Japan contributed vast sums of money to the war effort. The financial cost of waging war should not be underestimated. Germany was beat in WWII because they were out-produced.
Those tomahawk missiles and A-10's ain't excacly free.
I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but if you thing the tobbacco companies were losers in this, you have been played for a sucker.
In fact, several watchdog groups are preparing a class action suit against both the "big five" tobbacco companies and the lawyers who wrote the settlements to reverse the settlements under anti-trust law.
The settlement made the lawyers involved (like Minnesota's Mike Cericci) extremely rich, will result in almost no money whatsoever going to insurance members and tax payers (on who's behalf they were supposedly suing), and here's the real gem:
The companies which settled were being sued for deceptive advertising and hiding the results of some studies. The punative damages are high, so they made the argument that if they tried to pass the cost on to their customers, smaller competitors would push them out of the market. That would put them out of business, which means no more payolla for the lawyers. Therefore, a provision was written saying that any new tobbacco company that comes along will be required to pay into the same settlement fund, even though they had no history of wrongdoing.
The upshot of this is that it does not hurt the tobbacco companies... not one little bit. All they need to do is raise the price of cigarettes a little, knowing full well that anybody that wants to enter the market will have to do the same (and will lack the resources... therefore not enter the market.)
So, in exchange for the possibility of losing a few customers to higher prices, they have guaranteed a monopoly trust position over a multi-billion-dollar market for the next couple decades.
On top of that, they are required to fund PSA's... some of which paint them in pretty good light, and those that don't are still free publicity. Previously, it was illegal for them to even do TV product placements.
You just go right ahead and keep sniping/camping. I've never meet a sniper that I couldn't outscore with hunter-seeker tactics.:)
Games with scopes and/or limited ammo tend to give a sniper a leg up, but even then it is deathmatch suicide to stay in one place if you opponent knows how to play.
On the positive side, people who practice sniping a lot in deathmatch are good team-mates to have in TF or capture-the-flag type games, so I ought not pick on you too much.:)
Inciting a riot and fighting a war are two different things. Rioters do not overthrow governments very often... They just break things and hurt people while less-involved people take advantage of the distraction by looting.
I didn't say I am against DeCSS copying. I have both of the Copyleft T-shirts in my laundry basket at home. I'm just responding to the short-sighted comment about all restrictions to speech being evil. Some restrictions are a good idea, and do not neccesarilly conflict with the First Amendment, which was mainly written to protect journalists, critics of the government, and churches.
It is *only* about free speech. "Free" means "absoulutely free". You can't put conditions on absolutes. If are for restrictions, of *any* kind, than you are *not* for Free Speech, end of story.
Then I guess I'm not. I don't think you are free to commit libel, or slander, or start riots, or use a megaphone outside my bedroom window at 3:00 AM, or reprint 10,000 copies of John Grisham's new novel and sell them, or mass-produce bootlegs of MS-Office.
FYI, the Constitution of the United States is on my side, not yours.
This is every bit as big as the fight against racism
Sorry. I take IP law pretty seriously, but this is nothing compared to the fight against racism.
No matter how this case shakes out, there will still be geeks, artists, and greedy corporations, all playing the same roles. Nobody has ever been lynched or murdered over DVD copy protection. Families have not been broken up by it. Lives are not in danger.
I strongly urge you to push yourself away from the monitor, go for a walk outside, and get things in perspective a little.
I'm not just flaming you here, I'm serious. The DeCSS case is important, but it is not something to start a war over, or even contact Amnesty International about. It's just a trial (one of many) that tests a recent law... one which will probably be radically revised before long.
Space is not crowded, but Earth orbit paths are getting to be. There's an awful lot of debris drifting around up there, and avoiding it is an issue on every single mission.
