From the name of it you can figure out what it is about. On the old Ford-Diesel.com (now thedieselstop.com) they had the exact same incident you were describing.
Some people had modded their Powerstroke Diesels and destroyed something. They promptly removed the aftermarket product, took it into the dealer with stock components, and claimed ignorance.
And of course they were discussing their mods on the forums. Some of the dealers wised up and began reading the site on a regular basis and allegedly several warranty claims were denied because of this.
I don't see why the government needs to "ban" this activity.
Some people can drive responsibly while multi-tasking. Others cannot.
If you cause an accident and it is your fault, then it is your fault regardless of "WHY"! Different levels of irresponsiblity should be established, extreme negligence, etc etc. Restitution should be in order, of course you should pay the price for your actions or lack of responsibility. But an accident is an accident as long as there was no malice or criminal intent.
But if you drive for 20 years with a cell in your ear and never caused an accident, why should you all of the sudden be required to hang up?
The government should stay out of people's personal lives!
Congressman Ron Paul: America Without An Income Tax?
As April 15 approaches, ponder these words from Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has introduced legislation to abolish the income tax:
"[C]ould America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.
"Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck.
"Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion - a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000!
"Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.
"It's something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."
See, the market will naturally take care of that though WITHOUT government interference.
You may indeed be correct in some or most instances, I am not an economist. However government intervention and regulation tends to have a negative effect overall as a market force.
The airlines are a prime example of this. The airlines USED to be huge and bloated. They had regulation and couldn't compete on price, only on service. Once de-regulation happened and the government got its nose out of where it shouldn't have been in the first place, several larger carriers folded because they couldn't exist in the natural market based on internal and external conditions.
Even now some of the larger ones (think Delta/United) are having to restructure and regroup or face total annihilation. This proves that you are correct, when a company is too big, the market will take care of it through natural selection. However when the government is involved, it allows a continuance of inefficient activities because those activities are being propped up artificially.
See, the beauty is that under free markets businesses that can't turn a profit, or corrupt the market, will collapse under their own weight eventually.
Legislation and governmental action is not needed unless that specific entity has been playing unfairly by being anti-competitive or predatorial.
I agree that smaller companies tend to be more innovative, but larger companies have their place as well. Large companies allow for mass production, thus lower costs and more savings to the end consumer. This means they are (usually) a more efficient producer in the marketplace.
American car companies grew bloated and slow for two reasons. The first was due to union stagnation. The second was because the US DOT heavily regulates the auto industry thus creating a higher barrier to entry and effectively limiting competition.
And about regulation, big business LIKES big government. Think about it. When the government has the power to regulate the market, it creates regulations, red tape, legislation, and other obstacles that smaller and medium sized businesses cannot afford to participate in. Think drug companies. It takes over $1 BILLION (USD) to release a new drug, most of which is due to FDA regs. Thus, the only people who can participate are larger companies with deeper pockets; smaller firms are excluded.
And you are wrong about how big business survives. Some survive on their own free-market merits. Others however, and this is unfortunately becoming more and more common, survive to due influence in legislation and a bloated far-reaching government.
If the US government were limited and allowed the free-market to naturally self-regulate, like the US Constitution originally set forth, we would all be in a better situation now.
First off, it would more than likely be a trademark infringment instead of a copyright infringment.
To obtain copyright, you must express anything with a minimal degree of creativity in a tangiable form. To obtain a trademark, you must simply use a logo, slogan, etc in commerce. Registering these two with the appropriate US gov offices provide extra protection, but is not absolutely needed.
Secondly, why do we need legislation? Who would enact it, US Congress? How could it be enforced outside of the US? It can't. Legislation isn't really a good idea in this instance (it rarely is). Instead let the free market and the courts decide on the best course of action. They are closer to the situation anyway. Besides, legislation usually causes more problems than it solves.
I think a distinction should be made between local telcos and long-distance carriers.
Local telcos until very recently (think Vonage and VoIP), have a geographic municipality-granted monolopy. If you want a dial tone, you had to have a a local telco provide one at their rates up until about 10-15 years ago.
Now for a local dial tone you can go with a telco, a cell-co, or VoIP.
Long distance was deregulated years ago and now long distance is virtually $free/minute as a result. Technology has helped with the local governental granted monolopies, but I think deregulation should be conducted there as well.
