Not true. If they can somehow prove that gold farming is detrimental to the functioning of their game world, they can sue. Any real player can attest that gold farmers are largely unwelcome as they just get in the way and kill the in-game economy. They make the game less fun for everyone else either because they flood the game with cheap items, undercutting legitimate craftspeople, or they kill-steal, hoard minerals/herbs/whatever preventing legitimate players from acquiring them... much like the RIAA's unsubstantiated claims, it's hard to put a number on how much money Blizzard actually loses because of Chinese farmers, but when people are paying $15 a month for a subscription, if their experience is negatively affected by non-players there's probably a noticeable number of players who just stop playing it and move on.
Analogy time (slashdot loves analogies!). If you're running a golf course, you charge people to play on your course. Now if a bunch of chinese kids showed up and stood all over your course, obstructing your paying customers, putting excess wear on your lawns, pooping in your restrooms, and of course stealing players' golf balls and selling them off the side of the road... I think you'd be angry and so would your players. Sooner or later, people would just stop coming to your golf course because the parasites spoil all the fun. A good business owner would get rid of these trespassers ASAP, and make sure they don't come back.
I get severely irked by the multi-taxing nature of certain governments. The way I see it, they've collected tax at the point of sale, when I bought the item from the retailer in the first place. I see no reason for them to get paid again for the private re-sale of a used item. The day I see tax collectors go after yard sales will be the day I drive down to the states to buy a gun.
They should quit fretting over "internet" businesses and just treat them like any other business. If a brick and mortar store doesn't pay their taxes, you revoke their licenses, shut them down and sue the owners until they fly back to friggin' China. If an online store doesn't pay their taxes, the same strategy should be applied. If some cocky bastard on disability is selling 200k worth of beanie babies on eBay, you take away their cripple pension and tax them on that 200k.
The obvious workaround is to use a foreign identity and a server located in different country. Then it becomes a case of international fraud and tax evasion... but good luck with the lawsuit! It's already hard enough to get two allied nations to cooperate, imagine the hoops to get server logs from a russian datacenter to an american tax bureau.
I say let the governments do what they can, while they can. Given another decade or two of mass screwups, they're going to be largely obsolete anyway!
That's why the RIAA needs a gambling factor... make a legitimate takedown request and it gets honored. Make a bad one and it gets treated like any other fraudulent abuse of power. Let's pretend the kid made this takedown notice, well for one he is illegally assuming the indentity of an ABC employee. This isn't a strong case because any idiot can look up ABC's address and type it on a letter. So plan B: the recipient should check the credentials, by contacting the sender, no less. Obviously someone failed to do that here. But if they had contacted ABC, they would have to answer the question "Did you send us a takedown notice for XYZ?" If they answer yes, they're lying! Fraud! If they answer no, the prank ends. All that can be done against the prankster is a deposition stating that he or she must stop abusing the company's resources with pranks. If they do it again, well then you have documentation to press charges against them. Sue the kid, toss them in juvy, hell drag it to Texas and shoot it if you must.
The important thing is that every party involved should be held accountable for their actions. They are each responsible for a piece of the puzzle that makes the DMCA work (in theory). If any one of them fails to do their part of the job properly, they can potentially cause far more damage than the alleged infringement ever did.
Quite the seasoned troll you are. Air pollution in some other state is, yes, better than air pollution in one's own. That's why you live here and not there. Sure, overall it's bad but it's not like people are taking green issues seriously (yet). Not until we have a big dramatic holocaust-grade disaster will people start to conserve resources. That's why some people drive Priuses (which aren't that green to begin with), and others drive Hummers.
Energy costs a ton of money. I'm not too sure why because it certainly isn't worth anything, but companies were created to put dollar signs at the end of that nothingness. We can't undo this capitalism screwup so we have to deal with it. I live in a rather big city, seeing as it's the nation's capital, and we tend to be a rather progressive society that is pro-green to some extent. That doesn't stop massive buildings from being lit up 24/7 even though they're staffed for only 10 hours a day. It's so bright that my window shades glow at night from the skyscrapers a half-mile away. "It's for security" they say. Well then what's more important ? Energy conservation or the physical security of a bunch of government cubicles full of bullshit that nobody wants to read, not even the people who write it. We watch the cost of electricity go up every year, primarily because we sell too much of it to the Americans, and through some messed up contract we have to buy it back at a higher price. Luckily we don't have brownouts more than once every couple of years, but that will probably change as time goes by and the electricity market takes a turn for the absurd just like oil did. What happens when nobody can afford the electricity anymore ?
