Paper consumption raises the demand for timber, which causes more tree farms to be established. The best way to ensure there will be more trees is to use more paper, not less. Get rid of the timber industry, and you get rid of all economic incentive to grow and maintain forests.
From all accounts, it was a sucky MMORPG on release, was revamped into a suckier MMORPG, and is being revamped again into something even worse. Obviously anybody still playing doesn't give a crap about gameplay, and just wants to "be a jedi" or hang with on-line friends who haven't yet agreed on another game to migrate to.
Okay, maybe that wasn't the most insightful observation ever. I was just in the mood to post a comment using "suckier" as a word.
So does it make any difference if an American engineer who made many contributions to the success of the company is put out of a job so that the profitable American company can replace him/her with a cheaper and less experienced Chinese engineer and thereby redirect even more profit into the CEOs compensation?
Again, why should it?
If the Chinese engineer can get the job done for less, why should he not be allowed to? Both guys are just trying to make a living. Is the Chinese one a less-worthy human being to you than the American engineer?
Oh. You're a Galbraith desciple. That saves me some time. HAND.
Advertising is a billion-dollar industry. QED.
And that demonstrates that... advertising is a billion dollar industry. It doesn't demonstrate that demand is being manufactured at all. Advertising usually serves to persuade you to use our service to meet your already-present demand.
When CD's came out, the vast majority of music lovers replaced the albums they already owned with new CD's.
I seriously think that there are music execs out there who were hoping that a new format (downloaded music) would mean that we would all want to buy our entire music collections all over again, in spite of the fact that the power is in our own hands to convert files this time.
Consequently, the back-catalog sales are absolute shit compared to what the early days of CD's were like. Lots of people are using iTMS to buy songs from Fountains of Wayne, Death Cab for Cutie, and/or the latest pop princesses, but nobody's re-buying the old Pink Floyd albums they already own in another format, and that's what's driving them nuts.
Why, we even have the audacity to BACK UP our media files, so we no longer need to buy a new copy every few years because of loss, damage, or wear. It's KILLING their sales numbers.
Engineers are engineers. Everybody's gotta eat. Why should I whether a Chinese engineer has a job and an American engineer is out of work or vice versa?
Against both groups we are currently losing; our strategy does not match their will.
There are a lot of countries who would love to be "losing" the way we are. Both Iran and China would fit on that list.
Our strategy is a brilliant one, and one that goes back more than a Century: "The business of America is business."
Prior to the break-up of Yugoslavia, no nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it had ever gone to war with another nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it. Prosperity, contentment, and outright sloth is the surest way to make people not want to get up off the futon and shoot at each other anymore.
The more power that goes to Washington (and, in particular, the President)
Actually, I'm far more concerned with limiting the power of Congress.
The President is a single executive who must re-apply for his job after four years, and resign after eight. He's charged with running the military, and holds tremendous influence, but has no actual power over what the government spends, which is the same as saying he has no actual power.
Limited scope, lots of accountability. That's the way we likes 'em.
A corrupt congressman, however, is a royal pain in the ass, especially if he mananges to maintain popularity in whatever podunk state he happens to come from. Those two jackass Senators from Alaska (both Republicans, IIRC) are prime examples.
I agree. This same technology (small handheld TVs) has been around since the 80s at least and never really caught on. I think the cellphone companies are pushing this now because they need the next gimmick to sell the next generation of phones. We've now seen, in addition to plain old phone functionality, PDA functionality, Web browsing, digital cameras, and now they need more.
Yeah. When they added that "plain old phone functionality" gimmick to phones, it was the nose fo the camel. Before that, phones were really simple. You could build your own out of rocks.:)
Rather, I think that they like the iPod itself coupled with how society perceives iPods and their owners.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Can we please let the "people buy iPods just to be trendy" meme die already? It's total bullshit, but it seems like certain people need to tell that to themselves in order to "justify" their decision not to buy one.
So you decided an Archos (or whatever) is the right personal media gadget for your needs. Good for you. Enjoy it. There's no need to piss all over the choices other consumers made. Not owning an iPod does not make you a better person or anything.
