Who cares about the average palestinian? They aren't the ones my leaders deal with. The palestinians representatives self appointed and almost otherwise want that. That's what they say in interviews. Probably because if they said what they really want, "No peace other than total victory on our terms," would probably be met with enourmous military aid to israel and their destruction.
What's really funny, is they have the solution to their problem. The Indians gave it to them. And now, it a time of such fast and often raw communications, the palestinians have it so much easier. But as long as they keep targeting civilians, preferentially I might as, they've doomed themselves and all who ally with them. But no, they keep teaching their kids to beg to be shot, parents taking their children into harms way, and teach them, the few that grow up, to provoke reprisals without sympathy, what do they expect. They've got the fight they wanted. They demanded. Casting the Israelies as villains isn't going to happen by blowing up families out for a night on the town. That's just a fact of life. Call it ignorance, call it whatever you like. But it's immutable.
As for, the "this land is our land" crap. Too bad. Romans stole it from the jews first. How far back should we go? 1967? 1BC? Your arguments aren't what I would call symetric. Why shouldn't the Israelies adopt palestinian logic and kill as many palestinian civilians as quickly as they can? And it would certainly seem from recent events that should the israelies wish to do this they certainly could.
Re:this is what happens from watching cnn
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Globalism Post 9/11
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I think I'll actually take Arafat at his word, live and unedited. Thank you very much. Not to mention the muslim states can't even agree that the killing of civilians is in fact terrorism. And I could get that information anywhere, the fact that in this case it comes from CNN is irrelavent.
We all see the world through the filter of our experiences, and all news agencies emphisise certain elements above others to play to their audiance. Non-US media is hardly immune. To pretend it is, is foolish. To laud one above the other is mearly a matter of personal preference and perhaps just tells us a little more about what you prefer to believe. Pretend the Al Jeezera and the BBC are disinterested 3rd parties if you want to, it doesn't effect me in the least. But don't expect anyone to count that as something of a substitue for a rational argument.
I think that's why they say they hate us, but in reality the people who do hate the US are just stupid and poor.
They see us making trade demands from everyone, our fingers in too many pies, and think it greedy or maybe arrogant. But it's just that we're the largest trading partner of most countries. Our national interests are simply more distributed, and unsurprisingly, our foreign policy follows our interests. But there's a strange sort of dichotomy. I think it might come from the value placed on individuality, where by and large people take care of their own crap. Perhaps other cultures see national agreements more holistically. And perhaps expect something more than free trade for any concessions made, and we've left the building. We're watching Access Hollywood for an update on the personal dramas of Britney and Justin, or something equally mundane. A baby who inexplicably fell down a well, whatever. And the populace of other countries feels that the US is too conceited for it power, or too powerful for its conceit. But the truth is much less interesting. It's simply a matter of my goods for your money or my money for your goods, and if you expect me to even entertain the prospect of this process, there are going to be a few things we need to agree on first.
Then you have people, such as the palestinians, who expect to just be happy because some book I've never read says they deserve it. They picked a fight, they lost. And now they're really loosing. (Good.) They expect the US to wave a magic wand and just solve all their problems for them, without any effort on their part. Even if the world did work that way, and history has consistantly shown us it doesn't, why on Earth would we possibly intervene on behalf of the palestinians, given the past years events, and the occasions they choose for celebration?
If it wasn't in such a tragic context, even Arafat's recent statments would be funny. According to him the US is directly responsible for palestinian deaths because the Isralies use some american hardware, and the palestinians are not directly responsible Isralie civilian casualties because they are short on saritonin re-uptake inhibitors, or something. They really feel entitled to everything, and it's somehow our obligation to just give it to them, and they shouldn't even have to stop killing innocent people to get it. It's pretty obvious I've got no pity left for the palestinians. But I do think they have an excuse of sorts.
Some of the data I've read suggests the the majority of the people in the muslim world, which is vastly poorer than the west on a per capita average, are illiterate. Being illiterate and raised in enviroments that even in their mildest forms I would consider reactionary and fundementalist, and having few sources of information, they grow up without bullshit detectors. This and the fact they grow up with a religion that extols, in some instances, the murder of civilians and suicide, and a culture where people think nothing of using people for political ends, well it's to be expected. But we can't make them rich, we can't make them smart, we can't grow bullshit detectors in vasts and have missionaries and peace corps volunteers insert them using a novel out-patient procedure. They've got to help themselves, too bad for them they don't see it that way. Too bad for us too.
Well, at least I get to see some stuff blow up on CNN. There's the steel lining I guess.
Things like cool bar are part of IE, but are also part of windows. If MS did what the states wanted it, whatever it would be, would not be windows. The users would have no way of knowing before hand if they had the right chuncks of the operating system to install supposedly windows software. The funny thing is, the market would kick this idea to death. Microsofts success is built on the idea that people want a common method to easily exchange information, and they care about the commonality and intuitive ease of use more than anything else, especially reliability. A hodge podge of frankenwindows would reduce that commonality, and everyone would flock to windows as we know and love to revile it on slashdot. Sure there might be a market for it places like cash registers, but that's a pretty small market that already has a lot of windows in it. Not to mention that all of this work the states ask microsoft to do will cost money, which will do nothing to push the cost of a windows license below 15 bucks, which is what 2000 goes for now, and ME etc used to go for. XP home is probably 15, pro maybe more.
