The question is whether investors would rather get the proceeds of liquidation and/or sales of the company's assets or whether they would like to have some very nice SUN stock that they have to sell Grandma for a penny in order to be able to write off the loss on their taxes.
Personally I think Sun can grow by shrinking, focusing on doing a few things well, and continuing to improve their niche. Their whole "the network is the computer" thing didn't work so well in the past, but it was somewhat visionary. They need to run with that idea. Look at how well Apple did by starting with two things: iMac and then Mac OS X. The former was an absolute coup. The latter was bungled, but still managed to get a lot of geeks into the Apple camp. The sensible focus on simplifying the hardware first helped a lot with the move to OS X, though. Sun has some valuable stuff out there, and a lot of name recognition. It will be fun to watch if they sink or swim.
Maybe now's the time to buy ten shares. At $4 a piece, it's a loss easily eaten, and if they recover, in a few years it could be worth something.
You see where this whole P2P "revolution" has gotten us? This whole "information wants to be free" mindset? People can't write out their own damn comments for pointless discussion boards.;)
For the record, I verified Rude Turnip's assertion and it appears that grand-parent and great-grand-parent posts really are copy/pastes of Yahoo messages. It's one thing to share information, it's completely another to pretend the ideas presented are your own. Even a hardcore libertarian who would never conceive of equating ephemeralities like music and stories with real property knows that plagiarism is fraud and is therefore wrong.
As to the whole idea of buying a recording of the show I just saw... why? I'm with George Carlin on this one. Instant nostalgia is a bit off-kilter. To quote the man himself, "What's the point? You just [heard] the [expletive] thing?"
Moving to Linux is not "free". Nothing is "free". There are distinct opportunity costs in switching to Linux. There is the time spent learning about Linux. The time spent getting any data that needs to be preserved into a portable form. The time to actually reinstall software on existing hardware. The inevitable troubleshooting required. If you are a company there is probably a lot of time spent to train employees. There is lost productivity due to system unavailability during the transition and due to "ramp up" time as people get used to working with the new software.
Depending on the size of your company, this could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. In fact, it might be easier to buy Apple computers for many reasons. Each company or individual must make its own decisions about any changes to existing IT infrastructure based on a lot of these factors, but simplistic statements like "Linux is free" are misleading. It sets up extremely unrealistic expectations.
However, there is one way in which Linux beats all the alternatives: It is Free (as in speech).:)
OK. Two questions about this law: doesn't the naming violate Hormel's trademark (don't they specifically request the word spam to be lowercase only) or did Congress and the White House reach some sort of licensing agreement? Second, shouldn't it be CANT-SPAM?
And to respond to your post: start reporting my fraudulent spams? I get about 500 to 1000 spams a day. But then I count "undeliverable" messages as part of my spam traffic. Ditto all those stupid MS Outlook worms. Can I report fraudulent use of my email addresses in the headers of emails I did not send but for which I receive rejection notices?
Your "experiment" is fundamentally flawed. Back to grade school science class for you. You have no control (like another earth on which you do not raise the CO2 levels), so you have no way to tell if it was increasing heat that caused the rise in CO2 or if increasing CO2 caused rising heat or if one or more confounding variables caused the rise in one or both of the variables in question.
I firmly believe that we ought to live efficiently and that we ought to attempt to alter the atmosphere as little as possible until we really know what we're doing, but bad science and logic aren't going to do any of us any good.
There are many better reasons to worry about pollution from a variety of sources than this vague threat that the earth might warm up.
A very good question, and one which people like RMS incorrectly answer when it comes to the GNU FDL. The problem comes when we consider the nature of the work in question.
Software is clearly a tool-- no matter how fine the craftsmanship of the code, ultimately software (more to the point, the source code) is a means, not an end. Especially because to use software generally requires the software to go from a human-readable form to a binary form. The binary form then "runs" on hardware to do stuff. Some of us believe that free software is an essential part of progress (open source attitude)-- a pragmatic question. Others believe that sharing the ideas that code expresses is something that should not be restricted (free software movement attitude)-- a moral question.
Writing and art are also tools, but very different tools-- the "source" code for any visual artwork or written work is indistinguishable from the work itself. Non-fiction is clearly a tool to express ideas. When we find technical documentation encumbered with partially free or wholly un-free licenses, this is as bad as the case of the non-free software, whether for pragmatic or moral reasons. Some of might extend the need for this type of freedom to all sorts of non-fiction, especially when it comes to the right to copy and share.
