of Jesus, the Father's desire for blood for falling short was fulfilled by the Death of Jesus, the opening of the Holy Spirit for all men occurred after the Resurrection/Ascension, and I believe that the vanquishing of Sin occurred at the second coming.
Please help me understand this. If the preterist "church" is considered to be the entire body of humanity (including unrepentant rapists, murderers, adulterers, satanists, atheists, etc), if that be the case, then God has a very messed up family. And the violence, perversion and hate is getting worse every day! His body would be getting more corrupt every day it would seem. So are these people all automatically welcomed with open arms into heaven upon their departure from the earth, regardless of the decisions that they have made? Even those who reject/hate God?
Yes. Why? God is a loving God. Jesus Christ did not come to earth to die for men, He did it for the Father -- to reconcile the Father's loved children and creation to be stewards of His earth, not to be judged or penalized for their shortcomings.
Regarding the 70AD completiong of God's programme, in Matthew 28, Jesus states that when the gospel is preached to all nations, then will the end come. This was not the case by AD70 ( although some claim that representatives of each nation were present in Jerusalem at penticost). In reality, there are still many unreached people groups and cultures where the gospel has never been heard. What use is there in preaching the "good news" if all people are already saved and nothing they can do affects their eternity?
Your Bible, unfortunately, is wrong. Scofield and Moody in the late 19th century really did a number on the Church in order to try to push the Evangelical ideology into the mainstream. The New Testament supposedly says that Christ would not return until the Gospel was preached to all the nations, but "nations" did not mean the entire Earth. The Hebrew and Greek text supports the definition there of "all of Rome" or "all of the Roman Empire" where the Gospel SURELY was preached in entirety.
Many of the biblical prophecies have their fulfillment in 2 different time periods, especially those in the Old Testament that supposedly combine Christ's death and Kingly reign. Isn't Jesus meant to setup his Kingly throne for a time in Jerusalem? Seen Jerusalem lately?
No. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Christ will reign (especially not for 1000 years). All it says is that the faithful and righteous BEFORE the second coming will reign WITH Christ. How they will reign, and specifically where, is unknown.
Jesus' own disciples didn't really believe that He would die, even though He told them plainly. They probably expected Him to take His throne in the physical sense. The OT prophecies would seem to imply this. Perhaps many of the prophecies that were fulfilled in 70AD actually and have their fulfillment in multiple time periods as well.
I fully believe that. I laugh a little in my heart when Christians tell me that Christ surely couldn't have returned already because look at the world. But I remind them that Jews today refuse to believe that the Messiah came 2000 years ago because THEIR interpretation of prophecy was not fulfilled -- just like the mainstream Christian refuses to believe that we live without sin today.
Actually, the common term is preterism, and there is a huge following of Christians who espouse at least a partial-preterist perspective. MOST preterists don't go to a "church" though because we believe that the Church is the entire body of humanity -- those who believe in Christ or not.
Mainstream Evangelical Christians believe preterism is heresy and damnable, as do Catholics and most of the Protestant movement. The biggest problem with preterism for the dispensational Christian is that what it espouses conflicts with the idea of building up the "church" they attend, plus preterists don't believe in the mainstream Christian profession for human laws, spreading the gospel, and the rest.
Hit me up with an e-mail and I can give you some of my links, including my own sites on the matter.
Okay, so that's a travesty, but it still underlines the point that putting in your time is part of the game.
I'm not sure it's a travesty (I love Bad Religion but I think Green Day does a better job interacting with fans, and they've always been that way), but I agree 100%.
If you want to make money as a band, stop pretending you're "just an artist trying to be heard." Anything you do for income must be entered in with a business perspective. If you want to be broke performing, that is easy to do. If you want to pay the bills and live off of performing, you have to understand that you are now in the market of entertaining others, and this requires investing the time it takes for people to know that you will always be there for THEIR needs (entertainment), so they will support YOUR needs (financial).
Arooo? Best Buy sells Computers, CDs, TVs, and major appliances. CompUSA sells computer gear, and a smattering of TVs and PVRs. If anything, CompUSA's inventory goes deeper, but certainly not wider.
Good catch, bad wording on my part. I intended to mean wider inventory of IT/PC based products:)
Exactly! The cost to manufacture a nice CD, sticker and a T-shirt for a band is around $8 in low quantity. The fan is usually willing to pay up to $25-$30 for the merch. Sell 20 sets a show and do 90 shows a year is about $30k in profit -- not including door entry share, beer share or up front money from promoters. It isn't great money, but it is decent enough to do what you love doing in one of the MOST competitive markets in the US. I know quite a few "professional" touring bands that share 6-figures a year between their 4/5 band members, but they're touring constantly -- and they love doing it.
Disclosure: I worked for CompUSA about 18 years ago during a court-mandated stint forcing me to have a "real" job. It was a 6 month stint at which time I was the top performing sales person month after month, even though I was only 16. I learned a lot of corporate retail problems, which continue to this day.
I have 2 CompUSAs in my area, close to clients that my company still maintains. They're both depressing -- too many workers, but no one with knowledge. I hear a lot of lies, get pushed on extended warranties that don't work, and have to deal with waiting and waiting when I need to find something that their website shows as in-stock. The company is inept because the company is trying to compete in the wrong market.
I honestly see a lot of retail collapsing because the time is getting close that the manufacturers can sell products cheaper, and at a higher profit for themselves, directly or through direct-partners. I can't imagine a Luddite like my father trying to buy something at CompUSA when the typical sales person there is no different than Best Buy's brilliant teen workers. But that's the end problem: CompUSA is still trying to be a consumer store rather than business-oriented.
CompUSA has a much wider inventory than Best Buy or Circuit City, but they obviously can't compete with those power houses who have more stores and also have a lot of value-added items they can sell to make up for what they don't make on popular laptops and LCD monitors. Yet the typical business that I deal with still prefers solid advice over bottom-line price. Consumers want it cheap, and they tend not to have long-term relationships with a particular sales person or a store. CompUSA dropped the ball when they started to lose to CDW and MacWarehouse -- the corporate clients of mine haven't used CompUSA in years because of their change from business-focused to consumer-oriented and cheap.
