The tax and regulatory environment, domestically, is the environment in which business must either turn a profit or close its doors. Contrary to your delusional rant, the tax and regulatory environment is *everything* to a business that must turn a profit to survive.
Funny, we seemed to be doing just fine until Reagan and his deregulation bullshit came around. Our main economic problems then stemmed from OPEC arbitrarily doubling the price of a barrel of oil, and that was simple greed on their part.
Yes. The lack of demand, due to higher cost, due to higher taxes and more regulation, compared with places like China, with lower costs and fewer regulations.
Lack of demand as in "how many people can afford to even buy a fucking iPad in the first place?". People that are struggling to pay their mortgage aren't buying consumer goods or services. What's the first thing people start cutting when they're hurting financially? The lawn service, the cable bill, eating out, buying electronic toys, upgrading the television, the newest BluRay releases. Wealth doesn't trickle down, but we can see with our own eyes what happens when it ceases trickling up because they don't have any at the bottom. If it wasn't for the explosion of credit in the 90's and 00's, we would have felt the effects of this shit much sooner. People still couldn't afford the shit they were buying, but it was a fuck of a lot easier for them to charge it then.
Due to high taxes and regulation, they move jobs to China ( and other lower cost environments ) via outsourcing and someone else makes the widgets.
No, they moved the jobs to China to increase their profits because the drive towards globalization in the 80's made it cheaper to produce over there than here. In countries with more protectionist measures in place, like Canada, and Germany, you see that the global recession hasn't fucked them nearly as bad as we have been. Allowing business to import goods without paying an import tax is what crippled our economy, not fucking regulations. Before that, they had no choice but to follow the regulations, and guess what? Everybody did just fine. They continued to get rich (just not as rich) and their employees were able to actually afford the shit they were producing.
Besides, there are good regulations. Unless you want another Love Canal, for instance, there needs to be regulations and stiff penalties for polluting. Do you want to live in polluted shit like they do in many parts of China? As always, out of sight, out of mind; pay no attention to the river that's fucking burning due to all the pollutants in it.
Every rich asshole knows you don't get rich by consuming things. You get rich by producing things for a profit.
Only if there is someone to buy the shit they're making. The less disposable income the middle class has, the less of the shit they're producing gets sold. Henry Ford deliberately paid his employees very well (for the time) to be able to afford the cars they were making. When people make shit wages they don't have the money to buy the crap. It doesn't matter how cheaply they can produce the crap, if people are struggling, they're not gonna buy it.
No matter how rich you become, you're only going to need one fucking toaster, and that's never going to change. Throwing more money or opportunity at "Job Creators" doesn't effect demand for their product at all. Only throwing money at the consumers so that they can continue consuming is going to do that. Once they have the disposable income to go to movies, and go out to eat, and buy new flat-panels, the wealth trickles right the fuck up. For better or for worse, we're a consumer culture. You want to make things better, give people
Yes because no one ever ran as an independent. Believe it or not you can use the internet to form your own political party and raise funds to sponsor a candidate to represent your party's interest. Nothing prevents this from happening... well... except maybe apathy.
Ah, yes, the fabled 'Independent'. Let's examine the success of Independents in our Presidential elections:
1996 - Ross Perot (Reform Party): 8% of the popular vote.
1992 - Ross Perot (Independent): 18.9% of the popular vote.
1980 - John B. Anderson (Independent): 6.6% of the popular vote.
1968 - George Wallace (American Independent): 13.5% of the popular vote.
1948 - Strom Thurmond (Dixiecrat): 2.4% of the popular vote.
1948 - Henry A. Wallace (Progressive Party): 2.4% of the popular vote.
1924 - Robert M. La Follette (Progressive Party): 16.6% of the popular vote.
1912 - Theodore Roosevelt (Bull Moose Party): 27.4% of the popular vote [most successful third party run to date]
If Teddy Roosevelt, consistently ranked as one of the greatest President's this country has ever had, hugely popular even in his own time, can only capture 27.4% of the popular vote as a Third-Party candidate, what the hell chance does anyone else have? Like I said, there are many on the right that are ready to throw Ron Paul under the bus even if he wins the primary, and he's running as a fucking Republican.