Where we find the most ambiguity is with creative works and fiction. Some might argue that these types of works serve no purpose other than enjoyment or enhancement. There is also a sense that these types of works require a greater sense of "creativity" than non-fiction works. But the biggest danger is that of dilution, either of a known style, or of a story line or what have you. If everyone can use and modify an existing artwork, this may diminish the effectiveness of the original. Obviously famous works (like the "Mona Lisa") get used all over with no danger to the original work because the original is so famous in its own right. But what about an artist trying to establish his work's place? What about a mesage that gets distorted by reuse? Example: what if everyone were free to write their own sequels to the Harry Potter series? Or even to take the existing works and change the endings?
This is the difference. Personally I don't agree with it. I hold the belief that property is property and expression is expression and that expression cannot be treated like property (although I do not support plagiarism or other forms of fraud). I find it especially confusing when artwork is intended to accompany free software that it would be encumbered by trademark or dissimilar copyright license terms. That sort of thing could make it very difficult to share the software in any modified form. In this case, the restriction is on commercial activity. Does that mean that non-profits are exempt, even if they sell a product using the image? What if the profit-making entity makes no direct revenues from the use of the image? It's a grey area, and I don't know if the CC license really answers those kinds of questions.
This is insightful? Perl is less readable than some of the alternatives. However, readable is a function of many things, some internal, some external. Internally we have expectations, experience, and IQ. Externally we have sigils, syntax, keywords, etc.
To my eye, Perl is significantly less readable than several alternatives-- especially Ruby. Some of this centers around my expectations, some of this centers around the language design. It's not like all languages are inherently equal and the only difference is programmers.
So the real question: what's so hostile about images of people engaging in acts normally associated with intimacy and love? If this is the direction that western civilization is really headed, I... I don't know. But the idea that an employer can be sued because a third party, acting criminally, happens to sneak a message to an employee, strikes me as worlds apart from the traditional problem where we have bosses demanding services from employees that were not part of the original job description.
Yes, it will be so much easier to retrain the users than it will to write software which simply meets their existing expectations.
Most users don't use 95% of the features of Word, but for those who do use any of those "advanced" features, your suggestion is mostly dead in the water. I suggest exploring useful integration of tables, revision control, forms, mail merging, spell checkers, outline tools, and many other fairly highly visible features from Word, before worrying about training users to think in computer-friendly terms so they can take advantage of less powerful software.
Also, Word already has stylesheets (and has since forever, IIRC). So you can already work with it in a way that gets you many of the advantages of other markup-based systems.
Disclosure: I use emacs for 99% of my text processing needs and if I need to present the text in a "pretty" form, I tend to present it as HTML. I don't really want to get into a flamewar because I'm not particularly fond of Word, but none of the tools I've seen on Linux are really at that level, when it comes to plain old word processing. Some of them are better for page layout, sure, but that's not all that exciting when the tool doesn't help at all during the process of writing.
In any event, it can't be done with GNU/Linux has Linus already holds the rights to the word 'Linux' itself. GNU/Linux would be an infringement.
The 171 trademarks containing the word "Linux" beg to differ. Especially the one that is for the word "Linux" when used in connection with "laundry detergents and laundry bleaches for home use; all purpose cleaning preparations for home use; general purpose scouring powders; skin soap for personal use; perfume; essential oils for personal use; preparations for personal hygiene and cosmetic purposes, namely, hair shampoo, skin toners, shower gel, skin lotions; hair tonic and toothpaste."
I kid you not. There is even a trademark on file for something called "Z/Linux". Look for yourself (suggested search "linux").
None of this is to say that there isn't some licensing agreement between most of these folks and Mr. Torvalds. The point is, you can have a trademark on something that incorporates another word, especially if that trademark is in a different trade.
If it takes six months for your vendor to deliver a critical patch for your critical systems or to issue some sort of advisory with useful advice on mitigating the risk pending an actual patch, I think you had better look at that approach to your systems infrastructure as fundamentally broken.
If you have a vulnerable system sitting around online six months after someone has discovered a flaw, that's six months that you could lose a lot more than your quoted dollar amount. You could lose your whole system to an attacker. You could lose every byte worth of customer data through that security hole.
