Localized monopolies (which is what you most likely ran into) are often under state and/or municipal jurisdiction.
Why you want the FCC (given the context) to step in (when your sig indicates you'd probably want a smaller federal government) and remove that monopoly truly escapes me.
If you have a beef with that regulation, take it up with those who enacted or enforce it. Don't sit here and grumble that deregulation of everything will fix all ills.
I suppose someone's got to pay for the executives.
Seriously, something is horribly wrong when directors vote to give a CEO an 7-figure salary or bonus for the seemingly simple reason that "everyone else is doing it". Especially when at least 80% of the time, they have absolutely no idea how well the person will perform other than a nice speech and a good Powerpoint presentation (case in point: Carly "I ran HP into the ground and that's why I should be US Senator!" Fiorina), and when the incompetent ass drains the company, they are contractually bound to give the jerk a golden parachute.
Had you mentioned PUBLIC schoolbook, perhaps your point would stand. But try asserting that religion doesn't belong in schoolbooks at a Catholic school, and see how far you get.
Dominionists, for those who don't recognize the term, are Christians (usually evangelical Protestants, though some Catholic groups exhibit dominionist theology) who believe that God's "laws" or moral wishes supersede any law drafted by men. To these folks, abolishing abortion by legislation or by Supreme Court reversal, banning homosexual rights (and possibly even recognition as humans), and creationism (along with a general rejection of scientific consensus) are all crucial and pressing policies that must be enacted in any government.
Naturally, that theology runs afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...). They will, of course, try to argue that they're not trying to establish a Church of America, but nevertheless the consequences of their success are no different. Furthermore, trying to reason with them is usually futile, as they perceive the US to be a rebellious state against God that was originally founded by Christians (which is a poor reading of history at best)-- and since their theology unnaturally blends Old and New Testaments, they think that if the US continues the status quo or adopts policies left of conservatism*, it will meet the same fate as ancient Israel when it was conquered by Babylon, or when it rebelled against the Roman Empire. No amount of arguing from Paul's letters or "render unto Caesar" will do any good, because as far as they're concerned, they have absolutely nothing to lose-- the Kingdom on the earth must be established, but they will not recognize that it was never meant to be a literal kingdom or government built by the hands of men.
But in their minds, they've already lost several times-- the conservative Supreme Court has at least ruled conservatively where social issues were concerned-- as in, they relied more on precedent and the Constitution rather than Christian morals (though we'll really see their true colors when the CA Prop 8 trial is sent their way), they only got what was no doubt in their minds a watered-down abortion/stem cell ban from Congress, and they've now lost a very reliable friend and ally in the White House due to term limits and a charismatic Democrat-- not that the former Alaskan governor did much to help them at all. They refuse to believe that their allies in government (the Republicans) failed them, because their allies are their leaders and to them, "one of us". If you're a member of the congregation, you don't speak ill of "one of us", though you can heap criticism and vitriol on "one of them". Therefore they see the electoral losses in 2006 and 2008 not as defeats, but as "them"-- non-dominionists-- having conspired to destroy the Church (or euphemistically, the "good things about America"). You'll notice that this duress argument is used commonly in the big Tea Party rallies and by some right-wing media men.
So the way they see it, because the "liberals" and the "atheists"** cheated, they're going to fight back just as dirty-- but of course they'll justify their own actions as "saving the children", as that has demonstrably worked to enact skewed legislation for generations. Their efforts to mess with public school textbooks is but a taste of what these extremists are capable of, and are willing to do. The greatest shame is that they will think they have brought another Enlightenment and Revival to the US, when in fact they will have consigned their children to academic inferiority as China, India, and other nations progress. The conservatives who are participating in the name of ideological "balance" are digging their own graves as well, as they are more interested in indoctrination, not building up thinking skills in our children. I suppose that, given their permanent self-victimization, they'll blame our relative failure on the "liberals" and "atheists" too.
* Given the "small government" creed of conservatism, dominionism has always been a strange bedfellow, but I suppose Frank Schaeffer's father leveraged his connections well to cement the alliance... ** And here's where Dawkins' movement really hurts those who wish to bring some of these folks back to reason... Yes, I know reasoning with them is usually futile, but that doesn't mean I'll stop trying.