The only way a Third Party candidate stands a chance is if they are able to compete on an equal level financially with the DNC and the GOP. That will never happen, so long as those parties exist. This is why the only way to truly break their stranglehold on our government is to cut them off financially by instituting strict campaign finance reforms and forcing the candidates to run on equal funds from a taxpayer-fed source, such as a general election fund.
The real problem is that in order to put these checks into place, we'd need our current, mostly corrupt politicians to agree to them.
Which will never, ever, fucking happen. Time to start thinking about what We, The People are going to do to remove the current government from power. No, I don't mean representative, I mean government, as in the whole fucking thing. Our Constitution worked great for 200 years, but it's clear now that our forefathers didn't anticipate the ridiculous amounts of corruption that money would add to the equation.
If the average person isn't smart enough to know the importance of voting than how do we expect our choice in leaders to be any better?
Oh, they know the importance of voting, they're just too fucking beat and demoralized after working their 2 jobs and taking care of their kids and staring at their delinquent notices that come in the mailbox every day to wait in line for who knows how long to do it. Plus, only having a realistic choice between the guy that will fuck you to death and the guy that will fuck you almost to death, may have a lot to do with it, too.
They'll never let something like internet voting occur. Never in a million years. Not because of the security concerns, but because the last thing either party wants is everyone voting. Something like 40% of the people in this country live below the poverty line. I assure you, if they had a proportionate voice in our government, things would be a hell of a lot different, and not in a way that would be beneficial at all to the powers that be.
Besides, this whole government is just a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy anyway. Every one of our candidates for office, in order to be competitive, has to go through the kingmakers at the DNC or GOP first. They're the real power in this country, not the elected officials. Shit, look at the current hub-bub over the possibility that Ron Paul may win the Iowa primary! The GOP establishment is basically saying "If Ron Paul wins Iowa, ignore him and look at number two and three". They would rather lose the election than allow someone like Ron Paul to win, even though he is a member of their own fucking party.
The only way raising taxes would work is to actually start having everyone pay income tax.
Great! So let's start paying people a living wage and let the wealth trickle-up. Our economy was at it's strongest when our middle-class was at it's strongest, after all.
Oh, wait, never mind, you meant let's squeeze more out of the people that are already struggling, didn't you? Yeah, good call. Then we can use the Michele Bachmann unemployment solution: dump the current minimum wage so that the "Job Creators" can move the sweatshops over here. It'll be great! No more unemployment, everyone can get a job for $2 an hour! And think of all the money the "Job Creators" will save not having to ship their crap over here from China! And once we get rid of those awful child labor laws, we finally can get back to the real American Dream of being put to work in grade school! Well, the poor kids, anyway, but who cares about them, right?
The whole "everyone should pay something" idea sounds fair on paper but will accomplish jack fucking shit in terms of improving the state of our economy. The phrase "A rising tide lifts all boats" is absolutely true. But taking more money from the people that have the least to give, just so we can continue keeping tax breaks on the books for those that can most afford them, is more of that trickle-down Reaganomics horseshit that has done nothing but harm our country since that corporate shill took the oath of office in 1980.
We're 30 years into this stupid fucking shit and the only times this country has done well financially was during the Dot Com boom, and as soon as that retard George W. Bush got elected they pissed all of the progress we made then right down the fucking drain so they could give rich people another fucking tax cut and continue the trickle down bullshit for another generation. Then, to make matters even worse, we get involved in a massive, nebulous war effort all over the middle east that costs us tens of billions of dollars a month to fund without raising taxes to pay for it at all.
It's not taxes and regulations that are responsible for the unemployment rate, despite what you hear over and over and over again on conservative talk radio and Fox News. It's the lack of demand for the goods and services these companies put to market. These companies aren't hiring because they don't need to hire anyone, they're making just as many widgets as they need to meet demand. The rich assholes aren't buying them; no matter how large their bank account is, they still only need one widget, just like everyone else. People are trying to make it seem like making it cheaper for these "Job Creators" to operate is going to increase demand for their product...how? Seriously, how is that even fucking logical? When everyone is poor, who the hell is buying a new car? Or a new home? Or going on vacation? Or going out to eat? Or going to the movies?
You're sound like the type that would blame the homeowner for keeping their doors unlocked instead of the intruder for going in without permission.
Blame? Nope. Call a retard? Abso-fucking-lutely.