If a police officer runs a red light because they just got a call, obviously they won't be fined. On the other hand, if they're just cruising around like the inconsiderate repressed bastards that they are, they should be responsible for all actions they take that aren't directly mandated by duty. They certainly don't give anyone else any leeway. The whole concept of traffic fines makes very little sense to me. I'd rather pitch in a few dollars a year on my taxes than have to deal with radar pigs. Yep, speeding can be dangerous, but ignorant driving is far worse. It doesn't matter how fast you're going if the federal worker in her Echo decides to invade your personal space without warning, or some jackass who can't be bothered to think ahead decides that he needs to turn onto the left street while he's in the right-most lane, or some outlander who's never seen an arrow decides to go the wrong way up a one-way street.
I'd like to think that if people relied less on traffic signs and more on their own common sense, the roads would be safer overall. It's simple: you're piloting a 3000lb battering ram. If you don't want to kill or be killed, then keep that battering ram away from soft mushy things like people!
Or you could take a cue from postal workers and kill the idiot. The trick to keeping your job is to convince HIS higher-ups that it is a cost-cutting measure.
This reminds me of the Xbox 360 release. One of the reasons why there's a Wii shortage is because of all the assholes hoarding them for big profits. Every day in the local bartering newsgroup/weblists, I see a half-dozen Wiis posted for ridiculous prices. The fact that these welfare cases crawl their asses off to Best Buy every morning with their mastercard is just one of the reasons why I want to strangle each and every one of these scalpers. Just in my city, there's probably a hundred Wiis being "held hostage", that's probably more than the actual demand would be so Best Buy isn't going to do anything to stop it, they're just moving more units.
While we're at it, anyone wanna pay $900 for a Duron 1.3ghz system with a massive 15" CRT ? Come to Ottawa, someone here will gladly take your money.
Liquid cooling doesn't decrease the amount of heat dissipated, it's just a better conductor than air. You still have to cool the liquid. In a closed space like a server room, you're still going to have the same amount of heat energy, it's just getting drawn away from the machines faster but you still need to cool that room somehow.
Liquid cooling still requires a radiator, and that's where the heat goes. It does move it quicker, so your chips can be pushed harder without overheating, as long as you have a bigass radiator with big fans blowing the heat off. The main source of problems with watercooling rigs is usually inadequate cooling (#2 would be pumps). If that water can't lose the heat as fast at the chip puts out, its temperature will rise exponentially and you end up with burst pipes from the boiling water, and of course a fried computer.
Now back to the article... I would be weary of this company, simply because it's a little crazy and I'm not sure if a UK company could have the capital and staying power to honor warranties on such tricky setups. Time will tell.
This could be the USA in a decade or lses. The dangerous thing here is that it is perfectly reasonable to "restrict" teenagers to 3 hours of gaming per day. What's wrong with this picture is it shouldn't be the government's job to do this, it's the parents responsibility. If families offload their parenting duties to the government, that's a very slippery slope of shaping and mind control. A generation later, we'll have these kids all grown up in these federal ways. They will be far more open to being controlled by their government... every generation will be less "free" than the last and they won't even know it.
Me, I'm all about tough love. If the kid is left to piss away their life in front of a dumb game like Lineage, and become a worthless drain on his/her family, well that's just desserts for the failed parents. The same way a good family expects their children to provide for the family later, as if parenting were a business venture, well they should be responsible if their strategy bombs and goes bankrupt.
The reason no one has any stock is because OEM Express / OEM Depot bought them all:) Give them a look if they're in your town, as they don't sell online.
Is it just me or has Intel been dirty ever since that Otellini guy reared his ugly head ? I remember a while back when he came to Canada to suck some federal cock, he needed a larger security detail than the premiers he was visiting.
This is Britain, they always think everyone's out to get them. They also think they have any skill at dealing with such problems. Say, how's that worthless CCTV system doing ?:P
If anyone ever bombs the UK, it's purely because we can't get that pitifully small unproductive nation to shut up.
The problem with WoW is that Blizzard Entertainment specifically prohibits the sale of any virtual possessions. The gold farmers get away with it to a certain extent because they're in countries where western law is largely ignored, so Blizzard has little pull beyond shutting down accounts known to engage in trading, but for example in China, because more people make use of internet cafes vs personally owned computers, Blizzard sells CD Keys for 30 yuan (less than 3 US dollars). Paying 3 bucks every time a farmer gets banned, that's a joke!