Interestingly enough, Walt Disney had intended Fantasia to be a framework. Every so often, there was going to be another Fanstasia movie, in which another group of animators were allowed to express themselves within the format. The fact that only two have been made, while Disney had been churning out crap like The Lion King and Mulan on a regular yearly basis, tells you everything you need to know about that company.
Now, had Disney decided to make the entire movie a classical music feast with cgi visuals, it would have been both innovative and amazing.
They did. It was called Fantasia 2000. Hardly anybody went to it, though. Those who wanted to see a Disney picture went to Dinosaur instead.
Re:[OT] Ralph Bakshi and "low-tech motion-capture"
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Too bad all of Bakshi's movies stink on ice.
Rotoscope Animation predates Bakshi's work by quite a long while... Disney used very similar to model the motion of the Dwarves in Snow White.
Re:Do Holywood sheep dream of electric movies?
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All that is true, but Clerks would not have been better in color. Nor would Pi.
The whole color vs. black&white debate kind of reminds me of the joke from a few years ago, about how Ted Turner was probably going to colorize the beginning and ending segments of The Wizzard of Oz.
Just for the record, at no point did I call you an asshole.
(I did mention that I thought you were a troll, because it is so common for people to say excactly the sort of things you said for the sake of trolling. I am no longer under the impression that this is what you were up to.)
When you tell my that a close, personal friend of mine should have been killed, it is very hard to see it as anything other than a personal attack. Even if you meant to be speaking in jest, you were out of line.
In spite of your strong feelings about how evil her religion is, I do not find your comments amusing, and an apology would have been a much classier move than trying to justify your statement with comments about crusades and Popes.
I was just trying to provoke and irritate you because I see Xtians as irritating and dangerously blinkered people.
I take it by "Xtians", you mean Christians (people who believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Hebrew Messaiah).
I don't recall expressing an opinion in favor of one religion or another on this forum, merely a concern about the lack of free expression in places like Communist China.
Often when I read an angry tirade against Christians in an online forum, I will substitute the word "Christian" with the word "Jew" and read it again. It does wonders to make the true nature of their ideology a lot more obvious.
You are correct that Sweden is really more like Socialism than Communism. A minor error of semantics on my part. My point was that my objections to China have little to do with the socialist economy, and everything to do with the suppression of basic human rights.
Well, NATO has historically been more concerned with the security of Europe (hence NORTH ATLANTIC Treaty Organization), but their mission has been shifting over the past few years, so you might be right.
What seems more likely is a spur-of-the-moment alliance of nations, like there was against Iraq. Russia, Japan, and pretty much every country that was concerned about oil got involved in that one. It is very easy to imagine countries like South Korea, Australia, Japan, and Singapore becoming interested in a threat to a big trading partner like Taiwan.
I sincerely hope that you are right, because even a non-nuclear confrontation between China and the US (or some kind of UN force) would be a huge, bloody mess.
Your colorful views on the thrust of what I was saying is interesting, but I respectfully disagree with several of your points.
First of all, while Western Civilization is far from perfect, there are several things that has going for it: free speech, freedom of religion, protection against unfair search and seizure, the presumption that our lives and rights are ours alone (as individuals) and inalienable.
If the people of China want a communist economy (as the Swedes do), that's just hunky-dorey with me. What concerns me about socialist and communist nations is the fact that they are run by tyrants. If you live in those countries and oppose the leadership, you will be killed for doing so.
People like to compare corporate "powers" to these dictators, but anybody can chose not to drink Coke if they want to, or rent a billboard in downtown Chicago to write "Nike Sucks!" on. These companies do not have the power to oppress you the way Milosovic oppresses muslims; the worst they can do is offer you a deal you don't like (such as a sweatshop job), and annoy you with bad marketing.
As for your suggestion that all economic systems are pyramids, and only so many people can be rich... that is what Econ 101 profs call the "zero sum game", and the theory does not hold. The basic assumption is that the economy is static, like one big pizza, and if I eat too many slices you are left with nothing but the box.