Now, I'm not sure what kind of legal remedies there are for careless handling of this kind of data, but I think leaving a vulnerable system online in such a critical environment smells like a very expensive class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Because in places and times where this law doesn't or didn't exist, the problem was no worse than what we see today. It's really that simple. No law like this should restrain free adults without adequate evidence that the freedom surrendered to the law is vastly outweighed by the benefits purported. It's not like the law simply exists on its own. Someone had to propose it and other people have to enforce it. Because the law is unnatural and antithetical to freedom, it is not I who should have to defend my assertion that the law is poor, but those who would propose and keep this law that must defend its very existence.
OK, now I almost agree. It is possible that he was told by some documentation that his actual, specific card would work and that it did not. It is also possible that the card does work and that some other factor is causing him not to hear any sound. My own experience leads me to believe that especially with on-board controllers that it can be difficult to figure out which one you really have and which driver is appropriate for it. My own experience also leads me to believe that this is not a very common problem, as every sound card I've ever had works fine under Linux.
Man, Toyota will never cut it as a car company. I went to put the engine from my '67 Ford in my '98 Corolla and none of the parts matched at all! The Linux community has been asking, wheedling, begging, and probably even bribing device makers into releasing drivers or even just specs to help developers write their own drivers. What more can the Linux community do? If this guy didn't check for compatibility before exepecting something to work, why should anyone feel sympathy for his plight? You know what, I tried installing Windows instead of Mac OS 8.5 on my iMac and it didn't work... but Linux has been running on that platform for several years.
"In 1998, one in three high school seniors reported being drunk in the preceding month, up 13 percent since 1993." Not exactly recent, nor have I checked their sources, but somehow I don't think there's been a huge swing since a few places started using mag stripes in addition to visual inspection of proof of age.
In any case, even if you could cut their cited number by 50% it would still be the case that 1 in 6 high school seniors would be reporting getting drunk in the preceding month. Whatever is being done is obviously so ineffective as to be useless. In fact, we are probably fooling ourselves into thinking these laws will keep kids from drinking so that we ignore more effectual methods of keeping kids sober and/or teaching them to drink responsibly.
That way, even if you do get photographed going over the limit, they'll have a hard time issuing a ticket to "anonymous cyclist in a yellow shirt on a blue mountain bike.":)
Um, I'm legal to buy. And if they refuse to serve me because the mag stripe on my ID doesn't work, they are simply shutting themselves off from potential profit. However, your statement gets more to my other point about government interference in the private acts and commerce of consenting adults. The best part of all this? All these laws against minors getting alcohol haven't done a bit of good. We're shooting ourselves in the foot here asking the government to play mommy and daddy for us. And now those of us who are legal adults have to wonder/worry about all the privacy implications of the completely ineffectual measures we're taking to keep kids from drinking.
Why would they deny service to a paying customer? Are they being paid for every card they swipe? Or are they being required to use these machines by government? In which case saying "it's also the bar's right" to do anything is pretty silly, because what's really happening is an expanding amount of gov't regulation and interference in the private lives and commerce activities of citizens.
Good god, man! Microsoft has been crappy software since Day 1 and people have been complaining about the health effects of tobacco use since the U.S. was just a bunch of colonies. Anyone who gets "hooked" on either deserves every last drop of what they get.
Why is it that these discussions always have to descend into Windows vs Linux flame wars? Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about Windows right now. What I want to see is a good discussion of what's going on at Stanford. What can the rest of us do to make sure we don't fall victim to the same problems, etc etc.
I mean, when I recommend Linux to my friends and family, how can I know that we're going to be safe from this stuff? Telling them that Windows is worse or that Microsoft should be held to a higher standard isn't a good enough answer. If it were, I would have easily convinced everyone I know to switch a long time ago.
Yeah, one hour. Sure. I buy that. For most of us it will take an hour just to get an admin's attention, let alone get a good solid recovery done. Sure. One minute. That's believable, too!
Thankfully for most work users in properly set up environments, most work is done on servers that are backed up well. So you might lose today's work, but probably not yesterday's, and you will be able to get us back on our digital feet.
But I can see why you would be minimizing the cost of this kind of threat-- the more the network and its users need fixing, the more job security there is for admins, right? But for the rest of the company it's a serious loss of productive time and work. Most of the people who have to go through any sort of recovery experience will lose a whole day of time they would have rather spent doing something useful. And if this hits a whole work group that can be a real disaster.