Second Life... well it's a weirder beast given their explicit financial system. This is where things can get hairy because there is genuine income generation in this game, where people set up virtual businesses / services / brothels:P and it is their virtual "job". I've never played SL so I have no idea of the kind of money people make, but I'm sure some enterprising gamers must have the patience and know-how to develop full-time income, since it is supposed to mimic real life to a certain degree. Should that income be taxed at the state or federal level at all ? Should they crack down on virtual prostitution:P and make it a real criminal offense ? The government would probably answer yes to taxes, and no to law enforcement... anything with a dollar sign overrides common sense, when dealing with large organizations.
My personal take is that those people who make money through gaming, they have to spend it somewhere. If the supplier/provider/consumer chain were properly taxed, it wouldn't matter where the money came from, as its effect would trickle back up the chain like everyone else's money.
You're skipping a level of indirection here. First of all, telecom fiber is paid by, ahem, the telecom. The fact that they get preferential gov't treatment is beside the point. Tax the telecoms. Then the power lines are paid for by the power company, see previous point. And then the roads are a public good, supposed to be covered by vehicle registration and licensing dues, public transit fees, and tyre levies. Then the telecoms, power companies and tire vendors pass the costs back to the consumer in their prices. If the government isn't making enough money from 1st-tier taxing, they should either adjust those tax rates and let the difference trickle down to the consumer through natural market forces, or they should cut their spending and jack up efficiency. There's no justifiable reason for these things to be double-taxed, not in a true capitalist economy.
It's called "here's a slashdotting to boost my pagerank". Whenever you see useless tripe on the internet, chances are it's designed to generate idiot traffic and/or ad revenue. Thank Google for this glut.
Cell phones are cheap, noisy chinese devices. The fact that my bigass car stereo goes "ba-ba-buzz-ba-ba-buzz" whenever the phone rings is more than enough proof for me. If the cell's nasty op-amp interference can penetrate all my carefully installed uber-shielded stereo equipment and wiring, then I wouldn't be surprised if it messed with flight sensors and other twitch-sensitive gadgetry.
Fears aside, I actually like not having cell phones in a plane. For one, I hate phones. Two, I hate people who spend their whole life on a phone. Three, flights are long and boring, perfect for a nice little nap. If a dozen powersuit assholes are having a phone conference in a plane, I'll be turning into a spontaneous terrorist. I don't care if I have to beat them to death with a pillow, whatever it takes to shut them up. It's already enough of a nuisance that people treat coffee shops like their own personal office these days... a guy can't have a frickin' macchiato and enjoy a book anymore with these loud pompous market-slaves invading every quiet space on this bubble.
The iMac/eMac is for people who either want a smaller footprint or a simpler setup, just think of all the people who buy notebooks even though they don't carry them around, just to have a smaller, quieter machine that doesn't have a tangled mess of cables all over.
The Mac Mini is targeted to PC users. BYO keyboard, mouse and monitor, so it's aimed at people who already own a computer. It's a cheap way to try out a Mac and get people hooked on OS X. Just have a gander at the forums, or even idle banter at the local PC shop... a lot of people start out with the Mac Mini, fall in love and save up for the Mac Pro. Heck, I know quite a few people who installed Windows on the Mac Mini just to have a quiet, tiny little PC.
There can be no revolution because the people are too complacent. The government could piss every single person off, including their own staff, and people still would just sit at home and bitch in front of their TV over the 6 o'clock news. It's always someone else's job to take care of it or "I don't do politics"... well politics are sadly what shapes our lives. We live in society, maybe we should pay attention to what that society is doing for us, not TO us.
Okay rewind buddy, step away from the soap box and have a chill pill. Yes, you can buy a car for $7500. Yes, it's going to be a bit puny. No, it won't have all the features the Prius has. Most people don't give a damn, we just want to get from point A to point B. I've got an average city car (a Focus), it's almost six years old and I've burned about $15k worth of fuel since I bought it in 2001. Aside from a few fragile bits of trim, I've been mostly quite happy with my $15k car. Had I bought a Prius instead, the fuel savings still wouldn't match the price difference between the two cars, and I don't think anyone markets a supercharger for the Prius engine, nor can you easily drop in a beefed up alternator to power the massive stereo:) Even if cost were the only factor, with my increased fuel consumption and rather high mileage, I still can't justify the cost of a hybrid vehicle. When you add in the fun factor of pumping the tunes and speeding down the highway, there's no comparison at all.
