I would prefer if my web browser did what I told it to do, instead of what web page authors tell it to do. For the most part, I'm going to go with the author's decisions, but often I'll tweak and twiddle things. Specifically, the two best examples, in order of importance, are filtering of parts of pages (think, advertisements), and caching pages marked nocache. This isn't some crazy concept, the CSS specs first made the mistake of telling browser writers that webpage stylesheets took precedence over user stylesheets, but then CSS was corrected because most people agree that user preferences are the most important.
But, then again, I imagine there is some way to override that nocache setting in Mozilla.
The USA hasn't followed our Constitution for seventy years. Every part of the New Deal, and pretty much everything that has come after it, is a very clear violation of the Constitution, but we all decided to tacitly ignore that fact because, for one, most people like the New Deal (and things that have come since), and also because amending the Constitution to make all those programs and laws constitutional would be prohibitively difficult.
That's not a bad list, but it's a list of technologies, whereas the list in The Fucking Article was a list of products.
So, instead of the Personal Computer, they list a couple personal computers; instead of Word Processing, they list a word processor; instead of the GUI, they list a couple GUI operating systems.
I just did that last week with the Java GregorianCalendar class. I actually thought it was very useful, not at all a "bug". In fact, what I needed was the last day of a month, and apparently the only way to get the last day of a month using that class is to go to the next month, and choose day zero of that month, which is calculated as the last day of the previous month.
Again, I don't think it's a bug, I think that's good design, properly implemented. Things could have been different for your friend, though.
I hate to burst your bubble, but lots of industries produce products which cause cancer and other health ills. (So, it's not the "only" industry.) Tobacco has a bad rap because non-smokers don't like how it smells, heck a lot of smokers don't like how it smells, and the product gets a lot of recognition and attention.
The thing that makes tobacco companies evil is their demonstrated willingness to use addiction as a business model. I would have less contempt for them if they just sold good high-quality nice-tasting enjoyable natural unadulterated tobacco. It would still cause maladies, but fewer of them, and it would still be addictive, but less so; and the blame would go more squarely onto the consumers and not the producers.
I don't blame Haliburton. I blame George W Bush. Even though it wasn't Bush's idea, and Bush himself didn't fuck up the war effort, he is, as he has so often said, "the decider". Even though the bad ideas originated with Rumsfeld and his ilk, the bullshit filter inside Bush's head should have filtered out those bad ideas -- but it didn't. Bush gets the blame. All evil that resulted from Bush's decisions, is Bush's fault. Haliburton did exactly what it should have done, which is do its best to make money in any situation. Bush gave them the money. Blame Bush.
I totally agree with you. Congress/legislatures pass laws trying to stop the advancement of civilization all the fucking time. In fact I would be surprised if this weren't the case before 1929 when that quote was first made.
I like how the article author uses the phrase "cherry pick the most lucrative areas" as if that is a bad thing. I might have used the phrase "compete in the most viable markets".
You are right in general. Specifically, one quarter of TV is commercials, not half. One quarter is still about five times more than I am willing to tolerate.
But you know, the thing I don't understand is, why isn't the TV industry embracing the new business models made possible by the internet? When TV was invented, companies that previously made radios switched to making TVs, because that was pretty obvious. So, why doesn't Viacom just make their own YouTube and profit like mad? Are they just pissed off luddites?
They're about as forgettable as the appointments which paved the way for Roe v. Wade. Bush's appointments will be infamous for fifty years of abortion prohibition, starting in about two or three years. Our granddaughters will be having coathanger abortions, decades after everyone stops talking about the Iraq war.
Well yeah I figure the "motive" is that by suing a small number of people, other people won't break the law (I use that phrase loosely), thus improving the situation of the content industry. That seems like a reasonably "honest motive". Is that irrational, from a legal perspective? I mean, is there a rule that you can't sue if the individual case isn't financially lucrative?
I don't mean to ask a stupid question, but I will anyway. Why will the amount necessarily seem too large or too small? Why isn't there a good reasonable middle number?
Where is the line drawn around the word "commercial"? I mean, if publishing a photo in a newspaper which costs money isn't "commercial", nor on an ad-supported website, then what is "commercial"? (I know that using the image in an advertisement is "commercial", but I don't know where the line is.)
No, things haven't changed, and I totally agree with you: the Arch Deluxe was the bomb. Whatever that mayo-and-relish sauce they put on it -- that was good stuff. Disgusting, but awesome disgusting. Yeah, I don't eat at McDonald's. I do live in Alaska, where we have the special McKinley Burger, which is some kind of triplestack burger or something -- but I haven't been in to try it.
Two things that I remember being awesome at McDonald's: french fries and chicken nuggets. Mmmmm!