What's really stupid is, they've already got their wish of a sort of bastard windows. Wine on linux would almost certainly work better than randomly removing windows componants.
Oh, and oem's do modify their versions of windows, in mostly cosmetic ways. (Adding things like support buttons to the "my computer" properties sheet. Almost every oem used to replace ms fax with something else etc.)
Windows is the common marketplace where people sell their software, microsoft makes it's coin of making it common, and charging admission. The states are proposing to make it a marketplace where no one can be sure they can use the software other people are selling, and no one can be sure they are making software all the people can, and want, to use.
But I don't think the states really want that anyway. My personal theory is that they see MS's $36B in cash and they see a quick way to make up their states budget shortfalls. The right or wrong of the matter doesn't really apply as they are lawyers and sophists by nature. They got a lot of money from the tabacco companies that most of the states didn't spend on "prevention" or set aside for health care costs. So search for another company with deep pockets, rinse lather repeat.
Insightful? Government owning the roadways information travels on? I don't think so. Next thing you know they'll be owning the roadways cars travel...oh.
One wonders if nsync cds would sell worse without the cd's in the jewels cases.
Not that I am a profesional sociologist with reams of rock hard data, or anything other than just shooting from the hip.
But I would bet that having the music on the cd is less important than having the cd itself. I'm not just saying this because nsynch sucks, but that it might be more important for their "fans" to be part of the pop-culture phenomina than to be enjoying whatever entertainment value the music has intrinsicly. As such, 12 year old girls would be one of the last groups to turn away from the music industry, their not buying the music at all.
Re:Puritan war cry: What about the children!?
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LoTR Takes 4 Oscars
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1) My egotism? Yeah, I probably could be more egotistical. For instance I might deem myself annointed by a magic guy in the sky to be the final arbitor of what people should be allowed to see, read, and or hear. I prefer to let individuals make individual choices. There are plenty of instances where the puritan minority tyranny excersices disproportunate control over a more liberal majority.
2) Your delicate sensibilities. Perhaps you haven't heard of trailers, movie reviews, word of mouth etc. But these, and other venues provide a good way for people to decide if they want to see a movie. I would say I get something other than I expect maybe 2 to 5% of the time. I would expect other peoples results to be similar. But should movie makers wish to be clear and make sure that the extream minority, unable to tease a reasonable expectation out of a preview, has a little extra information, that's fine by me. But the idea that this makes it right for some people to decide what's right for other peoples kids to see is crap. People should raise their own kids, see personal responsability.
3) Poor Farmers. Look at a graph of wealth over a map of the united states. How many square feet do you think you can get for a 1000$ in podunk arkansas? Your sophistry aside, even a quick look at the electoral college will show your claim for the sham it is. Not that we couldn't look further, say to the fact that cities pay for telephones, among other things, for the more remote areas.
4) Small Government, as long as it's big enough to force other people think like us. Small government, according to the puritans should determine what magazines are allowed to be sold in each local community, what movies are allowed to be viewed, what people in large cities thousands of miles away should be allowed to hear on the radio, watch on tv, oh and the particular brand of Jehova that should be the offical sponser of the school day. That is hypocrisy.
5) "Hey I'm personally responsible, and I completely endorse a system that tells people how to raise their kids!" And while you might not care what I watch now, someone just like you wanted to make sure I would have to make an extra effort to see some movies when I was younger. At least the kids seeing movies now, they won't feel this way, at least if they live in the cities. While the restrictions remain, they certainly don't seem enforced.
6) Bad Simile Theater. If you wanted to end the discussion, why not just bring up Nazi's and Hitler. Not that I don't find spurious comparisions ammusing mind you. I'm fine with being a bigot (everyone has their areas of inflexibility). But if you expect me to tolerate your intoleance, I must ask you do the same for me:). But you're right, the silly and arbitrary ideas of what passes for approved and not approved content, they don't apply to me anymore. I'm over 18 and I don't live where people care what I entertain myself with. But the fact that it doesn't directly affect me, doesn't make it right.
And as an aside, if you decide, with a little help from your friends, which movies you should be seeing, and assumably previews, reviews et al, what exactly do you get from the ratings system? But most importantly the part of the ratings system that prevents (in theory) other peoples kids from seeing a movie you don't approve of.
You seem like the kind of guy who might not have much of a problem with Commando, but would think Pulp Fiction would be way out of bounds for kids, even young teenagers. What's really funny is how this might come back to haunt your kids later. One of my friends was raised like that. And when it comes to the cultural knowledge a larger group of people assume to be common, he's uncommonly deficent. Sometimes he might take a little crap for it, but what's probably even worse are the times when it's not exactly appearent, but he can't really participate. While each incident, might be meaningless in and of itself, I think the pattern probably has an impact. It'd be an interesting sociology experiment.
Puritan war cry: What about the children!?
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LoTR Takes 4 Oscars
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Thinking is hard. So they avoid it.