Well, that's what I'm saying, they are the price leaders, any other oil-producing concern doesn't need to worry about cutting their prices in order to cut into OPEC's share in order to make money, they just need to let OPEC worry about pricing and follow along. The mental image I have is of a car drafting behind a semi, where OPEC is the semi and instead of reducing air resistance they are cutting through price resistance. What I'd be curious to know is how much buying changes when the price of oil goes up.
That is a very good question and part of the answer is that there is no real competition going on. The reason for this is not that there is an outright conspiracy or a monopoly (or even a well-organized US-based oligopoly). Rather, Americans consume gas like they're breathing air-- we don't know how to live without it. This skews the normal market dynamics, in my opinion.
The other main problem is barriers to entry. No one is going to go out and start a gas company today. If you could even find virgin oil fields that no one else had the rights to, the cost of getting wells up, refineries built, regulatory stuff done, and finally getting the product to market are prohibitive. A commodity good where only established players can get in the game is going to have an abnormal pricing curve.
So, there's this tacit sense of just about how much gas should cost at any given time based on a floor price and an approximate sense of what the market will bear. But in the long term there is no overall downward pressure on gas prices because there are no substitutes and no one is going to set up a gas factory in their basement and suddenly start undercutting established firms in the market.
It's not a case of sell or perish for most of the businesses involved in the gas market. It's just a case of don't push more than the neighbors. But gas buyers are not particularly sensitive to pricing, partly because compared to the other costs of vehicle ownership, gas is not a major expense (unless you measure it on an annualized basis--which I'm guessing most Americans do not), partly because when you need gas you need gas. How many people do you know that won't fill their tank because the gas price went up, and will then delay trips based on their need to conserve fuel until they can refill more affordably?
In short, gas prices are high because everyone is willing to pay those prices. Even if the suppliers are getting their crude oil cheaper or whatever, what do you think consumers are going to do if all the various outlets keep selling for approximately the same price? Switch to hydrogen? Start biking? Take the bus? Until consumers look for substitutes or make the price of gas an issue beyond those breathless evening news spots about some outrageous pump price, there is absolutely no reason to expect the price to go down.
Slashdot Mirror
The question is whether investors would rather get the proceeds of liquidation and/or sales of the company's assets or whether they would like to have some very nice SUN stock that they have to sell Grandma for a penny in order to be able to write off the loss on their taxes.
Personally I think Sun can grow by shrinking, focusing on doing a few things well, and continuing to improve their niche. Their whole "the network is the computer" thing didn't work so well in the past, but it was somewhat visionary. They need to run with that idea. Look at how well Apple did by starting with two things: iMac and then Mac OS X. The former was an absolute coup. The latter was bungled, but still managed to get a lot of geeks into the Apple camp. The sensible focus on simplifying the hardware first helped a lot with the move to OS X, though. Sun has some valuable stuff out there, and a lot of name recognition. It will be fun to watch if they sink or swim.
Maybe now's the time to buy ten shares. At $4 a piece, it's a loss easily eaten, and if they recover, in a few years it could be worth something.
You see where this whole P2P "revolution" has gotten us? This whole "information wants to be free" mindset? People can't write out their own damn comments for pointless discussion boards. ;)
For the record, I verified Rude Turnip's assertion and it appears that grand-parent and great-grand-parent posts really are copy/pastes of Yahoo messages. It's one thing to share information, it's completely another to pretend the ideas presented are your own. Even a hardcore libertarian who would never conceive of equating ephemeralities like music and stories with real property knows that plagiarism is fraud and is therefore wrong.
As to the whole idea of buying a recording of the show I just saw... why? I'm with George Carlin on this one. Instant nostalgia is a bit off-kilter. To quote the man himself, "What's the point? You just [heard] the [expletive] thing?"
Moving to Linux is not "free". Nothing is "free". There are distinct opportunity costs in switching to Linux. There is the time spent learning about Linux. The time spent getting any data that needs to be preserved into a portable form. The time to actually reinstall software on existing hardware. The inevitable troubleshooting required. If you are a company there is probably a lot of time spent to train employees. There is lost productivity due to system unavailability during the transition and due to "ramp up" time as people get used to working with the new software.
:)
Depending on the size of your company, this could cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. In fact, it might be easier to buy Apple computers for many reasons. Each company or individual must make its own decisions about any changes to existing IT infrastructure based on a lot of these factors, but simplistic statements like "Linux is free" are misleading. It sets up extremely unrealistic expectations.
However, there is one way in which Linux beats all the alternatives: It is Free (as in speech).