I like the idea of a hybrid or even pure electric car, but this is one case where I don't want to be the early adopter. Until they get the kinks ironed out and make them a LOT more efficient, I'm going to stay away. More money AND less fun just doesn't appeal to me.
I'm not familiar with history, at least not american history. If it (sort-of) works in Canada, why wouldn't it work in the states ? Why is federal police funding such a big no-no down there ?
The founding idea of "use it or lose it" is pure and honest, but we all know there are easy loopholes around it, and it's called the paper release. Once again I wish people had any sort of integrity and discipline and simply stopped throwing money at these IP goons. If the "business" of patent hoarding ceases to be profitable, they will stop doing it and find some other racket.
The Linux Mastercard was dead to me a long time ago, MBNA was a horrible bank to deal with. It's one thing to support a cause, it's another to pay retarded fees to a goddamned bank. I hate banks, and I especially hated MBNA so while I miss the cute penguin card, I was quite happy to terminate that account.
There are better ways to support free software than to partner with the devil. Hey why not strike a deal with Thailand where 5% of all prostitution income goes to the EFF ?
Maybe I'm just an asshole, but I never thought the Prius was a big deal to begin with. 55 MPG for an overpriced hybrid vehicle, or 35 MPG for a cheap city car that costs 1/3 of the Prius; seems like an easy choice for most people. Buying a Prius still means spending a ton of money over the lifetime of your vehicle, except you're giving more to the auto manufacturer and less to the fuel distributors.
Come up with a car that results in net savings over the lifetime of the vehicle, then people will have a real financial incentive to buy it up. Being environmentally friendly is something most people agree is a good idea, but the tense economy we live in takes precedence over long-term green ideals whose impact will be felt only after this generation's passing, if at all.
100 MPG ? If it means I could get 3-4 times more distance out of every dollar of fuel pumped, sign me up! Until then, I'll keep driving my thirsty little speeder.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true. If they can somehow prove that gold farming is detrimental to the functioning of their game world, they can sue. Any real player can attest that gold farmers are largely unwelcome as they just get in the way and kill the in-game economy. They make the game less fun for everyone else either because they flood the game with cheap items, undercutting legitimate craftspeople, or they kill-steal, hoard minerals/herbs/whatever preventing legitimate players from acquiring them... much like the RIAA's unsubstantiated claims, it's hard to put a number on how much money Blizzard actually loses because of Chinese farmers, but when people are paying $15 a month for a subscription, if their experience is negatively affected by non-players there's probably a noticeable number of players who just stop playing it and move on.
Analogy time (slashdot loves analogies!). If you're running a golf course, you charge people to play on your course. Now if a bunch of chinese kids showed up and stood all over your course, obstructing your paying customers, putting excess wear on your lawns, pooping in your restrooms, and of course stealing players' golf balls and selling them off the side of the road... I think you'd be angry and so would your players. Sooner or later, people would just stop coming to your golf course because the parasites spoil all the fun. A good business owner would get rid of these trespassers ASAP, and make sure they don't come back.
I get severely irked by the multi-taxing nature of certain governments. The way I see it, they've collected tax at the point of sale, when I bought the item from the retailer in the first place. I see no reason for them to get paid again for the private re-sale of a used item. The day I see tax collectors go after yard sales will be the day I drive down to the states to buy a gun.
They should quit fretting over "internet" businesses and just treat them like any other business. If a brick and mortar store doesn't pay their taxes, you revoke their licenses, shut them down and sue the owners until they fly back to friggin' China. If an online store doesn't pay their taxes, the same strategy should be applied. If some cocky bastard on disability is selling 200k worth of beanie babies on eBay, you take away their cripple pension and tax them on that 200k.
The obvious workaround is to use a foreign identity and a server located in different country. Then it becomes a case of international fraud and tax evasion... but good luck with the lawsuit! It's already hard enough to get two allied nations to cooperate, imagine the hoops to get server logs from a russian datacenter to an american tax bureau.
I say let the governments do what they can, while they can. Given another decade or two of mass screwups, they're going to be largely obsolete anyway!