Even on price CompUSA doesn't compete -- often times when I need something I am shocked at the prices. Sure, we're all familiar with the $6-USB-cable-that-sells-for-$39, but even basics such as a stand IEC power cord are overpriced. Their selection is decent, but they are trying to compete in a market that they can not penetrate, especially with Amazon and eBay destroying the price competitiveness of the big box PC store.
This is a good thing for CompUSA, but I don't see them lasting. Every CompUSA near me has both Best Buy and Circuit City nearby, and I admit that I've had more intelligent sales staff at the big box store than at CompUSA. If they want to save their business, they have to focus on local businesses rather than trying to be the answer man for people who want cheap prices and sales. Without the business customer (who tends to accept a higher cost in exchange for GOOD advice and support), their business is heading to the toilet.
Twenty paying shows a month? You're absolutely extraordinary.
I don't book shows -- they have someone who handles that in exchange for a cut of merch sales. She handles dozens of bands, and she gets them shows constantly. I can't think of one band I work with that can't get 10+ shows a month by hiring a booking agent, even small bands.
She spent the days making phone calls to venues who generally never called back. The band I worked for was extraordinarily talented (download some of their music for free here). They quit their day jobs for over two years. They toured up and down the East coast and as far as Detroit. They had a devoted but small audience.
She didn't follow through well with her contacts. Venues want to see warm bodies buying beer, if you send bands to them that don't attract even a small crowd, they won't call you back ever. The best way to get a band out there is to get them involved with show promoters (we have www.mpshows.com in Chicago) and get them opening for small bands. A lot of bands don't want to invest the 1-2 years it takes opening up for bands that they think are worse than them. I know, I watch bands all the time give up because they won't move forward with the risk. Many people invest 4-8 years in college to further their career; a band needs to invest 1-2 years of even more work, and they don't have to pay as much as college costs.
If they could have booked 20 paying gigs a month, they'd still be in existence. Most venues want cover bands, not original music. The venues have the power and so they get to treat me rudely. I bow before your superior nagging-people-on-the-phone skills.
I have never heard of a venue that wants cover bands over original music. The indie pop scene is huge right now, I just went to an indie show last night in Chicago for 4 bands that I've never heard of, and they were all excellent and the crowd was thick. Cover was $7, but all 4 bands sold a ton of merch to people who liked their sound -- and I think I heard one cover song the entire night. I go to 2-3 shows per week in the Spring and Summer, and I have yet to visit one venue in Chicagoland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and the Bronx that had cover bands. Most of the bands I talk to fail because they refuse to invest the time it takes to get notoriety.
(It's because of that that the "Hey, give the music away and make it up at the live shows" argument on Slashdot makes me furious. But if you've got the secret for booking venues, please let me know and I'll retract everything I've said about it.)
Plan on investing as much time honing your writing and performing skills -- make it like a future career. You go to college for 4 years and spend up to $100,000 learning a trade or a skill, why should a lifetime of performing be any different?
One thing, though: there are a LOT of bands that just don't have it -- just like there are programmers or CAD operators or lawyers who don't have it. It is easier to pick up a guitar and a mic and find 3 friends and call yourself a band than it is to become a lawyer, so of course there is a higher drop out rate. Yet I still see venues dark 3+ nights a week for a lack of bands committed to playing and bringing in warm bodies.
As a very very small music producer (basically, I give bands money to record or tour, and I hope to recoup some of that investment in the future), I work very hard to get the bands I finance to repudiate not just DRM but copyright in general. Small bands have no real reason for either -- recording music is just a marketing process to try to get people to come to your shows. Sure, without copyright, some big producer might steal your lyrics and music and have the newest pop boy band re-record it, but this too would just be a great marketing tactic -- the Internet would jump all over it.
Small bands need to give their recorded music away freely online in order to get more people to come to their shows. My brother's band Maps & Atlases just went on a 7 day tour to the East Coast and ended up in a tiny university town called East Stroudsburg, PA. Instead of showing up to no crowd, the venue was packed -- a rarity for the town and venue. Why did this happen? Maps & Atlases released their EP for free online. They sold out of their first EP (2000 copies) during their 2006 tour, and they're coming up fast on selling out their second pressing, even though the music is easily downloaded online. Why do fans pay for albums? They get face time with the band, they get autographs, and they know that buying the merch direct will keep the band writing and touring.
DRM is terrible for any band but the absolute largest, and even for them it is bad because the new fan base wants to have nothing to do with it. I look at it this way: DRM for the adult contemporary crowd just makes life harder for them, DRM for the teen crowd is easily bypassed. But it isn't just DRM that makes things difficult, it is also the fact that copyright really throws fan distribution a curve -- even the fans who openly distribute the music know it is "piracy" but they feel they're helping the band.
I look at the Internet as one big radio station waiting to be harnessed by smaller musicians all over the world. Write music with one purpose: to attract fans to your live shows where you can make your income by continuing to work, rather than hoping to write one hit once and earn royalties for the rest of your life. Who here works a regular job and wishes that they could work a few months in exchange for years of income? Life doesn't work that way -- unless you work with the distribution cartels that are quickly watching their futures slip through their fingers. If you're in a band, tell your fans to copy your music for their friends in hopes that those friends will become the new fans. Viral marketing is key to making a solid income in live music.
Sidenote: If you're in a band and you disagree with me on making a living, it is because you're trying to keep a "steady job" while also trying to tour. You can't do both. My brother's bandmates all quit their jobs (some of them have master's degrees!) to handle a tour schedule that includes typically 20 shows a month. Stop whining and dig in.
I have customers who have asked us to do this, and we usually work to talk them out of it. As an employer myself, I have no problem with my employees "wasting time" on occasion, as long as their work is getting finished on time, and they're meeting their deadlines. Work takes more of our time than ever, so there is no reason why people can't take a recess for 5 minutes out of the hour to do personal things.
Nonetheless, the best solution that I came up with (I don't think I "invented" this, but I did come up with it after many days of contemplating) was to have a revolving DNS change for those 20 MySpace Class C addresses. We made it intermittent enough that the employees "thought" it was MySpace downtime, and eventually usage dropped significantly. Every 5-10 minutes a CRON job would add its own random address for one of the MySpace addresses, then 5 minutes later it cleared that and then did it to another address.
The only guy that I am aware of that noticed it is the guy who ran his own DNS on his workstation, but he was geeky enough to probably realize that it wasn't MySpace that wasn't resolving.