The other reason the administration's going to Aus (for you Hanlon's razor holders out there) is that of all the industrialized nations with "high-speed" internet, Australia is reasonably close to the US geographically. I'm sure they're taking a look at how Canada did their Internets as well. One counter-reason tossed around against the "why don't we do it like {geographically small / population-dense country here}??" is that we have huge open spaces where we have to route things like fiber backbone, and remote places that could really benefit from being online, but is insanely expensive to deploy to. I don't think that's an unreasonable objection, and if we can find a cost-effective way to solve those problems that improves on how everyone (US, Aus, Canada, etc.) does it, that's a huge win in my book.
That's because some numbskull (or genius, depending on which side of the money you're on) determined that it would be more profitable to a company to be a complete asshole to its existing customers while at the same time ramping up the marketing budget to grab more customers. Customer service is one of those parts of doing business where you will be guaranteed to lose your entire investment; marketing always has a return. It's called "churn", and it's one of the reasons why so many companies jettisoned customer service principles that were once a hallmark of good business.
If you know business-level Japanese (and take it from a guy who sacrificed over a decade of Saturdays to learn Japanese in a dedicated school-- it's HARD), try to get a statement to Toyota's central office in Japan. If they ignore you (which is likely), take it to the pack of ravenous wolves-- er, the Japanese news media.
Two things work in our favor here: First, Japanese companies, like all Asians, love prestige, and will do somersaults* if it meant that you will think better of them. Toyota is hardly an exception here, as they hype the hell out of their Prius to gain eco cred. Second, Japanese news media is somewhat modeled after the British rags, in that they are by no means the docile bobble-heads that comprise the US press corps-- they are aggressive and ruthless. This means that if this story ended up in the Japanese press, it will cause enough of a furor to send execs over here to demand what the hell these idiots did.
* There was a Salaryman NEO sketch poking fun at the depth of bowing increasing proportionately to the authority of the person being bowed to; Prime Minister was a full forward somersault.
I'll chuck my mod rights to state the bleeding obvious:
Depending on the composer or cook, songs and culinary dishes can be open-source. Consider what the "source code" is for each: sheet music and recipes. Not too hard to share these, especially in this increasingly-digitally-connected world, no?
Of course, both require additional equipment and often some skills that no computer can reasonably provide (yet), but that's true of open-source software as well. You can't build Linux off a source DVD alone, nor can you compile X.org from the source someone gives you on a USB stick.
You could copy by hand, or transcribe it into a form of source code (ABC, lilypond, Music TeX, etc.) and generate reams of copies through Postscript/PDF.
I'm surprised the sheet music industry hasn't sued the maintainers of those projects yet. Maybe in that regard they're saner than the RIAA's members.
The former, I gather, is great for twitch types-- the kind of gamer who loves fast action and will maximize FPS to ensure that he isn't fragged the next millisecond.
The latter is good for those who like the tactical emphasis in games like CoD, although there is a bit of "if I can't see them, they can't see me" going on there. Especially good for sniper types, which is also why you don't find scoped weapons very easily in that game.
I concur with other comments asking for clarification-- it seems this scenario is fictitious, as the way it works in most courtrooms (and even more so in media and politics) is that the seemingly offensive game is used by the prosecution to call for stiffer regulation of game developers and publishers.
They have a huge contract with Apple as they've adopted NVidia chipsets for pretty much the entire Mac product line. Given that Jobs would preemptively shift to another chipset platform in the last round of announcements if this were even remotely true, I seriously doubt that NVidia would even think of limiting further R&D in their chipsets to Ion 2.
Unfortunately I'm used to the editors slipping at least twice a day...
Japan is also a country where the cops can manipulate you into producing a confession, then hand you over to the courts with said confession, saying, "look, he admits guilt."
Right to legal representation? Right not to self-incriminate? They're not the US, with their vaunted Bill of Rights.
It's as if the rest of the world copied the democracy part of the US but missed the major reasons why the US declared independence in the first place.
Poor credit isn't an indication of whether you'd commit larceny-- that's a syllogistic error. Put another way, just because thieves in general have bad credit, doesn't mean that people with bad credit are necessarily thieves.
The poor credit rating / score indicates that you're inexperienced or poor at financial management, which is a minus in any financial institution. If the credit agencies don't have any evidence that you're any good at managing your finances, no bank will be willing to take the risk of you managing other people's money.
