Opinino? It sounds like... some sort of tropical fruit. Mmmmm... opinino. And I bet that, just like with apples - that opinino from someone else's garden tastes the sweetest.
This is Slashdot. Only company we are allowed to indiscriminately hate and make fun of is Microsoft. Sorry... Micro$oft.
Other corporate entities are free game from time to time - but never Apple. Also, badmouthing Linux, penguins in general and in some cases Natalie Portman will almost certainly get you in serious trouble.
...any branch of CS/IT, study of which includes time-limited exams during which you have to churn out large quantities of functional but utterly boring code.
On average, and entirely unsurprisingly, one time in three you'll be in the fastest line; one time in three, you'll be in the slowest line. (And in the remaining third of cases, you'll fall in the middle.)
Don't give me any of that "It's how you play the game" positivist commie-pinko crap.
*I* must win, and everyone else MUST lose. Regardless if it is fastest cashier line or thermonuclear war. Any other solution is simply unacceptable injustice and it makes baby Jesus cry.
As a kid, I was VERY impressed by Bakshi's version which looks rather inferior today. Still, despite all its flaws it still made loads of money. Actually, buck-for-buck per minute of production, it was a grater success than the Jackson's trilogy.
But I digress. It was never about the money or technology - it is about the strength of the story. And there usually isn't really that much of THAT going around in most tales aimed at small children.
Well, it was a bit of a Tongue-in-cheek description of Santa Claus, based on a urban not-completely-legend that he was created by Coca Cola in order to sell more Coke during winter. Actually, he was more like "appropriated" for that purpose.
As for the "symbol of consumerism" - sadly, I can't say that I was joking there. Cause, he is either selling soda-pop, or promoting shopping. And even at his pre-Coca Cola moral best, he was still a symbol of material rewarding for "being good".
LotR is based on a seminal work of fantasy literature for all ages, read by generations of readers over the decades. So it is fair to say that it already had an established fan-base. It also featured a whole lot of "real people" actors, most of them of a rather high caliber.
Polar Express is based on a 1980's children's book, based around a character created by Coca Cola's marketing division. A character that has since then grown into a symbol of consumerism like no other. Oh, and the animation sucked.
Also, one features a HUGE universe and loads of heroic battles and quests, while the other features... well... public transportation.
3 weeks of training, hand them a gun and send them out. China does it, N.Korea does it, Russia does it.
What exactly were you smoking when you wrote that? Cause, you seem to be mistaking world's largest armies for some African warlord's "army" of "child soldiers".
Russia - 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18-27. 18 months until couple of years ago. And those are just your civilians - there are over a million in active service and almost as much in reserve.
China - 24-month service obligation. But they don't enforce it as they have way too many soldiers already. About 7.5 million in total.
there are many who would state that retaliation in kind is the safest option.
No it isn't. What would that accomplish?
North Korea nukes South Korea and you go and nuke North Korea - and drop more radiation on the South AND everyone else in the region? How is that safe? And what exactly would that prevent? North Korea dropping radiation across the region while killing innocent civilians? And a retaliatory nuclear strike against North would be different how exactly? Because people who would die immediately would be north of the border?
"But they started it first" is NOT an excuse for genocide. Regardless who does it.
What IS safe is an all out conventional bombing raid. Turn every single military building into rubble. And then bomb them some more. I'm sure that there would be plenty of South Koreans that would be more than willing to help out with that.
...with what you believe was the level of education of the supposed intellectual elite. A belief which is probably very far from the truth. Remember, they trialed Galileo over heliocentrism a century and a half after the discovery of America, and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake 30 years prior. And if you want another utterly wrong but common belief from that time that lasted all the way to the middle of the 19th century - try bloodletting.
BTW... I know for a fact that there are still people around who don't believe in the Earth being round nor it turning around the Sun. Or turning around at all. And not for religious reason or anything - they simply "don't believe any of that shit".
Sure, if you want to go back to before the Revolution communism meant something else
Oh please! That is like saying that democracy means something else now based on the track record of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
what difference is there between Communism and Fascism?
