If you think either political party is particularly concerned with your American Dream, you're dreaming.
Replace "socialist" with "corporate" and you just described the other party, by the way.
And that's my point. As simple as putting the shoe on the other foot, which no one ever wants to do these days.
She's screwed. She's using her personal address to ask if here blackberry account can't be subponea'd.
Or she's trying to make sure that her lovey-dovey notes to hubby don't get plastered all over the news media when the Obama-ites on the "impartial" committee "investigating" troopergate subpoena everything then leak it all to the press. I had similar questions at a job I once worked at. I sent a similar message from a home email to one of the partners of the firm, who happened to be a lawyer. I was not planning to do anything illegal, but I did want to make sure that if anything ever happened, my personal and private emails would not be grabbed. When he told me it was a possibility I began using PGP to encrypt anything really personal and private.
I think that it's far more possible the democrats, wanting to make a mountain out of this molehill, are pushing this big time. It will backfire I do believe, since the same hacked email account doesn't appear to actually have any real business work. Of course, that doesn't matter to people that want to believe the worst of someone. A hacked Obama account without any emails to Ayers or Rezko wouldn't stop me from believing the he had regular email contact with known terrorists and criminals. But at least I recognize that I feel that way because of my own predisposition to dislike socialist elitists who want to keep me from ever experiencing the American Dream that they have gotten to live.
So you believe everything in the Wash Post? Well, the National Enquirer says Elvis was spotted in a KFC in Alabama! I'd better believe that too! Believe 1/2 of what you hear and 1/8th of what you read. And always remember that these days so called "impartial" reporters are anything but. And that goes for both sides of the spectrum.
Cable TV (TimeWarner Digital, no premium channels, no PPV, 1 DVR box) $60.90/mo.
That's 60.90*12*4=$2923.20 for 4 years. And I actually probably really WATCH that TV much less than I actually log in and play Warcraft. I have the TV on all the time, but I'm usually ignoring it or using it for background noise while I do something else. When I play warcraft, that's ALL I'm doing. So $800 for 4 years of actually using a game and being entertained as opposed to $3000 for 4 years of half ignoring something. Not a bad deal after all.
To compare either party to its 100 yr old counterpart is ludicrous. Forgot to mention though. I'm not comparing the party of 100 years ago. The KKK Exalted Cyclops is TODAY 3rd in line. Not 100 years ago. Today in 2008. Are you really sure the leopards spots have changed that much?
And here it seems to be the opposite. When I talk about the possibility of a black president, more republicans seem to be open to that (depending of course on the black person!) than Democrats. Here it seems to be Hillary Uber Alles.
Can we please get over this myth that civil rights and gun control go together? Gun control was started as a racist measure by the Democratic party, led by the KKK wing of the Democrat party as a method of stopping former slaves from getting their hands on weapons. Civil rights was actually pushed by the Republican party overwhelmingly. Here's a funny thing. The Democrats, who created and controlled the KKK, and which is the only political party to have a sitting Senator who was an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, loves to call Republicans members of the KKK. Oh, and that former KKK member is 3rd in line of succession to the Presidency of the United States. KKK does not equal NRA, KKK=DNC. For more information click here and here.
Why do I have to *need* a gun? Would you ask why I *need* a printing press? Well, a gun is a tool for efficiently killing people, so yeah...
And a printing press is a tool for efficiently killing the truth... Banning guns does not stop the violence and never will. Prohibition does not work. Didn't we learn this back in the 20s? Criminals will ALWAYS get their hands on what they want/need. We can't stop cocaine, heroin and other drugs from flooding the country over our borders, but you think we'll be able to stop the Mexican gangs from bringing in gun? Hell, where I live there is actually a bar called "Rumrunners" which is on the place on the wharf where the illegal booze used to come in from Canada on small boats. Think we can stop every small boat from Canada?
No one in the US is allowed to sell fully automatic weapons. That has been the law for decades, and yet criminals still manage to get ahold of them. Do you think they're growing them in their back yard?
I feel relieved that I have access to a firearm to protect myself and/or others. I may not feel it necessary to carry while roaming the streets of the small town that I live in, but I carry when traveling within the state in case of car trouble or other problems. And when I go to a larger city, you can bet I carry my sidearm for personal protection.
Just because liberals tend to believe they and their friends are too stupid to be able to protect themselves does NOT mean that the rest of us are that stupid too.
But... But... But... The GLOWBULL WORMENING! We can't have all that heat producing equipment near the arctic! THINK OF THE POLAR BEARS! We MUST STOP this TRAGIC interference with the Arctic ice sheet! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!!!
Scary part is some asshat will probably actually think that's a legitimate argument.
Norway also has one of the highest GDP's in the world thanks to a large amount of oil being shipped from their North Sea platforms. Most of those oil companies send a whole lot of money directly to the government. One of the reasons the price of oil is so high today is that the US is subsidizing things like broadband rollout and health care in places like Norway through buying their oil. Don't believe me? Look into tobacco. The real reason it isn't outlawed is simply that the government would collapse if it did not have the revenue stream generated by the purchase of cigarettes.
Raise our GDP by 50-100%, and I'll bet we'd see a bit more penetration. Everyone in the world stop buying oil from Norway, and see how long they stay at the top of stuff like this.
You also have to deal with the fact that in the US, especially in the Midwest, there are sections of land the size of Norway that have less people living in them than Norway does! And if you think it's so cheap to run fiber, think again. There is a lot of money involved, and that takes time. If you want true comparisons, compare something like the state of Texas to Norway, not the whole US. Something comparable in size, if not population. Comparing a country the size of the US to something the size of Norway is disingenuous in the least. Compare us to the Russian Federation and what do you get? Or how about the whole European Union? I'd be more interested to see those kind of figures honestly.
What is the point of DRM-free tracks if you still have to go to a retail store to buy them?
Simple... By offering this they can then say, "See! We offered what they wanted, DRM free music, at no more than the cost of the CD, and they wouldn't buy it!"