OK. Two questions about this law: doesn't the naming violate Hormel's trademark (don't they specifically request the word spam to be lowercase only) or did Congress and the White House reach some sort of licensing agreement? Second, shouldn't it be CANT-SPAM?
And to respond to your post: start reporting my fraudulent spams? I get about 500 to 1000 spams a day. But then I count "undeliverable" messages as part of my spam traffic. Ditto all those stupid MS Outlook worms. Can I report fraudulent use of my email addresses in the headers of emails I did not send but for which I receive rejection notices?
Your "experiment" is fundamentally flawed. Back to grade school science class for you. You have no control (like another earth on which you do not raise the CO2 levels), so you have no way to tell if it was increasing heat that caused the rise in CO2 or if increasing CO2 caused rising heat or if one or more confounding variables caused the rise in one or both of the variables in question.
I firmly believe that we ought to live efficiently and that we ought to attempt to alter the atmosphere as little as possible until we really know what we're doing, but bad science and logic aren't going to do any of us any good.
There are many better reasons to worry about pollution from a variety of sources than this vague threat that the earth might warm up.
What's the difference?
A very good question, and one which people like RMS incorrectly answer when it comes to the GNU FDL. The problem comes when we consider the nature of the work in question.
Software is clearly a tool-- no matter how fine the craftsmanship of the code, ultimately software (more to the point, the source code) is a means, not an end. Especially because to use software generally requires the software to go from a human-readable form to a binary form. The binary form then "runs" on hardware to do stuff. Some of us believe that free software is an essential part of progress (open source attitude)-- a pragmatic question. Others believe that sharing the ideas that code expresses is something that should not be restricted (free software movement attitude)-- a moral question.
Writing and art are also tools, but very different tools-- the "source" code for any visual artwork or written work is indistinguishable from the work itself. Non-fiction is clearly a tool to express ideas. When we find technical documentation encumbered with partially free or wholly un-free licenses, this is as bad as the case of the non-free software, whether for pragmatic or moral reasons. Some of might extend the need for this type of freedom to all sorts of non-fiction, especially when it comes to the right to copy and share.
Where we find the most ambiguity is with creative works and fiction. Some might argue that these types of works serve no purpose other than enjoyment or enhancement. There is also a sense that these types of works require a greater sense of "creativity" than non-fiction works. But the biggest danger is that of dilution, either of a known style, or of a story line or what have you. If everyone can use and modify an existing artwork, this may diminish the effectiveness of the original. Obviously famous works (like the "Mona Lisa") get used all over with no danger to the original work because the original is so famous in its own right. But what about an artist trying to establish his work's place? What about a mesage that gets distorted by reuse? Example: what if everyone were free to write their own sequels to the Harry Potter series? Or even to take the existing works and change the endings?
This is the difference. Personally I don't agree with it. I hold the belief that property is property and expression is expression and that expression cannot be treated like property (although I do not support plagiarism or other forms of fraud). I find it especially confusing when artwork is intended to accompany free software that it would be encumbered by trademark or dissimilar copyright license terms. That sort of thing could make it very difficult to share the software in any modified form. In this case, the restriction is on commercial activity. Does that mean that non-profits are exempt, even if they sell a product using the image? What if the profit-making entity makes no direct revenues from the use of the image? It's a grey area, and I don't know if the CC license really answers those kinds of questions.
This is insightful? Perl is less readable than some of the alternatives. However, readable is a function of many things, some internal, some external. Internally we have expectations, experience, and IQ. Externally we have sigils, syntax, keywords, etc.
To my eye, Perl is significantly less readable than several alternatives-- especially Ruby. Some of this centers around my expectations, some of this centers around the language design. It's not like all languages are inherently equal and the only difference is programmers.
So the real question: what's so hostile about images of people engaging in acts normally associated with intimacy and love? If this is the direction that western civilization is really headed, I... I don't know. But the idea that an employer can be sued because a third party, acting criminally, happens to sneak a message to an employee, strikes me as worlds apart from the traditional problem where we have bosses demanding services from employees that were not part of the original job description.
Yes, it will be so much easier to retrain the users than it will to write software which simply meets their existing expectations.
Most users don't use 95% of the features of Word, but for those who do use any of those "advanced" features, your suggestion is mostly dead in the water. I suggest exploring useful integration of tables, revision control, forms, mail merging, spell checkers, outline tools, and many other fairly highly visible features from Word, before worrying about training users to think in computer-friendly terms so they can take advantage of less powerful software.