Fascism is DESIGNED to empower the rich and powerful and keep the masses in line. Communism is designed to be the exact opposite, BUT it is often DEFORMED to create the powerful and keep the masses in line.
The difference is akin to that of seeing a group of people walking down a street holding shovels, and that same group walking down the same street holding guns. Sure, should a group be an angry mob shovels can be used as formidable weapons - but guns were DESIGNED to kill people.
Does it make a difference whether a small elite group rules the state which rules commerce, or whether a small elite group rules commerce which rules the state?
Even deformed communism is still based on democratic and social principles. In fact, they are readily taught as being "the highest standards" while trying to describe the "deformed communism" as the real deal - a common man's utopia. A dissonance that must eventually create the realization among people that "This ain't that promised utopia". And either with a whimper of a economic failure or a bang of a revolution that kind of a state will fall.
Fascism is based on "Might makes right". The weak are taught that they are weak because they are supposed to be. Just as the strong are fed the same philosophy. Even if there is a "strong should protect the weak" (enlightened oligarchy) clause in the prescribed philosophy it still fortifies the position that "strong should be strong(er)" in order to "protect the weak". Should the weak become strong by some twist of fate, they have no realization that there was no change in the society - cause they have reached their utopia by becoming strong. If that means that someone else must be weak to support their new found strength - so be it. Cause they now have the might and that makes all the right there is.
FFS man... Look at your own sig for the difference.
Governments absolutely should keep confidential secrets, but trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube once the cat is out of the bag is not only futile, but plainly wrong and, for yet another odd saying, shutting the barn door after the horse.
Ha! That's nothing. For some real excitement you should try putting the toothpaste into a cat and then shoving the cat into the tube.
On the other hand, putting a horse (and the barn) into a bag is rather simple - all you need is a shovel. Once you "compress" the whole thing to ashes by burning it all down, that is.
The word civil has several definitions. The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha.
And civil disobedience DOES NOT necessarily have to be non-violent. Although it is much 'nicer' when it is.
There has been some debate as to whether civil disobedience need be non-violent. Black's Law Dictionary includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian Bay's encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires "carefully chosen and legitimate means," but holds that they do not have to be nonviolent.[23] It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects, rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedients' use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest. Civil disobedients' refraining from violence is also said to help preserve society's tolerance of civil disobedience.[24] But McCloskey argues that "if violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience."
So to use a sporting analogy, it would be like saying that more experienced soccer teams would be given a smaller goal to defend when playing against novice opponents.
FTFY. Larger goals are harder to defend, easier for the attacking team.
You seem to have understood the spirit of the comment but not the actual point. Try rereading it again in your spare time.
Or maybe a car analogy would help? E.g. a Formula 1 competition where novices can pick either a horse or a bicycle as their "car".
Eh? Find me an consumer level Internet provider these days that ISN'T a government regulated utility operating under a government granted monopoly? The little Mom & Pop ISP is long dead.
Government regulation or ANY regulation does not make a SERVICE a utility.
A good rule of thumb if something is a utility would be the answer to the question "Would child services found a home without X suitable for raising children?". Electricity, running water, gas (heating) and sanitation (sewer) would have 'Yes' as an answer. Phone, internet and cable TV would have 'No' as an answer.
Another question would be "Can you store X?". And yes, you COULD store electricity - it wouldn't be very practical but you could.
You can't store up on your phone calls nor can you pre-browse the internet no more than you can pre watch the next season of your favorite cable show before it airs.
Yes it is, just not in the same way as the electric company having to buy a trainload of coal to provide the power to your PC.
Uhh.. NO. It is NOT.
Just because they planned to oversell by 100% while their infrastructure can handle 50% at best, doesn't make the amount of the product they are selling finite. In fact, their ability to oversell DEMONSTRATES that it is not a finite source. Just try doing that with electricity or water. The reason they can do that at the first place is because you are not buying data or speed or internet access from them. You are actually RENTING the use of their infrastructure.