The sexual images in Amelie, regardless of their context, absolutely insured it could only get an R rating. Old blue haired women and efeminate aged men cry and lament the death of movies like State Fair that the children would flock to. To this end, they have been given the ability to "rate" films and determine whether people they don't know are fit to see them. The studios kinda have to tolerate it, as without this sort of agreement, the puritans of small towns would certainly sue the studios for violating local standards at the behest of some child molesting minister. It's stupid, it's wrong, but it's pragmatic. It solves the problem in a way that the stupid deny themselves exposure to interesting things.
Hell, I know where I see movies, the ratings aren't a factor at all. Paying doesn't even seem to be much of a factor. I've seen groups of a dozen or so kids "sneak" into movies. But "sneak" is something of a misnomer, since they are so blatant. Theaters don't seem to care if people even pay, I doubt they are checking ids.
But crap like this comes from the political struggle in america where the poorer, and land owning people of the midwest have disproportunate power to that of the richer, more liberal people in the cities. The poorer, more religious, people seem to eschew personal responsability in favor of a "smaller government" that's big enough to make sure that everyone isn't thinking impure thoughts.
Personally, I think God doesn't like hypocrisy so he sends tornados to destroy their trailers.
The kooky literalists aren't the ones who pain me. They've lost, they've been voted out of the mainstream and may recieve their consolation prizes in the event of a Jehova approved Armaggedon.
Personally, I have a little bit more of a problem with the "intelligent design" brand of kook. It's pretty clear their only motivation is to wedge their God into other people lives under the guise of empirical truth. Funny how similar people legislated God into the pledge of allegiance in a naive and embarisingly futile attempt to push back the clock to a Ward Cleaver ideal that never really existed. Maybe such pledges for children too young to understand them are the fine line between nationalism and fascism. Maybe it's even a good thing that people who invested too much faith in a magic guy in the sky, rather than personal responsability, added those little words that didn't belong and got it kicked out of schools. Although, perhaps not all. But I think there is some value giving kids a sense of national identity. These are the people affecting change. And never for the better. The people trying to find Noah's Ark, they might make the news, but never a difference, and as such, they're pretty harmless.
I would bet that every state has its properly apportioned share of state representatives that are trying to get a mandatory intelligent design curriculum state wide. Enough time is wasted in our schools as it is. We don't need to be inventing worthless garbage that will be competing with the little bit of useful information our educational system disseminates.
In short I find the AC +2 insightful as well:)
And at least you're a professional karma whore, I'm still an unranked amature.
faster than cpu speed, and hard drive storage, doesn't it seem that spam will get worse as the technology provides more and more bandwidth at ever lower prices? It doesn't seem that the extreamly rare individual costing the spammers some pocket change is a significant pressure against the behavior. And since the bandwidth is going to probably be less and less of an issue, doesn't it seem likely that spam will just be something we'll have to just accept? At least until law makers provide some real teeth for little guy to rend soft pink spammer flesh. Unless ISP decide to throw their weight around for their customers, with the problem getting easier for them to ignore, it's just going to end up an accepted, and shitty part of life.
It'd be interesting to see what spam cost the world in lost time, and lost network resources.
We got him and grandma a nice little compaq to surf the internet with. Inside of a year not only was he installing peripherals, and software, but adding ram on his own. Sure I get like a call a month, and sure I get all kinds of "interesting web site" clippings from their local paper sent to me. But it's really satisfiying to see...err hear them getting so much enjoyment out of it. I didn't think they'd do a tenth of the stuff they've done with it.
That will certainly teach me to underestimate MY grandparents, perhaps yours have a similar lesson in store for you.
But the Cinerama is by far the best I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. It was Seattle's best older theater; bought, remodeled and brought into the THX age by Paul Allen. The screen is huge, the seats are comfy, the sound great, and inbetween what are usually the biggest, if not best, movies out at the time, you'll get the odd Kubrick film festival. In short, there is no better place to see a movie in Seattle. Hell between Vancouver BC and Portland. Seattle to Portland being the farthest I've ever driven to see a movie. In general, the vast majority of theaters in the seattle area are THX, DTS or SDDS certified. Most are relatively nice, but few have the nice nice stadium seating. Things have gone somewhat downhill after Regal and Lowes acquired Act III and Cineplexodeon (though the difference between them and Lowes isn't that great). At least they stopped forcing the poor Lowes empolyees to beg for money to help cure Terry Bradshaw's baldness or something.
And in any case, I'm sure that Cinerama will add one of the digital projectors to their entertainment aresenal. But anything I'm desperately anticipating and expecting to be a sublime movie viewing experience I go through the extra hassel and expense to see it there, and insure it's as good as possible. As good as it could ever be.
Next time you buy a copy of anything with MS on the label, I encourage you to take your opened software package back to CompUSA, or what have you, and tell the clerk you don't agree with the End User Liscence Agreement. Hell, try this with any software. For extra ammusement try to buy a stack of cd-r media at the time you're making the return.
Well, I know why I sometimes make an extra effort to see a showing on the first day.