I still think that it is wiser to discuss WHY employees might be needing some downtime versus locking them out of applications. Happy employees are efficient, productive and fun to work with. I would never block my employees access to any sites (then again, I would never drug test, delve into their private lives, run a credit report, or any of the usual steps employers take).
Absolutely. There is a lot of Truth there regardless of whether or not you believe it is the Word of God, God-inspired, a historical account of a really cool dude, or just some fictional thoughts. The biggest problem with Christianity are Christians, to paraphrase Gandhi.
"One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor"
Actually, I did something similar to this about 18 months ago -- I did sell almost everything I possessed and distributed all of the extra to a variety of charities in my area, and invested in a charity of my own. E-mail me for details.
That being said, I believe the Kingdom message was focused on the Early Church, prior to His second coming which I believed happened in 70 AD, ending the Age/the Covenant of Abraham and David. With that ending of the Covenant came the end to the Commandments and the Law.
It doesn't undo what Christ said about the basics of living, rather than the Kingdom perspective -- in my opinion two totally separate things.
I also don't believe in having to do anything to get to heaven, whatever heaven may be -- not works, not faith, not action or follow-through.:)
My beliefs in my faith leave no room for denominations or an unlimited variety of faiths -- to me, the Body is the Body, regardless of how they want to segregate themselves from others, or what they believe.
...I look at Jesus' words and actions as significant and the previous story before Him and insignificant in terms of how we live. In my opinion, when Jesus said "Judge not others" He meant it.
Christians who judge others haven't read their Bibles. It is time to move forth, Christians, read your Bibles, and get out of people's lives, especially the lives of non-Christians.
This is FUD. T-Mobile branded phones NEVER supported Google Maps or Gmail for Mobile. Just buy a non-T-Mobile branded phone (unlocked of course) and all the apps work fine.
I have an HTC Trinity P3600 and I use GOogle Maps (with GPS!), Gmail for Mobile, and Skype and it works flawlessly.
Slashdot editors don't understand the difference between a T-Mobile branded phone and a real unencumbered phone.
I use an HTC Trinity P3600 and this will NOT affect me. I also tether my laptop to my P3600 (bluetooth or USB) and I will also not be limited.
This is ONLY if you use T-Mobile branded phones. I called my customer retention agent and she confirmed over and over that this will NOT affect third party bought phones, which is the only way to play unless you want to try to buy an outdated phone of T-Mobiles at a discount price.
FUD, FUD, FUD. I love my T-Mobile phone and I travel to 13 states to do business, plus I work in Europe and Asia regularly and my phone works fine there with my T-Mobile SIM (albeit pricey but it works fine).
...except it would be better if there was an equivalent tax slash, too.
The role of the government shouldn't be to fund every kind of research under the sun. All government organizations are inefficient, and jockey more for position and power than for results. If a government organization could obtain positive results, it would mean they couldn't ask for more money.
I'm a fan of getting the State out of science entirely -- let the market produce what the market has a demand for, not for pie-in-the-sky results that never seem to be worth the cost to taxpayers and the economy as a whole. While there are certainly cases where government research led to something positive for the average taxpayer, there are many more situations where that spending was negative for most, if not all.
I personally know so many college-educated Ph.Ds and all who are constantly trying to get grants so they don't have to go into the "real world" that it disgusts me. Some of the smartest graduates of my high-ranked high school fit this description, and it has gotten to the point that I don't even bother talking with them as all I'll hear is how the didn't get a certain grant or how they have to figure out a way to keep one for the next year or three.
...this is probably a positive step, in many ways. As the article shows, the previous software was terrible already. Military research and development may seem high tech and modern, but they are one of the most inefficient organizations imaginable -- tons of ancient embedded programs trying to integrate with one another. I can't imagine being a "new" programmer in the military and trying to comprehend what decades of previous programmers were trying to do, let alone keep it working.
Sure, there are many options out there -- Linux, continuing to use a proprietary OS, Windows, whatever. Yet with technology changing as fast as it does (even military hardware), it does make sense to use an operating system that has some base support for almost everything. In this case, it is Microsoft.
Does Windows crash often? For many users, I think the answer is yes. But in my experience, you can tailor a Windows installation to just the most basic requirements and it runs fairly well. I highly doubt that warships would be connecting to the public Internet with the users downloading any number of buggy apps to conflict with mission-critical applications. Since that is the case, there are a number of long term installations that I have familiarity with that have been running Win2K (and some WinXP) that have been running flawlessly for years for my client base. None of these installations are on a public IP, none of them allow end-user application installation, and all of them have been extremely rock solid AND easy to maintain when necessary. As the article shows, their main connection is a unidirectional 300 baud ship-to-shore link.
We're not talking about a machine running everything, just specific software for a specific purpose. Anything is a step in the right direction when you consider what a Luddite the military can be in terms of support applications versus the modern hardware they're running. Training new users on ancient system is very inefficient and dangerous (read the article on their ancient interface hardware!), giving them an interface they recognize makes sense from many angles, including safety. The interface to enable weapons firing won't rely just on Windows to approve or disapprove a launch -- there are always old-fashioned hard key-based turn-locks that override whatever the software does. If they want to launch a missile, the physical keys must be turned, and THEN the software must be approved. If there's a glitch after this hard-approval is turned, it can't be in grave error.
The bottom line is that I liked Win2K towards the end of its supported life. I had many customers who were unhappy about moving to Windows XP, and we still support numerous servers running Windows 2000 for mission critical (not THIS critical, though) applications that are running strong and haven't had to be restarted in over a year or longer (one customer hasn't rebooted their Win2K installation in 3 years). The software works, the API interface is known by most modern programmers, user interface is comfortable for almost everyone, and as long as you don't connect it to the public Internet or try to install a variety of conflicting/buggy applications, you're in good shape.
I think this option is better than Linux or F/OSS operating systems that would possibly require MORE training for their programmers and users to learn. My biggest frustration with F/OSS operating systems is that the user interface is counter-intuitive for a lot of Windows-friendly users, and even worse, trying to find an "old but stable" operating system is a mess as the F/OSS operating system support-base seems to be more focused on the latest stable builds rather than what mission-critical users would want: older software that has a longer history of running well for a given situation.
