"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
When is the United States Government going to learn that large corporations represent a domestic enemy? They only take from the country, they do not give. This oil spill is the latest example.
Exxon paid ZERO taxes this year, yet accepted millions in subsidies. BP, for this oil spill, will no doubt have to pay a fine, but guess what, it's likely to be less than they already recieve in Federal subsidies, furthermore, if it impacts their bottom line in any way, they'll just scream "bailout", and we'll hand them money -- meanwhile, they gleefully continue to pollute, and I'm sure they pay no taxes either. So the CEO get a bazillion dollars by cutting safety measures, which boosted profit.
I'm surprised airline CEOS haven't caught on to this. You can increase profitability by cutting safety. Forget about servicing planes, that costs money! So what if a few fall out of the sky, and kill people? Hey, as long as the CEO gets paid his bonus! That's all that matters. And when the government asks you to look into the matter, you ask for Federal dollars to do it because you're too poor! And meanwhile you slip money to senators under the table to make sure no commie regulations get put on the industry because that would put Americans out of work!
America has been bought and sold, this country is over. All that's left is for the CEOs to strip mine what's left, take our remaining cash resevres, and scurry away to United Arab Emerates, like Haliburton did.
Babylon 5 / Firefly / Star Blazers
on
Lost Ends
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It seems to me that a series is *so* much better when the writers KNOW what the ending will be BEFORE the series airs. This way, the entire series can work towards the ending, with the result being much more satisfying.
The subject above lists three series I felt were fucking epic, because the ending matched what the series was all about from the very first episode. It wasn't just "make shit up as you go along", and then after you've run out of material stringing your audience along for as long as you can, write up some mish-mash of an ending that really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the series.
The Star Force got the Cosmo DNA and got back to Earth, The Alliance accidentally created the Reavers by trying to make paradise, and Sheridan kicked some Shadow ass (and paid the ultimate price, twice!).
I've never watched LOST, but I knew from the begining they had no plan to really end the series, so, I never bothered to even try to get into it. I'm sorry if you did. Next time, choose more wisely.
Can't we just make a rule that this tired strawman argument doesn't belong to anyone anymore, since it's a worthless analogy? We're taking about: A) digital data that is copied without disturbing the original, and B) Once you've posted it in a public place (aka the internet), it's there essentially *to* be shared and copied, that was the PURPOSE of the internet.
Perhaps a better analogy for you: When you go to Times Square with you camera, do you intentionally frame your shots to avoid taking photos of any of the signs, ads, light-up stuff, or anything there meant to be seen? After all, you're "stealing" the sign, ad, light-up thing by making an illegal copy of it, right? And once you post that photo on the internet, showing others you're trip to New York, you've compounded your crime by a second copyright infringment of copying the photo in the camera to your computer!!!
I'll bet I know who's sending DMCA takedown notices...
What's her name, Tila Tequila? Cindy Margolis? All those chicks that claim they are the most downloaded on the internet, and *thats* their only claim to fame!
So, what's next, a business that scrapes every video and mp3 on the internet? Hey, this isn't a truck you can just dump stuff on, it's a series of tubes!
Really, I see people playing Youtube videos on their iPhones and iPod touches all the time. There's an app that even has an entire series of videos. They are all streamed, no video video file is downloaded into the iphone's limited storage.
So, let's start posting pictures of Mohammad (or a guy in a Bear Suit), on EVERY WEB SITE, as well as on our personal blogs, email signatures, tweets, SMS messages, business cards, everything. If we plastered the entire world with images of Mohommad, then the crazy-ass krackers out in the hot desert will either give-up and change their ways, or block everything, go back to living in caves, and not get anywhere near western media.
Either way, we win. They can't blow us all up with their non-working gasoline car-bombs. Or their non-working underwear bombs. There have to be more reasonable people in the world than radicals, otherwise we would have gone extinct long ago. There's more of us than there are of them.
The next time a southern state wants to secede from the union.... LET THEM!!!!!!!!
Seriously, the country is better off without them.