Also, Word already has stylesheets (and has since forever, IIRC). So you can already work with it in a way that gets you many of the advantages of other markup-based systems.
Disclosure: I use emacs for 99% of my text processing needs and if I need to present the text in a "pretty" form, I tend to present it as HTML. I don't really want to get into a flamewar because I'm not particularly fond of Word, but none of the tools I've seen on Linux are really at that level, when it comes to plain old word processing. Some of them are better for page layout, sure, but that's not all that exciting when the tool doesn't help at all during the process of writing.
In any event, it can't be done with GNU/Linux has Linus already holds the rights to the word 'Linux' itself. GNU/Linux would be an infringement.
The 171 trademarks containing the word "Linux" beg to differ. Especially the one that is for the word "Linux" when used in connection with "laundry detergents and laundry bleaches for home use; all purpose cleaning preparations for home use; general purpose scouring powders; skin soap for personal use; perfume; essential oils for personal use; preparations for personal hygiene and cosmetic purposes, namely, hair shampoo, skin toners, shower gel, skin lotions; hair tonic and toothpaste."
I kid you not. There is even a trademark on file for something called "Z/Linux". Look for yourself (suggested search "linux").
None of this is to say that there isn't some licensing agreement between most of these folks and Mr. Torvalds. The point is, you can have a trademark on something that incorporates another word, especially if that trademark is in a different trade.
If it takes six months for your vendor to deliver a critical patch for your critical systems or to issue some sort of advisory with useful advice on mitigating the risk pending an actual patch, I think you had better look at that approach to your systems infrastructure as fundamentally broken.
If you have a vulnerable system sitting around online six months after someone has discovered a flaw, that's six months that you could lose a lot more than your quoted dollar amount. You could lose your whole system to an attacker. You could lose every byte worth of customer data through that security hole.
Now, I'm not sure what kind of legal remedies there are for careless handling of this kind of data, but I think leaving a vulnerable system online in such a critical environment smells like a very expensive class action lawsuit waiting to happen.
Because in places and times where this law doesn't or didn't exist, the problem was no worse than what we see today. It's really that simple. No law like this should restrain free adults without adequate evidence that the freedom surrendered to the law is vastly outweighed by the benefits purported. It's not like the law simply exists on its own. Someone had to propose it and other people have to enforce it. Because the law is unnatural and antithetical to freedom, it is not I who should have to defend my assertion that the law is poor, but those who would propose and keep this law that must defend its very existence.
OK, now I almost agree. It is possible that he was told by some documentation that his actual, specific card would work and that it did not. It is also possible that the card does work and that some other factor is causing him not to hear any sound. My own experience leads me to believe that especially with on-board controllers that it can be difficult to figure out which one you really have and which driver is appropriate for it. My own experience also leads me to believe that this is not a very common problem, as every sound card I've ever had works fine under Linux.
Man, Toyota will never cut it as a car company. I went to put the engine from my '67 Ford in my '98 Corolla and none of the parts matched at all! The Linux community has been asking, wheedling, begging, and probably even bribing device makers into releasing drivers or even just specs to help developers write their own drivers. What more can the Linux community do? If this guy didn't check for compatibility before exepecting something to work, why should anyone feel sympathy for his plight? You know what, I tried installing Windows instead of Mac OS 8.5 on my iMac and it didn't work... but Linux has been running on that platform for several years.
Ack. screwed up the link.
"In 1998, one in three high school seniors reported being drunk in the preceding month, up 13 percent since 1993." Not exactly recent, nor have I checked their sources, but somehow I don't think there's been a huge swing since a few places started using mag stripes in addition to visual inspection of proof of age.
In any case, even if you could cut their cited number by 50% it would still be the case that 1 in 6 high school seniors would be reporting getting drunk in the preceding month. Whatever is being done is obviously so ineffective as to be useless. In fact, we are probably fooling ourselves into thinking these laws will keep kids from drinking so that we ignore more effectual methods of keeping kids sober and/or teaching them to drink responsibly.
anyone have any thoughts on defeating them?
:)
Ride a bike?
That way, even if you do get photographed going over the limit, they'll have a hard time issuing a ticket to "anonymous cyclist in a yellow shirt on a blue mountain bike."