Technology changes things. Technology can take a utility that has been given a governmental granted monolopy and make it so that a natural monolopy won't occour.
For example, phone service. One used to only be able to get a 'dial tone' by having a local telco run a wire to the house. Now we can choose between that, a cell phone, or VoIP. Now local telcos do not have the same stranglehold that they used to because of technology. The gov should drop regulation on it.
In the future think about things such as electricty. Perhaps we can microwave energy from a sat to any house that wants it. Since we can have an unlimited number of sats, that means we could have a CHOICE of power companies.
What about a personal home fusion reactor? Or what about a process that takes refuse and turns it into distilled water (this already exists BTW)? Or a home water recycling unit? Any of these advances in technology would ELIMINATE the need for governmental regulated monolopies of natural monolopies.
Roads? When we get fail-safe automation, and the ability to make flying vehicles affordable, the state won't be forced to build/maintain as many roads.
So honestly, I think that almost all monolopies will go away if we have free markets, limited government, and capital invested in R&D.
Well... the local telcos (until recently, VERY recently) are indeed a monolopy with anti-competitive practices. But they are actually in their positions BECAUSE of the government!
So therefore they are a government granted monolopy! Water, utilitiy (power), sewer, phone, and cable are all local monolopies in place because of the government.
Long-distance telephone service is no longer monolopolized nor regulated. Local service is. When the government gets involved, prices go up, and it's usually bad for consumers.
If I were a woman, I would take a few photos of myself in a sexual position, put them in a VERY obvious place on my drive, but not somewhere in the "open".
For instance, the 'my photos' directory, or "my documents" or something where the techs have no reason to be. The desktop or root directory doesn't county since that is essentially "in the open".
THEN, I would take my computer to the GS for work. Once it comes back to me, I would surf the web for porn and download all the porn I could get my hands on. If I ever find photos of myself, I would then sue GS and BB into oblivion.
I am willing to bet that these types of photos make it to the Net in this fashion more than people care to admit. Ever wonder how many drug-store photo developers make an "extra" print for 'personal use'?
As April 15 approaches, ponder these words from Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has introduced legislation to abolish the income tax:
"[C]ould America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.
"Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck.
"Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion - a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000!
"Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.
"It's something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."
The government should NOT be interfering in the marketplace like this. Why?
It's real simple.
Problems are caused because the government cannot act and respond to market changes (ie; technology) as well as the private sector can. And when the gov interferes in the private sector and begins to regulate it, and then technology changes, all of the sudden we have outdated laws and "programs" that are causing a loss of money, and are obsolete.
Governmental regulation fouls up the free market almost always. Look at the airlines. Look at the phone companies. Look at modern day broadcast radio. Look at many other entities you think are monolopies, and chances are they only have a monolopy because of some sort governmental intervention in the marketplace.
Government should be limited and the markets should be free so as long as one is not anti-competitive and as long as one is also not trampling on the rights of another.
A friend of mine was a consultant for Dell a few years back.
They took him to one of their plants one day where they hooked a motherboard up to a machine which rotated it and then beat the bloody hell out of it. It beat it until all of the components fell off of it and into a bin.
Then they fed the contents of the bin through a centrifuge to sort these items by weight, etc. Those that could be recycled were, and those that couldn't weren't.
He was told that Congress had a law in the books that within a few years some of these major mfgs were going to be forced to recycle old computers. Apparently Dell was already doing the R&D for this type of operation.
They are not a macro-monopoly. But they can in many instances be considered a micro-monopoly.
There are many monopolies out there (80% of the market share or greater), but that is not always a bad thing. There is nothing inherently wrong, bad, or evil with monolopies as long as their are alternatives.
However, when monopolies begin to use their market share to put forth anti-competitive business practices, THEN there is a problem. This is called a predatorial monopoly. This is an important distinction.
You caught me.... you are right... I didn't watch the entire FV. It was initially dull so I advanced through it until I got to the action of it which led me to believe they were just trying to slow traffic.
If what you say is true, then I came to the wrong conclusion about it. However, I still think they should be flogged at high noon for holding up traffic like that, even if their point was well taken.
My great uncle died when I was 10. He had everything written up, set up perfectly etc. He owned a house, a few cars, and operated an antique shop out of his house in rural Mississippi.
