If that's the case, why didn't Gilette raise a fuss when The Onion ran [url="http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930"] this story[/url]? Considering that they use a photo & the name of Gilette's actual CEO (pretty much everything *but* his signature) why wouldn't that be objectionable too?
Maybe a company's PR team can make some angry phone calls to The Onion, but I don't believe they've ever been legally at risk.
What parts of the DMCA would that be breaking? Would a cheat/mod for WoW would even have a EULA? And what is a program that reports "User NiGhTeLf69 is running WoWdupe.exe from c:\games\wow\hacks, 867kb, 5125kb ram" even violating? I haven't seen any legal issues resulting from Microsoft's Task Manager yet. Or are you talking about a Legal 3rd party program like Photoshop that Blizzard might be theoretically "probing" into?
And what would prevent Apple from raising the price of an iPod by $0.50-$1 to compensate for the increased cost of circuitry? Or even $5 or $10 if you throw in the UI redesign & engineering costs? Given the choice between a standard iPod that costs $240 or one that includes a radio at $250, I know that I'd get enough use out of a radio iPod listening to broadcasts (not podcasts) of NPR, local talk radio, news & traffic reports, etc to be worth the extra cost.
However I'm sure Apple has done extensive marketing studies to justify the exclusion of a radio -- probably pushes people towards purchasing more music from iTunes instead of tapping into the constant supply of listening material provided by radio.
Ever seen how an 8 year old boy acts after watching Saturday morning cartoons, or Power Rangers? Or notice how the thoughts you have while driving regarding pedestrians change (though not necessarily your actions) after an 8 hour marathon of GTA?
It doesn't prefetch everything, it prefetches certain links that the user mouses-over. And from the behavior the GWA seems to be displaying, the app prefetches from Google's proxy servers to the local hard drive in most cases, so it probably doesn't add siginificant bandwidth costs to most average-traffic webservers.
If it's a low-traffic site, then the prefetching activity probably isn't adding much more stress than it would be receiving from a small number of users anyway.
Paranoid much? It's just as much of a "privacy problem" as IE or Firefox's local cache. Which means if you don't want your mom to know you were looking at porn, you'd clear your browser history and cache, and also clear your GWA cache which is easily accessible through the program options.
Plus, how are you supposed to judge whether a child is 12 or 13 for admittance to a PG-13 movie? It's not like anyone under the age of 16 has any kind of state-issued picture ID, and requiring a kid to bring in something like a birth certificate would be a bit extreme.
If you want me to understand what you're trying to say, then learn to express your ideas clearly and make your reply relevant to what you are replying to. You responded to someone who basically said "Most parents are clueless on how computers and security software like this works, their kids probably know more than the parents". You considered that a specific case? I'd call that 95% of the households out there.
You start talking about a small subset of today's parents who grew up using computers back in the late 70's/early 80s which was pretty uncommon at the time, and who went on to learn even more during college, on the job, etc, an even *smaller* subset. It'd be stretching it to say that this represents 10% of parents.
My sisters and I used Tandy color computers with casette tape drives back in the early 80s. None of our friends had even seen one before. I did some simple BASIC programming, they played games and that's about it. I went on to work in IT and they became teachers and are comfortable using internet, word processing, etc on your standard mac or PC, but nothing near what you described.
Regardless of whether parents who started using computers back then went on to become very knowledgeable, as I'm sure many did, it's still a very small subset of parents. You miss the point.
He's talking about a very specific case, and you aren't? "Assume x, y, z, aa, bb..."
So you have your assumptions, while I'll assume that anyone who went that in-depth into mainframe concepts and low-level hardware stuff probably never figured out how to reproduce with the opposite sex.
IF it becomes a viable mechanism??? Since Napster came out in 1999, what sources for getting "free" music or movies don't have some sort of upload mechanism built in (besides IRC or newsgroups, which still require voluntary uploading from a significant portion of the community)? And there really aren't any consumer-level DSL or Cable ISPs that provide anywhere close to synchronous up/downstream bandwidth, so I'd say the cap has been in effect for quite a while.