I used to run a brick and mortar chain of stores (skateboarding, paintball, etc) that went bankrupt due to tax incompetency on our part. But we learned some important lessons along with our suppliers -- even with the Internet quickly dismantling brick and mortar operations, we were a VERY important arm of the manufacturer's life because of our direct end-user support. As our local competitors fell to the online pricing, we were growing because we supported our customers (even for online purchases). In the video game world, it isn't as big of a deal, but the gaming industry still needs brick and mortar stores for more than just sales.
Our most important items were those that we had received to sell before the online merchants did -- at a decent margin (50-60% profit). It took about 2 years for the manufacturers to offer these "brick and mortar-only" products, but they helped us so much that it gave us reason to open additional stores.
I don't think you'll see tons of games go local-only, but those that do will help to keep the local stores open, and for the manufacturers this is a very important area to keep alive. I can't see the negatives, except that the more local-oriented family stores won't have that competitive edge, which is definitely a loss.
...isn't just the IRS -- it is the CPAs and tax accountants and "experts" who have waged war on the common man. Taxes do NOT have to be as complicated as they are, but when they are complicated, the tax preparers have a huge "monopoly" of fear over the average taxpayer -- or even the non-average taxpayer.
The tax experts surely want the IRS to inquire to eBay and Yahoo because that means more business for them. For me, my biggest tax preparer prepared filings were years that I had more than a few businesses. They make a bundle on business returns, which in my case always had to end up as $0 income (S corp). They were dozens of pages in length, and I was never able to really ascertain what forms I really needed myself. Each year, it changed.
I hate every CPA and tax accountant I've met. I tell them this. They are scum of the earth, to be thrown into the pit of fire with the taxmen and Congressional Representatives that let this happen. It happens on the "watch" of the Democrats, and it happens on the watch of Republicans. It would happen on the watch of Libertarians if the ever were elected.
I was going to reply to you point by point until I read your last line:
If we need any major internet change, it's nationalizing it. I don't see what's wrong with it right now other than some people crying they will not make enough money (like all companies), people stating that somehow it is making it hard for new companies to be started or people saying that there is a big dark technical problem looming over it waiting to kill us all. None of these are news.
Nationalizing it like the UK's health care, where they recently discovered that doctors were letting old people die rather than get treated because the doctors did better financially treating younger, healthier patients? No thanks. Nationalizing it like South American dictators are taking over their oil industries and watching the prices skyrockets? No thanks. Nationalizing it like the US did with education, quickly watching it spiral to one of the worst in the first world? How about nationalizing it like social security -- we had great private health care and private retirement programs until social security and the HMO Act of 73 quickly made it all federal. Let's nationalize, that's the solution!
People who want to make money do so because the save other people money and frustration. Profit only shows one thing: that you're doing for someone else something that they can't do as cheaply/quickly themselves. Profit is good, it allows for further investment. Nationalizing would destroy it.
If I'm offered 5Mits/s from my cable provider, that is an obligation for them to fill my order. If they can't fulfill my expectations, then they shouldn't have offered the service to begin with. If telco XYZ is getting bitten for overselling their lines that sure as hell isn't my problem as a consumer. What I do with my 5Mbits/s is my own business. I could use the internet to check my email (10kb), or surf the web a while (2MB), or download a YouTube video (200M?).
You're correct -- but they weren't offering 5MBits always (if you read your contract/service agreement). If you wanted 5Mbit guaranteed always, no-holds-barred, you should have asked to modify the contract. They might charge you quite a bit more, though:)
Why should my internet operator, the guys protected up the ass by common carrier protections dictate my internet surfing activities?
I personally am against common carrier protections, but it is tort law that is screwed up so much that the elite mercantilists wrote their own law to protect themselves. If tort made sense (from a free market perspective, let's say), then we wouldn't need common carrier protections.
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I own and run VIPMinistry.com, a church print co-operative. We used color laser printers for the first few months and they were slow and painful to watch. Then we discovered Xerox's Phaser LED printers -- basically a laser, but with a "full width" of LEDs spanning the width of the page. Now they crank out double-sided sheets about 6 times faster than single-sided sheets (full color). With just 4 of these printers, we have replaced 12 lasers, and likely could replace 24 of them. They're mega-fast.
Inkjet printers are still my favorite if not for the high cost of ink and the inability to work with a wide variety of paper. LEDs/Lasers are very maintenance heavy (drums, toner, a billion rollers, LED/Lasers over time, waste cartridges, etc, etc). I love the idea of a full-width printhead, though.
The biggest problem with inkjets is ink technology. I'd love to find a solvent-based printer or something closer to an Indigo. Instead of working on faster printers (which help business more than the home), I think they should be working on newer printhead+ink technology.
...respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.
That's an Amendment to the Constitution, better known as the First Amendment. The Constitution, folks, was written to restrict government's reach -- it was not written to protect our rights or to restict people.
Our Federal government has absolutely zero power to regulate the Internet. The Interstate Commerce Act has been stretched to give Congress power, but the Act was not intended to actually allow the government to regulate commerce but to prevent the Individual States from perverting commerce between them. Read the Federalist papers to see more on that debate.
We already have anti-porn powers in place -- it's called the Power of Parenting. No government official can legislate control over how a parent decides to introduce their children to various topics. I fear that heavy-handed moralists may decide that sites with breast-feeding or basic sex information might get censored along with bestiality sites. For me, neither matter since I don't have kids, but should I decide to, I want to regulate what my children can look at. I also want to regulate at what age they are free to start deciding for themselves what they want to look at.
I grew up in the early BBS days (1983 or so). My parents didn't regulate me at all. My BBS that I ran, starting in my pre-teens, ended up having a small porn download/sharing section. It was probably viewed by some youths, but the vast majority of visitors there were adults (we did telephone authorization to give people access). I don't recall spending more than a few minutes in that section myself, since I preferred the online forums and the chat area (we were multinode early). My parents both visited the BBS on a few occasions, and they never scolded me for any section. They did warn me to be careful not to break any laws, but in our household, their regulations were the only laws that I had to work to obey. I did obey, until I moved out, at which point I realized that a lot of what my friends' parents restricted them from were the very things they clung to when they reached a point of maturity. Forbidden fruits create many jams, I guess.
Let's keep government out of our households. Let's remember that the Constitution was written to prevent Federal government from going bonkers and destroying our ability to not just choose for ourselves, but also reap what we sow when we make mistakes (and when we work hard). Equalizing everyone's chances is what government tries to do, at the restriction of those outside the box who really can venture forth in success by working hard outside of the box. I don't like the box, and I don't want to be restricted to living there, even if you do.
