Yes because it is ALL the helicopter operators fault. You are so right. I mean, if the good samaritan hadn't been helping that mugging victim then the mugger wouldn't have shot his gun across the street.
FYI: my comment has nothing to do with picking a side in the fight (hunters vs activists)... it has to do with the idiocy of your logic and those who modded you up. Unless of course we can't see your tongue planted in your cheek [whoosh].
The failure here, as with many taxes, limits, etc is that the threshold was not indexed to inflation to avoid catching (or in other cases excluding) an ever increasing portion of the population.
How about you use less inflamatory language when trying to make an intellectual assertion.
Obamacare... um... how about Health Care Reform. Of better yet, forget about the name and worry more about what is does, or is at least trying to do... give affordable health care for ALL. Of course first we have to ask: did you think the system before was "good" or even "good enough" because if you did then we are done having a conversation.
On the other hand, if you accept that healthcare is stupidly expensive and that too many people are unable to afford it then we can talk. - Talk about how as human beings with a social contract we won't turn away even an uninsured person from the emergency room. - Talk about how being uninsured (read not paying into the larger system) means you and I pay for that emergency room visit via higher healthcare costs. - Talk about the concepts of pooled risk and how that means both low risk AND high risk people need to be in the same pool. - Talk about the insanity of a system that bases availability and affordability of health care on employment status (i.e. lose your job + lose your income + lose your healthcare = BAD(tm)) - Talk why it is that car insurance can be mandated (or self-insured with a heafty bond) and no one screams about constitutionality, but mandate health insurance and suddenly it is fascism? Last I checked the prevailing theory is that dring a car on the pubilc roads is a priveledge (I actually disagree with that)... but life as in "Life, Liberty, and the persuit of happiness..." is considered slightly more um... important. And don't waste your breath on federal vs. states mandates because Romney still takes shots for what he did in MA. It doesn't matter if this happens at the state or federal level, it is the concept that matters. Heck, fine, leave it up to the states... you can bet your ass I'll choose to live in a state with cheaper health care. Only problem is, states can't go it alone because the whole national system needs an overhaul to actually drive the economics.
well then i can tell you that the card is always in the reader while the machine is logged in and unlocked. pull the card and the machine immediately locks. perhaps that needs to change?
Or is that mitigated by the fact that when a website or other resource (outlook msg signing) require reauthorization they force a reread of the card and asks for your pin? Policy wise for email that ensures non-repudiation, and for online resources I know it enforces authentication in case someone fails to lock their computer when they walk away. But does that also help prevent token discovery?
However that is an apples to oranges situation. A live streaming event compared to a recorded movie... quality aside, depending on the event, I am not surprised if it were more expensive. Talk about limited supply, there is exactly one showing limited to the number of seats dedicated to that specific event.
Sure supply is an issue.. it is called seat count. Even with digital distribution eliminating the costs of physical film, there are still a limited number of projectors, and limited number of screens and a limited number of seats. At any given moment a theater could increase supply for a given movie by increasing screen count and thus seat count, but at the detriment of another movie's seat count. That might be the right move if there are people waiting in line to see "Opening Ngiht Blockbuster" and not "4 Week Old Sleeper Niche Cult" Film. But between those two extremes is an opportunity to adjust pricing so that you can fill the seats of that Sleeper... a film that might even have a higher per-seat profit if it isn't costing you as much as the Blockbuster.
So now the question becomes an optimization problem based on limited screen/seat count, content licensing costs etc etc.
As for why would they implement variable pricing... because if they + studios pulled their heads out their assess they might be able to work out a mutually beneficial business model. Really it is nothing more than a more granular approach to second run movies. Instead of removing a film from first run at price X and then sending it to a crappier second run theater at price Y (Y X) they just lower the cost of the movie to the "first run theater" gradually over time as demand goes down. They already reduce supply costs by reducing screen / seat count. This is just the next step.
Of course second run theaters would then struggle since fewer people will be left who have not already seen the movie, but there still might be a market for them to fill.
As mentioned below, except for "premium formats", and not premium content, prices are the same at every theater I have been at (lived in 7 different states across the country) except for specific "second run" theaters. Even then, the prices are uniform at that given theater, just lower than the big box first run theaters.
