It was an economic failure *only* because they couldn't outspend us on military implements. Take a look at N. Korea - those fuckers are starving their own people in order to build up their military, but they have *no* *real* enemy to go up against toe-to-toe, other than S. Korea, which relies upon the US for military assistance (in the form of troops and supplies). S. Korea doesn't have to try to outspend N. Korea, and we aren't doing it for them.
I guarantee that if S. Korea was forced to spend on its own defense, and was going toe-to-toe w/ N. Korea, then N. Korea would topple within 2 years.
I guess economics was a course you failed, huh? We *spent* them into ruin. You don't have to march into the middle of the capital with your troops in order to topple a gov't. We did the Soviets economically, we did a lot of Banana Republics with the use of covert agents supplying and training domestic troops. Shut up, read and understand your history, pay attention, and maybe you might just learn something!
You may not like us, but you'll come crawling on your knees and suck our dicks for us to help you. Face it, if it weren't for the Americans and the Brits, all you Europeans (Norgie or otherwise) would be "Germans," so long as you were white skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed... We saved your asses *twice* in one century, and typically, you shit all over us. How about we let you fuckers go it alone next (this) time around? I'd love to see a fish-eating norgie wearing a burqa and being beaten by the Religious Police.
Poor students buy books just like rich students - its called student aid (loans, grants, etc.)
Whats wrong with teaching graphic design studenta about flash? Likewise, I'm sure that PEPSI is taught in food courses, it just may not be the focus of the course.
As far as the actual buying of software - the answer is very easy: When I was in school (at the University of Florida, no less...) I lived in an apartment off campus. I wanted the freedom to be able to work on something whenever I had the time or desire - if I had a solution to a problem at 3am, I could work on it then, rather than wait until a lab opened up the next morning. I also didn't have to wait in line to use a computer, or feel pressured to rush through the work because someone else needed the machine...
That's fine, since there are Hondas, Porsches, Audis, Chryslers, Fords, Mazdas, Mercedes-Benzs. There are *choices* for the buyer. Gee - I can't afford a Mercedes, but I *can* afford either the Honda and the Toyota. Any one of the three does what I need it to do - get me from "Point A" to "Point B" in a hurry. Which one does everything I need at the lowest price? Am I will ing to pay more for the luxury of the Mercedes? Also, Mercedes-Benz cars are not the industry standard.
That situation doesn't occur with software. Sure - you can get a cheaper piece of software, but the functionality is also a lot less.
As far as your (and other peoples') argument that they wouldn't make as much money if they sold Photoshop for $50 - take a look at the guy who invented the Ginsu knife! Sure, they could charge $100s just like Heinkel or Chicago, but they only charged like $20 for a complete set of knives. They made *millions* by selling *lots* of knives at $20. Adobe could make a lot more money by selling *lots* of licenses for Photoshop @ $50 than they do now at $1000/license.
Funny - I still have no problems trying to find the stuff I want to listen to, even though most of what I listen to is punk, ska, country and what-not. The problem with finding classical music is that generally, it is worthless unless the entire opera/concert/etc. is available for download. How many average users like classical music enough to have multiple mp3s, each of which is probably around 20MB? An easy thing to do is add the words "live" or "rare" or what-not to your search criteria.
For this to occur, it would mean that people would have to buy an HDTV with the copy protection, etc. I wager that this won't happen for the very simple reason that, unlike computers or music copy protection, TV copy protection will be shunned by a larger population of people. How many millions of TV sets are there, just in the US? How many millions of people *just* figured out how to program their vcrs and are extremely excited about taping their favorite shows? How many TV owners are willing to shell out the $1000 or so (when the price eventually drops from the $1500+ they are right now) to buy a TV set that is less capable (at least in the average tv watcher's eyes - HDTV resolution is less important than the ability to record any program they want)?
I foresee HDTV with DVI cacking it just like Circuit City's DIVX crapola.
Well, let's see - the EPA is a bureaucratic monetary blackhole that is in sore need of revamping - like being done away with completely, since they have two different factions - the big business, rape the land faction and the bunny-hugger faction. Neither faction is fit to run the EPA.
As for Enron, et. al - I have no sympathy for the sheeple that went along with the dumb idea of putting *all* their 401(k) money into their own company's stock. They were stupid and deserve all the misery they got. I put no more than 5% of my 401(k) money back into my own employer's stock. I guess those people never heard of the idea of diversification, huh?
Lets face it - I would rather deal with soft money from Old Boy businessmen who went to Harvard or Wharton than from self-important hollywood types who barely graduated high school... The Old Boys may be crooked, but at least they aren't complete morons.
Why is it that everyone seems to want to knuckle under as soon as some corporate lawyer sends them a nasty "Cease and Desist" letter? It may be different in other (shithole) countries, but here in the US, afaik, the *only* authority to make someone cease and desist is the government (police with warrants, judges' rulings, etc.)
Yes they DO exist, but they don't need any engineering or science work before they produce industrial strength output. Fusion reactors ALREADY have industrial strength output - they are called stars...