I think their real thought pattern is:
No one will buy it
People will steal the music through file sharing
People will continue to rip CD's
Therefore, people are crooks and we need DRM to keep them from stealing from us.
They will then use this Edsel of a DRM-free music setup to try to get more laws passed forcing DRM onto CD players, computers, and other hardware. It's a straw man that they are setting up to convince the US government that we're all crooks. Of course, they never seem to grasp that locks are there to keep honest people honest. Any good thief will figure out a way around the locks on a house or safe, or around the DRM crap they want to push so hard. All it does is make it harder to do. The only issue they don't understand is that unlike the locks on my house, each person that wants to rob me has to break down the door. With DRM, once it's broken, it can be copied and "stolen" a million times. And will be as long as the pricing is so far out of line with what their customers are willing to pay.
Hmm... Why do I watch anime? That's a good question. Several reasons that I can think of off the top of my head are:
1) It's not the standard US crap that's all pointed at the lowest common denominator. Most US shows are so blatantly dumbed down that it's absolutely pathetic. Anything that strikes of being intelligent (and isn't a medical or criminal drama) usually ends up taken off the air in a season.
2) It gives a different perspective on life sometimes. The characters are of course larger than life and more extreme than reality usually is, but some of the differences in how Asians and Westerners perceive life is fascinating.
3) Anime doesn't need a $100 million dollar budget to put out a good solid high quality show.
4) Good anime is timeless. Just borrowed some old 80s anime from a friend, and it's just as irrelevant today as it was then. Still fun to watch though.
5) I don't have to put up with some annoying fluff head that thinks their opinion suddenly matters because they play a character on TV.
6) I don't have to put up with laugh tracks.
7) Voice actors on anime don't get paid a million dollars an episode like some American "actors."
9) Different mythos and cultures can really make a show interesting to me even if I think the premise is kind of dumb.
10) Did I mention no fluff headed "actors" that couldn't make me believe they were on fire if I doused them with gasoline and put a match to them myself?
I tend to like the longer story arc anime, although a few of the shorter works are just as interesting. Cowboy Bebop was one of my favorites. I wrote bail for 2 years, and sometime the characters just reminded me of people I knew in the industry. Hikaru no Go was an interesting series as well, since it showed a glimpse into what it's like to be a Go player in Japan. I don't usually like the "Big F**king Robot" anime, although I do have a few exceptions to that rule (Armitage, Bubblegum, GunBuster). And although Naruto is a secret (well, not anymore) vice of mine I'm not really a big fan of the "Ninja" crap. What I mostly like about anime though is that the characters actually tend to develop as the series continues, unlike the cardboard cutout US characters. Most of the time it really doesn't matter to me what the setting is, as long as I can find the characters compelling.
A better question though might be: Why do people continue to watch the crap that American companies have continued to foist off on the world as "art?" Like "Survivor." After the first couple of episodes, I kept hoping they'd drop a nuke on them to give the bastards something to survive. Or "Lost." I figured out why they didn't get rescued. No one gave a flying fsck if they ever got off the damn island. "Dresden Files" I liked, but of course SCIFI killed it so they could have more wrestling (True, it's fiction, but is there REALLY any Science in pro wrestling?). I have 200 channels and I usually end up on Cartoon Network, TBS, Nick at Night, Discovery Channel, or the History channel.
True. However no COMMERCIAL nuclear reactor designed to produce power as it's major product has ever been built in the US that was as dangerous as Chernobyl. Hanford, if I recall correctly, was designed to produce plutonium and tritium, not to produce power, right?
OK, you're almost there. The point on this is that "safe" has very different meanings for different people. I do not think that the government has a right to force filters and restrictions into place. I personally believe in turn the channel or turn it off. I don't believe in society dumbing down the outside world just so that children can run free. Put the kids to bed, have PARENTAL restrictions on what they can and cannot do. Don't rely on the government to fix it.
I do not disapprove of privacy. I disapprove of people with children forcing what I want or enjoy underground because their precious Johnny or Susie may see it or do it. If people have a problem with things like Porn on the internet, smoking, drinking, etc. and don't want their children to see or do it, TAKE care of it as a parent. Do NOT force the rest of the world to conform to what you want. That's what pisses me off about the nanny state.
Really? I always thought that the simplest solution was "Let the state take care of it." Instead of being responsible for my child's safety by teaching them I need to have someone pass a LAW! Having no computer in the bedroom is no worse than saying they can't have a TV or a telephone in their rooms. Sure, today that's considered child abuse, but when we were growing up it was not only normal, it was considered good parenting! And yet my mother didn't have to panic when I spent the night at a friends house that I might do something "wrong." Or panic if I was 20 minutes late showing up from a movie. She knew that she had taught me how to be safe. That was all that was needed.
A computer is not a diary or a journal. A computer is a portal to the world, just like a TV or a telephone. If you treat it like a diary pretty soon you'll see that the child will to, and next thing you know everything about the child will be online where a predator can access it.
BTW: Do you support making the Canadian government stopping CityTV from Toronto from playing Baby Blue? After all, if your child has a TV in their bedroom, they could watch this pornographic smut. If you support making the internet "safe" for a 7 year old, shouldn't you first make TV safe? Say goodbye to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, or anyplace else that may show a little skin. If I have to make sure MY internet is safe for your 7 year old under penalty of law, shouldn't YOU have to make your TV safe for MY 7 year old?
I also walked around unsupervised, but I had rules I had to follow. I could not go past a certain street, or walk after a certain hour. That's why it was safe. Now the kids have no rules. It's become decided UNSAFE due to this.
The death camps haven't showed up yet, but that is because they have not yet found their "True Leader" The Communists were around far before Stalin, the Socialist party in Germany was around long before Hitler. "Socialism" in theory is a wonderful thing. In reality it just ends up as a way for a small group of elite citizens to control the lower classes of the country. When the lower classes get too populous or too strong, then there is a flip, with a small group of the lower classes in charge. This tends to lead to purges and the like. No matter what system you use, human nature is that some will lead and some will follow.