You did such a great job on that project. have some perks! more money? no. you wont get more money.. but look! pizza on fridays! wooo!
It gets better*, in 2006-2007: "You know all that money you made us with that project you did last quarter? Raise? Bonus?! Sorry, peon, no can do. But we'll invest it in real estate! Ohh yeah, subprimes, CDOs, more money for us executives-- I mean the company. (And if you mention the 15% cut of profits that we executives get in bonuses, we'll can your ass so hard, you'll be eating through it.)"
2008-2009: "I'm sorry, we can't afford to {keep you on the payroll}|{keep contributing to your 401k/IRA/pension}|{keep your insurance}-- we lost all that money we invested in the subprime market. What? Ditch the corporate jet fleet and cut executive perks? Are you high?!?!"
* Sarcasm alert for those who filter irony from their internets.
The UMD is for all intents and purposes dead, defeated, vanquished, extinct, inanimate, no longer alive.
Given the "dead" nature of UMD, I'd hoped he'd go for "UMD is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to see its maker. This is a late format. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace..."
Windows has traditionally been about receiving the product. This has been true of much of Microsoft's product line, thanks to Bill Gates' philosophy on software.
I'm guessing that until recently Microsoft could afford to chuck costly favors and gifts to favored partner companies. If they're being squeezed by shareholders now, they will almost certainly be unable to "bribe" their own customers, and unless they come up with a way to make all of them happy (which isn't likely), Microsoft may be facing a very tough future.
And given how they built their corporate, office software, WWW browser, and desktop OS hegemony, I couldn't imagine this happening to a better company.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he's pretty much left that to his DoE secretary, Dr. Chu, who said we should "absolutely" expand the nuclear part of our energy portfolio.
I'm hoping he'll give fast breeders and thorium fuel a fair hearing, but we'll see.
Localized monopolies (which is what you most likely ran into) are often under state and/or municipal jurisdiction.
Why you want the FCC (given the context) to step in (when your sig indicates you'd probably want a smaller federal government) and remove that monopoly truly escapes me.
If you have a beef with that regulation, take it up with those who enacted or enforce it. Don't sit here and grumble that deregulation of everything will fix all ills.
I suppose someone's got to pay for the executives.
Seriously, something is horribly wrong when directors vote to give a CEO an 7-figure salary or bonus for the seemingly simple reason that "everyone else is doing it". Especially when at least 80% of the time, they have absolutely no idea how well the person will perform other than a nice speech and a good Powerpoint presentation (case in point: Carly "I ran HP into the ground and that's why I should be US Senator!" Fiorina), and when the incompetent ass drains the company, they are contractually bound to give the jerk a golden parachute.
Had you mentioned PUBLIC schoolbook, perhaps your point would stand. But try asserting that religion doesn't belong in schoolbooks at a Catholic school, and see how far you get.
Dominionists, for those who don't recognize the term, are Christians (usually evangelical Protestants, though some Catholic groups exhibit dominionist theology) who believe that God's "laws" or moral wishes supersede any law drafted by men. To these folks, abolishing abortion by legislation or by Supreme Court reversal, banning homosexual rights (and possibly even recognition as humans), and creationism (along with a general rejection of scientific consensus) are all crucial and pressing policies that must be enacted in any government.
Naturally, that theology runs afoul of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...). They will, of course, try to argue that they're not trying to establish a Church of America, but nevertheless the consequences of their success are no different. Furthermore, trying to reason with them is usually futile, as they perceive the US to be a rebellious state against God that was originally founded by Christians (which is a poor reading of history at best)-- and since their theology unnaturally blends Old and New Testaments, they think that if the US continues the status quo or adopts policies left of conservatism*, it will meet the same fate as ancient Israel when it was conquered by Babylon, or when it rebelled against the Roman Empire. No amount of arguing from Paul's letters or "render unto Caesar" will do any good, because as far as they're concerned, they have absolutely nothing to lose-- the Kingdom on the earth must be established, but they will not recognize that it was never meant to be a literal kingdom or government built by the hands of men.