So, since IANAL, can you tell me which part of RICO lets you lock people up indefinately without a court date?
The same part as in PATRIOT which says you can lock people up indefinately without a court date.
In other words, nowhere. The PATRIOT Act never mentions any such thing. It says a lot of things which I strongly object to, but nothing about locking people up.
The PATRIOT Act was not required for the Bush Administration to lock away terrorists without due process. Out-of-uniform enemy combatants currently have pretty much zero protection of rights in either US or international law.
NEWS FLASH: Hallow tube may be used to do the job of... a hallow tube.
Next on Slashdot: Make a crude beer stein out of an ordinary measuring cup!
(Insert oblig. "hacking is way cooler than just BUYING a beer stein like the rest of the sheep!!!1! It's about the JOURNEY d00d!!" comment in response to howls of laughter over such a useless activity.)
...err, how long was it before anyone dared point out the gee-dub-yah had nothing to go into iraq with?
Nonsense. He had the most powerful army in the world to go into Iraq with.
The few that did were branded as anti-american: so, why do you hate america?
Still waiting on that answer....and anyways, it seems to me that we're making pretty quick with the give-up-the-freedoms-for-security gig right now and we could be just half a step away from losing large chunks of freedom, and being no better off than the chinese...
Apart from the freedom to get on a plane without first taking my shoes off, I'm at a loss to think of any freedoms I've given up lately.
Yes, because of the PATRIOT Act the gub'ment (see, I can type with a stupid dialect while pretending to mimic your side, too) can now tap my phone if they tell a judge that I might be a terrorist.
Before PATRIOT, they would have had to tell the judge that I might be a mobster, and tap my phone under the RICO statutes.
Not a good state of affairs, but hardly a shocking change from what eight years of Clinton/Gore brought down on us.
Well, how come airline pilots are always chatting on the radio then ?
I feel the same way about windshield HUD's. I'd love to be able to glimpse at my guages without taking my eyes off the road for that split-second.
There's been a lot of resistance against having things like your current speed and direction show up on the windshield, because it's supposed to be "too much of a distraction," but if pilots of supersonic fighter jets can get by with them, why can't auto drivers?
Oh, come now. This isn't morality; it's prejudice and spite masquerading as morality.
First of all, I never said morality had anything to do with this. Quite to the contrary, I believe I was pointing out that this was all about money.
Secondly, the rest of your post is just knee-jerk hyperbole. I never said it was a valid argument. If you had bothered to read and comprehend my entire post before lashing out at me, you would recognize that I'm not anti-gay marriage. Not even a little bit. I was merely laying out what the case was and pointing out that religion and "morality" have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Specifically, opponents of government recognition of gay marriage believe that the expansion of the definition of marriage would eventually result in economic forces which weaken traditional families. You are free to make the case that this isn't really such a bad thing, but they are on pretty solid ground when they say so. Society is currently heavily weighted in favor of the nuclear family, and any change to marriage laws would change that.
The only room for debate is on whether that's a good thing or not.
Also such as: gay people getting married is a threat to straight people's marriages
No, that's an issue of fuck-buddies taking advantage of loopholes in laws which were written to motivate parents to stay married for the sake of the kids.
It's based on several axioms:
1. All else being equal, a kid is better off being raised by both biological parents. 2. Society wants kids to be well off. 3. Using tax laws and so forth, we can encourage families to stay together. 4. A gay couple, collectively, can never produce offspring of their own. 5. If you allow gays to be legally married, they enjoy the benefits which were put in place for the sake of keeping families together, which is fundamentally unfair to single people and common-law marriages, who also do not enjoy said benefits.
Of course, where gays can claim they are being discriminated against is that we allow sterile people to marry. If a woman with no uterus is permitted to marry a man, how can you use the same lack of a uterus to prohibit a man from marrying him?
The only way to make it completely fair to everybody is to strip away all government recognition of marriage, and handle all weddings with simple civil contract law... which is fine by me, but that's exactly what the anti-gay-marriage crowd is desperately fighting against. They like their unfair marriage-law goodies, and don't want gay couples horning in on them and exposing how nonsensical they really are.