Surely if the entire world have the indwelling Holy Spirit, then the fruit of the Spirit in everyone's life would be love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Think of how this would radically change the world.
I agree with part of what you're saying, but I don't agree that it is "all or nothing" in terms of fruit of the Spirit. I do believe that all men have the Holy Spirit within, but not all men care to listen (not even Christians, necessarily). When you listen to the guidance, surely you bear good fruit. I think you're sort of saying that "Every man planted tomato seeds, why don't we all have tomatoes?" That's because not everyone allows them to grow, and some ignore the seeds once they're planted and they wither and die.
Reality check: evil abounds on planet Earth. Look around you, this definitely ain't a New Heaven and a New Earth. Has God wiped away all our tears yet? Is there pain and suffering still? There is still alot of pain and tears in this world.
That's another great point. Evil does abound, but evil != sin. Sin merely means falling short of God's demands, and if Christ fulfilled all of God's demands for us, there are no demands to fall short of, hence there is no sin. We will have mortal desires because we don't have completely knowledge as God does. As to pain/suffering/tears, that reference in the New Testament refers to Psalm 116, which actually associated death with pain/suffering/tears. I believe there is no death (spiritual, that is), so we don't have to associate the pain/suffering/tears any more. I think from an English translation perspective it is a stretch, and to delve into the Hebrew/Greek deeper would occupy much more space than I have, but I will write an article about it in the near future -- it is definitely something I am comfortable continuing the debate on, but we have to dive a little deeper into WHY certain words were chosen. For me, much of the NT is eschatological in nature, which shows fulfillment of prophecy in the way that the previous prophecies were fulfilled -- same words, same terms, same imagery.
In your opinion, what is the Great White Throne judgement? Judgement Seat of Christ? The Second Death? When are/were these?
All happened in the past with the destruction of the Great Temple, the death of Nero and the great war. 63AD to 70AD (7 years).
You are saying everyone is now clean, but many "clean" people reject Christ's sacrafice! There is no longer a sacrafice for their sin it would seem. Therefore God's judgement is on them. How does your view handle this scripture?
I don't believe Christ died for our sins for MAN, He did it for the Father to reconcile man to God. God's judgment only occurs when we fall short of His expectations, but His expectations were fulfilled completely in the Life of Jesus, the Father's desire for blood for falling short was fulfilled by the Death of Jesus, the opening of the Holy Spirit for all men occurred after the Resurrection/Ascension, and I believe that the vanquishing of Sin occurred at the second coming.
Please help me understand this. If the preterist "church" is considered to be the entire body of humanity (including unrepentant rapists, murderers, adulterers, satanists, atheists, etc), if that be the case, then God has a very messed up family. And the violence, perversion and hate is getting worse every day! His body would be getting more corrupt every day it would seem. So are these people all automatically welcomed with open arms into heaven upon their departure from the earth, regardless of the decisions that they have made? Even those who reject/hate God?
Yes. Why? God is a loving God. Jesus Christ did not come to earth to die for men, He did it for the Father -- to reconcile the Father's loved children and creation to be stewards of His earth, not to be judged or penalized for their shortcomings.
Regarding the 70AD completiong of God's programme, in Matthew 28, Jesus states that when the gospel is preached to all nations, then will the end come. This was not the case by AD70 ( although some claim that representatives of each nation were present in Jerusalem at penticost). In reality, there are still many unreached people groups and cultures where the gospel has never been heard. What use is there in preaching the "good news" if all people are already saved and nothing they can do affects their eternity?
Your Bible, unfortunately, is wrong. Scofield and Moody in the late 19th century really did a number on the Church in order to try to push the Evangelical ideology into the mainstream. The New Testament supposedly says that Christ would not return until the Gospel was preached to all the nations, but "nations" did not mean the entire Earth. The Hebrew and Greek text supports the definition there of "all of Rome" or "all of the Roman Empire" where the Gospel SURELY was preached in entirety.
There is no need to preach the Good News, in fact I believe that the great commission is over.
Many of the biblical prophecies have their fulfillment in 2 different time periods, especially those in the Old Testament that supposedly combine Christ's death and Kingly reign. Isn't Jesus meant to setup his Kingly throne for a time in Jerusalem? Seen Jerusalem lately?
No. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that Christ will reign (especially not for 1000 years). All it says is that the faithful and righteous BEFORE the second coming will reign WITH Christ. How they will reign, and specifically where, is unknown.
Jesus' own disciples didn't really believe that He would die, even though He told them plainly. They probably expected Him to take His throne in the physical sense. The OT prophecies would seem to imply this. Perhaps many of the prophecies that were fulfilled in 70AD actually and have their fulfillment in multiple time periods as well.
I fully believe that. I laugh a little in my heart when Christians tell me that Christ surely couldn't have returned already because look at the world. But I remind them that Jews today refuse to believe that the Messiah came 2000 years ago because THEIR interpretation of prophecy was not fulfilled -- just like the mainstream Christian refuses to believe that we live without sin today.
Actually, the common term is preterism, and there is a huge following of Christians who espouse at least a partial-preterist perspective. MOST preterists don't go to a "church" though because we believe that the Church is the entire body of humanity -- those who believe in Christ or not.
Mainstream Evangelical Christians believe preterism is heresy and damnable, as do Catholics and most of the Protestant movement. The biggest problem with preterism for the dispensational Christian is that what it espouses conflicts with the idea of building up the "church" they attend, plus preterists don't believe in the mainstream Christian profession for human laws, spreading the gospel, and the rest.
Hit me up with an e-mail and I can give you some of my links, including my own sites on the matter.
There used to be a section in all of the stores with "cheap" cables... the equivalent of radio shack generics.
That section exists, but it is online only! Talk about frustrating:
14 foot patch cable, pick-up, $34.99
14 foot patch cable, delivery-only, $6.00
Okay, so that's a travesty, but it still underlines the point that putting in your time is part of the game.
I'm not sure it's a travesty (I love Bad Religion but I think Green Day does a better job interacting with fans, and they've always been that way), but I agree 100%.
If you want to make money as a band, stop pretending you're "just an artist trying to be heard." Anything you do for income must be entered in with a business perspective. If you want to be broke performing, that is easy to do. If you want to pay the bills and live off of performing, you have to understand that you are now in the market of entertaining others, and this requires investing the time it takes for people to know that you will always be there for THEIR needs (entertainment), so they will support YOUR needs (financial).