Well, he died on the morning of January 1st at a hospital in Memphis. However his car was stolen the morning of his death (Memphis has a LOT of crime). Unfortunately my parents pulled a lot of important documents from the house (small town - every one knew he was in the hospital) in order to protect them and they were in the trunk of the car when it was jacked.
AND, they had all of his blank checks in there too.
These theifs had hit the jackpot. For two years after his death they wrote hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad checks. They also got legit IDs in his name and reordered checks and then got credit cards in his name etc etc.
Talk about a CLUSTER!
Anyway, 10+ years later my family (my dad was executor) is STILL getting calls from creditors looking to collect, and the direct marketing lists keep sending us dozens of mailings with his name on it.
Those kids are assholes and deserve to be flogged and hung at high noon in the public square on the 6 o'clock news!
What if someone had an important reason that they needed to speed? What if someone was rushing to the hospital but couldn't get there in time and someone died as a result of their actions? What if it was an ambulence?
What if someone was being robbed at gun-point and the fastest way for the police to get there was take the interstate, but it was blocked because of these idiot asshat kids?
Impeding the flow of traffic IMO is a citable offense and they should have gotten a ticket for what they had done. They were creating a hazard by being the slowest on the road.
Now, the people who went around and executed illegal moves to go around them are just as guilty, but these kids created a very dangerous hazardous situation.
Slashdot Mirror
I own and operate GM-Diesel.com
From the name of it you can figure out what it is about. On the old Ford-Diesel.com (now thedieselstop.com) they had the exact same incident you were describing.
Some people had modded their Powerstroke Diesels and destroyed something. They promptly removed the aftermarket product, took it into the dealer with stock components, and claimed ignorance.
And of course they were discussing their mods on the forums. Some of the dealers wised up and began reading the site on a regular basis and allegedly several warranty claims were denied because of this.
Ever wonder why it takes an attorney these days to do anything besides paintyour house?
Here is the problem: attorneys DO NOT BELONG IN LEGISLATURERS!!!!
People that make a living off the law, should not be the ones WRITING the law.
I think the bar associations of this country are the white collar mafia.
I don't see why the government needs to "ban" this activity.
Some people can drive responsibly while multi-tasking. Others cannot.
If you cause an accident and it is your fault, then it is your fault regardless of "WHY"! Different levels of irresponsiblity should be established, extreme negligence, etc etc. Restitution should be in order, of course you should pay the price for your actions or lack of responsibility. But an accident is an accident as long as there was no malice or criminal intent.
But if you drive for 20 years with a cell in your ear and never caused an accident, why should you all of the sudden be required to hang up?
The government should stay out of people's personal lives!
...10 seconds of joy, 30 years of misery!
Congressman Ron Paul: America Without An Income Tax?
t m
As April 15 approaches, ponder these words from Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has introduced legislation to abolish the income tax:
"[C]ould America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.
"Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck.
"Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion - a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000!
"Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.
"It's something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."
Indeed!
Source: "Cough Up" by libertarian Congressman Paul:
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst041006.h
See, the market will naturally take care of that though WITHOUT government interference.
You may indeed be correct in some or most instances, I am not an economist. However government intervention and regulation tends to have a negative effect overall as a market force.
The airlines are a prime example of this. The airlines USED to be huge and bloated. They had regulation and couldn't compete on price, only on service. Once de-regulation happened and the government got its nose out of where it shouldn't have been in the first place, several larger carriers folded because they couldn't exist in the natural market based on internal and external conditions.
Even now some of the larger ones (think Delta/United) are having to restructure and regroup or face total annihilation. This proves that you are correct, when a company is too big, the market will take care of it through natural selection. However when the government is involved, it allows a continuance of inefficient activities because those activities are being propped up artificially.
Good discussion...
I'd say the Julian calendar is most logical?
;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Calendar
Currently the time is: 2453842.03565
See, the beauty is that under free markets businesses that can't turn a profit, or corrupt the market, will collapse under their own weight eventually.
Legislation and governmental action is not needed unless that specific entity has been playing unfairly by being anti-competitive or predatorial.
I agree that smaller companies tend to be more innovative, but larger companies have their place as well. Large companies allow for mass production, thus lower costs and more savings to the end consumer. This means they are (usually) a more efficient producer in the marketplace.
American car companies grew bloated and slow for two reasons. The first was due to union stagnation. The second was because the US DOT heavily regulates the auto industry thus creating a higher barrier to entry and effectively limiting competition.