I have a good friend that lives out in the sticks, he used to brag all the time to us city folk how he left his doors unlocked routinely because it was just so much safer out there and how we were all suckers for living 'like prisoners' in the crime-infested city. Then one day he forgot to shut his garage door and half the shit in there walked away, thousands of dollars worth of tools, exercise equipment, and other crap. Boy did we have a laugh at his expense the next day.
He doesn't brag about leaving his doors unlocked anymore. Go figure...
Point is to make it too bothersome for average person.
What on earth makes you think that's going to make a difference? You know what will happen? Everyone will just start coming to us for their shit again, just like they used to, and we'll get it for them, just like we used to.
This is gonna be like the glory days of Napster all over again for people who know how to find stuff online. My senior year wardrobe was paid for completely by the money I made selling personal mix CDs to friends, family, teachers...
The game console was marketed as a media box, just like it's linux capabilities were. You can't fault someone for buying a product to do a job that they were told the product did.
In all honesty, I don't know anyone that bought a PS3 for the games. Most people I know bought it for the Bluray player, since the good ones were going for more than a PS3 was at launch, as well as the streaming capabilities (whether local or via Netflix, which I don't think even had streaming service at that time).
Besides, putting together a decent HTPC that could push 1080p wasn't nearly as cheap back in 2005 (or was it 2006?) as it is today.
Believe me, it wasn't the fans that ruined Galaxies, it was Sony. They drove that property into the fucking ground. The "New Game Enhancements" killed it permanently back in '05, it just took them 6 years to put that final nail in the coffin.
Sony should never be allowed to touch a fucking MMO again.
Well, in the case of 'Wolverine', when I got around to watching the finished film on DVD I wasn't really too enamored with it. I just didn't care for the movie when it was a "serious" film, but the workprint was both hysterical and fascinating to me. It's not that I dislike the character or comic book movies or anything, I've generally enjoyed Iron Man, Ang Lee's Hulk (Apparently I'm in the minority on that one, and I hated the Ed Norton sequel), Thor, The X-Men films, etc. The Wolverine movie was just boring to me in some way I can't put my finger on.
I guess it's like what Plinkett said in his now legendary review of Star Wars: Episode 1. Paraphrasing: "[on the subject of the original trilogy 'Special Editions'] This is why I found the Special Editions so goddamned offensive. It's like George Lucas just shoved as much crap into every frame as he could. It doesn't accomplish anything but distract you, like a child waving his arms in front of you yelling 'look at me!'" During this section of the review, he cuts to the scene from the redone A New Hope where Luke and Obi Wan are cruising into Mos Eisley in the land speeder just before the "These are not the droids you're looking for" scene and it's totally ridiculous in a way I hadn't consciously thought about before with those films. It's not immersive, it's totally distracting and detrimental, and puts into words one of the things I didn't like about them (or the prequel trilogy) that I wasn't able to put my finger on. I felt much the same way about the Transformers series of films, there was almost too much insanity and shit going on all the time that I wasn't intrigued, I was fucking bored.
I don't know, maybe I'm just of the wrong generation to appreciate the flash over the substance. I love good special effects, but not to the detriment of the story, and what we have today hardly passes as good anymore, in my opinion. I'm far more drawn in by the dated techniques of yesteryear like the Ray Harryhausen work in Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts. For instance, my favorite movie dragon, of all time, was Vermithrax Pejorative, of the awesome, cult film Dragonslayer. Nothing since compares, and Dragonslayer came out 30 years ago. It gives me hope that Peter Jackson is looking to Dragonslayer as his inspiration in creating the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit.
Maybe it's the uncanny valley? Even early CGI, such as what we see on films like Jurassic Park, seemed far more realistic to me than most anything that's come out within the last decade.
At least watching the workprint made it fun: "Claws Grow".
Hell yeah! I found the workprint to be far more entertaining than the finished film as well. I watched it at least 3 times and laughed my ass off every single time. Remember the plane crash? "EXPLOSION!!!" The part when Wolverine gets hit by the Big Rig was great, too.
I wish more studios would include workprints and stuff like that on their legitimate DVD/BD releases. The process of making a movie is often times far more fascinating to me than the movie itself.
Btw, i think the push for home ownership in USA is a direct attempt at stifling uprisings. This in the belief that a home owner is less likely to rock the local boat.