What have the socialist reforms brought Europe? A population that has some of the lowest productivity in the civilized world. Record high unemployment. Rationing of health care because the state cannot afford to give everything to everyone. Rules that give certain groups more or less rights depending on their perceived class. You see it now with Muslim's being given preferential treatment in their style of life, while Christians and Jews are demonized to wanting their own style of life to be given equal weight.
Why does a prime minister get paid more than someone on the dole? Why does a judge make more money than a peasant? How is this fair? Because the group that is in power has decided exactly how much is fair. There comes a reckoning point in which the structure tumbles. When the extreme Muslim population grows enough that in an apathetic voting year they manage to put a majority of hard line Muslim politicians in France or Spain, see what happens. When Sharia is the law of the land in Europe, see how long it takes for the mass murders to begin. It won't take long.
Once you start taking things away from people in the name of society, you place society above the people. It's a short road from there to death camps. Ask a simple question: When is it acceptable for the State to take an action that is unacceptable for the people of the State? Can my pastor come to my door with a gun and demand that I give him money for his charity? No. But the State has every right to do so in a Socialist world. Can I kill or imprison my neighbor because I disagree with his lifestyle? The State can. And note that this goes for EVERY type of human society, be it democracy, totalitarian, communist, socialist, monarchist, etc. It's always fine when you're the one in charge, but when you aren't any more, boy does that change the perception. Just ask the peasants that put Stalin in power. Or Mao for that matter. Or Pol Pot.
After posting, I realized that some people may feel I'm directing these rants at the parent poster. I'm not. His question was answered in the first paragraph. The rest was just venting my spleen on people that like to call themselves moderates, yet prove on a regular basis that they are not. Or on people that can't step aside from their personal feelings when placing articles or comments into categories. I don't mod down a post talking about Al Gore just because I believe that Global Warming is junk science. Nor if I were the editor would I place it under the tag of "Science Fiction" even if I believe it belongs there. Editors are supposed to leave their personal feelings at the door. If they can't be impartial they should leave the job and look for something else. Maybe be a paid mouthpiece for someones campaign.
So when someone posts an article about "Parents of troop protest Bush." and someone files it under "Whiners, whining, etc..." you think no one here would get mad? "Support the Troops, end the war!" "Support the Protesters, End the PROTEST!" I think Heinlein once wrote that the best way to tell if a deal was honest was to turn it around and see how you still felt about it. That's the problem with these types of issues. People don't turn it around.
One congressman flirts with a page, but doesn't do anything illegal. He resigns because his own party refuses to support him due to his actions. Technically nothing wrong done, morally a really questionable act. A sitting president does an intern in the oval office, his party (including his wife, who should have had the backbone to file for divorce that day!) stands up for him and refuses to punish him for his actions. If the president of my company got caught dipping his pen in the company ink, you can guarantee he'd be crucified by the women's movement the same day. And probably fired the next. But it's a different rule if you're a Democratic "leader."
I'll be honest here. I would be about 100% more likely to vote for Hillary in 2008 if she would have had the backbone to divorce that jerk years ago. If she's that much of a battered woman complex, do I REALLY want her to control the nukes in this country? After all, they tend to go back into abusive relationships, so we can start to understand why she wants to felate the the terrorists for her party.
We went into Kosovo, no one complained. We bombed aspirin factories and not a single word was said. We watched helicopter pilots dragged through streets and it was barely a blip on the radar. Yet we take down the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and give millions of people a chance to live free, and it's nothing but a screamfest of "WE SHOULDN'T BE THERE!" How come taking down Kosovo was a necessity, but taking down Saddam wasn't? Both held mass murders. Both tried ethnic cleansing. Did you really just object to what color the cleansing was in Kosovo? Did it maybe not bother you nearly as much when Saddam did it because it was "little brown people killing little brown people?" Is that why the Libs seem to LOVE Castro and Chavez, Saddam and Mao, and yet hate Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and other white heroes? Is it only a problem when a Caucasian kills a dark person?
If you all are REALLY the moderates you say you are, turn it around before you post it and ask yourself what you would think if the words were the other way around. If it was a post about YOUR group instead of the dreaded OTHER. That's one reason why I'm still a Republican (couldn't you tell?). At least they TRY to censure their own people. David Duke was repudiated by the Republicans for being in the KKK. Robert Byrd is celebrated by the Democrats. That right there tells me a lot about how the PARTY works. Not the individuals, but the party.
I still don't understand this argument. Don't like FIOS get the cable company and their version of telephone and high speed. There IS still competition, it's just competition that doesn't require someone to maintain, install, and update their competitor's lines. If you're going to complain about FIOS, then start complaining about the cable companies too. They're even worse, since you HAVE to use all their services, and cannot use a competitor's over their lines, right?
When you upgrade the rims on your car, do you insist that they keep the old ones installed too? When you fix your sidewalk do you remove the old stone and pour a new one? Or do you leave the old one underneath the new?
I on the other hand believe that we have more problems with water/sewer/garbage rates going to outrageous amounts, and there being absolutely no possibility of competition in most municipalities.
I'd have to say that this argument doesn't hold any water anymore. Any place that you are capable of getting service, you are also capable of getting cable, so if you don't like the service provided, you can always go to cable. I'm more concerned with how cable is fast becoming the "one stop shop" for communication (digital phone/digital cable/high speed internet) by blocking competitors from giving one of the services (cable) in their area. If they want a monopoly, then fine, they can have it, but they ought to be forced to not participate in other activities until their core business is opened up. After all, VZ was forced to open their copper, how come Time Warner isn't being forced to open theirs? Especially now that they are a "telephone company" by providing telephone service in areas they service. Shouldn't say AT&T be given access to TW or comcasts last mile? Why is it only the telco's get ripped for doing stuff like this?
They would respond. So? The US produces more than enough food to survive, and can quickly start producing steel and other items that we now buy from China. The US was self sufficient for 100 years, and should still be today. The only thing we can't really substitute is oil from the middle east at this time. Sure, there would have to be a lot of sacrifices, but it would be worth it to make a point. Our trade balance with China is out of control, right? So who gets hurt more if people stop trading? The buyers? Or the sellers?