By *gasp* reading the article, you find that they have already addressed what KIND of files (more specifically, what genres of media) can be taxed:
"A Legislative Fiscal Bureau summary of Doyle's proposal says it would extend the 5% sales tax to "audio works," including music, books on tape and pre-recorded speeches; "audiovisual works," including movies, music videos and live events; "finished artwork," including paintings, designs and photographs; and "literary works," including books."
So it'd apply to songs purchased from iTunes (reason for it being dubbed the "iPod tax"), eBooks, online textbooks & coursepacks, streaming/downloaded movies, pay-per-download desktop wallpapers or photographs, in addition to physical copies of similar items that are shipped to your address. The eTextbook & coursepack inclusion is the main reason that university students are staging a hunger strike in protest.
It would not tax items that you are not paying anything for, such as free mp3s available from websites, or anything that you do not have to pay someone else to access. A 5% tax of $0 is still $0.
Starbuck's and your internet subscription through the cable/phone company is already taxed, just look at your monthly bill, so this is not affected.
Subscriptions to websites such as Slashdot, Salon.com, and possibly porn sites don't seem to be included in this, but a more thorough explanation of the proposal's text would need to be seen. The description "literary works" seems to apply more towards fiction or non-fiction eBooks where you pay one price and then "own" that item on your hard drive, it doesn't seem like that would apply to a subscription to a news site like the NY Times.
I wouldn't doubt that the actual text of the proposed law might change to include website subscriptions, since a recurring payment means more money for the government over time than a one-time mp3 download.
Although like usual, it's not the "dumb user opens executables from random strangers" problem, but the "dumb user opens executables from trusted friend" problem. From the old days of infected-floppy-sharing to modern viruses that pull email addresses from users' address books, this goes after the type of people who think "I'm curious what Uncle Fred is trying to send me, so I'll just click "OK" repeatedly to open it!"
Except the ringer turns off after 10 seconds and lets you go right back to napping, while babies generally keep screaming for as long as they want, which is usually THE REST OF THE FUCKING FLIGHT.
I would think a better, more appropriate analogy would be Slashdot itself, or SomethingAwful's "Awful Link of the Day". If this Ad agency is liable for the bandwidth bill, then/. & SA would have been sued into oblivion years ago. In fact, they would be considered even more responsible, considering that the ad agency apparently just made a mix-up, while/. & SA intentionally direct thousands or millions of readers to sites that often can't handle the traffic. Therefore, the only conclusion if that they put something on the public web and you're not using illegal means (DDoS or hacking) to bring down the website, then it's fair game.
Taking a Sunday afternoon drive on an open country road to the local apple orchard in the fall is fun.
Speeding along a winding ocean lane at sunset in a convertible with the top down in the summer is fun.
Taking a midnight drive to Makeout Point is fun, as long as you have a companion.
Making the 45-minute morning commute on the 8-lane, due-east freeway into the city for the 500th time is NOT fun, but I don't really have much of an option if I want to keep doing the job I like that pays my bills. What fun is a "journey" that I've already made 499 times before that involves little more than putting on the cruise control, keeping the steering wheel straight, and hoping I don't get stuck in a traffic jam?
See a difference? That is what an auto-driving car would fix -- I'd be free to use that time to catch up on the news, read a book, browse slashdot wirelessly, do some work, take a nap, shave, actually LOOK at the scenery around me instead of staring 30 feet in front of me, whatever.
I'd ENJOY the journey, instead of dread it!
The goal is to have cars that can drive themselves when you want them to, and turn over the controls when you want them to. I can't imagine car makers would plan for a future where personal transportation vehicles with manual controls will disappear. Despite being 2 miles from a major highway right now, I can drive for 5 minutes and be on any number of dirt roads, which may well never be paved. No one's taking away your steering wheel.
What the hell does RFID have to do with GPS? You're comparing a short-range-radio barcoding system to a worldwide positioning system. Is this just a standard knee-jerk reaction to a technology you don't understand?