Of course! Debt has always been a method of exacting control over a person. A person in debt can't as easily give his boss the finger and storm out, a person in debt can't as easily devote the time and resources to fighting their government, and a person in debt can't as easily depend on himself financially and thus must rely on insurance companies to "guard them" from economic uncertainty.
Of all the drives I've used over the last 15 or so years, Western Digital drives have consistently lasted longer than any other manufacturer.
Yes, I realize this is completely anecdotal, but to be honest, I've never heard someone use Western Digital as an example of a hard drive manufacturer that sucks before. I guess I'm just curious about your negative experiences with the brand. I mean, my dad is still using a 500 MB and 750 MB WD hdd in one of his legacy machines (he loves the older PC games like Doom, Descent, Dune II, etc) and they must date back to the mid-late 90's at least, and I've got tons of smaller WD drives that still work just fine, I just don't have any real use for a bunch of small PATA hard drives...
Although I will admit that I haven't built a new machine in a couple years so maybe they've slipped in quality a lot, I dunno. For the record, Maxtor would have to be the number one worst fucking pieces of shit hard drives I have ever owned in my life. I've never had one that lasted more than 2 years, and most died much sooner than that.
Which leads us right back to the same Catch-22: In general, those people that are educated enough to see through the lies and the bullshit games are forced into submission by tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, in student loan debt. By the time they are secure financially and have that monkey off their back, a decade or more later, they have far too much to risk in bucking the system or standing on principle, and nothing ever changes.
You don't see this in countries with socialized secondary education, which is why youth are so much more politically active in those places. Consider the success the Pirate Party has been having in Northern Europe. People are able to stand on their principles there in a way that they will never allow here, not without a fight. Here you have to sell out or resign yourself to a life of destitution, at least, that's the way it is now in this country.
Seems to me that Google should startup a 'Google Kids' to handle things like this in compliance with COPPA. Once the child reaches 12, they can convert it over to a regular Gmail account.
Parents can administrate, while at the same time teaching their kids how to behave on the internet, teachers can email assignments, etc. As long as control rests solely with the parent, I see no issue with something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy shit, the rare AC post worthy of moderation! Wish I had the points for you, sir (or madam).
The tax and regulatory environment, domestically, is the environment in which business must either turn a profit or close its doors. Contrary to your delusional rant, the tax and regulatory environment is *everything* to a business that must turn a profit to survive.
Funny, we seemed to be doing just fine until Reagan and his deregulation bullshit came around. Our main economic problems then stemmed from OPEC arbitrarily doubling the price of a barrel of oil, and that was simple greed on their part.
Yes. The lack of demand, due to higher cost, due to higher taxes and more regulation, compared with places like China, with lower costs and fewer regulations.
Lack of demand as in "how many people can afford to even buy a fucking iPad in the first place?". People that are struggling to pay their mortgage aren't buying consumer goods or services. What's the first thing people start cutting when they're hurting financially? The lawn service, the cable bill, eating out, buying electronic toys, upgrading the television, the newest BluRay releases. Wealth doesn't trickle down, but we can see with our own eyes what happens when it ceases trickling up because they don't have any at the bottom. If it wasn't for the explosion of credit in the 90's and 00's, we would have felt the effects of this shit much sooner. People still couldn't afford the shit they were buying, but it was a fuck of a lot easier for them to charge it then.
Due to high taxes and regulation, they move jobs to China ( and other lower cost environments ) via outsourcing and someone else makes the widgets.
No, they moved the jobs to China to increase their profits because the drive towards globalization in the 80's made it cheaper to produce over there than here. In countries with more protectionist measures in place, like Canada, and Germany, you see that the global recession hasn't fucked them nearly as bad as we have been. Allowing business to import goods without paying an import tax is what crippled our economy, not fucking regulations. Before that, they had no choice but to follow the regulations, and guess what? Everybody did just fine. They continued to get rich (just not as rich) and their employees were able to actually afford the shit they were producing.
Besides, there are good regulations. Unless you want another Love Canal, for instance, there needs to be regulations and stiff penalties for polluting. Do you want to live in polluted shit like they do in many parts of China? As always, out of sight, out of mind; pay no attention to the river that's fucking burning due to all the pollutants in it.
Every rich asshole knows you don't get rich by consuming things. You get rich by producing things for a profit.