...and unless a small company has a remote chance of taking on a large country (be it economically or militarily), Disney really doesn't have much say in the matter.
And this would be a good reason why I laugh at the so called International Court systems. If an American company manages to make a profit through ANY type of help by the government everyone in the world screams. China blatantly rips off a corporation and "nothing can be done." WTF? If the WTO and other organizations are that weak, why the HELL to we keep kowtowing to every stupid little demand they toss our way.
This would be a good time for America to slap huge tariffs on all Chinese products until this type of blatant crap is stopped. If Wallyworld has to pay $500 for that cheaply made American flag, I'm sure they'll find someone else to make them than the Chinese.
Let's just say "Screw China." They've never been our friends and they are working on destroying us economically and eventually politically. That's why they try to buy our politicians. How come everyone gets upset when the US tries to influence an election somewhere else (That's IMPERIALISM!) But when they try to buy the Clinton White House, no one says crap about it. How come THAT isn't Imperialism? Oh, cause they're a Communist country why they couldn't POSSIBLY have any Imperialist plans.
1) Any ordinarily skilled person in that area of expertise would, if they set about building a device to do what the patented device does, come up with nearly the same solution you did. In other words, you can't patent sending email over a cellular network, because anyone with email/cellular networking experience would come up with the same system you did (or one substantially similar).
I guess my problem with this is: Who makes this decision? This sounds like another boondoggle of "Expert Witnesses." Basically, whoever can come up with the most people that say it either is or is not obvious is the winner. Always remembering of course that EVERYTHING is obvious in hindsight. That objection BTW does not necessary have anything to do with this particular case, but is IMHO a definite potential problem to the "obvious" rule in possible future cases.
Would for example the simple claw hammer count under a patent when it was first made? Prior to that invention, one would (I assume) use a miniature sledge type hammer to pound a nail in and something akin to a crowbar to pull it out if they needed to. Some smart cookie said "Damn, I wish there was a way to have a single tool that would let me pound in a nail OR pull it out, so I wouldn't have to keep switching tools." It's an incredibly obvious invention, but it was put together in a whole new way. And it also falls under 2) below, since it combines 2 existing methods of general knowledge in the art, right?
2) A patent that is merely a combination of two existing methods is considered routine exercise of general knowledge in the art and is also not patentable.
I was always under the (perhaps misguided) belief that this was one of the main REASONS for a patent. If you have come up with a way to combine existing materials or technologies in new and innovative ways you deserve to have the rights to that invention. The patent is given BECAUSE it is possible for another to copy it. You have the patent to prove that you were the 1st to do it in a certain manner. Heinlein even made that point in "Door Into Summer" if I recall correctly by mentioning "He had even used an electric typewriter for his keyboard chassis, giving credit on the drawings to an IBM patent series. That was smart, that was engineering: never reinvent something that you can buy down the street." And of course his "There wasn't really anything new in it; it was just the way I put it together. The 'spark of genius' required by our laws lay in getting a good patent lawyer." Now quoting Heinlein may not be a legal argument, but from my casual understanding of patent law that's just about what is involved.
...or doing what any sane person with skills in that area would do.
But that is something that really cannot be proven. You can always say that "Well of COURSE that's the way I would do it," but that just is because someone has made something obvious to you. Someone somewhere first came up with the idea and was the originator. It may not have been the person that applied for that patent (as in at least some of the examples you provided IMHO), but some had the idea first. This is why drugs end up going generic, because there is only one "obvious" way to make them. It doesn't mean there aren't more ways, it just means that the other ways are not as easy or as productive as the patented way. But I could be completely wrong on this.
Heinlein made another point on this when he pointed out in his book "Friday" that the Shipstone was not patented because part of the patent would involve the inventor basically giving away the secret of how it was done. It was an application of natural law, so therefore would be "obvious" to anyone with the same training, once they saw a method that did it.
I'm sure that somewhere there is a patent on the electromagnet that was issued years ago. I'm also sure that today we would say "Well, THAT was obvious." But it wasn't in the beginning.
I never said I was against the technology. I specifically said that I'm interested in the technology developing even more, but I doubted they were spending efficiently. I bet a lot of the money went into the coffers of the high-level executives.
There are so many ways to circumvent the system, it's obvious the Missle Defense Program is just another way to fund the Miltary-Industrial Complex.
Sorry, the second quote (from the original post) seems to say "Oh, missile defense is pie in the sky and will never work so we're wasting money on it, but at least well get some cool new things like Tang and Velcro..." Never once did you talk about money being spent efficiently. You complained about the cost, but did no breakdown on cost of development vs. pockets of high level execs. You made a blanket statement that appeared to me to be a total write off of the whole project, that you expect it to be a total failure, but that we might learn something else that is useful from it. That to me is an even worse attitude, since if you truly think that something is a total loss for the purpose the money was originally being spent, then it is your duty to act against it. Not to pray that "well, something good might come of it in another field." If I have misread you, my apologies. Your second post makes more sense if what you're really concerned about is efficiency. For that, I applaud you.
If you draw a line on the globe from North Korea to Chicago, it passes quite close to Yellowknife, The Pas, Kenora, and Winnipeg . I suppose Chicago is worth the three reindeer in Assiniboine Park, and 600 000 Winnipeggers eh?
Ummm... Yeah. At least to the people of Chicago. And since they are part of the people paying for this and electing people into power in the US... Yeah, I guess it's an acceptable writeoff for Washington. ("Mr. President, we can save several million voters in the city of Chicago, which also has important industry for our war effort. But it will kill a couple hundred thousand Canadians!" "No Mr. Secretary, our neighbors to the North are more important than your relatives in Chicago. Let Chicago die so that the Winnipeggers and the 3 reindeer can live unmolested.")
If Canada joins this plan, we would have to demand protection of our major cities, but more then likely if we do join this, we will just end up being a target.