Watching a movie on your tv and in a theater are obviously different experiences. But there is one really key difference. Seeing it in a theater is a community experience. When you know a movie is really good and will just rock you, it is a very different experience seeing it last show of the first night and a week or so later. Out in seattle there's a bunch of cinemas, maybe not the most by land area or population, but there are a lot. Most of them are near good, and occasionally cheap restaraunts and even near by. Some, like the most excellent Cinerama are not. The better the movie, especially on a friday night the parking can be brutal. And standing outside in the crisp night air, possibly getting rained on, for hours on end looses its charm just as quickly as one might imagine. But it's worth it. The people who are there understand that it is an event and they are invested in it. A setting like that is almost enough to make you cry during Pearl Harbor. No, not for that reason, stop being so cynical.
Basically, it's the same reason people put chocolate sauce on ice cream.
With all due respect -- no, you clearly don't. You're raising the (entirely valid) question of whether letting the market set prices is the fairest way for a society to do it. But even Lamborghini prices are set by the entire market: by the.01% who are willing to pay the going rate and the 99.99% who aren't.
It's a little closer to, "the people will decide to break the laws when a monopoly or cartell sets unfair prices." That is the market making a decision, and it has an effect on prices. The music industry certainly doesn't compete for customers the way say... car companies do. They've bought my freedoms, and I didn't sell them.
I think the idea is that the bomb would dig in a few 10's of meters then detonate and the resulting shockwave would be powerful enough to collaps the underground fortification. The reason for using a nuke at all is to deliver a powerful enough shockwave in a can to the target area.
The other things depleted uranium has going for it is it is pyrophoric and self-sharpening. So as it pushes through the armor of its target the tip doesn't blunt. As it penetrates, instead, the material sort of peels back always leaving a sharp point. And when it is through the armor, the high temperature, and high preassure cause hot chips of the penetrator to fly off killing everyone unlucky enough to be in the opposing tank. Or what have you. From what I understand it would not be totally unlike throwing iron filings through a flame.
The problem with washington is they have a massive budget short fall, but really no programs that can be cut. There was an initiative that barely passed, limiting government growth when the economy was booming. The idea was to create a rainy day fund. And surprise surprise, the planning worked. We had a massive surplus that would have helped us ride out a rough spot and avoid binge and purge spending so common in governments. The only problem is the economy was booming, and there was a huge surplus so the inbred hicks that account for most of washington state, just naturally assumed that the economic boom would continue indefinately. A perfectly reasonable assumption. So they decided on significant tax cuts, most significantly in the taxes that went to pay for road repairs and construction. That surplus that should have protected us? Not what it was. Government can't get much smaller without eliminating important services thanks to the limited growth. And government has to create innovative ways to raise taxes as most of the normal routes require approval by the voters, who are inbred hicks. Sure, in King County and most of the metropolitin areas things go in a more or less intelligent manner, but state wide people vote for these insipid initiatives assumeing that government should run on prayers and wishful thinking. I literally could not have more contempt for these people. The people responsible for the current state of affairs are the hick, conservative voters. Not the politicians, no one else. But hey, maybe next year washington will be forced to teach the "intelligent design" version of creationism. After all there is "no evidence of evolution".
Personally, I think we need a law that would return taxes to the community that paid them. Sure, I realize it would probably be unconstitutional. But if these idiots had to pay their own way, and didn't have the wealth of cities subsidising them, they'd change their tune about the responsabilities of government real quick.
Oh, and Boeing leaving. That has nothing to do with seattle's infrastructure. That has to do with their plans on moving to ever greater amounts of foreign outsourcing. And strikes outside your corporate head quarters are a little more difficult to pull off if the workers are far away. They made a lot of excuses about how washington wasn't competative tax wise, but Boeing got spectacular tax exemptions.
You don't think the coup d'etat by reactionary forces within the military had anything to do with Russia ending up on that list? It has nothing to do with the content of the government and how they feel about figure skating judges, it has to do with what might happen should that government fall. We call this a contingency.
Aside from the developments of Robert Goddard, as a private individual, under the FDR administrations, the end of world war 2 and the bounty of the german weapons programs. The Atomic bomb. ICBM's under Kennedy. Cruise missles and the B-70 valkyrie (forerunner of the B-1b) to say nothing of stealth technology came of age, and the later started with Carter AFAIK. But most significant weapons programs inception to implimentation tended to last decades, witness the B-52 which is planned to have an 80 year lifespan. In general democrats seem to be fans of new weapons programs, republicans more enamoured with expansion of existing public ones, and intelligence gathering. But I imagine that if I acctually put some effort into researching this I would find that it's very evenly split.
Those who wish me ill, and those who seek to right percieved injustices by willfully and knowingly killing innocents are no form of life I place any value in.
They seek the glory of Allah, I'm proud to have my tax dollars sending them to it.
They are suing because Microsoft has deep pockets and that reason alone. In sun's case, they weren't harmed, they were helped. And only their bizzar temper-tantrums have hurt them with respect to Java.
But the fact, not the idea, that they are using court rooms as away to improve their bottom line and not a place to seek redress makes me want to vomit. Those are the types of people at sun. Amoral sophists. That's what they stand for. It's only a matter of time before that attitude permiates everything they do.