Your first example says that the State should not spend taxpayer dollars to provide something for disabled people that isn't really necessary, just because it's the "PC" thing to do. That's valid. Now in this case, you'd prefer that the government step in and stop a privately-owned business from providing a "service" to disabled (or lazy) people that may or may not violate any hunting laws? Why should the State care if people want to blow their money on something stupid, simply because you consider it PC and therefore bad? Should the State stop disabled rich people from getting gold-plated wheelchairs just because it's a waste of money?
If it's illegal for a person without a hunting license to use this service or if there's other legal issues with it, then the government should stop it. But if it is legal, how would this be (at its roots) different from telling a waiter at a restaurant which lobster you want or ordering a turkey or steak out of a mail-order catalog, except this has a middle step with the customer choosing what animal they want to eat?
Personally I think this is an a clever idea and a very novel use of the internet -- I'd love to see more concepts like this pop up than Yet-Another-eStore. But the logistical problems within the business like camera/gun control, safety issues, etc, should be what would cause it to fail, not Governmental Regulations. We need less crap like this holding back clever small businesses, regardless of whether people like you consider it "PC" or a waste of money.
Ah, that's neat! Yes, I figured that there were applications that dealt with similar situations, it was just the "real-time" nature of the program that made it seem ridiculous... I was imagining the input as something like Angle_of_trauma=225; Age_of_attacker=7; Gender=female;, Ponytail=Yes;, whacking_stick=42_inches. Click, !
Of course, if anything involving computers in a TV program takes more than 2 seconds to accomplish (generally by hitting a bunch of random keys on the keyboard) then the viewer starts to get bored. What keeps most people's attention is the drama involved with solving the clues and catching the criminal, and not with having 100% accurate uses and depictions of technology.
I saw an episode of one of the Law & Order shows I believe(not sure which one) where they found a dead body with fatal head trauma, and an arm broken in multiple locations. They used some specialized software that allowed them to model the arm being twisted & showed where it would break (pretty much useless, since they could just look at the arm and see how it broke).
But the ridiculous part was another piece of software that showed how the head trauma occured, based on the angle of broken skull bones and other such details they apparently found. They even modeled in wireframe 3D that it must have been a small girl (complete with ponytail) with a large stick, sneaking up from behind and whacking him in the head. The animation that they used for the head-smack had me laughing out loud. My friends thought I was being sick... but it was too absurd not to laugh.
oh yeah dude? well i watched a movie once where a wacky gang of (mostly) american criminals used an EMP to knock out las vegas' power system for 30 seconds and used the ensuing chaos to break into a casino and steal a lot of money! but they hacked into the security system so it looked like they were somewhere else and fooled the evil casino owner, and george clooney stole his girlfriend!
do i see george clooney coming to michgan to steal my girlfriend?! i think so! that is why i'm covering my apartment in tin-foil and using pin-hole cameras, to make it EMP- and clooney-proof.
I'm with you 100% about the purpose of the Wikipedia, but...
You berate an Anonymous Coward, as if having a Slashdot account somehow gives one the "credentials" to make educational policy decisions? You must have gone to Catholic School and gotten smacked with the paddle often, right?
Either that, or you don't actually *know* any real teachers. The claim that teachers only chose that profession because it has a "lack of any real work," "perks," and lets them "stay out of the real world for as long as possible" shows *your* ignorance. The first sentence of point #1 is probably the only correct statement in your post -- most teachers do their job because they enjoy imparting knowledge and making a positive influence in their community and the young generation. It's certainly not for the pay. But their reasons for pursuing that career are as numerous and varied as there are teachers.
My mother was a teacher, I had numerous great teachers throughout my Public School system that I still keep in touch with (I'm 25 now), and some of my friends are now becoming teachers, for all the right reasons. And they put much more effort into their career than the average Joe. The teachers I know are generally in the school from 7 am to 4 pm, and spend 1-3 hours per night grading assignments, making lesson plans, and all the other "behind the scenes" work that people forget about. How many other careers (besides game programmers) are willing to regularly put in 10-12 hours days for the chicken scratch that they earn? In addition, they are more inclined to be active in community activities and continue their own education by regularly taking community college or university classes to keep up on the latest educational methods, or general knowledge classes, whether biology, english, or technology-related. Having a desire for knowledge is HARDLY a desire to "stay out of the real world".