They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
Because GOD says so. And Texas was the first state in the Union, so we get to call the shots, after all, we won the civil war. And I didn't get that there girl pregnant, biology got nuthin' to do with it, GOD got her pregnant. Leave me alone so I can drink my beer and shoot out windows while driving my pickup truck. God made America for us to do whatever we want, as long as we say three hail mary's after we done whatever we did. So, if the kids are smarter than the school board, they'll contest every answer they get wrong on every test, because all they need to do is say "God says so".
If the school board can change "learning" to their benefit, so can every single student in the state Texas. Go for it. Idiocracy is prophecy.
Listen, go back a few more articles about how the US GOVERNMENT can't run Linux on PS3's anymore, and you'll hear Slashdotter's saying "Well, stupid Air Force, they shouldn't be trying to use a game console as a computer", and "Sony can control their game-box how they please".
Now it's Apple being just like Sony, and suddenly the tables have turned to "how dare they!"
Make up your mind Slashdotters. Which way is it?
Are Apple and Sony EVIL? Yes. Are they both going to get their way? Yes. Good for the users? No. Good for the companies? That remains to be seen.
Lots of companies trying to control their hardware sounds like a bad thing, like the early days of the computer industry. Open standards won out in the hardware biz in the mid-80's. Let's see if that happens again.
Listen, I don't hear anyone complaining they can't develop for the PS3 and XBOX and WII using flash.
Once upon a time, Rodney Allen Greenblat (who designed the characters for Parappa the Rapper) and I petitioned Macromedia to develop a Director "Projector" for the Playstation, so we could rapidly develop games using Lingo and Director. They refused. And Sony wouldn't have allowed it anyhow because they wanted to sell you their expensive developer's kit (and then they turned around 10 minutes later and sold the Yaroze). We successully created projectors that ran on the developer units for Pippin, but that system never went anywhere.
So this is all history repeating itself, again. And again. And again.
When you call Verizon now, to tell them you have no dial-tone (using my cell phone to tell them my landline is down), you're shuttled through a completely automated system that even "checks your line" for you. Whether it actually does *anything* or not for real isn't the issue, but it gives the illusion of customer service.
eBay, for example has NO customer service, and yet, they are the largest company in their category, proof that you don't need to maintain *any* kind of customer service, so I'm surprized that corporations even bother to maintain a call center at all.
Secondly why have a "call center"? It's a telephone and computer. You should be able to have a PBX route incoming calls to people's home lines, and they all work from home. No "call center" itself is even needed.
"Here in america, we have laws that prevent mega-corporations from making insanely complicated contracts and inserting clauses about how they own your soul and can harvest your body parts whenever they please. This modern pattern of bullshit is why I avoid buying anything that follows that pattern." --- === ---
So,... you have no credit cards, don't own a house or a car either, as far as I can tell, because all these things have insanely complicated contracts that the banks can change willy-nilly if they please.
I'd also have to say that you don't own a cell-phone either, as most phone contracts are bigger than the phone book. And I'll bet you don't have cable-TV either. Or Health Insurance.
In fact, here in America, almost everything comes with an insanely complicated contract that grants all kinds of rights to the giant-mega-corp, and almost nothing to you. And you're paying them for that priviledge. Ain't capitalism grand?
At this point, it's pretty clear that NOTHING WAS STOLEN, clearly, Apple is intentionally "losing" these phones to continue to generate buzz. So unless Jason Chen was part of the viral marketing campaign (if so, I hope he's being paid real well to have his door kicked in), I think the California Police Department of Overreaction owes this guy some crow-eating.
Apple is the guilty party, and you can't be in possetion of stolen property if it was intentionally "lost" by the rightful owner. That's called a "free sample". And if the Police State we live in can't tell the difference anymore, then companies shouldn't be allowed to viral market.
They've been saying for some time the market was due for a correction. Mind you, at the height of the financial meltdown, the Dow was at 6500, and has almost doubled value in about a year, it was rising too fast considering that the recovery still really hasn't come (i.e., there are still no jobs).
The only people making money are the same ones that are always making money -- the fat cats. Now it looks like the market will correct, and probably stablize around 10k, maybe 9. And even more people will lose their jobs and the cycle will continue until America admits that it is bankrupt.