Funny, they sure seemed to want the revolution when Uncle Mao was running the show... I'm, not saying that you can't love "China" - just don't love "Communist China." It's funny, but thousands of years of progress in China have been destroyed by a few decades of communist rule. I remember a story (true or not) of how Mao made all of the people shoo away sparrows because they looked like they were eating the rice in the fields. The birds would be shooed away so often that they died of exhaustion from flying. So - they had tractor trailers of sparrow carcasses - which left the rice to be eaten by the bugs, since no sparrows were around to eat the bugs. Thousands supposedly starved that year. So much for communist wisdom...
The fact of the matter is (and none of you liberal geniuses "gets it") that the only thing that totalitarian regimes like China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the old USSR, (*any* African country), etc. understand is force - whether it be political, economical, or the plain 'ole "brute" kind. Standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen looks impressive on TV - the hamburgered remains are even more impressive. Instead of standing in front of the tank, they should have stomped the soldiers and police to death. Until the average chinaman is ready and willing to kill their own in order to rid themselves of a "communist" (i.e. totalitarian) regime, then they deserve all the misery they get. Granted, we could help them along - no aid of *any* kind to them. "Gee, had an earthquake and 200,000 died? Fuck you! No Red Cross aid for you!" We can help them along by refusing to do *any* "bidness" with them - no importations of any kind. No "most-favored-nation status." Nothing. Remember how everyone was decrying the US over the EP-3 incident due to the prospect of MFN status? Well - *none* of those liberal news outlets reported that of that $160 billion or so trade, only $6 billion of it was them giving to us - the rest was the US spending on their shitty (and illegally made) Pokeman and Brittany Spears knock-offs. Let them run the risk of losing $100 billion+ and they'll settle down. Ever wonder why Hong Kong is given special status? Cause they bring in billions. We can freeze any and all Chinese assets in the U.S. We can deport any and all known Chicoms. We should have (and would have, if clinton wasn't actively encouraging it at the time) jailed *any* foreign Chicom sympathizers attempting to illegally buy themselves a U.S. politician (as well as the politicians that they bought).
See - the difference between those shitty countries and the U.S. is that, no matter how bad it gets, we can always vote them out of office in a few years (which really doesn't explain why people were stupid enough to vote clinton into office a second time (and don't give me the "It's the economy, stupid," since it *wasn't* due to him, but rather, due to the 12 prior years finally coming to a head, but I digress). The ones we have to worry about most are the *non-elected* bureaucrats - those govvies that build their own personal empires down at the DMV, or at the local dog pound or school board.
It isn't even football that kills it, since football is only 4 or so months of the year - it is all of the people who are watching 60 Minutes on that other channel. Fox should get a clue and put shows on at a time where the audience will be able to watch without having to decide which show they want to see.
So says you - I know tons of ME's I went to school with who were just as competent at coding as us EE's - and much more competent than most of those touchy-feely CIS fags. In fact, a large majority of the people in the intelligent machines lab (i.e. robots, A.I., etc.) were ME's.
Your argument breaks down simply because software isn't worth as much as a tangible product. Let's face it - most software isn't worth the cost of the media it is published on.
Not necessarily - remember Philips makes *many* other things than CD players and copiers... They have the resources to hold out on litigitation. After all, they have a patent just on the manufacturing of a blank CD, let alone the CD audio standard for audio placed on a CD.
Actually, games *are* a problem - show me a list of all of the commerically available games out there. Where is BG2, The Sims, "BambiSlayerGame number 24" and Flight Sim 2002? The sad fact is that until Linux is standardized into a single configuration/flavor, hardly any commercial games will be developed for it. Yes, before Windows, developers had configuration issues due to MS-Dos, etc., but some flavor of Dos (MS, DR, IBM, etc.) was the only thing available to the home user and they all pretty much worked the same. Windows is pretty much standardized, regardless of the hardware. Commercial games were and still are the killer app for the home user. Really - how many people are going to be doing photo editing or using StarOffice? These are apps that are useful for a graphic artist or secretary, not Joe Sixpack who wants to shoot simulated deer, or Joe Jr. who wants to blast bad guys with magic or rifle or even try his hand at flying a simulated aircraft. You say "But Opera is available!!" So what? the average home user expects his computer to come with a web browser "to get on that there internet thang," and he could care less which one it is as long as it works. The sad fact is that it isn't what the avg user needs that sells an OS, it is what the avg user wants (along with a bunch of hokey force-fed marketing crap) that sells an OS.
Hmm - I've never looked at the "Desktop" as root - I've always looked at the desktop as simply a place to hang shortcuts off of. Using Windoze as the example, I use the desktop as simply a place to hang shortcuts for executables that I access frequently - not as a place to put any actual data (i.e. I don't let non-executables, such as word or PDF documents, reside there.) I also use the old Win3.1-style file manager (yep it is still buried in the system) because it works better than "Explorer."
As to "confusion" - really - how confusing is it that I have multiple HDs and each of them is a unique physical AND virtual location? On a winbox, you can't argue that the OS bridges the HDs when it uses them, unless you purposely set it up that way (setting Windoze to use the D: drive for the swap file when Windoze is installed on C:) The only time it could be confusing for newbies is when you have multiple partitions on a single physical drive.