And about regulation, big business LIKES big government. Think about it. When the government has the power to regulate the market, it creates regulations, red tape, legislation, and other obstacles that smaller and medium sized businesses cannot afford to participate in. Think drug companies. It takes over $1 BILLION (USD) to release a new drug, most of which is due to FDA regs. Thus, the only people who can participate are larger companies with deeper pockets; smaller firms are excluded.
And you are wrong about how big business survives. Some survive on their own free-market merits. Others however, and this is unfortunately becoming more and more common, survive to due influence in legislation and a bloated far-reaching government.
If the US government were limited and allowed the free-market to naturally self-regulate, like the US Constitution originally set forth, we would all be in a better situation now.
Your ignorance has shown through your post.
First off, it would more than likely be a trademark infringment instead of a copyright infringment.
To obtain copyright, you must express anything with a minimal degree of creativity in a tangiable form. To obtain a trademark, you must simply use a logo, slogan, etc in commerce. Registering these two with the appropriate US gov offices provide extra protection, but is not absolutely needed.
Secondly, why do we need legislation? Who would enact it, US Congress? How could it be enforced outside of the US? It can't. Legislation isn't really a good idea in this instance (it rarely is). Instead let the free market and the courts decide on the best course of action. They are closer to the situation anyway. Besides, legislation usually causes more problems than it solves.
You and Jelly Roll Morton....oh wait... he wasn't ashamed.
I think a distinction should be made between local telcos and long-distance carriers.
Local telcos until very recently (think Vonage and VoIP), have a geographic municipality-granted monolopy. If you want a dial tone, you had to have a a local telco provide one at their rates up until about 10-15 years ago.
Now for a local dial tone you can go with a telco, a cell-co, or VoIP.
Long distance was deregulated years ago and now long distance is virtually $free/minute as a result. Technology has helped with the local governental granted monolopies, but I think deregulation should be conducted there as well.
Technology changes things. Technology can take a utility that has been given a governmental granted monolopy and make it so that a natural monolopy won't occour.
For example, phone service. One used to only be able to get a 'dial tone' by having a local telco run a wire to the house. Now we can choose between that, a cell phone, or VoIP. Now local telcos do not have the same stranglehold that they used to because of technology. The gov should drop regulation on it.
In the future think about things such as electricty. Perhaps we can microwave energy from a sat to any house that wants it. Since we can have an unlimited number of sats, that means we could have a CHOICE of power companies.
What about a personal home fusion reactor? Or what about a process that takes refuse and turns it into distilled water (this already exists BTW)? Or a home water recycling unit? Any of these advances in technology would ELIMINATE the need for governmental regulated monolopies of natural monolopies.
Roads? When we get fail-safe automation, and the ability to make flying vehicles affordable, the state won't be forced to build/maintain as many roads.
So honestly, I think that almost all monolopies will go away if we have free markets, limited government, and capital invested in R&D.
Well... the local telcos (until recently, VERY recently) are indeed a monolopy with anti-competitive practices. But they are actually in their positions BECAUSE of the government!
So therefore they are a government granted monolopy! Water, utilitiy (power), sewer, phone, and cable are all local monolopies in place because of the government.
Long-distance telephone service is no longer monolopolized nor regulated. Local service is. When the government gets involved, prices go up, and it's usually bad for consumers.
If I were a woman, I would take a few photos of myself in a sexual position, put them in a VERY obvious place on my drive, but not somewhere in the "open".
For instance, the 'my photos' directory, or "my documents" or something where the techs have no reason to be. The desktop or root directory doesn't county since that is essentially "in the open".
THEN, I would take my computer to the GS for work. Once it comes back to me, I would surf the web for porn and download all the porn I could get my hands on. If I ever find photos of myself, I would then sue GS and BB into oblivion.
I am willing to bet that these types of photos make it to the Net in this fashion more than people care to admit. Ever wonder how many drug-store photo developers make an "extra" print for 'personal use'?
Thoughts? Comments? Issues? Moans? Bitches? Groans? Complaints?
There was an interesting post here a while ago about hacking Vodka.
1 6/1731212
Essentially it is all about the filtration:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/
Saturday November 20, 2004
As April 15 approaches, ponder these words from Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who has introduced legislation to abolish the income tax:
t m
"[C]ould America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.