As in any profession, there are some teachers who get into it for the wrong reasons (as we all know quite well), such as expecting short work days, extended summer vacations, or because of authority or power issues, as you mention. People are all too willing to let one or two bad teachers ruin their memories of two dozen average or good ones. But pessimists have been claiming for decades (or centuries) that "this new generation is nothing but a bunch of no-good, no-respect slackers, the world is going to hell". And yet somehow people are going to college in higher numbers than ever, science continues to progress, and we haven't blown up the world yet. Imagine that?
Re:What's a good alternative for people stuck with
on
Winamp Down for the Count
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Hmm... how about Winamp? You can continue to download Winamp 5.05 from their website, and the announcement said they will continue to release minor updates, such as security patches and plugin support. Unless you change to a brand-new streaming format that only a new player supports, why should people switch away from Winamp? Just because AOL is letting the rest of the Nullsoft team go, it doesn't mean that you have to stop using a program that really whips the llama's ass.
If 2/3rds of the movies you've seen were absolute crap, why are you giving them over $25 per week for the opportunity to watch said crap? Instead of waiting for a "grass roots revolution" (which will never happen) why don't you spend some of that money on pursuits and companies that aren't asshats? Or only go to see the handful of movies that are actually *worth* your money!
You must have a different definition of the word "free" than the rest of the English-speaking world. You are paying ($24.99/(number of rentals)) for each movie you watch. If you watch a movie every Friday & Saturday night, you're still paying around $3 per rental, which is pretty much what it would cost you if you got one movie at a time at most places.
Now if you don't go out often, or have kids or a large extended family to share the cost with then it certainly could be economical for you. However, I don't even know if I could find 8 new movies each month that were worth my time to watch... let alone signing up for a subscription service and watching over 10 movies a month to make the "obligation" worth it.
So, useful for some, but probably not economical for most people.
Slashdot Mirror
If that's the case, why didn't Gilette raise a fuss when The Onion ran [url="http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930"] this story[/url]? Considering that they use a photo & the name of Gilette's actual CEO (pretty much everything *but* his signature) why wouldn't that be objectionable too?
Maybe a company's PR team can make some angry phone calls to The Onion, but I don't believe they've ever been legally at risk.
What parts of the DMCA would that be breaking? Would a cheat/mod for WoW would even have a EULA? And what is a program that reports "User NiGhTeLf69 is running WoWdupe.exe from c:\games\wow\hacks, 867kb, 5125kb ram" even violating? I haven't seen any legal issues resulting from Microsoft's Task Manager yet. Or are you talking about a Legal 3rd party program like Photoshop that Blizzard might be theoretically "probing" into?
And what would prevent Apple from raising the price of an iPod by $0.50-$1 to compensate for the increased cost of circuitry? Or even $5 or $10 if you throw in the UI redesign & engineering costs? Given the choice between a standard iPod that costs $240 or one that includes a radio at $250, I know that I'd get enough use out of a radio iPod listening to broadcasts (not podcasts) of NPR, local talk radio, news & traffic reports, etc to be worth the extra cost.
However I'm sure Apple has done extensive marketing studies to justify the exclusion of a radio -- probably pushes people towards purchasing more music from iTunes instead of tapping into the constant supply of listening material provided by radio.
Nanotech will absorb everything
Just don't tell that to anyone who's recently read any Michael Crichton.
Ever seen how an 8 year old boy acts after watching Saturday morning cartoons, or Power Rangers? Or notice how the thoughts you have while driving regarding pedestrians change (though not necessarily your actions) after an 8 hour marathon of GTA?
A classic study backing the opposite of what you claim: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Bandura/bobo.htm
The same kid after watching a romance/sex scene would most likely just be confused.
It doesn't prefetch everything, it prefetches certain links that the user mouses-over. And from the behavior the GWA seems to be displaying, the app prefetches from Google's proxy servers to the local hard drive in most cases, so it probably doesn't add siginificant bandwidth costs to most average-traffic webservers.