The truth is that people create prosperity, if they are in an economic system that rewards them for it. The more people that are producing wealth, the bigger the pizza gets. Will the rich benifit "unfairly" by rising economic tides? You can make that argument, but if you go from being a millionaire to being a billionaire while I go from being dirt-poor to having a nice house and car, should I be upset? Would I be better off if I was still poor and you were still a millionaire?
Free trade and capitalism, as we currently know it, is not a perfect system of managing an economy, but so far nobody has produced a better one.
I'll stop now, because I am getting waaaay off-topic.
Yes, but at least the nations of the West are unlikely to run you down with tanks when you peacefully assemble.
I really don't give a crap if the US government knows what my political views are. If they haven't gotten around to shooting Ralph Nader and Harry Browne yet, they are hardly likely to get around to bothering with me.
Living in a place like Iraq and being critical of the government (or just being somebody they don't like) is a much more dangerous game, as thousands of Kurds discovered.
Here in America, we are royally pissed off that Kevin Mitnick's parole terms are unfair, but if he were caught in China doing the same crimes, he would be in an unmarked grave right now, and nobody would have ever heard his story.
eriously, no offense but maybe it would be better if your friend never got out.
So you don't mean to offend me by saying you wished a friend of mine was detained for life or killed by a communist dicatorship for the crime of free expression? Oooooookay.
Do we really need any more "holy wars" and persecutions?
You mean like people being oppressed for their religious views? Like you just advocated in your first sentence? Hmm. Good point.
This is not flaimbait but just meant to stimulate thoughts.
You are not the first troll to think it was funny to say "I am not trolling". Now go away.
Or, to steal from the movie "Forever Night", you could get a job at a radio station reading communist propaganda, coughing and clearing your throat in the right places to send a coded message.:)
I had a friend in college a few years ago that joined a missionary group that was smuggling Bibles into the country. Her return was delayed by four months, during which time we were unable to contact her, or even confirm that she was alive or ever coming back. Turns out that getting out was not quite as easy as getting in.
China seems to me like a country on the verge of radical change. We all remember the kid standing in front of the tank, throwing rocks... but when you look at the way they handled the annexation of Hong Kong (by changing almost nothing), there's room for hope.
If I'm wrong, we (by which I mean most of the world) will probably end up at war with them over Taiwan (or something) within the next decade or two. The old Chinese curse about living in interesting times seems to apply.
ROFL! You are so right! Instead of talking with Scully on the cell phone all the time the way Mulder always did, he could send mini-cassettes to her autopsy lab with lots of comments about how good the cherry pie and coffee is.
I really miss Cooper's "holistic" investigation methods. It makes me want to get my hands on the Twin Peaks tapes again.
Slashdot Mirror
Those tomahawk missiles and A-10's ain't excacly free.
In fact, several watchdog groups are preparing a class action suit against both the "big five" tobbacco companies and the lawyers who wrote the settlements to reverse the settlements under anti-trust law.
The settlement made the lawyers involved (like Minnesota's Mike Cericci) extremely rich, will result in almost no money whatsoever going to insurance members and tax payers (on who's behalf they were supposedly suing), and here's the real gem:
The companies which settled were being sued for deceptive advertising and hiding the results of some studies. The punative damages are high, so they made the argument that if they tried to pass the cost on to their customers, smaller competitors would push them out of the market. That would put them out of business, which means no more payolla for the lawyers. Therefore, a provision was written saying that any new tobbacco company that comes along will be required to pay into the same settlement fund, even though they had no history of wrongdoing.
The upshot of this is that it does not hurt the tobbacco companies... not one little bit. All they need to do is raise the price of cigarettes a little, knowing full well that anybody that wants to enter the market will have to do the same (and will lack the resources... therefore not enter the market.)
So, in exchange for the possibility of losing a few customers to higher prices, they have guaranteed a monopoly trust position over a multi-billion-dollar market for the next couple decades.