Actually, while Blockbuster refused to carry the original NC-17 version of "Requiem for a Dream", it provoked the creation of an R-rated edit specifically for large video chains.
But then, a few months later, an unrated directors cut was released, which included and I rented it from a Blockbuster. Jennifer Connolly sharing a double-sided dildo with another girl right there on a Blockbuster-blessed DVD. Go figure.
Swerving back to the main topic...
This jackass could have simply released the film unrated, and the title would have fit just fine. He submitted a film for approval when it features clips which provoked NC-17 ratings in other movies, so you can't tell me he's surprised it got slapped with an NC-17 of its own. He obviously was hoping for the NC-17 so hyperbolic screams about the eeeeeevil MPAA would generate a little more buzz about his great big whine-fest.
News flash, movie directors: If you make a film with a lot of kinky sex and freakish violence in it, some people will not want to see it, or want their kids to see it, or even want it promoted in their neighborhoods. Their desire not to be grossed out supersedes your right to perform a song about fucking your mother.
Go ahead an make a movie where somebody shits on somebody else's face then ass-fucks them with a gardening trowel while nibbling their jugular vein open, if that's what your "artistic vision" calls for, but don't act all shocked and hurt when a ratings board gives it a grade that suggests suburban mall theaters might not want to show it. Nobody feels bad for you.
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save the trees
Paper consumption raises the demand for timber, which causes more tree farms to be established. The best way to ensure there will be more trees is to use more paper, not less. Get rid of the timber industry, and you get rid of all economic incentive to grow and maintain forests.
From all accounts, it was a sucky MMORPG on release, was revamped into a suckier MMORPG, and is being revamped again into something even worse. Obviously anybody still playing doesn't give a crap about gameplay, and just wants to "be a jedi" or hang with on-line friends who haven't yet agreed on another game to migrate to.
Okay, maybe that wasn't the most insightful observation ever. I was just in the mood to post a comment using "suckier" as a word.
P.S. WoW pwns, bee-otch.
So does it make any difference if an American engineer who made many contributions to the success of the company is put out of a job so that the profitable American company can replace him/her with a cheaper and less experienced Chinese engineer and thereby redirect even more profit into the CEOs compensation?
Again, why should it?
If the Chinese engineer can get the job done for less, why should he not be allowed to? Both guys are just trying to make a living. Is the Chinese one a less-worthy human being to you than the American engineer?
In Korea, most MMO gamers play at PC bangs (cafes)
Yeah, but I hear that only old people go to them.
And in Soviet Russia, PC bangs YOU!!!
Thanks folks! Enjoy the veal! Slashdot audiences are the greatest audiences in the worrrrrrrrrrrld!
It's a common sentiment, but the direct word-for-word quote is from Firefly.
Oh. You're a Galbraith desciple. That saves me some time. HAND.
Advertising is a billion-dollar industry. QED.
And that demonstrates that... advertising is a billion dollar industry. It doesn't demonstrate that demand is being manufactured at all. Advertising usually serves to persuade you to use our service to meet your already-present demand.
but when our children and grandchildren
And why should I care more about your grandchildren than theirs?
This is a case of unreasonable expectations.
When CD's came out, the vast majority of music lovers replaced the albums they already owned with new CD's.
I seriously think that there are music execs out there who were hoping that a new format (downloaded music) would mean that we would all want to buy our entire music collections all over again, in spite of the fact that the power is in our own hands to convert files this time.
Consequently, the back-catalog sales are absolute shit compared to what the early days of CD's were like. Lots of people are using iTMS to buy songs from Fountains of Wayne, Death Cab for Cutie, and/or the latest pop princesses, but nobody's re-buying the old Pink Floyd albums they already own in another format, and that's what's driving them nuts.
Why, we even have the audacity to BACK UP our media files, so we no longer need to buy a new copy every few years because of loss, damage, or wear. It's KILLING their sales numbers.
Another question: Who cares?
Engineers are engineers. Everybody's gotta eat. Why should I whether a Chinese engineer has a job and an American engineer is out of work or vice versa?