If it's a low-traffic site, then the prefetching activity probably isn't adding much more stress than it would be receiving from a small number of users anyway.
Paranoid much? It's just as much of a "privacy problem" as IE or Firefox's local cache. Which means if you don't want your mom to know you were looking at porn, you'd clear your browser history and cache, and also clear your GWA cache which is easily accessible through the program options.
Plus, how are you supposed to judge whether a child is 12 or 13 for admittance to a PG-13 movie? It's not like anyone under the age of 16 has any kind of state-issued picture ID, and requiring a kid to bring in something like a birth certificate would be a bit extreme.
If you want me to understand what you're trying to say, then learn to express your ideas clearly and make your reply relevant to what you are replying to. You responded to someone who basically said "Most parents are clueless on how computers and security software like this works, their kids probably know more than the parents". You considered that a specific case? I'd call that 95% of the households out there.
You start talking about a small subset of today's parents who grew up using computers back in the late 70's/early 80s which was pretty uncommon at the time, and who went on to learn even more during college, on the job, etc, an even *smaller* subset. It'd be stretching it to say that this represents 10% of parents.
My sisters and I used Tandy color computers with casette tape drives back in the early 80s. None of our friends had even seen one before. I did some simple BASIC programming, they played games and that's about it. I went on to work in IT and they became teachers and are comfortable using internet, word processing, etc on your standard mac or PC, but nothing near what you described.
Regardless of whether parents who started using computers back then went on to become very knowledgeable, as I'm sure many did, it's still a very small subset of parents. You miss the point.
He's talking about a very specific case, and you aren't? "Assume x, y, z, aa, bb..."
So you have your assumptions, while I'll assume that anyone who went that in-depth into mainframe concepts and low-level hardware stuff probably never figured out how to reproduce with the opposite sex.
IF it becomes a viable mechanism??? Since Napster came out in 1999, what sources for getting "free" music or movies don't have some sort of upload mechanism built in (besides IRC or newsgroups, which still require voluntary uploading from a significant portion of the community)? And there really aren't any consumer-level DSL or Cable ISPs that provide anywhere close to synchronous up/downstream bandwidth, so I'd say the cap has been in effect for quite a while.
By *gasp* reading the article, you find that they have already addressed what KIND of files (more specifically, what genres of media) can be taxed:
"A Legislative Fiscal Bureau summary of Doyle's proposal says it would extend the 5% sales tax to "audio works," including music, books on tape and pre-recorded speeches; "audiovisual works," including movies, music videos and live events; "finished artwork," including paintings, designs and photographs; and "literary works," including books."
So it'd apply to songs purchased from iTunes (reason for it being dubbed the "iPod tax"), eBooks, online textbooks & coursepacks, streaming/downloaded movies, pay-per-download desktop wallpapers or photographs, in addition to physical copies of similar items that are shipped to your address. The eTextbook & coursepack inclusion is the main reason that university students are staging a hunger strike in protest.
It would not tax items that you are not paying anything for, such as free mp3s available from websites, or anything that you do not have to pay someone else to access. A 5% tax of $0 is still $0.
Starbuck's and your internet subscription through the cable/phone company is already taxed, just look at your monthly bill, so this is not affected.
Subscriptions to websites such as Slashdot, Salon.com, and possibly porn sites don't seem to be included in this, but a more thorough explanation of the proposal's text would need to be seen. The description "literary works" seems to apply more towards fiction or non-fiction eBooks where you pay one price and then "own" that item on your hard drive, it doesn't seem like that would apply to a subscription to a news site like the NY Times.
I wouldn't doubt that the actual text of the proposed law might change to include website subscriptions, since a recurring payment means more money for the government over time than a one-time mp3 download.
Although like usual, it's not the "dumb user opens executables from random strangers" problem, but the "dumb user opens executables from trusted friend" problem. From the old days of infected-floppy-sharing to modern viruses that pull email addresses from users' address books, this goes after the type of people who think "I'm curious what Uncle Fred is trying to send me, so I'll just click "OK" repeatedly to open it!"