That's why the RIAA needs a gambling factor... make a legitimate takedown request and it gets honored. Make a bad one and it gets treated like any other fraudulent abuse of power. Let's pretend the kid made this takedown notice, well for one he is illegally assuming the indentity of an ABC employee. This isn't a strong case because any idiot can look up ABC's address and type it on a letter. So plan B: the recipient should check the credentials, by contacting the sender, no less. Obviously someone failed to do that here. But if they had contacted ABC, they would have to answer the question "Did you send us a takedown notice for XYZ?" If they answer yes, they're lying! Fraud! If they answer no, the prank ends. All that can be done against the prankster is a deposition stating that he or she must stop abusing the company's resources with pranks. If they do it again, well then you have documentation to press charges against them. Sue the kid, toss them in juvy, hell drag it to Texas and shoot it if you must.
The important thing is that every party involved should be held accountable for their actions. They are each responsible for a piece of the puzzle that makes the DMCA work (in theory). If any one of them fails to do their part of the job properly, they can potentially cause far more damage than the alleged infringement ever did.
They'd partner up with X-10 Inc.
Now THAT'S a scary thought.
Quite the seasoned troll you are. Air pollution in some other state is, yes, better than air pollution in one's own. That's why you live here and not there. Sure, overall it's bad but it's not like people are taking green issues seriously (yet). Not until we have a big dramatic holocaust-grade disaster will people start to conserve resources. That's why some people drive Priuses (which aren't that green to begin with), and others drive Hummers.
Energy costs a ton of money. I'm not too sure why because it certainly isn't worth anything, but companies were created to put dollar signs at the end of that nothingness. We can't undo this capitalism screwup so we have to deal with it. I live in a rather big city, seeing as it's the nation's capital, and we tend to be a rather progressive society that is pro-green to some extent. That doesn't stop massive buildings from being lit up 24/7 even though they're staffed for only 10 hours a day. It's so bright that my window shades glow at night from the skyscrapers a half-mile away. "It's for security" they say. Well then what's more important ? Energy conservation or the physical security of a bunch of government cubicles full of bullshit that nobody wants to read, not even the people who write it. We watch the cost of electricity go up every year, primarily because we sell too much of it to the Americans, and through some messed up contract we have to buy it back at a higher price. Luckily we don't have brownouts more than once every couple of years, but that will probably change as time goes by and the electricity market takes a turn for the absurd just like oil did. What happens when nobody can afford the electricity anymore ?
If a police officer runs a red light because they just got a call, obviously they won't be fined. On the other hand, if they're just cruising around like the inconsiderate repressed bastards that they are, they should be responsible for all actions they take that aren't directly mandated by duty. They certainly don't give anyone else any leeway. The whole concept of traffic fines makes very little sense to me. I'd rather pitch in a few dollars a year on my taxes than have to deal with radar pigs. Yep, speeding can be dangerous, but ignorant driving is far worse. It doesn't matter how fast you're going if the federal worker in her Echo decides to invade your personal space without warning, or some jackass who can't be bothered to think ahead decides that he needs to turn onto the left street while he's in the right-most lane, or some outlander who's never seen an arrow decides to go the wrong way up a one-way street.
I'd like to think that if people relied less on traffic signs and more on their own common sense, the roads would be safer overall. It's simple: you're piloting a 3000lb battering ram. If you don't want to kill or be killed, then keep that battering ram away from soft mushy things like people!
Or you could take a cue from postal workers and kill the idiot. The trick to keeping your job is to convince HIS higher-ups that it is a cost-cutting measure.
This reminds me of the Xbox 360 release. One of the reasons why there's a Wii shortage is because of all the assholes hoarding them for big profits. Every day in the local bartering newsgroup/weblists, I see a half-dozen Wiis posted for ridiculous prices. The fact that these welfare cases crawl their asses off to Best Buy every morning with their mastercard is just one of the reasons why I want to strangle each and every one of these scalpers. Just in my city, there's probably a hundred Wiis being "held hostage", that's probably more than the actual demand would be so Best Buy isn't going to do anything to stop it, they're just moving more units.
While we're at it, anyone wanna pay $900 for a Duron 1.3ghz system with a massive 15" CRT ? Come to Ottawa, someone here will gladly take your money.
Wow you're old!
:0
I remember a time when we just beat the crap out of them. It was easy before the internet, everyone you knew lived within walking distance
Liquid cooling doesn't decrease the amount of heat dissipated, it's just a better conductor than air. You still have to cool the liquid. In a closed space like a server room, you're still going to have the same amount of heat energy, it's just getting drawn away from the machines faster but you still need to cool that room somehow.