Which they can rent out almost infinite number of times to almost infinite number of customers - only not at the same time and with decreasing quality of service (and price for such service) as the number of customers increases. Somewhere in the middle of all that there is a "sweet spot" that would let them keep the number of customers as high as possible while providing the quality of service that they can charge as high as possible - and still keep all their customers.
The fact that they are overselling beyond that attainable "sweet spot" shows what they really are - greedy and bad planners.
Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.
Except internet access is generally not considered "utility", nor is internet access based on a consumable resource. Other than periodic upgrades of infrastructure (pushed by higher demand for their services and increasing numbers of users) - costs for the providers ARE flat.
Now, overselling their capacity and then blaming their users for "hogging" - isn't that kinda like false advertising? How was that covered in your "econ 101"? Or should the customers just "deal with it"?
Slashdot Mirror
someone else's opinino
Opinino? It sounds like... some sort of tropical fruit. Mmmmm... opinino.
And I bet that, just like with apples - that opinino from someone else's garden tastes the sweetest.
Dammit! Now I have a craving for an opinino.
This is Slashdot.
Only company we are allowed to indiscriminately hate and make fun of is Microsoft. Sorry... Micro$oft.
Other corporate entities are free game from time to time - but never Apple.
Also, badmouthing Linux, penguins in general and in some cases Natalie Portman will almost certainly get you in serious trouble.
...any branch of CS/IT, study of which includes time-limited exams during which you have to churn out large quantities of functional but utterly boring code.
Oh, and also if you happen to be applying for a job of John Travolta's personal coder.
On average, and entirely unsurprisingly, one time in three you'll be in the fastest line; one time in three, you'll be in the slowest line. (And in the remaining third of cases, you'll fall in the middle.)
Don't give me any of that "It's how you play the game" positivist commie-pinko crap.
*I* must win, and everyone else MUST lose. Regardless if it is fastest cashier line or thermonuclear war.
Any other solution is simply unacceptable injustice and it makes baby Jesus cry.
That 2 out of 3 times - I'm in a faster line than you. Ha!
Also, 6 out of 8 times, my cashier is more competent and better looking.
... of this post.
Well, depends on the people.
As a kid, I was VERY impressed by Bakshi's version which looks rather inferior today.
Still, despite all its flaws it still made loads of money.
Actually, buck-for-buck per minute of production, it was a grater success than the Jackson's trilogy.
But I digress. It was never about the money or technology - it is about the strength of the story.
And there usually isn't really that much of THAT going around in most tales aimed at small children.
Well, it was a bit of a Tongue-in-cheek description of Santa Claus, based on a urban not-completely-legend that he was created by Coca Cola in order to sell more Coke during winter.
Actually, he was more like "appropriated" for that purpose.
As for the "symbol of consumerism" - sadly, I can't say that I was joking there.
Cause, he is either selling soda-pop, or promoting shopping.
And even at his pre-Coca Cola moral best, he was still a symbol of material rewarding for "being good".
LotR is based on a seminal work of fantasy literature for all ages, read by generations of readers over the decades. So it is fair to say that it already had an established fan-base.
It also featured a whole lot of "real people" actors, most of them of a rather high caliber.
Polar Express is based on a 1980's children's book, based around a character created by Coca Cola's marketing division.
A character that has since then grown into a symbol of consumerism like no other.
Oh, and the animation sucked.
Also, one features a HUGE universe and loads of heroic battles and quests, while the other features... well... public transportation.
...them there be fightin' words round these parts.
3 weeks of training, hand them a gun and send them out. China does it, N.Korea does it, Russia does it.
What exactly were you smoking when you wrote that?
Cause, you seem to be mistaking world's largest armies for some African warlord's "army" of "child soldiers".
Russia - 12 month draft, mandatory for all male citizens age 18-27. 18 months until couple of years ago. And those are just your civilians - there are over a million in active service and almost as much in reserve.
China - 24-month service obligation. But they don't enforce it as they have way too many soldiers already.
About 7.5 million in total.