Except the ringer turns off after 10 seconds and lets you go right back to napping, while babies generally keep screaming for as long as they want, which is usually THE REST OF THE FUCKING FLIGHT.
I would think a better, more appropriate analogy would be Slashdot itself, or SomethingAwful's "Awful Link of the Day". If this Ad agency is liable for the bandwidth bill, then /. & SA would have been sued into oblivion years ago. In fact, they would be considered even more responsible, considering that the ad agency apparently just made a mix-up, while /. & SA intentionally direct thousands or millions of readers to sites that often can't handle the traffic. Therefore, the only conclusion if that they put something on the public web and you're not using illegal means (DDoS or hacking) to bring down the website, then it's fair game.
Taking a Sunday afternoon drive on an open country road to the local apple orchard in the fall is fun.
Speeding along a winding ocean lane at sunset in a convertible with the top down in the summer is fun.
Taking a midnight drive to Makeout Point is fun, as long as you have a companion.
Making the 45-minute morning commute on the 8-lane, due-east freeway into the city for the 500th time is NOT fun, but I don't really have much of an option if I want to keep doing the job I like that pays my bills. What fun is a "journey" that I've already made 499 times before that involves little more than putting on the cruise control, keeping the steering wheel straight, and hoping I don't get stuck in a traffic jam?
See a difference? That is what an auto-driving car would fix -- I'd be free to use that time to catch up on the news, read a book, browse slashdot wirelessly, do some work, take a nap, shave, actually LOOK at the scenery around me instead of staring 30 feet in front of me, whatever.
I'd ENJOY the journey, instead of dread it!
The goal is to have cars that can drive themselves when you want them to, and turn over the controls when you want them to. I can't imagine car makers would plan for a future where personal transportation vehicles with manual controls will disappear. Despite being 2 miles from a major highway right now, I can drive for 5 minutes and be on any number of dirt roads, which may well never be paved. No one's taking away your steering wheel.
What the hell does RFID have to do with GPS? You're comparing a short-range-radio barcoding system to a worldwide positioning system. Is this just a standard knee-jerk reaction to a technology you don't understand?
Your first example says that the State should not spend taxpayer dollars to provide something for disabled people that isn't really necessary, just because it's the "PC" thing to do. That's valid. Now in this case, you'd prefer that the government step in and stop a privately-owned business from providing a "service" to disabled (or lazy) people that may or may not violate any hunting laws? Why should the State care if people want to blow their money on something stupid, simply because you consider it PC and therefore bad? Should the State stop disabled rich people from getting gold-plated wheelchairs just because it's a waste of money?
If it's illegal for a person without a hunting license to use this service or if there's other legal issues with it, then the government should stop it. But if it is legal, how would this be (at its roots) different from telling a waiter at a restaurant which lobster you want or ordering a turkey or steak out of a mail-order catalog, except this has a middle step with the customer choosing what animal they want to eat?
Personally I think this is an a clever idea and a very novel use of the internet -- I'd love to see more concepts like this pop up than Yet-Another-eStore. But the logistical problems within the business like camera/gun control, safety issues, etc, should be what would cause it to fail, not Governmental Regulations. We need less crap like this holding back clever small businesses, regardless of whether people like you consider it "PC" or a waste of money.
Ah, that's neat! Yes, I figured that there were applications that dealt with similar situations, it was just the "real-time" nature of the program that made it seem ridiculous... I was imagining the input as something like Angle_of_trauma=225; Age_of_attacker=7; Gender=female;, Ponytail=Yes;, whacking_stick=42_inches. Click, !
Of course, if anything involving computers in a TV program takes more than 2 seconds to accomplish (generally by hitting a bunch of random keys on the keyboard) then the viewer starts to get bored. What keeps most people's attention is the drama involved with solving the clues and catching the criminal, and not with having 100% accurate uses and depictions of technology.
I saw an episode of one of the Law & Order shows I believe(not sure which one) where they found a dead body with fatal head trauma, and an arm broken in multiple locations. They used some specialized software that allowed them to model the arm being twisted & showed where it would break (pretty much useless, since they could just look at the arm and see how it broke).