Or, it would alternatively allow us to site the equipment further north of our borders, allowing us to shoot more missiles than we could from Alaska alone, and have a better probability of hitting and destroying them before it would be an inconvenience to those 3 reindeer.
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And that's my point. As simple as putting the shoe on the other foot, which no one ever wants to do these days.
She's screwed. She's using her personal address to ask if here blackberry account can't be subponea'd.
Or she's trying to make sure that her lovey-dovey notes to hubby don't get plastered all over the news media when the Obama-ites on the "impartial" committee "investigating" troopergate subpoena everything then leak it all to the press. I had similar questions at a job I once worked at. I sent a similar message from a home email to one of the partners of the firm, who happened to be a lawyer. I was not planning to do anything illegal, but I did want to make sure that if anything ever happened, my personal and private emails would not be grabbed. When he told me it was a possibility I began using PGP to encrypt anything really personal and private.
I think that it's far more possible the democrats, wanting to make a mountain out of this molehill, are pushing this big time. It will backfire I do believe, since the same hacked email account doesn't appear to actually have any real business work. Of course, that doesn't matter to people that want to believe the worst of someone. A hacked Obama account without any emails to Ayers or Rezko wouldn't stop me from believing the he had regular email contact with known terrorists and criminals. But at least I recognize that I feel that way because of my own predisposition to dislike socialist elitists who want to keep me from ever experiencing the American Dream that they have gotten to live.
So you believe everything in the Wash Post? Well, the National Enquirer says Elvis was spotted in a KFC in Alabama! I'd better believe that too! Believe 1/2 of what you hear and 1/8th of what you read. And always remember that these days so called "impartial" reporters are anything but. And that goes for both sides of the spectrum.
Actually, I would say just look at it this way:
Cable TV (TimeWarner Digital, no premium channels, no PPV, 1 DVR box) $60.90/mo.
That's 60.90*12*4=$2923.20 for 4 years. And I actually probably really WATCH that TV much less than I actually log in and play Warcraft. I have the TV on all the time, but I'm usually ignoring it or using it for background noise while I do something else. When I play warcraft, that's ALL I'm doing. So $800 for 4 years of actually using a game and being entertained as opposed to $3000 for 4 years of half ignoring something. Not a bad deal after all.
And here it seems to be the opposite. When I talk about the possibility of a black president, more republicans seem to be open to that (depending of course on the black person!) than Democrats. Here it seems to be Hillary Uber Alles.
Can we please get over this myth that civil rights and gun control go together? Gun control was started as a racist measure by the Democratic party, led by the KKK wing of the Democrat party as a method of stopping former slaves from getting their hands on weapons. Civil rights was actually pushed by the Republican party overwhelmingly. Here's a funny thing. The Democrats, who created and controlled the KKK, and which is the only political party to have a sitting Senator who was an Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, loves to call Republicans members of the KKK. Oh, and that former KKK member is 3rd in line of succession to the Presidency of the United States. KKK does not equal NRA, KKK=DNC. For more information click here and here.
And a printing press is a tool for efficiently killing the truth... Banning guns does not stop the violence and never will. Prohibition does not work. Didn't we learn this back in the 20s? Criminals will ALWAYS get their hands on what they want/need. We can't stop cocaine, heroin and other drugs from flooding the country over our borders, but you think we'll be able to stop the Mexican gangs from bringing in gun? Hell, where I live there is actually a bar called "Rumrunners" which is on the place on the wharf where the illegal booze used to come in from Canada on small boats. Think we can stop every small boat from Canada?
No one in the US is allowed to sell fully automatic weapons. That has been the law for decades, and yet criminals still manage to get ahold of them. Do you think they're growing them in their back yard?
I feel relieved that I have access to a firearm to protect myself and/or others. I may not feel it necessary to carry while roaming the streets of the small town that I live in, but I carry when traveling within the state in case of car trouble or other problems. And when I go to a larger city, you can bet I carry my sidearm for personal protection.
Just because liberals tend to believe they and their friends are too stupid to be able to protect themselves does NOT mean that the rest of us are that stupid too.
But... But... But... The GLOWBULL WORMENING! We can't have all that heat producing equipment near the arctic! THINK OF THE POLAR BEARS! We MUST STOP this TRAGIC interference with the Arctic ice sheet! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!!!
Scary part is some asshat will probably actually think that's a legitimate argument.
Norway also has one of the highest GDP's in the world thanks to a large amount of oil being shipped from their North Sea platforms. Most of those oil companies send a whole lot of money directly to the government. One of the reasons the price of oil is so high today is that the US is subsidizing things like broadband rollout and health care in places like Norway through buying their oil. Don't believe me? Look into tobacco. The real reason it isn't outlawed is simply that the government would collapse if it did not have the revenue stream generated by the purchase of cigarettes.
Raise our GDP by 50-100%, and I'll bet we'd see a bit more penetration. Everyone in the world stop buying oil from Norway, and see how long they stay at the top of stuff like this.
You also have to deal with the fact that in the US, especially in the Midwest, there are sections of land the size of Norway that have less people living in them than Norway does! And if you think it's so cheap to run fiber, think again. There is a lot of money involved, and that takes time. If you want true comparisons, compare something like the state of Texas to Norway, not the whole US. Something comparable in size, if not population. Comparing a country the size of the US to something the size of Norway is disingenuous in the least. Compare us to the Russian Federation and what do you get? Or how about the whole European Union? I'd be more interested to see those kind of figures honestly.
Simple... By offering this they can then say, "See! We offered what they wanted, DRM free music, at no more than the cost of the CD, and they wouldn't buy it!"
I think their real thought pattern is:
They will then use this Edsel of a DRM-free music setup to try to get more laws passed forcing DRM onto CD players, computers, and other hardware. It's a straw man that they are setting up to convince the US government that we're all crooks. Of course, they never seem to grasp that locks are there to keep honest people honest. Any good thief will figure out a way around the locks on a house or safe, or around the DRM crap they want to push so hard. All it does is make it harder to do. The only issue they don't understand is that unlike the locks on my house, each person that wants to rob me has to break down the door. With DRM, once it's broken, it can be copied and "stolen" a million times. And will be as long as the pricing is so far out of line with what their customers are willing to pay.