If you are telling us that you have been to a typical first run theater, and seen different prices for blockbuster movies vs less in-demand movies (again ignoring IMAX / 3D premium) then you are likely in the minority, not in the US, or both.
If you are going on a date with a girl that won't yet trust you to be alone at your house then you are on a very early date... and as such you should be choosing options a little more engaging than going to a movie where you have no opportunity to actually learn anything about each other and thus... build trust.
My sister lives in Austin so I've been to at least two Alamos there and really learned to appreciate them... Luckily, those of us in the Northern Virginia/DC area have the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse. Comfy seats, alcohol, food, and NO KIDS!!! But unlike Alamo it is a single screen/stage venue. Still movies are cheap ($1 Monday, $2 Tuesday and $5.50 Wed/Thu !!!), they do open mic comedy, screen TV shows like The Walking Dead. I don't think I've been in a "normal" theater since Avatar 3D and even then I waited until its run was almost over and went during "church hour" on sunday to avoid the crowds and the kids.
Even better, there is a specific option for this behavior in No-Script... you can allow all scripts from the main domain (not the right words but I am at work on IE so can't look it up. But basically, if I go to www.cnn.com then all scripts from cnn.com are allowed to run. You can even go further (and I think *I* did) to allow anything from ???.cnn.com to run. This way in most cases, anything needed to run just runs and the websit works.
Then you have to deal with content delivery networks, which often aren't ???.cnn.com but more like ???cnncdn.com. And before anyone thinks regex would solve that, they often aren't quiet as obvious. But once you allow them once (but not temporarily) you are good to go.
The worst thing I have to deal with now, and maybe someone can explain why this happens so often, is some obscurly named script that gets blocked, then also prevents drop-downs from working. The page is rendered, and the drop-down is labelled, but I have to go searching for the script that controlls the drop-down functionality. But even those I've mostly tracked down and whitelisted them for at least the sites I visit frequently (And there appears to be overlap as well between sites using the same drop-down script sources).
Heck, more often then not, it is AB+ (Easylist+Easy Privacy) that block something which breaks a web page functionality:O
Because I don't feel like wasting my time actively seeking out upcoming Movies or TV series. Yup, that is right, I'm just too lazy to do it because in general, I do usually hear about stuff through other forms of advertising and worth of mouth.
That said, I wouldn't mind a little more exposure. If web hosts can get paid to provide me that info all the better.
So in addition to the "not annoying" criteria I'll even click a few boxes to help the advertisers target me better (so they don't even have to try to troll my personal data) and tell them I want to hear about movies, cars, computers, books, hiking and camping. So I just saved them the money to profile me AND money on coming up with new ways to annoy me into looking at their ads.
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/ "All told, Sean replaces approximately 10 drives per week, indicating a 5 percent per year drive failure rate across the entire fleet, which includes infant mortality and also the higher failure rates of previous drives. (We are currently seeing failures in less than 1 percent of the Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630 drives that we’re installing in pod 2.0.)"
For reference, when comparing A and B you should remember to actually quote the data for both A and B and not just one of the other as your proof that one is better than the other.
So long as you have TRIM enabled and functioning, and have certain OS features tuned (win7 automaticalyl turns off superfetch, defrag etc), then stop worrying and learn to love your SSD.
All solved via an EXTERNAL optical drive. They are cheap, small and don't need external power. Which means if you absolutely need to take it with you, it is easy. Otherwise you get to perform almost all of your stated activities at home and then pick up and leave, relegating the optical drive to your desk at home.
as for boot from USB... if it works once, it is gaurenteed from then on. If you buy a laptop that can't boot from USB then my two comments are: do better research and return for a different laptop. Well a third, try another USB because now adays if there is a usb boot problem it is as likely to be the computer/bios setting's fault as it is the USB sticks fault.
Like it or not optical drives ARE going away as a built in feature in the near future for main stream laptops. Just like Floppies went away. Like it or not manufacturers cater to the ever increasing "arrogant" (re below poster) majority of folks who see no need for a device that is rarely used, often when NOT mobile, and is easily satisfied with an external option.
First I don't have to do anything, I'm the customer. In fact I can choose to do nothing, like not pay money for content. In my case I have not spent money on a quantized product (downloadable music or CDs) for so long I can't even remember. I do make fairly prodigious use of other business models like those provided by radio and Pandora. To top it off I haven't even pirated music in probably 5 years.