Why should I love humanity when I hate people? Not just the whiny, smarmy, "freedom-of-speech (but only for those who think like me)" poodle-shit liberal fucks like you, but almost all people. I hope you fall and break your fucking hip and be paralyzed for life (or get hit by a truck and be maimed, with a limp and a speech impediment).
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I guarantee that if S. Korea was forced to spend on its own defense, and was going toe-to-toe w/ N. Korea, then N. Korea would topple within 2 years.
Poor students buy books just like rich students - its called student aid (loans, grants, etc.)
Whats wrong with teaching graphic design studenta about flash? Likewise, I'm sure that PEPSI is taught in food courses, it just may not be the focus of the course.
As far as the actual buying of software - the answer is very easy: When I was in school (at the University of Florida, no less...) I lived in an apartment off campus. I wanted the freedom to be able to work on something whenever I had the time or desire - if I had a solution to a problem at 3am, I could work on it then, rather than wait until a lab opened up the next morning. I also didn't have to wait in line to use a computer, or feel pressured to rush through the work because someone else needed the machine...
That situation doesn't occur with software. Sure - you can get a cheaper piece of software, but the functionality is also a lot less.
As far as your (and other peoples') argument that they wouldn't make as much money if they sold Photoshop for $50 - take a look at the guy who invented the Ginsu knife! Sure, they could charge $100s just like Heinkel or Chicago, but they only charged like $20 for a complete set of knives. They made *millions* by selling *lots* of knives at $20. Adobe could make a lot more money by selling *lots* of licenses for Photoshop @ $50 than they do now at $1000/license.
I foresee HDTV with DVI cacking it just like Circuit City's DIVX crapola.
As for Enron, et. al - I have no sympathy for the sheeple that went along with the dumb idea of putting *all* their 401(k) money into their own company's stock. They were stupid and deserve all the misery they got. I put no more than 5% of my 401(k) money back into my own employer's stock. I guess those people never heard of the idea of diversification, huh?
Lets face it - I would rather deal with soft money from Old Boy businessmen who went to Harvard or Wharton than from self-important hollywood types who barely graduated high school... The Old Boys may be crooked, but at least they aren't complete morons.
The fact of the matter is (and none of you liberal geniuses "gets it") that the only thing that totalitarian regimes like China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the old USSR, (*any* African country), etc. understand is force - whether it be political, economical, or the plain 'ole "brute" kind. Standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen looks impressive on TV - the hamburgered remains are even more impressive. Instead of standing in front of the tank, they should have stomped the soldiers and police to death. Until the average chinaman is ready and willing to kill their own in order to rid themselves of a "communist" (i.e. totalitarian) regime, then they deserve all the misery they get. Granted, we could help them along - no aid of *any* kind to them. "Gee, had an earthquake and 200,000 died? Fuck you! No Red Cross aid for you!" We can help them along by refusing to do *any* "bidness" with them - no importations of any kind. No "most-favored-nation status." Nothing. Remember how everyone was decrying the US over the EP-3 incident due to the prospect of MFN status? Well - *none* of those liberal news outlets reported that of that $160 billion or so trade, only $6 billion of it was them giving to us - the rest was the US spending on their shitty (and illegally made) Pokeman and Brittany Spears knock-offs. Let them run the risk of losing $100 billion+ and they'll settle down. Ever wonder why Hong Kong is given special status? Cause they bring in billions. We can freeze any and all Chinese assets in the U.S. We can deport any and all known Chicoms. We should have (and would have, if clinton wasn't actively encouraging it at the time) jailed *any* foreign Chicom sympathizers attempting to illegally buy themselves a U.S. politician (as well as the politicians that they bought).
See - the difference between those shitty countries and the U.S. is that, no matter how bad it gets, we can always vote them out of office in a few years (which really doesn't explain why people were stupid enough to vote clinton into office a second time (and don't give me the "It's the economy, stupid," since it *wasn't* due to him, but rather, due to the 12 prior years finally coming to a head, but I digress). The ones we have to worry about most are the *non-elected* bureaucrats - those govvies that build their own personal empires down at the DMV, or at the local dog pound or school board.
Not necessarily - remember Philips makes *many* other things than CD players and copiers... They have the resources to hold out on litigitation. After all, they have a patent just on the manufacturing of a blank CD, let alone the CD audio standard for audio placed on a CD.
As to "confusion" - really - how confusing is it that I have multiple HDs and each of them is a unique physical AND virtual location? On a winbox, you can't argue that the OS bridges the HDs when it uses them, unless you purposely set it up that way (setting Windoze to use the D: drive for the swap file when Windoze is installed on C:) The only time it could be confusing for newbies is when you have multiple partitions on a single physical drive.
Why should I love humanity when I hate people? Not just the whiny, smarmy, "freedom-of-speech (but only for those who think like me)" poodle-shit liberal fucks like you, but almost all people. I hope you fall and break your fucking hip and be paralyzed for life (or get hit by a truck and be maimed, with a limp and a speech impediment).