Arooo? Best Buy sells Computers, CDs, TVs, and major appliances. CompUSA sells computer gear, and a smattering of TVs and PVRs. If anything, CompUSA's inventory goes deeper, but certainly not wider.
:)
Good catch, bad wording on my part. I intended to mean wider inventory of IT/PC based products
Thanks for the catch and clarification.
Exactly! The cost to manufacture a nice CD, sticker and a T-shirt for a band is around $8 in low quantity. The fan is usually willing to pay up to $25-$30 for the merch. Sell 20 sets a show and do 90 shows a year is about $30k in profit -- not including door entry share, beer share or up front money from promoters. It isn't great money, but it is decent enough to do what you love doing in one of the MOST competitive markets in the US. I know quite a few "professional" touring bands that share 6-figures a year between their 4/5 band members, but they're touring constantly -- and they love doing it.
Disclosure: I worked for CompUSA about 18 years ago during a court-mandated stint forcing me to have a "real" job. It was a 6 month stint at which time I was the top performing sales person month after month, even though I was only 16. I learned a lot of corporate retail problems, which continue to this day.
I have 2 CompUSAs in my area, close to clients that my company still maintains. They're both depressing -- too many workers, but no one with knowledge. I hear a lot of lies, get pushed on extended warranties that don't work, and have to deal with waiting and waiting when I need to find something that their website shows as in-stock. The company is inept because the company is trying to compete in the wrong market.
I honestly see a lot of retail collapsing because the time is getting close that the manufacturers can sell products cheaper, and at a higher profit for themselves, directly or through direct-partners. I can't imagine a Luddite like my father trying to buy something at CompUSA when the typical sales person there is no different than Best Buy's brilliant teen workers. But that's the end problem: CompUSA is still trying to be a consumer store rather than business-oriented.
CompUSA has a much wider inventory than Best Buy or Circuit City, but they obviously can't compete with those power houses who have more stores and also have a lot of value-added items they can sell to make up for what they don't make on popular laptops and LCD monitors. Yet the typical business that I deal with still prefers solid advice over bottom-line price. Consumers want it cheap, and they tend not to have long-term relationships with a particular sales person or a store. CompUSA dropped the ball when they started to lose to CDW and MacWarehouse -- the corporate clients of mine haven't used CompUSA in years because of their change from business-focused to consumer-oriented and cheap.
Even on price CompUSA doesn't compete -- often times when I need something I am shocked at the prices. Sure, we're all familiar with the $6-USB-cable-that-sells-for-$39, but even basics such as a stand IEC power cord are overpriced. Their selection is decent, but they are trying to compete in a market that they can not penetrate, especially with Amazon and eBay destroying the price competitiveness of the big box PC store.
This is a good thing for CompUSA, but I don't see them lasting. Every CompUSA near me has both Best Buy and Circuit City nearby, and I admit that I've had more intelligent sales staff at the big box store than at CompUSA. If they want to save their business, they have to focus on local businesses rather than trying to be the answer man for people who want cheap prices and sales. Without the business customer (who tends to accept a higher cost in exchange for GOOD advice and support), their business is heading to the toilet.
Twenty paying shows a month? You're absolutely extraordinary.
I don't book shows -- they have someone who handles that in exchange for a cut of merch sales. She handles dozens of bands, and she gets them shows constantly. I can't think of one band I work with that can't get 10+ shows a month by hiring a booking agent, even small bands.
She spent the days making phone calls to venues who generally never called back. The band I worked for was extraordinarily talented (download some of their music for free here). They quit their day jobs for over two years. They toured up and down the East coast and as far as Detroit. They had a devoted but small audience.
She didn't follow through well with her contacts. Venues want to see warm bodies buying beer, if you send bands to them that don't attract even a small crowd, they won't call you back ever. The best way to get a band out there is to get them involved with show promoters (we have www.mpshows.com in Chicago) and get them opening for small bands. A lot of bands don't want to invest the 1-2 years it takes opening up for bands that they think are worse than them. I know, I watch bands all the time give up because they won't move forward with the risk. Many people invest 4-8 years in college to further their career; a band needs to invest 1-2 years of even more work, and they don't have to pay as much as college costs.
If they could have booked 20 paying gigs a month, they'd still be in existence. Most venues want cover bands, not original music. The venues have the power and so they get to treat me rudely. I bow before your superior nagging-people-on-the-phone skills.
I have never heard of a venue that wants cover bands over original music. The indie pop scene is huge right now, I just went to an indie show last night in Chicago for 4 bands that I've never heard of, and they were all excellent and the crowd was thick. Cover was $7, but all 4 bands sold a ton of merch to people who liked their sound -- and I think I heard one cover song the entire night. I go to 2-3 shows per week in the Spring and Summer, and I have yet to visit one venue in Chicagoland, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and the Bronx that had cover bands. Most of the bands I talk to fail because they refuse to invest the time it takes to get notoriety.
(It's because of that that the "Hey, give the music away and make it up at the live shows" argument on Slashdot makes me furious. But if you've got the secret for booking venues, please let me know and I'll retract everything I've said about it.)
Plan on investing as much time honing your writing and performing skills -- make it like a future career. You go to college for 4 years and spend up to $100,000 learning a trade or a skill, why should a lifetime of performing be any different?
One thing, though: there are a LOT of bands that just don't have it -- just like there are programmers or CAD operators or lawyers who don't have it. It is easier to pick up a guitar and a mic and find 3 friends and call yourself a band than it is to become a lawyer, so of course there is a higher drop out rate. Yet I still see venues dark 3+ nights a week for a lack of bands committed to playing and bringing in warm bodies.
As a very very small music producer (basically, I give bands money to record or tour, and I hope to recoup some of that investment in the future), I work very hard to get the bands I finance to repudiate not just DRM but copyright in general. Small bands have no real reason for either -- recording music is just a marketing process to try to get people to come to your shows. Sure, without copyright, some big producer might steal your lyrics and music and have the newest pop boy band re-record it, but this too would just be a great marketing tactic -- the Internet would jump all over it.