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Who cares about the average palestinian? They aren't the ones my leaders deal with. The palestinians representatives self appointed and almost otherwise want that. That's what they say in interviews. Probably because if they said what they really want, "No peace other than total victory on our terms," would probably be met with enourmous military aid to israel and their destruction.
What's really funny, is they have the solution to their problem. The Indians gave it to them. And now, it a time of such fast and often raw communications, the palestinians have it so much easier. But as long as they keep targeting civilians, preferentially I might as, they've doomed themselves and all who ally with them. But no, they keep teaching their kids to beg to be shot, parents taking their children into harms way, and teach them, the few that grow up, to provoke reprisals without sympathy, what do they expect. They've got the fight they wanted. They demanded. Casting the Israelies as villains isn't going to happen by blowing up families out for a night on the town. That's just a fact of life. Call it ignorance, call it whatever you like. But it's immutable.
As for, the "this land is our land" crap. Too bad. Romans stole it from the jews first. How far back should we go? 1967? 1BC? Your arguments aren't what I would call symetric. Why shouldn't the Israelies adopt palestinian logic and kill as many palestinian civilians as quickly as they can? And it would certainly seem from recent events that should the israelies wish to do this they certainly could.
I think I'll actually take Arafat at his word, live and unedited. Thank you very much. Not to mention the muslim states can't even agree that the killing of civilians is in fact terrorism. And I could get that information anywhere, the fact that in this case it comes from CNN is irrelavent.
We all see the world through the filter of our experiences, and all news agencies emphisise certain elements above others to play to their audiance. Non-US media is hardly immune. To pretend it is, is foolish. To laud one above the other is mearly a matter of personal preference and perhaps just tells us a little more about what you prefer to believe. Pretend the Al Jeezera and the BBC are disinterested 3rd parties if you want to, it doesn't effect me in the least. But don't expect anyone to count that as something of a substitue for a rational argument.
I think that's why they say they hate us, but in reality the people who do hate the US are just stupid and poor.
They see us making trade demands from everyone, our fingers in too many pies, and think it greedy or maybe arrogant. But it's just that we're the largest trading partner of most countries. Our national interests are simply more distributed, and unsurprisingly, our foreign policy follows our interests. But there's a strange sort of dichotomy. I think it might come from the value placed on individuality, where by and large people take care of their own crap. Perhaps other cultures see national agreements more holistically. And perhaps expect something more than free trade for any concessions made, and we've left the building. We're watching Access Hollywood for an update on the personal dramas of Britney and Justin, or something equally mundane. A baby who inexplicably fell down a well, whatever. And the populace of other countries feels that the US is too conceited for it power, or too powerful for its conceit. But the truth is much less interesting. It's simply a matter of my goods for your money or my money for your goods, and if you expect me to even entertain the prospect of this process, there are going to be a few things we need to agree on first.
Then you have people, such as the palestinians, who expect to just be happy because some book I've never read says they deserve it. They picked a fight, they lost. And now they're really loosing. (Good.) They expect the US to wave a magic wand and just solve all their problems for them, without any effort on their part. Even if the world did work that way, and history has consistantly shown us it doesn't, why on Earth would we possibly intervene on behalf of the palestinians, given the past years events, and the occasions they choose for celebration?
If it wasn't in such a tragic context, even Arafat's recent statments would be funny. According to him the US is directly responsible for palestinian deaths because the Isralies use some american hardware, and the palestinians are not directly responsible Isralie civilian casualties because they are short on saritonin re-uptake inhibitors, or something. They really feel entitled to everything, and it's somehow our obligation to just give it to them, and they shouldn't even have to stop killing innocent people to get it. It's pretty obvious I've got no pity left for the palestinians. But I do think they have an excuse of sorts.
Some of the data I've read suggests the the majority of the people in the muslim world, which is vastly poorer than the west on a per capita average, are illiterate. Being illiterate and raised in enviroments that even in their mildest forms I would consider reactionary and fundementalist, and having few sources of information, they grow up without bullshit detectors. This and the fact they grow up with a religion that extols, in some instances, the murder of civilians and suicide, and a culture where people think nothing of using people for political ends, well it's to be expected. But we can't make them rich, we can't make them smart, we can't grow bullshit detectors in vasts and have missionaries and peace corps volunteers insert them using a novel out-patient procedure. They've got to help themselves, too bad for them they don't see it that way. Too bad for us too.
Well, at least I get to see some stuff blow up on CNN. There's the steel lining I guess.
Not really.
Things like cool bar are part of IE, but are also part of windows. If MS did what the states wanted it, whatever it would be, would not be windows. The users would have no way of knowing before hand if they had the right chuncks of the operating system to install supposedly windows software. The funny thing is, the market would kick this idea to death. Microsofts success is built on the idea that people want a common method to easily exchange information, and they care about the commonality and intuitive ease of use more than anything else, especially reliability. A hodge podge of frankenwindows would reduce that commonality, and everyone would flock to windows as we know and love to revile it on slashdot. Sure there might be a market for it places like cash registers, but that's a pretty small market that already has a lot of windows in it. Not to mention that all of this work the states ask microsoft to do will cost money, which will do nothing to push the cost of a windows license below 15 bucks, which is what 2000 goes for now, and ME etc used to go for. XP home is probably 15, pro maybe more.