Um, I'm legal to buy. And if they refuse to serve me because the mag stripe on my ID doesn't work, they are simply shutting themselves off from potential profit. However, your statement gets more to my other point about government interference in the private acts and commerce of consenting adults. The best part of all this? All these laws against minors getting alcohol haven't done a bit of good. We're shooting ourselves in the foot here asking the government to play mommy and daddy for us. And now those of us who are legal adults have to wonder/worry about all the privacy implications of the completely ineffectual measures we're taking to keep kids from drinking.
Why would they deny service to a paying customer? Are they being paid for every card they swipe? Or are they being required to use these machines by government? In which case saying "it's also the bar's right" to do anything is pretty silly, because what's really happening is an expanding amount of gov't regulation and interference in the private lives and commerce activities of citizens.
Good god, man! Microsoft has been crappy software since Day 1 and people have been complaining about the health effects of tobacco use since the U.S. was just a bunch of colonies. Anyone who gets "hooked" on either deserves every last drop of what they get.
Why is it that these discussions always have to descend into Windows vs Linux flame wars? Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about Windows right now. What I want to see is a good discussion of what's going on at Stanford. What can the rest of us do to make sure we don't fall victim to the same problems, etc etc.
I mean, when I recommend Linux to my friends and family, how can I know that we're going to be safe from this stuff? Telling them that Windows is worse or that Microsoft should be held to a higher standard isn't a good enough answer. If it were, I would have easily convinced everyone I know to switch a long time ago.
Yeah, one hour. Sure. I buy that. For most of us it will take an hour just to get an admin's attention, let alone get a good solid recovery done. Sure. One minute. That's believable, too!
Thankfully for most work users in properly set up environments, most work is done on servers that are backed up well. So you might lose today's work, but probably not yesterday's, and you will be able to get us back on our digital feet.
But I can see why you would be minimizing the cost of this kind of threat-- the more the network and its users need fixing, the more job security there is for admins, right? But for the rest of the company it's a serious loss of productive time and work. Most of the people who have to go through any sort of recovery experience will lose a whole day of time they would have rather spent doing something useful. And if this hits a whole work group that can be a real disaster.
That is the single funniest thing I've seen today. Much better than all these references to SpaceBalls, War Games, and other not-so-worthwhile movies.
Well, that's what I'm saying, they are the price leaders, any other oil-producing concern doesn't need to worry about cutting their prices in order to cut into OPEC's share in order to make money, they just need to let OPEC worry about pricing and follow along. The mental image I have is of a car drafting behind a semi, where OPEC is the semi and instead of reducing air resistance they are cutting through price resistance. What I'd be curious to know is how much buying changes when the price of oil goes up.
So why would that be, if the U.S. just "liberated" a major oil supplier?
Then why do gas prices continue to increase
That is a very good question and part of the answer is that there is no real competition going on. The reason for this is not that there is an outright conspiracy or a monopoly (or even a well-organized US-based oligopoly). Rather, Americans consume gas like they're breathing air-- we don't know how to live without it. This skews the normal market dynamics, in my opinion.
The other main problem is barriers to entry. No one is going to go out and start a gas company today. If you could even find virgin oil fields that no one else had the rights to, the cost of getting wells up, refineries built, regulatory stuff done, and finally getting the product to market are prohibitive. A commodity good where only established players can get in the game is going to have an abnormal pricing curve.
So, there's this tacit sense of just about how much gas should cost at any given time based on a floor price and an approximate sense of what the market will bear. But in the long term there is no overall downward pressure on gas prices because there are no substitutes and no one is going to set up a gas factory in their basement and suddenly start undercutting established firms in the market.
It's not a case of sell or perish for most of the businesses involved in the gas market. It's just a case of don't push more than the neighbors. But gas buyers are not particularly sensitive to pricing, partly because compared to the other costs of vehicle ownership, gas is not a major expense (unless you measure it on an annualized basis--which I'm guessing most Americans do not), partly because when you need gas you need gas. How many people do you know that won't fill their tank because the gas price went up, and will then delay trips based on their need to conserve fuel until they can refill more affordably?
In short, gas prices are high because everyone is willing to pay those prices. Even if the suppliers are getting their crude oil cheaper or whatever, what do you think consumers are going to do if all the various outlets keep selling for approximately the same price? Switch to hydrogen? Start biking? Take the bus? Until consumers look for substitutes or make the price of gas an issue beyond those breathless evening news spots about some outrageous pump price, there is absolutely no reason to expect the price to go down.