But in their minds, they've already lost several times-- the conservative Supreme Court has at least ruled conservatively where social issues were concerned-- as in, they relied more on precedent and the Constitution rather than Christian morals (though we'll really see their true colors when the CA Prop 8 trial is sent their way), they only got what was no doubt in their minds a watered-down abortion/stem cell ban from Congress, and they've now lost a very reliable friend and ally in the White House due to term limits and a charismatic Democrat-- not that the former Alaskan governor did much to help them at all. They refuse to believe that their allies in government (the Republicans) failed them, because their allies are their leaders and to them, "one of us". If you're a member of the congregation, you don't speak ill of "one of us", though you can heap criticism and vitriol on "one of them". Therefore they see the electoral losses in 2006 and 2008 not as defeats, but as "them"-- non-dominionists-- having conspired to destroy the Church (or euphemistically, the "good things about America"). You'll notice that this duress argument is used commonly in the big Tea Party rallies and by some right-wing media men.
So the way they see it, because the "liberals" and the "atheists"** cheated, they're going to fight back just as dirty-- but of course they'll justify their own actions as "saving the children", as that has demonstrably worked to enact skewed legislation for generations. Their efforts to mess with public school textbooks is but a taste of what these extremists are capable of, and are willing to do. The greatest shame is that they will think they have brought another Enlightenment and Revival to the US, when in fact they will have consigned their children to academic inferiority as China, India, and other nations progress. The conservatives who are participating in the name of ideological "balance" are digging their own graves as well, as they are more interested in indoctrination, not building up thinking skills in our children. I suppose that, given their permanent self-victimization, they'll blame our relative failure on the "liberals" and "atheists" too.
* Given the "small government" creed of conservatism, dominionism has always been a strange bedfellow, but I suppose Frank Schaeffer's father leveraged his connections well to cement the alliance...
** And here's where Dawkins' movement really hurts those who wish to bring some of these folks back to reason... Yes, I know reasoning with them is usually futile, but that doesn't mean I'll stop trying.
This is a familiar meme (Hollywood is full of liberals), but I would be surprised if the execs of the studios and big theaters were liberal at all.
It's not about who you represent, it's about who has the most money to give.
I should have said "similar", not "close"...
(use preview. use preview...)
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!
The other reason the administration's going to Aus (for you Hanlon's razor holders out there) is that of all the industrialized nations with "high-speed" internet, Australia is reasonably close to the US geographically. I'm sure they're taking a look at how Canada did their Internets as well. One counter-reason tossed around against the "why don't we do it like {geographically small / population-dense country here}??" is that we have huge open spaces where we have to route things like fiber backbone, and remote places that could really benefit from being online, but is insanely expensive to deploy to. I don't think that's an unreasonable objection, and if we can find a cost-effective way to solve those problems that improves on how everyone (US, Aus, Canada, etc.) does it, that's a huge win in my book.
Sergeant? Is that you?
Watch out for the pineapple and pointed sticks, guv.
That's because some numbskull (or genius, depending on which side of the money you're on) determined that it would be more profitable to a company to be a complete asshole to its existing customers while at the same time ramping up the marketing budget to grab more customers. Customer service is one of those parts of doing business where you will be guaranteed to lose your entire investment; marketing always has a return. It's called "churn", and it's one of the reasons why so many companies jettisoned customer service principles that were once a hallmark of good business.
If you know business-level Japanese (and take it from a guy who sacrificed over a decade of Saturdays to learn Japanese in a dedicated school-- it's HARD), try to get a statement to Toyota's central office in Japan. If they ignore you (which is likely), take it to the pack of ravenous wolves-- er, the Japanese news media.
Two things work in our favor here: First, Japanese companies, like all Asians, love prestige, and will do somersaults* if it meant that you will think better of them. Toyota is hardly an exception here, as they hype the hell out of their Prius to gain eco cred. Second, Japanese news media is somewhat modeled after the British rags, in that they are by no means the docile bobble-heads that comprise the US press corps-- they are aggressive and ruthless. This means that if this story ended up in the Japanese press, it will cause enough of a furor to send execs over here to demand what the hell these idiots did.
* There was a Salaryman NEO sketch poking fun at the depth of bowing increasing proportionately to the authority of the person being bowed to; Prime Minister was a full forward somersault.
I'll chuck my mod rights to state the bleeding obvious:
Depending on the composer or cook, songs and culinary dishes can be open-source. Consider what the "source code" is for each: sheet music and recipes. Not too hard to share these, especially in this increasingly-digitally-connected world, no?