Small bands need to give their recorded music away freely online in order to get more people to come to their shows. My brother's band Maps & Atlases just went on a 7 day tour to the East Coast and ended up in a tiny university town called East Stroudsburg, PA. Instead of showing up to no crowd, the venue was packed -- a rarity for the town and venue. Why did this happen? Maps & Atlases released their EP for free online. They sold out of their first EP (2000 copies) during their 2006 tour, and they're coming up fast on selling out their second pressing, even though the music is easily downloaded online. Why do fans pay for albums? They get face time with the band, they get autographs, and they know that buying the merch direct will keep the band writing and touring.
DRM is terrible for any band but the absolute largest, and even for them it is bad because the new fan base wants to have nothing to do with it. I look at it this way: DRM for the adult contemporary crowd just makes life harder for them, DRM for the teen crowd is easily bypassed. But it isn't just DRM that makes things difficult, it is also the fact that copyright really throws fan distribution a curve -- even the fans who openly distribute the music know it is "piracy" but they feel they're helping the band.
I look at the Internet as one big radio station waiting to be harnessed by smaller musicians all over the world. Write music with one purpose: to attract fans to your live shows where you can make your income by continuing to work, rather than hoping to write one hit once and earn royalties for the rest of your life. Who here works a regular job and wishes that they could work a few months in exchange for years of income? Life doesn't work that way -- unless you work with the distribution cartels that are quickly watching their futures slip through their fingers. If you're in a band, tell your fans to copy your music for their friends in hopes that those friends will become the new fans. Viral marketing is key to making a solid income in live music.
Sidenote: If you're in a band and you disagree with me on making a living, it is because you're trying to keep a "steady job" while also trying to tour. You can't do both. My brother's bandmates all quit their jobs (some of them have master's degrees!) to handle a tour schedule that includes typically 20 shows a month. Stop whining and dig in.
I have customers who have asked us to do this, and we usually work to talk them out of it. As an employer myself, I have no problem with my employees "wasting time" on occasion, as long as their work is getting finished on time, and they're meeting their deadlines. Work takes more of our time than ever, so there is no reason why people can't take a recess for 5 minutes out of the hour to do personal things.
Nonetheless, the best solution that I came up with (I don't think I "invented" this, but I did come up with it after many days of contemplating) was to have a revolving DNS change for those 20 MySpace Class C addresses. We made it intermittent enough that the employees "thought" it was MySpace downtime, and eventually usage dropped significantly. Every 5-10 minutes a CRON job would add its own random address for one of the MySpace addresses, then 5 minutes later it cleared that and then did it to another address.
The only guy that I am aware of that noticed it is the guy who ran his own DNS on his workstation, but he was geeky enough to probably realize that it wasn't MySpace that wasn't resolving.
I still think that it is wiser to discuss WHY employees might be needing some downtime versus locking them out of applications. Happy employees are efficient, productive and fun to work with. I would never block my employees access to any sites (then again, I would never drug test, delve into their private lives, run a credit report, or any of the usual steps employers take).
Absolutely. There is a lot of Truth there regardless of whether or not you believe it is the Word of God, God-inspired, a historical account of a really cool dude, or just some fictional thoughts. The biggest problem with Christianity are Christians, to paraphrase Gandhi.
"One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess and distribute it to the poor"
:)
Actually, I did something similar to this about 18 months ago -- I did sell almost everything I possessed and distributed all of the extra to a variety of charities in my area, and invested in a charity of my own. E-mail me for details.
That being said, I believe the Kingdom message was focused on the Early Church, prior to His second coming which I believed happened in 70 AD, ending the Age/the Covenant of Abraham and David. With that ending of the Covenant came the end to the Commandments and the Law.
It doesn't undo what Christ said about the basics of living, rather than the Kingdom perspective -- in my opinion two totally separate things.
I also don't believe in having to do anything to get to heaven, whatever heaven may be -- not works, not faith, not action or follow-through.
My beliefs in my faith leave no room for denominations or an unlimited variety of faiths -- to me, the Body is the Body, regardless of how they want to segregate themselves from others, or what they believe.
...I look at Jesus' words and actions as significant and the previous story before Him and insignificant in terms of how we live. In my opinion, when Jesus said "Judge not others" He meant it.
Christians who judge others haven't read their Bibles. It is time to move forth, Christians, read your Bibles, and get out of people's lives, especially the lives of non-Christians.
Embarassing, to say the least.
This is FUD. T-Mobile branded phones NEVER supported Google Maps or Gmail for Mobile. Just buy a non-T-Mobile branded phone (unlocked of course) and all the apps work fine.
I have an HTC Trinity P3600 and I use GOogle Maps (with GPS!), Gmail for Mobile, and Skype and it works flawlessly.
Slashdot editors don't understand the difference between a T-Mobile branded phone and a real unencumbered phone.
I use an HTC Trinity P3600 and this will NOT affect me. I also tether my laptop to my P3600 (bluetooth or USB) and I will also not be limited.
This is ONLY if you use T-Mobile branded phones. I called my customer retention agent and she confirmed over and over that this will NOT affect third party bought phones, which is the only way to play unless you want to try to buy an outdated phone of T-Mobiles at a discount price.
FUD, FUD, FUD. I love my T-Mobile phone and I travel to 13 states to do business, plus I work in Europe and Asia regularly and my phone works fine there with my T-Mobile SIM (albeit pricey but it works fine).
...except it would be better if there was an equivalent tax slash, too.
The role of the government shouldn't be to fund every kind of research under the sun. All government organizations are inefficient, and jockey more for position and power than for results. If a government organization could obtain positive results, it would mean they couldn't ask for more money.
I'm a fan of getting the State out of science entirely -- let the market produce what the market has a demand for, not for pie-in-the-sky results that never seem to be worth the cost to taxpayers and the economy as a whole. While there are certainly cases where government research led to something positive for the average taxpayer, there are many more situations where that spending was negative for most, if not all.
I personally know so many college-educated Ph.Ds and all who are constantly trying to get grants so they don't have to go into the "real world" that it disgusts me. Some of the smartest graduates of my high-ranked high school fit this description, and it has gotten to the point that I don't even bother talking with them as all I'll hear is how the didn't get a certain grant or how they have to figure out a way to keep one for the next year or three.