Hmm... Why do I watch anime? That's a good question. Several reasons that I can think of off the top of my head are:
:)
1) It's not the standard US crap that's all pointed at the lowest common denominator. Most US shows are so blatantly dumbed down that it's absolutely pathetic. Anything that strikes of being intelligent (and isn't a medical or criminal drama) usually ends up taken off the air in a season.
2) It gives a different perspective on life sometimes. The characters are of course larger than life and more extreme than reality usually is, but some of the differences in how Asians and Westerners perceive life is fascinating.
3) Anime doesn't need a $100 million dollar budget to put out a good solid high quality show.
4) Good anime is timeless. Just borrowed some old 80s anime from a friend, and it's just as irrelevant today as it was then. Still fun to watch though.
5) I don't have to put up with some annoying fluff head that thinks their opinion suddenly matters because they play a character on TV.
6) I don't have to put up with laugh tracks.
7) Voice actors on anime don't get paid a million dollars an episode like some American "actors."
8) I was a fan of Nagel http://www.patricknagel.com/ and Olivia De Bernardis http://www.eolivia.com/ so... The fan service can be fun...
9) Different mythos and cultures can really make a show interesting to me even if I think the premise is kind of dumb.
10) Did I mention no fluff headed "actors" that couldn't make me believe they were on fire if I doused them with gasoline and put a match to them myself?
I tend to like the longer story arc anime, although a few of the shorter works are just as interesting. Cowboy Bebop was one of my favorites. I wrote bail for 2 years, and sometime the characters just reminded me of people I knew in the industry. Hikaru no Go was an interesting series as well, since it showed a glimpse into what it's like to be a Go player in Japan. I don't usually like the "Big F**king Robot" anime, although I do have a few exceptions to that rule (Armitage, Bubblegum, GunBuster). And although Naruto is a secret (well, not anymore) vice of mine I'm not really a big fan of the "Ninja" crap. What I mostly like about anime though is that the characters actually tend to develop as the series continues, unlike the cardboard cutout US characters. Most of the time it really doesn't matter to me what the setting is, as long as I can find the characters compelling.
A better question though might be: Why do people continue to watch the crap that American companies have continued to foist off on the world as "art?" Like "Survivor." After the first couple of episodes, I kept hoping they'd drop a nuke on them to give the bastards something to survive. Or "Lost." I figured out why they didn't get rescued. No one gave a flying fsck if they ever got off the damn island. "Dresden Files" I liked, but of course SCIFI killed it so they could have more wrestling (True, it's fiction, but is there REALLY any Science in pro wrestling?). I have 200 channels and I usually end up on Cartoon Network, TBS, Nick at Night, Discovery Channel, or the History channel.
True. However no COMMERCIAL nuclear reactor designed to produce power as it's major product has ever been built in the US that was as dangerous as Chernobyl. Hanford, if I recall correctly, was designed to produce plutonium and tritium, not to produce power, right?
OK, you're almost there. The point on this is that "safe" has very different meanings for different people. I do not think that the government has a right to force filters and restrictions into place. I personally believe in turn the channel or turn it off. I don't believe in society dumbing down the outside world just so that children can run free. Put the kids to bed, have PARENTAL restrictions on what they can and cannot do. Don't rely on the government to fix it.
I do not disapprove of privacy. I disapprove of people with children forcing what I want or enjoy underground because their precious Johnny or Susie may see it or do it. If people have a problem with things like Porn on the internet, smoking, drinking, etc. and don't want their children to see or do it, TAKE care of it as a parent. Do NOT force the rest of the world to conform to what you want. That's what pisses me off about the nanny state.
Really? I always thought that the simplest solution was "Let the state take care of it." Instead of being responsible for my child's safety by teaching them I need to have someone pass a LAW! Having no computer in the bedroom is no worse than saying they can't have a TV or a telephone in their rooms. Sure, today that's considered child abuse, but when we were growing up it was not only normal, it was considered good parenting! And yet my mother didn't have to panic when I spent the night at a friends house that I might do something "wrong." Or panic if I was 20 minutes late showing up from a movie. She knew that she had taught me how to be safe. That was all that was needed.
A computer is not a diary or a journal. A computer is a portal to the world, just like a TV or a telephone. If you treat it like a diary pretty soon you'll see that the child will to, and next thing you know everything about the child will be online where a predator can access it.
BTW: Do you support making the Canadian government stopping CityTV from Toronto from playing Baby Blue? After all, if your child has a TV in their bedroom, they could watch this pornographic smut. If you support making the internet "safe" for a 7 year old, shouldn't you first make TV safe? Say goodbye to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, or anyplace else that may show a little skin. If I have to make sure MY internet is safe for your 7 year old under penalty of law, shouldn't YOU have to make your TV safe for MY 7 year old?
I also walked around unsupervised, but I had rules I had to follow. I could not go past a certain street, or walk after a certain hour. That's why it was safe. Now the kids have no rules. It's become decided UNSAFE due to this.
The death camps haven't showed up yet, but that is because they have not yet found their "True Leader" The Communists were around far before Stalin, the Socialist party in Germany was around long before Hitler. "Socialism" in theory is a wonderful thing. In reality it just ends up as a way for a small group of elite citizens to control the lower classes of the country. When the lower classes get too populous or too strong, then there is a flip, with a small group of the lower classes in charge. This tends to lead to purges and the like. No matter what system you use, human nature is that some will lead and some will follow.
What have the socialist reforms brought Europe? A population that has some of the lowest productivity in the civilized world. Record high unemployment. Rationing of health care because the state cannot afford to give everything to everyone. Rules that give certain groups more or less rights depending on their perceived class. You see it now with Muslim's being given preferential treatment in their style of life, while Christians and Jews are demonized to wanting their own style of life to be given equal weight.