"Prior to 1913, the government operated with revenues raised through tariffs, excise taxes, and property taxes, without ever touching a worker's paycheck.
"Even today, individual income taxes account for only approximately one-third of federal revenue. Eliminating one-third of the proposed 2007 budget would still leave federal spending at roughly $1.8 trillion - a sum greater than the budget just 6 years ago in 2000!
"Does anyone seriously believe we could not find ways to cut spending back to 2000 levels? Perhaps the idea of an America without an income tax is not so radical after all.
"It's something to think about this week as we approach April 15th."
Indeed!
Source: "Cough Up" by libertarian Congressman Paul:
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst2006/tst041006.h
The government should NOT be interfering in the marketplace like this. Why?
It's real simple.
Problems are caused because the government cannot act and respond to market changes (ie; technology) as well as the private sector can. And when the gov interferes in the private sector and begins to regulate it, and then technology changes, all of the sudden we have outdated laws and "programs" that are causing a loss of money, and are obsolete.
Governmental regulation fouls up the free market almost always. Look at the airlines. Look at the phone companies. Look at modern day broadcast radio. Look at many other entities you think are monolopies, and chances are they only have a monolopy because of some sort governmental intervention in the marketplace.
Government should be limited and the markets should be free so as long as one is not anti-competitive and as long as one is also not trampling on the rights of another.
I've been reading /. since I was a teenager and have learned a lot here.
When discussing anything like this issue I have learned a favorite phrase from others here which you touched on, but didn't quite say it.
"Correlation |= causation"
If more people understood this, the world would be a better place.
Yes - like we can trust CBS either!
*rolling eyes*
A friend of mine was a consultant for Dell a few years back.
They took him to one of their plants one day where they hooked a motherboard up to a machine which rotated it and then beat the bloody hell out of it. It beat it until all of the components fell off of it and into a bin.
Then they fed the contents of the bin through a centrifuge to sort these items by weight, etc. Those that could be recycled were, and those that couldn't weren't.
He was told that Congress had a law in the books that within a few years some of these major mfgs were going to be forced to recycle old computers. Apparently Dell was already doing the R&D for this type of operation.
They are not a macro-monopoly. But they can in many instances be considered a micro-monopoly.
There are many monopolies out there (80% of the market share or greater), but that is not always a bad thing. There is nothing inherently wrong, bad, or evil with monolopies as long as their are alternatives.
However, when monopolies begin to use their market share to put forth anti-competitive business practices, THEN there is a problem. This is called a predatorial monopoly. This is an important distinction.
You caught me.... you are right... I didn't watch the entire FV. It was initially dull so I advanced through it until I got to the action of it which led me to believe they were just trying to slow traffic.
If what you say is true, then I came to the wrong conclusion about it. However, I still think they should be flogged at high noon for holding up traffic like that, even if their point was well taken.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Here is one for ya...
My great uncle died when I was 10. He had everything written up, set up perfectly etc. He owned a house, a few cars, and operated an antique shop out of his house in rural Mississippi.
Well, he died on the morning of January 1st at a hospital in Memphis. However his car was stolen the morning of his death (Memphis has a LOT of crime). Unfortunately my parents pulled a lot of important documents from the house (small town - every one knew he was in the hospital) in order to protect them and they were in the trunk of the car when it was jacked.
AND, they had all of his blank checks in there too.
These theifs had hit the jackpot. For two years after his death they wrote hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad checks. They also got legit IDs in his name and reordered checks and then got credit cards in his name etc etc.
Talk about a CLUSTER!
Anyway, 10+ years later my family (my dad was executor) is STILL getting calls from creditors looking to collect, and the direct marketing lists keep sending us dozens of mailings with his name on it.
UGH!
Those kids are assholes and deserve to be flogged and hung at high noon in the public square on the 6 o'clock news!
What if someone had an important reason that they needed to speed? What if someone was rushing to the hospital but couldn't get there in time and someone died as a result of their actions? What if it was an ambulence?
What if someone was being robbed at gun-point and the fastest way for the police to get there was take the interstate, but it was blocked because of these idiot asshat kids?
Impeding the flow of traffic IMO is a citable offense and they should have gotten a ticket for what they had done. They were creating a hazard by being the slowest on the road.
Now, the people who went around and executed illegal moves to go around them are just as guilty, but these kids created a very dangerous hazardous situation.
Lead, follow, or get the HELL out of the way!