Second, I absolutely have the right to sell something which I have purchased (first sale doctrine) AND I am presumed innocent until proven guilty. So what does that mean?
It means I have the right to sell my license regardless of the format it is delivered in (electrons or physical)
It means I am presumed innocent of copyright infringement (i.e. not deleting my copy) until proven otherwise.
If they want to sell a license that is not resellable then they better start pricing it accordingly. Otherwise people will just obtain it for free elsewhere and DRM won't do a damn thing to stop it.
Finally, coming full circle, they better cater to my purposes and whims if they want my money. Neither artists nor the industry has an inherent right to my money and if they have forgotten that they do it at their peril. I don't need to find a way around anything, they do.
That is not my problem. If the business model they have set up is not technically and realistically workable then come up with another model. Part of that new model will ahve to accept that the value of a digitial music license for which I have no transfer rights is then much less than the value of a physical music license which i can transfer via selling the phsyical storage medium.
That is the real crux of this whole issue and one of the many reasons the ??AA like to play both sides of the fence. It prevents them having to address head on the loss of value inherent in a non-transferable license. The same goes for e-books BTW.
I have no trouble with non-transferable licenses, but don't try to charge me the same price for it.
Content owners do have a right to make money from their content.
Actually no they do not. They have a right to TRY to make money. Just like Bank of America does not have a "right to make a profit" they only have a right to TRY to make a profit.
It is a subtle distinction but it matters a whole lot and frames the discussions a little differently.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes because it is ALL the helicopter operators fault. You are so right. I mean, if the good samaritan hadn't been helping that mugging victim then the mugger wouldn't have shot his gun across the street.
FYI: my comment has nothing to do with picking a side in the fight (hunters vs activists) ... it has to do with the idiocy of your logic and those who modded you up. Unless of course we can't see your tongue planted in your cheek [whoosh].
The failure here, as with many taxes, limits, etc is that the threshold was not indexed to inflation to avoid catching (or in other cases excluding) an ever increasing portion of the population.
How about you use less inflamatory language when trying to make an intellectual assertion.
Obamacare ... um ... how about Health Care Reform. Of better yet, forget about the name and worry more about what is does, or is at least trying to do ... give affordable health care for ALL. Of course first we have to ask: did you think the system before was "good" or even "good enough" because if you did then we are done having a conversation.
On the other hand, if you accept that healthcare is stupidly expensive and that too many people are unable to afford it then we can talk. ... but life as in "Life, Liberty, and the persuit of happiness..." is considered slightly more um ... important. And don't waste your breath on federal vs. states mandates because Romney still takes shots for what he did in MA. It doesn't matter if this happens at the state or federal level, it is the concept that matters. Heck, fine, leave it up to the states ... you can bet your ass I'll choose to live in a state with cheaper health care. Only problem is, states can't go it alone because the whole national system needs an overhaul to actually drive the economics.
- Talk about how as human beings with a social contract we won't turn away even an uninsured person from the emergency room.
- Talk about how being uninsured (read not paying into the larger system) means you and I pay for that emergency room visit via higher healthcare costs.
- Talk about the concepts of pooled risk and how that means both low risk AND high risk people need to be in the same pool.
- Talk about the insanity of a system that bases availability and affordability of health care on employment status (i.e. lose your job + lose your income + lose your healthcare = BAD(tm))
- Talk why it is that car insurance can be mandated (or self-insured with a heafty bond) and no one screams about constitutionality, but mandate health insurance and suddenly it is fascism? Last I checked the prevailing theory is that dring a car on the pubilc roads is a priveledge (I actually disagree with that)
perhaps, but not in the DoD. DoD locks the machine as soon as you remove the card.
well then i can tell you that the card is always in the reader while the machine is logged in and unlocked. pull the card and the machine immediately locks. perhaps that needs to change?
Or is that mitigated by the fact that when a website or other resource (outlook msg signing) require reauthorization they force a reread of the card and asks for your pin? Policy wise for email that ensures non-repudiation, and for online resources I know it enforces authentication in case someone fails to lock their computer when they walk away. But does that also help prevent token discovery?