Liquid cooling still requires a radiator, and that's where the heat goes. It does move it quicker, so your chips can be pushed harder without overheating, as long as you have a bigass radiator with big fans blowing the heat off. The main source of problems with watercooling rigs is usually inadequate cooling (#2 would be pumps). If that water can't lose the heat as fast at the chip puts out, its temperature will rise exponentially and you end up with burst pipes from the boiling water, and of course a fried computer.
Now back to the article... I would be weary of this company, simply because it's a little crazy and I'm not sure if a UK company could have the capital and staying power to honor warranties on such tricky setups. Time will tell.
This could be the USA in a decade or lses. The dangerous thing here is that it is perfectly reasonable to "restrict" teenagers to 3 hours of gaming per day. What's wrong with this picture is it shouldn't be the government's job to do this, it's the parents responsibility. If families offload their parenting duties to the government, that's a very slippery slope of shaping and mind control. A generation later, we'll have these kids all grown up in these federal ways. They will be far more open to being controlled by their government... every generation will be less "free" than the last and they won't even know it.
Me, I'm all about tough love. If the kid is left to piss away their life in front of a dumb game like Lineage, and become a worthless drain on his/her family, well that's just desserts for the failed parents. The same way a good family expects their children to provide for the family later, as if parenting were a business venture, well they should be responsible if their strategy bombs and goes bankrupt.
The reason no one has any stock is because OEM Express / OEM Depot bought them all :) Give them a look if they're in your town, as they don't sell online.
Is it just me or has Intel been dirty ever since that Otellini guy reared his ugly head ? I remember a while back when he came to Canada to suck some federal cock, he needed a larger security detail than the premiers he was visiting.
This is Britain, they always think everyone's out to get them. They also think they have any skill at dealing with such problems. Say, how's that worthless CCTV system doing ? :P
If anyone ever bombs the UK, it's purely because we can't get that pitifully small unproductive nation to shut up.
The problem with WoW is that Blizzard Entertainment specifically prohibits the sale of any virtual possessions. The gold farmers get away with it to a certain extent because they're in countries where western law is largely ignored, so Blizzard has little pull beyond shutting down accounts known to engage in trading, but for example in China, because more people make use of internet cafes vs personally owned computers, Blizzard sells CD Keys for 30 yuan (less than 3 US dollars). Paying 3 bucks every time a farmer gets banned, that's a joke!
:P and it is their virtual "job". I've never played SL so I have no idea of the kind of money people make, but I'm sure some enterprising gamers must have the patience and know-how to develop full-time income, since it is supposed to mimic real life to a certain degree. Should that income be taxed at the state or federal level at all ? Should they crack down on virtual prostitution :P and make it a real criminal offense ? The government would probably answer yes to taxes, and no to law enforcement ... anything with a dollar sign overrides common sense, when dealing with large organizations.
Second Life... well it's a weirder beast given their explicit financial system. This is where things can get hairy because there is genuine income generation in this game, where people set up virtual businesses / services / brothels
My personal take is that those people who make money through gaming, they have to spend it somewhere. If the supplier/provider/consumer chain were properly taxed, it wouldn't matter where the money came from, as its effect would trickle back up the chain like everyone else's money.
You're skipping a level of indirection here. First of all, telecom fiber is paid by, ahem, the telecom. The fact that they get preferential gov't treatment is beside the point. Tax the telecoms. Then the power lines are paid for by the power company, see previous point. And then the roads are a public good, supposed to be covered by vehicle registration and licensing dues, public transit fees, and tyre levies. Then the telecoms, power companies and tire vendors pass the costs back to the consumer in their prices. If the government isn't making enough money from 1st-tier taxing, they should either adjust those tax rates and let the difference trickle down to the consumer through natural market forces, or they should cut their spending and jack up efficiency. There's no justifiable reason for these things to be double-taxed, not in a true capitalist economy.
It's called "here's a slashdotting to boost my pagerank". Whenever you see useless tripe on the internet, chances are it's designed to generate idiot traffic and/or ad revenue. Thank Google for this glut.
Cell phones are cheap, noisy chinese devices. The fact that my bigass car stereo goes "ba-ba-buzz-ba-ba-buzz" whenever the phone rings is more than enough proof for me. If the cell's nasty op-amp interference can penetrate all my carefully installed uber-shielded stereo equipment and wiring, then I wouldn't be surprised if it messed with flight sensors and other twitch-sensitive gadgetry.