Oh, oops, my bad, I missed the sarcasm. As for me, I have very little idea what shows are coming and going on TV. The huge hits I will hear about in popular culture, like American Idol. Other shows I have to be told to watch, like Lost. I tune in for one two-part show: Stewart/Colbert, so I see advertisements for other Comedy Central shows, which I don't watch.
Where exactly do you hear so much about all these different shows? What "other media" advertises TV shows? What, like newspapers?
We might agree that your little description is the way it should be, but I hope you understand that's not the way it is. There are all kinds of restrictions placed on the things we buy and the things we are allowed to do. Luckily in a free society we generally have the liberty to, well, usually to just not participate in the restriction. In this case, you have to get along in life without the TV shows you know and love. That sucks, but it's hardly the end of the world. Or, pay the price, and watch the shows. Or, produce your own shows and release it any way you want. Or, work for the election of people to pass laws to make society the way you want it to be. Or, be one of those lawmakers. Or, shit, download the damn shows on the internet. Lots of options there.
Or, if you want, sit back and just biatch about it all day long. It won't change anything, but it'll make you feel better. I do a fair amount of biatching about things (more than my fair share, really).
I must misunderstand you, because it seems you suggested that commercial radio is higher quality than commercial television. I assure you that isn't the case. There is only one thing more dismal and disappointing than tv, and that one thing is radio. Internet, on the other hand, is a bastion of freedom and truth, comingled with trash and more trash.
No, you have it backward: property taxes are the most legitimate of all taxes. The primary (numero uno) purpose of government is protection of the homeland. In exchange for ownership of a slice of that homeland, you pay for a slice of that protection.
Going way back to the beginning of countries, a "country" is tantamount to a large piece of inhabited land. Normally, that land is allotted to owners, under the umbrella of a single governing agent. That system hasn't changed, ever. The thing that changed is that humanity developed modern economy, with goods and incomes and wealth which were substantial and separate from ownership of land, so we started taxing all those other things, too.
You aren't "renting" the land from the government, you are "paying" for soldiers to prevent invasions and loss of said land.
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I would prefer if my web browser did what I told it to do, instead of what web page authors tell it to do. For the most part, I'm going to go with the author's decisions, but often I'll tweak and twiddle things. Specifically, the two best examples, in order of importance, are filtering of parts of pages (think, advertisements), and caching pages marked nocache. This isn't some crazy concept, the CSS specs first made the mistake of telling browser writers that webpage stylesheets took precedence over user stylesheets, but then CSS was corrected because most people agree that user preferences are the most important.
But, then again, I imagine there is some way to override that nocache setting in Mozilla.
Yeah, you're right. Also, "your" terrible at English.
The USA hasn't followed our Constitution for seventy years. Every part of the New Deal, and pretty much everything that has come after it, is a very clear violation of the Constitution, but we all decided to tacitly ignore that fact because, for one, most people like the New Deal (and things that have come since), and also because amending the Constitution to make all those programs and laws constitutional would be prohibitively difficult.
That's not a bad list, but it's a list of technologies, whereas the list in The Fucking Article was a list of products.
So, instead of the Personal Computer, they list a couple personal computers; instead of Word Processing, they list a word processor; instead of the GUI, they list a couple GUI operating systems.
Car alarms might be the number-one all-time worst BUG masquerading as a feature.
I just did that last week with the Java GregorianCalendar class. I actually thought it was very useful, not at all a "bug". In fact, what I needed was the last day of a month, and apparently the only way to get the last day of a month using that class is to go to the next month, and choose day zero of that month, which is calculated as the last day of the previous month.
Again, I don't think it's a bug, I think that's good design, properly implemented. Things could have been different for your friend, though.
I hate to burst your bubble, but lots of industries produce products which cause cancer and other health ills. (So, it's not the "only" industry.) Tobacco has a bad rap because non-smokers don't like how it smells, heck a lot of smokers don't like how it smells, and the product gets a lot of recognition and attention.
The thing that makes tobacco companies evil is their demonstrated willingness to use addiction as a business model. I would have less contempt for them if they just sold good high-quality nice-tasting enjoyable natural unadulterated tobacco. It would still cause maladies, but fewer of them, and it would still be addictive, but less so; and the blame would go more squarely onto the consumers and not the producers.
I don't blame Haliburton. I blame George W Bush. Even though it wasn't Bush's idea, and Bush himself didn't fuck up the war effort, he is, as he has so often said, "the decider". Even though the bad ideas originated with Rumsfeld and his ilk, the bullshit filter inside Bush's head should have filtered out those bad ideas -- but it didn't. Bush gets the blame. All evil that resulted from Bush's decisions, is Bush's fault. Haliburton did exactly what it should have done, which is do its best to make money in any situation. Bush gave them the money. Blame Bush.