Of course, both require additional equipment and often some skills that no computer can reasonably provide (yet), but that's true of open-source software as well. You can't build Linux off a source DVD alone, nor can you compile X.org from the source someone gives you on a USB stick.
"The person who made this claim specifically opted in, granting her permission to receive campaign emails and other communications from Toyota."
Ah, so he means:
"My boss told me, 'OH, SHIT! TELL THEM SOMETHING, ANYTHING! MAKE THIS GO AWAY!!'"
You could copy by hand, or transcribe it into a form of source code (ABC, lilypond, Music TeX, etc.) and generate reams of copies through Postscript/PDF.
I'm surprised the sheet music industry hasn't sued the maintainers of those projects yet. Maybe in that regard they're saner than the RIAA's members.
The former, I gather, is great for twitch types-- the kind of gamer who loves fast action and will maximize FPS to ensure that he isn't fragged the next millisecond.
The latter is good for those who like the tactical emphasis in games like CoD, although there is a bit of "if I can't see them, they can't see me" going on there. Especially good for sniper types, which is also why you don't find scoped weapons very easily in that game.
I concur with other comments asking for clarification-- it seems this scenario is fictitious, as the way it works in most courtrooms (and even more so in media and politics) is that the seemingly offensive game is used by the prosecution to call for stiffer regulation of game developers and publishers.
They have a huge contract with Apple as they've adopted NVidia chipsets for pretty much the entire Mac product line. Given that Jobs would preemptively shift to another chipset platform in the last round of announcements if this were even remotely true, I seriously doubt that NVidia would even think of limiting further R&D in their chipsets to Ion 2.
Unfortunately I'm used to the editors slipping at least twice a day...
Japan is also a country where the cops can manipulate you into producing a confession, then hand you over to the courts with said confession, saying, "look, he admits guilt."
Right to legal representation? Right not to self-incriminate? They're not the US, with their vaunted Bill of Rights.
It's as if the rest of the world copied the democracy part of the US but missed the major reasons why the US declared independence in the first place.
I'm not seeing a whole lotta 802.11n drivers, to be honest...
But yeah, shame that this router will be stuck with 2.4.
Poor credit isn't an indication of whether you'd commit larceny-- that's a syllogistic error. Put another way, just because thieves in general have bad credit, doesn't mean that people with bad credit are necessarily thieves.
The poor credit rating / score indicates that you're inexperienced or poor at financial management, which is a minus in any financial institution. If the credit agencies don't have any evidence that you're any good at managing your finances, no bank will be willing to take the risk of you managing other people's money.
You did such a great job on that project. have some perks! more money? no. you wont get more money.. but look! pizza on fridays! wooo!
It gets better*, in 2006-2007: "You know all that money you made us with that project you did last quarter? Raise? Bonus?! Sorry, peon, no can do. But we'll invest it in real estate! Ohh yeah, subprimes, CDOs, more money for us executives-- I mean the company. (And if you mention the 15% cut of profits that we executives get in bonuses, we'll can your ass so hard, you'll be eating through it.)"
2008-2009: "I'm sorry, we can't afford to {keep you on the payroll}|{keep contributing to your 401k/IRA/pension}|{keep your insurance}-- we lost all that money we invested in the subprime market. What? Ditch the corporate jet fleet and cut executive perks? Are you high?!?!"
* Sarcasm alert for those who filter irony from their internets.
The UMD is for all intents and purposes dead, defeated, vanquished, extinct, inanimate, no longer alive.
Given the "dead" nature of UMD, I'd hoped he'd go for "UMD is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to see its maker. This is a late format. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace..."
Yeah, and Apple's video iPod released a year after the PSP's debut pretty much was the beginning of the end for UMD.
Windows has traditionally been about receiving the product.
This has been true of much of Microsoft's product line, thanks to Bill Gates' philosophy on software.
I'm guessing that until recently Microsoft could afford to chuck costly favors and gifts to favored partner companies. If they're being squeezed by shareholders now, they will almost certainly be unable to "bribe" their own customers, and unless they come up with a way to make all of them happy (which isn't likely), Microsoft may be facing a very tough future.
And given how they built their corporate, office software, WWW browser, and desktop OS hegemony, I couldn't imagine this happening to a better company.