If the Trojan can pull pki credentials it can keylog pins.
However that is an apples to oranges situation. A live streaming event compared to a recorded movie ... quality aside, depending on the event, I am not surprised if it were more expensive. Talk about limited supply, there is exactly one showing limited to the number of seats dedicated to that specific event.
Sure supply is an issue .. it is called seat count. Even with digital distribution eliminating the costs of physical film, there are still a limited number of projectors, and limited number of screens and a limited number of seats. At any given moment a theater could increase supply for a given movie by increasing screen count and thus seat count, but at the detriment of another movie's seat count. That might be the right move if there are people waiting in line to see "Opening Ngiht Blockbuster" and not "4 Week Old Sleeper Niche Cult" Film. But between those two extremes is an opportunity to adjust pricing so that you can fill the seats of that Sleeper ... a film that might even have a higher per-seat profit if it isn't costing you as much as the Blockbuster.
So now the question becomes an optimization problem based on limited screen/seat count, content licensing costs etc etc.
As for why would they implement variable pricing ... because if they + studios pulled their heads out their assess they might be able to work out a mutually beneficial business model. Really it is nothing more than a more granular approach to second run movies. Instead of removing a film from first run at price X and then sending it to a crappier second run theater at price Y (Y X) they just lower the cost of the movie to the "first run theater" gradually over time as demand goes down. They already reduce supply costs by reducing screen / seat count. This is just the next step.
Of course second run theaters would then struggle since fewer people will be left who have not already seen the movie, but there still might be a market for them to fill.
As mentioned below, except for "premium formats", and not premium content, prices are the same at every theater I have been at (lived in 7 different states across the country) except for specific "second run" theaters. Even then, the prices are uniform at that given theater, just lower than the big box first run theaters.
If you are telling us that you have been to a typical first run theater, and seen different prices for blockbuster movies vs less in-demand movies (again ignoring IMAX / 3D premium) then you are likely in the minority, not in the US, or both.
PS: great sig haha
Yes indeed hearing that the first time at the Alamo I wanted to find the person responsible for making it happen and give them a hug.
You are 100% correct, and that place would NOT be most big box movie theaters.
If you are going on a date with a girl that won't yet trust you to be alone at your house then you are on a very early date ... and as such you should be choosing options a little more engaging than going to a movie where you have no opportunity to actually learn anything about each other and thus ... build trust.
They already exist, there just aren't enough of them.
My sister lives in Austin so I've been to at least two Alamos there and really learned to appreciate them ... Luckily, those of us in the Northern Virginia/DC area have the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse. Comfy seats, alcohol, food, and NO KIDS!!! But unlike Alamo it is a single screen/stage venue. Still movies are cheap ($1 Monday, $2 Tuesday and $5.50 Wed/Thu !!!), they do open mic comedy, screen TV shows like The Walking Dead. I don't think I've been in a "normal" theater since Avatar 3D and even then I waited until its run was almost over and went during "church hour" on sunday to avoid the crowds and the kids.
Even worse, do you want your proctologist pulling your teeth? ewwwww!!!!
Even better, there is a specific option for this behavior in No-Script ... you can allow all scripts from the main domain (not the right words but I am at work on IE so can't look it up. But basically, if I go to www.cnn.com then all scripts from cnn.com are allowed to run. You can even go further (and I think *I* did) to allow anything from ???.cnn.com to run. This way in most cases, anything needed to run just runs and the websit works.
Then you have to deal with content delivery networks, which often aren't ???.cnn.com but more like ???cnncdn.com. And before anyone thinks regex would solve that, they often aren't quiet as obvious. But once you allow them once (but not temporarily) you are good to go.
The worst thing I have to deal with now, and maybe someone can explain why this happens so often, is some obscurly named script that gets blocked, then also prevents drop-downs from working. The page is rendered, and the drop-down is labelled, but I have to go searching for the script that controlls the drop-down functionality. But even those I've mostly tracked down and whitelisted them for at least the sites I visit frequently (And there appears to be overlap as well between sites using the same drop-down script sources).
Heck, more often then not, it is AB+ (Easylist+Easy Privacy) that block something which breaks a web page functionality :O
Because I don't feel like wasting my time actively seeking out upcoming Movies or TV series. Yup, that is right, I'm just too lazy to do it because in general, I do usually hear about stuff through other forms of advertising and worth of mouth.