Picard: Everyone dies alone.
That's a Mal Reynolds quote from Firefly, not a Jean Luc Picard quote from Star Trek.
(Of course, just because of the fact that I knew that, it's a safe bet that I will die alone too.)
Number One: You will die alone.
Against both groups we are currently losing; our strategy does not match their will.
There are a lot of countries who would love to be "losing" the way we are. Both Iran and China would fit on that list.
Our strategy is a brilliant one, and one that goes back more than a Century: "The business of America is business."
Prior to the break-up of Yugoslavia, no nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it had ever gone to war with another nation with a McDonald's restaurant in it. Prosperity, contentment, and outright sloth is the surest way to make people not want to get up off the futon and shoot at each other anymore.
The more power that goes to Washington (and, in particular, the President)
Actually, I'm far more concerned with limiting the power of Congress.
The President is a single executive who must re-apply for his job after four years, and resign after eight. He's charged with running the military, and holds tremendous influence, but has no actual power over what the government spends, which is the same as saying he has no actual power.
Limited scope, lots of accountability. That's the way we likes 'em.
A corrupt congressman, however, is a royal pain in the ass, especially if he mananges to maintain popularity in whatever podunk state he happens to come from. Those two jackass Senators from Alaska (both Republicans, IIRC) are prime examples.
I agree. This same technology (small handheld TVs) has been around since the 80s at least and never really caught on. I think the cellphone companies are pushing this now because they need the next gimmick to sell the next generation of phones. We've now seen, in addition to plain old phone functionality, PDA functionality, Web browsing, digital cameras, and now they need more.
:)
Yeah. When they added that "plain old phone functionality" gimmick to phones, it was the nose fo the camel. Before that, phones were really simple. You could build your own out of rocks.
Rather, I think that they like the iPod itself coupled with how society perceives iPods and their owners.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Can we please let the "people buy iPods just to be trendy" meme die already? It's total bullshit, but it seems like certain people need to tell that to themselves in order to "justify" their decision not to buy one.
So you decided an Archos (or whatever) is the right personal media gadget for your needs. Good for you. Enjoy it. There's no need to piss all over the choices other consumers made. Not owning an iPod does not make you a better person or anything.
So, since IANAL, can you tell me which part of RICO lets you lock people up indefinately without a court date?
The same part as in PATRIOT which says you can lock people up indefinately without a court date.
In other words, nowhere. The PATRIOT Act never mentions any such thing. It says a lot of things which I strongly object to, but nothing about locking people up.
The PATRIOT Act was not required for the Bush Administration to lock away terrorists without due process. Out-of-uniform enemy combatants currently have pretty much zero protection of rights in either US or international law.
Astonishing indeed.
NEWS FLASH: Hallow tube may be used to do the job of... a hallow tube.
Next on Slashdot: Make a crude beer stein out of an ordinary measuring cup!
(Insert oblig. "hacking is way cooler than just BUYING a beer stein like the rest of the sheep!!!1! It's about the JOURNEY d00d!!" comment in response to howls of laughter over such a useless activity.)
...err, how long was it before anyone dared point out the gee-dub-yah had nothing to go into iraq with?
...and anyways, it seems to me that we're making pretty quick with the give-up-the-freedoms-for-security gig right now and we could be just half a step away from losing large chunks of freedom, and being no better off than the chinese...
Nonsense. He had the most powerful army in the world to go into Iraq with.
The few that did were branded as anti-american: so, why do you hate america?
Still waiting on that answer.
Apart from the freedom to get on a plane without first taking my shoes off, I'm at a loss to think of any freedoms I've given up lately.
Yes, because of the PATRIOT Act the gub'ment (see, I can type with a stupid dialect while pretending to mimic your side, too) can now tap my phone if they tell a judge that I might be a terrorist.
Before PATRIOT, they would have had to tell the judge that I might be a mobster, and tap my phone under the RICO statutes.
Not a good state of affairs, but hardly a shocking change from what eight years of Clinton/Gore brought down on us.