...this is probably a positive step, in many ways. As the article shows, the previous software was terrible already. Military research and development may seem high tech and modern, but they are one of the most inefficient organizations imaginable -- tons of ancient embedded programs trying to integrate with one another. I can't imagine being a "new" programmer in the military and trying to comprehend what decades of previous programmers were trying to do, let alone keep it working.
Sure, there are many options out there -- Linux, continuing to use a proprietary OS, Windows, whatever. Yet with technology changing as fast as it does (even military hardware), it does make sense to use an operating system that has some base support for almost everything. In this case, it is Microsoft.
Does Windows crash often? For many users, I think the answer is yes. But in my experience, you can tailor a Windows installation to just the most basic requirements and it runs fairly well. I highly doubt that warships would be connecting to the public Internet with the users downloading any number of buggy apps to conflict with mission-critical applications. Since that is the case, there are a number of long term installations that I have familiarity with that have been running Win2K (and some WinXP) that have been running flawlessly for years for my client base. None of these installations are on a public IP, none of them allow end-user application installation, and all of them have been extremely rock solid AND easy to maintain when necessary. As the article shows, their main connection is a unidirectional 300 baud ship-to-shore link.
We're not talking about a machine running everything, just specific software for a specific purpose. Anything is a step in the right direction when you consider what a Luddite the military can be in terms of support applications versus the modern hardware they're running. Training new users on ancient system is very inefficient and dangerous (read the article on their ancient interface hardware!), giving them an interface they recognize makes sense from many angles, including safety. The interface to enable weapons firing won't rely just on Windows to approve or disapprove a launch -- there are always old-fashioned hard key-based turn-locks that override whatever the software does. If they want to launch a missile, the physical keys must be turned, and THEN the software must be approved. If there's a glitch after this hard-approval is turned, it can't be in grave error.
The bottom line is that I liked Win2K towards the end of its supported life. I had many customers who were unhappy about moving to Windows XP, and we still support numerous servers running Windows 2000 for mission critical (not THIS critical, though) applications that are running strong and haven't had to be restarted in over a year or longer (one customer hasn't rebooted their Win2K installation in 3 years). The software works, the API interface is known by most modern programmers, user interface is comfortable for almost everyone, and as long as you don't connect it to the public Internet or try to install a variety of conflicting/buggy applications, you're in good shape.
I think this option is better than Linux or F/OSS operating systems that would possibly require MORE training for their programmers and users to learn. My biggest frustration with F/OSS operating systems is that the user interface is counter-intuitive for a lot of Windows-friendly users, and even worse, trying to find an "old but stable" operating system is a mess as the F/OSS operating system support-base seems to be more focused on the latest stable builds rather than what mission-critical users would want: older software that has a longer history of running well for a given situation.
I used to run a brick and mortar chain of stores (skateboarding, paintball, etc) that went bankrupt due to tax incompetency on our part. But we learned some important lessons along with our suppliers -- even with the Internet quickly dismantling brick and mortar operations, we were a VERY important arm of the manufacturer's life because of our direct end-user support. As our local competitors fell to the online pricing, we were growing because we supported our customers (even for online purchases). In the video game world, it isn't as big of a deal, but the gaming industry still needs brick and mortar stores for more than just sales.
Our most important items were those that we had received to sell before the online merchants did -- at a decent margin (50-60% profit). It took about 2 years for the manufacturers to offer these "brick and mortar-only" products, but they helped us so much that it gave us reason to open additional stores.
I don't think you'll see tons of games go local-only, but those that do will help to keep the local stores open, and for the manufacturers this is a very important area to keep alive. I can't see the negatives, except that the more local-oriented family stores won't have that competitive edge, which is definitely a loss.
...isn't just the IRS -- it is the CPAs and tax accountants and "experts" who have waged war on the common man. Taxes do NOT have to be as complicated as they are, but when they are complicated, the tax preparers have a huge "monopoly" of fear over the average taxpayer -- or even the non-average taxpayer.
The tax experts surely want the IRS to inquire to eBay and Yahoo because that means more business for them. For me, my biggest tax preparer prepared filings were years that I had more than a few businesses. They make a bundle on business returns, which in my case always had to end up as $0 income (S corp). They were dozens of pages in length, and I was never able to really ascertain what forms I really needed myself. Each year, it changed.
I hate every CPA and tax accountant I've met. I tell them this. They are scum of the earth, to be thrown into the pit of fire with the taxmen and Congressional Representatives that let this happen. It happens on the "watch" of the Democrats, and it happens on the watch of Republicans. It would happen on the watch of Libertarians if the ever were elected.
I was going to reply to you point by point until I read your last line:
If we need any major internet change, it's nationalizing it. I don't see what's wrong with it right now other than some people crying they will not make enough money (like all companies), people stating that somehow it is making it hard for new companies to be started or people saying that there is a big dark technical problem looming over it waiting to kill us all. None of these are news.
Nationalizing it like the UK's health care, where they recently discovered that doctors were letting old people die rather than get treated because the doctors did better financially treating younger, healthier patients? No thanks. Nationalizing it like South American dictators are taking over their oil industries and watching the prices skyrockets? No thanks. Nationalizing it like the US did with education, quickly watching it spiral to one of the worst in the first world? How about nationalizing it like social security -- we had great private health care and private retirement programs until social security and the HMO Act of 73 quickly made it all federal. Let's nationalize, that's the solution!
People who want to make money do so because the save other people money and frustration. Profit only shows one thing: that you're doing for someone else something that they can't do as cheaply/quickly themselves. Profit is good, it allows for further investment. Nationalizing would destroy it.
If I'm offered 5Mits/s from my cable provider, that is an obligation for them to fill my order. If they can't fulfill my expectations, then they shouldn't have offered the service to begin with. If telco XYZ is getting bitten for overselling their lines that sure as hell isn't my problem as a consumer. What I do with my 5Mbits/s is my own business. I could use the internet to check my email (10kb), or surf the web a while (2MB), or download a YouTube video (200M?).
You're correct -- but they weren't offering 5MBits always (if you read your contract/service agreement). If you wanted 5Mbit guaranteed always, no-holds-barred, you should have asked to modify the contract. They might charge you quite a bit more, though
Why should my internet operator, the guys protected up the ass by common carrier protections dictate my internet surfing activities?
I personally am against common carrier protections, but it is tort law that is screwed up so much that the elite mercantilists wrote their own law to protect themselves. If tort made sense (from a free market perspective, let's say), then we wouldn't need common carrier protections.