Why does a prime minister get paid more than someone on the dole? Why does a judge make more money than a peasant? How is this fair? Because the group that is in power has decided exactly how much is fair. There comes a reckoning point in which the structure tumbles. When the extreme Muslim population grows enough that in an apathetic voting year they manage to put a majority of hard line Muslim politicians in France or Spain, see what happens. When Sharia is the law of the land in Europe, see how long it takes for the mass murders to begin. It won't take long.
Once you start taking things away from people in the name of society, you place society above the people. It's a short road from there to death camps. Ask a simple question: When is it acceptable for the State to take an action that is unacceptable for the people of the State? Can my pastor come to my door with a gun and demand that I give him money for his charity? No. But the State has every right to do so in a Socialist world. Can I kill or imprison my neighbor because I disagree with his lifestyle? The State can. And note that this goes for EVERY type of human society, be it democracy, totalitarian, communist, socialist, monarchist, etc. It's always fine when you're the one in charge, but when you aren't any more, boy does that change the perception. Just ask the peasants that put Stalin in power. Or Mao for that matter. Or Pol Pot.
After posting, I realized that some people may feel I'm directing these rants at the parent poster. I'm not. His question was answered in the first paragraph. The rest was just venting my spleen on people that like to call themselves moderates, yet prove on a regular basis that they are not. Or on people that can't step aside from their personal feelings when placing articles or comments into categories. I don't mod down a post talking about Al Gore just because I believe that Global Warming is junk science. Nor if I were the editor would I place it under the tag of "Science Fiction" even if I believe it belongs there. Editors are supposed to leave their personal feelings at the door. If they can't be impartial they should leave the job and look for something else. Maybe be a paid mouthpiece for someones campaign.
So when someone posts an article about "Parents of troop protest Bush." and someone files it under "Whiners, whining, etc..." you think no one here would get mad? "Support the Troops, end the war!" "Support the Protesters, End the PROTEST!" I think Heinlein once wrote that the best way to tell if a deal was honest was to turn it around and see how you still felt about it. That's the problem with these types of issues. People don't turn it around.
One congressman flirts with a page, but doesn't do anything illegal. He resigns because his own party refuses to support him due to his actions. Technically nothing wrong done, morally a really questionable act. A sitting president does an intern in the oval office, his party (including his wife, who should have had the backbone to file for divorce that day!) stands up for him and refuses to punish him for his actions. If the president of my company got caught dipping his pen in the company ink, you can guarantee he'd be crucified by the women's movement the same day. And probably fired the next. But it's a different rule if you're a Democratic "leader."
I'll be honest here. I would be about 100% more likely to vote for Hillary in 2008 if she would have had the backbone to divorce that jerk years ago. If she's that much of a battered woman complex, do I REALLY want her to control the nukes in this country? After all, they tend to go back into abusive relationships, so we can start to understand why she wants to felate the the terrorists for her party.
We went into Kosovo, no one complained. We bombed aspirin factories and not a single word was said. We watched helicopter pilots dragged through streets and it was barely a blip on the radar. Yet we take down the Taliban and Saddam Hussein and give millions of people a chance to live free, and it's nothing but a screamfest of "WE SHOULDN'T BE THERE!" How come taking down Kosovo was a necessity, but taking down Saddam wasn't? Both held mass murders. Both tried ethnic cleansing. Did you really just object to what color the cleansing was in Kosovo? Did it maybe not bother you nearly as much when Saddam did it because it was "little brown people killing little brown people?" Is that why the Libs seem to LOVE Castro and Chavez, Saddam and Mao, and yet hate Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and other white heroes? Is it only a problem when a Caucasian kills a dark person?
If you all are REALLY the moderates you say you are, turn it around before you post it and ask yourself what you would think if the words were the other way around. If it was a post about YOUR group instead of the dreaded OTHER. That's one reason why I'm still a Republican (couldn't you tell?). At least they TRY to censure their own people. David Duke was repudiated by the Republicans for being in the KKK. Robert Byrd is celebrated by the Democrats. That right there tells me a lot about how the PARTY works. Not the individuals, but the party.
I was talking telephone. You can get Earthlink over DSL, or AOL, or many other ISPs.
I still don't understand this argument. Don't like FIOS get the cable company and their version of telephone and high speed. There IS still competition, it's just competition that doesn't require someone to maintain, install, and update their competitor's lines. If you're going to complain about FIOS, then start complaining about the cable companies too. They're even worse, since you HAVE to use all their services, and cannot use a competitor's over their lines, right?
When you upgrade the rims on your car, do you insist that they keep the old ones installed too? When you fix your sidewalk do you remove the old stone and pour a new one? Or do you leave the old one underneath the new?
I on the other hand believe that we have more problems with water/sewer/garbage rates going to outrageous amounts, and there being absolutely no possibility of competition in most municipalities.
I'd have to say that this argument doesn't hold any water anymore. Any place that you are capable of getting service, you are also capable of getting cable, so if you don't like the service provided, you can always go to cable. I'm more concerned with how cable is fast becoming the "one stop shop" for communication (digital phone/digital cable/high speed internet) by blocking competitors from giving one of the services (cable) in their area. If they want a monopoly, then fine, they can have it, but they ought to be forced to not participate in other activities until their core business is opened up. After all, VZ was forced to open their copper, how come Time Warner isn't being forced to open theirs? Especially now that they are a "telephone company" by providing telephone service in areas they service. Shouldn't say AT&T be given access to TW or comcasts last mile? Why is it only the telco's get ripped for doing stuff like this?
They would respond. So? The US produces more than enough food to survive, and can quickly start producing steel and other items that we now buy from China. The US was self sufficient for 100 years, and should still be today. The only thing we can't really substitute is oil from the middle east at this time. Sure, there would have to be a lot of sacrifices, but it would be worth it to make a point. Our trade balance with China is out of control, right? So who gets hurt more if people stop trading? The buyers? Or the sellers?