Then will come some really hard times, but, once we address the real issues plauging the country, we'll come out of it stronger. But first, we need to start getting rid of all the lawyers....
Just like corporations expect privacy, and individuals are told that we should have no expectation of privacy. Too bad we can sue TRW for providing every creditor in the world our "trade secrets".
America has gone the wrong way. Even the tea party movement has it wrong. We don't need to fear and change the government, we need to fear and change the power corporations have over us.
So, by your own argument, the United States of America should be arrested for illegally obtaining the stolen property consisting of a MIG-25 Foxbat, when, in Sept 6, 1976 a Soviet pilot defected and brought with him an aircraft that our country then disassembled and learned a great deal about.
I assume you'll be turning yourself in to the Russian Authorities as a member of this ruthless gang of crooks.
Yes, but they can make an example out of some pro-blogger, so all the other bloggers out there get the message to never try anything like this again or the Apple Police-State will crush you.
I think Steve needs to watch that 1984 commercial he helped make -- except HIS FACE needs to be the face of Big Brother. And see why 2010 will be like 1984...
Better yet, did you read the inventory? Among other items, they "seized" a box of business cards. I can only imagine what horrible forms of evidence will be hiding there! Why, it might have his email address on them! Holy cow, better call CSI!!!
Now claim that unpublished articles were on the seized computers and file a claim against Apple and have the police come in and seize their computers. That'll teach 'em.
If the phone really was left in a public place, Apple has no case. If the glove don't fit, you must aquit.
Therefore, I'm free to decrypt satellite TV and get HBO for free, right? After all, the signal is OUT THERE, so large corporations should fully expect me to decode it on my own and play it through my TV.
Why is it that corporations expect privacy, but citizens should not expect it?
Slashdot Mirror
"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
When is the United States Government going to learn that large corporations represent a domestic enemy? They only take from the country, they do not give. This oil spill is the latest example.
Exxon paid ZERO taxes this year, yet accepted millions in subsidies. BP, for this oil spill, will no doubt have to pay a fine, but guess what, it's likely to be less than they already recieve in Federal subsidies, furthermore, if it impacts their bottom line in any way, they'll just scream "bailout", and we'll hand them money -- meanwhile, they gleefully continue to pollute, and I'm sure they pay no taxes either. So the CEO get a bazillion dollars by cutting safety measures, which boosted profit.
I'm surprised airline CEOS haven't caught on to this. You can increase profitability by cutting safety. Forget about servicing planes, that costs money! So what if a few fall out of the sky, and kill people? Hey, as long as the CEO gets paid his bonus! That's all that matters. And when the government asks you to look into the matter, you ask for Federal dollars to do it because you're too poor! And meanwhile you slip money to senators under the table to make sure no commie regulations get put on the industry because that would put Americans out of work!
America has been bought and sold, this country is over. All that's left is for the CEOs to strip mine what's left, take our remaining cash resevres, and scurry away to United Arab Emerates, like Haliburton did.
It seems to me that a series is *so* much better when the writers KNOW what the ending will be BEFORE the series airs. This way, the entire series can work towards the ending, with the result being much more satisfying.
The subject above lists three series I felt were fucking epic, because the ending matched what the series was all about from the very first episode. It wasn't just "make shit up as you go along", and then after you've run out of material stringing your audience along for as long as you can, write up some mish-mash of an ending that really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the series.
The Star Force got the Cosmo DNA and got back to Earth, The Alliance accidentally created the Reavers by trying to make paradise, and Sheridan kicked some Shadow ass (and paid the ultimate price, twice!).
I've never watched LOST, but I knew from the begining they had no plan to really end the series, so, I never bothered to even try to get into it. I'm sorry if you did. Next time, choose more wisely.
Can't we just make a rule that this tired strawman argument doesn't belong to anyone anymore, since it's a worthless analogy? We're taking about: A) digital data that is copied without disturbing the original, and B) Once you've posted it in a public place (aka the internet), it's there essentially *to* be shared and copied, that was the PURPOSE of the internet.