Fears aside, I actually like not having cell phones in a plane. For one, I hate phones. Two, I hate people who spend their whole life on a phone. Three, flights are long and boring, perfect for a nice little nap. If a dozen powersuit assholes are having a phone conference in a plane, I'll be turning into a spontaneous terrorist. I don't care if I have to beat them to death with a pillow, whatever it takes to shut them up. It's already enough of a nuisance that people treat coffee shops like their own personal office these days... a guy can't have a frickin' macchiato and enjoy a book anymore with these loud pompous market-slaves invading every quiet space on this bubble.
The iMac/eMac is for people who either want a smaller footprint or a simpler setup, just think of all the people who buy notebooks even though they don't carry them around, just to have a smaller, quieter machine that doesn't have a tangled mess of cables all over.
The Mac Mini is targeted to PC users. BYO keyboard, mouse and monitor, so it's aimed at people who already own a computer. It's a cheap way to try out a Mac and get people hooked on OS X. Just have a gander at the forums, or even idle banter at the local PC shop... a lot of people start out with the Mac Mini, fall in love and save up for the Mac Pro. Heck, I know quite a few people who installed Windows on the Mac Mini just to have a quiet, tiny little PC.
There can be no revolution because the people are too complacent. The government could piss every single person off, including their own staff, and people still would just sit at home and bitch in front of their TV over the 6 o'clock news. It's always someone else's job to take care of it or "I don't do politics"... well politics are sadly what shapes our lives. We live in society, maybe we should pay attention to what that society is doing for us, not TO us.
Okay rewind buddy, step away from the soap box and have a chill pill. Yes, you can buy a car for $7500. Yes, it's going to be a bit puny. No, it won't have all the features the Prius has. Most people don't give a damn, we just want to get from point A to point B. I've got an average city car (a Focus), it's almost six years old and I've burned about $15k worth of fuel since I bought it in 2001. Aside from a few fragile bits of trim, I've been mostly quite happy with my $15k car. Had I bought a Prius instead, the fuel savings still wouldn't match the price difference between the two cars, and I don't think anyone markets a supercharger for the Prius engine, nor can you easily drop in a beefed up alternator to power the massive stereo :) Even if cost were the only factor, with my increased fuel consumption and rather high mileage, I still can't justify the cost of a hybrid vehicle. When you add in the fun factor of pumping the tunes and speeding down the highway, there's no comparison at all.
I like the idea of a hybrid or even pure electric car, but this is one case where I don't want to be the early adopter. Until they get the kinks ironed out and make them a LOT more efficient, I'm going to stay away. More money AND less fun just doesn't appeal to me.
I'm not familiar with history, at least not american history. If it (sort-of) works in Canada, why wouldn't it work in the states ? Why is federal police funding such a big no-no down there ?
The founding idea of "use it or lose it" is pure and honest, but we all know there are easy loopholes around it, and it's called the paper release. Once again I wish people had any sort of integrity and discipline and simply stopped throwing money at these IP goons. If the "business" of patent hoarding ceases to be profitable, they will stop doing it and find some other racket.
The Linux Mastercard was dead to me a long time ago, MBNA was a horrible bank to deal with. It's one thing to support a cause, it's another to pay retarded fees to a goddamned bank. I hate banks, and I especially hated MBNA so while I miss the cute penguin card, I was quite happy to terminate that account.
There are better ways to support free software than to partner with the devil. Hey why not strike a deal with Thailand where 5% of all prostitution income goes to the EFF ?
Maybe I'm just an asshole, but I never thought the Prius was a big deal to begin with. 55 MPG for an overpriced hybrid vehicle, or 35 MPG for a cheap city car that costs 1/3 of the Prius; seems like an easy choice for most people. Buying a Prius still means spending a ton of money over the lifetime of your vehicle, except you're giving more to the auto manufacturer and less to the fuel distributors.
Come up with a car that results in net savings over the lifetime of the vehicle, then people will have a real financial incentive to buy it up. Being environmentally friendly is something most people agree is a good idea, but the tense economy we live in takes precedence over long-term green ideals whose impact will be felt only after this generation's passing, if at all.
100 MPG ? If it means I could get 3-4 times more distance out of every dollar of fuel pumped, sign me up! Until then, I'll keep driving my thirsty little speeder.