...and unless a small company has a remote chance of taking on a large country (be it economically or militarily), Disney really doesn't have much say in the matter.And this would be a good reason why I laugh at the so called International Court systems. If an American company manages to make a profit through ANY type of help by the government everyone in the world screams. China blatantly rips off a corporation and "nothing can be done." WTF? If the WTO and other organizations are that weak, why the HELL to we keep kowtowing to every stupid little demand they toss our way.
This would be a good time for America to slap huge tariffs on all Chinese products until this type of blatant crap is stopped. If Wallyworld has to pay $500 for that cheaply made American flag, I'm sure they'll find someone else to make them than the Chinese.
Let's just say "Screw China." They've never been our friends and they are working on destroying us economically and eventually politically. That's why they try to buy our politicians. How come everyone gets upset when the US tries to influence an election somewhere else (That's IMPERIALISM!) But when they try to buy the Clinton White House, no one says crap about it. How come THAT isn't Imperialism? Oh, cause they're a Communist country why they couldn't POSSIBLY have any Imperialist plans.
Sigh... Sorry... Button pushed...
1) Any ordinarily skilled person in that area of expertise would, if they set about building a device to do what the patented device does, come up with nearly the same solution you did. In other words, you can't patent sending email over a cellular network, because anyone with email/cellular networking experience would come up with the same system you did (or one substantially similar).
I guess my problem with this is: Who makes this decision? This sounds like another boondoggle of "Expert Witnesses." Basically, whoever can come up with the most people that say it either is or is not obvious is the winner. Always remembering of course that EVERYTHING is obvious in hindsight. That objection BTW does not necessary have anything to do with this particular case, but is IMHO a definite potential problem to the "obvious" rule in possible future cases.
Would for example the simple claw hammer count under a patent when it was first made? Prior to that invention, one would (I assume) use a miniature sledge type hammer to pound a nail in and something akin to a crowbar to pull it out if they needed to. Some smart cookie said "Damn, I wish there was a way to have a single tool that would let me pound in a nail OR pull it out, so I wouldn't have to keep switching tools." It's an incredibly obvious invention, but it was put together in a whole new way. And it also falls under 2) below, since it combines 2 existing methods of general knowledge in the art, right?
2) A patent that is merely a combination of two existing methods is considered routine exercise of general knowledge in the art and is also not patentable.
I was always under the (perhaps misguided) belief that this was one of the main REASONS for a patent. If you have come up with a way to combine existing materials or technologies in new and innovative ways you deserve to have the rights to that invention. The patent is given BECAUSE it is possible for another to copy it. You have the patent to prove that you were the 1st to do it in a certain manner. Heinlein even made that point in "Door Into Summer" if I recall correctly by mentioning "He had even used an electric typewriter for his keyboard chassis, giving credit on the drawings to an IBM patent series. That was smart, that was engineering: never reinvent something that you can buy down the street." And of course his "There wasn't really anything new in it; it was just the way I put it together. The 'spark of genius' required by our laws lay in getting a good patent lawyer." Now quoting Heinlein may not be a legal argument, but from my casual understanding of patent law that's just about what is involved.
...or doing what any sane person with skills in that area would do.
But that is something that really cannot be proven. You can always say that "Well of COURSE that's the way I would do it," but that just is because someone has made something obvious to you. Someone somewhere first came up with the idea and was the originator. It may not have been the person that applied for that patent (as in at least some of the examples you provided IMHO), but some had the idea first. This is why drugs end up going generic, because there is only one "obvious" way to make them. It doesn't mean there aren't more ways, it just means that the other ways are not as easy or as productive as the patented way. But I could be completely wrong on this.
Heinlein made another point on this when he pointed out in his book "Friday" that the Shipstone was not patented because part of the patent would involve the inventor basically giving away the secret of how it was done. It was an application of natural law, so therefore would be "obvious" to anyone with the same training, once they saw a method that did it.
I'm sure that somewhere there is a patent on the electromagnet that was issued years ago. I'm also sure that today we would say "Well, THAT was obvious." But it wasn't in the beginning.
I never said I was against the technology. I specifically said that I'm interested in the technology developing even more, but I doubted they were spending efficiently. I bet a lot of the money went into the coffers of the high-level executives.
There are so many ways to circumvent the system, it's obvious the Missle Defense Program is just another way to fund the Miltary-Industrial Complex.
Sorry, the second quote (from the original post) seems to say "Oh, missile defense is pie in the sky and will never work so we're wasting money on it, but at least well get some cool new things like Tang and Velcro..." Never once did you talk about money being spent efficiently. You complained about the cost, but did no breakdown on cost of development vs. pockets of high level execs. You made a blanket statement that appeared to me to be a total write off of the whole project, that you expect it to be a total failure, but that we might learn something else that is useful from it. That to me is an even worse attitude, since if you truly think that something is a total loss for the purpose the money was originally being spent, then it is your duty to act against it. Not to pray that "well, something good might come of it in another field." If I have misread you, my apologies. Your second post makes more sense if what you're really concerned about is efficiency. For that, I applaud you.
If you draw a line on the globe from North Korea to Chicago, it passes quite close to Yellowknife, The Pas, Kenora, and Winnipeg . I suppose Chicago is worth the three reindeer in Assiniboine Park, and 600 000 Winnipeggers eh?
Ummm... Yeah. At least to the people of Chicago. And since they are part of the people paying for this and electing people into power in the US... Yeah, I guess it's an acceptable writeoff for Washington. ("Mr. President, we can save several million voters in the city of Chicago, which also has important industry for our war effort. But it will kill a couple hundred thousand Canadians!" "No Mr. Secretary, our neighbors to the North are more important than your relatives in Chicago. Let Chicago die so that the Winnipeggers and the 3 reindeer can live unmolested.")
If Canada joins this plan, we would have to demand protection of our major cities, but more then likely if we do join this, we will just end up being a target.
Or, it would alternatively allow us to site the equipment further north of our borders, allowing us to shoot more missiles than we could from Alaska alone, and have a better probability of hitting and destroying them before it would be an inconvenience to those 3 reindeer.