I totally agree with you. Congress/legislatures pass laws trying to stop the advancement of civilization all the fucking time. In fact I would be surprised if this weren't the case before 1929 when that quote was first made.
I like how the article author uses the phrase "cherry pick the most lucrative areas" as if that is a bad thing. I might have used the phrase "compete in the most viable markets".
yeah, FSM
I have improved your post, wiki-style:
Just to get this out of the way, a wiki is a solution to replacing scholarly peer reviewed journals. Okay!
WTF?
You are right in general. Specifically, one quarter of TV is commercials, not half. One quarter is still about five times more than I am willing to tolerate.
But you know, the thing I don't understand is, why isn't the TV industry embracing the new business models made possible by the internet? When TV was invented, companies that previously made radios switched to making TVs, because that was pretty obvious. So, why doesn't Viacom just make their own YouTube and profit like mad? Are they just pissed off luddites?
They're about as forgettable as the appointments which paved the way for Roe v. Wade. Bush's appointments will be infamous for fifty years of abortion prohibition, starting in about two or three years. Our granddaughters will be having coathanger abortions, decades after everyone stops talking about the Iraq war.
Well yeah I figure the "motive" is that by suing a small number of people, other people won't break the law (I use that phrase loosely), thus improving the situation of the content industry. That seems like a reasonably "honest motive". Is that irrational, from a legal perspective? I mean, is there a rule that you can't sue if the individual case isn't financially lucrative?
I don't mean to ask a stupid question, but I will anyway. Why will the amount necessarily seem too large or too small? Why isn't there a good reasonable middle number?
(Also, what is your field?)
"Who knew you couldn't control your own image?"
Well, the rest of us did.
Where is the line drawn around the word "commercial"? I mean, if publishing a photo in a newspaper which costs money isn't "commercial", nor on an ad-supported website, then what is "commercial"? (I know that using the image in an advertisement is "commercial", but I don't know where the line is.)
No, things haven't changed, and I totally agree with you: the Arch Deluxe was the bomb. Whatever that mayo-and-relish sauce they put on it -- that was good stuff. Disgusting, but awesome disgusting. Yeah, I don't eat at McDonald's. I do live in Alaska, where we have the special McKinley Burger, which is some kind of triplestack burger or something -- but I haven't been in to try it.
Two things that I remember being awesome at McDonald's: french fries and chicken nuggets. Mmmmm!
Okay enough about that, I'm getting hungry.
Oh, oops, my bad, I missed the sarcasm. As for me, I have very little idea what shows are coming and going on TV. The huge hits I will hear about in popular culture, like American Idol. Other shows I have to be told to watch, like Lost. I tune in for one two-part show: Stewart/Colbert, so I see advertisements for other Comedy Central shows, which I don't watch.
Where exactly do you hear so much about all these different shows? What "other media" advertises TV shows? What, like newspapers?
We might agree that your little description is the way it should be, but I hope you understand that's not the way it is. There are all kinds of restrictions placed on the things we buy and the things we are allowed to do. Luckily in a free society we generally have the liberty to, well, usually to just not participate in the restriction. In this case, you have to get along in life without the TV shows you know and love. That sucks, but it's hardly the end of the world. Or, pay the price, and watch the shows. Or, produce your own shows and release it any way you want. Or, work for the election of people to pass laws to make society the way you want it to be. Or, be one of those lawmakers. Or, shit, download the damn shows on the internet. Lots of options there.
Or, if you want, sit back and just biatch about it all day long. It won't change anything, but it'll make you feel better. I do a fair amount of biatching about things (more than my fair share, really).
I must misunderstand you, because it seems you suggested that commercial radio is higher quality than commercial television. I assure you that isn't the case. There is only one thing more dismal and disappointing than tv, and that one thing is radio. Internet, on the other hand, is a bastion of freedom and truth, comingled with trash and more trash.
(NPR excepted.)
No, you have it backward: property taxes are the most legitimate of all taxes. The primary (numero uno) purpose of government is protection of the homeland. In exchange for ownership of a slice of that homeland, you pay for a slice of that protection.
Going way back to the beginning of countries, a "country" is tantamount to a large piece of inhabited land. Normally, that land is allotted to owners, under the umbrella of a single governing agent. That system hasn't changed, ever. The thing that changed is that humanity developed modern economy, with goods and incomes and wealth which were substantial and separate from ownership of land, so we started taxing all those other things, too.
You aren't "renting" the land from the government, you are "paying" for soldiers to prevent invasions and loss of said land.
You may not be the target of most advertisers. If so, consider it a blessing.