North Korea - 42 months and longer. And their army is the 4th largest in the world.
there are many who would state that retaliation in kind is the safest option.
No it isn't. What would that accomplish?
North Korea nukes South Korea and you go and nuke North Korea - and drop more radiation on the South AND everyone else in the region? How is that safe?
And what exactly would that prevent? North Korea dropping radiation across the region while killing innocent civilians?
And a retaliatory nuclear strike against North would be different how exactly? Because people who would die immediately would be north of the border?
"But they started it first" is NOT an excuse for genocide. Regardless who does it.
What IS safe is an all out conventional bombing raid. Turn every single military building into rubble. And then bomb them some more.
I'm sure that there would be plenty of South Koreans that would be more than willing to help out with that.
...to cause decades long nuclear winter.
How long can you go without food?
Cause about 30 of them "liked" the new photo.
...with what you believe was the level of education of the supposed intellectual elite. A belief which is probably very far from the truth.
Remember, they trialed Galileo over heliocentrism a century and a half after the discovery of America, and Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake 30 years prior.
And if you want another utterly wrong but common belief from that time that lasted all the way to the middle of the 19th century - try bloodletting.
BTW... I know for a fact that there are still people around who don't believe in the Earth being round nor it turning around the Sun. Or turning around at all.
And not for religious reason or anything - they simply "don't believe any of that shit".
Wishing cancer and/or heart disease on someone is more of a long-term situation.
Sure, it may be more "entertaining" in the long run, but it just ain't the same.
In both versions.
Possibly a beer can... but it was a can.
You mean to say that "go suck on a tailpipe" will cease to be a death-wishing insult?
What is this world coming to?
But where's the fun in that?
Sure, if you want to go back to before the Revolution communism meant something else
Oh please! That is like saying that democracy means something else now based on the track record of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
what difference is there between Communism and Fascism?
Fascism is DESIGNED to empower the rich and powerful and keep the masses in line.
Communism is designed to be the exact opposite, BUT it is often DEFORMED to create the powerful and keep the masses in line.
The difference is akin to that of seeing a group of people walking down a street holding shovels, and that same group walking down the same street holding guns.
Sure, should a group be an angry mob shovels can be used as formidable weapons - but guns were DESIGNED to kill people.
Does it make a difference whether a small elite group rules the state which rules commerce, or whether a small elite group rules commerce which rules the state?
Even deformed communism is still based on democratic and social principles.
In fact, they are readily taught as being "the highest standards" while trying to describe the "deformed communism" as the real deal - a common man's utopia.
A dissonance that must eventually create the realization among people that "This ain't that promised utopia".
And either with a whimper of a economic failure or a bang of a revolution that kind of a state will fall.
Fascism is based on "Might makes right".
The weak are taught that they are weak because they are supposed to be. Just as the strong are fed the same philosophy.
Even if there is a "strong should protect the weak" (enlightened oligarchy) clause in the prescribed philosophy it still fortifies the position that "strong should be strong(er)" in order to "protect the weak".
Should the weak become strong by some twist of fate, they have no realization that there was no change in the society - cause they have reached their utopia by becoming strong. If that means that someone else must be weak to support their new found strength - so be it.
Cause they now have the might and that makes all the right there is.
FFS man... Look at your own sig for the difference.
Governments absolutely should keep confidential secrets, but trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube once the cat is out of the bag is not only futile, but plainly wrong and, for yet another odd saying, shutting the barn door after the horse.
Ha! That's nothing. For some real excitement you should try putting the toothpaste into a cat and then shoving the cat into the tube.
On the other hand, putting a horse (and the barn) into a bag is rather simple - all you need is a shovel.
Once you "compress" the whole thing to ashes by burning it all down, that is.
It's only civil disobedience if you act civilly.