What's really stupid is, they've already got their wish of a sort of bastard windows. Wine on linux would almost certainly work better than randomly removing windows componants.
Oh, and oem's do modify their versions of windows, in mostly cosmetic ways. (Adding things like support buttons to the "my computer" properties sheet. Almost every oem used to replace ms fax with something else etc.)
Windows is the common marketplace where people sell their software, microsoft makes it's coin of making it common, and charging admission. The states are proposing to make it a marketplace where no one can be sure they can use the software other people are selling, and no one can be sure they are making software all the people can, and want, to use.
But I don't think the states really want that anyway. My personal theory is that they see MS's $36B in cash and they see a quick way to make up their states budget shortfalls. The right or wrong of the matter doesn't really apply as they are lawyers and sophists by nature. They got a lot of money from the tabacco companies that most of the states didn't spend on "prevention" or set aside for health care costs. So search for another company with deep pockets, rinse lather repeat.
Insightful? Government owning the roadways information travels on? I don't think so. Next thing you know they'll be owning the roadways cars travel...oh.
Sorry. Carry on.
So, is Sam Jackson going to play you in the movie?
One wonders if nsync cds would sell worse without the cd's in the jewels cases.
Not that I am a profesional sociologist with reams of rock hard data, or anything other than just shooting from the hip.
But I would bet that having the music on the cd is less important than having the cd itself. I'm not just saying this because nsynch sucks, but that it might be more important for their "fans" to be part of the pop-culture phenomina than to be enjoying whatever entertainment value the music has intrinsicly. As such, 12 year old girls would be one of the last groups to turn away from the music industry, their not buying the music at all.
1) My egotism? Yeah, I probably could be more egotistical. For instance I might deem myself annointed by a magic guy in the sky to be the final arbitor of what people should be allowed to see, read, and or hear. I prefer to let individuals make individual choices. There are plenty of instances where the puritan minority tyranny excersices disproportunate control over a more liberal majority.
:). But you're right, the silly and arbitrary ideas of what passes for approved and not approved content, they don't apply to me anymore. I'm over 18 and I don't live where people care what I entertain myself with. But the fact that it doesn't directly affect me, doesn't make it right.
2) Your delicate sensibilities. Perhaps you haven't heard of trailers, movie reviews, word of mouth etc. But these, and other venues provide a good way for people to decide if they want to see a movie. I would say I get something other than I expect maybe 2 to 5% of the time. I would expect other peoples results to be similar. But should movie makers wish to be clear and make sure that the extream minority, unable to tease a reasonable expectation out of a preview, has a little extra information, that's fine by me. But the idea that this makes it right for some people to decide what's right for other peoples kids to see is crap. People should raise their own kids, see personal responsability.
3) Poor Farmers. Look at a graph of wealth over a map of the united states. How many square feet do you think you can get for a 1000$ in podunk arkansas? Your sophistry aside, even a quick look at the electoral college will show your claim for the sham it is. Not that we couldn't look further, say to the fact that cities pay for telephones, among other things, for the more remote areas.
4) Small Government, as long as it's big enough to force other people think like us. Small government, according to the puritans should determine what magazines are allowed to be sold in each local community, what movies are allowed to be viewed, what people in large cities thousands of miles away should be allowed to hear on the radio, watch on tv, oh and the particular brand of Jehova that should be the offical sponser of the school day. That is hypocrisy.
5) "Hey I'm personally responsible, and I completely endorse a system that tells people how to raise their kids!" And while you might not care what I watch now, someone just like you wanted to make sure I would have to make an extra effort to see some movies when I was younger. At least the kids seeing movies now, they won't feel this way, at least if they live in the cities. While the restrictions remain, they certainly don't seem enforced.
6) Bad Simile Theater. If you wanted to end the discussion, why not just bring up Nazi's and Hitler. Not that I don't find spurious comparisions ammusing mind you. I'm fine with being a bigot (everyone has their areas of inflexibility). But if you expect me to tolerate your intoleance, I must ask you do the same for me
And as an aside, if you decide, with a little help from your friends, which movies you should be seeing, and assumably previews, reviews et al, what exactly do you get from the ratings system? But most importantly the part of the ratings system that prevents (in theory) other peoples kids from seeing a movie you don't approve of.
You seem like the kind of guy who might not have much of a problem with Commando, but would think Pulp Fiction would be way out of bounds for kids, even young teenagers. What's really funny is how this might come back to haunt your kids later. One of my friends was raised like that. And when it comes to the cultural knowledge a larger group of people assume to be common, he's uncommonly deficent. Sometimes he might take a little crap for it, but what's probably even worse are the times when it's not exactly appearent, but he can't really participate. While each incident, might be meaningless in and of itself, I think the pattern probably has an impact. It'd be an interesting sociology experiment.
Thinking is hard. So they avoid it.