Well, how come airline pilots are always chatting on the radio then ?
I feel the same way about windshield HUD's. I'd love to be able to glimpse at my guages without taking my eyes off the road for that split-second.
There's been a lot of resistance against having things like your current speed and direction show up on the windshield, because it's supposed to be "too much of a distraction," but if pilots of supersonic fighter jets can get by with them, why can't auto drivers?
The myth of the sovereign consumer has been debunked long ago.
Saying it has doesn't make it so.
It is a given that demand can be manufactured.
No, it's not a given. It's your hypothesis. Please demonstrate it.
it's designed to control obscenity and pr0nography
Isn't "any information" an unusual way to spell "obscenity and pornography"?
Oh, come now. This isn't morality; it's prejudice and spite masquerading as morality.
First of all, I never said morality had anything to do with this. Quite to the contrary, I believe I was pointing out that this was all about money.
Secondly, the rest of your post is just knee-jerk hyperbole. I never said it was a valid argument. If you had bothered to read and comprehend my entire post before lashing out at me, you would recognize that I'm not anti-gay marriage. Not even a little bit. I was merely laying out what the case was and pointing out that religion and "morality" have absolutely nothing to do with it.
Specifically, opponents of government recognition of gay marriage believe that the expansion of the definition of marriage would eventually result in economic forces which weaken traditional families. You are free to make the case that this isn't really such a bad thing, but they are on pretty solid ground when they say so. Society is currently heavily weighted in favor of the nuclear family, and any change to marriage laws would change that.
The only room for debate is on whether that's a good thing or not.
I would even maintain that if it does not contain NC-17 material, then it's not very useful as a documentary.
Also such as: gay people getting married is a threat to straight people's marriages
No, that's an issue of fuck-buddies taking advantage of loopholes in laws which were written to motivate parents to stay married for the sake of the kids.
It's based on several axioms:
1. All else being equal, a kid is better off being raised by both biological parents.
2. Society wants kids to be well off.
3. Using tax laws and so forth, we can encourage families to stay together.
4. A gay couple, collectively, can never produce offspring of their own.
5. If you allow gays to be legally married, they enjoy the benefits which were put in place for the sake of keeping families together, which is fundamentally unfair to single people and common-law marriages, who also do not enjoy said benefits.
Of course, where gays can claim they are being discriminated against is that we allow sterile people to marry. If a woman with no uterus is permitted to marry a man, how can you use the same lack of a uterus to prohibit a man from marrying him?
The only way to make it completely fair to everybody is to strip away all government recognition of marriage, and handle all weddings with simple civil contract law... which is fine by me, but that's exactly what the anti-gay-marriage crowd is desperately fighting against. They like their unfair marriage-law goodies, and don't want gay couples horning in on them and exposing how nonsensical they really are.
Actually, while Blockbuster refused to carry the original NC-17 version of "Requiem for a Dream", it provoked the creation of an R-rated edit specifically for large video chains.
But then, a few months later, an unrated directors cut was released, which included and I rented it from a Blockbuster. Jennifer Connolly sharing a double-sided dildo with another girl right there on a Blockbuster-blessed DVD. Go figure.
Swerving back to the main topic...
This jackass could have simply released the film unrated, and the title would have fit just fine. He submitted a film for approval when it features clips which provoked NC-17 ratings in other movies, so you can't tell me he's surprised it got slapped with an NC-17 of its own. He obviously was hoping for the NC-17 so hyperbolic screams about the eeeeeevil MPAA would generate a little more buzz about his great big whine-fest.
News flash, movie directors: If you make a film with a lot of kinky sex and freakish violence in it, some people will not want to see it, or want their kids to see it, or even want it promoted in their neighborhoods. Their desire not to be grossed out supersedes your right to perform a song about fucking your mother.
Go ahead an make a movie where somebody shits on somebody else's face then ass-fucks them with a gardening trowel while nibbling their jugular vein open, if that's what your "artistic vision" calls for, but don't act all shocked and hurt when a ratings board gives it a grade that suggests suburban mall theaters might not want to show it. Nobody feels bad for you.