Only if there is someone to buy the shit they're making. The less disposable income the middle class has, the less of the shit they're producing gets sold. Henry Ford deliberately paid his employees very well (for the time) to be able to afford the cars they were making. When people make shit wages they don't have the money to buy the crap. It doesn't matter how cheaply they can produce the crap, if people are struggling, they're not gonna buy it.
No matter how rich you become, you're only going to need one fucking toaster, and that's never going to change. Throwing more money or opportunity at "Job Creators" doesn't effect demand for their product at all. Only throwing money at the consumers so that they can continue consuming is going to do that. Once they have the disposable income to go to movies, and go out to eat, and buy new flat-panels, the wealth trickles right the fuck up. For better or for worse, we're a consumer culture. You want to make things better, give people
Hopefully the prices on the 5000 and 6000 series start dropping after Christmas. My 4670's are starting to show their age...
Yes because no one ever ran as an independent. Believe it or not you can use the internet to form your own political party and raise funds to sponsor a candidate to represent your party's interest. Nothing prevents this from happening... well... except maybe apathy.
Ah, yes, the fabled 'Independent'. Let's examine the success of Independents in our Presidential elections:
If Teddy Roosevelt, consistently ranked as one of the greatest President's this country has ever had, hugely popular even in his own time, can only capture 27.4% of the popular vote as a Third-Party candidate, what the hell chance does anyone else have? Like I said, there are many on the right that are ready to throw Ron Paul under the bus even if he wins the primary, and he's running as a fucking Republican.
The only way a Third Party candidate stands a chance is if they are able to compete on an equal level financially with the DNC and the GOP. That will never happen, so long as those parties exist. This is why the only way to truly break their stranglehold on our government is to cut them off financially by instituting strict campaign finance reforms and forcing the candidates to run on equal funds from a taxpayer-fed source, such as a general election fund.
Yeah, really. I hear people say "for all intensive purposes" far more often than the correct, "for all intents and purposes".
The real problem is that in order to put these checks into place, we'd need our current, mostly corrupt politicians to agree to them.
Which will never, ever, fucking happen. Time to start thinking about what We, The People are going to do to remove the current government from power. No, I don't mean representative, I mean government, as in the whole fucking thing. Our Constitution worked great for 200 years, but it's clear now that our forefathers didn't anticipate the ridiculous amounts of corruption that money would add to the equation.
If the average person isn't smart enough to know the importance of voting than how do we expect our choice in leaders to be any better?
Oh, they know the importance of voting, they're just too fucking beat and demoralized after working their 2 jobs and taking care of their kids and staring at their delinquent notices that come in the mailbox every day to wait in line for who knows how long to do it. Plus, only having a realistic choice between the guy that will fuck you to death and the guy that will fuck you almost to death, may have a lot to do with it, too.
They'll never let something like internet voting occur. Never in a million years. Not because of the security concerns, but because the last thing either party wants is everyone voting. Something like 40% of the people in this country live below the poverty line. I assure you, if they had a proportionate voice in our government, things would be a hell of a lot different, and not in a way that would be beneficial at all to the powers that be.
Besides, this whole government is just a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy anyway. Every one of our candidates for office, in order to be competitive, has to go through the kingmakers at the DNC or GOP first. They're the real power in this country, not the elected officials. Shit, look at the current hub-bub over the possibility that Ron Paul may win the Iowa primary! The GOP establishment is basically saying "If Ron Paul wins Iowa, ignore him and look at number two and three". They would rather lose the election than allow someone like Ron Paul to win, even though he is a member of their own fucking party.
Yeah, it doesn't always, but it does sometimes. Why is it so many are afraid to even try?
The only way raising taxes would work is to actually start having everyone pay income tax.
Great! So let's start paying people a living wage and let the wealth trickle-up. Our economy was at it's strongest when our middle-class was at it's strongest, after all.
Oh, wait, never mind, you meant let's squeeze more out of the people that are already struggling, didn't you? Yeah, good call. Then we can use the Michele Bachmann unemployment solution: dump the current minimum wage so that the "Job Creators" can move the sweatshops over here. It'll be great! No more unemployment, everyone can get a job for $2 an hour! And think of all the money the "Job Creators" will save not having to ship their crap over here from China! And once we get rid of those awful child labor laws, we finally can get back to the real American Dream of being put to work in grade school! Well, the poor kids, anyway, but who cares about them, right?