Perhaps a better analogy for you: When you go to Times Square with you camera, do you intentionally frame your shots to avoid taking photos of any of the signs, ads, light-up stuff, or anything there meant to be seen? After all, you're "stealing" the sign, ad, light-up thing by making an illegal copy of it, right? And once you post that photo on the internet, showing others you're trip to New York, you've compounded your crime by a second copyright infringment of copying the photo in the camera to your computer!!!
Oh Noes!
Avast! I am the real creator of number 462826674840809873425894986513859764213550 !
Why, just look at my slashdot id....
(nevermind!)
I'll bet I know who's sending DMCA takedown notices...
What's her name, Tila Tequila? Cindy Margolis? All those chicks that claim they are the most downloaded on the internet, and *thats* their only claim to fame!
So, what's next, a business that scrapes every video and mp3 on the internet? Hey, this isn't a truck you can just dump stuff on, it's a series of tubes!
Really, I see people playing Youtube videos on their iPhones and iPod touches all the time. There's an app that even has an entire series of videos. They are all streamed, no video video file is downloaded into the iphone's limited storage.
Fail is not a noun it's an acronym:
Forcefully
Absorb
Illiterate
Lemmings
Which is the basis of all religion.
Pretty good. I think I'll change my sig right now....
So, let's start posting pictures of Mohammad (or a guy in a Bear Suit), on EVERY WEB SITE, as well as on our personal blogs, email signatures, tweets, SMS messages, business cards, everything. If we plastered the entire world with images of Mohommad, then the crazy-ass krackers out in the hot desert will either give-up and change their ways, or block everything, go back to living in caves, and not get anywhere near western media.
Either way, we win. They can't blow us all up with their non-working gasoline car-bombs. Or their non-working underwear bombs. There have to be more reasonable people in the world than radicals, otherwise we would have gone extinct long ago. There's more of us than there are of them.
I Keeeeel You! Ahhalalalalalaalallalala!
Except for the new Apple product, the i-Bomb.
The next time a southern state wants to secede from the union.... LET THEM!!!!!!!!
Seriously, the country is better off without them.
They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages.
Because GOD says so. And Texas was the first state in the Union, so we get to call the shots, after all, we won the civil war. And I didn't get that there girl pregnant, biology got nuthin' to do with it, GOD got her pregnant. Leave me alone so I can drink my beer and shoot out windows while driving my pickup truck. God made America for us to do whatever we want, as long as we say three hail mary's after we done whatever we did. So, if the kids are smarter than the school board, they'll contest every answer they get wrong on every test, because all they need to do is say "God says so".
If the school board can change "learning" to their benefit, so can every single student in the state Texas. Go for it. Idiocracy is prophecy.
Sir; I wish I had mod points today as you deserve it. One of the best and most insightful posts seen on Slashdot in a long time. Thank you.
Listen, go back a few more articles about how the US GOVERNMENT can't run Linux on PS3's anymore, and you'll hear Slashdotter's saying "Well, stupid Air Force, they shouldn't be trying to use a game console as a computer", and "Sony can control their game-box how they please".
Now it's Apple being just like Sony, and suddenly the tables have turned to "how dare they!"
Make up your mind Slashdotters. Which way is it?
Are Apple and Sony EVIL? Yes.
Are they both going to get their way? Yes.
Good for the users? No.
Good for the companies? That remains to be seen.
Lots of companies trying to control their hardware sounds like a bad thing, like the early days of the computer industry. Open standards won out in the hardware biz in the mid-80's. Let's see if that happens again.
Listen, I don't hear anyone complaining they can't develop for the PS3 and XBOX and WII using flash.
Once upon a time, Rodney Allen Greenblat (who designed the characters for Parappa the Rapper) and I petitioned Macromedia to develop a Director "Projector" for the Playstation, so we could rapidly develop games using Lingo and Director. They refused. And Sony wouldn't have allowed it anyhow because they wanted to sell you their expensive developer's kit (and then they turned around 10 minutes later and sold the Yaroze). We successully created projectors that ran on the developer units for Pippin, but that system never went anywhere.
So this is all history repeating itself, again. And again. And again.
Then why bother with customer service at all?
Or have the entire thing automated.