That said, I wouldn't mind a little more exposure. If web hosts can get paid to provide me that info all the better.
So in addition to the "not annoying" criteria I'll even click a few boxes to help the advertisers target me better (so they don't even have to try to troll my personal data) and tell them I want to hear about movies, cars, computers, books, hiking and camping. So I just saved them the money to profile me AND money on coming up with new ways to annoy me into looking at their ads.
Do you have failure rates for spining drives? A little research might just show you that they are basically on par with the numbers you are quoting.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/131168/harddrive_failures_surprisingly_frequent.html
http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/
"All told, Sean replaces approximately 10 drives per week, indicating a 5 percent per year drive failure rate across the entire fleet, which includes infant mortality and also the higher failure rates of previous drives. (We are currently seeing failures in less than 1 percent of the Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000 HDS5C3030ALA630 drives that we’re installing in pod 2.0.)"
For reference, when comparing A and B you should remember to actually quote the data for both A and B and not just one of the other as your proof that one is better than the other.
So long as you have TRIM enabled and functioning, and have certain OS features tuned (win7 automaticalyl turns off superfetch, defrag etc), then stop worrying and learn to love your SSD.
My OCZ Vertex 2 ... I have updated firmware about 4 or 5 times, never a single format.
You are living in the dark ages, that was only a problem in the very early days. Not just of 1st and 2nd gen drives, but of 1st and 2nd gen firmware.
All solved via an EXTERNAL optical drive. They are cheap, small and don't need external power. Which means if you absolutely need to take it with you, it is easy. Otherwise you get to perform almost all of your stated activities at home and then pick up and leave, relegating the optical drive to your desk at home.
as for boot from USB ... if it works once, it is gaurenteed from then on. If you buy a laptop that can't boot from USB then my two comments are: do better research and return for a different laptop. Well a third, try another USB because now adays if there is a usb boot problem it is as likely to be the computer/bios setting's fault as it is the USB sticks fault.
Like it or not optical drives ARE going away as a built in feature in the near future for main stream laptops. Just like Floppies went away. Like it or not manufacturers cater to the ever increasing "arrogant" (re below poster) majority of folks who see no need for a device that is rarely used, often when NOT mobile, and is easily satisfied with an external option.
playing back a file off your hard drive is going to consume significantly less power than doing the same off spinning physical media
I agree with your overall sentiment but you do realize the irony of how you said what you just said? Right?
First I don't have to do anything, I'm the customer. In fact I can choose to do nothing, like not pay money for content. In my case I have not spent money on a quantized product (downloadable music or CDs) for so long I can't even remember. I do make fairly prodigious use of other business models like those provided by radio and Pandora. To top it off I haven't even pirated music in probably 5 years.
Second, I absolutely have the right to sell something which I have purchased (first sale doctrine) AND I am presumed innocent until proven guilty. So what does that mean?
It means I have the right to sell my license regardless of the format it is delivered in (electrons or physical)
It means I am presumed innocent of copyright infringement (i.e. not deleting my copy) until proven otherwise.
If they want to sell a license that is not resellable then they better start pricing it accordingly. Otherwise people will just obtain it for free elsewhere and DRM won't do a damn thing to stop it.
Finally, coming full circle, they better cater to my purposes and whims if they want my money. Neither artists nor the industry has an inherent right to my money and if they have forgotten that they do it at their peril. I don't need to find a way around anything, they do.
That is not my problem. If the business model they have set up is not technically and realistically workable then come up with another model. Part of that new model will ahve to accept that the value of a digitial music license for which I have no transfer rights is then much less than the value of a physical music license which i can transfer via selling the phsyical storage medium.
That is the real crux of this whole issue and one of the many reasons the ??AA like to play both sides of the fence. It prevents them having to address head on the loss of value inherent in a non-transferable license. The same goes for e-books BTW.
I have no trouble with non-transferable licenses, but don't try to charge me the same price for it.
Content owners do have a right to make money from their content.
Actually no they do not. They have a right to TRY to make money. Just like Bank of America does not have a "right to make a profit" they only have a right to TRY to make a profit.
It is a subtle distinction but it matters a whole lot and frames the discussions a little differently.