The whole "everyone should pay something" idea sounds fair on paper but will accomplish jack fucking shit in terms of improving the state of our economy. The phrase "A rising tide lifts all boats" is absolutely true. But taking more money from the people that have the least to give, just so we can continue keeping tax breaks on the books for those that can most afford them, is more of that trickle-down Reaganomics horseshit that has done nothing but harm our country since that corporate shill took the oath of office in 1980.
We're 30 years into this stupid fucking shit and the only times this country has done well financially was during the Dot Com boom, and as soon as that retard George W. Bush got elected they pissed all of the progress we made then right down the fucking drain so they could give rich people another fucking tax cut and continue the trickle down bullshit for another generation. Then, to make matters even worse, we get involved in a massive, nebulous war effort all over the middle east that costs us tens of billions of dollars a month to fund without raising taxes to pay for it at all.
It's not taxes and regulations that are responsible for the unemployment rate, despite what you hear over and over and over again on conservative talk radio and Fox News. It's the lack of demand for the goods and services these companies put to market. These companies aren't hiring because they don't need to hire anyone, they're making just as many widgets as they need to meet demand. The rich assholes aren't buying them; no matter how large their bank account is, they still only need one widget, just like everyone else. People are trying to make it seem like making it cheaper for these "Job Creators" to operate is going to increase demand for their product...how? Seriously, how is that even fucking logical? When everyone is poor, who the hell is buying a new car? Or a new home? Or going on vacation? Or going out to eat? Or going to the movies?
Oh, Mitch Hedberg, how I miss thee...
You're sound like the type that would blame the homeowner for keeping their doors unlocked instead of the intruder for going in without permission.
Blame? Nope. Call a retard? Abso-fucking-lutely.
I have a good friend that lives out in the sticks, he used to brag all the time to us city folk how he left his doors unlocked routinely because it was just so much safer out there and how we were all suckers for living 'like prisoners' in the crime-infested city. Then one day he forgot to shut his garage door and half the shit in there walked away, thousands of dollars worth of tools, exercise equipment, and other crap. Boy did we have a laugh at his expense the next day.
He doesn't brag about leaving his doors unlocked anymore. Go figure...
Even if 1% are clever enough to stay a step ahead of them, 99% will be blocked.
Seems like 1% of us are going to have a lot of opportunities to make some scratch, then...
Point is to make it too bothersome for average person.
What on earth makes you think that's going to make a difference? You know what will happen? Everyone will just start coming to us for their shit again, just like they used to, and we'll get it for them, just like we used to.
This is gonna be like the glory days of Napster all over again for people who know how to find stuff online. My senior year wardrobe was paid for completely by the money I made selling personal mix CDs to friends, family, teachers...
and stock enough food for the next 50 years.
Didn't you get the memo? Having more than 7 days worth of food is a sign you may be a terrorist!
The g-men will be descending upon you shortly.
Fucking thing sucks!
What's the good, compelling reason
What on earth makes you think there was one of those involved?
The game console was marketed as a media box, just like it's linux capabilities were. You can't fault someone for buying a product to do a job that they were told the product did.
In all honesty, I don't know anyone that bought a PS3 for the games. Most people I know bought it for the Bluray player, since the good ones were going for more than a PS3 was at launch, as well as the streaming capabilities (whether local or via Netflix, which I don't think even had streaming service at that time).
Besides, putting together a decent HTPC that could push 1080p wasn't nearly as cheap back in 2005 (or was it 2006?) as it is today.
Believe me, it wasn't the fans that ruined Galaxies, it was Sony. They drove that property into the fucking ground. The "New Game Enhancements" killed it permanently back in '05, it just took them 6 years to put that final nail in the coffin.
Sony should never be allowed to touch a fucking MMO again.
Well, in the case of 'Wolverine', when I got around to watching the finished film on DVD I wasn't really too enamored with it. I just didn't care for the movie when it was a "serious" film, but the workprint was both hysterical and fascinating to me. It's not that I dislike the character or comic book movies or anything, I've generally enjoyed Iron Man, Ang Lee's Hulk (Apparently I'm in the minority on that one, and I hated the Ed Norton sequel), Thor, The X-Men films, etc. The Wolverine movie was just boring to me in some way I can't put my finger on.