When you call Verizon now, to tell them you have no dial-tone (using my cell phone to tell them my landline is down), you're shuttled through a completely automated system that even "checks your line" for you. Whether it actually does *anything* or not for real isn't the issue, but it gives the illusion of customer service.
eBay, for example has NO customer service, and yet, they are the largest company in their category, proof that you don't need to maintain *any* kind of customer service, so I'm surprized that corporations even bother to maintain a call center at all.
Secondly why have a "call center"? It's a telephone and computer. You should be able to have a PBX route incoming calls to people's home lines, and they all work from home. No "call center" itself is even needed.
"Here in america, we have laws that prevent mega-corporations from making insanely complicated contracts and inserting clauses about how they own your soul and can harvest your body parts whenever they please. This modern pattern of bullshit is why I avoid buying anything that follows that pattern."
--- === ---
So,... you have no credit cards, don't own a house or a car either, as far as I can tell, because all these things have insanely complicated contracts that the banks can change willy-nilly if they please.
I'd also have to say that you don't own a cell-phone either, as most phone contracts are bigger than the phone book. And I'll bet you don't have cable-TV either. Or Health Insurance.
In fact, here in America, almost everything comes with an insanely complicated contract that grants all kinds of rights to the giant-mega-corp, and almost nothing to you. And you're paying them for that priviledge. Ain't capitalism grand?
And a full apology from the Storm Troopers?
At this point, it's pretty clear that NOTHING WAS STOLEN, clearly, Apple is intentionally "losing" these phones to continue to generate buzz. So unless Jason Chen was part of the viral marketing campaign (if so, I hope he's being paid real well to have his door kicked in), I think the California Police Department of Overreaction owes this guy some crow-eating.
Apple is the guilty party, and you can't be in possetion of stolen property if it was intentionally "lost" by the rightful owner. That's called a "free sample". And if the Police State we live in can't tell the difference anymore, then companies shouldn't be allowed to viral market.
They've been saying for some time the market was due for a correction. Mind you, at the height of the financial meltdown, the Dow was at 6500, and has almost doubled value in about a year, it was rising too fast considering that the recovery still really hasn't come (i.e., there are still no jobs).
The only people making money are the same ones that are always making money -- the fat cats. Now it looks like the market will correct, and probably stablize around 10k, maybe 9. And even more people will lose their jobs and the cycle will continue until America admits that it is bankrupt.
Then will come some really hard times, but, once we address the real issues plauging the country, we'll come out of it stronger. But first, we need to start getting rid of all the lawyers....
Just like corporations expect privacy, and individuals are told that we should have no expectation of privacy. Too bad we can sue TRW for providing every creditor in the world our "trade secrets".
America has gone the wrong way. Even the tea party movement has it wrong. We don't need to fear and change the government, we need to fear and change the power corporations have over us.
So, by your own argument, the United States of America should be arrested for illegally obtaining the stolen property consisting of a MIG-25 Foxbat, when, in Sept 6, 1976 a Soviet pilot defected and brought with him an aircraft that our country then disassembled and learned a great deal about.
I assume you'll be turning yourself in to the Russian Authorities as a member of this ruthless gang of crooks.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-25
Yes, but they can make an example out of some pro-blogger, so all the other bloggers out there get the message to never try anything like this again or the Apple Police-State will crush you.
I think Steve needs to watch that 1984 commercial he helped make -- except HIS FACE needs to be the face of Big Brother. And see why 2010 will be like 1984...
Better yet, did you read the inventory? Among other items, they "seized" a box of business cards. I can only imagine what horrible forms of evidence will be hiding there! Why, it might have his email address on them! Holy cow, better call CSI!!!
Now claim that unpublished articles were on the seized computers and file a claim against Apple and have the police come in and seize their computers. That'll teach 'em.
If the phone really was left in a public place, Apple has no case.
If the glove don't fit, you must aquit.
Therefore, I'm free to decrypt satellite TV and get HBO for free, right? After all, the signal is OUT THERE, so large corporations should fully expect me to decode it on my own and play it through my TV.
Why is it that corporations expect privacy, but citizens should not expect it?