On top of that, they are required to fund PSA's... some of which paint them in pretty good light, and those that don't are still free publicity. Previously, it was illegal for them to even do TV product placements.
So, tell me, how have they lost?
You just go right ahead and keep sniping/camping. I've never meet a sniper that I couldn't outscore with hunter-seeker tactics. :)
Games with scopes and/or limited ammo tend to give a sniper a leg up, but even then it is deathmatch suicide to stay in one place if you opponent knows how to play.
On the positive side, people who practice sniping a lot in deathmatch are good team-mates to have in TF or capture-the-flag type games, so I ought not pick on you too much. :)
Inciting a riot and fighting a war are two different things. Rioters do not overthrow governments very often... They just break things and hurt people while less-involved people take advantage of the distraction by looting.
I didn't say I am against DeCSS copying. I have both of the Copyleft T-shirts in my laundry basket at home. I'm just responding to the short-sighted comment about all restrictions to speech being evil. Some restrictions are a good idea, and do not neccesarilly conflict with the First Amendment, which was mainly written to protect journalists, critics of the government, and churches.
Then I guess I'm not. I don't think you are free to commit libel, or slander, or start riots, or use a megaphone outside my bedroom window at 3:00 AM, or reprint 10,000 copies of John Grisham's new novel and sell them, or mass-produce bootlegs of MS-Office.
FYI, the Constitution of the United States is on my side, not yours.
Sorry. I take IP law pretty seriously, but this is nothing compared to the fight against racism.
No matter how this case shakes out, there will still be geeks, artists, and greedy corporations, all playing the same roles. Nobody has ever been lynched or murdered over DVD copy protection. Families have not been broken up by it. Lives are not in danger.
I strongly urge you to push yourself away from the monitor, go for a walk outside, and get things in perspective a little.
I'm not just flaming you here, I'm serious. The DeCSS case is important, but it is not something to start a war over, or even contact Amnesty International about. It's just a trial (one of many) that tests a recent law... one which will probably be radically revised before long.
Space is not crowded, but Earth orbit paths are getting to be. There's an awful lot of debris drifting around up there, and avoiding it is an issue on every single mission.
Interestingly enough, Walt Disney had intended Fantasia to be a framework. Every so often, there was going to be another Fanstasia movie, in which another group of animators were allowed to express themselves within the format. The fact that only two have been made, while Disney had been churning out crap like The Lion King and Mulan on a regular yearly basis, tells you everything you need to know about that company.
They did. It was called Fantasia 2000. Hardly anybody went to it, though. Those who wanted to see a Disney picture went to Dinosaur instead.
Rotoscope Animation predates Bakshi's work by quite a long while... Disney used very similar to model the motion of the Dwarves in Snow White.
The whole color vs. black&white debate kind of reminds me of the joke from a few years ago, about how Ted Turner was probably going to colorize the beginning and ending segments of The Wizzard of Oz.
(I did mention that I thought you were a troll, because it is so common for people to say excactly the sort of things you said for the sake of trolling. I am no longer under the impression that this is what you were up to.)
When you tell my that a close, personal friend of mine should have been killed, it is very hard to see it as anything other than a personal attack. Even if you meant to be speaking in jest, you were out of line.
In spite of your strong feelings about how evil her religion is, I do not find your comments amusing, and an apology would have been a much classier move than trying to justify your statement with comments about crusades and Popes.
He was just pointing out (correctly) that it was NATO and not the UN Council that lead the action. I think you must have misread something in there.
I take it by "Xtians", you mean Christians (people who believe Jesus of Nazareth was the Hebrew Messaiah).
I don't recall expressing an opinion in favor of one religion or another on this forum, merely a concern about the lack of free expression in places like Communist China.
Often when I read an angry tirade against Christians in an online forum, I will substitute the word "Christian" with the word "Jew" and read it again. It does wonders to make the true nature of their ideology a lot more obvious.