I guess it's like what Plinkett said in his now legendary review of Star Wars: Episode 1. Paraphrasing: "[on the subject of the original trilogy 'Special Editions'] This is why I found the Special Editions so goddamned offensive. It's like George Lucas just shoved as much crap into every frame as he could. It doesn't accomplish anything but distract you, like a child waving his arms in front of you yelling 'look at me!'" During this section of the review, he cuts to the scene from the redone A New Hope where Luke and Obi Wan are cruising into Mos Eisley in the land speeder just before the "These are not the droids you're looking for" scene and it's totally ridiculous in a way I hadn't consciously thought about before with those films. It's not immersive, it's totally distracting and detrimental, and puts into words one of the things I didn't like about them (or the prequel trilogy) that I wasn't able to put my finger on. I felt much the same way about the Transformers series of films, there was almost too much insanity and shit going on all the time that I wasn't intrigued, I was fucking bored.
I don't know, maybe I'm just of the wrong generation to appreciate the flash over the substance. I love good special effects, but not to the detriment of the story, and what we have today hardly passes as good anymore, in my opinion. I'm far more drawn in by the dated techniques of yesteryear like the Ray Harryhausen work in Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts. For instance, my favorite movie dragon, of all time, was Vermithrax Pejorative, of the awesome, cult film Dragonslayer. Nothing since compares, and Dragonslayer came out 30 years ago. It gives me hope that Peter Jackson is looking to Dragonslayer as his inspiration in creating the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit.
Maybe it's the uncanny valley? Even early CGI, such as what we see on films like Jurassic Park, seemed far more realistic to me than most anything that's come out within the last decade.
At least watching the workprint made it fun: "Claws Grow".
Hell yeah! I found the workprint to be far more entertaining than the finished film as well. I watched it at least 3 times and laughed my ass off every single time. Remember the plane crash? "EXPLOSION!!!" The part when Wolverine gets hit by the Big Rig was great, too.
I wish more studios would include workprints and stuff like that on their legitimate DVD/BD releases. The process of making a movie is often times far more fascinating to me than the movie itself.
Btw, i think the push for home ownership in USA is a direct attempt at stifling uprisings. This in the belief that a home owner is less likely to rock the local boat.
Of course! Debt has always been a method of exacting control over a person. A person in debt can't as easily give his boss the finger and storm out, a person in debt can't as easily devote the time and resources to fighting their government, and a person in debt can't as easily depend on himself financially and thus must rely on insurance companies to "guard them" from economic uncertainty.
As the great warrior poet Rick James said, "Cocaine's a helluva drug...
Of all the drives I've used over the last 15 or so years, Western Digital drives have consistently lasted longer than any other manufacturer.
Yes, I realize this is completely anecdotal, but to be honest, I've never heard someone use Western Digital as an example of a hard drive manufacturer that sucks before. I guess I'm just curious about your negative experiences with the brand. I mean, my dad is still using a 500 MB and 750 MB WD hdd in one of his legacy machines (he loves the older PC games like Doom, Descent, Dune II, etc) and they must date back to the mid-late 90's at least, and I've got tons of smaller WD drives that still work just fine, I just don't have any real use for a bunch of small PATA hard drives...
Although I will admit that I haven't built a new machine in a couple years so maybe they've slipped in quality a lot, I dunno. For the record, Maxtor would have to be the number one worst fucking pieces of shit hard drives I have ever owned in my life. I've never had one that lasted more than 2 years, and most died much sooner than that.
Which leads us right back to the same Catch-22: In general, those people that are educated enough to see through the lies and the bullshit games are forced into submission by tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, in student loan debt. By the time they are secure financially and have that monkey off their back, a decade or more later, they have far too much to risk in bucking the system or standing on principle, and nothing ever changes.
You don't see this in countries with socialized secondary education, which is why youth are so much more politically active in those places. Consider the success the Pirate Party has been having in Northern Europe. People are able to stand on their principles there in a way that they will never allow here, not without a fight. Here you have to sell out or resign yourself to a life of destitution, at least, that's the way it is now in this country.
Seems to me that Google should startup a 'Google Kids' to handle things like this in compliance with COPPA. Once the child reaches 12, they can convert it over to a regular Gmail account.
Parents can administrate, while at the same time teaching their kids how to behave on the internet, teachers can email assignments, etc. As long as control rests solely with the parent, I see no issue with something like that.