But the ridiculous part was another piece of software that showed how the head trauma occured, based on the angle of broken skull bones and other such details they apparently found. They even modeled in wireframe 3D that it must have been a small girl (complete with ponytail) with a large stick, sneaking up from behind and whacking him in the head. The animation that they used for the head-smack had me laughing out loud. My friends thought I was being sick... but it was too absurd not to laugh.
oh yeah dude? well i watched a movie once where a wacky gang of (mostly) american criminals used an EMP to knock out las vegas' power system for 30 seconds and used the ensuing chaos to break into a casino and steal a lot of money! but they hacked into the security system so it looked like they were somewhere else and fooled the evil casino owner, and george clooney stole his girlfriend!
do i see george clooney coming to michgan to steal my girlfriend?! i think so! that is why i'm covering my apartment in tin-foil and using pin-hole cameras, to make it EMP- and clooney-proof.
I'm with you 100% about the purpose of the Wikipedia, but...
You berate an Anonymous Coward, as if having a Slashdot account somehow gives one the "credentials" to make educational policy decisions? You must have gone to Catholic School and gotten smacked with the paddle often, right?
Either that, or you don't actually *know* any real teachers. The claim that teachers only chose that profession because it has a "lack of any real work," "perks," and lets them "stay out of the real world for as long as possible" shows *your* ignorance. The first sentence of point #1 is probably the only correct statement in your post -- most teachers do their job because they enjoy imparting knowledge and making a positive influence in their community and the young generation. It's certainly not for the pay. But their reasons for pursuing that career are as numerous and varied as there are teachers.
My mother was a teacher, I had numerous great teachers throughout my Public School system that I still keep in touch with (I'm 25 now), and some of my friends are now becoming teachers, for all the right reasons. And they put much more effort into their career than the average Joe. The teachers I know are generally in the school from 7 am to 4 pm, and spend 1-3 hours per night grading assignments, making lesson plans, and all the other "behind the scenes" work that people forget about. How many other careers (besides game programmers) are willing to regularly put in 10-12 hours days for the chicken scratch that they earn? In addition, they are more inclined to be active in community activities and continue their own education by regularly taking community college or university classes to keep up on the latest educational methods, or general knowledge classes, whether biology, english, or technology-related. Having a desire for knowledge is HARDLY a desire to "stay out of the real world".
As in any profession, there are some teachers who get into it for the wrong reasons (as we all know quite well), such as expecting short work days, extended summer vacations, or because of authority or power issues, as you mention. People are all too willing to let one or two bad teachers ruin their memories of two dozen average or good ones. But pessimists have been claiming for decades (or centuries) that "this new generation is nothing but a bunch of no-good, no-respect slackers, the world is going to hell". And yet somehow people are going to college in higher numbers than ever, science continues to progress, and we haven't blown up the world yet. Imagine that?
Hmm... how about Winamp? You can continue to download Winamp 5.05 from their website, and the announcement said they will continue to release minor updates, such as security patches and plugin support. Unless you change to a brand-new streaming format that only a new player supports, why should people switch away from Winamp? Just because AOL is letting the rest of the Nullsoft team go, it doesn't mean that you have to stop using a program that really whips the llama's ass.
If 2/3rds of the movies you've seen were absolute crap, why are you giving them over $25 per week for the opportunity to watch said crap? Instead of waiting for a "grass roots revolution" (which will never happen) why don't you spend some of that money on pursuits and companies that aren't asshats? Or only go to see the handful of movies that are actually *worth* your money!
You must have a different definition of the word "free" than the rest of the English-speaking world. You are paying ($24.99/(number of rentals)) for each movie you watch. If you watch a movie every Friday & Saturday night, you're still paying around $3 per rental, which is pretty much what it would cost you if you got one movie at a time at most places.
Now if you don't go out often, or have kids or a large extended family to share the cost with then it certainly could be economical for you. However, I don't even know if I could find 8 new movies each month that were worth my time to watch... let alone signing up for a subscription service and watching over 10 movies a month to make the "obligation" worth it.
So, useful for some, but probably not economical for most people.