It is "civil" because you are resisting a "Civil Government". Not because you are supposed to be 'nice' and 'orderly' about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)#Title
The word civil has several definitions. The one that is intended in this case is "relating to citizens and their interrelations with one another or with the state", and so civil disobedience means "disobedience to the state". Sometimes people assume that civil in this case means "observing accepted social forms; polite" which would make civil disobedience something like polite, orderly disobedience. Although this is an acceptable dictionary definition of the word civil, it is not what is intended here. This misinterpretation is one reason the essay is sometimes considered to be an argument for pacifism or for exclusively nonviolent resistance. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi used this interpretation to suggest an equivalence between Thoreau's civil disobedience and his own satyagraha.
And civil disobedience DOES NOT necessarily have to be non-violent. Although it is much 'nicer' when it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience#Violent_vs._nonviolent
Violent vs. nonviolent
There has been some debate as to whether civil disobedience need be non-violent. Black's Law Dictionary includes nonviolence in its definition of civil disobedience. Christian Bay's encyclopedia article states that civil disobedience requires "carefully chosen and legitimate means," but holds that they do not have to be nonviolent.[23] It has been argued that, while both civil disobedience and civil rebellion are justified by appeal to constitutional defects, rebellion is much more destructive; therefore, the defects justifying rebellion must be much more serious than those justifying disobedience, and if one cannot justify civil rebellion, then one cannot justify a civil disobedients' use of force and violence and refusal to submit to arrest. Civil disobedients' refraining from violence is also said to help preserve society's tolerance of civil disobedience.[24] But McCloskey argues that "if violent, intimidatory, coercive disobedience is more effective, it is, other things being equal, more justified than less effective, nonviolent disobedience."
So to use a sporting analogy, it would be like saying that more experienced soccer teams would be given a smaller goal to defend when playing against novice opponents.
FTFY. Larger goals are harder to defend, easier for the attacking team.
You seem to have understood the spirit of the comment but not the actual point. Try rereading it again in your spare time.
Or maybe a car analogy would help?
E.g. a Formula 1 competition where novices can pick either a horse or a bicycle as their "car".
Eh? Find me an consumer level Internet provider these days that ISN'T a government regulated utility operating under a government granted monopoly? The little Mom & Pop ISP is long dead.
Government regulation or ANY regulation does not make a SERVICE a utility.
A good rule of thumb if something is a utility would be the answer to the question "Would child services found a home without X suitable for raising children?".
Electricity, running water, gas (heating) and sanitation (sewer) would have 'Yes' as an answer.
Phone, internet and cable TV would have 'No' as an answer.
Another question would be "Can you store X?". And yes, you COULD store electricity - it wouldn't be very practical but you could.
You can't store up on your phone calls nor can you pre-browse the internet no more than you can pre watch the next season of your favorite cable show before it airs.
Yes it is, just not in the same way as the electric company having to buy a trainload of coal to provide the power to your PC.
Uhh.. NO. It is NOT.
Just because they planned to oversell by 100% while their infrastructure can handle 50% at best, doesn't make the amount of the product they are selling finite.
In fact, their ability to oversell DEMONSTRATES that it is not a finite source. Just try doing that with electricity or water.
The reason they can do that at the first place is because you are not buying data or speed or internet access from them.
You are actually RENTING the use of their infrastructure.
Which they can rent out almost infinite number of times to almost infinite number of customers - only not at the same time and with decreasing quality of service (and price for such service) as the number of customers increases.
Somewhere in the middle of all that there is a "sweet spot" that would let them keep the number of customers as high as possible while providing the quality of service that they can charge as high as possible - and still keep all their customers.
The fact that they are overselling beyond that attainable "sweet spot" shows what they really are - greedy and bad planners.
Lets examine the rest of the utility world. Do we have flat rate electricity? No. Do we have flat rate water? No. We sometimes have flat rate sewer but more often it is tied to water consumption on the assumption that most of your water eventually goes down the drain.
Except internet access is generally not considered "utility", nor is internet access based on a consumable resource.
Other than periodic upgrades of infrastructure (pushed by higher demand for their services and increasing numbers of users) - costs for the providers ARE flat.
Now, overselling their capacity and then blaming their users for "hogging" - isn't that kinda like false advertising?
How was that covered in your "econ 101"? Or should the customers just "deal with it"?