You are correct that Sweden is really more like Socialism than Communism. A minor error of semantics on my part. My point was that my objections to China have little to do with the socialist economy, and everything to do with the suppression of basic human rights.
What seems more likely is a spur-of-the-moment alliance of nations, like there was against Iraq. Russia, Japan, and pretty much every country that was concerned about oil got involved in that one. It is very easy to imagine countries like South Korea, Australia, Japan, and Singapore becoming interested in a threat to a big trading partner like Taiwan.
Mother Night. That was it. Thanks.
I sincerely hope that you are right, because even a non-nuclear confrontation between China and the US (or some kind of UN force) would be a huge, bloody mess.
First of all, while Western Civilization is far from perfect, there are several things that has going for it: free speech, freedom of religion, protection against unfair search and seizure, the presumption that our lives and rights are ours alone (as individuals) and inalienable.
If the people of China want a communist economy (as the Swedes do), that's just hunky-dorey with me. What concerns me about socialist and communist nations is the fact that they are run by tyrants. If you live in those countries and oppose the leadership, you will be killed for doing so.
People like to compare corporate "powers" to these dictators, but anybody can chose not to drink Coke if they want to, or rent a billboard in downtown Chicago to write "Nike Sucks!" on. These companies do not have the power to oppress you the way Milosovic oppresses muslims; the worst they can do is offer you a deal you don't like (such as a sweatshop job), and annoy you with bad marketing.
As for your suggestion that all economic systems are pyramids, and only so many people can be rich... that is what Econ 101 profs call the "zero sum game", and the theory does not hold. The basic assumption is that the economy is static, like one big pizza, and if I eat too many slices you are left with nothing but the box.
The truth is that people create prosperity, if they are in an economic system that rewards them for it. The more people that are producing wealth, the bigger the pizza gets. Will the rich benifit "unfairly" by rising economic tides? You can make that argument, but if you go from being a millionaire to being a billionaire while I go from being dirt-poor to having a nice house and car, should I be upset? Would I be better off if I was still poor and you were still a millionaire?
Free trade and capitalism, as we currently know it, is not a perfect system of managing an economy, but so far nobody has produced a better one.
I'll stop now, because I am getting waaaay off-topic.
I really don't give a crap if the US government knows what my political views are. If they haven't gotten around to shooting Ralph Nader and Harry Browne yet, they are hardly likely to get around to bothering with me.
Living in a place like Iraq and being critical of the government (or just being somebody they don't like) is a much more dangerous game, as thousands of Kurds discovered.
Here in America, we are royally pissed off that Kevin Mitnick's parole terms are unfair, but if he were caught in China doing the same crimes, he would be in an unmarked grave right now, and nobody would have ever heard his story.
So you don't mean to offend me by saying you wished a friend of mine was detained for life or killed by a communist dicatorship for the crime of free expression? Oooooookay.
Do we really need any more "holy wars" and persecutions?
You mean like people being oppressed for their religious views? Like you just advocated in your first sentence? Hmm. Good point.
This is not flaimbait but just meant to stimulate thoughts.
You are not the first troll to think it was funny to say "I am not trolling". Now go away.
Or, to steal from the movie "Forever Night", you could get a job at a radio station reading communist propaganda, coughing and clearing your throat in the right places to send a coded message. :)
China seems to me like a country on the verge of radical change. We all remember the kid standing in front of the tank, throwing rocks... but when you look at the way they handled the annexation of Hong Kong (by changing almost nothing), there's room for hope.
If I'm wrong, we (by which I mean most of the world) will probably end up at war with them over Taiwan (or something) within the next decade or two. The old Chinese curse about living in interesting times seems to apply.
I really miss Cooper's "holistic" investigation methods. It makes me want to get my hands on the Twin Peaks tapes again.
I hope you recover from the eyestrain of reading that mess soon, while I go twice around the rosary for not using the Preview button.