The sexual images in Amelie, regardless of their context, absolutely insured it could only get an R rating. Old blue haired women and efeminate aged men cry and lament the death of movies like State Fair that the children would flock to. To this end, they have been given the ability to "rate" films and determine whether people they don't know are fit to see them. The studios kinda have to tolerate it, as without this sort of agreement, the puritans of small towns would certainly sue the studios for violating local standards at the behest of some child molesting minister. It's stupid, it's wrong, but it's pragmatic. It solves the problem in a way that the stupid deny themselves exposure to interesting things.
Hell, I know where I see movies, the ratings aren't a factor at all. Paying doesn't even seem to be much of a factor. I've seen groups of a dozen or so kids "sneak" into movies. But "sneak" is something of a misnomer, since they are so blatant. Theaters don't seem to care if people even pay, I doubt they are checking ids.
But crap like this comes from the political struggle in america where the poorer, and land owning people of the midwest have disproportunate power to that of the richer, more liberal people in the cities. The poorer, more religious, people seem to eschew personal responsability in favor of a "smaller government" that's big enough to make sure that everyone isn't thinking impure thoughts.
Personally, I think God doesn't like hypocrisy so he sends tornados to destroy their trailers.
Spam 2.0, another white meat.
The kooky literalists aren't the ones who pain me. They've lost, they've been voted out of the mainstream and may recieve their consolation prizes in the event of a Jehova approved Armaggedon.
:)
Personally, I have a little bit more of a problem with the "intelligent design" brand of kook. It's pretty clear their only motivation is to wedge their God into other people lives under the guise of empirical truth. Funny how similar people legislated God into the pledge of allegiance in a naive and embarisingly futile attempt to push back the clock to a Ward Cleaver ideal that never really existed. Maybe such pledges for children too young to understand them are the fine line between nationalism and fascism. Maybe it's even a good thing that people who invested too much faith in a magic guy in the sky, rather than personal responsability, added those little words that didn't belong and got it kicked out of schools. Although, perhaps not all. But I think there is some value giving kids a sense of national identity. These are the people affecting change. And never for the better. The people trying to find Noah's Ark, they might make the news, but never a difference, and as such, they're pretty harmless.
I would bet that every state has its properly apportioned share of state representatives that are trying to get a mandatory intelligent design curriculum state wide. Enough time is wasted in our schools as it is. We don't need to be inventing worthless garbage that will be competing with the little bit of useful information our educational system disseminates.
In short I find the AC +2 insightful as well
And at least you're a professional karma whore, I'm still an unranked amature.
faster than cpu speed, and hard drive storage, doesn't it seem that spam will get worse as the technology provides more and more bandwidth at ever lower prices? It doesn't seem that the extreamly rare individual costing the spammers some pocket change is a significant pressure against the behavior. And since the bandwidth is going to probably be less and less of an issue, doesn't it seem likely that spam will just be something we'll have to just accept? At least until law makers provide some real teeth for little guy to rend soft pink spammer flesh. Unless ISP decide to throw their weight around for their customers, with the problem getting easier for them to ignore, it's just going to end up an accepted, and shitty part of life.
It'd be interesting to see what spam cost the world in lost time, and lost network resources.
My grampa kicks your grampas ass.
We got him and grandma a nice little compaq to surf the internet with. Inside of a year not only was he installing peripherals, and software, but adding ram on his own. Sure I get like a call a month, and sure I get all kinds of "interesting web site" clippings from their local paper sent to me. But it's really satisfiying to see...err hear them getting so much enjoyment out of it. I didn't think they'd do a tenth of the stuff they've done with it.
That will certainly teach me to underestimate MY grandparents, perhaps yours have a similar lesson in store for you.
But the Cinerama is by far the best I've ever had the pleasure of visiting. It was Seattle's best older theater; bought, remodeled and brought into the THX age by Paul Allen. The screen is huge, the seats are comfy, the sound great, and inbetween what are usually the biggest, if not best, movies out at the time, you'll get the odd Kubrick film festival. In short, there is no better place to see a movie in Seattle. Hell between Vancouver BC and Portland. Seattle to Portland being the farthest I've ever driven to see a movie. In general, the vast majority of theaters in the seattle area are THX, DTS or SDDS certified. Most are relatively nice, but few have the nice nice stadium seating. Things have gone somewhat downhill after Regal and Lowes acquired Act III and Cineplexodeon (though the difference between them and Lowes isn't that great). At least they stopped forcing the poor Lowes empolyees to beg for money to help cure Terry Bradshaw's baldness or something.
And in any case, I'm sure that Cinerama will add one of the digital projectors to their entertainment aresenal. But anything I'm desperately anticipating and expecting to be a sublime movie viewing experience I go through the extra hassel and expense to see it there, and insure it's as good as possible. As good as it could ever be.
Next time you buy a copy of anything with MS on the label, I encourage you to take your opened software package back to CompUSA, or what have you, and tell the clerk you don't agree with the End User Liscence Agreement. Hell, try this with any software. For extra ammusement try to buy a stack of cd-r media at the time you're making the return.
Well, I know why I sometimes make an extra effort to see a showing on the first day.
Watching a movie on your tv and in a theater are obviously different experiences. But there is one really key difference. Seeing it in a theater is a community experience. When you know a movie is really good and will just rock you, it is a very different experience seeing it last show of the first night and a week or so later. Out in seattle there's a bunch of cinemas, maybe not the most by land area or population, but there are a lot. Most of them are near good, and occasionally cheap restaraunts and even near by. Some, like the most excellent Cinerama are not. The better the movie, especially on a friday night the parking can be brutal. And standing outside in the crisp night air, possibly getting rained on, for hours on end looses its charm just as quickly as one might imagine. But it's worth it. The people who are there understand that it is an event and they are invested in it. A setting like that is almost enough to make you cry during Pearl Harbor. No, not for that reason, stop being so cynical.
Basically, it's the same reason people put chocolate sauce on ice cream.
It seems like something, once upon a time, someone would have said about Sony.
With all due respect -- no, you clearly don't. You're raising the (entirely valid) question of whether letting the market set prices is the fairest way for a society to do it. But even Lamborghini prices are set by the entire market: by the .01% who are willing to pay the going rate and the 99.99% who aren't.
... car companies do. They've bought my freedoms, and I didn't sell them.
It's a little closer to, "the people will decide to break the laws when a monopoly or cartell sets unfair prices." That is the market making a decision, and it has an effect on prices. The music industry certainly doesn't compete for customers the way say
I think the idea is that the bomb would dig in a few 10's of meters then detonate and the resulting shockwave would be powerful enough to collaps the underground fortification. The reason for using a nuke at all is to deliver a powerful enough shockwave in a can to the target area.
The other things depleted uranium has going for it is it is pyrophoric and self-sharpening. So as it pushes through the armor of its target the tip doesn't blunt. As it penetrates, instead, the material sort of peels back always leaving a sharp point. And when it is through the armor, the high temperature, and high preassure cause hot chips of the penetrator to fly off killing everyone unlucky enough to be in the opposing tank. Or what have you. From what I understand it would not be totally unlike throwing iron filings through a flame.
The problem with washington is they have a massive budget short fall, but really no programs that can be cut. There was an initiative that barely passed, limiting government growth when the economy was booming. The idea was to create a rainy day fund. And surprise surprise, the planning worked. We had a massive surplus that would have helped us ride out a rough spot and avoid binge and purge spending so common in governments. The only problem is the economy was booming, and there was a huge surplus so the inbred hicks that account for most of washington state, just naturally assumed that the economic boom would continue indefinately. A perfectly reasonable assumption. So they decided on significant tax cuts, most significantly in the taxes that went to pay for road repairs and construction. That surplus that should have protected us? Not what it was. Government can't get much smaller without eliminating important services thanks to the limited growth. And government has to create innovative ways to raise taxes as most of the normal routes require approval by the voters, who are inbred hicks. Sure, in King County and most of the metropolitin areas things go in a more or less intelligent manner, but state wide people vote for these insipid initiatives assumeing that government should run on prayers and wishful thinking. I literally could not have more contempt for these people. The people responsible for the current state of affairs are the hick, conservative voters. Not the politicians, no one else. But hey, maybe next year washington will be forced to teach the "intelligent design" version of creationism. After all there is "no evidence of evolution".
Personally, I think we need a law that would return taxes to the community that paid them. Sure, I realize it would probably be unconstitutional. But if these idiots had to pay their own way, and didn't have the wealth of cities subsidising them, they'd change their tune about the responsabilities of government real quick.
Oh, and Boeing leaving. That has nothing to do with seattle's infrastructure. That has to do with their plans on moving to ever greater amounts of foreign outsourcing. And strikes outside your corporate head quarters are a little more difficult to pull off if the workers are far away. They made a lot of excuses about how washington wasn't competative tax wise, but Boeing got spectacular tax exemptions.
Your jokes aside.
You don't think the coup d'etat by reactionary forces within the military had anything to do with Russia ending up on that list? It has nothing to do with the content of the government and how they feel about figure skating judges, it has to do with what might happen should that government fall. We call this a contingency.
Aside from the developments of Robert Goddard, as a private individual, under the FDR administrations, the end of world war 2 and the bounty of the german weapons programs. The Atomic bomb. ICBM's under Kennedy. Cruise missles and the B-70 valkyrie (forerunner of the B-1b) to say nothing of stealth technology came of age, and the later started with Carter AFAIK. But most significant weapons programs inception to implimentation tended to last decades, witness the B-52 which is planned to have an 80 year lifespan. In general democrats seem to be fans of new weapons programs, republicans more enamoured with expansion of existing public ones, and intelligence gathering. But I imagine that if I acctually put some effort into researching this I would find that it's very evenly split.
Those who wish me ill, and those who seek to right percieved injustices by willfully and knowingly killing innocents are no form of life I place any value in.
They seek the glory of Allah, I'm proud to have my tax dollars sending them to it.
They are hardly so high minded.
A little cynicism would do you good.
They are suing because Microsoft has deep pockets and that reason alone. In sun's case, they weren't harmed, they were helped. And only their bizzar temper-tantrums have hurt them with respect to Java.
But the fact, not the idea, that they are using court rooms as away to improve their bottom line and not a place to seek redress makes me want to vomit. Those are the types of people at sun. Amoral sophists. That's what they stand for. It's only a matter of time before that attitude permiates everything they do.